116 keith evan green student design work citadel a precise anomaly conceived by the studio, an architectural advertisement for public display and reaction. over a five week term, students were asked to design an alternative to auckland's visitor information centre on its current downtown site adjacent to auckland town hall on aotea square. what is a "visitor's center "? what is "auckland"? how can a building help to define a place ? how can one account for the vital transformations in the other ? at the outset of the italian renaissance, leon battista alberti encountered similar complications when describing the citadel. he explained that while the citadel was initially "a place of piety and religion," it soon became "one of cruelty and excess." for alberti, the citadel was an anomaly, a place which was "neither inside nor outside the town" one defined alternatively as a "pinnacle of the whole world or lock of the city." "in short," he wrote, "a citadel should be conceived and built like a small town." following from the complications presented by alberti's suggestion, members of the studio were asked to reflect upon the situation of both /1 auckland" and it's "visitor's centre". for this studio, i proposed a particular "tactic" which might serve as an economical vehicle for pondering the particulars of the architectural situation, to discourage the abstruse and long-winded diatribes sometimes invented or appropriated, without discrimination, by students of architecture. members of the studio were thus asked to conceive their "visitors center" and /1 citadel" following from an oxymoron, a written figure consisting of just two words set in a tense relationship which might represent their unique vision of the city of auckland. in this way, "auckland" and "visitor's centre" were defined in the projects shown here as a "fragmented collective" and a "responsible deception". while arriving at their figurative representations of the city, students wondered whether "auckland" might be mythical or real, whether /1 auckland" is a past, present and i or future, and how "auckland" might feel, taste, and smell. at the outset of the studio, each member of the studio conceived his or her own oxymoron and presented this along with five graphic images that demonstrated it. thereafter, members of the studio worked to develop a precise, anomalous architecture following from their oxymoronic conception of /1 auckland" and "visitor's centre". the discovery of this anomalous citadel was represented with the utmost precision in drawings. responsible deception nick melrose, fifth year student 117 • the visitor's centre can never fully define the vitality of auckland as a systematic, static phenomenon. at best, the centre acknowledges this difficulty and proposes to responsibly deceive the visitor. as in the city itself, the visitor to the centre is required to navigate his or her way through an ever-changing landscape of images, offered as electronic information by instruments which themselves define the interior space of this public place. while the historical centers of europe might be described as a collective form, auckland's is relatively fragmented. but the city, as an ever-transforming situation, inherently has something of both the fragmented and the collective. fragmented collective melinda trask, third year student auckland and it's visitor's centre is here described as a fragmented collective. visitors enter the centre through an oscillating passageway that brings them to a cylindrical volume, a "pin" . here, across a reception desk, the visitor meets a worker who can obtain the desired printed information about the city. this information is retrieved from the walls of the cubic volume, essentially composed of leaflets. the elevator tower is accessible only to the worker, who can descend to an underground level to retrieve additional leaflets, or ascend to survey the situation of the city. after the encounter with the worker, the visitor exits through a linear passage and returns to auckland, somehow changed. -:l ross jenner the spaces between for some time now a need has been felt to set up another platform for architecture in this strangely dislocated part of the world where an architectural culture can be said scarcely to exist. important developments in thinking about architecture have been ignored or actively resisted here. it is our premise that architecture only happens in an environment of critical discussion and debate. we hope to offer a forum for the discussion and development of issues and ideas important to architecture without the restrictions of immediate commercial appeal which has hitherto been a 'justification' for the lack of a thoughtful treatment of architecture which elsewhere is taken for granted. 'justification' because ultimately important assumptions which for many must not be broken open and examined underlie this resistance to architecture and to theory. the intention of this journal is not to reaffirm existing normative standards and canons, nor to rest comfortably in the supposed self-sufficiency of the building object, regional identity, composition, nature, function or other modes. of legitimating work here but to explore the interstices, the gaps and fractures within an institution that appears solid, secure and fixed. it is the spaces between idea and thing where perfect correspondence is never quite found, demanding a realm of endless negotiation and interpretation that we see as productive. this is the sort of mismatch that damisch observes relative to viollet-le-duc where he says 'the "truth" of a building is not to be found in bricks and mortar any more than in the outer form. no, it lies in the space between them, that which makes them complementary, in that space where style is born, in that gap between things which is intimated in the absence of a logical link ... ', this is not a 'project' for an all-embracing account of things but a sounding of the cavities within the walls which sustain architecture. what interests us is the recognition that no formal schema posed in terms of composition, structure, or function can any longer adequately cover either the production or the account of the design in hand, where with the invasion of language into every area of problematics in architecture, in the resulting absence of centre and origin, everything becomes susceptible to the play of discourse. similarly questions of place, identity, regionalism, biculturalism, relations between the modem and the " , non-modem, thrown into prominence by the recent call for the design of a national museum, in this light can only be posed in terms of the conjunctural, constituted by negotiation, splicing, juxtaposition, collage. cultural factors are seen to be mixed, relational, inventive, mobile, with uncertain boundaries, not constituted by stable essences or polar opposites. it is also becoming clear that, while architecture must measure up to the quality of critical thinking demonstrated in other disciplines, there are gaps through the walls, institutionally defined disciplinary boundaries are being increasingly threatened and crossed. a productive tension is found sliding through the intervals, a labyrinthine exploration of the interstices, to risk 'speaking into the void'. our intention is to publish original writing generated from the under construction seminar series hosted now ~or the last three years at the department of architecture, university of auckland, whose aim initially to produce an increased consciousness in architectural circles of developments in theory in all disciplines, unexpectedly became a platform which did not seem to exist in the wider university. we aim to provide illustration and discussion of current architecture from new zealand, the pacific rim, and those from further afield which we see as being of interest and relevance to local practice, student work from the schools of architecture, translation of significant writing on architecture, and extended book reviews. letters will be treated with serious consideration, our interest is in fostering and continuing discussion not in sustaining a monolithic position. view from northwest. long weekend house gingin, western australia simon anderson and kate hislop granville community centre, gingin wa. 118 the long weekend house is situated on a 1.3 hectare site in the town ofgingin (population 540), 85 kilometres north of perth and 35 kilometres from the coast on the dandaragan plateau. the site has north and west distant views over gardens to the beermullah and swan coastal plains. it is designed to be used by the architects three days a week as a house/office/holiday house. it is the sort of house that cannot be readily accommodated in the city: expansive, pool, tennis court, gardens. the house adjoins the town football and show ground and its nearest contempora1y neighbours are the town recreation and community centres, both built in the spreading gingin vernacular of columned brick commanding lowly-elevated landscapes. the clients have spent many years working in the heavy and numerous colonnades of uwa and holidaying at rottnest island in the colurnnated cottages of herny vincent (1840s) and r j ferguson (1970s). together local context and history conspired to produce a colonnade, in fact a double colonnade, here formally superior to the exigencies of the domestic programme, save for the removal of one column around the hearth. the plan owes its length and narrowness to the late shingle style houses of mckim, mead & white (such as the low, appleton and cowdin houses), and its siting to john horbury hunt's pittington bungalow. it is gabled form of the low house made lower, inflected by hunt. it is spread form from the rural sheds of "belltrees" and the swan valley and it is the reverse timber frame of traditional construction, especially seen in queensland. it is terraced from the carre house of alvar aalto. it is post-colonnade rather than post-colonial, post-modem rather than post-modem: a post-post house. 1 driveway 2 pool 3 tennis court 3 eb ~ 0 2 5 10 alvar aalto . carre house , bazochessur-guyonne, france. gingin recreation centre, gingin wa. cattle sheds, "belltrees," scone nsw. shed, west swan wa. 119 1---------1 i d d i i i i i : 3 : i i r------------------------=----------_j l____ _ ------ci11 . a a 0 ~~------.. i 2 a d d 5 3 l_o ______ _ _ g _ ___ _ _ j;j _______ g_ _____ _p _ ____ g_o _ _ _ __p _ _ __ __ _g __ _ 0 1 2 5 10 ljl eb henry vincent. s up erinte nde nt 's house, rottnest wa, 1842. rj ferg uson. holiday cottage, rottnest wa. 120 1 carport 2 store/workshop 3 verandah 4 entry 5 bedroom i ii south elevation. north elevation. longitudinal section looking south. 6 7 8 9 3 i i i i i i d : i i i i i i i ____ g_ _ __ __ _ q ______ q..j bathroom study kitchen/din ing living r l1111 111i111 1 east elevation. west elevation. cross-section through living room looking east. cameron chisholm nicol . reid library, the university of western australia . forbes & fitzhardinge. mathematics building, the university of western australia. rj ferguson. lawrence wilson art gallery, the university of western australia . mckim, mead & white . low house, bristol , long island usa john horbury hunt. spurling house, brighton victoria . john horbury hunt. pittington bungalow, mt victoria nsw . . ··<_ 121 in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 132 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m interstices: journal of architecture and related arts is an open forum for the dissemination of architecture and thought. it is a non-profit journal published once a year. to remain independent, interstices relies upon institutional and private support to fund its editorial production. annual individual sponsorship is available from $500; corporate sponsorship from $1,000; and institutional sponsorship from $3,000. sponsors will receive full acknowledgement of their contribution in each issue of interstices for which they are a sponsor. this issue is supported by school of architecture + planning, university of auckland, school of art + design, auckland university of technology (institutional sponsors) and moller architects, architectus, warren and mahoney, jasmax (corporate sponsors) executive editors andrew douglas (andrew. douglas@aut.ac.nz) and ross jenner (r.jenner@auckland.ac.nz) co-ordinating editor susan hedges issue editor julia gatley contributors this issue michael davis, robert freestone, sam kebbell, milica mađanovic, gill matthewson, ann mcewan, aaron paterson, patrick reynolds, christoph schnoor, linda tyler, and lucy vete design and typography catherine griffiths typefaces founders grotesk, tiempos text klim type foundry production catherine griffiths and louise belcher web programming steve huynh published by enigma : he aupiki, auckland, new zealand september 2018 issn 1170-585x (print) issn 2537-9194 (online) this work is entitled to the full protection given by the copyright act 1962 to the holders of the copyright and reproduction of any substantial passage from the work except for the educational purposes therein specified is a breach of the copyright of the author and/or publisher. this copyright extends to all forms of photocopying and any storing of material in any kind of information retrieval system. interstices: journal of architecture and related arts takes a non-exclusive copyright in the papers submitted and accepted, i.e., we reserve the right to publish and republish the paper (for instance, electronically). authors are welcome to upload their papers in published form into their institution’s research repository. they retain the right to republish their papers elsewhere, provided that they acknowledge original publication in interstices. all applications by third parties, for reproduction in any form, should be made to the executive editors. submissions the editors invite submissions of articles, reports, book and project reviews, and translations. all correspondence should be addressed to the editors, interstices, school of art and design, aut university, private bag 92006, auckland 1020, new zealand. books for review and advertising should be forwarded to the executive editors, above. notes and guidelines for contributors can be found at http://interstices.ac.nz/ information-for-contributors/ guidelines-for-submissions/ acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the support of the very many people who have contributed to the realisation and quality of interstices auckland school centenary special issue in various ways—including, but not limited to, the blind refereeing of papers. they are elizabeth aitken rose, peggy deamer, andrew douglas, robert freestone, susan hedges, glen hill, mark jackson, ross jenner, andrew leach, russell lowe, mirjana lozanovska, ann mcewan, james mcgregor, bill mckay, alessandro melis, caroline miller, michael milojevic, tanja poppelreuter, marc aurel schnabel, christoph schnoor, robin skinner, bill taylor, sarah treadwell, linda tyler, paul walker, julie willis, and peter wood. we thank all those who presented research at the 2017 centenary symposium, “educating architects and planners, 1917–2017”. thanks to catherine griffiths and louise belcher for designing and copy editing this issue. if we have inadvertently overlooked anyone, we apologise. thanks also to the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland and the school of art and design at auckland university of technology. and, finally, a big thank-you to all the contributors to interstices auckland school centenary special issue! www.interstices.ac.nz editorial advisory board aotearoa/new zealand mike austin (unitec institute of technology), dan fleming (university of waikato), robert jahnke (massey university), laurence simmons (university of auckland), a.-chr. (tina) engels-schwarzpaul (auckland university of technology) australia suzie attiwell (rmit university), jillian hamilton (queensland university of technology), stephen loo (university of new south wales), mirjana lozanovska (deakin university), john macarthur (university of queensland), jeff malpas (university of tasmania), paul walker (university of melbourne) germany uta brandes (köln international school of design), ursula baus (frei04-publizistik, stuttgart) italy renato rizzi (università iuav di venezia, architect trento), nigel ryan (architect, rome) sweden hélène frichot (kth royal institute of technology) uae bechir kenzari (united arab emirates university) uk mark dorrian (edinburgh college of art), anthony hoete (what_ architecture, london), sally jane norman (university of sussex), peg rawes (the bartlett school of architecture), joseph rykwert (emeritus paul philippe cret professor) usa peggy deamer (yale university), mark goulthorpe (mit, decoi architects paris), jonathan lamb (vanderbilt university), david leatherbarrow (university of pennsylvania), moana nepia (university of hawai’i at mānoa) colophon jo u rn a l o f a rc h it ec tu re a n d r el a te d a rt s interstices02.indb 115 new zealand has a genius for genealogy. māori trace their whakapapa back to a fi rst canoe and many european new zealanders track their ancestral spoor back to a fi rst ship. who you’re from, where you’re from – perhaps it isn’t surprising that issues of identity are of concern in a country that is a remote fragment of larger landforms and bigger societies. though a preoccupation with descent may be endemic, it is, mercifully, not mandatory. for instance, i presume my forebears dwelt in various irish bogs. some may even have been princes of their patches of peat. who knows, and, at this remove, who cares? the point is, clan or family history matters more to some than others; it matters most, of course, to those who evoke the past in support of territorial claims. how important is the question of lineage in new zealand architecture? a recent and happy coincidence of anniversaries offers some indication. over the summer of 2005-06 three of the country’s larger architecture practices celebrated fi fty years of professional existence. the birthday boys – a literal description: the practices cannot muster one female partner between them – were aucklandbased asc architects; stephenson & turner, which has offi ces in auckland and wellington; and warren and mahoney, which has offi ces in auckland, wellington and christchurch. all three practices gave some thought to how they should acknowledge their silver jubilee; in ascending order of pomp, let’s look at what they came up with. asc architects marked their milestone with an edition of their occasional twopage newsletter and a party at a café next to their city-fringe premises. this effort – comparatively modest, as we’ll see – suggests a busy offi ce, or ambivalence towards self-promotion, or a lukewarm interest in genealogy (or all three). certainly, asc does not have a pretentious persona, and the fi rm’s low-key celebration of reaching fi fty was in keeping with its journey there. the history of asc serves as a reminder that, for all the debate about whether architecture is an art or a craft, it is also a business. the practice now known as asc architects was established by the late nyall coleman. gordon moller, the immediate past president of the new zealand institute of architects, worked for coleman in the early 1960s and remembers his employer as, “a very urbane gentleman”. a catholic, who drew upon his social contacts to get school commissions, and a businessman who recognised the value of the repeat client, coleman exemplifi ed the normal type of successful twentieth century architectural practitioner. that is, he wasn’t an auteur, but rather a respectable professional man. though coleman did well in his career he didn’t make it into the kiwi canon, and though his fi rm has endured his name has long since disappeared from its title (the “c” in asc is neil cotton). asc’s continuity is attributable to an overlap of personnel, not to dynastic succession. genius and genealogy john walsh interstices 07 so, no ancestor worship at asc, and maybe its founder would have wanted it that way. filial piety, at least formally, is more evident at stephenson & turner, and self-esteem more obvious. on its fi ftieth birthday s&t hosted functions with a high suit count at the price waterhouse tower on auckland’s waterfront (architect: stephenson & turner) and te papa in wellington. guests were welcomed by a hired raconteur and farewelled with a complimentary copy of a history commissioned by the practice (publisher: balasoglou books; rrp $59.95). very establishment, very corporate, very much in keeping with s&t’s reputation as a practice that does the business for fi nance companies, health boards and government departments. and true to the memory of the fi rm’s progenitor, sir arthur george stephenson (1890-1967), knight of the british empire, holder of the military cross, fellow of the riba, raia, and nzia, and recipient of riba and raia gold medals. now there’s a father fi gure, and s&t have been pretty happy to follow in the footsteps left by his big brogues. however, there have been a couple of issues along the way. for one thing, sir arthur and his company were australian, and in new zealand stephenson & turner started out as a branch offi ce. separation from the australian parent eventually occurred, but not without some anxiety. it must have been tempting to signal a new start with a new name, perhaps some clever piece of architectonic lexicology. but s&t didn’t get where they are by essaying hip, and they stuck with the brand. by keeping dad’s name, stephenson & turner acknowledged that they had embraced their destiny. no apparent regrets, just a hint, now and then, of wistfulness: those who have chosen to work in prose must occasionally wish they’d opted for poetry. warren and mahoney’s anniversary celebrations were the most ambitious of all. birthday bashes in christchurch, wellington and auckland served as launch parties for a monograph that, even priced at $110, must have cost the practice a small fortune to produce (again the publisher is balasoglou books). it is the best-looking architecture book to have been published in new zealand, though it’s title is a real mouthful: new territory/warren and mahoney//50 years of new zealand architecture. or: vision/brand//history. in this book warren and mahoney are both claiming and reclaiming territory. the practice wants to have it both ways: it is established (in terms of back catalogue warren and mahoney are the lennon and mccartney of new zealand architecture) and it is innovative (the practice seems to believe it has the local franchise for environmentally sustainable design). what the book also announces is that the practice has worked out an answer to the question of miles. for a while the fi rm’s partners seemed intent on escaping the shadow of w&m’s famous (and still very much extant) founder, sir miles warren. edging down the route to professional parricide, they even changed the practice name to architecture warren and mahoney. the redundant prefi x is gone now. warren and mahoney, as one would expect of a practice sired in origin-conscious christchurch, has realised the advantages of its inheritance. to put it another way: if you’re descended from genius, there’s good reason to be a genealogist. sroaroa.r iz naaur 22 rediscovering the city zwischenwelt in rovereto principal: r rizzi project team: f. allocca, c. bosio. the city is in a: process of moving away more and more from its quality of having 'place' because it is being rapidly homogenised. this has already happened in the peripheral areas and now there is a danger that the same contamination may happen even for the central areas. in other words, it seems almost that the ways and customs that have progressively taken root in the suburbs are able to become models for imitation in designing the zones inside the city, forgetting that there exists an enormous bundle of generative grammars that have been produced from a slow process of modification and that these possess the features of an urban character. the character of place in terms of rovereto the site represents a very important 'void', for all the city, a place in which figurative memory finds its expressive, oneiric forms, where the circus, the tournament, games, festivals: had their stage of illusion, a camivalesque place. an indefinite place, however, that could fill up until it almost burst or remain empty, a void unutilised, transversed only by children's incursions. this place of thousands of limits and also of no limit, _has a precious richness in defining the differential character of rovereto. this space, a little protected, enclosed, this space of forgetting, has maintained its character of marginality even though surrounded by the contemporary city. an area with certain invisible aspects, free, that has never participated in and that has never been absorbed by urban re-organisation and has always resisted any transformational programme. the historic iconography a reading of historical images traces a process of modification principally by cancellations, by the loss of signs, by successive and continuing enfeebling to the point of their total disappearance. the constituent elements that structured the plan small canals that incised the borders: the enclosing walls that are inscribed on the countryside represented the continuation of an urban landscape much more articulate, much more complex than that deduced from the few remaining archaeological traces or indications some of them describe the entire development of a network of waterways, illustrating and recounting with an incredible precision and richness all the possible ~j ~~ ~ 1 1 ~ ~ i 1 j ~i 23 \ diversions, controls, closures, barriers, types of canals, locks, wheels dislocated along the entire tracing. the value of these maps is in being able to restore a tangled world of images, of sounds, noises, it allows us to see the entanglement of the timbers with the fine threads of silk in a deafening rotation of gears rotted by water, which wrap around each other setting the scene now for the great urban machine. only in the book invisible cities by italo calvino can one savour again this fascinating intricacy and from a different point of view, some sort of analogy is offered by the machines of jean tinguely. but one can interpret other things from these maps. it is the particular way of holding together the region, countryside, architecture even the particular internal constructs of the figure. everything comes to be presented by their own image, all is expressible through the figures of a refined aesthetic logic. .> the planning programme above all the project is the endeavour to give a contemporary description of the city, it is the possibility of an urban narration through the figure. it expresses an undeniable aesthetic necessity if one wants the city to turn into a representation of itself grounding its own legitimacy on the necessity of use and not the contrary. therefore, the assumptions or themes of the figurative plan are: a. the theme of the void: to construct the void as a distinct characteristic of the area; b. the theme of transgression: to permit the possibility of welcoming again, the circus, the tournaments, the festivals, the games also fairs and markets at the limit; c. the theme of inversion: to bind the area whether to the historic texture or to the modern orthogonaloutlines, upsetting sense. while the more .rigid contemporary plan imposed itself on the more delicate historical plan cancelling it out, now the historic generative grammars assume preeminence over the modern organising syntaxes. d. the theme of the citation: the use of traces fragments, analogous figures, coming from the text of the city and from the iconographic memories, as referential citations e. the theme of the theatrical: the insertion of the great natural landscape, the mountains inside the urban rim as a new and fascinating theme of the modern. the figurativeprogramme two worlds, two landscapes look for their own space of confluence in the project. the first is an horizontal space, taut, even slightly concave, that almost covers 24 completely the entire area. it is the space that represents the void, the place where anything can happen. it should resemble a piazza but it is not exactly that. it is a space liberated, open to everything and anybody, not institutionalised, whose one rule is that it no one possess it. placed some metres above the level of the street it acts as roof it could be more opportune to say, as shield for the area below full of activity. it is a space that refers to the modem city, to its horizontal expansion. the second represents a vertical space, deep, dense, from the forced and controlled views. the landscape of the border. it changes radically depending on the different ways one approaches it. if one travels along it in an east-west direction, following the development of the historical city, it becomes a true urban street of more levels, rich with objects and figurative surprises, supported by a building-wall that will also welcome residential use. it reflects a modem sloping of the street of the historical areas, since it places itself as an ideal continuity with it. the compactness of the fronts, the continual suspension, floating between a below and an above produces the analogy of serried and articulated perspectives. if instead one comes from the north towards the south, the direction of the modem city, the edge is transformed into a soft organised margin of trees. a linear park of tall trees with the ground lower than the level of the streets becomes furrowed by the transversing pathways. the figurative tension that it produces between the edge and the horizontal space makes a series of objects emerge, fragments that are none other than circulation spaces stairs, ramps, entrances, bridges, gangways between the two diverse systems. to establish a reverberation between the opposite edges they reflect the traces extracted from the pre-existing buildings in the area. standing in a central position one can, moreover, observe a hierarchy of horizons. the first is given by its own limits, the second those that appear at the edge higher than 2.4 metres the third from the limits of the foliage of the trees, the fourth the urban skyline and last of all the scenography of the mountains. the point of view of the observer is no longer external to the city, but instead inside. it is no longer possible to perceive the city in its totality but only through parts, through traces and the texture of the fields in this case, no longer convex but concave since it is no longer nature but architecture. the figure had to exceed its own confines (the physical confines of the area) to display its expressive charge derived from the confrontation with the different texts of the city. it had to search for a profound rootedness in memory and tradition knowing well that only thus could it possess the necessary strength to detach itself, to be able to reveal, to be transgressive and innovative. " 1 i~~ j 25 \ it has re-figured a middle space, a zwischenwelt, an 'in-between world' which together hold the irre-soluble conflict between the historic city and the modem city, between the tight, fine, horizontal spaces, and the dense vertical spaces, between the limits that separate and the limits that include in a continual and incessant exchange of roles. the figure has thus finally unveiled the disquieting images of the place making them legible, liberating them from the prison of history. "'.: ..i in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 119 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m review / sam kebbell penumbral reflections sarosh mulla and aaron paterson objectspace, auckland may 12–june 23, 2018 there is something slightly disconcerting about walking into an unfamiliar dark room, especially when there is a weird thing in the middle of it, but it also ignites my curiosity. the room, in this case, is the main gallery at objectspace, and the weird thing was made by aaron paterson and sarosh mulla, both of pac studio and the university of auckland school of architecture and planning. at first glance, it looks like a big black egg in an orthogonal nest, but it’s not. what is it? the big black egg is in fact a dark-tinted reflective disc. from the side at which i arrived, it is totally black, which is why it looks like an egg, but when i move around it i can see it has a slightly convex curve that distorts fig. 1 a big black egg in an orthogonal nest? [photograph by david st george] in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 120 penumbral reflections sarosh mulla and aaron paterson objectspace, auckland may 12–june 23, 2018 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m the reflections of the projectors aimed at it. i read in the project description on the wall that it is a claude glass. wikipedia tells me that in the eighteenth century, a claude glass was a portable black-tinted convex mirror that tourists and landscape painters used to turn expansive views of the landscape into an image, so i am looking at a brobdingnagian version of that. the nest is not really what i thought either. as random as the framing appeared when i walked in, it is actually a finely made metal frame that forms a 3.6 x 3.6 x 3.6-metre cube with vertical members spaced evenly down each side and embedded within it is a slightly rotated framework of similar proportions. the shadows of the frame appear on the claude glass and in the puddle of light in front of it. the rotated smaller framework sets up a diagonal geometry that also provides some lateral bracing. there are projections on the walls behind us too, which were produced in gaming engines as a digital simulation of certain visual qualities in the metal contraption. how do i look at it? if i was an eighteenth-century painter using this claude glass, these projections are where the landscape would be. i would be using the claude glass to look at that landscape, but here i am inclined to use that landscape to look at the claude glass. partly because i prefer to look at the finely crafted object and the complex play of light and shadow across it rather than the projected pixels on a flat wall. i circle it a few times wondering if i might stand in the puddle of light and take a good hard look into the claude glass as fig. 2 screenprint made as part of the design process. [screenprint by pac studio] 121 penumbral reflections sarosh mulla and aaron paterson objectspace, auckland may 12–june 23, 2018 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e if staring into a giant eyeball. the gallerist senses my timidity and invites me to climb on in, so i do. i get very close to the claude glass, but i don’t touch it. i promise. it looks like polished metal, but the reflections make it hard to focus on the surface itself. it is more like peering into a strange phantasmagorical scene with my own eyeballs in the foreground. when i turn around though, i see my colleagues and a more prosaic reality takes over my mind. i start to think, if i had time, this might be quite a nice spot to pull up a few chairs and kick back with a drink. a sort of belvedere in a digital landscape. i can imagine looking out at this digital landscape and pondering one of the fundamentals of our trade: light, in its various forms and with its range of implications. the way light and dark produces apparent depth, even if the surface is in fact flat. the way a complete lack of tonal variation produces a totally different kind of depth, the kind of infinite depth james turrell has so often produced, and that the claude glass is capable of here. it is a relatively figs. 3-6 the claude glass, the frame that supports it, and the various projections. [photographs by david st george] in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 122 penumbral reflections sarosh mulla and aaron paterson objectspace, auckland may 12–june 23, 2018 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m dark room to ponder light, but maybe that in itself is something to ponder. even though light and shadow are a phenomenological couple, light has been the dominant partner under modernist regimes. in this sense, it is refreshing to wallow in the dark thinking about light. this contraption is also a good vantage point to ponder the tension between realities and digital simulation, given that screens, projected images, and pixels are very much part of our contemporary reality. on one hand, i ponder the exhibit as a string of simulations: projected images that simulate aspects of a contraption, and a contraption that simulates certain architectural qualities. on the other hand, i am conscious that all these simulations form the reality of the gallery space i am standing in. so i think of it all as both simulation and reality; i am both part of pac’s architecture, and part of their thinking about it. all this serves to reflect on the creative processes pac explore, and their relishing of the movement between different modes of architectural production. along this line of thought, it is hard not to consider pac’s built work and the frequent use of dark timbers, shadowy interiors, enclosed courtyards, and expressed framing. this room feels like an elaboration on those qualities but it pushes them to new extremes. it will be interesting to see if the built work also becomes more extreme as a result of this exercise. pieces of this exhibit will be relocated to the waikereru ecosanctuary near gisborne, and this might give us a clue to how this thinking will play out in larger buildings later. pac’s buildings matter to this exhibition because for all the play with simulation, it remains committed to architectural experience. while the claude glass does introduce certain narrative layers, the exhibition is not a representation of an idea that belongs outside of architecture. it relies less on some external narrative than on the attention i pay to my experience in the room, and the histories and potentials that surround that. yes, the claude glass is a historical device for looking at the landscape, and that’s not what is happening here, but the mechanics of the device have been co-opted at an architectural scale to look at architectural surroundings. the claude glass is not a metaphor here; it remains an instrument. 123 penumbral reflections sarosh mulla and aaron paterson objectspace, auckland may 12–june 23, 2018 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e in fact, the whole exhibition is an instrument, a kind of multi-tool running on the fuel of light and shadow. i think it has less representational value than operational value. it is a contraption to produce depth, illusion, and distortion. it flips between reality and simulation, and it exposes creative fascinations with light and shadow. it is never quite what i think it is, and simple interpretations of it never quite resolve. but however much i slip off one idea and into another, i always feel immersed in architectural thinking: in drawing, digital modelling, experimenting with light, framing, looking, and fashioning some future situation. at this stage in the reflections, sitting in my real-imaginary belvedere, i have been utterly drawn into pac’s web. the various modes that architecture must exist within cannot easily be pulled apart on a clear day, and this contraption tangles them up even more. it is full of rich ambiguities, and insights into their multi-modal practice. this weird thing in the middle of the room is a real thing, for sure, but it also operates between the realms of simulation, representation, and imagination. i have been invigorated by the exchange between them. interstices02.indb interstices 07 just as men [sic] will want to stave off contradiction as much as possible in life, they seek an equal degree of comfort in science by decreeing as axiomatic that contradiction could not be real. … only contradiction drives us – indeed, forces us – to action. contradiction is in fact the venom of all life, and all vital motion is nothing but the attempt to overcome this poisoning (von schelling, 1997 [1813]: 124). most planners consider their profession to be primarily concerned with the aims of modern enlightenment. arguably, the enlightenment is the promotion of a spirit of progress resolutely seeking a superior world, a better future of light and purity for the collective good. the defi nition of better and good is open to contention, and, of course, herein lies the rub. in attempting to create, at least the appearance of, a level playing fi eld of fairness as to who defi nes the good, planning generally advocates a set of core values supportive of equity, democratic method and social justice. explicit forces seldom overwhelm these norms of fair process in most modern democracies. however, they are often overcome when confronted by subtle, and frequently unquestioned beliefs, or sometimes even overt authoritative rationalities, which seek to advance predispositions disproportionately supportive of the principles of wealth maximisation and its concentration, not to mention power, in our, now globalised, capitalistic system. when planning does fall short in applying this distributional ‘goodness’, or at least the appearance of fairness, many would consider that planning is no longer an agent of enlightenment. some authors consider this to be planning’s ‘dark side’, a term initially deployed by oren yiftachel (1995) and bent flyvbjerg (1995) in quite dissimilar circumstances. yiftachel’s use of the concept ‘dark side’ was as part of a title for an empirically based case study, illustrating how planning had been unashamedly deployed overtly by the israeli state as a mechanism of tribal control, land alienation and displacement of israeli arabs. flyvbjerg’s deployment of the term was as part of a broader critique of planning theory, which flyvbjerg argued to be synonymous with modernity’s wider inclination towards normative idealism. this is the propensity of modernity’s orthodox discourses of social science, and related ‘progressive’ disciplines, including planning, to see only what is desirable, as if one lived in an ideal and perfect planning’s contradicting genius within the twilight against the empty night michael gunder 107 social reality, devoid of contradiction, meanwhile unashamedly failing to notice what is actually occurring. in other words, modernity’s propensity is a desire for a fantasy of perfection and light – the perfect city shining in the light of perfect structures inhabited by the lightness of being provided by perfect angelic people. this is a fantasy especially perpetrated by traditionalist theoreticians of modernist planning, in which only the desired enlightened side is privileged, theorised and observed. the imperfect, dark side that constitutes a less coveted social reality of blemish and strife, is largely empirically overlooked. this agonistic reality is, flyvbjerg argues, the real rationality, or realrationalität, of the genuinely grounded world constituted by the imperfections of human striving, disagreement, desire and real-politics. it is an actuality of the heideggerian ‘being in the world’, which lacanians would suggest we desire to block out and, inauthentically, obscure with fantasies of ideological justifi cation and wish-fulfi lment. this allows us to preserve our desired delusions of a preferred genius – a spirit – that presents a world of sanctuary and certitude, not to mention a progression to an even better place on earth, even if this illusionary construct of social reality may be somewhat more appropriately predicated on a desire for enlightenment’s precursor; ie. the baroque, which sought the creation of a taste, illusion or simulation of heaven on earth, rather than a materialisation of the real thing. this delusion of solidity and safety, not to mention the dream, if not the fulfi lment, of the creation of heaven on earth, is consistent with another everyday fantasy of modernist social reality, a fantasy unequivocally facilitated by planning’s normative desire and advocacy for fairness. this is the fallacy that the state (in place of any former god) has concern and cares for us, provided we act responsibly in our duties to the state as good citizens. in lacanian parlance, we are desired, protected, and even loved by an abstract ‘big other’ that in its totality represents a fair social order. yet, lacan suggests that this big other does not exist, rather it is merely a desired illusion (2006: 688). further, it is an illusion perhaps believed and sought after most devotedly when society is being particularly unfair. for the very notion of the modern, its essence or central spirit, is perhaps the resultant aggregate product of our desired fantasies and their mandatory prerequisite not to challenge, or examine too fi nely, the cracks of contradiction in our beguiling dreams and ideals. accordingly, a dark side appraisal of our ideologically shaped reality may provide a helpful traversing of our fantasy constructs. it may be an intrinsically anti-modern intrusion for interrogating the outcomes of planning and other, more diverse, disclosures of the cultural and hegemonic movements that shape our public policies and actions. yet, theorising issues within the context of a light/dark dichotomy creates its own problematic. the traditional spirit of modernity, as well as other conventional forms of western thinking, are placed, or located, under the inexorable power of binary reason, an underlying logic that ed soja refers to, after derrida, as the “the terrorism of the either/or” (soja, 2003: 271). moreover, planning, and its related modernist disciplines, is seldom black or white in its agency. planning rarely attains absolute fairness. yet, similarly, it is seldom totally deceitful and discriminatory, at least within regimes that attempt to provide, at a minimum, the appearance of democratic rights for all citizens (perhaps in contrast to yiftachel’s israeli planning appararti). interstices 07 while perhaps a bane to some, a core role of planning is to supply an aspect of society’s paternal fi gure of authority and regulation, one that says: “no, you are not permitted to do that in this environment!” this regulatory function actually helps constitute our symbolically constructed culture and society. most consider this regulation a societal good, if applied with fairness towards an acceptable end. yet, as this seeming fairness or acceptable goal deteriorates towards what may be perceived by many as tyranny, planning, at a certain point, stops constituting a common good and develops into a specifi c blight. further, the point of change from being a benefi cial remedy to a toxic affl iction is usually undecidable, ambiguous, and generally dependent on one’s specifi c individual perspective and aims – be it those of developer, architect, or affected party (derrida, 1981: 125). fundamentally, the light/dark duality only favours the achievement of perfectly impossible ideals. this idealised transcendental perfection is beyond what is achievable by human knowledge, or even knowable by experience. the attainment of any transcendental ideal is impossible, by defi nition – indeed, a true contradiction. to suppose otherwise is, innately, a utopian dream of modernity, or some other similar faith. lacan suggests we have to acknowledge that our ideals will always come up short; they will always lack completeness and, even when the truth about our ideals is forthcoming, it may not be benefi cial (2004: 15). fundamentally, our ideals are so lacking in completeness that, over time, many turn out to be the cause of their initial decline and eventual obscurity. to paraphrase lacan, with a touch of deleuze, we simply overthrow the mastery of one transcendental ideal to replace it with the mastery of another, perpetuating a new void of lack, undecidability, contradiction and eventual dissatisfaction (129). i suggest that the modern human disciplines, including planning, which, on the whole, materialised as artefacts of modernity’s constant search for knowledge to contribute to the production of some better enlightened world, should not be considered as spirits that reside in either the light or dark: rather they should always be considered to reside somewhere in between. planning resides in perpetual twilight, for planning’s actual spirit of place – its specifi c genius loci – dwells somewhere between that of the empty darkness constituting the night of the world, and the divine light of our desires. planning and modernity’s other human practices of collective action are grey arts of chiaroscuro that take place in a shadowy reality of particularity and ambiguity (after hillier, 2002: 17). this is a social reality where our practices, norms and ideals are imperfect, lacking and incomplete, consistent with the imperfection which constitutes the human condition of inherent contradiction. here, perhaps, one task of academic critique is to expose these absences and tackle the illusions we form to cloak this emptiness. 109 references derrida, j. (1981). dissemination (b. johnson, trans.). chicago: the university of chicago press. flyvbjerg, b. (1995). the dark side of planning: rationality and realrationalität. in s. mandelbaum, l. mazza and r. burchell (eds.), explorations in planning theory (pp. 383-394). new brunswick, new jersey: rutgers press. hillier, j. (2002). shadows of power. london: routledge. lacan, j. (2004). the seminar of jacques lacan, book xvii, the other side of psychoanalysis: 1969-1970 (r. grigg. trans.). photocopy of translator’s manuscript. lacan, j. (2006). ecrits: the fi rst complete edition in english (b. fink. trans., in collaboration with h. fink and r. grigg). london: w. w. norton. soja, e. (2003). writing the city spatially. city 7(3), 269-280. von schelling, f. (1997 [1813]). ages of the world (j. norman. trans.). in s. žižek and f. von schelling the abyss of freedom/ages of the world (pp. 103-182). ann arbor: university of michigan press. yiftachel, o. (1995). the dark side of modernism: planning as control of an ethnic minority. in s. watson and k. gibson (eds.), postmodern cities and spaces (pp. 216-242). oxford: blackwell. j> qf the coo!t of xew zea.land t6jr111•rjvn' ,j,//t,.tn11v t/fj!j ,,;n/1j711 . r~i.cook; f'tm11111tnn?r r /,/h my!fft/.r 1j1rr-' endeavour; map of cook's voyage around the new zealand coast. (andrew david, ed., the charts and coastal views of captain cook's voyages) mapping landscape katrina simon maps are spatial representations which can in turn stimulate other spatial representations ... and representation is an act of knowledge construction. maceachron 1 maps are some of the most commonly used tools in landscape architecture. they are used to represent both large and small areas, whole regions and individual sites. they can show physical characteristics, both "natural" and "attificial," such as landform, river systems, areas of vegetation, infrastructure, roads and houses. they can also indicate things such as legal boundaries and controls, which may or may not be visible "on the ground" even though they are visible on the map. other things or qualities may be visible in the landscape and yet never appear on a map, being perhaps transient or ephemeral. maps are produced for specific reasons and they are selective. they simplify and edit in order to make certain things or relationships clearer. rachel potter. yet maps are often taken to be a complete and accurate picture of the world. they are frequently designed to look autltoritative and scientific. the history of cartography is the history of both the changing ways in which the world has been seen and understood, and of technical developments that have altered the ways in which the world could be seen and represented. the maps that we use today are based on specific procedures, assumptions and conventions that have become "naturalised"so familiar that we don't necessarily realise or notice that they are being used. 1. a . maceachron, how maps work: representation, visualization and design (new york: guilfo rd press, 1995), vii. tracey moore. 75 tracey moore. heidi monks. 76 charting the unknown some maps are particularly eloquent in the ways that literal and metaphorical discoveries in and of landscape are possible . one such image is the chart of new zealand made after captain cook's first voyage around the world in 1770. the general form of the passage of the endeavour around the coast. the map was projected and drawn from a continuous series of measurements and sketches done on the ship as it circumnavigated the islands. the map was constructed with the physical and mental tools available the two main islands is very recognisable, as it was a to cook: in other words, he brought the mechanisms relatively thorough and accurate survey. there are to make this map with him. like all maps, this was some significant "errors" with which most new zealanders are familiar: banks peninsula is shown as an island, and stewart island is shown as a peninsula. the kaipara harbour in the north of the north island, which is one of the largest harbours in the southern hemisphere, is missing entirely, as its narrow entrance was not seen or explored. the internal details of the two main islands are largely generalised from the landscape visible during the voyage around the produced for specific reasons (representing the known world, claiming land for britain) and it is selective. the map was not a property of the landmass, or an image or "print" of reality. the indication of the ship's path also reveals something about the exploration inherent in the mapmaking process. the map emerged gradually, just as the coast was gradually encountered, revealed and represented. at times the ship travelled away from coast. the coast in a seemingly haphazard fashion, while at one of the most interesting things about this other times it was anchored and cook went ashore map, however, is not the depiction of the landform with members of the crew and had a variety of enbut the curiously erratic dotted line which depicts counters with the landscape and the maori inhabit~ l 1 ants. cook's map was produced as part of a process which annexed and colonised "undiscovered" lands for britain. yet, unlike most modem maps which anonymously present their information, this map contains an acknowledgement of the construction that this (and every map) comprises. the dotted line is a recorder and a reminder of how the map was made, and by whom. this map is a representation which has a specific history and purpose, and uses a range of techniques to clarify, reveal or conceal that purpose . it also represents the arrival and transfer of a specific system of map-making to a part of the world where it has now become entrenched. this particular map from cook's voyage can also be read at a more personal level as the process of recording and unfolding. the unknown is rendered visible by the process of drawing--once it is drawn, it can be imagined in new ways, especially by those who will never actually see it. the way in which it comes to be drawn is based on a system of conventions which enable the representation of the previously unknown or previously unrecorded. value judgements are inherent in the process, as each map reveals different notions of"what's worth recording." cook's map provides an illustration of the map as historic artefact, as process and as metaphor, as a guide to moving in uncharted realms. it is also a reminder to present-day inhabitants of these islands that maps are simplified and distorted versions of reality. and of course, this representation of cook's "methods," "intentions" and "categories" is itself a "map" with its own formulations and agendas . kelly o'meara . margaret mckegg. 77 alexis barr. 2. daniel dorling and david fairbairn, mapping: ways of representing the world (harlow: longman, 1997). 3. james corner, "the agency of mapping : speculation, critique and invention," in mappings, ed. d. cosgrove (london: reaktion books, 1999). re-mapping rangitoto this studio took the map as a literal and metaphoririved from three aspects of cartographic production: cal device with which to design. maps have many the cartographic techniques of generalisation, such uses. they can be tools for navigation and exploratas exaggeration, masking, combination, displacement ion; they can provide a template for recording inforand omission;2 the process of contour interpolation mation discovered through exploration. they also which has a series of in-built assumptions about shape our expectations of what we will discover. landfotm; and the mechanics of making a new copy maps and plans don't exist in isolation but are part of a wide range of devices that reflect, organise and control space, both "real" and "imaginary" space. this project involved examining a number of different techniques, operations and procedures of map-making, and manipulating these in order to create a landscape proposal for a 20 by 20 metre site on rangitoto. rangitoto has a status as an icon of pristine nature. the island also resists conventional mapping, as it is a field of complex lava flows and adventitious vegetation. a site visit enabled a systematic measuring of transects and mapping of the found conditions of the landform, vegetation, and other features of the site. the specific procedures used as design operations on these initial drawings were deof a map, such as tracing, printing, pricking out, reflecting . all of these procedures were available to be used on the initial drawings of the site. the mapping process was thus used upon itself, not as a tool to reveal the "actual" state of the landscape, but as a generative act. as james comer observes, "as a creative project, mapping precipitates its most productive effects through a finding that is also a founding ; its agency lies in neither reproduction nor imposition, but rather in uncovering realities previously unseen or unimagined, even across seemingly exhausted grounds."3 by manipulating the to~ls by which we discover and represent landscape, we create new landscape possibilities. l traversing the city this project again took the map as a literal and metaphorical device with which to design. with the maps of the city that we keep in the glove compartment and hold in our heads, we navigate and negotiate our way through the urban landscape. the fabric and terrain of the city itself is shifting and restless, in a constant state of flux. maps and photographs record this succession of transitory states. every state leaves an impression, which can affect the subsequent state, just as every map or layer that is created can leave a physical or mental impression on the design process. the site for this project is presently used as a carpark. its distinctive terrain is a result of successive phases of building and demolition and its current use is yet another temporary phase in the constantly changing urban landscape. the task of this project was to create a linear park in a segment of this westfacing site, exploiting its location to create an alternative traverse between two major one-way streets. mapping the terrain, vegetation and detritus revealed a number of similar conditions to the rangitoto site, in spite of the highly modified nature of this urban site. again, different techniques, operations and procedures of map-making were examined. in particular, a series of procedures of elongationsuch as blurring, stretching, rolling and splicing-were used to manipulate initial mappings of the site and create a linear urban landscape. by manipulating the tools by which we discover and represent the landscape of the city, we create new urban landscape possibilities. heidi monks. richard smith . gerrard carey. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 109 p r e s e n c e bios nina boyd nina boyd is an architectural graduate who completed her master of architecture (prof ) at victoria university wellington in 2017. since graduating she has worked as a tutor at the victoria university school of architecture and is working with toi āria design for public good and massey university college of creative arts on community engagement projects. konrad buhagiar konrad buhagiar obtained a degree in architecture and civil engineering at the university of malta followed by a post-graduate degree in studio e restauro dei monumenti at the universita’ di roma, ”la sapienza”. he is a founding partner of ap valletta and senior visiting lecturer at the university of malta. he has lectured in several countries abroad and is a member of the board of experts of the european urban space prize. he is co-editor of the founding myths of architecture (forthcoming). john dixon hunt john dixon hunt is professor emeritus of the history and theory of landscape at the university of pennsylvania. he has written over a dozen books on landscapes, and a biography of john ruskin in 1982, the wider sea. his book on ruskin’s watercolours will be published early in 2020  by reaktion books. andrew douglas andrew douglas is a senior lecturer in theory and design at the school of architecture and urban planning, where is also the current associate director of design. he previously taught spatial design at the school of art + design at auckland university of technology. he is a member of the turnspace collective, and an executive editor of interstices: journal of architecture and related arts. he currently chairs the enigma: he aupiki trust, and is a trustee on the greg bowron memorial trust. he has practiced architecture in both auckland and london and completed postgraduate studies at the university of auckland and goldsmiths, university of london. his research ranges across fields associated with urban and greek philosophy and history, aspects of continental philosophy—particularly the work of gilles deleuze and felix guattari—critical perspectives on socio-spatial practice, and gender and sexuality as these pertain to literature, cinema and the urban imaginary. his doctoral research investigated observation and reflectivity in modernity via accounts of walking in european contexts since the seventeenth century. his current research addresses the role of affect in emerging forms of publicness and governance, colonial-urban formations in aotearoa new zealand, and philosophies of image and imagination. carl douglas carl douglas is the curriculum leader for spatial design at auckland university of technology, auckland. his research circulates around two main themes: unprofessional space (informal, ad-hoc, illicit, and amateur space-making); and procedural design techniques (cartography, design computation, abstraction, drawing, and intuition). in previous work he has examined infrastructure as a determinant of public space, made a case study of urban transformations of revolutionary paris, and researched archaeological sites as scenes of architectural production. current research attends to design strategies for climate change and sea-level rise, and the construction of unorthodox cartographies. guillaume dreyfuss guillaume dreyfuss is director of research at architecture project (ap). guillaume is an art historian and obtained an msc in sustainable heritage from ucl (university college london). he is co-editor of a printed thing (2012), and the founding myths of architecture (forthcoming), and is the author of various academic papers. 110 biographies p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 mark jackson mark jackson is associate professor of design in the school of art and design, faculty of design and creative technologies, auckland university of technology (aut). he received his phd from the university of sydney in the discipline of architecture in the early 1990s and has taught at the university of sydney, the university of adelaide and at aut. his research engages the tradition of continental philosophy, especially the works of heidegger, foucault, derrida and agamben. he has published in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, design cultures, film-philosophy, and the visual arts and has produced a number of film and video works. ephraim joris ephraim joris is a design director at ap valletta and a faculty member at ku leuven and piet zwart institute in rotterdam. his research looks at the idea of an architectural phenomenology recasting history as the experiential content of speculative architecture. this research stands at the basis of his design work at ap as much as his design work stands at the basis of his research. he contributed as a researcher and teacher to various institutions such as rmit, syracuse university, westminster university and brighton university. he has been a program director at uca in canterbury and ku leuven and is a current member of the mediated city research team at university college london. he is the author of various international publications and academic papers. adrian lo adrian lo completed his phd in architecture at the university of auckland, new zealand, where he also completed his bachelor’s degree. his research focuses on the processes and issues relating to space making, particularly the condition of interstitiality and in-between spaces in architecture and urbanism, such as that of peter eisenman, aires mateus, and urbanscapes in hong kong and kathmandu. he has practiced in hong kong and australia, and has held teaching positions in new zealand and nepal, specialising in architectural and urban design, historytheory, and final year theses. jules moloney jules moloney is associate dean research and innovation, school of design, rmit university, australia. he has held positions at the victoria university of wellington, the university of melbourne and the university of auckland. his academic career was preceded by a decade of architectural practice in the united kingdom. the distinctive approach he brings to his research and teaching is based on expertise in digital technology and the importance of grounding computational design within the wider context of theory and practice. felipe lanuza rilling felipe lanuza rilling is an architect trained at the university of chile, and obtained his master in architecture at the catholic university of chile. he holds a phd in architectural design from the bartlett school of architecture, ucl. through his investigations on absence, he explores processes of design and representation as a way of prompting new understandings and alternative interventions in the built environment. he has taught and exhibited internationally. he is a senior associate at urban transcripts, co-founder of dla scan / devilat + lanuza architects, and currently a post-doctoral researcher at the ucl urban laboratory/bartlett school of architecture. nicola short nicola short is a heritage consultant and lecturers in heritage and spatial environments at the school of art + design at auckland university of technology. with over 30 years’ experience in the heritage and glam sector she has held a range of roles in museums and local government, both in new zealand and overseas including; exhibition development australian museum, head public programmes, museum of transport and technology, auckland; heritage manager, auckland city council, and a secondment to christchurch city centre as lead heritage advisor, master planning team post the 2011 earthquakes. she is a member and has sat on the board of the international council on monuments and sites, new zealand chapter. nicola has a particular interest in heritage and social equity with a focus on heritage landscapes, strategic planning, public policy and cultural theory. her research interests include decolonisation and time, feminist theory, cartography and critical heritage theory with a particular focus on heritage landscape values and ontologies. she has a bachelor in art history 111 biographies p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 from auckland university and a masters from sydney university in museum studies and heritage management. she is published in the areas of; museum management and cultural capital, heritage landscape studies and #protectihumatao. she is a member of save our unique landscape (soul) and has written extensively on the role of heritage legislation and cultural heritage landscapes for the campaign. she is currently enrolling in a phd at the school of architecture and planning, auckland university. jan smitheram jan smitheram is a senior lecturer in the school of architecture at victoria university of wellington, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students. her current research project involves working on a urf funded project researching how architects think about the body when they design. papers currently under preparation address questions of architectural representation, performativity, occupation and affect. simon twose simon twose is an architect and senior lecturer at the school of architecture, victoria university of wellington, new zealand. his work focuses on drawing, particularly in the territories between art and architecture practices. twose has published and exhibited widely, including invited contributions to five venice architecture biennales. stepan vaneyan stepan vaneyan was born in 1964 in moscow, where he currently resides. after graduating from the moscow lomonosov state university (1989), he worked at the moscow state museum of fine arts. his phd thesis on hans sedlmayr, and his doctoral dissertation was dedicated to the problems of the iconography of architecture. since 1998, vaneyan has been a professor of art history and theory at the faculty of history in the moscow state university. he teaches courses on art theory, methodologies of art history, history of western art criticism, psychology of art and architectural theory of the 20th century. he is also a senior researcher at the research institute of theory and history of fine arts in the russian academy of arts and a lead researcher at the state institute for art studies. interstices02.indb interstices 07 the wedding, royal new zealand ballet national tour. premiere performance aotea centre, auckland, march 1 2006 the red carpet was laid out for the opening night of the wedding. television cameras rolled on writer, witi ihimaera, as he shared a few last thoughts before curtain up. promises of strip dancing and all male shower scenes – on stage with the royal new zealand ballet had already sent ripples of anticipation throughout the land. bums on stage generally mean bums on seats, and this opening night looked like a sell-out. just as well. an investment of $1.7 million meant this was the most expensive production ever mounted by the royal new zealand ballet. as composer, gareth farr, acknowledged, “if we don’t get the sales and nobody wants to go, no one’s going to want to do it again” (watkin, 2006: 17). ihimaera approached the company fi ve years ago with an idea for a love story set amidst the multi-cultural reality of contemporary new zealand, “a new society on the brink of transformation” (ihimaera in conversation with the author, 1 july 2006). artistic director, gary harris, and company manager, sue paterson, were enthusiastic. they brought together part fijian, ex-pat choreographer, now director of london’s rambert dance company, mark baldwin, director/dramaturg, raymond hawthorne, gareth farr, and designer, tracy grant, to form, what tim watkin described in the weekly new zealand listener as, the “dream team” (2006: 15). on all fronts, expectations for this production were understandably high, especially given ihimaera’s stellar literary career, and award winning success with the fi lm, the whale rider (2003). ihimaera also promised to bring to ballet “an audience that ballet’s never had” (watkin, 2006: 17). a total of 21,067 people saw the wedding in auckland, napier, palmerston north, wellington, christchurch and dunedin (susana lei’ataua in conversation with the author, 5 july 2006). a more detailed account of audience fi gures, and percentages for the whole tour, has yet to be released. opening night, in auckland, was a glamorous event, with invited vip ‘wedding’ guests wining and dining in fi ne style; corporate sponsors mingled with politicians, artists huddled and exchanged notes. according to ihimaera, two busloads of school children from ruatoria travelled south, for several hours, to see the production in napier, and one performance in wellington was invaded by a contingent of goths (ihimaera in conversation with the author, 1 july 2006). the original storyline featured a part māori, part italian female lead, opportunities to portray samoan and hindu dance, a māori karanga (call of welcome), american in-laws, a gay love duet for two men, and, of course, the now famous post-rugby practice shower scene. the media loved the idea. ihimaera’s “my big fat kiwi wedding” portrait, with lead ballerina chantelle kerr, was on the front page of the new zealand listener (2006, march 4-10). after the hectic season fi nished, company publicist, susana lei’ataua, took a well-earned holiday on a fijian beach that wedding-planners anywhere would die for. a marriage of convenience? review by moana nepia 125 the famous shower scene. the audience was kept in suspense until well into the opening act. then, one by one, the men entered the shower-room. they soaped themselves up one side, then the other, and with a fl ick of their towels and a few jetés across front of stage, they were off like bouncy spring lambs. what a tease. this was defi nitely a family production. for the stag night, female strippers played it safe: they didn’t shed a thing. three male strippers, for the hen’s night out, did get their gear off down to what looked like oversize fl esh coloured panties. not sexy. if they had problems with being completely naked for the sake of art, a jock strap or a pair of y-fronts would have worked better. if they were feeling shy, they should have remembered they were not actually naked, and that in striptease it is the promise of something more that counts. inspired choreography could have had us gasping, if not blushing. the wedding was heralded as a groundbreaking ballet love story, but the love story got lost in the mix. by the time the leading couple reached the altar, i knew very little about them as individuals, except that the heroine and the delivery boy rekindled an old fl ame, when he appeared on her doorstep with fl owers that much i had already gleaned from the programme notes. the groom, who was american, played rugby, got angry and picked a fi ght with the fl ower boy at the altar. why, i am not exactly sure; earlier he had not seemed particularly in love with his fi ancée. for it to succeed, as dramatic ballet, the wedding needed a major element of tension or mystery. instead, the wedding planners delivered a comic spectacle, a pantomime complete with the frilliest pink wedding dress imaginable, a gorilla, swingers, koru fern frond set motifs, mini-skirted air-hostesses (who stole the show), a pastel chapel altar scene, and main protagonists who all lived ‘happily ever after a fi ght’. the original story had depicted people of all ages, shapes and sizes, but ballet dancers, as a rule, are generally neither fat nor old. little surprise then, that the rugby haka translated into something rather more aerial than grounded. the choreographic opportunity to investigate different cultural dance vocabularies and subvert conventional ballet language was also missed. mark baldwin exploited the familiar, elegant vocabulary and linear precision that ballet dancers train so arduously to perfect. however, there was no choreographic innovation; likewise, the musical score and design elements lacked any outstanding originality. i do not have a problem with the ballet company presenting light-hearted and populist work, but promoting it as “groundbreaking” is a patronising exaggeration, and to label the wedding “ruggedly indigenous” is misleading (watkin, 2006: 17). are we so gullible that we cannot see the work for what it is? perhaps raymond hawthorne hit the nail on the head when he said: “they’ll love it. the dancers all get en pointe and whiz around with their legs around their heads. what more can they want?” (watkin, 2006: 19). perhaps most new zealanders want ballet to be a pastiche of itself. do they also want new zealand to become a pastiche of itself? i rather hope not. the ballet company needs to aim higher; it is capable of much more than this. interstices 07 on the verge of a politically strategic tour to the people’s republic of china, in 1984, the newly appointed management of the royal new zealand ballet commissioned a new work, moko. the chinese had made a request for something distinctly new zealand, after noticing the glaring absence of any such work in the proposed programme. maori choreographer, piri sciascia, his wife, gaylene sciascia, maori artist, sandy adsett, and composer, ross harris, explored ancient and specifi cally maori themes and narratives in the making of this work. chinese, and new zealand, audiences alike may have had mixed feelings about the artistic outcome, but the symbolic gestures of goodwill were signifi cant. in 2001, the ballet company joined forces with mark baldwin and te matarae i orehu, one of the leading maori kapa haka performing arts groups. they shared an evening programme where there was little convergence of the different artistic traditions, but enough proximity to suggest further possibilities of working together. to what extent the healthy maori audience response to this season can be nurtured and sustained remains to be seen. in 2006, the wedding dream team could have made a much greater commitment to the themes of cultural diversity and interaction offered by maori writer, witi ihimaera. instead they delivered a simplifi ed story, a safe and pastel romp. a genuine engagement with indigenous themes could help to establish a cultural specifi city for the royal new zealand ballet. is this what new zealand audiences want? dame peggy van praagh founded the australian ballet with the aim of establishing a repertoire that had a clearly defi ned balance between classical ballet, modern ballet and australian work. her policy was instrumental in supporting australian choreography and choreographic talent. the aims of the royal new zealand ballet have never been as specifi c. the company’s current vision statement reads more like a report on the status quo, than a guide for the future: “the royal new zealand ballet is a company of 32 dynamic dancers, performing a wide range of choreographic works throughout new zealand and overseas”. it wants “to build a style and repertoire that is ultimately unique to the company”. perhaps this needs to be qualifi ed. commissioning new work from overseas is a good idea, and, aiming for a repertoire consisting of 30% new zealand choreography would be excellent. making a commitment to higher levels of artistic innovation, at all levels of production, must be commended. however, this demands long-term planning and fearless fi nancial application. perhaps the ballet company could learn a lesson or two from the music industry, where commitment to local music by producers, publicists and local radio has seen a huge increase in the success of new zealand music, both here and abroad. the ballet company would risk nothing but change by considering a bicultural aspect to its mission statement. classical ballet, after all, is an ethnic dance form that has evolved out of specifi c european movement traditions, myths and historical narratives. ballet continues to evolve elsewhere, incorporating musical and other cultural infl uences from latin america, asia and, particularly, the united states. the royal new zealand ballet needs commitment and a long-term vision if it is to achieve anything other than a superfi cial engagement with its own unique cultural position. 127 in the meantime, the reality of keeping a national institution such as the royal new zealand ballet afl oat, remains principally one of negotiating a delicate balance between box offi ce and artistic success: the two do not always neatly coincide. healthy audience numbers not only generate income, but also make the company a more attractive proposition for prospective corporate sponsors. this, in turn, means more investment in the status quo. as long as this cycle continues, the public feels confi dent ‘it must be doing well’ whatever the artistic merits or failings on stage. francesca horsley thought the wedding was destined to be a winner (horsley, 2006: 45). at the opening night gala, georgina te heu heu, opposition spokesperson for the arts said she loved it, and judging by the applause, so too did most of the audience. as gary harris has quite rightly asserted, “ballet is not brain surgery”: ballet is entertainment. ballet is also a form of spectacle, and, for many of us, an escape from reality, something impossibly un-real. ballet dancers are ‘super-human’ and much of what they do is beyond the physical capabilities of their audience. furthermore, some of the most sublime ballet moments happen when artists transcend the context of the most improbable fairy tale scenario and take us somewhere else, allowing us a moment to dream. whenever creative dreams are compromised, we compromise the potential to imagine anything better. references horsley, f. (2006, march 18-24). puce moments. new zealand listener 202, pp. 44-45. royal new zealand ballet (2005). retrieved 5 july, 2006, from http://www.nzballet.org. nz/company.html watkin, t. (2006, march 4-10). my big fat kiwi wedding. new zealand listener 202, pp. 14-19. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 93 p r e s e n c e nina boyd with jan smitheram staging tourism: performing place in new zealand, tourism is tied to images of pristine landscapes into which architecture is admitted as a romanticised diversion from urban places. this project found in the “100% pure new zealand” tourism marketing campaign—initiated in 1999 (see tourism nz, 2019)—an opportunity to speculate on a greater potential for engagement between architecture and tourism. in short, it sought ways that architecture might be truly transformative for tourists. through this design research project, the relationship between architecture and the tourist experience was interrogated through increasing scales spanning from an installation to a hotel and finally an artificial island. instead of attending to tourists as if passive consumers of ‘sights/sites’, investigated here were the embodied performances tourism makes possible. architecture in turn was considered a stage for amplifying this performative dimension, with places themselves thought of as performances en route; rather than as fixed and incompatible with the hypermobility of tourism. mobilising the tourist the project was shaped by two key theoretical shifts in how tourism is understood from an architectural perspective. the first sought to recognise tourism and architecture as reciprocally related. hence the project built on the proposition that rather than being a backdrop to tourist experiences, architecture was thought as integral to these experiences (ockman and fraustro, 2005: 35). as such, architecture can be seen to build on tourist values to the extent that tourism sites are often redesigned and packaged for mass consumption (lasansky, 2004: 1). this understanding signals that tourism is simultaneously a process through which places are experienced and a force which shapes and interprets those places. the second theoretical shift looked to tourism studies to better rethink the presumption that tourism and the ‘tourist gaze’ are essentially passive (urry, 1992: 172). tourism was instead understood as a dynamic practice that is ‘performed’, and that architecture may amplify the multi-sensuous experiences deepening this performance of tourism. this emphasis on performance enabled a sensitivity to the way tourists inscribe themselves into space through social practices, (re) 94 staging tourism: performing place p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 producing place through their individual and collective enactments. attentive to the practice of ‘doing tourism’, this project considered a series of staged performances, choreographed through architecture as a mise-en-scene or theatricalising platform. drawing from both these theoretical threads, the project positioned architecture as central to the tourist experience and asked, how can architecture stage and amplify the embodied performances of tourism? expanding “wellywood” the investigation is sited in shelly bay, a former military base and emerging recreation hub along the coastline of the miramar peninsular in wellington, new zealand. the decision to focus the project around shelly bay came about before the announcement of a new, proposed $500 million-dollar development for the area. this development aimed to consolidate shelly bay as a burgeoning tourism hub on the periphery of the central city, one just 3km from wellington airport. the site is also adjacent to the popular movie tour route which operates in the area; it’s close to weta workshop and various nearby shooting locations for the fig. 1 author (2016). preliminary investigations into understanding the tourist through performance [photographic collage] 95 staging tourism: performing place p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 lord of the rings trilogy. parodically dubbed “wellywood” in recognition of the centrality of film production for the capital’s economy, the title similarly offers a marketing platform for the film-based tourism underpinning wellington’s tourism overall—a dominance that itself forces a re-examination of appeals to “authentic” tourist experiences typically associated with new zealand (tzanelli, 2004: 38). for the relationship between the shelly bay site and wellington’s urban placement overall, see figure 2. shifting scales to explore the relationship between architecture and tourism, a “design through research” methodology was employed where the design proposition developed through iterative experiments at increasing scales. in summary, three scales were explored: the first engaging with the human scale and culminated in a 1:1 installation; the second explored the performance of tourism through the design of a hotel; and the third proposed an artificial island to stage a range of public performances by tourists. working through these shifting scales allowed a critical revaluation of the proposition across different design registers. in more detail, the first design scale exploration extracted moments of interest from the shelly bay site and developed multiple scenarios through drawings and physical modelling (fig. 3). each of these experimental scenarios sought notions of place that incorporated movement and displacement. these qualities were translated into a series of physical objects in order to create a 1:1 installation (fig. 4). following these early experiments into fluid notions of place, site and placement, architecture and the performance of tourists were more directly engaged with and tested via the design of a hotel, itself thought of as a stage for “dwelling in mobilities”. this staged environment in fact offered revised potential for amplifying the corporeal, tactile experiences of tourists (penner, 2004: 219). fig. 2 author (2016). wellington harbour [photographic collage] 96 staging tourism: performing place p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the hotel programme was employed as a tool to interrogate the usual partition of exotic and everyday aspects of the tourist experience. while hotels traditionally leave little room for the intersection of everyday routines with socially exuberant experiences—with private rooms divided from spaces of social interaction—in this experiment the hotel was designed to intersect socially exuberant performances with everyday routines to better encourage new “encounters, and opportunities for action” (dovey and dickson, 2002: 5). to do this, private spaces were made to continuously brush up against lively social spaces allowing the privatised routines of dwelling to be performed simultaneously with the dynamic mobilities associated with ‘doing tourism’ (fig. 5 and 6). fig. 3 author (2016). explorations of site movement and displacement [photograph of physical models] fig. 4 author (2016). physical models formed as 1:1 installation [photograph of physical models] fig. 5 author (2016). performing tourism within the hotel [composite digital images] 97 staging tourism: performing place p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 in the final stage of the project, the design of an artificial island offered a mise-enscene for investigating parodically the placemaking capacity of tourists through their individual and collective performances. the artificial island was located just off the shoreline of shelly bay and utilised surplus land dredged from wellington harbour for the proposed airport runway extension (figs. 7 and 8). fig. 7 author (2016). masterplan of the artificial island [composite digital image] fig. 8 author (2016). axonometric view of the artificial island [composite digital image] fig. 6 author (2016). performing tourism within the hotel [composite digital images] 98 staging tourism: performing place p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 figs. 9, 10 and 11 author (2016). ‘swim’, ‘see’ and ‘spend’: elements of the architectural programme toolkit [composite digital images] 99 staging tourism: performing place p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 figs. 12 and 13 author (2016). view of the island’s main public entrance via the gondola, and view of the heated sea baths [composite digital images] acts of relaxing, playing, sightseeing and spending were programmed into the island’s design through architectural gestures which invited the site to be used in multiple, intersecting ways thereby amplifying the performative nature of the enactments. a series of ‘architectural toolkits’ resulted. for instance, the ‘swim toolkit’ incorporated a diving board, thermal pools and sea baths which asserted the corporeal qualities of being in and with water. fountains heightened ‘eruptive’ and ‘splashing’ experience, while bobbing pontoons asserted floating sensations. these toolkits supported the notion of tourism as a dynamic practice integral with its enabling architecture. through their participation in these social practices, tourists were imagined to inscribe themselves into space and (re) produce places eventfully via their individual and collective performances (figs. 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13). to conclude, this project sees architecture as a central protagonist in developing an understanding of tourism through design, a proposition that situates the tourist not as a passive consumer of places but as “a dynamic force in creating them” (crang, 1997: 74). as such, this design research project asserts that while the performances of tourists can be staged through architectural mis-en-scene, tourists themselves produce place through their individual and collective performances. consequently, neither tourism nor place can be assessed as merely products; instead, their intertwining incessantly performs places. 100 staging tourism: performing place p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 references crang, m. (1997). picturing practices: research through the tourist gaze. progress in human geography, 21(3), 359-373. dovey, k. & dickson, s. (2002). architecture and freedom? programmatic innovation in the work of koolhaas/oma. journal of architectural education, 56(1), 4-13. lasansky, d. m., & mclaren, b. (2004). architecture and tourism: perception, performance, and place. oxford, uk & new york, ny: berg. ockman, j. & frausto, s. (eds.) (2005). architourism. authentic, escapist, exotic, spectacular. munich: prestel. penner, b. (2004). doing it right: postwar honeymoon resorts in the pocono mountains. in lasansky, d. m. & mclaren, b. (eds.), architecture and tourism: perception, performance and place. oxford, england & new york: berg. rendell, j. (2013). a way with words: feminists writing architectural design research. in m. fraser (ed.), design research in architecture: an overview. surrey, uk: ashgate publishing. tourism new zealand (2019). 100% pure new zealand. retrieved from, https://www. tourismnewzealand.com/about/ what-we-do/campaign-andactivity/. tzanelli, r. (2004). constructing the ‘cinematic tourist’: the ‘sign industry’ of the lord of the rings. tourist studies, 4(1), 21-42. urry, j. (1992). the tourist gaze ‘revisited’. american behavioral scientist, 36(2), 172-186. lamella: a spacing of skin and distant boundaries sarah treadwell recent works by barbara tuck, a series entitled lame/la, consist of groups of nine elliptical skins of painted aluminium. each lamella, the parts and the whole, is desirable, difficult and excessive; arousing the passions of the collector and refusing attributes of value. no frames to set apart or emphasise and no secret fixings to mark the artist as magician; the lamella barely adhere to the wall surface. they seem marginally located in art categories although participating, somewhat uneasily, in the conventions of the field; they are to be attached to walls in varying arrangements of the nine parts and can be described as oil paintings though on aluminium not canvas. the lame/la, membranes or gills, refer to the morphological not only through their naming, spreading out beyond the boundaries of the discipline that attempts to house them. a calligraphic surface passes across the constrained shapes of the elliptical lamella. the ovals 159 lame ila suggesting an imperfect origin, egg or womb, a distorted circle or stretched sphere straining the credibility of an originary i (the gestures of authorship are repressed and suggested in these works); a straining of an eye which locates a body in relationship to a surface gaze. the lamella consists of unstable imperfections, ellipses which only the positioning of the body in space utilizing the laws of perspective can restore to the perfection of the circle (here the physical corrects or creates the ideal instead of the usual perfection of theory). the observer, a material body in space, can create the platonic satisfaction of a circle but only fleetingly and at the expense of giddiness and disorientation utterly aware of the separation between mind and body. the geometries of the lamella, the repeated ellipses, and the regular patternings that they seem to resist, invite a biological reference. an egg contains a germ of future life but in the lamella it is not a pristine new beginning nor a unique mark but rather an inevitable re-run of information contained in patterns that imprint the egg. potential new beginnings are smothered in over-arching decorative patterns. between the shape and the surface of the lamella is a plane of slippage; a lack of conjunction between skin and body. ornamental narratives flow over individual lamella; the lamellae themselves create a field within which the individual is both marked and lost. registered in ellipsis is an absence, "the omission of one or more words in a sentence, which would be needed to express the sense completely ... " ; 1 the works remain open in meaning and spatial configuration. in lamella no vii the nine pieces that make up the work are all different and separate but with internal references. two milky egg shell blue lamellae, with a surface calligraphy that scrapes through to the tissue/ flesh beneath, like twins, set up possibilities of pairing. but one is a pale reflection of the other; the body beneath the skin less bloody. a ghost constructed in a different focus, in a different layer, straining the eyes of the viewer, warping the surface of the wall to which they lightly adhere . in lamella no vii the pairing off continues; the 160 sarah treadwell sameness of two brick ochre dusty lamellae qualified by a difference that destabilizes the structure of the whole. thus the control and clarity of the surface marks disintegrates the pairings; the surface skin is rumpled by a calligraphy cutting through to differing layers of chalky bone. this is not "the nihilistic gesture of attempting to counter totality with the assertion of unmediated singularity or individuality" but rather " ... [a] dwell[ing] on the possibility of thinking unity or totality beyond the determination of synthesis and therefore beyond a projected or posited essence and thus in terms of the possibility of unity /totality being the belonging together of the different; a fundamental and constitutive part of which will be distance." 2 in the pairings and groupings within the lamella familial connections and failures of connection are constructed. the distance between parts created by a shifting surface focus, contrasting tonal shifts and foreign hues . there is also, over-riding the internal arrangements, a stream of words, a babble of signs that momentarily adhere to the surface of the lamella but seem to refer to another level of discourse. a distant other level beyond the particular individual case of ellipse or grouping of ellipses; a realm of writing. the surface calligraphy is a writing that invites interpretation but also suggests the loss of a conscious will to decipher that subsumes meaning into form . the writing of a language that is unknowable, a babble that offers amnesia of form as an escape, into pattern, texture, colour and arrangement, into drawing. but as catherine ingraham points out "writing and drawing are exactly the same from a textuality standpoint. neither are linear structures, neither are representational in the way that they claim."3 the drawings of the writing on the lamella suppress the differences that conventionally structure their separate 'reading' techniques. denial of the hand-writing continues in the making of these paintings, a process that 161 lame ila eschews presence; the signature is buried in the automatic action of the roller that skims the aluminium surface which gives no resistance. the grain of canvas is absent and the working of self into the material of the lamella is reduced. the calligraphic form seems to insist on being read; marks of writing score the surface skin. the lines of writing are interrupted and also continued by the conventional notation of architectural drawing, drawings that defer to materiality while structuring the physical. these partial plans and sections that cause an "interruption of "linear writing by drawing, spatiality, volumetrics, may also be a moment of breach that is inevitably sexual (the imprint of the body or shape on the clean page.)"4 the repetition of representation of the physical indicatesthe convoluted boundary between writing and spatiality; the marks of architectural drawing depending on formal qualities, the enclosing boundary, the turned shoulder. in the lamella surface marks cannot be separated from the body. the body is marked by writing, a double writing that is constructed from the forms of presence. that the works shifts between the surface/skin and the body refusing any simple separation of the two is recognized by the inclusion of lamella no iv in an exhibition surface tension and the description of the works by the the curator; "these artists, then, are no longer charged with stripping away the outer and unnecessary trappings of art to reveal its essence, but rather, they are engaged in a constant play between a surface and that which putatively lies beneath it."5 the "play between" in the case of the lamella seems to be through a negotiation 162 sarah treadwell of boundaries; apparent in the refusal to separate writing and, the marks of materiality, architectural writing. and in the swelling and contracting of the boundaries of the ellipses by the presence of a viewer; distortions of perfection. the boundaries between the enclosures of the ellipses and the fields of surface patterning that flow above them are also problematic as are those that govern the scale of ornamentation in relationship to size. the surface of the lamella seem to endlessly assert and withdraw from the act of enclosure, the formation of boundaries. elbows, small l shape marks, construct corners that jab at the surface of the pieces. the corners, vestiges of contained space, acts of containment that creates an interior and an exterior, are places to dwell and to hold. "the constitution of the house necessitates distance. in addition it demands the experience of that distance. the experience of dwelling is, though in an as yet to be specified way, premised upon the experience of distance."6 the lamella, spaced out across the wall, concerned with relationships of distance and space, marked with gestures of containment written in an architectural language, can be seen to construct relationships of dwelling. the house, dependent on distance to separate floor from floor and room from room, is held together by corners. corners are the outcome of collisions; the meeting of lines of distance and difference that the ellipse and the circle cannot acknowledge. in a circle all becomes one and the ellipse is an uneasy expression of unity but unity nevertheless whereas the corner, the place of disgrace, of secrets and security, is a point of accumulation and weakness where planes joined for strength can be prised apart; the corner is redolent of separation. the incisions of calligraphy separate the surface of paint, splitting it to reveal an inner and create an outer layer. writing, calligraphy cutting into the surface, like tattoo, violates and constructs the surface of skin; the boundary of the body is at risk, an opening or orifice created or revealed. the surface puckered and flaking; magnified, a piece of reptilian skin proffers up a decorative, physical and irritable surface. excesses of colour, over-sized tex163 lame ila ture, an enlargement of matter pushing the limits of reason and the restrained boundaries of taste. excess wells up beneath the surface; like the marks of thumbprints on the body the surface reveals a bruising. a welling up of drops of blood that coagulate and congeal, marks of possession and ownership, a signature. the fluidity of the lamellae is also transgressive of boundaries; drops of gold, blood and tears seep and exude through boundaries passing through a moment of perfection; the parts and the collection in a continuous flow. the surface of the works, a plane of evaluation, is in flux, the layers shifting. like floaters that drift across the retina disturbing vision, the lamella unsettle the "truth" of vision. "since non-meaning falls within the purview of the understanding it does not mark its limit. the limit will not be an absolute but rather exist as a site of tension at which in spite of its being present the understanding can no longer be said to dominate." the lamella is shadowed by itself, an anamorphic version of the sphere, the tracings and displacements of an impossible perfection.7 the construction of the ellipse involves a division, a slicing of the circle, construction of displaced centres, a transferral of measurement leading to a multiplication of circles (displaced progenies in the image of their father). the new figure, the ellipse, is delineated by tracing the boundary that tangentially touches these displaced circles; the ellipse founded on an iteration and alteration of a structuring circle. in the lamella the geometry of the ellipse acknowledges connections to 164 sarah treadwell founding orders but also threatens to expand past its own formation, its expansiveness cannot be contained. in the process of construction, criss-crossing the dissection of a circle, the lamella, germ of the material and maternal, begin to proliferate in a disturbing way. notes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 shorter oxford dictionary 1973. andrew benjamin, "distancing and spacing," in a. benjamin (ed.), philosophy and architecture (london: academy editions, 1990), p. 7. catherine ingraham, "initial proprieties: architecture and the space of the line," in b. colomina, (ed.) sexuality and space (princeton: princeton architectural press, 1992), p. 258. ibid. christina barton, "at the surface: an introduction," catalogue for exhibition "surface tension" (auckland city gallery, 1992), p . 3. andrew benjamin, op. cit., p. 7. in an interview barbara tuck discussed spheres in their anamorph ic forms as eggs in work by fiero della francesca, pala di brera, milan. 165 in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 94 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n review / jan smitheram the baroque in architectural culture 1880–1980. edited by andrew leach, john macarthur and maarten delbeke. surrey: ashgate publishing company, 2015. the baroque in architectural culture, 1880–1980 is aimed at exploring two projects, “the intellectual history of modern architecture and the history of architectural historiography.” in doing so, the book “defines a role for the baroque in the history of architectural historiography and in the history of modern architectural culture.” the historical understanding of baroque as a phenomenon of the sixteenth and seventeenth century is acknowledged in the book, but the central focus is on how the baroque has been created in our more recent past. or, more accurately, its focus is to unpack how particular politics of our recent past have shaped how the baroque is understood from the 1880s to the 1980s. the book draws our attention to which stories of our recent past have flourished, and which have fallen by the wayside. thus the book asks the reader to consider how the baroque has been shaped by privileging a particular understanding, author, text, and national location. the strength of the book is its focus on the history of modern architectural culture and its histographical approach. this approach offers us, following gayatri spivak, an “insistence on the politics of the present in the making of the past more precisely still foregrounds the location of the historian or teller of tales” (spivak, 1999: 119). and this book offers a critique of linear ideas of history, but renders it complex and multiple. moreover, it also questions stories that are rendered neutral in the continual circulation of ideas named in relation to the baroque. although this is also the weakness of the book, as it takes on a histographic approach but never considers how history is made in the present directly, instead, it is situated in looking at how the baroque is re-made in our recent past—never joining in with more contemporary debates. the book’s twenty chapters are structured around a loose chronology, as described by the the three editors. the tone of their first chapter is clearly aimed at an academic audience, as evident in the complexity of the argument, sentence structure and terminology. but subsequent chapters seem aimed at a broader audience that might chide the introduction’s complexity and opacity, after which we begin with francesca torello engaging albert ilf ’s writing on the baroque of 1880s vienna. to give an idea of the breadth of the chapters included in this book, we end with gro lauvland’s chapter considering the recurrence of the baroque in the in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 95 review / the baroque in architectural culture 1880–1980 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n norwegian architect christian norberg-schulz’s writing in the 1970s, in particular, the baroque ideas of constancy and change. the middle chapter by andrew leach on the future of baroque, circa 1945, acts to an extent, but not entirely, as a datum on how the baroque is received. the anthology ends with editors leach and delbeke providing further insights and questions provoked by the book. as one reads the book, one is faced with the ebb and flow of opinion on the baroque: from delight to distaste, from exclusion to source material, and from signaling the new to what we must depart from (see michael hill’s chapter on steinberg). the book questions how the history of the baroque has been construed in our recent past and looks at how it has been edited, whose voices are heard (or not) and how this functions as the grounds for the constant ‘’traffic of ideas’’ between modernism and baroque. francesca torello’s and matthew aitchison’s chapters highlight how favouring of certain voices over others has had an impact on how the baroque has been understood and shaped, and consequently has an impact on how we have come to understand it in more contemporary times. francesca torello’s chapter highlights how the history of the baroque has been edited or controlled for the use of particular ends. she attends to how the germanization of the baroque in weimar, germany, occurred not because it was formal or rational, but because it was expressive and spiritual. a similar concern with national identity and its complex intertwining with the baroque is evident in matthew aitchison’s reading on the effects of pevsner’s shift from leipzig to england. the book demonstrates how careful readings provide us with a richer history, rather than an attempt to reinstate a singular or authoritative understanding of the baroque. chapters which highlight that the baroque is made up of multiple and complex story lines, rather than a singular story, are those by luka skansi, denise r costanzo, maarten delbeke, albert narath and francesca torello. luka skansi’s chapter deals directly with an uncritical collapsing of the present in the past, unpacking the “retrospective projection of modern expectations and tendencies onto the so called baroque” (49). meanwhile, denise r costanzo in “giedion as guide’’ challenges the framing of the baroque as theatrical, deceitful and lacking integrity—via a standard modernist text. similarly, maarten delbeke’s reading of charpentrat allows us to understand the salvaging of the baroque from the avalanche of popularism through a functionalist reading of it. however, a careful reading did not foreclose on chapters that were more propositional, such as albert narath’s insightful article on großstäd and baraockstadt, which unpacks the relationship between architecture and advertising—that enables an expansion on the histographical theme outlined at the start of the book. but at the same time, it is similar to torello’s chapter in demonstrating how the baroque had been reframed within this period—to invoke the new. chapters that stood out were those providing clear insights into the thickening complexity of relations between modernism and the baroque, while at times highlighting caution against periodisation. these were chapters by andrew hopkins, luka skansi and eacaiisa eeva-liisa pelkonen. through a close reading we are also made privy to how subtle shifts, or omissions in knowledge, provide us with different understandings of the baroque, as evident in john macarthur’s chapter. a point articulated clearly by evonne levy, compares riegl with wöllfflin, where the latter’s aristocratic vision of the baroque dominated; wöllfflin continues to in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 96 review / the baroque in architectural culture 1880–1980 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n dominate as a significant figure in framing the baroque and in writing on perception. while wöllfflin’s linear approach to history has dominated subsequent understandings, the history of the baroque and its relationship with modernism in this book is cast as a series of contested relationships rather than as a process of time imaged in a more linear way. while the book is focused on history in its aim and methods, the chapters which are likely to connect with a broader audience are the ones which induce us to think architecturally, with such a notion explored in roberto dulio’s chapter in this book. here, dulio cites bruno zevi; “the history of architecture as taught by architects is only valid if it manages to extricate itself [from the past] other than the verbal instruments of writing of the history of art through a graphic and three dimensional and operative criticism that induces one to think architecturally” (188). the chapters by silvia micheli, luka skansi, eeva-liisa pelkonen, anthony raynsford and gro lauvland offer the possibility of inducing one to think architecturally. these chapters raise questions, which are relevant to, and help locate, discussions about how one approaches design, rather than just being relevant to historical stories and how history is made—the potential here is to shape how we might look at, for example, how design thinking is made in the present. the book does raise a few questions however. the first was the desire to reinstate sedlmayr to architecture’s history, and to an understanding of the baroque. in chapter 8 a physiognomic analysis was explained in neutral terms by the author as merely sedlmayr’s curiosity of new analytical tools and at an apparent departure from art history. and, this was before you reach the author’s revelation (at the end of the chapter) of sedlmayr’s adherence to nazism. yet, critically, this neutral framing defangs the fact that physiognomic analysis was a tool used by the nazis to situate people of colour and jews between apes and white men as proof of their inferior status: as subhuman (gray, 2004). although the use of physiognomic analysis within architecture predates sedlmayr by some years, its troubled history cannot be ignored. yet, the author of this chapter urges us to question the implicit ban on sedlmayr, which he suggests is not because of his ties with nazism, but as a result of the ambiguity of his research. however, this raises questions as at the time of writing this review, this was the only chapter referenced because it provides support to look to sedlmayr, despite his past. considering the histographical approach of the book one would assume that this would draw attention to how arguments on the baroque are being constructed and remade—and to what ends. to ask what does it mean when an argument is cast as neutral, despite the context, as attempted by some writers on the baroque, and cited in this book to define the baroque as a style and therefore “without ideological or conceptual content”, leaves us with “a tool of dry historiography that cannot be turned to evil ends” (leach, 2016: 126). the conflation of baroque and national identity, which leach speaks to, illustrates the complicities of power with architectural and artistic movements, but it does not follow that notions of the baroque around complexity, ambiguity, senses, and feelings are wrong. but what must be challenged and debated following historiographical approaches is treating history and its methods as neutral and banal: as the book argues at times rather than unpacking the political consequences further of how the baroque has been tied up and utilised to support a particular ideology. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 97 review / the baroque in architectural culture 1880–1980 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n the second question explores why the book concludes at the 1980s without going further. the final chapter laments the baroque’s loss of historical position, or even the lack of welcome with which it is greeted within general debates of the discipline. however, are we not in a post-critical period where anything goes, where a range of ideas are welcome? is this not the perfect time for a historiographic insistence on how the politics of the present are refashioning the past? one, therefore, would think a historian’s close reading of the digital use of the baroque would be more than welcome—to develop a clearer understanding of its significance and how it operates in our own time. a further rounding out of the chapters would have been enabled by extending to more contemporary writing that would enable a strengthening of the question—how is the baroque being remade in the present? to conclude, the points raised in this review do not detract from a book which clearly situates the baroque in the history of architectural historiography and in the history of modern architectural culture. this is an elegant book and a welcome addition for scholars of art and architectural history. additionally, the book boasts a wider appeal than those concerned specifically with a historical perspective. references gray, r. (2004). about face: german physiognomic thought from lavater to auschwitz, detroit: wayne state university press. leach, a. (2015). the future of the baroque, c. 1945. in the baroque in architectural culture, 1880–1980. edited by andrew leach, john macarthur and maarten delbeke. surrey: ashgate publishing company. narath, a. (2015). großstäd and baraockstadt: art history, advertising and the surface of the neo-baroque. in the baroque in architectural culture, 1880–1980. edited by andrew leach, john macarthur and maarten delbeke. surrey: ashgate publishing company. spivak, g c. (1999) a critique of postcolonial reason: toward a history of the vanishing present, cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. interview with mark wigley and paul walker pw. insofar as you are different from new zealand architecture, or its lack, you apparently offend it. was it necessary for the new zealand condition to provoke an agent which would in turn provoke it? do we need to be offended at the moment? mw. new zealand's lack of architecture is precisely what makes it central to the world thought about architecture. it was also necessary that the complete denial of architecture here would produce some kind of licentious behaviour. pw. i'm suspicious of this. my experience is only new zealand, but i suspect that wherever i was, i might equally discover a unique condition for my region. i would discover the regionalism of my architecture to be unique, to have a unique and privileged role. this is what you seem to say about new zealand architecture or its non architecture. it's a kind of unique keeper of past models, or something. and this seems to me, to be echoed in the 219 mark wigley relationship of architecture to philosophy that you propose or trace: it's a privileged relationship. doesn't this make you suspicious that you're simply privileging wherever it is-new zealand architecture-you find yourself? mw. yes. it is my current description of my work, but one which came after the work, that what i did was to generalise my contempt for new zealand architecture into a contempt for architecture as such, to get over the contempt and admire architecture in the way it covertly resisted certain things. in a way i wrote a personal history bound to a certain location on the earth, bound to certain qualities of my education, and so on, that precisely calls into question notions of place, location, and all that. it would be nonsense to claim that my description of the relationship between architecture and philosophy was not influenced by the fact that i was largely outside the architectural world by virtue of being in new zealand. i think it would be nonsense to say that i wasn't effected by the fact that i wasn't in the united states when i wrote m y thesis. pw. would there be any discipline in new zealand that would not feel itself in such a provincial position? mw. probably not. i think that all provincials are obsessed with their provincial status. those who think that they are not in the provinces are also obsessed with their belief that they have got away from provincialism; they too exhibit all of the symptoms. to argue about the provinces is to argue about the relationship between the centre and the margins, or the inside of an architectural game, for example, and the outside . everybody is trapped. we are all obsessed with provincialism, and we all start our argument from wherever we are told we are placed in this game. in new zealand we are told, and tell ourselves, that we are outside. so that is where i started from; then i attempted to argue that the kind of things we 220 paul walker deviously protect here are inside the world, at the centre; and then i came across a series of texts which made talking about that interesting. equally, the people who are on the inside take things like deconstruction in a way coloured by their thoughts that they are first, that they started at the beginning, that they are at the centre. i am saying that because i began thinking, as a provincial, that this angled the work i did and dictated its character, but i end up alongside the position of people who started off believing that they were at the centre. precisely by following up those respective positions thoroughly one ends up calling into question the inside/ outside relationship, and therefore calling into question one's own provincial status, and in a certain sense rejecting it. pw. there are different kinds of provincial status? mw. yes. i think the different provinces have a different sense. australia has a different sense of its relationship to the inside. the people in new york who abhor provincials are extraordinarily prov incial in their attitude. the force with which new yorkers limit themselves to manhattan is, in some way, much more oppressively provincial that the way in which we just say that it is obvious we are isolated-here are billions and billions of gallons of water cutting u s off. over there they work very hard and point to maybe a hundred yards of water, attempt to demonstrate that a hundred yards marks the beginning and end of thought, and entertainment, and theatre and so on. pw. is there anyone who isn't bound to be provincial? mw. no. in my view the belief that you are not provincial is the belief that you are god. the full force of western philosophy is b ased on the premise that one day we will get to the centre, that the centre is definitely the place to go . that is the imperative under which we all operate. so while i cite my provincial status as being extremely important in the construction of my arguments, at the same time, having completed those arguments, i then gener221 mark wigley alise and proclaim that to be the condition of all rigorous inquiry into architecture. pw. it seems to me that in your thesis you say architecture has a kind of provinciality with respect to philosophy, which makes the relationship between them special. but couldn't one equally write a thesis called 'jacques derrida and law: the deconstructive possibilities of judicial discourse,' that would equally claim such a relationship for the law? mw. yes. there is a book by gillian rose called dialectic of nihilism1 which proclaims that derrida is somewhat uninteresting because, at his most interesting, what he says is actually already written into the legal tradition. but the argument has a different quality. pw. i am asking if you can entertain the possibility that something other than architecture can claim an equally privileged relationship with philosophy. mw. yes, but we necessarily proclaim our own area to have such privilege . the particular privilege that i would ascribe to architecture would be different to that ascribed to other fields . pw. obviously you would have to u se different philosophical writings in the construction of the argument. mw. but i think it would have a different structural relationship. pw. am i right in saying that architecture is privileged in philosophy b ecause it has acted as a powerful metaphor? mw. i would rather say its privileged status comes from appearing to be a metaphor but turning out to be much more than that. my argument would be that the privilege architecture has is that unlike other metaphors employed by philosophy this one can't be rejected as a metaphor, can't be abandoned easily. philosophy regards metaphor as being precisely 222 paul walker that which can be abandoned, but which is supplemental, illustration. but the concept of metaphor is itself dependent on an architectural argument. therefore the architectural metaphor cannot be abandoned. one cannot abandon the thing with which one constructs the idea of metaphor so simply. but, undoubtedly, at the same time that which i am calling architecture is not something which is isolated from that thing which you called law. so i would dip into legal texts and argue that they were architectural texts in disguise, and a legal theorist might read architectural texts as somewhat blurred versions of legal texts. i think other disciplines could not make the same first moves as we can with architecture, but the endpoint of these sorts of arguments is much the same; after some time the legal arguments and the architectural arguments could not be simply separated. pw. it seems to me that you might not be able to make the same moves in law but you might still presume your moves were the privileged ones. do law and philosophy have the same relationship between them as architecture and philosophy? mw. while both disciplines can thoroughly demonstrate a privileged relationship, traditionally law is seen to be worthier of that privilege in that philosophers have dealt with the question of law more extensively. i suppose the interesting question would be things like painting, to compare painting and architecture, whether painting could assume the same status. except painting never existed as a discipline. pw. i'm not sure architecture has either. i accept arguments about architecture that suggest that it is really only constituted as a discipline in the renaissance or the 18th century. mw. yes. pw. i wouldn't see architecture just as being discourse on building for instance. i would 223 mark wigley want to argue that architecture is a discourse on building that is structured in a certain way and that this structuring doesn't happen until quite late. that would make any kind of allusion to architecture in plato's text, say, something difficult. i don't think that to discover reference to building is enough. mw. my view is that those references to building were discovered in the renaissance. to put it in a slightly different way: hidden bonuses in the contract between architecture and philosophy were discovered in the renaissance. in a way the contract only became a contract at that point. in the renaissance, certain conditions laid down within the [philosophical] text were exploited by a group of people to produce a discipline. they became constructural conditions. i'm interested in following this history of the idea of the contract, and relating that to the history of the idea of architecture. pw. this brings me to my last question, which is about the relationship of building and architecture. for me this has become an obsession since working in an architectural practice, and one noted for the strongly tectonic qualities of its work. however, i feel remote from building. my experience is that the obligations placed upon me in my work situation seem quite self-contained and removed from any ultimate obligation to building. this may be false. maybe the workplace is cleverly contrived. would you sustain a definition of architecture as discourse about building? mw. it's a particular kind of discourse about building. in any view it's a discourse that attempts to disguise the horror of building; it attempts to keep the nature of building unobserved, to construct a shield around building. architecture is a kind of collective discourse on the nature of building, but it is a discourse which is desperately concerned not to interrogate building too closely. so it has concentrated on considerations of ornament, for example, which lead us to believe that building is non-problematical. in a sense, it's an attempt to keep us to one side of building. the concern of the architectural discipline is to reaffirm 224 paul walker the insight on which philosophy depends; that building is non-problematical, and by definition virtuous and uplifting, in the sense of lifting something up, erecting it on sound foundations, and so on, and that by these gestures it is necessarily moral. in a sense, culture is then defined by its ability to build. my particular interest is in articulating the horror of building itself. to return to eisenman, his recent work is more challenging than the earlier work because it occupies building. and this is precisely why he has no disciples in architecture; it's impossible for eisenman to have architectural disciples because all architects refuse to stage an in-depth encounter with building itself. rather, they act around building in a certain way to claim that territory and prohibit others from occupying it. i think the only interesting work in architecture today is that which inhabits the realm of building. to get access to that realm the traditional relationships between structure and ornament and between building and architecture have to be skilfully undermined, against the full force of the discipline. that kind of undermining is what i'm most interested in. eisenman is its only successful exponent. so he is correctly seen as dangerous; he is undermining not just the foundations of our discipline, but also the assumptions on which we base our ideas about everything that we have. pw. by whom is he seen as dangerous? mw. by architects. this is complicated. you can argue that up until two or three years ago he was seen as superficially dangerous-he was assigned the role of being the dangerous fringe of architectural inquiry, and it was felt he would soak up all that energy and allow the rest of the profession to get on with the business of doing architecture. eisenman was appropriated by 225 mark wigley the discipline as a demonstration that it was actually worried about its own condition, inquiring into it. but that has changed and now he is seen as truly dangerous. he can no longer be simply dismissed because he has now moved his projects into the heart of building. he's involved in the construction of major projects. and he's maintained the same conceptual rigour that he demonstrated earlier. i'm waiting to see what the next project will be, and the one after that, because a very incisive inquiry has begun and it could have very significant results. at the same time quite a few of eisenman's generation are sceptical about the condition of their own work. pw. what kind of work-mainstream, postmodernism? mw. absolutely. pw. i suppose my view is that the architectural mainstream will contain eisenman as english departments contain derrida, reduce the work to a set of motifs with which they can replace other motifs. but business will go on as usual. mw. i wouldn't promote his work as a new wave; i think it will always remain without followers. pw. building must be a difficult location for dissent or inquiry or criticism because it costs money, you've got to get someone to pay for it, to get someone else involved in the act. or you work covertly. other disciplines perhaps do not face such severe stringencies. mw. i agree. but that is also an assertion of architecture's privilege. i would tend to invoke rather than the financial costs and so on, the philosophical weight of what's being tampered with. but what our culture values philosophically it also values financially. is it any surprise that it's hard to find support for a project which questions the nature of support? obviously 226 paul walker one can only do that in a slippery way. that is the problem, if you want to undermine building. there's a limit to how surreptitious you can be. so-called deconstructionists who happily pull apart texts are immediately horrified at the thought that the room in which they are doing that might have some of the gaps in it revealed. everyone is aware of the influence of building. notes: 1 g. rose, dialectic of nihilism: poststructuralism and law (oxford, basil blackwell, 1984). 227 installation of the auckland school at the fifth architectural biennale, venice. (photo. chris adams.) the venice prize, a competition for schools of architecture, was mounted for the first time at the fifth architectural biennale in venice. a prize was awarded for the best installation showing current architectural research directions. forty-three schools from around the world were invited to prepare exhibitions. exhibiting schools were selected not only for cultural diversity, but also for the different social and historical conditions in which their students are educated for the profession. the director of the biennale, francesco dal co, wanted to offer an initiative to students and teach ers from centres of international debate with established lines of communication, and also to those of us from the margins who had never had such an opportunity to participate. a prestigious jury comprising ignazio gardella, hans hollein, arata isozaki, richard meier and franco purini unanimously awarded the prize to the university of auckland department of architecture. 189 the venice prize architecture to a fault. la biennale di venezia 1991 settore architettura "venice prize" the department of architecture, university of auckland, new zealand design project model, the architecture of exile-belinda ellis. (photo . lynn logan.) fault, faltering, faulting is a critical theme in this selection of recent work from the auckland school. the work was selected to show what can happen to architecture that has been authorised by an 'archaeology of theory' when the ground itself, the land, culture, and civilisation is discovered to be shattered, shaken, faulted. theories of design in this school as elsewhere had been founded on totalising phenomenologies of space, land-form, region, back-ground, etc., where these contexts were assumed to be a pure, unsullied land. the original and continuing violence within and beneath the landscape was either denied, re190 university of a uckland design project model, "nimesis"fraser cameron. (photo . lynn logan.) sisted, ignored or reduced to the picturesque. critical archaeology discloses a glaring fault in former theories of paradise. here we speak with architecture as with prophecy. the culture itself is at fault, a bi-culture-europe and polynesia, empire and its othe -not simply and merely divided, but an intimate and deep-founded grindingtogether of peoples, an architectonic fault-line of pressures and upheavals, a seismic folding of languages, forged in the intense heat of fault. when empire reached this strip of land at the southern end of the world, a torn straggle of islands on the edge of the pacific plate, a crumpled strip of white fish-flesh torn from the realm of the sea, he faltered in the course of conquest. 'man alone' hesitated . he revealed uncertainty in his progress. he felt exposed on the indefinite edge of the face of empire, unsure how to proceed beyond the horizon of the subject. like kokoschka's everyman, swallowed in emptiness, he felt compelled to invent his idea of society. he faltered upon the question, "what architecture is?" civilisation arrives here as representations of the centre. a local reading of theory simulates but always distorts the original. (another reading of semiotics, another version of deconstruction.) the slippage between the original and the copy produces an uncanny quality 'almost the same but different,' that is often noted. this difference again, this misrepresentation of the architecture of civilisation is 'our fault .' the nineteenth century beginnings 191 venice biennale winners (from left) andrew barrie, helene furjan, glenn watt, mary jowett, richard mcgowan, chris adams, stephen auld. the venice prize were themselves representations-of nature, history, the primitive hut, the subj ect. at every turn we are caught between strata of (mis)-representation. at first, with a colonial perception of wilderness, remoteness and natural wealth, imperial architecture tried to produce a faultless culturation, not to expose too much the shabby workings of conquest and exploitation, but to imitate the european picturesque in the farmstead and the city. later, particularly in the post-war period, this imitative tradition faltered before its own image of 'tabula rasa.' architecture developed a passion to re-work the blank slate of the house, to re-invent the farm shed, to discover a regional identity which could b e 'without fault.' auckland architecture was a paradigm of the modern, utopia in its place, on the edge of the empire of ideas. but still it faltered. th e modernist clean slate cannot itself be simply effaced nor by-passed, but rather it must be interrogated. the lyotardian project of 'elab oration of the initial oblivion' would mean here a 'working through' of the historical processes which led to the cleaning of the slate, allowing the repressed material to show through, archaeologically cutting through its bland surface. the aesthetic research direction which is illustrated in this selection of recent design work has little to do with a critical regionalism or with the empire of the picturesque. the work has been likened to a cloud, the 'long white cloud' of mythic arrival, or the uncanny ephemeral cloud in which damisch found fault with the body-centred perspective. it is a tenuous university of auckland an early model study. (photo. lynn logan.) ethereal thing, like the tattered white ghost of a cloak, a 'white mythology' drawn across the surface of building, the silent cloud of unknowing, which averts its face from the fault as it floats gracefully over the shaky surface of the ground. the work displays little fascination for technology, the final stitching together of a coherent aesthetic for how can you stitch a cloud? it would be a mistake to describe this work as superficial. it is not clever, tongue-in-cheek, street smart. it is often derivative, unashamedly so, quick to acknowledge its sources. it does not waver any more at mere imitation. but if it is like waves, there is also an undertow. if it is clouds, we also smell the heat of thunder. we detect a deep-grinding energy which causes the paper to crease and smudges the line. this architecture 'to a fault' embraces the fault itself into the body of its own text. we notice a fault in all this work, that it is introverted. there is no context, no urban fabric, no geological ground, no horizon. or is the ground itself, faulted, corrupted and imperfect, drawn into the text itself? we have not yet found an answer for this question. this is 193 the venice prize architecture 'to a fault,' faltering, opening itself to fault. as it opens n ew ground for new zealand architecture, we are also made aware that there are not the means at hand (traditional, theoretical, metaphorical or even mythical) with which to amend the fault which architecture exposes. michael linzey photo. chris adams. university of auckland crossed lines: drawing threads from the 1991 venice prize design project for a navigation school-fraser cameron (photo. lynn logan) the winged sculpture by massimo scolari marked the entrance to the corderie dell' arsenale which housed the student exhibition. it both made and marked an arrival, a wooden and steel glider, crashed but intact, settled on a ruined wall. the installation awarded the 'venice prize', by the school of architecture at auckland university, was a collection of drawings and models linked both literally and figuratively with a construction of wood and paper. this delicate 'object' was somewhere between a kite-like full-scale model and a complicated wall fragment of uncertain origin. hovering between definitions, this object resisted definition, resisted being placed, and indeed resisted settling 195 the venice prize in this place: hovering, barely connected to the floor by tenon pins. these objects figure the beginning of icarus's flight: that heady desire to rise above all constraints, " to fly above our corporality with fantasy ." 1 but scolari's glider also reminds us of the failure of that desire, "impossible constructions" for an "inhuman aspiration." 2 his landing, like icarus's, brings us firmly back to earth, weighting the flight of fantasy with the gravity of the real, "that primordial aspiration to the lightness that our freedom has not been able to concede to u s."3 the world-wise wooden ruin is pinned to the earth, heavy in the knowledge of its own limits. the auckland student installation was composed from a working drawing laid out on the floor which was connected by the extension of a set of co-ordinate cross-axes that literally crossed the drawing (an arbitrary marker of centre-lines designated by the maximum length of cargo on a jet plane to venice, a literal cross-section), to both this object, and to the exhibition of works (drawings and models), organising their display. the object was con196 jeremy leman, "house for freud's dora" (reinterpreta tion of the auckland pioneer women's memorial hall.) (photo. lynn logan.) university of auckland structed from two sets of light, prefabricated framing (the 'one' based on local domestic vernacular, defined by the nz standard 3604 code of practice for light timber frame buildings; the 'other' based on a micronesian navigation map, figure for an-other architecture), crossed through each other, severed at the cross-axes, marked with crosses at their truncated ends (with lead inserts that 'traced' its origins in drawing) and finally covered in tissue paper crossed with a 500mm grid. if, as a fragment, the framed construction of the auckland school bears witness also to the descent of that tragic flight, it is as yet unaware of defeat. it presents the young face of the school, naively eager, like a kite straining at its ties, resisting the gravity of the limits that bind it. and yet it is aware of these limits: the construction is indeed 'framed', caught in the play of representations that is architecture in this place. representing the condition of a school of architecture, it is confined always to the 'drawn'. drawn on the floor and papered, its status hovers between construction and drawing, resisting presence in the act of presenting itself. at the limits of both, it exists as barely anything more than a "a strange light", an inner glow that "reveals the unconditional within its own limits; the light of the invisible within the visible."4 it is the 'strange light' of the ephemeral gaze of the angel, the modern angel of klee's angelus novus. scolari's glider, too, is such an angel. together, they watched over the thresholds of architecture-the place of the schools in the biennale. but unlike klee's angel which, for walter benjamin, is driven backwards over the wreckage of the past, towards the future, by the storm of progress, these angels are static: "the air seems not to breathe and everything is arrested for an immobile instant."5 and in this stillness these objects are figured as enigmas: the glider amongst its ruins, the framed wall fragment, ancient cloak, or kite; both are at once so heavy that they would sink into the surface, speaking of "the weight of the wall, the construction of the architecture;"6 197 the venice prize and so weightless that they could "at a certain point become as light as a cloud and vanish"7 , speaking of "the aireal lightness of the flight" 8• it is an enigma that sees these objects unable to be pinned to a stable meaning, unable to be grounded, just as the framed 'object' resists the pins that would tie it to the floor. the installation treads the fine line between an archaeological fragment and a tourist trophy, a souvenir of a 'south seas paradise' and the myths of its country. the white cloud of aotearoa is at the same time the pure white of a white mythology: the blinding glare of the tabula rasa, the clean screen, of orderly, white tissue cladding signifying the unrepresentable, blank landscape that, like c.d. freidrich's painting, wayfarer above a sea of cloud, attests to the colonial desire to 'discover' that there is nothing (already) here. but this ideal, this 'clouded' view that would conceal an existing architecture in a sea of mist, itself already resists the colonial gaze that constructs it: a cloud cannot be re-presented, it resists the perspectival projection that defines and records the gaze, and thereby renders impotent the claim that centres this gaze, as the averted face of freidrich's wanderer also testifies. writes franco rella of both freidrich and scolari's paintings: a strange world is this, in which nothing is diminished by perspective; a world in which objects lie parallel, equidistant from each other; so to speak, in an unterminated space-rendered infinite by its own confines.9 where the tissue screen blurs the two framing systems into a shadowy, indistinguishable synthesis (the colonial enterprise that sees its other(s) assimilatedconsumed and concealed), the surface is no longer the clean white of colonial tabula rasa but is etched by the marks and traces of a repressed architecture. it is a move that 'unveils', not so much in order to reveal what it hides, as to lay bear the fabric of the veil, to locate within it the working-over that sees its other(s) assimilated, consumed and concealed, that renders the 'bi-' of bi-culture as rend, a double cut, that allowed within the white mythology the possibility of cross-section, 198 university of auckland of interstitial details, fleeting glimpses that resist a totalising view, a mastering gaze, hints at a crossing or weaving of figures of culture that move past and through each other, like the faulted landscape, shaking each other to the foundations, and contaminating each in a sliding trajectory. here, if it is the edge that speaks, it is an edge that, paradoxically, speaks with the authority of an empty centre: an edge too anxious, too edgy, to speak of itself. an edged figure from the edge of the world, it hedges the edge of its site. "like an intact catastrophe that redeems the accident beyond common sense" 10, it speaks of the enigma of the threshold, of the limit. notes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 helene furjan massimo scolari, 'l'ingresso alle corderie dell' arsenale', in the catalogue to quinta mostra internazionale di architettura, (milan, electa, 1991), p. 40. ibid. ibid. franco rella, 'the gaze of the argonaut', in hypnos, massimo scolari, p. 18. ibid., p . 12. scolari, op. cit. rella, op . cit., p. 10. 199 the venice prize 8 scolari, op. cit. 9 rella, op. cit., p. 14. 10 scolari, op. cit. 200 university of auckland a detail of the auckland university installation under construction. (photo. chris adams.) 201 202 winged entranceway to the architectural exhibitionm. scolari. (photo. chris adams.) • 46 fig 1 (top left) syntax, sakyo-ku, kyoto, 1990 (photo: tom daniell) fig 2 (top right) kirin plaza, osaka, 1987 (photo: tom daniell) fig 3 (bottom) crystal monolith, yokohama, 1992 (computer graphics: courtesy ofakihiko endo, shin takamatsu architect & associates) interview with shin takamatsu and tom daniell ornament and (anti)urbanism td your architecture is uncompromisingly individualistic and without apparent precedent. it has been characterised as a response to the overpowering and chaotic nature of the contemporary japanese city. this is certainly true of a building like kirin plaza osaka, located in the shinsaibashi district of osaka, one of the most intense urban environments in all of japan. kirin seems excessive in photographs, but in reality it is silent and serene: the eye of the storm. there, it is a perfect response. however, it seems ironic that the majority of your built work to date is located here in kyoto. this is a very traditional city, in both architecture and custom. how do you regard context in your work? st there are two ways to deal with context. one is to harmonise as much as possible, to work with utmost sympathy for history, tradition and the aesthetics of the surrounding buildings. by way of analogy, imagine the city to be a length of obi.1 if you wish to add to or repair the obi, you could weave a new pattern into it using a very similar thread and stitch. this would then become indistinguishable from what was existing. the second method would be to inlay a brilliant and complex knot of gold thread into the obi, to transform it. this is my method . kyoto has a profound tranquillity which rapidly assimilates all new intrusions. it is a form of stagnation. the context here is something that must be played with, challenged, fought and transfigured. in creating a new building, it is necessary to also create a new place, to redefine the surroundings. as long as the making of a building is intended to add value to the city, architecture and urbanism cannot be separated. when i make a building, i am always considering both the immediate context and the deep structure of the city. td kyoto is becoming increasingly modernized; tradition is fading. you have said kyoto is dying. st entropy increases. all cities must die, and it is exciting to be present at their death. what is important is how a city dies. unfortunately, kyoto is dying very badly. on the other hand, vienna is dying well. the viennese show wisdom in dealing with their city. kyoto needs such wisdom right now. td wisdom in what way? st we must take account of that which makes a city unique. one thing vital to kyoto is shakkei.2 shakkei enhances and invigorates every space in the city, and allows spectacles such as the diamon-ji.3 as long as kyoto does not lose its shakkei, it will die well. unfortunately, projects such as the kyoto tower hotel and the new kyoto jr station were designed without thought for this, without an understanding of kyoto. if the city was analyzed more intelligently, better architecture would result, and kyoto would die with dignity. td many of your commissions have been from developers and other commercial clients, yet these buildings have very powerful, almost religious, qualities, far in excess of the average tenant building. you once said, in reference to the links building, "to me, a commercial building is like a temple ... commercial space, in an extreme sense, is a space to sublimate and to rescue us from all our wants and cravings." 4 are such buildings intended to ritualise consumerism? do you believe contemporary society has substituted materialism for religion? st no. materialism will not bring us closer to the infinite. however, commercial space requires intense realization. if we use language as an analogy, a word does not exist in isolation. the word becomes a sentence, a page, an idiom of its own. if you read a book mishima perhaps, or pynchon you gain far more than just a collection of words. the words attain a certain synergy. it is the same with architecture. a commercial building must be more than functional. it must be architecture. in the case of links, that is a building which is intended to be seen from a distant place. a person seeing links has a glimpse of a different world, a different definition of their world. each viewer 47 • fig 4 (top left) "the garden of abstract fo1ms" kunibiki messe, matsue, shimane-ken, 1993 (courtesy of nae sa & partners) fig 5 (top right) okamura research centre, yokohama, 1992 (computer graphics: courtesy of akihiko endo, shin takamatsu architect & associates) fig 6 (bottom) kunibiki messe, matsue , shimane-ken, 1993 (courtesy of nae sa & partners) creates their own definition. i want to create an architecture that enriches and transfigures its surroundings. if architecture is a language, then links is not only a means of communication, but a totally new word in the mind of the perceiver. td and the function of consumerism is then irrelevant? st if we are to believe hegel, architecture is building without function. td i am interested in the paradigm shift regarding technology that has occurred in your work in recent years. this is perhaps exemplified by the differences between the syntax building in kyoto and the crystal monolith project for yokohama. syntax is a concrete fortress ornamentedwith mechanistic details; crystal monolith is a floating glass box, its form defined by the lcd video screens on its surface. the references here are to information technology, electronics rather than mechanics. st there is indeed a paradigm shift between these projects. architecture is always changing, and technological developments will guide these changes. crystal monolith is a field of serial simulations, manifested as a simple glass box. electronic and media technology provide an appropriate metaphor for architecture in the public domain. technology, the machine, is a means by which architecture may be transformed. td why the machine? st the machine has two important aspects. firstly, the machine is a sign, that is, a visual message. secondly, it is a metaphor: it has an invisible function. the machine desires something. it desires transcendence, and this secret function is more important than its appearance. a machine expresses both functional efficiency and the invisible dynamic forces that act within it. my machines are pure energy. they provoke and transform their context. td the mechanistic detailing of your early work was generally unrelated to function, yet in crystal monolith the ornament has apparently become inseparable from the structure. similarly, in kunibiki messe and the okamura research centre, you are dealing with forms that seem to be simultaneously undecorated yet entirely decorative in and of themselves. the distinction between essential and auxiliary, between the ornament and the ornamented, is no longer clear in any conventional sense. st such a distinction has never existed in my work. throughout history, ornament has been seen as something added, a question of rationality and efficiency versus beauty and grandeur. i am interested in something in between, beyond questions of utility and decoration. i compose architecture. it is all essential. td it is hegel who suggests architecture is at its most powerful when it is most concerned with appearance, with pure symbolic power. perhaps kirin plaza is a good example. the light towers are ornamental, yet completely integral to the architecture. st yes. kirin plaza is a monument without physical form. you have seen kirin plaza by night: the building dissolves into darkness, and the floating towers remain. it is architecture composed of light. td i have noticed connections between your recent work and certain aspects of traditional japanese architecture. the early buildings were dense, formally-complete monuments, yet your current work has become more sequential and episodic, freer in its composition. this interest in the timeoriented, experiential possibilities of architecture has obvious links with spaces such as katsura riky or ry anji stone garden. st two major factors led to these changes. the first is the issue of scale. the early buildings were very small, and hence designed to be instantly comprehended by those who see them. i wanted people to feel their power and strength in the first glance, to experience a moment of ecstasy when 49 • fig 7 (top) a stone garden designed in the karesansui (waterless stream) style circa 15th century, ry an-ji temple, kyoto (photo: tom daniell) fig 8 (bottom)kyoto concert hall, 1991 (courtesy of shin takamatsu architect & associates) j they encounter these buildings. however, as i started working at a much larger scale, i had to allow for the time it takes to comprehend vast forms and spaces. such buildings require the accumulated understanding of their many aspects. i began to question the possibilities of large scale, to experiment with what i might achieve during the time it takes to perceive these buildings. the second reason is that many of my commissions are now for public buildings rather than tenant buildings, and there is a huge difference in the design process. the programmes for public buildings are complex and varied. tenant buildings simply require neutral, open space. on the other hand, specific functional requirements become very important for public projects. the complexities of the brief guide the design process. td so form follows function? st in a sense. while designing kunibiki messe, i was focusing on the programme very intensely. the building required a tight hierarchical system. we may design with diagrams showing different programmatic functions connected by line segments. this can then be translated into an arrangement of spaces. i struggled for a long time with this approach, and the results were unsatisfactory. i then shifted my attention from the functions to the line segments themselves.these tend to be all but ignored, and resolved into corridors and alleyways of no architectural power. i wanted to create a new type of line between elements, a new method of division and connection. i intended to create a building in flux, in a fluid equilibrium. i don't mean this as a banal deconstructivist aesthetic, but in an experiential sense. rather than connecting the elements with lines, i allowed the elements to be swallowed up by the lines. at ground level in kunibiki messe, there is a 90-metre long processional space. in the taller section of the building, there is a 24-metre high glazed volume containing a number of floating elements, each with a different function: the "garden of abstract forms." there is a similar play of elements within transparent voids in the okamura research centre and ykk okayama projects. from the original planning diagrams, line segments without dimension became these enormous spaces. the elements themselves are held in a delicate balance. if you imagine a bowl of water with several apples floating in it, over time the apples will find a stable equilibrium in relation to each other. or if you look at the kanji character kokoru, the location of the fourth and final stroke is not fixed, but is contained within a zone defined by the preceding three. the design process for these buildings involves a rigorous examination of the programme, followed by an analysis of time in the abstract. it is each particular system which provides the solution, through rigid adherence to every aspect of the system rather than by capricious transgressions of its rules. a system is always impoverished, but it is a poverty that guarantees richness. the solutions lie within this poverty. the purer the system, the greater the possibilities for discovery. i am aware that my work right now is moving closer to aspects of traditional japanese architecture. there is a similar equilibrium involved. for example, at ry an-ji, if one stone is moved, or a stone is added, that space is significantly altered. japanese space is always balanced on the edge of change. the system may be relatively flexible, but altering a single element can radically affect the entire structure. td if these recent projects are related to the minimalist zen space of ry an-ji, are buildings such as kirin plaza and syntax related to the ornate and hermetic shinto shrines, for example t sh g gate at nikk? st yes. td your buildings have always floated. the recessed podiums and top-heavy compositions of the early buildings create the illusion of weightlessness. st i am trying to set architecture free . architecture is constrained by so many things: function, 51 • • 52 budget, building codes, systems, institutions, society, daily life, common sense. but above all, it is constrained by gravity. it is very difficult to free architecture from any of those things, although historically it has perhaps been attempted through religion or technology. to actually free architecture from gravity itself is, of course, totally impossible, so i try to achieve this freedom metaphorically rather than physically. in other words, i want an architecture that playss with gravity. my architecture expresses the hope of one day escaping from gravity. in the early buildings, i wished to suggest a kind of instability, through their heavy appearance and tenuous connections with the ground. although those buildings wish to float free, they barely levitate. td your work is beginning to achieve that freedom, in projects such as kunibiki messe. st perhaps. those projects are tentative experiments. to simply resist gravity is no longer sufficient; i must escape gravity altogether. td your architecture has always been explicit about its own artificiality, its unequivocal separation from the natural world. recently, however, i have noticed that the boundaries between architecture and environment are becoming ambiguous. why the shift from darkness to light, from enclosure to openness, from pure artifice to the inclusion of nature? st i have become interested in blurring the division between a building and its surroundings. this is related to the shift to public projects. for public buildings, you must examine their relationship with the city very carefully. of course, you must deal with the facade, the structure, the space, but you must also deal with the transition between the surroundings and the building interior in a new way. for example, in my design for the kyoto concert hall, the building changes over time6. it is a flexible7 system which interacts with its environment. one section is clad in a three-layer "breathing membrane." on the outer perimeter there is a glass boundary wall, which absorbs the landscape. the glass wall is required for the functioning of the building, although i would rather have nothing at all, no separation between inside and outside. behind the glass is a layer of infrared-reflective polycarbonate. behind this is a system of computer-controlled timber louvres. these louvres filter interior and exterior space, and allow glimpses of the activities within. thus, the building breathes light. ultimately, it will breathe in the history of kyoto. fig 9 (above) katsura riky, the former imperial villa, kyoto , circa 17th century (photo: tom daniell) i wish to alter the relationship between the interior and the exterior in architecture. i wish to mingle these two conditions, to layer space. td japanese architecture has always layered space as you describe. st of course. the traditional kyoto townhouse is separated from its surroundings by membranes and lattices, by shoji8 screens, marsh-reed blinds and bamboo shutters. the kyoto concert hall project achieves this layering by means of high technology. i am now searching for new types of spatial relationships, an open and ambiguous architecture. this is the ambition of the series of projects beginning with kunibiki messe. as i deal with public buildings, i wish to redefine the public domain. i am trying to eliminate boundaries. june 1993, kyoto, japan. translation: hiroshi watanabe (japan) and hideaki inoue (new zealand) lthe traditional kimono sash, made from hand-woven silk. 2"borrowed scenery," the inclusion of distant views as background in the design of a building or garden. kyoto is located in a basin, and is surrounded by bush-clad mountains. while the middle distance is ignored, the mountains are acknowledged and included in the composition. 3 an annual festival in which bonfires are lit on seven mountainsides around downtown kyoto, in the shape of enormous kanji characters. 4 "a temple", ga architect 9, (1990) pp. 118-119. 5"tawamureru", a childlike freedom from cares. 6 "utsuroi", transient, floating, ever-changing. 7 "kaihoteki", open, frank, easy, flexible. 8 sliding rice paper screens. 53. daniel naegele the readymade: duchamp's thing marcel duchamp fully appreciated the twentieth century's proclivity for certainty and classification and this attitude became an essential component of his art. in this he was not unlike freud or einstein or, in his immediate artistic milieu of belle ipoque paris, stravinsky or raymond roussel. of the playwright roussel, duchamp once noted with admiration that "starting with a sentence ... he made a word game with kinds of parentheses .. . his word play had a hidden meaning ... it was an obscurity of another order.1 roussel had economically undermined the totalizing tendency of word order, throwing all of its accepted significance into question. he did so by employing, not destroying, the 'givens.' duchamp's strategy would be similar as is evident in his readymades. duchamp describes the readymades in terms of what they were not. they "weren't works of art ... weren't sketches" but rather objects, 'things' "to which no art terms applied."(cabanne, p . 48) like roussel's parentheses which are not words but marks (not unlike letters in their most material sense), duchamp's things were imbued with the accoutrements of art but were not 'retinal' art. like bracketing, they are inserted into a highly structured world, and in the most economical manner question expose its fundamental nature. as strategy the readymade was hardly ready made, rather it came about as the logical next step in duchamp's seemingly methodical approach to art, an approach in no way unusual or exceptional until february of 1912. at that time, duchamp sent his recently-completed nude descending the staircase to the paris independents where, according to him, his "fellow cubists did not like it and asked me to, at least, change the title."2 he refused and withdrew the painting, but it is significant that the controversy surrounding nude descending the staircase had little to do with the inherent qualities of the work. rather it revolved around not only the painting's title, but also its apparent allegiance to both cubism and futurism, movements which were regarded at the time as mutually exclusive. the importance of these two extraneous issues titling and classification were never forgotten by duchamp. together with framing and the notion of museumizing itself they serve as society's means of appropriating art, of controlling its display and therefore its momentum. collectively, titling, framing, classification, and museumizing form a sort of systematic thinking, an ideology if you will (and one which extended far beyond the jurisdiction of the art world), whose authority and coerciveness duchamp began to question and ultimately set out to undermine. in effect, duchamp's readymades unmasked the 'act' of representation. he would expose the arbitrary nature and illusionistic function of 'retinal' art by presenting an analogous condition, that is, by re-presenting representation, a tactic not new to the visual arts in france. courbet's the painter's studio, real allegory, summing up a phase of seven years in my artistic life from 1854-553 and any of a number of paintings by seurat from the 1880's to 1891 might be seen as relevant predecessors to duchamp's attempt. in the circus, for example, seurat painted the perimeter of his canvas to resemble a frame. this painted frame suggests that what is being portrayed in paint is a picture of a picture. that is, what we see is a painting of a framed picture, a painting whose proportions neatly coincide with those of the re-presented image, whose boundaries begin where the delineated boundaries of the re-presented end. by painting an illusionistic frame, seurat appropriates the act of containment. seizing the boundary between art and reality, he renders the subjective objective, reducing a picture to its material components: paint and canvas. his pointilliste technique promotes the materiality of the medium, discreetly dividing the surface of the picture into equal dabs of paint and thus accentuating its physicality (cabanne, p. 47). while this division exposes the painting's objectivity, it simultaneously elevates its illusionism for its dot rendering insists that the 'picture' be actively constructed by the viewer. by objectifying, seurat underscored the subjective nature of perception. picasso's first collage still life with chair caning (1911-12) poses a similar question by replacing the medium of paint with swatches of 'reality' notably a mariner's rope and a stock oil cloth pre-painted to resemble chair caning. here again the frame (the mariner's rope) is part of the artist's domain, and as a three-dimensional 'real' object begins to question the status of the apparently two-dimensional painting, confusing classification by situating itself somewhere between painting 71 • p a r \ c u i a r s and sculpture. duchamp protracted this question at first unwittingly beginning in 1913. when he "put a bicycle wheel on a stool, the fork down, there was no idea of a 'readymade,' or anything else. it was just a distraction. i didn't have any special reason to do it, or any intention of showing it, or describing anything."(cabanne, p. 47) in 1914, duchamp chose his first readymade, bottlerack. "i just bought it, at the bazaar of the town hall. the idea of an inscription came as i was doing it. there was an inscription on the bottle rack which i forget." there was no move to introduce the piece to the art world at this time. "when i moved from the rue saint-hippolyte to leave for the united states," duchamp continues, "my sister and sister-in-law took everything out, threw it in the garbage, and said no more about it. it was in 1915, especially, in the united states, that i did other objects with inscriptions, like the snow shovel, on which i wrote something in english. the word 'readymade' thrust itself on me then."(de harnoncourt and mcshine, p. 275) not until 1917, when duchamp purchased a urinal from 'mott works' company in new york, signed it 'r. mutt,' titled it fountain and submitted it to the independents exhibition to be hung on the wall rotated and upside down, did he confront the artistic establishment with his things. duchamp saw the readymade as an attempt to "reduce the idea of aesthetic consideration to the choice of the mind, not to the ability or cleverness of the hand which i objected to in many paintings of my generation." (de harnoncourt and mcshine, p. 275) he very carefully selected these objects. "i had to beware of its 'look.' it's very difficult to choose an object, because, at the end of fifteen days, you begin to like it or to hate it. you have to approach something with an indifference, as if you had no aesthetic emotion. the choice of readymades is always based on visual indifference and, at the same time, on the total absence of good or bad taste."(cabanne, p. 48) for duchamp, taste is merely a habit, the "repetition of something already accepted" and he maintained that mechanical drawing enabled him to avoid taste since it lies "outside all pictorial convention." he insisted that the 'functionalism' of the object "was already obliterated by the fact that i took it out of the earth and onto the planet of aesthetics." (cabanne, p. 276) finally, regarding the short sentences which he occasionally inscribed on the readymades, they were not intended to describe the object "like a title" but instead, duchamp says, "meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal."4 duchamp did several variations on the readymade theme, but proliferation was necessarily prohibited by his own prescription for the objects: visual indifference and an absence of taste, that is "the repetition of something already accepted." that duchamp later found it desirable to "expose the basic antinomy between art and readymades" by introducing a "reciprocal readymade" which would turn classic art into everyday objects ("use a rembrandt as an ironing board"), suggests that his attempt to situate his work outside the boundaries of the art world was something which needed to be renewed regularly, that perhaps the museumizing tendency was more totalizing, or more accommodating, than he had initially thought. or simply that his things, when considered as such, might have had an unanticipated appeal, might possess merit in themselves, not as anti-art. certainly, recent art theoryand criticism view the readymade not so much as an object but as a gesture or as a moment in the history of art. octavio paz deems the readymades 'an-artistic,' something in between art and anti-art, something "indifferent, existing in the void." he notes that "their interest is not plastic but critical or philosophical" and judges them "beyond beauty and ugliness ... not creations, but signs, questioning or negating the act of creation." for him, the readymade "does not postulate a new value" rather it is "criticism in action;" it exudes "nonsignificance." here we might ask how paz can assign nonsignificance to that which he previously designated as sign. he concedes that "form projects meaning" and consequently "nothing is more difficult than to find an object that is really neutral." yet clearly, we must add, the readymades have form, often very pleasing form, and are anything but neutral. presumably paz would counter that duchamp neutralized these things and that he did so by placing them in an art museum, by treating them as if they were, figuratively speaking, 'framed.' "detached from its original context," paz proceeds, "the 73 • p a r \ c u i a r s • p a r \ i c u i a r s 74 readymade suddenly loses all significance and is converted into an object existing in a vacuum, into a thing without any embellishment." but the museum is not a vacuum, we might argue, in fact it serves as the missing frame which insists that we consider objects within its confines as worthy of contemplation. furthermore, titles, inscriptions, pedestals and spotlighting would certainly seem to embellish the readymade. and paz again concedes that the "really neutral" quality lasts "only for a moment" after which they succumb to an "invisible transformation and become objects for contemplation, study, or irritation."5 peter burger, too, finds duchamp's readymades "not works of art but manifestations."6 readymades serve as exemplars in burger's 'theory of the avant-garde' which convincingly argues that avant-garde art sought to overthrow bourgeois art by interrogating the purpose or function of art, its production and its reception. like paz, burger believes that "the meaning" of the readymade cannot be inferred from its "form-content totality." rather meaning can be ascertained "only from the contrast between mass-produced object on the one hand, and signature and art exhibit on the other." he sees the readymade as a provocation that relies "on what it turns against: here, it is the idea that the individual is the subject of artistic creation." both paz and burger, perhaps in following the artist's cues, would seem to deny the 'thingness' of duchamp's things, yet both would agree that his objects bicycle wheel, bottlerack, urinal, comb, snow shovel, etc. were carefully selected. presumably both would recognize that these readymades share certain (decidedly non-pictorial?) characteristics, qualities which when considered collectively might even constitute if not an aesthetic, an 'obscurity of another order.' diagrammatic, even mathematical, the "form-content totality" of these things certainly might be regarded as a threedimensional formation of the mechanical drawing duchamp employed in his attempt to avoid tastemaking. all of this is to say that lost in paz's claim that the readymade "does not postulate a new value" and in burger's assurance that readymades are mere "manifestations" is the distinctive 'thingness' of these things as a positive characteristic worthy of contemplation in itself. 'thingness' is a quality martin heidegger investigates in his die frage nach dem ding, broaching the topic by contrasting the characteristics of modern science with those of ancient or medieval science. he dismisses the factual, experimental, measuring qualities of modern science in favor of a more fundamental feature which he claims "rules and determines the basic movement of science itself." this characteristic is science's "manner of working with the things and the metaphysical projection of the thingness of the things." heidegger deems this manner mathematical and proceeds to analyze its formation. the greek expression ta mathemata means "what can be learned and thus, at the same time, what can be taught." it is identified and understood in connection with its several determinations one of which is ta pragmata, that is, "things insofar as we have to do with them at all, whether we work on them, use them, transform them, or only look at and examine them." heidegger goes on to note that the numerical is something mathematical and not vice versa. this is so because the mathematical is "that about' things which we really already know. therefore we do not get it out of things, but, in a certain way, we bring it already with us."7 when we recognize in things something which we already have, this recognition is "genuine learning" and thus the numerical is something learnable for no thing or things in themselves exude threeness, for example, but "we can count three things only if we already know 'three'." heidegger concludes that "the most difficult learning is to come to know actually and to the very foundations what we already know. such learning ... demands dwelling continually on what appears to be nearest to us, for instance, on the question of what a thing is. we steadfastly ask the same question which in terms of utility is obviously useless of what a thing is, what tools are, what man is, what a work of art is, what the state and the world are."(heidegger, p. 252) in a truly philosophical approach to science, heidegger notes, scientists seek to "create new ways of posing questions and, above all, hold out in the questionable." (heidegger, p. 248) heidegger's philosophy offers another way of viewing duchamp's project. duchamp, it could be said, captures the basic movement of art itself by focusing on its "manner of working with the things and the metaphysical projection of the thingness of things." this leads to something more than merely critical. in illuminating fundamental issues of art naming, perception, measuring he questioned the nature of knowledge. while the readymade may serve to dismantle, it also offers its ' thingness' for contemplation. in rendering visible museumization, the thingness of things becomes obvious. when heidegger concludes that the mathematical is "this fundamental position we take toward things, ... the fundamental presupposition of the knowledge of things," it is this position, this presupposition that duchamp 'holds out as questionable.' duchamp's questioning transcends the issue of museumization as it confronted him beginning in 1912. his investigation was ontological, in the deepest sense of the word philosophical. in concluding it must be noted that duchamps strategy of re-presenting representation extended far beyond the individual object. although he subscribed to a philosophy of indifference, abhorred routine, and feared the habitual as taste-making, like no other artist marcel duchamp promoted the cumulative nature of his work. time and again he collected his works together, representing them as miniatures in, for example, the large glass or the box in a valise. for walter arensburg, duchamp collected himself, amassing what has been called the largest single collection of an artist's work to be displayed anywhere, bringing together nearly all his major works. as a precondition for donating the collection to a museum in the early fifties, duchamp and arensburg required that the museum guarantee exhibition of the work for not less than twe?nty-five years. only the philadelphia museum of art was interested in these terms and philadelphia is where the oeuvre is housed today, displayed almost exactly as duchamp himself specified. by collecting and classifying, he countered the twentieth century penchant for collection and classification. 1 pierre cabanne, dialogues with ma rcel duchamp, trans. ron padgett (london: da capo, 1979), p. 41. 2 quoted in marcel duchamp, eds. anne d ' harnoncourt and kynaston mcshine (new york: the museum of modern art, 1973), ~· 258. see michael fried, "representing representation: on the central group in courbet's studio," in allegory and representation, ed . stephen j. greenblatt (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 1981). 4 marcel duchamp, "apropos of ' readymades'," in the writings of ma rcel duchamp, edited by michel sanouillet and elmer peterson (new york: da capo press, 1988), p . 141. this p assage is taken from a talk delivered by duchamp at the museum of modern art, new york, oct. 19, 1961. 5 octavio paz, marcel duchamp: appearance stripped bare, trans. rachel phillips and donald gardner (new york: little, brown and company, 1990), p. 22-24. 6 peter burger, theory of the avant-garde, trans. michael shaw (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1984), p. 52. translation based on the second edition of theorie der avantgarde (frankfurt: suhrkamp verlag, 1974, 1980). the illustrative text which supports this claim includes a photograph which more closely conforms to a standard definition of art than does (or did) duchamp's thing, stieglitz's photograph of duchamp's fountain. the image is saturated with gender iconography, both male and female. it was placed by duchamp in the the blind man itself a duchampian enterprise in the form of an art journal ~which represented the art world tendency towards representation in its critical literal?). martin h eidegger, basic writings, ed. david farrell krell (new york: harper & row, 1977), pp. 247-255. this selection, here entitled "modern science, metaphysics, and mathematics" appears in heidegger's what is a thing? trans. w. b. barton, jr. and vera deutsch from the original die frage nach dem ding (tiibingen: max niemeyer verlag, 1962), pp. 50-83. 75 • p a r \ c u i a r s • 102 in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 2 p r e s e n c e editorial / ross jenner presence over the past decade or so, initiatives have emerged to recover some form of presence against a global culture that, largely through electronic technology, has become more and more perfectly “cartesian”. we now seem, however, to be at the beginning of a situation where new presence elements in our everyday world are recovering some ground, and there is a growing emphasis on the physical, material, performative and atmospheric—rather than meaning and semiotics. materiality and its effects have come to assume what hans ulrich gumbrecht, terms a “non-hermeneutic” presence (2004: 1-20). today, we no longer believe that a complex of meanings can be kept separate from its medium of presentation, that is, from material. neither is pure manipulation of data, without aesthetic and bodily intention, able to produce architecture. the material and the immaterial are not easily divided. while presence concerns communication, it concerns space even more—through its occupation (or dis-occupation) and activation. gumbrecht reminds us that, what is “present” to us (in the sense of the latin prae-esse), is “in front of us, in reach of and tangible for our bodies” (17). he reminds us also of george steiner’s remarks that the arts, “wonderfully rooted in substance, in the human body, in stone, in pigment, in the twanging of gut or the weight of wind on reeds”, begin, but do not end, in immanence. the task of the aesthetic is to “quicken into presence the continuum between temporality and eternity, between matter and spirit, between man and ‘the other’” (steiner, 1989: 227). absence of presence is not the same as presence of absence, in which traces, silences or voids powerfully embody (and make present) something not present. for example: the voids of berlin as captured by daniel libeskind and peter eisenman; or the voids of eduardo chillida, jorge oteiza and tadao ando; the silence of john cage and the mā of toru takemitsu. they all involve experience and affect. by contrast, representation seems to be involved with the “age of the sign” and “conceptual deduction” as gumbrecht asserts (2004: 57). however, for jean-luc nancy in france, representation “is as old as the west”, and maybe there is “no humanity (and, perhaps, no animality) that does not include representation” (1993: p. 1). nancy’s conception of presence does not refer to a permanent state, but to nascence: “presence itself is birth, the coming that effaces itself and brings itself back” (5). gumbrecht relates this wavering to the in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 3 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim p r e s e n c e double movement of withdrawal and unconcealment in martin heidegger, particularly in relation to his account of a greek temple in terms of presence via the notions of “earth” and “world”. here, “the sheer presence of the temple triggers the unconcealment of a number of things—in their thingness—that surround the temple” (2004: 73). for nancy the very act and pleasure of drawing, insofar as it is “the opening of form” (p. 1), is also a nascence. what would it mean for a drawing, building, artwork or poem to perform or keep alive the performance of its birth? perhaps the malleability of alvaro siza’s works (see molteni, 2003), which retain the ‘life’ of their first sketches, or lemi ponifasio’s irruptive choreography (ponifasio, 2009) provide some hints to the potential of works in statu nascendi. in addition, a human tendency to endow buildings and artworks with life includes practices involving the holy and tapu, such as sacrifice, rites of foundation and the address to a living ancestor (in whare and fale, for example). these practices frame, stage and enact the effect of “living presence”—exceeding a disinterested aesthetic contemplation of art’s formal qualities (eck, 2015: 172). “studying what makes viewers deny the representational character of art,” argues caroline van eck, “will help understanding why art is such a universal feature of human life” (209). after all, “aesthetic experience” provides feelings of intensity unknown in specific everyday worlds for there is no aesthetic experience without presence effects emerging seemingly out of nowhere. such tendencies raise the question of the relationship between life and presence, the ways in which both dimensions metabolically participate in our material environment and multiple modalities of incarnation in the arts. in all fields of art practice, we are led to ask what part presence plays, particularly the status of presence in virtual reality and digital representation obsessed with verisimilitude. how can even purposeful design, particularly in an era of parametricism, retain an element of the status nascendi, as unprogrammed (or even unprogrammable) emergence? as nancy finds, the “joy of averring oneself to be continually in the state of being born—a rejoicing of birth, a birth of rejoicing” requires an acceptance, even embrace, of the fact that existence “comes nude into the world” (2004: back cover). this issue derives from the symposium on the theme of presence accompanied by a colloquium, led by sir harold marshall, which took place in auckland on thursday, friday and saturday 12-14 july 2018 at which hans ulrich gumbrecht was keynote speaker. reviewed papers the first four reviewed papers treat the theme of making absence present in space and process. in “between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house,” adrian lo examines peter eisenman’s treatment of architecture as a form of text which can be read through traces of presence and absence generated by his design process. while the notion of the trace has been examined by scholars already, it has largely been overlooked in the guardiola house, an un-built project dating from 1988. it is here that lo finds the trace developed particularly in terms of the interstitial, proposing that a framework focused here can present novel strategies in notation for recording and indexing 4 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 instances of absence and presence. lo proposes, further, that the guardiola house presents a critical shift in eisenman’s work. here, for the first time, he explored the trace in three dimensions as a condition of the interstitial enacted through operations of imprinting. this not only brought about the merging of constituent geometries but also provided a new way of blurring spaces (and even concepts) to constitute what might be termed a ‘phenomenal’ state of the interstitial, consistent with the distinction rowe and slutzky made between ‘literal’ and ‘phenomenal’ transparency. the house reflects eisenman’s shift from the rulebound transformations framed by structuralism to the complex and unpredictable “events” of post-structuralism. in “ex uno lapide: a making present of absence”, konrad buhagiar, guillaume dreyfuss and ephraim joris discuss a drawing protocol, which they term the “monolith drawing”, whereby an architectural figure is extracted from a single volume, synchronising analogical with digital thinking to enter history through our capacity to long for, and hence experience, something absent. lacan assumes there cannot be absence in an objective world, since absence can only exist through symbolic or representative means. thus, the authors argue, it is through the representational means of the monolith drawing that architects are enabled to design presence where there is none. hence, they explore and (re)deploy the notion of ex uno lapide in contemporary architectural production. such creative practice recovers a tradition linking geology with architectonic drawing, and operating in conceptual space through means of contained sets of formal operations to generate a particular kind of architecture. the monolith drawing is here explained in relation to the design of a museum extension to house a tapestry cycle by peter paul rubens, adjacent to st john’s co-cathedral in valletta. these tapestries represent the idea of transubstantiation. in response, the museum design acts as a closed vessel, a monumental reliquary, enabling a closed and controlled environment to ensure the conservation of the artwork. the reliquary is interpreted as a container of meaning, directing a reciprocal gaze towards the idea of meaningful absence. the monolith drawing installs two important principles. the idea of the mirror construct, in which an object is depicted using parallel lines to project its mirror image and allow twofold vision, outwards (res extensa) and inwards (res cogitans); and the idea of ex uno lapide—a strategy where architecture is carved out of solid mass. this carving is guided by allowing the depicted object and its mirror image to intersect. its transcriptions allow for a drawing with history; a tracing of its own tracing. simon twose and jules moloney, in “drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape”, propose that architectural drawing can involve the merging of multiple presences. the permanent interruption, tension and intensity of mark-making, here merges with intensities in what the marks draw, be it architectural space or landscape. their paper reports on “canyon”, a hybrid drawing project that intensifies drawing’s capacity for smudged presences. canyon attempts to develop an ever-emergent, nascent architecture from presences in drawing and landscape. the first stage of “canyon” was exhibited at the palazzo bembo in the xvi venice biennale. it draws atmospheres from the dynamic undersea landscape of kaikōura canyon, aotearoa/nz, using a hybrid of hand sketches, soundscapes and virtual reality to distil architectural possibilities from the canyon’s vast body of water, recently jolted by huge forces in the 2016 kaikōura earthquake. this landscape is known through instrumental descriptions: sonic scans, digital models and scientific data. less easy to record, in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 5 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim p r e s e n c e however, is its powerful and ominous presence. the canyon has unimaginable mass and scale, with water kilometres deep and is figured by seismic jolts, turbid flows, pressures and intensities. “canyon” imaginatively projects into this unseen landscape, crossing its ominous presence with evocative graphite sketches, soundscapes and the canyon-like boundlessness of virtual reality. this work proposes hybrid drawing as an open medium figured by blurred presences. it resonates with jean-luc nancy’s notion of drawing as the opening of form, indicating “the traced figure’s ‘essential incompleteness, a non-closure or non-totalizing of form’” (2013: 1). they extend the openness of gestural sketching to the digital and sensorial, and argue that vr, and sound, can be sketch-like: they too are figured by “recalcitrant, ‘meaningless’ smears and blotches” (elkins, 1995: 860). they argue that such hybrid, “non-semiotic’’ marks draw presences, blurred presences, making evident an architecture of nascence. stepan vaneyan’s “jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence?” examines the notion of “diaphanous structure” as a correspondence between the structure of ritual in gothic architecture, which realises the holy presence symbolically, and that of the cult space, where experience of theophany is made manifest visually. hans jantzen first introduced his programmatic theory of “diaphanous structure” (diaphane struktur) with the term “diaphaneia” in his 1927 article “on gothic church space” (“über den gotischen kirchenraum”). by that time the word had been used in near-esoteric circles (from jacob boehme to pierre teilhard de chardin) and in joyce’s ulysses, 1922. jantzen’s seminal article is dedicated to the space of the gothic cathedral, which he sees as a ritual-liturgical and multi-layered space that has, he argues, a “diaphanous structure”. in his late texts, from the 1950 and 1960s, he explored “diaphaneia” as a universal way of keeping in view the horizon of the invisible presence. most importantly, jantzen’s “diaphanous structure” informs all levels of the gothic cathedral—from the walls of the nave to the stained glass, in other words, to colour. in his paper, vaneyan contrasts jantzen’s “diaphaneia” with that of hans sedlmayr’s in the origins of the cathedral (die entstehung der kathedrale), 1951, noting that whilst for both the term presupposes the transcendent, for jantzen this transcendence concerns space, whereas for sedlmayr it concerns corporeality—for instance, in the vertical and the weightless canopy (baldachino) that enters the church space from above. this leads vaneyan to question whether “diaphaneia” might be merely a means of “spiritualisation” of both the cathedral per se and of architectural theory. further, he questions whether a “mnémotechnique” is enough to ensure the presence of the other or does it become a sign of its absence? while architecture keeps silent, an architectural theorist speaks—or, using derrida’s words, “diaphaneia” becomes “diaphonia” (2011). a further reviewed paper addresses the issue of presence in relation to built heritage. in “heritage & persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment”, andrew douglas and nicola short consider a small surviving portion of the kaiapoi woollen company building, a warehouse and offices constructed in central auckland, aotearoa/new zealand, in 1913. known as the kaiapoi fragment, the incongruity of this persisting building element was foregrounded in 2017, when the griffiths holdings building, a plain deco, two-story commercial building immediately adjoining it, was demolished to make way for an underground station. a small portion of the kaiapoi woollen company building, itself demolished in 1964, had inadvertently remained fused to the party wall of the griffiths holdings building. it was this that was left standing incongruously with the 6 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 removal of the latter. for douglas and short, this tenuous persistence prompts broader questions, not only about the constitution of the present and future by cultural heritage, but also about the precarity of the contemporary present tout court. in particular, they link this precarity to gumbrecht’s (2004 and 2014) recognition of an emerging, yet still undefined, post-historicist chronotope. as gumbrecht argues, if the preceding, historicist chronotope was characterised by a “narrow present”, one in which passing historical time provides immediately cogent bearings for acting on, and organising, an impending future, our current present, “inundated by memories and objects form the past”, themselves shorn of organising metanarratives, posits a truncated future, one distanced from the present, itself stalled and broadening inordinately (2014: 54-55). in their paper, douglas and short follow gumbrecht’s use of the chronotope to account for this compounded nature of the present and the past, a notion in fact developed by mikhail bakhtin to describe particular fusions of space and time evident across the history of the novel (see bakhtin and holquist, 2000). to better grasp the potential of gumbrecht’s claims, they explore what for bakhtin underwrites the chronotope—dialogical exchange. in turn, they examine a particular aspect of dialogue developed by henri bergson (1935/1991), who himself tied such exchange to a foundational agent capable of dissolving all spatio-temporal amalgamation—duration. as a consequence, they are led to ask how bergson’s broader emphasis on the “‘primacy of memory’ over a ’primacy of perception’” (lawlor 2003: ix) might assist in reworking gumbrecht’s notion of presence in heritage contexts. following leonard lawlor’s recognition of a “non-phenomenological concept of presence” in bergson (x), the authors attempt a provisional anatomy of presence, one prompted by—despite its diminutive scale—the kaiapoi fragment itself.    the remaining reviewed paper considers absence in relation to place. in “absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice”, felipe lanuza rilling proposes a dialogue between absence and silence, specifically between his own interpretations of absence through layered images and silence as it features in the musical works by tōru takemitsu. his layered images seek to re-present experiences of absence as they appear to the senses in the built environment. they respond to what he sees as the capacity of absence to evoke multiple, uncertain and distant presences that seem to be away from our grasp. in takemitsu’s multi-layered and seemingly unstructured pieces, silence plays a key role in bringing about ma, which refers to a meaningful spatio-temporal gap, interval or in-between condition, often invested with metaphysical connotations of great significance in japanese culture. following a hint by composer philip dawson, the advice of musical interpreter cristián alvear, and largely driven by intuition, rilling explores the albeit distant resonances of his visual work in the acclaimed japanese composer’s music. in this way, he expands the interpretative possibilities of absence and layering in representing the vanishing atmospheres of venice, an example of fragile existence and aggregated formation.  postgraduate creative design research in a reviewed design research paper arising out of a master of architecture (professional) degree at victoria, university of wellington, nina boyd examines the relationship between architecture and the tourist experience. in her project titled, “staging tourism: performing place”, boyd argues that in architecture the in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 7 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim p r e s e n c e corporeality of the tourist is typically reduced to acts of viewing. contrastingly, her project explores and devises multiple acts of mobilisation to force a paradigmatic shift from the “gaze” to “performance”. privileging sensuous experiences and active choreography, the project investigates how architecture can stage and amplify the multiplex performances of tourism in order to produce more complex accounts and experiences of place. utilising a “design through research” methodology, the design proposition is developed through iterative design experiments enacted across three increasing scales: the first engaging with the human scale through 1:1 installation; the second testing the performative dimensions of tourism as embodied programmatically via hotel design; and, the third testing the nature of tourism’s public performance through the design of an artificial island for wellington’s shelly bay. reviews completing the issue are three book reviews. the first, by john dixon hunt, considers anuradha chattergee’s, john ruskin and the fabric of architecture (2017) published by routledge press. the second, by carl douglas, addresses marian macken’s, binding space: the book as spatial practice (2018) also released by routledge press. the third, by mark jackson, engages with farzaneh haghighi’s, is the tehran bazaar dead? : foucault, politics, and architecture (2018) pub-lished by cambridge scholars publishing. finally, the adventure into presence carried by this issue may be thought, as gumbrecht himself has subsequently characterised the symposium and colloquium that was nascent for the papers offered here, as a “desire for and first trace of a recovery of presence culture” (personal communication, 2016). against an insistent “universe of contingency”, what working on and with presence potentiates is the opening of “fault lines” in a present saturated with modes of control and drives to commodify (personal communication, 2016). presence as erring immediacy, precisely suggests a critical counter to the insistent swathe of techniques determining contemporary attention. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 8 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim p r e s e n c e references bakhtin, m., holquist, m. (ed.) (2000). the dialogical imagination: four essays by m.m. bakhtin (c. emerson & m. holquist, trans.). austin, tx: university of texas press. bergson, h. (1935/1991). matter and memory (n. margaret paul, w. scott palmer, trans.). new york, ny: zone books. derrida, j. (2011). voice and phenomenon : introduction to the problem of the sign in husserl’s phenomenology (l. lawlor, trans.). evanston, ill: northwestern university press. eck, c. van (2015). art, aagency and lliving presence: from the animated image to the excessive object. boston, ma: de gruyter. elkins, j. (1995). “marks, traces, ‘traits’, contours, ‘orli’, and ‘splendores’: nonsemiotic elements in pictures.” critical inquiry, vol. 21, no. 4, 822-860. gumbrecht, h. u. (2004). production of presence: what meaning cannot convey. stanford, ca: stanford university press. gumbrecht, h. u. (2014). our broad present: time and contemporary culture. new york, ny: columbia university press. jantzen, h. (2000). über den gotischen kirchenraum und andere aufsätze, berlin: mann [originally freiburger wissenschaftliche gesellschaft, heft 15, freiburg in breisgau, 1928]. lawlor, l. (2003). the challenge of bergsonism. london, uk: continuum. nancy, j. l. (1993). the birth to presence (b. holmes, et. al., trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. nancy, j. l. (2013). the pleasure in drawing (p. armstrong, trans.). oxford, uk: oxford university press. ponifasio, l. (2009) tempest: without a body [performance] retrieved from https://www. youtube.com/ watch?v=wflqv85ucww& feature=player_embedded molteni, e. (2008). comme un sculpteur, on doit maintenir l’argile humide. casabella, 763, 11. reverb. (2016). kaiapoi building fragment heritage report. unpublished report commissioned by auckland transport. steiner, g. (1989). real presences: is there anything in what we say? london, uk: faber. giuliano da sangallo (?) . facing fronting s. maria delle carceri, prato. 1485-95. gordana kostich-lefebvre the face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obligation, which no "inferiority" permits avoiding. -levinas, "ethics and the face"1 this exercise is merely the beginning of an etymological study on the fa9ade. it is less a search for an historical perspective of the building surface than a routine task of monitoring the "good old" foundation of architectural terms and meanings. it examines the ancient terminology for its own contemporary cracks, as much as it watches for the appearance of newer ones, in order to ensure that not too much falls into them. scrutinising the fa9ade and dusting it off will inevitably upset our ordinary architectural terminology, but i hope that it will also refresh memories. nor will some relearning of "other" dimensions communicated through our "banal" fa9ade be excluded. aspects of frontality are the main issue. the english word far;ade was imported from the french in the sixteenth century. the french, in turn, devolved from the italianfacciata, and the latinfacies, appearance. another cognate isfaccia, "face" in modern italian lfacia in vulgar latin). they all stem fromfacereto make, render, realise, execute. ls the fa9ade an ontological extension of making? the term that vitruvius consistently and predominantly used for the front of a building is "simply"frons.frontis, meaning literally forehead2 (gr. metopon), browthe prominent part of the face (gr. prosopon). 3 transferred to a building, this became frons aedem, or the famous frons scenae; thus in fronte et postico templi, "in front and back of the temple" is said, not in antico et postico . in the genitive,frontis, 4 frons also designated a forepart of a book, hence the frontispiece. 5 in medieval vocabulary frontispicium ecclesiae was, of course, the principal fa9ade . it is the straightforwardness (frontality) ofjrons that establishes a facing situation and enables a direct, dignified (appropriateness emphasised), honest (essential) encounter, thus imposing a certain (moral) authority. the "front" is a stature. 6 everything relating to it is referential, even in modern languages. the "front" is unequivocally situated both on the artefact to which it belongs as the superior side, and also in direct relation with another, necessary, engaged party, be it a river, park, piazza or an admirer. a constant in this coupling is a variable traversable distance between "participants." in order to approach the "front," a fa9ade has to be qualified as the main fa9ade. the proper latin verb for/ace, to stand opposite, is (a)spectare; aspectus, view, and conspectus, full view, are the "correct" nouns . it is the viewing, looking at, observing as a spectator, just as in "real" theatrical performances, that turns the observed into a spectacle. in addition, the buildings, altars and images of gods "actively"7 look atthey spectant; and in turn, they are looked at and receive regard. vitruvius revealed a lot about these "exchanges" in book four, chapter five"how the temple should face." for a moment, let us move around vitruvius, and consult his contemporary varro, the linguist. in his own pursuit of retrieving the meanings of "obscured words" in the first century a.d., varro provided an explanation that is still useful for the meaning and relationship between 1.. emmanuel levinas, totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority (pittsburgh: duquesne university press, 1969), 201. 2. when dealing with the building/body analogy, and discussing proportioning the face (os capitis and ipsius oris) in iii.1.2, vitruvius referred to the human forehead, frons . 3. vitruvius used other common words for appearance, like species (the particular "looks" which distinguish a class of objects/creatures sharing similar appearances); where we could, with regard to a building, possibly use fa9ade (but not "elevation," as it stands in the infelicitous loeb translation), although classes, kinds, and species better fit in some cases (below, de architectura , iii.3.1 ). "recognisable appearance" is adequate and would preserve a little of spectare in species. vitruvius, dearchitectura, for example in iii.3: species autem aedium sunt quinque ("there are five classes [according to their appearance] of buildings"); or in i.1.4: operis speciem deformare valeat ("speaking about the drafting skills of architects needed to present the appearance (looks) of the works which they want to create"). architectural drawing devices, which fall into species, are obviously undifferentiated; they are anything drawn to clarify an architect's intentions. in the preface to book five, species are the sides of a cube. 4. the nominative homonym frons, frondis f. (leaf, foliage) points to the possible visual interplay between faces and leafy vegetation as a result of semantic closeness. this is evidenced in the conjuring up of numerous facial and vegetal representations. 5. frans + species = first and foremost frontal appearance. 6. to which status relates both etymologically and logically; both stemming from the sanskrit sta, to stand up. 3 7. the verb is used in the active sense. the building faces and/or looks at itself. it is not being looked at. the spectators. on the other hand, look at it on their own. 8. varro, de lingua latina. trans. roland g. kent (loeb classical library, 1967). vi.viii.78. varro developed a theoretical stance that presents facere as closest to crafting in vi.42, where he introduced the concept of an action (actionum) as a tripartite process consisting of firstly motion of the mind (agitatus mentis); secondly, consideration (cogitare). which corresponds to the design or planning of that which shall later be done or said (dicere or facere); and. finally, that which is done or said (facere or dicere). 9. varro's further careful distinction of facere (to make) from similar, interfering verbs like age re (to act, do) and gerere (to carry, carry on) opens with "for a person can facere something and not agere it" (vi.viii.77); and develops into defining facere in terms of the level of subject's participation in action. he also notes the popular contemporary corruption of the purity of these verbal uses. "but because general practice has used these words indiscriminately rather than with care. we use them in transferred meanings; for he who says something (dicit) we say make words (facere verba). and he who acts something (agit) we say is not inficiens. 'failing to do' something (inficientem) ." (vi.viii.78) 10. varro. de lingua latina. vi.viii.78. 11. levinas, totality and infinity, 78. 12. what is known as the "princip le of frontality" in art is rather common to bu ildings, especially those of importance: temples, palaces, government buildings, and bu il din gs of foreign stat(e)-ure or representation. the supreme examples of frontal representation in art are the byzantine devotional icons. in christian art generally "the degree of frontality sometimes seems to correspond to the sanctity of the person depicted, christ, the virgin and angels being portrayed full face, the apostles three-quarters, whi le judas and other evil-doers might even be in profile." james hall, the history of ideas and images in italian art (new york: harper & row, 1983), 113. 4 facere, "to make," andfacies, "external appearance," "face," although he wrongly (customarily) derived the verb from the noun instead of vice versa. he is said to make (jacere) a thing who puts external appearance (jacies) on the thing which he makes (jacit). as the image maker (jictor) when he says "i shape" (jingo) puts a shape (jigura) on the object, and when he says "i form" (jormo) puts form (jorma) to it, so when he says "i make" (jacio), he puts an external appearance, a "face" (jacies) on it; by this external appearance there comes a distinction so that one thing could be said to be a garment, another a dish, and likewise the various things that are made by carpenters, image makers and other workers. he who furnishes a service, whose work does not stand out in concrete form so as to come under the observation ofour physical senses, is, by his action or motion (agitatus) thought rather to act (agere) than to make (jacere) something. 8 from the view expressed above, and other auxiliary explanations,9 it follows thatfacere is the resulting creative 10 work that "stands out in concrete form" and "comes under the observation of our physical senses." it is not surpri sing, then, that to face a building means both to stand in front of it "exchanging glances" and to "finish" it, to put a face on it. what is astonishing is that these meanings still persist even in english. thus our "to face" (to see and be seen, to encounter and be encountered, to define one's position according to the direction of one 's face) is a second-round development from the noun (this time), which has nothing to do with the "original" facing as a perceptible conclusion of making (taken from ideation to realisation) from which fac;:ade, asfacies, originated. the ethical stratum of"face to face" is somewhat veiled; it is more conspicuous in "fronting" (including frontage) than in "facing." "face to face" never ceases to be a primary condition, historically, socially and personally; it is an " ineducible relation" and remains the "ultimate situation.'' 11 as a concentration of visible senses and the most expressive bodily surface, the face epitomises a person; facing defines the position of the whole body according to the face-direction, while fronting is the upright posture of the whole being in an attentive situation. 'he basic, elemental mind (i refuse to call it primitive), facing was a matter of equally basic ethics, that, naturally, reflected social interactions; it was reflected in the perception of social spaces and, finally, in aesthetics. before they reached "very" advanced stages most cultures had considered that meeting full face, both friends and foes, was a measure of decency, and not only of courage . it was also a measure of giving and receiving honour, and of dignity. appearing and meeting in person, face to face, is a privileged modus of social encounter and exchange, although not the only one . most languages still entail idiomatic remnants of this understanding. since "face to face" was proper, morally uplifted interaction, frontal posture became the elevated, "right" posture, and frontality a legitimate, in itself dignified, if not the "right" aesthetic principle. 12 this axiomatic, "ineducible" and "ultimate situation" in human intenelations was a foundation for all subsequent, more abstract human institutions. one "faces" gods and demons, death, adversity or "real" life, even buildings and altars. the requirement is situational: two parties at a certain spatial distance concentrate on each other, front each other, measuring, learning and sensing each other 's surface and beyond j michelangelo. pitti madonna. detail. the surface, usually looking at each other. eye to eye 13 is synonymous with face to face. yet the spatial distance is filled with and modified by another distance, an ethical distance, measured by the level and kind of respect between the "facers." superficially, facing is a frontal appearance, an exposition of the fullest and, on the human level, most vulnerable surface of oneself, but it also provides an opportunity for an exposition or exhibition of the most dignified and/or most impressive "surface" of oneself. adoration, protection and decoration are therefore responses to and extensions of real and imaginary facing . the first of these belongs to love, which never tires ofa beloved's face (adornment coming along); the distances are shortest, and the space private, intimate. the latter two "excel" in the social realm and have a lot to do with the sizing of ethical interspace . decoration, we need to keep in mind, derives from decorumdignity, the sense of inner moral value, and the most desirable property in the self-presenting of buildings, according to both vitruvius and alberti. honour and honesty are related and revolve around distinguishing and dignifying. alberti talks about hones ta as that inner, appropriate relation of parts from which decorum , as grace and excellence, results. ornaments may be added to enhance decorum, but not to create it. the prospect of a close encounter with the supernatural added the irrational categories of reverence and awe to the facing through the a priori infinite distances set between the revered and supplicants. temples, of course, were meant to be faced frontally, to be approached directly, and so were the statues they protected. the fronton, 14 though, remained a protruded foreheada pediment, gable. in my view, the astonishing forehead of michelangelo's pitti madonna presents an eloquently delicate intertwining and overlapping of the ideas of the face, front, fronton and fayade unfolding here. the result is a temple-face with an arched pediment created on (out of) the madonna's forehead. framed within a gentle curvature of her scarf and her lower headband is a winged head that rests on a heavier, "velvety" headband or diadem (fascia, tenia) interrupted at the centre with what seems a precious stone. the insufficiently developed facial features of this fronton guardian veil his/her age and gender. to me, he looks like an older male rather than a child. this is an invaluable example of face made fayade. alberti diversified the vocabulary of the building's face by applying both.frons andfacies to the fa9ade; and vultus andfacies to human, animal and the faces of statues. 15 as a verbal noun, facies pertains to the inanimate more than the animate. it implies an outcome, a product, a result of a manual effort visible on its object, and consequently carries along an air of artificiality and pretence. literally, it meant an outward appearance, aspect or expression (susceptible to change, se in omnes facies vertere: literally, to change in every way 13. in english, however, it is taken to mean accordance between the parties and not a discourse which would include tension arising from their differences. this also means the most open in a discrete exchange. 14. maybe from fronto, frontonis f., a person with a big forehead. 15. 0e re aedificatoria , 7.16 ; 8.1 ; and momo o def principe (240) on stu pore, to mention just a few (loca) occasions. 5 brunelleschi. s. maria degliangeli. plan. 16. which is clearly a later development, although in common use in literatu re during augustan times (for example, cicero, horace, virgilius and ovid). 17. the modern italian ii volto (face) is a descendent of vultus. 18. the former indicated the ephemeral in a face, that is, an expression of a mood or character, and the latter, which is the original word for the mouth , was applied to the whole face. os was not normally used for the face of a building but for ports and entrances of roman houses. in the works of scenic writers, the plural denoted ornaments for the head and face; wh ich we learn from varro, again , as he tried-not without good, "oratorial" (oration comes from os) reason-to derive ornament from oris, although it actually came from ornare (to adorn), which is related to order, ordo, ordinis. (vi.viii.76) 19. in italian translation: "e con gran meravglia si videro di fronte un enorme arco di triomfo di tutti i colori." alberti, momo o de/ principe, nanni balestrini presentation (genova: costa & nolan, 1986), 154-55. 20. san lorenzo still searches for its front. although some of us might find its gallery of proposed physiognomies and temporary installations an interesting "body" of evidence of the impotence of "facing" the exterior of this church, this condition turns its interior into its on ly front. when the door is closed the square is faceless. 21. while fabbrica is a vo lume , faccia is a surface. 6 [virgil]). it also denoted a face, countenance, 16 and in transferred meaning, a character. synonyms such as vultus 17 and os, oris pertained more often to humanoids (humans and gods) and statues. 18 of the nouns and expressions derived from spec tare, conspectus was the closest to "frontal appearance." alberti utilised it, for example, in the momus, describing a wonderfully crafted and ornate celestial triumphal arch that showed conspecto e regione maxima-literally, "with the biggest side in full view."19 the "modem"facciata was born with the renaissance re-facing of old church fronts. alberti was responsible for at least two. facing the santa maria novella was clearly an act of crafting, putting together a design, making of a dignified front in communication with the piazza and people in front, while standing in front of and representing the church behind. the unrealised facciata of the medici church of san lorenzo is a paradigm of the fai;:ade 's separation from the building and the wall/surface behind despite a huge portfolio of designs .20 the wall and the face/fa9ade are different. the face engages in dialogues (even choruses); the wall is voiceless and faceless. except for being a division it does not communicate anything but displays materials and their finishings, often seen as faces. with or without holes the wall is lifeless, unless some breathtaking legend engages the imagination to persuade us otherwise. but it is the face given to the wall, made on or with the wall (and the floor or ceiling too), that is delegated to communicate with people and given conditions, to participate in their "situation." the relative autonomy of the appearance of renaissance buildings contributed to an understanding of the artificiality, replaceability and shallowness of the fai;:ade. faccia was necessary to close, cover and protect spatial incongruities; it was still a face, an intrinsic part offabbrica21 as the whole opus, and its removal would produce a transverse "section" of the building. facciata bordered being a possible object per se, a veneer or tableau, an articulated, dispensable surface, a skin over the wall, later to be commonly seen as a mask in its " modem" sense of non-identity, rather than the desired, borrowed or attracted identity the mask used to mean to "less sophisticated" societies.22 this realisation, together with the restructuring of other social spaces in the renaissance, produced a serious rearrangement in the ethico-aesthetic sphere. due honour and dignity became proportional to the mixture of the newly formulated value categories of magnificence and meraviglie.23 j j j an insight into a more general and casual understanding of"fai;:ade" comes from an ordinary statement made in 1485 by an ordinary, yet informed, florentine commentator on an extraordinary work. describing brunelleschi's oratory, santa maria degli angeli, the first centrally planned monument built in the renaissance, manetti wrote, "this temple was built with sixteen outside faces, eight inside faces and also with eight faces above the chapels."24 the temple, of course, was to revere god and honour the commune .25 this mundane description, written half a century after the initiation of the oratory, a period filled with an incomparable bustle ofconstruction in and around the city, provides clues about status ofjaccie. appearances, sides, views, surfaces, faces or facings? we learn that for manetti every intersection of three planes constituted a new faccia, which enabled him to count sixteen exterior "faces" on the octagonal building plan, whereas both rustici and vasari, in earlier and later accounts respectively, would reckon only eight. 26 thefaccie on the upper level above the chapels, which expressed the change in depth, were worth counting separately. finally,faccie "existed" both inside and outside27 which underlined the continuity, if not the permeability, of a building's "in" and "out," a trait that was "original" to the italian renaissance, considering its reliance on the solid wall. it was this kind of building, so dear to renaissance architects, that contributed modem ambiguity to the simplicity of the monodirectional "face to face." it also paved the way for the poly-frontal edifices we now take for granted. it should be mentioned here that the entrance often was, and still is, the only building part that truly allowed "face to face" relations on a human scale; the entrance is equally primary and "irreducible" as a "face to face" situation itself. with the main fai;:ade problematised by the poly-frontal treatment of centrally planned edifices, it was the main entrance (ianua principalis) that determined the principal face/fai;:ade; a hierarchy of accesses (main road, piazza, "front garden-park") reinforced it on the social level. the matter is complicated. ethics and aesthetics both deal with value judgments and emotions; "correctness" and a sense of beauty are more intertwined than commonly thought. with our present understanding of the mechanisms of perception and attention, and their effect on the dimensions and appearances of buildings and urban situations, architects have lately reasonably concentrated on the fragmenta1y, obtuse (angled) and oblique, and the "cadre." neither much space nor much willingness seems to be left for a "face to face" encounter with buildings. a less involving, less obliging and less defined, "in passing" mode with ever smoother fai;:ades corresponds to the increase of the shallow and peripheral in interhuman relations and to a general "speeding." we can only hope that, this time, the present taste for slanting and curving is neither an echo of, nor will be echoed by, ethical slanting. semantics is the easier part. could we benefit from a comprehension of the inadequacy of our indelicate use of the term "fai;:ade"? we use it to encompass a number of meanings : from the actual view and position of any building surface, including the front, for which the word "aspect" is better suited; to the vertical representations of projects in "paper architecture," views brought up from plans, for which the only correct term is "elevations," as they are a demonstrative architectural tool "elevated" from drawings into an impossible view, an apparition, recognised in the old term orthographia. the fai;:ade as a cover-up is a choice and not a rule. we might need to brood a little more on the free fai;:ade . 22. although intending to stay within my anthropological limits , i should not refuse the benefit of invoking (briefly) an unrelated culture and its related image, like the intricately carved (abundance of facere) polynesian parata or koruru face/head, a model for a facial design actually incised in vivo . lack of space, unfortunately, prevents elaboration. 23. it does not seem viable to me that the renaissance obsession with central perspective had much to do with ethical considerations. 24. "el quale tempio e fondato di fuori a faccie sedici, ed a faccie otto net drento, e dalle cappelle in su, faccie otto medesimamente. " antonio di tuccio manetti, "vita di filippo di ser brunellesco, " in divo save lli , la rotonda def brunelleschi: storia e documenti (firenze : esuvia edizioni, 1992), 45. 25. "ad dei reverentiam et communis honorem ... " in alto notabile per la construzione de/la rotonda degli angeli (16 aprile 1434). manetti, 41 . 26. and literally everybody else up to the twentieth century-myself includedwould see, or repeat, sixteen. the consensus was that the building was extraordinary, bizarissimo, in vasari 's words. 27 . if this building, as it is believed, was intended to have pronounced structure and austere ornamentation both inside and out, it is appropriate to present it as double-faced, with an almost interchangeable inside and out that might be comparable to reversible (doublefaced) garments. exemplifying the effect of the back wall of arena chapel david leatherbarrow raised another interesting issue-an "inside front." 7 the history of entrapment the history of entrapment: a reading of architecture’s 2-d accessory john dickson by reference to a classical style low-relief building facade in auckland, this paper gives a reading of architecture’s origins supported by connection with the adventures of mowgli and daniel. concealment of three dimensionality, inherent in the device of the trap, is advanced as a crucial accessory to architecture . interstices 4 the history of entrapment: a reading of architecture’s 2-d accessory 1 just as the wallet, pen, chequebook, and jewellery are the body’s power accessories, the signet ring of old, from which one’s individuality, signature, stamp of authority, patent, intentions is derived, so is the two dimensional ornamented surface for architecture. the rest body and building is that dependable or disposable, conforming to function, conventional, lovable vernacular of matter, of which some save the bones (seeing structure as the essence) others the skin (parchment). all is ultimately water soluble although parchment, so esteemed by lawyers, unlike paper, is resistant to this process.1 it is toward parchment that the architectural accessory of the 2-d ornamental surface is inclined. the concern of this paper is with the design that is placed upon it; and with the power of the 2-d ornamented surface, architecture’s key accessory, for subordinating 3-d building. some architects, unlike alberti, are uneasy about the tension between the 2-d and 3-d aspects of architecture.2 architecture’s 2-d aspect is surely part of its repertoire despite culturist scorn of ancient egypt, archaic greece, byzantium, and asia’s sophisticated use of 2-d surface and low relief as a representational device which makes schemas of ornament an archive of design and culture. the 3-d aspect of architecture can get out of hand. perhaps the 2-d/3-d issue, associated in this paper with the accessory issue, is concerned with the conflict between realism and poetry.3 as an example i will refer to what i would like to call ‘the most beautiful building in auckland’ but if i d o t h i s i w i l l a l i e n a t e a l l m y c o l l e a g u e s . i w i l l instead refer to the selected building as one of auckland’s architectural good lookers. the building, the pacific forum line, i assume faces custom street but it is the rear facade facing north onto the britomart place bus terminal t h a t i w i s h t o discuss ( fig 1). this facade is beautiful because of its two dimensionality. in its texture and colouring it is like a painting. painting, being a higher, finer art, gives access to beauty in a way that eludes most buildings on account of building being unavoidably coarse, site-bound and circumstantial. the pacific forum line facade, by means of its composition and ornamental scheme in low relief, is clearly a representation of a 3-d building, both of a simple and grand kind, and one unlike the actual building within the facade. a simplistic three-fold analysis of classical building refers first to the plinth/base, secondly to the shaft, and thirdly to the capital/entablature/roof pediment. speculation, treatises, and investigation concerning the first building from whence this 3-d classical scheme has been derived, and concerning the notion itself, have been largely preoccupied with the primitive woodwork of the upper two zones for reasons which wigley, following derrida, has probed.4 these studies tend to focus on the 3-d building itself and not on its accessory 2-d role. as accessories, designs in the form of textiles, parchment and ceramic have been bundled up quite literally in history’s silk road baggage and have stayed with us, whatever our existential journeying, ever since. that these 2-d designs are, on a huge scale, sometimes laid over buildings, like the festival thankas of bhutan and tibet, is not immediately apparent to, nor appreciated by, all. modernism, particularly, has protested against this practice. one can safely say that the pacific forum line facade is so straightforward in its use of the classical scheme of ornament that it, like others nearby, is in touch with, and depicts the first, original building (a house perhaps). by means of its accessory ornament this facade gives access to the very moment of building’s invention. the pacific forum line thus wears a blueprint plastered onto its face; a mask perhaps, but with the pathos of the whitened circus clown, and with the bathos of the inevitable custard pie. interstices 4 the history of entrapment: a reading of architecture’s 2-d accessory 2 together with many other auckland buildings and interiors this facade spans the entire history of the human accessory architecture. the two key human accessories building and clothing (particularly women’s dresses) both intimately body related are joined by a third; in our time the motor vehicle. motor vehicles, and buildings for them, dominate the environs of the pacific forum line. the surrounding buildings are aggressively three-dimensional. it requires concentration in such a context to focus on the surface ornament of the pacific forum line which brings to our attention a wider architectural repertoire. on closer inspection it can be seen that three buildings are implied by the facade; a short one thoroughly keyed-in to a basement; a second tall one on top of the first with a secondary hesitation within its attenuated pilasters; and a third, short one, on top (fig 2). thus the facade oscillates between the simple and the grand. each building, short or tall, repeats to a degree the classical threefold scheme of base/shaft/entablature within itself and in conjunction as a whole. for europeans, the cellar or crypt is a much taken for granted vernacular aspect of building, of little visual consequence perhaps; useful for effacing certain people and things, not least for security. in new zealand, thanks to a literary tradition of which the late professor sir keith sinclair was an exponent we are tuned to 3-d ‘hack’ and ‘dig’ cues in both literature and architecture.5 t h u s , f o r u s , the digging o f a basement, something we haven’t bothered with much, takes precedence over its imaginative aspect. it is easy therefore for a new zealander to grasp that the pacific forum line’s first ground-level, short, simple building atop a basement with windows poking through a plinth, is basically a h o l e d u g i n t h e g r o u n d a n d a s s u c h i n d i c a t e s t h e first building that ever was. this invention is much more basic than caves or twig shelters, for these just happen to be there. a hole in the ground excites, and requires concentration and caution, as the poet robert creeley has observed: i could look at an empty hole for hours thinking it will get something in it, will collect things. there is an infinite emptiness placed there.6 the first building/house was undoubtedly a hole dug in the ground.7 and with death ritual the first became the last. i think it is simpler to think of the necropolis as the last house not the first as lewis mumford has suggested.8 w h e n d i g g i n g a h o l e f o r shelter, as evicted irish tenants did in the frozen ground in the 19th century during the potato famine, a boon is the spoil. this piled around the hole lessens the depth of dig for head height. although a parapet from inside, outside this spoil c r e a t e s t h e s t u b o f a w a l l o r ‘mastaba’ the sitting bench as it has become known in arab egypt. there are perhaps batter slopes and gaps for doors; the pacific forum line h a s o n e s u c h ; t o which roman mythology is sensitive, by means of allusions to ploughing digging a hole for a city and turning up a sod city wall, understanding the gap where the plough was carried (portare) across to make the city gate. one might instead step up and over the mastaba and then down into the hole. steps inside are made with a bit of left behind spoil. solid steps against a wall excite, even in our time, memories of this ‘first house.’ i a m i n c l i n e d t o t h e v i e w t h a t t h e f i r s t h o u s e a h o l e i n t h e g r o u n d w a s i n s p i r e d b y t h a t d u g t o trap animals. somehow it became known that it was snug down there.9 life at that time was otherwise very open. closure had not quite been invented. snug, but after the catch risky. someone, like daniel, had to go down with the animals. here is the sacramental aspect of house for those who want it. this line of thought crystallised for me when i recently re-read rudyard kipling’s jungle book.10 mowgli can’t bear to sleep in a house in the village; h e h a s t o s l e e p o u t s i d e ; h e t h i n k s t h e h o u s e i s a trap. this is all legions away from the expansive openness and repetition of the paleolithic paintings of animals on the walls of caves. architecture is thus the history of human entrapment. i believe the facade of the pacific forum line records this. after digging a hole, when it is a trap, over it is placed concealment as false ground. this false ground which conceals the hole is the twodimensional surface. concealment is thus the inherited function of the two-dimensional facade. that is to say its function is to conceal a 3-d reality. this very facility of concealment becomes a means whereby the 2-d ornamented facade can be read; its 3-d subject detected, swept, cleared, appreciated, defused; disentangled from that within and then approached with caution lest aggressive 3-d power residual within be nevertheless unleashed.11 when the hole is a house its covering is a roof. this function of roof is concealed also when the hole is a trap. (tego, texi, tectum = to cover, protect, to make secret, bury, conceal; tegula = roof, roofing tile; interstices 4 the history of entrapment: a reading of architecture’s 2-d accessory 3 teges = mat, rug, covering; tectum = roof, shelter, dwelling; tector = plasterer.) all construction above the hole and its spoil can be understood to derive from the roof. roofing over the hole with whatever is to hand sticks, leaves, logs, mud, stones is inevitably arranged for a house to achieve a crucial ventilating and observation gap or strip between elements, and within their thickness, on top of the mastaba w a l l . modernism with its celebration of threedimensionality featured this strip; it can be observed in the work of new zealand’s dr richard toy as a clerestory strip sometimes merely glass set between rafters as well as the ubiquitous glazing strip above interior partitions in modern design.12 lighting often takes precedence over ventilation in these examples as they are not actually holes in the ground. the holocaust memorial hall, yad vashem, at jerusalem is a dramatic interior evocative of this hole in the earth scheme. in classical design this gap strip is the frieze; one breathes through it, sees through it, and hears through it even if the hole is deep; even when inside the strip is trompe-l’oeil painted plasterwork13 ( figs 3 , 4 ). in egypt a continuous visual record of the convention of the frieze derived from archaic and vernacular building can be traced from the 4th millennium bc to roman times. this is a self conscious alignment of a decorative scheme with a 3d vernacular celebrated for its archaic significance indicating a primeval time of the gods and their first abode of which the temple is a representation in stone. 14 the pacific forum line building’s first short register indicates this frieze zone at ground level by means of steel barred basement windows reminiscent of an egyptian kheker f r i e z e ; a n d a l s o a b o v e t h e mastaba wall by means of a generous uplifted zone which involves by implication the imposition of posts, rather like trajan’s kiosk at philae. by this means an airy pavilion is created above the hole in the ground, perhaps with its own floor concealing both the hole below and its role as the hole’s roof; or perhaps remaining open aloft as a high belvedere lantern as at the crossing of english cathedrals. a roof/floor directly on top of the mastaba wall provides the plinth and terrace of the classical scheme. by means of timber or masonry this airy pavilion can be extended vertically as at ephesus, baalbek, persepolis and with buttresses at beauvais. whether constructed of ashlar masonry or of fragrant, perfumed timbers as in turkey’s early mosques and persia’s halls of paradise at isfahan, as noted by warren and mahoney’s citibank centre within sight of the pacific forum line, these pavilions have excited the senses throughout history.15 a pavilion of this kind is the dazzling intimation of the central register of the pacific forum line building. of course the actual solid building within, with its tiers of windows, is at odds with this conception which prefigures late twentieth century curtain wall buildings. the facade excites the presence of an immense gilded cage, a single shaded volume, with glinting profiles set over a hole in the ground; like paris’ exquisite s. chapelle. this auckland facade is unbelievably airy to the casual eye. pilaster capitals hint of archaic twiggery and leafage. on top is another pavilion rather stubby. this accessory f a c a d e t h u s r e f e r s t o w h a t w a s ; t o t h a t which is elsewhere; to that which isn’t, enlivening thereby that which is. there is thus a sense in which freestanding building, of which the pillared shrine is an exemplar, is constructed within the conjunction of hole and roof. coomaraswamy has drawn attention to timber building, particularly roofs, built within indian caves with use of wall brackets for supports. it could even be that paleolithic cave paintings express the intention of transforming the natural cave into an ‘architectural’ conception in rejecting its closed wall aspect by painting the fauna of the open landscape as a ‘frieze’ zone and thereby accepting the floor and roof aspect of the cave itself.16 attempts to trace the evolution of building from a simple closed hut, cryptless and with full height walls, seem in this light to be perhaps rather misguided. coomaraswamy has attempted to do this for indian architecture, being convinced that the fully developed, complex indian temple had such an origin. neither meister, coomaraswamy’s posthumous editor, nor rykwert in their discussion of coomaraswamy’s work seem to entertain the possibility that all building is substantially a roof complementing the pit, despite coomaraswamy’s recognition of the stacking of roofs (sikhara) as the generator of the temple tower form incorporating multiple eave/clerestory zones between the roofs.17 the development of construction is largely the ‘raising of the roof’. it may be that the simple closed wall hut is not by any means an origin but rather a constructed ‘twin’ of the pavilion and understood as an alternative tradition; or perhaps even an adaption of the constructed pavilion made whenever the ‘eggshell’ hole and earthworks system was put aside. interstices 4 the history of entrapment: a reading of architecture’s 2-d accessory 4 certainly, in the history of building, a tension exists between these twins. when the constructed pavilion is revealed, above or outside the pit, the inner secret of architecture is manifest, as by the greek temple and portico. coomaraswamy has shown how in indian temple architecture the closed hut is then inserted or re-inserted into the otherwise open composition. to conclude i will refer to a nearby building with the same scheme but in a grandiose manner viz the ferry building on quay street auckland 18 ( f i g 5 ) . i think of this building as the morning after daniel was thrust down into the lion pit, when the king came to see what had become of daniel, as if painted by veronese, accompanied by an oratorio by handel. one can observe king darius, at the break of dawn, with his family and retinue sweeping between the pavilion’s massive sandstone columns on the uplifted terrace sealed with his own signet ring. the building’s brick interior dissolves in the imagination leaving a tented pavilion over the pit. as in 17th century turkish pavilions there are retiring rooms with fireplaces. this terrace is set on top of a mastaba wall constructed of coromandel tonalite/granite, like heaps of grey shingle beside a hole in the road. from this airy, elevated platform, a rather stodgy persepolis, the court peers down to see to their amazement, and to darius’ relief, daniel down there alive, cosy with the lions. at road level one can see the thick arches through which the lions have been chased in and out as in the colosseum a t rome. like the pacific forum line there is another short pavilion on top. unlike at the colosseum one’s thoughts are not directed towards the horrible sequel when daniel’s accusers are thrown down into the pit and seized by the lions even before they reach the floor of the pit.19 denied concealment’s 2d accessory they are exposed to a grim 3-d reality. the whole show is noisy and spectacular. no wonder the byzantines once, and the eastern orthodox church still, enact this scenario of the first house as part of their liturgy. but this building of intrinsic power impressive as it is, on account of its coarse three-dimensional buffoonery to which architecture is prone, does not have the delicate accessory charm and subtle suggestion of the pacific forum line’s rear facade on britomart place. notes 1 “a parchment book lost in the thames was recently recovered completely intact. ‘water simply strengthens parchment, unlike paper. that is why several books have survived for more t h a n a thousand years.’ says wim visscher whose family have been making parchment and vellum since 1860.” including restoration of the doomesday book. r.u., “living national treasure: parchment maker” country life (november 24, 1994), p. 32-33. 2 auckland architect david mitchell is one of these. he scorns post-modern architecture for this reason; for its entertaining the 2-d surface as a key design element: “in 1980 michael graves had rendered the facade of the public service building in portland, us as a gigantic neoclassical collage barely related functionally to what was behind it. in one stroke he had granted a licence to reduce 3-d architecture to 2-d scenography.” david mitchell, “urban decline” architecture new zealand (january/february, 1995), p. 50-52. 3 “the richness and variety of the english school of landscape painters has resulted from the constant conflict between realism and poetry.” laure meyer, masters of english landscape (paris: pierre terrail, 1993), dustcover. 4 joseph rykwert, on adam’s house in paradise: the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history (new york: museum of modern art, 1972), mark wigley writes: “the invisible architecture of the crypt is always bound to a visible architecture ... furthermore, there is no architecture without crypt.” the architecture of deconstruction: derrida’s haunt (cambridge, massachusetts: m.i.t. press, 1993), p. 179. 5 “life, real life, was physical. t o l i v e w a s t o d i g , hack, hit, shove, sail, swim, kick.” k. sinclair, “life in the provinces: the european settlement” distance looks our way: the effects of remoteness on new zealand (auckland: university of auckland, 1961), p. 41. 6 robert creeley, “joy” the finger. poems 1966-1969 (london: calder and boyars, 1970), p. 23. 7 whilst holes in the ground are included as part of the origins of architecture by some writers they are not dwelt upon e.g. vitruvius, who mentions “others dug caves on mountain sides” and notes the trenches dug by phrygians who lived in open country. vitruvius, the ten books on architecture trans. m. h. morgan, (new: york: dover, 1960), p. 39-40. sir william chambers writing in the 1750’s dismisses such holes and other early devices as soon abandoned on account of their being “disgusting, d a m p a n d dark” rykwert, on adam’s house in paradise p. 70. 8 lewis mumford emphasizes the paleolithic cave sanctuary in the social development of place in the city in history: its origins, its transformations, and its interstices 4 the history of entrapment: a reading of architecture’s 2-d accessory 5 prospects (london: secker and warburg, 1961). 9 in australia near canberra i once saw a kangaroo, a large male, established in a hole it must have shaped for itself; he had his rear limbs and soft parts snug in the hole with his powerful ‘mastaba’ tail on the brink at the ready. his squeaky nose, eyes, and ears were lifted high like the communications masts on the mountain tops around canberra’s moist hollow. 10 “tiger! tiger! mowgli’s song” rudyard kipling, the jungle book (london: macmillan, 1st ed 1894). 11 “every apparently stable building presupposes such a concealed and unstable spacing that is itself a mechanism of concealment,” “but of seeing what it might say about such a hiding, seeing what it reveals about concealment, what it opens about closure, and so on. in the end, these are the architectural questions.” wigley, the architecture of deconstruction p. 179, 88. 12 an example is r.h.toy’s all saints’ church, (1957) ponsonby, auckland. p. shaw, new zealand architecture (auckland: hodder and stoughton, 1991), p. 153. more extreme examples by le corbusier are ronchamp chapel (1950-55) and the church of s. marie-de-la-tourette (1957-60). also the fosse ardeatine, (1945) rome by aprile et al g.e. kiddersmith, italy builds (london: the architectural press, 1956), p. 174-177. 13 william mason’s old government house (1856) auckland, now the university of auckland senior common room, has all these sense cues, visual, olefactory, auditory worked in relief plaster as an interior frieze; apollo/orpheus lyres alternate with garlands of fruit and flowers with ribbons fluttering in the breeze. shaw, new zealand architecture p . 3 4 . recent truncation of the ribbons on auckland university’s crest, in o r d e r t o m e r e l y m a k e t h e m less ornate, is an act of ignorance. once like the pennons at thebes, stirring in the air o f t h e god amon the invisible one, auckland university’s ribbons now indicate that the university has become an airless overcrowded zone. 14 egypt also introduced the concept of a building within a building as in tutankhamun’s concentric shrines whereby each, shorter than the one over it, provides a ventilating strip as a kheker frieze; and whereby solid interior walls are painted as the elevations o f a n a i r y pavilion. auckland graduate robert tse has recently located in china his family’s ancestral hall in which a strip of painted landscape is placed in exactly this frieze zone. robert tse, “on the way to ha leung,” (barch thesis: university of auckland, 1994). 15 “a clear division into base, middle and top was made.” ‘citibank centre, 23 customs street, auckland.’ warren and mahoney architects 1958-1989 (christchurch: warren and mahoney, 1989), p. 93. 16 ananda k. coomaraswamy, essays in early indian architecture e d . m i c h a e l w. meister, (new delhi: indira gandhi national centre for the arts and oxford university press, 1992.) 17 michael w. meister and joseph rykwert, “afterword: adam’s house and hermits’ huts, a conversation,” coomaraswamy, essays in early indian architecture 18 ferry building, (1912), quay street, auckland. architect alexander wiseman, in shaw, new zealand architecture p. 70. 19 “at the first sign of dawn he was up, and hurried off to the lion pit. as he approached the pit he shouted in anguished tones, ‘daniel, servant o f t h e living god! has your god, whom you serve so faithfully, been able to save you from the lions?’ daniel replied, ‘o king, live for ever! m y g o d s e n t h i s angel who sealed the lions’ jaws, they did me no harm, since in his sight i am blameless, and i have n e v e r d o n e y o u a n y w r o n g e i t h e r , o k i n g . ’ the king was overjoyed, and ordered daniel to be released from the pit. daniel was released from the pit, and found to be quite unhurt, because he had trusted in his god. the king sent for the men who had accused daniel and had them thrown into the lion pit, they, their wives and their children: and they had not reached the floor of the pit before the lions had seized them and crushed their bones to pieces.” “daniel” 6.17-25 the jerusalem bible (london: darton, longman and todd, 1966). "the plan sites the office building parallel to the motorway across the maas river, which is taken as a point of orientation and verification. the design contains a parking deck which slices through the site like a wedge and forces the building upward, so to speak, freeing it of its weight. "the building itself consists of two wings shifted out of alignment, one of which juts across the road linking the sphinx-ceramique grounds to the randwijck area of maastricht. in this way the building marks the intersection of two roads. a pedestrian ramp underscores the link between building and intersection. accordingly the building should be treated as a function of the road." 1 "as in the classic temples and in minimalist art, arets' work is not a mimetic, literal obedience to the guidelines of the site but rather an interpretation and link with it; it has no meaning outside the point where it is inserted. 'we want our buildings to merge into the existing context, but at the same time, to be flexible and open to changes,' arets has written. for this purpose, as greg lynn explains, arets uses two tactics: disappearance and foldability. both movements are expressed with the materiality of skins that act like alabaster-half transparent, half translucent, like a chameleonic reflection of the surroundings .. .. "2 "architecture may be considered a desire for purity, a striving for perfection. the principal color white marks a process in which the undecidable is respected; it is not a question of meaningful or meaningless. "the whiteness of newly fallen snow in the morning light, the white of perfect skin, the white paper on which the design will be sketched-white is everywhere and may be considered the color of origin and beginning. white is the color of the between: between conception and execution, between unblemished and defiled, between innocence and seduction, between virginity and marriage."3 122 i -----~ -l--!--• i i i -· i ceramique office building maastricht, the netherlands wielarets 0 .lf»,"h'fnlg vah~ ll.hm..lol l.ametllil ( dotlkellgl!ijs) ·l(objnvnl'l'i'eswtnl'i:eoceoajl(ctlooia.'ftl..d)('noiwtgiujs) schaal; 1/200 -l'ltua9 8£too(zwaat)paj'>'eel~~fnl!l'.llfflstek>i datum: 26.06. 1 995 llljtstun (lwnitl.iet zwajit£v0£gen) ill -im betrett: zuidgeveukleurenschema blok 36 ceramique te maastrlcht wilma vastgoed bv schaal: 11200 datum: 26.06.1995 l betreft : noorogeveukleuaenschema i blok 36 ceramjoue te maastricht ! i wilma vastgoed bv i ~,..-'lb:..l:ae'fs-~fllli)cuttskllijlft'trn'tlcr~~~-~-~l "architecture is therefore a between, a membrane, an alabaster skin, at once opaque and transparent, meaningful and meaningless, real and unreal. to become itself architecture must lose its innocence; it must accept a violent transgression. it can only become part of the world by entering into marriage with its surroundings .... "4 "fifty years ago technology brought us reality. now it is destroying it. the design of the thirties already contributed to a series of man-made communications; today architecture has reach the status of an interface. it is architecture's task to mediate between man and everything that befalls him. "5 "when you talk about 'skin', for example, most people quickly translate the skin as a fai;ade or as the surface of the body which has an inherent 'thinness'. my idea in alabaster skin was to explain that skin actually involves 'thickness', even when you talk about the skin of a city, its political and economical circumstances and its culture . however when you talk about the building in the city, the thickness has to do with the air in front of the building, the building itself and the air behind it. the fai;ade is no longer just a kind of representational act but has a multiplicity, a complexity which goes beyond the first reading. you are no longer looking at the human body just in terms of the skin but also in terms of the movement of the skin ... "6 1. "ceramique office building," el croquis 85 (1997): 100. 2. josep marfa montaner, "wiel arets: european architecture after postmodernism," el croquis 85 (1997): 30. 3. wiel arets, "an alabaster skin," d: columbia documents of architecture and theory, vol. 2 (1993): 35. 4. wiel arets, "an alabaster skin," 36. 5. wiel arets, "an alabaster skin," 39. 6. wiel arets in dominic papa, "a conversation with wiel arets," el croquis 85 (1997): 15. 123 the stamp of architecture the stamp of architecture: post-marking the architectural drawing peter wood interstices 4 the stamp of architecture: post-marking the architectural drawing 1 the professional view of architectural drawing is perhaps that best expressed by edwin lutyens, who, when writing to the lady emily lytton in 1897, declared his exasperation at the misunderstood nature of the architectural drawing: i was not cross only very dictatorial and impressive. they never realise that a working drawing is merely a letter to a builder telling him precisely what is required of him and not a picture wherewith to charm an idiotic client.1 lutyens expresses a belief common throughout the practice of architecture that the drawing serves as a neutral bridging device that allows the architectural idea to be transformed into the architectural project. typically this transaction is seen as a projection and is often loosely referred to as a translation.2 implicit in such an assumption is the hypothesis that the surface of the drawing corresponds in some direct way to the surface of a building. robin evans has noted this “through the miracle of the flat plane, lines transfer with alacrity from paper to stone and the wall becomes a petrified drawing, inscribed or embossed to lesser or greater degree.”3 in this way the architectural drawing is described, through inscription and embossing, as a particular type of relief carving, as a mark or stamp.4 architectural drawing is simultaneously the marking and stamping of architecture into drawing, perhaps a drawing towards this stamp (fig 1). evans conditions this transfer as ‘simple’ and ‘primitive,’ but not without some sense of appropriateness to the origins of drawing. this origin is generally understood to derive from pliny the elder as a function of projection and tracing. the occasion is initiated by butades’ daughter who is about to be separated from her lover. placing a lamp in front of the young man she drew around the profile cast on the wall behind. butades then pressed clay onto the silhouette to produce a relief of the young man’s face.5 this moment is at once one of drawing and of stamping. the young man is a soldier being sent to another part of the empire, he is literally being posted (fig 2) and it is for this reason that butades provides the relief. without the posting of the soldier there exists no reason for the action of drawing so that we may say casually that drawing and posting already define each other at this point of origin (fig 3). in this way all postings are to some extent a drawing, a drawing out, or drawing towards, just as all drawing must contain an element of the post in order to satisfy some moment of transfer, or translation. but this genesis also contains an inevitability of loss, and death. butades draws the profile of his daughter’s lover so that she need not forget both who he is, and who he was, a condition concerned with locating place and time and motivated by the prospect of his loss. without this drawing the soldier suffers an inevitable death at his new posting, a death through posting (fig 4). represented in this way the soldier is relegated to an action of memory, but this too is an act of dissolution, a separation through time and space. the relief of the soldier is, in fact, a death mask (fig 5). this original drawing, the proto-type of the architectural drawing, marks the occasion of a crime as butades, knowing of the soldier’s posting, seals his fate with a particular type of stamp (fig 6), a die. butades is an accessory to the soldier’s premeditated death where the drawing marks the site of a murder. this he does with relief, or more specifically a relief, a device capable of leaving an impression or imprint, it is a stamp that makes a mark, but significantly this is an ornamental mark (fig 7 ).6 the memory of the departing soldier, of his posting, is etched into memory, a drawing towards and simultanously away from the memory of contact. as the origins of architectural drawing this story serves to point out the distance that occurs between the mark and its referent, a distance so wide that it may almost be criminal (fig 8). alberto perez-gomez has described the distance between architectural drawing and building as having always been opaque and ambiguous; because of this drawing is erroneously understood as a tool of reduction (fig 9). he notes: interstices 4 the stamp of architecture: post-marking the architectural drawing 2 the original architectural ideas were transformed into universal projections that could then, and only then, be perceived as reductions of buildings, creating the illusion of drawing as a neutral tool that communicates unambiguous information, like scientific prose.7 seen as a device of reduction the architectural drawing begins to exhibit the attributes that claude levi-straus8 reserves for the miniature ( fig 10). he contends that the illusion of the miniature is not only a projection of the object but it actually constitutes an experiment with an ‘original’ (fig 11). as a reductive tool the architectural drawing attempts the illusion of the miniature, producing a projective facsimile of the architectural project (fig 12). seen in this way the drawing is other to its own self by providing a representative moment of itself, essentially it provides a souvenir signature of its own originality. the architectural drawing makes a promise towards its own origins, and in doing so invites a search for this origin. thus the architectural drawing is a mark of desire, and a souvenir of this affinity (fig 13). in a discussion on the souvenir susan stewart comments, the souvenir speaks to a context of origin through a language of longing, for it is not an object arising out of need or use value; it is an object arising out of the necessarily insatiable demands of nostalgia (fig 14).9 as the object of an architectural nostalgia the drawing records desperate longings; the idea for its project, the architect for the building, the daughter of butades for her lover, and the mark for the signature. each nostalgic desire introduces a corruption that marks a deficiency of transfer to reveal dissolute practices. the drawing’s desire for the building, like that between a daughter and her lover, reveals a tenuous thread of connection reaching beyond patriarchial control. the drawing remains firmly the tool of the traditionally masculine architect, and is thereby the tool of a masculine desire, but one operating within a domestic tradition (fig 15). butades’ daughter, in longing for her departing lover prefigures a drawing in, or drawing of, approved desire. the souvenired profile is a stamp of approval (fig 16) that delineates the carnal nature of desire as domestic rather than the threat of the foreign. similarly the architectural drawing delineates between the submissive domestication of architecture and the constructed fabrications of building. the architectural drawing is simultaneously an architectural stamp capable of that interiorising that which is exterior to itself. the stamp is a mark capable of domestication which it achieves by inflicting a nostalgic provision for a simplified object of household origins, it provides the personal signature of the birthmark. quoting stewart again, because the world of the souvenir offers transcendence to the viewer, it may be seen as a miniaturised one, as a reduction in physical dimensions corresponding to an increase in significance, and as an interiorization of an interior.10 in this way the architectural stamp as a souvenir provides a reduced and interiorised view of architecture where representative attributes are substituted for the work itself. further, this interiorised view makes explicit a distancing of the familiar from the experienced. this is contained within a familiar and intimate environment. it is domesticated through separation (fig 17). concludes stewart, each representational sign is a kind of postcard serving to describe without ever capturing; one side always obscuring the other. the postcard initiates a distancing from, and construction of, an exotic origin by positioning itself within a field of difference. thus it represents the representation and the mortality of the represented (fig 18). but within the subject’s desire, to experience mortality, is issued the simultaneous desire to transcend death, to produce a representation with no referent, “each sign as a postcard from the land of the dead, and on the other side, the longing mark that is the proper name.”11 the postcard is a signature from the land of the dead, it is a death certificate that announces mortality upon receipt and as such it is both of life and death, and between life and death. it marks the borderline of life and death in the text. the representative souvenir signals, through its reductive signature, the existence of an original, authentic event. but this moment, this line, is at once broken, dotted, it gives itself up to the fatality of desire. no, the very idea of destination includes analytically the idea of death, like a predicate (p) included in the subject (s) of destination, the addressee or the addressor. and you are, my love, unique.12 the unique maintains a singular address by readdressing the question of difference to maintain its own solitary outpost, complete with the corrupted finality that absence implies. drawing, maintains stanley allen, marked with this sign of absence, is endlessly directed toward the desire of origin, or an original desire, which is thwarted as the object of architectural drawing is not prior, but immanent (fig 19). states allen: it is difference, rather than a system of correspondences, which makes possible the translations between drawing and building ... absence implies purity; architectural drawing is fundamentally impure. it carries a shadow which is translated across scale as the trace of the author.13 interstices 4 the stamp of architecture: post-marking the architectural drawing 3 the trace of the author, the author’s proper name, survives the process of translation unscathed so that the name of the drawing’s author is always attached to the drawing and the project, whether substantive or speculative. likewise the architectural stamp remains attached to the ‘truth’ of an original drawing despite the indiscriminate reduction and miniaturising that portrays all building as the same size (fig 20, 21). paradoxically, the hybridising of representation and fiscal value, that threatens the drawing’s primary value of architectural representation, evokes the mixing and reassembly that nietzche reserved for the intuitive rather than the necessary a condition justified by the concept of ‘truth.’14 according to nietzche: the truths ... are illusions which are no longer recognised as such; metaphors which have been used up, which have lost their sensual power; coins which have lost their face and are no longer valued as coins but only as pieces of metal. 15 in the same way the illusion of the architectural stamp retains the ‘truth’ of postage that challenges definitions of the stamp or the architectural drawing as only pieces of paper. that the stamp remains architectural is the responsibility of the signature attached to it. this illusion of truth is contextualised by the accessorised presence of the architect. the architectural signature is contractually bonded to the surface of the drawn mark, indelibly inscribed into the surface of the stamp ( fig 22). the contractual letter is already drawn up between the mark and architecture, a state remarked upon by vitruvius, and so that in drawing up contracts the interests of both employer and contractor may be wisely safe-guarded. for if a contract is skilfully drawn, each may obtain a release from the other disadvantaged.16 the contractual state of the architectural stamp provides for a promise of release. it inscribes into the letter of the architect the contractual signature of emancipation but conditions this against a promise of mutual obligation. but the drawn inscription, woven into the face value of architecture by a masculine hand defies mutual agreement. rather, following the action of butades the inscribed mark is subject to a masculine hierarchy (fig 23). andrea kahn argues that the action of drawing is more than a simple inscription of building into paper; rather, drawing provides for a structuring of architectural knowledge in which the drawing itself is a site of location, analogous to the site of building, and which can define architecture in its own terms. writes kahn, “whether explanatory or exploratory, drawing as both verb and noun is an inscription of architecture, an interpretation open to interpretation.”17 inscription then is also a mode of production that not only structures but actively restructures architectural knowledge, it continually re-draws the contractual obligation between addressee and addressor, but it does so in a masculine model. following his reading of plato’s “republic,” derrida has this to say of the inscription, inscription is ... the production of the son and at the same time the constitution of structurality (fig 24).18 the drawing, from the original relief by butades, is always masculine, and of a particular kind of reproductive masculinity that defies biological sense to re-present its own self. it is necessarily accompanied by a ‘constitution of structurality’ as it is the constitutional condition of inscription that ensures its own survival. butades, following the profile of his daughter’s lover, inscribes not his daughter, nor her lover, rather, it is the name of butades that pliny passes down. in this way butades, and pliny, both successfully ensure their own masculine parthenogenesis by authorising the truth of their own recounted experiences. pliny’s story of butades is constitutionally added to itself through the action of repetition so that it supplements itself with its own truth, it becomes its own accessory throwing into doubt its own truths. continues derrida: the disappearance of the face or the structure of repetition can thus no longer be dominated by the value of truth. the true and the untrue are both species of repetition. and there is no repetition possible without the graphics of supplementarity, which supplies, for the lack of a full unity, another unit that comes to relieve it, being enough the same and enough other so that it can be replaced by addition.19 every architectural drawing provides for a repetition of the original drawing (fig 25), extending through a perverse truth the contractual obligation of the architectural drawing to accessorise architecture (fig 26), which it does by assigning the reproductive signature to the drawing. the drawn signature then constitutionally organises the institution of architecture in a masculine state. constitution, derrida reminds us, is an act of institutionalising, and therefore so too is the signature which maintains a link with the instituting act (fig 27).20 indeed the founding act of an institution has to maintain within itself the mark of signature. the uniqueness of the signature is that it gives powers and rights ‘in the name of’ as the signature invents the signer, “it gives birth to itself, as free and independent subject, as possible signer, this can only hold in the act of the signature.”21 the signature becomes a point of interstices 4 the stamp of architecture: post-marking the architectural drawing 4 boundary that demarcates transgressions beyond the institution of legitimate architectural representation. to deviate outside this institutional programme is to violate the constitutional contract so that the unsanctioned signature reverts to primal shadow or trace rather than legitimate mark ( fig 28). thus the signature distinguishes between the living and the dead by assigning contractual value to the architect rather than the building. delineated in such a way the signature allows for only the legitimate or the illegitimate, condemning any transgression between the two as criminal.22 following butades, the crime of the architectural stamp takes place between the moment of perpetration, of inscription and marking, and that of its representation, its stamp. further, the crime is defined through, and drawn by, this relationship of marking/birth and stamping/death (fig 29). notes derrida, between birth and death, the spacing of the between marks at once the distance and the link, but the link according to a kind of distension.23 this ‘dis-tension’ derrida accords to the presence of in the between of the very being of dasein,24 “‘before’ any biological determination ... the link thus enter-tained, held or drawn between, over or through the dis-tance between birth and death.”25 the ‘dis-tension’ opens up a structural flaw that allows a drawing to cross between birth and death in a masculine hand (fig 30).26 here derrida introduces the figure of geschlecht as that which passes on from one genre to another, from generation to generation.27 this continued genealogical presence despite its masculine precedence is not made possible though by an action of projection, but rather through one of throwing. notes derrida, “dasein is geworfen:28 that means that before any project on its part it is thrown.”29 the sublime creative moment of conception too is characterised by geworfen, towards a throwing up that reveals the interiorised contents of existence. likewise the tale of the original drawing reveals butades, first and foremost a potter, actually ‘throwing’ the profile as he would a pot. in such a way butades is able to become individually fertile, throwing out from within an immaculate masculine offspring (fig 31). through the action of this throwing, or throwing up, the nature of drawing and existence are brought together. to make the mark of drawing is also to proclaim oneself as present and distinct, but it is to do so within an androgynous male tradition where the mark is always of birth, and where it remains as a birthmark. immutably inscribed onto the body the birthmark is immediately both attached to and inseparable from the body’s surface, it is thrown onto the body from within and stamps each surface as a unique extension of the same (fig 32). this original marking provides for a signature of difference. butades describes his daughter’s lover through his difference from his own self, an action indebted to surface and yet set in relief. butades, the original draftsman, transgresses between the visual fixation of the birthmark, and the embossed signature of the death-mask (fig 33). it is exactly at this point of inflection, somewhere between the immaculate birth of an idea and its inevitable execution, that the criminal nature of the drawing exists. the drawing is postmarked as unlawful, illegally violating the contractual obligation of the signature. conceived of immaculately the drawing exists outside any institutionalising construction or marriage so that drawing is always unsanctioned and illegitimate (fig 34). the signature of such criminal activity, the postmark, is concurrently that bastard stamp of the tattoo, demarking illegitimate production and unrequited love. quoting jacques derrida, phila-tely then is love without, with/without marriage, and the collection of all stamps, the love of the stamp with or without stamped love.30 the postmark, inscribed indelibly into the paper skin of the stamp, invalidates the stamp through the corruptive applied permanence of the tattoo. this incised disfigurement remarks the already incised surface of the stamp with the terminal empirical condemnation of time and place. in this way the tattoo is actually a countersignature that calls attention to the conditions of origin and termination. states derrida, it all starts with the countersignature, with the receiver, with what we call the receiver. the origin of the work ultimately resides with the addressee, who doesn’t yet exist, but that is where the signature starts.31 we should recall here that the signature is not merely the writing down of a name but an act, the event of signing itself. 32 paradoxically the tattooed postmark, in claiming the inevitability of a birth and a death, reinscribes a moment of life, and of love, by proclaiming the immaterial instant between the two. through cancellation the postmark grants approval (fig 35). thus the postmark tattoo is a sign designed to express a paradoxical condition of both exclusion and inclusion, an exteriorising and an interiorising. in this way the origin of drawing does not lie solely in the inscriptive action of butades, rather, it is his daughter to whom we must seek an approval as it is to her that the work is addressed, or more explicitly, it is to her longing, or nostalgia, that the origin of drawing resides as the countersignature. it is the desire of this feminine other that politicises the inception of drawing. butades, unable to give up his daughter to her lover, throws himself into the young interstices 4 the stamp of architecture: post-marking the architectural drawing 5 man’s profile in an attempt to substitute his own desires for that of his daughter’s ( fig 36). inevitably such an incestuous perversion manifests itself in the work as the inscribed degenerate signature of the tattoo, postmarking the drawing as masculine (fig 37). but insidiously the tattoo disguises an already existent birthmark, solicitously covering it up. intimately inscribed within the drawing is the feminine desire for an absence, a mark of repressed production ( fig 38). the architectural drawing contains an essence of feminine desire concealed within it, encrypted and occult.33 it is this desire of butades’ daughter for her lover that countersigns the young soldier’s relief as the origin of drawing. the countersignature of desire is carried within the signature of the architectural drawing as the moment of addressee, of mortality, longing, of the mark.34 suppressed within the origins of drawing this desire is an unheard domestic violence, a silent voice speaking from behind the tattooed criminal (fig 39). edwin lutyens, in the final bed ridden weeks of his life, found his own voice failing due to the degenerative effects of bronchial cancer. during this time he wrote a letter to his wife, emily lytton, in which he asked the question, “can you hear my writing?”35 lutyens died soon after, surrounded by his architectural drawings. he was survived by his wife, one son, and four daughters. to my knowledge he was not tattooed. notes 1 edwin lutyens cited, lever and richardson the architect as artist (new york: rizzoli, 1984), p. 1. this axiom is commonly attributed to mies van der rohe who stated architectural drawings are ‘simply letters to contractors.’ 2 for an introduction to these arguments see stanley allen, “projections: between drawing and building,” a+u (1992), n. 259, p. 40-47; stanley allen, “on projection,” harvard architectural review (1993), v. 9, p. 122-137; robin evans, “architectural projection,” architecture and its image: four centuries of architectural representation, works from the canadian centre for architecture eds. eve blau and edward kaufman, (montreal: canadian centre for architecture, 1989), p. 19-35, robin evans, “translations from drawing to building,” aa files (1986), n. 12, p. 3-18. 3 evans proposes this in his discussion of the possibilities of projection in discussing an elevational drawing for the campanile of s.maria del fiore, florence. alternatively he proposes the drawing as guided directly, as quoted above, or, as using projection as ‘guide rails’ that allow some degree of manipulation without ‘emancipation.’ robin evans, “translations from drawing to building,” aa files (1986), n. 12, p. 8. 4 stamp: “to mark (paper or textile material) with a device either impressed in relief or intaglio, imparted to the surface by ink or pigment, or produced by both processes combined. also to impress (a device) on paper, etc. by means of a die or engraved plate.” the oxford english dictionary (oxford: clarendon press 1989), v. xvi, p. 483 5 pliny the elder, natural history: a selection ed. john f. healy, trans. john f. healy, (london : penguin books, 1991), p. 336. 6 the term stamp applies not only to the tool of stamping but also to the ornamental mark produced by it. 7 alberto perez-gomez, “architecture as drawing,” journal of architectural education (winter 1982), v. 36, n. 2, p. 3. 8 claude levi-strauss, the savage mind (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1968) 9 susan stewart, on longing: narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection (durham and london: duke university press, 1993), p. 135. 10 stewart, on longing p. 144. 11 stewart, on longing p. 173. 12 jacques derrida, “envois,” the postcard: from socrates to freud and beyond trans. alan bass, (chicago and london: the university of chicago press, 1987), p. 33. 13 stanley allen, “projections: between drawing and building,” a+u (1992), n. 259, p. 41. 14 stephan meier, “to signify oneself! on lies in architecture,” daidalos (june 1983) n. 8, pp. 10-13, 1620. 15 f. nietzche cited, meier, “to signify oneself! on lies in architecture,” p. 20. 16 vitruvius, the ten books of architecture trans. morris hicky morgan, (new york: dover, 1960), p. 10. 17 andrea kahn, “disclosure: approaching architecture,” harvard architectural review (1992), n. 8, p. 4. emphasis added. kahn continues: “only when drawing is seen to inscribe its own architectural ground is it possible to accord it both a definitive role in shaping the conception of architecture and a substantive tectonic relationship to built form.” p. 18. interstices 4 the stamp of architecture: post-marking the architectural drawing 6 18 jacques derrida, “plato’s pharmacy,” dissemination trans. barbara johnson, (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1981), p. 161. 19 derrida, “plato’s pharmacy,” p. 168. 20 “the constitution and the laws of your country somehow guarantee the signature, as they guarantee your passport and the circulation of subjects and of seals foreign to this country, of letters, of promises, of marriages, of checks all of which may be given occasion or asylum or right.” jacques derrida, “declarations of independence,” trans. tom keenan and tom pepper. new political science (summer 1986), n. 15, p. 10. 21 derrida, “declarations of independence,” p. 10. 22 “the crime has taken place (and every hymen intervenes, like a crime, ‘between perpetration and the memory of it:’ here i draw a veil over ‘la double séance’), and its dissemination dissolves or absolves it in the crowd only by multiplying it incalculably.” jacques derrida, “living on: border lines,” trans. james hulbert. deconstruction and criticism ed. harold bloom et al (new york: seasbury press, 1979), p. 154. we should remember here that in greek and roman mythology hymen is “the god of marriage, represented as a young man carrying a torch and veil.” the oxford english dictionary v. vii, p. 549. hymen then is also a god of drawing, carrying as he does, the two devices of drawing, the torch to allow the projective practice of drawing, and the veil upon which the projection is made. but the hymen is also a signature of death, or more correctly a counter signature as the hymen gives life precisely to announce death. the death that is ‘given’ is always requested, demanded, by the one who receives it, and who immediately signs the death of the other, the other death in order to live-on (survivre). 23 jacques derrida, “geschlecht: sexual difference, ontological difference,” research in phenomenology (1983),v. 13, p. 77. 24 literally ‘existence’ or ‘presence.’ 25 derrida, “geschlecht: sexual difference, ontological difference,” p. 77. 26 we should remember here that accessory is originally linked etymologically to access; as in “coming to or into; coming into the presence of, or into contact with, approach, entrance.” the oxford english dictionary v. i, p. 72. 27 “within the path of his writings too, and the marked impression or inscription of the word geschlecht will not be irrelevant. that word, i leave here in its language for reasons that should become binding in the course of this very reading. and it is indeed a matter of ‘geschlecht’ (sex, race, family, generation, lineage, species, genre/genus) and not of the geschlecht; one will not pass so easily toward the thing itself (the geschlecht), beyond the mark of the word (geschlecht) in which, much later, heidegger will remark the ‘imprint’ of a blow or a stamp (schlag).” derrida, “geschlecht: sexual difference, ontological difference,” p. 65. 28 geworfen is the past participle of the word werfen in the sense ‘to throw:’ “ jdn ins gefängnis etc werfen, to throw somebody into prison etc. ... etw in den briefkasten werfen, to put something in the letter box;” collins german dictionary (glasgow: harper collins, 1991), p. 758. 29 derrida, “geschlecht: sexual difference, ontological difference,” p. 78. 30 derrida, “envois,” p. 56. 31 jacques derrida, “the spatial arts: an interview with jacques derrida,” deconstruction and the visual arts: art, media, architecture (cambridge and new york: cambridge university press, 1994), p. 19. 32 “the signature is something other than merely writing down one’s own name. it is an act, a performative by which one commits to something, by which one confirms in a performative way that one has done something that it is done, that it is i who has done it.” derrida, “the spatial arts,” p. 17. 33 etymologically the word ‘occult’ is used to mean hidden and refers explicitly to those lines “drawn in the construction of a figure, but not forming part of the finished drawing.” an obsolete usage describes “a dotted line.” the oxford english dictionary v.x, p. 680. 34 signature: “a person signs a document when he writes or marks something on it in token of his intention to be bound by its contents, commonly by subscribing his name. illiterate people commonly sign by making a cross.” osborn’s concise law dictionary ed. leslie rutherford and shelia bone, (london: sweet and maxwell, 1983), p. 305. 35 edwin lutyens cited, mary lutyens edwin lutyens: by his daughter (london: john murray, 1980), p. 282. interstices02.indb signature effects: john soane and the mark of genius helene furján but let the sacred genius of the night such mystic visions send, as spenser saw, when thro’ bewildering fancy’s magic maze, to the bright regions of the fairy world soar’d his creative mind. thomas warton, the pleasures of melancholy (1747) we have now conducted the reader, step by step, through the apartments on these two fl oors, appropriated to the reception of works of art, and may safely assert that no where within a similar extent does there exist such a succession of varied and beautiful scenery, so many striking points of view, so many fascinating combinations and contrasts — so much originality, invention, contrivance, convenience, and taste. john britton, the union of architecture, sculpture and painting (1827) today, the question of ’genius’, in architectural discourse, is, perhaps, associated more with the sciences, with what john maeda has referred to as “creative code” (2004). however, the persistence of an interest in ’signature effects‘ among contemporary architects, like frank gehry, peter eisenman and greg lynn, suggests older notions of genius persist. artistic genius has typically been associated with the romantic period, when, as a means to theorize the role of the author and the process of creation, the concept became legitimate within the discourses of art and architecture. its arrival signalled a moment in which design was no longer seen as a process of mimesis — the recombination of pre-existing material — but rather as an individual act of invention. architecture, in the romantic period, elaborated a complex defi nition of genius, tying innovation to its own version of form-fi nding; to aesthetic theories steeped in atmospherics, mood and effects; to politics, the politics of aesthetic and cultural discourse and the politics of the nation-state. all these concerns can be seen mobilized in the work of that quintessential romantic architect, john soane. this essay will explore late eighteenth and early nineteenth century aspects of genius, through the motives and motifs at play in soane’s work, focusing largely on the most idiosyncratic of his projects, his own house at 13 lincoln’s inn fields. soane’s house-museum was formally bequeathed to the british nation in 1833 and preserved by an act of parliament on soane’s death in 1837. work on the house and three adjacent lots began in 1792 and spanned the rest of his life, con interstices 07interstices 07 tinuing from developments at his country house in ealing, pitzhanger manor.1 lincoln’s inn fields was a hybrid in many ways. nested into the functioning domestic spaces of a cultivated urbanite was an architectural offi ce (in latter years a studio training apprentices); a museum, a room-scaled model case; an archive of drawings and folios; an extensive professional and scholarly library; an art gallery which transformed the walls into cabinets, interleaving the paintings in layers to maximize hang space; and a sequence of themed spaces, largely “gothick” in character and loaded with moody special effects. special effects, indeed, were mobilized throughout the house in complex spatial interpenetrations; in soaring triple height domes and fi ssures; in mirrored complexities and gleams; in colorized or gloomy atmospheres. these effects, picturesque and sublime in their aesthetic leanings, but also owing allegiance to popular spectacles in london at the time, were part of the panoply of techniques — and, indeed, technologies2 — deployed by soane to exhibit his ’genius’ as architect and choreographer of space. these techniques can also be found in soane’s other projects, notably in the domed spaces of the bank of england’s public offi ces, and his mysterious freemason’s hall. but it is in the house that they are most intensely engaged. showing off: soane was no less aware of the economic value of signature effects than today’s architects are. he was more than willing to mobilize his own houses as highly successful publicity machines, as others like the adams brothers and thomas hope had done before him, demonstrating, to students, peers, critics and potential clients alike, his ’genius‘ as a tag of marketability. the many visits, tours and parties conducted at both residences were intended to reveal, to infl uential clients and friends, soane’s architectural skills, to demonstrate his genius, originality and taste, as well as his ability to keep up with fashions. from the gothic scenes and intellectual banquets at pitzhanger, to the major public spectacles staged at no. 13 in 1825,3 to the design of the spaces themselves, signature effects were constantly used as marketing devices. ‘effect’, and its corollary, ‘affect’, were frequently used terms during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. ‘effect’ was the mark of production, it was the mark of the ‘hand’, the trace of artifi ce, of fabrication. ‘effect’ was also the ability of an artwork to produce an impression on the mind, to produce ‘affect’. in soane’s house, eighteenth century aesthetic theories were combined with a baroque theatricality adapted from piranesi. soane stage-managed a raft of technological possibilities to produce light and shade, scenography and setting, negotiating tensions between horizontal and vertical, as well as complex spatial manipulations of formal elements, to create a whole range of expressive effects. these effects — the production of a certain image, a staging, an atmosphere, certain qualities of light and shade, and so on — culminated, in the words of his friend, well-known archaeologist, john britton, in a space designed for “spectacle and display” (britton, 1827: 44); a theatre of effects designed to highlight and showcase his talent. the latter is signifi cant here. showcasing talent, that is, creativity, invention, style, design skill, was a controversial aim in the early nineteenth century. to privilege talent in this way was to mobilize a debate that moved the production of a work 1 for a more complete history of soane’s building and collecting activities, see thornton & dorey (1992); stroud (1996); feinberg millenson (1984 & 1987). 2 no. 13 lincoln’s inn fields was an early house to be fully plumbed and have a central heating system. 3 the house was opened three successive saturday evenings to some 900 invited guests to celebrate the acquisition of an egyptian sarcophagus. this was also an opportunity to show off the house, which the deployment of theatrical lighting, to interior and exterior, aided. for more on this event, see furján (2002). 5757 of art away from a mimetic act to a highly individualized act of creation, taken to its extreme in romantic theory under the concept of genius. soane’s house, as showcase, parallels the work of artists such as his friend, j. m. w. turner, who overturned dominant classical notions of self-effacement, leaving the traces of his ‘hand’, and his brush or palette knife, clearly legible. turner’s abstractions made explicit the difference between “natural effect and the imaginative reality of art” (gowing, 1966: 31). he was not content to have his work subsumed under the blanket of good taste, judged on how well it imitated nature or remained faithful to the existing rules of the genre. rather, he believed in the importance of creative genius, an innate ability which he saw as unique and unfathomable. like soane, he also saw himself located in a genealogy of great artists whom he frequently invoked in his paintings or their captions. the mark of the hand, the idiosyncratic detail or technique, indicated the ambitious subject behind it: creator, inventor. in soane’s house, then, the role of imagination was crucial. the theatrical nature of the rooms, as scenes and evocative settings, demonstrated the range and power of his imaginative faculties. britton noted this, and thus confi rmed soane’s stature, in a text he gave to soane as a christmas gift in 1824, on the completion of a suite of rooms in the basement, fi ctionally inhabited by soane as the monk ‘padre giovanni’. “the sinners [sic] offering at the shrine of st. john of soania”, professed his admiration for the “most potent, grave and reverend st. john” and paid homage to “the miraculous powers and potencies of that revered saint, which i had chosen for my father and mediator”.4 in soane’s style, as in turner’s, the emphasis on individuality worked against the grain of established tradition, by refusing a servile imitation of classicism, and insisting on the indelible mark of his own hand, his own particular genius.5 such inventiveness, a continual re-reading and re-invention of classical rules, was considered to be an example of bad taste (i.e. ‘improper’), because it broke the accepted rules of classical architecture.6 sir joshua reynolds, and other stalwarts, considered marks of authorship defects, and architectural theorists largely continued to assert that classicism involved the emulation of antique models and accepted conventions, not invention. in effect, architectural practice was to protect a status quo — an architect was to work within a tradition and pass on its rules to the future. in contrast, soane’s interest in an identifi able style, one that could point directly to its singular author, promoted an interpretive, inventive and highly individual approach to the traditions of architecture.7 4 soane museum archive, 7/10/8, 2. 5 for more on the attacks on soane’s style see schumann-bacia (1991). 6 such a resistance to imitation could already be seen in the french querelle over the same issue of imitation (the ancients) versus invention (the moderns). see perrault (1993). 7 it is also worth noting that part of soane’s re-evaluation of classicism was due to the infl uence of the picturesque and of romanticism; both had forced a revaluation of the accepted taste of the classical style. interstices 07 photographs by michael shepherd interstices 07 poetic genius: john summerson, noted architectural historian and theorist, and curator of the soane museum from 1945-1984, was most probably the fi rst to refer to “the soane style” which he regarded as highly distinctive and idiosyncratic: in 1792, when it arrives suddenly at maturity, there was not, anywhere in europe, an architecture as unconstrained by loyalties, as free in the handling of proportion and as adventurous in structure and lighting as that which soane introduced at the bank of england in that year (summerson, 1983: 9). summerson notes that much of that style had been formed under the infl uence of george dance, and that soane developed his own signature version by adding, “a novel handling of proportion, a highly personal mode of decorative emphasis and a tendency to arrive at solutions by unlimited, often bizarre, distortions of old themes” (summerson, 1983: 9). these traits included pendentive domes with lanterns, often dilating in diameter to all but swallow the springing arches, semi-circular arches screening hidden light sources, double height tribune spaces, coloured skylights, and complex sectional interpenetrations. for instance, the complexities of sculpted space for which soane has become famous, demonstrate, not an affi liation to style as genre — the following of precedent — but to space, conceived as an abstraction of solids and voids, as a site for morphological experimentation. georges teyssot argues that, for eighteenth century architects, abandoning the rules of classical architecture meant not a freedom from technique but a freedom for technique.8 likewise, writing of the sectional relationship between the gothic parlour and picture room above it at no. 13, john britton already pointed out that, “it would be utterly impossible to convey by a drawing, however well executed, any adequate idea of the singular effect thus produced” (britton, 1827: 41). he remarks on the originality and skill evidenced: we perceive what beautiful and novel effects may be attained by ingenious and tasteful contrivance — what rich and picturesque architectural scenery may be created within the most confi ned space … after witnessing what has been accomplished here, let no architect complain that private residences afford little scope for the display of originality 8 see teyssot (1978: 62). 5959 photographs by michael shepherd interstices 07 and fancy, or that striking effects cannot be produced on a small scale, or that picturesque beauty cannot be obtained, except at the expense of convenience (britton, 1827: 28-29). “singular effect” is critical. in defence of soane’s originality, britton acknowledged that some critics may have been of the opinion that, “he has occasionally allowed himself too much license”, but retorted that there was no reason “why architecture, which is purely an art of invention, should be more fettered or restricted in this respect than any other” (britton, 1827: 9). this was a reference to a commonly held opinion that painting, since it represented, was an art of imitation; sculpture was part imitation, part invention, as it isolated bodies from settings, stripped colour and was often paired with architecture; architecture and music, being the most abstracted from nature, were non-representational, and hence inventive arts. however, britton did caution against novelty for novelty’s sake and stressed that innovation required, “consummate judgment and the most refi ned taste” and could in itself be seen as “the touchstone of an architect’s ability; for it is exceedingly diffi cult to hit upon the due medium between servility and timidity on the one hand, or caprice and rashness on the other” (britton, 1827: 9). soane was against the “monotony and tame repetition” (soane, 1996: 605) of the prevailing neoclassical design method, as a blind copying of historical precedent, and he developed instead a method of invention that abstracted and preserved the effects of such styles.9 singularity was the product of an experimental technique derived from dance and the work of visionaries soane admired étienne-louis boullée, nicholas ledoux, j-b piranesi. it could also be found in the cult of novelty that took hold of theorists of the picturesque, as it appeared in the continuous references to novel effects made by barbara hofl and in her commentaries for soane’s privately printed descriptions of his house, or in britton’s earlier union of architecture, sculpture, and painting.10 in theories of the sublime and the picturesque, architecture turned into a theatre for special effects, characterised by the play of mass and void, of form, and of light, shade and atmosphere. for britton, soane’s house, especially the museum with its crypt and monkish apartments, aligned architecture with poetry: “we perceive here not merely the imaginative architect, but the poet, and are at a loss which most to admire, the originality or the beauty, the mystery or the intricacy of the conception” (britton, 1827: 6). in his 1830 description, soane himself noted an emphasis on the conjuring of “an almost infi nite succession of those fanciful effects which constitute the poetry of architecture”, notably through the use of picturesque devices (soane, 1830: 2).11 like many eighteenth century theorists of taste, aesthetics, or association, soane, when referring to poetics, used ‘fancy’ and ‘fanciful’ interchangeably with ‘imagination’. it wasn’t until coleridge wrote his biographia literaria in the early nineteenth century that fancy and imagination were distinguished from each other. drawing on aristotle, coleridge linked “the associating power” to memory and fancy, and kept them both distinct from reason and imagination (coleridge, 1817: vol. i, 104-05). in his theory, fancy was characterized by fi nitude, remaining inseparably linked to the store of impressions, memories and ideas of the perceiving subject’s sum of experiences (coleridge, 1817: vol. i, 296). in contrast, imagination was limitless; imagination was novelty and invention where 9 on the topic of the abstraction of styles to effects, see summerson (1983: 14); and teyssot (1978: 67). 10 “far above, and on every side, were concentrated the most precious relics of architecture and sculpture, disposed so happily as to offer the charm of novelty, the beauty of picturesque design, and the sublimity resulting from a sense of veneration due to the genius and the labours of the ‘mighty dead.’” hofl and, b. in soane, (1835/36: 37). 11 for more on this topic, see furján 1997. 61 fancy was mimesis, always beholden to the re-assemblage of precedent. for coleridge, imagination, “that syncretic and magical power”, is clearly the privileged faculty in the cultivation of artistic genius: “good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole” (coleridge, 1817: vol ii, 11-12). in strikingly similar terms, soane set out the combination of faculties necessary for the production of great architecture: “rich fancy and bold imagination; fl ights of powerful mind and magical genius” (soane, 1966: 619, emph. added). soane made explicit use of poetics in his architectural work, and evoked the term ‘poetry’ for its romantic and theatrical implications and associations. “like poetry, [architecture] presents a succession of varied pictures” (soane, quoted in bolton 1927: 100). recognizing these aims, isaac d’israeli was to describe the museum as a “built poem”.12 thus, the “poetry of architecture” is, in soane’s understanding, a combination of novelty, the picturesque, the sublime and poetic association. however, it is also evidence of that elusive quality, genius. soane wrote of his paper projects — his “architectural visions” — that they were the “wild effusions of a mind glowing with an ardent and enthusiastic desire to attain professional distinction” (bolton, 1927: 18). in 1818 william hazlitt wrote of the representation of objects distorted by the poetic imagination, thus immediately evoking the distortions of the convex mirror; that beloved of picturesque tourists (the claude glass), as well as the many that line the interiors of soane’s house (see furján, 1997). combining the mirror with the lamp, he further complemented the mimetic faculty with a reasoning and “emotional light”, in order to show that the artistic work is mediated, the product of the object and its contemplation, the work of the mind’s refl ection (quoted in abrams, 1971: 52-54).13 in this analogy, hazlitt brought together the two modes of composition that formed the basis of a romantic neo-classicism like soane’s the mirror of contemplation and mimesis, together with the emanating light of individual genius. the fi gure of the lamp, in hazlitt’s evocation, originates in notions of god and the human spirit fi gured as a fl ame (typically burning in the darkness of evil and disbelief). this romantic re-fi guration follows directly from the enlightenment conception of knowledge understood literally as enlightening, as the bright light of illumination that renders things clear and visible; except that here, it is the light of imagination, of creation, not of nature and reason. styling a nation, nationalizing a style: john gwynn, in london and westminster improved, described the question of “public magnifi cence” in architecture as “a national concern” for honouring the country’s distinction and its people’s genius, along with its culture’s refi nement of taste and manners (gwynn, 1766: 1-2). soane, in one of his royal academy lectures, linked magnifi cence to “national taste” and “national glory” through the notion of “character”, essentially a representational aspect of architecture, one he admitted is malleable: 12 letter from isaac d’isralei to soane, 14 august 1836, in bolton (1927: 529). 13 hazlitt is quoted from his essay on poetry in general. interstices 07 notwithstanding all that has been urged to the contrary, be assured my young friends, that architecture in the hands of men of genius may be made to assume whatever character is required of it. ... without distinctness of character, buildings may be convenient and answer the purposes for which they are raised, but they will never be pointed out as examples for imitation nor add to the splendour of the possessor, improve the national taste, or increase the national glory. the want of proper character and appropriate magnifi cence in the buildings of this wealthy metropolis is not confi ned to the exterior form and interior distribution of single structures, but is almost general (soane, 1966: 648).14 britain, as a nation, required a self-image strong enough to bolster her status, both domestically and internationally.15 the british “nation” had always included the diverse countries of the british isles, and was now the seat of an expansive empire. the attempt to develop a self-image was steeped in a cultural anxiety about the implications of its poly-cultural and poly-national constitution. how was england, the origin and centre of this largely remote empire, to keep its presence readable?16 in the true-born englishman, william defoe argued that england was a mongrel nation of mongrel origin, the barbarous offspring of all the invaders and colonizers who had besieged england in the course of history (defoe, 1701: 28-30). in the multiple and essentially arbitrary answers to the question of, what is english, defoe saw an indication that the nation was a self-conscious fabrication. the poly-stylism of neoclassicism, meanwhile, which included egyptian, “hindoo,” gothic, as well as greek and roman infl uences, refl ected the intense effects of travel on british culture, as well as the diversity of the british empire. soane’s own stylistic solution to the question of a national architecture, which went beyond that of most of his neoclassical colleagues, was the development of a new classical language. moving away from the abstracted incising of the bank of england interiors, for instance, soane developed a fully-fl edged ornamentation that combined gothic, roman and greek detailing. this was intended as a truly national style, original and contemporary, and one that would be signifi cantly unique to britain. however, it was also highly idiosyncratic, the product of individual innovation, developed in a climate in which “genius is encouraged to create, rather than to copy and adopt” (papworth, 1916: 312). soane’s “national style” appeared in many of his public projects for london, both commissioned and proposed; for example the house of lords, the law courts, the new offi ces for the board of privy trade and the privy council, as well as an ambitious (unrealised) scheme for a processional route through the city.17 its novelty was timely; a new nation needed a new language. ‘genius’ was thus employed in two different modes by soane. through the inventiveness of the “soane style”, he sought to gain a market advantage; through invention, he contributed to the means by which a nation with a newly constructed identity could represent itself. in the architectural world soane inhabited, they could be, and often were, easily blurred. the numerous controversies that soane was involved in, and that he so bitterly complained of, pitted him in battle against other architects, as well as the “state apparatus” in the form of his local district surveyor, the royal academy or parliament — in a struggle for architectural prominence.18 the ‘battle of styles’ that these confl icts represent was also a battle for political lev14 the reference to character here is signifi cant, an important element of neoclassical architectural theory, most notably theorized by quatremère de quincy. for more on this, see di palma (2002). 15 see colley (1992). 16 see pagden (1995). 17 for more information on these projects see richardson & stevens (1999). 18 for detail on these confl icts, see darley (1999). photograph by helene furján 63 erage. ‘genius’ was thus as much about economics — who will receive coveted and lucrative public commissions — as it was about aesthetic theory or artistic merit. pr: as a meticulously curated archive of soane’s production and its genealogy, witness the purchase of the dance and adams archives, or the prominently displayed piranesi etchings. soane’s house, too, is an emblem of signature construction within the terms of a legacy. the bequest of the house and its considerable collections, including over 60,000 drawings, forms a cultural inheritance both of his own work, that of those architects to whom he felt himself indebted, and of the aesthetic theories and cultural trends materialized in it. thus, it was also a temple to fame. one could think of the house — as library and museum — operating as a carefully constructed exposition, with meticulous evidence and detailed footnotes, buttressing a claim to his place in the panoply of great architectural geniuses. one could think for a moment of today’s architects engaged in similar moves: michael graves, a fan of soane, turning his house into a museum already gifted to the public; or frank gehry, signing and dating everything he draws, the building archive already under contract on his death. it could be said, that they, like peter eisenman, zaha hadid, and others, are great masters of the signature effect. and perhaps more than any other contemporary architect, graves and gehry have literally sold their signatures with canny success. the “soane style” could be seen as a similarly commercial exploitation of signature. in a parallel move, turner’s famous self-portrait at the royal academy annual show on varnishing day made great fl ourish out of his auratic presence, and clearly served to add massive commercial appeal to his signature both on the work and clearly in it. soane’s house, and the highly idiosyncratic public projects he built or designed, certainly helped cement his claim to a signature effect invention as the mark of genius. it gave a competitive advantage to a long line of ‘great’ architects, from michelangelo to ledoux, from piranesi to boullée, and continues to do so today. it is not for nothing that peter eisenman is want to insert himself into a genealogy of ‘signature’ architects, just as soane did, or that his student, greg lynn, will talk of ’signature effects‘ as a deliberate design goal, one that counters the general misapprehension that today’s digital architecture is ’autogenerated’. there is no doubt that soane was a master of self-representation, ready to demonstrate the greatness of his achievements and certain of their worth as cultural legacy. he used his ability to create a theatre of special effects and spectacular spaces: a sublime architectural virtuosity as a deliberately emphatic way of expressing his professional skill. his house’s primary ‘effect’ was thus the demonstration of soane’s consummate genius as the magician of space, a master showman displaying his talents and achievements in a blaze of effect. critic john papworth referred to soane’s work as “the ideal imagery” of “an exuberant fancy” (papworth, 1816: 312). the athenaeum, reviewing soane’s house-museum in 1828, echoed papworth’s sentiments: here he has collected his rich stores of art and antiquity. here he revels in architectural glory, dwelling, magician-like, among fairie chambers photograph by michael shepherd interstices 07 of his own creating. of its kind it is perfect, the ichnography of the very mind of the architect, everywhere diffi culties surmounted, ingenuity triumphant ... the importance of fi ction and imagination to soane’s domestic enterprise must be emphasized; fantastic invention is the mechanism by which genius can be revealed. this ‘theatrical’ architectonics complimented the architectural theatre of the house (as museum), its role as memorial immortalizing his work, his collections and his creations, of which the house-museum itself was the most exemplary manifestation. it is no surprise, then, that the visitor to the house fi nds, in the centre of the double height tribune space that focuses the museum section, a bust of soane himself, surveying his collections and accomplishments. john britton, in his theorization of architecture as an art of invention, necessitating originality, experimentation and innovation, was mindful that ‘genius’ was merely the fl ipside of a failed experiment: in this, as in many other things, much depends on success: if the architect be fortunate in his attempts, he enriches his art and adds to his powers; if he fails, he has done worse than nothing, and exposes himself to derision. innovators are like usurpers: they either become the founders of new dynasties, or are hurled as rebels from the eminence to which they aspired (1827: 9). soane may not have generated the dynasties he hoped for, but for britton (as for the many admirers of soane’s work today) it was clear that no. 13 lincoln’s inn fields memorialised, more generally, the achievement of genius in soane’s oeuvre. soane’s risky experiments in morphology and effect had paid off. references: abrams, m. h. (1971). the mirror and the lamp: romantic theory and the critical tradition. london/new york: oxford university press. bolton, a. (1927). portrait of sir john soane, ra (1753-1837) set forth in letters from his friends (1775-1837). london: butler and tanner. britton, j. (1827). the union of architecture, sculpture and painting. coleridge, s.t. (1817). biographia literaria. london: rest fenner. colley, l. (1992). britons: forging the nation 1707-1837. new haven/london: yale university press defoe, d. (1701). the true-born englishman: a satyr. london. darley, g. (1999). john soane: an accidental romantic. new haven/london: yale university press designs for public and private buildings. the athenaeum (15 april 1828). feinberg millenson, s. (1984). the genesis of sir john soane‘s museum idea: 1801-1810. journal of the society of architectural historians (october 1984), 225-237. 65 feinberg millenson, s. (1987). sir john soane’s museum. umi research press. furján, h. (2002). sir john soane’s spectacular theatre. aa files (47, summer), 12-22. furján, h. (1997). the specular spectacle of the house of the collector. assemblage (34, december), 57-92. gowing, l. (1966). turner: imagination and reality. new york: the museum of modern art gwynn, j. (1766). london and westminster improve. london. maeda, j. (2004). creative code. new york: thames & hudson. pagden, a. (1995). lords of all the world: ideologies of empire in spain, britain and france c. 15001800. new haven/london: yale university press. papworth, j. b. (1816). select views of london (no. lxxvi). perrault, c. (1993). ordonnance for the five kinds of columns after the method of the ancients (i. kagis mcewen, trans.). santa monica (ca): getty center for the history of art and the humanities. (first published 1683). richardson, m., & stevens, m. a. (eds.). (1999). john soane architect: master of space and light. london: royal academy of arts schumann-bacia, e. (1991). john soane and the bank of england. new york: princeton architectural press. soane, j. (1830 & 1835/36). description of the house and museum. soane, j. (1996) lectures. in watkin, d. sir john soane: enlightenment thought and the royal academy lectures. cambridge: cambridge university press. stroud, d. (1996). sir john soane: architect. london: dlm. summerson, j. (1983). soane: the man and the style. in john soane. london/new york: academy editions/st. martin’s press. teyssot, g. (1978). john soane and the birth of style (notes on the architectural project in the years around 1800). oppositions (14), 61-83. thornton, p., & dorey, h. (1992). sir john soane: the architect as collector. new york: harry n abrams di palma, v. (2002). architecture, environment and emotion: quatremère de quincy and the concept of character. aa files (47, summer), 45-56. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 101 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m aaron paterson & michael davis propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning has a legacy of teaching and producing architectural media that challenges normative representations of the discipline. this was made evident in auckland during 2017, at the school’s centennial exhibition, the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning (milojevic, treep, barrie, & gatley 2017). it showed that although technology had changed many representation methods over the years, there has been a continuum of students developing idiosyncratic representation styles and an insistence on students demonstrating a critical position in representation. since the 1980s, when the auckland school developed a reputation as a “drawing school” (barrie 2017: 108), a culture of rigorous media use has been cultivated by many teachers and through the shared memory of many beautiful drawings produced by students and staff. the “critical” approach to media was championed by sarah treadwell, who joined the school in 1981, and was originally employed to teach disciplinary types of drawings including plan, section, elevation, and axonometric. teaching “criticality” can be described as a process of asking students to question why they are drawing in a certain way, and to see drawing, making, and architecture as intrinsically connected. treadwell taught her students that the use of media was never a neutral act and could be much more than a mechanical representation process. the insistence that drawings could be considered a work of art put her at odds, in a collegial way, with patrick hanly, a painter of considerable note and a teacher of freehand drawing at the auckland school. treadwell recalled that hanly refused to see architectural drawing as art. instead, he saw it as a utilitarian form of representation, separate from his art practice (treadwell 2016). moving from the mechanical to the artistic and critical was in line with the theoretical turn and the growth of intellectual thoughtfulness throughout architectural academia. it represented a shift in how drawing, or media as it is now called, was taught at the auckland school. media now looked to challenge the dogma of the discipline and ideas of culture, gender, and occupation. students at the auckland school are still encouraged to use representation as a means to explore ideas beyond building-as-usual, or to pursue the founding challenge of the academic journal most closely associated with the school, interstices, as “the spaces between ideas” (about interstices 2017). traditionally, the school 102 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e has taken pride in understanding the periphery, rather than the cutting edge of technology, making students adept at exploring the pitfalls and unintended consequences of technology as well as challenging the discipline through its critical use of architectural and non-architectural media. thus, andrew barrie, who had been a student in the auckland school in the 1990s and was appointed as its professor of design in 2009, has observed that its reputation for representation has broadened in recent years from “drawing” to “making” (barrie 2017: 125). this article considers how the introduction of architectural software focused solely on “making” in media may neglect a genuine legacy of students producing idiosyncratic graphic styles and exploring the periphery of the discipline in favour of mechanical drawing. it shows that criticality and making must coexist to continue the school’s critical legacy in media. is the auckland school’s critical legacy at risk from normalising software? in design studio and media classes, the biggest threat from technology to the school’s critical legacy does not come from cutting-edge technologies like virtual and augmented realities or robotics, to name a couple of upstart disruptors, but from architecture’s flabby commercial middle, the promise of building information modelling (bim) software. software packages like revit and archicad are positively historic now, but this technology, more than others, still feels foreign in the studios of the auckland school. the lack of uptake of industry-standard bim software by students creates a schism between how the academy makes and how the profession draws. the question remains: to what extent should the auckland school be a vocational tool for practice? bim and other software with a bias towards fabrication and construction are viewed here as a normalising force that is descriptive (a “how-to” methodology), rather than speculative. bim challenges the legacy of the auckland school’s resolve for students developing critical positions. it is argued here that the incorporation of bim into media courses need not be at the expense of the situated practices concerned with the “what” of architecture if students are taught the disciplinary biases of the technology and use software as one tool among an array of options. methodologies over software many schools across new zealand and australia feel pressure from the profession to deliver practice-ready graduates. it is often argued that students require new knowledge acquisition with a bias towards project delivery and media outcomes that are descriptive. the potential of bim in practice is well established; it dissolves the gap between construction delivery, the production of design intent, and the transmission of information (garber 2014: 120–27). bim challenges the primacy of design and the divisions between disciplines as well as notions of collaborative authorship. architects, as the controllers of the one-to-one digital model, are given back a lost agency during the construction process. all these positives in practice are problematised in academia when academics are pushed by industry to produce graduates that are bim-ready or, more simplistically, revit-ready. the resistance in academia is understandable given that the primacy of design in studio is at odds with the woefully poor design features of the bim software. peggy deamer (2011) has championed a need for the integration of bim 103 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e into architectural education, asking where it should be taught. is bim a software issue and, therefore, should it be taught as a support course or an elective? or is it a new way to design collaboratively? architectural practitioners around the world have used bim and parametric modelling to make innovative design responses that do not adhere to professional norms—to name a couple, the perot museum of nature and science designed by morphosis (2012) and kaohsiung port terminal by reiser + umemoto of rur architecture (2012–16). similarly, architecture schools worldwide have embraced digital fabrication in their course programmes. most schools have digital fabrication equipment and many offer programmes that specialise in transdisciplinary design research with a focus on constantly evolving digital technologies. for example, rmit’s spatial information architecture laboratory (sial) offers a master of design innovation and technology.1 there is not a specific programme for digital fabrication at the auckland school, but students are adept at picking up new technologies for fabricating including the use of robotic arms, 3d printing, and virtual and augmented realities. barrie has consistently offered a postgraduate design stream focused on fabrication using timber technologies. when designing the learning objectives for a second-year media course at the auckland school, we wanted to ensure that bim and parametric techniques did not become the sole content of the course. however, we did want these techniques to assist students with form-making and the production of drawings that communicate fabrication thinking. for these reasons, we incorporated into the course bim and other architectural software with embedded tendencies towards construction. this course is taught during the third semester of a bachelor of architectural studies (bas) and follows on from the more speculative first-year introductions to media. the course is sequenced in the bachelor’s degree to enable students to consider the idiosyncratic nature of their workflows. bim and parametric software are used to communicate spatial ideas as well as test fabrication and assembly. the course’s learning outcomes push students to understand fabrication methodologies over bim software, like revit. it is important that bim is integrated into an existing suite of media skills that assist with learning-by-making. these skills include hand drawing, physical and digital modelling, collage, and animation. the aim is to problematise bim in relation to an overall workflow made up of a series of relationships between separate media practices. representation of fabrication methodologies in architectural media what types of representations are produced when fabrication and assembly are pushed in a media course? traditionally, drawings that explore fabrication, assembly, and tectonics have been particular tools of investigation in the dialogue between design and realisation. jean prouvé called these “constructive ideas” (picon 1983), with the view that drawing constructs how architects design. contrary to this insistence that drawing is the driver of design, digital modelling operations give primacy to the one-to-one model as both the object and constructible output of architecture. it is revealing that we revert to traditional architectural representation to tell the story of fabrication. this is because it ties back into the disciplinary history of architectural representation and allows 104 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e abstract critical thinking. drawings produced by second-year media students include: unfolded / developed surface; exploded axonometric; axonometric; material assembly; façade / elevation study; digital fabrication cutting sheet; analytique—multi-informational drawings; and operative perspective. what knowledge do these drawings privilege and how does this measure up to the school’s critical legacy of media? a contemporary disciplinary bias of the “how” architecture, as a spatial practice, often reveals its disciplinary knowledge through representations. in this respect, media is understood as discursive (kulper 2013), representing the disciplinary knowledge and discourses privileged during different eras. amy kulper invokes foucault’s understanding of a discipline as a regime that produces knowledge. the contemporary operations of architecture’s discursive representations reflect a shifting disciplinary bias towards “architectural images whose sole aspiration is to communicate the techniques of their own making” (kulper 2013: 42). the digital fabrication cutting sheet (see fig. 1) represents a merging of design and fabrication practice for the discipline. the drawing is a demonstration of its construction and assembly. kulper claims that contemporary design research and architectural images of fabrication focus on the techniques and protocols of the design process and privilege the “how” over the “what”. a danger for media pedagogy is that the technique may become the content. this concern is magnified when trying to incorporate bim into media courses. its normalising defaults and design tools overly predict formal outcomes to make all drawings look the same. fig. 1 louie tong, march(prof ) thesis student, constructed pavilion and digital fabrication cutting sheet, 2016. the bias of the “how” overshadows representations of the situated practice, or what stan allen refers to as the practice of architecture “marked by this promiscuous mix of the real and the abstract” (2009: xvii). kulper asserts that: architecture’s disciplinarity is best represented by recognising the reciprocity of its techniques for making with the political, social and cultural 105 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e contexts it engages. how architects do what they do is a critical aspect of the continuity of the discipline, but our disciplinary discourse must aspire to more (2013: 64). alessandro zambelli in “the undisciplined drawing” argues that transdisciplinary drawings, sitting between the thresholds of disciplines, can be described as “undisciplined” (2013: 357–79). this undisciplined character is true for abandoned drawing types such as piranesi’s multi-informational drawings that use perspective in an uncanny, undisciplined manner. it could be argued that piranesi’s drawings are all about technique. however, there is also an implicit critique of the discipline because the drawings reveal the inadequacies of mid-eighteenth-century drawing conventions for communicating his aims. there is a long history of undisciplinary representation at the auckland school, and it is important that contemporary students understand their drawings and other architectural representations as part of a discourse so that they may explore the space between the “how” and the “what”. let’s do the time warp again at this point, it is worth considering if there are pedagogical lessons to be learnt from the mainstreaming of the digital in the 1990s when this undisciplined intruder challenged the school’s legacy of valuing hand-drafted speculative drawings. studio culture was in flux at the turn of the century, with the introduction of computers and the way students used the design studio. in 1996, jules moloney, who was on the staff from 1995 to 2005, advocated for computer use in the design studio rather than their isolation into labs (barrie 2017: 123). this bold strategy was adopted with poppy-coloured imacs distributed around the studio spaces on levels 2–4 of the architecture building. before the school refurbishments in 2002, there was an air of the “wild west” about studio spaces, with students bringing their own furniture and creating ad hoc structures to house their cliques. this led to staff navigating student shanty towns with army-surplus tarpaulin tepees strewn across the studio and drawing boards used for makeshift communal kitchenettes. this lo-fi environment could not be further from the rigid fit-out and clear hierarchy between student and teacher that was instated in 2002 and continues today. radical student experimentation was valued and rewarded as an outcome of this chaotic studio culture. this was a time before digital skills became prosaic and there was the view among students that their digital knowledge put them apart from practising architects who did not possess such skill. this is not to argue that the quality of the design projects being produced was better than the present; many celebrated student projects of the time had very little traditionally recognisable architectural content and left elder practising architects scratching their heads. the animations of the era seem pixelated and simple, the architectural equivalent of a first-generation cellphone, all chunky and oversized. however, there is something to be said for the spirit of the times, which fostered a level of creative representational radicalism that has scarcely been seen since. the “anything goes” attitude of the studio space enabled a critical adoption of digital tools. the shift towards new digital representational techniques was made explicit in the comparison of the media of sean flanagan and sam cuttriss (see figs. 2 and 3), both of whom were selected to represent the auckland school in the 2000 106 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e new zealand institute of architects (nzia) student design awards—an annual competition between new zealand’s three schools of architecture, in which each school is represented by four finalists. without falling into false dichotomies of analogue and digital, flanagan’s detailed work was characterised by an approach to drawing that was esteemed at the auckland school. here, privilege was given to architectural composition that consisted of parts set in relation to other parts, an approach that was considered typical of work in the field of “modernist tectonics”. cuttriss’ proposal for a synthetic expression took theoretical inspiration from american computer scientist and futurist ray kurzweil’s the age of spiritual machines (1999), which asserted the day was coming where human bodies would become synthetic, and would be eventually replaced by spiritual robots. in cuttriss’ words, his architectural exploration “critically engages the nature of synthetic space, and develops an environment as a continuation, an extension of reality. a substrate within which our synthetic other may exist” (cuttriss in nzia student design awards 2001). this can be considered a moment at the auckland school when architecture made an appearance outside its discipline and declared architecture’s ability to merge its own and other disciplinary methods. fig. 2 sean flanagan, auckland regional civil defence station, 2000. fig. 3 sam cuttriss, synthetic expression [still from animation], 2000. 107 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e the digital turn of new zealand architecture schools was slower to become mainstream when compared with others around the world. this was unceremoniously pointed out by howard raggatt, an adjunct professor at melbourne’s rmit and the international judge for the 2000 nzia student design awards. raggatt said he was given a “little fright” seeing new zealand students still clinging to traditional pencils: “computer-generated designs are entirely ubiquitous at rmit,” he explained, i would be shocked if anything else appeared—in fact i doubt the students can use a drawing board or physically write in the traditional sense. so, to walk into a room where graduates are producing work that is not a reproduction or output, but crafted like an art work, was a little shocking—like walking into a time warp (raggatt in nzia student design awards 2001: 75–76). given raggatt’s penchant toward the new and digital it was not surprising that the winning project for the first year of the new millennium was a boundary-pushing digital animation full of speculative optimism, but bereft of human presence and traditional architectonic craft. a lament for the death of hand drawing followed, alongside recognition of an emerging digital craft (davis 2009: 82–91) and media outcomes exploring new fields that included film animation, web design, and gaming. although cuttriss pushed furthest away from the school’s legacy of valuing hand-drafted speculative drawings as outcomes, it did not diminish its insistence on the aesthetic and speculative at the forefront of emerging digital representational techniques. in retrospect, this was less about the death of the handcraft than the emergence of new areas of representation and hybrid experimentation. the success of cuttriss’ proposal encouraged other students to explore the “digital”, as it was referred to at the time. in effect, it was an un-nuanced marker for anything to do with a computer. in 2003, a close-knit group of students from the auckland school produced an exhibition titled quickenings: digital film architecture (bellard & chua 2003). the exhibition explored the intersection of film, architecture, and the digital through final-year student work made between 1999 and 2002. stand-out work included melanie tonkin’s emotional city (2002), an animation that examined a glitch in a prosaic landscape, resulting in a turner-esque dematerialised space that challenged traditional orthographic and perspective representation (see fig. 4). equally challenging was eu jin chua’s wallpaper (2000), which questioned the norms of “good taste” in architectural representation. the animation was a pointed response to disparaging comments fig. 4 melanie tonkin, emotional city [still from animation], 2002. 108 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e about interior design as “wallpaper”, implying that interior design was the lesser art form compared to architecture. the exhibition highlighted the transdisciplinary ambition of the auckland school and its ongoing legacy of critique aimed at destabilising the bastions of architectural discipline. sarah treadwell summed up the zeitgeist in the quickenings exhibition catalogue, drawing allusions to the weather as a metaphor for digital space and its connection to media practice: weather is always about future conditions mapped with signs from the past. architecture, too, is caught in a complex oscillation between representations weighed down by history and technologies that imagine a future in the present. anxiety about weather is a consequence of its unpredictability, and architecture suffers a similar anxiety as it negotiates new forms arising from anticipated conditions and changing technologies. weather and architecture, seemingly opposed states, can be seen to share aesthetic and social inclinations (treadwell 2003: 20–22). quickenings’ animations presented digital technique as content and, in an “undisciplined” moment, they also challenged the discipline’s orthodoxies. fast-forward to now: making, hybridity, and the undisciplined drawing if we take this “undisciplined” approach as a lesson about contemporary challenges in teaching architectural media, we can imagine how asking students to invest in the idea of fabrication could produce diverse media outcomes. since the auckland school’s first digital turn, there has been a consistent emphasis on the hybrid use of media pointing to a continuation of explorations that attempt to reveal the “how” and the “what” of kulper’s dichotomy. treadwell advanced a hybrid analogue and digital approach as the most productive way to solve architectural problems. with this model, students should be encouraged to move from one mode of representation to another to discover the potential and anomalies of each, as teaching media is not about the “technical acquisition of a skill, a digital skill, but rather it’s a mode of critical thinking about the subject” (treadwell 2016). this kind of hybridity suits the contemporary way that students learn the use of digital modelling, and bim is one subset of media that students must master, along with physical modelling, digital fabrication, sketching, animation, and virtual and augmented realities. second-year media, as taught in 2017, continues the auckland school’s legacy of making, hybridity, and undisciplined drawing, where students are encouraged to examine the content of the construct represented. students begin with sketching and generative model-making, which becomes the basis for a digital/bim model that allows the students to focus on how to communicate fabrication and occupation. from here, digital collage and cut-out techniques are used to embed narrative into architecture, allowing stories to unfold. drawing styles jump from fantastical to technical and are used to discover narrative content that exceeds the parameters of construction. the hybrid use of media is a consequence of a design workflow particular to each student assembling a portfolio with a range of media outputs. this forces the 109 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e student to think about the specific aspects of their practice and helps them to explore relationships between different types of media. the portfolio of vinayak garg (see fig. 5) exemplifies the work of recent and current second-year media students. he examined the narrative potential of merging fabrication ideas with a hybrid collage of media that included collage (cut out and digital), fabrication cutting sheets, plaster models from digital patterns, and animation. garg’s drawings are loaded with references to architectural precedents, from the drawn style of superstudio to the built work of louis kahn. the construct’s surface is embedded with characters from hieronymus bosch’s oil painting, the garden of earthly delights (ca. 1490–1505). an animation plays with the conventions of the exploded fabrication drawing. similarly, fin forster’s drawing for the course (see fig. 6) uses a hybrid media process to test how a construct may be occupied and operated. both drawings evoke worlds with numerous meanings and tectonic possibilities. fig. 5 vinayak garg, second-year media student, collage combining plaster physical models, made from a bim model, and animation, 2016. the student work produced in this course reveals an interesting area of productive digital speculation that merges the fabrication potential implicit in bim, grasshopper, and collage techniques. sam jacob sees the speculative value in “collage culture” that privileges curation, editing, narrative, assemblage, and photoshop. this type of post-digital representation offers a reconnection with architectural images as “polemical assemblages”. jacob states, the digital drawing tools we now have at our disposal have changed the relationship we now have to images—both as we consume and make them. but at the same time these tools can allow us to engage with the long disciplinary history of architectural representation (2017). 110 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e the hybrid collages point to ways forward that continue the speculative legacy of media while embracing fabrication and bim. the introduction of bim into studio, while important, should not be a primary aim without critically positioning it within a workflow. bim is not implicitly obvious in the drawings; it is subsumed in the process, making part of the drawing possible and leading the work to a place that embraces fabrication, materiality, texture, and craft unexpectedly. these hybrid drawings express an interest in a compositional tectonic of parts. curiously, this is a move back to flanagan’s tectonic expression as distinct from cuttriss’ atmospheric surface with students toggling between the abstract and the real. since the 1990s, the syllabus has shifted from teaching the disciplinary drawing of plan, section, elevation, axonometric, and physical modelling. digital modelling and animations have been added to this media suite. now we accept that media practice informs design. we talk about communicating fabrication thinking and encourage students to embrace the engagement potential of augmented and virtual realities. one element that is consistent between eras is the desire to teach students to understand the privileged disciplinary knowledge behind media positions and to raise questions about what constitutes creative engagement with drawings and technology. in this way, bim, as a tool for the communication of fabrication thinking, can be used critically rather than merely describing learning outcomes. it is vital that we encourage students to think beyond the act of representation, demonstrate their understanding of drawing as part of a larger discourse, and produce undisciplined drawings where appropriate. in this way, we will see the propagation of the auckland school’s critical legacy. fig. 6 fin forster, second-year media student, hybrid drawing, 2017. 111 propagating a legacy: undisciplined drawings and evolving technology f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e endnotes 1 for an overview of rmit’s master of design innovation and technology (mdit) coursework programme, see http://www.sial. rmit.edu.au/sial-study/ references about interstices (2017). interstices: journal of architecture and related arts. retrieved from http://interstices. ac.nz/about-interstices/ allen, s. (2009). practice: architecture, technique and representation. new york: routledge. barrie, a. (2017). “architecture to a fault”: the postmodern years. in j. gatley & l. treep (eds.), the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning (pp. 102–127). auckland: school of architecture and planning, university of auckland. bellard m., & chua, e. j., curators. (2003). quickenings: digital film architecture. auckland: film archive, february 20–april 2. chua, e. j. (2000). wallpaper [animation / mp3 file]. auckland. davis, m. (2009). maintaining the abstract critical facility in post-digital drawing practice. interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, 11, 82–91. deamer, p. (2011). introduction. in p. deamer and p. g. bernstein (eds.), bim in academia. new haven, ct: yale school of architecture. garber, r. (2014). no more stopping. in bim design: realising the creative potential of building information modelling (pp. 120–127). somerset, gb: wiley. jacob, s. (2017). drawing as project: post-digital representation in architecture. retrieved from http:// strangeharvest.com/ wp17/?p=4047 kulper, a. c. (2013). representing the discipline: the operations of architecture’s discursive imagery. architecture and culture, 1(1), 42–66. kurzweil, r. (1999). the age of spiritual machines: when computers exceed human intelligence. new york: viking. milojevic, m., treep, l., barrie, a., & gatley, j., curators. (2017). the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning. auckland: gus fisher gallery, september 8–november 4. nzia student design awards. (2001). architecture new zealand, january–february, 75–78. picon, a. (1983). is drawing dead? in jean prouvé: l’idée constructive. paris: dunod. tonkin, m. (2002). emotional city [animation / mp3 file]. auckland. treadwell, s. (2003). digital weather: pacific space. in e. j. chua & m. bellard (eds.), quickenings: digital film architecture [exhibition catalogue] (pp. 20–22). auckland: the nz film archive. treadwell, s. (2016, september 28). personal interview with l. treep, auckland. zambelli, a. (2013). the undisciplined drawing. buildings, 3, 357–379. interstices02.indb 21 the artist, architect and town planner, luc deleu, worked for more than ten years on the project, the unadapted city,2 a speculative urban-scale project articulated as a succession of spatial models. as each of these encloses the preceding ones, vipcity, its last occurrence, represents the entire project. the unadapted city has been shown in numerous exhibitions and described in three monographs.3 if the impressive numbers of accompanying tables, diagrams, drawings and models testify to the enterprise’s scale and complexity, this documentation doesn’t fully succeed in revealing the project’s nature or goals. though the author himself provides for its chronicle through an abundance of explanatory notes, an impression remains that he is showing the pieces of a giant jigsaw devoid of an outline. in fact, deleu has become famous through his peculiar manner of showing things. his practice of what he termed “resistance architecture” (davidts, 1999: middle verso of fold page 10) soon attracted the attention of the contemporary art world.4 the piles of containers, the tumbled-down pylons and cranes, the manifestos and controversial proposals, and even his urban conversion projects, all had the capacity to involve the viewer.5 his work did not seem to ask for analysis as much as it did for an audience, and often derived its meaning from the pleasure and effect of a gesture.6 an earlier version of ticle was published as car pour fi nir tout retourne à la mer – vipcity ou la mise en scène d’une fi liation (châtel 2004), which was translated from the french by michael novy in february 2006. 2 luc deleu b.1944, founder of top offi ce (“turn on planning”), antwerp. 3 deleu (1996); theys (2001); deleu (2002). 4 in this interview deleu explains that he wants to resist the generally accepted notion that every practice of architecture must be instrumental and fi nally aimed at building. he states that the current separation between art and architecture is inopportune and reductive; that there is no reason why a work of architecture could not be an image or a discourse. 5 for an overall view of the work prior to the unadapted city, see deleu (1991). 6 see bekaert (1991). plan obus and vipcity, as from father to son guy châtel installation with two high-tension pylons lying down for initiatief 86, ghent, 1986 photo : dominique stroobant orbino, nauerna, 2002 photo luc deleu interstices 07 the unadapted city started with such a gesture. the work was launched in 1995, following wien usiebenpole, the project for a linear city of 120,000 inhabitants on the donau insel.7 on this occasion deleu used the score of strauss’s blue danube to regulate the city’s functional arrangement. through the arbitrariness of this procedure, he drew attention to architecture’s lack of instruments for the conception and regulation of urban facilities. the unadapted city, in turn, aimed at studying and developing models for the deployment of such facilities which, for deleu, are an essential element of habitat. beyond their contribution to comfort and their organizational aptitude, he acknowledges their capacity to become part of our heritage in future years. noting that the public space is under pressure from private interests, he intends to induce decision-makers to face their responsibilities by confronting them with his project’s ‘ethical stand’. through his work with urban facilities, or equipment, he proposes to advance a renewal of western societies’ urban habitats. in initiating new strategies, deleu seems to hope that the project will provide examples that may contribute to a critique of the aims of architecture and urbanism.8 deleu sets his ambition against the current aims of a discipline he considers to be too pragmatic and therefore impotent. he asserts that the unadapted city is a work of ‘conceptual urbanism’, an autonomous theoretical venture.9 seen in this light however, it reveals some fragility. the postulates that supposedly underlie it are nowhere verifi ed. the work cannot be said to grow out of its premises; it forges ahead regardless. undeniably speculative in character, its desire to be exemplary predisposes it towards representation, and a performance that is elaborated through an abundance of references to modernism and the oeuvre of le corbusier. while the project derives much of its meaning from this posture of a descendant, the work simultaneously bounces off its cross-references, continually gets carried way by its marginalia. representation is constructed in the course of its enunciation, and hence the work is much more a discursive than a theoretical undertaking. rather than furnish the project with arguments that its author prefers to dispense with, i shall attempt to make sense of its cunning genealogical claims. these claims do not occur in properly referenced arguments but in the course of enunciation. for instance, the two most recent monographs about the unadapted city, which were produced under deleu’s own control and can therefore be regarded as part of its documentary fund, contain a large number of photographs of le corbusier’s work – without explanation. this essay is an attempt to discover what they hint at, by re-ordering the pieces of the jigsaw deleu presents us with. 7 for an account of this project, see châtel (2001a: 43-47). 8 for all those claims, see deleu (2002: 25). 9 see châtel & davidts (2003). wien usiebenpole, model, 19941995 photo : syb’l s.pictures wien usiebenpole, eigenmächtiges funktionsarrangement, 1994-96, digital drawing 23 the unadapted city proceeds in stages. it begins with ten panels that make up an atlas of urban facilities.10 each corresponds to a category of services and is a graphic transposition of quantitative data derived from the analysis of existing urban equipment. their surface area grows, seemingly in response to population growth. but this is about a different form of exploration from reading. the large polychrome panels are nothing like the dry verbiage one would expect from such documents. here, already, the image reigns supreme and the ‘taxography’ tends towards the iconic. the panel listing medical services brings to mind the play of light across the pale green walls of a hospital, while that listing culture and leisure activities evokes a criss-cross pattern of light beams. the atlas relates the equipment programme to the number of inhabitants. another document, the dos standard,11graphically represents the proportional relation between the surface needed for this equipment programme and the housing area. here, the equipment is presented in three columns according to its desired distribution. deleu differentiates between structural, zoned and occasional allocations, depending on the impact that a type of service may have on the structure of its environment. the dos standard is not only the end-product of data processing, it also constitutes an articulated and quantifi ed programme of urban habitat its generator. 10 the ten panels form a set shown for the fi rst time in may 1996 at the netherlands architecture institute (nai) in rotterdam. these documents were published in deleu (1996). since then, several of the panels have been revised. 11 dos is the acronym for de onaangepaste stad, the dutch name of the unadapted city. luc deleu & t.o.p. offi ce, dos ‘95 (la ville inadaptée) planche viii culture & divertissement, 1999, dessin digitalisé, © sabam interstices 07 bingbong (1996) should be regarded as a fi rst draft of the spatial model of the unadapted city – more an illustration, however, than a test of the generator. the urbanistic conception of this district for 6,800 inhabitants is based on usiebenpole. through the radical application of precepts such as the dictatorship of the sun, the segregation of traffi c and the liberation of soil, the latter project was in full conformity with the town planning ideology of the 1930’s. the entire habitat of the linear city was installed in a sequence of 110 unités d’habitation,12 with entwined infrastructure on several levels serving the inner streets. bingbong offers a variant of this, but remains a simple mechanism for the occupation of space. instead of repeating the 12 le corbusier, housing unit of compatible size. deleu uses the unité of marseilles, 1946-1952. 13 these are averages calculated from data relating to a large number of existing districts and towns. also featured are calculations aimed at estimating the population of their hinterland. top left: junction haarlem-amsterdam ‘halfweg’, a surface arrangement for a building development for 60.000 inhabitants, 1995 top right: housing generator 2000, a surface arangement for a building development for 20.000 people/sa standard, 1997 right: bing bong, 1996 d.o.s. ‘95 (the unadapted city). photo: steven van den bergh 25 architecture of the unité, deleu applies the term literally; the running metre of the unité is put forward as a yardstick, one metre corresponding to the housing of 6.4 persons. the habitat is organized in buildings of various shapes, designed as extrusions from the unité’s cross-profi le. subsequent development of the spatial model will be based on a gradual approach to urban complexity, where several thresholds are marked in response to rising population. the base level is the number of persons that the unité de marseille could reasonably house today, i.e. an average of 2.51 inhabitants for each of its 350 apartments, or a total of 878 persons. the second level is represented by the unité’s original population, i.e.1,600 persons. the next levels are the district, the local town and the regional city, for which dos envisages respectively 9,500, 22,000 and 72,000 inhabitants.13 the highest level, threshold for a truly urban situation, would be reached with a population of 192,000. brikabrak (1998) and dinkytown (1998-99) are projects for districts of 9,500 inhabitants, based entirely on the bingbong system. brikabrak is the primitive model of dinkytown, and both have a full place in octopus (1999). the latter proposes a system of four crossing infrastructure lines, marking out the centre of a city whose linear districts could extend in eight different directions. but it does not extend beyond this knot where the brikabrak and dinkytown districts join, forming a local-sized town of 38,000.14 the numerical growth is obtained by doubling the population each time, earlier projects being incorporated into the new. thus octopus, in its turn, was destined to form an integral part of vipcity (1999), which generates the infrastructure of an enormous housing development, whose 15,140 lots allow the population to be doubled again.15 this brings the project up to the level of a regional city. the additional equipment necessitated by the population growth is installed alongside a monorail track, which connects with the octopus centre. 14 the fi gure of octopus is like the fi gure [#] – octopus or eight limbs. on two of its branches brikabrak and dinkytown are fi xed. the population is 9500 + 9500 (for brikabrak and dinkytown) + 19000 on the knot fi gure itself (#): total 38000. 15 each lot has 0.663 hectare, so that 0.663 hectare = 2.51 x 0.2643 ha. on the basis of an ‘orbanistic’ calculation, deleu presents 0.2643 ha as the average land area available for individual housing. thus the 0.663 ha lots represent the ‘maximum luxury’ that a family could have access to today. by drawing the boundaries in such a way as to suggest later division of the land, deleu anticipates the calculations being very soon overtaken by the vertiginous growth in world population; he refers to the housing lot ironically as “decent”. the concept of maximum luxury is the justifi cation for the name vipcity. population redoubled results in (15,140 x 2.51) + 38.000 (original population of octopus) = 76.000 inhabitants for vipcity. d.o.s. xxi vipcity # 9 updated d.o.s. xxi model octopus, model t(scale 1:2000), 1999, 6 x 301 x 80 cm photo : steven van den bergh interstices 07 the avowed aim of the systematic exploration carried out through successive spatial models, is none other than the gradual discovery of the capacity of functional arrangements to organize and modulate urban space. yet the unadapted city has the special feature of grasping the whole articulation of a project by its extremities, by its knowledge base or, more precisely, its statistical substructure; and by its outcome, that is to say, its morphology and shape. both ends are determined in enunciation, fi xed in accordance with a logic specifi c to them. the fi rst is the product of detailed study; the second is placed there, like a courtroom exhibit hastily assembled from the debris of architecture’s history. the project can thus be seen as a double systematic procedure, which follows two lines of action entirely controlled by deduction; two lines that the author then endeavours to cross with each other. in the limited space where they meet, the information is submitted to a stochastic equation, producing what deleu called, in an unpublished notebook, a “spatial choreography”.16 we fi nd this choreography in the documents entitled, “clustering of the amenities” or “space arrangement”.17 these are the scores that note the facts, events, accidents, fi gures and forms of functional arrangement: the architecture of the unadapted city. it is by force that deleu brings the project back to the simplicity of a double deductive sequence: it is obtained by deliberate inversion of its ends and means. the spatial model of the unadapted city is given in its entirety at the outset, its form 16 see châtel (2001a: 52). 17 the publications show that before vipcity was embarked on, that is, until octopus, the plates and diagrams portraying these ”clustered amenities” and ”space arrangements” were virtually all the project had in terms of graphic documentation. for vipcity there is the addition of plans, elevations and cross-sections. d.o.s. ‘98 model dinkytown ground arrrangement digital drawing, 1999 27 already crystallized. the project develops its discourse – and in fact reveals itself – after being assembled in this way. deleu’s stand is to concentrate on the functional, on the comfort and ease given to urban life by suitable equipment and good distribution of services, shops, places for work, leisure and rest. he overlooks the question of how fi t these are as frameworks for interaction and exchange between the inhabitants, for the vitality of a human environment. every project is assumed to be carried out in terms of the virtuality that is the destination of its object. there is always a conceptualized anticipation in the act of architecture or urbanism. this anticipation is constituted by the expectation of its use, of its appropriation. in the unadapted city, however, appropriation is not really anticipated but, rather, simulated. inhabitants remain abstract, they count only in terms of their numbers. moreover, a project responds to a demand, to a need or a lack. but the relationships that it sets up are of the order of the possible, not of the necessary. that contingency, specifi c to architecture and urbanism, is controlled by the notion of propriety. in other words, it is governed by judgement and tempered by suitability. through the reversal that deleu imposes on the project, contingency is circumscribed within the closed fi eld delineated by the question of functional arrangement. it is a playground and a fi eld for experience where his hand remains totally free. he alone lays down the rules and interprets them. it is the compression of contingency, the neutralization of propriety and the underplaying of appropriation which justify the project’s curious name. this city would be ‘unadapted’ because it is liberated from architecture’s conventional straightjacket. one discovers that the unadapted city is not so much the project of a city as that of an image of the city. this image is given as a reminder of the symbolics of modernism, the recapture of an emblematic linear city. by its allegiance to the deductive method it is directly related to the work of ciam iv.18 but this relationship turns out to be dialectical. through its choreography of functional congestion, the unadapted city presents itself as an antithesis to the functional city that emerges from the doctrine of the charte d’athènes; the project is a critique of modernism in terms of its own language.19 what it might mean for our time, however, remains obscure.20 since the launching of vipcity, the project has undergone a remarkable change of tack. in spite of the fact that the additional housing is no longer correlated to the infrastructure, the latter still supports urban facilities and organizes public space. the monorail line is marked by huge offi ce buildings hinting at the regular emplacement of the stations. the monumental alignment of these ‘matching buildings’21 punctuates the route slashed into the isotropic carpet of housing lots. the line cuts through an ominous allotment. thus, eased of the disguise of an illusive urban unity, the unadapted city can reveal its stubborn actuality. the effort of the project is now directed to the details of entwining the infrastructure, the collective facilities and the public space. an esplanade on several levels snakes along the infrastructural braid and seems to rebel against the stately dance of the tower blocks. just as le corbusier’s 1931-1939 plan obus for algiers preserved the kasbah’s gradients, vipcity spares the tract of the plots. but beyond their shared tolerance of a habitat’s dissipation and conservatism, a comparison of vipcity with plan obus reveals the unadapted city’s distinctive features. 18 see van der woud (1983: 66). he points out that the election of cor van eesteren as new chairman after ciam iii meant that the reliability of a rational approach was preferred to the visionary attitude of le corbusier and his supporters. in the directives of ciam iv, the new chairman calls this approach “the materialist deductive method” and, while opposing what he calls “idealistic induction”, he legitimizes it by stating that it corresponds to the common will expressed at the fi rst congress. 19 this is the conclusion reached in châtel (2001a). 20 in châtel (2001a: 46), i put forward the hypothesis that for usiebenpole this critical value is determined by the project’s anachronistic character. in a text going back to 1976, used as introduction, koolhaas (1995) notes in respect of bijlmermeer – a late example (end of the 1960s) of the most radical modernist urbanism – that “if architectural debate is an endless re-enactment of the son killing the father, then the bijlmer presents a potential reversal of the oedipal formula, in which the father threatens the son. instead of team x attacking the mechanistic attitudes of ciam for a fetishistic obsession with the objective and the quantifi able, through the bijlmer, ciam questions from beyond the grave as it were the equally fetishistic concern with the ineffable and the qualitative that characterizes its allegedly humanistic replacement” (koolhaas 1995: 867). interstices 07 le corbusier forged a symbolic representation of the feast and the disenchantment of modernity (see tafuri, 1985). although he regarded the kasbah as an urbanistic masterpiece, he could not use it directly as a model. “the kasbah can only remain what it is, outside time, outside modernity and indifferent to its fate” (20). it is the converse of the syncopated experience of time and space written into the sinuous megastructures of plan obus. the cascading arabesques isolate and threaten the kasbah. quite the opposite of this dramatic assault on the hills of fort l’empereur, vipcity displays all the resignation of mutually accepted defects. the braid and the allotment are at odds with each other, but constitute the conditions of their reciprocal existence. the choreography of vipcity is staged in front of a disillusioned crowd of housing lots. what remains today of the city is little more than commodity or spectacle. the recreation of the towers is disciplined by the cadence of their funeral march, the linear structure is merely the city’s skeleton, and the winding esplanade represents its dance of death. the unadapted city is an allegory of the desperate combat waged by the contemporary city against its dislocation. despite the gulf between them, the formation of plan obus matches the kasbah’s amphitheatre by the transposition of its syncretic qualities. the eternal everyday of the kasbah is sustained by a pact, an age-old agreement which allowed for the intensive inhabitation of this site. its body was built up through accumulation, vipcity under construction page 3, digital drawing, 2001 one nautical mile amenities for 9500 inhabitants, 2000-2004 photomontage t.o.p. offi ce 29 piece by piece, a piling that enabled it to straddle this diffi cult gradient. the perennial accord is the very condition of its existence. but the kasbah is not really unchanging; it carries on through incorporation, it is totalizing. its organic integrity is not endangered by the mutation of its cells. each can be replaced without corrupting the kasbah’s communal programme or morphology. it was on top of that complex but unifi ed body that le corbusier threw out the structures of his plan obus. a totalitarian gesture, it conquers the territory and reshapes the landscape. but its bearing is to lend itself to habitat. dwellings can be fi tted into the gigantic rack of the megastructures without any other constraint than that of shelving. form fi nds its expression in the length and movement of the course and is by no means affected by the detail of that use. however immense it may be, the difference here engaged is essentially causational. the kasbah’s morphology is effected by an awkward topography and by the federated determination of its inhabitants; that of the megastructures by the singular will to redraw the site’s scenography, and by an extensive use of modern technology. the kasbah’s syncretism is ratifi ed by the signature of machinism. the notion of the resilience of overall form, as discovered and actualized by plan obus, had considerable infl uence on post-ciam architecture and urbanism. it enabled architects to rid themselves of their attachment to the specifi city of the object, in favour of exploring the expressive force and organizing capacity of a support structure or shape established by accumulation and interconnection of a basic unit. research in this direction dominated and reunifi ed the architecture and urbanism of the second half of the 1960s. this was the period during which deleu trained as an architect and began his professional career. already at that time, he took positions that were at odds with canonical practice. his fi rst exhibition, in 1970, was presented as an announcement of his departure from architecture.22 one of the exhibits was a sheet of paper with four photographs of projects then considered as major references. deleu had boldly crossed them out. in addition to two views of the marseilles unité d’habitation, the collage showed peter cook’s plug-in-city and moshe safdie’s habitat ’67 for the montreal world fair.23 today, it is apparent that deleu’s work fi nds support in the sources he rejected at the time; the unité is, for instance, an important infl uence for the unadapted city. a repositioning, that provides for a connection of the inner streets to the system’s public infrastructure, indeed seems to take all its measure from the intentionality determining this project.24 as for plug-in-city and habitat ’67, each in its own way is also a descendant of plan obus. by piling up prefabricated modules like bunches of grapes,25 habitat ’67 recalls the visual and interrelational complexity of the kasbah. plug-in-city is like an extensive mechanism conceived as a vine to which housing pods simply have to be hooked up. 21 these pairs of towers one lying and the other standing present a series of variants on the phenomenal confi guration of the barcelona towers. in this regard see châtel (1999 & 2001b). through this arrangement, which relates to his series lessons in scale and perspective, deleu engages the building’s formal characteristics in their relationship with the spectator. 22 “luc deleu leaves architecture in the vacuum for new dimensions”, febr. 1970. 23 for a reproduction of this collage, see deleu (2002: 33). 24 see tafuri & dal co (1976: 344-45). 25 see tafuri & dal co (1976: 388). le corbusier alger : urbanisme 1930 © sabam belgium 2006. interstices 07 deleu himself sees the acts of architecture and urbanism as making available a structure or support that can lend itself to distinctive appropriation. the array of the collective is seen as a condition and guarantee of individual completion. the advent of the city would then occur in the encounter between architecture’s singular formal determination and the chorus of interpretative particular actions. in fact, this hypothesis is to be found throughout his work and serves as justifi cation for the approach adopted in the unadapted city. deleu found a convincing representation of the concept in le corbusier’s well-known sketch intended to demonstrate the freedom of habitat within the structures of plan obus.26 but this drawing, whilst a statement of the intention to retain the diversity of habitat, seems to reduce communal life to cohabitation. likewise, and equally far from providing any scheme that could lead to the creation of a community, the prototype habitat ’67 puts forward an image of the richness and complexity of built structure, while plug-in-city fl aunts itself as a technological fantasy, carefully avoiding any involvement with societal questions. the analysis and the critique of the conditions under which building happens, and of its institutional and societal context, were nevertheless of much concern in those days. it was a time of resistance and refl ection. the fact that this attitude produced no lasting results has been attributed to the inability of architects to carry this refl ection to its conclusion, which would have meant questioning their own function and their fi erce attachment to autonomy.27 among all the projects of that time, those which are still relevant today are those which stand out as having a radical approach. a project like archizoom’s no stop city: 26 he made this an epigraph to deleu (1990), an issue being entirely devoted to his work. le corbusier gave this drawing the ironic caption: “every architect will make the house he wants, just imagine!” 27 see tafuri & dal co (1976: 390). collage, 1970 31 does not make a decisive break with what went before – the modern city – but extrapolates it, intensifi es it, accelerates it. the radicals bring future time closer ... and propose a rear vision that forces one to look at what exists so as to operate its critique. the ‘project’ work amounts to giving explicit form to an invisible reality: to invent or imagine the world that is already there (rouillard, 1994: 432). all that remains in plan obus by way of eloquence and relevance to the present time is due to the shift in viewpoint brought about by its radical moves. the unadapted city is close to italy’s architettura radicale to the extent that it performs a savage extrapolation from phenomena detected in reality, but torn from their context and looked at from the new perspective of an autonomous project. vipcity is just like no stop city, potentially infi nite and isotropic. like no stop city, it turns utopia upside down, replacing an imagined fi nality by the projection of an ‘image’. it is the radicalized image of a devious present, slyly hiding beneath the bubbling of the everyday, seemingly waiting for this one occasion to loom up.28 the last two monographs on deleu’s project seem aimed at reframing it in concrete terms. in la ville inadaptée/luc deleu (theys, 2001), the project is presented against a background of site photographs, references to le corbusier’s work and images of navigation. luc deleu – urbi et orbi (deleu, 2002) contains about fi fteen full-page photographs of chandigarh today. it is clear that they must serve as imported context, illustrating the informal and apparently chaotic use of equipment and land. the pictures of the housing sectors connote the idea that the city comes to life through the interpretative adoption of its structures. but the exact role of the views of the capitol, such as that of la fosse de la considération (the trench of consideration), is more enigmatic. 28 for this idea of utopia being overturned, see rouillard (1994: 432). chandigarh building market, photo : luc deleu, © sabam interstices 07 tafuri associates the capitol’s “listening chambers” with the poetics of the ”unappeased desires” evoked in the open-air room of le corbusier’s beistégui apartment on the champs elysées (tafuri, 1985: 11).29 in that ”room surrounded by empty space” … ”where one can see only fragments of the town’s horizon”, he sees ”the last refuge, ruled by the silence and the wide”(11). it is a place ”of programmed isolation” that ”breaks with any ordinary accord”(11). this silence, which remains ”mercilessly separated from the theoretical landscape to which he entrusts his own social messages”(11), will give way to the din of plan obus. but it is the same desire, here turned into unrestrained appetite, that strikes it with the seal of alienation. the unifi cation promised by modernism would remain unattainable. the breach opened by the antithesis of ”perfect rest” and ”frenzied celebration” is endorsed by the disenchantment modelled in the oxymoron of vipcity. as a project, the unadapted city revisits architecture’s recent history, recounting its memories of illusion and disappointment. it refl ects on its condition, speculates on its task and destiny. it is in this sense that le corbusier’s work serves as a mirror. but, already now, the features of the work merge with those of the author. the specular image seems to outline an ideal of ambition and perseverance; that of an intellectual activity that claims to act as a lever on society while at the same time jealously preserving its independence. however eminent the model may be, it is bound to be a mirage. if the poetics of isolation endeavour to reforge architecture from the inside, they also stand for abandonment. by envisioning architecture as introspection they are liable to detach it from this world. by digging into it in search of depth they threaten to leave it empty. in his spiritual testimony, which betrays a large measure of bitterness, ”father corbu”30 reminds us in a profession of faith that ”nothing is transmissible but 29 apartment for charles de beistégui, paris, 1930-31. 30 le corbusier (1970). in this text he refers to himself as “père corbu.” chandigarh, capitol, the trench of consideration photo : luc deleu © sabam 33 thought, nobility of the fruit of our labours” (le corbusier, 1970: 172). the poetics of isolation dazzle us with their corollary: they designate ‘work’ as one of the last places where the transmission of meaning can be understood as reciprocal: life comes through men, or else men come through life. in this way all kinds of effects arise. look at the surface of the water ... look also at all the sky-blue fi lled with the good that man will have done ..., for in the end, it all comes back to the sea ... (le corbusier 1970: 168). references: bekaert, g. (1991). luc deleu, a self-power man. archis (4), 22-36. châtel, g. (1999). luc deleu. in de kooning, m. (ed.), horta and after, 25 masters of modern architecture in belgium (pp. 276-287). ghent: ghent university. châtel, g. (2001a). le projet d’une ville inadaptée. in theys, h. (ed.), la ville inadaptée/luc deleu (pp. 42-56). toulouse: editions ecocart. châtel, g. (2001b). les tours de barcelone. in theys, h. (ed.), la ville inadaptée/luc deleu (p.40). toulouse: editions ecocart. châtel, g. (2002). de voet en de zeemijl, een architecturale poëtica van de nabijheid en een verte. in rombauts, w. (ed.), 10 jaar cultuurprijs ku-leuven (pp. 26-34). louvain: k.u.leuven. châtel, g. & davidts, w. (2003). the lightness and seriousness of the project. janus (4), 32-37. châtel, g. (2004). car pour fi nir tout retourne à la mer – vipcity ou la mise en scène d’une fi liation. cahiers thématiques architecture, histoire/conception (ivfiliation(s)), 197-210. davidts, w. (1999). interview with luc deleu, 1st may 1998. in de meyer, r., davidts, w & verschaffel, b. (eds.), de ferraris & conscience, stills. brussels/ghent: vlaamse gemeenschap. deleu, l. (1990). earth, passengers and building. forum (34/1, march), 4-14. deleu, l. (1991). luc deleu & t.o.p. offi ce, 1967-1991, exhibition catalogue. antwerp: muhka. deleu, l. (1996). the unadapted city work in progress nai96, exhibition catalogue. rotterdam: nai publishers. deleu, l. (2002). urbi et orbi. ghent & amsterdam: ludion. le corbusier (1970). rien n’est transmissible que la pensée. in boesiger, w. (ed.), oeuvres complètes, volume 8, les dernières œuvres (pp. 168-172). zürich: editions girsberger les éditions de l’architecture artemis. koolhaas, r. (1995). las vegas of the welfare state. in o.m.a., koolhaas, r. & mau, b. s, m, l, xl (pp. 861-887). rotterdam: 010 publishers. rouillard, d. (1994). archizoom. in dethier, j. & guiheux, a. (eds.), la ville, art et architecture en europe 1870-1993 (pp.432-433). paris: editions du centre pompidou. tafuri, m. (1985). machine et mémoire. in brooks, h. a. (ed.), the le corbusier archive, vol x, new york/paris 1983-84, as translated in dutch by van der ploeg, k. wonen/tabk, (5) 10-25. tafuri, m. & dal co, f. (1976). modern architecture. new york: harry n. abrams, inc. publishers. theys, h. (ed.). (2001). la ville inadaptée/luc deleu. toulouse: editions ecocart. van der woud, a. (1983). ciam housing town planning. delft: delft university press. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 112 p r e s e n c e interstices: journal of architecture and related arts is an open forum for the dissemination of architecture and thought. it is a non-profit journal published once a year. to remain independent, interstices relies upon institutional and private support to fund its editorial production. annual individual sponsorship is available from $500; corporate sponsorship from $1,000; and institutional sponsorship from $3,000. sponsors will receive full acknowledgement of their contribution in each issue of interstices for which they are a sponsor and on the journal’s website (https://interstices.ac.nz/ index.php/interstices). this issue is supported by school of art + design, auckland university of technology, school of architecture & planning, university of auckland (institutional sponsors) and moller architects, architectus, warren and mahoney, jasmax cheshire architects, augustus architects, acs architects and salmond reed architects (corporate sponsors) executive editors andrew douglas, julia gatley, susan hedges co-ordinating editor susan hedges issue editors andrew douglas, susan hedges, ross jenner contributors this issue nina boyd, konrad buhagiar, john dixon hunt, andrew douglas, carl douglas, guillaume dreyfuss, mark jackson, ephraim joris, felipe lanuza rilling, adrian lo, jules moloney, nicola short, jan smitheram, simon twose and stepan vaneyan design and typography catherine griffiths typefaces founders grotesk, tiempos text klim type foundry production andrew douglas, catherine griffiths, susan hedges, ross jenner, joanne mathers published by enigma : he aupiki, auckland, new zealand december 2019 issn 1170-585x (print) issn 2537-9194 (online) this work is entitled to the full protection given by the copyright act 1962 to the holders of the copyright and reproduction of any substantial passage from the work except for the educational purposes therein specified is a breach of the copyright of the author and/or publisher. this copyright extends to all forms of photocopying and any storing of material in any kind of information retrieval system. interstices: journal of architecture and related arts takes a nonexclusive copyright in the papers submitted and accepted, i.e., we reserve the right to publish and republish the paper (for instance, electronically). authors are welcome to upload their papers in published form into their institution’s research repository. they retain the right to republish their papers elsewhere, provided that they acknowledge original publication in interstices. all applications by third parties, for reproduction in any form, should be made to the executive editors. submissions the editors invite submissions of articles, reports, book and project reviews, and translations. all correspondence should be addressed to the editors, interstices, school of art + design, aut university, private bag 92006, auckland 1020, new zealand. books for review and advertising should be forwarded to the executive editors, above. notes and guidelines for contributors can be found at https://interstices.ac.nz/index. php/interstices/information_for_ contributors acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the support of the very many people who have contributed to the realisation and quality of interstices 19 in various ways—including, ross anderson, chris barton, mike davis, peggy deamer, mark dorrian, campbell drake, carl douglas, mark jackson, manfredo manfredini, jules moloney, maria o’connor, rafik patel, albert refiti, christoph schnoor, kathy waghorn, paul walker. thanks to catherine griffiths and joanne mathers for designing and copy editing this issue. if we have inadvertently overlooked anyone, we apologise. thanks also to the school of art + design at auckland university of technology, and the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland. and, finally, a big thank-you to all the contributors to interstices 19. www.interstices.ac.nz editorial advisory board aotearoa/new zealand mike austin (unitec institute of technology), a.-chr. (tina) engels-schwarzpaul (auckland university of technology), dan fleming (university of waikato), gavin hipkins (university of auckland), robert jahnke (massey university), ross jenner (university of auckland), laurence simmons (university of auckland) australia suzie attiwill (rmit university), jillian hamilton (queensland university of technology), mirjana lozanovska (deakin university), john macarthur (university of queensland), jeff malpas (university of tasmania), vivian mitsogianni (rmit university), jules moloney (rmit university), deborah van der plaat (university of queensland), sam spurr (university of new south wales), paul walker (university of melbourne) germany ursula baus (frei04-publizistik, stuttgart), uta brandes (köln international school of design) italy renato rizzi (università iuav di venezia, architect trento), nigel ryan (architect, rome) sweden hélène frichot (kth royal institute of technology) tunisia bechir kenzari uk mark dorrian (edinburgh college of art), jonathan hale (university of nottingham), anthony hoete (what_architecture, london), sally jane norman (university of sussex), peg rawes (the bartlett school of architecture), joseph rykwert (emeritus paul philippe cret professor) usa peggy deamer (yale university), mark goulthorpe (mit, decoi architects paris), jonathan lamb (vanderbilt university), david leatherbarrow (university of pennsylvania), moana nepia (university of hawai’i at mānoa) colophon n t e r s t i ct i c e s 1 9i n jjoo uu rrnn aa ll oo ff aa rrcc hh it ec tu re dddd rrrreeee llllaaaa tttteeee dddd aaaa rrrttt sss a n d r the track ... extends through the site, weaves through the bracken (natural), meets and touches the hut (architecture), and continues its "journey". the "visitor" acts in the same way. the visitor's arrival is passive: to pass by, maybe, a place to rest, a place to pause , to catch one's breath. architecture (hut) is also revealed as a "moment in time"; to pause, to escape from the grandeur and shelter amongst "a minute part of the whole" . . . . this is a point, a moment, where architecture and the visitor(track), relate and meet, and share a mutual dialogue (both are in the act of pausing). both the visitor and hut leave the ground to retreat. the relationship amongst site, visitor and architecture is "understood". .. . a log lies silent once a tree, frozen, gentle, quietly sleeping, peaceful and harmless. a detail. a detail of architecture? a detail amongst the grandeur of the site, lost, forgotten, a memory, protected. a hidden detail (that no one sees), undisturbed, waiting . waiting to be found; discovered . . . . architecture to be disclosed, discussed, and realised . . . . to look beneath the skin, to unravel, unearth, realise, the potential, a secret nature, the rhythms of time, texture, colour, form, structure. to witness a thousand years, before people. i ask is this history, is this ancient times? ... to reflect to stop, to rest, to pause. i am a visitor, greetings. ... ....., __ ~..,,,, ... _ ""';~-·_, ·~ =~-=-·---4 -~" ~ ........ ,.-rrt'w.~ .. plan elevation rewi thompson carter holt harvey environmental award registered architect first place 1994 photography lynn logan ' . 101 • interstices02.indb 85 “i am”: colin mccahon genius or apostle? laurence simmons genius genius is a most diffi cult subject to talk about, seeming as it does to put us in touch with something other than ourselves, something we may never, perforce, be able to understand, while leaving us open, in the process of investigating and proclaiming it, to be read ourselves as tragic overreachers, lacking in true intellectual humility. the easy scholarly path might be to distance oneself from genius, to re-conceive of it dispassionately, hands off, so we might more accurately represent the truth of its object. or, should that be, its subjects? but just as the closer we seem to approach it the more unknowable it appears, so the more distance we place between it and ourselves the more unknowable genius also seems in its very aloofness. it could be that the question of genius consists in the absence of a relation to knowing. this absence of relation invites at least two different types of evaluation, inexhaustible and contradictory: fi rst there are those who seek to wage war on genius, to chop off its self-conceited head should it appear above the parapet, those who feel threatened by genius and desire ‘to chop down tall poppies’, as we so often say in poppy-less new zealand; and then there are those who relinquish themselves in front of it, lay down in a stupor of timidity and awe that fi nally resolves itself in outright passivity. what links these two efforts, in terms of shared rhetorical energy, is sheer intimidation of mind where language, either through exasperation or linguistic lassitude a sort of stammer of fury or ineptitude meets its unmaking. despite all these problems, i am going to stick with genius, to track it and trace it, to open myself to it (oh, that some of it might rub off!), to discover in each (nearly missed) encounter with it a fundamental inability to know it, completely or objectively, and a fundamental inability to represent it. of course, my encounter here, so far, refl ects that encounter with genie, or genius, which kant faces on the margins of several of his texts. genius is a natural endowment, deep, strange and mysterious. we ought not to expect, kant claims, that genius can explain itself. kant argues that the genius does not himself know; he has not learned and cannot teach what he has produced. elsewhere kant specifi es that we are not dealing with a fl ash of something like inspiration, but rather with the slow and even painful process of improvement.1 this is why genius fl ashes, like an instantaneous phenomenon which manifests itself in intervals, and then disappears again; it cannot be turned on at will like a light. all of this — the occasion of luminous self-dissemination, of the violent fl ash and gaiety of a sudden crisis and loss (but perhaps it is not loss since genius was never sought) of self-knowledge, the invention of the unteachable and unlearnable for kant, exceeds the structure of the possibility of all that which belongs to the specifi cally germanic. genius comes from elsewhere, it arises on foreign territory; by extension, it is foreign 1 genius, kant also says, is the talent capable of “discovering that which cannot be taught or learned” (1974: 234). interstices 07 to philosophy, or at least to the german “temperament of cold refl ection” (kant, 1974 [1798]: 233). but if genius is seen to yield to thought, to surrender and annex itself to the strength of philosophy, this must derive from the way it resists substantialization into an entity that would be opposable to thought. in this sense, although deriving from elsewhere, the absence of a relation to knowing that is genius, is something that can be known. while not offering a detailed history of the concept of genius, i shall draw upon a selection of philosophical perspectives to show how genius entails a process of othering that splits the individual from their gift. individual or individuation? in giorgio agamben’s short essay on “genius”, where he advances a theory of the subject reformulated as the relationship between genius and ‘i’,2 the concept of genius represents “in some way the divine essence of the self” (2006: 94). this implies that the human being is not only consciousness, but that an impersonal, pre-individual element also lives inside us to whose spur we must constantly respond. the subject, suggests agamben, is not an essence but rather a fi eld of tensions that is covered by two joined but opposing forces, moving from the individual to the impersonal and vice-versa. the human being is the result of a complicated dialectic between a part that is impersonal, and not (yet) isolated, and another side marked by individual experience. these forces intersect and they separate out; they can never perfectly merge nor can they completely free themselves from the other. genius is the most intimate but also the most impersonal part of us: “the personalization of that, within us, which surpasses and exceeds ourselves” (95). agamben suggests, “to live with genius means, in this way, to live in the intimacy of an alien being” (96). according to agamben, we all need to come to an accommodation with genius, ”with that inside us which does not belong to us” (98). let us take the example of the writer: the desire to write signifi es an impersonal power to write somewhere inside me. the paradox is that i write to become impersonal. however, by writing i become identifi ed as the author of this or that work, which in turn becomes personalized. thus, says agamben, i perforce distance myself “from genius, who may never have the form of an ‘i’, and even less that of an author” (96). every effort of my authorial ‘i’ to appropriate genius is destined to fail, for “only a work that is revoked and undone can be worthy of genius” (96). genius or apostle? in both his aesthetic pseudonymous works, and those ethical and religious writings published under his own name, kierkegaard reminds us that he speaks without authority. he says in his essay “on my work as an author”, “from the very beginning, i have stressed and repeated unchanged that i was ‘without authority’. i regard myself rather as a reader of the books, not as the author” (1998a [1851]: 12). the question of authorship is covered more extensively by kierkegaard in the book on adler of which only one chapter, entitled ”of the difference between a genius and an apostle”, was published during kierkegaard’s lifetime. it responded to the writings of adolf peter adler (1812-1869), a minor 2 genius is linked etymologically with generare, or generation as the personifi cation of sexual energy, and ingenium as the apex of innate physical and moral qualities of the person who comes into being. 87 danish preacher. in 1843 adler published a collection of his sermons in which he distinguished between those he had written in the normal manner, and those he had written assisted by what he called the spirit. the following year he was suspended by the bishop of mynster and in 1845, following an inquiry, he was deposed. adler later conceded his revelation was a mistake; but then, to make matters worse, he declared that his sermons of revelation had really been works of his genius. kierkegaard’s writing about adler is a mixture of sympathy for someone who has suffered at the hands of authority, and frustration with someone who, he claims, is confused. he also understands adler as a representative of his age, someone who embodies all the contemporary confusion about questions of authority and revelation in the nineteenth century. kierkegaard asserts that adler confuses the categories of genius and divine revelation, or, as he puts it, adler is confused between the state of a genius and that of an apostle, who is associated with the absolute (the religious) and speaking with (divine) authority. what, then, asks kierkegaard, is the nature of authority: is it about doctrinal profundity, excellence or brilliance? he thinks not, since the difference between a learner and a teacher is not simply about understanding the doctrine, but also about “a specifi c quality that enters from somewhere else and qualitatively asserts itself precisely when the content of the statement or the act is made a matter of indifference aesthetically” (1998b [1848]: 175). kierkegaard notes that the apostle speaks directly and under inspiration, and hence with authority. the genius has no such authority. first, the genius belongs to the sphere of immanence, the apostle to the sphere of transcendence (174). the original contributions of genius will eventually be assimilated by others, whereas those of an apostle retain forever their startling newness. secondly, genius is what it is out of its own resources, whereas apostles are apostles by virtue of being appointed by divine authority. thirdly, the goal of genius is fulfi lled in the completion of an immanent work of genius, while an apostle carries out work only in order to fulfi l an “absolute paradoxical teleology”, or a purpose that transcends the work itself (175). thus authority is not immanent but transcendent; it is not rational but paradoxical; it is not a matter of content but of otherness or heterogeneity, of coming from elsewhere. kierkegaard reverses the traditional view of genius by declaring the apostle to be the anti-genius: qualitatively different, a genius and an apostle belong each in different qualitative spheres of immanence and transcendence. when kierkegaard defi nes the genius by what he is by himself (in himself), and an apostle by what he is by his divine authority, he refers to the traditional defi nition of genius as a passive endowment or gift that has no active component. “genius, as the word itself says (ingenium, the innate, primitivity (primus), originality (origo), pristineness, etc.), is immediacy, natural qualifi cations the genius is born” (175). kierkegaard’s genius is only a temporary exception and paradox, while the apostle is absolute. a genius may be paradoxical in his fi rst communication, but the more he comes to himself the more the paradoxical vanishes. the apostle is fi rst and foremost difference: “it is different with an apostle. the word itself (it means ‘one who is sent’ in greek) indicates the difference. an apostle is not born; an apostle is a man who is called and appointed by god and sent by him on a mission” (176). this is what kierkegaard designates as “the paradoxical-religious relation” (181). interstices 07 in philosophical fragments (1985 [1844]), kierkegaard makes a distinction between philosophy and theology over this question of the transferential relationship to truth. whereas, in traditional philosophy, a philosopher like socrates is only the midwife for a timeless and eternal truth, in christian doxa the truth of a statement lies, not in what is said, but, in the authority of the one who speaks. the truth of christ’s message lies not in any actual content but in the very fact that christ said it. this is the meaning behind kierkegaard’s insistence, undoubtedly a little strange to our ears, that those who believe what christ is saying because of what he says, reveal themselves not to be christian: christians, on the contrary, believe what christ is saying because it is said by christ (93). yet it is not quite as simple as this, for despite his absolute personal authority, christ is also only an empty vessel for the word of another. in other words, christ only possesses authority because he carries the higher transcendent word of god. it is in what he transmits and not in christ himself that his power lies. or, to use kierkegaard’s own distinction, christ is not so much a genius as an apostle. this seems to pose a dilemma, for while the authority of christ lies not in what he says but only in his personal authority, he only retains this personal authority insofar as he transmits directly and without mediation the word of god. what then lies at the impossible intersection of these two sets christ’s life and his teachings? how may we think together these two elements that at once exclude and necessitate each other? practical religion the second chapter of the letter of james, especially verses 17-21, was søren kierkegaard’s favorite passage of scripture. “yea, a man may say, thou hast faith, and i have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and i will shew thee my faith by my works” (james 2: 18 king james version). 3 for kierkegaard, this was an important parable about the reading of scripture. taking up the metaphor, he argued for an understanding of god’s word as a mirror in which one should observe oneself and not merely as a doctrine, “something impersonal and objective”. for, if you want to relate impersonally (objectively) to god’s word, there can be no question of looking at yourself in the mirror, because it takes a personality, an i, to look at oneself in a mirror … while reading god’s word you must incessantly say to yourself: it is i to whom it is speaking; it is i about whom it is speaking (1990 [1851]: 43-44). i want to suggest that this statement of kierkegaard’s is critical to colin mccahon’s understanding of his own painting, and is also an effective mechanism for considering how his use of biblical quotations in painting can be conceived autobiographically. i shall endeavour to weave all these themes together through an examination of a series of works by mccahon entitled practical religion, in particular the subgroup based on the letter of james. the most elemental feature of these works is their form. these paintings, now popularly known as scrolls, are crayon and wash texts on blank wallpaper stock. 3 kierkegaard declared the letter of james to be his only love, to which he returned again and again. 89 according to mccahon scholar and biographer gordon h. brown, “the scrolls were all produced in 1969, most during august or september” (2003: 3). mccahon eventually completed 72 scrolls that were hung together edge to edge to create an installation at the barry lett galleries in october 1969, of which practical religion, containing instructions for everyday life drawn from the letter of james, was a subgroup. in terms of art historical tradition, mccahon’s paintings also allude to the visualization of oral sequences of words and sentences painted on a scroll, frequently found in renaissance paintings.4 mccahon’s choice to illustrate (or appropriate?) the letter of james is as unusual as kierkegaard’s appreciation of it was. in the seventeenth century, luther had dismissed the letter as “an epistle of straw”, and it was far from popular in the twentieth century – often rejected as lacking unity (williams, 1965: 92). this raises another point about the practical religion subseries, the question of its address. the key to understanding james is the rhetorical fi gure of paraenesis or protrepsis, an exhortation that employs traditional ethical teaching and consists mainly of short sayings and commands. james is full of these: “do not deceive yourselves, my friends” (1: 16); “only be sure that you act on the message and do not merely listen” (1: 22); “come close to god, and he will come close to you” (4: 8). the letter begins with the stereotypical traditional epistolary form of opening (of x to y), “from james, a servant of god and of the lord jesus christ. greetings to the twelve tribes dispersed throughout the world” (james 1: 1). the question of address raises the question of authorship and, in the case of mccahon’s painting, the question of the appropriation of another’s (james’s) address. this address, in using words of another, implies a certain self-absence. when mccahon calls up speech, or at least a voice, we might say that his is an avowal, in the sense of the root of the english word avow to call to one’s aid the voice or speech of another.5 the advocate, another word from the same root, is called to speak in place of the other, to lend his or her voice to the other’s cause. i want to argue that this process is embedded in the selections from the letter of james which mccahon chooses to illustrate. as the body is dead … (1969), a painting on hardboard, draws upon james 2 (not 3 as mccahon incorrectly suggests in the upper right corner), verses 16, 18 and 26, from a section that looks at the relation between faith and action.6 i want refl ect upon the two texts in the lower half of the painting. the wider textual context for the phrase is verse 18: but someone may object “here is one who claims to have faith and another who points to his deeds.” to which i reply: “prove to me that this faith you speak of is real though not accompanied by deeds, and by my deeds i will prove to you my faith” (james 2: 18 new english bible, emphases added). part of james’s reply (italicized) is quoted by mccahon, and it is this very verse which, in giving the views of an unidentifi ed objector, is ambiguous. mccahon gives the response to the unnamed objector. we need to ask who is the person speaking? who is the objector? is he speaking as a friend or opponent of james? could the person speaking (objecting) be james himself, or james projecting himself? the words mccahon adopted from the new english bible, “to which i reply”, are not to be found in the greek original. that is, there is nothing in the 4 for instance, in jacobello del fiore’s 1421 justice between the archangels michael and gabriel. in renaissance painting a scroll often identifi ed its bearer as an old testament prophet. the inscriptions on these scrolls were often legible, especially when the individual was associated with a familiar text, such as the ‘ecce angelus dei’ of st john the baptist. in many cases the writing was illegible or false, for example fi ctive hebrew. a scroll also often signifi ed speech and sometimes emanated from the speaker’s mouth while a codex signifi ed writing. the most familiar example of visualized speech is the dialogue between gabriel and the virgin mary at the annunciation. see sparrow (1969) and covi (1986). 5 voice is a multi-semic notion with divergent meanings. the grammatical category of voice refers to the speaker of an utterance, the implicit or explicit ‘i’ supposedly speaking. it also refers to the form in which this subject speaks, the register. in the analysis of narratives, the concept enables us to address the question ‘who speaks? ’ and thus almost automatically entails the question of intention. with its connotation of bodiliness the term voice brings to mind jacques derrida’s critique of the preference for voice over writing in of grammatology. for a discussion of the voice of prophetic suffering in mccahon see pound (1993: 3-12). 6 colin mccahon, as the body is dead … (james 3: practical religion), 1969, acrylic on hardboard, private collection, auckland, [cm 1625]. interstices 07 greek to make it clear that a change of speaker is intended, which would imply that james speaks the words of the objector, too. the phrase reproduced in capitals from verse 16 at the bottom of the painting is similarly fraught with ambiguity. the wider textual context for this phrase is: my brothers, what use is it for a man to say he has faith when he does nothing to show it? can that faith save him? suppose a brother or sister is in rags with not enough food for the day, and one of you says, ”good luck to you, keep yourselves warm, and have plenty to eat”, but does nothing to supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? so with faith; if it does not lead to action, it is in itself a lifeless thing (james 2: 14-17, emphases added). “good luck to you ...” is a voice projected by the voice of james on to one of us, you or i. in some way we are made to say this phrase: “one of you says” it tells us. but it is also a phrase that comes from the outside, that is uttered by james and in turn avowed by mccahon in his painting. mccahon, too, makes us speak the phrase by putting it in quotation marks. in both examples, the question ‘who speaks?’ is thus foregrounded through the problems of trying to project mccahon’s voice into the textual space of the painting, and our own imbrication as reader/spectators in its saying. in a sense, the ‘who speaks?’ is doubly removed, for the voice is lifted from its original reference in the new english bible which already contains a shadowy interlocutor whether that be the objector, or ourselves or ultimately, of course, god. mccahon’s work also raises important methodological questions. what does it mean to represent the voice in painting, silently, pictorially? how can the word (or the word) be sent to sight? where is the site of that sending? how might we hear the voice with our eye, or with our ‘i’? mccahon’s work implies a shift of both the voice and its signs towards the fi gural. it explores the connection between voice and motifs of visual representation, where the voice is manifested in the syncopes of the fi gurative mechanism, the signs that mark the space between saying and inscription. his choice and painting of text strains towards the moments where the force of the voice shows itself to the gaze, and where it reveals the things that allow us to hear a voice in painting. these works struggle with, and through, the attempt to make the force of the voice visible. this struggle is also reinforced by the way the words are painted: how the section referencing the living deeds of faith is placed above the horizontal line we might take to represent the earth’s surface; how the capital “p” of “prove” and the word “accompanied” are given special painterly emphasis. even through its very materiality, mccahon’s painting in this instance can be understood as a theoretical object that interrogates the relations of convertibility between saying and seeing. this relation is heightened in those of mccahon’s paintings which take the word as their subject matter. the presence of the voice in these paintings does not only have to do with a sequence articulated in words or sentences on the scroll or painting that might be read, but it resides in the moments in which a given sentence or formula was pronounced. let me offer a few more examples from practical religion. “a word with you …”, from james 4: 13-17, begins one scroll.7 the voice (of james? of mccahon?) ascribes again a voice for you and i: “you who say, ‘today or tomorrow we will go 7 colin mccahon, a word with you … (james 5: practical religion), 1969, conte crayon on wallpaper stock, private collection, [cm 56]. 91 off to such and such a town and spend a year there trading and making money’” (13, emphasis added); and “what you ought to say is: ‘if it be the lord’s will, we shall live to do this or that’” (15, emphasis added). the letter of james also thematicizes the question of speech, the importance and the dangers of the tongue. it is not by chance that in the fi rst scroll i referred to, at the bottom of the text separated out from the rest, we fi nd the verse: “so with the tongue. it is a small member but it can make huge claims” (james 3: 5).8 two scrolls, based on the text from the letter, look at the consequences of uncontrolled speech. “and the tongue is in effect a fi re” (6), “out of the same mouth come praises and curses” (10) (james 3: 6-12 and 10-12).9 it is also signifi cant that an important painting like victory over death 2 (1970), which i cannot discuss here, has recently been read, with its monumental ‘i am’, as intensifying “the uncertainty that surrounds the fi gure of the written ‘i’ in mccahon’s art” (smythe, 2004: 28). while not labelling it as such on the canvas, mccahon was careful to note in his survey exhibition catalogue that this painting “belongs to the practical religion series a simple i am at fi rst. but not so simple really as doubts do come in here too. i believe, but don’t believe” (1972: 29).10 (auto)biography mccahon’s work has long been studied from an (auto)biographical perspective, relying on the artist’s own statements to analyse his paintings. until recently, the fi gure of the painter colin mccahon may have profoundly affected critical response to his work, perhaps even straight-jacketed it. “my painting is almost entirely autobiographical — it tells you where i am at any given point, where i am living and the direction i am pointing in”, claims mccahon (26). i am intrigued by the notion of mccahon somehow ‘destining’ or ‘programming’ his fate, how his work is actually about this destiny or destination and how it both predicts and creates for itself a future. this is, indeed, close to the idea of religious prophecy (and thus can be linked to mccahon’s subject matter), but this sense of fate or destiny cannot be separated from the day-to-day machinations of actually creating an artistic reputation in a small settler culture with a nascent art market. again, the point here is that this sense of destiny is not to be thought of as somehow contrary to mccahon’s religious beliefs (either in the sense of a willless predestination or a lack of christian charity), but is absolutely the expression of them. in other words, mccahon’s religiosity and his art-world manipulations should not be seen as opposed: the two are absolutely the same thing. it should also be clear that i do not fi nd mccahon’s actions, in a moral sense, reprehensible in any way.11 as the fi rst stage of this investigation let me briefl y examine the actual specifi cs and mechanics of the production of mccahon’s reputation; how he systematically set about to do all the things possible that would ensure his work’s future, to diminish his rivals, etc. in the early 1940s mccahon worked in relative obscurity and had little in the way of a media profi le. however, during 1947 and 1948, mccahon’s public profi le swung to the opposite extreme, as he consciously organized a medley of one-person shows at various locations throughout the entire country: dunedin’s modern books, the lower hutt public library, the helen hitchings gallery in wellington, amalgamated studios in auckland, numerous 8 colin mccahon, my brothers not many among you … (james 3: practical religion), 1969, water-based crayon and wash on wallpaper stock, [cm 63]. 9 respectively, what a huge stack of timber… (james 3: practical religion), 1969, conte crayon on wallpaper stock, private collection, [cm 79]; and out of the same mouth come praises … (james 3: practical religion, 1969, charcoal and traces of watercolour on wallpaper stock, private collection, [cm 960]. 10 another painting which does contain the inscription is the equally monumental practical religion: the resurrection of lazarus showing mt martha (1969-70). see my discussion of this work (2003: 11-27). 11 my itinerary is selective and i am drawing upon the copious detail of a recent superbly researched phd thesis on mccahon by richard lummis (2004). interstices 07 group shows in christchurch. although these venues might seem inauspicious to us today, this frenzied exposure was a remarkable feat in the cultural context of the day, and mccahon’s stock accordingly rose. he was taken up as the critics’ cause célèbre and these exhibitions generated over 19 published critical responses, including those from a.r.d. fairburn, james k. baxter, j.c. beaglehole, rita angus, louis johnson and charles brasch. at this early point mccahon’s art was visited and sustained by some of new zealand’s most articulate voices. mccahon’s ascendancy was meteoric, and the volume of writing his work provoked was unprecedented. this was even more remarkable in that the arts scene of the time was devoid of even the most rudimentary infrastructures that might aid any aspiring career-minded artist. the making of mccahon as a fi gure of national notoriety also had much to do with his intimacy with charles brasch, most obviously in brasch’s capacity as editor of landfall. but brasch also took on mccahon as a talent in need of fostering, mentoring and fi nancing. not only did he regularly buy works directly, he also facilitated commissions, gifted money and fi nanced mccahon’s trip to australia in 1951. the activities of the writers who helped put mccahon on the map are well-documented in the archives and the critical literature. mccahon has often been characterized, and increasingly mythologized, as a victim of widespread critical and ad hominem hostility particularly at the outset of his career. in contrast to these sentimental accounts of the artist’s heroic struggle it would be more profi table to establish how the impediments, and at times negative response, in fact contributed to the discursive invention and institutionalization of mccahon, how the negative talk might have helped a prominent profi le. profanation let me now see if i can bring my various threads together. what holds together agamben’s reformulation of the subject as a process of individuation between ‘i’ and genius, kierkegaard’s distinction between a genius and an apostle, and mccahon’s insistence upon practical religion and his worldliness as a sign of his genius, is that they all involve a mediation between the sacred and profane. before proceeding any further, it is necessary to distinguish here between secularization and profanation. secularization is a form of displacement which leaves basic forces intact; for example, the secularization of theological concepts of politics simply shifts heavenly power to an earthly form but leaves intact the nature of that power. profanation, on the other hand, implies a neutralization of that which is profaned. once it has been profaned, that which was separate and untouchable loses its aura and is returned to use. sacer (sacred) is, in latin, that which is separated, put aside, subtracted from common usage and, in opposition, profane is that which escapes this separation (etymologically pro fanum means before, or outside, the temple). to profane something signifi es touching the sacred in order to liberate it. agamben notes: “to profane signifi es opening the possibility of a special form of negligence, which ignores the separation, or rather, makes a special use of it” (2005: 85). one of those special uses, i have attempted to argue here, is art or more precisely painting. within the destining or programming of a career, the authenticity of a work of art is reduced to an institutional framing, and to a signature whose reference is precisely the possibility of commodifi cation. as we have seen, the circula 93 tion of mccahon’s painting cannot do without myths, prophets, paymasters and priests explaining and interpreting it, and i fear that i may have become just one more in that long line. this is not to deny that commodifi cation may incorporate within it the paradox of refl exivity. the problem that the work undergoes as its condition of existence (the impossibility of avoiding the art system) becomes, or can be read as, the theme of the work, its destiny. in this sense, mccahon’s work is about its self, its own fate, as it attempts to mediate between the spiritual and the practical, the sacred and the profane. this is why, in a version of ventriloquism, we fi nd mccahon taking on a voice, to lose his own voice, to fi nd it again. as agamben has reminded us in an interview: when your life becomes a work of art, you are not the cause of it. … at this point you feel your own life and yourself as something ‘thought’, but the subject, the author, is no longer there. the construction of life coincides with what foucault referred to as ‘se deprendre de soi’ (2004: 613). foucault’s phrase is diffi cult to translate; it has all the connotations of ‘to shake free of the self’, ‘getting rid of oneself’, ‘detaching oneself from oneself’, ‘unlearning oneself’, ‘taking oneself out of oneself’. genius is an issue here precisely because it evades our grasp and takes us out of ourselves. as agamben has noted, “when we love someone we don’t really love his genius, nor his character (and even less his “i”), but we love the special way he has of eluding both of these” (2006: 9). despite, but also because of, his best intentions, mccahon himself cannot fall outside of the structure of passage from the profane to the sacred and the sacred to the profane, nor can his work. so we might say that mccahon’s work falls between jean-luc nancy’s two precepts regarding the contemporary christian framework: “the only current christianity is one that contemplates the present possibility of its negation”; and “the only current atheism is one that contemplates the reality of its christian roots” (nancy, 2001: 113). this is the exceptional place that mccahon occupies in terms of the religious today. it is an exceptional place less in terms of the question of the religious than in terms of the religious as a question.12 let me conclude, then, by suggesting that mccahon was no apostle, despite his aspirations to be one, but he was perhaps a genius. references agamben, g. (2004). an interview with giorgio agamben. interview by ulrich raulff in german law journal (5, 5 ), 609-614. agamben, g. (2005). profanazioni. rome: nottetempo. agamben, g. (2006). genius (l. simmons, trans.). interstices: a journal of architecture and related arts (7), 94-99 brown, g. h. (2003). an exploratory look at colin mccahon’s use of ‘a letter to hebrews’. in r. taberner (ed.), colin mccahon: a question of faith. papers from a seminar. auckland: auckland city art gallery. 12 see my discussion of mccahon’s relationship to the religious as an example of “what derrida has identifi ed as ‘religion without religion’, a philosophical discourse that would articulate the structural possibility of the religious without professing a determinate, orthodox faith” (2003: 27). interstices 07 covi, d. (1986). the inscription in fifteenth century florentine painting. new york: garland publishing. kant, i. (1974). anthropology from a pragmatic point of view (m. j. mcgregor, trans.). the hague: martinus njhoff. kierkegaard, s. (1985). philosophical fragments/johannes climacus. kierkegaard’s writings 7 (h. v. hong and e. h. hong, trans.). princeton: princeton university press. kierkegaard, s. (1990). for self-examination: judge for yourself! kierkegaard’s writings 21 (h. v. hong and e. h. hong, trans.). princeton: princeton university press. kierkegaard, s. (1998a). the point of view. kierkegaard’s writings 22 (h. v. hong and e. h. hong, trans.). princeton: princeton university press. kierkegaard, s. (1998b). the book on adler kierkegaard’s writings 24 (h. v. hong and e. h. hong, trans.). princeton: princeton university press. lummis, r. (2004). modelling the new zealand artist: rita angus and colin mccahon. unpublished dissertation for the degree of doctor of philosophy, university of otago, dunedin. mccahon, c. (1972). colin mccahon/a survey exhibition. auckland: auckland city art gallery. nancy, j-l. (2001). the deconstruction of christianity. in h. de vries (ed.), religion and media. stanford: stanford university press: 112-130. pound, f. (1993). endless yet never: death, the prophetic voice and mccahon’s last painting. in colin mccahon: the last painting. auckland: peter webb galleries: 3-12. simmons, l. (2003). “i shall go and wake him”: the fi gura of lazarus in colin mccahon’s painting. in r. taberner (ed.), colin mccahon: a question of faith. papers from a seminar. auckland: auckland city art gallery: 11-27. smythe, l. (2004). bill culbert/colin mccahon. auckland: np. sparrow, j. (1969). visible words: a study of inscriptions in and as books and works of art. cambridge: cambridge university press. williams, r. r. (ed.). (1965). the letters of john and james. commentary on the three letters of john and the letter of james. cambridge: cambridge university press. interstices02.indb interstices 07 leonhard emmerling, the new director of aut’s st paul st gallery, put together this show, his fi rst here, in just three months. as will happen with immigrant curators, it juxtaposes the culture he comes from with the culture he is beginning to fi nd here. in this show, he works with german artists and bill viola side-byside with paintings and drawings by colin mccahon and stephen bambury. the main gallery space is about as not-white-cube as you can get: irregular walls and angles, exposed services in a ceiling that feels oppressively low for the width of the space, one long wall and two short, interrupted by a window, more like a loading-bay than a gallery. this set-up fully tests curators’ ability to make anything coherent. leonhard emmerling does well: he has undoubtedly got a good eye for hanging a show, giving work that needs slow thoughtful looking plenty of wall-space; making major juxtapositions out of the different framing effects of the walls; not afraid of irregularities in the lines and groupings on the longest wall; and happy to mix – not easy to do – drawing, painting, photography and, in the two more regular shaped rooms, video. the terms for coherence for this show are laid out in his interesting introductory essay. it covers the ground: landscape as a questioning of mediation of perception; seeing revealed as visionary and seeking the sublime. that works well with most of the imported work, putting in high-relief questions of light, the eye, the perception of something seen as out there, but necessarily elusive and illusionary. in most of them, the instrumentation of lens/camera attempts to make it permanent, fi xed, and pieter rösel’s paintings attempt to do likewise. with bill viola’s chott el djerid video, it is mirages – unnameable constantly shifting images from which slowly fi gures appear, a truck maybe, a camel, motor-bikes; with rösel’s it is again mirages, but unreachable by plein-air painting, because the images are always in fl ux and such painting implies only one sighting of something, more or less constant, pace monet. in a digital video by gerhardt mantz, the views of changing landscape are all fabricated, manipulations evidently schematised by some apparently inner vision. even photography here is, quite properly, problematic as two pairs of two variant views by sylvia henrich dispose of the seemingly evident singularity of what it can say of a place. high up on the gallery’s one pillar, that everyone tries to ignore, is the work that emmerling regards as a paradigm for the whole: bernhard härtter’s egg, a shining stainless steel ovoid, refl ecting in its own re-stating rather than dis-torting mirror-surface whatever for whoever as they pass. these works sweetly cover the ground. the curator’s intelligence shines in the conceptual tightness of the show and the recognition of variations on a central issue among the overseas works. but whether this conception works for the local content is not so clear. it runs into diffi culties with colin mccahon’s ‘necessary protection’ painting and drawing straight away. even the roughest drawings of the series are not the recordings of an eye for a scene. characteristically, as with the northland panels, a decade landscape / inscape review by tony green landscape/inscape exhibition at st paul st gallery april 27 – may 28, 2006 123 earlier, they were done from memory, in the studio. mccahon, in his art, resists every kind of pictorial blandishments, impurities of sense – colour, fi ne fi nish, and charm. it cannot accept pure formal abstraction, because that eliminates exactly the justifi cation for painting, the overriding moral purpose that mccahon clings to. it is diffi cult to see this as other than founded on fear of the biblical taboo on images. his landscapes are, instead, the gradual and diffi cult transformations of characteristic blocks of light and dark – generalities of a scene, never particulars, into a fi eld fi lled with symbols. in their furthest extension, the large necessary protection canvases, the once-seen scene is a lingering specifi c local reference, alongside moral readings that result from a meditation on the crucifi xion. this puritanical art does not elude, however, the beauty of surface effect, the look, of his paintings and drawings, which does not hide their simple feeling for materials, nor spoil moral utterance with virtuoso displays of decoration. instead, with the craft pared down to the most direct means, they they are testaments to integrity. stephen bambury, as emmerling recognises, reverses that which in mccahon’s procedure pushes away from pictorial landscape scene to moral utterance. the little southland panels and the sight line (ix) oaia island are both variants of mccahon images. bambury begins with some simplicity of formal arrangement, but in the working of the materials, allows for the resonance of the formal with those who have used it before, and that the formal carries a symbolic weight. further, his working of medium, resin or patinated metal, is always open to the aleatoric. he allows the medium to throw out suggestions of how paint surface or metal patination can be looked at as fl eeting unstable landscape-like images. in his continuing meditation on mccahon’s painting, bambury, though capable of a range of feeling from the gentlest, as in the small pieces, to terrible intensity in the large trowelled orange resin [priests’ robes] and streaked graphite of angkor ii. in all respects, even in its plain reference to buddhist culture within the format of mccahon’s crucifi xion/necessary protection, bambury is performing his necessary corrections to mccahon. in his opening up of abstraction’ to image, to symbol, to states of feeling, to landscape, bambury fi ts better with the refl ections on landscape in the rest of the show. this show, with its high quality work by artists’ rarely, if ever, seen here before, has usefully opened up some critical issues. bernhard härtter, egg, 1998, metal, private collection, auckland interstices02.indb interstices 07 the passion of ignorance review by lucy holmes at a conference on tertiary education management, in july 2006, kuni jenkins mentioned lacanian psychoanalysis and its principle of the passion of ignorance.1 a leading academic making a place for ignorance seems surprising, as does reference to a fi eld of psychoanalysis yet to fi nd a place, either as theory or as clinical practice, in a new zealand tertiary institution. the fi rst chapter of knowing nothing, staying stupid intimates why this may be so. the analyst’s passion of ignorance is defi ned, not as the absence of knowledge, but as the recognition of the limits of knowledge: as knowledge does not hold all the answers, so the analyst’s knowledge must not be presented as the truth about the patient (25-26). lacanian psychoanalysis focuses not only on the speech of each unique person within a specifi c social formation, but also on how speech is unconsciously marked by the satisfaction and suffering driving the subject’s words. nobus and quinn’s book links these clinical concerns to epistemology, making the case that the unconscious presents us with the limits of our knowledge; its truth is the “human being’s incapacity to master all knowledge owing to the absence of a knowing agency at the level of the unconscious” (49). in the context of tertiary education, to speak of the passion of ignorance implies a challenge to education to account for the ‘other’ of academic reason. in contrast to a lacanian epistemology, contemporary universities tend to rationalise all knowledge in terms of its market value whose goal is social and economic success (121-122). this implicit denial of the failure and fall of knowledge results in a mania for progress and completion, paradoxically working to hinder the development of academic knowledge (196). similar criticisms have been made of new zealand tertiary education; the knowledge economy provides more funds for those bodies of knowledge “that support competition and economic growth” (harvey, 2003: 4). using lacan’s discourse theory, nobus and quinn explain how the discourse of the university always serves a master – in this case the economy and the market place of ideas. their book explains an important difference between those discourse theories in which ideology fi nds its support in the social practice of language, and lacan’s “discourses [which] are not to be used as keys to the meaning of speech, but as a means of separating speech from meaning” (2005: 128). this separation makes explicit a distinction between the truth of the unconscious as a causal function that “drives and structures speech”, and the view upheld by the knowledge economy of “truth as a consciously achieved effect” (132). the conscious use of speech aims to convey a certain meaning. however, the unconscious undermines intended meaning and its reception; thus, communication entails its failure, no matter how skilled the speaker. in knowing nothing, staying stupid, the role of applied psychoanalysis, and how it might avoid being yet another interpretive procedure servicing the market place, dany nobus and malcolm quinn, knowing nothing, staying stupid: elements for a psychoanalytic epistemology. london: routledge, 2005. 1 2006, 3-4 july. association for tertiary education managers, new zealand branch conference. bay of plenty polytechnic, tauranga. kuni jenkins is interim chief executive offi cer of te whare wanaanga o awanuiarangi, whakatane. 111 is a key question. nobus and quinn present various philosophical and artistic hoaxes – žižek, sokal and duchamp – to explain how the logic of the unconscious redirects the search for an interpretive truth. žižek’s hoax involved his interpretation of a painting about which he knew nothing. however, his listeners, at an art round table, accepted it as a successful interpretation. the hoax is used in his critique of cultural studies’ use of theory to highlight the “radical apathy at the very heart of today’s cultural studies” (žižek, 2001: 6, 130). adding a further twist to the critique, nobus and quinn point out that žižek falls into his own trap when he later applies the same interpretative approach as a legitimate method; thus the critical force of the hoax is lost, changing neither “the relations of ‘the žižekian fi eld’ that secured him a place at the art round table”, nor “the relations within the market place of ideas in which the public discourse on art and psychoanalysis is contained” (2005: 178). as žižek’s readers, we are in the same position as the participants of the art round table, uncritically accepting interpretative mastery. this is a position shared by the editors of the journal social text when they accepted alan sokal’s paper on the basis of the author’s credentials, despite his fraudulent use of cultural theory. sokal disturbed the realm of academic reason by showing that cultural theory (including postmodernism and lacanian theory) is nonsense, a mistaken belief. however, nobus and quinn claim that the consequence of sokal’s hoax demonstrates that “the exchange of nonsense” is able to make perfect sense (190). the affair underlined how the stupidity of signifi ers (i.e., the style of theory-speak used by sokal) constructed an artifi ce, a fabrication, effectively exposing the manoeuvres of academic speech for which there are no “academic subjects to speak, receive, or understand it” (181). the consequences of the hoax exemplify the lacanian theory of discourse, where the separation of speech from meaning may produce an effect that the author did not intend: sokal, unwittingly, proved that lacan makes sense. knowing nothing, staying stupid examines the effects of the hoax on an institutional critique. pierre bourdieu’s admission that his institutional critique ironically perpetuated the success of those institutions, introduces a discussion of duchamp’s submission to the new york independents’ show as an intervention leading to institutional failure and the fall of knowledge. rather than contributing to the independents’ show’s progressive aims – of allowing anyone to enter an art show – duchamp’s action averted institutional and discursive ideals by highlighting progress’ latent possibility of failure (184). for nobus and quinn, this action operates in the same way as the psychical object or artifi ce, which is constructed on the basis of the unconscious effects in speech, and on which the patient’s fantasy is articulated and traversed. the analyst’s position of misunderstanding, of playing the dummy hand – as with the gap made by the work of art – defl ects the patient’s request for interpretation, allowing space for a strange nonrelational form of knowledge at the limits of representational systems. this book’s critical potential lies in its advocacy of a form of knowledge “that is no longer relational, that essentially disrupts the relational quality of any discursive structure” (5). the unconscious occurs in the discontinuities of speech, thought and action, and interrupts communication between self and others. the non-relational stupidity of the unconscious may seem regressive when compared with the emphasis on the intersubjective in certain social constructivist theories and relational aesthetics. a psychoanalytic epistemology is concerned with what interstices 07 continually prevents the full realisation, or closure, of relationality, and instead takes into account the resistances to meaning where the search for knowledge about self and other fails. knowing nothing staying stupid concludes by addressing the question of what use lacanian psychoanalysis is, if it does not improve interpretive methodologies. rather than providing a hermeneutical model, a psychoanalytic epistemology offers another paradigm where, like duchamp’s intervention, an apparently negative or spurious act, which seems to invent problems where none exist, or which fails to respect the wish for knowledge to ‘move on’ in search of the latest epistemological trends, is precisely what is needed in order to link knowledge to its effects (197). in the context of a local and global focus on the society of knowledge, in which research is increasingly measured by its market value, the consequences of knowledge become less creative and more constrained.2 an alternative approach to an ethics of knowledge allows for the passion of ignorance, the moment when the failure of knowledge has creative and critical effects. references dyess, c. and dean, t. (2000). gender: the impossibility of meaning. psychoanalytic dialogues, 10, 735-756. harvey, s. (2003). for knowledge society read knowledge economy? one future for tertiary education in new zealand. retrieved 26 june, 2005, from http://surveys.canterbury. ac.nz/herdsa03/pdfsref/y1076.pdf žižek, s. (2001). the fright of real tears: krzysztof kieślowski between theory and post-theory. london: british film institute. 2 sharon harvey’s criticism of the new zealand knowledge society makes a similar argument when she points out that academics tend to decry the processes of the knowledge economy, but are less concerned with the “destination” of knowledge that advances the globally competitive market place (2003: 5). 202 winged entranceway to the architectural exhibitionm. scolari. (photo. chris adams.) l'ingresso alle corderie dell'arsenale massimo scolari (translated by helene furjan) we could explain this sculpture as an expression of that freedom which flying caused in each one of us, as a record of paper wings between school benches, or of enchantment before the giddy evolution of swallows and the majestic gliding of birds of prey. and perhaps we will only succeed in veiling the evidence reminding us of the aeroplanes that streak the sky every day, depicting modernity with the white trails mingled with the breath of the clouds, or the too luminous points of the satellites that deform the ancient perspective of the starry vault. in reality this object has for years flown over my landscapes, slowly crossing their representations. in the porta per citta di mare (biennale, venice, 1980), it hovered among unravelled clouds above an architecture that protected a peaceful cove. after eleven years of motionless acrobatics that glider settled here, at the limit of architectural construction, already freed from the lament for a heroic utility. nothing else has attracted me like the flight in a way as silent and enigmatic, and perhaps has imprisoned that primordial aspiration to the lightness that our freedom has not been able to concede to us. we are able to fall from the sky, but not to rise, we can float or dive, but we cannot hover in the air like the 203 l'ingresso alle corderie most modest of winged creatures. the flights of icarus or simon mago punctuate the history of this inhuman aspiration, they skirt technical impossibilities until they verge on the laughter of the gods. but we are nevertheless able to fly above our corporeality with fantasy . others have invented machines to glide on gravity and wear wings, as had otto lilienthal for the first time, a hundred years ago, gliding from the 13erlin hills of derwitz. this sculpture only wants to understand all those impossible shattered constructions; it doesn't want to represent but to record them, evaporated from every anthropomorphism and deprived of noisy rotations. two identical architectonic elements stolen from the oblique architecture of the arca (triennale, milano 1986) have here been reunited without changing their individual meaning. from their meeting has sprung this archaic glider set down in front of the navy yards of la serenissima, in this labyrinthine place for excellence from whose belly swarmed the might of venice, "cite humide, sexe femelle de l'europe" (apollonaire) . in a great exhibition of architecture this useless sculpture, not functional, not even to itself, finds in the pride of its futility the region of its existence. and in its exhibited exterior scale this sculpture immediately shows a rupture between what it is and what it would like to be in this place. two ideas interpenetrate and incorporate each other without choice except uncertainty. one belongs to the weight of the wall, to the construction of the architecture; the other, born from the simple symmetrical doubling of the first, returns to the aerial lightness, to the flight. the absence of a compact connection between the two wings was built from the compositional principal of the renunciation, first of all of the renunciation of every peripheral solution: only in the truth of this limitation do the effects not exceed the causes. the image of the glider rested silently among rendered walls appears like an intact catastrophe that redeems the accident beyond common sense. i could have wanted to imprint on it an impalpable smile and to restrain the cutting enigma of the artifice. but if none of all this 204 massimo scolari will manage to unite with the real, i would like at least to leave desire suspended on the beautiful verse of melville: "not vastness, not profusion, /but form-place; /not obstinate invention, /but respect for the archetype." 205 a 1hrcc-<lim c nsional t-. focbius strip foldin g hack on it self ti1c foan generated froot 1...cdom:'s shadows u s i~g a prophyl ac ti c a n undcmarcatcd surface merging i11 sidc/outsidc , puhlicjprivmc sexually a111biguous, it dissolves <li scrllniuato11· brnmdarics eng rave d plates of claude nicholas ledoux's ba1/z hous e a l c lrau x and the house for th e agricullura/ guards of maupertuis an overlapping of an ideal of public space with au ideal of pri vate lpace the re sultant fom1: a product of distort ed s urface ten sions ,, a serie s of parall el cuts pcm1i1 s reproduc tion of the fmm mark goulthorpe in the shadow of 1:edoux installation at le magasin, grenoble material dissolution went furthest in our development of a sculptural piece for 'le magasin' in grenoble named 'in the shadow of ledoux'. here we literally poured the form in plastic, squeezing it as the resin set; the form clarifying with time, fading into existence. this form was generated, not in a 'positive' sense, but negatively, from the imagery of ledoux in two of his utopian projects (the 'bath house at chaux' and the 'house for the forest guards of maupertuis ' ); from the shadow, in the shadow in the graphic margins of his oeuvre. it, hangs in the balance between past and future, in a suspension in time (poised in the abyss of the present), in a suspension in space, a suspension of space perhaps. the exhibition 'application and implication' intended to raise the question of the public and private faces of architecture which we felt had changed markedly throughout history, from the strict · symbolic codes of feudal or despotic orders, codifying and controlling the socius, containing desire to the much more diffuse and ambiguous influences of democratic, capitalistic society. no longer limiting or restricting energy, they release it, opening space to the great flows of modernity; flows of money, flows of people, flows of desire . it is a great curving social surface across which everyone is free to circulate, led by desire,by all the mechanisms of capitalist attraction. our question, though, apropos ledoux (last architect of the king, first architect of the modern) (vidler) was whether we still inhabit enlightenment space? whether the fraternal ideals of these utopian projects one public, the other private still capture our imagination? our collage, merging ledoux's social and aesthetic radicalism (hugely transgressive in its time) subverts the still clear demarcation between inside and outside. it problematizes notions of public and private by projecting one into the other. but such violation of ledouxian precedent, a continuing transgression, is not a controlled or measured manoeuvre, for our use of a prophylactic, a condom, as a generative model has resulted in unpredictable and non-geometric volumes. a product of distorted surface tensions, the resulting form, is a nebulous and un-demarcated social surface. curving back on itself (as an almost three-dimensional moebius strip) it creates an invaginated pocket for which it is impossible to define a transition point from inside to outside, from public to private. no longer an architecture which projects itself out into space through elaborate systems of signification, it is codifying space, controlling space . it is the flow of space which invades the architecture a turning inside-out of public space; now a mute and implacable surface. the form sets up a series of oppositional logics which reverberate across time. it is a staged dissolution of demarcated and structured space and the merge and fade of public and private in an indeterminate space of social milieu (ledoux neither really present nor absent). it is a folding back of historical and social issues condensing a form mute yet resonant. it is an irresolute repetition, an altercation. we built the piece with rings of plywood chosen for their laminated, annular intensity which gives the surface a kinetic energy, an oscillation which desubstantiates in some curious way its objectivity. an eroded monolithic form, worn smooth eccentrically, it reveals itself as sedimented, archaeological: a memorial of the instant. in small steel letters, sanded flush with the surface, we embedded the names of the sponsors into thegrain of each ring, creating a very real social surface names flowing across its deterritorialized and undemarcated surface. but each one alone, trapped within their own circuit (the independence and isolation of the post-modern self) emerged as the antithesis of ledoux's idealized fraternity, and this, too, is evoked by the generative model of the condom, the perfect quotidian object for problematizing all boundary conditions: public/private, inside/ outside, self/non-self, the free and unrestricted body of the present unsheathed in a transparent veil. in this sense the object is not simply a 'body without organs' (deleuze and guattari's slippery, unrestricted social surface) but an organ without body, a curiously hermaphrodite modern creature. it is both a tactile promiscuity and a flotation of sexuality (barthes, baudrillard), ambiguous couplings endlessly fracturing, endlessly reconfiguring duets: a 'poetry of the incomplete ... ' 19 • f i-t,. 43 the necessity of beauty renato rizzi the continuous growth of complexity the evolution of the economic, productive and administrative phenomena that characterise the process of transformation those that manifest themselves and translate themselves into a region changing its physical appearance are reaching such a level of complexity and articulation that they render the entire planning system comprehensible only with difficulty. it would be better to say with 'visible' or 'observable' difficulty within a complex horizon, difficulty in verifying with respect to the concrete, physical and material aspects of objective reality. so it is true that to control it this planning system is manipulated into a decomposition of parts (traffic, housing, services, industry, recreational) ramifying its homogeneous subsystems, in an attempt to reduce the complexity, which results, but into a fragmentation unable to restore formal sense to a general planning programme. from this point of view regional planning, forming a hierarchy with respect to the diverse operative levels provincial, district, communal, local is forced to enclose, reunify or at least keep together within proper objectives, the complexity of reality. a reality that, tends to become diluted, ground down, rendered ever more inconsistent, almost transparent because it is seen, analysed, interpreted principally through the abstract filter of technico-normative instrumentation. a reality which shows the weaknesses of the planning system, unfortunately overworking foreseeable aberrations and consequently stressing the defects. from the quantitative to the qualitative condition the state of crisis reached by the regional and urban arrangement only testifies, precisely through the factual evidence, that the brining together of the urbanistic, economic productive programme with the effectual reality produces a great distance between the expectations and the intentions of development and their traditional practices. the phenomenon of the degradation of things in general the environment, the countryside, the city is stressed ultimately in these years because it has passed from a first quantitative phase, concerned with the development of primary needs (house, work, services) to that of a qualitative type renato rizzi, born july 3 1951, rovereto, italy. he graduated from the instituto di archiieciura, universita di venezia (i.a.u.v), and now has his own practice with f allocca in rovereto. together they undertake a broad range of work from exhibition design to large urban projects. in the mid to late 1980s rizzi collaborated with peter eisenman on anumber of projects. in addition to these professional activities, he also teaches at the i.a.u.v. rizzi has visited new zealand twice: 1988 resene paints architecture exposition as judge and 1989 with assistance from fletcher development and construction lid to work with members of the school of architecture, university of auckland, on the report aesthetic directions for hamilton, presented to hamilton city council. which explores in the modes of use and in their representation its own value. 44 opp. beato angelico, the annunciation 15c st mark's convent in florence ~ up to the recent past, the region was still understood as a place of inexhaustible exploitation: productive, residential, agricultural. today, however it is coming to be considered as a place of value for its intrinsic qualities: its own beauty. it is passing thus from a conception of property to be consumed to another, property to be conserved. above all this state applies to the city. exhausted, the great phase of uncontrolled expansion has turned towards attaining internal requalification, seeking to recover a series of values and significances that were previously fought against or, at best, ignored. ~l ~ from an idea of city as production, towards an idea of city.as representation. the imperfectionof the regional planning view 1 this important change which demands a further displacement of such limits understood as conservation and representation requires a revision of the planning codes and instruments. it requires a different approach, a different thinking which does not sour expectations by the normative grid, or stiffen the restrictive bonds exclusively. the theme of environmental quality, urban and rural, now demands the introduction of an aesthetic thought that concretely values questions of form -precisely in their figurative aspects, perceptible by the sensibility of sight. the actual structure of town planning or of regulatory plans, is founded above all on a descriptive abstraction of reality that is entrusted almost exclusively, to the capacity or potential of numerical calculation indices, relations, standards. an abstract interpretation that reduces and cancels out study of the physical and figurative materiality of the city and the region, rendering it in the end inconsistent, almost incomprehensible. like a view almost of deprived of sight. from the freedom of chaos to the freedom of beauty an aesthetic programme that develops an 'idea of beauty' appears to be, today, the only possible response. to recover aesthetic thinking no longer as handed down from the historical tradition (for our intents and purposes the tradition that developed from the 19th century on: the knowledge, or more precisely the study of the perception of beauty and of the work of the art), but as a 'consciousness', as a capacity to interpret, to understand, to project reality through sensible forms. it means developing a thinking capable of 'seeing comprehensively', of re-unifying in the figure, or better in an entanglement of figures, the different aspects of the ~, 1 1 \ sf' planning ideas: political, economic, technical, poetic. it means erecting a programme of 'figurative coherence' that establishes a great constellation of referential images that can reverberate as in a process of expansion and concentration at different levels: from those of the region to those of the community or neighbourhood. 46 1. f. rella (ed), bellezza e veritd, feltrinelli, editrice, milan, 1990. ~, the territory, the countryside, the natural environment and the built environment of the city, come to be interpreted then no longer separately, as facts in themselves, and thus bereft of their complex framework, but rather in their togetherness, in their fickle exchange of values and of relationships, in company with all the body of programmatic expectations. -, the study of a 'beauty of form' which could embrace all ideas (defined by hegel as 'the highest act of reason/t) represents the struggle to attain that necessary quality, but pursued in vain (so they declared) by the regulations. " it is the breaking open, the surpassing of linguistic chaos expressed, for example, in architecture. an inevitable chaos, since, for all that, no objective to attain it exists. no aspiration towards representation except as solitary or individual presence exists any longer, since in fact, it is impossible for it to be inscribed in a wider horizon of meaning. this is how the theory of the 'fragment' came to be. a weak strategy that has renounced its involvement and confrontation with a more complex idea of 'planning', and that, therefore, has justified and legitimated at present the 'particular in the absence of a general reflexion'. the same holds for the theses sustained by 'planning'. these testify to the failure, it would be better to say the abandonment of town planning, compelled to renounce its own abstract strategies in favour of jnore concrete but limited formal observations. " if a great aesthetic thinking for 'producing beauty' is not reproposed it means giving up any 'authentic project', thus, reducing the horizon of our destiny to the ordinariness of making. the freedom of languages which means freedom of ideas, of movement, of choice, and which represents one of the most important values by our social-historical epoch, has produced an enfeebling of quality in general, but above all notions of aesthetic quality, since it has subtracted from the great liberal progressive strategy its vital foundations: the ability to plan. ..,;.,"" the absence of 'planning' leads towards chaos, it opens to the disorder of things, to the impossibility of recognising value, to incapacity and the indifference of choice. ~, j ~ 47 \ the value of freedom, however, is a precious value, irrevocable, but which cannot produce paradoxes for pursuing an imperfect progress: the degradation of the environment, the squalor of the urban edge, the impoverishment of the urban, the chaotic disorientation, the destruction of the countryside. even for freedom if we want it to grow in its value the definition of iimits.of thresholds is necessary, certainly not to repress or quash it, but to 'direct it', to unveil the complexity, leading it away from confusion, so that instead of dispersing and cancelling itself out in the indistinguishable chaos of the swarm of things, it is elevated to produce beauty, value recognised by all. an idea of beauty that displaces, of course, the classical categories of harmony, symmetry, hierarchy, that abandons completely the absolutism and the rigidity of the styles or univocity of ideologies. no longer an oppressive or conservative beauty, but rather a beauty that thinks out the becoming, the possible, the plural, difference, that cares for complexity and that contains multiplicity. a beauty able to restore and elevate to aesthetic dignity what consider contradiction, bond, impediment. a beauty able to produce a unifying force2 demonstrating and exalting the tension of difference. a beauty that holds together freedom and quality: a cohesion possible only within dimension and an aesthetic consciousness. splendor mundi an aesthetic programme that derives its structure from images, its o~n projective sense, its own legitimation, in taking root in and entanglement in the other demands: political, economic, social. it itself becomes a normative programme defining the great figurative-formal thresholds capable of restoring to the region, the natural and agricultural landscape, to the city and its parts, to the great structures of communication their own specific beauty, as a representation full of our own well being and our own civility.s published in parametro, no. 1785/6, 1990. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 101 p r e s e n c e review / john dixon hunt anuradha chatterjee john ruskin and the fabric of architecture routledge, 2018 ruskin looms huge, unwieldy, contradictory, yet happy (as he himself wrote) to be trotting round a polygon and accepting its different perspectives. his vast oeuvre (39 volumes in the library edition published in the first decade of the 20th century) not to mention the as yet uncollected graphic work and watercolours, is unavoidable, a lion in the path of architectural historians and theories. he is also a writer who is both an eminent victorian and yet one who sometimes asked (in his own lifetime) to be considered outside that context. the temptation to jump on either of those explanations is acute, and i was recently reminded that claude monet thought ruskin’s elements of drawing was 85% “spot on” what would be hailed as impressionism. anuradha chatterjee “jumps” in both directions. she opts to focus on the fabric of architecture, its “space of surface”, on the wall as “veil”, and thence she treks into architecture as “female body” via ruskin’s theory of dress and the effects of an “adorned edifice”. part of that agenda seems very apt—he was extremely attentive to decorative surface, especially in venetian buildings, and in his early essays in the poetry of architecture, he never sought to enter into any of the villas and cottages that he wrote about and relished what their exteriors, or just their details, told him. the other part seems, at least to me, occasionally a stretch, trying to dress up his victorian gravitas and moral probity in fashionable ideas, though not (as macbeth said) in “borrowed robes”, for that discourse is immediately available today, and of course was so in carlyle’s sartor resartus, which ruskin knew well. the sequence of the five chapters begins with ruskin’s interest in the wall, and the analogy between the folds of a dress and the surface wall or veil of a building is offered. the second asks us to see architecture as “dressed female body”, which is where carlyle is relevant, though the parallel with female as opposed to male dress is less discussed by ruskin. a third chapter addresses ruskin’s “theory” of dress, based upon his readings of drapery in gothic statues and renaissance paintings. chapter 4 extends the workings of this analogy to “reveal his imaginative textile historiography”, though a reader familiar now with ruskin’s geology, would be aware that he chastised the geologist john tyndall by demanding “stretch no analogies farther than they will hold” (ruskin, 1906: 283). the last chapter expands to consider the “effects” of his theory of the “adorned wall” on later writers and architects. 102 review / anuradha chatterjee john ruskin and the fabric of architecture p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 reference ruskin, j. & cook, e. t. (ed.) (1906). the works of john ruskin: volume xxvi. retrieved from https://archive.org /stream/ in.ernet.dli.2015.6206/2015.6206. the-works-of-john-ruskin-volxxvi_djvu.txt. there is much to be gained from this dense argument, especially if you accept its proffered analogies with somewhat limited force when applied to ruskin’s own concerns with women. the author’s discussion of this “troubled relationship” with women takes us over what we knew and cites authorities along the way, but yields little new insight, and so moves quickly into a discussion of feminising architecture. a selection of colour plates of san marco by the author are extremely eloquent when it comes to surface detail and decoration. jeanne clegg in ruskin and venice (1981) saw this as a safer area of enquiry for ruskin than the religion there (or even women until he became obsessed with rose la touche and carpaccio’s ursula). yet the usefulness of their juxtaposition of the buildings to two clothing images, which are held in the ruskin foundation at the university of lancaster, one of watercolours of a veronese dress and of a woman “with a rose”, are hard to assess. when in 1966 robert furneux jordon asked us to see ruskin whole or not at all, he established an almost impossible agenda. one difficulty with this book is its dedication to citing all and everybody who has written on ruskin, sometimes not very pertinently, so that the author’s individual voice is lost. added to that is the publishing practice of including in the main text lengthy parenthetical citations of author and page references, keyed to full details at the end of every chapter. it reads like a dissertation, and while there is nothing wrong with that, it deflects the chance for readers who want to grasp how ruskin survives as a major figure in architectural writing and, importantly, how what is offered is new. any reader of ruskin has to be able to grasp how his interests shift or twist during one visit to, say, venice, or over his long writing career. and there is a great deal of that writing, as we crest every wave and current in the mare maggiore of his architectural, geological and meteorological pronouncements (tinteretto’s aphorism on how the sea of painting always gets larger, that ruskin loved to cite). that chatterjee notes in her acknowledgements that a colleague had “faith in my obscure meanderings” is both honest and touching: caveat lector! in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 124 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m photographic essay / patrick reynolds words / julia gatley krta’s conference centre building, 22 symonds street, auckland in 2018, the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning commissioned patrick reynolds to photograph the university’s conference centre building, ahead of its likely demolition in 2019 or 2020. the university also announced, in mid-2018, that it would be closing the three branch libraries of the faculty of creative arts and industries and consolidating their collections into the general library building on alfred street. the three are architecture and planning; music and dance; and fine arts. as the conference centre building is home to the architecture and planning library, this photographic essay records the library ahead of the relocation of its collections, as well as the building ahead of its demolition. bill mckay has discussed the design and construction of the building in the school’s centennial history publication (2017: 79–81, 93–97). here it suffices to say that both the high-rise architecture and planning building at 26 symonds street, and its low-rise wing, the conference centre building at 22 symonds street, were designed by kingston reynolds thom & allardice fig. 1 the complex roof forms, with the architecture and planning library in the foreground. it sits back-to-back with the design theatre (under the turret), with the dean’s office to its left (south), and the conference centre lecture theatre and so-called flat floor space to the right (north). construction of a new building for the faculty of engineering is underway. 125 krta’s conference centre building 22 symonds street auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m (krta) from the early 1970s (patrick reynolds’ father ian reynolds was a partner in krta and contributed to the project from the outset). the architecture and planning building was built as stage i from 1975 to 1978, with blair white serving as project architect. the conference centre building followed as stage ii, with derek king as project architect, and was opened in 1982. building users have long appreciated the complexity of the conference centre building’s roof forms, the generosity of its foyers and stairs, the material palette of off-form concrete and exposed timbers, the informality of the design theatre, and the volume and luminosity of the library. fig. 2 the building’s courtyard façade, originally designed around oak trees. the trees were felled 2013, following a particularly hot, dry summer and the partial collapse of one of the trees in a storm. fig. 3 the entry identifies the building by its current name. to its right is the exterior wall that originally displayed pat hanly and claudia pond eyley’s large mural, now moved inside to help ensure its longevity. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 126 krta’s conference centre building 22 symonds street auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m fig. 4 the flat floor space benefits from a high ceiling with exposed timber trusses and rafters, and timber sarking. fig. 5 the design theatre, notable for its comparatively small scale, high ceiling, top lighting and harold marshall-designed acoustic panels. the chairs and writing tablets were a later addition. fig. 6 the conference centre lecture theatre, now with replacement seats and writing ledges. the timber ceiling and detailing add interest. 127 krta’s conference centre building 22 symonds street auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e fig. 7 the off-form concrete wall of the design theatre, now adorned with pat hanly and claudia pond eyley’s mural, signed too by professor allan wild, dean of the faculty from 1969 to 1993. fig. 8 the generous stair from the entry level down to the architecture and planning library. the concrete block wall shows the ghostly traces of architecture + women new zealand’s timeline, posted for the school centenary in september 2017 and removed in august 2018 after an 11 month showing. fig. 9 entrance to the architecture and planning library, where the walls have presented an everchanging array of exhibitions of books, journals, posters, and drawings. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 128 krta’s conference centre building 22 symonds street auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m fig. 10 allan wild described the building as “an arabian tent beside a city wall” (in robertson 1982: 29). the sense of the tent is apparent upon entry to the architecture and planning library, where the high ceiling and top lighting combine to produce a sense of volume and luminosity. fig. 11 in addition to the collections of books and journals, the architecture and planning library has long displayed student drawings and models, all of which contribute to its character and atmosphere. fig. 12 the architecture archive, combining drawing cabinet upon drawing cabinet of large format work, box upon box of files, and a compactus of old books and journals. references mckay, b. (2017). the counterculture and its containment: the loose years. in j. gatley & l. treep (eds.), the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning (pp. 74–101). auckland: school of architecture and planning, university of auckland. robertson, k. (1982). the man in his castle. home and building, 5, p. 29. (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite. vanya steiner it would be necessary, before speaking of appropriation, to know if the system that seems to appropriate something is or is not modified by that which it believes it is appropriating. even though i do not believe appropriation to be possible in general ... it is inevitable that something resembling appropriation take place ... otherwise, the only hope for deconstruction’s remaining happily intact and pure would be for it to be utterly ignored, radically excluded or definitively rejected jacques derrida,limited inc. ed. gerald graff, (evanston, illinois: northwestern university press, 1988), p. 141-142. interstices 4 (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite 1 derrida asks couldn’t these citations or references be interpreted otherwise rather than viewed simply as a sign of appropriation? (fig 1)1 in new zealand over the last few years the use of maori figures, 2 particularly by non-maori, has become a much debated issue. variously described as culturally insensitive, a symbol abusing colonialist exploitation, a promiscuous plundering or trivial debasement, to many the use of these figures associated with an ‘other’ is an unacceptable use of what is presumed to have no value other than within its traditional context. seen as the corruption of ‘the proper’ (the maori) such usage is considered a sacrilegious impropriety; a stealing, violation and misuse of that regarded as sacred; a site of criminal activity, stolen property and illegitimate access. the argument is that these figures naturally belong to maori and that when non-maori use them they rob or steal. thus outsiders seen as thieves and criminals are ascribed to a position of illegitimacy; outside the l a w o f t h e p r o p e r , t h e o t h e r b e c o m e s s e e n a s a n outlaw.3 involving territorial disputes and contestations of authority, ownership, propriety and property, these become sites of conflict, resentment and defensiveness. the issue is that of ‘appropriation.’ ironically, it is a subject of contention which has been intensely debated in the fine arts 4 and of which little has been said in architecture. although continually described as ‘appropriation’ i will, for reasons i shall explain, refer to these transgressive shifts in use and interpretation as (mis)appropriation. the term appropriation is not a simple one and much as it would seem reasonable to provide clear definitions, this term continues to confuse. appropriation is on the one hand described as to use properly, to make or use as one’s own, to possess o r a u t h o r i z e f o r a p a r t i c u l a r u s e in exclusion to other’s. yet on the other hand, in contemporary use this word takes on negative connotations, such as to take without permission or consent, to improperly use as one’s own, to wrongly or illegitimately apply to an-other use. in this way a concern with overpowering, possession and containment is implicit to appropriation’s making of a thing private property, whether another’s or one’s own.5 ‘misappropriation,’ on the other hand, presumed the opposite of appropriation, is found to be defined in strangely similar terms to appropriation to the extent that no unambiguous distinction can be drawn between them. in this way ‘appropriation’ takes on connotations of ‘misappropriation,’ yet in doing so it redefines ‘misappropriation’ which is now also given connotations of the proper. that is, ‘the proper [one’s own]’ is confused, but without simply reversing or negating as happened in appropriation. although no longer restricted to the closure of an initial opposition misappropriation cannot however flee from what in a sense it contains. i will therefore bracket the (mis-) in this paper. (mis)appropriation indicates that aspects of both ‘appropriation’ and ‘misappropriation’ are involved without being reducible to either.6 enmeshed in a struggle for power (mis)appropriations indicate a certain complexity inviting a reconsideration of any conventional sense of propriety. issues of propriety, possession, property, provenance, authority and power are also implicated in this confusion. in shifting the proper, (mis)appropriation proposes the possibility of interpreting or using in a ‘different’ way, neither as own nor other, neither as proper nor improper. the own and other are radically disturbed, questioning the signifying practices that interstices 4 (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite 2 construct them. by complicating attempts to define and divide, language and interpretation are confused. thus (mis)appropriation recognises a differential rather than simple interpretation. its ability to, in a sense, contain different and seemingly contradictory readings or positions terrorises the ground between these poles. consistently finding itself being inconsistently defined by that which is mistaken as its opposite, it is not restricted to any pre-established philosophical stance. there is a complexity here which continues to puzzle. this work will call this (mis)appropriation. in interpreting such an undecidable we must recognise an irreducible uncertainty confounding distinction, containment or mastery. thus any privileging of a part or position over another will be provisional as “the shadow presence of the other meaning is always there to undermine the distinction.” 7 this position i will translate from language to the use and interpretation of figures. meaghan morris writes of the “metonymic flipping over of an image ... from one context to another in which its first meaning is not ‘negated’ but transformed in such a way that all the relationships resulting are questioned.”8 i am therefore not suggesting reading these complex figures as an appropriative mixing where the two become one, (whole, proper, complete and settled), but as a site of struggle and contestation where differences are unresolved; where ownership is not reversed or negated but confused and complexly entangled. the (mis)appropriation of maori figures, as with a (mis)quote, violates the premise that figures remain the self-same, bound to a proper place, interpretation or authority. controversies arise where assumptions of a fixed interpretation or placement are contested by complicated genealogies of interpretation and use. figures are not dismissed as homeless, insignificant or valueless, but their place, interpretation and value shifts as political interests contest and dispute property claims. open to unexpected and uninvited uses and interpretations authorial authority with its ideology of power, is threatened by contestation and ambiguity, becoming provisional. displacements are however never easy; the violent wrenching from one context to another creates tensions between the interests of different ideologies, traditions and assumptions, creating sites of resentment and antagonism. what is at stake is not accuracy but authority. legitimations and biases become a struggle for the power to define a normality that illegitimates all other positions; a struggle for territorial dominance, containment and control. however, the proper (one’s own), the very condition by which we judge, prove, legitimate and divide, is also that which confuses or complicates the very attempt to divide. thus (mis)appropriation draws attention to a violence in proprietorial and provenance claims and the desire to contain, conceal and control by means of defining, categorizing, naming and identifying. the (mis)appropriation of maori figures can be read as a response to ‘maori art and architecture’ and an attempt to deal with the complexities of an entangled relationship with an ‘other.’ these mutual (mis)appropriations have become our history; a story o f t h e contestation and negotiation of conflicting assumptions and pretensions. in this work mutual (mis)appropriations are seen as inevitable when dealing with ‘other’ cultural forms, values and beliefs. with its prefix ‘mis-’ (mis)appropriation doubts clear and precise definitions, recognising a lack of resolution or completeness. this fault or failure to meet, attain or contain by implication undermines attempts to control or enforce domestic order. both ‘the proper’ and ‘the other’ become suspect. the (mis)appropriate/d ‘other’ is no longer restricted to the position of ‘other’ (or own) as it violates the security of any position or placement. in this way (mis)appropriation becomes entangled with the law of ‘the proper,’ and as ‘the proper’ it becomes implicated as an accessory to crime. there is, in a sense, a legitimation of crime; an incrimination of the ‘proper.’ conformity and transgression become insidiously entangled. the proper that assigns to, or claims, a proper place or position, becomes problematised and is no longer understood as a site of stability. the sacred ‘proper’ is both contested and shifted. architecture as “the scene of the proper”9 is immediately implicated. further, “building understood as housing, is repeatedly described as appropriation”10 with connotations of containment, domestication and closure. however understood as (mis)appropriation architecture and the house become an incriminated site; a site that extends or shifts the proper and cannot be simply contained. interesting to consider in this regard is the maori battalion memorial building in palmerston north designed by john scott and opened in 1964 (f i g 2 ). commissioned by a maori trust the brief was to design a building “that would be a harmonious combination of the maori and european cultures.”11 scott responded to this brief with a design that draws upon both the language of the whare whakairo and that of the modernist tradition at a time when new brutalism, from england, was a interstices 4 (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite 3 stylistic influence. the specific use of these paradigms to convey a sense of power, strength, authority, and even intimidation to the work, may be read not only as the use of a style popular at the time, but presumably as a means of marking the mana of the building to both maori and pakeha. the ‘references’ to both maori and european paradigms can, rather than should, be considered within the context of the 1950s. in new zealand this was a time marked by a desire to invent new zealand, to define an essential new zealandness, a certain specificity of place. the 1950s also brought a shift in official government policy from assimilation to that of integration. the hope was for an intermingling of maori and pakeha, a harmonious blending to which each might contribute, and in which the two might finally become one; as if a utopian space might be achieved, where nothing but the overlap would remain (fig 3).12 in the fine arts the tovey scheme of the 1950s also advocated the bringing together of these two backgrounds in a fertile overlap. initiated by gordon tovey and authorized by maori leaders throughout new zealand, maori teachers were sent o u t t o s c h o o l s t o t e a c h m a o r i arts to all school children. francis pound writes “the hope was, that by combining elements of maori culture with the most avant-garde educational and artistic ideas of the west, a new kind of new zealand might be invented, and a new kind of new zealander.”13 similarly te ao hou (the new world): the maori magazine was at this time advocating that maori and pakeha work together and frequently published the works of contemporary maori artists, such as arnold wilson, ralph hotere, muru walters, para matchitt and cliff whiting, who explored the use of both maori and modernist stylistic references within a s i n g l e w o r k . i n t h e f i n e a r t s t h e w o r k o f t h e s e artists still continues to have a decisive effect on the work of artists of both maori and pakeha descent. in contrast to the fine arts, the avant garde o f n e w zealand architecture in the desire to assert an architecture that was seen as progressive, modern and of this land closed down architectural discourse by repressing any acknowledgement of overseas sources and advocating that architects need look only to new zealand farm buildings, sheds and baches for inspiration. this was further reinforced by a public distaste for the modern or abstract a resistance to what was seen to come from outside, threatening a certain view of architecture. whilst these nationalist desires attracted some attention to maori architectural forms, these forms remained relegated to the past by an institution that saw them as having little contemporary value. by contrast the battalion building associates maori architectural elements with that well established as architecture. responding to the philosophies and convictions advocated by scott’s peers14 this building also demonstrates an engagement with an overseas ‘new brutalist’ discourse; both of which held in common an ideological emphasis on honesty and essentialism. the building draws authority and mana from the authoritative sources of le corbusier and walter gropius, ‘heroes of the modern movement.’ in associating the marginalised with ‘architecture proper’ the value of ‘one’ was seen by some to enrich and elevate the value of the ‘other.’ in the words of francis pound scott “endeavoured to place something of maori discourse centrally and powerfully into a european 20th century context, and this in a time when the voice of the maori was being largely silenced by the dominant monoculture.”15 this travesty of ‘the proper’ opens up the discourse of both, transgressing the restrictive closure that threatens permanent containment or incarceration. this disturbing, whilst making visible the closure of the proper, proposes the recognition of another layer to architecural discourse in new zealand; disturbing a long standing presumption that maori and modern forms are incompatible and must be kept at a distance.16 the battalion building also makes strong references to the contemporary work of kenzo tange in japan; in particular his well publicised community centre of 1956 (f i g 4 ). at this time, when much of his work was described as brutalist, tange was concerned with creating an architectural image for modern japan that drew on the traditional but did not appear traditional. further tange attempted to work with commonalities in both japanese and modernist architecture (i.e. the stripping back to essential elements and honest use of materials).17 presumably this struck a chord with what scott was trying to produce in new zealand. scott finds a way to situate his work in relation to both such that both modernist and maori discourses become significant elements. 18 perhaps scott considered this a necessary juxtaposition for maori architectural forms to be appreciated (fig 5). responding to the use of raw concrete block in new brutalist buildings, such as those by tange and the smithsons, the use of concrete block in new zealand was at this time largely considered an unsuitable material for proper architecture.19 i n t h e public mind this material was despised as lowly and interstices 4 (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite 4 cheap, reinforced by its associations with public toilets, prisons, basements and foundations. it may therefore have seemed a particularly deviant, even sacrilegious move at this time to use concrete block for a war memorial. the economy of concrete block to provide both interior and exterior surfaces with a single element, along with associations as a basic or essential element may have further endeared this material to scott. in response to the brief, fourteen carvings front the building (fig 6). the ‘bodies’ stand as if commemorative statuary within the space of the frame, forming a line of defence across the facade announcing a certain ‘new zealandness’ to new zealand; a distinctness that is reliant on a certain defensiveness. although perhaps read as a cultural badge, the carvings are no longer simply restricted to previous associations and interpretations but become implicated in the political interests and ideologies of the time; they become more than ornament or ancestor (f i g 7 ). whilst the building’s symmetrical facade in many ways aestheticises the carvings it also calls attention to the public power of their function; the placement and scale of these carvings demands attention (f i g 8 ). in a political move these carvings are not hidden away, cowering in the face of modernist strength, but turned to the exterior in a brutalist display of the building’s guts. as with the meeting house the carvings on the exterior mark the entry to this ‘house’ that no longer contains. modernism’s continuous wall of glass is broken by carvings weaving through its length. the equivalently sized windows and carvings become, in many ways, a reversal or negative of each other (fig 9). the building, in some articles described as a meeting h a l l , d r a w s o n t h e architectural forms of pataka (store houses) and whare whakairo (meeting houses). the whare whakairo, claimed to be an architectural ordering of relationships legitimating a claim to land, property, authority and identity is however now widely regarded as a post-european structure; a (mis)appropriation of the chief’s house, large guest houses and the churches of the european missionaries. similarly the carved panels were apparently intended to allude to the ancestral waka or ‘fleet.’20 popular belief has it that seven canoes, collectively known as the ‘fleet,’ brought the ancestors of the maori to new zealand. these carvings as a reference to the fleet may have served as a connection to source, to the empowering authority of origin. however the very idea of the ‘fleet,’ of course, is one that has been (mis)appropriated by maori from european thinking. attributed to percy smith, amongst others, the idea of the ‘fleet’ was refined to the level of dogma and adopted by maori and non-maori alike. david simmons has described the ‘fleet’ as ‘the great new zealand myth.’ in this way, on one hand set aside as distinctly non-european, the carved panels, in drawing upon the myth of the great fleet, are already inscribed with a certain ‘european-ness.’ where the structure is to be frankly uncovered scott ‘exposes’ a myth. within the 1950s ideology of integration it may well have appeared that these two discourses could harmoniously co-exist. in the romantic idealism of a ‘one people, one nation’ ideology an unproblematic and compliant reconciliation was possible. however scott’s design, whether a critical or uncritical response to the brief’s advocation of a happy blending, is not the simple bringing together it may first appear. to read the maori battalion building as a harmonious bringing together of two discourses, is to repress the many complexities and entanglements that problematise such a reading. the harmonious mixing becomes an unconvincing argument that would have us believe that both architectural elements remain undisturbed, that their interpretation, value and status are unaffected by this unconventional relationship. these (mis)appropriated figures, according to nicholas thomas, “cannot be seen as unproblematic equivalents of whatever we take them to be” as they can be variously reinscribed and politically relocated.21 to continue to read these elements as simply maori or brutalist is to ignore the shifts which have occurred, to maintain a certain essentialist interpretation that presupposes no interpenetration is possible. the considerable assymmetries of colonisation are not overlooked a colonial aspect is inscribed on the building ‘the maori,’ reframed by modernism, is in a sense domesticated. to read the building as a whole, a ‘oneness,’ is to contain or appropriate. the privileging of this reading over any other not only presupposes repression but also presumes a distinctively polarised relationship. read as appropriation there is a colonial emphasis on civilising this untamed savage. the paternalistic british frame gives shelter and protection, controlling and confining the ‘other’ within certain limits. in this reading the carvings become a superficial, denigrating and subordinate use of ‘the maori’ as ornament and crime. scott becomes seen as the modern primitivist. as ornament the carvings are read as supplement, excess and improper accessory placed within the structuring of another frame; located where they should not properly be. this position however interstices 4 (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite 5 maintains modernism’s privileging of the structure in opposition to the carvings, which if read as ornament are always seen as subsidary and therefore of inferior value. read in this way the carvings are contained within their proper place and pose no threat to the privileging of the frame as the structuring and defining mechanism. there is a shift from the carvings’ associations of mana and authority to ornament, where the structural aspect of the carving is repressed. the interpretation of these carvings as ornament however becomes extremely problematic. can these so-called ‘decorative’ panels not also be seen to structure or define the building? can they not be argued to be as structural as the structural elements are ornamental or aesthetic? read as subversive elements they threaten and transgress that which structures or defines the frame and therefore disturb the distance which is so carefully maintained by such oppositions. the presumption that a shift in one does not also produce a shift in the other, ignores the way the carvings clash with modernism’s admiration of purity and contempt for ornamentation; contesting that which would attempt to house them. the carvings violate and are violated by the modernist ideals of purity and the ordered whole; the universal modern is exoticised and restructured. we have then a brutalist modern building, the most prominant part of which appears ornamental. the impropriety of carved panels on the clean modernist surface marks a site of resistance. repelled to the exterior, the carvings sit like tattoos on modernism’s purified body. the carvings here become improper accessories not seen as subserviant to or contained by a proper place (fig 10). the carvings permeate the wall, the surface of modernism, that divides, separates and excludes. occupying a problematic position in relation to both the inside and outside, the carvings located on the boundary become implicated in defining and structuring the building. the boundary line as a mark of separation becomes a contested site. the issue of power and authority, of who defines and where the boundary is drawn, is confused. the building threatens a fundamental property of architecture that of enclosure and containment. as the building is structurally ambivalent, on what g r o u n d s o r b a s i s i s t h e w o r k t o be judged? ‘the proper,’ that by which we judge, is problematised; architecture as the site of stability is disturbed. it initially seems strange that this building is so unrecognised, by the architectural profession. in the many retrospective articles in architecture new zealand dedicated to scott’s work there is no mention of this building. in comparison, te ao hou: the maori magazine dedicated a front cover and article to this work, showering the building with praise. it describes the building as: one of the most handsome ever to be erected in new zealand and would be well able to stand comparison with the best contemporary work being done by architects overseas. yet at the same time the maori battalion memorial centre unmistakably belongs to our own country, and it owes much of its power and beauty to the fact that it draws its strength from both of the cultural traditions of new zealand. for this reason, it may well prove to be something of a landmark in the history of the development of new zealand architecture.22 here again we find the need to look overseas for legitimation of a design which on the other hand is thought to be locally authorised as it “belongs to our own country.” the writers of te ao hou clearly convey their approval of the design which was, it seems, seen as serving maori interests of the time; however this magazine was published by the department of maori affairs so it becomes difficult to say whose views and interests are conveyed. similarly a 1968 paper by katarina mataira published in a book called the maori people in the nineteen-sixties says “here, at last, is a building incorporating both maori and european elements of architecture which are not only happily and harmoniously wedded, but which show conclusively that it is possible for new zealand to develop unique architectural forms.”23 the battalion building has however been almost totally repressed within new zealand’s architectural discourse. it seems this building was for many too disturbing or offensive in its violation of conventional separations supporting a certain view of architecture. due to the battalion building’s diverse references or residual associations it seems that many were unsure of how to respond to it. many probably felt they lacked the authority to interpret or comment on it; whether to praise its ingenuity or to interpret it as an offensive insult. in this way the building might function as an exemplar of bi-culturalism. in the many retrospective articles dedicated to john scott’s work, scott is commonly defined by the domestic, the house. russell walden, the most prominant commentator on scott’s work, in his many writings advocates scott as a bi-cultural architect with emphasis firmly placed on the creation of a unified, coherent and expressively harmonious synthesis. where in other buildings by scott the interstices 4 (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite 6 maori references are blended away, subtly integrated, or reduced to a blur of indistinguishableness, the battalion building by contrast is for walden perhaps too much, too obvious, too strong, and too resistant to a reading of a synthesised unification. walden also expressly denies the involvement of any political, self-motivated interests or fashion in scott’s work. walden writes that scott “felt alienated by a profession which ripped its integrity apart by wholesale cribbing from foreign magazines.” 24 the possibility that scott critically or uncritically used whatever he wanted from wherever he wanted, adapting it to fit his purposes and interests, irrespective of what it had meant in previous contexts, is never postulated. that scott uses elements from brutalist architecture without permission, without restricting himself to the way in which they are used in other contexts, or to a strict following of the ideologies associated with them, is never questioned. the building redefines or complicates definition, mocking the cultural projection of elements as essential, pure or incompatible. the design is indebted to its sources and these sources are indebted to this extension of boundaries, form and definition; to this projection outwards that exceeds defined limits. the battalion building ruptures the closure of ‘one’ with the ‘other.’ each is placed in relation to the ‘other’ and yet is also complicit with this ‘other.’ the familiarity of each is rendered strange. neither remains safely removed from the other in this realm of mutual encroachment, creating a certain ambiguity as to which elements are figured and which are grounded, as the properties of each are both reinforced and violated by this unusual conjunction. this undecidability has more to do with shifting dominances and realignments than any agreement or confirmation of equality. in ‘deterritorializing’ properties the building highlights the complications implicit in issues of identity and the assigning of certain properties or traits as belonging to a specific place or people. derrida writes there would thus be two speech acts in a single utterance. how is this possible? ... and what if everything that is g i v e n t o p l e a s e o r i n r e s p o n s e t o a desire, as well as everything that one promises to give, were structurally ambivalent? what if the gift were always poisoned ... in a manner so as to prevent any simple logic ... from being able to decide, i.e. to distinguish between the two or to determine their meaning univocally?25 the impropriety of this conjunction may well have offended modernist devotees. the battalion building may have been interpreted as denigrating and trivialising new brutalism and european modernism in its association with a presumably lowly and primitive non-architecture; transgressing the essentialist and puritanical space of modernist architecture and its repression of all that threatens to contaminate its white surfaces. the building does not presume a clean slate, a vacant or passive site for european conquest but exposes the potential for resistance with the subversive use of a brutalist aesthetic. the building is caught between the modernist suppression of any entanglement with other discourses, its repression of regionalism and ornamentation and the apparent specificity of the maori elements; the wall is clearly not universal or neutral (fig 11). scott’s unconventional use of both modern and maori elements may also be read as an act of resistance to the categorisation and placement of himself as an architect. the utter competence with which the modern reference is constructed would seem to be a resistance to others’ expectations of him as a maori architect producing maori architecture. neither a predictable conformist nor a radical rebel, what is expected from john scott is not necessarily w h a t h e i s , n o r w a n t s t o b e . o f b o t h m a o r i a n d european descent scott held an ambiguous relationship to both, and is portrayed as the perfect bi-cultural model, an architectural bi-linguist. to again use pounds words, scott is a person of fissured identity who knows and lives with an “incommensurable doubleness of voice.”26 the majority of articles that discuss scott’s work are quick to emphasis his ‘maoriness’ and to describe his work as ‘unique to new zealand’ or ‘of this land.’ his buildings are almost always placed within a closed and domestic new zealand architectural discourse; his houses are emphatically derived from the whare and the woolshed, references to overseas sources and discourses are largely ignored or repressed. in many articles it seems the references to maori traditions are largely forced onto his work which in most cases contain little to provoke such readings. the fact that all scott’s buildings could be interpreted or understood without any reference to maori traditions is not, as it may seem, an outrageous suggestion. although we might define the battalion building as maori (or non-maori) we remain unsure of this classification as it also contains that which we would not dream of considering as maori (or non-maori). interstices 4 (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite 7 there is a complexity to this design which cultivates confusion and paradox, disturbing attempts to define, control or domesticate, which would inevitably mask the unresolvable contradictions i wish to draw attention to. to describe this building as simply maori or modern architecture is to set aside the indeterminacy, to decide what remains uncertain. the buildings ability to, in a sense, contain different and seemingly contradictory readings resists appropriation. there is difficulty in placing this building which, on the one hand, appears to respond to a local discourse commonly relegated to the past and on the other to an overseas modernist and contemporary discourse. problematically located between, inscribed by two systems and intruding on both, this building is not proposed as proper, as one’s own, but provokes a reassessment of its interpretation as either. impinging upon the security and stability of the absolute, the essential and the homogenous, the building shifts away from polarised oppositions and is no longer easily placed or contained but is multiply inscribed. the boundaries, the limits, the walls or skin of what is one’s own, although difficult to delineate, are not reduced to an assimilative blur. the body of architecture and the status of that body are at stake. trading in the body parts of architecture scott flouts authority, threatening to subvert the interests of both as the building is open to politically significant misinterpretations. the impropriety and illegitimacy of the body he constructs is a violation of the body proper; the body of modernism is carved up. to use brutalist and maori architectural parts in this way is to threaten the ‘integrity’ each is grounded upon. however to see the (mis)appropriation of the other as a sacrilegious impropriety is to perpetuate european myths of authenticity and purity. it could be said that architecture in new zealand is a condition of the critical or uncritical (mis)appropriation of ‘other’ models. the innocent eden is corrupted, as it always was. (mis)appropriation has always already insinuated itself into new zealand’s very tradition, framing architecture in new zealand. the maori battalion building may therefore be seen as existing in and responding to a contested space of bi-cultural entanglement, where neither is finally able to dominate, contain or house the ‘other.’ in this way the maori battalion building can be read as (mis)appropriation rather than simply a reversal, juxtaposition or appropriation. the building’s indeterminacy is due to a complexity to which simple binary oppositions are not sufficient. a tension occurs at the moments of contraflexure between opposing or contradictory views; the turning points and shifts in accentuation. in this way scott produces an infuriatingly ambiguous building, which is both and not simply maori or non-maori. the parts, as if clues, are directed towards interpreting the architecture in a traditional way and yet the building contests this traditional view by being structured in a different way. the building, unsettled by complexities and an ambiguity that dislocates comprehension, resists the subordination of the parts to a whole; an ideal, coherent and unified totality. full of unresolved conflict the building parts invite provisional readings that resist wholeness. the work can be read as a building of complex definition or boundary, in a sense containing an irreducible uncertainty that resists capture and evades containment. in this way it poses a threat to the modernist ideals of a unified whole. (the whole carries with it the premise of a unified subject where edges are defined). war memorials may be proposed as the epitomy of a memorialising tradition a means of remembering or recording heroic ideals in lasting form. the recording of that deemed worthy of remembrance, of that not to be forgotten or changed. the memorial acting as an immortilising medium places emphasis on permanence, its materials are those of enduring strength rather than temporality. the memorial is the product of a vain hope that of an unchanging permanence and immortality. this brutalist-maori building that memorialises war and strength has itself undergone dramatic if not brutal changes (f i g 1 2 ) . not content to celebrate violence, it partakes, and is also violated. the raw concrete frame of european modernism is now decorated, painted over by another skin. painted a healthy green or a green of sickness, envy or greed, its strong, clear lines are now cluttered by advertising (fig 13 ). the painting over of the paternal frame marks changing attitudes to the british empire and its colonial associations. the carvings, like billboards, are now threatened by the encroachment of subsequent layers. the memorial’s surfaces do not escape reinscription. recently used as a nightclub, each year on anzac day the battalion survivors would move aside “the revellers’ tables and hold a memorial service.”27 debased and corrupted, as it always already was, by economic and political manoeuvres, there is now food in the ‘sacred’ building. there is a certain amount of irony in the situation whereby a ‘maori war memorial’ becomes a nightclub, a ‘drug den’ and then a restaurant, and not just any restaurant, but the wild horse saloon ( fig interstices 4 (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite 8 14 ). this dangerous and volatile realm of inexact identities transgresses the ‘proper,’ one’s own, conjuring up wildly sacrilegious visions of impurity and criminality. there is an undermining of domestic o r d e r w o m e n a n d children encroach upon this boistorous exhibitionism of male bravado the measure of a man. today’s specials are propped up against the roll of honour (f i g 1 5 ) . w h a t w a s a n open space with mezzanine, and therefore involved an overlapping of spaces, is now separated and contained. the interior tukutuku panels and kowhaiwhai beams are now removed the maori has been expelled from the confines of the interior. this building is no longer set apart exclusively for a particular or proper use but (mis)appropriated. notes 1 j. derrida, limited inc. ed. gerald graff, (evanston, illinois: northwestern university press, 1988) p. 142. 2 the terms maori and pakeha will be used to describe that which is provisionally interpreted as maori or pakeha. the t e r m f i g u r e i s u s e d f o r i t s connotations as a form, shape, person or perceptual concept. 3 mark wigley, the architecture of deconstruction: derrida’s haunt (cambridge, massachusetts: mit press, 1993), p. 150. 4 notably by francis pound the space between (auckland: workshop press, 1994). 5 the proper becomes complicated by the improper, the other. entangling notions of rightful use with those of proper(ty) crime, ‘appropriation’ becomes problematised by the ambivalence of an unresolvable contradiction. that is, it recognises other, even contradictory claims to property and propriety. from here it follows that ‘appropriation’ does not deny recognition of the other, but is in fact acknowledgment of the other. it becomes other-wise. i n a d e b a t e w h e r e i t i s a r g u e d that so much has been taken and so little returned, this work proposes the possibility of a differential give and take. as that ‘taken’ or ‘returned’ never remains the same any affiliation or acknowledgement may be contested and therefore not be mutually accepted as acknowledgement, compensation or homage. 6 if appropriation is to freely take as own or to steal, (mis)appropriation is the possibility of a ‘different’ propriety, neither stealing nor freely taking as own. n o longer seen as an overpowering territorial exclusiveness there is the possibility of some sort of differential ‘exchange.’ i would like to thank mike austin for drawing my attention to this and for his support and obvious assistance with many aspects of this paper. 7 b. johnson, “translators introduction,” j. derrida, dissemination trans. b. johnson (chicago: university of chicago press, 1981), p. xiii. 8 meaghan morris, “on the beach,” cultural studies ed. grossberg, et al, (london: routledge, 1992), p. 462. 9 j. kipnis, “twisting the separatrix,” assemblage (1991), n. 14, p. 32. kipnis describes architecture as “the scene of the proper, a scene of stability.” in derrida’s writing the proper i s a l s o seen to be bound to that of the house. “derrida draws on the greek association between the household (oikas ) and the proper (oikeios).” mark wigley, the architecture of deconstruction p. 101-102. a relationship between the house, law, economy, and family is an important theme throughout derrida’s work. derrida writes “economy: the law of the family, of the family home, of possession. the economic act makes familiar, proper, one’s own, intimate, private. the sense of property, of propriety, in general is collected in the oikeios.” j. derrida, “glas,” p. kamuf, a derrida reader between the blinds (new york: columbia university press, 1991), p. 345. 10 m. wigley, the architecture of deconstruction p. 102. 11 chris maclean, “legacy of war: race relations and memorials,” nz historic places (september 1990), n. 30, p. 34. 12 pound, the space between p. 149. 13 pound, the space between p. 155. 14 in particular vernon brown, the group and miles warren. 15 pound, the space between p. 122. 16 there are of course difficulties in talking of ‘maori architecture’ for this is also an unusual and ‘improper’ conjunction as ‘architecture’ is founded and located within a western discourse and metaphysics. 17 robyn boyd, kenzo tange (new york: george braziller inc., 1962), p. 12, 15. 18 the open plan as an element of both modern and maori architecture potentially indicates more than one governing formal idea. interstices 4 (mis)appropriation in new zealand architecture: an incriminating cite 9 19 one of the earliest uses of concrete block as an architectural element in new zealand was in miles warren’s dorset st flats (1956-57) which responded to the new brutalism warren had recently seen in england. 20 mike austin, personal communication. 21 n. thomas, entangled objects (london: harvard university press, 1991), p. 108. 22 te ao hou (the new world): the maori magazine (june 1964), n. 47, p. 32-33. 23 katarina mataira, “modern trends in maori art forms,” the maori people in the nineteen sixties ed. erik schwimmer, (auckland: blackwood and janet paul ltd, 1968), p. 205-206. 24 r. walden, voices of silence: new zealand’s chapel of futuna (wellington: victoria university press, 1987), p. 53. 25 derrida, limited inc. p. 75. 26 pound, the space between p. 147. 27 maclean, “legacy of war: race relations and memorials,” p. 34. mark goulthorpe reykjavik high court iceland this project is the competition entry for the supreme court of iceland in reykjavik. it focusses on a 'public' architecture, but one which is still seemingly shrouded in privacy, for the courthouse (the chamber where the law of the land the foundation-stone of democracy is established) is in iceland, certainly one of the most important public institutions, second only, perhaps, to parliament itself. yet, when i went to iceland (to this most democratic and egalitarian of societies), i was astonished to read the brief which specified (quite literally) that the building be of concrete construction, and divided completely in two with the judiciary entirely separated from the public who i had supposed they were to represent. this was not to be a courthouse where people are tried (which one might imagine still needs such distinction, such reinforcement of power), but a debating chamber, open to all, where the public might come to witness and comprehend the process by which the law evolves and which gives shape to their liberty. we might speculate, with nietzsche, that every advance in society, every heightening of its morality, is marked by an opening of its systems of justice, as it resists, to an ever greater degree, the ethic of revenge . the law, and transgressions of the law, come to be seen in this movement increasingly at a social rather than an individual level. notions of 'guilt' (and even punishment) are dissipated into social debate and society reflects upon itself this, as i see it, is the very substance of the supreme court. it is not a place of division and privilege, but of open and just social commentary; the courthouse as a quite public sanatorium of the conscience. our proposal, then, is a high court for the 21st century. it anticipates this continuing desire for refinement, this straining towards an ideal of open justice, and it does so in quite marked opposition to the constraints of the brief. the building is simple. it is open and transparent in both its organisation and its materials as it looks for an increased openness and clarity, as justice brought to light. it is envisaged as an open public forum, a great moot hall filled with filtered natural light within which are placed the various elements of the courthouse. discrete scupltural forms float in open space, shrouding the judicial functions within, but clearly open to view. such conceptual clarity extends even to the separation of judges and public. this is achieved simply and effectively by a series of walkways in space which allow one to glimpse the judges as they circulate such that the public can witness and comprehend the full functioning of the court, a theatre of justce. 21 • • 22 the courtrooms themselves, the point of union between lawyers, judges and public, continue this ideal of openness. elevated boxes are flooded with daylight from skylights which pierce up through the plane of the roof. they are calm, neutral spaces, folded combinations of concrete, plaster and wood, stripped of all symbolism or hierarchy. they are simple and elegant (both conceptually and physically), and they impart a dignity and equality to this highest court of the people. externally the building is a simple crystalline cube, a translucent and fragile envelope enclosing more solid and elemental forms (perceived as shadowy forms) within. its glass skin is sheathed with a delicately perforated metallic surface, a filter which plays continuously with the subtle and changing light of iceland a solid luminous form, in the dark winter, glowing from within, and in the surreal summer light, an ambiguous and reflective surface. the courthouse compliments the delicacy and lightness of the adjacent library with a contemporary aesthetic and finesse . the form of the building duplicates that of the existing library. the rhythmic pattern of its metallic skin is generated from the library's geometry and is incised with the abstracted forms of ancient runes (the primordial root of all writing and law). the two buildings read as twin pavilions of light one white, the other metallic, set against the dark and powerful form of the art deco theatre behind. set on a hill overlooking the harbour, the two buildings begin to define a civic presence, the library already destined to house the president's offices. the courthouse draws inspiration from the generic simplicity and the utilitarian and lightweight construction of contemporary icelandic architecture. fragile but pure forms are placed delicately into the savage expanse of the volcanic landscape. they draw from the almost mystical qualities of this strange land: the subtle ambiguity of the northern light, the eerily illumination of the vast atlantic skies, and the harsh rawness of natural materials the rough concrete shrouded by a cold and brittle metallic veil. there were two architects on the jury, and three members of the judiciary, and what, for me, was interesting, was that it was the architects who liked the project and apparently staked their claim on it. the lawyers hated it to the point where they threatened to dissolve the jury. this was completely the reverse of what i had expected since i had blithely assumed that the lawyers would appreciate this search for a form that mirrored, as it were, this opening of the judicial system which championed the supreme court as the haven of democratic law. this leads me to question our potential to effect change through architecture, to open the way, as it were, to an increasing liberty. it is a question succinctly posed, and effectively answered, i think, by michel foucault: "men have dreamed of liberating machines. but there are no machines of freedom, by definition. this is not to say that the exercise of freedom is completely indifferent to spatial distribution, but it can only function when there is a certain convergence . ... where liberty is effectively exercised, one finds ... that this is not owing to the order of objects, but, (once again), owing to the practice of liberty .. . " so there may, in fact, always be, a certain number of projects whose aim is to modify some constraints, to loosen, or even break them. but none of these projects can, simply by their nature, assure that people will have liberty automatically: "i think it [architecture] can and does produce positive effects when the liberating intentions of the architect coincide with real practice of people in the exercise of their freedom." in reykjavik, it became apparent that our liberating intentions simply did not coincide with such practice (or at least did not correspond with the perception of such practice). it scarcely matters if, in our opinion, that resulted from a certain blindness. the fact of the matter was, that there was not a 'convergence'. that is not to say that we shouldn't have attempted to 'modify some constraints, to loosen or even break them', for i think the aspiration to an increased openness in the judicial system was a good one. one does not hesitate to have the courage of one's convictions (that, i am afraid, is our inheritance) which means that one must be willing to have one's ideas rejected, in the hope that, if nothing else, they might begin to shift perception. ::~: :1: ·r i m 23 • in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 54 p r e s e n c e stepan vaneyan jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? two texts, one diaphaneity? in this article, i would like to consider two texts written by two german art historians: on gothic church space (1927)1 by hans jantzen and the origins of the cathedral (1951)2 by hans sedlmayr. both texts, dedicated to the phenomenon of the gothic, have to do with the notion of diaphaneia, or “diaphaneity”. this term, having a long history, was reconsidered by jantzen and then by sedlmayr. i propose to trace the logic of the use of diaphaneity by these scholars focussed on the problems of sacred architecture and presence. my suggestion is that, although diaphaneity seems to indicate an impossibility of description and analysis of the transcendent in terms of phenomenology and gestalt-psychology (which may well be a characteristic of the presence and the architecture), it is otherwise a powerful methodological concept and analytical tool, which sedlmayr complements with the notion of abbild (depiction). 55 jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 jantzen’s on gothic church space, epoch-making in its conscious combination of gestalt psychology and phenomenology, was, albeit subconsciously, used by sedlmayr in his ambitious project to construct a new architectural history and theory, the monumental the origins of the cathedral. the logic behind the interaction of what seem to be but two versions of almost identical conceptual constructs reveals, among other things, the ability of a single word—in this case diaphanous—to indicate two different conceptual configurations that coincide almost nowhere. in this article, i will seek to highlight these configurations and demonstrate that diaphaneity, used to describe the concept of “diaphanous structure” (the term coined by jantzen), can be seen as an almost universal aspect within a wide variety of contexts. the history of the term diaphaneity is derived from “diaphanous”, so light that you can almost see through it. although at first sight the concept seems clear, the ‘true meanings’ that it has taken on in different contexts has been, in fact, far from transparent. this is evidenced by its very history, rooted deep within aristotelian thought, where two key texts come to the fore, de anima and de sensu. the first of these (chapter ii) is particularly important for bringing the concept of transparency (τὸ διαφανὲς) already familiar thanks to pindar and plato, into almost metaphysical circulation, moreover for doing this through sight and optics. according to aristotle, diaphaneity is a quality within things that makes them visible. the question is, are there degrees of diaphaneity and should light be understood as a condition for sight? an even more specific question is the link between diaphaneity and colour, the only thing subject to sight. in the wake of a number of commentators (starting with alexander of aphrodisias, who clarified that diaphanous was by no means the same as transparent) we must recognise that diaphaneity is in part linked to surface (i.e. to the permeable or reflective potential of a substance with regard to light). this is already found in the writings of aristotle (remember that place in de sensu, 439b 10): “colour is the limit [ἔσχατον] of the transparent element (τὸ διαφανὲς)” (1906: 57), for whom it was important that diaphaneity makes possible the presence of light in an object (light being above all fire and presence the existence of some active quality, the famous parousia, which meant that the mystical implications of diaphaneity became obligatory). and vice versa: “light is the actuality of diaphanousness” (de anima ii 418 / 1907: 79). of great importance was the filled distance (the intermediary environment and, simultaneously, the medium, or metaxu), in which light can only be manifested: for if we place something coloured on the eye then, as the philosopher of stagira rightly noted, you do not see the colour (de anima ii 419 / 1907: 79). the christian reception of diaphaneity immediately proved eschatological and architectonic, for the sole use of the word in the new testament (rendered in standard english translates as “transparent”) is the celebrated description of the heavenly jerusalem (“and the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass” —revelations, xxi:2 1). bearing in mind that “gold” in this passage indicates not material but colour, the optics of diaphaneity—both physical and metaphysical—becomes clear. the medieval reception of diaphaneity lies in its 56 jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 latin morphological transposition, transparentia (used in the twelfth-century latin translation of aristotle by burgundio da pisa). thomas aquinas particularly emphasised that transparency was the equivalent of diaphaneity, moreover, that it was mediality.3 if we add to diaphaneity’s mediality it is possible to link not only with colour but also with darkness (opacity or impenetrability to light does not mean lack of all visibility), we immediately start to understand the undoubtedly complementary nature of transparency/opacity and their link with the perception of, among other things, artistic creation, something which in its substance (materiality) can be penetrated by the gaze (including the knowing gaze that looks through the object to the ideal) but can also insist on its own corporeality and made-ness. very early on, transparency became the condition for all penetration, infiltration and mastery, which made it possible in the renaissance to identify it with perspectiva (the neologism of boethius, as is well known), and that painted image with the open window (alberti) or with transparent glass (leonardo da vinci). thanks to james joyce’s ulysses (1922), the “diaphane” mentioned by stephen dedalus becomes a concept indicating either the emblematics or the hieroglyphics of creation,4 while in le milieu divin (1926–1927; published 1957) teilhard de chardin gave diaphaneity back its mystical-anagogical context.5 diaphaneity in jantzen’s and sedlmayr’s texts all of the contexts outlined above imply different architectures, different spaces, and simply different worlds.6 going back to jantzen’s and sedlmayr’s texts and to the world of church or cathedral respectively, we may note that for them diaphaneity presupposes transcendentality, but with regard to what? jantzen’s answer is space whereas sedlmayr proposes corporeality. this difference is fundamental: for jantzen the relationship of body vs background is immutable while sedlmayr seeks to eliminate the figurative, replacing it with the baldachin (canopy). for jantzen, in the middle of his space featuring the layers of body and background, which he describes exclusively in optical and spatial terms, something that seems to belong in a different taxonomy takes place: namely, a liturgical or cultic event (kultisches geschehen) that presupposes not only the presence of active and passive participants but also transformation: the transubstantiation into the flesh of the easter lamb. sedlmayr, on the contrary, focusses on the baldacchino (the vertical, the weightless) that, he notes, enters the church space from above. now, for him the relationship is not optical (as they are for jantzen, for whom light is the “original data”); rather, they are hypnotic, utterly kinaesthetic, and even hallucinatory. the baldacchino’s pointing to the heavenly jerusalem is not merely referential but structural: the architectonic facilitation and equipping of real, active processes, a direct revelation, captured visually and symbolically as an abbild (depiction). in this regard we might say that jantzen’s concept describes spatial-corporeal states and relationships up to the moment of transubstantiation, while sedlmayr is more eschatological and in his vision all the relationships are radically altered. significantly, for sedlmayr, in all his texts abbild is a universal reflection of the state of affairs in the world in general. it is applicable to anything, including jantzen diaphaneity (which i call here diaphaneity-i), which, in this case, 57 jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 is understood as a structure, a relationship of transparency and transitiveness. later sedlmayr seems to reveal the metaphorical nature of jantzen’s “diaphanous structure”, and thus in the origins of the cathedral he proceeds to his own diaphaneity (diaphaneity-ii). it appears that, driven by the gestalt of abbild, he felt obliged to carry out a reduction of ‘structure’ and saw diaphaneity as a quality, in the phenomenological sense. for him, the bearer of diaphaneity becomes the wall, thus essentially deprived of its corporeality. this way he, so to speak, makes diaphaneity as a structural principle within gothic disappear: according to his “first wall system”, maximum diaphaneity could be found in justinian architecture. das raumlose (the spaceless) sedlmayr‘s reduction notwithstanding, the fate of diaphaneity, both its reception and its undoubted apperception, was determined by the meaningful, promising and multi-layered concluding formulations of jantzen’s text. as will be shown, this text is not quite open to straightforward reading, and its semantic tendency and ambiguity seem to be exactly “the design task” out of which hans sedlmayr’s “church”—both as building and as knowledge—emerged. the most important thing in jantzen’s text (jantzen, 2000: 32–33) is undoubtedly the promise of different perspectives. horizontality set by liberation from space, in which states connected with its disappearance or loss become possible: das raumlose (the spaceless). most significantly, they are linked to the enchanting effect on the heart exerted through worship, which is, we must recall, at the centre of all relationships within the church and which is the mass. this poetic “magic” is comparable to sedlmayr’s “poetic roots of architecture”; but, above all, this is a reaction of the one who reads jantzen’s formula of space: der raum als symbol eines raumlosen (space as a symbol of the spaceless) as an instruction or even as a performative expression (mantra or incantation): one can get rid of space and material and one can rise up if one’s heart is subject to and open to influence. meanwhile, space is allotted a symbolic function, capable of opening up conceptual perspectives, of which jantzen perhaps never even dreamed. our hypothesis is that sedlmayr, one of jantzen’s most attentive readers, is responsible for “carrying out his will”. in that, however, jantzen himself might have been but a medium, for it is the liturgy which is the source and simultaneously the object of the “testament”, if we are to believe, for instance, otto von simson in his text the occidental testament of the liturgy (das abendländische vermächtnis der liturgie), first published around the same year (1945) as sedlmayr’s concept (simson, 1995). the mass itself, understood in the medieval synthetic-syncretic spirit as the most active kind of theophany, as a direct discovery of the sacred, has that “power of the image”, which we have perhaps ceased to feel and perceive in the modern age, or rather in the post-tridentine age. the formula of space as a symbol of the spaceless could easily have been the subtitle of sedlmayr’s the origins of the cathedral. we should also note that for the liturgical event, an appropriately constructed space amounts to its ‘symbolic form’. the event as such presupposes participation and the impossibility of evasion or detachment, hence the acceptance of this kind of space by the participants as their own state. if this event is a symbol, then for them it is also a means of transcending and overcoming the given state. for us, the implications are as 58 jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 follows: if we are consciously talking of symbolic form, notably of space as “the experiencing of edge cases”, then it becomes clear that the inevitable, surmounting and transforming interpretation-reaction to any such formula-formulation is exactly this overcoming of present boundary-screens. jantzen must have known that the expected raumlose (spaceless) could also take on the form of the baldachin, like any tabernacle-canopy sheltering preserving within all with which it comes into contact. however, it was not he but sedlmayr who addressed this question explicitly. sedlmayr must have realised that the super-formal and, at the same time, deformalising “magic” of the liturgical space required means. indeed, the arsenal of conceptual formulations such as baldachin, “all-embracing structure”, “diaphanous walls” (not “structures”) etc. introduced by sedlmayr under the heading of ‘the phenomenon of the cathedral’ (‘die phänomene der kathedrale’) are like the instruments of a magus, ‘polymath’ and enchanter, taking up his stance fully armed to face a challenge, if not a threat, from a comrade-rival very like himself. or perhaps those were simply precautionary measures as jantzen, who regularly referred to ‘magic’ and such like, seemed at once too mystical and magical for sedlmayr. the cathedral: gestalt and abbild sedlmayr’s most significant conviction and postulate is as follows: the cathedral is, on the phenomenal level, not merely the reproduction of a vision, seen and recorded, of the celestial city, but in its very structure recreates each time the very situation of seeing and meeting. the cathedral is this city, for both are in essence a vision. this happens because the cathedral as gestalt is simultaneously the abbild (depiction) and leaves nothing else for its viewer and visitor. on one condition, however: that the viewer be not only viewer and not only visitor, but also a participant in that same festivity, that worship, the composition of which includes theophany in the form of the bloodless sacrifice, before which all kinds of visual mysticism recedes but does not disappear, being filled with bare reality, mysticism which is thus relieved of the burden of verticalism: christ is in the middle, amongst those who have gathered in his name. we should note that sedlmayr himself sets this behavioural pattern for his reader, who, it is suggested, should accept the conceptual conditions of what we might call gestalt phenomenology, and should trust the author of the text on the emergence of the cathedral, in order to become a co-author of, as it were, its co-emergence. for sedlmayr takes seriously jantzen’s proposal-supposition as to those same charms in worship and expands the magic of the constitution of reality. sedlmayr’s thought was linked to specific liturgics, filled with criticism of the medieval experience (such is the main spirit of the german “liturgical renaissance”). in the relevant chapters he speaks, without sacrilege, of the theatricalisation of the mass, points out its choregetic nature (an allusion to abbot suger, who compared the service to a dance performance). as we shall see, these postulates intended to play a fundamental role, as well as many other (quite daring, unusual and emphatically provocative) observations on gothic, set out in the very first chapter, frankly entitled “the completed cathedral” (die ergänzte kathedrale), which was conceived as a true gesamtkunstwerk, utterly in the 59 jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 spirit of wagner. it deals with the main function of historical reconstruction: the latter can also be intended as straightforward construction, completion or development of something for which there was no time in the era itself, or which earlier scholarship dared not do.7 such procedures are like the actions of an architect in giving graphic form to their concept using ideographical configurations, preparing their design like a scenario for subsequent actions to be performed by others playing the role of, perhaps, the “builders” of the gothic cathedral or, for instance, the “priests” carrying out some religious ritual, or even “interpreters” of relevant texts or relevant experiences, in accordance with particular spatial states.8 jantzen’s ideas in sedlmayr’s work: the diaphaneity of the space and the diaphaneity of the theory our task, again, is to trace carefully how the direct, clear desire to put into effect jantzen’s ideas about the symbolic aspects of diaphaneity gave birth to sedlmayr’s radically new theory, pregnant with extreme consequences for scholarship. sedlmayr uses jantzen for his own ends, which include—among other things—establishing architectural theory as an apparatus for permanent and real transcendence. essentially, this theory uses representative resources of the architecture, which contains an endless epiphany with its characteristic visual-mystical implications and the potential for departing from any kind of method, according to gadamer as reported by hügli and lübcke (2002).9 significantly, sedlmayr attempted to found such an important project on the phenomenology not of visual experience (as jantzen did) but of design-constructive activity. sedlmayr intended to resurrect the very order and process of the architectonic and, at the same time, of, as it were, prophetic creativity, in which the viewer and user is assigned the role of the performer of the sacramental act, although we must not forget for a moment he who is, was and shall be its creator. as for the architect, they become something along the lines of a choregos and theurge. the transformed concept of diaphaneity becomes the definitive and decisive point in establishing that presence in the church is the same as presence at revelation, not only apocalyptical and eschatological but absolutely real—timeless and eternal. thus, revelation is founded, if i may put it this way, on the sacramental concept of the abbild: the church can itself be the monumental sacramental, like a monstrance–ostensory and baldachin–aedicule, housing within itself and being itself sacred, saved, illuminated and soteriological.10 sedlmayr starts by postulating the incontrovertible abbildende (depictive) nature of the gothic cathedral, which acts as an individual instance of ‘depictive architecture’ in general, contrasted to ‘symbolic’ architecture. the difference between them lies in the degree of realism of that which is represented by the architecture. ‘being-depicted’ reality is present at the same level as architecture, while symbolic reality (as is right for any referential relationship) is present beyond the bounds of architecture. in this context the decisive moment is indubitably an understanding of the meaning of depiction. for sedlmayr (1976) abbild is notable for its direct concordance, even convergence, of the signifier and signified: it is far from being mere bild (which is too 60 jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 general a concept), nor is it a symbol; rather it is, to use a term which is not part of sedlmayr’s repertoire, a direct signal. in the abbild, the sensory converges with the suprasensory. obviously, for sedlmayr this is a situation not merely of revelation but rather of visual hallucination. the role of faith in the wider sense in one’s value-system is important here: it allows a recognition of the direct link between (even identicality of ) the sensory and the suprasensory. sedlmayr points out that, in borderline cases, where a depiction is equated with depicted, the need for external resemblance is lowest (kurz und kris). it is only “where the belief in the identity of depiction and depicted is waning that a new link between them emerges to bind them: ähnlichkeit [likeness]”. however, when a sinnbild [symbol, mental image] is considered somehow to resemble the suprasensory, the sinnliche bild (sensory image) increases in value tremendously (1976: 103). abbild and sinnbild in the above text, we note firstly the mention of “borderline cases”. for jantzen, this is in essence where diaphaneity makes its appearance: diaphaneity comes through at the spatial boundary, or rather, space itself is the boundary. thus, hidden within this quotation from sedlmayr is reference to that same diaphaneity as transparency which makes the image and that which depicts it mutually penetrable.10 secondly, of course, we note the indication of special cases that require likeness, which is not required in the case of the abbild, constituted and reinforced by faith. lastly, it is not difficult to see sedlmayr attempt to identify (almost by way of pun) meaning and sense: the sensory takes on the meaning and significance (in effect value) of the manifested suprasensory: it proves meaningful, and the sensory image becomes a symbol. such reflections are important to sedlmayr, since his prime purpose is to show how the cathedral becomes and is experienced as the “celestial city”, when looked at in a very specific way (we might describe it as assuring discretion and experience of the suprasensory as the sole unifying reality, on a sensory, not only visual, level). the cathedral is not the condition for or means of re-experiencing revelation (both as apocalypse and as epiphany) but is itself the situation of epiphany–theophany. suffice it to say that this situation is liturgical and eucharistic, presuming both presence and communion with the presence. sedlmayr is quite open here (chapter 27 and after). it is important for him to apply maximum method and methodology to justify what we have already called religious-mysterious experience, to show that this is a matter not of metaphor, but of reality. to be precise, sedlmayr’s task is to resurrect the experience (both mystical and architectonic) of those responsible for creating the cathedrals, and perhaps to repeat it. sedlmayr’s conceptual equipment (phenomenology and gestalt theory) allowed him to do this: one can, again almost on a sensory level, make clear, comprehensible and acceptable the idea that the true abbild is capable of many things, one of which is that it facilitates the unquestioned intentional unity of the earthly and heavenly, by very reason of architecture’s involvement.12 such a conceptual form-factor is facilitated by diaphaneity in the sense given it 61 jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 by jantzen. architecture as such—or its space—is diaphanous, and its extremes and polar opposites come through. they come through, come together and unite for the sake of something new, something which might be that very same boundary, or it might be tensions, dissonance and disruption: for gestalt laws of grouping within the psyche also offer a group of pre-mimetic and pre-figurative states that are, essentially, moods (see below). it is important to understand that the very relationships between these concepts and their authors are diaphanous: jantzen is the “ground” for sedlmayr’s new “figurativity” (in gestalt terms) but he also pervades it. whole theoretical systems and books are capable of being symbolic forms, not only of both the spaceless and also deprived of space (jantzen’s raumloses). diaphaneity: the hermeneutics of the impossible? how can that deprived of space, that free of our sensory perception, become an object of representation? perhaps new light needs to be thrown upon it, there needs to be a new sacramentalisation of the renewed mystery? or do we need to move into other spheres and discourses, notably epistemological? this is the tactic—unconsciously, it seems to us—chosen by sedlmayr. for, as he speculated, there was surely a good reason why, for example, the illumination of the church became such an obligatory element at a very particular point in liturgical development. sedlmayr might have felt forced to turn to this ritual, this religious action-ceremony, to explain his intuition regarding the means for, or rather the quality of, the presence of the heavenly jerusalem. that same logic lies within the desire to affirm abbildlichkeit, depiction through references to the word, to literacy, to poetic texts: these are not simply verifiable “written sources”. it is not simply the recording of speech, but its essential clarity, free of representation, something close to expression in its similarly essential import and significance as an unmediated stamp or trace, the abbild, evident and physiognomical, as a reciprocal impulse, a reaction to impression and expression (eindruck and ausdruck). and the act of writing is that same ostensive gesture, although deprived of the precision of the dot: it is, rather, a spot (macchia) or punctum, a touch, whether of the gaze or the finger (the latter comes to our aid when the first comes across its own blind spot).13 in conclusion, let me emphasise the most important hermeneutic aspect of the transition from diaphaneity-i to diaphaneity-ii, in which sedlmayr’s twice-repeated phrase “ich komme zum schluss” (“i am coming to the end”) is of the essence. temporality is perhaps the most decisive—eschatological—instrument in interpreting diaphaneity. this ending or conclusion is like some exclusion-enclosure, exhaustion and completion of the world’s structurality, being the same transition from bild (picture) to abbild (depiction), from sight to hearing, and from diaphaneity (diaphaniea) to derrida’s ‘diaphony’ (diaphonie). this forces us to listen to the stimme (voice), and through stimmung (mood) move on to bestimmung (definition).14 thus, signifying the presence of the transcendent in the space of liturgical experience (jantzen: year?), diaphaneity, at the same time, points at that which is behind it, which negates space and turns out to be body and then text. sedlmayr’s subconscious, as i believe, correction of jantzen seems to teach us a hermeneutic lesson: it is impossible to catch the presence in either 62 jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 space—phenomenal-sacramental or mental-textual. in further research, it could be interesting to address more emerging questions concerning connections between the optical and textual: on what condition can architecture remain “sacred”, providing the presence of the transcendent? what other kinds of diaphaneity seem possible here— of affect? of empathy? of consciousness? but unfortunately, i should stop here. references aristotle. (1906). de sensu and de memoria: ross, g. r. t. (ed.) text and translation with introduction and commentary. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. aristotle, hicks, r. d. (ed.) (1907). aristotle de anima; with translation, introduction and notes (r. d. hicks, trans.). cambridge uk: cambridge university press. böhme, g. (1995). atmosphäre: essays zur neuen ästhetik. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. böhme, g. (2014). the theory of atmospheres and its applications. trans. a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul, interstices 15 atmospheres and affect, pp.92-99. böhme, g., & engelsschwarzpaul, a.-chr. (ed.) (2017). atmospheric architectures: the aesthetics of felt spaces (a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul, trans.). london, uk: bloomsbury academic. derrida, j. (2011). voice and phenomenon : introduction to the problem of the sign in husserl’s phenomenology, trans. leonard lawlor,evanston, ill. : northwestern university press. gantner, j. (1979) «das bild des herzens». über vollendung und un-vollendung in dr kunst. reden und aufsätze. berlin: gebr. mann. gumbrecht, h.g. (2004). production of presence: what meaning cannot convey. standford (cal.): stanford university press. heidegger, m. (1996). being and time, trans. j. stambaugh, albany, ny: state university of new york. hügli, a., lübcke, p. (2002). philosophie im 20. jahrhundert. band i: phänomenologie, hermeneutik, existenzphilosophie und kritische theorie. hamburg: rowohlt. jantzen, h. (1984). high gothic. the classic cathedrals of chartres, reims, amiens, tr. james palmes, princeton: princeton university press [originally (1957) die kunst der gotik. hamburg: rowohlt]. jantzen, h. (1997) die gotik des abendlandes. köln: n. dumont schauberg. jantzen, h. (2000). über den gotischen kirchenraum und andere aufsätze, berlin: mann [originally freiburger wissenschaftliche gesellschaft, heft 15, freiburg in breisgau, 1928]. jormakka, k. (2006). geschichte der architekturtheorie. vienna: luftschacht. maas, r. (2015). diaphan und gedichtet: der künstlerische raum bei martin heidegger und hans jantzen. kassel: kassel university press. pfisterer, u. (ed.) (2011). metzler lexikon der kunstwissenschaft. stuttgart: j.b. metzler verlag. nille, c. (2013). mittelalterliche sakralarchitektur interpretieren. eine einführung. darmstadt: wissenschaftliche buchgesellschaft. paumann, l. (2010). vom offenen in der architektur. vienna: passagen verlag. sauerländer, w. (1997). hans jantzen als deuter des gotischen kirchenraumes. versuch eines nachworts. in: hans jantzen: die gotik des abendlandes (pp. 210218). köln: n. dumont schauberg. schmarsow, a. (1998). grundbegriffe der kunstwissenschaft: am übergang vom altertum zum mittelalter [1905]. berlin: gebr. mann. sedlmayr, h. (1976). die entstehung der kathedrale, munich: atlantis-verlag; 3rd edn., freiburg: herder. sedlmayr, h. (1939). die architektur borrominis, 2nd edn, munich: piper. simson, o. von (1995) „das abendländische vermächtnis der liturgie“. in von der macht der bilder im mittelalter. gesammelte aufsätze zur kunst des mittelalters. 2nd ed. berlin: gebr. mann. summerson, j. (1963). heavenly mansions and other essays on architecture, new york: w. w. norton. teilhard de chardin, p. (2001). the divine milieu: an essay on the interior life, new york, ny: harper & row. vesely, d. (2004) architecture in the age of divided representation. cambridge, ma: mit press. wittgenstein, l. (1922). tractatus logico-philosophicus. logischphilosophische abhandlung. side-by-side edition containing the original german, alongside both the ogden/ramsey, and pears/mcguinness english translations. retrieved from http:// people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/ tlp.epub 63 jantzen and sedlmayr: diaphaneia—an impossible presence? p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 endnotes 1 jantzen 2000: 7–34. 2 hans sedlmayr, die entstehung der kathedrale, munich: anlantisverlag, 1951; 3rd edn, freiburg: herder, 1976. 3 “huiusmodi corpora proprie dicuntur perspicua sive transparentia, vel diaphana. phanon enim in graeco idem est quod visibile...” thomas aquinas, sentencia libri de sensu et sensatur, lect. 6. 4 limits of the diaphane. but he adds: in bodies. then he was aware of them as bodies before of their being coloured... limit of the diaphane in. why in? diaphane, adiaphane.” the phrase ‘maestro di color che sanno’ in this section is also a reference to aristotle, but as he appears in dante’s inferno (iv 131). 5 xvii.4.3: ‘yes, lord, not only the ray that strikes the surface, but the ray that penetrates, not only your epiphany, jesus, but your diaphaneity.’ (chardin 1960: 130–131). and jantzen himself includes a quotation from teilhard: jantzen 1997: 40. but such diaphaneity is more typical of neo-platonism (particularly medieval) than of aristotelianism. compare, therefore: ‘…luminosity can be described as a theophany of light (lux), which penetrates the world and moves hierarchically through the different levels of reality (vesely, 2004: 116). 6 a full and extremely precise history of the concept is set out in: maas 2015: 124ff. (particularly the relationship between aristotle on one hand and heidegger and jantzen on the other, covering the various implications and individuals involved). 7 recall the spirit of sedlmayr’s pre-war texts regarding “strict science” in the arts, where the leitmotiv is “non-euclidian” methodology, although applied to baroque material, which is nonetheless not so far removed from gothic. see, for instance: sedlmayr, 1939. 8 on mystical connotations of the method (mystische konnotationen der methode) and axonometric projection as a form of presence, see: jormakka (2006: 205). 9 cf.: ‘“gadamer’s intention is not to develop a methodology that would help us reach a ‘more correct’ interpretation or exegesis but to point out the – transcendental – elements presumed in any interpretation, whether we like it or not” (hügli & lübcke, 2002: 209). 10 a superb example of the universal reading of the aedicule motif (using gothic as an example) is john summerson’s essay [summerson 1963]. 11 see wittgenstein (1922): “2.16 die tatsache muss, um bild zu sein, etwas mit dem abgebildeten gemeinsam haben. […] 2.171 das bild kann jede wirklichkeit abbilden, deren form es hat. das räumliche bild alles räumliche, das farbige alles farbige, etc. (2.16 “in order to be a picture a fact must have something in common with what it pictures. […] 2.171 the picture can represent every reality whose form it has. the spatial picture, everything spatial, the coloured, everything coloured, etc.” cf. later: 2.172 “seine form der abbildung aber, kann das bild nicht abbilden; es weist sie auf.” (“the picture, however, cannot represent its form of representation; it shows it forth.”). 12 and simply the cathedral as monumental mystery (kathedrale als monumentales mysterium), which we find in jantzen (see: mass, op. cit.: 151), who perceived the mystery of gothic space phenomenologically (das mysterium des gotischen raumes phänomologisch erfaßte) (sauerländer, 1997: 213). the “revealed” is also a mystery understood as a duration in the unlimited time of the aion (die dauer in der unbeschränkten zeit der aion) (paumann, 2010: 111 with reference to deleuze). she adds that it is the inspirational, virtual side of reality that shines through form (“was durch die form hindurchleuchtet, ist die inspirative, virtuelle seite der realität”, ibid.: 112. but we must always recall the danger of fetishisation of architecture as such (paumann, 2010: 62–64). 12 “macchia” is one of the fundamental concepts in sedlmayr’s system of views (but not only his – see also, for instance, joseph gantner and his “prefiguration” (1979: 107-136). 13 we should recall the fundamental and at the same monumental pre-history of this “spots”, not just optical but haptic: alois riegl with his idea of “haptic form” as the result of primal tactile experience (touching a surface with our fingertips shapes our understanding of twodimensionality, which thus unfolds in space as the sum of many dots), and august schmarsow, with his key correction to riegl’s idea, asserting the impossibility of drawing tactile or bodily experience from touching individual points alone and suggesting instead an experience of holistically and kinaesthetically experienced somatics, including the whole and living body. see: schmarsow, 1998: 42. 14 cf. for instance: “die stimme… ist nämlich die artikulation leiblicher anwesenheit” (“in fact, voice is an articulation of bodily presence”, böhme, 1995: 146). cf. böhme 2014. and, undoubtedly, jacques derrida, who, in voice and phenomenon spoke, among other things, of “the instance of voice and its strange authority” (derrida, 2011: 60).. cf. also: gumbrecht 2004, especially the chapter: “epiphany/ presentification/deixis: futures for the humanities and arts”. szczepan jan urbanowicz & mark panckhurst competiton entry: "the laugh" 119 • the end's second annual design competition: the laugh received some 350 submittals which were judged by the following prominent architects: arthur erickson, thom mayne, eric owen moss and wolf d. prix. the judges awarded three winning entries and named seven honorable mentions. these winning and selected entries were on public exhibit in the city of los angeles from 31 october 1994 21november1994. included in the category of honorable mentions were two graduates from the department of architecture at the university of auckland: szczepan jan urbanowicz and mark panckhurst. on two kinds of laughter there they stood, devil and angel, face to face, mouth open, both making more or less the same sound but each expressing himself in a unique timbre absolute opposities. and seeing the laughing angel, the devil laughed all the harder, all the louder, all the more openly, because the laughing angel was infinitely laughable. laughable laughter is cataclysmic. and even so, the angels have gained something by it. they have tricked us all with their semantic hoax. their imitation laughter and its original (the devil's) have the same name. people nowadays do not even realise that one and the same kinds of laughter, and we lack the words to distinguish them. from milan kundera the book of laughter and forgetting the site the structure is locates in a vacant lot in queen street, central auckland, new zealand. queen street is in the centre of auckland's central business district and the site was vacated by the demolition of the his majesty's theatre in 1987 to make way for an office block that never eventuated. the shrine every physical relic of the site has been removed. visually it is an empty site. but it is a site still imbued with meaning. the shrine is the recollection of laughter. it is the theatre retained in the mind. the intention of the project is to create an architectural intervention that brings these memories into physical tangibility. the temple it is intended that a screen plays movies, television, music, shows to a small audience contained within a skeletal egg-like theatre. the temple seeks to make comprehensible the loss of his majesty's theatre by setting up a reciprocal relationship between temple and the passer-by. the purpose of this temple is the recollection of laughter. • 120 e 1:50 c c v a 0 ll e v a o n §~:;.:z.§?-::.?:::~.::.. ~==-~~~:s.~ --:.o ... ,,-···-.. --. ""-·-··-.... ·------::=::=:=.:=~~-::..-.: .. -... :. .. ::::::"..:::=::-.:=..---.. ·-=-..:.:.":--=-::=~::--·--... ~.:.p-se:-:.-:.==-...:::-.-:_-::. ?.:::=-:e.?-'::7f..tr=:.::. ~.;g~..:..~"'e-===~~ ., j i i '1 lighting casts the audience's shadows on ton the large translucent shells that are suspended from the theatre. the images of the theatre's screen/ audience relationship in motion catapult this private heterotopia into the public realm. 121 • the first celebration the celebration of a theatre's portrayal of life is put on its own stage and hence the relationship between the audience and the screen. the audience's suspension of disbelief is made public. that which is the essence of what theatre "is" is affirmed publicly. the total structure seeks to take a step back and celebrate the position of laughter and theatre within life. the former heterotopia of the theatre bursts into the street, its participants are at the same time viewers and the viewed. the theatre pivots between being the camera and the screen. szczepan jan urbanowicz & mark david panckhurst a house in the west. bill mckay "east and west mean nothing to us here," odysseus told his men when they landed at aeaea, the home of circe. "where the sun is rising from when he comes to light the world and where he is sinking we do not know."1 and half a turn of the globe away on our own little stretch of island, on this isthmus at the narrowest neck of the country, do you think we would not know where in the world we were? our site is near the end of the alphabet, waterview, west auckland, the piece of land under the won the map. one can see the last stroke of that w in the stairway veering down to the water on a lava flow from the extinct volcano, that once ran down to the sea on a path the street now follows to the shore of a tidal lagoon. sometimes there is water here when the last spit of the pacific creeps up through the mangroves to this westernmost bit of the isthmus shore, looking out over one last rim of hazy hills to the tasman sea. the thinnest bit of the country, one can walk from ocean shore to shore, the sun rises from one sea, sets in the other. portage country. 183 a house in the west the tides make this lagoon seem primal, flooding and draining to its own rhythm disconnected from our days, the rhythm of the moon. the tides seem to recreate the original separation of sea from shore, the emerging land and emerging life in the thrust of mangrove pneumatophores from the mud. prompted by the woman's long held dream of egypt these west auckland mangroves conjure western history's beginning in nile mud. these landscapes seeming opposite, antipodean, are not so far apart-new zealand soldiers were shipped there twice-the man's namesake is under egyptian sand. mccahon appealed to egypt or something there when he saw " ... perhaps an egyptian god but far from the sun of egypt in southern cold. big hills stood in front of little hills-a landscape of splendour, order and peace-something belonging to the land, and not yet to its people."2 an egyptian myth i found attractive: the sun traverses the sky in a day-boat, at sunset transferred to the night-boat on the horizon, to be towed on the waters under the earth, to be reborn in the redness of dawn. in this island land, fished from the sea, and rediscovered several times over by people in boats, drawing boats up on shore to stay, we thought we detected a motif of the boat in the air: patea aotea canoe memorial; petone pioneer foreshore museum; gisborne's endeavours skewered on poles and star of canada on the turanganui riverbank; devonport naval museum; w aipu house of memories memorial; boats on trailers parked in streets, or built in backyards, or up on the hard; 184 the fishing boat safely ashore; the lifeboat about to set out; ghost boats on the old foreshore; dinghies on the beach, wrecks, ark, canoe; the ratana manuao _from the english mano' war. bill mckay the boat in the air can be simply a joke, a pun on waterview, a reference to the awkwardness of launching a boat on this bit of the harbour of the "city of sails". a literal house for a littoral suburb . but it evokes the rising and falling of the tides, heightens the sense of the end of the isthmus, the change of surfaces where land blurs with sea and sky out on the shoals and birds alternate with fish, and the sky is unnaturally at one's feet, reflected in the smooth, knee-deep water. the boat shape reflects the crescent moon first seen in the west, riding low over the waterless lagoon, the moon that fills or drains the harbour. the boat not sign or symbol, but real boat or rather imitation real boat stands propped on mast and oar over the front door, portaged boat forming a port and portal, porte-cochere and portico. port-harbour-home. port-left-high and dry. another tide is evident from this site-traffic streaming home in the evening, across the causeway in the wake of daylight, red tail lights in the dusk like sparks from a fire roaring up into the emptiness after sunset, and the vast hollow aerial miles apparent before stars appear. the house is conceived as a suburban villa, a simple country house now hemmed in by suburban tides. there is no dialogue with neighbours, the house addresses landscape and distance, marks the end of the street where land is separated from sea and sky and day turns to night. a cylinder pushed away from the street to the corner of the site, by a tiny stream, it is an observatory lost in its own world of the dreamy lagoon. simple shapes form the house: a cylinder resting on a cube, crowned with a tiny egyptian pyramid, transparent in the guise of a skylight (or is it the volcano's tip or a glimpse of the 185 a house in the west southern cross?) the expansive curve of the rotunda addresses the horizon, recalling the way that in water, ripples go away from you, on this edge of the pacific, melville's ocean, "that rolls the whole earth round,"3 banks's sea, "that lens of water twice bulged and wobbling and rolling round the earth."4 (this house-white whale or pequod?-contains on its deck a tiny lens of precipitated water in an inverted perspex sky dome, lensing light into the basement: "here the small waves fall on the beach for a while."5) like an orrery the cylinder models and tracks the orbit of sun and moon, and curve of earth, as william blake's "serpent temple, image of infinite shut up in finite revolution,"6 expansive yet containing the domestic interior, intimate world cupped in the face of immensity, as seen in joseph cornell's 'space-object boxes,' where "once gone through we trace the round again ... where lies the final harbour where we unmoor no more?"7 the long flight of stairs (the stroke of the w,) veers off northwest and runs away down to an empty jetty and idle archimedean screw at the extreme tip of the site, inscribed "lux lucis lune diminuendum est," our motto, "the light of the moon is not constant and cannot guide one from the other side to the shore of here ." as the earth turns, from the first inkling of morning sunlight in the library, the sun swings round the rotunda, slowly filling it with daylight, till brimming full and driving shadows before it, the setting sun buoys its satellite the boat up into the air, brilliantly lit at sunset, like the evening crescent moon sometimes seen floating over the shadowed lagoon, or the 186 1 i i bill mckay full moon rising over the volcano at the other eastern end of the street. the last rays of horizontal sunlight penetrate the western portals of the house, drill through a pin hole in the farthest wall over the fireplace to project an inverted miniature image of the world in the camera obscura darkness of the stairs to the basement, and this last scene of day is played out in fading light over the kindled fire. two lighting systems are installed, labelled "true" and "false", one obvious, one subtle-glint and gloom. at night a small lighthouse under the boat illuminates the porch, the dream world built by that strange artificial wavering light of candle and lamp beats out the pulse of the night. outside the sinking moon grounds its driftwood and jetsam fleet and sucks out the lagoon water over the rim of the horizon, the travelling meniscus pushing mangrove propagules like tiny boats before it, out into the open sea, to circle the planet, heading for that foreign shore, the world, where once they said of a land upside down from them: "when the sun rises for us, then for them it sets; when it sets for us, then it rises for them. our noon is their midnight, and our summer is their winter, and so everything goes in opposites and the ancient scholars have discussed this in amazement and at some length. perhaps this newly discovered new zealand is equivalent to our (untranslatable dutch) 'opposite-footers' ."8 notes: 1 " ... so the sooner we decide on a sensible plan the better." homer, odyssey, trans. e. v. rein 187 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 a house in the west (harmondsworth: penguin, 1945), p . 163. c. mccahon, beginnings, landfall, 80, 1966, pp. 363-4. h. melville, moby dick or the whale, (1851). i. banks, the wasp factory (futura, 1984), p. 182. ibid. w. blake, from 'europe: a prophecy,' pl. 10. melville, op. cit., p. 114. van nierop, summary of tasman's voyage, 1674, (quoted in a. salmond, two worlds (viking, 1991), p. 82.) 188 interstices02.indb interstices 07 introduction gaps between and within gen-ius and gen-ealogy a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul this issue of interstices: journal of architecture and related arts provides another occasion to explore small and narrow spaces between apparently solid and secure structures; to pause and to expand openings for thought and practice in architecture and related arts. interstices (pl. ĭn-tûr’stĭ-sēz’, -sĭz) insert themselves, as man-made, articulated, and unobstructed spaces, into the elements of their surrounding structures. despite their difference, they remain part of the fabric, as a crevice or crack is a structural part of the overall form of a wall or a rock, or an interval or rupture part of a network’s fl ow of forces. seventeen years after the fi rst issue of interstices, it would be an overstatement to reiterate that an architectural culture in new zealand scarcely exists. nevertheless, its relationship with the exigencies of practice to quote from the editorial of the fi rst issue: “the restrictions of immediate commercial appeal” remains largely unchanged. such exigencies have also produced gaps in the publication of this journal, disrupting continuity, but also creating a void around which new co-operations could form. this broken lineage gives rise to questions of genealogy. as a way of writing history, genealogy can engage refl exively with the variability and contingency of values. its defamiliarizing and performative procedures provide degrees of freedom, by exploring questions of subjectivity from alternative, self-critical perspectives. genealogies, while never universal or external, can clear and open up spaces “by a sense for the possible, … i.e. for that which might be otherwise” (saar, 2002: 237). by making room for potentiality, they can give new impetus to questions posed from diverse perspectives, or from different ways of looking at a problem. they can break, what david owen calls, “aspectival captivity” and disclose extra-ordinary possibilities, purposes and values (2002: 227). similarly, traversing interstices entails productive tensions capable of unsettling monolithic positions. inevitably, genealogy is bound up with questions of subjectivity, and, etymologically, is related to notions of genius. giorgio agamben provides an account of the subject-under-genius where the subject is a fi eld of tensions, generated by a dissonance between the “most intimate and personal“ (p. 95) and a, potentially frightening, “most impersonal part … which surpasses and exceeds” the individual (p. 95). a subject’s impersonal and pre-individual part does not simply precede individuation. it is not merely a past to be recalled through memory; it is always present as a still unidentifi ed reality, “a zone of non-consciousness” (p. 96). this oscillation, between one’s individual self and a power that cannot be owned, amounts to a potentiality of becoming, undoing and generation. from this perspective, writing or designing may entail distancing from genius, rather than demonstrating genius. to “take possession of genius, to constrain him to sign in his name, is necessarily destined to fail” (p. 96). to try to reduce genius to a tolerable size, to act as if the encounter with genius were a personal privilege, produces “tics and symptoms that are even more impersonal”, or, effects that 5 are “laughable and fatuous” (p. 96). ideas of individual genius, creativity and inspired personal achievement generated within romanticist or enlightenment traditions collide with indigenous knowledge traditions. despite many variations, the latter share a number of concepts in which all things are interdependent and related through a common genealogy. becoming-embodied is a material manifestation of a lineage of a person or an object (whakapapa in maori, or gafa in samoan). the body is connective tissue to the gene-archaeological matter of ancestors, land, community, family (refi ti, 2005: 54). depending on how they are engaged with, genius and genealogy can stand in complementary and oppositional relationships. in this issue we want to explore the gaps and fi ssures in all-embracing, genealogical accounts, and the splits and spillages in notions of genius, within architecture and art, practice and theory. thomas mical’s genius, genus, genealogy: hejduk’s potential angels prefi gures many aspects subsequent contributors engage with. shuttling between agamben’s notion of genius and nietzschean/foucauldian ideas of genealogy, mical sketches possible relations between etymologically closely related terms. genius’ potentiality and genealogy’s contingency interlace to elucidate the individual subject-under-genius, generic containers of genus, and the play of invisible forces and drives in genealogy. john hejduk’s angel fi gures, descending into iconic architectural masques in his later works, challenge the conventions of modern architecture-without-qualities. in an unseen space within the image, they fall from potentiality to contingency, move from architectural thought to image. luc deleu’s imagery in the unadapted city project is examined as a discursive undertaking in guy châtel’s plan obus and vipcity, as from father to son. vipcity performs a critique of the contemporary city, questioning methods and aims of architecture and urbanism, but eschews questions of authorship. thus, le corbusier’s image evokes a hackneyed ideal of intellectual effort that professes to act as a lever on society, while jealously preserving its freedom. châtel traces references to modernism and le corbusier which position deleu as descendant, and his work within a “cunning genealogy”. re-assembling pieces of deleu’s giant jigsaw, châtel endeavours to discover what its genealogical references may hint at. carl douglas is similarly interested in the bonds of affi rmation and denial that makers maintain with their precursors. in latecomers, he pairs the writings of two theorists with the relationships of two latecomers in architecture to their predecessors. bloom’s anxiety of infl uence (1973) highlights aspects of adolf loos’ relationship to karl friedrich schinkel, and browne’s hydriotaphia (1669) provides comment on genealogical connections between hadrian and augustus’ mausoleums. the notion of infl uence can be deployed to establish intergenerational debt. however, as douglas shows, the latecomer often thwarts this debt through its very acceptance; genealogy, rather than being passive inheritance, becomes actively antagonistic. douglas juxtaposes architectural incidents, separated by centuries, with literary notions activated in other periods. desley luscombe in constructing the architect of the italian renaissance closely examines the composition and iconography of two architectural frontispieces. notions of genius and professionalism, which are intermingled in these allegorical representations, shifted the role of the architect in italian renaissance culture beyond that of a designer of buildings, by conferring on him a set of classical, ethical and moral values. his intellectual capacity to form architectural space and imagery congealed with ideas of individual genius, propagated by writers such interstices 07 as giorgio vasari, to suggest that an architect was a remarkable citizen with responsibility for society’s visual representations. claims to genius and worth set architects apart from the mass of citizens. in the romantic period, notions of individual artistic genius were further elaborated, as design was increasingly regarded as an individual act of creation, rather than a process of mimesis that re-combined pre-existing material. helene furján’s signature effects: john soane and the mark of genius examines the implications of this shift through the lens of soane’s work. soane mobilized complex defi nitions of genius that had developed during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: aspects of innovation and form-fi nding; aesthetic theories of atmospherics, moods and effects; politics of aesthetics, culture and nation-state. furján also refl ects on the resonances the period’s ‘cult of genius’ has with today. despite an increasing theoretical association of ‘genius’ with processes based on creative codes, notions of individual genius seem to persist in the interest of contemporary architects’ in ‘signature effects’. however, mirjana lozanovska argues that ideal images of master architects are never the real images of architects. as lenses through which architects are seen, they mediate architects’ self-identity. in mistresses and others: the ‘body as subject’ in (architectural) discourse, lozanovska explores the question of who can be an architect. becoming an architect, today, involves confronting the vision of a transcendental and heroic master. how can those whose bodies are crossed by signs of the female, the black, the migrant, the working class, the peasant … stage themselves as provisional masters? lozanovska brings questions of the master/non-master relationship to bear on zaha hadid’s 1996 presentation of her work at the american university of beirut. in genius loci, mark jackson’s interest in the body revolves around that which a body is unconscious of, those elements in agamben’s notion of genius that are not spiritual but, rather, unknown powers in our bodies – most personal and most impersonal, closest and most remote. by linking these aspects to two texts by jacques lacan, jackson probes into the possibility of considering architecture’s genius loci as a locus of the body’s drives. the lacanian notion of jouissance, understood as a structural place of preserving that is usually forbidden, may alert us to the locus of genius as the primordial, though uncanny, ground of architecture’s genius loci. likewise, laurence simmons combines selected philosophical perspectives of kant, agamben, and kierkegaard to complicate theories of the subject as a unity with certain innate attributes. reconsidering the concept of genius with respect to new zealand painter colin mccahon (1919-1987), simmons performs, in “i am”: colin mccahon genius or apostle?, a reading of works from mccahon’s practical religion series, which draw upon the texts of the letter of james. simmons explores how these works navigate a course between the sacred and the profane, and how mccahon negotiates a position vis-à-vis the texts, which renders his identity as an author problematic. in this issue of interstices we are very proud to be able to present the fi rst english translation, by laurence simmons, of giorgio agamben’s 2004 essay genius, the very text that provided many contributors with a common platform for their refl ections on genius and genealogy. in the non-refereed part of this issue several contributors bring a shared interest in psychoanalysis to their explorations of architecture and related arts. in dreamlikeness, steve appel discusses freud’s dream theory and its potential for thinking about art, specifi cally with reference to two images by new zealand artist julie firth. michael gunder provides, in planning’s contradicting genius, an insight into the dark side of planning 7 from a lacanian point of view. lucy holmes, concerned with lacanian psychoanalysis as well, fi nds in the passion of ignorance – also the title of her review of dany nobus and malcolm quinn’s 2005 book knowing nothing, staying stupid: elements for a psychoanalytic epistemology an inspiring challenge and an antidote to contemporary tertiary institutions’ rationalization of knowledge in terms of market values. in his empathetic review of roger neich’s 2001 book carved histories: rotorua ngati tarawhai woodcarving, arapata hakiwai stresses the importance of genealogy for an understanding of the art of maori carving and its traditional and contemporary practices. neich’s book is successful partly because of its understanding of the context in which the carvings and carvers it discusses belong. a rather different application of genealogy unfolds in john walsh’s light hearted genius and genealogy, which considers the question of lineage in new zealand architecture through the publications of three new zealand architectural fi rms on the occasion of their fi ftieth anniversary. in indifference as a subversive strategy, leonhard emmerling discusses theodor w. adorno’s notion of indifference in the context of his aesthetic theory, and relates it to andy warhol’s ostensible indifference towards the banal and the non-banal, and his almost capitalist production for the art market. in landscape / inscape, tony green’s review of emmerling’s fi rst curated exhibition in new zealand, at the st paul street gallery, he discusses the curatorial strategy, as well as the advantages and problems, of an outsider’s perspective on new zealand art. moana nepia concludes this issue with a marriage of convenience?, an at times whimsical, at times serious review of the 2006 royal new zealand ballet performance the wedding. based on a story by witi ihimaera, the performance was geared towards spectacle. nepia argues this compromised the potential of ihimaera’s themes of cultural diversity and interaction, and thus the sense of the possible, the potential to imagine something better was also compromised. references agamben, g. (2006). genius. interstices, 7, 94-99. owen, d. (2002). criticism and captivity: on genealogy and critical theory. european journal of philosophy, 10(2), 143-161. refi ti, a. l. (2005). woven flesh. interstices journal of architecture and related arts(6), 53-60. saar, m. (2002). genealogy and subjectivity. european journal of philosophy, 10(2), 231245. interstices 07 refereed papers interstices02.indb 117 the more total society becomes, the more completely it contracts to a unanimous system, and all the more do the artworks in which this experience is sedimented become the other of this society. … because the spell of external reality over its subjects and their reactions has become absolute, the artwork can only oppose this spell by assimilating itself to it. … this shabby, damaged world of images is the negative imprint of the administered world. … just as art cannot be, and never was, a language of pure feeling, nor a language of affi rmation of the soul, neither is it for art to pursue the results of ordinary knowledge, as for instance in the form of social documentaries that are to function as down payments on empirical research yet to be done. the space between discursive barbarism and poetic euphemism that remains to artworks is scarcely larger than the point of indifference into which beckett burrowed (adorno, 1997: 31f). 1 adorno’s aesthetic theory, published in 1970, one year after his death, begins with the statement: “it is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore” (1). beyond that, his often meandering writing is motivated by the question, “whether art is still possible”(1). this question results not only from the shock that auschwitz caused, and which provoked the often quoted and often misunderstood sentence – to write poetry after auschwitz would be barbarian1 – but it is also aimed at a characteristic of the work of art itself, resulting in an intrinsic and indissoluble ambivalence. adorno reveals this ambivalence by the use of mutually complementary notions. autonomy and heteronomy may be seen as the confi guration on which others are based, with both spheres intricately and dialectically related. the work of art aims at autonomy; or, its status in the post-feudalistic world is dictated by the autonomy of the artist from commissioners, and the limitations of social institutions like the church or the court. the artist is free to escape the demands of society by withdrawing into his own subjectivity. however, the autonomy adorno speaks of is the autonomy of the work of art from the empirical world. the empirical world is to be considered as the same as the sphere of heteronomy, in which no other law than that of exchange is valid. thus, another pair can be added to the autonomy/heteronomy confi guration: that of “being-for-others” (everything is subject to the law of exchange), and of “being-for-itself” (the work of art). as the autonomy of the work of art guarantees its utopian potential,2 it tends, exactly for that reason, towards an affi rmation of the existing conditions, be it even involuntarily.3 as the autonomous work of art constitutes itself by follow 1. “cultural criticism fi nds itself faced with the fi nal stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. to write poetry after auschwitz is barbaric, and this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today”. adorno, kulturkritik i, quoted in martin, (2006) 2. “by emphatically separating themselves from the empirical world, their other, they bear witness that that world itself should be other than it is; they are the unconscious schemata of that world’s transformation” adorno, (1997: 177). 3. “artworks detach themselves from the empirical world and bring forth another world, one opposed to the empirical world as if this other world too were an autonomous entity. thus, however tragic they appear, artworks tend a priori toward affi rmation” (1). indifference as a subversive strategy leonhard emmerling interstices 07 ing exclusively its own “law of form” (formgesetz), and so opposes any need to be useful, it is opposed to the empirical world. it is for itself instead of following social standards. “art’s asociality is the determinate negation of a determinate society”(226). this asociality, however, is also the reason for its ineffectiveness: “the society at which it shudders is left in the distance, undisturbed”(226). “neutralization is the social price of aesthetic autonomy” (228). thus, every work of art is characterized by an indissoluble ambivalence. its autonomy does not erase its character as a “fait social”, and even if it is, as far as possible, removed from the “the crudely empirical” (203), it will not lose its double character as “being socially determined in its autonomy and at the same time social” (210). the aporia, to which the work of art is subjected, is not only to be found in this double character, but is more deeply constituted by the aporia of what adorno calls the “law of form”. on the one hand, this guarantees the distance of the work of art from the empirical, its being-for-itself, its autonomy and its utopian potential; but, on the other hand, the law of form itself is not free from the quality of violence. the process of submitting diverse elements to the dictates of unity and purity is modelled on the principle of heteronomy, which adorno describes as the submission of the plurality of life to a totalitarian unity. for this, all beauty (as the purity in which the law of form is realized) has an affi nity to death, in which all diversity and divergence expires (52). however, at the same time, adorno describes the force that constitutes the work of art as a violence that respects that which it matches: “it is through this idea that art is related to peace. without perspective on peace, art would be as untrue as when it anticipates reconciliation. beauty in art is the semblance of the truly peaceful. it is this toward which even the repressive violence of form tends in its unifi cation of hostile and divergent elements” (258). the restlessness of the dialectic process, which becomes evident here and fi nally threatens to end in absolute negativity, rarely comes to a standstill in adorno’s writings. he seems to undermine every positive idea of art. for that reason, it is not surprising that he writes (using beckett again) that every work of art wants to return to silence, because it is intertwined with what he calls the universal context of guilt. and, where it does not atone for its guilt, the work of art would be nothing but a desecration of silence (134). the absolute negativity of adorno’s theory leaves almost no way out. but there are some key notions in his theory which offer a more positive perspective. apart from the notion of shock, and an often surprisingly positive idea about nature’s beauty (das naturschöne), it is particularly the notion of reconciliation which infuses the whole aesthetic theory and leads to ever new movements of thought. questioned, doubted and reconsidered again and again, its central role and its importance regarding the work of art’s potential for humankind is never undermined. the way in which the work of art could be a pre-appearance of reconciliation unfolds in the light of the notion of “correct consciousness”, which is itself dialectically folded. “…, ever since freedom emerged as a potential, correct consciousness has meant the most progressive consciousness of antagonisms on the horizon of their possible reconciliation” (191). first, this means that correct consciousness is 119 historically determined and not absolute and invariant; it is not an un-historic or super-historic knowledge about the “real” character of things. secondly, it, too, is characterised as a negativum, as the consciousness of antagonisms and not as the sum total of positive knowledge or convictions, all of which, for adorno, are under suspicion of being ideological. thirdly, correct consciousness unfolds on the horizon of reconciliation, as the unredeemed promise of the potential of freedom previously mentioned. reconciliation in the work of art, therefore, happens in the form of a principal failure: “that is the melancholy of art. it achieves an unreal reconciliation at the price of real reconciliation. all that art can do is grieve for the sacrifi ce it makes, which, in its powerlessness, art itself is” (52). through the irreconcilable renunciation of the semblance of reconciliation, art holds fast to the promise of reconciliation in the midst of the unreconciled ...” (33). adorno’s ambivalent notion of reconciliation, which essentially constitutes the utopian potential of the work of art (and for which autonomy is an indispensable pre-condition), is related to his insistence on the character of the work of art as semblance. if the work of art is untruthful, insofar as it stages reconciliation as realisable, and if its truth is precisely that, in renouncing reconciliation, as a symptom of suffering and disruption, it still recollects the possibility of reconciliation negatively, then, in a world in which infatuation, as the counterpart of real alienation has become total, it stages the semblance of its being-for-itself as the mask of truth (p. 227). what appears, but is not, promises to become by appearing. “the constellation of the existing and non-existing is the utopic fi gure of art” (233). 2 the “unanimous system” adorno speaks about is, today, not that of the administered world, but that of the globalized world. the mechanisms of this world follow exclusively the demands of quantifi cation (jameson, 1981). as long as a value can be quantifi ed, i.e., can be transformed into an economic value, it is an object of interest. if it cannot be transformed into an economic value, it is completely ignored. capitalism has the wonderful nature of complete permissivity; there are no values to be fought against, because it soaks them all up. capitalism does not attack values, nor does it destroy them; it simply incorporates and assimilates them. they live on inside capitalism, untouched, completely neutralized, as long as they do not resist its tendency to quantifi cation. i am not sure whether there are any values that can resist. since world war ii, two artists, more than any others, at least from a european perspective, have changed the idea of the work of art: joseph beuys and andy warhol. while beuys’ obvious political activism leaves no question regarding his critical attitude, warhol is often discredited as a cynic, unable to develop a deeper interest in people or social issues. my question, here, is whether his strategy of indifference, and affi rmation, of a society which, since capitalistic, uses values only for a humanist masking of its real indifference towards values, might be a riddle; one which is not so easily unravelled by simply resorting to the bourgeois and snobbish position that the work of art should provide us with interstices 07 that non-quantifi able surplus we are missing, painfully, in our economically determined world. the character of indifference is to be found in warhol at the level of his chosen medium, and at the level of semantics and iconography. the silk print, which warhol for decades preferred to painting, comes from the profane area of advertising (warhol began his career as a graphic designer), and is, from its origins, opposed to the valorised area of the “arts” (groys, 1992). its use testifi es to warhol’s indifference as regards the category “art”, as the principle of the one-off was given up for the principle of unlimited reproducibility, even though he produced limited editions. to distinguish a silk print reproduction of a silk print, from a silk print might be quite diffi cult, and borders on the imbecile; in the end, the certifi cate, or the signature, decides whether the print sells for fi ve dollars in the next poster shop, or for a fortune at sotheby’s. however, even if, following boris groys, we would like to read warhol’s strategy as a valorisation of the banal, it is not completely clear whether warhol himself differentiated between the banal and the non-banal. his often quoted sentence, “all is pretty”, is one of his manoeuvres to neutralize the traditional antagonisms of high and low. the work itself does not offer any evidence that he appreciated images of cows, fl owers, scissors or dollar notes less than images of goethe, or of leonardo’s last supper. instead of calling this a valorisation of the banal, it would probably make more sense to call it the elimination of the idea of “value” itself. the virtually endless reproducibility of the silk print has its analogue in the repetition of the motive, which can be understood as a negation of the idea of the image. instead of an elaborate defi nition of the image, there is the motive’s diffusion all over the surface, an all over without centre, a radical equalization; instead of concentration, a tiring, if not boring, repetition of the same. and it is only logical that warhol used this equalization for images of soup cans, porn scenes or vesuvius, as well as for depictions of marilyn monroe, mao tsetung, james dean or suicides jumping from sky scrapers (feldman & schellmann, 1989). another famous sentence by warhol states that everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. this sentence is nothing but an oxymoron: to be famous for 15 minutes means not to be famous at all. the idea of celebrity simply loses its meaning; nevertheless this phrase exactly meets our talk-show reality. and it meets, in its paradoxality, exactly the neutralization of value and meaning that is driven by capitalism. the icon of this paradoxality is warhol’s self-portrait, with the silver hair wig and camoufl age patterns. this self-portrait can be understood as the culmination of his strategy to establish himself as a brand, and to disappear as a person. to the extent that warhol established the brand warhol – his face, his wig – the person who wore that wig vanished as a replaceable quantity. in the end, the category of individuality is eliminated by the system’s unanimousity and complete indifference. the imbecility, in distinguishing a silk printed reproduction of a silk print by warhol, from a silk print by warhol, is the imbecility of a system that tries to camoufl age the actual worthlessness of any non-economic idea of “value” behind the smoke screen of culture; which is nothing but the nice and intellectual decoration of the actual system, skeletonized to quantifi able values. this imbecility unfolds exactly here: indifferent to the semantic, or symbolic, “value” of the image, the 121 art user stares at the certifi cate or signature which testifi es the authorship of the artist. but the surplus here is not the aura of the unique work of art, it is the aura of the fetishlike status symbol. warhol’s productivity was enormous. the capitalistic principle of division of work in the factory facilitated an output comparable to that of a small-scale company. the market was run. it did not matter whether he delivered images of race riots, car crashes, electric chairs, fellatio, drag queens, sigmund freud or queen elizabeth, as it does not matter, from an economic point of view, if i sell higher valorised products (“good literature”) or lower valorised products (porn booklets). the market swallowed everything, because it could be transformed into money. warhol’s perfect adaptation to the capitalistic mechanisms leaves no space for any euphorical estimation of “art”; it eliminates any category, perhaps even the idea of a distinction between categories. warhol’s cruelty consisted of his strategy of duplicating the mechanisms of capitalism in a kind of mimicry. whoever wanted to be portrayed by him was trapped by the logic of elimination of any idea of value. to be portrayed by him amounted to a humiliation, because, in the whole body of his work, the portrait had lost the privileged position it had once had in the history of art. the point, here, is that warhol used the double faced character of the capitalistic system, and depicted it. by refusing any kind of statement, and by forcing the fetishisation of the warhol brand, he delivered a perfect picture of the capitalistic system. whoever bought or commissioned a work by warhol needed to be asked if she or he were still sane. and this is the question warhol asked of this society. in a perfi dious way he testifi ed to what adorno had already declared: “culture is refuse” (adorno, 1997: 310). references adorno, t. w. (1997). aesthetic theory (r. hullot-kentor, trans.). london: athlone press. feldman, s. f., & schellmann, j. (1989). andy warhol prints. a catalogue raisoné. new york: distributed art publications. groys, b. (1992). über das neue. münchen: fischer. jameson, f. (1981). the political unconscious. cambridge: cornell university press. martin, e. (2006). re-reading adorno: the ‘after-auschwitz’ aporia. retrieved 3 july, 2006, from http://forum.llc.ed.ac.uk/issue2/martin.html in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 83 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n review / sean flanagan the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning. edited by julia gatley and lucy treep the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning is a commemorative account of a century of the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland. written by staff members and published by the university, the book played an important part in recent centennial celebrations. anticipation of those celebrations have unavoidably marked its making, for the book is largely celebratory. as a whole, it is rarely critical or contentious. as such it accounts for much that happened over the century, but as a whole contends less. it eases us through the past, negotiating its way around things that could have been a stretch to the imagination if so desired. but it wasn’t. this book knows its place in history. edited by dr. julia gatley and dr. lucy treep, the auckland school includes contributions from bill mckay, andrew barrie, and elizabeth aitken rose. each contributes a chapter leading chronologically through several decades of the school’s evolution: treep 1917–1940, gatley 1940–1968, then mckay up to about 1980, and barrie to around the turn of the century. gatley returns to reflect on the school’s current state, while aitken-rose slips in a piece about the department of planning. the dispensing of the decades tends to align with either the contributor’s specialist subject (i.e. gatley and post-war modernism) or with the time spent at school (mckay and barrie). treep meanwhile was deep into the research, working her way back through archives and interviews. it was probably natural she took on the early years. and the engaging anecdotes and personal reflections of graduates and staff recalled throughout are presumably due to her many interviews. judging by the extent of referencing, end noting, and indexing, it’s clear the research for the auckland school has been superbly conducted and curated. the book’s historical narrative generally favours depicting the school as a collection of buildings and biographies rather than a more precarious assortment of pedagogics. through the decades we’re introduced to the heads of department, key staff, and some of the more provocative students. the evolution of the school programme is discussed, but with less emphasis on its values or ideology, and a more sustained concern for the social context as something shaping what students learnt. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 84 review / the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n when it comes to changes in the programme, on more than one occasion it’s suggested charismatic staff harnessed student passions to foster revolt. in fact, there are stories of student activists in all decades pushing for staff appointments, better facilities, and changes to teaching methods. but invariably the agitation returns to the age-old question of the relationship between the academy and the profession. the auckland school illustrates how this question emerges for each generation, with students lamenting the separation and wanting closer relations with practice, while academics celebrate the break and the intellectual freedom it affords. or, of course, vice versa. through the decades we also witness the pressure that swelling numbers put on the school’s accommodation. considerable space is then given to tracing the history of school buildings. having followed the foundation pupils down into the basement of the old auckland grammar school, we’re then led down symonds street to the clocktower arts building. from here it’s across to the remuera rentals and then back to the army huts in symonds street, before scattering amongst a slew of old buildings. discontented with this shambles, the staff seize the day and we’re welcomed into doc toy’s early version of the vital “design theatre”, then the short-lived-but-legendary brick, steel, and timber studios of the mid-tolate 1970s, and finally krta’s “bent” building—first occupied in 1978 and still the school’s home. aside the sense of duty to give voice to many of the gems collected in research, it’s likely other forces—overt or otherwise—have shaped the story. the auckland school is the product of careful and valuable research, but the close ties between the publisher, the subject, and its subjects necessarily raise questions about the book’s place as native content. and it raises questions about what limitations were placed on the research and the contributors’ ability to set it to work without fear or favour. in this dilemma and beneath the criticism of the book accounting for much but contending little lies a more haunting question—one of presence. michael king posed a question of presence in his history of new zealand. he described how he had shaken the hand of someone who had shaken of someone who had shaken the hand of sir george grey. for king, this experience helped explain how close he felt to momentous events and key characters in local history. when writing, he said, he was confronted by vivid memories of things that felt so very close to his own lifetime. in addition to the idea of history in aotearoa being something vividly remembered, there is another moral to all of king’s handshaking. it points to how local history is something ready-to-hand and something that has its ups and downs. for whilst there’s the wonder of being so close to the past, there’s the complication of trying to get beyond arm’s-length with one’s subject in order to be able to appreciate its broader historical presence. if, due to the vagaries of life, only a handshake or two separates the historian from someone of significant historical import, then what of the reader? what’s their relationship to the historical subject? it could be very close. and what of the opportunity for the historian and the reader to together step away? the question of presence is therefore a question for both the historian and the reader. to appreciate a subject’s historical presence, it can be important to step out of its immediate presence. but the historian must lead the way. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 85 review / the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n king anticipates the effects of presence on writing and suggests other historians should too. their step away needs to be deliberate, forceful, and embedded in the very structure of the work in order to have effect. the auckland school names both a place and an educational experience that has a vivid presence in many people’s memories. and these memories are, for the most part, living memories. a centenary is not long when measured in terms of architectural generations. where we are now is very close to where it all began. indeed, using the delightful list of academic appointments published at the back of the book it, didn’t take long to work out i could go one better than king’s triple-shake. i only needed two—having shaken the hand of someone who had shaken the hand of cyril knight, holder of the school’s inaugural chair. it’s useful to think about the auckland school in terms of a question of presence; as a question of the presence of this school amidst a broader history of architectural education. and while the book is about a school it is, like much local history, also about how the editors and contributors chose to address the complications of being close to their subject. to what extent did they anticipate its effect? john dickson once characterized the auckland school as a place where architectural education turned around contentious things. at auckland, you struggled to surmount the difficulties and dangers of architecture. you were here to study architecture in a way that stretched the imagination and the intellect. i was told there were other places to go if i wanted to practice architecture. if the auckland school can be said to have a presence, then it may turn around this contentious idea. and this is not just a recent phenomenon. it’s not an ’80s post-modern challenging of grand narratives. the school is too young for this to be deemed a recent effect. or rather, if you’re only talking about 100 years, then everything is recent. john dickson shook hands with doc toy who shook hands with cyril knight. all these educators stretched the intellect. a history of the auckland school could therefore quickly lead us back to the beginning of something contentious. each chapter in the auckland school has snippets of debate, like that around the bent-building’s design and who claims authorship—dickson, toy, gordon smith, alan wild or ian reynolds. i’ve seen many of an exchange of views on this. but while it’s something of importance to those close-at-hand to the project, it doesn’t really lead the reader to an appreciable thesis about the school as a place of education. what has perhaps been let slip here is the opportunity for the writers to contend something about the school’s historical presence and in so doing remember the school in a more consequential way. that opportunity was perhaps let slip by a missed step—that deliberate and forceful step away from the school’s presence, a step that needed to be embedded in the book’s structure. studying history at auckland was always difficult. during my time it was a basic tenet that one did not structure an account chronologically. there was resistance to its neat division of the subject under investigation, its emphasis on the rhythms of continuity that could occlude critical enquiry, and the latent inwardness of its focus—your historical subject seems to affirm time’s continuity and in turn affirm the narrative structure, so there’s little motivation to step away and look beyond it. it’s a structure that can ease you through the past. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 86 review / the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n the school’s history and theory staff lived this conviction, obliging their lectures and papers find structure elsewhere. they practiced what andrew leach characterises as thematic history, one examining relationships between architectural activity and other kinds of historical activity. whether it was architecture and politics, or architecture and representation, or architecture and memory—the thematic approach tended to pair architecture with what leach called an “external corollary”. it promotes thinking at the borders of architecture and offers a way of stepping away from your subject in order to critique it. as a student this was hard. having abandoned chronology, it became a stretch to conceive of a narrative line through to the past. but that was the point. you were led away and had to think your way back. you had to contend with what else your subject could be aside from something that changed in time. in fact, you often had to contend with what your subject actually was. criticism can be leveled at both chronological and thematic approaches. but a thematic bias is known to incite a forceful step away. when the subject matter anticipates the need for such a step, and for the historian to lead the way, then it must seriously be considered as the model for structuring the narrative. in this respect, one wonders how different the auckland school could have been if its structure was not chronologically marking time’s passing, but instead contending pedagogical questions around architectural education. perhaps we could have been led to contend that the auckland school is not so much buildings and biographies, but more education. _l 62 mitchell stout house, auckland, 1991 sarah treadwell mike austin this work is a collaboration coloured by cooperation and compromise, confused by issues of age and gender. ideas of sources and authority are undermined and obscured by the weft and weave of initiation and response. the classical architectural language of symmetry and axiality constructed as a series of self contained spaces hierarchically ordered from major to minor, interior to exterior, is used in this house by julie stout and david mitchell. however the classical, reliant on an orderly categorisation, is undermined by ambiguous boundaries, a layering and leaving that creates a building unsettled by constant restless adjustments. restless adjustments that are both combative and pleasurable, and lead to consideration of the picturesque. "it may come as a surprise to realise that the picturesque is not about the inherent virtues of roughness, irregularity, and abrupt variation, but about their contribution to a larger composition. its motivation is to keep things alive by 63 mitchell sto ut house mixin g in the marginal qualities, to maintain vividness, to resist the tendency for systematic application of an y form of selection to b ecome d espotic."1 recent re-readings of the picturesque emphasise its complexities and possibilities, including its connections to political theoriesconnections that have been repressed. 2 the political returns in this house in its resistance to consumption, its refusal of the fashionable and its rereading of the indigenous . it is also 64 part of the picturesque in its involvement in ambiguity, deferral of completion and its multiplicity of views. to call this house picturesque in its external form and in its undecidable interiors further suggests the importance of its relationship to landscape or "nature".3 but here the stability of the natural is as subject to doubt as the classical. the grounding of the house in nature is complicated by an absence of ground. the ground is covered with building, pool, entry steps, an introduced garden and even a beach. it is then reconstructed in a shell path, container boxes, clay dishes of soil; so that while the project acknowledges the impossibility of the ground (the often sarah treadwell & mike austin repeated baseless, fissured and riddled nature of contemporary existence) it deals with the issue by covering it. the house floats above the ground. the relationship of the house to the street has neither the discreetness of the urban house nor the openness of the suburban. it is a country house in the city; a country house treating its setting as landscape almost as if it were the only house in freemans bay sitting in its own tiny gully.4 the site is both overlaid and revealed. the floor levels reflect the landforms as they step down from front to back and are dished across the site mirroring the gully. there is no sense of past occupation of the site except that the house adheres to subdivision patterns of street frontage alignment. the open front of the house cannot accommodate the entry from the street and the paradoxical closure that this implies. instead a tapering entry staircase, covering the contours beneath, slides up the side of the house stopping at a plywood wall five degrees off a right angle, leading to the door. the wall is diagonally slashed as if a fallen shadow drawn on an elevation. the slash points to the door; overhead is a canopy supported on a tapered angled beam on a central column. jennifer bloomer commenting on piranesi's plan of the collegio suggests that the "apparatus" of the plan is not made apparent through an approach by way of conventional geometry but is rather revealed "by sliding in along the path of the inscribing or incising tool, sliding through a tear in the old curtains in the back of the theater ... "5 sliding in through this tear there is an immediate engagement with the ambiguous boundaries of the house, the double wall that envelopes the central space. called a "living room" this room seems to suggest the possibility of all living being contained in a single space, a place to lie, with fire, water and a cooling breeze. other rooms surround and open off this 65 mitchell stout house central space which, embedded within, organises the house. the room occupies an entire level on its own; you step up and down from it to other spaces. it is separated from the rest of the house by lintels over the many openings in its walls. this room, however, as in piranesi's collegio " ... is an equivocal center that does not perform its traditional duty of stabilizing the structure. it is an eccentric center"6 a rug sits squarely in the middle attempting to repress the restless passage of the body in movement that the house in its oblique approaches and intricate ornament (picturesque qualities) sets up. the wall surfaces resist closure with openings at the corners. two plywood structures on either side of the room refuse to align with the walls; set at diverging angles they also deny correspondence across the space. the plywood box that is part of the entry wall is pierced giving a view, partially blocked, onto the stairs. there is unaccounted for space within the wall and parts of the wall are curiously thickened. the central space can also leak out through a floor level window. even the divan refuses to align with the containing walls. darkly internal, the exterior of the enclosing walls of the central room have been given a rough black external finish . the space, however, does not open directly to the outside. it is an interior space and unusual in a new zealand house where, generally, the only interior space is the passage or hall. these are circulation spaces and the same is true of this central space. it is a centre as circulation; as bois writes of the collegio, "the center is a thoroughfare, i.e., an indifferent place with no other identity than the one conferred on it by the passers-by, a non place that exists only by the experience of time and motion that the stroller may make of it."7 but the issue of interiority is not straightforward in the stout mitchell house. the fireplace, displaced from the conventional central position, is outside the living room and beyond it. 66 sarah treadwell & mike austin it skews and curves and closes the central space but it warms the outside. the pomposity of the conventional mantelpiece, the displaying of artefacts and trophies, is difficult here. the wood of the mantelpiece twists away from wall and fire; it is woven through the plywood panel above, which is itself split vertically . the fireplace endlessly denies its fiery qualities -it is surrounded by timber and has a downpipe running down through the chimney which is itself split. the fireplace refuses the usual comforts; warmth is whisked up through "the gap". 8 the gap according to bloomer is the site of architecture and in this house the gap is between and both inside and outside-the seemingly endless architectural desire to make the outside habitable and dissolve the inside. in this unsettling of the usual demarcation between inside and out, the gaps become a vulnerable point of the house; there is an attempt to construct a non existence with plastic roofing and louvres. the wind can blow through the louvresthis is the negative detail at building scale. this gap between inside and outside is also between the classical and the domestic. 67 mitchell stout house domesticity is cleared away from the central space making an empty interior so that the rooms beyond the gap (the add-ons or wings) contain the expansive aspects of domesticity; objects, clothes, laundry, ablutions and visitors. these wings are cast outside the house which is insulated from these potential contaminants by the gap. the wings are both joined and detached, they bulge from the pressure of their domestic interiors and exclude the few remaining pieces of site. it is a house that in its doubled efforts to contain ends up being unable to contain. it has, built-in, the possibility of its own unravelling. the roof bulges into the barrel vault which is peeled back. a skeletal network protrudes from under translucent corrugations which slip from under corrugated steel so that a possibility of further peeling back is suggested. the central space is not protected in this direction by the insulating qualities of the gaps; the unravelling could go from end to end. the gaps have their ends and beginnings in the water garden. the house, like a hydro dam, holds back and contains the water that might stream through and down the slope. the picture making tendency of the central space slices the water view into frames with a guillotine window (a big double hung with concrete counterweights), a technical (but hardly technological) solution. framed as in a picture we are to look out to, but not to go into, this south side water garden containing sensuous dreamy possibilities both proffered and withheld. the bath opens onto the pool in a play of cold against hot water. the water is used to manipulate the light in the house and activates the picturesque9 in the other direction the house is itself a frame that constructs, through its absent front wall, its own interior as part of the view through the trees to the city. the house is swept through by this axis that starts at the source, the cubist waterfall (oddly non symmetrical) proceeds over the contours of the land to the bush and city to rangitoto beyond and ultimately the openness of the pacific. sweeping the central space free of 68 mitch ell stout house _j lj.j ::::> lj.j _j a: lj.j q_ q_ :::::> _j lj.j ::::> lj.j _j cl z: :::::> 0 a: (!) -sarah treadwell & mike austin containment, this ruthless, rigorous and symmetrical axis is determined by the street layout of the city. the passage of spaces is also the passageway of a suburban house, the hall that splits the house. the suburban pattern repeats in the vertical dimension from cars in the basement to bed in the atticfamiliar and ordinary. which is to say that it is an ordinary new zealand house with its deck to the street and the view and its public and private separations. it uses ordinary materials too. but the materials are never treated as ordinary; there is a sparseness, a lack of indulgence, a care in the details that raises the building out of the ordinary. 10 the extraordinary is combined with a beguiling accidental look that tells us that this is all artifice.11 artifice is fundamental to the picturesque. the mitchell stout house is not a rustic house though it bears touches of that tradition with its creosote and unfinished ends to timber. instead it is considered, deliberate and highly controlled. everywhere the house is dependent on or indebted to nature ('natural' finished timbers, polished plywood, shadows and light) . most unnatural treatments construct its nature; water contained in a concrete box fountain, selective breeding of goldfish, a shell path miles from the sea and a sprouting ponga fence sustained with rubber hosing, all construct a vision of paradise. paradise is also a pacific myth. there are pacific references everywhere; hanging screens, rattan blinds, printed fabrics, and woven mats. these claim to be decorative rather than structural but the pacific is not that easily categorised. the spatial and material organisation of the house is very pacific; the empty pavilion, the separation of functions, the timber structure, the swelling forms . consequently what is structural and what is decorative remains in doubt. for instance the central space in the stout mitchell house is structured ornamentally with a weaving of walls and gaps, interiors and exteriors. fine cloths sway between the gap and the space and slant across the face of the bench. nailing patterns on plywood beams are structural yet decorative. there is a decorative fineness both ornamental 71 mitchell stout house and structural that makes the space complex and multiple and reaches into the rest of the house. the almost geodesic trellis over the deck pretends to be structural (it holds up the plastic roofing) but is also decorative. extension is prevalent; hanging timber screens shimmer and flap in the breeze and extend the walls out into space; a constant movement past the moment of contemplation and appropriation. the complex spatial wanderings initiated in the gaps are elaborated with ornament and fray the serene picture making of the spatial sequence. 12 this house is a building about extension and openness woven together in an intricate play of light and timber with varieties of timber and treatments of timber; overlaid, meshed, stretched and filleted. the rough and ordinary is woven with the polished and refined; the tyranny of structure dissolves in detail. layers of light timber blur the axial system. the power of classical centrality and axiality is constantly ameliorated and undermined but not avoided. 13 here there might be a dialogue between the pacific and the classical, a dialogue of questionable equivalence, certainly the "planimetric choice" of axiality is undermined by its own dependence on hierarchy of structure and ornament which the deeply decorative design dissolves. the stout mitchell house resounds with the internal upheavals of the picturesque. notes: 1 sidney k. robinson, inquiry into the picturesque (chicago: the university of chicago press, .. 1991), p. 27. 2 for example see sidney k robinson, "the picturesque: sinister dishevelment", in marco 72 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 sarah treadwell & mike austin diani and catherine ingraham, restructuring architectural theory (evanston illinois, 1989), p. 74; and yve-alain bois," a picturesque stroll around clara-clara", in annette michelson, rosalind krauss, douglas crimp, joan copjec (eds.), october the first decade 1976 1986 (cambridge mass.: the mit press, 1987), p. 364. "nature and the conventions of classical culture each served as foundations for stable, authoritive, aesthetic constructions. the appeal to such sanctioned sources may be argued in terms that seem to set up a contradiction between nature and convention, but neither is willing to replace its claims of absolute reliability by a recognition of its self-referential construction. mixture itself can be proposed as stable, optimal condition only by seeing its prevention of homogenisation as a constant that lies behind obvious changes. such a continuous reframing of the phenomenon as whole becomes a part serves to overcome the inertia of certainty." sidney k. robinson, inquiry into the picturesque (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1991), p. 21-22. the picturesque, according to bois, operates "not to force nature but to reveal "capacities" of the site while magnifying their variety and singularity." bois, op. cit. jennifer bloomer, "towards desiring architecture", in andrea khan (ed.), drawing building text (new york: princeton university press, 1991), p. 62. ibid., p. 48. bois also suggests that piranesi "foreshadows the space of all modern sculpture ... one of passage and displacement from the centre." bois, op. cit. "a third image is the gap between boundaries, the place where the edge of things comes close to touching. the place of architecture seems to be here in these places (as well as in its conventional disciplinary capsule, which rather sheepishly embeds itself in an imagined wall between art and science). this architecture is not disciplinary, but interdisciplinary. it seeps out of its capsule and bleeds into the interstices, ... "bloomer, op. cit., p. 56. also le corbusier about whom bois says: "le corbusier, as his vocabulary shows, again takes up the idea of the picturesque, and tries to imagine what a picturesque architecture might be." bois, op. cit. this is less so in the wings which have conventional building details and which make one aware how refined and sophisticated the house is in its construction. "for the picturesque is above all a struggle against the reduction' of all terrains to the flatness of a sheet of paper."' bois op. cit. "the struggle to avoid tyranny and system by habitually injecting "roughness, irregularity and abrupt variation ... ", robinson, 1989, p. 78. 73 13 mitchell stout house "the collegio, then, constitutes a kind of gigantic question mark on the meaning of architectural composition: the "clarity" of the planimetric choice is subtly eroded by the process with which the various parts engage in mutual dialogue; the single space secretly undermines the laws to which it pretends to subject itself. manfredo tafuri, the sphere and the labyrinth (cambridge, mass.: the mit press, 1987), p . 31. 74 mae west print (1934-35). assemblin g the apartment. (ram6n g6mez de la serna, dalt) mae west apartment. 80 re-visiting mae west's face gordana kostich-lefebvre ljudskoga lica i zvezdanog neba nikada se covek nagledao ne bi. (one never beholds enough of human face and starry heaven.) ivo andric, "lica, predeli" ("faces, landscapes") dali's famous gouache on printed paper from 1934, 1 face of mae west which may be used as a surrealist apartment, was realised forty years later as an "apartment" in dali's theatro-museo, in his native figueras. constructed under dali's direction by the catalan architect-designer oscar tusquest, the figueras piece consists of furnishings for a rather stretched, semi-enclosed space which needs to be viewed through an entraordinary observation point, a key(hole) to the face on the ground. unfortunately, this spatial portrait and its decoder (vue eclarte) have never been presented as a two-part installation. this myopia needs to be corrected first. if visitors were "ordinary" passers-by-that is, not already familiar with the "portrait," and not looking for itthe face would be concealed from them, and revealed only though a very particular "point of view." a viewer could certainly recognize the famous lip-shaped, red sofa,2 the most sensual of all sofas, and could even sit on it, but would not be able to immediately put it together with the rest of the facial features, which are separate objects apparently scattered around. the floor is slightly inclined . what would fit into the portrait as "blond bangs" is a suspiciously ragged carpet, which indeed draws attention as something out of its proper place, wherever that place could possibly be . a visitor's passage or hallway divides the "room" from a rectangular pedestal of table height, set across from, and at the orthogonal axis to the "sofa." a hoofed, stuffed animal-if my memory doesn't betray me, a single-humped camel-is placed upon the pedestal in an "en passant" position to the face fragments in the room, crossing mae west's "neck," so to speak. on both sides of the pedestal, from the front and at the back of the camel, steps lead up the platform and a narrow space is left "behind" the sculpture, just enough for a person to stand and traverse it. somewhere around the middle of the animal's belly there is a suspended speculum. it is only after the "speculant" climbs up from the side of camel's face, stops and bends halfway to look through a concave lens,3 that the object reveals itself to the eyes of the "mortal." only together do the setting and a mirror make this face a spectacle. this is dali's moment of initiation. this work evokes a long and rich tradition of composed, encrypted and transformational representations. thematically, it is close to aberrated portraits, "hidden" (subsumed) objects, and patchwork/puzzle compositions. spatially, it is akin to two-part perspectival "experiments" of a brunelleschian type; "scenographies"; architectural figurations in plan, landscape and/or garden assemblages; and even large-scale land designs visible only from the air. at first, references could be established with any of the above, but on closer inspection, nothing completely fits. dali's piece seems truly independent from all of the above. so what is this aslant assamblage/ performance with a diva? surprisingly, nothing in mae west face installation or its operation is aberrated. 4 through the dimension of the "hidden face" invokes a composite portraiture of a kind that made giovanni arcimboldo and his humanoid creations5 influential far beyond refined mannerism and an inspiration to twentieth century avant-garde artists. breton, for example, considered arcimboldo note unless otherwise noted, images are from th e arcimboldo effect: transformations of the face from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. 1. the sa me year that the surrealists as a group denounced dali. 2. in 1936, a little more than a year after the gouache portrait, dali made the first mae west lips sofa, a wooden frame upholstered in dark and li ght "shocking pink," now much less known than the red lips sofa. he represented it in his 1937 chalk and gouache birth of paranoiac furnishing. 3. which might be called a "diminishing" lens , as opposed to a magnifying one. 4 . what dali aberrated this time was a traditional depth perception, as well as horizontal and vertica l space expectations. by playing with our visua l limitations, dali teased and thwarted our spatial aptitude. he only extended the parameters within which we normally operate. there is a certain definite space within which we discern images and figures presented on the vertical surfaces. by considerably moving these limits dali hid his creation. the face is a spatial composition: a horizontally designed, gigantic threedimensional sculpture, wh ich could have been a part of a landscape or garden design were it in the open . 5. mostly compositions of various species of the same class, they were also exercises in the art of classification, a real obsession of the mid-sixteenth century. considerable attention has been paid to the (glamourised) musical chromatic notation thatarcimboldo supposedly used to correlate his paintings to music. see tonino tornitore, "music for eyes" in the arcimboldo effect: transformations of the face from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, eds. simonetta rasponi and carla tanzi (milan : bompiani, 1987), 345-358. leonardo's interest in chromatic music-as well as his organic sculpture/ shield of the head of medusa which, although shortli ved, was rather famoussh ould be seen in the same light. "camel sketch" by author. 81 matthaus merian. anthropomorphic landscape (early seventeenth century). dali. the paranoiac visage (1931). 6. the series of french postcards (well) known as "tete composee" which were in circulation around 1900 showed heads composed of female nudes. 7. benno geiger, i dipinti ghiribizzosi di giuseppe archimboldi: pittore l/lus-ionista del cinquecento 1527-1593 (italy: vallechi editore, 1954), with commentary on arcimboldo, "the musician" by lionello levi and the final word by oskar kokoschka . baltrusaitis discussed arcimboldo in the article "tete composee" which appeared in the medecin de france in 1951 . filippo de pisis published "l'arcimboldi italiano e surrealisti parigini" in l'ltaliano of january 1934 and alfred barr publicised the interest by inserting enlarged photographs of arcimboldo's works in the moma exhibition "fantastic art, dada, surrealism" in 1936. 8. dali introduced the image in le surrealism au service de la revolution (vol. xii no. 3, paris 1931) as a process of superimposition . he produced a painting based on this image around the same time (1934-35) that he created mae west's face. they are shown the the arcimboldo effect (286, 289), accompanying cacciari's text "animarum venator," but unless the illustrations are meant to form a parallel visual essay in its own right they are completely out of place as they are "out of text. " interestingly, although dali 's work has illustrated this book more than anyone else's (besides arcimboldo), and although his little text "honor to be object!" has been reprinted in it, dali's composed heads receive only non-verbal attention. 9. "faces and/or heads in the landscape" is too vast a subject, even if confined just to surrealism . 10. around forty versions of muses inquietantes. 11. salvador dalf, hidden faces, trans. haakon chevalier (new york: morrow, 1974 [rostros ocultos, 1944]). 12. hidden faces. author's foreword , xvi. 13. intended as a homage to rothko, dali created thi s painting in 1976 as a digital interpretation of lincoln's face, based on th e informaion recei ved from american cybernetician leon d. harmon. the technique has been called pixnpix, constant density graphics and sometimes even dali vision , although dali vision is closer to holographic t ec hnique as it contains multiple images which change depending on the changing perspective of the viewer. 82 to be one of the masters and a precursor to the world of the imaginary and the marvellous. surrealists were referring to the tetes composees6 long before the first monograph onarcimboldo appeared in 1954.7 an anthropomorphic landscape by another mannerist, matthaus merian (1533-1650), is curiously comparable to dali 's "ethnic" paysage polyvalently titled the paranoiac figure, an african village-scape within a giant female face whose "birth" as the paranoiac visage dali originally presented in 1931. 8 both fall into the category of human faces concealed in the landscape. 9 then the fact that, in order to access the picture of mae west's face, it is necessary to raise a viewpoint twicefirst of all by stepping onto the camel pedestal to discover the plane of depiction, and secondly "entering" the picture itself through the diminishing lens-places the installation on the level of "larger scale arts," although very far (below) from, for example, the ancient, mysterious peruvian ground figures visible from thousands of feet above the ground; far even from the visions of bodies embedded in architectural plans ... but the principle is the same. the theme of the convulsive face has its place within a general surrealist exploration of illusionary and spatial visages, and this subject was regularly exploited, starting with de chirico, io but also by ernst, magritte, delvaux, duchamp and man ray. however dali's work, more than anyone else's, abounds with symbolic and illusionary heads and faces. they are anthropomorphised and personalised spaces, often with mythological and cosmological dimensions. dali divines rather than creates "hidden faces." his ability to initially perceive them, together with a deep persuasion that a face offers an entry to a set of conditions "behind" itself and, reciprocally, that the phenomena could be facialised (for example, in dream [1931 ]; anthropomorphic echo [1937]; sleep [1937]; old age, adolescence, infancy [1940] ; and melancholy [1942]) are the prerequisites for dali's "facialisation." in this light it is quite natural that dali titled his novel hidden faces, 11 a novel "dealing with the development and the conflicts of great human passions .. . the story of the war, and more particularly of the poignant post-war period." 12 other apposite examples of dali's metamorphic "facial" works are the image disappears (1938), a variation on vermeer's interior metamorphosed into a "hidden" face; the apparition of a war scene on the face of lieutenant deschanel (cover of paris match, 1954); the famous skull sculpted with bodies of four women, photographed by phillipe halsman (1954) and then retouched by dali; paranoiac-critical conversion which was a transformation of antiques magazine cover intu the apparition of a face (1974); gala contemplating the mediterranean sea which at twenty metres becomes the portrait of abraham lincoln (1976); 13 and endless anamorphosed visages, including self-portraits on an empty-looking skin such as the one in enigma of desire. 14 philosophically, the mae west installation seems to be firmly within a lacanian system, 1 and not only because the "object" is a face of the desirable american "cultural" icon from the thirties. it is a very clean uncanny, and the paradigm of a cleverly deconstructed object. it embodies many of elements figuring in lacan's theory: camouflage and mimicry; the mirror; objet a= agalma; luring; the gaze and the eye; the cathartic speculum; and sublimation. dali's familiarity with lacan's writings has often been emphasised and lacan's "influence" on dali is deduced from their acquaintance and the role of the paranoiac within dali's system. definitely, lacan knew dali's work. 15 taking into account their common interests in freud, in the phenomenon of vision and the laws of optics and in painting, it is not surprising that there should have been an exchange between their respective systems. mae wests face requires a sharpening of the (scopic) vision, lying as it does between the large scale and the "readable," just across the threshold of the normally perceptible, merely but wittily hidden in front of"our noses." it is easy and convenient (perfectly suited) to interpret it in lacan 's terms where dali's visions are already incorporated. with regard to representational aspects, there is a considerable conceptual difference between facialised landscapes, heads sitting on the open ground and "faced" interiors. the facial landscapes. as painted by giorgione and dlirer are an extension of the recognition of "playful figurativeness of nature." 16 less well-known arcimboldan "face-scape" woodcuts underline the interplay between the "natural," or the existing condition on one hand, and the real or possible manmade intervention on the other, rather than being illustrations of some portraiture both created and discovered "by chance." volumetric "heads on the ground," such as ork ofbomarzzo, pirro lighorio's anthropomorphic catharsis of the entrance to hell motif, like le corbusier's "facial five points" reveal a great tension with the chthonian from which they seem-painfully, and unsuccessfully-to attempt to gain independence. that is the case of anti-antheus. a "faced" interior, in comparison, is completely unnatural, exclusively artificial. to phrase it better, it is utterly independent from nature's whim and under the full control of its creator. paradoxically, to facialise an interior means to externalise it. an ephemeral facial epidermis envelops furnishings inside the dwelling, where a nose could become a hearth, the eyes landscape depictions framed on the wall and the lips a rosy love seat. does this still resonate with a more traditional building/body analogy, where the breath is the vital force and the hearth coincides with the classical breathing heart or soul, 17 windows are the eyes and the entrance is the mouth? the analogy is still possible although across the threshold, just behind the traditional mouth/entrance where the whole face-interior occurs, making room for the inner face. in the case of mae wests face, this transgression hinges on the fullness and startle of the pink-lipped love seat. the access into an interior faceas opposed to the access to the interior through the faceinteriorising, and the face-interior are strung together beyond lacan. dali. study for the image disappears, in which a portrait in sem i-profile appears in a "vermeer" scene. (robert descharnes, salvador dali: the work, the man) dali. the endless enigma (1938). dali. ruin with the head of medusa and landscape (1941). dali's portrait from the extension of the museo dali. (penny mcguire, "surreal collage," architectural review) original pink lips sofa for edward james. (robert descharnes, salvador dali: the work, the man) 14. further well-known faces are the great paranoiac (1936); the infinite enigma (1938) and the related apparition of face and fruit dish on a beach (1938); visage of war (1940); the market with a disappearing face of voltaire (1940); apotheosis of homer ( 1944-45); galatea of the spheres (1952); birth ofa deity(1960); and apparition of the visage of aphrodite ofcnide in a landscape (1981) . dali's own enormous black and white face, displayed on a revolving panel, camouflages the elevator door at the top of the staircase of the extension to the museo theatro dali (1995) and is reflected in a multitude of mirrors which clad the walls of the staircase. only unwittingly does dali's face go beyond being a "symbol of dali's egocentrism ." 15. for example, jacques lacan, the four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis (new york: w.w. norton & co, 1981), 878, where he mentions dali by name. there are other, more general "artists" statements in the book where lacan could have had dali in mind. 16. that is, delight in the discovery of concealment and the subtlety of the figural. the phenomenon of "bearded clouds"-that is, the unintentional (non-artificial) figuration , described by pliny (natural histories, ii.lxi) and re-admired during the renaissance-has been lately discussed by hubert damisch in theorie du nuage: pour une historie de la peinture (paris: editions du seuil, 1972). 17. the greeks believed the seat of vital breath to be somewhere w ithin the tight tissue of the heart and lungs. the romans placed it in the whole chest (pectore): see r. onians, "the organs of consciousness" and "the stuff of consciousness" in the origins of european thought (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1991 ), 23-66 . the parallel between altar, hearth and this essence of life was a commonplace in classical thought. 83 standing in the shadows standing in the shadows gill matthewson interstices 4 standing in the shadows 1 i in the call for papers for this symposium, a worker’s tool kit and a courtesan’s reticule are cited to illustrate the difference between accessory as useful and as ornament. presumably the courtesan’s reticule is that which is ornamental and the worker’s tool kit is useful. and yet ... a tool kit might be carefully aged to give an illusion of experience and a reticule might contain condoms. so who can say which type of accessory is more necessary to the work or even the very survival of the person that carries it. there are two things that interest me in this illustration, one is the inherent crude polarisation of gender: a woman and her accessories are decorative a n d a m a n a n d h i s a r e u s e f u l . although the text speaks of there being no sense in privileging either of these positions, it exists. what also interests me is the notion that an accessory carries with it an idea of identity. can a worker be a worker without tools and can a sex worker survive without condoms? it seems that accessories are more than either just useful or ornamental but are integral to survival, legitimacy and identity. thus, accessories within accessories give clues. and so i want to access this notion of theory as accessory to architecture by combining these two interests and conducting a parallel investigation into another accessory: woman. in particular the way she has been accessorised in a certain building: the barcelona pavilion (fig 1). first built in 1929 for the barcelona international exhibition but demolished soon after, the regard for both the pavilion and its architect, mies van der rohe, was such that it was reconstructed in 1986. ii i find myself in an odd position here because when i speak of woman i also have to speak as a woman. i cannot separate the accessorising of woman within architecture from my own search for survival, legitimacy and identity in this same world. they are entwined. and this search for a place in the world of architecture has been shadowed by a force that has constantly marginalised me and other women. i b e g a n w i t h a s e a r c h f o r r o l e m o d e l s . i u s e d to collect the names of women architects as some kind of evidence that before myself and my contemporaries there were others. they were the n a m e s o f w o m e n w h o i n e a r l i e r d a y s h a d t o f i g h t society’s stricture that married women did not work and so practised in partnership with their husbands. but her name would slip under his and not be seen again. or women who chose career over family and never married. they were rarities, oddities and therefore unable to be classified. or women whose interest in architecture was propelled by a middle class concern with helping the ‘less privileged,’ work firmly rooted in the domestic realm and so deemed of interest only to sociologists not to those compiling histories of architecture. or women involved as patrons who supported, encouraged and guided the building of architecture. one such name is that of lilly reich, mies van der rohe’s seldom acknowledged collaborator. she is a shadowy figure, existing almost exclusively in the margins and footnotes of books, between the lines, and in the lapses and discrepancies of accounts of mies’ life and work. it is, however, a strong shadow. i believe that someone of importance cast it. lilly and mies met sometime in the mid-twenties and in 1926 she moved her studio to berlin from frankfurt. most historians mark this move as being the beginning of their collaboration 1 which lasted until mies emigrated to the states in 1938. this period includes the barcelona pavilion. that lilly reich has impacted on the work of mies can not be denied. prior to working with lilly, mies was foundering badly in his attempts to translate his theoretical ideas of the early twenties into built form. even as sketch designs the individual theoretical works are neither complete nor consistent. the 1923 brick country house, for instance, has plans and perspectives that are impossible to match up. with his first commission for a built modern work, the dexel house, obtained in early 1925, mies failed to progress further than a couple of small vague preliminary sketches. 2 mies’ procrastination was legendary: “chronic dilatoriness and indecision [is] mentioned in all first-hand accounts of mies,” 3 a n d t h e w o r k p r o d u c e d d u r i n g their collaboration is marked by the speed of its execution. 4 after the collaboration, mies’ work did interstices 4 standing in the shadows 2 not in general maintain the sensibility of the collaborative period: there was a change in his later work a new coldness, a relentless austerity that many found offensive ... arthur drexler spoke of mies’s ‘freezing down’ in america ... philip johnson agreed, ‘an architecture of sensibility seemed more than he could bear.’ 5 david spaeth writes that “reich’s influence was less in the realm of ideas than in the application of those ideas which, prior to 1927, mies was only beginning to address colour, texture, and furniture.” 6 to describe lilly’s influence as being ‘limited’ to furniture and other such details (thereby implying a lesser significance) runs counter to classic miesian lore which maintains that ‘god is in the details.’ even if her influence is considered confined and limited only to the ‘application’ of mies’ ideas (denying her any design input) then her role must still have been absolutely critical and vital in producing the buildings described as mies’ masterpieces. for the success of the european work is precisely its realisation of ideas by attention to detail, colour, interiors and furniture. 7 lilly’s skills place her at the very core of ‘miesian’ architecture. iii before her collaboration with mies, lilly reich was a designer of note and had sufficient repute to be appointed a director in 1920 of the deutscher werkbund. but her work has since been marginalised. the reasons for this are complex. primarily, the idea of collaboration interferes with the concept of genius. battersby argues that for architecture to effect the transition from craft to an art in the european tradition, there must be geniuses. 8 so in the nineteenth century architectural history was represented as a succession of great geniuses and great buildings. collaboration was also denied by mies. he maintained that: “when an idea is good and it is a clear idea then it should only come from one man.” 9 in response to gropius advocating collaboration in the creation of a building, mies once said, “but gropius, if you decide to have a baby, do you call in the neighbours?”1 0 the erasure of lilly reich from the history of mies then, was necessary to promote him to genius and his work to the realm of art. but this view of architectural history requires not just the erasure of the work of a collaborator, it also requires the erasure of the work of women. genius in the art canon has always been an attribute of men: men who deviate from the traditional norm, transcend it and set new rules. women (and people of different race) may also deviate from the proscribed rules and norms, but they do so from a different position. they are ‘others,’ struggling to be normal and failing. women basically do not “stand in the same relation to cultural traditions as do men.”1 1 “women perform lower-level conversions of nature to culture [children, education, cooking] but when the culture distinguishes a higher level of the same functions, the higher level is restricted to men.”1 2 a woman’s role in the production of art is tightly circumscribed: chadwick argues that historians consistently attribute “to the woman artist ... diligence rather than invention, the locus of genius.”1 3 lilly reich is consistently portrayed dealing with the details of building with precisely such diligence rather than the flair attributed to mies. her work, influence and impact is modified to fit into acceptable cultural definitions of a woman’s role, especially that of “behind every great man is a woman.”1 4 thus, she is defined as an interior designer or fashion couturière, (although her talents ranged widely enough to challenge any such classifications) and descriptions of her are of the “vine around the figure of a great man” variety.1 5 reich is seen as having a purely administrative and supportive role, of carrying the weight of everyday life so that mies might concentrate on another world.1 6 iv this level of bias within the history books meant that e v e n o n c e i h a d f o u n d t h e n a m e s o f women and uncovered their work it made no difference: no name carried the status of any of the men, regardless of talent. and then i discovered a strong history of women’s involvement in building architecture. reaching far back into pre-history, women were the original builders and for millennia in nomadic and so-called primitive cultures, women have designed, built, controlled, and owned the structures that sheltered them and their families. adam’s first house in eden? eve would have built it. but this still wasn’t enough, there always seemed to b e a w a y t h e i n f o r m a t i o n i w a s finding could be sidelined: it was building not architecture ... it was interesting but not today’s reality ... it was essentialism ... something very complex was at work to keep me illegitimate and in the shadows. interstices 4 standing in the shadows 3 in frustration i decided that nothing i could do or say could make any difference because i was missing the point. it meant nothing that there had been others and that i could prove that women had been involved in architecture since time began. it seemed i could never be legitimate as i was missing the most essential accessory required to be an architect: the phallus. but before i resigned forever from the field, i decided that there might be a clue in this overly simplistic and pessimistic analysis: that the body has some kind of hold on architecture. the body has a long history in western architecture. from vitruvius via the renaissance theorists such as alberti, di giorgio, and filarete, and sealed into the very foundation of western architectural thought is the idea that the symmetry and proportion evident in the human body are natural laws of beauty. therefore, the form of the human body should generate architectural form, its proportions define architectural proportions, and its parts supply the measures necessary for building.1 7 the body centres the world and architectural rules and configurations. but the body concerned is not ungendered. it is unquestionably male. vitruvius writes of “a wellshaped man” and his words generated the classic drawing of a man centred in the circle and square (fig 2). but at the precise centre of this drawing/view that posits the male body controlling architecture, and forming a pure circle to the hands and feet is the navel. the navel marks the body’s dependence on, and connection to, the body of woman. so, laying aside for the moment fears of biological determinism and essentialism, i began to further search for the body of woman in architecture v in the barcelona pavilion is to be found the statue of a woman (fig 3) . she is veiled by a multitude of reflections; she both belongs, but is secondary; she is decorative, additional but somehow also essential; she controls the building yet seems trapped by its walls. she is an accessory to the building but views of the statue, immortalized in the original black and w h i t e p h o t o s a n d n o w i n c o l o u r g l o s s , a r e iconic views for modern architecture and descriptions of the pavilion lead to her. an accessory she may be but also pivotal: the architectural focus of the building.1 8 investigation reveals some odd information about this sculpture by georg kolbe. it holds the curious distinction of being the only part of the composition to have survived the dismantling of the original 1929 pavilion. although there was for over half a century a persistent rumour that the pavilion was held in storage in a warehouse somewhere in spain (or germany, or iowa) potentially awaiting reconstruction, the truth is that all materials were sold to defray the high cost of the building.1 9 n o t even the furniture survived. reproductions were made from original drawings.2 0 t h e s t a t u e i s k n o w n b y a number of names: the dancer, morning and evening a r e a l l u s e d b u t n o n e with sufficient authority to be definitive. hays2 1 a n d frampton2 2 a n d t h e oxford companion to twentieth century art 2 3 use the dancer. tegethoff2 4 and constant2 5 write of morning. in a similar vein quetglas 2 6 writes in spanish of amanecer translated as sunrise in quetglas, 2 7 schulze,2 8 drexler2 9 and james3 0 all use evening.3 1 others sidestep the issue by writing of a ‘statue of a dancer.’ in euripides, aphrodite says “i am mighty among men and they honour me by many names.” 3 2 this and other phenomena surrounding the statue seemed to me to refine it as a kind of ancient goddess figure. the goddess is commonly perceived in a triple form as virgin, mother and crone. she is the archetypal trinity representing a cyclical view of life ruled by the continuing roll and flow of the seasons; of birth, death and rebirth.3 3 she is often and most powerfully symbolised by the moon and her triple face portrayed by the phases of the moon. the three distinct names attributed to the statue are suggestive of a trinity and the names themselves are evocative of the phases. morning: the waxing light of the new moon; evening: t h e w a n i n g l i g h t o f t h e o l d m o o n ; and the pitch and pivot of the full moon reminds me of t. s. eliot’s lines: “at the still point of the turning world ... there the dance is.”3 4 the raised arms gesture is an ancient one; f i g 4 is of a painted terracotta female figurine, the bird-faced goddess of pre-dynastic egypt, with her arms raised to invoke the power of life: one of the clan-ensigns of the chalcolithic age had been the uplifted arms so commonly depicted as a human gesture on funerary vases or clay figurines or the rock paintings of the desert, a gesture perhaps expressive of the invocation or reception of divine force. in the days of written texts this was the symbol of ka, the single life-energy [potentiality].3 5 applied colour in the pavilion is most notably used interstices 4 standing in the shadows 4 in the other, like the statue, non-constructional but still architectonic elements of the pavilion: the white furniture, red curtains and black carpet. these are also the colours of triple goddess and correspond with phases of the moon: “the new moon is the white goddess of birth and growth; the full moon, the red goddess of love and battle; the old moon, the black goddess of death and divination.”3 6 this overlap between the qualities and attributes of the statue and those of the goddess seems to me to mark a series of coincidences that implicate the statue as representing a goddess figure. vi so, if the statue can be seen as an ancient goddess figure, might this make the barcelona pavilion a pagan temple? that the pavilion might be seen as such is certainly a provocative, perhaps even a perverse, idea; and these observations might seem somewhat circumstantial, an interesting story but ... if it wasn’t for the fact that t h e w o r k o f m i e s , a n d t h e p a v i l i o n in particular, have consistently provoked comparisons to religious buildings. drexler states that “mies has designed nothing but temples.” 3 7 tegethoff writes of the statue in the pool b e i n g l i k e t h e c u l t f i g u r e i n t h e c e l l a o f a greek temple. 3 8 glaeser suggests formal analogies with a basilica. 3 9 according to scully, the basilica form is derived from the architecture of greek temples to the goddess demeter. “demeter’s sites ... formed a link which ran beneath the normal surface of greek design and connected the older architecture of the religion of the goddess with the new architecture of christianity [the basilica].4 0 even earlier sacred spaces and temples link very strongly to the body of woman. predating the demeter sites are the sanctuaries at malta where the plans have a clear correlation to the shape of carved goddess figures of the same era (fig 5). what the body of woman probably represented at the time was “the conception of a pervading principle, not in this case their own creative power, but a life substance through which that power could act, conceived already in the form of maternal fecundity.”4 1 what is being spoken of here is potency and power which seemed to belong to woman. as the source of the power, she was therefore deified as goddess and sacred places honoured her sacred body. labyrinths were ancient sacred spaces that required ritual in order to be entered. they symbolised “the female womb, only penetrable if one is pure and perfect.”4 2 every time a sacred space was entered, it was the reenactment of entering the body of woman. guidoni describes a ritual of the australian aborigines which involves the use of a sacred pole, symbolic of “contact between the earth, the subterranean world and the sky as well as of the male sex ... [the pole] represents the link with the most sacred.”4 3 i f t h e p h a l l u s i s t h e l i n k w i t h t h e most sacred, then that which is most sacred is the interior of the body of woman. vii so, if architecturally pivotal to the pavilion, captured in bronze and framed by familiar archaic forms, is a powerful symbol of a goddess; if the pavilion is consistently, one way or another, considered a religious or sacred building and sacred spaces have a history that connects them to the body of woman; and we know that the design of this building was t o u c h e d b y t h e h a n d o f a w o m a n , i s t h e barcelona pavilion then a pagan temple to the goddess? but perhaps this is not the question because there is another body of a woman that i feel a need to place in the pavilion: my own (fig 6). as a woman walking through the building, it disturbed and unsettled me. i felt alienated by it. the purity of its detail and space, its simplicity and the slick lines attract; but a woman alone in a foreign country is ever wary and weary of slick lines, the pick-up lines. the pavilion’s simplicity makes it seem almost bland. but what is disturbing for me is not this blandness, this seeming self-effacement; but the near total effacement of woman. her position in the pavilion may be pivotal, but it is highly ambiguous: lilly reich is buried by history, the statue is bounded and frozen by walls, and if the body of woman ever underwrote the building it has long since been overshadowed. this bondage reveals a powerful need to circumscribe and contain the body of woman. the presence of rules to control women in many cultures, past and present, marks a consistency so prevalent that rapoport argues that the position of women within a culture has a decisive impact on the format and meaning of the whole built environment of that culture.4 4 in ancient greece, the desire to control woman is clearly articulated. women were never a part of that public world that has bequeathed us the great greek temples and precincts. these places were for interstices 4 standing in the shadows 5 the citizens of the city who were men free-born, not slaves nor women. their world was the house which (in stark contrast to the public architecture) had a straight-forward, utilitarian purpose namely the “shelter of moveable property.”4 5 according to euripides “a sympathetic wife is the greatest ktema (possession).”4 6 women were possessions necessarily secluded to maintain legitimate child birth to ensure “the transfer of wealth with the right to citizenship from one generation of men to the next.” 4 7 enclosure amounting to captivity, was an economic and legal requirement within the culture. a further reason women had to be kept under control may have been because her body was once considered sacred. the greek term muchos is the word for the women’s quarters, but it can also refer to hades (the underworld) and a prophet’s shrine.4 8 sanctity carries a notion of polluting: one can only enter a sacred space if properly prepared. the handling of sacred objects or the conducting of rituals is always subject to very detailed and precise instructions, for the sacred has the power to destroy. s o t o o d o w o m e n . r u t h p a d e l a r g u e s t h a t greek systems of thought held the view that woman can threaten male order and men’s life and sanity because they are open to both passion and daemonic infiltration.4 9 women endanger men by being enterable. mark wigley argues that woman was seen as not being able to control herself, and so she required walls to both contain and define her.5 0 she was polluting and needed to be edged and contained least she leak and contaminate the world. the site of that deemed necessary control, seclusion and enclosure is the house. a certain fear of woman’s openness to invasion which stems from both cultural and biological notions has continued through the centuries. consequently, underlying architecture has been the idea that the house functions to enclose and control woman. a man’s home is his castle, but kept within is woman: it is quite simply the container of woman. within, she appears to be controlling it, embodying it even in poetic images, but is at the same time utterly trapped by it. superficially only, does she command the walls that imprison her. luce irigaray pinpoints this relationship as the foundation of male identity: woman has been represented as the space or place by and in which man can find a position and locate himself. as the corporeal horizon of his existence, the mother cannot be seen as occupying a place of her own. she is space, place or ‘home’ and consequently has none herself ... women, especially mothers, are considered the dwelling, home or haven from which man comes, his nostalgic place of origin. but this is a place the man must leave in order to create his own.5 1 rousseau believed that “when the mistress of the house goes wandering in public, her home is a lifeless body which is soon corrupted.”5 2 henrietta barnet who founded the hampstead garden suburb, regarded the woman’s body as “the shell of the home.”5 3 i n this suburban house is literally embodied ‘the feminine mystique’ which betty friedan identified in the early sixties: a woman’s place is in the home. and that home is “the stage set for the effective s e x u a l d i v i s i o n o f l a b o u r . . . a s p u r f o r m a l e p a i d labour and a container for female unpaid labour.”5 4 architecture seems to exist to control the body of woman. yet even contained, woman still threatens. although the apron-strings actually securely tie the woman to the house, there is a fear that they might too ensnare the man. freud speaks of this fear in his investigation of the uncanny (unheimlich): freud makes much of the fact that ... one might see ‘heimlich’ [homely] as a word the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, ‘unheimlich.’5 5 viii i too have a fear, perhaps the fear of the trapped. i have felt muted, circumscribed and barely visible in this world of architecture. i have sat at drawing boards in frustration trying to ease the rigid lines drawn before me. i have wondered that maybe i was simply gilding the cage and blinding the bars of some kind of trap for myself and those for whom i was designing. i have sat in libraries reading, and felt the words cut and enter my body in unconsenting surgery. words built on slithers of fact and slathers of assumptions slicing my body to twist and confuse and render it invisible, obscured, but above all s i l e n t . a n d i h a v e f e a r e d t h a t t h e r e w a s n o o t h e r way of being, that i had no choice. the condition of woman in architecture has been so bound and constricted and acts so against us, it implies the impossibility of women being architects ... almost. but before this argument assigns us a place settled deep within the status quo, we need to examine the controlling images and metaphors of the position. for within architecture, woman is tightly interstices 4 standing in the shadows 6 controlled and circumscribed, both in actuality and as an image. the male or masculine is seen to overlap the human, to represent the universal. but the body of woman has been bound tight within the role of maternity. so tight, that in architecture it is literally t h a t o f a mummy . n o t o n l y i s s h e d e f i n e d by her maternal function and her womb, she is also defined by the weaving of the bandages that bind her. in architecture, the womb is assigned to closure: either as a closure that failed or is unreliable because it rejects; or as the ultimate enclosure of a both safe haven or claustrophobic prison. as it stands now, architecture can be seen as being constructed with piercing and painful foundations on the body of woman. in some traditions, the foundations of any new structure were slaked with a blood sacrifice. yet although the body of woman lies at the foundations of architecture, it is actually a bloodless sacrifice (no less painful or destructive for women for being bloodless). because it is precisely her blood that is excluded. for blood is life and life is necessarily that which has been excluded from architecture. adolph loos maintained that “the art in architecture is preponderant only in the tomb and the monument.”5 6 neither are for the living. as a tactic, it is possible to let blood flow and to reread the body of woman in architecture. this is not to argue a form of biological determinism, nor to invoke the nostalgia of a lost feminine paradise, but to consider its potential as an image and metaphor in other ways. to speak of the body of woman as more than the womb, or at the very least to speak more accurately of the womb. to approach the body of woman without fear, awe, reverence or other notions that create separation, isolation and alienation. to uncover other modes of the feminine than the maternal. according to irigaray “the relation to the body is always a symbolic one.” 5 7 it is possible to reinterpret and consequently alter symbols, which is w h y i s p e a k o f t h e b o d y o f w o m a n , o f h e r w o m b and of her blood, for through these metaphors and symbol we can access architecture in complexities that are otherwise denied. more complex relationships between sacred and profane, the living and the dead, enclosure and openness, and closing in and opening out are possible, i believe, than are ever dreamt of in the architecture that surrounds us at present. what happens when the blood of woman is allowed to flow? any liquid is deadly to foundations: it seeps i n c a u s i n g s l i p p l a n e s . . . i f w e a l l o w fluidity, we unfreeze the moment and may gain insights into conceptions of identity, legitimacy and survival. the accessory that aids and abets can also undermine and redefine. to see something as an accessory, it is necessary to place it and fix it in one point: it is to see bags and label them as useful or decorative. we are nothing without our accessories, they are a powerful tool. but equally, we can choose them. if we allow the womb life, then it simply cannot be said that the womb is the dark secretive prison of nightmares. the foetus is rarely a secret from the world, and the womb is diaphanous with light filtered through skin and membranes and the sounds of the body and heartbeat; more like the tent of the vernacular tradition than the solid cave, that static enclosure with which it is usually identified. it nourishes and nurtures and then, although it might be difficult to leave, it opens out to the world. but more than anything the womb is about a nearness and touch that survives the physical separation of birth (the psychic separation occurs much later in the infant’s life). connection is possible without physical proximity or physical solidity which argues to a differing conception and/or re-interpretation of built form. if we acknowledge an idea of nearness, then the narrow separations made by architecture and architectural history become unsustainable: separations that place the work of women like lilly reich and countless others in the shadows. an architecture premised on notions of the body of woman could not dissociate the living from the spiritual; nor articulate such separations; nor confine and define those that inhabit. it must open out to the world, yet retain an accommodation of intimacy. the flesh made form requires a fluidity (like of blood) if i t i s n o t t o c o n g e a l into something that limits. it requires too a dynamic and ever-opening relationship with the world. an architecture of relationship, of interaction and dialogue between multiple strands, provides a key to potential futures accommodating the world in infinity and intimacy, rather than alienation and limits. ix in a pastiche of canonical interpretations of the barcelona pavilion, bonta summarizes: the pavilion suggested a new kind of spatial experience based on having no spaces closed but each space fluidly linked to adjacent indoor or outdoor areas. roof, floor and walls, rather than forming a continuous enclosure, became separate ... their independence was further accentuated by interstices 4 standing in the shadows 7 their different materials, whilst spatial continuity was emphasized ... it explored the expressive possibilities of the free plan ... the new spatial experience and the free plan make each other possible.5 8 the use of words such as fluid, spatial continuity and free plan suggest the idea of an architecture of openness, of free-flowing dynamic space. it sounds like the kind of architecture that a new reading of the body of woman in architecture might engender. the building is inscrutable to the point of frustration. surfaces are mirror-like but offer little other than intriguing but ultimately banal reflections. at one level, the pavilion demands silence: of the visitor, of women, of the voicing of doubts. and yet it has generated volumes of noise in the form of written and spoken commentaries and explanations; including my own. in demanding silence, it offers reflection and allows ‘opening-in’ to occur. such chances for reflection need be chosen, but they also need to be articulated against the silence, however imprecise the utterances may be. which is why i speak of metaphors and myths, with words that somersault meanings. we need stories to help us exist in the world, and they also create and recreate it. stories that place woman at the centre of architecture, re-write and re-interpret history and reveal violence, assist our understanding of how and who we are. they are, however, approximations not truths; but nor are the stories that have come down to us as if engraved on stone. when seen as the truth they can easily blind. the barcelona pavilion w a s t h e p r o d u c t o f l i e s a n d oppressions but it is also formed from a dynamic tension with concepts of truth. if we consider that its flaws tell the truth and its perfection lies, then actually what is open and open-ended about the pavilion is its ability to receive interpretations. somehow it is able to accommodate the contradictions and the oppositions of all that anyone has ever said, and will say, about it. maybe ‘god’ is not in the details but in the surfaces that sheen and reflect allowing multiple stories and possibilities. the barcelona pavilion is not an answer nor the future. it should not be replicated, nor should we be forced into mies and lilly’s brave new world. w e d o n o t n e e d a n o t h e r h e r o n o t t h e o l d m i e s nor a newly resurrected lilly but we do need the lessons critiquing their building offer us. the pavilion has been regarded as an exhibition building exhibiting nothing but itself, with no utilitarian purpose. in effect it is a folly and follies reveal our dreams and nightmares. its value lies in the multiple stories that can be woven into it. without critique, it is barren and useless. for me, it stands as an embodiment of the idea that knowledge is meaningless if uninterpreted and unquestioned, and that understanding is a process of endless interpretation. the pavilion is a hall of mirrors and flashing in the polished surfaces, shining in the reflections and disappearing into the glass can be seen ever-changing glimpses of other worlds, other architectures, other truths. when one route only to the truth (and architecture) is dominant the work, dreams and knowledges of women (and other marginalised peoples) are repressed. other stories and routes provide us with a place to stand, necessarily temporary, from which we might re-imagine the world and thereby begin to re-construct it. notes 1 sandra honey, “mies in germany,” architectural monographs (1986), n. 11, p. 19. 2 wolf tegethoff, “from obscurity to maturity: mies van der rohe’s breakthrough to modernism,” mies van der rohe: critical essays ed. franz schulze, (new york: museum of modern art; cambridge: m.i.t. press, 1989), p. 57. 3 karin kirsch, the weissenhofsiedlung (new york: rizzoli, 1989), p. 33. 4 “having received the commision [for the barcelona pavilion] some time around the first of july 1928, mies responded with atypical speed and decisiveness. even under the most concentrated of normal conditions h e w a s w o n t t o f u s s e n d l e s s l y o v e r a project, forever revising, leaving a trail of hundreds of sketches.” franz schulze m i e s van der rohe: a critical biography (chicago: university of chicago press, 1985), p. 152. 5 elaine hochman, a r c h i t e c t s o f f o r t u n e : m i e s van der rohe and the third reich (new york: weidenfeld and nicholson, 1989), p. 291. 6 david spaeth, “ludwig mies van der rohe: a biographical essay,” mies reconsidered: his career, legacy and disciples ed. john zukowsky, (new york: rizzoli; chicago: the art institute of chicago, 1986), p. 34. 7 “the materials themselves [in the silk and velvet café] were no less important to the effect of the ensemble ... reflected reich’s exceptional way with textiles as well as her vivid, opulent sense of colour.” schulze, mies van der rohe: a critical biography p. 144. interstices 4 standing in the shadows 8 8 christine battersby, “the architect as genius: feminism and the aesthetics of exclusion,” alba (1991), v. 1, n. 3, pp. 9-17. 9 mies van der rohe, “no dogma,” interbuild (1959), v. 6, n. 6, p. 10. 10 mies cited, schulze, mies van der rohe: a critical biography p. 338. 11 battersby, “the architect as genius,” p. 16. 12 sherry ortner, “is female to male as nature is to culture,” woman culture and society eds. rosaldo and lamphere, (stanford: stanford university press, 1974), p. 80. 13 whitney chadwick, women art and society (london: thames & hudson, 1990), p. 26. 14 “soon after her arrival in berlin she took over the organization and management of mies’ architectural practice, attending to all the things he hated to do and leaving him free to get on with the design work (in w h i c h s h e t o o was active).” honey, “mies in germany,” p. 19. 15 kirsch, the weissenhofsiedlung p. 62. 16 “some of the explanation for this alacrity rest with lilly reich, whose responsibility for the exhibition halls relieved mies of much of the burdens ... thus he could devote his energies mostly to the pavilion.” schulze, mies van d e r r o h e : a critical biography p. 153. 17 vitruvius, the ten books on architecture trans. morris morgan, (cambridge: harvard university press, 1914), p. 73. 18 “in the smaller pool stood the figure of a woman by kolbe, balancing on a rock and gesturing with her outstretched arms. toward this image the observer was led, seeing it first through the glass ‘darkly’ and then coming out to it where its act was exposed to the s k y a n d framed by the constructivist planes. now, however, its sudden precarious gesture seemed to be creating the constructivist environment around itself and, once seen, controlled the building completely. all the p l a n e s s e e m e d t o b e derived from it, positioned by it, even as its lifted arm could be faintly perceived from the far end of the platform.” vincent scully, modern architecture: the architecture of democracy (new york: george braziller, 1974), p. 28. 19 wolf tegethoff, mies van d e r r o h e : t h e villas and country houses (new york: museum of modern art; cambridge: m.i.t. press, 1985), p. 74. 20 schulze, mies van der rohe: a critical biography p . 159. 21 k. michael hays, “critical architecture,” perspecta (1984), n. 21, pp. 14-29. 22 kenneth frampton, modern architecture a critical history (london: thames & hudson, 1985). 23 oxford companion to twentieth century art e d . h a r o l d osborne, (oxford: oxford university press, 1981). 24 tegethoff, mies van der rohe: the villas and country houses. 25 caroline constant, “the barcelona pavilion as landscape garden: modernity and the picturesque,” aa files (1990), v. 20, pp. 46-54. 26 josep quetglas, “relato en tres actos,” on (1986), n. 73, pp. 12-22. 27 josé quetglas, “fear of glass: the barcelona pavilion,” architectureproduction revisions ed. beatriz colomina, (new york: princeton architectural press, 1988), pp. 122-151. 28 franz schulze, mies van der rohe: interior spaces (chicago: the arts club of chicago, 1982). 29 arthur drexler, the mies van der rohe archive (new york and london: garland publishing ltd, 1986), v. 2. 30 warren a. james, “barcelona,” progressive architecture (1986), n. 8, pp. 61-67. 31 james’ article actually titles the statue the dancer in a photo caption but uses evening in the text. the caption is corrected in an erratum in a following issue of the magazine. 32 euripides cited, vincent scully, the earth, the temple and the gods: greek sacred architecture ( n e w h a v e n : yale university press, 1979), p. 80. 33 “in this trinity ‘three’ were ‘even’ (the same), in that one goddess appeared in three manifestations corresponding to the three tiers that composed the world. first she was a bright young maiden-huntress o f t h e air ... then she was the mature woman goddess at the centre, dispensing fertility, ruling land and sea, an erotic divinity ... and finally she was an old woman who lives in the underworld, the goddess of death who at the same time effects rebirth.” christa wolf, “a letter,” feminist aesthetics interstices 4 standing in the shadows 9 ed. gisela ecker, (london: the women’s press, 1985), p. 98. 34 t. s. eliot, “burnt norton,” four quartets (london: faber & faber, 1959), ln. 62-63. 35 g. rachel levy, the gate of horn (london: faber & faber, 1948), p. 116. 36 robert graves, the white goddess (london: faber & faber, 1961), p. 70. 37 arthur drexler, ludwig mies van der rohe (new york: george braziller, 1960), p. 32. 38. tegethoff, mies van der rohe: the villas and country houses p. 80. 39 “the way mies accommodated the public and ceremonial functions suggests analogies with a romanesque church plan: the open part of the pavilion representing the atrium, the roofed part the basilica replete with nave and aisles, and the end walls the apse formed by the walls around the small pool. it even had a monumental altar piece in the gold onyx wall, which, although shifted perpendicularly out of axis, clearly marked the pavilion’s ritual centre.” glaeser cited, tegethoff, mies van der rohe: the villas and country houses p. 81. 40 scully, the earth, the temples and the gods p. 79. 41 levy, the gate of horn p. 62. 42 adrian fisher and georg gerster, the art of the maze (london: weidenfeld & nicholson, 1990), p. 19. 43 enrico guidoni, primitive architecture trans. robert wolf, (new york: harry n abrams, 1978), p. 49. 44 amos rapoport, house form and culture (englewood cliffs, new jersey: prentice hall, 1969), p. 65. 45. susan walker, “women and housing in classical greece: the archaelogical evidence,” images of women in antiquity eds. averil cameron and amelie kuhrt, (london: croom helm, 1983), p. 82. 46 euripides cited, ruth padel, “women: model for possession by greek daemons,” images of women in antiquity eds. averil cameron and amelie kuhrt, (london: croom helm, 1983), p. 4. 47 walker, “women and housing in classical greece,” p. 82. 48 padel, “women,” p. 10. 49 padel, “women.” 50 mark wigley, “untitled: the housing of gender,” sexuality and space ed. beatriz colomina, (new york: princeton architectural press, 1992), pp. 327-389. 51 elizabeth grosz, sexual subversions (st leonards, new south wales: allen & unwin, 1989), p. 173. 52 rousseau cited, chadwick, women art and society p . 137. 53 barnet cited, lynne walker, “concrete proof: women, architecture and modernism,” fan (1990), v. 3, n. 4, p. 7. 54 dolores hayden, “what would a non-sexist city be like? speculations on housing, urban design and human work,” women and the american city eds. stimpson, dixler, nelson and yatrakis, (chicago: university of chicago press, 1981), p. 169. 55 anthony vidler, “the building in pain,” a a f i l e s n . 19, p. 10. 56 loos cited, joseph rykwert, on adam’s house in paradise (cambridge and london: m.i.t. press, 1981), p. 27. 57 margaret whitford, luce irigaray: philosophy in the feminine (london and new york: routledge, 1991), p. 70. 58 juan pablo bonta, an anatomy of architectural interpretation (barcelona: g gili, 1975), p. 62. intersecting lines intersecting lines deidre brown interstices 4 intersecting lines 1 this paper is divided into two parts. firstly, i propose to show certain architectural drawings that were produced in the 1860s by maori. the drawings relate to the construction of pai marire niu. for this discussion, a short explanation of pai marire will be provided. the concept of niu as architecture will also be explored, although a full description of their development is beyond the scope of this paper. a description of the niu architectural drawings will follow this explanation. these are archived drawings, contained in three documents: the ‘ua rongopai,’ an 1852 maori language edition of the new testament, and ‘aporo’s sketches.’ an investigation of maori draughting knowledge will be preceded by a description of pai marire’s drawing distribution system. the second part of the paper will explore the intersecting relationship that pai marire, the archive and architecture have with theory. the architectural drawings studied in the first part are pai marire’s architectural appropriations from pakeha. architectural borrowings are identifiable in them, and can be used to broaden our understanding of architecture, theory, and drawing. i pai marire pai marire is a religion based on maori understanding of the bible and pre-contact spirituality. at its height, in the mid-1860s, it had approximately 10,000 followers in the central north island, about twenty percent of the total maori population.1 pai marire’s founder was te ua haumene of south taranaki, a wesleyan lay-teacher in the 1840s, and follower of the maori king in the 1850s.2 after experiencing a vision of the angel gabriel in 1862, te ua began to formulate a gospel called ‘pai marire’ (‘good and peaceful’). his teachings were recorded, by scribes, in books for circulation throughout the central north island. included in his gospel were instructions for the erection of niu, or ‘posts,’ through which god could communicate with pai marire followers. 3 a t least fifty niu were built during the new zealand wars, of which four are still known to be standing. typically they resembled a flagpole (fig 1) or a ship’s mast (f i g 2 ), with at least one cross-tree. niu were usually surrounded by a fence. te ua’s good and peaceful teachings were delivered during a lull in the twelve years of the new zealand wars. taranaki had just endured a twelve month armed conflict with government troops over the forced survey of waitara; and, only months after his vision of the angel, new conflict began in taranaki when a party of soldiers, on a crop-destroying operation, were killed by te ua and local pai marire adherents.4 after this incident, pai marire became a vehicle of spiritual, if not physical, resistance, and the niu became an architectural icon of the new zealand wars. niu as architecture to discuss niu as architecture does not preclude them from fulfilling other functions. they were also a development of boundary posts, whakapakoko (‘god-sticks’), moari (swing poles), tuahu, centres of learning, flagpoles, christian symbolism and ship’s masts. architecture was only one of the many aspects of maori culture that niu would go on to influence. however, in this paper, it is their architectural function which is under examination. niu are described here as ‘architecture’ because they fulfilled some of the same architectural functions that ancestor houses and christian churches also served, and they went on to influence the hybrid modern meeting-house form. during the new zealand wars, niu amalgamated ancestor and church architecture in a form that could be quickly erected during times of conflict. like the ridge-pole, rafters and support poles of an ancestor house, the main post and rigging of the niu were believed to catch the wind-messages of the angels and deliver them to the encircling pai marire followers.5 also, the sacred space inside the niu fence seems to have been regarded with similar veneration as a christian altar. only pai marire leaders were permitted to stand in this area, from which they would administer a liturgy to their followers.6 in the christian sense, the niu was not an object of worship but a place of worship. interstices 4 intersecting lines 2 like other types of architecture too, niu afforded protection from the elements, and provided a partition between interior and exterior space. for example, pai marire followers believed that by participating in ritual activities around the niu, they became surrounded by an impenetrable barrier; a roof, floor and walls of spiritual energy, that would protect them from any external force. there is a belief amongst some tohunga whakairo (master carvers) that the yard-arms of niu had the same transitory associations as maori door lintels.7 niu could be interpreted as doorways between protected and unprotected realms. the fence around the niu also defined internal and external areas, or sacred and common space. the first modern meeting house was reputed to have been built in the 1870s by certain of te kooti’s followers who had previously been pai marire adherents. by painting niu flag motifs onto the structure of this seminal building, te tokanganui-anoho, te kooti’s followers influenced the symbolic vocabulary of future meeting-house builders.8 hence, niu architecture probably influenced the development of meeting house architecture. a transition between internal and external realms was marked by the lintel, which acquired spiritual connotations as niu yard-arms during the new zealand wars. pai marire flag motifs, which were an integral part of niu construction, were an important development in modern maori meeting house construction. in the intersecting lines of the maori architectural tradition, nui may have been the first architecture to have been built from architectural plans and drawings. three documents exist in archives around new zealand which support this contention. the niu architectural drawings in question belong to the ‘ua rongopai’ ledger-book, a 1852 maori language edition of the new testament and ‘aporo’s sketches.’ ua rongopai the first set of niu drawings to be discussed, appear in the ‘ua rongopai’ ledger-book. they were prepared sometime before 1866. the ‘ua rongopai’ is currently archived as a maori manuscript in the grey collection of the auckland public library. an anonymous note attached to this book claims it was “found in a native hut during the war on the west coast of the north island.” lyndsay head believed that the ‘ua rongopai’ was probably seized from a maori settlement at putahi, in taranaki, during january 1866. as head wrote, “we probably owe the survival of the ua rongopai to the instructions given the soldiers to search for written documents, so that they could be examined for evidence of hostile intent against the government.”9 eleven sketches of niu, nine of them named by location, appear in the ‘ua rongopai.’ of these, five niu that can be placed on a modern map, all are in the south taranaki/wanganui area. similarities between these drawings suggest that they were drawn by the same artist. the ‘ua rongopai’ also contains another twenty-one black ink and pencil sketches, including a two page map of the waikato area, and drawings of flags, machines and a weatherboard building. a series of cross designs may be niu plans. one such design is drawn directly above an elevation of a niu. if it is indeed a plan, this method of presentation is strongly reminiscent of nineteenth century architectural draughting convention. the drawings of the ‘ua rongopai’ are complemented by the two chapter gospel of te ua, an outline of pai marire services and a record of songs and prayers which were probably used in conjunction with the niu. 10 all of the writings in the ‘ua rongopai’ appear to have been dictated by te ua to a scribe identified in the text as ‘karaitiana te korou,’ almost certainly the ngati kuhungunu figure of the same name.11 from similarities in handwriting it seems that karaitiana also drew the niu sketches. from the writings of william colenso, who baptised karaitiana near masterton in 1848, we know that t h e s c r i b e a n d a r t i s t o f t h e ‘ u a rongopai’ was a fluent reader of the maori bible. 12 government documents from 1862 described him as a supporter o f t h e m a o r i king, but angela ballara and mita carter believed that this allegiance was only based on a mutual opposition to land sales.13 however, for karaitiana to be the scribe of te ua’s gospel, he must have had some religious empathy with pai marire. karaitiana used two methods of niu illustration. the first appears to be a combination of elevation and plan, or perhaps, perspective. this method was generally employed to depict ‘two-piece’ top-mast and main-mast constructions. the second is similar to a flat elevation. he used this simplified technique to illustrate ‘one-piece’ mast constructions. in all eleven niu drawings, pai marire flags were depicted in some detail. typical of the sketches showing two-piece mast constructions is the drawing captioned ‘potatau putahi’ (f i g 3 ). potatau was the second maori king, interstices 4 intersecting lines 3 and putahi was a pai marire pa (fortress) located in the south taranaki area. in this pencil illustration, the mast is drawn in elevation, while the fence surrounding it is viewed from the top. the rigging of this niu is carefully drawn, and the two-piece mast and yard-arm are carefully illustrated, a possible indication that the putahi niu was drawn from life. the flags in this drawing intimate pai marire’s reverence for potatau. the inscriptions ‘ingikimene’ (‘the king of men’) and ‘ingipotatau’ (king potatau) on two flags demonstrate an allegiance to him. 14 a tri-star motif, featured on two of the seven standards, is borrowed from the king movement’s ‘aotearoa’ flag. star motifs like these appeared later in paintings on the porch, window lintel and interior rafters of te tokanganui-a-noho.15 the reoccurrence of kingitanga symbolism, in this drawing and throughout these architectural sketchbooks, alludes to the respect that pai marire, and te ua in particular, felt for the maori king. by following karaitiana’s drawings, pai marire adherents would have been able to reconstruct these flags, and similarly show their support for potatau, and his war in the waikato. karaitiana’s simpler method of illustrating one-piece mast constructions is typified by the taiporohenui niu drawing (f i g 4 ). his use of front elevation may have been due to the elementary construction of this niu, which consisted of one tapered pole with a halyard. this is in contrast to the two-part mast and complex rigging seen in the putahi sketch, which required a more complex method of illustration for its construction to be properly understood. the niu at taiporohenui, te ua’s headquarters from 1865 to 1866, is notable because it’s construction is also described in pakeha sources. according to kimball bent, a pakeha who fought alongside pai marire, this totara niu was one of the first built in taranaki.16 he claimed it was fifty feet tall, and crossed with a fourteen-foot yard. karaitiana’s drawing approximates to these proportions. bent also remarked that the niu had undergone the same dedication ceremony as used for maori architecture. a large piece of unworked greenstone had been buried beneath its foot, following the custom of placing stones under the first pillar of a house. this similarity may imply that pai marire saw niu as fulfilling some of the same functions as houses. by examining the niu drawings from the ‘ua rongopai,’ two important themes in karaitiana’s method of depiction have become apparent. the first relates to his selection of either complex or simple drawing techniques depending on the niu’s construction. hence, his deliberate and detailed sketches may have been patterns for projected niu building schemes. a second theme is the repetition of kingitanga motifs. these were obviously important to te ua, if not karaitiana. therefore, detailed drawings of king movement flags were produced for pai marire to copy. this iconography was later introduced into maori meeting-houses, perhaps as a result of its popularisation by te ua, and these sketches. neither of these themes could have been illustrated properly without karaitiana’s patient, steady, drawing method. his command of the written word was probably developed at a local mission school, and it follows that he may also have received drawing instruction at the same institution. 1852 new testament the second set of drawings to be examined were copied into an 1852 edition of ko te kawenata hou, the maori new testament. this book was donated to the alexander turnbull library manuscripts section, by june carle of te horo, in 1993. three sketches show two niu and one set of flags, all depicted in a similar technical style to those of the ‘ua rongopai.’ it is plausible that they were executed at about the same time. that the drawings were copied into a bible indicates the high esteem in which the artist held niu. there are no clues as to who this artist may have been, but the owner of the bible is identified. according to an inscription inside, this bible belonged to someone known as ‘taria’ or ‘tarea.’ ballara has suggested that the bible may have belonged to katarina taria of the ngati kuhungunu, who signed the ahuriri (napier) purchase deed in 1851.17 another possible owner, also from the hawkes bay, could have been the high ranking chief tareha moananui, or a member of his family. 18 interspersed with handwriting practice on some of the blank pages of this bible, are two drawings illustrating pai marire niu. similarities between the drawings suggest that they may represent one niu. the use of present tense captions intimates that these sketches were drawn while this niu was still standing in the 1860s.19 however the complexity of one drawing (f i g 5 ) contrasts with the simplicity of the other (f i g 6 ). this difference may indicate that less experienced draughtspeople were copying, and simplifying, other master-drawings. the most detailed niu drawing in this bible is on the reverse side of the contents page (f i g 5 ). it shows a rigged two-piece niu mast, flying three flags. the rigging appears to have been drawn with the aid of a interstices 4 intersecting lines 4 ruler, indicating a familiarity with pakeha drawing implements. appearing on the lowest flag are two ‘spade’ symbols. in the text of the ‘ua rongopai’ te ua described the ace of spades as a metaphor for maori men and women.20 the club was also repeated in the porch of te tokanganui-a-noho. some of the other flag motifs appear with hand written a n n o t a t i o n s a t t h e t o p o f t h e page. according to ballara’s translation, these inscriptions read, “this type of flag display is for all hauhau; te ua’s flag is o n t h e u p p e r b e a m ; the king’s flag is much [or always] nearer the butt [of the pole].” she interpreted the caption at the bottom of the page as, “all hauhau use this [method of flag] display.” these annotations reiterate the two major themes of the ‘ua rongopai’ niu drawings. firstly, they refer to the sketch as an example of niu architecture for others to follow. secondly, they reinforce the mana of the maori king through the illustration of flags, while retaining a distinct ‘hauhau’ or pai marire identity. it might be assumed, then, that the drawings in this maori bible were made for the same purpose as those in the ‘ua rongopai.’ it could be concluded that they were two of possibly many architectural instruction booklets for pai marire craftspeople. there are both similarities and differences between the niu drawings of the annotated 1852 new testament a n d t h e ‘ u a r o n g o p a i . ’ b o t h documents have the appearance of niu construction manuals, and each illustrates the importance of kingitanga symbolism in pai marire architecture. however, the draughtsperson of the bible drawings is not as skilled as karaitiana. this raises the possibility that there were pai marire master-drawings, such as those of the ‘ua rongopai,’ which were copied by other scribes. aporo’s sketches the last of the three documents to be examined is the posthumously titled ‘aporo’s sketches.’ these are presently held in the alexander turnbull library in wellington. an attached note by gilbert mair reads “maori sketches illustrating the dreams by aporo. shot by me at poripori jany (sic) 23 1867 under a waterfall. i took the sketches, wet with his blood from his body. g. mair.”21 six niu and related drawings appear in ‘aporo’s sketches,’ part of a series of twelve illustrations concerned with pai marire. these illustrations are preceded by ten other drawings based on maritime themes and political cartoons. the depiction of sailing craft and two maps of tauranga indicate that the artist of the maritime drawings had an awareness of nautical draughting and cartography. this knowledge was probably gained through working in either local shipyards or coastal trading. 22 t h e r e i s nothing about the sketches to indicate when they were completed, where they were drawn or who drew them. however, the sketches are assumed to have been drawn between 1860 and 1867, that is, from the beginning of the new zealand wars to the date of their recovery. they were probably executed in the tauranga region, which is not only mentioned in the maritime drawings, but was where the sketches were recovered. with respect to the identity of the artist, differences in style and media suggest that this person was not responsible for the maritime sketches or the political cartoons.23 unlike the niu drawings of the ‘ua rongopai’ and the annotated 1852 bible, ‘aporo’s sketches’ have little in common with the denotative aspects of draughting (fig 7). they provide little constructional information. their significance lies in their connotative spiritual motifs, which have been liberated from pai marire texts and flags that surround and construct the niu. they are not so much a guide for construction, as a celebration of niu. indicative of this celebration are the last two niu drawings in this sequence, on the document’s final page. the first features a pole surmounted and surrounded by celestial symbols and a tiny serpent figure (fig 8). in the ‘ua rongopai’ te ua described serpents as guardians and the defenders of tribal boundaries.24 hence, the reptile in this drawing may represent the niu’s protection of maori territories. architecturally, the serpent could signify physical shelter. beside this niu is the inscription ‘he ki,’ meaning ‘the key.’ adjacent to the niu is an upraised hand, the pai marire gesture of homage, reaching towards a cloud, which is set against an outline of the sun. an inscription above this design translates as “the day of glory.” 25 i n t h e ‘ u a r o n g o p a i , ’ t e u a describes clouds as spiritual guides, and also states: “let the glory of the most high god be praised. he i s t h e o n e w h o c o v e r s y o u w i t h t h e c l o u d . ” 26 the ‘glory’ of christ, returning in a cloud, is a reoccurring theme in the bible. i n o n e o f t h e bible’s passages he is “sitting on the right hand of power.”27 from these references, it appears that the representations of a hand, a cloud and ‘glory’ form a biblical metaphor for the second coming cited in the ‘ua rongopai.’ the caption on the next sketch can be interpreted as reading “the pole of glory.” this drawing, at right angles to the first, illustrates two niu-like poles on interstices 4 intersecting lines 5 either side of a person with his, or her, right arm raised. both the poles and the person appear to be enclosed inside a fence. at the top of the left niu is a human face. its significance may reside in the pai marire practice of using the severed heads of enemies as oracles in niu ritual. at the extreme left of this drawing is a descending or diving bird. this may represent rupe, te ua’s personal owl deity, who was regarded as an agent of the spirit world. effigies of rupe were sometimes carved onto the base of niu masts, and this may explain it’s depiction on this niu drawing. as with the previous pages of niu drawings, these last sketches are of a highly symbolic nature. pai marire motifs have been liberated from flags, carvings and oral narratives, and have taken their connotative positions. in these drawings, the symbols have become an integral part of the niu’s construction. since their primary function is not related to building, the architectural drawings of ‘aporo’s sketches’ differ from those in the ‘ua rongopai’ and the annotated 1852 new testament. however, the drawings may have still been constructionally important. it is just that the arrangement of these elements does not denotate construction as a measured drawing would, but instead focuses on the connotative aspects of architecture. the niu illustrations of the ‘ua rongopai,’ the annotated 1852 new testament and ‘aporo’s sketches’ can all be regarded as mid-nineteenth century maori architectural drawings. this assertion is based on the artists’ use of drawing to illustrate both the denotative and connotative aspects of architecture. in the ‘ua rongopai,’ karaitiana has carefully followed standard draughting techniques to produce informative drawings which may have been for an intended audience of niu builders. the drawings contained within the annotated 1852 new testament appear to have been simpler copies of karaitiana’s, or another artist’s, drawn by a less skilled hand. captions, accompanying these elevations, imply that they were used as architectural drawings. they were drawn accurately and to scale. however, the drawings of ‘aporo’s sketches’ were more like architectural illustrations. their composition focuses on the connotative aspects of niu architecture. in this respect, they are not so much like the measured drawings of the other documents. like other maori maps, paintings, carvings and textiles, produced in the 1860s, the sketches seem to have been drawn for a functional, rather than inspirational (or ‘decorative’), purpose. the niu elevations can be read as two parts. the illustration of the fence, pole and rigging configuration forms the first part of the composition. the second part relates to the flags. each flag is drawn so that the shapes and symbols can be fully appreciated by the viewer. in all three documents, architecture is illustrated using certain formalisms of measured drawing, combined with the artistry of concept drawing. drawing however, this alone does not prove that the resemblance between the documented niu sketches and architectural drawings is deliberate. the architectural sources of maori draughting ability need to be explored. drawing in pre-contact maori society was practised in a number of forms, but the drawings discussed in this paper are specifically made by pen, or pencil, on paper. to maori and pakeha, in early colonial new zealand, this type of drawing was more than a vehicle of communication, it was a method of appropriating land and power.28 maori were subjected to the power that draughting facilitated – through measurement, division and control. measurement was first employed by the hydrographers on board the heemskerk and endeavour. division occurred with the arrival of settlers, who used survey drawings to subdivide the land resources.29 control resided in the drawing of land boundaries. survey drawing had already and often brought maori and pakeha into conflict. the f o r c e d s u r v e y o f w a i t a r a i n m a r c h 1 8 6 0 w a s t h e catalyst for the first engagement of the new zealand wars. fighting resumed in waikato, three years later, when government troops violated the ‘aukati’ (cut), a border between kingitanga and pakeha.30 during this three year period, the drawn line superseded the boundary post as a partition of power. maori had become aware of the power of drawing as a tool of appropriation, and were using it to protect their land from the government. the relationship between maori and drawing was not entirely born out of conflict. the graphical methods used in niu drawing may have been developed from maori knowledge of survey fieldbooks. these books prepared by early survey parties contained draughted plans and, sometimes, architectural drawings. most survey parties in the 1850s employed maori as guides and assistants. 31 during these survey expeditions, maori assistants would have become familiar with the contents of the surveyor’s fieldbook, in which illustrations and measurements were made in preparation for plan drawing. the drawings of niu are reminiscent of draughted elevations and architectural plans. one interstices 4 intersecting lines 6 practice in particular, of mixing elevation and plan on the one niu drawing, may have been an indication of maori familiarity with pakeha architectural conventions. in the early to mid-nineteenth century, some surveyors were also architects, and house plans often mixed these conventions.32 familiarity with the surveyor’s notebook through employment in survey parties may have exposed pai marire followers to these techniques.33 through both peaceful and dangerous liaisons with pakeha, maori had begun to be familiar with european architectural drawing. understanding grew out of the new divisions colonists placed on the land. followers of pai marire would have soon realised that the power of appropriation resided in the drawing. how, and why, this method of conveying information was selected rests with its convenience of exchange. distribution the repetition of niu architectural drawings in the ‘ua rongopai,’ the annotated 1852 new testament and ‘aporo’s sketches’ is cause for speculation that these illustrations were required for distribution. in pre-contact times, specialist tohunga (experts) who oversaw architectural projects had travelled between sites ensuring that tribal styles were maintained. during the new zealand wars however, travel became dangerous, and was often prohibited. new methods of disseminating architectural advice were needed to maintain conformity in niu construction. the ‘pattern-book’ approach, in which niu architectural drawings could be distributed and copied among pai marire villages, may have been derived from a similar experience which maori had had with the bible in the early nineteenth century. christianity had spread faster than the missionaries could carry it, because for example freed slaves quickly took the bible, and literacy, to their home tribes. 34 this experience of rapid dissemination of information through books was not lost on te ua. it is well known that he dictated his gospel to scribes, and encouraged the copying of these works for distribution among pai marire followers across the north island. similarly, niu drawings may have been quickly re-copied and distributed over a wide area. by providing a set of drawn models in documents such as the ‘ua rongopai,’ the annotated 1852 new testament and ‘aporo’s sketches,’ followers could erect niu without prior knowledge of their construction. information could be distributed quickly, and over a large area, and the advice of the tohunga was no longer needed. ii three lines of discourse intersect upon this topic of pai marire architectural drawings. the first discourse relates to the place of restricted maori knowledge in academic theory. the second reflects upon the importance of archived information for architectural theory. the third involves the relationship of architecture and theory. pai marire and theory most of the archived information concerning pai marire records the colonists’ desire for eradication of pai marire and the destruction of their niu poles. two pai marire sketchbooks owe their place in the archive to their perceived use as ‘incriminating evidence.’ the guardianship of these manuscripts now rests with the archive, but responsibility for their interpretation does not rest solely with the researcher.35 as charles royal has indicated, interpretation does not imply or substitute for authorship.36 with respect to pai marire documentation in particular, the researcher has a responsibility to respect the authority of maori authorship. restrictions on the use of this material have to be observed. this is despite the decontextualisation of material within the archive. the conflict has robbed history of the original authors’ intentions for their work. it is now unclear for example whether these documents were ever intended to survive. in maori culture, written manuscripts and drawings were comparable to oral narratives, and just as an oral narrative cannot be maintained after death, maori manuscripts have often been either interred with their authors, buried under new meeting houses or otherwise destroyed. it is likely that many pai marire niu drawings were treated similarly. the niu drawings that are stored in archives today are in many ways divorced from their original context. the theorist must however respect customary restrictions about the use of these drawings, even if their divorcement within the archive gives some degree of academic licence. the message from maori has always been that esoteric knowledge is not to be traded. to do so would be profane. for example a researcher cannot use these drawings for financial gain. restraint must be applied to the management of restricted information. the ‘ua rongopai,’ annotated 1852 new testament and ‘aporo’s interstices 4 intersecting lines 7 sketches’ contain restricted information which is understood to be intended for pai marire users. the original intent and purpose of these drawings has been lost to time, but this if anything only contributes to the tapu which still surrounds the meaning of the niu drawings and which ought not to be infringed by the researcher. neither decontextualisation nor the loss of restricted or esoteric knowledge affects the contribution niu drawings can make to architectural theory. in many ways the archived sketches are now open to interpretation, and can be used as ‘evidence’ in the construction of seamless architectural narratives. it is by no means the case, however, that the descendants of pai marire have relinquished their rights to the documents. the reinstatement of tribal ownership is an active issue between maori and the archive. yet, as things stand today, the theoretical interpretation of maori documents is not checked or reviewed by any authoritative maori body. a burden of responsibility for correct interpretation rests on the researcher. archive and theory as beatriz colomina writes, architectural discourse is merely the scholar’s method of ordering the chaotic archive.37 architectural theory is about writing a r o u n d , o n o r inside the gaps between evidence. theory relies on evidence to support continuous, or seamless, lines of argument. but the information is divided into individual units of evidence, achieved through categorisation. since what we know about niu is mostly conjecture, the number of narratives that could be arranged within this ‘evidence’ is almost infinite. the niu drawings’ original function has become almost incidental, and in the context of the archive, they can take on a multiplicity of new meanings as ‘evidence.’ but scholarship is also immensely complicated by cultural interaction. the archive is also an interface between cultures. it is not an impartial storage space, but a workshop for the reassembly of decontextualised material. from the archive, theory is created, and dialogue is also maintained. michael goldsmith has likened the inter-action between colonial and counter-colonial cultures to an argumentative conversation.38 as in an argument, he writes, the shifts in position should be documented against the relative and changing power of the participants. but in this context, the maori authors of the niu drawings cannot speak. a vital dialogue is on-going between cultures. but the two participants in this instance are architecture and information, and the argument is self-reflecting. architecture and theory can cultural ‘differences’ ever be comprehended in a single field of understanding? according to l e o n a r d b e l l t o “ t r y t o d o s o . . . t o p r e s c r i b e o r demand ‘correct’ or pure translation and universal, all-embracing, explanations, might be to create problems, rather than to solve them.”39 this is partly because translation, by nature, is faulty. meanings and functions can become altered through change. the problem is also compounded by recently acknowledged discontinuities in theory. borders between categories have become fragile and permeable. for example, two cultures, which might have once been depicted as ‘oppositions,’ can now be enclosed within a single term, and visa-versa. in architectural theory, borders have been permeated by multi-culturalism. the descendants of the other people, who were once the subject matter of theory, now participate quite happily within the discourse of architecture. architecture is no longer a western idea. the self is now architecture, and the other i s information. using a process of reflection, the boundaries of architecture can be expanded. the mirror is formed by information about niu drawings, and an illusion of opposition is created. one advantage of oppositional discourse has been that it always relied on the culture of the oppressor for expression. the architectural theorist now needs to ask “who is reflecting whom and is the process passive or confrontational?”40 royal holds the view that theoretical writing has in the past reflected a foreign view of maori. 41 h e writes, “the works that have emerged from the pens of paakehaa writers have said more about the writers than about their maaori subjects.” 42 then, applying this argument to the architectural description of niu drawings, the theorist’s real achievement is a re-definition of the meaning of ‘architecture.’ the non-lexographical marks inscribed within the three pai marire documents are capable of being interpreted as architectural drawings and as a reflection upon architecture. through identifying apparently ‘architectural’ traits in the archive, theory is capable of expanding the boundaries of architecture. by looking at the niu sketches as architectural drawings, a dialogue between architecture and information is set up. the perceived borders between maori and pakeha cultures are penetrated by architecture through an analysis of multiinterstices 4 intersecting lines 8 culturalism and the decontextualisation of archived information. by a process of self-reflectivity, architecture can explore new territories and rediscover itself. this re-discovery is achieved through both passive and active means. however, this is not a form of architectural imperialism, because theory is no longer striving for a general world view. the reclamation is both passive and active. the authors of the pai marire niu drawings appropriated architectural information from surveyors during intervals of co-operation and conflict. however, this is itself a reflection of theory because it assumes that the motivations of pai marire can be described at all. commentators have variously described the drawings as, at one extreme, the ‘evidence’ of heretical religio-political ancestor worship, and at the other as evidence of early maori architectural drawing. with respect to architectural theory, the appropriation of niu drawings should not be viewed as an imperialistic act. applying talal asad’s anthropological argument to architecture, the role of theory in maintaining structures of colonialism is trivial. 43 the knowledge gained is esoteric, or uneconomic, and cannot be used as a weapon. however, the reverse argument does not hold. the expansion of a general world view has been central to western architectural theory, even when the possibility of this hegemony has been excluded. this situation has arisen not only because theory in new zealand has been undertaken by colonial institutions, such as the archive, museum and university; but, because architecture, as discourse and practice, is always both the reality that architectural theorists have attempted to define, and the method by which they attempted to define it.44 architectural theory does not strive for a general world view. as with other academic disciplines, architecture can accommodate the “uncomfortable fact that there are people who live their lives [build their structures and draw their drawings] quite happily outside it.”45 by expanding the boundaries of architecture but at the same time acknowledging the limitations of theory, theorists can view new subject areas, such as niu drawings, and not consume them. niu drawings then become an accessory to architecture. they allow access to information, that could be construed as being ‘architectural,’ from which the limits of architecture can be redefined. no longer a western idea, architecture embarks on a process of self-discovery. this is not appropriation. by using archived documents, the theorist expands the definition of architecture using a mirror of decontextualised information. summary architectural theory seldom contributes to its sources. however through a process of selfreflection, archived information can contribute new ideas to, and highlight old ideas about, architectural theory. the success of this process is dependant on the sensitivity of the researcher. the architectural ideas reflected from niu drawings, build upon pai marire’s architectural appropriations from pakeha. note: the maori words used by the author are vowel length neutral. in the instances where quoted authors have used long and short vowels the double vowel convention has been used. notes 1 lyndsay head, “the gospel of te ua haumene,” journal of the polynesian society (1992), v. 101, n. 1, p. 7. 2 lyndsay head, “te ua haumene,” dictionary of new zealand biography ed. w. h. oliver, (wellington: historical branch of the department of internal affairs, 1990), v. 1, pp. 511-512. 3 herbert williams, christianity among the new zealanders (london: seeley jackson and halliday, 1867), p. 46. in the ua rongopai ledger-book, te ua makes reference to the niu, imploring followers to “practise the things you were taught. you have the n i u a n d t h e guidance o f t h e spirit, so that your people may enter in under you. d o n o t shut it; keep it open, for good or ill.” head, “the gospel of te ua haumene,” p. 23. 4 judith binney, “wars and survival,” people and the land: te tangata me te whenua (auckland: allen and unwin, 1990), p. 130. 5 bronwyn elsmore, mana from heaven: a century of maori prophets in new zealand (tauranga: moana press, 1989), p. 200. 6 james cowan, new zealand wars and the pioneering period (wellington: government printer, 1922 [reprinted 1983]), v. 2, p. 88. herbert meade, ride through the disturbed districts of new zealand (london: john murray, 1870), pp. 127-128. 7 personal communication, t. smith, wellington, interstices 4 intersecting lines 9 (january, 1995) 8 roger neich, painted histories (auckland: auckland university press, 1993), p 171-173. “te tokanganui-a-noho was built for the maori k i n g , t a w h i a o , w h o h a d b e e n a follower of pai marire since 1864. the practice of applying of niu symbolism to buildings was spread rapidly from the king country to the east coast, poverty bay, hawke’s bay and the bay of plenty regions. these motifs were repeated in a number of meetinghouses by the builders o f t e tokanganui-a-noho, other followers of te kooti and impressed kingitanga adherents who wanted to emulate the new style.” neich, painted histories p. 173, 184. 9 head, “the gospel of te ua haumene,” p. 13. 10 head, “the gospel of te ua haumene,” p. 14. 11 personal communication, mr r. c. a. maaka, (28 may, 1989); head, “the gospel of te ua haumene,” pp. 14-15. 12 angela ballara, (& mita carter), “te korou, te retimana,” dictionary of new zealand biography e d . w. h. oliver (wellington: historical branch of the department of internal affairs, 1990), v. 1, p. 466. 13 angela ballara, (& mita carter), “te korou, te retimana,” p. 467. 14 binney, “wars and survival,” p. 160. 15 neich, painted histories p. 171. the club symbol, seen on three flags, was also applied to the architecture of rua k e n a n a i n the early twentieth century. 16 james cowan, kimble bent [sic], (christchurch: caper press, 1911 [reprinted 1975]), p. 80. 17 angela ballara, “report on marginalia in ‘ko te kawenata hou,’”(wellington: ms papers 4754, manuscript collection, alexander turnbull library, 1993), p. 1. 18 ballara, “report on marginalia in ‘ko te kawenata hou,’” p. 1. 19 ballara, “report on marginalia in ‘ko te kawenata hou,’” p. 1. 20 ua rongopai, chapter 2, (january 13, 1863); head, “the gospel of te ua haumene,” p. 19. 21 evelyn stokes, “pai marire and the niu at kuranui,” (hamilton: centre for maori studies and research, university of waikato, 1980), (occasional paper n. 6), p. 50. 22 stokes, “pai marire and the niu at kuranui,” p. 51. as stokes has mentioned, shipbuilding and coastal shipping were established industries in tauranga at the time these images were drawn. stokes, “pai marire and the niu at kuranui,” p. 51. 23 pencil, water-colour and ink, or sometimes combinations of pencil and water-colour or pencil and ink were used. 24 h e a d , “ t h e g o s p e l o f t e u a h a u m e n e , ” p . 3 8 . (note there were no serpents in new zealand.) 25 stokes, “pai marire and the niu at kuranui,” p. 54. 26 head, “the gospel of te ua haumene,” p. 17, 27. 27 matthew 26: 64; see also mark 13: 26, matthew 24: 30, revelation 14: 14. 28 beatriz colomina, privacy and publicity modern architecture as mass media (cambridge, massachusetts: mit press, 1994), p. 90. 29 bernard smith, imagining the pacific in the wake of the cook voyages ( n e w h a v e n and london: yale university press, 1992), p. 31. 30 binney, “wars and survival,” p. 123, 124. 31 nola easdale, kairuri t h e measurer of the land (wellington: highgate/price milburn, 1988), p. 7. 32 barbara de vries, “colonial surveyors of new z e a l a n d 1 8 4 0 7 6 , an overview,” new zealand surveyor (1974) v. 27, n. 5, p. 511. easdale, kairuri the measurer of the land p. 12. 33 the use of surveyor’s jargon in niu chants is well documented, (cowan, new zealand wars and the pioneering period ), so, it seems plausible that previous survey work might have also provided pai marire artists with some technical knowledge of draughting. 34 peter lineham, “this is my weapon,” mission and moko: the church missionary society in new zealand ed. robert glen (christchurch: latimer fellowship, 1992), p. 177. 35 barry barclay, “the held image,” agmanz (1989) v. 20, n. 1, p. 4. 36 charles royal, te haurapa an introduction to researching tribal histories and traditions (wellington: bridget williams books/historical branch of the department of internal affairs, 1993), p. 24-25. 37 colomina, privacy and publicity p. 9. interstices 4 intersecting lines 10 38 michael goldsmith, “the tradition of invention,” other sites ed. michael goldsmith & keith barber (palmerston north: massey university, 1992), p. 37. 39 leonard bell, “under capricorn some partial observations,” art new zealand (1994) n. 71, p. 51. 40 goldsmith, “the tradition of invention,” p. 36. 41 royal, te haurapa p. 26. 42 royal, te haurapa p . 26. 43 talal asad, “from the history of colonial anthropology to the anthropology of western hegemony,” colonial situations ed. george stocking (wisconsin: university of wisconsin press, 1991), p. 315. 44 asad, “from the history of colonial anthropology t o t h e anthropology of western hegemony,” p. 315. 45 goldsmith, “the tradition of invention,” p. 30. pihabach dani el marshall -~j __,__ 33135/ t.czjli'.j ., ;jg i${lx:i 124 (re )generation the site runs east/west between north piha road and the tasman sea. the previous bach, a two level, gabled rectangle six by 10.4 metres, was destroyed by fire in 1998 . the concrete block lower level survived the fire. the clients, an elderly couple, were dissatisfied with the volumes of the original structure. it experienced severe heat gain and did not provide exterior shelter from the extremes of the west coast winds, rain and sun. the breathtaking outlook was marginalised by a deck that ran the entire seaward side of the house. the budget of the new was the approximately the same as the insurance payout (replacement policy) for the old ($125,000). the axis of the new upper level was rotated 90 degrees from the concrete bock "template." the living areas project seaward (west), the services run north/south above the eastern concrete block wall, and the bedroom extends east towards the hills that rise steeply from north piha road. the "leftover" area of the original rectangle becomes a southeast facing terrace providing beach access to the upper level. the other deck on the northwest was treated as a covered adjunct to the living area. the internal stair remained in the original position, though the concrete block wall was extended slightly with a radius added. the form followed the same principle as the planning, with two monopitched roofs falling to a large internal gutter over the kitchen (service core) . the structure was intently considered, with most elements designed to the edge ofnzs 3604 (new zealand's modular), which achieved an economy of building structure whilst enhancing the structural articulation of the design. materials were selected for economy and longevity. the design was strongly influenced by the domestic work of oscar niemeyer and le corbusier, the "language of modernism" being considered appropriate for the "utopic" functionality of the bach. the term "vernacular" is often championed by those who regard the moderist aesthetic as their nemesis, although i suggest that the archetypal new zealand bach springs from a similar set of proletarian desires to that of early domestic modernism-consider le corbusier's own "log cabin" as roquebrune cap martin, a curious collision of the rational and the nostalgic. 125 section ground floor plan section 126 ... ~~eh:::::::1':::::j:::::::::!_t 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 11 1-l west elevation first floor plan .. _qoj 1 1; i 1 1. i ij/&uj ~~r<.'f'n ~oe'j"~ 'fl ejjj.t . !.1'6z . 51~ -rv~ffi:r?:jf. kitchen be ~.o 'on"; hw bathroo111 " '"' ----rl!1111 i '1·~ di,o aq""""p& 1i ,e..\.,l)!.j":'°'~ '~!j. gt:l:-. ~~'ti ~,j ~ br><·r'~rr1<'~~"nimw, ..,, ~ ~--,., .,,. <$flf"'l'l-i~/?. north elevation .i .i :i :i l j: l .l ' 'l ....\_ al· ' !'"" _l ' 1 ' ' floor fram ing plan j_ roof fram in g . . ·~~-,_:-~ _;... __ ~ ::u_ ii i m :i . . i ~ .l i .l : i i ii .l 11,,...;;r .. ,, ... i.,:j.:>o><~ f!!.."f'/0~4> . <--.. ii ] photography: adam firth. 127 architectus: bowes clifford thomson ltd house at kelvin road, auckland 1991-1995 project team: malcolm bowes patrick clifford mahendrah daji james penton timmien rod sellars michael thomson model: i.i· jeremy wells photography: 77 • paul mccr~:~i/"" lynn log/ ..... // ·-/"" v • 78 north east 79. south west in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 116 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m photographic record auckland school of architecture and planning centenary, 2017 as noted in the editorial to this special issue of interstices, the university of auckland school of architecture and planning marked its centenary in september 2017 with a book on the history of the school, four exhibitions, the symposium at which the refereed articles in this volume were presented, a series of panel discussions with alumni, and a gala dinner. presented here are photographs from the exhibitions and the dinner. the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning the main school centenary exhibition, the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning, curated by michael milojevic, lucy treep, andrew barrie and julia gatley, was held at the gus fisher gallery. the exhibition focused on student work produced across the 100 years, particularly drawings, as well as coverage of key staff, publications and stories. photographs by sam hartnett, for the gus fisher gallery. 117 auckland school of architecture and planning centenary 2017 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m design studio in action the exhibition of current student work, design studio in action, was curated by manfredo manfredini and uwe rieger, and held in the school’s level 3 exhibition studio. it included drawings and models as well as digital work, with exhibition goers invited to use headphones 100 years, 100 books michael milojevic and sarah cox curated a series of eight exhibitions throughout the centenary year, under the broad banner of 100 years, 100 books, shown in the architecture and planning library. the eight were: (i) words and pictures: “the architecture book” as a conveyor of architectural information; (ii) the civic; (iii) observe and record; (iv) the glossies: architectural periodicals; (v) architecture + photography; (vi) beautiful theses: students as book designers; (vii) the technical detail; and (viii) essentiality and sensibility. photographed here are the civic (top left) and words and pictures (top right; photographs by sarah cox); architecture + photography (photograph by johanna holzke). to listen to recordings of students talking about their work. photographs by joe hockley, for the nzia festival of architecture. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 118 auckland school of architecture and planning centenary 2017 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m 100 years of architecture by women architecture + women new zealand have exhibited their timeline on several occasions since 2013. the 2017 version, 100 years of architecture by women, included the addition of dark blue panels carrying the names of women architecture students from the 1920s to the 1970s. photographs by joe hockley, for the nzia festival of architecture. alumni gala dinner the culminating centenary event was an alumni gala dinner, held at the pulman hotel and attracting 280 people. senior lecturer elizabeth aitken rose served as mc, while the late david mitchell delivered an outstanding speech, reflecting on the school and its history, and courtroom brown, a band of architecture graduates, provided a musical interlude. photographs by andrew lau photography (http:// andrewlauphotography.com). in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 9 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m milica mađanovic persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 “dis-moi ce que tu lis, je te dirai qui tu es,” il est vrai, mais je te connaîtrai mieux si tu me dis ce que tu relis. (mauriac 1959: 138) [“tell me what you read and i’ll tell you who you are,” is true enough, but i would know you better if you told me what you re-read]. in architectural history, it is easy to focus on buildings and structures and, in doing so, to overlook the influence of the written word on architectural development—for various and, one might add, obvious reasons. the significance of the great treatises—from vitruvius’ de architectura to le corbusier’s vers une architecture—is acknowledged and widely discussed in architectural scholarship. but what about the numerous, less famous titles, subtly making their contribution to the course of architectural history? literature has played a particularly important part in the history of institutionalised architectural education. it rose to prominence within the beaux-arts tradition. the academic intellectual climate of the french school nurtured the specific profile of the architects. beaux-arts students were well-trained academics, encouraged to assume the role of a scholar in the exploration of the past. the achievements of architectural history were condensed in treatises on composition, proportion, symmetry, ornamentation, etc. books became a supplement to, or, in countries remote from europe, a substitute for actual buildings. furthermore, a tendency to perceive every historical phenomenon as a unique structure shaped by specific sets of conditions gained in strength since its emergence in the eighteenth century. the architectural past was no exception. to fully understand the architectural production of different époques and environments, architects needed to study the broader socio-economic, political, and cultural context. historiography was their strongest ally. the beaux-arts methods were systematically introduced into the auckland school of architecture by professor cyril knight, the first professor of architecture, who took up his position in 1925 (treep 2017: 25–31). knight was living in new york at the time of his appointment and his first task was to purchase books for the architecture library. the telegram knight received informing him about his professorship included £100 for this purpose. unfortunately, the list of the titles knight brought from new york has been lost. however, it is possible to 10 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e learn which books were deemed necessary for the education of architects from the school’s annual prospectus. these publications present valuable information about the auckland school, including the reading lists for individual courses, or papers. there can be no doubt that the teachers sometimes deviated from the officially advertised content. they would have offered their personal interpretations, decided the extent to which individual books were to be used, and suggested other titles to their students. nonetheless, the official school prospectuses documented the institutionalised intellectual climate that influenced the formal education of young architects in auckland for decades (see fig. 1). the words by the influential french writer françois mauriac were an appropriate line of inspiration for this article. exploring the titles students were—at least officially—encouraged to read and re-read, the article is focused on the teaching of history and theory at the auckland school of architecture. history and theory courses formed the conceptual nucleus of the curriculum in the educational tradition of the beaux-arts. in turn, knowledge and comprehension of the architectural past informed the teaching of design and drawing. however, a curious fig. 1 in the period covered by this article, the auckland school of architecture prospectus was redesigned six times. above are the cover pages for the years 1927 (a), 1944 (b), 1948 (c), 1958 (d), 1964 (e), 1967 (f ), and 1970 (g). dichotomy developed at the auckland school. on one hand, the residues of a conservative beaux-art tradition were apparent in the recommended bibliography and descriptions of history and theory courses until as late as 1969. on the other, from the 1930s on, student designs were obviously influenced by modernist ideas. tracing the gradual transformation of the history and theory courses from 1927 to 1969, the article explores the persistence of beaux-arts influences at the school, and, consequently, demonstrates that the once resounding ideas of the école des beaux-arts had echoes, even if increasingly faint, until well into the twentieth century. 11 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e “the world-famous system”: école des beaux-arts as the model for new zealand the early history of architectural education in new zealand has been discussed by ann mcewan (1999, 2001) and lucy treep (2017). mcewan (1999, 2001) has shown that in new zealand, as in britain and the united states, the study of architecture existed for decades outside of the university context, prior to becoming a taught discipline. aspiring candidates could learn their craft in the office of a senior architect, by correspondence or—for the few who could afford it—studying at an overseas university. however, the prosperous years of the early twentieth century instigated changes in new zealand’s architectural profession. the economy was recovering from the previous decades of crisis, and the colony became a dominion in 1907. in an atmosphere of growing national pride and general prosperity, confidence in the future of the architectural profession gained strength. the new zealand institute of architects (nzia) was established in 1905, and a three-year diploma course in architecture was offered by canterbury college from 1914, run in conjunction with the schools of art and engineering. determined to raise the profession to a more advanced level, architects campaigned for the establishment of an architectural school in new zealand. after years of debate, the relentless efforts of the nzia and individual practitioners ultimately bore fruit. the first new zealand school of architecture was officially established at auckland university college in 1917. one hundred years later, in the school’s centennial history, treep (2017) reveals the important role that professor knight played in the employment of beaux-arts methods during the early history of the auckland school. his formal education and professional experiences were deeply rooted in the french tradition. of australian origin, knight graduated with a first-class honours degree in architecture from the university of liverpool. he broadened his understanding of the discipline through architectural studies in europe—mostly paris—and the united states. lacking systematised architectural education, the united states and the united kingdom adopted the beaux-arts model for the development of their tertiary-level instruction during the course of the nineteenth century. in both countries, architectural knowledge was previously acquired through the traditional system of apprenticeship. in contrast, the école des beaux-arts in paris developed a centralised, government-funded, and systematic education from the middle of the seventeenth century (drexler 1977; egbert & van zanten ca. 1980). the united states employed the beaux-arts model for the first time at mit in 1865 (draper 1977; noffsinger 1955). england got its first full-time architectural programme in 1895, again based on the beaux-arts system, at the university of liverpool (crouch 2002). both the british and the american schools taught the beaux-arts design principles and, especially at first, aimed to employ french design tutors. however, they did not copy the programme of the école des beaux-arts—rather, the content taught at the french school was adapted to fit university teaching in the british and the american contexts. echoing american and english practices, knight adopted the beaux-arts system at the auckland school. this was proudly advertised in school prospectuses: the training in design is based upon the world-famous system adopted by the école des beaux arts at paris, which has been followed by liverpool, manchester, and london university schools of architecture with such 12 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e distinguished success. it is also the system operative at the architectural association school in london and most of the american universities (prospectus 1931: 6). the school of architecture was established as a part of the developing auckland university college, which was undergoing an intensive expansion to meet new zealand’s needs for a better, more systematic education. as a result, and in keeping with the british and american precedents, in contrast to the seemingly laissez-fair atmosphere of the école’s ateliers, where students progressed at their own pace, studio design instruction was integrated with the university lecture and class systems.1 a question logically follows: why was the beaux-arts method such a fitting model for development of tertiary-level architectural curricula? discussing beaux-arts influences on the architectural profession in the united states, joan draper (1977) formed some insightful conclusions, and ones that are also relevant to the british and new zealand experience. the standardisation of education following the beaux-arts model offered solutions to two major problems. first, the establishment of systematic rules helped overcome the rampant pluralism of nineteenth-century architectural styles. the french school developed a precisely defined, universal formula of historic architectural styles and a rational method for applying it. furthermore, the beaux-arts system helped the development of specific professional abilities which would differentiate architects from other professionals of the construction industry. this contributed to the emergence of a specific, standardised approach to architectural design and, officially supported and acknowledged by the public, institutionalised education therefore played an important role in the professionalisation of architecture. “architecture confirmed history”: the beaux-arts and the importance of history beaux-arts architects approached the design process through a scholarly comprehension of the past. their practice was heavily influenced by historicism. challenging the older universalist conception, the historicist notions of individuality and development altered the way humans perceived history (reynolds 1999). the historicist thinkers expressed the idea, today a default for historical scholarship, that each historical phenomenon—whether a person, an event, or a complex political structure such as a state—was unique, different from others, and shaped by a specific set of conditions. maintaining that the present was a part of the historical stream of development, humans started conceiving of culture historically. architecture was traditionally deemed to be a product of “high” culture par excellence. christchurch architect richard harman vividly illustrated the significance of architecture in an address given to the new zealand society of artists in 1934. he stressed that the “people of the past were judged by their architecture and people of the future would judge those of to-day in the same way” (“architecture and history” 1934: 12). architecture was an integral part of civilisation. “races without architecture were called barbarians, but those who built were held to be civilised. architecture confirmed history ...” (“architecture and history” 1934: 12). the intellectual climate of historicism contributed to the prestige of historical study. gwendolyn wright (1990) notes that history courses legitimised 13 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e professional training in architecture. according to wright, professors of architecture at universities maintained that the history curriculum lifted their programmes above the technical schools where they were often first located: “history gave them autonomy and legitimacy within the academic setting” (1990: 17). architects set off to examine the architectural production of the past, taking into consideration the wider, sociocultural background of any particular period. students were encouraged to study the past not in the positivistic way of an archaeologist, but to understand the complex circumstances significant for the progress of human culture and their influence on forms and ornaments of architecture. the educated—and well-argued—choice of historic styles, dependent upon authoritatively generated precedents, resulted in a clearly identifiable model for architecture that was highly regarded throughout the western world. the belief in the relevance of the study of the past was deeply rooted in new zealand architecture. addressing the members of the auckland architectural students’ association, the renowned architect william gummer articulated this belief in a speech to auckland architects in 1915. gummer stressed that the purpose of historical study was comprehension, not the reproduction of “the structures of other peoples in other lands” (1915: 294). in the same year, dunedin architect leslie coombs, in his lesson to architectural students, stressed that modern architecture should be in accordance with modern civilisation. and since: … our civilization has developed from the experience of the past so our architecture should reasonably be expected to develop. therefore study the history of architecture and the forms that were designed by the men who came before us, and make full use of the ideas. i say make use of the ideas, i do not say copy blindly the works (coombs 1915: 199). the teaching of history and theory at the auckland school of architecture the degree structure at the auckland school of architecture remained largely unchanged for a period of 34 years, until 1961. revolving around the thesis development, the fifth and final year allowed great freedom. in contrast, the teaching programme of the first four years demonstrated strong beaux-arts influences. for example, the fourth-year examination involved a typical esquisse-type beaux-arts test. the students had five days to develop a design solution for the programme to which they were introduced on the first day. an initial design concept had to be presented by the end of the first day. it could be further developed during the following four days, but the final design could not deviate from the original sketch “in its main line of compositions” (prospectus 1948: 39). the french tradition and importance placed on historical study in institutionalised education were even more evident in the first three years. the study of the architectural past was divided into three individual courses, taught from firstto third-year level.2 theory of architectural design was offered to second and third-year students.3 architectural history directly informed the first-year freehand drawing paper. in the first part of the paper, the students were drawing the motifs of architectural ornaments from the cast, and, in the second, from memory. descriptive geometry and sciagraphy offered in the second year included study of the “ionic volute” and “geometry as a basis of ornamentation” 14 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e (prospectus 1948: 38). while the study of history and theory was important in the conceptual shaping of the undergraduate programme, it did not dominate over the timetable of lectures in comparison with the hours allocated to other courses (see fig. 2). for example, in comparison to structural mechanics, where the students had five hours per week in the second year, every individual history and theory paper was taught one hour weekly, at all levels of study. fig. 2 timetable of lectures: 1931 (a), 1944 (b). [prospectus (auckland: auckland school of architecture, 1931; 1944)] the place that history and theory courses held in the school curriculum is relatively clear. but who was behind them? who were the people teaching history and theory at the auckland school? the annual prospectuses regularly included a list of staff members. interestingly, though it is possible to learn who was teaching subjects such as architectural construction, physics, or professional practice and law—and in what capacity—there is no official record of the history and theory lecturers. for some reason it was deemed unnecessary to record this information separately. it is well known that knight was teaching architectural history for many years—his carefully prepared lecture notes, kept in the architecture archive at the university of auckland, illustrate his enthusiasm for the subject. additional information can be found in the passing comments in the “annual letters”, written by knight and included in the school prospectuses. for example, an annual letter from 1938 noted the contributions of arthur marshall, who was teaching construction and history to the second year. imric porsolt, a hungarian who trained at prague, was employed in 1950. julia gatley (2017) noted that porsolt played an important role in the modernisation of history and theory teaching at the school: “he invigorated this subject area with interests that extended to modernism and also the applied arts” (50–51). finally, what tools did aspiring young architects have at their disposal for the exploration of professional principles validated and legitimised by centuries of 15 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e experience? what were the official sources for the study of architectural history and theory? the school prospectuses also included lists of the titles the students were expected to read for different courses. regardless of the individual preferences of the teachers, the officially recommended bibliography records the dominant attitude of the auckland school. the reading lists published between 1927 and 1969 documented three phases of the beaux-arts influence on history and theory teaching at the auckland school: predominance, from 1927 to 1947; transition, from 1948 to 1958; and then decline, from 1958 to 1969. 1927–1947 as noted earlier, the prevalence of beaux-arts influences was initially advertised proudly on the first page in the school prospectuses. however, although no significant changes were made to the curriculum in 1940, the paragraph praising the “world-famous” french system was excluded from the prospectus documents from that time. the paragraph was omitted following knight’s (1937) return from his visit to approximately 40 architectural schools in the united states and the united kingdom. in the 1938 “annual letter”, knight expressed his intention to make “many improvements” to the school curriculum as a result of the tour (annual letter 1938). the outbreak of the second world war and its aftermath interfered with the realisation of his plans. though there was awareness that beaux-arts methods were internationally perceived as outdated, the texts recommended for students studying architectural history and theory remained the same. fig. 3 a country residence: fourthyear diploma time sketch, six hours, by r. keith land. [prospectus (auckland: auckland school of architecture, 1932)] fig. 4 a city hotel: fourth-year design by j. fairbrother. [prospectus (auckland: auckland school of architecture, 1938)] there was a growing dichotomy between the recommended reading and the most successful student designs, which were also included in the school prospectuses in these years (see fig. 4). the design solutions gradually transformed from the traditional eclectic historical approach of the late 1920s, to pristine, ornament-free façades from the mid-1930s onward, as students were increasingly influenced by modernist aesthetics. the strict symmetry of the beaux-arts planning methodology remained in place for the designs for public buildings, while more freedom was apparent in the planning of residential structures, such as a design for a country residence from 1932 (see fig. 3).4 the shift in students’ 16 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e designs coincided with the broader changes new zealand architecture was going through at that time. publications, immigrants, architects returning from overseas, and projects by the department of housing construction significantly contributed to the dissemination of modernist ideas in the late 1930s and early 1940s (clark & walker 2000; gatley 2008). the dichotomy was a result of the contrast in the curriculum itself, which, in turn, reflected the broader professional struggles of that period: architectural art or architectural science; historicist eclecticism or modernism? on one hand, history and theory courses drew lessons from the past, and in the spirit of beaux-arts tradition stressed the importance of ornament, preaching an art of architecture. on the other, courses such as reinforced concrete construction or sanitation and hygiene were primarily focused on the future, relying on contemporary science and cutting-edge technologies. a similar pattern had developed at the liverpool school of architecture a decade earlier (crouch 2002; richmond 2001; sharples, powers, & shippbottom 1996). alongside historicist projects, art deco and modernist influences increased from the second half of the 1920s. however, though the history of the liverpool school is a widely researched topic, history and theory courses have not been studied individually so far. therefore, it is not possible to claim that a similar discord between the teaching of history and theory and student designs existed at the liverpool school in this period—this can only be assumed. what was the teaching of history and theory like at the auckland school of architecture? in the first two history courses, students learnt about the development of architecture from ancient history to the modern period. in the historicist tradition, rather than discussing the architectural forms as an abstract, aesthetic category, students were expected to obtain “a general knowledge of the history of nations with reference to its influence upon architecture” (prospectus 1927: 13). the first-year courses surveyed egyptian, assyrian, persian, greek, roman, byzantine, early christian, romanesque, and gothic architecture. the second-year paper focused on renaissance architecture in italy, france, and england. it also introduced modern architecture: “the tendency in modern design” was explored with regard to “the influence and value of ancient architecture” and “its effect in england, america, and the colonies” (prospectus 1927: 14). this was “modern” architecture as in contemporary, or of its time, rather than of the modern movement. the reading lists for both courses consisted of the conservative classic texts of architectural history (see fig. 5). the first-year students were to study from three canonical texts—the latest edition of sir banister fletcher’s famous a history of architecture (1898); history of architecture (1909) by alfred d. f. hamlin, the esteemed american architectural historian and professor at columbia university; and william james anderson and richard phené spiers’ the architecture of greece and rome (1902). fletcher’s 1898 history remained a recommended text for longer than any other. in 1968, after 41 years, it was the last of the 1927 titles to be removed from the history reading list. the sources for the second-year exploration of tendencies in “modern design” remain unclear—for 21 years the official reading lists for the second-year history paper consisted solely of traditionalist titles on the renaissance (anderson 1898; blomfield 1900; gromort 1922; ward 1911). the content of the third-year history paper clearly demonstrated the school’s affiliation with the beaux-arts system. it covered architectural history from early egyptian to late renaissance, “with special attention to architectural ornament 17 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e of each period” (prospectus 1927: 14). students also learnt about “sculpture, painting, ceramics and other methods practiced for decorative purposes” (prospectus 1927: 14). stressing the relevance of ornament and decoration in the best beauxarts manner, the third-year paper strongly encouraged the discussion of architecture as an artistic category. the name of the paper itself was changed to history of decoration in 1931. it was returned to history of architecture, part iii almost a quarter of the century later, in 1955. interestingly, the same year the name of the paper was first altered, “tendencies in modern decoration” (prospectus 1931: 19) were added to the scope of the study, clearly showing the important place ornament held in the school’s design methodology. students were encouraged to read about architectural ornament in the traditional titles—the extensive styles of ornament (1906), by the german author alexander speltz; the two influential volumes by alfred hamlin (1916); and the sections from fletcher’s history (1898). the third-year history paper was the most progressive of the three. in 1939 it was the first paper to include a book by a female author—art through the ages (1936 [1926]), by the distinguished american art historian, helen gardner.5 furthermore, in 1943, art and industry (1934) by herbert read and nikolaus pevsner’s pioneers of modern design (1936) introduced the modernist perspective in the third-year history curriculum. heavily influenced by the beaux-arts design methodology, the first-year theory paper focused on the general principles of composition, proportion, scale, and unity. the students were instructed in the laws of contrast, composition of masses, and character in design. particular emphasis was placed on the “composition of plan, relation between plan, elevation and section” (prospectus 1927: 17). then, in the second year, planning was explored in greater detail. special attention was given to the form of masses, wall treatment, and types of façades. fig. 5 list of recommended titles, 1931. [prospectus (auckland: auckland school of architecture, 1931)] 18 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e for a period of 20 years, the students’ understanding of architectural theory was developed—at least, officially—under the influence of the seminal works from the beaux-arts tradition. principles of architectural composition (1924) by howard robertson was the first title on the list. robertson accepted modernist ideas during the course of his career and in this very book raised the question of the appropriate architectural expression for modern buildings. however, when first published in 1924, the title considered the problems of unity, scale, composition, and architectural character from a beaux-arts perspective. a memento of french design methods in architectural education, for 40 years robertson’s principles (1924) remained the official reference for theory courses at the auckland school. students were also encouraged to read more traditional titles, such as theory and elements of architecture (1926) by atkinson and bagenal, as well as the famous éléments (1910) by the distinguished beaux-arts professor julien gaudet. finally, architectural composition (1923) by the american architect nathaniel curtis, the well-known survey examining the principles and practical applications of scale, balance, proportion, and symmetry, was included in 1928, and would remain on the list until 1965. the list of references for the second year of theory of architectural design did not differ significantly from the first. it included the classic beaux-arts references—gaudet’s éléments (1910), along with two titles on architectural composition by the american authors curtis (1923) and john van pelt (1930). 1948–1958 reflecting the shifting—and conflicting—attitudes of the period, the reading lists for the history and theory courses changed in 1948. though the beauxarts titles—and influences—remained, from this year forward, a modernising tendency gradually gained in strength (mccarthy 2010). the change in history and theory teaching in 1948 followed a very particular series of events, outlined by gatley (2017) in her centennial chapter on the post-world war ii years at the auckland school. in 1946, a group of second-year architectural students prepared a manifesto titled on the necessity of architecture and published the first issue of a magazine, planning (gatley 2010). the group consisted of young men and women, who were knowledgeable about modernism and increasingly disgruntled with the standard of education they were receiving. the next year saw student displeasure with the school’s decision to appoint charles light, a conservative beaux-arts acolyte, for the chair of architecture in the area of design (gatley 2017). some would have preferred the appointment of another of the applicants, ernst plischke, an austrian émigré and a well-known modernist architect who had arrived in new zealand in 1939. the situation intensified in 1948, when the architectural students’ society organised an extraordinary meeting which culminated in a vote of no confidence in the school’s studio programme (gatley 2017). the students wrote a report on the functioning of the school and submitted it to the college council, demanding change. among other issues, they complained about the extent to which the history and theory courses focused on past architectural styles. instead, they wanted to learn about current architectural developments, and, more specifically, about modernism. their vision for a restructured bachelor of architecture 19 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e included a revised history course, one surveying the period from the industrial revolution to the modern movement. the school rejected the majority of the student suggestions. the official response regarding the history and theory teaching was uncompromising: the treatment of history and theory in this school as to both subject matter and method is in general accordance with that in university schools of architecture in england. the statutes cover the development of history and theory from ancient times to the present day. the subjects are not, as some students believe they should be, devoted in the main to recent work (as in the case of studio work) but endeavour to promote a knowledge of the development of the cultures of different races concerned in the evolution of european civilization. in our view this approach is necessary to an understanding of present day architecture.6 however, in spite of the resolute official attitude of the school, changes were introduced to the history and theory programme (see fig. 6). the descriptions of the courses remained the same, but the 1948 reading lists demonstrate a response to student requests. the theory courses were significantly altered. in the first-year paper, the modernist bible towards a new architecture (le corbusier 1927) and the influential space, time and architecture (giedion 1941), replaced curtis’ and gaudet’s classic references. the same year, a number of lesser known progressive titles were introduced to the first-year reading list (faulkner, ziegfeld, & hill ca. 1949; leathart 1940; yorke & penn 1939). the beaux-arts holy trinity of curtis (1923), van pelt (1930), and gaudet (1910) was off the list for the second-year theory paper, never to return; from 1949, the reference list was completely modernist. fig. 6 list of recommended titles, 1948. [prospectus (auckland: auckland school of architecture, 1948)] 20 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e in comparison, the teaching of history was transformed at a slower pace. for example, the reading list for the first-year history of architecture paper changed for the first—and only—time in 1953, when an outline of european architecture (pevsner 1948) was included. the year 1948 brought the first modernist title to second-year history—modern building (behrendt 1937). reflecting the dualism of beaux-arts and modernist approaches, two quite different books were added to second-year history in 1950—pevsner’s an outline (1948) and hamlin’s history of architecture (1909). the third-year history paper changed most drastically. technics and civilization (mumford 2010) was added in 1948, followed by a number of other modernist and interdisciplinary titles in subsequent years (childe 1964; pevsner 1948; summerson 1949). interestingly, the list for the thirdyear history paper was excluded from the 1957 prospectus, with an explanation that “the field of study in this subject is too wide to be covered by a list of some half dozen books” (prospectus 1957: 14). from this point on, the teaching of history and theory at the auckland school started catching up with international practices. however, unlike other courses, it remained completely exclusive of certain topics in the period covered by this article. for example, as a response to local needs, the study of earthquake-resistant buildings and the official new zealand building regulations was introduced in the paper on reinforced concrete construction as early as 1941 (prospectus 1941: 14). furthermore, the post-world war ii period witnessed growing demands and efforts to develop a specific, new zealand architecture. the result was a diverse architectural production since the late 1940s, with a distinguished current of new zealand modernism (gatley 2010). in contrast, as far as the history and theory courses were concerned, new zealand’s own architectural past did not exist. references exploring the local architectural achievements were not—at least officially—included in the period covered by this article. 1958–1969 from 1958, the prospectus no longer presented the reference lists by courses and year levels. instead, it consolidated them into the different areas of study (see fig. 7). traditional titles, such as fletcher’s history (1898) and the art of architecture (1938) by richardson and corfiato were still recommended. however, the following 10 years saw a gradual shift from general overviews of architectural history towards more specific research topics. outdated titles like ward’s 1911 book on the french renaissance and hamlin’s history (1909) were replaced (in 1958 and 1961 respectively) with more recent studies (blunt 1999; frankfort 1954; hitchcock 1968). the 1960s prospectuses illustrated a humanist interest in broadening the understanding of architecture. the teaching of history was enriched with titles from other disciplines, most notably by major studies from the discipline of art history (burckhardt 1945; gombrich 1995; wittkower 1959). the merged theory list highlighted the contrast between the conservative beauxarts tradition and modernising efforts. contrary to the generally progressive attitudes of this period, the architecture of humanism (1914) by geoffrey scott was added in 1958. in this famous early twentieth-century treatise, scott attempted to formulate the main principles of architectural classicism. in contrast, the introduction of titles such as contemporary structure in architecture (michaels 1950) attests to a shift to a more scientific design methodology. similarly to the 21 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e history courses, a number of books added to the theory reading list during the 1960s reflected the tendency to explore and experience architecture from an interdisciplinary perspective (arnheim 2004; kepes 1944; rasmussen 1964). coinciding with the retirement of older staff members—starting with professor knight in 1958—the sixth decade of the twentieth century witnessed the end of beaux-arts influences at the auckland school of architecture. as illustrated by the best student work published in the prospectuses, beaux-arts aesthetics were long forgotten by this time. however, french academic teaching and design methods persisted. the final countdown for the beaux-arts was signalled in 1961, when the five-day esquisse-type test was deleted from the fourth-year studio (gatley 2017). the same year significant changes were made to the history curriculum. starting with 1961, architectural history at the school was divided into two courses, taught at the firstand the third-year levels. in the following years, the titles in the beaux-arts tradition were gradually excluded from the theory teaching. curtis’ architectural composition (1923) was removed in 1965, and robertson’s principles of architectural composition (1924) and scott’s the architecture of humanism (1914) were recommended for the last time in 1966. in 1967, 40 years after the auckland school of architecture printed its first prospectus, the reading lists excluded all of the major works in the tradition of the beaux-arts. however, the echoes of the beaux-arts principles lingered for two more years. the sharp contrast between the contemporary design methodology and traditionalist principles remained apparent in the description of theory of architectural design i. the functionalist approach to architecture was merged with a humanist “man as measure” ideal, and taught alongside the character-defining beaux-arts qualities of unity, rhythm, and scale (prospectus 1969: 11). the 1970 prospectus marked the end of an era. completely redesigned, it was the first booklet devoid of even a faintest reference to the école des beaux-arts. fig. 7 list of recommended titles, 1958. [prospectus (auckland: auckland school of architecture, 1958)] 22 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e conclusion to return to mauriac’s words, the students at the auckland school of architecture were re-reading the seminal titles of the beaux-arts tradition in the period covered by this article. history and theory courses remained the main carriers of beaux-arts influences, informing design-related courses for decades. however, they were in contrast with the actual student designs, and essentially detached from the practically oriented courses. the most successful student work published in the annual school prospectuses demonstrates that the aesthetics of the historicist eclecticism were abandoned from the mid-1930s. the transition from traditionalist to modernist architectural forms was gradual, similar to that at the liverpool school. typically for the remoteness of new zealand, it occurred with a decennial delay—since the mid-1930s. courses such as structural mechanics, reinforced concrete construction, and professional practice and building law were up to date with the most recent findings and closely related to practice in new zealand. after all, architecture remains a niche profession in new zealand, and the school attempts to prepare its students for it. the student designs and the majority of the curriculum show that, in general, the training at the auckland school did not lag behind architectural practice in new zealand. nonetheless, the prospectuses printed between 1927 and 1969 record the persisting beaux-arts practices at the auckland school. the modernising aspirations of the late 1930s were interrupted by the outbreak of the second world war and its consequences. in the pre-war period, following his visit to various architectural schools in the united states and the united kingdom, knight announced that there would be curriculum change and thus showed awareness that the teaching at the auckland school needed to be brought up to date with international practices. but in the immediate post-war years, the leadership at the school took a rather conservative stand. they responded slowly to the mid-century modernising demands of the majority of students and some of the staff. the drastic increase of student numbers after the war made securing the sufficient funds for additional staff and adequate teaching spaces a priority. under the circumstances, revaluation of the curriculum was considered less pressing. perhaps the most telling choice made in the years following the war was the decision to employ charles light as the professor of design in 1947. the decision to hire a conservative beaux-arts acolyte, instead of a more progressive architect, should be seen both as a symptom of broader circumstances responsible for, and as a contributing factor towards, the slower modernisation of the auckland school. although 1948 marked a beginning of the modernisation of the history and theory curriculum, the canonical beaux-arts texts continued—at least officially—to serve as valid references for two more decades. consequently, the teaching of history and theory became anachronistic. the failure to adapt in a timely manner to the altered circumstances of the post-war period caused dissatisfaction and had far-reaching consequences. this can be seen as the moment when history and theory courses acquired the status they still have among students, who often struggle to comprehend their relevance to their primary aspirations in contemporary design. however faint, the beaux-arts rhetoric was still present at the auckland school of architecture as late as 1969. did this mean the school was producing beauxarts architects in the late 1960s? certainly not. however, it might have meant 23 persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education: history and theory teaching at the auckland school of architecture, 1927–1969 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e two things. first, that there was someone in a leadership position convinced of the relevance of the french experience for contemporary architectural education. furthermore, the ideas the students were reading about—the principles of composition, symmetry, proportion, and the idea of an architectural art—must, unavoidably, have left some traces. it would be interesting to re-examine the works of the prominent, progressive new zealand architects who graduated in the 1950s and 1960s. future scholarship might yet determine that it contains echoes off their beaux-arts influenced education. endnotes 1 the system of student-run ateliers did exist in auckland, since the architectural students’ association had established it in 1914 (bassett 2011). 2 annual prospectuses for the auckland school of architecture published between 1927 and 1969. 3 between 1927 and 1931, theory was taught in the third and the fourth years. from 1931 onward, the theory papers were introduced earlier, in the second and the third years. 4 student design published in the 1932 prospectus. 5 influencing art education in the united states, gardner’s book remained a standard textbook at the american schools and universities for decades (kader 2000). 6 a typed copy of the original “report of the faculty of architecture”, march 31, 1949. auckland university college council minutes, 1949, vol. 1, pp. 333–334. a copy is available at c. r. knight papers, architecture archive, the university of auckland library. references anderson, w. (1898). the architecture of the renaissance in italy: a general view for the use of students and others. london, new york: b.t. batsford, charles scribner’s sons. anderson, w., & spiers, r. p. (1902). the architecture of greece and rome: a sketch of its historic development. london: batsford. annual letter in prospectus. (1938). auckland: school of architecture, university of new zealand. anonym. (1934, june 11). architecture and history: development of an ancient architecture, press, 70(21187), 12. arnheim, r. (2004). art and visual perception: a psychology of the creative eye. berkeley: university of california press. atkinson, r., & bagenal, h. (1926). theory and elements of architecture. london: ernest benn. bassett, d. 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(1939). a key to modern architecture. london, glasgow: blackie and son. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 55 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m linda tyler imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile hungarian imric porsolt (1909–2005), a graduate in architecture from the czech technical university in prague, arrived in auckland as a 30 year old in june 1939. he practised as an architect for over a decade and then taught full-time at the auckland school of architecture, in both architectural history and design studio, from 1950 until his retirement in 1974. speaking with a pronounced middle european accent, he brought a dramatic presentational style and breadth of learning to his lectures. porsolt was employed in the school of architecture only a short time after it had experienced a period of revolt against poor studio teaching. after world war ii, staffing of the school was meagre: professor cyril knight as head of school was joined by english academic charles light, who was appointed to a professorial chair in design in 1947; edmund ferriday, sammy crookes, and arthur marshall taught construction; muralist james turkington taught art, with vernon brown and richard toy in studio. recent graduates and current students worked as parttime tutors. in 1946, the architectural group produced a magazine, planning, with a content critical of the limited scope of the school’s curriculum. in 1948, they and others offered a new vision for the bachelor of architecture and their complaints were escalated to the university’s professorial board (gatley 2017: 44–50). the students had requested changes to the history and theory courses in particular, and although knight defended the focus on “the evolution of european civilisation” (gatley 2017: 50), it is evident that porsolt’s encyclopedic approach to teaching the history of buildings—which included african, persian, chinese, and japanese construction—was an attempt to redress the imbalance of his predecessors. porsolt took challenges to his content and ideas in good spirit, later remembering that in those early years, “i met a very restive generation of young architects” (porsolt 1984b: 3). five years after he retired, the school of architecture invited him to publish 12 of his architectural history lectures as study papers, inaugurating the school of architecture series: italian architecture (1980); axial symmetry in classical greece (1980); romantic and nineteenth century architecture (1980); the history of building: an outline history of structural thought (1980); a brief outline of world history (1981); a history of the dwelling and of places of meeting considered together (1981); the history of city forms as artifacts in the landscape (1981); the history and design of vertical in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 56 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m communication (1981); italianate architecture in europe (1981); preliminary notes to twentieth century architecture (1981); outline history of the architectural profession (1981); and a single essay on architectural conservation, architecture in the landscape and the revolution of bath (ca. 1983 [1981]). these constitute the major documentation of the focus of his architectural history teaching. he also published articles on furniture and, as julia gatley notes, was a valuable counterpoint to cyril knight, whose own history/theory teaching, with its focus on “the evolution of european civilisation”, was conservative and traditional: porsolt was an important addition in overcoming concerns about the teaching of history and theory in the school. he invigorated this subject area with interests that extended to modernism and also the applied arts. from 1955, a revised history/theory curriculum included a course on architecture from the eighteenth century to the post-war period, with a new zealand component (gatley 2017: 50–51). roger walker was one former student who found porsolt’s knowledge and understanding of history impressive. in a 2016 interview with john walsh, on the occasion of his new zealand institute of architects gold medal, walker remembers, imi really embedded a sense of history and what was happening in europe, and put new zealand in context. he didn’t put new zealand down but clearly established the pecking order of architectural history and that was very important to me (walker in walsh 2016: 1). porsolt kept a minor private architectural practice going while teaching, although he admitted, “i think i was lacking in the necessary business acumen” (porsolt 2005: 34). nevertheless, his work has attracted acclaim from historians of modernism. the pollard house in titirangi makes it into bill mckay and douglas lloyd-jenkins’ list of the top 50 new zealand houses of the twentieth century (lloyd-jenkins & mckay 2000: 75). mckay and gatley consider the pollard house evidentiary of the existence of connections between the international and the regional in new zealand modernism (mckay & gatley 2010: 206–07). gatley also observes that: porsolt differed from many of new zealand’s émigré architects, who tended to favour the flat roofs and clean white surfaces of international modernism, as his houses were soon gabled and woody, as demonstrated by the pollard house in titirangi (1962) (2017: 60). if his architectural projects seem limited in scope for a 50-year career in new zealand, it might be due to the energy and time he expended on his teaching and on writing about art and design for the herald, home & building, and landfall. he approached writing for the popular and literary press with a kind of missionary zeal, driven by a desire to educate his audience. his art criticism evinces a transcultural approach typical of the viennese school and analogous to the writing of his australian contemporary, the austrian-born art critic gertrud langer (1908– 1984) in brisbane. he frequently compares local painters to their european and american peers and discusses local manifestations of art styles and movements in an international context. porsolt was a keen advocate for the conservation of heritage buildings, in particular old st mary’s in parnell, but ironically, given that the generation of architects fig. 1 university of auckland staff photograph of imric porsolt, ca. 1975. [appfa staff photographs collection, architecture archive, university of auckland libraries and learning services] 57 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e he taught included several important postmodernists, he was vehemently opposed to the preservation of façades of old buildings to preserve streetscapes. he saw postmodernism, which he referred to as “neo-pre-modernism” or “neoprene modernism”, as meretricious and appealing only to the nouveau riche and share-market speculators, writing in 1984: it is old-fashioned: its philosophical idol is pierce, and its semiological hero, de saussure. and, as i tried to demonstrate, even these obsolescent theories are unapplicable. their practice is a sort of “anything-goesism”: eclectic stylism, arbitrary axialism, wilful mannerisms of all kinds, and not really surprisingly, a steady “revival” in a playful way of mechanistic, pseudo-structural formal elements that have come down from functionalism. amusing and clever. an amusement of the jaded rich. of whom else? (porsolt 1984b: 3) he knew both vladimir cacala (1926–2007) and viennese-trained heinrich kulka (1900–1971), who were fellow czech émigré architects in auckland, and was the sponsor for the family of czech architect robert fantl (1923–2016), who stayed with porsolt on his arrival in new zealand in october 1940 at the age of 17 (fantl 2005: 32). fantl remembers: i watched imi at work at night, we talked about architecture, and i read some of his books on the subject. even to a fairly raw and under-educated youngster, it became clear that imi was highly intelligent, well-educated, cultured, very knowledgeable, original both in his thought and his design, and a lateral thinker with a great sense of humour. he was highly influential in my decision to take up architecture after my discharge from the air force (fantl 2005: 32). after graduation, fantl joined the housing department where he met viennese émigré architect ernst plischke (1903–1992). in 1960, he joined plischke in private practice in wellington. this article argues that there are three distinct aspects to porsolt’s contribution and that these assume equal importance when calculating his legacy, and also informed his teaching. these are the buildings he designed, the articles he wrote on design, and, finally, his significance as an art critic. in his writing on abstraction, in particular the paintings from the 1950s and 1960s by milan mrkusich and colin mccahon, he shows a depth of understanding of the international context for abstraction that led mccahon to remark, “before the advent of mr. porsolt there was no criticism in new zealand” (bell 2017: 144). porsolt’s depth of understanding of abstraction distinguished his writing from other critics such as a. r. d. fairburn, who famously dismissed mccahon’s paintings in a landfall article in 1948, snidely suggesting that they “might pass as graffiti on the walls of some celestial lavatory” (fairburn 1948: 49–50). parochialism of this sort was anathema to the cosmopolitan imric voytich porsolt. background and training born in pozony in hungary in 1909 (now bratislava in slovakia), porsolt grew up speaking both hungarian and german as a citizen of the austro-hungarian empire. the classical revivals were still dominant when he began studying at the technical university in prague, where he graduated with a diploma in in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 58 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m architecture in 1935, and his writing and teaching were influenced by the materialism of gottfried semper (1803–1879), the most influential and prolific german architectural theorist of the nineteenth century. porsolt never shook off the classical influence, choosing to write his doctoral thesis on axiality in greek antiquity some 40 years later. in keeping with the materialism of semper, he situated his discussion of the origins of architecture in anthropology and archaeology (porsolt 1973b: 1). fellow students at the technical university were oldrich tyl, jan visek, ludvik kysela, and josef k. riha, who formed a club of architects called “for new architecture”, publishing the monthly magazine stavba (which translates as “construction”) from 1922 to 1938, and inviting walter gropius, le corbusier, adolf loos, j. j. p. oud, and amédée ozenfant to speak in prague (sayer 2014: 20). they drew inspiration from several avant garde art and architecture movements and publications: le corbusier’s vers une architecture, russian constructivism, the bauhaus, and dutch de stijl, turning to functionalism and constructivism to create a neue sachlichkeit (new objectivity) in czech architecture. an editor of stavba, karel teige, was invited to lecture at the bauhaus by hannes meyer, and published czechoslovak architecture in 1927 in the bauhaus books series (sayer 2014: 27). porsolt describes how he was “brought up in an anti-beaux arts, anti-axial design spirit, and also in the belief that artistic attitudes don’t just happen but are the outcome of deep-seated and complex social factors” (1973a: 11). modernism represented a radical departure for him from the old way of life of the austro-hungarian empire. it symbolised cosmopolitanism and internationalism, as well as a new optimism. czech functionalism was the result of fascination with industrial development, engineering, and machine technology. its programme was formulated by karel teige (1900–1951) and jaromir krejcar (1895–1950), and josef havliček was one of its principle exponents. an image of havliček’s functionalist state pension building (1932) was published by max rosenfeld in his 1944 article, “the culture of czechoslovakia”, in the quarterly periodical art in new zealand. highly influential for porsolt were the slightly older generation of architects such as josef chochol (1880–1956) and pavel janák (1882–1956)—known as the prague vitruvius—who formulated spiritualist philosophies of design and a dynamic ideal of planar form derived, in part, from cubist art. janák began to move away from purely angular forms, believing that active curves could create a new, spiritually charged architecture. in 1918, he proclaimed the discovery of typically czech architectural forms, which allegedly emerged from a sociologically conceived study of the customs of czech family and social life, and would be described as “rondo-cubism”, the perfect national style for the new czechoslovak state (lahoda 2010: 223). following graduation in 1935, porsolt married his first wife gerda porzsoltova (1909–1964) and undertook two years of compulsory military service, during which he worked as a clerk in the army, before he began to practise as an interior architect. three days after hitler’s annexation of czechoslovakia on march 15, 1939, the young couple fled to holland, then england, before being accepted as refugees by new zealand, arriving in auckland via vancouver and sydney on the rms niagara on june 12, 1939. interviewed shortly after they arrived, porsolt, fluent in english, spoke of the amazing developments in building blocks of flats in prague. perhaps here he was referring to chochol’s rondo-cubist apartment building, neklanova ulice, prague (1913). rather than replicate what he knew 59 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e from his home country, though, porsolt said that he intended “to study the tastes of new zealanders for architecture, with emphasis towards interior decoration” (“international day” 1939: 11). porsolt remembered: the same day we were taken by friends to the “jewish welfare society” where i was told that there is nothing doing for architects up here, and the place for me is wellington. the same friends took us rightaway to mr morris van staveren, who picked up his phone straightaway and got me an interview with his architect, mr alva m. bartley, in whose office i started a three-weeks probationary period three days later (porsolt 1984b: 2). working on the design for 1zb radio studios in partnership with norman wade, alva bartley had designed the new zealand broadcasting building in shortland street in 1934, and by 1939 had the commission for a new building in durham street west, to be designed for the contract price of £80,000 as the flagship for the commercial radio station 1zb, which had begun broadcasting in 1926. bell states that bartley prized porsolt for his “continental ideas” and familiarity with both modern building types and radio (2017: 170). perhaps he was interested to see how the “rondo-cubism” and active curves of czech architecture would marry with the streamlined moderne language imported from america. porsolt would have been familiar with the operation of radio prague, which had begun broadcasting in 1919, but it did not carry advertisements. unlike 1ya, the new zealand broadcasting board’s building in shortland street, which was funded with money from radio licences and built with depression labour in 1934, 1zb was a commercial station, a different proposition from the radio stations porsolt knew from europe. porsolt suggested to bartley that the form of the building be used to create a visual identity for the station, attracting both advertising clients and audiences. in the press release for the 1zb building, porsolt described himself as “a bit incredulous when told that this new building was to be the first sizeable city building in the style we call ‘modern’ in europe” (mclaughlin 1990: 34). it is possible to interpret the design as an adaptation of the curves of rondo-cubism to the new zealand context, giving a continental inflection to the local variant of modernism. the heavily glazed, streamlined moderne building featured a corner entrance with an elongated rectangular fin holding the neon call sign, “1zb”, aloft. its sculptured cantilevered stairwell and extensive use of glass bricks made for a breathtakingly modern foyer and attracted considerable attention in the local press. it is these features that indicate porsolt’s hand in the design. czechoslovakia is known for its tradition of glass-making, maintained today in bohemian crystal. czech-born sigfried giedion (1888–1968) made much of the possibilities of glass in his first book, building in france, building in iron, building in ferroconcrete, published in leipzig in 1928, where he argued that the main principle of the new architecture was raumdurchdringung, or space penetration, facilitated by the new technologies of glass bricks and reinforced concrete, in contrast to the stütze und last or load bearing that had prevailed in architecture previously. due to the country’s pre-eminence in glazing, le corbusier chose to publish all four parts of his paeon to the brilliance of glazed materials, “glass, the fundamental material of modern architecture”, in the in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 60 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m czech trade journal tchéco-verre in 1935, the year that porsolt graduated from architecture school. it is likely that porsolt would have studied the photomontages in giedion’s book and read these articles, or may have known of the maison de verre, a design collaboration between pierre chareau (a furniture and interiors designer), bernard bijvoet (a dutch architect who had been working in paris since 1927), and louis dalbet (a craftsman metalworker) and built in paris in 1932. fig. 2 alva bartley and imric porsolt’s broadcasting house, corner durham street west and durham lane, auckland, 1942. [photograph by doree & sache. sir george grey special collections, auckland libraries, 915-album-148-1] when it opened in october 1941, the most remarked-upon aspect of broadcasting house (as it was called) was the thousands of glass bricks used in its construction. these were considered “a stylish and futuristic blending of form and function” (mclaughlin 1990: 34). porsolt had been vexed by “the problem of designing a façade for a function which by the logic of its planning was to remain buried in the bowels of the building” (mclaughlin 1990: 24) and wanted to maintain an honesty in his expression of materials as well as transparency of forms. juxtaposing these “industrial” materials and fixtures with more traditional features of décor like linoleum, he sought to express the function of radio through the use of symbolism. in addition to creating a building that would become a visual symbol of modernity, he designed 1zb’s official logo, a large bolt 61 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e of lightning combined with a musical note and overlaid with the station’s name. it featured in the wall and floor coverings. porsolt described it as “a good clean piece of technico-constructivist fun, a manifesto of structural functionalism” (1984b: 3). porsolt’s diffidence about the incorporation of a branding element in each street façade of broadcasting house was counteracted by what he called “the vertically accentuated intimacy of durham street … [which was] exactly the sort of streetscape known to me from prague” (porsolt 1984b: 3). the relationship of plan to elevation, however, ran counter to porsolt’s training and belief, where the positioning of individual spaces and their mutual relationships were meant to correspond to the function and purpose the building was to serve. yet he was hugely proud of the building as expressive of auckland’s nascent modernity. speaking years later to art historian leonard bell, porsolt said that he always felt at home in durham street: i feel it as part of myself … i still think that the old 1zb is not only an historic landmark, but a damn good piece of architecture … sharp-lined clarity and simplicity, curves and odd angle shapes, handled under command of a sense of proportion, and with a taste forged … yes, by classicism (bell 2017: 170). patricia mclaughlin noted the incorporation of references to technology: rails on the fourth floor receded back, with the tower appearing as the funnel of a ship, and the interior had porthole type windows into the studios (2000: 34). perhaps this indicates porsolt’s knowledge of le corbusier’s writing in vers une architecture (1927), which praised ocean liners, aeroplanes, and automobiles for their streamlined form. where the “rondo-cubism” is most apparent is in porsolt’s design for the magnificent internal staircase. its cantilevered curved form was, he said, expressive of human movement, and creates a series of interpenetrating spaces like the forms of a cubist sculpture. staircases are always an opportunity for technical bravura, he writes in the history and design of vertical communication, a study paper that was published by the school of architecture after his retirement (porsolt 1981b: 1–26). in his treatment of this curved staircase at broadcasting house, he tempers bold modernism with the use of classical motifs. the winged horse pegasus, tamed by bellerophon, is a metaphor for radio waves and electricity being deployed in broadcasting, and its inclusion over the staircase shows porsolt’s love of classicism, as does the mural of terpsichore with her lyre in the recording studio. porsolt’s relationship with classicism remained fraught, however. as a jewish exile, he recognised the potentially fascist overtones of the stripped classical architecture of the national socialists, yet maintained a life-long interest in classical architecture. as well as being the basis for his doctoral thesis, patterns in classical architecture were fundamental to many of his art history lectures, several of which were published as study papers after he retired. axial symmetry in classical greece (porsolt 1980a: 1–4), for example, focused on the symmetry and patterns of nature as expressive of the deep geometries that recurred in western architecture. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 62 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m becoming an academic at the auckland school of architecture in his narrative of his early years in auckland, porsolt (1984b: 2) describes how he remained working with bartley until “all architecture in the civilian field stopped after pearl harbour, december 1941”, and bartley found him a role designing interiors in the office of the auckland construction firm of noel cole, the builders of broadcasting house. on advice from fellow émigré max rosenfeld on how to avoid being classified as an enemy alien, porsolt explained that he sought a position as a draughtsman with the american army, gaining the experience to become chief draughtsman for gummer & ford and then working for the auckland architectural practice of alleman & land (1984b: 3). work in the postwar years was scarce, which led him to become an academic: meanwhile, i tried with some success to build up a private practice (the socalled “pee-jay” = private jobs), made quite a few friends inand outside the jewish community; built my own house too, and joined the nz institute of architects, having been compelled to take a few fourth-year subjects at the school of architecture. this brought me into touch with a very restive generation of young architects, from whom the famous “group” was formed—bill wilson and his crowd. my efforts to expand my pee-jay practice were only moderately promising, so i did jump to the suggestion of one of my friends, mick cutter, who was just appointed as lecturer at the school, that i should go there too. i applied, and was gladly accepted by professor c.r. knight, the dean, and lecturing also in the history of architecture. my interest in the subject was by then somewhat known. two years later, i became permanent staff member, and another five years later senior lecturer with history of architecture as my “subject” and the normal duties of a studio lecturer in design (porsolt 1984b: 3). fig. 3 alva bartley and imric porsolt’s broadcasting house, 1942. [photograph by doree & sache. sir george grey special collections, auckland libraries, 915-album-148-7] 63 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e ross jenner (2005: 32) recalls: “imi was a memorable, if not always entirely comprehensible lecturer—he never lost his heavy european accent.” his study papers, with their frequent typewritten capitalisations and under-linings, give the flavour of the emphases of his pronunciation. in the introduction to his outline history of structural thought, for example, he explains how structure and construction are technical aspects; … they will both have a marked influence on the actual form of the building, although we may consider their role of less importance than those design aspects which aim at the satisfaction of human needs—both bodily and mental comfort. we shall find that these technological aspects are in fact restrictions, while the human aspects are the driving forces of the designer’s creativeness (porsolt 1980b: 1). in this study paper, he traces the history of building from the tent and the cave (“nomadic building”), through megalithic builders, mesopotamia, egypt, asia minor and the iranian high plateau, minoan crete, mycenean greece, classical greece, etruria, rome, the middle ages, gothic construction to the new age, military and civil engineering, modern times, the concrete revival, and, finally, the expression of structural and material truth (porsolt 1980b: 1–26). for each, he emphasises the social and historical context of the architecture. in this he follows semper, particularly the approach taken in der stil in den technischen und tektonischen künsten (1860–63) (the title translates as style in the technical and tectonic arts), where semper shows how construction techniques can result in particular styles. jenner describes how these lectures were illustrated by images projected from books by deploying an epidiascope—the forerunner for the overhead projector. this technology often ended in disaster when porsolt lingered too long on a page while he was explaining his point: “his fondness for the epidiascope often ended in smoke, if not flames” (jenner 2005: 32). clearly he greatly enjoyed teaching, remarking himself that, “i found what i think was my real forte: academic life” (porsolt 1984b: 3). he remained a firm believer in the importance of education generally. summarising his career in architecture, however, he underplayed his own achievements, remarking “to what extent i have made a mark with these [buildings] in the architecture of this city is for others to judge—probably a very modest one”. he then explained where he thought his legacy lay: but i have stronger reason to believe that my educational activity was more effective, especially as i did not confine it to the school but branched out into art criticism in the daily press and periodicals. through it all, however, i remained faithful to my old love: the history of architecture (porsolt 2005: 34). writing on architecture and architects auckland’s ubiquitous wooden architecture was novel to porsolt, and one of the first articles he published after taking up his lecturing position was on the kiwi bach. his design for a hillside holiday house was published on the cover of home & building in 1950. what is so unusual in this two-storeyed structure is that porsolt opened up one large space for domestic purposes, with partitions only for essential divisions such as the washroom. employing an open plan, merging interior and exterior space and using only partitions to regulate space was justified in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 64 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in the text as being functional, technically accomplished, and very economical, but would have struck many kiwis as rather unusual. later, when writing about fellow émigré heinrich kulka for landfall, porsolt remarked that he himself, like kulka, had had to “learn weatherboards” (1971: 89–92). he found auckland’s ubiquitous colonial villas and bungalows to be quaint, writing, “in my early years this side of the equator, i was often intrigued by an odd spectacle: greenery cut into stark cubic forms, and the florid fretwork of architecture as its complement.” porsolt went on to explain that to his eye, the floriated fretwork belonged to nature and the cubes to architecture, and his own house designs for new zealand demonstrated this approach. architectural designs porsolt’s clients were the educated few—mostly jewish like him, and active in the creative arts. the artist and muralist john holmwood, the fashion designer emma knuckey, the musician ernst specht, the alternative bookseller robert goodman, the french lecturer walter pollard, and czech-born dr ruth black (nee blumenthal), who was a member of the board of management for the broadcasting corporation as well as a pioneer in the field of family planning, founding and chairing the new zealand family planning council in 1963– 64, and representing new zealand on the international planned parenthood federation of southeast asia and oceania. none of his clients were wealthy, but they were all interested in good design. one of his first commissions came from a fellow czech émigré, robert goodman, who owned an alternative bookshop in the city. the goodman house at 3 canterbury place in parnell was built in 1956 and published in home & building in 1958, in an article entitled “privacy in a glass house”. it is a two-storeyed house, built in the shape of a pentagon with a glazed living room on the upper level and the exposed oregon beams of the living area extended out over the concrete block balcony to complete the apex of the pentagon. it was designed, porsolt said, to have great views of the north shore, rangitoto, and the auckland harbour bridge, through floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors. porsolt’s specifications for the house originally had it clad in vertical boards of oiled cedar, which as it weathered would change to a soft grey colour. in this neighbourhood of multi-millionaires, the house was quickly dubbed the chalet, locals recognising something foreign, possibly swiss, in its design. fig. 4 and 5 imi porsolt, the goodman house, parnell, auckland, 1956. [photographs by stephen robinson, 2011] 65 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e the pollard house, commissioned by walter pollard, a friend of porsolt’s and a lecturer in french at the university of auckland, was built as a pole house in the titirangi bush, showing an appreciation of the new environment and an ability to use it in a sensitive way. it was published in home & building, where it was described in anthropomorphic terms: “the house stands on this spur, or rather has its heels dug into its flanks; the toes rest on steel pipe stilts, which, it is hoped, will soon be overgrown again by the bush” (porsolt 1963a: 36). designed to be an integral part of the landscape, the house curves around the brow of a hill with a living room that fans out to encompass the panoramic bush view and a wide roof open like an umbrella over the entry way and deck. it was described as “a house that lives in the tree tops and touches the land lightly” by bill mckay in the block itinerary for modernist houses in west auckland (2008). porsolt himself described the reflexive relationship between site and structure succinctly: “the shape of the land approximates the geometry of the house” (porsolt 1963a: 36). echoing the topography, the occupant or visitor steps down into the living area and the wood-finished interior, utilising both native and exotic timbers. it adopts two features promoted by bauhaus teacher marcel breuer in that it is bi-nuclear, with separated sleeping areas, and has a butterfly roof: the narrow eastern part of the wedge-shaped central space houses the kitchen: you can’t look into it, only over it, from the western part, the living area proper (dropped three steps, approximating the fall of the spur). you look at the bush again, along the slope of the ceiling-roof. this of course means a butterfly roof, at any rate for the central space: dished shape over the living area, part of a flat pyramid over the kitchen. the living wing roof is symmetrical, the living room under it isn’t—the northern bay of the roof shelters the open deck. logically, the straight western boundary line of the roof terminates against the sky with upturned corners. geometry lends the roof wings (porsolt 1963a: 36). fig. 6 and 7 imi porsolt, the pollard house, titirangi, auckland, 1962. [photographs by simon devitt, 2007] in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 66 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m geometry also predominated in the design of dr ruth black’s house in william fraser street, kohimarama, from 1959. it comprised a series of flat-roofed rectangular blocks over a free plan of open spaces which were partitioned. the progressive aspect of the house was tempered by specific new zealand devices— its steel-reinforced frame was clad in traditional wood. writing on art and design porsolt’s interiors were characterised by built-in furniture, a modernist feature which he championed in the article, “to build it in or not to build it in” (1950b). porsolt argued convincingly that having modern furniture would be more time effective as it would limit the amount of time moving furniture to clean beneath and behind. his use of myriad materials and forms is the signature treatment for his domestic projects. he appears to straddle the regional/internationalist divide in new zealand architectural modernism, as alvar aalto did in finland. porsolt’s houses are architectural collages, synthesising modernist, vernacular, and natural motifs. this eclectic approach is echoed in his writing on design for the popular press. like ernst plischke in his book design and living (1947), porsolt illustrated his ideas about furniture design—tables and chairs—with his own drawings, and continued to advocate for the use of glass: in contrast to cabinets which are the permanent dwellings of our odds and ends, tables are temporary places of abode for the same things … bruised legs tell a disappointing story of anybody’s experiences … a fully transparent glass top has the advantage of eliminating the darkness under the table and giving even a small space an airy and spacious character—the main aesthetic requirement of our day (porsolt 1950a: 69). porsolt wrote about art in architectural terms, noting with approval “the suave regularity of the geometric forms” in a milan mrkusich painting and commenting on the “purposeful symmetry” and “geometric framework” within his compositions. these terms are reminiscent of the tools of formal analysis developed by the german art historian heinrich wölfflin (1864–1945) in his principles of art history (1929). porsolt told landfall readers that “mrkusich also used abstraction, most determinedly among auckland painters, his kaleidoscopic paintings which one felt to be a very geometric kind of impressionism rather than straight out constructions” (1959: 364). porsolt’s architectural approach to painting suited the period when modernist artists were exhibiting at the architectural centre in wellington, and mrkusich was working as an architect with brenner associates in auckland. erudite and internationalist, porsolt was wary of nationalism and parochialism. he made connections between the arts of various periods, places, and cultures, as well as emphasising the importance of art history for contemporary artists just as he cultivated a love for architectural history in his students at the school of architecture. while he acknowledged the importance of english art critic clive bell’s formalist method, porsolt’s writing in fact appears more informed by wölfflin and viennese school art historians like alois riegl and franz wickhoff, writers whom he may have read in the original german. their focus on the formal aspects of painting as the primary way to communicate the meaning in the 67 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e art led to his championing of abstraction. as bell points out: “against the grain of mainstream critical opinion, porsolt vigorously promoted local abstract painting (when there was not much of it) as ‘the algebra of art’, and without ‘algebra’ there was an absence of the experimental and exploratory” (2017: 152). how porsolt promoted the art of abstraction was by concentrating his writing on the emotional content of the pure physicality of the painting. in this he followed the german art historian wilhelm worringer (1881–1965), whose book abstraction and empathy had argued that the key to understanding abstraction was recognising the emotional content of the physical properties of paintings— form, line, and colour. porsolt championed mccahon as an artist whose relation to representation continually equivocated between the autonomy of the means— paint applied to the surface—and a search for the truth about the existence of god. porsolt saw mccahon’s work as loaded with emotional expression and experiences, something he referred to as “content” (1959: 366). for porsolt, mccahon’s content “[excluded] the possibility of rendering details, this style permits concentration on the essence of natural forms, as perceived and strongly felt by the artist. it also forces him to employ his powers of design to express his feelings” (1959: 365). porsolt found it useful to use musical analogies to introduce abstraction to his readers. in 1959, he wrote that the northland panels (1958): … were perhaps the best mccahon has exhibited so far … which should be read together like a musical suite, with rising and falling rhythms, changing lyrical moods and an intellectually nostalgic background thought which he gives intermittent verbal expression by actually writing it out in so many words as part of the pictorial but also poetic component. beneath the visual search lurks the search for emotional anchorage (porsolt 1959: 366). in this same article, he goes on to write about mccahon’s the wake (1958) as the “creation of a pictorial-poetic unity of music and verse in song. in that sense it is a music style painting, although of literary origin” (porsolt 1959: 366). he commends mccahon for his wavering writing on the canvases and use of the trunks of kauri trees as interstices, seeing this as a step towards the emancipation of painting from reliance on literature towards a greater abstraction. he described new zealand painting as having a symbiotic relationship to literature, growing like “a strange rata vine which may become a tree one day, although it is unlikely to kill off its host” (porsolt 1959: 365). he also deploys a musical analogy in his analysis of the mccahon painting that won the hay’s competition in christchurch in 1959, describing its four rectangular shapes as being like the four movements of a simple symphony. porsolt believed that in inscribing the northland panels with the phrase “a landscape with too few lovers”, mccahon was “longing to love what one feels one ought to”, and was wrestling with the idea that his painting should reflect his new zealand character (porsolt 1959: 365). wölfflin and worringer were art historians who believed in a german style of art that reflected the national character. like many who had escaped nazism, porsolt avoided nationalism but believed that local circumstances had to be acknowledged. he consciously built up the european context for mccahon’s primitive figures as “medievalizing” and related the structure of mccahon’s compositions to “mondrian, cézanne, picasso, michelangelo, titian … it would be absolutely wrong to regard these stylisings as in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 68 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m artificial inseminations of the imagination … [rather they are] deliberate tests of the painter’s own ability to digest influence” (porsolt 1963b: 272). conclusion porsolt was proud to call himself a new zealander, and believed that he was responding to the environment in his own architectural design. in one of his pieces of writing on architecture, he was critical of examples of colonial architecture in auckland which he felt failed to acknowledge local context such as the french renaissance-styled customhouse (1888–1890) designed by edward mahoney. architectural historian john stacpoole reacted immediately, “not being a new zealander mr porsolt cannot be expected to fully appreciate that the customhouse built when auckland was 48 years old was a considerable achievement then” (stacpoole 1973: 3). porsolt retorted in his own letter to the editor of the listener the following month, “[stacpoole] refers to me as a non-new zealander. as a matter of fact i am one, not by the blind accident of birth, but by a conscious act of choice” (porsolt 1973a: 4). porsolt’s teaching and writing at the school of architecture emphasised the continuity of western architecture from antiquity, particularly ancient greece, through the classical revivals to twentieth-century modernism. his art writing sought to build an appreciation for abstraction by educating readers about the importance of compositional structure. he was a distinctive voice, not only because of his strong central european accent, but also because he was a modernist who was outspoken in his defence of auckland’s architectural heritage. he was well attuned to a regional dynamic, as his description of auckland shows: “an unsettled city, roaming people from the south, from britain, and other foreigners … this volcanic city likes to be disrespectful of established values” (porsolt 1962: 295). porsolt was a significant architect, art writer, and architectural history and design teacher in the loose cosmopolitan subculture that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s in auckland. a key supporter of the development of abstraction in painting when new zealand-born critics decried it, and a practitioner of both rondo-cubism and pacific regionalism in architecture, he used his “foreignness” to advantage. the notion that european émigrés brought a homogeneous modernism with them to new zealand has been discredited. nonetheless, porsolt saw himself as a kind of missionary, leaving instructions that the words “a messenger of modernism” be engraved on his headstone. as a messenger, he was highly important, if somewhat idiosyncratic. 69 imric porsolt: the “messenger of modernism” in exile f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e references bell, l. (2017). strangers arrive: emigrés and the arts in new zealand, 1930–1980. auckland: auckland university press. fairburn, a. r. d. (1948). art in canterbury. landfall, 2(1), march, 49–50. fantl, r. (2005). in, imric vojtech porsolt, 1909–2005. architecture new zealand, 5, 32–34. gatley, j. (2017). after knight comes light (and toy): the modernising years. in j. gatley & l. treep (eds.), the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning (pp. 40–74). auckland: school of architecture and planning, university of auckland. international day. (1939, july 11). new zealand herald, p. 11. jenner, r. (2005). in, imric vojtech porsolt, 1909–2005. architecture new zealand, 5, 32–34. lahoda, v. (2010). cubism translated? the western canon of modernism and central/eastern european art history. art in translation, 2(2), 223–238. lloyd-jenkins, d., & mckay, w. (2000). top 50 homes new zealand. home and entertaining, december–january, 75. mckay, b. (2008). west auckland guide. retrieved from http://www. architecture-archive.auckland. ac.nz/docs/block-digital/200804blockdigital-westakguide.pdf mckay, b., & gatley, j. (2010). buildings for the sub-tropics: the group and other moderns. in j. gatley (ed.), group architects: towards a new zealand architecture (pp. 197–207). auckland: auckland university press. mclaughlin, p. (1990). 1zb from design to demolition, 1939–1990. (unpublished thesis for the degree of bachelor of architecture). university of auckland, new zealand. porsolt, i. v. (1950a). all manner of tables. home & building, june– july, 35, 69, 71–72. porsolt, i. v. (1950b). to build it in or not to build it in. home & building, april–may. porsolt, i. v. (1958). privacy in a glass house. home & building, january. porsolt, i. v. (1959). painting in auckland, 1959. landfall, 15(4), 364–367. porsolt, i. v. (1962a). one man shows in auckland. landfall, 16(3), 295–297. porsolt, i. v. (1962b). primitive sculpture: a festival of auckland exhibition at the auckland museum, home & building, june, 58–59, 113–116. porsolt, i. v. (1963a). pollard house, titirangi. home & building, july. porsolt, i. v. (1963b). retrospectives: m. t. woollaston and colin mccahon. landfall, 17(3), 272–275. porsolt, i. v. (1971). henry kulka, architect, 1900–1971. landfall, 99, 89–92. porsolt, i. v. (1973a, august 13). letter to the editor, new zealand listener, 6. porsolt, i. v. (1973b). origins of axio-symmetrical town and sanctuary design in greek antiquity. (unpublished thesis for the degree of doctor of philosophy). university of auckland, new zealand. porsolt, i. v. (1977). colonial architecture in new zealand by john stacpoole. art new zealand, 6, june–july, 31. porsolt, i. v. (1980a). axial symmetry in classical greece. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1980b). the history of building: an outline history of structural thought. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1980c). italian architecture. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1980d). romantic and nineteenth century architecture. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1981a). a brief outline of world history. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1981b). the history and design of vertical communication. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1981c). the history of city forms as artifacts in the landscape. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1981d). a history of the dwelling and of places of meeting considered together. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1981e). italianate architecture in europe. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1981f). outline history of the architectural profession. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1981g). preliminary notes to twentieth century architecture. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (ca. 1983 [1981]). architecture in the landscape and the revolution of bath. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1984a). appendix to my curriculum vitae: my architectural creed in a nutshell. p838s sheppard collection, architecture and planning library, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (1984b). the run of my life (curriculum vitae). p838s sheppard collection, architecture and planning library, university of auckland. porsolt, i. v. (2005). in, imric vojtech porsolt, 1909–2005. architecture new zealand, 5, 32–34. rosenfeld, m. (1944). the culture of czechoslovakia. art in new zealand, 63, march, 7–9. sayer, d. (2014). modernism, seen from prague, march 1937. artl@s bulletin, 3(1), 19–29. stacpoole, j. (1973, july 2). letter to the editor. new zealand listener, 6. walsh, j. (2016). roger walker in conversation. retrieved from https://www.ntazia.co.nz/explore/ interviews/roger-walker-inconversation interstices02.indb 113 this book is both a personal journey and a record of over three decades of dedicated research by its author, roger neich and we are indeed fortunate to have this research published. māori carving has been the object of fascination and intrigue for over two hundred years, and continues to be the subject of ongoing research by ethnologists, anthropologists, art historians and māori scholars today. for māori, the whakairo, or carving art form, is a powerful language of communication, and one of the richest artistic expressions of the māori world. it contains a profound body of knowledge and tradition that speaks of tribal and sub-tribal histories, traditions, narratives and world-views. however, this is more than just a book on māori tribal carving. turning the pages, you discover a richness and depth that is often lacking in other māori tribal carving publications. you are reminded, too, of its importance to the ngāti tarawhai people. the foreword, written by joseph te poroa malcolm, chairman of the ngāti tarawhai trust board, affi rms the confi dence and trust that he has in author and scholar, dr. roger neich. for the descendants of ngāti tarawhai, this research will be an enduring legacy of the past and a guiding light for the future. neich also reminds us of the importance of working closely with the ngāti tarawhai people. he notes, in the preface, that key people helped him throughout his research work. this should not be underestimated, as there are many examples where researchers enter into māori areas of research without ever consulting the people who are being studied. the book is an invaluable treasure and will have enduring relevance for descendants, māori carvers/artists and historians alike. the meticulous attention to detail in the text is a strength that future researchers should take note of. recently, the te arawa master carver lyonel grant, speaking at the national museum in wellington about anaha te rahui and the ngāti tarawhai carving traditions, reinforced the respect that he had for roger neich and his research work documenting the ngāti tarawhai carving traditions. the book comprises twenty chapters, beginning with the history of ngāti tarawhai and their fi rst settlement at okataina. it describes the infl uence of missionaries, the new zealand wars and the various religious, political and economic factors that affected ngāti tarawhai, and the wider rotorua region. the lives of ngāti tarawhai woodcarvers and their relationships with related ngāti pikiao carving traditions are detailed, along with chapters that consider the nature of art, māori carving, and the impact and infl uence on ngāti tarawhai māori carving practice of a changing patronage. the identifi cation and examination carved histories: rotorua ngati tarawhai woodcarving review by arapata hakiwai neich, r. (2001) carved histories: rotorua ngati tarawhaiwoodcarving, auckland: auckland university press interstices 07 of individual carvers and their styles reveals the strength and depth of carving in this tribal region. the book has a freshness, and delivers a welcome insight into the artform known as whakairo māori, or māori carving. if you are unaware of ngāti tarawhai, then reading this book will give you a good understanding and appreciation of this tribe, their history and their established carving traditions. the mana and reputation of ngāti tarawhai carvers is apparent when you discover that their master carvers travelled all over new zealand – including waitangi, otiria and hawke’s bay – to carve meeting houses. the title is appropriate too, because the depth of scholarly research on ngāti tarawhai carving, history and life is, in fact, the history of its people as carved out by its leaders, men such as anaha te rahui, neke kapua and tene waitere. although the text is dense in parts, in particular the chapters on the theoretical approaches to art, this does not detract from the readability of the book. it is rich in photographs and visual representation, with carvings identifi ed in museums throughout the world. identifying ngāti tarawhai carvings held in museums, and in private collections around the world, is an enormous task and neich has done a superb job bringing this information together to sit alongside the historical record. through the visual record, and the depth of social and historical context provided, one is reminded that what is being presented here is the lives of real people through time. neich not only identifi es these carved treasures, but brings them to life through the art historical process, identifying the actual carver(s) who carved them and the date(s) as well. a benefi t of this research methodology, as neich has shown here, is that we can now document changes in style over time. changing patronage and historical circumstances have certainly impacted on the carving traditions of ngāti tarawhai. as joe malcolm says in the foreword: “the burgeoning european market gave rise to an entrepreneurial spirit within the ngāti tarawhai carving community so that opportunities for individual enterprise were readily available”. the impact and infl uence of tourism in the rotorua region on the ngāti tarawhai carving traditions, as mentioned in chapter 15, was also signifi cant. as neich says: “‘tourist’ carving, defi ned by reference to its patronage and its public, represents the ultimate end-point of commodifi cation and commercialisation of ethnic art” (p.232). dr. roger neich is well known in māori and pacifi c art circles and his publications carry a reputation for integrity, thorough research and impeccable scholarship. this is true of this publication. regrettably, there are still many taonga, including carvings, that have not been reconnected with their tribal descendants, and remain on shelves in museum collection storerooms. at a time when māori are advancing their cultural heritage initiatives, and reclaiming and reaffi rming their art heritage foundation, these carved treasures are extremely important for māori tribal identity and belonging. this art historical publication is an excellent example of contemporary research and has the power to make a considerable difference to the ngāti tarawhai people. it will have great value, too, for present day carvers and carvers yet unborn, by providing an opportunity to study and analyse the rich carving traditions of this tribal region. as well, it provides a good model and template for others to follow. we are indeed fortunate that dr. neich has given us this book, as without it, all of us would be denied an important treasure. editorials a particular encounter defined by domestic ritual, a house speaks to "houses" of many other times and places; it occupies the enviable condition of simultaneity. the resonance of the individual architectural project holds true within other building typologies as well. at the same time, individual architects often wish to bring something of their particular selves to the architecture project, to enliven it, to particularize it as we are. architecture is not necessarily responsive to this particular calling. our human dilemma is thatwhilewe identify ourselves and ourworkwith the particulars ofourindividual being, these are always subject to universals . the particular and collective dimensions of living were, of course, fiercely debated in vienna between freud andthatnotoriouscircledefined by wittgenstein, kraus, schoenberg and loos-the contest between the determination ofan organism and the lifeoflanguage. lfwe boldly make a claim for the individual life, then we can say that while architecture lives many lives, we each live but one particular life; or as milan kunderawrote in the unbearable lightness of being, "we can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come. /1 to the project of architecture, architects must persist in drawing that breathe of life that one discovers in the sketch; to enliven architecture, to particularize it, even when it resists us. through a tense labor, the individual has the cunning to conceive a near-vital architecture. keith evan green specifications as a rt of ordering architecture demands a coherence, a bringing together, a joining, a jointing of specific differences. a construction joint or a room do not have to hold together the way a garden or a city, which is neverfinished, do but a building at a certain level must be assembled and hold together. the challenge of the particular, however, isthethreatthat nothing might be able to be said of it or made of it. ltposesthe limits of language. canweevensaythatthe particular is an idea, exceptinsofarasitis already brought within an existing system of sense, which is to say, a system of universals? the moment of resistance by something trulyspecifictoanyform of generalization, any elevation to the level of unity and of ideas that sustain a unity, is potentially a moment of sublime breakdown to be contemplated and even prolonged with a certain cultivation. thisveryattemptateditorializing, with its necessary demands for an overview, must acknowledge its own limits in the face of this. the unique, the singular, the heterogeneous, the new, fall outside the canon, they fall outside sense, raising the dilemma ofauthentication and authorisation in the guise ofother singulars : the individual witness and the signature. but even the 'i' in its declaration of si ngu la rity does not turn out to be a stable entity. at the furthest limits of certainty and the known world chance and unaccountable phenomena demand to be brought into the realm of intelligible systems and institutionalized knowledge. the task of ordering, mapping, and bringing to the level ofculturalvisibilityisan intimate part of the colonial universalization of productive and habitable space that is now so questioned by exposure of internal conflicts. places, sites, texts, for example, are not simply 'found' but are a product both of the coloniser's expectations, intentions, and interpretations and of dialogue between coloniser and colonised. thus a diversity may be exposed between and within presumed homogeneous discourses where the smallest 5 • • 6 particulars may become the focal point of their intersection . in effect it is the smooth finish of discursive rationality itself which totalises and enslaves in its refusal to risk the death of meaning in anything that stands outside its empire. order, classically, was constructed bya systems of substance and accidents, form and matter, part and whole; relationships supported by grammar, metaphysics, power structures. with the break up of such systems has come the need to think otherwise obliquely and peripherally-to elude thetotalising effect of purely rational thought. architecture is never simply analytical but necessarily projective. the sort of conjectural thinking that ginzburg locates in the minute and specific narratives of clues and traces has been related by marco frascari to architectural knowledge, itselfa way of thinking that cannot be explained through the use of demonstrative reasoning or by the scientific method. if mies' minute concern with the particularityof the building craft relative to the universals of modernist space, was typified by his "god is in the details," a notion with its own particular micro-history, frascari reads the detail as site of creation itself. the exercise of detailing here becomes the guiding concept for the discipline ofarchitecturewhere by invention the elements and jointing are seen as a fertile nexus of all forms of connection in a chiasmus, a tense dialectical crossing, between reason and constructing, between the construction of construal and the construal of construction . the menace and instabilityofthe particular, is in that it is accidental, it is what simply befalls and denies classification. the risk, so common in our local architecture, isthataworkmay, in theabsenceofan idea, fall apart into an assemblage of details or else never rise beyond the banal, that is, the general which is opposed to the particular, for in becoming common property, a commonplace, the particular is transformed into the banal, being the particular we know too well to see. the banal is "the singular in general," that is to say, the inability to maintain the two terms in their difference. unlike duchamp's "beauty of indifference" that comes so close to it but instead raises the question of what was not already art, the banal defies the impulse to become symbol, orfigure; it belongs to no poetic genus. the challenges are to transform the everdaydetail into myth, to join and make differences visible while maintaining theirfertile particularity. ross jenner counting particulars "et n' est-ce pas lefantasme lui meme qui appelle le' detail,' la scene minuscule, privee, dons laquelle je puissefinalement predre place? ... " (roland barthes, le ploisirdu texte) to film is to particularise . a film shows everything at the same time on the same surface. yet the number of things we chose to distinguish in a film is confusing and variable. its completeness never ceases to bethere in front of us, a power from afar, but viewing is somehow never a complete act. we are ever aware of what we miss. one never looks at a film, at least heuristically speaking, we gaze which is not the same mode of apprehensision. to gaze is notto see, notto see at a 11. we gaze to see more in the whole, todiscoverthe imperceptible. perhaps what we gaze at is really the more we cannot see? so what can it mean to possess a detailed knowledgeoffilm, a film? orto turn that question round, what is the role of detail in film? to film is to engage the triple operation which marks detail. the first is to approach or enter into a field, to enter into the particulars. this is the penetration ofan elective epistemology of the intimatewhichtheaction of the zoom lens or the rack of focus brings with it. descending to particulars. this intimacy however also conveys with it a perverse violence, and surely it is perverse. oneapproachesthusonlytocuttosomething else, ortocutup, to morcelise. this is the fundamental meaning, the 'part', of particular and it is the etymology of detail, too, in /a faille, 'tocutfrom.' the cutting bench of the film edit. finally the particular, in a move no less perverse, designates an operation that is symmetrically opposite to the cut: the assembling together of the pieces of the whole. as if the cut has only provided for the collection together of all the pieces, was only to provide for the possibilityofa summation inthe pan of the camera around a room across its objects, oroverthefaces in a crowd, entranced with diversity. it is also there in thetotalising systematics of combination in film montage. so a triple and paradoxical operation is in play. the particular with its three operations proximity, portage, summation depends upon an ideal of knowledge and totality. the whole depends upon the part. but fixing the particular also allows us to redefine and reconstitute the whole. the particular is not a fragment. l for the fragment relates to a whole in order to put it in question by posing itasabsenceorenigma orlost memory. the fragment is not defined by its position in a compositional chain since, as barthes has noted, itis "syntagmatically irresponsible. "2 the fragment can only be explained according to the whole. in contrastthe particular imposes the whole, its legitimatised presence, its hegemony, its recovery. the greatfortune of the particular in the field of interpretation is that it is not simply restricted to its common sense meaning. theassumptionthatsimplyin orderto know something one needsdiscoverit in detail, discover its details . as if the enigmas of the visible have but one solution. but the particular, as we have seen, is more ofan event than an object. its presuppositionsarecertainlymorecomplexand more strategic and in this sense it is a riskforthought. it is this risk which interpretation must indicate: it can only indicate, not measure, it. the intractable which constitutes its object. the object of the particular is not a representation of the visible world but the fragile moment of its defiguration . every film ends with a cut but also keeps going. the reel never stops like the endless list of the etcetera.3 this etceteraisthetropeof inexpressibility and incompletion which seems to dominate all discourses of the particular. for the particular is a discussion that is without end. laurence simmons 1 see omar calabrese, neo baroque. a sign of the times, trans. charles lambert(princeton : princeton university press, 1993) , in particularchapter4 ' detail and fragment'; and jacques de rrida, " les marts de roland borth es," poe tique, xll 47 (1981):269-292 . 2 "letroisiemesens : notes de recherch essurqu e lques photogrammes d e s. m. ejzenstejn ," cahiers du cinema, 222 (1970) : 17. 3 see alan liu , "local tran scend e nce : cultural criticism, postmoderni sm, and the romanticism of deta il," representations 32 (fall 1990) : 75 113 , p .8411 7 • l•~ ~ ~ t 1 i 1 ~ '\\ l t 4 ) f ). ,~ \t ~ ) ~ ( <~. "t \ ~~ ~, le ;. ls' ~ ;> ~ t ~ ~ ~ ~ >-;) i. ! ) t '~ l '" t "; ; lt.; ) i:t i "i(, ".~ '. ~ ~, ; '.t ( $ \,, \ i' $ "?if' ~ >, '. f two houses at haslett street, eden terrace, auckland, 1989-90 n eil kirkland and kim sin clair 85 neil kirkland and kim sinelair graduated from the . school of architecture.':" university of auckland, practice architectural design and construction in auckland. they have completed a number of private dwellings. -i sinclair and shouler house design: kim sinelair builders: neil kirkland and kim sinclair kirkland house design: neil kirk/and builders: neil kirk/and and kim sine/air opp. worm's eye isometric of nor-western corner of kirkland house view from haslett street (west). j ~ }] ,"" ---~ '\ ~ , / -i-~r--2j ---------/.. plan legend 1. living room 2. sofa (hall) 3. bedroom 4. oda (rooms) 5. loggia 6. study 7. kitchen 8. bathroom 9. laundry 10. fountain 11. pergola "" sinc1air and shouler house: north elevation ~ kirkland house: nor-west elevation sinc1air and shouler house: west elevation kirkland house: sou-west elevation 114 moore or less house cottesloe, western australia simon anderson the round house, a small prison, is the oldest extant building in western australia. it was designed by henry reveley and is presumed to be inspired by his father's well-known design for jeremy bentham's panoptic prison. it is an architecture of sheer and smooth wall surfaces and fluid space, built by the unskilled in an expansive new world to confine the lawless. durable and robust, not particularly repressive, an ideal gesture in a pragmatic world, soon too small for its purpose-altogether a perfect model for a modest house to be built by the clients themselves in a topographically similar location. the moore or less house was designed for a photographer and design couple-two bedrooms and two studies to permit working from home in the future. it was designed as a compromised round house, but instead of concentrating vision within, its voids allow the house to capture views to the west above neighbours (without overlooking) to norfolk island pines and the indian ocean. the house is built in the manner of the commercial vernacular, so much so that a garage tilt-a-door was included. brick piers give the house a certain agedness, their disengagement an ageless uncertainty. during the design stage, the clients became interested first in the oriental, and then in the price/o'reilly house by engelen moore (george st, redfern, 1995). so further compromises were made: an islamic porch or talar was added, an uneasy symmetry emerged and a monochromatic interior developed. however the articulated structural piers and flayed service areas give the house sufficient life to accommodate stylistic modification. henry reveley. round house, 1829. office warehouse, east perth. 115 1 entry 2 powder 3 study 1 4 laundry 5 kitchen 6 living/dining 7 study 2 8 bathroom 9 dressing 10 bedroom 1 11 balcony 12 bedroom 2 13 garage 116 basement plan eb ground floor plan longitudinal section : i ! : i ' i ----..j 13 first floor plan --: 6 i i i i i ___ j exterior photographs by robert frith. interior photographs by gaylene trethewey. 117 in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 92 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n review / jonathan hale atmospheric architectures: the aesthetics of felt spaces gernot böhme. edited/translated by a-c. engels-schwarzpaul. london: bloomsbury academic, 2017 this is a fascinating collection of essays by the german philosopher gernot böhme, who was a professor of philosophy at darmstadt technical university from 1977 until his retirement in 2002. the book focuses on his understanding of atmosphere as ‘a basic concept of a new aesthetic’—the means by which the world appears to us in experience, and thereby challenges the age-old philosophical schism between experienced objects and experiencing subjects. drawing on a range of classical sources in philosophy from aristotle and plato to kant and hegel, he also takes inspiration from j. w. goethe’s writings on light and colour, as exemplified in goethe’s description of scientific experiments as mediators between subjects and objects. for architects frustrated by the traditional fixation on buildings as static objects, there is an obvious advantage to this renewed emphasis on how designed environments are experienced by their users. but there remains in böhme’s writing a lingering tension between the more-or-less ‘objective’ qualities of ‘things-inthemselves’ and those ‘subjective’ responses that—at least partly—result from their users’ own unique perspectives. in several places böhme suggests that atmospheres may in fact possess ‘quasi-objective’ qualities, while at the same time he also acknowledges the influence of contextual factors such as social and political conditions. disappointingly, at least for this reader, the issue is never properly elaborated here, and is perhaps an unfortunate consequence of the book’s ‘collected essay’ format. as the book brings together a collection of separately published writings, most of which are no longer than typical journal papers (between 12 and 20 pages), the effect is rather like reading a series of short summaries of—or introductions to—some much larger works. there are several repetitions of the same summary definitions, and the arguments circle around without ever quite pinning down some tantalisingly suggestive concepts. one of the most interesting—and timely given the current fashion for so-called object oriented ontology—is the questioning of the nature of surfaces of things as constituting fixed and determinate boundaries. böhme instead proposes a definition of things based on what he calls their ‘ecstasies’, or emanations—the effects that they have on the objects and spaces around them. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 93 review / gernot böhme atmospheric architectures: the aesthetics of felt spaces s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n this idea of a fundamental continuity in the fabric of things around us is strongly reminiscent of maurice merleau-ponty’s concept of the ‘flesh of the world’, that shared primal fabric of materiality out of which what we later call subjects and objects gradually emerge. while böhme does refer several times to phenomenology as a relevant philosophical framework, it is curious that he makes only passing reference to the work of martin heidegger, and (apart from the ancient greeks) makes no reference to any non-german thinkers. this is a pity because it misses an important strand of thinking on the social and political contexts of ‘atmospheric experience’ in post-war french thought, perhaps most vividly exemplified in jean baudrillard’s seminal 1968 text le système des objets [1]. one theme that does come through strongly in böhme’s work—and chimes well with other recent writers—is the effect of so-called non-material phenomena on the experience of built forms and spaces. i am referring here to work by david leatherbarrow, peter zumthor, jonathan hill and others on the ‘agency’ of environmental conditions such as local climate and weathering processes, although böhme casts a wider net to include factors such as lighting, acoustics, colour and music. he also credits the initial idea of designing atmospheres to the english landscape garden, specifically as described and theorised at great length by the german historian c. c. l. hirschfeld in the late eighteenth century. overall, the essays are thoughtfully translated, and usefully introduced, in a way that will make bohme’s work accessible and engaging to a wide audience. the message of the book is inspirational in its shift from the study of objects toward experience, and it will sit nicely among similarly motivated titles in bloomsbury academic’s impressively burgeoning architecture library. references [1] jean baudrillard, the system of objects, london: verso, 1996 [1968]. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 106 p r e s e n c e review / mark jackson farzaneh haghighi is the tehran bazaar dead? foucault, politics, and architecture cambridge scholars publishing, 2018 for those old enough to remember, the years of 1978 and 1979 were marked by electrifying political events. in a geo-political climate dominated by neo-liberal policies that emerged with thatcher and reagan, the shah of iran was deposed, fleeing to the united states, with the ayatollah khomeini returning from exile in paris to establish an islamic government. what form would such governmentality take: a muslim shiite governmental reason that would be neither arab nor sunni, non-aligned with pan-arabism or pan-islamism? michel foucault visited iran twice in 1978 to gain first-hand an understanding of how this governmental reason would be formed. he wrote some thirteen separate articles, mostly for french and italian newspapers, reporting on how he understood this event that would not be named “revolution”. in concluding one such article for le nouvel observateur in october 1978, he comments: “for the people who inhabit this land, what is the point of searching, even at the cost of their own lives, for this thing whose possibility we have forgotten since the renaissance and the great crisis of christianity, a political spirituality? i can already hear the french laughing, but i know that they are wrong.” indeed, foucault was heavily criticized for what some termed his “folly” in iran, for mistaking the ideal of an islamic political will for an ultimately repressive theocracy. more recently, there are book-length studies that have revised that reception to foucault’s political analyses, one by afary and anderson (2005) referenced briefly by haghighi, and even more recently, behrooz ghamari-tabrizi’s 2016 foucault in iran: islamic revolution after the enlightment. the same year that foucault visited iran, he delivered his “collége de france” lecture course, security territory population, introducing the notions of governmentality and security. ghamari-tabrizi suggests that foucault’s encounters in iran set him on other paths for thinking the question of political will, and the fate, in europe, of what he called a political spirituality. this perhaps overly extended introduction to farzaneh haghighi’s book on the tehran bazaar aims at placing aspects of foucault’s thinking in some broader political contexts of iran. it is also important to recognise, as haghighi outlines comprehensively in her book, that the tehran bazaar during various political upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been a locale or site 107 review / farzaneh haghighi is the tehran bazaar dead? foucault, politics, and architecture p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 for galvanizing resistance and demonstration of political will. this was certainly the case with the return of khomeine, and has been the case in subsequent turbulence. with donald trump’s reinforcing of stringent economic sanctions against iran in january this year and his reminder to especially france and germany to fall into line or be treated as hostile to united states interests, the tehran bazaar is again an epi-centre of agitation and political expression, especially around the issues of currency exchange and availability of us dollars for bazaar traders. haghighi’s book goes into considerable detail on historico-political understandings of the founding of the bazaar, its subsequent socio-political agencies and its urban and architectural morphologies. the book undertakes this detailed and thoroughly researched accounting for an architectural object, in order to radically question the grounds upon which such scholarship rests. this is a book that introduces just how foucault’s approaches to history, power and human agency require us to reconsider, from the ground up, how to question the “encounterability” of things. with this strategy in mind, the book follows a curious, though highly successful structure. knowing full well the kinds of limitations she will bring to more conventional socio-political analyses or urban-architectural analyses of the tehran bazaar, haghighi undertakes such analyses according to the precepts of key scholars in those fields. foucault does not get mentioned. this is to say, haghighi does not bring critique immediately to conventional scholarly accounts of the bazaar in terms of historical, sociological, political, urban and architectural analyses. we are somewhat lulled into the security of securing our object of study, quantifying and qualifying “it” as somehow objectively knowable. two early chapters of the book undertake this securing. then, there comes the seismic rupturing in a chapter on foucault, and especially on foucault’s notion of “event”. it is instructive that haghighi takes “event” as a central concern rather than, for example, aiming at providing accounts of the bazaar in terms of archaeology, genealogy and governmentality as subsequent modalities by which foucauldian analyses are generally encountered. “event” is especially pressing, as there is no real and decided explanation for just what it is. “it” is essentially aleatory, chance, as much as governmental reason. as haghighi notes: “by considering the tehran bazaar as an event, one might be able to explore this marketplace at a micropolitical level. moreover, such a perspective allows one to incorporate the chance encounter as an element of investigation, which can open possibilities for the emergence of the not-yet-thought. as chapters two and three suggested that the socio-political and architectural discourses reduce an event to a known incident, the foucauldian chance event acknowledges the rise of the unknown” (151). there follows three more chapters that narrate the bazaar as event. the first narrates “death” as event, the second “movement” and the third “resistance”. just how haghighi undertakes these narratives is instructive for how we are able to invent (or event) along with foucault. the narrative of death that haunts the bazaar is a focus on two chance elements that haghighi encountered in her own travels to tehran. one is a socio-political 108 review / farzaneh haghighi is the tehran bazaar dead? foucault, politics, and architecture p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 encounter with roller-doors that now come to signify closure. crucial to her approach, haghighi emphasises practices: practices of occupying premises and modalities of occupancy for which roller-doors are elements in a broad geo-economic connectivity that takes in the manufacture of aluminium as much as it does access or its denial to particular traders within the bazaar. the second element encountered is the ritualised photographic presentation of forebears within the perimeter of a trading establishment. again, haghighi emphasises that display of images is a practice, or complex relation of practices, rather than being reducible to discursive meanings of objects. roller-dooring and photographic displaying are events, “eventalising” as power-knowledge relations constituting the spacings of the bazaar, their segmentations and contiguities as micro-political. the chapters on movement and resistance engage further depth in foucauldian analyses, and further understandings of practices immanent to inhabitations of the bazaar. crucially, these three chapters revisit precisely concerns thoroughly engaged in those earlier chapters on the socio-political history of the bazaar and urban-architectural morphology of the building, though do so in such a way that palpably and politically draws out the failures in that earlier scholarship to account for what is genuinely living as practices of “bazaaring”. haghighi emphasises at the commencement to her book that we cannot take the tehran bazaar as a “case-study” for a broader foucauldian approach to architecture. by the conclusion of the book we recognise why this emphasis is made. to define a case-study is to define a particularity within the broad schema of universals. with the notion of event, we need to replace this grounding division with one of singularity, enabling the aleatory to rupture any sense of universality or totality. that having been said, it is not difficult to recognise just how haghighi has ruptured many of the well-worn pathways by which we think of, analyse and define architectural objects. in this, we learn, from her approach, to think our own exemplars otherwise. ~ l ··r~ i : """ ,, ' .. •(. •, i t-l-t, !, ·~ f ' "'"" " . . ~ • -~..:=--::~ / . ., ~ . . r , r ., • . ... ~ . . i ...... . ....... ",. the st matthew passion is a complex work that depicts the liturgical events of easter, with the libretto told by a single author. explicit in the structuring of the st matthew passion is both the notion of the whole divided into two and its antithesis, the fusion of opposing bodies. sacred and secular music, the two fundamentally different textural layers of the passionmadrigalesque poetry on the one hand, holy scripture and chorales on the other-are not abruptly juxtaposed . on the co ntrary: picander and bach alike set a premium on a seamless integration, already manifest in the opening chorus, in which freely conceived verse and the chorale blend into each other. numero logically the number two symbolises the figure of jesus christ, omega and alpha. an arrangement of two choirs, two orchestras and two parts give aural and visual reference to the underlying device and theme of the passiori. the structural framework underlying the design is a reflection of the sequencing and coding of the passion. the different layers of the passion were mapped onto the site to unlock the encryptions and signature of the piece. vided the site into part one and part two . sacred lines were projected from the centre of the cross and from the high altar. secular lines moved across the site parallel to the pedestrian streets surrounding the existing building. implicit in the passion is the number seventeen. scenes i-vii fo rm part one; scenes viii-xvii form patt two, following the sermon. poetic contemplations come at the end of the scenes in question. the structure of the libretto reveals the symmetrical arrangement of the two parts with their seventeen (7+ 10) contemplations. this division provides the main articulation in bach 's composition, for the contemplative pieces in musical terms form the most substantial paits of his passion setting. the seventeenth piece is a mysterious, unwritten chorale, in an otherwise fully notated work. seventeen is also a fermat prime, where seventeen is two to the power of two to the power of two plus one . plus one is the betraying disciple, the judas. the second part of the design was to make explicit what was implicit in the passion cycle. by shifting the focal point from the centre of the cross to the unwritten in siting the music school and auditorium, a chorale on the scaling line, the interior of the scale of two octaves based on the harmonic design was reconfigured. lines projected out proportions of st matthews church was defrom the cross, formed by part one of the procvised and proj ected from the centre of the ess, in part two converged upon this single cross, through the organ chamber. a scaling point. line between the first and second octave didivisions of part one and part two ,,,-.. -> """' chorale lines -7 1 ·, --~ ,i . . _). .1 • i •. text from jesus :: ..:l _.:=:____-.:_ -=scenes from pi ca nder -~ number seventeen as view point 129 ~( t. ......... ~ it. stained glass window in st matthews church organ chamber. performance hall roof plan . part two: plan, auditorium level (later version) . 130 federal st st matthews church hobson st li i"!, ~11 [~ ... / part one: plan, basement level. 1 part one exordium 2 library 3 school courtyard 4 practice rooms 5 teaching studios 6 carpark 7 museum 8 car ramp 9 exivburial ,~ · ~ bird's eye view looking towards st matthews church. part two fa9ade (view from federal st). fa9ade towards st matthews church. r--------------· i g_·c/ i r t/ ,, i i [ part two: plan , auditorium leve l. 1 library roof 2 backstage and cloakroom 3 cafe/informal performance space 4 display cabinet 5 practice rooms 6 teaching studios roof 7 circu lation/false witnesses/balconi es 8 part two exordium 9 bar 10 bathrooms 11 performance hall 12 stage 13 seatin g 14 roof terrace -:.~~ 1-•,t • ~ "',. > ··~.... ~~-:. -_ .. ...,d_..~,_,_,,.,,wi backdrop of stage {behind performers in auditorium) . auditorium . start of part two. part two: federal s t eleva tion (auditorium behind). part one: entrance. view of roof. 131 in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 130 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m bios michael davis dr michael davis is director of architecture programmes at the university of auckland school of architecture and planning, where he also teaches and researches in architectural design and architectural media. a registered architect, he has practised in new zealand, canada, and the netherlands. his project experience spans from high-density housing to heritage retro-fits, and from government buildings to resorts in locations from ethiopia to new caledonia. he holds a phd from rmit (melbourne) and a master of architecture in architecture and urbanism from the architectural association’s design research laboratory (london). robert freestone dr robert freestone is a professor of planning in the faculty of built environment at the university of new south wales. his research interests are in planning history, metropolitan and airport planning, heritage, and education. his books include planning metropolitan australia (2018), dialogues in urban and regional planning 6 (2017), place and placelessness revisited (2016), urban nation: australia’s planning heritage (2010), and urban planning in a changing world (2000). julia gatley associate professor julia gatley is head of the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland and an historian of twentieth-century new zealand architecture. she has published four books with auckland university press: vertical living: the architectural centre and the remaking of wellington (2014, with paul walker); athfield architects (2012); group architects: towards a new zealand architecture (2010); and long live the modern: new zealand’s new architecture, 1904–1984 (2008). she also co-edited, with lucy treep, the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning, published in 2017 on the occasion of the auckland school of architecture and planning’s centenary. sam kebbell dr sam kebbell is a senior lecturer in the school of architecture at victoria university of wellington (vuw) and a director of kebbelldaish architects. he graduated with a barch(hons) from vuw and an mdes (history and theory) (dist) from harvard in 1999 before working in europe and north america. he has won numerous awards for his work and has presented to both academic and professional audiences in new zealand and around the world. in 2015, sam won an adapt-r research fellowship at the university of westminster, london, and he completed his phd at rmit in 2016. milica mađanovic milica mađanovic is the first recipient of the murray wren doctoral scholarship in architecture at the university of auckland. in the school of architecture and planning, she is preparing her thesis on architectural historicism. she is employed as a teaching and marking assistant at the university of auckland, and as a part-time lecturer at unitec institute of technology, auckland. milica has written several papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and has presented papers at a number of conferences. gill matthewson dr gill matthewson has a background as a practising architect in britain and new zealand and continues to design. she has a longstanding interest in women in architecture, which has encompassed scholarly work, activism, and advocacy from the 1980s onwards. the latest manifestation of this concern is her phd thesis, “dimensions of gender: women’s careers in the australian architecture profession”, which was conferred by the university of queensland in 2015 and earned a dean’s award for outstanding thesis. gill is 131 biographies f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m currently teaching at monash university in melbourne. ann mcewan dr ann mcewan is an independent scholar and the principal of heritage consultancy services (est. 2006), which provides heritage policy and assessment services throughout new zealand. she has lectured in architectural history and heritage conservation at the university of waikato and the university of auckland and was a foundation member of the auckland council heritage advisory panel. ann is the registers coordinator for docomomo nz and since 2011 has written a weekly heritage building column for the waikato times. aaron paterson aaron paterson is an architect and a director of pac, a collaborative ideas-driven architecture studio, committed to intellectual and artistic rigour and to realising ideas in the world. aaron’s buildings range from houses and community facilities to commercial projects and even the giraffe house at the auckland zoo. he has earned new zealand architecture awards for the lake hawea courtyard house and the s-house (see www.p-a-c.nz). aaron is also a part-time lecturer in the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland, and a regular contributor to architectural publications. patrick reynolds patrick reynolds is a perpetual student of the urban world. he is deputy director of advocacy groups greater auckland and urban auckland, and serves on various public sector boards. he writes about urban futures, and has taught urban design papers at the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning. he is also new zealand’s leading photographer of the built environment, with numerous books to his name, including new new zealand houses with john walsh, architecture uncooked with pip cheshire, villa with jeremy salmond and jeremy hansen, and bungalow with nicole stock. christoph schnoor dr christoph schnoor is an associate professor of architecture at unitec institute of technology, auckland, where he has worked since 2004. lecturing in the history and theory of architecture, his main research fields are modernist architecture (with specific focus on le corbusier and ernst plischke) and colonial and post-colonial architecture in samoa. at present, he is working on an intellectual biography on ernst plischke, to be published in both german and english editions. linda tyler associate professor linda tyler has taught art and design history at canterbury, victoria, waikato, and auckland universities and at the dunedin school of art and unitec. she is currently convenor of the museums and cultural heritage programme at the university of auckland. she has a particular interest in the legacy of bauhaus pedagogies promoted in post-world war ii aotearoa by émigré architects and designers. she is an associate emerita of the auckland war memorial museum, and a research associate of the museum of new zealand te papa tongarewa. lucy vete lucy vete completed her master of architecture (professional) at the university of auckland school of architecture and planning in 2017. with her thesis project, “shifting grounds: conceptions of the homeland and the journey to emergence”, she won the top prize in the annual nzia student design awards that year. this national competition is held across new zealand’s three schools of architecture. upon completion of her thesis, lucy spent the first half of 2018 travelling solo across the united states and europe, and then took up a position with architectus in auckland. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 28 p r e s e n c e konrad buhagiar, guillaume dreyfuss, ephraim joris ex uno lapide: the making present of absence background to the research the principle of ex uno lapide was a topos of classical literature (barry, 2019: 57-72), which first appeared in alberti’s treatise on sculpture (lavin, 1998: 194). alberti’s writing develops observations by diodorus siculus on the proportion system of egyptian sculptors (195). the principle of ex uno lapide can be found in michelangelo’s preliminary sketches preserved in the archives of the casa buonarotti foundation, which represent quarried marble blocks in outline with indications of the future sculptural groups to be carved (193). also referencing ex uno lapide through the use of a monolithic block in a digital drawing space, the monolith drawing,1 described below and in the following drawings, correspondingly exists as a study of architecture seemingly in search of ancestral origins—the place where we discover architecture. this urge to (re)discover classical architecture stems from a desire to participate in a renewal of the world, not through post-classicism but through the idea of loss with which we nurture our intuitive understanding of the momentum of history. with this we seek a particular notion of history, acknowledging the fact that history is not merely a moving-on but more like a dwelling in (or through) all time that has passed. we ask here how to design architecture through historical recollection? as such, the monolith drawing is never in search of singular historical referents; rather, it looks for a general engagement with history. fig. 1 ephraim joris (2018). primary volume [computer generated drawing: joris/ap valletta] 29 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 in this paper we comment on the “monolith drawing”, whose drawing protocol is outlined in the first part. in this part we describe how an architectural figure is extracted out of a single volume, thereby synchronising analogue thinking with computational development. we argue that by this means, entry to history is made possible through our capacity to long for the experience of something that is absent. this argument rests on a lacanian notion that there cannot be absence in an objective world, since absence can only exist through symbolic or representative means (see saint-cyr, 2012), an interpretation that takes the research from the figural towards the spatial. it is through the representational means of the monolith drawing that we enable ourselves, as architects, to design presence where there is none, an attempt that amounts to making present absence itself (see joris, 2015: 213 and also joris, 2016a). extracting the architectural figure the monolith drawing investigates how to design architecture through historical recollection, as opposed to reaffirming existing historical interpretations. the emphasis on recollection here aims to draw on its dynamic and inevitably non-linear qualities. the monolith drawing, in turn, envisages a place where relations are drawn as intersecting solids through the repetition of subtractions, cutting into one another, to recompose and eventually create new formal conditions. each repeated subtraction acknowledges the existing volumes, however, they inevitably modify them, uncovering new possibilities through a removal process of what exists. by this means, creation of form rests on the renegotiation of relationships between forms rather than on the assemblage of pre-existing archetypical elements. this is accentuated by the fact that there are no walls or floors, even with the transcription of void within a lithic core (the equivalent of a solid piece of stone in a digital drawing environment). as such, no real entrance is ever made, nor a real exit achieved. instead, compositional variability is explored during the subtraction process with the aim of uncovering differential intensities that underlie the process of lithic subtraction itself. in this way the process produces compositional identities—what can be thought of as architectural precursors—where the individuality or clarity of any architectural object is inseparable from the different series of compositional transmutations underpinning it. hence, while the process stands in service of the creation of interior space, it is really about entering matter. the procedural subtraction process structuring the monolith drawing in fact rethinks the objective reality of entrance-forming by reconceiving interiority itself as entrance into dynamic recollection. the following drawing set illustrates the systematic process of lithic reduction forming the monolith. they indicate how a retrieving of history, indeed a repossession of time itself, was enacted. scrutinising the formation of the monolith in this way allows for a visualization of how time working through time is possible. starting with a certain appeal to materiality to better induce consciousness of a particular place in time, the drawings in turn communicate the process of an evolving consciousness of this materiality. this gently erases the a priori sense of an object as a fixed entity by allowing a more sensorial relationship. emphasising the embodied nature of perception, the observer and author of the drawing inevitably become enmeshed with the drawing much as we are enmeshed with the larger world constituting author and drawing. called on by the monolith 30 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 then—with its process of projection and subtraction, acting and responding, making and unmaking—is something akin to the crafting and occupying of time. certainly, at stake is less an occupying of space (although one is inevitably part of a single space of viewing), than a temporal occupancy necessary to the emergence of new architectonic conditions. caught partially between absence and presence, the monolith drawing progresses according to acts of remembering.2 the spatial intentional of the monolith as an initial volume is to suggest the creation of ‘room’ via subtraction. this is given through of a slow process of ‘carving into stone’ as the antithesis of composing architecture by means of elements such as columns and beams. the monolith, as cutout ‘stone architecture’ enacts a correspondence between form and structure. as such, the expressive value of its form is a direct result of its structural capacity. vaults, domes and spheres as potential or latent primary volumes thus play an important role. the monolith drawing starts with the composition of a primary volume or what amounts to a lithic-like core. in this initial drawing, the core is sphere-like, due to an implicate integrity of that form bestowed historically. as such, the core recalls certain archetypical forms, or, as carl jung has characterised this association, a “psychic residua of innumerable experiences of the same type” (1922: 415). the act of sculpting into the lithic-core follows principles of stereotomy, a process by which the lithic body is doubled to introduce a second intersecting volume. this volume is always and inevitably smaller, much as gazing at one’s own reflection necessitates a certain distance. such distance determines the factor by which the reflected counterpart is scaled. by increasing the distance between the lithic core and its mirror image, the size of the latter will decrease (see fig 2). fig. 2 ephraim joris (2018). defining an intersection [computer generated drawing: joris/ap valletta] 31 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 fig. 3 ephraim joris (2018). part removal of the lithic core [computer generated drawing: joris/ap valletta] fig. 4 ephraim joris (2018). monolith 14c-a7 [-155 8] after subtraction [computer generated drawing: joris/ ap valletta] in turn, the subtraction process is initiated by identifying an overlap or intersection between the lithic-core and its reflection. the area of intersection between two solids describes what will become void after the mirror image is subtracted from its original (see figs. 3 and 4). 32 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 figs. 5 and 6 ephraim joris (2018). monolith 16-10, monolith 16-10.5 [computer generated drawing: joris/ ap valletta] the guiding principle of ex uno lapide allows architecture to be thought about through the solidity and integrity of a single volume out of which spaces are carved. this stands in contrast to algebraic architecture where the idea of building is understood as the assembly of parts. thus, the monolith drawing, negotiates the creation of architecture through a distribution of voids which in turn produce space and structure simultaneously. nevertheless, continuing the process of mirroring and subsequent subtraction, a point of collapse is eventually reached, one where the lithic body is little more than a collection of shreds and slivers. along the way, residual monolith drawings make up intermediate images leading towards this moment of collapse. in figures 5 and 6 are seen an elevation sequence looking into the zone of subtraction as partially revealed in the previous diagram (fig. 4). the process of reflection and subtraction is a cyclical process in which the lithic core receives multiple carvings from subsequent mirror images, each time leaving a recess or exedra subsequent to the subtraction. the process leads to the formation of openings or mouths accessing vacated space within the monolith or lithic core itself. still, even with this transcription of voids within the lithic core, no real entrances are made, nor are actual exits formed. instead, different degrees of compositional intensity are explored during the subtraction process. nevertheless, imposition of exedra upon exedra eventually excavates interior spaces within the lithic core—space in fact that can only be accessed as if through the recurring arches of archivolts (see fig. 7). curiously, this ongoing extraction results in an eventual disappearance of the numerous inscriptions or embrasures forming around each void. as such these features seem analogous with ancient principles of ornamentation such as the blind doorways of the pre-classic mesoamerican olmecs (ca. 2000bc) (stross, 1996: 83-84), the seven osirian doorways of the temple of osiris hek-djet in 33 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 karnak (ca. 900bc), or, the false-door stela of princess wehemnefret (2543-2435 bc—see fig. 8). interestingly, all such doorways are said to facilitate entrances to various underworlds. following similar analogous associations, similarities with the romanesque portals of the twelfth centuries are evident—for instance, the south porch portal of st peter’s church in moissac (ca. 1115-30), the triple portal of st jacques’ church in aubeterre sur dronne (consecrated 1171), or, the church of st trophime in arles (ca. 1190). despite these similitudes, the monolith never induces such references directly, since the drawing system eschews ornamentation as a design intention. instead, the monolith drawing produces an architectonic reflective of specific drawing rituals in which ancient production techniques such as stereotomy and ex uno lapide were key. the monolith drawing thus processes form through the renegotiation of ancient production  techniques (emmons, kassem, 2014), without directly referencing specific styles or types of ornament. the resulting monoliths exist outside actual systems of historical classification and taxonomy, remaining, in this sense, somewhat anachronistic. it is as if time has been misplaced in the object. such fig. 7 ephraim joris (2018). monolith 16–11 [computer generated drawing, joris/ap valletta] fig. 8 anonymous (2543-2435 bc) false-door stela of princess wehemnefret [photo: museo egizio, torino] 34 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 a system of drawing is inherently unstable, always in a process of nascence as jean-luc nancy has described (1993: 4), and given the constant fragmentation, it is without singular identity. in this way, the monolith drawing resists the predominant modern ethos of progress, defined as it is in terms of movement towards ideals. it is instead expressive of incessant mutation—an architecture of becoming by means of serial projections and subtractions. the monolith drawing persists as a reflective instrument resistive of intentional representational ends, or, stylistic clichés. while dislocating form from its traditional associational meanings or symbolic values, it doesn’t deny the presence of such values either—a mode of indifference peter eisenman has argued for in a different context (1999: 205-211). the diagrammatic qualities of the monolith drawing simply allow the articulation and study of a field of intersectional forces, forces that are themselves unintentionally suggestive. from the figural towards the architectural: ex uno lapide the commission in 2013 of a new extension for the museum of st john’s co-cathedral in valletta, malta (dedicated 1578), provided an ideal opportunity to develop an architectural interpretation of the monolith drawing research. the co-cathedral (see figs. 9 and 10) sits at the heart, both physically and symbolically, of the fortified city of valletta, itself a manifestation of faith conceived according to renaissance humanist principles as a bastion of catholicism in the 16th century mediterranean (see tunbridge, 2009 and pollack, 2010). the commission for a design incorporating the rehabilitation and extension of the current museum, in addition to restoring and reusing the neglected and underutilised historical spaces annexed to the co-cathedral, included a stone enclosure intended to exclusively house a precious set of tapestries. fig. 9 guillaume dreyfuss. main façade of st john’s co-cathedral, malta [photograph] fig. 10 guillaume dreyfuss. side elevation of st john’s co-cathedral museum, malta [photograph] 35 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 in the early 1620s, isabella, infanta of spain and portugal and the governor of the spanish netherlands (see paranque, 2017) collaborated with peter paul rubens to design a set of tapestries (see fig, 11) that would illustrate the triumph of the eucharist and act as a tool to further counter the onslaught of the reformation. the set of monumental tapestries was presented by the infanta to the monasterio de las descalzas reales, where they were used to decorate the convent church on important occasions. over half a century later, ramon perellos y roccaful, on his election as grand master to the order, commissioned a further set of the same tapestries as a gift to st john’s co-cathedral, a tradition that held sway for the two and a half centuries during which the order of the knights of st john of jerusalem governed the island of malta. his intention was probably to outshine the gifts of all previous grand masters and to add a soft and sumptuous touch to the interior of the church, whose walls, vault and floor had been, over the previous decades, covered with polychrome marble sepulchral slabs, gilded sculptural decoration and paintings by artists including mattia preti and caravaggio. the twenty-nine tapestries were hung in the cathedral every year between the feast of corpus christi and the feast of st john (de giorgio 2018: 127).3 they are composed of three series: seven tapestries depict episodes of the life of christ from the new testament; seven tapestries are allegorical representations of the triumph of the eucharist; and, the last fourteen represent the twelve apostles, the virgin mary and christ saviour (de giorgio). if the richness and splendour of the tapestry series leave no doubt as to the intention by ramon perellos y roccaful to impress his contemporaries, the intention behind the choice, in the late 17th century, of the triumph of the eucharist as one of the two main themes remains to be uncovered. indeed, while malta was affected by the reformation in the first-half of the 16th century, the situation worsened considerably a few decades later following the construction of the new fortified city of valletta (started in 1566), and the establishment of the inquisition (cassar, 1988: 51-68). today the fig. 11 guillaume dreyfuss. peter paul rubens (1697–1700) the resurrection of our lord, detail, st john’s co-cathedral, malta [photograph] 36 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 tapestries constitute the only full set of these designs by rubens in the world, and are considered one of the greatest artefacts of the baroque age. however, centuries of handling, inappropriate storage and harmful lighting and climatic conditions have left their toll on these rich, but delicate images made from silk, silver and gold threads. further, today, with the cathedral museum exhibiting only six of the tapestries, the result is a loss of the larger narrative that celebrated the glory of the roman catholic church then. our design in 2013 for the new museum enclosure consisted of blind walls, a requirement springing from the need to shut out all harmful natural uv light in the hall, itself measuring 50m in length and 12m in height. the enclosure was carved and articulated according to the classical use of the niche and rotated pilasters (see fig. 12). restricted by programmatic and conservation requirements, the core volume of the tapestry hall is carved at varying depths to produce an elaborate dialectic between the envelope—itself a container foregrounding divine absence—and the tapestries themselves celebrating the renewed presence of christ through the eucharist. pursued in the carved volume is an expression of the “dialectical tension of absence and presence” (rasmussen, 2003: 154) resting on the intersection of two guiding principles of the roman catholic church: the concept of transubstantiation (crownfield, 1991) itself intrinsic to the sacrament of the eucharist; and, the assertion of relics as figures of absence capable of catalysing popular fervour fig. 12 ephraim joris (2018). monolith sequence for st john’s co-cathedral museum [computer generated drawing: joris/ap valletta] 37 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 towards the faith more generally. the design for the carved volume then, simultaneously inferred references to paleo-christian sarcophagi and their layered architecture, something found in medieval enamelled reliquary caskets of the 12th and 13th centuries too. what we anticipated for the volume, itself thought of as the lithic-core with blank panels, was a making visible of the invisible hosted within. in short, by surrendering the direct presence of a superior (divine) order, we focused instead on the task of making experienceable something that is absent—this being, in fact, one of the tenets of christian architecture itself (pérez-gómez, 2016: 118). the resultant architecture, akin to a cephalophore carrying its own head and echoing the subtractive duplications of the earlier monolith drawing, lent to this space intended to house the relics, a corresponding presence of an absence (see fig. 13). as such, the new extension was conceived of as a monumental reliquary containing the mystical narrative describing the principal mystery of the catholic faith. the making present of absence more generally, the monolith drawing as a notation and generative system opens towards an architectural history inclusive of modernism, one that people can enter as if a complex of multiple pasts and presents. rather than a new conception, this aligns with an ancient capacity of architecture to imagine connecting narratives between the previous and the current (augé, 1995). the monolith drawing itself collates form from within a field of intersecting, duplicating forces, thus acting analogously with the space of architectural history. yet it learns from modernism too, eschewing ornamentation as a design intent. in this way, architecture is made by means of a collision of matter through which intersecting forces become visible as they sculpt various intensities of space. this kind of drawing permits the expression of movement: an architecture of becoming, subject to unceasing change. as has been demonstrated above, the relentless erosion of archetypical elements leads to a compositional language presencing domes and vaults despite their literal absence as such. hence, the architectural figure is never erased, nor is it ever fig. 13 ephraim joris (2018). elevation showing the monolith proposal in context for st john’s co-cathedral museum [computer generated drawing: joris/ap valletta] 38 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 abstracted. instead, the figure is isolated from its original narrative framework. such isolation—given in the drawing by a pure black backing—opposes abstraction but aims for the undoing of the figurative task with which the architectural figures (columns, domes, and archivolts) have traditionally been burdened. its figurative task, compliant with pre-set narratives, is halted, for within the monolith drawing, the figure enters a state of the figural, a term used by foucault (1972) to describe a condition which is both non-figurative and non-abstract. this condition, where relations between the image as signifier and the object as that which is signified are broken, allowing for drawing to become matter. from within this material state—in fact the very pre-condition by which we are present at all—dark entries are split into open passages siting within architecture structures of loss. as each drawing develops in time, the marks of absence proliferate. the drawing thus shifts from being a medium in which architectural objects are represented to a medium expressing architecture in its becoming. so does the monolith drawing oscillate between representation and expression, rendering visible forces that are in themselves not visible. the monolith drawing as applied to the st john’s co-cathedral museum project has allowed the condensation of multiple design parameters and the articulation of the historical and spiritual values inherent to the project. intersected at the site of drawing is the unravelling of forces within the memorial realm of an architectural consciousness that presences what has become, and must always be, absent. the resulting architecture, while responsive to its site and situation, draws out the flux inherent in the continuing historical dynamics of changing perception and beliefs. using the monolith drawing as a primary investigative resource contributed here to develop an architecture in which individual consciousness can coincide with shared understanding, existing not as abstract form but as a figure freed from its previous task of figuration through the repeated process of multiple subtraction. the process of stereotomy enacted through mirroring & subtraction, allows for a conversation between a lithic core—the initial architectural volume whose silhouette, in the case of the st john’s co-cathedral museum project, is the delineation of site-specific boundaries—and a process of lithic reduction where mass is subtracted from the initial monolithic by choreographed process of mirroring. form is, in the process, always an indirect product; lines are not actively drawn but are the outcome of the intersection of delineated site-historic margins. the resulting drawings of the st john’s tapestry hall—with its carved exterior of blind doorways—aim at expanding on encounters with, and divergences from, form itself. the resulting architecture marks new areas of access, both physically and conceptually. the drawing is thus equal parts mind and material. the monolith drawing catalyses a process of drawing, and thus the contemplation of architecture, breaking the path of self-projection. as such, the architect as a determining self is subtracted from the drawing process per se. excused from entering the drawing process as a personal agent, a meditative instrument is found instead, one that approaches a collective historical consciousness. 39 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 fig. 14 ephraim joris (2018) monolith 16-07; a process of becoming [computer generated drawing, joris/ ap valletta] 40 ex uno lapide: the making present of absence p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 references augé, m. (1995), non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity (j. howe, trans.). brooklyn, ny: verso. barry, f. (2013). ex uno lapide. the myth of the monolithic building in antiquity. in k. buhagiar, g. dreyfuss, j. bruenslow (eds.), the founding myths of architecture (pp. 57-72). london, uk: artifice books. cassar, c. (1988). the reformation and sixteenth-century malta. melita historica 10(1), 51-68. crownfield, d. (1991). the seminal trace: presence, difference, and transubstantiation. journal of the american academy of religion, 59(2), 361-371. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org / stable/1465501 de giorgio, c. (2018). hanging images for the last crusaders: the triumph of the eucharist tapestries and the knights of malta. in j. azzopardi, d. r. busuttil, a. darmanin (eds.), tribute to alain blondy (pp. 123131). malta: fondation de malte eisenman, p. (1999). diagram diaries, london, uk: thames & hudson ltd. emmons, p., kassem, d. (2014). architect-computer symbiosis. montreal architectural review, vol 1, 47-65 foucault, m. (1972). the archaeology of knowledge (a. m. sheridan smith, trans.). newyork, ny: harper and row. jancsary, j. (2019). the future as an undefined and open time: a bergsonian approach. axiomathes, 29, 61-80. https://doi. org /10.1007/s10516-017-9364-0 joris e. (2015). on longing: rendering architecture through a consciousness accommodated by a collapse of time in space. (unpublished doctoral thesis). rmit, melbourne. joris e. (2016a). on longing: rendering architecture through a consciousness of a collapse of time in space. in e. joris (ed.), social sciences & arts conference sgem vienna scientific sessions: book 4, vol.2., 449-460. joris e. (2016b). the monolith drawing. in joris, e. (ed.), between paper and pixels: transmedial traffic in architectural drawing: vol. 4. jung, c. (1922). art as archetypal form. in l. archie, j. g. archie, readings in the history of aesthetics: an open-source reader (pp. 408 – 420). retrieved from https://philosophy.lander. edu/intro/artbook.pdf lavin, i. (1998). ex uno lapide: the renaissance sculptor’s tour de force. in m. winner, et al. (eds.), il cortile delle statue. der statuenhof des belvedere im vatikan (pp. 191-210). mainz: philipp von zabern. nancy, j.-l. (1993). the birth to presence (b. holmes, et al. trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press paranque, e. (2017). isabel clara eugenia, governor of the spanish netherlands: trade, politics, and warfare, ruling like a king, 1621–1633. in e. paranque, n. probasco, c. jowitt (eds.) colonization, piracy, and trade in early modern europe: the roles of powerful women and queens (pp. 73-93). london, uk: palgrave macmillan. pérez-gómez, a. (2016). attunement :architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science. cambridge, ma: the mit press. pollack, m. (2010). cities at war in early modern europe. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. rasmussen, b. g. (2003). presence and absence: richard hooker’s sacramental hermeneutic. in w.j. torrance kirby (ed.), richard hooker and the english reformation (pp. 151164). dordrecht: springer. saint-cyr, v. (2012). creating a void or sublimation in lacan. recherches en psychanalyse, 13(1), 15-21. stross, b. (1996). the mesoamerican cosmic portal: an early zapotec example. res: anthropology and aesthetics, no. 29/30, 82-101. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org / stable/20166944. tunbridge, j. (2009). forging a european heritage: the role of malta. geographische zeitschrift, 97(1), 12-23. retrieved from http:// www.jstor.org /stable/25758630. endnotes 1 architecture project (2016). exhibition on the monolith at palo alto (barcelona) as part of exhibition/installation the rabbitduck illusion at time space existence, venice biennale 2016. 2 following a bergsonian approach to time as non-linear. see for example jancsary, j. (2019). 3 the feast of corpus christi celebrates the elements of transubstantiation, part of the catholic faith. a moveable feast, it takes place in may or june depending on the liturgical calendar. the feast of st john takes place on june 24. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 112 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m 113 shifting grounds: conceptions of the homeland and the journey to emergence f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m postgraduate creative design research project lucy vete nzia student design awards winner, 2017 shifting grounds: conceptions of the homeland and the journey to emergence shifting grounds explores the convergence of the past and present, and of the physical and social worlds in a journey through the emergent possibilities of tonga and its people. as a “home”, “homeland”, and “imaginary homeland”, tonga exists as a malleable construction of ideas, stories, traditions, and history. this thesis draws from these numerous “conceptions” and presents a projective imagining of how architecture can be used to stimulate progression and movement in the everyday social realm. the project imagines a trajectory of composed social spaces along the north-eastern axis of tupoulahi road, within the heart of nuku’alofa. binding across the “homeland” from one body of water to another, the project responds to the expansive conception of tonga; integrating expressions of cosmological stories and domains as a way to reimagine social space and create an architecture of emergence. the act of journeying becomes an inherent and necessary process for the formation of the scheme, taking precedent from the dynamic history of exchange between islands in and outside tonga’s archipelago. this active and constantly shifting network of islands mirrors the emergence and dissipation of its people. as contemporary way-finders, tongan communities have grown and developed “oceans” away in new lands and surroundings. central to the core of this thesis research is the exploration of a contemporary tongan condition that actively seeks to encompass these communities of the growing diaspora. here, architecture functions as a catalyst for the translation of these ideas and stories into spatial and material expressions. as a reimagining and portrayal of social space, the project speculates on the nature of identity and perception on tongan ground and asks, how can the various conceptions of tonga help to inform an architecture for and about tongans? in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 114 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m 115 shifting grounds: conceptions of the homeland and the journey to emergence f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 103 p r e s e n c e review / carl douglas marian macken binding space: the book as spatial practice routledge, 2018 many of us pass our days moving from one illuminated screen to the next, channeling our creative activity through software and wi-fi. in this accelerated and transient state, a paper book or a pencil drawing can seem luxurious. marian macken, in binding space: the book as spatial practice (2018), suggests such analog pleasures are more than personal extravagances. books, she contends, are an under-exploited mode of architectural discourse: not simply bearers of writing about architecture, but a creative practive offering an alternative to the conventions of drawing sheets, screens, and eye-catching imagery: binding space demonstrates the possibilities of book making: it considers how the book format reveals and facilitates certain aspects of the design process, and the repercussions of this for spatial drawing and representation (5-6) macken presumes that modes of representation are not innocent or neutral transmitters of information, “a uniform space through which meaning may glide without modulation” (evans, 1997: 154); and that digital tools do not obviate the production of drawings and models as physical artefacts. book-making, she argues, has potential to open new avenues for designers and critics of space: the seeming conventionality of the book has the capacity to be reinvented anew, through creative practice, to take on a role of critical enquiry and to be the site of architectural innovation. (130) binding space (which derives from macken’s phd thesis; 2012) has an interdisciplinary flavour, marrying a study of book production by artists with theories of architectural representation. it provides an extensive practice context for the production of architectural art-books; theorises the format as a space-time construction; and demonstrates some of its potential through a series of macken’s own creative works. the text is organised into five parts, each attending to a different spatial register of the book format. part 1, field, identifies “bookness” (25): the characteristics of books that distinguish them from, for example, screens, models, or individual drawing sheets. central to bookness is seriality: while a single sheet of paper can be imagined as a window to look through, the page of a book is part of a sequence. we literally peel a page away from the stack of pages yet to be read, and 104 review / marian macken binding space: the book as spatial practice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 lay it over the pages passed. this “openable codex format”, writes macken, “offers the element of interiority, and, hence, its opposite, exteriority” (32). parts 2 and 3, page and volume, attend to the book as a material artefact. individual pages are a physical substrate that can be manipulated by stitching, cutting, creasing and embossing; so that the paper, “rather than receiving the drawing, is manipulated to form the drawing” (57). books that pop up, unfold, or contain voids—such as okoshi-ezu from edo-period japan, and the het nieuwe instituut’s vedute collection—overlap with models in their ability to produce or describe spatial volumes. the time of the viewer is implicated in the way books unfold in series, the theme of the fourth part. the movement of the reader travelling interactively through the book, leads macken to closely associate the book with exhibition design. this leads her to conclude in part 5, by articulating book time as multiple: “there is a multiplicity, a plurality, of ‘times’ that should be included within architecture… not just the time of inhabiting, but also the times of making, recollecting and repositioning” (135). this suggests a concern with a broad range of spatial agencies and narratives, rather than the telling of a single story oriented by a designer’s intentions. at the beginning of each part, macken describes some of her own books. these sections sit outside the main discursive line of the text (not even appearing on the contents page), but superbly exemplify her thought. for instance, her book $1.45¢: houses in the museum garden: biography of an exhibition, which heads up part 3, demonstrates how the spatial seriality of the book can unfurl the plural times of building. it documents three demonstration houses installed in the sculpture garden of new york’s moma between 1949 and 1955: one by marcel breuer, a second by gregory ain, and the third a replica of a japanese guest house by junzō yoshimura. macken attends to the houses’ prefabrication, short exhibited life, maintenance, disseminating function, relocation, and re-use; presenting them through a set of 22 unfolding portfolios containing collapsible models and embossed drawings. the portfolios form intersecting time-series of the transformations of each individual house, and the changing state of the museum courtyard. using overlays, cut-outs, pop-ups, and embossing, the portfolios describe the courtyard as a transient space, and invite cross-reading of the houses and their various careers. as conceptual probes, macken’s books are indispensible to her project, moving binding space from being a purely abstract meditation to being a provocative model of practice. architectural books can be more than normative archives for completed works, or polemic texts. instead, macken suggests that by experimenting with the book-making as a process we might refresh our understanding of the time(s) of architecture, and experiment with sequences, narratives, and interiority in new ways. the temporal and multiple nature of books exposes the rhythms, syncopations, and sequences of architecture, making it easier to see their various states and shifts. macken assembles an extensive collection of invigorating examples, and makes a strong argument that book-making remains valuable in a time of screen-based presentations, without resorting to nostalgia at any point. she does not seem to feel the urge to defend physical production against the intrusion of digital techniques (her own books integrate digital fabrication, particularly laser-cutting, 105 review / marian macken binding space: the book as spatial practice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 with traditional techniques of paper-making, folding, and debossing). rather, she affirms book-making as a slow “savoring” process, as equally necessary in design as rapid and efficient ways of working (frascari, 2011: 69). the organisation of the book is perhaps more complex than necessary. some discrete short essays could have been meaningfully merged into single chapters. macken’s direct accounts of her own practice work are one of the major strengths of the work, but sit oddly between chapters (not even appearing on the contents page at all). while this reinforces creative practice as having a discrete logic and independent existence of its own, i found it a little disjointed. for me, macken’s research triggered thoughts of how architecture’s temporal frames are locked to particular divisions of labour. for example, the inception of the drawing set (initially through the pairing of plan and section in the renaissance) encoded the distinction between architect and builder. where the former had ideas and overview, instructing by means of drawing, the latter were understood to expertly follow the plans to produce a building. the richer temporality that comes into view through book production might provide a way to recognise a less stark division. macken extends discussions about architectural representation into an under addressed area. it is an essential read for anyone interested in the theory and practice of architectural representation. as a representational form, the book allows us to question default settings for the presentation of architecture, opening new spatial possibilities. in particular, those who are interested in the use of craft techniques, and slow or tactile media will appreciate the book’s cogent demonstration of why such things are not mere luxuries. because it works with a broad range of spatial practices, it has particular relevance for thinking about interiors, exhibitions, installation and critical or speculative spatial design. i am grateful to macken for introducing me to many new artists, designers and works. macken’s own book is a constructive provocation for experimental practitioners and teachers of architecture and related areas of spatial design. references evans, r. (1997). translations from drawing to building and other essays. london: aa publications. frascari, m. (2011). eleven exercises in the art of architectural drawing: slow food for the architect’s imagination. london, uk: routledge. macken, m. (2012). the book as site: alternative modes of representing and documenting architecture. (doctoral thesis, university of sydney, australia). retrieved from http://hdl.handle. net/2123/8400 macken, m. (2018). binding space: the book as spatial practice. london, uk: routledge. interstices02.indb interstices 07 genius giorgio agamben translation by laurence simmons now my charms are all o’erthrown, and what strength i have’s mine own. (prospero to the public, shakespeare, the tempest, act v. 1: 2404-5) genius was the name the latins gave to the god to whom each man was placed under tutelage from the moment of his birth. the etymology is transparent and still visible in italian in the proximity between genio (genius)1 and generare (to generate). that genius must have had something to do with generation is otherwise evident from the fact that the object pre-eminently considered ‘ingenious’ (‘geniale’) by the latins was the bed: genialis lectus, because the act of generation was accomplished in bed. and sacred to genius was the day of one’s birth, which because of this, is still called genetliaco in italian. the gifts and the banquets with which we celebrate birthdays are, despite the odious and by now inevitable english refrain, a trace of the festivities and sacrifi ces which roman families offered to genius on the occasion of the birthdays of their family members. horace speaks of pure wine, a two month-old suckling pig, a lamb “immolato”, that is, covered in sauce for its sacrifi ce; but it seems that, initially there was only incense, wine, and delicious honey focaccia, because genius, the god who presided at birth, did not welcome bloody sacrifi ces. “he is called my genius, because he generated me (genius meus nominatur, quia me genuit)”. but this is not all. genius was not only the personifi cation of sexual energy. of course, every male had his genius, and every woman her juno, both of which were manifestations of the fecundity that generates and perpetuates life. but, as is evident from the term ingenium, which designates the apex of innate physical and moral qualities of the person who comes into being, genius was in some way the divine essence of the self, the principle that supported and expressed its entire existence. because of this the forehead was consecrated to genius, not the sex; and the gesture of bringing one’s hand up to touch one’s forehead, that we perform without even being aware of ourselves in our moments of confusion at a loss, when it seems that we have almost forgotten our very selves, recalls the ritual gesture of the cult of genius (unde venerantes deum tangimus frontem). and since this god is, in a certain way, the most intimate and personal (proprio), it is necessary to placate him and to have him propitious in every aspect and in every moment of one’s life. there is a latin expression that wonderfully expresses the secret relationship that each one of us must learn to entertain with our own genius: indulgere genio this text fi rst appeared separately in italian as genius (rome: i sassi nottetempo, 2004). it was subsequently reprinted as one of the collection of essays in profanazioni (rome: nottetempo, 2005). 1. agamben consistently uses the latin word ‘genius’ when he is referring to the deity but the italian word ‘genio’ when he is referring to the earthly quality or attribute [tr. note]. 97 2. ‘io’ in italian is the fi rst person singular personal pronoun but also the translation of the freudian psychoanalytic term ‘ich’ (or ‘ego’ in the english standard edition of freud’s works). lacan was to make the distinction between ‘je’ and ‘moi’ both of which had been used to translate freud’s ‘ich’. lacan refers to the ‘je’ as a shifter, which designates but does not signify the subject of the enunciation. i have translated ‘io’ as ‘i’ and retained single quotation marks in order to alert the reader to these associations [tr. note]. 3. as well as ‘consciousness’ in italian, coscienza also carries the meaning of ‘conscience’ and may be used to convey the idea of capacity or competence in terms of knowledge of a practice [tr. note]. [to indulge genius]. it is necessary to agree with and abandon oneself to genius, we must concede everything that he asks of us, because his demands are our demands, his happiness is our happiness. even if his – our! – expectations might seem unreasonable and capricious, it is better to accept them without question. if, in order to write, you require – he requires! – that yellow paper, that special pen, if you really need that muted light which cuts in from the left, it is useless to say that any pen will do the job, that all paper is good paper, that any light will do. if you can’t live without that light blue linen shirt (for heaven’s sake, not the white one with the salesman-like collar!); if you can’t carry on without those slim cigarettes in the black wrapping paper, it is not good enough to repeat that these are only obsessions, that it’s time to display some common sense. genium suum defraudare, to cheat one’s own genius is the meaning in latin: to fi ll one’s life with sadness, to dupe oneself. and genialis, pleasant (geniale) is the life that distances death’s gaze and responds without hesitation to the spur of genius that has generated it. but this most intimate and personal of gods is also the most impersonal part of us, the personalization of that, within us, which surpasses and exceeds ourselves. “genius is our life, in as much as it was not given origin by us, but gave us origin”. if he seems to identify himself with us, it is only in order to reveal himself immediately afterwards as something more than ourselves, in order to show us that we ourselves are more and less than ourselves. to comprehend the concept of man which is implicit in genius, means to understand that man is not only ‘i’2 and individual consciousness (coscienza),3 but that from the moment of his birth to that of his death he lives instead with an impersonal and pre-individual component. that is, man is a unique being in two phases, a being who is the result of the complicated dialectic between one side not (yet) singled out (individuata) and lived, and another side already marked by fate and by individual experience. but the part that is impersonal and not isolated (individuata) is not a chronological past which we have left behind once and for all, and which we can, eventually, recall through memory. it is always present in us and with us and from us, in good times or bad times; it is inseparable. the face of genius is that of a young man, his long restless wings signify that he does not know time, that when he is very close to us we feel him as a shiver, just as when we were children we felt his breath upon us and his wings beat our feverish temples like a present without memory. this means a birthday cannot be the commemoration of a day that has passed, but like every true festival, it entails the abolition of time, the epiphany and the presence of genius. and this presence that cannot be separated from us, that prevents us from enclosing ourselves in a substantial identity, is genius who breaks apart the pretext of the ‘i’ that it is suffi cient for itself alone. it is said that spirituality is above all this consciousness of the fact that the being singled out (individuato) is not entirely identifi ed (individuato), but that it still contains inside itself a certain charge of unidentifi ed (non-individuata) reality, that it is necessary not only to conserve but also respect and, in some way, to honour, as one honours one’s debts. but genius is not only spirituality, it doesn’t appertain only to things that we are used to considering as the highest and most noble. all that is impersonal in us is ingenious (geniale). above all, ingenious (geniale) is the force that drives the blood coursing through our veins, or that which causes us to sink into a deep sleep; ingenious is the unknown power in our bodies that regulates and distributes warmth so delicately, and limbers up or contracts the interstices 07 fi bres of our muscles. it is genius who we obscurely exhibit in the intimacy of our physiological life, there where the most personal (proprio)4 is the most alien and impersonal, where that which is closest is the most remote and uncontrollable. if we did not abandon ourselves to genius, if we were only ‘i’ and consciousness, we wouldn’t even be able to urinate. to live with genius means, in this way, to live in the intimacy of an alien being, to keep oneself constantly in relation with a zone of non-consciousness (non-conoscenza).5 but this zone of non-consciousness is not a discharge (rimozione), it doesn’t displace and dislocate an experience from consciousness to unconsciousness, as if it has deposited itself as a disquieting past, ready to fl are up again in symptoms and neurosis. the intimacy with a zone of non-consciousness is a daily mystical experience, in which the ‘i’, in a kind of joyful esotericism, smilingly assists at its own undoing and, whether one is dealing with digestion or with illumination of the mind, it is an incredulous testimony to one’s own incessant becoming less (venir meno). genius is our life, in as much as it does not belong to us. we need therefore to see the subject as a fi eld of tensions, whose antithetical poles are genius and ‘i’. this fi eld is covered by two joined but opposite forces, one that proceeds from the individual to the impersonal, and the other from the impersonal to the individual. these two forces live together, they intersect, they separate out, but they can neither free themselves completely one from the other, nor perfectly identify each with the other. what then is the best way for ‘i’ to bear witness to genius? let us suppose that ‘i’ wishes to write. not to write this or that work (opera), only to write, that’s enough. this desire signifi es the following: ‘i’ feel (io sento) that genius exists somewhere, that inside of me exists an impersonal power which impels me to write. but the last thing that genius, who has never taken up a pen (even less sat in front of a computer), needs is a work of art (un’opera). one writes in order to become impersonal, in order to become ingenious (geniale) and, nevertheless, by writing, we identify ourselves as authors of this or that work, thus distancing ourselves from genius, who may never have the form of an ‘i’, and even less that of an author. every effort of ‘i’, of the personal element, to take possession of genius, to constrain him to sign in his name, is necessarily destined to fail. herein lies the relevance and the success of ironic moves like those of artistic avantgardes, in which the presence of genius was certifi ed through a process of ‘un-creating’ (decreando) or destroying the work (opera). but if only a work that is revoked and undone can be worthy of genius, if the truly ingenious (geniale) artist is without work (senz’opera), the ‘duchamp-i’ can never coincide with genius. in the context of general appreciation it proceeds around the world as the melancholy proof of its own inexistence, as if it were the notorious carrier of its own worklessness (inoperosità). due to this, the encounter with genius is terrifying. if the life that is held in tension between ‘i’ and genius, between the personal and the impersonal, is a poetic one, the feeling that genius exceeds and overcomes us from every side is one of panic, the panic that something infi nitely much greater than what we appear to be able to endure is happening to us. because of this the majority of human beings fl ee terrifi ed in front of their own impersonal aspect, or they, hypocritically, try to reduce it to their own minute stature. it may happen then that the rejected impersonal reappears in the guise of tics and symptoms that are even more impersonal, in the guise of a scornful gesture that is even more excessive. but equally laughable and fatuous are those who live the encounter with genius 4. ‘proprio’ has associations of ‘one’s own’ but also that which is ‘correct’ or ‘proper’ [tr. note]. 5. the italian ‘conoscenza’ can mean ‘knowledge’ (‘una buona conoscenza dell’arabo’ – a good knowledge of arabic) as well as ‘consciousness’ (‘perdere la conoscenza’ – to lose consciousness). so ‘non-knowing’ would be an alternative here [tr. note]. 99 as if it were a privilege; the poet who takes on airs or assumes a pose or, even worse, who with false humility gives thanks for the grace he has received. before genius there are no great men, they are all equally small. but some are reckless enough to let themselves be thwarted and beaten by him to the point at which they break into pieces. others, who are more serious but not as happy, refuse to impersonate the impersonal, refuse to lend their own lips to a voice that does not belong to them. there exists an ethics of the relationship with genius that defi nes the arrangement of all beings. the lowest level of the rank competes with those – and they are often celebrated authors – who rely on their own genius (genio) as if they were relying upon a personal sorcerer (“let everything turn out well for me!” “if you, my genius, do not abandon me …”). how much more agreeable and restrained is the gesture of the poet who can do without this sordid accomplice, because he knows that “god’s absence will favour us”! children experience a particular pleasure in games of hiding, and not, because of this, at the end in being discovered. there exists in this state of being hidden, of huddling down in the laundry basket or squeezing behind a wardrobe, of crawling up into a corner of the attic to the point of disappearing, an incomparable delight, a special sensation of fear which they are not ready to renounce for any reason. it is from this childhood fear that the desire which made walser secure the conditions of his own illegibility (his micrograms) originates,6 and from which benjamin derived his obtuse desire not to be recognized. these writers are the custodians of the solitary glory, that his hideout has revealed one day to the child. because in ‘non-recognition’ the poet celebrates his triumph, just as the child anxiously reveals the genius loci of his hiding place. according to simondon,7 we enter into a relationship with the pre-individual through our emotions. to become excited (emozionarsi) means to feel the impersonal inside of us, to have an experience of genius as anguish or joy, security or agitation. on the threshold of the zone of non-knowing (non-conoscenza), ‘i’ must lay aside its own propriety and characteristics (proprietà),8 it must be moved. passion is the rope kept taut between ourselves and genius, the rope on which life, the tightrope walker, balances. even before the world outside of us, what is wondrous and astonishes is the presence inside us of that aspect which is always immature and infi nitely adolescent, that hesitates on the threshold of every individuation (individuazione). and it is this elusive child, this obstinate puer that pushes us towards others in whom we only seek the emotion that has remained incomprehensible inside us, hoping that by some miracle in the mirror of the other we might clarify and elucidate ourselves. if one looks at pleasure, the passion of the other is the supreme emotion, the primary politics, this is because in the other we look for that relationship with genius in which, on our own, we are unable to bring to a conclusion our secret delights and our self-conceited agony. with time genius divides in two (si sdoppia) and begins to assume an ethical hue. the sources, perhaps due to the infl uence of the greek theme of the two demons inside every man, speak of a good genius (genio) and a bad genius, of a white (albus) genius and of a black (ater) one. the fi rst counsels and pushes us in the 6. the reference is to the swiss writer robert walser (18781956) and his unpublished manuscripts (‘micrograms’) composed in an infi nitesimal shorthand [tr. note]. 7. see gilbert simondon, l’individu et sa genèse physicobiologique. paris: puf, 1964; and l’individuation psychique et collective. paris: aubier, 1989 [tr. note]. 8. the italian word contains associations of propriety, properties and property. see also note 4 above [tr. note]. interstices 07 direction of good, the second corrupts us and turns us towards evil. horace, probably correctly, suggests that in reality we are dealing with a single genius that is however changeable, now white then dark, now wise then depraved. this means, and it is worth noting that it is not genius who changes but our relationship with him, that from luminosity and clarity everything becomes opaque and dark. our life principle, the companion who directs and makes our life pleasant, is suddenly transformed into a silent stowaway who shadow-like follows our every footstep and conspires in secret against us. in roman art two genii are represented one alongside the other, one has a burning torch in his hand, the other, a messenger of death, turns the torch upside down. in this late moralization, the paradox of genius emerges into the full light: if genius is our life, in as much as he does not belong to us, then we have to respond to something to which we are not responsible, our salvation and our ruin have a childlike (puerile) face that is and is not our face. genius fi nds an equivalent in the christian idea of the guardian angel – indeed of the two angels, one good and holy, that guides us towards salvation, and one evil and perverse, that prods us towards damnation. but it is in iranian angelology that the guardian angel fi nds its most pure and unprecedented formulation. according to this doctrine, at the birth of every man an angel called daena, who takes the form of a beautiful young girl, presides. the daena is the heavenly archetype in whose likeness the individual has been created and, at the same time, the silent witness who watches over us and accompanies us in every instant of our lives. however, the face of this angel does not remain unchangeable and fi xed in time but, like the portrait of dorian gray, it changes imperceptibly with our every gesture, our every word, our every thought. so, at the moment of its death, the soul sees its angel who comes towards it transfi gured, according to the conduct of the subject’s life, into a creature even more beautiful, or into a horrendous demon. the angel whispers: “i am your daena, formed from your thoughts, your words, your acts”. in this vertiginous inversion our lives mould and design the archetype in whose image we have been created. all of us in one way or another come to an arrangement with genius, an agreement with that inside us which does not belong to us. the way that each of us tries to disentangle ourselves from genius, to fl ee him, is his own nature. this is the grimace that genius, in as much as he has been shunned and left without means of expression, scores on the face of ‘i’. the style of an author, like the grace of every creature, depends however, not so much on his own genius (genio), but on that in him which is lacking in genius, on his character. because of this, when we love someone we don’t really love his genius, nor his character (and even less his ‘i’), but we love the special way he has of eluding both of these; that is, his quick-witted coming-and-going between genius and character. (for example, the childish grace with which a poet secretly gulped down ice-creams in naples; or the languid uncoordinated way a philosopher had of walking up and down the room as he spoke, suddenly stopping to fi x his gaze on a remote corner of the ceiling).9 nevertheless, for each of us there comes the moment when we have to part company with genius. it might be suddenly in the middle of the night, when at the sound of a passing brigade, you don’t know why but you feel that your god has 9 the poet referred to is giacomo leopardi and the philosopher is walter benjamin [tr.note]. 101 abandoned you. or instead it is we who dismiss him in a very lucid, extreme moment when we know that salvation exists, but we no longer wish to be saved. go away ariel! it is the moment when prospero sets aside his spells and knows that whatever force that is left to him is his alone. it is the fi nal late period of life when the old artist breaks his paintbrushes in half and contemplates. what does he contemplate? the gestures: for the fi rst time they are entirely our own, they are completely demystifi ed (smagati) of any incantation. certainly, life without ariel has lost its mystery – but, nevertheless, from somewhere we know that now it belongs only to us, that only now can we begin to live a purely human and earthly life, a life that has not kept its promises and can now, because of this, offer us so much more. it is exhausted and suspended time, the sudden shadow in which we begin to forget genius, it is the night that has been granted us (la notte esaudita).10 did ariel ever exist? what is this music which unravels and grows fainter in the distance? only the leave-taking is true, only now begins the long process of unlearning oneself (il lungo disapprendimento di sé),11 before the idle child returns to take up one by one his youthful blushes, to urgently take up one by one, his doubts (esitazioni). 10. the ‘notte esaudita’ recalls the ‘notte salva’ at the end of agamben’s l’aperto. there the phrase is derived from walter benjamin’s ‘die gerettete nacht’, ‘the redeemed night’ [tr. note]. 11. the italian phrase here is a translation of foucault’s se deprendre de soi. in turn, foucault’s phrase is diffi cult to translate; it has all the connotations of ‘to shake free of the self’, ‘getting rid of oneself’, ‘detaching oneself from oneself’, ‘unlearning oneself’, ‘taking oneself out of oneself’ [tr. note]. vladamir cacala and the gelb house (1955) g. elliot reid eisenman writes of a "modernism of alienation"1 which arises in the anxiety of dislocation, an architecture of "an alienated culture with no roots." "architecture has repressed the individual consciousness in the physical environment that is supposed to be the happy home. i think it is exactly in the home where the unhomely is, where the terror is alive-in the repression of the unconscious. what i am trying to suggest is that the alienated house makes us realise that we cannot only be conscious of the physical world, but rather also of our own consciousness. "2 i feel that a rootless alienated repression can be a central fact of life in new zealand, particularly for the exiled immigrant, to which architecture on the whole usually chooses to 'turn a blind eye,' that architecture refuses to engage with a social disintegration and a repression, preferring instead to fragment itself, submerge itself uncritically into its own condition. 75 the gelb house i refer to a work by such an exile, vladimir cacala, the gelb house, mount albert (1955). cacala's work on the whole remained committed to a small circle of influences, choosing to explore a reduced vocabulary of architectural forms. (this alien ground holds no memory, no associative value for cacala.) the typical cacala house comprises two enveloping walls with large expanses of glass to the north; planes pushed forward at floor and roof level in the manner of richard neutra (for example the kun house, 1936, or the davis house, 1937). cacala's four years of training at prague technical institute under svoboda jiri (who was more recently the set designer for the film 'amadeus') was in the tradition of a bauhaus education. his architectural modernism was transplanted in new zealand with little interest in developing the vernacular shed tradition that vernon brown was calling for-his clients were mainly continentals like himself. his only concession would be to the climate, seizing upon the overhang/verandah combination employed in colonial building ostensibly to protect the owners from a harsher summer sun. having escaped the communist takeover in 1948 to american-occupied bavaria, he later made his way to new zealand where his father already resided, arriving here in 1952. brenner associates employed cacala to develop the furniture design aspect of the company. vladimir's father had made plywood furniture and his father in turn had been involved with thonet mundas, austria's woodbending manufacturers. brenner associates ltd. 3 comprised stephen jelicich and des mullen (who graduated alongside the group architect's members,) john butterworth, ron grant and milan mrkusich. throughout the 1950s these young men had helped to introduce "new overseas ideas in architecture, up-to-date decoration, and the best methods of presenting goods to the public."4 the herald ran articles on them with lines such as: "a modern continental type of shop architecture is giving queen street a new look and taking some of the drabness from suburban business centres." (6.12.51) a bright, assured and increasingly fashionable mod76 g. elliot reid ernism had moved out of the books, onto the streets and into the homes. shortly after he began with brenner associates, cacala received a commission to design the gelb house. ilse and ernst gelb were an austrian immigrant couple who had come to new zealand in 1939.5 both were interested in contemporary european architecture and were impressed by the distinctive and sophisticated ideas of cacala, whom they had met through friends. they were looking for a private house which would embrace the distant views from their hillside section. traversing a rather large series of generalisations, i believe that cacala's work has been ignored up to this point6 because of the condition of normalcy it appears to represent, the easy success with which it meets an unassuming brief. cacala seems to be questioning how an individual might cope with the new zealand conformity. interest in the house eventually focuses on the interior, where originally milan mrkusich's fashionable colour scheme helped define the spaces, bold panels of sunset red and aqua combining with the texture of wood. the exterior, particularly as it addresses the road, is about denying interest. one would struggle to call the gelb house radical in terms of what had already come before. its very modernism seems schooled, technically good but limited, even off the pace. however, it is this apparent 'normalcy' i wish to question, for within the normal lies something less palatable, less simple and wholesome that one might initially not notice. set back slightly below the level of the road, the entrance elevation is unremarkable save for the careful attention to the fenestration, and the flat roof visible from the road. the house is entered either from the garage below or across a small bridge to the front door. inside, the landing gives access to the kitchen hard left, living area straight ahead, stairs to the basement off to the right and around the corridor, bedrooms, bathroom and a separate toilet. the north elevation is more remarkable. the deck cantilevers beyond the basement and is protected above by an "eyebrow". although cacala speaks of the cantilever as an economi77 the gelb house ~i cal device, saving on the basement by tying the deck back to the building with extended joists, there is little doubt it is also a favoured aesthetic feature, expressing lightness in place of the traditional massing of masonry. the north facade makes a false gesture to confidence; blinkered at the sides, the house is like a camera posed towards a distant view. and like a camera the gelb house could be set up anywhere else, in any country, to any view. this balcony lacks a definitive social purpose. one might stand on it, but would one lounge on it, eat or sleep under its overhang? its actual dimensions preclude normal activities. its purpose as such is more gestural. the balcony does not define security but more a state of siege. while one cannot ignore the exterior, nor can one really occupy it. in the interior a number of subtle relationships are slightly distorted or erased. the absence of the hearth is notable from the start, an elaboration of what had been a central preoccupation in the work of brenner associates, into oblivion. in the jelicich house, meadowbank (1956/57) an enormous fireplace is located at the centre of a nine-square plan. architecture enshrines the fireplace not only as the physical but also the communal core of the dwelling 78 .... ... ~ • '! ....::~ --is a long wall-mounted cabinet with radio speakers. g. elliot reid and the subordination of the individual to the family ethos. semper conferred on the fireplace connotations of sustenance and supplication. if we read it in this material tradition then, without a fireplace the gelb house becomes spiritually decentred. solidity is replaced by a peculiar centre-piece drinks cabinet structure behind which two black painted steel columns rise through the drinks cabinet and shelf, to support the ceiling's only visible beam. surprisingly this centrepiece support was introduced at the last moment. the beam that runs through the room was unsupported in the architect's designs; excessive deflection was observed during building. this display of load and support expressing the construction of the house is exceptional for cacala. his interiors are usually more abstract and devoid of beams. demonstrating the typical concerns of the furniture designer, he speaks instead of surface textures, uncluttered distinction in joints between one surface and another, transparencies, and interior units, shape of furniture and effect of colour. the conversation area is a peculiar grouping of furniture to which i will return shortly. the gelbs' own a coffee table with a glass top and reversible yellow i orange base by bob roukema, the dutch designer who produced work for jon jansen. (other versions exist, one by cacala had disc-topped legs, another by 79 the gelb house des mullen had wrought iron legs.) a roukema chair and two by cacala also feature . these consistently appeared in brenner advertisements and are made of japanese sen with foam rubber and originally were covered in bedford upholstery. the legs have an elegant precision to their tapered form, though two pins have replaced the former one in connecting the hind leg to the back, stabilising the chair's initial tendency to wobble. a more formal version with a higher back has been placed near the reading area. the long wall-mounted cabinet with radio speaker, and the built-in couches demonstrate cacala's european concern with designing almost every piece of furniture in the house. the cabinet itself reflects the building on a minor scale. the first floor's "in-line" planning allows both main bedroom and living area privileged amounts of sun. the deck's overhang allows the lower winter sun to stream in whilst designed to cut out the high mid-day summer sun. this sun however causes problems in the kitchen, where internal blinds have proved ineffective against the heat. the prescribed hillside view is framed matter-of-factly by two pairs of glass panelled doors. but the built-in and fixed seating is strangely displaced to the periphery of view. the area before these vast doors, over-lit by the sun, is indeterminate, under-designated, unoccupied. habitation is removed to a more subdued place, out of the light, out of the frame and is turned by stages away from the exterior world. a hierarchy of seating evolves, as a hierarchy of removal which is further complicated by a third person, who, entering the space, is immediately cast in the role of 'intruder'. thus an inward gaze, the averted gaze which the interior determines, and the gaze of domination from the exterior, reside side by side. colomina writes that: "architecture is not simply a platform that accommodates the viewing subject. it is a viewing mechanism that produces the subject. it precedes and frames its occupant." 7 80 g. elliot reid if, by comparison, we take the work of heinrich kulka, in the villa kantor at jablonec (193334) where seating patterns lie along or create lines,8 one can see how the seated figure is privileged and given access/ axis to the view, and a standing figure is denoted as an interloper, interrupting the subject/ object (seated viewer /view outside) relationship . in the kulka house at st heliers (1944) a series of theatre boxes are established which also construct the subject, positioning the viewer to explore the exterior from the comfort of enclosed space, past an organised 'forecourt' to the chaotic world beyond. colomina9 is dismissive of kulka in this respect. she reads his interpretation of the theatre box as an exigency of economic planning (tightness and openness) contrasting it with adolf loos's understanding of the raumplan. "for loos the theatre box exists in the intersection between claustrophobia and agoraphobia ... on the threshold of the private .... " 10 but for kulka she claims they speak of the inability of the house to maintain its veil of security. goldie too notes this difference between kulka and loos, although he appears to place a more positive value on the notion of the house as defensible mechanism. "knowing that a small, low nook (or recess or annexe) gives the feeling of mental shelter and appears as a place of contemplation; but only if it is a part of a larger room; as for example a box at the theatre which, by itself would give a feeling of claustrophobia."11 the interior of the gelb house does not ascribe to these conventions of intimacy but, rather to a concept of removal. comfort is no longer a given condition. the withdrawal of simple comfort calls one to reconstruct it in the mind. in this respect, cacala the exile is distanced from a utopian concept of reintegration of the individual and society. owners often experienced initial problems in these modern houses. the builder and cacala had many difficulties, especially with the detailing. cacala's attempts to reduce the size of interior skirtings, scotias, cornices and window sills ran counter to a building industry still 81 the gelb house accustomed to hiding poor joints behind elaborate dressing; antithetical to modernism's purist streak. other problems existed. ilse complained that the mahogany wall initially installed looked like flooring so it was replaced and given a lighter fini sh . when the wind blew from the north in summer time, the french doors had to be shut, turning the house into an oven. louvres were installed later, and some picture windows replaced by top hung sashes. when the original cedar overhang got fungus, it had to be painted, with holes bored to allow air to circulate between the ceiling and roof. yet the gelbs were prepared to put up with the "new ideas", saying that the "original ones had to suffer." they judge the house has been a success; the architect reconciling his aesthetic concerns with the client's specific needs. an elegant, pleasant and modern home. what is at stake here, i believe, in reappraising this fragment of new zealand modern architecture is to witness a simultaneou s growth and decay, a sort of minor catastrophe of home and homelessness, a crisis injected just under the skin of architecture, an issue of anxiety and dislocation which was tackled to effect by one architect at least in the post-war period. if new zealand subjectivity is sh aped in its suburbs, defining this country's values, the way people act, dress and discu ss things (or don' t), it has little to do with angst, more to do with retentive banality; being straight-up, abrupt, but not without edge. whether cacala's work is symptomatic or critical of new zealand suburbia is perhaps moot, n evertheless the concerns discussed h ere remain relevant and their examination is ongoing. 82 n i g'lound floor plan notes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 g. elliot reid peter eisenman-an architectural design interview with charles jencks, architectural design 58, no . 3/4 (1988), p. 49. ibid., p. 52. brenner associates ltd. refer to g. elliot reid, "untitled: the mrkusich house 1950-52",art new zealand, no. 62, pp. 79-81 & 86. "trading optimism in auckland's queen st." freelance magazine, (undated.) the lack of cultural recognition given to war refugees is both notable and dismal, especially in relation to their experience of this country as opposed to the trite praise of the contribution they made-that is, what we took from them. a notable exception is peter shaw, new zealand architecture from polynesian beginnings to 1990 (hodder and stoughton, 1991), p. 165. beatriz colomina, sexuality and space (princeton: princeton architectural press, 1992), p. 83 . jan sapak, "heinrich kulka villa a jablonec 1933,1934", domus 726. beatrix colomina, op. cit., p . 76. ibid ., p. 82. c.r. goldie, "henry kulka," undergrad thesis, architecture dept., university of auckland, (1986). 83 interview with francesco venezia and nigel ryan nr. in the last ten years or so there has been a proliferation of the use of stone by architects, most especially marble. indeed architects have again resorted to painting the effect of stone. however you have been critical of the recent use of stone, perhaps you might like to articulate your opinion. fv. post-modern architects in my opinion do not use stone very well because the starting point for their use of the material is not constructive. you might say that they use stone in an ideological manner, against the aesthetic of modern architecture. post-modern architects use stone in protest, in a polemical mode and without a sense of art. i believe that for the most part post-modern architecture is of beaux arts origin and of course the beaux arts are not very constructive. in fact neo-classicists use stone in a very decorative manner, not in a structural way. i have my own ideas for the use of stone. i was always surprised by a feature of classical architecture (by classical i refer to greek and egyptian) which i believe to be very important. 207 francesco venezia there is an antagonism, a battle between the integrity of the form and the way in which this integrity is reached, its construction. it is within this conflict between the integrity of the form, and the apparent disorder of the pieces forming the whole when viewed more closely, that the strength of these buildings resides. when you first view a classical building, you gain the impression of something very compact and united yet upon approaching the building one can appreciate that the unity is achieved by a certain movement. neoclassical walls have no such movement; the stones are very regular and "designed". of course in classical architecture one can find some regularity, but this is not usual. in the most evolved phase of architecture, an attempt was made to reconcile the contrast between an ideality and actuality; between integrity of form and that which is necessary for its construction. it is a pleasure to see such architecture. an example is an egyptian relief where the figure is cut at the head and at the groin: the whole is composed of two or three blocks of stone. from a distance the silhouette of the human figure is strong but upon approach the cuts become apparent. the egyptians used to cut the stone at these specific points, which were controlled casualties. the division of the stone was necessary as to work, install, one block of stone would have been impossible. similarly etruscan terra-cotta sarcophagi were made in two pieces as a piece of terra-cotta 2m-2.5m long could not be fired as one. therefore there is always this extraordinary conflict between the unity of the form, the reclining figure, and the fact of the cut. a further example is that of an ancient classical column. the structure of a column is a unity, but it can be seen that the cylinder is cut just above the base and also just below the capital. the apparent structure is base, cylinder, capital, but the capital is made of a stone which is also partially part of the cylinder. this absence of coincidence between form and construction is very important. in a classical 208 ni gel ryan building, the door and windows do not coincide with the systems of the stones, but always cut through the lintel. the same thing is found in old norwegian wooden architecture. the door frame cuts into a big piece of wood. similarly in egypt. there is always this method of conflict; of putting things against things. in much contemporary architecture, for example that of ungers or mies, there is always a coincidence in the geometrical system and the geometry of the material components of the material elements. in a building by ungers the form and geometry of the material components coincides perfectly with the form of the building. thus if the building is divided into squares, everything is a square and the square windows do not cut the system of the other squares. in a pavement, the small squares are all sottomodolo of the larger squares. and the squares in a metal net/ grid are also sottomodolo. this destroys architecture because it is a system in which there is no interference-the main module is divided in four and those units are then divided in four. this is an elementary way to use geometry rather than a complex cultivated method. within five seconds of viewing the building you understand everything and you are totally annoyed because you have captured everything in an instant. when i see these buildings i cannot understand how such mindless things are created after our great heritage of the art of building. i am sorry to say that this tendency, this way of producing architecture began with mies van der rohe. i do consider mies van der rohe to be a great architect. nonetheless he initiated this method. the national gallery in berlin, which i believe has a beautiful form is one of the strongest designs using frank lloyd wright's influence. it is very strong, a true temple. however the ceiling inside is in the form of squares which are a sottomodolo of the main square. this is a pity because the strength of the square is a little weakened by the obsessive repetition of squares; in granite blocks, in the pavement, in the ceiling; everywhere. the square lives when it is made of figures which are not necessarily squares. 209 francesco venezia the german school of ungers has banalised that which in the great tradition of mies was just a detail but has now become everything. the small perhaps wrong detail has become the architectural system and i do not agree with this position. my response to this kind of architecture stems, perhaps, from my direct contact with ancient architecture, without reading it through beaux-arts architecture. nr. i would have thought that this tendency, which in one way is but a manifestation of the conditions that regulate modern production, would have begun with the inauguration of "designed" architecture, with the very beginning of modernity, with the architects of the renaissance, with alberti. fv. yes but alberti used two co-present systems. you are right, alberti and palladio too, both used a very regular system but both used a constructive system in which the components are very irregular in relation to the regularity of the formal pattern. if you get close to the wall of palazzo rucellai you can see that this albertian system conflicts with the artisan's system. there is a medieval construction system where the stones are all of different sizes. these stones are inscribed, cut with a formal system that is very abstract. today there is none of this co-presence. when one is in a building of ungers, one is not in a building of alberti. nr. what you are discussing here with the examples of palladio and alberti may be said to have been not so much the result of architectural principles than a casualty of history: of the meeting of designed architecture with pre-design building techniques: there was a historic conflict between architectural culture and the building industry. to use a phrase of yours, you have discovered "a happy accident", that the economic contingencies of the constructive aspect of architecture can produce an interesting result. fv. yes perhaps you are right. for example palladio's palazzo thiene. you note in the corner 210 nigel ryan he uses brick together with stone-for economic reasons. this was because the stone used in this period was white istrian stone and very expensive because !stria was controlled by turkey. therefore it was difficult to import stone from dalmatia. likewise with alberti: he had intended that the tempio malatestiano in rimini to be constructed totally in white stone from dalmatia, but was forced to complete it with byzantine marbles from ravenna. there is, therefore, a strange conundrum between the white stone and the veined stone. the latter is not classical at all, in fact it is decadent. the greeks never used marbles as they wanted to use pure colours. occasionally they applied stucco to the stone as they could not tolerate the figuration. nr. here you are hinting at another conflict; an interior conflict within materials themselves, between their substance and image. for example figured stones, especially when polished, function in much the same way as do the painter's materials. in one sense stones thus treated are dematerialised pure image. moreover it is a quality that forms a principal component of an architectural tradition that is different from that about which you have been speaking. a tradition which you might say is decorative rather than constructive; perhaps even a tradition of de-materialised architecture. i am thinking here of the thematic treatment of stone by mies van der rohe and adolf loos or alvaro siza for that matter. also and perhaps more significantly the venetian tradition which of course is ultimately byzantine and therefore roman. to what extent are you interested in the figurative quality of stone or perhaps better are you interested in setting up a play between the tectonic properties of stone and its figurative properties? fv. at this point let me stress that i believe that good architecture can be attained with any material; that every material can give great satisfaction to the architect. 211 francesco venezia with concrete too it is possible to obtain a complexity very similar to that of stone. i believe the complexity and intricacy of masonry construction can be utilised with other materials. architects have had most experience with the stone system because as a material it coincided with the great period of architecture. thus a stone system can aid architects to reach complexity in other materials too. and so it is with normal concrete which can be used in a complex manner. for example in the house "l" in lauro i used stone trying to effect a rhythm-using two different sizes of stone and two different treatments of the surface texture. it is the same idea the same system with two very different materials. using all that stone has taught us and all its complexity we can use another material in a manner analogous to the ancient greeks who took the principles of building in wood and applied them to the building of stone temples. that was a case of using the grammar and syntax of wood, changing the material and translating it into a very new system. indeed we must not forget that all the great stone architecture in the mediterranean area was derived from wooden architecture. therefore the technology of wood is present in the grammar and syntax of all classical architecture. classical buildings cannot be thought of, understood without wood: they are petrified wooden buildings. , and when i went to norway i found no great difference between its tradition of wooden architecture, totally wooden architecture and the architecture of ancient egypt. i think that stone and wood which appear to be so distant are in fact the same material. nr. you have been speaking of a conflict between form and its construction which you consider to be essential to architecture. viewing your work, another conflict is evident. it is a conflict of geometrical systems or perhaps better an interplay of different figures. for instance you project for salaperuta. 212 nigel ryan fv. this is a project which i designed at a moment when i was very interested and involved in the idea that a building may coincide with a body, which is of course a very well known architectural tradition. this is particularly so in the renaissance from which period there exist many drawings showing a human body incorporated in the form of the church. however i was more interested in the egyptian rather than the renaissance approach to this problem, as whereas the latter is somewhat static, there is the idea of movement in the egyptian tradition. some egyptian buildings have deformations but these deformations do not stem from an inability to build, as the egyptians had an exemplary capacity for achieving precision. there is the idea of movement in objects, of a "growing up" of forms. take for example the well known question of the rhomboid pyramid. some people explain the deformation as evidence of the egyptians being incapable of building to their initial design and having to change the form in the middle of the building process. i do not believe this is the case. i think they wished to express double form. some egyptian buildings have a deformation in the plan which is derived from this idea of relating the building to the growth of man-this idea is found in the building's proportional system and its systematic deformation. the system of proportion is not static but relates to a growing figure: it is very complex. it is the highest point of complexity reached by architecture and never afterwards achieved. the project for salaperuta was an experiment with this architectural tradition. it is a building in which everything is continually deformed using a strategy of egyptian architecture-that is-a distortion of the right angle so that it is not exactly 90°-a technique called rhomboidalisation-transformation of the square to the rhomboid. of course the distortion is very subtle-almost, but not quite a square. this is a technique the greeks inherited from the egyptians and used in mouldings, thus always avoiding using right angles. they sharp213 francesco ven ezia ened the corners. due to this point which was not static but in tension, their architecture became more dramatic. moreover the difference of light, the play between light and shadow is stronger because the shadow is deeper. i have often been to the archaeological museum in palermo which houses the gigantic fragment of the selinunte temple, in which i have a great interest. normally there is a great distance between the object and the viewer and the latter can sense but not see a certain tension. when viewing this fragment one can at last discover the reason for the tension in the mouldings. there are also sections as the blocks are cut so one can appreciate the whole system. it is most interesting and whenever i am in palermo i try to visit the museum. nr. there is also a strong greek presence here in naples. it was after all a greek colony. nonetheless it would seem as if a tradition has developed here that could be best described as neapolitan, that is neither greek nor roman. fv. here in naples there is a strong presence of the earth in buildings-a co-presence. it is always difficult to perceive, to feel the point at which nature stop s and the building material (the tufa) and the artificial action of the building begins. everything is very connected. for example an architecture which consists of a substance of artificial ground and then a house above this structure. there is always a joke-having something on the earth which is the earth, etc. i believe that from this point of view naples is extraordinary. rome for example is very beautiful but in rome there is not such a strong presence of the earth as there is in naples :-of course in rome there is the extraordinary presence of the seven hills which ensures that the city gently undulates; which is a very beneficial form from an urbanistic point of view. in naples there is a strong connection between the city and the landscape. nr. here in naples and for that matter right around the bay, there is an extensive tradition of excavated architecture, of an architecture that is cut out of the stone. it is an architecture 214 nigel ryan of which you have written. moreover i believe that in your work there is a sense of the subterranean, of the underworld. what precisely for you is the value of the underworld? fv. in naples the idea of excavation is very important. there is the building itself naturally but there is also the idea that the building comes directly from this excavation. there is the need to excavate, to produce a building. in naples the interest is in the "co-presence" of underground quarries and buildings on the ground. naturally there is a similar phenomenon in all towns but the two elements are usually separate. quarries were dug when towns were being established. an example is the selinnute temples in sicily. five to ten kilometres away from these temples are the quarries, where one can find abandoned pieces of column-very interesting to visit. but these elements are apart from each other. in naples, however, you have, you perceive, you feel a simultaneous action. the quarrying and building are executed through a vertical axis. the constructive process can be seen and felt all in an instant. i do not like strange words but it is "synchronic" . the other situation is diachronic-there is a transfer of the materials for five, ten, one hundred kilometres . here in naples it is immediateyou excavate and you build. and in the building can be felt the presence of the building's "mother". this is so in many neapolitan buildings. often the excavation is used as a storage room, other times it is transformed into 215 francesco venezia an annex of the house. i was recently asked to design a house in palazzolo acreide, sicily, on a site where there were small underground caves. i decided not to locate the house in the logical/practical position but directly above the caves, in a difficult position, in order to create this axis. this is the neapolitan section. this is the relationship between my observation and the actual work which i always employ. in another sense this section old roman house: is an explorathe houses in pompeii and a relationship with the sky. that there is the excavated impluvio. underground there is a small (1.5same concept. i have written a usque ad coelum. this is the erty. upon purchasing a piece of extended up to the stars and tried to express this right in their atrium, that is a windowless space the world is with the sky and the idea of house this is probably one this sectional idea is often present makes reference to the idea of the tion of this idea of house. from herculanium one can experience is not the case in this house but 2 m) reservoir, not a cave, but the small article, usque ad infera latin definition of private propland in roman times, your rights down to the underworld. they houses with the construction of the in which all communication with earth. together with the gothic of the strongest notions of house. in the architecture of le corbusier ... who visited pompeii on his early travels. however the use of the idea and form are of course peculiar to le corbusier, complex and not an imitation of the roman house, but the concept is the same, containing the presence of the sky. 216 nigel ryan nr. another important aspect of the history of neapolitan architecture is the baroque which exhibits a complex geometry. i can see, however, that you are not especially enthusiastic about the baroque. fv. i do not like the baroque particularly. however the transition between the renaissance and the baroque is very strong. it is a moment, a terrible moment in which everything explodes. it is not a moment for normal architects. michelangelo was the only great baroque architect because he brought the explosion under his control. when the explosion becomes virtuosity, it becomes boring, becomes only a complicated game. however the moment of its creation is a great drama. but from the signs of this great drama, it becomes rhetorical and the baroque which we know. nr. how does this interest or rather belief in a necessary conflict inform the process of your work? fv. each project i do is different from all the others. i do not use a technique such as that used, for example, by mario botta. you know the sort of thing he will do before he does itapproximately of course-because he has a very clear, very consolidated language. in my work i prefer to "experience a way for each project." it is a method by which i can still be a student. my interest necessarily coincides with the nature of the work. when i have a particular project to work on i inject some of my current interests into that work. for example, three or four years ago i was in chicago and there i very much appreciated the buildings of the chicago school, louis sullivan etc. i was also very interested in the connection between the chicago school and the architecture of adolf loos because i'm sure that loos took to europe that which the states had understood of classical architecture. there had been a major experiment in the united states adapting classical architecture to commercial necessity, that is to capitalist cities and of course chicago was more advanced 217 francesco venezia in this area than any european city. i believe that loos-but before loos, schinkel-started with this ability to transform the classical heritage to something which can be adapted to contemporary needs. now in tokyo i have a commission for some urban development and in this work i tried to explore this idea, to adapt all the traditions of the classical world as seen by the architects of modern industrial cities, chicago and then by loos in vienna. another of my current interests is the pyramid. i must tell you that i was shocked when bruno zevi declared that the pyramid was not architecture. it is architecture. it is an excessive architecture. it is an architecture in which the interior space is tremendously small in relation to the wall-the mass . there is something extra-ordinary in the relationship between the penetration system and the form. i am exploring the architecture of the pyramid in a commission for a new large open air theatre in gibellina. the programme demands a very long stage and i have given it the form of a boat. the section of the entrance however recalls the section of the pyramid. the constructive system is gone. it is a pyramid built in a system different from that used by the ancients but the idea is the same. in this case i have the idea and not the constructive system. it is a project of course very different from others. there is a possibility of using a consolidated language so that as soon as a client asks you to design a building you can use the linguistic solution. i do not like to work in this manner. i prefer to use the occasion, the project as an opportunity to "climb through architecture" and to reach a point possibly far removed from or near to architecture. in this case-3,000-4,000 years-but it is not a problem. architecture is always the same. i try to take an idea and place this idea in relation to the different moments in which the idea appeared in the history of architecture. the pyramid is present in our work at the same moment as the chicago buildings. 218 129 f ( f 1 1, r 'f i f ill 1> ( ~ (t .,j l t r p~·h)wo ecent roj~~t£ \t ·l , , , morphosis morphosis is a santa monica-based patnership established in 1977 by thom mayne and michael rotondi. since its inception the practice has built up a strong international reputation and an extensive portfolio, that encompasses work from house alterations and restaurants to cultural centres and health clinics. morphosis have won many design competitions and have been acclaimed with numerous design awards along with having' their work published in an impressive collection of critical and professional journals. in addition to their professional activities, mayne and rotondi have been and continue to be involved extensively in archi~ufflp-e1iudit-ion. mayne was a founding board member of the southern california institute of architecture (1972) sci arch and is still listed on the faculty there. rotondi is currently director"of sci-arch. both mayne and rotondi have been listed on the visjtj'nglfaculty ~o~~a~y hrdtm~ctural schj}qls, and @lle_served on "-~ """""" --~. different juries of importance. thorn mayne visited new zealand in 1989 as the levene paints ltd international architect. (,.)(7t;.....~ "h. -y.... -y-) s ~ i1"!l ~ h_ , l 131 ;~: 'j. chibaprefecturegolf club \~ 'the ongoing conversation about the environment is grounded in the ancient dichotomy of man versus nature. so far we have sought to resolve the argument through a series of truces; either sequestering large traces of wilderness in a state of imagined innocence, or limiting the ways in which man can domesticate nature's imagined savagery. we must begin to talk about man and nature, not man versus nature. what do we see when we look into a forest? lumber? our planet's breathing apparatus?' the chiba project concerns itself with the interaction of our architecture (which establishes a discussion about the man-made) and the natural landscape. it is a project which attempts to break down or blur the demarcations between the manmade and the natural by developing a strategy which links a site investigation to an architectural language. the focus is directed to the whole of the physical and draws on all senses, producing an architecture which is engaged in making natural environmental processes self-evident and connected to one's day-to-day life. the work is perceived as an instrument of pleasure, a sum of knowledge capable of organising space and time. the entire program with it's emphasis on the game (golf) is about movement, the rhythm of walking, the arc of an arm in full swing, the nature and sequence of physical spaces, the narrative and diversity of place, and the dynamic and connective nature of a complex organisation. the building is about the land's surface (hence its orientation to the building's sectional characteristics) as it affects movement both via the automobile and via the pedestrian. the basic parti is made up of four elements; a segment of a curved wall which produces a space for arrival (automobile), a lineal sequence of alternating volumes which accomn.'-odatesa majority of the program, a second circular wall which embraces the larger site and facilitates movement to the grounds, and a pavilion which contains space for dining and social events. the configuration of the two curved walls holds the more static and platonic inner spaces which are introspective and contemplative in character. the pavilion piece is in the air and outside the limits of the bounding walls allowing the observer to perceive the vastness and expansiveness of the natural setting. the realised or built environment seeks more than just a 'truce' with nature. we have aspired to create an architecture which can contribute to the 'man and nature' rather than the 'man versus nature' conversation. design architect: morphosis principals: thom mayne, michael rotondi principal in charge: thom mayne project architect: kiyokazu arai project team: john enright, [ulee herdt, teresa ross, george yu project assistants: susan addison, john baez, david bennett, peter buffington, craig burdick, belinda georhe, andreas heirholzer, [im [ackson, conrad lames, frederick lebard, lauren maccoll, frank martens, mark mcvay, lames meraz, raul moreno, christopher oakley, michael poris, scott romses, jennifer schierbeck, ursula shumacher, peggy shinkle, selwyn ting, chris wahl associate architect: epl corporation principal: takero ogawa project team: yoshikazu togami, masao abe structural and mechanical engineer: ove arup and partners principals: peter budd, alan locke structural engineer: toyohiko yamabe project team: mitsuhiro hashino mechanical engineer: alpha engineering company lid principal: masanobu kondo t nrameisar 1.{~nol1.{luoh;)clsclslclasut!l.l uejdjoo~ o 1al01112/05/90 18: 43 '8'213 829 3270 morphosis ~ i! uu ~lj ., :.:~.;!.:. "\ \.. u axonometric showing the parti of the project in order from top: vehicle entrance canopy monitors truss that support the shell of the light monitor cantilevered walkway connecting main building to the restaurant pavilion structural armature of the restaurant ~-~ ~i · '/. i -' 'i ,\ \ \ \, '. :1 ':i i, .u .>. '-'"\ " ~j ~ 1 , .c section study of connecting passage and stair (photo george yu) ; q : section model study of restaurant insert right. plan view of light monitor model (. opp. drawing study for canopy and monitors insert left. model study of light monitor partial view of model from south showing vehicle entrance, light monitors, entrance to club house, double landscape wall (photo george yu) model study of vehicle entrance with truss-canopy and light monitors beyond 4i t-, ~ i 26 le corbusier's illustration in th e decorative art of today of the white wall: three african tribesmen in front of a white-washed wall, taken from l'/llustre. white walls, black holes: the molecular face of contemporary architecture tim adams ·i l architecture post-face architecture positions its ensembleshouses, towns or cities, monuments or factories-to function like faces in the landscape they transform. -deleuze and guattari, a thousand plateaus where is the human face in contemporary architecture? if "face" is read figuratively to mean "aspect" or "appearance," there has been a loss of humanity in what houses humanity. but if "face" is understood as a literal term, then architecture has lost the ability to assemble the face and to harmonise with the social machine or political regime that privileges the face. contemporary architecture lacks a human face. deleuze and guattari have argued that architecture arranges its elements to function like faces. 1 the face is the product of "faciality" or visageite, the machine that combines the forces of white walls and the black hole. if architecture has a face it is because it first assembles a "facialising machine" that can then produce a face. focus is shifted from the product to process, from the built object dispassionately observed by a subject to its objectification in the larger social setting of subjectification. at first glance, architecture that "functions like a face" would seem to be a continuation of that anthropomorphic tradition which projects the organic human body onto an inorganic urban material, a tradition well established and well documented in architectural discourse . anthony vidler has outlined a version of the progressive expansion of this anthropomorphic projection into wider and wider domains of action, beginning with the vitruvian human figure as simple measure and model for classical architecture; then to alberti's perfection of the parts of a building in relation to the organic whole, to filarete's functionally specialised organs of a building, and culminating in le corbusier's modulor.2 finally the projection of the body disintegrates. overall there has been a shift of emphasis from the body's corporeality towards its attributes, its functions and sensations, finally leading to the fragmentation of the projected body and a morcellated or "deconstructed" building form . if vidler's argument is followed to its conclusion, the only projections of the body still possible today are those of a post-humanist body: either a collection ofmorcellated part-objects, as in the projects of coop himmelb(l)au, bernard tschumi and daniel libeskind; a zoomorphic body, seen in projects by lars spuybroek, kass oosterhuis and greg lynn; or an inorganic bodya synthetic landscape or fragmented machine (found in works by rem koolhaas, the mvrdv partnership, alejandro zaera polo and shin takamatsu). with its endlessly twitching movements of mouth, eyebrows and eyes, the face forms the perfect site for the expression of affects or mental states (consciousness, one of the lived body 's attributes). the projection of the face would then occur at the point where the body begins to fragment and the projection of its attributes begins: the animism of the building, or the projection offeelings and affects. 1. gilles deleuze and felix guattari, a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. brian massumi , (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1987), 172. 2. anthony vidler, "the building in pain : the body and architecture in postmodern culture," aa files 19 (spring , 1990) : 3-10. 27 the expansion of the anthropomorphic projection: from the body, to its organs, to its attributes, and finally its fragmentation . 3. mirko zardini, "skin , wall, facade," lotus international 82 (1994): 38-51. 4. mark wigley, "untitled : the housing of gender," sexuality and space, ed. beatriz colomina (new york: princeton architectural press, 1992), 368; and mark wigley, "architecture after philosophy: le corbusier and the emperor's new paint," journal of philosophy and the visua1arts2 (1990): 86. this passage appears unchanged in both sources. 28 if we accept that the fac,;ade functions like a face-that it is literally the face of architecture-then mirko zardini 's brief survey of contemporary fac,;ades provides a smaller scale of facial variation to be inserted into vidler's larger line of projection of the body. 3 this additional "microvariation" commences with the fac,;ade or face of modem architecture that makes the exterior face passively dependent on the interior arrangement. it then moves to a face being structurally independent of the interior (le corbusier's plan libre) . once freed from immediate practical functions, the face becomes a pure sign able to indicate popular imagery or surrealist illusions (venturi 's references to vernacular references and james wines' playful mock structural failures). finally, a shift is made from the visual to the tactile (corresponding to the movement from a surrealist to a minimalist aesthetic) as the face-as-sign is replaced by the material face, the rediscovery of the phenomenology of perception. fac,;ades now consist of layers of various densities and opacities, even including textures that are virtual (jean nouvel, herzog & de meuron and toyo ito) . the projection of the face, then, ensures a shift into the expanded field of the body 's attributes of feelings and sensations, ranging from simple stimulus and response (the fac,;ade responding only to the interior) to complex assemblages of mental states and sensations (the fac,;ade depends on thought and the senses). this line starts with one of the faces of early twentieth century architecture, the white wall. mark wigley links the corbusian white wall to gottfried semper 's theory of architecture as dressing. semper identifies the textile essence of architecture, the dissimulating fabric, the fabrication of architecture, with the clothing of the body. he draws on the identity between the german words for wall (wand) and dress ( gewand) to establish the principal of dressing (bekleidung) as the "true essence" of architecture.4 wigley argues that the pioneers of modem architecture, such as le corbusier, adolf loos, herman muthesius and henry van de velde, were all connected in some way to the anti-fashion, dress-reform movement in germany. the white-washed face of early modem architecture is a coconspirator in a "guilty secret": the suppression of the effeminate domain of fashion as architecture's degenerate other, even while architecture must covertly participate in fashion. wigley's declared aim is "not simply to set the historical record straight ... but rather to open up new possibilities for contemporary action." with that aim in mind it might be useful here to add felix guattari's black holes to wigley's analysis of white walls. the white wall can now be seen as a component of faciality, the machine that makes the face . le corbusier implied that the white wall might be a kind of machine, an active measuring apparatus, a white piece oflitmus paper. the white wall can look back, he says in the decorative art of today. when you "put on it anything dishonest or in bad taste," writes le corbusier, "it hits you in the eye. it is rather like an x-ray of beauty. it is a court of assize in permanent session. it is the eye of truth."5 le corbusier illustrates his argument about white walls with a picture from l 'jllustre showing three african tribesmen with the caption: "sultan mahembe and his two sons. three black heads against a white background, fit to govern, to dominate ... an open door through we can see true grandeur." here in a classic text of modern architecture is the purest description of the primitive faciality machinethree black holes of subjectification distributed like eyes against the despotic white wall of significance. the defacing of deleuze and guattari i no longer look into the eyes of the woman i hold in my arms but i swim through, head and arms and legs, and i see that behind the sockets of the eyes there is a region unexplored, the world of futurity, and here there is no logic whatsoever. ... i have broken the wall. -henry miller, tropic of capricorn "architecture positions its ensembles ... to function like faces in the landscape."6 deleuze and guattari are not talking about the image of the face, but rather the assemblage or abstract machine that produces the face: "no anthropomorphism here . facialisation operates not by resemblance but by an order of reasons. "7 the face occurs at a certain conjunction of flows that can be abstracted to produce the effects of facialisation elsewhere. the pupil of the eye is not the black hole: it absorbs light because it is located in the black hole. "even a use-object may be facialized: you might say that a house, utensil, or object, an article of clothing, etc ., is watching me, not because it resembles a face, but because it is taken up in the white wall/black hole process, because it connects to the abstract machine of facialization."8 this one sentence links together foucault's work on the panopticon (the building that watches me); merleau-ponty's intertwining of the eye and flesh (the eye is located at the "chiasmus" of body and soul); lacan's story of the sardine can looking back at him (the subject is both an eye and a screen in the domain of vision); and levinas' ethical philosophy of the face (the face with its defenceless eyes commanding without tyranny, "you shall not commit murder"). 9 in dialogues deleuze describes how he and guattari created faciality. deleuze says he collaborated with guattari, not by working together and exchanging ideas but by working between the expansion of the face of architecture from the passive projection of the plan, to the autonomous face of the free plan, to the faceas-sign, and finally the tactile material face. 5. le corbusier, the decorative art of today, trans. james i. dunne! (london: the architectural press, 1987), 190. 6. deleuze and guattari , a thousand plateaus, 172. 7. deleuze and guattari, a thousand plateaus , 170. 8. deleuze and guattari , a thousand plateaus, 175. 9. michel foucault, discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, trans . alan sheridan (london: penguin books , 1991), 195-228; maurice merleauponty, the visible and the invisible, trans. alphonso lingis (evanston: northwestern university press, 1968), 130-155; jacques lacan , the four fundamental concepts of psycho analysis, trans. alan sheridan (harmondsworth: penguin books, 1987), 95; and emmanuel levinas, totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority, trans. alphonso lingis (pittsburgh: duquesne university press, 1990), 199. 29 10. gilles deleuze and claire parnet, dialogues, trans. hugh tomlinson and barbara habberjam (new york: columbia university press , 1987), 17. 11. deleuze and guattari, a thousand plateaus, 184. 12. deleuze and guattari, a thousand plateaus, 171. 13. these neologisms are intended to mean exactly what their authors want and no more. deleuze and guattari have taken from ethology the concept of territory-the process of staking out a zone of control-and extended this into a two-way process of gaining and losing control of a zone. a territory is any partitioning of space or time, such as a bird-call that simultaneously marks out a spatial area in the forest and a particular period in the day. the bird's call could be set free (deterritorialised) when captured by a musician's refrain. but all deterritorialisations are exposed to further reterritoralisations: the musician's refrain can be recaptured and restricted in its use by copyright laws. 14. guattari's motto as quoted by deleuze in dialogues, 17. 15. deleuze and guattari, a thousand plateaus, 188. 16. felix guattari, 'the architectural structures of shin takamatsu ," transfiguration: europalia 89 japan in belgium (brussels: centre beige de la bande dessinee, 1989), and deleuze and guattari, a thousand plateaus, 546, n. 91 . 17. reyner banham, theory and design in the first machine age (london : the architectural press, 1960). 30 each other, assembling a third which, he argues, forms a crowd with political effects. 10 deleuze then gives the following example: at the time he was working on the aesthetic concept of white walls and canvases, guattari was working on the astronomical phenomenon of black holes and, specifically, what might escape the black hole. then, as if by chance, the two concepts were brought together to describe the abstract machine that produces the facethat is, the face mechanism as the intersection of vertical significance (the semiological screen, the white wall, the broad face with white cheeks) and horizontal subjectification (consciousness and passion, the black hole, the eyes on the face). deleuze and guattari emphasise that they do not mean that the black hole is in the pupil of the eye like a pin hole into a void. rather, the eye is in the black hole. 11 this reversal of priority goes to the heart of their philosophy which always locates a process, constructs a machine, rather than focussing on a product. the eye is a product of the faciality machine; they have little interest in the eye itself. in fact they criticise both sartre and lacan for not going beyond vision. 12 these are not metaphors, warns deleuze: they are "deterritorialised" notions that are "reterritorialised" on their own concept of faciality. 13 from an assemblage of interests in aesthetics and astronomy we are led to politics-guattari 's motto is "before being there is politics" 14to ask what kinds of regimes, societies and civilisations depend on such a facialisation. and this question leads them to analyse the nature of despotic regimes that project the glorious face of the ruler across every surface and medium, and to wonder how might non-despotic groups deal with the face. if the face is always political, dismantling the face will be political too. this dismantling is one of the goals of their "schizoanalysis" or "politics of becoming." "here the program, the slogan, of schizoanalysis is: find your black holes and white walls, know them, know your faces; it is the only way you will be able to dismantle them and draw your lines offlight."15 the molecular face of architecture becoming-music how shall we know the faces of architecture, its protective white walls and black holes with no escape? joining shin takamatsu's orig in i with luciano berio 's visage can form an architecturemusic assemblage to help us answer that question. the former is described by guattari as the becoming-machine of architecture, the facialisation of the fa9ade; and the latter, say deleuze and guattari, is the molecular dismantling of the face produced by electronic music. 16 takamatsu's early projects are small to medium-scale commercial buildings, most of which are located in kyoto . these have become known for their excessive metallic ornamentation, such as in ark (1981-1982), that transforms a small dental clinic into a baroque locomotive, an image reinforced by its location near a railway. recent projects, starting with the kunibiki messe exhibition hall in matsue (1990-1993) are by contrast large public buildings located outside kyoto . in terms oftakamatsu's aesthetic, they mark a paradigm shift from the mechanical to the electronic. these buildings are just as exquisitely detailed as before, only now the earlier, first machine age forms (large, visible, symbolic; trains and automobiles) are replaced by second machine age forms (invisible, magical, synthetic; televisions and computers). 17 instead of protruding steel pipes and cylinders, a flush steel and glass skin encases programmatically dete1mined elementary shapes such as cones, spheres and tubes that are like the interior components of a computer, free to be placed wherever they may function with the greatest effectiveness. as guattari points out, the early projects often have circular windows placed symmetrically on their fa9ades. he calls these "ocular structures" and observes that they convert the architectural composition into a partially expressive object [obj et enonciation partielj. they complete the process of personification [visageifzcation] of shin takamatsu's fa9ades. wherever you go, you will find either a cyclopean eye (miyahara house, kyoto 1982), or two eyes one above the other (pharaoh, kyoto 1981), two eyes of different sizes and squinting (ark, kyoto 1983), two eyes growing together in an owl's head and forming the symbol of killing moon, a kind of signature by shin takamatsu (origin, kyoto 1981) ... 18 expanding on hiromi fujii's definition of architecture as a machine for producing sense, guattari gives his own definition of architecture as a machine for the production of subjective enunciation, or existential transferences. 19 this kind of production is, says guattari, a creative direction finnly fixed in japanese culture, which consists of passing from one register to another with the aim of releasing a subjective effect of decentring. thus the most abstract can occur in continuity with the most concrete, the most immediate. for example, the stones of the zen garden of the famous temple, ryoan-ji in kyoto, will be perceived simultaneously as a natural element and as an abstract composition. numerous other examples of this technology of subjectivity may be found in the traditions of floral art, the tea ceremony, martial arts, sumo, noh theatre, bumaki, etc.20 shin takamatsu. ark, nishina dental clinic, fushimi, kyoto, 1981-82. 18. guattari , "the architectural structures of shin takamatsu," 105-6; and "les machines architecturales de shin takamatsu," chimeras 21 (winter, 1994): 138-139. for a fuller account of what guattari means by converting architecture into a partial enunciation, see "l'enonciation architecturale" in felix guattari, cartographies schizoanalytiques (paris : galilee, 1989), 291301. 19. fujii's definition of architecture is in the architecture of hiromi fujii, ed. kenneth frampton (new york: rizzoli international, 1987). 20. guattari , "the architectural structures of shin takamatsu," 101 . shin takamatsu. kunibiki messe exhibition centre, matsue, shimane, 1990-93. 21. michel foucault, the archaeology of knowledge, trans. a. m . sheridan smith (london: tavistock publications ltd , 1985), 55. 22 . the bakhtin reader, ed. pam morris (london: edward arnold ltd, 1994), 251. 23. see j. laplanche and j.-8 . pontalis, the language of psychoanalysis , trans . donald nicholson-smith (london: karnac books, 1988), 301-302 . 24 . felix guattari, "space and corporeity," d: columbia documents in architecture and theory 1 (1993) : 147. for an alternative translation of this essay along with guattari's "drawing cities nomads," see semiotext(e)/architecture, ed . hraztan zeitlian (new york: semiotext(e), 1992), 118-125. 25 . deleuze and guattari, a thousand plateaus, 232-309. 32 shin takamatsu. the centra l atrium of kunibiki messe showing the cone-shaped tea house. as noted earlier, the facialising machine is located at the intersection of a vertical significance and a horizontal subjectification. language always belongs to faces that can enunciate its statements. here enunciation is not interchangeable with language or speech. guattari's use of the term has affinities to foucault's concept of enunciation: it is the event of the statement with mutual interdependencies existing between it and the enunciating subject, the institutional fields of support, specific dates, places, materials and so on.21 both foucault and guattari attempt to avoid the expressive function oflanguage so as to locate a field ofregularity for various positions of subjectivities. guattari cites mikhail bakhtin, the russian theorist of the novel, as the source for his use of the term enunciation. bakhtin 's term vyskazyvanie is more commonly translated as utterance. for bakhtin an utterance (enunciation) is a specific encounter between consciousness and the social, political, concrete and dialogised world. it is always becoming, and therefore an on-going synthesis between the psyche and ideology where every utterance is an answer to a previous utterance and is followed by another in the uninterrupted process of historical becoming. 22 as a literary theorist, when bakhtin says utterance he means speech acts such as words and texts, but guattari extends this to include buildings, which can also be an on-going synthesis between specific psyches and the concrete world. dismantling the face and its landscape as the site oflanguage therefore releases facial traits (particles) and enunciations (mutual becomings of the psyche and the world) so that they may form new assemblages with traits (particles) of faciality, traits of landscapeness (paysageite) , traits of musicality and so on . enunciation and subjectivity will then be "partial," in the sense of melanie klein's "pati-object": parts of the body that have become an aesthetic or symbolic object without implying the whole person.23 when the face of architecture, a machine for subjective enunciation, is dismantled one can no longer speak of the subject and of a perfectly individuated enunciation/utterance but of partial and heterogeneous components of subjectivity and of collective pattemings/structurings, which imply human multiplicities but also animal, vegetal, machinic, incorporeal and infrapersonal becomings/evolutions/changes/ destinies. 24 thus the facialisation of takamatsu's far;ades (initiated by the ocular structures, but not limited to the image of the face) can lead us in two directions, either toward the face and the definition of architecture as the production of enunciation (its white walls to inscribe signs on) and subjectification (its black holes resonating centred consciousness and passion); or towards the dismantling of the face and a redefinition of architecture as a partial enunciation and a partial, decentred subjectification, as an asignifying diagram and as asubjective becomings-animal, -vegetal, -machine, -woman, -imperceptible, an instantaneous zigzag of world lines that are no longer of this world, an emission of particles where there was once a face. 25 . j i j 1 ~ j __ _j takamatsu claims to have avoided this ambiguity still inherent in his early machinic projects when, in relation to the kunibiki messe exhibition centre, he says, "i wanted to create a new type of line between elements, a new method of division and connection. i intended to create a building in flux, in a fluid equilibrium. i don't mean this as a banal deconstructivist aesthetic, but in an experiential sense .. .. i am aware that my work right now is moving closer to aspects of traditional japanese architecture. there is a similar equilibrium. for example, at ry an-ji (sic), ifone stone is moved or a stone is added, that space is significantly altered."26 by treating the face in takamatsu's early works as a facialising machine, an approach already implied by their overtly machinic nature, and by defacialising its architecture as a partial enunciation--dismantling the face to free its facial traitswe are then in a position to join these traits of architecture with traits of music and thus create a new diagram, a new abstract machine producing concrete machines and real affects. for example, in the machinic and zoomorphic fai;ade of origin i (kyoto, 1980-1981) two ocular windows are merged to form what guattari calls an owl's head. but in the centre of what could otherwise be considered its face is wedged a riveted steel plate folded into a u that seems to be holding apart some immense force . this is what guattari calls the symbol of killing moon, a kind of signature for shin takamatsu. besides referring to a futurist manifesto by marinetti, killing moon is also the name given by takamatsu to a futuristic samurai sword he designed. origin i incorporates a kind of proto-sword in the middle of its face. what we find here is an assemblage of animal and machinic becomings with the partial and heterogeneous components of takamatsu's own subjectivity. these becomings, like all the becomings described in a thousand plateaus, are not of the "a" becoming "b" kind. they are instead essentially "molecular" becomings, a single "a+ b" block, a zone of proximity where heterogeneous particles can freely mix: a zone of swirling, colliding proto-swords, rivets, fragments of steel, chips of granite, concrete dust and beads of glass, an owl's head, the oculi and the face in tatters, 256 shades of gray, becoming-indiscernible with molecules of sound and subjectivities that can only make partial enunciationssst, k, g(uh), d(ih), k(m), ksh, d(ah), ah ... bringing the defacialised origin i into proximity with berio 's 21-minute, electro-acoustic music composition visage (19601961) will form a becoming-music of architecture. music is the the dismantling of the face that at once breaks through the white wall of the despotic signifier and escapes of the black hole of subjectivity. 26. "ornament and (anti)urbanism : interview with shin takamatsu and tom daniell ," trans. hiroshi watanabi and hideaki inoue, interstices 3 (1995): 51. 27. deleuze and guattari, a thousand plateaus, n. 91. 33 shin takamatsu . the fa9ade of origin i, hinaya home offices, kamigyo, kyoto. shin takamatsu . killing moon, a samurai sword. 28. for berio's comment on berberian see richard causton, "berio's 'visage' and the theatre of electroacoustic music," tempo 194, (october, 1995): 17. my description of visage is largely based on the excellent analysis found in george w. flynn, "listening to berio's music," the musical quarterly 61: 3 (july, 1975): 388-421. 29. deleuze and guattari, a thousand plateaus, 279-280. 34 most deterritorialised aspect of the face and berio 's composition demonstrates the molecularisation of music's face: visage is composed according to the three states of faciality: first, a multiplicity of sound bodies and silhouettes, then a short symphonic and dominant organization of the face, and finally a launching of probe-heads in all directions. however, there is no question here of music "imitating" the face and its avatars, or of the voice constituting a metaphor. instead, the sounds accelerate the deterritorialization of the face .. .. this is a molecular face produced by electronic music. the voice precedes the face, itself forms the face for an instant, and outlives it, increasing in speed-on the condition that it is unarticulated, asignifying, asubjective. 27 visage consists of two asynchronous components: an electronic element created by berio at the studio di fonologia in milan, and a human element, the mostly unprocessed voice ofberio's wife, cathy berberian, a voice berio describes as a little studio di fonologia in itself. 28 the composition itself can be divided into three sections. in the first the voice dominates, emerging out of an electronic mist of white noise, initially articulating only the minimal molecular consonants of speechsst, k, g(uh), d(ih), k(rrr), kshand then adding vowels: d(ah), ah .. . , in a painfully slow movement towards the word "parole" ("words" in italian, the only word that is not a nonsense word in visage) . following that enunciation the face is finally assembled, but only for an instant. in the second section the electronic part dominates as the voice disintegrates into gasps, murmurs, shouts and hysterical cries that repeatedly slip into mad laughter. some singing occurs. the third section marks the disappearance of the voice once it has been bounced around by the electronic element, electronically di storted, spatially dislocated and then split into a polyphony of subjectivities, to be finally obliterated by a chorus of infinite machinic voices. this reverses the movement already traced out by dismantling the face in takamatsu's origin!, where we began with a becoming-machinic (the killing moon sword in the fac,;ade) which is then distorted by a becoming-animal (the owl head) and finally arrives at a zo ne of freely swirling asignifying molecules . visage starts with the asignifying patiicles and finishes with the machine: when they are placed face-to-face they form a single block of architecture becoming-music with 8 '0_0 11 '00 ib'oo a continuous line of becoming-machine, -animal, -molecular, -animal, -machine, providing, that is, that all the institutional thresholds that must be crossed along the way are ignored for the moment. becoming-molecular has one goal and that is becoming-imperceptible. this is the immanent end of all becoming, its cosmic formula: becoming imperceptible is becoming everybody/ everything, the making of a world from its molecular components.29 it is the german composer karlheinz stockhausen saying "i would like to be allowed to make music with more far-reaching sounds, so to speak, with planets, moons, and with racing clusters of planets, suns and moons ."30 the face is not limited to its anthropomorphic image. its attributes can occur wherever there is a a semiological white wall of significance in proximity with a subjectivising black hole of consciousness or sensation. the face is the signifier of the interior that must be set free, defacialised from the interior to allow for more adventurous alliances with particles of other faces set free from foreign interiors. the concept offaciality, a white wall/black hole machine, is therefore a powerful tool for indisciplined action of which this berio/takamatsu, visage/origin i, music/architecture assemblage is only a hesitant, stammering beginning. here we must be careful to differentiate between safe interdisciplinary research and institutionally illegitimate indiscipline, with deleuze and guattari as the best example we have today of the latter kind. 31 interdisciplinary research was always the dream of rigidly segregated disciplines: to channel and encode messages between departments, whereas truly experimental action leaves discipline behind in order to become indisciplined. given the expanded field offacialisation and defacialisation outlined by deleuze and guattari, the human face may not even be in contemporary architecture. as in berio's visage, if the face does appear in architecture its appearance is sure to be brief as it is replaced by the much faster molecular face breaking through its walls and pouring out of its black holes. architecture and the humanist body it once projected onto its white walls are in tatters. the writing was on the wall when le corbusier introduced three black holes from africa, and inadvertently constructed a machine for leaving the face that not even his modulor man could reassemble for more than an instant. luciano berio with cathy berberian, the human voice of visage. the three sections of visage: the voice dominates; a face is assembled from fragments; the electronic part dominates; and the voice is defacialised releasing probeheads in all directions. 30. karlheinz stockhausen, towards a cosmic music, trans. tim nevill (longmead: element books ltd , 1989), 120. 31. see gary genosko, undisciplined theory (london: sage publications lid, 1998) and on the indisciplined nature of architecture see christian girard, "the oceanship theory: architectural epistemology in rough waters," journal of philosophy and the visual arts 2 (1990) : 79-82. origin i and cathy berberian, forming a single architecture becoming-music. created using photoshop. 35 in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 63 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n joanne choueiri with füsun türetken interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec this research project considered the use of personal memories of the house i grew up in as a narrative for the inception of drawn spaces. inspired by the work of italian illustrator luigi serafini’s codex seraphinianus (1981) and french writer georges perec’s species of spaces and other pieces (1997), memories were reconfigured as narratives, which then became benchmarks for the creation of images. particular images themselves responded to the vibrant nature of the memory, but emphasised the spatial dynamic they suggested. the work aimed to create a series of fantastical spaces that themselves invoked a new set of paradigms. focusing on the narrative space or tableau against which all characters and actions occur, this project sought to emphasize the role space plays in various stories, and investigated how narration might become the focal point of the architect’s work. features of the fantastic despite numerous attempts to define fantasy as a genre, little consensus exists. more generally, fantasy is regarded as an “imaginative fiction dependent for effect on strangeness of setting (such as other worlds or times) and characters (such as supernatural beings)” (fantasy, n.d.). in the fantastic: a structural approach to a literary genre (1975), literary critic tzvetan todorov described the fantastic as a state in which a person is uncertain whether the events he/she is witnessing are real or imaginary: “the fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event” (25). in this light, fantasy allows the reader to experience a different order built on a present reality of the world, while calling that reality into question. in my own work, looking to the past for material with which to create imagined worlds similarly involved reworking the order of reality subsisting with them. yet as recollections, they already carried within themselves a certain extension and bending of reality, an aspect that readily permitted the creation of fantastical narratives and spaces. memory, space and the domestic french philosopher gaston bachelard outlined the relationship between memory and space in the poetics of space (1994). there he interpreted the domestic interior in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 64 interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n as a being psychically rich with every corner, door, and window readily combining actual and remembered experiences. as such memories are not just of the past but subsist with, and are housed by, domestic space itself (bachelard, 1994: 3–7). he writes of his childhood home; in the past, the attic may have seemed too small; it may have seemed cold in winter and hot in summer. now, however, in memory recaptured through daydreams, it is hard to say through what syncretism the attic is at once small and large, warm and cool always comforting. (bachelard, 1994: 10) as bachelard suggested, memories always extend and prolong space, radically colouring the very experience of it. while individuals may experience space divergently by bachelard’s account domestic spaces particularly gather memories of inhabiting or dwelling well, securely, happily. codex seraphinianus and species of spaces and other pieces luigi serafini’s codex seraphinianus (1981) constituted a base for the graphical production of spaces undertaken for this project. the book is an encyclopedia made up of different chapters dealing with fauna, flora, creatures, and architecture. the drawn fantastic worlds represented in the codex shift between the real, the imagined, the lived, and the dreamt. serafini owes many of his illustrations to his childhood memories, as derek white (2012) has written. in his illustrations, serafini extrapolates elements from his environment and manipulates them using various methods including grafting, repetition, scaling up/down, and distorting the shape or function of particular objects, strategies i similarly employed in my own project. george perec’s species of spaces and other pieces (1997) was a critical source for the written narratives i assembled to accompany each image. perec’s episodes were infused with layers of personal memories of spaces and objects, allowing the reader to obtain a different perspective of the home. perec uses the term “infra-ordinary” to capture a sense in which everyday life itself is composed of a complex array of strange, if minor, qualities that are far from ordinary when attended to (perec, 1997: 206). for example, the space of the bedroom is more than merely a collection of objects; it is richly infused with affects and mnemonic qualities as perec describes: my memories are attached to the narrowness of that bed, to the narrowness of that room, to the lingering bitterness of the teas that was too strong and too cold…the resurrected space of the bedroom is enough to bring back to life, to recall, to revive memories, the most fleeting and anodyne along with the most essential. (21) in this description, it is not just the object reality of the space that is given; he provides the reader with the tools to enter into and experience the space imaginatively via dreams and memories projected there ourselves. the importance of this book lies in perec’s capture of how space is in reality, investing commonplace objects within interiors with lived qualities, qualities rich in attachments that simultaneously collectivize and individualise. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 65 interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n interiors of memories the works of serafini and perec relate to each other in their use of memory as a tool for the creation of narratives of attachment and engagement. both authors manipulate specific objects and spaces in attempts to demonstrate the complex essence of space, elevating objects beyond the trivial and the mundane. in the process, both oeuvres redefine the existent typologies of space and object. the episodes below, along with their images, create a set of fantastic spaces based on memories that question perceptions of the domestic. each image digitally extends memory. each strips away objective reality of the domestic to open a pathway into the infra-ordinary and the fantastical—domains never far from each other, or indeed from the real. as paul feyerabend beautifully put it: “we need a dream world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit “(1975: 22). in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 66 interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n the guest toilet fig. 1 joanne choueiri (2014). “the guest toilet” the guest toilet was tiny. no more than 2x2sqm. it was our hiding place during the war. most of the façades of our house were made of glass therefore hiding in other rooms wasn’t an option as the danger of glass shattering during attacks was too risky. as soon, as we heard explosions, my sister and i would clamber, climbing over furniture, dodging tables and random items strewn on the floor, destination: the tiny toilet. it felt like passing through a land of mines before reaching the door. once we crossed the door into the toilet, we fell into complete darkness. we lost electricity during the raids. in this tiny space, my older sister and i would be curled up together somewhere in the back. it was total darkness until mum lit up a candle. i remember the flickering light of that candle hovering over our heads, casting dancing shadows throughout the tiny space. when the raid was over, we would leave the toilet hesitantly. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 67 interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n the circulation & bomb shelter fig. 2 joanne choueiri (2014). “the circulation & bomb shelter” i have vague memories of that space. i was pretty young when the civil war started. i always felt like i was going down into a dungeon; maybe because the stairs leading there were always dark. i remember the loud sounds as everyone rushed down the stairs: doors slamming shut, kids screaming, neighbors calling out to each other, the sounds of shoes and flip-flops scurrying down the staircase. i never quite understood what was happening. i was too young to understand. i can still hear the muffled sounds of bombs exploding above us. some wear louder than others. i could hear the gasps of the people around me as the bombs exploded. the atmosphere felt cold, although according to my parents, there were about 15 people squished into a 5x4sqm. space. years later that space was even colder; the grey metal cupboards still lined the walls. the war had ended. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 68 interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n the bedroom fig. 3 joanne choueiri (2014). “the bedroom” fig. 4 joanne choueiri (2014). “the bedrooms” my bedroom is quite small. when you enter, the bed is right in front of you. it takes up most of the room. it has no headboard. it squeaks a lot. we bought it from ikea. it squeaks a lot. there’s a window above my bed opening up the room to the outside world, making it seem a bit larger than it actually is. you can see the neighboring building from it. on the ceiling above me are the pipes that link to the radiator. it can get quite loud and disturbing. right next to the pipes, right above my bed, hangs a small hot air balloon a friend gave to me to remind me to dream more. to the left there is a grey cupboard that was moved from my sister’s room. after my dad passed away, the curtains stay up all the time. it was in that same bed that i learned the bad news. the room became even smaller that night. the curtains stay up all the time. after that day, everything changed in this space. it became a space of solitude away from people . . . away from the world . . . it became my memories of a past. it became my lost dream of a future. it became a space of escape. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 69 interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n the entrance fig. 5 joanne choueiri (2014). “the entrance” the entrance hall is the central place of the apartment. it was away from the glass facades, so it became a secondary safe place. weirdly enough, the entrance hall was also the place where we took quick showers during the war. the bathrooms, having glass windows, were always too dangerous. my mother would lay out the bucket in the foyer and splash hot water, which was heated on the stove, rapidly before the next attack. years later, when the war had ended, a piano was added onto the entrance hall. my sister and i played the piano while growing up. these endless lessons became a tedious job after a while. we stopped playing in our teenage years right when other things became more important; since then it was no longer the centerpiece of the entrance hall. the piano now, lies on the side as a decorative two-level table where candles and vases are set out. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 70 interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n the kitchen fig. 6 joanne choueiri (2014). “the kitchen” in the mornings, waking up to the smell of coffee slowly seeping out from the kitchen was one of my preferred times of the day. the standard u-shaped kitchen was engulfed with an intense coffee aroma. coffee brought everyone together, the family, the neighbors, and the occasional visitors. our favorite brand of coffee was called café brazil, which led to the assumption that the beans were actually imported from brazil. so, i would always imagine being amidst an endless coffee field in brazil. both my assumptions and imagination misled me, for as it turns out, the beans were not of brazilian origin. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 71 interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n references bachelard, g. (1994). the poetics of space. (m. jolas, trans.). boston: beacon press. fantasy (n.d.). in merriamwebster online dictionary. retrieved from http://www. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ narrative feyerabend, p. (1975). against method: outline of an anarchist theory of knowledge. london, england: new left books. griffith winton, a. (2013). inhabited space: critical theories and the domestic interior. in weithal, l. & brooker, g. (eds.). the handbook of interior architecture and design (pp. 40–49). london, england & new york, ny: bloomsbury press. marks, l. (2000). the skin of the film. durham, nc: duke university press. mitchell, k. (2009). growing up in wonderland: an analysis of lacanian subject formation within the secondary worlds of children‘s fantasy (unpublished project for a bachelor of arts, honours degree). jefferson city, tn: carson-newman university. mitchell, p. (2004). constructing the architext: george perec’s life a user’s manual. mosaic: an interdisciplinary critical journal, 37 (1), 1–16. perec, g. (1997). species of spaces and other pieces. (j. sturrock, trans.). london, england: penguin books. serafini, l. (1981). codex seraphinianus. milano: franco maria ricci. sullivan, c. (2001). folklore and fantastic literature. western folklore, 60(4), 279–296. todorov, t. (1975). the fantastic: a structural approach to a literary genre. (r. howard, trans.). ithaca, ny: cornell university press. white, d. (2012). decoding the decodex: demystifying luigi serafini’s codex seraphinianus. retrieved from http:// www.5cense.com/12/decoding_ decodex.htm http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/narrative http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/narrative http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/narrative theory on the sepik theory on the sepik mike austin interstices 4 theory on the sepik 1 introduction the papuan kills his enemies and eats them. yet if modern man kills and devours someone, then he is a delinquent or a degenerate. the papuan covers with tattoos his skin, his boat, his paddle, in short anything within reach.1 the eating of the other is associated with cultures without writing and, according to arens, the myth of cannibalism as the marker of the other sustains the discipline of anthropology.2 it is always the other group, at some other time, who practice anthropophagy, which has consequently had shifting global locations historically. the twentieth century site is that singled out by loos, namely papua new guinea where, if the practice occurred at all, it was confined to particular areas. similarly it is only in some areas where paddles or skin are decorated and then it is only some people on some occasions. the thought of mount hagen women and not men going about their daily business with face paint on is culturally nonsensical: it is unthinkable for them ... the sexes are certainly sharply distinguished, and are separated by taboos that have no currency in the west; there is also an ideology of male superiority vis-a-vis women, but this does not extend to requiring women to carry the whole ‘load’ of artifice and sexuality, as is the case in the western cosmetics tradition.3 andrew strathern in his theorising of body decoration uses analyses of the architecture and carving of a particular region, the area known as the sepik, about which he says. “to my knowledge, the reasons for the astonishing efflorescence of this art form in the sepik have never been thoroughly established by anthropologists.”4 there has also been an extraordinary efflorescence of theorising in this area, with an anthropological couple, gregory bateson and margaret mead, as the founding ancestors. they also describe and theorise the architecture, and a particular building type can be associated with each of these figures. the bateson b u i l d i n g i w i l l c a l l t h e iatmul house.5 mead also worked in the sepik with people she called the tchambuli and another group the mundgumor (‘a cannibal tribe’). 6 however her favourites were a group she called the arapesh, living in the mountains near the town of maprik. the house in this area i will call the maprik house. these two sites are within 50 miles of each other and are physically geographically and environmentally distinct the maprik area being mountainous and the middle sepik being a riverine environment. the iatmul house palimbei is a contemporary classic iatmul house, but the most well-known house is that called wolimbit from kanganaman village where bateson worked in the thirties, and he describes this house as: “a splendid building, as much as a hundred and twenty feet in length, with towering gables at the ends.”7 i n 1980 an earthquake caused substantial damage and during the eighties the house was dismantled and is now being rebuilt. bateson also compares the building to “the nave of a darkened church” but cautions against taking the analogy too far: “the ceremonial house serves not only as a place of ritual but also as a clubhouse where men meet and gossip a n d a s a n assembly-room where they debate and brawl.”8 alongside a photograph of wolimbit, bateson writes: the shingles of the sago leaf thatch are alternately yellow and brown, giving a decorative pattern. in the gable front four little windows are visible, with an enemy’s skull in each. above these windows there is a grotesque face of which only the teeth and crescent-shaped nose ornaments are visible in the photograph. in front of the building is the wak or ceremonial mound on which dead enemy bodies and captives are laid.9 the building dominates the settlement and its life much as a medieval church is said to have done (the cathedral analogy), but a more apt comparison might have been with a greek temple which is a similar gabled pavilion and which hersey has argued is involved with sacrifice and anthropomorphic representation in much the same way that these buildings are.10 however i find it difficult to associate any ‘decorative’ aspect with this house other than the banded wall coverings mentioned by bateson. interstices 4 theory on the sepik 2 on the other hand it is surprising that this house has not been given structural attention by anthropologists in spite of their preoccupations with ‘structure’; but i have described this structure elsewhere so i will discuss only one aspect.11 a t t h e gable an upper ridge slopes up, supported at its outer end by the so called ‘meri post’ (meri = woman), which continues up through the roof and gives it the characteristic saddle shape. the meri post with a carving of a woman at its base is in turn sitting in the centre of a beam which is supported on the cantilevered ends of the wall plates something like a t r a p e z e a r t i s t o n a b a r – a n d i n f a c t t h e w h o l e assemblage is like a giant balancing act. the initiation of young men into the secret tambaran (spirit) cult which involves seclusion and bodily mutilation takes place in this men’s clubhouse. these events take place behind the gable end screens which are hung off the roof as are the side walls. each gable has a mask that is the face of the female building. the woven mask hides the interior of the house from those outside, but like all masks the house reveals as it conceals and the mask attracts the gaze even (or maybe especially) of those (women and children) w h o a r e f o r b i d d e n t o look. this is especially so when the tambaran is present, acoustically revealed by the sounds of flutes and bullroarers. the maprik house the maprik house is found in hamlets “laid out on hill-tops or mountain ridges, around the town of maprik.” mead claims: “the tamberan [sic] house is so situated that its shadow wheels across the plaza square and the sun very seldom strikes full upon its facade.”12 f o r g e s a y s t h a t h e r e everybody “whether initiated or not, can see the facades of the ceremonial houses.”13 inside the house “is a huge space which with its half light, recalls a cathedral.”14 once again the cathedral analogy; but others are disappointed with the labyrinthine interior and the extremely low entrance necessitating crawling on hands and knees for initiation purposes. “the tamberan [sic] houses are not used as gathering places, but only to house sacred objects.”15 the bark paintings which make up the facade are the distinguishing aspect of maprik houses, and been used as decoration on postcards, banks and the port moresby national parliament building. these facades have a standard arrangement, having a large beam at about head height which is carved with a series of heads above are the bark panels on which the paintings are said to be flying-fox faces.16 h e r e t h e structure might be seen as a mechanism to support the decorative paintings in a classic semperian manner but while both tuzin and forge have given detailed descriptions of house construction, some aspects of the structure remain problematic. the massive ridge which slopes down from front to back is erected, with much ceremony and secrecy, on a scaffolding of posts. there are plates on each side of the two posts, the structural role of which also is not clear, as the rafters of thin bamboo run from the ground up past the wall plates in a fine lattice work.17 at completion the temporary scaffolding and ridge support is removed, leaving the interior completely open and giving the structure a pleasing, free-floating architectural character … [w]ith the terrific weight of the ridgepole being borne entirely by the rafters the latter bow very slightly. the house takes on a slightly ‘hunched’ appearance, enhancing the enigma of weightlessness and converting what was a static image of mere support into one of dynamic self -support.18 it seems that in fact the roof does support the ridge pole, which is presumably now held up by the roof planes. it appears to be suspended from the structure in a way reminiscent of the manner that the long yams grown in this area are supported when displayed.19 forge makes phallic connections between ridge pole and yam but distinguishes between the phallus of the ridge pole, standing for aggression and violence, and the phallus of the long yam as a nutritive organ. this opposition between fertility and violence is for many reasons not as clear as forge wants us to believe. the hooded peak is occasionally formed around the e n d o f t h e r i d g e p o l e , c a l l e d b y the abelam the mangandu. usually another piece of wood is fastened at a more upwardly tilted angle to the end of the mangandu. this location is called the ‘nose’ of the house and contains a chamber and ritual items and is covered with a woven crown (amid some ceremony) at the end of construction. forge says: i once suggested to a group, building a ceremonial house, that the carved end of the mangandu m i g h t b e a p e n i s . this was rejected on the grounds that it was called dama and as was suggested, one would hardly bore a hole in one’s penis, although one did in one’s nose. my objections that the tassels were testicles, and therefore there should also be a penis, were countered by the assertion that was just a name (tsimalei). 20 but this is hardly the end of the story as this hood has female genital associations and the house is interstices 4 theory on the sepik 3 female. “we have then a female house, the most important part of which is masculine and phallic, and is closely associated with warfare and the success of the village in killing its enemies.”21 beier claims that there are four distinct maprik house styles.22 however there are two main groups, already mentioned, who live in the maprik area: the arapesh said to be the original inhabitants and the abelam whom forge suggests (and it seems to be generally accepted) are later arrivals from the sepik river. 23 discussion what i want to now consider are attempts by anthropologists to connect the maprik architecture o f t h e h i l l s w i t h t h e i a t m u l h o u s e s d o w n on the river. to do this involves a number of transformations from a house on piles to a house on the ground, in an evolutionary sequence the validity of which it is impossible to assess. the proposal is that: “although abelam and iatmul ceremonial houses do not look alike, they are homologous at a more abstract level; that is, their symbolic functions and ritual forms are virtually identical.”24 forge links the iatmul and abelam peoples in this way “because they seem to me to present an excellent opportunity to compare two cultures that are extremely similar in language, social structure, the importance they attach to art and ceremonial, and yet have totally different economies and modes of livelihood based on their respective environments.”25 this seems a perfect test for rappoport’s ‘hypothesis’ that house form relates to culture, but it also demonstrates some of the problems in this generalised proposition.26 equally (and oppositely) regionalism in its various versions is difficult to argue from this material. filer concludes (the emphases are his): “there is no sense in which it can be taken for granted that each culture in a certain region occupies a unique and exclusive space by virtue of belonging to a unique and exclusive local group.”27 however it has been proposed for the sepik that while “settlement patterns vary with the environment, house structures show a continuity greater than that of any other cultural trait except language.”28 i w a n t t o e x p l o r e this latter proposition. forge admits that in the houses of the two people “the differences are striking” and he actually tends to point out more differences than similarities.29 nevertheless the similarities are: “firstly, both types of ceremonial house are basically larger and exaggerated forms of the ordinary dwelling house with certain added features.” this could be said to be the case elsewhere. secondly, “like the iatmul, the abelam ceremonial house is also female and, as among the iatmul, the interior may be referred to as the belly of the house.”30 t h i r d l y t h e r i d g e p o l e i n both areas uses the same timber, but this also is probably true throughout papua new guinea. in short we are being asked to accept that a house o n t h e g r o u n d w i t h a t r i a n g u l a r g r o u n d plan no walls and a sloping ridge pole is the same as a saddle roofed rectangular house on stilts. the reason for this attempt to stretch our incredulity is that the iatmul and the abelam are part of the same language family. this identity of language seems to have provoked anthropologists to look for house form similarities. language becomes the indicator of culture, so that the language map of the area becomes the cultural map with determined boundaries. however the architecture of the maprik house straddles a major boundary of these cultural territories, so that while arapesh and abelam speak different languages, both occupy maprik type houses.31 it turns out that laycock who has drawn this linguistic-become-cultural map of the sepik has also considered house form to argue for a particular configuration and direction of movement of cultural territory. a further cultural indication of northward migration from the sepik is found in house-forms. the houses on the river, being built on stilts, cannot be adequately compared with those in the plains and mountains, which are built at ground level, although construction is similar … only in the maprik mountain areas, where timber is again plentiful, do the spirit houses again approach the dimensions of those on the sepik river.32 i have no competence to assess the validity of laycock’s linguistic analysis, but the architecturally naive proposition of available materials is hardly sufficient explanation for the formal differences and similarities, and it is surprising that it is used to assist in the definition of cultural territories. this seems to be another case where architecture is invoked at a crucial moment and makes the argument somewhat circular. another way of looking at the architectural question is whether the abelam is a development of the less impressive but similar arapesh house; or is the a r a p e s h a l o w e r ( i n t h e s e n s e o f height of front interstices 4 theory on the sepik 4 elevations of the houses) version of the abelam? the presumption is that: “in the case of houses we can say that the abelam brought something with them.”33 presumably this is based on the idea that the yet-tobe-invaded copied the invader because the invader is the more ‘powerful’ culture. yet hauser schaublin gives a specific example of movement the other way.34 and what did the arapesh build before they are said to have copied the abelam? the preoccupation with origins and language seems to blind the analysis. hauser schaublin argues that: buildings are not traded between villages as artifacts may b e . i t i s n o t e n o u g h s i m p l y t o s e e s u c h a house on a trading or war party in order to copy it.35 but we have to ask why not? is it not possible that t h e a b e l a m h a v e c o p i e d t h e f o r m o f t h e arapesh house in the same way that they adopted the competitive growing of yams?36 i n t u r n t h e a r a p e s h could have adopted aspects of the improved abelam house in the same way that they “have acquired a number of important cultural traits, including elements of tambaran ideology and organization.”37 hauser schaublin argues that the arapesh copied the shape but not the structure of the abelam house. 38 forge gives precise examples of copying of the abelam styles of facade painting by neighbours, and also the reverse, where a style of figure painting at ilahita (the largest arapesh village) “is now being reimported into some parts of the abelam territory.”39 might it not be possible to trade and copy both building decoration and structure independently of language. hauser schaublin speaks of people in the area losing their language.40 clearly there have been complex movements which foil any attempts to establish a simple cultural or environmental determinism even in such ‘authentic’ and ‘primitive’ situations as the sepik. filer has said: ”would it not be less tendentious to begin with the idea that sepik people saw their world as a collection not of ‘languages’ and ‘cultures’ but of cultural distinctions, reproduced and reinterpreted at many levels and in many ways without becoming ‘things’ associated with collections of communities.”41 the assumption of the determinism of culture and the hegemony of language leads to yet further propositions by hauser schaublin which can be questioned, such as: “i have said that the ilahita tambaran house has only the superstructure and not the internal structure (i would call it syntax) of the abelam korambo.” later she concludes that the “shape is similar but the basic structure is lacking.”42 this is to privilege structure over shape, technology over form, the persistence of syntax over semantic variability inside as against outside. like body decoration the outsides of these buildings are masks, and like all masks they are both socially inscribed and a statement of difference. this is a folding that makes an outside that is an inside. the inside is the rituals and presence of the secret tambaran, but the secret is that there is no tambaran there is no secret inside. the sounds of the tambaran are made by the men.43 this confounds the western assumption of the deep meaning inside against the superficiality of cosmetics. but cosmetics are not simple. the deep meaning is of course culture. architecture is seen as an accessory of culture but as this sepik material indicates, architecture as accessory confounds and confuses linguistic determinations of culture. notes 1 adolf loos, “ornament and crime,” (1908), the architecture of a. loos: an arts council exhibition (london: arts council of great britain, 1985). 2 william arens, the man-eating myth: anthropology and anthropophagy ( n e w york: oxford university press, 1979). “the so called nonanthropophagic cultures practice symbolic anthropophagy and even construct their most elevated socius, indeed the sublimity of their morality, their politics, and their right, on this anthropophagy.” jacques derrida, “eating well,” who comes after the subject? ed. edward cadava (new york: routledge, 1991), p. 114. 3 andrew strathern, “dress, decoration, and art in new guinea,” malcolm kirk, man as art , new guinea body decoration (london: thames and hudson, 1981), p. 39. 4 thomas in his recent book, oceanic art uses the term ‘proliferation’ when speaking of the sepik: “the causes of this degree of diversity present an intriguing, if somewhat intractable, problem.” nicholas thomas, oceanic art (london: thames and hudson, 1995), p. 37; strathern, “dress, decoration, and art,” p. 24. 5 the iatmul number around 8000 people and live on the banks of the middle sepik river and on ox bow lagoons formed by the meanders of the river which i s f u n d a m e n t a l t o l i f e h e r e i t is the means of transport the source o f f o o d even of building materials. interstices 4 theory on the sepik 5 6 mead has said that “this is my most misunderstood book.” margaret mead, sex and temperament in three primitive societies (new york: william morrow and company 1935), preface to second edition. 7 gregory bateson, naven (stanford: stanford university press, 1958), p. 123. the length of the kanganaman ceremonial house is actually unusual with a length to width ratio of four to one compared to the usual ratio of two to one. gordon holden, “the kanganaman haus tambaran,” gigibori (october 1975), v. 2, n. 2, pp. 47-58. 8 bateson, naven pp. 123-124. in an analogy that may not have been unconnected, guiart called wolimbit “a real cathedral,” jean guiart, the arts of the south pacific (new york: golden press, 1963). 9 bateson, naven caption to plate viii. this conjunction of decoration and violence is not unfamiliar, and while violence cannot be overemphasised it has been discussed elsewhere. m. r. austin, “the house tambaran of papua new guinea,” assemblage (1993), n. 20, p. 10-11. 10 george hersey, the lost meaning of classical architecture (cambridge, massachusetts: m.i.t. press, 1988). 11 m. r. austin, “the gable end,” traditional construction practices, traditional dwellings and settlements working papers series, (california: berkeley university of california, 1989), v. 17, p. 17-27. 12 margaret mead, the mountain arapesh (new york: the natural history press, 1970), v. ii, p. 94. 13 anthony forge, “learning to see in new guinea,” socialisation: the approach from social anthropology e d . p. mayer, (london: tavistock, 1970), p. 283. 14 r. gardi, sepik (baarn: bosch and keuning, 1958), p. 135. 15 margaret mead, the mountain arapesh p. 94. 16 “these faces are marked as female by the use of a feather ornament worn specifically by women, but beneath the face is a central white stroke called ‘the breast of the flying fox.’ the stroke represents the penis of the male flying f o x , a n d the figures are therefore male-female composites, bringing together in a single body the separate ideas of male and female nourishment.” strathern, “dress, decoration, and art,” p. 27. 17 hauser-schaublin says the side plates are redundant. “i doubt that they are crucial to the statics of the korambo, and there would be more efficacious means of supporting the heavy roof.” brigitta hauser-schaublin, “in the swamps and on the hills: traditional settlement patterns and house structures in the middle sepik,” sepik heritage eds. nancy luktehaus et al, (bathurst: crawford house press, 1990), p. 474. structurally the plates could both support and anchor the rafters which otherwise would have to be buried into the ground to resist lateral spread. 18 donald tuzin, the voice of the tambaran: truth and illusion in ilahita arapesh religion (california: berkeley university of california press, 1980), pp. 151-152. 19 “ i t w o u l d b e t r u e t o s a y that long yams are the dominant things in the male abelam’s life.” anthony forge, “art and environment in the sepik,” art and aesthetics in primitive societies e d . c a r o l f . j o p l i n g , (new york: dutton, 1971), p. 307. 20 forge, “art and environment in the sepik,” p. 306. the anthropologist involved in the endless pursuit of the signified is assured that it is just a signifier. finding out what the users (or the architects) of a building say does not solve the dilemma of architectural interpretation) forge does not seem to connect all this with the fact that this particular culture is characterised by the practice of penis bleeding which, while it is not boring holes, i s a similar mutilation. the iatmul house has a hole in the upper ridge to take the meri post. 21 forge, “art and environment in the sepik,” p. 305. strangely he neglects to mention that the hood at the gable could be seen as similar in both houses. 22 ulli beier “haus tambarans in maprik revival or tourist attraction?” gigibori (april 1976), v. 3, n. 1, p. 20. 23 “it seems certain that the abelam have moved up from the river into the p alexander mountains pushing the arapesh and other groups back, some of them right over the mountains and d o w n t o t h e coast.” forge, “art and environment in the sepik,” p. 295. “during the last century, and continuing into the early decades of this century, the arapesh were encroached upon by warlike peoples migrating northward in a predatory expansion from the environs of the sepik river.” tuzin, the voice of the tambaran p. 11. 24 anthony forge, “the power o f c u l t u r e a n d the culture of power,” sepik heritage eds. luktehaus et al, (bathurst: crawford house press, 1990), p. 166. 25 forge, “art and environment in the sepik,” p. 294. interstices 4 theory on the sepik 6 26 rappoport discusses and illustrates new guinea h o u s e s b u t i n doing so he combines iatmul and maprik houses. to further confuse matters the plan he draws is from the highlands while his description mixes in long houses and houses from the papuan gulf. amos rappoport, house form and culture (new jersey: englewood cliffs, 1969), pp. 44-45. 27 colin filer “diversity of cultures or culture of diversity?” sepik heritage eds. luktehaus et al, (bathurst: crawford house press, 1990), p. 117. thomas has said that: “virtually no generalisation about sepik art can be sustained.” thomas, oceanic art p. 42. 28 hauser-schaublin, “in the swamps and on the hills,” p. 471. 29 for example: “an abelam house is made for storage and sleeping in, while an iatmul house is made for living in.” forge, “art and environment in the sepik,” p. 298. 30 forge, “art and environment in the sepik,” pp. 298299. 31 “abelam houses look like their neighbors’ houses yet abelam ceremonial houses are bigger, often much bigger; they are more daringly raked forward and better-built, but in construction they are just a better version of the local type.” forge, “the power of culture and the culture of power,” p. 166. 32 laycock does admit in a footnote that the data could equally suggest southward migration. d. c. laycock, the ndu language family (sepik district new guinea) (canberra: the australian national university, 1965), p. 194. 33 forge “the power of culture and the culture of power,” p. 166. 34 “traditionally, abelam ceremonial houses were not closed at the ends as they sometimes are today. my informants said that closing the back was a new thing that they had copied from the arapesh (who had in turn earlier copied the shape of the abelam korambo).” hauser-schaublin, “in the swamps and on the hills,” p. 474. her parenthesis remains an assertion and needs further explanation especially as s h e g o e s o n t o s a y that this closure would affect ritual procedures. 35 hauser-schaublin, “in the swamps and on the hills,” pp. 470-471. 36 forge, “art and environment in the sepik,” p. 313. 37 tuzin, the voice of the tambaran p. 11. 38 “the shape of abelam ceremonial houses has been copied, although not the structure evolved step by step by the abelam.” hauser-schaublin, “in the swamps and on the hills,” p. 471. 39 anthony forge, “style and meaning in sepik art,” primitive art and society ed. a. forge (london: wenner-gren foundation and oxford university press, 1973), p. 175. 40 “ a s i k n o w h a p p e n e d w i t h a n a b e l a m g r o u p that migrated to nagripaim) or outsiders adopted a socalled ndu language.” hauser-schaublin, “in the swamps and on the hills,” p. 470. bragge speaks of “ancient wandering clans travelling great distances and doing amazing things.” lawrence bargee, “the migrations,” sepik heritage ed. nancy luktehaus et al, (bathurst: crawford house press, 1990), p. 36. 41 filer, “diversity of cultures or culture of diversity?” p. 127. 42 to argue this she makes several points. the first is that the wall plates and facade cross beam are not at the same level, (indicating an absent but once existing floor). secondly the facade below the cross beam does not have sago thatch under the matting, (indicating that it is conceptually a roof), and “the little round roof at the peak of the house is not part o f t h e m a i n r o o f a s i t i s i n the abelam korambo; i n s t e a d i t l o o k s l i k e a h a t s e t o n t h e ridge pole.” hauser-schaublin, “in the swamps and on the hills,” p. 476. 43 “the prominence of secrecy suggests that the widespread belief that art expresses broader cultural values is not quite appropriate for the sepik.” thomas, oceanic art p. 54. the witch in the wardrobe the witch in the wardrobe. tracey maughan interstices 4 the witch in the wardrobe 1 the traditional story of architecture rests within the economy of vision. modernism follows this tradition. it is new and clean. [it] is not simply the look of cleanliness but a cleaning of the look, a focusing of the eye. not a machine for looking at but a machine for looking.1 smell is expelled (fig 1). the origins, of modernism’s removal of smell, can be found in the nineteenth century aaerist theories which influenced architecture. [theorists aimed] to use nothing but architectural resources to capture the air, cause it to circulate, and expel it. the aim for designing a building was to separate putrid exhalations from currents of fresh air. the idea was that the shape of the building itself would ensure satisfactory ventilation. cupola and dome were transformed into machines to draw up miasmas. abandonment of the ground floor in favor of the first storey began to be advocated so that the living space is separated from earth and exposed to the purifying action of the air.2 this extended to the planning of towns. trades that caused unpleasant odors would be moved outside the walls, together with cemeteries, hospitals, and butchers’ shops. factories would be located in the suburbs. wide streets, vast squares dotted with fountains, would facilitate the circulation of air.3 this is the dispersal of the smell of the crowd which is the smell of confusion and chaos, an explosive, undefined concoction. with the emergence of the nineteenth century concept of the individual, came the desire to control smell. smell has the invisible ability to transform the individual’s experience of space by transgressing the social boundaries that the individual constructs (fig 2). gottfried semper subverts the traditional story of architecture. for semper the house begins with women, the woven fabric, the textile, texture, an appreciation of a sensual and sensory perception. for semper architecture is artificial, it is combinative, and it creates a disguise. according to semper, woman is at the origin of architecture, because architecture’s woven form places it within the tradition of the feminine arts. it is a process that has been “borrowed” from “the mother of the human race.”4 semper appropriates her art in his theory on the origins of architecture and as he places her at its origins she disappears into the past beneath its history. but semper is the sorcerer who inserts smells into his fabric. “to complete the image of an oriental residence one has to imagine the costly furnishings of gold-plated couches and chairs, divans, candelabras, all kinds of vases, carpets, and the fragrance of incense.”5 however, smell contains a threat that undoes semper’s notion of architecture. “an odour is always, in fact, something only half-formed: no pattern has the proportions demanded for the acquisition of an odour.”6 smell trangresses boundaries and certain materials encourage this transgression. chevreul condemned the capillarity of mortar. walls, intended to separate and support, also proved to be conduits, sites of complex upward movements, and, like the soil, repositories for ancient filth. they combined deposits with the wafts of mephitisms and hence concealed a multiplicity of threats. also fatal were emanations from new walls, the odor of plaster and humidity ... in paris new buildings were left to prostitutes, a practice known as ‘drying out the plaster.’7 before the proper tenants inhabit the building, the prostitutes, who soak up the excess of desire, soak up the waste products that emanate from the new walls and when this is done they are removed. woman is the surrogate victim, the disposable object that disappears after she inhabits the space, put in her place, before it becomes proper, a proper place as the property of the rightful owners. the prostitutes are contaminated by desire but they are important to society as their role is to embody its image of sickness. they cure society as its ills are directed away from the populace to this disposable object operating at the margins (fig 3). protitutes are working women women who work in the marketplace. for emile zola, in the belly of paris, the crowd consists of women and their produce. the smell of women in the marketplace is the smell of fish as this is interstices 4 the witch in the wardrobe 2 the produce of their labour. this smell represents the desirable female, therefore the smell of desire in zola’s marketplace is the pungent aroma of fish. smell and desire combine to produce the image that woman is an offensive threatening stench. in the marketplace produce that has been removed from life begins to decay. “the impregnation of the stalls by foul smells aroused the desire to destroy that is so frequently manifested in the projects of urban reformers.”8 the desire to destroy also comes from the desire to control the process of decay the smell of death. the architectural solution is to wipe out the offending rotten structure so that a clean form can take its place. according to yvonne verdier, order is masculine and it is his knowledge that is put at the origin of creation. women are associated with incompletion and it is the masculine order, or odour that is required for completion. what gave woman’s smell its ideal quality was male sperm, in the same way that the act of coitus filled the flesh of the females of numerous animal species with a specific odor. in every sphere, sexual intercourse was held to complete femininity.9 for corbin the temporary structures of the stalls are open to impregnation. these temporary female structures are inadequate, and more; they insult. according to corbin the female form is seen to be lacking and the application of another substance restores order. the “aromatic effluvia provoked or ‘destroyed the vapors’ of the womb and restore it to its natural condition.”10 this ordering technique is a device to correct and complete the female form. as architecture constructs, it enacts a process of insertion, it fills in the gaps by impregnating the fabric with a redeeming smell. this specific odour is a male smell. all orifices are sealed. fabric which exposes a texture that allows gaps, is seen to stand for the passive body of a woman open to impregnation. the insertion of a foreign substance fills in the gaps of the fabric and as these gaps are filled it cannot breathe. walls preserved odors ... prisoners recognised the odors of incarceration that had impregnated the dungeon at vincennes years after it had ceased to be a state prison. this strange preservative power was deadly: ‘a doctor attended a woman afflicted with a gangrenous disease from which she died. two years later, returning to the same place to visit another patient, he found the same gangrenous odor, the odor sui generis’ the walls had transmitted the disorder of the bodily tissues.11 the walls absorb and transmit a potion of death, this potion is the disorder of the body produced by women. this deadly potion is removed and with its removal woman is erased. after an epidemic of puerperal fever ... workers disinfected the murderous room; this task involved removing the layers of old mortar. ‘as they detached the rubble from the walls and ceilings, a most fetid odor was given off ... the stench was so great that it even surpassed the odor of a dissection room.12 the modernist architect removes the past, scrapes the surface until it is clean, purified. the dirt is purged from without and a clean homogenous layer is applied to cover and protect the naked structure. sanitary reformers revived the old testament injunctions against the mouldy infections of houses. taking down old plaster and replacing it, piercing walls, removing bricks in direct contact with the earth because they absorbed the putrid substances mixed in it, were not just sound recommendations for construction. plastering, coating, painting, and whitewashing walls, vaults, and woodwork provided a positive armour against miasma. plaster was deemed not only pleasing to the eye but also an effective agent in the struggle against infection. banau intended his anti mephitic varnish to be used for walls and furniture as well as for clothing.13 the myth of the whitewash operates as a ritual of ‘architectural hygiene’ and according to mark wigley, it is not a passive neutrality. the whitewash is not simply what is left behind after the removal of decoration. it is the active mechanism of erasure. more than a clean surface, it is the cleaning agent, cleaning the body in order to liberate the eye. the whitewash makes the objects of everyday life visible, as any impurity, any decorative excess would leave a ‘stain’ on its surface.14 the non-porous varnish masters materiality and, even without texture, the smooth white surface remains a fabric. we are still in the domain of the text.15 the body is transformed into form as it is masked by the whitewash. as insertions can be made in the text, “the whitewash is inserted between two threats in order to transform body into form (fig 4).”16 in a society that supports the illusion that everything is exposed, all secrets are dirty. women threatens this as her cyclical nature is secret, hidden within her body. as the flow of blood is secreted, it indicates a dirty secret. woman is associated with disguise, to disguise is to deceive. the deception is seen to be a disease. blood interstices 4 the witch in the wardrobe 3 indicates violence and it is contagious, as blood flows from a woman’s body she represents disease. the special condition of women whose smells were in a state of imbalance also derived from these beliefs: redheads were always pungent, both putrid and fascinating, as if their cycle had broken down and put them in a continuous state of menstruation; pregnant women, temporarily deprived of menstrual effluvia, were also examples of imbalance.17 either way, the delicate balance of order is upset, the disease of the feminine is introduced, “by restoring the elasticity of the air gauger hoped to stem female disease.”18 rather than the ‘female disease’ the disease is the feminine. the feminine threatens the masculine order as desire crosses the boundary of appearance. the female body is soft, her desire is hidden in the folds of excess flesh. the economy of vision that organises form can never be satisfied by feminine desire as it is never seen. woman becomes the sacrificial victim she is the witch. witches spread on the surface of the globe ‘like caterpillars in our gardens,’ says an inquisitor ... contagion spreads through bits of bodily waste and through odors ... wastes: nail clippings, menstrual blood, excrement, a lock of hair: these scraps of the body are what will act as charm. as partial objects detached from the body, they are especially powerful, in the same way that ‘object a,’ the part where the object of desire settles is powerful in its very detachment. the pound of flesh: take it and it is death ... partial objects, bound by bodily geography to orifices: voice, spit, tears, shit, a cry, anything secreted and transmitted ... the precious secretions are partial objects for the others’ desire.19 the witch roams in the garden. she manipulates desire by collecting waste and recirculating it. her spells are contagious. these partial objects, objects of desire, contain the threat of death (fig 5). the architectural space of woman, as object of desire, is put aside, outside, in the garden. it is separated from the place of work, the house. the garden is where the woman plays, it presents an atmosphere for adventure and escape from the confines of the house. its woven fabric creates the opportunity for seduction in its hidden recesses. this ritual is expressed by bataille as that between the man and the animal, the woman is the prey. in this dance of seduction, the woman who enters the game is the animal in disguise, her role is to choose the moment to sacrifice herself and thus divert violence into the realm of play. woman is the animal as she exists close to nature and its cyclical processes, in the garden. perfume is the aroma of the garden which impregnates her clothing and skin and attracts the hunter to her. the garden, the domestic hunting ground, is an environment designed to contain female desire. it structures isolation and traps women, dissipating the threat of desire with perfume. its boundaries are not separate from the repressive structure of the house. architecture is always rebuilt upon the shattered fragments of the past. it mirrors these fragments. architecture reflects itself, and its past for the future. it is an instrument to behold the selfsame image, a narcissistic device. architecture also uses the mirror to reflect itself. the mirror reflects the fabric, the architectural mask, and it multiplies this image. for trinh minh-ha, a shattered mirror still functions as mirror; it may destroy the dual relation of i to i but leaves the infiniteness of life’s reflections intact. here reality is not reconstituted, it is put into pieces so as to allow another world to rebuild (keep on unbuilding and rebuilding) itself with its debris ... writing is meshing one’s writing with the machinery of endless reflexivity. footprints of emptiness multiplied to infinity in an attempt at disarming death.20 reality is reduced “to a chain of causes and effects.”21 architecture is the ritual, the performance of the operation that controls the elemental mixture to ensure the continuation of the same. smell stimulates memory and instigates a reflection for a particular place. smell is an intimate sensation and is by definition non-visual: ... odor gives us the most intimate sensations, a more immediate pleasure, more independent of the mind, than the sense of sight; we get profound enjoyment from an agreeable odor at the first moment of its impression; the pleasure of sight belongs more to reflections, to the desires aroused by the objects perceived, to the hopes they give birth to.22 yet even in spaces, such as the garden, where smell is experienced, it is sight, rather than smell, which governs the design. a garden was of course, primarily, a picture. its composition was based on the mechanism of sight. architects were clearly guided by the desire to indulge sight and hearing above the other senses. the english garden provided the opportunity to consecrate and enact a hierarchy of the senses in a manner that resembled a religious litany. hirschfield summarised the position decisively in 1779: of the senses the sense of smell, which receives the sweet exhalations of plants and vegetables, seems to be the last, unless it is joined with the coarser sense of touch, to experience the refreshing action of the air; consequently the artist, though without neglecting the sense of smell entirely, had to work for interstices 4 the witch in the wardrobe 4 the eye and the ear, particularly for the eye. therefore the gardener will mainly endeavor to expose the visible beauties of rural nature (fig 6).23 form persists, while smell is diffused with the movement of time. smell marks time in the garden, it is part of the natural cyclical process and as such it is associated with woman. woman, associated with smell, becomes, in the garden, like the flowers insubstantial, a momentary substance. the design of the house in the nineteenth century is motivated by the separation of form and smell. public and private, male and female space are demarcated as ... the only way to get rid of troublesome smells and to reserve private space for the delicate effluvia of intimacy was to sort them out and contain the strongest smells in the appropriate places. this demarcation of the intimate spaces of interior monologue liberated the olfactory possibilities of both bedchamber and salon; they sanctioned the emergence of an aesthetic of olfaction within private space. the skilful arrangement of the background smells in the boudoir came to be aesthetically inseparable from the odor of the woman to whom one came for inspiration.24 in this way woman, smell and the boudoir combine to create a world for male appreciation and consumption (fig 7). in the twentieth century the design of the bathroom changes. it is no longer the space of sensual practice, where dirt and the naked body are exposed. the voluptuous space is reduced, sanitised and given mechanical functions and proportions. the hygienic space removes dirt, it does not display it. for a long time the nudity of moving bodies, the total freedom of the gestures of the toilette, and the cosy intimacy sheltered from all intrusion, conferred on the place a perfume of licentiousness ... the rare nineteenth century bathrooms, equipped with heavy furniture and protected by wall hangings, tended to be spacious ... they advised paneling the partitions to protect against the mephitism of the walls, and above all using solid partitions to shelter the bedroom from condensation and moist odors ... later the use of clean and decent geometric space came to underwrite the idea of the bathroom area as a sensually neutral and innocent space (fig 8).25 to examine how the nineteenth century concept of the individual affected architecture we can begin with waste. the place for defecation became specific and individualised. the privatization of waste tended to make it the place for an inner monologue. water closets were introduced and tombs became individual and lost their stench.26 waste and death are the areas which demand attention because of smell. with the dead resting in the tomb, the living resting in bed and women resting in the garden, the space of the individual is articulated. rest, in any form now requires separation. the individual is isolated in the bed and in death. as the bedchamber is connected with the casket, the smell of seduction becomes the smell of death. desire becomes connected with the corpse, and the waste of the dead (fig 9). the end of the eighteenth century also brought the first symptoms of a reduced threshold of the tolerance among the masses, who made a direct connection between odors and death ... the stench of corpses seems to have been the first to arouse nearly universal intolerance ... the perceived correlation between the odor of corpses and the corruption of meat and metals accentuated feelings of anxiety.27 the odour of seduction, the odour given off by women is the odour of the corpse that corrupts meat and metals, “the sorceress whose menstrual effluvia tarnished metal and turned the meat in the saltingtub.”28 woman is the corpse and the corpse according to kristeva is the fallen, a symbol for the waste that falls beyond life. the corpse lies at the border crossing the bridge or boundary between life and death as, a wound with blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death ... as in true theatre, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what i permanently thrust aside in order to live. these body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. there, i am at the border of my condition as a living being. my body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border. such wastes drop so that i might live, until, from loss to loss, nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit cadere, cadaver.29 culture, according to bataille, is built on the taboo of the transgression of life. this taboo results from the fear of death. death is sacred, care is to be taken with the human corpse. it is different from the corpse of the animal, it requires burial. the separation of the human corpse from that of the animal is identified by bataille as the origin of the differentiation of the individual. the architecture of death, the tomb, begins with the transgression of the boundary of life and it separates the individual from the crowd. the individual tomb removes the stench of the crowd, the stench of a mass of rotting corpses (fig 10). architecture is the rite of death. it is the bridge that is required by transgression to ensure the continuance of culture. architecture exists on the border to carry the interstices 4 the witch in the wardrobe 5 body beyond death. it creates a container that has the magical rite of transference, of resurrection, of life after death. the burial of the body hides the ugly process of decay. the smell of death, the smell of the corpse, is not death itself. smell is alive and it is through smell that death lives. it challenges the structure of architecture, as it fills the spaces of architecture and transforms them. the processes of burial and fumigation follow the architectural rite of forgetting as architecture acts to deceive memory. notes 1 mark wigley, “architecture after philosophy: le corbusier and the emperor’s new paint,” philosophy and architecture ed. a. benjamin, (london: academy editions/new york: st. martin’s press, 1990), p. 85. 2 alain corbin, the foul and the fragrant: odor and the french social imagination (cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press, 1986), p. 99. 3 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 100. 4 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 220. 5 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 216. 6 plato, timaeus and critias trans. a. e. taylor, (london: methuen, 1929), p. 69. 7 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 25. 8 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 55. 9 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 46. 10 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 62. 11 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 26. 12 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 26. 13 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 91. 14 wigley, “architecture after philosophy,” p. 85. 15 wigley, “architecture after philosophy,” p. 88. 16 wigley, “architecture after philosophy,” p. 87. 17 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 45. 18 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 95. 19 catherine clement, “sorceress and hysteric,” helene cixous and catherine clement the newly born woman trans. betsy wing (manchester: manchester university press, 1987), p. 34-35. 20 trinh minh-ha, woman, native, other: writing postcoloniality and feminism (bloomington: indiana university press, 1989), p. 23. 21 trinh, woman, native, other p. 23. 22 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 82-83. 23 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 79. 24 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 169. 25 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 175. 26 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 83-84. 27 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 58. 28 corbin, the foul and the fragrant p. 45. 29 julia kristeva, powers of horror: an essay on abjection (new york: columbia university press, 1982), p. 3. auauresequtdol.ls:>f.i0m:asnohpulll:>f.idi 91 the kirkland house and the sinclair and shouler house john d dickson the site disposition of these two houses seems to have less to do with nostalgia for the nineteenth-century urban residential-streetscape, than with confident placement upon upthrust-iandform, and with full spatial participation in the surrounding landscape and skyscape. the sinclairand shouler house the tall, narrow west-end facade of the sinclair and shouler house, dramatised by first-floor entry, has a theatrical air. a sense of dislocation of a town-house facade, combined with the accoutrements of more spacious environs, notably a palm-tree and open-light, give the sense that even in one's approach one is actually stationary and it is the world that is moving, to any locale, to any height. one is dazzled by this display of the world's virtuosity, and by the apparent weightlessness of material such as a brass door-knocker, which in a london town-house context would be redolent of solidity and permanence, these excited by its polished glint, but here it is flashing through high-trapeze-space caught up in a zabriskie point tour en l'air. sinclair is clearly less interested in what things are than in what these might become, and to enter this house is to be caught up in such a transformation. reassurances of new zealand's staid building concrete-block, timber, plywood, corrugated-iron here have a trompe-l' oeil quality, with building elements balanced and counter-balanced in acrobatic display. one senses that space beyond the door is of another kind. meanwhile one is observed by the display itself, for bemusedly levitating two floors above is a window-seat with swan-necked rafters. .. through the door is indeed another world, a rectangular hall the length and width of the house it seems, with a central line of posts. is module here too intrusive? but surely less so than in the work of new zealand's modern rationalists such as the group architects. the hall spills to ground-level at its east-end with rhythmic alternation of vertical windows and wall on the north-side. a lean-to serves to the south butting into the ridge. here is one large room yet does one sense from the module, partitions and corridors stacked away? under the stairs perhaps? a light touch of classical intention composes this room twinned beneath at ground-level. a hall in plan but not in height. on this floor one again senses movement all around, yet there is nowhere to go, except into a cupboard under the stair wherein access to the lower-floor is found. curiously confined as on a boat, one can pace length, and there are lateral encounters with posts. and as if boats are moored alongside each other, rhythmic intimation of buildings nearby direct one's attention back into the room, where movement is stylised ingeniously, as in the lean-to kitchen where all its appurtenances seem to be contained in bins-on-wheels or dramatically, as by the stair crafted by neil kirkland, which descends from above like a thunder-bolt from zeus, or perhaps it is the lighter flash of mercury's tripping. despite these disturbances the room undoubtedly alludes in plan to sinclair's admiration for monastic and vernacular buildings in the south of france and to later chateaux. one senses this in details such as the proportion and placement of windows, and in the room's simple outline and construction, but without the appearance of stone. is there here also, nostalgia for history's inter-tidal zone? for the library of bishop selwyn at parnell? or for that by lippincott at the university of auckland, where recently, partitions and corridors have been re-deployed? life in this room is meanwhile luxurious whatever the incoming-tide may bring. this first-floor room is centered on its south-wall, on a side-board painted mediterranean blue-green, from which, colour accents spring out into the room; lemon, orange perhaps, or blue ceramic. whatever momentary still-life is here, each frame gives way to colour dynamics in the larger space of the room and inevitably toward red. one is aware that everything including the floor is painted, as if an old building has been converted with pipes and wires cut through its joists. the room recycles itself endlessly; cycles of matt and gloss texture construct a succession of trompe-i'oeil scenarios in the large back-reaching room-space. sinclair's command of spatial-openness places him as the twentieth-century's child sprung from the french ethos of fin de siecle painters such as matisse, and with the colour-sense and brightness of le corbusier's painted kouros, and accustomed to the liveliness of a ballet-set by picasso brilliantly renewed by david hockney. yet maybe, as one glances at the minoan-columned table, is there not a touch of necropolis in this realm of super-colour so evocative for ancient people of eternity's paradise? j 1 j if we have accounted for the lightness and agility of sinclair's cyclist temperament; and we shall take as an axiom of sinclair's design that architecture expresses the person; this room in its polychromy suggests also a neo-classical bravura, a touch of gravity and composure, expressive of kirsten shouler's danish heritage perhaps; an insistence on design and form in everything; a scandinavian recognition of beauty; and an irresistible attraction to the southern-world of colour and warmth. an alliance of architecture in new zealand with a nineteenth-century neo-classical world effected in timber, is re-stated here. yet in this room in which joie de vivre through colour dominates, we are seemingly untroubled by scandinavian -, hayward and rowe house (1985) north elevation mythology, well away from the danish and manawatu lowlands. if on the first-floor, colour is within a comfortable register of nostalgia, on the floor above, the presence of colour takes over with excess. images compound. references to living-places previously enjoyed are intense; a window-seat at robin rockel's endymion apartments at newmarket, and courtville apartments' loggia. the personal realm intensifies architectural detail. there is a neo-classical ambience; the slender-waisted, wooden, doric columns of the loggia, carved by neil kirkland to sinclair's design; the out-reaching cymarecta profiles of the window-seat rafters; the long runs of cornice and shelf mouldings. one detects an interest also in pop-art and folk-art motifs; stencilled leaping dolphins in the bathroom, and in fret on its wooden shutters. although sinclair's gift for rendering spatial-openness through colour and pattern must be recognised, it raises the issue of largesse or spatialextravagance? yet there seems to be no desire to impress. but who can judge in such matters? externally this second-floor is clearly intended to express an admiration for the icon of mansion so successful in western architecture; a loggia between two towers roman palace, venetian palazzo, and tuscan villa. the full impact of this facade is blocked by the neighbouring kirkland house. this second referen~e to frontality in the sin clair and shouler house suggests an open space, undoubtedly water-space, before it to command. however, the symmetries of these two frontal statements, north and west, are cheerfully added to, in a new zealand manner, by a lean-to, to the south. sinclair's symmetries cannot be taken as indicative of a serious belief in classical composure as a committed stance. these symmetries exist as set-pieces with iconographic intent. we must consider the possibility of an ecclectic design-philosophy at work. an informed dexterity undoubtedly, and this gives architectural vitality, and as we have seen vivaciousness, moving across boundaries set by painting, stage-set, and film, together with a recycling of auckland's topos. but do we under-estimate sinclair's extensive reading of architecture and its critical theory? can we detect here a palimpsest of images, a shifting ground with articulate, momentary, conjunctions betwixt architectural periods and places, and betwixt architecture's internal and external spaces and forms? can we detect here an architecture of references and denials, or do we grace sin clair with the conceits of others? at this point, a wider assessment of sinclair's design-work is called for beyond the scope of this review. suffice to note a range of approaches and dissimilar forms. how for example, can we bring the concrete, barrel-vaulted hayward and rowe house, (1985) at anawhata, into meaningful relation to this haslett street house with its more direct involvement with the new zealand building-vernacular? 94 the kirklandhouse \ on approaching the kirkland house one encounters at its south-west-end, a concrete basement-workshop, over-sailed by a slight cantilever of the timbered living-quarters above. enclosed by concrete of precise and smooth surface-finish, and with half its volume lodged in the earth of the sloping site, the basement makes an emphatic statement of solidity. a steel-beam and posts, supporting lofty joists, together with the concrete walls and floor, define a volume impressive in a domestic milieu. here, the place is fixed, whatever comes in or goes out. this scale is qualified on the south-west facade by the only low-window, and at the sub-terranean northeast-end, a mezzanine-alcove cut into the earth, provides a drawing-office above the heavy-work ground-level. in recalling antonello da messina's painting of saint jerome in his study, one nervously searches for saint jerome's lion. light floods down into the workshop from high, separately defined.windows, some qualified with degrees of translucency. this is a cavernous in-world; an artisan's work and storage-space up front, proudly manifest, yet capable of privacy and seclusion. somewhere within there is an inter-connecting stair, but this is played down. there is no discernible applied finish to the architectural elements of concrete, wood, and steel. the concrete walls of the basement are qualified and geometrically organised by means of bands of red aggregate incised with under-cut shadow, and with friezerondels and a cavetto-cornice, and green-plugged tie-holes in regular patterns. thus the walls, in accounting for hydrostatic pressure and successive pours, make reference also to mud-brick coursing and masonry, to egyptian and syrian ablaq patterns, and to geological processes of sedimentation. this is not rough concretework anticipating concealment, but construction of quality. kirkland is clearly interested in finding out what can be achieved, and what he with his own hands can do. there is water here, outside at the door, and fire a forge and anvil one pace within, beneath where springs above a corbelled, arcuated, qualification of the concrete-wall at first floor level, derived bluntly from circles in a robust roman manner. but this basement-workshop, open to the south-west, seems a cold place, at least in winter, and contrasts with the sun-dried timber-world above. intimation of the north-west orientation of the first-floor is discernible on the south-west facade, where the symmetries are complex. a pair of parallel windows, set in slightly protruding, plastered timber-work, express enclosure and confirm a closed south-east flank to the house; whereas to the north-west, timber weatherboards and plywood, framed by timber pilasters, plinth, and architrave, together with a broader eave indicate a loggia, the full extent of which occupies the entire north-west facade. the whole length of the house is thus framed rhythmically by pilasters, architrave, and plinth, in the manner of the palazzo della cancelleria at rome. this long glazed-loggia is qualified at its ends by timber containment. on 1 1 i 1 ~ 1 1 1 -( .~ ~ 95 \ account of its colour and textural differentiations, this wall has the subtlety and impact of a painting. apprehending this at close-quarters, on rounding the corner from the south-west, and then raised-up gradually by a stair to become level with the centre of this painting toward the north-east-end, one at the moment of penetration becomes archangel to the loggia within. yet, although one discerns centrality and module with bays defining a rhythm closed by each end, the length of the composition is sufficient to turn one's mind from fra angelico's annunciation, to duccio's gold majestas with its serried ranks of figures to each side. by this flight of fancy i mean to convey that there is a breath-taking majesty, to the discerning eye, on entering this house; in experiencing the composition of this painterly facade with its sky-blue doors, red-gold boards, cream joinery, and below this world of blue and gold, the earth-realm of red, grey, and green. if at this moment, one was to step back into the landscape void, and view the house from a distance as one might have done on approaching the place, the siting and prominence of the form and shadows of eave and windows, would clearly reveal the loggia, held from behind by the solid, plastered walled-enclosure. but close-to one's attention is held by the glint and absorption of surface, by the fine, lineardetailing of joinery and mouldings and incised relief, with its black crevices of shadow, and by other concavities of glowing shade. stepping inside, under the hipped-roof of the house, is a moment to savour. a long room the entire length of the house, and independent of its immediate environs at ground-level, except at its north-east-end, is orientated toward the landscape, but not frontally, for this direction is brutally blocked by the neighbouring house to the north. instead one sweeps out into the landscape progressively, along the depth of the room; a direction reinforced by oblique walls and doorways. there is a sense of belonging, and in-dwelling of the landscape through a linked succession of especially broad double-hung windows with fine glazing-bars, all of which when raised together, open the central, wider space, entirely. the room is as much an elizabethan gallery as it is a new zealand verandah. its chevroned and battened timber-boarded ceiling, zigzagging along its entire length, makes the hieroglyph for water, and thus suggests a water-space below reflecting up into the room. there is also, in this pattern and texture, annunciation of archangel wings, a beneficent outline above, as from the fronds of the palms outside the windows. the room is slightly contained and separated at each end. all the spaces of the house on this floor open onto this long gallery, and two of these at either end of the house, are conceived of as square rooms oversailing the concrete basement below. these are closed to the south-east, provided with cupboards, bound internally with mouldings, and open through shuttered windows onto the long gallery, as well as opening directly to the morning or evening through inward-opening shuttered windows. symmetrical, self-contained, refined further in their linings and mouldings, these rooms celebrate the intimacies and value of human shelter; one room for necessity, and another for the other whatever that might prove to be; mc kenzie house(1990) perspective view from north maxwell house (1986) nor-west elevation ~ 1 i 1 the night, visitors, or whatever one chooses, or whatever may be forced upon the household. it is obvious that considerable thought has been given to sun-protection and sunpenetration, to ventilation and insulation, to site orientation, and to the complementary roles of room and gallery; to a simple gradation of inside, inbetween, and outside. all these considerations have been reconciled with a classical approach to form and to use of a new zealand vernacular. furthermore, recognition has been made of the similarity between the new zealand vernacular and the ottoman vernacular. the kirkland house, in its planning and construction, expresses curiosity about this similarity. both the new zealand and ottoman vernaculars are committed to the external landscape, to a degree of open-living in close association with others; both have been developed in temperate-zones using a wood and masonry based technology; both are based on mediterranean culture; and both respond to european custom. the semblance of the kirkland house to ottoman house-types, is not mere reference ethnically, or architecturally, nor is it simply coincidental as part of a wider affinity with a classical approach, but it is rather, an intended invigorating implant, implying that the new zealand vernacular can be even more richly aligned to an appreciation of material, technology, and form. this seems to be a reasoned emotional choice. crossfertilisation and the vigour of hybridisation is the goal. yet there can be doubts. there is perhaps a fine line between this path kirkland is treading and romanticism. can this house be clearly seen as the outcome of one or the other? its form is clear enough, with its sofa (hall), and two sekiliks (raised seating alcoves) at either end, and two oda (rooms) opening onto the sofa. more allusive tendencies are already embodied in new zealand's victorian, and orientalist-orientated arts and crafts traditions, and their development in the context of the bungalows of the 1920s and 1930s. the kirkland house is too frank in its use of ottoman form to be considered in these terms. its curiosity about ottoman architecture is too far-reaching; its reorganisation of the new zealand vernacular is too deep, too convincing, too classically enacted to be solely a romantic interest. but is this nevertheless a direction backwards? the kirkland house, by means of its detailed finesse and quality, and consideration of environmental performance, indicates the considerable distance this designdirection has already been advanced. a review of kirkland's earlier design and building-work is beyond the scope of this review. suffice to note an assessment of the modern-movement and its ottoman susceptibility in the exquisite loggia for sir alan and lady stewart, (1982) on the north and west-front of their cliff-top house at whakatane; also the carved radiata posts in the chisholm house, (1985) at maxwell avenue, grey lynn; and the maxwell house, (1986) at army bay, whangaparaoa. the maxwell house has a cruciform hipped-roof of singular beauty with a central sofa, glazed on its east-arm, and a porch with carved posts on its north-arm. the 97 implications of this form for weather-boarding, timber-framing, concrete-work, corrugated-iron, and double-hung sashes are all convincingly essayed. in the recently designed mckenzie house (1990) at paekakariki, classical elements are further closely adapted to a new zealand life-style. its symmetries and regularities are balanced by the peculiarities of its situation. but of course that is exactly what the ottoman tradition, and any classical vernacular, is practised at. this house is satisfyingly sited according to a new zealander's expectation, no matter how much one equates the bosphorus with cook strait; up a hillside, overlooking the sea, managing with its neighbours to maintain its own advantage of identity and exhilaration; with a basic variety of internal spaces, and deploying new zealand vernacular elements in specific ways; with also a touch of middle new zealand deja-vu. in conclusion, whatever the independent failings, or thoughtful detail, of these two haslett street houses, they can be seen to share something of distinction which closely identifies them with their own neighbourhood. i think it is their siting, their larger response to the landscape, and their use of a familiar building-vernacular, which fastens these two houses securely in place and which gives them local identity. this is not distracted from by arbitrary style, but rather, their sense of enlivened ordinariness might well cause the viewer to become aligned sympathetically with them. interstices02.indb interstices 07 mistresses and others: the “body as subject” in (architectural) discourse mirjana lozanovska apparently arab scholars when speaking of the text use this admirable expression: the certain body. what body? we have several of them; the body of the anatomists and physiologists, the one science sees or sicusses: this is the text of grammarians, critics, commentators, philologists (the pheno-text). but we also have a body of bliss consisting solely of erotic relations, utterly distinct from the fi rst body: it is another contour, another nomination; thus with the text: it is no more than the open list of the fi res of language (those living fi res, intermittent lights, wandering features strewn in the text like seeds and which for us advantageously replace the “semina aeternitatis,” the “sopyra,” the common notions, the fundamental assumptions of ancient philosophy). does the text have a human form, is it a fi gure, an anagram of the body? yes, but of our erotic body. the pleasure of the text is irreducible to physiological need. the pleasure of the text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas for my body does not have the same ideas i do (barthes, 1975: 16). greatness, or recognition, as a master architect is not possible for most people. only a few in history attain such stature and this might have to do with a number of variables: family history, work, genius, talent, economic foundation, labour, intensity of personality and luck. the ideal image of the master architect is not the real image of the architect; it is the mirror or the lens through which the real architect is seen. nonetheless this image mediates each self-identity as an architect, and mediates the question of who can become an architect. a popular exemplifi cation of this image is the architect in the 1949 fi lm, the fountainhead, famously captured by gary cooper playing the lead role, as architect howard roark. howard roark is portrayed as creative, artistic, brilliant and unforgiving, an image that is typical of the genius in history. he will not give in to the mediocrity that is central to the society he lives in. he is perceived as a solitary fi gure acting against the grain. he believes in his own creativity and his own vision, and will not negotiate this with others or with the context within which he must function. this makes him both impossible he burns drawings and goes to work as a labourer and desirable for the same reasons. howard roark (gary cooper) is both elegant and understated, demonstrating the effects of his masculinity as mind, and, handsome and sexy, demonstrating the effects of his masculinity as body. the image of the master functions as an ideal image. it is argued in contemporary psychoanalytic theory that idealization is the single most powerful inducement for identifi cation – we cannot idealize something without, at the same time, identifying with it (silverman, 1996: 2). the fi rst instance of this is the idealized image of the body. the body of the master architect is a determinate body; it permeates the architectural community at a level of identity and idealization. 67 within a fi eld in which the master holds a transcendental and heroic vision that budding architects aspire to, how can identities perceived as the non-master subjects who are crossed by signs of the female body, the black body, the migrant body, the working class body, the peasant body become great architects? if notions of genius, as that “part of us that surpasses and exceeds ourselves” (as outlined in the theme description for this periodical) are etymologically and intimately linked to notions of genealogy, as the tradition of interdependence and becoming-embodied, then the struggle is between a grand narrative of master architect always already masculine, eurocentric, white and privileged and the story of others embedded in a group (not individual), and located in a place (not universal). the idealized image of the body alludes to both genius and genealogy, in that it contains a specifi c body rendered beyond its specifi c details. how can unmasterful subjects, construed through their specifi c detail, stage themselves as provisional masters? secondly, how does this affect the canonical topography of the discipline, and what kind of architectural discourse is generated through this staging? this essay will focus on sexual difference as a specifi c detail symptomatic of the unmasterful subject. within language, a strange equivalence between the two terms ‘old masters’ and ‘old mistresses’ is revealed; the second term carries traces of entirely different histories and connotations (pollock, 1988). in the fi rst part of the essay, theories of sexuality and otherness will be introduced. the second part of the essay will elaborate on this, through a case study of zaha hadid and the effect of her presentation of her work at the american university of beirut, in late 1996. body as object / body as subject theorist and psychoanalyst, luce irigaray, argues that gender and sex, or the social and biological are interwoven, and the connection she makes between them has thereby provided a radical and infl uential theory of sexual difference. society is divided and organised in terms of two sexes, male and female, not only two genders, women and men, irigaray argues. the human subject is more like a body-subject, and the subject’s social practices are embedded in the inscriptions of a sexually specifi c body history (irigaray, 1985; grosz, 1989). a very different concept of human subjectivity emerges, one that differs from both the essentialist claim, that gender is an innate biological condition, and from the culturalist claim, that gender is constructed culturally and has nothing to do with biology. earlier theories of gender and sexuality proposed that culture (gender) and biology (sex) were either conceptualised as two separate realms, or that they were confl ated. irigaray, drawing from psychoanalytic theory and practice, develops a concept of the body as structured and inscribed, even at levels of bodily experience. irigaray refers to the morphology rather than the biology of the body, a body that is already coded and given meaning socially and historically (grosz, 1989: 111). in the practice of architecture, as in other creative work, the body also refers to the created object, its form, shape and matter. buildings become body-objects in a counterpoint gesture to irigaray’s body-subjects, acting as metaphoric expressions of subjectivity. theories of deconstruction were disseminated and found interstices 07 expression in visual fi elds. ideas about the western subject as a deconstructed subject became associated with broken looking buildings and forms. the specifi c body is also pointed to: viennese architects, coop himmelblau, ironically use images of their own faces to generate urban design schemes. their bodies do not actually generate the design, but are turned into visual representation, a twodimensional map or composition. representational techniques, already within architecture, are used to manipulate the images. at one level the process has nothing to do with their bodies, at another they joke about their own bodies as inanimate objects. unwittingly, their bodies, integral to their identity as creative artists, are turned into objects on which they act out their creative processes. notions of the other, and theories of otherness, are explored through radical and illicit body-objects, exploring that which is strange to and yet within architecture. most poetic is the work of american architect john hejduk. while he was in vladivostok, and as shown in his book, hejduk’s drawings explore the human subject of architecture user, symbolic fi gure, or fi ctional character transforming the nomadic, the homeless, or the vagabond, as fi gural concepts, into architectural imagery and signifi cation (hejduk, 1989). the subject becomes a particular kind of metaphor transporting humanity, as understood in literature, into the fi eld of architectural making. it offers a point of encounter with the opening quotation from roland barthes’ pleasure of the text, because hejduk preserves the creative process of making architecture as a dialogue between objects and subjects, but, more importantly for the understanding of barthes, as an intimacy and conversation between the reader and the work. barthes is referring to the reader, not as a subject who is merely absorbing information, or reacting to it mentally, but as a body-subject who might wander into a daydream. for example, if architecture is largely a fi eld of housing, hejduk presents the architectural community with human fi gures that have strange relations to housing. this inspires rethinking about housing. the rethinking is not about housing as a typology, but as constitutive of architecture, begging the question, “what, who and how does architecture house?” it is the precise openness of the question that enables barthes’ pleasure because it liberates ideas about architecture. titles of recent publications, including sexuality and space (colomina, 1992), building sex (betsky, 1995), architecture and body (flynn, al-sayed, smiley, marble and lobitz, 1988), the sex of architecture (agrest, conway and weisman, 1996) indicate that there is theoretical engagement with the body and sexuality in architecture. aaron betsky’s argument is founded on concepts of gender confl ated with biology, and endeavours to divide space according to a feminine interior and a masculine exterior. if, as barthes suggests, the pleasure of the text is associated with a body that pursues its own ideas, then, in the analytical essays of sexuality and space and the sex of architecture, the body is buried within architectural discourse, becoming the silent other. the body, as reader, is subjected to the density and weight of theory, or to an explicitly ideological position. in contrast, architecture and body, comprising a mixture of creative projects and visual musings rather than a collection of essays, and jennifer bloomer’s critical creative essay, “the matter of matter: a longing for gravity” in the sex of architecture, present an erotic body. the reader fi nds herself looking at, or reading literally, about a body rather than discovering the body of and within language. the text thus behaves auto-erotically, presenting its own enjoyment of itself as a body. the reader is subjected to being a witness of this performance. 69 in this discussion, my enquiry is oriented towards a study of otherness. if body, sex and gender index woman, my discussion will read for difference within woman (gunew, 1994). in particular i am thinking of two tactical moments: the moment in which a woman is different from a man, even though she may be an architect and, momentarily, a master/mistress; and the tactical moment in which women is different from woman, one woman is different from another woman (and man is different from men), a moment which coincides with culture, race, ethnicity, class and a history of the present (spivak, 1986, 1988, 1990). how are different subjects either enabled or disenabled by the bodies of, and in, architecture, and what is the possibility of agency for these subjects? subjects are positioned in a hierarchical structure of society partly through the specifi c characteristics of their bodies. ideally, their objects of production are independent of this position as subject. however, my discussion, in this essay, explores how the body is a link between subjects and objects. in a similar sense, the body is a point of collision in the perceived opposition between genius, as the impersonal divine that is within and exceeds the personal, and genealogy, that ties persons to their biological/cultural lineage. the study of a presentation by zaha hadid serves to elaborate the ongoing resistance and battle undertaken by subjects, in order to make this collision between genius and genealogy a productive and performative meeting, wherein identity is that which is mimed and constructed rather than pre-given (butler, 1990). mistresses: zaha hadid at the american university of beirut (aub) in a presentation by zaha hadid at the department of architecture and design, the american university of beirut, some specifi c factors around the theoretical concerns raised here came to the surface.1 the architectural community were the recipients of a presentation from hadid, who has emerged as an international architect and an important speaker and critic on architectural projects and design approaches. while there was much to ponder in hadid’s presentation, the questions from the audience shifted the discussion from the realm of the object, in terms of form, composition, and philosophy, to one about the role of an architect in the fi eld of identity, politics and cultural representation. zaha hadid’s work is most often categorized as deconstructionist and placed in the same fi eld as the work of bernard tschumi, lebbeus woods and daniel libeskind (noever, 1991; gulsberg, 1991; norris & benjamin, 1988). hadid’s work is not categorized with the work of the so-called regionalist architects, and hadid is not seen to belong to a specifi c architectural tradition. she does not, in any immediately visible way, make references to arab culture, to the middle east or to femininity. for example, indian charles correa, and sri lankan geoffrey bawa, are too easily placed in the regionalist category by both local and international architectural forums. in questions of ethnicity and ethnic identity, daniel libeskind, as the architect for the jewish museum in berlin, has not been explicitly discussed, or rather libeskind’s jewishness is not transferred over to the object as an essential ethnic identity. the jewish museum does not look jewish, in a traditional sense of the term, and libeskind receives projects other than jewish projects.2 the subject-object relation here is not essentialized as a fi xed and bounded cultural structure. however, there is a belief that, through his jewishness, libeskind was able to bring a profound architectural sensibility to the project. the term regionalist implies an identity intrinsically related to place, a location that is non-western, a genealogy perceived as the antithesis to western constructs of genius. 1 the presentation by zaha hadid at the school of architecture and design, the american university of beirut in 1996 coincided with a seminar course, “the body in/of architecture,” that i ran at aub in 1996 and 1997. 2 the idea of traditional jewish architecture is diffi cult to describe due to centuries of jewish diaspora. however, it is evident that libeskind’s use of the star of david is not a feature of the museum, but a less visible reference generating the design. libeskind is represented as an architect in forums that are not about jewishness, such as the competition for the world trade centre. interstices 07 in the regional category, the subject-object relation becomes essentialized, and both subject and object are contained and constrained within traditional parameters that the western subject is liberated from. hadid has noted that kenneth frampton and rem koolhaas have commented that the fl uidity of her architectural plans is associated with arab calligraphy. in response, hadid asserts that this association “has nothing to do with the organization, it has to do with the fl uidity of the pen these very fl uid spaces which seem to fl ow like a line, like a sentence” (hadid, 1995: 15). this comment specifi cally ensures that the association between the plan and arab calligraphy is not about an ethnic building tradition, but about sketching and writing. and yet it reveals a trace of the generative potential of tradition, of the original within genealogy. it might be only a small step to imagine that the work of the regional architect engenders creative architectures through that which ties her to a tradition. if hadid’s work is not identifi ed in relation to a specifi c cultural tradition or ethnicity, i argue that it is not the object of architecture that invites the unusual response to hadid’s presentation. that zaha hadid’s visibility, as an immaterial media fi gure, shifts from untouchable to embodied and specifi c is a transgressive event between audience and speaker. an intense interest about hadid’s body and appearance, and factors of identity and physicality, entered and intervened in zaha hadid’s presentation. the audience enquired whether she was an ambassador for the middle east, and whether she represented this marginal position in relation to the dominant west. after the presentation students came to me and made comments about her shoes, her jacket, and her physical presence. they found there was something especially confi dent and excessive about her appearance. the object was radically overlooked in this case. while this is only one event, it is symptomatic of the role of the body as subject in architecture. it is also a curious coincidence that three internationally acclaimed contemporary female architects are not western, not anglo-saxon, american or european: zaha hadid, itsuko hasegawa, kazuyo sejima. the body according to mary douglas, in her radical anthropological work, purity and danger (1966), the body is invested with social demarcations; its perception and experience is mediated through a cultural map of social coherence. “the body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious” and that “all margins are dangerous. …any structure of ideas is vulnerable at its margins” (douglas, 1966: 138-145). somewhere between the objectivity of zaha hadid’s architectural work, and the embodied subjectivity of her presentation, a certain boundary is crossed, so that what should have been separate is joined. in this case, there is no tidy distinction between the representation of the object and the presentation of the subject. it seems that hadid’s presence and presentation as a subject is incongruous with the representation of the object for which she is recognised. if there is symmetry between the subject and object in canonical production, in this event, it is unwittingly disturbed. the debate that resulted amongst the audience and the speaker was an attempt to redraw, to make right again the institutional and disciplinary lines. it was a way to turn away from the fragile lines and orders between the objects and subjects in the structure of knowledge in architecture. 71 if, as in contemporary writing in psychoanalytic theory and identity studies, the body is not determined by nature and biology, the question of hadid’s body is not simply a physical one, but becomes a cultural terrain of signifi cation. the body as signifying and physical, rather than the body as metaphor, or the body as process, is a concept that intervenes in the discourse of architecture. zaha hadid has already crossed the structural lines that divide woman/architect, oriental/western, local/foreign. if questions of the body as subject are marginal to central canonical interests of the architectural edifi ce, of form, design and urban strategy, this particular presentation made visible the interwoven layers between them. most visible is her dress and appearance. hadid is reputed to wear clothing by the japanese designer, issey miyake. on this occasion the jacket hadid was wearing black and made of the folded fabric that miyake has invented appeared to be one of his pieces. the jacket behaved like a shawl, loosely sitting on hadid’s shoulders. the weather always seems to be warm in beirut; it was that day, though it was autumn. hadid’s simple black soft dress set the background for the jacket. on her feet was a pair of slip-on shoes with a small black heel and a clear plastic strap over her toes. they were somewhat like cinderella shoes, redolent of fantasy and dress-ups.3 hadid has an expressive, strong face and fl amboyant hair that complements her stature. miyake’s clothing is noted for its innovative technology and imagery, referencing the east and dismantling a simple division between east and west (miyake, 1997). this is demonstrated in his interest in the space between the body and the garment, and for allowing the female form to create the shape of the garment. the star architect’s dress functions as a eurocentric global code, following the miesian dictum of ‘less is more’, and making the body more or less invisible. invariably black and tailored garments are structurally set against the form of the body, rather than sensorially responsive to the kinetics of the body as was hadid’s jacket. in dematerializing the body, the code of dress, in the west, functions predominantly as a sign. it does not entangle itself with the body as physical and sensual matter, and attempts to avoid historical or cultural discrepancies. zaha hadid produced a version of the west through the code of black and designer label; but also produced a version of the west’s image of the orient. her performance is differently crafted, reproducing an exotic and feminine imagery through a play of signifi ers of femininity, and perhaps an irony about an oriental woman/architect. her dress, as appearance, is in play with her body, making both strangely visible. it is a discomforting visibility. the audience found themselves doing in-disciplinary things looking at her not her work, stealing moments for their own gaze at a body rather than at the architectural objects. the audience is confronted by the body as subject, initially via hadid’s subversive manner of dressing. in its most radical sense, an oriental appropriating the occident (and in hadid’s case, especially englishness) is perhaps explained as a kind of mimicry that shows up the west, as well as the east, as an artifi ce, a kind of masking or dressing that makes for theatrical play and performance. the effect is one of restaging appropriation. if hadid has become an internationally acclaimed architect through particular routes and economies within the west, her dress displayed that she was not strictly assimilated in that role. hadid looked like a foreign woman, but this appeared to be an act rather than an authentic position. in this sense, her presentation was like a performance of a creative actress subverting both the central place of eurocentric subjects and the authentic places of others. 3 the way clothes have played a role in hadid’s role as a designer and as an identity are noted in an interview in which hadid states that she used to wrap herself in fabric, tying it and fastening it with pins; and later that she would wear designed clothes upside down (hadid, 1995: 9). interstices 07 the problematic is not hadid’s presentation of her work, but the presence of her body. zaha hadid displayed an image of a non-master (an eccentric foreign woman) and yet she was speaking in the mode of a master architect. what is being threatened here is the neat division between the west and the non-west. if hadid’s work is already central to economies of the west, her identity, as not strictly part of this economy, affected that place of her work. identity theorists propose that the difference that is encountered in the body as subject is always an indigestible or irreducible difference (gunew, 1993: 3, 9). an international architect is assumed to have a disembodied subjectivity which, in the presentation, coincided with a specifi c subjectivity, through the body as subject. the idea of a disembodied subjectivity is therefore a misreading of real practices and presentations. the fantasy body of ‘master’ is precisely not mistress, not arab, not black, not asian and not working class.4 it is the antithesis of indigenous, to the extent that these signs belong somewhere. in this sense, the canon is bought into a fi eld of encounter with the margin in and through the body of the subject. the specifi c identity position that enters the scene of architecture literally changes the terms of the discourse (gunew, 1992). the specifi c body renders itself visible because it is not the same as the determinate body of the master architect, and its visibility calls into question the subject position of the architect. is this architect in the right place? what gives this architect the authority to present her work in a masterly way? how can we take the work of this architect seriously? the discourse shifts from one about the architecture as an object of study, about the work and the symbolic production, to one about the architect as a specifi c subject. difference identities are not fi xed in time or place they are not ahistorical rather they are produced within institutional parameters and disciplinary structures (hall, 1996: 4). two levels of symmetry are disrupted in the visibility of the specifi c body as subject: fi rstly, the projective symmetry between the subject and the object; secondly, the refl ective symmetry between the specifi c subject and the constitutive subject of the discipline of architecture. psychoanalytic theorist, ellie ragland-sullivan, explains lacan’s mirror stage as a moment in the subject’s awareness of her own refl ection, from the point of view of another. as a result, the ego is an imaginary form, both alien and yet also whole (ragland-sullivan, 1987: 16-30). the mirror stage is not a developmental phase in lacanian theory; rather, misrecognition repeatedly acts like an interruption to symmetrical refl ections of the subject, and between the subject and the object. if man is perceived as constitutive of humankind, and if whiteness is perceived as constitutive of a hegemonic humanity because it has the capacity to be no colour or all colours, then a misrecognition, or a cultural mirror stage, would occur precisely at the moment that such a myth was dismantled. the excess and limit of whiteness is a specifi cally coloured human subject, as the excess and limit of man is a specifi c man or woman (gunew, 1994: 31). white is invisible only until it encounters something which is not white, its own margin, its own limit, something that interrupts the fi ction of its mythical fi eld of representation. stuart hall argues that identity arises at the point of intersection between the political fi eld of the social realm and the psychoanalytic conception of subjectivity (hall, 1996: 2-10). the function of misrecognition, and the concept of ideology in 4 i have found that ‘international speakers’ in other disciplines might also be subjected to this type of questionnaire. recently a presentation by slavoj žižek, “the only good neighbour is a dead neighbour,” (the university of melbourne, 27th july 2001) inspired such a response. in one example, žižek cited an incident about a reaction to him as a representative of the balkans – barbaric, volatile, violent a reaction that crossed over the line of the usual tolerance and political correctness given to specifi c signifi cant ‘others’. in that moment, žižek, the master theorist, and žižek, the symbol of balkanness, coincided, and žižek projected that coincidence back to the audience. 73 hall’s social theory, elaborate that “identities are constructed through, not outside, difference” (hall, 1996: 4). theorists, including jacques derrida (1981) and judith butler (1993), have termed this the subject’s constitutive outside, “the radically disturbing recognition that it is only through the relation to the other, the relation to what it is not, to precisely what it lacks” that the term identity can have a positive function (hall, 1996: 4). in other words, the subject is a precarious sort of identity in a process of redefi nition against the grain, against that which it excludes. what might be seen as a dominant discourse in architecture, invested through the object of architecture and body-objects, is contingent on what it delimits to its outside, or its margins. in my discussion, this limit is defi ned as the body as subject. it can be read as the encounter between genius (the masterly subject who exceeds her personal boundaries) and genealogy (the manifestation of her material lineage) in the becoming of a great architect. it would be a mistake to think that the reaction to zaha hadid’s presentation was due only to the traces of her gender, ethnicity, culture in other words to her identity as a signal of origins. histories of origin, co-existing within a subject speaking in a masterful way, are imagined as journeys and routes which suggest movements rather than static points. they indicate a radical enunciative position in hadid’s presentation: not who zaha hadid is, her being, but rather the process of becoming hadid; not a projected restrictive genealogy, but the genius within a genealogy that is becoming of interest to the fi eld of representation in architecture. sneja gunew describes such practices of identity: so here we are, ethnics who are pagan or heathen in the sense that we are not part of the dominant ethos of this culture – hence we mimic its character at times in order to produce our own performative gestures of a different aesthetics, a different rhetoric (1993: 11). the subversive impact of hadid’s presentation is not strategic or planned; it is an outcome of a continual readjustment in the relation between subjectivity and disciplinary boundaries. the architect who enters the discourse from the margins is threatening, if her enunciative position is contradictory and complex when participating in an intellectual fi eld of sophistication, irony, double vision, hybridity, subversive play, or mimicry. why? because that sort of intelligence, insight or pleasure threatens the stability of the normative subject of western culture and civilization, whose constitutive outside becomes visible as an excess that is central to its own construction. in an uncanny way a similar destabilisation occurs with the normative other, the non-western subject constructed through western historical delineations: minority individuals are always treated and forced to experience themselves generically. coerced into a negative generic subject position, the oppressed individual responds by transforming that position into a positive collective one. and therein, precisely, lies the basis of a broad minority coalition: in spite of the enormous differences between various minority cultures (gunew, 1994: 42). interstices 07 conclusion hadid is recognised for developing a strange mathematical basis to her drawings, not a strictly western perspective. hadid’s design for the peak club, hong kong, 1982-1983, won the pritzker architecture prize (hadid was the fi rst woman to win the prize in its 26 year history) and has been recognised for its extraordinary visual imagery using 89 degree perspective. the perspective projection interfaces the picture plane surface tilted at 89 rather than 90 degrees. drawing on hong kong urbanism kowloon crowds and the city’s high-rise prowess hadid had planned to excavate and rebuild the landscape. in drawing after drawing, hadid has produced a new geology that combines this urbanism with the organicism of the mountain. through an extraordinary mathematical construction, the perspective approaches its own margin and excess, its own planar surface materiality. it produces a strangely surreal image of topography and building, in which the distinction between ground and fi gure is dismantled, and both are strangely fl oating beyond the grasp of reality. it is a kind of morphological genealogy of hong kong. in one slide during the presentation, hadid who paints her architectural drawings revealed the edges of the painting, unmasked, showing at once that the construction of precise lines is dependent on a highly extensive labour of the hand. hadid’s presentation exemplifi ed a labour of love, and also indicated a substantial body of work. that the architect is both the subject of this work the creative origin and also that the work preoccupies the architect the subject is pre-occupied by the object becomes a fantasy about the master architect. the object extends the subject backwards and forwards. such a relationship between the body as object and the body as subject is circumscribed by desire and pleasure. it belongs to the hand of the master in the gesture of object-making and object-love. transferred to a non-master (a mistress, as language has it, or a slave, as in philosophy) it is a pleasure that risks transgression. it is a transgression because a gesture of object-making and object-love in the hand of a woman has associations that are entangled in a web of sexual difference, the difference between a master and a mistress. a coincidence between genealogy and genius becomes a transgressive act.5 references agrest, d. conway, p., & weisman, l.k. (eds.). (1996). the sex of architecture. new york: harry n. abrams. barthes, r. (1975). the pleasure of the text (r. miller, trans.). new york: hill & wang. bloomer, j. (1996). the matter of matter: a longing for gravity. in agrest, d., conway, p., & weisman, l.k. (eds.). the sex of architecture (pp. 161-166). new york: harry n. abrams. betsky. a. (1995). building sex: men, women, architecture and the construction of sexuality. new york: william morrow. butler, j. (1990). gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. london: routledge. butler, j. (1993). bodies that matter. london: routledge. colomina, b. (ed.). (1992). sexuality and space. new york: princeton architectural press. 5 in a similar sense, a gesture of object-making and object-love in the hand of a man who is a slave or a native has associations that are entangled in a web of sexuality and power, the difference between a master and a non-master, a slave. 75 derrida, j. (1981). positions (a. bass, trans.). chicago: university of chicago press. douglas, m. (1966). purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. harmondsworth: pelican books. flynn, s., al-sayed, m., smiley, d., marble, s., & lobitz, d. (eds.). (1988). architecture and body: the special project from precis, columbia architecture journal. new york: rizzoli. grosz, e. (1989). sexual subversions: three french feminists. sydney: allen & unwin. gulsberg, j. (ed.). (1991). deconstruction: a student guide (uia journal of architectural theory and criticism). london: academy editions. gunew, s. (1992). pmt (post modernist tensions): reading for (multi)cultural difference. in s. gunew (ed.), striking chords: multicultural literary interpretations (pp.36-48). sydney: allen& unwin. gunew, s. (1993). feminism and the politics of irreducible differences: multiculturalism/ ethnicity/race. in s. gunew & a. yeatman (eds.), feminism and the politics of difference (pp. 1-19). st. leonards, n.s.w.: allen & unwin. gunew, s. (1994). framing marginality: multicultural literary studies. carlton, vic.: melbourne university press. hadid, z. (1995). conversation with zaha hadid. interview by luis rojo de castro in el croquis (73), 8-21. hall, s. (1996). who needs ‘identity’? in s. hall & p. du guy (eds.), questions of cultural identity (pp. 1-17). london: sage.hejduk, j. (1989). riga, vladivostok, lake baikal: a work by john hejduk. new york: rizzoli. irigaray, l. (1985). this sex which is not one (c. porter with c. burke, trans.), ithaca, n.y.: cornell university press. miyake, i. (1997). issey miyaki: the third way. i.d. magazine (march/april), 54-59, 97. noever, p. (ed.). (1991). architecture in transition: between deconstruction and new modernism. munich: prestel. norris, c. & benjamin, a. (1988). what is deconstruction? london: academy editions. pollock, g. (1988). vision and difference: femininity, feminisms and the histories of art. london: routledge. ragland-sullivan, e. (1987). jacques lacan and the philosophy of psychoanalysis. urbana: university of illinois press. silverman, k. (1996). the threshold of the visible world. new york: routledge. spivak, g. c. (1986). imperialism and sexual difference. oxford literary review (8, 1-2), 225240. spivak, g. c. (1988). can the subaltern speak? in c. nelson and l. grossberg (eds.), marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271-313). basingstoke: macmillan education. spivak, g. c. (1990). questions of multi-culturalism (interview with s. gunew). in s. harasym (ed.), the post-colonial critic: interviews, strategies, dialogues (pp.59-66). new york: routledge. drawing variants drawing variants: tilting the theodolite barbara tuck and sarah treadwell interstices 4 drawing variants: tilting the theodolite 1 projection (f i g 1 ): comforted by the interior, nineteenth century surveyor john wallis barnicoat1 drew up a chair. its legs, tangling with his, scraped across the wooden floor and he steadied it so as to maintain the regularity of the line he was inscribing in his journal. seated in the moutere survey house, at the top of the south (middle) island, the lines on his page were a continuation of the lines cut by the surveying gang through the scented scrub and tangled vegetation, imaginings about increasingly elusive memories and a future yet to be constructed. he scratched a small plan of the house. surveyor j. w. barnicoat kept a journal during his time of employment with the new zealand company. enfolded within the volumes are architectural drawings of survey houses that he built and inhabited recorded with plans and perspectives. the architectural plan, as conceived by frascari, is a poetic production of building.2 not only an analytic or prefiguring operation the architectural plan also registers the tactility of building.3 selected from barnicoat’s 1841-44 journal are architectural drawings which are read as poetic and tactile productions of colonial domesticity, as deferred and imaginative material assemblages that resonate with, and predict, twentieth century constructions of domesticity in new zealand. aligned with the reading of barnicoat’s journals is a perusal of a book of architectural drawings by ernst plishke.4 titled design and living it was produced for the new zealand government in 1947 as a survey of the existing and future housing.5 both books consider architectural conditions in new zealand, one at the time of colonisation and one during modernisation. drawings by barnicoat and plishke are brought together in writing and drawing with regard to relationships between colonization, modernity and domesticity. the assemblages are seen to involve an inclination between states and times; a sliding into and out of material, shifting from the remembered to the forgotten to the imagined. in 1844 barnicoat stood with theodolite and chain in the landscape, making drawings as devices for reshaping the land (f i g 2 ). pencil sharpened like a lens, the field book was inscribed with the profiles of the land and garnered measurements hard won across swampy ground or slippery dry tussock.6 sighting across the terrain the distant view (a projection of the new ordering) provided his worn body, momentarily, with respite from the hard immediate ground. projection (fig 3): at night barnicoat withdrew from the unrelenting sky. the intransigent nature of his partner’s disposition and the appearance of prohibited alcohol on the survey made welcome the chair by the fire. looking down at the chair barnicoat imagined the touch of its wings on his shoulder blades. the chair insists on the memory of gravity and subject to importation it records the architect’s travels as a souvenir of styles. repository of the weight of dreams and retaining a memory of the bodily in its form, the chair inclines, sliding between states. thus lodged the body is a mere slippery suspension between the visual and the tactile. as a siting/sighting device the chair is discovered in both surveyor and architect’s written and drawn accounts of interiority and domesticity. the chair inhabits survey houses and architectural surveys as an articulation or interpretive device for reading the imprints of interiority and conditions of domesticity in new zealand architecture. ernst plishke’s chairs, strung through time, a gleaming metallic thread, reassemble and reconfigure past structures of domesticity and propose new definitions. casting and carving, with laminations, extrusions, mouldings and mass productions plishke observed; although these considerations may come under the heading of ‘furnishing’ it will ... become obvious ... that ... a clear distinction between ‘house’ on one hand and ‘furniture’ on the other is no longer possible.7 assemblage one: the moutere survey station (fig 4). the moutere survey station, located at the northern end of the south island of new zealand, was drawn by barnicoat in 1842 in plan and in perspective. an instance of the colonial ‘domestic’ and a proposition of control the architectural drawing can be read as a interstices 4 drawing variants: tilting the theodolite 2 prescription for social and spatial relations that still linger in housing in new zealand. capturing a point on the grid (the grid that parcelled and, temporarily, re-apportioned the land) the moutere survey house (fig 5) occupied it provisionally, temporally, in a brief engagement with a specific point. the grid effectively organized both t h e l a n d a n d t h e m o d e o f occupation which was bracketed around one point in space. occupation of a bracket or parenthesis suggests an uncategorised assertion within an existing order. the colonial and domestic conditions, always unruly, nevertheless, collect around a system of control. the body, bracketted by a chair in a temporary partial containment, is an embodiment of domestic relations with the apportioned, appropriated land. the moutere house, as drawn, is a divided house. there is no internal circulation from room to room. the back to back corners describe a separation and the impossibility of communal relationships. communality was, of course, prevalent in the local (and disparaged) pa. the imagined future in the images of the moutere house is one of a conjunction between proximity and separation. the walls, which separate and divide, are also drawn as inhabitable marking out a boundary and containing space. the walls become passage like, a linear space that casts the rooms into an external condition, a form echoed later in the central corridor of the colonial architectural form of the villa. signalling an inbetween condition the gaps in the walls of domesticity resound with the separations and collisions of inhabitation. ornament and reproduction coalesce and inhabit the centre of the plan of the moutere survey house. the delicate pattern of the thickened cross is a decorative and potentially repetitive detail; every point of the surveyor’s grid could be articulated with such an ornamental floral organ. every joint is such a thickening; conjunction flowers. the junction in this image furnishes the domestic as a decorative or formal articulation of social conditions. the walls leading to the jointing are ornamental containers of volatile combinations; the reproductive, the ‘married couple,’ were to be separated from single men and ‘surveyors.’ the separations, however, do not avoid the possibility of contamination. in the chimney escaping gases mingle, the conjunction is fruitful. the moutere house plan, diagrammatically foundational, is bedded in a domesticity. the married couples have no beds, surveyors have bunks at cross purposes and the single men have aligned and double bunks. rather than an oppositional structure of the sexual, a horizontal penetrated by a vertical,8 the moutere survey house is an inclination between two states; both and neither properly. an angular house, concerned with deflection; deflection of words, theory, emotions and blows. the corners, inclined between parts/people/states, in the coolness of conflict, hold out the possibility of contact. they also locate the cross piece. the house registers both conflict and the impossibility of reconciliation within and without. the plan on the page of barnicoat’s journal touches the north point which nudges the plan with its loss of instinctive orientation; it spins. the wall lines hook around, gathering space, projecting the corners o f t h e house outwards, spinning the centre in a wayward movement. bereft of familiar navigational aids it travels. projection (f i g 6 ): a world and a hundred years later ernst plishke, refugee and architect, arrived in new zealand, architecture his vista. suffocated by the clean empty air plishke dragged his chair into the courtyard. out into the air which he proceeded to construct as internal. caught in the crook of the house, outside the house, he imagined an architecture to reconstruct family life. he drew a chair and then another. in pliskche’s images of the l shaped dwelling chair a n d h o u s e a r e b o u n d together (fig 7). the plan collects a corner, inclining around the open courtyard it repeats the formal structure of the chair. it marks the moment of solitary reflection the individual on the house, the house upon the suburb. yard and chair, lightly poised, are empty in a landscape that runs to the horizon promising only solitude in this new world. plishke wrote of his l shaped house; the straight forms of the house are continued even in the paving and the garden pool to bind the house into one unbroken unit. the idea of keeping everything as light and thin as technically possible is carried through also in the interior design. each chair is made according to its own use and purpose. the dining-chairs are as light as possible; the reading-chair is rather more comfortable.9 t h e c o r n e r t h a t i s t h e l s h a p e d h o u s e s e e m s a s a segmented remnant of moutere. that survey house, collector of oddities, disseminator of regularities, gathered such corners together in a middle ground (fig 8). the gathering of contours, seemingly reasonable, tilts the plan undoing an apparent but fallacious symmetry. land marks, contour lines, decorate this implacable plan of the survey station interstices 4 drawing variants: tilting the theodolite 3 which caused the land to be temporarily considered disposable, negligible or commodified. below the plan barnicoat offers another version of the house (f i g 4 ). epitomizing ‘home,’ the gabled roof contains a ‘proper’ notion of family. four walls offer the propriety of enclosure and containment. this house is a personification of now familiar constructions. projection: the two faced house offers a shaded face, the end wall/skin with a central dark door/mouth and winking eye/windows, fringed with strands of timber/hair. the other face split, doubled, a light skin/wall speaking with two voices reflecting the divided nature of the interior. the faces, back to back, echo the carved pou that gaze out through paua shell eyes from the palisaded fence of pa. cast from internal conditions the singular and divided roof indicates divisions that question any unity of domestic structure (f i g 9 ). where the walls in the plan occur in elevation there are only door openings. doors, traditional hinges, mechanisms of adjustment, here mark an altered condition, an inability or a refusal to speak with a singular voice. the moutere survey house idealised as thatched cottage unpicks the persistent myth that in the colonies a chance existed to escape the ‘containment’ of domesticity. it still rehearses the myth in that the category ‘man alone’ is allocated more space than the area assigned to a ‘married couple.’ but the house also constructs the possibility of solitude and separation as occurring within the confines of domesticity. barnicoat’s domesticity signals a double move of containment and separation. isolation, a traditional attribute of nature, was in new zealand already framed as a domestic condition. projection: leaning forward on his chair to catch the shadowy candlelight10 barnicoat marked out a zero point on his scale beneath his perspective of moutere survey station and, carefully blotting the ink, allowed for the possibility of an overlapping of experience and imagination. the small linear scale on the drawing (f i g 5 ) asserts another state or an inclination between two conditions. the drawn architecture refers to another reality, another condition of existence; scale as a k i n d o f b o d y c o v e r i n g , a h a r d s h e a t h i n g o f a s o f t condition. barnicoat drew small steps, insect-like marking out of territory; ‘feet’ moving in a linear fashion mapping across domains. the graphic marks of the scale on the page provide a notation of the animal condition of drawing. the meaning of scale lodged neither in the image nor in the words but instead between sign and gaze. the scaling device ensures mobility, lack of placement and the possibility of being in two places at once. barnicoat’s chair (lurching on the earth floor) is another such scalar device with its insistence on a particular body in architecture. moutere survey station constituted a standing point. a station-point from where surveying and recording devices ordered and parcelled up an already owned and occupied land. the process of constructing a system of occupation of the external world did not occur on a blank slate but within, on, through and over another system of land use. here the violence of the survey (to become bodily and bloody for barnicoat at wairau) is repeated and masked as a domestic construction. the survey station is also a house redolent of familial occupation. the devices of the surveyor are already domestic items; their inscribed white sheets already bloodied. assemblage two: the ‘weimai’ survey house (fig 10, 11). barnicoat wrote in his journal reflecting on his experience with the moutere survey station; from the experience of this i am convinced that the cheapest p l a n i s t o l a y t h e h o u s e o u t o n e r o o m d e e p o n l y t h e chimney’s should be back to back also where wood is to hand, poles can be put up quicker than clay. indeed i would have the posts about 4 inches in diameter put as close together as they would stand leaving cracks and chinks only to be stopped by clay.11 barnicoat’s drawing of the ‘weimai’ survey house p l a n d e p i c t s t h r e e r o o m s i n a l i n e (fig 12 ). two fireplaces back to back across a folding line wall share a chimney. on one side of the wall is a single self contained room. on the other side are two rooms with internal access. the chimney is caught in a line of replication, as a marker of reproductive potential. the reproductive nature of line, lineage, suggests a colonial construction of another blood line culture. a line whose continuation is signalled by the projecting purlins. a system that is described by barnicoat as “one room deep,” the singularity not negating the possibility of depth, a conjunction of individuals not swallowed up by notions of the ‘whole’ or the ‘master plan.’ plishke intervenes (fig 13): each piece of furniture has good pure lines and its use has clearly determined its shape. its structure is not concealed by superfluous ornament. since each piece has its own interstices 4 drawing variants: tilting the theodolite 4 purpose, the method of its construction is quite independent of that of any other piece ... chair, table, sofa, bookcase are, so to speak, independent individuals and not part of a set. the same freedom is kept in the placing of furniture in a room.12 stretched out in a line (fig 12) the plan consists of adjacent segments separated but in back to back proximity with an assertion of the ‘room’ as a primary form. the construction of the house as room both particularises (like the surveyor’s vision) and also universalises in that replication renders all individuals as one. a simple, sideways replication in non-hierarchical addition, the ‘weimai’ house is a collection of units strung across a landscape mapping out another domestic structure. survey lines are constructed as linkages mapping out provisional structures that register continual shifts of the body in landscape or house (f i g 1 4 ) . t h e n e w landscape/domestic narratives and their incremental displacements are pegged out in space, the shifting positions reinforcing and questioning each other simultaneously. a line of rooms stretching through space operates as a divide (fig 12 ). the weimai survey house is constructed as a palisade, a line of closely marshalled posts, creating here and there, home and otherwise.13 the palisaded boundary defensively anticipates and prevents trespass (fig 15). survey pegs leave their traces within the walls; the home is fortified. across and through the fence certain property is regulated through exchange (food, arms, women, stories). the defensive house tightly controls the nature of the interior and the skin openings but the system of exchange and the delineation of enclosure makes illicit passage inevitable. l o d g e d i n t h e l i n e a s a f i g u r e o f conjunction the fireplace, sitting on the fence, records a jointing, the variable nature of union. the figure chair/fireplace (fig 16), drawn back-to-back, is an overlapping of time, of bodies. it insistently recalls the theoretical to the bodily, in its doubled addition, repeated union. unsettling the settled, the four legs of the chair scrape across the floor. faint lines groove the earth.14 in the line of rooms that was the ‘weimai’ survey house the extra room, past the mirrored rooms (fig 17 ), contains a sketchy row of bunks and a north point (fig 10 ). turning, moving to the sun, the middle bunk unreflected and inscribed by the compass, marks the trajectory of dreaming desires. projection: stumbling from his bed in the darkness barnicoat negotiated the tight interior. early morning sharp frost caused his eyes to water as he stepped out of the house and drew in the first gulp of morning air. the warm dank residue of house and lungs momentarily clouded the clear light. below the plan line is barnicoat’s sketch of the weimai survey house. the unified exterior belies the string of rooms in the interior. the assertion of the individual, new units in the colonial situation, is concealed by the importation of the self-contained family. barnicoat’s sketch of fabricated domesticity is set in a familiar landscape of foreground with picturesque object and a background of sublime nature. the house is positioned between everyday objects and the ether; grounded but with its smoke joining the clouds above. family life is captured in this sectional construction. the roof, draped garment-like across the structure, is suspended between the divisive walls that it both conceals and contains. a cloth thrown across the bones of domesticity making a tentative, lightweight construction at odds with notions of solidity and permanence of ‘home.’ projection: barnicoat added to the letter to his wife describing how he missed her and longed for a time of meeting. he sketched the weimai survey station (fig 18), solidly familiar, with the rustic and unusual construction as evidence of his exotic location. the chimney quietly smoked beside him and in his image in solidarity with notions of contented domesticity. the drawing depicted two paths leading to two front doors, one prominent and decisive, the other faded in the undergrowth. the chimney, shifting along the ridge, promotes one path and door as the main entrance and plays down the peculiarity of a home with two front doors. the house almost a p p e a r s t o b e p r o p e r b u t f o r t h e a p p e a r a n c e o f a tent to one side. the tent is rendered as a minimal, inconsequential object like the trolley and barrel. however the repeated sag of the ridges connects tent and house and suggests that there was a need to supplement the nature of family life. domesticity might not be not self contained. projection: at the end of the month barnicoat again drew the weimai house (fig 19). this time he thought he might catch the mail home. walking to the end of the path he turned and looked back catching the house unaware. he drew. the ridge of the house still had, however, a life of its own, it waved and curled as the fabric hung from the interstices 4 drawing variants: tilting the theodolite 5 structure. attention paid to the line gave it an insouciance that started to render the image of domesticity frivolous. in this image the house has become background to the tent which authoritatively occupies the central s p a c e . t h e p a t h s t i l l l e a d s t o t h e h o u s e but it is partially blocked by the usually inconsequential barrel. at the base of the hills, perhaps set in welcome opposition to an overwhelming nature, the house has acquired (water leaked and ground shifted) a fluidity and independence that barnicoat managed to eliminate only in the tightly stretched tent. the tent, portable and mobile, was detached from ideas of domesticity and homeliness. a room running free as a minimal degree of occupancy. lightly pegged, it would leave only small puncture wounds, the imprint of a chair, on departure. barnicoat recorded in his journal his own occupancy of such a lightly fabricated domesticity (fig 20). he was architecturally mobile, shifting sites, and shifty within architectural worlds. his encampment on the wairau plain indicated a knowledge of local architectural forms. barnicoat wrote; our encampment consists of a gable tent, a round and an oval one. we have besides put up a skeleton house on poles & covered it with a tilt-cover. this [is] our store-house and is intend[ed] as rat-proof.15 the encamped domestic is multiple and temporary, as in an arrangement of furniture. the object like nature of the tent is apparent in barnicoat’s closed depictions of their forms. the arrangement of these very separate complete structures seems to be haphazard, side by side and overlapping with no overall plan. the line of rooms that was the ‘weimai’ house had drifted apart. efforts at control of this wayward domesticity may be discerned in the military and ecclesiastical references in the image. ‘home’ is couched in military forms, the circular tents of battlefields. even the tilt cloth alludes indirectly to jousting. the ‘tiltcloth’ or awning, however, is a light covering that reveals a minimal skeleton frame of the structure beneath and reasserts the possibility of mobility in architecture. even the forms with an independent frame are lightly fabricated. plishke comments; no. 2 is more capricious in design ( f i g 2 1 ). i t i s n o t without a certain playful and ‘occasional’ fluency of line. there is no severity about it. the frame is made of bent laminated plywood and the seat is quite obviously put on top of it as an independent part.16 this settlement, a temporary construction of home, involved in often contentious acquisition of land, nevertheless drew on architectural forms of the indigenous culture. the gable tent/house in the drawing is similar in form to the gabled chief’s house drawn by the missionaries in which the gable ends reach the ground. the store house, covered with the awning, refers more directly to the indigenous store house or pataka. barnicoat was aware of the existing architecture of new zealand. he later drew a plan, elevation and sketch of a chief’s house on ruapuke island (f i g 2 2 ) i n w h i c h h e r e c o r d e d the interior arrangements including the positioning of the “mats for seating and sleeping.” he later incorporated mats as a unit of domestic furnishing/functioning.17 mats as seats make the body mobile in relationship to the ground, shifting in all dimensions (f i g 2 3 ). as clothing they furnish the body. a covering or an o r n a m e n t t o t h e f l o o r , t h e m a t i s a l s o l o c a t e d a s part of the vertical walls (as woven structure or tukutuku) in the meeting house (f i g 2 4 ). between european categories of furniture, furnishing, structure and clothing the mat, like a worked over drawing, is an articulated surface. the tent as pegged fabric/mat similarly mediates between categories of furnishing, furniture and architecture.18 the chair poised between verticality and the prone is a moment of balance between the axes of orthoganality and describes another condition, the inclined (f i g 2 5 ) . a s a l e a n i n g , a deviation and a bent, architecture as proposed by barnicoat and mediated by plishke is epitomised in an assemblage of furnishings, the chair, the mat and the tent (fig 26). furnishing the land and furnishing a domestic condition they have an allegiance to and a persistent deviation from the orthogonal traditions of architecture. the house (f i g 2 7 ) shaken free from the singular stable form of ‘home’ and another condition of housing, multiple, temporary and mobile, is proposed. notes 1 john wallis barnicoat (1814-1905) was born in england, and trained as an engineer. he arrived in n e l s o n i n 1 8 4 2 a n d w o r k e d a s a s u r v e y o r f o r t h e new zealand company. una platts, nineteenth century new zealand artists: a guide and handbook (christchurch: avon press, 1980). interstices 4 drawing variants: tilting the theodolite 6 2 marco frascari, “plans (3) ichnography: the topical enigma of architectural plans,” terrazzo (spring 1989) no. 2. 3 the plan, the ubiquitous architectural drawing, is, in new zealand, considered to be essential in that it is instrumental to the act of building, the preferred condition of architecture. new zealand architecture, it has been argued, comes from colonial traditions of self sufficiency and practicality, privileging working ‘directly’ with ‘material.’ notions of direct experience in shaping a ‘natural’ land underpin much of the writing about colonial life. this paper, however, attempts to insist on reading the corporeal into the theoretical and the speculative. 4 e r n s t p l i s h k e i s a viennese architect, born 1903, w h o a s a refugee from the second world war arrived in new zealand in 1939. he worked initially as a draughtsman and later as an architect until 1962 when he returned to europe. linda tyler, the architecture of e. a. plishke in new zealand: 1939-1962 ( m a thesis, university of canterbury, 1986). 5 e. a. plishke, design and living (wellington: department of internal affairs, 1947). 6 ruth allen quotes surveyor curling young in her history of nelson’s settlement, “‘there never was s u c h a p l a c e i n that respect a t t h e top o f t h e mountains and along the side swamps without end.’ the deep bogs and the raupo, bulrushes and giant flax growing therein made survey w o r k i n some areas a nightmare.” ruth m. allen, nelson a history of early settlement (wellington: a. h. & a. w. reed, 1965), p. 197. 7 e. a. plishke design and living (wellington: department of internal affairs, 1947), p. 45. 8 a. loos, “ornament und verbrechen,” (1908) bendetto gravagnola adolf loos (new york: rizzoli, 1982), p. 67. 9 e. a. plishke design and living (wellington: department of internal affairs, 1947), p. 41. 10 barnicoat during the construction o f t h e ‘weimai’ house wrote in his journal “we advanced rapidly with our house and look forward with pleasure to sitting under cover where we can light a candle” journal (wellington: alexander turnbull library, 1841-44), p. 8. 11 john wallis barnicoat, journal (wellington: alexander turnbull library, 1841-44), p. 34. 12 e. a. plishke, design and living (wellington: department of internal affairs, 1947), p. 33. 13 “drawing the line somewhere is an activity of last resort. ... vigorously maintaining the space that remains, it i s a line that a t t e m p t s t o f i x a limit. these ruled lines are according to sir joseph reynolds ‘to be considered fences placed only where trespass is expected.’ ... this seemingly paranoid prescription fails to realize that fences are also made for sitting.” r. durham crout, “red lines,” implementing architecture: exposing the paradigm surrounding the implements and the implementation of architecture (atlanta: the architecture society & nexus press, 1988), unpaginated. 14 “this line marks a ... feeling that something is about t o g o t o o f a r . . . . h e r e , t h e l i n e e x p o s e s itself as ‘trespassing’ its own limit. it reveals that beneath its sharp edge is an ambiguous and blurred foundation. the act o f d r a w i n g t h e line somewhere contains within it the very mechanisms of its own dismantling. in other words this line situates itself somewhere between sense and non-sense.” r. durham crout, “red lines,” unpaginated. 15 barnicoat journal, may 15 1843. text on drawing, alexander turnbull library, wellington c21763. 16 e. a. plishke, design and living (wellington: department of internal affairs, 1947), p. 17. 17 see his designs for maori housing in nelson 1843. barnicoat journal , p. 87. 18 catherine ingraham points out that; “architecture is a discipline that defines its boundaries and design capacities according to the workings of orthogonality (strictly defined, the right-angledness of the line) ... even in epistemological and representational accounts of its own artistic practice, architecture relies on a kind of orthogonality, a linear movement from drawing to building, architect to drawing.” catherine ingraham, “initial proprieties: architecture a n d t h e s p a c e o f t h e line,” sexuality & space e d . beatriz colomina (new york: princeton architectural press, 1992), p. 264. 12� review 2 by john walsh what’s the collective noun for a gathering of architects? how about a ‘muttering’? as the opening night of auckland museum’s the new zealand house proceeded, initial murmurings in the reception area gave way to more audible grumblings. some homonymic confusion at the drinks table? (“more whine, sir?”) no; the cause of the discontent lay elsewhere—upstairs, in two first-floor exhibition galleries. there, displayed in three vitrines, were the models for living: forty-eight, 1:50-scale, card models of new zealand houses, all in white, seemingly innocent, and perversely provocative. some criticism was predictable. in any exhibition, curatorial decisions—what’s in, what’s out—invite dissent. but the particular issue that vexed some viewers of models for living was the question of context, or rather, the lack of it. the gist of the slightly slurred complaints was that the exhibition reduced architecture to object, an impression strengthened by the austerity of the ‘concrete galleries’, the paucity of information about the displayed models, the lack of supporting material, and captions that were either confusingly placed or non-existent. (one vitrine had thirteen models, but only nine captions.) the shortcomings of the captions suggested fumbles under deadline pressure, but the curators could plead mitigating circumstances to some of the other charges. originally, curator charles walker had intended to augment a larger exhibition (one hundred models for one hundred years!) with architectural drawings and photographs, but a budget cut meant a scaled-down show. so: half the number of models, no plans or photos, and collateral material reduced to a few text boards and looped screenings of two episodes of david mitchell’s 1984 television series “the elegant shed” and one undated televison new zealand documentary on state housing. thus truncated, did models for living get a compensatory boost from the other displays gathered under the rubric of the new zealand house? not really; this was one show in which the whole was not greater than the sum of its parts. immediately outside both concrete galleries was a case occupied by stephen brookbanks’ models of rangitoto island baches. coloured models of ad hoc structures placed outside rooms with white models of figures 3 and 4: thompson house (auckland). architect rewi thompson, 1985. photos vincent kar interstices 6 architect-designed houses: whatever the motivation for the juxtaposition, it was a graphic expression of design apartheid. around the corner was houseworks, monique redmond’s series of small portraits of houses picked out in computer-programmed embroidery. as with those scale-model ocean-liners assembled from match-sticks, one can appreciate the effort, while wonder at the point. and one floor up, reached via the militaria department and so far removed from the rest of the new zealand house that it should have been given refugee status, was an abbreviated version of wellington city gallery’s ernst plischke exhibition. rather strange to be ushered into the presence of an émigré from nazism with “deutschland, deutschland über alles” ringing in one’s ears … models for living, then, did not get much in the way of contextual assistance from its exhibition mates. visitors had to make what sense they could of the displays, and the rewards offered by a ‘reading’ of the models were probably a function of design literacy. in this respect at least, the exhibition visitors’ books were interesting documents. some visitors were enthusiastic (“models are excellent—showing the structure explains it all”, wrote one), some were dismissive (“flat-roofed houses are impractical”), and the odd one clearly was odd (“life is difficult—but we are here to live peacefully”). a few visitors lamented the exclusion of certain architects (“athfield? walker?”), and some regretted the absence of topography (“the models are well done—but what about the site? is lack of context a typical nz response?”). “it would be great if the models were on turntables, as you needed to see the work as whole,” wrote another visitor. an intelligent point, if rather naïve: without sturdy protection the white models would have been tagged or bagged before one could say vladimir cacala. (an exaggeration? in one figures 4-6: chapple house (north shore, auckland). architect michael austin. 1969. photos krzysztof pfeiffer 1�1 visitors’ book the message “yo fuk yo, black power” was exceptional not for its obnoxiousness but its legibility.) what may have been in the back of some visitors’ minds was the exhibition of architectural models of contemporary japanese houses presented by auckland’s objectspace gallery last june. at that small exhibition, also curated by charles walker, viewers could practically poke their noses into the standalone white card models. at the objectspace exhibition there were some misgivings about ‘object architecture’ but also a more relaxed appreciation. what made auckland museum’s model show more contentious is that it was closer to home. models for living mated objectification with canonisation—an alliance sure to alienate those who know too little (much of the public) and those who know too much (all the architectural nick hornbys with their lists of top kiwi houses). apart from anything else, models for living prompted a stimulating consideration of the issue of how architecture can be displayed. we all know there’s no substitute for being there, and we all realise being there is often impossible. having witnessed the effort that went into the preparation of models for living, i prefer to take the glass-is-half-full approach. perhaps the exhibition was oversold (canny marketers always under-promise and over-deliver) but attendance was a reasonably happy experience—if not a haptic one. the matter of the cutting edge the matter of the cutting edge jennifer bloomer there may be neatness in carving when there is richness in feasting; but i have heard many a discourse, and seen many a church wall, in which it was all carving and no meat. john ruskin, “all carving and no meat”1 interstices 4 the matter of the cutting edge 1 in beginning my talk with these thirty-four words from ruskin, i have presented a ground, a playing field, if you will, for a certain kind of game. let’s look at the quote again. in one sentence, you will find four interrelated binary pairs, three of them metaphorical: neatness and richness, carving and feasting, discourse and wall, carving and meat. i cannot imagine a ground more appropriate for entering a discussion of contemporary architectural discourse; even, perhaps of any discourse. for here we have tropes for the structural and ornamental, objective and subjective, making and interpreting, theory and practice, style and substance. this is old ground on which many games have been played. for much of my writing and making life, i have investigated the question, “what would happen if the slope of this ground shifted?” i have never been so naive as to consider a simple reversal of slope, but have thought more about eccentric and disseminated mutations. in this paper, however, written by a me who is older and therefore believes herself wiser, i suspend disbelief in its immutability, and accept the ground as given, assembled of multitudes of neat pairs, the units of which may slip and slide, but within each of which is maintained a disequilibrium of value. the paragraphs that follow rest on particular conventions of difference. i have written them with hands that are beringed, lotioned, perfumed, and polished, with direction from a mind that lives in the body onto which they are hooked. it is the kind of body that, in the sets of pairs body-mind, matterform, and ornament-structure (just to recall a bit of the ground), traditionally relates to the left hand side. also the one who stereotypically doesn’t know ‘ w h i c h w a y t o m o v e t h e b a l l . ’ b u t l o o k : t h e f a c t that it is playing on the same field does not mean it is playing the same game ... one lovely thing about the experience of raising c h i l d r e n s o f a r a p a r t i n a g e a s m i n e i s t h e g i f t o f perspective and the respect for continuity and pattern that it offers. in life so far, i have enjoyed witnessing at close hand during three separate slices of time the remarkable games of young children. the amazing play of boys: the ever-in-motion parry and thrust, the smashing, clamorous battles with imaginary swords and guns and airships and bombs, the itchy quest to win, to be first, to be best. three times lived, three times (almost) the same. the protruding nosecone and explosive cargo of the bomber drawn in pre-bic leaky ballpoint scrawl on the blue fabric notebook of billy joe mullins (whose name in hearts was featured on mine) are not so different, after all, from joshua’s mighty-morphinsuper-power-sword with which he heroically gestures for the local gang of little girls collecting moss to make a canopy for their magic fairy treehouse in my garden. and the fabulous play of girls: the mixing of sawdust tea, redolent of its production in the clash of saw and tree; the patient, collective shelling of fallen purple locust pods to obtain a swishy bowlful of seeds; the secreting of milkweed fluff in a battered cookie tin deep in the caverns of the raspberry bramble. their always fresh and marvelous, but also familiar, drawings of intricately rainbow coloured birds and butterflies and fish, often accompanied by groups of small clones mamas and their babies also mark an intriguing continuity. my children and their friends keep me thinking about old and new a lot. they make me think, for example, about how the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns is based on an old, old agreement (or an old, old necessity) to quarrel that transcends the quarrel itself. i am thinking about how the desire to be the superlative is an old, old desire; and consequently, as we live in an era based on an always going forward, or out and away, from what has come before, how even (and perhaps interstices 4 the matter of the cutting edge 2 especially) the legitimation and substantiation of the desire to be new has become so old hat as to form a bizarre paradox sustained by the now rather rickety crutch that is called progress. much of architecture, and architectural discourse, is ever in quest of the so-called leading, or cutting, edge. this edge, this leading line of molecules of the blade that cuts into unknown territory, that whacks through the tangled snaky darkness of the jungle, through the brush and briar of the wilderness, thrust out in front, going where no man has gone before, is a remarkable metaphor indeed. the persistent metaphor of the cutting edge belongs partially to the heroic narratives of conquest of the unknown, i.e., the new and unexplored. and in the narratives of the exploration of a ‘new world,’ the protruding blade ever inscribing the frontier is the protagonist of a consistent allegory: the sexual conquest of a virginal female body of seductive, material richness. sir walter raleigh swore that he could not be torn ‘from the sweet embraces of ... virginia.’ from the beginning of exploration, then, sailors’ reports ... became inextricably associated with investors’ visions of ‘a country that hath yet her maydenhead.’ encouraging raleigh to make good on his promise to establish a permanent colony in virginia, [the investor richard] hakluyt prophesied in 1587, ‘if you preserve only a little longer in your constancy, your bride will shortly bring forth new and most abundant offspring, such as will delight you and yours.’ in 1609, one promoter of english immigration to virginia promised there ‘valleyes and plaines streaming with sweete springs, like veynes in a naturall bodie,’ while just seven years later, captain john smith praised new england as yet another untouched garden, ‘her treasures hauing net neuer beene opened, nor her originalls wasted, consumed, nor abused.’ ... in his 1725 verse history of connecticut, roger wolcott depicted an ardent mariner ‘press[ing] /upon the virgin stream who had as yet, /never been violated with a ship.’2 this body is nature, always female, with her primal wildness and material bounty. when, years later, the narrative tone shifts from the excitement of sweet maiden promise to the regret of rape and despoliation, the allegorical structure of a gendered female, material nature and her aggressive male suitor, man, remains in place. it is interesting to note the mixing of rhetorical figures within this relation: nature is metaphorically female, while man is metonymically male. as in all properly prescribed personal relationships, there is no other, woman. in this example of the gender construction by which much of the world is imagined and understood, the bitter and intricate relation of children’s games and adult patterns of behavior is revealed: the fantasy of this cutting edge is not disconnected from the fantasy of the invasive bomber or the power sword. the heroic visions of exploration, discovery, conquest, appropriation, and colonization that follow its revealing stroke have given rise to the historical realities and the interconnected cultures that practices of architecture and architectural discourse represent. it is interesting to ponder how, in architecture, the metaphor of the leading edge, which by the twentieth century has become paradigmatic, was and is strangely present and relevant even in the moment of architecture’s appropriation of discourses that have sought to dampen the fires in which such blades are forged. there is something beyond logic and reason at work here; i sense a fantasy, a child’s game grown up. there’s a theory, one i find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: `where was i before i was born?’ in the beginning was ... what? perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden [to] you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.3 angela carter’s words pull a ravelling thread from the troubling perplexity of nostalgia (from the greek, nostos “return home,” and algos “pain”), the sickness or longing for home, a place made distant in space and/or time. where were we before we were born? in the beginning for each of us was a wonderful and, once left, inaccessible room: the first home, that dark, warm, saltwatery, pulsing vessel, the matter of mater . a conjecture: every moment of significant twentieth century architectural discourse has at its generating core the needling itch, the troubling ache, of nostalgia: homesickness, that longing for something that one cannot ever have again. and the period of so-called postmodern architecture, when a certain self-conscious nostalgia was embraced, is the least of it. interstices 4 the matter of the cutting edge 3 i am interested in teasing out the fibres of nostalgia in relation to the practice and discourse of architecture. in opening this subject, this word tinged with obloquy and often preceded by the qualifier ‘mere,’ i cringe with awareness of the m i n e f i e l d o n w h i c h i t r e a d . b u t i a m profoundly curious about the polarized response to nostalgia in contemporary architectural discourse. on the one hand, it is placed on a pedestal and made a universal genius of new town planning and architectural style. on the other hand, the one i am considering in this essay, nostalgia is covered in refusal, like a bad zit or a b o d y o d o u r . i n t h e m a n n e r o f t h e s e a n a l o g u e s , nostalgia happens; and it comes with certain pleasures. the repression of nostalgia, a nineteenth century disease ever threatening to erupt on the skin of the twentieth, is at the core of the project of modernity; and, i think, it especially has driven, and drives, the movements of the avant-garde. the figure of the avant-garde is another kind of leading edge, another invasive metaphor, also tied to the search for the new. for decades the architectural avant-garde has engaged in a time-honoured activity: the planting of one’s flag upon intellectual territory ostensibly hitherto unexplored by other architects. but a peculiar phenomenon repeatedly occurs: the territory is then colonized under the unquestioned law of the architectural concept. most recently this endeavour has taken the perplexing and paradoxical form of borrowing the metaphors, especially those that are spatial, of discourses that are deeply critical of this very epistemological tack, and conceptualizing them as new form. the most outstanding examples of this concern the appropriation of the spatial or spatializable metaphors of gilles deleuze (with and without felix guattari) smooth space, holey space, desiring machines, rhizomes, the fold, etc. which he has used to tag complex and slippery theoretical apparatuses that work to undermine faith in the substantiality of epistemological structures that authorize such conceptualization as that in which the ‘avant-garde’ architects are engaged. when architectural enterprise is involved with making forms that are generated from such spatializing metaphors, architecture remains lodged in its nostalgia for form that embodies direct and specific meaning, even if here the reading of that embodiment is that meaning is slippery and illusive (like an object of nostalgia). and matter doesn’t particularly matter (as it certainly does to deleuze and guattari in mille plateaux). this is demonstrative of how the avant-garde, which endeavours to be new and original, fails to escape the sticky traps of tradition and convention. furthermore, the ceaseless search for the new in architecture, of which making form follow philosophy’s metaphors is an example, is a profoundly nostalgic project. design is the making of the always-in-progress new, which is always the becoming-old. the lust for the new, that telic carrot on a string, like nostalgia, is a longing for something one cannot have, for as soon as the new is formulated, it ceases to be new. and in order to stay on the cutting edge, the avant-garde architect must move on in search of the next formal frontier. this lust, driven by a necessary neglect of the weight of matter, is, in its persistent repressions, intensely nostalgic. in its subjugation of matter by form, the modern concept of design necessarily is dominated by a nostalgia for matter, a fetishization of an imagined absence. at the close of the twentieth century, design is driven by the necessity of the new, and, often in architecture, the big construed as the mega, the large object that makes gestures toward infinity. nowhere is this more marked than in the now new offering of electronic space: the new infinite, eternal design with no bounds, no walls, infinite frontiers, no stopping. this hyperspace is the legitimate heir to the modern project. a nexus of lines, whether drawn, virtual, simulated, or troped, is the mark of a longed-for object. form sitting on the lid of its other, matter. curiously, to enter electronic space is to leave home without leaving home. but in this space there is no matrix of domesticity; the cozy, sensual matter of home has no place here. there is no room for cyber-domesticity, for electrosentimentality. why? because this apparent nostalgiafree zone is, in fact, nothing if not nostalgic, a repression of ‘home-sickness’ so extreme that something is not quite being covered up. the urge to virtual realities of any kind relies on a constant domestic space, whether proximal or distant. the space of domesticity, configured as ‘real’ space, is still, always already, the spatial envelope of the cyberventuring subject who explores the public space of the net or the virtual space of simulation. leaving his body, that hunk of pulsing meat, nestled in its warm, comfortable domestic space, he can project himself anywhere, into anything. here, the lines of nerves and the lines of communication form a continuum. everything is transmission of information. here is an apparent triumph of form over matter, of the rational over the corporeal. with the ostensible obviation of the body comes the repression of shame, sentiment, and interstices 4 the matter of the cutting edge 4 nostalgia. this space replicates in certain ways the space of the infant, or even that of the fetus: interactive intake, no responsibility to any body. a nostalgic and sentimental, if not shameful, project in the extreme: the return to the natal home. that dirty place, the matter of mater. the relentless drive toward the new is a strangely directed attempt to escape from materia, the old, generative soil, the origin. the new is never dirty; it is always bright, spanking clean, light, full of promise, devoid of weight. in the extravagant, blade-wielding gestures of the contemporary architectural avant garde, there is something touchingly cervantian. like don quixote, driven by serious intentions, but somehow rather endearingly misdirected. living boldly, but fictionally-within-fiction, in deeply nostalgic visions. existing in a world of matter, but fantasizing an escape into the space of imagination, a world of images. like those little boys at play. i would like to return for a moment to swords and nosecones and magic houses of moss by means of one of my favourite peculiar passages of scholarship, from camille paglia’s sexual personae: construction is a sublime male poetry. when i see a giant crane passing on a flatbed truck, i pause in awe and reverence, as one would for a church procession. what power of conception, what grandiosity: these cranes tie us to ancient egypt, where monumental architecture was first imagined and achieved. if civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts. a contemporary woman clapping on a hard hat merely enters a conceptual system invented by men. capitalism is an art form, an apollonian fabrication to rival nature.4 i am interested in this remark less for what it proposes about the role of women in the construction of civilization and the pursuit of new form, than for its positioning of the domicile, and its marked materiality, as the measuring stick of the progress of civilization. even that the domicile is the place where architecture would have stopped on its line of progression toward the skyscraper, that is to say, the big and the new. the grass hut stands in for anything undeveloped, unadvanced, not extruding itself along the exalted line of progress. furthermore, it is not simply a hut, a notation that would imply function, size, and character, but a grass hut: the material of the object delineates its mereness. this picturesque grass hut suggests a notion of the primitive that the primitive hut, with its lofty theoretical accouterments, does not. the domestic vessel of rotting material, built and rebuilt, is nothing new. it is the old, the original home, the mater , the now useless husk cast off back there at the beginnings, whenever and wherever they might be. the selective nostalgia in which paglia indulges so intrigues me: on the one hand, the great, rigid, erect crane angled up against the sky is a tie to a glorious past: ancient egypt, the site of the big and new, thousands of years ago. in the next sentence, we are assured that the alternative to this sublime masculine expression, civilization “left in female hands,” is unacceptable. why? the implication is because “still” the grass hut has undergone no forward-looking, progressive evolution. so here a tie to the past if evocative of progress is good; a tie to the past hitched to material and formal continuity is the object, and a weapon of, contempt. here we have a scheme: large and protruding and going progressively forward versus small and enveloping and eschewing progress, masquerading as ma l e a n d fema l e, a n d , in the building of paglia’s thesis, apollonian and dionysian. but what we are really talking about here is that even more basic, old, old scheme, and of course what the apollonian and dionysian represent, form and matter. if we go to the customary western origin of this scheme and from aristotle traverse the line-space to kant to contemporary architectural design, we can continue to gather a tedious collection of bifolded mantric inscriptions of the formula (a word that i choose carefully here): mind and body, exterior and interior, large and small, hard and soft, sublime and beautiful, abstract and concrete, public and private, objective and subjective, culture and nature ... at this point the reader has surely recognized the simple and familiar pattern of correspondences that structure so much of the tradition of philosophical, social, artistic and literary discourses: the pattern of the gendered pair. in de generatione animalium, aristotle offered an instructive architectural analogy to demonstrate the relation of form and matter in procreation: the timber (material) with which the builder constructs is passive and receptive to the form idea that lies in the soul of the builder and is inscribed in the material by the activity of his tools in the same way that the material of a female body is inscribed by nature with mammalian form via the active, moving tool of semen. and only male animals possess semen because, being connected to the two higher elements, air and fire, they are warm enough to make the form-giving elixir from their blood and to give it movement. female animals, being of the lower elements water and earth, do not possess the heat required to produce semen, therefore mere blood trickles passively from their reproductive interstices 4 the matter of the cutting edge 5 systems. from aristotle’s influential model of male form and female matter to otto weininger’s matching pair in the twentieth century sex and character to the gendered children’s games with which i began, the overarching pattern of the valued and devalued term has informed the lineage. and the line is, in fact, a pair of more or less parallel lines defining the territory of epistemologically desirable entities the rational, exterior, large, hard, sublime, objective, cultural, public, and masculine by measurement against those on the other side of the tracks. and again, i am less interested here in pointing out the implications of this pairing for the status of women than in raising before it the question o f t h e o l d a n d t h e new, the traditional and the avant-garde. because things get a bit mixed up here. to make a radical move, to push the edge, to make something new, one might propose to situate an architectural or philosophical endeavour, in the territory of the other side the corporeal, the interior, the small, the concrete, the soft, the beautiful, the private, the subjective, and the ‘natural’ and, of course, this has been done. but, n o t n e w n o w , i t w o u l d b e , a l w a y s a l r e a d y never new, relying, as it must, on a move of switching the valued and devalued terms, while maintaining that tidy space in between. were we interested not necessarily, in the discovery of new form, but in the invention of an instructive set of relations within that familiar space, maintaining that space, we might find ourselves in the vicinity of the garden, the cultural artefact, that is grounded in the messy, dark, nurturing decay of its own production. in the garden, we are in the space of nature and culture, form and matter, concrete and abstract, exterior and interior. and significantly, we are in the space of the feminine and the masculine, in which assignments of value oscillate and flicker, in locales both esoteric and mundane. i mean, for example, the way in which femininity that is associated with flowers, is a positive value in the lofty world of eighteenth century philosophy, and furthermore terrene world of the garden club, but, in the same spaces, also carries negative value. this flickering of value also attends the problematic role of the matter of the garden in the discovery /exploration /appropriation /colonisation narrative, which i’ll come back to here. in the new world, after the wilderness had been cut and tamed, after the leading edge had moved to the halting brink, came the lovingly forced migration of seeds, scions, roots and corns. today, on the remains of the vast prairie, where my children and their friends play, are the vestiges of these antidotes to homesickness: fifteen-decade-old elms and oaks, and feral outgrowths of lily-of-the-valley, brought west in apron pockets as seeds and pips, as tools for making unfamiliar places homes. abiding residual documents of the westward expansion in north america, they are, almost literally, roots of present day american culture. they are evidence that pinafore pockets of moss and locust pod seeds and milkweed fluff become, in time, the bearers of roots: the keeping of holiday celebrations and cultural traditions, the passing on of love and spiritual warmth, the maintenance of human connection. and the making of gardens. furthermore, and i’m quoting again from kolodny: in the exchange of cuttings, seeds, and overripe fruit (for its seeds) and in the exchange of information about their garden activities, women shared with one another, both their right and their capacity, to put their personal stamp on landscapes otherwise owned, and appropriated by men.5 humans are not only territorial animals that imagine, make forms, and vie for dominance. we are also the animals that till the soil; we are the creatures of nature that invent language, defining culture in terms of digging in the dirt, cultivation. the founding of cities, is marked by a boys’ game of inscribing the dirt: the ludus troiae, or the trojan game, the labyrinthine marking of crisscrossing horses leaving their hoofprint paths in the soil. boustrophedon, an ancient method of writing alternate lines right to left and then left to right, is named by the pattern of an ox plowing the earth. culture, is a bunch of animals digging in the dirt, marking their territory, hunkering down, holding onto life. the inscriptions of animals on the caves at lascaux, are necessarily tied to someone’s discovering the staining power of ocher as she dug in the dirt. here, as in the garden, cultivation and culture share a root that is more than etymological. the garden is no more a natural thing than an electron microscope or the taj mahal . as an intersection of nature and culture, however, it is slightly more complex and involuted than most of the things we make. gardens are complex constructions of form and matter in which, unlike in the instrument and in the building, matter the residing substance of nature is the present condition, dominant over function and form. gardens are imaginative inventions with which we try to reconcile our warring animal/child desires for r u l e a n d c o n t r o l , a n d for the experiences called beautiful and sublime with what we find all around us in the world: other living creatures, the interstices 4 the matter of the cutting edge 6 o r d e r o f w h a t w e c a l l n a t u r e . g a r d e n s a r e a b o u t making lovely, controlled constructions that sway and rustle, mutate, give forth exquisite and repulsive odours, and sometimes simply disappear. gardens always threaten us with their easy potential to go utterly out of control. but this sinister potential is also their virtue. vast assemblages of matter, each bit of which has its own peculiarities and tendencies, garden constructions are dependent upon attention to a local and detailed materiality, in an always moving balance with conception of form. the garden is a “curious room, crammed with wonders:”6 mutating matter; palpable space-time currents; shifting colour; intimate relations with the sun’s light, with the breath of animals, and with the flow of liquid; notions of order; the substantiation of histories and theories. it provides a vehicle for opening up a serious consideration of the mining of nostalgia, the longing for home, that allows the exploration of the possibilities that lie in the conversation of old and n e w , a n d o f m a t t e r a n d f o r m . i n t h e g a r d e n , t h e field and the game are indistinguishable, and the cutting edge is not a metaphor, but a material tool of the imagination. to turn to the landscape or the garden, for thinking about architecture, is to make a significant and difficult turn. the landscape in modernity has been figured as a supplemental or accessorising feature of the design of the building. to look at the potential of this architectural accessory requires a 180 degree about-face on the line of progress, to look at the past, and to contemplate the riches of what came before the century of progress. i refer to the two centuries that, now that we have made our turn are receding down the line toward the vanishing point, in much the same way that the future does, when we peek back over our shoulders. in the webby historico-cultural panoply that comes to rest at points upon this line, we can see a number of ‘accessories before the fact’ of modernism, including the eighteenth century landscape garden tradition, with its stunning, visual culture-affirming relation with the landscape painting tradition, and the writings of john ruskin, the fellow who, in the nineteenth century, was one of those guys who wrote a lot about interesting relations he perceived between architecture and culture, but built nothing. if, in our slight near sightedness, we look at ruskin’s b u l g i n g p o d o f w o r k w a y d o w n t h e l i n e , w e see perhaps a quaint, but intriguing and historically important, supplement to nineteenth century architecture in all its properly natural materiality and its properly natural ornamentation all set about to make a pretty architectural picture redolent of the kitchiest nostalgia. but if we look with our handy two-way telescopes, zooming in, getting our noses right on the matter of the reading material, we can see something quite different, something that, for me, is astonishing. at the place on the line where le corbusier’s and walter gropius’ great grandmothers and great grandfathers are children at play in the garden, 1837, a series of articles on villa and cottage architecture appeared in loudon’s architectural magazine. h e r e a r e a few excerpts. in presenting them i would like to note how nicely they might accessorise the forthcoming book by mark wigley, on modernism’s white walls and fashion. i quote from this magazine: whiteness destroys a great deal of venerable character, and harmonises ill with the melancholy tones of surrounding landscape: and this requires detailed consideration. paleness of colour destroys the majesty of a building; first, by hinting at a disguised and humble material; and, secondly, by taking away all appearance of age.7 but further on following a note that the appearance of age in a villa is neither desirable nor necessary, he writes: we find, therefore, that white is not to be blamed in the villa for destroying its antiquity; neither is it reprehensible, as harmonising ill with the surrounding landscape; on the contrary, it adds to its brillancy, without taking away from its depth of tone.8 and: if the colour is to be white, we can have no ornament, for the shadows would make it far too conspicuous, and we should get only tawdriness.9 these seemingly prescient words, so marvellously ornamented with the language of taste, were written by an eighteen-year-old boy named john ruskin who, engaged in the literary game of the nom de plume, wrote under the signature of kata phusin. ah ha, you may be thinking, everybody knows about ruskin and his psychosexual problems: about the frustrated love affair at seventeen which, according to the encyclopaedia britannica, “seems to have been the effective cause of a permanent failure to obtain emotional maturity;”10 about the fact that his mother rented a cottage to be near him when he went off to oxford; about his unwillingness to consummate his marriage; about his ardent love at age 40 for a ten interstices 4 the matter of the cutting edge 7 year old girl. a child who never grew up; one messed up dude. is it any wonder the boy assumed that girlish name to mark his fledgling authorship? but look again. while kata may carry feminine connotation in its resemblance to kate, kata i s a l s o the greek word for “according to” and phusin is, of course, the word for “nature,” from which comes the english word physics. kata phusin “according to nature,” an early example of ruskin’s lifelong gameplaying with words, is a rather authoritative persona indeed. here is mother nature writing on the relation of domestic architecture, materiality, ornamental detail, and colour, in a manner that seems to make an impetuous leap from the grass hut to the white villa (where colour and form override materiality). whether we see this author as mater natura or john ruskin, she or he seems an unlikely source for the fathers of the white box, who will come along three generations later. let me tell you right now, that a relation of causality between ruskin and high modernism is not what i am after here. that is not the game i want to play. i’m interested in something fleshier than such a simple line as that. let me emphasise that although here ruskin speaks to modernism, i do not suggest that, for example, gropius or le corbusier had read his essays in loudon’s magazine. i am making a suggestion, instead, of the possibility of looking at the past in a different way, in a way perhaps similar to the way that we look at the future: as a mineable field for inspired invention. in kata phusin’s discourse, the building is not a machine in the garden, but a supplemental element of the landscape construed as a picture, a picture composed of hundreds of tiny details, in the mind of the tastemaking author or viewer. these articles form the germ of ruskin’s later 1842 paean to j. m. w. turner, the eighteenth century landscape painter praised by ruskin for his truthful depiction of nature in all its proliferation of colour and detail. with these thoughts of architectural theory, the garden, the landscape, proliferation, detail, and mutating material that our accessories before the fact give rise to, let us turn, or rather return, to that accessory after the fact, the computer, and what it gives rise to, electronic space. this is again a precipitous, however simple, turn, requiring us to move 180 degrees. again on our little pivot point (we are now of course five or ten minutes down the line) let us look at a teeny piece of the intricate panoply that now faces us, the tiny little piece that is connected to the construction of these words that i speak. we will call this piece the hypertextual picturesque. remember that game i mentioned at the beginning? well, this is it, and kata phusin will introduce it: that which we foolishly call vastness is, rightly considered, not more wonderful, not more impressive, than that which we insolently call littleness.11 the hypertextual picturesque rests on the logic of the garden the commingling of so many gendered games exercised within electronic space. the materiality of electronic space is electronic image; here form and matter have a direct relation. both are reductive versions of our conventional notions of form and matter, a situation that offers the possibility of architectures that, because obeisant to convention, perhaps escape it. in this space, representation and materiality are nearly in identity. in the space of information, what is old and past all the facts, images and documents of history merges fluidly with what is new and now: information, images, electronic documents. in the space of information, there is a seamlessness of time and space which mirrors, reversed perhaps, the intensity of seamless time and space that is modernism. the swiss mercenary soldiers away from home who were the original victims of nostalgia suffered also, of course, a condition in which time and space were connected by a smooth joint. the relations of landscape, architecture, painting, the interweave of time and space, and old and new, and constructions assembled from plethora from plethora of detail, define the old and much maligned concept of the picturesque. the picturesque, a collection of aesthetic theories and ideas, that address the way we look at and make landscapes, was a phenomenon of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. because i don’t have the time to digress into a discussion of it here, i’ll simply list some characteristics of the picturesque: an emphasis on detail over form; an emphasis on image; the manipulation of three dimensional matter, so that it conforms to a two dimensional image; the controlled use of the distant, geography and chronology; the use of the found object; passive matter; glorification of the ugly and ordinary; a foregrounding of matter and its physical phenonemon; a challenge to the idea of private property; an emphasis on variety and idiosyncrasy; the object of the tourist, as a collector, of pictures, of places; and finally, situated between the aesthetic characteristics of the beautiful and the sublime. unlike either, the picturesque appeals only to one sense vision. interstices 4 the matter of the cutting edge 8 perhaps i don’t need to mention that all of these characteristics of the picturesque, are also descriptive of the phenonomen we call hyperspace. and listen as i read the words of william gilpin, written in 1794: the first source of amusement for the picturesque traveller, is the pursuit of his object the expectation of new scenes continually opening, and arising to his view. we suppose the country to have been unexplored. under this circumstance the mind is kept constantly in an agreeable suspense. the love of novelty is the foundation of this pleasure. every distinct horizon promises something new; and with this pleasing expectation we follow nature through all her walks. we pursue her from hill to dale; and hunt after those various beauties with which she everywhere abounds.12 the condition of electronic space may also be described by these words, these contemporary words of raimonda modiano on the picturesque. she writes: in the picturesque desire remains free and unattached, continuously disconnecting from specific objects, in order to return to the self or move on to another object.13 furthermore: when desire is barred from its object, vision itself becomes appetite. i would like to suggest that the picturesque traffics heavily in the erotics of denied desire, relegating appetite to the exclusive realm of vision, which it at once limits and sustains it. the picturesque abounds in ‘wistful gazes toward untouchable objects,’ and features perpetual brides and bridegrooms, who never consummate their ‘affair with the landscape.’14 do you hear the succinct alignment of the space of the picturesque with the space of the computer, glued together by the metaphor of the land as an object of sexual desire? but this landscape object, unlike that of sir walter raleigh and others, is untouchable. untouchable because its materiality and its desirability consist in infinite numbers of images. to theorise a new game played on old ground by theorising an old game played in new space is logically appropriate within the necessary reflexivity of such a game. the constant pivoting and shuttling between the old and new, big and small, with its concomitant confusion of good and bad, of masculine and feminine, etc., is the mechanism of the garden and the landscape. it is also the mechanism that has structured this talk. the garden, as i have used it, is a metaphor of effect and event, not of formal causality. everything is potentially on the move, coming and going, repeating patterns, but the effect of the repetition is always a little or a lot different. this construction, like the garden, is a phenonomen of cyclic consumption and production of its own materiality. the hypertextual picturesque is an architecture of flickering text and images. it is an aggregation of detail. it is the making of structures within, with and in, the computer, that does not mine conventional architectural notions of space, and/or representation, but which does mine conventional architectural notions of construction. the hypertextual picturesque cannot, therefore, be reproduced in three dimensions, although it bears the potential to provide generative methodological impetus to three dimensional construction. the hypertextual picturesque could not be classified as hyperspace, but it is constructed in that space. it is a flickering hybrid (now you see it, now you don’t) of something old and something new, and of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. the picturesque landscape and the picturesque tour exist always in reference to the idea of home. no matter how far one ventures into the chronological or geographical distance, there is at every point, or moment, the possibility of a loop in the itinerary that returns to the starting point. this home base, this safe domestic space, is an implicit but necessary condition of the picturesque tour, that parallels that of the cyberventurer who can always loop back to shut down. the garden play of my children, the games of any children, are also played in reference to home, in its material, its formal and its metaphorical possibilities. when the games stop, children sometimes eagerly, sometimes reluctantly return home, whether it be grass hut, white stucco villa or the arms of a sheltering parent. and now, this little game can stop for a while. you know where to go. thank you. notes 1 john ruskin, “all carving and no meat,” precious thoughts (new york: john wiley 1878) p. 78. 2 annette kolodny the land before her: fantasy and experience of the american frontiers, 1630-1860 (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, 1984), p. 3. interstices 4 the matter of the cutting edge 9 3 angela carter, “alice in prague, or the curious room,” american ghosts and old world wonders (london: chatto and windus 1993), p. 127. 4 camille paglia, sexual personae ( n e w h a v e n , y a l e university press, 1990), p. 38. 5 annette kolodny the land before her p. 48. 6 carter, “alice in prague,” p. 127. 7 kata phusin, “art. i . t h e poetry of architecture: no.3. the villa, i. the mountain villa lago di como. (continued.),” the architectural magazine (july 1838), v. 5, p. 292. 8 phusin, “art. i. the poetry of architecture,” p. 293. 9 kata phusin “art. ii. the poetry of architecture: no.3. the villa (concluded), v. the british villa, hill, or brown country principles of composition,” architectural magazine (dec 1838), v.5, p. 552. 10 “ruskin, john,” encyclopaedia britannica: micropædia (chicago: encyclopædia britannica 1992), v. 10, p. 248. 11 phusin, “the poetry of architecture,” architectural magazine 12 william gilpin, three essays: on picturesque beauty; on picturesque travel and on sketching landscape (london: r. blamire, 1794), p. 47-48. 13 raimonda modiano “the legacy of the picturesque,” the politics of the picturesque e d s . s . c o p l e y a n d p . garside, (cambridge and new york: cambridge university press, 1994), p. 214, n. 3. 14 modiano, “the legacy of the picturesque,” p. 197. interstices02.indb interstices 07 latecomers carl douglas authorship and authority, originality and infl uence are genealogical concerns, arising in the relationship between a maker and his or her precursors. genealogy is concerned with lineage. it maps relations through time, tracking propagation and inheritance, and establishing inter-generational debts. how many accounts of poets, artists and architects are prefaced with an introduction which seeks to unveil sources, get the inside scoop on the various depths of plagiarism of which the maker is guilty, and draw out a tally of debts to be paid? these debts have often, in the past, been explained by the mechanism of infl uence. infl uence is the extent to which one’s work is attributable to another, can even be seen as belonging properly to that other. if one is infl uenced, he or she is no longer strictly an origin. the claim to originality and authorship breaks down if a work can be shown to originate in some precursor. agamben describes genius as “the personalization of that, within us, which surpasses and exceeds ourselves” (agamben, 2006: 95). it is this condition of being exceeded within oneself that is considered here. this paper introduces two theorists of lateness in order to build a picture of the latecomer, one who follows on and risks being overshadowed or overwhelmed by those who have gone before, surpassed externally and exceeded internally. clearing space harold bloom, in his anxiety of infl uence (1973), develops a theory of poetry as essentially constituted in the relationship between a poet and that poet’s predecessors. strong poets, argues bloom, “wrestle with their strong precursors,” in order to “clear imaginative space” in which they can work (bloom, 1973: 5). it is this, he contends, that defi nes a poet’s strength. the argument he builds seeks to “de-idealize” the notion of infl uence. infl uence, historically, was an ethereal fl uid fl owing down from the stars and affecting a person’s character and destiny.1 as it is used today, it retains this sense of fl ow and ascendancy someone is infl uenced more or less against his or her conscious will. infl uence is not entered into so much as it is come under. bloom sees this as an inadequate view of the relationship between poets, and proceeds to develop a more complex critical vocabulary for infl uence.2 infl uence is not to be taken as a smooth and inscrutable subconscious transfer of techniques or tropes, but as a fraught, sometimes painful, and above all, anxiety-inducing relationship: “what strong poet desires the realisation that he has failed to create himself?” (5). 1 oed, ‘infl uence’ 2 bloom explains that a genealogical view of the relationship between the precursor and the latecomer predates the modern concept of in-fl uence: “we remember how for so many centuries, from the sons of homer to the sons of ben jonson, poetic infl uence had been described as a fi lial relationship, and then we see that poetic infl uence, rather than sonship, is another product of the enlightenment, another aspect of the cartesaian dualism” (bloom 1973: 26). 35 in the anxiety of infl uence bloom describes six ‘revisionary movements’ or ‘revisionary ratios’.3 these correspond to the various ways in which he perceives latecomer poets clearing space in which to work by deferring their precursors. for example, in the revisionary ratio, which bloom calls clinamen, the latecomer poet constructs a poem which makes the precursor appear to have missed in his or her aim. the precursor is taken to have been moving correctly up to a point; it is at this point that the later poet diverges, and in this swerving away, it is implied that the latecomer is correcting a failure on the part of the precursor. this ‘act of creative correction’ is a repression of the precursor.4 in the revisionary ratio daemonization: “the later poet opens himself to what he believes to be a power in the parent-poem that does not belong to the parent proper, but to a range of being just beyond that precursor. he does this, in his poem, by so stationing its relation to the parent-poem as to generalise away the uniqueness of the earlier work” (15). in one of bloom’s examples, william collins attributes the power of milton’s poems to fear, understood as an autonomous spiritual power. when collins then proceeds to open up his work to this force, this daemon, he is able to claim a kind of ascendancy over milton: “a daemonic vision in which the great original remains great but loses his originality, yielding it to the world of the numinous” (101). in this way, too, the precursor is repressed, and a space in which to work is made. bloom is careful to emphasise that infl uence is not a failure of genius, nor the ascendancy of genealogy: it is not a mark of poetic weakness, or a faltering of talent, nor the subsumption of the individual. on the contrary, the struggle to make space for oneself with respect to one’s predecessors is a necessary part of one’s constitution as a poet. the anxiety of infl uence or indebtedness arises from the process of self-appropriation. contending with the precursor let us briefl y consider, in bloom’s terms, the relationship between a specifi c latecomer architect and one of his signifi cant precursors, in order to observe this kind of repression at work in an architectural rather than a poetic context. at the close of his essay “architecture (1910)” (loos, 1985: 104-109), in which he formulates his theory of the essential alienation of the modern architect, adolf loos offers the following stellar commendation of schinkel: but every time the minor architects who use ornament move architecture away from its grand model, a great architect is at hand to guide them back to antiquity. fischer von erlach in the south, schluter in the north, were justifi ably the great masters of the eighteenth century. and at the threshold to the nineteenth century stood schinkel. we have forgotten him. may the light of this towering fi gure shine upon our forthcoming generation of architects! (109). 3 in clinamen, “a poet swerves away from his precursor … as a corrective movement in his own poem”. in tessera, “a poet antithetically ‘completes’ his precursor, by so reading the parent-poem as to retain its terms but to mean them in another sense”. in kenosis, “the later poet, apparently emptying himself of his own affl atus, his imaginative godhood, seems to humble himself while actually de-fl ating his precursor”. in daemonization, “the later poet opens himself to what he believes to be a power in the parent poem that does not belong to the parent proper, but to a range of being just beyond that precursor”. in askesis, the poet “yields up part of his own human and imaginative endowment, so as to separate himself from others, including the precursor”. in apophrades, the poet opens his poem to the precursor widely, “and the uncanny effect … makes it seem to us … as though the later poet himself had written the precursor’s characteristic work” (bloom 1973: 14-16). 4 bloom’s theory of infl uence is heavily freudian, particularly in its emphasis on repression and the family romance: “freud’s investigations of the mechanisms of defense and their ambivalent functionings provide the clearest ana-logues i have found for the revisionary ratios that govern intra-poetic relations” (bloom 1973: 8). interstices 07 schinkel is commended as a guide, a kind of lighthouse pointing away from himself. loos invokes him to shine forward onto the following generation, and praises schinkel for indicating a return path, like von erlach and schluter, to the ‘grand model’ of classical antiquity. loos is deeply concerned to establish a lineage. he authorises his own production by demonstrating that it takes place within a specifi c genealogy. however, it is only in appearance that this appeal to genealogy is self-deprecating. just a little earlier in “architecture (1910)”, prior to this monumental fi guring of schinkel as an illuminating tower, loos remarks on the potency of the classical, which appears as an autonomous cultural force: our culture is based on the knowledge of the all-surpassing grandeur of classical antiquity. we have adopted the technique of thinking and feeling from the romans. we have inherited our social conscience and the discipline of our souls from the romans ... ever since humanity sensed the greatness of classical antiquity, one common thought has unifi ed all great architects. they think: the way i build is the same as the way the romans would have built (108). the true power of great architects, loos implies, derives from the amorphous potency of roman classicism, the “one common thought” of european architecture. in this way, loos, the latecomer, disarms schinkel, his direct precursor (and perhaps the one with whom his entire career can be seen to be directly concerned), and places him safely on a pedestal to serve as a lamp for the inexperienced. according to loos, schinkel’s greatness, his potency, lies precisely in the extent to which he channels the historical ‘force’ of classicism. loos mythologizes a genealogy for schinkel in such a way as to clear space to become an individual. in loos’ backhanded compliment, schinkel’s greatness is deferred, and identifi ed as originating elsewhere. bloom might identify this ‘elsewhere’ as the classical daemon, and the kind of deferral taking place here an instance of daemonization. prompted by bloom, we might re-conceive this apparently harmonious relationship as a struggle in which loos is attempting to clear a space to practice in. loos emphasises a relationship of essence between himself and schinkel, in which petty differences in detail of execution are unimportant. what matters, he insists, is the shared daemon rather than any particularities of style. to what extent is this a mis-representation of the relationship? bloom says that latecomer poets proceed by ‘misreading’ their precursors. to what extent is loos misreading schinkel? loos defers schinkel; he puts him away and elevates him on a pedestal. if we squint sceptically for a moment at this deferral, we might see it appear as a signifi cant repression of schinkel’s presence in loos’ work. might it be possible to ask whether some of loos’ most personal moments are in fact the moments when he is someone else? agamben suggests that genius is precisely such a chiastic moment, a moment when “this most intimate and personal of gods is also the most impersonal part of us” (agamben, 2006: 95). we might go on to ask whether the strength of loos’ work is in fact the invention of the very daemon he claims to be channelling. in favour of this possibility is that it is far from clear that the absence of ornament held the same signifi cance for schinkel as it did for loos. it is more likely that, for schinkel, the absence of ornament was a marker of rurality, even a kind of poverty, while for loos it signifi ed classical urbanity and civilisation. 37 in “architecture (1910)”, loos aligns the purifi cation of modern architecture with classicism. he observes: it is no coincidence that the romans were incapable of inventing a new column order, or a new ornament. for they had already progressed so far. they had taken all that knowledge from the greeks and had adapted it to their needs. the greeks were individualists. every building had to have its own profi le, its own ornamentation. but the romans considered things socially. the greeks squandered their inventiveness on the orders; the romans wasted theirs on the plan. and he who can solve the great plan does not think of new mouldings (108). loos sees the romans’ disregard for ornament as an advancement over the greeks. he argues that the time has come to move even closer to the roman ideal. not only should the production of new ornament be ceased by civilised people, but what ornament remains should be actively stripped off. ornament may continue in the country, amongst the non-urbane the farmer and the shoemaker are less civilised in loos’ terms, and taking ornamentation from them would amount to something like parental cruelty. the romans’ progressiveness is their urbanity, characterised by their disinterest in ornament. it is this force of roman progressiveness that schinkel is taken to be a herald for. the primary symptom of possession by this particular daemon is, according to loos, the removal of ornament. for loos, his shared ground with schinkel is the act of stripping away decoration in the service of civility. it is doubtful that schinkel marks increased civility with reduced ornament. according to schinkel’s own account, he begins to design with geometric shapes, manipulates them as masses, and then articulates them according to the impression they are required to make.5 distinctions in formality and consequence are indicated by an increased consideration of ornament. his large, civil buildings, and especially his designs for the aristocracy, develop rich ornamental schemes: the fi gures standing around on the roof and above the portico of the schauspielhaus; the colour, depth and detail of the altes museum’s facade. the sparest of his buildings are those with rural or informal connotations: they are farm houses, pavilions, garden retreats for aristocrats seeking an alternative to their more formal houses. this collection of arcadian buildings does not warrant the additional social emphasis supplied by ornament.6 minimalism, in schinkel, is more likely to be a state of deliberate underdevelopment; loos alone elevated the removal of ornament to an historical principle. on the other hand, there may be a very direct contact with his predecessor in loos’ most personal. his apparently idiosyncratic scheme for lina loos’ bedroom, in which the interior is shaped by draping and spilling fabric and furs from the walls and the bed, can be seen as a version of schinkel’s tented guest bedroom for the schloss charlottenhof, in which the interior is draped with striped fabric which also forms a canopy for the bed. in each case, the interior connotes the exterior, the place of tents and bears. in the same way, the careful and characteristic niche arrangement used by loos, could be seen to be a revision of schinkel’s niches, which similarly establish interior lines of sight towards the outside.7 in fact, some typical elements of loos’ work, which we may be inclined to consider signatory marks the things we look for in order to recognise loos in his work may be the points at which he is most closely schinkel’s disciple. 5 see “karl friedrich schinkel” (2003). 6 this group of buildings includes the lusthaus, the neuer pavilion at schloss charlotten burg, and the garden buildings of schloss gleinicke and schloss charlottenhof. the most direct comparison can be made between schloss gleinicke, and the informal casino in its grounds. 7 these niches are analysed by beatriz colomina (1994: 233281). the clearest comparison is between the niche in the garden room of the neuer pavilion, and the zimmer der dame, moller house. interstices 07 this inversion of the personal and impersonal, of the traces of the desired self and the ingested other is the same as that found in agamben’s account of genius. loos’ production of himself as an individual, including the genealogy which he posits for himself, is an eluding of his precursor, an attempt to avoid acknowledging what is not simply a debt to schinkel, but schinkel’s presence in loos’s identity. the domain of the remainder these considerations imply a spatiality which can be further developed by reference to another, earlier theorist of the latecomer. sir thomas browne (1605-1682), english doctor and man of letters, is no longer widely read, perhaps because of the dense style of his prose. his heavy use of historical, theological and classical allusion can render him opaque to a modern reader. in hydriotaphia, or urne-burial (1669), an antiquarian text regarding the discovery of a number of burial urns in norfolk, his writing is ceaselessly referential and laden with irony, elaborate rhythms, and catachresis. browne is concerned principally with the relationship between the material world (of bodies, matter and material productions), and the various registers of the immaterial (the imaginary, the spiritual, the conceptual). from considering how the human subject is constituted at this intersection arises a concern for the precision of the vague, the necessary relationship between uncertainty and vagueness.8 although ‘lateness’ (as a theme, an operating principle and a subject position) can be traced in other of browne’s writings, it is hydriotaphia in which it is addressed explicitly. in 1658, in a fi eld in old walsingham in norfolk, a cache of between forty and fi fty burial urns was uncovered, a metre below the surface, in sandy soil. the urns typically contained about a kilogram of ashes, bone fragments and other miscellaneous materials. having described the urns and speculated at length about their origins,9 browne turns to a meditation on the lateness of the present. he writes: “tis too late to be ambitious. the great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs” (browne, 1669: 26). in the opening scene of the essay, we are just too late to witness the urns’ interment: when the general pyre was out, and the last valediction over, men took a lasting adieu of their interred friends, little expecting the curiosity of future ages should comment upon their ashes; and having no old experience of the duration of their relicks, held no opinion of such after-considerations (i). having arrived too late to witness, the latecomer knows only echoes and impressions, after-images that fade away, and traces which require inference or interpretation. too late to observe the scene ourselves, we must admit browne as a witness. the world is thus conceived as the domain of the remainder, where the contents of the world are left behind to be encountered by the latecomer. primary amongst 8 perhaps because of his often strangely inconclusive tone and recondite subject matter, literary criticism of browne has often talked as if he were primarily a stylist and that his subject matter is really only a premise for stylistic exercises. “to the nineteenth century, the fi fth chapter showed how browne, fi red with the nobility to which his subject was allied, could abandon his modest scholarly purpose and a pedestrian scholarly style to seize upon the poetic possibilities of mortality, transforming what had started out as an antiquary’s report into a work of undeniable, if baffl ing, greatness. this view of browne as an artist in spite of himself has been exorcised by modern criticism” (nathanson, 1967: 12). along with the argument that browne is only a stylist, i discard the view that he does not present a theory. i contend that the consistency of his concepts is theoretical. engraving of the old walsingham urns. 39 the characteristics of the remainder in hydriotaphia is the tendency towards dispersal. browne composes a litany of dispersing and degenerating materials: clay crumbles into the ground, silverwork turns into “small tinsel parcels”, bones and ashes are found “half mortared unto the sand and sides of the urn” with grass roots “wreathed about”, liquors have “incrassated into jellies”, wood has transmuted into charcoal, thin brass plates are found melted amongst the bones, and the tiny iron pins found in some urns decayed rapidly, “exposed unto the piercing atoms of air, in the space of a few months, they begin to spot and betray their green entrails” (13). this concern with decay spills over from the urns into the rest of hydriotaphia. every material thing is in a state of gratuitous decomposition. browne discusses mingling of the ashes of relatives, the practice of grinding up mummies for use as balm, the plundering of graves, the coagulation of fatty deposits in graves into a kind of soap, and the amount of ash into which a human body can be reduced, as well as the fading of gravestones and the collapse of monuments. in this way, browne makes explicit the logic of death implicit in genealogy. associated with material failure is the problem of semantic failure. signifi ers are shown to repeatedly fail; inscriptions and engravings last no longer than the material on which they are engraved, “gravestones tell truth scarce forty years“ (26). with respect to those who have left nameless tombs and urns, browne writes: “had they made as good provision for their names, as they have for their relicks, they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. but to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant is a fallacy in duration” (25). arbitrarily is subsistence in memory achieved: “who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? herostratus lives that burnt the temple of diana, he is almost lost that built it. time hath spared the epitaph of adrian’s horse, confounded that of himself” (26). semantic subsistence cannot be assured by appealing to material permanence; signifi cance does not survive the material failure of the signifi er. for browne, the material world is a dense fi eld of detritus consisting of items which have failed to signify, fragments of bodies and matter that have been left behind by precursors. this world is a domain shared amongst latecomers, and between precursors and latecomers. however, the communal genealogical detritus is not shared because of its meaningfulness, but rather for its failure to retain meaning. within this apparently pessimistic perspective, browne retains a distinctly utopian streak. he writes: we have enough to do to make up ourselves from present and passed times, and the whole stage of things scarce serveth for our instruction. a complete piece of virtue must be made up from the centos of all ages, as all the beauties of greece could make but one handsome venus (ii-iii). the latecomer, alienated, displaced and threatened with dispersal, sets about constructing self and context. a ‘cento’ is a literary composition assembled from 9 hydriotaphia is undoubtedly of importance in the history of archaeology, for his methodical description and thoughtful conjecture. at the time, speculation regarding british history prior to the roman occupation was vague. the urns themselves are no longer extant, but an engraving of them (figure 1) has been used to classify them as anglo-saxon rather than roman, as browne suggested. interstices 07 scraps and quotes of other writers, deriving its name from the latin word for a patchwork garment.10 the temporal world is a place of partial values, and the present does not have a monopoly on virtue or beauty. therefore, in the domain of the remainder, it is necessary to assemble a “complete piece of virtue” from wherever it may be found, past or present, in the manner of zeuxis making a portrait of hera by selecting and composing the best features of a number of women. browne’s description of the latecomer’s need to construct a place proper to him or herself in the domain of the remainder is directly analogous to bloom’s “clearing space”, and so is bloom’s “self-appropriation” to browne’s “making up ourselves”. browne makes the failing material world the scene in which genealogical relationships are negotiated, and in which individuality must be attained through an act of resistance against the precursor. in hydriotaphia, with its dominant fi gure of the urn, this movement of individuation takes on an explicitly spatial sense. the urn represents at once the various framings or encasings of the human body, and the failure of bodies to cohere and signify. one of browne’s more curious pronouncements in hydriotaphia is a description of bodies: “circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle [the character of death] must conclude and shut up all” (26). for browne, what constitutes something as a body, is delimitation and closure; that is to say, a body must be an interior, demarcated by a line which separates it off from the outside. as browne puts it, this delimitation and closure is a function of geometry. auctoritas browne may also be evoking deliberately the vitruvian fi gure of man’s body framed by circle and square.11 in the vitruvian fi gure of the body, centrally pinned and stretched, the body receives passively, or attains by strenuous effort the geometric closure necessary for constitution as a body. this fi gure was a demonstration of ratio – not simply a relationship, or a kind of proportionality, but a force of coherence. indra kagis mcewen writes in her analysis of vitruvius: “bodies were wholes whose wholeness as qualifi ed matter was, above all, a question of coherence. the agent of coherence – in the body of the world and in all the bodies in it – was ratio” (mcewen, 2003: 55-56). ratio is closely associated with authorship via the concept of auctoritas. an auctor is one who increases, augments, or magnifi es. according to j.j. pollitt, an auctor “had the power to bring something into existence and/or ensure that its existence continued” (in mcewen, 2003: 34). bringing something into existence is a matter of making it cohere. there could be no wholeness without coherence, and therefore no wholeness without ratio. an auctor supplied ratio. auctor is the root of the word and idea ‘author’ and, similarly, auctoritas is the root of the word and idea ‘authority’. originally, according to mcewen, auctoritas was a kind of security offered by an auctor in underwriting some action for another party (e.g., a lawyer offered auctoritas as a service). mcewen argues that it was this kind of service vitruvius provided to caesar augustus in his de architectura, when he offered the emperor his knowledge of how architecture established authority. in this light, 10 oed, ‘cento’ 11 browne was familiar with vitruvius, explicitly citing him elsewhere. however, browne also appears to be referencing the platonic symbol of two circles intersecting at right angles to form a three-dimensional hieroglyph, which appears from one angle as a cross and from another as the letter theta, symbol of thanatos, death. for browne, death and architecture have this in common: they bring fi nality and limit. it would perhaps not be out of place to suggest that browne considers architecture to be a deathly case. 41 vitruvius wrote in order to position architecture as the privileged art of imperial auctoritas. an architectural auctor manipulated ratio in order to provide auctoritas. importantly, authority, auctoritas, simply did not exist without instantiation, without a coherent body to demonstrate it. buildings, cohering as bodies through ratio, were authorities, rather than simply expressing or referring to authority. “strictly speaking, public buildings did not ‘represent’ power any more than a dispatch ‘represented’ a victory” (mcewen, 2003: 36). in the same way that there was no victory without a dispatch announcing it, there was no power without physical interventions announcing it in the public sphere. one such intervention was augustus’ mausoleum, the largest and one of the fi rst buildings he commissioned as the fi rst emperor of rome (completed by 23bc). it consisted of a circular base, some 87m in diameter, on which earth was mounded as a hill and planted with trees. from among the trees rose a central drum, topped again with earth and foliage, and a statue of the emperor, with a total height of about 44m. faced in marble, it stood next to the tiber in a confi guration which included the ara pacis and the horologium augustae. two obelisks outside, engraved with the res gestae, enumerated the imperial accomplishments. the mausoleum was a receptacle into which the family was collected, or from which they could be excluded. emperors down to nerva were included, but augustus’ daughter and granddaughter were excluded. the tomb served to authorise the family tree. prior to augustus’s mausoleum, the romans had very rarely constructed round tombs. the emperor’s undertaking, however, seems to have prompted a fl urry of circular tomb-building. the mausoleum served as a model for the new empire’s architecture – it was offered as a model, an architectural authority. penelope davies argues that augustus’ mausoleum was deliberately multivalent, incorporating a broad scope of reference. in particular, she considers it to refer to the circular labyrinthine tomb of alexander the great, the mausoleum of halicarnassos, and the pharos lighthouse, as well as etruscan tumuli, roman trophies, and egyptian pyramids.12 this multivalence seems to imply a condensing of historical and cosmic signifi cance in the person of the emperor. the mausoleum incorporates its references in the truest sense of the word ‘incorporate’. it draws them together into a coherent body. in vitruvian terms, the tomb is made coherent by ratio, and is therefore an instance of auctoritas. among the circular constructions which took augustus’ mausoleum as a model, the most signifi cant is perhaps the mausoleum of emperor hadrian, (completed 139ad). like its model, hadrian’s mausoleum rises as a drum above the tiber. the square base is 85m on a side and the drum, mostly concrete and surmounted by a gigantic statue of hadrian riding in a chariot, rose to over 50m. a bridge, the pons aelius, approaches the tomb from across the river. this revision of augustus’ mausoleum shows the importance for imperial roman architecture of magnifi cence, which entails in particular the practice of out-doing what has gone before.13 the new mausoleum would have been quite clearly understood as a public statement of hadrian’s belonging in the imperial line (perhaps particularly important for one adopted into the antonine succession). by closely following augustus’ model, 12 see davies, death and the emperor (2000). 13 “auctoritas in buildings is a concomitant, variously, of increased spending, of greater richness of materials, of grander spaces, of heightened contrast in the light and shadow of a peristyle, of bigger columns and more of them” (mcewen, 2003: 37-38). interstices 07 hadrian demonstrates that he is well-founded. in adopting augustus as a precursor, hadrian publicly confi rmed the greatness of the present with relation to the past by outdoing him, while also authorising himself by reinforcing the connection. confl ict between hadrian (as a latecomer) and augustus (as his precursor) can perhaps also be traced in their different uses of circularity. while the mausoleum is nearly augustus’ only circular building, hadrian was responsible for a great many others. his most famous circular construction is of course the pantheon, whose importance in architectural history belies how little is understood about its signifi cance. hadrian’s villa at tivoli is also home to a large number of circular spaces: the famous island enclosure, sunken and moated; the circular hall, a massive internal drum; a number of semi-circular triclinea; the inverse-curved hall, which was to prove infl uential for the baroque sense of formal plasticity; and the park rotunda, a curious domed structure in the grounds of the villa. 14 it is noteworthy that, if hadrian and augustus are architects, they may be so in a different sense to loos and schinkel. however, what is of primary importance here is that in both cases a genealogical confl ict is played out in an architectural scene. into the chronological distance between these two exemplary relationships (loos/ schinkel and hadrian/augustus) should be read a desire to test the range of applicability of a conception of lateness, rather than an assertion of its universality. current state of augustus’ mausoleum and reconstructions after gatti and cordingley/richmond. hadrian’s mausoleum with baroque additions removed, and reconstruction after eisner 43 apart from the triclinea, uses for these spaces remain highly uncertain. it has been variously suggested, for example, that the park rotunda was a tomb for hadrian’s dead lover, a cool store, or a proof-of-concept for the pantheon itself. what is most noticeable is that there is not a single conceptual picture which can make sense of these spaces. it is as if it is a formal game over which hadrian presides. if hadrian’s circular spaces seem gratuitous, this could be passed off as a changing roman taste in favour of formal pluralism, but i believe this misses the point. hadrian’s use of circular form is the absolute antithesis of augustus’. where augustus uses it as a receptacle in which to gather signifi cance, hadrian disperses its signifi cance almost completely. hadrian unpicks the ratio of augustus’ mausoleum, and this should be understood as a strategic weakening of the precursor. hadrian fragments the consistency of augustus’ architectural body in order to constitute his own, in order to succeed augustus, not simply follow him in time.14 return to whom is architecture properly attributable? to whom can it be returned or restored? traditionally, architectural history and criticism has sought to return architecture to the architect as its individual origin. the very notion of an individual one who cannot be divided or internally separated – almost precludes being ‘under the infl uence’. infl uence is an infl owing; to be a descendant, follower, or disciple, is not merely to be overshadowed by a precursor, but to be laid open to, and potentially fl ooded by, that precursor. bloom’s insight with respect to poetic infl uence is that this laying-open does not escape the latecomer’s attention. on the contrary, it is a source of anxiety: that one’s work is not one’s own, that one is too late to be original, that in coming after the precursor one is doomed to be infl uenced. to become an origin, to make without precedent, it is necessary not to be infl uenced, not to be a mere descendant, follower, or disciple. the precursors, the poetic parents, must be set to one side. bloom’s thesis is that this setting-aside occurs both in, and by means of, poetic construction. bloom’s theory of infl uence is pertinent to architectural construction. architecture, too, can be the scene and means of setting aside precursors (warding them off, evading them, escaping them). rather than thinking of architecture simply as constructive or productive, architecture can be imagined as a wrestling with a precursor, a setting-aside of one’s architectural parents. in this antagonism, architecture itself is not a side-effect. on the contrary, architectural acts themselves are the offensive and defensive movements of individuation. two specifi c instances of are loos’ deferential disenfranchising of schinkel, and hadrian’s dilution of augustus. ideas of lateness, failure, and the exhaustion of the present also emerge in a reading of browne. bloom and browne present parallel conceptions of the world as the domain of the remainder, the state of struggle with respect to this inheritance, and interstices 07 the motivating anxiety which accompanies lateness. for browne, the anxiety of inheritance is closely associated with the anxiety of material failure (dispersal and degeneration). the two anxieties are so tightly bonded, or entangled, that it is diffi cult to tell them apart, to ascertain whether one is an allegory of the other. in order to open the full register of architecture, it is necessary to dispose of uncritical presumptions about the relation between an architect and his or her precursors. there is a need for a more antagonistic reading of architectural genealogy, which recognises identities rather than individuals, identities which are not contained within individuals but which pass through them and provide a ground against which the individual is resolved. references agamben, g. genius (l. simmons, trans.). interstices: a journal of architecture and related arts (7), 94-99 “karl friedrich schinkel, new pavilion, berlin, germany, 1824-1825”. (2003). a+u, 388(1), 42-44. bloom, h. (1973). the anxiety of infl uence, 2nd ed. oxford: oxford university press. browne, t. (1669). hydriotaphia, or urn-burial. london: henry brome. colomina, b. (1994). privacy and publicity. cambridge: mit press. davies, p. (2000). death and the emperor. cambridge: cambridge university press. mcewen, i. (2003). vitruvius. cambridge: mit press. nathanson, l. (1967). the strategy of truth. a study of sir thomas browne. chicago: university of chicago press. list of illustrations: engraving of the old walsingham urns. (browne, hydriotaphia, or urn-burial. london: henry brome, 1669, p.viii) current state of augustus’s mausoleum and reconstructions after gatti and cordingley/ richmond. (carl douglas) hadrian’s mausoleum with baroque additions removed, and reconstruction after eisner. (carl douglas) interstices 6 the open: man and animal1 review by maria o’connor the open is nothing but a grasping of the animal not-open. man suspends his animality and, in this way, opens a ‘free and empty’ zone in which life is captured and a-bandoned [ab-bandonata] in a zone of exception. —agamben (2004: 79) they all inhabit the interim, the interzone of the ‘meanwhile’ where action and process are rejected for what i like to call the ‘waiting’; that is the interstitial time in which, and this is essential, the notion of what-one-is-waiting-for is all of a sudden unimportant and irrelevant. the ‘waiting’ is that zone inbetween concrete and tangible ‘homes’ in which [language] investigates the meaning of an absence, of that which should have come, or should come or will come but is not here yet. —bartoloni (2004: 13)2 caesura: standing still in an opening perhaps agamben’s central motif in the open is that of the caesura—the stand-still—that holds our thinking, across any thinking of regions between man and animal; for in this book these regions are, in some way, always intimately linked—not only serving philosophical enquiry, but all enquiry that has questioned this relationship (theology, ecology, medicine, biology etc.)—and, for agamben, a radical re-entry, ethical in its impetus, into a genealogical analysis for an outside to humanism and all its problematic implications. let us enter the open in the middle that demarcates a shift in the book’s intonation; a tonal register that has implicitly shifted from retroactivity to potentiality. here agamben concludes the section on the anthropological machine, a machinic characteristic of instrumental humanist thinking that we associate with the epoch of modernity (and linking this work to his earlier concern with bare life, from the aristotelian distinction between bios and zoe to foucault’s concerns with the advent of the biopolitical).3 like every space of exception, this zone is, in truth, perfectly empty, and the truly human being who should occur there is only the place of a ceaselessly updated decision in which the caesurae 1. agamben, g. (2004). the open: man and animal (k. attell, trans.). stanford, california: stanford university press. 2. bartoloni, p. (2004). the stanza of the self: on agamben’s potentiality. contretemps (5, december). to contextualise this description that traces agamben’s thinking on the spatial-temporal condition of the open, bartoloni seeks to excavate agamben’s interstitial moment between literature and philosophy: the dispute between literature and philosophy that culminates as two different positions of the genres of a self, i.e., we exist either in (poetic) language, or through (philosophically enquiring) language. the writer’s attention to a more radical position on subjectivity is thought of with respect to agamben’s project of language and the self, whereby the potentiality (the openness of a radical other presence) for being is characterized by “the zone of presence that is determined to play its own potentiality, including inpotentiality, to the full, that is prepared to let 11� and their rearticulation are always dislocated and displaced anew. what would thus be obtained, however, is neither an animal life nor a human life, but only a life that is separated and excluded from itself—only a bare life. (agamben, 2004: 38) osmotic languages of agamben’s waiting we hover in a reading-understanding of questions of style that asks for another time; another paradigm of thinking, neither wholly constantive nor wholly performative: rather a thinking between both moments, oscillating without the desire for a claim on either position. this thinking of style, style of thinking marks agamben’s the open—a writing style that produces in its brevity something of an interstitial difference—a waiting—that allows the reader to gauge what is really at stake. really? we wait whilst something surprising reveals itself through this playful performing, whereby each section accounts for a slice of thinking (foucault suggests knowledge is not for understanding but for cutting) that has radically placed itself into some official doxa on the relations between man and animal. agamben’s open lies waiting between each section insomuch as it reveals the linkages which build upon modernity’s (humanist) prioritizing of (man’s) mastery over things (animals-himself ) in the world, thereby closing down (or forgetting) the contingent nature of our being. indebted to heidegger, agamben’s open is a revealing of a shift in thinking that holds open the wonder of thinking; the as such that opposes, as it reveals, the dominance of instrumental logic wherein a culture of technology has become our central way of relating to the world. here animals are ex-positions, revealed as things (not beings) that we relate to insofar as how we can use them; and in using them (as in the way of technicity), our own enslavement is produced—a reference to heidegger’s warning in his essay “the question concerning technology”, for instance, that the forgetting of being is paradoxically dangerous, for in the essence of technology (which is nothing technological) humanity can be saved, as what is acutely recognizable is the way in which we have forgotten being. and in the open agamben does something akin to heidegger, whereby the essence of man is revealed through our relation (a kind of non-relation) to animals. and more so here, in the open—interstitial waiting—style of this small book, where between the brevity of each section we find a larger field opens up around the middle of the book. this larger moment of openness structures the book into two marked parts. the first is marked by a kind of wisdom that revisits dominions of thinking (philosophy, theology, politics, medicine, biology etc.), exposing through their singular question the secured borders between human and animal: an exposure of thinking of difference both culminating in, and producing constantive accounts of man’s placing himself over and above all other beings in the world. in short, this is an effect of western thought that has produced the humanist condition, which agamben names efficiently as the anthropological machine. the title for agamben’s book is ultimately taken with respect to heidegger’s reciprocal gesturing for a revealing of being through positions of openness and closedness, or unconcealedness and concealedness. in heidegger’s thinking of animal as ‘poor-in-world’, within its poverty the animal possesses openness through captivation. man is not poor-in-world as he is able to recognize other beings in the world (that is not environment). the ‘in language’ free to roam within the ‘through language’”. to quote agamben (on such radical presence): “only when we succeed in […] experiencing our own impotentiality do we become capable of creating, truly becoming poets. and the hardest thing in this experience is not the nothing or its darkness, in which many nevertheless remain imprisoned; the hardest thing is being capable of annihilating this nothing and letting something, from nothing, be” (agamben, 1999: 253). so, in writing a ‘review’ (some kind of intepretation through and in reading), on agamben’s the open: man and animal, it is important to sense in what language we dwell in order to move through, not so that some kind of progression as an account of man’s dysfunctional relation to animal is confirmed as producing some kind of nihilistic cultural condition (marked in particular by the epoch of modernity), but rather to become productive in experiencing our own impotentiality as a not remaining in the darkness of the nothing but a coming into an open relationship with it such that letting something, from nothing, be. this presence is not the presence associated with metaphysics but rather is the promotion of a crossing of communities (for example, those of philosophy and literature) that dislocates knowing through the attempt at possessing (language and its object of) or keeping it (object of language/language of object) at a distance in order for possession to take place. rather, agamben’s openness brings the near and the far together in a rearticulation of singularity and subjectivity into a domain in which ‘suchness’ (agamben‘s such as it is, or, being-such) acquires its own possible actuality; an actuality which is obviously incommensurable with the universalizing concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity. agamben’s such as it is or being-such is characterized by a community of self. this condition or state is not calculable (i.e. we think interstices 6 although, as agamben states, heidegger’s ontological paradigm of truth is the conflict between concealedness and unconcealedness, it is a paradigm of thinking that has its originary thinking in a paradigm of politics. agamben wants to point to two things here that ultimately address his open. first, heidegger is still ensnared by the oppositional thinking that he seeks to overturn. even though animal is poor-in-world (occupying some small place in man’s ‘world’), animal is truly outside the zone of the polis (the essential place of man) with its discordant dialectics between concealedness and unconcealedness. for example, “in our culture, the decisive political conflict, which governs every other conflict, is that between the animality and the humanity of man. that is to say, in its origin western politics is also biopolitics” (80). and second, since animal is only capable of (non)recognizing the being of man through being closed in/to his world, then it is truly through the (thinking of the humanist) anthropological machine that animal is allowed to be: “if humanity has been obtained only through a suspension of animality, and must thus keep itself open to the closedness of animality, in what sense does heidegger’s attempt to grasp the ‘existing essence of man’ escape the metaphysical primacy of animalitas?” (73) idling locating the thetic moment of the open in the middle of the book with heidegger’s paradoxical holding pattern that keeps humanitas and animalitas (of man) quite separate, we sense how agamben is indebted to heidegger’s thinking with respect to a closure to metaphysical thinking. for a post-historical enquiry, this has meant a turn that allows for a foucaudian engagement with respect to genealogical questioning. this, in turn, takes us back to the book’s beginning: the engagement with an image of the last judgment, where humans are given animal heads, an image that starts with the end of history (a world after end of the world-post-judgement) and culminates in the metamorphosis of man and animal. and so heidegger acts as the central hinge, as that moment that (re-)turns thinking from the very ground of western thought and opens up a new ground. a suspended spike is placed into the wheels of a dominant (perhaps now idling) anthropological machine, which has claimed much of the ground for thinking the question of being human, separate from animal. its rise and history had made possible the most ‘logical’ outcome of a thinking that permits the stripping of humanity from human beings: “from the beginning, metaphysics is taken up in this strategy: it concerns precisely that meta that completes and preserves the overcoming of animal physis in the direction of human history” (79). in its concluding moments the book opens onto another kind of relation, outside dialectical and humanist thinking, another caesura, another hiatus of the decidability of man or animal—something truly unnameable (via walter benjamin, whose dialectics were always idling, at a standstill): “the machine is, so to speak, stopped; it is ‘at a standstill’, and, in the reciprocal suspension of the two terms, something for which we perhaps have no name and which is neither animal nor man settles in between nature and humanity and holds itself in the mastered relation, in the saved night” (83). for agamben, as for benjamin before him, the anthropological machine is out of play. again of a turn—not towards something but a turn/move simply in itself); it is incomplete, in the sense that it is something unstructured by the universal. “suchness”, according to agamben, is that which “presents itself as such, that shows its singularity. … the antinomy of the individual and the universal has its origin in language”. the open collects many singular recountings of discursive practices, of disciplinary genres, of relations between men and animals, and in multiplying the as such of brief interstitial accounts we (readers) arrive in and at the same time through agamben’s language: “an extra-temporal … the time of pleasurable plenitude … a time not, in other words, the eternal” (bartoloni, 2004: 12). we read agamben’s language as an attempt at the coming community of a pure ‘now’, the interim—not dependent upon a projected future point at which it will be come whole. and so, we may read the open as agamben’s performative genre, whereby the question of community is bound to his ethics of a taking-place that celebrates the pleasure of difference; each insight into man and animal offers something intelligent and stupid, authentic and inauthentic, potential and impotential. 3. see agamben, g. (1998). homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life (d. heller-roazen, trans.). stanford, california: stanford university press. round table connections: the house in the auckland scene mike austin 132 the exhibition connections: the house in the auckland scene was shown at the auckland university school of architecture during august, after a successful opening at wanganui. the exhibition mounted by g4 (the fourth generation) was in some ways a watershed and a marker, being an aesthetic and theoretical proposition that the architecture of auckland can be found in the thin layer of suburban housing. this was implied in the title and the layout of the exhibition. the exhibition was accompanied by a substantial catalogue, with essays by emeritus professor peter bartlett, dr john dickson and dr bechir kenzari. to coincide with the show in auckland g4 organised a round table discussion evening. the spatial and temporal architecture of the discussion characterised what followed , with two members ofg4 (simon twose and mahendra daji) in the middle and two professors (peter bartlett and john hunt) bookending a panel ofarchitects (marshal cook, patrick clifford, rewi thompson and tony van raat) . the only woman on the panel, felicity wallace, made a late entrance and squeezed herself in behind the men. this arrangement is all too familiar, as were the panellists' comments. all sorts of answers were provided, but it was not apparent what the questions might possibly be. there was some discussion about thinness and surface (ideas proposed by twose), but the talk moved onto the standard areas of identity and landscape with some minor squabbles and old positions being staked out. jasmax, who supported the evening, lamented in a fax to g4 the "propensity for new zealand architects to talk to anything but the point. " 1 the evening proceeded in the usual desultory fashion until a member of the audience, bill mckay, raised an issue that he had already spelt out in a letter to art new zealand, to the effect that the catalogue" ... is a text that focuses on auckland architecture yet ignores halfofit."2 the other half is the " ... concurrent, now nearly forgotten school of thought that produced houses that were cool, geometric, sophisticated and international in style." mckay provides a list: "robin simpson, tibor donner, henry kulka, vladimir cacala, brenner group and milan mrkusich, bill harsnape (sic), mark-brown fairhead, rigby mullan, kenneth albert, neville price and many others ... "3 it turns out that many of these had been mentioned in the catalogue, and there are various names that haven't made it onto mckay's list. in other words the list produces all sorts of new eliminations (just for example women, polynesians, government architects, builders, engineers, english expatriates, american expatriates, south islanders), each of which could be argued for as a neglected exclusion, and each of which could become a new research topic. the list is never wide enough. mckay suggested that "g4 don't make connections-they are retreading the same old story."4 mckay proposed another narrative, but even as he states it there is an immediate fragmentation. clearly there is not just one other position, as mckay claimed when he said that there is" ... a new generation ofarchitectural historians actually interested in unearthing the history of modernism in new zealand."5 however, the names he mentioned (peter shaw, douglas lloydjenkins, dr paul walker, justine clark and julia gatley) are, and in various ways, writing the establishment histo1y; but, more importantly, there is no longer any possibility of there being a singular history. nor was the history ofnew zealand modernism the subject of the exhibition. it note all images are of connections: the house in the auckland scene exhibition held at the school of architecture, property and planning, the university of auckland, 1999 . photographs provided by g4 exhibiting unit. 1. pip cheshire in a fax to g4, 22 august 99 . 2. bill mckay, "letters," art new zealand no. 92 (spring 1999): 82. 3. mckay, 82. 4. mckay, 82. 5. mckay, 82. 133 6. derek schulz, "g4 in wanganui making connections," art new zealand no. 91 (winter 1999): 51. 7. schulz, 51. 134 was, however, an aspect of the essays in the catalogue; and of which schulz says in review that john dickson "steals the show with his sustained attack on modernism's carnivorous soul, a critique which manages to be both whimsical and authoritative."6 the categorical significance of modernism is not established and there are many stories yet to be told. at the round table mckay accused the panel of being in collusion in their ignoring of this other tradition. dickson (as a member of the audience) then claimed that mckay's analysis was correct, but his conclusion was wrong. the panel was actually in deep disagreement. perhaps they were in agreement to not expose their disagreements . the disagreement would of course be as to who makes it onto the list, and therefore into the canon of new zealand modernism. mckay and dickson were in agreement that something was being suppressed, but what is it? is suppression rather than connection the condition of auckland architecture? this suppression produces the post-colonial cringe where we remain dependent upon the metropolis but at the very same time despise this dependence. this ambivalence about the metropolis is the colonial condition. the bogey of the international has its own little history here . international architecture was the world professed by charles light and cyril knight, who came from the metropolitan arena to the auckland university school of architecture and who, the mythology goes, suppressed members of "the group" following their attempts as students to unseat light. but it isn't that simple because light didn't seem to support the refugee modernists and internationalists either. the suppression of the group has perhaps led to the suppression now by the group's descendants who made up the discussion panel. (more research to be done.) the discussion evening was characterised by a mean spiritedness that was described by schultz as notably absent from the exhibition and catalogue," ... where writers no longer labour at the task of self-promotion but work to deepen and enrich the exhibition's detail."7 the panel did not subject the exhibition or the catalogue to any examination. instead discussion was in absentia-about what wasn't done. this seemed to lead to the old idea that auckland is interesting because of what it isn 't. that auckland is characterised by lack is not a new notion, and light himself once proposed that the auckland school didn ' t have any ideology. the right wing namesake of the round table also claims to be free of ideology and it might be suggested that both groups are involved in promoting self interest in the guise of discussion and suppressing other points of view. perhaps what is being suppressed is work? the suppression is about the work of others , whether it is the mounting of the exhibition by g4, the academic work of the catalogue, design work by local architects or commentary and criticism such as mckay's. intellectual architectural work is not taken seriously. there is no critical environment that supports and challenges the work of the best architects. at the "derrida downunder" conference at auckland university a few days later, stephen turner spoke of the impossibility of making theory in peripheral nonmetropolitan space. however to claim that this is a totally new zealand condition is to fall into the very hole that the panel dug for themselves. the same dismissive behaviour can be observed in new york (where there is perhaps more passion because the stakes are higher), and it has been noted in japan that japanese architects (for example tange and isozaki) are ignored locally when they become international figures. nevertheless local criticism has a certain lack of generosity and ad hominem argument that some have blamed on the auckland university school of architecture. mckay suggests that the exhibition catalogue provides material for an assessment of the auckland school to be written. certainly this author is far too implicated to make any evaluation. two observations can perhaps be permitted. firstly, that everyone who spoke on the evening was a graduate of the auckland school; and secondly, during much of the period in question this was the only school of architecture in the country. we teachers in the school hear all sorts of versions about whether the school is the best or worst in the university, new zealand, or the world. 8 what we suspect that it hovers closer to the middle of this continuum than most critics acknowledge and this very mediocrity is a hazard seldom discussed. mckay claims, "two out of three texts in this publication are pleasant reading ... " is the third unpleasant and which are the two selected for faint praise? a clue is given by mention of " ... the parade of teachers through the auckland school of architecture." 9 the third essay, by kenzari, the only figure who is not a graduate, although he is a teacher, of the auckland school, is characterised by its concentration on theoretical issues. so what is being suppressed here? is it that mckay is complicit with the suppression of international theory? certainly, the local names who have an international reputation (plischke, wigley) do not enter local discussion except at the margins of the academy. mckay speaks of" ... those who know the breadth of modern architecture out there in the suburbs of auckland" for whom "[t]he production is a real disappointment." 10 but this call for broad coverage is the very absence of research and theory, and is instead the stuff of data collection and survey, summarised by mckay's claim that " ... we do not have a representative survey of 'the house in the auckland scene."' "breadth" does not give theoretical leverage on the notion of the house and the proposition of layered thinness that is the value of the contribution ofg4. this exhibition and its title opened some theoretical propositions for discussion. the house, auckland and the scenographic have had much written about them but these issues were not theoretically examined in the catalogue. the scenographic (which has such a difficult time in architectural theory) was mentioned by dickson when he talked about "the extraordinary scenographic achievements of enid blyton." 11 schulz, citing this comment, refers to dickson's "deft sceptical [sic] spirit, committed to both seriousness of purpose and the lightest and most personal oftouches." 12 a quality lacking in the round table discussion . 8. schulz claims that "the auckland house that marks a homage to the elegance, freshness and wide erudition characteristic of the university of auckland school of architecture, from which all are graduates, the work of its students bearing testimony to one of the most progressive passionate and indigenous of our university faculties." schulz, 51. 9. mckay speaks of the parade of teachers but brown, toy, middleton and porsolt, to mention only those named by bartlett, had very different views about architecture. mckay, 82. peter bartlett , "the mid-century modern house in auckland 1960-1990," in connections: the house in the auckland scene (auckland: g4 exhibitions unit, 1998), 13. 10. mckay, 82. 11. john dickson, "architectural modernism in new zealand 1960-1990," in connections: the house in the auckland scene, 37. 12. schulz, 51. 135 in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 9 p r e s e n c e adrian lo between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house introduction this paper investigates peter eisenman’s notion of interstitial space through a critical reading of his un-built project for the guardiola house of 1988. it is a study of how eisenman discovered and developed a mode of design which employs a distinctive system of tracing and imprinting. the absent-present traces are the marks or indexical signs which record the steps of a narrative series of transformations, involving the overlapping of figures as exemplified by the process diagrams of eisenman’s many projects. eisenman’s trace is a consequence of his intention that one is to literally read the building, which stems from postmodernism’s development of a linguistic model for architecture, in establishing a theoretical basis of meanings and messages, so architecture could be a form of communication or language (jencks 1977: pp. 6, 39). this formalism, reflected in eisenman’s insistence on applying a linguistic model to his work and criticism derived from the analytical work initiated by his dissertation (eisenman 2006). eisenman’s early work employed noam chomsky’s structuralist linguistics as a heuristic or exploratory device to uncover the syntactic deep structure (chomsky 1972: pp. 14-32) of architecture as a means of providing its sign of intentionality (eisenman 2006: p.25). whilst chomsky’s grammars primarily occupied eisenman during his formative years, this study demonstrates that the guardiola house marks the point of a critical shift with the onset of poststructuralism via jacques derrida’s deconstruction. here, eisenman moves from generative elemental structures to the complexities influenced by the deconstruction of these very structures, resulting in something which embraces the coexistence of difference. the guardiola project is a pivotal moment whereby eisenman sought to establish innovative ways of conceiving a textual approach to architecture (kaji-o’grady 2001: p. 147; eisenman 1973: 319). there is a key distinction between his work before and after the guardiola house, where the traces formed between the constituent figures of the design (grids, cubes, els, etc.) become more important than the figures themselves. the guardiola house introduced a new form of the trace, that of the interstitial, as a condition of the in-between and the simultaneous coexistence of absent-present figures. this interstitial condition is an innovative form of spatiality, where 10 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 eisenman developed the trace through the operation of imprinting. this is not simply a means of pushing into a surface, but an interpenetration through masses, constituting the blurred geometries not seen in the work prior to the guardiola house. this notion of interstitiality is a significant shift, which reframed his whole mode of operating after the guardiola house. the poché is the pocket of space, found in the thickened walls of medieval castles; an idea fundamental to the work of louis kahn, who conceived of walls as hollowed stones, whereby interstitial spaces are contained within solid walls (brownlee & de long 1991: pp.56, 68). eisenman, however, achieves this through a transformative process, where these interstitial thickened masses are a record of the presence of absent steps. moreover, his innovation of the interstitial is more than just the record of procedural traces, in that it brings the element of chance and open-endedness into the reinterpretation of traditional architectural ideas and practices of designing, developing the poché into something more. although the trace has been much discussed, existing scholarship overlooks the significance of the guardiola house in the interpretation of eisenman’s work and thinking (allen 2006: pp. 49-65; benjamin 2003: pp. 306-310; davidson 2006: pp. 25-31). this research remedies this gap by asking: what significance, in terms of theory, culture, and program, does this notion of the interstitial have for eisenman’s work? the guardiola house is a diagram of eisenman’s projects, processes, and spatial thinking. the guardiola is used as a “house of guards” or a kaleidoscopic lens to observe and speculate on his work. this paper is divided into three parts. firstly, in order to engage in a heuristic exploration of the house’s design process, a reconstruction according to the published documentation was made. secondly, this is followed by a close reading to compare these documents to the actual development of the design as per the archived documentation. and lastly, a critical interpretation of these processes is made to discuss some of the important discrepancies between the published and archived processes which have implications on eisenman’s later work as well as the wider architectural discourse. fig. 1 3d section of eisenman’s guardiola house (1988) showing the interstitial blurring of orthogonal and rotated figures [cgi: author, 2013] 11 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 1. the published process whereas the technique of superimposition of figures was employed in many of eisenman’s previous projects, especially his cities of artificial excavation (eisenman et al 1994), the la villette project was the first to distinguish between mere layering with tracing and imprinting, and it is the guardiola house which first executes this distinction in three-dimensions (eisenman 1997: p. 134). eisenman’s previous projects dealt with figure-figure relationships primarily in plan, that is, in horizontal two-dimensions, and the vertical third-dimension was achieved with simple extrusions, where the sections did little justice to the more complex plans (eisenman 1997: p. 134). he argued that the idea of chora developed a new condition, such that it is a pivotal idea for introducing tracing and imprinting into three-dimensions (eisenman 1997: p. 134; eisenman 2004: p. 51). in the project’s published description, eisenman is interested in an “other” definition of place, which he finds in the definition of plato’s chora or receptacle “as something between place and object, between container and contained” (eisenman 1989: pp. 9-10). eisenman then likens the receptacle to sand on a beach, a record of movement, leaving traces and imprints on the sand with each wave receding to the water, or similarly like a foot leaving an imprint in the sand, but traces of residual sand remains on the foot (eisenman 1989: pp. 9-10). derrida describes the chora as place, interval, space, or spacing (derrida, eisenman, & kipnis 1997: p. 108), yet it “is neither sensible nor intelligible, it is a third something which does not belong to being … it is place, but place is nothing” (derrida, eisenman, & lesser 1997: p. 70; derrida 1997: pp. 15-16). paradoxically, eisenman attempts to make sensible the presence of absence of chora such that la villette sought “to bring into figuration an idea of chora” (derrida, eisenman, kipnis, leeser, & rizzi 1997a: pp. 10-12). yet derrida reiterates that the chora “is that ‘something’ which is not a thing” (derrida 1997: p. 18), and can only exist in one’s thinking, definable yet paradoxically indefinable fig. 2-3 exterior views from the southwest and southeast [cgi: author, 2013] 12 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 (derrida, eisenman, kipnis, lesser, & rizzi 1997b: p. 91; derrida, eisenman, pelissier, & rizzi 1997: p. 35). although the chora cannot be represented, andrew benjamin explains that the chora nevertheless has a “productive potential” (benjamin 2000: pp. 15-16) which is characterized by movement and process. eisenman interprets the chora as a malleable putty-like substance and refers to the guardiola house as a kind of receptacle that can receive imprints with the potential to simultaneously change its shape and the shape of another; essentially a three-dimensional notation and recording mechanism (eisenman 1997: p. 134). thus, he translates, illustrates, or even misinterprets the chora with the metaphor of the foot-in-sand, in which two entities (figure and ground) have a reciprocal effect on one another, affecting each other, constituting a “receptacle-like” interstitial condition. what follows is a discussion of the reconstruction and recording of the guardiola’s formal process based on the published process diagrams but attempted in digital three-dimensions, where the interstitial traces and imprints mark the movement of the transformations. here, the process begins with an initial condition of a white cube in which a red copy has been removed or subtracted to produce an fig. 4 eisenman’s process diagrams for the guardiola house (1988), based on eisenman 1989: p. 12 [drawing: author, 2018] 13 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 el-form (l1). this subtraction forms the basis of the remainder of the iterative design process. the el-form is then doubled and displaced (l2). these are then duplicated and mirrored, horizontally and vertically, to produce the four external el-volumes of the house (l1-l4). within the upper (l1-l2) and lower els (l3-l4), the intersections appear as red frames, which eisenman calls “traces” in his original project description (eisenman 1989: p.10). these ghosted geometries marking the absent presences of the intersecting volumes seemingly invade the interior of the house. the four initial els (l1-l4) are duplicated, scaled, and transformed, forming a second set of four interior els (l1a-l4a), which intersect with the external els. this is the interlocking or interpenetration stage of the process, which produces two components. the first component is the imprinted object, where the red interior els are subtracted from the white exterior els. this is the interstitial envelope or poché, where the absent-present interior red surfaces are the floors, ceilings, and walls of the house. the second component is the reciprocal of the first component, that is, the red parts sticking out of the white, which become the “windows”. the various els are then combined with the pragmatic elements of the house, which are not explained in the project diagrams or description, such as the internal doors, floors, and stairs. the traces were key in providing interpretations of particular cultural and social aspects of the villa type, that is, the type’s anteriority and interiority. anteriority describes the cultural aspects of architecture, particularly in relation to the evolution or history of types (“conceived space” in terms of lefebvre’s and soja’s trialectics of spatiality), whereas interiority describes the social and empirical aspects of architecture (“perceived space”), such as its functions, perceptions, and spatial organization (eisenman 1999: p. 37; soja 2000: pp. 17-19). here, the white cubic geometries of the guardiola house set it apart from its natural context, yet they respond to the specific conditions of the place, such as the suspended tumbling of el-cubes down the slope of the site. though abstracted, the reverberations of these cubes reflect the tumbling of waves on the beach where the house is sited. challenging social norms, there is an unconventional glass floor to see the sea and the non-structural red frames interrupt the space and movement within the house, such as the frame that cuts through the dining space. moreover, floors are at times slightly slanted to disturb one’s perception of a horizontal surface, and windows are of various unconventional shapes. the interstitial poché captures the presence of absent figural volumes as part of a procedural logic, but more importantly eisenman has translated the poché into something more by making the interstitial condition evoke a sense of experiential difference produced by the architecture. 2. the archived process eisenman’s absent-present traces of the process, evident since his early houses projects, are paradoxical, in the sense that the result may not necessarily correspond to the process of sequential series of transformations. there is an apparent linearity to the published transformation diagrams. but in reality, they are “fictional” and an elaborate means of storytelling, as revealed in the archived drawings which were studied at the cca, where the various analytical sketches reveal a nonlinear and heuristic decision-making process. 14 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 fig. 5-6 the initial condition of a white cube which is duplicated, displaced, and superimposed [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 7-8 subtraction producing an el-form (l1), which is then copied, displaced, and rotated, for the upper volume (l1 and l2) [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 9-10 mirroring the two els to create the lower volume (l3 and l4), producing the four external els (l1 l4) [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 11-12 marking the intersections as frames [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 13-14 the two orthogonal els (l1 and l3) are copied and transformed (l1a and l3a) [cgi: author, 2013] 15 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 fig. 15-16 the two rotated els (l2 and l4) are copied and transformed (l2a and l4a) [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 17-18 the transformed (internal) els (l1a-l4a) intersect with the external els (l1-l4) [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 19-20 subtraction of the internal els from the external els producing i) the interstitial and ii) the interpenetrations (residual parts of the internal els from the subtraction) piercing through the external els to become glazed elements [cgi: author, 2013] fig 21-22 further intersections of duplicated els (l5 and l6) which are subtracted to produce window slits [cgi: author, 2013] 16 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 fig 23-24 lower els (l3 and l4) extend to produce the lower detached volume (l3b and l4b) [cgi: author, 2013] fig 25-26 additional elements of the house: stairs, floors, doors, etc. combined with the results of the above process [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 27 assemblage of all the elements with foundations [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 28 3d longitudinal section [cgi: author, 2013] 17 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 fig. 29 3d cross section through upper els [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 30 3d cross section through intersection of the els [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 31 3d cross section through lower els [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 32 3d upper level, master bedroom [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 33 3d intermediate level, living and dining [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 34 3d entrance level with glass floor [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 35 3d lower level, son’s/guests’ rooms [cgi: author, 2013] 18 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 eisenman’s traces constitute a morphological fiction, in which a rhetorical narrative retells the story of how the form came about. robin evans, who sees the products as generally more interesting and complex compared to their justifications, claims that eisenman attempts to protect his objects from the viewer by creating a complex narrative (evans 1985: pp.69-70). the numerous process diagrams of eisenman’s projects imply a sense of movement, time, sequence, and multiple possibilities, which become ironically static in the built result (evans 1985: p. 72). eisenman intends his projects to be read as a process. he insists on a complex set of procedures that produced the object—a palimpsest of traces—yet he freezes these in time and space. the interstitial traces here, resulting from a multi-layered process, are what i call “flattened” in a controlled, step-by-step process to introduce a discourse on iterative geometries. eisenman’s published diachronic process diagrams are flattened in the resulting project, as it is ultimately blurred and made synchronic, but within the representation of this process, he selectively re-orders and re-represents the order of events. through this anachronic reduction or flattening (deliberate chronological inconsistency or discrepancy), eisenman intended to idealize and linearize the real pen on paper process, reducing its trial-and-error decisiveness, by creating a post-factual “perfect fiction” of the project’s becoming (leeser 2013). 3. two discrepancies there are two important discrepancies between the published and archived processes; these regard the unexplained steps of “rotation” and “imprinting through surface”, as per the published process diagrams. these discrepancies revealed an underlying significance of such procedures, as they were not just steps within the process, but fundamental moves, which actually motivate the development of the interstitial condition. fig. 36 interior of entrance level [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 37 interior of entrance level glass floor [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 38 interior of intermediate level with red frame cutting through space [cgi: author, 2013] fig. 39 interior of lower level room with triangular window [cgi: author, 2013] 19 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 3.1 the tumbling of el-cubes the transformative operation of rotation in the guardiola house is significant for two reasons. firstly, it starts a discourse about the guardiola project’s relationship to the site, and secondly, it is the first project which used rotation in three-dimensions to produce the interstitial. daniel libeskind, in an article on the guardiola house, inaccurately writes that eisenman’s rotation for guardiola was a “rotation without motive” (libeskind 1989). he had already used rotation in the cities of artificial excavations where complex plans were produced, combining orthogonal and rotated geometries. it is important to note that the published process resulted from parts of a much wider development in the actual process, which was a development of house x (1975). the guardiola project started as half of house x, which used el-forms (fig. 10 and fig. 41), but had not yet employed rotating or imprinting, as seen in the early unpublished schemes. in studying the archived drawings, i discovered that eisenman, only later in the design development, suddenly decided to rotate or tumble the el-cubes into each other, as in the rolling of dice, whereby chance and unpredictability enters into the project. after this, he re-tells the entire process as a linear narrative to re-elaborate the transformations producing this house. the rotation is a pivotal moment in this project, yet eisenman never talks it. at a certain stage, he decided to rotate the el-cubes, but what informed this? in an interview with thomas leeser, who worked with eisenman on this project, leeser comments, “i remember the rotation was a big step in this poché” (leeser 2013). furthermore, he believes that this rotational shift may have been to do fig. 40 guardiola house, site plan (based on eisenman 1989: p. 19) with site boundary from archived plan; rotation of volumes to southern boundary (lower dashed line) [drawing: author, 2013] 20 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 with the site, as arbitrary as that may be. on inspection of the archived site plan, it appears that the house’s orthogonal volumes are parallel to the orthogonal site boundaries, whereas particular sides of the rotated volumes seem parallel to the diagonal site boundaries, such that they could be referring to the diagonal sides of the site (fig. 40). the early orthogonal scheme of the guardiola house is similar to house x. eisenman here sought to explore interstitial matter, but produced only a singular reading of straight elements, horizontally and vertically. in the published scheme, the rotation tumbled the cubes into each other but, also unified the geometries into a coherent assemble, whereby he presented the interstitial condition as a double reading of absent-present traces of diagonal and orthogonal elements (fig. 41-43). the rotational shift in the guardiola house clearly comes from eisenman’s transformative operations employed in his earlier work, even as early as house iii (1969-71). however, as seen in house iii, the two systems remain distinct, that is, a rotated cube clearly overlapped with an orthogonal cube, where the geometries were not yet merged. as opposed to his earlier houses, where the formal operations were entirely autonomous without external references, eisenman’s cities projects employed the site to generate the forms and alignment, such as the rotation in the iba housing project, which was derived from the historical fig. 41-43 guardiola house longitudinal section comparison top left: orthogonal scheme, as per unpublished archived drawing top right: published scheme (based on eisenman 1989: p. 30) opposite: superimposing published and orthogonal schemes [drawing: author, 2013] 21 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 urban context. for eisenman, the site is where the story is, and he is interested in making those traces or paths legible (leeser 2013). here, we can assume the guardiola’s rotation must have also been derived from the site, and due to its steepness, he rotated in three-dimensions to allow for a more complex vertical quality in the design. this guardiola shift, however, goes one step further, as it is more generative—the two systems are blurred to create a third. the figural matrices are absorbed and crystallized by the interstitial condition, in which the constituent geometries are hybridized as absent-present traces and imprints. the interstitial is a new condition between interior and exterior, which is neither yet both at the same time. the rotational shift produces a discussion of disturbing the idea of surface; the interstitial condition produced gives the house a degree of abstraction, which does not refer to any previous conception of architectural convention. the rotation blurs the entire system by re-conceiving the floor, windows, structure, etc. the elements are not just structural, but become something other. the guardiola house is not a house in a traditional sense, there are no conventional rooms or windows, as the functions are not necessarily associated with spaces. as eisenman notes, “the resultant space is clearly different from the space of a house, even though it clearly may function as a house” (eisenman 1997: p. 134). the architectural elements do not necessarily contain, instead they blur inside and outside, frame and object, and rather than resulting from mere functional necessity, the architecture is intended to be part of a notional and indexical logic (eisenman 1997: 134). nevertheless, certain idiosyncrasies particular to the functioning and appearance of the house add more determining factors to the design beyond merely recording a process. 3.2 literal and phenomenal interstitiality eisenman already had an idea of a house following half of house x. the rotation was a key step, which distinguishes the guardiola house from its predecessor, by opening up the possibility of an interstitial blurring of orthogonal and rotated figures. this interstitial condition is more than just the meeting or encounter of the foot in sand, but produces a new conception of space, whereby he conceived space as interstitial or in-between, blurring interior and exterior, structure and space. a particular move in the published process diagrams points to an interesting discovery made in relation to the archived drawings. substantial to the development and understanding of the interstitial, resulting from imprinting, are steps 7 and 8 (fig. 44). this is the point of the second discrepancy, which relates to colin rowe and robert slutzky’s distinction between literal and phenomenal transparency (rowe & slutzky 1982, 1976: p. 161). following their discussion of transparency, eisenman’s work can be understood to be an investigation of the textualization of architectural form and formal relationships, stemming from their distinction between a “literal transparency”, which is inherent to substance and physical layering and a phenomenal transparency, which is more conceptual and ambiguous, being inherent to spatial or compositional organization. this paper poses a distinction between what is termed a “literal and a phenomenal interstitiality”. “phenomenal interstitiality” suggests notions of the ambiguous interpenetrations of the figures producing the design, as seen in step 8 (imprinting through surface), where the interior el pierces through the exterior el in order to manifest fig. 44 guardiola house process diagrams as per original project description [drawing: author, 2018] 22 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 and express the interstitial as a hybrid condition. this is in contrast to a condition of “literal interstitiality”, where the figures do not fully interpenetrate each other, as seen in step 7 (imprinting solids) in which there is less interaction between interior and exterior els. hence, the interpenetration of step 8 becomes particularly significant, as leaving the house at step 7 would have resulted, nevertheless with a blurring of figures, but one not perceivable unless seen in section, such that the interstitial would have lacked a visible or physical engagement. eisenman saw the need further to express the condition of the in-between in the guardiola house by making it experienced in its projected built fabric. this he achieves by forcing his translation of plato’s (via derrida’s) notion of the chora (as a metaphorical foot-in-sand). as per the published scheme of the guardiola house, eisenman intended the interstitial phenomenon to engage the viewer with a more sophisticated configuration of the rotated and orthogonal geometries of the design, where they are merged and hybridized through interpenetration. rowe and slutzky’s phenomenal transparency is hence deeply embedded in eisenman’s conceptual and experiential thinking, evident in his introduction of a phenomenal interstitiality in which interpenetrating and tumbling absent-present geometries are visibly expressed as a new form of the trace, creating an interplay of simultaneous systems both inside and outside the building (fig. 45-49). this imprinting stage of eisenman’s published diagrams for the guardiola house is an example of the anachronic flattening of the steps of the real process, as in reality this stage is a whole series of drawings, but reduced to one step in the published diagrammatic representations. this paradox of the representation of process reveals significant aspects of eisenman’s work and thinking, opening up the multiplicity and textuality of architecture as a discursive practice. the difference between steps 7 and 8 is a difference between eisenman’s real and fictional processes, and their coming together. the clearly distinct moves of eisenman producing the interstitial condition in step 7 and his articulation of representing this interstitiality in step 8 reflects his intention to linearize a process into an ideal narrative, but also captures the idiosyncrasies of his exploration and expression of this interstitial phenomenon that he discovers in the guardiola design. fig. 45-46 cross section comparison of guardiola house left: “literal interstitiality” of a diagonal space inside the red solid (diagonal inside orthogonal) in an unpublished archived scheme right: “phenomenal interstitiality” of an interpenetration (diagonal passing through orthogonal) in the published scheme (based on eisenman 1989: p. 31) [drawing: author, 2013] 23 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 eisenman legitimated the traces of the guardiola house through both an empirical and procedural logic. certain practicalities such as the windows become integrated into the logic of tracing and imprinting. the empirical logic of making the house work combines with the procedural logic of producing (and reading) traces and imprints, and the notion of “phenomenal interstitiality” makes this particularly apparent, as the ambiguity of the design is physically manifested as transparent elements of architecture. for instance, the windows of the house are designed according to the process, that is, the interpenetrations are manifested as glazed components, so that the process (of form making) produces the practicalities (functions) of the house. this illustrates andrew benjamin’s claim that the interstitial seeks to break or destabilize the conventional and homological relation between form and function (benjamin 2003: 308). the guardiola house hence re-conceives conventional design processes and questions the different possibilities of geometric systems and their becoming into built reality. figs. 47–49 guardiola house intermediate level plan comparison top left: “literal interstitiality” of a wall simply hybridized into a distorted el-shape in an archived scheme top right: “phenomenal interstitiality” of an interpenetration expressed as a wall-window junction (inside interpenetrating to the outside) in the published scheme (based on eisenman 1989: p. 25) opposite: superimposing published and archived schemes [drawing: author, 2013] eisenman’s early works can be seen as examples of literal transparency of the physical overlapping or superimposition of figures and their transformations. a shift then occurs with the guardiola house, which demonstrates a phenomenal transparency, that is, a superposition or merging of figures to form the interstitial condition. hence, as opposed to two systems merely overlapped, such as house iii, the two systems are integrated and become part of each other, redefining conventional dialectics of architecture, such as inside/outside and figure/ground. the guardiola project took the trace to three or more dimensions, by laying the founding operations and principles of the trace as a form of interstitiality. this 24 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 anticipates the remainder of eisenman’s projects, such as the hybridized geometries of the aronoff center in cincinnati and culminated particularly in the santiago complex in spain. as seen in the model (fig. 50-51) there is 10m of this interstitial matter, where the internal volumes appear subtracted out of the external artificial ground. here figure and ground is made ambiguous; there is no clear distinction. instead, there is the interstitial. conclusions eisenman treats architecture as a form of text—narratives told by his architecture. the traces of the guardiola’s published process constitute a morphological fiction, part of eisenman’s emphasis on a rhetorical and protective strategy of narrating transformations to retell the story of how the form actually came about as per the archived process. eisenman blurs speculation about whether he based the guardiola house on a geometric framework (algorithm) or the programme of a house (inhabitation). his objective was both to produce a linear process and to design a house; which became blurred in the resulting project. he blurs the logic of a linear procedure with heuristic exploration of the interstitial condition. eisenman’s critical engagement with the design process yields results often not achievable by more conventional practices, as his method of design has the ability to make explicit what is often concealed in an unexamined design process, exposing something inherently embedded in the discipline of architecture itself (allen 2006: 60-61). such is the case of the innovation of the interstitial condition, which operates between the linearity and nonlinearity of his processes, and makes something out of it, manifesting the steps of a process of becoming and materializing its accidental or chanceful elements. though eisenman intended to code the process, his work subsequently became more sophisticated to the point of non-legibility, and thereby experienced as ornamental effects. the interstitial condition constitutes a paradox of “necessary ornament”, whereby the traces are both essential and decorative. the traces are both structural (or apparently so) and indexical—recording a process. due to the increasing complexity of the work, the possibility of reading for an intellectual interpretation receded, and certain experiential effects (such as the unexpected dramatic experiences of the grid-lattice at the wexner center) took figs. 50–51 sectional model through eisenman’s city of culture of galicia showing hybridized interstitial geometries between the artificial landscape and interior spaces [photos: author, 2012] 25 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 over the status of interpretation. this created a dialectic between the intended “formal readings” and the unintended “experiential aspects”, where formal intellectualization found in tracing the design process stopped being ends in themselves and instead became techniques employed to achieve these unusual experiential sensibilities. eisenman termed these new sensations of unintended experiences as “affects” (kipnis 1996: pp. 175-176). the traces consequently became different from his intentions; they take on an experiential and perceptual quality. the phenomenally interstitial condition of the guardiola process is innovative—traces record the in-between steps of a design process, as well as producing in-between and ambiguous unconventional architectural elements. in this sense, eisenman is decorating the house with traces of its own design process, as indexical decoration, yet these decorative traces, as discussed, are also the essential structural and conceptual elements of the house. the guardiola’s tumbling el-forms are not just iterations of transformations (as per contemporary digital processes), but these transformations are indexed into the outcome. the resulting forms are not just decorative elements, but reinterpretations of traditional architectural ideas and practices of designing a house. it is not just a house, as the interstitial condition starts to question the notion of house-ness (fig. 52). the guardiola house is thus a topos of production, a space of speculation, suggesting alternative ways of designing spaces and articulating functions—as affects of accidental intentions. the interpenetrations constitute the “windows” of various unconventional shapes, whilst the slanted floors and interrupting frames start to engage with the users of the house, challenging the limits of inhabitability. fig. 52 interior of entrance level of the guardiola house showing the phenomenally interstitial glass floor, which records the inbetween steps of a design process whilst simultaneously redefining conventional architectural elements [cgi: author, 2013] this house is not only a project, but also an idea and a process of the interstitial trace which becomes paramount to eisenman’s work. the guardiola house is a resonating and reverberating “idea-process” leaving traces and imprints in his work like the waves on a beach. the guardiola project proposes a new spatiality after modernism’s open limitless space, where the interstitial condition expresses an ambiguity of systems, which not only records the design process, but also redefines architectural elements. the rotation or tumbling of el-cubes through themselves suggests that eisenman has moved to the unpredictable, complex, and interpretive “events” of poststructuralism. the guardiola house happened at a key moment in eisenman’s work, where he no longer worked with the rigid rule-bound transformations of 26 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 chomsky’s structuralism, rather, the phenomenal interstitiality of the guardiola is linked to derrida’s deconstruction, as critique and maintenance. the project maintains the cube, but challenges the spatial conceptions of classical and modern architecture. the guardiola marks a conceptual shift in eisenman’s approach, a shift from structure to “event”, made possible only by the discovery of the interstitial as something more than the record of procedural traces, welcoming the possibility of chance, risk, and the open-endedness of a text. what remains to be asked is the bearing the guardiola house has on the discipline of architecture. in the history of architecture, eisenman’s trace in the form of the interstitial is important to the development of the poché and design by subtraction. there has been a renewal of interests recently, particularly in the work of contemporary architects such as aires mateus, whose works can be conceived as poché spaces produced through molding (cortés 2011: pp. 21-41). nevertheless, eisenman translates the poché into something other than just spaces within solids. by making absence present, he operates on the strange and distorted geometries of the interstitial to produce an experience of difference. 27 between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 references allen, s. (2006). trace elements. in c. davidson (ed.), tracing eisenman: peter eisenman complete works, (pp. 49-65). london: thames and hudson. benjamin, a. (2000). architectural philosophy: repetition, function, alterity. london, new brunswick, n.j.: athlone press. benjamin, a. (2003). opening the interstitial: eisenman’s space of difference. in blurred zones: investigations of the interstitial: eisenman architects, 19881998 (pp. 306-310). new york: monacelli press. brownlee, d. & de long, d. (1991). louis i. kahn: in the realm of architecture. los angeles: museum of contemporary art; new york: rizzoli. chomsky, n. (1972). language and mind, enl. ed. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich. cobb, h. (1996). a note on the criminology of ornament: from sullivan to eisenman. in c. davidson (ed.), eleven authors in search of a building: the aronoff center for design and art at the university of cincinnati (pp. 9597). new york: monacelli press. cortés, j. a. (2011). building the mould of space: concept and experience of space in the architecture of francisco and manuel aires mateus. el croquis, 154, 21-41. davidson, cynthia. (2006). the absence of presence; or, the void. in c. davidson (ed.), tracing eisenman: peter eisenman complete works (pp. 25-31). london: thames and hudson. derrida, j. (1997). chora. in jeffrey kipnis and thomas leeser (eds.), chora l works: jacques derrida and peter eisenman (pp. 15-32). new york: monacelli press. derrida, j., eisenman, p., & kipnis, j. (1997). transcript seven. new york, october 27, 1987. in jeffrey kipnis and thomas leeser (eds.), chora l works: jacques derrida and peter eisenman (pp. 104-124). new york: monacelli press. derrida, j., eisenman, p., kipnis, j., leeser, t., & rizzi, r. (1997a). transcript one. new york, september 17, 1985. in jeffrey kipnis and thomas leeser (eds.), chora l works: jacques derrida and peter eisenman (pp. 7-14). new york: monacelli press. derrida, j., eisenman, p., kipnis, j., lesser, t., & rizzi, r. (1997b). transcript six. new york, january 10, 1987. in jeffrey kipnis and thomas leeser (eds.), chora l works: jacques derrida and peter eisenman (pp. 90-94). new york: monacelli press. derrida, j., eisenman, p., & lesser t. (1997). transcript four. new york, april 3, 1986. in jeffrey kipnis and thomas leeser (eds.), chora l works: jacques derrida and peter eisenman (pp. 69-73). new york: monacelli press. derrida, j., eisenman, p., pelissier, a., & rizzi, r. (1997). transcript two. paris, november 8, 1985. in jeffrey kipnis and thomas leeser (eds.), chora l works: jacques derrida and peter eisenman (pp. 33-36). new york: monacelli press. eisenman, p. 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(2006). the formal basis of modern architecture (dissertation for the degree of phd, trinity college, university of cambridge, 1963). baden, switzerland: l. müller. eisenman, p., bédard, j-f., bois, y-a., et al. (1994). cities of artificial excavation: the work of peter eisenman, 1978-1988. montréal: canadian centre for architecture; new york: rizzoli international. evans, r. (1985). not to be used for wrapping purposes: peter eisenman: fin d’ou t hou s: 20 february 23 march 1985. aa files, 10, (pp. 68-78). heidegger, m. (1973). art and space. man and world, 6, 3–8. jencks, c. (1977). the language of post-modern architecture. new york: rizzoli. kaji-o’grady, s. (2001). serialism in art and architecture, context and theory (dissertation for the degree of phd). school of literary, visual and performance studies, monash university, melbourne, australia. kipnis, j. (1996). p-tr’s progress. in c. davidson (ed.), eleven authors in search of a building: the aronoff center for design and art at the university of cincinnati (pp. 170-181). new york: monacelli press. leeser, t. (2013, april 2). interview between thomas leeser and adrian lo [unpublished digital recording]. libeskind, d. (1989). space is greater than heat. in peter eisenman: guardiola house = guardiola haus. berlin: aedes galerie für architektur und raum, unpaginated. perren, c. (2005). dan graham/ peter eisenman, positionen zum konzept (dissertation for the degree of phd). kassel university, kassel, germany: kassel university press. rowe, c. (1975). introduction to five architects (pp. 3-7). new york: oxford university press. rowe, c., & slutzky,r. (1982, 1976). transparency: literal and phenomenal. in the mathematics of the ideal villa and other essays (pp. 159-184). cambridge, mass.: mit press. soja, e. (2000). thirdspace: expanding the scope of the geographical imagination. in a. read (ed.), architecturally speaking: practices of art, architecture and the everyday (pp. 13-30). london; new york: routledge. tafuri, m. (1974). l’architecture dans le boudoir: the language of criticism and the criticism of language. oppositions, 3, 38-62. interstices 6 bovine buildings interview with anthony hoete after graduating in 1990 from the auckland school of architecture, anthony hoete left first for italy, and later moved to london, where he has been for the last 14 years. this interview took place with a.-chr. engelsschwarzpaul, albert refiti and ross jenner during one of his occasional visits to new zealand in february 2005. figure 1: sketch for house on motiti island. all photos by anthony hoete. �� you have just arrived here for ten days from london, perhaps to build another house in clarence street, ponsonby. yes, what a blast of fresh air compared to what you can do in london, both in terms of economics and heritage restrictions! you work in london at what_architecture, how many partners are there? three now, but we were originally four. we’ve lost the w of our acronym—she went back to germany. i guess that would make us hat_architecture! when did you leave new zealand, and what have you been doing since? in january 1991, days after the aerial assaults in the gulf war, i left for italy. i visited nigel ryan, my undergraduate thesis tutor at auckland, in rome and ended up working in turin. from october 1991, i worked in london for nigel coates, stefano de martino and sauerbruch hutton architects, who had all taught at the aa. however, there wasn’t much work around in the early nineties so i decided to do a masters at the bartlett. my education at auckland university had given me little idea of the prevailing architectural lineages influencing european architectural education. at auckland, references were commonly to italians like tafuri, cacciari, dal co ... so when i accidentally found myself interviewed for a course at the bartlett (in the elevator ride between ground and second floors), i unsurprisingly confused peter cook with peter wilson. the experience was liberating: values of metaphor and lyricism acquired at auckland were swapped for functionality and space programming. at the bartlett, i met chiara, a lost six-year-old, and a few hours later her distraught mother isabelle (whom i later married). in 1995, my father retired and received a golden handshake. after working on fit-outs and planning applications in london for three years, the opportunity to design and build a house appealed … did you design the house here or in london? it’s designed in london, made in new zealand. the bartlett masters course was very autodidactic and didn’t really prescribe lines of enquiry. i wanted to experiment, and the design became a ‘live experiment’, of which actual building was a vital part. peter cook agreed and so we designed figures 3-5: ground plan, model south elevation, model components. interstices 6 it over there (london) and built it over here (motiti). the site existed then only in memory. you were back for two years? yeah. i grew a ‘kiwifruit’ (hair and beard of the same length). seeing the model, albert refiti once said that the house was severely organised, which left me somewhat puzzled. but, in hindsight, yes, the internal planning is severe: two doors, one room. no concessions to western domesticity: bedrooms, parlours, verandahs … was that your father’s requirement? no. the architectural plan coincides with the severity of an island existence. lost at sea, immune to technological advances, culturally remote. to get to the island you fly or take a boat. these two arrival points on opposite sides of the island establish the axis upon which the house is founded. one door is oriented towards the jetty; the other to the airstrip. there are no rooms in the traditional sense—only a whare space, which is a modern open space. also, there are only two objects in the whare: one is a five meter long piece of cedar—the table. the wood was shipped from the bartlett—peter cook used to stand on it at the end-of-year shows—and is hung from the ceiling. we used the table to test the structural stiffness of the house—a robinson 800 helicopter landed on the roof and, by putting glasses of water filled to the brim on the table below, we watched for spillage … the other object is the concrete water store: the bathroom holds 1,000 litres of rain water in its ceiling to feed the shower, toilet, sinks etc. to get good water pressure from the gravity feed, we needed tall floor to ceiling heights. what were the planning and design parameters? upon arriving on motiti, we were confronted immediately with land issues: the right to occupy was contested amongst my hapu, patuwai, which i interpret as ‘troubled waters’. to avoid this problem, which is omnipresent with māori land today (multiple shareholder interests leading to land locks), we looked for a site on the other side of the island. it is even more intensive: a desolate, fragrant fennel-scape midway between jetty and airstrip. given that the island, as tribal land, does not come under the resource management act, planning or building consents were not required. for that, you get limited infrastructure: no electricity, no sewerage, no sealed roads, no vehicles. when we told the engineer that we didn’t need a building consent, he asked, “why are you using an engineer, then?” i said, “because i don’t really want to kill anyone.” that was quite funny. the political state of the island is interesting. my father’s generation have an obligation to look after the island, which is riddled with problems. for example, the plane is owned by a pākehā private operator, who ordinarily would pay landing fees to the māori shareholders with an interest in the airstrip. however, lack of organisational consensus amongst māori shareholders means no permission has or is likely to be granted to the plane operator. thus the plane lands literally a few yards away on the other side figure 6: table at the bartlett. figure 7: helicopter approaching building. �� of the fence onto european title. a not inconsiderable amount of potential marae revenue is lost. this creates economic tension, as the islanders cannot generate income on motiti. what, practically, are we supposed to do? we are supposed to earn money, have a life, then go back there and what? die? without economic sustainability, motiti is in grave danger of becoming a cultural cemetery. so there’s a whole sadness associated with the island. already now its demography is polarised—either very young or retired. the in-between generations have departed to the main land, chasing contemporary trappings: our playstation generation. the house sits within a cultural maelstrom. one thing about the island is its extremely transience. the whole island is transient … and yet, even though time is moving, nothing seems to have moved. people coming and going all the time, particularly for tangi … against those who effectively live there knowing that they are there to die. there is a smaller island off the big island, which used to be the cemetery and is tapu. the relationship between the two islands, one for the living, one for the dead, is surreal: a natural sea bridge which you can only get through at certain tides. you feel as if you’re walking on the water. how many people are living on motiti now? around twenty-five, though the population gets up to a hundred during a tangi when there are five to six flights a day (!). even funerals become embroiled in the economic tension of landing fees: death as revenue. the geographic size of motiti is about that of venice (80,000 people). but architecture is, really, the preserve of the city rather than the country. given the shed vernacular heritage and tangata whenua issues, maybe a rural institute of nz architects would have a plausible basis. is there a hint of dutch influence in the house? accepting the pre-eminence of dutch architecture at the end of the twentieth century, and its media presence, it would be difficult for any architect not to be influenced. that was, of course, compounded by my involvement as an associate at mecanoo, by teaching at the technical university of delft, plus, by being registered as an architect in the netherlands and a member of the curatorial board for ab1—the first architecture biennale of the netherlands.1 how far did your father’s intentions materialise? my father wanted to build something different. i guess he got that. the house seems branded with markings from the other side of the world … it has a certain foreignness or indifference to its surroundings. in the same way as the transient island population comes and goes, the house also doesn’t totally belong to the island. motiti is a signifier though: an identification point for the whanau, hapu, and iwi. the skin of the building almost looks like fur on the brick parts—like the wooden shingles on farm houses in switzerland. 1. the thematic was automobility and was triggered by my research into spatial mobility at the technical university of delft, later published in hoete, a. (2003). roam. a reader on the aesthetic of mobility. london: bdp. interstices 6 we often talk about the life of the building, but not its death. imagine hundred years of decay—what would be left? on the island, there are the carcasses of houses which have rotted away until all that remains is a concrete fireplace and chimney in the middle of a cornfield. this house, during its so-called building life, sits a bit awkwardly with the rest, not really integrated. but in a hundred years time, it will be dead like the rest of them, and the only thing left will probably be the concrete bathroom. i quite like that. what in your design do you trace back to influences of your father, and what did the experience mean to you? solitude and severity. and the idea of ‘land’s cape’: where the passing of the korowai (a cloak made of natural fibres such as flax and feathers) between generations reasserts territorial notions of the skin of the earth. i realised the value of participating in the building process: seeing the drawing ‘translate’ into building. a house is a difficult project because of the personality cults involved: experimental, yet emotionally charged. one can objectify a commercial space but domestic design can get extremely neurotic … the design incest of tap fittings and trendy appliances. how do you see your project for your father’s house today? in retrospect i think the house bears the predictable anxieties of an architect’s first house: it possibly contains too many (urban) details. what have you done since? in 1997, when the house was complete, i went to live in brussels and ended up working at mecanoo in rotterdam for five years. it’s two hours by train from brussels. i’d leave on monday morning, come home on wednesday or thursday night. on friday morning, i’d take the eurostar to the bartlett in london and be back in brussels on saturday morning. this movement, characteristic of northern europe with its dense fluid commuter landscapes, awakened an interest in spatial mobility, which resulted in the book, roam. eventually, i returned to london and set up what_archifigure 8: sketches 101 tecture.2 it was a slow process but we are gradually establishing ourselves with our first public building, due for completion this year. in it, there’s a wink to the house on motiti as it bears the same ‘furry’ block detail. what about your teaching experiences? the bartlett was academically interesting but extremely intense. teaching posts (lowly paid) are as competitive as student admissions (high fees). it is difficult in britain both to teach and run a practice. on the back of my work at the bartlett, i was offered a post as associate professor at the technical university of delft. it’s a huge school with 4,000 architecture students with better teaching conditions: there is a fifty percent research allocation which, being holland, means publication. teaching is very much about communication and information. i sometimes consider it like managing a football team: a delicate balance of emotional intelligence, strategy, organisation and technique. last year, i was visiting professor at the american university of beirut, running a design course called “urban surgery” (small project remedies for urban reconstruction). i learnt a lot about the middle east; i also saw once were warriors in arabic, which was weird. it’s a bit frustrating teaching there, as the students are intelligent without diligence—lazy intellectuals, in other words. i suspect that is because the design courses are organised in two stages: read theory, then apply to design—thus students often overconceptualise their projects. one cannot expect a reading of a sizeable text to manifest itself legibly within the architectural project. such demands often yield stage fright in studio. i prefer an iterative process of small steps that loop back: read a paragraph, undertake initial design gestures; feedback into research, produce a design, et cetera. labelling courses either ‘theory’ or ‘design’ also sends the wrong message: theory can be design and vice versa—more designers should write, more critics should draw. how do your dutch, or european, experiences relate to new zealand biand multi-cultural issues? as i state in roam, identity, like nationality, is increasingly fluid and mobile. i consider myself an anglo-māori (te hapu patuwai o motiti) married to a french-speaking flemlander who was born in the us. our son maui’s middle name is pehiamuopatuwai (the belgian of the tribe). the absence of a homogenous belgian identity (three national languages) sits comfortably with my own cultural schizophrenia. what this means for new zealand’s biculturalism i have no idea, but in the north and south magazine’s issue on “white māori”,3 i suggest that both māori and pākehā need to consider a cultural context beyond the polarity of each other. with the increasing numbers of asians in new zealand, chinese-māori (or ‘chow-ri’) will further expand and accelerate indigenous concepts. having said that, it is probably also worth saying that i found it much more secure being māori outside. in london, it’s much easier than here, for sure … it’s not like life and death or heavy, just less easy. being outside, you start to realise that indigenous thing. you don’t have to hide from it. 2. website: www.whatarchitecture.com 3. butcher, m. (2003). what is maori? who is pakeha? north and south (august), 36-47. interstices 6 how do you feel about your recognition in new zealand? the recent nzia conference taking stock and roam had similar thematics: mobility, identity, perception. i guess i found it surprising that the british arts council asked me to speak at the british museum on these same issues—yet the nzia expressed no interest. what similarities and differences do you see between work in new zealand and work overseas? contemporary new zealand architecture is formulated around the private house. the downside is that it means, socially, ‘architecture as privilege’. more high density, low-cost housing schemes need to be encouraged, as well as an indigenous architecture that moves beyond metaphor and iconic māori symbolism. working on the house for my father gave me a chance to engage intensively with the user, that was of great value, and to work intensively on concepts, rather than labour over details. would you say that you have an explicit design philosophy? everything is discourse, just add ‘what’! without wanting to sound pretentious, what informs the office is culture in its widest sense and architecture ought to be a function of this. an architecture without walls may not just be possible but preferable, an architecture founded on social event and use. perhaps a notorious question needs to be re-phrased: not “what is architecture?” but “when is architecture?” what are your current projects, and where do you see them leading? last year we were invited to propose an olympic landmark project for paris. based upon the story of the red balloon by lamorisse, we fitted two thousand, two metre diameter helium balloons with an led that would allow citizens of paris to text urban sms, visible from seven kilometres: “i love you marie”, “paris 4 nantes 2” … everyday communication elevated to national statement. now that london has won the bid, we need to change channels. last year, we were short-listed for another urban project, the new zealand memorial on hyde park corner, london. the site has a huge wellington arch in the middle, which sets up an axis between buckingham palace and marble arch. i don’t know who negotiated the project on behalf of the new zealand government, but it seems that nobody raised any questions, in death as in life, about what is basically a complete subjugation of all the colonies under the master image. the rules said that the design could not go over three meters, which effectively preserved the sightlines of the wellington arch. therefore, a colonial vision was preserved in the memorial, which was actually not about war but about sacrifice. i found that a bit grating. naturally(!) i thought we had the right strategy—a memorial that accentuated absence not presence—but we may have had the wrong landscape morphology. thus, the spatial physicality of the monument was for 10� saken for the temporality of the ‘nu moment’. a void inside an existing hill was created, accentuating the existing topography. inside, the walls were of polished greenstone. the passage inside the hill terminated in an open room from which one could reflect upon the colonial landscape. otherwise, current projects include: a public nursery featuring fifty reconfigurable floor plans—one for each child; a house in new zealand featuring a mega-sky window so that you can watch the stars at night; a collaborative project with akk architectes of beirut that is a house with a movable kitchen (sliding plumbing connections!) and perspex staircase; a house in london with a home cinema formed wholly from bent plywood and 100% leather … more cows and building, that kind of thing. what is the future for you in terms of this place and over there and … ? i would like to work in nz more often. we have two current projects here. i’d like to think what_architecture can add value through its dislocation! interstices02.indb 9 genius in his essay on “genius”, giorgio agamben returns to an ancient model of genius, more specifi cally, the genius of the individual human subject. it replaces the romanticist model (where genius is exclusively an indeterminate volatile imagination or eccentric performative madness) with a subtle personifi cation of a near-continuous, but contingent “murmuring” within and beyond the body that houses the individual subject. genius here is sometimes like a guiding proprioceptive sense integrated within the body, sometimes like a trace memory pressuring the body from outside:1 if the life that is held in tension between ‘i’ and genius, between the personal and the impersonal, is a poetic one, the feeling that genius exceeds and overcomes us from every side is one of panic, the panic that something infi nitely much greater than what we appear to be able to endure is happening to us (agamben, 2006: 96). the subject, under genius, is no longer the transparent enlightenment subject under reason, but is returned to a perpetual dissonance between this watching invisible spirit and the uneventful ground of work and days. as such, the individual for agamben is never still or complete, but clearly is rethought as a slowly oscillating “potentiality”, whose genius is the “subtle body” that signifi es indeterminacy, as agamben explains: but this most intimate and personal of gods is also the most impersonal part of us, the personalization of that, within us, which surpasses and exceeds ourselves. “genius is our life, in as much as it was not given origin by us, but gave us origin”. if he seems to identify himself with us, it is only in order to reveal himself immediately afterwards as something more than ourselves, in order to show us that we ourselves are more and less than ourselves (agamben, 2006: 95). since the potential of genius remains fugitive and invisible, the potential of agamben’s genius to inform architectural thought, as the manifestation of invisible desires, is both necessary and elusive. to ask the question of the promise of potentiality demands identifying the necessary minimal difference between genealogy and genius within the intentionality of design, between the epistemological foundation of (architectural) origins contra the poetic possibility of the un-representable moment, as accidental chance or event. the incomplete 1 the proprioceptive sense, defi ned by sacks, following sherrington, is “that continuous but unconscious sensory fl ow from the moveable parts of our body (muscles, tendons, joints), by which their position and tone and motion are continually monitored and adjusted, but in a way which is hidden from us because it is automatic and unconscious.” (sacks, 1985: 43). genius, genus, genealogy: hejduk’s potential angels thomas mical interstices 07 “subject-under-genius” is thus a subtle crossing of above-below, of before-after, and most importantly, a crossing of the visible-invisible. the task of genius within contemporary architecture, following agamben’s claims, is to always remain potential, and the task of the architect, in the uneasy position of artist, is to always remain a subject “without content” (agamben, 1994: 55). this claimed content-less-ness of artists, and their differential works, realizes the nascent objecthood and autonomy of conventional modern architecture (-without-qualities) – as neuter, minimal, mute – pulling most works towards a topos of the generic. in response to this tendency, john hejduk’s enigmatic and speculative later works (specifi cally bovisa, vladivostok, and victims) suggest invisible coercive possibilities within the immanence of late-modernist life and form, resonant with agamben’s anachronistic model of genius. within hejduk’s cryptic architectural tableaux sometimes occurs the peculiar fi gure of the angel, this most ancient avatar of genius and an anachronistic fi gure, which was almost abandoned within the visual languages of modernity. hejduk’s oeuvre, perhaps best reconsidered as a research project of associative imaginaries crossing signifi er and signifi ed, is helpful for refi ning the question of what is possible within the contingency of the image of architecture. hejduk’s angels are certainly in resonance with agamben’s later texts on genius and potential, as both thought-systems emerge from a questioning of the excesses of material facts and a search for that which grounds unpredictable yet defi nitive events. potential is this therefore architecture’s “genius”, architecture’s potential? in using agamben’s constructs to clarify hejduk’s later work, a distinction must be made between the contingent and the potential. contingency lies closer to the bare life of work and days, closer to genealogy than genius. it is signifi cant that agamben describes contingency through the image of an angel: know that gabriel has two wings. the fi rst, the one on the right, is purifi ed. this wing is the sole and pure relation of gabriel’s beingwith-god. then there is the left wing. this wing is grey; it has to do with a dark fi gure resembling the crimson colour of the moon at dawn or the peacock’s claw. this shadowy fi gure is gabriel‘s capacity to be, which has one side turned towards non-being (since it is, as such, also a capacity not to be). if you consider gabriel in his act of being through god’s being, then his being is said to be necessary, since under this aspect it cannot not be. but if you consider him in his right to existence in itself, this right is immediately to the same degree a right not to be, since such is the right of a being that does not have its capacity to be in itself (and that is, therefore, a capacity not to be) (agamben, 1991: 271). for agamben, potential is always unrealised capacity – it is the lack that drives the production of a series, and that which is the visual ‘missing matter’ from each specifi c work of art. and as every work is like a prologue, a “broken cast” of another never realised, so will later works in turn “be the prologues or the moulds for other absent works, [and] represent only sketches or death masks” 11 (agamben, 1993: 3). this phenomenology of appearance is of particular importance for exposing the function of hejduk’s works as a counter-memory of modern architecture. genealogy agamben situates a genius (always singular), which holds and exceeds the subjective body (again, always singular), as unique. genius therefore has no visible genealogy, which, since nietzsche, is a question of the differential relation between corporeality and epistemology. genealogy, after nietzsche and foucault, is not a tedious historical narrative of before and after, but traces the movement of descent (herkunft) of invisible drives and forces, as it simultaneously proposes an emergence (entstehung) of the suppressed, in and through the situated body. neo-nietzschean genealogy may appear to be the dissolution of the individual (as a body) into a series through language, where individual drives submerge into cultural manoeuvres. yet, blondel wisely warns “if genealogy is the discourse that consists in relating cultural phenomena back to the body, it only really achieves this as a result of a textual labour and movement, which are irreducible to the systematic unity of discourse” (1991: 258). dissolving historical imperatives, this alternative nietzschean promise of genealogy “disturbs what was previously immobile; it fragments what was thought unifi ed; it shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself” (foucault, 1977: 147). the elusive curvature of effects traced by this mode of genealogy “attaches itself to the body … it inscribes itself in the nervous system, in temperament, in the digestive apparatus; it appears in faulty respiration, in improper diets, in the debilitated and prostrate body of those whose ancestors committed errors” (147). the fl esh of stones, the fabric of architecture, recurs as such a body. vastly divergent architectural discourses all perform within their desired symbolic discourses (of power, truth, desire) where the series of visible works are confi gured as an (illusory) inevitability. individual works of architecture always function to conceal and contain the nietzschean invisible descent of past drives, as impulse or potential. hejduk’s spatialised, mytho-poetic narratives demonstrate this diffi cult genealogical labour and movement. they reveal and expose what is latent or silenced, but necessary, within modern architecture and repeatedly stage the possibility of a haunting genealogical emergence, the liminal emergent event – which is also an artistic “moment of arising” for foucault, “the principle and the singular law of an apparition” (148). repressed apparitions, vaporous ethers, and angelic ciphers seek to remind us that the determinist perception and representation of the moment is the nagging problematic of utopian modernist space proper, and it is no surprise that such apparitions return to ‘dwell’ within hejduk’s singular prescient representations, as if all subjects-under-architecture lived like the ancients, “surrounded, in the invisible air, by wandering avengers who never forget the ‘ancient contaminations’ ” (cheatham n.d.: n.p.). hejduk’s late works appear to illustrate agamben’s ancient model of the genius as the haunting limit-function of the incomplete and contingent subject: interstices 07 we need therefore to see the subject as a fi eld of tensions, whose antithetical poles are genius and ‘i’. this fi eld is covered by two joined but opposite forces, one that proceeds from the individual to the impersonal, and the other from the impersonal to the individual. these two forces live together, they intersect, they separate out, but they can neither free themselves completely one from the other, nor perfectly identify each with the other (agamben, 2006: 96). genus whilst under the pull of an individual but impersonal genius, the individual is still like others, and thus always an instance of the tearing between individual genius and a collective genus. agamben defi nes genus not simply as an empty “generic being” but as a reactive “original container (both in the active sense of that which holds together and gathers, and in the refl exive sense of that which holds itself together and is continuous) of the individuals who belong to it”(agamben, 1994: 80). this genus is the muted concept of the individual without difference, without qualities, separated from genius. prototypical and without temporality, the genus is soluble within the individuals forming a series or set, refl ected in the monotony of modern architecture. the genus resists architectural speculation, when genus is type. the genus of architecture is a non-existent generic and vague category (approximating type) within genealogy, and as such can never be its object, which must always exhibit individual difference. blondel notes that the object of nietzschean genealogy is a precise exposure of (generic) “factors that allow grouping to take place while themselves remaining hidden” (1991: 250). these factors, including concealed values, drives, desires, and memories, are present but latent within monumental history, knowable only through their translation into the specifi c images, forms, and affects of architectural languages. this is why nietzsche insisted: we knowers are unknown to ourselves, and for a good reason: how can we ever hope to fi nd what we have never looked for? … the sad truth is that we remain necessarily strangers to ourselves, we don’t understand our own substance, we must mistake ourselves; the axiom, ‘each man is farthest from himself’ will hold for us to all eternity. of ourselves we are not ‘knowers’ …” (nietzsche, 1989: 149). under these criteria, the genealogy of architecture, after the writing degree zero of ascetic modernity, must be a genealogy of all that which is invisible behind and within the stated materiality of architecture, where furtive glances, imperfect gestures, and failed encounters equal or exceed schemas in signifi cance. for foucault, such a genealogy of apparitions is the foundation of a necessary and compulsive counter-memory, which, by defi nition, is neither metaphysical nor transcendent, but real and immanent. hejduk’s last projects can be read as such a ‘counter-memory’ of teleological modernism which accepts but tasks the grid of formalism, and works from the possibility of a visual emergence of the perceptible unknown, the murmuring of potentials, from the contingencies of the generic type (as angel, machine, landscape, or narrative) imagined as dissonant series, without origin or end. 13 non-origin between the contested historiographies of modern architecture and hejduk’s enigmatic ‘refusal’, where is it possible to begin with a nietzschean genealogy of the unknown/unseen ‘genius’ of architecture? history, after hegel, always demands an origin, yet foucault offers “the origin lies at a place of inevitable loss, the point where the truth of things correspond to a truthful discourse, the site of a fl eeting articulation that discourse has obscured and fi nally lost”(1977: 143). the origin is the thus the site of disappearance and descent whose insignifi cance, according to nietzsche, increases with its knowledge: “…the more insight we possess into an origin the less signifi cant does the origin appear” (1982: 46). the superfi cial tracing of an origin, retroactively misperceived as foundational truth, is actually a vanishing point in the search for the descending forces of genealogy: it is always provisional, like philosophical truths that perform as masks concealing further masks. in the extreme, to fi nd the propulsion of meaning, “the genealogist needs history to dispel the chimeras of the origin” (foucault, 1977: 146). the fi xed “origin”, as described within narrative history structured as a genealogy of infl uence, is always untimely, always too early or too late, incomplete, provisional. agamben concurs with these revisionist claims for the diminished epistemic truth of the origin within genealogy when he affi rms “the origin itself can be neither fulfi lled nor mastered”(1999: 155). for agamben, the transient origin is always only a fl oating potentiality, not fact, in the present moment. his sustained exegesis of walter benjamin leads him to posit the origin as neither factual event nor mythical archetype, but one that acts, as for benjamin, “as a vortex in the stream of becoming and that it manifests itself only through a double structure of restoration and incompleteness” (155). note how agamben, in refuting the myth of the integrative origin, duplicates this double structure of temporality between potentiality and contingency, (again) as the split future of the incomplete subject-under-genius: that is, man is a unique being in two phases, a being who is the result of the complicated dialectic between one side not (yet) singled out (individuata) and lived, and another side already marked by fate and by individual experience. but the part that is impersonal and not isolated (individuata) is not a chronological past which we have left behind once and for all (agamben, 2006: 95). the spectre of dialectic time, as the open, the empty, and the effervescent creates fi ssion for the moment, as an existential throw of the dice, a choice between the genealogical tendency and the irruption of difference. within this doublevalent structure of the potential subject, the genius itself becomes a double agent serving dual temporalities: … we are dealing with a single genius that is however changeable, now white then dark, now wise then depraved. this means, and it is worth noting that it is not genius who changes but our relationship with him, that from luminosity and clarity everything becomes opaque and dark. our life principle, the companion who directs and makes our life pleasant, is suddenly transformed into a silent stowaway who shadow-like follows our every footstep and conspires in secret against us (agamben, 2006: 98). interstices 07 following agamben, the subject-under-genius and the spatial labour and movement of architecture (as art) evade and escape the determinism of the event as singular: the event is properly defi ned as both “projective past” and “future anterior”, a condition described by lacan as a history neither past defi nite nor present perfect, but a future anterior of what one will have been for what one is in the process of becoming (1977: 86). and both temporalities, as interval, are always a descent and a crossing beneath and behind any fi xed origin. invisibles and what results from this untimely, diminished, out-of-joint origin? following heidegger and blanchot, “the origin of that which has no origin is the origin of the work of art” (taylor, 1987: 246; see also silverman 1994: 49-50). the work of architecture, when it is within art, is without origin, a working of non-knowledge. “to live with genius means, … to live in the intimacy of an alien being, to keep oneself constantly in relation with a zone of non-consciousness” (agamben, 2006: 96). as nietzsche claimed, this non-knowledge is a necessary foundation of the body, which is the tantalizingly obscure object of (architectural) genealogy: “nothing … can be more incomplete than [one’s] image of the totality of drives which constitute [a man’s] being”; we “can scarcely name even the cruder ones: their number and strength, their ebb and fl ow, their play and counterplay among one another, and above all the laws of their nutriment remain wholly unknown” (nietzsche, 1982: 118). the phenomenology of art is formed from the obscure origin of the non-origin or, more specifi cally, the becoming visible of the invisible, because “it is the invisible, and it alone, that renders the visible real” (marion, 1996: 4). theologian jean-luc marion shows how “the visible increases in direct proportion to the invisible … the more the invisible is increased, the more the visible is deepened” (5). marion, in considering modern theology after phenomenology, adds a third dissonant operative term, the unseen, to this visual dialectic: the unseen, “only provisionally invisible, always exerts its demand for visibility in order to be made to irrupt”(25). and this categorical unseen is the volatile original non-origin of art, that which is condensed and displaced into the contingent image. the image is only an apparatus of capture; the space within images is fragile, ephemeral, fi nite, visible, presented otherwise. in a modern world increasingly closed to transcendence, agamben turns to hegel and claims that “art loosens itself from itself and moves into pure nothingness, suspended in a kind of diaphanous limbo between the nolonger-being and not-yet-being” (1994: 53). hejduk’s angels i cannot do a building without building a new repetoirof characters, of stories, of language, and it’s all parallel. it’s not just building per se, it’s building worlds (hejduk, in shaprio 1991: 61). from the 1984 iba competition entry entitled berlin masque/victims, and continuing through his later works, hejduk slowly and deliberately fused litera 15 ture, poetry, and art into potential architecture, where architecture performs as a series of visible containers of the unseen. he once stated: when an architect is thinking, he’s thinking architecture and his work is always architecture, whatever form it appears in. no area is more architectural than any other. my books, for instance, are architecture that you can build in your head. when the research succeeds, it can express the ineffable, which is ultimately translated as spirit. imagine a drawing and a sentence taking shape at the same time (hejduk, 1997: n.p.). the recombinant alogic of his masques, their near-repetition and their transposition of differential animate and inorganic fi gures (iterated across categories) implements the prior multiplicity necessary for world-making. calvino described each of our individual lives as a “combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined” (1993: 124). encyclopaedic inventories of objects and styles, their potentiality allows for multiple recombinations. by the late 1980’s, john hejduk’s architectural speculations increasingly included the disturbing presence of diminished angelic fi gures within multiple architectural meditations. they do not overtly represent supernatural messengers or hang in ordered celestial harmonies, but often come into representation as entangled. hejduk’s works bear affi nity with blanchot’s idea of language as composed of “angels with intertwined wings” (blanchot, 1982: 195), in that he intertwines architecture’s potentiality within contingent images. hejduk’s anachronistic angels are fl attened into encyclopaedic, tarot-like image-spaces appearing and disappearing. cinematically, they are without progression and their blank diegetic space, outside of topography or history, remains constant.2 the presence and persistence of these angels indicates that they are of signifi cance, but a signifi cance not immediately apparent. only a patient questioning of appearance as such will reveal that “the always hidden becomes the always there” (deamer, 2 these cinematic units of narrative analysis are assumed in the introduction of hays, hejduk’s chronotope hejduk, “crucifi ed angels”, bovisa, 1987 interstices 07 1996: 69). in the wake of modernity and the rise of “absence-of-god”, or negative theology, these angels become the typology of the unrepresentable alterity of potentiality within contingent architecture. following agamben, “an experience of potentiality as such is possible only if potentiality is always also the potential not to” (1999: 250) architecture’s contingency would be “something whose opposite could have happened in the very moment in which it happened” (duns scotus, in agamben, 1999: 262).3 the discontinuous, but identically scaled, spatial logic of bovisa, vladivostok, and victims is deliberately iconic and anti-perspectival – the occasional appearance of the descended angels marks the expulsion from the fullness of the theological vanishing point of the implicit rational subjective of perspective. situated in response to real places, hejduk’s projects appear as clear and distinct grounded icons within an implicit invisible spatial continuum that is neither transcendent nor immanent. hejduk’s reiteration of angels within the persistent blank diegetic space of the masques can be read as the annunciation of that which lies before or behind representation, the angel’s ancient function. however, cacciari warns that annunciation does not involve the “becoming visible of the invisible, the translating-betraying of the invisible in and for the visually perceptible” but, rather, an opening for human beings to relate to the invisible that “invisible which the angel safeguards precisely in the instant in which it is communicated through its forms” (cacciari, 1994: 3). angels were always historically transcendent messengers; their displacement into the visible immanence of hejduk’s masque-spaces constitutes a fantasy as event, specifi cally one of reversal, turning, or troping. hejduk makes this explicit as “when an angel penetrates a wall and becomes trapped in it, life and death implode at the moment and space and time fall into infi nity” (hejduk, 2002: n.p.). echoing agamben’s subject-genius coupling, hejduk’s visual narratives repeatedly stage the descent and entanglement of the genius (guardian angel) into the body (architecture’s material form) across these projects, blocked from ever achieving immanence and transcendence, always potential and contingency. as such, hejduk’s individual angels surface as wary ciphers, a visual ‘almost nothing’ that is over-determined and yet immobilised. in their entirety, they form a genus excluded from functionalist doctrine, and as a genus perform as evidence of a hidden or latent order. the genus of hejduk’s angels function to “exscribe the unseen”. this notion of exscription, as defi ned by jean-luc nancy, is a potentiality: “by inscribing signifi cations, we exscribe the presence of what withdraws from all signifi cations, being itself (life, passion, matter)”, and, “… the being of existence is not unrepresentable: it presents itself exscribed” (1993: 339). marion defi nes the unseen as a special category of the invisible, of concealed being, as the potential of the image: “the unseen admittedly falls under the jurisdiction of the invisible… it is able to transgress it precisely by becoming visible” (1996: 25). here, being, in the heideggerian mode, is that which is outside but coupled with representation – the vacant spaces of the unseen, potential, invisible within hejduk’s masques. his drawn angels, captured into separate iconic postures, are pure potential, an annunciation of the “outside” of instrumental representation. within atheological modernity, “the angel has no proper place, but for this reason it is the necessary fi gure of the instant that brings to a standstill the arrow of time, that interrupts the continuum” (cacciari, 1994: 3 hejduk’s potentiality deliberately falls outside of many of the conventions of architectural reproduction, clarifying their contested status as para-architecture, as ciphers and clues for a non-mimetic / angelic potential that is behind, beneath, and after what remains incomplete in the condensation of instrumental architectural space since modernity. 17 33). what is presented in hejduk’s masques is not medieval nostalgia but “the re-inscription of modernist opacity back into representation itself; it means the mask that fi gures a real that did not exist before its representation” (hays, 1996: 11). the angel, as the fi gure of exteriority, is anticipated in the infl uential opening of rilke’s duino elegies that illuminate hejduk’s angelic potential: who, if i cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: i would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. for beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. every angel is terrifying. and so i hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing. ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need? not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware that we are not really at home in our interpreted world (rilke, 1982: 151). in describing a function of the angel in rilke’s poetry (equally applicable to hedjuk’s angels), blanchot notes that the creative work “touches upon absence, upon the torments of the infi nite; it reaches the empty depths of that which never begins or ends” because the image “constitutes a limit at the edge of the indefi nite” (1982: 196-7,254). and angels are always already this potentiality of the limit-experience for, as cacciari notes, “their own tremendous presence is a sign of dis above: hejduk, ‘angel catcher’, bovisa, 1987 left: hejduk, ‘house of the suicide’, bovisa, 1987 (where the “the record keeper of hallucinations … reads the poems of rilke to the point of obsession”) ‘which is not turned to us nor do we shed light on it’ ” (blanchot, 1982: 139-40) interstices 07 tance, of separation … instead of being the guardians of a threshold, here angels appear to be unsurpassable demons of the limit” (cacciari, 1994: 9,11). the series of fallen angels in bovisa are a narrative of loss, named ‘the angel watcher’, ‘the angel catcher’, ‘the crucifi ed angel’, ‘(angel) autopsy’, ‘angel collector’, and also the ‘via of the crucifi ed angels’. their fall is not a fall from transcendence into immanence, or from abstraction into the concrete, but a horizontal fall of the unseen into “murmuring images”. in their fall, these angels are transmuted in a manner similar to blanchot’s description of the reversal of art, of making the visible invisible in rilke. in this “transformation of the visible into the invisible and of the invisible into the always more invisible” being un-revealed expresses an “access to the other side ‘which is not turned to us nor do we shed light on it’ “ (blanchot, 1982: 139-40). hejduk’s symptomatic angels are excluded from the contingency of machinic modernism, but haunt its representations; the building-machines reciprocate by reverting to their prior medieval forms, perhaps to suture an imperceptible genealogical break. the materiality of architecture in hejduk’s medieval machines are drawn with precision, yet they are light, ungrounded; conversely, the angels caught in the images are irregular and earthbound. in the project vladivostok, hejduk noted “the air in vladivostok is much thinner; the weather of vladivostok is a vaporous, angelic time-space, … ‘the space created at the moment of the event.’ anachronic, anatopic” (in hays, 1996: 12). the masques and their angelic fi gures can be seen in this light as an emergence, an event, of the making visible of a real that was only a potentiality within the corpus-genus of modernism proper. the hermetic genealogy of hejduk’s literary-architecture is a counter-memory drawn and descended from autonomous architectural (and literary) modernism in that it repeats and re-arranges its components in different ways. as countermemory, it mutates modernism by re-actualising it “along different and multiple series” (colwell, 1997: n.p.). peggy deamer notes the motivation of hejduk’s counter-memory: “in vladivostok and the mask of medusa, the narrative presentation shows that, as in mythology and psychoanalysis, following after doesn’t necessarily mean following from” (1996: 69).4 the repeating event of the angel-machine coupling is both a “projective past” and “future anterior” whose limit oscillates between event and memory, potentiality and contingency. in hejduk’s diminished angels, the genius of architecture is but this poetic possibility of the unrepresentable event, contra origin. hejduk’s angel works, potentially outside architecture and opposed to generic modernism, expose that which is concealed but affects the body-in-space, using minimally differential relations between fantasy, fi gure, angels, and machines. by transposing the angel into modernity, hejduk relies upon the icon of architectural masks and the opacity of emptied space in his attempt to re-familiarize what had been banished to the exteriority of modernist architectural thought and representation (jameson, 1975: 52). the unique atmosphere conjured in hejduk’s masques, and the incidents of entangled and murmuring angels, entangle three registers of architectural thought the unseen, formless alterity, the logic of construction – into architecture’s murmuring potential. 4 for a brief lacanian gloss on hejduk, see gavin seeney, online, accessed 01 may 2006, ht tp : // us.geocities.com / ateliermp/the_given.rtf: “…which brings up the whole problem of hejduk and the presence of his two towers embedded within the santiago complex). this phantasmatic surplus registers as well within the lacanian orbit, as a screen (the imaginary) onto which things are projected -intuited as almost always monstrous things -or, a form of psychic mechanism that signifi es representation itself alongside or within the fi eld of normative constructs typifi ed by the complex of the lacanian symbolic. within this perverse system the real only ever appears as irruptive and/or uncanny episodes. as ‘other’, and as such (disembodying ‘the given’), the real is automatically marginalised, problematised, and instrumentalised -and the transcendental ego (subject/self) is, in turn, simply traumatised in its presence.” 19 references: agamben, g. (1993). infancy and history: the destruction of experience. london: verso agamben, g. (1999). potentialities. stanford: stanford up. agamben, g. (1994). the man without content. stanford: stanford up. agamben, g. genius (l. simmons, trans.). interstices: a journal of architecture and related arts (7), 94-99 blanchot, m. (1982). the space of literature. lincoln: nebraska up. blondel, e. (1991). nietzsche: the body and culture. stanford: stanford up. cacciari, m. (1994). the necessary angel. albany: suny press. calvino, i. (1993). six memos for the next millennium. ny: vintage. cheatham, r. (n.d.). “dromos”. retrieved 01 may 2006, from http://noel.pd.org/~zeug/ dromos colwell, c. (1997). “deleuze and foucault: series, event, genealogy” in theory & event (1)2, n.p. deamer, p. (1996). me, myself, and i. in hays (ed.), hejduk’s chronotope (pp. 65-77). ny: princeton architectural press/cca. deladurantaye, l. (2000). agamben’s potential. diacritics (30)2, 3-24. foucault, m. (1977). language, counter-memory, practice. ithaca: cornell up. greenspan, d. a. (1981). medieval surrealism. inland architect 2, 10-29. hays, k.m. (ed.). (1996). hejduk’s chronotope. ny: princeton architectural press/cca. hejduk, j. (1985). mask of medusa: works 1947-1983. ny: rizzoli. hejduk, j. (1987). bovisa. ny: rizzoli/harvard gsd. hejduk, j. (1989). vladivostok. ny: rizzoli. hejduk, j. (1996). victims. london: architectural association. hejduk, j. (1997). (in) other soundings: selected works by john hejduk, 1954-1997. montréal, cca, october 1997. retrieved 01 may, 2006 from http://cca.qc.ca/pages/niveau3asp?page =hejduk&lang=eng hejduk, j. (2002). (in) machines for living with angels [symposium], october 10, 2002. retrieved 01 may, 2006, from http://www.archleague.org/lectures/scales/hejduk susmary.html jameson, f. (1975). the prison house of language. princeton: princeton up. keeney, g. (2004). the given, the taken, and the given-back. retrieved 01 may, 2006, from http://us.geocities.com/ateliermp/the_given.rtf komar, k.l. (1987). transcending angels: rainer maria rilke’s duino elegies. lincoln: nebraska up. lacan, j. (1977). écrits: a selection. ny: w. w. norton & co. lacoue-labarthe, p. (1993). the subject of philosophy. minneapolis: minnesota up. marion, j.-l. (1995). god without being. chicago: chicago up. marion, j.-l. (1996). the crossing of the visible. stanford: stanford up. nancy, j.-l. (1993). the birth to presence. stanford: stanford up. nancy, j.-l. (2000). being singular plural. stanford: stanford up. nietzsche, f. (1989). on the genealogy of morals and ecce homo. ny: vintage. nietzsche, f. (1982). daybreak: thoughts on the prejudices of morality. cambridge: cambridge up. interstices 07 rilke, r.m. (1982). the selected poetry of rainer maria rilke (stephen mitchell trans.). ny: vintage. sacks, o. (1985). the man who mistook his wife for a hat. ny: touchstone. shapiro, d. (1991). the architect who drew angels. architecture and urbanism 244 (january), 1991. silverman, k. (1994). textualities: between hermeneutics and deconstruction. london: routledge. taylor, m.c. (1987). altarity. chicago: chicago up. privacy and propaganda privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats julia gatley the official opening of the state block of 116 flats in dixon street, wellington, was performed by the minister of works, mr semple, on saturday afternoon. the weather was the worst possible for the ceremony, which took place in the vestibule of the building ... the mayor, mr hislop, said there was plenty of water available for christening the latest child of the state, and it appeared to be well and sturdily built. “multi-unit block: new wellington state flats; building officially opened,” dominion (september 6 1943), p. 4. interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 1 introduction the dixon street flats are a block of state rental flats designed by the labour government’s department of housing construction in 1940 and built 19411944 in inner-city wellington. a ten storey monolith, this block was of a magnitude unprecedented in the history of domestic architecture in new zealand and may be described as the archetypal example of the modernist apartment block in this country. as such, it is a building of national significance. during construction, progress was followed in the local press. the media attention and public interest provided fertile ground on which the labour government was to capitalise and, in doing so, use the building for the purpose of political propaganda. the dixon street flats were publicly opened six months before completion in order that the opening ceremony would coincide with labour’s election campaign of september 1943. this paper will consider the use of nascent modernism for political propaganda in new zealand and, more specifically, the issue of authorship within that realm. the authorship of the dixon street flats is torn between gordon wilson (1900-1959), a new zealand educated architect, who was the chief architect of the department of housing construction, and ernst plischke (1903-1992), an austrian architect, an esteemed modernist and a refugee in new zealand. both wilson and plischke made significant contributions to modern architecture in new zealand. a tension between the two was established with their first meeting in 1939. at this time wilson produced a copy of alberto sartoris’ gli elementi dell’ architettura funzionale.1 this is a substantial book addressing modern architecture by country. its chapter on austria opens with plischke’s work signifying the esteem in which he was held internationally. hence wilson knew of plischke’s work before his arrival in new zealand but proceeded to employ him not as an architect but as a draughtsman. disharmony between the two was compounded by their personalities, wilson being described as “arrogant, over-bearing, often rude and insensitive to other peoples’ feelings” and plischke as a “sensitive soul.”2 the tension did not subside and has been embodied in the controversy which continues to surround the authorship of the dixon street flats. on the completion of the dixon street flats in 1944, all accolade was accepted by wilson. over the years since its completion, wilson’s name has been increasingly disassociated from the design of the building and replaced with that of plischke. popular opinion would now have it that plischke designed the building and that wilson had plischke’s name removed from the drawings in order that he, wilson, could claim the building as his own. it is interesting to note that the archetypal modernist apartment block and this esteemed modernist architect appeared in new zealand about the same time and it is understandable, even a little romantic, that a relationship has emerged between the two. the labour government and state housing as the depression eased in the mid-1930s, a severe housing shortage became apparent throughout new zealand. in an effort to overcome the shortage, the recently elected labour government built thousands interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 2 of state rental houses throughout the country from 1 9 3 7 ( f i g s 1 , 2 ).3 a new government department, the department of housing construction, was set up to facilitate the construction of the state rental houses. these houses tended to follow english models and exhibit georgian imagery. at the time of their construction they were a visible expression of the realisation of labour’s policy to provide the working classes with affordable accommodation of a reasonable standard. indeed they testified not only to labour’s housing programme but to the totality of its social programme. photographs of a “family,” complete with a borrowed baby, outside a state house in palmerston north were used to promote immigration to new zealand from britain in 1939.4 street names such as savage crescent within the schemes of detached houses ensured that the association with labour was readily apparent and enduring, michael joseph savage being the labour prime minister 1935-1940. in addition to the state rental houses, the labour government also built thirteen blocks of flats in reinforced concrete. the blocks of flats were limited to wellington and auckland, two cities which together laid claim to 80% of the nation’s housing shortage. the inaugural multi-unit scheme, known today as the centennial flats (1939-1940), is situated in the wellington suburb of berhampore (figs 3, 4). it provides evidence that domestic architecture in new zealand had progressed beyond the villa, the bungalow, and the english cottage exemplified by the detached state rental house. the modern aesthetic, and more particularly the “international style” commonly associated with 1920s europe, had infiltrated new zealand architecture. in planning, however, the berhampore flats remain little more than a series of row or terrace houses and this scheme can be interpreted as transitional. its occupant density lies between that of the detached housing schemes and the multi-storey blocks which were to follow it: the dixon street flats, wellington 1941-1944 (figs 5-9); mclean flats, the terrace, wellington 1943-1944 (f i g s 1 0 , 1 1 ); hanson street flats, newtown, wellington 1943-1944 (figs 12, 13 ); symonds street flats, auckland 1945-1947 (figs 1 4 , 1 5 ); and greys avenue flats, auckland 19451947 (figs 16, 17).5 whereas the state rental houses had followed english models, the multi-storey blocks of state rental flats followed european precedents and are decidedly modern in their aesthetic. this stylistic anomaly is not simply explained by the low occupant density of the state rental houses as compared with the high occupant density of the state rental flats. why did the government decide to introduce the modern aesthetic for the blocks of flats instead of following the english models used for the state rental houses? both building types were, after all, being built under the one housing programme. the detached houses were built to standardised designs which had been produced under the auspices o f t h e n e w zealand institute of architects.6 the same designs were used repeatedly and required little in the way of ongoing design input from the department of housing construction. the blocks of flats, on the other hand, were designed by the department itself. the architects of the department were not confined to english models but instead were given a blank slate. responsibility ultimately lay with the department’s chief architect, gordon wilson. the modernist imagery of the blocks of flats provides evidence that wilson was interested in, and knowledgeable of, contemporary european architecture. the dixon street flats the dixon street flats were constructed 1941-1944. this block of flats was of a magnitude unprecedented in the history of domestic architecture in new zealand. during construction, progress was followed in the local press.7 the press focused on the magnitude of the block and the job developed a high public profile. the media attention and public interest provided fertile ground on which the government was to capitalise and, in doing so, cement its association with the building. in september 1943 when the dixon street flats were nearing completion a general election was imminent. the building was opened six months before it was completed in order that the opening would coincide with the labour party’s election campaign.8 the opening ceremony attracted the attentions of the local media and in this way the government was able to propagandise the realisation of its policy to provide state rental housing. with this premature opening the government was using the dixon street flats for the purpose of political propaganda. the detached housing schemes had already been used for this purpose but the dixon street flats provided a richer opportunity in that they employed a progressive architectural language. this interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 3 architectural language was that of modernist europe o f t h e 1 9 2 0 s a n d e a r l y 1 9 3 0 s a n d w a s associated with the political left. it was condemned by nazi germany in the 1930s but had yet to establish itself in new zealand. with their unprecedented magnitude and their modern aesthetic, the dixon street flats w e r e u s e d t o market the ‘progressive’ nature not only of the department of housing construction, but of the labour government itself. fred newman, another of the department’s refugee architects, would later write to gordon wilson: “though the erection of the individual houses is the most important part of the nz housing scheme, it must be borne in mind that the large blocks already b u i l t a n d p l a n n e d f o r 1 9 4 7 a n d 1 9 4 8 , i n v i e w o f their much greater architectural possibilities, are an excellent propaganda to show the efficiency and the success of the nz’s (sic) government’s housing activities both in this country and also overseas.” 9 newman personally favoured the construction of multi-unit blocks to avoid urban sprawl and his statement may have been intended as a play on the government’s desire for propaganda in order that he and the department could continue to build multiunit blocks within the state housing programme.10 regardless of newman’s intention, the dixon street flats must be considered within the agenda of the labour government under which they were built. the authorship of the dixon street flats o n t h e completion of the dixon street flats, all accolade was accepted by gordon wilson. wilson was australian born but, importantly, was new zealand educated. he served articles under william m page from 1916 and commenced study at the school of architecture at auckland university college in 1920.11 about the same time he entered the office of hoggard, prouse and gummer. this partnership was dissolved in 1921. william henry gummer and charles reginald ford then entered partnership in 1922 and wilson continued to be employed by the new partnership in auckland. wilson was elected an associate of the new zealand institute of architects in 1928 and became a junior partner of gummer and ford the same year. 12 h e remained in this position until 1936 when he was appointed chief architect within the department of housing construction. while gummer and ford are remembered for their pioneering domestic architecture, their public buildings tended to rely on a stripping of classical forms to allude to a modernist imagery. ian lochhead refers to their “allegiance to classicism.”13 ford had a particular interest in seismic design, however, and in terms of structure and construction their works were advanced.14 with fourteen years in the office of gummer and ford, wilson’s grounding in reinforced concrete construction would have been thorough. in his role as the department of housing construction’s chief architect, wilson was ultimately responsible for all buildings built by the department. plischke, on the other hand, had trained under peter behrens at the vienna academy of fine arts (1923-1926), had spent five months working in behrens’ office in 1926 and had worked in the office of jacques ely kahn in new york in 1929. 15 returning to austria in 1930 he contributed a design f o r t h e vienna werkbundsiedlung, the vienna state council’s experimental housing research project which had been inspired by the weissenhofsiedlung (1927). a much praised and widely published example of plischke’s work is the government employment office building at liesing, vienna (19301931), which was defaced after the annexation of austria in 1938 as it was thought to epitomise modernist philosophies. plischke, with his jewish wife and her children, fled austria and sought refuge in new zealand. arriving in may 1939 plischke found work as a draughtsman within the department of housing construction. he remained in the department until 31 december 1947 and then entered private practice with cedric firth. he left new zealand in 1963 to return to austria and head the prestigious akademie der bildenden künste in vienna. plischke was one of about a thousand people with jewish connections to flee germany, austria, czechoslovakia, hungary, romania and poland in the mid-to-late 1930s and to find refuge in new zealand.16 of the 657 in full-time employment by 1945, fourteen are said to have been working as architects.17 this number includes the handful employed by wilson within the department of housing construction, of which plischke was one. others were fred newman, ernst gerson, fritz farrar and richard fuchs.18 an account of the reception faced by european refugees upon their arrival in new zealand is given by ann beaglehole in a small price to pay; refugees from hitler in new zealand 1936-46. the refugees were known as ‘enemy aliens.’ this nomenclature is in itself derogatory and beaglehole provides evidence interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 4 that in many cases the europeans were treated with suspicion by new zealanders. one explanation is that new zealanders had difficulty making the distinction between german and jew and all german speaking immigrants were thought of as potential spies. another explanation, and one of relevance to the refugee architects, is that of professional jealousy.19 while in many cases their qualifications were recognised in new zealand, the european architects were nevertheless required to sit examinations before they could register with the new zealand institute of architects. this can be interpreted as an attempt to keep them out of the profession in the light that the european qualifications and training were likely to have been superior to local apprenticeships and the course offered by the school of architecture at auckland university college, the curriculum of which still included the meticulous rendering of drawings of the classical orders, an exercise of questionable relevance in the twentieth century.20 germany, in particular, home to the bauhaus and the deutscher werkbund, was at the forefront of progressive architecture while new zealand in the 1930s was a somewhat belated follower of international developments.21 the institute’s requirement for the refugee architects to sit examinations should not be interpreted solely as an attempt to keep them out of the profession. the institute would not have been familiar with all the institutions the refugee architects had attended, with all the qualifications they held or with the standard of those qualifications. in addition, none of the refugee architects would have been familiar with the building industry or with the running of contracts in new zealand. the examinations were a simple procedure by which the institute could ensure professional standards were maintained and in its requirement the institute appears to have acted with conservative prudence. some of the refugee architects chose to sit the examinations, others chose not to. plischke refused. in her thesis on the architecture of plischke in new zealand, linda tyler provides evidence that plischke was given little responsibility during his first couple of years in the department of housing construction.22 she nevertheless credits him with the design of dixon street flats. t h i s w a s n o t t h e f i r s t instance in which such credit was given. in a newspaper article as early as 1963 architect george porter stated that: “it is believed that he (plischke) was the original designer of the dixon street flats, though the final design was not his.”23 indeed popular opinion would now have it that wilson had plischke’s name removed from the drawings in order that he, wilson, could claim the building as his own. 24 t o m y k n o w l e d g e , t h e o n l y surviving copies of the drawings of the dixon street flats in new zealand are those reproduced on micro-fiche (f i g 1 8 , f i g 1 9 , f i g 2 0 ). these drawings carry wilson’s signature. the drawings also carry the initials of a number of other architects and draughtsmen who worked on the project.25 the earliest drawings do not carry plischke’s distinctive e. a. p. initials. nor do the archived files which cover the construction of the building.26 that the micro-fiche and archived files do not carry plischke’s initials neither proves nor disproves the theory that wilson had plischke’s name removed from the drawings. the documentation sheds no light on the extent of plischke’s involvement. it does shed light on the number of people, at least 15, who contributed to the drawings and it has to be asked whether we are justified in attempting to pin the authorship to a particular individual. one drawing of the building which does carry plischke’s initials is a perspective drawn in 1942. it is reproduced in his autobiography and carries the caption: “wohnanlage dixon street, wellington, 1942; perspektive e. a. p.” 27 while plischke may well have drawn this perspective of the building in 1942, department of housing construction records show that the building had been designed in 1940 28 a n d that by 1942 construction was well underway. this drawing does not in itself provide evidence that plischke designed the building and in the text which accompanies this drawing, he attributes the design of the building to “my department.”29 from the documentary evidence which is available, it is possible to compile a chronology of events. plischke arrived in new zealand in may 1939. he found work within the department of housing construction a short time later but was given little responsibility for the first couple of years. the site on which the dixon street flats would be built was purchased in february 1940. by the end of march drawings were being prepared for a block of 116 flats30 and in june that year it was reported that the dixon street flats would be “the biggest block of flats in the dominion.”31 contract drawings are dated september 1940. the design of the building and the preparation of the contract drawings overlap with interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 5 the period in which plischke was given little responsibility within the department. wilson supervised the construction,32 and it was certainly wilson who was acknowledged at the opening of the building in september 1943.33 in addition, he was awarded a gold medal by the new zealand institute of architects in 1947 as head of the team responsible for its design.34 the documentary evidence and chronology of events point to wilson as the architect ultimately responsible for the design of the dixon street flats.35 popular opinion, however, continues to credit plischke and to label wilson as an ‘accessory after the fact.’ what popular opinion overlooks in its labelling of wilson is the agenda of the labour government. to have attributed the building to plischke would have been to attribute an expression of the progressive nature of the new zealand government to a german speaking refugee who was a potential spy and an ‘enemy alien’ not very patriotic, particularly during war-time. there was more at stake in attributing the building to wilson than wilson’s reputation. what is at stake? the dixon street flats i s the archetypal modernist apartment block in this country and, consequently, a building of national significance. plischke has been constructed as the author and to now remove the dixon street flats from the works attributed to him in new zealand, to remove a building of national significance from his oeuvre, would constitute a significant change and affect the manner in which the name plischke functions.36 the name plischke signifies not only an austrian architect, an esteemed modernist and a refugee in new zealand, but also a subject who was humiliated by not being recognised by the new zealand institute of architects and who was humiliated by being employed as a draughtsman with little responsibility in the department of housing construction. in short, the name plischke describes a subject who was victimised. professional jealousy may have been a factor in wilson’s decision to employ plischke as a draughtsman rather than as an architect but it should also be considered that plischke had no experience of building in new zealand, and that in choosing not to sit the institute’s examinations, he could not call himself an architect in this country. i have noted that the institute was prudent in requiring all refugee architects to sit examinations before they could be registered. why should plischke have been accorded special treatment? he chose not to sit the examinations of his own volition and the institute did not relax its requirement.37 t o say that he was victimised in this respect is arguable. the myth that wilson had plischke’s name removed from the drawings in order that he, wilson, could claim the building as his own is consistent with the view that plischke was victimised during his time in new zealand. within this myth, the recognition of plischke’s authorship of the dixon street flats serves as a form of retribution in that it compensates for one aspect of the humiliation he suffered in this country. without this myth, where is the evidence that plischke was humiliated?38 e v e n t h o u g h h e d i d not register as an architect he nevertheless succeeded in exercising his profession in new zealand, and over a period of 24 years he produced a significant body of work and enhanced the reputation he had previously developed before returning to a privileged position in austria.39 it can be argued that works of a particular author have an inaugurative value precisely because they are t h e w o r k s o f t h a t a u t h o r , 40 t h a t i s t o s a y a value which is intrinsic to the works of that author and recognised per se. works which possess the name of a particular author will not be consumed and forgotten their status and their manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which they circulate. to attribute the dixon street flats to plischke is to provide this building with an inaugurative value. that it is typical for those aboard the plischke bandwagon to express a particular liking for the dixon street flats is evidence of this. there is more at stake than plischke’s reputation, however, with popular opinion recognising and serving to compensate for humiliation, victimisation and even prejudice. the authorship of the dixon street flats affects not only the manner in which the names plischke and wilson function, but also that in which the name of the building functions. attributed to plischke, the dixon street flats are the archetypal modernist apartment block in new zealand; a modernist apartment block displaced from austria. returned to wilson, however, the dixon street flats become the archetypal new zealand modernist apartment block. this would constitute a significant change in the manner in which the building is perceived and would add considerable weight to wilson’s reputation as a modernist architect. the authorship of the building, therefore, has ramifications interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 6 concerning the establishment of a new zealand modernism. the issue of author-genius it can be argued that the name of the author groups together a number of works and thus differentiates these works from others. to attach a single name to the group implies “relationships of homogeneity, filiation, reciprocal explanation, authentication, or of common utilisation” amongst them, a stylistic uniformity.41 attributing the dixon street flats to plischke serves to isolate it from the department of housing construction buildings attributed to wilson such as the berhampore flats, wellington (19391940), and the greys avenue flats, auckland (19451947). indeed it serves to include the dixon street flats within plischke’s repertoire and implies a relationship with his other works including the government employment office building at liesing, vienna (1930-1931), the community centre at naenae (1943) and the community centre at mount roskill (1946).42 the dixon street flats are distinguished from the oeuvres of both wilson and plischke, however, in that they constitute an upright slab. it is difficult to find homogeneity between this slab apartment block and other works by either wilson or plischke. to uncover a trace of the individual author, one might look for continuities between the detailing of the dixon street flats and other works by that individual.43 the department of housing construction, however, used standardised details. the timber joinery for both state rental houses and state rental flats, for example, was prefabricated in state owned joinery factories at kaiwharawhara and penrose. a study of the detailing of the dixon street flats would show traces of the department of housing construction but not of either individual. the employment of standardisation is readily apparent when the dixon street flats are considered alongside the two state rental blocks which followed it: the mclean flats, the terrace, wellington (1943-1944), and hanson street flats, newtown, wellington (1943-1944). not only the details but even the plans and elevations have become standard. of a smaller scale than the dixon street flats, t h e mclean flats a n d t h e hanson street flats are little more than a segment of it. the relationship is one of imitation as opposed to filiation. other than the standard details they employ and the imitations they inspired, therefore, the dixon street flats have little in the way of stylistic uniformity with other buildings attributed to either wilson or plischke. as an example of the slab apartment block, the dixon street flats are more closely related to other examples of their genre: gropius’ siemensstadt scheme, berlin (1929); his project for eleven storeyed apartment blocks exhibited at the berlin building exhibition, 1931; and van tijen, brinckman and van der vlugt’s bergpolder block, rotterdam (1933-1934). sigfried giedion credits walter gropius and marcel breuer with first conceiving and developing the slab apartment block in the mid-1920s.44 gropius and breuer did not simply design a few blocks but they also made possible this genre.45 to refer to gropius and breuer with respect to the dixon street flats is to r e f e r t o t h e m n o t a s historical individuals but as culturally constructed authors. other than the siemensstadt scheme, which is better described as a walk-up apartment block than a slab, gropius and breuer’s development of the slab apartment block in the late 1920s was limited to unbuilt projects. giedion credits the bergpolder block as being the first realisation of this genre,46 and it is interesting to note that the dixon street flats were completed within ten years of this dutch prototype. the complexity regarding authorship might be discussed in terms of a chain comprising: treatise go-betweens author work.47 the chain to the dixon street flats might read: gropius and breuer reproduction in books and periodicals development of the slab apartment block and the realisation of the bergpolder block further reproduction in books and periodicals author (wilson and/or plischke) dixon street flats.48 a l l o f these factors contribute towards the production of t h e w o r k a n d a s a l i n k i n a c h a i n t h e r o l e o f t h e author might be described as mediate.49 nowhere in this process has there been any mention of the author-genius. we can admire the bringing together of chains but in doing so, we are not proclaiming the author as genius.50 in the dixon street flats we can admire the bringing together of such works as gropius’ siemensstadt scheme, berlin (1929), his eleven storeyed apartment blocks (exhibited 1931), and the bergpolder block, rotterdam (19331934). we can admire the interest in and knowledge of contemporary european architecture whether the mediate author is wilson or plischke. wilson had yet to visit europe when the dixon street flats were designed but he knew of such works interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 7 through imported books and periodicals. plischke might have visited these or other examples before arriving in new zealand and/or known of them through books and periodicals. beatriz colomina argues that modern architecture only became modern with its engagement with the media, and that, as a result of reproduction in the media, the location of a particular building is no longer exclusive to its construction site but is displaced into such sites as architectural publications, journals and exhibitions.51 reproduced as a subject within the media, an architectural object becomes accessible to the architect in berlin, in london, and indeed in wellington. architecture is more accessible as the subject than it is as the object.52 this is certainly the case when considering the accessibility of european architecture to new zealand architects: the object is 12,000 miles away whereas the subject is within arm’s reach. thus modern architecture in europe, the united kingdom and the united states was accessible to new zealand architects as a result of mass re-production. i have noted that wilson was in possession of alberto sartoris’ gli elementi dell’ architettura funzionale (1935). other books to which he might have access include le corbusier’s towards a new architecture (1927), bruno taut’s modern architecture (1929) and hitchcock and johnson’s the international style; architecture since 1922 (1932). of the periodicals being imported in the 1930s and 1940s, the architectural review was treated “as the gospel” by young architects in new zealand.53 by the late 1920s modern architects working in both europe and the united kingdom were featured regularly in the architectural review and their work was accompanied by numerous essays on the subject of modernism.54 regarding the infiltration of the modern aesthetic into new zealand architecture, new zealand architects were influenced not only by the imported books and periodicals to which they had access, but also by their own experiences overseas and by the presence of european, british and american architects in new zealand. the refugee architects, in particular, would have provided stimulus within the department of housing construction and their influence on wilson must have been considerable. it is possible that wilson would have been threatened b y t h e p r e s e n c e o f a n a r c h i t e c t o f t h e calibre of plischke in his office but it is equally possible that he would have been challenged and even inspired by it. conclusion: the politics of the dixon street flats the purpose of this paper has not been to determine whether the dixon street flats should be attributed to gordon wilson or to ernst plischke but rather to look at what is at stake in attributing the building to either of them. popular opinion continues to attribute the building to plischke. to remove the building from plischke’s oeuvre and return its authorship to wilson would constitute a significant change and would affect the manner in which both their names, and the name of the building itself, function. that plischke was victimised in new zealand is partly dependent on the myth surrounding the authorship of the dixon street flats. the current recognition of his authorship serves to compensate for the humiliation, victimisation and prejudice that he suffered in new zealand. this recognition is based on retribution rather than on rationale. the dixon street flats w e r e completed within ten years of the prototypical slab apartment block. attributed to plischke, the dixon street flats are the archetypal modernist apartment block in new zealand a modernist apartment block displaced from austria. attributed to wilson, however, the dixon street flats become the archetypal new zealand modernist apartment block. to have authored a building of such significance would add considerable weight to wilson’s reputation as a modernist architect. there is more at stake than reputation, however: the authorship of the dixon street flats has ramifications concerning the establishment of a new zealand modernism. was this a new zealand building or was it a building displaced from europe? not only does the authorship of this building have ramifications concerning the establishment of a new zealand modernism, but concerning the nature of the labour government’s propaganda machine. was this “child of the state,” this expression of the progressive nature of the labour government, the w o r k o f a n e w z e a l a n d architect or was it the w o r k o f a german speaking refugee who was a potential spy and an ‘enemy alien?’ the surviving documentation does not provide the answers to these questions and if indeed plischke was ultimately responsible for the design of the dixon street flats, then the labour government was politic in its decision to credit wilson with the design. wilson was, after all, chief architect of the interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 8 department of housing construction and as such was ultimately responsible for all buildings built by the department. notes 1 it is not known if it was a copy of the 1931 edition or the 1935 edition. see e. a., plischke, ein leben mit architektur (wien: löcker verlag, 1989), p. 233. 2 graham dawson, to julia gatley, (10 december 1994). 3 see department of housing construction, general report on state housing in new zealand (wellington: ministry of works, 1943). 4 s e e d i stewart, and associates, “savage crescent state housing precinct, palmerston north: an historical and architectural overview,” (palmerston north, palmerston north city council, undated c.1993-94). 5 of the thirteen multi-unit schemes built in wellington and auckland, the remaining seven comprised little more than a series of double storeyed row or terrace houses with skillion roofs and overhanging eaves. they are the victory flats, adelaide road, wellington; jackson street flats, petone; petone flats, adelaide street, petone; tennyson street flats, petone; randwick road flats, lower hutt; wakefield street flats, lower hutt; and parnell flats, parnell, auckland. 6 h. t. armstrong, minister of housing, “statement showing progress of government housing scheme from inception,” (june 1 1939), national archives, wellington, nash 217/0720. 7 see “random notes,” building progress (april 1940), v . 5 , n . 4 , p . 2 1 ; “ l a r g e b l o c k o f f l a t s , ” building progress ( j u n e 1 9 4 0 ) , v . 5 , n . 6 , p . 7 ; “ t e n d e r s , ” building progress (september 1940), v. 5, n. 9, p. 19; state housing: scheme said to be uneconomic,” dominion (september 9 1940), p. 12; “tenders: housing construction department,” dominion (november 9 1940), p. 18; “random notes,” building progress (december 1940), v. 5, n. 12, p. 24; “state housing,” building progress (march 1941), v. 6, n. 3, p. 24; “random notes,” building progress (june 1941), v. 6, n. 6, p. 8; “building news from all quarters,” building progress (april 1942), v. 7, n. 4, p. 23; “news in brief: dixon street flats,” dominion ( a u g u s t 1 8 1 9 4 3 ) , p . 6 ; “dixon street flats: opening on saturday,” dominion (september 2 1943), p. 7; “multi-unit block: new wellington state flats; building officially opened,” dominion (september 6 1943), p . 4 ; “ n e w flats opened: block in dixon street,” evening post (september 6 1943), p. 6; “housing in wartime,” dominion (september 9 1943), p. 6; “dixon street flats: advertisement criticised by mr semple,” dominion (september 22 1943), p. 8; “state housing policy: labour’s case stated; mr semple’s address,” dominion (september 23 1943), p. 8; “gigantic building programme: mr jacobson’s outline,” dominion (september 24 1943), p. 9; “government’s majority reduced, gain by national party at expense of labour,” dominion (september 27 1943), p. 7; “dixon street flats,” new zealand home and building (summer 1944), v. 7, n. 1, pp. 20-23, 47. 8 the building was opened on 4 september 1943. see “multi-unit block: new wellington state flats; building officially opened,” dominion (september 6 1943), p. 4; “new flats opened: block in dixon street,” evening post (september 6 1943), p. 6. the certificate of completion was not issued until 1 march 1944. director of the department of housing construction, correspondence to the manager of state advances corporation, (july 20 1944), national archives, wellington, file sac series 1, 35/152/3, part 1. 9 newman, correspondence to wilson, (january 16 1947), national archives, wellington, file hd 3/1/12 part 1, 10 maria newman, personal communication (february 1995). 11 k. j. davis, “a liberal turn of mind: the architectural work of f gordon wilson, 19361959, a cultural analysis,” (barch research report, victoria university of wellington, 1987); an encyclopaedia of new zealand ed. a. h. mclintock, (wellington: department of internal affairs, 1966), v. 3, p. 667; bruce petry, “the public architecture of gummer and ford,” (march thesis, university of auckland, 1992); “obituary: francis gordon wilson,” journal of the n. z. i. a. (march 1959), v. 26, n. 2, p. 56-59. 12 gummer and ford buildings from this period with which wilson is likely to have been involved include the dilworth trust building (1925), the remuera library (1925), the auckland railway station (1927) and the dingwell orphanage (1929) in auckland and the national war memorial carillon (1930-31), the national art gallery and dominion museum (1931-36), the new zealand insurance company building ( 1 9 3 6 ) a n d the public library in wellington (1936). according to gummer’s son john, wilson was the principal designer of the wellington public library. john gummer, correspondence to ken davis, (july 7 1987), davis, “a liberal turn of mind,” appendix. their pioneering domestic works include tauroa (1916) and craggy range (1918), both in hawkes bay. interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 9 13 ian lochhead, “new zealand architecture in the thirties: the impact of modernism," landfall 152 (december 1984), v. 38, n. 4, p. 468. 14 ford published a book earthquakes and building construction in 1925 and it has been suggested that this was the first book dealing with seismic performance of building structures to appear in english. paul walker, “shaky ground,” interstices (1992), n. 2, p. 31. walker refers to robert park, “development of structural design procedures for earthquake resistance in new zealand,” transactions of the institute of professional engineers of new zealand (1987), v. 14, n. 1, p. 23. 15 linda tyler, “the architecture of e. a. plischke in new zealand, 1939-1962,” (ma thesis, university of canterbury, 1986), pp. 1 3 3 . s e e a l s o e. a. plischke, on the human aspect in modern architecture (wien, münchen: verlag kurt wedl, 1969), pp. 15-31. 16 “immigration of refugees to new zealand,” cited, ann beaglehole, a small price to pay: refugees from hitler in new zealand 1936-46 (wellington: allen and unwin, and the historical branch, department of internal affairs, 1988), p. 146. according to this reference, 1043 refugees had arrived in new zealand from 1933 to 1939 inclusive. 17 these figures are from lochore, from europe to new zealand , pp. 77-78, and beaglehole, a small price to pay, p. 147. 18 dawson, letter to ken davis, (july 13 1987), davis, “a liberal turn of mind,” appendix, a n d beard, personal correspondence, (november 30 1994). in his letter t o k e n davis, dawson also credits helmut einhorn with having worked in the department but this is not the case for einhorn was actually employed by crichton mckay and haughton from the time of his arrival in new zealand until he joined the airforce in 1944, ester einhorn, personal communication (december 2 1994). 19 ester einhorn, personal communication (december 2 1994) and helmut einhorn cited, beaglehole, a small price to pay, p. 81. 20 the european qualifications and training were certainly viewed as superior by the european architects themselves. helmut einhorn cited, beaglehole, a small price to pay, p. 82. 21 lochhead, “new zealand architecture in the thirties,” pp. 466-481. he states: “but while le corbusier, walter gropius and their contemporaries were re-writing the language of modern architecture, new zealand architects continued to use the traditional vocabulary of the past inflected, more often than not, with a recognisable colonial accent.” 22 tyler, “the architecture of e. a. plischke in new zealand,” pp. 42-43. this scenario is echoed in the c a s e o f fritz/fred farrar, another fully qualified european architect to be employed as a draughtsman by the department, dr tom farrar, personal communication (december 8 1994). 23 d. g. porter, “exile brought fresh vision t o n z architecture,” dominion (april 6 1963), p. 10. 24 “ t h e ‘ e . a . p . ’ signature was removed from the designs after submission to the main draughting room. plischke had copies of the original drawings made which are held in his archive, vienna.” tyler, “the architecture of e. a. plischke in new zealand,” p. 52. 25 contract drawings hd 124/10/2 carry the initials k.r.r., t.l.m., a.m.g., r.h.s., o.a.j., w.j.b., t.m.c., c.j.k., e.m.c., l.t.h., e.s., g.c., and v.j.. the largest number were drawn by k.r.r. (ken rowe). micro-fiche copies of drawings held by housing new zealand ltd, lower hutt. photographic reproductions of the micro-fiche held by the author. 26 national archives, wellington, sac series 1, 35/152/3, parts 1 and 2 , a n d h d a c c w1353, 124/10/2, part 4. 27 plischke, on the human aspect in modern architecture p. 248. 28 contract drawings h d 124/10/2 are dated september 1940. 29 tyler, “the architecture of e. a. plischke in new zealand,” p. 52, refers to the “original drawings” of the dixon street flats, signed by plischke and held in his archive in vienna. she states that plischke was engaged on this project in 1943 (p. 47). she does not take account of the fact that the contract drawings are dated 1940. if plischke was prepared to claim the original design as his own in his lettertapes to tyler, why did he fail to mention this in his autobiography and instead credit the design to the department? further, antony matthews, “e. a. plischke t h e connection between theory and form,” (barch sub-thesis, university of auckland, 1986), appendix c, includes photocopies of drawings of the dixon street flats which carry plischke’s initials. the drawings are dated 1942. again, they do not support the claim that plischke was ultimately responsible for the design of the building, only that he worked on the drawings once construction was underway. my thanks to linda tyler for drawing this sub-thesis to my attention. interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 10 30 “state advances corporation of new zealand,” appendix to the journals of the house of representatives of new zealand (1940) b-13, p. 13. 31 “large block of flats,” building progress (june 1940), v. 5, n. 6, p. 7. 32 national archives, wellington, sac series 1, 35/152/3 parts 1 and 2 , a n d h d a c c w1353, 124/10/2, part 4. 33 “multi-unit block: new wellington state flats; building officially opened,” dominion (september 6 1943), p. 4. 34 “ n a t i o n a l l o s s d e a t h o f m r f . g o r d o n w i l s o n , government architect,” new zealand home and building (april 1 1959), v. xxi, n. 11, p. 21. 35 wilson’s authorship is confirmed by: (1) jim beard, a former employee of wilson in the ministry of works, who remembers hearing wilson claim the dixon street flats a s h i s o w n , j i m beard, personal communication (december 9 1994). beard was employed in the architectural division o f t h e ministry of works from c.1950; (2) ester einhorn who refers to it as: “his [wilson’s] baby,” ester einhorn, personal communication (december 2 1994). ester is helmut einhorn’s widow. s h e a n d helmut had been in wellington since july 1939; (3) graham dawson, an architect in the department of housing construction from 1939 who recalls that the berhampore, dixon street and greys avenue flats were “mainly wilson’s” designs. dawson remembers plischke being engaged o n n e w h o u s e t y p e s , site layouts, and shopping and community centres rather than on multi-unit blocks. he does, however, admit that plischke’s influence on wilson must have been considerable and that discussions and criticisms could well have resulted in alterations to wilson’s design, dawson, correspondence to davis, (july 13 1987), davis, “a liberal turn of mind,” appendix. 36 michel foucault, “what is an author?” trans. donald f bouchard and sherry simon, language, countermemory, practice: selected essays and interviews ed. d o n a l d f bouchard, (ithaca, new york: cornell university press, 1984), p. 122. 37 it was not until 1969, six years after his return to austria, that the new zealand institute of architects relaxed its requirement and awarded plischke with honorary membership. tyler, “the architecture of e. a. plischke in new zealand,” p. 180. 38 that plischke was not successful in his application to head the school of architecture, university of auckland might be cited as further evidence that he was victimised, humiliated and prejudiced in new zealand. the reasons for this decision are beyond the scope of this paper but, as with the attribution of the dixon street flats, i would suggest that there was more at stake than prejudice alone. 39 it can be argued that it w a s b e n i g n o f w i l s o n t o employ plischke in any capacity for the reason that plischke was german speaking, he was a potential spy, and he was labelled an ‘enemy alien.’ 40 foucault, “what is an author?” p. 122. 41 foucault, “what is an author?” p. 123. 42 i would be hesitant in looking for this relationship between the dixon street flats a n d massey house, wellington (1952), as the latter is attributed to both plischke and cedric firth. 43 the morelli method of attribution abandoned the convention of concentrating o n t h e most obvious characteristics and instead concentrates on minor details. carlo ginzburg, “morelli, freud and sherlock holmes: clues and scientific method,” history workshop: a journal of socialist historians (spring 1980), n. 9, pp. 5-36. 44 sigfried giedion, walter gropius: work and teamwork (london: the architectural press, 1954), p. 79. 45 foucault provides the example of a novelist who is responsible for more than his/her own text and cites ann radcliffe as one such novelist. s h e d i d not simply write the mysteries of udolpho and other novels but also made possible the appearance of the gothic romance at the beginning of the nineteenth century. foucault, “what is an author?” p. 132. 46 sigfried giedion, space, time and architecture; the growth of a new tradition (london: oxford university press, 1967), p. 834 47 mieke bal and norman bryson, “semiotics and art history,” the art bulletin (1991), v. lxxiii, n. 2, p. 183. 48 in giving examples of buildings attributed to wilson i chose not to mention two later examples of the slab apartment block which were designed by the department, by that time the housing division of the ministry of works, under gordon wilson, by that time government architect. they are the gordon wilson flats, the terrace, wellington (1955-59), and the upper greys avenue flats, auckland (195759). i chose not to mention them earlier because, with their two storeyed maisonettes, these blocks are linked to a particular building which followed the dixon street flats: le corbusier’s unité d’habitation at marseille (1946-52), completed during the interim years. the latter has been described by bill risebero as “perhaps the single most influential architectural work of the post-war years.” bill risebero, the story interstices 4 privacy & propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats 11 of western architecture (london: the herbert press, 1985), p. 245. 49 foucault distinguishes between mediate authors and fundamental authors, the latter term being reserved for the initiators of discursive practice. foucault, “what is an author?” pp. 133-136. 50 roland barthes, “the death of the author,” image, music, text ed. stephen heath, trans. stephen heath, (london: fontana paperbacks, 1984), pp. 142-148. 51 beatriz colomina, privacy and publicity: modern architecture as mass media (cambridge, massachusetts, and london, england: mit press, 1994), pp. 1415. 52 colomina, privacy and publicity p. 204. 53 bill alington, jim beard, george porter, bill toomath, and tony treadwell interviewed by philippa hoeta, (15 december 1994). 54 p morton shand, for example, wrote a series of essays titled “scenario for a human drama,” the architectural review (july, aug, sep, oct 1934), v. 76, and (jan, feb, mar 1935), v. 77. interstices 09 introduction on adam’s house in the pacifi c ross jenner if, in this part of the world, the context is defi ned as paradisiacal, what is the need for architecture? is it enough that building in such circumstances be as little mediated, as natural, as possible? how does architecture become dependent on this natural context? what is the pacifi c, which is invoked in the guise of a scene or site to safeguard a paradise and to defi ne a natural architecture? idyllic, remote and untouched parts, where architecture is barely needed, seem to summon up notions of original dwelling from their very surroundings in forests, glades, clearings, mountains, beaches, lakes and deserts. they summon up the primitive in the form of sheds, cabins and even villas and tourist resorts, which assemble sources for the uncorrupted hut. why does the private or single family house gain importance within such a primal setting, as it seems to in australasia? does the proliferation of books on the house signify that this is the sole local discourse? how does this demand for native traits measure against the original dwellings, such as whare and fale? where do they fi t? how do they fi t? what has been the role of the discourse of appropriation? the primitive hut seems to provide the basis of a natural perception, uncluttered by cultural baggage where only innate ideas and external necessities prevail in the pursuit of ever purer tectonics and returns to origins. this, the tenth, issue of interstices derives more or less from a symposium in honour of joseph rykwert held at the university of auckland in november 2008 on the occasion of his stay as distinguished visitor to the school of architecture and planning. the questions above and those which follow were posed in an attempt, in the form of both academic papers and architects’ examinations of their own work, to re-assess what signifi cance the house, the natural, raw shelter and beginnings and other australasian obsessions might still have in today’s architectural culture. as rykwert argued over 30 years ago in on adam’s house in paradise: the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history (1972), the primitive hut provides an image of perpetual reconstruction, a paradigm of building and renewal by return to origins. but perhaps this primitive hut could also be encountered as an exorbitant cultural accumulation of concerns with natural origins, derivative of a rousseau-inspired eurocentrism, an overly cluttered baggage of cultural assumptions and idealisms. since the publication of adam’s house, discourses of architecture have engaged in a panoply of critical concerns that question the search for origins and the existence of simple natures. would adam’s house, for example, survive the tremors of grammatology? could a radical understanding of communitarian ethics be derived from the hut’s primitive and essential joseph rykwert in conversation with albert refi ti (above) and delivering keynote address (below) prelims_int10_final.indd 4 11/3/09 1:44 am 5 nature? in what ways are these themes still alive and relevant today? what modes of renewal, return, persistence and continuity exist in today’s architecture here? what further contribution could be made to the theme of adam’s house? many questions remain unanswered but, in the attempt, a line of thought-provoking papers emerged. in “whiteness, smoothing and the origin of samoan architecture,” albert refi ti explores the idea of origin in samoan architecture by focusing on the attempt in samoan craft to dress and smoothmaterials in the layout and construction of architecture. in samoa, he argues, what is considered architecture (which has recourse to the fi rst house), must be dressed and be smoothed out. this is not because of a fascination with a “return to origins,”, rather, it has to do with what samoans considered “proper” or teu, which allows things to be put in order so that they turn towards the ancestors. space-making in samoan is inclined towards the production of things that are of whiteness, smoothness and openness because these are to be placed before the ancestors and the community. therefore, things-towards-the-ancestors must have a directionality and smoothing out that binds together the past and the present. likewise, charmaine ‘ilaiu, in her “tauhi vā: the fi rst space,” also fi nds rykwert’s primitive hut, as an image of perpetual reconstruction, only tenuously relevant to the tongan fale. she argues that, whereas rykwert seems to place emphasis on the sheer physicality and imagery of a structure, the domestic fale in tonga engages an essential space that, in many respects, exceeds architecture as that which begins between people. tongans call this concept tauhi vā – maintaining beautiful social relations. as the ‘fi rst’ and most enduring space, tauhi vā ‘makes,’ rather than ‘builds,’ tongan domestic architecture. ‘making,’ she argues, is more appropriate than simple ‘building,’ since tauhi vā can permeate the different stages of the fale’s realisation: conception, organisation on site (internally and externally), materialisation and building ethic. by contrast, mike austin and jeremy treadwell in “constructing the pacifi c hut” fi nd that a search for a history and theory of architectural origins, such as rykwert examines, is characterised by propositions of foundational acts and technological moments. common to these moments are the ideas of the unsheltered human, the necessity for enclosure and the notion of a technical and creative genesis. rykwert’s discussion of the japanese ise temple seems to suggest that other circumstances might apply. this paper argues that, in the pacifi c, an architecture emerged from mobility and a desire for openness. connecting the tectonics of the pacifi c building to the technology of the canoe, they consider some examples of the ridge beam and its supports (or lack of) on houses from samoa and papua new guinea. nevertheless, paradise continues to inspire the general and architectural imagination. in “take me away … in search of original dwelling,” tina engelsschwarzpaul and keri-anne wikitera argue that through elaborate, purposebuilt complexes, or deand re-contextualised single buildings, “the performative primitive” (dean maccannell) is still being staged as a form of ‘iconic architecture.’ alongside an exclusive resort in upolo, samoa, they explore the histories of several māori whare and samoan fale which travelled the world’s exhibitions and museums from the 1860s on. before the mid-twentieth century, houses were usually taken away without much consultation with, let alone involvement from, their original communities. from the 1960s, as tourism and leisure industries expanded to an unprecedented extent, exhibitions of ‘traditional’ dwellings in prelims_int10_final.indd 5 11/3/09 1:44 am interstices 09 modern “edutainment” contexts perpetuated the earlier exhibition of exotic others. the buildings, however, were often no longer built for community purposes but pre-fabricated in their countries of origin for display overseas. the ‘natives,’ as it were, now colluded with an ongoing western quest for origins and a yearning for authenticity and paradise. paul james and robin skinner in “sites of defence within picturesque scenes: late eighteenth century representations of natural architecture in new zealand” explore the tension between competing attitudes infl uencing early representations of the new zealand landscape. this paper examines a series of visual and written reports of māori fortifi cation and natural arches dating from the time of james cook’s fi rst voyage to new zealand in 1769-70. this highlights competing agenda for the role of nature within architecture: whether it should be a source for an abstract vocabulary informing construction, or whether culture should remain the dominant determinant for architectural form. during the eighteenth century there was a blurring of the relationship between art, architecture and nature, which was supported by the conceptual framework of the picturesque. the call within french architectural theory for architecture to be understood as an imitative art derived from the natural world. the natural arch was utilised as evidence to support that there was a natural origin for architectural form. in “what’s in a name? the first house in new zealand architectural discourse”, julia gatley examines the changing nature of references made to the group and to their first house in takapuna, 1949-50, in new zealand architectural discourse. it suggests that for architects who rose to profi le in the 1990s, the group operated as an origin. these practitioners made recourse to the notion of the group rather than to specifi c group houses. yet there really was a first house. or was there? this paper destabilises the primacy of the house by showing that the group were not the ones to elevate the house with the capitalised and categorical name, first house. it identifi es the original name, experimental house, as well as two subsequent name changes, and suggests that the changes in name refl ect and reinforce the changing importance attached to the house by critics, historians and commentators. reference to nature as a source of architectural inspiration has been an enthusiasm for many architectural theorists and practitioners in australia, as paul hogben notes in “uncovering the strategic: the appeal to nature in early twentieth-century architectural discourse in australia.” this relationship, however, has not been investigated from the point of view of discourse analysis. to initiate this, michel foucault’s concept of discourse as a strategic activity is deployed to examine the appeal to nature that was a central tenet of architectural writings and papers published in sydney in the early 20th century. this was a time when a theoretically active group were arguing that architectural design and decoration should be derived from a close study of ‘nature’. this essay identifi es the strategic dimensions of this discourse, which it argues were tied to the forging of a position of critical authority over domestic architecture and the powers of professional, aesthetic and commercial legitimisation this could carry. prelims_int10_final.indd 6 11/3/09 1:44 am 7 in on adam’s house in paradise, rykwert uncovered the primitive hut as a perennial theme in the theory and practice of architecture. by contrast with refi ti’s and ‘ilaiu’s reading of rykwert, tim adams develops the theme of the house as a project renewed and to be renewed endlessly. in “benoît goetz: a french reader of rykwert’s on adam’s house in paradise” adams relates adam’s house to the french philosopher benoît goetz, who picks up and expands rykwert’s discovery in his book la dislocation: architecture et philosophie. goetz observes that there could not have been a house in the garden of eden because prior to the expulsion from paradise there could not have been any division of places, nor any inside or outside. paradise lacks nothing so every space in it, goetz concludes, is equivalent to all other spaces. paradise is, in other words, an indivisible fi eld of immanence without otherness and without limit. this explains precisely why the primitive hut or fi rst dwelling is so endlessly fascinating: it conveys the fundamental truth that human beings have acquired the sin of knowledge and have thus become increasingly alienated from the continuum of unknowing nature. finally, carl douglas’s “contract, crowd, corpus and plasma: architectural and social assemblages” springs from rykwert’s observation, in on adam’s house in paradise of a conceptual correlation between marc-antoine laugier and jeanjacques rousseau. it discerns, in the condition of joints in laugier’s essay on architecture (1753) and social bonds in rousseau’s social contract (1762), an underlying structural logic: what he calls an implicit theory of assemblage. from this initial reference point in the mid-eighteenth century, the paper moves to consider theories of crowds in the late nineteenth century as implicit theories of assemblage, and ultimately advocates the work of gabriel tarde as a basis for explication of these underlying theories. prelims_int10_final.indd 7 11/3/09 1:44 am interstices 10 r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 8 11/3/09 1:47 am interstices 11 the draughtsman and the delineator: drawing the duties and freedoms of the united nations in new york luke pearson the draughtsman and the delineator investigates the semantic relationships between drawn renderings through a critical glance towards the united nations building in new york. these drawings provide an argument for semantic association through a series of drawn journeys, each echoing hugh ferriss’ original illustrations of the united nations building as a body of skyscraper islands hidden within the “gloom of his perpetual american night”.1 the drawings presented here are, on the one hand, propositional pieces (skyscraper, monument or insertion into a desk (fig. 2)), but they also constitute a process of mapping. this mapping seeks to reveal the ideological context of a bureaucratic institution, a drawn process revealing dialogue, debate and resolution, just as ferriss’ renderings reflected the grand visions of the developers who commissioned them. this begins by using diminutive sketches to examine and develop a conceptual framework for the production of larger, detailed drawings. it is a process of thinking through drawing whereby the sketchbook becomes a palimpsest of prototypes and key moments for later resolution. the process of allowing the solvent-based ink to bleed through the page and onto the next leaf starts to create new contexts on which to anchor the next drawing. patches of tone become part of a new drawing linked materially to that which came before it, allowing my architectural thinking to be serialised through the pages of the sketchbook (fig. 1). the first drawings were constructed using base tones of 10-30 % neutral gray marker pen to create a tonal composition. this was then built up through ink work using pilot hi-tec 0.25 gel pens and further tonal work added using darker shades of neutral gray. using either safmat film or printed paper collage i introduced context views or pictorial materiality of the united nations into the drawings and continued to work over this. representing the context of legislation and bureaucracy, one may interrogate the drawn matter through its minutiae or as an opaque block of “material” (figs. 2 and 3). 1. koolhaas, r. (1994). delirious new york. new york: monacelli press, 281. 93 fig. 1 sketchbook study for a united nations freeport. pen and marker on paper. interstices 11 fig. 2 monument to asbestos removal (under the united nations capital masterplan) for the u. n. building visitors lobby. pen, marker and collage on paper. 95 fig. 3 united nations headquarters delineated. pen, marker and collage on paper. interstices 11 fig. 4: united nations freeport. pen, coloured pencil, and marker on polyester film mounted over enlargement of sketchbook drawing. 97 the second series of drawings for the u. n. “freeport” were produced through enlargements of sketchbook drawings. these were overlaid with drafting film and rendered using colouring pencils and ink. further textural investigations of these drawings included the use of copic wide markers on polyester film to develop a watercolour-like surface effect which was then manipulated for some minutes before drying. working onto these enlargements signifies a process of resolution through a drawn conversation (fig. 4). in its ‘final’ iteration the u. n. building emerges as an attempt at an authentic expression of an institution struggling to emerge from the violent history that created it (fig. 3). the last stage of imagery infuses the renderings with the collective mural space and with economic grading systems (by which nations are comparatively judged) – directing the u. n. complex toward a counterpoint “freeport” where nations gain an economic foothold and tap into new york’s voltage at the crossroads2 (fig. 4). 2. le corbusier in g. a. dudley (1994). a workshop for peace. designing the united nations headquarters. cambridge ma: mit press, 21. the fearful mirror of apollo the fearful mirror of apollo andrew childs between rationalism and mysticism there is … a certain complicity. jacques derrida, of grammatology a little poison now and then: that produces pleasant dreams. and a lot of poison at last, for a pleasant death. friedrich nietzsche, thus spake zarathustra interstices 4 the fearful mirror of apollo 1 though it is not at all usual, i wish to step outside of the domain of critical research for one moment and into the realm of speculation (fig 1): it is late in the morning of august 27 1965. a man stands on the balcony of house e1027 at roquebrune, cap martin. looking at this man we know as le corbusier, he appears lonely, tired and embittered. his dreams are haunted by an aphorism, a casual sentence he once scribbled down from a book long forgotten: many die too late and some die too early. yet still the dictum may sound strange: die at the right time.1 it is already too late. he makes a decision; walking back into the house he carefully selects several red coloured barbiturates prescribed for insomnia and adds benzodiazepines prescribed for depression. he swallows them as he walks down the steep path to the azure waters of the mediterranean sea (fig 2). he has always been a strong swimmer, and this occasion is no different from any other. (fig 3) le corbusier’s accomplishments, particularly at ronchamp, chandigarh and la tourette were the work of a complex spiritual visionary who combined an idealistic aesthetic philosophy with an ancient dualist theology. born in la chaux-de-fonds on october 6 1887, charles edouard jeanneret was raised a calvinist protestant. the jeanneret family proudly traced their ancestry back to the cathars, a heretical christian sect which flourished in the southeast of france during the 12th and 13th centuries, and to the french huguenots who fled to the jura region following the revocation of the edict of nantes in 1685. in languedoc the cathari were known as the albigensians. pope innocent iii, alarmed by the threat posed to the authority of the roman catholic church, ordered a crusade which was begun in 1209. this was the first of the so called albigensian crusades (1209-1229), which effectively ended the spread of catharism.2 the cathari (derived from katharos, the greek word meaning ‘pure’) followed a distinctly eastern gnostic theology, the origins of which can be found in early dualistic heresies such as manichaeism, in which is proposed an eternal conflict between light and darkness, good and evil. like manichaeism, catharism entailed an explicit dualism. according to cathar theology, creation is divided between the material world, governed by an evil principle (known as the demiurge), and the spiritual domain, ruled by the absolute good god. within this dualistic cosmology, the goal of life was to achieve salvation by escaping from the cycle of reincarnation that binds the soul to the material world. the cathar adherents were divided into the credentes, whose obligations were very light, and the perfecti (‘perfected ones’), who were expected to lead a life of extreme asceticism. their one sacrament was the consolamentum and their final act of faith the endura or ritual suicide. the cathar perfecti, believed that by choosing how and when to end their lives, they could break the cycle of transmigration, and thus free their spirit from the inherent evil of material form. the cathari also believed in a doctrine of negative virtue, virtue that consisted of not doing wrong and which had as its reward peace of the soul. the catharist legend had long been part of the culture of the jura region. albert jeanneret in a personal conversation with paul turner spoke of the connection between the jura and the heretics. the jeannerets, classified as inhabitants of jura, came to france at the moment of the religious persecution of the huguenots. i think the huguenots, like their ancestors the cathari, were disciples of manes, living in the southeast of france, against whom the pope unleashed the cruel albigensian crusade3 (fig 4). interstices 4 the fearful mirror of apollo 2 while there is little historical evidence to suggest that the early calvinist protestants, known as the huguenots, followed a theology derived from manichaeism, the jura region did however receive a great number of exiles escaping the religious persecution in france which began in the early part of the 13th century and continued until the end of the 18th century (fig 5 ). according to albert jeanneret, his brother first became interested in la question cathare at the age of sixteen or seventeen and he maintained this interest throughout his life, reading everything he could about catharist history, doctrines and purported mysticism.4 le corbusier’s sketch-books contain several references to the cathari. he mentions, for example, the routes followed by the exiles, the places where they sought refuge and the parallel experiences of the jeannerets. later in life le corbusier explicitly identified with the cathar ‘parfaits’ noting that: the jeannerets, the janret [family] = truly the “perfect ones” of languedoc.5 le corbusier clearly considered himself to be descended from the cathari and to have inherited their mystical spirit, as paul turner points out; “whether or not this really was true seems to be less significant than the fact that le corbusier believed it to be true.”6 edouard schuré’s 1889 book the great initiates: a study of the secret history of religions, was inscribed by l'eplattenier as a farewell gift to le corbusier in 1907.7 schuré was profoundly influenced by german idealism. the necessity for a spiritual revival and the rejection of materialism together form the main underlying theme of the great initiates . schuré held the extreme platonic view that matter was merely an inferior reflection of spirit. his personal quest for the spirit traces the lives and exploits of the mystical prophets who transmigrate throughout the ages. eight of the greatest prophets are examined: rama, krishna, hermes, moses, orpheus, pythagoras, plato and jesus. aside from the accomplishments of the prophets themselves, of specific interest in schuré’s book is the notion of an elite – a chosen group of initiates who are privilege to know the profound mysteries of life. schuré divided the initiates into four categories: the instinctive, the passionate, the intellectual and the archetypal man – the so-called great initiate – whose “will acquires an almost unlimited strength, an all-pervading, creative magic.”8 schuré’s philosophy picks up on the apollonian/dionysiac duality (fig 6) that was popularised by friedrich nietzsche in the birth of tragedy. but rather than seeing dionysus and apollo as two opposing principles or forces, schuré insists that they are in fact two different revelations of the same divinity. dionysus represented esoteric truth, the heart and interior of things accessible to the initiates alone. he held the mysteries of life, of past and future incarnations, of the relationships between soul and body, the heaven and earth. apollo personified the same truth applied to terrestrial life and the social order. inspirer of poetry, medicine, and law, he represented science through divination, beauty through art, the peace of peoples through justice and the harmony of soul and body through purification. in a word, for the initiate, dionysus meant nothing less than the evolving divine spirit of the universe, and apollo his manifestation to earthly man.9 le corbusier for his part was especially interested in the chapter on pythagoras, heavily underlining and annotating passages, particularly descriptions of pythagorean numerology and the principle of the four divine numbers – the tetrad. according to schuré, pythagoras perceived in the tetrad the synthesis of the universal triad with its totality, the monad. the universal threefold law or the triad was identified as the essential law of all things and the key to life, both human and divine. just as the divine threefold law (father, son and holy spirit) is contained within the one, i.e. god, so too the human threefold law (body, soul and spirit) is contained within the will which sums up the whole, ie. the consciousness of self. in this way pythagoras conceived of threefoldness and unity (the three and the one) as symbolically constituting the sacred tetrad.10 pythagoras pursued the teaching of numbers still further. in each of them he defined a principle, a law, an active force of the universe. but he said that the basic principles are contained in the first four numbers, since in adding and multiplying them one finds all the others.11 schuré's descriptions of pythagorean numerology parallel le corbusier’s own numerical system, le modular. in a typical passage taken from his book on the modular, le corbusier proclaims that mathematics embraces both the absolute and the infinite, the understandable and the forever elusive … sometimes there is a door: one opens it– enters–one is in an other realm, the realm of the gods, the room which holds the key to the great systems. these doors are the doors of miracles. having gone through one, man is no longer the operative force, but rather it is his contact with the universe. in front of him unfolds and spreads out the fabulous fabric of numbers without end.12 conceived as a comprehensive and harmonious proportioning system, the modular is ostensibly based on the ideal man (oddly enough a six-foot tall english policeman), divided by a series of golden sections, known as the fibonacci series. beneath its superficially interstices 4 the fearful mirror of apollo 3 rationalist justification lies le corbusier’s barely disguised conception of le modular as a mathematically transcendental mystical system; that there exists universal formal principles capable of achieving perfect order within architectural form. le corbusier went to great lengths to prove that architectural exemplars such as the hagia sophia and the parthenon conformed in precise detail to the dimensions of his modular system.13 throughout the eccentric and esoteric narrative of the great initiates schuré highlights the strong links between the religions of divination and the solar cults. the cult of the sun, writes schuré, “is the golden key to all mysteries” and, he adds, unfolds in the religion of zoroaster, of which the cult of mithras represents the esoteric part. mithras is the male fire and mitra the female light. in the crypts of egypt the initiates look for this same sun under the name osiris.14 the solar cult, mithraism, originated in pre-zoroastrian iran. mithra, god of the sun, justice, contract, and war was the most important god in the iranian pantheon. known also as ‘the mediator,’ mithra signified all the forms of communication among men. during the achaemenid dynasty, king darius i acknowledged the religion of zoroaster as the official religion of persia, and mithraism was subsumed within the more dominant religion.15 mithraism was revived as a mystery-cult by the romans during the second and third centuries ad and given a wholly new platonic interpretation which equated the sun god mithras sol invictus (invincible sun) with the demiurge of the timaeus (fig 7). up until the reign of the emperor constantine in the early 4th century ad, roman mithraism was a serious rival to christianity. contemporary with the roman revival of mithraism, the persian prophet mani 16 began preaching a new syncretic gnostic religion.17 mani wished to found a universal religion, a synthesis of the teachings of zoroaster, the buddha and jesus, all of whom he regarded as his forerunners. during the middle ages mani’s doctrines were revived and transformed by the armenian paulicians, who directly influenced the neomanichaean sects of the bogomili and the cathari. so it is that the connection between the various cults becomes clear; catharism developed from manichaeism which in turn developed from zoroastrianism, which contained within itself the basis of mithraism. the creation of the world is central to mithraic mythology, according to which the sun sent his messenger, the raven, to mithra and ordered him to sacrifice a white bull (fig 8). mithra was reluctant to perform the sacrifice but the raven prevailed upon him. at the moment of death a number of miracles occurred; the bull metamorphosed into the moon, the cloak of mithra transformed into the vault of the sky, from the tail of the bull sprang grain and where blood had touched the ground grapevines appeared (fig 9). with the creation of the world, the struggle between good and evil had begun. le corbusier identified closely with the symbology of the raven, an image which continually recurred in his notebooks and painting. this identification with the image of the raven is in many ways tied to the manner in which charles edouard jeanneret came to acquire the name le corbusier. one view contends that it comes from the name of a cousin, lecorbezier, while another holds that it is a corruption of the french word corbeau, meaning raven or crow (which also suggested the profile of le corbusier's face). as a symbol of alchemy, the raven, avis hermetis, was closely associated with the original primal blackness, a state of putrefaction, dissolution or death out of which all matter must pass as it tended towards the quintessential white. according to legend, corvus the raven (or crow) was sacred to the sibyls. these prophetesses were able to predict the future by interpreting the birds’ song. their goddess was coronis, who was worshipped in pre-olympic greece and whose name was later usurped by athene. it was coronis-athene whom apollo married in order to impose himself as an oracular god and in so doing inherited the raven as his symbol. it is also said that at one time the raven had been as white as a dove, but that apollo changed its plumage to black as a punishment for its spitefulness. 18 finally it is worth noting that the raven (latin corax) was the first of the seven mithraic grades of initiation.19 between 1952 and 1957 corbusier completed fifteen paintings of what were to become known as the taureaux, or bull series ( figs 10, 11, 12). symbolically, the bull series appears to represent an abstracted self portraiture as the mediating link between opposing forces – the sun and the moon, the spiritual and the material. this was a theme which continued to develop in importance and sublety until le corbusier’s death. nor was his use of spiritual symbolism limited to le corbusier’s paintings. the sun and the moon, numerically represented by the triad and the tetrad, figure throughout ronchamp as does their sum, seven, which according to pythagoras represented the union of man and divinity.20 if one examines the plan of ronchamp from south to north, the outline of a human head looking east is discernible (fig 13), but orient the plan north to south, and the roof line of the southern facade produces the unmistakable horn motif of the taurus paintings (fig 14). perhaps le corbusier meant us to discover this for interstices 4 the fearful mirror of apollo 4 ourselves when he wrote in his commentary on ronchamp: counterpoint, and fugue – music – grand music, undertake to look at the image upside down, or turn them a quarter angle. you will discover the game.21 in ancient times carnival fell under the sign of taurus. in ours it falls under pisces. carnival is the thirteenth, the unprecedented month. its hero is a brazen don juan, who enters his mother’s bed and is subsequently caught and sacrificed to the father. he is impaled at the spring equinox ( fig 15). initially the zodiacal progression was presented as the tragedy of the sun, a handsome gallant, who boldly impregnated the moon during each of its twelve aspects, and arrived at the carnival exhausted and decrepit. rejuvenated by the blood, the sun can make the leap beyond the thirteenth month, beyond the circle of death, and thus transform himself into the first month of the new year. the zodiacal progression is represented in the cult of mithras by the sacrifice of the celestial bull (fig 16). mithras, dressed in persian clothes, kneels on the back of the bull holding the nose tightly with the one hand and plunging a sword into its neck with the other. underneath the animal there extends a long serpent; a dog licks the blood that flows from the wound, a scorpion attacks the bull’s testicles, and stalks of grain sprout from the tail. mithras is flanked by the two divine torch bearers, hesperus and phosphorus, while above is the moon and the sun with its messenger, the raven.22 the sacrifice of the bull (taurus) occurs over hydra, the aquatic serpent, and the celestial horizon. the dog is the star sirius in the constellation canis major, and the raven is the star group corvus, situated above hydra. hesperus and phosphorus represent the evening and morning aspects of the planet venus, while the stalks of grain are the pleiades.23 this tauromachy is believed to refer to a time as far back as 2000 bc when the new year (signalled by the spring equinox) began with the rising of the sun in the constellation of taurus. on this occasion the king performed the single most important rite of the calendar, the sacrifice of the bull, whose blood was collected and sprinkled over the furrows to fertilise the fields. the ritual required the king to lie with the chief priestess of the temple on a recently ploughed field. the tauromachy occurs in cultures throughout the mediterranean, from the ancient cults of mithras and the myth of the minotaur in crete to the spanish bull fight of the present day.24 also connected with the tauromachy is the sparagmos (gk. tearing to pieces), the dismemberment of victims, as practiced by worshippers of dionysus. in dionysiac ritual the sacrifice was ideally a bull, perhaps seen as a manifestation of dionysus himself. (the famous hymn of the women of elis, quoted by plutarch, identifies the bull with dionysus). the eating of the bull’s flesh was a symbol of participation in the life of the god himself. by this act of union with the god, the worshipper became entheos, filled with divinity, and could attain immortality. dionysus, the dismembered god was associated with others who suffered similarly, such as the cretan zagreus and the arcadian orpheus.25 sign of the carnival, son of the sun who attempts to enter the lunar mother’s bed and is subsequently sacrificed to the father. hence the immolation of the celestial bull by mithras, the rite of fertility, giver of new life, the necessary sacrifice. guardian of the labyrinth, guardian of the mysteries of life. personification of the encephalitic god whose ritual dismemberment brings the promise of reincarnate life. le corbusier’s enduring obsession with the symbology of the bull may derive from far more than a tenuous link with catharism. on the great enamel door of the assembly building at chandigarh, the mythology of the sacrificial bull is represented more thoroughly than in any of corbusier’s other work. on the inside face of the door the ancient and feminine tripartite year is represented (fig 17 ). the outside door mural celebrates the male solar cult, the tetrad, but the older lunar order, the triad, is also evident ( fig 18). the symbolism doesn’t stop at the door. the roof portico in profile again represents the upturned taurus horns (fig 19). the triad is signified by the triangular pyramid and by the three roof elements; the truncated hypoboloid which forms the assembly chamber, the skewed pyramid of the council chamber, and the stairway tower. in elevation the truncated roof of the assembly chamber suggests an arkite composition. the upturned crescent form, interpreted as noah’s ark, sits poised upon the rocky arch of mount ararat, enclosed within an encircling solar disk. together the taurus profile of the portico, the skewed pyramid and the truncated tower align to the north and south (north is given prominence by the fact that both the pyramid and the tower are angled in that direction).26 le corbusier’s symbolism, represented at its finest in the assembly building, comprises four cardinal signs that form the foundations of his cosmology. these four cardinal signs, which are present throughout all his mature work, can be summarised as: the triad – female moon goddess, fertility and material form; the tetrad which represents the male sun god as well as the spirit; the taurus or ark – signs of the deluge – representing the promise of life and creation through destruction; and finally, the circle or oval which signifies the absolute, the unity of form with the spirit, and the finished creation. interstices 4 the fearful mirror of apollo 5 through his life le corbusier developed a growing sense of predestination and a firm belief that he was one of the chosen elite, an initiate. ultimately, his ceaseless quest for the ‘truth’ would culminate in the manifestation of the spiritual idea in both his art and his architecture. the first year, the first appearance of things (events, men, ideas, etc). twenty years later, one has stepped back, the silhouette, the curve of intensity etc.: the breasts have softened, the chain of mountains shows up better. forty years later. distance has been acquired, the silhouette of the mountains is henceforth sharp: one sees the highest peak, the highest idea, the eminent man.27 jeanneret had acquired nietzsche’s thus spake zarathustra in 1908, inscribing it with his (then) paris address. towards the end of his life le corbusier took this same book with him to the south of france when he re-read it he wrote a second inscription on the half-title page: cap martin, 1 august 1961. i have not read this book since 1908 = 53 years = my life as a man. today having profited from these pages i glimpse situations, facts, decisions, destinations that are the stuff of men’s doing. i have decided to annotate these pages.28 the page marks, underlined passages and occasional annotation all date from the second reading in 1961. as a polemic young artist le corbusier was perhaps most influenced by nietzsche’s concept of the superman, the poet hero who embodies the future, rejects the past and suffers the present. nietzsche likened mankind to a rope, fastened between beast and the superman – a rope that bridges over an abyss. nietzsche wrote of the need to “prepare the way for the future by destroying the past.” in his view, creation was only possible through destruction and “man is something that must be overcome.” these were also the catch phrases of the avant-gardes to which le corbusier had once belonged and eventually rejected. at the end of his life all that le corbusier could identify with in the nietzschean zarathustra was vilification and sacrifice. as corbusier once wrote when on a plane to india: flying over the jura, i contend that it was for me, a land of exile and contrition. consider the degrees of my revolt against the “pine-tree” folklore of l’eplattenier – [consider] my desire to seek the source.29 but this was many years before he chose to end his life. in the battered old copy of thus spoke zarathustra, highlighted by le corbusier, was the following sentence; a great weariness has overcome me, whither shall i climb now with my longing? i look out from every mountain for the homeland. but nowhere have i found a home; i am an exile in every city and i turn away from every gate.30 there was, i suggest, a definite point in his life when le corbusier reflected upon the mirror of apollo. looking into that fearful mirror, what did he see? the capricious dionysus? the dreaded gorgon? the wild and fabulous chimera, perhaps? i think he saw none of these things. what corbusier saw reflected in his old copy of zarathustra in 1961 was not his own image but an appalling mis-en-abyme, the endless reflection of the reflection diminishing towards infinity, a horror too vast to comprehend. post script (fig 20). little is known about le corbusier’s last days. the sketchbook that he had with him at cap martin, in which he undoubtedly wrote down his last thoughts, was never found.31 in july 1965, one month before he died, le corbusier wrote the following words: when we all parted, i said to tobito, who was considering visiting me the following year: “yes, in paris or on another planet,” and i said to myself: "well, no doubt, from time to time they will have a kind thought for old père corbu." when i was alone once more, i recalled that admirable line from the apocalypse: "and in the heavens all was still for a time.” yes, nothing is transmissible except thought, the crown of our labour. this thought may or may not become a victory over fate in the hereafter and perhaps assume a different, unforeseeable dimension.32 notes 1 friedrich nietzsche, thus spoke zarathustra (london: dent, 1933), p. 97. 2 sanctioned by pope innocent iii, this was a crusade in the true sense of the word. the rewards were the same as for the crusaders in palestine and syria: absolution of all sins, a place in heaven and all that they could plunder. following the fall of the city of béziers, an officer enquired of the pope’s representative, arnold-amaury, abbot of cîteaux, how they might distinguish between heretics and true believers. the abbot is reputed to have replied, “kill them all. god will recognise his own.” between 15,000 and 20,000 men, women and children, both cathars and catholics were slaughtered. while this story may well be apocryphal, it is conservatively estimated that more than half a million people were killed during the albigensian crusades. chas s. clifton, encyclopedia of heresies and heretics (santa barbara: abcinterstices 4 the fearful mirror of apollo 6 clio, 1992), p. 10. 3 paul venerable turner, the education of le corbusier (new york: garland publishing, 1977), p. 203. n. 48. 4 “to this jura, whose backdrop is the forest and the mountains it is necessary to add, to place le corbusier exactly, the languedoc of the ‘parfaits’ of cathar origin. corbu was very proud of these jurassian and mediterranean roots, even if he did perhaps lay claim to the second [of these] more strongly.” jean petit, le corbusier parle (paris, 1967), p. 12. 5 le corbusier, le corbusier sketchbooks (1954-1957) (cambridge, massachusetts: mit press, 1982). sketchbook p26 v. 3, p. 318. note also on the same page; “[the] burning of the church at le locle in 1300 … archives of the jeanneret family end here.” 6 turner, the education of le corbusier p. 202. n. 48. 7 edouard schuré, the great initiates: a study of the secret history of religions (new york: steiner books, 1992). for details of the inscription see turner, the education of le corbusier pp. 24, 202, n. 43. 8 schuré, the great initiates p. 352. 9 schuré, the great initiates pp. 285-286. 10 schuré, the great initiates p. 318. “pythagoras stood up. his fascinated gaze fixed itself upon the doric facade of the temple. the severe building seemed transfigured beneath the chaste rays of diana. he thought he saw the ideal image of the world and the solution he was seeking. for the base, columns, architrave and triangular pediment suddenly represented for him the threefold nature of man and universe, of microcosm and macrocosm, crowned with divine unity, which is itself a trinity. cosmos, dominated and penetrated by god, formed the holy tetrad, vast and pure symbol, origin of nature and model of the gods.” p. 275. 11 schuré, the great initiates p. 319. le corbusier also transcribed a passage from rabelais’ gargantua and pantagruel which dealt at length with the secret meaning imbued within the combinatory aspect of the first four numbers. le corbusier, le corbusier sketchbooks (19541957) (london: thames and hudson, 1981), sketchbook h32, v. 3, p. 32. 12 le corbusier, the modulor (london: faber & faber, 1954), p. 71. 13 le corbusier, the modular pp. 191-225. 14 schuré, the great initiates p. 289. 15 zoroastrianism was the dualistic religion founded by the persian prophet zoroaster in the 7th or early 6th century bc and set forth in the sacred writings of the zendavesta. it is based on the concept of a continuous struggle between the god of creation, light and goodness, ormazd, and his arch enemy, ahriman, the spirit of evil and darkness. 16 mani, the founder of the manichaean sect, was born in babylonia in ad 216. he was flayed to death, skinned and decapitated in ad 277 after incurring the hostility of the zoroastrian priesthood. 17 until recently known only through the testimony of its enemies, such as st augustine, manichaeism was based on the doctrine of the two roots which are the opposite, eternal principles of god and matter, (or light and darkness). the mixture of light and dark created man and the material things. the separation of the mixture, the true object of manichaean ethics, could only be achieved by complete asceticism. the manichaean ‘elect,’ in order to achieve redemption and deliverance from transmigration, had to abstain from sexual intercourse, meat, wine and property, as these were regarded as binding the soul to matter (darkness). the elect were supported by their disciples, a more worldly order called ‘hearers,’ who by keeping simple moral rules hoped to be reincarnated as one of the elect. 18 coronis, while pregnant with apollo’s child, had an affair with ischys, an arcadian. apollo learned this from the raven which brought word to delphi. in his anger apollo had artemis kill coronis. but when she was on the funeral pyre, he took the unborn child, asclepius, from her womb and gave him to chiron to foster. afterwards apollo turned the raven from white to black for bearing the bad news. 19 early christian writers record the seven grades of mithariac initiation as corax (raven), nymphus (bride), miles (soldier), leo (lion), perses (persian), heliodromus (courier of the sun), and pater (father). 20 see richard a. moore, le corbusier: myth and metaarchitecture (atlanta: georgia state university, 1977). 21 le corbusier, the chapel at ronchamp (london: architectural press, 1957), p. 47. 22 interestingly, this symbolism reproduces the ancient sumerian myth of the slaying of the celestial taurus by gilgamesh (orion): two constellations that set when the sign of scorpio rises, giving the impression that it causes their disappearance. 23 giuseppe m. sesti, the glorious constellations (new york: harry n. abrams, 1991), pp. 62-63. 24 sesti, the glorious constellations p. 450. 25 elisabeth henry, orpheus with his lute (london: bristol classical press, 1992), p. 155. 26 for a complete description of the symbolism found in le interstices 4 the fearful mirror of apollo 7 corbusier’s late works see richard a. moore, le corbusier and the mecanique spirituelle: part iii (1948-65) the late period (ann arbor, michigan: university microfilms international, 1979), pp. 287-359. 27 le corbusier, le corbusier sketchbooks sketchbook m53, v. 3, p. 133. 28 turner, the education of le corbusier p. 56. 29 le corbusier, le corbusier sketchbooks sketchbook p26, v. 3, p. 315. 30 nietzsche, thus spoke zarathustra p. 144. 31 there is indisputable evidence that this sketchbook existed, le corbusier explicitly referred to it in sketchbook number 70. 32 c. e. jeanneret-gris, le corbusier last works ed. willy boesiger (london: thames and hudson, 1970), p. 177. 129 hot links lower 9th ward, new orleans atelier hitoshi abe hot links offers many different options for smart living. through the inherent flexibility of its organisation, this house can accommodate many arrangements – single family, multiple family, renter, tenant and live/work arrangements. interstices 11 two shotgun houses are linked together and able to open, close or share the space between. in this way, much larger open spaces are created for private bedrooms or public living 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boredom and bio-politics mark jackson introduction in a book remarkable for the brevity in which its prose develops considerable complexity, giorgio agamben interrogates animal being. the open: man and animal has at its core agamben’s reading of martin heidegger’s 1929-30 lecture course, published as the fundamental concepts of metaphysics. as agamben notes, the contents of this lecture course do not necessarily hold what one might have expected from the title. about a third of the publication concerns a discussion of ‘boredom’ as a fundamental attunement of being-in-the-world; another third is concerned with a determination of the essence of animality in the disclosure that ‘animal is poor in world’. the remaining third is concerned with the world forming of world as the disclosure of dasein’s being-in-the-world. agamben approaches the heidegger text for how heidegger is able in a non-contradictory way to speak of ‘the open’ with respect to both animal and human being while yet designating a fundamental abyss between the essence of animal and the essence of human being. and agamben inflects his engagement with heidegger concerning the fundamental condition for defining ‘life’ in terms of a notion of the biopolitical. in an earlier book, homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life, agamben takes up michel foucault’s engagements with governmentality and modernity in terms of the governance of ‘bare life’ of populations, or the biopolitics of living beings. in the open agamben further articulates the difficult notion of ‘bare life’ and brings an engagement with biopower into the orbit of heideggerian thinking. in this paper i want to assay these aspects of agamben’s argument in the open, firstly in relation to heidegger’s own account of animality; secondly, in terms of the proximity of dasein to animality in the fundamental attunement of dasein in ‘boredom’; and, thirdly, in terms of how agamben reads heidegger’s concerns as fundamentally political. perhaps, though, i should start with heidegger’s ‘animal’. � a break with humanism in his 1923 lecture course, published as ontology—the hermeneutics of facticity, heidegger develops his notion of dasein in fundamental distinction to the two predominant concepts of ‘man’, as ‘the theological concept of man’ and as ‘animal rationale’. ‘man’ has been that being that falls between a creation in the image of god and a ‘living being [animal] which has discourse’, which is to say between the divine and the inhuman. heidegger’s ‘dasein’ is nothing human in either sense: in choosing a term to designate this region of being and appropriately demarcate it, we have avoided the expression ‘human dasein,’ ‘human being,’ and will continue to do so. in all of its traditional categorical forms, the concept of man fundamentally obstructs what we are supposed to bring into view as facticity. the question ‘what is man?’ blocks its own view of what it is really after with an object foreign to it. (heidegger, 1999: 21) i am mentioning this notion of the ‘being-there’ of dasein in its ‘being there for a while’ in order to emphasise heidegger’s break both with humanism as an ego-centrism of the human and with any evolutionism implicit in a notion of ‘rational animal’. in the fundamental concepts of metaphysics, heidegger aims at an understanding of the fundamental attunement of dasein to its being in the world, to its being with beings, its world-forming. dasein’s being is its openness to being, to the being of beings as a whole as those beings disclosed to it. heidegger wants to come to some understanding of ‘world’ in the sense that ‘man is world-forming’. he undertakes this by initially inquiring into animal being and its relation to world, which is to say in relation to animal being’s relation to beings as a whole. he commences with a comparison of stone-being, animal-being and world-forming. hence, the stone is ‘worldless’ in the sense that the stone has no access to beings. while the stone is a being, it has no access to beings and equally is not deprived of being. it is worldless: “the worldlessness of a being can now be defined as its having no access to those beings (as beings) amongst which this particular being with this specific manner of being is” (heidegger, 1995: 197). hence, ‘world’ infers the accessibility of beings to beings. with respect to an animal, things are more complicated than for the stone. an animal, heidegger suggests, is ‘poor in world’. it both has and does not have world, which means it both does and does not as a being have access to beings. what does he mean? when heidegger discusses world-formation and dasein’s relation to beings, he means that beings are disclosed in their present at handness for dasein; that is, beings are disclosed in their being, in that they are as such. animal being never has access to the present at handness of beings, to the beingness of beings. beings are never disclosed to animal being in its dealing with its ‘world’ of things. heidegger goes into some detail in describing the relation of animal being to its ‘world’ and in so doing arrives at what he terms the essence of animality as ‘captivation’: of course, this driven behaviour does not relate itself, and as captivated activity cannot relate itself, to what is present at hand as such. interstices 6 what is present at hand as such means what is present at hand in its being present at hand, as a being. … the animal as such does not stand within a manifestation of beings. neither its so-called environment nor the animal itself are manifest as beings. (248) accessibility to being before addressing in any detail heidegger’s account of animal being’s relation to beings, i want to emphasise what is at stake in heidegger’s questioning. when heidegger initially enquires about stone, animal and man with respect to world, he arrived at the worldlessness of stone, the worldforming of man and the ambiguity of the animal which is in one sense closer to the stone as worldless and in another closer to man with world. but the decisive question is from what viewpoint can such a comparison be disclosed? who questions? and what does the questioning question? heidegger suggests: “the substantive problem with which we are concerned is precisely that of accessibility itself, the question concerning the potential access that man and animal characteristically have to other beings” (heidegger, 1995: 201). but who questions? human-being questions. hence, “can we transpose ourselves into an animal at all?” (201) transposition does not mean transferring ourselves into the interior of another being, becoming that other being; nor does it mean going along with that other being as if we were that other being; nor does it mean having empathy for that other being as a feeling our way into that being. rather, it firstly means understanding the being that we are as a being that has access to other beings and secondly, going along with the animal “in a way in which it sees and hears, the way in which it seizes its prey or evades its predators” (204). that is to say, we understand that the animal in its dealings with its ‘world’ has access to beings, and in our going along with the animal we recognize that the ‘sphere’ of its ‘world’ offers the possibility of transposition. with the stone, matters are different. while the stone is a being, its being offers no possibility in our going along with it for our transposition to its sphere of being: “it is impossible because the stone as such does not admit of this possibility at all, offers no sphere intrinsically belonging to its being such that we could transpose ourselves into the stone” (204). there is a third question: can we transpose ourselves into another human being? heidegger suggests this question seems to be the same question posed regarding animal being. we can go along with human beings in the possibility of transposing ourselves into the access they are with respect to the sphere of their world. but there is a fundamental difference. with human beings, it is no longer an intrinsic possibility that we may transpose our being into the being of other human beings. rather, human being as dasein is this transposition of existence into other human beings: “for it is part of the essential constitution of human dasein that it intrinsically means being with others, that the factically existing human being always already and necessarily moves factically in a particular way of being with …, i.e., a particular way of going along with” (206). in his analysis of accessibility of being to beings through the question of the giving of access itself, heidegger arrives at a fundamental distinction between animal and dasein. 11 organ, organism and life in breaking with the doxa of thinking of an ‘organ’ as an instrument in a mechanistic thinking of organism, heidegger suggests that the essence of ‘organ’ is ‘capacity’ or ‘capability’ understood as an “instinctual self-driving towards its wherefore” (heidegger, 1995: 228-9). are our organs, such as our eyes, equipment we see with, instruments of vision in a complex assemblage of instruments or pieces of equipment we call an organism? equipment is in the service of something. it is produced to accomplish a task. its essence is serviceability as reliability or readiness. instruments are ready for a task. a pen is ready for writing, or (the same thing) not ready if it needs ink, or the ink won’t flow. a pen has no capacity for writing, in the sense than an eye has a capacity for seeing. yet, organs in themselves have no capacity except as relations to an organism as capacities, that is to say, the organ is in possession of a capacity, is given a capacity. the readiness of equipment is determined and prescriptive, and in this sense we would not say a piece of equipment is capable of such and such. capability is selfregulative, as heidegger suggests: “it drives itself towards it own capability for …” (228). such capability, constitutive of living organisms, is instinctually driven: “capacity is to be found where there is drive” (228). drive infers capacity, and capacity infers the possibility of training for regular behaviour: these driving forces [antriebe], which arise from the instinctual capacity in each case, do not as such merely occasion vital movements—like nutrition and propulsion—but rather as drives they always permeate and drive on the whole movement in advance. that is why they are never simply mechanical, even if they can be isolated in this way, i.e., by ignoring the instinctual structure of drives in which the specific potentiality for being and thus the manner of being belonging to these drives is embedded. in principle there is no mathematical expression for this instinctual structure of drives, and it is one which is incapable in principle of being mathematised. (229) heidegger thus defines the constitutive moment of the being of animal as ‘being capable’, which means being organized in the sense of being a self-producing, self-regulating, self-renewing and self-preserving being. by ‘self’ he is not anthropologising animality, in the sense of a self-conscious or reflective organizing. rather, he means that such producing, regulating, renewing and preserving is the proper to the itself of animal being, what is closest to its being. that is to say, in its towardness, its potentiality for being, its movement in advance and anticipatory instinctual response, it does not leave itself behind. this, for heidegger, would be constitutive of what we have named, and are primarily concerned with, as ‘animal impulse’. and, as we will come to recognize in registering agamben’s concern with heidegger’s animality, animal impulse has the most complex complicity with dasein’s openness to being. i mentioned earlier that heidegger suggests the essence of animality is ‘captivation’. what does he mean by that, and what would be the relation interstices 6 of ‘captivation’ to capability or capacity? capability is the potentiality of the animal to be, which means its proper producing, regulating, renewing and preserving what is closest to itself in its being. in its being in the world it acts instinctually in its behaving in the world in its proper being, in being what is closest to it, its ‘world’ of other beings recognized as prey, nourishment, shelter, sexual partners and so on. capability is capability for behaviour. and here heidegger makes a further distinction between animal and ‘man’. animals behave in the sense that they act according to a driving performing, an instinctual drivenness; humans ‘comport’ as doing or acting: “the specific manner in which man is we shall call comportment and the specific manner in which the animal is we shall call behaviour. they are fundamentally different from one another” (237). how, then, is animal behaviour to be characterized? unlike the stone or the piece of equipment that have no access to beings, no drive or capability, the animal is open to beings in its ‘world’. its being is this openness to beings, its behaviour. again, it is crucial to emphasise that we do not in some manner define animal being and then ask what does this being do in a world of things, just as we do not ask the question ‘what is man’ and then ask what ‘man’ does in a world of things. rather, the disclosure of being is the disclosure of the being open of beings to their being in a ‘world’. if heidegger is emphatic on the distinction between animal-behaviour and human-comportment, he is equally emphatic on distinguishing between animal-environment and human world. world and environment come to designate different entities from the point of view of the disclosure of being. heidegger will define the inner possibility of behaviour, as the openness of animal being to beings, which is to say to its environment, as ‘captivation’. as the inner possibility of behaviour, ‘captivation’ refers not to a kind of enduring fixation an animal might have with its environment, a kind of seizure or mood that it cannot get over. rather, it refers to the animal’s absorption with itself, its remaining with itself, the specific manner whereby in its towardness, it does not leave itself behind. captivation does not accompany behaviour; it is the possibility of behaviour. how does the animal maintain the proper of itself in its towardness, its relatedness to beings, where this ‘towardness’ is also a moving-awayfrom in the traversing of an environment? as instinctual drivenness, the animal is ‘given over’ to beings: “it is not an apprehending of something as something, something present at hand. there is no apprehending, but only behaving here, a driven activity which we must grasp in this way because the apprehending of something as something is withheld from the animal” (247). this possibility of apprehension as such is ‘not given at all’. in this sense, the animal is ‘taken by things’. hence, this access of animal being to beings as a relatedness to things, as an openness to beings, is at the same time a withholding of the being of beings, a closeness to being, to that something is as such. the open as a revealing of beings to animal being is at the same time a concealing of the beingness of beings. strictly speaking, as a withholding of being, the open of animal being to things is neither openness to being nor closure to being. the question of revealing and concealing never arrives. 1� the openness of animal being but how do we yet understand this ‘open’ of the openness of animal being to beings? as mentioned earlier, in discussing organ, organism and drives, drives are not a mechanistic assemblage; the organ is given a capacity by an organism considered as the driven towardness of instinctual drives: “instinctual drivenness, as being driven from one drive to another, holds and drives the animal within a ring which it cannot escape and within which something is open for the animal” (249). so, on the one hand, the animal cannot apprehend beings as such and on the other hand animal relatedness to things, to environment, is circumscribed by the interrelatedness of instinctual drives constitutive of an organism as a capacity or capability of self-preservation. how to yet speak here of an openness? heidegger suggests that the negative manner of considering the ‘withholding’ of the apprehension of being for animal being may be considered otherwise. he rather emphasises that the animal in its relatedness to beings possesses an “eliminative character” which he will come to define as a “rejecting [of] things from [the] itself [of the animal]” constitutive of the animal’s self absorption (252). eliminative behaviour is the putting to one side, the obviating, of the present at hand, the as such of a being. in this sense, behaviour is a relatedness of a ‘not-attending-to’ that is yet still open in the sense that an animal in some manner announces itself as affected by things it relates to. hence an animal is understood as a kind of encirclement of instinctual drives as a “totality of its self-absorbed capability” constitutive of behaviour as relatedness to other things (253). behaviour is fundamentally eliminative as the non-attending to things as such. yet the animal announces its capacity to be affected by its environment, and as capacity is the towardness of its preserving in the open of its relatedness. but as capacity, as capability, it is the containment, as inhibition, of its instinctual drives that require disinhibition: capability for … and thus behaviour itself is open for such occasions, for stimuli, for that which initiates, i.e., disinhibits the capability for … in such and such a way in each case. that which the animal’s behaviour relates to is such that this behaviour is open to it. this other is taken up into the openness of the animal in a manner that we shall describe as disinhibition. since capability for … thoroughly governs the animal’s specific manner of being, a being such as the animal, when it comes into relation with something else, can only come upon the sort of entity that ‘affects’ or initiates the capability in some way. nothing else can penetrate the ring around the animal. (254) environment in this sense is the relatedness of behaviour to the disinhibitors that are capable of affecting, which is to say that are relatable at all. in such relatedness, the disinhibitors withdraw. heidegger suggests this is their manner of showing themselves, as that which withdraws and eludes. and it is in this respect that behaviour is eliminative as the not-attendingto. the withdrawal and elusiveness, as the not apprehending of the disin interstices 6 hibitors, coincides with the non-apprehension of the presence at hand. in this, heidegger suggests, there is no permanence as such, nor any change as such, which is to say, no temporality or historicity as such. the poverty of world it is not that the animal is trapped in the encirclement of its ring of inhibitors. rather, this encirclement is precisely the opening to a sphere of disinhibition. and in this sense, animal being cannot be defined, say as ‘captivation’, and then be shown how it relates to an environment. its being as captivation is essentially its being related to the separation-reparation of inhibitor-disinhibitor. an animal’s being is its self-surrounding with a disinhibiting ring. its absorption is not with itself in its interiority but with the ring of interrelated instinctual drives in their opening. this discussion of animal being commenced with heidegger’s notion that ‘animal is poor in world’ while ‘man is world forming’, and further, that heidegger wanted to develop a better sense of how animal being is both a having and a not having of world. we may now get a sense of what he might mean. ‘poverty’, heidegger suggests, is intrinsically related to having. one is not poor in something if that something is simply not within one’s horizon of disclosure. to be ‘poor’ already supposes a sense of not having what can be had. hence, ‘poverty’ is a ‘having’ that at the same time constitutes a not-having. at the same time heidegger’s guiding question concerning ‘accessibility’ of beings to beings, of animal being and human being to beings, which for dasein is ‘world-forming’ in that dasein can disclose beings as such in their being, must be borne in mind. both animal being and human being access beings. animal being accesses beings as behaviour, whose twin fundamental moments of relatedness are the withholding of being in ‘elimination’ as behaviour’s fundamental mode, and the withdrawing of the disinhibitors in the openness of animal being to its environment. it is in this sense that animal is poor in world, though heidegger emphasises that a valuative understanding of ‘poverty’ or ‘richness’ in world is totally misleading. equally, dasein’s world is meager in comparison to life: this does not mean that life represents something inferior or some kind of lower level in comparison with human dasein. on the contrary, life is a domain which possesses a wealth of openness with which the human world may have nothing to compare. (255) dasein’s world of boredom: agamben’s reading i suggested at the beginning of this paper that my interest was in assaying agamben’s the open: man and animal. has this interest been put to one side, and perhaps even eliminated, in a particular captivation with the text of heidegger? rather, what has been discussed so far is a preliminary engagement with aspects of agamben’s text, a recounting of salient aspects of his recounting of heidegger’s engagement with animality. i now want to turn to agamben’s concerns more directly, but in doing so, necessarily return to heidegger’s fundamental concepts of metaphysics, and in particular his engagement with ‘boredom’ as the fundamental attunement of dasein 1� to its being in the world. in what i have said so far about heidegger’s understanding of the poverty of world for animals, there is still something that does not quite make sense. if the animal is fundamentally deprived of access to the apprehension of being, can this be spoken of as deprivation at all? the animal is not open to being but nor is it closed to being. its ‘other’ is neither being nor non-being. so in what way does a question of having or not-having emerge at all? that is, if heidegger wants to make a fundamental distinction between world and environment precisely in terms of the being-disclosed of entities, why say the animal is poor in world at all, as ‘world’ is never a disclosable entity in the first place? however, we may begin to see what is at stake for heidegger, not so much in ascertaining the understanding of disclosure or unconcealment, constitutive of world, but rather in beginning to develop an understanding of concealment or undisclosure or non-revealing. if we speak of a poverty of world, it is precisely in being able to disclose concealment as concealment. and this is where agamben’s reading is addressed. agamben suggests: the ontological status of the animal environment can at this point be defined: it is open but not disconcealed, literally openable. for the animal, beings are open but not accessible; that is to say, they are open in an inaccessibility and an opacity—that is, in some way, in a non-relation. this openness without disconcealment distinguishes the animal’s poverty in world from the world-forming which characterizes man. the animal is not simply without world, for insofar as it is open in captivation, it must—unlike the stone, which is worldless—do without world, lack it; it can, that is, be defined in its being by a poverty and a lack. (agamben, 2004: 55) this ‘lack’ is fundamental to the animal as captivation, self-absorbing in the emptiness of its behaviour as eliminative, in the emptiness that is its inhibiting capacity. thus a question of the open for heidegger oscillates between animal and man, as that between a concealing and a revealing, or an essentiality as concealment and an essentiality as revealing. the ‘open’ or a questioning of the ‘open’ brings animal and man into closest proximity in the same moment as it constitutes an abyss separating them. their proximity is that abyss. agamben suggests: animal captivation and the openness of the world thus seem related to one another as are negative and positive theology, and their relationship is as ambiguous as the one which simultaneously opposes and binds in a secret complicity the dark night of the mystic and the clarity of rational knowledge. (59) agamben’s argument develops along these lines: that heidegger’s labour or meditation on aletheia and lethe, on the pre-socratic unconcealment of being and concealment of being are precisely set to work in their depth in his engagement with the animal’s poverty of world. in particular, heidegger dwells here on the mystery of concealment itself, what brings it about, what accomplishes or gives concealment. agamben’s thesis is that heidegger is interstices 6 here meditating on the profound nature of dasein as animal being, as that withdrawing, saving and preserving of the being of dasein in dasein’s revealing of the concealing of what gives being. in this dasein reveals bare life as its ownmost concealed proximity to being. heidegger’s own engagement in revealing this proximity is through his development of the fundamental attunement of dasein to its being in the world as ‘profound boredom’. hence the preceding of heidegger’s discussion of animality in the fundamental concepts of metaphysics with some one hundred pages on ‘boredom’. boredom’s indifference to beings briefly, heidegger works through three stages of ‘boredom’ to arrive at ‘profound boredom’. what is uncanny is that the terms he used to describe dasein’s relation to being in these stages will quite closely coincide with his description of the animal’s relatedness to its environment, that dasein’s boredom and the open of animal being are coincident or proximal if at the same time abyssal. the three ‘forms’ of boredom are structured around two moments defining the essence of boredom. the first is ‘being left empty’ or ‘abandonment in emptiness’: “leaving empty as refusal indeed presupposes something at hand, but what is at hand must precisely be something particular and something expected in a particular situation, so that we can come to be left empty by something, in the sense of becoming bored by …” (heidegger, 1995: 104). he contrasts this ‘being left empty’ with things by an account of being ‘satisfied’ with things in our dealings with them, in our immersion with them. heidegger will in fact use terms identical to those he will come to use in defining an animal’s captivation: “being occupied gives our dealings with things a certain manifoldness, direction, fullness. but not only that: we are also taken by things, if not altogether lost in them, and often even captivated by them” (101). hence in being occupied, dasein may be taken, captivated, or left empty. in boredom, the totality of dasein’s disclosed world shows beings in their ‘indifference’, in the emptiness of possibility for action. this disclosure is a disclosure of beings that refuse themselves. agamben suggests: dasein can be riveted to beings that refuse themselves in their totality because it is constitutively ‘delivered up’ to its own ‘proper being,’ factically ‘thrown’ and ‘lost’ in the world of its concern. but, precisely for this reason, boredom brings to light the unexpected proximity of dasein and the animal. in becoming bored, dasein is delivered over to something that refuses itself, exactly as the animal, in its captivation, is exposed in something unrevealed. (agamben, 2004: 65) hence both man and animal are here open to a closedness, given over to what remains concealed. the second moment of boredom develops from the first. if the indifference of dasein’s world of things lights up as the emptiness of possibility for action, for concernful underwayness in dasein’s projection that is its being-in-the-world, this emptiness, from the point of view of possibility, capacity or capability, is a ‘being-held-in-suspense’ which alerts dasein to what it could have done, its possibilities, possibili 1� ties as such, delivered precisely as the withholding of possibility, as the withholding of the disclosure of beings, the “telling announcement of possibilities left unexploited” (heidegger, 1995: 141). being-held-in-suspense, in the revealing of the inactivity of dasein with respect to the totality of its being, is the alerting to dasein of its potentiality as such for being, of the “possibilitisation proper to dasein” (66). the revealing of dasein as possibility or potentiality for being is precisely a revealing of an utmost concealing, of a potential-not-to, of a holding in suspense of dasein’s disclosed world of things. as agamben suggests: thus, the proximity, and at the same time the distance, between profound boredom and animal captivation finally come to light. … the animal environment is constituted in such a way that something like pure possibility can never become manifest within it. profound boredom then appears as the metaphysical operator in which the passage from poverty in world to world, from animal environment to human world, is realized; at issue here is nothing less than anthropogenesis, the becoming dasein of living man. (68) what is revealed as dasein’s openness to being is nothing other than an openness to the animal’s disinhibitor ring, to the concealedness of this ring, its withdrawal in animal being. this is an openness to the closedness, the concealed of life’s own open: “dasein is simply an animal that has learned to become bored; it has awakened from its own captivation to its own captivation. this awakening of the living being to its own being captivated, this anxious and resolute opening to a not-open, is the human” (70). animal impulse and the biopolitics of bare life i suggested earlier that agamben moves these concerns with heid egger’s disclosure of man and animal towards his own concerns with the question of the biopolitical. in a book that might be described as bleak and uncompromising, agamben introduces the notion of ‘bare life’ as the political substance of modernity. homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life takes up foucault’s analysis of biopower as modernity’s invention of an exercise of power in its operations on the corporeal reality of populations as the management of the (bare) animal life of humans. this may be thought of in terms of the circular movement of the twin terms: the total humanisation of the animal and the total animalisation of the human. as a summary to his analyses, agamben suggests: (i) the original political relation is the ban (the state of exception as zone of indistinction between outside and inside, exclusion and inclusion). (ii) the fundamental activity of sovereign power is the production of bare life as originary political element and as the threshold of articulation between nature and culture, zoe and bios. (iii) today it is not the city but rather the camp that is the fundamental biopolitical paradigm of the west. interstices 6 the first of these calls into question every theory of the contractual origin of state power and, along with it, every attempt to ground political communities in something like a ‘belonging’, whether it be founded on popular, national, religious, or any other identity. the second thesis implies that western politics is a biopolitics from the very beginning, and that every attempt to found political liberties in the rights of the citizen is, therefore, in vain. the third thesis, finally, throws a sinister light on the models by which social sciences, sociology, urban studies, and architecture today are trying to conceive and organize the public space of the world’s cities without any clear awareness that at their very centre lies the same bare life (even if it has been transformed and rendered apparently more human) that defined the biopolitics of the great totalitarian states of the twentieth century (agamben, 1998: 181-182). with his later publication, the open, agamben brings these theses into the arena of heideggerian thinking, and in doing so seems to offer two proposals where homo sacer seemed to deliver a singular message. indeed, the bleakness of homo sacer is precisely the fundamental figuring of the biopolitical as a totalitarianism abetted precisely by appeals to the contractual relations of human rights. one cannot say that, for agamben, heideggerian thinking alleviates anything; but it does, at a crucial juncture, suggest another path of thinking. for heidegger, the polis is fundamentally that place of questioning the question of unconcealment and concealment, which is to say the political paradigm for heidegger revolves about this pole, this turning of the question of the question of revealing and concealing. agamben gives to heidegger’s lethe, concealment, the proper name, animal, and to unconcealment, aletheia, the disclosure that is dasein. hence, with respect to agamben’s theses concerning the biopolitical, the ban as abandonment, state of exception or zone of exclusion marks precisely the having-not-having of world that is constitutive of bare life, or the animal life of humanity, just as bare life, lethe, concealment is the original political substance as that constitutive of the unconcealing of the pure possibility of dasein itself as pure potentiality for the letting be of its own concealed being. and what of the two scenarios suggested by agamben? after having suggested that the decisive political conflict today is that between the animality and the humanity of man, he goes on to say: at this point two scenarios are possible from heidegger’s perspective: (a) posthistorical man no longer preserves his own animality as undisclosable, but rather seeks to take it on and govern it by means of technology; (b) man, the shepherd of being, appropriates his own concealedness, his own animality, which neither remains hidden nor is made an object of mastery, but is thought as such as pure abandonment. (agamben, 2004: 80) while the first of these options constitutes the accounting for modernity in homo sacer, in terms of technologies of power productive of the global ordering of life, the second no less abandons the fragile vulnerability of bare life as political substance, in the sense that bare life is constitutive of the political as such. our recourse, then, is not the abandonment of zoe for a renewal of bios, abandoning the lethe of animal being for the humanitas of culture building. indeed, even heidegger suggests the post-history of this 1� recourse. rather, our recourse (but who is this ‘our’ in agamben’s context of the totalitarianism constitutive of ‘community’?) is a certain suspension of the question, which is itself already the question of suspension itself: holding open the openness of possibility as such to the revelation that there is being as such. agamben addresses this doubling of suspension directly, as perhaps the horizon of a politics that has always been the stakes of the political as such: in so far as the animal knows neither beings nor nonbeings, neither open nor closed, it is outside of being; it is outside in an exteriority more external than any open, and inside in an intimacy more internal than any closedness. to let the animal be would then mean to let it be outside of being. the zone of nonknowledge—or of aknowledge—that is at issue here is beyond both knowing and not knowing, beyond both disconcealing and concealing, beyond both being and the nothing. but what is thus left to be outside of being is not thereby negated or taken away; it is not, for this reason, inexistent. it is an existing, real thing that has gone beyond the difference between being and beings. (91-92) the politics of bare life would then amount to the recognition of the emptiness, the ‘hiatus’ that separates, within the human, man and animal, and to risk ourselves in this emptiness. this would constitute for agamben the positive figure of the zone of exception, or bare life, that would recognize in the impulse neither the singular element of a fundamental behavioral training nor the sub-species signature of life itself, but rather the trace of an outside of being that would at the same time be the withdrawn giving of the concealed as such. references agamben, g. (1998). homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life (d. heller-roazen, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. (original work published 1995.) agamben, g. (2004). the open: man and animal (k. attell, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. (original work published 2002.) heidegger, m. (1999). ontology—the hermeneutics of facticity (j. van buren, trans.). bloomington & indianapolis: indiana university press. (original work published 1988.) heidegger, m. (1995). the fundamental concepts of metaphysics (w. mcneill & n. walker, trans.). bloomington & indianapolis: indiana university press. (original work published 1983.) interstices02.indb interstices 07 dreamlikeness stephen appel dreams are performed in ‘dimension one’, while they are recounted in ‘dimension two’. (ellie ragland, 2000: 70) there was toilet in a run-down house. it was fi lthy. there were rotting leaves on the fl oor and the paint was peeling off the walls. it was a toilet, but it was somehow also a pantry or a butcher’s fridge. there were pig carcasses hanging from a rail. i think there was a woman in there. she gave me a fright. she had long dark hair and i couldn’t see her face. she was wearing a jewish prayer shawl. but isn’t the tallis worn by men? anyway, i don’t know if it was the same woman, but in the little room next door there was a woman also in a white dress. she was on a high shelf. she was standing in a very awkward position, sort of sideways, as if she might fall. i could see her leg through a slit in her dress. her fi ngernails were red. oh yes, there was a jewelry box on the fl oor. what have we here? it is very much like being told a dream. in fact, though, it is a description of a libidinous and forbidding photograph in julie firth’s stain (2006) corpus. although it is not her particular purpose to do so, in her evocative series firth has gone a long way towards solving a curiously persistent problem in art; that of dream depiction. reading, watching, or looking at a work of art can be like watching a dream unfold, and yet the problem of actually portraying a dream remains. painting, fi lm and prose literature have several devices with which to depict dreams: from simple wavy lines or altered typeface to accompaniment by weird music. or sometimes the problem is side-stepped and an apparently realistic episode ends with the dreamer waking up. now and then a more determined effort is made, as in the dream sequence designed by dali for hitchcock’s fi lm spellbound (1945) which includes memorable surrealistic images huge fl oating eyes, twisted landscapes, a faceless man in a tuxedo. the producer, david o. selznick, cut a scene in which ingrid bergman lifts her skirt revealing armies of ants. the invitation to read david lynch’s fi lm mulholland dr. (2001) as a dream is made early in the fi lm where a bit-character, dan, recounts a terrifying dream. lynch himself gave the movie the tagline, “a love story in the city of dreams”. the question of how much of the fi lm is dream and who is the dreamer is not answered. in his novel eating pavlova, d.m. thomas segues from one state of consciousness to another in his fi ctional version of freud’s dying delirium in the house at 20 maresfi eld gardens, hampstead: “i dream we live in a mare’s fi eld. it must relate to my fi rst sight of my mother’s genitals but not the last, for we lived in just one room” (1994: 3). 103 these are attempts to capture something of the nonsensicality of dreams, their uncanniness and fascination for us. both puzzlingly illogical and redolent, they make no sense, and yet we have a feeling that these “sweet, dark playthings”, as anne sexton calls dreams, have meaning (1999: 97). but how to show them? dreams, as depicted in art, tend to signify dreams. they are like dreams and we come to recognize them as dreams, but they are not dreamlike. (i purposely exclude poetry here. a single line from the man who dreamed of faeryland by yeats should be proof enough that poetry is at home with the nonsensical knowledge of dreamlife: “his heart hung all upon a silken dress” (2004: 18)). attending to a dream in art is too seldom like having a dream. we must note about the dream a quality of bizarreness which is composed of several elements. scenes shift abruptly and discontinuously. people change their identity; the furniture of a room is unpredictably altered. unusual things happen; birds talk, toilets are placed against windows opening into restaurants, sleeping pads are spread on the fl oor of public corridors, one is dispossessed of one’s bed. and yet none of this seems remarkable to the dreamer; he goes from one adventure to the next quite unconcerned at the inconsistencies and logical absurdities of what is happening (nemiah, 1961: 202, emphases added). perhaps there is a clue here as to why dreams in art are so often not dream-like. precisely because dreams depicted point to their own nature this is a dream they cannot but seem remarkable to the viewer or reader. in order for something to be dream-like, though, it is necessary that the viewer be unconcerned at its inconsistencies and absurdities. i would go further, the viewer needs to be unaware of the bizarreness and to take for granted the dream’s crazy premises. (the lucid dream is a dream in bad faith, like a child’s fearful reassurances, “it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie”). this defamiliarised world is somehow familiarised. sometimes in a dream the dreamer thinks, “that doesn’t make sense”, but if the dreamer is not to wake up, this realistic judgment must remain in the background. to my mind even surrealistic paintings are too obviously like dreams. in reality, roses don’t levitate, but dali’s drawing attention to this fact, julie firth: from the corpus stain colour transparency image with single-channel real projection video, 1200mm x 1200 mm, 2006 interstices 07 in the meditative rose (1958), detracts radically from the possibility of viewing such a picture as being like having a dream. however, when a pig’s carcass transforms into a woman’s lower leg, in image 1, it does not press to be decoded as a symbol or metaphor. rather than specifying a meaning, it is more generally suggestive. but of course, we don’t actually have dreams, we only remember them. when we our waking, conscious selves tell a dream to another or to ourselves we are retelling it. this is one of the functions of what freud called dream-work: “this function behaves in the manner which the poet maliciously ascribes to philosophers: it fi lls up the gaps in the dream-structure with shreds and patches” (1900-1901: 490). waking, we see the dream with the mind’s eye, but this is a re-visioning. like any eye-witness account it is, after all, but an account. remembering a dream is the fi rst retelling of it, and retelling a dream recasts it. it might be that this is another reason for the problems artists have had depicting dreams. too often they have been concerned to demonstrate what lies beneath the dream, to suggest its meaning; but that is to deny the most elementary fact about dreams. if dreams have meaning, that meaning is thoroughly hidden from view and one cannot get its meaning from direct apperception of it. the melting watch in the persistence of memory (1931) too obviously signifi es the non-linearity of time. this outer knowing gets in the way of any inner knowing. it is well known that, according to freud, the manifest dream is a transformation, or revision of underlying latent dream-thoughts. dream-work distorts day-residues and unconscious material to produce the dreamer’s dream. then there is a secondary revision when one wakes, remembers a dream, and tells it to oneself. unavoidably one attempts to render the dream as a more or less consistent and intelligible scenario. this secondary revision is the attempted removal of the dream’s seeming absurdity and incoherence, fi lling in its gaps, reorganising its elements through selection and addition; in short, “the attempt to make it something like a day-dream” (laplanche and pontalis, 1980: 412). julie firth: from the corpus stain colour transparency image with single-channel real projection video 1200mm x 1200 mm, 2006 105 the curious thing about recounting a dream is that while the critical, logical ego is disputatious: “i can’t quite remember, it was either a toilet or a butcher shop”, one still has access to the mysterious logic of the dream world: “in the dream it was both a toilet and a butcher shop”. it is this experiential doubleness that so many depicted dreams miss: the paradox of their believable fabrication, their lying veracity. and it is precisely here that julie firth’s photographs work so well. consider image 2. treat it as a pictorial composition, as an event in a story, and it might seem faintly ridiculous. treat it, as i think one must, as a palimpsestic rebus and it pulses. when it comes to the depiction of dreams, poetry and photography seem better-suited than narrative fi ction, painting, and, surprisingly, fi lm. this is a topic for another day, but perhaps a case could be made that the formal qualities of poetry and photography particularly layering and juxtaposition cohere with the mechanisms of dream-work condensation, displacement, and symbolization. the photographs by julie firth are not intended as the artist’s dreams and we should not try to interpret them as such. but they do have many of the features of dream enigmata. they are layered and suggestive, without having an explanation. they are over-wrought: beautiful without being pretty; horrifi c but not horrible; sexual, not crude; intelligent without being clever-clever. and they are dreamlike precisely in the sense that, while they don’t make sense, they seem to have a deeper affi nity. when we look at these photographs, absurd as they are, they work on us and we go along with them. “whether or not dreams are meaningful, they are good to make meaning with” (phillips, 2001: 57). similarly, it seems contrary to the spirit of these images to insist on explanation. it is not just that we cannot determine what they mean; we should not. far better to allow them to make us daydream. references freud, s. (1900-1901). the interpretation of dreams, standard edition, vol. 5. london: hogarth and the institute of psycho-analysis. laplanche, j. and pontalis, j.-b. (1980). the language of psycho-analysis. london: hogarth and the institute of psycho-analysis. nemiah, j. c. (1961). foundation of psychopathology. new york: oxford university press. phillips, a. (2001). houdini’s box. london: faber & faber. ragland, e. (2000). dreams according to lacan’s re-interpretation of the freudian unconscious. parallax 6(3), 63-81. sexton, a. (1999). flee on your donkey. in the complete poems: anne sexton. new york: first marriner, 1966. thomas, d. m. (1994). eating pavlova. london: bloomsbury. yeats, w.b. (2004). t he man who dreamed of fairyland. in the rose. whitefi sh, montana: kessinger, 1893. julie firth’s images are originally in colour. a full reading and appreciation of the work would certainly depend on this aspect. regrettably, we are only able to reproduce them as greyscale 149 tensions. design proposals for the confucius institute at the university of auckland george fraser gallery, auckland, 24 – 29 august 2010 work by yan chen, joseph crowe, angus muir, bhavina patel, divya purusotham, min tian and cynthia yu. curated by mike davis and sou muy ly review by carl douglas although tensions, an exhibition of work by march(prof) students from the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning, addresses a concrete brief for the confucius institute, it is best viewed as an index of architectural process. dressed in the matte white uniform of the gallery, it may take a moment to notice that the work doesn’t advance a unified stylistic agenda: within the group are represented siza-like plays of mass and volume, continuous surfaces like those of foreign office architects, programmatic envelopes like those of oma, hybrids of chipperfield and rcr arquitectes, and fujimoto-style villages. what the work shares is an experimental approach to the instruments of architectural generation: sections, diagrams, maps, algorithms. the graphic preference for the lucid and orderly cannot mask a state of agitation within each project. there is only provisional completeness to be found here. the process is non-linear, interrogative, and intensive. a collectively-produced sketchbook opens a window into the raw state of design that is welcome in a context obsessed with completeness and closure. mike davis, in his catalogue essay, describes an oscillation between the material practice of representing and reflective cross-examination. sarah treadwell, in her adjacent essay, speaks of george fraser gallery (photo by sou muy ly) interstices 11 min tian diagram 151 this oscillation as a kind of high-wire dance along the line of the cutting-edge, writing: “the danger for the maker lies in going too far or not far enough; there is no certainty in decision-making – just a strange sense of rightness, a momentary satisfaction with one particular cut or instance” (2010: 4). this sense of feeling one’s way in design is directly implicated in the selection and design of the architect’s toolkit. design tools are not necessarily physical implements. a conceptual framework like renaissance perspective is a tool, as is a gantt chart, a digital algorithm like a grasshopper script, or analog algorithms like those of sciagraphy. a minimum definition of “tool” might focus on its basic role as a differentiator or translator: something that generates a difference or produces a transformation. the exhibition sketchbooks reveal the operation of tools ranging from muscular and assertive to delicate, from general to specific, from theoretical frameworks to lifehacks, project strategies to spatial patterns. diagrams, for example, are prominent. as a kind of affine representation, they are minimally specified and portable: articulating a structure rather than an image. a topological circulation diagram, for instance, could find infinite concrete applications. but diagrams should not be understood as a “free” state which is then constrained by practicalities or codes. on the contrary, diagrammatic operation must always be balanced with a corrective – the understanding that the world is, strictly speaking, irreducible. one of the strategies deployed to this end here is the pairing of abstract diagrams with a more heavily coded representational tool like section drawing. davis explained to me that, far from strangling the projects, he found representational strictures released the designs from the designer’s mind into the open space of external relation. another class of tool is the architectural pattern. one recurring pattern in tensions is the architectural device of using through-passage to break institutional seals and maximise the surface of contact with the mobile public of the university campus. joseph crowe, for example, positions a series of folded ramps threaded through the building skin, allowing a pedestrian shortcut to brush up against the meandering programme of the interior. similar in strategy although not in appearance, cynthia yu proposes that pedestrians filter through a cellular village. angus muir is the limit-case of this approach: pointing out that the requirements for meeting-spaces, lecture theatres and function rooms can already be accommodated in existing university spaces, he elaborates a plaza stretching from the clocktower to the northeastern edge of the campus, providing the institute with a far greater public face than a single building could. these students, resist the idea that the site be a closed venue, a perimeter within which the two nations with which the confucius institute is concerned – china and new zealand – are permitted only formal encounters; in doing so they fulfill the institute’s collaborative and public spirit. seeking and producing site disturbance was another effectively-deployed tool. in the same way that lucretius’ atoms generate all the world’s complexity and differentiation from the merest of swerves, complex and elaborate proposals arise from the smallest detail of the site’s specificity. bhavina patel, finding that the historical coastline bites the edge of the site slightly, uses this disturbance to generate a volumetric play of deep shafts and shadowy voids. yan chen samples the density of the foliage on the site. divya purusotham reifies tiny slivers of shadow. min tian treats the site as a uniform field plastically deformed by external pressures. by analysing the site for something that individuates it, distinguishes it from any other place, the site itself becomes a generator, not just a canvas. according to richard sennett there are two types of expertise: antisocial, in which each problem is treated in isolation by means of rules; and sociable, which “addresses other people in their unfolding prospects, just as the artisan explores material change” (2008: 251). finding ways to open up the design process to external agents, pressures and effects is not a limitation on the artistic freedom of the designer. on the contrary, we should welcome the displacement of a singular antisocial designer in favour of more exhaustive engagement with a dynamic world of mixed agencies. architecture might be better defined in terms of its craft: instrumentally or equipmentally, rather than institutionally. generative strategies like those exhibited in tensions cause us to refocus on architectural craft. reyner banham, in his essay “a black box”, writes of the unspoken assumptions of the architectural profession. there is a whole series of unwritten assumptions about what architecture is, most tellingly revealed by the thought, “i know architecture when i see it.” nikolaus pevsner’s snooty comment that a bicycle shed isn’t architecture (“a piece of academic snobbery that can only offend a committed cyclist like myself,” writes banham, involving “a supposition about sheds that is so sweeping as to be almost racist” (1990: 23)) belongs to this class of statement. we should be rigorously suspicious of those who claim that the detection of architecture requires a priestly faculty, and of the uncriticised assumptions buried in professional common sense. tensions is noteworthy for the attention it directs to the question: what do architects do? architecture should not be what banham accuses it of being: “the exercise of an arcane and privileged aesthetic code” (25). demystifying architectural process is not a threat to architectural autonomy, but an opportunity to make explicit the rich and tense operations necessary to the fabrication of our shared space. divya purusotham long section 153 joseph crowe model (photo by sou muy ly) references banham, r. (1990). a black box. the secret profession of architecture. new statesman & society. v.3 n.122 (oct.), 22-25. sennett, r. (2008). the craftsman. london (uk): allen lane. tensions. design proposals for the confucius institute at the university of auckland (2010). auckland: george fraser gallery. treadwell, s. (2010). post digital craft – the razor and the tightrope. in tensions, 4. interstices 11 group architects: towards a new zealand architecture edited by julia gatley review by david mitchell every year another monograph or two is published on the work of contemporary new zealand architects, and we can only welcome these additions to our national library. they are, however, generally produced – at least in part – by the architect who is the subject. this casts a critical shadow over the writing. if content does not firmly reinforce the main character, it will not grace the page. group architects are now historical figures, and no such limitation constrains writing about them. julia gatley has assembled writers eager to cast new light or new interpretations on the group. group architects: towards a new zealand architecture is the first comprehensive presentation of group architects’ work. it is a major document in our architectural history, a handsome book and a pleasure to read. the authors are a generation or two removed from their subjects, which gives freshness to their views, and a chance to re-open questions older commentators might have thought settled. the book is admirably rich in illustrations, with many archival photos, and excellent new ones by simon devitt and paul mccredie. plans of most of the houses have been cleanly redrawn, and some revealing drawings by the architects are included. seeing a great deal of the group’s work in a single book clarifies their strengths and, it should be admitted, a few of their shortcomings. julia gatley is the editor, and the largest contribution comes from thoughtful writing by her and bill mckay. the work is amplified in various (not closely related) ways by other writers, most of whom are architectural academics with strong links to their topics in the book. all the work has been thoroughly researched, carefully annotated, and presented with the visual and the written material in a pleasing balance. the book is academically strong, but readily accessible to any intelligent reader interested in architecture and the people who make it. the story of how a handful of stroppy post-war students rebelled at architecture school, wrote a manifesto, designed and built their own first houses, and very rapidly stamped their brand on new zealand architecture is retold here. julia gatley then presents an ordered and rewarding analysis of the forms of significant group houses from 1948 until 1968. gatley rarely passes judgement, and her even-handedness with the group’s commercial and public buildings is perhaps over-generous. their row housing for the navy at devonport, cut loose in a suburban paddock, looked almost as gauche in its preferred drawn version as in the built one. it seems to have sent bruce rotherham overseas for good. the failure to submit their sydney opera gatley, j. (ed.). (2010). group architects: towards a new zealand architecture. auckland: auckland university press. 141 house competition entry will not be regretted by many, and the flanshaw shopping centre design seems as cheerless as plischke’s designs for naenae 10 years earlier. it is the houses and the house-like buildings (kindergartens and an ambulance station) that are most convincing. the group was destined by fate or desire to do their best work in the suburbs, to build a reputation on buildings few have seen, enlarged by the articulate utterances of the charismatic bill wilson. the nationalist desire of the group to invent a new zealand architecture was paralleled in new zealand literature and art. francis pound presented a sustained discussion on this theme in his recent book, the invention of new zealand: art and national identity (2009). gatley and mckay avoid the jingoistic overtones of the term nationalist, referring to the group as regionalist. set against international movements in architecture, there is a provincial ring to the regional, which promises recognition no wider than the country of its birth. perhaps new zealand was big enough for the group. some architects here (like ernst plischke) saw the group as little more than a sideshow to the great parade of modern architecture. as mckay and gatley point out, some very good local and émigré designers in auckland were contemporaries of the group. why, they seem to wonder, did earlier writers “marginalise” these people in favour of the group? certainly, the direct connections between teachers and students through several generations in the auckland school, from vernon brown onward, produced “graduates enculturated in the auckland architectural scene”. certainly, the elegant shed was regionalist (mitchell & chaplin 1984). but the book version of it arose from a television series, and regionalism was at the heart of tvnz’s brief for it. it was the easiest way of ensuring a national audience. yet there was more to it than that: mainstream modernism was everywhere in the world architectural press, and one was hard-pressed to find particular distinction in the local version of it, especially while the godfathers of 20th century architecture were still leading the pack. the regionalists here, for all the influences upon them, tried to be particular, and they did produce coherent bodies of work that varied from place to place. they were good to write about, as gatley and mckay demonstrate. in discussing new zealand architecture (in relation to the japanese and the swiss), tom heneghan has pointed out that the world’s “recent fascination with swiss architecture seems to be because it doesn’t look like everything, everywhere else. decades of internalised conversations and internalised references have given swiss work a self-contained integrity.” (2005: 116) that is, perhaps, the regionalist dream. kerry francis writes about the émigré landscape architect odo strewe’s relationship with the group, pointing out that while strewe and wilson worked on the relation between landscape and buildings, and investigated radical constructions in sprayed concrete, nationalism of any kind (including the group’s search for new zealandness) could not be tolerated by strewe. other émigrés from nazism, like plischke and kulka, doubtless felt the same. many of us would now agree with them. the multiple sources of group work – in particular the influence of japanese timber architecture, and also scandinavian and american architecture – are discussed by andrew barrie, exposing the curious irony that men seeking new zealandness had half an eye off-shore. interstices 11 though two of the original members of the architectural group were women, neither barbara parker nor marilyn hart became architects. gill matthewson’s chapter “house work” shows that the group boys were no less chauvinistic than most of their contemporaries. freddie hackshaw and marilyn reynolds have let fly to matthewson with some scorching comments about their attitude to housework, to comfort, and to the tastes of the bourgeoisie. poor dorothy catley felt she had to give away all her crystal wedding presents to keep pace with her new group house! brenda vale makes measured assessments of the structural and thermal performance of the group’s first house in relation to the material used, and compares it with a state house of the same size. it is no surprise really to find the group house falls short in most respects: minimal shelters tend to be cold, and small open-plan houses make very difficult family homes. i still see the early group houses as artworks about the subject of house. their exposed structures – generally of imported australian hardwood or oregon, imported cedar or redwood windows, and floors and linings of timbers from our last millable native forests – hardly expressed the essence of new zealandness. even the obsession with uncut sheet linings, producing battened modular planning, was more uncomfortable than it was useful. the prefab systems it mimicked, which were later seriously explored by ivan juriss, were, as brenda vale says, appropriate to a much bigger mass market than ours. in the late houses of juriss, all this is gone. the robertson, mann and worrall houses were relaxed, liveable and richly textured. paul walker and justine clark add a considered closing chapter to the book in which they reflect on “the group and the new zealand architectural canon”, noting that, “the group has subsumed a network of ideas pursued by a whole range of architects in new zealand. now anyone who was active at the time is almost always located in relation to the group.” (223) despite its clarifications, this book will probably reinforce that myth. there were at least a dozen other very good architects in auckland when the group were working, and most were friends. time calcifies as much as it dissolves. in 1959, as a first-year student at the auckland school, i heard bill wilson for the first time, talking brilliantly to a slide show of recent work by the group. it was a revelation i have never forgotten. the intelligence, erudition and warmth of the man, and the freshness, the zest for construction, and the localism of the work were truly thrilling. it seemed new zealand architecture had been invented. group architects: towards a new zealand architecture brings it all back. references heneghan, t. (2005). not as we know it. in c. walker (ed.) exquisite apart: 100 years of architecture in new zealand (110-117). auckland: balasoglou books. mitchell, d. & chaplin, g. (1984). the elegant shed: new zealand architecture since 1945. auckland: oxford university press. pound, f. (2009). the invention of new zealand: art and national identity 1930-1970. auckland: auckland university press. interstices 6 paradise looking for exits john pule june 2005: mau performs paradise at theater der welt, germany, and holland festival, netherlands i have glimpsed paradise in the north, west, south, east. so where is it? lemi ponifasio, the choreographer of paradise, a theatre piece with generic aspects of surrealism and polynesian realism, familiarizes us with the notion that reality is not what we anticipate. the kunstmuseum in basel, switzerland, is home to two gauguin paintings: one of a market, with tahitian women carrying fruits to the market; and nafea faa ipoipo, young girls available for marriage. in the background of both works is a scene western viewers associate with paradise: lush forests, green, healthy fruits, colour, and the sense that the land is still virgin emerges. next door is holbein’s the body of the dead christ in the tomb. in the stuttgart staatsgalerie, another gauguin painting, e haere eo i hia, is separated by a hallway from holbein’s gloomy stations of the cross. holbein’s western paradise has jesus as its doorway. gauguin’s setting is in the pacific. the west is inundated with brochure information and advice on how to get there. the idea of that doorway to paradise has been sold to pacific islanders: the weekly sunday donations to the church are a lifelong lay-by for entry tickets for the family. getting there is not so easy. but the painting tahiti revisited, by william hodges, which he brought back from his journey with captain cook to tahiti, shows a tropical lagoon where salubrious smiling girls cavort carefree through luxuriant foliage—images that have provoked wonder, lust and longing since first exhibited at the royal academy in london 1776. at the theaterhaus stuttgart, mau perform paradise, a sequence of narratives that voices the boundaries of orientation. its imagery relates to how the nations in moananui a kiwa are treated by individuals, communities, hollywood, and militarily and economically advanced countries. america and france use pacific soil and air to store, commercialize, parody, bully, and test nuclear weapons of mass destruction. the meaning of paradise has been packaged by westerners as a deal that includes eternal sun, endless golden sandy beaches and ocean. unfortunately, this package also included the nations and people of polynesia. characteristic of lemi ponifasio’s visual universe is the manifestation and presence of an imagined, cognitive world. in paradise, that world is damaged. paradise is treated as a unique species, a sickly animal conjured up from the past and reinterpreted for theatre. there are only two 1�� colours, black and white. at the same time, it encompasses the mystery of this world of ideas. ponifasio resuscitates and uses metaphors to reveal, through audio, film, oratory and dance, the impact of colonialism, the invasion of diseases, the debasement of images of pacific peoples—but also the triumphant memories of past histories. motifs of transition, birth of humankind along with monstrous creatures, migration, protest, reconciliation, thresholds and borderlines emerge. these include the use of maori and samoan orators and tongan dance, drawing the eye from an organized interior to the outside world and vice versa: lizards, light, mountains, birth, horror, dance, water, and the forever present use of darkness. light is an intriguing device and is used vehemently by mau lighting designer helen todd to instigate growth (in this case, creating an exterior reminiscent of polynesian pulotu and architecture). for me, it is the structure of one word that lines much of lemi ponifasio’s ideas: va. inside this word, transparent materials are created out of the desire to articulate the truths, the joys and the fears of living in moananui a kiwa; va is home to polynesian ancestors, our heroes, dark kings and queens, our poets, singers and writers of prose. albert wendt in his epic poem describes poetically this va: inside us the dead,/ woven into my flesh/ like the music of bone flutes. restless spirits, original footage of bikini atoll, and forebodings are the haunting qualities of paradise: images disconnected from the world of dreams, in settings that usually embody memories of polynesian mythologies and the advancement of televised horrific pictures of war, famine, and the invasions of countries by america and its allies. the performance attracted considerable attention, and generated an immense reaction from the audiences in stuttgart and amsterdam. we were taken on a rich and powerful journey through various plateaus of maori procedures of the powhiri. this foundation and obligation having been established, the performance began. powerful. enigmatic. mau is composed of musicians, orators and artists from different pacific nations. this plays an important part in how we perceive and experience reality, in itself a huge uncompromising force of strengthening ties and obligations to each other. some of the most defining imagery for me was the performers’ voices, which gave shape to the mountains that we all must climb so as to see, understand and feel the distance we must travel … in order to achieve jurisdiction over our own stories and destinies. all images: mau performance paradise by lemi ponifasio at the venice biennale 2003 the sea of tranquillity rod barnett j j i a white body floats in a steaming volcano lake high in an icy range. the body floats face up. the lake is a colour called aqua. black, broken trees stand around the lake. nomadic dogs move in shifting configurations through the wood. the camera pulls back: the scene is depicted on a computer screen. deep in the substratum of the mountain range, in the body of the earth, a hand moves a mouse. the cursor stops on the fa ce in the lake. click. the face becomes a hole .. . void, and without form, the natural system lies in darkness; deep, awaiting faciality. then it is divided from itself. grass and herbs, and seeds and fruit appear, and birds and creatures, and humansand an economy is complete. upon the vast white screen of the garden black holes appear through which the gift of nature flashes in consciousness and passion. this is the story of nature. however: "the mask does not hide the face, it is the face." 1 nature is on the white wall, not waiting down the black hole for us to dive in-the garden itself is a white wall/ black hole system. a face . for deleuze and guattari the face is the supreme icon of signification. but because the signified is always ultimately the signifier, nature always ultimately the garden, the final signifier, nature itself, is redundant. all possible signification has already occurred. the form of this redundancy is the face, the white wall/black hole system, which "emits and receives, releases and recaptures signifying signs." faciality is their name for this operating system. in the garden, therefore, nature is no longer necessary. the white wall/black hole system crystallises the structures and flows of (that which has been called) nature, which is both decoded and overcoded in the garden. for the "multidimensional, polyvocal corporeal code" of earth has ceased. the garden has spread across the body of the earth . the landscape industry has totalised this face: faciality is all there is. and yet the operation of this machine does not end here. it organises, combines, repeats-it is horrible, and magnificent. it spreads its white tableaux across the intersecting "fields" and "flows," and causes black holes to appear along the horizon and, yes, at your feet. the white wall/black hole system of the garden calls you. put your fingers in the water, put your nostrils to the rose. lie down. let the sun bum your face . you are part of the process. the facial order calls your bodyit is decoded and overcoded too. we say the garden is not nature; neither is it culture. the human is not nature, and neither is it separate from nature . but deleuze and guattari do not distinguish between the natural and the artificial at all. if the destiny of human beings is to escape the face, to dismantle both the face and facialisation, to become imperceptible by "strange becomings that get past the wall and get note all images by author. 1. all references are to g. deleuze and f. guattari, a thousand plateaus, trans. brian massumi (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1987). 69 70 out of the black holes," then the white face must become one with the black holes . the body (of the earth, of the human) will become the site of intersecting fields, of processes and flows which expend without end rather than return. th e garden will lose its capacity to signify nature and will become nature. nature as abstract machine. the garden deterritorialises; the human is removed from nature ("the stratum of the organism") and is connected momentarily to other stratasuch as signifiance (the signs ofnature) and subjectification (the promise of nature-nature is god's holy promise to the subject), before the dissolution of both . you visit a beautiful garden. there is signification, but nothing is explained. you explore its paths, recesses, domains and lawns, its wildernesses and temples-but you find nothing. there is nothing. all is shining back at you in bright luminosity. it is a pure abstract machine, a blank slate, a twilight world. certain elements (trees, bulbs, flowers, birds, water, wind) circulate in a white wall/black hole system. the system organises and circulates the elements according to its codes and passions. on the white screen of the garden we project our nervous accounts of the black hole. the screen receives our projections by opening out. through the black hole the garden opens on to openness itself. and through the selfsame hole the universe floods the garden with its light. the black hole becomes the white wall and for an instant there is meaning and resonance after all. but it is only the "meaning" of an instant and cannot be eternalised. "real" for as long as it carries us away. the abstract machine of faciality gives the signifying impulse its white wall, and the human link with nature is given in the black hole. as both inscription and participation the garden is made possible by an industrial process of abstraction that produces typologies, formations , histories ... the garden industry places the garden in an archive, as an archive. the relationship between the garden, the landscape and the face is an aggregate "in which black holes sometimes distribute themselves on a white wall, and the white line of the horizon sometimes spins toward a black hole, or both simultaneously." desire-decentred, fragmented, dynamic-"operates in the domain of free synthesis where everything is possible ." on the white wall "the reproduction of desire gives way to a simple representation." the productive unconscious makes way for an unconscious that (according to freud) "knows only how to express itself .. . in myth, in tragedy, in dream. " freud turned the unconscious from a factory into a theatre. the modern period turned the landscape from a factory into a j ~ i theatre. human and nature became opposite terms, confronting each other across a proscenium of signs instead of"one and the same essential reality, the producer-product." the human being, who wishes only to dive into the black hole finds him or herself repeatedly and unendingly inscribing wish lists on the white wall. and then man, "the eternal custodian of the machines of the universe," responsible "for even the stars and animal life," who "ceaselessly plugs an organ-machine into an energy-machine, a tree into his body, a breast into his mouth, the sun into his asshole," writes his treaty with the devil on the white wall of the garden and, turning from the black holes in the shadows, dives into the sunlit pool. meanwhile the garden/landscape/city flicks from culture to nature and back again . at the point of deterritorialisation (winds, shadows, clouds) reterritorialisation occurs. capitalist commodification and social flows simultaneously present and efface coded and decoded flows (the lemon tree will cost you $59.95). the garden is a machine driven by a machine. the natural system disaggregates and reforms on the white wall. black holes shift and shirmner ... in the landscape, mere artefact, representations of nature obscure and mystify nature: rain falls on the tiles, ripples the water in the pond. but the garden is not external to natural systemsit inhabits them, just as they inhabit the garden. like the city, the garden is a network of intersecting artificial fields. the most opaque of these is nature-that which has been called nature. without the garden nature is empty, without nature the garden is empty, without nature the city cannot exist. the garden forms the locus of resonance that "selects" the "natural" sign which must conform in advance to the cultural requirements made of it: the "dominant reality." like the city, the garden simply constructs the wall on which signs of nature are inscribedthe frame, the screen through which (that which signifies as) nature flashes . the garden lays the fuse through which the force drives the flower. in the landscape the dream contents of nature/subjectivity are inscribed on a white wall. this face is a surface, a map. it provides locations for black holes by means of a coding of elements which emerge from an economy that exists alongside the landscape as a carnival of passions which seduces and repels. the force which reverberates through the (body, earth, universe) flashes in the black holes that the industry of abstraction configures within the garden . the geography of holes shifts and shimmers ceaselessly according to diurnal rhythms which move like spacemen on the surface of the white wall. the gravitational pull of nature causes signifying elements to struggle to remain within the economy of the garden. scratch marks appear on the surface of the wall where holes have been. seconds later, not even these remain. the landscape is always the humanised landscape (antarctica, sahara, sea of tranquillity, you name it) . the landscape, then, is the face on which the blood of nature drops and man "forgets himself." the landscape is the garden. deleuze and guattari are quite explicit: "the snowy white wall of the landscape-face, the black hole of the falcon." the black hole is the cavity through which the blood of nature pours (in and out). could it be that nature has blood but no body? a body without organs, blood without a body? the white face of the garden, the black hole of nature . when, in the novel of the holy grail, the knight is catatonic (madly deterritorialising) he is a black hole towards which the "landscape-face" spins. the story of the grail poses the question: can the knight cross the event horizon, break through the white walleven ifthe attempt may backfire? can the knight accept the gift of nature, the black hole that swallows up the white wall? to do so is to become notknight, become animal, become nature. the city is a white wall/black hole system too. it is always renegotiating its relation with the natural processes preordained as its infrastructure. forever destabilised by this ambivalent set of relations, the urban system under landscape architecture is required to trace a nature that has already mapped the city. but just as nature is not separate from the garden neither is nature other to the city. the presence of nature in the discourse of the city is premised as an interweaving moment between what is there and not therein the very words "nature" and "city" as much as in a street, a park, an "industrial edge." the city, then, like the garden, far from beginning as a geometric grid is a fractile topology, a multiplicity of facialities that act as switching centres for reticulating signs. cities, gardens, landscapes: boundary conditions, points of change. the white wall/ black hole system weaves the city as a field of intersecting flows; the gift of nature appears as carnival, as sacrifice, as poetry and laughter as much as rain and wind and snow, as much as outcrop of underlying lava, or as tree, as grass, as water in fountain, cistern, sewer, duct or swimming pool. but the garden has a doubling movement. it reflects light: cultural and social institutions are reinscribed and become luminescent. it also absorbs light: its shadows lead through the screen of signs to a projected subjectivity, the consciousness of nothingness/plenitude-the expanding/contracting universe simultaneously flying down lines of departure and squeezing into a ball. light and darkness, wall and hole, dimensionless surficial nature finds its form in the landscapes of the garden and the city, bodying forth through enscripted tree and flower, laughter and poem, combining and recombining with the codes by means of which it becomes acceptable, permissible, but untouchable toonear as your hand and more distant than the stars. in the city the white wall also rises. but the black holes written across the face of the urban system (signs of signs) are so much more mundane: you step in a pile of dogshit, over fallen twigs on the sidewalk. nature here is strange and uncertain. in its very unpredictability it is potent; through its potency it seems to recede. black holes rove, they lie in wait-it's hard to pin them down. regulation, prohibition, attenuation. this landscape's signs attest to a place of origin that is so remote that the chain of signification seems to lead only to circles within circles, wheels within wheels: gardens appear on rooftops, in atria, behind walls, as if nature might be there too. as if nature might be in the city's squares or at the end of the pier, or up the second flight of stairs where writers stiffen between laundered sheets, instead of down the black victorian manholes or between the pistons of charging cars, or in the gutters and downpipes waiting for the storm. naturethat which has been called naturepresents itself as both a lack and an excess. as the limit of the possible, nature is that at which thinking stops. as the sum of that which can be, nature instantiates the principle of plenitude: everything which can exist, does. nature, world-consciousness, life force, gaia, passion, crime, carnival, expenditure without return. a black hole, a white face, a body floats ... leaves click in the dark, and then the thud of choppers from the city. in the garden, in the city, a white wall waits for its black hole. black hole, white wall, nature zero sum. 73 61 frontiers of shame and repulsion a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul introduction: sydney 2004, anaura bay 1769 at the 2004 sydney biennale a “traditional wooden dunny” (bond, 2004),1 imported from new zealand, featured centrally in daniel malone’s a long drop to nationhood. set at the end of a long corridor and flanked by a mural inspired by aboriginal artist albert namatjira, it is intentionally reminiscent of a scene in tracy moffatt’s short film night cries, where an adopted aboriginal daughter wheels her white mother to the outhouse. the outhouse, an “essential common denominator of two closely linked cultures” (wei, 2004), according to malone represents the pioneering spirit of the ‘colonial adventure’ in both australia and aotearoa/new zealand. engaging “with questions of belonging and place”, he also plays on the contrast between the outhouse as “fundamentally associated with waste” and the museum as a place concerned with “high eternal values” (daniel malone, 2004). to interrogate such a body/mind split, alongside the cliché of the south as body and emotion, as opposed to to the north as mind and reason, was the concern of the sydney biennale on reason and emotion.2 1. according to tony bond (2004), malone talked in the catalogue “about the need for us, in australia, to recoup our aboriginality if you like. to acknowledge, in fact, that this is an indigenous country and not a colony.” malone, in fact, used excerpts from germaine greer’s “whitefella jump up: the shortest way to nationhood” in the text of his catalogue entry rather than making his own artist’s statement. 2. thus, curator isabel carlos (2004) wrote in the catalogue: “the ‘emotional’ in western societies has been connoted, almost to the point of cliché, with the south” (24). “in a conventional dichotomy we would say that the south is the body and the north the mind but, believing this to be a false dichotomy, one of my aims was to bring together artworks that create a total physical and psychological experience” (25). figure 1: daniel malone, a long drop to nationhood, 2004, readymade kauri wood outhouse, wall mural, video with sound, export/import documentation, dimensions variable. photo jenni carter. interstices 6 in malone’s work mind and body, north and south, and settler culture and indigenous culture congeal “in the form of a dunny” (biennale of sydney volume 1: cake, 2004).3 but how much are perceptions of the dunny as an icon for ‘down under’ based on facts, and how much are they an investment in conventional notions of top and bottom, centre and periphery? after all, the privy was a common feature in europe at the time of colonisation, often paired with appalling hygienic conditions. in contrast, one of cook’s crew noted at anaura bay, in october 1769, that “every house, or every little cluster of three or four houses, was furnished with a privy, so that the ground was every where clean. the offals of their food, and other litter, were also piled up in regular dunghills ...” (hawkesworth, 1773: 312).4 hawkesworth compared this favourably with conditions in the capital of a european nation, madrid, where privies were rare until 1760. prior to that, it was “universal practice to throw the ordure out of the windows, during the night, into the street, where numbers of men were employed to remove it, with shovels” (313). this appeared to contemporaries so normal that a royal proclamation ordering proprietors to “build a privy”, and announcing the construction of “sinks, drains, and common-sewers … at the public expence [sic]” was seen “as an infringement of the common rights of mankind” and met with great resentment (313).5 the situation in the british capital was hardly better: the river thames served as the sewer for a population of two million in 1830. in manchester’s parliament street, “one single privy” served “three hundred and eighty persons” in 1851, and “in parliament passage … thirty thickly populated houses” (engels, 1845). so where do notions of the north as mind and south as body originate? how can they be so persistent, despite contrary facts, that malone and others see the need to engage with them and meet resonance in the audience? civilisation: a long process of separation between the eighteenth and the twenty-first century, according to norbert elias, a process that had been underway in europe for some time reached a new stage. in the process of civilization (1939), elias traces in historical documents a long-term development in european courts and cities. over the course of this development, however, people eventually came to think of their civilisation no longer as a process but as a universal standard. long sections of elias’ investigations are concerned with sixteenth century humanist texts, in which an unprecedented plethora of rules and regulations concerning the “natural functions” emerges.6 much greater control of affects and impulses was called for, and this changed people’s relationships with their own bodies and those of others. elias was theoretically informed by sigmund freud’s ideas in civilization and its discontents (1930), in which civilisation appears as a burden that must be borne so as to avoid worse evils. freud, in turn, owed much to friedrich nietzsche’s thought, who once wrote that the difference between animals and humans depended on the latter’s development of a plenitude of conflicting drives and impulses. their synthesis, precisely, makes humans the masters of the earth. nietzsche regarded the cerebral organ, just like the rest of the body, as the product of a confrontation of fortuitous impulses—each of which “would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate lord over all the 3. interpreting the installation as an equation of colonisation with defecation, nova paul commented: “malone identifies the long drop as belonging to both an australian and aotearoa/nz architectural vernacular … ingrained as part of our cultural identity; backward, funny and awkwardly displaced. it is this figure of the long drop that is activated in malone’s installation that addresses colonisation and sovereignty” (paul, 2004). 4. anaura bay is located in poverty bay: http://southseas.nla. gov.au/journals/maps/17691029. html. 5. similarly, a delegation protested in the seventeenth century at troyes, when the mayor tried to close the rue de bois, a public latrine: “messieurs, our fathers have shit there, we shit there, and our children will shit there” (in guerrand, 1997: 17). in 1894, a law concerning hygienic improvement in paris “met with strong hostility from landlords, for once united in opposition to this collectivist and tyrannical infringement of their rights” (perrot, 1990: 372). 6. elias emphasised that, while the civilising process in europe had no zero point, new codes became visible in these texts. they were a response to an increased population at the courts, and later in the cities. not only did this new situation require different hygienic conditions, people were also bound together by what elias calls “lengthening chains of dependence”. 7. see freud (1930: 296), nietzsche (1884b: s.59, s.179) and klossowski (2000: 26-30, 44-46, 257). toilets are, from the beginning, tied up with the “traumatic excess” they cater for—“according to lacan, one of the features which distinguishes man from animals is precisely that with humans the disposal of shit becomes a problem” (žižek, 1997: 5). 6� other impulses” (nietzsche, 1886: s. 6). the intellect as an apparatus for selfregulation (nietzsche, 1884a: s. 179), however, strives to sustain its position at the ‘highest’ extremity: high and low come to mean more than spatial positions (klossowski, 2000: 26). hierarchies of top and bottom secure the mastery of conflicting impulses.7 if nietzsche prefigured some of freud’s insights into the relationship between impulses (or drives) and intellect (or ego), elias historicized them by tracing the construction of selfhood since the fifteenth century in european courts.8 he observed how “pleasure-promising drives and … socially generated feelings of shame and repugnance, come to battle within the self” (elias, 1939: 160). analogous to freud’s superego, “the social code of conduct so imprints itself … on human beings that it becomes a constituent element of their selves”. this leads to a “pronounced division in the ‘ego’ or consciousness” as a “characteristic of people in our phase of civilization” that “corresponds to the specific split in the behaviour which civilized society demands of its members” and “matches the degree of regulation and restraint imposed on the expression of drives and impulses” (160). however, whereas nietzsche still used metaphors of body and intellect almost interchangeably,9 elias already took their division almost for granted. further, the ego, in his thinking, not only mediates between conflicting impulses but also between impulses and the social commands of an era:10 changing social imperatives can advance the frontiers of shame and render previously inconsequential impulses intolerable.11 thus “changes in attitudes towards the natural functions” become apparent in humanist books on manners from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. in 1530, erasmus thought it necessary to point out that it “is impolite to greet someone who is urinating or defecating” (de civilitate morum puerilium in elias, 1939: 110) and della casa repeated in 1558 that it “does not befit a modest, honourable man to prepare to relieve nature in the presence of other people” (110). neither should one, “when coming across something disgusting in the sheet, as sometimes happens, … turn at once to one’s companion and point it out to him. it is far less proper to hold out the stinking thing for the other to smell … when it would be better to say, ‘because it stinks do not smell it’” (della casa 1558 in elias, 1939: 111). these are new injunctions, which speak of a lowered shame threshold. on the other hand, details are still discussed in the texts that will soon be passed over in silence.12 interestingly, shame was associated not with guilt feelings, but with fear of exposure to those more powerful: certain things “are not done”, as della casa observes elsewhere, “except among people before one is not ashamed” (117).13 superiors produced shame in their inferiors by imposing on them stricter controls of impulses and emotions. conversely, the “sovereign holding court on his pierced chair” was a privileged sight in french absolutist society. his subjects “bow[ed] and kneel[ed] in pursuit of a royal turd” (laporte, 2000: 12).14 a little more than two centuries later, freud and his contemporaries were “astonished to learn of the objectionable smell which emanated from the roi soleil” (freud, 1930: 281). dirtiness now seemed “incompatible with civilisation” (281). would freud have been aware of the relative standards of cleanliness in european metropoles and those, for example, at anaura bay in 1769?15 the association of civilisation and toilet hygiene as we know it in the west made the toilet “a critical link between order and disorder” (pathak, 8. the ego is, in elias’ account, the result of a slow process dividing people’s lives into public and private. in this process, social pressures to restrain impulses were reproduced in individuals as self-controls, so completely that they continue even when alone (elias, 1939: 160). 9. experiences, for instance, are digested—like meals. if one cannot get over an experience, “this kind of indigestion is just as much a physiological matter as the other one—and in many cases, in fact, only one of the consequences of that other one” (nietzsche, 1887: s. 16). his awareness of bodily existence and his leaning to the irrational were (despite contradictory statements) out of step with the pace of the civilising processes of his time. 10. the latter change: in ancient rome, for example, bronze or silver urine pots were part of the furnishings of dining rooms, brought out by slaves upon request during a dinner—presumably so that eating and conversation could continue (guerrand, 1997: 14). and in paris at the middle of the seventeenth century, it was still possible for a young gentleman to urinate while holding the hand of a noble lady and simply to apologise: “excuse me madam, if i have you kept waiting a little that is because i had so much urine in my body and it caused great inconvenience” (30). 11. see freud (1919: 241). 12. elias demonstrates this with a comparison of two editions of la salle’s les règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chretienne (1729 and 1774). the earlier edition already surpasses erasmus’ text in its demands that all natural functions should be removed from the view of others (indicating that people actually did not conform with these rules at the time). while pronouncing that it is impolite to talk about them, the text still interstices 6 calls them by their names in detail. in the later edition, all these detailed references are dropped and they are ‘passed over in silence’. 13. some things that a “great lord” might do before “one of his servants or in the presence of a friend of lower rank” would not be a sign of arrogance “but rather a particular affection and friendship” (117). 14. given the possibility that the baring of one’s private parts in front of an inferior can be a friendly gesture, the “men…, women, girls, boys, abbeys, swiss guards” passing by the houses next to the forest at fontainbleau in 1694 may have felt honoured to watch madame la duchesse d’orleans doing her business. she herself felt inconvenienced and wrote to the electress of hanover: “you are indeed fortunate to shit whenever you may please and to do so to your heart’s content! … we are not so lucky here. i have to hold on to my turd until evening: the houses next to the forest are not equipped with facilities. i have the misfortune … of having to shit outside, which gravely perturbs me because i like to shit at my ease with my ass fully bared” (quoted in laporte, 2000: 4, 11). 15. would it have been difficult for him to imagine that “savages” not so long ago were ahead of madrid, paris, or london in their separation of food and filth—without, for that matter, necessarily effecting the same psychological separations that accompanied european toilet training? 16. see vigarello (1988: 146). 17. see note 5. in 1539, françois, king of france, passed an edict that privatised his subjects’ waste production. they were henceforth forbidden to toss out into the streets and squares “refuse, offals, or putrefactions, as well as all waters whatever their nature” and had 1995). the bathroom similarly featured, in a 1917 article “bathrooms and civilization”, as “an index to civilization … and in no line of building has there been so great progress in recent years as in bathroom civilization” (february issue of house and garden, quoted in lahiji & friedman, 1997: 81). it institutionalised the control of impulses and moulded individuals and groups further towards an ideal of civilisation. over the course of this development, demarcations between inside and outside were constantly reproduced: for example, the restraint of impulses was more and more exercised by european subjects themselves, rather than imposed from outside, as they adapted to the requirements of increasingly complex societies with lengthened chains of social interdependence. similarly, the separation from excrement—initially managed through sheer distance—was re-integrated into the house once suitable hygienic technologies were developed. this shift meant simultaneously a further privatisation of bodily functions. finally, the hygienist discourse accompanying those technical developments simultaneously applied to single bodies, groups and the larger social body.16 certain groups of people were constructed as unhealthy for the social body and removed from the centre just like excrement; and, in many cases, by the same means: water. let’s look at the last two aspects now, in turn. figure 2: a boy being given soap to wash his hands after going to the toilet. photo auckland city council, 1959-1960. 6� the state and the sewer the history of european cities reflects a protracted struggle over waste management. for a long time, any number of enactments “could not prevent people from defecating in the open”.17 but in the nineteenth century, techniques based on the reticulation of water and excrement became a matter of concern for a healthy, albeit invisible public body in the care of the state. at an international congress of hygiene, held in brussels in 1852, english hygienist f.o. ward described a system based on the “constant circulation of water” in and out of the city (in gille, 1986: 235). this system linked the city with the country through “a vast tubular structure that has two divisions; … each of these divisions is made up of two distinct subdivisions: an afferent, or arterial system: and an efferent, or venous system” (236). he concluded that “it is a matter of just pride for us that our country” should have conceived of “this purely analogous discovery—circulation in the social body” (237). english hygienists were initially in the forefront of this development but, soon, other european nations entered the body works competition.18 it is in the context of intensifying national rivalry in europe that adolf loos’ 1898 essay “plumbers” makes sense: increasing water usage is one of the most pressing tasks of a culture. may our viennese plumbers therefore do their jobs as fully and completely as possible in order to lead us to this great goal— the attainment of a cultural level equal to the other countries of the civilized western world. for otherwise something very unpleasant, something very shameful could take place. (loos, 1898: 19)19 on the upper levels of london society, a “compulsory cleanliness” made itself felt towards the end of the nineteenth century and the “wash-out closet” (elsewhere known as the ‘english basin’) became popular (laporte, 2000: 61, 59). a range of products catered for “new notions of cleanliness, order, and, by extension, beauty”, at least for the upper classes, and an “architectural abandon” turned some ‘public’ conveniences into commemorative shrines, “chapels to waste” (60), where “civilized man deposited offerings and prayers to ward off the … awareness of his primordial origins” (61). to control matter in the combat of the impulses, architectural force of form was enlisted. whereas matter “presses down and wants to spread out formlessly on the ground” (wölfflin, 1886: 159), form can provide an upright condition resisting any residual forces of a primordial condition to be forgotten or overcome.20 water closets and sewers were part of a characteristic process of segregation by which a whole range of body functions was removed from social life and displaced behind the scenes. with the availability of a technical apparatus allowing for the quick separation of body and excrement, excretion could once again take place within the house or apartment.21 since the end of the sixteenth century, the prevailing attitude in architectural treatises had been to remove ‘the place’ as far as possible from the actual places of dwelling.22 when julien guadet, influential teacher of architects at the école des beaux-arts wrote in 1901 that “as far as the toilets are concerned, we place them without any fear … into the midst of the apartment” (1901: “to delay and retain any and all stagnant and sullied waters and urins [sic] inside the confines of [their] homes” (quoted in laporte, 2000: 4, 11). in keeping with rules that applied different standards to superiors and inferiors, however, waste in the king’s castles continued to be disposed of outside. 18. haussmann regarded the parisian sewers in 1854 as “the organs of the metropolis” which “function like those of the human body” (quoted in gandy, 1998). see also gille (1986: 228). 19. the “shameful” and “unpleasant” was the possibility that japan could “attain germanic culture before austria” (19). 20. as ross jenner outlines in his contribution to this issue, several architectural theorists have seen parallels between the flow of forces of bodily impulses and those in the built environment. heinrich wölfflin considered the “opposition between matter and force of form” the “principal theme of architecture”. “we assume that in everything there is a will that struggles to become form and has to overcome the resistance of a formless matter” (wölfflin, 1886: 159). will, or the force of form, is what “holds us upright and prevents a formless collapse” (159). there is more than a faint overlap with nietzsche’s thought here. henry staten (1990: 166) writes of nietzsche’s concern with the conflict between force and form that the “endless dispersal of the substance of humanity can only be brought to a halt by and aim upward, an aim at a goal”. staten goes on to remark that “wherever there is the desire for meaning and the search for something more durable than the pointless pouring-fourth of life, there will usually also be the distinction between the human and the animal, fear of the female who disperses one’s substance, and loathing of the corruption of the body” (167). interstices 6 21. while this apparatus does not explain the “advance in the frontiers of shame and the threshold of repugnance”, once in place, it consolidates and constantly reproduces the new standards and their dissemination (elias, 1939: 99, 118-9). 22. see guerrand (1997: 26, 39). in 1883, it was still common in parisian apartment blocks or tenements to find one privy for twenty five persons, placed somewhere in the entrance area or courtyard (137). only legislation passed in 1894 made it compulsory for new buildings to allow for internal toilets. this did not necessarily mean their placement in the apartments themselves, and—if so—they were usually tucked away bordering onto the kitchen and the servants’ realm. 23. there is a structural parallel between the segregation of ‘the place’ from normal life and elias’ notion of the dampening of affects, on the one hand, and, on the other, the integration of the wc into the middle of the house and a relaxation of the control of affects, following a sufficient moulding of individual psyches. see “decivilizing and informalization processes” in van krieken (n.d.). an interesting extreme case of moulding of affects is that of prisoners in jeremy bentham’s panopticon cells: “a slight screen, which the prisoner might occasionally interpose, may perhaps not be thought superfluous. this, while it answers the purpose of decency, might be so adjusted as to prevent his concealing from the eye of the inspector any forbidden enterprise” (http://cartome.org/panopticon1.htm). 24. slavoj žižek finds an analogy between german, french, or american toilet constructions and national political characteristics: “german reflective thoroughness, french revolutionary hastiness, english moderate utilitarian pragmatism” are reflect62), he clearly announced a new trend in architectural design that set itself in opposition to common practice. much of the discussion at the time was concerned with health and hygiene—but these were not the only factors.23 thomas crapper’s flush toilet, according to a 1993 chicago tribune article, changed the course of history by allowing society to live with itself. it is more than valves and arms and floats that hiss and gurgle; the flush toilet is the very symbol of modern civilization. … life without the water closet is, for most of us, a horror beyond imagination, so unspeakable and unacceptable that we cannot conjure up the prospect. (ecenbarger, 1993)24 according to another non-academic source, queen victoria’s “porcelain throne” represented an attitude that may well have “seemed more ‘dignified’—more suited to aristocrats than the method used by the natives in the colonies” (health benefits of the natural squatting position, 2001). is it not surprising how civilisation, since the nineteenth century, has become a maxim for dominant european views of national achievements? does it not stand, even today, for stable and consummate standards, which place ‘civilised’ nations far ahead of those who have supposedly not yet reached their level of progress?25 imperial reticulations nineteenth century fears of social division and the contagion of poverty-related diseases eventually led to a wholesale purging of dangerous elements—be they matter or humans. points of intensive crowding, such as hospitals, barracks, prisons and workers’ housing, were to be “moved to the edge of the city, where conditions of isolation and ventilation would guarantee both their security and that of the city” (fonssagrives quoted in gille, 1986: 229). with that, the hygienists’ programme spilled over—or returned to—issues not only of architecture, but also of politics. figure 3: peter bromhead, french prime minister’s statement. 29 august 1985. 6� ed in “ambiguous contemplative fascination; the hasty attempt to get rid of the unpleasant excess as fast as possible; pragmatic approach to treat the excess as an ordinary object to be disposed of in an appropriate way” (1997: 5). 25. for long periods, civilization in europe had been an ideal rather than a reality, but by the second half of the nineteenth century it had become a maxim for dominant european views. as a goal, it shaped the process of interior restructuring that accompanied industrialisation, the rivalry of nation states, and expansionary and imperialist politics. the reference to nationhood in malone’s installation is interesting in this context. 25. such progressivist vocabularies may have even taken in norbert elias, who at times—despite his continuous discomfort with the notion of civilisation as achievement or standard—lapsed into his own brand of progressivism. see elias (1995). 26. the compulsive need to eradicate traces of the ‘olfactory animal’ by immersing shit in floods of water, the spite civilisation has for odour, and the ferocity with which it will oust it—“this ferocity reaches its peak when imperialism punishes color” (laporte, 2000: 83). brantlinger observed that the victorian middle classes not only displaced “their own ‘savage’ impulses onto africans”. they suffered from a fear of “backsliding” which was activated both by the protelarian mob and the colonial barbarians (1985: 196). if the mob uses a floor torn open as a privy, and if the natives shit on the ground, then white civilization must be identified with hygienist ideals of flushing toilets and well circulating sewers. waste management in the context of colonisation became the imperial reticulation of a poor or criminal population beyond national borders. following the american colonies’ embargo on convicts, the colonisation of botany bay was to ensure the ongoing flushing away of criminals (and the poor). however, ex-convicts—or escaped convicts—perhaps unexpectedly also ended up in the new zealand colony, which, in edward gibbon wakefield’s scheme, served as another, different and more wistful variation of a ‘safety-valve’ for overpopulation, endemic unemployment and poverty in england. already elias observes, it was “not a little characteristic of the structure of western society that the watchword of its colonizing movement is ‘civilization’” (1939: 509), and robert van krieken (1997) argues that any “self-conscious attempts to bring about ‘civilization’, have revolved around essentially violent policies and practices”. barbarism and civilization are thus “part of the same analytical problem” rather than successive stages of development (1997). in the colonies, according to laporte, civilisation is “the purview of the conqueror. the barbarian craps where he pleases; the conqueror emblazons his trails with a primordial prohibition: ‘no shitting allowed’” (2000: 57). the coloniser, according to professor mchugh in ulysses, brings with him to new shores “only his cloacal obsession”: “it is meet to be here. let us construct a water closet” (joyce, 1922). cloacal obsession in the nineteenth century was articulated through progressivist vocabularies of hygiene and toilet technologies.26 the water closet might have represented an achievement in nineteenth century europe, with its particular problems of over-crowding. but a peculiar myopia excluded from perception historical and geographical particularities such as the vast difference between the metropoles and the hinterland in europe, or earlier observations of barbarians and civilised such as hawkesworth’s notes about hygienic conditions in anaura bay in 1769. these lapses of historical and geographical awareness supported a particular ideological system by which one type of toilet comes to mean something different from another, in peculiar ways. the perception of the figure 4: daniel malone, in situ, opouteke, northland, aotearoa/new zealand, (partially covered outhouse), 2004, black and white photograph. interstices 6 figure 5: daniel malone, in situ, opouteke, northland, aotearoa/new zealand, (toilet seat), 2004, black and white photograph. long-drop as an icon of the new zealand or australian vernacular, or of the lavatory as one of civilizing achievement, is based on imaginary investment rather than facts. the long-drop’s appearance in the sydney biennale, revisiting the ‘forgotten’ world of dunnies and night carts, may be read as a return of what was repressed or eliminated in the process of civilisation. alternatively, it may index an intrinsic part of a european barbarism that was always folded into civilisation. separations of the metropolis from its excess population, of settlers and natives, and between body and excrement may have been parallel and interconnecting processes. they are all concerned with literal or metaphorical top/bottom relationships. when malone calls his installation a long drop to nationhood, the title implies not only the physical movement of matter (down, as opposed to mind: up) but also an implied loss of status, from centre to colon-y. implicit is still an unspoken assumption that people at 6� 27. okahu bay is situated in what is now a central auckland region. about its history, see waitangi tribunal report (1986), particularly in this context: chapter 7: “cleaning up 1930-1952”. 28. in 1952 “those left had to be burnt out and physically carried from their homes. it seemed necessary that that should not be delayed. her majesty queen elizabeth ii was to visit auckland in the coming summer 19521953.” her route of arrival was at the time expected to pass the “unsightly orakei shacks”—a prospect the council could not countenance. 29. the outfall was located at the head of okahu bay. from 1914 “auckland’s crude sewage was discharged to the shellfish beds of ngati whatua, opposite their ancestral village. there could have been no greater insult to a maori tribe even if one were intended” (waitangi tribunal, 1986). the centre have not only decided the combat of the impulses, but also have a right by virtue of their (our?) higher standard of civilisation to make others do as they (we?) do.27 what malone’s metaphor implies is that australia and new zealand share a colonial history, and that a long-drop is the makeshift, unsophisticated convenience attached to that condition. once accepted, the metaphor extends and gets mixed with the brutality and arrogance of colonial politics in both countries. much of what happened at okahu bay (orakei) in the 1950s,28 for example, was justified by references to hygiene and health: ngati whatua, in their struggle to maintain their rights of occupancy at okahu bay, found their efforts over decades of court procedures blighted by health concerns. thus, a 1935 sanitary report held “swampy conditions and inadequate drainage” against the continued existence of the okahu bay papakainga (habitation). figure 6: frederick g. radcliffe, looking north east from mount hobson towards orakei showing a real estate sign in foreground, “sections finest view winstone ltd”. interstices 6 ngati whatua’s objections that the “insanitary conditions” were not of their making were ignored. the mayor of the time failed to move the issue from housing and hygiene to broader issues of good faith and the rights of tangata whenua (people of the land, indigenous people). okahu bay, situated “at the front door of what must become a thickly populated european settlement”, was not considered to be the appropriate place “for a native settlement”. in a striking parallel to nineteenth century european politics, the papakainga was termed a “health hazard”, “a disease centre”, to be removed to make room for a new “garden suburb”.29 and yet a 1954 film (auckland’s drainage problem) shows how “night carts collect sewerage from suburban auckland homes. aerial views indicate the pollution of manukau harbour from the sewerage outfall at orakei” (1954: looking back 50 years, 2004)30 what, then, do we make of the perceived opposition between the north as mind and the south as body, as articulated by the curator of the sydney biennale? surely it is still based on the same conflict of the impulses observed by nietzsche, freud and elias. however, this combat is no longer supposed to occur in an individual body, or between members of the social body. rather, the frontier now delimits vast antipodean regions whose populations, indigenes and settlers alike, are supposedly ruled by emotions rather than intellect. that cliché is not new regarding the colonised … but, by a strange twist, it now suggests that the colonisers, too, have to decide whether they want to complete the march towards civilisation. it is in this context that the juxtaposition of long-drop and lavatory—but also of the present day portaloo, the exceloo or the megaloos of more recent suburban developments—reworks (part of) reality into anxious oppositions. figure 7: james d richardson, 12 feb 1921, looking south west from takaparawha point across okahu bay showing orakei pa and the sewer running along the foreshore. �1 references 1954: looking back 50 years. (2004). retrieved 13 march, 2005, from http://events.filmarchive. org.nz/event.php?eventinstanceid=454&eventid=124 biennale of sydney volume 1: cake. (2004). retrieved 13 february, 2005, from http://artlife. blogspot.com/2004_06_01_artlife_archive.html bond, t. (2004). daniel malone : a long drop to nationhood 2004. friday, 19 november 2004 visit the biennale at the art gallery of new south wales. retrieved 15 january, 2005, from http://abcasiapacific.com/nexus/gallery/s1234056.htm brantlinger, p. (1985). victorians and africans. critical inquiry, 12 (autumn), 166-203. carlos, i. (2004). on reason and emotion. in on reason and emotion: biennale of sydney 2004 (24-27). sydney: biennale of sydney. daniel malone. (2004). retrieved 12 september, 2004, from http://www.biennaleofsydney. com.au/biennale2004/2004/artists/daniel%20malone.html ecenbarger, w. (1993). flushed with success: never have so many owed so much to one almostforgotten inventor. retrieved 12 august, 2004, from http://ce.ecn.purdue.edu/~piwc/w3-history/crapper/crapper-ecenbarger.html elias, n. (1939). the civilizing process: sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations (e. jephcott, trans. revised edition, eric dunning, johan goudsblom and stephen menell eds.). oxford: basil blackwell. elias, n. (1995). technization and civilization. theory, culture and society, 12 (3), 7-42. engels, f. (1845). the condition of the working class in england. retrieved 4 sept, 2004, from http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/index.htm freud, s. (1919). the uncanny (j. strachey, trans.). in j. strachey (ed.), the standard edition of the complete psychological works of sigmund freud (vol. 17, 219-256). london: the hogarth press. freud, s. (1930). civilization and its discontents. in a. dickson (ed.), civilization, society and religion (vol. 12, 251-340). harmondsworth: penguin. gandy, m. (1998). the paris sewers and the rationalization of urban space. retrieved 12 september, 2004, from http://www.strath.ac.uk/departments/gs/pdf/gandy.pdf gille, d. (1986). maceration and purification. zone, 1/2, 227-281. guadet, j. (1901). éléments et théorie de l’architecture: cours professé a l’école nationale et spéciale des beaux-arts. paris: librarie de la construction moderne. guerrand, r.-h. (1997). les lieux: histoire des commodités. paris: editions la découverte. hawkesworth, j. (1773). chap. ii. a description of poverty bay, and the face of the adjacent country. the range from thence to cape turnagain, and back to tolaga; with some account of the people and the country, and several incidents that happened on that part of the coast. retrieved 12 january, 2005, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.cs-ss-jrnl-hv23-title health benefits of the natural squatting position. (2001). retrieved 14 july, 2004, from http:// www.naturesplatform.com/health_benefits žižek, s. (1997). the plague of fantasies. london: verso. joyce, j. (1922). ulysses. retrieved 15 may, 2005, from http://www.web-books.com/classics/ fiction/other/joyce_ulysses/ulysses_07_4.htm klossowski, p. (2000). nietzsche and the vicious circle (d. w. smith, trans.). london: athlone. lahiji, n., & friedman, d. s. (eds.). (1997). plumbing: sounding modern architecture. new york: princeton architectural press. laporte, d. (2000). history of shit (n. benabid & r. el-khoury, trans.). cambridge (mass.): mit press. loos, a. (1898). plumbers. in n. lahiji & d. s. friedman (eds.), plumbing: sounding modern architecture (15-19). new york: princeton architectural press. interstices 6 nietzsche, f. (1884a). nachlass, 25. die ewige wiederkunft. eine wahrsagung. spring 1884. retrieved 21 january, 2005, from http://thenietzschechannel.fws1.com/nachd25a.htm nietzsche, f. (1884b). nachlass, 27. zarathustrasheft, summer-autumn 1884. retrieved 1 february, 2005, from http://www.friedrichnietzsche.de/index.php?rem_sessid=a647735ab27 349514ec4b8c59809238d nietzsche, f. (1886, 2003). beyond good and evil. retrieved 6 june, 2004, from http://ftp.it.net. au/gutenberg/etext03/bygdv10.txt nietzsche, f. (1887). on the genealogy of morals. retrieved 5 september, 2004, from http:// www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/ pathak, b. (1995). international history of toilets. retrieved 15 november, 2004, from http:// www.sulabhtoiletmuseum.org/pg02.htm paul, n. (2004). dumping ground. paper presented at the interstices lecture series “animal/ impulse”, auckland, the university of auckland/auckland university of technology. perrot, m. (ed.). (1990). a history of private life iv: from the fires of revolution to the great war. cambridge (mass.): harvard university press. staten, h. (1990). nietzsche’s voice. ithaka: cornell university press. van krieken, r. (1997). the barbarism of civilization: cultural genocide and the ‘stolen generations’ or elias in the antipodes. paper presented at the elias centenary conference, amsterdam, 18-20 december, 1997. retrieved 15 january, 2005, from http://www.usyd.edu. au/su/social/elias/confpap/genocid2.html van krieken, r. (n.d.). norbert elias and process sociology. retrieved 12 january, 2005, from http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/robert/papers/ritzer.htm vigarello, g. (1988). concepts of cleanliness: changing attitudes in france since the middle ages (j. birell, trans.). cambridge: cambridge university press. waitangi tribunal. (1986). report of the waitangi tribunal on the orakei claim (wai 9). retrieved 10 february, 2005, from http://www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz/reports/northislandnorth/wai9/toc.asp wei, l. (2004). south by southeast: the 14th sydney biennale avoided many of the excesses typical of international art festivals by showing fewer artists and newer, often specially commissioned works. retrieved 18 september, 2004, from http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_ m1248/is_11_92/ai_n7637905/pg_2 wölfflin, h. (1886). prolegomena to a psychology of architecture. in h.f. malgrave (ed.), empathy, form and space: problems in german aesthetics, 1873-1893 (149-192). santa monica: the getty center of the history of art and the humanities. 107 splendour and miseries of architectural construction drawings marco frascari the painting will move the soul of the beholder when the people painted there each clearly shows the movement of his own soul ... we weep with the weeping, laugh with the laughing, and grieve with the grieving. these movements of the soul are known from the movements of the body. (leon battista alberti, on painting) the architectural profession has created an almost unbridgeable chasm between subjective design drawings and objective production documents. for design drawings, there are no established conventions, because they would interfere with the creativity of architects, but for construction drawings, most of which are objective documents, the logical conclusion is that they should have been easily codified. however, architects have had an incredibly hard time agreeing on construction notations, a predicament which is probably as old as the biblical turris confusionis and nimrod’s rave, “rafel mai amech sabi almi,” meaningless to anyone but himself. as a consequence of this peculiar condition, many architects, and most architectural firms, have their own systems. after a confusing beginning, musicians eventually accepted a common system of notation, but architects have not been capable of doing so, despite many attempts at unification and standardisation by nations and architectural associations. the reason is simple: neither the normative nor the arbitrary can figure out the emotional process of creating “sound edifices and structures”; the lines of construction drawings evoke strong feelings. however, the birth and growth of cad and bim are achieving a graphic unification of construction drawings. as a result, architecture is slowly becoming aphonic and impassive. nevertheless, this depressing result demonstrates that construction drawings are a powerful apparatus that can, in addition to informing the facture of buildings, encapsulate, orient, ascertain, interpret, model, control or secure the gestures, behaviours, opinions or discourses of the people who are involved in the making of architecture. in their present unemotional form, construction drawings have been a quite recent attainment. they are an authority apparatus devised by north american architects to wrest control of the architectural market away from the builders at the beginning of the nineteenth century (see ortenberg 2005). taking advantage of the greek revival, a style fashionable when this market struggle took place, the graphic models selected for construction drawings were the archaeological drawings of classical monuments such as those produced by thomas major for his 1768 book of prints, the ruins of paestum. by the mid-nineteenth century, american offices had come to resemble today’s architectural firms and had generated the orthodox understanding that sees construction drawings as visual (graphic) information, prepared by an architectural team for use by construction interstices 11 contractors and subcontractors. the main purpose of construction drawings is to define the size, shape, location and construction of a building and its parts. even if the original intention of the construction drawings, modelled after aseptic archaeological drawings, was to demonstrate the architects’ pre-eminence in conceiving architecture and its detailing, the present construction drawings, drafted by many hands, are considered merely protective legal documents that translate a design construct into prescriptions for a construction. in these sets of construction drawings, a visual rhetoric of mono-directional translations is the unacknowledged mode of production. both academic and professional architects regard this arrangement of the architect’s work as necessary and financially useful for billing clients, but a prosaic part of the making of architecture. for them, it is a superintendence problem to prepare documents that instruct the builder how to make buildings looking like the presentation drawings produced by the designer. a flawless management of production is the accepted solution by many firms and architects to the problem of construction drawings, even if it produces time-consuming and uninspiring documents with no connection to a maturation of real and proper architectural artefacts. the facture of construction drawings is not as obvious as the marketing for digital architectural instruments would have architects, builders and clients believe. this facture does not presume that traces, lines and scores in the drawings are worldly or unworldly, existing or non-existing, physical or mental, subjective or objective. the only thing that the facture assumes is that that which is marked, inked, pencilled, brushed, chalked and printed comes into the being of architectural artefact. construction drawings are, in other words, wholly based on a sapience of materialisation, where material lines become powerful carriers of fluid and invisible lines, thoughts to be transubstantiated in brick and mortar. to propose a change of the present trend of construction drawings is crucial to recall a traditional form of non-trivial construction drawings that accept them as an essential part of the process not separated from design drawing. to explain this possibility a novel neurological paradigm can be used. by rising from medieval tracing floors to paper, non-trivial construction drawings have evolved in a specific manifestation of non-verbal thinking, realised by either involuntary or purposeful comparison of the impressions of different sensorial modalities, based on structural or semantic and, most of all, emotional similarity. these non-trivial construction drawings are not merely factual information providing the likeness of the thing represented, but rather a programme of intentions that is to be revealed through the process of making. thus conceived, construction drawings allow a dialogue between the imagination of builders and the imagination of architects; they are drawings that grow and develop the making of architecture rather than relegating it to predetermined and inflexible impositions. the process is not just a matter of imposing likenesses on the builder by merely showing a still image, but rather the aim is to influence the results by producing images of becoming. construction drawings are, in other words, wholly based on a sapience of materialisation, where material lines become the carriers of fluid and invisible lines, thoughts. the ineffable nature of a non-trivial construction drawing is based on the somasensory brain. architects express their hopes and desires, their vision of society and humanity not only in their design drawings but also through construction drawings by producing architectural artefacts that first respond to the builders’ 109 desire for construction, and then to the users’ desire to live well. in these drawings, the architects’ soma-sensory brain filters the real ineffable nature of architecture. because of this consideration i hold the curious belief that architects are natural neurologists. by distilling in construction drawings the powerful axioms “we build buildings and buildings build us,” as neurologists in nuce, architects carry on investigations and assessments of architectural thinking and make the builders and the users think within architecture. there are two ways to verify this neurological quality of the architectural opus: from the top down, using neurological experiments (which i am not qualified to do), and from the bottom up, i.e. from occurrences in the tradition of drawing (which i am competent to do). it has been demonstrated that there is an area of the brain that recognises architecture. in brain imaging, the blood flow increases in a specific area when the person is shown a picture of a building. people who have had a stroke affecting this area often become disoriented because they have lost the ability to recognise buildings as landmarks, even if they can recognise other objects and they navigate their environment by looking to other spatial references (sternberg 2009: 30). in architecture, this cognitive assimilation of buildings is a productive inference generated by neurons, just as the oral tasting of early childhood is a part of cognitive appropriation. this assimilation becomes an enlightening experience when it takes place sinaesthetically, since it becomes an appropriation of reality obtained through a crossing of human senses. this enlightened assimilation becomes a powerful act of imagination and confers a special virtue upon its practitioners, because through this process of incorporation they can relate the immediate with the mediated in their constructions and constructs. physical and emotional interactions are shaped and conditioned by the body and building constraints. this common relational character is underpinned in the brain, by shared neural mechanisms. these neural mechanisms enable the shareable character of actions, emotions and sensations, the earliest constituents of our life. we-ness and intersubjectivity ontologically ground the human condition, in which reciprocity foundationally defines human existence. emotions recruit a unique modality – internal representation of bodily state – and are tightly connected to motivation. neuroscientific research may provide information on the ways in which we empathise with building and edifices by emphasising the role of embodied simulation. collage by marco frascari, 2010 interstices 11 thinking within architecture activates this system of cells, called mirror neurons, in the frontal lobes, and it is different from thinking about architecture, which activates other kinds of neurons. the implications of the discovery of mirroring neurons, the consequent mirror mechanisms and embodied simulation for empathetic responses to images in general, and to architectural drawings in particular, have not yet been assessed. nevertheless, architects should challenge the primacy of formal cognition in responses to their drawings and take into account the embodiment of construction in the lines of construction drawings. a crucial element of the constructive response consists of the activation of embodied mechanisms encompassing the simulation of actions, emotions and corporeal sensation. this basic reaction to drawing is essential to understanding the effectiveness both of everyday detailing and of works of superb craftsmanship. historical, cultural and other contextual factors do not preclude the importance of considering the neural processes that arise in the empathetic understanding of construction documents. during the penultimate decade of the twentieth century, giacomo rizzolatti, vittorio gallese and other scientists at the university of parma discovered what have been called mirror neurons. the discovery of mirror neurons in macaques, and of related mirroring mechanisms in the human brain, has brought a new dimension to the understanding of emotional processes. emotions and actions are infectious; when we see someone laugh, cry, show disgust, or experience pain, in some sense, we share that emotion. when we see a great actor, musician or athlete perform at the peak of his or her abilities, we can vicariously experience some of what he or she is experiencing. with an understanding of mirror neurons it has became clear just how this potent sharing of experiences takes place within the human brain. a new emphasis on the relevance of emotional processes for architectural perception can change our understanding of the neural basis of architectural cognition. the implications of the discovery of mirroring mechanisms, and embodied simulation, for empathetic responses to architectural drawings, buildings and building details, have not yet been assessed, but the capacity of architects pre-rationally to make sense of the actions, emotions and sensations of others (users and builders) depends on embodied simulation, a functional mechanism through which the actions, emotions or sensations start their internal representations of the body states that are associated with these architectural stimuli, as if they were engaged in a similar action or experiencing a similar emotion or sensation. the suggested emotional approach refuses the cognition of the primacy of forms in response to architecture. for this emotional way of conceiving and building architecture, the crucial element of response consists of the activation of embodied mechanisms encompassing the simulation of actions, emotions and corporeal sensation, and these mechanisms are neurologically universal. this basic reaction to architecture is essential to understanding the effectiveness both of everyday buildings and edifices. historical, cultural and other contextual factors do not preclude the importance of considering the neural processes that arise in the empathetic understanding of architecture. activation of the same region of the brain during design of firstand third-person experience of actions, emotions and sensations suggests explicit cognitive evaluation of architectural stimuli. there is probably a mechanism that enables 111 direct experiential understanding of objects and the inner world of others. the detection of mirror and canonical neurons explains the neural support structure of the recurrent, but until now unexplained, feeling of a combination of physical and psychical reactions to the built environment by the implied movements and emotions involved in its use; mirror neurons also offer the possibility of a clearer understanding of the relationship between responses to the perception of emotions within architecture. understanding the intentions of others while watching their actions, and figuring out how to control their movement with the environment, is one of the undertakings fundamental in architectural conceiving. the neural and functional mechanisms underlying this ability are still poorly understood, but successful and useful architecture is evidence of architects using this ability. vittorio gallese, a neuroscientist, working with david freedberg, an art historian, argued that when we look at images we are involved in empathy by having the body reacting with sensations, actions, emotions and motions to works of art (freedberg and gallese 2008, and gallese and freedberg 2007). for late nineteenthcentury architectural historians such as heinrich wöllflin and august schmarsow, bodies and their sensory responses became the medium and analogue for experiential encounters with buildings. theodore lipps, a german philosopher, discussed the role of empathy in aesthetic experience and introduced it in psychology, extending the concept of einfühlung to the domain of intersubjectivity, which he characterised as empathy with inner imitation of the perceived behaviour of others (lipps 1965). in lipps’ writings, we find the first suggestion of a relationship between the inner imitation and the capacity of understanding others by ascribing to them feelings, emotions and thoughts. mirror-neuron research offers sufficient empirical evidence to suggest that architects’ drawings induce an empathetic engagement of builders. the architects’ gestures in producing the construction drawings induce the empathetic engagement of the builder, by activating simulation of the motor programme that corresponds to the gesture implied by the trace. the marks of construction drawings are the visible traces of goal-directed movements; hence, they are capable of activating the relevant motor areas in the builder’s brain. emotionally charged drawings can capture attention, bias perception, modify memory and guide judgments and decisions. ralph liebing, a specialist in the construction industry, points out that builders cannot complete deficient construction drawings: “contractors do not know the thinking, reasoning, and rationale behind the design and documentation of the project” (1999: 21). this does not apply to emotionally rich non-trivial construction drawings because their poignant quality carries the thinking within architecture that is at the foundation of conceiving that specific design (see eich et al 2000 and winkielman et al 2007). george m. grant, vice-president of halmar builders, has drawn attention to a troublesome situation: “the cad system has been wonderful for architects. but do they know how to build what they’re drawing? constructability is one of the biggest problems i find” (quoted in bisharat 2004: 8). constructability was the question posed by carlo lodoli, an eighteenth-century franciscan priest, mathematician and censor of the venetian republic, who was also a subtle architectural theoretician and an influential if peripatetic teacher of venetian noblemen. by laying down pieces of building elements and rolls of drawings in the garden of the commissariato di terra santa in venice, lodoli adinterstices 11 vocated a correct use of representation in the practice of architecture. he called these drawings technographies (tecnografie). technographies of not-yet-built artefacts are powerful examples of non-trivial construction drawings because they reveal the common substratum between consciousness and matter. technographies present in themselves the same qualities that are negated in current construction drawings. they do not search for a likeness as the basis for relating building and an architectural conception, but for a mutual measure derived from a familiar nature, which constructs both the drawing and the edifice: the emotions. technographies are demonstrations related to the built world through emotional representations that contrast conventional notations of geometrical and factual construction, since they deal with the description of processes of construction. technographies embody the janus-like nature of technology, since they are a perfect instance of the non-separation of the emotions ruled by the techne of logos from the events of the logos of techne. technographies are mirrors of constructions demonstrated in representation. they help architects to perform one of the most difficult tasks of their profession: they give the appropriate measure of building as matrix of the edifying nature of an edifice. architectural technographies belong to the realm of masterpieces because they are inaugurations of construction, not merely likenesses of future buildings. they are anagogic demonstrations of construction. although it is not known if gianbattista piranesi actually frequented the open seminars of lodoli’s peripatetic school, during his early training in venice, his associations with lodoli and memmo have been documented. memmo referred to the della magnificenza ed architettura de’ romani (1761) as an example of lodolian thinking (memmo 1833-34, vol. 2: 139). piranesi produced these series of “views” and archaeological representations of various buildings, ruins and areas of rome. he created these prints hoping to inspire others to use ancient roman ideas and forms to create a new architecture. he also used this emotionally-loaded opus to promote his belief that roman architecture owed its roots to the etruscans rather than the greeks. in many of piranesi’s prints, fragments of architectural artefacts are represented holding down overlapping rolls of drawings showing plan, section, elevations and details and, a few times, a perspective view: possibly, a graphic memento of how architecture was presented and discussed in lodoli’s garden. these emotional prints can be considered the basic model of non-trivial construction drawings. they allow the grasping of construction by grasping the idea and the object. grasping requires a coding of the object’s intrinsic properties (size and shape), and the transformation of these properties into a pattern of construction movements through embodied simulation, implied gesture. feeling the movement behind the marks constitutes constructive empathetic responses that are the fundamental response to construction drawings. underlying such responses is the process of embodied simulation that enables the direct experiential understanding of the intentional and emotional contents of drawings. this basic emotional reaction to drawings becomes essential to any understanding of their effectiveness as generator of architecture, because emotion processing is grounded in modality-specific systems, in which conceptual operations involve the partial reactivation or even recreation (simulation) of the actual emotion experience. emo113 tion concepts recruit a unique modality – internal representation of bodily state – and are tightly connected to motivation. then construction drawings revert to a dialogical apparatus that has the capability to guide, determine, interpret and mould responses, opinions or discourses of the trades involved in the erecting of building. references alberti, l. (1991). on painting (c. grayson, trans.). harmondsworth: penguin. agamben, g. (2009). what is an apparatus? and other essays (d. kishik and s. pedatella, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. bisharat, k. a. (2004). construction graphics: a practical guide to interpreting working drawings. hoboken, new jersey: john wiley & sons. eich, e., kihlstrom, j. f., bower, g. h., forgas, j., and niedenthal, p. (2000). cognition and emotion. new york: oxford university press. frascari, m. (1981). sortes architecti. phd dissertation, university of pennsylvania. freedberg, d. and gallese, v. (2008). movimento emozione empatia. prometeo, 26: 103, 52-59. gallese, v. and freedberg, d. (2007). mirror and canonical neurons are crucial elements in esthetic response, trends in cognitive sciences, 11: 10, 411. grant, g.m. (1998). listening to contractors. architectural record, february. liebing, r. (1999). architectural working drawings. hoboken, new jersey: john wiley & sons, 4th edition. lipps, t. (1965). empathy and aesthetic pleasure. in k. aschenbrenner and a. isenberg, aesthetic theories: studies in the philosophy of art. prentice hall, new jersey, 1965, 404-412. major, t. (1768). the ruins of paestum, otherwise posidonia, in magna graecia. london: james dixwell. memmo, a. (1833-34). elementi dell’architettura lodoliana o sia l’arte del fabbricare con solidità scientifica e con eleganza non capricciosa, edizione corretta e accresciuta dall’autore, vol. 2. zara: fratelli battara. ortenberg, a. (2005). drawing practices: the art and craft of architectural representation. ph.d. dissertation, university of california, los angeles. schmarsow, a. (1994). essence of architectural creation, (1893) in h. f. mallgrave and e. ikonomou (eds), empathy, form and space (281-297). getty center publications: santa monica. sternberg, e.m. (2009). healing spaces. cambridge: harvard university press. winkielman, p., knutson, b., paulus, m. p. and tujillo, j. t. (2007). affective influence on decisions: moving towards the core mechanisms. review of general psychology, 11: 179-192. wölfflin, h. (1994). prolegomena to a psychology of architecture (1886) in h. f. mallgrave and e. ikonomou (eds), empathy, form and space (149-162). getty center publications: santa monica. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 64 p r e s e n c e andrew douglas, nicola short heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment introduction this paper considers a small surviving portion of the kaiapoi woollen company building (see fig. 1), a warehouse and offices constructed in the central business district of auckland, new zealand in 1913. known as the kaiapoi fragment, the incongruity of this persisting portion was foregrounded in 2016, when the griffiths holdings building, a plain deco, two-storey commercial building immediately neighbouring where the kaiapoi woollen company building had previously stood on wellesley street west, was demolished to make way for a proposed underground train station. dating from 1929, the griffiths holdings building itself was deemed to hold, in the view of the heritage specialists involved, “little specific cultural heritage significance” (reverb, 2016: 14). yet, adjoining its eastern edge was an extraneous hanger-on: a fragment of the older kaiapoi woollen company building which had inadvertently remained fused with its newer neighbour. this had been the case since 1964, the date at which the kaiapoi woollen company building itself was demolished as part of the urban redevelopment of the area, for which the bledisloe state building was catalyst and complicating agent for street relations built up since the city’s founding (see fig. 2). the kaiapoi fragment, for its part, stood detached and solitary for a short period following the demolition of its neighbour, having survived both the demise of its progenitor, and the griffiths holdings building—the vector that had transported it into a new century. duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances. and as the past grows without ceasing, so there is no limit to its preservation. — henri bergson, 1907 fig. 1 reverb consultancy (2016). kaiapoi fragment, part designation and dismantling diagram [photograph with pen-work] 65 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 our aim, in drawing attention to this fragment, is to explore questions of heritage persistence in the broader context of an inquiry into the nature of presence advanced particularly by hans ulrich gumbrecht.1 while the notion of presence implies temporal immediacy—that which appears as present, now—gumbrecht has emphasised, in particular, an insistent attribute that, we think, resonates with the tenacious persistence of the kaiapoi fragment. as he writes: “by ‘presence’ i have meant—and still mean—that things inevitably stand at a distance from or in proximity to our bodies; whether they ‘touch’ us directly or not, they have substance” (2014: ix). moreover, this substantiveness harbours a quality in excess of what can be analysed or interpreted: “the things-of-the-world, however we encounter them, also possess a [little considered] dimension of presence” (ix). this dimension, we propose, calls on questions of duration. in fact gumbrecht makes clear “present-ness” rests on broader temporal relations which are particularly fraught. recognising a type of precarity in the contemporary present, gumbrecht (2004 and 2014) argues that we are witnessing an emerging, yet still undefined, post-historicist chronotope. if the preceding, historicist chronotope is characterised by a “narrow present”, one in which passing historical time provides immediately cogent bearings for acting on, and organising, an impending future, our current present, “inundated by memories and objects from the past”, posits a truncated future, itself stalled and broadening inordinately (2014: 54-55). in this, gumbrecht’s prognosis sits adjacent to a raft of contemporary cultural analyses exploring changing temporal orientations (see: augé, 1995; berlant, 2011; crary, 2013) including a consideration of heritage, built space and shifting urban conditions. for instance, andreas huyssen’s (2003) critique of a “memory boom”, and with it, a “politics of memory” observes that, “the boundary between fig. 2 unknown (4 nov 1964). “showing the premises of the kaiapoi woollen manufacturing...” [photograph, sir george grey special collections, auckland libraries 7-a926] fig. 3. evotia photography (june 2016). kaiapoi fragment prior to dismantling and storage [photograph, reverb consultancy report] 66 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the past and present used to be stronger and more stable than it appears today” (2003: 1). if, for gumbrecht, the future, as a thing flowing readily out of a present itself building causally on the past, appears blocked off, correspondingly for huyssen, such a backlog takes the form of a chronic past-present permeability. where history could once claim to stand in for the past, representing a more or less objective accounting of the nation and its evolving contours, and where memory, in turn, was aligned with subjective experience and recollection, something like a reversal has occurred.2 we see in fact, a displacement of what huyssen terms a “hypertrophy of history” in the 19th century, to a “hypertrophy of memory” today—both personal and collective (2-3). reorientations in national traditions and a renegotiation of their sovereignty consequent to globalising forces are key. where the past had been curtailed, more or less, within agreed national narratives, huyssen sees a change in emphasis toward “memory without borders” and a surfeit of personal recollection (2003: 4). while canonical history is delegitimised, desire for narratives of the past continue to orientate our present, not least because modernity itself was predicated on a drive to learn from the past in pursuit of a progressively corrected future. rather than a future-orientated present though, one capable of reading the past pedagogically, we end up with a past-orientated present. to describe this compounded nature of the present and the past, gumbrecht borrows mikhail bakhtin’s (1895–1975) notion of the chronotope, a term characterising particular fusions of space and time evident across the history of the novel. to test the potential of gumbrecht’s claims, we explore bakhtin’s deployment of the chronotope and what underwrites it—dialogical exchange. we further investigate a foundational tenet of dialogue, developed by henri bergson (1859–1941), which conditions all space-time amalgamation—the dissolving power of ‘duration’. whilst not synchronous in their thinking,3 our extending of bakhtin via bergson aims to draw from gumbrecht’s consideration of “presentification” (2004: 94) a more acute attendance on temporal co-presence. the issue of temporal co-presence is integral to issues of cultural heritage and heritage theory where materials from the past continue to have contemporary presence. moreover, there has been uptake of bakhtin’s notion of the dialogical in contemporary views on heritage and anthropology, where relational dialogical ontologies create different kinds of “historicity” (wirtz, 2016) and with them more creative heritage frameworks (harrison, 2013; holtorf, 2015). dialogics, in these contexts, has been held to better engage with the complexities of contemporary challenges such as climate change, decolonisation and urban growth. emphasising the work of duration in dialogics and chronotopes asserts, as leonard lawlor has characterised the distinction bergsonism maintains over phenomenology, the “‘primacy of memory’ over a ‘primacy of perception’” (2003: ix). it makes imaginable, again in lawlor’s words, a “non-phenomenological concept of presence”, one whose ontology supplants being-in-the-present with a being in and of the past, and by extension, “being as the unconscious instead of consciousness” (x). while the full implications of bergson’s “spiritualisation”, with its emphasis on image and memory over matter, sit beyond the scope of this paper, we sense value in them relative to questions of intangible value, a central but thorny area of concern for heritage. further, we find, spanning these concerns, the possibility of offering a provisional anatomy of presence, one prompted by, despite its diminutive scale, the kaiapoi fragment itself.    67 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 with this framing in mind, the paper develops four aspects: • firstly it backgrounds the context and circumstances of the kaiapoi fragment; • secondly, we link the kaiapoi fragment to broadly theoretical and critical perspectives questing heritage orientation; • thirdly, we extend these considerations via discourses centred on temporal relationships, an orientation we see as leading to an anatomy of presence; • finally, the paper addresses a shift in our original perception of a precarious futurity for the fragment with a recently published proposal for the station forecourt. the paper develops a dialogue across our divergent interests—themselves spanning heritage, policy, cultural theory and architecture—in a quest to think how, and under what conditions, presence both persists and is called towards futurity. the context and circumstances of the kaiapoi fragment the kaiapoi woollen company building was a three storey, unreinforced double-skin brick masonry structure, topped with a gable roof in corrugated steel. it was a long narrow building primarily used for warehousing purposes, yet had an ornate, plaster-rendered, edwardian baroque façade serving the public on its (north) wellesley street frontage (see fig. 4). augmenting this primary street presence, was the notable alternative face it directed eastward towards the commercial and civic heart of the city. across the entirety of this lateral facade a blunt commercial appeal resting on nationalist sentiment spelt out: “buy new zealand made goods” (see figs. 5 and 6). fig. 4 james d. richardson (26 jan 1928). “looking west from elliott street up wellesley street west...1928” [photograph, sir george grey special collections, auckland libraries 7-a9264-2141] 68 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the wellesley street façade similarly signalled a nationalist appeal via its use of the edwardian baroque. baroque classicism had, as ian lochhead has summarised, followed a long “domestication”, remaking it firstly an english style, and subsequently the evolving architectural face of a conjoined nationalism of the british isles (2004: 43). as such, edwardian baroque signalled a “progressive nationalism” which in turn became linked to empire, for which a “wrenaissance” or “imperial baroque” was widely employed in colonial settings (43). deployed in the context of dominion status, realised in new zealand in 1907, the routine use of the edwardian baroque in public and commercial architecture testified to both an assertion of self-governance (one rejecting australian federalism) and imperial federation with britain (45). concomitantly, commercial nationalism, aligned with a shift from colonial extractive and progress industries (centred on resource removal and infrastructural expansion) to manufacturing economies, constitutive of pakeha claims of self-reliance and “belonging here” (belich, 2007: 361). claims of progressiveness accompanied this manufacturing (emphasising technological innovation and product ‘quality’), along with market competition (directed both internally and toward the imperial federation validitating dominion). auckland’s kaiapoi woollen building was a branch office of a business with premises in christchurch, wellington, dunedin and london. fig. 5 rjames d. richardson (16 oct 1924). “looking south west from queen street...1924” [photograph, sir george grey special collections, auckland libraries 4-5644] fig. 6 james d. richardson (1928). “looking south along wellesley street west...1928” [photograph, sir george grey special collections, auckland libraries 4-2176] 69 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the company name kaiapoi is itself rich in place reference and appropriation. the wool for kaiapoi woollens was sourced from the waimakariri district and named after the small town and mill there. the town itself borrows its name from the pā situated just north, itself said to have been the largest fortified site for ngāi tahu in the south island. kaiapoi combines both kai (food/resources) and poi (“a light ball on a string of varying length which is swung or twirled rhythmically to sung accompaniment”; māori dictionary (n.d.)). together they reference the challenging topographic situation of the pā whereby resources had to be ‘swung in’ to sustain settlement (christchurch city libraries, n.d.). whilst the kaiapoi business in a merged form continued until 1978 (puke ariki online, n.d.)  the kaiapoi woollen company building in auckland was demolished in 1964. factors influencing this demolition included plans for expanding the civic functions of the area for which the construction of the bledisloe state building, a new home for the local council, designed by then government architect francis gordon wilson with douglas jocelyn “jock” beere was key. the bledisloe state building, completed in 1959, was celebrated at the time for “its one and a half acres (6000m2) of glass”, which faced both bledisloe lane to the east and the neighbouring kaiapoi woollen company building to the west (shaw, 1991: 151). with a blank façade presented to wellesley street and the prioritising of lateral glazed viewing, at stake in the bledisloe’s nine storey rise was a radical contesting of the ‘party’ relation that had characterised the street up until that time. in this it advocated for, without seeing its promise completed, a different sense of the civic, the social and the temporal foundations of city places (see fig. 7). while the contrary visions embodied by both buildings awkwardly faced each other for a period, the clash was resolved in favour of the outlook for the bledisloe office workers in 1964 (see fig. 2). nevertheless, this produced no simple erasure, for it left in play for more than 40 years a gap approximating the kaiapoi’s prior footprint. the surviving kaiapoi fragment, a persistent portion of the original building, was left connected to the 1929 griffiths holdings building on the eastern party wall. as reverb consultants speculated: the reasons for the fragment’s survival when the kaiapoi building was demolished in 1964 are unclear, but the column, the massive coromandel base, and the attached brick backing, may have been left in situ out of caution for the structural support of the griffiths building. (reverb 2016: 11) the kaiapoi fragment remains via its persistence a lingering pointer to the complex congregation of intent, precedent and time intersecting on wellesley street west. theorising heritage the circumstances of the kaiapoi woollen company building have imbedded provocations for contemporary heritage practice, not least amongst these being its drastic reduction, at a material level, to a fragmented presence, and then, to no anchored presence at all. in this it mirrors the trajectory huyssen identifies where the historical ‘stuff ’ comprising narratives of nation are decommissioned by globalising forces leaving memories floating with uncertain relevance. yet, the kaiapoi fragment’s presence at the junctures of different development periods in auckland’s history evidences material and temporality resisting erasure. in huyssen’s framing, at the very least it contributes to “palimpsests of space in the 70 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 urban imaginary” (7). as such, its peculiar mix of the tangible and the intangible calls for a creative adaptation of heritage practice and theory to better grasp what heritage futures can be imagined for and through it. to clarify how heritage is being understood here, we see it as a practice that is about what is valued in the present (see lowenthal, 1987), with its principal concerns being configurations of time, space, tangible materiality and intangible worth. our aim, in reading such configurations via gumbrecht’s notion of presentification, huyssen memory boom, and aspects of bakhtin and bergson’s thinking, is to creatively and critically rework these heritage concerns. more broadly, we see this paper as participating in a comparatively nascent undertaking that applies cultural theory and/or critical lens on heritage and concepts of “heritage theory”—a project consistent with both the aims of the association of critical heritage studies (achs), itself formed in 2012 (see morisset, 2017), and the heritage futures (hf) project, a uk arts and humanities  research council research venture which understands heritage within a relational, dialogical framework.4 at stake for heritage seen this way, as rodney harrison, the hf chief investigator describes, are links to “broader issues of environmental, political and social concerns”, links in fact that allow an emancipation and use of heritage “in more creative, transformative ways” (2013: 204-205). here the usual concerns of preservation and conservation are read as forms of a present dispositif. heritage is not only what reminds people of the past—with all the associative unreliability of those interpretations—but more significantly, it reveals the present and how these relationships form and intersect—an awareness huyssen emphasises when he reminds that “the act of remembering is always in and of the present” (2003: 3). whilst huyssen is primarily concerned with memory here, heritage resources, as material evidence of the past within spatial fields, no less act as mnemonic devices in the present through their presence and their persistence. persistence, in all its mutable forms, is invariably what counters forgetting—the latter being, as cornelius holtorf, the unesco chair on heritage futures notes, fig. 7 auckland city council, architects office (1964). civic centre plans [print, sir george grey special collections, auckland libraries, 580-10204] 71 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the loss-averting task the “conservation paradigm” sets as its principle aim (2015: 11). further, as holtorf finds in adrian forty’s reading of sigmund freud, given the nature of memory in humans, forgetting must be “a freely decided and a deliberate act of putting something behind” (14). correspondingly, “[d]emolition and subsequent emptiness cannot undo a persistent heritage site—except when nobody cares to remember it anymore” (14). nevertheless, that the amplified interest in heritage over the last 200 years (lowenthall, 1996; harrison, 2013) and the related heritage boom have eventuated in vast increases of heritage places and objects being identified and protected is a response to late modernity’s relationship to change and time. it is, in fact, huyssen’s “hyper trophies of history and memory” made material. countering this loss aversion, holtorf argues that “destruction and loss are not the opposite of heritage but constitutive of it” (2015: 15). recognising the evolving, ongoing nature of what counts as heritage—its becoming as opposed to its being (as holtrof puts it)—permits a creative engagement with the process of ongoing change. in this light, bergson’s concepts of duration and sympathy offer one way of moving conservation from a singular purpose of constraining loss to potentially more heterogeneous and sustainable practices. for its part, the kaiapoi fragment complexly continues that from which it came while affirming the sympathetic potency of temporality itself. heritage chronotopes more generally, if heritage is understood as a form of palimpsestic presence, indicative of a convergence of multiple times in one place, it is also suggestive of evolving overlays of condensed time-space constituting what amount to “heritage chronotopes”. if the palimpsest connotes a textural condition, the notion of the chronotope correspondingly arises consequent to bahktin’s deployment of it, to account for certain generic patterns within the long compound history of the novel. to describe this heterogeneity, bahktin sought to identify commonly ordered patterns of time and space making narratives comprehensible—an approach that has proved useful for heritage, which similarly works with divergent societal worlds. writing in russia around the 1920s, bakhtin borrowed the term chronotope from biology, but saw in it both an alignment with einstein’s theory of relativity and a critique of kantian philosophy. as he put it, in the context of literature: time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible: likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. this intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterises the artistic chronotope. (2000: 84) consequently, chronotopes condense the plethora of discourses, utterances, and semiotic fragments making up specific collectives, and serve to make the worlds imagined in literary genres coherent and recognisable (todorov, 1985: 83). indeed, they are the variable building blocks of genres in so far as bakhtin puts it, “[e]very genre has its methods, its ways of seeing and understanding reality” and this ‘seeing’ “delineates itself differently as space and time” (cited in todorov, 1985: 83). similar concerns are expressed within critical heritage theory by harrison, in his work on the different domains of heritage practice (2015)—natural, cultural, archaeological, tangible, intangible, built, landscape—and in thinking through the overlapping of these ontological fields in what harrison characterises as “heritage ontologies” (2018). 72 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 building on bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, recent thinking on place relations, consistent with huyssen’s characterisation of a diversifying culture of memory, has emphasised a contesting state in which, at any one locale, chronotopes show up as contradictory and multiple, like so many monadic outlooks, closed off from each other, yet interacting dialogically across ontologically distinct borders. as bahktin put it: chronotopes are mutually inclusive, they co-exist, they may be interwoven with, replace or oppose one another, contradict one another or find themselves in ever more complex relationships. the relationships themselves that exist among chronotopes cannot enter into any of the relationships contained within chronotopes. the general characteristic of these interactions is that they are dialogical (in the broadest use of the word). (2000: 252) in the context of heritage, a dialogical approach offers creative and future-orientated vantage and is conceivably what harrison intends when speaking of heritage ontologies here: we might think of these domains of heritage or modes of heritage making as particular ontologies of heritage, in the sense that they are concerned with different categories of being and different ways of assembling futures. (2018: 1378) additionally, applications of bakhtin’s recognition of both monadic worlds and a method for understanding how their differences might speak to each other are useful for the challenges heritage practices face moving from a largely eurocentric ontological field to one where practitioners operate dialogically across the divergent ontologies of a decolonising world. useful for our thinking here about an anatomy of presence, is tristian todorov’s (1985) recognition of aspects of german aestheticism being worked through by bakhtin. if for wilhelm worringer empathy was central to aesthetic pleasure (98), for bakhtin, empathy—putting oneself in the place of another or in external things—must be tempered least it induces a “loss of one’s place”, or subsumes the other’s consciousness into one’s own—a gesture akin to hegel’s dialectical overcoming as monologue (cited in todorov, 1985: 109; see also 104). the dialogical is bakhtin’s counter to the dialectical, a means by which two consciousnesses may coexist by drawing empathetic identification back into the empathiser as a “self-other”, a conditional identification todorov translates as “exotopy” (bakhtin cited in todorov, 1985: 109; see also 99). in this notion of exotopy is a means for understanding, not just how two divergent subject positions coexist, yet inform each other; it also points to how divergent chronotopes convene, and indeed, suggests how consciousness itself is complexly chronotopic. given that bakhtin developed exotopy relative to characterological concerns in literature, how might it operate in broader inanimate domains? certainly, the meaning and place of material artefacts in social worlds has long preoccupied archaeologists and anthropologists. more recently, the “material turn”, as dan hicks argues, has provided multiple frameworks for “fixing the meaning or social use of objects in particular moments in time”, yet a more productive means for dealing with the “permeabilities of boundaries between humans and non-humans” might be to view “things as events” (2010: 81). this notion anticipates holtorf ’s proposition that heritage artefacts are not entities fixed at single times 73 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 but things in long sequences of becoming. this eventful nature of things similarly corresponds with gumbrecht’s assertion that aesthetic experience, itself richly material, arises as an “oscillation (and sometimes as an interference) between ‘presence effects’ and ‘meaning effects’” (2004: 2). this oscillation in fact may be thought of as exotopic encounters between worlds of meaning, a proposition we follow below. an anatomy of presence drawing heritage into the question of presence, gumbrecht alerts us to the possiblity of experiencing and thinking things doubly: on one hand through meaning attribution (a prevailing drive in modern western thought); and on the other, via presence effects. in relation to historical objects, as gumbrecht usefully deploys as examples, the former involves seeing them as symptoms of the past, symptoms capable of explaining the present. the latter, displacing analysis and meaning, effects a “historical presentification” that empathetically transports: the desire for presence makes us imagine how we would have related, intellectually and with our bodies, to certain objects […] if we had encountered them in their own historical everyday worlds. (124) this “historical imagination”, as he terms it, shares with aspects of aesthetic experience the capacity to break with everyday situations, thereby holding open a pause prior to closure of meaning attribution (125). historical objects, themselves incongruous with everyday immediacy, induce a “crossing of the life world threshold of our birth”, thereby complexifying the present with an empathetic experience of other space-times beyond our own. the distance-gathering capacity of such presentification is “deictic, rather than interpretive”—in other words, it is context-dependent (128). presence then, as that which breaks, counterintuitively, with the surety of the immediately given, calls up a deictic demand, a reading-into that oscillates joyfully and painfully between “losing and regaining intellectual control and orientation” (128). yet how might presence as oscillation in orientation be reconciled with the notion of the chronotope? our earlier explication of the dialogical, itself patently deictical in its to-and-fro interlocation, is suggestive. bakhtin considers such deictical co-presence in the context of the type of reception literature makes possible. at stake, he argued, in any encounter between a text and a reader is the invention of “a special creative chronotope” (2000: 254) condensing the work with the lived determinants of its reception—an encounter enacted exotopically. presence in this context amounts to a creative flare-up at the intersection of chronotopes, a dialogic exchange that itself immediately re-consolidates chronotopically. bahktin’s creative vitalism—building on a communicative potency spanning chronotopes—itself invites comparison with henri bergson’s own vesting of sense in a creative vitality exhibited by temporality. here, by way of comparison is bergson’s characterisation of one half of any dialogic exchange—listening: i can indeed understand your speech if i start from a thought analogous to your own and follow its windings with the aid of verbal images which are so many signposts that show me the way from time to time. (1991: 125) 74 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 more broadly, dialogue suggests a parallelism between interlocutors in which each pursues analogies seeking an adequate correspondence with the mobility of the other’s thought—forms of mobility always in excess of language itself. while language usage and social convention might well supply sufficient habits to render these analogous labours minimal, in fact, to be present to dialogue in its fullest capacity demands a shift from habitual experience to, what bergson termed “attentive perception”, a mode of sensing brought on by lapses of immediate understanding or recognition (1991: p104-105; see bergson’s fig. 1). to recognise habitually, or immediately as bergson put it, is to know how to act—a conversion that turns perception into sensorimotor responses, that in turn, extend a world out horizontally in what amounts to the building of a consistent and reliable ‘reality’. when presented with something unrecognisable or unidentifiable, perception cannot be extended into action but must follow another route—temporal excursions into memory in search of prior descriptions or images able to adequately equate with, and therefore elucidate, particular unknowns in the present. dialogue then, can be schematised as unfolding across two dimensions: a horizontal extension of locution by linked up, common-sensical utterances; and a vertical leap in which a listener seeks a more demanding grasp of the source or essence driving another’s utterances. as david lapoujade summarises this use of analogy in the latter by bergson: the circuit of recognition goes from idea to idea, following a symmetry, a spiritual work of analogy. analogy is memory throughout. we recognise the other in us, and this allows us to recognise ourselves in the other. (2018: 54) in bergson’s intuitive analogy there is an internalisation approximating the exotopic exchange we find in bakhtin. further, bergson schematises this complex recognition, as firstly, a feeling inward for the analogous, and secondly, via sympathy, a to-and-fro testing for an adequate symmetry between what is manifest outwardly and what is inward—in other words, a correspondence in what bergson sees as the “virtual objects” underpinning both (lapoujade, 2018: 53). beyond an interlocation between persons, what intuition finds in its vertical excursion is the action of duration reworking life itself, a duration not just internal to human consciousness, but to matter in general. moreover, analogy is a solvent dissolving other space-time amalgams, so that via sympathy we are capable of being transported into the durational interior reality of other entities—or what can be read as chronotopes. in short, intuition glimpses how duration is conserved inwardly, but also, via an affective sympathy, how the movements of matter beyond us are conserved. hence, this sounding of the vertical dimension of temporality runs past the limits of consciousness, leaning into a pure memory, or durational whole that envelopes all the fluctuations of duration making the living distinction of matter present as such. again, as lapoujade summaries bergson’s insights: […] it is man who, thanks to intuition, enters into ‘contact’ with the nonhuman movements, memories, and consciousness deep inside him. there is basically nothing human about man. it is because intuition reaches the nonhuman tendencies in man that it can give the reciprocal impression of humanizing the nonhuman. (47) so while bakhtin says, in relation to dialogic exchange between chronotopes, that everything, in the final analysis, comes up “against the human being” (253), 75 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 bergson invites us to recognise this humanness as itself being built in and out of the chronotopic fluctuations variously arising with the open movement of duration itself. further, if presence, via intuition and sympathy, draw awareness towards this openness—itself radically reorienting in anxiety-inducing as well as joyful ways—gumbrecht’s attendance on it as antidote to an excessive dependence on the intellectualising work of interpretation exhibits a bergsonian legacy to the extent that for bergson, intelligence is the evolutionary capacity in humanity that drives towards a disequilibrium in the attachment to life. an advocacy of presence today stands out precisely as a call for a renewed attachment to life as such, an attachment, as bergson (1935/2013) framed it, beyond religiosity per se, and closer in motivation, if not actuality, to mysticism. fig. 8 reverb consultancy (2016). kaiapoi fragment, elevational diagramme [pen-work] what presence the kaiapoi fragment? how then to read, sympathetically, the chronotopic intersection playing out in the kaiapoi fragment? it stands as a remnant of an older nationalism indexed to imperial federation—a past configuration with persisting echoes. more generally, like so much bound centripetally within what saskia sassen has referred to as “the spatio-temporal order of the nation-state”, centrifugation by global forces continues to reorder and ecilipse much that counted within the older nationalisms (2006: 398). in commencing this paper we worried that the kaiapoi fragment was set to join the sea of such eclipsed matter. yet the loss of the material object in fact provided an ongoing presence via a sympathetic recounting of its modes of persistence. certainly, the absence of its materiality is not the same as an absence of its presence. for no lesser a reason, as bergson has shown, memory is the very precondition for duration and is what persists absolutely. initially, whether the kaiapoi fragment would find a tangible, settled public presence again was uncertain. at one level this was peripheral to our exploration, relative to heritage, of a non-phenomenological concept of presence. nor did we set out to argue for the kaiapoi fragment’s retention or resituating someplace. instead, 76 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 we found in its precarity a provocative analogue for a truncated futurity more generally, and in turn, a prompt for a more critical theoretical vantage on what heritage enacts in conserving the past. nevertheless, time is capable of revising expectation, and in 2018 auckland transport, the agency determining the form of the new underground station, which in turn set in train the series of circumstances foregrounding the kaiapoi fragment’s lone standing, released visualisations showing the fragment’s restoration seemingly at its original location (see fig. 9). freed of both a party wall and a building as body, the fragment, once an engaged column, is shown standing in the round. this disengagement approximates a truncated column about which a travelling public will circle on route to and from the underground. while such a configuration would seem to offer reduced potential for interpretation—with nothing more of the kaiapoi woollen company building remaining—offered instead is a strong conduit for sympathy in the sense we have developed here. while dialogical exchange depends on the to-and-fro work of analogous presentification, the acutely reduced kaiapoi woollen company building presences an encounter with the dissolving power of duration itself. fig. 9 andrew douglas (2019). restored kaiapoi fragment at the entry to the new aotea station (with the bledisloe building in background) [pencil drawing based on at’s city rail link aotea station flythrough. see https://www. cityraillink.co.nz/crl-stations-aotea/] more positively, it would seem to enact, in its acute reduction, what bakhtin has referred to as the “real-life chronotope of meeting”, a ubiquitous motif in “spheres of public and everyday life” where particular convergences of space and time shift the very course of things (2000: p98-99). certainly the notion of encounter has been pivotal to our reading of the fragment: more broadly, how does the present meet the future and the past; how do chronotopes meet dialogically; 77 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 and, more specifically, how might the kaiapoi fragment meet a future? the motif of meeting is not an incongruous issue in this case, given that the fragment itself marks the pivotal intersection of both the party wall and street facade, those mechanisms by which buildings meet other buildings and varying publics over time. given this enduring “chronotopicity” and its becoming column-like, joseph rykwert’s the dancing column: on order in architecture (1999) offers a final vantage on the standing remainder of the kaiapoi fragment. on the metaphoric shaping of matter transported by classicism, he writes: “it elaborates the primal identification of the standing body with an upright post” (373). moreover, the two-term logic of metaphor—“this is like that”—is compounded by a third: “a body is like a building and the building in turn is like the world” (373). so too can architecture “speak in figures” consistent with an archaic “‘mimetic heritage’” (p373-374). if, as rykwert reminds, this figural dimension was progressively lost to western architecture and the arts from the 17th century, and called for in fact is a rehabilitation of mimetic empathy (388). intercourse and not order is the lesson rykwert draws from the “mimetic artifacts” favoured by classicism. against “‘plain reading’” and a mute architecture—in other words, reading and building that are “univocal [and] antimetaphoric”—he calls for that which sustains renewed “dialogue and touch” (391). with the kaiapoi fragment we have resisted both a plain reading of it as artefact and an analogous one of it as ‘heritage’ more broadly. instead we have sought, via sympathy, to make from not very much, a conduit running deep into duration itself. in contrast to the centrifugal relay linking bodies to columns, columns to buildings and buildings to world, we have sought to reverse-engineer ascending empathetic desire, an ascendance bergson (1963) himself critiqued in the affective belonging justifying nationalism. as such, the social instinct of family is expanded into the social obligation of nation no less than religion, a course seemingly running toward openness but in fact modelling closure at multiple levels (1963: 32; see also alexandre lefebvre’s “picture of morality” in bergson, 2013: 4). if at stake in family and nation, ideally, is love, but one resting on modes of constancy, bergson sees in duration a contrary and immediate affection. this is experienced variably according to an intuited sympathy, itself creatively contacting the plethora of temporalities spanning the human and the nonhuman (lawlor, 2003: 62). presence, in its common understanding speaks to what bergson understood as “attention to life”, those momentary engagements with the immediate present that counter the human capacity to dilate experience through dream and reverie, or, conversey, build an intellectual indifference to immediacy. sympathy instead points to a deepening of attention and a richer engagement, one necessary to an “attachment to life” (lapoujade, 2018: p59-63). the kaiapoi fragment seems capable of attuning us to such an attachment to life. in the context of globalisation’s unbundling of the “unitary time-space of the national”, a range of “diverse spatio-temporal orders”, otherwise invisible emerge (sassen, 2006: 398). consequently, the question of how to maintian attachment to forms of life shaped by such unbundling is pressing. more than a thing to be passed by indifferently, the persistent standing of the kaiapoi fragment suggests a dance with time that attachment richly visits upon us. 78 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 declaration of interest we wish to disclose that our interest in the kaiapoi fragment stems from a connection with the heritage professional responsible for its continued existence. in mid 2016 bruce petry, as director of reverb consultancy, arranged for the fragment to be retained and stored for future possible use shortly before his death. subsequently, for a brief period, andrew douglas acted as director of reverb consultancy for the purpose of closing the business. neither authors were party to recommendations or decisions by reverb consultancy related to the kaiapoi fragment. we dedicate this paper to bruce whose sympathy and passion for heritage inspired it. acknowledgement we further wish to thank anonymous review of both the presentation abstract and an earlier iteration of this paper. their insights have assisted us considerably. 79 heritage and persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 endnotes 1 this paper was originally delivered orally at the interstices under construction symposium + colloquium: presence, an event and explore hans ulrich gumbrecht’s work on the phenomenon of presence at the university of auckland, nz. 2 also see lowenthal (1987) on distinctions between ‘history’ and ‘heritage’ and the relationship of the present to these. 3 while bakhtin was separated from bergson by about a generation, and by language and geography, his awareness of bergson’s thinking likely arrived by way of secondary sources initially. despite debates over the degree of sympathy they may have shared, daphna erdinastvulcan (2013) has argued that bergson’s appeal to intuition as method and his “project of [open-ended] temporalization”, likely formed the foundation upon which the thinking of bakhtin and his circle was built (19 & 224). 4 sitting squarely within the achs schema, the hf project holds “a plural notion of heritage ontologies—understood as the world making, future assembling capacities of heritage practices of different kinds—and the ways in which different heritage practices might be seen to enact different realities and hence to assemble radically different futures”. 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(2013). engaging with the future of ‘critical heritage studies’: looking back in order to look forward. international journal of heritage studies, 19:6, p 562-578. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 41 p r e s e n c e simon twose, jules moloney drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape kaikōura canyon on a small vessel off the kaikōura coast of aotearoa/new zealand, the landscape beneath the sea’s surface is strangely present. the swells are at ocean scale, vast slow masses passing under the boat. just five hundred metres from the shore the sea noticeably darkens above a line of undersea cliffs. these plummet vertically more than a kilometre into the kaikōura canyon, which continues to deepen as it flows into the hikurangi abyssal river, formed by the subduction of tectonic plates. huge forces in this submarine landscape were released, two minutes after midnight on 14 november 2016, in the 7.8 magnitude kaikōura earthquake; the seabed lurched upwards, triggering submarine rock falls, turbid flows of sediment, gas eruptions and tsunami. the hidden bathymetric landscape became suddenly present, violently sketching its latency in rock and water (fig. 1, 2). canyon is a multi-media drawing experiment that projects into the imagined space of the kaikōura canyon. we imagine the presences in the submarine material/ space in concert with crude, hand drawn sketches that are intensified through virtual reality (vr) and spatialised sound. the blurs and smudges in these hybrid sketches that contribute to their openness and indeterminacy, are paralleled with fig. 1 simon twose (2018). south bay, kaikōura. the canyon is beneath the sea surface, beyond the reef [photograph] 42 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the canyon’s powerful yet un-representable presence. the hybrid drawings are spatialised as an abstract virtual and aural sketch environment, where presences in the kaikōura canyon and those in drawing are merged. the canyon installation brings this spatial experience to a gallery situation. the installation is the first output of the canyon research and was exhibited at palazzo bembo in the xvi venice biennale, 2018. the canyon installation adds a sculptural and material component to the drawing research. it is conceptually an inhabitable sketch that projects the participant into the abstract world of the kaikōura canyon while, at the same time, immersing them in the smudged dynamics of its drawing (fig. 3). canyon is a collaboration between simon twose, jules moloney and lawrence harvey, researching open possibilities in architectural drawing. this paper reports on the first stage of the research and uses the canyon installation as an armature for a brief discussion of findings. it observes that architectural drawing’s relation to its subject matter is more than simply a scalar projection of a mark towards the space it represents, such as a line describing the contours of a landscape drawing is a site where multiple presences, in landscape and drawing, influence and inflect one another. this is most intense in the rapidly sketched fig. 2 simon twose (2018). kaikōura canyon sea surface. [video still] fig. 3 simon twose, jules moloney, lawrence harvey (2018). canyon installation, palazzo bembo, xvi venice biennale [3d vr capture. [photograph, anastasia globa] 43 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 smudges and “recalcitrant marks” of a spatial sketch. in this, the non-semiotic blurs take on a dual role. their material performance combines with the material performativity of the spatial subject matter to evoke presences in both; the abstract blurs allude to physical and intangible conditions—of pressures or turbid flows, and imagined latencies. the sketch becomes a dynamic space of complex presences in sfumato relation. in sfumato, a painting technique perfected by leonardo da vinci, the subtle graduation of lights and darks creates a perceptual vibration between elements central to the gaze and shaded contours peripheral to it. it creates, in vasari’s words, a “hovering between the seen and unseen” (cited in gombrich, 2004 [1959]: 185). the term is used in this paper to bring to mind a state of liminality, shifting possibility and asymptotic mutuality, in the relation between presences in drawing and in landscape (fig. 4). presence sketches a rapidly sketched section through the kaikōura canyon picks up its general condition—a vertiginous drop in seabed in relation to a sea level datum (fig. 5). but the sketch is also an action of the hand which inevitably has smudges and erasures. its instrumental logic, as a section, merges with elements that are a-logical—unintentional marks that point to movement and flux of material (fig. 6). the lines extend beyond their intended contour, they smudge and skip over the texture of what they are drawn on. the blurs and smudges start to talk of spatial and material conditions, of atmospheres, pressures, flows of rock and mud, and latent seismic movement; eruptions of unseen gasses and turbulence. sketches like this are a way of observing intangible architectural conditions. smudges and other “recalcitrant marks”, as described by james elkins, coalesce with affective, non-representational registers (1995). they prompt thoughts about atmospheres, flows and latencies. they are marks that record the “nuanced misalignments, approximate thoughts and imperfect moments [that…] resist fixing normative figuration” (kulper, 2013: 63). fig. 4 simon twose, jules moloney (2018). recalcitrant smudges in spatialized vr sketch environment [vr still image, anastasia globa] 44 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the canyon analogue sketches were made by drawing sections, plans and three dimensional “scenes” over a rock-like surface. we made the graphite skip over the paper by the jagged shape of the rock underneath (fig. 7). this skipping allowed unexpected elements to influence the drawing’s marks. this was an exaggeration of the feedback normally found in analogue sketching and we used it as an analogue of the material dynamics of the canyon. the rock beneath the fig. 5 simon twose (2018). kaikōura canyon section [graphite on paper] fig. 6 simon twose (2018). kaikōura canyon section [graphite on paper] fig. 7a, 7b simon twose (2018). rock surface sketch study [photograph] 45 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 paper caused the marks to smudge and change direction, so that a sectional drawing of the sea floor became not a single line, but an indeterminate series of marks mapping the imagined presence of flows, pressures, mud and rock. some of the lines are singular and fine, and describe pure boundaries, such as at the water’s surface. others describe transitions between materials that are less defined, such as at the muddy junction of sea and sediment-laden seabed, or where sea cliffs drop vertiginously into an imagined darkness. the sketches traverse the imagined space of the canyon, allowing scale and material to be amorphous in order to distil something beyond instrumental description (figs. 8, 9). the research focusses on the traces and marks that contribute to openness in drawing: the blurs, erasures and pentimenti in an architectural sketch—the redrawing of lines, one over the other, to strengthen one’s thinking (fig. 10). pentimenti is used in art historical descriptions of art practice, and is useful in evoking the delicate dance between certainty and uncertainty in making drawings. joan faust, in discussing leonardo da vinci’s drawings, talks of how, evidenced by “a welter of pentimenti”, he engaged uncertainty in sketching: fig. 8 simon twose (2018). presencedrawing studies (details). sediment turbidity. [graphite on paper] 46 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 leonardo conceived of the sketch as a liminal stage, a stimulation of the mind to further investigations not a preparation for a particular work. in his concept drawing becomes “a process which is constantly going on in the artist’s mind,” and instead of fixing the flow of imagination, the uncertainty of line keeps it in flux. (faust, 2012: 81) these irresolute marks contribute to spatial understanding, they are part of drawing as an active way of knowing, a “knowing immanent in doing” (downton, 2003: 98). the indeterminate, blurred marks are not descriptive in an instrumental sense—but allude to abstract spatial qualities, such as immense scale, atmosphere or even the weight of material. they contribute to an understanding of presences, both within drawing and within drawing’s subject matter. a sketch, such as a section, captures form and contour but is also inflected by what that space is imagined to be like; the sketch triggers images in the drawer’s mind of pressure, weight, viscosity and unpredictable flows. an instrumental fig. 9 simon twose (2018). presencedrawing studies (details). gas eruptions. [graphite on paper] fig. 10 simon twose (2000). recalcitrant smudges, blurs, erasure and pentimenti of the sketch. [graphite sketch on butter paper] 47 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 understanding mixes with one cultivated through spatial imagination—dark, heavily drawn lines align with the obdurate mass of rock, fine curved lines with motile flows and pressures. gestural analogue drawing has traditionally been associated with intangible, qualitative dimensions. sketches are open: evocative, indeterminate and unfinished, and therefore, full of possibility. drawing is, to paraphrase nancy, nascent, “the opening of form” (2013: 1); it is necessarily irresolute. to elkins the “recalcitrant, ‘meaningless’ smears and blotches” (1995: 860) that surround the interpretable line hover between logic and a-logic. he calls them non-semiotic marks, with the power to evade interpretation, “shimmering thing(s) at the edge of analysis” (858). this aligns them with intangible spatial understandings, such as flows, atmosphere or presence. in this way, a smudged non-semiotic mark, made in concert with architectural imagination, is an uncertain mode of inquiry that embraces aleatory, agrammatical ways of knowing, to use sarat maharaj’s terms, engaging modes that are “beyond the organizing, classifying spirit of grammar” (2009: 4). maharaj makes the case for these uncertain aspects in art practice to be key to it as a complex and unique way of knowing. rather than the “methodological steel tracks” of know-how, it is a pursuit of no-how (3). it is part of a cultivation of non-method necessary to maintaining uncertainty, which maharaj argues is crucial to creative practices. a non-method where the openness of creative production prompts the discovery of intangible conditions, such as presences. the canyon project pursues sketchy indeterminacy into other media. it tests how analogue and digital media, and spatialized sound, can intensify the “tensions and intensities, and pentimenti, of mark making” (clift in nancy, 2013: back cover). and consequently, how an intensification of these open, abstract conditions might radicalise drawing’s projective connection to space beyond it, exploring it as a space of sfumato presences, in drawing and landscape. vr sketch-space in the canyon vr, we made the blurs and pentimenti of sketched marks three-dimensional and bodily navigable; a participant in the virtual environment is within a weather system of lines, smudges and grainy marks that are at huge scale and constantly changing in form and density. in this virtual sketch environment, the a-logical, non-semiotic marks, which allude to shared presences in the kaikōura canyon and in the material performance of the sketch become an endlessly transforming substance. they form an unbounded sketch-space that is canyon-like in its scale and an abstract evocation of flows, pressures and seismic jolts. viewers within the vr sketch-space are swept along by currents and navigate within a world of irresolute marks with no reference to their location or scale: marks appear huge, and pass, like ocean swells, or spawn endlessly in the distance creating a dynamic space with no discernible boundary. the subject of the sketch, the sea, becomes entangled with the spatiality of the digital medium. presences in drawing and landscape are palpable through the kinematics of vr (fig. 11). in canyon, vr is a sketchy medium, similar to the traditional architectural sketch. we configured the virtual environment through four types of mark, extracted from the analogue drawings: contour, flow, space and smudge. each 48 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 mark is then placed in flux via the capacity of the software to interactively adjust graphic variables such as transparency, colour, scale and granularity. further transformation occurs autonomously via a spawning system, in which a ‘parent’ mark spawns a ‘child’ that has independent behaviours and spawns further, independently behaving child objects. these propagating families of marks oscillate within an environmental milieu of dynamic particle systems and lighting effects, and are experienced via an array of camera manipulations. our strategy of exploiting the technical affordance of vr, to extend drawing’s traditional openness, contrasts with typical approaches to vr that are primarily concerned with verisimilitude. the reference point for architects using vr is the use of animation, which as documented by as and schodek (2008) has been developed primarily to communicate the kinematic experience of architecture. traditions of projective geometry condition the practice of animation that underpins spatial representation and the technical apparatus of the animation camera, which utilises principles of perspective. in the canyon project this is radically shifted. we reduced perspectival representation of ‘real’ space in favour of the space of an open, sketch-like indeterminacy; rather than passively presenting the viewer with a virtual version of reality, vr provides an environment available for multiple interpretations, as in an open sketch. this raises questions about how the immersive kinematics of vr can be a creative drawing medium, effectively intensifying the traditional openness of a sketch. we are interested in the architecture that this three-dimensional sketch environment provokes, and how the immersive medium of vr can afford conceptual openness, how it might distil things beyond instrumental description, such as presences. sonic sketches a landscape of blurred and smudged sounds accompanies the navigation of a viewer, or drawer, in the canyon vr space and installation. sonic sketches that blur and smudge and jolt their experience (fig. 12) confront participants moving through here. lawrence harvey created six fluidly interconnected soundscapes to correspond to aspects of the presence sketches. these have qualities of granularity, pointillism and unexpected shifts in scale and intensity gleaned from the sketches and the canyon subject matter. harvey notes that the temporal organisation for the sound design can be likened to a mobile slowly turning in the room where the sonic layers are circling or revolving within each other at different generative parameters cell cell: number of objects with animated shaders number of particle systems number of spatial audio assests objects with animated shaders: count size / proportion rotation / position mesh distortion animated shaders: textures [3 source images] dissolve image distortion pulsation [alpha channel] colour and transparency range rgba translation and rotation speed particle systems: type [lines/fog/swarm] texture velocity / direction emission rate / life time camera effects: [post processing] contrast/levels/bloom/ colour correction depth of field/blur sound: point and volumetric sound sources dynamic environmental audio propagation realtime audio occlusion randomization and fading fig. 11. jules moloney (2018). canyon installation, viewer in vr sketch environment. [vr still image, anastasia globa] 49 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 cycles. the soundscapes are composed to accentuate the motion inherent in the sound, and to provide a sense of fluctuation in the environment; the sound intensifies the experience of textural motion and flows, to “connect the tar paper folds, dents, cavities with an unsettled continuum of forces” (twose, moloney, harvey, 2018: 189). in the canyon project, sound is a way of drawing, as a spatial and sensorial way of sketching the kaikōura canyon landscape. it augments the appreciation of the sketch, taking its evocative aspects and making them appreciable in a non-visual, spatial and sensorial way. in this sense, the sonic drawings delve into the spatiality of the sketch, distilling aspects that evade instrumental description, aspects that are bodily appreciable, and not easily interpreted as representational marks. canyon installation at xvii venice biennale canyon was a mixed-media installation. it was a dark, immersive space formed by a forty metre drawing in black tar-paper, crumpled to form an enclosed space within the gallery. six overlapping soundscapes within the space accentuate the creases and spatial dislocations created by the tar-paper drawing. four small video screens were visible through fissures in the drawing. these allowed glimpses into a virtual environment, composed of continuously morphing, abstracted sketches. these flickering images provided the only light in the space, and they occasionally flashed brightly, jolting the space in a similar way to the soundscapes. participants entering the dark drawing space experienced a gradual dislocation from “normal” architectural space as their eyes adjust to the darkness. they entered into an abstract world of creased black surface, shifting soundscapes and digitally generated sketches (fig. 13). once in the small space of canyon, viewers were conceptually within an inhabitable drawing. they were within both a single mark and an unbounded, abstract submarine landscape. prompted to move around the dark space, following the crumpled surface and soundscapes, visitors discovered the flickering sources of light from the small vr screens showing through fissures in the surfaces. fig. 12 lawrence harvey (2018). canyon installation soundscape design. [screen shots of reaper program. screenshot, lawrence harvey] fig. 13 simon twose, jules moloney, lawrence harvey (2018). canyon installation, palazzo bembo, xvi venice biennale [photograph, anastasia globa] 50 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the black forty metre drawing was ‘sketched’ in the space by deforming the paper in response to intensities, pressures and flows imagined in the canyon (fig. 14). in this sense, it was an extension of ideas pursued in the canyon research, extending the gestural potential of drawing in response to a material feedback, as a way of coalescing two asymptotically related presences—in landscape and drawing. the tar-paper sketch was in response to the spatiality emerging from the vr and sound sketch-spaces, experimenting with how these might work as a spatially appreciable, sculptural space. the installation was in effect a fourth aspect to the hybrid drawing, augmenting the hand drawn, vr and sonic drawing modes. the room poses a question the installation was very difficult to record; it was very dark and immersive so relied on sensory experience. it was also unlike a traditional architectural exhibition. an expectation of seeing representations of architecture, when entering the space, quickly dissolved as one’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and the soundscapes imposed themselves on the senses—and the space itself began bodily to pose a question. it had a strange atmosphere not recordable solely in visual images. we tried several ways to capture this strangeness. we took panoramas that unravelled the crumpled drawing, captured the space in 3d imagery and took 3d videos of our interacting with the space. we put these into a vr environment, which had the odd effect of allowing one to inhabit the installation with one’s previous self (figs. 15, 16). we also recorded the drawing in material, with imprints of the creased surface cast in concrete and wax (figs. 17, 18). these recordings, in images, video and castings, are similar to the pentimenti of sketches—the many lines drawn over one another in the same place. they are part of an ongoing process of sketching that is about distilling presences, bringing them into space and material while keeping them sketch-like and irresolute. each mode of recording opens another set of possibilities and corresponding non-discursive registers, so is part of an iterative progression, each is a mark standing in for something beyond it. the acts of making involved in this ongoing process of sketching, recording then re-sketching, raise the question of drawing’s poiētics. poiēsis (ancient greek: ποίησις) is the etymological root of poetics and is related to technē, or the making of things; the formative, becoming of form. in heidegger’s words, “technē is fig. 14 simon twose, jules moloney, lawrence harvey (2018). canyon installation being physically drawn. [photograph, anastasia globa]. fig. 15 simon twose, jules moloney, lawrence harvey (2018). canyon installation, vertical panorama recording. [photograph, simon twose]. fig. 16 simon twose, jules moloney (2018). canyon vr environment: vr navigation of installation space and presence-drawings. [video still, anastasia globa]. 51 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the name not only for the activities and skills of the craftsman, but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts. technē belongs to bringing-forth, to poiēsis; it is something poiētic” (1977: 5). poiētic marks stand in for something beyond them, they are irresolute and in formation, referring to further possibilities. this is close to the way architectural drawings operate, they are an archive of making, a sea of marks that stand in for, and bring forth, space outside them, such as a building or landscape. the acts of making in an architectural drawing, such as in the full size sketching of the tar paper, acknowledge the poiētics of an architectural mark, that is, constantly in a state of referring outside itself while responding to the non-discursive characteristics of its making. poiēsis is part of the emergent, perpetual bringing forth quality of a sketch, capturing complex qualities such as the “invisible extremity of the mark [trait], the point whereby the line advances and loses itself beyond itself in its own desire” (nancy, 2013: xiii). the focus on the shared space of drawing’s making and the performative agencies of landscape opens the possibility of a poiētic architecture; a space of transference where drawing and landscape are in continual emergence or nascence. the canyon hybrid drawings, and installation, are concerned with distilling this poiētic spatiality. fig. 17 simon twose (2018). canyon installation recording, concrete imprints of the drawing surface. [photograph, simon twose] fig. 18 simon twose (2018). canyon installation recording, wax/ tar-paper surface imprints. [photograph: simon twose] 52 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 sfumato presences we use the term sfumato as a metaphor of relation. it is a way of imagining the difficult connection between drawing and space beyond it. sfumato is the active crossing and blurring of one thing with another, taking care “that your shadows and lights be united without strokes or marks, in the manner of smoke” (“senza tratti o segni, a uso di fumo”) (leonardo quoted in nagel, 1993: 11). it is a useful metaphor to evoke a complex intra-action of things, such as light and dark, drawing and building, drawing and landscape. sfumato alludes to a tending towards but never complete intersection of one thing and another. it aligns with sketching’s poiēsis, of a mark in the process of being made and becoming, or referring to, something beyond it. we use the term to evoke a hovering of presences, between drawing and the space it draws; it has a sense of open possibility and cloudy movement. sfumato is a metaphor that suits the canyon research’s ambition to problematise connections between things, such as the ideas and phenomena in architectural drawing, and it also paints an atmospheric image, of smoky indeterminacy, that closely aligns with the strange spatiality that appeared in the canyon vr, soundscapes and installation. future work at present canyon is in the mode of observational architectural drawing. drawings are in a sense archives of thinking, by way of many acts of marking; they are fields of collected impressions. these impressions are tied to the space in which the marks are made, as much as the ideas and subject matter they respond to. as architect riet eekhout says, drawing is a way of “speculating on the nature of a subject or object … and how, through drawing, their presence can be activated” (2014: 9). it is a way of extending sensory capacity, towards the discovery of things that might hover between the seen and unseen, revealing the “appearance of what was never hidden” (nancy, 2013: 105). drawing is also generative, it is a way of inventing space and form. the next stage of canyon will continue to develop how presences, distilled through hybrid drawing, play a role in ideation; how the shared space of drawing and landscape generate architectural space and form, while maintaining a nascent, sketch-like ever-emergence. canyon is part fig. 20. simon twose, jules moloney (2018). canyon vr environment: smudge zone of vr environment. [video still, anastasia globa]. 53 drawing canyon: sfumato presences in drawing and landscape p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 of an ongoing project in open architecture, an attempt to sketch an architecture that hovers between drawing and landscape, composed of presences hovering in sfumato relation. references as, i., schodek, d. (2008). dynamic digital representation in architecture: visions in motion, london, uk: taylor and francis. chard, n., kulper, p. (2013). pamphlet architecture 34: fathoming the unfathomable. new york: princeton architectural press. downton, p. (2003). design research. melbourne: rmit university press. eeckhout, r. (2014). process drawing (unpublished doctoral thesis, rmit university, melbourne, australia). elkins, j. (1995). marks, traces, “traits”, contours, “orli”, and “splendores”: nonsemiotic elements in pictures. critical inquiry, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 822-860. faust, j. (2012). andrew marvell’s liminal lyrics: the space between. newark, de: university of delaware press. gombrich, e. h. (1959, 2004). art and illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorial representation, new york, ny: phaidon press. heidegger, m. (1977). the question concerning technology (w. lovitt, trans.). new york, ny: harper & row. nagel, a. (1993). leonardo and sfumato. anthropology and aesthetics, res 24, pp. 7-20. nancy, j-l. (2013). the pleasure in drawing (p. armstrong, trans.). new york, ny: fordham university press. maharaj, s. (2009). know-how and no-how, stopgap notes on “method” in visual art as knowledge production. art and research, a journal of ideas contexts and methods, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 1-11. twose, s., moloney, j., harvey, l. (2018). canyon: experiments in drawing through analogue sketching, sound and virtual reality. in d. maxwell (ed.), proceedings of 1st annual design research conference (adr18) (pp. 179-194). sydney: university of sydney. 31 architectural drawings do not represent mike linzey introduction most people view architectural drawings as a means to an end, a mode of communication, a medium of expression. even most architects usually describe their own drawings as representations of something else, as pointing towards some future condition of architecture that matters more than mere drawings, or as imperfect representations of some prior and usually superior theoretical ideal. drawings for most architects are only a sign, a semiotic device that points away from itself towards what truly matters. most people don’t think very much about drawings at all, but when they do it is often in this middling, muddling, drawing-doesn’t-matter sort of way. people who do think usually identify two other kinds of being as well. effectively they recast the task of drawing in the form of a representational project. juliana pallasmaa, for example, says that the energetic lines and smudges on the page of a drawing represent a kind of muscular memory in the bodily experience of the draftsperson (pallasmaa 2009: 89-105), and mark wigley says that the “almost-nothing” gossamer condition of architectural drawings stands for or withers in contrast to the excessive materiality and the blinding super-sufficiency of architecture itself (wigley 2008). karl popper declared that drawings are “objective ideas” (popper 1972, 1994). he made the radical claim that human constructs such as architectural drawings, orchestral scores, mathematical theorems and scientific theories are ideas in their own right. yet popper also took perhaps the most exaggeratedly representational position when he said that these drawn ideas occupy a kind of “world” of objective forms and signifiers, and that their primary function is to negotiate “interactions” between two other “worlds” of experiential thought and physicality, between mind and matter. thus his very important empirical insight rapidly descended into yet another modern version of platonism. martin heidegger’s unitary “world” on the other hand has the same sense of being-in-ness and historical timeliness as popper’s three worlds, but without reducing epistemology to a kind of semiological conjecture. most people who think about drawing do not write about it. even people who do write about it often persist in calling architectural drawings a mode of reference to something else. representation is such an easy language to slip into. pallasmaa does it. wigley does it, as we shall see shortly. we spent years at my own school trying to keep the words “representation” and “communication” out of our descriptions of the architectural drawing curriculum. we did not succeed. interstices 11 my simple-minded proposition then is this: that architectural drawing is not essentially a mode of representation and communication. drawings are instead autonomous and novel architectural ideas. it is not their primary function to represent something else, but to present themselves as something new. on one hand they do not represent the private experiences of the architect who draws them, since architects do not have clear and distinct architectural ideas other than those we discover in a drawing. nor do drawings re-present what vitruvius called the operis futuri figura, the future form of an intended built work. the issue here is one of strict temporal ordering. it is drawings that take priority in time, and building follows. this is not to deny that drawings often do mediate between architects and architecture or between architecture and buildings in the ways that popper calls interactions (1994). for example, many aspects and details of iktinos’s drawings for the classical parthenon would have also represented the forms and ratios of earlier temples in the doric style. what i am saying is that representation is not their primary role and function. drawings work more “truthfully” in another way altogether, as autonomous performances of innovative meaning. in his fine essay on the almost-nothing of architectural drawings, mark wigley says at one stage that drawings are neither an idea nor an object (wigley 2008: 157). but i want to say the opposite to this, that drawings are both a graphical object and a performative idea, literally as vitruvius stated it. drawings are the graphical diathesis through and within which an architect sets out and discovers an idea for the first time. i want to explore in this paper other ways of describing architectural drawings, additional to representation and communication and interaction, that we can share and understand in this diathetical sense. in heidegger’s terms, i will argue that drawings are the being of architecture. drawings are a kind of this-worldly and historical entity that dispel the darkness and reveal the meaning of architecture as energy and performance and light. heidegger said “the world worlds” (1971: 44). i would say that drawings draw architecture out of the night of academic mystification and representational thought, into a creative world of an altogether more relevant and timely kind of architectural discourse. heidegger did not discuss architectural drawings as such, but i argue, if it were not for drawings there would be no effective language of building, dwelling and thinking. drawing is the originary “language” of architecture; it is a graphical language but this does not mean that it represents thinking or building or ideas about dwelling any more than it represents the heavy substance of a stone wall that is yet to be built or than it represents the experience of a muscular prehension that is never otherwise articulated and expressed so clearly. like a gift to architecture, a drawing presents the dramatic truth of being-in-the-world and being-in-time. it brings architecture to light inthe-world, in-time, and for the first time. drawing the parthenon in order to set the scene for a discussion of the phenomenology of architectural drawings, my essay begins by recounting a story that will already be familiar to many architectural readers. john coulton (1977: 112-3) describes how the original drawings of the parthenon would have brought the classical vision of the greek gods into an enhanced light compared to other temples that had been built and 33 planned in the doric tradition. i invite us to imagine an aesthetic debate raging around the presentation of this new idea for the parthenon, and how this debate over drawings may have been misconstrued as irrational by socrates. let us imagine then this key moment in the history of architectural ideas. it was the year 450 bc. socrates would have been 19 years old when iktinos the architect presented his drawings for the parthenon for the very first time. we may imagine a bundle of wax tablets, scratchings on stone or paintings on wood or leather sheets, and let us say that the primary audience at this presentation was the sculptor/architect pheidias. coulton (1977) calls this one of the most original and interesting presentations of an idea in the whole history of greek architecture. borrowing from heidegger we would say that iktinos’s drawings were the coming-into-presence of the meaning of the parthenon within-time and for the first time, at least so far as pheidias and socrates were concerned. these wax impressions et cetera were the first historical intimation of what would shortly become the most beautiful temple in the world of athenian architecture. “look how beautiful is the parthenon!” said iktinos the architect. (laertius 1925: 177 [vii 67]) the greek word he would have used was kalos, from which, in heidegger’s sometimes erratic tradition, we may be licensed to misconstrue that the word calorific also derives. “look at this hot new architecture!” iktinos showed pheidias the now-famous front elevation of the parthenon, a sea of columns proudly drawn in the doric style. coulton leads us to imagine next that pheidias responded negatively to this idea. the negative of kalos is aishros, meaning ugly and shameful. fig. 1 plans of the classical parthenon and the older parthenon drawn to the same scale. courtesy m. korres. interstices 11 “it is a shameful attempt,” pheidias might have said, “there are too many columns.” the canonical doric temple only had six columns on its front elevation. in the temple of zeus at olympia, for example, into which pheidias would later install his most famous sculptural work, the architect libon had provided the correct number, six columns. but iktinos presented here an orthographic composition with eight columns. “what are you trying to produce here,” pheidias might have asked, “a pseudodipteron in the degenerate style of the ionians?” to pheidias’s eyes what iktinos had drawn was not hot, it was pseudés, false, striving for effect. the situation we are imagining here was like an architectural design critique. pericles and the citizens of athens had placed pheidias in overall charge of all the new work on the acropolis. pheidias did not want the new god-house for athena to be ugly, shameful and false, and he challenged the drawing on aesthetic grounds. iktinos replied with a comparative drawing, and we imagine now a pair of plans as in fig. 1, laid out in order to explain his rationale. by introducing two additional columns, he said, and with the outer faces of the cella walls aligned as is proper with the centre-lines of the columns one in from each corner, then more width is provided in the interior of the cella. according to coulton’s measurements the free space between the inner colonnades in the eastern cella of the classical parthenon is 9.82 metres, where the equivalent measurement at olympia is only 6.35 metres. in the older parthenon that previously had been destroyed by the persians, and that iktinos and pheidias were effectively rebuilding from scratch, the equivalent width is estimated to have been about 6.8 metres. so iktinos’s drawing provided pheidias an extra three metres of space in which to display the new chryselephantine cult figure. a few octastyle doric temples had previously been built in italy and greece, but none that we know of had yet employed this novel strategy to widen the interior space of the cella at the expense of the exterior perambulatory spaces. in the most theatrical kind of drawing that vitruvius called scenographia, iktinos may have shown how beautifully the parthenon uses this extra width to display the goddess to the best effect. “look,” iktinos would have said, “how previously the goddess was enframed in a narrow dark corridor of space. in the conventions of the doric style, at olympia, libon has given your masterwork a dark and hidden look. but here at athens the goddess is revealed standing comfortably in her disclosedness (alétheia) with two high windows let into the eastern wall of the fig. 2 an indicative construction for a scenographia drawing, photo-montaged by the author from various sources. 35 cella to introduce the first light of dawn into the interior colonnaded spaces and with room even for the internal columns to return and bounce the light around behind her. in this way too athena is presented in an interior room that has the same base proportions (4:9) as also applies to the exterior proportions of the temple. is this not truly a more beautiful setting than the narrow corridor of space that the doric ideal would otherwise provide?” the academic view on representation let us continue this historical reverie in order to speculate about the willfulness of academic theory. let us imagine that the 19-year-old socrates audited this heated exchange, heard these strong and emotionally loaded words, kalos, meaning beauty, alétheia, meaning truth, pseudés, meaning false, eidos and its cognate idea, meaning an architectural image impressed into wax, fought over with passion and energy by these god-like beings. socrates may have tried to record or critique or undermine the dialectical vitality of these god-like beings, pheidias and iktinos. perhaps he willfully distorted what he had seen for reasons known only to himself, or perhaps he simply got it wrong. something, anyway, inspired socrates to found a school of thought in which craftsmen were cast as lesser beings, and artists as altogether removed from access to alétheia. the academic philosophers who came after socrates conspired through various analogies and expressive devices to strip the language of its dialectical vitality and reduce it to the representational conventions that we know today. the academic viewpoint so dominates our thinking that we are almost compelled to accept as true that the parthenon represents plato’s timeless and perfect ideal form of architecture. every word represents a perfect idea, so any particular assemblage of stones to which we apply the name “temple” is only a rough and inferior copy of the idea, “temple”. we assume any drawings that iktinos may or may not have produced would merely have mediated and communicated these wonderful ideas between the architect’s mental experiences of an exact theoretical vision or intuition and the inexact world of practical temple-building. this is despite the glaring historical anomaly that this view implies. one of the more potent ideas that are contained in the academic discourse has been plato’s analogy of the divided line. in book 6 of the republic (509d-513e) plato effectively suggested that human apprehension can be divided into a bodily part and an intellectual part. and just as with the body, touching something with the hand usually provides more obscure impressions than things that are seen with the eyes, so also on the intellectual side, our apprehension of mathematical ratios are supposedly less clear and our intuitions of “pure ideas” in the timeless realm of forms are supposedly the most clear and direct of all. our views about ideas continue to be shaped by this analogy even though we also know that it is antiquated and unscientific. already in antiquity aristotle was more than a little uneasy about the academic theory of ideas, and zeno and the stoics clearly knew what herophilus and eristratus had discovered early in the third century bc, that human psychology conforms to the musculature of the body; the eyes not only see things through the massive optic nerves but they also look for the forms of things, interrogate the world and images of the world through patterned searches that are known as rapid eye movements and are governed by the smaller oculomotor nerves; and our hands not only touch things and feel hot and cold but they also grasp things in the distinctively human preinterstices 11 hensile fashion. everywhere throughout the body, the greeks knew that our nervous system runs in pairs. grasping a pencil or a digital device and drawing with it is an intellectual skill that is governed not only by the complex system of mechano-receptor neurons of the hand, but all of the neural pathways are engaged in drawing – feeling the texture of the paper with the hand, seeing it with the eye, searching for form and meaning also with the eye but in an energetic and muscular mode of looking, as well as drawing and smudging the page with the energetic musculature of the arm and hand. a phenomenology of drawing in three stages in being and time (1927) heidegger set out through phenomenology to recover the pre-socratic and non-academic meaning of being. although the purview of his argument did not extend to architectural drawings, yet i argue there is much of value to be drawn from studying his text. what is thoroughly non-representational about heidegger’s phenomenology is effectively summed up by the german word, dasein. the profoundly unitary and this-worldly quality of this word is usually marked with hyphens in english translations. dasein means being-inthe-world. heidegger’s version of being is down-to-earth whereas the academic versions of it were always at least quasi-divine. being-in-the-world signifies for heidegger the primordial and energetic unity of all aesthetic productions of a technically proficient dasein, and architectural drawings of course are one kind of aesthetic production. rather than locating ideas as the academics did in a nebulous and timeless world at the far end of plato’s divided line, heidegger reappointed all meaning into this-world-here, being-here, being-in-time. we may think of heidegger’s dasein as something like a greek craftsperson: what hippocrates called a technités. dasein is someone who would rather take care of their own equipment, ensure their tools were sharp and true, even in the face of their own death. heidegger employed this technical device in opposition to the anti-technical world-view of the likes of socrates, plato and, to some extent, aristotle. phenomenology then is a non-academic approach to art and work. while with socrates and plato the essential ideas were other-worldly, divorced from art and craft, and a-historical, heidegger opposes to this what he calls dasein’s intrinsic temporality and historicality and its work-man-like nature. his analysis is grounded in concepts of readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand, concepts that refer to and build upon the prehensile musculature and the limited sensitivity of the hands of a manually adept technités. as such, however, there is nothing about the visible aspect of drawings in heidegger’s basic notions of dasein. a phenomenology of drawing requires that the eye also be engaged along with these hand-related phenomena. the question of visuality does come into play in being and time, but only relatively late in the book, after page 376 of the mcquarrie/robinson translation, where heidegger introduces what he calls the “moment of vision” (augenblick) in relation to an analysis of the ontological meaning of care. our outline phenomenology of architectural drawings then proceeds in three stages: from readiness-to-hand to presence-at-hand to the moment of vision. in other words it will proceed from prehension to apprehension to comprehension. these three terms, prehension, apprehension and comprehension, all relate to grasping. the word “comprehension” that we usually associate with mental ac37 tivity, therefore entirely and academically separate from the body, actually derives from cicero’s translation of the stoic technical term, katalépsis. katalépsis means to grasp something firmly and resolutely, as if with the hand. comprehension for dasein is not a disembodied mental act. it is more correct to signify it as closing a loop in the neural network between the eye and the hand of a technically proficient dasein. stage 1. readiness-to-hand in readiness-to-hand (zuhandenheit), a piece of equipment is grasped thematically and energetically put to use in an appropriate technical context. an architect grasps a pen in the already knowing and skilful role of being an architect. there is to be no hint of “learning how to draw” in the phenomenology of drawing. heidegger only emphasises (1962: 98) how differently it is that one seizes upon a piece of manual equipment, grasps it and puts it to use, compared to staring at it disdainfully or refusing to work at all, on theoretical grounds. the sense of temporality, that is prehended readily-to-hand using the muscles and mechanoreceptor cells of the hand, heidegger likens to the rhythmic beat-beat-beat of a hammer at work, or the stitching rhythm of a tailor’s needle and so on. manual work takes time. it cannot be done without a proper sense of timing. yet with this kind of temporality often there is no great sense of the passing of time nor is one often aware of the historical significance of what one might be working at. it is not to say that the prehensile technités is blind, for the rhythmic manipulation of work must be guided proficiently and closely by the eye, but heidegger calls this kind of workman-like sight “circumspective” vision, which is to say that one tends to look around the equipment and around the workshop or studio, not so much looking at it. in a strange way, what grasps and what is grasped circumspectively are not differentiated within readiness-to-hand. technical equipment seems to dissolve into the prehensile body. the medium of drawing dissolves into the act of drawing. there is neither space nor time nor vision for ideas to make an appearance in the prehensive mode of readiness-to-hand. stage 2. presence-at-hand in the second stage, which heidegger calls presence-at-hand (vorhandenheit), the regular rhythm of work-time is held up and suspended. this may be for a variety of reasons. entities that are most closely to-hand may be encountered as something unusable. the hammer may be too heavy, the needle or the plane blade too blunt. or maybe something is missing, equipment that should be tohand is not to-hand. or maybe something else related to the work just cannot be made to budge. we can imagine iktinos working away at his drawings. say his charcoal pencil breaks or a scribing tool is blunt; this would be only a minor interruption, and presence-at-hand might scarcely announce itself at all in such circumstances. but say he encounters the intractable problem of determining a suitable scale and proportion in the hexastyle form to accommodate pheidias’s giant sculpture: with a problem like this, heidegger’s analysis suggests, iktinos would have obtained a “pre-phenomenal glimpse” of architectural worldhood that was unique and thoroughly original. no longer simply prehended, and no longer viewed circumspectively, instead all of his defective attempts at drawing would have been scrutinised and stared at in an extreme of apprehension. for that which cannot be budged calls attention to itself in presence-at-hand in the interstices 11 mode of conspicuousness, obtuseness and obstinacy. and, in such extreme circumstances, heidegger says, the whole workshop and the context of equipment would become lit up in a mode of vision that is totally different than circumspection. we imagine the musculature around iktinos’s eyes working overtime, searching everywhere for a new kind of form. what is lit up in presence-at-hand is “disclosed” and “laid open”; it takes on the character of alétheia. (heidegger 1962: 102-5) stage 3. the moment of vision but to stare at something apprehensively is not yet to understand it. comprehension comes in a third stage of phenomenology that heidegger calls the moment of vision (augenblick). “the moment of vision,” heidegger writes, “permits us to encounter for the first time what can be ‘in a time’ as ready-to-hand or present-at-hand” (heidegger 1962: 388, heidegger’s emphasis). at this stage in the phenomenology of drawing, the eye is fully engaged along with the hand. augenblick literally means at “a glance”, but heidegger makes it clear that vision is understood here in an active sense, not just seeing a vision passively passing before our eyes like idly watching a cinematic presentation with merely a glance of the eye, but an active alert participatory kind of lookingat-that-which-stands-out. in our case iktinos “glances” at his latest drawings in a state of resolute rapture. he sees and comprehends the octastyle idea. he is acutely aware of its timeliness, beauty and historical significance. this critical and originary kind of phenomenological vision, i argue, is never achieved when drawings are treated merely as medial tokens of reference to transcendental ideas that are outside of the ecstatic present and presentation of the drawing itself. this is why it is important to draw attention to this other aspect of a drawing’s function that is ideational but non-representational. heidegger does not go on to describe a possible fourth stage in the technical phenomenology in which work reverts and resumes its primordial rhythm. the statement, “[t]hen – when it dawns – it is time for one’s daily work,” (heidegger 1962: 467) does not, i think, capture that most peculiar phenomenon of all, where what had formerly been stared at and disclosed as a problem in presence-athand, and then discovered in the eureka-like ecstasy of the historical moment of vision, now mysteriously rapidly and quietly subsides into the former kind of circumspective invisibility of readiness-to-hand. to rehandle a hammer or to lighten an interior room requires no great feat of the imagination after it has been done the first time. after iktinos completed his work at athens he went on to bassae where he designed the famous temple of apollo epikorios, facing north and reverting to the traditional hexastyle doric format. the new work at bassae was not without innovation, however: iktinos repeated his famous strategy with the pi-shaped internal colonnade, and he found another original way to introduce sunlight behind the colonnade by opening a doorway in the eastern wall of the naos (fig. 3). and pheidias went on to olympia to work on his great statue of zeus. beside his workshop he built a 1:1 scale model of the naos of the temple in order to assemble the chryselephantine sculpture. in this case too there is evidence that pheidias experimented with new ideas, including an array of windows to illuminate his sculpture from the side. 39 conclusion i have tried in this paper to come up with some words to substitute for representing …, indicating …, signifying …. for as soon as we say, in an architectural context, “this drawing represents … ”, our discourse effectively “descends” out of what heidegger calls the “ecstatic present” of the moment of vision to the level of representational discourse that addresses only the externalities of architecture and forgets about its being. what begins to emerge, perhaps, is a family of words that are naturally associated with theatricality and visuality. “this drawing shows … ”, “reveals …”, “enacts …”, “performs …”. what iktinos’s drawings “showed” and “performed” in the time of the classical parthenon was what heidegger calls “the truth” in an authentic and nonrepresentational sense. the architectural meaning of alétheia in this case refers to letting the light of the dawning sun into an interior space, opening windows and doors, dispelling the darkness that had formerly surrounded the gods in the doric style. references coulton, j. j. (1977). greek architects at work: problems of structure and design. london: elek. heidegger, m. (1962). being and time. (j. macquarrie and e. robinson, trans.). oxford: blackwell. heidegger, m. (1971). the origin of the work of art. in poetry, language, thought (a. hofstadter, trans.). new york: harper & row. laertius, d. (1925). lives of eminent philosophers (r. d. hicks, trans.). london: heinemann. pallasmaa, j. (2009). the thinking hand, existential and embodied wisdom in architecture. chichester: wiley. plato (1955). the republic (h. d. lee, trans.). harmondsworth: penguin. popper, k. (1972). objective knowledge, an evolutionary approach. oxford: clarendon press. popper, k. r. (1994). knowledge and the body-mind problem, in defence of interaction. london: routledge. wigley, m. (2008). towards a history of quantity. in a. vidler (ed.). architecture between spectacle and use (pp. 155-163). williamstown (mass.): sterling and francine clark art institute. figure 3 eastern doorway in the temple of apollo epikourios at bassae (photo: the author). interstices 08 43 introduction the concepts of the coming community, which we discover in giorgio agamben’s work, and of a future people, treated by gilles deleuze and félix guattari in what is philosophy?, appear to be utopian formulations of community. they seem to forestall, indefinitely, the arrival or satisfaction of community, making it an impossible project. yet, to assume the perpetual deferral of the coming community does not allow for the ontological and ethical striving that participates, not in a fixed idea of community, but in a fluid structure that opens up the possibility for new forms of collective sociability. i would like to argue that the striving for a coming community, and the formation of a future people, is an ethico-aesthetic activity suffused with an affirmative joy that we can associate with deleuze’s treatment of the concept of a life. the insistence on the indefinite article, a life, determines that no life in particular can be denominated, but that the singularity of any life can participate in community. while admitting that utopia is not the best possible word, deleuze and guattari stress that utopia as an idea can become useful through an active engagement with contemporary geopolitical problems (deleuze and guattari, 1994: 100); for example, the question of refuge. within the specific limits of the discipline of architecture, how can we frame a utopia (no-where) for the problems (now-here) of the present? the architectural theorist, reinhold martin, has recently speculated on what he calls utopian realism as a means of transforming feelings of helplessness. this vision is directed not at the distant, inaccessible future, but suggests that in the present things can be otherwise (2005: 5). with such a vision of hope in mind, this essay will address ways in which the concepts of a coming community, a future people and a life can be activated as a practical utopian attitude; an attitude that helps to confront the problems of present architectural discourse and production in a globalized world, where socio-political relations have become increasingly fraught. this essay cannot offer a fixed answer to the question of what kind of architecture will solve the problem of a coming community. instead, what i attempt here is the articulation of different philosophical constructions of community, to suggest ways in which architecture might reframe its material and theoretical projects. striving for a coming community and the question of a life hélène frichot interstices 08 45interstices 08 45 the structure of the coming community the structure of the coming community allows us to address contemporary problems, which remain with us as part of our legacy, which demand our attention in the present, and which threaten to pass into the future unresolved unless we take up their challenge. to do so, we need to think, using creative, conceptual processes in the ever mobile and elastic present. as deleuze suggests: “to think means to be embedded in the present-time stratum that serves as a limit: what i can see and what i can say today?” he adds: “thought thinks its own history (the past), but in order to free itself from what it thinks (the present) and be able finally to ‘think otherwise’ (the future)” (1988: 119). to frame a practical philosophy, deleuze turns to 17th century dutch philosopher, benedict de spinoza, for whom the theme of a life evolves through the diminution and increase in our power to act in a world. the greater our capacity to act, the stronger our force of existence, and the more open we are to being affected. of our relations and acts of creation across a common plane of immanence, deleuze suggests: “it is a long affair of experimentation, requiring a lasting prudence” (125).1 the ethico-aesthetic task of inventing a new people, and a new future, is never one that can be satisfied once and for all. what is required is the understanding that we are never separate from our common world, and that we do not know in advance what we are capable of, nor what good or bad compositions of the socio-political we might enter into. deleuze argues that there are “laws of composition and decomposition of relations which determine both the coming into existence of modes, and the end of their existence” (1990: 211). every thing, person, institution, comes into being through a series of relations, and is transformed in response to encounters, new situations and the admixture of further materials and relations. “when a body encounters another body, or an idea another idea, it happens that the two relations combine to form a more powerful whole, and sometimes one decomposes the other, destroying the cohesion of its parts” (1988: 19). from an architectural point of view, it is important to apprehend that these compositions are not only assembled from the socio-political relations between people, their thoughts and actions.2 in the midst of these relations, different kinds of architectural materials and surrounds, and different kinds of human and other bodies intermingle. architecture can augment forms-of-life by recognizing that its material is animate and inanimate, made up not only of steel, concrete and glass, but also of the social relations between people. new compositions arise through explorative experimentation. existence becomes an ethical test, though not to determine what is right or wrong. rather, it determines whether life is augmented or diminished, depending on what compositions it enters into (deleuze, 1988: 40-41). whether at the scale of the single cell, the human body, the building, or the institution, these formations are made coherent by relations and compositions, or decompositions, in response to different situations. beatitude is a perplexing spinozist concept, or, rather, a state of being, which is of especial importance in deleuze’s late essay, immanence: a life … a life, or that which participates in absolute immanence, is said to achieve complete potential, and complete beatitude (deleuze, 2001: 27).3 an entire chapter of deleuze’s expressionism in philosophy: spinoza is dedicated to this important concept, which frequently confuses secular audiences. through the concept of beatitude, 1. in a similar vein, agamben insists that the concept of a life constitutes a pressing problem for a coming philosophy, one that can be re turned to a practical calling (agamben, 1999: 238). 2. an alternative term for composition developed by deleuze and guattari is assemblage. different assemblages, for instance, machinic assemblages and collective assemblages of enunciation, combine bodies, actions, passions, and acts, statements and incorporeal transformations respectively. see deleuze and guattari (1987). 3. in the english translation by anne boyman, we find the term beatitude diluted by being replaced with the term, bliss. interstices 08 45 interstices 08 45 4. through the concept of beati tude deleuze and guattari describe how spinoza gives infinite movement to thought : “there he attains incredible speeds, with such lightening compressions that one can only speak of music, of tornadoes, of wind and strings” (1994: 48). 5. i will not directly address blanchot’s unavowable community, which is made in response to nancy. though blanchot’s murmur might still be heard asking whether it is possible to belong to any community at all, especially that community to which we are obliged to avow our allegiance. 6. this essay is translated as “beyond human rights” in agamben (2000). its original title, “we refugees”, is inspired by an essay written by hannah arendt, also called “we refugees” (1943). deleuze and guattari describe how spinoza gives infinite movement to thought: “there he attains incredible speeds, with such lightning compressions that one can only speak of music, of tornadoes, of wind and strings” (1994: 48). while this paper aspires to arrive at the conceptual moment of beatitude, a turn in experience that transports us to an image of thought, it will in all likelihood, and perhaps necessarily, fail.4 what i will focus on is the ethical striving for, and composition of, the coming community, and a future people, which is driven by a striving toward beatitude, or what is also known as spinoza’s third kind of knowledge. to achieve this i will, alongside agamben, and deleuze and guattari’s work, pass briskly through jean-luc nancy’s concept of the inoperative community.5 aside from an orientation directed toward a future, deleuze, agamben, and nancy all describe a circulation of singularities in their formulations of a community to come. i propose that architecture is at the same time composed of singularities, and can be seen as that medium in which further singularities co-mingle. giorgio agamben’s whatever singularities agamben’s coming community is presented to us as a series of fragments, more affective than effective in their argumentation. agamben does not even give a description of the coming community, which we are to conceptually place in conjunction with a coming philosophy and a coming politics. instead, he intimates that there is no such community, that it is perhaps nowhere, and, as such, utopian. the coming community appears to be without a place; what’s more, it appears to be a community that has never been. resisting identification as this or that thing, the coming community is patched together out of what agamben names ‘whatever singularities’, co-mingling and without identifiable attributes (agamben, 1993: 85). a difficulty arises here with respect to what can be said about architecture if it cannot be ascribed attributes. the ‘whatever singularities’ composing agamben’s coming community own no common ground, no set of beliefs or practices that conjoin them; they merely appropriate belonging as such, according to a structure of being-such (1993: 2). agamben argues that this is the greatest threat the coming community can level against the state-apparatus. if the state has no means to identify the outlines of this community, how can it placate, order and contain it? we might add that this does not necessarily stop the state from denominating identity. for instance, a community of suspect others may be manufactured on the basis of perceived threat, as in the war against terror, or in the treatment of refugees in the australian context. in contrast, the striving for a coming community requires that the citizen learn to acknowledge the refugee that he or she is. in we refugees,6 agamben goes so far as to suggest that our political survival depends on the recognition that we are all, in one way or another, refugees: “the refugee is perhaps the only thinkable figure for the people of our time and the only category in which we may see today … the forms and limits of a coming political community” (2000: 16). we slowly realize that the so-called citizen has, in a global state of exception, or emergency, become as vulnerable as the refugee. agamben asks us to look in the direction of the camp and the figure of the refugee (rather than the nation-state and the figure of the citizen) to begin to imagine interstices 08 47interstices 08 47 a community to come (2000: 16). but how might we begin to imagine a coming community which – as mark holland suggests regarding blanchot’s concept of community – may “never constitute a community except in this mode of ‘yet to be’”? (1996: 188). the formulation of a coming community as a state for which we might yearn, but which remains always just out of grasp, only appears to deny the very immanent particularities of a here and now. the permanent flux inherent in the concept of a coming community is akin to becoming, that is, a transformative metamorphosis that draws us into the sphere of life, so that new forms-of-life might be created. architecture can contribute here, not so much in terms of fixed attributes of durability, beauty, or utility, but by opening up a flexible and responsive material field for new forms-of-life to emerge. encompassing an intimate relationship with the present as it passes, and expanding into the past as into the future, the coming community does not have to be located in an evasive ‘yet to be’. finally, the coming philosophy must take the concept of life, or a life, as its pressing concern (agamben, 1999: 238). jean-luc nancy’s singular plural being in contrast, nancy’s coming community has always already arrived. paradoxically, this does not mean that the necessity of heeding its coming is in any way diminished. in his essay the inoperative community, nancy argues against the most ancient myth of the western world: the conception of a lost community as a lost capacity after which we still yearn (1991: 9). for agamben, the coming community has never been; for nancy, community has never been lost, and there is no such person as the one who has nothing in common. even in the extreme context of the concentration or extermination camp, where we discover the “will to destroy community”, we can also discover resistance (35). from time to time, such resistance has become visible in australian refugee camps; for instance, through acts of arson, hunger strikes, lip sewing, or successful and unsuccessful attempts at escape. nancy identifies community as a “resistance to immanence” (1991: 35): “it is precisely the immanence of man to man, or it is man, taken absolutely, considered as immanent being par excellence, that constitutes the stumbling block to a thinking of community” (1991: 3). this move away from immanence seems to pit nancy against deleuze. however, the immanence nancy critiques places the human subject at its centre. on deleuze’s plane of immanence, neither subject nor object is given prominence, but relations between different moments of becoming appear briefly only to fade away again. nancy’s community is about compearing: an event of singularities, or singular beings, appearing together, a co-appearance that exposes us to our very finitude (1991: 28). equally, it depends on the concept of partage, a sharing out or division of singular being: “at the limit, the exposition of singular beings to one another and the pulse of this exposition: the compearance, the passage, and the divide of sharing” (1991: 38). an incomplete passage of sharing conjoins at the same time as it splits us apart, by turn distinguishing us, and making us indistinguishable. nancy calls this an “exposing-sharing” (29), that is, the paradoxical construction of the singular plural. nancy’s community, which has never been lost, while at the same time never achieving completion, participates in a coming: “and what remains thus, or what is coming and does not stop coming as what remains, is what we call existence” (nancy, 1997: 132). as such, the passage of the coming community interstices 08 47 interstices 08 47 remains inconclusive (35). importantly, community is not a work to be produced, though it might be imagined through the creative impulses of writing, art or architecture. these creative practices should not be concerned with erecting monuments, but with facilitating action for the time being. for instance, in a striving for community, the monumentalizing impulse of architecture would have to be redirected to more provisional ends. despite his questioning of immanence, nancy shares with deleuze a belief in the emancipatory promise of the creative act, as well as a formulation of community that does not anticipate a moment of completion. in unison with agamben, nancy is also insistent that community owns no essential attributes, but, instead, is an ongoing activity.7 the ethico-aesthetic practice of concept creation like nancy, deleuze and guattari believe that what a future people have in common is resistance: “their resistance to death, to servitude, to the intolerable, to shame and to the present” (1994: 110). importantly, a resistance to capture, in a movement of absolute deterritorialization (101), provides the potential for a new earth and a new people. deleuze and guattari use the concept of utopia as a figure of political promise, as a critical point from which the present milieu can consider itself and its pressing problems. they appropriate samuel butler’s formulation of erewhon (utopia) to designate not only no-where, but also now-here: the patch of new earth where we can pitch our tent for the meantime. a provisional architecture, modest in its aspirations and durable only for as long as the immediate circumstances dictate, could provide a space of potential for this kind of realist utopia. the coming community of a future people circulates around the construction of new concepts and the identification of contemporary problems. unlike nancy’s inoperative community, it seems to have work to do. deleuze and guattari tell us that a concept is acquired by “inhabiting, by pitching one’s tent, by contracting a habit” (1994: 105), but concepts can also be repulsive, and some tents become despicable in their distribution and use. concepts, much like built archi tectural forms, can create life possibilities but can also restrict forms-of-life. in any event, the creation of concepts calls for a place where philosophy and art, life and concept can converge, a place to which we can proceed according to a practical, ethico-aesthetics and where the coming community can engage in what deleuze describes as “the problem of the work of art yet to come” (deleuze, 1990: 248). this work must constantly resist the deadliness of banality, and the insistence of opinion and cliché. we can work through the power of concept creation as an ethico-aesthetic activity, but first we must increase our power so that we are capable of creative activity. one of the most radical aspects of deleuze and guattari’s creative philosophy is that concept creation – as well as the construction of affects and percepts of art, the propositions or functions of science, even the framing capacity of architecture – constitutes ethical and properly political activity. foucault wrote of deleuze and guattari’s first collaborative work, anti-oedipus, that it was a work of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in france for quite a long time (1983: xiii). the last book deleuze and guattari collaborated on was what is philosophy?. in pursuing the restless question of the title late in their lives, they were not merely reflecting 7. the temporal orientation of deleuze and guattari’s future people, or a people to come, also sets us upon a passage toward the future, but with less passivity than evinced by nancy. parenthetically, michael hardt and antonio negri argue in their influential book, empire, that deleuze and guattari have not gone far enough here. they suggest that the pair manage to articulate a future people “only superficially and ephemerally, as a chaotic, indeterminate horizon marked by the ungraspable event” (hardt and negri, 2000: 28). interstices 08 49interstices 08 49 on lives well lived, but laying out a new plan for ethical becoming. in deleuze and guattari’s shared project, creativity and ethical activity operate simultaneously. their project requires a double becoming, a zone of exchange between philosophy and non-philosophy that enables the constitution of a people to come, and a new earth (1994: 109). though, at first, the temporal structure of the coming community might appear to require perpetual deferral, the ontological and ethico-aesthetic striving we experience toward the constitution of community should not be under-estimated.8 in response to deleuze’s essay, immanence: a life …, agamben argues that deleuze’s attempts to account for a life remain thwarted. a life is not something that can be represented, only intimated. a life is impossible to approach directly, for it shies from our face-to-face confrontation. yet, something happens on the approach to this question that is inextricably interconnected with the problem of a coming community, a future people and a new earth. with respect to the question of a life, deleuze writes: “the life of the individual gives way to an im personal and yet singular life that releases a pure event freed from the accidents of internal and external life” (2001: 28). however, we should not forget that the “singularities and the events that constitute a life coexist with the accidents of the life that corresponds to it” (2001: 29).9 our passivity and our passions, the life we lead, make up the necessary length of the passage toward community, and toward the profound stillness of spinoza’s third kind of knowledge, beatitude. for nancy, this passivity is non-productive; for deleuze (after spinoza), we find it is a matter of progressing from passive to active affections by conjoining life and concepts; that is, it is a matter of becoming active and creating concepts that enable us to enact very material tests on the world in which we are immersed. deleuze and guattari suggest that the passage from joyful passive affections to active affections (spinoza), or from the inadequate (yet adequate enough) ideas and images of the imagination to the adequate ideas of reason,10 is more akin to the uncoordinated leaps of a dog than the explanations of a reasonable person. caught up in haphazard movements, we proceed through an apprenticeship, which advances in a futural direction not only toward an increase in the power of corporeal and intellectual being, but toward the construction of signs of art that help inaugurate the emergence of another world. thus, we take a passage that will eventually lead us toward spinoza’s beatitude, as a third kind of knowledge, and through a network of passages along which one becomes, in turn, both lost and found. we will always find ourselves amidst sad and joyful passions. power constitutes a passage, or point of conversion, the capacity to shift from passions to actions at a moment where ”we stop striving to think the world and begin to create it” (hardt, 1993: 59). we – however this ‘we’ is differentially composed – arrive at a hiatus of sorts, a pause in our striving, only to continue again into the active creation or construction of concepts, an ethico-aesthetic activity that is fundamental to the ongoing creation of community. finally, the task is never complete; neither is community, as such, identified through determined attributes. by striving to create new kinds of social relations, and new forms-of-life in relation to environmental situations, community perpetually unfolds. 8. passive, though passionate passage. 9. community incorporates singularities in corporeal mixtures and through the circulation of incorporeal effects. for agamben these are whatever singularities, for nancy they are singular beings, or singular plural beings as distinct from individuals. finally, for deleuze, singularities are less to do with singular beings, as they contribute to both physical states of affairs and to incorporeal, immaterial events: “singularities are turning points and points of inflection: bottlenecks, knots, foyers, and centers; points of fusion, condensation, and boiling points; points of tears and joy, sickness and health, hope and anxiety, ‘sensitive points’” (1990: 52). singularities are not to be confused with the individual, the subject or the object. for instance, deleuze tells us that very small children, who might be viewed on the one hand as all alike, have singularities, “a smile, a gesture, a funny face”(2001: 30). singularities are turning points between affections and processes of creation and contribute as much to the constitution of community as they do to the question of a life. manuel delanda, commenting on deleuze, insists upon a scientific account of singularities that takes us back to henri poincaré (2002: 14, 15). singularities, for delanda, suggest the long-term tendencies of a given system and lead to new ways of viewing the genesis of physical forms. while delanda’s definition might prove reassuring to some, it is worthwhile remembering that even if the genealogy of deleuze’s use of the concept of singularities can be returned to mathematics and geometry, the philosopher is far more interested in what concepts can do once placed in contemporary assemblages. 10. as well as the parallel passage of thought (mind) and extension (body), and the parallel movement of theory and practice. interstices 08 49 interstices 08 49 the architectural problem of the contemporary refugee camp as an ethical test of our existence, and the ramifications of our modes of being and becoming, we can begin to apply the above to real spatial coordinates. as deleuze explains, this is not a moral test, but rather like the way in which “workmen check the quality of some material” (1990: 317). ethics, in this context, is opposed to moral judgment, which determines in advance, according to a fixed code or imperative to act, how a situation will be assessed (deleuze, 1988: 40). applying the ethical test of existence is a difficult task, for there are no clear assessment criteria; we are grappling with contemporary problems in the midst of things. we are to remain attuned to how we affect others, and are affected in turn, and that we are never separable from our relations in and with a world. agamben expressly includes the refugee in the midst of this ‘we’, and deleuze allows not just for human, but animal and other bodies. in addition, martin points out that: “we cannot use the pronoun ‘we’ to denote a self-consistent, geographically, culturally, or economically unified agent” (2006: 15). any coming community is composed of diverse relations, compositions and decompositions. it is a matter of aspiring toward the best possible composition, given the situation at hand. from the midst of things, which situates us upon a plane of immanence, the australian processing and reception centre, that country’s local rendition of a refugee camp, presents a contemporary problem. it could be argued that the camp does not constitute a problem in the arena of architectural en deavour. on the contrary, i would insist that it is part of the task of architecture to recognize the extent of the imbrication of the built environment with modes of life. the body, in its compositions, can be thought of in spatial terms; that is, that the body includes the coordinates of the architecture through which it moves. within architecture it may discover itself captured in a bad composition, one that leads to its disintegration, or its decomposition. if the desert camp at woomera, south australia, was a bad composition, the immigration processing and reception centre at baxter, in the same state, is even worse. from the relative appearance of temporariness at woomera (composed of so many tents and reterritorialized existing military infra structures), a permanent and rigid, spatial structure has evolved at baxter. this purpose-built desert camp, five hours drive from adelaide, is arranged as a series of nine rectilinear compounds with chamfered corners, expressing a spare architecture. further, each compound is organized around a grassed courtyard, turning upon its own independent universe, operating in isolation even from the desert setting. the detainees are further fragmented, isolated into groups based on gender, ethnicity, or on whether they can be collected in a family group, or whether they are a threat to themselves and others. the community composed here is arranged so as to form non-communicating cells, and attributes are forced upon the inmates as ready-made templates inhibiting active community formation. relations between peoples and spaces is regulated and coagulated. the fragile compositions formed are apt to decompose. similar socio-political, and very real, material compositions, are also to be found in the midst of australian cities; for example, in the suburban camps of villawood interstices 08 51interstices 08 51 (sydney) and maribyrnong (melbourne). they exemplify agamben’s intimation that the contemporary city is increasingly indistinguishable from the camp. at the end of tramline 57, the maribyrnong immigrant detention centre (midc), currently the only federal detention centre in victoria, is set in the gradually, but obviously, gentrifying and redeveloping suburb of maribyrnong. the briefest of histories of the site reveals different successive compositions, which suggest ways in which a coming community is either welcomed or rejected from within the body politic. initially, the site was home to british and other migrants who used the original maribyrnong migrant hostel as a transitory refuge before establishing a permanent home in melbourne. in sharp contrast, the detention facilities today occupy a small wedge of land, a much reduced area of the former allotment. the larger part of the original site, now owned by victoria university, houses a somewhat ramshackle student village into which the historic buildings have been seamlessly transformed. on either side of a high security wall, mandatory detention and student accommodation are set in a curious adjacency, while the land to the west is being developed into a housing estate. inside the razor wire fence of the camp, building works continue to cramp the living conditions of the mostly invisible inmates (see frichot, 2006). an ethical test applied to the potential composition of a coming community fails here on a number of counts. the camp is spatially segregated, which means that singularities are rendered immobile, thwarting the promise of new expressions of subjectivity. the identity of the camp’s inmates is over-determined; they are figured as unwanted others, and a possible threat to the broader community. the potential of the coming community, as it pertains to the australian context, is diminished exactly through this architectural process of exclusion and stigmatization. thus, the camp reflects directly on the australian body politic, negatively determining its attributes. however, this reflection is difficult to perceive for much of the body politic, due to successful attempts to render this suburban camp invisible. the architecture is resolutely non-descript, without expression, generally blank where it faces the outside world. the entire complex is set back from major roads and hidden from view. from its inception as a migrant hostel after world war two, to its present day composition of student village and detention centre (the latter surrounded by a double layer of fence and under constant electronic surveillance), the architecture of the site reflects the political attitude at our current socio-political juncture (see frichot, 2006). it is important to remember that architecture never acts alone in such instances; it remains entangled with the actions effectuated by government policy, material infrastructures existing and new, the migrations of peoples, emerging subjectivities and so forth. relations that circulate amidst a future people and a coming community have the potential to allow for the creation of socio-political compositions that augment life. in contrast, a composition such as the australian camp generally removes the capacity to create, and particularly to imagine and create new forms of sociability and community. as martin suggests, the architectural imagination needs to remain open to the promise that this is not the only possible world, and certainly not the best of all possible worlds (2006: 15). how might architecture, as a specific set of activities, create more positive compositions? interstices 08 51 interstices 08 51 in the situation of the contemporary refugee camp, we discover the maximum of sad encounters, not just on the part of the asylum seeker, but on the part of those who seek to capture, contain and isolate them, even from their fellow inmates. thus, the question of the composition of the camp, which decomposes the singularities captured within its confines, and impacts upon the ways in which a coming community might be imagined, becomes an ethical question in the australian socio-political context today. therefore, the test is how to concatenate joyful passions, passions that may facilitate common notions that orient active affections or joys toward the positive power of creation and even beatitude. the architectural theorist, martin, has suggested two simple tasks for architecture: one aesthetic and the other territorial. architects have the capacity to participate in the aesthetic creation of new built environments that participate in new forms of community. likewise, architecture can participate in the reconsideration of territorial boundaries that presently dispossess those on the inside as well as those on the outside (martin, 2006: 21). yet, there can be no hard and fast moral or ethical rules, as these work against the possibility of responding to the particularities of each new encounter as it presents itself. hardt suggests that deleuze “posed the common notion and its process of assemblage as part of an ethical project (becoming active, becoming adequate, becoming joyful)”; but, he asks, “how can we recognize this project in properly political terms?” (hardt, 1993: 108). if only we could learn to create our mixtures, and form our compositions with some confidence, for as spinoza frequently reminds us, we are more apt to sad passions. success or not, it is important to recognize that there are no lasting instructions toward the best possible way of composing community, nor of composing an architecture that responds to the promise of a future people. and since there is never just one approach to a happy life, a form-of-life, a people, a community, our compositions depend on a combination of chance and necessity. we will always wind up with something different, something that could not have been imagined beforehand, for we do not know in advance what we are capable of, nor what good or bad compositions of the socio-political we might enter into. references agamben, g. (1993). the coming community (m. hardt, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. agamben, g. (1995). “we refugees”. symposium (49) 2, 114-120. agamben, g. (1999). potentialities (d. heller-roazen, trans.). stanford (cal.): stanford university press. agamben, g. (2000). means without ends: notes on politics (v. binetti & c. casarino, trans.). minneapolis: minnesota university press. arendt, h. (1943). “we refugees”. the menorah journal (3). blanchot, m. (1988). the unavowable community (p. joris, trans.). barrytown (ny): station hill press. de cauter, l. (2004). the capsular civilization (p. bouvier, trans.). rotterdam: nai publishers. delanda, m. (2002). intensive science and virtual philosophy. new york: continuum. deleuze, g. (1988). foucault (s. hand, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. interstices 08 pb deleuze, g. (1988). spinoza practical philosophy (r. hurley, trans.). san francisco: city lights books. deleuze, g. (1990). expressionism in philosophy: spinoza (m. joughin, trans.). new york: zone books. deleuze, g. (2001). pure immanence: essays on a life (a. boyman, trans.). new york: zone books. deleuze, g. and guattari, f. (1987). a thousand plateaus (b. massumi, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. foucault, m. (1983). preface. in deleuze, g. and guattari, f. anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia (r. hurley, m. seem, and h. r. lane, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. frichot, h. (2006). the biopolitical wall in the midst of our city. in s. basson, j. stephens, t. mcminn, (eds.). sahanz: 2006: contested terrains (pp.151-158). perth, western australia: university of curtain. hardt, m. (1993). gilles deleuze: an apprenticeship in philosophy. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. hardt, m. and negri, a. (2000). empire. cambridge (ma.): harvard university press. holland, mark, (ed.). (1996). the blanchot reader. oxford: blackwell publishers. martin, r. (2005). “critical of what? toward a new utopian realism”. harvard design magazine (22 spring/summer), 1-5. martin, r. (2006). “moment of truth”. log ( 7 winter/spring), 15-20. mills, c. (2004). agamben’s messianic politics: biopolitics, abandonment and happy life. contretemps (5, december), 42-62. nancy, j-l. (1991). the inoperative community (p. conner, l. garbus, m. holland & s. sawhney, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. nancy, j-l. (1997). the sense of the world (j. s. librett, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. sorkin, m. (ed.). (2005). against the wall, new york: the new press. interstices 6 introduction a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul, ross jenner, and albert refiti in february 2004, a series of lectures was announced jointly by the school of architecture, university of auckland, and the school of art and design, auckland university of technology, to re-initiate the critical work carried out between 1989 and 2000 in the under construction lecture series and the resulting interstices publication. in the past, writers and presenters such as the 2005 pritzker winner tom mayne (usa), mark wigley (usa), francesco venezia and renato rizzi (italy), and mark goulthorpe (france, now teaching at mit) were involved with interstices, contributing to contemporary local and international debates. the fact that both the lecture series, with its lively and collegial discussions, and the publication then lay fallow for some years was felt as a sad gap by many in the architectural and arts community in new zealand. it was albert refiti’s entrepreneurial spirit that brought about discussions of a joint venture between the two schools and institutions. ross jenner and laurence simmons—old interstices activists—were thus joined by albert refiti, tina engels-schwarzpaul, and mark jackson to forge a theme that would attract interest and participation from a wide range of academics and practitioners of architecture and related arts, in and beyond the two schools and institutions. thus, last year’s lectures and the current interstices issue animal/impulse set their sights on what is perhaps a central problematic for contemporary culture and theory. animal/impulse raises a series of questions regarding the idea of the human/animal divide in western thought. what are the formations/formulations that discipline the body and impulses from outside? how are the natural forces, that are but fortuitous bundles, controlled and striated in the animal/person/body? how do they, in turn, contribute to the construction of meaning? these are philosophical and ethical questions that go to the root not just of what we think but of who we are. in response, contributors to animal/impulse explore a set of coordinates for the representation of these issues in and through contemporary architecture and related arts. � our aim was, from the beginning, to open interstices’ reach beyond the local ground, on which it had begun and developed, and to address a readership beyond—both within new zealand, and further afield. it was encouraging to see how many architects and academics of high standing in other countries were willing to join the editorial board to support and guide the publication through the next issues. a few, such as nigel ryan, have been involved with interstices already at the very beginning. with peter wood, we were able to welcome a colleague from the university of victoria at our lecture series, who later also submitted his paper for publication. regarding interstices 6: animal/impulse, we are very proud to count marco frascari (ottawa), deane simpson (zürich), and anthony hoete (london and beirut) amongst the contributors. for the current lecture series, genius/genealogy, we have the pleasure to welcome andrew benjamin from the university of sydney and jonathan lamb from vanderbilt university. as in the past, interstices is committed to providing an interface between theory and practice, and writing and drawing, in recognition of different ways of theorizing architecture and the related arts. the issues are composed of a strictly thematic, double-blind refereed part and a lighter and more diverse non-refereed part, which more loosely addresses the theme of an issue through reviews of exhibitions or books and reports on project work in new zealand and overseas. thus, interstices brings together local and international contributors and juxtaposes locally conducted art and design practices, and research and scholarship, with those from outside new zealand. it is intended that interstices will be published at least once a year, with guest editors at other institutions in new zealand and australia to bring a greater variety to the journal. we also look forward to the institutional sponsorship and involvement of the schools of architecture and design at victoria university of wellington and unitec institute of technology. the journal will remain a forum for the dissemination of research and debate on architectural and art practices. it will continue as a critical platform for the review and discussion of current projects in new zealand and overseas. the annual lecture series will become, yet again, the point of contact between practitioners and academics to develop a critical culture focused on contemporary practice. as in 1989, interstices is not intended to reaffirm existing normative standards and canons, nor to rest comfortably in the supposed self-sufficiency of the building object, regional identity, composition, nature, function … but to explore the interstices, the gaps and fractures within an institution that appears solid, secure and fixed. interstices is about “the spaces between idea and thing where perfect correspondence is never quite found, demanding a realm of endless negotiation and interpretation that we see as productive” (“introduction”, interstices 1). in the current issue, animal/impulse, mark jackson opens this realm with “impulsive openness: boredom and bio-politics”. in a close reading of aspects of martin heidegger’s 1929-30 lectures the fundamental concepts of metaphysics, and giorgio agamben’s the open: man and animal, the latter’s notion of ‘bare life’ is traced in his reading of heidegger. for a concern interstices 6 with animality, ‘bare life’ is an indication of the substantial political conflicts of modernity clustering around animality and humanity. in “heidegger and the herringbone cowshed”, laurence simmons similarly explores the question of animality in the theoretical context of heidegger’s, derrida’s and agamben’s writings. he also engages with a local instance of technological innovation: ron sharp’s 1952 change of his twelve bail walk-through milking shed to what became known worldwide as the herringbone cowshed. simmons suggests that while it is urgent to think the animal beyond mechanical paradigms, it is equally important to investigate the blurring lines between human, animal, and machine. from a very different perspective, sarah treadwell and paul veart investigate in the animation beyond the blurring of lines between animal and architectural movement, which give rise to an unexpected animal/architectural drawing: “animation, the cat and escaping drawing” traces the porosity between the categories of animal/human/drawing/architecture. the theoretical reference here is hélène cixous’ “without end, no, state of drawingness, no, rather: the executioner’s taking off”, where drawing is somehow always beyond her strength but nevertheless looks back at itself. such interest in animal cunning is shared by peter wood, who explores the human animal’s environmental responsiveness and non-intellectual aspects of aesthetics and architecture. in his paper “architecture = building + value: exploring the social purpose of architecture” he addresses atavistic factors operating through art in the evolution of human relationships. with the help of such a change in perspective, the oppositions between building and architecture, body and intellect, become unsettled and open up for re-inspection. “woven flesh”, too, is concerned with the space-between of human bodies, animals and ancestors. albert refiti engages two motifs: one of the impulse in albert wendt’s works, and the other of the animal in john pule’s. the two motifs are read against the thematic animal/impulse in an attempt to open up discussion of an architecture of the body in polynesia. if the body is the dwelling of the ancestors, then the impulse is its long-time resident and the animal its temporary lodger. dispersed and difficult to control, impulses are also historically contingent. in “frontiers of shame and repulsion”, a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul explores connections between the efficiently circulating sewers of suburban developments and the exhibition of a ‘dunny’ at the 2004 sydney biennale. while not immediately obvious, aspects of the ‘civilising process’ demonstrate an increasing distance between human bodies and their excrements. this moulding of affects is necessary for both sewers and art work to function. the peculiarly moulded affects of italian futurism and rationalism lend themselves to an architecture leaning towards transcendence. there would appear to be little hope of finding in it forms of lightness that seek freedom within earthly matter. but, as ross jenner shows in “what goes up must come down”, they can indeed be found in a suspension, caused by the engagement with the contradictions of the regime, in the works of persico and albini. a different concept of lightness emerges, a lightness of ‘thinking otherwise’. � in the non-refereed part of interstices 6, an interesting mixture of speculation, review, translation and reporting rounds off the theme. marco frascari’s “gee wiz” is a speculative account of the cosmopoietic dimensions of architectural criticism buried deep inside the closet of architectural culture. at present, frascari maintains, most architectural judgment works by a refusal of the power of recognition that properly belongs to animal experience and, being uncritically open to memory-less scientific or artistic fashions, forgets the links between the arts of building, living and thinking well. this paper is an antidote. while frascari uses cheese as metaphor, deane simpson employs that of misfits to counteract certain tendencies of the last 75 years of urban planning, which often failed due to an excess of will and intention. simpson discusses collaborative projects in detroit and copenhagen where the strong will of ‘master’ planning was suspended in favour of experiments with open and auto-reactive systems. these ‘instinctive systems’ challenge the genetic identity of particular urban ‘species’ through the generation of urban mutations. during the production of this issue, anthony hoete, 1990 graduate of the auckland school of architecture, came to new zealand on a visit from his permanent base in london to visit family—but also to begin a commission for the design of a house. in an interview with a.-chr. engelsschwarzpaul, albert refiti and ross jenner, he reflected on his 1995 design for his father’s house on motiti island and its relationships with his own, highly mobile life in architectural designing and teaching. the interview is followed by two reviews of the fale pasifika at the university of auckland by semisi potauaine and jeremy treadwell. potauaine discusses tongan architecture around the theme of “the tectonic of the fale”, and treadwell recounts, in “chains of negotiations: navigating between modernity and tradition”, the complex processes and dilemmas involved in the design and construction of the fale pasifika. subsequently, john walsh and peter bartlett explain their views of the exhibition models for living: 1905–2005: a survey of 100 years of new zealand residential architecture held at the auckland war memorial museum, 8 april–19 june 2005. maria o’connor provides a tantalising review of one of the key texts informing this issue, giorgio agamben’s book the open: man and animal. rather than (or over and beyond) explicating the text, or giving a relatively fixed account, o’connor appeals to those readers who will benefit from agamben’s ethico-political stance in relation to their own projects, through an active and personal engagement with the text. finally, a translation of félix guattari’s “l’énonciation architecturale” by tim adams, “architectural enunciation”, shows how the french psychotherapist and activist applied his considerable conceptual apparatus to the problem of architecture. this was a subject dear to his heart, about which he often wrote. it is strange that this important work has been so long overlooked, especially given the attention paid by architectural theorists to the work of his collaborator, gilles deleuze. this translation goes some way to address this oversight. interstices 11 tree-ness house otsuka, tokyo akihisa hirata architecture office the intention of this project is to develop the potential for a nature-like architecture explored in our previous work, but the approach is developed further here. a tree consists of different parts such as roots, a trunk, branches, leaves and flowers, but these parts are not totally independent. the trunk and leaves differ in appearance, but are very similar in their basic structure – their inter-relationship creates a kind of nested or layered organic structure. it is possible to create an architectural logic that creates a similar organically layered and “tangled” structure. the design seeks to develop this new architectural principle, with the intention of creating a complex ecosystem connected to the city. 133 this building is a residential complex with spaces for commercial tenants and is located in the otsuka district of tokyo. the site is narrow and deep, thereby defining the building as a narrow volume. in contrast to typical buildings that are simple stacks of floors, this design employs an organic layering system. it draws in elements not typically included in architecture, such as the street and other exterior spaces, generating fully three-dimensional spaces. much as a tree defines various spaces in the air, this design creates for its occupants a “tangled” space characterised by ambiguous interior-exterior relationships. interstices 11 boxes: boxes are composed into a layered volume that includes numerous voids. within this volume, internal boxes define enclosed spaces like bedrooms and external boxes create terraces; more open interior spaces are defined with the voids by glass walls. pleats: the openings in the boxes have been pleated, creating an ambiguous relationship between inside and outside. plants: greenery is planted around these pleats, resulting in three-dimensional gardens around the building’s perimeter. the arrangement of functional volumes and voids, openings, and greenery integrates and entangles the building into a single organic whole. 135 interstices 08 9 interstices 08 9 architecture in the post-political world for kenneth frampton (1992: 8), the construction of architectural history generally relies on a consideration of architectural polemics. however, of even greater importance are the “socio-economic or ideological circumstances” shaping the production of architecture. most histories of architecture in the service of politics are founded on the assumptions that political systems are innately ideological, and that architecture produced under these regimes reflects the values and beliefs of the political system (millon and nochlin, 1978; dovey, 1990; schumacher, 1993). while the proposition of a causal reflection of ideology in design has been questioned, the premise that political systems necessarily possess an identifiable and stable ideology remains largely unchallenged (findley, 2005). however, in the last few decades conventional political belief systems (like socialism or fascism) are being supplanted by governing structures which do not strive to achieve some social ideal or uphold a moral principle. instead, their goals are expressed through economic or managerial concepts including growth, transparency, productivity and security. this is not to suggest that contemporary politics lacks ideological values; rather, these values are hidden, repressed or subservient, and are rarely apparent in the artefacts they produce. similarly, these systems are called post-political, not because they are no longer concerned with steering a nation state, but because they have arisen in the aftermath of failure in a dominant ideological system. thus, the post-political condition encompasses both the apparent loss of ideology and the lacunae that results from regime failure. jacques rancière and alain badiou argue that in the post-political world any association between a system of governance and the physical artefacts produced under its guise (like art or architecture) is more complex, and contingent, than it is under more overtly ideological and stable regimes. for this reason, the interpretation of architecture requires new concepts and techniques. a case in point is russian architecture since the demise of communism in the 1980s when, significantly, a regime failure occurred and an ideologically based system was replaced with a managerial one. conventional interpretations of early 20th century architecture in communist russia draw clear programmatic and formal parallels between the ideology of the state and the designs produced by its architects; between aesthetics and power rancière and the metapolitical framing of architecture: reconstructing brodsky and utkin’s voyage michael j. ostwald interstices 08 11interstices 08 11 (khan-magomedov, 1987; papadakis, 1991). this direct projection of ideology into space, form and materiality is supported by constructivist manifestos (kopp, 1970; 1985). however, the same method of historical interpretation permits a different, equally ideologically inspired reading of the neoclassical architecture authorised by the soviet state in the 1960s (brumfield, 1991; bown and taylor, 1993). moreover, these techniques are problematic when applied to the post-communist architecture that arose during the dissolution of the soviet union. for instance, alexander brodsky and illya utkin produced their most famous unbuilt designs in the years immediately following the liberalisation of the soviet economy, during the era badiou describes as the “death of communism” (2004: 126). a canonical interpretation of the place of brodsky and utkin in world architecture – in sir banister fletcher’s, a history of architecture – describes brodsky and utkin’s formative years as a precursor to “developing the confidence to” use architecture to “attack the defeatism and complacency of the professional establishment” (1996: 1444) in the soviet union. variations of this interpretation – architecture as reaction to, and criticism of, the impact of a stifling political ideology on architecture – are repeated in the only monograph on brodsky and utkin, in the major catalogues of their work, and in newspaper articles.1 because their architecture appears to reject the values of communism, a conventional historical reading opposes their work to the dominant ideological position of the state. however, if brodsky and utkin’s work is viewed as the product of either a regime change, or the rise of an apolitical system, then it cannot simply be defined in opposition to communism. using the theories and methods of rancière, this paper develops an account of the political framing of brodsky and utkin’s architecture.2 importantly, its purpose is not to formulate a counter history, but rather to offer an alternative understanding of the fabrication of history. the limited number of examples contained in the present paper does not permit a complete reinterpretation of brodsky and utkin’s architecture. more importantly, rancière’s methods do not support the production of any definitive historical evaluation of any cultural artefact, in any political context. in his view, history is not fixed or immutable, but simply a story which presents itself as telling the truth (1994). thus, studying the construction of history (the combination of unseen political forces, structures and orders) is more rewarding than reading history. rancière’s methods provide a range of mechanisms that are significant for the framing (interpretation or critical positioning) of architecture in a world where political systems are neither stable nor founded on traditional ideologies. rancière’s metapolitics jacques rancière has written on the importance of intellectual emancipation (1991), social equity (2004a), the power of language (1994; 2004c), the problems of democracy (2007a) and, important to the present context, the relationship between les arts plastiques and politics (2004b).3 while originally a supporter of socialism, rancière rejected all mainstream political systems in the aftermath of the civil unrest in france, may 1968. he turned his attention instead to understanding the rules and mechanisms which sustain political structures. badiou (2005) characterises rancière’s theoretical method as metapolitical: a 1. brodsky and utkin’s collaborative works are recorded in one major monograph published in 1990; it was expanded and updated without change in theoretical or historical framing in 2003. over 20 books and catalogues, and 70 newspaper articles and reviews in professional journals feature their work, mostly predating 1994. the majority of readily available sources are either purely descriptive or they are uncritical of the dominant ideological positioning. brodsky and utkin’s collaborative designs and installations have been represented in almost 40 joint and group shows in europe, north america and australasia (including sydney in 1991 and wellington in 1992). 2. rancière divides the common sense notion of the political into ‘police’ (la politique/police) and ‘politics’ (la politique/politique), where ‘police’ is the current partition of the sensible and ‘politics’ is a means for disrupting it. disagreement is the essence of politics (see rancière 2000: 11). 3. for rancière les arts plastiques include jewellery, sculpture and architecture. rancière (2007b) uses the phrase “aesthetic object” to denote a wide range of labour products that include literature, design, the arts and performance. while rancière (2004c) explicitly acknowledges architecture as an aesthetic object, he appears to consider the text, and its incar nations in poetry or fiction, as the ideal analytical subjects. interstices 08 11 interstices 08 11 philosophy of politics that does not come from a distinct ideological tradition, but which considers operations both within and across multiple governing structures. the challenge of rancière’s method is his awareness that his own arguments are necessarily part of the political structures he is analysing. this awareness leads rancière to write in a manner which hayden white characterises as “nonnarrative and nondiscursive, aphoristic, almost oracular” (1994: xviii). badiou (2005) traces the origins of this use of language to rancière’s desire to speak only from within his metapolitical domain—to avoid the artificial distancing that metapolitical thought usually entails. in order to understand rancière’s recent theory of the relationship between aesthetics and politics, it is important to consider his earlier explanation of the rise of apolitical systems. in 1988, rancière presented the first of a series of papers which argued that particular spatial and philosophical figures are brought into focus by the “end of politics itself” (1995: 3). rancière’s, on the shores of politics, commences with the proposition that the relationship between philosophy and politics has historically been articulated through spatial metaphors. accordingly, the failure of major political systems in the 1980s (in russia, south america and europe) corresponds to a shift away from conventional topographic distinctions (between left or right, socialist or fascist) towards a more contingent and operational model. the old boundaries that once divided political orthodoxies may no longer exist, but the topography of political boundaries is still in use: to speak of the boundaries of the political realm would seem to evoke no precise or current reality. yet legend invariably has the political begin at one boundary … and end up at another … riverbanks of foundation, island shores of refoundation … there must surely be something of the essence in this landscape for politics to be so stubbornly represented within it. and we know that philosophy has played a signal part in this stubbornness. its claims in respect of politics can be readily summed up as an imperative: to shield politics from the perils that are immanent to it, it has to be hauled on to dry land, set down on terra firma. (1) rancière’s politico-spatial topography is aquatic and estuarine; it recalls plato’s division between the power of the athenian political state, which is invested in its shipping fleets, and the philosophical foundations of its governing structure, located in the terrestrial urban forum. for rancière, the problem of approaching politics from a philosophical perspective is that it involves leaving the shore and “surrendering … to the whims of tides and mariners” (1995: 2). however, where once political vessels set out to cross borders in search of “isles of utopia”, in the last decades of the 20th century they are no longer so ideologically motivated, and are more concerned with “the art of steering the ship and embracing the waves, in the natural, peaceful movement of growth” (1995: 5-6). in rancière’s terms, this is the era of the “death of politics”, the “end of political divisions, of social antagonisms and utopian projects” (1995: 3). in its place has arisen a time of growth, capitalism and trade. with the end of politics, the philosophers’ role to guide or ground utopian voyagers is rendered obsolete. instead, they must look within what remains of the political structure, to uncover and expose its component parts, its processes and outcomes.4 in order to do this, rancière develops an alternative understanding of political systems in terms of the “distribution of the sensible”. 4. badiou is critical of rancière’s retreat from the consideration of ideological politics because it leads to “taking up political results by cutting them off from the processes that give rise to them. this practice ultimately relies upon what [rancière] himself highlights as a philosophical imposture : forgetting the real condition of one’s speech” (2005:121). interstices 08 13interstices 08 13 white argues that the key to understanding rancière’s “distribution of the sensible” lies in the proposal that: participation in politics hinges on conceptions of membership in communities whose pedigrees are either confirmed or denied by an appeal to “history”. but this “history” is a construction of those who already enjoy membership and indeed privileged positions in already formed communities (1994: ix). for rancière, every society is constructed upon a “system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it” (2004b: 12). rancière refers to both a system of organisation (a delineation of elements), and the extent to which an individual has a voice in this system. rancière’s word “sensible” relates to what is seen or enabled; it refers to the actions or expressions a society finds acceptable. the relationship between art, architecture and politics is necessarily concerned with the distribution of the sensible (2007b), and defined by the “delimitation of … the visible and the invisible, of speech and noise” (2004b: 13). the invisible, by its very nature, has little impact on the set of rules or values of a society,5 its “police order”. just as the distribution of the sensible encompasses a wide array of modes of operation (not just rights of membership or expression), the police order is more than the uniformed officers of the state: it includes everything from the media and social mores, to theological values and cultural practices. indeed, the “essence of the police … is not repression but rather a certain distribution of the sensible that precludes the emergence of politics” (2004b: 89). one final and significant dimension of the distribution of the sensible concerns the nature of opposition or disagreement. actions, events or representations which diverge from the police order are examples of “dissent”. actions, events or representations which seek to radically alter the distribution of the sensible are examples of “dissensus” with political intent. simplistically, the former is the breaking of a law, while the latter is the advocacy of widespread lawbreaking. in part, the difference is between disagreeing with the distribution of the sensible and actively seeking to subvert or change it. however, the distinction between dissent and dissensus is more complex; it is also context sensitive. thus, it relies on the extent to which a transgression of the distribution of the sensible is made apparent; as rancière reminds the reader, politics necessarily “revolves around what is seen” (2004b: 13). the same transgressive event that occurs in private, but is later broadcast through the media, can potentially shift from dissent to dissensus as it becomes more visible. however, when interpreted in a different police order (a context with different social and cultural values) this same event may not be transgressive at all. the key here is in the way the event is positioned or made visible, not in the event itself. rancière rejects any assumption that there are correct, ideal or necessarily authoritative interpretations of events. each successive framing must be viewed in its own terms. nevertheless, the rules for understanding the distribution of the sensible remain constant across political topographies, even if the values embodied in the police order vary. the essence, as white observes, is not “what are” the facts or events, but “what can count” (1994: x)? facts or events matter through 5. badiou defines his own metapolitical theory as being reliant on the “the state of the situation”; a term he uses to describe “the correlation between the counting and non-counted” (2005: 116). regarding the strong parallels between his own theory and rancière’s, badiou argues that his own preceded rancière’s and is ultimately more useful for its underlying ontology; something rancière has been criticized for lacking. rancière, in a rare footnote, acknowledges some indebtedness to badiou but counters that his “distribution of the sensible” has critical differences (1995: 37). interstices 08 13 interstices 08 13 their visibility and framing, their being counted. rancière’s methods allow relational framing to be dissected without recourse to political ideology, and his understanding of political systems, through the distribution of the sensible, provides a method for investigating the dominant interpretation of brodsky and utkin’s architecture. children of stagnation in 1988, when rancière was lamenting the loss of political will to seek utopian isles, brodsky and utkin were completing a project appropriately entitled a ship of fools. this project, which has strong resonances with many of rancière’s concepts, depicts a “merry group of friends carous[ing] on the roof of an unsteady skyscraper in a sea of smoking chimneys” (rappaport, 1994: 138). the “fools” are caricatures of brodsky, utkin and many of their fellow paper architects, “who performed a version of this merry ritual to help them survive the years of stagnation” (boym, 1992: 38). in the single etching comprising this project, brodsky and utkin symbolise, in the form of the timber, ship-like skyscraper, their own architectural endeavours over the previous decade. every beam and column, every shadow and surface is rendered with care. as the skyscraper sways beneath their feet, the architects bravely celebrate their achievements while feigning ignorance of the precarious nature of their existence. like the soviet state at that time, which was, to use rancière’s metaphor, sailing without direction but with a newfound commitment to the trim of the rigging and the luff of the sail, the ship of fools is rudderless but exquisitely detailed. while rancière, the philosopher, laments the need to enter ideologically charged waters at a time when political mariners have lost sight of their destination, brodsky and utkin are depicted as oblivious to their course. without the guiding charts of ideology, the celebrations of politicians and paper architects soon shift from being the traditional socialist “banquet of equals”, to being a gluttonous wake for the lost navigator (rancière, 1995: 65). as badiou argues, “rancière tends to identify politics in the realm of its absence, and from the effects of its absence” (2005: 122). in brodsky and utkin’s project, the significance of politics is precisely that it is absent. the ship of fools is an architectural vessel for the post-political era; its politics are not clear, in the sense that it neither criticizes nor supports communism, although its metapolitical commentary on the state of architecture adrift in society is. this project is one of many where the canonical interpretation of brodsky and utkin’s architecture (as critical of the soviet state or the architectural profession) is unconvincing. therefore, how did the political framing of brodsky and utkin’s architecture occur? the first stage in tracing this process involves positioning their work in relation to the traditional, ideologically understood, history of russian architecture. alexander rappaport traces the end of architectural freedom in the soviet union to the 1930s. since then, “the architecture of the soviet union had been if not actually dead, then at least considered to be so … and any exceptions were eliminated through the system of state and party control” (1994: 129). mikhail belov similarly asserts that, from the 1930s, there is “a blank which lasted for fifty years” in the architectural history books on russia (1988: 6). initially, this absence could be traced to stalin’s predilection for repetitive neoclassicism. however, in 1957, nikita khrushchev famously denounced stalin’s advocacy of neoclassical design, calling instead for the party to endorse a utilitarian, modern architecture. the result of khrushchev’s action was, as alexey tarkhanov records, that the brodsky & utkin, a ship of fools, 1988/90 (plate produced / plate printed) from projects portfolio, 1981-90, 35 etchings, ed. of 30, 43 x 31 3/4 inches (f). courtesy ronald feldman fine arts, new york. photo by d. james dee. [originally drawn in 1988 and published in 1989] interstices 08 15interstices 08 15 communist party resolved to abandon “excesses in design and construction” and to outlaw officially “nearly everything which had motivated architecture in the preceding twenty years: historicism, orientation to classicism, richness of material and abundance of detail” (1994: 123). this impacted on the localized distribution of the sensible, changing what could be appropriately seen, spoken of, or propagated as architecture. by abolishing the production (the act of making visible) of a particular architectural approach, and by banning pedagogy associated with this aesthetic, the connection between the power of the state and its symbolic or literal depiction is manifest (cooke, 1988). as lois nesbitt notes, from that point in time the communist party in russia considered “aesthetic discourse of any kind … unnecessary and immoral” (2003: n.p.). it is against this political backdrop that brodsky and utkin’s architecture is viewed and interpreted in conventional architectural histories. brodsky and utkin commenced their studies together at the moscow institute of architecture in the mid 1970s. with few exceptions, they were taught by staff who had little choice but to support the architectural ideals of the state. after graduation, brodsky and utkin found that architectural practice was even more circumscribed, and there were few legitimate outlets for their creative energies. it was amidst this stifling professional atmosphere that they began to compete, illegally, in international ideas competitions and, in 1982, won the japan architect journal’s “central glass company” competition. brodsky and utkin’s award winning entry, crystal palace, presents a towering glass structure sited at the edge of an unnamed town. from a distance, the structure is reminiscent of a grand expansion of joseph paxton’s prototypical modern structure of the same name. yet, to reach the seemingly magical palace, travellers must venture into the decrepit margins of the city. once they have crossed the urban wastelands, they soon discover that, instead of being a large enclosure filled with a cornucopia of delights, the structure is illusory. the palace, which is constructed from a series of vertical “glass plates, stuck into the huge box of sand”, is a mirage (brodsky and utkin, 1982: n.p.). it promises the viewer a wondrous destination, which “proves on closer inspection to be an illusion built on a municipal rubbish heap, and the flowers growing out of the urban litter turn out to be the blooms of dashed hopes” (rappaport, 1994: 138). like the majority of brodsky and utkin’s works, crystal palace is presented on a single page and is rendered in dense black lines against the sepia surface of the paper. brodsky & utkin, crystal palace, 1989/90 (plate produced / plate printed) from projects portfolio, 1981-90, 35 etchings, ed. of 30, 43 x 31 3/4 inches (f). courtesy ronald feldman fine arts, new york. photo by d. james dee. [originally drawn and published in 1982] interstices 08 15 interstices 08 15 in 1984, brodsky and utkin completed a project, for an architectural competition, entitled town bridge, which featured a colossal arched bridge spanning a meandering river in a bucolic landscape: a place reminiscent of gustave doré’s early etchings for dante’s divine comedy. the bridge is structured like a hypertrophic ponte vecchio: hundreds of townhouses, towers and steeples line the bridge creating a singular city. in the arcadian foreground, a traveller surveys the grandeur of the bridge. a later project, hill with a hole (1987a), offers a variation on this theme. once again, it is sited in the mythical “landscape of old painters”. however, this time, the inhabited bridge is more explicitly explained; it “doesn’t enclose the landscape behind [it], being a kind of frame for it” but connects the “[p]ast and the [f]uture” (1987a: n.p.). such projects are typical of brodsky and utkin and the paper architects’ “dark etchings” (rappaport, 1994: 135) in general. a hint of ennui tinges many of these works, as does a strong sense of irony. thus, what is it in such works that allows them to be positioned as clearly political? constantin boym (1992: 36) suggests that the crystal palace project is a criticism of post-war moscow master planning; yet, there is little evidence in the drawing to identify the city as moscow, or even modernist. it would be equally possible to read the crystal palace as a criticism of the vacuous nature of western consumer society. the town bridge and hill with a hole projects certainly exemplify a desire for the rich urban fabric of historic cities. if there are conventional political intentions at all, they are present only through their absence. the projects evoke urban settings far removed from the everyday reality of the socialist state. the same equivocal dimension prevails in columbarium architecture, which calls for the construction of a “museum for disappearing buildings” as a storage vault for discarded architecture. the drawings describe a funereal chapel, where miniatures of “[e]ach disappearing building, even the most unprepossessing” are exhibited (brodsky and utkin 1984: n.p.). this project seems to call for a memorial for all buildings, and their associated architectural styles, that had been destroyed by communism. however, it also infers that there is an equal need to protect the neoclassical buildings of the stalinist state. this is further dramatised in the project description, which proposes that capitalism may be the primary cause of the destruction of historic buildings. in none of these projects, all typical of their oeuvre, is there clear evidence of an assault on the police order. brodsky and utkin’s architecture may not conform to the state’s aesthetic values, but that does not necessarily make it an architecture of rebellion. brodsky & utkin, town bridge, 1984/90 (plate produced / plate printed) from projects portfolio, 1981-90, 35 etchings, ed. of 30, 43 x 31 3/4 inches (f). courtesy ronald feldman fine arts, new york. photo by d. james dee. [originally drawn and published in 1984] interstices 08 17interstices 08 17 retracing the voyage the manner in which brodsky and utkin’s architecture first became visible, or sensible, undoubtedly shaped its initial historical framing. accounts of brodsky and utkin’s careers typically stress that, in the early 1980s, it was still “illegal” for soviet architects to seek international forums for their work (boym, 1992: 36; cruickshank, 1996: 1444). thus, participation in the event, which rendered their work sensible, was, by definition, a form of opposition to the state. also, brodsky and utkin’s architectural aesthetic did not conform to the modernist approach authorised by the state and supported by the architectural profession. as rappaport argues, the paper architects’ initial crime was that, in their aesthetic approach, “they allowed themselves to do whatever they liked” (1994: 129-30). this led historians to read brodsky and utkin’s architecture as a rejection of the police order, and therefore as a sign of opposition. however, in 1982, the soviet state was already signalling its intention to embrace the administrative and economic reforms of perestroika and, in so doing, to join the post-political world. perestroika and glasnost heralded new freedoms, and the first changes in the distribution of the sensible in russia since the 1950s, certainly in terms of architecture. thus, brodsky and utkin’s architecture may have defied the law, but the police order had already begun to shift to accommodate a wider range of conditions and actions. there is a substantial difference between a rejection of the law, which is – as a juridical dispute – one of many dimensions of and within the police order, and an attack on a political system. juridical disputes, as instances of dissent, do not challenge the distribution of the sensible. in contrast, political disputes challenge the distribution of the sensible, resulting in dissensus. dissensus “creates a fissure” in the “established framework”— it challenges the foundations of police order by questioning the partitioning of the sensible (žižek, 2004: 85). politics may have a particular aesthetic, and the arts a political agenda, “[b]ut there is no formula for an appropriate correlation: it is the state of politics that decides” (rancière, 2004b: 62). les arts plastiques in themselves cannot constitute an attack on a political system, and there “are no criteria” for the work of art, or the aesthetic impulse, to be a subversive action. instead, “[t]here are formulas … whose meaning is often in fact decided upon by a state of conflict that is exterior to them” (2004b: 61). thus, for rancière, it is the role of the political system, or of opponents to the system, to frame an aesthetic work as constituting dissensus in relation to the police order. these distinctions suggest that the relationship between the early architecture of brodsky and utkin and the soviet state was one of dissent. how, then, did the canonical reading of brodsky and utkin’s architecture as dissensus arise? ironically, it was the soviet state that initially placed brodsky and utkin’s work into a political framework. the state sought to capitalise on a rich underground practice of architecture in moscow that was beating western designs in international competitions. in 1984, the official soviet union of architects decided “that international recognition [for paper architecture] was advantageous to the state” (quoted in boym, 1992: 21). it sponsored a modest exhibition of the paper architects’ works in the offices of younost in moscow, where the state tacitly pardoned minor instances of dissent and presented the works as the products of interstices 08 17 interstices 08 17 soviet ingenuity. as a result of the visibility provided by the state, more exhibitions soon followed in europe and the united kingdom and, in 1988, the deutsches architektur museum staged a major exhibition that later toured north america. thus, it was not until four years after the initial exhibition of paper architecture that historians began to frame the work in opposition to the soviet state. heinrich klotz records in the architektur museum’s catalogue that, when he was initially confronted with the work of the russian paper architects, he supposed that the projects had grown from the era of glasnost and perestroika. yet, when he questioned the architects about their designs, they claimed that their ideas had formed throughout the breshnev era. it “was under breshnev’s rule that all those rigid, large buildings that have disfigured moscow’s image were erected” (1989: 7). this led klotz to propose that it was their brutal, totalitarian environment that lead these architects to “rebel against the petrification and to mobilize counterforces on paper. their ‘paper architecture’ [is] a protest against a corrupted state architecture of former years” (1989: 7). klotz’s sentiments are echoed in belov’s assertion that these works “are not yet the fruits of perestroika – these will be harvested in the future. rather, they are all the ‘children of the stagnation’, who have grown up in spite of it” (1988: 6). rappaport argues that the work is a reaction against socialist attempts to create a utopian cityscape. the nature of totalitarian architecture, he states, “lies not only in gigantism or in the cult of power but also in a normative monotony which evolves in the course of a systematic realisation of utopias” (1989: 12). in 1990, eight years after the work first became visible, nesbitt effectively cemented the canonical interpretation of brodsky and utkin’s architecture as a “response to a bleak professional scene” in which only state authorized work could be constructed. for this reason, she concludes that brodsky and utkin’s work “constitutes a graphic form of architectural criticism ... an escape into the realm of the imagination that ended as a visual commentary on what was wrong with social and physical reality and how its ills might be remedied” (2003: n.p.).6 in this canonical framing of brodsky and utkin’s work, the relationship between it and the dominant police order gradually shifts from one of dissent to one of dissensus. their position develops from a personal rejection of the power of the state, to a more visible criticism of the distribution of the sensible in russia during the previous fifty years. while this seems a plausible interpretation, reality may be more complicated: the canonical reading falsely assumes that the ideological values of the soviet state did not alter substantially throughout the 1980s. it also largely ignores the increased visibility of brodsky and utkin’s architecture, which was promoted by state exhibitions in 1984 and 1987, as well as the later financial support which allowed them to show their work to the world. this leads to the supposition that the canonical interpretation may be reliant on the manufacturing of dissensus. to account for the visibility, or sensibility, of brodsky and utkin’s architecture in the late 1980s – in terms of the distribution of the sensible in russia from the 1950s to the 1970s – western european and north american writers constructed a peculiar history of their work. lacking reference to a dominant political and ideological context, historians chose the one that was most closely aligned with the formative years of the architects. however, in terms of the distribution of the sensible, this misalignment may say more about the west’s desire to promulgate 6. it is important to note that the framing of brodsky and utkin’s position in architectural history is complicated by two things: first, their close involvement with the paper architecture movement and, second, the relative paucity of their own writings. brodsky and utkin speak through their architecture, not through manifestos or polemics. however, there is a clear tendency to ascribe to brodsky and utkin, as prominent members of the paper architecture movement, views and opinions expressed by other members. this paper suffers from the same two flaws. particularly significant here is the reframing of their architecture via its framing by secondary sources. this, however, is precisely why a rancièrian analysis of the distri bution of the sensible holds more promise than conventional historical methods. interstices 08 19interstices 08 19 a heroic vision of the architect rejecting the will of the soviet state, than it does about life in russia during a time of great political change. arguably, brodsky and utkin’s architecture did not disturb the distribution of the sensible in either the east or the west. rather, it was framed by both sides in terms of their own opposed political positions: the former as an example of russian ingenuity, the latter as a reaction to state oppression. these framings are examples of what rancière calls the “politicization” of a work (2004b). without a clear ideological context, the production of history relies on localized framings, which often reveal more about their own methodological biases than they do about the architecture they are considering. seen in this way, the canonical interpretation of brodsky and utkin’s work is problematic, precisely because it lacks a critical awareness of its own construction. running aground the ship of fools project is the closest brodsky and utkin come, in any of their works, to a personal commentary. while many of their etchings offer a similar level of sublime beauty, only this project provides clues to the social and cultural reality of their endeavours. two short extracts from poems, almost hidden in the etching, assist in this regard. the first stanza is written on the vessel itself; the second half-concealed in the smoke above the city. the first reads: come here, brothers, idler men! we are sailing on a ship to land of fool’s around the world, but here—hay! we run ashore! [sic.] (brant, s. “ship of fools” quoted in nesbitt, 2003: n.p.). remember that, according to rancière, the purpose of philosophy is to drag the aimless vessels of politics “to dry land” (1995: 1), to force wayward apolitical mariners to confront ideology once more. the terra firma on which the ship of fools has run aground is a bleak, overcrowded, industrial city, “magnificent in [its] gloom and density” (boym, 1992: 38). the second fragment of poetry is, fittingly, from a poem by pushkin entitled “a feast during the plague”. it describes a gathering raising their glasses to toast the epidemic: a final act of bravado. with these additional fragments, the earlier interpretation of the work is expanded. the ship is not sailing through an urban ocean, as rappaport obliquely suggests, but it has finally left behind its aquatic meanderings to confront the real world. this is not an heroic image; it acknowledges the challenge ahead at the same time as it bids a mocking farewell to the past. there are no political apparitions in the etching: the ship has not found a utopian isle, it has run headlong into the reality of the post-political world. the year 1988, when the ship of fools project was completed, effectively marks the end of the paper architecture movement. at that time the work of the previous decade was collected, widely exhibited and indelibly recorded in the history interstices 08 19 interstices 08 19 books. while the members of the movement, including brodsky and utkin, separately went on to produce more substantial architectural designs, the framing of their earlier works has remained largely unchanged since then. the ship of fools presciently marks this shift: it is the last work of a group who knew that they were no longer so isolated or constrained. their work had reached an international stage, and the dissolution of the soviet union was barely two years away. unfortunately, within a few more short years, the interest in these great works of paper architecture would also wane, and the histories that had already been written would lie undisturbed. references badiou, a. (2004). infinite thought: truth and the return of philosophy (o. feltham & j. clemens, trans.). new york: continuum. badiou, a. (2005). metapolitics (j. barker, trans.). new york: verso. belov, m. (1988). children of the stagnation. in nostalgia of culture: contemporary soviet visionary architecture (pp. 6-7). london: architectural association. bown, m. c. & taylor, b. (eds.). (1993). art of the soviets: painting, sculpture, and architecture in a one-party state, 1917-1992. new york: st. martin’s press. boym, c. (1992). new russian architecture. new york: rizzoli. brodsky, a. & utkin, i. (1982). “crystal palace”. reprinted in l. e. nesbitt (2003). brodsky and utkin: the complete works. (plate 6, n.p.). new york: princeton architectural press. brodsky, a. & utkin, i. (1984). “columbarium architecture (museum for disappearing buildings)”. reprinted in l. e. nesbitt (2003). brodsky and utkin: the complete works. (plate 2 unpag.). new york: princeton architectural press. brodsky, a. & utkin, i. (1987). “hill with a hole”. reprinted in l. e. nesbitt (2003). brodsky and utkin: the complete works. (plate 16, n.p.). new york: princeton architectural press. brodsky, a. & utkin, i. (1988). “ship of fools”. reprinted in l. e. nesbitt (2003). brodsky and utkin: the complete works. (plate 20, n.p.). new york: princeton architectural press. brumfield, w. c. (1991). the origins of modernism in russian architecture. berkeley: university of california press. cooke, c. (1988). a picnic by the roadside or work in hand for the future? in nostalgia of culture: contemporary soviet visionary architecture (pp. 11-26). london: architectural association. cruickshank, d. (ed.). (1996). sir banister fletcher’s a history of architecture. 20th ed. oxford: the architectural press. dovey, k. (1990). framing places: mediating power in built form. london: routledge. findley, l. (2005). building change: architecture, politics and cultural agency. london: routledge. frampton, k. (1992). modern architecture: a critical history. 3rd edition. london: thames and hudson. khan-magomedov, s. o. (1987). pioneers of soviet architecture: the search for new solutions in the 1920s and 1930s (a. lieven, trans.). london: thames and hudson. klotz, h. (ed.). (1989). paper architecture: new projects from the soviet union. new york: rizzoli. kopp, a. (1970). town and revolution: soviet architecture and city planning 1917–1935. london: thames and hudson. kopp, a. (1985). constructivist architecture in the ussr. london: academy editions. interstices 08 21interstices 08 21 millon, h. a. & nochlin, l. (eds.). (1978). art and architecture in the service of politics. cambridge (mass): mit press. nesbitt, l. e. (2003). brodsky and utkin: the complete works. new york: princeton architectural press. [first ed. 1990] papadakis, a. c. (ed.). (1991). the avant-garde : russian architecture in the twenties. new york : st. martin’s press rancière, j. (1991). the ignorant schoolmaster: five lessons in intellectual emancipation (k ross, trans.). stanford (ca.): stanford university press. rancière, j. (1994). the names of history: on the poetics of knowledge (h. melehy trans.). university of minnesota press. rancière, j. (1995). on the shores of politics (l. heron, trans.). new york: verso. rancière, j. (2000). literature, politics, aesthetics: approaches to democratic disagreement. interview with solange guénoun and james h. kavanagh. substance, 29(2), 3-24. rancière, j. (2004a). the philosopher and his poor (j. drury, trans.). durham: duke university press. rancière, j. (2004b). the politics of aesthetics (g. rockhill, trans.). london: continuum. rancière, j. (2004c). the flesh of words: the politics of writing (c. mandell, trans.). stanford (ca): stanford university press. rancière, j. (2007a). hatred of democracy. new york: verso. rancière, j. (2007b). the future of the image (g. elliott, trans.). new york: verso. rappaport, a. (1989). language and architecture of post-totalitarianism. in h. klotz, (ed.). paper architecture: new projects from the soviet union (pp. 11-17). new york: rizzoli. rappaport, a. (1994). paper architecture a postscript. in a. yurasovsky & s. ovenden (eds.). post soviet art and architecture (pp. 128-143). london: academy editions. schumacher, t. l. (1993). the danteum: architecture, poetics, and politics under italian fascism. new york: princeton architectural press. tarkhanov, a. (1994). post-modernism on a scale of 1:666: the phenomenon of ‘paper architecture’ in the ussr. in a. yurasovsky & s. ovenden (eds.). post soviet art and architecture (pp. 122-127). london: academy editions. white, h. (1994). foreword. in j. rancière, the names of history: on the poetics of knowledge (pp. vii – xx). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. žižek, s. (2004). glossary of technical terms. in j. rancière, the politics of aesthetics (g. rockhill, trans.) (pp. 80-93). london: continuum. interstices 11 okoshi-ezu: speculations on thinness andrew barrie introduction in a recent monograph on the architecture of toyo ito, eminent philosopher and architecture critic koji taki made use of a striking analogy – he described ito’s tod’s omotesando building (2004) as being as if “the entire volume were wrapped in a single sheet of paper” (taki 2006: 9). the aesthetics of thinness and ephemerality have long been central to ito’s work, and the image of paper is something ito himself used early in his career. in an essay entitled the thin façade ito described the façade of the one of his key projects from the 1970s, the pmt building in nagoya (1978), as being “like a curved sheet of paper” (ito 1978a: 21). some commentators have extended – perhaps speculatively – this notion of paper-like thinness in ito’s architecture, noting a similarity in his work to an ancient japanese drawing technique called okoshi-ezu, or “folding drawing”, that is little known in the west. in an essay on the work of david chipperfield written in the early 1990s, kenneth frampton made a passing and rather cryptic reference to the use of two-dimensional planes in ito’s architecture as an “aestheticized play on the okoshi-ezu tradition” (frampton 1992: 11), and i too have previously noted similarities to okoshi-ezu in ito’s more recent work (barrie 2004). the intriguing thing about taki’s “sheet of paper” analogy in relation to the tod’s building (fig. 1) is that it came at a time when ito seemed intent on jettisoning notions of emphemerality. since completing work on the sendai médiathèque in 2001, ito’s work underwent a fundamental shift: my aim used to be to transcend modernist architecture by means of lightness and transparency. however, i have begun to feel that ... i may be able to arrive at a more convincing scheme by trying to express, not lightness or transparency, but strength. (ito 2005: 16) how, then, should we understand the continuing paper-like qualities of ito’s recent work? this paper traces the emergence of the okoshi-ezu technique in the edo period (1603-1868), examining its unique representational qualities. it then addresses the claims that ito’s architecture is directly influenced by the okoshiezu tradition, and uses the okoshi-ezu as a vehicle by which to speculate about the particular surface-oriented qualities of the tod’s omotesando building and several of ito’s other post-médiathèque projects. a systematic architecture in edo period japan, construction was a highly constrained affair. building work was carried out by family-based carpentry workshops. in contrast to modern 63 practice, which clearly separates the roles of designer and builder, the japanese master carpenter performed both the development of the design and the supervision of the construction process. these families of carpenters, much like the stonemasons guilds of medieval europe, designed and executed their buildings in a seamless process (coaldrake 1990: 14). building design, however, was determined more by conventions and practical constraints, such as the way wood could be split or cut, than by the arbitrary design intentions of the carpenter. these conventions were embodied in the systems of proportions and modules that guided traditional practice. based on a few simple modules such as the thickness of columns or the width of structural bays, the dimensions of each building element related to those of every other. although drawing techniques evolved over time, for the most part edo-period construction drawings consisted only of simple plans (okawa 1975: 114). elevations and detail drawings were sometimes also prepared, but the detailed design of the building was largely determined by experience and the use of the proportion systems. the transmission of specific techniques within each carpentry workshop was shrouded in secrecy, with knowledge and traditions being passed on through master-apprentice relationships. to record the “cumulative wisdom and experience of successive generations of carpenters”, manuals and pattern books had begun to be produced in the fourteenth century (coaldrake 1990: 38). they were not “how to” books explaining basic carpentry techniques, but described in written and diagrammatic form the various plan types and proportional systems which formed the basis of building design. the earliest books were passed down fig. 1 the tod’s omotesando building, tokyo (2004). photo: nacasa & partners inc. courtesy toyo ito & associates, architects. interstices 11 from generation to generation, although by the edo period the expanding use of woodblock printing techniques meant that manuals were becoming widely available. this dissemination of advanced techniques and high-culture styles elevated the general quality of building. however, by establishing clear architectural design standards these books stifled innovation and individuality (nishi & hozomi 1983: 47). this standardisation was reinforced by detailed regulations laid out by the feudal government. called “sumptuary laws”, these rules set out the styles, construction methods, materials, and even the number and arrangement of rooms that were permitted for members of the various strata within each social class. the effect of all these layers of constraint was that a practiced builder could visualise and construct an entire building using just a plan board and his measuring tools. the plan board was a simple, diagrammatic plan drawn in ink on thin pieces of board (fig. 2). it indicated pillars, flooring, verandas and steps, as well as the location and type of wall openings. as the design of the building was determined by customary modules, the plan board included only a minimum of dimensions or other written notes. in addition to the plan board, carpenters also made use of various squares and a long rod for measuring and marking the elements of the building. these tools were particularly important for working in the vertical plane, and they effectively filled the role that might otherwise be performed by section and elevation drawings (itoh 1972: 42). escaping the grid naturally, construction techniques in japan had developed considerably over the centuries, many of the changes being brought about by the advent of new tools and woodworking methods. by the start of the edo period, however, the development of temples and shrines had largely stopped, and the sumptuary laws inhibited the evolution of residential architecture. the ruling elite, however, created certain types of building in which the predetermined patterns were set aside and innovation was encouraged, notably those built in the sukiya style. these developing types included castles and aristocratic residences, but the most important influence on sukiya architecture was the teahouse (itoh 1972: 26). these small spaces were intended to create a heightened sense of awareness in their occupants, and their design and construction demanded intense consideration and attention to detail. the position and height of windows, the arrangement of the alcove, hearth and other features, the selection of materials and textures, and the details of fabrication were all carefully manipulated by the designer. in order to consider and communicate such detailed and specific design intentions, a new type of drawing emerged – the okoshi-ezu or “folding drawing”. such a sophisticated tool had not existed before.1 okoshi-ezu (or tateokoshi-ezu or tate-ezu) were “pop-up” drawings which folded up to create a fully three-dimensional miniature. they consisted of pieces of washi paper cut to the shape of walls fixed onto a plan drawing. holes were cut into the walls for windows and openings, and minor elements such as shutters, raised floors and steps were sometimes fixed into place on the walls. drawn onto both sides of the paper walls were the various elements of the room – structural members, windows, fusama, shoji, shelves, fittings, and so on. particular attention was paid to the patterns of bamboo, reeds and vines used in windows and as ceiling linings, to the shape of rough-hewn timbers, and also to the size and placement author’s note: this paper revisits and further develops material from my deng thesis (barrie 2003). 1 there is some disagreement among scholars as to whether okoshi-ezu were used during design or simply served to record existing buildings. the difficulty is that although the okoshi-ezu method seems to have originated early in the edo period – exactly when or how is not clear – the oldest surviving examples date from the latter part of the edo period. see nakamura (1998: 30-31). it is argued here, however, that the detailed and customised designs of sukiya architecture would not have been possible without a design tool such as the okoshi-ezu. fig. 2 the plan board. courtesy william h. coaldrake. 65 of stepping stones and pebbles. consistent with the highly diagrammatic character of much japanese architectural drawing, textures and colors were generally communicated by written notes rather than represented graphically; this written information also included detailed specifications and dimensions for carpenters. stored flat, the drawing was erected by folding the walls up and fixing them into place with tabs and slots. occasionally, other loose elements (such as stairs, ceilings, or roofs) could be slotted into position or simply placed onto the drawing. the resulting representation is at once a three-dimensional drawing and a collapsible model. an okoshi-ezu of shigure-tei at kodai-ij in kyoto (fig. 3) is typical of those made of teahouses. the upper floor of this two-storey building is attached to the insides of the exterior walls, shutters are shown in place outside the windows, while the roof and stairs are separate elements to be placed onto the drawing. the surroundings, including a covered walkway that linked the shigure-tei to another teahouse, are indicated only by columns and stepping-stones marked on the plan. such okoshi-ezu were employed by the designer “to judge the precise effects created by the combinations of materials, light and space, and to experiment with special design and assembly techniques” (coaldrake 1990: 40), although many examples, however, were made as detailed records of famous buildings, and okoshi-ezu were often made and collected as a hobby (hamashima 1992: 193). prior to the advent of sukiya, as the design of the highly conventionalised religious and residential building types was determined primarily by the proportion systems, “the most critical aspect of the design had been the floor plan” (nishi & hozomi 1983: 108). at the kojoin guest hall in onjoji (1601), an example of this earlier approach, an almost rectangular layout was simply subdivided into rooms, the placement of the walls following the column grid (fig. 4). this highly schematic layout, easily represented by the diagrammatic plan board, was suited to an architecture in which a building’s structural column grid was the primary determinant of its design, and where the carpenters’ conventions ensured the process of construction was highly systematised and predictable. in short, the systematised nature of the architecture and predetermined patterns of use meant that there were few design variables in any one style. in contrast, sukiya design encouraged innovation. indeed, it has often been characterised as an architecture that explicitly rejected the canons. the historian teiji itoh has argued that rather than being conceived as a large structure subdivided into rooms, sukiya buildings can be understood as a collection of individually fig. 3 okoshi-ezu of the shigure-tei at kodai-ji, kyoto. source: kokuritsu rekishi minzoku hakubutsukan, chiba. fig. 4 plan of kojoin guest hall, onjoji. fig. 3 fig. 4 interstices 11 designed spaces without predetermined relationships to each other (itoh & futagawa 1969: 84).2 itoh suggests that the sukiya buildings were the first in the history of japanese architecture to be conceived through the addition of individual rooms rather than through the subdivision of a larger whole. this is clearly seen at the famed katsura detached palace in kyoto (1616-60), which is composed as a loose collection of rooms arranged in a staggered plan (fig. 5). thus, in terms of planning, sukiya architecture represents a shift to the priority of space over structure as the organising principle of the design. in contrast to spatial uniformity of the earlier styles, sukiya architecture was intended to allow the creation spatial variety. okoshi-ezu served as a tool for both determining and recording such highly customised and specific designs. with its cutout paper walls and floor, the okoshi-ezu technique presents the elements of the building as thin planes. while this might be seen as a coincidental effect of the drawing’s paper material, this does in fact reflect the building’s physical reality. in earlier architectural styles, the thickness of the main loadbearing columns was about 300mm, while sukiya columns were typically about 120mm (itoh & futagawa 1969: 84). thus, sukiya buildings were literally “thinner” than comparable buildings in earlier styles. the okoshi-ezu has no real counterpart in western drawing. a rarely used technique from england employed folding paper elements – flaps were attached to presentation drawings to allow the patron to consider alternative solutions, for example, in the plan or ornamentation (wilton-ely 1977: 181-182). however, where the okoshi-ezu provides information from a different dimension (i.e. adding the vertical dimension to the horizontal plan), these drawings introduce images of an alternate reality. perhaps the okoshi-ezu’s closest western analogue is the “developed surface interior”, which was used to represent domestic interiors for a rather brief period in the late eighteenth century (evans 1997: 202). but where the conceptual folding down of these drawings fractured the space represented, the literal folding up of the okoshi-ezu creates a spatial unity. okoshi-ezu are extraordinary in that they are both easy to understand and extremely comprehensive – a combination that is usually mutually exclusive in architectural drawing, where legibility tends to decline as the density of information increases. this quality makes okoshi-ezu drawings extremely helpful in studying the buildings they represent. indeed, okoshi-ezu provided such a complete description of the design that they were often used as the basis for the common practice of copying teahouses; the dimensional and specification information they included meant they could be used as construction drawings. these drawings could communicate so much with so little because their representational qualities were so similar to the actual architecture they represented – thin walls wrapped around cubic spaces to create highly refined and specific compositions of material, space, and light. fig. 5 plan of katsura detached palace, kyoto. fig. 6 tod’s omotesando building concept study. source: courtesy toyo ito & associates, architects. 2 in minka, argues itoh, the layout of spaces in the house was determined by the position of the columns that supported the roof structure. columns normally appeared at the corners of rooms, with sliding partitions arranged between them to subdivide the total floor space. sukiya architecture, however, had no such basic framework, and itoh asserts that it was only after the floor plan had been determined – as an assemblage of individually designed rooms – that the problem of supporting the roof was addressed. in short, the fundamental difference was that “in the minka style the structure restricts the floor plan, while in the sukiya style the floor plan restricts the structure.” (itoh & futagawa 1969: 84) 67 toyo ito and okoshi-ezu? the okoshi-ezu drawing technique is little known outside japan but is familiar to most japanese architects, being mentioned in many books on tea culture and its architecture (nishi & hozomi 1983; nakamura 1998; hayashiya et al 1974). the technique has, however, only rarely been employed in the service of contemporary architecture, most notably by arata isozaki in the 1970s in his explication of the somewhat contested japanese notion of ma space (matsuoka 1978), and by takefumi aida to represent some of his early houses (aida 1984; bognar 1990), although aida’s drawings explicitly represent the thickness of walls and therefore more closely resemble volumetric paper cut-out models than the fold-up okoshi-ezu drawings.3 aida’s drawings were included in the exhibition catalog, a new wave of japanese architecture, edited by frampton (1978: 15-19). this book also included ito’s pmt building, as well as an essay by ito in which he once again described the elements of his buildings as being “treated lightly and graphically as if they were made of paper” (ito 1978b: 69). it was perhaps this juxtaposition of the okoshi-ezu technique with ito’s comments that prompted frampton to casually assert that ito had been influenced by the “okoshi-ezu tradition” in his 1992 essay (1992: 11).4 commentators discussing contemporary japanese buildings frequently position them in relation to traditional japanese patterns, and are often tempted to assert some kind of continuity between the two. however, questioned directly about okoshi-ezu, ito disavows any such influence on his work (ito 2010b). he points out that in early works such as the pmt building, the house in nakano (1977) and hotel d (1978), his interest was simply in expressing “thin outer surfaces” (ito 1978a: 21). frampton, it seems, has assumed a relation of causality when there was only correlation; the connection between the thin planes of ito’s buildings and the okoshi-ezu is simply one of resemblance. however, if frampton went one step too far, the paper-like qualities he identified in ito’s early work were validated by the architect’s own words, and the same qualities noted by koji taki in relation to the recent tod’s building remain striking. this is particularly apparent given the much-published conceptual image of the tod’s building – which likely influenced taki’s comments – that show the façade as a patterned paper strip folded to define the building’s perimeter wall (fig. 6). similar drawings exist for several other recent ito projects: developed surface drawings show the structure passing across the surface of the roof and walls of the serpentine pavilion in london (2002), and unfolded elevations described the patterned façade of the mikimoto ginza 2 building in tokyo (2005). while ito doesn’t use the okoshi-ezu technique per se, it is clear that the conception of some of his buildings does follow a very similar kind of thinking – buildings defined by thin and highly-graphic folded planes. the last section of this paper will explore this relationship of resemblance, examining the tod’s building and other of ito’s post-médiathèque works alongside the okoshi-ezu technique and offering some speculations as to the significance of the surface-oriented character they have in common. 3 the renowned modernist architect and teahouse scholar, sutemi horiguchi, published a substantial collection of okoshi-ezu models, complete with texts, photos and other drawings. see s. horiguchi (1963-1967) chashitsu okoshiezu shu [folding drawings of the famous tea rooms]. 12 vols. tokyo: bokusui shobo. horiguchi’s publication, now very rare and expensive, was itself the subject of a more recent book – see m. nakamura (ed.). (2005) chashitsu okoshiezu no miryoku [the attraction of folding drawings] fukui, japan: fukui shimbunsha. 4 additionally, in his 1986 essay frampton had described ito’s frontally-oriented single-line axonometrics as “a version of the traditional okoshie drawing technique” which suggested “the unreal notion of a paper thin architecture” (frampton 1986: 144). interstices 11 a new architecture ito’s writings and interviews since the completion of the médiathèque have been characterised by his increasingly boldly-stated desire to move “beyond modernism” (ito 2006: 32); one recent interview characterised his current position as an “anti-mies stance” (ito 2010a: 302). ito takes particular aim at the role of the grid, which he sees as the “architectural order of the twentieth century” (ito 2009: 7). for ito, the grid defines the contemporary city as uniform or homogenous space, which in turn has a homogenising effect on society and on its individual members. defining the grid as the cause of society’s ills is clearly an oversimplification, but it provides a clear architectural direction to explore. ito states his goal is now to “transform homogenous space” (ito 2009: 8), and suggests that in this task “structure offers important clues” (ito 2006: 32). in the wake of the médiathèque’s completion, ito described a lingering dissatisfaction with its design. while the vertical structure of the tubes was organic and free, the flat floor slabs they passed though implied a certain uniformity. the building, he complained, had “been assembled from elements with opposing tendencies. will a time come when i am liberated from this contradiction?” (ito 2001: 7) in subsequent projects, his attention focussed therefore on developing structural systems that didn’t consist of distinct systems for horizontal and vertical dimensions – that is, structural systems that were three-dimensionally integrated. this search focussed, it is argued here, on continuity as an alternative to separation. the early modernists, seeking to escape the limitations imposed by the heavy masonry structures which characterised the european architecture of the time, separated the structural and space-defining elements of their buildings; this separation made possible the independent manipulation of structure, façade and internal partitions that was fundamental to le corbusier’s dom-ino system. looking to attack the homogenising influence of the dom-ino structural grid, ito sought to reunite what the moderns split asunder: “for 100 years modern architecture has been created by separating the structure from the external envelope, but my intention is to reunite them” (takiguchi 2005). in this task, ito followed the moderns in making use of the new materials and the new methods of structural analysis of his time, but in re-integrating structure and envelope with the aim of creating new ways of building he effectively reversed modernist innovations. fig. 7 the serpentine pavilion, london (2002). source: courtesy toyo ito & associates, architects. 69 ito achieved his goal in two small but startlingly-original projects completed soon after the médiathèque: the bruges pavilion in bruges, belgium (2002) and the serpentine pavilion in london (2002).5 in many ways these buildings were very simple, formed from structurally patterned folded planes. the use of the fold is a relatively common compositional or organisational device in contemporary architecture; what was unique in these buildings is that they consisted of the folded surface and literally nothing else. further, the structures of these buildings, were remarkable in being non-hierarchical. the walls and roof of ito’s serpentine pavilion, for example, employ exactly the same structure; the structural system acknowledges difference only in the most subtle way, in that the thickness of each steel plate has been determined by the specific loads it carries (fig. 7). even distinctions such as those usually made between primary and secondary structural elements had disappeared. the remarkable purity and clarity of these pavilions was made possible by their programmatic simplicity and relatively small size. in the larger and more complex tod’s omotesando building and the mikimoto ginza 2 project in tokyo (2005), structure and envelope remained integrated but distinctions between horizontal and vertical structure re-emerged; both were defined by thin, continuous perimeter walls which became “both graphic pattern and structural system” (ito 2009: 194). this mode of design seeks to resolve all the structural, spatial and functional requirements of the project in one stroke. each building has been distilled into an all-encompassing system, which often involves dispersing the various functions of the building – load-bearing, weathertightness, lighting, insulation, storage, ventilation – throughout the building’s structure. each part is related to every other. the unity of the various systems was created by the use of algorithms or rules to generate a spatial or structural geometry. these rules were not highly sophisticated; at the tod’s building, the structure was defined by the repetition of the silhouette of a simple tree. the goal, however, was not uniformity, but the opposite – the creation of spatial variety, such that each spot within a building has its own character. the varying thickness and density of the branches in the tod’s tree silhouette results in each floor having a different spatial character, fulfilling ito’s desire for non-homogenous space (fig. 1). these architectural systems are capable of generating three-dimensional complexity, variety and, in many cases, apparent randomness, while maintaining a sense of both economy and clarity. integrating structure and envelope disguises the elements we normally understand as structural. this suppression of the force of gravity creates the appearance of effortlessness. the modernist preference for separation allowed each element of a building – whether tectonic, functional or spatial – to be (or at least appear) identifiable and self-contained. but where modernism resulted in an architecture of parts, ito’s re-integrated emergent architecture is one of continuity. there is nothing apart from the continuous, effortless surface. it is this continuity, the compression of all the architectural action into the building’s surfaces to create a highly graphic effect, that, it is argued here, explains why these buildings so strongly resemble the three-dimensionally arranged paper sheets of the okoshi-ezu technique. 5 this line of development also includes the aluminium cottage in yamanashi (2004), and the sumika pavilion in utsunomiya (2009). these two buildings fit less comfortably, though, as, due to the inclusion of “non-surface” elements – partition walls in yamanashi and columns in utsunomiya – they are less pure as non-hierarchical systems. interstices 11 conclusion the teahouses depicted by edo-period okoshi-ezu could not be rotated – the wall could not become the floor, nor the ceiling the wall. but in the okoshi-ezu drawings these distinctions were erased and the various elements were represented in the same way – as uniformly thin planes.6 we can see in ito’s new architecture a drive towards a physically lighter or thinner architecture, and a desire to escape the universal space of the grid for greater variety and specificity. the similarity of these buildings to okoshi-ezu drawings is in part due to their thinness and, in some cases, their whiteness, but by configuring his buildings as three-dimensional compositions of uniform, highly patterned structural planes, ito has created buildings that resemble these drawings to an extraordinary degree. the paper-like qualities of ito’s architecture, however, may be undergoing an important shift. while many of ito’s recent projects have employed continuous surfaces as structure, he has moved increasingly beyond planar, folded surfaces. the relaxation park in torrevieja, spain (2001-) and the taichung metropolitan opera house in taiwan (2005-) take the form of three-dimensionally curved shell structures. it seems the use of complex, organic geometries will allow ito’s structures to retain their thinness but jettison the fragility suggested by paperlike planes, fulfilling ito’s twenty-first-century desire to make architecture that expresses strength. references aida, t. (1984). kenchiku nouto aida takefumi: tsumiki no ie [architecture note takefumi aida: toy block house]. tokyo: maruzen. barrie, a. (2003). folded space: the representation of space in edo era architectural drawings and cartography. [edo jidai kenchiku zumen to chizu ga kataru kukan.] unpublished dissertation for the degree of doctor of engineering, university of tokyo, tokyo. barrie, a. (2004). tracing paper. monument (64), 38-44. bognar, b. (1990). takefumi aida: buildings and projects. new york (ny): princeton architectural press. coaldrake, w. h. (1990). the way of the carpenter: tools and japanese architecture. new york (ny) & tokyo: weatherhill. evans, r. (1997). the developed surface: an enquiry into the brief life of an eighteenth century drawing technique. in r. evans, translations from drawing to building and other essays. cambridge (mass.): mit press, 194-231. this article was first published in 9h, 8 (1989), 120-147. frampton, k. (ed.). (1978). a new wave of japanese architecture. new york (ny): institute for architecture and urban studies. frampton, k. (1986). ukiyo-e and the art of toyo ito. space design, 264 (september), 144-147. frampton, k. (ed.) (1992) david chipperfield. barcelona: editorial gustavo gili. hamashima, m. (1992). sekkeizu ga kataru kokenchiku no sekkai. [the world of old architecture told in design drawings.] tokyo: shokokusha. hayashiya t., nakamura, m. & hayashiya, s. (1974). japanese arts and the tea ceremony. translated and adapted by j. p. macadam. new york (ny): weatherhill & tokyo: heibonsha. ito, t. (1978a). the thin façade. the japan architect (september), 19-21. 6 it’s important to note that the resemblance proposed is between ito’s buildings and okoshi-ezu models, not between ito’s buildings and sukiya designs. intriguingly, however, both ito’s recent work and sukiya architecture hold in common a shift from the grid to freer or more variable or flexible organisational principles. 71 ito, t. (1978b). collage and superficiality in architecture. in frampton, k. (ed.) (1978). a new wave of japanese architecture. new york (ny): institute for architecture and urban studies, 68-69. ito, t. (2001). dividing vs. making continuous. in toyo ito: sendai mediatheque, miyago, japan, 1995-2000 (ga detail 2). tokyo: ada edita. ito, t. (2005). interview with toyo ito: invisible process. architecture + urbanism (417), 16. ito, t. (2006). the new “real”: toward reclaiming materiality in contemporary architecture. in a. suzuki & a. imafuji (eds.) (2006). toto ito: the new “real” in architecture. tokyo: toyo ito exhibition executive ctte, 30-44. ito, t. (2009). in search of a new architectural order. in toyo ito. london: phaidon press, 7-9. ito., t. (2010a). ito toyo tokuhon 2010 [toyo ito reader 2010]. tokyo: ada edita. ito, t. (2010b). (2010, january 14). pers. comm. to the author. itoh, t. (1972). traditional domestic architecture of japan. translated by r. l. gage. new york (ny) & tokyo: weatherhill / heibonsha. itoh, t. & futagawa, y. (1969). the elegant house: traditional sukiya architecture. new york (ny) & tokyo: walker / weatherhill. le corbusier. (1946). towards a new architecture. translated by f. etchells. london: the architectural press. matsuoka, s. (ed.) (1978). ma: espace-temps du japon. [ma: space-time in japan.] paris: musée des arts décoratifs. nakamura, m. (1998). chashitsu no rekishi: kizo ga wakaru q+a. [the history of teahouses.] kyoto: tankosha. nakamura, m. (ed.) (2005). chashitsu okoshiezu no miryoku [the attraction of folding drawings]. fukui, japan: fukui shimbunsha. nishi, k. & hozumi, k. (1983). what is japanese architecture? translated, adapted and with an introduction by h. mack horton. tokyo, new york (ny) & san francisco (ca.): kodansha. okawa, n. (1975). edo architecture: katsura and nikko. translated by a. woodhull and a. miyamoto. new york (ny): weatherhill & tokyo: heibonsha. õta, h. (ed.). (1972). traditional japanese architecture and gardens. translated by kirishiki shinjiro. yokohama: kokusai bunka shinkõkai. taki, k. (2006). life and technology. in a. suzuki & a. imafuji (eds.) (2006). toto ito: the new “real” in architecture. tokyo: toyo ito exhibition executive ctte, 9-21. takiguchi, n. (2005). the design of small things: an interview with toyo ito. unpublished paper. wilton-ely, j. (1997), the rise of the professional architect in england. in s. kostof (ed.), the architect: chapters in the history of the profession. new york (ny): oxford university press. interstices 11 fig. 1. the discovery, level 1 plan, by ostwald-tucker-chapman. pencil, pen, ink, collage. size: a1. 99 re-tracing history: drawing the anti-monument michael j ostwald, chris tucker and michael chapman a design brief for a monument to commemorate the ‘discovery’ of the city of newcastle, australia, was the catalyst for this set of drawings that explore notions of tracing, mapping and incarceration. inspired in part by poststructuralist interpretations of “zones of control”1 and the “violence of naming”2 – both acts which operate through the power of drawing and writing – the project proposes an alternative to a conventional monument which was intended to be sited in the city’s civic park and was expected to depict heroic colonial explorers naming (and thereby claiming) the region for an english monarch. instead, a counterdesign was proposed that was sited in an abandoned reservoir that is hidden, underground, at the base of a stone obelisk on a hill overlooking the city and its coastline. the historic obelisk is an important marker because colonial cartographers used it to chart the highest peak in the city and the distribution of the surrounding urban street grid: it represents the known. the reservoir is of interest because it is an unstable structure that has restricted access and which resists simple attempts to map its form or influence; for the present project, it encapsulates the imagined. our counter-proposal involves the mapping of a series of historic events, each of which might reasonably offer an alternative discovery narrative, and the sites they are associated with. amongst these alternative sites are the original location of aboriginal inhabitation in the area, a site out to sea where captain cook charted the location of the peak and the harbour mouth, the place where escaped convicts hid from their colonial oppressors, and the office, far to the south in sydney, where the colonial legal and bureaucratic process of renaming finally took place. through this sequence of events a complex process is mapped which gradually transforms a place from being known, by aural tradition, as muloobinba (“place of ferns”) to its renaming and gazetting first as kingstown and later as newcastle. this same sequence records the growing dominance of the line, in its drawn and written incarnations, over speech. the lines drawn on the map from the alternative historic sites are traced through the centre of the reservoir forming a series of cuts into different layers of the drum. as visitors rise through the interior of the drum they uncover a series of vistas, sliced through the surrounding earth, each denoting a different, equally valid, location for the ‘discovery’ of the city. in this way the project sets out to question the european notions of claiming and possessing the landscape. it uses architecture to chronicle the gradual incarceration of the land through physical, symbolic and legal operations. from the highest geographical vantage point in the city, the monument explores the sites where the city was successively sited, sighted, inhabited, colonised, mined and then named. 1 this idea is well-known in architecture through foucault’s interpretation of the panopticon, but in this case the power structure is changed to allow the visitor to construct their own process of incarceration of the land. in this way the project also has much in common with vidler’s mask: the blank face for the labyrinthine interior. see: foucault, m. (1991) discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (a. sheridan, trans.). london: penguin; vidler, a. (1999) the mask and the labyrinth: nietzsche and the (uncanny) space of decadence. in a. kostka and i. wohlfarth (eds.). nietzsche and “an architecture of our minds”. (pp. 53-66) los angeles: getty research institute for the history of art and the humanities. 2 derrida in of grammatology analyses lévi-strauss’ account of the origins of language, which relies upon a description of the nambikwara and the violence of their naming. in this description the acts that define the tribe initially are twofold: the picada, a crude track, and the abandoned telephone line, both of which allow the nambikwara to be architecturally, spatially and cartographically drawn, mapped and thereby imprisoned. see: derrida, j. (1976) of grammatology, (g. c. spivak, trans.). baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 101-40. interstices 11 fig. 2. the discovery, level 2 plan, by ostwald-tucker-chapman. pencil, pen, ink, collage. size: a1. fig. 3. the discovery, level 3 plan, by ostwald-tucker-chapman. pencil, pen, ink, collage. size: a1. fig. 4. the discovery, level 4 plan, by ostwald-tucker-chapman. pencil, pen, ink, collage. size: a1. fig. 5. the discovery, level 5 plan, by ostwald-tucker-chapman. pencil, pen, ink, collage. size: a1. 101 fig. 6. the discovery, site plan, by ostwald-tucker-chapman. pencil, pen, ink, collage. size: a1. interstices 11 this design is depicted in six layered plans, each functioning like a clock face, to record events in time and their corresponding location in space. two crosssections complete the depiction of the design. fig. 7. the discovery, cross section 1, by ostwald-tucker-chapman. pencil, pen, ink, collage. size: a1. note: each drawing was first constructed by hand on tracing paper, as a sketch overlay on a regional map. this sketch was then scanned and used as a construction layer for a cad plan to be produced and printed. this black and white drawing, part cad drawing and part sketch, was then printed, airbrushed and pencil-rendered by hand. finally the image was scanned once more and natural elements were rendered by computer (the sky, trees and grass) while the synthetic objects, the buildings, retain their hand-drawn qualities. significantly, each drawing represents the skills of three people, not just in design but in the construction of the image. initial sketches by michael ostwald and michael chapman were traced and converted into cad images by chris tucker, before being airbrushed and rendered by chapman, and then scanned and computerretouched by ostwald. 103 fig. 8. the discovery, cross section 2, by ostwald-tucker-chapman. pencil, pen, ink, collage. size: a1. interstices 6 the tectonic of the fale semisi fetokai potauaine1 1. semisi fetokai potauaine is a fourth year student in architecture at the university of auckland. 2. the fale is in some sense treated like an upturned boathull. in fact, the technology used for its construction is based on replaceability of its components or parts, just as parts are replaced when boats are serviced. with the use of lalava, the joints or members are not weakened by cutting, drilling or nailing. the fale could even be portable: in his book tongan society (1929), gifford mentions early voyagers’ accounts of portable houses set up at convenient places near anchorages for the reception of visitors. lalava: the ‘lashing’ of the fale as part of pacific and, more specifically, polynesian building culture, tongan architecture is essentially derived from notions of ocean, sea faring and navigation, and cosmology (refiti, 2002). as discussed by tomui kaloni, in his paper “the evolution of tongan architecture” (2005), tongan culture resulted from a process of differentiation by adaptation, and developed within a unique environment. kaloni advocates that this uniqueness should not be mistakenly generalized. tongan aesthetics are based on heliaki—to say one thing, but mean another (wood-ellem, 2004). as context and meaning change, this use of allusion and metaphor allows for the passing on of cultural knowledge. therefore, some insight into the poetics and politics of tongan verbal and visual modes of expression is necessary to understand tongan aesthetics, which are not just “an artistic penchant; … [but] a philosophy; a way of life”… (stevenson, 2002: 18). as a way of analysing tongan architecture, i propose exploring the tectonics of the fale in terms of lashing, or lalava. the essence and form of lalava reflect not just a general pacific ‘tectonic tool’, but a specifically tongan one. applications of lalava are not restricted to the fale, but can be extended to other uses: for instance, to boat building, tool making, and traditional clothing.2 thus, lalava not only integrates the fale and its components but reflects every other aspect of tongan culture, society, and way of life. tectonics: ontology and representation in general, tongan arts are divided into faiva, performance art, and tufunga,3 material arts. both art forms are governed by time and space: faiva translates as ‘time and space’, and tufunga as a temporal production of ‘form in space’ (mahina, 2002: 5). the tongan conception and praxis of ta and va, ‘time’ and ‘space’, critically govern the arts of lineal and spatial intersection from which lalava comes. in an anthropological dimension, tufunga lalava can be related to aesthetic concepts and practices of particular and universal significance. figure 1: inside the falehau, tonga, in ‘a new, authentic and complete collection of voyages round the world …’ london 1784. the image shows the tectonics with lavalava connecting the structure. figure 3: lalava, fata section of the fale pasifika, the university of auckland, 2004. all photos by semisi fetokai potauaine. 10� while ta may generally be less significant than va in tonga, they are of equal currency in formal social and aesthetic contexts. this is critical in the performance of reciprocal social obligations and creations to do with beauty and harmony. like the world over, both ta and va underpin the overall tongan conception of the practice of art. not only are the ontological entities, time and space, the medium in which all things are, in a single level of reality, spatio-temporality or four-sided dimensionality, they are epistemologically intensified and reorganized, thereby giving rise to art. art can, thus, be defined as the rhythmic and symmetrical reorganisation of time and space that produces harmony and beauty. a type of ta-va, time-space, transformation, art is formally investigative and functionally therapeutic … (mahina, 2002: 5) as social obligation, hereditary profession or way of life, tufunga were the obligation of ha’a tufunga and faiva that of ha’a punake. the ha’a tufunga class was divided into several subclasses,4 but all ha’a tufunga use intertwining line and space, and all tufunga professions use the lalava as their main tool.5 in fact, all tufunga masters will get involved in the construction 3. tufunga can be juxtaposed with the greek tekton, but tufunga governs all aspect of creating. it is a way of living, a profession important in society. even the gods are referred to as tangaloa tufunga. 4. tufunga fo’uvaka, tufunga langafale and tufunga tãtongitongi, tufunga tongi’akau and tufunga tãmaka which to deal with ’akau (wood) and maka (stone). both tufunga fo’uvaka and tufunga langafale have more direct connections with tufunga lalava. 5. “working with kohi or tohi, by way of ta or beating of time, makes lalava an abstract art form. by extension, tufunga lalava is akin to tufunga tãtatau, body art or tattooing. although they are differ in subject matter, or space, the former is a work with houses and boats and the latter with sino or the body. both arts utilise line and space, with kafa sinnet made from coconut fibres and black ink or vaitohi’uli as respective means of interlacing kohi and va …” (mahina, 2002: 5) figure 4: the construction of the fale pasifika involved tufunga tamaka (stone), tufunga tongi’akau (wood) and tufunga langafale (architecture). of a fale, along with the whole of society (reciprocal duties). in this highly strung society, the professions are shared and collective: tufunga tãmaka are responsible for the elevated platform or the ’esi; tufunga tãtongitongi and tufunga tongi’akau for the wood preparation; and women, usually, are responsible for lãlanga of coconut leaves and woven mats for wall and roof coverings. interstices 6 tufunga masters, as non-academic professionals, are empirically oriented. they draw their inspirations—like their predecessors—from their experiences with their physical and social environment. with ancient lalava, masters ingeniously created abstractions of real life and everyday in many kupesi or lalava patterns with direct connections to the lashing of boat and house construction. in “rappel a l’ordre: the case of tectonic” (1990), frampton discusses semper’s “theory of formal beauty”, which viewed architecture as an “ontological world-making art” despite its “static representational form” (5). this applies not just to symbolic form, but also to the urge to strike a beat, string a necklace and, in this case, perform the lalava. semper also regarded architecture, together with dance and music, as cosmic arts, in contrast to painting and sculpture. this concept has a parallel in the conception of tongan art, where tufunga (material art) and faiva (performance art) stand side by side: the making of -cloth (koka’anga) is always accompanied by singing and chanting. this explains the unity and execution of reciprocal duties among the social groups taking part in the tapa-cloth making, where ta and va are both practiced. performance by singing creates the ta, and tapa-cloth making brings about the social va between the participants. from an anthropological perspective, the tongan concepts of “such things as the sky, the human body, and social practices such as lãlanga (weaving) and koka’anga or ngatu-making” are all “associated with the lineal and the spatial” (mahina, 2002: 5).6 lalava is a term made up of two words, lala and va. this two-word scenario is a common occurrence, especially in the language of art, crafts and society. lala means to intersect, as in the 6. “the celestial bodies in the sky or outer space, or vavã, were treated as kohi ’a velenga, where the points of spatial intersection of imaginary lines form the actual stars and galaxies, of value to navigation and voyaging. in fact, kohi is the older form of tohi, hence tohitohi or kohikohi. the word tohi applies to lãlanga and koka’anga, especially when making dried pandanus leaves into fe’unu or fine threads or fibres for weaving, and painting over printed kupesi using koka and tongo ‘black-dye’ made from treated sap of koka and tongo trees, which are known as tohi lãlanga or tohi ngatu respectively.” (5) there are parallel analogies. figure7: lalava pattern, fale pasifika. 10� intersecting of two or multiple lines (kohikohi). thus kohikohi is a multiple intersecting of woven cords (coconut sinnet) in lashing, black-dyed koka and tongo in tapa making, lining threads of leaves (fe’unu) in weaving and line productions with black ink in tattooing. mahina (2002: 6) states that, “in its ‘pure’ form, the word lala evokes a pristine state”—harmony; and that “the notion lala lies in close proximity to the concept noa, meaning a zero point, which depicts a state of nothingness, emptiness or formlessness” (6). a number of contradictory yet intersecting tendencies are counter-poised, giving “rise to unity, harmony and beauty” (6). in “rappel a l’ordre” frampton also refers to the tectonic of the hellenes, by karl boetticher (1843). boetticher regarded construction as an appropriate interlocking of two constructional elements. these conjunctions are seen as body forms, simultaneously articulated and integrated. this not only guaranteed the finish of the building material, but also enabled form to acquire symbolic meaning. boetticher then distinguished between “structural nucleus” and “decorative cladding”, in which ”decorative cladding” somehow symbolised the status of the “structural nucleus”. in the lalava of the fale, the interlocking of the constructional elements can be easily fitted into boetticher’s position.7 the lalava reiterates the symbolic, and aesthetic, of the fale’s tectonics by further intersecting the intersected constructional element. according to the lalava master of the fale pasifika, university of auckland (2004), filipe tohi, the kafa sinnet used is normally in kula or red and ’uli or black, the spatio-temporal intersection of which eternally reproduces foursided dimensionality, the colours symbolise men and women, who are physically united and genealogically related in time and space, and connected through procreation … (cited in mahina, 2002: 5) in fact, the old tongan term for copulation and sex is lala, and symbolises the physical ‘intersection’ between male and female, in all animals— but particularly between women and men. referring to pierre bourdieu’s analysis of the berber house (published in 1969), frampton points out that the berber house itself constitutes a cosmos in the way in which its tectonic order unites language and the collective beyond the house itself. it is possible to explain certain aspects of the fale, the lalava and their relationship with the wider society in this way. on the other hand, semper’s “conception of style” points at ancient monuments and constructions, emphasising that “they are the free creations of men, who employed understanding, firstly, the term kãlava refers to both types of the blood vessels, that is, arteries and veins. kãlava then translates into arteries and veins intersecting to form the human body. secondly, the human brain, which is referred to as the ’uto, is believed to be a collection of (various intersecting) thread-like or fibrous substances (a reference to coconut sinnet). thirdly, various types and forms of thinking such as vavalo, vavanga, havala, and so forth all refers to their spatio-temporal ta-va, kohi-va or lalava origin. the term tauhivã literally translates as ‘the beating of space’ or in a more formal sense means ‘nurture the space’. these are all to do with maintaining exchange relationship between so. 7. similarly, marco frascari’s essay on the “the tell-tale detail” (in frampton, 1990: 13) seems to summarise every aspect of the architecture of the fale: it is an art not only for the basic need for shelter, but puts together materials in more than just a meaningful manner. this occurs through ‘formal’ and ‘actual’ joints, and it is here that the ‘construction’ and ‘construing’ of architecture takes place. figure 8: section of a typical fale. drawing by semisi fetokai potauaine based on tomui kaloni, 2005. interstices 6 observation of nature, genius, will, knowledge and power” (in rykwert, 1982: 129). following semper, one could say that fale are microcosmic and mirror the law of nature—while not necessarily following natural law. rather, they are the products of the collective, of society, exactly in the same way as language. conclusion like other tongan or polynesian art, within a system of cultural knowledge the tectonic of the fale as a whole remains highly aesthetic. its construction, from the elevated platform to the roof, involves the whole community. what is created in the fale’s tectonics reflects people’s ways of living, their culture—not just within the confines of the fale, but within society as a whole. as an analogy, the fale could be put alongside the berber house, with the berber house being stereotomic and the fale very ‘monolithic’ and uniform. however, with all due respect to frampton and other followers of tectonic theories, the fale requires special treatment and special analytical tools. its ethnic domain must be approached, and heliaki must be considered, in order for this architecture to be understood. for example, the fact that the tufunga lalava intersected tufunga fo’uvaka and tufunga langafale might not only confirm that the tectonic of the fale is based on the vaka, or boat, construction. it may also explain the role of an up-turned boat hull as current metaphor for the fale concept. lalava, then, is not only a structural necessity for the tectonics of the fale, but also an abstraction of society. lalava can, indeed, be put alongside the knot as a primordial mode of the tectonic, as semper conceived it. it is a variety of the knot, a record to hand down cultural knowledge. the lalava of the fale pasifika, although not structural (due to building code requirements), still echo the main essence of lalava. here, the functionality of the lalava is far removed (non-structural), but its recording mode and ideas are still present, its messages still as a powerful as in ancient lashing. the patterns created in the fale pasifika depict, according to filipe tohi, the lalava master responsible for the lashing, abstractions not just of academic relationships between polynesian communities. the work knows no ‘geo-political boundaries’ and it relates to everything in oceania. the fale pasifika is a modern fale, highly contemporised to fit modern requirements, intended not just for polynesian students but for all of new zealand and for a wider global audience. lalava in context is a philosophy, a way of life, which is vulnerable to changes, which are of course part of modern society and technology. but these changes can, as seen in the fale pasifika, also provide sustenance to pacific cultures. glossary of tongan terms (mahina, 2002) faiva lit. to do time and space; performance art. fale lit. tongan house. fe’unu noun: fine threads; ‘line’ made from dried leaves for weaving; verb:sliding along, or readjusting of more than two things; refers to ladies taking position in weaving large mats. 10� ha’a professional class, usually hereditary professional class. ha’a punake class of performance artists. ha’a tufunga class of material artists. heliaki to say one thing and mean another; tongan proverbs; punake’s profession. kafa sinnet made from coconut fibres; ‘lines’ for lineal-spatial intersecting. kohi line; writing; older form of tohi. kohikohi multiple lines; writing; older form of tohitohi. koka black dye made from treated sap of koka trees. koka’anga bark-cloth; tapa-cloth making; ngatu-making. kula red, brownish colour. kupesi a design, a blue print, a pattern. lala older term for sex, copulation. also used as pristine, or nothingness place. lãlanga intersecting of line and space; mat weaving. lalava intersecting of line and space; kafa lashing. noa state of purity, harmony and beauty. ta time; tempo; beat; rhythm. tongo see koka; black dye made from treated sap of tongo trees. tufunga lit. ‘to do time and space’; material art or artist. tufunga fo’uvaka art of boat building, boat builder. tufunga lalava art of intersecting line and space; lineal spatial sculpture; lashing master; lalava master. tufunga langafale art of house-building or architecture; house-builder; master builder. tufunga tãmaka art of stone cutting; stone sculpture. tufunga tãtatau art of symmetry-beating (of body); tattooing; body sculpture. tufunga tãtongitongi art of wood carving; wood sculpture. tufunga tongi’akau see tufunga tãtongitongi. ‘uli black. va space; social relation. references frampton, k. (1990). rappel a l’ordre: the case of tectonic. architectural design, 60 (3/4), 19-25. gifford, e. w. (1929). tongan society. honolulu (hawai’i): bernice p. bishop museum. kaloni, t. (2005). the architecture of tonga. cross section: nzia news (march), 11-15. mahina, o. (2002). tufunga lalava, genealogy of lines, filipe tohi. new plymouth: govettbrewster art gallery. refiti, a. (2002). making spaces: polynesian architecture in aotearoa new zealand. in s. mallon & p. f. pereira (eds.), pacific art niu sila (209-225). wellington: te papa press. rykwert, j. (1982). semper and the conception of style. in the necessity of artifice: ideas in architecture. new york: rizzoli. stevenson, k. (2002). lalava-ology: a pacific aesthetic. in o. mahina (ed.), tufunga lalava, genealogy of lines, filipe tohi (17-19). new plymouth: govett-brewster art gallery. wood-ellem, e. (ed.). (2004). songs and poems of queen salote. nuku’alofa (tonga): vava’u press. illuminating pacific perspectives illuminating pacific perspectives roger neich interstices 4 book review: illuminating pacific perspectives 1 nicholas thomas oceanic art (london: thames and hudson, 1995). isbn 0-500-20281-8 anybody brave enough to attempt a general comprehensive book covering the huge field of pacific art is immediately faced with a major dilemma; how to deal with the dazzling diversity of pacific arts and cultures in one volume. in the past, some writers have opted for a generalised synthesizing approach which emphasises the similarities and common themes but then has to wrestle with all the exceptions and variations encountered in this vast area. others have taken the more common but more pedestrian approach of a descriptive survey moving across the pacific culture by culture or area by area. this approach has resulted in some huge books on pacific art which usually become more appreciated for their illustrations than their text. both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, either becoming so general that the special characteristics of each art in its cultural context are lost, or so detailed that the important common themes and connections across the pacific are overwhelmed by a welter of culturally-specific variations. in this book, nicholas thomas has taken the bold step of combining these two approaches by looking at a series of major pacific themes and artforms distributed widely across a carefully selected range of cultural areas. with little concern for artistic, archaeological or historical connections, thomas discusses in turn, sepik art especially in relation to initiation, maori carving especially architectural, asmat carvings and shields in relation to warfare, solomon island canoes, tahitian, maori, marquesan and samoan tattooing, new guinea string bags, vanuatu mat weaving, melanesian and polynesian tapa cloth, eastern polynesian tivaevae quilts, tahitian and hawaiian featherwork cloaks, sashes and other chiefly insignia in relation to divinity and rank, narrative paintings on micronesian palauan clubhouses in relation to the development of pacific “tourist art,” and finally contemporary pacific art in relation to national independence and indigenous minorities. this last chapter, which is strongly focussed on papua new guinea and new zealand, includes valuable discussion of both maori and immigrant polynesian contemporary art and individual artists. with his serious and thoughtful attention to contemporary pacific arts as part of the continuous spectrum of pacific art, thomas’ study represents a great advance on previous pacific art books which have either ignored the present living arts or relegated them to a final patronising paragraph. this wide variety of objects and activities that can legitimately be included under the rubric of “art” in the pacific emphasizes the point made by thomas in his introduction. here, he notes how oceanic art challenges a whole range of western expectations concerning knowledge and social relationships, as well as art itself. art in the pacific can be as much an experienced process as a fixed “image.” thus he maintains that pacific art can only be truly understood within its own cultural context which includes indigenous ideas of what art is and how it operates. an important observation made by thomas corrects the western expectation that art should have a discursive meaning or external referent such as an ancestor. in fact, much pacific art is rather intended to arouse an immediate affective response in the viewer, perhaps one of awe or terror in the face of supernatural power, or humility in the face of political authority, or comforting maternal feelings in the presence of new guinea women’s string bags. this approach has also freed thomas from the old museum-oriented perspective on pacific art with its usual concentration on carvings and “ancestor figures.” within his separate discussions, thomas has incorporated and helpfully summarised valuable new understandings of traditional and contemporary pacific artforms, derived from recent studies such as t h a t b y g e l l o n t a t t o o , m c k e n z i e o n p a p u a new guinea string bags, hammond on tivaevae, bolton on vanuatu mats, and o’hanlon on new guinea highland tribal warfare. these are effectively used by thomas to demonstrate that in the pacific the diversity of art processes and the diversity of views on the nature and purpose of art is more interstices 4 book review: illuminating pacific perspectives 2 fundamental than the sheer visual diversity of art objects. there is virtually no discussion of the role of the individual named artist in traditional pacific societies. except for the named artists in the contemporary arts section, readers will not find anything here about famous traditional artists of the past, even in the maori section where many individual artists of the nineteenth century are well-known and celebrated. this absence may give the questionable impression that the artist as an individual was not particularly important in the pacific. simlarly, there is very little on indigenous aesthetics and art criticism, again perhaps emphasizing the collectivity over the initiative and genius of the individual. inevitably, this book suffers from some of the disadvantages of both the generalising and the survey approaches. the mental gymnastics required for making generalisations about pacific arts lead to a few sudden unattached comparisons and some convoluted language that requires careful unravelling. nevertheless this effort is well repaid by the insights provided. however, although this book is probably intended by the publisher as an introductory text, full appreciation of these insights requires some prior knowledge and experience of the full range of pacific art forms. beginners will therefore need to read this book in association with older pacific art survey books or visits to a good comprehensive museum display. the quality of illustrations here is very high and the subjects well-chosen, but the range is limited by space allocation. for example, all of sepik art is represented by only eighteen illustrations, maori art early and modern by twentyfive, and hawaiian art by just ten. several other pacific cultures warrant only one or two illustrations. new zealanders will find the section on traditional maori carving a bit thin, with some awkward photo captions. some mention is made of the current controversies about meaning in maori art, but because of the loose referencing system beginners w i l l n o t f i n d i t easy to follow up on particular topics such as this. thomas’ thematic approach does provide some opportunities for in-depth analyses of particular arts in their cultural context, especially sepik art and palauan clubhouse decoration, but the treatment of other arts such as tattooing and tapa suffer from the old generalising syndrome. i would also have appreciated some more critical assessment of gell’s interpretations of pacific tattooing. modern understanding of traditional pacific arts now realises how much these arts were always changing, both in pre-european and post-european times. in his introduction, thomas briefly sketches in the prehistory of this region and summarises the colonial and post-colonial experiences. when discussing each art form he is always mindful of their situation in time, with special attention given to post-european changes. overall, this book is successful in terms of its stated purpose, with some penetrating observations especially on art in the modern world. it will not become a major reference work for the range of pacific artforms, but is valuable for the ideas and themes that can then be explored further elsewhere. the understanding gained from a careful reading of this text will illuminate other pacific art forms. interstices02.indb interstices 07 genius loci mark jackson introduction this paper, as with others in this series, takes its impetus from the short text ‘genius’ by the philosopher giorgio agamben. agamben alerts us to the complications in coming to an understanding of this notion, from its origins in the roman god given to each of us at birth, to something like what crucially constitutes the impulses of life in our animal bodies: but genius is not only spirituality, it doesn’t appertain only to things that we are used to considering as the highest and most noble. all that is impersonal in us is ingenious. above all, ingenious is the force that drives the blood coursing through our veins, or that which causes us to sink into a deep sleep; ingenious is the unknown power in our bodies that regulates and distributes warmth so delicately, and limbers up or contracts the fi bres of our muscles. it is genius who we obscurely exhibit in the intimacy of our physiological life, there where the most personal is the most alien and impersonal, the closest is the most remote and uncontrollable (agamben, 2006: 96). there is also a legacy, in architectural discourse, of this notion of genius which is expressed in the term, ‘genius loci’, translated as the ‘spirit of place’ or what, in a fundamental way, constitutes the taking place of architecture as its essential constituting force. would it be possible to pose for architecture the kinds of complications offered by agamben with his notion of genius? this would amount to developing some complicity between what i understand as the essential constituting force of architecture’s ‘taking place’, and the very drives that make up the impulsive becoming of bodies. this paper approaches the possibility of considering such a complicity in a reading of two texts by the psychoanalyst, jacques lacan, both written at about the same time. one concerns architecture and sublimation discussed in the context of perspectival space and anamorphic construction; the other concerns the subversion of the subject as a void or nothing for the signifi er. both texts are particularly concerned with an understanding of the notion of the void or nothing that is constitutive of a self or architecture as such. sublimation and the thing lacan’s mention of architecture is found in seminar vii, the ethics of psychoanalysis (1992 [1959-60]). this material is discussed by lorens holm in his essay, “what lacan said re: architecture” (2000). holm stresses that lacan didn’t ever say very much about architecture, and perhaps what is more interesting is what architectural theorists say about lacan, that his comments directly addressing architecture are confi ned to the ethics of psychoanalysis (holm, 2000: 29). 77 however, it must be noted that lacan does indeed discuss architecture in later seminars (in particular seminars ix, xi, xviii and xix). in seminar vii, lacan addresses architecture in a chapter titled “marginal comments”. what is interesting here is that these comments do not fi gure as marginal because they are not stitched onto the end of the seminar, nor are they an addendum to something else, but rather they operate as a kind of apologia, an apology for not being prepared: i am not this morning in a state of readiness i consider necessary for me to conduct my seminar in the usual manner. and this is especially the case, given the point we have reached, when i particularly want to be able to present you with some very precise formulas. you will thus allow me to put it off until next time (lacan, 1992: 128). lacan wants to talk about courtly love in the 12th century as a presentation of anamorphosis, and some weeks later he will do just that. where he was up to is an emptiness that needs to be skirted around, as if something essential is veiled enough to leave him unprepared to address it with precise formulas. this week’s class in the seminar is a fi ller, a circling around what lacan actually wants to get at. what he wants to do is present some introductory remarks on anamorphosis, or the scant view, the oblique view of what concerns him directly such that something other comes into view. at stake is his discussion of sublimation in relation to the pleasure principle, and an articulation of how sublimation is constitutive of art, religion and science, which is to say, constitutive of human creation, belief and knowledge, or truth. sublimation of what? this is sublimation of the thing, what can never be approached directly: neither science nor religion is of a kind to save the thing or to give it to us, because the magic circle that separates us from it is imposed by our relation to the signifi er. as i have told you, the thing is that which in the real suffers from this fundamental, initial relation, which commits man to the ways of the signifi er by reason of the fact that he is subjected to what freud calls the pleasure principle, and which, i hope it is clear in your minds, is nothing else than the dominance of the signifi er i, of course, mean the true pleasure principle as it functions in freud (lacan, 1992: 134). what is crucial for lacan is that while perspective will shore up the processes of sublimation, anamorphosis can precisely show these processes. but i am moving ahead of myself. lacan suggests that primitive architecture can be defi ned as something organised around emptiness. he does not mean by this that architecture is a kind of shell determined around an internal void because an empty space needs to be fi lled up with habitation. this emptiness is what he will qualify by the sacred, and in that sense, not for habitation but for the infi nite thing. the thing is severed from us, perhaps a father radically severed or cut from us, perhaps judaic more so than greek. yet, in what he is saying here, lacan will be doing nothing other than re-emphasising what he had already discussed the week before, precisely in the class titled, “on creation ex nihilo”. interstices 07 the father thing: god is dead lacan emphasises, on many occasions, his faithfulness to freud, that all of freud commences with, and never ceases to ask, the question, “what is the father” and ceaselessly works through the father’s murder. at the conclusion of the chapter “on creation ex nihilo”, lacan notes: it is obvious that god is dead. that is something freud expresses from one end of his myth to the other; since god derives from the fact that the father is dead, that clearly means we have all noticed that god is dead (126). lacan is treating here the relation between the creature and the creator, the attributions of creation in processes of sublimation of the creature’s drives at the insistence of the signifi er as constitution of pleasure: and here we encounter linguistic usage that, at least in connection with sublimation in the sphere of art, never hesitates to speak of creation. we must now, therefore, consider the notion of creation with all it implies, a knowledge of the creature and of the creator, because it is central, not only for our theme of the motive of sublimation, but also that of ethics in its broadest sense (119). a number of key notions need to be kept in play. the thing is fundamentally veiled, concealed, hidden, by precisely that which we encircle or bypass in order to conceive of it. it is that which, in the real, suffers from the signifi er, as an emptiness un-representable. the thing is the place of the drives, and this place is what i want to emphasise throughout this paper as a concern with genius loci. “i” am that nothing that separates the organization of a signifying network as representation and the constitution in the real of the place in which the fi eld of the thing as such presents itself. for lacan, the real is not ‘reality’ as we would conceive of our world securely known. rather, such a notion of reality is constituted, for lacan, through the signifying structures of language and imaginary, or fantasy projections. the real is constituted in that lost thing referred to here, and constitutes the unsecurable object of desire. this place of the thing, determinable in our bypassing or encircling it, is the locus of the object, always already constituted as found, or more precisely refound, as if it has been lost. it would be what we have been looking for, as if it were there all along to fi nd. this re-fi nding opens the thing by virtue of its structure to be represented by something else, and, in this sense of a something else, the locus is always already doubled. moreover, as it is the human creature that is capable of manipulating signifi ers, this creature is the creator of that which will come to represent the thing, that place of the creature’s drives. the function of the pleasure principle is to lead this creature, as subject, from signifi er to signifi er. the signifying network will sublimate what is not bearable in the thing, as the hole in the real. but every fabrication, every creation will be possible only from the position of this hole, this nothing in the real that is the thing. every creation is ex-nihilo, or from the place of the nothing, which is to say from the locus of the drives. here can be recognised a repetition with hegel, in the sacred origins of primitive architecture already necessitating a prior originary moment in the 79 still more primitive vessel that will serve as its model (hegel, 1975: 632). however, i would also emphasise that there is a strict refusal of hegel in that the veiled thing, the nothing, the sacred will not arrive as the other thing, as a process of sublation, of dialectical mastery. this may be emphasised in lacan’s repeated insistence that the unconscious is not in a relation of negation to consciousness: “in the freudian fi eld, the words notwithstanding, consciousness is a characteristic that is as obsolete to us in grounding the unconscious for we cannot ground it on the negation of consciousness …” (lacan, 2002: 286). that sublimation is not coterminous with sublation may be emphasised in a marginal comment made by lacan concerning the equivalence of the fashioning of the signifi er, and the introduction of a gap or hole in the real. he suggests: modern science, the kind that was born with galileo, could only have developed out of biblical or judaic ideology, and not out of ancient philosophy or the aristotelian tradition. the increasing power of symbolic mastery has not stopped enlarging its fi eld of operation since galileo, has not stopped consuming around it any reference that would limit its scope to intuited data; by allowing free reign to the play of signifi ers, it has given rise to a science whose laws develop in the direction of an increasingly coherent whole, but without anything being less motivated than what exists at any given point (lacan, 1992: 122). this “given point” would be entirely the point of perspective’s infi nitising, its vanishing points whose cones of projection enable a subject, and a world, to fi nd their moment on an abstract plane of existence. and this would be the death of god: “in other words, the vault of the heavens no longer exists, and all the celestial bodies, which are the best reference point there, appear as if they could just as well not be there” (122). this severance from the father, this cut may be considered in the cut of perspective’s cone of projection that constitutes the picture plane, and the orthogonal nature of this cut in all perspectival constructions constituting a centrism. the ex-centrism of this construction is established in an oblique cut that fi gures an ellipsis that is decentring in the distortions it projects. i read this ellipsis in anamorphism, as the necessity in having to reconstitute one’s point of view. this contingency of a reference point is constitutive of the accident that ultimately grounds all knowing, and concedes truth, in truth, as trauma. trauma is understood in terms of a repetition anxiety triggered by accident. the import of this lacanian reading is that the fi nding of the other thing, as the work of truth, is a compulsive repetition of circling the hole of the real that constitutes the essence of truth as a contingent accident. marginal projections lacan suggests that, with the invention of perspective, this pictorial construction will fi rst of all imitate architecture, as a two dimensional plane that projects a three dimensional volume, to the point where architecture itself will come to imitate the geometrical properties of perspective, as a three dimensional volume approximating a two dimensional plane; and in doing so architecture will come to represent itself (he is thinking, for example, of palladio’s theatre in vicenza, the teatro olympico, with its elaborately painted false perspective as a principal spatialising device). with the invention of anamorphism, though, something else interstices 07 is going on. as holm states, “architecture and perspective enter the symbolic order” (2000: 36). the symbolic order can be understood as a signifying network that constitutes the other thing as a naturalised standpoint, sublimating the trauma of the nothing of any “i” ex nihilo. anamorphism allows us to see the signifying construction as such, and in this allows us to glimpse the veiled thing, the stain that stands out as the emptiness, the absence of signifi cation in the signifying network. holm outlines the series of examples offered by lacan: holbein’s the ambassadors, with its anamorphic smear in the lower right foreground read as vanitas, or a skull from an oblique angle, at which angle the perspectival space of the painting can no longer be deciphered; “an eighteen-metre long fresco in a chapel built in descartes’ time”; and “an anamorphic copy of a rubens crucifi xion, which is organised around a cylindrical mirror” (2000: 36). lacan suggests that the pleasure of anamorphic images happens in that moment when something undecipherable pops into recognition. we glimpse the thing behind the surface of the imaginary register; we glimpse illusion as illusion, or the visual fi eld as the other thing, as the signifying network’s play. when we pull back the visual fi eld to see what is hidden behind it, it is the absent object as the cause of desire, an absence that motivates all of the drives the visual world as screen for originary loss. this absent object lacan names the ‘object a’. after seminar vii, anamorphosis is most thoroughly treated by lacan in seminar xi, the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, under the heading of, “of the gaze as objet petit a”. if genius loci has a legacy in being considered as the sacred or spirit of place, an infi nitising in the fi nitude of taking place, lacan would suggest that this locus is that of the thing, radically voided non-being around which creation’s signifying structures skirt in sublimation of the nothing. architecture would, in this sense, be an originary voiding/avoiding in the securing of a creature’s existence, in which perspective is a shoring up of sublimation in a ‘natural’ standpoint, and anamorphosis is an encounter with the veiled thing, locus of the motivation of all of the drives. separation constitutive of an “i” at the same time that lacan was delivering his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis, he delivered a presentation titled, “the subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the freudian unconscious” (2002 [1960]). through a series of increasingly tortuous graphs, lacan charts the cut in the signifying chain that is constitutive of the subject of desire, and the relation of the unconscious to the constitution of this subject (2002: 291, 294, 300, 302). that is to say, he deals with the hole in the real that is the thing and the network of signifi ers that make this nothing into a being. this text also articulates more clearly lacan’s relation to hegel as a relation to freud, or, in short, the difference for lacan between hegel and freud, which amounts to a difference in how each differentiates truth (savoir) and knowing (connaissance). i want to emphasise that when lacan is discussing architecture, he is fundamentally addressing the locus of emptiness, or nothing, in the constitution of being, where the question of being, as such, cannot be separated from the question of the signifi er and the signifying networks of a creature’s language. the spatialising of this locus adheres to the creature’s body. it will be determinable by the privileged instance of the delineating of 81 a cut that takes advantage of the anatomical characteristic of a margin or border: the lips, “the enclosure of the teeth,” the rim of the anus, the penile groove, the vagina, and the slit formed by the eyelid, not to mention the hollow of the ear (303). these anatomical marks are constitutive of cuts in a creature’s body, assimilable to a metabolism of needs, and out of which come objects cut from this creature’s body, “the mamilla, the feces, the phallus (as an imaginary object), and the urinary fl ow. (an unthinkable list, unless we add … the phoneme, the gaze, the voice … and the nothing) (303). two preliminary comments on these cuts. first, the body’s drives will isolate these cuts or “erogenous zones … from the function’s metabolism” (303). that is what the drives do, and their isolating phenomenon is the locus or locale we are suggesting as the nothing of the thing. second, these objects “have no specular image … no alterity”, which means there is no other thing that establishes these objects in a signifying network (303). this enables “them to be the ‘stuff’ or … the lining” of what will have become the subject, but not the reverse of the subject, that one takes to be the speaking subject, the “subject of consciousness” (303). rather, this subject, who thinks he can accede to himself by designating himself in the statement, is nothing but such an object. … it is to this object that cannot be grasped in the mirror that the specular image lends its clothes (303). if, as lacan suggests, “a signifi er is what represents the subject to another signifi er”, “i” as subject come on the scene as the being of non-being, as the trace of what must be in order to fall from being, of a true survival abolished by a knowledge of itself, and by a discourse in which it is death that sustains existence, under the formula: “he did not know that he was dead” as the relation of the subject to the signifi er in an enunciation whose being trembles with the vacillation that comes back to it from its own statement (304). we need to see in this a precise articulation of anamorphism, of a supposedly radical loss of disclosure, whose true disclosure is the disclosure of the scene of radical loss. this would also be within the province of all accounting or forms of bookkeeping for fi liation and history. genius loci bears on the place of this radical loss that is circled around, the thing obliquely glimpsed, this thing that is also a no-thing, in the sense that the thing and its place are not necessarily distinguishable. lacan emphasises that the creature’s body, its real stuff, is born prematurely, which has signifi cant implications on how this body of drives and metabolism negotiates its prolonged dependency, primarily in the relations of need and demand that it establishes, where demand is constituted in the signifi er, which is to say in the interand intra-subjective. primarily constituted in dependency, all demand made by this creature will be demand for love from the other, where love is understood in an economy of defi ciency; love will come to be what the other cannot give, the fault of the other. however, there is a third term, irreducible to demand and need, and this is desire that is articulated but not articulable: there is no demand that does not in some respect pass through the de-fi les of the signifi er. … man’s inability to move, much less be selfsuffi cient, for some time after birth provides grounds for a psychology of dependence, … this dependence is maintained by a universe of interstices 07 language. … needs have been diversifi ed and geared down by and through language to such an extent that their import appears to be of quite a different order. … these needs have passed over into the register of desire. … what psychoanalysis shows us about desire in what might be called its most natural function, since the survival of the species depends on it, is not only that it is subjected, in its agency, its appropriation, and even its very normality, to the accidents of the subject’s history (the notion of trauma as contingency), but also that all this requires the assistance of structural elements which, in order to intervene, can do very well without these accidents. the inharmonious, unexpected, and recalcitrant impact of these elements certainly seems to leave to the experience [of desire in its most natural function] a residue that drove freud to admit that sexuality had to bear the mark of some hardly natural fl aw (297-298). these structural elements, locus of the signifi er, are constituted in the unconscious, or what the subject does not know he is saying. the locus of the signifi er is the other (who does not exist other than as a structural locus of the enunciating subject): “no authoritive statement has any other guarantee than its very enunciation” (298). there cannot be another signifi er that is not in this locus, in the sense “that there is no other of the other”, which is to say, “there can be no metalanguage”, no other to language outside of language by which language would be understood (298). we cannot emphasise enough this formula of lacan’s that is easily glided over or missed, “that there is no other of the other”, which means that there is no locus of exteriority to the structural element of the unconscious to which a subject has recourse as a verifi cation of a statement of authority or authenticity. the other is not the other person or thing, neither as substance or locus. as we have said, all demand implies a request for love, while desire “begins to take shape in the margin in which demand rips away from need”, where need becomes represented by a subjective opacity, producing the substance of desire, and demand becomes anxiety as unconditional appeal to the other, a signifying network, having “no universal satisfaction” (299). the other’s response, which is to say the response of the place of the signifi er, to a subject of demand, in defi cit, is a “phantom of omnipotence” in the sense that the question of the other comes back to the subject from the place from which he expects a reply to “what do you want?” (299-300). the question “leads the subject to the path of his own desire” by reformulating it, “without knowing it”, as “what does he want from me?” (300). crucial to this creature’s relation to his desire is not a concern with what he demands, but a concern as to where he desires. i am maintaining the notion of creature in order to emphasise lacan’s discussion of creation ex nihilo as “a question of what man does when he makes a signifi er” (lacan, 1992: 119). hence, “the unconscious is (the) discourse of the other … (objective determination)”, and “man’s desire is the other’s desire … a ‘subjective determination’ namely, that it is qua other that man desires (this is what provides the true scope of human passion)” (lacan, 2002: 300). and desire changes according to fantasy as that which “is really the ‘stuff’ of the i that is primally repressed” (302). the subject of the unconscious cannot be designated as the subject of a statement, as the articulator, since this subject of the unconscious, from the place of the other, “does not even know he is speaking” (302). hence, it can be understood how it is that the discourse of the drives will come to articu 83 late this subject, now “designated on the basis of a pinpointing that is organic, oral and anal” such that “the more he speaks, the further he is from speaking” (302). only the cut, that trait that distinguishes the drive from its organic function, remains as a signifi er (302). as there can be no other of the other, the subject’s unconscious enunciation can only be located in the other as that other’s lack, its defi cit. it is only in this sense that the subject is a lack, void, nothing for a signifi er. but this void or nothing is the shoring up or protection of the place of the “i”, a protecting or sheltering that goes by the name jouissance, which requires more complexity in its translations than terms such as ‘ecstatic pleasure’. jouissance should not be collapsed with desire, or with a notion of pleasure or satisfaction. if it is a place of shelter or protection, it protects precisely the contingent nothing that i am, and shores it up for and against demand’s response constituted in a signifying network. hence, the subject cannot be that other’s other. in this sense the signifi er, the locus of the other is that which represents the subject for another signifi er: i am in the place from which ‘the universe is a fl aw in the purity of non-being’ is vociferated. … by protecting itself, this place makes being itself languish. this place is called jouissance, and it is jouissance whose absence would render the universe vain (305). jouissance is the locus of the nothing of the signifi er for which all other signifi ers represent the subject, the emptiness that is the hole in the real around which we skirt. through an economy that perhaps marks the fundamental structure of the oikos, household, holy family or fi liations to dead fathers and mothers, this jouissance is usually forbidden me: am i responsible for it, then? yes, of course. is this jouissance, the lack of which makes the other inconsistent, mine, then? experience proves that it is usually forbidden me, not only, as certain fools would have it, due to bad societal arrangements, but, i would say, because the other is to blame if he was to exist, that is. but since he doesn’t exist, all that’s left for me is to place the blame on i, that is, to believe in what experience leads us all to, freud at the head of the list: original sin (305). thus, lacan suggests “that jouissance is prohibited to whomever speaks. … it is pleasure that sets limits to jouissance, pleasure as what binds incoherent life together” (306). the mark of the prohibition of the infi nitude of jouissance, the fi nitude of the subject inscribed in the pleasure of the signifying network, is signifi ed in the unnatural splitting of sexuality at the level of the interventions of desire as the locus of the other: the phallus as negativity in the place of the specular image, the object a or thing, that non-being which we encircle in order to be (306). in this sense, the phallus embodies “jouissance in the dialectic of desire”, while castration is the name given to the work of the signifying network in the pleasure principle, as a principle of sacrifi ce but as well as the possibility of knowing (307). genius loci could be thought of as that place of the other, whose demand we make our own, whose locus is the locus of the discourse of our unconscious enunciation, and whose locale is that of our desire. but then, perhaps more radically, and interstices 07 impossibly, genius loci would be that place called jouissance, an incoherency, stain of the real, stuff of the “i”, infi nitisation of the drives, glimpsed, in its horror perhaps, as our own defi cit of being, the non-being that is the clamour of being: “for this subject, who thinks he can accede to himself by designating himself in the statement, is nothing but such an object” (303). would this enable me to say something more concerning architecture, where i would think of architecture as a locus of structural elements, in the abstract sense that i have given for an understanding of jouissance? this would suggest that something is always already forbidden in architecture’s presentation. in a way, lacan has said as much in his pronouncement on the void that centres architecture and the skirting around of this thing, or the glimpse that can be made of the horror once architecture enters the symbolic order of representation in something like a sublation to painting, in anamorphism. equally, i would acknowledge a long history of architecture’s classical legacy in deriving from its genius loci, its authentic or originating unfolding in the circumstance of its place, placing or placement. but, ultimately, it is necessary to recognise that the thing is not a material substance in the world, veiled in its knowing, a form-content relation waiting for revelation or actualisation, that self and world are not bifurcated like this. what lacan says regarding architecture attunes us more closely to something essential in the primordial relations that establish the structural elements for the signifying networks of architecture’s discourses: separation, locus, protection. it is, perhaps, protection as a sheltering securing that is privileged here, and one would want to understand how lacanian jouissance, as a forbidden protecting locale, is at once a primordial articulation of the essence of architecture, and a powerful moment of critical analysis, resonating with the uncanny in both freud and heidegger, as a primordial relation to homelessness. references agamben, g. (2006). genius (l. simmons, trans.). interstices: a journal of architecture and related arts (7), 94-99 hegel, g.w.f. (1975). hegel’s aesthetics: lectures on fine arts. (t.m. knox, trans.). 2 vols. oxford: the clarendon press. holm, l. (2000). what lacan said re: architecture. critical quarterly (42, 2), 29-64. lacan, j. (2002). the subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the freudian unconscious. (b. fink. trans. in collaboration with h. fink and r. grigg). in écrits: a selection (pp. 281-312). new york: w. w. norton. lacan, j. (1992). the seminar, book vii, the ethics of psychoanalysis. j.a. miller (ed.), (d. porter, trans.). new york: w.w. norton. lacan, j. (1994). the four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis. (a. sheridan, trans.). london: penguin. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 70 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m robert freestone mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland formal university training in town planning only commenced in new zealand in the late 1950s during the town and country planning era. the university of auckland’s first professor of town planning was robert terence kennedy (1903– 1997), who was appointed in 1957 and retired in 1969. with no formal academic qualifications but an impressive background in design practice and administration in britain, kennedy found the going tough as a teacher and a professor and seemed relieved when it came time to step down. this article offers a biographical account of kennedy, known as terry to friends. biography provides insights into broader narratives in history. as a human-centred methodology for planning history, it places individual lives and careers within broader ideological and institutional currents to illuminate, in more nuanced fashion, agendas, achievements, and failings (freestone 2018). kennedy’s timeline instructively intersects with several critical junctures in the history of modern architecture and design at both ends of the world: in britain through participation in social housing projects pre-world war ii, the mission of postwar reconstruction through the ministry of town and country planning, and the new towns programme, and in new zealand through the promotion of town planning, urban renewal, and the institution of tertiary planning education. this article concentrates on the latter episode with kennedy switching from his practitioner-bureaucratic roots into an academic role in which he made significant contributions in an antipodean setting. the article sketches kennedy’s early career as a prelude to his time in new zealand, the background to the establishment of a planning programme at the university of auckland, development of the early curriculum and staffing, and the legacy laid. it draws on two earlier conference presentations (freestone 2014a, 2014b) and additional research utilising private papers subsequently lodged with the university of auckland. it constructs an assessment of kennedy as an archetypal british expatriate architect-planner, somewhat patrician but principled, steeped in old-world planning but not dogma, and striving to adapt best practice to the new zealand environment. despite selfdoubts about his life achievements, within the educational sphere he is the key figure in establishing planning education on a firm footing in new zealand. 71 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m kennedy’s early career kennedy (see fig. 1) was a mancunian destined to follow the career of his architect-father. he studied at the manchester college of technology and school of arts but never completed a formal architectural qualification. from 1925 to 1939, he worked successively with three local governments: manchester, essex county, and liverpool city, where he was involved with several central area redevelopment projects. from 1940 to 1943, he teamed up with professor william holford on wartime building contracts for factories and worker hostels on behalf of the ministry of supply. in 1943, he joined the new ministry of town and country planning which gathered together some formidable talent (ward 2012). this was kennedy’s first entrée into town planning proper, working in the “planning technique” section alongside holford, gordon stephenson, colin buchanan, and, briefly, thomas sharp, with the focus on new planning standards and techniques. after the war he was appointed chief planning officer in the directorate of technical services in the ministry of housing and local government. in this role he was involved in a more expansive range of town and country planning matters: the replanning of blitzed cities; the selection, designation, and planning of 12 new towns; designation of national parks; and examination of advisory city, regional, and county borough plans. in 1955, he entered private practice with holford in london. the working relationship proved less satisfactory second time round (cherry & penny 1986). despite taking a long time deliberating on leaving the ministry, by 1956 he was looking for another opportunity when the auckland position came up. the new zealand planning scene in the early 1950s the broader institutional and statutory backdrop to kennedy’s appointment is well covered in miller’s history of the new zealand planning institute (nzpi) (miller 2007). an active town planning movement dated from the 1910s and a major product of its efforts was the town-planning act of 1926, which enabled local authorities to prepare comprehensive town planning schemes overseen by the central government. amendments in 1929 introduced regional planning provisions. by the early 1950s, only a handful of towns and boroughs had approved plans and larger new zealand cities had little control over land development (miller 2000). metropolitan auckland, with a population of nearly 400,000 by the mid-1950s, was said to be feeling the strain under the pressures of modernisation. the city was coming of age as a “national metropolis” but rapid growth and ad hoc development were bequeathing problems of residential blight, traffic congestion, and sewerage disposal, prompting thoughts toward limiting future expansion (pownall 1950, 1951). the early post-war years saw a renewed enthusiasm for planning, as they did globally, with energetic propaganda and lobbying campaigns including the first home-grown planning textbook in 1949 (barry martin 1949). complementing the fledgling professional discourse was a growing community appreciation of the need for expert land use management and design control (schrader 2010). the passage of a new town and country planning act in 1953 provided a significant fillip to the planning cause. this required every city, borough, and town board to provide and maintain a district planning scheme. regional planning fig. 1 r. t. kennedy, ca. 1944. [courtesy of philip kennedy] 72 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e provisions were also retained. regulations to the act promulgated in 1954 provided more detailed guidelines to preparing planning schemes leading to “a rather standardised approach to plan writing” (miller 2007: 23). the ministry of works provided oversight and a town and country planning appeal board was empowered to deal with appeals resulting from council decisions. qualified planners remained thin on the ground, assembled from the ranks of british immigrants, ex-servicemen, and dedicated individuals undertaking external study to meet the british town planning institute’s (tpi) requirements. the town planning institute of new zealand, founded by john mawson in 1930, had only 31 full members by 1954 (aitken rose 2017: 230). while the demand for planners from local authorities having to meet their obligations under the act was set to grow, the institutional environment for professional education remained undeveloped. a notable non-government initiative from 1949 to the early 1950s was the town planning section of wellington’s architectural centre, which formalised the historic practice of senior professionals mentoring students undertaking external study for tpi membership, with lectures by leading planning advocates such as john cox, george porter, al gabites, maurice patience, and helmut einhorn (gatley & walker 2014). the auckland chair the university of new zealand was the only tertiary entity able to institutionalise this approach and auckland university college was the obvious host as the only architecture school in the nation. as early as 1929, cyril knight, foundation professor of architecture, had developed a town planning diploma proposal involving papers in history, law, practice, engineering, and design (miller 2000: 458–59). depression, war, and the departure of mawson cooled this early enthusiasm but from the late 1940s, knight, who saw planning and architecture as “two phases of the same activity”, resumed his efforts. various bodies took up the cudgels alongside him including the town planning institute of new zealand, the town and country planning association, and the institute of professional town and country planners. other professional bodies like the new zealand institute of surveyors were also in the mix along with lobbying from the chamber of commerce and the city council in auckland. the preferred model by 1948 was a professorial chair in planning as head of a separate school within the faculty of architecture. various committees endorsed this approach including the university council in april 1949. in mid-1952, the academic board “after an exhaustive investigation” also endorsed a new chair and following further examination the university senate approved the proposal in august 1954. the latter decision was subject to available funding, which was the main sticking point throughout this protracted mini-saga. an approach to the minister for education was agreed (principal[?] 1954). the key move at this time came from a member of university council, norman spencer, who pledged an endowment of £7,200 to support the chair for the first four years. spencer was a businessman, lawyer, and philanthropist involved in the transport industry, and chairman of the auckland transport board from 1955 to 1964 (glenie 1972; sinclair 1983: 211). 73 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e appointment of kennedy applications for the chair were invited in early 1956 to reach the university by august 31. the number of applicants is unknown but two shortlisted candidates soon emerged. one was neil abercrombie, son of the legendary sir patrick. apart from that credential, he had just taken up the position of town and country planning commissioner of tasmania after five years as senior lecturer in town and regional planning at the university of melbourne (1951–55). before that he had worked with the department of local government in sydney and the illawarra planning authority in wollongong, new south wales. neil was a gentleman architect-planner with interests in coastal planning and conservation; he was a competent administrator who would have brought a different sensibility to the role with a likely accent on regional planning. kennedy, then aged 53 years and coming off an unsuccessful application for architect of the city of london, was arguably the lesser name. he was not a planner by training but his decade in the ministry made him a key participant in a momentous period in british planning and in 1951 he had been awarded a cbe in recognition of his services to town and country planning. kennedy enlisted influential support from dame evelyn sharp, the secretary of the british ministry of housing and local government; robert matthew, professor of architecture at edinburgh university; gordon stephenson, by then head of city and regional planning at the university of toronto; and holford, who was also a referee for abercrombie. applications were deliberated on by various university entities including the professorial board and there was a report of a special “london committee”. spencer was actively involved in this process, filing a report with his “impressions” of both candidates. the post was offered to kennedy in october 1956. he accepted and sailed with his family from southampton on the southern cross and arrived in may 1957. the position of professor and chair of the department of town planning carried an annual salary of £l,792.8.0 for an initial period of five years and compulsory retirement at 65. the “conditions of appointment” (dated may 1956) specified several responsibilities: fostering public interest and participation in town planning matters as well as directing and undertaking planning research; establishing and teaching into a new diploma in town planning plus ancillary teaching into the architecture programme; and the right of private practice as a planning consultant. planning philosophy kennedy was a self-confessed newcomer to planning having learnt on the job in the british civil service. his formative views were thus shaped largely by practice and through his working associations rather than a formal professional education. intellectually, his influences were not patrick geddes or raymond unwin, both of whom he regarded as eccentric, but lewis mumford, whose culture of cities (1938) he found inspiring, patrick abercrombie, clough williams-ellis, and, perhaps surprisingly, william lethaby, whose essay “towns fit to live in” (1918) had first stimulated his interest in planning (kennedy 1959). “as soon as greater interest in town life can be aroused improvements must be undertaken in every direction”, wrote lethaby (1922: 27). 74 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e kennedy’s inaugural professorial address delivered in university hall in the arts building fronting princes street on march 27, 1958 establishes an ideological outlook to which he remained true. the occasion marked the transition of the auckland university college of the university of new zealand into a university in its own right (kennedy 1958a, 1958b). the “purpose of planning”, he explained, was “the control of land use for the creation of a physical environment conducive to better living”. his elaboration reveals an incipient appreciation of the local scene and the challenges posed by increasing car ownership, tourism, and uncoordinated development. he had already perceived a divide between the clarity of the original town grids in new zealand and the “mere agglomerations of buildings” growing up within them. there are other themes which would resurface in his endorsement of planning that was holistic, cooperative, based on common-sense, and not “compromised by legal complexities” (kennedy 1958a: 59–68). kennedy was first and foremost a physical planner. time and again he returned to three crucial yardsticks in making and evaluating plans: the economic, the social, and the aesthetic. he was a firm believer in the importance of what we would now term urban design—though rarely using that term—for its power in communicating the visions and elaborating the details that matter for successful planning on the ground. he was also an unapologetically pragmatic planner, which could be attributed partly to his years in whitehall: “a theoretical future is so often at odds with immediate and practical solutions” (kennedy 1969a: 14). alongside that was the need for simpler, realistic planning schemes. he channelled many of his ideas into constant critiques of the town and country planning act 1953. he saw it as overly prescriptive and legalistic, particularly in its voluminous regulations, and offering few opportunities for positive planning or community involvement. he mounted an ultimately unsuccessful legal challenge to the unsympathetic erection of a residential apartment building immediately adjacent to his family home in the auckland suburb of remuera, a cause célèbre case which only confirmed his jaundiced view of the malleability of the act’s regulations and council administration of them (northey 1966: 9–11). his criticisms of the complexity and the administrative demands of the legislation were not well received by the town and country planning directorate within the ministry of works. nevertheless one of his most original ideas did call for greater centralisation, namely that planning survey research and data gathering be resourced at the national level (kennedy 1968), an idea that would have come from his experience in central government in britain (kennedy 1969b). in terms of the built environment, kennedy was anti high-density, which he saw as compromising standards of living. he saw new zealand’s main urban problems stemming not from british-style “blitz and blight” but traffic (kennedy 1960). while acknowledging the general quality of material life, he was also critical of the regimented and sprawling suburban landscape; “in physical terms, a mess” (kennedy 1968). his middle way looked towards the better integration of land use and transport planning; encouraging mixed use through more flexible land use zoning rather than monolithic spatial segregation; combining public and private development; and enhancing urban design standards. his overriding yardstick was securing a common-sense balance of individualistic demands and collective welfare in the “public interest”, a theme he returned to frequently in his writings (kennedy 1965b). what was notably missing to latter-day eyes was a true appreciation of environmental management and virtually no mention of māori or lifestyles beyond the stereotypical nuclear family. 75 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e establishing a department kennedy’s brief from the university was for instruction to commence in the first session of 1958. he had first to build a department. the offices and lecture rooms were initially located at 28 symonds street (on the present-day site of the faculty of engineering) and then moved to 8 symonds street in 1964, expanding to 10 symonds street (shared with political studies) in 1968. derek hall recalls the scene at number 10 in the late 1960s: this was a two-storey house with a basement which was the student common room. out the back was a garden with fruit trees in it … an annex at ground level had added a further three student rooms. existing rooms provided offices and further student rooms, and one bigger room which was used for seminars and lectures. [they then started] using a proper lecture theatre across the road in botany for lectures (d. hall, personal communication, april 22, 2017). betty cutter was appointed departmental secretary. initially, there were no other staff except gerhard rosenberg, who had been appointed a senior lecturer in town and country planning in the school of architecture by cyril knight in 1955. rosenberg was a german jew trained in architecture and town planning in the united kingdom (mackenzie-hooson 2014). elizabeth aitken rose notes that while kennedy always retained “a certain technocratic british essence”, rosenberg was “quintessentially european” (2017: 233). nonetheless, a strong working relationship would develop between the men and many years later rosenberg wrote to kennedy that he was “quite proud of having spent so many years as part of [his] team” (rosenberg 1986). developing a programme: the diptp kennedy arrived to what nancy northcroft described as “a blank slate” with little information on important issues like student demand (northcroft 1969: 10–11). before coming to new zealand, kennedy had begun his research on planning programmes at various british universities. he was well aware of the deliberations of the schuster committee in the united kingdom, which in 1950 endorsed an expansive social science-infused approach to planning education underpinned by inter-professional collaboration and ideally delivered as a twoyear postgraduate programme (ministry of town and country planning 1950). after his arrival he spent nearly a year in consultation with architects, surveyors, engineers, and government officials to arrive at an educational programme acceptable to all. the eventually agreed structure was a one-year full-time postgraduate diploma, a step down from a full master’s degree but pragmatically defended as the best way of producing work-ready town planners at a time of urgent need. kennedy did not see this as a narrowly-focused academic qualification but more a post-professional experience aimed at men [sic] with “mud on their boots”, a phrase used in an address to the institute of surveyors in gisborne. this hands-on approach was all about devising a “stimulating” and applied experience rather than just providing “men [sic] with an opportunity to add another qualification to their name” (kennedy 1958b: 213). 76 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e six subjects were devised: a foundational paper in town planning theory and techniques, complemented by instruction in geography, civil and traffic engineering, surveying, architecture, and law, all as related to town planning. an additional thesis was “a test of how you apply what you know to a particular problem” and students were also exposed to “drawing office and field work” through various assignments. this curriculum evolved incrementally but was substantially intact a decade later. by then, theory and techniques had become two distinct courses, surveying was dropped, architecture included landscape, law became statutory planning and administration, and a dissertation (a “written discourse” of up to 10,000 words) was added in a new honours stream. at various times, kennedy confessed that the programme had weaknesses, “particularly in relation to the examination prescriptions of the town planning institute” (kennedy 1965a). the absence of a dedicated economics, and particularly land economics, paper was acknowledged along with the need to cram so much into a one-year programme. communication skills, positive rather than legalistic planning, and cross-professional learning were all valued highly. to keep things fresh and relevant, kennedy displayed daily news cuttings and items of interest on the student noticeboard (kennedy 1963: 4). the teaching staff papers were taught by both core planning staff and part-time lecturers. by 1968, the core staff had grown to five members—kennedy, rosenberg, two former star students (jim dart commencing in 1962 when rosenberg was on leave, and mike pritchard who started in 1965), and harry turbott, who taught landscape and urban design part-time from 1966. kennedy was able to cultivate good relations with other people around and outside the university. the slowly increasing core staff was complemented by a changing cast of professors and practitioners. early inputs came from professors n. a. mowbray (engineering), f. j. northey (law), cyril knight (architecture), and kenneth cumberland (geography), although kennedy was “always a bit wary of the geography department in cumberland’s day, running courses to expand his territory” (kennedy 1991b). well-respected professionals were also conscripted such as j. w. cox (ministry of works), f. w. o. jones (auckland regional planning authority), and nancy northcroft (christchurch regional planning authority). by all accounts, this was a strong, well–assembled, and harmonious team. kennedy’s colleagues were united and loyal; they respected his directness, integrity, worldliness, experience, pragmatism, loyalty, and immersion in and knowledge of current events. he could be a harsh critic, but didn’t spare himself. kennedy was a good manager bringing to bear his senior british experience from both private practice and the civil service. mike pritchard remembers his collegiality with informal examiners’ meetings over lunch at his house in remuera (m. pritchard, personal communication, august 8, 2012). students students generally had to have a first professional qualification in architecture, engineering, or surveying (university of auckland 1960). full-time candidature with a demanding workload was preferred. kennedy warned the fresh intake of 1965 that their lectures, seminars, visits to various offices and sites, excursions, 77 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e and set exercises would be demanding; “full-time means full-time and overtime” (kennedy 1965a). the diploma struggled early in attracting students. kennedy recalls the “birth pangs” as “agonising” (1984). in 1958, there were 14 students (only four fulltime); by 1969 this had risen to 59 students (12 full-time) (northcroft 1969). most full-time students were sent and supported by the ministry of works and local councils. the part-timers were largely employees of government or planning practices around auckland who were given time off to attend (d. hall, personal communication, april 22, 2017; aitken rose 2017: 234–38). by 1968 bursary scholarships were offered by the surveying and architect institutes and the auckland city council. teaching planning kennedy’s main teaching responsibilities were two co-taught papers. one was the foundational paper on theory and techniques, with contributions from rosenberg. this provided an overview of planning history, governance, design, surveying, and methods. the primary topics when offered for the first time in 1958 were: — the main contributors to town planning thought and the application of their theories and ideas, with historic examples; — the objects of present-day planning; — the inter-relation of social, economic, and physical planning; — the role of the physical planner; — the organisations and agencies for planning and development in new zealand and abroad; — studies of regional and town planning schemes; — the design of new towns and redevelopment areas; — the design of industrial, commercial, residential, and recreational areas. the 1966 syllabus for town planning theory provides a more detailed breakdown of lectures (see table 1). this was not a theory course as that term is presently understood, but rather an introduction to the profession, its history, and the major foci of spatial planning. fig. 2 the town planning theory lecture programme included garden cities and suburbs, such as hampstead garden suburb, designed by parker & unwin. [photograph by julia gatley] 78 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e table 1: town planning theory lectures, 1966 first term (march 1 to may 3) 1. objects of present-day town planning—r. t. kennedy (rtk) 2. historic development up to end of nineteenth century—gerhard rosenberg (gr) 3. geddes gr 4. howard, unwin gr 5. mumford gr 6. garnier, le corbusier, ciam gr 7. french grand ensembles, reichow, kahn gr 8. buchanan gr 9. regional planning theories gr second term (may 31 to august 9, with mid-term break) 10. regional planning examples gr 11. rural areas, agriculture and forestry gr 12. social factors in tp rtk 13. economic factors in tp rtk 14. aesthetic factors in tp rtk 15. role of physical planner (schuster) rtk 16. residential areas gr 17. industrial areas gr 18. recreational areas gr 19. town planning schemes i rtk 20. town planning schemes ii rtk third term (september 6 to october 4) 21. central areas rtk 22. comprehensive redevelopment areas rtk 23. new towns rtk 24. planning organisations rtk 25. planning organisations rtk his second co-taught paper was architecture for planners. this offered an introduction to architectural composition and materials, site planning, and landscape and urban design. the 1958 synopsis was as follows: — architectural composition and the grouping of buildings; — urban street and open space patterns; — studies of historic and contemporary examples; — site planning in relation to topography and climate; — preservation of architectural and historic places; — use, colour, and texture of building materials; — street furniture; — landscape, natural, and man-made patterns; — planting for use and amenity; — park, garden, and recreation area design. by the mid-1960s, kennedy’s input had retracted as the landscape dimension was enhanced with the arrival of the harvard-trained turbott (see table 2). 79 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e table 2: provisional programme for architecture and landscape lectures, march–october 1965 march– october 1965 1. introduction—r. t. kennedy (rtk) 2. natural man-made patterns of landscape—harry turbott (ht) 3. patterns of landscape ht 4. historic examples: hippodamus’ roman towns, medieval contribution— gerhard rosenberg (gr) 5. renaissance, to haussmann’s paris gr 6. rome—imric porsolt (ip) 7. form and function in building rtk 8. architectural expression: historical and contemporary rtk 9. scale and proportion in building rtk 10. structure, materials, texture and colour rtk 11. architectural criticism rtk 12. townscape, spaces between buildings gr 13. cullen, lynch—visits to sites gr 14. preservation of historic places—cyril knight (ck) 15. street furniture and lighting gr 16. twentieth-century architect-planners gr 17. le corbusier, tony garnier gr 18. unwin gr 19. niemeyer gr 20. modern landscape architecture ht 21. parks, recreation areas, trees in towns ht 22. motorway planting ht 23. suburban landscape ht 24. effect of buchanan, retirees gr kennedy, who had departmental secretary cutter type out all his lectures, was not, by his own estimation, a good lecturer. he later recalled: just think of the bloody awful lectures that i had to give. i had never before given a lecture—on anything. i was no scholar, had had an insufficient education, had no degree, had even failed matriculation … when i saw what i thought i had said when typed out by betty i was appalled and ashamed (kennedy 1986). the late jim dart, student and later colleague to whom this confession was addressed, remembered differently. he saw kennedy as “a natural teacher … not dogmatic in any way” and often reacting to current events (j. dart, personal communication, august 7, 2012). further, he was: … always stimulating in his enthusiasms and his passions, always constructive in his criticisms of poor design and indignant at the crassness, lack of vision and ad hocery of so much civic decision-making. like the ancient mariner, once within range of his voice, he would capture his audience with talk at great length on a wide range of topical issues and always with a total recall of past events (dart 1998: 2). bill robertson, a distinguished alumnus who became president of the nzpi, captures further the character of the classroom: 80 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e his courses were all about the process and the various options and not expecting right answers. he would stand there looking at you over his rimless glasses and always able to suggest another point of view when one thought one had finally settled on a “right” point of view. he was very good at providing wider references when various planning issues arose. he could always find alternative ideas or references to keep the planning possibilities open … he used the diversity of student backgrounds to encourage us all to see the value of other skills, points of view and techniques (b. robertson, personal communication, july 20, 2011). former students have mixed recollections. michael wearne remembers him in the late 1960s as still “somewhat schoolmasterish” and a practitioner rather than a theorist, “not surprisingly” (m. wearne, personal communication, july 22, 2011). henry van roon and richard smyth both remember an intense and alert lecturer with a wide general knowledge who cared about his students (h. van roon, personal communication, september 27, 2012; r. smyth, personal communication, november 14, 2011). someone so steeped in british planning orthodoxy was not going to change radically overnight and the time he spent in government in london would remain the foundation of kennedy’s planning ideas. to convey the realities of planning process, he would often tell stories about the politics of planning in britain and how the ministry had worked. richard smyth recalls that for his architecture course the main textbook was town design (1953) by frederick gibberd, the designer of harlow (r. smyth, personal communication, november 14, 2011). in the 1960s, there were design exercises interpreting the parameters laid out by london county council for its proposed new town of hook (london county council 1961). other former students recall a similar anglocentric treatment. bill robertson, who remembers kennedy as “an approachable learned person with certain english reserve”, notes that, “he did convey a strong sense of the 1940s and 1950s planning approach. we were taught about the 1947 uk planning act, new towns and classic architecture in uk and europe” (b. robertson, personal communication, july 20, 2011). robert riddell remembers that over time kennedy became “more of a kiwi” and the quality and relevance of his lectures picked up enormously (r. riddell, personal communication, june 27, 2011). kennedy tacitly acknowledged criticism that he was parlaying “just old-fashioned ideas from another country … not really applicable to new zealand” (m. pritchard, personal communication, august 8, 2012). but as he gained a greater grasp of the new zealand scene he began to more confidently distance himself from the solutions of his past. he criticised the 1953 act as based too closely on the british experiences. the same extensive derelict industrial lands, scale of slum housing, and regional imbalance of economic opportunity were not replicated in new zealand. notes for a lecture in his town planning theory course provide a concise statement of the position he had reached by 1965: it is, i think, a mistake to look for exact parallels in other countries to justify our town planning approach, legislation and practice. the economic and social conditions that have created almost insuperable problems in the building and rebuilding of cities and the development of agricultural and mineral resources in older countries have not been paralleled in this country to anything like the same extent. we have our own social, economic and 81 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e aesthetic problems to solve and should find solutions to them in our own way, solutions that are politically acceptable and suited to the way of life we have decided to follow (kennedy 1965c). university life mike pritchard remembers kennedy as an inspiring “battler” rather than an establishment figure; someone who was not afraid to critique orthodoxy and fight for what he felt was right in professional and personal terms—the fight to preserve the amenity of his own living space conflating both these ambitions (m. pritchard, personal communication, august 8, 2012). kennedy participated in broader aspects of university life but his firm views about issues and individuals placed him occasionally on the outer. he had an inferiority complex about his lack of traditional academic qualifications and some of his professorial peers were apparently all to ready to remind him of it. his opposition to the proposed relocation of the university to a suburban greenfield site at either tāmaki or hobson bay, a row that was in full cry when he arrived, put him offside with some senior university figures. at a hearing of the town and country planning appeal board in july 1960, he spoke compellingly against any move and this resulted in his criticisms of moving away from the princes/symonds street precinct being upheld. he had presented a range of criteria pointing to the superiority of the central city site (planning the university 1957). amid a general atmosphere of bitterness and resentment— which turned nasty for kennedy when the pro-chancellor accused him of “not being a university man” (kennedy 1987)—he resigned from the professorial board and associated committees (sinclair 1983: 239). while the affair did not damage his association with vice chancellor kenneth maidment, it further estranged him from the powerful chancellor william hollis cocker. in a 1995 oral history tape, kennedy tells of two extraordinary encounters with cocker, who was blind. the first saw him as a newly arrived professor grilled inquisition-style in a darkened room by cocker and members of the university senate; the second alleges that cocker attempted to sabotage his inaugural lecture in a stand-off with the vice chancellor through unflattering lighting and the absence of any of the usual protocols of such a significant event (kennedy 1995). conclusion robert kennedy was relieved to step away from university life, and while his retirement was long it was not particularly happy and was marked by harsh self-judgments about an “up and down” serendipitous career. his admissions to gordon stephenson seem far too bleak. in 1980, his summation was that “i am not—was not—much good as a town planner/academic and most of my efforts in practice fell on stony ground” (kennedy 1980). a decade later came a similar sentiment: unlike you i was never a dedicated town planner and unlike you never academically trained for the job. my lectures were an agony to me, my talks and addresses very ordinary. i wrote no books. i relied almost entirely on experience of town planning in the ministry but made no name for myself outside it … i have no great thoughts on the subject. unlike you i was never 82 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e acknowledgements my particular thanks to philip kennedy for enabling access to his father’s papers in christchurch. in conversation and/or making available documentation, i am also indebted to elizabeth aitken rose, julie bindon, dirk bolt, savana carroll, sarah cox, jim dart, wendy garvey, julia gatley, katy gribbin, errol haarhoff, derek hall, caroline miller, margaret mackenziehooson, mike pritchard, robert riddell, bill robertson, richard smyth, ted thomas, janet thomson, bill toomath, gerard ward, and michael wearne. commentaries and advice by two anonymous referees were also invaluable. the conclusions reached remain mine alone. dedicated. often i was sceptical and inwardly critical of much town planning activity, so many plans, so many words, so much talk and so much paper (kennedy 1990). there is significant counter evidence to suggest this was a life worth living and a career that made a difference. the auckland diploma remained the principal means of providing professional training for town planners in new zealand until 1974. when kennedy retired in 1969, there had been 66 graduates representing perhaps two-thirds of all professionally qualified planners in new zealand (kennedy 1969a), half of whom had been admitted as full members of the nzpi (northcroft 1969). the town planning quarterly stated that “there is barely a government department involved in aspects of land use planning or a territorial local authority of any consequence that does not have at least one ex-student on its staff ” (fact and opinion 1969: 4). many of the graduates from the first decade went on to have distinguished planning careers in new zealand and australia. one story might illustrate several. richard smyth recalled that only when he actually travelled to europe did he fully appreciate the value of kennedy’s enthusiasm for urban design which in turn influenced his decision to set up the first such unit in the department of environment and planning in new south wales in the 1980s (r. smyth, personal communication, november 14, 2011). jim dart conveyed a pervasive influence on the department’s first generation of graduates: “they gradually wove what they gained from kennedy into their own thinking, their own work, whether it was harbour board work or ministry works, roading or first attempts at regional metropolitan planning … he opened the eyes of many people” (j. dart, personal communication, august 7, 2012). according to aitken rose, kennedy “epitomised the post-war reverence for rational comprehensive plans guided by a consensus ‘public interest’ and a progressive thrill of the modern” (aitken rose 2017: 240). he was certainly a product of his time, training as an architect-planner, with the early sensibility to urban design standing out. he was a classic “pracademic” of the old school. there were no refereed publications but plenty of public addresses. research grants were conspicuously absent although there was some contract research. his primary interest was not traditional scholarship but practical interventions into real-world problems like the auckland waterfront and the wellington city centre. derek hall casts him as “more of an organiser and just what planning in new zealand and the university needed at that time” and an individual who, “given all the surrounding circumstances”, delivered outcomes that might not have been bettered (d. hall, personal communication, april 22, 2017). in his valedictory nzpi address, kennedy saw his step from practice to academia as undoubtedly a good thing: i first entered university life late in my own life … i have not regretted it. it has done for me what it has i hope done for most university staff and students. it has enlarged my own understanding of the world around me and by the intellectual stimulus it has provided made me think more deeply than i otherwise would have done of many things (kennedy 1969a: 16). kennedy later reflected that his life had “not been adventurous, daring, distinguished, not even notorious. i have just bobbed about on the life stream” (kennedy 1991a). it was nonetheless purposeful enough for him to have been awarded in 1985 the nzpi gold medal for exceptional service to planning. 83 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e references aitken rose, e. (2017). “all the problems and also the advantages of youth”: the planning years. in j. gatley & l. treep (eds.), the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning (pp. 226–259). auckland: school of architecture and planning, university of auckland. barry martin, d. e. (1949). town and country planning. auckland: a. h. & a. w. reed. cherry, g., & penny, l. (1986). holford: a study in architecture, planning and civic design. london: mansell. dart, j. (1998). obituary: robert terence kennedy cbe, 1903– 1997. planning quarterly, march, 2. fact and opinion. (1969). town planning quarterly, 17, september 4. freestone, r. (2014a). auckland calling at the bottom of the dial: the journey of british architectplanner r. t. kennedy. in c. schnoor (ed.), proceedings of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand: 31, translation (pp. 681–690). auckland: sahanz and unitec e-press. freestone, r. (2014b). the contributions of r. t. kennedy to new zealand planning. in m. gjerde & e. petrović (eds.), uhph_14: landscapes and ecologies of urban and planning history, proceedings of the 12th conference of the australasian urban history/planning history group (pp. 147–161). wellington: australasian urban history/ planning history group. freestone, r. (2018). biographical methods. in c. hein (ed.), the routledge handbook of planning history (pp. 60–75). london: routledge. gatley, j., & walker, p. (2014). vertical living: the architectural centre and the remaking of wellington. auckland: auckland university press. gibberd, f. (1953). town design. london: architectural press. glenie, v. w. bro. j. p. (1972). norman b. spencer: citizen, humanitarian, freemason. united masters lodge 1687: lodge of masonic research, 19(16), october, 267–278. kennedy, r. t. (1958a). design in environment. journal of the new zealand institute of architects, april, 59–68. kennedy, r. t. (1958b). a diploma course in town planning. new zealand surveyor, 213. kennedy, r. t. (1959). notes for a talk, otahuhu rotary [typescript], june 23. kennedy papers, box 7, architecture archive, university of auckland. kennedy, r. t. (1960). traffic tangles. talk delivered at the north island motor union, wairakei, september 18. kennedy papers, box 15, architecture archive, university of auckland. kennedy, r. t. (1963). auckland: a conspectus for planners. tcpi annual conference, auckland, may (10 pp. typescript). kennedy, r. t. (1965a). general introduction talk to all students. talk delivered in town planning theory and techniques, march 1. kennedy papers, box 12, architecture archive, university of auckland. kennedy, r. t. (1965b). planning and the public interest. new zealand local government, june, 3–5. kennedy, r. t. (1965c). town planning theory, may 31. kennedy papers, box 5, architecture archive, university of auckland. kennedy, r. t. (1968). planning and the public interest. j. t. stewart lecture in planning no. 2. manawatu: new zealand geographical society. kennedy, r. t. (1969a). a backward and forward view of town planning. planning quarterly, 17, september, 14–17. kennedy, r. t. (1969b). a ministry for all town planning in england and wales. traffic quarterly, 3, 138–148. kennedy, r. t. (1980, december 5). letter to g. stephenson. kennedy papers, 1/136, university of liverpool archives, liverpool. kennedy, r. t. (1984, february 29). letter to j. dart. kennedy papers, dart correspondence (in possession of p. kennedy; since transferred to university of auckland). kennedy, r. t. (1986, april 19). letter to j. dart. kennedy papers, dart correspondence. kennedy, r. t. (1987, april 30). letter to j. dart. kennedy papers, dart correspondence. kennedy, r. t. (1990, september 10). letter to g. stephenson. stephenson collection, box 2, university of western australia library, perth. kennedy, r. t. (1991a, august 13). letter to j. dart. kennedy papers, dart correspondence. kennedy, r. t. (1991b, september 26). letter to j. dart. kennedy papers, dart correspondence. kennedy, r. t. (1995). oral history tape. courtesy of philip kennedy. lethaby, w. r. (1922). form in civilization: collected papers on art and labour. london: oxford university press. london county council. (1961). the planning of a new town. data and design based on a study for a new town at hook, hampshire. london: london county council. mackenzie-hooson, m. (2014). translating architecture and planning from berlin and britain to new zealand: the work and life of gerhard rosenberg. in c. schnoor (ed.), proceedings of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand: 31, translation (pp. 735–747). auckland: sahanz and unitec e-press. miller, c. (2000). town planning in new zealand, 1900–1933: the emergent years—concepts, the role of the state, and the emergence of a profession (unpublished thesis for the degree of doctor of philosophy in planning). massey university, palmerston north, new zealand. miller, c. (2007). the unsung profession: a history of the new zealand planning institute 1946–2002. wellington: dunmore press. ministry of town and country planning. (1950). report of the committee on qualifications of planners. london: hmso. mumford, l. (1938). culture of cities. london: secker and warburg. northcroft, n. (1969). professor kennedy retires. town planning quarterly, 17, september, 10–11. 84 mud on his boots: r. t. kennedy and the beginnings of planning education at the university of auckland f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e northey, j. g. f. (1966). a legal case-note. town planning quarterly, 5, september, 9–11. planning the university. (1957). civic digest, june, 17–18. article previously published in new zealand herald. pownall, l. l. (1950). metropolitan auckland 1740–1945: the historical geography of a new zealand city. new zealand geographer, 6, 107–124. pownall, l. l. (1951). metropolitan auckland: the contemporary character of a new zealand metropolis. new zealand geographer, 7, 21–42. principal[?]. (1954, november 16). memo, to chair, university grants committee. appointment of town planning professor file, university archives, university of auckland. rosenberg, g. (1986, september 29). letter to r. t. kennedy. kennedy papers, miscellaneous (in possession of p. kennedy; since transferred to university of auckland). schrader, b. (2010). city planning. te ara—the encyclopedia of new zealand. retrieved from https://www.teara.govt.nz/en/cityplanning sinclair, k. (1983). a history of the university of auckland: 1883–1983. auckland: auckland university press. university of auckland. (1960). calendar 1960. auckland: whitcombe and tombs. ward, s. v. (2012). gordon stephenson and the “galaxy of talent”: planning for postwar reconstruction in britain, 1942–1947. town planning review, 83, 279–296. interstices 6 architecture = building + value: exploring the social purpose of architecture peter wood architecture and value i wish to begin with a contrived formula: architecture = building + value. that is to say that the practice of architecture is concerned with adding value to an accepted state known as ‘building’. this is a simplistic but surprisingly difficult principle to disprove. it is immediately apparent that buildings, through a utilitarian distinction from sculpture, monuments, or follies and the like, have a value to us, but this value is inevitably defined within a narrow spectrum of functional servitude to human occupancy. crudely, buildings provide security against unpredictable external factors, and they facilitate and ritualise human existence. at the level of survival, these pragmatic criteria serve firstly to protect occupants and resources from predators and adverse climatic conditions. only after accomplishing this do they perform a secondary role, organizing controlled and centralised spheres within which ceremonies such as food preparation and consumption can accentuate social groupings and, therefore, also social and cultural developments. both of these services can, however, in principle and practice, be more than adequately provided for without evoking disciplinary architecture (as vast areas of urban and suburban development testify). the addition i am referring to is a value over and above the survival of a corporeal frame and genetic code: one that instead celebrates being as more than simply a biological creature (or perhaps that should read a simple biological creature). this is alluded to wherever discussion of disciplinary architecture refers to the elevation of a condition sometimes described as the human spirit. this aspect of architectural value encapsulates what is widely thought of as the art of architecture, and as a state surplus to mere biological existence. however, i will not be suggesting that additional value is a worth removed from biological imperatives. rather, i wish to show that those qualities of human activity that appear to transcend mere animalistic behaviour—and which therefore celebrate human life as removed from just biologically encoded actions—may in fact be pre-disposed tendencies that serve basic and instinctive drives for survival: animal impulses. 4� architectural elaboration determining an evolution-based distinction between building and architecture begins by acknowledging the presence of art practices throughout all human society, culture, and history. as evolutionary biologist ellen dissanayake (1992) has observed, the universality of what we have come to call art practices can only be accounted for biologically if it satisfies an intrinsic and fundamental human need. throughout western history, art has been regarded as a supplement to survival—as a non-essential overloading of resources and time that adds nothing practical to a species’ reproductive success. simplistic opposition to evolutionary arguments often emphasizes art practices, since they appear to contradict basic darwinist principles with their emphasis on biological survival rather than cultural development (aiken, 1998). the common problem in readings of this kind is their interpretation of evolution in narrow, pragmatist terms of natural selection. they do not take into consideration the significance of emotional, social, cultural, or ritualistic criteria that are just as intrinsically a part of successful human development. geoffrey miller (2001) offers an example of how an aesthetic sensibility might serve evolutionary interests. he argues that the examples we use in our efforts to distinguish ourselves from the animal kingdom are often striking for the parallels they draw with natural phenomena.1 he contends that creative and aesthetic displays are ‘indicators’ for reproductive choice. the importance of indicators lies in their ability to single out individuals, and help them succeed, by demonstrating their advanced intellectual ability. human achievement throughout history was significantly linked to a creative imagination that helped advance technological fields through invention. architecture is no exception. in evolutionary terms, the development of tools was a creative step, and may have involved aesthetic principles to identify materials most suitable to pragmatic tasks.2 in this, artists or architects were able, by making objects ‘special’, to demonstrate their particular ability—and thereby a particular superiority and desirability.3 miller’s assertions owe much to dissanayake. where his argument is limited in scope by his interest in reproductive choice, however, dissanayake makes a greater claim for the significance of ‘making special’. she emphasizes that this is the core defining feature of all art practice, and it “casts a new light on previously troublesome questions about the nature, origin, purpose, and value of art, and its place in human life” (dissanayake, 1992: 52). ‘making special’ is an example of added value. while a decorated paddle may be neither more nor less efficient at moving through water, it does offer a stronger commentary on the person who carries it, and the society that produced it. in this case, value consists in a contribution exceeding the purely utilitarian or pragmatic and, consequently, becomes quantifiable as an addition to the pre-existing state. architecture, too, can be distinguished as a value based addition to a base condition called ‘building’. it is this that architects have historically termed the ‘art of building’, but the usefulness of this phrase is questionable in a period when value judgments are dominated by fiscal concerns.4 generally, the role of architecture in society can be seen as a ‘making special’ of buildings so that, at an urban scale, architecture signals the desirability of a city by demonstrating its 1. for example, see the discussion on the australian bowerbird by alphonso lingus (2000). 2. one reason why architects have retained prominence in contemporary professional circles, despite relatively lower financial rewards, may be the way in which they are able to display their creative strengths, and therefore their suitability as stronger reproductive partners. 3. “making things special can be done in many ways: using special materials, special forms, special decorations, special sizes, special colors, or special styles. … from an evolutionary point of view, the fundamental challenge facing artists is to demonstrate their fitness by making something that lower-fitness competitors could not make, thus proving themselves more socially and sexually attractive.” (miller, 2001: 281-2) 4. current developments in architecture that seek to reduce the energy requirements in buildings are an example of ‘making special’ insomuch as the increase in energy performance has a tangible worth. this i see as a function of the act of building and quite apart from an art of architecture. it is arguable that any building which fails to exploit the full range of its utilitarian and serviceable requirements is, really, something less than a complete act of building (rather than a poor architectural performance). interstices 6 commitment to human advancement and progress. such advances, however, remain firmly within a technocratic paradigm. the key to ‘making special’ that i am interested in here is the achievement of a heightened emotional experience, rather than physical accommodation. that we should desire such a state may well be a consequence of the evolution of our genetic makeup, and in times of risk it is essential to our short-term survival and our long-term existence (dissanayake, 1992: 61). thus it is the foundation of our animalistic relationship to the world around us. at some point during our evolutionary path, we “deliberately set out to make things special or extra-ordinary, perhaps for the purpose of influencing the outcome of important events that were perceived as uncertain and troubling, requiring action beyond simple fight or flight, approach or avoidance” (dissanayake, 1992: 51). ‘making special’ is a biologically endowed need. we quite naturally exaggerate, pattern, and otherwise alter our movements or voices or words to indicate that what we are doing is set apart from ordinary states (60-1). it is to be expected that those activities most concerned with human existence also display the greatest degree of ritualised ‘special-ness’. objects and activities associated with important life events are inevitably given additional value: birth, puberty, marriage, death, hunting, warfare, and healing. these are not only perennial concerns for societies that live close to the edge of survival (dissanayake, 1992: 34): they are also apparent in contemporary western societies. grant hildebrand (1991) has made a compelling case for such ‘life values’ in the houses of frank lloyd wright, and i would like to further his argument by contending that the threshold of distinction between architecture and building occurs at the point of divergence between two different notions of survival. building is concerned with the survival of the immediate and singular body. architecture, by contrast, identifies with the body as a collective, community, and especially as a congregation. in evolutionary terms, ‘special-ness’ seeks to account for the way in which humans attach complex aesthetic values to essential behavioural patterns that support continued existence. the art of architecture is no more exempt from these traits than any other art practice. studies of human evolutionary practices often suffer from an emphasis of individual fitness over social fitness. since adding aesthetic to utilitarian value appears to offer no immediate advantages to a singular entity, whole areas of human art practice are, within such framework, dismissed as archaic, atavistic, and, ultimately, primitive. however, they can also be read in evolutionary terms as crucial markers of fitness.5 dissanayake (1988) observes that there is no such thing as fitness in the abstract. it is by definition a response to environmental parameters and, while also concerned with reproduction, not limited to overtly practical or utilitarian aspects. in modernist architectural discourse, such markers of fitness were suppressed because of their atavistic implications. modernism and evolution the history of architecture, as written, with its theory of utilitarian origins from the hut and tumulus, and further developments in that way—the adjustment of forms to the conditions of local cir5. “to the unsentimental gaze of an evolutionary biologist looking for ‘selective value,’ elaborating is truly perplexing. what ends could it possibly accomplish? the other human capacities described here—mutuality, belonging, making meaning, and developing manual-mental competency—all clearly contribute to survival. but elaborating would appear to interfere with fitness, certainly not enhance it.” (dissanayake, 2000: 134) 4� cumstance; the clay of mesopotamia, the granite of egypt, and the marble of greece—is rather the history of building: of ‘architecture’ it may be, in the sense we so often use the word, but not the architecture which is the synthesis of the fine arts, the commune of all the crafts. (lethaby, 1974: 1) so begins william lethaby in architecture, mysticism and myth. where, he asks, does the distinction between building and architecture lie? this is not a moot question but neither is it a categorical one. lethaby’s prejudice is immediately evident where he identifies the distinction between building and architecture as being like the difference between pigment and painting: building is a vehicle for architecture in a linear system that prevents architecture from ever being a vehicle for building. in his terms, buildings realise the ‘manifestation and transmission’ of architecture and emphasise the appeal of architecture to the intellect. this opposition between the intellectual efficacy of architecture and the corporeal expediencies of the building underlies almost all discourse on the nature of architecture in the modernist period.6 we expect architecture to engage with our lives beyond our animalistic tendencies and requirements because we see ourselves as existing in a higher domain than the animal world. all other forms of physical occupancy are, at best, mere buildings. a basic hierarchy of human edifices reflects this: shelter to structure to building and, finally, to architecture. this model is also an evolutionary one: shelter is the plane of the primitive, architecture that of the civilised, and between the two a linear progressive path upwards is emphasised. this is apparent in an architectural discourse that has privileged the primitive hut as the genesis for all architectural developments. for vitruvius, it was the discovery of fire that led to centralised assembly and, consequently the need for new accommodations. “the men of old,” he writes, “were born like the wild beasts, in woods, caves, and groves, and lived on savage fare” (vitruvius, 1960: 38). following vitruvius, the classicist laugier described the erection of the primitive hut as a direct response to the failings of the cave and the forest floor to adequately service the human desire for comfort—a state beyond survival.7 in the contemporary writing of joseph rykwert, finally, a fully developed theological framework to account for the primitive hut is presented. he writes: whether in ritual, myth or architectural speculation, the primitive hut has appeared as a paradigm of building: as a standard by which other buildings must in some way be judged, since it is from such flimsy beginnings that they spring. these huts were always situated in an idealized past. (rykwert, 1972: 190) ‘idealized’ is a euphemism for eden. the hut may indeed be primitive but the purpose it serves is of the highest order. to distort michel foucault’s argument on architecture and institutionalisation, we can hardly speak of god until we can point to a tangible place in which god dwells: worship and architecture become concurrent events. the primitive hut is a useful metaphor for theology, from whose perspective keeping its origins clear of pagan practices is important. 6. i will in this essay refer to writers who are not so simplistic in their structuring of architecture upon intellectual grounds, but i also hope to show that these arguments are often equally awkward in their accounts, and not without their own versions of a polemical stance. 7. “some fallen branches in the forest are the right material for his purpose; he chooses four of the strongest, raises them upright and arranges them in a square; across their top he lays four other branches; on these he hoists from two sides yet another row of branches which, inclining towards each other, meet at their highest point. he then covers this kind of roof with leaves so closely packed that neither sun nor rain can penetrate. thus, man is housed.” (laugier, 1977: 12) interstices 6 adolf loos and primitivism adolf loos’ polemical writings are the clearest (but by no means the only) example of a modernist rhetoric that defines human progress as a movement away from an atavistic state. loos finds evidence of the risk of regression in the ornamentation practices of ‘primitive’ peoples. in the course of his argument, loos claims that it is degenerate for a civilised person to dabble in ornamentation, but perfectly permissible for a papuan to do so because the child-like ignorance of primitivism prevents him from acting immorally. he writes: “… the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornamentation from objects of everyday use” (loos, 1998: 167). his stance needs to be understood within a general context of positivist darwinism. in particular, loos was influenced by the italian proto-criminologist cesare lombroso, who had a strong social darwinist orientation. central to lombroso’s position on criminal development was the premise that some men are closer to their primitive ancestors than others, which led him to develop a scientific methodology in order to identify, through physiological data, individuals capable of aberrant social behaviour. abnormally sized hands, bad dentition, and a pre-disposition to express oneself pictorially—especially through tattoos—are all identified by lombroso as atavistic traits found in those predisposed to a life of crime. his position is surprisingly non-judgmental: in contemporary society, criminals are modern primitive beings who cannot control their regressive biological tendencies, such as laziness and weak-consciousness. the criminal is “a relic of a vanished race” (lombroso-ferrero, 1911: 135). in his interpretation of lombroso’s work loos highlighted a relationship between primitivism and ornament, especially criminality and tattooing, while avoiding the complexities of pictographic meaning in tattooing that lombroso found so interesting.8 the result was a simplistic and ethnocentric argument in which loos attacked ornament as a degenerate expression of production threatening modern life with its atavistic tendencies. he wrote in 1908 that “modern man finds a face more beautiful without tattoos than with, even if the tattoos are by michelangelo himself. and he feels just the same about bedside tables” (loos, 1998: 165).9 for loos, tattoos are emblematic of an atavistic corruption affecting modern life. anything exceeding the clarity of immediate functioning represents a dangerous deterioration of cultural progress (cacciari, 1993: 104). it is important to emphasize that loos’ argument depends upon evolutionary principles, even as it constructs a notion of spatiality aligned with the tenets of christian faith (ewen, 1988).10 loos’ position reflects a much wider conflict between positivistic science and the prevailing european theological belief systems of the period: for the jesuit laugier, the primitive hut already would have represented a metaphorical dilemma. within a theological model of creationism, the primitive hut is cast as a place of worship—the first house of god. the primitive hut is a pivotal moment in the development of modernist principles of utility and function, but these doctrines were in conflict with popular ideologies of the period, and held in a tension similar to that between scientific rationalism and christian theology of the enlightenment period. it was due to the prevailing influence of this friction that ornamental additions to buildings were seen as serving no purpose other than to identify atavistic (read pagan) tendencies. 8. “one of the strangest characteristics of criminals is the tendency to express their ideas pictorially. while in prison, troppmann painted the scene of his misdeed, for the purpose of showing that it had been committed by others. we have already mentioned the rude illustrations engraved by the murderer cavaglia on his pitcher, representing his crime, imprisonment, and suicide. books, crockery, guns, all the utensils criminals have in constant use, serve as a canvas on which to portray their exploits. from pictogram it is but an easy step to hieroglyphics like those used by ancient peoples. the hieroglyphics of criminals are closely allied to their slang, of which in fact they are only a pictorial representation, and, although largely inspired by the necessity for secrecy, show, in addition, evident atavistic tendencies.” (lombroso, 1911: 43) 9. massimo cacciari, on what he calls loos’ anti-ornament ‘ethic’, writes: “the concept of ornament in loos hence goes well beyond the facade—it boils down to a concern for the ends of construction, production, and communication. for loos, as for all the other ‘great viennese masters of language,’ ornament is every word that goes beyond the conditions of its meaning, beyond the formal laws of its grammar and syntax, beyond the limits of its function.” (cacciari, 1993: 104) 10. in loos’ most notorious diatribe on ornament, it is possible to exchange the term ‘papuan’ with ‘pagan’ and leave the intention, and syntax, completely intact. 4� burke, art, and the gothic cathedral at this point i would like to turn to a basic definition of ‘art’ within evolutionary arguments to explore the theme of the ‘art of architecture’. all art, states nancy aiken, turns on a biological response to ethnological releasers (aiken, 1998). a ‘releaser’ is another type of environmental trigger that, quite literally, releases an emotional and, therefore, a behavioural response. as noted before, the most powerful of these releases are those linked to our survival reflexes, and especially the fight/flight/freeze responses. ‘art’, by this definition, can be found in any cultural artefact or event that is able to activate a range of our primary reflexes, but outside of the parameters of actual physical risk. ‘art’ is an activator of behavioural patterns so deeply seated in our biological makeup that they should be considered innate to the human condition and not environmentally or culturally acquired. these are generally traits concerned with survival and reproduction, but one response released by art, which aiken finds with frequency in the built world, is the quality known as ‘awe’. monumental building—in aiken’s words, the “very huge”—is awe-inspiring because it initiates an emotional release of ‘magnitude’.11 this is by no means a new or even recent observation. writing in 1757, edmund burke identified awe as a division of the sublime, and he, too, found it in buildings of great magnitude. burke’s writing on the sublime, often invoked in contemporary architectural discourse, is of note here for its divergence from conventional architectural treatises of its period. the degree of divergence is evident in his definition of the sublime: whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. (burke, 1958: 39) burke is describing sublimity within a range of behavioural responses that humans are genetically predisposed towards and, while he gives attention to examples of the sublime taken from the bible, there is an immediate disparity between his proto-evolutionist observations and the prevailing creationist orthodoxy of the time. it may be for this reason that burke never draws a direct parallel between sublimity and gothic architecture. as boulton had observed before, gothic architecture displays all the qualities necessary to activate sublimity: magnitude, apparent disorder, expressions of immense energy, the gloom of the interior, and in particular the profusion of detail and suggestions of infinity through ornamental traceries (burke, 1958: 76). the creation of artificial infinity arises, said burke, from the uniform succession of great parts. systematically repeating a single sound is one example, as predictable repetition creates an expectation that then organizes a frame of reference for unpredictable change, however subtle. the optical reverberations caused by a uniform colonnade moving through perspectival space is another, but it pales in comparison to the profusion of succession and uniformity that can be provided for in ornamental detailing. for burke, ornament is the site of infinity in architecture. as our eyes fail in their ability to comprehend the movement and variability found in a complex ornamental system, an illusion of infinity is achieved, and with it 11. “another possible releaser used in art, but which i found little about in the literature, is monumentality. something very huge, such as the sears tower, the egyptian pyramids, the easter island faces, and the sistine ceiling, is awe inspiring.” (aiken, 1998: 137) interstices 6 a reflection on our own insignificance is evoked. repetition is the simplest articulation of additional value. whereas one curlicue is unintelligible, an ordered series proves deliberation, control, and emphasis, even as it disappears into the abstract infinity of the composition (dissanayake, 1992: 84). it is tempting to read ‘infinity’ as ‘eternity’ but this would miss the pagan threat at work in ornament. ‘eternity’ can be thought of as a certainty of faith that exists beyond the temporality of mortal existence. we can arrive at eternity. infinity is the converse. infinity does not include ‘ourselves’ but marks out instead a concept of ‘self’ as nonexistent. this is why it is such a powerful releaser of sublime effect, and also why it challenges architectural thought. where burke says “it appears very clearly to me, that the human figure never supplied the architect with any of his ideas” (burke, 1958: 100), he is dismissing anthropomorphism as a standard of theologised aesthetic beauty. he replaces it with emotive psychology, which treats human existence as a responsive animal behaviour. creationism versus evolution the processes of evolutionary selection take hundreds of generations. despite its fervent conviction, modernist ideology cannot undo genetically encoded behaviour or preferences. what works best for human development is not decided by zealots and evangelical movements but is determined, to paraphrase donald symons (1992), in the crucible of evolutional time. i believe it is this same crucible where we can begin to fully separate architecture from building. it has been observed that the central evolutionary problem is not survival per se, “but design for survival” (williams in symons, 1992: 111). what distinguishes the human animal from all others is what symons calls our “special problem-solving machinery.” however, what we denote today as the ‘modern’ period of architectural development took place within societies with strong christian ideals that held creationism central to human endeavour. in this context, all profane tendencies would be viewed at least with suspicion, at worst as blasphemy. while there may have been a newtonian death of god in the sciences, the arts, and especially architecture, continued to uphold christian values. the builders of the great gothic cathedrals still saw no paradox in emotionally manipulating a devout brethren with genetically determined releasers, and thereby demonstrated an architectural commitment to encouraging faith with fear. the breakdown in this successfully co-dependent relationship takes place when pugin identifies the ‘true principles of christian architecture’. he provides his two rules for design: firstly, that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; secondly, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building (pugin, 1853: 2-3). in this way, he locates the primary condition of value in the action of building. this is, in its essence, the origin of loos’ anti-ornament fervour. but where loos condemns ornament outright as an expression of latent primitive tendencies, for pugin the true purpose of denouncing ornament is a profoundly pious declaration of the faith which architecture must serve. he writes: �1 the finest temple of the greeks is constructed on the same principle as a large wooden cabin. as illustrations of history they are extremely valuable; but as for their being held up as the standard of architectural excellence, and the types from which our present buildings are to be formed, it is a monstrous absurdity, which has originated in the blind admiration of modern times for every thing pagan, to the prejudice and overthrow of christian art and propriety. (pugin, 1853: 3) both pugin and loos refuse the significance of ornament as an additional value to the value of building, and both condemn its use, although to differing degrees. the vital difference here is the debt of service. loos holds ornament accountable as representative of architecture in decline, and its removal constitutes for him the cultural progress of buildings into a new age. by contrast, pugin’s rejection of ornament is formed inside his christian beliefs. for pugin, ornament in building means the ornament of pagan antiquity and to use it in a christian context is not just atavistic, but heretical. it should be remembered that while ornament is only one expression of atavistic added value, it is the one that has dominated contemporary thought. i suggest that the reason for this dominance is the deep, unresolved conflict between creationism and evolution that the ornamental makes apparent to the external world. other forms of additional value, such as sublimity, are emotional releasers that act inwardly and thus are less confrontational to absolute belief systems. “when you boil it all down,” says dissanayake, “the social purpose of art [is] the creation of mutuality, the passage from feeling into shared meaning” (2000: 204). as a species, human beings across all cultures universally display the same set of needs. we need to belong to a social group, we need to find and make meaning, and we need to elaborate these meanings as a way to express their vital importance.12 congregational worship is a profound union of these needs as people are brought together by a common belief system, with rituals and iconography that is specifically designed to provide meaning. architecture is the perfect tool for organizing, focusing, and delivering these rituals. elaborating on ceremonial meaning—which is to say, providing additional value—is what architecture does well. architecture is an enhancement of where the everyday is transformed into the sublime.13 but visible atavism—be it in the form of classical ornament, repetition, or archaic architectural elements such as the gable—is not merely a reference to other times. it simultaneously denounces contemporary societies who do not have the moral, ethical, or spiritual standards that are being evoked. unfortunately, the absolute nature of the opposition between creationism and evolution has constructed an impenetrable wall that prevents shared thought over added value. this is not to say that architects do not consciously manipulate physiological or psychological responses to the environments they design—they do—but these qualities are not thought of as ‘added’ in a manner that conveys architectural integrity. until we acknowledge animal impulses in our architectural practices, uncertainty over the difference between architecture and building will remain. 12. “my thesis begins with the assumption that it is in the inborn capacity and need for (i) mutuality between mother and infant (the prototype for intimacy or love) that four other essential human capacities and psychological imperatives are enfolded or embedded and gradually, in their time, emerge. mother-infant mutuality contains and influences the capacities for (2) belonging to (and acceptance by) a social group, (3) finding and making meaning, (4) acquiring a sense of competence through handling and making, and (5) elaborating these meanings and competencies as a way of expressing or acknowledging their vital importance.” (dissanayake, 2000: 8) 13. “enhancement of space is achieved additionally when, within humanly shaped or elaborated space, the normal everyday arrangement of people in that space is itself altered for ceremonial purpose. women and men may be spatially separated; performers or initiates may occupy a stage or arena apart from onlookers; some people may be excluded from the proceedings altogether. dances usually require that individuals form rows, circles, or other regular configurations in space.” (dissanayake, 1992: 113) interstices 6 references aiken, n. e. (1998). the biological origins of art. london: praeger. burke, e. (1958). a philosophical inquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful. london: routledge & kegan paul limited. cacciari, m. (1993). architecture and nihilism: on the philosophy of modern architecture (s. sartarelli, trans.). new haven and london: yale university press. dissanayake, e. (1988). what is art for? seattle and london: university of washington press. dissanayake, e. (1992). homo aestheticus: where art comes from and why. seattle and london: university of washington press. dissanayake, e. (2000). art and intimacy: how the arts began. seattle and london: university of washington press. ewen, s. (1988). all consuming images: the politics of style in contemporary style. new york: basic books. hildebrand, g. (1991). the wright space: pattern and meaning in frank lloyd wright’s houses. seattle: university of washington press. laugier, m.-a. (1977). an essay on architecture (w. &. a. herrmann, trans.). los angeles: hennessey & ingalls, inc. lethaby, w. r. (1974-1891). architecture, mysticism, and myth. london: the architectural press ltd. lingus, a. (2000). quadrille. performance research, 5 (2), 1-10 lombroso-ferrero, g. (1911). criminal man according to the classification of cesare lombroso (1972 ed.). monclair, new jersey: patterson smith. loos, a. (1998). ornament and crime: selected essays (m. mitchell, trans.). riverside, california: ariadne press. miller, g. (2001). the mating mind: how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature. london: random house. pugin, a. w. (1853). the true principles of pointed architecture or christian architecture. london: henry g. bohn. rykwert, j. (1972). on adam’s house in paradise: the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history. new york: the museum of modern art. symons, d. (1992). on the use and misuse of darwinism in the study of human behaviour. in j. h. barkow & l. cosmodes & j. tooby (eds.), the adapted mind: evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (137-159). new york, oxford: oxford university press. vitruvius (1960). the ten books of architecture (m. h. morgan, trans.). new york: dover publications, inc. 5 1 amongst which we include architecture, interior architecture and design, furniture design and various scenographic mediums: theatre, film, exhibition, installation and performance. 2 descartes’ biographer adrien baillet (1649-1706) dated the occasion 10 november, 1619, and located it in a town near ulm in germany. in discourse on the method, descartes described it this way: “while i was returning to the army from the coronation of the emperor, the onset of winter detained me in quarters where, finding no conversation to divert me and fortunately having no cares or passions to trouble me, i stayed all day shut up alone in a stove-heated room, where i was completely free to converse with myself about my own thoughts.” (2007a: p. 116) 3 these rooms were envisaged as literally places of pause where a demolition of received thought could occur: “so today i have expressly rid my mind of all worries and arranged for myself a clear stretch of free time. i am here quite alone, and at last i will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.” (2007b: p. 12) introduction: aspects of interiority andrew douglas and a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul impelling this edition of interstices is the sense of an undervaluation – critically, aesthetically, professionally – of interiority. being closest and most proximate, interiority (in its various cognate forms: inside, innerness, the interior, the domestic, the private, the intimate, etc.) lies, we argue, in a persisting shadow zone of critical scrutiny and selective professional attendance. implicated in one of the most persistent western cultural dichotomies (inside/outside), interior ‘types’ of space have long acted as flash points through which anxious concerns about the limits and identity of practice and thought in the spatial arts have been channeled.1 not coincidently have they been assigned a minoritarian status. cursorily put, interiority is routinely the casualty of a quarantining edict that has insistently settled it ‘inside’. for our part, we have looked to unsettle this closeting effect, bringing the interior ‘out’, so to speak, to better sight the effects of an “interior machinery” at work in a variety of places and at a range of spatial ‘scales’ (fuss 1991: 01). accordingly, we view interiority as in no way substantive, self-evident, or settled. rather, we seek to catalogue its deep implication in experiences, categories and designations indicative of the outside, of publicness, and of collective force. equally, we attend to the condensing and intensifying capacities of interiority, finding in containing space – with its appeals to, and effecting of, refuge, shelter and limitation – a political consecration, even when that communing may be as modest as a solitary confining in place. amongst the earliest philosophical depictions of ‘modern’ interiority – an emblem for all that the interior has subsequently had claimed in its name – are rené descartes’ deliberations in, and on, various “stove-heated” rooms (the first somewhere in a wintery town on the danube in 1619).2 they condense what we hope both to draw into awareness, and in key ways, exceed in this issue: namely, as diana fuss suggests, that not only do we inhabit interiors but that they also inhabit, habituate and orientate us (2004: 2). descartes’ private ‘refuges’ for philosophically rehearsing a “methodical doubt” were simple, cellular rooms, whose confines defined the thinking-self as singular, removing the confounding effects of collective, political life and accumulated thought; in short, they proselytised for time apart.3 in this they form a proto-bourgeois model portending a shift from the early modern communal house to the private domestic interior arising in the wake of the social and civic turmoil of late eighteenth-century revolutionary change (fuss 2004: 3). the commodious, stove-heated room, as a spatial model – something that itself might be thought of as a mechanism for managing the deleterious consequences of time – has continued to inhabit the western cultural imagination. the “topophilic” domestic poetics of gaston bachelard (where, according to henri lefèbvre (1991: 121), an “almost absolute space” of intimacy binds “home and ego” through well-housed memories) amount, no less than the long-venerated cabins, huts, and retreats, to figures of pause enduring over an otherwise tempestuous, outside temporal background. nevertheless, descartes’ stove-heated rooms bring into view something that was perhaps occluded in the subsequent nineteenth century “phantasmagoria of the rené descartes (1596-1650) at work. (wikimedia commons) interstices 12 interior” – as walter benjamin characterises the centripetal, bourgeois drive to recast the dwelling as a “universe of the private individual” in compensation for “the absence of any trace of private life in the big city” (2002: 19-20). the sparsely appointed environ descartes deemed necessary to thought in its untutored state was strikingly centrifugal. it offered a seemingly essential vantage point for deliberating over a remaking of the world, in what antonio negri (2007) terms an early modern “prometheanism” inherited from a preceding humanism. if for the latter it was enough to ‘encounter’ and thereby reframe the world in human terms, the modern age desired knowledge as a means, a fulcrum, for “possessing” the world in total (37). but how did the private room come to exemplify this prometheanism? negri’s consideration of descartes’ use of metaphor offers a clue: firstly, descartes’ famous appeal (from the first of the stove-heated rooms recalled in discourse on the method) to the cleared foundation of housing built anew under the aegis of a single hand covertly borrowed from a renaissance reworking of urban space. the simple, solitary room, like the “building undertaken and completed by a single architect” in an earlier prometheanism, is reworked to better signal the potency of a self-authoring individual. secondly, an aligning of science and philosophical method rests on “step by step”, deductive processes favouring “self-evident”, “simple natures” (descartes 2007a: 20) suited to “analytic division and productive reconstruction” (negri 2007: 97). for descartes, this reconstruction was redolent of “artisan techniques” whose constructive simplicity was evident in “weaving and carpet-making” and the “more feminine arts of embroidery” (2007a: 35) – crafts indicative of an incremental making, where the whole is manifestly greater than its parts. in the context of a broader seventeenth century political transformation, their appeal to descartes was likely due to a “class self-identification” (broadly mercantile and entrepreneurial) which borrowed from the “cosmopolitan humanism” of the earlier italian city states (negri 2007: 95). for negri, this explains the persistence of humanist metaphors in descartes; they signal a proto-bourgeois imagination that sought a mediation between the rising absolutist monarchical power consequent to the thirty years’ war (1618-1648), and a disenfranchised and dispossessed multitude left to circulate outside the older vertical feudal ties of caste and land. however, with the state above and an insurrection below, this emerging class could claim rightful place neither in the court nor on the streets. instead it proselytised for a domain of industrious action and self-making that descartes depicted as provisionally private. in search of a ‘reasonable’ place for its enterprise, this emergent bourgeois class gradually made the interior both pivotal to its centrifugal concerns and routinely immune to scrutiny of its claims to ‘reasonableness’. the interior so depicted was a political place, whose positing of a mediated world, however, was not recognised as such. perhaps there is no better depiction of this critical ‘provisionality’ of interior place and its essential sidelining, than in the discourse on the method: now, before starting to rebuild your house, it is not enough simply to pull it down, to make provision for materials and architects (or even train yourself in architecture), and to have carefully drawn up the plans; you must also provide yourself with some other place where you can live comfortably while building is in progress. (emphasis added, 2007a: 122) 7 this indefinitely situated “other place” then, a place given over to comfortable waiting, is much like a site shed, provisionally called on to see out the implementation of a project, only to be dispatched in the end. overlooked from it is a worldmaking as the interlude to a world-possession to come. in commencing this issue with descartes settled in his stove-heated room, we have in mind the likelihood that such interiors were never crucibles for a muted withdrawal but, rather, a political device, a veritable contact apparatus, whose progressive ethos, spanning from the classical to the modern ages, has contributed to an “interior machinery” inhabiting us still (negri 2007: 325). further, negri asserts an explicate parallel between descartes’ historical situation and our own today. if bourgeois reason grappled with the excesses of aristocratic power and the risks of a “refeudalization”, we find ourselves caught in a similar “crisis” in which an older state-directed capitalism faces the excesses of a new global governance and (mis) management, this time in the name of “‘privatization’” (320-21). consequently negri parallels the emergent seventeenth-century bourgeoisie with the current “proletarian multitude”. the question arising with such an isomorphism is, what allegiances, political compromises, spatial configurations and freedoms might interiority now portend? a lingering nineteenth-century misrecognition of interiority as centripetal inhabiting belies the evidence of a radical centrifugation at the heart of interiors everywhere in the wake of contemporary adventures in refeudalisation. contributors to this issue were asked to consider interiority in terms of unsettled containment – a thematic aiming beyond the prevailing object-cult in design and architecture, and a neglect of the interior generally. despite an incessant bourgeois proselytising for the merits of an inside/outside partition (of workplaces and dwellings, public and private domains), we were interested in inside-outside reversals, public-private conflations and vitalising contact-intimacies and alliances that pitch up against a backdrop of stalely replicated public non-places (augé) and an often banal, architectonic formalism. in response, the first two contributions to this issue engage with peter sloterdijk’s thinking in the context of aotearoa/new zealand. tina engels-schwarzpaul, in “restless containers: thinking interior space”, draws on sloterdijk to explicate what amounts to a complex field of containment and infinite overlappings of existential spheres. she reads this useful, if euro-centric, perspective against the place-relations and collective enfoldings integral to māori and pacific cultures – a mobilisation of interiority that in many ways eludes sloterdijk’s depiction of spherical life. also drawing on sloterdijk’s writings, sean sturm and stephen turner discuss, in “built pedagogy”, the university of auckland’s business school as a local manifestation of “u 2.0”, or, “the transcendental university”. they show how a thoroughly market-oriented appropriation of design, in its insistent appeal to openness (atria, curves, glass), closes off other kinds of talk. as “built pedagogy”, the business school renders concrete a geoand biopolitical frontierism transforming teaching and learning. looking further afield, ross jenner, in “inner poverty”, draws his readers into a detailed encounter with zumthor’s brother klaus field chapel at wachendorf, germany. this encounter presses into a densely enacted place and material reference, which preserves and maintains, in the name of a modest poverty, making over the made and the force of matter over form. revealed is an interior that is all externalisation, unfolding as a setting/unsettling of time. on the other hand, deborah van der plaat seemingly focuses her investigation solely on the interior in “cosmopolitan interiors”. yet, in a reading of oscar wilde’s lecture “the house beautiful”, the rené descartes in his study, 17th century engraving (marilynkaydennis). interstices 12 blinds of the late nineteenth-century aestheticised interior are shown to open onto a panorama of nationalist and race politics. wilde’s lecture positions the interior no longer as the counterpart of, or retreat from, the global consciousness of empire, but as its very condensing. the next three contributions consider interiority across divergent media: stefanie sobelle explores in “inscapes” the correlations between architectural and fictional interiors. she finds mark z. danielewski’s novel house of leaves (2000) exemplarily staging a problematic in dwelling; in it no simple correspondence between inside and out can be identified, nor can a constancy of form constrain the perpetual passage-work induced by the interiority it propagates. in “life at the periphery”, annmarie brennan turns to neorealism in cinema to consider rome’s post-war remaking by way of kevin lynch’s exploration of “imageability” developed in a parallel american context. she intersects lynch’s charting of a complex urban, economic and societal remodelling with gilles deleuze’s consideration of neorealist film, particularly his identifying of disorientated any-spaces-whatever. kate linzey examines in “reflective interiors” different notions of interiority in okamoto’s tower of the sun and e.a.t.’s pepsi pavilion at the osaka expo ‘70. she argues that – contrary to appearances – the seemingly opaque tower of the sun is enlivened by an interior vitality while the pepsi pavilion’s lasting influence is due not to its interior but to its exterior. john di stefano and dorita hannah conclude the refereed section with “intermission”, in which they explore the transformative moment that occurs when the homogeneity of theatrical space and time is interrupted and broken by the uncanny presencing of an unscripted and unimaginable element. javier téllez’ work and the 2002 moscow theatre siege provide their frame of reference. for this issue, we invited two papers: the first is “disorientation and disclosure” by david leatherbarrow, which considers architecture as a form of spatial knowledge. its settings – particularly interior settings – are ways of knowing one’s place in the world which are not given but achieved in response to changing conditions. in the alternation between orientation and disorientation, the discovery of directionality and sense is also the disclosure of spatial understanding. disorientation is thus the point of departure for productive design, and the interior, far from being a space of retreat or withdrawal, is nourished by external conditions it cannot control, but which qualify its spatial, historical, environmental, and cultural sense. the second invited paper, “architecture as an art of immersion” by peter sloterdijk, was published originally in german in 2006. sloterdijk looks at immersive configurations in politics, culture and everyday life practices as they occur and change over time and in different places. humans do not just lie about, selfcontained like pebbles, but inhabit the world ecstatically and openly. architecture, particularly interior architecture, designs embedded, immersive situations indicative of this fundamental human condition, in which we oscillate between “the desire to be embedded and the desire to break free”. john walsh opens the non-refereed section with “just looking”, an account of publishers’ complicated relationships with the seen in architectural journals. rafik patel in “an opening of tanwir”, look at events in cairo in january 2011. gerrit confurius examines “modernism’s secret anxieties” in places as diverse as kafka’s attics, corbusier’s radiant city, the new york stock exchange, and winnicott’s nursery. lynda simmons, in “interior darkness / contained shadow” draws attention to features in pacific building traditions to the present day that run counter to a stereotype seeing brightness, lightness and mobility everywhere in new zealand 9 and pacific architecture. carin wilson reviews whare māori, a television series broadcasted by māori television in 2011 and maurizio sabini reviews marco frascari’s eleven exercises in the art of architectural drawing. emma morris presents a visual record of her installation “the archive of atmosphere: installation as an interior architectural event”, and ross jenner reports on santiago calatrava’s law faculty library at the university of zürich. while these contributions each speak in their own way to an unsettled containment, it seems valid to assert across their breadth a prevailing strand; each, in the aspect of interiority they chart, finds the ‘interior’, to the extent that it persists, to be an event performed both with, and against, the deleterious effects of time. descartes – routinely demeaned as the deployer of the mind-body split – predicated his first philosophy (as blueprint for an ensuing revolution of bourgeois reasonableness) on a temporary hiatus engineered by a solitary room. yet even this temporal stasis – a moment descartes carefully coveted and carved out of the routine run of affairs – necessitated an opening or rent onto the outside: be that a window granting a plunging view of the street, or, perhaps more fundamentally, the very stove-heated room itself as an event remembered and, in turn, relayed through an emerging print capitalism. seldom remembered of descartes is that he was also a philosopher of wonder, and “[w]onder is the motivating force behind mobility in all its dimensions” (irigaray 2004: 63-64). the stove-heated room then, like interiority as we would have it considered, mobilises unanticipated encounters with new species of space and thought. in this it might well be taken (as gilles deleuze and felix guattari have figured the precarious fold of shelter and exposure mandated by territory-making) as an umbrella bravely erected beneath a cosmic chaos (or “chaosmosis”). people, as they say, constantly put up … an umbrella that shelters them and on the underside of which they draw a firmament and write their conventions and opinions. but poets, artists, make a slit in the umbrella, they tear open the firmament itself, to let in a bit of free and windy chaos and to frame in a sudden light a vision that appears through the rent … (1994: 203) references benjamin, w. (2002). the arcades project (h. eiland & k. mclaughlin, trans.). cambridge (mass.): harvard university press. deleuze, g. & guattari, f. (1994). what is philosophy? (h. tomlinson & g. burchell, trans.). new york: columbia university press. descartes, r. (2007a). the philosophical writings of descartes, volume 1 (j. cottingham et al., trans.). cambridge (england): cambridge university press. descartes, r. (2007b). the philosophical writings of descartes, volume 2 (j. cottingham et al., trans.). cambridge (england): cambridge university press. fuss, d. (1991). inside/out. in d. fuss (ed.), inside/out: lesbian theories, gay theories (pp. 01-10). london & new york: routledge. fuss, d. (2004). the sense of an interior: four rooms and the writers that shaped them. london & new york: routledge. irigaray, l. (2004). an ethics of sexual difference (c. burke & g. gill, trans.). london & new york: continuum. lefèbvre, h. (1991). the production of space (d. nicholson-smith, trans.). malden (england): blackwell publishing. negri, a. (2007). the political descartes: reason, ideology and the bourgeois project (m. mandarini & a. toscano, trans.). london & new york: verso. margaret barr's "strange children" [ballet], 1955 (photographer unknown, state library of nsw). 143 villa: from heritage to contemporary by patrick reynolds, jeremy salmond, and jeremy hansen review by bill mckay at first sight this book is rather like the contemporary villa: large and lovely to look at, but more expensive than you would think. and, as with any open home, a casual leafing through its pages had me pondering if it were really for me. but reading it has won me over in much the same way as the authors characterise the villa: for its “combination of charm and utility”. villa: from heritage to contemporary has three authors, each contributing a substantial section. patrick reynolds, instigator of the project, has contributed all of the photographs, but it is his short-but-spirited introduction that gets the book off to an excellent start. he manages in a couple of entertaining pages to encompass key aspects of the villa that the book explores, as well as charting the trajectory of his life from boyhood in a modernist “anti-villa” to acceptance of fate as an architectural photographer living in a villa alteration in auckland’s western bays. jeremy salmond is of course one of our preeminent heritage architects. like the others he starts his text the villa: 1860 1910 with a little autobiography, the kind of thing that can veer towards the nostalgic and sentimental in a context such as this. luckily, once he gets into what he knows, he produces a very smart and readable essay. this is probably the best summation of the development of the villa that i have come across: he traces it stylistically, as italianate architecture in the dress of gothic revival, but also socially, through its appeal to a better way of life and through the mechanics of early antipodean city development. he comes up with the most accurate definition i’ve heard so far of the difference between a large cottage and a small villa: any house that can’t be “dismissed as a mere cottage” becomes “entitled almost by default to be called a villa”, something that still holds true in the auckland property market today. salmond’s essay is quite well illustrated with a balance of period and contemporary images; after all, too many pictures of contemporary villas can leave one feeling rather enervated, an exercise akin to leafing through the homes for sale section of the saturday paper. it is always good to see period information as well, such as this sale notice from 1846: reynolds, p., salmond, j. and hansen, j. (2009). villa: from heritage to contemporary. auckland: random house. interstices 11 … superior clover paddock… garden and well stocked orchard in rear… dwelling house (newly built of best materials) …four spacious rooms, handsome verandah front. a detached kitchen, well fitted up, an outhouse; coach house and stabling for four horses; a well of water; an aviary, and sixteen double bee-hives: with every other requisite for a gentleman’s family. i knew epsom was desirable but never quite realised it was literally the land of milk and honey. but advertisements such as this do give a good sense of how some lived and to me there should be little difference between a social history and an architectural history; an appreciation of architecture is hollow without context. salmond also addresses the important evolution of the villa from the earlier victorian residence described above, sedate on its large section, to the later products of a kitset cornucopia that spewed out lines of houses cheek by jowl on auckland’s inner city streets. this description of our pretty streets may seem harsh, but bear in mind that the villa and its clutter of contents are the output, as both reynolds and salmond make clear, of victorian capitalism allied with industrialisation. this process involved the pitiless exploitation of local resources, land speculation and the beginning of the consumer society we know so well today. the kauri milling company alone, on the shores of freeman’s bay, churned out 139 million metres of timber from 1898 on, disemboweling the centuries-old kauri forests of northland and the waikato to produce cold and drafty houses closeting the victorian family. and these auckland streets were the equivalent of the stucco acres of housing we now see in botany downs, houses for new immigrants or those climbing the social ladder, anxious to impress the neighbours. salmond also briefly discusses the interior design of villas and the extent to which there are regional styles; interestingly, the faceted (as opposed to square) bay villa is “essentially an auckland style”. this is an improvement on previous books on the subject as well as a reflection on the subtleties of salmond’s knowledge (as one would expect since the first villa he lived in was in gore). he is at his most arch when he comes to discussion of the contemporary villa and the phases of “villafication” (“plague of aluminium windows sweeps the land”, ceilings are lowered with new “wonder materials of the age: pinex and gib”) and how gentrification leads through an increase in property values to the pressure to replace neighbourhood housing such as the villa. “the growth of towns is not unlike an onion,” he says, “it makes one weep at times.” although brief for a book of this size, this section of the book is very well-rounded in its appreciation of the villa not just as an architectural form, but through consideration of its social and economic context as well; after all villas were the “building blocks of late 19th century towns” and now occupy architecturally contestable chunks of the inner city landscape. salmond addresses the issue of whether or not the typical villa requires “open heart surgery” for modern needs or whether alterations can be conducted in a more conservative manner aligned with period style. he comes down on the side of “good design” (who doesn’t?) but it's an easy answer in relation to the villa. these houses have always been flexible and adaptable from the interior through to the backyard and with the street façade left intact to shore up the character of the neighbourhood; a compromise of sorts keeps most of the people happy most of the time. 145 this is explored in the next section, the villa today, primarily through patrick reynolds’ photographs and jeremy hansen’s short texts on the “diversity of modern day occupation”. this is where the book takes on more of the characteristics of coffee table tome rather than useful reference; something mainly for dipping into. hansen, editor of home nz magazine, makes an affable tour guide but his several short pieces on various villa do-ups can be relentlessly positive after a while. he does enthusiasm well but when he allows himself to muse, his prose matches more the tone of reynolds’ photography. these images are a long way from the cheerful portrayals found in the real estate world: they have an introspective quality that draws you in. it is ironic that the villa, with its original layers of strict social hierarchy, in which a visitor would never get beyond the hallway arch or drawing room, is now opened up for inspection. we are invited to poke our noses deep into the detail and detritus of how people live. certainly the most interesting are those in which the villa is background; it becomes merely a cave in which we peruse the collections of mainly creative types. the habitations of lloyd jenkins and wells, and knox and ward, certainly have nothing to do with the accepted niceties of interior design as retailed in the lifestyle magazines. reynolds’ images aren’t prurient, though, nor are they excessively styled, though they are posed. they are of people like us at home in their environment, and except for the more modern intimacy, are reminiscent of the period photographs also presented in the book. perhaps this is the success of the villa. beyond the fairly uniform façade these houses can be occupied in myriad ways and indulge one's idiosyncrasies. as these three authors maintain, although the fancy frontage is beguiling, that is not the primary appeal of the villa to them. it is the scale, simplicity and flexibility (and flimsy construction!) which allow us to make of them what we want. this has maintained their appeal and survival into the modern era, beyond the street appearance that preoccupies planners and real estate agents. this book does not aim to be the definitive word on the villa, a history or critical analysis. it sets out to be a “generous tribute” and it achieves just that: it is a smart, intelligent and enthusiastic guide and, like any tour, has a little something for everyone. would i recommend it to someone who has acquired a villa and is keen to restore it “properly”? it could do them good. this is not a book for the doctrinaire; it is quite the opposite. as reynolds puts it “a villa-like book, rambling, generous, textured, every room off the hall another possibility for surprise”. interstices 11 155 sep yama: “ground you cannot see” finding country (a primer) don’t come gallery, melbourne, 30 april 6 may 2009 & sling exhibition, brisbane, 25 june 2009 co-curators: kevin o’brien and michael markham contributors: gina levenspiel, peter steudle, eugene nemisi, claire humphreys review by carroll go-sam sep yama / finding country (a primer) – a foundation exercise in resurging insights into rights in country 1 pursued provocative expressions of indigenous place as resistance in order to catalyse an audience response. sep yama reinstates rival notions of occupation and geography as a means of reordering what has been colonised. the first instalment, labelled “a primer”, the culmination of many streams of activity over a period of time, comprised two separate exhibitions, one at don’t come gallery, melbourne, the second at sling bar, brisbane. the exhibits were a composite of disparate elements and endeavours, that were by no means seamless or easily comprehended, and demanded considerable decryption. a number of ancillary elements added to the conceptual and semantic explorations of finding country, including a catalogue, a film relay of skaters, image projections, and a series of colourful skateboards painted in traditional meriam mer abstract motifs. sep yama is both process and exhibit, encapsulating pan-indigenous and nonindigenous constructs of place. unlike the exclusivity of indigenous custodial tenure, its extended process and realisation is clearly inclusive of non-indigenous place-making. it is also a way of thinking that links human activity with the natural world in pursuit of pan-sacred notions of country.2 as an exhibit, sep yama did not seek to invoke traditional indigenous concepts of country but borrowed linguistic etymology and cultural constructs to alter perceptions of place. it was neither distinctly indigenous nor non-indigenous, but co-existing. the ground zero of sep yama consists of select sites within the city of brisbane, the contested country of the yagera, jagera, turrbal, ugarupul and kurnpal peoples. 1. o’brien conceives country as a “presettlement space” (http://www.findingcountry.com/tug_lightbox/index.html): “country is an aboriginal idea. it is an idea that binds groupings of aboriginal people to the place of their ancestors, past, present and future. it understands that every moment of the land, sea and sky, its particles, its prospects and its prompts, enables life. it is revealed over time by camping in it and guides my way into architecture” (kevin o’brien, https://www.lib.uts.edu.au/about-utslibrary/news-and-communication/markets-forum/2010/forum-35). 2. also expressed in other related works through amorphous poetic constructs concerning architecture and place, see architectural review (australia), 2009: 103, 92-98. interstices 11 157 co-curators o’brien and markham extended their curatorial role to that of contributors, propositioning their collaborators to devise an intervention within a designated zone, to contrive their own fragment of the city (for only half the current population), and to expropriate its redundant structure and artefacts. the exercise was alluring since it countered models of development and speculation premised on the inevitable growth of the future city. could this disrupted urban state give rise to new theoretical or imaginary propositions, along with new processes of reconstructing urban space?3 the 19 intervention schemes produced by the collaborators represent a hybrid of orthogonal, radial and organic systems of city planning models. in the exhibit, each intervention was restricted to its designated zone on a single a4 sheet, identified by map coordinates: hence, b19 is a combination of vertical [a-j] and horizontal [01-38] reference points. on completion, each intervention was slotted into its grid location to form the composite of the final large-scale exhibition panel – an alternative city redesigned by a diverse group. the organising model for each endeavour was constrained within the boundaries of its coordinates, with propositions ending abruptly at the limit. this assemblage emphasised contrasting strategies between adjoining sub-panels, and between new and existing morphologies. in the process, the known city was reconfigured beyond recognition. the consequence is an anti-city, fragmented, disintegrated and disrupted, where neighbouring themes suddenly change, yet some continuity occurs between major geographic and morphological features. if the viewer focused on the individual unit and its contextual neighbours, however, any expectations of unified constancy of city planning have already been radically undermined. dismantling and interrupting the prevailing order, the chaotic intention is further heightened by the clustering and scattering of individual themes across the city. memories of the displacement of the ‘organic nature’ of indigenous settlement planning arise, yet in reverse – the orthogonal grid structure is subverted by revisionist inconsistent utopias. sep yama not only infuses the city with tension (indeed, tension seems too polite a descriptive) – the reordered morphology brazenly usurps existing systems and provides new directions, which seem difficult to conceive at first glance. some propositions are decipherable, others are esoteric and impenetrable. the city and its architecture are severed: viewers are made to consider them as separate dimensions. architecture is only contemplated for its operational or classificatory use, not its value as an artefact. there are discrepancies between exhibition and catalogue: in the latter, a single graphic depicts the completed plan, supported by text explaining this exercise of interrogating the city. at the exhibition, the point was lost somewhat, due to a lack of translation. the viewer was left appreciating the aesthetic quality and collective power of the composition, solely, as objet d’art. in the exhibition catalogue, each of the interventions is given equal status, highlighting the egalitarian premise that sep yama is a medium inviting free exploration. contradicting this inclusivity, though, is the considerable editing of the image content; there is a disparity between the final composite details and those represented in the catalogue. it suggests that a particular graphic product was given preference over specific themes or propositions. the tension and unevenness of the composite panel at the 3. for instance, lower density lends itself to a reduction in built fabric, allowing the exposure of an imagined morphology and devising of an alternate typology. yet the density of the reconfigured patchwork city is surprising. also, it is difficult to determine whether emphasis was placed here on the process prescribed or the significance of the state arrived at. once arrived at the fragmentary final condition, does the conceptual achievement then have any attributes worthy of implementation? and, does sep yama advance a generative framework for place-making by melding panindigenous concepts of place with the dominating hierarchy of the city’s morphology? interstices 11 exhibition was perhaps a consequence of its procurement, where communication of intent and resolution had been achieved through surprisingly unrelated streams of undertakings that were by no means completely consolidated. sep yama proposed multi-hued readings of objects, event and actions. next to the panel, the project attempted to orchestrate meaning into painted skateboards, footage of skaters in abandoned swimming pools and image projections. these elements were then tied to compositions of digital statements about indigenous dispossession and oppression. but these were implicit not explicit. the painted skate decks were displayed like indigenous fighting shields, scarified after their use in empty pools: implements of a ritualised settling of dispute. their inclusion stresses that this dispute has not achieved reconciliation. it is ongoing and unresolved. the disenfranchisement of skaters from free access to pedestrian space (and their subsequent anonymous claim of useless spaces) subliminally corresponds to the historical exclusion of the indigenous from the city heart. to imbue power into the mundane, the observer had to leap to an alignment in thinking through an altered perception which registered the correlation between the skaters (who are regulated not as a consequence of race, but recreational choice) and brisbane’s apartheid, or indigenous oppression. this link, forged by the exhibition’s choice of media and communication, was a little too vague, which partially diminished the overall strengths of sep yama’s assertions. a different editing of the documentary film might have added to the impact of the message. the general tension exuding from the wall-mounted composite culminated in an assault on the monumental and historical artefacts of the city through three sites of projection. borrowing from the technique of the guerrilla street art movement, of throwing images onto buildings, the projections expanded on under-explored indigenous resistance themes. indigenous people, once the ‘dominant culture’ in australia, became subordinated and displaced through traumatic events, by destructive technologies of warfare and suppressive legislation. in this exhibition, visual media technologies acted to subvert commonly-held views of place. care159 fully-edited images, in particular one image repeatedly appliquéd on known sites of usage by traditional owners, sat uncomfortably against the projection screens of the ‘gabba’ (the brisbane cricket ground), the gallery of modern art and the infamous windmill tower – all brisbane landmarks. each of these three sites had diverse uses that resonate in contemporary indigenous knowledge: one sacred, another economic and the third destructive (e.g., an early site for hanging aboriginal frontier guerrilla fighters). the fleeting presence of each projection and the repetitive use of one image reinforced the contrast between the presumed ephemeral nature of aboriginal existence and the city’s monuments to permanence. finally, sep yama / finding country was defined by what it was not. it was not an enactment of longing for an idealised, imagined place of the past, since destroyed by dispossession and trauma. it did not seek to uncover or reveal a strength inherent in contemporary notions of place and country that sustain indigenous identity. in many ways, sep yama was even tangential and alien to known indigenous constructions of place. yet, through its imagery, projection and curatorial processes the exhibition exposed prior occupation through the overlay of several thematic explorations. rather than a sentimental return to the past, sep yama was a prompter, to push those living in the present to remember that the city of today must be vigorously interrogated, and that it is the culmination of earlier historical displacements. 11� for thousands of years, perhaps by imitating crustaceans or termites, human beings have been encasing themselves in all kinds of shells. we are ceaselessly secreting buildings, clothes, cars, images and messages that cling to the flesh of our existence like flesh clings to the bones of our skeletons. nevertheless, there is one major difference between men, crustaceans and termites, which is that the last two species haven’t for the moment been found to include any corporations of architects, artisans and media “pros”. be that as it may, for a very long time, the delineation of social assemblages has been largely due to ecolithic expressions such as the building of ziggurats, the demolition of the bastille, or the capture of the winter palace. only now, besides stone having been replaced by concrete, steel and glass, the cleavages of power occur above all in terms of the speed of communication and the control of information. under these conditions architects don’t even know which hero to turn to! what use would le corbusier be today in a place like mexico city, that grows uncontrollably towards 40 million inhabitants! even someone like haussmann would be useless here because the politicians, technocrats and engineers now manage this sort of thing with the least possible contribution from the men of that art that hegel once placed on the bottom rank among all other arts. admittedly architects do maintain a minimal window of control2 in the domain of extravagant buildings. but positions in this area come at a high price, and unless they consent to become postmodern dandies, which the politico-financial schemes always imply, the lucky few are subjected to a deceitful degradation of their creative talents. they channel their energies into pure theory, utopia, or a nostalgic return to the past.3 alternatively, although the times hardly seem to lend themselves to this, there is the possibility for critical contestation. the architectural object flies to pieces. it is useless to cling to what it has been or should be. situated at the intersection of political stakes of the utmost importance, of demographic and ethnic tensions, of economic, social and regional antagonisms that are by no means nearing resolution, spurred on by constant technological and industrial mutations, the architectural object is irreversibly condemned to being tugged and torn in all directions. nothing infers, however, that we should take an eclectic course of action in such a state of affairs, which on the contrary demands an exacerbation of the ethico-political choices that have always underlain the practice of this profession. from now on it will be impossible to take reffélix guattari architectural enunciation1 translation by tim adams 1. [the source for this translation is “l’énonciation architecturale” from félix guattari’s cartographies schizoanalytiques (1989: 291-301). wherever possible i have found existing english texts for guattari’s references and made his quotes correspond to these. unless indicated by square brackets, all other footnotes are guattari’s. many thanks to trudy agar for her considerable guidance with my translation and grammar. any errors that remain are entirely my own.—trans.] 2. [guattari’s term here is créneau, which has a double meaning of “crenel of power” and “battlement of a building”. my thanks to trudy agar for suggesting “window of control”.—trans.] 3. as an example of pure theory, leon krier considers that in the face of “the holocaust that raged through our cities ... a responsible architect doesn’t want to build anything today”, babylone no. 1 (paris: uge, 1983), 132. as examples of utopia, the work of daniel libeskind or the landscape compositions of vittorio gregotti, such as his project for collective housing in cefalu, have little chance of being realized. for a nostalgic return to the past, see the interesting propositions on regional architecture in gaudin (1984). interstices 6 uge behind art for art’s sake or pure science with a clear conscience.4 to reinvent architecture can no longer be taken to mean the revival of a style, a school, or a theory with hegemonic tendencies, but rather to recompose the architectural enunciation, and in a sense, the métier of the architect under today’s conditions. when architects stop trying simply to be plasticians of built form and begin to offer their services as revealers of the virtual desires of space, place, journeys and territory, then they will have to analyse the relations between individual and collective corporeities by constantly singularising their approach. and furthermore they will have to become intercessors between those desires revealed to themselves and those interests they oppose; in other words, they will have to be artists and craftsmen of perceptual and relational lived-experience [vécu]. obviously, i have no particular desire for them to lie down on the psychoanalyst’s couch so they can come to terms with such a decentring of their role. on the contrary, i believe they are in the position of having to analyse for themselves certain specific functions of subjectivation.5 for this reason they will be able to constitute, along with many other social and cultural operators, an essential relay within the multi-headed assemblages of enunciation that can deal with the contemporary productions of subjectivity, both pragmatically and analytically. consequently, this is far from placing the architect in the role of simply being a critical observer. the emphasis having thus shifted from object to project, an architectural work, whatever the characteristics of its semiotic expression and its semantic content may be, will now require a specific elaboration of its enunciative “material”: how should one practice architecture today? what part of themselves do architects need to mobilize? what kind of commitment should they be making and which operators should they use? what relative importance should they give to the developers, the engineers, the town planners, and the users, both actual and potential? up to what point will they be justified in making compromises with the various parties involved? it’s a matter of a highly elaborate transferential economy, and one that i will now examine from the point of view of the two forms of consistency of the enunciation of an architectural concept: —the first one polyphonic, of the perceptual order, inherent to the deployment of the components concurrent with its discursive coming into existence; and —the second one ethico-aesthetic, of the affective order, inherent to its non-discursive “coming into being”. the polyphonic components under the category of scale, philippe boudon has listed twenty ways of conceptualising the architectural object, all essentially based on the category of space. he then proposes to regroup these into four categories: —scales that refer real space to itself (geographical, optical visibility, proximity and apportionmental scales); —scales that refer architectural space to an exterior referent (formal, symbolic, technical, functional, extensional, dimension4. i refer here to the exciting analysis of christian girard in architecture et concepts nomades: traité d’indiscipline (1986). 5. on the sometimes decisive position of the programmer and the architect in the modelisation of psychiatric institutions, see the special edition of recherches (june, 1967). 121 ally symbolic, socio-cultural, modelling and economic scales); —scales that refer architectural space to its representation (geometric, cartographical, and representational scales); and —lastly, scales of architectural thought processes that involve a constant to-ing and fro-ing between different spaces (to “put into scale”, “give scale” etc.).6 one could no doubt list other components of this type, but from the point of view of enunciation rather than a simple taxonomic enumeration of modes of spatialisation, it is evident that their number is potentially infinite. in fact, all of the virtual enunciations can drift into the vicinity of the architectural object. as henri von lier writes, “a significant work of architecture always has the ability to be other than what it is. a dwelling is not dwelling per se, but refers to dwelling: it is one of its possibilities appearing as such.”7 nevertheless, i have selected eight kinds of assemblages from this continuous spectrum of virtual enunciations to reflect those “voices” that seem to me to be active in contemporary architecture. 1. a geopolitical enunciation taking into account not only the orientation of cardinal points but also the contours of the land and the climatic and demographic givens, which evolve over long periods like fernand braudel’s secular trends causing the centre of gravity within “an archipelago of towns” to drift according to the fluctuations of the world-economy.8 2. an urbanistic enunciation relative to the laws, regulations, habits and customs, concerning the size of parcels of land, the arrangement and volumes of buildings, as well as the mechanisms for contamination between various models and images (referring to what philippe boudon calls the scale of proximity). the interlocutors here can take the hard form of local authorities and state bodies or the “fuzzy” form of a collective state of mind, opinions more or less controlled by the media. 3. an economic enunciation, the capitalistic expression of relations of force between the different systems of individual and collective valorisation: the use of a relative evaluation of costs and demand in terms of projected profits, prestige, political impact and social usefulness to fix the exchange value of real-estate property and to “drive” the choices and scales of investment in the domain of construction. 4. a functional enunciation or function of equipment that considers built spaces according to their specific uses. collective equipment as well as equipment for private use becomes integrated into a double network of: a) “horizontal” complementary relations positioning each constructed segment in the set of urban structures now interconnected within world capitalism,9 and b) “vertical” relations of integration ranging from the micro-equipment (lighting, ventilation, communication, etc.) up to the infrastructural macro-equipment. 6. see boudon (1971; 1972; and 1975). 7. see van lier (1985: 554). 8. see braudel (1992: 76-82). the world economy is the largest zone of consistency in any given period and in any global field, a sum of individualised economic and non-economic spaces that usually transgresses the limits of other large groupings of history. françois fourquet, under the term écomonde, has undertaken a systematic theorisation of the conceptions of fernand braudel and immanuel wallerstein in la richesse et la puissance. publication provisoire: commissariat général du plan, convention d’étude (1987). 9. cf. my study in collaboration with eric alliez (1984: 273287). interstices 6 as paul virilio writes: today ... the essence of what we insist on calling urbanism is composed/decomposed by these transfer, transit and transmission systems, these transport and transmigration networks whose immaterial configuration reiterates the cadastral organisation and the building of monuments. if there are any monuments today, they are certainly not of the visible order, despite the twists and turns of architectural excess. no longer part of the order of perceptible appearances nor of the aesthetic of the apparition of volumes assembled under the sun, this monumental disproportion now resides within the obscure luminescence of terminals, consoles and other electronic night-stands.10 consequently, the collective enunciators here will be: —the social stratifications according to resources, age group, regional characteristics, ethnic divisions, etc. —the social bodies sectored according to their specialised activities of an economic, cultural nature or by a state of assistance (internment, incarceration, etc.). —the programmers, experts, and technicians of all sorts, having the position of stating the constraints and norms of architectural writing. 5. a technical enunciation implying that the equipment and, more generally, the construction materials “speak” in terms of fixed standards, stating, for example, “the slope of a roof according to the relative permeability of the material employed, the thickness of a wall according to its load, the dimensions of a material according to its ease of handling, transportability or implementation.”11 the relay of interlocutors here no longer only includes building engineers but also chemists, who every month invent new materials, electrical and communication engineers, and eventually all the technical and scientific disciplines. 6. a signifying enunciation whose aim, independent of functional semantemes, is to allocate a significant content to a built form, which is shared by a more or less extensive human community, but which is always delineated by all the other communities not sharing the same type of content. we rediscover several of philippe boudon’s scales here. at one scale a building comes to embody a symbolic form independent of its size (for example, the cross plan of christian churches). at another scale, the plan of an ideologically explicit model is transferred to a construction (the ideal city of vitruvius; the rural, industrial and commercial cities of le corbusier). at yet another scale, a more or less unconscious socio-cultural scheme intervenes (such as the central courtyard that arab builders probably inherited from roman antiquity). or at another even more vague scale, a global style is conferred onto an urban settlement (such as the self-enclosed character of a small tuscan town, being the opposite extreme of north american ag10. see virilio (1991: 21-22). 11. see boudon (1972: 17). 12� glomerations that open onto a transfinite spatium and cling, as best they can, to the flow of motorway traffic). 7. an enunciation of existential territorialisation that is as much of an ethological order as of a perspective one, in which i will locate the three types of spaces distinguished by vittorio ugo.12 —euclidean spaces under the ægis of apollo, univocally positioning an object identity within the framework of an axiomatico-deductive logic in which is inscribed a “primary and elementary architecture in all the clarity of its crystalline perfection, always identical to itself and devoid of any ambiguity or internal contradiction”. — projective spaces under the ægis of morpheus, positioning forms of a modulated identity within metamorphic perspectives, affirming the primacy of “the imaginary above the real, vision above speech, extension above usefulness, the plan above perception”. — labyrinthine topological spaces under the ægis of dionysus, functioning as existential space13 according to a geometry of the envelopment of the tactile body that already refers us to the register of affects. architectural space is one concrete operator among others in the metabolism between objects on the outside and intensities on the inside. but even if the interplay of correspondences between the human body and its habitat has been explored continuously, from vitruvius to leonardo da vinci and le corbusier, perhaps it is henceforth less a question of considering these correspondences from a formal point of view than from one that could be described as organic. as massimo cacciari writes, “any authentic organism is labyrinthine”.14 and let’s not forget that the labyrinthine (or rhizomatic) characteristics of existential territorialisation can have multiple fractal dimensions. 8. a scriptural enunciation that articulates all the other enunciative components. because of the diagrammatic distance that it introduces between expression and content, and through the coefficients of creativity that it generates, architectural projection promotes new potentialities, new constellations of universes of reference, starting with those which preside over the deployment of ethico-aesthetic aspects of the built object. the ethico-aesthetic ordinates architectural enunciation is not limited to these diachronic discursive components: it is just as much a matter of the capture of consistency within synchronic existential dimensions, or ordinates on a level. following bakhtin15 i will distinguish three types: —cognitive ordinates, namely the energetico-spatio-temporal coordinates that pertain to the logic of everything discursive. it is in this register that the scriptural enunciation of architecture concatenates the first five types of assemblages of enunciation listed above. —axiological ordinates, including all the systems of anthropo12. see ugo (1987a and 1987b). 13. in the sense that martin heidegger gives this term in “building dwelling thinking” (1975: 143-161). 14. see cacciari (1980). 15. i refer here to the three categories of enunciation (cognitive, ethical, aesthetic) proposed by mikhail bakhtin (1990: 257-325). interstices 6 centric valorisation of aesthetic, economic and political orders. —aesthetic ordinates determining the thresholds of completion of entities, objects or structural groups, inasmuch as they are able to transmit meaning and form on their own account. it is up to these ethico-aesthetic ordinates to intertwine the components of signifying enunciations and existential deterritorialization with the other components. thus the built object, lived reality [le vécu] and the incorporeal find themselves rearticulating each other, despite the fact that capitalist corporations are ceaselessly trying to eliminate any trace of subjective singularisation from their architecture and urbanism in an effort to achieve a rigorously functional, informational and communicational transparency. it should be clear that the singularisation at issue here is not a simple matter of a “supplement of the spirit”,16 a “personalisation” filed away under “after-sales services”. it concerns procedures that operate at the heart of the architectural object and grant it its most intrinsic consistency. under its exterior discursive aspect this object establishes itself at the intersection of a thousand tensions that pull it in every direction, but under its ethicoaesthetic enunciative aspects it reassembles itself in a non-discursive mode, whose phenomenological approach is given to us through the particular experience of spatialised affects. below the threshold of cognitive consistency the architectural object collapses into the imaginary, the dream or delirium, while below a threshold of axiological consistency the dimensions of alterity and desire are exhausted—like those cinematic images that fail to interest the aborigines of australia—and below the threshold of aesthetic consistency it ceases to capture the form’s existence and the intensities destined to inhabit it. what therefore defines the art of the architect, in the final analysis, is the capacity to apprehend these affects of spatialised enunciation. but it must be admitted that it concerns paradoxical objects that cannot be delineated by the coordinates of ordinary rationality; they can only be approached indirectly by meta-modelisation, by an aesthetic detour, and by mythical or ideological narratives. like the part-objects of melanie klein,17 or the transitional objects of winnicott,18 this kind of affect establishes itself transversally on the most heterogeneous levels; therefore we must not homogenise them but, on the contrary, engage them further in the fractal process of heterogenesis. architectural form is not destined to function as a gestalt closed in on itself, but as a catalytic operator setting off chain reactions among the modes of semiotisation, which draw us out of ourselves and expose us to new fields of possibility. the feeling of intimacy and existential singularity contiguous with the aura given off by a familiar situation, an old dwelling or a landscape inhabited by our memories, establishes itself in the rupture of the redundancies emptied of their substance, and can be the generator of a proliferation and lines of flight in all the registers of the desire to live, of the refusal to give in to the dominant inertia. it is the same movement of existential territorialisation and capture of synchronic consistency, for example, that will make things “work” together, things as different as a treasure chest and a shoe box under the bed of a child hospitalised in a psychiatric home, the refrain-password that he perhaps shares with some comrades, the space within the particular constellation that he occupies in the refectory, a totem tree in the playground or a part of the sky 16. [see guattari (1996: 110), where guattari compares painting, which for the ruling classes has never been more than a “supplement of the spirit”, a currency of prestige, to architecture that has always had a major role in forming territories of power, fixing its emblems and proclaiming its durability.— trans.] 17. see klein (1950). 18. see winnicott (1958). 19. [the key text for sartre’s concept of commitment is his short book, what is literature?, where he writes, “the ‘committed’ writer knows that words are action. he knows that to reveal is to change and that one can reveal only by planning to change. he has given up the impossible dream of giving an impartial picture of society and the human condition.” (13) —trans.] 12� known only to him. the architect’s aim, if not to compose a harmonic out of all these fragmentary components of subjectivation, must be at the very least, to allow for all these virtualities and not to mutilate them! the architect, in order to undertake the recomposition of existential territories in the context of our societies devastated by capitalistic flows, must be able to detect and processually exploit all the points of catalytic singularity likely to establish themselves, not only in the perceptible dimensions of the architectural apparatus, but also in its formal composition and in the most complex institutional problematics as well. all the cartographic methods that can help achieve this will be valid since their commitment19—let’s not shrink from this old sartrean concept that has been taboo for too long—will find its own regime of ethico-aesthetic automisation. the only criterion of truth confronting the architect will then be the effect of an existential completeness and an overabundance of being, which will never be absent so long as he has the good fortune to be caught up in a process of becoming-an-event, that is to say, the historical enrichment and re-singularisation of desire and values. references bakhtin, m. (1990). the problem of content, material, and form in verbal art. in m. holquist & v. liapunov (eds.), art and answerability: early philosophical essays by m. m. bakhtin. austin: university of texas press. boudon, p. (1971). sur l’espace architectural: essai d’épistémologie de l’architecture. paris: dunod. boudon, p. (1972). la ville de richelieu. paris: area. boudon, p. (1975). architecture et architecturologie. paris: area. braudel, f. (1992). civilization and capitalism, 15th-18th century, vol. iii: the pperspective of the world (s. reynolds, trans.). berkeley: university of california press. cacciari, m. (1980). eupalinos or architecture. oppositions 21 (summer 1980). fourquet, f. (1987). la richesse et la puissance. publication provisoire: commissariat général du plan, convention d’étude 984. paris. gaudin, h. (1984). la cabane et le labyrinth. brussels: pierre mardaga. girard, c. (1986). architecture et concepts nomades: traité d’indiscipline. brussels: pierre mardaga. guattari, f. (1989). l’énonciation architecturale (291301). in cartographies schizoanalytiques. paris: galilée. guattari, f. (1996). the postmodern impasse. in g. genosko (ed.), the guattari reader. cambridge, ma; oxford, uk: blackwell publishers ltd. guattari, f. with alliez, e. (1984). capitalistic systems, structures and processes. in molecular revolution: psychiatry and politics (r. sheed, trans.). london: penguin books. heidegger, m. (1975). building dwelling thinking. in poetry, language, thought (a. hofstadter, trans.). new york: harper and row. klein, m. (1950). contributions: contributions to psycho-analysis. london: hogarth press. programmation, architecture et psychiatrie. recherches (june, 1967). sartre, j.-p. (1970). what is literature? (b. frechtman, trans.). london: methuen & co. ugo, v. (1987a). l’objet architecture. paris: minuit. ugo, v. (1987b). une hutte, une clairiere. critique 476/477. van lier, h. (1985). encyclopaedia universalis. vol. ii, section 1. paris. virilio, p. (1991). the lost dimension (d. moshenberg, trans.). new york: semiotext(e). winnicott, d.w. (1958). collected papers: through paediatrics to psychoanalysis. london: tavistock. interstices 08 5 introduction: consensus versus disagreement a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul post-millennium consensus politics are, to french philosopher jacques rancière, everything but a model of “social peace”. on the contrary, they suppress the struggle constitutive of the political (la politique), destroying the space of the political (le politique), and producing various forms of identitarianism, and gloom, as their flip side. consensus politics re-established racism and xenophobia (rancière, 2000: 119). consensus reduces people to populations, and rights to facts, and incessantly works to fill in the gaps between things (2006: 6), denying what makes them different. this filling-in and ironing-out is also the concern of the police, which is, for rancière, not identical with the uniformed arm of the state executive but a partition of the sensible characterized by the absence of a void or a supplement: society consists of groups dedicated to specific modes of action, in places where these occupations are exercised, in modes of being corresponding to these occupations and these places. in this fittingness of functions, places, and ways of being, there is no place for a void (2001: thesis 7). in the space of the political, the police and the political confront each other as regimes of visibility, which strive to police the current distribution of the sensible or, respectively, to disrupt and re-partition it.1 their confrontation and conflict is a disagreement (mésentente) about what it means to speak, and over the distribution of the sensible that delimits what can be said, and determines the relationship between seeing, hearing, doing, feeling, making and thinking: “political litigiousness/struggle is that which brings politics into being by separating it from the police that is, in turn, always attempting its disappearance ... politics is first and foremost an intervention upon the visible and the sayable” (rancière, 2001: thesis 7). politics is about altering the visibilities of places and “abilities of the body in those places, … the partition of private and public spaces, … the very configuration of the visible and the relation of the visible to what can be said about it” (2003: s5). art and architecture can have a part in politics (certainly, they are not apolitical), but correspondences between aesthetic and political virtue are difficult to ascertain. there are no criteria “for establishing an appropriate correlation between the politics of aesthetics and the aesthetics of politics” (2004a: 61). aesthetics has its own politics of changing perceptions and asserting invisible rights: for instance, the right not only to labour and suffer, but also to observe or take part in a spectacle. and, “to read what was never written” (hofmannsthal in benjamin, 2002: 416). as this issue of interstices: a journal of architecture and related arts goes to print, stages being set up – and up-set – in aotearoa/new zealand highlight this predicament. on 15 october 2007, abc news reported on “the first [anti-terrorism raids] under new zealand’s tough new anti-terrorism laws” (2007, 15 oct). the thanks to julia gatley, ross jenner, and moana nepia for peer-review. 1. rancière calls the “distribution of the sensible the system of self-evident facts of sense perception, that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common, and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it. a distribution of the sensible, therefore, establishes at one and the same time something common that is shared, and exclusive parts … based on a distribution of spaces, times and forms of activity that determine the very manner in which something in common lends itself to participation, and in the way in which various individuals have a part in this distribution” (rancière, 2004a:12). interstices 08 5 same day, new zealand’s tv3 news broadcast the “terror” plot about the arrest of 17 activists. the report openend with 2005 footage of māori activist tama iti challenging members of the waitangi tribunal before the beginning of the hearings at tauarau marae (ruatoki, tuhoe; tv3, 2007).2 iri akarana-rewi said of this event, that it took māori culture, which had become “catalogued and contained on performance stages”, into the valleys, roads and streets as “a functioning part of everyday life” (indigimedia, 2005). according to iti, the performance, of which the challenge was a part, sought to make the tribunal “feel the heat and smoke, and tuhoe outrage and disgust at the way we have been treated for 200 years” (indigimedia, 2005).3 “remembered most for his outrageous protests” (tv3, 2007), iti honed his theatrical sensibilities in the tempest, a collaboration with the mau dance troupe, in early 2007 – at a time when professor paul moon found interest in the treaty of waitangi at a dangerous low. now on remand in mt eden prison, iti explores further the “delicate interstices of constitutional law” (jackson, 1999). writing, itself, is partitioned by a blurring and contested interstice. through disagreement, politics and writing can open up new ways of perceiving. the printed word has a mobility that frees the “orphan letter” to wander aimlessly around, to talk to anyone, to undermine the sensible co-ordinates of a current aesthetic regime (rancière, 2004b: 14). as an artistic practice, writing intervenes in the “general distribution of ways of doing and making, as well as in the relationships they maintain to modes of being and forms of visibility” (2004a: 13). printed text stages a theatrical “partition of identities, activities and spaces”, exhibiting fantasies capable of disturbing the status quo to “a community of readers … formed only by the random circulation of the written word” (14). however, as in politics, where those who previously had no-part will inevitably take part in rancière’s police (once they succeed in making themselves heard and becoming a part of society), writing can institutionalise, legitimise and control perception. however tentative, written words make permanent a new distribution of the sensible. this tension is a galvanizing and productive one. interstices, as an academic journal (and particularly in its refereed section), is implicated in this force field. we invite readers to disagree, and thereby be part of this tension (and perhaps contribute to the next issue). michael ostwald’s “dissent and dissensus: politics and labour in the architecture of brodsky and utkin”, which opens this issue, is about the impact that blurring and changing lines between police and politics have made on the reception and critique of two representatives of the russian paper architecture movement: alexander brodsky and illya utkin. their work became internationally known in the wake of glasnost, and was immediately perceived as a form of rebellion against the authoritarian soviet state. ostwald questions the ways in which it was constituted as an aesthetic affront to the communist state, and investigates the nature of brodsky and utkin’s defiance. in the force field between architectural aesthetics and politics, was their position one of juridical opposition (dissent), or a political dispute (dissensus)? only the latter would make their practice one of rancièrian disagreement proper. when can disagreement even take place? in “travel in tropical islands – enemies co-existing in peace”, tina engels-schwarzpaul explores the potential for creative conflict at the tropical islands resort at brand, germany. set in the ruined surrounds of a former soviet military base in the brandenburg province, it now stages a ‘one-world-village’, with a samoan fale 2. for information about the waitangi tribnal and the ure wera hearing, see http://www. wait angi-tribunal.gov t .nz / inquiries/teurerewa_inq/ 3. iti was subsequently convicted on two charges, which were later overturned by the court of appeal (tv3, 2007). interstices 08interstices 08 7 in the centre of a tropical village that conjures up dreams of pacific life styles. do visitors and operators recognize historical and current conflicts in the politics of display between locals and foreigners, former colonial power and colony? carl douglas’ “barricades and boulevards: material transformations of paris, 1795-1871” is about a clearly conflictual and tumultuous series of configurations. spatial operations of barricading effected a redistribution of the sensible as they transformed paris in different ways. the city’s materials, spaces and activities are not a neutral surface. rather, they make the city what it is, prescribe who inhabits which parts, and how. barricades and boulevards are provisional metaphors for politics and police, for those who have no-part and those who want to control what they have. in haussmann’s paris, middle-class individuals and the mob were allocated different spaces. in australian refugee camps, says hélène frichot in “striving for a coming community and the question of a life”, architectural practices disregard inmates’ personal characteristics to create artificial, categorical groupings. architecture can augment, as well as diminish, life in geopolitical conflicts, and frichot argues for an ethico-aesthetic striving toward a coming community, a future people and a life, to suggest modes of acting collectively, beyond the isolated point of view of individuals who believe that what they do can make no difference. frichot draws on concepts by giorgio agamben, gilles deleuze, félix guattari, jean-luc nancy and maurice blanchot to outline alternatives to a spatial organization where refugees, strangers and others are segregated in the midst of a global body politic that is increasingly fragmented. leonhard emmerling engages with a politics of recognition that is not identity politics, is even explicitly opposed to it. in “plzklme”, he stages disagreements between him and himself. starting with a quote by bell hooks, he reflects on the relationship between the global art business and identity-art. to emmerling, the art business perpetuates the assimilation, instrumentalisation, incapacitation and paternalism that western colonisation has inflicted on the rest of the world. in identity-art, it does so by providing a stage for the restitution of identity, as compensation for that which is, in reality, denied: redress of injustices, equal rights and the realisation of an undamaged life. a reticence that emmerling finds lacking in identity-art, with its eagerness to expose and demonstrate, made linda walker and stephen loo consider the role of writing in, “and the open bridge: labour, enchantment, there forever“, their reflections on a 2007 ephemeral public art project in adelaide. explorations of rancière’s writings are interwoven with poetical vignettes describing the events, spaces and objects of this project. no community is taken for granted, the role of the political only tentatively circumscribed, as writing itself is tested to see how much it “conceals itself in the flesh”, and how much it “openly reveals itself as the disembodied condition of any glorious flesh” (rancière, 2004a: 60). in any event, writing applies a different language to the languages of the unwritten, and may even stand in the way of reading what was never written. in the non-refereed section of interstices 08, contributors take issue with architects and academics, juries and judging and books and buildings. the first two papers are from, and about, east asia. hong-chi shiau’s, “the glamorous, but doomed, bamboo forest” narrates tsai-ho cheng’s competition winning memorial project to the victims of the 1999 earthquake in taiwan. shiau reveals misalignment between intellectual and local desires and interpretations, and shows how a lack of consultation with locals led to the project’s failure. tom daniell, in “the letter of the law”, explains how tokyo’s volumetric building regulations shape an unusual skyline of steeply angled roofs. daniell shows how, in the pursuit of interesting urban form, it is possible to manipulate the regulations to good effect. interstices 08 interstices 08 7 bill mckay, in “a short venting of the spleen on the subject of the architect and science”, reflects upon what scientists have learnt about spherical planets and gravitational forces over the last 500 years, and wonders why these discoveries have not filtered through into architectural thinking, drawing and practice. in “the myth of the nation”, andrew leach targets new zealand’s architectural profession, and suggests that local architects embrace an overly simplistic understanding of this country’s architectural history. celebrating “exquisite apartness” and myths about new zealand-ness, they ignore recent scholarship and alternative possibilities. similarly, paul walker finds a lack of awareness in architecture inspired by new zealand (2006), a book on houses in new zealand landscapes, pointing to naivety in its conceptualization, and reliance upon clichés in its realization. in contrast, peggy deamer’s re-creation and analysis of “dick toy’s last lecture”, presented during the 2007 auckland architecture week, demonstrates the desired levels of both complexity and nuance. following, julia gatley, in “new measures for other moderns”, navigates a path between historiography and pedagogy, reflecting upon the past, present, future and historiographical implications of the measured drawing course at the university of auckland. kerstin thompson architects and architecture workshop’s competition entry for the waitangi precinct on wellington’s waterfront (2005) is a scheme that warrants a more substantial place in the published record than it has been given to date, the local contributors having earned their place in the international field of entrants. finally, tim adams’ translation of daniel payot’s “le jugement de l’architecture” (“the judgement of architecture”), is concerned with criticism in the broadest sense, and architectural criticism in particular. one of payot’s key points is that all criticism is ultimately positive. references abc news. (2007, 15 oct). anti-terror raids in nz. retrieved october 28, 2007, from http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc_vaf5fb20 benjamin, w. (2002). the arcades project (h. eiland & k. mclaughlin, trans.). cambridge (mass.): harvard university press. indigimedia. (2005, 19 jan). the ruatoki valley blazes as tuhoe stands tall. retrieved october 28, 2007, from http://indymedia.org.nz/feature/display/28216/index.php jackson, m. (1999, 30 september 1999). looking in. paper presented at the public service senior management conference “weaving the future”, te papa, wellington. rancière, j. (2000). dissenting words. a conversation with jacques rancière. diacritics, 30(2), 113-126. rancière, j. (2001). ten theses on politics. theory & event, 5(3). rancière, j. (2003). comment and responses. theory & event, 6(4). rancière, j. (2004a). the politics of aesthetics: the distribution of the sensible (g. rockhill, trans.). london: continuum. rancière, j. (2004b). the politics of literature. substance, 33(1), 10-24. rancière, j. (2006). the ethical turn of aesthetics and politics. critical horizons, 7(1), 1-20. tv3, n. z. (2007). the “terror” plot. retrieved october 28, 2007, from http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=zj2ixdfcnnm interstices16_symposiumschedule_24march2015 symposium schedule saturday, 11 april 2015 time presenter chair registration 9.30-10.00am session 1, introduction & keynote 9.30-10.00am introduction h hopewell/andrew douglas 10.00-11.00am keynote – mark dorrian ross jenner morning break session 2, practice as charting 11.30-12.00pm 1 – mark jackson, city corp andrew douglas 12.00-12.30pm 2 – katrina simon, cultivating an urban orography 12.30-1.00pm 3 – simon twose, plasticity of engagement lunch break session 3, translating/transposing 2.00-2.30pm 4 – simone chung shu yeng, urban translations hannah hopewell 2.30-3.00pm 5 – robyn creagh, memory & urban place 3.00-3.30pm 6 – kathy waghorn & christina houghton, speaking urban things afternoon break session 4, edge places 4.00-4.30pm 7 zamani /dermott – the analysis of an urban movement sue hedges 4.30-5.00pm 8 sophie hamer possible realities: bali as messy urban edge conference dinner sunday, 12 april 2015 time presenter chair session 5, tamaki makura 9.30-10.00am 9 – andrew douglas, plan/ditch sarah treadwell 10.00-10.30am 10 – ross jenner & manfredo manfredini, the virtualised public thing 10.30-11.00am 11 – charles walker, the auckland thing morning break session 6, blockages & breaks 11.30-12.00pm 12 jacky bowring, strange generation: doing the phenmenological within a disprupted urban thing mark jackson? 12.00-12.30pm 13 – dorita hannah, the barricade 12.30-1.00pm 14 – hannah hopewell, real urban things round up & lunch 2.00-5.30pm pacific spaces forum interstices02.indb 45 constructing the architect of the italian renaissance desley luscombe many renaissance treatises on architecture included an allegorical frontispiece that portrayed both the discipline and the purveyor of architecture as having attributes that were social, ethical and moral in purpose. while alberti in his de re aedifi catoria reinforced the importance of virtus for citizenry, these illustrations join the concept of virtus with that of disegno in the architect’s attributes.1 allegorical frontispieces took an understanding of the architect beyond the role of designer of buildings. as a model citizen with responsibility for the visual representations of a governed society, he was represented as capable of forming architectural space and imagery, designed and organised by a programme of invenzione that inscribed political intent able to be read in the context of the court.2 biographical texts, written in the same period, emulated the representation of the architect in the allegorical illustrations and presented, through the adoption of key terms, an explanation of individual genius. this paper examines the participation of architectural treatises in establishing the ethical and moral values that were instrumental in fi guring the architect as a professional ideal, an ideal, which in turn informed understandings of genius, or in the latin, ingenium, in individuals. the re-emergence, during the italian renaissance, of the term ‘architect’ from antiquity (latin architector or italian architetto) infl uenced interpretations of the architect’s function.3 these interpretations were also infl uenced by the increasingly popular illustrated printed books that, in their frontispieces, gave a visible explanation of the architect’s role in social governance. such visualisations depended on the development of meaning through the narrative structure of allegory. allegorical meanings developed both independently, in each component of the illustration, and in the combination of signifi ers and compositional clues, to contribute to its narrative of meaning (cf. martin, 1994: 320-365). to examine characteristics of sixteenth century concepts of the architect, this paper focuses on two frontispieces. the fi rst is from cosimo bartoli’s translation of leon battista alberti’s de re aedifi catoria (1550 and 1989),4 and the second is from daniele barbaro’s commentary and translation of vitruvius’ de architectura (1556, 1567 and 1997).5 what brings these two texts together is that both translators, rather than being architects, were part of the structures of political governance in their cities. of particular interest in this context are the social virtues attributed to disegno in the fi gure of the architect which, signifi cantly, cross from notions of ideal type to refl ections of individual worth. hence, they announce an interconnection between architecture and the social that is located in the origin of modern formations of the architectural. to examine characteristics of individual worth or ingenium, two of the lives from giorgio vasari’s le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori (fi rst printed i would like to thank dr. flavia marcello, the american university in rome and dr. martha fattori, professore di storia della fi losofi a moderna all’università di roma “la sapienza”, facoltà di filosofi a, for their help in translation of the italian texts. page numbers for vasari, giorgio. 1568. le vite de piu eccellenti pittori scultori et architetti, italiani. firenze: giunti. retrieved 11, january, 2006 from http: //biblio.cribecu.sns /lt /vasari / consultazione /vasari /ricerca.html 1 see glossary (alberti 1988). 2 invenzione were narratives explaining how specifi c allegorical fi gures and symbols developed political meaning and could be judged as relevant to their locale and purpose. 3 for a history of the re-emergence of the term “architect”, see pevsner (1942: 549-562), hollingsworth (1984), vagnetti (1980). 4 this edition held the title l’architettura di leonbattista alberti, tradotta in lingua fi orentina da cosimo bartoli, gentilhuomo, & academico fiorentino. 5 this edition was titled i deci libri dell’architettura di m. vitruvio tradutti et commentati da monsignor barbaro eletto patriarca d’aquileggia, printed in the volgare during 1556. interstices 07 in 1550 by the florentine printer lorenzo torrentino, and then in 1568 by the giunti printing house) will serve as points of reference. a study of the social virtues, developed in association with frontispieces, will show how these same virtues were considered in the individual. such correlations would indicate that individual architects were represented as exemplars of citizenry – examples of the idealised or model citizen – within a notion of the social that was ordered and structured for political purposes.6 the attributes of disegno as having the virtues of minerva and flora for cosimo bartoli and giorgio vasari’s “architect”. the frontispiece of bartoli’s translation l’architettura was designed by vasari to an invenzione by bartoli.7 bartoli and vasari were members of the socio-politically distinctive florentine court of cosimo i de’medici (1519-1574). bartoli’s invenzione, reinforced through vasari’s design for the frontispiece, brings together the components of an idealised understanding of the architect contextualised by the florentine court life of cosimo i de’medici (bartoli, 1567: fol. 22-26r).8 in order to delimit the argument, the focus will be on the fi gures of minerva and flora, the prominent allegorical fi gures of the frontispiece.9 the reasons why specifi c virtues were assigned to the architect, and why his capacity of disegno was emphasized, can be gleaned from the illustrations’ narratives and their combination of particular elements. 6 by social i do not mean society as an aggregate of people. rather the concept includes all forms of social interchange and the boundaries that distinguish the organization of these interchanges. 7 vasari’s original drawing is found at the uffi zi, gabinetto disegni e stampe (v, 47a). 8 charles davis has recognised that bartoli wrote an explanation of the invenzione of the frontispiece in ragionamenti accademici davis (1980: 127-99). although, the dating of the ragionamenti is 1567, bryce suggests that it was during the early 1550s that bartoli recast the dante lectures he had given during the 1540s and which were later printed as the ragionamenti bryce (1983: 71). 9 for a full analysis of the frontispiece see luscombe (2004). 10 gli antichi fi nsono che nascesse puramente dal cervello di giove, senza essersi egli congiunto, ò con iunone ò con altro: & la intesono per la virtu intellettiva volendo mostrare, che dal profondo segreto della sapienzia di dio, nascesse ogni sapienza, & ogni intelletto puro, & separato da ogni terrena feccia, ò spurcizia, dentro a gli animi de gli huomini. vasari’s original sketch 47 in bartoli’s invenzione, minerva, the personifi cation on the left of the aedicule, is described as the wisdom of pure intellect. bartoli explains: the ancients supposed that she was born purely from the brain of jove, without having copulated, either with juno or with another; and they intended her for intellectual virtue wanting to demonstrate that from the deep secret of god’s wisdom, is born all wisdom, and each pure intellect, and separated from every earthly dreg, or fi lth, in the souls of men (bartoli, 1567: fol. 23v).10 however, bartoli also had the fi gure portraying the characteristics of prudenza, the practical intellect of disegno, through her military attire and her attributes of physical valour. the concept of disegno encapsulated the capacity to represent the city, in all its forms, as a corporeal representation of governance corresponding to a metaphysical ideal. for bartoli, the notion that art and architecture coexisted in two worlds, the divine and the corporeal, paralleled the notion that architectural creativity, although refl ecting divine creativity, derived from the architect’s power to transform the idea, through disegno, into the social space of architecture. the architect’s productivity was a physical enactment of the transference of beauty from an abstract principle to matter. for bartoli, minerva’s attributes were essential in defi ning architecture as a higher order of intellectual activity related to civic governance. giorgio vasari and cosimo bartoli, fontispiece interstices 07 bartoli continues his invenzione to describe and explain the personifi cation of flora, placed opposite minerva. it is through flora that the physical making of architecture is placed in dialogue with the virtues of intellectual capacity. like minerva, bartoli imbues flora with attributes of physical valour and action. but he also brings her into play to symbolise the city of florence (bartoli, 1567: fol. 24)v and to invoke her metaphysical persona primavera. this is consistent with more traditional interpretations of flora, where primavera combines the physical attributes of spring’s regeneration and the blossoming of fl owers, as in the famous sandro botticelli painting primavera (c. 1482). even though painted approximately seventy years prior to the frontispiece, the painting’s symbolism would have been well known to bartoli and vasari as it was housed in the medici collection in florence.11 in the frontispiece, flora has all the sensual attributes of worldly experience in the craft of making, whereas minerva represents the wisdom of the intellect that is distinct from, but still guided by, phenomenal experiences. sensual and intellectual attributes are articulated in the image of the aedicule framing the personifi cations. in combination, flora and minerva describe the architect’s capacity for disegno, bringing together concepts defi ning architecture as real form and as idea, and rendering his art invaluable to political governance of the city.12 disegno, through drawing organised by geometry and proportion, transposed an image of ideal things into the real world – as architectural shapes. in a similar manner, through the combination of minerva and flora, bartoli recognised the necessity for the intellect to be able to understand the sensible for what it is, in its state of transformation of an idea, while being located in the political structures of the city. bartoli’s vision is that these concepts are made useful to their specifi c social setting through the architect’s understanding of purpose: his civic role. piero de’medici’s (1416-1469) imprese of the falcon and ring is placed below minerva. piero was the last direct heir of cosimo de’medici (1389-1464), the pater patriae of the lineage who was politically without blemish. cosimo i de’medici was related to piero through his mother, and piero’s imprese provided a legitimacy that cosimo needed to assert in claiming the title of grand duke of tuscany. cosimo i’s own imprese of the tortoise and sail is placed below flora in a position reinforcing his importance. these two arms of the medici lineage culminate in the fi gure of immortalità sitting in the pediment of the aedicule, holding the double-forked laurel, imprese of cosimo i de’medici, signifying the bringing together of the two strands of the family’s genealogy. furthermore, immortalità forms an axis with the image of the river-god arno below, surrounded by the many achievements in florentine arts, framed symbolically by the aedicule signifying its architectural achievements. by depicting minerva and flora in this context, illustrating the power of the architect to enact politically relevant disegno for the medici court, the frontispiece locates the architect as central to the requirement to form tangible representations of social governance in the city. the frontispiece to this 1550 edition of alberti’s text locates an affi rmation of the role of the architect to represent, specifi cally for florentine society, the important aspects of court culture and its hierarchy of power. 11 wind’s interpretation of botticelli’s image suggests that in the painting primavera is in the act of transforming from one state of being to another. in botticelli’s painting, she is depicted fl eeing chastity (chloris) and changing into beauty (flora) by the impact of passion in the character of zephyr, wind (1958: 105). 12 for his explanation of idea see panofsky (c1968). see also summers analysis of disegno in sixteenthcentury florence which calls attention to the attitudes of federico zuccaro who formulated the importance of this concept for architecture (1987: 298ff). 49 the attributes of disegno as the embodiment of practical intellectual habit in daniele barbaro and andrea palladio’s “architect” andrea palladio’s design for daniele barbaro’s frontispiece to i deci libri dell’architettura di m. vitruvio used a triumphal arch to locate allegorical personifi cations and the title of the book. the invenzione for the design probably derives from barbaro’s proemio or foreword to the text. building on the interpretation of the virtues associated with disegno in bartoli and vasari’s 1550 frontispiece, my focus on barbaro and palladio’s frontispiece will be on the two personifi cations in the niche of the triumphal arch. when the fi gures are seen in relation to barbaro’s proemio, the qualities of scienza described in the text become evident in the personifi cation with attributes of temperànza, in the left niche. the qualities of intelletto can be seen in the fi gure on the right that includes attributes of prudenza.13 this separation of virtues is distinctive when compared to those found in bartoli’s frontispiece, as the personifi cations articulate a more rigorously consistent division of attributes. of the other fi ve personifi cations of the barbaro frontispiece, the four across the attic level of the arch represent the quadrivium of the arts: geometria, musica, astrologia and aritmetica. the central fi gure is a representation of the virtue of rational wisdom in the fi gure of sapiènza.14 3 in past interpretations of the frontispiece, the fi gure in the left niche has been attributed the name of either theory or astrology. the fi gure on the right has been interpreted as practice, experientia or prudenza, frascari (1988: 15-27), angelini (1999), and miotto (1999: 233-243). 14 i disagree with miotto’s interpretation of these as ‘rhetoric,’ ‘music,’ ‘arithmetic,’ and ‘geometry.’ see luscombe (2004). frontispice, andrea palladio and daniele barbaro, i deci libri dell’ architectura di m. vitruvio tradutti et commentati da monsignor barbaro eletto patriarca d’aquileggia, venezia: marcolini, 1556, montreal, centre canadien d’architecture/ canadian centre for architecture interstices 07 in his proemio to the fi rst book of vitruvius, barbaro introduced the term habitus to explain the workings of the intellect. the term habitus has an aristotelian source and refers to the actions emanating “from an acquired perfect state or condition” (calabi and morachiello, 1987: 231). barbaro followed benedetto varchi’s due lezzioni for his use of the term and separated habits stemming from “necessary truth ... composed of the proof of the thing proven”, from those emanating from “contingent truth” that are dependent on will. both writers place art within the category of contingent truth (barbaro, 1556: 6; 1567: 2-3). varchi had correlated the human soul with a notion of reason, which was then divided into distinctive categories of particular reason and universal reason. within his understanding of universal reason, he separated inferior reason from superior reason – associating the habit of science with superior reason and the habit of art with inferior reason, because art culminated in making whereas science was culmination in knowledge. art was thus the lowest habit of human reason (cf. summers, 1987: 276ff; mendelsohn, 1982: 6-9). nevertheless, barbaro suggested a link between architettura and “necessary truth” related to higher categories of reason, due to its reliance on geometria, aritmetica and the other sciences of the quadrivium. further, barbaro argued that architettura was synonymous with rhetoric, a higher habit of reason (barbaro in vitruvius, 1567: 36). the personifi cations of scienza and intelletto were developed by barbaro to make vitruvius’ roman fi rst-century bce text relevant to sixteenth-century italian contexts and concerns with intellect and reason. scienza, on the left, incorporates attributes of temperànza and is represented as a gaunt old woman clothed in full robes with her head covered. scienza is looking upward and raises opened compasses high in her left hand. this directional orientation suggests an association with the quadrivium on the attic level. vincenzo fontana claims that in an earlier manuscript, libro detto delle quattro porte, barbaro had suggested that aritmetica, musica, geometria and astrologia as the quadrivium constituted the four doorways to knowledge (fontana, 1985: 39-72). the quadrivium was, indeed, fundamental to divisions of knowledge in architettura. for barbaro, as for varchi, scienza was associated with “necessary truth” and the rational logic of proof in its subject, as distinct from the contingencies of phenomena. barbaro notes in his proemio that scienza “is a conclusion acquired through true and necessary proof” (in vitruvius, 1556: 6).15 scienza provides barbaro with a link between architecture and “necessary truth” through her gaze toward geometria and aritmetica. temperànza’s association with the fi gure of scienza, as a virtue of the architect, suggested a need to possess objective rationality in order to restrain acts of personal licence. the set of compasses scienza is holding symbolise the architect’s comprehension, through their use, of the principles of geometry and mathematics, which enable him to form judgments about his art. in this context, temperànza warns the architect that he should not presume that all of his discoveries will necessarily refl ect philosophic principles related to the rational logic of proofs. consistent with alberti, barbaro believed that the architect should lead an active political life and work for the benefi t of the whole of society. for barbaro, the architect’s temperànza is an attribute that allows him to recognise principles. through disegno, it leads to an appreciation that architecture refl ects principle and idea. rational wisdom, in this case, is associated with practical reasoning. truth, for the architect, is about making distinct, through his combination of intelletto with prudenza, ideas of practical reasoning. 15 la prima e nominata scienza, che habito è di conclusione per vera & necessaria prova. 51 the fi gure in the right hand niche is intelletto. in his proemio barbaro noted that intelletto, while also about principles and proofs, “retains the name of the power of the soul where it is found” (in vitruvius, 1556: 6).16 intelletto is portrayed as a fully clothed young woman looking downward, with the back of her head forming a second face, that of an old man.17 her youthful face gazes into an armillary sphere she holds, whereas the face of the old man gazes toward the edge of the frontispiece. this janus like confi guration goes back to older representations of prudenza whose youthful face, traditionally often portrayed as looking into a mirror, symbolised self-knowledge and virtue, while her old face represented the wisdom gained through historical distance. the mirror is replaced in barbaro and palladio’s representation of intelletto by a speculum nature (mirror of nature) in an armillary sphere. this suggests that in barbaro’s conceptualisation of the architect, intelletto inferred the self-knowledge of natura and principles of natural cause.18 annarita angelini suggests that the motif of the downward and upward gazes of intelletto’s faces and its source in prudenza give each fi gure the double meaning of universal theory and earth bound action (angelini, 1999: 18ff; see also miotto, 1999: 233-243). characterised in this way, intelletto refl ects the two-fold ability of the architect to build buildings and to conceptualise natural philosophy through his practices.19 for barbaro, intelletto calls attention to the differences between, as well as interrelatedness of, causes or fi rst principles in the context of their operational use, through the architect’s capacity for disegno, in the service of men.20 unlike in bartoli’s frontispiece, where flora’s attributes illustrate the transformation of the idea through the act of making and the architect’s disegno, barbaro reinforces disegno by associating it with the self-knowledge and principles of natura. thus, by placing scienza opposite intelletto to emphasize the primary role of the concept of disegno for the architect, barbaro combines the requirement of rational principles and those of social good in the practices of the architect. the classical framing of the frontispiece to barbaro’s translation and commentary with a triumphal arch setting is unmistakably based on an earlier sketch by palladio for his competition entry for the rialto bridge project of 1554.21 the illustration’s technique, with its orthographic projection, refl ects barbaro’s conception of architettura as the highest of the arts. it depicts the power of the architect’s capacity for disegno as it moves from idea to real form in its measurable precision and accurate portrayal of geometric proportion. barbaro’s allusion to the importance of the orthographic projection to disegno is further reinforced by the fi gure of sapienza, or rational wisdom. she holds a measuring rod, pointing at the appreciable accuracy of a drawing of the triumphal arch. the manifestation of sapienza in architettura conferred to the architect the virtue of judgment, informed by intellectual wisdom and knowledge, alongside the agility of scienza and intelletto. in defi ning the architect’s attributes as a social fi gure in the context of sixteenth century thinking, cosimo bartoli and daniele barbaro elaborated the architect’s intellect as ideal action, in the formulation of propositions for real form. both writers saw the ideal architect as actively engaged in political life, working for the good of society. through a capacity for disegno and the ability to make – structuring building campaigns to create social space through architecture – the architect was idealised as a type. when we compare the characteristics of the ideal ‘architect’ emerging in these representations with those in biographical texts, it 16 la seconda è detta intelletto, che è habito de i principij, & delle prove, & ritiene il nome della potenza dell’anima, della quale egli si truova … . 17 both frascari (1988) and miotto (1999) have considered the fi gure as ‘prudence’ because of her two faces. 18 cf. frascari (1988: 22) suggestion of a possible source being the tarot card set by andrea mantegna where his representation of prudencia holds a speculum showing her refl ection. 19 for discussion of the aristotelian interpretation of prudenza and intelletto, summers (1987: 273ff). 20 barbaro in vitruvius (1556: 6). la seconda è detta intelletto, che è habito de i principij, & delle prove, & ritiene il nome della potenza dell’anima, della quale egli si truova: la onde è nominato, intelletto. 21 see burns (1973), gioseffi (1973) and calabi (1987) for their discussion of the competition entry. interstices 07 will become apparent that attributes referring to social functions in the former are used in the latter to signify individual worth. as a result, some individual architects were conceived, distinct from their artistic practices, as model citizens, within a conception of a society ordered and structured for political purpose. the attributes of genius (ingenium) in vasari’s vite. vasari’s le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori established the value of individual architects’ works based on a correspondence with the virtues of the idealised architect.22 rather than relying on the structure of allegorical divisions found in the frontispieces, vasari explained through individual examples how virtuous acts, or the culmination of virtues in the individual, could determine beauty in art and achieve in real form what he called divine or natural perfection. in examining the attributes of minerva as rational wisdom and scienza informed by temperànza for their similarity to descriptions in vasari’s writing, i will focus on his account of the lives of michelangelo and brunelleschi. in a similar manner to bartoli and barbaro, an essential component of vasari’s concept of the architect’s worth is his belief that architecture develops in the intellect as a mediated transference of idea to real form. consistent with the concept of disegno in the frontispieces, vasari distinguished architecture from the manual skills 22 vasari’s involvement with the establishment of the academic del disegno, and his discussion of disegno in his technical preface provide a context for his advocacy of the central role of the architect. see discussion rubin (1995: 234ff.). andrea palladio, rialto bridge project, ink drawing, museo civico, vicenca 53 gained through the experience of repetitive manual practices, to characterize it as a higher form of knowledge. like bartoli, vasari saw the architect’s intellect aligned with rational wisdom (minerva) informed by prudenza. barbaro’s more aristotelian understanding of the architect had presented scienza as an attribute distinct from practical intellect (intelletto informed by prudenza), whereas bartoli and vasari both suggested that it is the practical intellect of the architect that is his highest virtue. for bartoli, vasari, and barbaro, prudenza was an intellectual habit that emanated from a pre-disposed moral virtue in the good citizen, resulting in an individual architect’s ability to realise “natural philosophy in practice” (summers, 1987: 275). however, it was only barbaro who valued scienza as qualifying a distinct form of an architect’s intellectual practice, his comprehension of the power of principle. vasari continuously made references to michelangelo’s honour and moral prudence. to establish consistency between the notions of individual and idealised architect, he employed michelangelo’s appeal that the architect should have his compasses in his eyes, a metaphor for grasping divine order through the intellect.23 in a statement that resembles cosimo bartoli’s invenzione, vasari wrote about michelangelo: it is known that when he wanted to extract minerva from the head of jove it was necessary for him to use vulcan’s hammer ... he said that it was necessary to hold one’s intruments in the eye and not in the hand because it is the hands that work but the eye that judges: and this is the method he used in architecture as well (vasari, 1996: 773-774; 1568: 109).24 this connection between the mind and the eye are the requirements of disegno in bartoli’s notion of the architect. vasari constructs michelangelo as the genius architect who is able to be the living incarnation of the idea of minerva. continuing, vasari reinforces a notion in bartoli and barbaro’s concept of the architect, namely, that genius cannot simply reside in an act of contemplation and study but that, for the architect, it requires an active and informed engagement with the decorum expected of public fi gures, through prudenza and temperànza. reinforcing barbaro’s association between scienza and temperànza, vasari writes about michelangelo’s individual mannerisms, “he greatly loved human beauty for the sake of imitation in art ... for without this imitation no perfect work can be done; but not with lascivious and disgraceful thoughts as he proved by his way of life, which was very frugal” (vasari, 1996: 739; 1568: 112).25 here, vasari associates notions of “necessary truth”, a quality of scienza found in the idealised architect through “imitation”, with temperànza in individual architects. vasari confl ated, as did bartoli, the distinct notions of rational intellect (scienza) and practical intellect (intelletto). separating them from the notion of making, he was able to argue that specifi c experiences in practice and life had lead to the development of ingegno in the architect. mirroring the concept of disegno in art, this transformation of character through experience for vasari turned into a measure of recognising worth in architecture, as well as in an individual architect’s character; an emblem in the architect’s life as well as in his work. 23 clements (1961: 31) has discovered four texts testifying that michelangelo’s saying had a meaning commonly understood in florence. 24 vasari (1996: 773-774; 1568: 109)…si conosce, che quando è voleva cavar minerva dalla testa di giove, ci bisognava il martello di vulcano: imperò egli usò le sue fi gure e farle di 9 & di 10 & di 12 teste, non cercando altro che col metterle tutte insieme ci fussi una certa concordanza di gratia nel tutto, che non lo fa naturale, dicendo che bisoganava avere le seste negli occhi, & non in mano, perche le mani operano, et l’occhio giudica: che tale modo tenne ancora nell’architettura. 25 vasari (1996: 739; 1568: 112) amò grandemente le bellezze umane per la imitazione dell’arte, per potere scierre il bello dal bello, ché senza questa imitazione non si può far cosa perfetta: ma non in pensieri lascivi e disonesti, che l’ha mostro nel modo del viver suo, che è stato parchissimo. interstices 07 in his account of the life of brunelleschi, for example, vasari argued that, even though brunelleschi was not a man of letters, he was able to achieve greatness because of his ability for mathematics, together with a great deal of practice and experience. however, vasari then continued that it was only after brunelleschi became a man of letters that he was able to create a building which, “in its very artifi ce, you cannot imagine more beautiful, nor more magnifi cent architecture” (1996: 354; 1568: 187).26 vasari’s use of a transformation in brunelleschi’s development as an architect to promote recognition of the value of his work parallels bartoli’s understanding of flora’s attributes. these virtues were not only used to defi ne the architect as a model citizen with responsibility for the visual representations of a governed society. they were also used to assert an understanding of individual genius, which indicates a desire to consolidate diverging perceptions of social order within the city’s representation as a governed society. each occasion used to display the good citizenry of individual architects, through recognition of moral and ethical virtues in their practices, served to reinforce the formation of a collective abstract and ideal type that could transform into the notion of a profession. later transformations of this idealised type of social fi gure into the notion of a profession could be easily achieved. thus, the moral and ethical virtues used to idealise the fi gure of the architect, distinctively understood in italy as a profession, came to be synonymous with descriptions of the individuals taking part in this profession’s practices. in this context, vasari’s claims for determining genius and worth amongst specifi c architects not only set them apart from the mass of citizens but raised their status as exempla for good citizenry. references alberti, l. b. (1550). l’architettura di leonbatista alberti tradotta in lingua fi orentina da cosimo bartoli con la aggiunta de designi. firenze: appresso lorenzo torrentino. alberti, l. b. (1988). on the art of building in ten books (joseph rykwert, neil leach and robert tavenor, trans.). cambridge (mass.): mit press. angelini, a. (1999). sapienza prudenzia eroica virtù: il mediomondo di danile barbaro. firenze: olschki. bartoli, c. (1567). ragionamenti accademici di cosimo bartoli gentil’huomo et accademico fiorentino, sopra alcuni luoghi diffi cili di dante con alcune inventioni et signifi cati, et la tavola di più cose notabili. venezia: francesco de franceschi senese. bryce, judith. (1983). cosimo bartoli: the career of a florentine polymath. geneve: librarie droz. burns, howard. (1973). i disegni del palladio. bollettino del centro internazionale studi sull’architettura, a palladio (xv), 169-191. calabi, d., & paolo m. (1987). rialto: le fabbriche e il ponte, 1514-1591. torino: einaudi. clements, r. (1961). michelangelo’s theory of art. london: routledge & kegan paul. davis, c. (1980). frescos by vasari for sforza almeni, coppiere to duke cosimo i. mitteilungen des kunsthistorischen institutes in florenz (14), 127-99. fontana, v. (1985). il ‘vitruvio’ dell 1556: barbaro, palladio, marcolini. in e. riondato (ed.). trat26 vasari (1996: 354; 1568: 187) in tanto artifi zioso, che non si può imaginar piu bella, ne piu magnifi ca architettura. 55 tati scientifi co nel veneto fra il xv e xvi secolo. venezia: università internationale dell’arte, 39-72. frascari, m. (1988). maidens ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. assemblage (7, october), 15-27. gioseffi , d. (1973). palladio e l’antichita. bolletino del centro internazionale di studi di’architettura, andrea palladio (15), 43-65. hollingsworth, m. (1984). the architect in fifteenth-century florence. art history (7, december), 385-410. lewis, d. (1981). the drawings of andrea palladio. washington: international exhibitions foundation. luscombe, d. (2004). inscribing the architect: the depiction of the attributes of the architect in frontispieces to sixteenth century italian architectural treatises. unpublished dissertation for the degree of doctor of philosophy, university of new south wales. martin, h-j. (1994). the history and power of writing. chicago: university of chicago press. mendelsohn, l. (1982). paragoni: benedetto varchi’s “due lezzioni” and cinquecento art theory. ann arbor (mi.): umi research press. miotto, l. (1999). le vitruve traduit, commenté et illustré de daniele barbaro (1556). in m. plaisance (ed.), le livre illustré italien au xvie siècle (pp. 233-243). klincksieck: presses de la sorbonne nouvelle. panofsky, e. (c1968). idea: a concept in art theory (j. peake trans.). new york: harper & row. pevsner, n. (1942). the term architect in the middle ages. speculum (xvii), 549-562. rubin, p. (1995). giorgio vasari art and history. new haven: yale up. summers, d. (1987). the judgment of sense, renaissance naturalism and the rise of aesthetics. cambridge: cambridge up. vagnetti, l. (1980). l’architetto nella storia di occidente. padua: cedam. vasari, g. (1550). le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori. firenze: torrentino. vasari, g. (1568). le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori. firenze: giunti. vitruvius. (1556). i deci libri dell’architettura di m. vitruvio tradutti et commentati da monsignor barbaro eletto patriarca d’aquileggia (d. barbaro trans. and ed.). venezia: francesco marcolini. vitruvius. (1997). i dieci libri dell’architettura, tradotti e commentati da daniele barbaro. tafuri, m. & morresi, m. (eds.). milano: polifi lo. (facsimile edition of vitruvius 1567). wind, e. (1958). pagan mysteries in the renaissance. london: faber and faber in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 2 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n god is in the detail —aby warburg, 1925 editorial / susan hedges, tina engels-schwarzpaul and ross jenner surface / pattern: a pursuit of material narratives fig. 1 james turkington & tibor donner (1957). parnell baths mural, auckland. [photo, susan hedges, 2017] the tie between surface and ornament is a long one. the patterning of surfaces in accordance with the latter has been extensively reviewed, admonished, and discarded, only to re-emerge more recently as a rehabilitated and indeed pressing arena of inquiry, in part due to the plethora of animating possibilities arising with digital technology and image-saturated life. concomitantly, there has been a renewed interest in the writing of aby warburg (1866-1929) and alois riegl (1858-1905). warburg, german art historian, ethnographer and cultural theorist, recognised an afterlife of images arising from antiquity during the florentine renaissance and pointed to the potency of ornament and decorative motifs in cultural interpretation. riegl, austrian art historian, attended to the decorative arts, until then routinely unexamined in art historical canons, and found in ornamental details significant historical resonance and elucidation. numerous studies have addressed these issues relative to gottfried semper, adolf loos, hermann muthesius, and le corbusier. they have recently become relevant in questions concerning demarcations between the animate and the inanimate (see, for example, papapetros 2012, payne 2013, van eck 2014) given digitalisation particularly (see spuybroek 2008 and schumacher 2009). if, as alina payne (2013) has suggested, ornament shifts from being a nineteenth-century surface in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 3 editorial / surface / pattern: a pursuit of material narratives s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n concern in architecture, to become in the twentieth a matter of detached objects carrying an already highly mobilised ornamental impetus (as décor), this impetus achieves extreme mobility and detachment in the twenty-first century. at this stage, objects themselves increasingly provide a focus for image repertoires (‘lifestyle’-indexing), which are simultaneously hollowed out in ‘smart’ networks, enchained in stretched vectors of production, distribution, and accelerated obsolescence. architecture, left to find its own course after the eschewal of ornamentation, faces the continuing “problematics of appearance” following the division between an aesthetics expressive of (modern) production and one of (traditional) representation, as david leatherbarrow and mohsen mostafavi (2002: 1-6) have argued. in twentieth-century modernism, façade design—a hangover of representation—gave way to a certain “autonomy of the surface”, a façade independent of structural frames that could be viewed as ‘skin’ (8). enunciative concerns favouring volumetric over rhetorical effects came to define multi-faced compositions (13-14), leaving behind the relative representational freedom of nineteenth-century architectural expressionism—rich in physiognomic and moral/therapeutic implications (10). yet, in the tension between building technology and expression, as leatherbarrow and mostafavi insist, a more or less generic logic of production remains seemingly at odds with a singularizing will in architectural figuration (20). the former has previously been seen as indicative of repetition (at times in an anonymising and alienating way) and the latter of identity (itself assumed to respond to immediate locality, climate, and social mores, etc.; 7, 22). yet, repetition—itself intrinsically caught up in continuities but also in breaks and irregularities—offers one way of understanding how production and representation might commingle in complex ways (23). this complexity is perhaps better understood as patterning. over the past decades, emerging digital fabrication technologies have certainly offered an avenue for a new profusion of patterning, shifting the previously site-less and substance-less ‘stuff ’ of digital design into varied, non-standardised material manifestations (pell, et al. 2010: 11-12). the result: incrustations, protuberances, textured expressions, smoothed surfaces, surfaces enlivened as screens—all, in their own ways, erasing the distinction between ornament and cladding. this is the territory contributors to interstices 18, surface/pattern: a pursuit of material narratives explore: the tension between ornament, adornment, object enlivenment, cladding, surface and pattern, and the strange animations inherent in surface-pattern continua. etymologically, surface accords with the revealing of an upper or outward layer, but it also points to things that receive a surface through polishing or finishing. pattern suggests the imposition of a plan or design that models or leans on exemplars for its form and rhythms—an underlying principle taken up materially. so, what might their continua potentiate? thought in one direction, the smoothing of surfaces, particularly territorial ones, is indicative of a prevailing politic and policing, as paul virilio (1986) has emphasised, with speed and frictionless transfer made a global ideal—if a contested and problematic one. thought in another, pattern imparts rhythm to surfaces, potentiating deceleration, awareness and contemplation, even deviation and delay. hence, the journal issue is motivated by the renewed fascination with the surface of things and the expressive effects and underlying patterns they mobilise materially. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 4 editorial / surface / pattern: a pursuit of material narratives s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n any anatomy of pattern soon runs into repetition. as gilles deleuze and felix guattari (1987) have argued, repetition, far from a surface-effect, is what makes a patterned (and therefore recognisable) world possible. from the encoding of milieus founding territoriality and place-specificity to social behaviours and cultural distinctions, concretisation and mobilisation of rhythms consolidate and release the very differences through which life assembles itself. performative and plastic arts in the pacific, like those elsewhere, use repetition as an aesthetic device. however, they also use it “to symbolise and effect relations of mana” (tomlinson & tengan 2015: 17), to channel affective force and to represent memory and knowledge to those who understand (clark 2006: 12; nepia 2013: 133, 197). hence, pattern and rhythm run free of, and extend beyond, all planar fixity. surfaces are not simply seconded within the hierarchies of built place; they also open onto insistently moving and shifting states (taylor 2009: 47). far from keeping an outside apart, architecture, then, can be rethought to transform and crystallise the radical rhythms of an outside at large (grosz 1995: 135). patterning answers to this chaos, providing environments rich in repetition, difference and affect. seen this way, the decorative and the detailed, the immediate and the superficially apparent, all partake of domains of repetition extending into the very ontological depth of things. contributors to this issue have sampled some of this complex continuum. invited contributions preceding this issue was the interstices under-construction symposium held in june 2017. there, the first keynote speaker, spyros papapetros (associate professor in history and theory of architecture at princeton university), extended his work on the historiography of art and architecture, the intersections between architecture and the visual arts, as well as the relationship between architecture, psychoanalysis and the history of psychological aesthetics. in his address, papapetros reminded us that animation, in architecture and design, starts with little things like ornament, accessories—things we might consider marginal, but which, nevertheless, are at the very core of the visual and material culture of their and our times. a recording of the address is available here, and we provide a summary in the following. beginning with the image of a kaffir chain necklace from south africa, made of heterogeneous artefacts perforated and strung together in a chain, papapetros raised the seemingly self-contradictory notion of a “portable ecology”, which became the core of this paper. moreover, before adolf loos banned it, ornament was already buried by the very weight of ethnographical and archaeological literature that had been piled upon it. from this point of departure, papapetros raised a succession of issues. 1/. atrophy by decoration examines headgear, in particular, the spiked helmet and accoutrements of kaiser wilhelm ii, the last german emperor and king of prussia, which veer between pageantry and a military attachment. here, papapetros refers to a primaeval relationship between ornament and weaponry; arms, he quotes gottfried semper, are “the true adornment of man”. 2/. regressive evolution refers to evolution by atrophy in biology and sociology by jean demoor, jean massart and emile vandervelde (originally in french 1899), who argued that certain organs atrophy to the point of becoming mere in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 5 editorial / surface / pattern: a pursuit of material narratives s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n accessories, there being no progress without recoil. papapetros draws attention to the strange case of the senators of the city of hamburg who, when the lower classes challenged their authority, reverted to sixteenth-century costume. 3/. ornamentation through rudimentation refers to three main texts: anthropologist alfred cort haddon’s evolution in art (1895), in which ornament is seen as organic, richard clazier’s a manual of historic ornament (1899), and semper’s lecture of 1856, “on the formal principles of adornment and its meaning as a symbol in art”. the last was one of the first to use evolutionary terms to describe ornament, specifically in the earplugs of the brazilian botocudo, which, semper speculated, could have represented rudiments, or the origin, of archaic greek ear pendants and, by extension, those of today. in this lecture, semper defined three “axes of formation that correspond to the three extensions of space” from which “three spatial characteristic qualities of beauty emerge”: symmetry (macrocosmic unity), proportionality (microcosmic unity), and direction (unity of movement). 4/. warburg reads semper unravels warburg’s analysis of semper’s lecture in terms of cosmic forces of both attraction and repulsion. warburg articulates three universal categories of ornament: one to do with movement and oscillation—the macrocosmic; one to do with the ring—microcosmic radial movement of expansion; and one to do with direction—projective, regimented space. 5/. world histories of adornment treats the legacy of semper’s theory of ornament in j. matthias’ the human ornament (der menschliche schmuck, 1871). 6/. the ornament of people pursues the theme in michael haberlandt & martin gerlach’s völkerschmuck (1906), emil selenka’s der schmuck des menschen (1900) and the ethnologist and zoologist, carl semper’s (nephew of the architect) reisen im archipel der philippinen (1868-1916) and palau-inseln im stillen ocean (1873). papapetros concluded by returning to selenka’s study of the minutiae of hair in apes, where direction is grafted into the layer of the skin—as in an expanded animate field. here, hair is still a cosmic directional ornament, which undergoes a regressive evolution into its origins, according to selenka. it is no longer a figure in front of a background, but the background itself. ornament has not disappeared but turned into landscape, forest, sea, coral reef or sky. if selenka’s wish to limit ornament to nature eventually allowed loos to extricate ornament from modern civilised culture altogether, papapetros, nevertheless, encouraged us to rediscover ornament in an afterglow, in a mediatised presence, “where there are no rays, no pendants, no directions, but only an animated field of constant yet variegated extension …” the second keynote speaker, tēvita o. ka‘ili (associate professor at brigham young university, lā’ie, hawai’i), has ancestral connections to samoa, fiji and tonga and is a long-time member of the tā-vā theory group in the moana-nui region. his keynote, hoa patterns: binary, repetition, symmetry, kupesi, and mana, demonstrated the application of an area of the moana-nui (pacific) theory of tāvā (time-space) that is relevant to design generally, and to the key theme of the symposium, surface / pattern, specifically. opening the pacific spaces panel of the 2017 interstice under construction symposium, ka‘ili asserted that all things stand in relations of exchange, through intersections/connections or separation, in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 6 editorial / surface / pattern: a pursuit of material narratives s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n in relations of order or conflict. his presentation focused on a concept that is common to the entire moana-nui region: hoa. with over 40 cognates in different locations, the term refers to the relations between two or more entities: companions, friends, but also adversaries (hoariri in māori), involving complementarity, duality, harmony, equality, but also tension and conflict. ka‘ili presented this field of connotations primarily from a tongan perspective but often considered variations prominent in other areas of the pacific. he showed, for example, how the very notion of pairs recurs in many moana-nui ways of thinking about the world: in cosmogonies, there are primordial and cosmic pairs, ancestral twins, and pairs of plants and fish. this duality also underpins kupesi (patterns) and heliaki (poetic, metaphoric comparisons: fakahoa). well-established patterns are manulua (two fish) and kau-ika-lilo (hidden school of fish), for example, with the latter also featuring in the fale pasifika in auckland. mathematically, patterns rest on binary numbers systems—in use, for instance, in pre-contact mangareva and in tonga, where the system was called nga‘ahoa. mata and ava are crucial elements of kupesi. mata (eye, point) is the point of intersection between two or more kohi (lines), while ava is the symmetry of mata. kohi themselves are collections of two or more mata, and vā (space) arises out of a collection of kohi. these elements are deployed across different forms of symmetry (radial, bilateral, spherical and fractal), which mediate their levels of energy, order and conflict. energy is most dense and intense at the mata, which is the location of, or/or creates, mana—which itself is constituted as a surfeit of energy. as a basis for plurality, the duality of hoa is in principle dynamic—and thereby in important ways different from binary marked–unmarked oppositions in contemporary western thinking, which assume the dominance of one term over the other. on certain occasions, though, as in the tongan kava ceremony, order is tapu (sacred)—preserving the state of harmony, order and beauty. tēvita o. ka‘ili’s keynote is available here. reviewed papers john ruskin offered a different angle on the debates concerning constructional polychromy in victorian britain, according to anuradha chatterjee, who considers their larger context and ruskin’s place within it. ruskin, she argues, favoured the decorative use of materials’ innate colour to achieve concealment of a building’s structure. though his theory of polychromy, especially his attitudes to colour and pattern, remains far from obvious, chatterjee offers insights into them through the lenses of gender, body, soul and dress. she presents his triadic theory of architecture: a) architecture is a combination of painting and sculpture; b) it is feminine; and c) it is analogous to a dressed body. in this light, she revisits an ambivalence between colour as pattern, and colour as effect, arguing that, for ruskin, simultaneity and vacillation, not singularity and stability, essentially characterise the visual field. ruskin’s writings, she proposes, undermined polarities prevalent in contemporary understandings of polychromy and rendered them more complex, since he not only refused to resolve the difference between pattern and effect but also to the settle the difference between sculpture and painting; canvas and textile; and flatness and texture. in “on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire”, andrew douglas explores a surface-pattern nexus by way of what he terms territorial images. arguing that http://interstices.aut.ac.nz/ijara/index.php/ijara/article/view/252 in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 7 editorial / surface / pattern: a pursuit of material narratives s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n there is no territory without repetition patterns, which in turn inscribe a semiotic generating images, he draws on the role of ‘picturing’ to account for the possessive and demarking dynamic implicit in territorial assemblages. crossing hans blumenberg’s (1985) thinking on “existential anxiety” and its mythical reworking of horizons of unknowing with the work of gilles deleuze and felix guattari (1987) on repetition patterning and the refrains of territoriality, the paper looks to modes of imagined place-solidarity emerging with nation states. drawing on andrea mubi brighenti’s (2010) call for an expanded territorology—itself building on deleuze and guattari’s (1987 & 1994) notions of territoriality—douglas emphasises the extent to which territory, usually regarded as a spatial phenomenon, in fact rests on temporal and psychical geneses consolidating differences in modes of repetition—in the case of the nation-state, as benedict anderson (1991) has proposed, spanning commonly imagined daily routines, memorialising, and refashioned futures. in particular, the paper draws on the role of utopian discourse in the transition to europe nationalism and, in turn, to the transmittal of utopian aspirations and imaginings to colonial places. central is a reading of a novel influential in a range of deleuze’s writings: samuel butler’s erewhon, or, over the range (1872/2013), a utopian satire set in aotearoa/new zealand’s southern alps. developing links between the novel’s philosophical uptake; its deployment of topography and modes of imagining specific to aotearoa/new zealand; and butler’s deployment of a neoplatonist empiricism more broadly, the paper plays out the significance of chiastic desire—a criss-cross patterning that draws surface configurations (landscape picturing, textual place descriptions, topographical delineation, perceptual routines) into deeper relations of grounding, imagination, and the drawing of place sensibility out of the imperceptible. sébastien galliot, in his essay “from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography” draws on fieldwork conducted between 2001 and 2013 in samoa, new zealand and europe, as well as his curatorial activities involving pacific and samoan tattooing. building on previous research on ritual efficacy and ritual transmission, the paper examines changes in the mode of reception of samoan iconography and questions the changing status of pacific tattoos. galliot first establishes the context of production and reception, discussing the emergence of what he terms a tattooscape in pacific tattooing. theoretically, he takes a pragmatic, rather than kantian, approach to the interpretation of images in their field of practice, by exploring charles s. peirce’s semiotic categories, index, icon and symbol. the dual nature of iconicity, where surface and depth interact to produce iconic power (alexander, bartmanski, & giesen, 2012), is particularly relevant for tattooed images since iconic power gives the mark inscribed on the skin both effect and meaning—both ritual efficacy and visual saliency. in their original practice context, completed tattoos index primarily a well-conducted ritual, in which two parties (the recipient and his or her family on one side, and the tattooing expert on the other) managed to maintain respectful and caring interactions throughout the process. from that perspective, tattooed images index good relations and the physical and psychological strength of the wearer. when looking at the elements of tattoo patterns in detail, though, their iconic aspects come to the fore. in a multimodal reading of samoan tattoo iconography, juxtaposing primarily indexical and iconic aspects of tattooing and tattoos, galliot reworks peirce’s own realisation that icons and indices are always partly symbolic, and that the icon/index/symbol trichotomy is an abstraction. tattoos, like any sign, combine all three characteristics and, in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 8 editorial / surface / pattern: a pursuit of material narratives s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n depending on the context, any one aspect can dominate. while tattoos can be seen as being detached from their original destination (the human skin), they retain some iconic power even in branding campaigns that deploy them to connote samoan-ness or pacific-ness—or, more generally, to convey notions of authenticity. ultimately, galliot demonstrates how the global (re)appropriation of pacific designs has caused a change in their mode of production and reception. in “binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building”, tina engels-schwarzpaul considers modes of patterning evident in the university of auckland’s fale pasifika. the fale is a gathering place intended primarily to connect the university with pacific communities in the region, but it also appeals to wider audiences and is often used for the reception of international visitors. recognised as iconically pacific by the university, it draws mainly on polynesian traditions, with its lalava (lashings) also referencing micronesian and melanesian patterns. engels-schwarzpaul proposes that the fale owes its iconic power (alexander, bartmanski, & giesen, 2012) to a fusion of surface and depth, mediated by the very materiality and meaning of those patterns, which provide diasporic communities with shared histories and a starting point for trans-pacific identifications. in the right constellations, lalava is able to bind together ancestral knowledge and present practices, despite many concessions to alien regulations and rules of production. tongan tofunga (expert) tohi asserts that lalava is “deeper than just the lashing”, more connected to a changing world and cosmos-in-motion than given credit. patterns extend, indeed, into cosmological, social, technological and subjective realms. over time, they can engender relationships between people and things (gell, 1998). such relationships between arresting figures, ensnaring ground and viewers are founded on mimetic experiences (rampley, 1997). the paper explores the conditions under which arresting patterns on refined surfaces can both symbolise and effect relations of mana and channel affective force (tomlinson & tengan 2016). the paper suggests that iconic power could be a valuable strategic resource for indigenous trans-pacific concepts, integrating aspects of materiality, performativity, atmospheres and non-human agency with more traditional, structuralist insights generated in cross-overs between architecture and anthropology. reviewed postgraduate creative design research projects in “interiors of memories: a study of personal memories based on the works of luigi serafini and georges perec”, joanne choueiri, in a project undertaken at the piet zwart institute, rotterdam, utilises personal memories as an oneiric foundation for the creation of new forms of interior. drawing on the work of italian illustrator, luigi serafini’s codex seraphinianus (1981) and french writer, georges perec’s species of spaces and other pieces (1997), memories are reconfigured as narratives, which themselves form the prompt for the production of fantastic interiors. room by room, domestic typologies and their programmatic functions are called into question via an appeal to the fantastical, a genre merging the imagined and the real—in a manner, in fact, coextensive with french philosopher, gaston bachelard’s (1994) claim of a psychically dense layering found in the dwelling places of childhood. building on david leatherbarrow and mohsen mostafavi’s (2002) consideration of surface in architecture, john de manincor, from the university of queensland, in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 9 editorial / surface / pattern: a pursuit of material narratives s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n australia, devised “whethering station: thin surface, thick surface”, a pavilion project exploring parametric modelling and novel fabrication processes. this doctoral research project plays out the implications of the undefinable thinness of digital lines to rework the notion that drawn lines connote a surface indicative of a volume coming into being. manincor unpacks a suggestive reading by andrew benjamin (2006) of gottfried semper’s thinking on the wall as a paradigmatic element—both harbouring and concealing depth—in order to articulate a pavilion of acute thinness, both conceptually and technically: a pavilion whose materiality is nought but surface. reviews as series of reviews draw this issue to a close: a book review by sean flannagan of the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning, edited by julia gatley and lucy treep (2017); john walsh’ exhibition review of the auckland school: celebrating the centenary of the university of auckland school of architecture and planning (2017); and book reviews by jonathan hale of atmospheric architectures: the aesthetics of felt spaces by gernot böhme (edited/ trans a-c engels-schwarzpaul, 2017) and by jan smitheram of the baroque in architectural culture 1880-1980, edited by andrew leach, john macarthur and maarten delbeke (2015). papers and projects presented in this issue show, across a considerable range, that surfaces are anything but ‘surface-affairs’. no surface—even the most austere—can absent itself from the work of patterning, punctuating and spacing. in short, no surface is ever shorn of the implications of repetition and, with them, enlivening rhythms and echoes that carry on into the very constitution and depths of what is surfaced. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 10 editorial / surface / pattern: a pursuit of material narratives s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n references alexander, j. c., bartmański, d., & giesen, b. (2012). iconic power: materiality and meaning in social life. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. anderson, b. (1991). imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london, uk: verso. bachelard, g. (1994). the poetics of space. (m. jolas, trans.). boston, ma: beacon press. benjamin, a. (2006). surface effects: borromini, semper, loos. the journal of architecture, 11(1), 1–35. blumenberg, h. (1985). work on myth (r. m. wallace, trans.). cambridge, ma: the mit press. bogue, r. (2003). deleuze on music, painting and the arts. london, uk: routledge. brighenti, a. m. (2010). on territorology: towards a general science of territory. theory, culture & society, 27(1), 52–72. bruno, g. (2014). surface: matters of aesthetics, materiality, and media. chicago, il: university of chicago press. butler, s. (1872/2013). erewhon: or, over the range. seattle, wa: createspace independent publishing. cache, b. (1995). earth moves: the furnishing of territories (a. boyman, trans.). cambridge, ma: mit press. clark, h. p. (2006). kūkulu kauhale o limaloa: a kanaka maoli culture based approach to education through visual studies. (doctor of education thesis), massey university. retrieved from http://mro.massey.ac.nz/ handle/10179/1459 deleuze, g. & guattari, f. (1987). a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. vol. 2 (b. massumi, trans.). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. deleuze, g., & guattari, f. (1994). what is philosophy? (h. tomlinson, g. burchell, trans.). new york, ny: columbia university press. gell, a. (1998). art and agency: an anthropological theory. oxford, uk: clarendon press. grosz, e. (1995). space, time and perversion: the politics of bodies: new york, ny: allen & unwin. leatherbarrow, d., & mostafavi, m. (2002). surface architecture: cambridge, ma: mit press. nepia, p. m. (2013). te kore exploring the māori concept of void. (doctor of philosophy thesis), auckland university of technology, auckland, nz. retrieved from http:// aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/ handle/10292/5480 pell, b., hild, a., jacob, s., & zaera-polo, a. (2010). the articulated surface: ornament and technology in contemporary architecture. basel, ch: birkhäuser-de gruyter. perec, g. (1997). species of spaces and other pieces (j. sturrock, trans.). london, uk: penguin books. papapetros, s. (2010). world ornament: the legacy of gottfried semper’s 1856 lecture on adornment. res: anthropology and aesthetics, 57(1), 309–329. papapetros, s. (2012). on the animation of the inorganic: art, architecture, and the extension of life. chicago, il: university of chicago press. papapetros, s. (2013). from ornament to object to surface. oxford art journal, 36(3), 470–474. payne, a. a. (2014). living stones, crying walls: the dangers of enlivenment in architecture from renaissance putti to warburg’s “nachleben”. in c. van eck, j. van gastel, & e. van kessel (eds.), the secret lives of artworks (pp. 308-339). leiden, be: leiden university press. rampley, m. (1997). from symbol to allegory: aby warburg’s theory of art. the art bulletin, 79(1), 41–55. serafini, l. (1981). codex seraphinianus. milan, it: franco maria ricci. spuybroek, l. (2008). the architecture of continuity. rotterdam, nl: v2 publishing. schumacher, p. (2009). parametric patterns. ad architectural design—patterns of architecture, 79(6), 28–41. taylor, m. (2009). relentless patterns: the immersive interior. architectural design, 70(6), 43–47. tomlinson, m., & tengan, t. p. k. (2016). introduction: mana anew. in m. tomlinson & t. p. k. tengan (eds.), new mana: transformations of a classic concept in pacific languages and cultures (pp. 1–36). acton act, au: anu press. van eck, c. (2015). art, agency and living presence: from the animated image to the excessive object. boston, ma: de gruyter. virilio, p. (1986). speed and politics: an essay on dromology (m. polizzotti, trans.). new york, ny: semiotext(e)/columbia university press. http://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/1459 http://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/1459 http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/5480 http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/5480 http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/5480 some binary architecture some binary architecture sites for possible thought. mike linzey interstices 4 some binary architecture sites for possible thought 1 there are some works of architecture which it is useful to describe as ‘binary.’ their spatial field is bipolar, which is to say that their meaning is organized—whether deliberately or consequentially—around two poles, two identities, two sets of constructed meaning. it is architecture with two different identities. what is interesting about binary architecture, is when a differentiated semantic field, which i will call a region of sameness is generated between these poles of constructed identity. it is this region of sameness between poles of identity which marks binary architecture as a site for possible thought. some works which illustrate this idea in terms of architecture are: • bernard tschumi’s national centre for contemporary arts a t l e f r e s n o y , i n w h i c h t h e n e w roof is folded over a collection of old buildings which it is otherwise supposed to replace. jeffrey kipnis has already criticised this work in terms of its “informational” (in contrast to “deformational”) character.1 here the poles of constructed identity are the ‘old’ and the ‘new.’ the new does not destroy the old, but enfolds and preserves it. what is interesting about this work is the way that conceptual attention focusses in the realm between the two roofs. tschumi sets up the structural trusses as exhibition spaces, communication paths, ‘art in the clouds’ in the realm between old and new; • the national gallery extension in london by denise scott brown and robert venturi, where enforced adjacency with the 19th century building of william wilkins enriches the separate meanings of post-modern pastiche and neo-classical philology (fig 1). venturi and scott brown were careful neither to denigrate, nor to damn with false praise the neoclassical composition—which might otherwise be a tired monument to people’s art. in the same gesture—with a ‘crescendo of columns’—they raised post-modern architecture to a representative place in the architecture of london, and raised the victorian neo-classical to a plane of genuine historical interest. martin pawley has described this two-fold architecture in terms of “the antithetical and semiological language” of the information age confronting “the gaunt geometrical old timer” of the architectural tradition.2 venturi’s work here also draws attention to another remarkable two-fold architecture—st. martin’s in the field, whose striking juxtaposition of a temple and a spire makes a memorable construction of anglo-saxon complex identity in the 18th century. • the castelvecchio museum in verona where carlo scarpa used modernist ornament like a scalpel to break open the body of an architectural tradition. this remarkable work was carried out in the 1950s and 1960s, when all of modernism was otherwise injected with visions of utopian identity. scarpa, with great delicacy, created a realm of sensitive retrospection between what were then widely understood to be opposite poles: modernity and history. • and nearer to home, the auckland war memorial museum, b u i l t i n t h e 1920s, which metaphorically ‘ingested’ an ancestral maori architecture, hotunui , into its classical interior, but which, like some titan in the belly of cronus, refuses to digest it, and instead lives on as significant architecture precisely because of a binary tension generated between different architectural traditions (figs 2, 3). these various works of binary architectures are significant accessories for theory in the age of information. their bi-polar spatial field is analogous to binary information. binary architecture can be likened to a binary switch, the elementary building block of the digital computer. in a binary switch there are two poles: the pole of ‘certainly on’ and t h e p o l e o f ‘ c e r t a i n l y o f f . ’ 1 = o n ; 0 = o f f . b u t what is the state of a switch when you don’t know whether it is on or off? the realm between 1 and 0 is a region of logical or ontological uncertainty. it is called binary information. binary information is the essential theoretical construct of the information age. binary architecture can give us a renewed feeling for what martin heidegger called the ‘two-fold.’ the greater part of heidegger’s later works hinged around the difference as he saw it between sameness and identity. in heidegger’s view, proceeding from his seminal paper of 1957, difference is ontological, whereas identity is constructed.3 but difference can be a blunt instrument in the de-struction of identity. interstices 4 some binary architecture sites for possible thought 2 difference can be merely separateness, and as such it is often used as an excuse merely to construct a separate identity. heidegger repeatedly sharpened and refined his concept of ontological difference until it became almost-the-same as identity itself. in the region of refined doubt between sameness and identity we find heidegger’s concept of the two-fold, the grounds for certain ethical claims that heidegger makes in relation to techne and poiesis. binary architecture reveals a region of ontological sameness between two constructed poles of identity. the two-fold is found in heidegger’s writings with a wide range of interpretations. first of all in terms of technology—because architecture today, in the age of information, is still a confrontation between poetry and technology—heidegger argued that the construction of identity is the rule of technology. identity means the equi-form, the “dull unity of mere uniformity.” technology is ‘dangerous’ because it accumulates identity. technology challenges, enframes the world with uniformity. technology is totalitarian in this sense, because it privileges identity and represses difference. but technology also has a ‘saving power.’ and here we see its ‘two-fold’ character. the saving power of technology awaits to be discovered in its revelation of sameness, or poiesis. the two-fold is a dialectic without resolution. it is manifest contradiction. the two-fold opens all of heidegger’s significant regions of investigation— between the poet and the thinker; between the greek and the american; between the oriental and the occidental; between the original and the modern; between the abstract rules of thought and what deleuze has aptly called “opinions among friends.”4 i can illustrate the two-fold by folding a piece of paper in half. if the fold is placed horizontally and in the background, what is presented to the eye are two horizontal planes. this is the dualism of cartesian metaphysics, and of classical and baroque architecture. here we see earth and heaven separated from each other, a dualistic view of the world. if i turn the paper around so the fold is now in the foreground, we see the deleuzian ‘fold,’ the crease, the catastrophe of non-differentiability.5 b u t i f i n o w p u t t h e p a p e r o n e n d , w i t h t h e f o l d uppermost, in the shape of lambda, l, we see that the two-fold now resembles the graphical field of binary information. the two ‘feet’ of the lambda represent two poles of identity or states of certainty, where a binary switch is either on or off. at both of these poles the degree of choice, uncertainty and negative entropy is zero. the apex of the lambda, the fold in the paper, is a point of maximum binary information. in architectural terms it is a point of refined doubt or irresolution. i n t h e remainder of this paper, for purposes of illustration, i will explore the two-fold or binary architecture of the auckland museum. first i describe its two poles of constructed identity: the neoclassical museum—european, colonial, intending dominance and the repression of indigenous difference; and the post-contact maori meeting house, which is an architecture of resistance, belligerent difference, and at the same time also an architecture which constructs identity, but in this case through a profoundly different conception of space and a mythopoetic ontology. i will attempt to describe some of the richnesses and contradictions which are set up in the region of sameness between these conflicting poles of identity. architecturally the region of sameness may be located in the ‘maori court,’ a central space in the museum which is shared or conjoined by both the neo-classical and antipodean poles. in cultural and political terms in new zealand, this region of sameness is called ‘bi-culturalism.’ bi-culturalism is an essential two-fold in new zealand’s political and cultural life, a small window of acceptability between what we perceive to be two unacceptable poles—assimilation and apartheid. i will briefly address these issues with reference to the binary organisation of the auckland war memorial museum. finally i will discuss what i see to be the principle value of binary architecture, and in particular the value of the auckland museum, in terms of the ethics of alterity. because binary architecture diverts attention from the normal architectural agenda of identity construction, and because it attends instead to the information-rich possibilities which are opened in in-between spaces, the theory of architecture may now embark into the realm of the ethical. the binary construction i suggest is the saving power of architecture in an age of technology and information. the auckland museum i s a distinctive monument, a p r o u d m e m o r i a l t o t h o s e w h o f e l l i n two world wars. its neo-classical exterior is doubly significant not only for the various tropes of sacrifice that are inscribed upon it as ornament but also because it was to the theatres of the old world—in turkey, greece, italy, north africa and france—that two generations of young new zealand men and women were sent upon their ‘great adventure.’ interstices 4 some binary architecture sites for possible thought 3 the facade of the entrance porch is closely modelled on the parthenon in athens (f i g 4 ). this gives it every appearance of being determinedly mono-cultural. and mono-culture was consistent with the dominant political agenda of the inter-war years. the policy then was to assimilate cultural differences at all cost. among other meanings, neo-classicism is an architecture of colonial domination. the exterior also sets the scene for the interior space of the museum. the ethnographic and trophic displays are laid out within the museum on an orthogonal grid, organised on three levels. the largest central room on the ground floor is the ‘maori court.’ hirini mead writes: two contrasting institutions in new zealand are focus points for maori art. one is the museums of various types and the other is the meeting house. the museum is a western institution … museums of natural history … collect rocks, fossil remains, dead birds, butterflies, fish, reptiles and four-footed animals. we, the maori, are included among the preserved fish and the fossils and we often have to compete with them for the scarce resources of the museums (fig 5).6 it is necessary to explain the sense of grievance with which mead appears to personalise the museum artefacts. “we, the maori” are humanly enmeshed in the space of the museum like a living presence thrashing in a net. in a previous paper i discussed at some length the difference between maori and european attitudes or comportments towards works of art. 7 maori treat their own taonga, in particular their meeting houses, as if they were living personalities. when an artefact is catalogued and archived in a museum it is as if a living person were entrapped or imprisoned (fig 6). architecture is an organising principle in space. bernard tschumi describes it as paradoxical that architecture both makes space distinct and also states the precise nature of space. 8 architecture both defines and is defined by, both organises and is organised by, its unique spatial situation. michael austin was the first architect who clearly described the spatial structure of maori meeting houses in terms of openness and closure, front and rear.9 h e pointed out that meeting houses are located in their natural landscapes with closing elements to the back and open elements, including always a marae atea o r open meeting ground, to the front. thus the meeting house ‘reads’ the natural landscape and clarifies the organisation of space (fig 7). there is a linear organisation of space in the maori meeting house, from darkness to light. the back wall of the house often signifies the night, and death. the front wall, the doorway, and in particular the lintel over the door often depict creation, birth, emergence into the light. the open space in front of the meeting house signifies openness and clearing. the complex relationship between meeting house and landscape is never merely picturesque. there is also a political and proprietary agenda—which was particularly aggravated by resistance to the colonial appropriation of land in new zealand in the 19th and 20th centuries. the interlayering of space in the meeting house has other cosmological significances as well. roger neich claims to be ‘extending’ austin’s case when he argues that the meeting house also defines certain directions of the landscape in which it is located. “without the meeting house standing at the focus of the landscape pointing out where is ‘front’ and ‘rear,’ the notions of enclosure and openness would have little cultural significance.” 10 roger neich, incidentally, is the curator of ethnology at the auckland museum. this has been a brief and summary review of how the architecture of the meeting house has been used to construct and polarise maori identity. binary architecture is constructed upon two poles of identity. the museum is polarised by two cultural constructs, the maori and the european. the space of the parthenon is gridded, “polis-ised” and interiorising, and the space of hotunui is focused, ‘pagan’ and exteriorising (fig 8). the ‘maori court’ is an un-owned realm of sameness between these two poles of identity. we may see this in the way it is used several times every day in the re-enactment of mihi or meeting for benefit of tourists and visitors to the museum, when a party of young maori men and women, strangely dressed in red robes and bone ornaments, ceremonially challenge a disparate party of australian or japanese tourists (fig 9). i don’t want to get into a fruitless discussion about authenticity and cultural purity, tourism, exploitation and the devaluation of meaning in the migration of signs. of course this daily mihi is tokenised but it is not uneventful. i merely record what happens each day in the ‘maori court.’ whatever its validity or otherwise, a mihi could not happen without the ethical sway of the two-fold—without the enlivening, refining, grinding difference of identities interstices 4 some binary architecture sites for possible thought 4 which is underwritten and constructed by the particular conjunction of architectures of the museum and the meeting house. more than 900,000 people visit this museum every year, and there is a real sense in which it has become auckland’s marae. it defines, if you like, the cosmology of this bi-cultural city. to summarise, let me quickly enumerate some dimensions which begin to define the auckland museum as binary architecture. 1. life and death. we think of death, hegel once said, as an extraneous event which contradicts our own life. but death and life are one thing. hotunui is enlivened architecture, an ancestral presence. even transposed out of its tribal landscape, trapped in the w e b o f t h e m u s e u m , a n d c a s t a s a dead artefact, hotunui i s a l i v e l y p l a c e . a n d t h e parthenon, which o u g h t t o b e the livelier pole in the partnership, representing the supposed roots of the dominant culture, is instead dead—dead, derivative, imitative. 2. the triumphal procession of greek columns is centred and focused on british origins and a supposed lineage of european democracy. yet the neo-classical space of the museum is diffuse and uncentred. by contrast the space of hotunui is intensely focused in the ‘maori court,’ yet its connotations include an oceanic diffuseness and the dispersal and intended sacrifice of the colonised other. 3. the meeting house located inside the museum contradicts our normal expectations of interiority versus exteriority. the museum authorities, we may imagine, intended to display the meeting house as an anonymous representative of the past, the art of a dying culture, an icon of successful assimilation. they brought the house indoors and made it an object for the european gaze. but because it is architecture—because the space of architecture permeates boundaries and refuses the categories that logic would prescribe—hotunui redefines the interior as effectively exterior. the meeting house is doubly or dubiously owned— by the museum and by the ngati maru, and also by the people of ngati awa who originally carved and decorated the house. we should also acknowledge the restoration work contributed by ngati whatua and the morehu, (dispossessed) people of auckland (fig 10 ).11 the binary space of the museum antagonises the dull equation which architecture normally constructs—between interiority and property. heidegger claimed that the two-fold is now ‘a global reality.’ it ‘befell’ western thinking only about two hundred years ago. it is recent and we are not yet accustomed to it.12 but how does architecture contribute to the understanding of the two-fold? how can architecture reveal the two-fold as savingpower in the age of information? architecture is making of thoughtful constructions in space. spatial thinking is always more concrete, as compared to abstract logical thinking. sometimes things can appear quite straightforward in terms of space yet they seem to be hard to say or even illogical in the abstract world of philosophy. the two-fold is like this, rather too paradoxical in terms of thought, yet relatively straight-forward in terms of space. the refined difference that heidegger draws between sameness and identity can resolve itself quite simply in terms of the space of binary architecture. two things can be ‘the same’ as each other, that is similar in every respect, yet so long as they occupy different places in space they are not ‘identical.’ and in the auckland museum, the same space of the maori court is a meeting ground of two conflicting identities. the rigorous logical idea of ‘identity’ (leibniz), of two things the same as each other also occupying an identical place, tends to be nonsensical in spatial terms. again, in-between spaces are commonplace in architecture; but the thought of a semantic region between concepts, a region which is not itself a concept, seems to present large difficulties in philosophy (deleuze). architecture always has permeable boundaries, composite layers of space between the inside and the outside. but ‘fuzzy’ boundaries are notoriously difficult to handle in terms of abstract thought. language sometimes seems to become over-wrought by the use of abstract concepts. so that to speak in terms of space sometimes appears to require a language of contradiction. logic advocates clear thinking, and clear thinking needs self-identical concepts. ever since parmenides and aristotle, philosophy has repressed ‘the middle term.’ philosophy has only allowed the ‘footprint’ of the lambda , and disallowed the two-fold. what i particularly want to draw attention to about binary architecture is its ethical possibilities, its respect for alterity. each of these works which i have discussed actively sustains the architectural interstices 4 some binary architecture sites for possible thought 5 identity of the other. this is remarkable, in terms of heidegger’s thinking, because architecture is technology and technology is supposed to subvert alterity. as veronique fóti puts it, heidegger remained convinced to the end that technology will always actively subvert the unconcealment of its poetic supplement.13 but these works which i am calling binary architecture, even although they are technology, display certain poetic qualities with evident respect for the other. they project architecture into the realm of the ethical. the ethical, here, is understood in the sense of ‘letting be.’ the museum does not condemn the meeting house, but lets it be. venturi does not belittle wilkins or mock the shortcomings of his rather undersubscribed version of neoclassicism. scarpa’s ornamentation lets the casselveccio be. tschumi’s modernism does not displace the old studios and cinemas but lets them be themselves. to articulate the ethics of alterity beyond the mere letting-be of technology, architecture must engage in strategies of counter-action. binary architecture seems to provide an effective strategy, a straightforward approach to alterity. in binary architecture the established technologies or techniques are treated in the normal way as poles of constructed identity. but by constructing two technologies together, two differing identities, whether the difference be cultural, historical, or in terms of function, binary architecture also produces a region, a real space in which certain qualities of refined difference can be explored. the ethics of alterity can be conceived as a sort of negative entropy or creative doubt in the realm between poles of identity. in binary architecture the inbetween realm is a finite constructed space in which the thought of the two-fold can dwell (fig 11). notes 1 j. kipnis, “towards a new architecture,” architectural design profile (1993), n. 102, pp. 41-49. 2 m. pawley, “what london has learned from las vegas,” blueprint (may 1991), pp. 20-23. 3 m. heidegger, identity and difference trans. j stambaugh (new york: harper, 1969). 4 gilles deleuze, what is philosophy? (london : verso, 1994). 5 an edition of architectural design in 1993 was devoted to architectural works which interpret this fold literally—projects with folded and crumpled surfaces. 6 s. m. mead, te toi whakairo (auckland: reed/methuen, 1986), p. 200. 7 m. linzey, “speaking t o a n d talking about maori architecture,” dwellings, settlement and tradition eds. j. p. bourdier and n. alsayyad (lanham: university press of america, 1989); also in interstices (1991), n. 1, pp. 50-61. 8 b. tschumi, architecture and disjunction (cambridge: mit press, 1994), p. 55. 9 m. r. austin, “a description of the maori marae,” the mutual interaction of people and their environment ed. a. rappoport (the hague: mouton, 1976). 10 r. neich, painted histories (auckland: auckland university press, 1993), p. 124. 11 g. barton and d. reynolds, hotunui: the restoration o f a meeting house (auckland: auckland museum, 1985). 12 m. heidegger, “principles of thinking,” piety and thinking eds. j. g. hart and j. c. maraldo (bloomington and london: indiana university press, 1976), p. 58. 13 v. fóti, heidegger and the poets (new jersey: humanities press, 1992), p. 113. 2018 interstices under construction symposium + colloquium: presence symposium friday 13th july colloquium saturday 14th july 09:00am —09:30am registration (design theatre) 09:30am —10:00am symposium welcome an mihi (design theatre) colloquium welcome: matariki performance performed here by mezzo-soprano claire scholes and dancer cathy livermore session a: design theatre (423-348) session b: architecture lecture theatre 1 (alr1) (421-201) 10:00am —11:00am site + presence chair: ross jenner drawing canyon: asymptotic presences in scale, material and sense. simon twose and jules moloney in-time and in-place marian macken and fiona harrisson discussion keynote: hans ulrich gumbrecht new dimensions of presence 11:00am—11:30am tea + coffee tea + coffee tea + coffee 11:30am—01:00pm ritual + presence chair: julia gatley monumentality and ‘light’ in the sydney opera house kamila soh heritage & persistence: the case of the kaiapoi fragment andrew douglas and nicola short between presence and absence: phenomenal interstitiality in eisenman’s guardiola house adrian lo discussion music + machine + performance chair: harold marshall notations: drawing as idea and process between the intersection of music and architecture in relation to presence (skype) charlotte greub troubled bridges: absence and memory in the architectural machines of eadweard muybridge michael chapman ex uno lapide: a making present of absence (skype) guillaume dreyfuss, konrad buhagiar, ephraim joris discussion history / culture / theology presences across worlds anne salmond place of presence and absence in maori philosophising carl mika on holy ground: a church as a place of presence merv duffy round table 01:00pm—02:00pm lunch lunch lunch 02:00pm—03:30pm landscape + presence chair: marian macken a reorientation towards aesthetics: landscape architecture and the operationalisation of the sublime shaun rosier aalto’s foyers: landscape presences john roberts what landscape design aesthetics might offer to the question of the designer’s relation to the real? peter connolly discussion absence + vacancy + urban chair: andrew douglas vacant geelong mirjana lozanovska and akari nakai kidd presence—between walk and play and beyond jan smitheram lines from the past: evoking the presence of un-built architecture in virtual reality jules moloney, simon twose, anastasia globa and ross jenner discussion visual arts / media studies / artificial intelligence spectrum to spectre dane mitchell architectures of virtual absence: digital media and information environmentalism ethan r. plaut artificial intelligence,intensity, and presence sam ginn round table 03:30pm—04:00pm tea + coffee tea + coffee tea + coffee 04:00pm—05:30pm presence of absence (design theatre) making silence: some modes of emptiness ross jenner discussion composition / music / acoustics aesthetic immurement, the schock of the new, and my imperfect body (of work) david chisholm matariki and more gillian whitehead the oblique imperative: the acoustical dimensions of presence harold marshall round table 07:30pm dinner with ross interstices symposium open to symposium and colloquium attendees venue: ‘vivace’ 50 high st, auckland, 1010 in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 37 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m christoph schnoor ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna from early on in his career, austrian-born architect ernst plischke (1903–1992) wished not only to be a practising architect but also to be able to pass on his knowledge as a professor. as an émigré in wellington in the 1940s, he was able to give small series of lectures, sometimes in private circles, at other times in collaboration with the architectural centre. in 1947, he applied for a position of chair of design at auckland university college. although interviewed, the university preferred charles light, a beaux-arts trained, english candidate with considerable teaching experience. instead of teaching at university, plischke began his successful career as an independent architect (in partnership with cedric firth). sixteen years later, in 1963, plischke left new zealand to return to vienna. while giving up his practice in wellington, he was finally able to teach architectural design. for 10 years until 1973, plischke taught his master class at the academy of fine arts. the teaching aspect of his career has not previously been researched extensively. in his autobiography of 1989, plischke shows a few projects from this time, while sarnitz and ottilinger in their 2003 catalogue of plischke’s complete works only touch this subject ever so lightly. the most thorough documentation of his teaching stems from a 1976 publication of student designs, while the best documentation of the long-term results of his teaching is the collection of essays by his former students and assistants (also 2003) in which fourteen contributions are devoted to plischke as teacher. some of his former students have formed the plischke society to keep the memory of their teacher alive. this alone indicates that plischke had given more than just ordinary teaching. plischke is well known as a staunch supporter of modernist architecture—indeed, of a light, elegant modernism. did he teach what he practised? drawing from literature and personal conversations, as well as archival material, this article aims to show that while plischke was strict in expecting architectural modernism of a high quality from his students, more important to him may have been to teach his students a moral compass, to develop an underlying noble mind that would support their architectural endeavours. fig. 1 ernst a. plischke, 1947. [photograph by spencer digby, wellington] in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 38 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m a modernist architect with a strong sense of aesthetics plischke and his jewish wife anna came to new zealand in 1939 as refugees from the nazis in austria. from early on in his career, plischke had developed a reputation as a modernist architect, and as such he was an exception in austria. one of his best pieces of architecture is his employment centre in vienna’s suburb of liesing (1930–31). this building was soon published internationally, for example by alberto sartoris in gli elementi dell’architettura funzionale of 1935; but although the book title indicates functionalism, plischke’s architecture was driven by a strong underlying aesthetic sense, combined with his understanding of site, programme, and construction. having studied under prominent architects such as oskar strnad, josef frank, and peter behrens, all of whom were members of the austrian werkbund, plischke graduated from the academy of fine arts in 1926. before emigrating to new zealand, he was able to call a handful of houses, the double unit at the werkbund settlement in vienna, three employment centres, and a good 20 interior designs his realised achievements (orosz 2003).1 at the age of 33, he had won the großer staatspreis—the great state prize, a prize newly introduced by government. thus, when plischke arrived in new zealand in 1939, he had already made a name for himself. educational engagement in wellington early in his career, still in vienna, plischke developed the wish to teach architecture, to become a professor one day. in vienna, the circumstances did not allow this to happen. in wellington, while working in the department of housing construction, he took up the opportunity with delight to realise his dream to participate in architectural education—even if this was on a modest level. as early as 1941, he was invited by the wellington architectural students’ club to deliver a lecture. plischke reports to his life-long friend and confidante, the renowned potter lucie rie (1902–1995): the club of the students of architecture invited me to give a lecture on modern architecture. i spent plenty of time to prepare this lecture and enjoyed these preparations immensely. then the material became too much for one evening, so we had to have a second one. we had a projector which enabled me to show them plenty of my foto-cuttings; if you remember them. after the first lecture for the second evening there came also our chief architect with his wife, the assistant architect and also private architects who had heard about it. we had lots of fun out of this evening and especially for the youngsters it was absolutely new and exciting (plischke 1941).2 thus, with some right, plischke may have felt that he was able to attract an interested audience when speaking publicly about architecture. a little later, he was asked to deliver lectures at the history department of victoria university of wellington, both in 1943 and in 1945. plischke writes to rie: i already have another and quite pleasant private job. i have been asked to have a serie[s] of lecture[s] at the university out here. i may pick any theme i like and they want to have it in the way of kunsthistorisches seminar with 39 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e discussions and so on. i hope that i will like it very much (plischke 1943, april 19). the “kunsthistorisches seminar” was like a university seminar in art history, indeed on the topic of the fine arts. the seminar finished by the end of september. in a further letter, plischke adds: “there were ten of [the lectures], one every week, perhaps the greatest fun i had since i am here, very exciting but also very strenuous” (plischke 1943, september 30). in his application to auckland university college in 1947, plischke would list about 30 lectures he had presented overall (see further down). at the same time, plischke was able to lay down a few of his theoretical positions in two publications. asked to write a design guide for returning servicemen, about houses was published in 1943 by government. this was extended into a veritable book which discussed good modern design on three scales—the interior, the house itself, and the urban environment. design and living, published in 1947, allowed plischke to contribute to the design education of the general public. his engagement in educational activities in wellington extended into the early years of the architectural centre. the centre was created at a meeting on july 23, 1946. plischke was present, amongst architects such as graham dawson, gordon wilson, helmut einhorn, and fritz farrar, the two latter also being émigrés, and a group of students. plischke became part of the executive committee (salinger 1996: 69–78). he also participated in the publication of the centre’s journal, the design review, both with articles on his own work and, for a period, as member of the editorial board. as we have seen, plischke had already delivered lectures to the wellington architectural students’ club five years before the architectural centre was founded. because the only architecture school in the country was in auckland, a strong driver for the architectural centre was to assist “students with their study in the form of an atelier”; thus with support from the housing division and town planning office of the ministry of works, “in 1947 the centre ran its first course in architecture” (salinger 1996: 74). plischke was invited to take part in the 1948– 49 summer school studio session, which was held in august 1948. this was the starting point for the design and building of a contemporary prototype house, which became known as the demonstration house (gatley 1996: 89–95; gatley & walker 2014: 35–39). in this, plischke was joined by his former superior, gordon wilson—“an interesting pairing”, as julia gatley and paul walker observe, “given their much-hyped personality clash” (2014: 36). all of these moments show plischke’s wide engagement with architectural education of students as well as of the general public. after leaving the department in late 1947, a new phase in plischke’s life began when he officially went into partnership with cedric firth. the two young architects had met in 1939 in the department of housing construction and began to cooperate soon thereafter,3 while officially setting up their joint office as plishke & firth in early 1948. in firth, plischke found an equally committed supporter of modernist architecture. firth had trained as a builder and studied at auckland university college before travelling to europe in 1931 and 1932 (bowron 2000). in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 40 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m application at auckland university college in december 1946, auckland university college advertised for a chair of design in the school of architecture (auc 1947: 378–78a). student numbers in the school had continuously increased from 66 in 1943, to 210 in 1946, and would continue to grow. considering this increase, another two positions were advertised in 1946, that of a lecturer in construction and a permanent librarian (gatley 2017: 42, 44). also in 1946, several students had formed the architectural group, writing in their constitution that they would work on a development towards “1) group practice … on a co-operative basis” and “2) … to achieve an organization of planners and builders similar to the deut[s]che wer[k]bund, and including the ideas of the modern architectural research group [mars, london] and the association of building technicians in england” (architectural group 1946, in gatley 2010: 20). here was a call, made by young students, for modernist architecture in new zealand. this would manifest itself a few years later in the group construction company houses, designed and built by the group in auckland. ernst plischke was made aware of this opening by friends, suggesting he apply. he writes to rie: since my last letter we had again a bit of excitement, but not too bad. five months ago a new chair for design was created at the architectural school of auckland university. it was advertised all over the empire. it is the only architectural school in new-zealand. some friends thought that i should apply and that i even might have a chance (plischke 1947, june 14). it was a new position, needed because of the increased student numbers, to be filled by someone who would work closely with the dean, cyril knight—on whom cedric firth commented in a letter to plischke: “good prof. knight, may his bones rest in hell if not in worse” (firth 1948). knight, an australian who had studied in england, paris, and the united states, had been professor and dean at auckland university college since 1925. he had set up the bachelor of architecture, which started in 1926.4 both his education and teaching had been strongly focused on beaux-arts methods and practices. firth elaborates upon his criticism, made in the context of a visit he paid to architects at harvard and mit. on this occasion, he met with professor william wurster and walter gropius, calling the latter “an old and disillusioned man”. he also says, however, that wurster’s and gropius’ work at these schools “makes the school at auckland look quite foolish, and quite incredible” (firth 1948). plischke put together his résumé and sent it off to auckland—and to london, where the jury was assembling. professor lionel budden of the university of liverpool had been chosen as chair of the committee in england. apart from budden, this consisted of four officials, representing the royal institute of british architects board of architectural education, the architectural association school of architecture, the universities’ bureau,5 and the university of new zealand.6 in a 2010 paper, christine mccarthy has attempted to clarify the decision-making process for what might have become plischke’s professorship in auckland (mccarthy 2010: 258–64). she discusses the composition of the appointment committee in detail, in order to determine a possible bias of the committee towards the beaux-arts or modernism. while this seems to be difficult to establish in retrospect, she concludes that budden himself, although “a clear adherent to the beaux arts”, was sufficiently liberal and modern to steer 41 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e the university of liverpool towards the teaching of modernism (mccarthy 2010: 260–61). budden compiled a shortlist of six of the 12 applicants for interview. these were the candidates: ashworth, breakwell, bulmer, harvey, light, and wood. “professor budden indicated that in his opinion mr. plischke would have been included in this list had he been available in england” (auc 1947: 380). plischke was considered to be a suitable candidate but could not be interviewed together with the other six shortlisted applicants. thus he was in the strange situation to remain outside the main application process although he was present in the country where the position was to be filled. the interviews in london were conducted on april 21, 1947. the committee unanimously agreed on charles light as their preferred candidate, with harry i. ashworth as the runner-up. however, the committee saw itself “unable to recommend the appointment of any of the other candidates which it interviewed” (auc 1947: 381). a month later, ernst plischke was interviewed in auckland. he had been given relatively short notice, receiving the telegram on may 20, six days before the interview (registrar, 1947). he travelled to auckland via plane. the auc council minutes of may 26 state that “mr. e. a. plischke was interviewed by council” and recommend that the chair be offered to charles light while asking the senate “to approve of the following four applicants: h. i. ashworth, r. h. bulmer, a. c. light and e. a. plischke” (listed in alphabetical order and thus not giving away any hierarchy of the list) (auc 1947: 350). in the letter to rie from june 1947, plischke summarises: a few days ago i got a cable to come to auckland for an interview of the council. the chairman and part of the council was for me but the other professor who is dean of the faculty was dead against me. he wanted of course an englishman, with the routine experience of teaching, and [who] would be a mediocre architect and be no competition for him. so the final toss-up was between the englishman and myself. now his appointment has been announced in the newspaper (plischke 1947, june 14). the “other professor who is dean of the faculty” and who was “dead against” plischke, was professor knight. with the assumption that “the englishman” light would be no competition for knight, plischke indirectly says that he would foresee a competitive situation between himself and knight because of his own strong architectural convictions that would not (easily) be reconcilable with those of knight. returning to wellington, plischke muses over the event in a diary entry of the interview day. in view of the unfortunate circumstance that no official records of the interview have survived,7 his recollection is the closest we will get to know about the conversation that took place: whatever i said, knight would have found it unsuitable or insufficient; either too aggressive or not forceful enough. teaching experience as precondition. i have no english education. they asked many questions that were already answered in the application … apart from knight no one asked a question. it is just as well that the antagonism with knight became visible now and not too late. had i talked as i wished, there would have immediately been a row with prof [knight]. should i have presented a prepared lecture? … creative force of nz youth. if i had ever enquired if the riba recognises our degree. prof. knight did not query my qualification but that it is not a in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 42 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m british training. what ever i could have said in my favour was an attack on knight … i would endeavour to link my teaching—the work of the students—as closely as possible to the practice background and conditions of practice and every day life (plischke 1947, may 26).8 plischke seems to have seen correctly that his lack of teaching experience presented a difficulty. although the advertisement, while specifically asking for “qualifications and experience in architectural design”, did not require a mention of teaching experience (auc 1947: 378), in his application he had named all the lectures he had presented so far: a series of ten lectures on fine arts … in the history department, victoria university college, wellington, in 1943 … a series of ten lectures at victoria university college on the design of modern houses as an adult education course in 1945. several lectures for the army education service … a lecture to a conference of the new zealand librarians in auckland on community centres. lectures on design and criticism of esquisses for the wellington architectural students’ club. three lectures on problems of modern design to the architectural centre summer school of design, wellington. (plischke 1947, february 3: 3) about 30 lectures are surely more than nothing, but this enumeration certainly does not compare favourably with the comprehensive teaching and administrative experience of some of his competitors. plischke also saw clearly that his lack of an english background made it more difficult for him to be successful. whether his perceived discord with professor knight would have been as strong in reality as it was in his imagination cannot be answered. and given his difficulties with other strong minds—such as clemens holzmeister in austria or gordon wilson in wellington—it might very well have. julia gatley reiterates mccarthy’s findings, stating that “plischke [who] was a respected architect, was never a strong contender for the position because the college sought a person with both practice and academic experience, and plischke had comparatively little of the latter” (gatley 2017: 44–45). while the job description stated the “right to private practice” (unless it interfered with the duties at the college) and required a statement about the candidate’s experience in architectural design, the advertisement was surprisingly mute on both the expected teaching experience and practice experience (auc 1947: 378); in this, the ad was perhaps imprecise. and the surprise is that charles light who was appointed as professor, as per the short cv in the council minutes, did not have any practice experience at all. he had indeed won important design prizes—but there is no mention of running an architectural practice or having been employed in one (auc 1947: 374). plischke thought that in the end it came down to a decision between charles light and himself, and until the end of his life this is how he saw the event.9 this possibility cannot be ruled out entirely for two reasons: the committee in england saw itself “unable to recommend the appointment of any of the other candidates 43 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e which it interviewed”, and the fact that plischke was able to refer to the shortlist of two can only mean that members of the council at his interview must have indicated as much. so perhaps “the final toss-up” was indeed between light and himself, even if mccarthy claims that this was not the case (2010: 262). first, she notes that “the short-listing privileged experience and post-graduate qualification over practice, and experience over youth” (2010: 261). with this in mind, she re-formulates her question to ask whether or not another one of the british candidates should have been offered the position. this was william walter wood, a practising modernist architect with teaching experience who already had been head of school at three polytechnic schools (2010: 261). mccarthy concludes that on strength of the material available, william wood would have been at least a strong contender for the job, if not better suited than light. but he was not chosen—and so this hypothetical scenario is perhaps unrewarding. however, mccarthy importantly points out it appears that the english “committee’s bias was against a professor conducting practice” (2010: 262). indeed, the report by the universities’ bureau clearly argued against this possibility by stating william wood was “a very ambitious man, but the committee considered that he was likely to be more interested in the building up of a large private practice than in the development of a university school” (auc 2010: 381). plischke might easily have received the same comment had he been present at the interviews in england: his thought after the interview that “i would endeavour to link my teaching—the work of the students—as closely as possible to the practice background and conditions of practice and every day life” makes his position on the relationship between teaching and practice very clear. and it is a useful, modern position that would resonate in any similar application today. in a letter of june 1, 1947, to his family back in vienna, plischke goes into more detail, and his thoughts regarding teaching and practice seem relevant here: last night then was the meeting of the university council and i [was] presented and interviewed. of all the applicants only one architect in england and myself are left on the shortlist. very honouring, isn’t it? the president of the senate absolutely wants me. the dean (of the architecture faculty) wants the englishman. here, a teaching architect has not been allowed to practice until now. this is different for this new position, since one begins to accept that practice is important also for teachers. but it is an innovation. as of yet, an applicant for a teaching position only had to demonstrate teaching practice at other schools … the senate is divided and i think that the englishman will get the position. when i realised this during the interview where the dean was present, i got very depressed and disappointed (plischke 1947, june 1).10 so what emerges from a renewed study of the application process, with new material by plischke at hand, is that the committee—and thus, one has to conclude, auckland university college—was not sufficiently interested in a professor of design who would continue to maintain a design practice. charles light was their preferred candidate because of his uninterrupted academic experience and because he did not “threaten” to practise. as mccarthy has shown, his inclination towards the beaux-arts might have helped. perhaps plischke’s last sentence in his reflections on the train back to wellington can open a discussion: in the universities’ bureau report on the applicants, light in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 44 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m was recommended for being “the only one of the candidates who appeared to have a clear conception of how to teach the theory of design” (auc 1947: 380). it would be interesting to compare plischke’s ability to formulate his own theory of design: how would the committee have judged him? plischke had continuously developed his own theoretical stance on architecture and design since the early 1920s and had advanced far beyond what he was able to lay down in design and living— which had been published almost at the same time as the interview in auckland was conducted.11 would he have been able to convince the jury in london? it seems important here that plischke, who in his own personal reflections often maintained the need for an innerlichkeit, perhaps to be translated as inwardness that reflects one’s fundamental stance towards life as a whole, in these notes referred to the “conditions of practice and everyday life”: he had become well versed in the conditions of the making of architecture in new zealand and understood what the students would benefit from. plischke had both an interest and an ability to put himself in the students’ shoes. but perhaps that was only one aspect of the story. in 1947, resentments against germans (or, as in this case, german-speaking people) were still running high (beaglehole 1988). in a twist of irony, plischke’s disadvantage was not only to be of the german language but through being a migrant in the colony he had become somehow a local. he was the only applicant who lived in new zealand. seen from today’s perspective, the intimate local knowledge (own practice, planning for government both in housing and in town layouts and community centres) should have given him a solid advantage over any other non-local applicant. this question of teaching experience remains, and is to be re-considered in the light of his appointment in vienna: at the academy in vienna, teaching experience was not even considered. what counted was that candidates were prolific practising architects. appointment at the academy in vienna in january 1960, while still in practice with firth in wellington, plischke received a letter from architect roland rainer, who at the time was rector of the academy of fine arts in vienna. rainer enquired if plischke was willing to return to vienna to become full professor at the academy (rainer 1960). to add to the surprise, this meant that plischke would take over clemens holzmeister’s professorial chair. holzmeister (1886–1983) was a successful and politically active conservative modern architect who had emigrated to turkey in 1938 and returned to austria in 1954. he had been plischke’s nemesis in the years before the war. or so at least plischke felt. he saw holzmeister as being directly behind his difficulties in obtaining any commissions after 1933 and believed holzmeister had been against him winning the great state prize in 1935 (plischke 1989: 181, 199). with his first assumption, plischke may have been right, but in the second case, he erred: as part of the jury, holzmeister had suggested that plischke should win this prize, giving consideration to the many difficulties he encountered as a young architect in 1930s austria (posch 2010: 254). plischke answered rainer with ambivalence: in his letter of january 18, he speaks about their “lovely house and beautiful big garden” and about a hesitation to “deal with the question what a new uprooting and a back-transplantation would 45 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e implicate”; first of all he wished to discuss technical details with rainer (plischke 1960).12 but in the ensuing correspondence between the two architects, plischke did show himself prepared to leave new zealand in principle. his wife anna agreed more reluctantly since it meant a lot to her to be close to her adult sons (henry lang living in wellington and franz lang living in sydney, both with their families). still, in the following three years, plischke went through various phases of ambivalence and agony: this is how long the decision-making process in vienna took. again and again, he did not know whether they would finally leave for austria or not. for example, on may 20, 1960, he writes to his friend rie, expressing his unease: we live and work as usual, but in reality everything is totally unsettled with us. one day we think we are leaving n.z. for good—sell our house and the garden where we have taken roots during those 20 years and go back where we left then. another day we kind of hope that we stay here. no, lucie—i have no illusions; i am very aware of the mental climate of vienna from our last visit (plischke 1960). with this last comment, plischke refers to his first visit back to vienna in 1953, to celebrate his 50th birthday. he had not seen his family since their emigration in 1939. however, in vienna he experienced an overwhelming disgust at the continued presence of “nazis”—those who had either been in power during the third reich or been opportunist followers. a return to austria was, if not impossible, at least loaded with mixed feelings. however, plischke’s attitude changed, and he did hope to be appointed in vienna, while remaining very sceptical that it might not happen. in this letter, he continues: anyhow i think the whole lot of trouble is again a waste of time—there is no real likelihood that they will take me. in their coalition proporz [proportional representation] system 50% is red and 50% black—rainer is the red half and holzmeister and his chair is the black one. i have never been or will be a clerikaler [cleric] in my life. and that is what finally counts with the people who make the decision (plischke 1960). this is a reference to the political system of post-war austria which, in some ways, has been continued until this very day, with half of posts and jobs being given to social democrats and the other half to members or allies of the conservative party (berger 2007: 278–81). implicitly, plischke also refers to a letter by holzmeister of a few weeks earlier (april 1960) in which holzmeister speaks of his chair and that the institute for sacral art was attached to it. because he wanted this tradition to be continued, he was keen to know whether plischke had built any churches (holzmeister 1960). the leading nature of this question annoyed plischke and, in his eyes, demonstrated the politicisation of this case (a. plischke n.d.). in his scepticism, plischke was right in principle, however, in this case his worries were unnecessary: rainer had prepared the ground for plischke long before 1960; at least that is what appears to be the case when we closely follow the faculty meetings at the academy. roland rainer (1910–2004), seven years younger than plischke and a prolific modernist architect, had brought plischke up for discussion in these meetings as early as 1957, repeating his mention of plischke’s name several times up and until 1960. thus, it seems that rainer was eager to make his colleagues aware in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 46 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m of plischke and his achievements—perhaps to prepare them for a favourable decision at a later date. and if this was his tactic, it was fully successful. in the meeting on june 24, 1960, rector professor christian martin informed his colleagues that: professors dr rainer and dr holzmeister have asked to set the replacement of the chair of the master school, prof dr holzmeister, on the agenda. simultaneously, those above-named professors have named following architects for a list of three candidates, to be suggested to the federal ministry of education: ernst plischke, born 26 june 1903, in austria, currently in new zealand; arne jacobsen, born 1902 in copenhagen, denmark; heikke siren [sic], born 1918 in helsinki, finland. (academy of fine arts vienna 1960) martin concludes by saying: “prof dr rainer emphasized that the above named were outstanding and world-renowned architects. this dignifying appointment alone would cause a sensation in architectural circles internationally and bring honour to the academy” (academy of fine arts vienna 1960). this was indeed something of a coup since by naming the world-famous arne jacobsen, plischke’s own standing was automatically strengthened. was it rainer’s calculation that jacobsen would not accept the offer anyway? this is not to say that plischke would not have had an impeccable reputation in his own right. but being compared to an internationally renowned architect like jacobsen would have helped plischke’s position. jacobsen indeed declined the offer. in the end, the list was changed to plischke, german architect egon eiermann, and heikki sirén. in the decisive meeting of may 1962, the group of professors at the academy agreed to rainer’s suggestion and recommended plischke as their first choice (academy of fine arts vienna 1962). it was not until march 1963 that the council of ministers accepted plischke’s appointment. how much does teaching experience matter? does it matter if a candidate for professor of architectural design—whatever the actual job title—has considerable teaching experience when appointed? it seems that the german and austrian system differs fundamentally from the system employed in britain and new zealand in this regard. without going into depth about cultural differences in educational systems—here anglo-saxon, there continental—one can observe a different attitude with regard to the way in which practice experience in architecture is acknowledged. for the austrian professors at the academy of fine arts in vienna, there was no question whether plischke (or any other of their suggested candidates) had teaching experience or not. what mattered was that the new chair would have the design experience and international standing that would allow him to attract and educate keen students. the selection process of the new professor was also different from the british procedure: in vienna the members of the faculty made suggestions as to whom they would like to appoint as a new chair—that is, as their new colleague. this is, of course, fundamentally different from applying for a job opening. in new zealand in 1947, things were very different. 47 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e there is the question whether a design professor should be a career academic or a practitioner who teaches students, while keeping his practice. it appears that in the auckland process the committee preferred light over the other candidates not only because of his ability to teach and administer but also because he presented no “threat” of suddenly wishing to practise. they said: ... and though he has a good deal of practical architectural experience the committee has no doubt that his chief interest lies in teaching and it does not consider him likely to wish to develop a private practice to the detriment of his teaching duties (auc 1947: 380). while from the committee’s point of view this judgment makes perfect sense, it means that such a system sees no merit in the knowledge transfer that happens between teaching and practice. the german/austrian system which is based on such transfer is not without conflicts for exactly the reasons that the committee had outlined in the case of light and wood: often, design professors find it hard to combine their teaching with a successful running of their practice. since it is their practice experience that helped them obtain the position in the first place, it is often seen as desirable by the university that the professor in question keeps up his practice, with all the ensuing time and workload conflicts. the author of these lines has seen many cases in which this works well and an equal number of professors for whom it became necessary to decide for the one or the other. would plischke have made a good professor in the sense of what auckland university expected? perhaps not. as mentioned, he recorded in a note to self: “i would endeavour to link my teaching—the work of the students—as closely as possible to the practice background and conditions of practice and every day life” (plischke 1947, may 26). here, plischke stresses the point of practice—and probably did so in the interview. he had no wish to give up practicing at all. in fact, he would resign from the civil service at the end of 1947 to go back into practise from january 1948 onwards—and thoroughly enjoyed this move: “altogether i am satisfied, especially i enjoy my freedom” (plischke 1949). the “graph”, the essence of plischke’s architectural thinking two years after his return to austria, plischke was appointed rector of the academy. that year, 1965, he also gave his inaugural speech at the academy. in it, plischke brought together his lifelong grappling with the contradictory elements of architecture in one precise but flexible definition. not often in his career did he get the opportunity to define, to the point, his theoretical position. here, the occasion allowed him to make a programmatic statement about his fundamental attitude towards architecture. he says: in my view, the aim of a fully developed modern architecture needs to be the unity of a spatial concept on the one hand and a bauplastik [a built sculpture] on the other hand. these two qualities nevertheless need to be developed from a fulfilment of the function of the building and of its structure. the principal quality of such a fully developed architecture lies in the tension between the spatial concept and the building’s function on the one side and the vision of a sculptural building and the structure on the other hand. only this tension brings a building to life, and makes its architectonics in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 48 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m noticeable. without this tension we end up with either pure utilitarianism or with an abstract built sculpture (plischke 1965b: 11–12).13 in this definition, which he later completed with an explanatory diagram which he called the “graph”, plischke does something very interesting: he extends the vitruvian triad of utilitas, firmitas, venustas (utility, firmness, beauty) by splitting venustas into two aspects: the interior and the exterior beauty—space and sculpture. through this manoeuvre, he arrives at a construct that allows him to identify the tensions between its elements: between space and function on the one hand and sculpture and tectonics on the other hand. these tensions are well-observed, and through this comparison plischke demonstrates an understanding of an essential principle of architecture. this understanding was not only central to his own design work, he also placed it at the heart of his teaching. a supportive but strict teacher plischke would teach his master class at the academy for 10 years, from 1963 to 1973. classes were small, with about 10 students per year. a total of 103 students graduated from plischke’s class, while another 86 studied one or more semesters in his class. these are small numbers, and they may highlight the more personal approach to teaching in this type of master class, compared to today’s year groups in new zealand architecture schools. in 2002, 10 of his former students formed the ernst-a.-plischke society in vienna to keep the memory of their teacher alive. to honour the centenary of plischke’s birthday in 2003, they decided to publish a book with essays on their former professor. the list of 10 grew into 25 names of contributors to the book that is now jokingly known as the “red book” (because of the colour of its cover). not all of these had been his students, some were colleagues, friends, or his assistants at the academy. but this fact in itself indicates that plischke had given his students more than just ordinary teaching. in conversations, architects luigi blau and matthias mulitzer have pointed out how much plischke strove to assist his students. blau, born 1945, studied in plischke’s master class from 1966 to 1973. he says: “the positive aspect of his teaching was that he tried to encourage, to support, when a student was near and dear to him” (l. blau, personal communication, august 30, 2016). mulitzer, who later interviewed plischke (1985 and 1986) as preparation for plischke’s autobiography and helped assemble the material for it, was too young to study under plischke (he graduated from the academy in 1986). but through his conversations with plischke he developed an intimate understanding of the master class and plischke’s teaching. he says, almost with the same words as blau, that plischke tried to support his students and to help them where he could (m. mulitzer, personal communication, august 30, 2016). at the same time, plischke appears to have been a strict, at times unrelenting, teacher. he gave his students a heavy design workload before they would be able to receive the abtestur—maybe “attestation” in english. mulitzer describes it as giving his students “hard nuts to crack”. apparently, plischke added detail on detail drawing before he approved a design. where there was a difference in opinions, he would argue with his students, “but”, as blau asserts, “not in a bad way, instead disputing in a good way” (l. blau, personal communication, august 30, 2016). 49 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e not indoctrinating but anachronistic? architect alessandro alverà, who studied under plischke from 1967 to 1971, states that it came as a big surprise to him that plischke’s students did not rail against their professor as was common at the other schools during the 1968 protest years: “i think that plischke’s lectures as well as his teaching style explain the loyalty of his students” (alverà 2003: 98).14 this opens the question of how plischke’s teaching sat within the radical challenges and changes of those years. architect dietmar steiner remembers a case in which the given brief was a single-family house—in 1971. he found the idea of having to design a house for one family appalling and changed the brief into designing a communal house for 20 people. plischke’s reaction apparently was to ask: “so my anna would have to stand in the kitchen with other women?” he then declared disinterest in the project (steiner 2003: 126). steiner was allowed to continue working on the project—but with one of his assistants, not with plischke. steiner consequently shows himself unimpressed with plischke’s teaching but remains with respect for what he calls a “relic from another time” (2003: 126). this is an odd incident when compared with an observation of janet paul. paul and plischke had been friends since the 1940s when she designed the inscription for plischke’s 1942 tasman memorial. she remembers that plischke had told her of his efforts to design with cultural awareness. being tasked to design multi-units for ōrākei in auckland from 1939 onwards (schnoor 2014: 805–16), plischke apparently was well aware that they were intended for māori of the ngāti whātua iwi (tribe), the original residents of ōrākei: in private conversation, plischke later related how, since these houses were to be lived in by maori families, he had tried to find out the future residents’ specific preferences: these were for communal kitchens where all meals were prepared and eaten, as well as for the well-used deep verandas such as were commonly found in maori meeting houses. in his initial design, plischke had altered the small separate spaces of the kitchen, the tiny dining area, and the sitting room of the typical state house to make instead one large kitchen/living room, which opened on to a sheltered sun terrace. the sketch went up through the housing department as far as a final arbiter—the prime minister, peter fraser—who then rejected it on the grounds that “our maoris deserve the same housing as is made for pakeha new zealanders” (paul 1998: 193). when he had shown so much progressive sensibility in the 1940s, how come a student’s idea to design a communal kitchen in 1971 vienna angered him? steiner also compares plischke and grete schütte-lihotzky, the designer of the frankfurt kitchen of 1926. he shows himself surprised how little interest both of them showed in political and societal challenges of their time. “they followed an inner position and searched to justify it morally and politically. in that, however, they neglected much that actually developed in politics and society of these times” (steiner 2003: 128).15 it is fair to say that plischke, despite his closeness to the big events of the twentieth century, indeed remained surprisingly apolitical. party politics were not his means of engaging with society. however, in his in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 50 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m designs of both social housing and community centres he remained driven by a fundamentally philosophical stance towards life. steiner’s view of a politically and socially disinterested teacher is countered by martin spühler’s observations. spühler, one of plischke’s many swiss students, who graduated from the master class in 1967, claims that plischke’s teaching allowed great freedom and was in no way indoctrinating. in trying to answer the question of why plischke was of such sustained importance to him as a teacher, he refers to the congruence of the person plischke and his work (spühler 2003: 130).16 spühler remembers plischke’s tuesday lectures as “unsystematic but always accurately prepared”, adding that the students had to assemble the whole picture from mosaic pieces. “this concept, at first sight didactically unclear in its setup, suppressed the student as consumer; it required perseverance and patience” (spühler 2003: 131).17 alessandro alverà adds that the lectures often served as a platform for lively discussions that were primarily led by the more mature students (alverà 2003: 98). “in the ensuing discussion on the respective topic we discussed, on the same level, in the most engaged manner. often, very critical voices could be heard” (99). thus, even with only letting a few voices speak, a complex image of a strict, at times unrelenting, but helpful teacher begins to form—one who fostered discussion but may have ignored positions he disliked. a good designer does not necessarily make a good design teacher. how does plischke compare in this sense? in his autobiography, plischke remembers: my aim however was not to produce nothing but small plischkes, but rather to foster the strengths of the individual students, in order to help them become independent architects, able to expand, who would keep up my baugesinnung (mindset relating to architecture) (plischke 1989: 423).18 there are two parts to this quote: first, in a conversation, luigi blau answered the question of whether plischke had tried to educate “small plischkes”. blau thought plischke had not, saying: “even if plischke did not really listen very well, he however tried to read the design attempts of the students as best as possible in order to help them, as best as he could” (l. blau, personal communication, august 30, 2016). the other part of the quote refers to the baugesinnung, a neologism made up by plischke. “bau” means building or “bauen”: to build. “gesinnung” is more difficult: attitude, mindset, beliefs, all these could be “gesinnung” but it is also an old-fashioned word. what plischke means by it is a noble mindset that underlies all architectural activity—in fact, a philosophical stance towards life in general that is characterised by humility and the above-mentioned inwardness (innerlichkeit). what he, according to his former students, tried to achieve on a daily basis was to help them understand and continue this underlying humble stance towards architecture. in a lecture in 1965, plischke said: “the baugesinnung is a matter of knowledge, of restraint, of tact” (plischke 1965a).19 studio teaching: light-weight structures and a “new landscape of living” towards the end of the 1960s, when changes in study organisation and content were discussed all over the world, plischke seems to—once again—have been in an ambivalent position: on the one hand, he attracted many students from 51 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e roland rainer, who, as viennese contemporaries tell, was very authoritarian; and maybe, plischke’s personal attitude helped avoid a severe clash between professor and students, as alverà suggests in the above quote. on the other hand, plischke was not entirely of this new time. he was a staunch modernist and did not agree with postmodernist ideas at all. but this does not mean that he would have been anachronistic in the sense suggested in the section above. while he did not show much interest in blob structures as they were en vogue with the students in the early 1970s, organic and tensile constructions—above all frei otto’s munich olympic stadium—formed a core part of plischke’s teaching and are reflected in his students’ works. thus, the publication on work by students of plischke’s master class of 1976, entitled designs and projects, opens with the illustration of a structural model used for the class’s exhibition in 1967, an elegant tectonic sculpture made of metal, mesh, and string, by one of the students, based on purely tensile and compressive forces within the structural members (plischke 1976: 9). “organically differentiated” is the title of the first chapter, showing tensile structures, space-frames, and tectonically expressive structures. these works are very different from plischke’s own designs and perhaps somehow surprising when compared with his site-inflected modernist houses, but it appears that he had a great interest in exploring the possibilities of such elegant lightweight structures. the other main trajectory of plischke’s design teaching has to do with urban planning. soon after his return to vienna, plischke took a small group of students to the old danube river arm outside the city, to introduce a project for a new district, or one could even say for a whole new city outside the existing city centre of vienna, called wohnbezirk alte donau—“residential area old danube”. in the accompanying text and in the respective chapter of his autobiography, plischke refers to his own experiences with housing and community planning schemes. he speaks of wishing to develop an alternative to the viennese courtyard housing projects of the 1920s. as a student, plischke had worked briefly on drawings for karl ehn’s famous project of the karl-marx-hof and had, so he remembered, despised its monumentality (plischke 1989: 72). he had also submitted a project for another courtyard scheme competition, together with his american friend william muschenheim. strangely, plischke never appreciated the tenement blocks of “red vienna”, despite their achievements both in urban design and in liveability for the tenants. from his days in vienna onwards, he always preferred the model of the siedlung, smaller scale houses with adjacent gardens in a much lower density. “there is no doubt for me that the single family house, whether as terraced house or detached, constitutes the best form of living, particularly because of its garden” (plischke 1976: 68).20 one could easily say that with this preference in mind, the new zealand way of living suited him more than the typical viennese density. in this publication text and in his autobiography, he mentions as precedents both his hometown klosterneuburg (for its size of ca. 25,000 inhabitants and its density), together with his community designs for trentham or naenae, north of wellington (plischke 1989: 451–55). plischke suggested a neue wohnlandschaft, a new landscape of living (1976: 69). this project of autumn 1963 was indeed forward-looking in two respects: the so-called donau-city became reality after 1990 and, with the united nations buildings, forms a new high-rise area outside the city of vienna. with the in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 52 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m wohnbezirk alte donau, plischke also anticipated the many harbour revitalisation projects all over the world that were to be realised from the 1990s onwards. most of the student projects, however, employed a much higher density than those two precedents. the illustrations also demonstrate that the students were given substantial freedom to develop their own interests. what the publication overall demonstrates is that plischke did not mind so much if a student designed in an architectural language different from his own preference. what remained crucial was that students stayed away from formalism and utilitarianism. conclusion: teaching or practice plischke was as devoted a teacher of design as he was an architect. the publication of his former students in 2003 speaks of this devotion, as discussed here. much to his regret, plischke did not receive many more architectural commissions after his return to vienna. he was merely able to realise one school building and two more houses, with the frey house in graz (1970–73) an accumulation of his life-long experiences in bringing function, space, structure, and bauplastik into one. such lack of commissions, however, meant that he was now able to devote his time almost exclusively to teaching. it is perhaps the irony of history that thus, in vienna, he—involuntarily—fulfilled one of two main requirements that the commission for the auckland professorial post had set. similarly, in the late 1940s, he would have been the professor that the academy of fine arts in vienna wanted him to be. in auckland, he would have tried to bring practice and teaching as closely together as possible—exactly what the expectation was at the academy in vienna when he was appointed in 1963. the academy wanted him to participate in public debate—much more than he did. this situation perhaps then characterises plischke: that he was always somewhat out of place. or, as he had written to his brother-in-law, the painter max frey, in 1939: “it is the outland/foreign that attracts me … the foreign, between which one lives without really belonging—the air and the distance to ones surrounding” (plischke n.d., ca 1939: 6).21 acknowledgement this article is part of a bigger research project on ernst plischke. this includes a book in the german language about to be published in vienna, and which is planned to be published in english also. an earlier version of the article was presented at “educating architects and planners, 1912–2017”, a symposium at the university of auckland in 2017. i am grateful for the opportunity to discuss ernst plischke’s contribution to architectural education. all translations from german are my own, unless noted otherwise. 53 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e endnotes 1 though published in sarnitz and ottilinger (2003), orosz’s catalogue was unfortunately not included in the english edition of this book (sarnitz & ottilinger 2004). 2 in this letter to rie, plischke refers to the lectures having taken place “this last winter”, i.e. mid-1941. 3 linda tyler suggests that firth wrote the specifications for the house plischke designed for otto frankel in christchurch in 1939–40 (tyler 1996: 34). see also firth’s job diary of the years after 1944. cedric firth papers, no. 94–132, alexander turnbull library, wellington. 4 first set up as bachelor of architectural science, it had by 1933 become the bachelor of architecture (barch) that remained in place until the introduction of the master of architecture (professional) (march(prof)) (treep 2017: 27). 5 “in 1907, the league of empire sponsored an imperial conference on education; in july 1912, the first congress of the universities was held in london, representing 53 universities and with 60% of delegates having had direct experience of living and working in the empire. a central universities bureau of the british empire was established at the imperial institute in 1913” (bush 2014; see also pietsch 2013). 6 “professor l. b. budden, professor of architecture, university of liverpool, in the chair; mr. martin s. briggs, senior vice-chairman of the board of architectural education, r.i.b.a.; mr. c. st. clair oakes, senior master of the architectural association school of architecture; mr. s. ziman, representative in great britain of the university of new zealand; mr. j. f. foster, universities bureau of the british empire (secretary)” (auc 1947: 380). 7 it appears that the records for the auckland school of architecture for the year 1947 have gone astray. information kindly provided by elizabeth nichols, auckland university records management programme manager, january 2018. 8 original diary entry in german with english parts. translation by the author. parts that are english in the original have been set in italics. 9 and this is what he conveyed to linda tyler when she visited plischke in vienna in 1984 as part of the research for her master of arts thesis on plischke. 10 “gestern abend war also die sitzung des universitätssenates und ich vorgestellt und interviewt. von den gesamten bewerbern ist nun nur noch ein architekt in england und ich in der engsten wahl. ganz ehrend, nicht? der präsident des senates will unbedingt mich. der dekan der (architektonischen) fakultät will den engländer. hier hat bist jetzt ein unterrichtender architekt keinerlei praxis haben dürfen. das ist anders für diese neue lehrstelle, weil man einzusehen beginnt, dass praxis auch bei lehrern notwendig ist. aber es ist eine neueinführung. bis jetzt hatte ein anwärter für eine lehrstelle nur praxis an andern schulen nachzuweisen. [...] der senat ist geteilt, und ich glaube, dass der engländer die stelle bekommen wird. als mir das gestern bei dem interview, bei dem auch der dekan anwesend war, klar wurde, bin ich sehr, sehr niedergedrückt und enttäuscht geworden.” 11 plischke (1947, june 14) reports having just sent lucie rie a copy of the book, meaning it was published by this date. 12 “wir leben hier in unserem lieben alten haus und schönem großen garten seit über zwanzig jahren. […] bevor ich mich aber innerlich zuviel damit auseinandersetze, was eine neue entwurzelung und rückverpflanzung mit sich bringen würde, ist es notwendig, in einigen punkten klarer zu sehen.” 13 “das ziel einer vollentwickelten modernen architektur muß meiner ansicht nach eine einheit sein zwischen einem räumlichen konzept einerseits und einer bauplastik andererseits. diese beiden qualitäten müssen aber aus der erfüllung der funktion des bauwerkes und seiner konstruktion erarbeitet werden. die wesentliche qualität einer solchen vollentwickelten architektur liegt in der spannung zwischen dem raumkonzept und der funktion einerseits und zwischen der vision einer bauplastik und der konstruktion andererseits. es ist erst diese spannung, welche einen bau lebendig macht und zu einem spürbar-werden seiner architektonik führen kann. ohne diese spannung haben wir entweder einen reinen utilitarismus oder eine abstrakte bauplastik.” 14 “bei meinem übertritt war es eine große überraschung für mich zu sehen, dass die plischke-schüler nicht über ihren professor schimpften, wie es an anderen schulen damals üblich war. ich denke, dass plischkes vorlesungen sowie seine lehrmethode die loyalität seiner schüler begründeten.” 15 “sie folgten einer haltung und suchten dies moralisch und politisch zu begründen. dabei ließen sie aber vieles, was sich tatsächlich in politik und gesellschaft in diesen zeiten entwickelte, außer acht.” 16 “als ganzes zeigt das bild eine übereinstimmung von mensch und werk.” 17 “dieses auf den ersten blick didaktisch unklar aufgebaute konzept verdrängte den studenten als konsumenten, es verlangte ausdauer und geduld.” 18 “mein ziel war es aber nicht, lauter kleine plischkes zu produzieren, sondern die stärken der einzelnen studenten zu fördern, um selbständige und entfaltungsfähige architekten aus ihnen zu machen, die meine baugesinnung aufrecht erhalten.” 19 “die baugesinnung ist eine sache des wissens, der zurückhaltung, des taktes.” 20 “es besteht für mich kein zweifel, daß das einfamilienhaus, ob als reihenhaus oder freistehend, die beste wohnform ist; vor allem aber wegen seines gartens.” 21 “es ist die fremde, die mich anzieht ... das fremde, zwischen dem man lebt, ohne so wirklich dazu zu gehören—die luft und der abstand zu seiner umgebung.” in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 54 ernst plischke as teacher: wellington (auckland) vienna f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m references academy of fine arts vienna. (1960, june 24). minutes of the 6th faculty meeting, academic year 1959/60. archive of the academy of fine arts vienna. academy of fine arts vienna. (1962, may 23). minutes of the 4th faculty meeting, academic year 1961/62. archive of the academy of fine arts vienna. alverà, a. (2003). vermittlung. in f. kurrent & w. stelzhammer, ernst anton plischke: architekt und lehrer (pp. 100–109). salzburg: anton pustet. architectural group. (1946). constitution of the architectural group. republished in j. gatley (ed.), (2010). group architects: towards a new zealand architecture (p. 20). auckland: auckland university press. auckland university college. (1947). council minutes. volume 1. registry archive, university of auckland. beaglehole, a. (1988). a small price to pay: refugees from hitler in new zealand 1936–46. wellington: allen & unwin and department of internal affairs. berger, p. (2007). kurze geschiche österreichs im 20. jahrhundert. vienna: facultas. bowron, g. (2000). firth, cedric harold. te ara—the encyclopedia of new zealand. retrieved from https://teara. govt.nz/en/biographies/5f6/firthcedric-harold bush, b. (2014). review of pietsch (2015). review no. 1541. retrieved from http://www.history.ac.uk/ reviews/review/1541 firth, c. (1948, july 9). letter, new york, to e. plischke. plischke archive, academy of fine arts, vienna. gatley, j. (1996). a contemporary dwelling: the demonstration house. in john wilson (ed.), zeal and crusade: the modern movement in wellington (pp. 89–95). christchurch: te waihora press. gatley, j. (ed.). (2010). group architects: towards a new zealand architecture. auckland: auckland university press. gatley, j. (2017). after knight comes light (and toy). in j. gatley & l. treep (eds.), the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning (pp. 40–73). auckland: school of architecture and planning, university of auckland. gatley, j., & walker, p. (2014). vertical living: the architectural centre and the remaking of wellington. auckland: auckland university press. holzmeister, c. (april 6, 1960). letter to e. plischke. archive of the academy of fine arts, vienna. mccarthy, c. (2010). imagining prof plischke. in m. chapman & m. ostwald (eds), imagining… proceedings of the 27th international sahanz conference (pp. 258–264). newcastle, nsw: society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand. orosz, e. (2003). catalogue of works. in sarnitz & ottilinger (2003). paul, j. (1998). ernst plischke. in james bade (ed.), out of the shadow of war: the german connection with new zealand in the twentieth century (pp. 192–199). auckland: oxford university press. pietsch, t (2013). empire of scholars: universities, networks and the british academic world, 1850–1939. manchester: manchester university press. plischke, a. (n.d.). letter to dr r. lang. carbon copy. archive of the academy of fine arts, vienna. plischke, e. (n.d., ca. 1939, august). letter to m. frey. private archive, vienna. plischke, e. (1941, september 15). letter to l. rie. private archive, vienna. plischke, e. (1943, april 19). letter to l. rie. private archive, vienna. plischke, e. (1943, september 30). letter to l. rie. private archive, vienna. plischke, e. (1947, february 3). application for chair of design, faculty of architecture, auckland university college. plischke archive, academy of fine arts, vienna. plischke, e. (1947, may 26). diary entry. plischke, e. (1947, june 1). letter to his family, vienna. private archive, vienna. plischke, e. (1947, june 14). letter to l. rie. private archive, vienna. plischke, e. (1949, october 17). letter to l. rie. private archive, vienna. plischke, e. (1960, january 18). letter to r. rainer. archive of the academy of fine arts, vienna. plischke, e. (1960, may 20). letter to l. rie. private archive, vienna. plischke, e. (1965, january 12). lecture. in a. alverà (2003). gehört und geschrieben. auszüge aus den dienstagvorlesungen von eap. in f. kurrent & w. stelzhammer, ernst anton plischke: architekt und lehrer (p. 109). salzburg: anton pustet. plischke, e. (1965, november 24). die vielfalt der bildenden kunst in der welt von heute. inaugural speech at the academy of fine arts vienna. plischke, e. (1976). entwürfe und projekte: meisterschule e. a. plischke. vienna: prachner. plischke, e. (1989). ein leben mit architektur. vienna: löcker. posch, w. (2010). clemens holzmeister. architekt zwischen kunst und politik. salzburg: müry salzmann. rainer, r. (1960, january 4). letter to e. plischke. archive of the academy of fine arts, vienna. registrar, auckland university college. (1947, may 20). telegram to e. plischke. archive of the academy of fine arts, vienna. salinger, l. (1996). a breath of fresh air: the architectural centre inc. in john wilson (ed.), zeal and crusade: the modern movement in wellington (pp. 69–78). christchurch: te waihora press. sarnitz, a., & ottilinger, e. (eds.). (2003). ernst plischke: das neue bauen und die neue welt. munich: prestel. republished in english as: sarnitz, a., & ottilinger, e. (eds.). (2004). ernst plischke: modern architecture for the new world. munich: prestel. schnoor, c. (2014). between werkbund and wartime sobriety: ernst plischke’s designs for orakei. in c. schnoor (ed.), proceedings of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand: 31, translation (pp. 805–816). auckland: sahanz and unitec epress; and gold coast, queensland: sahanz. spühler, m. (2003). reflexionen eines schülers aus der schweiz. vermittlung. in f. kurrent & w. stelzhammer, ernst anton plischke: architekt und lehrer (pp. 130–133). salzburg: anton pustet. steiner, d. (2003). meine anna sollte hier mit anderen frauen in der küche stehen?”. in f. kurrent & w. stelzhammer, ernst anton plischke: architekt und lehrer (pp. 126–128). salzburg: anton pustet. treep, l. (2017). “a school of architecture for the dominion”: the first years. in j. gatley & l. treep (eds.), the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning (pp. 14–39). auckland: school of architecture and planning, university of auckland. tyler, l. (1996). the urban and urbane: ernst plischke’s kahn house. in john wilson (ed.), zeal in crusade: the modern movement in wellington (pp. 33–38). christchurch: te waihora press. interstices 11 the landscape of portraits christopher morgan this series of four drawings, located in the expanded field of painting, explores the indeterminate relationship between the structure/frame and picture plane. this enquiry looks to understand new operations between the two by exploring gilles deleuze and félix guattari’s idea of faciality through the manipulation of framing and the multiplication of surface planes. in doing so, these drawings have implications for architecture. the first drawing of this series, iron man (fig. 1), opens this enquiry with a black lattice type line that configures the torch beam (the work’s dominant visual frame) as integral to the painted surface. the line also has the ability to see through the painting: the torch as x-ray through the work (and world) and its operational frames.catherine ingraham explains that it is impossible to know the world outside of its representations due to the “ever-present structure of the frame, the lens, the world, the apparatuses of representation” (1996: 65). herein lies the problematic: as the configuration of the frame in iron man does not organise the world in the cartesian sense, its relation to the picture plane is problematised. the faciality and, in particular, the face-landscape relations discussed by deleuze and guattari, provide an understanding of the possible operations occurring between the picture plane and the frame. in these drawings, the lines of the face are not ingraham’s line but something much closer to deleuze and guattari’s line of identity, which paradoxically deterritorialises. although a literal face is represented in secure hord and make it now (figs. 2 and 3), their appearances show how the face is (literally) transformed into a field or a milieu on which signification and subjectification can take place. in these two works, “faciality” as a territorialising and deterritorialising procedure, emerges at a certain point in the drawing’s history (on the eve of a “finished” work) when the line as frame is at risk of disappearing.1 1 ingraham explains that, “as a subject, the line must be outlined – given a shape or character – and it is precisely at the moment when the line takes a shape that it eludes our grasp.” (1996: 67) fig. 1 iron man, 2008. acrylic on canvas, 1200 x 1500mm. fig. 2 secure hord, 2008. acrylic on canvas, 1220 x 1830mm. fig. 1 fig. 2 105 the last work in this series, one-eyed jacks (fig. 4), acknowledges this idea of faciality from its inception. the figure (a spaghetti western bandito) engulfs the picture plane, already questioning its content before being transformed by reframing. deleuze and guattari speak of the transformational workings of this system: “this machine is called the faciality machine because it is the social production of face, because it performs the facialization of the entire body and all its surroundings and objects, and the landscapification of all worlds and milieus” (1987: 181). deleuze and guattari advocate a challenge to the anthropological machine by reterritorialising faciality through deterritorialising the body (174).2 how the drawn face (portrait) and landscape reterritorialise each other offers a place for the indeterminacy created by these works to allow the prop/frame and the content/plane to play out a new order. the deterritorialised face is the white wall, a plane empty of content or identity. the prop/frame, which refuses to have a static relationship with the picture plane, can now inscribe meaning, and therefore operates as a landscape (field of relations). on the deterritorialised face, the drawn line reconceptualises identity in architecture: no longer does the facade in architecture provide identity through a static coherence, but as a landscape of continuously moving features with no exacting relations. what these drawings do is challenge the hegemony of the plan and the notion of form as the only means of providing a sense of the architectural. the drawn line, while allowing this idea of identity to occur, also allows the dispersal of meaning and thus the continual reterritorialisation on the deterritorialised face. this transfigures the face (face as line) to become a subject maker.3 when we are confronted by a face – as in these drawings – whether reflective or intensive, we re-coordinate our vision of the world and consequently our actions in that world, to approach the world anew. references deleuze, d. & guattari, f. (1987). a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. (b. massumi, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. ingraham, c. (1996). lines and linearity: problems in architectural theory. in a. kahn (ed.), drawing/building/text (63-84). new jersey: princeton architectural press. fig. 3 make it now, 2008. acrylic on canvas, 1210 x 1820mm. fig. 4 one-eyed jacks, 2008. acrylic on canvas, 1200 x 1800mm. 2 deleuze and guattari give an example of this face-landscape relation: “architecture positions its ensembles – houses, towns or cities, monuments or factories – to function like faces in the landscape they transform.” (1987: 172) 3 for an example of the relationship between faciality, subjectivity and architecture see loo, s. (2009). the transverse face: architecture x culture. in gatley, j. (ed.), cultural crossroads: proceedings of the 26th international sahanz conference. the university of auckland, new zealand, 2-5 july 2009). auckland: sahanz. fig. 3 fig. 4 interstices 11 invited papers interstices 11 interview with momoyo kaijima of atelier bow-wow sarosh mulla and patrick loo since forming atelier bow-wow in 1992, yoshiharu tsukamoto and momoyo kaijima have been responsible for some of the quirkiest and most subtly nuanced work produced by their still-young generation of architects. their seemingly light-hearted name masks an extremely insightful research-based practice; this is not to say they are paper architects. their projects range in scale and are defined by spatial inventiveness rather than aesthetic brand. they have gained notoriety for shoehorning complex buildings into tightly-packed urban neighborhoods. this notoriety has developed steadily into a loyal following, and as japanese architecture becomes more and more the focus of the international discourse, atelier bow-wow seems set to become a central figure in the development of architecture globally. the atelier bow-wow pair is prolific. they have published and built an enormous amount in their relatively short careers thus far, and the quantity of this work is matched by its quality. the work has its roots in effective, practical research, and is aided by the laboratory system of japanese architecture schools; each student joins the laboratory of a particular professor, with the lab often taking on larger or ongoing projects as a group. kaijima’s own laboratory is based at tsukuba university and is a mixture of undergraduate, masters and doctoral students. in her own words, “the university provides a good framework by which to be responsible to the public”, and this belief can be seen throughout atelier bow-wow’s academic and practice-based pursuits. for kaijima, her work at the university allows dedication to design ideas, meaning that architecture does not have to submit to being “business more than research”. for atelier bow-wow, design at the most fundamental level needs to be ”for our enjoyment, for our pleasure”, otherwise, in their eyes, “quality will go down”. when asked how they manage to squeeze in time for both practice and research, kaijima points out that their work time is “always continuous. when the two types of work are similar, you can get them to work together a little bit easier.” both tsukamoto and kaijima have taught at some of the most progressive institutions in the world, including the harvard graduate school of design and the eidgenössische technische hochschule (eth) in zurich. these schools are known for pursuing new approaches to design, and atelier bow-wow’s contribution is apparent in their research into what might be described as “evolutionary urbanism”, that is, the way the city makes and remakes itself following its own laws of selection. their investigations into tiny “pet architecture” showed how in-between spaces get adopted and developed in tokyo, often resulting in quirky buildings that wouldn’t occur on green field sites, or even in less densely populated cities. following these investigations the practice also presented their own speculative designs for “pet architectures”. of course, understanding that momoyo kaijima was born in tokyo in 1969. she founded the tokyo-based firm, atelier bow-wow, with yoshiharu tsukamoto (born 1965, kanagawa) in 1992. the pair’s interests range from urban research to architectural design and public artwork. their research works are epitomised by the publications pet architecture guidebook and made in tokyo. while on the one hand the practice has designed over 20 detached houses such as gae house (2003) and house & atelier bowwow (2005), recent projects such as hanamidori cultural centre in tokyo (2005) mark an expansion towards a larger scale. their artwork has been exhibited across the world at biennales in korea, china, japan, italy and brazil. momoyo kaijima visited new zealand as the university of auckland school of architecture and planning international architect in residence for 2010. sarosh mulla and patrick loo interviewed her at the auckland regional council offices on 6 august 2010. 137 no space in the city need be wasted will inevitably translate into their domestic designs; within atelier bow-wow’s houses, every space is exploited. there are lessons here for our own cities, as we learn to deal with urban densification. atelier bow-wow’s work shows that even if the quarter-acre dream is now slipping beyond the means of most, we need not view being squeezed into the city as a necessarily bad thing – it can force an exciting re-imagining of what constitutes domestic space. atelier bow-wow’s latest publication is behaviorology (tsukamoto & kaijima 2010). the meaning of the book’s title is defined on its cover, and gives an indisputable sense of direction for the work inside. behaviorology, the book cover says, is a subjective field of interpretation that focuses on the study of “functional relations between behavior and its independent variables in the behavior-determining environment”. anthropologists and psychologists might be entirely comfortable with such a definition, but within the field of architecture it represents a distinctly provocative change of direction. behaviorology stands to completely reverse the ubiquitous uniformity of style, colour, shape and volume that characterised the international style as well as the reticent architecture produced in the decades following the demise of post-modernism. it sets the scene for pluralistic solutions and binds program into a driving role in the design process. a way of living can be designed in parallel to the architecture, rather than simply resulting from it. atelier bow-wow refer to this as “behavior-engineering”. in this respect, atelier bow-wow’s projects are humanist. they study the role of humans within architecture in a way that goes beyond the empirical analysis of data employed as a methodology by offices such as oma or mvrdv. atelier bow-wow embraces more the subjective facets of the brief, such as the client’s dreams, personal goals, and even their desire to make their pets happy. while such subjective issues could prove slippery, it seems that with each brief the pair are able to move beyond any obvious responses and to deliver instead a novel rethinking of program and occupation. while at first glance some atelier bow-wow projects could be written off as pure formalism, each is anchored by a genuine consideration of the inhabitation of the interior. the resulting spatial complexity, particularly in their residential projects, results in a new way of living. the house tower in tokyo (2006), which is based on their observations of the way land in japan is subdivided over the generations, exemplifies this approach. producing a family home with a total floor area of 65.28sqm on a 42.29sqm site while only creating a building footprint of 18.44sqm takes skill. it takes even greater skill to produce such a building with moments of genuine spatial delight and generosity. living spaces flow vertically into each other, creating elegant volumes and articulating the program across the various split-levels. the idea is materialised in concrete and glass, distilled to the point where the form of the house represents the program, the history of the city, and the social processes that have made this type of housing necessary. the finishing of this project is of the usual high japanese standard, but it is its reconsideration of high-density housing typologies that is particularly interesting. kaijima explained how this vertically works in her own house (fig. 1): “in the case of house and atelier bow-wow, we had a twelve meter difference in height interstices 11 from bottom to top … i tried to create connectivity, but in person the experience of this is more one of this corner, that corner, another corner. that means the contact you feel is not so strong: you are aware that other people are there, but it is not so disturbing. this vertical type of connection is very interesting.” the practice conveys their concern with occupation through their drawings by adding a perspectival projection to plans and sections. these drawings show the occupants sleeping, eating and generally living in the space. these drawings are not simply ink sketches showing a stylised image of the volume, but are highly detailed construction drawings that also communicate texture, light and other tactile elements rarely included in cad drawings. another feature of these drawings is that they show an understanding of the building in relation to the client. atelier bow-wow’s architecture does not imagine an idealistic living environment littered with objects cut from magazines; they are concerned with producing a direct response to client needs that doesn’t rely on creating a neutral, ‘flexible’, and gallery-like backdrop. why should the occupant have to buy new furniture? fig. 1: house and atelier bow-wow, shinjuku, tokyo (2005) 139 to facilitate the successful delivery of such spaces, atelier bow-wow conducts discussions with their clients about their previous spatial experiences – what their previous homes were like, and what they did and didn’t enjoy about their workspaces. these discussions lead to consideration of how the designs of spaces might affect the behavior of the occupants, resulting in a re-evaluation of the way in which people conduct their lives. this raises an interesting point about the work of atelier bow-wow: its quality is not linked to its context or scale. the office also has no defined aesthetic style. their output is defined instead by a way of working that focuses on the uniqueness of their clients. “every client is looking for something different. that’s why our designs are so different for each project. we always try to find something new in the surrounding area. our method is based on research, but we always adapt and change. the objective is the same but the approach is different.” when asked whether or not atelier bow-wow gets to choose its clients, kaijima answers, “basically we don’t choose. we give some kind of conditions based on time or budget and so on. if the project doesn’t fit the conditions then it’s very simple, we don’t do it.” kaijima does point out that most of their clients are architecturally knowledgeable, and as they are often also from creative fields they are not strangers to the creative process. this awareness allows the pair to start the design process one step ahead, which in turn allows them to push the client and their brief further within the time and budget provided. clients who have made a deliberate and educated decision to engage a practice like atelier bow-wow are expecting their brief to generate a challenging response. atelier bow-wow’s practice is based on discussion, and on the idea that what is around us is worth interrogating. it also assumes that architecture can be both a lens for viewing the society in which we live, as well as a mechanism for changing that society. “i like to talk to people through architecture issues. the subject of the discussion might be some other issue, but we always try to look for its relationship to architecture and society or culture. architecture always helps me to understand what’s happening in each different city or society.” references: tsukamoto, y. & kajima, m. (2010). behaviorology. new york (ny): rizzoli. the perplexity of painting the perplexity of painting laurence simmons “tiene in sé la pittura una forza divina” (leon battista alberti) interstices 4 book review: the perplexity of painting 1 carlo bertelli, piero della francesca (milan: silvana editrice, 1991) (english edition: ithaca: yale university press, 1992) isbn 88-366-0330-0 attilio brilli, in search of piero: a guide to the tuscany of piero della francesca trans. deborah hodges, (milan: electa, 1990) isbn 88-435-3218-9 bruce cole, piero della francesca: tradition and innovation in renaissance art (new york: harper collins, 1991) isbn 0-06-430906-1 john pope-hennessy, the piero della francesca trail (london: thames and hudson, 1991) isbd 0-500-55024-7 marilyn aronberg lavin, piero della francesca: san francesco, arezzo (new york: george braziller, 1994) isbn 0-8076-1317-7 marilyn aronberg lavin, ed., piero della francesca and his legacy (washington: national gallery of art, 1995) isbn 0-89468-203-2 bernard-henri levy, piero della francesca (paris: la difference, 1992) isbn 2729107851 ronald lightbown, piero della francesca (new york: abbeville press, 1992) isbn 1-55859-168-0 you are driving from the tuscan city of arezzo in the direction of the delicate profile of monte maggiore in the apennine range, more precisely towards the small mercantile town of borgo sansepolcro: in summer through blazing yellow fields of the myriad turned heads of sunflower plants you would wind back and forth across narrow, sinuous streams; in winter through wooded gorges covered in the russet browns and muted greens of thicket growth, dotted here and there with silver-blue elders. a landscape of understated yet evocative beauty. a little past the halfway point of your journey, on an isolated knoll, lies the walled hilltown of monterchi (a corruption of the latin mons hercules). outside these walls on a narrow road flanked by two rows of cypresses you reach the tiny mortuary chapel of monterchi’s cemetery or camposanto. inside that chapel is a small but important fresco painting, piero della francesca’s madonna del parto o r (very) pregnant portrayal of the virgin. you note her protruding abdomen which she touches with her right hand through the expandable pleats of her maternity dress; her left hand twisted awkwardly against her waist as if to support and counterbalance her newly acquired weight; the humility, intense introspection, almost a sense of unease or impending drama, you feel, in the expression on her face with its half-closed eyelids and downcast eyes. “but a mother [you remember julia kristeva once stating] is always branded by pain, she yields to it.”1 perhaps it is the extraordinary intimacy of the cramped viewing conditions? the way in which the central figure of the madonna steps out to engage you as spectator? the enthralling quality of the light? your growing awareness of the strong geometrical underpinnings of this composition? the two angels who contemplate us so rigidly, witnesses rather than interpreters, pulling back the flaps of the tent-like structure, are almost perfect mirror images of each other made from the simple flipping over of the one cartoon. after a time you begin to understand that a geometry of pentagramal relationships inhabits the interactions of the figures within the internal dimensions of that tent. nor is it difficult to appreciate the simplicity, yet efficacy, of the sparse symbols piero uses such as the repeated pomegranate motif with its associations of fecundity and the bursting activity of birth. or is the strength of your response simply a result of the fact that you h a v e made this journey, that this is one of the few paintings left today where one’s encounter still has some of the authentic feel of an individual pilgrimage and, as such, is personalised? it is as if, as spectators, we are caused to refocus ourselves in front of this interstices 4 book review: the perplexity of painting 2 fresco, as if the placidity of the painting’s surface is in some way a rebuke to the restlessness of our eyes: the restlessness that keeps us from seeing things while it kids us that we are seeing everything. whatever it might be, most visitors to this tiny chapel feel that there is something very special about this painting and this painter. if you undertake this journey you will have completed the first leg of what, especially after john mortimer’s successful television screenplay of his novel summer’s lease, has recently become known as ‘the piero della francesca trail’ (see the useful but rather descriptive volume by sir john pope-henessey or the detailed historical compilation of travellers’ responses by the italian publishers electa). it is a trek which in recent years, because we have just celebrated the five-hundredth anniversary of the artist’s death, has drawn many and varied visitors, attracted not only by the paintings of piero themselves, but also by the promises of special exhibitions, conferences and celebrations to mark this occasion. there has also been, as naturally happens at these moments, something of a biblioblitz of new books on the artist during the last five years. one great disappointment of all this activity and these festivities is that the restoration of the fresco cycle of the legend of the true cross i n a r e z z o ( t h e subject of a new illustrated monograph by marilyn aronberg lavin) has not been completed as was previously promised, and today unsightly scaffolding still masks the viewer’s appreciation of at least half of that composition. this, however, is a disappointment that is positively balanced by the masterful restoration of the madonna del parto a n d the new arrangements for its exhibition on the outskirts of monterchi. a rehousing which nevertheless means, perhaps somewhat sadly, that the especial intimacy of the traveller’s encounter with this work described above and attested to by so many travellers of ‘the piero della francesca trail’ no longer pertains. when examined in detail, the history of piero’s reception as a painter instructs that he was not always so popularly or widely admired, nor was he always such an accepted part of the canon. vasari’s account of piero “defraudato dell’onore che si deve alle sue fatiche” (“cheated of the honour due him”) during his lifetime could also be extended to cover the response to his work during the first four centuries subsequent to his death. for, oddly, his elevation to the status of major artist does not begin to happen until the middle of the nineteeth century and he is then further promoted by berenson and the postimpressionists (cézanne and seurat) at the beginning of the twentieth. for them it is the rational, abstracted structure of piero’s work and its obvious connections with cubism and modernist abstraction that drew approbation. it is not suprising, then, to learn from biographers that picasso, in the middle of his analytical cubist period, spent hours in front of piero’s arezzo cycle of the legend of the true cross engrossed in resolving problems of linear ambiguity, as his drawings and paintings of the hilltown of horta de ebro testify. artists by imitating a painter’s work, or even by putting it up for their critiques, place it more firmly in the canon, re-marking it for our critical attention. piero della francesca is one of the most potent twentieth century examples of the phenomenon norman bryson has labelled as ‘retroactive canonisation,’ where a painter’s work “emerges retroactively, in the tropes of homage (submissive or subversive) in which it comes to be located.”2 for piero we could also mention a further case of what i would call ‘interdisciplinary canonisation’ through the various activities of twentieth century architects and writers who have cited, recited and resited piero’s work for us. part of piero’s present popularity lies in his populism: even today the faces of the stocky aretini and italians of the region encountered in bars, on public transport, during the evening passeggiata o n town squares, uncannily seem to have just stepped forth from one of piero’s frescoes. there are, too, many popular touches in piero’s painting ranging from the testicle that rather naughtily slips out of the side of the drawers worn by the figure engaged in transporting the wood for the true cross counterbalanced perhaps even more cheekily by the halo pattern of the growth rings that encircles his head to the topographical echoes of the approach to borgo sansepolcro that are so clearly there in the background to his version of the baptism of christ. by situating provincial borgo sansepolcro on the shores of the river jordan, piero is poignantly evoking the hills, fields, crops, sky, even the pungent smell of the tilled tuscan earth, so familiar to his contemporary onlookers, and familiar also to those viewers today who undertake to travel ‘the piero della francesca trail.’ that piero’s populism still has a serious hold was powerfully proved recently when it was suggested that his madonna del parto b e moved from its tiny chapel to a grander museum setting. it was significant that the women of monterchi objected, albeit unsuccessfully, on the grounds that, for them, piero’s painting was a living presence, a potent talisman for birth and fertility and recent critical studies of this work, elaborating on this popular supposition, have attempted to link the figure of the pregnant madonna to specific cults interstices 4 book review: the perplexity of painting 3 of fertility and water rites of the local, pre-christian rural culture. according to this interpretation, in this painting piero is not simply responding, as has long been held, to a possible personal, biographical situation, but his subject matter is part of a longinstitutionalised secular (but then also christian) tradition aimed at the protection and support of mothers of the local peasantry during difficult periods of pregnancy and birth. but perhaps the real reason for the twentiethcentury interest in piero della francesca’s work lies in the fact that he sees painting as an activity of the intellect and that his intuition of the real is part of a formal, intellectual search for the numerical essences of things. vasari writes of him as “the leading geometrician of his day” and, not suprisingly, piero teorico (‘piero the theoretician’) was the title of a recent international colloquium held on the artist. sansepolcro was not simply a provincial renaissance backwater (as most commentators tend to assume), but a more-than-modest centre for mercantile mathematics and humanist activity. piero’s two treatises, on perspective and on the five regular bodies, as recent critical editions have proved, are important moments in the history of geometry and mathematics and exercised, when adapted and disseminated by piero’s protege and possible plagiarist, luca pacioli, a deep influence upon the sixteenth century. as john pope-hennessy has remarked “a skeleton of theory” underlies all of piero’s works and geometrical analysis was fundamental to the planning of his compositions. for piero the essence of painting is perspective, but differently his is an approach to perspective considered from the point of view of the spectator where the intellect plays a role in the creative perception of a sense of depth. piero is one of the first renaissance painters to realise that the dimension of figurative painting was not simply that of recognisable forms which belong to the natural w o r l d , b u t t h a t i t i s a l s o t h e domain of abstract organisation where line, colour, surface re-present that reality. part of the twentieth-century fascination with piero, it seems, may also perversely be due to the difficulties we experience with his painting. piero’s painting often leaves us feeling perplexed. his monumental pala dei montefeltro f o u n d t o d a y i n t h e pinacoteca di brera , milan, is such a bewildering painting: a history (istoria) seemingly without action, fragments of an everyday world tied to an eternity, where we sense a cogent yet puzzling underlying logic. so precise is piero’s attention to detail that it has been noted that the steel gloves placed by the donor figure, federico da montefeltro, in front of the virgin even reveal a tiny border of the red velvet that lines them inside. yet the answers to the grander questions about this work have remained elusive. who exactly are these figures? for example, the bearded man on the right (st john the evangelist? st andrew? st paul?) and to what ‘species’ do they belong? (angels without wings? saints without haloes?) and where are they with respect to the architecture that contains them? under an imaginary c u p o l a , i n f r o n t o f o n e , a t t h e r e a r o f a c h u r c h , towards its abside? what, too, is the source of the strange light which illuminates this scene? as well, there are a myriad more questions that remain unanswered hors texte: for which church was the pala painted? when? (the dates so far proposed vary between 1466 and 1474). has it always been a painting of today’s dimensions? from the giant scallop shell of the abside on a golden chain hangs the greatest mystery of all, a single, perfect ostrich egg. the ostrich, we know, figures on the imprese or coats of arms of the montefeltro family; ostrich eggs are laid in the sand and warmed in the sun in the absence of parents and so may possibly allude to the unique fecundation of mary by the holy spirit. or there are possible connections with the nascent interest in greek culture during the renaissance and the account in pausanius of the temple in which a priestess venerated leda’s egg hung from the ceiling in a similar fashion. (bertelli’s volume and the collection of specialist essays piero della francesca and his legacy are especially informative on questions such as these). but even with the possibilities of these ovological meditations and explanations there remains something ambiguous and peculiar about this suspended egg. for the more you look at this painting, the more it disintegrates and loses its sense of wholeness to reveal pieces and structures that were not at all apparent when you first looked at it. there is, for example, the curious absence of a figure on the left of the composition, in an empty space signaled by the gaze of both the duke and the virgin. is the painting in some way a memorial to the duke’s dead and therefore absent wife, battista sforza, whose memory is also recalled by the presence of her saintly namesake, s. giovanni battista, on the extreme left? the fact that piero seems to have literally reused part of the cartoon of his earlier double portrait of montefeltro and his wife for his profile of the duke bears this out and suggests that something of what alberti believed to be the essential function of painting is at work here: “tiene in sé la pittura forza divina non solo quanto si dice dell’amicizia, quale fa gli uomini assenti essere interstices 4 book review: the perplexity of painting 4 presenti, ma più i morti dopo molti secoli essere quasi vivi ... e così certo il viso di chi già sia morto, per la pittura vive lunga vita.” (“painting,” alberti declares, “possesses a truly divine power in that not only does it make the abstract present (as they say of friendship), but it also represents the dead to the living many centuries later ... through painting, the faces of the dead go on living for a very long time.”) there is another fascinating biographical reference in this work: it is possible that the pieces of armour we see (notice how battered the surface of the helmet appears) are those that federico da montefeltro w o r e d u r i n g a j o u s t i n 1 4 5 0 w h e n a b l o w f r o m a lance penetrated the visor, broke his nose piercing his right eye and almost touched his brain. this, then, allows us to see the profusion of blood on the bodies of the other saints in a different light. more importantly, the complete mutilation of his right eye together with a profile held so rigidly parallel to the painting’s picture plane means that federico da montefeltro, who ‘donates’ the painting to us and is also our ‘stand-in,’ can’t see what we as spectators see, that he is, so to speak, ‘turning a blind eye’ to the mysteries of the scene before us and yet remains himself one of those mysteries. the strange, almost anamorphic qualities of the surface painting of federico’s armour where in the chestpiece we find fused reflections of madonna and child and where in the battered helmet on the ground the shadowy reflections must logically be those of the spectator’s space, our space, twisted and contorted almost beyond recognition, indicate a complex metatextual strategy of revealing while concealing, a displaced representation of the act, what we might call the scene, of painting. there is a further intriguing example of ‘wilful blindness’ on piero’s part in an equally perplexing w o r k , a n a l t a r p i e c e n o w i n t h e galleria nazionale dell’umbria in perugia. it is an altarpiece which has always seemed to its viewers something of a grand, if unwieldly assemblage, and the scene of the annunciation which crowns it was, it has been argued, once possibly a separate rectangular altarpiece, subsequently altered to its present shape when it was used to make a gable for the tryptych of the madonna and saints. here the instance of perplexity was first remarked upon, but only briefly and in passing, by kenneth clark in his seminal monograph on piero. the virgin directly in front of the kneeling angel is not in the same piazza space as that angel. at first she may seem so as the black stone visible between the pair of columns in turn superimposed on the black panel behind the virgin creates the illusion that the columns and the arch lie behind her. this impression is reinforced by the horizontal black bands that counterplay above the two protagonists. however, it is when we notice, and i suggest that it is important that it takes quite a while to do so, that the base of the first column group is in fact placed in front of the virgin’s mantle, then we realise that in so doing piero has placed her in a separate enclosed space. as kenneth clark notes: “indeed it is some time before we realise that the virgin is behind the first columns to the right, and the discovery, when we make it, shocks us by a sense of disproportion.”3 that is, the positions of the angel and the virgin are articulated in space in a way actually completely different from how they appear to be on first sight. clark’s ‘shock’ value is enhanced even further when we understand that the virgin is not simply “behind the first column to the right” as he suggests but that the two figures are placed on the same white strip on the floor where in fact the second group of four columns (visible only as a tiny protruding sliver) must be. this means, of course, that these columns block the line of gaze, and that the angel is unable to see the virgin and viceversa as drawings of the reconstructed spatial arrangements done by thomas martone and referred to by bertelli indicate. piero’s observer, perhaps now something of a combination of private investigator and perspectival geometrician, has had his or her gaze captured and deceived but is then made something of a collaborator in the construction of the true spatial relations in this composition. in a painting that makes use of some of the most powerful resources that can possibly be employed in the construction of a sense of depth, piero, one of the renaissance’s greatest theoreticians of perspective, by giving us such a planar effect within a depth is experimenting with one of the theoretical conditions for the possibility of representation in painting. in the catalogue for a show he recently guestcurated at the louvre museum in paris mémoires d’aveugle (memoirs and possibly memories of the blind) jacques derrida has explored primary questions of vision and the importance of the metaphor of blindness for artistic activity. in the act of painting from memory, derrida suggests, at the very moment of applying paint to canvas, the painter is no longer looking at his or her subject but at the painting coming into being. during the act of painting, the artist ‘has seen’ and ‘will see’ but ‘presently does not see,’ since at the moment a brushstroke is made there opens up an abyss between the thing painted and the painting stroke. so a painting is always made from memory, always interstices 4 book review: the perplexity of painting 5 attempts to recapture the visible through memory, since at the moment of putting brush to canvas, the painter is no longer looking at his or her subject, but at the painting coming into being. even the very mark made at the tip of the brush is not itself strictly visible until after it is made. the painter is blindly reaching out ‘to see’ what is there, to make what is there visible, by relying on the hand. this is the perplexing apperception that founds painting. like the blind themselves the painter is a visionary who sees without eyes what others can see with them. derrida adds the suspicion that when an artist chooses an image of blindness as his or her subject matter what she or he paints in the end is an allegory for the process of painting, an allegory for the very necessary blindness experienced by the artist i n t h e a c t of painting. there is also, as derrida indicates, a powerful analogy between the activity of the artist and that of christ the healer of the blind who reaches out to empower the sight of the blind by tracing the contours of their eyelids with his hands. so if we are to believe, and there seems no reason not to, vasari’s account of the end of piero’s life there is a touching artistic justice in the fact that piero during his final years was struck by sudden blindness brought on possibly by glaucoma. piero’s physical blindness, like federico’s one-eyed variety, is a biographical metaphor for what i have called the scene of painting, that moment when a painter deploys complex frames of the presentation of the issue of representation. of this piero was the renaissance painter par excellence, the master of what louis marin calls the ‘reflexive opacity’ of painting, that process whereby every painting is like a pane of opaque glass that allows us to see something other than itself, through itself, while it is being viewed. this is the other journey, the journey of the mind, on which piero takes us where his paintings themselves have become like those dear departed friends whose portraits alberti says “con molta ammirazione dell’artefice e con molta voluttà si riconoscono” (“are recognised by spectators with pleasure and deep admiration for the artist”). notes 1 julia kristeva “stabat mater,” trans. leon s roudiez, the kristeva reader ed. toril moi, (oxford: blackwell, 1990), p.167. 2 norman bryson tradition and desire: from david to delacroix (cambridge and new york: cambridge university press 1984). 3 kenneth clark, piero della francesca (london and new york: phaidon, 1969), p. 66. interstices 11 refereed papers 9 notation and crocodiles: the architecture of steinberg’s magnolia motel sarah treadwell cartoonist steinberg’s well known and celebrated ink drawings frequently involve architecture and the discipline is often the subject of his acerbic wit and melancholic sharp insights; his wonderful covers for the new yorker have been understood as commentaries on urban conditions and american dreams of progress. steinberg (1914-1999), born in romania but known for his observations of a wider world, initially studied in philosophy and subsequently in architecture, and his drawings offer critiques of architecture, cities, geometry and those parts of human life that resist the clean orderliness of basic, euclidean structures. steinberg suggested that the time spent at the reggio politecnico studying architecture “brought purpose to the continuous line of my drawing … a way of looking at writing from my illiterate days” (smith 2007: 26). this paper considers a series of drawings that steinberg included in his collection, the labyrinth, published in 1960. the selected drawings are far from the stately skylines of new york, addressing instead the everyday yet haunting architecture of the magnolia motel. in interviews recorded between 1974 and 1977 steinberg spoke of the difficulties of drawing from life and the need to first give up on all commonplaces of the drawing subject: “more difficult than inventing is giving up on accumulated virtues. the things you discovered yesterday are no longer valid. it’s impossible to find anything new without first giving something up” (steinberg and buzzi 2002: 70). motels have already ceded from virtue and while architecture is generally constrained by the known, the anticipated and a heavy history, the quick wit of motels, subject to steinberg’s drawing, catch at the possibilities of invention. architect and architectural theorist marco frascari, who has written about saul steinberg’s marvellous creations, in a diatribe about the contemporary nature of architectural drawing, asserted “that current architectural graphic productions have reached an unchangeable and highly sterile phase of inert classifications and taxonomies, based on a pseudo-transparency of scope and a pseudo-scientific justification of the functions and roles carried out by the different kinds of architectural representation” (frascari 2007b: 1). the motel as a type might be the site of sterile excess but frascari’s desire for a fluid, fertile graphic engagement with architecture drives this analysis of steinberg’s magnolia motel drawings, which will be considered as an aberrant and productive architectural notation. frascari’s own writings on the architectural plan give insight into steinberg’s inscriptions because steinberg utilises the disciplinary conventions of architectural drawing, plans and perspectives, distorting and remaking them, producing new conditions of programmatic description. architectural drawings, under his manipulations, become figural, destabilising habitual representational systems. the magnolia motel drawings can be viewed as records of social behaviour steeped interstices 11 with emotional emanations: images of an unattainable condition of home slipping into and out of categories of architecture. operating between writing and drawing, steinberg’s images are critically shaped by the architectural plan, the drawing that cuts horizontally through the social life of a building and yet is recognised as an abstraction. this essay considers the effects of steinberg’s disruptive figurations in drawings that comment on the social, material and atmospheric conditions of life in a motel. motels have long figured in the popular press as sites of transgression, violence and dubious commerce. stories of drug dealing, prostitution and mayhem colour this architectural type, which also houses cosy versions of the domestic. the motel in alfred hitchcock’s enduring horror film psycho (1960), the site of the bloody shower scene, is set beside a proper (and unnerving) gothic house. as constructed by hitchcock, bates motel serves as both a sign of modernity with its horizontality, close relationship to the car and obsessive attention to plumbing, and as a counterpoint to the stifling madness of the single-family home. multiple and reoccurring, unlike the singular suburban home, the motel is in steinberg’s much-reproduced drawings a repetitious home that travels, demanding only a fleeting allegiance: it is a space for the convergence of the fixed and the mobile. the motel is a transit-form of the domestic that could be seen as complicating the oppositional structure that cultural theorist meaghan morris pointed out in her essay on the henry parkes motel, where the home is inscribed as the site of “both frustrating containment (home as dull) and of truth to be rediscovered (home as real)” (morris 1993: 252). families occupy the motel as a home away from home, alien and desired, different and familiar. in the process of being replaced by holiday resorts, motels in new zealand, remote and necessarily out of date and time, persist on the edges of motorways, lakes and volcanic landscapes. the car, following the endless white line of the road across landscapes, through towns, is intercepted by a motel knowingly placed within the driver’s vision on the outskirts of town. premised on a short life with frequent renovations and typically low rise, motels consist of car park, bedroom, basic cooking facilities, and a bathroom. they provide accommodation that is relatively anonymous and reasonably cheap in comparison with hotel accommodation and, while they are disparagingly charged with a temporary and second-rate homeliness, they might also be seen more positively through steinberg’s drawings, as an imagining of everyday life without routines of ownership, without closure. around the time of the drawings of the magnolia motel, michel foucault located the motel as a form of heterotopia: “this type of heterotopia, which has practically disappeared from our civilizations, could perhaps be found in the famous american motel rooms where a man goes with his car and his mistress and where illicit sex is both absolutely sheltered and absolutely hidden, kept isolated without however being allowed out in the open” (foucault 1967). in the limited quarters of the motel the impossibility of separation or personal distance is combined with the expansive freedom of the open road. the potential of mobility becomes disconnected from notions of progress and accumulative constructions of home, and allied instead to chance and desire. foucault described heterotopic sites as relations of proximity or propinquity, associated with deviancy, and his analysis was framed in reaction to the conservative morality of that period of social change. nabokov’s descriptions of 11 motels in his novel lolita in 1955 also would have promoted the association of the motel with both pleasure and cruelty. humbert recounts: “to any other type of tourist accommodation i soon grew to prefer the functional motel – clean, neat, safe nooks, ideal places for sleep, argument, reconciliation, insatiable illicit love” (nabokov 2000: 143). the idea of the motel as a housing of deviancy continues to be registered in both contemporary, popular commentaries and in the physical planning of the motel. magnolia motel the magnolia motel is both a persistent idea and a building. the material version of the motel, in which steinberg could have stayed on his trip to kentucky, tennessee and west virginia in 1957 (rosenberg 1978: 242), was recorded on the website vanishing america and included photographs of the magnolia motel from the 1950s, the 1970s and in more recent times. located at knoxville, tennessee, it is depicted nostalgically as an architectural sign of a golden past and in its contemporary condition as the haunt of prostitutes. the neon sign of the motel is now missing but the magnolia motel remains mythical, fictive and inaccessible – there is always “no vacancy” (according to steinberg’s drawing). steinberg drew the magnolia motel at least four times in the labyrinth and his drawings include two site plans, a plan, a perspective sketch and a key detail of a general condition of “motelness” which is positioned beneath the magnolia motel plan. the plan drawing, like a folded-out developed surface drawing, includes elevational information, and the combination of the drawings provides an almost complete architectural design of the motel. shaped with a sinuous, stuttering line, the architectural drawings enact the air of freedom and comic moodiness that pervades the various formations of the magnolia motel. the motel drawings are each “read” following steinberg’s own instructions: “i am a writer who draws” (willer 2009: 5) and with a specifically architectural eye. arrival on the edge of the long highway a neon sign looms up as the automobile, imaginatively finned, elongated and gleaming, speeds along: a jumble of block letters stacking up in identification of product and place – a sign illuminating participation in a network of virtual relations, signaling intersection and a conjunction of services. the sign points out that the motel is air-conditioned (a longed-for relief from the hot, humid interior of the leather-clad car); it has a television, is a member of the aaa, is named magnolia and has no vacancies. the car speeds off into the night. the sign leapt out of the darkness and from the page of steinberg’s book. with its reference to service the sign is an indexical link to networks of commerce, advertising and exchange. it offers identity and the formal aspects of the sign are linked to a striving for modernity and newness subject to the cyclings of fashion. visible from a distance, the motel sign, like most advertising, projects and seduces; the words demand attention but in capitals they are subject to a 13 per cent reduction in reading speed, signs approach too quickly and visibility is fleeting (rehe 2000: 106). interstices 11 the motel in steinberg’s drawing exists under a moon, always at night. the moon is a thin crescent, cuckold horns pointing into a sky rendered wide and bare. the crescent moon, marking (illicit) beginnings and endings, echoes, in reverse, the form of the curved word on the sign: “air-conditioned”. glowing like the moon, neon effects are hinted at in the drawing of the multiple, parallel brake lights that stutter behind the cars pulled up at the units. for the museum of neon art neon is “[n]ot just for sleazy motels anymore”1 but neon, like motels, is either bright or swallowed up in darkness, pure pleasure or dubious; neon reeks of commerce and exchange. the violence and complex social negotiations that remain hidden in the family home are manifest in the secrecy of a motel advertised by glowing neon. steinberg admired american artist edward hopper for his rendering of neon light (steinberg and buzzi: 2002, 59) and hopper is remembered for his motel paintings of anxious expectancy (treadwell 2005). magnolia m o t e l tv air conditioned aaa no vacancy words as formal constructions, as building blocks, gain ascendancy. the motel drawings in the labyrinth are heavy with words and steinberg refuses their usual orderly, linear progress. in other drawings in the labyrinth ornaments and mazes replace words in speech bubbles, and clouds of smoke and elaborate curlicues are spoken. instead of words, figures shout with angular marks, talk dirty with smudges and blots, seduce with convoluted meaningless calligraphy. drawings replace the social agreement of words with representations of physical (albeit ephemeral) formal conditions of the sounds of words in a comic complication of usual privileging of writing over drawing. when, in the labyrinth collection, steinberg draws words rather than writing them (if such a distinction can momentarily be made) the words enact their content: the word help falls with an exclamation, the letter e crunches up the letter a on table t. the word swindle starts with a flourish and conceals its ending; tremulous words, “maybe” and “perhaps”, are drawn teetering on a seesaw of indecision. steinberg draws his words and writes his drawings. words become things, material conditions of themselves, unexpectedly animate and fleshy. in the magnolia motel everyday life produces a steinberg effect and the motel sign is all words. it repeats the ordinary appearance of signs that string along the highways where the support or structure, on which the words depend, is erased and there are only words and symbols against the dark sky in an abbreviated self-sufficiency that recalls the domestic condition of the motel. in the magnolia motel sign steinberg undermines any perceptible substance with an anthropomorphic addition of two small legs unlikely to support the weight of stacked-up words. 1. http://www.neonmona.org/flash/index. html visited 2005. 13 the motel sign is the most important thing in steinberg’s drawing – the peaks of the m in magnolia, mountain-like, rise above the moon. the word “magnolia” arches across a curved arrow following the curvature of the earth to arrive at this particular location. and with its name the motel is situated within the “pure, magnolia-scented fantasy of the old south” (bloomer 1998: 52). the drawings were made just prior to the civil rights act of 1964 that outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations, and the white petalled “magnolia motel could be read as the late, last flowering of the segregated south”2. the magnolia motel has no other evidence of the southern fantasy: no lawns, no trees, no genteel behaviour, just wires and letters, boxes and cars assembled under a moon. nevertheless the word magnolia, with the roundness of its o and the emphasised softness of the l (the lines that construct the letter are a little heavier) becomes oily, carrying a trace of lingering lemonsweet fragrance. frascari in his essay, “architectural synathesia: a hypothesis on the makeup of scarpa’s modernist architectural drawings,” retells rabelais’ story of gargantua and pantagruel when handfuls of frozen words are thrown onto the deck of a ship. words that in their frozen state could not be heard but could be imagined through associations with colour and form; as the words thawed they could be heard but not understood, being in a unknown language. in a steinbergian manner frascari sees that these acts of transubstantiation make the invisible order of words momentarily visible and palpable through configurations of the noise/signs in material form (frascari 2010). frozen words, ice-coated and glittering, promise the unknown, and skittering across the surface, already subject to unpredictable inclinations, the words, like the blocked words in steinberg’s volumes, shift towards and away from predictable orders, jumbling into new associations. steinberg’s magnolia motel drawings have something of frascari’s synesthetic effects as the black ink lines operate spatially, vibrating with electricity on the page in the cold night air; a chill of temperature and excitement emanates from the drawing. frascari points out the impossibility of treating architectural drawings as neutral information, arguing instead that drawings make architecture with their own particular characteristics. steinberg, for example, employs perspective, not to shape regular pictorial space, but rather as a method of stretching out the ground, implying the wide space of the highway and the inconsequential saul steinberg magnolia motel perspective © saul steinberg, 1960/ ars.licensed by viscopy 2010. 2. a description offered by the anonymous reader of this paper for interstices. interstices 11 nature of the architecture on its edge. and if the pictured sign is understood as notation that shapes the magnolia motel, then it is notation that produces the architecture of the magnolia motel itself as a sign. the drawn words construct the motel as precariously founded, insubstantial and determinedly graphic. graphic is an appropriate word for the work of steinberg in that it underlines the linear nature of his drawing: the variable lines alluding to script, pattern and notation even when illegible. when steinberg works with the legibility of the sign, when he writes out words in boxes stacked up in the air, it is the graphic nature of the motel that is being proffered. the word “graphic”, as well as alluding to drawing and the inevitable entwining of drawing/writing, also refers to a vivid everyday quality, something almost too visible. walter benjamin wrote of a “heightened graphicness” in his images in the arcades project and this phrase conveys something of the stripped yet ornamental quality in the drawings of the magnolia motel (benjamin 1999: [n26] 461). whereas graphicness might be seen as a resistance to consumption, with its suppression of materiality, it is made fat in benjamin’s images through the excesses of production. graphicness (in pornography or current filmic depictions of violence) is a vivid condition and is aligned with the motel and its sensitivity to the corporeal: to hand marks, fingerprints, stray hairs and calligraphic traces of the body. marco frascari wrote that “[d]rawings become aromatic-chromatic-visual tools to flavor buildings” (frascari 2010), and steinberg’s graphic line records the taste of glaring neon, the stripped materiality and the slight bodily decay of the magnolia motel. in the hesitations, in the fluidity and congealing edges of the linear constructions, the social agendas of the motel are conveyed. the sign that, in the perspective drawing of the magnolia motel, is simultaneously ornament, identity, architectural type and presentation of services, has become separated from inhabitable space. qualities that conventionally assert architecture have, in steinberg’s image, an independence that sets occupancy to one side. the sign implies a new architectural species, an anthropomorphic figure that, pylon-like, transmits signals with hejdukian qualities. john hejduk was an architect who “eschewed traditional typology for anthropomorphic and saul steinberg magnolia motel plan © saul steinberg, 1960/ars.licensed by viscopy 2010. 15 animal-like buildings that were hybrids of simple abstract geometries and idiosyncratic figuration. these operated like trojan horses, providing the architect with vacant protagonists through which to sneak in emotion and meaning” (meredith 2002). steinberg similarly suggests architecture as an anthropomorphic or zoomorphic node in a network or systemic formulation; unmistakably in the cranky typography, and the faint odour of flowers (not to forget the shaky legs), motelness persists in the sign. the visitors arrive, brake lights flashing, right at the door of their motel room. if the giant road sign is the first intimation of the magnolia motel, repetition occurs in the wiry aerial that is the centre of the drawing, positioned between the sign and the moon, and attached to the motel building. the aerial alludes to the dispersed space of the motel – its repetitions (always the same and yet endlessly shifting) and its occupation of the electrical grid. the insubstantiality of the motel, its rapid disappearance towards the horizon line, is matched by its expression as receiver and transmitter of desires and needs. steinberg’s depiction anticipates current coded, formulaic conditions of architectural drawing. elevated above the motel office (distinguished from other units only by an arrow) the aerial seems like an esoteric code as it marks space through manipulations of lines and crossings. like an architectural drawing the aerial is formed of instructional marks: two parallel lines indicate the thickness of matter and two arrow-heads mark a significant gap. the motel consisting only of division is crowned with a sign that articulates openness: a spangling vertical protuberance able to receive signals that fill the emptiness of space between the moon and the open road. the motel plan the car park of the magnolia motel is elaborated in steinberg’s plan drawing in the labyrinth. the drawing has a ground line that is the road from which the trajectories of the sign lead visitors into the car park around which are ranged motel units on three sides. the interior of the room is the closure of the road; only the parking lot mediates between the room and the openness for which it longs. and the road is the constant horizontal foundation of the motel, framing the mythic legend of motels in endlessly-remade road movies. steinberg’s plan of the magnolia motel is diagram, notation and, as frascari writes in an article about architectural plans, a “passe-partout” – a key that secures entrance everywhere, a pass key that makes the invisible visible (frascari 1988: 97). the plan of the motel establishes the sign as a “key” in a field of data consisting of arrows, words, codes and trajectories. the key points into and out of the motel, highlighting a strange wilderness that exists beyond the motel units. plans establish the limits of architecture constructing the landscape, the suburb and the world beyond as diminishing ripples of plan effects. in the 1960s and ’70s the architectural plan was seen to be primarily utilitarian, attracting relatively little in the way of critical discussion. marco frascari’s two articles on the architectural plans, plans (1) and plans (3), written in the late 1980s, were exceptions. between the two articles is a gap, an absent volume, plans (2), never published. interstices 11 plans (1) does not follow the usual pattern in which drawings operate as illustrative handmaiden to text. there is, instead, one page of writing followed by 34 continuous pages of drawn plans. the plans are rendered as distinct figure ground relationships, patterned marks, retrieved and separated from history. frascari wrote that, the best part begins when the plan is torn to pieces by history, defeated by events, chewed by time; when it reaches us as an incomprehensible collage of forgotten memories, as an unexpected and enigmatic structure, as existential lust, as pure decoration. (frascari 1988: 97) the sequence of plans presents exclusions, containments, black and white flickerings that accumulate. a series of possibilities – patterns of living and dying; tried, failed re-imagined. the sequence of 34 plans is long, wonderfully extended, exceeding expectations of text/image relationship. the plan asserted as figural, ornamental and scalar reactivates the operations of steinberg’s motel plan drawing. frascari wrote in the later article, plans (3), that a building is represented in plan in its entirety but there is no likeness between a plan representation and the original. the plan is neither a facsimile nor a symbol. it is not a model, but it represents a building through modeling, so that instead of reproducing the building the plan produces it poetically. (frascari 1989: 126) the plan does not exist as a model of the building-to-be but, instead, it engages in a prescient anticipation of building through the work of modeling – an active demonstration of the architecture. it is in the movement between the plans, the flicking of pages, in plans (1) that the work of planning is revealed to be a geometrical marshalling of alterations, elaborations and eliminations: an assemblage of matter and space shaped formally and emotionally. steinberg’s ink drawing of the magnolia motel plan questions the confines of the plan as drawing type and, like frascari’s text, it suggest that the limits of building and drawing are not the same. the magnolia motel is drawn past that which would aspire to be a built edge; the plan inscribes the forecourt with a tipped over sign promising cool air, and a road network that directs visitors into the motel. in the magnolia motel the units are drawn in code with a repeating horizontal dash/vertical dash, wall/body, arrayed in a long box. and as the units tilt into elevation they are drawn as containers with repeating door/window, saul steinberg magnolia motel site plan from saul steinberg illuminations © saul steinberg, 1960/ars.licensed by viscopy 2010. 17 door/window. the code signals both the separation of the units (the difficulty of acknowledging other occupants) and the collective dreams of the lonely and isolated. twisting space from vertical to horizontal and back again, in a rhythm of illicit coitus, steinberg creates a hybrid drawing that heightens and amplifies conditions of the plan. frascari begins plans (1) by pointing out that “the drawing of a plan can be read as the abstraction of an idea; it can represent a sociological programme; it can be structured as a technological metaphor; it can – eventually – turn into an erotic image or be translated into a surreal apparition” (frascari 1988: 97). he indicates the abstract qualities of the plan, its potential use value in terms of ideas, sociology or technology when the plan is deployed with the concerns of other disciplines in mind. he concurs with le corbusier’s call for the plan as abstraction without austerity. where le corbusier wrote that a “plan is not a pretty thing to be drawn like a madonna’s face” (le corbusier 1946: 46), frascari will allow much more. in the repetitious beat of the black and white pattern of the 34 plans, page after page, a quickening of pulse is generated, a recognition of the bodily action of book, plan and architecture. the plan of the magnolia motel refers to a logic of occupancy that drives calculations of loss and gain but it is seen to produce excess; it cannot be contained by the reason that might operate its construction. outside the units, out the back in the land beyond the civilizing road, in the wilderness, the dreams and nightmares bred in the motel spawn and proliferate. recumbent bodies lie in the motel units, registered in code – a dash – eyes shut tight in a horizontal line, dreaming of body parts and vegetative forms. extending from the sleeping unit are clouds of bulgy excess in shapes of grasping fingers, genitalia and teeth. steinberg records the fantasies, erotic, natural and threatening, generated by and exceeding the time of the motel. in stories of pleasure, illicit relationships and escape, monsters swell on the margins of the motel. frascari has written about the role of monsters in architecture: monsters that place “events within our vision that are capable of putting our thought out of place, of determining a buried but real possibility of meaning” (frascari 1991: 32). in steinberg’s plan grotesque figures emanate from the motel and with their anatomical references they jolt expectations of the plan as a provider of measurable discrete information, signaling instead that which is known but repressed. the plan is coded with longing, with desire both cerebral and physical. the bulging, shape-shifting figures that churn out of the unit code undermine the completion and understanding of motel as type. frascari noted that “the grotesque body is a body in the act of becoming. it is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, continually created; and it is the principle of the others’ bodies” (frascari 1991: 32). if the magnolia motel is all sign, the site plan of the motel by steinberg locates it within a field of signs, in an array of black savage spikiness. in the site plan the magnolia motel is situated with other motels on the banks of a wide and dangerous river/highway filled with ferocious black scribbles/cars/insects. between the car park and a forest of wild, hybrid growth (variously vegetative, animal and architectural) the motels become a thickened boundary constructing the edge of an open and dangerous space as a fringe condition. horizontally arranged along interstices 11 the river/road the magnolia motel is between a hybrid aerial/motel plan and a diner. four unnamed motels are depicted along with the flamingo and the colonial court that draw on an exoticizing or nostalgic distance for their names. site plans might generally be seen as conservative, as a commitment to a shared world, addressing context, situating architecture legally and in terms of the already existing. steinberg, in contrast, depicts the site of the motel as hybrid, transformational and dangerous in a world that is exuberant, graphic and vigorous. away from the architecture of the metropolis, situated in left-over space, constructing the margins and the marginal, the motels in the site plan become refuges – sheltering respite from the horrors of the highway and the looming nightmare zone beyond. marked by imminent collisions, assumed loud noises and angry encounters, the road is shaped by an overall miasma of scratchy, ornamental atmosphere; the flamingo motel is guarded by a large, smiling toothy crocodile. for steinberg the crocodile is a symbol for dragons: “power at once evil and invincible, setting the terms for a world it aims only to devour” (smith 2005: 164). steinberg’s free drawings reveal parts of motel architecture that conventional drawing will not notice, even as he employs disciplinary language to locate the motel within architecture. his hybrid drawings, combinations of plans and elevations, plans and perspectives, expose movement as a structural, necessary condition of the architecture; the motel is never permanent and always experienced as transitory. the steinberg motel participates in the road trip as an entanglement of linear forms of travel that repeat and return. movement is caught in the momentary stillness of the motel room, framed by the speed of the open road, and is delineated in the repetitious code of closure and occupation. rhythmical movement, the repetitive oscillation of bodies and rooms, repeated patterns of engagement, shape the flow of the drawings. repetitive movement causes the figure/ground of the architectural plans to shimmer in frascari’s articles on the plan, dissolving historic location and time in a blur. even as the sharply wayward linearity of steinberg’s drawings mirrors the sudden flare of excess associated with the social programmes of the motel, so too the excessive repetition of the frascari’s plans induces a bodily response in the heartbeat rhythm of turning pages. both steinberg and frascari trace and reveal architecture through a paring back and also an intensification, offering a sort of productive violence to the familiar orders and codes of architectural drawing. steinberg’s magnolia motel, gathered out of his collections, operates between cartoon, architectural drawing and building, inducing a slight destabilisation in each system or code; the magnolia motel as a fiction reveals the presence within the systems of representation of that which cannot be contained. references benjamin, w. (1999). the arcades project. r. tiedemann (ed.) (h. eiland and k. mclaughlin trans.). cambridge, mass.: belknap press. bloomer, j. (1998). pale houses, silenced shadows. assemblage 37, 46-67. foucault, m. (1967). of other spaces. retrieved 11 january 2010 from http://foucault.info/ documents/heterotopia/foucault.heterotopia.en.html frascari, m. (1988). plans (1). terrazzo, no. 1, 97. 19 frascari, m. (1989). plans (3) ichnography: the topical enigma of the architectural plan. terrazzo, no. 3, 125-144. frascari, m. (c1991). monsters of architecture: anthropomorphism in architectural theory. savage, md.: rowman & littlefield. frascari, m. (2007a). horizons at the drafting table: filarete and steinberg, chora 5, 179-200. frascari, m. architectural synaesthesia: a hypothesis on the makeup of scarpa’s modernist architectural drawings. retrieved 2 january 2010 from http://art3idea.psu.edu/synesthesia/documents/synesthesia_frascari.html frascari, m. (2007b). introduction, from models to drawings, m. frascari, j. hale and b. starkey (eds.). new york: routledge. le corbusier (1946). towards a new architecture. london: the architectural press. lyotard, j. f. (c2006). discourse, figure. the lyotard reader and guide. k. chrome and j. williams (eds.). edinburgh: edinburgh university press. meredith, m. (2002). john hejduk reviews: new york, artforum, http://findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_4_41/ai_95676031/ morris, m. (1993). at henry parkes motel. in john frow and meaghan morris (eds), australian cultural studies: a reader. (241-275) leonards: allen & unwin. nabokov, v. (2000). the annotated lolita, a. appel (ed.). london: penguin edition. rehe, r. f. (2006). legibility. in graphic design and reading: explorations of an uneasy relationship. g. swanson (ed.). new york: allworth press. rosenberg, h. (1978). saul steinberg. new york: alfred a. knopf in association with the whitney museum of american art. smith, j. (2005). steinberg at the new yorker. new york: harry n. abrams inc. steinberg, s. (1960). the labyrinth. new york: harpers & brothers publishers. steinberg, s. with buzzi, a. (2002). reflections and shadows. (john shepley, trans.). new york: random house. treadwell, s. (2005). the motel: an image of elsewhere, space and culture, may vol. 8, no. 2, 214-224. willer, t. (curator) (2009). saul steinberg: visual writing, catalogue: tomi ungerer museum international center of illustration, november 27th 2009 february 28th 2010. vanishing america: knoxville, tennesse then and now. retrieved 30 december 2009 from http://www.swankpad.org/places/knoxvilletan/magnolia/magnolia.htm. smudges, smears and adventitious marks smudges, smears and adventitious marks justine clark interstices 4 smudges, smears and adventitious marks 1 this paper is concerned with the adventitious aspects of drawing which mark and mar the surface – traces one might consider as accessories to architectural drawing. these marks both decorate and deface, they adorn and subvert the surface of drawing. apparently superfluous these stains are impossible to be rid of. they are the incidents which create the surface: a maculated surface which draws attention to itself. to consider these traces is to problematise standard assumptions about architectural drawing and, more widely, representation in general. in a similar vein georges didi-huberman has explored art history’s exclusions of the “effects of uttering,” exclusions which he suggests are in part based in the humanist conception of art or representation as a mimetic project.1 one might suggest smudges are the “effects of uttering” in the architectural drawing. however here the question of mimesis is more complicated: “the imitated object is not prior but immanent.” 2 nevertheless most approaches to architectural drawing are predicated on the assumption that drawing is a mimetic activity vis-a-vis building, albeit a complex one.3 smudges and smears lie outside this mimetic role. operating as indexical signs, they refer not to the building represented/projected, but to the actions and efforts of making, of process. smudges are excessive and superfluous to the expectation of drawing as a transparent transcription of a putative reality. they cloud alberti’s window, smearing the glass. we should remember, however, that the window’s transparency is always compromised – streaks, reflections, refractions, dust and impurities.4 the object of architectural mimesis is also the idea. in this sense drawing functions as a demonstration: an architectural object configuring architectural knowledge.5 what are omitted here are the aspects of drawing (and of architecture) which stand outside reason. in figuring architecture (both building and idea) drawings are notations and demonstrations – legible structures in which one might read stories of architecture.6 drawing consists of representational codes to be deciphered and interpreted.7 within the representational structures of drawing are voids – gaps in the representational logic – these are the points where lisibility and visibility are disrupted,8 “where depiction fails or is blocked as a collection of legible signs, where depiction mounts a measure of resistance to the whole mimetic project.”9 smudges and stains suggest the accidental, they disrupt figurative representation, they have no descriptive pertinence and little demonstrative logic. they interrupt the representational continuity of the image. these marks might be, to the architectural drawing, what norman bryson has described as the “‘underside’ of visual representation … a type of visual experience in which clarity and legible form are shipwrecked.”10 attending to these accidental marks and the suggested ‘visual underside’ is felicitous – it draws attention to aspects of drawing which pass unnoticed within a mimetic or figurative economy – the surface, materiality, the hand and the body – qualities which remain unseen as the viewer peers through the drawing to the putative building beyond. smudges intimate the fabricated nature of drawing, the substantial surface and the work of representation. i will explore these themes further through a number of specific drawings. the first was published by diller + scofidio in back to the front: tourisms of war.11 this is a n a n a l ytic drawing for the suitcase studies project (f i g 1 ). it describes and interprets a postcard of mark twain’s bedroom (case study 12): an ‘irreducible representation’ of a well known tourist attraction. the drawing projects the plan of the space which appears through the door frame, described by diller + scofidio as “the sanitised field of vision.”12 however the drawing itself is anything but sanitised; spread across this projection is a large smudge, staining the image. this smudge is emphasised and smeared further by marks of erasure (f i g 2 ). this image is unusual for a published drawing in that both the smudge and its erasure are overt. images are never immaculate, however the published stain is usually a more subtle presence than this.13 smudging here constitutes an ‘indecipherable interstices 4 smudges, smears and adventitious marks 2 counter-image,’ one that is no longer representative, one that makes no deference to mimesis. the materiality of the image is immediately seen – the graphite gathering lightly on drawing sheet and the smearing pressure of erasure. however in this case the materiality is not only graphite, it is also the ‘matter’ of reprographic technology, the pixel, the abstract materiality of publication. the blur of graphite lies outside the purview of the line (f i g 3 ). like clouds it cannot be submitted to geometric analysis, it disrupts mathematical descriptions of reality.14 the limits of the smudge(s) are ill-defined, they spread as graphite moves across t h e p a g e w i t h t h e s w e e p o f t h e a r m ( f i g 4 ). one begins to notice smaller marks and blurred lines, the smudge appears everywhere, invading the drawing (fig 5). these blurred lines and the marks of erasure imitate the sharper projective lines, but they are ‘not quite’ the same. in the end nothing is there completely, everything is ‘almost,’ but ‘not quite’ there.15 the marks are not stable, the image begins to undermine its own coherence, visually unravelling, blurring (fig 6). these ambiguous marks shift and slip between line, blur and erasure. they suggest that the distinction between line and smudge cannot be so simply maintained. as catherine ingraham has shown, lines are themselves material, they have a fleshiness and thickness which is usually suppressed through architecture’s general dependence on the abstract line. architecture has maintained its dedication to linearity in the face of what seems like astounding counter-evidence, the drift and turbulence of forces that can barely be resolved ... the tenuousness of graphite on paper or ink on mylar; the loss of resolution in repetition and reproduction; the interior mess of the wall.16 an acknowledgement and exploration of this fleshiness and thickness is partly what is at stake when we focus (perhaps bleary-eyed) on the smudge. here the clouded image directs one’s attention to the materiality of the drawing, to its surface fabrication. this drawing concerns projection and description, but it makes no pretence at transparency. the drawing and the project are concerned with the fabrication of the authentic, not merely with its presentation. these effects constitute and construct the drawing surface, they are also the substance of the modified and marred surface (f i g 7 ). they draw attention to the matter of drawing, to drawing as a material construction/practice; “matter as fact,” to use roland barthes’s term.17 this is even more evident when looking closely at a drawing by michael webb, published, without commentary, in a+u ( f i g 8 ).18 here the substance of the drawn surface is more complex, more explicitly worked. matter is added, subtracted, scratched, scumbled, smirched and layered (f i g 9 ). scratchings, rubbings and scribbles overlay the surface, knitting figure and ground together. the surface texture consumes any concern with form; one discerns nothing but materiality. drawing is a material practice, an architectural object as well as the representation of an object. these marks confirm drawing as a site of production. the worried worked surface exhibits the remains of actions – rubbing, scumbling, frottage (fig 13). such actions are not, however, recognised as ‘proper’ architectural drawing techniques.19 indeed technique is itself the reduction of process to a ‘proper’ role within a representational system which seeks to efface or conceal its status as a site of production.20 (the ‘proper’ is the province of the line and clarity, the demarcation of property and the act of mimetic recognition). didi-huberman refers to this propriety when he writes “the act of drawing a line … [is] the act that constitutes stable differences, the act of making graphic decisions and distinctions.”21 (but as i have already noted the distinction between line and smudge is not so clear). illegitimate, these marks are the accidental smears and rubbings which the draftsperson often tries to eliminate and avoid, lest they upset the mimetic project of drawing (fig 2). however, as both drawings clearly show, the attempt to eliminate leaves further traces: further indices of absent activity and the tenuous process of making. erasure points to the accidental and mistake, but also to the attempt to remedy (fig 11). the art historical/painterly term for such traces is pentimento, from the italian for repentance. repentance suggests the error, but also uncertainty and changing one’s mind. hélène cixous suggests these marks concern work and wanderings rather than remorse or failure: no repentance. we who draw are innocent. our mistakes are our leaps in the night. error is not lie: it is approximation. sign that we are on track.22 drawing is intimated as an active engagement, interstices 4 smudges, smears and adventitious marks 3 hesitation, the struggle to represent and the impulse to correct – the work or labour of representation. this work always implicates the engagement of the body. in its obscure sense the smudge is a kiss, a caress of matter, but the pressure of erasure bruises (fig 12).23 these various traces, whether caresses or bruises, rouge or scars, invoke the manual pleasure of drawing, of manipulating and manoeuvring matter, of getting one’s hands dirty. as barthes writes: “these gestures, which aim to establish matter as fact, are all associated with making something dirty.” 24 smudges, smears and rubbings are less mediated, they refer explicitly to the hand, to the contiguity of body and drawing surface. (or to other ‘bodies’ which mark – the drawing machine, the coffee cup, etc.) in the substantial surface of representation there is a coincidence of touch and visuality, material and theory. mieke bal points out that theory has, at its etymological origins, the notion of insight.25 (which is not to be conflated with vision per se, nor with the readable, identifiable world of the visible).26 marianne hirsch takes this up, suggesting that stepping into the visual i s n o t t o e n g a g e i n t h e o r y a s systematic explanation of a set of facts but to practice theory, t o make theory, j u s t a s [ o n e ] … makes a n image … [t]heory as a form of reflection and contemplation emphasizes mutual implication over domination, affiliation over separation, interconnection over distance, tentativeness over certainty. in relation to the visual such a practice can, perhaps, enable us to envision how we might replace the regime of the gaze with the field of the look.27 i w i l l r e t u r n t o t h e q u e s t i o n o f t h e g a z e a n d t h e look later on; what interests me now is the sense here that theory itself may be improper when considered as a practice (tentative, changing, murky) rather than as a systematic explanation (static, concerned with clarity). a theory, which defines itself in terms of abstract explanation is similar to the image defined in terms of projection and clarity, both elide subjectivity and the body. theory as practice, as tentative work, implies the body: work as process makes dirty hands and those dirty hands, contiguous with the image or text, put the self on the spot. in contrast the kind of representation which shuts out the representer’s self – artist and critic alike – present work as a neat product, effacing the traces of process.28 smudges and smears are the residue of the body, the deictic traces of the subject that labours to represent.29 “deixis is utterance in carnal form and points back directly (deiknonei) t o t h e b o d y o f t h e speaker.”30 these marks refer to making and touch as well as being visual markers of this touch. the substantial surface of the drawing might be a place where the practice and making of theory could happen. one might begin to think about the blurs, smudges and scars that result from making/fabricating theory (fig 20). these obscure marks are not so much about optics and the visible, (seeing and imitating), as about touching, making and the blur of visuality. classically one draws in order to see, to know, but these marks are blind (f i g 1 4 ).31 the smudge that spreads over the drawing sheet suggests another approach to drawing, “another ‘state’ of [drawing] within the representational system of the picture: a precarious, partial, accidental state,”32 – o n e w h i c h does not write out the carnal, indexical qualities of drawing/making, one which is not predicated on the numbness of the body. the smudged lines slide between their material qualities and their representational/analytic roles, between the visual and the tactile, between numbness and blindness. the presence of the body is transgressive. but it is also what institutes the authentic. “the effacement of all figuration in the trace is itself a guarantee of authenticity, if there is no figuration it is because contact has taken place.” 33 t h e a u t h e n t i c i s o n e o f the concerns of the suitcase studies project and it is precisely the possibility of previous bodily contact which satisfies the tourist’s desire for authenticity. diller + scofidio write: “the bed is the most private site of the body’s inscription onto the domestic field.”34 mark twain’s body is now absent from the b e d ( f i g 1 ), but the idea or possibility of bodily imprint is crucial to the construction of the tourist ‘sight/site.’ diller + scofidio have elsewhere written of wear and tear (f i g 2 ), the unconscious traces of inhabiting building, as drawing. architecture is understood as itself a drawing apparatus – unconscious everyday traces function as memories and indices of inhabitation.35 on becoming a tourist site/sight the everyday is valorised, but the dirt is eliminated. the room is viewed from the distance of t h e d o o r ‘ a sanitised image,’ all dust removed. erasure and the desire for a clear view apparently wins over trace; however the concept of trace continues to underwrite the tourist sight/site. diller + scofidio chart this shift from ‘site’ to ‘sight,’ from the material to the visual (f i g 1 ). but in the process of their analysis, in the process of drawing this room as defined by the optical shadow, matter and the interstices 4 smudges, smears and adventitious marks 4 tactile return in a dislocated manner. dirt, cleansed from the official postcard view reappears as ‘matter out of place’ on the drawing sheet, the dust removed from the room has settled on the drawing. (this dirt has theoretical pertinence; diller + scofidio’s work transgress many architectural boundaries; the publication of smudged drawings is not accidental). this displaced matter can be understood in terms of the symptom, as articulating “unconscious knowledge and unconscious desires in a displaced, recoded and translated manner.”36 t h e s u r f a c e o f t h e d r a w i n g i s the site of involuntary traces, just as the surface of the body is the scene of involuntary muscular motions – blushing, tics, twitches – the play of internal effects across the surface of the body. if we follow elizabeth grosz’s contention that “all effects of depth and interiority can be explained in terms of the inscriptions and transformation of the subject’s corporeal surface … that the body can be understood as the very ‘stuff’ of subjectivity,”37 t h e n this surface of bruises and blushes, tingles and scars is crucial (fig 15 ). if drawing is a surface of architecture, then what effects can we read there? the symptom occurs in “a body [that] no longer resembles itself, or anything else for that matter.”38 i n the drawing, the symptom is the place where the resemblance of the image breaks down, betraying the resistance of the medium. it is where the surface is no longer smooth or transparent, but records bunches, folds, and swellings, confusions and puckers in the representational field. smears and stains hint slyly at materiality and the body, at the work necessary for representation – work that is then effaced in the representation itself. the architectural drawing is complex with regard to work and making. drawing might be acknowledged as a site of work, but this is the work of designing and of developing ideas (drawing as tool), not the physicality and effort of drawing itself. we could then read representation as a repression which is never quite complete. elizabeth bronfen observes that symptoms are failed repressions: they conceal what is too dangerous to articulate openly, but too fascinating to repress successfully … they repress what they purport to reveal and articulate what they hope to conceal.39 these repressions and fascinations are complex. traces are indexical, referring to body and work, but they also exceed this, these traces are symptomatic of the desire not to be seen. mieke bal explains: the traces of representational effort are not the pen or brush work so much as the collusion between that work and the work of representation it is doing. in other words the drawing does not represent by means of the brushwork; instead the brushwork is a representation of the unwillingness to be seen.40 bronfen suggests that symptoms in representational work, by being so excessively obvious, remain unseen, and this is precisely the fate of the adventitious in a mimetic economy. but to notice the smudge is not to contain it. didi-huberman, writing of painting: the patch stares you in the face, mostly in the foreground of the picture, frontally, indiscreetly; but for all that it does not let itself be identified or enclosed: once uncovered it remains problematic.41 to see these marks is not to define or understand them, they have no fixed meaning, slipping and moving between possibilities – these marks are neither/nor. the symptom brings forth events “in partial and contradictory ways, however, so that meaning emerges only as an enigma or phenomenon-cum-clue, n o t a s a stable ensemble of meanings.”42 michael webb’s drawing remains enigmatic and elusive, even as we attempt to examine it. symptoms are clues, and these marks might be clues to the blind, illegible, carnal qualities of drawing – dirty hands leave fingerprints (and all hands are dirty to some degree). the metaphors of symptom and clue suggest corresponding activities of diagnosis and detection, but these activities have no answer, no definitive end. the marks are enigmatic, they cannot be read transparently. the maculated surface promotes an active and involved viewer, one who constructs and is constructed and stained by the image. the ‘reading’ or interpretation of architectural drawings becomes an active occupation, an architectural making. the viewer is both detective and accessory in the production of drawing. maker and producer, the viewer produces meaning according to his or her viewing attitude. once again practice and process implies and engages the body. f o r t h e b o d y o f t h e m a k e r i s n o t t h e o n l y body excluded through the denial of the diectic reference, the body of the viewer and the sensual aspects of looking are also repressed. norman bryson describes this: “the gaze takes the body and returns it in an altered form, as a product but never as production interstices 4 smudges, smears and adventitious marks 5 of work; it posits the body only as content, never as source.”43 (considering the bodily presence and subjectivity of the viewer raises questions concerning the specificity of the body – whose body, which body?) the smudges and smears which move across the page (f i g 1 2 ) promote an involved look, in which the viewer is aware of and bodily participates in viewing. adventitious marks encourage (rather than bracket) viewing as process. the smudges do not limit interpretation or possible readings, rather they are so open as to appear meaningless. one might consider these marks to be ‘unreadable,’ they conform to neither the economy of the visible, nor that of the lisible. reading within a representational context demands that these marks either be looked through or that they be ascribed meaning, that they be ‘read as something.’ like clouds, smudges may be read capriciously, one might see images – faces, ships, animals – in the blurred edges and vague marks which appear accidentally on the drawing surface. but if we put this whimsy aside it seems the only meaning we have available is as if they were totally indexical. smudges are unstable, partial, coincidental, one cannot read them within structures of intentionality. intentionality is problematised, both surpassed and undercut, when we contemplate the smudge. such marks might reiterate the singularity of provenance, they may be used as a means of attributing authorship and establishing authenticity. more reliable than a signature, touch lends authenticity to the drawing. however the various marks which collect on a drawing cannot be read as signs of intention. one cannot refer to them in search of authoritative meaning. they are accidental and ambiguous in terms of provenance – more than one hand may have made them and the hand is not t h e o n l y a g e n t o f the adventitious. rubbings, the debris of erasure, themselves leave further marks as they are smeared against the drawing sheet (f i g 2 ). the building site also adds to the drawing, it becomes muddied, torn, ripped, stained with coffee. the attribution of authorship and the valorizing of the touch of the artist is only possible through the denial of the communal. accidental marks might indicate authenticity but besmirched drawings also betray the collective nature of architecture and confound intention as the primary location of meaning. the question of intentionality is complicated further through the act of publication. the published image incorporates all marks, regardless of intent or provenance. publication and reproduction modify these marks and also leave other marks and stains.44 smudges lose their textural qualities, they become visual effects. the tactile qualities are those of the publication, waxy or smooth, shiny or rough. smudges and stains remind us that drawing happens at the surface between intention and accident, between numbness and blindness. they are symptomatic of the drawing as fabrication. as didihuberman observes the symptom “bind[s] together, paradoxically but intimately, the mimetic and the non-mimetic.”45 to attend to such marks is not entirely to disregard the mimetic, but it is to consider also different ways of looking, different approaches to drawing, and by extension, to architecture. drawing is excessive, it slips and slides, evading classification and oscillating between roles which it always exceeds. one could speculate that the relationship of smudges to drawing might figure that of drawing to architecture, but is this perhaps to besmear architecture? notes 1 georges didi-huberman, “the index of the absent wound (monograph on a stain),” october (1984); georges didi-huberman, “the art of not describing: vermeer – the detail and the patch,” history of the human sciences ( 1 9 8 9 ) , v . i i , n . 2 , p . 135-69; georges didi-huberman, “critical reflections,” artforum (january 1995). see also norman bryson, “georges didi-huberman, devant l’image: question posée aux fins de l’histoire de l’art,” art bulletin (1993), v. lxxv, n. 2, pp. 336-337. 2 stanley allen “projections: between drawing and building,” a+u (april 1992), n. 259, p. 41. 3 pliny the elder’s myth of the origin of drawing has recently enjoyed currency amongst accounts of architectural drawing, notably by robin evans, stanley allen and werner oechslin. pliny tells of diboutades tracing the shadow of her departing lover. drawing, at this origin concerns mimesis and memory. 4 one might also understand such marks as stains in the lacanian sense, as shadows cast by the screen of signs that constructs visuality – another screen of compromised transparency, one which leaves its interstices 4 smudges, smears and adventitious marks 6 mark. lacan’s famous example of this shadow or stain is the anamorphic skull in holbein’s ambassadors. t h i s is discussed by norman bryson, “the gaze in the expanded field,” vision and visuality (seattle: bay press, 1988). 5 andrea kahn, “disclosure: approaching architecture,” harvard architectural review n. 8. 6 “the drawing pen then is the knife with which architects cut through building – that is, the tool with which they write the story of their building.” marco frascari, “the drafting knife and the pen,” implementing architecture (atlanta: nexus press, undated) unpaginated. frascari also investigates the idea of drawing as demonstration. 7 the working drawing functions as a legal document; it is explicitly notational in its attempts to describe the materiality of the building, and in doing so effaces the materiality of drawing. but working drawings are also most liable to be muddied, torn and stained on the building site. such marks must be looked through; the legal document cannot afford ‘noise.’ 8 bryson talks o f “ t h o s e q u a l i t i e s o f t h e image that stand outside reason, qualities that do not correspond to meaning (the lisible) a n d cannot be apprended in terms of mimesis (the visible) – the very things, of course, that the author is eager to identify and analyse.” norman bryson, “georges didi-huberman, devant l’image ,” p. 337. 9 norman bryson, “georges didi-huberman, devant l’image,” p. 336. 10 norman bryson, “georges didi-huberman, devant l’image,” p. 336. 11 diller + scofidio, back to the front: tourisms of war (basse-normandie: frac, 1994). 12 diller + scofidio, “tourisms, suitcase studies, 1991,” journal of philosophy and the visual arts: architecture space painting (london: academy editions 1992), p. 65; diller + scofidio, back to the front:tourisms of war . 13 this drawing is also published in diller + scofidio, flesh: architectural probes (new york: princeton architectural press, 1994), p. 214-215. in this version the smudges are less distinct, although still evident. 14 in “modern painters” john ruskin sets out rules for the drawing of cloud in perspective. after discussing their unknowable and random quality at length, he submits them to a measured geometric field, constructing them as distorted squares spread across the sky. i n a later edition he omits this entire section, noting that “[i] have never heard anyone express the slightest interest, nor intimate they have put them to any use.” john ruskin, the works of john ruskin ed. e.t. cook and a. wedderburn (london: george allen, 1905), v. vii, p. 152. 15 didi-huberman investigates the notion o f t h e ‘not quite,’ suggesting that the status of marks dominated b y t h e ‘not quite’ is precarious t o t h e image as representation. they present the moment of crisis, they place us in a perilous situation if we want to recognise ‘the same thing.’ georges didi-huberman “the art of not describing: vermeer – the detail and the patch,” p. 155. 16 catherine ingraham “lines and linearity,” drawing/building/text (new york: princeton architectural press, 1991), p. 73. 17 roland barthes “the wisdom of art,” calligram: essays in new art history from france e d . n o r m a n bryson (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1988), p. 168. 18 michael webb, a+u (1991), n. 249, p. 14. 19 the closest one comes to a discussion of smudging in drawing manuals is in discussions of rendering. but rendering concerns shadow and colour applied after the fact, removed from any association with process. 20 norman bryson, vision and painting: the logic of the gaze (london: macmillan, 1983), p. 74. 21 georges didi-huberman, “the art of not describing: vermeer – the detail and the patch,” p. 152. 22 hélène cixous, “without end no state of drawingness no, rather: the executioner’s taking off,” new literary history (1993), v. 24, n. 1, p. 93. this is a translation of an essay for the catalogue of the exhibition repentirs at the musee du louvre. for more regarding pentimento (or repentir in the french) s e e t h e translator's preface in the same volume. interstices 4 smudges, smears and adventitious marks 7 23 the oxford english dictionary defines ‘smudge’ as: “to smouch, or caress.” ed. r. w. burchfield, (oxford: clarendon press 1989), v. xv, p. 816. 24 roland barthes, “the wisdom of art,” p. 168. 25 “theory has, as its etymology, visual origins, it is defined as the act of viewing, contemplation, consideration and insight.” mieke bal, reading “rembrandt”: beyond the word-image opposition (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1991), p. 288. 26 didi huberman uses the term visuel for the category of fragile visual experience in which indexical effects function. this is distinguished from the legible, lisible world of visiblity. see isabelle franck, “the fragile illusion,” times literary supplement (11 january, 1991), p. 14 27 marianne hirsch, “masking the subject: practising theory,” the point of theory: practices of cultural analysis ed. mieke bal and inge e. boer (amsterdam: amsterdam university press, 1994), p. 110. 28 mieke bal, reading “rembrandt” p. 282. 29 the idea of the labour of the representing subject is drawn from mieke bal, reading “rembrandt.” 30 norman bryson, vision and painting p. 88. 31 “drawing is, in fact, the discipline that connects sight and knowledge. the act of seeing ... is the first and foremost means by which we come to possess these things ... it can be said, then, that drawing is knowledge ... through drawing we strive to possess a world that exists outside us, and to make it part of ourselves.” jose rafael moneo, “foreword,” m. scolari, hypnos ( n e w y o r k : rizzoli, 1987), p . 2 . jacques derrida argues that drawing is always blind, that at the moment o n e d r a w s o n e i s b l i n d . s e e jacques derrida, memoirs of the blind: the selfportrait and other ruins (chicago: university of chicago press, 1993). 32 george didi-huberman, “art of not describing: vermeer – the detail and the patch,” p. 163. 33 georges didi-huberman, “the index of the absent wound (monograph of a stain),” p. 67. 34 diller + scofidio, back to the front: tourisms of war p. 48. 35 george teyssot, “erasure and disembodiment: dialogues with diller + scofidio,” ottagono (1995). 36 elizabeth bronfen, over her dead body: death, femininity and the aesthetic (new york: routledge, 1 9 9 2 ) , p . x i i . t o c o n s i d e r a s p e c t s o f d r a w i n g a s symptom is not to indulge in psychobiography, it is not to search for illness, nor for the repressed motives or desires of the author. rather it i s t o think in terms of that which the institution surrounding the architectural drawing represses, it is to think about other ways of looking. 37 elizabeth grosz, volatile bodies: toward a corporeal feminism (bloomington: indiana university press, 1994), p. vii-ix. 38 georges didi-huberman, “the art of not describing: vermeer – the detail and the patch,” p. 159. 39 elizabeth bronfen, over her dead body p. xi. 40 mieke bal, reading "rembrandt" p. 144. 41 georges didi-huberman, “the art of not describing: vermeer – the detail and the patch,” p. 165. 42 georges didi-huberman, “the art of not describing: vermeer – the detail and the patch,” p. 160. 43 norman bryson, vision and painting: the logic of the gaze p . 1 6 4 . i t s h o u l d b e n o t e d t h a t the g a z e t o which bryson refers cannot be conflated with the lacanian gaze, which is not so easily escaped. mieke bal explains that bryson’s terms, gaze and glance, are predicated on varieties of the lacanian look within the (lacanian) gaze. the glance presents the possibility of looking with desire but not appropriation. mieke bal, reading "rembrandt" p. 142-143. 44 diller + scofidio seem to be exploiting the act of publication as a medium itself when they say that they have no original, the original is the reproduced image. (of course this also refers to the original/copy distinction). the publication of the smudge seems self-conscious; once again authenticity and authorial intention are complex. interstices 4 smudges, smears and adventitious marks 8 45 georges didi-huberman, “the art of not describing: vermeer – the detail and the patch,” p. 161. the "maori house" at the canterbury museum the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum paul walker interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 1 in 1873 the canterbury museum in christchurch acquired a carved meeting house, hau-te-ananui-otangaroa, from the ngati porou chief henare potae, of tokomaru bay. it had reputedly been intended as henare potae’s “residence.”1 but materials prepared for it were partially destroyed during the hau-hau uprising, and it was not put up. its designer, hone taahu, and tamati ngakaho, another carver from the east coast, arrived in christchurch early in 1874 to complete the building and prepare it for erection. it had been expected that this would take between two and three weeks, b u t t h e r e c a r v i n g a l o n e o f l o s t o r damaged parts took much longer. the work was delayed further while the provincial government for some months declined to take any financial responsibility beyond the original purchase and freight costs, while nevertheless allowing a site to be selected for the reconstruction, just to the east of the museum building. there the maori house was finally completed in december 1874. located thus, the maori house (f i g 1 ) was both an exhibit in the museum collection and an extension of the museum fabric. it was both a thing and a space, trophy or curiosity and cabinet. it was “a valuable and most interesting ethnological study;”2 and it was, suggested julius von haast, director of the museum, “a considerable addition to the accommodation of the museum for holding ethnological collections.”3 because it was considered in its new setting to be property ( s p a c e o r thing, it had cost hundreds of pounds,4) the architectural nature of the maori house necessarily changed. james stack, who helped mediate between haast and the ngati porou carvers, wrote the first departure from the original intention, was caused by the unexpected costliness of the materials. it was thought unadvisable to risk the speedy destruction of the carved timbers, which had already cost £290, by allowing them to be set up in the grounds after the maori fashion, accordingly, a concrete foundation was laid for them. this alteration in the structure, necessitated the erection of a frame-work, by european carpenters, to which the maori work was fastened. and as the building proceeded, other alterations had to be made, which rendered it still more unlike what it was meant to be. fluted kauri boards were substituted for toe-toe reeds inside, and the outside of the building was covered with corrugated iron, instead of the ordinary covering of raupo and toe-toe, which was of too inflammable a nature to be allowed upon a building placed so close to the museum.5 these changes resulted in a controversy over a loss of authenticity, or it might be said propriety. in its status and in its architectural treatment the maori house was an ambivalent accessory. this ambivalent status can be understood through analysis of descriptions of the house as a relic of an art “which must soon pass away,” 6 and through contemporaneous accounts of the design of the canterbury museum a n d t h e l a y o u t o f i t s e x h i b i t s a s planned and as realised. the canterbury museum was opened in 1870, but proposals for it date back to the 1850s. the story that is usually told of architecture in new zealand during the period of european settlement in the middle of the nineteenth century is that it was made of simple robust forms, devised to meet immediate need. this story is often accompanied by a lament over the subsequent loss of this direct, honest quality. the single theoretical influence that is sometimes allowed in early colonial architecture is t h a t o f a . w . n . p u g i n , s e e n f o r i n s t a n c e i n t h e work of frederick thatcher, the architect of the selwyn churches. so much is this so that occasionally thatcher’s magnum opus , st paul’s cathedral in wellington, has been purported to be the work of pugin himself.7 pugin is allowed, perhaps, because his doctrine of picturesque utility is not so far from the creeds of the (modernist) historians who have identified his influence here. the architect of the museum, benjamin woolfield mountfort, is another architect whose work has been aligned with puginian ideals. he has paid for this identity with theory by having the structural failure of his first major building, holy trinity church in lyttelton,8 always counted against him. although the statement of principles that he produced, with his partner isaac luck in 1857 to defend their professional reputation as they tried to win the commission for government house in auckland, is offered in the form that pugin had used a series of interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 2 contrasts of ancient and modern principles much of the content is ruskinian: architecture ... proposes to go to nature for lessons if not for models. accordingly, we see in nature’s buildings, the mountains and hills; not regularity of outline but diversity; buttresses, walls and turrets as unlike each other as possible, yet producing a graduation of effect not to be approached by any work, moulded to regularity of outline. the simple study of an oak or an elm tree would suffice to confute the regularity theory.9 certainly by the time that he produced his first designs for the canterbury museum in 1865, ruskin’s views were ascendent. this first design was devised in response to the architectural competition set up by the canterbury provincial government late in 1864. robert speechly, another architect who entered the competition, defended his proposal by citing ruskin when the press criticised it for having “an air more suggestive of gloomy piles on the dank dark canal streets of an old flemish town, than such as we would wish to see under our bright skies.” speechly responded that the apparent gloominess was merely a misapprehension arising from his technique of etching his drawings, and that “many ancient buildings of the type i followed, and which are so frequently resorted to by our first architects for study, and so highly praised by our great art critic mr ruskin, are to be found in venice, where surely the bright sky and the scenery will favorably vie with that in new zealand.”10 the ‘committee of taste’ that adjudicated this 1864/65 competition split the prize between speechly and mountfort,11 and building was put off. i do not know if mountfort read ruskin, but there are intimations of ruskin’s influence in mountfort’s designs for the museum when at last it proceeded, piecemeal, between 1870 and 1882. there are indications of influence also in the important design he made for the canterbury provincial council chamber. this building was completed in 1865. the council chamber is an elaborately decorated high victorian gothic space. it features stonework carving of plant and animal forms by the mason william brassington. this carving was said by the press to have a life-like quality because “here the fancy of the artist is allowed free range.”12 the emphases on natural forms as a source of ornament, and on the active r o l e o f t h e m a s o n i n i t s d e s i g n r e c a l l o n t h e o n e hand ruskin’s “lamp of beauty,” and on the other his “lamp of life.” it was these lamps, and perhaps more likely mountfort’s council chamber, that the press had in mind when it stated in its review of the museum design competition: of all our public buildings a museum most demands the stamp of excellence and completeness. beyond being commodious for the reception and display of its contents, the building itself ought to be as good a specimen as may be possible of the architecture of our day ... such sculpture as capitals, corbels, and the like, might be allotted to picked workmen; and while conventional details should be executed with scrupulous exactitude, in a few instances we w o u l d h a v e t h e m c o p y t o t h e b e s t o f t h e i r a b i l i t y r e a l foliage and plants.13 this article goes on to suggest of the museum building that “every variety of granite building stone, slate, and marble to be found in canterbury would naturally find a place in the fabric, either in its exterior or interior, as may be expedient; and we can imagine even the crystals from our mountain ranges introduced with the best effect among the details of an edifice which might fairly be called the cathedral of our art.” this strategy of gathering together building stones and minerals to act as a sort of synecdoche for the territory from which they came was employed by mountfort in the provincial council chamber. he had also proposed the use of a representative collection of building stones in his unsuccessful design for government house in auckland in 1857.14 this strategy had a precedent in the design of a building with which ruskin was closely associated, the oxford museum of 1855-60 by deane and woodward. a notable feature of the oxford building is the use of a large number of different british stones in the column shafts of its court: a reflection of ruskin’s interest in geology, and of his conflation of science and aesthetics. garnham writes o f t h e oxford museum that it reflects the common view of ruskin and its founding director, henry acland, that the world is “a living whole in which we are immersed and from which we draw meaning as well as minerals.” the gathering of mineral specimens did not, in the event, become part of the canterbury museum’s architectural strategy. 15 but geology and palaeontology were key elements in its collections, and in their growth. these collections were initiated in 1861 by julius von haast, the first director of the museum, when travelling in new zealand with the austrian geologist dr ferdinand hochstetter. that same year haast was made the provincial geologist, a position which had important economic significance to the colonial enterprise of the canterbury settlement. the collections put together by haast interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 3 were temporarily placed in rooms in the provincial government buildings, where they were opened to public inspection in december 1867. in 1866 a very large number of moa bones were found in a swamp at glenmark, and presented to haast’s museum. haast was widely vilified for failing to find gold within canterbury’s boundaries,16 but the bones turned out to be just as profitable, at least for haast’s purpose, in building up the museum’s collection and prestige. these moa bones were exported all over the world in exchange for artifacts and natural history specimens. the oxford museum was a major partner in this trade, and indeed it came to have an important connection with the province. william rolleston, the superintendent of canterbury from 1868 to 1876, was the brother of george rolleston, professor of anatomy and physiology at oxford, henry acland’s colleague, and his successor as director of the museum. as superintendent, william rolleston officially opened the temporary exhibition staged to mark the completion of the new canterbury museum building in 1870. he gave a “thoughtful speech,” in which he “took ruskin’s view of art as the servant and interpreter of nature.”17 more interesting than this was the inclusion among a few photographs in the architecture and archaeology section of some “from the museum, oxford” and one described as “photograph museum oxford.” they were exhibited by mountfort.18 haast was sent more photographs of the oxford museum (of its interior) by george rolleston the following year, 1871.19 there is a striking likeness between photographs of the oxford museum and ones of the canterbury museum as it was after 1882, when it was in its ‘complete’ state (figs 2, 3). this state, however, was the outcome of erratic development that reflected the political and economic fortunes of the canterbury province during those years and the influence that julius von haast was able to wield with successive provincial governments. it simply was not as much a s h e w o u l d h a v e l i k e d . t h i s s h a p e d t h e building rather more than did any consistently followed line of development. nevertheless, the look of the oxford museum was known in christchurch, and in particular to mountfort, throughout the period of the canterbury museum’s early development. from the beginning haast and mountfort had intended a large (and fundamentally symmetrical) complex;20 a n d i n 1 8 7 4 h a a s t h a d p r o p o s e d t o t h e government that considerable additions be made in two stages to those parts of the museum that had b e e n p u t u p i n 1 8 7 0 a n d 1 8 7 2 . h e s t a t e d i n t h e memorandum he submitted to the superintendent of the province “this is the main point i wish especially to draw to your attention, if not a proper plan be now worked out and the money set aside, the building will become simply a congeries of rooms without purpose and design.” (this is an apt description for what did happen and for the plan of the building in its 1882 condition.) accompanying haast’s appeal were drawings in mountfort’s hand that showed extensions to the west of the existing buildings, extensions that would have defined the sides of two courtyards that would then be covered over with iron and glass roofs.21 these, too, echoed oxford: deane and woodward’s building had a glazed iron roof over its courtyard, a structure with which there had been notorious problems. f. a. skidmore, the iron master who supplied the iron work at oxford, was known to mountfort who had commissioned his firm to fabricate an iron clock tower for the canterbury provincial government buildings. it was not used for that purpose; mountfort included it in his design for the 1865 museum competition.22 the oxford museum w a s a key building in several respects: in its use of iron, of course, but more important than this it symbolised the role of the natural sciences in the university and bound up with this its architects tried overtly to implement the case put by ruskin in the stones of venice, a n d alluded to also in the seven lamps of architecture, that the worker should be “allowed to translate nature into ornament after his own design”23 ( f i g 4 ). it may b e d i f f i c u l t f o r u s t o understand how the gothic forms and decor of the oxford museum c o u l d h a v e been appropriate to science and laboratory research, but at the middle of the nineteenth century it seems a connection was apparent. the gothic revivalist architect g. e. street said “surely where nature is to be enshrined, there especially ought every carved stone and every ornamental device to bear her marks and to set forth her loveliness.”24 and this could only b e d o n e w h e r e t h e workers were not bound to designs determined by someone else, but could follow their own interpretations of nature. william brassington was again allowed the ‘free range’ that the press had seen in his work at the provincial council chamber when he carved the window decorations of t h e 1 8 7 6 w i n g o f t h e canterbury museum. another mason, mr j. smith, carved the capitals of the museum’s 1878 portico as “an artistic mingling of foliage and animals’ heads carried out in the gothic style, the general effect being emblematical of the museum ... mr smith does his work unaided by any interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 4 pictorial design, and undoubtedly exhibits high artistic culture”25 (fig 5). how was mr smith’s carving “emblematical” of the museum? it was an emblem of the mid century connection of theology and science, wonder at creation and a desire to know about it. the architect john hendry, who designed the last major extension to the canterbury museum, of 1977, has noted in connection to this conflation of faith and science that the canterbury museum is sited at one end of a street (now worcester boulevard) such that it faces the cathedral of christchurch at the other. 26 t h e y s h a r e a common architectural language and their makers shared a common view of the world. ruskin himself had said: how strange it seems that physical science should ever have been thought adverse to religion! the pride of physical science is, indeed, adverse, like every other pride, both to religion and truth; but sincerity of science, so far from being hostile, is the path-maker among the mountains for those who publish peace.27 he had the expectation that science would enlighten the world and free it of pestilence and starvation. the most important scientific treatise of the middle years of the nineteenth century was charles darwin’s on the origin of species, published in 1859. the controversies over this book destroyed the prospect of a unity of science and theology. darwin’s theories were reported in some detail in the christchurch newspapers and were apparently widely discussed locally. samuel butler, resident in canterbury from 1859 to 1864, amused himself during 1862 and 1863 writing articles for the press and letters to its editor under various pseudonyms contrarily attacking on the origin of species and defending it. in a letter to the press of june 13 1861, titled “darwin among the machines,” butler writing under the pen name cellarius rehearsed thoughts that he would later pursue in erewhon (1872): “day by day the machines are gaining on us ... it is our opinion that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed on them.”28 the evolutionary paradigm had been quickly carried over from natural history into the realm of material culture. haast was strongly influenced by darwin. he had none of butler’s doubts. he described on the origin of species as “the great work of the age,” of particular importance to those with an interest in new zealand natural history faced, as they were, with the unexplained extinction of moas and other defunct bird species (fig 6).29 there was some correspondence between haast and darwin during the 1860s and haast arranged for james stack, who was to have a close connection to the maori house and its carvers, to contribute observations on maori for darwin’s the expression of the emotions in man and animals of 1873.30 the categorizations of nineteenth century natural history were an abstract spatialization of evolutionary time. in the arrangement of the museum, this abstract space was physically realised: the temporal schema of natural history was given spatial extension, made directly available for experience. haast reports in 1875 that: the addition of further space ... has afforded me the opportunity to arrange the collections more systematically than they have hitherforto been. the mammals have been placed together as near as possible to their natural classification. the birds, with the exception of the extensive nz species have been arranged systematically, according to gray’s list of birds.31 ethnology and art collections were also shown in the canterbury museum, accessories to what was basically an assemblage and display of geology and natural history specimens. the canterbury museum was founded not only on the idea of revealing the gradual improvement as it was conceived in life forms and human material conditions in the past; as an extension of this it was also committed to improvement in the future. it was committed to education. this is clear in the museum’s role in the foundation of canterbury university college in 1870; haast was professor of geology there while continuing his duties as director of the museum. the commitment to education was in turn linked to the ideas of material progress that drove the colonial enterprise, as is outlined in haast’s 1862 address to the canterbury philosophical institute: the erection of a museum of economic geology and of natural history generally, will also be of the highest importance; not only on account of those who are desirous of instruction, as a mere matter of intellectual enjoyment, but also of those who already understand the great value of well arranged collections, as aids to the development of the resources of the province. how often have i been struck with the eager zeal, with the desire for knowledge, displayed by all classes of settlers who have come to inspect the collections made during our geological survey.32 interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 5 there were likenesses in the architectural strategies of the oxford and canterbury museums; their institutional agendas were also alike. ruskin’s expectations for the oxford museum and the knowledge it would produce were directly connected to english colonial undertakings and ambitions: for much as i reverence physical science as a means of mental education ... i reverence it more at this moment, more as the source of utmost human practical power, and the means by which the far-distant races of the world, who now sit in darkness and the shadow of death, are to be reached and regenerated. at home or far away the call is equally instant here, for want of more extended physical science, there is plague in our streets, famine in our fields . . . a l l t h i s i s t e r r i b l e ; b u t i t i s m o r e t e r r i b l e y e t t h a t dim, phosphorescent, frightful superstitions still hold their own over two-thirds of the inhabited globe.33 twelve years later, giving his first lecture as the oxford university slade professor of fine arts, ruskin emphasises england’s destiny as the colonial power, and links this explicitly with the making of art and of science. “the art of any country is the exponent of its social and political virtues.”34 he suggested that england should delegate unpleasant economic activities to “less fortunate and more covetous races.” 35 english “simplicity and good humour,” “love of the grotesque” and “love of adventure,” as well as the country’s developing knowledge of physiognomy would “enable us to give to the future inhabitants of the globe an almost perfect record of the present forms of animal life upon it, of which many are on the point of being extinguished.”36 the arrogance of these statements fades, however, in comparison to the virulent comments with which ruskin ended his inaugural. english destiny is to govern the world: within the last few years we have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity which has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit and communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the habitable globe. one kingdom; but who is to be king?37 england must found colonies wherever she can, teaching her colonists that “though they live on a distant plot of ground, they are no more to consider themselves therefore disenfranchised from their native land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because they float on distant waves.”38 ruskin described england’s colonies as parts of its “fastened fleet.”39 evolutionary arguments and colonialism are clearly brought together in nineteenth century anthropology, with the museum, during that time, its principal disciplinary site. johannes fabian has outlined how anthropology has made its object of study, the other, by locating it in a time other than that of the anthropologist. for mid-nineteenth century anthropology, the time in which the other was located was the natural time of evolution. anthropology was made practically possible through colonialism, but the links between them were more fundamental than this. they were epistemological: anthropological knowledge might have been facilitated through european expansion, but an anthropology which took evolution as its paradigm in turn gave colonialism a philosophical basis. “it promoted a scheme in terms of which not only past cultures, but all living societies were irrevocably placed on a slope, a stream of time some upstream, others downstream.”40 upstream and downstream in haast’s museum would ideally have become downstairs and upstairs. in his 1874 proposal for expanding the museum (f i g 7 ), haast describes how the museum collection would be disposed between the various floors and wings. the ethnological specimens and art works would be arranged in their own wing “beginning in the lower part with pre-historical remains, antiquities and ethnological collections and advancing gradually to the gallery upstairs built for the purpose with lights from the top to contain works of art, showing the gradual advancement of the human race from the manufacture of rude flint implements to the highest productions of great artists.”41 e u r o p e a n a r t i s the peak of human evolution, and by implication of natural evolution too. the maori house was necessary to the canterbury museum in its role in producing an other, the maori. this maori was a coherent and singular other signified in the building’s designation as ‘the maori house,’ and not for example ‘the ngati porou house.’42 thus, the canterbury museum employed haute-ananui-o-tangaroa in the disciplinary discourses of ethnology in a way that european and american museums employed other artifacts from new zealand and elsewhere at the same time. and in some sense (but only some) it was as foreign to christchurch as it would have been to europe or america. the dunedin periodical the illustrated new zealand herald wrote: it may seem strange to residents of new zealand that a maori building should possess any novelty, but the explanation is not far to seek. the 40,000 maoris who interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 6 still inhabit new zealand are confined to the north island. a mere handful, numbering only a few hundreds, are scattered over the south island; and to a southern colonist a maori is quite a novelty, and such a thing as a ‘runanga-house’ is almost unknown.43 what was this other like? how was it exemplified in this building? (ruskin had said the art of a country is an exponent for its virtues.) what was this other’s future in the evolutionary scheme of things? the illustrated new zealand herald: on entering the building ... visitors find themselves within the walls of a genuine maori whare, carved, painted, and embellished in the highest style of ancient maori art. many of the carvings are of course very grotesque haliotis-eyed monsters in every variety of attitude, with tongues protruded, and their faces rendered more hideous by the elaborate ‘tatoo’ markings ... the building is substantially erected, on solid foundations, and may probably last long after the maori race has become extinct. this is of course popular journalism, but it is not far removed from the aesthetic and ethnological discourses proper to the museum. ruskin, for example, wrote in the stones of venice of “the barbarous grotesque of mere savageness, as seen in the work of the hindoo and other indian nations; or, more grossly still, in that of the complete savage of the pacific islands;” and the german anthropologist adolf bastian, writing in 1881, said: for us, primitive societies are ephemeral ... at the very instance they become known to us they are doomed.44 canterbury was, of course, in competition with other museums in its acquisition and display of objects. haast was first informed of the availability of hau-te-ananui-o-tangaroa in a telegram from samuel locke, native commissioner in napier, in january 1873: i have just heard of a maori house as good as wellington’s one but it would cost full £200. there appears to be great difficulty in getting poverty bay house & it is not a first class one.45 how were such values £200, ‘first class’ determined? presumably in a marketplace where the buyers were museums, tourists, and other collectors, the suppliers were entrepreneurs such as henare potae and samuel locke, and objects became property. property entails propriety. stack’s description of the maori house makes it clear, however, that its reconstruction involved various compromises: the timbers were not set directly on the ground; the carvings were attached to a framework; fluted kauri boards were used on the interior instead of toe-toe; the exterior was covered with corrugated iron. these changes and others became the subject of a local controversy over an imputed loss of authenticity. (in the marketplace, authenticity becomes a pressing issue.) the work of the ngati porou carvers was closely scrutinised. thomas potts, member of the provincial council (and the builder of ohinetahi, now the home of sir miles warren) wrote to the superintendent in june 1874 setting out his concerns about work that was being done on the building: it may be thought somewhat persistent to trouble your honour, but i feel strongly that if any alteration takes place in the erection of the maori house other than what is simply restoration, such a departure from the original building will only be accomplished at the costly price of losing a valuable and most interesting ethnological study, illustrating the old habits, manners and customs of so many of our fellow subjects.46 why, he asked, had the carved slabs been cut? were the timbers being used of the same kind and quality as those in the “original building?” what authority was there for the use of “patent paints” by the “native artificers?” haast responded that “as it was impossible for me to procure for them shark oil or any other nasty compound used by them i was obliged to allow them a substitute, taking care that the shades of colour were as near as possible to those they obtain in the northern island.”47 the carved slabs had been cut to allow the painted rafters to be fitted to them “according to the original design.” haast finished by saying “i trust that no meddlesome interference of persons who know nothing about it will be allowed,” and appended to his statement another, from james buller “whose knowledge of the native race ought to give to his opinion a far greater value than of any other person in canterbury” (including, presumably, those maori who lived locally at kaiapoi and on banks peninsula).48 buller’s letter backs up haast’s. the colours being used red, white, green, blue were the closest possible to those used in the north island; the natives rejected all foreign timber; cutting into the carvings was explained by the carvers as simply a matter of course. buller expresses his fullest confidence in the interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 7 two maori workers, their skill and trustworthiness. t h e y “ e x p e c t t o h a v e a l l r e a d y i n a b o u t 2 weeks time.”49 four months later, however, the work was still not complete. in haast’s absence from christchurch it was apparently felt necessary for buller to superintend the final stages of hone taahu and tamati ngakaho’s work. his trust in them had seemingly waned. he wrote: the carvings in front have a very imposing appearance. i mean those covering the mouldings to the doors and windows. i suggested painting out the silly fancy work on the outside post and giving it a coat of red ... the only defence the maori artist could offer was that this illustrated the ‘moku’ or ‘tatu’ markings on a woman’s breast and arms. i told him we wanted a house and not a woman. he grinned and said he would paint it out. we must be careful to have nothing introduced that we cannot defend. 50 apparently, though, not all the “fancy work” was painted out. in his description of the completed house, read to the philosophical institute of canterbury in august 1875, james stack wrote: “the artist unfortunately did not confine himself to ancient patterns, but introduced various novelties of his own designing, consisting for the most part of representations of the leaves of different plants and shrubs.” could paintings such as these have been so far, say, from ruskin’s own, or from mr smith’s carvings on the portico of the museum (f i g 8 )? the responsibility and inventiveness argued for the worker by ruskin in the stones of venice a n d i n the seven lamps of architecture, and argued by the press f o r the masons at the canterbury museum, was denied to the colonised subject. charles darwin included information about maori that he had received from james stack in three sections of his book, the expression of emotions in man and animals. t h e y w e r e t h e sections on sulkiness, anger, and blushing. the point of darwin’s book was to establish that all humanity shared certain traits which were not culturally specific, but had a basis in common physiology. paul carter has criticised darwin for decontextualising the information that he used, and for failing to account for the complexities of communication between individuals from different cultures.51 what could the grin of a ngati porou carver told to erase the moko from a meeting house mean? how could it be read? what did the carvers think of christchurch and the situation in which they found themselves? we know they were disenchanted with the wrangles between the provincial government, haast, and the board of governors of canterbury college (which at this time controlled the museum) over money and responsibility. in may 1874, haast wrote to the provincial secretary for public works that the carvers “were very dissatisfied” (apparently at the prospect of being sent home before work was complete); in june they threatened to go home of their own volition.52 and what was at stake for them in the introduction of elements and techniques which were “novelties” (according to the european arbiters of maori culture), and in the representation of leaves of different plants and shrubs? i do not know. roger neich’s recent book painted histories has started to investigate questions such as these in the wider context of around 100 meeting houses built between 1860 and 1920 many of which feature unconventional paintings (see note 1). adverse reaction in christchurch to novel aspects of the maori house’s paintings was perhaps based on the necessity of maintaining difference. differences in culture for which evidence was found in objects such as the maori house were reinscribed by nineteenth century ethnology as differences in value. but the maori house was not just an object; it was also a space. it was an extension of the museum, tenuous to be sure, but an extension nevertheless. in its status as such the stakes were different. stack: “the incongruities of style would, doubtless, provoke less remark, if the building were called what it really is, the maori court, instead of the maori house.”53 the maori court housed a collection of maori artifacts, which were, therefore, out of sequence with the rest of the ethnological collection. the part of the building to which it was attached, the first part of the museum complex to be built in 1870 was, after extensions ceased in 1882, the location of the new zealand natural history collections, likewise anomalously separated from the rest (f i g 9 ). h a a s t a s w e have already seen attended very carefully to the layout of his institution. the museum not only told a story about evolution, but also one about new zealand. thus, while the maori house was necessary to the museum’s ethnological role, it was also implicated in what was perhaps a nationalist discourse to which the museum was party. this would of course be a story of unity; not, however, fabricated as was darwin’s. it was a unity based not on biological similarity, but on the prospect of cultural interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 8 assimilation. this nationalist discourse had as its object the determination of the character of something called new zealand. this was something that did not indefinitely consider itself to be necessarily a part of england’s ‘fastened fleet.’ mountfort, for instance, allowed in his little tract of 1885, other places , that though it should be postponed as much as possible, there might come the day when “the exigency of political combinations may require that new zealand shall not form part of the british empire.”54 new zealand was something which, to the minds of nineteenth century christchurch, might not have seemed as necessary as it does to us; in dunedin there was discussion, after the abolition of the provincial governments in 1876, of the south island separating politically from the north.55 what might a story of new zealand say? robin craw has shown that in a story told about nature in new zealand in the nineteenth century (and in recent years too) it was said to be unlike nature elsewhere. and this difference could be used to establish national identity, in the kiwi, for instance, and the fern. 56 what might a story of new zealand say about the place’s culture? the problem was, as mountfort put it “we [europeans in new zealand] cannot boast of a past.”57 this was not a uniquely colonial condition, however. following foucault, stephen bann has suggested that the great welling up of european interest in history during the nineteenth century was t h e r e s u l t o f a s e n s e o f l o s s , o f l o s s o f t h e past: “19th-century man did not simply discover history: he needed to discover history, or, as it were, to remake history on his own terms.”58 an apparent lack of history was reason enough, thought mountfort, for new zealand to remain an extension, an accessory, to britain. but perhaps some history some cultural difference could be made with materials at hand. it may have been necessary to import these from the north island, to attach to a european framework, accessorizing it, making it unique. in this regard the position of the maori house at canterbury could be identified not only with that of ethnological exhibits in western museums (which implicates it in the production of an other) but also with new kinds of historical museums and collections that appeared in the nineteenth century, and then with the national architectural exhibits erected at world expositions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. while undoubtedly the foreign architectures shown at the expositions had the role of producing cultural stereotypes of ‘otherness,’59 exhibitions of local architecture historic english architecture at english expositions, historic french architecture at french expositions, and so on had a more ambivalent role. certainly they established the past as another other which progress had left behind. but at the same time they had an affirmative and legitimizing effect of producing national identity, ‘not otherness.’60 i n h i s writing about outdoor building museums and period americana rooms introduced into american art collections in the early decades of this century, edward n. kaufman identifies these two effects: on the one hand the differentiation between the past and the present; and on the other the celebration of national traditions that emphasised the idea of a common american experience. the nineteenth century world fairs, says kaufman: had, of course, done a great deal to emphasise concepts of nationhood. but american craft collections had to expound not only a uniquely american tradition but one that was quite specifically independent of european values.61 new zealand, too, was not the same as europe, and maori culture could be deployed as evidence of this. an important aspect of this was the sheer weight of evidence, the filling of space with things evoking a mythic ‘maoriness’: cloaks, weapons, tools, ornaments, carvings, clothing, mats. they supplemented the ‘maoriness’ of the maori house. this fullness is a quality identified by bann in early historical collections such as that of alexandre du sommerard (now the museé de cluny ): “broadly speaking, the strategy of the historically minded pioneer in the 1820s is to delimit an area designated as authentic and to people it with objects which will collectively attest that authenticity”62 (fig 10). in this alternative reading of the maori house, as a space rather than a thing (a space full of things), it s t o o d n o t f o r a r a c e t h a t w o u l d s o o n b e e x t i n c t . rather, it represented another kind of colonial desire, one for assimilation. potts had described the house as “illustrating the old habits, manners, and customs of so many of our fellow subjects.” in his report on the progress of canterbury museum for the eighteen months ending march 31 1875, haast wrote the ethnological objects of new zealand, both of historic and prehistoric times have been placed in the maori house a n d i t o u g h t t o b e o u r e n d e a v o u r t o m a k e t h e s a m e a s complete as possible, so as to save the records of an interesting people which doubtless in years to come will interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 9 entirely lose their former original customs and habits and assimilate with the european immigrants and their descendants.63 by 1906, the maori house not only contained maori artifacts, but also what the museum guidebook described as ‘pakeha relics’ (relics of non-maori new zealanders), itself an interesting list: a cast of the korotangi, an object reputed to be from the maori ancestral home of hawaiki; remains from a grave, apparently of a european seaman, found at new brighton in 1854; a copper plate from the port levy whalers; a flag taken from pai marire warriors in 1867; and another flag, a red ensign, taken by maori during the land wars (fig 11).64 there was a certain tension between the role of the maori house as a thing, and the maori house as a space; between a discourse of separation and death, and a discourse of integration and dispossession. this ambivalence was never resolved at the canterbury museum. the house was moved at least twice as the museum grew and rearranged. in 1881 it was taken down so that the space between the 1870 and 1876 wings could be enclosed with a roof, to make a r o o m f o r ‘technological science’ (fig 12 ). it was shifted to the western side of the 1870 wing where it was rebuilt with dado eliminated, and the wall slabs directly touching the floor.65 skylights were installed (fig 13). then in 1894 it was taken down again, the floor replaced (had it been directly touching the ground?) and turned so that the carved front, previously and appropriately facing north now faced south, enabling it more easily to be seen (fig 14).66 i t was finally dismantled in the 1950s when a large extension to the museum was commenced, and it was stored in the museum basement.67 notes 1 james stack, “an account of the maori house attached to the christchurch museum,” read before the philosophical institute of canterbury, (august 5 1875). most subsequent reports of hau-te-ananuio-tangaroa have d r a w n h e a v i l y o n stack’s paper which was published in transactions and proceedings of the new zealand institute (1875), v. 8, pp. 172-176. h . v o n h a a s t r e p e a t s parts o f i t verbatim in his biography of his father. the l i f e a n d t i m e s o f sir julius von haast, explorer, geologist, museum builder (wellington: h. f. von haast, 1948), pp. 683-685. other texts which have cited stack are: guide to the collections in the canterbury museum (christchurch: canterbury museum, 1906); w. j. phillipps, “carved meeting houses of the eastern districts of the north island,” r e c o r d s o f t h e dominion museum (1944), v. 1, n. 2, pp. 111-112; and roger neich, painted histories (auckland: auckland university press, 1994), pp. 271-272. stack’s paper was reprinted in te karanga ( 1 9 8 9 ) , v . 5 , n . 2 , p p . 1 1 13. 2 thomas potts, letter to william rolleston, superintendent, (june 25 1874), national archives, christchurch, cp 349d. 3 haast, letter to secretary for public works, (march 31 1874), canterbury provincial government, national archives, christchurch, cp349d. 4 £200 was paid to henare potae. costs of removal of the house and the carvers to christchurch were £91.2.2. the estimate for the cost of erecting the maori house was £478.17.0. (statement of accounts attached to letter from the chairman of the canterbury college board to the provincial secretary, (june 16 1875), estimate of cost of erection, signed by b. w. mountfort, architect, (march 20 1874), national archives, christchurch, cp349d.) the illustrated new zealand herald suggested the total cost at £1000 (november 1875), n. 99, p. 6. 5 stack, “an account of the maori house,” p. 173. 6 james buller, letter to julius von haast, (june 26 1874), national archives, christchurch, cp349d. 7 margaret alington, frederick thatcher and st paul’s: an ecclesiological study (wellington: government printer, 1965), p. 39. 8 holy trinity was built in 1852 and demolished shortly thereafter. peter shaw, new zealand architecture from polynesian beginnings to 1990 (auckland: hodder and stoughton, 1991), p . 3 0 ; ian lochhead, “the early works of benjamin woolfield mountfort 1850-1865,” (ma thesis, university of auckland, 1975), pp. 44-47. 9 letters to the governor of new zealand concerning the designs for the new government house, auckland (1856-1857), colonial secretary’s notebook, national archives, wellington ia1 60/1708. 10 the press (may 11 1865), p. 3. 11 ‘committee of taste’ report to canterbury provincial executive council, (may 5 1860), national archives, christchurch, cp349a. 12 the press (november 22 1865), p. 2. 13 the press (may 9 1865), p. 2. interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 10 14 lochhead has noted these parallels with oxford. “the early works of benjamin woolfield mountfield,” pp. 84, 91. 15 a collection of building stones was kept there, however. the lyttelton times (february 16 1881), p. 5. 16 haast, the life and times of sir julius von haast p p . 456, 560-563. 17 haast, the life and times of sir julius von haast p . 599. 18 catalogue, art exhibition, 1870 (christchurch: art exhibition committee, 1870); the press (march 14 1870), p. 2. 19 george rolleston, letter to haast, (february 1871), mentions that thomas acland had “offered to take charge of our dodo’s head for your museum,” and that “some photographs of views in the interior of our museum” were being sent. haast papers, alexander turnbull library, wellington, ms papers 37, folder 132. 20 the lyttelton times a r t i c l e o n t h e opening of the museum notes that “we are informed that it is part only of an extended design, and n o d o u b t w h e n complete will fall into its proper place with effect,” (october 1 1870), p. 2. 21 haast, memorandum to provincial council (may 30 1874). national archives, christchurch, cp658a/21. the 1876 extension consisted of a reworking of this design, much reduced and relocated to the eastern side of the 1870 building. the 1882 portion was a t i m b e r v e r s i o n o f o n e o f t h e proposed iron and glass roofs of 1874. 22 trevor garnham, oxford museum (london: phaidon, 1992), unpaginated; the press ( m a y 9 1 8 6 5 ) , p . 2 . the tower w a s t o b e f i n a l l y set up as a freestanding edifice. 23 garnham, oxford museum bibliography. 24 street cited, peter fuller, theoria: art and the absence of grace (london: chatto and windus, 1988), p. 96. 25 the press (may 9 1878), p. 2. 26 historic buildings o f n e w zealand: south island ed. frances porter, (auckland: methuen, 1983), p. 87. 27 john ruskin, the works of john ruskin (london: george allen, 1903-1912), v. 16, p. 221. 28 on the relationship between his pieces in the press and butler’s later writings, see the works of samuel butler eds. henry festing jones and a t bartholomew, (new york: ams press, 1968), v. 20, pp. 32-49; and joseph jones, the cradle of erewhon (austin, texas: university of texas press, 1959), pp. 98-113. cellarius’ distaste for machinery could be compared to ruskin’s dislike of machine made ornament. 29 haast, typescript of address to the philosophical institute of canterbury, as its first president, (1862), pp. 23-24. haast papers, alexander turnbull library, wellington, ms37 244. 30 charles darwin, the expression of the emotions in man and animals (chicago: university of chicago press, 1965). the haast papers at the alexander turnbull library, wellington, include a folder of correspondence from darwin. darwin wrote to haast on january 2 1868 thanking him for stack’s answers to his queries (apparently sent to various correspondents in the form of a checklist) regarding human expression. the answers were few “but decidedly the best and clearest i have received from any quarter.” ms37 51. 31 julius von haast, report on progress of canterbury museum for eighteen months ending march 31st 1875, national archives, christchurch, cp 349d. 32 haast, the life and times of sir julius von haast p. 8. 33 ruskin, the works of john ruskin v . 16, pp. 220221. 34 ruskin, the works of john ruskin v. 20, p. 39. 35 ruskin, the works of john ruskin v. 20, p. 21. 36 ruskin, the works of john ruskin v. 20, pp. 31-32. 37 ruskin, the works of john ruskin v. 20, p. 41. 38 ruskin, the works o f j o h n r u s k i n p . 4 2 ; edward said, culture and imperialism (london: vintage, 1994), pp. 123-127. 39 ruskin, the works of john ruskin v. 20, p. 42. 40 johannes fabian, time and the other: how anthropology makes its object ( n e w y o r k : coulmbia university press, 1983), p. 17. 41 haast, memorandum to provincial council (may 30 1874), national archives, christchurch cp658a/21. 42 this could not h a p p e n n o w . i n r e c e n t years the canterbury museum has pondered what it might do with the carvings that made up the building. one proposal was to erect it at a marae at the university of canterbury. this was opposed by local ngai interstices 4 the ‘maori house’ at the canterbury museum 11 tahu, who did not want a marae set up where the appropriate protocols would not be theirs. personal communication from chris jacomb, canterbury museum archaeologist and ethnological curator; (may 1995). 43 “the maori house, canterbury museum,” the illustrated new zealand herald (november, 1875), n. 99, p. 6. this ‘absence’ of maori from the south island should perhaps be considered with homi bhabha’s reading, in the context of colonialism, of the word ‘territory’ as “a place from which people are frightened off.” “sly civility,” october (1985), n. 34, p. 78. 44 ruskin, the works o f j o h n r u s k i n v. 11, p. 189; bastian cited, johannes fabian, t i m e a n d t h e w o r k o f anthropology (chur, switzerland: harwood academic publishers, 1991), p. 194. 45 samuel locke, telegram to julius von haast, (january 6 1873). national archives, christchurch, cp349d. the provincial government had apparently already approved the expenditure of £100 for “the maori house at poverty bay.” haast, note to provincial secretary, (january 7 1873), on the back of locke’s telegram. 46 thomas potts, letter t o t h e superintendent (june 1874), national archives, christchurch, cp349d. 47 haast, “statement re maori house,” (june 26 1874), national archives, christchurch, cp349d 48 haast, “statement re maori house.” 49 james stack, letter to julius von haast, ( j u n e 2 6 1874), national archives, christchurch, cp349d. 50 haast cited, haast, the life and times of sir julius von haast p. 684. 51 paul carter, living in a new country: history, travelling and language (london: faber, 1992), pp. 75-77. 52 haast, letter to the provincial secretary for public works (may 1874), national archives, christchurch, cp349d. 53 stack, “an account of the maori house attached to the christchurch museum,” p. 173. 54 b w mountfort, other times (christchurch: whitcombe & tombs, 1885), p. 4. for an account of the relationships between new zealand and great britain during the late nineteenth century see keith sinclair, a history of new zealand (auckland: penguin, 1991), pp. 213-233. 55 sinclair, a history of new zealand p. 154. 56 craw, “visible difference: nationalist repertoires and the semiotics of place in new zealand science,” antic (1990), n. 4, pp. 5-7. 57 mountfort, other times p. 3. 58 bann, “the sense o f t h e past: image, text, and object in the formation of historical consciousness in nineteenth-century britain,” the new historicism ed. h aram veeser, (new york & london: routledge, 1989), p. 103. 59 “ i n s u c h a n environment the stereotype acquires authenticity; it gathers strength for a seemingly inexhaustible cycle of repetition and regeneration.” zeynep celik & l e i l a kinney, “ethnography and exhibitionism at the expositions universelles,” assemblage (1990), n. 13, p. 35. 60 o n p r o g r e s s a n d nationalism at the world fairs, particularly at the paris exposition universelle of 1900, michael wilson, “consuming history,” american journal of semiotics ( 1 9 9 1 ) , v . 8 n . 4 , p p . 131-153. 61 e d w a r d n kaufman, “the architectural museum from world’s fair to restoration village,” assemblage (1989), n. 9, pp. 33-34. 62 bann, “the sense of the past,” p. 109. 63 haast, report on the progress of canterbury museum. 64 guide to the collections in the canterbury museum p p . 218-219. 65 the lyttelton times (february 3 1881), p. 5. 66 this information is contained in notes, apparently taken from annual reports for the period 18901939, in possession of c jacomb, canterbury museum. 67 i would like to acknowledge the victoria university of wellington internal grants committee for its support of the research presented in this paper. the monument of ornament the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses laurence simmons the human figure is the ideal ornament for the niche. michelangelo buonarroti there is no culture without the tomb and there is no tomb without culture. rené girard, things hidden since the foundation of the world just as the archaeologist builds up the walls of a building from the foundations that have remained standing, determines the number and position of the columns from depressions in the floor and reconstructs the mural decorations and paintings from the remains found in the debris, so does the analyst proceed when he draws his inferences from the fragments of memories, from the associations and from the behaviour of the subject of the analysis. both of them have an undisputed right to reconstruct by means of supplementing and combining the surviving remains. both of them, moreover, are subject to many of the same difficulties and sources of error. freud, “constructions in analysis,” 1937 interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 1 let me begin with the only ornament which most readers already have of this essay: my title. the monument of ornament immediately raises an essential problem for the grounds and conditions of ornament itself. can ornament as a topic ever be the subject of an ornament that any discourse on ornament must of course be? it is the dynamics of this complex predicament which i wish to examine here on several different levels. there is no critical theory of art that does not in some way question the determination of the borders, the frames, imposed upon art by theory or projected by art with its own representation of self. “the philosophical,” says jacques derrida, “encloses art in its circle but also lets discourse on art be caught in a circle.”1 the question here that i wish to pursue is how to break out of the enclosure determined by a traditionally established inside/outside opposition of this nature. first of all, it will probably not come as a suprise if i admit that my title, the monument of ornament, is not my own at all. i have borrowed it from the title of a n a r t i c l e b y a contemporary italian philosopher, gianni vattimo. vattimo leads a current italian school of philosophy known by the rubric il pensiero debole o r ‘ w e a k t h o u g h t , ’ a weak thinking which does not attempt to categorise things but instead to indicate the trajectories, directions, paths and possibilities of certain ideas and, as such, takes a polemical stance towards western rational metaphysics and totalising systemic philosophies like that of kant. in borrowing this title here i have naturally also translated it for you from the italian original of ornamento monumento2 but, as those readers who understand a little italian will see, in the process of translating i have added my own little ornament, that of a “the” and an “of,” such that the “ornament monument” of the original ornamento monumento will become in my discussion “the monument of ornament.” we could even ask, thinking weakly, and risking the charge of mere game playing, but recognising, too, that ornamentation is itself a serious game, if the ‘o’ at the end of the italian word ornamento ( f i g 1 ) should not be seen as a continental flourish, an ornament, on that rather plain english word ‘ornament’... i whatever, it is clear that what is ultimately at stake here as the first issue of ornamentation is the problem of translation, of the translation of meaning from one language system to another. as my borrowed title suggests, translation is never simply a matter of the transference of meaning, ideally intact, from one language to another. what jacques derrida has called “the metaphysics of presence” is closely related to this whole problematics of translation and linguistic difference, and he has shown that notions of the transparent transference of meaning have played a dominant role in “logocentric” western philosophy. in this tradition there has been a strong predeliction among philosophers to believe that their concepts and categories are not in any fundamental way languagedependent and, as a consequence, translation (and style one may add) become minor issues having interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 2 nothing to do with that which is thought to be properly philosophical. this belief that the casting of thoughts into words is a form of secondary labour, and that the effects of language must be minimised to preserve the economy and validity of philosophy as a discipline, has formed the basis for philosophy setting itself apart from disciplines like rhetoric or literary criticism in traditional terms. what derrida has consistently argued is that not only is thinking in some sense always language-dependent but that there is an irreducibility of writing to any kind of straightforward, univocal sense, even before the issue is raised of translating from one language to another. thus, according to the succinct formulation of barbara johnson, it is “precisely the way in which the original text is always already an impossible translation that renders translation impossible.”3 as an example of those disruptive elements of non self-identical meaning that resist all attempts to reduce language to a stable economy of sense, derrida cites the use of the word pharmakon in plato, a word whose contradictory meanings (‘medicine,’ ‘remedy,’ ‘poison,’ ‘drug,’ ‘charm,’ ‘spell’... ) resist all attempts to determine or reduce it to a secure univocal sense.4 t h e f a c t t h a t p l a t o o n m o r e t h a n one occasion refers to writing as a pharmakon making it the focus of these contradictory significations is, for derrida, an index and reminder that philosophy is a written discourse, a use of language that allows of no reduction to self-sufficent concepts. as with plato’s pharmakon , so too the term ornamentation conjures up a conflict of interpretations and is overdetermined, signifying in so many ways that the very notion of signification gets overloaded. to invoke the secret service, ornament or parergon (to give it its kantian nomenclature) is a double agent, always operating in more than one direction. the traditional view which holds a work of art, or architecture, to be an organic unity always assumes it possible to distinguish between what is essential and indispensible (the work) and what is secondary or insignificant (the ornament), the work existing on the level of the primary in a hierarchical relationship to that of the secondariness of ornament. in such a system of enclosure and exclusion the critical act of interpretation would necessarily share the features of ornament. derrida moves to displace such a view using the notion of the supplement to suggest that ornament is not an index of inferiority, nor something unnecessarily tacked on to something already complete in itself. for, he says, there are two contradictory meanings of the term supplement only one of which squares with the traditional idea of the relation between art object and ornament: the supplement is an inessential extra something added on to something that is complete in itself, but it is also something added in order to complete or compensate for a lack in what was supposed to be complete. such a logic of supplementarity makes the w o r k o f a r t t h e p r i o r t e r m , t h e p l e n i t u d e t h a t i s there at the start, but also reveals an inherent lack within it so that ornament, the additional extra, becomes the essential condition of that which it supplements.5 derrida begins this revision with the criticism of ornament expounded by kant in the fourteenth paragraph of his critique of judgment.6 for kant, ornament is “only an adjunct, and not an intrinsic constituent.” it is that which can be detached from the work, that which has been added to it, an external addition, a supplement subservient to the work, in the service of the work. furthermore kant blames ornament for becoming an end in itself, a purely sensual attraction which detracts from the total representation of the object and one which reduces the judgment of taste to a sensation of pure and simple pleasure. it is important to mention here that in this brief kantian paragraph are condensed with clarity all the motives of aesthetic legitimation that can be propounded in favour of positions counter to ornament and, as such, the polemic against ornament conducted by architects and critics belonging to the modern movement may be traced back to the values of ornament as superfluous and sensualising decoration deplored by kant. one other chapter of that polemic and another example of the denigration of ornament in the history of modernism is that of adolf loos in his essay ornament and crime (1908).7 for the modernist loos, ornament is the unfinished trace of the infantile, an insult to history and to progress. the modern is progress demonstrated by simple, essential and rational forms and “the evolution of civilisation is synonymous with the elimination of ornament from objects of use.” finally, because of ornament, immense and useless efforts have been expended in the fabrication of goods that have resulted in an inhuman exploitation of human labour: “ornament is not merely produced by criminals, it commits a crime itself by damaging a national economy and therefore its cultural development,” thunders loos. both these rejections of ornament, on the part of kant and of loos, have a platonic origin and may be seen as part and parcel of the platonic depreciation of the ornaments of discourse (rhetoric), the inert remains of the spoken word (writing), and the interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 3 unfaithful copies of ideas (artistic production). derrida argues that all philosophical discourse on art (from plato to heidegger) attempts to draw the distinction between the inside and the outside of the artwork, between its internal meaning and external circumstances, and that this is disturbed by the category of ornamentation (parergon) which is neither simply inside nor outside the work (ergon). there is always a lack, a gap, a crack in the structure of the w o r k w h i c h m u s t b e f i l l e d b y the ornament and what links kant’s three examples of ornament (the frame on a painting, drapery on a statue, the colonnade on a palace) is that they cannot be detached without destroying the work. the work not only admits the external ornament into its interior, but is constituted by that very entry, made possible by that which is excluded from it, that which serves it, that which it masters. the ornament is “an outside which is called inside the inside to constitute it as inside,”8 an outside that always already inhabits the inside as an intrinsic constituent. derrida, as i have mentioned, sees heidegger, and naturally himself, at the end, as the ends, of this platonic tradition and it is here that we might find gianni vattimo’s paper relevant. in his essay “ornament monument,” vattimo rereads a littleknown minor later lecture of heidegger which, as he demonstrates, is of great relevance to the disciplines of architecture and sculpture. this lecture, entitled “art and space” of 1969,9 vattimo believes, must be reread with reference to two central questions of heideggerian aesthetics: a) first of all that from the publication of being and time of 1927, the discourse that heidegger conducts on being, which appears to privilege its relationship with time and temporality as the guiding dimension for an understanding of the problem of being; b) secondly that heidegger’s most systematic essay on the problems of aesthetics, the origins of the work of art , affirms the poetical (dichterisch) character of all the arts, giving a primacy to poetry as the art of the word above other possible forms.10 “art and space” is important, vattimo suggests, because at a later stage in his career it puts these critically accepted tenets of heidegger’s thought in question. in this text, heidegger recognises space as a sort of ur-phenomenon and attempts to describe existence in spatial terms. as a natural consequence, the primacy of poetry among the arts is also questioned given the new centrality of this role of space, which, in the later writings, heidegger gives to sculpture the site of the happening of truth. this rediscovery of the dimension of spatiality is a decisive step taken on heidegger’s path towards a philosophy that is truly beyond the metaphysical. this shift of emphasis has significant consequences, vattimo believes, for aesthetic discourse on ornament, not simply because the earlier insistence on the truth c h a r a c t e r o f t h e w o r k o f a r t i n h e i d e g g e r w o u l d appear to be contrary to the recognition of ornament, but because the arts of decoration function in a double sense by attracting the attention of the observer and by sending attention beyond the work to its living context, that is, it is a displacing of the relationship between centre and periphery. as vattimo says, “for heidegger, it would appear, it is not merely a question of defining decorative art as a specific type of art ... rather, he seeks to acknowledge the decorative nature of all art.”11 the implications of this are that all art, in so far as it is a realisation of truth, is decorative and decoration becomes the central phenomenon of heidegger’s aesthetic such that each monument of the work of art is ornament, every ornament a monument. ii i may say at once that i am no connoisseur in art, but simply a layman. i have often observed that the subject matter of works of art has a stronger attraction for me than their formal and technical qualities ... nevertheless works of art do exercise a powerful effect on me, especially those of literature and sculpture, less often of painting. this has occasioned me, when i have been contemplating such things, to spend a long time before them trying to apprehend them in my own way, that is to explain to myself what their effect is due to ... this has brought me to recognise the apparently paradoxical fact that precisely some of the grandest and most overwhelming creations of art are still unsolved riddles to our understanding. we admire them, we feel overawed by them, but we are unable to say what they represent to us ... but why should the artist’s intention not be capable of being communicated and comprehended in words, like any other fact of mental life? perhaps where great works of art are concerned this would never be possible without the application of psychoanalysis. the product itself after all must admit of such an analysis, if it really is an effective expression of the intentions and emotional activities of the artist. to discover his intention, though, i must first find out the meaning and content of what is represented in his work; i must, in other words, be able to interpret it. it is possible, therefore, that a work of art of this kind needs interpretation, and that until i have accomplished that interpretation i cannot come to know why i have been so powerfully affected. interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 4 these are the introductory pages of an essay by freud entitled “the moses of michelangelo,” an essay w h i c h c o u l d a l s o b e c i t e d a s t h e f i r s t e x a m p l e o f psychoanalytic art criticism ever written.12 i t w i l l b e clear, too, i hope, that in my discussion on ornament i have still remained with that ornament, the title, more precisely with the second part of my title “michelangelo’s moses.” i was quoting selectively from freud’s essay so as to dwell on the way that for freud discourse on art, interpretation (and it is significant that the verb ‘to interpret’ is underlined in freud’s account), bears an intrinsic relation to the work of art itself while at the same time appearing to be something extra, something superfluous, something that really never “says anything that solves the problem for the unpretending admirer.” but at the same time, freud suggests, because the work of art is in some way incomplete, insufficent, it needs criticism, a special kind of criticism, it needs psychoanalysis. it cannot convey its intentions without the psychoanalytic critic. the situation is t h a t t h e p o w e r o f t h e a r t o b j e c t i s r e d u c e d to a position of powerlessness where it needs the critic, but even so for freud there remains “the apparently paradoxical fact that precisely some of the grandest and most overwhelming creations of art are still riddles to our understanding.” in a situation where the work of art cannot communicate its intentions without the psychoanalytic critic it is no wonder that freud, despite his disclaimer to be only a layman, a point which he uses to secure our initial indulgence, proceeds in this essay with remarkable and confident authority in discussing the issues of aesthetics. there is another curious way in which a ‘scene of interpretation’ is also played out at the beginning of freud’s text on michelangelo. freud in this essay is not writing as himself, that is as the founder of psychoanalysis, but he is writing under an assumed identity. “the moses of michelangelo” was originally published anonymously in imago, an official psychoanalytical journal, in 1914, where it was accompanied by the following footnote obviously drafted by freud himself: although this paper does not, strictly speaking, conform to the conditions under which contributions are accepted for publication in this journal, the editors have decided to print it, since the author is personally known to them, moves in psychoanalytic circles, and since his mode of thought has in point of fact a certain resemblance to the methodology of psychoanalysis.13 this article, the founding piece of psychoanalytical criticism, the model for the genre, is thus born under the shadow of illegitimacy and anonymity. the author is a layman in matters of art he tells us and he is presented as an anonymous layman in matters of psychoanalysis. he “moves in psychoanalytical circles,” says the footnote, an uncanny statement when we consider that in reality freud moved those circles as his disciples only too clearly came to discover. jane gallop has teased out the suggestiveness of this situation when she states: a certain legitimacy by association pervades this article, which is neither legitimately psychoanalytic nor art criticism, but resembles both. at the same time that association is accompanied by and oddly militant illegitimacy and a puzzling question about authorship. the founder of psychoanalytic art criticism disguises his authorship, rendering it questionable, as if there were some profound intrication between psychoanalytic art criticism and a radical question about its legitimate author-ity.14 freud, the layman, gallop maintains, feels he has something to contribute to the understanding of art, something that the ‘connoisseurs’ have not been able to come up with. if he unabashedly proclaims that his is a lay opinion, it is because he considers it an excellent opinion. he is not just any old layman; he prides himself on being a good lay.15 the very structure of the beginning of freud’s essay on michelangelo’s moses invites us to read that text as we would read a work of art, in the sense that “every text is a tissue that masks at the same time that it reveals.”16 freud claims that he is no connoisseur, but if we read on there is a connoisseur in his text, as he says again dissembling: long before i had any opportunity of hearing about psychoanalysis [and that is a very curious phrase itself!], i l e a r n t that a russian art connoisseur, ivan lermolieff, had caused a revolution in the art galleries of europe by questioning the authorship of many pictures, showing how to distinguish copies from originals with certainty, and constructing hypothetical artists for those works whose former supposed authorship had been discredited.17 the activity of a connoisseur consists in determining the author of a work of art on the basis of its visual characteristics and the connoisseur in performing such a function is like an archaeologist or a philologist. but in a curious turn freud also finds a parallel between his efforts to solve the riddles of meaning repressed in the unconscious and interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 5 lermolieff’s detection of the authority of the artist’s hand, and in so doing he becomes the connoisseur he says he is not. it seems to me that his method of inquiry is closely related to the technique of psychoanalysis, [claims freud] it, too, is accustomed to divine secret and concealed things from despised or unnoticed features, from the rubbish-heap, as it were, of our observations.18 what exactly was giovanni morelli’s method? (for morelli was the anagrammatic lermolieff’s real name as will become clear in a moment)19 ( f i g 2 ). morelli believed that the museums of his time were full of incorrectly-attributed paintings and that the task of ascribing masterpieces correctly or distinguishing copies from originals was doomed, since in many cases the paintings were unsigned or painted over, or in poor repair. morelli maintained that one should abandon the convention of scrutinizing the most obvious characteristics of a painting since these were the ones that could most easily be imitated. instead he held that it was necessary to concentrate upon minor details, especially those least significant in the style typical of a painter’s own school. these might be, for example, the way in which the painter draws hands and ears, earlobes and fingernails, or the shapes of fingers (f i g s 3 , 4 ). the connoisseur must observe these morphological details rather like a graphology expert observes and compares the forms of letters of the alphabet. using his method morelli was particularly successful, some discoveries he made were even sensational such as his identification of a reclining venus by giorgione, which until then had been displayed at dresden as a copy of titian done by sassoferrata. he was also the first to reconstruct the early life and works of correggio and was to be a formative influence on the work of bernard berenson. it is a curious thing then that a man whose life work is dedicated to the assignment of proper names to art works should be so concerned about hiding his own and morelli’s first publication was presented under the following rubric: the galleries of rome. a critical essay by ivan lermolieff, translated from the russian by dr johannes schwarze. in these writings morelli presents himself as a young russian critic at the beginning of his career, yet it will be obvious to present day readers, just as it must have been obvious to the restricted circle of art connoisseurs, that behind the russified anagram of the supposed author and the germanised parody of the pretend translator lurks the italian of giovanni morelli. but the nominal accretions do not end here! morelli was born in verona in 1816 and his family was originally of french protestant origin, so morelli itself was already an italianisation of the french morel. being protestant in origin giovanni morelli was sent to school in switzerland and susequently undertook medical studies in munich and, indeed, there is much in common between his method of drawing hands and ears and the medical semiotics of current manuals of comparative anatomy. after a period of study in paris, where he moved in artistic circles, morelli returned to italy in 1848 and joined cavour’s circle and the political movement of the italian risorgimento and in 1873 he was nominated a senator for life in the new italian parliament. despite his political ambitions morelli remained closely involved with cultural and art historical concerns, helping, among others, the collectors who formed what was to become the national gallery collection in london. if ‘lermolieff’ was a novice, a debutante in cultural circles, one could definitely say that morelli was not such an unknown. the comparison with freud’s anonymous presentation of himself as moving in but not the mover of psychoanalytical circles is indeed an u n c a n n y o n e , a n d f r e u d c o u l d be thought of as playing out that scene again in his presentation of giovanni morelli. however, in the anonymity of playing at being morelli, freud denounces the ideology in which he (morelli) is trapped, the ideology of attribution, of the search for the paternal name of the author. it is precisely the theological conception of a work of art, that which posits an autonomous conscious subject who is the f a t h e r o f h i s w o r k s , a s g o d i s o f c r e a t i o n , w h i c h freud sets out to unmask.20 freud was correct to see that morelli had a special place in the history of psychoanalysis and that the implications of morelli’s method lay elsewhere and w e r e m u c h r i c h e r . o n e o f those implications has been developed recently by the italian historians enrico castelnuovo and carlo ginzburg21 w h o d r a w a parallel between morelli’s methods of classification and those attributed by arthur conan doyle only a few years later to his fictional creation sherlock holmes. the art connoisseur, the detective and the psychoanalyst can be compared since each makes discoveries from clues that go unnoticed by others, u n c o v e r i n g t h e a u t h o r i n o n e c a s e o f a crime, in another of a painting, in the third of the self. ginzburg cites a curiously morellian tale entitled “the cardboard box” (1892) to illustrate his point.22 we find watson observing holmes the expert at work thus: [holmes] was staring with singular intentness at the lady’s profile. suprise and satisfaction were both for an instant to be read upon his eager face, though when she glanced around to find out the cause of his silence he had interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 6 become as demure as ever. i stared hard myself at her flat grizzled hair, her trim cap, her little gilt ear-rings, her placid features, but i could see nothing which would account for my companion’s evident excitement. later on holmes explains to watson the course of his unusual deduction: as a medical man, you are aware, watson, that there is no part of the human body which varies so much as the ear. each ear is as a rule quite distinctive, and differs from all other ones. in last year’s anthropological journal you will find two short monographs from my pen upon the subject. i had, therefore, examined the ears in the box with the eyes of an expert, and had carefully noted their anatomical peculiarities. imagine my suprise then, when, on looking at miss cushing, i perceived that her ear corresponded exactly with the female ear which i had just inspected. the matter was entirely beyond coincidence. there was the same shortening of the pinna, the same broad curve of the upper lobe, the same convolution of the inner cartilage. in all essentials it was the same ear. of course, i at once saw the enormous importance of the observation. it was evident that the victim was a blood relation, and probably a very close one. watson cannot account for the intrinsic (“the enormous importance of the observation”) in the apparently extrinsic (“trim cap” and “gilt ear-rings”). it is clear that the problem which watson has difficulty grasping here is the problem of ornament, the implications of ornament as supplement in derrida’s terms. i want now to try and follow some of those implications for freud’s text and psychoanalysis, and for michelangelo’s statue of moses itself. iii initially in his essay freud cites a variety of late nineteenth-century interpretations of michelangelo’s statue of moses (f i g 5 ) and shows how they fall into two groups: those which maintain that michelangelo intended to create “a timeless study of character and mood;” and those which argue that moses was portrayed at “a particular moment of his life.” most of the commentators freud cites favour the latter reading and the majority think that they can identify the moment in question. as freud phrases it: the majority of judges ... are able to tell us what episode in his life it is which the artist has immortalised in stone. it is the descent from mt sinai, where moses has received the tables from god, and it is the moment when he perceives that the people have meanwhile made themselves a golden calf and are dancing around it and are rejoicing. this is the scene upon which his eyes are turned, this is the spectacle which calls out the feelings depicted in his countenance feelings which in the next instant will launch his great frame into violent action. michelangelo has chosen this last moment of hesitation, of calm before the storm, for his representation. in the next instant moses w i l l s p r i n g t o h i s f e e t h i s l e f t f o o t i s a l r e a d y r a i s e d from the ground dash the tables to the earth, and let loose his rage upon his faithless people.23 the distinguished art historian and connoisseur heinrich wölfflin held this view when he spoke of “inhibited movement” and saw the statue as depicting “the last moment of self-control before (moses) let himself go and leaps to his feet.”24 b u t f r e u d n o t e s how these nineteenth-century accounts contradict each other and that “a figure in the act of instant departure would be utterly at variance with the state of mind which the tomb is meant to induce in us.”25 following on from his discovery and discussion of morelli, but proceeding we should note in a nonmorellian fashion since he does not make a comparison with other works by michelangelo, freud focuses on what he perceives as two troubling details concerning michelangelo’s moses the attitude of the right hand and the position of the two tables of the law. let us begin with the right hand (f i g 6 ), essentially freud believes that the way the fingers and the strands of the beard are related can only be understood as the consequence of a prior movement, as he puts it: “perhaps his hand had seized his beard with far more energy, had reached across to its left edge, and, in returning to that position in which the statue shows it, had been followed by a part of his beard which now testifies to the movement which has just taken place.” 26 w i t h r e s p e c t t o t h e t a b l e s (f i g 7 ), freud argues that “a protuberance like a horn” on their lower edge indicates that they are upside down and this peculiar position also indicates prior movement. linking his analysis to these two morellian details of the statue he proposes a cinematographic sequence of the figure’s movement which he has an artist draw for him (fig 8). the first diagram shows moses sitting sedately with the tables firmly under his right arm supported by his right hand. the second depicts him after he has seen the israelites on his left looking towards them in a state of rage, the tables have now swiveled upside down and he grasps his beard in anger. the third presents the statue as it is, moses has drawn his right hand back across his beard to regain control and overcome his fury of which only a few traces remain. 27 freud concludes: interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 7 what we see before us is not the inception of a violent action but the remains of a movement that has already taken place. in his first transport of fury, moses desired to act, to spring up and take vengeance and forget the tables; but he has overcome the temptation, and he will now remain seated and still, in his frozen wrath and in his pain mingled with contempt. nor will he throw away the tables so that they will break on the stones, for it is on their especial account that he has controlled his anger; it was to preserve them that he kept his passion in check. in giving way to his rage and indignation he had to neglect the tables, and the hand which upheld them was withdrawn. they began to slide down and were in danger of being broken. this brought him to himself. he remembered his mission and for its sake renounced an indulgence of his feelings. his hand returned and saved the unsupported tables before they had actually fallen to the ground. in this attitude he remained immobilised, and in this attitude michelangelo has portrayed him as the guardian of the tomb.28 from what remains of michelangelo’s various designs for the tomb of julius ii and the biographical accounts of vasari and condivi, it is clear that the statue of moses was first intended to take up a position other than the one in which it is placed today. as is well-known, michelangelo’s tomb for julius ii was first commissioned in 1503, and when michelangelo left rome for carrara in 1505 to quarry marble for the tomb we know that decisions about its form and scale had been made.29 the tomb was to be freestanding for it was intended that it should stand in the new basilica of st peter’s where julius is in fact buried. it was also designed in imitation of classical sepulchral monuments, imposing i n s i z e , a b o u t 2 3 f e e t b y 3 6 f e e t a n d s o m e three levels high, the three tiers deriving possibly from those of the imperial ceremonial immolation or rogus, and the unfinished tomb would itself contain over forty sculpted figures (f i g s 9 , 1 0 ). the moses was originally planned as one of four figures on the cornice of the second level of the tomb. the other three, according to vasari were to have been st paul, the active life and the contemplative life. however, michelangelo carved almost nothing of this initial design and he did not really begin to work on the tomb until 1513. in fact this was after the death of julius ii when a second contract was drawn up, this time with julius’ heirs and we do have some surviving drawings, one of 1513, found today in berlin and its accompanying version which is a reconstruction by panofsky (figs 11, 12 ). this revised tomb is the one, most scholars believe, for which the statue of moses was carved between 1513 and 1516. it is clearly no longer the grandiose freestanding project of 1505 with all its classical connotations, the rear face now abuts against a wall and so it becomes a more modest renaissance walllike tomb with a far more explicitly christian and marian iconographic content, also associated with this revised project is an explicit neoplatonic allegory (f i g s 1 3 , 1 4). at the very top we find the m a d o n n a a n d c h i l d i n t h e empyrean heaven and then the pope’s body born by a joyful and a weeping figure (figures of angels) representing heaven receiving julius’ immortal soul, joyfully, and earth weeping at loosing him, since earth will retain only his corruptible remains in this very tomb. then, on either side, we have an allegory of the contemplative and active life with the figures of moses and st paul. these figures are not in some form of contrastive opposition to each other but each contains within it both active and contemplative elements if we follow vasari’s account.30 t h e n d o w n b e l o w o n t h e t h i r d level we have a series of bound male prisoners, b o u n d t o columns which have heads upon them called termini. terminus, the figure of an aging and ugly god, was traditionally put up to mark and protect boundaries and here these termini can be seen as dividing the heavenly allegory above from the earthly one played out below. in the niches between them and the bound prisoners under them we have a series of female victories (winged victory figures in the greek and classical style). at the very bottom of the tomb then there would appear to be some sort of triumph, a triumph of victories and the binding of those who are taken prisoner. for michelangelo’s other contemporary biographer condivi, the winged victories are the virtues and the bound prisoners the arts which julius ii practised and fostered.31 the arts are bound as prisoners because they are subject to death in this world as was julius, the one who had released them and whose death is now the occasion for their binding again. the final, incomplete and unsatisfactory tomb, a mixture of several styles and hands, was not achieved until 1545 and finally unveiled in 1547 (fig 15). michelangelo’s moses is now found in the centre of the bottom of two tiers flanked by two of the weakest figures that michelangelo ever carved, those of rachael a n d leah; the two completed slaves or bound prisoners, which are to be found in the louvre today, no longer had a part to play and were given away to be replaced by huge volutes under the termini heads; above moses is the stark and frozen architecture of the upper level containing the bland, inexpressive and indifferent work of michelangelo’s assistant, raffaello da montelupo. and so, rather miserably, and to his great dissatisfaction, michelangelo finished t h e t o m b h e h a d b e g u n s o confidently forty two years earlier, a tomb that is today remembered or visited not for its monumental qualities, nor for its interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 8 ensemble of figures but for the one sculpture of moses. in fact, it was anton springer, a critic whom freud cites, who was the first to suggest that the anomalies and defects perceived by critics in the statue of moses would disappear if it were placed up high and viewed from below as michelangelo might have intended.32 more recently earl rosenthal has reproposed a viewing of the statue from below and p r o v i d e d a m o c k u p o f a p l a s t e r c a s t t a k e n f r o m various angles to approximate what the statue would look like if it were placed on a platform fifteen-feet high (fig 16). and indeed, when seen from below, the figure appears less rigid and more relaxed, the left foot drawn back along the side no longer suggests an intention to rise (fig 17 ), the muchquestioned tables seem more firmly tucked under a p o w e r f u l a r m a n d a l o t l e s s p r e c a r i o u s f r o m this angle. it is now that the contemporary description of the statue by michelangelo’s biographer condivi seems far more plausible: moisé duce e capitano degli ebrei; il quale se ne sta a sedere in atto di pensoso e savio, tenendo sotto il braccio destro le tavole della legge, e colla sinistra mano sostenendosi il mento, come persona stanca e piena di cure (fig 18).33 i believe that this rethinking of the relationship between the sculpture and the architectural monument that contains it may be taken even further. that is, the redimensionings and changes successive to the first project of 1503 are partially a testimony to the lack of interest on michelangelo’s part for the complex as a whole, as are the indifferent work on the figures of leah a n d rachael and the final assigning of the upper portions to the second-rate efforts of raffaello da montelupo. or more correctly perhaps we should redimension that lack of interest itself, to see it as a change of interest: it seems clear that the idea of the condensation of the entire monument into one figure, at the outset merely one of its ornaments, begins to take place in michelangelo’s mind from the project of 1513 onwards. the redimensioned 1513 project has one side with its back placed against the wall echoing the form of the sculptural figure of moses which was not sculpted to be viewed from the rear. the figure of moses t a k e s o n gigantic, architectural proportions, like that of the david. there are many syntactical correspondences to be found between the moses a n d michelangelo’s work in architecture itself, in particular in the new sacristy of san lorenzo and the vestibule of the laurentian library. the volutes below the termini figures of lower section of the tomb bear a striking resemblance to those used in the vestibule of the laurentian library. the columns of the laurentian library are constructed almost sculpturally by a process of removal, ‘per via di levare,’ r a t h e r than being modelled or ‘built up’ in relief, and are inserted like autonomous members into the wall, corresponding to the massiveness of right leg of moses (fig 19). the columns of the new sacristy, too, are white legs of marble and it is no coincidence that the same material as the sculptures, marble, characterises all of michelangelo’s early architectural works as ackerman notes (f i g 2 0 ).34 only architecture could offer michelangelo the possibility of reading the enormous dimensions of the human figure which became his obsession after the sculpture of david and the painted figures of the sistine ceiling, together with his moses.35 only architecture could become so central to this sculpture of moses, initially as the monument of ornament and finally the inseparable ornament of its monument. iv i c o u l d h a v e finished here with something of an ornamental flourish, but it is the nature of all ornamentation to keep on going on, as michelangelo was to discover to his dismay. so let me see if i can bring a few more threads together with respect to freud’s essay remembering too that freud would argue in one of his last essays that all analysis is inherently interminable since the dynamics of resistance and transference at work can always generate new beginnings in relation to any conceivable end. in contrast to the psychobiographical model of freud’s essays on art and literature, such as the monograph on leonardo da vinci, the object of freud’s analysis in “the moses of michelangelo” is not the creator of the sculpture, and it has often been objected that he has nothing at all to say about michelangelo buonarroti when there w a s s o m u c h t h a t c o u l d h a v e b e e n s a i d , s o m u c h agony or ecstasy about him to express. curiously and significantly in this essay the object for analysis is the figure which furnishes the model for the sculpture, that is the historical figure of moses. the result of this shift of attention is that in the sculpture itself we have a re-presentation of the theoretical model of psychoanalytical cure as freud was beginning to elaborate it. michelangelo, the sculptor in the role of the analyst, gives form to the biblical tale of moses, enunciates that history with its hesitations, contradictions, obscure details, permits us to follow a hidden meaning; he places, we might say, the ornament of moses’ life within the monument of history. one can see here exactly the relationship proposed by freud nine months later in a text which interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 9 is rich in secret harmonies with this essay on michelangelo, the case study known as the wolf man, written up with the title “from the history of an infantile neurosis” between 1914-15 but only published in 1918.36 freud at the threshold of this case history warns us he is dealing with an infantile neurosis analysed fifteen years after its termination: “an analysis of a childhood disorder through the medium of recollection in an intellectually mature adult ... necessitates our taking into account the distortion and refurbishing to which a person’s own past is subjected when it is looked back upon from a later period.”37 l e t m e l a y o u t t h e s a l i e n t p o i n t s of the dream, the frightening dream of the six or seven white wolves sitting in a tree, which came to name the case and the patient himself and which freud retained as the cornerstone of his analysis. the wolf man drew a diagram (fig 21) and gave this account of his dream: i dreamt that it was night and that i was lying in my bed ... suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and i was terrified to see that some white wolves were sitting on the big walnut tree in front of the window. there were six or seven of them. the wolves were quite white, and looked more like foxes or sheep-dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something. in great terror, evidently of being eaten up by the wolves, i screamed and woke up.38 for the wolf man, recounting this dream as he did on various occasions, two elements remain invariable and of great significance: the action of the opening window and the fixed attentive gaze ascribed to the wolves. for freud the opening window becomes the young dreamer waking up, opening the window of his eyes, the strained attention of the wolves is a displaced representation of the intense looking of the dreamer himself, and the motionlessness of the wolves points by contradiction to the most striking feature of the scene he observes, its agitation. according to freud for the wolf man: “what sprang into activity that night out of the chaos of the dreamer’s unconscious memory traces was the picture of copulation of his parents.”39 this dream by deferred action produces a neurotic reaction to the ‘primal scene’ witnessed by the child two and a half years earlier. the dream both records the past events, it is a rememoration, and itself in the past is a decisive present event in the adult wolf man’s story. the dream is a text which explains but which also alters the reality to which it refers.40 freud in his relationship with the wolf man is in a position analogous to the wolf man with his own buried past, and the wolf man’s case history is in turn analogous to the dynamics of the contemporary essay, “the moses of michelangelo”: freud : adult wolf man :: adult wolf man : child wolf man freud : michelangelo :: michelangelo : moses. both texts dramatise the narrative situation and in both the narrative procedures uncovered are the same, both exhibit a desire to actualise the past, to make it present, moving back from present symptoms to the traumatic events and their subsequent revival in the patient’s life. the patient comes to the analyst like the artwork comes to the critic with a story to be told, a story that is incomplete and untherapeutic, but which when told is curative and satisfying. michelangelo’s moses demands decipherment, the unpacking of a dense and overlaid text, by reordering its components as narrative in a cinematographic sequence, finding the implications of the (hi)story behind it. as in freud’s reading of michelangelo’s moses, in the wolf man’s dream the thematic material only makes sense when ordered as a sequence of events or narrativised. in both cases it is clear that the plot is not straightforward: the constitution of the present narrative in relation to the past is complex, the notion of causality confusing and problematic, the actual part played by the event or its phantasmatic imagination difficult to unravel. more importantly, these two texts of freud are both texts which demonstrate the value of the transferential model and they document freud’s progressive discovery of the importance of the transference in analysis, bringing into play the dynamic interaction of the teller and listener of a tale, the dialogic relation of production and interpretation. the traditional transferential model is that of transference as a distinct space created between the analysand and analyst where the past affective life and erotic impulses of the analysand are reinvested in the multiple dynamics of the interaction with the analyst. these key concepts on transference by freud are expressed in two early essays, “the dynamics of transference” (1912) and “remembering, repeating and working through” (1914) both written before the case history of the wolf man and the essay on michelangelo’s moses. these two latter works contain, i believe, the beginnings of a reworking and rethinking of those early ideas on transference which then culminate for freud in the two essays “constructions in analysis” interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 10 (1937) and “analysis terminable and interminable” (1937), and are then to be subsequently elaborated in the work of jacques lacan. if the transference necessarily elicts interpretation, it is equally true that the potential and promise of interpretation (the countertransference) on the part of the analyst, the figure whom lacan rephrases as “the subject supposed to know,”41 triggers the transferential relation, the analysand’s entry into the interpretative space of transference. lacan sees transference as the entanglement of two desires: the transference is a phenomenon in which subject and psycho-analyst are both included. to divide it in terms of transference and counter-transference however bold, however confident what is said on this theme may be is n e v e r m o r e t h a n a w a y o f avoiding the essence of the matter.42 in lacan’s more radical view of the transferential relationship interpreting is what happens on both sides of the analytic situation: what needs to be understood regarding psychoanalytic experience is that it proceeds entirely in a relationship of subject to subject ... what happens in an analysis is that the subject is, strictly speaking, constituted through a discourse, to which the mere presence of the psychoanalyst brings, before any intervention, the dimension of dialogue.43 thus the unconscious is not simply the object of psychoanalytical investigation, but also paradoxically its subject; it is not simply that which must be read, it is also that which reads. as peter brooks, to whom i am indebted for many of the insights here, notes writing about the wolf man’s narrative: the logic of his interpretative work moves freud to an understanding that causation can work backward as well as forward since the effect of an event, or of phantasy, often comes only when it takes on meaning ... which may occur with considerable delay. chronological sequence may not settle this issue of cause: events may gain traumatic significance by deferred action (nachträglichkeit) or retroaction, action working in reverse sequence to create a meaning that did not previously exist.44 in his text on michelangelo, protected by both the extrinsic subject matter and the doubly deferred anonymity of address, freud risks proposing this radical hypothesis, one that he will not dare offer in such explicit terms within the formality and legitimacy of the wolf man’s case study. in interpretation it is not simply a question of finding proof for a hypothetical event in the past, but of making that history, of establishing the history of a cure. this is to say that the path the analyst follows has its origins in the goal proposed. there is no cure without a project and every project finds its justification in its theoretical precedent. the space of criticism is in fact a meeting place, like the meeting place of the two voices of the patient and the analyst in the transitional realm of transference, a medium of the inbetween, a space that is artificial but nonetheless the place of real investments of desire. the true narrative of criticism/analysis is the product of two discourses playing against one another, often warring with one another, a perpetually reversing counterpoint of origin and process. what this implies in its most extreme version is that whoever interprets out of his or her unconscious, is an analysand even when the interpreting is done from the position of the analyst. there is no ornament of theory that is not already some monument of analysis. notes 1 jacques derrida, the truth in painting trans. geoff bennington and ian mcleod, (chicago and london: university of chicago press, 1987), p. 27. 2 this essay was first published in rivista di estetica (1982), n. 12 p. 36-43 with the title “ornamento e monumento” and then reprinted in the collection la fine della modernità (milan: garzanti, 1985), p. 8797, as “ornamento monumento.” it is now available in english as “ornament/monument” in gianni vattimo, the end of modernity: nihilism and hermeneutics in post-modern culture trans. jon r. synder (oxford: polity press, 1988), p. 79-89. for “il pensiero debole” see il pensiero debole eds. pier aldo rovatti and gianni vattimo, (milan: feltrinelli, 1983). 3 barbara johnson, “taking fidelity philosophically,” difference in translation ed. joseph f. graham, (ithaca: cornell university press, 1985), p. 146. s e e a l s o jacques derrida, “letter to a japanese friend,” derrida and differance ed. david wood, (coventry: parousia press, 1985), p. 1-8, where he states “i do not believe that translation is a secondary and derived event in relation to an original language or text.” 4 jacques derrida, “plato’s pharmacy,” in his dissemination trans. barbara johnson, (london: althone press, 1981), p. 61-156. 5 for derrida’s notion of supplement see christopher norris, derrida (london: fontana modern masters, 1987), p. 108-113, 118-121. 6 derrida, the truth in painting p. 15-147. interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 11 7 adolf loos, “ornament and crime,” yehudra safran and wilfred wing, the architecture of loos: an arts council exhibition catalogue (london: arts council of great britain, 1985), p. 100-103. 8 derrida, the truth in painting p. 63. 9 martin heidegger, die kunst und der raum (st galen: erker verlag, 1969). a not entirely reliable english translation of this essay by charles h. seibert exists as “art and space,” man and world ( 1 9 7 3 ) , n . 6 , p . 3-8. 10 an english translation of this essay is contained in martin heidegger, poetry, language, thought trans. albert hofstadter, (new york: harper and row, 1971). 11 vattimo, the end of modernity p. 85. 12 sigmund freud, “the moses of michelangelo (1914),” the pelican freud library, volume 14, art and literature trans. james strachey, ed. albert dickson, (harmondsworth: penguin, 1985). on freud’s essay see: hubert damisch, “le gardien de l’interprétation,” tel quel ( 1 9 7 1 ) , n . 4 4 , p . 7 0 8 4 , and (1972), n . 4 5 , p. 82-96; gerald l. bruns, “freud, structuralism, and ‘the moses of michelangelo’,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism ( 1 9 7 4 ) , n . 3 3 , p. 8-13; rudy bremer, “freud and michelangelo’s moses,” american imago (1976), n . 3 3 , p. 60-75; c l a u d e l e guen, “un discours de la méthode psychanalytique: le ‘moïse de michel-ange’ de sigmund freud,” revue francaise de psychanalyse (1977), n . 4 1 , p. 489-502; peter fuller, “moses, mechanism, and michelangelo,” in his art and psychoanalysis (london: writers and readers, 1980), p. 26-70; sarah kofman, the childhood of art: an interpretation of freud's aesthetics trans. winifred woodhull, (new york: columbia university press, 1988), p. 8-13, 92-94; and laurie schneider adams, “michelangelo’s moses and other michelangelo problems,” in her art and psychoanalysis (new york: harper collins, 1993), p. 155-175. 13 freud, “the moses of michelangelo,” p. 253. 14 jane gallop, “pyschoanalytic criticism: some intimate questions,” art in america (1984), p . 1 3 . now reprinted in a slightly different form as “a g o o d l a y ” i n h e r thinking through the body ( n e w york: columbia university press, 1988), p . 1 3 5 149. 15 gallop, “pyschoanalytic criticism,” p. 13. 16 kofman, the childhood of art p. 9. 17 freud, “the moses of michelangelo,” p. 265. 18 freud, “the moses of michelangelo,” p. 265. 19 for biographical details of morelli’s life see sir a. h. layard’s introduction to vol. 1 of giovanni morelli, italian painters: critical studies of their works; the borghese and doria-pamphili galleries in rome trans. c. j. foulkes (london: j. murray, 1892). this was also most probably the source of freud’s biographical information. on morelli’s ideas see edgar wind, “critique of connoisseurship,” in his art and anarchy (london: faber and faber, 1963), p. 32-51; arnold hauser, the philosophy of art history (cleveland: a. a. knopf, 1959), p. 109-110; richard wollheim, “giovanni morelli and the origins of scientific connoisseurship” in his on art and the mind, essays and lectures (london: 1973); hubert damisch, “la partie et le tout,” revue d'esthetique (1970), n. 23, p. 168-88; jack spector, “the method of morelli and its relation to freudian psychoanalysis,” diogenes ( 1 9 6 9 ) , n . 6 6 , p. 63-69; henri zerner, “giovanni morelli et la science de l’art,” revue de l'art (1978), n. 40, p. 209-15; giovanni previtali, “a propos de morelli,” revue de l'art ( 1 9 7 8 ) , n . 4 2 , p. 27-31; jaynie anderson, “giovanni morelli et sa définition de la ‘scienza dell’arte’,” revue de l'art ( 1 9 8 7 ) , n . 7 5 , p. 49-55; and jack spector, “the state of psychoanalytic research in art history,” the art bulletin (1988), n. 70, p. 49-76. 20 kofman, the childhood of art p. 10. 21 “cette méthode se ressent nettement des tendances du temps, son caractère scientifique est indéniable mais, d’autre part, elle semble suivre un méthode parallèle à celle des enquetes policières de sir arthur conan doyle” enrico castelnuovo, “attribution,” encyclopaedia universalis ii (paris, 1971), p. 782; see also carlo ginzburg, “morelli, freud and sherlock holmes: c l u e s a n d scientific method,” history workshop (1980), n . 9 , p . 5 3 6 . ginzburg gives some evidence to suggest that the parallel was possibly more than mere coincidence: a n u n c l e o f c o n a n d o y l e ’ s w a s d i r e c t o r of the dublin art gallery and met morelli in 1 8 8 7 a n d apparently used his method in compiling the catalogue of the gallery in 1890. the first english translation of morelli appeared in 1883 and the first holmes story was published in 1887. recently the connections between freud’s methods and those of sherlock holmes have been suggested and elaborated upon by peter brooks, reading for the plot: design and intention in narrative (new york: vintage books, 1985), p. 269, who notes comments in the wolf man’s memoirs that specifically attest to freud’s knowledge and interest in sherlock holmes. 22 a . c o n a n d o y l e , “ t h e cardboard box,” sherlock holmes: the complete short stories (london: e. m u r r a y , 1 9 2 8 ) , p . 9 3 2 , 9 3 7 (for another striking example of congruence of method see “the boscombe valley mystery,” in the same volume). a footnote by ginzburg “morelli, freud and sherlock holmes,” p. 30, offers a further tantalising interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 12 complication: “‘the cardboard box’ first appeared in the strand magazine v , j a n j u n e 1 8 9 3 . from the annotated sherlock holmes, ed. w.s. baringgould, 1968, we learn ( p . 2 0 8 ) that the strand several months later published an unsigned article on the varieties of the human ear (“ears: a chapter on,” the strand magazine vi, july-dec. 1893). baring-gould thinks the author likely to have been conan doyle, publishing holmes’s anthropological treatise on ears.” 23 freud, “the moses of michelangelo,” p. 258. 24 heinrich wölfflin, classic art (london: dover, 1952), p. 72. 25 freud, “the moses of michelangelo,” p. 263. 26 freud, “the moses of michelangelo,” p. 267. 27 recently peter armour has argued that freud’s “proposed reconstruction of moses’ pose is unecessary, for a simple experiment will prove that the figure could not possibly s t a n d u p f r o m this position as can be verified by anyone who cares to reproduce the pose ... as freud’s theory implies, if moses did spring to his feet, he would break the tablets by accident, even carelessly, for they would simply topple over and fall to the ground.” peter armour, “michelangelo’s moses: a t e x t i n stone,” italian studies (1993), v. xlvii, p. 31. 28 freud, “the moses of michelangelo,” p. 273. 29 for good accounts of the details of the composition and chronology of michelangelo’s work on the tomb of pope julius ii see giulio carlo argan and bruno contardi, michelangelo architetto (milan: electa, 1990) “tomba di giulio ii primo progetto, 150506,” p. 49-54, and “tomba di giulio ii progetti successivi, 1513-42,” p. 67-77; martin weinberger, michelangelo the sculptor (london: routledge and kegan paul, 1967), v. 1 , p . 1 2 9 2 3 4 , 253-280; charles de tolnay, michelangelo (princeton, new jersey: princeton university press, 1943-60), vol. iv: the t o m b o f j u l i u s i i ( 1 9 5 4 ) ; erwin panofsky, “the first two projects of michelangelo’s tomb of julius ii,” the art bulletin (1937), n. 19, p. 561-79; and enrico guidoni, il mosé di michelangelo (bari: editori laterza, 1982). 30 “on the corners of the first cornice were to go four large figures, representing the active and the contemplative life.” giorgio vasari, lives of the artists trans. george bull, (harmondsworth: penguin books, 1965), p. 344. 31 “these represented the liberal arts, such as painting, sculpture and architecture, each with its attributes so that it could easily be recognised for what it was, signifying thereby that all the artistic virtues were prisoners of death together with pope julius, as they would never find another to favour and foster them as he did.” ascanio condivi, the life of michelangelo trans. alice sidgwick wohl, ed. hellmut wohl, (baton rouge: louisiana state university press, 1976), p. 33. 32 anton springer cited, earl e. rosenthal, “michelangelo’s moses, d a l d i s o t t o in sù,” the art bulletin (1964), n. 46, p. 544-550. 33 “moses, the leader and captain of the jews, who is seated in the attitude of a wise and pensive man, holding the tables of the law under his right arm and supporting his chin with his left hand like a person who is weary and full of cares.” condivi, the life of michelangelo p. 77-79. 34 james ackerman, the architecture of michelangelo (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1986), p . 7 4 f f . ackerman also points to michelangelo’s practice of making clay models of his architectural projects and concludes “his buildings ... are concieved as if the masses of a structure were organic forms capable of being moulded and carved ... like a statue.” f o r t h e sculptural qualities of michelangelo’s architecture see also pietro c. marani, “michelangelo’s architecture as monumental sculpture,” the genius of the sculptor in michelangelo’s work ed. denise l. bissonette (montreal: the montreal museum of fine arts, 1992), p. 449-467. paolo portoghesi, michelangelo architetto e d s . p a o l o portoghesi and bruno zevi (turin, 1964), p. 14-17, in contrast argues against this sculptural reading of michelangelo’s architecture. 35 on ‘gigantismo’ in michelangelo see guidoni, il mosè di michelangelo p. 18-24. 36 sigmund freud, “from the history of an infantile neurosis,” the pelican freud library, volume 9, case histories ii: ‘rat man,’ schreber, ‘wolf man,’ female homosexuality trans. james strachey, ed. angela richards, (harmondsworth: penguin books, 1979). 37 freud, “from the history of an infantile neurosis,” p. 235. 38 freud, “from the history of an infantile neurosis,” p. 259. 39 freud, “from the history of an infantile neurosis,” p. 267. 40 see jean laplanche “notes on afterwardsness,” in his seduction, translation, drives e d . john fletcher and martin stanton, (london: institute of contemporary arts, 1992), p. 217-223, and passim, for a discussion of the concept of nachträglichkeit . 41 embedded in this “subject supposed to know” there is of course another connoisseur: ‘connoisseur’ from the french connaitre, connoting a certain kind of interstices 4 the monument of ornament: michelangelo’s moses 13 knowledge, knowledge which you cannot learn by rote, and knowledge which gives its possessor, the connoisseur, a certain aura. 42 jacques lacan, the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis ed. jacques-alain miller, trans. alan sheridan, (london: hogarth press and institute of psychoanalysis, 1977), p. 231. 43 jacques lacan, “intervention on transference,” trans. jacqueline rose, in dora’s case: freud, hysteria, feminism ed. charles bernheimer and clare kahane, (london: virago press, 1985), p. 93. 44 peter brooks, reading for the plot p. 280. 35 inner poverty: a setting of peter zumthor’s brother klaus field chapel ross jenner from a distance, zumthor’s feldkapelle at wachendorf appears as a slab, stele or dolmen: an erect monolith of unlikely interiority.1 the object’s blurred, paradoxically diaphanous appearance derives from its being of a substance with the mud of the fields, of the same sand and gravel as its site and mixed there with white cement, sticking making to locality.2 on approach, it yields, via a pivoting triangular door, a blackened interior cast on tree trunks, open to the sky, wet underfoot, spangled with the glazed apertures of its former form-ties and reeking like a chimney of smoke. 3 in the working of concrete – a material both amorphous and deemed devoid of inner life – and in the forming of an interior as burnt-out trace, this work is as much about matter and making as it is about form and content.4 in memory of the hermit, niklaus, in the refusal to transcend from material to image, (that is, to stand above matter) in depriving the work of the completion which is form, its poverty is its potential. concrete concrete, the essential ingredient at wachendorf, is still regarded as the simulation of a material: stone.5 by imprint it can simulate other forms but it has none of its own, except as a mixed, messy mass, a paste or dough kneaded then clotted. ferro-cement is scientifically conceived, but mud-like. the origins of the french (thence german) word for concrete, béton, point to nothing promising. in historian peter collins’ account, it derives from betum, old french for “a mass of rubbish” (2004: 21).6 according to larousse, betum derives from the latin bitumen: view from distance approaching on foot through fields (photo: author) 1 thanks are due to peter zumthor for an interview in autumn 2008, to ted mccoy, leonhard ott, joseph rykwert and tina engels-schwarzpaul for their help. a university of auckland faculty research grant has also to be acknowledged. 2 such localisation of concrete has not been thoroughly researched. it is clear, however, that perret used regional aggregates to relate his concrete to the local; wright’s los angeles “textile block” houses were made from the materials of the sites in an attempt to capture an indigenous colour and texture. the dark reddish-brown hue of i. m. pei’s national center for atmospheric research, boulder, colorado, is made to match the range of the rocky mountains before which it is set with sand ground from the nearby quarry and the surface bush-hammered like eroded rock. see legault (2006: 51-52). 3 for a full description of the construction of the chapel, see rossmann (2008: 12-14) and baglione (2007: 142-153). 4 in zumthor’s words: “i think materials somehow stand above form. artists such as beuys have used materials in a more essential, basic way than many contemporary architects. there is an unwritten code which defines the meanings of materials in particular contexts and in my buildings i like to work with that.” (1996: 64) 5 ostler (1995) and cohen (2006), for example, still feel obliged to reference concrete to stone. 6 cohen, however, claims that the late eighteenth-century experiments of the labourer françois cointereaux, “with adobe cast in a type of wooden form called a ‘bétum’ … provided the etymology for ‘béton’ in french” (cohen and moeller 2006: 22). interstices 12 7 in vitruvius, de architectura, ii, iv, the term caementum (from the verb caedo, to cut into pieces) indicated the scrap stone used to make concrete. caementum became cementum in vulgar latin, keeping the meaning of scrap stone. in the later middle ages it would assume the meaning, in the italian term cemento, of the whole conglomerate that is contemporary concrete. only at the end of the eighteenth century did the term “cement” assume its current meaning, while the conglomerate was definitively assigned the term “concrete”. in english, the oed cites g. godwin, 1836, on “concrete” from trans. inst. brit. archit. 12: “the generic term dates from the period when its use became general and frequent, probably no longer than 15 or 20 years ago.” see collins (2004: 36). 8 here benjamin wrote “for just like any good car, whose every part, even the bodywork, obeys the needs above all of the engine, klee’s figures too seem to have been designed on the drawing board, and even in their general expression they obey the laws of their interior. their interior [dem innern], rather than their inwardness [der innerlichkeit].” (benjamin 1982: 215-16, 1996: 733 translation modified) 9 for example, benjamin (1982: 220, 1999: 157) quotes mayer: "iron inspired a certain distrust just because it was not immediately furnished by nature, but instead had to be artificially prepared as a building material. this distrust is only a special application of that general sentiment of the renaissance to which leon battista alberti [1966: 239, 1988: 83] gives expression.” 10 joray refers to the swiss writer charlesferdinand ramuz (1878-1947). bitumen, pitch and asphalt: sticky things used in sealing and preserving. concrete demands processes of cutting, breaking, crushing, mashing, milling, grinding and pulverising into aggregates, sands, and fired powders, which when hydrated as pastes and mixed, collect, coagulate, thicken, curdle and set, turning from plastic to solid.7 the name of its relative, “mortar”, derives from grinding to paste (with pestle and mortarium) but implies dead as opposed to living stone. lime, the chalky mineral used in making mortar derives from old english lim “sticky substance”, related to german leim, from *(s)lei“slime, slimy, sticky”, related to loam. in a sense, concrete resembles stone but, being ersatz, can never equal it. granular, it lacks its grain (even if all stone were once plastic). only when the moulded is hammered or, as on the podium to the left of the entry at wachendorf, polished into a seat, can a richness or inner life of the material be suggested. with the arrival of modernity in architecture, the interior walter benjamin found lost was replaced by a notion of design from the inner workings of things (machine, mind, material, matter). glass, the main focus in his essay “experience and poverty”,8 embodied the sense of calculation, hardness, coldness and loss of “inwardness” – evident also in other modern materials like steel and concrete. all three undergo a plastic phase and are, in a sense, artificial, synthetic, and initially distrusted.9 nevertheless, as emblem of modernity, empty and without “inwardness”, concrete excels in its capacity to receive imprints. frank lloyd wright’s remarks on the meaning of concrete reflect its generally-held sense of baseness. it is “supine, and sets as the fool, whose matrix receives it, wills”. it is “mongrel, servile” and “one of the insensate brute materials that is used to imitate others” – “it has neither song nor story”. however, wright continued, “surely here, to the creative mind, is temptation. temptation to rescue so honest a material from degradation.” therefore, its form is a matter of this process of casting rather than a matter of anything at all derived from its own nature. because it is thus, universally, at the mercy of demoralizing extraneous influences, it is difficult to say what is “concrete” form and what is not. (1975, 208) on the use of concrete in art, the swiss, marcel joray, argued for transcendence: concrete is, in itself, “neither noble nor base … only through inspiration can concrete be given a soul. concrete might rather be considered as antipoetic, but ‘poetry is only made with the antipoetic’, according to ramuz. the act of creation transcends the material.” (1977: 13)10 historian, adrian forty argues (along wright’s lines): concrete “is not a material, it is a process” (2006: 35). rejecting the expectation that it should have “its proper form”, he adds “uncertainty, indecision, and conflict are normal, and, indeed, structural” to concrete (35) and “[a]ll that characterises the aesthetics of concrete is confusion and uncertainty” (37). left: site model moulded in plasticine (courtesy architekturbüro peter zumthor). right: ground and polished concrete on podium to left of entry (photo: author) 37 11 zumthor had already remarked: “i think materials somehow stand above form. artists such as beuys have used materials in a more essential, basic way than many contemporary architects. there is an unwritten code which defines the meanings of materials in particular contexts and in my buildings i like to work with that.” (1996: 64) 12 see leroi-gourhan (1943: 14-15.) the idea is developed by bernard stiegler (2009: 48-49). 13 rykwert emphasises that semper provided four “ways of operating”, not four materials. plasticity there is, however, one property, which seems too blatant to bother about today, but upon which wright (one of the last to remember it) did not fail to insist – the “essential difference” discovered in “the plasticity of the material itself”: i should say that in this plasticity of concrete lies its aesthetic value. as an artificial stone, concrete has no great, certainly no independent, aesthetic value. as a plastic material – eventually becoming stone-like in character – there lives in it a great aesthetic property, as yet inadequately expressed. (1975: 209) the plasticity of moulding and modeling, in architectural thinking, must be understood in relation to elementary means of acting on and with materials, and in making relative to their properties as they concern human life. save its technical side, however, this area is little theorised. there are the millennia of behaviour with materials, recovered by anthropology and living-on in language, and there are a few words by zumthor himself, even if not specific. for example: to me, there is something revealing about the work of joseph beuys and some of the artists of the arte povera group. what impresses me is the precise and sensuous way they use materials. it seems anchored in an ancient, elemental knowledge about man’s use of materials, and at the same time to expose the very essence of these materials, which is beyond all culturally conveyed meaning. (2006: 8-10)11 lest it seem here that zumthor revert to any simple essentialism, it could be noted that the ‘poverty’ of arte povera lies in stripping away preconceptions regarding materials and form in attacking the powers of hierarchical structures, the market place, the corporate mentality and cultural institutions in general. moreover, the anthropologist andré leroi-gourhan in his critique of the “culturalist” point of view, posited with regard to ancient knowledge of materials, the notion of a “technical tendency” independent of the particular cultural milieu in which it is concretised.12 the term “plastic” is a comparatively recent revival. in 1879, gottfried semper observed that “[t]he greek word plastic (plastik)” was used only for “figurative representation”, was “not in general use and hence sound[ed] affected” (1879: 1). in semper’s schema, plastic “referred to the process of forming”, in particular to clay (kéramos), the “material basis” of ceramics – but it also encompassed metal and glass. concrete had scarcely entered architectural discourse at this stage. moulding, a “mode of operating” (rykwert 1990: 42),13 concerned what is “[s]oft, malleable (plastic), capable of being hardened, easily shaped and formed, and retaining a given form when hardened” (semper 1879: 9). leroi-gourhan noted of “plastic solids” in their primary state: “[t]heir common characteristic is to be able to pass from an almost fluid to a solid or consolidated state. one cannot assign them categories based on their composition (mineral, horn or metal).” he proposed three groups: those which are and remain powdery like the earth; those which by mixing with water become pastes and by heating pass into a stable state like clays; those which by mixing become semi fluids and harden by drying. these are, respectively, plastics of weak cohesion, plastics proper and agglutinating plastics. (1943: 214-15) of the treatment of clay he proposed, in turn, three modes: modelling, moulding and turning (1943: 221-243). he did not, of course, include concrete in these classifications. the oozing, dripping and slipping of concrete between the tree trunk formwork” (photo: author) interstices 12 14 o.e. dag “dough,” from p.gmc. *daigaz “something kneaded” (cf. o.n. deig, swed. deg, m.du. deech, du. deeg, o.h.g. teic, ger. teig, goth. daigs “dough”), from pie *dheigh “to build, to form, to knead” (cf. skt. dehah “body,” lit. “that which is formed,” dih“to besmear;” gk. teikhos “wall;” l. fingere “to form, fashion,” figura “a shape, form, figure;” goth. deigan “to smear;” o.ir. digen “firm, solid,” originally “kneaded into a compact mass”. 15 job, x, 9-10. the image of milk clotted by pressure has been used since ancient times. it is a longstanding notion amongst pastoralists of the pyrenees and alps to explain the process of conception. see needham (1959: 64 and 84-5), belmont (1988:13-28), didi-huberman (2008: 54). in aristotle, the analogy of setting of cheese in the womb to form the baby transmits resemblance. it represented the passage from the liquid phase of seed and blood to the solid phase of the baby’s body where the matrix, the womb, was mould counter-form. de generatione animalium (729a). 16 the french, “instinct plastique” [from “bildungstrieb”, a term hegel borrowed from johann friedrich blumenbach], is usually rendered as “formative-drive” in english. 17 see legault (2006: 46). cf. rudolph’s marginal remarks (reported in pommer 1972: 860): “there is a paradox in the art and architecture building – it is relatively carefully built, but the handling of the surfaces renders it purposefully mud.” 18 mud is cognate with and probably from m.l.g. mudde, m.du. modde “thick mud,” from p.gmc. *mudfrom pie *meu-/*mu-, found in many words denoting “wet” or “dirty” (cf. gk. mydos ‘damp,’ pol. mul ‘slime,’ skt. mutra‘urine,’ avestan muthra‘excrement, filth’); related to ger. schmutz ‘dirt,’ which also is used for ‘mud’. the word plaster comes from the greek plássein (whence “plastic”) means to mould, stamp, coin, forge, or mass. the last word relates to mássein, to handle, touch, work with the hands, to knead dough, press into a mould. the latin massa is that which adheres together: a lump or mass of pitch, salt, cheese, dough, mud, dirt or air, even. a mass is something of indefinite contour and dimension. the english “glebe” (land, fields; from the latin gleba: globe, glob, clod or lump of earth) is similar. the etymology of “dough” suggests a history of construction and figuration: figuration by modelling/moulding.14 the word “human” derives from humus, earthly being, as opposed to gods’ being. in genesis, man is “formed from the dust of the ground”, in job, moulding is added to modelling: 9. and 10. remember i beseech thee that thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again? 10 hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?15 writing on mud and the primitiveness of the “plastic instinct”, gaston bachelard quoted hegel’s philosophy of nature: “the plastic instinct is like excretion, an act whereby the animal becomes exterior to itself.” (1947: 106)16 some architects, such as paul rudolph (whose furrowed, ‘corduroy’, finish zumthor’s interior resembles), delighted in the plasticity of concrete. “concrete is mud. i work with concrete, not against it. i like mud”,17 he jotted, adding, “[o]ne of the most humanising elements in corbu’s concrete is the oozing, dripping and slipping of concrete between poorly placed forms … ” (pommer 1972: 859) 18 about the same time, francis ponge was composing his “unfinished ode to mud” in which, denying the formation of man from mud, he affirms: “despised mud, i love you. i love you because people scorn you”, ‘concluding’ on mud: but since i am fonder of it than my poem … i’ll give it a chance, not to turn it into words. for it is opposed to forms and remains on the edge of the non-plastic. it tempts us to form, then in the end discourages us.. (1999: 729-731, 2009: 80-83) ponge’s postponement of form, his highly finished ‘unfinishedness’, is like the highly wrought ooze of concrete within this chapel and the strata without. it is usual to take concrete as an image of solidity, hence the expression ‘set in concrete’. but concrete can be worked (as here) in such a way that it leaves traces of its plasticity. such might be called a ‘delay in concrete’. the material and the mud of the fields, masses worked by hand and foot, take form by not taking form. this is the potential of the plastic. potentiality plasticity may also be a rendering into material terms. thus, max bill observed of robert maillart’s bridges that the relationship between the material and the shaping of reinforced concrete is one between “extreme economy” and “spiritually essential purposes”. if we are to call this art “concrete” [“konkret”], because it represents reality, the materialisation of a spiritual idea in the philosophical sense, i would draw attention to the fact that the word “concrete” in anglo-saxon terminology has also the meaning of artificially made pourable stone as well as the meaning it has in art; it is material formable after the spirit 39 19 here see (probably the most conspicuous example) francis onderdonk: “according to the esthetics of potentialities …, a material approximates perfection in proportion to the number of possibilities it presents. from this point of view ferroconcrete is the most perfect material, as its potentialities far outnumber those of other materials.” (1928: 17) forty complains: “over and over, people talk about concrete’s ‘potential,’ its ‘possibilities’ – in other words, it is seen as a material whose existence lies in the future rather than in the present or past.” (2006: 38) 20 “esti d’he men hule dunamis, to d’ eidos entelecheia” (de anima; iii 4, 412a9). ‘matter’ (hule) is that out of which something is made. entelecheia may be better translated as ‘that which has itself in fulfilment’ or ‘that which has been produced/carried out’, as heidegger (1995: 193) puts it. 21 cf. leo steinberg on rodin: “his real theme then is the intimacy of gestation, every available means being used to maintain a given figure as a telescoped sculptural process. whatever vicissitudes a work in progress can undergo are sealed into the form. the wet rags that are wrapped around clay to keep it moist leave their textures imprinted on the bare chest of the great marcelin berthelot bust” (1972: 393). 22 aristotle in metaphysics writes: “impotentiality (adunamia) is a privation contrary to potentiality. thus all potentiality is impotentiality of the same with respect to the same.” here agamben finds the originary structure of potentiality. “all potentiality is impotentiality”. the teleological shift from potentiality to actuality becomes the return of potentiality to itself, to its own privation, its own non-being. see also heidegger (1995: 91-94). of man by technical means, it is not only similar to stone but possesses still further qualities. here the circle closes again and the two meanings of concrete do not lie as far apart from each other as one might suppose on hasty comparison. (1949: 31-32) the emphasis here heads towards the concretisation of an idea: art concret. another emphasis might see in plasticity a process leaving a trace. roland barthes, for example, remarked (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, albeit accurately) that plastic is “a miraculous substance: a miracle is always a sudden transformation of nature. plastic remains impregnated throughout with this wonder: it is less a thing than a trace of a movement.” (1957: 173) wright’s remark about concrete’s “as yet inadequately expressed” aesthetic property implies an element of the unfulfilled. this may be read not only as concrete’s potential in modernity,19 but also as a figure of potentiality per se that happens to have become emblematic of modernity. potentiality is usually thought of as a substrate for the actual world, especially in the idea of “development”. if potentiality preceded actuality, however, it would be merely something annulled in actualisation. there are, however, ways of thinking the potential outside of futurity’s “not yet”. what is potential is also not definite enough to be a thing. a differal of form, it is deprived of completed presence. unfulfilled, it is a trace. the whole interior at wachendorf is only a trace, by imprint, and smell. according to aristotle, “matter is potentiality and form actuality”.20 thus, the plastic is both the mouldable and the moulded. it is something on the verge of formlessness: in formation as much as being a form. bachelard found potentiality in modelling – the moment of making, which entices the material imagination but which, as he noted, is neither fulfilled nor exhausted in completion: the imagination of forms rests endlessly in repose. once fulfilled, form is rich in values so objective, so socially exchangeable that the drama of their valorisation slackens. the dream of modelling, on the contrary, is a reverie that maintains its possibilities. (1947: 101-102) plasticity, the most common figure of potentiality, concerns the receiving and leaving of traces, aesthectically valued as the inchoate, protean, unfinished and emergent in (post-)modernity.21 reception and passivity are essential elements of concrete’s potentiality – like that of clay, wax, or paper before imprinting. but also like the mind, whose relation to the body aristotle conceived by plasticity: “wax and its imprint” (de anima, iii 4, 412b 5-7). furthermore, he conceived the mind as capable of being given, of yielding and suffering form. similarly, the initial plasticity of concrete is its ability to be moulded into shape: an ability expressed in the passive voice. concrete’s virtue is its passivity. the potentiality of thought, aristotle continued, “is like that of the tablet on which there is nothing actually inscribed” (429a 18-24). here, the unmodelled and untraced are further aspects of the mouldable, which giorgio agamben highlights. in relation to plasticity, both the trace and the absence of trace are presences of absence, potentialities. potentiality is the existence of a non-being, “a form of privation” (agamben 1999: 179), sterésis, a poverty in which something that is not actual can exist.22 aristotle thus “gives form to an aspect of potentiality that is not reducible to actuality”, a potentiality that lives on and “conserves itself in actuality” (184). here, actuality is no longer simply a using up of potentiality but the full realisation of impotentiality, the potential not to be. actuality is thus a form of trampled layers. photo: author. interstices 12 23 according to the diccionario de la real academia española de la lengua, hormigón derives from hormigo, which in turn refers to porridges, as lumps or pliant masses, of flour. 24 the process has become celebrated in works such as bruce nauman’s “a cast of a space under my chair” (1965), richard serra’s “casting” (1969), a series of lead angles as both inchoate idea and hardened form (where he threw molten lead into the mould of the juncture of wall and floor in fulfilment of his verb list compilation: actions to relate to oneself, 1967–8), and the castings of rachel whiteread. for the popularity of direct contact in art practice since the second half of last century, see didi-huberman (2008: 327-28). in terms of soot, cf. some of jannis kounellis’ works “senza titolo (ciminiera)” and “metamorfosi” in the hallen für neue kunst, schaffhausen, for example. potentiality that is capable of not not being. matter is not an indeterminate mass or lump before the bestowal of form. it is not “a formless quid aliud whose potentiality suffers an impression”, argues agamben, “rather it can exist as such because it is the materialisation of a potentiality through the passion (typos, ichnos) of its own impotentiality” (218). potentiality is on the verge of perceptibility, only an “experience of the indeterminate” makes it possible to think the indeterminate, as in darkness and silence (217). inside, this experience of darkness (even by dayor candle-light) and silence (even with cowbells and pilgrims) is what the chapel offers – abundantly. moreover, it is a measure of zumthor’s craftsmanship, that what he makes here keeps alive the potentiality which is matter, dunamis, the ability to accept and receive form, matter with its making and its making into. the word ‘make’ (from proto-indo european ‘mag’ – ‘to knead, mix, make’) is related to ‘might’, meaning both force (noun) and possibility (verb), as in the greek, dunamis. the verb ‘may’, ‘to have power’ or ‘be able, is also cognate with these words. in a sense, all making concerns the forceful change from one state to another. an architecture sensitive to such possibilities, as here, can reveal the ‘might’ in the making. restless containers the moulded has neither interior nor inwardness, being but an impression of the exterior of another, “extraneous” (wright’s word) form: its model. it is a cast double that lives vicariously in exchange. what is cast inside at wachendorf is an exterior, which appears as an interior: outside-in. the word “mould” derives from “model”. similarly flipping in perception and conception since antiquity, the word “form” ( forma) has meant both form and formwork. the spanish and portuguese words for concrete, hormigón, formigão, allude to this being-given-form.23 the italian and french for cheese, formaggio and fromage, likewise, derive from formare, “to give/be given form”. they are made in forms and so-named through impression, that is, represented by the substitution of form by material. the architect luigi moretti employed a similar operation to analyse historical interiors, substituting solid for void in cast plaster (moretti 1952–1953: 9-20,107-108).24 darkness: ‘the experience of the indeterminate’ (photo: author) 41 interior with oculus and ‘firmament’ of glass tie-plugs. the brass wheel in the likeness of bruder klaus’ meditation symbol at bottom left. vestiges of spruce trunks and soot are also visible (photo: author) reciprocity and reversibility in casting are unsettling, for designer and participant, constituting the restlessness of content and container, donor and recipient, active and passive, male and female. between them there is always an infinitesimal gap in time and space. marcel duchamp understood this well, making a separative difference, tied to the theme of contact and touch, a key part of his “infra-thin (inframince)”, for example: the possible, implying the becoming – the passage from one to the other takes place in the infra-thin. (duchamp 1983: 1) duchamp also describes this “infra-thin” as “[t]he hollows in paper, between the front and back of a thin sheet …” (rougemont 1968: 567) it intervenes between mould and casting to affirm their intimacy and separation. in the mould, taking form (invisible and within its own technical system) eludes the operator. as gilbert simondon poses the problem, the worker “would have to be able to enter into the mould with the clay, to be made simultaneously mould and clay, to live and experience their joint operation to be able to think taking form in itself.” so, it is “the active centre of the technical operation that remains veiled” (simondon 1989: 243). because the “‘[i]mprinted’ form is obtained blindly, in the interiority inaccessible to contact between the substrate-material and its copy in formation” (didi-huberman 2008:121), a restless element of contingency, accident, fallibility and chance roam in play. moulding and casting occur between adventure and anxiety, in an intimacy without interiority. at wachendorf, the inside is not only made from an outside but is an outside, being both a (seemingly fortuitous) representation of the radiant firmament (if this can be called ‘an outside’) and in reality open to the sky with a bowl of rainwater, an impluvium, subtly cast in the floor. the heavens are reflected in a puddle. the jagged ooze of concrete is quite unlike the comfort of any interior. “outside and inside are both intimate – they are always ready to be reversed … ” as bachelard proposed relative to subject and world (1957: 196, 1969: 218). interstices 12 contact what is important in the chapel derives from direct touch with bare material. the result is concrete untreated after removal of the formwork (béton traité ‘brut de decoffrage’), in a rough or raw state and bearing the exact imprint of the form into which it had been poured, the mark of making.25 as with corbusier’s brute matter, the chapel is something ‘as struck’, that is, ‘as found’ after casting. in the post-war period, not only in new brutalism but also “in italian realism or the great engineering structures, reinforced concrete comes with be exhibited as poor material par excellence, which evokes the rudimentary character of the building site” (poretti 2005: 9). the marks that scar the surface – stigmata – are proof of an authenticity, a striving for purity guaranteed by crudity in the imprint’s capacity to register material directly. the words of philippe potié on la tourette are applicable at wachendorf: materials must be displayed in all their poverty in order for them to appear in all their purity. the less a material is worked the more expressive it will be. however, this form of primitivism does not rule out a form of violence which the term brutalism sums up very neatly ... (2001: 108) at wachendorf, 112 spruce trunks (charred and removed) left their traces in the inhospitable interior surface both by imprint and by soot. the imprint’s capacity to register things directly in coins, stamps, embossments seals and inscriptions bestows evidence of authenticity. the indexical sign is based on a physical contact to its referent, but one that makes the question of contact rear up into visibility. the inaugural gesture of imprinting, particularly inside the chapel, disorients vision and touch, providing both contact and the look of contact. it questions the tactility of things and materials.26 the inanimate imprint is lent a magical animation by that with which it was for a moment in contact and from which it draws its nature as imprint. there is the touch of the formation, then the distance of having been abandoned by what engendered it. what guarantees presence by imprint inevitably states an absence. for the print to be produced the foot must sink into the mud: the walker must be there, at the very place of the mark to leave it there. but for the imprint to appear in what results, the foot must also lift, be separated … from then on, quite surely, the walker is no longer there. (didi-huberman 2008: 310) the vestige is something physically immediate but temporally remote, a presence as something past. the play of contact and gap overturns our relation to becoming and to memory, “the now and the past interweave equally in an unknown and 25 see le corbusier (1953: 190), banham (1955: 354-361; 1966: 16), collins (2004: 344), legault (2006: 47). 26 see didi-huberman (2008: 190-191). left: view of chapel under construction showing interior spruce trunk form work (courtesy architekturbüro peter zumthor), middle: cross sections (courtesy architekturbüro peter zumthor), right: strata showing vestiges of successive pours trampled at half metre intervals (photo: author) 43 27 see also krauss (1985: 218), didihuberman (2008: 189-90). 28 see leroi-gourhan (1943: 226). 29 on nicholas, see hemleben (1977) collins (2008). 30 see didi-huberman (2008: 27). left to right: the primitive hut (source: claude perrault, les dix livres d’architecture de vitruve), the first house (source: viollet-le-duc, the habitations of man), charcoal kiln or köhlerhütte, reconstructional drawing of a mycenean tholos, undated (source: anonymous, from bury, j.b. (1938) a history of greece). troubling formation for thought” (310). “[t]he referent ‘adheres’ to its recording.” (stiegler 2009:14) the reality of the trunks is that of a “having-been-there” – as in a photograph – a borrowed reality, but with “the constantly amazing evidence: this took place in this way” (barthes 1964: 47).27 this play between contact and loss is also that between organic and mineral, living and dead, origin and the putting to death of the origin; between incinerated trunks and fossilised substrate. it is manifest as the lost inner carcass of wicker, straw, or wax in primitive ceramics.28 there is another, equally physical vestige (the word meaning “footprint”) evident in the building’s strata from outside: the concrete, hand-mixed, was tamped, stamped, trampled, trod by the local land-youth and land-folk movement in the manner of pisé de terre (rammed earth), in half-metre layers in 24 pours. as with pisé, holes remained through which ties had passed. what exactly is imprinted inside? is it a tepee, skéné, the zelt of which the owners speak (scheidtweiler 2009), cosmic tent, tabernacle; or a primitive hut (along the lines of perrault’s, chambers’ or viollet-le-duc’s) – likely home for a hermit;29 or a charcoal-kiln (kohlenmeiler), such as that which provided the mode of releasing the trunks? all three and more, perhaps, a megalithic dromos-tholos schema, something reinforced by the door – symbol of the trinity or mycenae? in ichnography, the space suggests a womb. the shapes are unspecific, like the oculus, which in its comma-comet-leaf-tear drop-shape resembles sogn benedetg’s footprint. in the mortification of its form by sacrificial fire, the memorial aspect of the chapel emerges: an absence is materialised. this process is an archaism (perhaps a primitivism) but it is not any gratuitous play with history. what this casting depends upon is something rudimentary and anachronistic, an inescapable reference to and employment of an extremely primitive technique, a survival, a living-on, a nachleben, from a time when humans first made imprints, placed sooty hands on or blew soot over them on cave walls.30 since his presentation-preservation-representation of the roman remains at chur, zumthor’s work has posed a question which obliges us to rethink historical knowledge. rather than striving for any positivist and objectifying certainty, he stages an encounter of temporalities through an ‘archaeology’ that does not proceed according to plan but shows itself to be “more tactile, more groping, more disturbed, more heuristic”, as didi-huberman notes of many contemporary works of resemblance by direct contact, imprint and casting (2008: 311). stooping into the sudden darkness of zumthor’s chapel on entry, with the imprint of daylight still in the retina, the hand gropes but has little inclination to touch. here is an experience of inexperience, of the indeterminate, of potentiality in solid and void, of matter made into mass – and space. interstices 12 making within the hearth (that is, the interior, here) prevail the crafts of plasticity: the zinc-pewter poured by crucible and flamed by hand over the floor; the breathblown glass stoppers; the half figure of niklaus cast in bronze (with relic inside); the brass wheel in the likeness of the meditation symbol in his hermitage, the blacksmith’s art: the small sacristy shrine and sandbox for the candles, which are of course, also cast. in all aspects of this constellation, zumthor articulates relationships between modes of acting on materials and their spare existential properties. when he employs concrete, modern material par excellence, he makes visible what has existed since the ‘first’ experience of matter and the dialectic between form and formwork, between inside and out. he sets up a structure of preservation based on the persistence of the past in the present. one which may seem fundamentally sparse, hollow, and empty, being a memory in which the past appears as ooze, impression, soot, shade and spectre. all is revealed, if not in a mode of “rescue” (to use a word of wright’s, yet again), then at least in one where nothing is mean or unworthy. the higher poverty of the hermit, an affirmation of autonomous life scarcely comprehensible today, is thrown down as a challenge in silence and darkness. left: the hand flamed metal floor surface (photo: author) right: the sandbox for the candles (photo: author) left: oldest extant sculpture of niklaus von der flüe (photo: author, rathaus stans) right: sketch plan (courtesy architekturbüro peter zumthor) 45 the force of the work derives from the relation of materials to context: i believe they [materials] can assume a poetic quality in the context of an architectural object, although … materials themselves are not poetic … sense emerges when i succeed in bringing out the specific meanings of certain materials in my buildings, meanings that can only be perceived in just this way in this one building. (zumthor 2006: 8-10) the chapel demonstrates that significance can lie as much in the very act of making as in any end product. it tests bounds and possibilities in the interplay between bodily actions and the materials of the environment.31 the building becomes indistinguishable from the processes that went into its making. it challenges the classical (and current) aesthetic whereby making is ‘technique’, mere means towards an end called ‘form’ (or ‘image’). here formation is as important. this may be better rendered in the present participle (forming as opposed to formed, i.e. solidified). better still, is the notion of the formable, the persisting or ‘living-on’ of potential inherent in materials. in this field-chapel, zumthor thickens field and process: setting adheres to setting. 31 in this respect, see morris (1970). view from distance approaching on foot through fields (photo: author) interstices 12 references: agamben, g. 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(1998). technics and time, 1: the fault of epimetheus. (r. beardsworth & g. collins, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. stiegler, b. (2009). technics and time, 2: disorientation (s. barker, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. vitruvius pollio, marcus, de architectura libri decem. wright, f. l. (1975). in the cause of architecture vii: “the meaning of materials – concrete” [architectural record, august 1928]. new york: mcgraw-hill. zumthor, p. (1996). thermal baths at vals. london: architectural association. zumthor, p. (2006). thinking architecture. basel: birkhäuser. interstices 6 heidegger and the herringbone cowshed laurence simmons …and already the knowing animals are aware that we are not really at home in our interpreted world. —rainer maria rilke, “duino elegies” …technology is the mastery not of nature but mastery of the relation between nature and humanity. —walter benjamin, “one-way street” to render inoperative the machine that governs our conception of man will therefore mean no longer to seek new—more effective and more authentic—articulations, but rather to show the central emptiness, the hiatus that—within man—separates man and animal, and to risk ourselves in this emptiness. —giorgio agamben, the open figure 1: herringbone cowshed (diagram showing ‘angle-parking’) 21 i my paper is dedicated to ron sharp, who died last year. ron sharp was a waikato dairy farmer who in 1952 changed his 12 bail walk-through milking shed to a design of his own, now known worldwide as the herringbone cowshed. sharp’s design was a direct result of a knee problem, and designed to resolve the recurrent difficulty of having to stoop while milking. one estimate had a person milking for a season stooping 2,400 times for each cow—that is, 240,000 times for a 100-cow herd. as with all good ideas, the basics of the herringbone shed were simple. it included a pit for the milker to stand in down the middle of the shed and raised platforms for the cows, which were ‘angle-parked’ with their udders within easy reach and at a convenient height for the milker [figure 1]. the angle-parking idea came to roy after observing cars angle-parked in victoria street, hamilton’s main thoroughfare. cows in the herringbone shed could be milked in batches, rather than being let in one at a time. as each batch finished milking it was released to walk out the other end of the shed. the sharp cowshed could handle up to 90 cows an hour, compared with 30 in the traditional milking set-up. it was also calculated that the sharp system saved the milker around 225 kilometres of walking each dairy season. initially the herringbone design won little support from the dairy industry, but by 1964, ten years after its invention, there were thousands of herringbone cowsheds around the world, including india and the soviet union [figure 2]. the herringbone cowshed was later acclaimed by many as the greatest innovation in the dairy industry since the invention of the milking machine. by all accounts roy was a modest man who had no secondary education, having left school after primary school to help on the family farm during the depression of the 1930s. he never applied for a patent for his design, and never made any money from it. ii i am going to revisit, rework, and re-worry the bone of giorgio agamben’s careful re-reading in his book the open of martin heidegger’s attempt to distinguish animal life from human life. i want to explore the question of the animal, within the context of heidegger’s critical retrieval and transformation of the philosophical foundations of our technological conception of the world, and through jacques derrida’s and giorgio agamben’s re-reading of heidegger’s ‘empty interval’ between man and animal. to the extent that modernity formulates an understanding of the animal in terms of the mechanical paradigm this will involve me, among other things, in a shift from hand-milking [figure 3] to the herringbone cowshed. although it has been increasingly urgent to think the animal beyond the mechanical paradigm, i want to suggest that it may be equally crucial to venture an investigation of the mechanical component in the human: to explore, that is, the necessities and automatisms at the physical as well as psychological level; to investigate the blurring of the lines between human, animal and machine; and to open up questions of prosthetic subjectivity. or, to follow derrida, i intend to explore how “my guiding threads lace together in this knot: the question, the animal, technology” (1987: 57). an exploration of this knot may be necessary and crucial if we wish to stop the ‘anthropological machine’ of western thought that operates by interstices 6 creating an absolute difference between man and animal: a difference that, on the one hand, elevates the human above the animal and its environment and, on the other, places animality outside of what heidegger described as the human’s ‘openness’ to the world. heidegger’s foundational stance in thinking the question of the animal is a fundamental, and a fundamentally correct, one. it is radically non-anthropocentric in that it attempts to understand the animal’s relation to world on the animal’s own terms rather than from the perspective of the human. it is this ‘biocentrism’, in contrast to anthropocentrism, that has led subsequent commentators to use heidegger’s thought to justify a radical ecological critique of technological modernity and to see him as a forerunner of radical environmentalism. deep ecologists, who represent one branch of the radical ecology movement, have used heidegger to argue that nature, and the animal, has an intrinsic value apart from its usefulness to human beings, and that all life forms should be allowed to flourish and fulfill their evolutionary destinies (see naess, 1989 and zimmerman, 1993). nevertheless, it is clear that heidegger cannot avoid falling back on oppositional distinctions between animal and human, and is thus unable to overcome the anthropocentrism of the metaphysical tradition; he is unable to speak of ‘the open’ with respect to animal and human in a non-contradictory way. what inhibits him from achieving this overcoming, but also offers him the possibility of overcoming, i shall argue, is his reliance on a certain notion of technology. iii i will proceed according to four axes, each of which lead—separately and in tandem—to my conclusion on the relation between the technical and the animal. each axis or ‘question’ starts from a modality of ‘the animal’, as it is explored by heidegger, but i also follow through a critique of heidegger’s position using the ideas and responses of jacques derrida, giorgio agamben and bernard stiegler. 2� the question of language because plants and animals are lodged in their respective environments but are never placed freely into the clearing of being which alone is ‘world,’ they lack language. but in being denied language, they are not thereby suspended worldlessly in their environment. still, in this word ‘environment’ converges all that is puzzling about living creatures. (heidegger, 1998: 248) heidegger argues that animals lack a specific relation to language because they lack ‘world’. by world heidegger does not simply mean nature or environment, but intends the capability for standing in what he elsewhere calls ‘the clearing of being’, where being comes into presence and leaves. plants and animals do not exist outside of themselves in the clearing of being; rather, they live enclosed within their surrounding environments. this means simply that plants and animals cannot access beings beyond themselves in the way that human beings with language and world are able to do. the human body, on this account, is what belongs to the realm of the animal, and the human capacity for language and reason are specific marks of the human beyond the animal. heidegger here takes the cartesian (but also aristotelian in its origin) definition of the human as animal rationale (that which sets the human apart as the single and sole living creature with the capacity for language), and he insists that this capacity for language cannot be seen as arising from the human’s animal nature. language is not just one among a number of things added on to the essence of the human; “[r]ather”, says heidegger, “language is the house of being in which the human being exists by dwelling” (1998: 254). as this passage suggests—and derrida notes it clearly (derrida, 1989: 48)—heidegger’s questioning of the metaphysical definition of the human as animal rationale simply displaces one form of humanism in the name of another, more exacting humanism. heidegger opens up the question of the animal to existence, he shifts the question to a different register, but ultimately he offers nothing by way of critique of the traditional oppositional line drawn between human beings and animals; and so he closes the question down again. it is also important that for heidegger this line of division—of language—bears an essential relation to death. figure 3: heidegger hand milking (photocollage) interstices 6 the question of death mortals are they who can experience death as death. the animal cannot do so. but the animal cannot speak either. the essential relation between language and death flashes up before us, but remains still unthought. (heidegger, 1971b: 107) it is only the human that is capable of dying in the sense of complete, irreducible, untold loss taking place in/with the death of an individual. and it is given to humans to relate to their own death as that which uniquely individuates each of them. by contrast, the animal lacks memory; lacks the ability to repeat. in its absolute singularity, in its ‘losing itself at every moment’, it lacks presence and a substantive, continuing stability. heidegger writes elsewhere: “to die means to be capable of death as death. only man dies. the animal perishes. it has death neither ahead of itself nor behind it” (1971a: 178). thus heidegger distinguishes between the ‘biological-ontological’ death of animals and plants—deaths measured in ‘longevity, propagation and growth’—and the ontological death of dasein. while denying the relation between death, language and the animal, heidegger does not explicitly explore how the relation between death and language separates the human from the animal. derrida writes: against or without heidegger, one could point to a thousand signs that show that animals also die. although the innumerable structural differences that separate one ‘species’ from another should make us vigilant about any discourse on animality and bestiality in general, one can say that animals have a very significant relation to death, to murder and to war (hence, to borders), to mourning and to hospitality, and so forth, even if they have neither a relation to death nor to the ‘name’ of death as such, nor, by the same token, to the other as such. (1993: 75-6) derrida’s point is neither does “man as dasein” have a relationship to “death as such, but only to perishing” (76). thus the paradox of heidegger’s position is that since the animal is purely resolved into the species, its death ends up being a matter of that which may be repeated without loss. because of this, the animal (the labour of metabolic survival and reproduction of life that the animal names) is ‘undying’—it indicates life’s seamless continuum. the question of poverty man is not merely a part of the world but is also master and servant of the world in the sense of ‘having’ world. man has world. but then what about the other beings which, like man, are also part of the world: the animals and plants, the material things like the stone, for example? are they merely parts of the world, as distinct from man who in addition has world? or does the animal too have world, and if so, in what way? in the same way as man, or in some 2� other way? and how would we grasp this otherness? and what about the stone? however crudely, certain distinctions immediately manifest themselves here. we can formulate these distinctions in the following three theses: [1.] the stone (material object) is worldless [weltlos]; [2.] the animal is poor in world [weltarm]; [3.] man is world-forming [weltbildend]. (heidegger, 1995: 177) the stone is described as ‘weltlos’ or ‘without world, worldless’. the stone has no experience, no world: one cannot even say of a stone, employing some form of anthropomorphism, that it is indifferent to being. human beings are characterized as ‘weltbildend’ (translated as ‘world-forming’ or ‘world-picturing’). the human has access to entities and so ‘has a world’, and this access is the openness that is characteristic of dasein. we see the objects in the world as they are. for heidegger this capacity of a human being to grasp something as something is not due to the human possession of language, the fact that it can name things. in fact, in the radical nature of heidegger’s ontology it is the reverse: human beings have the facility of language because of the kind of being-in-the-world they are—that is, open to entities. in being and time he writes: we do not so to speak, throw a ‘signification’ over some naked thing which is ‘present-at-hand’, rather when something withinthe-world is encountered as such the thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world. (1987: 150) animals are ‘weltarm’, ‘poor in world’. again, that they ‘lack language’ does not explain why animals are deprived in this context. in contrast to the stone, the animal is not absolutely without access to entities, and in this sense it can be said to have a world. however, in comparison to human beings, the animal is impoverished: its mode of having a world is in the form of not having a world as such. heidegger’s statement concerning the world-poverty of animals is meant to indicate a simultaneous having and not-having of the world, the assumption being that human beings are not simply part of the world but also in some sense have world. in the 1929/30 lectures heidegger explains this relationship in terms of how the biological drives that characterize the animal organism are ‘disinhibited’ by external factors, how a circle is put around them: “the animal, when it comes into a relation with something else, can only come upon the sort of entity that ‘affects’ or initiates capability in some way. nothing else can ever penetrate the ring around the animal” (1995: 254). in his book of spirit (1989) derrida has three related objections to heidegger’s account. first of all, he says, heidegger assumes ‘animality’ is one thing, that there is “one homogeneous type of entity which is called animality in general” (1989: 57). heidegger does not speak, or seem to think of, the domesticated animal when he writes (his examples are lizards, bees, moths, worms, amoebas, and so on). that is, he passes over the possibility that a different animal—say, one i live with or alongside—might be in different respects ‘another like myself’. derrida’s second objection is that heidegger’s thesis is circular. how can the essence of animality be determined by a process of exclusion if interstices 6 one does not have an essential knowledge of what constitutes inclusion in the category animal? “the logical contradiction between the two propositions (the animal does and does not have a world) would mean simply that we have not yet sufficiently elucidated the concept of world” (1989: 51). heidegger’s account of the animal placed somewhere between the stone and man, derrida claims, has simply left no category of existence for the animal. derrida’s third objection is that the concept of privation or poverty that informs heidegger’s account of animal existence “cannot avoid a certain anthropocentric or even humanist teleology” (1989: 55). that, even though heidegger wishes to avoid it, “the words ‘poverty’ and ‘privation’ imply hierarchy and evaluation” (56). the problem lies with the term ‘poor’: the animal is ‘poor in world’ is not to be understood in terms of hierarchical value; the animal is ‘poor’ does not mean to say in comparison that the human is ‘rich’ in having world. according to heidegger, the animal is poor in the world on its own terms, poor in the sense of being deprived. the question of the hand the [human] hand is a peculiar thing. in the common view, the hand is part of our bodily organism. but the hand’s essence can never be determined or explained, by its being an organ which can grasp. apes, for example, have organs that can grasp, but they have no hand. the hand is infinitely different from all grasping organs—paws, claws or fangs—different by an abyss of essence. (heidegger, 1968: 16) the sentence at the centre of this quotation is, derrida says, “heidegger’s most significant, symptomatic, and seriously dogmatic”; it is one, he continues, that risks “compromising the whole force and necessity of the discourse” (derrida, 1986: 173). “apes, for example, have organs that can grasp, but they have no hand.” this statement, derrida claims, presupposes a sort of empirical knowledge whose evidence is never shown. heidegger takes no account of zoological knowledge, and its recent rapid expansion, that is to be included under the word animal, or animality. we read here the inscription of an absolute oppositional limit between a human withdrawn from biologistic determination and an animality enclosed with organicobiologic programmes. as derrida notes wryly, what heidegger says of the ape without hand is a clear indication that he has not studied the apes in the black forest (174). the result of this discussion of the system of limits within which the human hand takes on sense and value is that the very name of the human, his or her geschlecht (‘species being’)1 a becomes problematic itself. the human hand, then, is a thing apart, not as a separable organ but because it is dissimilar from other prehensile organs (paws, claws, talons). the abyss that is reinstated between the human hand and the ape’s ‘paw’ is that of speech and thought. “only a being who can speak, that is, think”, heidegger writes, “can have the hand and can be handy in achieving works of handicraft” (heidegger, 1968: 16). thus for heidegger the human hand has a complex relation to thought and all work of the hand is rooted in thinking. derrida continues his critique: 1. this word, with its shifting meanings of ‘race’, ‘species’, ‘genus’, ‘gender’, ‘stock’, is the title phrase of a series of essays by derrida on heidegger: “geschlecht: sexual difference, ontological difference” (1983); “geschlecht ii: heidegger’s hand” (1986); and “heidegger’s ear: philopolemology (geschlecht iv)” (1992). 2� if there is a thought of the hand or hand of thought, as heidegger gives us to think, it is not of the order of conceptual grasping. rather this thought of the hand belongs to the essence of the gift, of a giving that would give, if this is possible, without taking hold of anything. if the hand is also, no one can deny this, an organ for gripping (greiforgan), that is not its essence, is not the hand’s essence in the human being. (derrida, 1987: 172-3) we might say that here that heidegger’s treatment of the animal ‘shows his hand’. for heidegger, the figure of the hand is determined not by a biological or utilitarian function—“does not let itself be determined as a bodily organ of gripping” (173)—but rather can serve as a figure for thought. the essential centre of this meditation opens onto what derrida describes as “the hand’s double vocation”. the word vocation describes the way that the hand holds on to speaking and at the same time shows, points out, gives itself as the extended hand. heidegger writes: but the work of the hand is richer than we commonly imagine. the hand does not only grasp and catch, or push and pull. the hand reaches and extends, receives and welcomes—and not just things: the hand extends itself, and receives its own welcome in the hand of the other. the hand holds (hält). the hand carries (trägt). (heidegger, 1968: 16, translation modified) the nerve of the heideggerian argument, as derrida points out, seems reducible to the opposition of giving and taking: the human hand “gives and gives itself, gives and is given”, like thinking or what gives itself to be thought, whereas the organ (let’s call it that) of the ape as a simple animal can “only take hold of, grasp, lay hands on the thing”, in that it does not have to deal with the thing as such (1987: 175, derrida’s italics). can the hand change hands? is it given or taken? what does it mean to be handed over from human to animal? then again, as derrida has repeatedly shown in a clutch of diverse texts, “the distinction between giving and taking” (176) is never one we may be assured of.2 furthermore, the hand for heidegger, as will be clear from the few quotations i have provided, is a singular thing; that is, heidegger always thinks the hand in the singular—“as if man did not have two hands but, this monster, one single hand” (182), notes derrida. the human that speaks and the human that writes uses one hand. the human of the typewriter (today we would say of the computer), and technics in general, uses two hands, as does, let me add, the human who milks the cow. so this is why, derrida writes, “[t]he hand cannot be spoken about without speaking of technics” (169). the question of technics however, reading heidegger on technology immediately invokes a technical problem, the question of translation. with heidegger, samuel weber has written, “what is lost in translation, often without a trace, is a certain practice of language, in which colloquial, idiomatic phrases play a decisive role” (weber, 1996: 55). the translation of heidegger’s famous 2. see, for example, the gift of death (1995) and given time i. counterfeit money (1992). interstices 6 paper “the question concerning technology” (die frage nach der technik, 1953) confronts us with the problem of translation, the problem of conceptual rendition. first of all, the english translation of ‘technology’ for ‘technik’ loses this trace of the colloquial. it is, as weber says, both “too narrow” in excluding the meanings of craft and skill and, at the same time, “too theoretical in suggesting that the knowledge involved is a form of applied science” (60). i shall follow weber and use the term ‘technics’ which is less theoretical in english but also, unfortunately, less habitual, than ‘technology’. a second problem arises with the word ‘concerning’ in the standard title, “the question concerning technology”; this word again is odd because ‘nach’ in german carries the primary meanings of ‘towards’ and ‘after’. let me quote weber again: “both meanings will play a significant role in heidegger’s train of thought as it moves towards the question of technics, but only by going (and coming) after it in a certain way” (61). even the word ‘question’ (‘frage’) in heidegger’s title designates something “very different from a mere striving after and answer, in the sense of cognition or information” (62). rather, it involves a movement of opening oneself up to something else which is worthy of being questioned.3 weber proposes that the equivocal title be translated as “questing after technics”. in “questing after technics” heidegger’s position contests the classically mechanistic understanding of technology. for heidegger, western metaphysics has not led to human ‘progress’, but instead to a technological instrumentalism in which everything—including humankind—stands revealed as raw material for the goal of greater power and security. in contrast, the dynamic sense of technics is ongoing and moves away from the idea of a pure and simple self-identity of technology. this is not in itself technical. again, to quote weber: “heidegger leads his readers in a quest after something that is not simply equivalent to technology, although it is that without which technology would not be” (63). the thinking of technology depends upon philosophical speculation, a presentation of philosophy’s constitutive inability to think technē, but a speculation that transforms philosophy in the process. the approach to the question, the questing, of technics allows the relation between the technical and the human to appear through past failures to think it. for heidegger this speculation starts from the distinction between a traditional and a modern technics. his example of traditional technics is drawn from the sphere of pre-industrial agriculture where nature is worked or tilled (‘bestellt’). but in the era of industrialization, he argues, nature is no longer worked and cultivated (bestellt), it is gestellt, literally, placed, ‘set up’ or ‘emplaced’. technics now has the sense of placing nature on order—a sort of extracting. gestell, we must also remember, comes from ‘stall’, once meaning ‘place, position’, but now, of course, as it is in english, ‘a stable or cowshed’.4 the notion of ‘emplacement’ (again i am following weber in using this ‘english’ word for gestell, in contrast to the standard english translation and subsequent commentary, where it is rendered as ‘enframing’) assembles the various ways in which everything, animals and human beings included, is set in place.5 but as emplacement the questing, the on-going of technics has an ambivalent character: the questing brings to a halt, it sets in place; and yet this placement is a constant ‘re-placing’, it is a dynamic process that opens up. it is in his 1926 essay “why poets?” 4. note also the interplay of these terms in heidegger’s ‘why poets? ’: “but that which is set up [das gestellte] —where is it set up [gestellt], and by what? nature is brought before man by human re-presentation [vor-stellen]. man sets up the world as the entirety of objectiveness before himself and himself before the world. man delivers [stellt zu] the world unto himself and produces [stellt her] nature for himself. we must think of this production [herstellen] in its wide and diverse essence. man tills [bestellt] nature when it does not satisfy his representation” (2002: 215). 5. taking up another hint of heidegger, weber (1996) also offers the translation of ‘skeleton’ to encompass the corporeal implications of gestell. 3. see derrida (1989) for a discussion of “questions opened by heidegger and open with regard to heidegger … to the question of the question, to the apparently absolute and long unquestioned privilege of the fragen” (7, 9). 2� that heidegger, following rilke, reverses his position on animal, being and world and concedes the existence of a community of living beings, “the integral entirety of beings”. heidegger writes in this essay: the absolute self-assertion of the deliberate production of the world … is a process that comes out of the hidden essence of technology. only in the modern era does this begin to develop as a destiny of the truth of beings in their entirety … (heidegger, 2002: 217) this is not simply a restatement of the commonplace that we live in a world articulated through increasingly sophisticated technological supports, which, in turn, bring with them a radical transformation of the site of humanity in the world. nor is it purely a case of a split between the position of an affirmation of the technicization of the world, or simply, in contrast, an affirmation of the human against these very processes of technicization. my argument will be that thinking through the relation between the human and the animal, as begun by heidegger, will allow us to think through the relation between the human and the technical, in a way that thinks technology without opposing thought to technics. or, to put this otherwise, my gamble is that it is the question of technics that allows us, will allow us, to think the relation between the human and the animal through all the past failures to think it. that will allow us to “take a hint”, as heidegger says, “from the phenomena of advancing technology, a hint in the direction of those regions from where, perhaps, an originary, constructive overcoming of the technical could come” (2002: 217). at times heidegger’s treatment of the animal, as i have noted, verges on a cartesianism (what derrida calls “the cartesian tradition of the animalmachine that exists without language and without the ability to respond” [2003: 121]): a position which treats animals as little more than machines. this is most clear in a now notorious passage from an unpublished lecture of 1949, where heidegger adverted to the holocaust. interestingly, the title of this piece was “das gestell”, and it was part of the lecture series upon which “the question concerning technology” was to be based: agriculture is now the mechanized food industry, in essence the same as the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same as the blockade and starvation of nations, the same as the manufacture of atom bombs. (“das gestell”, 1949 lecture cited in rockmore, 1992: 241) this comment is perplexing. what was heidegger thinking when he compared modern methods of farming with the holocaust? is this remark a work of deep thought or an obscene comparison? does it display a shocking insensitivity to the mass murder of the death camps? which is greater: the scandal of heidegger’s post-war silence on the shoah or the scandal of this off-hand comment, this sort of throwaway discourse? on the one hand, roy sharp’s herringbone cowshed functions as an illustration of heidegger’s statement: it employs a technological means to make efficient a mechanical output. indeed, the phenomenon of modern mechanized agriculture is so momentous for heidegger that it is comparable to historical events such as the russian blockade of berlin and the american interstices 6 deployment of the atom bomb over japan.6 this race for efficiency—in gas chambers or milking sheds (“in essence the same”)—reduces being to raw material. but in its way the herringbone cowshed also suggests that the operative distinction is not between human being and animal, as heidegger ended up maintaining, but between the lived body and the objectified body, as his analogy to the death camps forces us to consider.7 as heidegger had already noted in “the question concerning technology”, “the essence of technology is by no means anything technological” (heidegger, 1977: 44). something deeper is going on in the mechanization of agriculture than first meets the eye. for, on the other hand, as heidegger was to fleetingly argue, the technē of sharp’s cowshed is not addressed at making or producing certain things, but at the unlocking of being as such. iv i want to turn now briefly, before returning to this question of ‘the unlocking of being’, to the work of someone who has tackled the broader immediate cultural and political stakes of this undersubscribed debate on the technical object, bernard stiegler. technics, as stiegler points out, is the unthought, repressed by philosophy as an object of thought. he writes: “the meaning of modern technics is ambiguous in heidegger’s work. it appears simultaneously as the ultimate obstacle to and as the ultimate possibility of thought” (stiegler, 1998: 7). my exploration of stiegler will also return us for a moment to the question of the hand (of the ape). a central section of stiegler’s first volume on technics and time consists of a discussion of the writings of the french paleontologist andré leroi-gourhan and his empirical analysis of the process of hominization based upon the evolution of the prosthesis—something not itself living—by which the human is nonetheless defined as a living being. stiegler elaborates how this account of the origin of man (in terms of the stone implement or tool) refuses to confront, despite having the terms to do so, originary technicity. in his book gesture and speech (1993), leroi-gourhan grants the prehominid (australopithecus) the possibility of speech, but refuses it the possibility of anticipation (memory and foresight), the symbolic, and the thought of death. leroigourhan thereby maintains that the technics of the prehominid is still of a zoological type. hence its language is nothing more than the articulation of an animal cry, a language constituted by signals rather than the general and abstract economy of signs. in other words, the prehominid has none of the (later) human qualities (anticipation, language, the symbolic). it is here that stiegler mobilizes derrida to argue that any possibility of speech already rests on a movement of idealization without which there would be no language in the first place, and that this idealization rests in turn on the possibility of anticipation. stiegler writes: “it is in the aporia of the origin of language that the chasm deepens: what will have come first, language for the foundation of society, or society for a decision on language?” (stiegler, 1998: 127) as a result, the passage from the prehominid to the hominid, which leroi-gourhan wishes to sustain, cannot have a simple origin. rather this passage, and remember we are precisely here at the moment of trying to think the passage from animal to human, demands to be thought in terms of its impossibility, in terms of the aporia of origin. furthermore, for leroi-gourhan’s hypothesis what marks the transition is the technical 6. heidegger’s lecture was delivered in 1949, the same year as the russian blockade of berlin, and four years after the deployment of the atom bomb. 7. for a broader discussion of the relation of non-human life in the factory farm or laboratory and human life in the camps see agamben’s discussion of the concepts of ‘bare life’ (1998) and the exceptionary power of sovereignty (2003) that are central to the power exercised over the human in the camp but may also be applied to non-human animal life. �1 intelligence in the use of a stone implement, but at the same time what lies beyond the animal is language, a symbolic transcendence of the technical. in his inability to think through the aporia of origin, leroi-gourhan’s analysis is thus beset by a non sequitur. technical intelligence ends up by being animal and yet it does not mark the specificity of the human. by refusing the abyss of essence between logos and technē, stiegler is both working within the heideggerian problematic and overturning it. this realignment with the constitutive role of technics has radical consequences for all of heidegger’s themes, methods and articulations. it should not be forgotten that heidegger’s concern was to understand the animal in its otherness, and to let that otherness be. this understanding was to be achieved, he thought, through an imaginative transposition of the human into the animal. in this self-transposition “the other being is precisely supposed to remain what it is and how it is. transposing oneself into this being means … being able to go along with the other being while remaining other with respect to it” (heidegger, 1995: 202). “it is not”, says derrida, “that the animal has a lesser relationship, a more limited access to entities, it has an other relationship” (1989: 49). the idea of an “other” relationship provides a crucial insight into the possibility of an animal world. derrida moves the question from one of its existence (does the animal have a world?) to that of the relationship by which humanity might discover the animal world (how can one speak of or comprehend an animal world?). in derrida’s critique of heidegger, the poverty of animal being presupposes, nonetheless, some mode of having, even as it drifts towards ‘not-having’. “the animal is deprived of a world because it can have a world”, says derrida (1989: 50). accordingly, animals are neither reticent inhabitants of the human world, nor are they, like stones, impassive to the environment of entities. rather, the animal inhabits, even if in a negative manner, a world that is at the same time not a world. it is at this point, declares agamben, that the ontological status of the animal environment can be defined: it is offen (open) but not offenbar (disconcealed; lit. openable). for the animal, beings are open but not accessible; that is to say, they are open in an inaccessibility and an opacity—that is, in some way, in a non-relation. this openness without disconcealment distinguishes the animal’s poverty in the world from the world-forming which characterizes man. (agamben, 2004: 55) v giorgio agamben concludes that from heidegger’s perspective on the ‘anthropological machine’ of western thought two scenarios are possible: (a) posthistorical man no longer preserves his own animality as undisclosable, but rather seeks to take it on and govern it by means of technology; (b) man, the shepherd of being, appropriates his own concealedness, his own animality, which neither remains hidden nor is made an object of mastery, but is thought as such, as pure abandonment. (agamben, 2004: 80) interstices 6 how are we to understand these projections? and for us they still are projections. i will conclude here by trying to get all of my cows out of the black forest back into their cowshed. heidegger’s strategy is not simply one of refusal of technology, nor the nostalgia involved in the return to an agrarian condition, but of a new relation of cohabitation and thereby a reconfiguration of humanity itself in relation to being as a whole. for what is most characteristic of ‘emplacement’ or ‘enframing’ (gestell), the transformation of the world into a totalized network of resources, is that it is not merely something humans do to an environment, or do with machines but, first and foremost, it is a demand, a requirement they place upon themselves, their transformation into the human resources necessary for total mobilization. this is how the question raised by technics, we might say, points beyond mere technology. it is in order to describe the face of this ‘beyond’, and the nature of its ‘suspension’ of the interval between human and animal, that agamben turns to two examples to illustrate these two scenarios. first of all, a letter of walter benjamin which introduces the enigmatic concept of the ‘saved night’.8 this agamben elaborates as follows: the ‘saved night’ is the name of this nature that has been given back to itself … the salvation that is at issue here does not concern something that has been lost and must be found again, something that has been forgotten and must be remembered; it concerns, rather, the lost and the forgotten as such—that is, something unsavable. the saved night is a relationship with something unsavable … for modern man the proper place of this relationship is technology [la tecnica]. but not, to be sure, a technology conceived, as it commonly is, as man’s mastery of nature … the anthropological machine no longer articulates nature and man in order to produce the human through the suspension and capture of the inhuman. the machine is, so to speak, stopped; it is ‘at a standstill,’ and in the reciprocal suspension of the two terms, something for which we perhaps have no name and which is neither animal nor man settles in between nature and humanity and holds itself in the mastered relation, in the saved night. (82-83) agamben’s second example is a late work by titian known as nymph and shepherd (vienna, kunsthistorisches museum, 1570-75) [figure 4]. there are two figures in the foreground in a dark country landscape. the shepfigure 4: titian, nymph and shepherd (vienna, kunsthistorisches m, 1570-75) 8. it is worth noting that agamben’s term ‘bare life’ (“life that may be killed but not sacrificed” [1998]) also has its origin in walter benjamin’s work “critique of violence”, where the term used by benjamin—bloßes leben (1996c: 33) —signifies ‘bare life’, ‘naked life’, ‘uncovered life’ or, as in the edward jephcott translation of the piece, “mere life”. rodney livingstone in the same volume translates benjamin’s die gerettete nacht as “the redeemed night”. �� herd (‘the shepherd of being’) facing us has just taken the flute in his hands from his lips. the nymph, naked and viewed from behind, lies stretched next to him on a leopard skin, a traditional symbol of wantonness. she has turned her face towards us and with her left hand lightly caresses her other arm. in the distance is a tree that has been struck by lightning and is now half-bare and half-green. an animal (a goat, according to some commentators) rears up to nibble at the tree’s leaves. what are we to make of the exhausted sensuality and subdued melancholy of this landscape? it points, agamben conjectures, to the existence of a space beyond both the figure of the human and the animal, in which neither openness nor concealedness are constitutive of being. it is an image not limited by the contest between human and animal; an image that allows the animal to exist outside the sphere of being; an image that “let[s] the animal be outside of being” (91). agamben writes: sensual pleasure and love—as the half-bloomed tree bears witness—do not prefigure only death and sin. to be sure, in their fulfillment the lovers learn something of each other that they should not have known—they have lost their mystery—and yet have not become any less impenetrable. but in this mutual disenchantment from their secret, they enter, just as in benjamin’s aphorism, a new and more blessed life, one that is neither animal nor human. it is not nature that is reached in their fulfillment, but rather (as symbolized by the animal that rears up … ) a higher stage beyond both nature and knowledge, beyond concealment and disconcealment … in their fulfillment, the lovers who have lost their mystery contemplate a human nature rendered perfectly inoperative—the inactivity and desoeuvrement of the human and of the animal as the supreme and unsavable figure of life. (87) titian’s lovers present an image of being in a state of suspension. the lesson that agamben draws from heidegger here is one of ‘letting be’. he conjectures the existence of a space beyond both the figure of the human and the animal, and within this state being is not driven towards the revelation of being, there is only a ‘lost mystery’ and a suspension of the desire to look further behind the façade of just being (2004: 87). this same movement allows the human to reconfigure its relationship with the animal within itself. as agamben observes, if humanity defines itself by its capacity to disconnect itself from its animal connection to its disinhibitors, then it should also possess the capacity to allow the animal to exist outside of the sphere of being, to “let the animal be” (agamben, 2004: 91). among the many things at stake here, i have tried to suggest, lies the break with instrumentality at the heart of technics: the instrumentality that holds technics is a means to an end. what heidegger wants is a conception of technics that is extroverted in a relation of indebtedness to and responsibility toward another. roy sharp’s herringbone cowshed may mechanize milking but it also opens up the animal as a place of spacing, the spacing of body with natural world, of human body to animal body, of animal with animal. it opens up the possibility of thinking the body as a place of clearing. we understand such things about animals quite instinctively: we gain entry to their bodily space, whenever animals are treated like objects, when interstices 6 cows are treated with hormones which grossly increase their productivity of milk but cause them great pain, when they are herded into stalls barely large enough to hold them, when they are mercilessly slaughtered (despite a lifetime of service as milk producers) for their hides. we understand this best, and quite instantly, when we cause animals pain. as deep ecologists have argued in the wake of heidegger, for humanity to realize its genuine potential, and thus to be authentic, human beings must let animals be what they are instead of treating them merely as resources for human ends. this is the realm of posthuman biopolitics, where to allow the animal to exist outside of being is precisely to remove it from the inquiry of human sujectivity, and thus call an end to the continued determination of life that characterizes the conflict between human and animal. references agamben, g. (1998). homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life (d. heller-roazen, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. agamben, g. (2003). stato di eccezione. torino: bollati boringhieri. agamben, g. (2004). the open: man and animal (k. attell, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. benjamin, w. (1996a). letter to florens christian rang (december 9, 1923; r. livingstone, trans.). in m. bullock & m.w. jennings (eds.), selected writings: vol. 1, 1913-1926. cambridge: harvard university press: 389. benjamin, w. (1996b). one-way street (e. jephcott, trans.). in m. bullock & m.w. jennings (eds.), selected writings: vol. 1, 1913-1926. cambridge: harvard university press. benjamin, w. (1996c). critique of violence (e. jephcott, trans.). in m. bullock & m.w. jennings (eds.), selected writings: vol. 1, 1913-1926. cambridge: harvard university press. derrida, j. (1987). geschlecht ii, heidegger’s hand. in j. sallis (ed.), deconstruction and philosophy. chicago: university of chicago press. derrida, j. (1989). of spirit: heidegger and the question (g. bennington & r. bowlby, trans.). chicago: chicago university press. derrida, j. (1992). given time: i. counterfeit money (p. kamuf, trans.). chicago and london: university of chicago press. derrida, j. (1993). aporias: dying—awaiting (one another at) the ‘limits of truth’ (t. dutoit, trans.). stanford. stanford university press. derrida, j. (1995). the gift of death (d. wills, trans.). chicago and london: university of chicago press. derrida, j. (2003). and say the animal responded (d. wills, trans.). in c. wolfe (ed.), zoontologies: the question of the animal. minneapolis: minnesota university press. heidegger, m. (1968). what is called thinking? (f.d. wieck & j. glenn gray, trans.). new york: harper and row. heidegger, m. (1987). being and time (j. macquarrie & e. robinson, trans.). oxford: blackwell. heidegger, m. (1971a). poetry, language, thought (a. hofstader, trans.). new york: harper and row. heidegger, m. (1971b). on the way to language (p.d. hertz, trans.). new york: harper and row. heidegger, m. (1977). “the question concerning technology” and other essays (w. lovitt, trans.). new york: harper and row. heiddeger, m. (1995). the fundamental concepts of metaphysics: world, finitude, solitude (w. mcneill & n. walker, trans.). bloomington: indiana university press. �� heidegger, m. (1998). letter on humanism. in w. mcneill (ed.), pathmarks. cambridge: cambridge university press. heidegger, m. (2002). why poets? in j. young & k. haynes (eds. and trans.), off the beaten track. cambridge: cambridge university press: 200-241. leroi-gourhan, a. (1993). gesture and speech (a. bostock berger, trans.). cambridge, ma: mit press. naess, a. with d. rothenberg. (1989). ecology, community and lifestyle. new york: cambridge university press. rockmore, t. (1992). on heidegger’s nazism and philosophy. berkeley: university of california press. stiegler, b. (1998). technics and time, 1: the fault of epimetheus (r. beardsworth & g. collins, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. weber, s. (1996). upsetting the setup: remarks on heidegger’s “questing after technics”. in a. cholodenko (ed.), mass mediauras: form, technics, media. stanford: stanford university press: 55-75. zimmerman, m. (1993). rethinking the heidegger-deep ecology relationship. environmental ethics, 15: 195-224. interstices 11 summoning daena: drawing the parallel stephen loo prologue: finding angels in leftovers to marco frascari, the intersection, assimilation and transformation of influences, processes and materialities in architectural making, like cooking, contain intermediary and bifurcatory steps that frequently overturn the objective methodological authority of recipes. to frascari, such continuing poiesis in the act of making produces not only the originary dishes and architectures, but augurs the somewhat unpredictable emergence of leftovers. architecture, like cooking, is therefore cosmopoietic: “a discipline that begins in the mastery of the reuse of leftovers” (2005: 31). in march 2004, i commenced a conversation with frascari on the relations between gastronomy, architecture and the virtues of “plainness” when we were invited speakers at the architecture symposium of adelaide festival of arts. i used a family recipe for steamed fish to explain the concept of plainness in chinese cooking. this essay commemorates and continues that conversation by picking up the concept of “leftovers” which frascari evoked in his opening address for the 2009 interstices under construction: the traction of drawing symposium; many papers presented there are published in this issue of interstices. our conversation on this occasion concerned finding the angelic in leftovers in the fields of cooking, and philosophical research on drawing. the recipe i presented this time around is a family recipe for leftovers. ma po sheen choy (clay pot sour vegetables) open freezer door and remove all pre-packed leftovers (leftovers have been selected for their suitability in being a part of this dish at various past meals. this act is also called chap suey, meaning to pick up bits and pieces) thaw ingredients heat 3 tbs of vegetable oil in a wok stir-fry all ingredients for 5 minutes until sizzling add 1 litre of warmed chicken stock, ½ cup of chin kiang (black rice) vinegar, 1 tsp of tamarind paste, a generous splash of light soy, and 1 tbs of crushed palm sugar 41 bring to the boil transfer all ingredients to a large clay pot add one bunch of chinese cabbage or 2 bunches of bok choy stew for 30 minutes serve in clay pot with steamed rice ma po sheen choy is a dish my family would have once every couple of months. as a child, the joy in the dish is a temporal one, located in the surprise of finding parts of dishes that one remembers consuming months ago, or a few weeks back, or perhaps yesterday. the gastronomic experience of the dish departs from one conventionally based on taste: while the texture of the individual morsels is identifiable and reminiscent of past meals, their taste is masked by the overarching sourness of the dish. and the poetics of the dish – its form, consistency and subtle balance of flavours – cannot be anticipated until it is cooked. each time the dish is cooked, it tastes subtly different. the dish is at most times sublime: like finding angels in refuse. but there are times it fails to work: there are too many bones and/or inedible parts, inappropriate textures or monstrous combinations of flavours. like ma po sheen choy, in this essay on drawing is a recombination of leftovers from past and current research projects. the material originates from the lines of flight that are the expansions of somewhat unconnected marginalia of larger projects concerned with writing on architecture and public space as material poetics. these projects are interested in the literal appearance of writing in, and the literal practice of writing on, architecture and public space, and in writing as architecture, as a type of spatial writing or site writing. the appearance of architectural or spatial writing in this way paves the way to understanding how appearance itself is the expression of subjectivation, of faciality and the movement of becoming-subject, immanent and purely relational to material and poetic practices in which it is involved. the following essay has not much to do with these research projects, although what i have just described is useful as its contextual frame. what i present here are two segues into a landscape of philosophical thinking and architectural constructions, with associations between concepts, places, beliefs and etymologies. the first is a footnote, and the second an endnote, both of which are lines of enquiry drawn across the topological surface of research that continually imbricates the real, the instrumental, the fictional and the symbolic. however, there is every chance that these lines drawn by the notes will not meet; they are parallel trajectories that continuously hold the desire for crossings, for connections. although parallel lines do not connect, they are nevertheless always already held in relation: like the parallel warp yarns in weaving that never meet, but their relations, through the wefts that bridge them, create textuality. there are nevertheless bridges in the account that i draw out in this paper; and they are quite literally bridges, as there are fields with their furrows, clefts and saw-cuts, the mountain, the night, and gates for a city. and we know very well from frascari that, in drawings, whether those in my lines of flight, or that which is within an architectural mode of production, there will inevitably be angels. angels are none other than the personification, the image – or “imaginals” as french islamic scholar henri corbin would put it (1972: 1) – of the relations between the realm of the intelligible-instrumental and the realm of the sensible, interstices 11 which may include the inarticulable and therefore requiring of imagination. but i will attempt to show that when parallel lines are drawn, the angel summoned has a quite different disposition. footnote: furrows first, the footnote: that which resides at the bottom of the page, but harbours the text above. the word “page” is from the latin pagus, meaning field, which the farmer has ploughed. like the field, the written page is worked surface; the implications for this will become clear in a while. the footnote reference i am developing here relates to heidegger and his 1959 essay, the way to language, where the philosopher resurrects an ancient kinship between the word for “saying” and the word for “showing”. this was part of my attempt to establish an account of language and, in corollary, writing, that moved beyond a technocratic definition of communication, towards language as appearance, in order to instate a specific relationship between language and image. heidegger’s thinking about language depends on the rejection of a traditional picture of language as the animation of dead signs with living meaning, and he does this through a critique of aristotle’s “architectonic structure” that secures language’s capacity to speak. aristotle once said, in on interpretation, “now, what takes place in the making of vocal sounds is a show of what there is in the soul in the way of passions, and what is written is the show of the vocal sounds.” (quoted in heidegger 1971: 114) heidegger wants us to progress along the way to language, in order that language shows its “linguistic nature”, in a manner that “language has a being … that remains gathered in what language grants to itself, in its own idiom, as language” (1971: 119). to do this, we can begin by having language show what especially pertains to it and makes it language, that is, what is essential to itself, and not to have language conceptually grasped as something else. and for heidegger, we do this through experiences immanent to the concerns at the very moment of speaking, which is only possible with an a priori relationality between speakers: a comportment to an appropriative openness or, using heidegger’s word, dwelling. dwelling is that to which language grants access, but it is also what grants access to language. “everything spoken stems in a variety of ways from the unspoken, whether this is something not yet spoken, or whether it be what must remain unspoken in the sense that it remains beyond the reach of speaking” (1971: 120). language’s essence, in speaking, is, as heidegger puts it, “drawn out”. heidegger uses the word “draw” in relation to the showing-saying because he is interested in reaching the sense of the manifold modes of saying. some modes grant language’s appearance, and others refuse it: a drawing (out) and withdrawing. in this way, the totality of saying, and the essential being of language, means a showing, but one that is not based on semiotics or signification, but a lettingappear, marked by the shuttling of presences as well as absences. the latter to heidegger must remain unsaid, as such unshowable: as mystery. therefore, the showing, or the drawing-withdrawing of appearance, which is the “unity” in the being of language, heidegger calls “design” (1971: 121). 43 the persistent image of drawing in design, which is symptomatically forgotten, and one that heidegger evokes here as something to resist in an account of language, is that of an incision, a cut, in the sense of starting into something. in fact, the “sign” in de-sign, from the latin, signum, is related to sacere, meaning to cut or saw. drawing is etymologically related to traction, a movement or passage. the linear cut is as such violent, as it can involve a wresting or tearing away, as in to draw-out or to draw blood. this description of design also recalls heidegger’s notion of rift (riss) in design or rift-design in his essay the origin of the work of art. he quotes albrecht dürer’s well-known remark: “for in truth, art lies hidden within nature; he who can wrest it from her, has it.” (dürer is not known for his gender-neutral language, or images, for that matter.) “wrest” here means to draw out the rift and to draw the design with the drawing-pen on the drawing-board (1971a: 70). such an incision on the surface is a cutting of the surface by a line, whereby the action of one opens up or defines the other. in this mode drawing defines the other technically, by exposition. heidegger provides another image to imagine drawing, namely the furrow. he says, “we make a design also when we cut a furrow into the soil to open it to seed and growth” (1971: 121). in order to understand the possibilities in this imageconcept, we need to get down low. the furrow, as fissure or chasm, inscribes the surface by dividing one side from another. this opening up of the world on one hand creates an antagonism between that which has been divided (the two banks), but it is also the condition of the source for all living things to reappear above the earth. as the world opens itself up, the earth comes to rise up. it stands forth as that which bears all, all that is sheltered in its own law and always wrapped up in itself. world demands its decisiveness and its measure and lets beings attain to the open[ness] of their paths. earth, bearing and jutting, strives to keep itself closed and to entrust everything to its law. (1971a:38) the plough does carve a line that makes a mute surface into a sign but, in making furrows, the straight line stands alongside many other parallel lines. for such an opening of the earth, heidegger’s image-concept is “rift-design”, which is associated with growth and emergence. the conflict is not a rift (riss) as a mere cleft ripped open; rather it is an intimacy with which opponents belong to each other. this rift carries the opponents into the source of their unity by virtue of their common ground. it is a basic design (grundriss) an outline sketch (aufriss) that marks out the fundamental features of the rising up of the clearing of beings. (1971a: 63) the furrow as rift-design marks out an ontological condition of identity in difference, of gathering and dispersal, being and nothing, proximity and distance, appropriation and expropriation. when heidegger states that, “the rift-design is the drawing together into a unity of the sketch and basic design, breach and interstices 11 outline,” we hear an undecidability between whether design is imposed on the earth by human beings, or whether humans bring out the hidden design already there: that is, whether the human genius gives decisiveness and measure to the earth, or finds it there. the question becomes, where is the genius, who or what is it that comes when summoned? so drawing furrows through a field, as with writing lines of words on a page, becomes a documentation or witness – or, as frascari would say, a demonstration – of the unsayable being of language, and with that the very possibility of saying itself. perhaps the genius shuttles between being active and passive, because to draw is also to be drawn; to inscribe a cleft or a rift is also to be drawn along it, and perhaps ultimately to be drawn into a gulf or abyss, or mystery? drawing parallel lines, although incisive, enacts a non-dialectical separation between two conditions (for heidegger they are thinking and poetry). drawing is a setting apart (expropriation) that opens them to one another (appropriation) in nearness. and the drawing can only draw itself, is itself, as it performs this demarcation. endnote: angels from the ground and the beginning, to the sky and the end. the endnotes are where the text acknowledges its finitude by virtue of the traces it leaves at the end, in the form of extensions, some explanatory of, and others tangential to, what has ensued in its body. at the endnotes, we find angels. this is an endnote to a bigger project not considered here, which attempts to move the concept of faciality in architecture away from postmodern referentiality shored up by identity politics and anthropocentrism, the history for which includes work by the likes of stanley tigerman and michael graves. and i was also trying to move the face a little away from the deleuzo-guattarian molecular assemblage of “black holes” and “white walls” that functions as an “abstract machine” (deleuze and parnet 1987: 17-18) and which is able to deterritorialise subjective identification in a combination of over-codification and slippery semiotisation. this larger project moves towards félix guattari’s psychoanalyticallybiased take on the expressive potential of the face, based on its capabilities for transversal relations between self, and self as other. this face-off of the self and its internal other brought me to giorgio agamben’s essay genius, in which the self faces genius as a face that both is, and is not, our face. to explain the many refractions of faces, agamben fleetingly summons an angel. in explaining genius as the “divinization of the person” – a godly version of the self, in the self, and therefore what is most intimate and most our own – agamben provided an image of the other in the self, an image of ourselves that we must face all our lives, by answering its call, and granting its requirements. what we do, in action and thought, become instantiations or materialisations of that genius. but in order for this other of the self to be so demanding or powerful, it must really reveal itself as more or less than, and therefore impersonal to, our lived selves. the excess or loss experienced in relation to “our” genius is that which propels us to action. to become a genius is to become what agamben calls “impersonal”, to move outside ourselves to a pre-individual state. that is to say, our lived existence is determined by a movement to something which is one’s own that is also most strange and impersonal to us, continually shattering the pretensions of the ego to be self-sufficient. 45 we may say that in drawing, as a human material and poetic practice that summons the material world and incarnates the spirit to form a continuous landscape of possibilities, the human soul bears witness to its genius, and is therefore the actualisation of divinity within. to draw is at once productive of lines, and these lines are replete with potentiality because they call into visibility a greater or poorer version of the self, one that is always to-come. but, we can say at the same time that drawing escapes the humanist idea of individualisation: the lines produced in fact do not subscribe to a companion who orients our existence and renders it amiable, but are traces of attempts to grasp at a shadowy figure who conspires against our identity, one who is our life in so far as it does not belong to us, and in fact harbours the dissolution and dissipation of this lived life of ours. in time, and influenced by the christian tradition, this dichotomous personality of genius took on the classic twofold aspect of ethical coloration: the good angel and the evil angel. in this oblique reference to angels, agamben says that the productive image of genius is not in the image of christian guardian angels, but the iranian angel, a daena, the heavenly archetype in whose likeness the individual has been created, but whose face changes with the individual’s every gesture, word, and thought. i quote agamben here: at the moment of death, the soul is met by its angel, which has been transfigured by the soul’s conduct in life, into either a more beautiful creature, or into a horrendous demon. it then whispers: “i am your daena, the one who has been formed by your thoughts, your words, and your deeds.” in a vertiginous reversal, our life moulds and outlines the archetype, in whose image we are created. (2007: 17) agamben draws upon the daena for her impersonality. the angel does not have a predetermined form. her form, which manifests at the end of a human life when the soul faces its image, is an archetype that is a posteriori to the practices of that life. therefore, it can be said that the material and poetic practices of the human being, practices of giving measure, with their attendant instruments and technologies – and here i ask the reader to reflect upon drawing as such a practice – are those that name beings, by giving them form, and allocate them to their place, their offices, their meanings. drawing as a practice that inscribes clefts, rifts and furrows, gathers together the whole complex of meanings that constitute human being-in-the-world, or mortals dwelling-on-earth. however, the drawer does not bring the rifts and furrows themselves into the world in strokes of genius. in the anticipation of the self in the angel – the form and image of which cannot be expressed and is un-anticipatable – the practice of drawing sets up an articulation by which beings (both mortals and angels) are brought into mutually limiting yet mutually respecting order (heidegger calls this the event of appropriation or ereignis): an order that is of quite a different kind from that of causality (pattison 2000: 182), owing to the mutual thrown-ness of mortals and celestial beings. speaking about celestial beings and heidegger’s account of existential ontology in the same breath may seem strange, but within his rereading of parmenides is an exposition of aletheia as the goddess “truth”: “’the truth‘ – itself – is the goddess.” (1992: 5) here, heidegger is reclaiming the words of parmenides, which interstices 11 appear in the linguistic form of poems with verses and strophes, from didacticism to poiesis which entails work by the thinker in bringing into language the unconcealment of and/or by the divine. recounting how the goddess greets parmenides at her house in his travels, heidegger conceives of the words of truth uttered by the goddess in her greeting as not emanating from her person as messenger, but that truth itself is experienced as a goddess. this is an attempt at thinking human thinking outside truth as an onto-theological condition in which the goddess is not a mytho-transcendental experience of the thinker, but the thinker “out of his own initiative is ‘personifying’ the universal concept of ‘truth’ in the indeterminate figure of the goddess” (1992: 5). truth, as the open, is not the revelation of a universal by a thinker, but necessitates a change in his or her mode of existence where the open is made present, and in which the unconcealed truth is encountered. however, agamben’s summoning of the daena, and heidegger’s greeting by the goddess, still do not tell us much about the status of the drawing itself, the line drawn demarcating the threshold of the house, or the field that is drawn or furrowed, in this psycho-cosmological equation. it may be the angel that provides the drive for marking parallel lines of the furrow, but it is also the furrow, like marco frascari’s instrumental angle, which summons the angel. parallel furrows, in the relationality between opposing banks that never meet, is immanent to the open, or rather, is immanence, the open, pure potentiality as truth, aletheia. in order to explain this, i have to come back down to earth, or at least to the mountain that makes up the bank of the furrow, and the bridge that crosses the unfathomable chasm beyond it. and i have to turn to cosmology on iranian sufism, to the geography and topography of the actual meeting between the soul and the angel, daena, as its celestial form, thereby making an endnote to agamben’s endnote on daena. in iranian sufism, the human soul or fravarti, meets daena (who is the daughter of spenta armaiti, the feminine archangel of the earth or, in short, mother earth (afshari 2004)) upon death. here the fravarti undertakes a difficult journey, on a path up a mountain that leads to a precipice spanned by a bridge called the chinvat bridge, beyond which is the abode of hymns, the region of infinite lights. the human soul, the fravarti, is a trilogy: the soul-in-the-body, akin to the terrestrial form of the angel and close to the western conception of genius; the souloutside-the-body, which is the soul when it has reached the abode of hymns; and, lastly, the soul-on-the-way to the chinvat bridge, the one that is met and led by the angel daena across that bridge. daena does not take on the role of the messenger in the way that is widely believed in western eschatology. daena carries the message in, or by virtue of, her form, that is, she carries knowledge and information of a terrestrial life in her face, shape and persona. what is also interesting is that in sufi mythology, the bridge is not a mute object: like the angel, it is a primordial archetypical image, and like the furrowmountain before and beyond it, a visionary geography. on the bridge, daena seizes the hand of the fravarti and leads it across. a beautiful daena in the form of a young girl will help the soul of good deeds, in whose image it is, across the bridge without difficulty, as twins. the soul of evil deeds is however led by an ugly witch, who halfway across the bridge will attempt to throw the fravarti into the infernal hole. 47 but the story goes that the bridge itself makes a selection – chinvat means the bridge of the selector – it widens for the just, and narrows for the wicked to the point that it is no more than a razor’s edge (bonnefoy 1991: 114). the bridge, as something which arrives out of drawing, is itself the register of the behaviour of the human soul. this means that the earthly human condition, and drawing as a practice that demonstrates that condition, is the boundary state between potential angel and potential demon. the human condition, its concepts, practices and beliefs, is therefore implicated in the form of the bridge, and is immanent to the ease of access across it, to go between the terrestrial-instrumental practices in the world of reality, and that of the abstract-cosmological-transcendental realm. drawing firstly summons, then becomes, the angel who proceeds from the archetypal world. but in order to meet a beautiful angel and cross a strong wide bridge, drawing needs a transcendental active imagination, which can give form to perceptions, and that will show something of the un-sayable. it is here that drawings have to tell fictions, with bravery, risk and perseverance, so that the soul can cross the chasm by having its angelic image as a “productive” one; that is, one that requires a healthy adoption of the monstrous or the hybrid, as discussed by frascari. the potentiality of this occurring is increased by a productive imagination. after all, as manfredo tafuri once said in an essay about the angelic monstrations in massimo scolari’s drawings, such coming together of the psycho-cosmic in the imagination has served as the basis for many gigantic symbolic constructions, for example, the ziggurats of babylonia, and the stupas of cambodia, all of which are symbolic architecture that is the outer covering of an inner secret (tafuri 1981). one last event. it is also on the mountain from which chinvat bridge springs, the mountain of dawns, that the prophet zarathustra meets the archangel of “excellent thought” vohu-manah, whereupon zarathustra disrobes, discarding his material body and organs of sensory perception. that is why, under certain human conditions of small deaths, in sleep, ecstasy, meditation, trance and euphoria, the soul momentarily escapes in ecstatic anticipation to meet soul-onthe-way; for a glimpse of daena. and the practice of drawing, which enables, and is enabled by, imaginations of the inarticulable and the unsayable, is one way the human arrives at the light, albeit momentarily and in small ways, that brings about the transfiguration of the world. conclusion drawing instigates a return to the unsayable and the unredeemable, not in the name of a technological mastery of nature, but a mastery of the relationship between humanity and nature. this is because drawing allows the legitimate deformations and unnatural relationships between facts of physical action, and the invisibilities of the imagination, to produce beings – frascari’s monsters – that are “enigmas that express precisions” (frascari 1990: 86). drawing is not a sign of the genius’s capability to build whole-object relations, but rather demonstrates a co-evolution governed by the rhythmic incarnation and excarnation of the spirit: a place of continual rebirth into oneself (carter 2004). drawing vivifies the constant condition of the “between”, or interstices of the parallel, a condition for which we have no name, that is neither animal nor human, nature nor humanity, but holds itself in a material relation (agamben 2004). interstices 11 references afshari, a. (2004). the earth is an angel. in mazdean angelology (december 13, 2004). http:// www.iranian.com/history/2004/december/mazda/index.html. accessed 4 april 2010. agamben, g. (2004). the open: man and animal. k. attell (trans.). stanford: stanford university press. agamben, g. (2007). genius. in profanations. new york: zone books. carter, p. (2004). containment: greg burgess’s architecture of community. unpublished paper. bonnefoy, d. (1991). asian mythologies. w. doniger (trans.). chicago: university of chicago press. corbin, h. (1972). mundus imaginalis, the imaginary and the imaginal, spring, 1972. new york: analytical psychology club of new york, inc., 1-19. accessed at http://hermetic. com/bey/mundus_imaginalis.htm 24 august 2010. deleuze, g. and parnet, c. dialogues. h. tomlinson and b. habberjam (trans.). new york: columbia university press. frascari, m. (1990). a new angel/angle in architectural research: the ideas of demonstration angels and angles, journal of architectural education, vol.44, no. 1. (nov, 1990). frascari, m. (2005). cooking an architectural happy cosmospoiesis, crossing boundaries: architecture and the influence of other disciplines. volume 31, issue 1 (march 2005), 31-37. heidegger, m. (1971). the way to language. in on the way to language. p. d. hertz (trans.). new york: harper and row. heidegger, m. (1971a). the origin of the work of art. in poetry, language, thought. a. hofstadter (trans.). new york: harper and row. heidegger, m. (1992). parmenides. a. schuwer and r. rojcewicz (trans.). bloomington: indiana university press. pattison, g. (2000). routledge guidebook to later heidegger. london: routledge. tafuri, m. (1981). the watercolors of massimo scolari. in massimo scolari : watercolors and drawings 1965-1980. f. moschini (ed.). london: academy editions. interstices 08 53 and what i feel unites you and me is: we can locate in one another a similar yearning to be in a more just world. so i tried to evoke the idea that if we could come together in that site of desire and longing, it might be a potential place for community-building (hooks, 1991: 83). i. these sentences are from an interview with bell hooks where she discusses problems of female and afro-american identity. what i find remarkable in her statement is the implicit idea of a universal notion of justice, and of overcoming potential or actual differences (between individuals, different genders, classes and ethnicities), toward a (utopian) realm of yearning and desire as “a potential place for community-building“. the realm of longing and desire for a more just world can be opposed to the world as it is (and, with little nuances, probably always has been): divided by ethnic, cultural, religious, economic and political differences, which affect some simply as an accumulation of economic and thereby political power; and others, since the twentieth century, as continuing economic and cultural depravation, prolonging colonization and imperialism. of course, one could dismiss bell hook’s ideas as utopian, in the face of an accumulation of violent conflicts, waged in the name of ’justice’ and, like the conflict in the middle-east, cruelly ending in an almost infinite spiral of violence. plzklme leonhard emmerling translation by a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul and f. chichon ross liew, please kill me, b/w photography, 2005. interstices 08 55interstices 08 55 and, of course, there are valid arguments against the universalism (in the name of cultural diversity and different, culturally relative ideas of justice) implicit in hooks’ text. from the perspective of liberal democracies female genital mutilation, honour killings and forced marriage, human rights violations in china, the caste system in india, etc., do not jell with the idea of a more just world, although they are often defended with reference to a particular cultural identity, or to a specific evolutionary situation.1 the assertion of universal human rights can also be rejected using the argument that they represent nothing more than the continuation of colonial expansion, the pursuit of class interests,2 the globalization of western enlightenment principles, or the realization of a global ‘internal politics’, dominated by the west. however, this could be controverted by the juridical argument that the signatory states to the declaration of human rights are obligated to accept and respect it, as a common law at least, and that by no means only western delegates were involved in its drafting. there were also representatives of a multitude of ethnic and religious groups (see morsink, 1999), which means that the colonial argument fails. in turn, this could be refuted by stating that australian aboriginals, american hopi or new zealand māori (and an infinite number of other ethnic groups and indigenous nations, whose identity was, and still is, overarched by a post-colonial government) hardly had the opportunity to express their opinion of this document, let alone have it included. whereby the colonial argument regains its relevance. and so on. and so on. there is no way that this text could solve what legions of lawyers, politicians and scholars could not. therefore, i prefer to move on to my core subject and, having now sketched its approximate horizon, become more concise. ii. what interests me is to explore how bell hooks’ statement is relevant to the field of visual arts. i am a critic of ‘identity-art’ which centres, with tiresome obstinateness, on one’s own particular cultural conditioning (or even simply one’s own biographical background). no examples necessary. at each bienniale or trienniale, curators compete to present new artistic examples, and to demonstrate the theme’s topicality. globalization, migration, identity: in a globalized and migrating art business, these are the central catchwords that many exhibition concepts hinge on. the underlying, and constantly rehashed, formula can be described as follows: with ‘globalization’ as a rather diffuse but looming backdrop, an attempt is made to describe, or at least briefly illuminate and exemplify, the loss and reconfiguration of identity, and the conflict between different and specific cultural concepts of identity. the basic pattern: here, we find a multi-faceted and fragmented field of different ethnicities, cultural micro systems and individual biographies – a myriad of minorities fighting against oppression, depravation, razing and extermination; there, an aggressive, globalized and monolithic capitalism of western provenance, whose expansion is accompanied by endangerment, colonization, if not effacement, of non-european concepts of life, self and world. 1. nussbaum (1999: 129). on the same topic of female genital mutilation, see michael ignatieff’s surprisingly relativistic position human rights as politics and idolatry (2001: 72). he comments on chinese politics: “the great leap forward in china, in which between twenty-three and thirty million people perished as a result of irrational government policies implacably pursued in the face of their obvious failure, would never have been allowed to take place in a country with the selfcorrecting mechanisms of free press and political opposition. so much for the argument so often heard in asia that people’s ‘right to development’, to economic progress, should come before their right to free speech and democratic government” (90). regarding the problems of “honour killing”, or namus: in its name, six women were killed in berlin in 2004, within six months. until 2003, turkish civil law, amended in 2005, provided in art. 462 for mitigation in cases of provoked killings. in rural areas of turkey, honour killings still hardly attract punishment. see also schirrmacher (2007) and böhmecke (2005). 2. see anderson (1999: 115): “the claim to universalism is a shame. universalism is mere globalism and a globalism, moreover, whose key terms are established by capital.” see also pollis & schwab (1979: 1): human rights are a “western construct of limited applicability”. interstices 08 55 interstices 08 55 the art business dedicates itself to this undoubtedly serious struggle with a kind of preventative and simultaneously belated admission of guilt. thus, it repeats, knowingly or unwittingly, what the colonialist west (who first produced the art business) has already inflicted on the rest of the world: assimilation, instrumentalization, incapacitation and paternalism. the resulting impression of a bad conscience does not seem to be without reason. the very same imperialist and colonialist west that, globally, caused endless, literally murderous, and still ongoing conflicts generates a concept of art, and especially a concept of modernism, which annexes without residue what assimilates itself to it (and radically expels as local, traditional and ”anthropological“ all that is not compatible). the art system is western; the concept of art is western; the concept of modernism is western; the concept of contemporary art is western. the big circus of the bienniales touring around the world disseminates these concepts, with philanthropic missionary zeal and downright uncompromising, totalitarian commitment to the good, until even the remotest archipelago has been reached. within the realm of art, as a realm of the ‘as-if’, the west provides platforms for the restitution and re-configuration of identity (and barely an artist rejects the offer to present himor herself). the west allows – as a way to relieve its own guilt – what in reality continues to be denied: the right to be heard; the actual (that is, comprehensive and, particularly, economic) rather than the symbolic redress of colonial injustice; equal rights; the realization of an undamaged life. because charges can be laid there, no justice has to be served here. the realm of the ‘as-if’, of autonomous art, is exclusively legitimated by and beholden to its own laws and is independent of commissioners. in its autonomy, this art leaves the society it criticises ultimately unchallenged (adorno, 1997: 226). however, this is exactly the problem of autonomous art, and of politically/ socially committed art, which is the poorer the more it wants to be directly involved. the relationship between art and society, between art and the problems it deals with, is reciprocally analogous to a fraternity sword-fight.3 while the latter, staged in the realm of the ‘as-if’, has consequences in reality, the former confrontation is staged because the lack of consequences is guaranteed. not even the little scandals about elephant’s dung on paintings of the virgin mary can belie this fact.4 and that provocations are still possible does not refute the argument that art, in its autonomy, is only very indirectly related to the real of society. therefore, in art business, the game with identities is precarious, and whoever has decided to play the game has decided to play the game of the west. ‘identity’ is itself a western idea, central to european philosophy since aristotle, challenged for the first time by nietzche and psychoanalysis, and, subsequently, shattered by deconstructivism and post-structuralism (see hetherington, 1998). according to lacan (1977), a rift passes right through us: nothing can heal it, just as nothing can heal us from the desire to close it. without the notion of the self, without the notion of identity, the individual cannot exist. however, one can differentiate between the concept of personal, individual identity – as an anthropological necessity – and the concept of cultural identity – as a system of imprints we experience more or less passively, which we affirm more or less actively, and which we question, criticize, reject or endorse. 3. lorenz (1974: 94). the english translation of “comment kampf”, which lorenz used in his text “das sogenannte böse” (vienna 1963) as fraternity sword-fight or “chivalry” does not transport the meaning of the french “comment” which can be translated as “like…”. it nevertheless transports the meaning of “comment” as a rule of behaviour, especially in groups, which are defined by class distinctions. 4. in september 1999, the brooklyn museum of art displayed an exhibit called “sensations”, in which a work by chris ofili was shown, a depiction of a half naked virgin mary, covered in elephant faeces. in october 1999, mayor rudolph giuliani said that the bma should have its funding pulled and should not be sponsored by the city of new york. interstices 08 57interstices 08 57 iii. if i consider the work of art as an autonomous system that follows its own rules and objectifies subjectivity through the law of form, then this art work contains, on the one hand, more than the author could have intended. on the other, in the art work that generates objectifying propositions, she or he dissolves as a life-world subject. the art work is situated in a different frame of reference from any statement with non-artistic intentions, even if it is only by being positioned in the context of art – that is, the entire institutional framework of art.5 whoever positions his or her work in the context of art (and where else should or could it be placed?) can no longer go back. the work is out there, contextualized by exhibitions, texts, interpretations. it is now, not only the product of objectification, but an object, a fact. the author’s identity as a person – her/his individual and cultural identity – is irrelevant in the face of the work. what counts is the form into which the artistic subject has diffused. this might sound as though the viewer and the work could enter into a relationship that is not disturbed or burdened by external (historical, political, cultural) differences and their inherent problems of understanding; as though the pure, completely transparent work existed on one side, and the completely unconditioned gaze on the other; as if, between the work and the viewer, an all but pure, uncontaminated flow of information and perception existed, in which every contingency has been extinguished. of course, this is not my opinion; iconography, iconology and iconics (or what is now called bildwissenschaft – science of the image) have demonstrated to what extent it is necessary to draw on all kinds of information (biographical and artist related information included) to be able to embed the work in a horizon of understanding and, thus, to make it accessible. however, this is relevant particularly for the arts which have become historical and, with the passing of time, have become records of their time. in contrast, what is required from a contemporary work of art (beyond the effort of understanding it) is to critique it. the more it is simply a symptom of its time, the poorer it is. what we may ask for, with good reason, is that the work of art provides us with an image of our time, or the opportunity to think the present in the mode of the concrete (amman, 1997: 40f). this could almost be a definition of ’contemporary art’. when it comes to the determination of quality, a decisive criterion might be the degree to which this thinking of the present in the mode of the concrete succeeds, and with what degree of complexity and density. to assess this is not an authoritative act, but a taken-for-granted, and permanently demanded, capability of orientation in the present. to clarify: it goes without saying that works like francisco de goya’s, “desastres de la guerra” (1810–1820); théodore géricault’s, “raft of the medusa” (1819); otto dix’ graphic cycle, “the war” (1924); peter robinson’s, “one lives” (2006);6 or michael parekowhai’s, “the indefinite article” (1990)7 and this is a quite random collection partially gain their strength, as well as their appellative and emotional power, from their frames of reference. however, they owe this power primarily to the density by which they render formally objective subject matter, or the information contained in their frames of reference: that is, to the clarity of their elaboration. 5. this, of course, is also the case with theatre, literature and music. 6. see emmerling (2006: 5). 7. see garrett (2007: 46). interstices 08 57 interstices 08 57 contrast this with art to which the buzzword ‘relational aesthetics’ (nicolas bourriaud) is often applied. this art operates quite differently: it derives its legitimacy entirely from extra-aesthetic categories, such as sincere political convictions, or the indictment of economic, political, or cultural grievances. works by the hohenbüchlers, by thomas hirschhorn,8 or by the long march project claim legitimacy, not as autonomous works, but as ’committed art’. it is unclear what renders them formally different from the hands-on work of a street worker, and it is unlikely that these activities would attract much attention, were it not for the sleight of hand of locating them in the arts milieu (auckland art gallery, 2007: 112-23). the infamy essentially consists in making temporary interventions that poke fun at severe minority problems through, for instance, funny architecture competitions and exhibitions for the notoriously humanistic art audience: in the end nobody stands to gain but the artist himself. he or she then moves on to the next critical engagement, a superficial globetrotter of starry-eyed idealism. formally trivial and morally questionable, the artist uses the benefits both spheres provide – that of art and that of social and political engagement. in the sphere of art, he or she poses as a critic of the art work and as an agent of a new concept of art; in the sphere of politics, he or she purports to be an honest humanist and fighter for minority rights. i don’t know what else to add, except that both the ethics of the arts, and the ethics of a social engagement that is lastingly committed to its object are, in the end, betrayed. iv. my objection to identity art is that, all too easily, it plays the game of the west, and all too compliantly accepts the ‘as-if’ compensation proffered by the art business. willingly, one plays the trump card of minority-identity (against which there is no argument to win the trick), while the migrating, globalized art business unfurls, with a sorrowful face, the post-colonial backdrop and paints it black. discussion about an art work as autonomous is hardly possible since, from the outset, the game is contaminated by a discourse of power. it is not only that the post-colonialist discourse suffers, as does half the world, from the fact that colonialism survives in countless disguises (of which globalization is surely one) but it now involves new players. nations like india, china, iran and northern korea are among them and, in different ways, form our perception of the world while other, older protagonists play only modest roles. not only has colonialism dropped its poison in every zone of contact, this demon is also passionately nurtured in the realm of the ‘as-if’ because nobody has to make real efforts to solve real problems: the art business is a palliative. in his re-reading of freud, lacan has stringently elaborated the corrosion of substantial notions of identity that were initiated by structuralistic linguistics. for lacan, desire is motivated by the subject’s suffering from its insufficient capability to get hold of itself completely. the rupture between je and moi suffered by the subject fuels the endless play of longing and desire; and as the desired wholeness of the subject (which could claim identity beyond discourse) is continually missed, the conversation between je and moi never stops. it is this inherent difference that tears us apart, forces us to speak, even if this speaking is only fantasizing and prattling. 8. see hirschhorn (2004: 133-148). interstices 08 59interstices 08 59 however, the concept of identity deployed in the art business operates with an ideal of substantiality, not with systems of difference, no matter to what extent the post-colonialist discourse of identity insists on difference. in identity art, difference, located by lacan within the subject, can never be found in the individual or cultural subject itself. difference is used only as a means to constitute otherness. this otherness is always conceived of as essential, block-like, monolithic and unhistorical: unhistorical, because identity art holds fast to the idea of a substantial identity, despite all recourse to historical developments. however, substance can only be conceived as not deformable by transformations that occur because of economic, political or cultural changes. even if makere stewart-harawira insists that her description of traditional onto logies and principles of indigenous knowledge is not intended to be essentialist (2005: 155),9 i am at a loss what to see in it if not an essentialist generalization of indigenous knowledge, eyeball to eyeball with its mirror image of an essentialist, generalizing criticism of western scientific principles (which certainly deserve criticism for many reasons). when i place stewart-harawira’s sentence, “the important task was to find the proper pattern of interpretation” (155) in relation to rené descartes’ idea that the most important task is “rightly to apply (the) vigorous mind” (1986: 3), i see it as an indication of how close both systems of knowledge are with regard to claims for universality. and did adorno and horkheimer (1969) not show that the possibilities for both freedom and barbarism are founded in exactly this idea: the “right” use of the “right” principles? in a secular world, the substantial i (ich) is the atrophied form of the soul; hence the martyr’s, the prophet’s and the saviour’s gestures are deployed in the ‘as-if’ realm of art business, when the tales of the world’s problems, grievances and salvation are spun. however, if conversation, discourse, language and speech are not only motivated by the difference between the subject and all others, but also by the difference between me and myself; between what i am and what i know about myself (and also between what i know about myself and what i long to be); between je and moi, then the assertion of a substantial i (ich) in identity art is radically anticommunicative. thus, there is a question about how communication can be conceived of in this constellation. as a leaning of the viewer towards the work, to listen and learn from what it, and the subject behind it, might say? as an opening of boundaries, a transgression of limits, a change of habits of reception? this is how scholars have defined the task of contemporary art for decades – a passepartout that sounds seditious but is really no more than a bourgeois bonmot. when taken at its word, identity art does not seek communication, but simply posts statements. it is conservative in its continual delineation and consolidation of what has already been said, thought and asserted. it is affirmative, hermetic and (despite its pronouncement of substantiality) an art of the closed surface, not of plastic dimension. the substance behind this surface is accessible neither to vision nor to discourse. two surfaces clash which cannot enter into any form of communication because they are hermetically sealed. 9. kindly communicated by tina engels-schwarzpaul, auckland. interstices 08 59 interstices 08 59 the subject of identity art has always taken hold of itself, even if as imperilled. it is hieratic, lonely, fragile and tragic, and demands to be taken seriously. what imperils it never lies within itself, but always outside, with the other, which it claims to be: one other as monolithic as the other other. v. the game of identity art is to establish an ambivalence that always impresses the stain of power on the other. in terms of a substantial i (ich), identity art produces a monadic closedness and ideal intactness (or evokes it in the image of damage) in which every threat to its integrity is blamed on the outer world. in a perfidious and paradox manner, identity art closes itself off from the world, while, nevertheless, shifting all the blame onto it. because of these structural attributes, identity art is the perfect medium for the art business as a system of the ‘as-if’. all too willingly, the artist intervenes where he or she has nothing to contribute, nor wants to contribute, to the solution of the problems he or she juggles with. identity art as a conservative art, as the manifestation or evocation of “this is me!”, is incapable of unfurling the utopian horizon bell hooks and adorno speak of. utopia, not as a state that could be achieved offhand, right here and right now, if only everybody were full of good will and best intentions; utopia, rather, as a state, which to give up as impossible to achieve, even facing the uttermost improbability of its achievement, would simply mean to declare that the world, as it is, is the best of all possible worlds. identity art insists on ‘difference’ but does not incorporate it. in this regard, it differs significantly, in two respects, from what contemporary art can do and what is only fair to expect of it. it affirms prevailing circumstances without unfurling a horizon which would allow us to think beyond the current state of affairs. identity art also suffers from a lack of self-reflexivity, which it tries to compensate for by an excess of moral appeals. this excess is fed by references to the discourse of power. moreover, in its insistence on ‘difference’, identity art is probably opposed to what richard rorty described as an indication of some form of progress – progress being defined as “an increase in our ability to see more and more differences among people as morally irrelevant” (1998: 11). when the discourse of ‘art’ and the discourse of ‘power’ intersect, difference becomes a moral category, and differences become morally relevant. therein lies the tragic aspect of identity art. beyond doubt, the west has deprived uncounted nations and peoples of their right to self-determination, their cultural integrity, their identity, and their economic potential. and, without doubt, art and cultural praxis can be a medium to restore this damaged integrity. however, i doubt that art is the appropriate arena to fight the fights that should be fought in the spheres where the real grievances still prevail: politics and economics. vi. my own arguments, too, suffer from an underlying universalism: the application of certain criteria, hopes, ideas in connection with art, which collide with other interstices 08 61interstices 08 61 criteria, hopes and ideas, which in turn demand and deserve, if not universality, then at least unconditional respect. my argument against the essentialism of identity art is itself based on a concept of identity (lacan), which can be criticized as essentialist and ahistoric, or transhistoric or a-temporal. in its radical criticism of an essentialist notion of the i and identity, lacan’s concept of identity is itself essentialist. and even if butler’s concept of performativity (1990) could offer a way out – how could i be sure that this concept is not essentialist (nor, in this context, colonialist or imperialist)? the same question applies to habermas’ concept of discursive rationality (1981), laclau’s idea that all universalisms are subject to constant negotiation (by definition, incomplete and necessary at the same time) (2000),10 or to michael ignatieff’s concept of deliberation (2001).11 the only possible option seems to be to keep the discourse going, the argument or conversation between particularity and universalism. it bears affinity with the conversation between the je and the moi, it arises from a desire: the desire to understand (not to possess); the desire to be at home in a world, which is less characterized by boundaries and ‘difference’ but more by the quest for commonalities. vii. assuming that the globetrotting curators’ sophisticated diagnoses are right and we do live in a globalized world, then their much favoured identity art is a strange relic. it is also dishonest, hypocritical and bourgeois: an agent of political correctness in a world of the ‘as-if’; a totalitarian instrument for the production of silence; the death-knell for all thought that moves outside the institutional framework; the end of communication. rather, what is needed is a culture of curiosity, of not-knowing, of constant questioning. in the place of the cult of identity, a culture of communication, of the insecure, of the debatable, of desire. a culture of doubt, of consultation, where identity is as precious as the dirt under everybody’s fingernail: a bit that is left, impossible to get rid off. references adorno, th. w. (1997). aesthetic theory (r. hullot-kentor, trans.). london: the athlone press. ammann, j.-c. (1997). über die notwendigkeit von kunst. in ammann, j.-c. (1997). annäherung, regensburg: lindinger + schmid. anderson, k. (1999). secular eschatologies and class interests. in c. gustafson and p. juviler (eds.), religion and human rights: conflicting claims (pp. 1-12). armonk, n.y: m.e. sharpe. auckland art gallery (ed.). (2007). turbulence 3rd auckland triennial. auckland: auckland art gallery. 10. “from a theoretical point of view, the very notion of particu larity presupposes that of totality (even total separation cannot escape the fact that separation is still a type of relation between entities the monads require a ‘pre-established harmony’ as a condition of their non-interaction). and, politically speaking, the right of particular groups of agents ethnics, national or sexual minorities, for instance can be formulated only as universal rights. the appeal to the universal is unavoidable once, on the one hand, no agent can claim to speak directly for the ‘totality’ while, on the other, reference to the latter remains an essential component of the hegemonic-discursive operation. the universal is an empty place, a void, which can be filled only by the particular, but which, through its very emptiness, produces a series of crucial effects in the structuration/destructuration of social relations. it is in this sense that it is both an impossible and a necessary object” (2000: 58). 11. “if rights conflict and there is no unarguable order of moral priority in rights claims, we cannot speak of rights as trumps. the idea of rights as trumps implies that when rights are introduced into a political discussion, they serve to resolve the discussion. in fact, the opposite is the case. when political demands are turned into rights claims, there is a real risk that the issue at stake will become irreconcilable, since to call a claim a right is to call it nonnegotiable, at least in popular parlance. compromise is not facilitated by the use of rights claim language. so if rights are not trumps, and if they create a spirit of nonnegotiable confrontation, what is their use? at best, rights create a common framework, a common set of reference points that can assist parties in conflict to deliberate together” (2001: 20). cf. ignatieff (2000: 22 and elsewhere). interstices 08 61 interstices 08 61 böhmecke, m. (2005). studie: ehrenmord. tübingen: terre des femmes, commissioned by feleknas uca, member of the european parliament. retrieved october 5, 2007 from www. frauenrechte.de/tdf/pdf/eu-studie_ehrenmord.pdf butler, j. (1990). gender trouble. feminism and the subversion of identity. new york: routledge, chapman & hall inc. descartes, r. (1986). a discourse on method (john veitch, trans.). london and melbourne: dent. emmerling, leonhard (ed.). the inconceivable. exhibition catalogue st paul st, auckland, 13.7. – 12.8.2006. garrett, r. (march 2007). walking with letters. artlink, 27 (1), 46–49. habermas, j. (1981). theorie des kommunikativen handelns (vol.1: handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche rationalisierung, vol. 2: zur kritik der funktionalistischen vernunft). frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. hetherington, k. (1998). expressions of identity – space, performance, politics. london, thousand oaks, calif.: sage publications. hirschhorn, t. (2004). bataille monument. in c. doherty (ed.), from studio to situation (pp. 133-148). london: black dog publishing. hooks, b. (1991). in a. juno and v. vale (eds.), angry women, (pp. 78-93) san francisco: re/search publications. horkhomer, m. and adorno, th. w. (1969). dialektik der aufklärung (1947). with an epilogue by jürgen habermas. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp. ignatieff, m. (2000). the rights revolution. toronto: anansi press limited. ignatieff, m. (2001). human rights as politics and idolatry. princeton and oxford: princeton university press. lacan, j. (1977). le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du je, (1949). in lacan, j. (1977). ecrits. vol 1 (pp. 1-7). paris: seuil. laclau, e. (2000). contingency, hegemony, universality contemporary dialogues on the left. london, new york: verso. lorenz, k. (1974). on aggression (m. kerr wilson, a. helen and k. wolff, trans.). london: methuen & co ltd. morsink, j. (1999). the universal declaration of human rights: origins, drafting and intent. philadelphia: university of pensylvania press. nussbaum, m. c. (1999). judging other cultures: the case of genital mutilation. in m. c. nussbaum, sex & social justice (pp. 118-129). new york, oxford: oxford university press. pollis, a., & schwab, p. (eds.). (1979). human rights: cultural and ideological perspectives. new york: praeger. rorty, r. (1998). truth and moral progress: philosophical papers. cambridge: cambridge university press. schirrmacher, ch. (2007, march, 8). feste verwurzelung des ehrenmords im islam. ehrenmord in islamisch geprägten gesellschaften. schweizerzeit aktuell. retrieved october 5, 2007, from www.schweizerzeit.ch/0807/ehrenmord.htm stewart-harawira, m. (2005). cultural studies, indigenous knowledge and pedagogies of hope. in stewart-harawira, m. (2005). policy futures in education, 3(2). interstices 11 drawing has always been more than drawing” : derrida and disegno laurence simmons “…le dessin a toujours été plus que le dessin.” ( jacques derrida) 1. disegno it would be trite and obvious to say that all i can provide in a short essay is a sketch of the problem (or is it a thematics?) of drawing, from among the abundance of the references to the subject in jacques derrida’s writing. indeed, what i want to sketch is an answer to the, for me at least, simple and puzzling question: why drawing and not painting? the obvious answer would be that derrida speaks of drawing rather than painting (or of colour, as we shall see) because in drawing, in the encounter with drawing, there is the experience of the trait, of the differential trace that marks all his work from the ground-breaking essay on différance. derrida proposes the simple fact that any mark is already re-marked: the first mark is already second if it is to be identifiable and to signify. this is the structure of what derrida calls “the differential inappearance of the trait” (1993: 53). but the trait, as many have pointed out, is also the brushstroke (see brunette and wills, 1994). of course, matters are never by any means so simple with derrida, and so mine will be perforce an excessively and necessarily sketchy gesture, a drawing out and drawing down. in memoirs of the blind derrida confesses, “i have always experienced drawing as an infirmity … i still think that i will never know either how to draw or how to look at a drawing” (1993: 37). this, of course, did not stop him looking at drawings and writing about drawing. in a short text of 2005, le dessin par quatre chemins (the four pathways of drawing), derrida explores four lines of force around the fact that “the possibility and meaning of drawing remains to be thought” and that, in the phrase i have taken as my title, “drawing has always been more than drawing” (2005a: 4). those four lines of force which exert a certain attraction (attrait) upon each other are: dessiner, designer, signer, and enseigner. to draw, to designate, to sign and, to keep the assonance going, we might say “to assign” in english (although the french enseigner more literally encompasses both indicating and teaching). from the point of view of the possibility of drawing, and the responsibility of the trait, everything necessarily returns here to a question of the sign. everything in designing or projecting itself (through its signature) returns towards the same thing: the designatum. “ 115 in italian the word disegno refers to a figure, an image traced on a surface through a sign left by a pencil or other means (in other words a drawing), but the word disegno also means project or plan. in italian disegno is the noun from disegnare. however, in french from the old verb desseigner two nouns are possible: dessein (with two ‘e’s) and dessin (with one) are originally synonyms and also homophones separated by a silent ‘e’, but which come to denote with the enlightenment the metaphysical and the descriptive. that is, the not simply orthographic, but also semantic, silent ‘e’ marks the gap (écart) between conception and execution, between the intelligible and the sensible. to appropriate a derridean commonplace, le dessein (two ‘e’s) is always already dessin (one) and their relationship is co-extensive. as georges didi-huberman has recounted, for renaissance art theory “disegno was a word of the mind as much as a word of the hand. disegno, then, served to constitute art as a field of intellectual knowledge” (2005: 78). by speaking of disegno we have begun to design the subject of disegno, paving a pathway (one of derrida’s chemins) for it. in its claim to discourse on disegno (drawing), this paper will be the result of disegno (design) that speaks of itself in a reflexive structure, one that does not produce a coincidence with itself but instead forever projects forward the advent of drawing as disegno; that is to say, it follows a trace. drawing as disegno is designing itself as drawing. it presents itself from the start as a beginning that is already designed. there can be no metadiscourse on drawing since all work on drawing is also a work of drawing. fig. 1 valerio adami, jacques derrida (allegorical portrait), january 27, 2004, graphite pencil on paper. interstices 11 2. allegory “not a single day without the line”: nulla dies sine linea is the epigraph on italian artist valerio adami’s letterhead. this is the line that superimposes itself upon the white page. but what is it, this line? presence and absence; one and multiple; the same as itself and always different. perhaps, for this very reason it journeys with a single companion, the rubber: that cancels, chases away, renounces, places it under ‘erasure’ (sous rature), allowing it to be different to what it thought it was, to renew itself again each time. the journey of drawing was the title of adami’s exhibition for which derrida’s essay “+r”, to which i wish to return in a moment, was written. to follow a line, uncover derrida’s line on drawing, i want to read a drawing by adami. the drawing i have chosen is a drawing about which jeanluc nancy to complicate matters further, has also published a short reading in book form: à plus d’un titre (2007). valerio adami, jacques derrida, allegorical portrait, pencil on paper, january 27, 2004, first exhibited at the galerie daniel templon, paris in december 2004, barely two months after derrida’s death, among an exhibition of adami’s painting, dedicated to derrida’s memory and titled “préludes et après-ludes” (fig. 1). let me start with the description i have just furnished, according to adami: the subtitle “allegorical portrait” was apparently given by derrida to the drawing (nancy 2007: 85-6). derrida, i think, is slipping us a definition of drawing that is at once allegorical and ironical. the reference, of course, is to the two rhetorical figures that paul de man judged to be inseparable and irreducible. derrida writes in mémoires for paul de man: paul de man often stresses the ‘sequential’ and ‘narrative’ structure of allegory. in his eyes, allegory is not simply one form of figurative language among others; it represents one of language’s essential possibilities: the possibility that permits language to say the other and to speak of itself while speaking of something else; the possibility of always saying something other than what it gives to be read, including the scene of reading itself. (1986b: 11) if one were to recast adami’s portrait of derrida in de manian terms, the portrait is an allegory of drawing and of the attempt to read drawing: that is, to understand the activity of drawing. but, as a reader of de man will remember, reading as he (de man) establishes it, whether one is reading rousseau or proust (or a drawing) is forever impossible. the act of trying to understand drawing repeats the enigmatic unknowable event (drawing) that is the object of our anxious interpretation. 3. subjectile but let me try to recover some ground. let me really begin with the subjectile: an old technical word meaning what is put under the drawing or painting, the support, that which makes the image or representation possible. in adami’s drawing we might first wish to say that the subjectile becomes a subject. the point of the pen, one of those old-fashioned fountain pens, grasped tightly by bunched-up fingers, is placed exactly at the edge of the drawing, as if to run over – pour déborder (nancy 2007: 58) – in this way. this pen nib at the edge, on the edge, raises the question of how to get in to or out of the drawing. the term subjectile marks a certain crossing of borders, as well as an institution of the borders it crosses. 117 it is derrida’s reference to the hand – and indeed the very hand we are looking at – that asks us to consider again. the physicality of the primary gesture of the drawing hand here must also be understood as an impulse to touch that which should only be an object of visual perception, to transfer a presence to a deep memory. the drawing is in this sense a “search” rather than a “communication”. nevertheless, with drawing one is not dealing, according to derrida, with an experience of blocking vision, but of refinding it, through (behind [derrière]) the mirror, and igniting its internal sparks and revelatory breaths. as he has explored at great length, and with great subtlety, in le toucher jean-luc nancy (2005b), the privilege of the visible has been constantly sustained and framed by the privilege of touch. 4. desk and books the preface to a taste for the secret, written with maurizio ferraris, is titled “secretaire”, a reference to “a writing desk in which papers are locked away”, and a secretary “assistant … sparring partner … interviewer”, and “a catalogue, even an iconography or a portfolio, or more exactly an ichnography [from ichnos “trace”] in which one collects, writes or describes traces, which are, at bottom, secrets” (2001: vii). what secrets? in every drawing, in which there exists the tracing of drawing, there is a movement that is secret, that is separate from and irreducible to daily visibility. and here we have it, a writing desk and books: six in the first line and three in a second line, one held partially open as if it had just been placed back down in its place in the line and a finger or thumb had been removed from the gap between the pages. what might their titles be? let us fantasise for a moment that they might be hegel and genet: aesthetics, faith and knowledge, phenomenology of spirit, funeral rites, our lady of the flowers, the thief’s journal. the references would be to the building blocks of derrida’s strange and powerful “bookish” volume glas (1974), which blends a meticulous commentary on hegel’s philosophical works, in one column of a vertically divided page, with a more lyrical, fragmented commentary on jean genet’s literary writings in a facing column. this juxtaposition, apposition or opposition of the textual columns, and widely diverse writing styles gives rise to provocative semantic and phonemic networks: “phonogrammatic” is derrida’s adjective. there are also sidebars or baby columns in different typefaces; each column has its own continuity but is not impermeable to oblique interconnections, creating a multi-directional reading. the reading process is further complicated by the presence of a number of what derrida refers to as “judas holes”: peepholes through the commented texts that give self-conscious access to autobiographical or signatory effects. first published a year after glas in derrière le miroir, no. 214, and then reprinted in the truth in painting, the essay “+r (par-dessus le marché)” (“+r: (into the bargain)”) introduces adami’s drawing exhibition le voyage du dessin (the journey of drawing). derrida’s essay functions as part of the exhibition, and undercuts its commercial underpinning, as well as offering the supplementary function of critical commentary. in particular “+r” examines several drawings of adami, notably two studies for a drawing after glas and a portrait of walter benjamin, described by derrida as a “hieroglyph of a biography” (1987: 179). adami’s characteristic fissured picture plane, his composition by erasure, and his use of textual citations in the image become the ground for derrida’s examination of the interstices 11 art mark/art market and the economy of the (sur)plus-value of the letter. adami’s rendering of derrida’s texts and his handwriting become in turn the captions and illustrations dispersed in derrida’s subsequent essay. and, finally, adami’s use of derridean texts affords derrida the opportunity to comment on his own transformation into an image. the first drawing after glas (fig. 2), appearing to represent a text written on the back of a canvas, effects the figure of chiasmus as a crossing-out by a triple-play manoeuvre of, first, a text partially hidden under a fold at the bottom; second, the x near the middle which could be read as barred; and, finally, the x at the top, a sort of false start cut off by the edge of the paper. marges (margins, the title of derrida’s essay collection) written and crossed over at the top, occupies the title position but seems to have been folded over from the bottom of the other side of the canvas. the text’s continuation over the folds at the right undoes any notion that the writing preceded the folding. as does the mise en page of the drawing, its reduction in size, its place first of all in a sequence which includes its own repetition (in the truth in painting on pages 153, 167 and the front cover). the second drawing after glas is titled ich (fig. 3). the german first person pronoun ich when transliterated back into the greek (iota plus chi) designates christ, as traditionally symbolised by a fish-like emblem that provides a greek acronym for jesus christ. furthermore, for derrida, as a pseudomorpheme of the abbreviated greek word ichtus (fish), the reversed ich is chi chiasmus (x), the rhetorical figure whose double criss-cross marks this drawing as it did the previous one. in this chiasmatic exchange it would be wrong, though, to think of the fish as drawing and the words as writing. the outlines of the fish loosen and disintegrate and become at their tail an angular scribble, and notice how a capital ‘a’ and a ‘d’ seem to materialise at the right below its tail. the glas drawing contains several other truncated words, including part of derrida’s signature and an implied je (ich) in the capital ‘j’ of jacques, as well as, at the bottom of the page, a relic of derrida’s first poem published at the age of 17. one of derrida’s strategies in glas is to show how genet’s autobiographical writings comment on, and eventually undermine, the very assumptions about the role of the signature which inform definitions of autobiography. he does this through a commentary via those “judas holes” on the way his own signature, the name that signs glas, operates just as he claims genet has done. the result is not only a fig. 2 valerio adami, study for a drawing after glas by jacques derrida, 27 february 1975, graphite pencil on paper. fig. 3 valerio adami, study for a drawing after glas by jacques derrida, 22 may 1975, graphite pencil on paper, private collection. fig. 2 fig. 3 119 theoretical critique which questions the assumption that the signature is a mark in the text that points to an extra-textual source of the text, one that he developed around the same time in signsponge (1984), but is a radical displacement of the genre of autobiography that now must include glas as one of its examples. this still leaves the question of the (double) signature on the drawing. derrida’s signature or “half signature” is not original but reproduced; here it is a reproduction of a reproduction, the signature is as much adami’s as it is derrida’s, since it is reinscribed in adami’s characteristic hand. if in glas the reader has to generate a meaningful relation between the two juxtaposed texts on hegel and genet, in “+r” the viewer moves in a similar way between adami’s drawing and derrida’s writing. but, as i have been at pains to insist, the drawings are not illustrations. they function as an accompaniment. in the light of this account of derrida’s discussion we might ask: what then is drawing, a drawing, as such? is it possible to distinguish it, if we take the example of “+r”, from hypothetical writing on drawing, on these drawings? can we distinguish, that is, between writing that speaks about drawing and writing that appears within drawing? when does the drawing begin to become writing and the writing drawing? 5. landscape and circumflex like the portrait convention of placing landscape or landscapes behind the figure, adami’s drawing has its own background landscape: a pointed hill and a desert of dry, schematic trees. it is noteworthy adami confirms that for him this is derrida’s algeria, a desert of dunes, small hills and trees without leaves (nancy 2007: 91). given, as we have seen, the emphasis placed on the graphic effects of diacritical marks in glas it is perhaps significant, therefore, that the strangely pointed hill reminds us of the french accent, the circumflex. it is the same disseminative drift of the circumflex that features in glas in the play between the proper name genet and the flower genêt. it is all, derrida suggests there, “a question of the circumflex: of a ‘fruitless’ complication of the orthography” (1986a: 230bi 257). but the circumflex is not just a diacritical caprice, or an archaic mark of punctuation, it has the quality of what david wills calls a “graphic effect” that constitutes, he continues, “perhaps the most explicit example of the figural in derrida’s writing” (2001: 113). the very inbuilt graphicality of language becomes, as wills outlines it, “both a cohesive and disruptive force” (114). the circumflex is one of the minimal traces of the way in which, for derrida, writing is already constituted by the “figuro-pictorial” but for adami, in turn, how the pictorial is already constituted by the “semantico-syntactic”. 6. face we come now to the figure, the portrait face. to all appearances it is a face that dedoubles, its planes sliding and meeting behind each other, to cover and envelope, reveal and display as jean-luc nancy suggests “like the carapace of a tortoise or a suit of armor that plays against itself and pushes its plates or its scales one upon the other in slippages and progressive rubbings where the disposition of a face in waiting breaks up (se brouille)” (2007: 68; my translation). and what of the three eyes that all look to the left, the central one perhaps cyclopean (see derrida 1993: 87ff)? we register the hint of a certain non-presence in the gaze that looks to us but doesn’t regard us directly in the face, face-to-face. the expression on the interstices 11 lips: a mocking yet tender smile. a smile that now, inevitably, recalls derrida’s final words spoken for him by his son pierre at his graveside: “smile for me, he [derrida] says, as i will have smiled for you until the end. always prefer life and constantly affirm survival… i love you and am smiling at you from wherever i am” (2007: 244). je vous souris: we hear the assonance but also dissonance between survivre and sourire in what nancy has baptised as “this surviving portrait that will have become the allegory of his smile” (2007: 38; my translation). 7. cat according to david wills, the essay “+r” represents “the most fertile nexus of relations among framing, animals, and autobiography” in any of derrida’s writings (2001: 126). as we have seen, a fish hooked and emerging from the water is analysed by derrida as the figuration of a play or competition of his signatures, signatures that adami also draws on the surface of the work. in adami’s portrait of derrida, on our left protruding from the border, its head completely exposed, is a gazing cat. in terms of formal compositional dynamics, this cat is a case of what in the renaissance leonbattista alberti, giving advice to painters in his della pittura, called a “spectator figure”. it represents the displaced glance of the picture’s real spectator: it is the spectator’s painted deputy. what we see is not a gaze looking at us but the gaze, our gaze, itself displaced. by it, the cat, it is the act of our seeing that we see. plausibly posed as a bystander or onlooker to the depicted scene, the cat yet flagrantly represents us – like it, observers of a scene from which, spatially, we are and must remain implacably separate. often, like a lead-in figure, the spectator figure stands in the wings and gazes into the depicted scene. like the real spectator, it is separated from the scene it observes by a depicted space it can never cross. the structure of a cat’s eye is a permanent gaze that unblinkingly fixes the instant as if in a moment of eternal attention. it is the cat that considers and guards the secret of that which it sees. the cat without words. we notice the ears of the cat pricked up as if listening for language. the cat at the edge of the drawing recalls for us the moment, recounted in the animal that therefore i am, when one paris morning, while naked in his bathroom about to take a shower, jacques derrida observes his cat observing him. observe is not quite the right word here; this “looking” of the cat is more directed, more intentional, and more disturbing because of this. he was, derrida says, “faced with the cat’s eyes looking at me [qui me regarde] as it were from head to toe, just to see [pour voir], not hesitating to concentrate its vision [sa vue] – in order to see, with a view to seeing – in the direction of my sex” (2008: 373). “caught naked, in silence, by the gaze [le regard] of an animal” (ibid.: 372) derrida has difficulty overcoming his embarrassment. why he asks does he “have trouble repressing a reflex dictated by immodesty”? why is he disturbed by “the impropriety that comes of finding oneself naked, one’s sex exposed, stark naked before a cat that looks at you without moving”? he gives this old experience, the impropriety that comes “from appearing in truth naked, in front of the insistent gaze of the animal, a benevolent or pitiless gaze, surprised or cognizant”, a new name – animalséance – derived from the french for impropriety (malséance). in derrida’s essay where these events are recounted, the malaise of this scene in the bathroom plays out over a crossing of borders between human and animal. “the animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. thinking perhaps begins there,” suggests derrida (397). the nudity in front of the cat is like the nudity in 121 front of the drawer of the drawing. adami who gazes to draw his subject has remarked that in terms of the dynamics of the drawing he thinks of himself as the cat (nancy 2007a: 92). in his turn, the subject is exposed, his shirt front is open, his face is denuded under the artist’s gaze, indeed the drawing may turn against him and show him what he is not or what he does not want to believe/see. 8. table in the upper left of our drawing there is a table in the sky. tavola in italian also means board or panel (subjectile) for a painting. it is a table that floats in a phantasmatic fashion, its leg somehow fixed into another subjectile, the wall, one of the two walls we see of the four that must surround the figure. a single leg supporting the corner of a table suspended in the sky that has upon its table-top lightly drawn the sign of a cross. perhaps it is a “drawing table”, the table on which this drawing was drawn, a table that is then drawn mysteriously skyward? and what if the cross isn’t a symbol, a christian cross, but rather a mark of the artist’s process, a sign of the drawing, part of the squaring up, its mapping? as a sign of position and positioning its longer line may be extended as a mark for the j. (‘je’) of j. derrida, it points us to jacques, and the cross-line if extended passes through the forehead of the figure, the portrait of derrida. so, a sign of position and positioning. as if the writer’s desk has become this table/is this table lifted out, but no books, no hand that draws or writes, a tabula rasa. the cross is also the cross of erasure (sous rature) and the crossing of chiasmus (x). the cross on the table is also the ‘+’ (plus) of derrida’s economical title of economy. a seemingly off-hand incision that becomes a double and doubling signature, of writer and artist, a marking that through its double-crossings, its marking and marketing, signs and binds the two discourses of writer and artist. 9. signature so here in this drawing, like those of glas, we have it, a sort of signature, but not really, balancing on an inclined line that bisects the top quarter of the composition diagonally, crossed, divided or fissioned. but this may also be the line and the trait that the pen, which is gripped so firmly, at the opposing side of the composition is drawing. this name like a mountain range at the top of the drawing. a name like an avalanche that might slip down and be lost in the impossible. this incline is the counter-band (contre-bande) derrida makes reference to in glas (1986a: 244a). “a band passing from the upper sinister corner of the escutcheon to the lower dexter corner” (american heritage dictionary) (cited in leavey 1986: 178). but also a surnom that surmounts adami’s signature at the bottom right (adami’s name that shares a ‘da’ with it), next to the date of the drawing (257 days before derrida’s death). the portrait can only appear in truth in the disappearance (the surmounting) of the name. but also a nickname of sorts, like the one that might be carved in a desktop by a naughty schoolboy: jackie derrida. 10. colour perhaps the most striking thing about derrida’s essay on adami in glas is the absence of colour from the drawings discussed and yet the painstaking, if convoluted, analysis of colour in this text that draws meticulously upon visual examples that are just drawings and are colourless. how is it that the graphic is used interstices 11 to discuss an absent chromatic? or drawing to talk about painting? this is made even more striking because derrida chastens us on this very point in memoirs of the blind: “we are talking here about drawing, not painting” (1993: 44), he admonishes. but to return to “+r”; the text in question. it is no doubt of significance that the first mention of colour in the essay on adami comes in a passage where derrida is commenting on his own signature on the edges of the drawing and he remarks that two letters of his name (those two that he shares with adami) are missing: “the da is not there, hic et nunc, but it is not lacking. like colour?” he then defers… “we’ll have to see later…” (1987: 159). colour, then, is a mode of deferring, it is the “unanticipated”. colour is something we must wait for. on the same page as the passage cited earlier, derrida writes of all the drawn lines of the adami drawings, all their traits together: “let drawing = tr” (1987: 170). what can he mean by this enigmatic statement? what is the significance of this sublexeme tr? immediately, he lists a number of tr words which his translator cleverly catches: the treachery of this translation or transcription, the transpassing, the trance or tragedy of ich, the transpiercings, trunks, trepannings, the tréma or the ex-tra which interest adami have apparently no linguistic or semantic affinity with what i say i am doing … when i travail, tremble or become troubled while writing. (1987: 171) [my italics] he continues: “but if tr is each time altered, transformed, displaced by what appears to complete it, it keeps a sort of self-sufficiency” (171). this matrix, as jonathan tiplady notes, “is singular because it does not simply stand pregnantly vacant, allowing for an event but not already inciting it; instead the matrix tr already has within it the events it is supposed to be merely hatching” (2003: 208). despite their listing and retracing in moments of translation, travel, traction, trains, traits, transactions, transfer, traversals, trailings, and of course the italian ritratti (portraits), words encountered along the trajectory of tr cannot be retrieved in a thematic inventory. the two letters have no identity for themselves, for there is no way to vocalise tr, i have to say or spell it to you like that, ‘tr’. i now turn to a passage on the following page. in some way my entire essay so far has been working towards a citation of this unusual passage and to saying a few words about it in conclusion: the rigor of the divide between trait and colour becomes more trenchant, strict, severe and jubilant as we move forward in the [adami’s] so-called recent period. because the gush of colour is held back, it mobilizes more violence, potentializes the double energy: first the full encircling ring, the black line, incisive, definitive, then the flood of broad chromatic scales in a wash of colour. the colour then transforms the program, with a self-assurance all the more transgressive (perceptual consciousness would say “arbitrary”) for leaving the law of the trait intact in its inky light. there is, to be sure, a contract: between the drawing which is no longer an outline or sketch, and the differential apparatus of the colours. (1987: 172) derrida’s logic is clear enough. we have here what we might call the “countereffect of colour”: drawing the black line is an act of aggression against colour and by being that invites colour’s very revenge. colour most forcefully is when it is most rigorously held back and detained. in the context of derrida’s wider work 123 we have an example of what hillis miller has called derrida’s “refraining”: “the contradictory ‘with-against’ movement that characterizes derrida’s work” (2007: 279) he calls it. formulations where the system in question does not close because it is tr: entrenched, transposable, transgressive, traversed, tremulous, troubled etc. the opposition between the trait and colour is not really an opposition at all; it is a question of supplementarity. colour supplements the drawn line by filling it out. at the same time colour brings into the open what is the essential of the drawn line. colour is already there when it is most forcibly held back, when it is a retrait. adami’s colourless drawings precisely because they so strenuously resist it are already awash with colour. of course, in this sketch i have not been able to provide a satisfactory representation of derrida’s thought on drawing, nor, despite some hypotheses, a satisfactory account of what drew him to drawing. this is, i conclude, because with the question of drawing there can be no “originary” insight, because with derrida, as geoff bennington says, “there is complexity at the origin” and “his thinking turns around the thought that the origin is not simple, and that a non-simple origin has immeasurable consequences for thought” (2007: 231). there has been no colour here, in the images i have shown you, no chromatic in the graphic, but neither a simple chromatic-graphic distinction, and yet what i have been attempting to do is a certain kind of colouring in; the sort of “filling-in” one finds in those books that children use made up of thick black lines (like, of course, adami’s) which form spaces to be filled up upon a white page. it is a form of touching up which forces us to ask once again with derrida: “does one ever get over drawing, is one ever done mourning it?” (1993: 39). references alberti, l. (1991). on painting (cecil grayson, trans.). harmondsworth: penguin. bennington, g. 2007). foundations. textual practice (21:2), 231-49. brunette, p. and wills, d. (eds.) (1994). deconstruction and the visual arts: art, media, architecture. cambridge: cambridge university press. de man, p. (1979). allegories of reading: figural language in rousseau, nietzsche, rilke and proust. new haven and london: yale university press. derrida, j. (1986a). glas (j. p. leavey jr. and r. rand, trans.). lincoln: university of nebraska press. derrida, j. (1986b). mémoires for paul de man (c. lindsay, j. culler and e. cadava, trans.). new york: columbia university press. derrida, j. (1987). the truth in painting. (g. bennington and i. mcleod, trans.). chicago: university of chicago press. derrida, j. (1993). memoirs of the blind: the self-portrait and other ruins (pascale-anne brault and michael naas, trans.). chicago: university of chicago press. derrida, j. with m. ferraris (2001). a taste for the secret (g. donis trans., g. donis and d. webb eds.). cambridge: polity. derrida, j. (2005a). le dessin par quatre chemins. annali. fondazione europea del disegno (fondation adami) 1 (2005): 3-5. derrida, j. (2005b). on touching – jean-luc nancy (christine irizarry, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. derrida, j. (2007). final words, trans. g. walker. in w. j. t. mitchell and a. i. davidson (eds.), the late derrida (p. 244). chicago: university of chicago press. interstices 11 derrida, j. (2008). the animal that therefore i am. (d. wills, trans.). new york: fordham university press. didi-huberman, g. (2005). confronting images: questioning the ends of a certain history of art. (j. goodman, trans.). university park, pennsylvania: university of pennsylvania press. hillis miller, j. (2007). don’t count me in: derrida’s refraining. textual practice (21:2), 279-94. leavey, j.p. jr. (1986). glassary. lincoln and london: university of nebraska press. nancy j.-l. (2007). à plus d’un titre. jacques derrida. sur un portrait de valerio adami. paris: editions galilée. tiplady, j. (2003). colouring in beckett. the oxford literary review 25: 199-217. wills, d. (2001). derrida and aesthetics: lemming (reframing the abyss). in t. cohen (ed.), jacques derrida and the humanities: a critical reader (108-31). cambridge: cambridge university press. 125 non-refereed papers, projects, reviews & interviews interstices 6 the exhibition, in celebration of the centenary of the nzia, comprised fifty scale-model houses designed by architects and delicately crafted by students—all pure white in paper and card. they represented a selection of new zealand domestic architectural designs whose scope ranged from 1905 to 2005. the exhibition was supported by video projections of david mitchell’s “the elegant shed” and the hamish keith/bill saunders documentary “the city and the suburbs”. not surprisingly, since model making is daunting, the representative house selection is a thin one. presumably, the range of models will be augmented for future exhibition elsewhere. modeling of this precision is irresistible both to gaze and hand, captivatingly tantalizing, and more so here when protected from grasp. yet while each model on its abrupt white pedestal exalts and focuses, it is also deprived of any evidence of external elements important to the design’s genesis. the visual triggering available, and the perception that follows, are derived from a finite architectural object without context, rather than from any interaction with an environment. our own mental stock of notional environments may compensate a bit, but only roughly so. what these exquisitely detached models of detached houses preclude is our perceptual grasp of the often specific and crucial design influences and living experiences that lie beyond these mostly suburban dwelling exteriors in the wider spaces of site and landscape. nor can we convincingly comprehend interiors as indicators of designed ways-of-life, or as influences on exterior form. though one can revel in the often voluminous living spaces, one can hardly do so at all in the variety of plan arrangements, which remain unrevealed in the models. thus, one design seriously models for living: 1905 – 2005 a survey of 100 years of new zealand residential architecture. an exhibition presented at the auckland war memorial museum 8 april – 19 june 2005 review 1 by peter bartlett 12� misrepresented is mike austin’s chapple house—one struggles to recognize the house without its pohutukawa pivot and its black lava brink. more satisfying, however, is the exception: andrew patterson’s summer street courtyard house, where site-is-house-is-model. plans and site plans would have enabled this fuller comprehension in other cases, as too might have the alternative medium of digital and photographic modeling, with the added advantages of permitting a much increased range of house samples, as well as a means of readily reproducing them all. the similarities and differences of external form are most discernible across the range, being uncomplicated by pronounced material or colour cues. the stuttering evolution of suburban dwelling form and composition—its elaborations and reductions—is superbly highlighted for scrutiny. the suburb has clearly scored as the main testing ground for creativity, even though, as the models demonstrate , at the end of the century architectural intrigue and merit are irresistibly wedded to wealth. wealthdriven residential work that excels in keeping abreast or ahead of this testing tumult defies canonisers, mostly because of its inherent freedoms and non-conformity—at least until that work chooses to embrace the pangs of negative reinforcement which sustainability imperatives now confront it with. canon seeking amidst this turbulence is history’s privilege and, increasingly, one which must compound and mediate international as well as local acts and readings of architecture. while canons to the (new) right seem illusory, canons to the left of us might have a chance. low to middle income levels equate with conservative, slower-changing habits and more figures 1 and 2: the model display in the ‘concrete gallery’. photos tim adams. interstices 6 normalized tastes. moreover, a prospect arises of eventually looking back on residential minor canons, about to be created under the stimuli and constraints of two intensifying challenges: sustainability, and the intensification of suburban nodes and arteries, the latter tending to an anti-suburban typology. what this house show is about is the fixation of the creative edge and the resources of designers and their times. the ignition of engagement in any matrix of ideas, opportunities and constraints, by which an architect is motivated, is inevitably ephemeral. thus, on reflection, two impressions suggest themselves: first, the fate of award-winning buildings is to become familiarized, type-cast, and diluted by commodification. secondly, an inevitable benefit of this fate is to register, through their durability, memorials to their times. domestic architecture leaves rich, tell-tale traces of swings in design and life aspirations. for future cultural epidemiologists, celebrated house designs, together with their ‘trickle-down’ hybrids in the community, will afford good litmus tests of wider social trends. whilst the worlds of the café, the restaurant, retail and recreation have known well how to draw upon stage settings and practices for their theatricality, their humanity, and certainly their farce, most urban office and institutional environments have evolved into places of comparative abstraction. these places bear little resemblance either to the former, or to the creative vitality of home places. is this adequate, or not? will it persist, or is likely that prolonged familiarity with such workplace minimalism, with abstraction a relentless conditioning basis, presumes a confident shift towards greater abstraction in future dwelling environments? figures 3 and 4: thompson house (auckland). architect rewi thompson, 1985. photos vincent kar �� what goes up must come down: the combat of impulses in italian futurism and rationalism ross jenner the impulses: lightness and gravity the conflicting impulses of lightness and gravity are more often taken for granted than theorised. they are experienced as the will to ascend from the earth or to merge with it. in modernity, the propensity to launch buildings into the air is usually taken to refer to the will to rise above and remake the world in a new mould, to break with the weight of traditional materials and contexts. so, recent critiques of modernist lightness, such as adolf max vogt’s concept of the ‘suspension-syndrome’ (1989) and john rajchman’s of ‘immateriality’ (1994b; 1994c) have focused on the elements of ‘dematerialisation’ and ‘transparency’.1 building in the air manifests a will to reject earthly and bodily matter.2 the earth shows traces, gets worn, accumulates history. the air does not; it offers least resistance to being filled with new projects.3 but rajchman argues, referring to nietzsche and calvino, that the lightness of today’s architecture is more a question of how to displace boundary stones, how to lighten the earth itself. 1. see also fossati (1971) and lynn (1994). 2. see vogt (1989) and rajchman (1994a). 3. research into the question of the ‘spatial revolution’ brought about by aviation confirms such a view. see ingold (1978); wohl (1994); boatto (1992); and asendorf (1997). figure 1: persico, nizzoli and fontana, hall of the gold medals, 1934. interstices 6 could something of this other lightness, which is one of ‘thinking otherwise’, not be found already in the rationalism of edoardo persico in the 1930s and of franco albini from the 1930s to the ’50s? moreover, there would seem to be other forms of lightness, even within modernism, where the conflicting impulses come to a temporary halt. this lightness is not simply concerned with transcendence, nor the actualisation of force and will, but rather with the suspension of these very factors. it appears in some modernist work as a figure of potentiality. in the hands of persico and albini, displacement into the air also indicates an instability, risk and balance which entails suspension of judgement, of self in irony, and of necessity in grace, achieving an elusive and paradoxical lightness. weight/will as a field of conflict that buildings must resist the force of gravity seems a constant—but is it a coincidence that the expression of gravitational force came to be theorised with the advent of a voluntarist philosophy? in schopenhauer’s account, architecture brings to clearer perception some of the ideas that are the lowest grade of the will’s objectivity: the conflict between gravity and rigidity is the sole aesthetic material of architecture ... it solves this problem by depriving these indestructible forces of the shortest path to their satisfaction, and keeps them in suspense through a circuitous path; the conflict is thus prolonged, and the inexhaustible efforts of the two forces become visible in many different ways. (schopenhauer, 1958: 214) heinrich wölfflin’s grundthema der architektur (1994) started from a similar point but emphasized a living, upward striving side rather than the delay of gravitational forces. the effects of gravity are deduced from physical experience and always associated with a decrease in vital energy. it is the will that counter-acts this decrease and, through the “liberation from material gravity”, realises and releases potential (161). wölfflin proposed an empathy between building and body: matter is heavy; it presses down and wants to spread out formlessly on the ground. we know the force of gravity from our own body. what holds us upright and prevents a formless collapse? it is the opposing force that we may call will, life, or whatever. i call it force of form (formkraft). the opposition between matter and force of form, which sets the entire organic world in motion, is the principal theme of architecture. (159) in italy, this will was expressed in futurism through figures of flight and speed as the means of overcoming gravity and rising above the ruins of the past, from at least as early as its official foundation in 1909. together with the dissolution of matter into energy, aerial figures of thought became variations on the theme of transcendence. �� the double face of lightness filippo tommaso marinetti’s futurism is bent on simultaneously fleeing, rising above, and overcoming the earth. with a note of pathos echoing nietzsche’s zarathustra, the founding manifesto of futurism ends with the refrain: “lift up your heads! … erect on the summit of the world, once again we hurl our defiance to the stars! …” (1909/1968: 13). but marinetti’s eulogy of flight and speed, his frenetic activity, turns out to be a means of exorcising the anxieties of technology and warding off the abyss of nothingness. his combat with subjectivity and interiority is intimately bound up with the association of flight with escape from closure. flight exteriorises the will and unites desire with the exterior world of machines, the sky, and the universe. marinetti’s modernity harbours a rejection of matter or, at least, an intent to transform it into a new higher, more energetic form through the ‘metalisation’ of the flesh, electricity, the penetration of electromagnetic waves, and dissolution into particles. umberto boccioni shares with marinetti an enthusiasm for verticality, and a voluntarism that is most stridently expressed in the concluding words of his 1914 transcendentalismo fisico e stati d’animo plastici (1977: 145): have we perhaps begun to understand man’s aspiration to travel at 300 kilometres an hour? do we know why he is prepared to risk his life climbing to 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 metres—to infinity? there is only one necessity, only one will: to ascend. movement and light dissolve the materiality of bodies. matter becomes permeable without fixed surface and co-extensive with universal space. the distance between things is composed not of empty space but “continuities of matter of different intensity” (boccioni, 1971: 42). material is redeemed from its inertia by means of a spiritualising bath that gives precedence to the idea of transcendence before that of immanence. the process is double: matter is spiritualised, the spirit is incarnate in matter, the state of mind becomes plastic. since, for boccioni, objects are never completed, matter, work, action, becoming, and future are all associated. the manifesto envisages ever-increasing possibilities not only in depth—but, above all, in height. he pioneers fusion, simultaneity, and space as an all-embracing field of intensities, open, scattered, multiple, energised, aerated, and lightened. fragments are not arbitrarily dispersed, however, but aligned to vectors of possibilities.4 in enrico prampolini’s manifesto (1984: 88), futurist architecture will have “an atmospheric genesis” in the “atmospheric style”, creating “a unique abstract entity”, “abstract consequence of energies” amalgamating “air”, “light” (“natural energies”) and “force” (“artificial energy”). this is one side to the freedom that lightness can offer: lightness as freedom from the weight of earthly matter. there is another side, which is not always easily distinguished: lightness as freedom within, no longer set in opposition to matter. italo calvino (1988) conceived of a lightness that is flighty and inexplicable; it will not let itself be constrained to fall into any definite place.5 this inexplicable lightness is capable of dissolving the opacity of the world. unpredictable deviations and combinations of atoms and letters, graceful minutiae, infinite unexpected possibilities, the invisible, and even nothingness elude the crushing weight of matter. recomposed, 4. “all types of lines should be used at any point in whatever means. this autonomy of the component parts of the edifice will break up the uniformity and create an architectural impressionism, and from this new possibilities can flow.” (boccioni, 1997: 185) in the continuity and reciprocity of subject and world, object and object, environment and figure, there is a coming and going of energy, following henry van de velde’s energist principle of force-lines and albert einstein’s lightening equation, mass = energy. see also note 10. 5. calvino’s first lecture in lezioni americane has become a celebrated starting point for current discussions on lightness. regarding its reception, see, for example, gregotti (1988), rajchman (1994c), and frascari (2000). interstices 6 lightness is brought back to the mobility of mental processes. knowledge of the world then tends to break up its solidity through the play of subtle and imperceptible elements—or, at least, a high degree of abstraction. lightness is thus a way of looking at the world from a different perspective, obliquely. it is a reminder not to sink into heaviness and inertia; not to ignore, and hence suffocate, the slightest brush of thought or feeling. lightness engenders the flowering of a consciousness that evades the predictable and opens up to the possible. simultaneously, calvino highlights the paradoxes of lightness: definitions cancel lightness out of existence, yet it can be nourished by science and philosophy as a flight of thought. and it is cancelled out of existence by attempts to grasp it: it reverses into its opposite the moment it is seized. lightness is “the unattainable object of an endless quête”; if one says one has gained it, one has lost it (calvino, 1996: 7). he concludes with kafka’s enigmatic story “der kübelreiter”. in the midst of winter the narrator goes out for coal with a bucket which, along the way, he comes to ride. but it floats too high in the air to come down and get coal from the merchant. hovering, he begs for a shovelful but the merchant’s wife unties her apron and shoos him away as if he were a fly. the bucket knight and bucket fly off, blown about like a feather in the wind, to vanish beyond the ice mountains. the reason for the quest—and thus lightness—is a need and a lack, which their satisfaction would annul. a full bucket would cancel lightness. in attaining the object, “everything we chose and value in life for its lightness soon reveals its true unbearable weight” (7). kafka’s bucket is a reminder of another paradox: that emptiness “is just as concrete as solid bodies” (8); that the bucket’s void is infinitely greater than the thin rim that encloses it. the bucket flies because it is empty, like molecules that flit around because they are only motes in a void. fundamentally part of their opposites, lack, absence, and emptiness also signify potentiality. giorgio agamben adds to kafka’s story an urgently condensed sequel of a teacher of gravity who, having “brought proof after proof to bear”, to which nobody listened, “launched himself into the air and, hovering, continued to teach that law—now they believed him” without being surprised that he did not come back from the air.6 there is no better proof of gravity than flight. agamben finds another instance of the paradoxical nature of lightness in nietzsche’s zarathustra, where the problem of ascension and gravity is, however, symmetrically inverted. in the episode “of the vision and the riddle”, the prophet is mounted by the “spirit of gravity” (half dwarf, half mole), who whispers to him, “you stone of wisdom! you have thrown yourself high, but every stone that is thrown must—fall!” in the episode “of the spirit of gravity”, man is likened to a beast of burden: “only man is hard to bear! that is because he bears too many foreign things upon his shoulders” and “lets himself be well laden” (nietzsche, 1961: 211). agamben notes that zarathustra “accepts in substance the judgment of the dwarf (‘every stone that is thrown must—fall’), but astutely flips it into its opposite: the stone that falls back again eternally is the lightest thing of all” (agamben, 1986: 42). burdened with the greatest weight, zarathustra wants to turn it into the lightest wings, convert weight into the most elevated flight. supreme lightness is at one with “the greatest weight”: the eternal return of the same. 6. recounted by paul celan in agamben (1986: 41). 7. the ecstatic uplift and wildly exuberant flows, the futurist impulse to an exultant ascension, to upward projection, had come already in the futurism of fillia’s paintings and alberto sartoris’ drawings to an end, arrested in suspension. �� the bucket knight, on the other hand, deprived as he is of all weight, wants instead to come down to earth to find gravity but is carried off forever. in agamben’s reading, he seems to say that “true lightness … is not the eternal return, but never to return. so desolate, in appearance, is his lesson. we can believe him, precisely because he will never come back again to repeat it” (42). levity and desolation often belong together. freedom from weight brings with it a potential loss. the bucket knight’s wish for freedom from want and lack sets him adrift in the act of overcoming them—into a realm of improbability, uncertainty and fantasy. here, to be in the air is to have lost, or not yet attained, the status of actuality. this might also be said about persico and albini’s rationalism. excluded from monumental works by the machinations of a powerful minority of traditionalists, they found their outlet only in the all-too-light world of small projects, exhibition design and displays. in the architecture of the 1920s, the figures of movement and aerial pressures pioneered by futurism had been arrested. ascension and flight changed into the motif of hovering. the free-flowing air of impressionism and futurism now flipped into the opposite pole of the paradox: a space of emptiness, alienation, detachment.7 perhaps a distinction is viable between a lightness of ascension, an initial rebellious flight away from earth, and a lightness of suspension, a levelling off in both later futurism and in rationalism. suspension: between lightness and gravity given italian rationalist architecture’s orientation towards transcendence, there would appear to be little hope of finding in it forms of a lightness that are understood as freedom within earthly matter. but they are indeed to be found the works of persico and albini with their different concepts of lightness, of ‘thinking otherwise’. the withholding of impulses in potentiality in 1934-5, persico designed two parker shops in milan.8 shortly afterwards, raffaello giolli commented: “… everything is reduced to purpose. but in undressing architecture thus to the point of making it only a vibration of lines, persico went beyond that point” (1937: 30). beyond the reduction to purpose, beyond divesting, the issue is not simply an emptying out. nor is it just hygiene, the application of a coat of white paint as a whitening out of psycho-sexual desires, existenz minimum, essentialism. nor is it ‘less is more’, whose silence negatively states the limits of the art of building. what is presented in the ‘vibration of lines’ against the blank walls of these shops is an image of pure potentiality. the image of the tabula rasa in relation to modernism has more recently come to be understood as a form of erasure and repression, rather than of receptivity, with the potentiality of blankness itself erased.9 but the metaphor of the tabula rasa, the writing tablet on which nothing exists, had previously expressed the existence of a genuine potentiality. agamben notes “all potential to be or do something is … always also potential not to be or not to do”; otherwise potentiality would always already have passed figure 2: persico and nizzoli, parker shop in largo santa margherita, milan 1934. 8. the first was demolished in 1964, the second bombed in 1943. 9. the image derives ultimately from that of the nous, thought or mind, in aristotle’s de anima (430 a 1) where the mind “has no other nature other than being potential, and before thinking it is absolutely nothing”. thus, he writes, “the nous is like a writing tablet on which nothing is actually written”. interstices 6 into actuality and would be indistinguishable from it (1999: 215). the blank tablet is an image of the pure potentiality of thought itself. the mind is not an intelligible object; it has no other nature than that of being potential. before thinking it is nothing. but, comments agamben, it “allows for the act of thinking to happen, just as the film of impressionable wax is suddenly grazed by the scribe’s stylus” (245). because potential to be or to do is also potential not to be or do, “thought exists as a potential to think and not to think as a wax writing tablet on which nothing is written …” (245). in this sense, blankness in persico’s shops is the space where quivering lines trace thought and unexhausted potentiality.10 the works keep open the possibility of non-actualisation, of not fully being. the notion that a drawing or model of something unrealised is itself a form of potential architecture is not unfamiliar. here, the contrasts between black and white, vertical and horizontal, so fundamental to suprematism and neo-plasticism,11 take on a graphic note that giulia veronesi’s caption to the first parker shop did not fail to detect: a weave of infinite lines traced by thin straight poles in square section, black and white extended the exquisitely graphic structure of the elevation into the dynamic of the third dimension, creating volumes of transparency alone, perspectives lyrically excited by varying the viewpoint and by the very nature of the materials, but rigorously ‘held’ … (veronesi in persico, 1964: s.p.) in both shops, in fact, it is as if the space had supremely attained the third dimension but, at the same time, had preserved something of the two dimensions of graphics. it is not just because it is difficult physically to locate a thin line before the eyes in space, nor because the fittings are for the most part in a-tectonic suspension, nor even because they refer to the weightless co-ordinates of suprematism and neo-plasticism. the lightness hints at something unactualised, the pure capacity of architecture to become a matter only of a vibration of lines against blankness.12 the perceptual play between black and white, their rhythmic interplay suggesting co-possibilities, is paralleled by that between the optically vibrating lines and their background. veronesi wrote, “nothing other than moments of pure rhythm was intended in the infinite of a metaphysical atmosphere created by diffuse white light” (in persico, 1964: s.p.). the mountings and cases compose an architecture of ‘construction lines’, the scaffolding of an image—austerely intellectual like early renaissance wire-frame perspectives, but without the intention to define a threedimensional object. the presentation of “only a vibration of lines”, the “volumes of transparency alone” (giolli, 1937: 30); the wavering of asymmetric balance; the flickering between three dimensions and layers on paper; the refusal to come to ground (as the elements graphically hover in “moments of pure rhythm” between black and white, between line and blank ground; veronesi in persico, 1964: s.p.) … all intimate a suspension that conserves and exercises in the realised work a potential not actualised. between the presentation of nothing, in blankness, and the presentation of something, in lines, lies the event of materialisation—manifest as typos, as trace. persico maintains a reserve in the finished work that, keeping actuality in suspension, reveals the traces of a process of thought.13 10. for a resonance with boccioni, cf. note 4. the potential of the blank surface plane had, of course, already become apparent in suprematism and the anti-perspectival space of parallel projection, when, in el lissitzky’s words, suprematism “shifted the vertex of the optical pyramid to infinity” (1925: 107). before him, malevich had written in 1919: “i have ripped through the blue lampshade of colour. i have come out into the white. follow me, comrade aviators, sail on into the depths—i have established the semaphores of suprematism.” (1969: 122) malevich’s white abyss/ plenitude plays with the perceptual possibilities of black and white, negating them, to create an optically ambivalent space where their rhythmic interplay suggests an infinite world of copossibilities. 11. both suprematism and neoplasticism were derived from the right angle and emphasised directionless space. the vertical axis determining the familiar horizontal view “from which man looked about the earth” was changed when the aeroplane, opening a new sphere of spatial experience, as benjamin stated, “broke the monopoly of the vertical” (benjamin, 1972: 538). see also asendorf (1997). 12. in this era, a line or mark, or word on paper, came to be conceived no longer as contained on a surface but related to a ground of indefinite depth. so, in the parker shops, nothing quite touches the walls; and yet, seemingly indefinite, the thin steel sections pass through the walls, ceiling, and floor, running off the edge of the paper. �� in the parker shops, design begins with and returns to the graphic, to the black of ink and the white of paper—the possibilities in graphic space. they exhibit the space of communication as an experience of possibility. the black does not touch the white but is held back from it as if in an act of creation according to the model of thought thinking itself. “in the arab tradition”, agamben notes, “agent intellect has the form of an angel whose name is ‘pen’ (qualam), and its place is unfathomable potentiality” (agamben, 2003: 36-7).14 tectonic suspension is joined here by a sceptical suspension. they mark the point at which architecture retreats from rhetoric to a silence of pure potentiality, capable of expression precisely by virtue of saying nothing. what matters is not so much speaking or functioning but a return to the grounds on which anything may be communicated: that there exists a medium in which communication takes place, and that what is communicated in this medium is not one thing or another but, first of all, communicability. suspension is a breath-taking path to virtual non-existence, indetermination, potentiality. the achievements of the first parker shop were developed further in june 1934 in the sala delle medaglie d’oro, widely regarded as the foremost exhibit at the milan exhibition of aviation and celebrated as persico’s finest architectural work. the hall commemorated the exploits of italian aviators in the first world war who received the prestigious gold medal. concealed light was diffused over the white walls by a luminous strip running right around them and evoking sky in the glowing shadowless space between two planes of darkness. the void of the sky and the void of the ground become the same. an explosion of documents remains suspended between them and at the threshold between oblivion and consciousness. photographic panels, artefacts, and texts are mounted on a series of slender white scaffolds. above head-height, a single continuous frame runs lengthwise through the hall, like a fuselage in translucent scrim. carrying the floating relics of heroic aviators, they evoke loss, flight, and the suspension of time. the frames offer an idealized realisation of the grid as pure abstraction that, nevertheless, elides with a recurring figurative element: the box frame structure of the first bi-planes. as in futurism, there is no return to earth. however, flight is here not represented as willed ascent and mastery but as suspension, loss of ground, force spent, diffused and vanished. similarly, in persico’s last project of 1936, the salone d’onore at the milan triennale, narrow white walls played a rapid and urgent beat, suggesting ascents and “improbable climbs” (giolli, 1936: 19). and again, the image of feathers and wings appears in giolli’s description: the thin pilasters of the exhibition are “like a fluttering of wings” and seem to “detach themselves from the wall to vibrate alone”—the effect is dizziness. a precisely determined installation, it nevertheless had the capacity of producing the perception of something indeterminate, something out of grasp. potentiality is, after all, “not simply non-being, simple privation, but rather the existence of non-being, the presence of an absence” (agamben, 1999: 179). irony: suspension of self in both persico and albini’s work the doubt and instability a displacement into the air can produce found an expression in irony. albini, in particular, explored notions of risk and balance. purely tectonic suspension 13. the very idea of space, as something that can never be fully realised, is a form of potentiality. only because architecture is capable of building nothing, that is, the non-material which is space, can it build anything; otherwise, it remains only an art of the imposing mass, shelter, functioning mechanism, or advertisement. what is frequently termed modernist ‘dematerialisation’ must, rather, be understood as materialisation. beyond reduction to purpose lies a potentiality not exhausted in the passage to actuality. 14. in the second parker shop, the figure of an angel even materialises. after the exorcism of all figuration, the messenger appears, solidly actualised in this graphic space as a prop or support to its suspended abstraction. the pinioned aggelos bearing pens is a redundant and ironic doubling: the medium of communication bearing the medium of communication. and the angelic announcement/creation is, anyway, already there as the space itself, in black and white. the low little angel signifies a fall; it brings us down to earth. interstices 6 is in his work often accompanied by hints of the acrobatic: for example, the sailing ship bookcase (1938-40); the project for the bombini-parodi-delfino stand at the milan trade fair (1947), structured as a highly improbable series of scales balanced from scales; or the extraordinary stand for the sculptural group of marguerita of brabant in the palazzo bianco (1945-51). all allude to the element of grace as the acceptance, but deflection, of the weight of necessity and the element of irony. despite the fact that gravity, as jankélévitch observes, “in the double meaning of serious and geotropism, is … our natural tendency” (1964: 31), consciousness can detach itself from life and things. as epochē, this does not simply lead to indifference but to an experience of possibility (20). “irony”, jankélévitch notes, “is the disaggregation of every ‘res’ or dereification” (183). in posing questions, thought chops up the apparent solidity of what is taken for granted, making fissures. thus, it is able to suspend the self, “able to look left and right and strip off at last the heavy mantle of necessity” (22). in his room for a man, the task was to give form to rationality, specifically to exhibit the rationality of standardisation. albini represented this by the abstraction of a three dimensional grid. but housing even the barest essentials unavoidably leads to a situation where material things, such as coats, undercut the abstraction as a reminder of man’s bodily relationship to the world. similarly, the universal aspirations of the grid are undercut by the singular fantasy of the bed (reached, acrobatically, via ladder and the top of the bookcase). the ironic note in albini’s work does not come as a sudden addition, but is present from his earliest projects—an ashtray that intimates a propeller fan and a floating hammock for an aviator. the lead and zinc pavilion for montecatini, at the exhibition autarchy of the italian mineral (rome 1938), was planned as a display of the phases of national production: from the excavation of the raw minerals from the bowels of the earth, through their extraction and processing, to their use as products. the exhibition’s itinerary proceeded from an ‘underground’ area, representing a mine with mineral deposits, up a ramp that continued on as a raised gallery in a double-height space from which the heavy machinery exhibited below could be viewed. the narrative was thus developed from subterranean confinement, through various transformations, to an aerial release in the form of sheets of metal hoisted like sails. throughout the exhibition, thread-like uprights and horizontals contrasted with sachlich elements such as the raw materials, rocks, ores, alloys, and the machinery used to wrest them from the earth in mining and metallurgy. a roughfigure 3: albini, lead and zinc pavilion for montecatini, rome 1938. 81 hewn slab overhung the entrance to threaten the arriving visitors, who were also greeted by realist sculptures of heroic workers suspended in the air. the sail-like sheets exhibited as the end product of the process were skewered on the uprights like the accompanying photographic placards of machinery, which tilted menacingly overhead, confronting the visitor descending the stair to exit. this not only added a touch that perhaps reflected the boring and drilling required in excavation, but also albini’s views on the politics of autarchy as excavation of the home ground. irony here is the expression of a split between one part of the designer that exists in a state or situation of inauthenticity, and another part that exists only in the form of questioning, and that asserts the knowledge of this inauthenticity. twenty-three years later, at the height of italy’s economic miracle, the exhibition organisation, productivity, market at the international exposition of labour (part of italia ’61) provided another opportunity for a comment on the state of technology. panels illustrating the evolution of machines and industrial production circulated on industrial conveyor systems, rising and descending like materials of assembly in a factory (“italia ’61: la ricerca scientifica, l’organizazzione industriale, la produttività, il mercato,” 1961: 241). necessity, embodied in functionalist theory or the assembly line, may appear to offer little chance for humour, but “the comic is an effect of contingency: monkeys make us laugh because they could be men”. therefore, “what is funny, according to bergson, is not the mechanism, as such, nor the vital as such, but the automatic, that is to say, the machine that breathes, or the man who looks like a machine” (jankélévitch, 1964:155). so, when images circulate like mechanised sandwich-board men bearing allusions to the cycle of serial production and its inevitable discarded leftovers, reality becomes too light.15 when knowledge of inauthenticity combines with an inability to overcome it, irony gains momentum. when the assembly line doubles as a tool for exhibiting and an object-symbol of the industrial cycle exhibited, reality becomes a disposable image of itself. in a reflective figure 4: albini and helg, international work exhibition, italia ’61. 15. tentori notes that the panels, “far from being only neutral supports of the didactic history—metamorphose, in my imagination, into a slow indian file of sandwich men, as in photos of a marching protest in an american strike of the ’30s” (1965: ). interstices 6 disjuncture, the meaning of mechanical reproduction is made evident, and the viewers watch it circulating like skiers on a chairlift from below in the comfort of armchairs. representation thus affords the disaggregation necessary to strip off the heavy mantle of necessity and the possibility to think and laugh. gravity is at the core of this play of forces, and the fact that objects are, of necessity, physically hung or propped to counter their weight creates in his works at times an incongruency albini seems to have deliberately set in scene. what goes up, must come down … but, must it? there is a long, drawn-out moment of hesitation in his suspension.16 the difference between nietzsche’s eternally falling stone and the bucket knight is that one achieves freedom by accepting necessity, whereas the other drifts away never to return. while albini’s designs have the lightness of the one-off and the exhibition, the ephemerality of the bucket knight, they also have an acceptance of the necessities of programme and tectonics (nietzsche’s stone). grace, the show of good will, will later lead albini to moments of serenity and a curious weightlessness when, without force or anxiety, he accepts the pull of multiple gravities operating in the treasury of san lorenzo, both of the suspended objects and that of the building floating in the ground. the heavy necessities imposed by instrumental rationality seem, paradoxically, to have brought about a lightness in the work of persico and albini that unpredictably surpassed necessity in meeting and fulfilling it. modes of design thinking arose that did not leap instantly to a vertical 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(1961). thus spoke zarathustra (r.j. hollingdale, trans.). harmondsworth: penguin. persico, e. (1964). edoardo persico tutte le opere. milan: edizioni di communità. prampolini, e. (1984). l’atmosferastruttura. in e. crispolti (ed.), architettura futurista (pp. 88). modena: fonte d’abisso. rajchman, j. (1994a). constructions. cambridge, mass.: mit press. rajchman, j. (1994b). the earth is called light. architecture new york, 1, n.5 (march/april), 12-13. rajchman, j. (1994c). lightness: a concept in architecture. architecture new york, 1, n.5 (march/april), 5-7. schopenhauer, a. (1958). the world as will and representation (vols. 1 & 2). new york: dover. tentori, f. (1965). opere ricenti dello studio albini-helg. zodiac (14), 94-127. vogt, a.m. (1989). das schwebe-syndrom in der architektur der zwanziger jahre. in das architektonische urteil. annäherungen und interpretationen von architektur und kunst (201-233). basel: birkhäuser. wohl, r. (1994). a passion for wings: aviation and the western imagination 1908-1918. london and new haven: yale university press. wölfflin, h. (1994). prolegomena to a psychology of architecture. in h.f. mulgrave (ed.), empathy, form, and space: problems in german aesthetics 1873-1893 (149-190). santa moni ca, ca: the getty centre for the history of art and humanities. interstices 11 the invention of new zealand art & national identity 1930-1970 by francis pound review by pip cheshire poet allen curnow’s comment in the first yearbook of the arts in new zealand lays out the general argument for the necessity of invention: “… strictly speaking new zealand doesn’t exist yet, though some possible new zealands glimmer in some poems and in some canvases. it remains to be created – should i say invented – by writers, musicians, artists, architects, publishers.” curnow writes in 1945, the second world war has ended, the country has roads, railways and hydro schemes; the land is cleared, irrigated and farmed. his comment is, like cook’s comments some 180 years earlier, a conceit, an hyperbole; where cook saw a land without habitation curnow sees a land physically occupied, yet here in body only – tied still to the culture of england. in his preface pound couples curnow’s text with a mccahon landfall essay of 1966 entitled “beginnings”, in which mccahon refers to “... something… belonging to the land and not yet to the people. not yet understood or communicated or even really yet invented.” the two texts point to a way of understanding creative endeavour, primarily that of painting and writing, that became so pervasive as to be a canon, a nationalist canon – an unquestioned tenet by which all creative work was measured. the extent to which the necessity of inventing a nation dominated the critical frameworks of writers, reviewers and curators is measured yet in the unbalanced collections of the nation’s museums, the hearts and minds of some more public commentators and the marginalising of some of our more interesting artists. pound examines a number of themes central to the establishment of a nationalist sensitivity: the necessity for particularising and naming (rita angus’s cass, robin white’s mana railway station), the ubiquitous strong clear light (don binney’s bird, brent wong’s clouds), the engendered land – the nurturing earth mother ravished by the invariably male artist, and so on. for each such tenet there is a carefully articulated and illustrated argument, and an ever so gentle demolition of that argument as each is subject to his erudite examination. so gentle are his refutations of the arguments that it is, as pound himself says in the preface, as if he has become enamoured of the canon, wistfully nostalgic for the certainty and singularity of vision implicit in such a dominant idea. there is too an heroic task at hand – the making of a country. is one therefore unmaking the country to some degree by questioning its clarion call and yardstick? pound’s use of mccahon’s the listener (head), as the first plate of the 190 that are grouped throughout the book, becomes a reference, an introduction to those pound, f. (2009). the invention of new zealand: art & national identity 19301970. auckland: auckland university press. 147 aspects of the country that need inventing: the cleared and empty land, and the rear view of the listener’s observing head gazing out. by the end of the thesis the land may not be so empty: theo schoon has recorded cave dwellings, connections to a wider world have been discovered and the necessity of a new zealand way of painting looks increasingly like a convenient shibboleth of the handful of curators, writers and publishers who held sway over what was seen in the country’s museums and its few galleries in the early part of last century. in a small society the power of a prevailing canon of thought is significant: too few critics have too few opportunities for publication and thus those that are published have undue influence. where those commentaries are within the mass media those few key figures have the power to skew the public’s understanding of art to fit that canon. throughout this extraordinarily written and crafted work pound runs parallel arguments; a coherent argument in favour of a nationalist reading is made, then work is discussed that either doesn’t fit, and was thus ignored by the canon, or is of such profundity as to make the nationalist reading somewhat trivial. mccahon’s work for example is dominant throughout, yet, in pound’s words “its shifting meanings” invariably suggest themes larger than those dealt with by the tropes of nationalism. his a piece of muriwai canvas can certainly be employed to illustrate the searing white light between dark sea and the underside of the long white cloud, yet that is to barely engage in the more complex ideas and emotions provoked by the work. a piece of muriwai canvas illustrates too the uncertainties and failures of the nationalist canon to engage in abstract, non-figurative work. milan mrkusich’s abstract work of the 1940s sits like an elephant in the nationalist room, his work, as pound notes, never having been figurative. it is consigned, by analogy with the influx of european modern artists and architects to pre-war america, to a kind of immigrant holding station. where we see john weeks’ undated cézanneinfluenced abstraction of the land (landscape sketch, abstract, green and orange) and gordon walters’ transition to non-figurative work (painting no. 2, 1952), mrkusich’s 1946 constellation with red is shocking in this context for both its clear engagement in an international discourse unconcerned with the occupation of a new land and for the self-referential nature of the work itself. just as the nationalist trope fends off the outer world, and in particular the distractions of modernism, in favour of inventing the new land so the prior existence of a vibrant visual culture before the colonial mapping of new-found exotica is something of an embarrassment. pound tracks theo schoon and gordon walters’ discoveries of south canterbury cave drawings and the incorporation of maori pattern and motif within their work. this synthesis is placed within the context of paintings depicting dejected ‘natives’ and presented as evidence of a declining maori population and the loss of pre-colonial innocence. these are crude abbreviations of a superb book which raises academic writing in this country to an extraordinary new standard. though its focus is on a relatively short but critical period of new zealand art, its text is an endlessly effervescent provocation that has one wishing for a wider education and more time to read the very many referenced texts. the book is thoughtfully organised, with usefully explanatory footnotes immediately at hand at the page’s bottom, an extensive bibliography and index, and well-selected and referenced full colour plates. interstices 11 if there is critique then pound shows himself all too aware of it; in his preface he refers to the length of time taken for the book to come to print. this has clearly given time for polishing the manuscript but perhaps some of the arguments may have benefitted from an updating. though the period of study is well past and our art now reflects the currents, complexities and contradictions of the wider world, the shadow of a singular paternalistic and constraining reading of art lingers in the country’s asymmetric public art collections. we might also point to a collective inability to engage in coherent discussion about abstraction of any kind as a legacy of nationalism’s bias to the figurative, witness the public gnashing of teeth over the artist et al’s venice biennale work of 2004, or almost any other publicly funded abstract art for that matter. architecture is similarly tongue-tied in discussion of the abstract and retains a strong emphasis on the relationship with the land, though invariably the focus is on the search for a rapprochement with nature rather than a transformational occupation. this has conferred a moral certitude on the farm shed which is consistently referenced by architects today, though their projects invariably owe more to those of immigrant europeans in post-war america than the hayricks of the waikato or southland. pound’s thesis ends with the outside world no longer able to be held at bay by the constructs of a nationalist ideology; by the early 1970s the vuletic gallery in auckland is showing new zealand art, made here, engaged in current contemporary discourse current in the rest of the world and without a figurative stroke in sight! the large public response to the recent rita angus show in wellington and auckland city galleries is testimony to the current popularity of a nostalgic look back to an austere and circumscribed time of our history. the invention of new zealand art & national identity 1930-1970 is a superb work that offers rich insights into the time when artists, writers and those of our own trade were exhorted to create an intellectual infrastructure to complement the labours of the black-singleted and pinnied colonial forebears. references curnow, a. (1945). dialogue by way of an introduction. first yearbook of the arts in new zealand, no.1, 1-8. mccahon, c. (1966). beginnings. landfall. vol 20, no. 4, 360-64. in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 80 p r e s e n c e felipe lanuza rilling absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice absence through layering absence emerges between the physical world and the perception of the subject who experiences it. what makes absence eventually present is the imagination of the subject, activated by a trace, a fragment, a void, or any other element or situation acting to suggest something absent. therefore, absence depends on presence, yet one that points at something that is away, physically or temporally.1 absence is, therefore, a matter of distance. i draw on the concept of atmosphere to situate the realm in which a sense of absence can be recognised. atmospheres have been addressed as an aesthetic category that considers the sense of ambience of a place or situation, as immediately felt by the perceiver. philosopher gernot böhme’s theories on atmospheres offer a comprehensive understanding of sites and situations, as perceived both intellectually and emotionally by groups and individuals. böhme briefly defines atmosphere as tuned space or space with a mood (2016: 2). to perceive something that triggers the awareness of an absence tinges that mood. what is at hand to the senses, present in the here and now of experience, can also carry a sense or a feeling of what is away. according to philosopher tonino griffero, sensing the atmosphere is “grasping a feeling in the surrounding space, … being gripped by a something-more, … an excess with respect to the place” (2014: 5), suggesting atmospheres as entities that can bear absence as well as being loaded by what is at hand to the senses.2 in the experience of cities, absence comes forward through spaces left aside from or overlooked by their active and regular life. these are evocative places, which, by virtue of a lack of current determinacy, can stimulate spontaneous and alternative uses, a free sense of memory as well as prospective and retrospective imagination. in sites of this nature, absence embodies fullness and is a source of richness and potential. ignasi de solá-morales used the term terrain vague to define what he considered to be the “form of absence in contemporary cities” (1996: 21). mainly referring to large-scale areas, the attributes that de solá-morales identified in such unproductive spaces, are: openness, alternativeness, strangeness, uncertainty, ambiguity, as well as an evocative sense of expectation, and critically, an escape 81 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 from the overwhelming contemporary city (1995: 119-20). as set aside from the mainstream, formal urban spaces, they offer different possibilities of interpretation and occupancy, by both humans and nature (kamvasinou, 2006: 255). absence can be an immersive experience when experienced in terrain vagues, characterised by silence (unless an informal event is taking place). there is a sense of multiplicity and simultaneity in the subtle gamut of noises coming from active urban spaces that remain away. for the perceiver standing in the middle of an abandoned space, the distant noise s/he hears chime with the imagined echoes of what is no longer or what is yet to be. silence, beyond taking part in the experience of absence in urban leftovers, can also become a metaphor for the fullness it evokes. in dialogue with the ideas briefly discussed, i have developed a method of visual representation to explore and recreate absence. i call it layering, and it was born as a response to absence as experienced in such places. while these do not straightforwardly follow or apply böhme’s theory, these interpretations evoke a sense of atmosphere through blurry and dense images that result from the overlay of a series of photographs of a specific place or situation. they express an ambiance loaded with absences in accordance with what can be experienced on site. these images are composed of many translucent layers, corresponding to several photographs of a site or situation, superimposed on each other with reduced degrees of opacity allowing them to become simultaneously present. de solá-morales suggests that urban photography in the 1960s and 1970s first indicated the cultural significance of contemporary terrains vagues (1995: 119). beyond the portrayal of abandoned portions of urban land, absence is inherent in the medium of photography as representation and distancing from reality, as stated by philosopher jean baudrillard (1999). by discussing the etymological meaning of photography as the “writing of light,” baudrillard underlines the immaterial presence of reality when portrayed by photography. i further this etymological interpretation by regarding photography as “drawing of light”. in fig. 1 author (2014/2018). left over spaces and surfaces in cannaregio ovest, venice, 9-20 november [layered photographic composition] 82 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 this i follow svetlana alpers’ analysis of the greek root graphos, which refers to writing, drawing and recording as forms of description (1983: 136). therefore, i propose the layering of photographs as “palimpsests of light” that reimagine the experience of absence as an approximate impression of things that appear to be away, vanishing, haunting, and have to be recreated by the observer.3 the layered images are made of the simultaneous and intensified projection of captured light. as absence relies on the awareness and imagination of the perceiver, they bring forward a retrospective and prospective re-imagination of the site from a spatial and/or temporal distance. the images hold transformative potential bearing absence in their mode of production, revealing (or reinventing) the qualities de solá-morales recognises in terrains vagues, in spaces that may hold absence even in different ways. silence and ma in its basic apprehension as the absence of a predominant sound, silence allows for less perceivable sounds to become available to experience, enhancing the sense of hearing. silence provides a context for the emergence of a rumour composed by a myriad of overlapping, distant or subtle sounds,4 constituting a meaningful parallel for absence and layering. in musical terms, silence can work both as a space or gap between two sounds, or as an active opening for other sounds to become part of the composition. a radical example of the latter is composer john cage’s piece 4’33’’ (1952), in which not a single sound is set to be played.5 a silence lasting four minutes and thirty-three seconds allows the perceiver to focus and reflect on sounds otherwise obscured by the presence of music. when played in a room of almost any nature, a variety of sounds coming from inside and outside converge in a dense rumour perceived due to a heightened awareness triggered by silence, which works as an opening. among many, cage influenced takemitsu, making him discover the values of traditional japanese music (burt, 2001: 92), mainly through his sensibility towards japanese zen buddhism, in which a fundamental aspect is the simultaneous presence and absence of all things (cage and charles, 1981: 46). according to mikiko sakamoto, “it was from this pairing of two contradictory ideas that cage established his own unique concept of music and shaped the way he thought about sound and silence. his interests in japanese culture (…) largely contributed to the fundamental philosophy of takemitsu” (2010: 3). takemitsu, in turn, bridged traditional japanese and contemporary western music. his silences are embedded in his compositions producing a sonic landscape with no clear distinction between silence and sound.6 he privileges a sense of atmosphere formed by sonic phenomena instead of a structural narrative. according to peter burt, the absence of recognisable musical forms within his pieces has the effect of “removing the obstacles placed between events and their perception by the act of organising the former into some distracting conceptual ‘system’” (2001: 252). in doing this, he privileges a more direct and intuitive apprehension of sound phenomena, an experience less framed by rational categorisations. takemitsu’s compositions become like impressions of sound formed by a series of sometimes alternating and sometimes overlapping notes that hold a certain degree of autonomy.7 as takemitsu states: 83 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 […] each note is refined and emphasised in isolation, the significance of the scale to which it belongs becomes of less importance, and thus the sound approximates to a condition that resembles silence, since it is no longer distinguishable from natural noises, which, though full of concrete tones, as a whole represent ‘silence’. (cited in miyamoto, 1996: 132) takemitsu’s musical interpretation of silence is an opening to multi-layered sonorities existing either within or outside the composed sound piece (burt, 2001: 237-8). in drawing on a myriad of unnoticed or hidden sounds, his use of silence echoes the ability of absence to evoke multiple and distant presences. takemitsu’s silence is loaded by what the japanese identify as ma: an opening or interval. for arata isozaki, ma articulates space and time in a unified understanding of a condition in-between or void, yet encompassing a sense of fullness. he writes, ma signifies both the distance between two points—the in between space— and the silence between two sounds—internal time. both imply blankness. the ability and technique to sense ma, the blank or gap, can be the means to aesthetic and artistic expression. (2009: 162) the notion of ma was largely introduced to western architectural audiences by isozaki in the exhibition ma: space-time in japan (1978), which influenced broader accounts of the concept, as in the case of music. interpreted also as interstice or margin (isozaki, 2011: 95), or as the japanese sense of place or place making (nitschke, 1966: 117), western appropriations of the concept in the field of architecture, enriched but also complicated its definition (nakagawa, 2010: 44). kevin nute asserts that the original meaning of ma in japanese culture does not fundamentally differ from the western idea of interval, indistinctively used to refer to a spatial or temporal gap as an “uneventful void”. he suggests that more elaborate and even metaphysical architectural interpretations of ma follow specific agendas to stage japanese culture and architecture in western audiences (2019: 54-55, 61). being an elusive concept, and posing difficulties for its translation, ma has profound connotations but is also very much embedded in japanese quotidian culture, in which the ambiguity of the term is embraced in everyday life (aragüez, 2016: 89-90). lesley di mare acknowledges the crucial importance of ma in all aspects of japanese life, and points out that ma is a concept that reflects japanese understanding of time and space as a single entity, in opposition to the western separate and teleological understanding. “for the japanese, space, time, and silence are a constellation of elements that form the elusive yet penetrating concept of ma” (1990: 319). richard pilgrim emphasises ma as an interval that not only refers to measurement but can also carry meanings such as “opening, space between, time between, and so forth. a room is called ‘ma,’ for example, as it refers to the space between the walls; a rest in music is also ‘ma’ as the pause between the notes or sounds” (1986: 155). however, the meaning of ma in japanese culture entails more complexity than being simply a spatial and/or temporal gap. ma can also interact with sound producing an ambiguity between silence and sound, as in the case of takemitsu’s notes in his piano works, which shade into silence without a 84 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 clear point of termination.8 timothy koozin describes such pieces as follows, [o]ne is more likely to hear the silence arising toward the end of such figure as a direct outgrowth of the previous sound-event. in this sense, the soundevent draws silence into the piece as an active rather than passive element. it is possible to think of takemitsu’s long, decaying tones as hashi (bridges) projecting from the world of sound into that of silence. the moment of waiting for sound to become silence is imbued with the quality of ‘ma’. (1990: 36) rather than an element in the composition, koozin observes ma has a metaphysical connotation, “it is an expressive force which fills the void between objects separated in time and space” (1990: 36). takemitsu regarded ma a philosophical term, and “when questioned as to its deeper significance, takemitsu’s own response seemed to withdraw into a kind of inscrutable silence which was an example of ‘ma’ in itself ” (burt, 2001: 237). for takemitsu, in traditional japanese music, ma corresponds to an intense silence that balances sound, for which it holds “a metaphysical continuity that defies analysis” (1995: 51).9 takemitsu argues that ma, the unsounded part of the experience of music, “is that which gives life to the sound and removes it from its position of primacy” (1995: 51). the kind of silence takemitsu expresses in his work is by no means abstract and isolated. it incorporates other, autonomous sources of sound, as the own notes of the composition are thought to interact with silence and a realm no longer external to the played music, but brought forward and contextualised as part of the piece. it becomes evident, as the music itself seems to accompany the acts of a play or a movie that is not being watched, reinforcing its dream-like atmosphere, opposed to self-evident rhythmical structure or syntax between sounds.10 it is a musical texture formed by a multiplicity of sound phenomena, which “seems to project a space of timeless possibility around itself at every moment” (hutchinson, 2014: 428). miyamoto underlines the role of silence in gathering sound phenomena within and beyond takemitsu’s pieces when he writes, it is “in no wise something void, but rather is filled with the numberless tones or noises of space (1996: 32). following miyamoto, burt states, “it is the function of the ‘notes played’ to contrast with and render perceptible this underlying continuum” (2001: 237). for miyamoto, this means to “enliven the countless sounds of silence through music” (1996: 32). in takemitsu’s own words: “ma o ikasu” (“enliven the ma”) (1996: 32). from a different yet complementary perspective, koozin highlights takemitsu’s sounds as framing such openings and giving meaning to an otherwise incomprehensible continuum. in his music, “sounds give meaning to silence; finite temporal markers suggest an awareness of eternal time” (1990: 41).11 for koozin then, it becomes evident that silence, in the musical composition, works as a medium to grasp ma when the piece is experienced. here, i do not argue absence to be what the japanese call ma. a fundamental difference is ma being understood here as an entity in its own right, although existing in-between other entities, while absence being always linked to what is away or not in place, thus it is defined in opposition to or as the negative of presence. nevertheless, the distance or gap implied in that being away in a temporal and in a spatial sense, and the way it constitutes an opening, reflects a potential quality 85 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 of ma: an opening which, as silence in takemitsu’s work, gathers the evocation of a multiplicity of subtle, even distant presences. absence, in the experience of the built environment, comes through traces, voids or fragments similarly to the way in which the texture of decaying and fading tones in takemitsu’s pieces draw silence into them, and, with it, other sounds that can be or become part of the sound piece.12 they evoke silence in themselves, as miyamoto notes, inasmuch as they produce an interaction with it.13 ma thus becomes an active agent of ambiguity that blurs the limits between sound and silence, and removes the primacy of the author’s intention to give way to a more open musical narrative.14 isozaki suggests ma to be better understood not only as a gap but also as “the original difference immanent in things” (2011: 95). this extended definition gets closer to takemitsu’s interpretation of ma through the way silence dialogues with sound, which in turn reflects on my understanding of absence in drawing in multiple tonalities that, in a seemingly non-structured assemblage, appear as distant, not filling or occupying but reverberating in space. played in simultaneity, these sounds conform a balanced impression of a sensory and multi-layered immanence, resembling the different temporalities evoked by the inarticulate traces and fragments of a ruin. as koozin puts it: in the temporal imagery of traditional japanese arts, moment-to-moment events are superimposed against a static background; being and becoming are recognized as contraries, which mutually define each other. through the decaying reverberation of the piano’s tone, takemitsu creates a metaphor for the fluidity and impermanence of the physical world. (1990: 41) takemitsu embraces a sense of multiplicity and simultaneity in his interpretation of silence. the materials of his compositions are in constant flux; sometimes they are single fading tones, or sometimes they are rich layered sonorities that reverberate and assimilate silence. these are analogous to the rumour one can perceive coming from the distant, active city, standing in the middle of a terrain vague, which blends with possible pasts and futures, not readily present but suggested as absences. i have contextualised takemitsu’s work in john cage’s account of silence to further address its resonances with absence and layering, instead of exploring fields of proximity and interaction between music and architecture or visual arts. takemitsu’s musical work constitutes a distant field from which i comparatively reflect on my account of absence.15 this paper seeks to advance an understanding and representation of absence, making of the gaps and distances between the field of architecture and music (and between western and japanese culture) a space of interpretative opportunity. 86 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 venice from the distance the following images do not represent disused or overlooked spaces in venice but try to expand the interpretation of absence as layering beyond those kinds of places, to reflect on the city’s multi-layered formation and slow ruination.16 the following compositions reimagine the memories of a city away in space and time—moments captured in light. venice exemplifies the idea of the urban palimpsest, giving the impression of accumulating its dense history in its materiality. this becomes evident in the aggregation of its intricate housing fabric, in the layers of stucco partially covering the old façades as they reveal either white stones or dampened walls. the decay of surfaces alternating with recent restorations or some scarce new buildings also contributes to reveal the “layered reality of venice that condenses at once a plurality of times” (stoppani, 2011: 161). fig. 2 author (2014/2018). walks in venice, 3-20 november 2014 [layered photographic composition] the vertical orientation of this composition depends on the spatial proportion of the photographed environments: narrow streets, alleys, and vertically framed vistas. despite the city’s great spatial diversity, the image reveals some consistent features, such as how the light is distributed and the textures and colours of the deteriorating walls of buildings. the accumulation of images gives a painterly effect to the composition, as if through the dense air the masses of buildings of both sides can be seen gradually dematerialising in light. 87 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 the next composition deals with more open spaces. the façade’s materiality and texture and the alternating presence of water and hard floors seem to reverberate together with the glowing light and the humid air of venice’s hazy and cold autumnal days. when concentrating on the encounters between façades and water, the overall colouring stays similar. the reflection adds a different depth and complexity, and the greater presence of its green colour and texture reveals the city’s atmosphere through the aggregation of more detailed images of the buildings being reflected on or touched by green, flickering waters. the blurring of venetian buildings into the water triggers thoughts on the fragility of the city and its haunting fate of fig. 3 author (2014). a walk to cannaregio ovest, venice, 3 november 2014 [layered photographic composition]17 fig. 4 author (2014). encounter of buildings and water, venice, 3-20 november, 2014 [layered photographic composition] 88 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 slowly sinking into the lagoon.18 vanishing into the air or the water, the city appears both constituted by multiple translucent images, anticipating its possible future absence. in these images of venice, the photographs vanish into each other losing some of their particular characteristics. in turn, the sites become less legible as the image does not work in a documentary or analytical sense but as a source of re-imagination that appeals to an open-ended, even emotional engagement with something not yet graspable, in the process of becoming. this form of representation does not respond to an understanding of the geometry of space and form. sharp edges give way to the predominance of a sensory impression of light and colour, encompassing a temporal and spatial density and depth. in this way, the nature of the images resonates visually with takemitsu’s musical landscapes. the compositions suggest fading images seemingly in motion, balancing between a total opacity and the almost absolute transparency that allows them to reverberate together, interweaving presence and absence. beyond still images, takemitsu’s relation between sound and silence to express ma can be furthered through an exploration of moving images, working more directly with the dimension of time. fig. 5a-d author (2014). cannaregio ovest, venice, 20 november 2014 [snapshots of layered video] 89 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 while having observed reflections of my visual work in takemitsu’s music, in the following filmic series i attempt to actively interpret takemitsu’s work by incorporating the variable of time. the resulting moving image composition combines sequence and superimposition to convey an active state of suspension, in which slight movements become visible and seem to hold the captured reality still.19 there is no particular event occurring in the film, it is a core silence that is in turn invaded by sounds coming from a distance. the gaps between images become evident as they sequentially appear in the composition, generating a sense of vibrating transition enlivened by the movement of water, light and people. the fading transitions bring forward the ephemeral and transient condition of light appearing and disappearing in the composition, vanishing into blankness. in this way, the resulting piece reflects some of takemitsu’s musical work, following a sense of a “particularly unhurried, autumnal atmosphere” (hutchinson, 2014: 428), a flow of non-linear time in which the ambience of venice unfolds. a slow palimpsest made of the autumnal light of venice encountering the city’s materiality reimagines its different temporalities accumulated throughout time. this last moving composition involves a greater complexity in this series of representations, reflecting the layered formation of the city. as isozaki writes: [the…] fading of things, the dropping of flowers, flickering movements of mind, shadows falling on water or earth [shows a…] fondness for movement of this kind [permeating] the japanese concept of indefinite architectural space in which a layer of flat boards, so thin as to be practically transparent, determines permeation of light and lines of vision. appearing in this space is a flickering of shadows, a momentary shift between the worlds of reality and unreality. ma is a void moment of waiting for this kind of change. (isozaki, 1979: 78) i have attempted to infuse such quiet intensity in representing the cannaregio ovest district in venice through layering, observing the reverberations and transitions between different images forming an immaterial, moving palimpsest. final remarks while it seems that western interpretations of ma in architecture are more of a creative nature rather than based on historical analysis, as nute suggests, in music it has had perhaps a similar development, enabling both theoretical understanding and creativity. its intellectualisation may correspond to an effort for the western mind to grasp something that is already and deeply internalised in japanese day-to-day life, art and culture. takemitsu in music and isozaki in architecture are paradigmatic examples of this productive cross-cultural hybridisation, on which i have based this dialogue between architecture and music, acknowledging the points of encounter as well as the inevitable distances between both fields. how could the music of takemitsu be thought of as a model of interpretation, representation—even of design—of absence, as it comes forward in the experience of the built environment? if not falling into the trap of the mere transparency of materials, the precedent notes and images can contribute to ongoing debates and established interpretations of ma and architecture, as well as of 90 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 absence and architecture. here, i have proposed an interpretation of silence and ma in takemitsu’s music to reflect on and inform my method of representation of absence in the built environment. silence, as understood and used in music by takemitsu, resonates as a parallel to absence and how it tinges the atmosphere of places. it offers an opportunity to enhance our understanding of the spatial possibilities of architecture and bring forward that which is beyond its physical presence, and beyond the functions and meanings it is supposed to carry. the terrains vagues in our cities offer a powerful metaphor of silence. beyond the challenge of intervention without obliterating the qualities of absence, architectural and urban designers may draw on them to observe and conceive of the built environment in other ways. my attempt to represent venice as absence through layering constitutes a step in that direction. as absence itself needs some sort of presence to come forward as such in the imagination of who perceives it, the question would be what kind of architectural presence can bring about or recover absence while keeping it at a distance. in my view, one lesson of takemitsu’s music is the active use of silence and how it draws sound beyond the musical piece—allowing for its emergence. silence in architecture could then be thought of as being an opening for absence to come forward, rather than being absence itself. acknowledgements with thanks to philip dawson for suggesting that i look into takemitsu’s music as a way to reflect on my work, to marcela aragüez for her insights on ma and to both reviewers of this paper for their rigour and encouragement. with special thanks to cristián alvear, musician and interpreter of ma, for providing generous and insightful observations on an earlier version of this paper, enhancing the text presented here. 91 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 references alpers, s. (1983). the art of describing. chicago, il: university of chicago press. alvear, c. (december, 2018). personal interview with the author. aragüez, m. (2016). in the name of ma. interpretations of a japanese untranslatable character. lobby, 5, 89-90. baudrillard, j. (2000). photography, or the writing of light (f. debrix, trans.). ctheory. retreived from, www.ctheory.net/ articles.aspx?id=126. böhme, g., thibaud, j-p. (ed.) (2016). the aesthetics of atmospheres. new york, ny: routledge. burt, p. (2001). the music of tōru takemitsu. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. cage, j. (composer) (1952). 4’33’’. london, uk: peters edition. cage, j., charles, d. (1981). for the birds. boston, ma & london, uk: marion boyars. de solá-morales, i. (1996). present and futures: architecture in cities. barcelona: comitè d organització del congrés barcelona uia. de solá-morales, i. (1995). terrain vague. in (c. davidson, ed.), anyplace (pp. 118–23). cambridge, ma: mit press. di mare, l. (1990). ma and japan. southern communication journal, 55-3, 319-328. griffero, t. (2014) atmospheres: aesthetics of emotional spaces (s. de sanctis, trans.). farnham, uk: ashgate. hutchinson, m. (2014). dreams, gardens, mirrors: layers of narrative in takemitsu’s quotation of dream. contemporary music review, 33-4, 428–446. isozaki, a. (hewitt museum) (1978). ma, space-time in japan [exhibition catalogue]. paris, musée des arts décoratifs. isozaki, a. (1979). ma: japanese time-space. the japan architect 54, 78. isozaki, a. (1995) space of darkness: the spatial structure of illusions. in k. tadashi oshima (ed.), arata isozaki (pp. 150-155). london, uk & new york, ny: phaidon. isozaki, a. (1995). on utsu: the void. in k. tadashi oshima (ed.), arata isozaki (p. 155). london, uk & new york, ny: phaidon. isozaki, a. (2009). ma – space/ time in japan. in k. tadashi oshima (ed.), arata isozaki (pp. 156-161). london, uk & new york, ny: phaidon. isozaki, a. (2009). on utsu: the void. in k. tadashi oshima (ed.), arata isozaki (p. 162). london, uk& new york, ny: phaidon. isozaki, a. (2011). japan-ness in architecture (s. kohso, trans.). cambdridge, ma: mit press. kamvasinou, k. (2006). vague parks: the politics of late twentieth-century urban landscapes. architectural research quarterly, vol. 10, issue 3-4, 255-262. koozin, t. (1990). tōru takemitsu and the unity of opposites. college music symposium, 30-1, 34-44. lanuza, f. (2015). no guilt. lobby, 2, 79-82. lanuza, f. (2017). absence through layering: from experiencing urban leftovers to reimagining sites. (unpublished phd thesis, university college, london, united kingdom). miyamoto, k. (1996). klang im osten, klang im westen: der komponist tōru takemitsu und die rezeption europäischer musik in japan. saarbrücken: pfau. murray, j., bradley, h., craigie, w., onions, c. (eds.) (1888/1923). new english dictionary based on historical principles. oxford, uk: oxford university press. nakagawa, m. (2010). the production of multi-layered space in japanese spatial representations between 2d and 3d. (unpublished phd thesis, university college london, united kingdom). nitschke, g. (1966). ma-the japanese sense of place in old and new architecture and planning. architectural design, xxxvi, 113-156. nute, k. (2019). space, time, and japanese architecture. the birth of a new temporal tradition. international journal of architectonic, spatial, and environmental design, 13-3, 51-63. retrieved from, https://doi. org /10.18848/2325-1662/cgp/ v13i03/51-63. pilgrim, r. b. (1986). intervals (ma) in space and time: foundations for a religio-aesthetic paradigm in japan. history of religions, 25-3, 255-277. retrieved from, http:// www.jstor.org /stable/1062515. powell, d. (2012). venice hasn’t stopped sinking. science news, 181-9, 15. retrieved from: http:// www.jstor.org /stable/23211397. sakamoto, m. (2010). takemitsu and the influence of “cage shock”: transforming the japanese ideology into music. student research, creative activity, and performance, school of music, 23. retrieved from, http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ musicstudent/23. stoppani, t. (2011) paradigm islands: manhattan and venice. london, uk and new york, ny: routledge. takemitsu, t. (1961/1966). piano distance [recording of yuji takahashi piano interpretation]. on works of toru takemitsu [vinyl]. tokyo: victor. takemitsu, t. (1973/1974). for away [recording of roger woodward keyboard interpretation]. on, takemitsu [vinyl]. london, uk: decca. takemitsu, t. (1973/2018). autumn [recording of interpretation by kaoru kakizakai, shakuhachi, akiko kubota, biwa and peter eötvös, conductor]. retrieved from, https://www1.wdr. de/mediathek/av/video-torutakemitsu----autumn-100.html. takemitsu, t. (1976/1982). marginalia [interpreted by the tokyo metropolitan symphony orchestra directed by hiroyuki iwaki]. on takemitsu – winter, marginalia, gitimalya [vinyl] tokyo: jvc. takemitsu, t., kakudo, y. & glasgow, g. (eds.) (1995). confronting silence. selected writings (y. kakudo & g. glasgow, trans.). lanham, toronto & oxford, uk: fallen leaf. wylie, j. (2007). the spectral geographies of w.g. sebald. cultural geographies, 14-2, 171-188. wylie, j. (2009). landscape, absence and the geographies of love. transactions of the institute of british geographers, new series, 34–3, 275-289. retrieved from, http://www.jstor.org / stable/40270717. 92 absence, silence, and the shades of takemitsu’s ma in venice p r e s e n c e in t e r s t ic e s 1 9 endnotes 1 the use of the word “absence” not only designates “the state of being absent or away”, but “also the time of duration of such state” (murray, et. al.: 1888/1923). this early definition, etymologically traced back to the middle ages, is consistent with the contemporary meaning of the word, as can be seen in several english dictionaries. its latin root absentia implies that it has a similar meaning in french, spanish, portuguese and italian. 2 for accounts of absence as haunting and embodiment see wylie (2007 and 2009). 3 transparency becomes a necessary condition for layering to convey absence, allowing for the simultaneous appreciation of multiple layers. in these images, transparency is perceived as operating in space and time, thereby evoking a myriad of other moments and situations not readily available in the here and now of experience. this is opposed to absence expressed literally through transparent or translucent materials. 4 distance here refers to an experiential sense of being away, not to a precise and measurable direction. 5 cage’s 4’33’’ was first performed by david tudor on 29, august 1952 at the maverick concert hall, woodstock, new york. 6 in reference to pieces like marginalia (1976/1982). 7 this approach is evident in takemitsu´s more experimental phase in the late 1970s. see burt (2001: 175). 8 as examples, consider, piano distance (1961/1966) and for away (1973/1974). 9 takemitsu refers here to music played with japanese traditional instruments such as the biwa and the shakuhachi. 10 however, takemitsu’s pieces do have a precise notation in which sounds are presented rhythmically. personal interview with c. alvear (2018). 11 according to koozin, in traditional japanese arts, ma is expressed as a portion of void or blankness. for example, in sumie paintings, the strokes give boundary to the infinite by rendering the void expressed on the blank page as something tangible and meaningful (1990: 43). 12 silence in music works as an active aperture or opening within what can be thought of as autonomous musical phenomenon. in takemitsu’s work, this turns the background or context into a musical content. personal interview with c. alvear (2018). 13 for instance, works like autumn (1973/2018). 14 see jo kondon, a contemporary japanese composer who incorporates ambiguity within his musical compositions. 15 i do not intend a direct comparison between my visual work and takemitsu’s music. his work is a paradigm in a different artistic field. 16 this amounts to a transient condition corresponding, to some degree, to conservation efforts. 17 previously published in lanuza (2015: 82). 18 for consideration of the deteriorating influence of water and humidity for built surfaces, in the structure of buildings, as well as the slow, yet consistent sinking of the city into the lagoon, see powell (2012). interstices 11 seeing in section: the practice of photogrammatic drawing shelley f. martin the photogram as material drawing the science of photogrammetry accesses the space of photographs for the measurement, translation and production of data about an object or environment that has been stilled by a camera, and in doing so indirectly senses its qualities. this translation of the photographic image distills multiple reference points to estimate and map the three-dimensional qualities of objects, surfaces, and terrains. just as principles of photogrammetry mine geometric properties from photographic records and project them as formal gestures, the photogram’s direct transposition of a three-dimensional object onto a surface produces a field of inquiry rich in spatial consequence by examining light as a tectonic object. yet the photogram does not merely record the object, it also transforms the object. laszlo moholy-nagy’s initial photographic material practice of recording the form of light revealed a surface constructed solely by means of drawing. moholy-nagy saw photography as an act that inscribed both tangible and intangible qualities of light, surface, profile, and depths. seeking to “… deal more with the folded plane. photogram: kate godfrey folded light. photogram: aubrey lynch 161 artistic function of expression than with the reproductive function of portrayal” (kostelanetz, 1970: 51), moholy-nagy produced the dynamic presence of the image of light as a material engaging a surface. the two-dimensional plane of the photograph became a surface record presenting the ability to see light transparently, translucently, opaquely and refractively, thereby changing the state of both the light and the object. by actually drawing with light, the photogram, as moholy-nagy named this production, reveals a continuous presence and shifts both drawing and photography to a space in between stasis and motion. the examples of such investigations shown here are produced in the setting of the architecture studio, an educational construct that initiates the plastic nature of design as discovery occurring through autonomy natural to open observations and practices. the studies engage the presence and physicality of behaviours of light arrested by a planar surface, and yield artifacts composed by the dynamic spatial relationships of the form and force of light. the artifact’s ability to physically produce and make visible what was once invisible in a thing or action stands as a lesson for drawing and announces the opportunity for apprehending correspondences between section and material production. as a direct artifact of light, and the interrelationship of an object placed in tension with light, the photogram is a materially productive tool that registers, activates and transforms both material and phenomenon. folded plane. photogram: kate godfrey folded section. drawing: katrina neirgarth interstices 11 re-registration: the frame and photogrammatic space in 2000, i witnessed a commercial aired on television by dodge motors of the dodge chrysler group llc that beautifully presented a new sliding side van door feature, and intended to promote its ability to remain open even when parked on a downward slope. the commercial was highly organised to convey relationships in ways just as in the complex spatial prospect of drawing, and, by initiating the multiple depictions of the van in reference to on object seen through it, demonstrated the registrations, re-registrations, and inhabitation of sectional planes. an axis through the van was imagined as a crucial origin in establishing given relationships, allowing the camera to tightly focus on a goldfish swimming in a fishbowl seen through a picture window in a house directly facing and parallel to the street on which the van was parked. the van itself was not yet in view; only later were the objects through which the axis cut revealed. the fish was the fragment that told the story, and as the fish looked happy, it swam in water that curiously was not level. in order to present the door feature of the van, the ground plane of the frame of reference of the street was recast in an orientation parallel to the horizon. by justifying the frame to a level ground plane, the environment was re-registered, making the axis of the street level, thereby allowing a van with two open heavy side doors to seemingly sit calmly and lightly on a horizontal surface. as the camera began to pull back through the window, and through the open van doors to the elevation of all the objects in view, we ultimately saw the fundamental axis of the ground plane move and shift to its true slope, allowing the water in the fishbowl to seek its own level, and demonstrating what all the fuss was about: the van doors remained open even if parked on a downhill slope. i find the re-framing, extension of reach, depth and breadth, and the resultant re-imagining of the frame with respect to the object it presents to be the strongest visual demonstration of the facts and experiments of the condition of section as sensed and understood in drawing. the profiles revealed by section and the space between and around the object of study re-situates the total environment and extends the geographic prospect of the frame, making it elastic: a line that shuttles and continually moves. seeing section as a mobile figural operation based on the re-organisation of frames is a prerequisite for understanding the phenomenon of luminosity as material shape and presence. the sectional records presented in the plates investigate the instrumentality of light by moving between the technical and the imaginative states of lines and spatial occupation, continually recording, regulating and propagating material illuminations. the instrumentality of drawing acts as a catalyst and makes legible the correspondences of graphic processes of construction and continually constructs and re-constructs interplay within the picture and the line, the gramma and the gramme. as the state of drawing moves between surface and frame, it at times hovers or connects between similar and dissimilar inscriptions of light, concurrently recognising and retrieving, and imagining and projecting. it is in this space that drawing becomes an operation seeking questions as well as rules, and at times simultaneously imposes and derives patterns. both an act of recognition and an act of invention, the production of sectional drawings from 163 transformative photographic space considers the nature and demonstration of geometric construction as an act of both contingency and specificity, and within a rarefied space of drawing makes shape palpable prior to construction. the surface: “seeing-in” the vessel of drawing drawing sectionally through photogrammatic space produces an environment that does not attempt to verify the preceding object’s original or transformed material dimensions or qualities; instead it seeks to re-recognise material form and potential. each mark is wholly three-dimensional in its spatial occupation of the plane of the page, and it directly deals with the thickness of shape. shape is revealed as more than a perimeter, and becomes a surface that can be occupied. a new space of drawing is made where light records the consequence of sectional space prior to material existence. the space is a relic of light. richard wollheim recognises this activity as a perceptual state, and imbues this “simultaneous attention” (wollheim 1980: 213) with the ability to perceive object and medium. seeing in is a natural capacity we have – it precedes pictures, though pictures foster it – which allows us when confronted by certain differentiated surfaces, to have experiences that have a dual aspect, or ‘twofoldedness’: so that, on the one hand, we are aware of the differentiation of the surface, and, on the other hand, we observe something in front of, or behind, something else. (wollheim 1993: 188) drawing is a vessel for both veridical and non-veridical modes of thought, vision and material inquiry. moving between wollheim’s “seeing-in”, or representational seeing of relevant three-dimensional aspects in a surface, and a type of nonveridical imaginative resurrection of what already may exist, the photogram, considered as a basis for drawing, understands the sectional projective action. in this photographic space, drawing studies the transformation of the original frame. drawing: kate godfrey surface. drawing: kate godfrey interstices 11 object, and seeks to materially express both interior and exterior, volume and profile, and to engage the construction of drawings as fields of inquiry. the photographic works are a totality of layers, and like the layering practice of sinopia, a pigment applied before the final painting of the fresco, the under-drawings are initial markings that become a part of the deep surface of the work. investigative works produced within the educational setting, these drawings are made with light and graphite, and propose that there are laws found in the acts of forming and the acts of seeing which create new knowledge. drawing exists in an emergent condition activated by its own means, where the nature and demonstration of form-making determine each drawing’s existence, and behaviours both specific and contingent to production manifest an ability for a drawing to build a particular presence. the recognition of movement within the plane, density and dynamism found through material means, celebration of the internal logic of a given material, and the ability of matter to receive and express transformation through action were ideas developed by theo van doesburg in the forms, inquiries, and works he termed plasticism. the material qualities and formal behaviours in these drawings share the fundamental tenet of plastic art, whose problematically-based practices propose that form emerges and is not fixed, having been activated by an origin located solely within the work’s own means of production, and by absolute or elemental terms that arose directly out of its own being (van doesburg 1966: 27). vessel. photogram: patrick hummel section. drawing: patrick hummel 165 “plastic – the sense of existence which a painting achieves.” (rothko, 2004: 43) the author walker percy writes that the essential nature of education should be openness (1975: 56-62). this, he believes, is the only condition and environment within which true knowledge may develop. such true discoveries depend upon the condition of autonomy, and require an environment predicated on the cultivation of the free sovereignty of an individual pursuit. the interrelationship of the idea of form and the act of making require that it is more important for a work to reveal its own nature rather than revel in received ideas. these means of discovery are as critical to the acts of seeing and drawing as they are to education. seeing in section: drawing as a relic “ … it is just not true that we see pictures in what they depict; rather, we see their depicta in them.” (schier 1986: 199) in these works, drawing acts as both a carrier to read consequences through the material processes of construction, and a speculative venture that moves the act of drawing closer to the form of poetry. remnants, traces and pieces of light cast out new frames and net new unified wholes. these may be definite in relation, but temporary in nature, as drawing becomes more like the sensible relics of plasticity. photogram: samson chang sovereignty. drawing: samson chang interstices 11 light’s activity through a surface, a surface whose intangible content is recognisable through traces of form, imagery, and the spirit of material imagination. references kostelanetz, r. (ed.). (1970). moholy–nagy: an anthology. new york: da capo press. percy, w. (1975). message in a bottle. new york: farrar, straus, and giroux. rothko, m. (2004). the artist’s reality: philosophies of art. new haven: yale university press. schier, f. (1986). deeper into pictures. cambridge (uk): cambridge university press. van doesburg, t. (1966). principles of neo-plastic art. new york: new york graphic society. wollheim, r. (1980). art and its objects. cambridge (uk): cambridge university press. wollheim, r. (1993). the mind and its depths. cambridge (mass.): harvard university press. relic of light. photogram: lisa cox interstices 08 99interstices 08 99 the premise of this book is that the relationship between house and landscape in new zealand warrants investigation and critical assessment. the words of mike austin are cited at the top of the foreword: “it is a step forward to have a discussion about houses that attempts to be analytic and precise about the relationship of the building to the site”. how could anyone disagree? however, this book barely begins such a discussion. it is certainly neither analytic nor precise. rather, what it does is to present a series of houses – mostly trophy houses in the current 50s-modernism-on-steroids style du jour – each in relation to its landscape setting. what landscape actually seems to mean here, would in other contexts be called ‘scenery’. architecture inspired by new zealand is a coffee-table book in the scenic new zealand genre, distinct from the rest of its type because there are images of houses interpolated into the foreor mid-ground in most of the photographs. this cross-over of genres – between glossy tourist pap and glossy shelter rag – might have been interesting. some provocative disjunctions could be imagined: photoshopped ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots, both inverting and updating the procedure of repton’s red books, so we could see if the landscape looked better with or without the architectural ‘improvement’. perhaps perforations around each photograph would have allowed an interactive reader to decide which they wanted: the house or the land, shelter magazine or coffee table scenic album. however, the problem with this book is that those responsible for it do not seem to be aware that they are dealing with genres, consolidated myths, etcetera. all this twenty-five years after francis pound’s book, frames on the land, so persuasively showed that new zealanders look at their country through eyes conditioned, not by the local landscape and its physical attributes, but rather by a placeless panorama of clichés. in architecture inspired by new zealand, this is most apparent in the landscape photograph that begins each section, and the breathlessly inane introductory text that follows. thus, queenstown is introduced by a panoramic image of lake, tussocky hillsides, mountains, clouds and sky, with the town itself seen as a distant fragment in the extreme right of the image. (this happens to be the only image in the whole book that includes anything remotely like a town: ‘landscape’ here is never urban.) then we are told that the town perches “precariously on the banks of crystal clear lake wakatipu”, and that its “picturesque scenery is framed by spectacular mountain ranges”, rising at “a seemingly vertical angle out of the deep blue water”. meanwhile, wanaka has “towering mountains”, is “blessed with a continental climate”, and is characterized by “glistening white peaks in winter, kaleidoscopic wild flowers of spring, architecture inspired by new zealand amanda hyde de kretser and david sullivan review by paul walker amanda hyde de kretser and david sullivan; photographs by judith holtebrinck, architecture inspired by new zealand (auckland: mint publishing, 2006). interstices 08 99 interstices 08 99 summer’s scorched brown high country and rows of luminous golden poplars in autumn”. and so on. it is as if the copy (attributed to david sullivan), as much as the architecture, has sought to return to the 1950s. however, the houses themselves are, of course, more knowing than this. we might be alarmed by what the architecture of the contemporary house in new zealand implies when presented like this, en masse. new zealand architects, the images seem to say, work for clients with lots of money and in most cases with no apparent individuality or identity: they have no children, no pets, no elderly parents, no disabilities, no books, no ugly heirlooms, no weirdness, no mess, no taste – except that bought by the metre according the prevailing dictates of home and entertaining and vogue living. further, we know that, at present, they prefer fifties modernism built as if budgets don’t matter. however, this is probably more the message of the pictures, and of how the houses have been dressed to be pictured. actually, there are many interesting buildings here: the houses designed by felicity wallace, hugh tennant, christopher kelly and mitchell & stout, for example, all manage to reach through the clichéd manner in which they are presented to suggest that something is going on in new zealand domestic architecture beyond an uncritical reverence for neutra. and two of the houses actually entail a complete transformation of the landscape, into what is known as a garden: ron sang’s brake house in titirangi (the only one in the book which has had any opportunity to weather) is shown surrounded by spring magnolia bloom; and a waikato house by nicholas stevens and gary lawson treats the landscape as artifice, including an affectedly ‘natural’ arrangement of bromeliads and cycads in its swimming pool hall. there is even a reminder, in the form of a house by melling morse in a patch of wellington bush, that architectural quality can be achieved in modestly scaled buildings on modest sites. each of the houses comes with a second text, that is presumably meant to deliver the analysis and precision that austin’s words lead the reader to expect. this material is authored by amanda hyde de kretser. in each case, she has linked the design of the house to some landscape or site related line of inquiry or activity in design culture. some of the suggested lines of thought are rather extraordinary, preposterous even. we are told that felicity wallace’s approach to the design of a house at wakatipu is an “architectural response” to the mountains around; this comment, banal as it is, is prefaced by a short discursus on what viollet-le-duc and ruskin in turn said about mountains and architecture 150 years ago. this takes up a quarter of the brief textual space hyde de kretser has to work with, and her point seems to be that neither viollet-le-duc nor ruskin apply in this case, as if the average reader might have erroneously thought that they did. or this, of a house at lake hayes: “like the romans, who believed that the landscape was to be observed rather than entered, this house defines a viewing platform outside and a picture window inside, through which its occupants can command the view”. huh? however, in hyde de kretser’s brief essays there is at least the sense that things are being tried out. it is a pity the book did not give more scope for this: the foreword discloses that she did not even have an opportunity to visit the houses (or the landscapes). this is a little like trying to read a book – the thought crossed my mind – without bothering to turn its pages. interstices 08 21 interstices 08 21 an 1851 punch cartoon of the london world exhibition shows a “european rider with a spiked helmet” racing closely “behind the african elephant and next to an american indian” (kaiser, n.d.). they waste no time on taking notice of each other, but scramble furiously towards the finishing line. meanwhile, contemporary debates nurtured pious hopes that intercultural encounters at the exhibition would further mutual understanding and world peace. likewise, sigfried giedion optimistically remarked of the exhibition: “to take a turn about this place … is literally to travel around the world, for all nations have come here; enemies are coexisting in peace”(in benjamin, 2002: 175-6). in 2006, a tropical village at the tropical islands resort at brand, 60km southeast of berlin, features several houses from tropical regions, a samoan fale in their midst. set on an oval, elevated platform, the fale signals the south seas’ eternal sun and balmy breezes. its handcrafted pandanus mats, carved posts, weaving and lashing details tell of an imaginary place where time moves at a different pace. as part of the €70 million themed resort, the fale is sheltered under a 360 meter-long steel dome: indeed, an ex-cargolifter hangar. both scenarios stage notions of progress, nostalgia and exoticism. in their creation of global public spaces, both combine labour and leisure in peculiar ways, so that giedion observed enemies coexisting in peace, while the tropical village has been labelled a “one-world-village” (eine-welt-dorf ). these tropes orient experience, shape perception and activate knowledge. but which knowledge? the punch cartoonist and giedion registered competitive conflict and peaceful coexistence in the same setting. and while chinese-malaysian multi-millionaire colin au planned the resort to satisfy a germanic yearning for sun (unmatched by expendable incomes and geographical location: “i’ve done my research and i know how the germans tick”; in connolly, 2004), some disagreement accompanied tropical islands’ establishment, as will be discussed later. what is visible of the fale today says little about its origins; and germans, it seems, have forgotten about their past involvement in samoa. jacques rancière and walter benjamin share an interest in the relationships between different modes of art and politics: ways in which perception and language set up pictures of the world; and in the productive potential of conflict to open up new spaces of visibility. thus, they may offer pointers regarding the potential of tropical islands to aid or prevent the appearance of different forms of relationships. many thanks to ross jenner, nina corsten, albert refiti, mark jackson, julia gatley, frances edmond and the two blind reviewers for valuable comments and criticism. travel in tropical islands: enemies coexisting in peace a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul punch 20 (1851), p. 208. interstices 08 23interstices 08 23 regimes of visibility: aesthetics and politics rancière sets apart his approach from benjamin’s notion of the “aestheticization of politics”: he sees the assumption that politics are not originally aesthetic as false.1 this setting-apart rests on his definitions of aesthetics and politics. for rancière, aesthetics is not a theory of the beautiful (opposed or complementary to knowledge), but an intrinsic dimension of knowledge (2006: 1). when art suspends “the ordinary coordinates of space and time that structure the forms of social domination”, shapes “a specific sensorium”, it is political (2005). correspondingly, a (kantian) disinterested aesthetic experience, with its temporary deferral of normal social conditions, can enable a different way of seeing (2006: 2):2 “spectacles which disassociate the gaze from the hand and transform the worker into an aesthete” (9) have the potential to disrupt the consensus of an established order.3 then, politics happens through disagreement, through an “aesthetic conflict” over the “configuration of the sensible”, the “visibilities of … places and abilities of the body in those places, … about the very configuration of the visible and the relation of the visible to what can be said about it” (2003a: s5).4 in political dispute, the argument is often “first of all on the legitimacy or even the reality” (holmes, 2001) of what configures disagreement. similarly, benjamin wagers on disruption, against consensus, to change a status quo that is really a continuous state of emergency. conflict between what is and is not, or can and cannot be, is, for him, the very energy driving the endless renewal of language (1969a: 320; 1969b: 79). conflict, but also complementation and redemption, is part of the vital relationship between an original and its translation. as the original’s afterlife, a translation releases, in a different language, what remained repressed in the original (1969b: 80). changed and non-identical, it represents and expresses “the central reciprocal relationship between languages” (72). thus, in diverse ways, languages configure the experience of perception. aesthetics, as this experience, derives from “aisthesis: the appearance of that which, of itself, shows itself” (mersch, n.d.: s3), and is “perceptive by feeling” (buck-morss, 1992: 6). sensory perception (taste, touch, hearing, seeing, smell) “refers to symbols” (benjamin, 1996: 92) which, like language, configure differently what can be said about the sensible. thus, aesthetics constitutes an historically specific mode of visibility and intelligibility, not of art alone. politics impacts on visibility by creating a theatrical space for new and disparate things to appear; it sets up a stage where the hitherto unconnected may be connected (rancière, 1999: 88). art and politics share an uncertain reality, and movements from the political to the aesthetic are inherent in the political itself. metaphorical displacement may shift a community’s perception of “the relation between a situation and the forms of visibility and capacities of thought attached to it” (2006: 9), so that new objects become visible and thus available to thinking. once such changes have been reintegrated into a “generally accessible mode of reasoning or form of language”, a collective creative reconfiguration of the common world of experience becomes possible (2000a: 116). with respect to both art and politics, tropical islands resort’s status is uncertain. for instance, as with many other non-european art forms, that of the samoan tufuga (master builders) was long denied the status of art within western frameworks. on the other hand, claims to the status of art are increasingly made in the entertainment industries.5 it would be impractical and elitist to rule out the 1. “… politics is … an aesthetic conflict. not at all in the sense of the aestheticization of politics analyzed by benjamin, but in the sense that politics in general is about the configuration of the sensible, about questions such as what is given, what is terrible about it, who is visible as a speaker able to utter it” (rancière, 2003a: §5). rancière’s assertion that benjamin treats art and politics as separate entities seems overstated: “what we may register in benjamin’s juxtaposition is both an account of the partition of the sensible within a given artistic practice and an investigation of the effects of an artistic partition of the sensible upon a political one” (toscano, 2006). see also benjamin (1969c: s vii). 2. for a critique of pièrre bourdieu, see rancière (2006: 3-4) and hallward (2006: §37). 3. rancière (2004: 6) opposes the police (as the administrative apparatus defining appropriate “ways of being, doing, and saying”) and politics (as actions that call into question the existing divisions between common and private, or visible and invisible). see also ostwald’s contribution in this issue, page 8. 4. through this account runs aristotle’s distinction between “those who possess language and those, like slaves, who can only understand”, having only “cries of hunger, rage, or hysteria” (rancière, 2004: 5): there are those who are visible, because they can argue, and those who remain invisible, because they cannot. their relationship is one of mésentente – of “‘the fact of not hearing, of not understanding’ and ‘quarrel, disagreement’” (5). perhaps rancière settles too quickly for the translation of mésentente as ‘disagreement’. the german translation, unvernehmen or unstimmigkeit, is more multivalent. ‘disagreement’, as one element of politics as dissensus (as opposed to the consensus in contemporary regimes under the rule of police) may not account for certain processes where no engagements occur, where “a dispute over the situation itself, … over what is visible” interstices 08 23 interstices 08 23 possibility that some phenomena at tropical islands may qualify as art: they may indeed shape a specific sensorium, suspend the ordinary coordinates of space and time, open up new ways of seeing, and reconfigure a common world.6 do they, however, lend themselves to politics? does tropical islands afford potential for creative reconfigurations through conflict or disagreement? according to rancière, it is the conflict about what can or cannot be expressed that allows a controversial world to be polemically framed within the given one. in contrast, consensus, far from simply being an agreement between political or social partners about shared interests, “properly means the dismissal of the ‘aesthetics of politics’” (2003c). it suppresses the need of the outsider to create “another way of seeing than that which oppresses them” (2006: 3). from world exhibition to theme park consensus, like politics, is produced: for instance, during the heyday of imperialism it was important for imperial nations to create internal consensus by appealing to national pride in progress and technological achievements. thus, french national and municipal bodies gave away to workers hundreds of thousands of free tickets for the world exhibitions (benjamin, 2002: 186), and french workers’ delegations were sent to the 1851 london world exhibition (188). benjamin called the exhibitions “training schools in which the masses, barred from consuming, learned empathy with exchange value. ‘look at everything; touch nothing’” (201). those who entered were distracted by the phantasmagoria of a “universe of commodities” (8) contained in an interiorized world. “cut off from the will of man,” the commodity performed “as an actor on a phantom stage” (182), and visitors themselves shared much with the commodity. surrendering to the manipulations, they enjoyed their alienation from themselves and others (2002: 7).7 perception as much as thinking was affected, as reality was adjusted to the masses and the masses to reality (1969d: 223). the interior of the 1851 crystal palace was designed for an exhibition of the world in a village (see kaiser, n.d.) – for a global public from diverse social backgrounds and numerous countries. however, what was staged in the village was, predominantly, english and french industrial displays – in contrast to performances of the simple life of ‘natives’ from the colonies. this strategy would be employed repeatedly at later world exhibitions and smaller shows. exotic displays, compensating for a widely felt loss of authentic tradition in europe, played out a series of spatial tropes (dipaola, 2004: 328-31), which structured the experience of the strange, and changed european perceptions of self and other. a trope, of course, is a rhetorical device. from the greek “a turn”, it shifts our perception and the way we make sense of the world. thus, in nineteenth century german literature on samoa, a strange exterior space, exotic and abundant nature, morphs into interior space, a zoological or botanical garden, to be filled with homely elements and commonplace exotic images. in a strange cultural space, childlike, happy and naïve noble savages wait to be civilized. these tropes are overlaid and interlaced by a space of erotic power where fragments of the strange woman blend with fruit and flowers, and the strange colonial territory is appropriated metaphorically through the sexual act between colonizer and native woman.8 and over “which visible elements belong to what is common” cannot take place. while rancière registers a growing demand for consensus in western societies, obscuring the “contestatory, conflictual nature of the very givens of common life” and replacing political difference with “police-like homogeneity” (7), he does not address configurations where a lacking common world precludes sufficient political conflict, which could then re organise the “division of per ceptible givens” (6) to transform “one world into another” (7). 5. “at the end of the day, video games … are pieces of art” (the mark of kri on playstation 2 2003). 6. the “autonomy staged by the aesthetic regime of art is not that of the work of art, but of a mode of experience” and “the object of that experience is ‘aesthetic’, in so far as it is not—or at least not only—art” (rancière, 2002). depending on the reference framework, art could be either “political to the extent that it is merely art”, or, “to the extent that it is art no longer” (2005). 7. regarding workers’ delegations, rancière (2003b: 73) gives a somewhat different account, emphazising that, on the scene, a spectacle of machines was staged while, offstage, the workers were dispossessed of their work and their lives. 8. these tropes (described by dipaola for german literature of the time) appear, for instance, at the 1896 samoan show at the zoologischer garten in frankfurt (see steffen-schrade, 1998) and survive into current tourism marketing: “south seas paradises replete with tropical fruit, naked women and free love” (beuchelt, 1987: 98). in the 19th century, zoological gardens were, along with dioramas and panoptica, preferred venues for the exhibition of exotic natives. their performances, choreographed with elaborate dramaturgic effects, were inserted into exotic dreamscapes, and the zoos’ architectures increasingly alluded to the animals’ places of origin, for instance in berlin during the 1870s (goldmann, 1987: 88-89). interstices 08 25interstices 08 25 tropical islands management gmbh at tropical islands resort, too, the world is brought into a vast interior. signs such as, “welcome to the one-world-village” and “peace camp” make reference to global unity and peace. exterior and interior morph in the resort’s promotion as an “island of eternal summer” (allmaier, 2004). village, islands, or world suggest topographies organized by different thresholds of inside and outside, but all contained by the resort’s huge dome: bali lagoon and south sea; rainforest; waterfalls; rivers and spa pools; “several islands plus a sandy beach” (eames, 2006). in a strangely familiar ‘strange exterior space’, visitors stroll along “1.2km of jungle pathways … and enjoy cultural shows by 160 performers from the six indigenous areas” (dpa, 2004).9 however, which particular indigenous areas they are remains unclear, and a general multicultural con/fusion prevails at tropical islands resort. in the 2005 show “call of the south seas”, more than eighty ‘indigenous’ performers further confused the strange cultural space: the all-samoan troupe purported to represent all pacific islands. the scenario was staged by samoan tourism authority’s (sta) general manager lesaisaea reupena matafeo, who convinced the organizers that it was unnecessary to involve several smaller groups from different pacific islands. matafeo claimed that the samoan troupe was able to perform all the dances: “we all know that our island dances differ slightly from each other and we don’t look too different from each other” (in leaupepe, 2005). it is not that the effects of visibility do not matter to the sta. whilst rather generous on the multi-cultural side, the samoan organizers ensured that only performers with a history of “good conduct” represented samoa.10 however, their efforts to control regimes of visibility from a samoan perspective namely to have their culture portrayed in accordance with their own values while excluding other pacific cultures – was frustrated by the tropical islands website designers’ creation of a space of erotic power. the video, “holiday and night”, exposes fragments of strange women from a mix of cultures, a topless glimpse included, all to the soundtrack of ‘pacific’ music. many samoan contributors or observers would be dismayed to hear ‘cultural’ shows staged at tropical islands described as extravaganzas with “feathery headdresses, spangly bikinis and bottoms like j.lo” (eames, 2006). a politics of aesthetics concerns the “partition of the sensible” (rancière, 2000b: 8): historically and geographically specific modes of distributing time and space, and of visibility and intelligibility. aesthetics provides in its image-spaces (interstices between immediacy and rational abstraction, appropriation and distance; see brüggemann, 2002: 14, 51) a space of freedom from normal conditions and images of the possible. however, as long as objects and subjects are missing from the stages of globalized and virtualized environments (from nineteenth century world exhibitions to contemporary theme parks); as long as disagreement cannot take place, the question of whether or not enemies coexist in peace in these theatrical spaces is a mute question. 9. some confusion prevails about what the “indigenous areas” are: a sunday times reporter believes the restaurants are of “thai, malaysian and indonesian architectural style” or, simply, “oriental”. these exotic spaces are further interiorised by filling them with homely elements, for instance with “plenty of german beer and wurst” (eames, 2006). a global space for the public is created and filled with meaning in ways reminiscent of dipaola’s tropes. 10. performers had to submit “reference letters from their pastors” (leaupepe, 2005). interstices 08 25 interstices 08 25 outside tropical islands resort, the region is marked by conflicting histories that are still apparent, and which have introduced a great deal of ‘third world’ in the first. successive and different imperialisms placed the hangar, like an alien spaceship, in the territory of what was formerly the largest military airbase outside the soviet union. inside, with hardly anyone noticing, a former german colony makes an appearance: to germans, if they can place it at all, samoa today seems just like any other tropical island. only an hour away from the re-established german metropolis berlin, the resort is in many ways light years and worlds removed. following german ‘re-unification’, 1990s economic restructuring has left the region crippled and, as europe is restructured within a global context, unemployment in brandenburg has soared to around 21%. xenophobia is rampant. in the current order of consensus, while the resort’s employees welcome visitors with smiles, in its surrounds, often at bus or railway stations, foreigners are regularly attacked by neo-nazis. strangely, on a late mid-winter afternoon in 2006, the entrance area gives precisely the impression of an oversized railway station. as at airports, x-ray machines guard access to the theme park proper. rancière’s police needs technologies of counting and discounting.11 in this simulated miniature world, visitors’ experiences are monitored and controlled in advance: at the entrance gates, they are equipped with electronic chips on wristbands. from the balinese gate, where the tropical village begins, to the bali pavilion, the borneo longhouse, the thai house and the samoan fale they travel around the tropics within minutes. two stages provide near-constant entertainment and glimpses of exotic worlds.12 only glimpses: what was invisible to the sun-searching germans the performers entertained during the show “call of the south seas”, was that the samoans were freezing in a climate they were neither accustomed to, nor properly equipped for. working exceedingly long hours, unable to leave the compound or their hotel, they eventually did not even earn enough to travel through germany in summer. the resort’s image space allowed visitors to see nothing but projections of their own desires. with the end of their contract, the samoans’ visibility faded away and was overlaid by a succession of new stimuli. in the website’s video, the intelligibility of the fragments of their show has since diminished even further, and so has that of the fale. while the fale’s physical presence remains, the way in which it is staged obscures its historical and geopolitical context. on the website, it is described as a “typical polynesian straw hut”, “a sort of ‘community house’ for several villages”. “it is particularly large and each of the 28 beautifully carved wooden posts represents one of the participating extended families” (samoa fale. open houses for living in the south seas, 2005). the reference to harmonious community life is as unmistakable as the nostalgic flavour in the description of the tropical village’s architecture: it was “built with authentic houses from 6 tropical regions of the world. they were constructed on site at tropical islands by craftsmen from their respective home countries” (the tropical village, 2005). claims to authenticity are often paired with realism in representation.13 similarly, a bad translation is frequently characterized by excessive accuracy. however, benjamin remarks, a translation must, rather then trying to resemble the 11. the “affirmation of ‘objective givens’ handled by the ‘experts in power’ is precisely the negation of the political; it defines what i have proposed to call ‘the police’” (rancière, 2000a: 124). migrant workers, like the samoan performers, are fragments of “the erstwhile worker” as much as the racists outside, “on whom sociologists significantly pin another color label, ‘white trash’” (rancière, 1999: 119). about the (police) desire to control conflict and shape a harmonious collective body, see also buck-morss (1992: 28). 12. since its opening, tropical islands has featured pacific, brazilian, cuban and carribean shows. 13. excessive realism in representation, and the will to control and contain, characterised the egyptian exhibit at the 1869 paris world exhibition (see mitchell, 2002). a street made to resemble cairo was painfully rendered in medieval decay and chaos, with even the façades made dirty. the streets were crowded, not only with make-believe orientals, but fifty imported egyptian donkeys. the mosque, like the whole street, was built as a façade. “as for the interior, it had been set up as a coffee house, where egyptian girls performed dances with young males, and dervishes whirled” (muhammad amin fikri in 1892, quoted in mitchell, 2002: 497). benjamin noted that during the 1867 paris world exhibition, “the ‘oriental quarter’ was the center of attraction” (2002: 18990). interstices 08 27interstices 08 27 14. a good translation does not cover the original (benjamin, 1969b: 79), touching it only lightly and at an “infinitely small point of sense” (80). 15. this “altered world” can, by being seen by all visitors, assume “the position of objective fact” (buck-morss, 1992: 22-3) and become social norm. contemporary theme parks as ‘experiential worlds’ have been interpreted as counter-design (hendry, 2000: 7-8), as escape phenomena, or as instances of mcdisneyization – which can all intensify specific fantasies and social practices (schlehe, 2004). entrance flanked by x-ray machines. photo: author, 2006. bali gate. photo: author, 2006. samoan fale. photo:sylvia henrich, 2007. samoan fale in the tropical village. photo: author, 2007. original, “incorporate the original’s mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language” (1969b: 78).14 to preserve the state a translator’s language happens to be in, is a principal mistake (pannwitz quoted in benjamin, 1969b: 81). the potential that lies between the lines of the original text cannot be recognized when reverence for one’s own language and culture is greater than that for the “spirit of the foreign”; when the desire to control and contain is greater than the willingness to abandon oneself to the other (82). “allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue”, a translator must “expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language” (81). while realism suggests correspondence with the world, certainty of representation simultaneously relies on the “difference in time and displacement in space” separating “the representation from the real thing” (mitchell, 2002: 501). this is ensured by the exhibition’s distancing of observer and object. a logic of consensus, which portrays a global community in which, “unfortunately, some groups or individuals still stay behind or accidentally fall astray, as traditional forms of social bonding tend to loosen or vanish” (rancière, 2005), is likely to reinforce the dividing line between “what is in and what is out”. these groups and their material cultures are then drawn into the production of phantasmagoric appearances of reality, which both extend and numb the senses through technical manipulation (buck-morss, 1992: 22). objects and performances are ‘real enough’ at tropical islands, but their setting-into-scene requires enormous logistics of construction, engineering, transport, environmental and operational control, media presence and finance. to allow viewers to forget about the background of the display, to make a narcotic out of reality itself,15 labour occurs back-stage and the performance seems joyous. thus, the audience, seated for dinner along the south sea’s sandy beach, watches the evening show on the island across the water, while technicians, cooks and cleaners remain in the shadows. ultimately, the simulated encounter with the exotic, and the fascination with commodified leisure or experience, is likely to disappoint. rancière notes that, for benjamin, “the arcade of outdated commodities holds the promise of the future” only if it is closed, “made unavailable, in order that the promise may be kept” (2002: 103). a world of total visibility leaves no room for appearance to occur, to “produce its divisive, fragmenting effects” (1999: 104). when everything is on display and up for grabs, a visitor is “called on to live out all his fantasies in a world of total exhibition”, in which everything seems possible, “meaning, of course, doomed to disappointment” (120). there is a price to be paid for bringing the distant too close without a willingness to go out of ourselves (taussig, 1992: 23ff). perceptibility suffers when experience is made impossible, when images and interstices 08 27 interstices 08 27 episodes constantly demand to be taken as one’s own personal fantasies and dreams. productive distance is obliterated, and the conflict between what can and cannot be said is suppressed. at tropical islands, some of the carefully selected samoan performers had to be recalled home following “constant disorderly and drunken behaviour” (sio, 2005, 25 may), perhaps induced by the “24/7 of fun” environment at the resort (tropical islands, 2005), or by their living and working conditions.16 turned into objects of european fantasies, some samoan performers may have preferred to disappear. taking a turn: when can disagreement take place? tropes, turns, travels … what they share are changing vistas and aspects, which will, however, be perceived in different ways. travel in tropical islands is not literally to travel around the world. not all that have come here coexist in peace: neither are they enemies. there is no apparent consensus about a common world: neither is there obvious disagreement. if experiences are the “sensible configuration of [a] lived common wor[l]d”, as rancière holds (2003a: s4), then they seem out of step here. disputes about what one sees and feels – “how it can be told and discussed, who is able to name it and argue about it” (s4) – which could lead to a common re-configuration of the sensible, do not take place. insofar as the tropical village, the samoan fale and the show “call of the south seas” are translations of a foreign original into a local idiom, they could, potentially, express what remains repressed in a samoan context. however, the configurations at the resort tend to obscure the common world rather than make it visible. interestingly, as jean-louis déotte suggests, rancière seems to overlook aspects of difference and dissonance (mésentente) that occur outside of situations in which speakers use the same terms in different ways. within western societies, voices that were previously unheard can indeed suddenly appear on the scene, forcing society to deal with their demands,17 so that those who had no share in politics “end by taking part” (2004: 81), since they belong to “a virtual community beyond social divisions … made up of anyone and everyone” (86). thus, the neo-nazis with their violent dissensus, and the dissent expressed in the press regarding tropical island resort’s planning and implementation, are sometimes visible and audible. however, rancière’s perspective is distinctively philosophical, and to an extent eurocentric. it cannot account for “cases of intercultural différend, for which there 16. they may have suffered a similar degradation to that of the egyptians in paris, 1869, which “seemed as necessary to these spectacles as the scaffolded facades or the curious crowds of onlookers. the facades, the onlookers, and the degradation seemed all to belong to the organizing of an exhibit, to a particularly european concern with rendering the world up to be viewed” (mitchell, 2002: 497). 17. see deranty (2003). entrance flanked by x-ray machines. photo: author, 2006. bali gate. photo: author, 2006. samoan fale. photo:sylvia henrich, 2007. samoan fale in the tropical village. photo: author, 2007. interstices 08 29interstices 08 29 would never be a common scene of interlocution” (86-7), and translation cannot even begin. in such situations, those outside (invisible and inaudible) not only have to accept the discursive norms of the ‘virtual community’ they are confronting, but also to explain themselves by them. they must also divide the sensible according to rules or laws that are alien to them (87).18 rancière does not seem to consider the role of the différend as a cause of mésentente.19 besides, disagreement seems impossible, almost by definition, with an exotic that one loves to visit briefly and look at, but whom one does not want to become lastingly involved with (beuchelt, 1987: 100). further, we tend to assume that everyone wants to be part of our virtual community of disagreement. what if they prefer not to? when discussing tropical islands in samoa, sometimes i had a distinct sense of withdrawal: rather than disagreeing with tropical islands’ handling of contracts or the use of the fale, two interviewees (from quite different positions within a spectrum of opinion) placed responsibility with the resort’s management, but preferred not to elaborate.20 on the other hand, colin au, who believed tropical islands would be successful because he knew “how the germans tick”, sought little involvement with locals in order to understand its context. many germans hunger for the tropical sun, but they may not care about cultural specifics and even be less interested in authenticity than au believed. the visitors’ interest in exotic cultures, beyond fleeting allusion, was not strong enough to sustain the resort as a viable business venture. at the end of 2006, tropical islands was restructured. while the notion of the world in a village is maintained, the village and the fale, next to the children’s fun park, are diminishing and the scene begins to look like an assembly of props.21 while to different degrees and in different roles, people have always participated at tropical islands, in the future it is likely that there will no longer be foreign ‘villagers’ with whom visitors could agree or disagree. given their interest in art and politics, perception and language, and the potential of ruptures and conflict to open up a space of visibility, it is not surprising that rancière and benjamin were also interested in the theatre and the stage. rancière even defined politics as a theatrical performance of: the gap between a place where the demos exists and a place where it does not … politics consists in playing or acting out this relationship, which means first setting it up as theatre, inventing the argument, in the double logical and dramatic sense of the term, connecting the unconnected (rancière, 1999: 88).22 benjamin recalls the final scenes in some plays, where actors enter the stage, fleeing. brought to a standstill by their appearance on stage, they enter into “the visual field of nonparticipating and truly impartial persons [which] allows the harassed to draw breath, bathes them in new air”. correspondingly, there must be “a place, a light, a footlight glare, in which our flight through life may be likewise sheltered in the presence of onlooking strangers” (1934/1986: 91). the onlookers can actively and knowingly engage with the spectacle, precisely because they never wholly identify with it but, rather, draw on their own experiences, from a critical distance (hallward, 2006: §13). these notions of the stage and its power are very different from what, currently, can be observed at tropical islands resort. closeness and distance, degrees of engagement and reflection, will play a role in creating the 18. symbolic apparatuses and industries (déotte, 2004: 79) institute a political and cultural order that cannot be challenged from outside. they rely ultimately on a silently shared assumption that voice and visibility depend on articulate deliberation, argument, logos. other forms of elaboration, narrative or reve lation, find no place to be shared here (88). emancipation à la rancière, therefore, will defeat those other formswhich will survive as an ever growing remainder (88). 19. see also note 4 above. 20 for a distinction between dissent and dissensus, see ostwald’s contribution to this issue,page 11, par 4. 21. the re-structuring appears to be based on a better understanding of the target market and has sadly led to an environment familiar to germans from saunas on the outskirts of cities: factory halls filled with plaster and trompes d’oeuil of mediterranean isles for the longing of the soul – all bound together by tons of tiles for the hygiene of the body. 22. i am using hallward’s adapted translation. interstices 08 29 interstices 08 29 conditions under which disagreement becomes possible, and the partition of the sensible might change. references allmaier, m. (2004). palmen fürs volk. retrieved may 12, 2006, from http://zeus.zeit.de/ text/2004/52/tropical_island benjamin, w. (1934/1986). one-way-street (e. jephcott, trans.). in p. demetz (ed.), walter benjamin. reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings (pp. 61-96). new york: schocken books. benjamin, w. (1969a). on language as such and on the language of man. in h. arendt (ed.), illuminations (pp. 314-332). new york: schocken. benjamin, w. (1969b). the task of the translator. in h. arendt (ed.), illuminations (pp. 69-82). new york: schocken. benjamin, w. (1969c). theses on the philosophy of history. in h. arendt (ed.), illuminations (pp. 253-264). new york: schocken books. benjamin, w. (1969d). the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. in h. arendt (ed.), illuminations (pp. 217-251). new york: schocken. benjamin, w. (1996). perception is reading. in m. bullock & m. w. jennings (eds.), walter benjamin. selected writings (vol. 1, pp. 92). cambridge (mass): harvard university press. benjamin, w. (2002). the arcades project (h. eiland & k. mclaughlin, trans.). cambridge (mass.): harvard university press. beuchelt, e. (1987). zur rezeption der völkerausstellungen um 1900. in h. pollig, s. schlichtenmayer & g. baur-burkarth (eds.), exotische welten. europäische phantasien (pp. 98-105). stuttgart: institut für auslandsbeziehungen & württembergischer kunstverein. brüggemann, h. (2002). architekturen des augenblicks: raum-bilder und bild-räume einer urbanen moderne in literatur, kunst und architektur des 20. jahrhunderts. hannover: offizin. buck-morss, s. (1992). aesthetics and anaesthetics: walter benjamin’s artwork essay reconsidered. october, 62 (autumn), 3-41. connolly, k. (2004, 21.12.). germans get taste of tropics an hour’s drive from berlin. retrieved may 1, 2006, from http://travelvideo.tv/news/more.php?id=a3758_0_1_0_m déotte, j.-l. (2004). the differences between rancière’s mésentente (political disagreement) and lyotard’s différend. substance: a review of theory and literary criticism, 33(1), 77-90. deranty, j.-p. (2003). rancière and contemporary political ontology. theory & event, 6(4), ss 1-37. dipaola, k. (2004). samoa ‘perle‘ der deutschen kolonien? ‘bilder‘ des exotischen anderen in geschichte(n) des 20. jahrhunderts. unpublished doctor of philosophy, university of maryland, college park. dpa. (2004). world’s largest indoor rainforest gets the nod. retrieved march 3, 2006, from http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=88305 eames, a. (2006). welcome to germany’s pleasure dome. retrieved september 6, 2006, from http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,10290-2187529,00.html goldmann, s. (1987). zur rezeption der völkerausstellungen um 1900. in h. pollig, s. schlichtenmayer & g. baur-burkarth (eds.), exotische welten. europäische phantasien (pp. 88-93). stuttgart: institut für auslandsbeziehungen & württembergischer kunstverein. hallward, p. (2006). staging equality. on rancière’s theatrocracy. new left review, 37(jan/ feb), 109-129. hendry, j. (2000). the orient strikes back: a global view of cultural display. oxford: berg. holmes, b. (2001). hieroglyphs of the future: jacques rancière and the aesthetics of equality. cabinet magazine, 4(fall). interstices 08 pb kaiser, w. (n.d.). world exhibition 1851: the rat-race for progress. retrieved may 1, 2006, from http://zis.uibk.ac.at/quellen/weltausstellungen/kaiser_punch.html leaupepe, j. n. (2005). dancing all the way to germany. retrieved may 3, 2006, from http:// www.samoaobserver.ws/news/local/ln0205/1905ln007.htm the mark of kri on playstation 2 long read. (2003, august 2004). retrieved september 5, 2004, from http://www.aocafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=285&postdays=0&postorder =asc&start=0&sid=3be50c8fff5e574c7c3ac45bc22f0875&5717af20b1e45d31238493a7a5adb7ff =cba5bd666a943a65e238a5b582140ccf mersch, d. (n.d.). ›aisthesis‹, ›ekstasis‹, and ›askesis‹. movements of avant-garde art. retrieved february 3, 2007, from http://www.momo-berlin.de/mersch_avantgarde.html mitchell, t. (2002). orientalism and the exhibitionary order. in n. mirzoeff (ed.), the visual culture reader (pp. 495-505). london: routledge. rancière, j. (1999). disagreement: politics and philosophy (j. rose, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. rancière, j. (2000a). dissenting words. a conversation with jacques rancière. diacritics, 30(2), 113-126. rancière, j. (2000b). literature, politics, aesthetics: approaches to democratic disagreement. interview with solange guénoun and james h. kavanagh. substance, 29(2), 3-24. rancière, j. (2002). the aesthetic revolution and its outcomes. emplotments of autonomy and heteronomy. new left review, 14(march-april). rancière, j. (2003a). comment and responses. theory & event, 6(4). rancière, j. (2003b). en allant à l’expo: l’ouvrier, sa femme, les machines. in les scènes du peuple: les révoltes logiques (pp. 63-84). lyon: horlieu. rancière, j. (2003c). the politics of aesthetics. retrieved december 13, 2005, from http:// theater.kein.org/node/99 rancière, j. (2004). introducing disagreement. angelaki journal of the theoretical humanities, 9(3 december), 3-9. rancière, j. (2005, 16.01.2005). statement on the occasion of the panel discussion: “artists and cultural producers as political subjects. opposition, intervention, participation, emancipation in times of neo-liberal globalisation”. paper presented at the symposium “der status des politischen in aktueller kunst und kultur”, 14-16 januar 2005, künstlerhaus bethanien und volksbühne am rosa-luxemburg-platz, berlin. rancière, j. (2006). thinking between disciplines: an aesthetics of knowledge. parrhesia (1), 1-12. samoa fale. open houses for living in the south seas. (2005). retrieved november 12, 2005, from http://www.my-tropical-islands.com/village/samoa-fale-e.htm schlehe, j. (2004). themenparks: globale kulturrepräsentation, nation building oder freizeitvergnügen? in k. beck, t. förster & h. p. hahn (eds.), blick nach vorn. festgabe für gerd spittler (pp. 298-310). köln: rüdiger koppe. sio, m. (2005, 25 may). 2 dancers being sent home from germany. retrieved may 13, 2006, from http://www.samoaobserver.ws/news/local/ln0505/2505ln004.htm steffen-schrade, j. (1998). exkurs: samoaner im frankfurter zoo. in g. kroeber-wolf & p. mesenhöller (eds.), talofa! samoa, südsee ansichten und einsichten (pp. 368-387). frankfurt: museum für völkerkunde. taussig, m. (1992). physiognomic aspects of visual worlds. visual anthropology review, 8(1), 15-28. toscano, a. (2006). pedagogic note on jacques rancière. retrieved january 10, 2007, from http://roundtable.kein.org/node/402 tropical islands. (2005). retrieved august 7, 2005, from http://www.my-tropical-islands. com/ the tropical village. (2005). retrieved november 12, 2005, from http://www.my-tropicalislands.com/village/index-e.htm interstices 6 chains of negotiations: navigating between modernity and tradition1 jeremy treadwell there is no denying the impressive interior space of the university of auckland fale pasifika, with its soaring shadowy volume rising above the low band of light at its base. the size of the building has necessitated timbers of impressive dimensions to carry the roof structure. this is indeed a substantial building, a tangible commitment by the university to pacific culture. this paper discusses some of the intricate dilemmas of its historical and contextual background. te rangi hiroa (sir peter buck) wrote in the introduction to samoan material culture that “persistence of custom has led to the retention of much native material culture in samoa … the need for guest houses kept up the guild of carpenters who … perpetuated the native form of architecture and technique” (1930: 6). linking custom and material cultural production, buck emphasised their widespread continuity, concluding that “the [recording of] technique may be useful to the samoans in days to come when the broadening of the horizon will inevitably lead to the decay of their native arts and crafts”(7).2 woven into buck’s description of the construction of a samoan guest house—a fale tele—are accounts of ceremonies that structured the process. the making of a fale is inextricably bound into the social world of politics and economies it was destined to shape. the fale simply was: it existed in its own time and space, congruent with its social milieu, rather than symbolising something separate from itself. in that sense, the fale may be equivalent to romanesque or gothic cathedrals in which peter eisenman (1984: 155) perceives a lack of signification: “things were; truth and meaning were self evident … it [the building] was de facto.” by contrast, he argues, all buildings from the renaissance onward “pretended to be ‘architecture’”—and “received their value by representing an already valued architecture”. eisenman’s proposition provokes consideration of a parallel condition in the pacific as a consequence of european colonisation. pacific and indigenous architecture generally was frequently appropriated by its colonisers (morton, 2000). an example is the exhibition of maori houses at interna1. this discussion is based on my prior experience of the complexity and dilemmas involved in the design and construction of a small traditional faletele at the school of architecture at unitec institute of technology. 2. buck’s anatomising description of fale construction may be seen as an attempt to describe and fix a contemporary tradition as a condition, against which all future fale may be judged. figure 1: construction and representation in conflict all photos by jeremy treadwell 111 tional and british expositions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. samoan fale were also variously exhibited in britain and new zealand during the 1920s and 1930s. colonial interest in re-representation led to their excision from their spatial and temporal contexts; they became colonial representations of fale. in the wake of these disjunctive interventions, fale building is no longer inextricably bound by traditional context. it has become a self-conscious act of the present, in which values of the past are relativised and represented. tradition is never a static order which excludes innovation: innovation was highly valued in samoan tradition. we know of two-storey fale, and one tufuga-fai-fale (architect/master builder), mulitalo, was described as having specialised in a “fale afolau (long house) with two smaller rounded ends added in the middle of the long section” (unesco office for the pacific states, 1992: 73). innovations in the twentieth century have included the use of corrugated steel for the roof, concrete floors, the widespread use of nails, milled timber, and a reduction in the use of lashing. in 1985, when roger neich surveyed houses in thirteen villages in upolu and savaii, only twenty-two of 887 houses were fully lashed, thatched and framed: “the percentage of traditional thatched, sennit lashed houses in all villages is now minimal” (1985: 21). these considerations form part of the background of the university of auckland project to construct a large fale afolau as focal point of the new centre for pacific studies. if buck’s 1930 textual fale is taken as an exemplar of samoan tradition, what might the huge dislocation in space and time mean for the designers and users of such a building? displaced from traditional context, the design of a fale becomes, in part, the design of representations. a chain of negotiations arises between elements signifying tradition and requirements arising from the new context. without binding traditions, things can get complicated, for everything is now at stake: form, structure, function, ornament, and of course spatial context. on what basis are architectural decisions about such things now figure 2: aligned with the street interstices 6 made? in an account of the design process, ivan mercep of jasmax was reported as saying this system of construction would not meet new zealand structural standards, particularly since at 26 metres long and 15 metres wide it is much bigger than a traditional pacific fale. so the timber poles are connected with unobtrusive bolted steel gussets that are set into the framework. these will be covered with traditional lashings. (university fale begins to take shape, 2004) this was a decision of considerable significance because it separated architecture from construction. traditionally, the fale’s powerful aesthetics were indistinguishable from its structure. samoan traditional fale architecture was enviably ‘modern’: the experience of the interior’s visual complexity and beauty is that of its explicit structure and construction. for samoan tufuga-fai-fale there was no need to devise the negative detail as shadowy representation—what could be a more explicit statement of function than the lashed joint? the union of elements can be traced with every turn of the afa (sennit cord). while western architecture relinquished the fiction of the modern in the 1980s, unease about covering structure with ornament is still widespread. within a modern tradition, lashing without structural role becomes ornamental; in a post-modern paradigm, the fale acquires an explicitly representational condition. figure 3: the lashed joint as an occasional feature 11� much appears to have been given away with the decision not take samoan structural systems seriously. new zealand’s environmental conditions are frequently mentioned to explain architectural decisions. many environmental risks, however, are related to the country’s general seismic conditions, which auckland does not equally share. however, auckland occasionally experiences significant storms that endanger buildings. fale were developed within this environment of annual storms, and archaeological records suggest that fale have been built in the tropical pacific region for many hundreds of years. contemporary observations of the fale’s general resistance to cyclones suggest that its structural system is worth considering. the large scale of the fale pasifika was another explanation why traditional principles of construction were abandoned. however, there are photographs of nineteenth century fale measuring around twelve metres in height and breadth—dimensions roughly equivalent to the scale of the fale pasifika. were the structural operations of the traditional fale investigated from an engineering point of view? such research would be of great value, not only to pacific studies, but also to the discipline of engineering. entering the fale pasifika is a memorable experience. when crossing the threshold at the top step of the paepae (platform) and passing under the low soffit of the roof, the building opens up its soaring interior volume. this experience confirms the understanding of the fale as an interior building. it is on the inside surfaces that they reveal themselves. but maybe as a consequence of this building’s size, its interior space—in contrast to traditional buildings with their proliferation of timbered complexity—seems strangely empty and mutely incoherent. it is as if pacific tradition has baffled the west. standing in the main space and looking up, one notices that the fine traditional thatching astles have been replaced with grooved plywood. on the straight sides of the building, the grooves run vertically (traditionally), and at right angles to the laau matua (under purlins), echoing the warp and weft of the pacific structure. but, astonishingly, the grooved plywood in the round end of the tala is run not at right angles with the great curved beams—fau, but in parallel, denying all sense of their constructional role.3 the building seems to embody the dilemmas faced by the architects in their quest to represent the traditional with the modern. what elements are needed to be present to signify tradition, once traditional construction and structure has been jettisoned? in the selection of familiar elements of a fale interior, questions arise as to which ones to use, and how much is enough? while in the tradition of the west ‘less is more’, in samoan architecture less is not enough. consequently, the building lacks the visual complexity of major and minor elements, interwoven in the wonderful texture of pacific architecture. while some elements were reinstated to operate symbolically, the omission of others such as the auau (ridge pole), an element fundamental to wider pacific architecture, leaves the building incoherent in its representational claims. auckland can feel like a subtropical city in summer but, for most of the year, the cold south-westerly winds banish such fantasies. fale were not built for such climates. their openness is architecturally foreign, even alarming, in a new zealand context. for a fale to be habitable throughout the year, it has to be capable of being enclosed. the designers’ response was to deploy a perimeter of glazed aluminium joinery, a mixture of bi-folding doors and louvres, to admit flows of people and breeze. visually, however, 3. the equivalent in western architecture would be to run nogs parallel with studs, or the ceiling battens parallel with the rafters. interstices 6 the glass in dark painted frames hermetically seals the house. taken seriously, the radical openness of the fale tradition offers western architecture a chance to rethink its strategies of achieving openness in buildings, beyond the ubiquities of aluminium joinery.4 the ‘glazing line’ of the fale also excludes from the building’s interior the important perimeter posts, crucial for setting out social and political hierarchies in the important kava ceremony. here, the architects’ judgement was in line with buck’s assessment of the disadvantages of fale afolau or long houses (the fale pasifika is a long house), where the main interior posts obstruct sightlines and where “guests therefore have to sit to the inner side of the supporting posts while the attendants sit between the main posts and the wall posts” (te rangi hiroa, w930: 21). adroitly, the architects left the perimeter posts visually to structure the exterior of the fale without compromising its social utility. to design a fale based on the samoan fale afolau, not just for samoans but for all pacific people, seems like an impossibly complex task. over-generalisation had to be avoided and materials and elements employed that could take the fale towards a new, hybrid complexity. filipe tohi’s lashings might do just that, and provide a beginning for the house to become both an instance of pacific architecture and a repository of wider pacific cultural production. perplexingly, however, they appear to have been abandoned before completion. at the level of the first tie beams, black and russet coloured afa are wound into complex geometries, unmistakeable statements of pacific craft. above this level though, the lashings are small and occasional, and the rest of the structure is revealed as a composition in pinus radiata and galvanised steel—meagre by comparison. the restriction of lashing to just a few locations seems as incongruous as the re-direction of the plywood grooves, and their location suggests that their purpose was indeed to conceal the steel fittings whilst simultaneously evoking tradition, at least at the major structural junctions. this creates a double emptiness. not only is pacific construction set aside, but its aesthetic and signifying properties seem also undermined. the fale pasifika reveals how difficult it is to build across cultures, but it also seems to offer clues about what may become a new pacific architec4. failure to rethink rote strategies has, during the period of new zealand’s control of samoa, similarly led to a misrecognition of openness: in model villages, fale were built in straight lines to one side of the malae or open ceremonial ground, which had taken on the ‘openness’ of a parade ground. the “almost ethereal loveliness” of samoan villages was lost in the view of a contemporary trader (in austin, 1996: 3). the issue is the extent to which western planning uncritically defaults to a cartesian spatial organisation. a fale that had swivelled to the openness of mechanics bay and unfurled an asymmetrical malae space, instead of aligning itself to the street, might have suggested a design concept critically open to pacific ways of thinking. figure 4: the interior poutu (posts) structure the space 11� ture: hybrid, contemporary, vigorous and enriching. it will be an architecture based on the recognition of traditional strengths and their adaptation, rather than on unquestioning acceptance of orthodoxies, or their representation as tradition. tohi’s sculptural work offers insights into possible transformations: working from projections of traditional tongan lashing, tohi has created a public sculpture already recognised for its architectural qualities.5 the fale pasifika is of great significance to auckland, which already has a number of fale buildings. its designers took a risk that others avoided: they navigated along a line running between modernity and tradition. in doing so, they stretched across great voids to connect two worlds. that the architecture was sometimes out of reach can only indicate the great difficulty of the project. references austin, m. (1996). the mau movement and the model villages in samoa, paper presented at ‘loyalty and disloyalty in the architecture of the british empire’. in proceedings of the 13th conference of the society of architectural historians of australian and new zealand, pp. 1-7. eisenman, p. (1984). the end of the classical. perspecta (21), 154-173. morton, p. a. (2000). hybrid modernities: architecture & representation at the 1931 colonial exposition. cambridge (mass.): mit press. neich, r. (1985). material culture of western samoa: persistence and change. national museum of new zealand bulletin 23 , pp. 1-66. te rangi hiroa. (1930). samoan material culture (vol. bulletin 75). honululu: bernice p. bishop museum. unesco office for the pacific states. (1992). the samoan fale. bangkok: unesco regional office for the pacific. university fale begins to take shape. (2004, march). retrieved 10 july, 2005, from http:// www alumni.auckland.ac.nz/2527.html 5. tohi’s halomoana sculpture, gifted to new plymouth by terry boon, was praised for its architectural implications. the piece outside the onehunga public library is equally complex and three-dimensional. figure 5: frigate birds in the south pacific sky interstices 08 115interstices 08 115 waitangi precinct: competition entry, wellington, 2005 ktaaw: kerstin thompson architects, architecture workshop architects’ statement: new grounds for play our proposal offers new grounds for play, for the city of wellington. imagined as an extension of waitangi park, it reconnects earth, sky and sea and strengthens the city and water edges of the precinct. our scheme provides a gentle topography held and framed by robust buildings, with new opportunities for living, working and playing. it achieves a balance between the development of the waterfront and its continued enjoyment by the public. the careful siting and scale of our suite of buildings and landscapes maximises the experience of the waters edge, while maintaining precious view lines from within the park and the city’s north-south streets. this proposal offers a place from which to consolidate wellington’s position as the cultural capital of new zealand, and new ground on which to play out the city’s future. taking a stroll imagined as a promenade, in celebration of the established walking patterns of wellington, the design traces a primary path from oriental parade alongside the historic sea walls of port nicholson yacht club, under and over our folded ground, past the graving dock, beside the chinese garden, through our gallery up to the marae of te papa. the integration of buildings and landforms orchestrates a journey which frames the harbour and city, and provides intimate and open spaces for repose. celebrating city and sea the proposal occupies two sites and each defines a key edge of the waitangi precinct. site 1/2/3 forms the waters edge and site 4, the city edge. they are designed to be in conversation with each other across the park. the waters edge is celebrated through our lyrical folded ground: a trafficable roof that gently rises up from waitangi park, forming a view corridor to the tararua mountains. a new horizon, it frames the harbour and creates an urban promontory to complement the field of the park. underneath is a substantial portion of the program, including cafes, restaurants, a fish market and deli. the city edge is defined by the gallery, a robust timber framed structure referencing local construction methods and the hardiness of marine structures. it is an exemplary demonstration of contemporary environmental design. as a carapace, it forms a climatic buffer to protect the heat and light sensitive galleries which are held within its volume. the gallery is urban in character, providing a major space following an initial call for expressions of interest, five firms and teams were invited to develop entries for the waitangi precinct: japanese architect shin takamatsu; john wardle architects from melbourne; oosterhuis_lenard and un studio, both from the netherlands; and the trans tasman team of kta aw (wood, 2005). john wardle won the competition for sites 1, 2 and 3 and un studio, for site 4. architecture workshop, in collaboration with isthmus group and tonkin & taylor, received both accolades and an nzia supreme award for architecture for their oriental bay enhancement project in 2006, oriental bay being but a stone’s throw from the waitangi precinct. these two urban design projects, both producing collaborative architecture and landscape architecture outcomes, demonstrate that the wellington city council, and its subsidiary wellington waterfront ltd., are committed to improving the quality of that city’s urban public spaces and the accessibility and experience of the wellington waterfront, thus making the lack of comparable initiatives in certain other new zealand towns and cities all the more noticeable. – eds. interstices 08 115 interstices 08 115 waitangi precinct: competition entry, wellington, 2005 ktaaw: kerstin thompson architects, architecture workshop for cultural events, defining the city edge of the site, and also forming the primary edge to the view corridor from tory street to the harbour. the hostel building addresses cable street. new ecologies with this landmark project, we have sought to use architecture and landscape to contribute to the larger sustainable future of the city. we propose a constructed environment: one that, as a sophisticated ensemble of buildings, landscapes and site infrastructure, forms a new ecology that supports events, people and place in a balanced relationship. green features of the proposal exploit wellington’s climatic conditions for carbon neutral technologies. city edge – environmental statement contemporary art galleries are energy intensive, due to the requirements for conservation and close environmental control. our response closely integrates architectural design, the ‘positively wellington’ climate, the natural sources of energy local to the waterfront site, and the organization and topography of the site elements. an ‘eco-skin’ is used to absorb heat in winter and to reflect heat in summer. natural day-lighting is provided to the main circulation routes. the building will be heated and cooled using energy and water efficient reversible heat pumps, fed from the natural seawater gradient beneath the site, with bores for supply and recharge. the opportunity exists to interlink the plant and energy management systems with those of the main te papa complex. waters edge – environmental statement energy use is minimized, by the use of double aspect apartments with winter garden balconies and maximum access to natural light and ventilation. the long-life building enclosure has best practice levels of thermal insulation, and low emissivity double glazing. each apartment is also provided with solar hot water panels integrated into the roof structure. water conservation will be encouraged by the use of ultra-low flow sanitary fixtures, and by roof-water collection and recycling for toilet flushing. low energy lighting and appliances complete the strategy. green transport solutions will also be encouraged as the development forms an important boardwalk node in the pedestrian network of wellington. car parking will be minimized, within the commercial constraints of the development and, where provided, will be on a ‘small car’ basis. secure cycle storage will be provided for residents, with additional facilities for the general public. the option exists to provide facilities for re-chargeable electric vehicles. the design provides a new paradigm for mixed use development in wellington. references wood, p. (2005). waitangi park competition. architecture new zealand (november december), 18-23. interstices 08 117interstices 08 117 the section through the waters edge site shows reduced height near the sea. site plan identifying the waters edge (site 1/2/3) and the city edge (site 4). the south-east corner (bottom right in the image) is now wraight athfield’s award-winning waitangi park. site diagram identifying the two primary view corridors through the precinct. the waters edge facilities, with the folded ground plane in the foreground, the old herd street post office and the overseas terminal behind, and proposed gallery building on the far left. exploded axonometric of the key elements of the waters edge site: sea wall; declaimed land; apartments and commercial outlets; the ‘program wall’ with fish market, deli, restaurant and recreational hiring facilities; and the folded ground plane, filtering the light to spaces below. sectional diagram showing the environmental strategies incorporated into the folded ground plane and apartment building, including solar and photovoltaic panels, rainwater harvesting, insulation, double glazing, natural cross ventilation and bicycle storage. interstices 08 117 interstices 08 117 above: exploded axonometric of the key elements of the city edge. below: the section through the city edge part of the proposal shows increasing height towards the city centre. sectional diagram showing the environmental strategies incorporated into the gallery building to achieve energy efficiency, including the use of renewable energy and the philosophy of reduce-reuse-recycle. the city edge / gallery building, neighbouring te papa. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 128 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s interview / anthony brand forensic architecture: an interview with lachlan kermode forensic architecture is a research agency based at goldsmiths (university of london), which undertakes advanced spatial and media investigations into alleged cases of state/government violence and persecution, with and on behalf of human rights organisations, media organisations, environmental justice groups, and international prosecutors. the agency was established in 2010 by eyal weizman and a collection of fellow architects after realising that their academic work at the centre for research architecture1 could only go so far: “we needed to place our research in the most difficult situations, the most antagonistic of forms, and make use of it, mobilise it, on behalf of people whose suffering had been ignored” (weizman 2018: 22). the practice is effectively a firm of architectural detectives; its work involves meticulously reconstructing past actions and events from trace evidence, ranging from the physical (bullet holes/shells, track marks, residue) to the more fleeting and ephemeral (audio clips, mobile phone footage, and witness accounts). their first commissions came from several organisations investigating drone strikes,2 since the targets of these strikes had drifted from vehicles parked on the roadside to buildings in towns and cities: “the evidence [now] had an architectural fig. 1 forensic architecture (2018). members of the fa team working in the agency’s office at goldsmith’s, university of london [photograph] in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 129 interview / forensic architecture: an interview with lachlan kermode p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s dimension, and there were no other organisations providing architectural analysis” (weizman 2017: 22). one of the key criteria for undertaking a particular project is determined by the agency’s mandate that stipulates that there must be an opportunity to develop, disseminate, and employ new technologies or investigative techniques that can be used to gather and present evidence in the service of human rights groups and communities exposed to state violence and persecution. forensic architecture has presented its investigations in international courtrooms, truth commissions, parliamentary inquiries, and united nations assemblies. the agency currently comprises of a group of fifteen full-time researchers—nine architects and six specialists including investigative journalists, software developers, game developers, film-makers, and others—though these numbers fluctuate with the scale and the particular expertise required for each project. i approached one member of the group, lachlan kermode, to learn more about fa. with a background in computer science from princeton university, kermode has been handling various full stack platforms and machine learning workflows for the agency since 2018. his academic interests are generally found in and between computer science, infrastructure studies, and cultural and critical theory. i spoke with him at the firm’s studio in goldsmiths on 26 june 2019. anthony brand: how did you get involved with forensic architecture (fa)? did they come to you or . . . lachlan kermode: no, so eyal [weizman], who’s our director, gave a seminar at my undergrad university a couple of years back and i then got in touch with fa and stayed in touch over the course of my research that i was studying in princeton in the us and [ . . . ] some of the professors that i worked with there were in touch with fa, so then when i was looking for a place to go after i graduated, i came to fa. ab: so presumably then before that seminar this wasn’t something you had been thinking about doing or had considered? lk: no, but i was interested in finding computer practices that were critical so that was sort of how i came in. and other people have different stories about how they came here—many come from an architectural background so we have a close affiliation with the architectural association (the aa), where eyal did his phd and then other people come into it from different angles as well. ab: what are the sorts of projects that you work on? lk: okay, so the first one that would perhaps be of interest would be saydnaya. the idea was basically to reconstruct the saydnaya prison based on interviews with detainees who have been tortured in that prison. the main difficulty in reconstructing this prison was that all of the detainees were blindfolded and disoriented the entire time so that all of the reconstructions had to be done through sound and other sorts of sensory experiences. so many of our investigations involve our architects employing this technique to situate the event or a series of events in 3d space and then map existing media—whether it be photos, videos, testimonies, audio files, satellite imagery, and that sort of thing—using the 3d model as a ground truth basically—placing that media in time and space and then working out how certain bits of media can corroborate other types of media and so on and so forth. almost any of these investigations [scrolls through the list of projects from the fa website], you can click on and find that sort of thing. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 130 interview / forensic architecture: an interview with lachlan kermode p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s ab: so how do you, as a non-architect, fit in? lk: the research that i do is more along the lines of looking at how we can use software and software techniques to enhance either particular workflows or looking at how computing can be similarly helpful, basically in developing techniques in computing. [ . . . ] a lot of the stuff we’re doing is architectural in terms of modelling things in space and that sort of thing, but it also reaches into a lot of other fields quite quickly in terms of, you know, webscraping or crawling certain web domains or something like that to find certain types of images using a search term. so, this is one recent investigation that we did [points to a project near the top of the fa website] which has been my main work for the past couple of months—was using techniques in computer vision using a machine learning algorithm, basically to analyse certain objects, training that machine learning algorithm to detect a particular type of object in an image, and then deploying that classifier across a range of different places on the web like youtube, or twitter, and that sort of thing, in order to automatically discover this type of gas canister, which is called a triple chaser gas canister, and then use that in tandem with ongoing human rights accountability efforts to basically discover new images of this gas canister algorithmically.3 fig. 2 forensic architecture (2016). reconstructing saydnaya: a detainee works with forensic architecture researchers to recreate elements of the prison [photograph, courtesy of fa] fig. 3 forensic architecture (2019). positive identification: during the process of training a “computer vision” classifier, bounding boxes and “masks” tell the classifier where in the image the triple-chaser grenade exists. [praxis films, courtesy of fa] in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 131 interview / forensic architecture: an interview with lachlan kermode p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s ab: fa have developed a pretty diverse portfolio of projects. how do you decide which to pursue and which are beyond your scope, remit, or areas of expertise? lk: so the process would be to first do a briefing meeting with eyal, christina varvia [deputy director],4 and the people who are involved in that particular project, to work out what the terms of the project might be. and there are quite specific terms in which an fa project can take place: in the sense that it’s not just “something happened and we want to investigate it”. there needs to be often like particular media (because a lot of the stuff we do is media based) or a way to develop a new methodology or a methodology that we’re already developing that might take place. and then there are various people, researchers work on different investigation at any one time, so it’s also a matter of what researchers are available for the particular timeline of a project. also what the expense of the project would be—we have some funding from the erc, which is the european research council, so the operational costs are covered, but if the project were to involve hiring outside specialists or bringing in a bunch of other people, then how we cover those costs would have to be discussed. ab: how do you even work out your fees for something like that? lk: well, we don’t have ‘fees’ in the sense that we don’t make any money as an agency, right? the way that we work out the fees is just basically ‘are we going to have to hire a fluid dynamics specialist for two months for this project? yes, we are. what’s a fluid dynamicist’s day-rate?’ that’s how much it costs, and then all of the project coordination and the regular costs are covered by the . . . ab: european research grant lk: exactly, so it’s not a ‘fee’ as in fa are trying to make an income or anything like that. ab: so in terms of how you select which projects to take on, it depends, as you say, on the media and opportunities to develop techniques and whatever you happen to be working on at the time. lk: yeah, exactly, so our particular mandate for the erc is to develop new research techniques in fa that can then be used more broadly. so, there’s a practical consideration in the sense of how many researchers we have available [ . . . ], and then the academic or theoretical consideration is, “is this an opportunity to develop new research techniques?” because that’s technically our academic mandate. ab: okay, so what sort of projects are you working on at the moment? is the content on the website current? lk: no, definitely not. so, some projects last three months, some projects last three years. basically, and it depends on a whole bunch of external factors and internal factors as well. there’s a range of investigations going on at the moment that aren’t on the website because they’re not finished or because this material may be sensitive or something along those lines. what i’m personally working on is on the website, so can be shown—which is this triple chaser thing—but what we saw from it is that using machine learning 5 in human rights research generally can be really useful for accountability efforts, so we’re holding a workshop with other human rights organisations such as amnesty [international], human rights watch, and that sort, to show them this tooling and just work out whether in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 132 interview / forensic architecture: an interview with lachlan kermode p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s or not we can use it more collaboratively and cohesively across different contexts. ab: so who commissions these sort of things generally then? because obviously you’ve got people like amnesty, and i know there have been journals like the new york times, but they seem pretty sporadic and random in terms of potential clients who approach you, or rather, clients whose projects you choose to take on. lk: yeah, it’s not always that we’re approached and asked to take on a project, sometimes we decide to take on a project in conversation with activists on the ground or on the back of a project that we previously did. for example, we did a lot of projects in israel/palestine, and there are always new opportunities to extend or refurbish research that we’ve done. so, for example, this project that was just released, conquer and divide,6 is a new project in a certain sense: we’ve never done an interactive map on this scale before, but it’s a continuation of a lot of the work that we’ve done in israel/palestine previously, [ . . . ] there’s definitely a lot of projects that we want to take on that we can’t take on [because] they’re sensitive to time or something like that. ab: do you know, in that case, if there are plans to expand? lk: we’re sort of expanding at the moment in a certain sense. there are plans to expand as in one of our programmes or prerogatives is to create these forensic techniques [from machine learning and photogrammetry to situated testimony and reenactment] and then allow other people to use them, other organisations, like human rights watch is now creating a digital lab for example and we work in partnership with them. in terms of fa itself expanding, it’s a question of resources. space is a major one: we don’t have any space beyond this office—the erc research grant runs out in 2020 as well, so . . . ab: a syrian military base, a residential tower block in london, a factory in pakistan, an internet café in germany . . . obviously fa have completed quite a few projects in quite a few locations now. are there any places that are off limits? or any projects that you wouldn’t take on? other than the ones that are government-funded of course . . . fig. 4 forensic architecture (2019). a still image from the conquer and divide platform [courtesy of fa] in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 133 interview / forensic architecture: an interview with lachlan kermode p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s lk: yeah, so that’s a key one: government-funded—we don’t take any funding from governments or anything like that, and i think (i’m the wrong person to be speaking to about this) the mandate is that all cases investigate state violence or government-initiated violence, or where the government is responsible for violence in some way, so there’s a sort of pre-filtering, based on our mandate and the kind of work that we do. i don’t think in principle we’re opposed to doing work in particular places, or that “we would never do work in this place, and we would never do work in that place” sort of thing. but there are certainly specific conditions around why we would or why we wouldn’t do a project. so for example we haven’t yet done a project in china, which is not to say that we’d never do a project in china or anything like that, but we wouldn’t just want to pick up one day and say “oh, let’s do some work on china” or something like that, it would have to be a sort of strong connection with activists on the ground, people that are materially affected on a daily basis by the conditions. ab: i imagine there would be certain parties who would have a vested interest in restricting your involvement in a particular project. what are the realistic limitations to what you can do when you get a project in a new site somewhere? how do you even go about finding witnesses for instance? lk: yeah . . . it depends [ . . . ] in the case of working with a legal organisation, sometimes they’ll have witnesses or people that we can interview for a particular project. but not every project requires witnesses, it depends on the terms. [in some cases] it might be coordinated by the collaborating legal organisation. in other cases, for example with the grenfell [tower fire] project, we have different ways of bringing in particular people: there’s an organisation called grenfell united who we’re in close contact with, the survivors of the grenfell tower catastrophe, and we can get in contact with them through that. there isn’t any formalised way, it depends on the project and on the terms. fig. 5 forensic architecture (2018). grenfell tower: early stages of projecting and mapping videos onto the architectural model within the web platform. the toolbars on the bottom and right side of the image show possibilities for interactivity using a timeline and communications data. [courtesy of fa] in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 134 interview / forensic architecture: an interview with lachlan kermode p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s ab: so how much of this sort of research can you do off-site, by which i mean not necessarily on the ground at the specific physical location of the incident itself ? lk: again it depends very much upon the project. in the saydnaya case, none of that research was done on-site because one of the constraints of the project from the get go was that we don’t have access to the saydnaya premises, so we have to reconstruct what we can entirely offsite. certainly if we’re trying to reconstruct what happened at a certain scene and we can go to that place and do photogrammetry at the place or capture the sort of environment, the conditions, in some way that can be constructive to a digital reconstruction, or the work or labour that we’re trying to do, then we’ll go to that place and do what we can with it. ab: so for instance, with the saydnaya project, how do you even know, once you’ve got this thing and you’ve put it all together, that it’s accurate? lk: we don’t, for sure, what we produced from the saydnaya project is a . . . ab: best guess? lk: yeah, it’s a forensic reconstruction of saydnaya. i mean that’s always what forensics is in a sense, it’s always a best guess of what happens—none of these are 100 per cent for sure. ab: so when the work here gets used in court by the un or whoever, someone could simply refute it and say “oh well, it’s digitally doctored (use basically the photoshop argument) and you could easily have just done anything you like with it”? lk: yeah, exactly, they can do that . . . and they do, as they understand it. ab: yeah, so how do you get people to take it seriously? lk: by presenting it in a serious and convincing way. ab: . . . sure . . . (?) lk: [laughs] are you familiar with bellingcat’s work? 7 bellingcat is another opensource investigative agency which was started by a guy called elliot higgins, who was just sitting on his computer at home, threading together a bunch of different things that happened online. there’s no prior legitimacy, i mean, now bellingcat has developed a sort of reputation for open-source investigations, so there’s a certain legitimacy that comes with their name . . . ab: yeah, as you guys have with this kudos that’s now associated with fa. lk: right, but there’s nothing there from the get-go, right? the first post was just someone who sat on their computer and decided that all of these things made sense together, showed how they made sense together, and that was the legitimacy in itself. ab: what would you say to people like myself—architectural academics—could be doing to further assist with the work of fa? lk: so one of the things we’re keen to do, or to try and do, is collaboratively working on software called open-source, which is where there’s lots of contributors from lots of different places and various different backgrounds, and that sort of thing—so to the extent that it is possible, we are trying to make more of our research open-source, [ . . . so that’s something potential] collaborators or outside independent researchers can do in order to help and assist with all of that . . . in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 135 interview / forensic architecture: an interview with lachlan kermode p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s another would be just sharing these investigations in your lectures and seminars. generally pointing people to us if they’re interested in that sort of work. we have a range of academic events [such as seminars and lectures at international institutions including the university of birzeit (palestine), cornell (new york) and concordia (montreal)], as well, mostly in london [the aa and goldsmith’s], but sometimes in other places as well—exhibitions and that sort of thing—so keep an ear out for those when they occur.8 ab: okay, that’s everything, thank you. references weizman, e. (2017). forensic architecture: violence at the threshold of detectability. new york, ny: zone books. weizman, e. (2018). forensic architecture. interview by linsey young. turner prize, 18, 9-28. endnotes 1 https://www.gold.ac.uk/ architecture/ 2 these included commissions from ben emmerson (un special rapporteur on human rights and counter terrorism) for a report presented at the un general assembly, shahzad akbar (pakistani human rights lawyer) for evidence presented at the uk court of appeal, and a collaborative investigation with the uk-based bureau of investigative journalism. 3 an installation of the triple chaser investigation was exhibited as part of the whitney biennial 2019 at the whitney museum of american art in new york (17 may-22 september 2019): https:// whitney.org /exhibitions/2019biennial?section=22#exhibitionartworks 4 as deputy director, varvia coordinates projects, assembles teams, and oversees the research and development of new methodologies. she is also a member of the technology advisory board for the international criminal court. (https://forensic-architecture.org / about/team/member/christinavarvia). 5 machine learning is a process whereby a computer algorithm is able to process digital data (images, numbers, clicks, etc.) and use that data to refine and redefine the results based on the perceived level of accuracy, so that it is improving each step of the way. one example might be the way that website advertising can be targeted to align with your likely interests based on previous search history, or recommendations from amazon and netflix. typically machine learning is employed when there is a massive data set that would be prohibitively large for a human to work through. 6 https://conquer-and-divide. btselem.org / 7 https://www.bellingcat.com/ 8 a list of fa events including exhibitions, lectures, seminars, and screenings can be found on their website: https://forensicarchitecture.org /programme/ events cultural safety some thoughts on cultural safety : contemporary art from new zealand: travel and its hazards. leonard bell interstices 4 book review: some thoughts on cultural safety: travel and its hazards 1 gregory burke et al, cultural safety: contemporary art from new zealand exhibition catalogue (city gallery, wellington, te whare toi, and frankfurter kunstverein, 1995) isbn 0-908818-30-0 the exhibition, cultural safety, jointly curated by gregory burke, then of the city gallery, wellington, and peter weiermair of the frankfurter kunstverein, was held at that institution in frankfurt and at the ludwig forum for international art in aachen in 1995. it is programmed for the city gallery in 1996. the city gallery’s director, paula savage has characterised cultural safety as “one of new zealand’s most significant visual arts exchange initiatives,” that aims, among other things, “to increase cultural understanding.”1 the bilingual catalogue for this putatively signal event has been available in new zealand well in advance of the show itself, and it is the catalogue only, or, more precisely, just some aspects of it, which is the focus of this article, not the art, since i have not seen the exhibition. the well-produced, book-sized (160pp., 23 x 22.7cm) catalogue includes a variety of textual and visual materials. there is a brief preface and a foreword by savage and weiermair respectively, a seventeen page essay (each page in two columns: the one on the right, narrower and in smaller print, the original english; the other, the german translation or equivalent) by burke, titled “cultural safety,” individual statements from the seven chosen artists (julian dashper, luise fong, jacqueline fraser, fiona pardington, michael parekowhai, peter robinson, ruth watson), as well as photographs of them and good quality reproductions of their work (about sixty in colour). this section, devoted to the artists and their works, comprises the main body of the catalogue (pp. 33106), and is followed by a list of the exhibited works, a time-line, and what is the second largest section of the catalogue (pp. 129-157), the artists’ biographies and exhibition histories with further black and white reproductions of their work. there is also a page headed “further reading,” which lists a selection of books, exhibition catalogues, and periodicals on new zealand art and art history. the timeline and burke’s essay are interspersed with an assortment of images for instance, reproductions of earlier artists’ works (e.g. augustus earle, l. j. steele and goldie, theo schoon, colin mccahon), stills from new zealand films (e.g. once were warriors, illustrious energy ), and seemingly random photographs (e.g. elvis presley with female members o f a m a o r i c o n c e r t p a r t y f r o m 1 9 6 5 , a g r o u p of female physical education instructors in training from 1944, the westlake girls’ high school cultural group at the maori and pacific islands cultural festival, nga tapuwae college in 1993). these were, presumably, meant to suggest salient or distinctive aspects of new zealand life or “culture” at various stages in its history. so cultural safety, the catalogue, constitutes a package of several kinds of information, commentary, translation, illustration and reproduction that could have been a useful supplement for german exhibition viewers who had little familiarity with, or knowledge of, new zealand art and history. the catalogue certainly l o o k s g o o d , a n d i t commendably foregrounds the artists and their works in pleasing contrast to those exhibitions and catalogues which have been geared primarily to showcasing the curators, and in which the artists and their works are there mainly to serve the curators’ self-interests. however the relatively secondary role taken by the curators in the catalogue may, ironically, have been a strategic miscalculation, insofar as, given the brevity of their commentaries, there was no way they could do justice to, or adequately explore, the complexities and problematics of the issues and socio-cultural phenomena they chose to engage with. for the curators, in particular burke in his essay, set themselves an ambitious and no easy task to address matters of culture (or intercultural relationships), identity (national, ethnic and gender) and the visual arts, both within new zealand and in terms of new zealand’s or various new zealanders’ interactions with the wider world, in particular the “first” world of western europe and north america. to do this effectively in such a short text for an audience of europeans was probably impossible since for the interstices 4 book review: some thoughts on cultural safety: travel and its hazards 2 great majority of europeans and north americans (excuse this unresearched and possibly paranoid generalisation) the “first” world is still the only “real” world. the south pacific, including new zealand, only exists for them insofar as it either provides an exotic holiday location, or, within “high” cultural and academic discourses, it belongs to that increasingly commodified category, the “marginal.”2 could that have been the niche that cultural safety occupied in germany? the topics burke took on the “nature” of identity and inter-, and intra-, cultural relations, the interplay of the local and the international, the “shifts in meaning that are brought about by changes in cultural context”3 are, it should be noted, generally “hot,” even fashionable, topics in western europe and north america, and have been so for some time. “cultural safety” (burke’s essay) could only touch on, introduce these matters. that their complexities and problematics have been keenly and widely argued and contested, wherein surely originates any productive energy in respect of the visual arts, remained largely unexplored. “cultural safety,” rather than probing beyond the surface of this field of productively conflicting and differing views and practices, delivers up a comparatively tidy and comfortable package. it is a package constructed primarily in terms of maori and european relationships, though, perhaps oddly, the term, pakeha, is not used. there is a nod in the direction of the multi-cultural, with the classification of fong as “of chinese and european descent.” the very choice and use of the term “cultural safety” as the title of the exhibition, catalogue, and burke’s essay, could be seen as symptomatic of this tendency to bypass the problematic. the term “cultural safety” is best-known in new zealand as a fundamental concept in nursing and midwifery education: the need, in the interests of good nursing practice, for nurses and midwives to have respect for, and sufficient knowledge of, the values and beliefs of their patients’ cultures, whatever they may be. whether or not “cultural safety,” so articulated or theorised, and however worthy in intention it may be, has been misused, misapplied, or appropriated for narrow and partisan political ends has been at the centre of controversy in new zealand over the last few years, with extensive media coverage, questions and debates in parliament, and investigations and reviews by a parliamentary select committee and the nursing council of both the theory and the practice of “cultural safety.” very few people do not have an opinion on “cultural safety,” it would seem. yet burke’s essay makes no reference to this: that the term and the concept, or more precisely some of the practical applications of the concept, have generated so much contention and conflict, even though burke clearly indicates that his a d o p t i o n o f t h e t e r m f o r t h e catalogue essay and exhibition title was inspired by, or derived from, its use in the “national health care system.”4 weiermair in his “foreword” asserts, without explaining why or how, that the choice of the term “cultural safety” was ironic, yet there is no irony apparent in burke’s use of the term. in fact he does little more than drop the term into the essay. it is left underdeveloped in relation to the art otherwise briefly described or referred to. interestingly, “cultural safety” is not translated in the accompanying german text. it remains italicised in english, without a bracketed equivalent in german, in contrast to other english titles or terms in the german text (e.g. t o u r o f n e w z e a l a n d ( rundfahrt durch neuseeland)). why this should be so remains unstated and unclear. perhaps there is no satisfactory equivalent term in german. one wonders, though, whether the coincidental and no doubt inadvertent echo of the term in the rhetoric of nazism of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, with its terminology of cleansing, public hygiene, ridding the social “body” of alien and “dangerous” elements, may have been potentially extremely discomforting in the german context. this possibility suggests that curators need to be very careful in using certain formulations or categorisations. the shifts in meaning or connotation that can occur from one socio-cultural context to another may be more than they bargained for. hoped for “cultural understanding” may end up as a misunderstanding. in respect of this consider cultural safety’s identification of the artists in terms of “race” and ethnicity, part or whole (e.g. “european,” or “maori” and “european,” with the maori part given tribal affiliations, though ethnic distinctions are not made within the category “european”). identifications of this sort are commonplace these days. yet, depending on the contexts in which they are used, they can acquire unanticipated associations. for instance, the catalogue uses the term “descent,” which can carry the implication, even if unintended, that a person’s membership of a culture is biologically determined; that in being, for instance, genetically patagonian, or part patagonian, that person is patagonian culturally as well. presumably the intention sustaining cultural safety’s classifications of the ‘race,’ ethnicity and culture of each artist was to demonstrate or declare the multi-cultural make-up of both the contemporary new zealand fine art milieu and new interstices 4 book review: some thoughts on cultural safety: travel and its hazards 3 zealand society generally. there is, of course, nothing wrong with that. however, even though the curators denied that “political correctness”5 or “ethnicity”6 were criteria in the selection of the artists for the exhibition, their disavowals may have the opposite effect. they may serve, against the intentions of the curators, to avow what has been disavowed; and to direct attention away from the individual practices and specific qualities of each artist’s works towards their (the artists’) supposed memberships of certain categories, of which their works then function primarily as illustrations e.g. of part maori and part european, or part european and part chinese, or european. furthermore, no doubt unwittingly on the part of the curators, such classifications according to “race” and ethnicity, these labellings of the artists, could bring to mind, perhaps uncomfortably for some german readers, aspects of nineteenth and early twentieth century theorising about “race,” central features of which were categorisations of people in terms of wholes or parts of particular “races” and a preoccupation with hybridity. the thesis presented by robert young in his recent colonial desire may be of interest here.7 he argues that much contemporary theorising and writing about culture and identity, contrary to the intentions of the authors, serves to reinscribe “the racialised thinking of the past.” certainly any engagement with matters of identity, culture, and ethnicity in a schematic and superficial way may provide scope more for misunderstanding than understanding. cultural safety’s curators were well aware that “international” exhibitions, like their own, or more particularly the ways in which artworks are presented and written about in/for such exhibitions, can, to quote weiermair, “unjustifiably simplify our understanding of other cultures and tend to stress similarities rather than differences.”8 whether this catalogue (and exhibition) successfully negotiated that problem (a difficult one for any curator or catalogue writer) could probably be debated endlessly. on one hand the information about the artists and their works provided by the catalogue overall, and by burke’s competent capsule summaries or characterisations of their works in his essay did give, at least to this reader, some sense of the local, of new zealand specificities. on the other hand the artists and their works were incorporated into discourses vis à vis contemporary art practice and theory (some of which have already been noted) that many german and other european readers and viewers would be well familiar with, that indeed could be said to have acquired in art periodicals and catalogues an often bland and homogenising “international” cast to them. the very tone of the curators’ writings in the catalogue was, maybe, a mark of this. in its earnestness, in its seriousness it was oddly out of keeping with, or did not give a sense of, the wit, irony, irreverence, the sense of the comic, that i would see as prime features of the art of most of the artists in the show; indeed aspects of their work that may carry a strong flavour of the local, of the new zealand-specific (if such a quality can be postulated) at its best and most energising. for german readers, otherwise little, or unfamiliar, with new zealand, cultural safety’s timeline, with its selection of “facts” about new zealand, its histories and peoples, may have contributed to establishing the grounds of difference between the contemporary new zealand art in the exhibition and current art in western europe. maybe not. timelines, by their very nature, involve a certain arbitrariness in the selection of the “facts,” and what is omitted may be as important, as loaded, as what is included. this timeline stressed, among other things, various german connections with new zealand from the time of cook’s second voyage in the 1770s, on which were the german naturalists, the forsters, father and son. was this meant to suggest a german “investment” in new zealand from the beginnings of european contact? on occasions the german connections were pursued overzealously, with two artists of other nationalities or ethnicities the austrian eugene von guerard, briefly in new zealand in 1876, and the czech gottfried lindauer being subjected to identification as “german.” that is another hazard of “identity” politics and ethnic categorisations. mistakes can be made. just because someone has a german-sounding name, for example, does not mean that he or she is german. in several places the timeline listed the migration to new zealand of people from european countries, besides great britain, so demonstrating that the european constituents of new zealand history and society are heterogeneous, not homogeneous a point that needs to be made more often in new zealand. however, curiously, given the frequency of the german connections that are made elsewhere, the timeline made no mention that about a thousand central european, mostly jewish and german-speaking refugees from nazism immigrated into new zealand in the mid to late 1930s, or that a number of these refugee immigrants made significant and lasting impacts on developments in the visual arts and culture generally here. three such people, ernst plischke, henry kulka and imres porsolt, are interstices 4 book review: some thoughts on cultural safety: travel and its hazards 4 mentioned in a later section of the timeline, as if they came to new zealand after world war two, with no mention of the actual and crucial circumstances of their immigration. were these omissions no more than accidental oversights? or could they have been concessions to contemporary german sensitivities about the nazi period? these are minor details, perhaps, but in a publication that deals with crosscultural relationships, and which is addressed to a bilingual and binational readership, they suggest how easy it may be to produce misconceptions; in this instance in relation to migration from europe to new zealand in a period of extreme social and political crisis, despite the most worthy sustaining intentions of the project overall. there is, of course, much more that could be written about cultural safety, which has many good qualities. in commenting on just a few aspects of the catalogue, i have sought to suggest that matters of culture and identity in new zealand and elsewhere are much more complex and problematic than the curators appear to have allowed for; that travelling from one place to another, relocation, is just as likely to result in mismatchings and misconstructions as in coordinated unions and understandings. to say, as gregory burke writes in the last sentence of his essay, that “cultural safety i s b o t h h e r e a n d there” begs further questions, any answers to which will only come after much more intensive and extensive explorations. notes 1 paula savage, “foreword,” cultural safety: contemporary art from new zealand city gallery, wellington, te whare toi, and frankfurter kunstverein, (1995), p. 6. 2 re the academic commodification of the category of “marginality” see gayatri chakravorty spivak, “theory in the margin: coetzee's foe reading defoe's crusoe/roxana,” consequences of theory: selected papers from the english institute 1987-88 eds. jonathan arac and barbara johnson (baltimore and london: johns hopkins university press, 1991) p. 154. 3 burke, “cultural safety,” cultural safety p. 20. 4 burke, “cultural safety,” p. 20. 5 weiermair, “foreword,” cultural safety p. 9. 6 burke, “cultural safety,” p. 17. 7 robert young, colonial desire: hybridity in theory, race, and culture (london: routledge, 1995). 8 weiermair, “foreword,” p. 9. interstices 09 109 finalists for the inaugural simon devitt prize for photography simon devitt & julia gatley the simon devitt prize for photography was established in the school of architecture & planning at the university of auckland in 2008. the prize recognizes the best photograph in architecture. this year, simon invited and judged photo graphs under the theme of “beauty and decay”. the ten finalists are published here. the winner will be announced at the school prize-giving on 27 november and will be published in the november-dec ember issue of architecture new zealand. patrick loo, unpleasant occurrence. j. marmoot, untitled 7. nick o’leary, bird. interstices 09 111 rayneil singh, maria. klaus carson, domestic beauty. yoon yang lee, noon. rowan fraser & josh stewart, photo a. interstices 09 113 david todd, tunnel vision. yong hwang, untitled. sam cowper, harry. �� woven flesh albert l refiti openings a very fine line is woven between the human and the animal (agamben, 2004), an impossibly thin separation and boundary whose appearance remains concealed to the animal and whose truth-in-total remains dead to man. the animal is blind to the true nature of world and captivated by it; man is world-forming, but hard of hearing to the world that opens towards him. sight opens the surface of the world to us but will not penetrate the soul—to apprehend ourselves in our totality is to hear it spoken in the open. this paper then pleads to the quality that allows man to hear the truthin-total-that-remains-dead-to-man. in paraphrasing heidegger, to listen to the poetic call and allow the animal a lodging in our being—and in letting the animal be—we are opened twice: to unfold space for the animal is to be folded or opened sideways in a divided symmetry of hospitality and time. woven flesh, the title of this paper, is borrowed from a short passage in the samoan poet albert wendt’s poem “inside us the dead” (wendt, 1976): inside me the dead woven into my flesh like the music of bone flutes 1 when albert wendt speaks of “inside me the dead”—of the dead or unconscious woven through us, within our bodies—two things are brought together to the surface: the life-less interior and the living exterior. the po1. the first section of the poem is located at the end of this paper. figure 1: albert wendt, who will wear the skin of the black star? 2001, ink on paper interstices 6 2. see figure 2 (wendt, 2002). 3. “last night before dawn while the cold foraged thru’ our backyard, the black star hovered above ponsonby right over our house. yeah, it was like close encounters of the third kind and i opened my window to it, sam said. yeah, and opened my pores to its converting light and deep scent of space-travel, oceans without end, and god. but you don’t believe in god, i said. now i do, he smiled.” see figure 8 in wendt (2002). 4. see figure 1 (wendt, 2002). tangaloa-a-lagi is widely accepted as being the first god of samoa and polynesia. 5. in polynesia and the pacific, genealogical ties with family/village/community/ancestors are the foundation of the individual; thus, a person is made from gene-archaeological matter. this involves the understanding that you—your body and being—represent a line of ancestors/land/community/ family, which are part of you. your body and your make-up belongs to the ancestors, to your fanua (the place of birth), and to the community that shaped and cared for you. consequently your ‘being there’ allows these ancient bodies to be present, too. this gives meaning to va relationships—va spaces, that which is in-between us that is more than you and me, what in you that is more than you. see wendt (1999: 399-412). etic image suggests that the body is fleshed, stuffed, woven and filled out with the life-less. the poem says that this thing, “the dead” inside us, is like “sweet-honeyed tamarind pods” ready to “burst in tomorrow’s sun”, or like “plankton fossils in coral alive at full moon”. it is at the point of bursting, in readiness pulsing, pulsing … to overcome. the poet’s voice is directed inward—becomes an inward bodily gaze of absolute flesh, full and alive with depth, abominable depth. this calling-in-the-deep is directed to both sides of the body, to the unconscious side and the conscious side. by the quality of poetic calling, the opening of the world through words will implode to reveal a depth that rests inside us. the sense of this unconscious world is made by the word, captured and taken by the language of the world. it is a language familiar to us, made to look and reflect on our present. but between the word and the image, the poet’s voice begins to crack and suspend our reality, for a moment, as it calls and mourns the present of our immediate reality while, at the same time, directing itself inwards to the gap-between-man, a vortex in the soul. in the book of the black star (wendt, 2002), wendt adds to this turn and intimates that this inward gaze is “a fathomless pool of black light that had witnessed our beginnings in tagaloa-a-lagi’s amazing eyes”.2 wendt seems to suggest that the black star, or fetu uliuli, is an ancestral impulse that clots the veins from the inside like a swollen vessel—a ‘spaceship’—that pushes from the gap-between-man. on the surface, the black star hovers in the darkness.3 the poet says that the black star was born from its birthsac before the first dawn, in an offering of pain and wonder to the universe: “born before tangaloa-a-lagi invented the alphabet of omens”.4 in his attempt to draw this poetics out, wendt literally draws by tucking and pulling with lines that scribble, weave and tie up words. in trying to write with lines and vectors, he draws like a partially blinded man. words are world-forming in their geometrical certainty, whereas lines only describe an intention located elsewhere. the poet’s blindness lies between lines and words and, in his uncertainty of sight, he relegates the words to braille-like marks on the page, embossed in the darkness between lines and vectors. this unsighted quest proposes two visions for the black star: firstly, as a continuous outward force that moves and cuts across space—across the page and across the soul; and secondly, as inward migrating lines that interweave to make the birth-sac, which returns life to its origin in threads that inwardly entangle the soul. the black star’s dual movements, outward and inward, are two moments in an oscillation between capture/release, between cradling/escaping, and residing/roaming. these qualities mark the differences between the two poets whose works i am theorizing here: one resides and calls to the depth of man, the other is a nomadic prophet who butchers the surface of man. albert wendt is of the first kind, and john pule of the other. surfacing, wendt cradles and secures the gene-archaeological matter.5 he draws for us the inward movements that weave us to the abominable depth of textile-like surfaces—made from bounded and tangled threads, in scribbles of soft lines woven within and without, which confuse orientation in space. his materiality of animate space is absolute flesh, at the point of bursting. �� wendt intimates that tagaloa-a-lagi’s will is woven within this very depth between-man. man’s beginning follows an impulse that forces the black star across the surface of being, in a movement outwards to the world. tagaloa-a-lagi is the original point of reference: the word loa (pratt, 1984) in the name means ‘longing’ or ‘to be long since’. it also refers to a family tomb built over with stones, and means ‘of time and measure’ when use in the plural loaloa. depth of time is accumulated in and on the body, which is often dismissed when life passes. wendt suggests that dying is not the passing of life, nor the nullity of being, but the accumulation of layers fortifying the ancient body within. death is an inward-turning thread, weaving another layer in the abominable depth between-man which closes further the surface of the world, like a healing that leaves a scar. therefore, the place of the dead—the tomb—is not the end of man but merely one point in the continual re-housing of man’s ancestors; in the accumulation of stones upon stones, of layers upon layers. another way to think of this house of the ancestors is as a textile-like dwelling, a taga (or sac), a woven textile vessel. the poet’s drawing of the intertwining lines describing the blood-clot-like birth-sac of the black star is an example. taga (pratt, 1984) refers to the idea of continuity, as in the expression tagafa, which means ‘to have numerous offspring from many wives’, or widely spread family connections. the ancestral sac that weaves life outwards creates people: taga + ta, which is the polynesian word for people. it literally means ‘a sac made in time’; ta is to strike time and to make time, thus tagata has the literal meaning of ‘woven time’. we’ve arrived at the surface of things, on the wave of time. according to the poet’s logic, the human is woven in time and from the threads/lines of the ancestors, which reach deep into the abyss of time. the impulses are gigantic layers of presence, a gene-archaeological matter, a force that swells from the inside and through us. there is something in us that is more than you and i. my body/this body/our body is a fortuitous thing, a timely reorganization of the gene-archaeological matter. this way of thinking bears close affinity with friedrich nietzsche’s thought; nietzsche held that the question of man is, in the long run, irrelevant since man is to be overcome (see klossowski, 2000: 34). in this overcoming we may present ourselves to the world with an understanding of truth-in-total: that our bodies, our beings, are woven flesh whose strands are ancestors, land, community, family. because we are woven from the flesh of the others, our body belongs to the ancestors; we are a locus of an ancestral impulsive being. figure 2: albert wendt, ua fanau mai le fetu uliuli. 2001, ink on paper interstices 6 calling woven into my flesh like the music of bone flutes implicit in this silent world of the dead is a critical reflection of our present—the now. wendt’s call suggests that the music of bone flutes is not a fanciful one, but rather mournful, gathering, remaining. bone flutes make an eerie sound not quite of this world—there is always a reverberating echo that draws away from the present. a guttural sound, it will not resonate with our immediate surrounding because, as the poet suggests, our world is a vacant one, a bony hollow shell. the ancestral is but an eerie sound, an echo bouncing between the recesses of our hollowness, and the music of bone flutes mourns us in our forgetfulness. in the music’s lamenting tenor we are drawn inward, reminded that we are dead to this unconscious world of the ancestors. we are not conscious that we are a passage of the dead, destined to make a way for them. by making us listen to the music of bone flutes, the poet’s critical voice reminds us of our forgetfulness. we forget mortality and the fate of our bodies and we are oblivious, many times over, of the dead that we are. in our contemporary lives this interior world is muted and we are deaf to its call. we do not apprehend ourselves in our totality and refuse to hear the call that is spoken in the open. a radical proposal would be that our body is pulotu. in polynesia, pulotu is both an abyssal corridor and the abode of the dead (pratt, 1984). as pulotu, we become the living-dead that straddles/houses/bridges the two sides of the truth-in-total—the inside/outside, unconscious/conscious. we stand between two sides, our selves but porous boundaries made in the present. we allow things to form through our being as thresholds, which house the dead on one side and the living on the other. as the birth of the the black star suggests, the dead has been a resident in our bodies since the beginning. in polynesian mythology, pulotu is always located to the west, towards the setting sun. pulotu is a temporal space that relies on the setting sun for certainty of place—it follows the setting sun, always; its temporal dimension is that of the day’s shadow and of the end of the day. as pulotuans, we are creatures of the shadow resonating in the present. the word pu means a crevice or a crack in the ground, and is also the word to describe the deep hollow sound made by the conch shell; lotu is the word for religion and prayer. if we are the location of pulotu, this threshold between past and present, then we are also the prayer-wish made in the deep hollow by the ancestors, an echo shaped in the recesses of our hollowness. therefore, we are opened up to the present by an ancestor’s call “like the music of bone flutes”. lemi ponifasio has suggested that the fate of the body is bound by a particular constitution: mau a le tino (mau dance theatre, 2000). mau is the sense of holding or clasping something between.6 in context of the motto mau a le tino, there is also a reading which suggests the ‘holding of the self in-between’. tino (pratt, 1984) is the word for flesh, or the body, which bonds the self to the surface of the world. this ‘holding of the self in-between’ refers to the space-between of the va: the temporal space that opens up the world and tends to the relational activities of polyne �� sian culture (refiti, 2002: 209).7 if, as the locus of pulotu, we are a threshold for the dead, then our body is the ultimate va—a porous boundary between the ancestor and the world. our bodies, both as va (space-between) and pulotu (abode of the dead), allow the past and future to arrive in the present. residing a very different quality is heard in the poetic call of the niuean artist/poet john pule. if one hears the gentle rolling surface of the ocean in albert wendt’s voice, then pule speaks with a cyclonic voice that wants to force the world. wendt’s call is to the depth residing in man, a depth that remains captivated by the woven flesh-upon-flesh, which binds man to the gene-archaeological matter. with pule, the poetic call arrives in a dazzle of multiple realities that strike the surface of man—breaking up his habitual cloak and making him scream. a passage from the shark that ate the sun bears witness to this: the black god tore my chest open like lovers do, and the first thing he grabbed hold of was the state house he tore from the earth, and blew the windows out, opened the door and sucked out the sad mothers of polynesia, the sad men, the sad children. (pule, 1992: 9) in these multiple attacks on the body, pule attempts to pierce the flesh and unfurl the abominable monsters in man’s depth to collide with our world. pule’s poetics is a ‘forcing apart’ that creates openings in the ancestral flesh, allowing us to pry into these hidden interior worlds. they are littered with creatures half animal and half human, devouring each other in a continual spiral that returns to itself. animals roam and lodge themselves in our flesh while defecating on shoulders of other animals (see plate 1). echoing the fictional world of his writing, pule’s paintings and drawings also show the savagery dealt to the body: its surface is sliced open and the canvas-like flesh of ancestral depth is hung on the gallery walls for inspection. this is the art of the savage cut, of the fresh kill hung from hooks arranged in a butcher’s display window. it is visceral stuff, without niceties about the outside world or respect for the internal depth of man. what a contrast to the poetics of wendt, which mourns and calls to man’s forgetfulness of the ancestral flesh that is woven through us! in the drawing suite titled ‘death of a god’ (in the exhibition people get ready, held at the auckland art gallery in 2000), pule subjects our eyes to the kerfuffle and noisy montage of woven flesh between man/god/animal/ plant, and in our fascination we are riveted to its unseemly sight which solicits our own monstrous depth to break forth and feast on the living. we are drawn to the fanfare of pule’s world as carnival of the dead. the entrails that lie flailing on the surface bear the truth of man—his overcoming. this overcoming, according to deleuze, is only possible in nietzsche’s dionysian superman. the superman’s qualities, “impersonal individuations” and “pre-individual singularity” (deleuze, 2004: 139), are rendered discernible on pule’s slaughter table.8 6. thus, when one is constipated there is a holding in place between inside and outside and the body becomes conflicted, because it is caught in-between. 7. it gives everyday life the continuity of affects that are inherent in each individual of the community. the va is the law that does not sit still in one place, but is rather a law continually activated when bodies are gathered in a particular space, such as the space of rituals. each body’s va becomes activated by the ritual in a collective willing that rules the community. 8. it is worth noting that pule, in laying bare the flesh of the dead on the operating table of consumption (the white-washed gallery walls), tries to literally prop up the scenario for us to see. it is not enough to rip open the body and lay it on the table for inspection. the poet wants to present it to us on scaffolding, a carefully constructed architecture that props up woven flesh. interstices 6 pule constructs image-fragments in sequences that are sometimes held within tapa-like frames; sometimes they resemble pictographic scenarios ruled by lines and drawn from tapa.9 in the works of 2001-2003, especially the drawings of the poem “death of a god” (pule, 2000), the lines constructing the images are literally drawn-out, pulled and tugged away from the written words and lyrics of the poem—no longer illustrations of the narrative but creatures fleeing from it, littering the pages, and either containing dead bodies or having been butchered themselves. in more recent work, pule suspends image-fragments inside clouds that are buried deep inside the earth, or inside a body. the clouds are smeared with blood: not at all the elevated clouds of heaven. they are shown to us in a sectional cut taken through the ground as body of the ancestors, revealing frenzied and dazzling worlds in archaeological layers twined together by vines and roots. almost cinematic, this architecture of poetic images consists of montages that collapse the space of the narrative and image-words onto a single surface. in this architectural making, the plan of the building and the actual object are allowed to exist together in the same space. in his essay “building dwelling thinking” (1975), heidegger suggested that since man has lost the ability to dwell, architecture and other attempts at the housing of man are futile endeavours.10 perhaps only in poetry can man begin to reside again in a meaningful relationship with the world. pule’s attempt at architecture is certainly not a project to recover this quality in a poetic calling. far from it, his architecture is an apparatus that is absolutely destructive to the condition of ‘saving’ or ‘of letting be’. he attempts to murder any attempt at reaching redemption in our depth, and wants to overcome man and all his efforts to place himself at the pinnacle of thought. thus, pule pins man to the surface of our desires and invites us to feast on him, to become animal. 9. in his works between 1993 and 2000, pre-stretched canvases were often hung on walls like raw flesh. this is a period when pule used the grid format of niuean and tongan tapa cloth designs. 10. “the real plight of dwelling is indeed older than the world wars with their destruction, older also than the increase of the earth’s population and the condition of the industrial workers. the real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell.” (heidegger, 1975: 16) figure 3: john pule, niniko lalolagi dazzling world (detail), 2004, oil and ink on canvas. �� 11. or, elsewhere: “my great grandfather pa … saw the kulukulu leave my mouth, which was an omen of song. salona and pa talked incessantly through the first night of my cries, interpreting movement of certain birds that coincided with my sighs and pauses.” (pule, 1998: 9) lodgings in john pule’s pictographic/poetic world, all types of animals are lodgers inside bodies. there is the shark, from whose skeletal frame our flesh is made to hang in the shark that ate the sun. and there are birds that lodge themselves inside the throat of poets and prophets. for the most part in this book, the poet wanders the street and alleys of the modern world, on a journey to reconcile his restless ancestral being of family/land/community in niue with the modern world of migration and poverty in the streets of auckland. the poet is planted with seeds in his throat so as to lure birds to feed and lodge themselves there. my family could plant a seed in the bird’s beak, spreading my words, because i am a giant in a small world and i have to be heard. (pule, 1992: 14)11 the animal that lodges in the throat of the poet gives him the power to speak with the voice of a cyclone. the gift tempers the body and opens up a space from which visions can grow. the event transforms the poet and, at first, he is confused and stunned by the visions: what does the poet save from the thousand glimmering stars up there in the heavens, every single fire a god’s eye or animals migrating into the dark? desperately i try to hold the golden grain, the seed, iridescent mineral, deep-sea fish, dolphins, looking for answers … i open the area that is temporarily closed by a dream, and inside a festival of dancers throw laughter at me, covering my eyes … i, the one stepping into the dark, my days full of the world, go out of the one to find the voice … afraid to dwell, as subconscious hope has lost reason, so we cling to violent energy which takes on the appearances of beautiful haloes. (pule, 1998: 27) as spectators of pule’s journey as an uprooted prophet, we may have difficulties in fixing exactly where the voice and visions of the poet originate from and to whom the text is addressed. double-edged words and images run amok in this vision; tension and suspense run in opposite directions and parallel to each other at the same time, and overload the senses. the poet’s tongue twists, overwhelms and breaks words. something is always let loose, drawn out, pulled apart and frayed at the edges. in pule’s work, the animals that inhabit our bodies remain within us as temporary lodgers—when the body passes away from the world they will depart from us in trails. when poets and prophets are about to die, little critters literally pull the threads of life from their bodies as they unravel being from the depth. the poets’ woven flesh is scattered to the earth: they do not return to an abominable depth. because poets and prophets possess the gift of vision they are only allowed to live in myths. pule intimates that the animal escapes us when the dead is no longer living, while it will become our lodger when the dead is within us. he also suggests that the poetic voice emerges only when the dead is made to speak through the animal that lodges itself in the throat. interstices 6 prologue (wendt, 1976) inside us the dead, / like sweet-honeyed tamarind pods / that will burst in tomorrow’s sun, / or plankton fossils in coral / alive at full moon dragging virile tides over coy reefs / into yesterday’s lagoons. / 1. polynesians / inside me the dead / woven into my flesh like the music / of bone flutes: my polynesian fathers / who escaped the sun’s wars, seeking / these islands by prophetic stars, emerged / from the sea’s eye like turtles / scuttling to beach their eggs in fecund sand, smelling / of the seas—the stench of dead / anemone and starfish, eyes / bare of the original vision, burnt / out by storm and paddles slapping the hurricane waves on, blisters / bursting blood hibiscus / to gangrened wounds salt-stung. these islands rising at wave’s edge— / blue myth brooding in orchid, / fern, and banyan; fearful gods / awaiting birth from blood clot / into stone image and chant— to bind their wounds, bury / their journey’s dead, as i / watching from shadow root, ready / for birth generations after they / dug the first house-posts and to forget, beside complacent fires / the wild yam harvest safe in store houses— / the reason why they pierced the muscle / of the hurricane into reef’s retina, / beyond it the sky’s impregnable shell; / and slept, sleep waking to nightmare / of spear and club, their own young— / warriors long-haired with blood / cursed, the shrill cry / of children unborn, sacrificed. no sanctuary / from the sun-black seed / inside the self’s cell— / coral lacerating the promise, / selfinflicted wounds at the altar / of power will not heal. references agamben, g. (2004). the open: man and animal. stanford, ca: stanford university press. deleuze, g. (2004). desert island and other texts. los angeles, ca: semiotext(e). heidegger, m. (1975). poetry, language, thought. london: perennial library. klossowski, p. (2000). nietzsche and the vicious circle. london: athlone press. mau dance (2000). boneflute iviivi. maidment theatre performance catalogue. pratt, rev. g. (1984). a grammar dictionary of the samoan language. papakura: r. mcmillan publisher. (original work published in 1893.) pule, j. (1998). burn my head in heaven. auckland: penguin books. pule, j. (2000). people get ready (exhibition catalogue). auckland art gallery, october 2000february 2001 refiti, a. (2002). making spaces: polynesian architecture in aotearoa new zealand. in s. & p.f. mallon (eds.), pacific art niu sila: the pacific dimension of contemporary new zealand arts. wellington nz: te papa press. wendt, a. (1976). inside us the dead. auckland: longman paul. wendt, a. (1999). afterword: tatauing the postcolonial body. in v. hereniko & r. wilson (eds.), inside out: literature, cultural politics and identity in the new pacific. lanham: rowman & littlefield. wendt, a. (2002). the book of the black star. auckland: auckland university press. interstices 08 77 interstices 08 77 on 21 september 1999, an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the richter scale rocked the central part of taiwan, killing approximately 2,400 people and severely damaging infrastructure. to locals, the event is known as the 921 earthquake. in 2003, following rehabilitation of much of the area, an international competition, for a built-operate-transfer (bot) project to commemorate the dead, was instigated. it attracted 182 entries from 34 countries. that submitted by tsai-ho cheng, a 23-year-old amsterdam-trained, taiwanese woman architect, who was allegedly inspired by the bamboo forests in ang lee’s acclaimed movie crouching tiger, hidden dragon (2000), was selected. cheng’s monument and bamboo forest were realized and the memorial was much celebrated in architectural circles. however, local residents reacted against the scheme, lamenting it as a disjuncture, bizarre and surrealistic. they predicted that the bamboo forest would not grow on the site chosen for the memorial. consistent with their predictions, after one year, the leaves on the trees in cheng’s bamboo forest started turning yellow. the agricultural department diagnosed a mysterious disease in the trees and, within two years of the installation, almost all the bamboo had died. after a series of appraisals, the local government decided to demolish the entire forest; it was removed from its site in 2007. chiu-ping yang, senior local correspondent for the china times, summarized the events thus: i saw an incredibly brilliant idea mesmerizing global and local architects, who, subsequently, led everyone marching into a dead valley, as predicted by the local residents (pers. comm. chiu-ping yang to the author, 2007). the emotional dissatisfaction of locals was never mobilized into an open protest; anger was eventually calmed and after the clearance of the bamboo forest, residents gradually came back during their leisure time and reclaimed the public space. on a sunny day, people run and play frisbee on the newly “renovated” lawn, teasing each other about the enormous expense of this piece of lawn. “it is a new start,” a local resident commented as he was walking with bare feet on the lawn. the glamorous, but doomed, bamboo forest: the western de /construction of local memory of the 921 earthquake in taiwan hong-chi shiau interstices 08 79interstices 08 79 this paper explores the multiple, dialectic, global processes through which the local memory of the 921 earthquake collides with the internationally endorsed memorial landscape bot project. the paper considers juxtaposition and collusion between the global and the local, attempting to illuminate how the political, economic and aesthetic agents wove multiple institutional processes into a doomed contemporary memorial landscape project. the paper relies on historical testimonials and documents as well as interviews with local residents, community leaders and local reporters in nantou. efforts to interview several key informants were unsuccessful: the local architects who had endorsed the project allegedly wanted to “keep it in low tone” and “let go of it”. as a result, it was not possible to include their reflections on the project or its failure. the 921 earthquake and the bamboo forest memorial park the 921 earthquake was taiwan’s first national experience of this kind of natural disaster. in the aftermath of the quake, to facilitate a rapid return to normalcy, immediate efforts, both public and private, focused on sheltering the displaced residents and restoring local economic activity. two main parties were involved in the initial reconstruction: central government and ngo-affiliated voluntary agencies. however, the two have been involved in a longstanding struggle: the centralized public sector programmes are resourceful but inefficient; while the in contrast to the design, the leaves of bamboo forest withered, turning yellow. while cheng found her project poorly executed, the contractor attributed the failure to an inappropriate planting methodology and a poor choice of species. photograph by chiu-ping yang. interstices 08 79 interstices 08 79 ngo-affiliated sector reacts more efficiently to local needs but is poorly funded (shieh & chang, 2005). the 921 earthquake recovery foundation (erf) was established to develop a coherent approach to addressing the gap between the two sectors. the 921 erf was proactive in planning for post-disaster recovery management to establish critical priorities and objectives, traceable milestones, essential leadership and community commitment for recovery (shieh & chang, 2005). by 2003, most of the reconstruction work had been accomplished and the 921 erf agreed on a plan to construct a memorial landscape installation. to terminate, symbolically, the entire recovery project, it began soliciting project proposals from across the world.1 it is clear that the central government intended to address the meaning of trauma through the installation of a large-scale, internationally recognized and memorable contemporary landscape. farrar (2004) has examined sites that commemorate famines, wars, genocides and terrorist attacks, arguing that these sites have often appropriated traumatic experiences to reproduce sovereign power. however, he also believes that these sites are potentially subversive, empowering people to contest nationalism and rethink their relationship to the state. in the same vein, jordan (2005) analyzed officially designated memorial sites, discovering not only changes and continuities in the forms and contents of public representations, but also the changing relationship among a state, its people and a collection of officially approved objects in urban landscapes (farrar, 2004; lennon & foley, 1999; gough, 2000). the bamboo planting expert examining the withered leaves, before concluding that the trees were suffering from a mysterious disease. photograph by chiu-ping yang. 1. the international bot project solicited applications on the internet and thus encouraged architects, landscape architects and designers from across the world to participate. some of the official event-related documen tation remains accessible on the internet. interstices 08 81interstices 08 81 the 921 project was intended as a tribute to local residents, whose resilience and endurance had helped them through the traumatic experience of the quake. it exemplifies how the construction of a memorial can function as a site of negotiation entangled with the ongoing creation of historical narratives, official visions, local memories and cultural productions. with this event, the state intended to look for global players in shaping the meanings of an earthquake, resonating seamlessly with its political rhetoric. as an “internationally plugged and diplomatically isolated and unrecognized” state (gross, 2006), the taiwanese government initiated such a project to reinvent iself as a global economic and technological agent. in political rhetoric, the important agenda for the independence-inclined government, led by the democraic progressive party (dpp), was to assure local and overseas commentators of the substantial legitimacy of the statehood. over the past decades, the promotion of international economic integration has enhanced economic, technological and social interconnected ness with global players, including foreign states and multinational corpora tions. the imperative role that the state has played is to democratize, privatize and liberalize taiwan’s market, in order to attract global capital and become better connected internationally. these practices have been intended not only to sustain economic growth, but also to override the hurdles resulting from diplomatic isolation. under this political economic circumstance, the government and other semi official agents involved in large-scale public construction projects were encouraged to pursue high profile international competitions. the 921 earthquake memorial park was one project well-suited to an international competition. according to the prime minister, hsih-kuen yo, “the global participation in creating the memorial park will definitely increase its global visibility and also ease the pains of the victims” (architect’s forum, 2004). in order to present the competition as global, the bidding committee was chaired by peter walker, an internationally acclaimed architect, who also chaired the 911 world trade center restoration plan. the jury had local as well as international representation. celebrating bamboo: global associations tsai-ho cheng’s competition winning project comprised a monument surrounded by a bamboo forest, complete with small walkways interconnected to enable visitors to walk through it. it was unanimously applauded by the committee (ding & yang, 2004). the global celebration was further endorsed by three well-regarded taiwanese architects, who compared the proposal to the vietnam veterans memorial in washington dc, designed by maya lin, another woman architect of chinese descent. for example, acclaimed taiwanese architect and member of the bot bidding committee prof. ming-herng wang commented: “i see cheng as an uprising superstar in the field of city planning and design…. she will emerge like the second maya lin” (ding and yang, 2004). there are similarities between the two monuments: when approaching both, the ground slopes gently downward and the low walls appear to grow out of the earth (brook, 2006). interstices 08 81 interstices 08 81 the use of bamboo may have seemed like a logical choice to cheng. in many tropical countries, entire villages, country houses, barns, and other structures share a common natural resource: bamboo. bamboo is not only a strong and flexible material, it is also aesthetically appealing. in regions vulnerable to earthquakes, bamboo is highly resistant to collapse. the material is easy to obtain and is easily replaced when aged or damaged by weather. in this respect, bamboo is always fresh and affordable (kakabadse, 2006). bamboo also has cultural associations: for example, from the perspective of chinese elites and intellectuals, the iconography of bamboo is very positive; it is often associated with the integrity of intellectuals; it is both elastic and tough. along with pine trees and plum trees, bamboo is thought to uphold moral standards in adverse conditions. in addition, the western imagination often associates bamboo with east asia or, in this event, with china in particular. this perception is perpetuated by the fact that panda bears live in bamboo trees. this latter association was also understood by cheng and her fellow architects, who thought of bamboo as charming, lovely and oriental/asian. cheng commented that she wanted her project to capture the mesmerizing charm of the bamboo forests featured in crouching tiger, hidden dragon. in her imagination, the greenness, the breeze and the shivering bamboo leaves would constitute a soothing and comforting landscape to create, symbolically, a sense of resilience and peace. according to one jury member, a particular strength of the project was that it did not passively emphasize the easing of the pain; instead, it rendered hope and encouraged people to look for things to be positive about.2 a local agricultural officer who supervised the construction of the bamboo forest recalled cheng saying that: “bamboo has strong local presence and the residents should be able to relate well”. further, “the greenness and wind and mist should be loved by the residents” (pers. comm. the agricultural officer to the author, 2007).3 for cheng, bamboo also symbolized the central part of taiwan. she had never visited this part of the island, but she had seen a wide range of landscape photographs of it. she understood the central part of taiwan to be mountainous and cool. mourning forests: local responses the local dismay towards the bamboo forest emerged long before its demolition, even before its creation. the earliest animosity resulted from the clearance of the locally grown trees that had survived the earthquake: we lived with the trees, we saw most of them surviving the quake like our friends on september 21, 1999, and we burst into tears. i don’t want to... no one has the right to claim their lives brutally, no matter how brilliant the plan is (pers. comm. local resident to the author). there were many other reasons why the bamboo forest was not appreciated locally. firstly, there was a sharp discrepancy between the meanings that elites, intellectuals and westerners associated with bamboo, and which were shared by the architects and the bidding committee, and those that were understood by 2. the juror, an acclaimed architect, is reported to have said this in an interview with a local reporter from the china times. 3. the local agricultural officer was responsible for communication between the architect, the government and the contractor. although reluctant to speak on behalf of the government, the officer said that the methodology of plantation had been modified several times to adjust to the local weather, land and temperature. during the process, every party was unhappy. interstices 08 83interstices 08 83 local residents. for locals, bamboo signifies “cheapness and low-maintenance” (author’s interviews with locals, 2007). the local appreciation for bamboo is functional and instrumental: they like to eat and drink bamboo shoot, they want to buy bamboo furniture, but they do not in any way enjoy its presence in a large scale park. the local reaction to the bamboo forest was summarized thus: what we need is a space where people would walk in, but the bamboo forest looks ying4 (chilly). my feeling about a bamboo forest since my childhood has been ghost haunting. a few bamboo trees in my garden are romantic, but a bamboo forest is too intimidating. we dare not approach, not to mention our children” (pers. comm. local resident to the author). another challenge that confronted locals was the transplantation, rather than plantation, of bamboo trees. the plan the local bamboo growers were required to follow was beyond the terrain with which they were familiar. local wisdom, not requiring an expert on bamboo, states that, generally, bamboo should not be transplanted. bamboo is allegedly tough, but it usually takes time to grow shoots. however, in cheng’s proposal, the concept of a “forest” was essential; to achieve an immediate forest-like installation required transplantation. from the perspective of professional local bamboo growers, transplantation was vulnerable and virtually unattainable in the typhoon season. the difficulty of transplantation was exacerbated by the heterogeneous geography of the central part of taiwan: “the site for the bamboo forest planting is dry and hot, whereas the site imagined by cheng, and probably by the internationally acclaimed judges, was high up in the mountains, constantly saturated with fog and a cool breeze” (author’s interviews with locals, 2007). conflict was exacerbated when a typhoon swept across the region and a gardening contractor went bankrupt due, in part, to the high maintenance work required during the typhoon season. he lamented that the bamboo forest seen in crouching tiger, hidden dragon was impossible to grow in the area. as another resident said: i see it as an expansion of the graveyard constructed in my neighbourhood. somewhat creepy. … we used to take a walk in the field, but now the entire field is abandoned. idiots know bamboo can’t grow in the way they prescribe. you can just randomly ask a resident here (pers. comm. local resident to the author). it transpired that cheng’s decision to use bamboo might have been more realistic if the forest had been planted at a higher altitude. the discrepancy between the global and local is further apparent in local folklore: a bamboo forest is frequently depicted as a place where ghosts and snakes mischievously hide in preparation for an attack on the innocent. it is a common belief that those who die of a natural disaster will not accept their fate, but haunt a forest, reluctant to leave. the ghosts harboured in the forest suffer immense anguish and sorrow, and will continue to wander around it as long as their wishes remain unfulfilled: “if each bamboo tree commemorates a death, the atrocity occurs when you kill the dead again. ironically, it happens here and has reshaped our memories” (pers. comm. local resident to the author). 4. ying literally means chilly and ghost haunting. local residents feel that too many trees would negatively affect their fung-shui. in this particular case, a bamboo forest is intimidating because it can link to the dead, whose ghosts are unwilling to leave due to the unaccomplished mission. interstices 08 83 interstices 08 83 conclusions this paper, focused on one specific event, has revealed differences between the intellectual and well-meaning agencies that worked to reshape public memories of a natural disaster, and their ill-considered local effects. the bamboo forest’s failure demonstrates a lack of vision among the project’s decision makers, primarily those in government who promoted global participation and ignored local wisdom, and in doing so compromised this high-profile international installation project. the project provides grounds on which to reflect more generally on the interplay between the local and the global, a negotiated relationship that underscores a wide range of contemporary issues. it also sheds light upon attitudes towards, and the potential for, the use of renewable material resources in contemporary developments. in the global age, it is foreseeable that global agents will continue to influence the construction of landscapes and public representations, even when these projects are culturally bounded. despite some good deeds, the bot is neither a poison nor a panacea. the point is that members of a community must be given the chance to comment, based on past successes, on what constitutes a good solution. it is imperative, in these forms of memorial construction, to capitalize on opportunities to create and strengthen the social network of a community. as advocated by many architects across the world (e.g. kakabadse, 2006), local wisdom is central to sustainable development. however, at the other end of the spectrum, it is also politically dangerous to depend solely upon local wisdom, which can be clouded by patronage and favouritism scandals. it is communication that is essential: between proponents and opponents; between initiators and converts; between experts and locals; between designers and makers. in the case of the 921 memorial park, such communication may have prevented the failure and subsequent clearance of the internationally acclaimed competition winning design. the bamboos being removed from the site. the controversy ends with sorrow. photograph by chiu-ping yang. interstices 08 pb references architect’s forum (2004). oh, landscape – chinese architecture site for design professionals. strategy of earthquake recovery: the role of the 921 earthquake recovery foundation. retrieved may 12, 2007, from http://www.ohlandscape.com/xoops/ modules/news/article.php?item_id=223 translated from chinese by hong-chi shiau. brook, s. (2006). touring the phantom agent: recognition, defacement and the vietnamese australian war memorial. journal of intercultural studies 27(2), 133-149. ding, j. & yang, c. (2004, february, 5). cheng won the championship of the landscape installation bidding, china times. translated from chinese by hong-chi shiau. farrar, m. (2004). trauma and the memory of politics. perspectives on politics 2(3), 567-568. gough, p. (2000). from heroes’ groves to parks of peace: landscapes of remembrance, protest and peace. landscape research 25(2), 213-228. gross, m. (2006, february, 12). taipei. new york times. retrieved may 8, 2007, from http:// travel2.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/travel/12going.html. jordan, j. (2005). a matter of time: examining collective memory in historical perspective in postwar berlin. journal of historical sociology 18(1-2), 37-71. kakabadse, y. (2006). the bamboo and local wisdom, the world conservation union. retrieved may 19, 2007, from http://www.holcimfoundation.org/portals/1/docs/awards book_0506_pp94-95.pdf. kao, y. (2006, october, 4). taiwan designers are in the vogue. new taiwan. retrieved may 8, 2007, from http://newtaiwan.com.tw/bulletinview.jsp?period=550&bulletinid=64761. translated from chinese by hong-chi shiau. lennon, j. j. & foley, m. (1999). interpretation of the unimaginable: the u.s. holocaust memorial museum, washington, d.c., and dark tourism. journal of travel research 38(1), 46-50. national park service (2007). vietnam veterans memorial: a design that heals. retrieved may 8, 2007, from http://www.nps.gov/archive/vive/memorial/design.htm#design. shieh, j. & chang, r. (2005). strategy of earthquake recovery: the role of the 921 earthquake recovery foundation, apec workshop on dissemination of disaster mitigation technologies for humanistic concerns phase i: earthquake disaster, taipei, taiwan, 18-21 june, 2001. unpublished paper. interstices 11 scale as the representation of an idea, the dream of architecture and the unravelling of a surface susan hedges architectural drawings are considered as a medium of thought and can be understood as a primary clue to thought processes and ideas. the drawn is a tangible speculation that experiments with scale as the labour of the hand and eye attempts to bring dreams into the built world. a drawn detail can be at a miniscule scale or at 1:1, the dimensions of a future building. focusing on a single object may change the sense of scale and require imaginative scale shifting to show the relationship between the drawn and its link to ideas. in olinda, if you go out with a magnifying glass and hunt carefully, you may find somewhere a point no bigger than the head of a pin which if you look at it slightly enlarged, reveals within itself the roofs, the antennas, the skylights, the gardens, the pools, the streamers across streets, the kiosks in the squares, the horse racing track. that point does not remain there: a year later you will find it the size of half a lemon, then as a mushroom, then a soup plate. and then it becomes a full-sized city, enclosed within the earlier city: a new city that forces its way ahead of the earlier city and presses it toward the outside. (calvino 2002: 129) in his book invisible cities, italo calvino’s version of scaling relies on procedures of partial seeing, scoping, rescaling and extending. this suggests that a single work can appear at once assured and ordinary, or near and yet strangely remote; it may affect vast areas, yet simultaneously seem in danger of disappearing (rugoff & stewart 1997: 14). scale, it is argued, is the representation of a dream and the complicating of a surface with which architecture comes into being. this paper attends to the drawing archive of the university of auckland for the smith & caughey department store (1927) and, in particular, two drawings of the elevations to the department store. this paper will discuss the drawn scale as three aspects: the representation of an idea, the dream of architecture and the unravelling of a surface. architectural drawings represent more than their architectural subjects and are proportionate to the future building; they are also elements in the history of architecture as well as an intriguing, if shadowy, window to the imagination (hewitt 1985: 9). drawing may not only present ideas of architectures past but also represent them through the un-built. mark hewitt writes: “an architect’s sketch or sketches, approximations of mental pictures and ideas with their own intrinsic qualities, provide a kind of foil for further mental speculations and images” (1985: 3). 73 architects are removed from directly representing or even abstractly depicting aspects of the visual world, except as they must visualise their invented objects within it. frank orr writes about scale from the perspective that it can be seen as a comparison of the size of something as it relates to something else, more specifically he writes that it is a comparison and relation to human size (1985: 9). the latin word “scalae” means a ladder or a flight of stairs.1 in a more modern application, scale could signify a series of marks made at regular intervals along a line, like rungs on a ladder, and later a device or system for measuring. in cartography and in architecture, a scale is a line divided into equal parts and placed at the bottom of a map, a drawing, or a plan to serve as a common measurement for all parts of a building or for all distances. rather than scaled drawing limiting accuracy, scale makes the comprehension of drawn worlds possible. a scale drawing could be seen as a miniature with a consistent specific ratio to the imagined object. the scale of architectural drawing consists of equal parts of measure and proportion where a unit of measure is chosen and a ratio established between idea, representation and future apparent size. scale invites the inhabitation of a drawing, the anticipation of occupation and is a means to imagining measure through projecting oneself into the drawing. the ability to project a miniature self into the drawings allows the architect to occupy the building, what susan stewart calls “the architects’ scalar imagination” (1993: 94). as the imagined miniature self (a tiny self with measures deriving from the human body) inhabits a drawing, the miniscule body of the architect is the measure, walking across the surface of the drawing. the relationship of the idea to a physical scale relies on internal systems of comparisons, the notion of hierarchy, selection and example of drawn details. paul emmons writes that, while cartesian approaches assume that scale is merely a numerical dimension known to the mind, it also has an empathetic bodily projection that is critical to imagining a future place (2007: 71). the making of architectural drawings engages the entire body in the physical act of imagination to understand scale. scale can affect the exchange between viewer and idea. small details may force us to draw closer in order to scrutinise, for the more closely we examine minute details, the less we notice the gap in size that separates us. the act of paying attention is itself a kind of magnifying or diminishing glass, the exchange between the viewer and the objective idea. imagination is required to project a change of scale. similarly the approach and the scaling of an idea can reveal the clarity needed for the idea to move into the built world. scale becomes a stair providing the means for ascending and descending between the great and the small and the compartments of the imagination. the climbing of stairs to view the representation of the idea more closely reveals the lines of the future place. the scaled detail will be discussed in relation to drawings from the university of auckland architecture archive. the question of the relationship between the architects’ phantasia and the nature of a scaled detail are tested in the archival drawings of one particular building. the drawings, it is suggested, become a kind of text, the visual representation of the author’s dream, a partial set of fragmented sheets, the taking apart and putting together required to see the dream in its entirety. 1 scalae – a flight of steps, stairs, staircase, ladder, scaling-ladder. (pollio 1960: book 5, chapter 6) interstices 11 smith & caughey department store (1927) the smith & caughey department store is a seven-storeyed building designed by roy alstan lippincott in 1927. the building reads as an ornate monolithic mass on the corner of elliot and wellesley streets, auckland city. the department store underwent a number of alterations from 1927 to 1940, all designed by lippincott, including the remodelling to the queen street façade in 1940 and the addition of a lightwell to the store in 1932 (bruce 1984: 74). the drawing set offers a department store richly decorated in pressed cement panels and plaster facings. large arched windows reach like ladders from the ground to the sky and recessed transoms set in cast iron dominate street front elevations. bronze panels separate floors and are repeated up the building. pilasters soar upwards and protrude above the parapet line, giving a vertical emphasis. ornamentation appears as leaves and rosettes of different types contained within geometric frames, blossoming pilasters and balconettes, and spiral and lozenge patterns decorate colonnettes. fig. 1 smith & caughey building. photograph by susan hedges. 75 the archived set and the representation of an idea the smith & caughey archived drawing set consists of a number of hand-drawn, ruled and contract drawings. the drawing set does not precisely represent the building as it is today; sheets from the façade remodelling are missing and only a single sketch showing the lightwell remains. the titles begin at the foundations and end at fibrous plaster details. the archived set consists of working drawings, instructions to be sent to various skilled workers, masons and builders. the first 22 sheets are on fragile, faded paper, weathered, yellowing and torn at the edges. the rest of the set is a series of more recent photocopied sheets, where patches of the drawings have been lost in the duplicating process. the set is incomplete, sheets are missing and some drawings have no titles. the surviving notation of the future building and the delicate marks of detail have become blurred edges, smudges lost in the attempt to be copied. the marks that are lost threaten the full clear representation of the imminent object. the loss of marks makes the images unstable and the images’ own coherence is undermined; scale shifts into smaller details, from rough proportioning to refining and trimming, repeated by subsequent enlargements, progressively focusing on parts of the dream. susan stewart writes that a book offers metaphors of containment, of exteriority and interiority, of surface and depth, of covering and exposure, of taking apart and putting together: “the book sits below me closed and unread; it is an object, a set of surfaces. but opened, it seems revealed; its physical aspects give way to abstraction and a nexus of new temporalities” (1993: 37). the opening of the book becomes the opening of the archive; the drawing set becomes the site of the phantasia, its construction and record in the archive enabling the exploration of future spaces and a glimpse of the architect’s imaginings. this discussion will centre on four of the sheets describing the details and elevations of the smith & caughey department store: sheet no. 3 south façade (to wellesley st) + north elevation, scale ⁄1 8” = 1 foot, sheet no. 4 west elevation (elliot st) + east elevation scale ⁄1 8” = 1 foot, sheet no.7: half elevation typical bay elliot street, and half elevation typical bay wellesley street, scale ¾” = 1 foot and sheet no.8: section at entrance, and sectional plan a-a, scale ¾” = 1 foot. fig. 2 lippincott, sheet no. 25, ‘sectional plan cc, reflected plan of ceiling under clerestory south wall’. architecture archive, architecture library, the university of auckland (uoa architecture archive). interstices 11 the drawn sheets and the dream of architecture sheet no. 3 and sheet no.4 reveal the four elevations of lippincott’s dream. the building’s two street elevations show eight bays of windows on wellesley street and six on elliot street and cover six floors of the department store. (shaw 1991: 111) the upward momentum is slowed at the fifth floor by a small row of flower boxes. two floors above this they merge to form a single range of double-height arched windows that visually tease apart the spaces of the page. the east and north elevations are drawn with a reliance on outline and flattening of surface. in the west and south elevations the line work becomes more complicated: depth is implied with darker hatching, the poché suggesting an embossed ornate surface. moments of drawn ornamentation begin to add depth to the sheet’s surface, and become a suggestion of the dream of skin. the flatness of the department store drawings, the elevations and their detailing, reveal the structural elements, the supports and connectors and, alongside the perceptual understanding of the building, closure and aperture, solid and void, surface and transparency. the elevational drawings offer the meeting and crossing of ideas, the steps, the required scale shifts and the scaling of a ladder to get closer to the representation. marco frascari writes that all the lines in architecture derive from the lines used in a loom (1993: 23-24). earlier, he had suggested that the architects’ phantasia are woven into shape from these lines: just as threads form a piece of cloth, the loom can be seen as a metaphor for the architectural plan, just as scaffolding could serve as a metaphor for raising the architectural elevation (1985: 87).2 the marks become an expression of imaginings and are a statement supplying the general picture. the large scale prompts elaboration so as to grasp the potential of the small part. the detail soon follows. the graphic elements involved in drawings, plans, sections and elevations, are a visual representation with silhouettes or figures. the elevation is the image of the projected building, an upright proper drawing showing a source of proportional play where surfaces become places for geometry. this flattened projection can be thought of as a mask, a portrait or a permeable screen. it suppresses the three-dimensional. the elevation is part of the performance of architecture, a place of strangeness and comfort. the mask transforms and omits as much as it represents and, as with the elevation, there is that which is denied and revealed (hill 2006: 13-14). 2 frascari suggests that scaffolding is not independent but an integral part of the façade (1985: 87). fig. 3 lippincott, sheet no. 3, ‘south façade (to wellesley st) + north elevation, smith & caughey limited, wellesley street extension’. uoa architecture archive. 77 the elevation is the picturing of architecture, a site for negotiating the inside and outside, the recording of materiality, a play of ornamentation, proportion and elevation. vitruvius writes that, “an elevation is a picture of the front of a building, set upright and properly drawn in the proportions of the contemplated work”3 (pollio 1960, book 1, chapter 2). the elevation is the construction or building of the front image, a picture or representation of the operis futuri, the future work. it suggests that the drawing should be worked on an upright wall like an inscription on a board, or like ink on paper. the implied depth in the two dimensions of an elevational drawing interact with the perception of real depth to give more or less a flicker between the present drawing and the imaginary future work. the smith & caughey department store elevation’s implied depth is made up of flat surfaces modulated within a thin layer. the scaled drawing offers notions of casting forward, of projection; it invites imaginative projection between a drawing, its future place and its detail. with lines stopping and starting, the architects’ phantasia is projected. line weights aid in the suggestion of depth, the heavier the delineation of an element the farther forward it appears, and the lighter the delineation of an element the further it appears to recede. tonal values of ink and texture are used to enhance the depth of materials, textures and shadows of the future work. the department store elevations depict this convergence of dreams, real space and time through a fragmented series of distinct but related views. pen and ink, the hand-produced drawing, hinders the image of scale and size. the “dream detail” is compromised by the physical size of the drawing instrument and the ability of the human eye to perceive it. thicknesses between lines diminish and line weights become heavier, rendering indecipherable blackness and moving beyond the limits of bodily skill to see and draw detail. the edge of skill necessitates the making of a new drawing, altering detail through instruments of removal and relocation, the architect shifting between drawings of differing scales. the detail of dreams promises a relocation, rescaling and removal, allowing movement between incomprehensible miniatures, failing vision and the thickness between lines. fig. 4 lippincott, sheet no. 4, ‘west elevation (elliot st) + east elevation, smith & caughey limited, wellesley street extension’. uoa architecture archive. 3 [orthographia autem est erecta frontis imago modiceque picta rationibus operis futuri figura. item scaenographia est frontis et laterum abscedentium adumbratio ad circinique centrum omnium linearum responsus.] (pollio 1960, book 1, chapter 2) interstices 11 the unravelling of a surface: elevational details sheet no. 7 and sheet no. 8 are scaled elevational details of the smith & caughey department store. sheet no. 3 and sheet no. 4 paint an account of the design. the scaled elevational details draw nearer to the operis futuri figura. sheet no. 7 shows half elevation details to the wellesley and elliot street façades, flat inscriptions lie horizontally across the paper. the window arches shift in size from elliot street to wellesley street, the radius of the arch deepens in scale to fit within the compositional arrangement of the building. to the right of the sheet the half detail of the terminal bays rises between ornate concrete colonnettes. to the right of the sheet a section reveals a flower box beneath each window. threads appear stretched, teased over the surface of the page, places of earlier complication have become unravelled and lighter in weight. flowers and tendrils are caught in geometric patterning, and swirling column shafts frame the arched windows. sheet no. 8 shows the lower two floors of the department store. plate glass windows dominate the centre of the sheet. woven across the surface of the sheet are small sectional details of points of juncture. bronze pilasters and grilles echo the verticality of the upper floors. for these imagined walls, their weight and consistency, the sheet surface becomes the imaginary scaled-down face of the future building to which the lines of the drawing correspond. connections between darker points become more visible in sheet no. 3 and sheet no. 4, where the architects’ phantasia appears with a measured clarity. sheet no. 7 and sheet no. 8 draw nearer and begin to consider the overall proportions of the future place. the scaled detail is the information required for the translation from the representation of the idea to the built. through the search for clarity, one draws closer, acts of scale become acts of scrutiny and, in this examination, the retracing of the architect’s movements between eye and hand become clearer (de zegher 2003: 71). the drawings made of lines become a line, provoking the thought that every line could itself be a world composed also of a multitude of lines. the reading of one view or component of a building automatically refers to another invisible condition outside of one’s immediate perception, referencing other realisations of the drawing’s characteristics. the attempt to translate surfaces of the building, whilst maintaining sufficient identity with the sheet of paper, happens with scale and proportional ratios, a teasing apart of drawn objects to fig. 5 lippincott, ‘sheet no. 7: half elevation typical bay elliot street, and half elevation typical bay wellesley street, smith & caughey limited, wellesley street extension’. uoa architecture archive. 79 understand or reduce their complexity. through this visual unravelling there could be elements of distortion, a means of making things fit, revealing another layer of narratives within its surfaces. the sheet’s visual field is occupied by an imagined architectonic structure, perforated with openings, arches and windows, becoming a kind of screen that simultaneously organises the two-dimensional surface and divides the implied depth of the pictorial space. the delicacy of the line work that shifts from the elevation to the detail and the sharply defined lines form a web of shapes. in the seeking of the scaled detail, the visual elements have become flimsy and delicate. the delicacy is there in order to resolve difficulty and to decide on a meaning that can be seen. georges didi-huberman writes that the detail is linked to a greater or lesser extent to the act of drawing a line, this being the act that constitutes stable differences, the act of making graphic decisions and distinctions (1989: 152). a visual matching of lines, marks on paper, become a transformation from one system of representation to another. they are a transformation of appropriate signs with a view to the imagining of certain architectural events (frascari 1984: 30). “scale is simultaneously an instrument for the hand to make drawing and for the mind to imagine building” (emmons 2007: 64). does the scaled detail become rinsed clean of all matter? is the teasing of line and thought, presentation without representation? the sheet begins to confront us with its material opacity. georges didi-huberman suggests, “it thus connotes both structures and the tearing away of parts of structures, or their partial collapse” (1989: 165). the rhythm of scaling relies on procedures for partial seeing, scoping, rescaling, extending and reducing material features. notions of graduation (nuances of size and degrees of presence) become internal streams, orders and disorders, visual puzzles, flows and synchronisation of moves. in “scaling up” or “scaling down”, successive repetition and redundancy compose a type of rhythm. the rhythm becomes an ordered variation in a series of moves performed with different intensities and speeds, creating a knowing through scaling, a lending of the body (yaneva 2005: 870). the use of geometry, line drawings and other representational conventions, the signs of architecture, the modelling of the scene, are held together for a moment before being teased apart. climbing the ladder to get a closer look at the architects’ phantasia, the surviving notation is of a lost fig. 6 lippincott, ‘sheet no.8: section at entrance, and sectional plan a-a, smith & caughey limited, wellesley street extension’. uoa architecture archive. interstices 11 visualisation, the scene and the production of a drawing and the representation of a dream. the drawings become a transfer from bodily visualisation and envisioning, to registers of representation. through the flat plane of the drawn sheet, lines transfer and imply depth. lippincott’s drawn sheets transform from elevation to detailed ornamentation, the spill of information and imagination. out of meticulous investigation architectural detail emerges, the practical procedures of drawing up projects are also mechanisms by which ideas are shaped, an initial image later to be a definitive form. the archived drawings of the smith & caughey department store are directed towards a future non-drawn object, the drawings an attempt to fix fragmented phantasia in a logical sequence by building knowledge step by step. this hoped-for figure is the scale. the scaling of a ladder to get closer to the dream becomes an act of clarification, a visualisation of the perceived or imagined. because its proportion and scale differs from its context, the detail invites an occupation of space, on ink and paper. this becomes a discursive unravelling of the smith & caughey drawings, a move from the dream of the architect to the dreams of the reader, where scale as representation shifts to misrepresentation and unruliness. in unravelling veiled implications for future work, scale becomes the weaving and unravelling of practiced fingers. the creator of the dream unravels tangled skeins to weave intricate drawings. one hopes that none of the fine threads will break. or he speaks of arachne’s fingers, expert at winding or unravelling wool, turning the spindle, plying the needle in embroidery, fingers that at certain point we see lengthening into slender spiders’ legs and beginning to weave a web… (calvino 1993: 10). 81 references: bruce, m. a. (1984). roy alstan lippincott: an american connection. thesis (barch) university of auckland. calvino, i. (2002). invisible cities. w. weaver, (trans.). london: vintage. calvino, i. (1993). six memos for the next millennium. new york: vintage books. de zegher, c. (ed.) (2003). the stage of drawing: gesture and act. london: tate publishing; new york: drawing center. didi-huberman, g. (1989). the art of not describing: vermeer – the detail and the patch. history of the human sciences. 2(2), 135-169. emmons, p. (2007). drawn to scale: the imaginative inhabitation of architectural drawings. in j. hale, b. bradley starkey and m. frascari (eds.), from models to drawings: imagination and representation in architecture. london and new york: routledge. frascari, m. (1993). the unfolding of an angelic paradox: the corporeal reading of plans. practices. b (spring), 19-25. frascari, m. (1985). a ‘measure’ in architecture: a medical-architectural theory by simone stratico architetto veneto. res. 9 (spring): 79-90. frascari, m. (1984). ‘the tell-the-tale detail’. via. 7: 22-37. hewitt, m. (1985). representational forms and modes of conception: an approach to the history of architectural drawing. jae: journal of architectural education, 39(2), 2-9. hill, j. (2006). immaterial architecture. abingdon (england): routledge. orr, f. (1985). scale in architecture. new york: van nostrand reinhold. pollio, v. (1960). vitruvius: the ten books on architecture. m. h. morgan (trans.). with illustrations and original designs prepared under the direction of h. l. warren. new york: dover publications. rugoff, r. and stewart, s. (1997). at the threshold of the visible: miniscule and small-scale art 1964-1996. new york: independent curators incorporated. shaw, p. (1991). new zealand architecture: from polynesian beginnings to 1990. auckland: hodder and stoughton ltd. stewart, s. (1993). on longing: narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection. durham: duke university press. yaneva, a. (2005). scaling up and down: extraction trials in architectural design. social studies of science. 35(6), 867-894. interstices 09 long live the modern: new zealand’s new architecture, 1904-1984 curated and designed by bill mckay and julia gatley long live the modern was held at the gus fisher gallery, the university of auckland, from 17 october to 22 november 2008. it was curated in conjunction with the launch of the julia gatley-edited book of the same title, published by auckland university press. it coincided with constructing the modern city: canterbury architecture, 1940-1970, curated by ian lochhead and jessica halliday and held at christchurch’s coca gallery from 14 october to 2 november 2008. both exhibitions celebrated new zealand’s modern architecture and encouraged increased heritage listing and registration of our modern buildings. drawings from the architecture archive, the university of auckland. photograph by sam hartnett. henry kulka exhibits provided by the kulka foundation. photograph by sam hartnett. inside gallery 1, the black wall explained the role of docomomo, the international working party for the documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the modern movement. photograph by sam hartnett. 135 an example of one of the eleven ‘stations’: vladimir čačala’s blumenthal house, st heliers, auckland, 1958. new photograph by simon devitt; period photographs by ted mahieu / collection of bill mckay; and model by clio kei-yan chiu. photograph by sam hartnett. gallery 1 contained drawings, models, photographs and text focusing on eleven of the 180 buildings included in the book. photograph by sam hartnett. the banner sports the book cover. photograph by sam hartnett. interstices 11 trans-form-ers auckland architecture week, 2009 report by kathy waghorn trans-form-ers was a design studio run as a joint venture between the university of auckland school of architecture and planning, aut department of spatial design and unitec programmes in architecture and interior design. around 400 students spent a semester designing and fabricating mobile pavilions for public display. the requirement was that on a given friday evening these pavilions would convoy across the inner city – acting pied piper-like in arousing curiosity – before arriving at the old city bus maintenance sheds in the cbd, where they would “transform” in some way. the requirement to traverse the city was addressed in the students’ projects in many imaginative ways. in one project a scaffolding tower recalling brodsky and utkin was towed through the city with lycra-clad performers writhing atop, in another inflatable fingers billowed out the back of a family sedan, and in a third eight vespa scooters carried riders whose plywood back-packs housed speakers, the eight tracks they broadcast weaving in and out of synchronicity as they negotiated the traffic. the overall affect on the friday night rush hour in this infamously car-bound city was a chaotic situationist-style delight, love parade meets oversize haulage with a touch of street protest thrown in for good measure. on arrival at the venue surprising things tumbled out of curtain-side articulated trucks; one truck housed a timber crate-like contraption while another conveyed a pavilion made from 4000 inflated condoms. the public began to arrive to see things hoisted, unfurled, stretched, clasped, stacked, inflated and clamped as the pavilions (mostly!) took on their intended shape. even before the audience could enter the pavilions, this setting up provided a spectacle in itself. once the various offerings were up, though, around 4000 people clambered into and onto them. fig. 1. nom inflate, the inflation process. 127 after two hours of trawling across, through, and under all 45 trans-form-ers projects, a valiant judge, pip cheshire, chose two particular projects on which to bestow awards. nom inflate from auckland university (figs. 1, 2 and 3), cannily used the audience as the mechanism of transformation. their parachute-like project required 50 people to pick up its edges, and then throw it into the air and over their heads. the transformation enacted was immediate and intense; one moment 50 people make a circle in an old shed, the next they find themselves in the svelte, chic, bubble-shaped lounge that results. the success of this project lay in its immaculate detailing, itself a result of much prototyping and materials research. every aspect of the project conveyed this attention to the detail, from the length and capacity of the sand bags that weighted the bubble’s edges, to the panel construction to trap air, to the cabling of lights concealed within the floor panel stitching. for 15 minutes, the time it took for the bubble to softly deflate, the lucky 50 luxuriated in the glamorous interior. while the nom inflate project channelled luxury, this way up from unitec (figs. 4, 5 and 6 conveyed a sense of danger. the timber pavilion was a crate-like space, but one laterally sliced, with the resulting pieces in a state of constant movement. entry was made through the gaps that opened up between slices, gaps that could just as quickly close, potentially jamming limbs, necks, heads, whole bodies. an oversized, machine-like contraption, with cogs and wheels all precisely assembled from timber, facilitated the movement. at the university of auckland the experience of large-scale fabrication is becoming an important part of the bachelor of architectural studies curricula. studios and events such as this allow students to learn through experience. this type of studio fosters the use of design strategies and techniques not promoted in regular studios, such as prototyping, large-scale modelling, stress testing and the production of shop drawings. to realise a project such as these for transform-ers, students are required to engage with the world, seeking out materials and systems, locating equipment, managing budgets and negotiating assistance and support. the students must work in small teams and thus experience the difficulties and rewards of the collaborative process, designing, presenting, project managing and fabricating through discussion and negotiation. through such studios we intend that students begin to see constraint as a driver of architectural opportunity. the constraints encountered may include that of the brief, budget, site/venue, regulatory requirement, time and the collaborative work process. through a well-designed and supported studio project such as this we aim to help the students maintain conceptual rigour in the face of these encounters. if trans-form-ers is anything to go by this seems to be paying off. fig. 2 and 3. nom inflate, interior. project by melanie pau, howard kang, frances lowe and ashleigh low of the university of auckland. photographs by sav schulman. interstices 11 to see a video of trans-form-ers go to http://www.creative.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/about/ab-creative-showcase/ architecture-planning-showcase the trans-form-ers competition blog is http://trans-form-ers.blogspot.com/ the 2010 project is called skyrise city, info on http://skyrise-city.blogspot.com/ fig. 4, 5 and 6. this way up by ryan ford, pat kelly, craig plant and adrian leat of the unitec architecture programme. photographs by anna tong. fig. 7. the crowd arrives as the trans-formers projects are set up. photograph by sav schulman. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 2 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s editorial / farzaneh haghighi & nikolina bobic political matters this thematic issue of interstices, political matters, approaches architecture beyond aesthetic analysis, and more than a mere branch of traditional art history or a civilisation’s will to form (kwinter, 2001). nor do we consider it as utilitarian space to maximise particular behaviours (bentham, 1843), or in an essentialised way whereby inhabitation and place-making are contextually and ontologically given (heidegger, 1927), or historically predetermined. instead architecture, and more broadly urban space, are understood as political forces in and of themselves, meaning that they can enforce sociopolitical changes. the urgency of engaging with the political significance of architecture and urban space is because we can no longer afford to reduce them to neutral backdrops of political realities. the ongoing and increasing global crises are explicit evidence of the inherent role of architecture and urbanism in the structural racism embedded in urban planning, the brutal treatment of asylum seekers, the desire for spaces of commerce to accumulate capital for the few rather than civic spaces to enable the agency of citizenship, the micropolitics and surveillance of social distancing during the pandemic, in addition to global warming, food scarcity, maritime territorialisation, and modern forms of slavery. as such, architecture can no longer be understood as that which is built on stable ground; economics is not static and neither is state power, the urban fabric is stretched across the globe (lefebvre, 1970). likewise, architecture and urbanism cannot be removed from their connections to digital technology, mass media, the military and the law. politics is spatial. moreover, architecture and urban space can be deployed as tools for radical and revolutionary changes, since collective awareness, resistance and social movements have a spatial dimension (harvey, 2013). the premise of change is undeniably enveloped in the rethinking of what architecture is by questioning its role, influence and ethical responsibility, as well as addressing how architecture and the urban can help articulate global concerns, and possibly offer alternatives. the nexus of politics and architecture is a growing topic of discussion. the recently co-edited political theory and architecture (bell and zacka, 2020) tackles this nexus by showing that the political role of architecture/urban space should be sought in how certain changes can be implemented. they argue that the relation between politics and architecture is often understood as deterministic through these three common ways: channelling occupants’ behaviours and in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 3 editorial / political matters p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s informing the meaning of their action (for example the arrangement of parliament seats); symbolic representation of values (for example, the pantheon in paris celebrating the french revolution); and fostering a social ethos (such as the modernist belief that architecture can cure all socioeconomic ills). instead they invite us to examine how architecture and urban space shape human experience, how they develop civic consciousness and how they limit or expand social or political infrastructures. understanding the political processes and effects of architecture—the how—is also taken up as an anthropological research project by albena yaneva in five ways to make architecture political: an introduction to the politics of design practice (2017). by analysing a series of projects from oma, azpa to moshe safdie, and contexts from birmingham, vienna, osaka and singapore, she unpicks the consequences of design and through this process reinvents the sites of political action in a way that are not limited to ideology, state, nation, government, policies, and activism (2017: 4). a way out is proposed through actor-network-theory (ant) methodology where architecture is not defined, stabilised, or fixed but rather it is a complex set of processes which all occur in a dynamic and incomplete relation to each other. another attempt to define architecture beyond a political symbol or a physical by-product of the political economy of neoliberalism, is offered by graham cairns in reification and representation: architecture in the politico-media-complex (2018). he sees architecture as a “mediated political hybrid”. that architecture is a complex, interdisciplinary and multifaceted field is explored in the co-edited spatial violence: studies in architecture (herscher and siddiqi, 2018). here, the common denominator of politics—the what—is violence, where the line between war and peace is blurred in themes that range from military targeting and incarceration to urban planning and refugee camps, and in contexts as wide as sri lanka, serbia, congo, italy, france and the us. to address what it means for space to be political beyond it merely being an expression of hegemonic orders, political matters call for papers drew upon specific studies in philosophy, political and cultural/critical theory by hannah arendt, chantal mouffe, paul virilio, michel foucault and gilles deleuze. arendt (1955) not only suggests that political questions are far too serious to be left to politicians, she also considers action as the highest manifestation of vita activa (which designates fundamental human activities including labour, work and action) which occurs in a public sphere (arendt, 1958). however, arendt’s account of action in the public realm is limited, because she frames public space through ancient greek texts, where the exercise of action is based on freedom-to-act rather than necessity-to-act. freedom-to-act may be better framed as keeping control at a tolerable level. more so, the elimination of the necessity-to-act was foregrounded by exclusion (in ancient greece, that would have included the slave, woman, foreigner). indeed, for chantal mouffe, arendt’s envisioning of “public space as a space where consensus can be made” is flawed since all forms of consensus do and will exclude certain opinions (2013: 10). thus, mouffe proposes the notion of agonism and the impossibility of a final reconciliation in thinking the political. she suggests that the political is inherent to all human societies and can take many forms and relations, but politics is a set of practices that arrange people by establishing certain orders (2013: 2). her theorisation of the difference between politics and the political has informed the ways in which we employed politics as a set of relations in which architecture is restricted, or used as a means of oppression or control, whereas political is approached as more hopeful and in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 4 editorial / political matters p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s constructive by giving architecture agency. this is not to say that oppression and agency cannot overlap. a well-placed spatial implication of this is seen in tina engels-schwarzpaul’s paper on contested public debates and protests on land ownership in ihumātao, which halted the construction project of a private company from building houses on indigenous land, since no consensus was made between those involved in the debate. another perspective that informed this issue is the re-conceptualisation of the notion of power by michel foucault (1975, 1976). simply put, we often understand power as being negative and oppressive, “a power to say no; in no condition to produce, capable of only posting limits, it is basically anti-energy” (1976: 85). foucault dismantles the habitual link between power and domination, by suggesting that we obey not because power is oppressive, but because power is productive. shifting from oppression towards production, one is encouraged to investigate what power relations give rise to. for example, walls are common architectural archetypes of segregation, however, daniel grinceri’s paper shows that the construction of border walls is based on creating a perception of security. by deploying wendy brown’s thinking (2010), grinceri indicates that physical borders are often erected to perform a theatrical role by giving the perception of the government being in control even if the border wall does not perform the given role, such as the mexico-us border. to make sense of contemporary forms of power, deleuze (1990) extends foucault’s notion of disciplinary society to the society of control. this is the subject of ian buchanan’s paper. he suggests that we need to understand how our desires are captured in specific ways. if we do not identify these ways and forces, we will continue to be complicit in the production processes that maintain control societies. here, desire is seen as social and productive, rather than the psychoanalytic stance where desire reproduces objet petit-a. thus, comprehending the complex forms of surveillance and governance in the age of contemporaneity requires us to shift our attention to examine the new ways by which corporates handle money, profit, and humans in control societies (deleuze, 1990). buchanan shows that today, when architecture is built for software and data storage rather than people, when a human is nothing other than a code and dividual, when governing associated with the panopticon is child’s play compared to the information held by corporations which we freely give with our purchases, likes and movements, when information is the new property and data is the new oil, it may be safe to say that it and the media permeate every pixel and second of our lives. as buchanan observes (2008), and in line with the thinking of gilles deleuze and felix guattari (1972, 1980), we need to search for different types of tools that capture human desires. indeed, this may require a different placing and questioning of ideas, events and spaces than may be associated with the normalised identification of architecture and accepted way of living. for paul virilio, speed is pivotal in the engagement with and understanding of reality. the substitution of one reality with another has been possible due to the historical focus on space rather than time, the impact being that the speed of weaponry and displacement of information drive history (1977). the shift from the middle ages to the enlightenment and the current period is driven by the constant acceleration of speed, and militarisation of the urban as well as our shifting perception of space (virilio, 1977, 1984, 1989, 1996). virilio’s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 5 editorial / political matters p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s thinking differs from mouffe’s, for whom the current society, including the very association with democracy, is correlational to the exchange processes of neoliberalism. for virilio, land, things, information, perception—and democracy and citizenship, although not directly stated—are connected to, and driven by, militarisation. for him, time rather than space is the driving factor. our perception is indeed framed by, and dependent upon, the military-information-media-entertainment complex—mime (der derian, 2009), since the conflation of the media and technology can help disguise possible acts of crime, and also because such iterations of violence are operationalised in the name of “security and peace”, “civil values” and “humanitarianism”. that our cities have become the new battleground of borders, wars, surveillance, and terrorism is explored in cities under siege: the new military urbanism (graham, 2011), a topic of discussion in daniel grinceri’s paper. the significance of 9/11 is that it was the first internecine war and the first war of globalisation (virilio and lotringer, 2002). the dismantled and reconstructed media frame of 9/11 was relentlessly replayed in order to perform the politics of mime. for political matters, engaging with the contemporary world is enmeshed in the complexities of politics engulfed in corporate capitalism, normalised archaeologies of knowledge, repression of urban struggles, and militarisation of information. it yields the investigation of the regimes for which architecture is a necessary tool, whether this be for civil ordering, or the way in which control is enabled through mining personal data, manipulation of data, producing ignorance through media entertainment, and affecting memory and perception. in our age of mass media, not only the distinction between fake/real news and true/false information is ever-more blurred, but more importantly, the revelation of truth does not change anything (such as the scandals of donald trump); the political is hijacked. however, it is not that the media image has replaced the real image of truth. for baudrillard, reality is obliterated; copy precedes and determines the real (1981, 1991). the interplay between war, media, truth, and architectural representation is investigated by endriana audisho in “liveness, mediation and the simulated: effects of the digital screen on architectural representation post 1990.” the underlying theme of this paper pertinent to politics in that digital technology has not only had a significant impact on pedagogy and the design processes in architecture, but also on the globally instantaneous circulation of images of featured buildings. audisho specifically engages with the digital turn by examining three case studies: the tension between the simulated and the real in cnn’s 1991 coverage of the gulf war as the first live reporting of a conflict in the world; experimental paperless studio and media city at gsapp (graduate school of architecture, planning and preservation), columbia university’ in 1994 using computers in studios; and finally, the united architects’ 2002 world trade centre (wtc) design competition proposal. audisho links these three moments together by suggesting that architects were following how the gulf war was mediated, and that these techniques were deployed in their teaching and practice. the adoption of the digital screen for purposes of experimentation by greg lynn, bernard tschumi and hani rashid happened when the architectural discipline was experiencing a crisis of representation. by drawing upon the wtc design competition entry of united architects, audisho suggests that the screen was reduced to a fetishised image dissociated from sociopolitical reality of architecture. consequently, what we are now left with are simulated images solely concerned with aesthetics and market economies. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 6 editorial / political matters p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s with the increasing death of refugees trying to reach the fortress of europe, or asylum seekers imprisoned in australia’s offshore detention centres, or detained children at united states immigration and customs enforcement (ice), it seems to be more important than ever to theorise the critical nexus between politics and space. daniel grinceri’s “tracing the border: excursus on the wall” specifically engages with wall borders from a theoretical point of view. by drawing upon the works of wendy brown, zygmunt bauman, giorgio agamben and saskia sassen among others, grinceri argues that the proliferation of walls worldwide highlights the declining authority of nation-states, which in itself is a consequence of ever-increasing economic control of multi-national corporations under capitalism. border walls, he suggests, do not create a more secure and safer environment. they are instead a means of controlling who can benefit from the free deregulated market and territorial mobility, and who should not. this paper also extends the discussion of physical walled borders into contemporary digital surveillance and opens up a debate around the current state of pandemic and the state’s role in managing the health of the population which requires some levels of state-sanctioned surveillance and control. however, grinceri shows that even during a pandemic and lock-down in melbourne, australia, policing the population does not solely operate for health protection, but is implicated in the segregation and stigmatisation of immigrants. despite the pandemic evading the conventional understanding of territorial borders, new ones are being created by using the pandemic to stigmatise and separate those who are contagious and ill (migrants and impoverished) from violating the safe zones of the wealthy and privileged. undeniably, the pandemic is used to mark wealth, race, and the other. that segregation imposed by borders should be also examined against the right to territory and ownership is addressed by tina engels-schwarzpaul in “peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently”. she argues that questions of territory are undeniably tied to formulating identity as fixed, central and concrete. more so, her thinking is aligned with our focus on thinking of the periphery not as that which is oppressed or backward, but rather opportunistically situated as a frontier that can offer alternatives. for engels-schwarzpaul, we can no longer afford to perpetuate assumptions of western superiority in terms of centre/periphery, individualism perpetuated by neoliberalism, nor national identities bounded to territories by sovereign borders. as such she calls for the concepts that can allow us to engage with a multi-centred world. the spatial conflicts caused by inadequate and dangerous colonial concepts of identity are examined through two scenes in her paper, cara di mineo, a refugee camp in italy keeping refugees out of europe, and occupation of ihumātao, a māori ancestral landscape tāmaki makaurau auckland. disputes over land-ownership led to the closure of the camp and brought a halt to the construction of a housing project by a private company on ancestral land. two different conceptualisations of relation-to-land in western imagination and the māori world are compared with each other; the former presumes unambiguous/unequal relationships through inflexible boundaries, whereas the latter is reciprocal and holders of the power over land are to care for the well-being of everything there. simply put, one is based on exclusivity and the other on association. by drawing mainly on the works of hannah arendt and edward said, the paper addresses these differing positions of territorial conceptualisation and examines the protest in ihumātao by suggesting that a common world based on plural perspectives is not in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 7 editorial / political matters p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s only possible, but an urgent necessity. incorporating plural perspectives requires a different methodology that can go beyond the business-as-usual politics. methods that offer real alternatives can be found in the independent spatial practice of forensic architecture (fa). led by eyal weizman, fa is a research-architecture practice based at goldsmiths, university of london. comprised of architects, journalists, film makers and software/game developers, fa cross-cuts architecture, art, journalism, law and science in an investigative way to provide evidence for new types of public truths. fa unpicks the ways in which state or government-initiated violence has attained a new level of acceptability and legality. the research uses the trace (ranging from witness accounts and image-based footage to bullet holes) to reconstruct the event in reverse. their work advocates for progressive egalitarian causes including transparent access to information, whilst also reflecting alain badiou’s position that the ethics of human rights and humanitarian interventions conceals an ideology of imperialism and invariably control (1993). in this issue of interstices, anthony brand interviews software developer lachlan kermode of fa. we learn about their design methodology and the dynamic of the practice itself. for example, the investigation into the saydnaya prison in syria by reconstructing places of tortures through sound and sensory experiences of the interviewed detainees. addressing the political in relation to architecture and urban space is incomplete without noting the right of the public to the city, both in design processes and in decision making. the necessity and complexity of social participation is addressed by christina deluchi in “the politics of social architecture in medellín: a reading of the parque biblioteca españa”. she examines the construction of a library to highlight two important aspects pertinent to political matters. the first shows how buildings are used as tools to represent certain ideologies, and the second highlights how the emergence of buildings is intertwined with complex socioeconomic forces and politics. this paper offers an engaging history of the transformation of medellín in colombia, from a city known for violence, corruption and drugs, to what has been globally presented as a successful case of urban renaissance. deluchi lays out how socio-geographic planning schemes, decentralised politics, participatory mechanisms, educational reform, economic partnerships and public works projects created the structural changes necessary for the emergence of social urbanism. more importantly, she further demonstrates that the language of social inclusion for the construction of this library was entangled in contradictions. ultimately the library was deployed as a symbol for the city’s renewal project, yet not only were the protocols for increased local participation and civic trust undermined, but the source of economic support and motives behind this project remain questionable. construing a new global image for medellín, and invariably colombia, was an attempt to disguise economic and softer versions of corruption, despite it being hailed as an example of a renewed sense of identity and belonging in the local community. that its image of success was short-lived is also evidenced by the fact that the building which officially opened in 2007 was closed indefinitely in 2017 for repair. that buildings can no longer be seen as autonomous objects, or that they are not only shaped by economic or ecological forces, is the main trajectory of investigation for gerard reinmuth and andrew benjamin in “autonomy-withinrationality.” they argue that the political in architectural discourse has been in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 8 editorial / political matters p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s wrongly sought within the object itself or in the context in which the object was conceived. instead, architecture should be sought in the relations that produce the object. the notions of object and relation are discussed by drawing upon pier vittorio aureli’s idea of autonomy and nishat awan, tatiana schneider and jeremy till’s work on agency. embedding the theoretical framework is done through the evolution of coop himmelblau’s projects since 1960s, zaha hadid’s and patrick schumacher’s projects, and alejandro zaera-polo’s consideration of the politics of the building envelope in architectural practice. in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, reinmuth and benjamin argue that the profession and practice started to rethink their relations with each other, that is, to identify the parameters of architecture in a deregulated neoliberal economy in which the autonomy of architecture is reduced to the minimum layer of a façade or eye-catching forms for a consumer society. their response to this crisis is to acknowledge autonomy-within-relationality, through which architectural autonomy cannot be understood without the wider ever-changing relations in which it is embedded . that architecture should be ethical and deliver what it promises is addressed by sandra kaji-o’grady in a review of critical care: architecture and urbanism for a broken planet (eds. fitz and krasny, 2019). whilst kaji-o’grady acknowledges the showcasing of 21 successful projects as examples of care in resisting the exploitation of global labour and resources in this book, she indicates that none of the examined projects can live up to their promise when analysed in detail, because the forces of capitalism are extremely pervasive in architecture and urbanism. she likewise asserts, that questions of care need to be understood beyond programme and tectonics. one of the projects examined in greater detail is the psychiatric center caritas in melle, belgium. the argument is that the project holds to the value of care due to its preservation of an existing building, however, kaji-o’grady suggests that care needs to extend to questions of who funded the project, and how the project came about. that the centre was funded by pc caritas, the so-called “care” arm of the catholic church, brings into question the historical role that the church has played in global conflicts and questions of colonisation. from a slightly different perspective, stephen walker’s review of the encyclopaedic routledge companion to critical approaches to contemporary architecture (eds. chattopadhyay and white, 2019), argues that contemporary global approaches in architecture need a greater level of criticality and careful consideration of the world in which we live and how we intend to shape it, rather than simply providing a collection of examples from various locations around the globe. a more connected global thread is present in sarah breen lovett’s review of a documentary human shelter (bertram, 2018), in which shelter is understood and dwelled in around different contexts, from the nasa camp on the edge of a volcano in hawaii, to the tree house in uganda, the refugee camp in iraq and how a moma curator lives in new york city. whilst the film traverses many different climatic, social and political contexts, it looks at everyday rituals shared by all humans. that sense of commonality finds presence in cameron logan’s review of the public green square library and plaza, sydney (designed by hollenstein stewart in association with steward architects), which celebrates the civic nature of this in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 9 editorial / political matters p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s building at a time of continuing privatisation. for logan, this library offers moments for solitary thought and scholarship amidst books, as well as opportunities for collective play and learning due to its adaptable programme. this thematic issue of interstices originates from the international conference political matters: spatial thinking of the alternative that was held in 18-19 july 2019 at the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland, in collaboration with auckland university of technology and the university of plymouth, uk. conference participants were selected from fifty double-blind peer-reviewed submitted abstracts, with participants from many different parts of the world (australia, canada, china, iran, south africa, united kingdom and the united states). the invited keynote lecture by professor ian buchanan from the wollongong university, australia, introduced the conference by questioning how our contemporary society of control operates, whilst professor felicity scott from gsapp, columbia university, us, presented the relationship between alternative and counter practices of 1960s-70s architecture in the us. the conference yielded rich and plentiful discussion among many scholars, practitioners and students, which also informed the international call for this issue. scholarly papers submitted for consideration came from australia, aotearoa new zealand, belgium, canada, germany, spain, iran, uk, and the us. this issue also includes peer-reviewed, postgraduate, creative design projects by frank liu (with susan hedges) and xavier ellah (with carl douglas). their selection occurred in parallel with the main issue. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 10 editorial / political matters p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s references arendt, h. (1955). men in dark times. london, uk: cape. arendt, h. (1958). the human condition. chicago: the university of chicago press. badiou, a. (1993 [2013]). ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil (p. hallward trans.). london, uk: verso. baudrillard, j. (1981 [1994]). simulacra and simulation (s. f. glaser trans.). ann arbor: the university of michigan press. baudrillard, j. (1991 [1995]). the gulf war did not take place (p. patton trans.). bloomington: indiana university press. bell, d. and zacka, b. (2020). political theory and architecture. london, uk: bloomsbury. bentham, j. (1843). the works of jeremy bentham, vol 4, ed. john bowring. edinburgh: william tait. brown, w. (2010). walled states, waning sovereignty. brooklyn, ny: zone books. buchanan, i. (2008) deleuze and guattari’s anti-oedipus: a reader’s guide. london, uk: continuum books. cairns, g. (2018). reification and representation: architecture in the politico-media-complex. boca raton, fl: routledge. deleuze, g. guattari, f. (1972 [2015]). anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia (r. hurley trans.). london, uk bloomsbury. deleuze, g., guattari, f. (1980 [2015]). a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (b. massumi, trans.). london, uk bloomsbury. deleuze, g. (1990 [1992]). postscript on the societies of control. october 59: 3-7. foucault, m. (1975 [1991]). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. (a. sheridan, trans.). harmondsworth, uk: penguin. foucault, m. (1976 [1990]). the history of sexuality, vol. i: an introduction (r. hurley, trans.). new york, ny: vintage books edition. graham, s. (2011). cities under siege: the new military urbanism. london, uk: verso. harvey, d. (2013). rebel cities: from the right to the city to the urban revolution. london, uk: verso. heidegger, m (1927 [1962]). being and time (j. macquarrie and e. robinson, trans.). oxford, uk: basil blackwell. herscher, a. and anooradha siddiqi, eds (2018). spatial violence: studies in architecture. new york, ny: routledge. kwinter, s. (2001). architectures of time: towards a theory of the event in modernist culture. cambridge, ma: mit press. lefebvre, h. (1970). urban revolution (r. bononno, trans.). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. mouffe, c. (2013). agonistics: thinking the world politically. london, uk: verso. virilio, p. (1977 [2007]). speed and politics (m. polizotti, trans.). los angeles, ca: semiotexte. virilio, p. (1984 [2005]). negative horizon: an essay in dromoscopy (m. degener, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. virilio, p. (1989). war and cinema: the logistics of perception (p. camiller, trans.). london, uk: verso. virilio, p. (1996 [2000]). landscape of events (j. rose, trans.). cambridge, ma: mit press. virilio, p. and sylvère lotringer (2002). crepsular dawn. (m. degener, trans.). los angeles, ca: semiotexte. yaneva, a. (2017). five ways to make architecture political: an introduction to the politics of design practice. london, uk: bloomsbury. br18_wilson_int10_final.indd 137 paki harrison: tohunga whakairo. the story of a master carver by ranginui walker1 review by carin wilson the great pleasure of reading one of rangi’s books derives from his uncompromising approach, which firmly contextualises the content in a māori point of view. chapter headings and subheadings, events and places, narrative detail – they all transport the reader to a place where we cannot but engage with the māori world. slowly, carefully, we track in this book the young pakāriki harrison through the stuff of biography: his whakapapa, childhood in ruatoria, early influences (especially those of his indulgent grandmother materoa, matriarch of ngati porou), and his training as a schoolteacher, which gave him insight into the lives of less privileged communities. there are hints in these early pages of what is to come: from adventures while felling and sawing timbers with his father harangi, to an account of a pivotal phase during paki’s teacher training at palmerston north: pine taiapa came to visit paki in the evenings to tutor him and carefully encourage his interest. yet it is easy to see that destiny was made in these formative years in a kind of old-fashioned māori way, in which the inevitable forces of whakapapa swing into action. we watch how paki’s life was being carefully moulded, to equip him with the tools needed for what was to unfold. nevertheless, his was not to be the tapu life of the tohunga of the traditional world.2 paki revels in being the occasional rabble-rouser, paki falls in love and marries hinemoa, paki buys a ford zephyr, paki carves in the presence of his grand-daughter. despite its focus on the life of this carver, the book provides a fascinating insight into the massive shifts in māori society over the last few generations. today, we see how the functional values of tohungatanga have become reframed in aotearoa/new zealand’s hybrid society of polynesian and occidental practices. the ngata method, whereby students were schooled in compositional and tool skills alone, did not resonate with paki, in spite of his ngāti porou heritage.3 this carver challenged conventions about value, establishing models for estimating time-related costs in a world where scant attention was paid to the passage of time; he railed against the sometimes inadequate evidence of skills transfer in the training of his contemporaries; he pioneered the development of unit standards,4 where some would have deemed it impossible to establish a standard on artistry. pakāriki harrison was unquestionably a master of whakairo, but it is clear that an expansive vision led him to master many other skills during his lifetime. 1. ranginui walker (2009) paki harrison: tohunga whakairo. the story of a master carver. auckland: penguin books (new zealand), isbn: 978-0143010067. 2. for māori terms, see glossary. 3. sir apirana turupa ngata (1874–1950) was a māori leader, politician, statesman, and scholar. ngata was intensely involved in the revitalisation of māori culture. he placed great store in carving and encouraged the building of carved memorials or meeting houses. 4. unit standards were introduced by the new zealand qualifi cation authority in the 1990s as part of the national qualifi cations framework, with the intention of standardising courses offered by public and private educational providers. br18_wilson_int10_final.indd 137br18_wilson_int10_final.indd 137 11/3/09 2:44 am11/3/09 2:44 am interstices 10 rangi walker recognises that it would be futile to try and chronicle the majesty of his body of work (such is the importance of the direct sensory experience which massive creative works like wharenui have on our neurology). instead, he seizes the opportunity to give us an insight into ways in which the carver handles the responsibility of managing his own creativity. this involves, for instance, finding a way through a prescriptive narrative, embodying tribal styles, whakapapa and formal decorative elements (such as maihi, tāhuhu, poutokomanawa, kowhaiwhai and tukutuku, to name a few). for those who want to understand māori architecture at a level that calls us to probe beyond stunning visual images, the book offers some substantial material detail in karakia, waiata, and primary gestures in the carver’s repertoire. accepting the range of paki’s work as given, some of the most intriguing passages in this book deal with attempts by patrons or commissioning committees to challenge his authority as an artist and manage, or even control, his artistic input. we are to discover how the weight of the responsibility of unveiling and arranging a narrative, which reveals characters and events spanning hundreds of years, is handled. time after time, project upon project, we are exposed to the spectacle of interlopers who would seek to borrow or trade on the mana of the work of the carver. we watch the frenzy of positioning, swelling up around the time of the house’s opening. this frenzy often manifests in the account as unseemly posturing and shameless borrowing, out of highly questionable motives. in the nature of things, these actions were hardly minor skirmishes, but rather engagements on the scale of pitched battles, where sustained assaults on the authority of the carver were mounted. it becomes increasingly clear over the course of the narration that the work of the tohunga of whakairo is still so influential that insubstantial ambitions will seek to enlarge their own stature by hitching a ride in the slipstream. some of these encounters would have tested the mettle of the strongest of characters, and it is a measure of paki’s early upbringing that he was able to face these challenges with forthright authority and character. ultimately, rangi walker guides us skilfully through paki’s world beyond the mallet and chisel, through a world of training schemes, degree-level tertiary programmes, the development of the toi iho mark and the odd squabble over land at harataunga. more importantly, he leads us to understand and respect the compelling values of whānau and kāinga as underlying forces in this odyssey. paki’s partnership with hinemoa proved to be as much evident in their artistic collaborations as in their marriage. later, their children also became involved in their projects. while he was working on tanenui-a-rangi at the university of auckland, paki began taking work across to the studio workshop he had built at harataunga in kennedy bay on the coromandel peninsula. this was to set in train a pattern of commuting from project to the home kāinga, which would continue until his work in this world was done. i was eager to read this biography, and my anticipation has been well rewarded. a body of work including 10 houses and numerous individual commissions is a remarkable achievement in one lifetime. the fertile mix of skill, intellect and unending appetite for knowledge on the part of both biographer and subject have given us a great story. br18_wilson_int10_final.indd 138br18_wilson_int10_final.indd 138 11/3/09 2:44 am11/3/09 2:44 am 139 glossary5 kāinga abode karakia invocation, prayer kowhaiwhai pattern used on rafters of wharenui maihi gable mana dignity, control, power poutokomanawa central heart post of the meeting house, supporting the tāhuhu6 tāhuhu ridgepole, ancestry tapu sacred tohunga craftsman, expert tohungatanga craft, expertise tukutuku lattice-work waiata chant, song whakairo carving whakapapa genealogy whānau family, birth wharenui meeting house 5. unless stated otherwise, translations are adopted from h.m. ngata, englishmaori dictionary at http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/nz/online/ngata 6. http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/education/ onlineresources/sgr/pages/rongomaraeroa.aspx br18_wilson_int10_final.indd 139br18_wilson_int10_final.indd 139 11/3/09 2:44 am11/3/09 2:44 am interstices 6 instinctive systems two projects by deane simpson in a darwinian sense, the architectural species can only survive if it exhibits a biodiversity of forms and a constant supply of mutations that provide an agility in the face of changing environmental conditions. —mark wigley (2005: 39) the last three quarters of the twentieth century produced certain types of urban planning (such as the master-minded hygienist neuroses of ciam and the nostalgic delusions of new urbanism) which, more often than not, failed due to an excess of will and intention. in the following collaborative projects in detroit and copenhagen the mode of willed ‘master’ planning with its formal preoccupations was suspended in favour of experiments with open and auto-reactive systems.1 these ‘instinctive systems’ challenge the genetic identity of particular ‘species’ through the generation of urban mutations. they have an affinity with the ‘misfits’, a series of mutant creatures in the work of german artist thomas grünfeld, produced primarily through techniques of hybridisation. additional techniques of mutation were deployed in the projects, promoting a diversity of chimeric outcomes. chimera2 techniques of ‘code modification’, for example, were applied to the detroit project and suggested alternate geo-political and time-space arrangements, perhaps best understood as intensifications of emerging space-time mutations.3 the ‘mixing panel’ strategy applied to the copenhagen x project led to the production of mutations at different scales. they included the block scale, in which patio house and closed block typologies were cross-bred, and small scale zones of anarchy, which operated as highly fertile mutation grounds. 1.this opposition is analogous to the distinction in the cognitive sciences between the behaviour of humans (characterized by self-conscious ‘will’) and animals (ruled by unconscious ‘instinct’ or ‘impulse’). in the monumental impulse (1999: 183), george hersey briefly mentions this opposition and questions its soundness (it is certainly an oversimplification but, in the present context, it offers a useful analogy). the bulk of hersey’s book is devoted to the description of two main concepts connecting the animal to architecture: first, a bioarchitectural analogy (mostly operational at a formal level) and, secondly, concepts of buildings as extended phenotypes of species. figure 1: thomas gruenfeld, misfits i-vii, 1991. taxidermy. courtesy jousse entreprise, paris. �1 detroit: global city state4, 2004 (deane simpson + john lin with niels albertsen)5 the city of detroit has undergone massive changes in the last century as it grew rapidly into the centre of the us automobile industry. by the 1930s, detroit was the fourth largest city in the us and by the 1950s its population had grown to 1.8 million people. from that point on, however, an uninterrupted process of sub-urbanisation occurred alongside the decentralisation of the automobile industry. by the year 2000, the city’s population had dropped to 950,000 residents, while that of the surrounding suburban areas, known as ‘metropolitan detroit’, had grown to almost four million people. this left a high proportion of the city’s predominantly 1920s building stock either demolished, or vacant, producing vast empty areas in the city. rather than interpreting the phenomenon of detroit’s ‘shrinkage’ as a situation to be reversed, the project suggested two strategies. firstly, it proposed tools to support elasticity, accommodating both shrinkage and growth, which were no longer evaluated with reference to moral or intentional structures. secondly, it viewed the existing condition of detroit as an opportunity to test modifications to presupposed ‘genetic codes’ (e.g. geopolitical) that define the performance of the city. perhaps the two projects discussed here could be framed as forms of ‘instinctive systems’, within which the act of design focuses on the identification of inbuilt codes of performance, rather than on singular pre-determined forms. they could be interpreted as genotypes rather than phenotypes. genotypes describe the genome, which is the set of physical dna molecules inherited from an organism’s parents (code). phenotypes describe the phenome, the manifest properties of an organism: its physiology, morphology and behaviour form. 2. a chimera is an organism, or part of one, with at least two genetically different tissues resulting from mutation, the grafting of plants, or the insertion of foreign cells into an embryo. 3. previously identified by urban geographer david harvey in the contemporary city (harvey, 1989: 284-307). 4. submitted for the shrinking cities ideas competition in 2004 5. niels albertsen is an urban theorist, sociologist and political scientist. he is currently the head of department for urban and landscape development (institute 2) at the aarhus school of architecture in denmark, where he has taught since 1975. john lin is an architect working and living in hong kong. he was educated at the cooper union in new york city and is currently teaching at the department of architecture of the chinese university of hong kong. his current research involves a collaboration with the kowloon-canton regional railway concerning processes of urbanization through rail infrastructure. figure 2: detroit city-state plan. areas of urban void, urban densification, in-between, new infrastructure, and proposed downtown airport location. bottom left: existing land vacancy. bottom middle: gaussian blur filter applied. bottom right: threshold filter applied, determining extent of urban agricultural and urban recreational voids. interstices 6 (a) elasticity coherent areas of existing land use (or vacancy) were identified from the cluster-map data, using simple graphic imaging techniques. gaussian blurs were applied to areas of existing land vacancy (extracted from the cluster-map).6 a threshold filter was then applied to these areas, which produced contour edges indicative of the boundaries of proposed recreational and agricultural concentration. the latter also accommodated new infrastructure in the project, enhancing the connection between various dense areas. a similar, but block-pixellated technique was applied to areas of existing land-use, generating possible boundaries for residential and commercial concentration. existing commercial strips were intensified to serve as bridges between different parts of the urban fabric. the remaining areas of the city, between those most used and those most vacant, were to operate as elastic zones accommodating both expansion and contraction. in the case of continued shrinkage, the consolidated agricultural zones would expand into the ‘elastic’ zone. if the population was to grow, consolidated residential and commercial areas would expand into the ‘elastic’ zone. in this aspect of the project, the city was not ‘planned’ in a top-down manner, but organized from the ground up, by the changes that occur in the city’s data over time. (b) code modifications some interventions were made into the existing genetic codes of the city, which significantly changed the regulatory apparatus to support mutations: geopolitics. the city of detroit became an independent city-state, self-governing and independent from the united states.7 immigration. all forms of immigration control into the city were eliminated, allowing global citizenship, rights and duties. transport hub. the airport was relocated from what was formerly known as the periphery of the city to what was formerly known as the centre of the city. abandoned inner-city skyscrapers too expensive to demolish were re-programmed as airline terminals, hotels etc. 6. a gaussian blur is an adobe photoshop image manipulation filter. 7. historically, the concept of citizenship has its origin in cities, beginning with the autonomous city-state. in recent times, nation-states have become weakened through the process of globalization, whereas urban regions have become increasingly independent. some cities, such as detroit, have been left behind in this process. this project proposed redefining the global positioning of detroit by transforming it into an independent city-state. 8. cebra is a young danish architectural firm based in aarhus, denmark. the studio has its focus on architectural design and urban planning and charges these with innovative pragmatism. their design process is often fuelled by transdisciplinary collaborators, anchoring their projects both to contemporary architectural discourse and themes of wider relevance. 9. “copenhagen x is a creative forum for innovation in dwellings, urban spaces and urban development in copenhagen. we aim to open people’s eyes to the changes in the city, and promote quality in urban development.” http://www. c o p e n h a g e n x . d k / t e m p l a t e / t12 . php?menuid=92 figure 3: airport view looking toward downtown detroit. eastern local evening-time. figure 4: international time-zones (left) and artificial day-time lighting effects (right) at downtown airport location. �� time-space. the downtown area adjacent to the relocated airport runway was redefined according to the 24 time zones of the world, in parallel with the operation of artificial daylighting. visitors were thus able to arrive at their destination in the same time zone from which they left. copenhagen x: orestad, denmark. 2004-2005 (cebra + deane simpson)8 this urban design proposal commissioned by copenhagen x, a creative initiative interested in innovation in urban development,9 in collaboration with the city of copenhagen and orestad,10 proposed a ‘supplementary’ urban study to address the perceived shortcomings of a previous, unbuilt urban proposal and suggested a new ‘local plan’ for the area.11 the partially state-funded assignment requested a proposal for approximately one million square meters of mixed-use space (residential, commercial and public), with a projected population of 10,000 people, on a 50 hectare site in copenhagen, denmark. the site is located approximately six kilometres south of the historical centre of the city. it belongs to a strip of land, 500 metres wide, extending from the city centre along a new metro rail line that is currently under development. importantly, the site is located at the junction of road and rail infrastructures that link denmark to sweden (29 minutes by rail to malmo, sweden), as well as connecting the airport of copenhagen (six minutes by rail) to the historical centre (seven minutes by rail). the original unbuilt urban plan’s focus was on defining a controlled formal outcome for the area. its major urban design gesture involved three wide, curved ‘boulevards’ functioning as the area’s primary public spaces. each boulevard incorporated a different landscape concept, such as ‘canal’, ‘park’, and ‘forest’. the proposal for the site’s built fabric was characterized by a homogeneous, traditional closed-block urban structure of almost uniform height across the whole of the development. rather than producing a single and fixed alternative to the unbuilt plan, an open set of variables was defined that could generate multiple possible solutions. they could be adjusted, as on the sliding scales of a music mixing panel, according to the requirements of the various parties involved. variables included the level of concentration and programming of public space; the extent of programmatic mixing; the orientation of the circulation system towards car or metro traffic; the variation in maximum height of building envelopes; the modulation of roofscape (incorporating landmarks), etc. this system of open variables operated in three ways: first, as an internal tool for the design team; second, as a tool in negotiations toward a ‘local plan’ between the city, developers, community groups and the architects; and thirdly, as a way of producing an elastic ‘local plan’ that moved beyond the fixity and content of the conventional ‘local plan’. this would allow for change over time, as well as greater flexibility in specific planning decisions. five plan variations were described, one of which was ‘frozen’ and further developed in order to demonstrate the potential of the system. it also offered a clear critique of the existing proposal. the ‘frozen plan’ proposed a shift toward more concentrated and differentiated public space; a clearly articulated roofscape supporting a differentiation of neigh10. the orestad is a new municipal entity which will incorporate six towns. four interdisciplinary teams were commissioned to make proposals within a ‘parallel assignment’ structure. this interdisciplinary team also included peter hesseldal (journalist and researcher) and designit bluesky (graphic and concept designers). development of the alternate urban proposal occurred through a series of workshops in collaboration with the city of copenhagen, the developer of the site ‘orestad’ and external advisors including adrian geuze of west 8. the existing proposal to be addressed was a 1996 competitionwinning scheme from the finnish architects arkki. 11. a ‘local plan’ is the legal document that defines possible building activity at the local scale. it typically figure 5: multiple plan scenarios for copenhagen urban design proposal. interstices 6 figure 6: aerial view looking toward downtown copenhagen of one proposed development scenario with differentiated and concentrated public space and articulated roofscape. �� bourhood areas within the overall plan; an increased level of programmatic mixing; a reorientation of the street system toward the main metro-rail entry points; and the introduction of areas free of any planning constraints: proposed areas of anarchy. in addition to working at the scale of the overall urban plan, the project addressed the scales of buildings as well as individual residential units. at the building scale, for example, smooth transitions were proposed between the normally distinct typologies of the patio house and closed block structure—transitions that were based on, amongst other factors, the maintenance of natural light. references harvey, d. (1989). the post-modern condition. oxford: basil blackwell ltd. hersey, g. l. (1999). the monumental impulse: architecture’s biological roots. cambridge, (mass.): mit press. wigley, m. (2005). towards the perforated school. archis, 20 (1), 39. figure 7: mixing panel as elastic local plan, and design and negotiation tool. interstices 09 119 pulp fictions and interior life: pulp fictions: the art of giovanni battista piranesi and andrew mcleod: interior life: a wall drawing adam art gallery te pataka toi victoria university of wellington 20 october – 21 december 2007 review by sarah treadwell filmmaker sergei eisenstein wrote of the pleasure he felt in acquiring two piranesi prints and, as he analyzed their internal turbulence, he also described them hanging on a yellow wall in his house; a strange relationship between the terrifying and the everyday (eisenstein, 1977: 85). there is a similarly disturbing and illuminating conjunction in the two exhibitions held at the adam art gallery at the end of 2007. the surface evidence of the two exhibitions might suggest that they were disjunctive – that the work of an artist from the eighteenth century who etched new understandings of interiority and individualism, who was seen to make a world that would fly apart, might be at odds with a twenty-first-century delineator who works with hybrid constructions shaped by digital drafting and the everyday, with precision and gentle, sometimes comic, effects. filmmakers and architects have repeatedly evoked the spatial constructions of piranesi, and it seems that every volume of architectural history refers to his astonishing and virtuoso prints. the piranesi exhibition, pulp fictions, consisted of a fine selection of prints from four series: prima parte di architetture e prospettivo (nine of the twenty prints published in 1750); the grotteschi (four prints from early 1760s to late 1770s); the carceri d’invenzione (thirteen of sixteen prints from mid 1760s to early 1770s) and the vedute di roma (24 of 135 views of rome from ca. 1748-1760). lent for exhibition by the alexander turnbull library, the prints were bequeathed by a new zealand architect, percy watts rule (1889-1953; barton & maskill, 2007: 3). the exhibition by andrew mcleod consisted of a commissioned drawing on three walls of a gallery executed over three days in october 2007 in chalk and white conté. the drawings were made, as it states in the catalogue, to “accompany an exhibition of piranesi prints” (andrew mcleod, 2007). andrew mcleod’s work accompanied piranesi as a shadow, a companion, and a tracker. there are certain obvious connections between the exhibitions: both have a graphic linearity that is associated with architecture and both have a somewhat marginal relationship to architecture. on other occasions, mcleod has directly utilized the methods and matter of contemporary representation of architecture, the clean and seemingly neutral language of archicad, etc. mcleod uses computer software as piranesi worked etchings, to imagine constructions for (and as a critique of) human occupancy of architecture: small figures and furniture balance on abstracted architectural constructions.1 piranesi was a critical figure in the architectural debates of the eighteenth century, producing what writer jennifer müller calls “visual architectural treatises.”2 utilitarian commentaries endlessly deploy piranesi as an exemplar of the irrational, the cruel and the unstable even as they insist that he offers a legitimate account of passing history. piranesi described himself as an architect but felt it necessary to draw the collegio plan to demonstrate his propriety (maskill, 2007: 33). both mcleod and piranesi seem to engage architecture from a peripheral position with an undecided relationship to the discipline of architecture. christina barton and david maskill, director and curator, named the piranesi exhibition pulp fictions…, suggesting a sliding between genre in the two exhibitions as in the popular and disturbing film of that name directed by quentin tarantino (1994); a coalescing of comic drawing, violence and filmic movement. pulp fiction is also a term for everyday reading, like piranesi’s tourist images shaped with knowledge of the market, for both public consumption and a mass audience. in his etchings of rome, a recurrent carriage, drawn up on the periphery of the architecture, ornate and low slung, transports the tourist from site to site. pulp fiction is associated with graphic violence in both the paperbacks and film, and violence is evident in piranesi’s carceri torture scenes and his grotesque remnants of sacrificial feasts. in the benign but black atmosphere of mcleod’s drawings, tucked behind an angular (and testingly uncomfortable) chair, a small figure is pierced through with a side-line flag. the implicit and displaced violence in tarantino’s film, piranesi’s etchings and mcleod’s drawings is associated with interior space, perspectival constructions and darkness. the space of the exhibition mimics a descent into darkness. piranesi’s tour of rome, his grotesque architectural fragments and the carceri prints step in series down the cliff-like architecture of the adam art gallery. hanging on the ledges of the gallery, under strips of light, the engravings are displayed in an implicit and descending order. full size, the carceri seem disturbingly clear after years of viewing small reproductions. bodies once indistinguishable from shadows are enlarged; the gaping mouth of a man entangled in ropes and chains (enlarged and stuck to the painted wall at entry level to the gallery) is precise, as is the pain of the man on the rack and the wretched postures of hunched figures rendered miniature in infinitely distorting space. the darkness that lodges in the cut lines of piranesi’s work, viewed as a series and at full size, is persistent. the relentlessly black walls of the mcleod exhibition are matt and absorbent; blackness has leaked from the etched scorings of piranesi to become an enveloping continuous surface that muffles and depresses. in tarantino’s pulp fiction, the prophet ezekiel is (mis)quoted with a reference to the valley of darkness. blackly interior, the mcleod drawings refigure the obsessive collections of childhood; the charming depictions seem apotropaic. the exhibition of andrew mcleod’s work titled “interior life: a wall drawing”, performs as a series of compilations: animal, furniture, pictures, objects, food, plants, etc. a collection of (chalk drawn) paintings hang at suitable intervals around the gallery space. beneath the ‘paintings’ are pieces of furniture – another collection – a mackintosh chair, an elizabethan table, a captain’s chair, a leather chesterfield, an art deco chair, an egyptian couch smudged with human use. other orders, in fainter lines, infiltrate the room. animals in abundance suggest that the black room is an ark with promises of both collective death and 2 see jennifer müller’s essay in the catalogue, pulp fictions (2007: 4-6). the catalogue is a generous and beautifully produced document. it contains nine short essays from the art history honours students from victoria university who, with the adam art gallery, organized the exhibition. there is also a scholarly list of works (and a guiding hand for the project) provided by their lecturer, david maskill. 1 particularly his digital compositions in the 54321 artists projects, auckland art gallery toi o tamaki, 2006. interstices 09 121 new beginnings (fig. 1). in a reseeding of a post-global world, mcleod drew a cow, a monkey, a bird, a cat and kitten, a bear and elephant (eyeing ice-cream). he inscribed a cat and cheese, cat and acorn, monkey up tree with camera and whirligig, kangaroo, goat, animal stack consisting of donkey, dog, cat, rooster, rabbit and escaping butterfly and fly (an escape from an interiorizing meal of animals laid within other animals), snake, lion, squirrel, rodent tail and lovesick bird. the architectural orders of piranesi, that were also remnants or signs of a natural order (corinthian baskets sprouting acanthus leaves), are multiplied in mcleod’s aberrant domestic. piranesi also drew small forms of life amidst an enlarged architecture including tiny beggars and tourists (skirts like domes), sheep herders and their sheep. dogs scratch and stand around the figures who admire the scenes. in the catalogue essay “take a closer look: the human drama in the vedute di roma”, georgia morgan suggests that the figures operate to not only provide scale and to direct attention to the architecture but also to situate the architecture in both theatrical and historical time (morgan, 2007: 25-27). in the interiors of mcleod’s drawings, animals prevail over humans; they occupy the interior space of the gallery and they are also often outside the framed images. animals proliferate; one child appears in a picture carefully writing with her left hand, distinguished by literacy but, in the vulnerability of youth, still animal (fig. 2). around the edges of the gallery, collected with the animals and trees is a flow of loosened household items: a tape-deck, a miniature refrigerator, frying pan with eggs, a prong, a bottle, a broom, a basket, a nail brush and soap, a heater, etc. piranesi also etches rivers of matter in a flow of time that, in the grotteschi, strips the bones and tumbles temples, plants, architecture and bodies together. piranesi records detritus over centuries while mcleod records everyday matter in the present. the bones and skulls of piranesi are remnants of life without form – biological life, bodies from armies, from battles, from prisons. while the worlds of the two exhibitions seem remote, there is one explicit reference to a piranesi print in mcleod’s drawing. in the carceri print, “the arch with a shell ornament” (pulp fictions, 2007: 33), there is a series of projecting steps that climb up the sides of an enormous arch. introduced in the second state of the print, the steps, on which miniature figures seem to be stranded, offer a different scale to the work. oversized in terms of human anatomy, they project into the centre of the image over dark and ominous machines. the space is gargantuan, convoluted, and the steps, without ornament or edging, seem to be structurally uncertain; abstract markers of ascension and the possibility of the fall. fig. 1: andrew mcleod, interior life: a wall drawing (detail). fig. 2: andrew mcleod, interior life: a wall drawing (detail). fig. 1 fig. 2 interstices 09 123 in andrew mcleod’s work a similar set of steps, without ornament or handrail, lies under a chesterfield, climbing from the floor (fig. 3). repeating the scale shifts of the prison, the couch has become the world to a miniature house, tree and chair. the chesterfield (encrusted with debris from small domestic rituals), beneath which the small world crouches, and from which the steps climb, is itself beneath a world beyond. above the chesterfield is a framed scene inscribed on the gallery wall. it is a scene of marital nightmares: the double bed, which lodges in the warped perspectival space of the bedroom, is inhabited by one occupant who seems to be a small coffin with blankets drawn up to the ‘head’. the geometry of space in this scene is disturbing: it tends spatially towards onepoint perspective, but planes slip and slide. geometries are suggested and resisted – a rectangular trap door is poised over a dotted half circle and the sense of ‘room’ is barely held together by bed and fireplace. a small fire (or is it a plant?) breaks out beside the pillow and the bed itself is alight with a fire inserted into it and an outstretched figure depicted amidst the flames. drawers under the bed eject a cash register drawer. on the floor beside the bed, a free-standing fire flowers – with the word ‘sculpture’ underneath and in the fireplace a third blaze consumes a hatchet. the steps which reoccur in both exhibitions provide no escape for the tortured occupants: neither the bare life of piranesi’s inflicted inhabitants nor the occupants of the doubly interiorized domestic in mcleod’s drawings. bodies disciplined by mechanical and institutional apparatuses tell only tales of alienation and pain. in the surreal chalk drawings the shared steps are diminished and separated from architecture. the slightness of life, the gentle, surreal nature of mcleod’s world, when set against the monumental workings of statehood, seems salutary. the indefinite dark time of the piranesi prints can be recognized in current representations of blindfolded prisoners at the guantanamo bay detention camp, where life is reduced to a system of painful humiliations. in contrast, mcleod has drawn a world in which the form of life is very present – removed from notions of a minimal, bare existence. he drew a world in which animals are domesticated (as they are in children’s books, reproaches to categorical rigidity), but they are also inextricably part of everyday life. by putting these two exhibitions together, the director of the adam art gallery and the curator of the exhibitions have demonstrated an optimism for life to be found in the imaginative openness of andrew mcleod’s architectural inventions, in a world shaped by the grandeur and pitiless projects of giovanni battista piranesi. references andrew mcleod: interior life: a wall drawing (2007). wellington: adam art gallery te pataka toi, victoria university of wellington. barton, c., & maskill, d. (2007). foreword and acknowledgements. in pulp fictions, p. 3. eisenstein, s. (1977). piranesi, or the fluidity of forms. in oppositions, 11(winter). trans. r. reeder, p. 85. maskill, d. (2007). pianta di ampio magnifico collegio, state iv/vii on double-page paper included in later roman editions of the opere varie. in pulp fictions, p. 33. morgan, g. (2007). take a closer look: the human drama in the vedute di roma. in pulp fictions, pp. 25-27. müller, j. (2007). self portrait as an antique fragment: piranesi’s artistic identity. in pulp fictions, p. 33. pulp fictions: the art of giovanni battista piranesi (2007). wellington: adam art gallery te pataka toi, victoria university of wellington. fig. 3: andrew mcleod, interior life: a wall drawing (detail). fig. 3 interstices 6 animation, the cat, and escaping drawing sarah treadwell and paul veart in her essay “without end, no, state of drawingness, no, rather: the executioner’s taking off”, hélène cixous has an explicit and unusual account of drawing: the drawing is without a stop. i mean to say the true drawing, the living one—because there are dead ones, drawn-deads. look and you shall see. barely traced—the true drawing escapes. rends the limit. snorts. like the world, which is only a perennial movement, the drawing goes along, befuddled and staggering, with a natural drunkenness. (cixous, 1998c: 21) cixous raises the possibility that not only might human beings be rent with a shifting animal/human divide, but that drawings too might slip across categorical boundaries that regularly shape knowledge of life and its effects. drawings, already meshed and riven in terms of technique and content, might also be quickened with the active involvement of time and spatial sequence. in her depiction of drawing cixous imagines drunken, disruptive movement that is variably paced and unpredictable. drawing that eludes finish and that seeks passing truth through encounters with error is what interests cixous; drawings on the run with erratic speed. for cixous, blythe and sellers suggest, the “practice of working on what moves, on what escapes” is something that “can only be done poetically” (blythe & sellers, 2004: 92). poetic work means allowing for a certain degree of freedom in interpretation—looking for potential for things (words, phrases, drawings) to mean more than their first appearance suggests. in this vein this paper sets a short animation, beyond1 by koji morimoto, alongside the poetic practice of cixous. her words are arranged in terms of a perceived correspondence through proximity, as found in the alongside-ness of children’s play (an implicit theme of the animation). the adjacency is imagined as a spatial and interpretative potential with animal connections—heightened senses and peripheral vision. beyond is one of a compilation of nine animated films titled the animatrix, a joint japanese-american production that is part of the wachowski brothers’ multi-media approach to the world of the matrix. the protagonist of beyond is a young woman called yoko who lives alone with her cat, yuki, in a small apartment in urban kichijoji, japan. yoko seems to be a typical anime orphan; she searches for a lost cat that is her main source of emotional expression (and the only creature that seems aware of the matrix). following some children to an abandoned site with a haunted house, she finds her cat (and herself, in bliss) through an instability in the world. she and the children are eventually evicted from the site, which is then sealed and remade as a parking lot. 1. released in the same year as the matrix: reloaded, the second part of the matrix trilogy, the animatrix was released direct to video/dvd (after a brief cinema release). the nine animations have seven different directors, mostly from the japanese animation industry. the animation beyond is directed by koji morimoto. �� drawing contours not all animations constitute ‘escaping texts’ despite the literal, constructed movement in the drawing. some animators draw cartoon contours as closures, and never escape them. cixous wants to draw that which is invisible to the naked eye and impossible to draw, “the quick of life” (blythe & sellers, 2004: 25). she sees traces of the quick of life in a rounded appearance that necessarily conceals the lack of pity and the brilliance of horror in drawing. the animation operating in beyond sets up categories of life through conditions of drawing: categories that, however, leak and reverse. certain things in the depicted city are drawn without contour and with attention to variations in surface condition, creating a reassuringly stable background—cixous’ rounded appearance. but while the drawing of the city tends to the realistic surface, with its technical assurance and consistency, it also becomes mere backdrop when set against an animated condition. things in the (insecure) animal category are drawn with a linear contour and flat colouration and include yoko, a young girl/woman; yuki the cat/girl; and a raven, a dove, and a dog. if cartoon drawing is reserved for the animated as a category of the living, then it also spreads into categories that are close to or touch the living: the cat’s feeding bowl and yoko’s bed are drawn with pronounced contour. contour drawing extends the corporeal, even as it fashions it with a line that is removed from depictions of reality, a line that proclaims most clearly its constructed nature. the film is structured by a line, a linear narrative, which, however, returns. the story starts with a city scene; depressed looking people march across an intersection. a curious melody plays, a refrain, signalling a marking of territory and imminent change. the sound is plaintive and reminiscent of childhood, haunting and repetitive.2 another road intersection follows, with the same song, but this time it is empty. the refrain hangs as a faint echo in the air. a crow or raven flies into the intersection; in its blackness, and with its melancholic cry, it intimates doubt or tragedy. the cat, yuki, strolling into the intersection, scares the bird away. cixous uses an image of something breathing under the pen that writes and draws: a beak/pen that sings, eats, pecks and is both a weapon and an instrument. a bird that can be scared away in the combat that is her image of drawing (cixous, 1998c: 21). cats and shadows purposefully walking across the square the escaping cat, yuki, wears a bell (suppression of feral hunting) and is well fed. it also has what could be the mark of a human footprint patterning its body (as a human might wear leopard fur, so the cat’s coat is decorated). yuki, strolling along a wall, purrs until, behind the wall, it sees its own impossibly large shadow projected onto a building. the disconcerting suggestion of a gigantic cat is caused by familiar techniques of architectural drawing—manipulations of scale, skiagraphy and controlling projections. cats in the eighteenth century were positioned as moral monsters in that they, like children, represented the asocial. as james steintrager points out, “cats are the spectre of society’s dissolution” (steintrager, 2004: 37). the curiosity of yuki the cat leads yoko to a place that is outside society and 2. the tune is the japanese folksong “tohryanse”, which contains a metaphor not dissimilar to that of the matrix. this is the concept of the chosen one, such as neo and yoko, who have the potential to discover the ‘real world’. interstices 6 in which play rather than law is operative. the curious cat remains potentially the cruel hunter in that it scares the crow and later hunts the white dove associated with transformative pleasure and excess. in the story “shared at dawn” cixous writes of finding a dead bird caught in a trellis in her house, only to discover that it was still alive and sought by her cat. instinctively she released the bird to the despair of her cat, who sought the bird in the house long after its departure to the other side of the city. cixous regretted her action: i’ve betrayed my counterpart, my betrothed, my little bride with the boundless heart; oh my god if that bird comes back i will give it to her i swear—yes it is better that i swear, surer that way, yes, if it came back, i too would play with its lukewarm little body, i’d give it sharp little blows with my paw and i’d slit its throat cheerfully. (cixous, 1998a: 179) cixous momentarily lets the cat in herself surface as she deals with the bird. invoking the law she swears to sanction her own cat-like desires. cixous sees relationships between animals and humans in metaphorical, dream-like terms: animals are important for me because i can’t imagine human beings other than as animals in transition … i need the instinctiveness and the wildness in a human being. so when i meet people in reality, or in dreams, there’s always a kind of animal awake in the person. (quoted in blythe & sellers, 2004: 64) drawings, too, are part of the instinctive wildness of the animal, but they are socially conditioned and claimed as combatative. cixous writes: “… every drawing (is) combat(s) itself. drawing is the emblem of all our hidden, intestine combats” (cixous, 1998c: 28). in beyond appetites, senses and instincts are represented, constructed and unknowable. yoko, in her apartment, talks on the phone and simultaneously gets food ready for her cat. yoko is ambiguously child and adult: she lives alone and is responsible for her cat; its physical necessities are a proof of life. yoko herself is drawn with her body rotating across and around the bed as she chats and looks for her cat simultaneously. her movements are sinuous and unselfconscious; cat-like, she seems to lack bones. from her carefully rendered apartment yoko hears, unnaturally acutely, the sound of her cat’s bell in the city into which she descends. the spatial nature of sound is aligned to filmic technique; there is a sudden blackness signalling the erasure of the visual world in the speed of movement. a heightened sense of animal hearing momentarily predominates. cixous writes with her senses: “by apprehension, with noncomprehension, the night vibrates, i see it with my ears …” (cixous, 1998c: 29) after enquiring as to the whereabouts of her cat from neighbours, yoko is told by a boy that her cat is at a haunted house. yoko and the children stand on a chain mesh fence and look across the city to the distant site of the house that is marked by a rainbow. �� dogs, butterflies and the haunted house the film then cuts to the city, where a woman attempts to control a leashed dog as it slavers and barks at the approach of a menacing looking truck. the dog is wild with fear and the woman who holds him seems anxious. dogs, once wolves, are nervously presumed to be domesticated. in beyond the leashed dog intimates imminent alteration; it barks at that which will eventually destroy paradise. to draw is not to be domesticated, according to cixous: like the frantic dog that senses destruction, so too painters might draw because “drawing is the right to tumult, to frenzy” (cixous, 1998c: 29). yoko walks towards the barricaded haunted house. it is not a singular house but, rather, a conglomeration of variable structures. she enters the decaying interior that opens into a courtyard and sees a can floating just above the ground. around it golden butterflies play. even while the tin floats above the ground it is still subject to gravity that holds it aloft while the butterflies move lightly in three dimensions and, in their animation, actively resist gravity. 3 for cixous the relationship between ground and foot, a relationship of gravity, is uncertain: she cannot find firm footing: “graze the paper with the soul’s foot, and immediately the foot slips” (cixous, 1998c: 29). she writes of an agitation that reigns in drawing—drawing as essay, as trial; the butterflies in beyond point to the provisional nature of the tin’s suspension, and the certainty of its fall. the haunted house in the animation is internally labyrinthine: rather than being a discrete object, it is riven with internal openings. the house has at its (multiple) heart a leak; rain falls in from a broken roof. mark cousins has written of the horror that a leaking roof provokes with its undermining of house/body security (cousins, 1992-3: 37).4 but the internal cascade in beyond has the opposite effect: gleaming trajectories of water make small bell-like noises and cast prismatic light as a halo; the leak is portrayed as wondrous. for cixous, far from being damaging, the leak that shimmers, the error in construction, is to be sought: “… to what extent we can’t do without the silvery burst of error, which is the sign, [like a rainbow] all those who go by pen don’t cease to marvel at this in a similar way, from century to century” (cixous, 1998c: 22). feral processes flourish in the haunted house in beyond. yoko discovers a dog ravenously eating, and as it eats colour surges through its body. the drawing contours of the dog that indicate both animation and the fabricated aspect of the creature will be obliterated by a colour that becomes coded as evidence of life: food malevolently flushes the body with blackness. the linear drawing that signals drawing-as-animated, and drawing coded as not real, in this scene, becomes invested with drives, with temperament. the dog stares at yoko, who backs away. its eyes are red, filled with the blood that will later leak from yoko. hélène cixous’ story “stigmata, or job the dog” (1998b) is sited in algeria after her father died, between the abject misery of an arab quarter and a french neighbourhood. the dog fips that she “loved by force, according to the laws of captivity” (cixous, 1998b: 190) is driven mad by stone-throwing attacks on the house that occurred after the loss of her father’s protection. 3. the ubiquitous tin can reappears at the end of the film when it is kicked by the cleanup agents, when it cuts yoko’s finger and she bleeds and, in the end, when it is claimed by gravity. the tin projects back to the viewer evidence of everydayness even in the marginal world 4. thanks to rachel carley for bringing this to my attention. interstices 6 we put the dog on a leash and tied the leash to a wire and the wire to an iron posts so he would not kill, we ourselves chained up our own incarceration, we ourselves put my father’s heir in irons. (cixous, 1998b: 190) the situation worsens with the child cixous being bitten and the dog eventually dying. cixous writes: i should have spoken to him, i should have, if i had been able to understand him but i thought him perhaps incapable of understanding for i was not then capable of understanding the profound animal humanity… . (cixous, 1998b: 190) in her story cixous suggests that time was the problem: time, disjunctions and anachronisms; there was no time. the starving dog that wolfs down some undesirable food (drawn but barely there) seems to be making up for lost time, in its desperation evidence of some sort of failure in sustenance. cixous writes, “what remains of a sheet of paper becomes a field of battle on which we, writing, drawing, have killed each other ourselves. a flagstone of paper under which a carnage effaces itself” (cixous, 1998c: 28). animated house, surface and ground while the dog flushes with blackness the sound of crackling electricity indicates an anomaly in the house. a broken light bulb completes itself momentarily and the filament glows. as the electrical pulse fades the light dims and the broken bulb reappears. electricity, as a form of nerve-signal, pulses intermittently through the body of the house, the same electrical current that cixous finds between the viewer and drawings that seek the living of life (cixous, 1998c: 26). yoko goes into a dark corridor and, hearing a noise behind her, turns and sees the walls of the corridor delaminate. the pieces of wall (paper) hit her like bats. the unnerving effect extends to the floor on which yoko sits. both yoko and the pieces of wall are made with the same drawing processes; they share the space of house and screen. the screen itself seems to digitally break down and pixilate as the papers sweep along. the sharp speed of the disintegrating walls is confirmation of cixous’ suggestion that “acceleration is one of the tricks of intimidation” (quoted in bray, 2004: 144). conventional haunted house movies rely on a readily acceptable belief that spaces are emotionally charged by events that might be explained by a projection of memories and feelings. but in beyond, rather than being simply alive or subject to projection, the house is undoing, shredding. walls as rendered background (familiar, rounded) have become delineated, sharp pieces of drawing that move as a “death passing” (cixous, 1998c: 27). ground that, in the dark corridor, was unstable with earthquake effects is, in the next sequence, doubled; an old pavement marked with an arrow is repeated and rotated. on this surface yoko picks up and cuddles yuki, who unexpectedly growls like a very large tiger. on the doubled ground the cat plays with yoko’s detached shadow and a small girl, who may be yoko herself at another time, plays alongside. shadows may be dark death marks that cannot be illuminated but here carry the human/inhuman interface 41 lightly, playfully. an interface that outlaws categorical purity for cixous who leaves “nothing of … pre-classifications intact” (cixous & calle-gruber, 1997: 151). feathers, birds and bliss children in the haunted house play with gravity, making and unmaking a glass bottle. they dive towards the ground and stop, poised above it as the tracking camera plunges with them. despite the apparent lack of impact a nose bleeds. yoko joins the children, as does a white dove. a feather hypnotically rotates before yoko: she holds it briefly. at the same moment the cat chases the dove, which flies up in front of yoko. time suddenly slows down and the bird is pictured as it laboriously climbs into the air. whiteness descends and touches yoko, who falls sideways. slowly and gently she lands, blissful pleasure evident; the viewer shares her spatial alignment. in the story “writing blind”, cixous writes: we all like to be to touch—to be touched. … it is with emotion and nostalgia that i touch the soft and ferocious touch of my cat [mon chat ma chatte], the cat whose cat i am, and between us no appropriation only moments of grace, without guarantee, without security without a glance thrown towards the following moment. this is jouissance. all now. (cixous, 1998d: 142) for cixous drawing is not necessarily a visual act: “the drawing wants to draw what is invisible to the naked eye” (cixous, 1998c: 24). rather than proposing drawing as simply haptic it seems that, like the touch of cat’s fur on the back of the legs, drawing is an internal blind exploration—a moment of sympathetic felicity. cixous draws in darkness and sees what is drawn in the light of day, but the white fog in beyond is a palpable light that touches but doesn’t reveal. yoko knocks gently on the earth: “is anyone home?” to knock on the earth is to be a stranger who imagines the possibilities of homeliness. to be shut out, to live for the moment, is, however, pleasurable. “all now”, yoko smiles. jouissance is often figured as a sort of speed, an “ecstatic flash of new meaning” (bray, 2004: 144). but for cixous speed is the antithesis of non-dominative thinking; yoko falls slowly into pleasure. speed returns in the film with the arrival of an extermination truck. in horror movies, bliss (especially sexual pleasure) is often followed by death, but in this case it induces play. yoko and the children, in the vertical space of the courtyard, joyfully explore time and gentle gravity. yoko falls in slow motion towards the earth and a small boy catches her by the heel: “light as a feather”. girl becomes woman, cat, bird, feather in a stream of shifty alteration. it is at this point of pure play, a condition outside economies of production or definition through use-value, that an external observation obtrudes. the ground, on which yoko lay in bliss, looks up at the scene with a low angle fish eye. yuki peers into the hole, and a rat leaps out. the stream of rats that then leave the area are a warning: the ship is sinking; floating is no longer an option. interstices 6 following the sound of her disappearing cat’s bell, yoko finds yuki scratching at a red door. holding the cat, yoko looks into the space beyond the door: there is only blackness. cixous describes drawing as a seeking in the dark—a never finished searching that is not directly answered but which provokes other ‘secrets’ to emerge. sounds circulate in the blackness before yoko, repetitions of her conversations, complicating linear time, activating ideas of surveillance. reconfiguration: white, blue and red at this point yoko and yuki are caught in the spotlight of a torch wielded by a gas masked rubber clad figure barely discernible as human. “you don’t belong here”, he says, and drags her away. the city is invoked at this point—the crowded everyday life of a small street (where she presumably does belong), in opposition to the dark nothingness and white bliss of the house. the forces of law, paternal prohibition, prevail with the children and yoko being dragged out of the compound. orders are given to seal off the area and this is achieved with pumped out whiteness. is this the same whiteness that was associated with bliss, an act of obliteration casting bliss as the loss of self-definition in a merging that is also a forgetting? the computer screen registers the effects of the house and site as a rendering anomaly and then records a ‘reconfiguration’ of the location. this is followed by a shot of blue sky which is also a blue screen with its tendencies to isolate and re-imagine context. the haunted house has become a parking lot behind a mesh fence. the children, bored and sullen, try to activate the site but to no avail. bottles smash and gravity works as usual. they depart sadly. yoko standing at the perimeter of the remade site finds the tin can and picks it up—she too tests gravity and time. the can falls. blood trickles from the cut it has made in yoko’s finger. it slowly winds down her hand and drips onto the stabilised facsimile of ground. cixous describes the search for that which it is desired to draw—“the quick of life”—as a series of approximations, something small and precise like a speck of blood, a nail, a needle—small sharp probes which damage. the quick of life, existing both prior and post vision as an apprehension or awareness, can only be approached cautiously, because with its visibility it will vanish. blood, the quick of life, which might stand as a proof of the body as an irreducible limit, a mark of biological origin, is problematised in this context. yoko’s body (that drips blood) refers to the computer-programmed bodies in the film the matrix. in beyond yoko’s body is a cartoon body, referring to a filmic body which represents a computer programmed body, and is physically drawn by hand from photographs of a young woman posed to anticipate the construction of the cartoon yoko. yoko’s fallen blood might also be a sign of a wounding. for cixous the wound “is a strange thing: either i die, or a kind of work takes place … it is here that i sense things taking place. the wound is also an alteration. … i like the scar, the story” (cixous & calle-gruber, 1997: 16). in beyond the wound, like stigmata, is a sign of both separation and repair. the story ends with a return to the beginning, a scene of city life in which depressed looking people march across an intersection. 4� filmmaker morimoto was permitted to make an animation about everyday effects of the matrix provided that the characters did not discover it. in beyond, yoko and the children do not even seek the reasons for the strange anomalies in their world; the cat yuki who, being animal, was not hooked up to the matrix (the law), but was part of the programme, was able to know about its presence. the cat as a systemic anomaly that didn’t necessarily work to maintain the system could perceive and enjoy its representational effects: yuki passed between systems. cixous refers to passwords (words that make passage between systems) as “magic animots”, “animal-words”, and registers a crossing between categories. the drawings that constitute the animation beyond might be like cixous’ animots. they are of the everyday, fashioned by familiar techniques of animation, but in their representational complexity, in their unreliable categorization of life and the gravitational play that they both enact and picture, they seem to be drawings that cross the eyelid into the openness of the animal. wondering about people who seek finish, which she associates with the clean and the proper, cixous poses a portrayal of truth in drawing that is characterised by a “panting and unstable allure”; drawing that looks to the drawing yet to be made; drawing that sees itself from a distance even as it is emerging. perhaps architectural animation needs to acquire such engaged distance, such animal allure, by losing the didactic and linear techniques which proposes architecture as self-evident, needing no telling, no bringing into the world. it might imagine instead a story like beyond—a movie designed, shaped with responsive narratives—a hybrid design, part animal, that is a spatial making that casts genre, categories and orders into doubt. the director of beyond, koji morimoto, certainly knew about categorical and temporal leakage: in a discussion on the making of the animation, he started by recounting a story from his childhood when he saw, on the surfaces of his home, the wood-grain move. references bray, a. (2004). hélène cixous: writing and sexual difference. hampshire & n.y.: palgrave macmillan. blyth, i., & sellers, s. (2004). hélène cixous: live theory. new york & london: continuum. cixous, h. (1998a). shared at dawn. in stigmata: escaping texts. london: routledge. cixous, h. (1998b). stigmata, or job the dog. in stigmata: escaping texts. london: routledge. cixous, h. (1998c). without end, no, state of drawingness, no, rather: the executioner’s taking off. in stigmata: escaping texts. london: routledge. cixous, h. (1998d). writing blind: conversations with the donkey (e. prenowitz, trans.). in stigmata: escaping texts. london: routledge. cixous, h. & calle-gruber, m. (1997). rootprints: memory and life writing. london and n.y.: routledge. cousins, m. (1992-3). the first house. arch-text, vol. 1 (winter) 37. steintrager, j.a. (2004). cruel delight: enlightenment culture and the inhuman. bloomington & indianapolis: indiana university press. 11 i gratefully acknowledge the help of moana nepia, albert refiti and ross jenner, who commented on earlier drafts, and of the anonymous reviewers. my thanks to andrew douglas for his fine editing. all translations from german texts are mine. 1 sloterdijk is not the only western philosopher who explores how alternative notions of self can reconnect the isolated individual with the social and natural world (see, for instance, nancy 2007). post-structuralist approaches generally dissociate agency and control from the masterful intentionality of the ego, and these shifts could constitute a potential rapprochement with non-western notions of self. sloterdijk, though, makes more explicit connections between forms of self and spatial relationships. the first volume of spheres, bubbles: microspherology (w. hoban, trans.) is to be published by mit press in october 2011. restless containers: thinking interior space – across cultures a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul in innenraum denken (thinking interior space), a section in the first volume of his spheres trilogy (1998, 1999b, 2004), german philosopher peter sloterdijk describes human relations as being akin to containers that restlessly enclose and exclude each other (1998: 85). to him, humans are “wild interior architects”, labourers who incessantly craft their lodgement in imaginary “sonorous, semiotic, ritual, [and] technological containers” (1998: 84). while producing their own enclosures, they are no less encompassed in those of others, into which they are unavoidably thrown upon leaving that most primal of spheres, the womb. in this way, sloterdijk’s positing of a complex overlapping landscape of containment and containing unsettles crude inside/outside divisions. internationally, he is held to be a philosopher who has returned questions of ontological being, or being-in-the world, to a spatial arena: being-in-the world is being-in-space. co-existence (mit-sein) precedes existence (dasein). the sense of self pervading sloterdijk’s explorations is essentially plural.1 the individual is never alone. both images: hieronymus bosch the garden of earthly delights (ca. 1490 to 1510, details). wikimedia commons interstices 12 with its emphasis on the plurality of the self and the inclusion of non-human agents, sloterdijk’s theoretical position – though not widely known or discussed in aotearoa/new zealand – is fertile ground for the investigation of spatial relationships, as i aim to show. in this paper, i propose, with sloterdijk, that a correlation necessarily exists between a culture’s prevailing sense of selfhood in relation to others (dasein and mit-sein) and the predominant spatial relationships it crafts. i also aim to interrogate the validity of his observations beyond the european sphere where they have been developed. when brought into productive tension with māori and pacific spatial relationships, aspects of sloterdijk’s thought may elucidate implicit codes of inclusion and exclusion and, in turn, better help us understand current spatial patterns and perhaps their future unfolding. aotearoa/ new zealand – established in the encounter of two parties with disparate ideas of self – today comprises many cultural groups, all with varying relationships between self and world. this is what we need to understand better at a spatial level. certainly sloterdijk allows us to see past the prevailing, narrow depiction of interior and exterior relationships centred on the nineteenth-century, bourgeois individual – something succinctly canvassed by walter benjamin, for instance. in fact, this individual sense of self began to replace a more collective one in western societies during what sloterdijk calls “terrestrial globalisation” (1492-1974). just as imperial/colonial agents ventured out into foreign exteriors, drawing in turn new contours for imperial territorial interiors, a particular form of private interiority arose, one capable of both recognising and closing out colonial others. moreover, the division of the world into an inside (to which the self and its possessions belong) and an outside (of the other, the foreign, the yet to be taken possession of) takes on a curious configuration in ‘postcolonial’ settler societies where the erection of ‘private interiors’ was undertaken within a broader domain of colonial exclusion. in these settings, globalisation as colonisation continues – rather than being overcome, as sloterdijk holds – if ‘overseas’ theories are imported without critical questioning. in settler societies, in particular, the relevance of theories generated elsewhere can only be established in relation to indigenous constellations. by considering sloterdijk’s project in the context of aotearoa, i hope to compose a more nuanced understanding of colonial and indigenous spatiality. to these ends the paper falls into three parts: the first provides an overview of a selection of sloterdijk’s thoughts on interior and exterior realms; the second considers specific māori and pasifika spatial notions and practices; and the third will pursue a synthesis of these divergent approaches resulting in what i propose to call interpretation of the ‘in’. sloterdijk’s spheres: european forms of interiority in spheres, spatiality plays a pivotal role. whether people feel enveloped in the world as in a perfect, god-given sphere or look at it from the outside affects their state of being and shapes their relationship with a world at large. blasen (bubbles, the first volume of sphären) opens with the scene of a child on a balcony blowing soap bubbles and feverishly watching them float into the open. whenever one bursts, sloterdijk says, there remains in its place, for an instant, the lonely “soul, which had left the body of the blower” – no longer contained in an exclusive connection between bubble and blower but in an ‘outside-itself’ relation with the world (1998:18). likewise, what martin heidegger called dasein (being) participates in extension. we arrive, in stuart elden and eduardo mendieta’s words, in the world as “mangled creatures” and survive only due to the “generosity and sir john everett millais, bubbles (1886). photo: bob swain 13 2 benjamin observed how the nineteenthcentury intérieur turned into an étui, a receptacle in which “self-satisfied burgher[s]” wove “a dense fabric” about themselves like a “spider’s web”, and in which world events were hung “loosely suspended” (benjamin 2002: 221). the home became the stage for a new personality of the private individual (cohen 2006: 136). divorced from communal life, people assembled “remote locales and memories of the past” as if their living room were boxes “in the theatre of the world” (benjamin 2002: 19). increasingly, the exterior was watched “from a space deep within the bourgeois interior” (alford 2002: 245). mirrors regulated the interpenetration of interiority and world in different ways – reflecting, perhaps, culturally divergent senses of self: they interwove spaces in french cafés by bringing “the open expanse, the street” inside and depriving the wall of its significance “as a container of space” (benjamin 2002: r1,1 and r2a, 1). gratitude” of others who welcome us, nourish us, give us “an abode and refuge”. as they say, we are “born of someone, [and…] someone receives us” (2009: 6). spheres in sloterdijk’s account are symbolic as much as they are material: beingin-spheres is a principal human condition (1998: 14) and, thus, solidarity and mitsein (being-with) begin in the womb (2005: 403). similarly, human beings are constantly overlapping with, and being contained in, various worlds with others (2005: 223). coming from an inside, they never cease to design these existential spaces as interiors of some sort. hence, strong relationships of closeness and participation in graduated spheres of sonorous, sensual, semiotic and material intimacy are pivotal for articulating and maintaining being-in and being-with. nevertheless, this inside-ness is – from the beginning – touched by an exterior against which it must assert itself, by way of sustained repair and expansion (sloterdijk 1998: 14). the second volume of spheres, globen (globes, 1999), traces the expansion of what sloterdijk calls the soul’s microspheric bubbles into the macrospheres of globes. europe’s relationships with the world, he asserts, changed when a belief in the earth’s flatness in the middle ages acquired again a spherical sense. the construction of the first world globe in 1492 pointed to an emerging tendency of lookingat-the-world, of thinking in terrestial, particularly spherical terms. between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, it was not uncommon in paintings of european interiors depict globes, for instance in vermeer’s geographer (1668-9). for sloterdijk, this was indicative of a shift away from a commonly shared sense of being-in-the-world to one concerned with looking-at-the-world as if from an external perspective (2005: 43-4). with increasing colonisation (“terrestrial globalisation”), the exterior became a privileged site from which to secure the future – the space into which europeans ventured as explorers, traders and travellers. yet this world (without periphery, with its centre everywhere, neither womb nor container and unbounded on all sides) could no longer provide shelter as earlier spatial conceptions had. imperial pioneers increasingly sought to save their souls by retreating into their richly decorated and wallpapered interiors (sloterdijk 2005: 147, 54).2 when the modern political order was established in the eighteenth century, the separation between a world out-there and the inner province of the self instituted earlier by rené descartes was strengthened and subsequently sedimented into bourgeois values of interiority. in the nineteenth century, homes and workplaces were increasingly separated (perrot 1990: 9-10), and the interior itself became a defence against the “noise, activity, and threats of the street, the space of the johannes vermeer the astronomer (1668) and the geographer (1668-9). photos: bob swain interstices 12 3 “immunisation is the construction of protective tissue as a prevention against invaders and insulters.” (mönninger 2009: 9) 4 the political aspects of space were very obvious in europe during the inter-war period but after ww2 space was depoliticised. from the late 1950s, accompanying a gradual saturation of the european markets, ‘space’ became increasingly an architectural and interior design concept. a “philosophy of the house beautiful” developed, in which space is no longer an existential question but a luxury commodity. see günzel (2005: 103) and sloterdijk is this issue. masses” (gunning 2003: 106). over time, this concept of interiority became central to western self-understanding. today, it is hard to unsettle and colours completely our notions of inside and outside, occluding a diversity of spatial relationships. the third volume, schäume (foams, 2004), considers the current phase of globalisation, which for sloterdijk is characterised by the virtualisation of all relationships and a resulting fundamental spatial crisis. as previously cohesive spheres were shattered and our globe lost its central position in the universe during the copernican revolution, a singularly globalised world came into being. sloterdijk argues that, to define their identity and location, ethnic and national groups rely on tangible and symbolic boundaries that elaborate significant differences between inside and outside (1999a: 28). these differences are gradually eroded by the effects of globalisation. new types of space proliferate in polycentric constellations, in which each bubble or sphere, while enclosed in itself, in fact depends on its neighbour. simultaneously, large-scale “luxury hothouses” and “atmospheric islands” (resorts, gated communities, shopping malls, etc.) form isolated clusters that fundamentally resist (neighbourly) exchange. these literalisations of an island mentality model for sloterdijk the operation of micro-worlds within worlds, much as maritime boundaries keep both the exterior out and draw together a defended or resistive interior (in a geographic sense, with flora, fauna, and human populations with their specific and local cultures, 2004: 311). in this sense, most, if not all, human beings are unwitting island dwellers insofar as they live within particular locations and cultures, which are isolated by their own physical or semantic ‘atmospheres’ in sloterdijk’s terms (313). curiously, “island” and “apartment building” share a latin etymology – insula (339); even single houses or apartment blocks function as immune systems that protect “an area of well-being against invaders and other carriers of malaises” (535). with their tendency towards defensive closure, they demonstrate that openness towards the world is always complemented by a simultaneous turning-away-from it (540). perhaps the first built atmospheric island, paxton’s crystal palace at the 1851 great exhibition in london, was not only the “largest greenhouse ever built, … a climate-controlled reconciliation of arcadia and industry” (wollen 1993: 9), but instantiated a new form of interiority: glasshouses and hothouses, theme-parks and resorts (sloterdijk 2004: 342). emerging towards the end of sloterdijk’s “terrestrial” globalisation, and gaining more and more currency today during “electronic” globalisation, luxury hothouses like the ocean dome in miyazaki (japan) seek to be total installations. ideally, visitors forget that they are visitors (814) and feel fully immersed, within a securely enveloping interiority that has otherwise been lost everywhere but in the private dwelling. as islands though, these installations rely on consolidated and policed boundaries to keep dissenters and interlopers out, to uphold “an eternal spring of consensus” (sloterdijk 2005: 267). these “great indoors of capitalism” (couture 2009: 161) come to interiorise more and more of the world: “what used to be environment is now enclosed in biospheric hothouses” (mönninger 2009: 9).3 space, so contested in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, became depoliticised in europe after ww2 and, in the global interior formed by capitalism, architectural and interior design in turn came to service a luxury hothouse for the privileged third of humanity (sloterdijk 2005: 303).4 this luxury environment, however, is haunted by political and economic refugees (günzel 2005: 103) who are feared by all who are not ready to embrace the chances and risks of a globe with thin walls and mixed populations (sloterdijk 1999a: 28). in the spheres’ three volumes, sloterdijk develops aspects of being-together, from sein to mit-sein. to explore the “co-existence of people and things in connective entrance to tropical islands resort, brandt, germany (2006). photo: author miyazaki ocean dome (seagaia), japan, interior and exterior (2007). photos: max smith 15 5 sloterdijk shifts towards more consciously eurocentric positions over the years that lie between the first volume of sphären and im weltinnenraum. 6 for the obverse argument, see ray chow, who claims that the native’s gaze renders the coloniser self-conscious and thus produces him as subject (chow 1993: 52). spaces”, he continually turns to spatial metaphors and concrete building practices. for, as he says, a house is a tenuously constructed “three-dimensional answer to the question of how someone can be together with someone, and something in something” (2009). the fragile nature of our coexistence in the world needs to be re-evaluated. the interior, abandoned by many architects as an inconsequential aspect of practice, is one such fragile category calling for re-evaluation. the interior deserves our defence, for only with a certain degree of embeddedness in an enveloping sphere can we fully relate to and move in the exterior. on the other hand, when stereotypical divisions between interior and exterior materialise in attitudes and actions (“inside” is one’s own and good, “outside” a bad exterior belonging to others: foreigners, immigrants, refugees who do not share one’s own group’s beliefs), the interior of one’s dwelling can become the locus from which the impure, threatening and foreign are projected onto the exterior, where they are persecuted and combated (funke 2006: 245). cultures and institutions are containers that grow out of human individuals and groups. they contain their makers, in turn. language, for instance, often serves as “a staunch fortress in which we can ward off the open” (sloterdijk 2009). inside the fortress, held captive what is closest and most familiar to us is precisely what we do not see. ludwig wittgenstein remarked that when we believe we are “tracing the outline of [a] thing’s nature over and over”, we are often “merely tracing around the frame through which we look at it. a picture [holds] us captive” – we cannot “get outside it, for it [lies] in our language and language seem[s] to repeat it to us inexorably” (1958: #114). sloterdijk, even though he is familiar with several non-european epistemologies – and refers to such forms of knowledge frequently – ultimately cannot get outside a eurocentric story about the world. this then comes to represent the history of the world in his writing. for instance, in im weltinnenraum, he suggests that “humankind” only came into existence after hundreds of years of unilateral european travels, which opened up an “anthropological horizon of the plenum of people and cultures” (2005: 222).5 this could not but sound incongruous to pacific peoples, whose ancestors (the “most daring navigators in the history of humankind”, kroeber-wolf & mesenhöller 1998: 314) undertook extensive and complex sea voyages thousands of years in advance of the europeans. and, while sloterdijk describes convincingly how europeans explorers and colonists carried with them their own spatial imagination and structures (2005: 193), he does not consider that these may not have been taken up by ‘the natives’ to become shared concepts. likewise, sloterdijk assumes that european colonisers were better at observing than ‘natives’ (i.e., perceiving “the other through a theoretical window” and eluding “counter observation”, 194). and while he explains how european theoretical perspectives framed the ‘other’ during colonisation, he does not consider how native theories may have been deployed to observe and frame the colonisers, nor in fact how they have been picked up subsequently by these same colonisers to understand their shifted place in the world.6 sloterdijk’s otherwise insightful narrative about the crucial role of lived space (2005: 11) suffers as a consequence. no doubt, grand narratives, if they avoid “intolerable simplifications” (13), can shed light on particular historical moments, but a problem arises when they treat other cultures as something that can be beheld objectively – in other words, as something their author looks at, rather than lives in. thus, despite sloterdijk’s lucid articulation of western modes of inclusion and exclusion, the dramatic, original difference between inside and outside he posits (1998: 84) plays out in his own work as specific divisions between “with-us and world financial center winter garden (2007). photo: francesco federico the last promenade at the crystal palace, from illustrated london news (1852) interstices 12 not-with-us” (mönninger 2009: 5). the resulting, and presumably unwitting marginalisation of other knowledges may well be a reason why he does not explore the function and effects of such central concepts as “with” and “in” in non-european contexts. certainly for some commentators, sloterdijk’s account of the modern world is “hemmed in by propositions about the nature of evidence and cultural preconceptions about space” (thrift 2009: 127). these objections aside, sloterdijk usefully speaks of half-open containers, and of the horizon as “an open circle that allows [us] to live in a sort of ecstatic interior”, one that provides us with a provisional opening to the world (sloterdijk & royoux 2005: 232). along these lines, he draws on gaston bachelard who conceived of humans as fundamentally unsettled and half-open beings (1969: 222). this halfopenness at the core of our being always allows inside and outside to be reversed. accordingly, the containers that house us, as mutable constellations, elude simple spatial demarcations and multiply as unexpected, fragile spheres with varying shades of interiority. with this in this mind, i will now juxtapose sloterdijk’s decidedly european notions of space with those of aotearoa and the pacific to see if the boundaries (samoan: tua’oi) between them can make good neighbours (tua’oi). in this, i am specifically interested in collective senses of self and corresponding forms of interiority. therefore, my account of pacific spaces will focus on what sloterdijk calls kollektoren (collectors, buildings that gather), houses that have performative aspects and provide the conditions for the production of collective space: the māori wharenui (great, or meeting house) and the samoan faletele (great, council house). selves, ancestors, land, seas and skies: pacific forms of interiority as a persistent critic of western individualist autonomy, sloterdijk emphasises the extent to which human relationships are not optional, nor revocable. he considers the dream of a subject “who observes, names and owns everything, without being contained, named and owned in turn”, a fundamental neurosis of western cultures. doggedly returns the dream of an all-inclusive monadic sphere, whose radius would be one’s own thinking – a thinking that traverses effortlessly its spaces to the extreme periphery, gifted with a dreamlike, casual discursivity which no real, external thing can resist. (sloterdijk 1998: 86) conversely, as sloterdijk insists, subjects arise in proximities with other “restless containers”; they contain and exclude each other; they ensconce themselves not only in their own symbolic orders but are part of a shared cosmos. space arises from a participatory folding and entangling of interior and exterior. to think of interior and exterior, and likewise of individuals, as principally separate is to avoid the ecstatic intertwining in a shared interior that produces strong relationships (sloterdijk 1998: 84-5). these views have great affinity with pacific space-relations. for instance, the current samoan head of state, tui atua tupua tamasese efi, affirms that samoans “live not as individuated beings but as beings integrally linked to their cosmos, sharing divinity with ancestors, land, seas and skies” (2007). samoans live in reciprocal relationships of belonging with their family, their village, and their nation and these relationships are the essence of their sense of belonging (2007) and, thereby, their identity. these inclusions form a vast total space, a spiritual 17 7 when sloterdijk states that most, if not all human beings are unwitting island dwellers, he speaks as someone whose home is not an island and whose audience are not usually islanders. is his choice of metaphor motivated by the seemingly (at least horizontally) clearcut original separation of an island from its environment? as he recounts in foams, the island metaphor served as remote stage set for revisionary processes against the definitions of reality on european terra ferma (sloterdijk 2004: 309); see also (ten bos 2009). for a similar argument from a local perspective, see austin (2004). 8 jahnke refers to the pataka taonga (storehouse of precious objects) here, as an architectural example of this multidimensional concept. a similar statement could be made about the wharenui. 9 “the meeting house (whare whakairo) is conceptualised … as a human body, usually representing the eponymous ancestor of a tribe. at the apex of the gable, attached to the tahuhu or ridgepole is the koruru (head). the maihi (bargeboards) are the arms, outstretched to welcome guests. the tahuhu is the backbone and the heke (rafters) are ribs. people in the house are protected in the bosom of their ancestor … the kuwaha (mouth) or door is the symbolic entry where the physical and spiritual realms come together. the window becomes the eye (matapihi) and the interior the womb (koopu). the poupou (carved posts) … depict notable descendants from the eponymous ancestor … reinforce the spiritual unity with human forebears right back to the beginning.” (harrison 1988: 1) for an introduction to māori houses, see rau hoskins in mackenzie & bennett (2011a, 2011b) and a review of the series by carin wilson in this issue (p.133). and material world that is affirmed through local relational knots and nodes (vā fealoaloa’i), and according to shared boundaries (tua’oi) and thresholds ( faitoto’a). in contrast to continental europe, aotearoa and samoa are both islands. a close relationship with the sea is perhaps one reason why wharenui and fale were historically mobile, rather than intended to last without change.7 as in other pacific cultures, the prevailing māori and samoan sense of self is plural, or collective. the individual never completely emerges free from a greater whole and eventually in death is subsumed by it again. relational pacific spatial patternings produce their own material configurations and conditions of interiority. thus, space, rather than being considered an empty container waiting to be filled, is dynamically generated between people – a notion sloterdijk would no doubt find agreeable. the relationship between interior and exterior is mutable, like the fall of waves on a beach: a boundary manifests itself, but it is never constant nor the same. what is excluded at one time may be included at another. māori and samoan foldings of interior and exterior, particularly threshold zones, are articulated and varied across time, their boundaries articulated by ritual as extended, intensive events that cost time. they entail absolute or gradual inclusions and exclusions, even in the same person, who may undergo a change of being upon encountering thresholds. māori and samoan houses are co-determined by their relationship to the open ground in front, the marae atea or malae, the centre of collectiveness towards which they are orientated. in harsher climatic conditions, the entirely open space of the faletele, however, became in aotearoa the wharenui’s mahau, the porch which mediates between the whare’s intense interior and the openness of the marae. inside the ancestor – outside the pa in he tataitanga ahua toi (2006), māori artist and theorist robert jahnke comments repeatedly on the conceptual and physical relationship between inside and outside. this relationship stems from a world-view “in which a spiritual dimension impacted on all spheres of the tribal interaction with their universe”, a model “of space and time that conceptualised movement as a transition” through multiple tangible and intangible, spatial and temporal planes simultaneously; each transition was, by his account, “qualified by intersecting indices” (2006: 57). therefore, the physical transition across the threshold of a whare is marked by “multiple metaphysical indices of inside and outside, above and below, front and back in terms of space and time simultaneously” in an “intimate connection between the material and spiritual world” (58).8 in the wharenui, there is at times an intense sense of interiority (e.g., a concentration on the interior, and a focus on events and discussions inside the house and on a collective self, rather than things outside). the house is the body of an ancestor (male or female), in whose belly or bosom the descendants and their associates are protected. the house “brings together its individual members into a united organism sharing life and a common heritage” (harrison 1988: 1).9 a succession of thresholds, both physical and ritual, impart a changed quality to the interior, which is construed in opposition to the openness of the marae atea. while, in the past, the absence of windows other than the matapihi in the front could be explained by the lack of glass, it is striking that contemporary wharenui still maintain this sense of inwardness. however, this is not a private interiority; insofar as it is collective, it is communal and frequently overtly political and controversial – but tempered by the maxim that inside the house debates are to be constructive. waha roa at orakei marae, auckland (2003). photo: carol green interstices 12 10 like the historical pa (fortified settlement), the contemporary marae complex is usually fenced in, but whereas the pa palisades were designed to keep out warring enemies, the boundaries of the marae preserves and protects a māori space within a nation state which is, in the view of most māori, controlled by pākehā. the marae grounds are frequently the last piece of land still collectively owned by a hapū (sub tribe) – the surrounding productive land being usually privately owned by pākehā. the waha roa (entrance gate) as threshold has the function of setting in motion a māori protocol and to temporarily suspend dominant political, economic and cultural imperatives that are in many ways alien or hostile to what māori assert as their identity. for māori, a marae, particularly the one they belong to by birth, is a place of belonging. 11 often, these thresholds are articulated by architectural elements, but not always: when a group of visitors is welcomed onto a marae and approaches the wharenui, there is a moment of pause, mid-way, which has always felt to me like a threshold changing my state of being. during powhiri (welcomes), though, the marae atea is sacred ground, whereas outside of ritual events, the same area can be used freely for children to play, to sit and talk and even to eat. in this state, the connections between marae atea and wharenui, outside and inside, are much more fluid. 12 “not only their [indigenous polynesians and europeans’] views of the cosmos, but their entire conception of time and space were very different.“ (tcherkézoff 2008b: 201) amanda yates suggests in oceanic grounds, “a dense interspersal of space and the event” is “familiar to oceanic cultures”, less so “to the traditions of western thought and architecture” (yates 2009: 12). 13 according to sloterdijk, we share the womb with a twin: the placenta. it is, writes rüdiger saffranski, “living proof that each of us begins as two. afterbirth follows birth.” (1998) the placenta, once treated with great respect, was made abjected in western modernity, thrown away or exploited for industrial purposes. “no respect is left for the companion of our earliest days.” (safranski 1998) māori and pacific people in aotearoa, though, still bury the whenua (placenta) in the whenua (land). there are some affinities between the relationship of wharenui and marae atea on a contemporary marae and european notions of a pacified interior versus an embattled exterior.10 the marae atea belongs to tūmatauenga, the god and origin of war and conflict (jahnke 2006: 139). when activated during encounters, it renders relationships potentially tense and volatile, and in need of sophisticated protocols to keep the danger of eruption at bay. by contrast, the interior of the wharenui is dedicated to rongomātāne, the god of peace and cultivation (140). “to enter the house is to enter the poho, the bosom of an ancestor.” (90) however, the division of inside-as-peaceful and outside-as-embattled is involuted: rather than pure exterior, the marae atea is already inside a complex of settlement. no absolute demarcation exists – instead, a series of transitional zones negotiate interior and exterior: the waha roa (entrance gate), the paepae kaiāwhā (the threshold to the porch) and the paepae a waha (the inner door-sill). each threshold constitutes a critical zone of interaction, strategically positioning hosts and guests, so that their presence and transition has to be negotiated to establish “protocols for the interface” (jahnke 1999: 193, 200).11 an early example of protocols for transitional zones was recorded in 1849 by cuthbert clarke. a party journeying with te heu heu iwikau and governor grey observed a young man in matamata, who was expelled from the settlement and had to “remain outside the fence day and night”. the man would sometimes “lean over the fence to listen to what was going on inside, looking on with … a wistful air” (frame 2002: 42). ‘locking-out’ seemed cruel, locking-in normal to grey. by contrast, māori were horrified by the “caging of offenders” (44). frame suggests that ‘locking-out’ would have been of little consequence to urban europeans at that time, but it could have traumatic effects for māori (44). such effects were underpinned by different notions of self, communality and world. today, in the seemingly similar exclusivity of gated communities, those shut out usually have no connections with those inside, no right of birth, and those inside no connection amongst themselves except the desire and the means to be insulated from others. the faletele and the circle of fa’amatai these bounded and internally differentiated spaces are articulated very differently from spaces in samoa. a european inability to conceptualise polynesian space has been a major source of intercultural misunderstanding, principally because in samoa “space is indissolubly linked to time” (tcherkézoff 2008b: 136).12the samoan fale, like the wharenui, houses the ancestors – who “inhabit everything, everywhere, simultaneously” (refiti 2009: 9). this notion of “everything, everywhere, simultaneously” connects past and present locations in and around the pacific. the ocean is, or is like, the vā, an “opening, a gap or in-between place” which multiplies and con-fuses people and things (ponifasio & refiti 2006). as a network of relations encompassing the world, the vā is “a way of thinking about space”, “influencing interactions in everyday life”, governing individual and group behaviour, “food division and distribution, sleeping and sitting arrangements, and language usage” in public and in private spaces (lilomaiava-doktor 2004: 200). vā is constituted by a back-and-forth movement of curiosity and disclosure (shore 2011). in samoa, vā relations are reflected in the seating plan of the fono, the meeting of matai (family chiefs), where “everything is somehow seen in terms of relations, nothing in terms of things” (tcherkézoff 2008a: 276). vā is “a space-event or co-openness, located at the centre of every gathering, every sociality, [which] structures samoan identity” (refiti 2009: 10). fale means not only “house” but also “inside” and falefale translates as “placenta”.13 still, a fale’s interior until the 1960s was 19 14 very important events may take place on the malae, rather than inside. shore recalls how the “malae became like the floor of a great house. and each house that encircled the village green became like one of the house posts that framed the meetinghouse and at which chiefs usually took up their stations.” (1996: 378) not primarily a place of intimacy but much more a “formal public space” which is owned not privately but by the aiga (family) (tcherkézoff 2008b: 161, 282). like other fale samoa, the faletele (council house) in its classical form has no walls and no internal partitions. the clearly differentiated positions of matai in the fono circle are materialised in the posts supporting the roof of the faletele, over a circular base. activating the vā, this intense opening inward, the co-openness towards the ancestors, makes place for the networks of coexistence related to a particular house.14 what is most interior here is also most public: a gaze inhabits “the centre of social space and exposes and discloses the being of tagata (human)” (refiti 2009: 11). in its light (emanating from the interior rather than the outside), people and things are exposed (13). in the faletele, interiority becomes externalised, everything is drawn towards, and exposed in, this grand internal openness. however, this interiority is externalised again: space does not recede into an interior but is thrown back onto the surface of the world. points (mata) alone fashion the plan of the house: they are the posts that denote ancestors and become the generator of space. (11) here, then, is a sense of interiority that seems diametrically opposed to that european notion of withdrawn-ness, innerlichkeit, in which individuals collect the world around themselves, secreted and separated. however, houses in samoa have changed over the last decades and walls are multiplying, along with new materials and private ownership. these changes to the central element of samoan relationships, the fale, signal fundamental social changes (tcherkézoff 2008a: 281-3). interpreting the in: the work of the local in aotearoa, contemporary māori and pacific architects bring western and oceanic concepts into dialogue, breaching the boundaries enclosing western architectural discourse in its disciplinary and cultural containers. interior, performance and landscape design – with their greater sensitivity to time – have affinity with the “temporalised built environments of oceania whose mutable and porous spaces express changing conditions of interiority and exteriority”. they establish fields of change and exchange in “fluid open spaces and transient breathing architectures” (yates 2009: 72). in tropical and subtropical climates, buildings can be co-extensive with their environment, creating different sensory scenarios: “wind announces itself by rustling the outer layers of the walls and roof while the air remains still inside”. the “soft bounce of the floor and gently filtered light”, and “the faint smells of the materials” alert the senses to their connection with the surroundings (hoskins & wilson quoted in yates 2009: 32). inside and outside are blurred, their boundaries rendered fluid (yates 2009: 12, 94). such architects, educated according to western-style concerns but simultaneously familiar with māori and pacific knowledges and practices, shift across these cultural registers to creatively draw on both. they maintain and develop a locally specific notion of being-in. sloterdijk, too, has written of a “reciprocal belonging between a place and its inhabitant” (2005: 231); relationships between spaces and people are always reciprocal and dynamic. one of the great strengths of sloterdijk’s books discussed here is their rearticulation of european perceptions of interior and exterior, the boundaries between them, and the different notions of ‘self’ that individuals or groups may adhere to. solidarity, the close togetherness of human beings and their ability to “interieur de la maison publique d’apia”, drawing by goupil; lithograph by p. blanchard, 1848. interstices 12 say “we”, creates interior spaces as spheres (sloterdijk, 1998: 14; 2005: 403). mitsein is “always being-alongside-others in a dwelling that has been built and in which we are enclosed. being-with is always being inside of a dwelling” (elden & mendieta 2009: 6). this leads sloterdijk to make explicit architects’ (and interior designers’) role in mit-sein: they interpret, in “their own way, … this most enigmatic of all spatial prepositions, namely the ‘in’” (2009). they make statements on the relationship between “the world as apartment and the world as agora” (2009). that sloterdijk has little to say about contemporary non-european spaces is understandable for someone living in europe. more problematic is his defaulting to the universalising tendency of much european theory. the pairing of apartment and sports stadium as spaces of co-existence may be a useful paradigm for the analysis of space in modern mega-cities in the usa and asia. it is less useful in other contexts. ignored are even successful collective spaces in european cities, such as parks, street cafes and squares (see schöttker 2011: 13). sloterdijk’s texts are utterly stimulating, and his use of references is lavish and astounding. however, ultimately, he is held captive by his own language, his own sphere of influence and knowledge, his own “staunch fortress” into which other cultures and perspectives only ever have limited access. the weight of the existing creates blind spots in us all, and our own internalised understandings will always command centre stage unless we make the renovation of limits and boundarywork a habit. perhaps sloterdijk’s shortfall outside his european context rests on omission, not commission – at least in the texts discussed here. given the lack of direct ‘friction’ with exterior (non-european) interiors, his views brush over many alternate meanings and configurations that “the interior” – an historically and culturally specific construct – has elsewhere. in an ecstatic mit-sein, the task ahead in aotearoa/new zealand is to articulate what “in” and “with” may mean here, and how these spatial relationships may interact with, impact on, and change sloterdijk’s assertions. at stake is an expanding and strengthening of the co-relations and co-production of interior and exterior states, and a re-discovery of the public and the multiple in the interior. the last words are sloterdijk’s: “in human relationships, speaking and building usually create sufficient security … now and then [to] permit ecstasy.” (2009) 21 references alford, c. f. 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(2009). oceanic grounds, architecture, the evental and the in-between. unpublished masters thesis, massey university, wellington. interstices 09 75 non-refereed papers, images, reviews, interviews interstices 09 77 serendipity: between making a magazine and writing history justine clark how does architectural history engage with serendipitous events, with a chance encounter that is put to use in the practice or making of something, but which leaves no overt archival record? serendipity, incident and accident are involved, to some extent, in every act of making – whether the product is a magazine, a building or a historical account/interpretation. but can the processes and practices of architectural history respond to the incidental, to the unwritten and the unarchived? or is this outside history’s frame of reference? does history only deal with its subject matter in terms of events that leave overt physical, ‘authoritative’ traces? (what of oral history?) this paper considers these questions. it originated in an invitation to “critique the practice of architectural history from my perspective as editor of archi tecture australia” for a conference of architectural historians (for beynon & de jong, 2008). so, it is not the outcome of long hours of concentrated and considered research. rather, it is the distillation of some ideas i have been mulling for a while, usually in a state of distraction, as i go about the everyday business of making a magazine. it is an attempt to bring these thoughts to bear on the topic of architectural history. architecture australia is the journal of record of australian architecture, and the latest in a direct line of publication that stretches back to 1904.1 as such, it is a significant resource for the architectural historian. however, many decisions in the day-to-day making of the magazine are made ‘on-the-fly’, the result of particular circumstances, serendipitous and otherwise, that leave few if any archival traces. nonetheless, the outcome of all these decisions is generally read as a ‘definitive’. what might this mean for the magazine as a historical source? acknowledging the role of serendipity does not necessarily undermine the ‘authority’ of the publication, but it does bring into question those historical accounts that are framed solely in terms of direct and apparently straightforward influence and intent. i am not an architectural historian, but i have produced some architectural history, most notably looking for the local: architecture and the new zealand modern, which was co-authored with paul walker and published in 2000. as part of the research for this, i spent quite some time trawling through old issues of architectural journals and magazines, so i have some awareness of the role of publications such as architecture australia in the writing of history. more than this, the knowledge gained through this earlier work has had a valuable influence on my current role as editor of architecture australia. it has provided a store of ideas – particularly about criticism, the media and the role of images in architectural culture – on which i continue to draw. but what are the potential influences in the other direction? does the messy, quotidian activity of editing a magazine 1. for a short history of the magazine and its predecessors, see the sequence of articles published during its centenary: goad (2004); hogben (2004); boddy (2004); the editors (2004); and hogben & stead (2004). pattern recognition ruth watson, erased graphite on paper, 2008 (p. 75) interstices 09 79 that is also a ‘journal of record’ have the potential to affect the way one might practise history? this paper reflects on the messiness of making and the processes of writing architectural history, on the seductiveness for the historian of pinning down and fixing intention and influence, on the impact of apparently slight, incidental events, on what is left off the historical record, and whether this matters. my interest in the conjunction of the messiness of production and the construction of the historical record is partly a reaction to a number of historical accounts of the magazine that i have heard since i began working on it. these seem to offer quite fixed accounts – put rather crudely, they might go: “in 19 somethingor-other so-and-so was president of the raia, his colleagues were published in the institute’s magazine, therefore he must have exerted some influence on the content of the magazine”. now, this may have been the case, but it strikes me as a rather simplistic account of influence. in my experience, influence is rather less direct; power is exercised rather more subtly. decisions about what to publish are the result of a more complicated and less overt set of circumstances, and the president and other raia officials have no direct input into what is published in any particular issue. this may have been different in the past, nonetheless i am sure that the magazine was still the outcome of complicated, incidental circumstances as well as highly considered policies and strategies. let me give an example. in may this year, architecture australia published a review of ashton raggatt mcdougall’s albury cultural centre (peacock, 2008). ian mcdougall, director of arm and member of the project team, is also the chair of the raia advisory board to architecture australia, and was, until recently, a member of the raia national council. for a future historian looking to join the dots, the exercise of influence might seem obvious. however, the means by which the project came to be reviewed are in fact quite different. mcdougall had indeed mentioned the project to me some years earlier when arm won the commission, but i was made aware of its completion, and of its quality, in a quite different way. over the course of two months in late 2007, i received three phone calls from quite different people, all of whose judgment i respect, each saying something like, “i am in albury and i have just seen a very interesting building – you should publish it”. three unsolicited phone calls about a project is three more than i usually get, and it was in a regional town, a location that is under-represented in the pages of the magazine. publishing it seemed like a good idea. the reasons for doing so have left no archival trace. does that matter? probably not. i am not suggesting that future historians should or will care about how that building came to be published. but i am suggesting that the writers of history need to beware of the temptations of joining the dots and to be mindful of the seduction of apparently easy chains of influence and stories of intent. putting together any issue of a magazine involves a lot of planning, consideration and hard work – and an element of chance. no matter the intent of the editorial team, there is always a degree of serendipity at play, and the results are often the better for it. as with making anything, it is partly a matter of seeing how to take advantage of unintentional but fortuitous events, of recognizing possibilities and finding a way to make something of them. no issue is made in an ideal environment. there is never a moment of quiet when all possible content is laid out before me, allowing a singular moment of informed decision about the content of a particular issue. rather any issue is commissioned over time, with some decisions influenced by earlier ones, and things being revised and reconsidered as we go. an issue of a magazine is not a book. it is an iterative, cumulative thing, which makes sense over a sequence of issues, as well as within any particular issue. any issue of the magazine is always also slightly beyond my control. i collect a series of projects that i think will make sense together; i commission intelligent and thoughtful reviewers who will have something productive to say. then a reviewer writes about projects in an unexpected way, and suddenly new connections are made within the content of an issue. the final photographs and drawings come in, and things change again: some images are particularly striking; others are small files and cannot be used that big on the page. the designer sees an opportunity we hadn’t thought of. another ad booking comes in and i have to reduce something by a page. the balance shifts again. the result is usually a network of projects and ideas rather than a tightly structured exegesis on a particular theme or type. in the pages of the magazine quite different buildings rub against each other and maybe generate some sparks in the mind of the reader, who brings further interests and interpretations to bear on the content. recognizing that the magazine as an object always exceeds the intent of the editorial team is important. it does not mean that one throws one’s hands in the air and relinquishes responsibility, but it does remind us that larger things are always at play than the intent of any particular individual or group of individuals. the magazine is a product of the culture in which it is made, and editors, authors and architects are all cultural agents. in making the magazine, i am also quite conscious of its role as journal of record and as future resource. i am quite aware that publishing a project is one important way of making it available for discussion in the architectural community, and that this is one first step in the consensual, communal creation of the canon.2 however, this consciousness of the role of the magazine in history also manifests itself in many small and pragmatic ways – for example, we put a great deal of work into reproducing drawings. we are very careful about the ordering, they are all reproduced at ‘proper scales’, line-weights are carefully adjusted to ensure they print as well as possible. this is invisible work, but it also distinguishes our publication from others in australia. so, might we construct historical accounts that acknowledge or engage with serendipity and the contingent, with objects that cannot be understood only in terms of intent? would this be useful? i believe these questions are relevant partly because they are at stake to some extent in all the objects that become the subjects and the sources of architectural history, not just in magazines. the process of producing a magazine has parallels in the way other objects are made – most obviously buildings – and in the production of history itself. in making and telling coherent stories, history often tends to smooth over the messiness of the everyday. in some ways this is a necessary effect, but wrinkles can also be revealing. it might be useful for historians to remember the contingent nature of their own productions. how do their research projects come about? which ones 2. juan pablo bonta’s account of canon formation in architecture is still very compelling. see bonta (1979). interstices 09 81 are realized, and for what reasons? which ones languish? which ones make it through the obscure workings of the australian research council (and why!)? how does a research project proceed? what of serendipity? how might reflecting on this affect the way in which one practises history? the seduction of the archive the archive is very seductive – there are the facts, just waiting to be dug up and strung together into stories. written down, in black lines on white paper, these facts appear incontrovertible, apparently objective. memory, by contrast, is unreliable; accounts are skewed to suit the agenda and interests of the teller. but of course the archive also provides a skewed account, simply by virtue of what is included and what is left out. we know this from many decades of work on gender, class and race, on those who were frequently omitted from the historic record and how their stories might be retrieved. this work is very important, but what also interests me are the more incidental events by which one debate or thought is recorded, and thereby made available to the future historian, and one is not. and with all the facts embedded in the archive, waiting to be ‘found’ and interpreted, what of those events that leave only tiny traces? one response to this dilemma is to simply try to record more and more, to keep filling in the gaps, to accumulate ever more detailed facts, to tell fuller and fuller stories, to record more and more oral history. one of my favourite pieces of history writing that fills a gap using personal knowledge is an essay published by reyner banham in 1968. “the revenge of the picturesque” outlines a debate around modernism in postwar london, which was influential, but left only slight traces in the printed record – in gossip columns, letters to the editor and so on. banham uses his knowledge and recollections to draw these slight traces together. he begins, in his inimitable way: those of my generation who interrupted their architectural training in order to fight a war to make the world safe for the modern movement, tended to resume their studies after demobilization with sentiments of betrayal and abandonment. two of the leading oracles of modern architecture appeared to have thrown principle to the wind and espoused the most debased english habits of compromise and sentimentality. (banham, 1968: 265) (he is talking of j. m. richards and nikolaus pevsner). he continues, so, combat was joined between a barely middle-aged architectural ‘establishment’ armed with a major magazine, and a generation of battle-hardened and unusually mature students.… but the student generation were without much means of public expression … and little of the polemic is visible in print. (banham, 1968: 265-66) banham goes on to give a detailed, amusing account of the polemic through the slight traces they left in print, concluding by pointing out that it all ended with the total “triumph of the unacknowledged picturesqueness of the picturesque’s avowed enemies” (banham, 1968: 273). like most of banham’s writing, this is a compelling and engaging essay. and it clearly makes the point that conversations and debates that have significant effects on the development of architectural cultures do not always leave much of a record, even when carried out by influential figures. but filling in the gaps can also be a very dull exercise, leading to some very dull history. the model of the ever-expanding canon is not always the most interesting or useful way to produce history. and the gaps can never all be filled. the incidental and new zealand architectural history but the gaps themselves might be interesting. this is an important point in this part of the world where so much architectural history goes unrecorded, and where canons seem to be built on quite ephemeral ground. indeed, i would suggest that architectural historians working in australia and new zealand might in fact be quite well equipped to deal with the questions i have raised, precisely because of the elusive nature of the archive and the printed record, and the need to be clever with the material one draws on to practise history here. we have rather less at our disposal, for example, than banham did. i would like to speculate further on this, particularly in relation to new zealand historical practices. these speculations are not based in considered analysis – i have not had time to systematically survey the proceedings of previous sahanz conferences, or the back issues of fabrications. rather they come out of a hunch i have had for some time, that a certain sensibility has developed in one strand of new zealand architectural history writing. as i reflected on the ideas above through the lens of architecture australia, it occurred to me that this sensibility offers quite some opportunity for thinking inventively about the practice all images courtesy of architecture australia / architecture media, melbourne. interstices 09 83 of history in relation to the serendipitous. so, my experiences here in australia have sent me back to thinking about new zealand. (but surely this is one of the benefits of sahanz). this particular sensibility, which i think pervades one strand of new zealand architectural history, is an interest in the minor, or the ‘slight’, and what it might offer. this is not an interest in simply adding more and more facts to the historical record, in constantly expanding the canon. rather, it is an approach to history predicated on what might be called the ‘glance’. on looking awry, on using apparently minor details to offer new vantage points, from which to construct new interpretations and tell other stories, to illuminate issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. to my knowledge, this has not been clearly articulated as a particular methodology, rather it has simply built up over the years. but it seems to offer some opportunities for dealing with ‘stuff’ on the edges of the historic record – a way of picking up the most minor trace, and running with it. and once you start looking from an odd angle, it is amazing what you find. this approach is not restricted to new zealand material. i recall a paper presented by sean flanagan at sahanz in 2002. this concerned the house for dr christ, described as “an uninvited guest at one of modernism’s most prestigious gatherings” (flanagan, 2002: 58); that is, the weissenhofsiedlung. the house left only tiny traces in the historical record: it only appeared in the corner of photos of other buildings. but flanagan used this absence to spin out an interesting discussion, one that he may not have developed had he been looking in a more straightforward way. this sensibility also influenced looking for the local, which used the story of an earlier book that never happened to unravel certain mythologies in new zealand architecture. indeed, writing a book about a book that didn’t go ahead seems like a particularly new zealand thing to do! i hope you will indulge me if i use this as an example. part of writing that book involved collecting stray elements floating on the surface of all kinds of architectural commentaries. these small traces indexed debates and discussions that had been influential but left no strong or clear historical record. one telling example was the string of slight references around the idea of the ‘straightforward’. like the polemic outlined by banham, this was an important idea, but it only left small traces. coincidentally it also involved nikolaus pevsner in debate with younger architects, but without other famous players. pevsner was one of the few international critics to visit new zealand and comment on its architecture postwar.3 he did so in two radio talks; in “commonwealth 1”, a special issue of the architectural review on the architecture of the dominions; and in a talk to the royal commonwealth society (pevsner, 1958a; pevsner, 1958b; new zealand, 1959: 206). in each of these he refers obliquely to a conversation with architect bill toomath about timber detailing. he tells the story differently on each occasion, recasting it for various audiences. sometimes pevsner allows that there may be some potential in such crude detailing – “maybe he was right, maybe that robustness of detail which strikes me as a little raw will one day be a valid expression of the new zealand version of 20th century architecture” (pevsner, 1958b: 4) – but in the anonymous piece for the prestigious canon-making architectural review, he leaves no room for such possibility: … lack of means is often apparent in the detailing, although a certain crudity is called straightforwardness and, at least by some of the most thoughtful young architects, set up as a new country feature in opposition to the old-men’s fussiness at home. it sounds convincing at first, but california is not all that old, but it still manages to get its details right. (new zealand, 1959: 206) this generated a series of responses in new zealand. in 1960 the new zealand listener reviewed the review, disseminating the story to a wide local audience and claiming straightforwardness as a national trait (seen from a distance, 1960: 7).4 the director of auckland art gallery, peter tomory, did likewise, writing, “a colonial heritage begets directness, bluntness in fact, a kind of colonial brutalism which provides a strong tonic to the too-sugared spirit of european sophistication” (tomory, 1961: 76). not every local commentator agreed. in a piece called “the wild colonial boys”, comment deplored the cultural nihilism of the listener (wild colonial boys, 1960: 10). tangential references to this conversation continued to appear as arguments for the straightforward were made and remade.5 it reverberates as late as 1993 when leonard bell, writing about the role of the primitive in new zealand art, quotes tomory and excises all connection to architecture (bell, 1993: 111). when each reference is read in isolation they are hardly noticed. however, when collected together they can be recognized as the strange echo of an incidental conversation about a post propping up a carport in lower hutt. the bizarre yet powerful effect of apparently incidental material becomes apparent. it might be said that this scraping together of slight references and tangential asides is another kind of join-the-dots. however, i would argue the difference is partly in the use to which these references are put, and the way they are understood. they are not treated as a string of facts to determine influence, or intent, nor as the building blocks of the canon. rather they are understood as indices of architectural debates and discussion which might be worth interpretation. stray sentences, half-developed ideas in building reviews, historical overviews and statements of intent might be read as the shadows, scratches and traces left by numerous events and discussions which leave no clear concrete archival account, but were nonetheless influential. what new critical and historical possibilities might open up if we develop these other ways of understanding archival traces – for example, in terms of indexicality? might this lead to other kinds of productive architectural encounters? this might seem like a long way from where i started – from serendipity and the everyday activity of editing architecture australia. however, i think that the idea of reading archival traces as indices has a lot of potential for negotiating the complex array of issues with which i began. it allows you to work in the space between intention and incident, between serendipity and authority, between economics and ideal, between the messiness and the formality of a publication like architecture australia. this is the space that i work in daily, and in which i am also interested in terms of the practice of history. the index allows you to negotiate these spaces because although it is a sign that is read as a mark caused by an action, it is also, if we follow umberto eco, a culturally produced effect. what is it to think of the stuff from which we make history in these terms? 3. for a full account of pevsner’s new zealand tour, see skinner (1996). 4. n. and j. sheppard make a similar argument (1961: 471). 5. for a longer discussion of this, see clark & walker (2000: 35-37). interstices 09 references banham, r. (1968). the revenge of the picturesque: english architectural polemics 1945-1965. in j. summerson (ed.), concerning architecture (pp. 265-73). london: allen & lane. bell, leonard. (1993). landfall, the primitive, and the visual arts in the 1950s. landfall, 1 (1 [new series]), 106-13. beynon, d., & de jong, u. (eds.) (2008). history in practice: 25th international conference of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand. geelong, vic: sahanz. boddy, a. (2004). photography and architecture. architecture australia, 93(4), 20-21. bonta, j. p. (1979). architecture and its interpretation: a study of expressive systems in architecture. london: lund humphries. clark, j. & walker, p. (2000). looking for the local: architecture and the new zealand modern. wellington: victoria university press. the editors. (2004). architecture australia, 93(5), 23-27. flanagan, s. (2002). the weissenhofsiedlung and the house for dr christ. in j. macarthur & a. moulis (eds.), additions to architectural history: 19th annual conference of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand. brisbane: sahanz. goad, p. (2004). one hundred years of discourse. architecture australia, 93(1), 18-26. hogben, p. (2004). one hundred years of advertising. architecture australia, 93(2), 20-23. hogben, p. & stead, n. (2004). rhetoric and tone. architecture australia, 93(6), 26-30. new zealand (1959). architectural review, 126(752), 206. peacock, d. (2008). albury cultural centre. architecture australia, 97(3), 58-65. pevsner, n. (1958a). the ingratiating chaos: impressions of new zealand. listener (uk) 60(november 20), 825-27. extracts published in journal of the nzia, 26(2), 42-43. pevsner, n. (1958b). new architecture and new art. new zealand listener, 40(1010), 4. republished in journal of the nzia, 25(10), 261-85. seen from a distance: london journal looks at nz architecture. (1960). new zealand listener, 42(1067), 6-7. sheppard, n. & j. (1961). domestic architecture in new zealand. architectural design, 31(october), 471-74. skinner, r. (1996). nikki down under: impressions of pevsner in new zealand. in p. goad & j. willis (eds.), loyalty and disloyalty in the architecture of the british empire and commonwealth: selected papers from the thirteenth annual conference of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand, auckland, new zealand, 1996 (pp. 102-10). melbourne: sahanz / university of melbourne. tomory, p. (1961). the visual arts. in k. sinclair (ed.), distance looks our way: the effect of remoteness on new zealand (pp. 63-78). auckland: paul’s book arcade for the university of auckland. the wild colonial boys (1960). comment, (spring), 10. interstices 08 101interstices 08 101 i am delighted to be asked to “deliver” dick toy’s last lecture. it has provided an opportunity to engage with a figure of renown, here in auckland, and to reflect on his legacy. it also has provided an opportunity to insert myself into a tiny piece of the history of auckland, and find a happy role in this fabulous event of architecture week. i should say that the word “deliver” is in quotation marks: in reproducing and condensing the lecture, it is necessarily a personal interpretation. indeed, when given one page of notes and 53 slides to negotiate, this would have to be the case! but also, only part of my talk will be the outlining of toy’s talk; the other part will be my interpretation of the relevance of this interpretation for auckland’s future. if i have taken the opportunity handed to me, to think through this lecture in a personal manner, too liberally, it only comes from my enthusiasm for toy’s thoughts, and an affinity i feel i have discovered. the lecture this lecture of dick toy’s was delivered on 8 june 1989, just short of twenty years ago. it was given to second, third and fourth year architecture students at the university of auckland, “by request of john goldwater”. it was twelve years after toy had ceased teaching at the university. he gave it the simple title: “talk about architectural structures: pavilions, squares, bays”. the lecture falls into three main parts: the first having to do with what toy refers to as “architectural language”; the second, with “opposing forms of earth-sky relationships”; and the third, with auckland’s formal bay structure. throughout, he lays out his argument for contrasting spatial typologies, and the need for auckland to adhere to its given, natural, own spatial typology. part 1 1. toy begins his “architectural language” discussion with this map of auckland harbour. he is interested in how the form of auckland’s bays – the relationship of water to earth; the hollow of the bay – gives rise to spatial imperatives. 2. the spatial imperative is best captured by a corresponding diagram of the behaviour of enzymes: the “hollow” of the enzyme invites the atp (the energy currency of the cell) and the glucose molecules into its sphere, thereby forcing these two elements together in a connection that allows for the exchange of an dick toy’s last lecture peggy deamer prof. richard horton beauclerc toy (1911-1995) was an auckland architect and academic. he taught at the auckland school of architecture from 1944, completed a phd at trinity college, dublin, in 1950, and then returned to the auckland school, where he held a chair in design from 1959 to 1976. all credit to adam wild, nzia auckland branch committee member for heritage, for pursuing the re-creation of this lecture as an adjunct to his auckland architecture week exhibition on toy’s churches, and also for inviting prof. peggy deamer to take up the task of recreating the lecture. the presentation required deamer to flesh out and interpret toy’s brief lecture notes and his set of 53 slides (the numbers contained within this text are deamer’s slide numbers). both the lecture notes and the slides are held in the university of auckland’s architecture archive. thanks to maria ericksen for making them available for presentation and publication. – eds 1 interstices 08 101 interstices 08 101 atp fragment onto and into the glucose fragment. in other words, the hollow of the enzyme, like the hollow of the auckland harbour, engenders a system of communication and exchange: indeed, more than this, it, like the bay, engenders “life”. 3. toy then expands from here to give examples of environments in which man sets up meaningful relationships with the earth. at the most basic, pre-architectural level, it is the child finding pleasure in both the security of the “hollows” of the rocks at the sea, and the expansiveness that the water allows: a closure and an opening; an inwardness and an outwardness. 2 3 interstices 08 103interstices 08 103 4. he then moves on to images of māori approaches to building. it is not about the space of the “hollow”, but it elaborates on other aspects of humans “grabbing” meanings in building form. here, it is the construction of the threshold – that moment in which the body moves from outside to inside, from expansiveness to contraction. here, the body’s physical labour and the inscription of the body into the architecture indicate the care with which this moment is understood by māori. 5. from here, toy moves to the significance of light in more recent, less vernacular approaches to architecture, exemplified by le corbusier’s chapel at ronchamp. he admires the way that light hits and modulates form, but also how light is set up as an object of appreciation in the exterior and the interior. again, it is an example of how man formally claims the offering of the heavens – light – and gives it meaning. 6. and then, on to the memorial to the victims of armenian genocide of 1915 at yerevan, armenia, where the celebration of life (and death) at the top of the hill provides, in the vertical dimension, the outwardness and upness that comes with being at the top of a mountain, while also providing the shelter, enclosure and manipulation of light that comes with occupying the space made at the top of this mountain. 7. and in peru, the same respect for the mountain as an object against which one builds towns, but in which one also finds enclosure, with the fulfilment of outward exposure, expansiveness and light. part 2 what follows in the second part, “opposing forms of earth-sky relationships”, is the explanation of two diagrams that are fundamental to toy’s understanding of built form. he is interested, it should be stressed, not just in how forms are set in relation to other forms, but how we, as perceiving human beings, receive and respond to these forms. the two principle forms or conditions, as we will see, are outwardness and inwardness. 8. in this diagram entitled “outward”, the three diagrams show a progression from inwardness to outwardness in three dimensional, spatial terms, where an inner corner containing space transforms, through an intermediary stage, into an object building of only outer corners, deflecting space, but not towards it. “outwardness” and its vectors correspond, on the right, to this last type. 9. examples of this, at the architectural scale, are the pyramids in egypt: at the urban scale, the acropolis in greece. 10. in contrast to this is the diagram of inwardness, in which space is confined and directed inward; in which space dominates over (is at the centre of) mass: mass at the periphery defines space. 11. an example of this, at the architectural scale, is the parthenon in rome and, at the urban scale, the piazzas of italy, forming as they do outdoor rooms. 8 interstices 08 103 interstices 08 103 12. what follows, then, seems to be a contest, or as toy refers to it, an explosion, witnessing a movement from mass-dominated, outward-type space-making to its reciprocal inward, space-dominated variant in various moments of architectural history, until, in modern times, we no longer find any reciprocity between these two formal types, but rather, only the object-oriented city that has no sense of space and hence, more importantly (as the human senses it), no sense of place. part 3 it is at this point, in the third part of the lecture, that toy makes an interesting shift. he re-introduces his new and third topic, the auckland bay form. seemingly, he has left behind the paradigmatic spatial types described above, in order to concentrate on the specifics of this particular city, auckland, and how it demonstrates these formal attributes. and he introduces auckland in a most interesting way. 13. he shows new zealand floating in an ocean-dominated world, saying: “auckland is a watery city.” he offers various examples of the particular bay forms that bring us back, immediately, to the “hollow” paradigm of the enzyme. 14. on top of this, he switches scales, showing us this same “hollow” – or perhaps more easily expressed as “transitional” – space of the typical auckland bungalow porch: space that is both enclosed and yet open, is both inward and outward. he switches scale and locale again when he compares this to the piazza st. marco 10 13 interstices 08 105interstices 08 105 in venice; again, a transitional space that is an urban porch, both part of the city and part of the water, both enclosed and open. auckland and its bays, in other words, are introduced to us not by the specifics of the local, but by the most global of typologies. 15. he then pulls out his coup: that indeed, these are not just examples of auckland’s deployment of the two spatial types – inward and outward – but they constitute a third and ultimately (if you give this a hegelian, dialectic reading, which it is hard not to do) superior type, the synthesis of the inward and the outward, the interaction of inward and outward, the “bay” type. that he sees this as its own independent type – of which he assumes auckland is the true possessor – is confirmed by the title of the talk: “pavilions (the outward, mass-dominated type), squares (the inward, space-dominated type) [and] bays (the simultaneous interaction of the two types to form a third).” 16. he has written about the specifics of this bay type elsewhere, so we can quote him here: “from home to bay to ocean the water-filled hollows constitute a hierarchical structure connecting inward and outward, permeated through and through with this potential for human place and connectedness, too, and for fundamental social and psychological satisfaction.” 17. this, then, becomes the opportunity to proselytize against what he sees as the ravaging of auckland’s natural bay type by modern development and land reclamation. 18. and he compares the natural, volcano/bay hollows that inspired māori and original pakeha settlers . . . 19a. ... to the modern day, which caters to cars, movement and development. 19b. the curving of the edge, so essential to the hollow, is replaced by the straight line. 20. here, he then proposes a new, “utopian” approach to development in auckland: instead of the linear development that privileges the isthmus over the bay, and development that grows along the isthmus’ straight roadwork . . . 21. ... he proposes a development that privileges the bay as the communal centre, with pockets of sub-centres that support and are supported by it. he calls it “congruence”, and he speaks of it (and diagrams it) this way: 22. quote: “congruence would involve through going occupation of these bays so that the future city is mainly a decentralized complex of its immensely varied bays, each able to develop its own community identity to its maximum. bay community would include not only residence but also other social services and functions, including decentralized work.” 23. this vision of a decentralized auckland, that has the bay (space) as the centre of the city, in turn has implications for how to conceive of other formal aspects of the city, all in contrast to the pavilion/mass approach which, he sees, typifies current (at his time) development. on the left are the (bad) consequences of the 15 interstices 08 105 interstices 08 105 “pavilion” approach to urban form, and to the right are the preferred (good) consequences to the “bay” approach to urban design: a). space distribution: with the pavilion, space is reduced at the centre (filled by mass/buildings), and density, congestion, pollution and noise multiply; in contrast, with the bay, space (occupiable for public use and shared identity) is at the centre. b). identity of place: with the pavilion, movement roads run through sub-centres, ironing out identity and draining local character; with the bay, people are invited to occupy space and a shared identity. c). movement: with the pavilion, choice between public and private modes of transportation is limited, and suburbs are scaled solely on the car; in contrast, with the bay structure, the movement system across the water – lattice-like, not tree-like – allows all communities to be equally connected with a variety of modes of transportation, including walking and boating. 19 23 24 interstices 08 107interstices 08 107 24. toy then ends his lecture with this enigmatic image of a church. there are no notes indicating its reference, origin or meaning for him. but for us, the audience, it is a reminder of the fact that all these diagrams and all the formal analysis matter mostly at the level of the spirit. the analysis one can, in all of this, admire the direction of this talk – the vision of a sympathetic place-based notion of development that takes into account the natural topography. he calls it utopian, but it is not hugely off the mark of what might be real. rather than speculate about the value of this vision (which i think we all can appreciate), i would prefer to bring out other points that may not be as obvious, and which i think are important in considering the lessons that toy gives us. the first is that toy, despite his concentration on the unique features of auckland and his clear love of this place, is not a “regionalist” as we may have understood him to be: his examples, his typologies, his categories come from a universal understanding of formal paradigms (earth-sky; mass-space; inward-outward; pavilion-bay) which appreciate regional characteristics, but which do not celebrate difference for difference sake, nor insist on a local reverence or a kiwi essentialism. in his approach to formal absolutes, he envisions a need for us (kiwis) to see ourselves in the context of a shared, common, universal response of form. connected to this, much can be made of toy’s own art historical epistemology. i do not know his educational training, other than the fact that he got his phd in dublin, on the influence of universities on the development of the region. but, it is clear from his formal framework that he is versed in a western tradition that not only reflects, as i have suggested, aesthetics as it is derived from hegel – the historical movement from a blunt notion of mass (thesis), to a more complex and opposing one of space (antithesis), to one that transcends these both as bay/ hollow (synthesis) – but also sets up a framework of polar opposites that allows him, and us through him, to see form in contrasting pairs: this is the tradition of heinrich wolfflin, august schmarsow, aby warburg and many others. in addition, it connects us to a tradition of phenomenology that runs through not only many of these same german art historians, but its more modern variant in christian norberg-shultz, whose work on the notion of place, as a supreme category of human well-being, we are all probably familiar with. i mention these connections to both formalism and phenomenology not to hammer home toy’s indebtedness or lack of originality. rather, i bring them up because he brings to his work a “worldliness” that i feel makes his appreciation of auckland that much more acute, and that much less provincial. i am trying to emphasize that his worldliness is both a part of his training, and a part of his global view of form – both making his observations more profound and far more reaching than a “regionalist” designation would imply. secondly, i want to emphasize that his designation as a formalist should not in anyway denigrate his importance, as we might be wont to do in this post-modern, post-structuralist, anti-formalist era. the observations, analyses and sensitivities to what he is seeing, and his ability to make us perceive things we would not interstices 08 107 interstices 08 107 1. urban spoiler was a second semester design studio in 2007, pursued at the university of auckland school of architecture and planning, the aut school of art and design, and the unitec school of architecture. it culminated in the construction of multiple temporary pavilions at britomart place and was opened after the toy lecture on the closing night of auckland architecture week. otherwise observe, is too impressive to be dismissed. more importantly, his formalism is not an end in itself, but is a link to our sense of humanity; that is, his notion of form is what i call “reparative”, meaning that he believes that when forms are presented to us correctly, they heal our human spirit. in this, he enters the company of critics such as john ruskin and adrian stokes, who read not just architecture but also nature and landforms as sources of deep psychological significance. toy is, above all else, through his formalism, a humanist. indeed, i would say that toy’s gift to new zealand architecture is this humanism, not his prescriptions for new zealand forms, be they at the level of regional planning or at the level of architecture. to concentrate, as some have, on whether he has correctly interpreted māoriness into his church forms, for example, misses the point. he taps into the kiwi spirit, not by telling us the essential nature of kiwi forms, but by reminding us (kiwis) of our fundamental humanism. finally, then (and here i am moving away from toy), i would like to say that the gift that auckland architects make to the world at large is, likewise, not their particularly regionalist spin on contemporary form, tectonics, sense of materials or attachment to the earth, but rather your profound humanity, your care for each other and your care for all those who live in and pass through your city. auckland architecture week, urban spoiler,1 and indeed your invitation to me to be a part of this, are an indication of an openness and a generosity that is not only unique, but permeates the character of this city. 95 an architectural history of the canterbury hebrew congregation gay sweely during the 1960s and 70s, many important structures in christchurch were unsympathetically demolished due to the lack of heritage laws and the introduction of new construction codes for withstanding seismic activity. noted historian john wilson recorded some of these buildings in lost christchurch (1984). four years later, the heritage-protected synagogue of the canterbury hebrew congregation in gloucester street met the same demise. in the middle of that year, the site contained only rubble from a building that had been loved and admired by many: jews, local residents and visitors alike. today, few people walking in gloucester street would realize that a once-stately polychrome building proudly occupied what is now a vacuum of asphalt paving. this paper outlines the design, construction and ultimate loss of t. s. lambert’s christchurch synagogue. to contextualize the building’s design and construction, the paper also considers earlier synagogues in australia and other new zealand cities. the final section discusses the loss of the gloucester street building and the re-use of various elements from it in the replacement, durham street synagogue, which continues to serve the canterbury hebrew congregation’s present-day needs. t. s. lambert’s synagogue in the early 1860s, gold was discovered on the west coast near hokitika, and a small group of jewish miners and merchants established a congregation on the goldfields. when the gold deposits subsequently dwindled, the jews of hokitika and south westland settled in the canterbury area. the torah from the hokitika congregation was sent and proudly displayed in christchurch (chc, 1963b: 11). this combined congregation offered lectures, meetings and social functions during the late 1860s, as recorded in various articles, advertisements and notices in the local newspaper, the press. in 1870, the rev. isaac zachariah arrived in christchurch from the west coast and, until 1905, provided substantial leadership, hitherto offered only by lay members. during the 1870s, new zealand anglo-jewish associations and the jewish philanthropic society were formed, as well as a hebrew school (though informal until 1890) for the study of judaic literature in the canterbury hebrew congregation.1 although the canterbury hebrew congregation was steadily growing, jewish immigration to new zealand had historically been low. in the 1870s and 80s, jews immigrating to new zealand and australia were no longer only from great britain. the majority of the new immigrants were eastern-european jews escaping waves of pogroms and massive episodes of oppression. the hebrew congregation in canterbury had expanded so much by 1875 that a meeting was held 1 these developments were reported in the local newspapers, the lyttelton times, the press (christchurch) and the otago daily times. the newspapers often carried notices or reports of interest to the jewish community, especially those solemn days observed throughout the year. in addition, news from other new zealand jewish communities was also reported by the local press. the archives of the christchurch hebrew congregation contain a large number of newspaper clippings, from which many of the details in the present account are taken. further details were obtained from personal interviews with s. cook and s. bures. interstices 09 97 the exterior fronting gloucester street east has an elevation of much originality, the chief feature in it being a large circular window, the tracery of which takes the form of the double triangle (fig. 1). on either side are smaller windows harmonising with the first, and below are a pair of handsomely panelled entrance doors... admission is gained through a vestibule, paved with marble in a lozenge pattern.... two doors hung so as to open in either direction, lead to the main building. here, the most striking feature is the decorations at the south end of the building. this is where the ark is situated (fig. 2). the ark itself is a large receptacle, lined with red velvet and enclosed with two massively carved sliding doors. in front of these hangs a white silk veil.… the gallery is supported by iron fluted pillars, having capitals ornamented with lilies and pomegranates (figs. 3 and 4).... the lighting by day is provided by four double windows on each side, filled with cathedral glass, and outlined by glass of more brilliant colours, the same colours being introduced into the large north window. (new synagogue, 1880: 2) the christchurch synagogue was an eclectic mixture of architectural styles. lambert designed in the classical style, as well as the venetian gothic and gothic styles.2 it was a basilica-like structure: the white vertical rusticated bands could easily be massive columns or pilasters. a classical pediment appeared at the apex, but gothic window hoods broke up the classical approach. lambert’s use of rustication and constructional polychromy placed the synagogue comfortably within the canterbury architectural aesthetics of the time. lambert effectively married classical, gothic and scottish elements into a very distinctive south island design. the small canterbury congregation seemingly was pleased with both the interior design, which was reminiscent of british synagogues, and the ornamental exterior: “it had taken more than a year in building and all the records show that it was considered by all present to be a very handsome building and worthy of the jewish citizens of christchurch at that time” (chc, 1963c: 14). early synagogues in new zealand the mid-nineteenth-century english jews who settled in new zealand would have been familiar with many synagogues around great britain, and perhaps in continental europe and australia. on the continent, architects of synagogues built during this period were experimenting with various styles, such as romanto discuss more suitable accommodation. a building committee was selected to decide on congregational requirements, available funding and an appropriate architect. the canterbury-area jewish community banded together and raised, in a very short time, £4,000 – quite a feat for such a small congregation. the promi nent christchurch architect thomas stoddart lambert (1840-1915) was selected. lambert’s designs in canterbury prior to 1880 had included churches, residences, schools, commercial buildings and rural hotels. the jewish community would have been aware of many of these structures, but they were probably more aware of his commercial buildings on high street for mark marks, w. simpson and b. simpson, as marks was a member of the canterbury hebrew congregation (chc, 1963c: 11). born in selkirk, scotland, lambert served his articles there before extensive travel and a brief residence in london. he arrived in new zealand in early 1866, working on various structures north of the wellington province. in 1874, he moved to wellington but was not optimistic about building prospects there and thus moved to christchurch, where he entered the office of frederick strouts, who in 1871 had been one of four founding members of the canterbury association of architects (stacpoole, 1976: 163). under strouts’ supervision, lambert “personally surveyed the entire city of christchurch” (cyclopedia, 1903: 581). in 1877, lambert formed his own architectural firm. he was most likely selected for the new synagogue because of his professional reputation: “his contracts [were] finished without extras, and their total cost [was] usually somewhat under his written estimate previously given” (cyclopedia, 1903: 581). a successful local christchurch contractor, w. prudhoe, was selected for the synagogue construction. prudhoe had served as contractor for architect samuel farr, known for the christchurch mechanics institute, and had completed se veral government contracts (akaroa civic trust, n.d.). an 1880 newspaper article reported that the new synagogue design was unique and that its façade design would be clad in blue, white and yellow stone, with exterior walls of brick. as the account notes, the new synagogue was completed in november 1880: fig. 1 fig. 1: the circular star of david stained-glass window in lambert’s building. drawn by jonathan rollins, department of art & design, eastern kentucky university. fig. 2: the ark. drawn by jonathan rollins. fig. 3: the lower level. drawn by jonathan rollins. fig. 4: the interior, showing the ceiling, gallery and circular window. drawn by jonathan rollins. fig. 2 fig. 3 fig. 4 2 “the great majority of the new larger commercial buildings of the 1870s and 1880s, and beyond … were italianate, a style common in other new zealand cities … [and] many of the city’s imposing italianate buildings came also from the hands of other architects like t. s. lambert” (wilson et al., 2008: 81). interstices 09 99 provincial council. by the early 1860s, the dunedin congregation was outgrowing its wooden synagogue and had to consider building a larger structure on a “more suitable and central site” (balkind, 1928: 12). thus, in early 1863, the congregation advertised for a permanent minister and began to discuss the feasibility of a new synagogue in a different location. in 1863, william henry clayton (1823-77) was awarded the tender for the new dunedin synagogue. when clayton became a partner of william mason, he brought with him this commission for the synagogue. clayton, who is best known for his wooden government buildings in wellington (1876), government house in wellington (1868-71), and the christchurch government buildings in cathedral square (1875-77), had only recently arrived in dunedin from tasmania. he was appointed colonial architect in 1869 (crighton, 1985: vi). the dunedin synagogue, the southern-most synagogue in the world (judd, n.d.), was designed in a classical style in 1881, with a facade of oamaru limestone. the symmetrical design has a vertical, uplifting emphasis created by tapering columns.6 the corinthian columns correspond aesthetically with the hebrew inscription on the frieze. other than the inscription and the magen david (a sixpointed star) in the centre of the pediment, the only other jewish emblem on the façade was a menorah (a candelabrum for jewish services) above the apex of the pediment. the classical style was understood to tread on neutral ground, “with few religious associations of its own” (de breffny, 1978: 175). in addition, the classical style also conveyed a desirable sense of antiquity (gunman, 1981: 103-21). the canterbury hebrew congregation by 1860, small jewish congregations had been established in the major cities of the north and south islands, with the exception of christchurch. the jews had not sailed to new zealand as members of any organized group, but it can be assumed that they were seeking a land where they could freely practise their faith and safely raise their families. early new zealand jewish-immigrant louis edward nathan was most likely in search of a nascent mercantile area and a new life in canterbury: a predominantly high church anglican colony. nathan, later elected as the first president of the canterbury hebrew congregation, was one of the first jews in canterbury (chc, 1963a: 13; clements, n.d.).7 the first record of the presence of a jewish community on the canterbury plain was printed in a newspaper “call for subscriptions” to aid former moroccan jews.8 nathan returned to england (perhaps for supplies or his family) and arrived back in canterbury by 1864 (chc, 1963b: 1). prior to that time, there is no record of any recognized structure or site of jewish worship in the canterbury region. in january 1864, a congregation was established, and nathan elected to the chair. the group met regularly in nathan’s home in st. asaph street, officiated by mark marks (chc, 1963c: 11). to build the first canterbury synagogue, £300 was subscripted immediately, and a request for government assistance discussed. subsequently, a subscription list was left in all of the area newspaper offices and many commercial premises in christchurch and nearby lyttelton. a general meeting concerning the possible site and design of the proposed synagogue was also held the same month. in june, tenders for the design were called for in the local newspaper. esque, byzantine, classical, moorish and german gothic. however, this eclecticism in design did not surface in the architecture of english jewry (for example, hambro and bevis marks in london), for reasons of discretion and financial constraints. the gothic revival style of the church of england was held in anathema by jews for its christian connotations. jewish settlers remaining in australia after the gold rush of 1851 moved to urban areas, founded minyans (ten jewish males, the number required by judaic law to hold a worship service), and built synagogues. the first colonial synagogues were temporary wooden, box-like structures. as their communities expanded and became more established, permanent synagogues were planned, designed and erected. the great synagogue at sydney, facing hyde park, was built in 1878. the interior is characterized by its “semi-centrally planned seating arrangement” and gallery (crighton, 1985: 153; also see summerson, 1963: 338). designed by thomas rowe, it is a magnificent building mixing the byzantine style with gothic characteristics. the twin towers on the façade are of pyrmont sandstone, characteristically moulded and carved in the period style. the spacious interior is resplendent with cast-iron columns, plaster decorations on the arches, and a panelled and groined ceiling. the stained-glass windows and fine light pendants render the interior jewel-like. a minyan was achieved in auckland in the 1840s, and these jewish males held services in a warehouse loft in shortland street, owned by david nathan until 1847.3 “the number of male worshipers was very few, as at this time there were only thirty-three jews altogether in auckland – men, women and children” (balkind, 1928: 23). from 1847 until 1858, a separate room in the warehouse served as the worship area for the small congregation. sometime in 1858, the auckland congregation leased a one-storey wooden building under construction, in emily place at the top of shortland street. since the building was only one storey, the women had to be seated behind the men, instead of in galleries, as is the jewish custom (rivkin, 1971: 339-40; hachlili, 1998: 24, 84).4 the small jewish congregation in wellington preceded the formation of any congregation in the south island. a minyan was established during the 1840s, and this congregation held temporary services in the residence of the congregation’s president for shabbat (sabbath) worship.5 this synagogue served the wellington community well until growing numbers in the late 1860s dictated that larger premises were needed. the first jewish settlements in the south island were at nelson and timaru. the congregations of dunedin and canterbury were organized later, most likely due to the fact that these were christian church-related, planned settlements. similar to the other jewish settlements in the colony, dunedin’s first synagogue was a wooden structure on lease-hold land in george street that was purchased, repaired and altered in the late 1850s (balkind, 1928: 10). the 43-male congregation adhered to the english jewish rituals and placed themselves under the jurisdiction of dr n. m. adler, the chief rabbi in london, with services conducted by lay members and readers. the dunedin jewish congregation definitely viewed themselves as fortunate. not only did they possess a magnificent pentateuch (the scroll of the mosaic law essential to every synagogue) and a baldachin (a canopy for special ceremonies, such as weddings), they also were granted a separate cemetery by the otago 3 there is no archival information linking the south island’s louis edward nathan to david nathan of auckland (clements, 2008). 4 there is no ancient tradition governing the separation of the sexes or placement of women in a gallery. the practice can be traced to thirteenth-century synagogues in europe. 5 the rapid growth in numbers must have been due, in part, to the shift of the seat of the government from auckland to wellington in february 1865. 6 the style of the dunedin synagogue is along the lines of more park, hertfordshire, especially the central pedimented porch and the verticality of the structure. 7 nathan served as president of the canterbury hebrew congregation from 1863-64, 1867, 1870, 1873, 1875 and 1879. 8 this request was placed by henry moss of the jewish central committee in lyttelton (call for subscriptions, 1860: 5). interstices 09 101 a class c heritage building of the new zealand historic places trust (cattrell, 1985: 62). renovations were completed in 1963, prior to the observance of the centennial of the canterbury hebrew congregation in christchurch (chc, 1963c: 40). lambert’s synagogue was a survivor, by the mid-1980s nestled between lowrise mixed-use buildings, including a masonic lodge, an art gallery and, a little to the west, christchurch girls’ high school. another new synagogue for christchurch in 1987, serious cracks in the foundations of lambert’s building were of great concern to the congregation. while the architect’s design was a monument to the community and the synagogue had served its purpose and the com munity most admirably, time had inevitably taken its toll. the only solution was to meet elsewhere. the congregation purchased a former brethren assembly hall in durham street, to be redesigned to include a social hall, offices, kitchen and a worship area. this task was given to the christchurch firm of skews, hay and archer. a new synagogue on durham street was also commissioned. in order to retain some of the beautiful decorations from lambert’s building – and a fragment of jewish history in canterbury – samuel cook, a prominent christchurch contractor and synagogue member, was directed to salvage important portions of the old synagogue for re-use in the new building. in early 1988, the old façade was scaffolded to remove the star of david circular window, entrance doors and stained-glass windows. stone from the gloucester street front and durham street side was carefully removed and incorporated into the new façade and walls. lastly, cook’s crew painstakingly removed the inner doors, bimah, seats and desks, the upper portion of the ark with the decalogue (the ten commandments), and the ark sliding doors. all of the wooden items had been constructed from native kauri and were remarkably well preserved. by 6 may 1988, one lone section of rubble was all that remained on the site of lambert’s historic synagogue. the first building planned for the jewish community in the canterbury region was a small wooden shul (in yiddish, a house of worship). it was decided that divine services would be held in this structure until a proper synagogue could be financed, but the completion of this modest building was a testament to a group of people who had survived displacement and relocation (chc, 1963b: 11). unfortunately, nothing, at present, is known of the form or appearance of this structure. primarily intended to serve as a building for hebrew instruction, the function almost dictates a modest design – most likely resembling a small wooden-gabled school of the era. the architect for the 1864 shul was benjamin woolfield mountfort (1825-98), who was, like lambert, a member of the canterbury association of architects (stacpoole, 1976: 163). at the time mountfort submitted his design proposal for the canterbury shul, he was also overseeing work on the new canterbury provincial council buildings (1858-65). the site for the shul was on inner-city gloucester street, only a short distance from the provincial council buildings. by 1865, the new building was complete. the congregation rapidly acquired necessary furniture and items for its services from europe and palestine. in the latter 1860s and early 1870s, as outlined at the beginning of this paper, the congregation grew and the decision was made to pursue christchurch’s first proper synagogue, leading to the realization of lambert’s building in 1879-80. before construction could start, mountfort’s old shul building was removed to an adjoining, recently acquired, property, to be used for the congregation’s educational and social activities (lochhead, 1999: 318). the site vacated by the shul was then prepared for the new synagogue (chc, 1963b: 1). m. harris, congregation president, performed the ceremonial laying of the foundation stone, and a sealed jar was placed inside the foundation stone to commemorate the event.9 lambert’s synagogue admirably served the canterbury hebrew congregation for over 100 years. it was the site of a plethora of lectures, bazaars, fund-raising ventures for aid to jews around the world, and solemn events, such as the observance of queen victoria’s passing, as well as its significance in the region as fig 6: the interior of the durham street building. photograph courtesy of the press (christchurch). fig. 5: the exterior of the new durham street synagogue. photograph by gay sweely. fig. 5 fig. 6 9 it may be assumed that mountfort, the architect of the early shul, was simply too busy to design the replacement synagogue. at that time, mountfort was continuing his building programme in rangiora with the anglican church of st. john the baptist (1859-82) for the rev. benjamin woolley dudley, and he was also supervising construction of the christchurch cathedral (macdonald, 1964; see also sweely, 1988: 6-23). interstices 09 103 the canterbury hebrew congregation’s new synagogue was consecrated on 14 may 1988, with about 120 people attending the service, led by the rev. jeffrey leverton. the exterior included the nineteenth-century stonework preserved and used in new ways – in paths, border walls and the frontal piece, which resembles a stone tablet (fig. 5) – while behind those officiating at the service were the redesigned stained-glass windows from lambert’s synagogue, enshrined by a kauri feature wall and now at eye level (fig. 6). reflections expatriate jews, part of a never-ending worldwide diaspora of expatriates, sought final refuge in the south island of new zealand in the latter portion of the nineteenth century. in addition to unconventional meeting places, the canterbury hebrew congregation built three houses of religious worship in the region. lambert’s synagogue (1880-1988) should be remembered in the architectural history of the jews of new zealand as a jewel built for a small group of expatriate settlers on the canterbury plain, seeking to find their way in a time of upheaval, displacement and relocation. these expatriates, like so many before them, were seeking a way to express their religious views in art and architecture in a new land. during the centenary celebrations of 11 august 1963, a special prayer was presented by the clergy officiating in honour of the canterbury hebrew congregation that built “such a beautiful synagogue … a source of great pride and inspiration to all of us who are the inheritors of those worthy jewish pioneers” (chc, 1963c: 42). the demolition of lambert’s nineteenth-century synagogue was a major heritage loss for christchurch and the jewish community of new zealand. its replacement with a utilitarian carpark continues to rankle with historians, although more generally, the memory of lambert’s synagogue has started to fade and it is hoped that this research will help to keep it alive. references akaroa civic trust (n.d.). walk akaroa. retrieved 15 august, 2007, from http://www. historicakaroa.co.nz/buildingdetail balkind, v. f. 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(n.d.). notes on jewish participation in new zealand history. retrieved 2 july, 2007, from http://www.nzjewisharchives.org/history.htm crighton, s. a. (1985). william henry clayton: colonial architect. unpublished masters thesis, university of canterbury, christchurch. the cyclopedia of new zealand (1903). canterbury ed. vol. 3. christchurch: horace j. weeks. de breffny, b. (1978). the synagogue, london: macmillan. goldman, l. m. (1958). history of the jews in new zealand, wellington: a. h. & a. w. reed. gunman, j. (ed.) (1981). ancient synagogues: the state of research. chico, california: scholars press. hachlili, r. (1998). ancient jewish art and archaeology in the diaspora. leiden, netherlands: brill. judd, s. (n.d.). jews in new zealand. retrieved 10 july, 2008, from http://vital.org.nz/ nzjews.html kadish, s. (2006). jewish heritage in england: an architectural guide. swindon, england: english heritage. krinsky, c. h. (1996). synagogues of europe: architecture, history, meaning. new york: courier dover publications. lochhead, i. (1999). a dream of spires: benjamin mountfort and the gothic revival. christchurch: canterbury university press. macdonald, g. r. (1964). the macdonald dictionary of biography. christchurch: canterbury museum. new synagogue (1880, december 16). press, p. 2. rivkin, e. (1971). the shaping of jewish history: a radical interpretation. new york: charles scribner’s sons. stacpoole, j. (1976). colonial architecture in new zealand. wellington: a. h. & a. w. reed. summerson, j. (1963). architecture in britain: 1530-1830. 2nd ed. baltimore: penguin books. sweely, g. c. (1988). the anglican church of st. john the baptist, rangiora, 1860-1988. unpublished manuscript held in christchurch library archives, christchurch. wilson, j. (1984). lost christchurch. auckland: lansdowne press. wilson, j. et al. (2008). contextual historical overview for christchurch city: final draft report for comment. christchurch city council, christchurch. retrieved 2 july, 2008, from http://www.ccc.govt.nz/christchurch/heritage/publications/christchurch cit ycontext ualhistor yover view/ch ristc hurc hcit ycontext ualhistor yover view introduction.pdf in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 25 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m ann mcewan learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects the 2005 new zealand institute of architects’ (nzia) centenary conference highlighted the experience of expatriate architects; in a similar vein the ninth issue of interstices examined various aspects of expatriate design and theory (gatley & douglas 2008). essays in the latter discussed the provenance of amyas connell’s high and over house in england (1929–31) and wellington’s dixon street flats (1941–44). this article steps further into the past, to the early twentieth century when what is known colloquially as the “big oe” was “born” and first-generation pākehā new zealanders were drawn “home” to study architecture.1 the story of the overseas experience of new zealand writers, artists, and performers is widely known and well documented (bones 2018; dunn 1984–85; edmond 2017; swarbrick 2014). similarly, the success of expatriate kiwi scientists, actors, and singers, both historically and in the modern day, is commonly heralded in the media, even when some of the folk new zealanders like to claim as their own left these shores as children. while new zealand can scarcely claim an architect of the fame or stature of ernest rutherford or lorde, the centenary of the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning offered an opportunity to shine the spotlight on a group of new zealanders who used study at london’s architectural association school of architecture (aa) to progress their education and enhance their professional development. that they did so at the same time as the foundation of the school of architecture and planning is further proof of the global movement to formalise architectural education in the early twentieth century (for context, see mcewan 1999). modern learning at the aa the aa was established in london in 1847. against the backdrop of john summerson’s 1947 centenary history of the association, mark crinson and jules lubbock (1994) have identified the role played by the aa in the modernisation of the architectural profession in britain. in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the aa, along with the royal academy, university college, and king’s college in london, modelled a new educational path for architects that was subsequently developed by full-time academic programmes such as that offered at liverpool university. according to crinson and lubbock, the aa, with its “anti-pupillage” 26 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e emphasis on design, “came to play a significant role in fostering most of the theories that came to reform architectural education” (1994: 56). new zealanders who attended the aa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were therefore not only circumventing contemporary colonial limitations in the educational sphere but were also at the forefront of modern architectural education. references to the aa appear in new zealand newspapers from the 1880s, with possibly the earliest mention of membership by a new zealand architect involving frederick de jersey clere (“industrial association” 1880; “labour disputes” 1891; untitled 1886). clere (1856–1952), who stated he became a member of the aa during his time working in london in the mid-1870s (clere 1917; “f. de j. clere” 1917; maclean 1993), is something of an outlier in this respect, given that the connection between the aa and new zealand architecture is largely a twentieth-century one. fig. 1 newspaper article mentioning frederick de jersey clere’s membership of the aa. [evening post, february 26, 1886, 2. paperspast, national library of new zealand, wellington] apart from clere, 15 of the architects included in the “new zealand architecture family tree” (barrie 2008) studied at the aa, according to the association’s records. of these, heathcote helmore and guy cotterill formed a successful partnership on their return to new zealand, as did hugh grierson, kenneth aimer, and malcom draffin (“auckland war memorial” 1923: 7). r. atkinson abbott, alva bartley, roy binney, william gummer, george hart, horace massey, and william trengrove all established successful practices on their return home. the oldest of the former aa students in the family tree are samuel hurst seager (lochhead 1996)2 and clere, whose partner l. e. williams was also an aa alumnus (“llewellyn edwin williams” 2016). the youngest of the cohort, amyas connell (1901–1980) and basil ward (1902–1976), established their careers in britain where the firm of connell, ward & lucas was “short-lived but hugely influential” (“connell, ward & lucas” n.d.). study in the aftermath of war service abroad during world war i gave a large number of new zealanders the opportunity to study at the aa. of the architects and architecture students whose names are inscribed in the online cenotaph, hosted by the auckland war memorial museum, 13% were students of the aa during the first three decades 27 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e of the twentieth century. aa president maurice webb acknowledged the presence of between 60 and 70 men from overseas who were attending the school in 1919, and was reported as saying that “their presence would spread a knowledge of english architecture throughout the world, and bring a fresher outlook to england” (“new zealand architectural students at home” 1919: 11; webb 1919: 175–76, 179). that said, not all of the new zealanders who attended the aa during the war years went on to practise as architects. walter d’arcy cresswell was one whose study was interrupted by the outbreak of world war i, and after completing his war service, he returned to new zealand and became an influential literary figure (broughton 1998). of the kiwis who did not return to new zealand, one made a particularly notable contribution to the aa itself. william thorne wilmot ching was born in auckland in 1888 and in 1904 he began his life in architecture in the office of arthur wilson. ching enrolled at the aa in october 1909, at which time he was in the office of j. w. troup. his application to study was supported by roy binney, who had entered the school in the previous year and was then working for robert weir schultz in london.3 ching competed his studies in 1914 and after his war service, for which he received a military cross, he returned to the aa as a house master at bedford square (“military cross won” 1916: 9). despite the fact that he remained for only four years, resigning to set up a heating engineering firm with f. b. craig in 1923, he was evidently fondly remembered after his sudden death in 1924, resulting from the after-effects of his wartime poison gassing. ching’s head, a student bar established in 1926, was named in his honour, as was ching’s yard, an internal courtyard space that is known for its happenings and performances (bottoms 2016: 60–65). ching was recently described as an englishman on the aa conversations website, an error that cannot fail to grate with kiwis who take pride in successful and influential expatriates (pierce 2013). another new zealander who studied at the aa, h. anthony mealand (1894–1968), did not return home for many years. supported in his membership application by horace massey (1895–1979), mealand gained a certificate in town planning at the aa in 1921 and was later co-author of sir patrick abercrombie’s “a plan for bath” in 1945 (“personal” 1921a: 14). even before the war had officially ended, new zealand servicemen were being given scholarships to attend the aa. lance-corporal alfred john brown (1893– 1976), of the new zealand engineers, for example, was awarded a scholarship by the lord kitchener memorial fund in july 1918 (“soldier scholarships” 1918: 3; willis 2013: 966). brown later practised architecture in auckland and, after 1930, town planning in australia (proudfoot 1993). horace massey wrote to the editor of progress in april 1919, describing his experience at the aa. massey reported that “new zealanders have stormed the architectural association” and there were at least 16 such students studying at bedford square. “the chance is ours now so i intend to avail myself of the opportunity before returning to good old new zealand.” the letter concluded by massey saying he wished to keep up his subscription to progress, in order to stay abreast of “things architectural at home” and that he was looking forward to his discharge from the army later in the month (massey 1919: 13). 28 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e the measure of success “success in competitions” by new zealanders attending the aa was proudly reported in the local press. in january 1920, for example, the evening post noted e. w. (ted) armstrong, previously of the wellington infantry regiment, had been studying at the aa since february 1919 and had just passed the examination to become an associate of the royal institute of british architects (riba). the post reported that armstrong, who intended to go to america after he finished at the aa, had recently come third in a daily mail competition for labour-saving homes (“new zealand architectural students” 1920: 15; “nz architectural students” 1920a: 6; “nz architectural students” 1920b: 6). in 1921, the herald reported that armstrong, along with fellow new zealanders eric arthur and james white, had been shortlisted for rome scholarships in architecture (“rome scholarship” 1921: 7). after the final design test, for a university arts hub, armstrong was awarded second place and thus secured the two-year henry jarvis studentship, valued at £250 per annum (“personal” 1921a: 12). armstrong ultimately established a practice in london, in 1932 (gatley 2007: 38). like fellow students a. p. morgan and massey, armstrong had secured a new zealand expeditionary force scholarship of £200 per annum for three years at the end of the war. morgan and massey had placed fourth in the aforementioned daily mail design competition and the duo placed second and third respectively in another competition for a town planning scheme for oxford. the same evening post article listed messrs e. t. marr, g. downer, e. s. c. miller, h. f. butcher, a. j. brown, and j. h. white as other new zealanders studying in london at that time (“nz architectural students” 1920a: 6). henry butcher appears to have attended the aa briefly before being awarded the lever prize to fund his studies in town planning at london university in 1920. he was appointed as a town planner in wellington in 1927 and was an active member of the profession in the 1930s (“personal” 1920: 7; “town-planning expert” 1927: 10). not all of these men’s names appear in the school’s membership nominations and applications records for the period 1904–27, which suggests not all applied for membership during or after their studies. j. h. white, for example, is not listed in the membership records but was noted in both the new zealand herald and the architectural association journal as enjoying success while a student at the aa (“annual prize distribution” 1920; “architect’s success” 1921: 8; “personal items” 1922: 10). in 1921, white was joint winner of the society of architects’ victory scholarship, which was open to “all students of the empire under thirty-five” (“personal” 1921b: 63; see also “architect’s success” 1921: 8). after his fig. 2 in 1919, horace massey used the aa as his mailing address. [progress, august 1, 1919, 13. paperspast, national library of new zealand, wellington] 29 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e return to new zealand in early 1922, white made a study tour of the united states with fellow aa graduate horace massey and later, in 1927, formed a partnership in dunedin with another alumnus, eric miller, which became one of the leading firms in the city. christchurch man edward dowling won the year prize in his fourth year of study at the aa in 1932 (untitled 1932: 14). it was reported from london that dowling had “taken the opportunity, during his vacations, of touring on the continent and in england and scotland, always with the object and [sic] studying the architecture of the various countries” (“architecture” 1932: 16). dowling (1906–1986), who had been a member of the christchurch architectural students’ association before he left for london, was to remain in britain after he completed his studies and practised in england before retiring to scotland (“architectural students” 1926: 3; “edward thorne dowling” n.d.; “st andrew’s” 1934: 7; “work of a christchurch architectural student” 1933: 14). james hall-kenney (wellington and napier) was another reported as having toured the west of england and the midlands during his studies at the aa in london (“new zealanders abroad” 1936: 18). the same evening post report that celebrated dowling’s success noted that miss m. j. blanco-white, who was the recipient of a holloway scholarship and fig. 4 the aa’s director of education, mr a. atkinson, sang the praises of the school’s new zealand students. [progress, march 1, 1923, 7. paperspast, national library of new zealand, wellington] fig. 3 a. m. bartley’s design for a central monument for the national war cemetery, france. [progress, december 1, 1919, 11. paperspast, national library of new zealand, wellington] 30 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e fig. 5 e. t. dowling’s final-year aa project. [press, august 24, 1933, 14. paperspast, national library of new zealand, wellington] the aa’s travelling studentship, had completed her third year and that miss beryl bickerton had gained an honourable mention in her fifth year (“london personals” 1934: 15). (margaret) justin blanco-white (1911–2001) was a scottish architect but, as the granddaughter of liberal politician william pember reeves, her success was evidently considered to be of interest to a new zealand audience (“(miss) margaret justin blanco white” n.d.). bickerton is discussed below. reginald uren’s “success in architecture” was reported by the evening post in november 1933 under the headline “making a name: petone boy at home” (1933: 3). uren (1906–1988) had won £350 for his design for a new town hall for hornsey borough in london (“unique award” 1936: 9). the post reported that 280 architects had entered the competition. the value of the town hall was then costed at £200,000 and the architect’s fees were estimated at £5000. uren’s father-in-law was quoted as saying that after uren’s earlier (1927) success in the design competition for the petone foreshore, “new zealand was too small for him” (“making a name” 1933: 3).4 a space for women not only did the aa welcome new zealand ex-servicemen, but it also offered educational opportunities for female would-be architects. in 1917, the auckland star reported that the “architectural association, founded in 1847, is throwing open its doors to women” (“women architects” 1917: 16). noting that the “scarcity of male students—there are only 20, compared with the usual 150—may have had some influence on the council’s decision”, the newspaper implied that the aa path to the profession might be more accessible to women than the article system, for which “even women of the comfortable classes hesitate before asking their parents to article them to a calling demanding … a premium of 300 guineas or more” (see also “hard hit” 1915: 17). membership of the aa subsequently became available to women in 1920, and by 1923 it was reported as having about 30 female students out of a student body of 200 (“women as architects” 1923: 36). crinson and lubbock state that the school quickly became “the most attractive venue for women [architectural] students” in britain (1994: 84). 31 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e alison sleigh (1898–1972) became an associate of the riba in june 1927, “the first lady student from new zealand to gain this distinction” (“miss alison sleigh” 1927: 11). sleigh had studied art at canterbury college and then entered samuel hurst seager’s office in 1917 to serve her articles. she completed these in cecil wood’s office and subsequently headed to england in april 1921 to attend the aa. sleigh had meant to stay in london for two years but changed her plans so that she could complete the full course of study needed for associateship of the riba (“nz students” 1921: 3). in 1925, she placed second in the tite prize: “this prize is awarded for a purely practical subject, with full details of construction, so that for a woman to be placed second in this competition was indeed a very high honour” (“miss alison sleigh” 1927: 11). as julia gatley has recounted, alison sleigh married a fellow aa graduate in 1928 and continued to practise architecture until her retirement in 1957 (2007: 20–45). another female attendee of the aa was beryl bickerton (1905–ca. 1996), the granddaughter of professor a. w. bickerton, a foundation lecturer at canterbury college in christchurch (“bickerton, william henry” n.d.). beryl bickerton worked in the office of collins & harman before studying in london and receiving an honourable mention on completion of her fifth year at the aa in 1932. in the same year, she was identified as the “first christchurch girl” to be eligible to use the letters ariba, after studying “at a famous architectural school at bedford row, london” (“personal notes” 1932: 15). (it seems cantabrians had forgotten sleigh by this time). bickerton practised under her maiden name after her marriage and news of her professional successes was reported in local newspapers (“london personals” 1934: 15; “london personals” 1936: 16). meanwhile, back at (lower case) home, it was not until 1933 that merle greenwood became the first female graduate of the school of architecture in auckland, suggesting that the aa gave new zealand female architects a head start on their stay-at-home “sisters”, in a similar way that going overseas opened doors for female painters and writers who might have been constrained by family responsibilities and social expectations (willis & burns 2017; c.f. gill 1993). with reference to training in architecture at the aa, willis and burns acknowledge that “[m]ore objective entry criteria encouraged women to qualify, yet most women found their subsequent careers circumscribed by social mores and expectations” (2017: 134). the aa as local role model the aa’s twin foci of student-led design and formalisation of professional standards appears to have influenced the profession in new zealand, just as it did in australia, in the formation of the university of melbourne’s architectural atelier in 1919, for example (crinson & lubbock 1994: 56; willis 2013). former student samuel hurst seager described the aa as the “parent association” of that formed in christchurch in 1915 (seager 1915: 19). the auckland architectural students’ association (aasa) had been formed in the winter of the previous year; inaugural officeholders included w. h. gummer (president), horace massey (secretary), and alfred morgan. gummer had applied for membership of the aa in 1908, whereas morgan was an nz expeditionary force applicant in october 1918, and massey, who had worked under gummer, applied in may 1919. all three men maintained their membership of the aa into the 1920s. at the aasa’s third 32 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e meeting in july 1914, noel bamford, who later became the first director of the school of architecture at auckland university college, gave a talk about the competition topic he had set members of the association: “a bath house in a thermal district” (“architectural students” 1914: 5; treep 2017: 15). gummer was appointed patron when the association was revived in 1921 (“auckland architectural” 1921: 9).5 news of the wellington architectural association’s (waa) first year of activities was published in progress in july 1922 (“wellington association’s growth” 1922: 9). an earlier association had been established in 1918 and was revived briefly by aa member frank greenish in 1920 (untitled 1919: 8). in 1921, the waa met one or two nights a week, initially in a studio in the free kindergarten building in taranaki street, under the patronage of stanley fearn (“wellington architectural” 1921: 57). it was reported in 1922 that the waa had become affiliated with the nzia’s scheme for holding competitions amongst the four architectural associations around the country, and that this had led to an improvement in the standard of work of the waa’s 11 members. the same progress article reported that one of the association’s committee members, john d’oyly, had left during the year to continue his studies (“wellington association’s growth” 1922: 9). d’oyly applied for membership of the aa in london in october 1922.6 in christchurch, the architectural association (formerly the christchurch architectural students’ association, est. 1915) also hosted talks and ran student design competitions (“christchurch architectural” 1915: 20). in 1934, for example, r. a. campbell, the engineer for the new state insurance building in worcester street, gave a talk to the association about the structural design of the building (“architectural association” 1934: 3; “christchurch architectural” 1934: 16). in 1945, student design competitions were held for a hillside house, a concrete water tower, a petrol station, and a domestic laundry (“address” 1945: 6; “architectural association” 1945: 6; untitled 1945: 4). theo schoon presented a lecture on modern architecture to the association in the spring of 1939, evidently beginning his talk with a quote from the “famous american architect” frank lloyd wright (“architectural association” 1939: 6). the aa had a physical presence in new zealand in 1927, when it toured a collection of architectural drawings (“architectural association” 1927: 13; “institute of architects” 1927: 11). the otago daily times described the origins of the aa as an entity “for the purpose of encouraging and providing facilities for the study of architecture”, which had developed into a day school after 1900. by 1927, a fiveyear programme was offered by the aa and its school was reported to be “the largest in the british empire, and usually has nearly 200 students attached to it, some of them coming from remote parts of the world”. examples of drawings and watercolours by students at all year levels were then being shown in dunedin. the new zealand tour was augmented by drawings from schools of architecture in australia, from whence the aa collection had arrived in new zealand (“architectural drawings” 1927: 4). an influential experience? it is difficult to quantify the value of an architectural association education for new zealand architects and planners, beyond making some general comments about the professional success and standing that they later attained. fig. 6 margaret hamilton, following her success in a christchurch architectural association competition. [press, december 20, 1938, 2. paperspast, national library of new zealand, wellington] 33 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e government scholarships for military personnel enabled some to pursue their studies at the aa sufficient to qualify as an associate of the riba. scholarships announced in june 1919 for messrs baker, gordon, haigh, reidy, downer, miller, butcher, marr, and reid were evidently tagged to specialism in town planning. “the education department has already done something in this direction of enabling its architectural students to visit under expert guidance such schemes of town-planning as are regarded as models—bournemouth, and port sunlight, wavertree (liverpool) and letchworth” (“nz architectural skill” 1919: 7). there was certainly some public awareness of the overseas experience of the new zealanders who attended the aa, but whether that awareness was translated into anything more tangible than professional networking opportunities is hard to determine. in one isolated incident, it was noted in a letter to the editor of the hastings standard in october 1920 that the taxpayer contribution to aa study for returned servicemen might reasonably be expected to see a return in the form of an open competition to appoint an architect for the hawke’s bay fallen soldiers’ memorial hospital (1927–28) (“soldiers’ memorial” 1920, october 7: 6). the letter writer got support from at least one other correspondent to the newspaper but in the event, and after considerable delay, the hospital was built to the design of the government architect, j. t. mair (“hawke’s bay” 1926: 1; “soldiers’ memorial” 1920, october 9: 4; “tenders” 1925: 6). the aa was a benchmark for the development of the school of architecture at auckland university college. citing the successful experience of arthur salmond at the aa after he had graduated from the auckland programme, the college registrar m. r. o’shea was reported in 1932 as saying that “it is felt that the auckland training thus compares very favourably indeed with the work of the leading home universities” (“aucklander’s success” 1932: 5; see also “study of architecture” 1932: 10). five years later, members of the auckland architectural students’ association held their annual “studio stampede” at the college. “plain and fancy dress was optional and many original costumes were seen in the large attendance of dancers” (“studio stampede” 1937: 3). the dean of the faculty, professor cyril knight, welcomed the attendees and the herald went to some lengths to list all of the women present. the 1966 encyclopaedia of new zealand included a section on expatriates, including the biographies of new zealanders who had “made names for themselves in their respective professions” (“united kingdom” 1966). architects reginald uren and basil ward in england, eric arthur in canada, and charles honey in malaysia were profiled in the encyclopaedia. by contrast, whereas individual expatriate scientists, artists, writers, and performers are featured in te ara—the encyclopedia of new zealand, the online encyclopaedia’s architectural content is largely focused on typology rather than individual practitioners or the development of the profession, including its education pathways. perhaps the story of new zealand architecture has been so closely aligned with that of incomers, including the émigré architects of the post-world war ii period and their modernist influence, that the story of the “out-goers” has been sidelined since the 1960s. 34 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e conclusion the traffic between new zealand and the architectural association continued well beyond the early twentieth century. to take one example, englishman david sayers studied at the aa for five years from 1948 before emigrating to new zealand in 1953. in the book chronicling his career that he self-published in 2010, sayers acknowledged help from fellow aa alumnus reg uren in securing a shortterm job with the government architect’s office in wellington, which was the beginning of his new zealand practice. uren was the nzia representative on the council of the riba from 1946 until at least 1966 (“united kingdom” 1966). in late 1954, sayers took up a junior partnership with frank gillman, and so began a 30-year career in hamilton specialising in the design of hospitals and, to a lesser extent, dairy factories. sayers recalled that the practical experience he gained at the aa, working on “a bomb site which was used for practical building instruction … stood me in good stead in later years” (2010: 216).7 “in good stead” might well describe the value of the aa to all of the new zealand architects who passed through its doors. for many, study at the aa was likely the silver lining “oe” experience arising out of their wartime service. most returned to new zealand, some to become leaders in their profession. a handful remained abroad but were still claimed as new zealanders in the mid-twentieth century, just as we claim writer katherine mansfield, artist frances hodgkins, and pre-eminent physicist ernest rutherford today (priestley 2018; swarbrick 2014). in contrast to the visibility of this cohort, however, those new zealand architects who chose to live as expatriates are now little known beyond academic architectural circles. for the returnees, study at the aa became one of the ingredients in their professional standing and success in new zealand. having recently celebrated the centenary of the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning, it seems timely to acknowledge another link in the chain of the global development of architectural education to which the school belongs. acknowledgements this paper draws upon archival research undertaken at the architectural association in may 2000. historic records accessed at that time included aa membership nominations and applications (1904–27), the aa card index list of members (to ca. 1905), the aa day school students’ register (1901–14), the aa evening school students’ register (1908–09 and 1913–14), aa subscriptions (1911–28), and the aa record books (1920– 24). various issues of the aa journal were consulted at the same time. 35 learning in london: the architectural association and early twentieth-century new zealand architects f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e endnotes 1 “oe” is a colloquial new zealand expression, short for “overseas experience”, referring to a period of study, travel and/or work abroad. historically, new zealanders’ “oe” was undertaken in britain, typically london. 2 according to his dictionary of new zealand biography entry, seager studied at the aa, as well as university college, the national art training school (later the royal college of art), and the royal academy of arts, in 1882–83 (lochhead 1996; “obituary” 1933: 13). 3 wilmot l. ching, aa session 1909–1910, no. 31, october 4, 1909, aa membership nominations and applications, 1904–27, box f504, architectural association, london. 4 uren had won the petone design competition in association with c. t. natusch & sons, of which stanley natusch also studied at the aa immediately after world war i (“petone foreshore” 1927: 17). see also stanley natusch, aa session 1919–1920, no. 27, july 1, 1919, aa membership nominations and applications, 1904–27, box f505, g–n, architectural association, london. 5 gummer wrote a letter in support of h. c. morton’s application to the aa in 1922, stating that “[s]uch has been your kindness & help to myself & other new zealanders in the past that i felt it a necessary thing for mr morton to meet you as soon after his arrival [in london] as possible”. herbert [sic] conrad morton, aa session 1921–1922, no. 127, may 30, 1922, aa membership nominations and applications, 1904–27, box f505, g–n, architectural association, london. 6 john r. d’oyly, aa session 1922–1923, no. 24, october 20, 1922, aa membership nominations and applications, 1904–27, box f504, a–f, architectural association, london. 7 conversely, when wellingtonborn george robb applied to study at the aa in october 1905 his letter of support from ernest wellman of johannesburg, south africa, stated that “[robb] has had a good practical experience & now desires to study more particularly the architectural & artistic side of the profession”. aa membership nominations and applications, 1904–27, box f506, o–w, architectural association, london. see also “personal” (1917: 24). references address on theatre architecture (1945, july 3). press, p. 6. annual prize distribution. 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(1933, august 24). press, p. 14. 49 the paper life of building: performative intra-action simon twose and jan smitheram introduction drawing in architecture is conventionally understood as representation of built form. representational thinking fixes the world as an object and resource for human subjects. in drawing, this means the creation of distance and a disconnection between the subject and the object of drawing. robin evans, for example, describes drawing as a mode of representational thinking expressed through its “disengagement, obliqueness, abstraction, mediation and action at a distance” (1997: 160). this separation between subject and object, for evans, renders drawing a “disembodied mode of activity” (evans 1997: 160). in his consideration of drawing, he argues that to free drawing from representation is to put into question the movement from drawing to building. his writing has provided leverage for subsequent writers to argue for a distinctiveness between drawing and building, to open drawing out to creative freedom, once it is lifted from the burden of the built and the burden of representation. this paper approaches the question of representation through a performative framework where the separation between the body, the object and the built is put into question. a building, the white-house designed by simon twose, will form the armature for a discussion of drawing and building in these terms. the white-house was a transitional project in that it began with an interest in representation, and was embedded within an evans mode of understanding drawing, but during the process moved away from questions of representation towards a more performative mode. the white-house project began as a response to auckland, and looked at the city as an aesthetic phenomenon, as a suburban landscape of complex domestic influences flowing over an apparently complicit topography. i (twose) argued that the suburbs, the landscape, and auckland’s architectural identity were all part of a complicated inter-connected economy. in the design process, the drawings and the subsequent building were seen as responsive to domestic influence, and to parallel larger domestic flows and influences in the action of the city; the design aestheticised on a small scale what the thin suburban field was doing at the scale of landscape. the drawing process, in this sense, was a representational lens in which to view auckland, and the design developed notions of thinness, responsiveness and lack of fixity in material and position, drawn from observations of the city. curved freehand drawings and a curved building resulted, and during the drawing process, an interest in flow merged with performative flows, in drawing and building. the first part of the paper introduces, briefly, theories of performance and performativity. in the second part of the paper, the white-house is used to illustrate and extend an understanding of drawing as performative. in this detail, curved door jamb. interstices 11 detail early plan, 1:50 sketch overlay, graphite on butter paper. 51 performative framework it is argued that, rather than framing representation as the only way knowledge can be extracted from the world, relations are reanimated by highlighting performative dimensions of drawing, and its relationships with the body and the built. the final part of the paper concludes that this re-working of the performative, within the context of drawing, focuses our attention on the assemblage of relations and intra-actions between drawing, building, the body and representation, and reveals them to be located, complexly, within and through each other. performance and performativity the shift towards performance and performativity is more commonly referred to as the performative “turn”, which loosely refers to the different apprehensions of the performative (conquergood 2002, denzin 2001, nash 2000, walker 2003, thrift & dewsbury 2000, mccormack 2005, madison & hamera 2006). performance has its genus in theatre. however, while the notion of theatre still has a place in the study of performance, within the humanities, notions of performance have extended beyond theatrical metaphors. performativity has its origins in the philosophical discussions of john l. austin, particularly in his work on speech act theory; speech as not only describing an act, but in itself performing an action. performance and performativity, within the so-called performative turn, have generally been collapsed, despite their different origins, and are often interchanged and used at cross purposes. this is manifest in the continual rendering of performativity through the lens of performance (steiner 2003: 187, butler 1993, campbell 1992, nicholson & seidman 1995, parker & kosofsky 1995). within architecture, this shift to understand drawing, the built form and occupation through performative understandings is seen, for example, in the works of jane tormey, peter wood, neal leach and iain borden. this paper is grounded in such debates, which shift towards considering processual and performative relations between architecture and the body; but we also move towards a composite of performance and performativity to describe the complex and dynamic relations of drawing. in this paper we argue that interleaving these two terms allows a productive way to approach the complexity of drawing practice, where discursive and embodied acts inherently cross. the performative discussion within drawing is already a story of differentiation: for tormey, we need to differentiate between the terms “performance” and “performative” (tormey 2010); for wood, we need to sever the connection with the built to completely consider the performative (wood 2002). this paper argues that, rather than creating boundaries, the performative provides a figure – as a composite of performance and performativity – for thinking of the drawing process as a complex and dynamic assemblage. performance in this paper is an apprehension that cannot be saved, recorded or documented; it pertains to visceral relations that do not involve discourse (phelan 1993: 146). thus by looking at performance we are focusing on how the individual engages in bodily practice, how we perform everyday activities, such as drawing. performance allows us to draw our attention towards the uncertainties of drawing in terms of flows, and it allows us to elaborate on these uncertainties and the complexity of relations that are involved in drawing. but it is not only the visceral dimension of performance that is important here, but also the materiality of the body and of the built. for bolt the performance of matter occurs when matter, of the body or the built, dominates the act performed (bolt 2004). interstices 11 the understanding of performativity in this paper, used to analyse the whitehouse, is a merging of performance with notions of performativity gained from judith butler. butler initiates her line of thinking of gender as performative in gender trouble (butler 1990), where she proposes that gender is not about essences, but rather a doing. “gender is itself a kind of activity…gender ought not to be conceived as a noun or a substantial thing or a static cultural marker, but rather as an incessant and repeated action of some sort” (1990: 112). in bodies that matter (butler 1993), butler takes her argument further and links the notion of performativity with citationality and the materialisation of the sexed body. butler argues that materialisation emerges through the effect of iteration or citation of norms, but the consequence of this is that matter is reduced to its sign. matter is left mute and without a history of its own. the actual busyness of making and acting in the world is left to slip away. the way we interact with the object world also slips, as butler argues, for a split between notions of performance and performativity, between an act defined through agency and an act defined through discourse. as a result of this split between discourse and a body that acts within space and time, her work is unable to fully capture “kineasthetic vocabularies and imaginations” (roach 1996). thus in this paper, butler’s theory of performativity is extended by connecting it, intentionally, with the notion of performance, to discuss the specific practice of drawing and building. as elin diamond has written, when: …performativity comes to rest on a performance, questions of embodiment, of social relations, of ideological interpellations, of emotional and political effects, all become discussable... when performativity materializes in that risky and dangerous negotiation between a doing (a reiteration of norms) and a thing done (discursive conventions that frame our interpretations), between someone’s body and the conventions of embodiment, we have access to cultural meanings and critique. (1996: 5) performativity in this paper is thus rooted in the materiality, as well as the social density, of the architectural performance. performativity provides us with a way of thinking about the grid of power relations which are institutional and structuring. performance allows us a way to describe and analyse a class of actions, which emphasises “liminality over legibility and change over fixity [and which] is effective in placing interpretative emphasis on actions rather than on commodifiable objects” (blocker 1999: 24) which occur at the level of the individual. this allows a complex theoretical framework to theorise the intra-actions between “material and discursive, social and scientific, human and nonhuman, and natural and cultural factors” (barad 2003: 808). in the next section of the paper we explore this composite of performance and performativity by looking at the drawing of the white-house. going through the project the first performance that takes place is the relationship between architect and client, a relationship that is as much discursive as it is embodied within the drawing. the clients’ brief for this project was very specific in terms of how they wanted to live and work, and grew out of detailed conversations. their everyday actions and protocols were recorded, along with their thinking about space, furniture and objects. the many complicated requirements and understandings of 53 built space were accommodated in the drawings and, as the design progressed, the drawings were tested in real space: the clients moved around an improvised kitchen island, made on site from the nearest pieces of cardboard, they sat in folding chairs in the building site to check out the view, imagining they were relaxing in a comfortable living room, and so on. the clients went over every detail of how the spaces would be used, what they would be like, how people would react on entering them for the first time, how the spaces would speak of their professional abilities, how the building presented itself to the street, how it directed views towards the landscape – myriad interconnected complexities of space, object and action, negotiated in drawings. the plan moved in response to this performative process, which itself moved between performance and performativity. the design began as a reasonably logical and orthogonal series of drawings ascribing functional areas normally associated with a house: bedrooms, kitchen, living room, hall, entry lobby. these initial drawings were crude 6b sketches and were composed of reasonably straight lines, representing an assumed euclidian accuracy that would occur in the built. in actuality the drawings were made up of many overlaid arcs and smudges attributable to the mechanics of the hand, arm and eye. through the negotiated performance of the brief, the curvature inherent in that way of describing walls became more active, and the plan became a series of buckles and bulges. the plan became less of a diagram, of conventional divisions of function, and became more influenced by nuances of life and objects in space. the action of the hand and eye in the drawings was a parallel event to the projected events accommodated by the drawing – a kind of compositional alliance between the spatio-temporal of the built and the temporal space of drawing. there seemed to be compatibility between a responsive composition early plan iterations, 1:50 sketch overlays, graphite on butter paper. interstices 11 developed plan, composite of separate drawings, 1:20, graphite on butter paper. 55 of arcs and curves, moved by objects and spaces competing for position, and the physical responsiveness of the body enacting the drawing. in turn this allied with a representational precedence taken from performative flows observed in the suburban city. process while drawing, the design flattens on the drawing board into a self-contained world: successive iterations of butter paper drawings build on top of one another, often with the same shapes reinforced again and again, with only subtle variation. there is usually something in the bundle of lines and paper that is suspected to be there but refuses to come out. this process can be its own compositional confinement, locking the drawer into the space of the drawing. in this sense, meaning slips through a process of iteration and the composition becomes directed by the contained physical context of drawing. the layers of translucent butter paper make for a blurry palimpsest that gets thick enough to gain its own topography which, when the mutoh’s scales are rested on, they plump into. at times, these many sheets are separated and laid out in a sequence, forming a drawn history of small decisions and quirks that can be viewed together – and selected parts are recombined and taped back onto the drawing board. this iterative drawing process engages iterations of space: dense layering, expanding, recombining – and the making of them involves many movements and proximities of body to paper. within the iterations there exists the possibility of disrupting notions of habit or norm. for butler, the disruption of norms occurs in terms of discourse or discursive practices rather than in terms of matter itself. clearly the matter of the body and of the drawing through these iterations has its own material presence. each arc of the hand on the paper, each performance, each repetition, involves different flows, and different connections, so that each repetition is always a singular behaviour (bolt 2004: 156). matter has a presence. matter has a force. moreover matter here is productive, a productive materiality: a type of performative materiality. drawings are fields of movement, in the way they record not only movement of the pencil, but also movement of viewpoint: eye and paper, a performance between me and the space internal to the process of design. one’s proximity to the paper varies, and movements between close and far attention correspondingly adjust perceptual relations to the drawing. when closely engaged in a small part of a large drawing there is pleasure in the limited field of view and the reduction in understanding of the whole – the drawing becomes about elements and junctions and qualities of line, active relationships at detail level. standing back, the composition of parts is seen together, in the conventional manner, and one’s understanding of the drawing at that proximity is tied to the active space around it, of the interaction between oneself and the drawing at a distance. at a distance, it can also be viewed obliquely, which opens another understanding of the design, different from the perpendicular attention of the drawing on the board. in the white-house, this oblique view was exaggerated in the construction set-out: the plans were drawn by hand on the concrete floors, using flexible timber sticks and improvised compasses. the one-to-one drawing was adjusted by hand-drawn arcs, as a large composition, and the drawing “walked through” as a final check detail plan, 1:50 sketch overlay, graphite on butter paper. interstices 11 of qualities sketched earlier on a smaller scale. the architect’s bodily engagement with the drawing process was activated by affective registers of the materials the drawing was meant to govern. the drawing becomes the trace of the body’s movement: the shifting of focus, the lightness of touch, the heaviness of repeated lines; varying pressures are made evident across the paper. but, quite literally, the production of the drawing requires the body, a body that is moving and is performing – where the body itself, for bolt, undermines the apparent truth of representation (bolt 2004: 51). but matter here, the matter of drawing, is still pressing against the body, impressing on the body. it is a dynamic exchange that occurs between drawing and the dynamism of the human body (bryson 1983: 137). i (twose) was also involved in the physical making of the project, where once again it is the performative body that works to undermine the truth of representation. similar to the hand-drawn set-out, the making of the ceiling doubled the design process with its built concomitant, and the three-dimensional curves of the ceiling were moulded by hand like a large model. the ceiling was designed as a soft moderator of many heights, all the doors were different heights and, being floor-to-ceiling, the ceiling draped over them; the spaces had different degrees of spatial generosity, and competing heights met at the central toilet. this was very difficult to describe in drawing and was physically modelled but in the end the only way to understand the ceiling was to hang a flexible ceiling grid in the space, get up on a ladder and physically manipulate the grid until the curves were right. the ceiling was “worked on” as if it were a large sheet of paper, only this time it was above my head and had gained the resistance of mass and unmanageable proportions. the ceiling as a terrain, overhead instead of underfoot, directly related to the terrains of paper that hosted the design thinking. moreover the ceiling had an insistence – within the operation of the meaning of the built (benjamin 1996: 47). the ceiling was a dynamic object. in this performative framework the environment, objects and bodies are no longer passive – instead it (not clear what ‘it’ is referred to) allows us to focus on the muddying of boundaries between human and non human, drawing and building, that causes mixtures or assemblages to occur (rajchman 1998: 60, thrift & dewsbury 2000: 418). these occur between the body working the material and the insistence of the matter of the ceiling; there is a mutual reflection here that is not just a oneway causality of the human. so the performative can be understood in terms of the relationship between client-drawing and the body-drawing but it is clearly evident in the exchange between building-drawing – as that which enacts or produces a drawing and guest toilet interior. 57 also a building. as already alluded to, this is a shift in the position that says: for drawing to be performative it must be separated from the built. light, for example, normally a clarifier of form, in this case is the agent of soft, drawinglike indeterminacy. the white walls, floor and ceiling are swamped in reflected light, which makes for a foggy boundary to the space and supports distortion as an event. the distorted surfaces are physically static but their curvature gives an impression of temporality; they are this shape but could be another shape, along some continuum of distortion over time. the temporal movements of the drawing process are palpable and the building has the sense of potentiality of a sketch. the drawing and the body are infolded enfolded into the immanent imminent potential of the built. another example of a performative relationship between drawing and building is found in the central toilet space. the centrally-located toilet was the meeting place of varying competing forces in the programme, and as a result is the most crumpled part of the building. inside the toilet, a curved mirror follows the wobble of the walls and, if you are not used to it, has a disconcertingly queasy effect. it is a curiously direct physiological feedback, from room to person, of the distorting forces of programme that shaped the plan: images of your body are stretched apart like chewing gum by the mirror and re-assembled as narrow figures in the tighter concave corners. the body here shifts more towards a drawn object. furthermore, the doors around the toilet push their way into the skin of the toilet walls. the walls curve into the door jambs, which reduces the tectonic and technical drama of the openings: rather than a door being a break in the wall, the wall surfaces are directed from one space to another along a curved route, around the curved jamb detail. the open leaves also slightly indent the walls they rest against. a sfumato light to the door edges helps in softening the rupture of the walls and the detail reduces the emblematic “doorness and realness” of the door and, consequently, the space. the space is more like an inhabited drawing, like being within a superficial thinness, which appears to have a trajectory. the detailing in general was carefully designed to give this impression – to reduce the seriousness and finality of a built architecture. things indicating building were reduced or eliminated: junctions between elements were made as simple as possible; there are no skirtings, no window sills, no apparent material to anything other than white, edges were detailed to give an impression of thinness and insubstantiality – everything was designed to give an impression of the provisional or possible, as in a drawing. white a further example of this performative exchange between the building and drawing is found in the exploration of colour. the surface of every element in the space is white, or is meant to be white, there being innumerable variations. the walls are painted in a flat white, with little texture. the floor is painted in interior + exterior façade, 1:50 detail topographical elevation of facade, graphite on butter paper interstices 11 gloss white; the ceiling is velvet white. the furniture (curved and purpose-made to suit the spaces) is velvet white formica, all the appliances and windows are “appliance white”, the façade is a low-sheen white, matched from the formica sample; the courtyard and loggias are a similarly uncompromising white. this treatment of the surfaces and objects gives an immaterial soft fog to the spaces. hierarchies between elements are reduced by the flat whiteness and there is a sense of merging of things which normally have a discrete identity: furniture is not framed by space but somehow in collusion with it, the bath has a white lid to acknowledge its usefulness as a seat – and is built in to the floor and wall surface – the layered white curtains are flimsy versions of the walls. conventions of orientation and weight are softened by the velvet white: wall is floor is ceiling – and when one moves through it, it is as if the building could be turned upside down like a large model and rotated to check the light. the soft texture of the surfaces, turning into the door edges or undulating down the hall, have a scaleless characteristic, with nothing to reference them in size or distance; they recede as you approach. the fuzzing of the surface texture works with soft curvature to maintain an atmosphere of provisional space, and alludes to an atmosphere of drawn space. moreover, the relationships between objects, architecture and the body are unstable, they are dynamic, and no longer defined by fixed relations that denote identity. rather, the differing relationships between architecture, objects and furniture create new connections. in this way they belong to a dynamic rather than static understanding of architecture. it must be acknowledged that this sounds like a typically modernist strategy – of a unifying abstract whiteness – but the surfaces here are very different to abstract euclidean ideals: it is evident they are distorted by some invisible process, the result of weird forces of negotiation, rather than composed with pre-conceived geometries. because of this, the house has an uncomfortable, comfortable sense – it is shaped by the needs of comfort without resembling architecture’s normal mode of providing it. when in the real space, it seems serene and undistracting, being curved and white – but there is also a sense of dislocation from the real. the materials seem to be, predominantly, light and time; nothing seems fixed, or of fixed substance. it is “like inhabiting an idea”, life tracing over drawn life, where the dynamic relations between drawing, building and the body continue to resonate off each other in constantly shifting assemblages of relations. in this case, the scuffing and smudging of architecture by life occurred in the drawing, and was suppressed in the building: the white surfaces are kept scrupulously clean and bear no marks vacuum cleaners that might bump the skirting-less negative detail at the floor are kept away from the walls; a special swivelling broom is used to sweep around the curved junctions. this concern for a purity of occupation is a reversal of drawing and building – with the building maintaining an abstract purity while the drawings record the smudges and marks of use through their hand-drawn interactions and accommodation of potential future events. there are many layers of process embodied within the drawing and the building, and it is in the practice of drawing and the practice of making architecture, hich architects performatively engage with, that reiterate norms of architecture – socially, economically and politically – of the particular historical moment (bolt 2004). the statutory controls of architecture – codes, legislative acts and drawing conventions – all become naturalised alongside the practice of doing architecture. the arguments and frustrations of working against these discursive con59 straints when designing are very much part of the drawings; they are normative relations embedded in the drawing process – the banality of the everyday. if we continue with butler’s line of thinking, the process of “materialization stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary or fixity of a surface” (butler 1993: 9). so this enables a discussion of how conventions or the economics of constraint are enshrined and fixed, or are literal laws that overshadow the drawing process and are embedded within it. however, as was alluded to earlier, within butler’s framework of performativity, there is no way that she can account for materialisation that occurs between the matter of bodies, the materials of production and discourse (bolt 2004: 153). of course these codes are themselves never finite or fixed – they are up for negotiation. through this exploration, of the drawing of the white-house as performative, on the one hand what is highlighted is that each “repetition involves different intensities, different flows, and different connections, so that each repetition is always a singular behavior” (deleuze 1990: 289). so, whilst butler’s account of performativity underplays this capacity to engender the transformation that is possible through material performance, framing performance, without performativity, and without constraints, runs the possibility of being framed as naive (thrift & dewsbury 2000). performance and performativity, when they form a composite of different modes of thinking, enable exchanges to be possible – indeed, this composite, this way of analysing the drawing process, highlights the dynamic intra-active relations that exist between body/building and drawing. conclusion: intra-active possibilities the first part of this paper introduced performance and performativity, and highlighted that these terms are seen as theoretically distinct. drawing was explored through an analysis using both notions – of performance and performativity. this composite analysis allows the complexity of drawing practice to be understood as an embodied and material performance, while at the same time not forgetting normative relations that inherently shape drawing. the whitehouse illustrates this performative state of drawing. the final part of the paper concludes that, in theorising drawing through the lens of performance and performativity, our attention focuses on the assemblage of relations and intra-actions between drawing, building, the body and representation, and reveals them to be located, complexly, within and through each other. indeed, it is the composite figure of performance and performativity that provides a way of thinking of the assemblages between drawing/body/building and their varied arrangements as “inseparable intra-acting ‘components’ ” (barad 2003: 815). this is a different proposition to exploring “interactions” between components, as this would imply that they are independent entities from the outset. this re-working of performativity allows an understanding of how drawing emerges – through various intra-actions with the body and the built (barad 2003: 815). so, rather than assuming that drawing is static and removed from the body and from the built, assemblages are understood as a “dynamic (re)configuring of the world’s specific agential practices/intra-actions/performances through which specific exclusionary boundaries are enacted” (barad 2003: 816). thus, if we are to understand the drawing of the white-house as a dynamic process of intradetail, developed plan, 1:20 draughted overlay, graphite on butter paper. interstices 11 activity, it becomes part of the ongoing “reconfiguring of locally determinate causal structures with determinate boundaries, properties, meanings and patterns of marks on bodies” (barad 2003: 816). thus, drawing and building, which are nominally assigned the role of non-human, start to shift in this framework as they are actualised through different intra-active possibilities. drawing is no longer just an object. it is not dead matter but is in dynamic reconfiguration, entanglements and (re)articulations with the body and the built (barad 2003: 818). drawing is active in this process of intra-active assemblages – it is not a thing but a doing. through this doing it has a congealing of agency, which has an effect. the important thing here – and what is not offered in butler’s theorisation, but rather within theories of performance – is a notion that matter is an active agent in its ongoing materialisation. matter in terms of the drawn or the built is an active agent in the dynamics of intra-activity. a composite of performance and performativity also provides a way of thinking of the intra-actions that occur between discursive and material performance. butler’s constructivist model is still fully implicated in the dynamics of intra-activity through which phenomena come to matter. materiality is still discursive; to claim that it was not would run counter to the thread of this paper, which is trying to understand the dynamics of body/drawing/building/body as complex material and discursive relations that act as a site of exchange, of “intra-activity”. so the material and the discursive are related through intra-activity, yet are still not reducible to each other. neither one is privileged over the other. codes and conventions of drawing and building, that inform the drawing and the building of the white-house, through intra-actions, are causally constraining yet still enfold further materialisation. references austin, j. l. (1975). how to do things with words. oxford: clarendon press. barad, k. (2003). post humanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. signs: journal of women in culture and society, 28, no. 3. 801-831, 815. benjamin, a. (1996). matter’s insistence: tony sherman’s banquo’s funeral. art and design profile, 48, no. 5. blocker, j. (1999). where is ana mendita: identity, performativity, and exile. durham and london: duke university press. plan, contract drawing, 1:20, graphite on film. 61 bolt, b. (2004). art beyond representation: the performative power of the image. london and new york: i. b. tauris. bryson, n. (1983). vision and painting: the logic of the gaze. london: macmillan. butler, j. (1990). gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. new york: routledge. butler, j. (1993). bodies that matter: the discursive limits of “sex”. new york: routledge. campbell, d. (1992). writing security: united states foreign policy and the politics of identity. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. deleuze, g. (1990). logic of sense. m. lester & c. strivale (trans.), c. v. boundas (ed.). london: athlone press. denzin, n. (2001). the reflexive interview and a performative social science. sage publications, vol. 1(1), 23-46. diamond, e. (ed.) (1996). performance and cultural politics. london and new york: routledge. conquergood, l. d. (2002). performance studies: interventions and radical research. tdr: the drama review 46(2) (t 174) 145-156. evans, r. (1997). translations from drawing to building. london: architectural association publications. madison, d. s. & hamera, j. (eds.). (2006). the sage handbook of performance studies. california: sage publications, inc. mccormack, d. p. (2005). diagramming power in practice and performance. environment and planning d: society and space, 23(1): 119-147. nash, c. (2000). performativity in practice: some recent work in cultural geography. progress in human geography. 24, 653. nicholson, l. & seidman, s. (1995). social postmodernism: beyond identity politics. new york: cambridge university press. parker, a & kosofsky sedwick, e. (1995). performativity and performance. new york: routledge. phelan, p. (1993). unmarked: the politics of performance. london and new york: routledge. rajchman, j. (1998). constructions. cambridge, mass: mit press. roach, j. (1996). kinship, intelligence, and memory as improvisation: culture and performance in new orleans. in e. elin diamond (ed.), performance and cultural politics (217236). london: routledge. steiner, b. (2003). performative architecture. in a. nollert (ed.), performative installation. cologne: snoeck. thrift, n. & dewsbury, j. d. (2000). dead geographies and how to make them live. environment and planning d: society and space, 18, 411-432. tormey, j. (2010). how to do things with drawing. retrieved february 23, 2010, from http:// www.lut.ac.uk/departments/ac/tracey/perf1.html walker, j. a. (2003). why performance? why now textuality and the rearticulation of human presence. the yale journal of criticism, 16 (1). wood, p. (2002). drawing the line: a working epistemology for the study of architectural drawing. unpublished dissertation for the degree of doctor of philosophy, university of auckland, auckland. interstices 11 drawing imagination and the imagination of drawing: the case of tiberio alfarano’s drawing of st. peter’s basilica federica goffi …there is always a tension. there is a drawing out [du triage], a traction: in a word, a line [un trait]. there is an invisible, untraced line that draws out and traces on both sides, that passes between the two without passing anywhere. it draws out and traces nothing, perhaps, but this impalpable line… (jean-luc nancy, the ground of the image) in contemporary understanding, architectural drawing produces an image of likeness; as such, representation renounces its dialogue with the humanities and becomes a narcissistic act, focused on the production of a self-reflection of the visual world, a duplication that does not allow a transcending of the visible, and provides a fixed image. in this way, representation nowadays is preoccupied with the production of finished photogenic rendered pictures, rather than interpreting drawing as a vehicle for representing and imagining change or transformation. this essay will argue that it is a mistake to believe in photo renderings as the best way of accessing a building. the dominance of photorealistic images should be challenged, undermining the notion that architectural drawing is a portrayal of likeness, and restoring its full potential as an iconic representation of presence. it is possible to enter a building through ambiguous imagery and unfinished representation, experiencing a kind of real transitus of the sort that religious icons allow (florensky 2000). hybrid-drawing tiberio alfarano’s 1571 hybrid-drawing of st. peter’s basilica in the vatican goes well beyond representing a one-time likeness, and provides a metaphysical gateway into experiencing this building (fig. 1). this is not achieved through exact visual duplication, but through a combination of past and present form, expressing allegorical significance. alfarano produced a hybrid-drawing, combining traditional architectural representation with decoupage and techniques of representation typical of icon paintings. his work is porous to the cultural context in which it was produced. as a scholar of the basilica’s history, a theologian and connoisseur of architecture, he wove into his drawing a complex body of religious, political, architectural and cultural elements. alfarano’s ground-plan is, in carlo ginzburg’s terms, a singularity, presenting a series of anomalies when compared with the surviving body of renovation drawings (ginzburg 1993: 13). a key anomaly in this process is the fact that alfarano was not, strictly speaking, an architect and this is not a design drawing per se.1 1. tiberio alfarano was a beneficiary clerk of the basilica. whether he was considered an architect in his own time is uncertain. what can be confirmed is that he describes the vatican basilica in his manuscript with precise language, which leads one to believe that he had a prominent interest in architecture; his ability to layer meanings into the drawing bears witness to his skillfulness, inventiveness and his understanding of architectural representation. recently scholars credited to alfarano the mastering of “the art of architectural drawing to a certain extent” (frommel 1994: 598-600). one should also think that the idea of who was an architect was much more fluid than it is today (kostof 2001). 21 alfarano is the author of a hybrid representation that is unique among period drawings. his ground-plan exhibits the use of advanced techniques, carrying within itself a new hybrid language, merging architectural representation with the language of icons; this drawing could only have been conceived by someone who was not only a good connoisseur of architecture, but also had an in-depth understanding of theology and its associated visual imagery. someone who was thus well aware of the interdependence of words and images through an understanding of sacred scriptures, and the notion of incarnated word, which became central to the defense of the icon in the face of the attacks generated by the protestant reformation against sacred images. fig. 1: tiberio alfarano, iconographia, 1571, mixed medium: hand drawing and print, 1172 x 666 mm. © courtesy of the archivio della fabbrica di san pietro (afsp). interstices 11 exploiting the ambiguity of metaphoric transparency, alfarano draws his plan as a transparent veil. this drawing provides a unique interpretation of the notion of ichnography (ground plan), going beyond a mere footprint, carrying the impression on earth of the process of fabrication, simultaneously being a representation of both above and below, before and after. the plan allows multiple readings, detecting the literal and metaphorical presence of a building within a building. ichnography is interpreted through this drawing as a “track-drawing,” providing memory traces on the drawing-site, making the passage of time visible, through unique colour renderings, revealing different time-layers, and the meaning of drawing as unfinished palimpsest-in-the-making.2 the primary medium for the drawing consisted of several sheets of paper of various dimensions, quality and consistency, joined together, and glued onto a wooden support. on this medium alfarano initially outlined in graphite the plan of the old basilica. he started drafting his drawing after michelangelo’s plan was committed to print in 1569 by the well-known engraver etienne duperac, four years after michelangelo’s death. a fragment of this print is glued above the old plan, thus producing a decoupage.3 this hybrid-making combines traditional drawing methods with decoupage, abducted from the art of cabinetry, and in so doing the drawing process mimics the renovation process. decoupage, from the french decouper, literally means to cut out, assembling unrelated elements to form a new whole. the use of decoupage reveals an understanding of the nature of the renaissance process of addition, as the coming together of different members, which are re-assembled to form a renewed body. the cutting up of duperac’s print by alfarano is an act of selection and alteration, that is then continued by re-drawing and painting onto the decoupaged plan. by literally writing over michelangelo’s plan, the new temple’s central design is being questioned. the wooden board used to execute the decoupage becomes a permanent and essential physical substratum for the drawing. this is not unlike the wooden board onto which the original mandylion cloth, a true effigy of christ, was mounted, becoming inseparable from its support. in this context we might say that afarano’s supporting board for his drawing is the equivalent of the vatican grounds, an original hypostatic foundation bearing the building and its multiple iterations, with all of its deep strata of time and meaning, forming a unique locus where time and place form an indissolubly merged presence. in a mnemic site/ building like st. peter’s, all of time happens in a single individual place in spatiotemporal continuity.4 ‘hallowed configuration’ alfarano’s double plan, portraying new and old members together, is thoughtprovoking and stimulates the imagination of conservation, asking the onlooker to gaze beyond the image, to project other possible futures.5 alfarano makes visible, and stimulates, a dialogue between new and old, yet to be resolved. he contemplates past, present and future simultaneously, through a metaphoric transparency, producing a multilayered plan. the drawing conveys not just a likeness, but a real presence, of a thing signified, which is a hybrid-body formed by new and old vestiges, conserved underneath a new building.6 the width of the new main nave corresponds to that of the old; this design move by bramante allowed the original footprint to be conserved intact, thus ensuring that the new foundations do not interfere with the old plan. the original ichnography reveals, 2. from the greek iknos, i.e. track, footprint and graphia i.e. writing, the ichnography is a ”track-drawing”. alfarano tracks the site changes in the drawing, all the way back to the presence of roman mausoleums underneath the basilica. those structures are outlined in his drawings – similarly to other temples and churches – with red ink. a crosshatched poche completes their rendering. the mausoleum’s walls are drawn last, after completing the rendering of michelangelo’s walls with white wash and azure coloration. the roman mausoleums appear to be drawn in a more sketchy and imprecise manner, compared with the outline of old st. peter’s footprint. 3. information regarding the archeological layers of the drawing and its materiality in terms of both medium and techniques is taken from silvan (1992), notiziario (1994) and direct observations by professor nazareno gabrielli (conservation expert of the vatican museum) and from the author of this paper in june 2009. the drawing is currently conserved at the archivio della fabbrica di san pietro. 4. the mandylion, for example, is constituted of several layers, such as a wooden board, onto which the original cloth is mounted; several painted layers have been added over time to preserve an original image disappearing, not unlike the sancta sanctorum. the mandylion and its layers were then framed into an elaborate gold and silver encasing. for a reading of the complex layering of strata of the mandylion see wolf, dufour bozzo and calderoni masetti (2004: 102206) and for the sancta sanctorum see marino (2005: 31-49). 5. ernst gombrich’s comments on the workings of “double images” (2000: 3-30), which allow a viewer to switch from one reading to the other. the notion of double images helps us understand the invisible workings of alfarano’s plan. in the case of gombrich, the ambiguity of the reading rests in the question: is this a “rabbit or duck?”. gombrich states that, “the shape on the paper resembles neither animal very closely. and yet there is no doubt that the shape transforms itself in some subtle way when the duck’s beak becomes the rabbit’s ears and brings an otherwise neglected spot into prominence as the rabbit’s mouth. […] we are compelled to look for what is ‘really there’, to see the shape apart from its interpretation, and this, we soon discover, is not really possible.” (2000: 5) 6. the word “presence” is used here with the significance attributed to it by hans belting (1994). 23 predicts, even generates what the future ought to be, unveiling a ‘hallowed configuration’ (lat. forma sacrosanctae) created by merging two plans (fig. 2). the terminology of hallowed configuration, which alfarano attributed to his ichnography, is an inviolable portraiture, capturing the essence of the thing signified beyond a one-time likeness (cerrati 1914: lii). the latin word “forma”, whilst translated as configuration, is used here to indicate not just a geometrical outline but also an evoked sacred presence. presence is charged with a significance, which hans belting (1994) explains relates to something beyond mere likeness, to embody essence. alfarano’s ground-plan brings back to light the presence of sacred burials taking place in the main aisle and transept of the old temple. their conservation was essential and became a decisive element determining the position of the new main piers. 7 iconic representation reaches beyond the physical to include a non-visible dimension. alfarano’s ground-plan unveils the old st. peter’s contained within the new. his drawing becomes a place where the multi-temporal dimension of the design process can be experienced as memory of the past and revealer of future presence. parallels with the relationship between old and new testament, where “the promise of the former was fulfilled in the latter,” also inform the production of this drawing, through its intertwined narratives (wood 1992). the relationship between old and new is not arbitrary, as alfarano depicts the temple in a state of transmutation, metamorphosing from one form to another, portraying the merging of multiple plans brought into coincidence by a “ubiquitous gaze” (de certeau 1987: 13). the dialogue between the two plans determines the position of the new piers. bramante located the eastern piers right under the crossing of old transept and main nave. the challenge for the vaulting of st. peter’s dome is determined by the necessity to conserve the main nave. when the width of the nave is applied east-west, the position of the western piers is foretold. as a result, peter’s grave, which according to tradition should be located beneath the altar, is not placed in the geometric centre of the crossing of the four piers. this idea of architectural drawing as palimpsest-in-the-making is also informed by the renaissance allegory of prudence. titian’s allegory of prudence (c. 1565-70) illustrates the threefold power of sight as memory of things past and foresight of the future, which together allow one to act prudently in the present. alfarano’s account is made possible by the fact that he was a first-hand witness, for about half a century, to the changes that took place there. in addition he relied on the recollections of his teacher giacomo hercolano, who had been present at st. peter’s since the period of bramante’s early designs (c. 1505-1506). thus alfarano’s gaze is informed by a prudent understanding of narrative, where the present can be stated and the future evoked, making present past memories. the renaissance imagery of prudence, such as that of titian, is, in turn, indebted to the two-headed roman god of gates, beginnings and endings, janus, who had the ability to look in two directions in space and time. janus’s double vision was allegorically expressed in the idea of threshold (see panofsky 1955: 181-205). veronica’s icon, which alfarano places in the top centre of the drawing, is like a ‘janus-keystone’, reminding us to read the ground-plan in two directions – spatially and temporally – to achieve revelation. this reading is inspired by a christian concept of memory, manifested in christ’s own effigy.8 veronica’s holy cloth is not just a memory of christ’s appearance during his life on earth, but also a prefiguration of a future vision to be revealed at the end-of-time. in a letter fig. 2: tiberio alfarano, iconographia, 1571. detail showing how the design dialogue between the old and the new plan reveals that the positioning of the new piers is determined by the necessity to preserve the old main nave and transept intact. © federica goffi. original image courtesy of the afsp (st peter’s) fig. 3: silvestro, scroll letter, 1300. vatican archives. © morello and wolf 2000: 123. interstices 11 from 1300, in the vatican archives, by the pontifical writer silvestro, a veronica icon appears on both ends of a scroll (fig. 3).9 the duplication of the icon above and below indicates beginning and ending, and alludes to the scrolling of linear time in opposite directions, signifying a relationship between memory and foretelling, as mirror images. the writing of the text converges towards the centre of the scroll, where the present is generated. old st. peter’s is thus present almost metonymically within the new. through metaphoric transparency, the observer’s gaze is directed in two opposite directions simultaneously. veronica was a blind woman who, by placing her face in contact with the holy cloth, regained sight (see kuryluk 1991). contemplating alfarano’s plan ad faciem one regains sight of the invisible presence of old st. peter’s, and understands the relationship between new and old, as an inversion of interior with exterior.10 the point of coincidence lies in the visible figure in which the gaze grasps the invisible element active within the figure. this instrument for the passing (transumptio) from one “seeing” to the other is the mirror. mounted inside the texts, it is the equivalent of poetic quotations in the mystic treatises of the sixteenth century. for the mirror is to the visual what the illuminatory ”word” is to the verbal.” (de certeau 1987: 8) in 1434 flemish painter jan van eyck mounted a mirror within his portrait of the arnolfini family; the mirror hung on a wall in the background of the portrait offers a counter-viewpoint, described by de certeau as “a place located inside the painted framework and often decorated as the monstrance or reliquary that circumscribes the appearance of another world” (ibid). alfarano’s new plan is the monstrance or reliquary of the old, making visible another dimension, hidden in duperac’s print, and his drawing above michelangelo’s plan is the equivalent of mounting a mirror within the plan and reading the story in two directions. the role of ambiguity the significance of colour in this drawing has never been discussed in the scholarly literature. using theories of functional specialisation of the visual brain by the contemporary british neuroscientist semir zeki (1999), it is possible to infer that by blocking out the element of colour, scholars have applied a specialised reading, focused on one predominant element, which is the geometric form, and thus eluding questions of iconographic significance. filtering out significant layers of meaning, these commentators have focused on the value of the drawing as a document witnessing physical locations of altars and precious relics, and providing information about geometric outline and the position of new and old elements relative to one another. but only a simultaneous reading of different layers of meaning allows one to grasp the complexity of a multi-layered making and thinking. the drawing, like a veil, bears the traces of the building’s presence within time. through the use of colour, the ground-plan truly becomes a “trackdrawing”, making the passage of time perceivable. the ambiguous drawing of two plans forming a double-image is enhanced by differentiated colours, which facilitate switching the reading, from latin to greek plan, and bring to the foreground that which is in the background, revealing a figure/ground relationship between them. while looking at the drawing 7. the basilica is from the beginning a space of many purposes, acting as memorial, burial site, and liturgy (de blaauw 1994). to define perdurance of identity within changes through time one needs to define a certain stability of the image, which can be defined as a fabrication of memory through the making of a drawing-effigy, identifying stable elements which allow sustaining identity. old main nave and transept are the elected cemetery of the church. julius ii stated that it is imperative to preserve them intact (cerrati 1914: 3-4). 8. “memory thus had a retrospective and, curious as it sounds a prospective character. its object was not only what had happened but what was promised. outside of religion, this kind of consciousness of time has become remote to us” (belting 1994: 10). 9. the so-called “letter by the pontifical writer silvestro”, dated february 22, 1300, is a letter to christendom by pope bonitace viii explaining and commemorating the beginning of the jubilee. the writer “silvestro”, was at the time scriptor for pope boniface viii (1294-1303), and worked for the papal curia (morello, 2000). 10. this is not unlike the phenomenon experienced when observing a rubin vase, where two images, ‘face’ and ‘vase’ allow perceptual shifts from one representation to the other. 25 fig. 4: christ, one and trinity (cristo uno e trino), st. agata church, perugia (1290-1314 ca) © bollati boringhieri editore. fig. 6: digital superimposition of carlo maderno’s 1607-12 plan onto alfarano’s 1571 drawing. © federica goffi. original images courtesy of the afsp (st peter’s) and gdu (uffizi). a chosen layer can change position, from rear to front and vice versa, generating an instability of the image and allowing multiple readings. ambiguity makes the viewer an active participant, something that would have been significant to alfarano, whose intention was to unveil a hidden presence. he unconsciously exploited a characteristic of the human brain and its workings with ambiguous images, where the onlooker takes advantage of a “knowledge seeking role” of the brain, in “providing different interpretations, and thus enhancing his or her experience of the work” (zeki 1999: 63). similarly ambiguous imagery can be found in the depiction of christ, one and trinity in the church of st. agata in perugia, where christ is represented with three heads, looking in three directions in space and time. only two eyes are painted in order not to confuse the onlooker, making possible multiple readings (fig. 4). the sharing of elements facilitates the switching back and forth between them. similarly in the design of new st. peter’s significant lines/walls are shared, contributing to creating a double image. the merging becomes evident in drawing details defining the central crossing. columns and walls overlap. gold paint is used to render the old columns, while thin azure tempera is used for michelangelo’s plan, weaving together the geometry of the crossing. boundaries of old and new merge into each other, so that neither image is complete without the other, requiring an active engagement of the imagination (fig. 5). a dual representation allows ambiguous, yet precisely shifted, readings. alfarano produced an “accurately inaccurate” bi-stable image, revealing the ambiguous presence of old st. peter’s within the new (zeki 1999). this hallowed configuration depicting a hybrid plan became the substratum for the imagination of conservation, defining a collective daydreaming strategy according to which multiple authors can imagine possible futures. when, in 1605, carlo maderno imagined his new addition for an elongated eastern arm, he initially drew on a sheet of paper overlaid onto alfarano’s plan, to fulfil the hallowed configuration, circumscribing the old one entirely, and adopting alfarano’s stratigraphic drawing strategy and his daydream of a hybrid plan (fig. 6). fig. 5: tiberio alfarano, iconographia, 1571. detail of the central crossing of st. peter’s. © courtesy of the afsp. interstices 11 intercollage the intercollages of czech artist jirí kolár (1914-2002), where two images come together to form a third, might be brought into this discussion, as an a posteriori element, in order to fully understand alfarano’s drawing (fig. 7). in kolár’s words, “the principal image of one reproduction is cut out and in its place another totally unrelated element is inserted. thus, the effect of intercollage results from unexpected encounters of unrelated elements” (kolár 1978: 18). kolár also stated that “the acts of crumpling, tearing and cutting are not really destructive but rather are like a kind of interrogation. … i am curious about what exists beyond the page or behind a picture” (kolár 1978: 18). alfarano’s plan could be interpreted as an ”intercollage”, in that it showcases the presence of the old plan contained within the new, and unveils its presence. by looking in two directions, through the medium of drawing, one can see the reason for the approval of bramante’s project.9 by cutting out the footprint of main nave and transept from alfarano’s plan, and intercollaging within it a fragment of ugo da carpi’s altarpiece (1525) for veronica’s altar, it is possible to make visible a hallowed configuration, resulting from a dialogue between two plans, defining a particular relationship, where old and new st. peter’s inhabit each other metonymically, through a simultaneity effect, analogous to the one exhibited by kolár’s work (fig. 8). intercollage penetrates beyond the world of the visible into the invisible, to find that which lies beyond. the image created is ambiguous, but not in the sense of being vague. the dual reading is precise; neither image is complete without the other. ambiguity is very important because, as semir zeki explains, it solicits the involvement of different areas of the brain simultaneously, thus initiating a process of multiple interpretations (zeki 1999). old st peter’s conforms to the latin-cross typology of the martyrdom basilica. the composite plan is created by the addition of a renaissance central body. alfarano reveals the necessity of a hybrid plan, through which old st. peter’s can be re-presented within the new. through the condition of the present, the drawing looks towards past and future, allowing having memory while, at the same time, having pre-figuration of something that will be. drawing here is performance, rather than final output, allowing one to perceive duration, through a construction of memory. fig. 7: jirí kolár, cow having eaten up canaletto, 1968. © thames & hudson. fig. 8: intercollage revealing the presence of the old within the new. © federica goffi. 27 reflections on modern and contemporary conservation in light of alfarano’s drawing simultaneity entails the possibility of two or more events entering a single, instantaneous perception. in the work of a modern master of architecture and time, carlo scarpa, gates and thresholds at the museo di castelvecchio, verona, demonstrate an approach to architectural conservation, through layering and transparency. it is in looking through the gap that the images of past and future merge (goffi 2006). in designing one of the windows that looks out toward the courtyard scarpa drew directly on a photograph, layering a new design and allowing, through transparency, the possibility of reading two time-layers simultaneously, thus revealing the permeability of time (fig. 9). alfarano’s plan draws its power from the fact that it is not a physical double; it is a representation of metaphysical essence beyond one-time likeness, allowing a real transitus into st. peter’s, analogous to that of religious icons. the possibility of displacement, penetrating the image beyond the visible, can be realised with a drawing that retains possibility for imagination. this cannot be accomplished by simply producing a photorealistic double, but rather through “the path of admiratio [astonishment] itself, an imageless surprise, an opening to the unknown,” which is achieved through a contemplative gaze reaching beyond that which sight seizes in the realm of the visible (de certeau 1987: 18). conversely, exact replicas allow viewing at a present as-is condition, coinciding with the visible, but do not make possible a real transumption, gazing beyond the visible. alfarano produced a bi-stable image. st. peter’s is simultaneously present in two places, before and after, allowing for a displacement that is no longer physical but intellectual. the ambiguous reading of two plans forms a double-image enhanced by colours, which facilitate switching the reading around, making the viewer an active participant. drawing as veil reveals supra-temporal presence, and provides for interpreting the drawing as a window through time. this provides the possibility of critically reassessing architectural-conservation in present practice as a form of invention and imagination. the dialogue between architecture and conservation might be reignited through such hybrid-drawing strategies. grasping the significance of alfarano’s drawing, one begins to comprehend the mistaken belief in the primacy of photo rendering to access a building and conserve its essence. any essence cannot be achieved through exact visual reconstruction, rather through a chiasmus of past and present form, expressing allegoric significance. ambiguity is at the source of the understanding of conservation, which today is often interpreted as the preservation of a still-shot, an understanding informed by the belief that by displaying photographic memory of the past, it is possible to gain access to it. but naturalistic representation is unequivocal and presents the onlooker with a single meaning immortalised by instantaneous still-images. instead ambiguity and polysemy generate an equivocal space where unforeseeable inventions might occur through a process of future predictions enhanced by the recollection of memories (de certeau 1987). “hallowed configuration” is polysemic, and opens up the possibility of a proliferation of simultaneous stories. fig. 9: carlo scarpa. free hand ink drawing on photograph (1950s-70s). detail of a window towards the courtyard. sketch of the new interior window mouldings. © castelvecchio museum. interstices 11 the traction of drawing resides precisely in this ability to draw out the imagination, allowing for multiple interpretations. alfarano’s drawing goes well beyond an archive of past histories. it is an instrument in-forming a living consciousness of the vatican palimpsest, allowing us to grasp its significance, and experience a real transitus, into these sacred grounds. the haptic qualities of the drawing demonstrate through the archeological strata of represented layers, the superimposition and merging of two buildings. indeed, the relief gold paint is a demonstration of a haptic real presence of constantine’s original cross, revealed during the 1940s’ excavations around the confessio area (apollonj ghetti et al. 1951). the depiction of “one-time likeness” reduces memory to an instant story without history. this is relevant in regards to contemporary survey techniques such as orthographic photography, which presently provides the field of conservation with documentation methods of unprecedented accuracy, contributing to generate the illusion that the past can be preserved, capturing an instantaneous still-shot, thus producing images without imagination, to be preserved as is. the photograph becomes the model for what is believed to be a truthful representation of the past. photographic representation is unequivocal and presents the onlooker with a single meaning. conversely, iconic portraiture is polysemic, and generates an equivocal space where multiple meanings and the proliferation of simultaneous stories is possible. nevertheless, “found” orthographic photographs could instead be interpreted as an imaginative substratum for future representations. alterations and additions could be made visible through layered representation techniques in the media of hybrid drawing-photographs, not unlike like the one made by carlo scarpa for castelvecchio. through metaphoric or literal transparency of a medium, combined with appropriate representation techniques, the past might dwell within a possible future; in this rests the possibility for a resurfacing of memories, and a possibility for a real transubstantiation from one condition to another. architectural-conservation drawings should be interpreted as a phenomenological palimpsest, forming a contiguous imagery, reminding us of the work of contemporary american photographer robert heinecken, and his 1989 recto/verso photograph overlays. writer james enyeart comments on robert heinecken’s work: “contiguous imagery in an artist’s work is the imagination’s imitation of the mind’s working process. it is impossible to imagine thinking one thought at a time or completing a thought without the overlay of another.” 11 renaissance st. peter’s is not the result of a destruction of substance through a change of form; it should be interpreted as a paradigmatic model of palimpsest renewal, understood as an imaginative form of conservation in spatio-temporal continuity. new and old st. peter’s are one and the same building, even if notably different, to the point of not resembling one another. in carlo maderno’s own words, “the basilica is one, even though through history it appeared under diverse likenesses.”12 architectural-conservation drawings should not portray an image to be preserved as is, like an archival document, but an image, which is the maker of change. a “hallowed configuration” is a substratum for the imagination of conservation. a drawing so conceived is an epiphanic demonstration, providing a serendipitous moment of sudden revelation and insight into the essence of a building. current interpretations of conservation, exhibiting prodigious photographic memory, reveal an understanding of the past as inventory, and are gradually 11. the 1989 recto/verso cibachrome photograms (11” x 14”) are described by landweber as “made without the use of camera or film. a single page from a mass-circulation magazine was placed in direct contact with color photographic paper and exposed to light. the resulting image superimposes the visual and verbal information from the front and back of the magazine page. no collage, manipulation, or other handwork was employed.” http://www.landweber.com/rectoverso/ rv_writers_3.html (accessed on february 19, 2010) 12. translated by author of this paper from: “la basilica era una sola, che nella storia era apparsa sotto strutture diverse.” maderno cited in spagnesi (1997: 24). 29 congealing our imagination of conservation, limiting our understanding of the past to a “read-only experience”. buildings and drawings should once again be conceived as unfinished entities, allowing for selective remembering and willful forgetting, closely approximating the secret inner workings of human memory, entailing continual renewal and allowing for meaningful change, rather than simply denying it. the retrospective and prospective character of the architectural-conservation process can be experienced through the intermediacy of hybrid-drawings in the present. directing the gaze simultaneously in two directions allows a pre-existent condition to be engaged in a dialogue with a future design, something that does not happen in today’s practice, where built, in the form of measured drawings of existing conditions, and design drawings are often kept separate. architectural drawings could rejoin these two temporal conditions, through metaphoric or literal transparency, looking in two directions “intime” and allowing for a real transformation of the building, within continuity of identity. the narrative of the transformations that took place on the vatican palimpsest cannot be told through a homogeneous single history. rather than recording work in progress (the working drawing), or celebrating the completed project (the final scheme), alfarano’s drawing conveys a convergence of time. indeed, st peter’s basilica is conceived as a temporal co-existence between old and new, redolent of st augustine’s concept of the “threefold present”. place is constructed over time, merging multiple unfinished stories. religious icons are intended to reach beyond the physical to include not only a non-visible dimension, but also, more importantly, the non-temporal dimension. it is through a simultaneous looking in two directions that one is able to transcend a single time frame and is transported in a non-temporal condition contemplating the icon-drawing, presencing the basilica and imagining other possible futures. in embracing the flow of time, one embraces change and the heterogeneous. alfarano’s work goes beyond modern aestheticism and reaches towards devotion. the mirror at work in his drawing is the revealing agent of a history, hidden but present. this sacred portrait is a gate, which can be accessed through contemplation, allowing the transformation of a perceptible visual experience into mystic vision. references apollonj ghetti, b. m., ferrua, a., josi, e., kirschbaum, e. (1951). esplorazioni sotto la confessione di san pietro in vaticano eseguite negli anni 1940-1949. vatican city: tipografia poliglotta vaticana. belting, h. (1994). likeness and presence: a history of the image before the era of art. chicago: the university of chicago press. de blaauw, s. (1994). cultus et decor. liturgia e architettura nella roma tardoantica e medievale: basilica salvatoris, sanctae mariae, sancti petri. vatican city: tipografia poliglotta vaticana. cerrati, m. (1914). tiberii alpharani de basilicae vaticanae antiquissima et nova structura (1582). vatican city: tipografia poliglotta vaticana. de certeau, m. (1987). the gaze, nicholas of cusa. diacritics, 17(3), 2-38. florensky, p. (2000). iconostasis. new york: st vladimir’s press. frommel, c. l. (1994). scheda 282. in h. millon & v. magnago lampugnani (eds.), rinascimento: da brunelleschi a michelangelo. la rappresentazione dell’architettura, (pp. 598-600). milan: bompiani. garroni, g. (2005). elogio dell’imprecisione. torino: bollati boringhieri. interstices 11 goffi, f. (2006). carlo scarpa and the eternal canvas of silence. arq, 10(3-4), 291-300. gombrich, e. h. (2000). art and illusion, a study in the psychology of pictorial representation. the a. w. mellon lectures in the fine arts 1956, bollingen series, xxxv: 5. princeton: princeton university press. kolár, j. and kotik, c. (1978). jirí kolár: transformations: with an essay. buffalo fine arts/ albright-knox art gallery. kostof, s. (2001). the architect: chapters in the history of the profession. los angeles: university of california press. kuryluk, e. (1991) veronica and her cloth, history, symbolism, and structure of a “true” image. cambridge: basil blackwell. morello, g. and wolf, g. (2000). il volto di cristo. milano: electa. nancy, j.-l. (2005). the ground of the image. bronx (ny): fordham university press. notiziario mensile della basilica di san pietro. (1994, vi: 1, p. 2). panofsky, e. (1955). meaning in the visual arts. new york: doubleday anchor books. silvan, p. le origini della pianta di tiberio alfarano. atti della pontificia romana accademia di archeologia (rendiconti 1989-1990), lxii (1992): 3-25. spagnesi, g. (1997). l’architettura della basilica di san pietro storia e costruzione. roma: bonsignori editore. taylor, b. (2004). collage, the making of modern art. new york: thames & hudson. wolf, g., bozzo, c. d. and masetti, a. r. c. (2004). mandylion. intorno al sacro volto, da bisanzio a genova. milano: skira,. wood, j. (1992). the nativity. london: scala publications. zeki, s. (1999). inner vision, an exploration of art and the brain. oxford: oxford university press. interstices 09 35 nomadic urbanism: the senior full-time recreational vehicle community deane simpson this paper frames the spatial practices of a particular contemporary social formation in the united states. while little in the way of official governmental statistics exist for the senior full-time recreational vehicle community (sftrvc), this so-called ‘nomadic’ society is conservatively estimated to number between two and three million retirees who have relinquished their sedentary homes and lifestyles for a continuous year-round life ‘on the road’1 (fig. 1). while nomadic communities are not a new occurrence, it will be suggested that one of this scale, sophistication and level of connectivity is unprecedented. categorizations of nomadism by operating as a physically spread, but densely connected social field, one that holds the potential to produce instant bottomup formations of actual physical urban density. rather than producing urbanity with its most common building block (built fabric), the sftrvc constructs it through an urbanism of infrastructure consisting of two overlaid networks, one physical and one non-physical. the sftrvc and its associated practices do not operate as a purely anti-urban phenomenon. rather, they lead to a collision of the most urban and the most antiurban of conditions, suggesting an alternate spatial model that could be provisionally termed nomadic urbanism. this paper refers to contemporary and historical models and theories related to both nomadism and urbanism. it is presented through the actions homemaking, touring, communicating, plugging in, clustering, squatting, infrastructuring, pioneering, escaping, imagining and evolving. each describes a particular aspect of sftrvc spatial practice. based predominantly on field investigations undertaken in a recreational vehicle, this research has also involved interviews with sftrvers, membership in rv and sftrvc clubs, online participation in sftrvc forums and on-site aerial photography.2 homemaking: on the road a recreational vehicle – or rv as it is commonly known in the us – is a “vehicle that combines transportation and living quarters for travel, recreation and camping … [an rv will typically] provide kitchen, sleeping, and bathroom facilities and be equipped with the ability to store and carry fresh water and sewage” (rvia, 2006)3 (figs. 2 and 3). historically, nomadic societies have been defined in dialectical opposition to sedentary urban ones. in the preeminent historical text on nomadism, the muqaddimah, medieval social historian ibn khaldun describes the two fundamentally opposed environments from which all human cooperation and social organization developed: a) the desert life of nomadic tribal societies; and b) the sedentary life of towns and agricultural villages. for khaldun, “the very nature of [nomadic] existence is the negation of building, which is the basis of civilization” (1967 [1377]: 118). nomadic societies therefore have been structurally defined as anti-urban, representing a mobile ‘other’ functioning outside of the heirarchi cal construction of sedentary urban society and the state apparatus. within this context, it will be suggested that the practices of the sftrvc problematize this opposition. the practices of the sftrvc exceed conventional classifications of pure nomadism by, firstly, embracing nomadic mobility as a leisure activity rather than one practised for subsistence and, secondly, operating with a high degree of instantaneous and uninterrupted connectivity across a scale not previously typical of nomadic societies. the practices of the sftrvc exceed typical anti-urban fig. 1: rv urbanism. source: deane simpson. fig. 1 fig. 2a fig. 2b fig. 2a,b: rv motorhome floor plan and interior. source: winnebago industries inc. the author would like to thank marc angélil, eyal weizman, jörg stollmann, jesse lecavalier and ida richter braendstrup for their comments and criticism related to this research. the research was supported by the holcim foundation for sustainable construction and an eth zurich research grant th-24 07-2 (th-project). 1. the full-time senior rv community “present[s] a familiar problem to researchers and statisticians: a moving target, dissolving and reforming, traveling in scattered bands and hard to distinguish from their semi-nomadic counterparts” (grant, 2003: 286). 2. existing documentation on the spatial practices of this specific community is relatively limited, particularly within urban and architectural discourse. this research attempts to address this ‘opening’. documentation to date is mostly limited to an ethnography of rving seniors in north america by the canadian anthropologists dorothy and david counts (1996). this publication is of particular use because it resulted from extensive research into specific sociological and demographic aspects outside of this author’s expertise. while the counts & counts work broadly describes the background, motivations and social practices of the lifestyle, it is limited in terms of critical investigation of the spatial/urban practices of the community. in addition to counts & counts, varnelis (2007) offers an interesting analysis of the town of quartzsite with reference to negri and hardt’s multitude. 3. for a history of the rv, see white (2000). interstices 09 37 the leisure-oriented lifestyle of the sftrvc is a product of the institution of retirement, creating a subject distinct from both torstein veblen’s idle wealthy of the late nineteenth century and dean maccannell’s mass tourists of the late twentieth century. the social security act of 1935, entitling americans over 65 years of age to financial support from the state, was designed both as a benefit for those ‘too old to work’ and an incentive for the ongoing replacement of ‘obsolete’ workers. it led, over the years in which the average life expectancy has risen drastically and the population has aged accordingly, to “the emergence of a large (and potentially vast) social group whose daily experiences do not consist of work or schooling – at least, not in the traditional sense of socialization for work – and who, crucially, can expect to live up to a third of their lives in this state” (blaikie, 1999: 69). the emergence of the new third age overlaps with the process the german sociologist ulrich beck (1992) calls individualization: the social transformation occurring in western countries in recent decades in which dominant traditional social hierarchies have become increasingly subordinated to individual choice and freedom.6 similarly, it is the possibility of freedom, independence and adventure that attracts sftrvers to their lifestyle. this suggests a radically different basis for constructing a nomadic practice, producing a form of distributed leisure space, one aligned to the logic of full-time tourist rather than the traditional survivalist logic of the pastoral nomad or hunter-gatherer. the tour in this case is based both around sites of a conventional touristic nature and kinand peer-based social interactions. descriptions of the spatial practices of nomads by social historians and anthropologists such as khaldun (1967 [1377]), jabbur (1995) and barfield (1993) and theorists such as deleuze and guattari (1986) are relatively consistent. the nomad functions according to a territorial occupation of space rather than one that is codified, divided and controlled. nomadic space is characterized by the dominance of the trajectory of movement (pathway or line) over the importance of destination (node or fixed point). for the nomad, the space between points is critical. points are secondary – inasmuch as a point is arrived at only to be left behind. this functions in contrast to sedentary space that privileges the fixed point over the line. this is no more evident than in the sftrver disease known as ‘hitch itch’, or what would be referred to clinically as dromomania (an abnormal, obsessive desire to roam.) the nomad plays a key role in deleuze and guattari’s discourse as a subject who resists the forces of the territorializing apparatus of the sedentary state. the emblematic space of this nomad is the desert, defined by characteristics rather than borders, in contrast to the divided and striated space of sedentary territory. they describe the function of the sedentary road, “which is to parcel out a closed space to people, assigning each person to a share and regulating the communication between shares. the nomadic trajectory does the opposite, it distributes people (or animals) in an open space, one that is indefinite and noncommunicating” (1986: 50). in addition to this non-communicating aspect of nomadic space, it is the limitation of communication between the dispersed individuals and factions of nomadic societies (communication that typically took place through serial chains)7 that is challenged by the contemporary leisure nomad. rv enthusiasts are typically divided into three categories: vacationers, snowbirds and full-timers. vacationers spend the majority of their time in an owned or rented sedentary residence, and vacation in an rv for a period typically numbering in weeks. snowbirds maintain a sedentary residence, in which they typically reside during the summer months, travelling south in an rv in the winter months. fulltimers relinquish their sedentary residence, adopting a full year-round nomadic lifestyle. the vast majority (approximately 80 percent) of the two-to-three million full-timers in the us are both elderly and retired (counts & counts, 1996: 148). the community of full-timers – retired third-agers whose only ‘home’ is the rv they travel in – constitutes the focus of this paper.4 particular tendencies emerge in the process of permanently making one’s home ‘on the road’. compressing the former suburban home often into a fraction of its original size suggests the need for drastic spatial recomposition. objects of weight and bulk that typically play an important representational function in the original domestic home – such as furniture pieces, books and paintings – are replaced by more compact built-in elements. however, it is common to observe an exaggerated quality of domesticity in the interiors, as if to counteract potential feelings of constant displacement or homelessness. this is evident in the material and colour palettes, along with the layout and designated function of ‘rooms’. familiar aspects include carpets, tiles, upholstery fabric, and stained oak or mahogany wood-veneer panelling in the ‘kitchen’, as well as the constant refurbishing and replacing of interior ornaments such as cushions, flowers and small tchachkas that are stowed in transit. a similar phenomenon occurs in the immediate external surroundings of the parked rv, where semi-private, semi-public and public spaces are consciously demarcated. this occurs through the positioning of the rv in relation to existing site objects and constraints such as sun orientation, trees and other vehicles, and the placement of particular objects and furniture. most vehicles have a retractable awning that can be extended to produce a domestic verandah, a semi-private space that is usually reinforced through ground surfacing practices. this surface is typically a green artificial turf – mimicking the domestic lawn – upon which is often placed a doormat, foldable tables and chairs. additional items such as barbeques, fireplaces, potted plants, exercise equipment, whirligigs, neon palm trees and garden gnomes personalize and demarcate the extent of the exterior domesticated space of the home. semi-public spaces are often produced through the cooperation of more than one rv, the focal point of which is typically a campfire, particularly in informal camping areas. these particular practices suggest that while sftrvers relinquish their sedentary house (or apartment), the notion of ‘home’ is consciously amplified. touring: the leisure nomad historically, there are three broad categories of nomadism: hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads and peripatetic nomads. sftrvers function in a similar fashion to these three forms inasmuch as they do not reside in a ‘fixed’ sedentary dwelling, instead moving from place to place on a predominantly seasonal basis.5 importantly, however, as they do not rely on nomadic behaviour for subsistence or survival, but take part in it by choice, as a leisure-oriented lifestyle, sftrvers suggest the necessity for a fourth category of nomadism: leisure nomads. fig. 3: rv types. source: rvia. fig. 3 4. the sftrvc consists of individuals from a wide range of socio-demographic segments, but those living this lifestyle have been categorized as predominantly middle class, most of whom formerly lived in suburban or exurban areas (counts & counts, 1996: 283, 315). 5. see barfield (1993: 12). 6. see also the excellent description of similar social transformations related to retirement migration on the spanish coast by andreas huber and karen o’reilly (2004). 7. from an overview of literature on early nomadic societies (see references, especially, carmichael (1991); cresswell (1997); khaldun (1967 [1377])), social communication might best be described in terms of serial chains. interstices 09 39 satellite internet systems has expanded instantaneous and remote communi cation to and from nomadic vehicles, leading to a dramatic increase in access to, and ‘online-ization’ of, the social networking operations of this community – communications that previously took place via telephone calls, message services and mailed newsletters to post office boxes around the country. as a massive clearing house of information, these websites support the large-scale coordination of events, actions and spontaneous meetings. the website www.datastorm. com is just one example of a micro-community in which individual rvers are spatially located on a communal map and messaging board (figs. 7 and 8). this level of instant connectivity at a distance has radically increased the social coherency of the community to the point that one may begin to understand it to be as socially dense as it is physically sparse. this is supported both by the staggering numbers of sftrvers active in clubs online and the intensity of information traffic. plugging in: lines/nodes if the first form of infrastructure supporting the sftrvc is relatively non-physical, the second is of a more physical nature. it consists of two main elements: the road and highway system (constituting a system of lines or circuits); and parking/camping sites for vehicles (constituting a series of points or nodes). the rv vehicles themselves operate as mobile elements that flow within this physical network (fig. 9). communicating: satellite internet portable satellite internet technologies – developed initially for military pur poses – have in recent years become available in a civilian context, supporting an unprecedented level of communication and interconnectivity for the sftrvc in real time (fig. 4). this communication system – constituted as an infrastructural network that is predominantly non-physical in nature – consists of two main elements: the mobile rv-based communication equipment (computer and two-way satellite internet dish and box) in which each moving vehicle operates as a node or point, and the series of circuits or lines of communication, in particular the web-based rv club sites and the internet that supports them (fig. 5). on-board rv communication equipment is increasingly sophisticated and remarkably widely used amongst the sftrvc. with a satellite dish mounted to an rv, a user is able to access the internet from any remote location in the us with a view toward the southern sky. in recent years, the dominant staging area of rv communities – typically known as rv clubs – has become the internet. clubs, as one of the central aspects of the rv lifestyle, not only organize yearly or seasonal rallies and conventions but also keep members in close communication through newsletters and magazines. many clubs supply parking spaces and some redirect mail. clubs have increasingly cemented a web-based presence with forums, chatrooms and info sites. forums, for example, offer support on travel itineraries, technical issues, buying and selling rvs, rver dating, rv friendly recipes, discount rv merchandise, security tips, rallies, conventions and more. the largest and best known rv community is the good sam club, with a 2006 membership of over one million rvers. founded in 1966, it publishes highways magazine and has a considerable web presence (at www.goodsamclub.com). escapees (www.escapees.com) is one of the first rv clubs exclusively for sftrvers (fig. 6). it was founded in 1978 and in 2008 has over 100,000 members. rather than suggesting that the internet led to the invention of this form of nomadism, it is proposed here that the commercial availability of portable fig. 4 fig. 5 fig. 4: rv satellite dishes for tv and two-way internet. quartzsite, 2008. photograph by deane simpson. fig. 5: rv non-physical network. source: deane simpson. fig. 6: rv website: the escapees rv club: forum directory. source: escapees.com fig. 7: automatic reported locations. courtesy of don bradner. fig. 8: close-up of automatic reported locations. courtesy of don bradner. fig. 9: rv physical network. source: deane simpson. fig. 6 fig. 7 fig. 8 fig. 9 interstices 09 41 estimates of the peak number in late january range from 300,000 to one million (counts & counts, 1996; grant, 2003; varnelis, 2007), defining an instant city of new third agers (fig. 10). the movements of such large numbers are coordinated predominantly online through club websites. the escapees club, for example, has several pages online dedicated to social events and activities, running three or more get-together locations in the quartzsite area simultaneously. the majority of winter rvers at quartsite boondock on ltvas. they arrange themselves in various spatial formations ranging from individual detached stand-alone vehicles, to four vehicle ‘courtyards’, to linear bands and pinwheel corrals, constructing micro-communities or neighbourhoods of temporary association (fig. 11). the instant city phenomenon takes place not only at quartzsite. there are many other examples of large-scale club events also coordinated online, such as the good sam club rallies (‘samborees’), sometimes attracting tens of thousands of rvers. many ‘clustering’ actions are organized online in very short periods of time, such as the organizing of sftrvers to distribute aid and offer building labour in the immediate aftermath of hurricane katrina in new orleans in 2005. ‘clustering’ is related both to the socio-cultural rituals of the sftrvc and the technological support that allows for communication and coordinated movement. in effect, these instant cities, like quartzsite, constitute a form of urbanity produced almost entirely from bottom-up forces without top-down planning, apart from basic planning of vital infrastructural services. squatting: destination boondocking the points or nodes associated with the physical infrastructure exist not only in what are traditionally understood as ‘non-urban’ areas. in many cases, informal rv parking sites are embedded within the existing urban fabric, operating on an unwritten ‘timeshare’ basis. this phenomenon is commonly referred to as destination boondocking. according to one rver, these sites include, “in the winter, hotel/ motel parking lots. in the summer, school yards. anywhere else that is quiet and that we won’t be in anyone’s way. shopping centers, church parking lots (except on saturday night)” (counts & counts, 1996: 173). the discount retailer walmart has a well-known policy of allowing free overnight parking for rvs in most of its retail parking lots. this functions for mutual benefit: rvers have a free, relatively safe, accessible and reliable network of locations in which to stay overnight, with access to bathrooms and store supplies; and in return, walmart maintains a large number of loyal customers who occupy parking lot space only during the overparking and camping sites function as a series of infrastructural nodes that may be classified as either formal or informal sites. formal campsites include public rv parks, membership or co-op parks, and private parks, and typically offer what is referred to as a ‘hook-up’. hook-ups supply electricity and water and sometimes waste removal services – not available at informal sites – directly to the rv. although rvs are somewhat limited in their ‘off-roading’ capacities – implying restrictions in freedom of movement – there are various non-paved off-road surfaces that are easily accessible. the most notable include the deserts of the south-west, where rvs are able to drive and park in almost any location. clustering: instant cities common informal sites include long-term visitor areas (ltva) administered by the us department of the interior. these sites are available to boondockers – or those who stay in areas where there are no power or water hook-ups and no charge for occupying the space. a high proportion of rvs are equipped to boondock. this requires self-contained water and waste disposal tanks and a 12-volt electrical system, which is normally powered by either solar panels or a generator. some ltvas also offer a centralized water supply and waste dumping facilities. the points or nodes within the physical network vary greatly in size, from single rvs parking alone or in small groups on a remote site, to instant cities of rvers numbering in the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. the most famous informal site is quartzsite – a small arizona desert town close to the californian border. its permanent population of 3,500 inhabitants expands exponentially in the winter months. while there are no official quartzsite rv population figures, fig. 10 fig. 10: quartzsite, arizona, 2008. photograph by deane simpson. fig. 11 fig. 11: quartzsite, arizona, 2008. photographs by deane simpson. interstices 09 43 171). the ‘space of flows’, in other words, refers to an emerging spatial logic in which social interaction occurs in between others who are both absent and distant in time and space – a schema in which living, inhabitation and social connectivity transgress immediate physical distance.8 in this context, the sftrvc is emblematic of the space of flows – an arrangement in which houses themselves and their inhabitants are literally in a state of flow, along with the information flowing between them – producing an urbanity that is physically spread (to varying degrees), but densely connected socially. the nomadic community of the sftrvc therefore deploys practices that are not anti-urban by definition, but produce an alternate form of decentralized urbanism – a socially coherent urban field. from castell’s point of view, density as an urban concept shifts from describing purely physical material conditions to include socio-informational ones. additionally, the mobility and clustering of the sftrvc suggests a shift in the understanding of urban density from something stable, toward something in a constant state of fluctuation and instability. instead of generating urbanity from its most common component – sedentary buildings – this highly mobile, dispersed and connected field produces a nomadic urbanism of infrastructure. it is useful to contextualize the contemporary spatial practices of the sftrvc with other historical mobile practices. there are three examples that resonate: those of the early pioneers of the nineteenth-century american west; those attached to the suburban flight from urban america in the mid-twentieth century; and those proposed by the architectural avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly archigram. all three examples may be linked together under the umbrella of urban decentralization, of which the so-called ‘exurban’ condition of the american edge city is the most documented contemporary form. according to castells: “this spatial form is indeed very specific to the american experience. because … it is embedded in a classic pattern of american history, always pushing for the endless search for a promised land in new settlement” (1996: 400). pioneering: from westward to interstitial frontier sftrvers often frame their own actions as the “modern embodiment of the early pioneers” (counts & counts, 1996: 94). as well as a psychological state of freedom, adventure and independence, the ‘pioneering spirit’ also defines a social attitude with clear micro-scale spatial implications, most obvious in the circled and closed courtyard formations of rvs that echo the circled wagon corral originally intended to offer protection from external attackers. this has been adopted by rvers as a way of producing a central space for communal activities – activities that also echo the social activities of the pioneer period: the communal (pot-luck) dinner around the camp-fire, games and the sing-along (fig. 14). at the macro-scale, the sftrvc reconfigures the westward expanding line of the frontier as an “interstitial frontier” (counts & counts, 1996: 111). spatial expansionism for the sftrver is directed toward the production of a form of nomadic urbanity in areas where urbanity is not yet present (at least in conventional terms.) the practice of destination boondocking extends this frontier beyond one based upon a finding or filling of gaps where ‘the city’ has not yet manifested itself, to include the extension of frontiers of transient occupation within the already existing ‘city’. while the former opens up questions concerning the sustainability of such practices, the latter is particularly interesting in the way it contests the legal and social frontiers of urban space. night off-peak period (fig. 12). destination boondocking has become a widely accepted spatial practice, so widely practised that several guidebooks have been published listing locations and directions to every walmart in the us, as well as supplementary titles that list the few walmarts not allowing overnight parking (for example, wiley & wiley, 2006). the walmart case is interesting as an example of a large corporation willing to tolerate what would normally be understood as illegal squatting. the possibility for the transient rv occupation of existing urban environments is supported by the fact that these practices are relatively indistinguishable from regular parking, especially in the case of smaller rvs, making it difficult for law enforcement to control. destination boondocking is the most obvious engagement on the part of sftrvers in marginal behaviour typically associated with other forms of transient nomadic lifestyles. it is precisely these practices that skirt and challenge the logic of accepted spatial and legal behaviour of the striated sedentary environment. it would be possible to conceive of this practice, whether it takes place in a school parking lot or retailer parking lot, as an opportunistic occupation of urban space, producing an agile additional layer of urbanity infiltrating the existing sedentary fabric. infra-structuring: nomadic urbanism in overlaying the two broad categories of infrastructure – the physical and the non-physical – the rv operates as both a node (in the non-physical case) and material flow (in the case of the physical infrastructure). this suggests a complex network of interconnected flowing nodes functioning in between the physical and non-physical realms (fig. 13). in the rise of the network society, manuel castells theorizes a shift in the dominant mode of urbanism at the end of the twentieth century. castells argues that the traditionally defined urbanism of the ‘space of places’ (which we associate with the traditional sedentary city of identity, centrality and materiality), is increasingly subordinated by that which he refers to as the ‘space of flows’, the space that “links up distant locales around shared functions and meanings on the basis of electronic circuits and fast transportation corridors, while isolating and sub duing the logic of experience embodied in the space of places” (castells, 2001: fig. 12 fig. 13 fig. 12: destination boondocking, walmart, arizona. photograph by deane simpson. fig. 13: rv physical and non-physical networks combined. source: deane simpson. 8. penelope dean’s paper on the australian royal flying doctor service is a highly relevant case study precedent in dispersed urbanism (2000: 86-91). according to dean, “whilst it bears no historic reference to the evolution of the ‘city’ as we know it, it is an extreme example where minimum density is coupled with maximum social cohesion.” if the royal flying doctor service functions as a fixed decentralized network, the rv community operates as a mobile distributed network. interstices 09 45 escaping: the second wave the decentralized practices of the sftrvc also have a particular resonance with the spatial practices of mid-twentieth-century urban ‘flight’. if this first wave of flight, from the urban centre to the suburban edge, was driven by fear of urban crime, falling property values and public school integration as well as government and military policy, then the sftrvc may be interpreted as a second wave of flight, from the suburban and exurban edge, to ‘anywhere’ and ‘everywhere’, one carried out by the same cohort that took part in the first wave. in light of the conventional three-part rv maxim – ‘freedom, independence and adventure’ – it would be possible to speculate that the second wave is at the same time driven by a fear of confinement, dependence and boredom in the suburban periphery. based on the “endless search for the promised-land in new settlements”, castells comments that this also means that “each wave of social and physical escapism (for example, the abandonment of inner cities, leaving the lower social classes and ethnic minorities trapped in ruins) deepened the crisis of american cities” (1996: 400). the abandonment of the suburbs by retirees may be inter preted in its most negative light as another form of self-interested escapism from territory – designed predominantly for the young nuclear family – that neither delivered the lifestyle promised, nor structured a lifestyle suitable for an increasingly aged population.9 imagining: technological arcadia the strongest historical resonance to the sftrvc is located in the projected spatial visions of members of the 1960s and 1970s architectural avant-garde such as superstudio and archigram. archigram in particular – through projects such as instant city, walking city, living pod and freetime node – engaged in themes of nomadism, networks, mobility and transience; they focused on the exploitation of technology to further personal choice and freedom. this approach – characterized most distinctly in their declared moratorium on building – challenged (to paraphrase archigram) an architectural establishment distracted in the tenets of permanence and good-taste. the suspension of ‘building’ in archigram’s work was not meant to signal the end of urbanism, but the emergence of a new form of urbanism based upon an (increasingly invisible) infrastructure. for this new urbanity to emerge, wrote archigram’s david green: … we will have to wait until the steel and concrete mausoleums of our cities, villages and towns etc., decay and the suburbs bloom and flourish. they in turn will die and the world will perhaps again be a garden. and that perhaps is the dream, and we should all be busy persuading not to build but to prepare for the invisible networks in the air. (green, 1969: 297) this particular urban vision – described by commentators as techno-primitivism, high-tech ruralism or techno-pastoralism – is centred on a return to nature through technology; escaping the constraints and the monotony of the city through ‘urbanism’. in the 1969 project, “instant city: children’s primer”, green described a scenario for a dispersed city of nomadic inhabitants living in trailers. he referred to trailer nomads as ‘node-owners’ plugged into camouflaged ‘logplugs’ and ‘rokplugs’ in the wilderness. logplugs, for example, would offer vital services such as water and power, and importantly what was referred to as the ‘international information hookup’ – an archigram-ism for the yet-to-be-invented internet: “plugs will increase the service to these [instant and remote] communities…. the whole of london or new york will be available in the world’s leafy hollows, deserts and flowered meadows” (green, 1969: 297). imagined is a utopia formed from the collision of the most urban and the most anti-urban of conditions, in which the most ‘ideal’ aspects of the urban realm would be brought to the ‘natural’ environment. with this in mind, instant city may be considered as a premonition of the contemporary sftrvc, an urban vision realized by the same generational cohort, 30 to 40 years later, as retirees. evolving in this context, it is necessary not to underestimate how radical the realization of this set of practices on such a large scale is. the sftrvc represents a social movement operating as a distributed city – roughly equivalent in inhabitants to the city of chicago, the third largest city in the us – produced without planning or buildings (in the conventional sense of these terms). by virtue of having been realized, these experiments produce an urbanism that exceeds the somewhat uncomplicated imaging of archigram’s technologized arcadia, with its romantic vision of technology and nature as a means of transcending the limitations of the city. grown from a particular set of socio-demographic, technological and cultural conditions, this form of spatial organization clearly problematizes the conventionally aligned series of relations between sedentary and nomadic, urban and rural, dense and sparse, town and country, home and away, and culture and nature. the short-circuiting of these constructs, with the support of infrastructural networks, offers potential (both positive and negative) for reconfig. 14: rv camp-fire. photograph by deane simpson. fig. 14 9. the argument for suburbia’s failure to address the needs and desires of the new third age is most clearly stated in del webb’s sun city film, the beginning, from the mid-1960s. interstices 09 figuring approaches to defining contemporary urbanity: in discarding conventional notions of ‘home’, for example, alternative practices of ‘homemaking’ are developing; in being forced to give up regular consumptive practices, new ones are evolving; and in abandoning traditional forms of sedentary civic engagement, other modes of civic action are emerging. references barfield, t. (1993). the nomadic alternative. upper saddle river (nj): prentice hall. beck, u. (1992). risk society: towards a new modernity. london: sage. blaikie, a. (1999). ageing and popular culture. cambridge: cambridge university press. carmichael, m. (1991). nomads. london: collins & brown. castells, m. (1996). the rise of the network society. london: blackwell. castells, m. (2001). informationalism and the network society. in h. pekka (ed.), the hacker ethic and the spirit of the information age (pp. 155-78). new york: random house. cresswell, t. (1997). imagining the nomad: mobility and the postmodern primitive. in g. benko and u. strohmayar (eds.), space and social theory: interpreting modernity and postmodernity (pp. 360-379). oxford: blackwell. counts, d. a., & counts, d. r. (1996). over the next hill: an ethnography of rving seniors in north america. peterborough (ontario): broadview press. dean, p. (2000). outback metropolis – time sharing urbanism. architecture australia, (january-february), 86-91. deleuze, g., & guattari, f. (1986). nomadology: the war machine. minneapolis: semiotext(e) university of minnesota press. grant, r. (2003). ghost riders: travels with american nomads. london: little, brown. green, d. (1969). children’s primer. in d. lachmayer, p. shoenig & d. crompton (eds.), a guide to archigram 1961-1974 (p. 297). london: academy editions. huber, a., & o’reilly, k. (2004). the construction of heimat under conditions of individualized modernity: swiss and british elderly migrants in spain. ageing and society, (24), 327-51. jabbur, j. s. (1995). the bedouins and the desert. albany (ny): state university of new york press. khaldun, i. (1967 [1377]). the muqaddimah. princeton (nj): princeton university press. recreational vehicle industry association (rvia) (2006). what is a recreational vehicle. retrieved 12 october, 2005, http://www.rvia.org/content/navigationmenu/rvfactsnews/ rvtypesprices/default.htm varnelis, k. (2007). swarm intelligence: quartzsite arizona. in r. sumrell & k. varnelis, blue monday: stories of absurd realities and natural philosophies (pp. 144-170). barcelona: actar. white, r. (2000). home on the road. washington (dc): smithsonian. wiley, b. & wiley, j. (2006). the walmart locator (6th ed.). bend (oregon): wiley products. interstices 09 115 after the crash thomas daniell review by andrew barrie western architectural critics are tempted to write about japan in ways they would describe architecture from few other countries. only a very brave critic would attempt to define the influence of church of england theology on norman foster’s work or to propose the hagia sophia as a ‘prototype’ that still informs the work of contemporary european architects. architectural commentators, however, have been perfectly willing to discuss toyo ito’s architecture in relation to buddhist beliefs or to suggest the roots of sanaa’s design for the twenty-firstcentury museum of contemporary art in kanazawa can be found in sixteenthcentury japanese palace architecture. to be fair to western commentators, they have often been led astray by the locals. the tendency to interpret japan’s contemporary architecture through relatively obscure parts of its cultural history or architectural heritage began in the 1920s, when japan’s increasingly nationalist authorities demanded new buildings be built according to an ‘oriental taste’. the progressive japanese architects then advocating european-style modernism began, largely as a political strategy to make their ideas more palatable, promoting an interpretation of certain strains of japanese traditional architecture as a form of proto-modernism. these ideas were picked up and disseminated by bruno taut and others, and japan’s traditions became one of the few vernacular reference points deemed compatible with modernist ideals, which otherwise sought a clean break with the past. this use of japanese culture took a new turn in the 1970s, when a new generation of commentators and architects under the leadership of arata isozaki began expounding the importance of hitherto obscure spiritual and anthropological concepts. this dubious anthropology was denounced at the time as an attempt by the architects involved to exoticize japanese architecture, and by extension their own work, but the ideas found a foothold and were repeated so regularly as to become clichés. of course, there are connections between japan’s cultural anthropology and its contemporary architecture, but locating these often requires looking past much more immediate influences and pervasive ideas. these include the architectural implications of the unique urban structure of japanese cities, massive demographic changes in the society, and the character of the local construction industry. japan’s slow-motion economic crash in the early 1990s made apparent the frivolousness of much of what had gone before and marked the emergence of a new seriousness in japanese architecture. architects dropped the wildly experimental approach that characterized the 1980s, and began focussing on the objective realities of japan’s social, economic and urban situation. it is this clear-headed reconsideration of architectural fundamentals that provides the key themes for thomas daniell’s after the crash: architecture in postbubble japan. as befits its serious subject matter, after the crash is a sober volume. within its simple black-on-white cover, the 200-odd a5 pages are sparely illustrated with black-and-white photos and drawings; the text has priority. the text consists of revised versions of 25 of daniell’s essays and articles written for a variety of architecture and design journals. as befits a period in which big issues are earnestly reconsidered, these essays offer lucid critique and insightful observation. daniell describes how a good deal of what seems to foreign eyes most extraordinary about contemporary japanese architecture has emerged from pragmatic responses to the unique constraints of the japanese context. he explains how, for example, the highly sculptural forms employed in small houses often result simply from the town-planning constraints impinging on the project: the intense pressure to maximize occupiable space on tiny sites often inflates building volumes into the precise angular geometry of the town-planning recession plane envelope. after the crash is one of the first english-language books to survey the japanese scene published since the millennium. as an anthology of essays, some very short, the book is a montage of scenes rather than a comprehensive survey. a number of the essays focus on the work of relatively minor figures (there are two essays on the work of kiyoshi sei takeyama) or on minor works by major figures (waro kishi’s hutong house). while it covers the key themes driving contemporary japanese architecture, as a fairly compact book it necessarily omits many of the key figures (including kengo kuma, tadao ando, shigeru ban) and key works (such as riken yamamoto’s university campuses, yoshio taniguchi’s gallery of horyuji treasures). however, if the book is paired with another recent publication with which daniell was involved – the “parallel nippon” issue of the japan architect, which surveys key japanese buildings from 1996 to 2006 – the depth of after the crash would complement the ja’s breadth to provide what is currently the best record of the post-bubble era. after the crash cements daniell’s place as one of the most articulate and astute interpreters of the japanese architecture scene for western audiences. within the necessarily partial coverage created by the book’s anthology format, it concisely captures a moment in japan’s architectural history. as daniell acknowledges in his introduction, however, that moment is already receding into the past. japan seems at last to be emerging from post-bubble gloom, and the themes of daniell’s essays are giving way to new ideas and approaches. a new generation of architects is emerging whose work, while moderated by the pragmatism of the last decade, returns to the experimental attitude of the bubble era. as these new alignments begin to coalesce, let us hope that commentators can follow daniell’s lead and escape the clichés of the past. references parallel nippon: contemporary japanese architecture 1996-2006 (2007). japan architect, 65(spring). thomas daniell, after the crash: architecture in post-bubble japan (new york: princeton architectural press, 2008). battlelines e.1027 battle lines: e.1027 beatriz colomina what the word for space, raum, rum, designates is said by its ancient meaning. raum means a place cleared or freed for settlement and lodging. a space is something that has been made room for, something that is cleared and free, namely within a boundary, greek peras. a boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing. t h a t i s w h y t h e c o n c e p t i s t h a t o f horismos, t h a t i s , t h e h o r i z o n , t h e boundary. space is in essence that for which room has been made, that which is let into its bounds. martin heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” poetry, language, thought trans. albert hofstadter (new york: harper and row, 1971) interstices 4 battle lines: e.1027 1 the horizon is an interior (fig 1). it defines an enclosure. in its familiar sense, it marks a limit to the space of what can be seen, which is to say, it organises this visual space into an interior. the horizon makes the outside, the landscape, into an inside. how could that happen? only if the “walls” that enclose the space cease to be thought of (exclusively) as solid pieces of material, as stone walls, as brick walls. the horizon organises the outside into a vertical plane, that of vision. shelter is provided by the horizon’s ability to turn the threatening world of the “outside” into a reassuring picture. but heidegger repeatedly opposed the transformation of the world into a picture, a “world-picture.” in the metaphysical foundations of logic, he makes even more explicit the idea that the horizon is an enclosure, but also quickly dismissed the primacy of vision implied in the familiar sense of horizon: we understand ‘horizon’ to be the circumference of the field of vision. but horizon, from opic∑iv, i s n o t a t a l l primarily related to looking and intuiting, but by itself means simply that which delimits, encloses, the enclosure.1 before vision, the horizon is a boundary, an enclosure, an architecture. the way we think about architecture is always organised by the way we think about boundaries. traditionally it is a matter of walls dividing inside from outside, public from private, and so on. with modernity there is a displacement of the traditional sense of an inside, as an enclosed space established in opposition to the outside. all boundaries are now shifting. this shifting becomes manifest everywhere: in the city, of course, but also in all the technologies that define the space of the city: the railroad, newspapers, photography, electricity, advertisements, reinforced concrete, glass and steel architecture, the telephone, film, radio, war. each can be understood as a mechanism that disrupts the older boundaries between inside and outside, public and private, night and day, depth and surface, here and there, street and interior, and so on. today, the boundaries that define space are first and foremost an effect of the media. (and not exclusively visual media. think for example about the space of sound: the radio, telephone, walkman.) the status of the wall has changed. throughout this century, this disturbance of boundaries has often been understood as a threat to identity, a loss of self. in talking about horizons, and in condemning their displacement by modern technologies, heidegger, for example, was elaborating nietzsche’s claim that a living thing can be healthy, strong and fruitful only when bounded by a horizon ... a man ... sickens and collapses [if] the lines of his horizon are always restlessly changing.2 modern man, then, will indeed be sick. with every new technology new sicknesses are identified. the idea of modernity can never be separated from the idea of sickness. even space itself, or more precisely the absence of boundaries, is seen to produce sickness. at the turn of the century, urban theorists like camillo sitte criticised modern town planning for its failure to institute boundaries. without a clear horizon, he said, the modern dweller suffers from new nervous disorders such as agoraphobia.3 interstices 4 battle lines: e.1027 2 but these sicknesses are almost always phantasmic. the identity of the supposedly unified self threatened by the displacement of the horizon is itself suspect and must be interrogated. this interrogation must address architectural discourse since the question of horizon is, from the beginning, an architectural question. 1952. the same year that heidegger publishes “building, dwelling, thinking,” the spanish architect josé luis sert, then president of ciam (congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne), opens the 8th congress, the heart of the city, which was devoted to “the core,” with a long quotation from jose ortega y gasset’s the revolt of the masses: for in truth the most accurate definition of the urbs and the polis is very like the comic definition of a cannon. you take a hole, wrap some steel wire tightly round it, and that’s your cannon. so the urbs o r t h e polis s t a r t s b y being an empty space, the forum, the agora, and all the rest are just means of fixing that empty space, of limiting its outlines. the polis i s n o t p r i m a r i l y a c o l l e c t i o n o f habitable dwellings, but a meeting place for citizens, a space set apart for public functions. the city is not built, as is the cottage or the domus , to shelter from the weather, and to propagate the species these are personal, family concerns but in order to discuss public affairs. observe that this signifies nothing less than the invention of a new kind of space, much more new than the space of einstein. till then only one space existed, that of the open country, with all the consequences that this involves for the existence of man. the man of the fields is still a sort of vegetable. his existence, all that he feels, thinks, wishes for, preserves the listless drowsiness in which the plant lives. the great civilisations of asia and africa were, from this point of view, huge anthropomorphic vegetations. but the greco-roman decides to separate himself from the fields, from nature, from the geo-botanic cosmos. how is this possible? how can man withdraw himself from the fields? where will he go, since the earth is one huge, unbounded field? quite simply; he will mark off a portion of this field by means of walls, which set up an enclosed finite space over against amorphous, limitless space. here you have the public square. it is not like the house, an “interior” shut in from above, as are the caves which exist in the fields, it is purely and simply the negation of the fields. the square, thanks to the walls which enclose it, is a portion of the countryside which turns its back on the rest, eliminates the rest, and sets up in opposition to it.4 the urbs is “like” a cannon. the city is “like” a military weapon. this was not a casual example. war was written all over this congress and its idea of public space. but what kind of war? most literally, it was world war ii. the end of the war found many ciam architects involved in the task of replanning central areas of bombed-out cities. they saw themselves as heart surgeons, trying to reconstruct vital organs of the city. from this came their preoccupation with the city and with “public space,” which they understood as place of “public gathering,” both in the traditional sense of “public squares, promenades, cafés,” etc., and also in what they saw as its most modern counterparts: “railroad stations, bus terminals, landing strips.” but also from this came their clear, almost phobic, opposition to the new means of communications, which were already redefining the sense of public. radio, movies, television and printed information are today absorbing the whole field of communication. when these elements are directed by a few, the influence of these few over the many may become a menace to our freedom.5 the media were identified with war, which is not surprising given its crucial role during w w ii. underlying this, however, was the common assumption that the public domain is the domain of violence, whether overt or latent, an assumption that is still currency today. domestic violence is silenced, unrepresented. but isn’t this silencing, this lack of representation, itself violent? but ciam 8 was not simply declaring war against the media. sert insisted on bringing the media into the public square (movies, television screen, radio, loudspeakers ...), and in so doing turning public space, in his words, into “balconies from where they [the public] could watch the whole world.” 6 n o t e that the balcony is an element from domestic architecture, a place for both looking and being looked at. to say that public space is a balcony is already to recognise that the public is not so much a negation of the interior, as in the quotation from ortega y gasset, but rather an occupation of its traditional boundary: the wall. to be in public is to be inscribed in the limit of the interior, inscribed in order to “watch the whole world” (a sense familiar to us today in the commonplace idea that to occupy public space is to be at home watching t.v.). far from declaring war on the media, sert was installing them. the real war here is architectural. the very separation between public and private, inside and outside, is itself violent in ortega y gasset’s passage. the public is established “in opposition,” “against,” “as negation;” “it turns its back,” all these terms mark a interstices 4 battle lines: e.1027 3 certain hostility. public space is produced by a violent effacement of the private. but here, returning to ortega y gasset’s cannon, what is wrapped around the hole that is public space are the interiors excluded from it. the cannon is therefore constructed out of domestic spaces. it is not that public space is violent and the “interior” is safe. the “interior” is the steel wire of the cannon. it is the very substance of the weapon. the interior is therefore precisely the possibility of the violence that becomes visible outside it. e. 1027 (fig 2). a modern white house is perched on the rocks, a hundred feet above the mediterranean sea, in a remote place, in roquebrune at cap martin. the site is “inaccessible and not overlooked from anywhere.”7 no road leads to this house. it was designed and built by eileen gray for jean badovici and herself between 1928 and 1929. she named the house e.1027: “e” for eileen, “10” for j (the tenth letter of the alphabet), “2” for b and “7” for g. they both lived there most of the summer months until gray built her own house in castellar in 1934. after the death of badovici in 1956, the house was sold to the swiss architect marie louise schelbert. she found the walls riddled with bullet holes. clearly the house had been the site of some considerable violence. in a 1969 letter, she comments on the state of the house: “corbu did not want anything repaired and urged me to leave it as it is as a reminder of war.” 8 b u t w h a t kind of war? most obviously, it was world war ii. the bullet holes are wounds from the german occupation. but what violence was there to the house before the bullets, and even before the inevitable relationship of modern architecture to the military? and anyway, to start with, what is le corbusier doing here? what brings him to this isolated spot, this remote house that will eventually be the site of his own death? as a young man he had travelled in the balkans and the near east and had made sketches of strange, inaccessible places and scenes. it was perhaps through a natural, antiromantic reaction of maturity that later, as a purist, he proposed to paint what was duplicable and near-at-hand.9 we will have to go back to le corbusier’s earlier travels, to the “strange, inaccessible places and scenes” that he had conquered through drawing. at the very least, to le corbusier’s trip to algiers in the spring of 1931. this was the first encounter in what will become a long relationship to this city, or in le corbusier’s words: “twelve years of uninterrupted study of algiers.”10 by all accounts, this study began with his drawing of algerian women. he said later that he had been “profoundly seduced by a type of woman particularly well built” of which he made many nude studies.11 he also acquired a big collection of coloured postcards representing naked women surrounded by accoutrements from the oriental bazaar. jean de maisonseul (later the director of the musée national des beaux arts d’alger), who as an eighteen year old boy had guided le corbusier through the casbah recalls their tour: our wanderings through the side streets led us at the end of the day to the rue kataroudji where he [le corbusier] was fascinated by the beauty of two young girls, one spanish and the other algerian. they brought us up a narrow stairway to their room; there he sketched some nudes on to my amazement some schoolbook graph paper with coloured pencils; the sketches of the spanish girl lying both alone on the bed and beautifully grouped together with the algerian turned out accurate and realistic; but he said that they were very bad and refused to show them.12 le corbusier filled three notebooks of sketches in algiers that he later claimed were stolen from his atelier in paris. but ozenfant denies it, saying that le corbusier himself either destroyed them or hid them, considering them a “secret d’atelier.”13 the algerian sketches and postcards appear to be a rather ordinary instance of the ingrained mode of a fetishistic appropriation of women, of the east, of “the other.” but le corbusier, as samir rafi and stanislaus von moos have noted, turned this material into “preparatory studies for and the basis of a projected monumental figure composition, the plans for which seem to have preoccupied le corbusier during many years, if not his entire life.”14 from the months immediately following his return from algiers until his death, le corbusier seems to have made hundreds and hundreds of sketches on yellow tracing paper by laying it over the original sketches and retracing the contours of the figures (ozenfant believed that le corbusier had redrawn his own sketches with the help of photographs or postcards).15 he also studied delacroix’s famous painting femmes d’alger (fig 3) exhaustively, producing a series of sketches of the outlines of the figures in this painting divested of their “exotic clothing” and the “oriental decor.”16 soon the two projects merged (f i g s 4 , 5 ) h e modified the gestures of delacroix figures, gradually making them correspond to the figures in his own sketches. he said that he would have called the final composition femmes de la casbah .17 but, in fact, he never finished it. he kept redrawing it. that the drawing and redrawing of these images became a life time obsession already interstices 4 battle lines: e.1027 4 indicates that something was at stake. this becomes even more obvious when in 1963-4, shortly before his death, le corbusier, unhappy with the visible aging of the yellow tracing paper, copied a selection of twenty six drawings onto transparent paper and, symptomatically, for someone who kept everything, burned the rest.18 but the process of drawing and redrawing the femmes de la casbah reached its most intense, if not hysterical, moment when le corbusier’s studies found their way into a mural that he completed in 1938 in e.1027 (fig 6). le corbusier referred to the mural as sous les pilotis or graffite à cap martin, and sometimes he also labels it three women.19 all three are remarkable titles. why “pilotis” when eileen gray never speaks of pilotis? why would le corbusier describe his own work as graffiti? and who are these three women anyway? according to schelbert, le corbusier explained to his friends that ‘badou’ [badovici] was depicted on the right, his friend eileen gray on the left; the outline of the head and the hairpiece of the sitting figure in the middle, he claimed, was ‘the desired child, which was never born.’20 this extraordinary scene, a defacement of gray’s architecture, was perhaps even an effacement of her sexuality, her relationship to badovici notwithstanding. for gray was openly gay. and in so far as badovici is here represented as just one of the three women and reveals as much as it conceals, it is clearly a “theme for a psychiatrist,” as le corbusier in vers une architecture remarks of the nightmares with which people invest their houses.21 w e s h o u l d also take into account le corbusier’s obsessive relationship to this house as manifest and this is only one example of a complex pathology in his quasi-occupation of the site after world war ii, when he built a small wooden shack (the “cabanon”) for himself at the very limits of the adjacent property, right behind eileen gray’s house. he occupied and controlled the site by overlooking it, the cabin being little more than an observation platform, a sort of watchdog house. the imposition of this appropriating gaze is even more brutal if we remember that eileen gray had chosen the site because it was, in peter adam’s words, “inaccessible and not overlooked from anywhere.” but the violence of this occupation had already been established when le corbusier painted the murals in this house (there were eight altogether) without the permission of eileen gray, who had already moved out. she considered it an act of vandalism. indeed, as adam has put it, it was a rape. a fellow architect, a man she admired, had without her consent defaced her design.22 the defacement of the house went hand in hand with the effacement of gray as an architect. when le corbusier published the murals in his oeuvre complète (1946) and in l’architecture d’aujourd’hui (1948), eileen gray’s house is referred to as “a house in cap-martin,” her name is not even mentioned.23 le corbusier will end up, later on, getting credit for t h e d e s i g n o f t h e h o u s e a n d e v e n f o r s o m e of its furniture.24 still today the confusion continues, with many writers attributing the house to badovici alone, o r a t b e s t , t o badovici and gray, and some still suggesting that le corbusier had collaborated on the project. eileen gray’s name does not figure, even as footnote, in most histories of modern architecture, including the most recent, and ostensibly critical ones. “what a narrow prison you have built for me over a number of years, and particularly this year through your vanity,” badovici wrote to le corbusier in 1949 about the whole episode (in a letter that adam thinks may have been dictated by gray herself).25 l e corbusier replied in a way that makes it clear that he is replying to gray: you want a statement from me based on my worldwide authority to show if i correctly understand your innermost thoughts to demonstrate ‘the quality of pure and functional architecture’ which is manifested by you in the house at cap martin, and has been destroyed by my pictorial interventions. ok, you send me some photographic documents of this manipulation of pure functionalism ... also send some documents on castellar, this u-boat of functionalism; then i will spread this debate in front of the whole world.26 now le corbusier was threatening to carry the battle from the house into the newspapers and architectural periodicals. but his public position completely contradicted what he had expressed privately. in 1938, the same year he went on to paint the mural graffite à cap martin, le corbusier had written a letter to eileen gray, after spending some days in e. 1027 with badovici, where not only does he acknowledge her sole authorship but also how much he likes the house: i am so happy to tell you how much those few days spent in your house have made me appreciate the rare spirit which dictates all the organisation, inside and outside, and given to the modern furniture the equipment such dignified form, so charming, so full of spirit.27 interstices 4 battle lines: e.1027 5 why, then, did le corbusier vandalise the very house he loved? did he think the murals would enhance it? certainly not. le corbusier had repeatedly stated that the role of the mural in architecture is to “destroy” the wall, to dematerialise it. in a letter to vladimir nekrassov in 1932, he wrote: “i admit the mural not to enhance a wall, but on the contrary, as a means to violently destroy the wall, to remove from it all sense of stability, of weight, etc.”28 t h e m u r a l for le corbusier was a weapon against architecture, a bomb. but “why then to paint on the walls ... at the risk of killing architecture?” he asks in the same letter, and then answers: “it is when one is pursuing another task, that of telling stories.”29 so what then is the story that he so urgently needed to tell with grafitte à cap martin? we will have to go back once more to algiers. in fact, le corbusier’s complimentary letter to eileen gray, sent from cap martin on april 28 1938, bears the letterhead: hotel aletti alger. le corbusier’s violation of eileen gray’s house and identity is consistent with his fetishisation of algerian women. one might even argue that the child in this mural reconstitutes the missing (maternal) phallus, whose absence, freud argues, organises fetishism. in these terms, the endless drawing and redrawing is the scene of a violent substitution that in le corbusier would seem to require the house, domestic space, as prop. violence is organised around or through the house. in both circumstances (algiers or cap martin) the scene starts with an intrusion, the carefully orchestrated occupation of a house. but the house is in the end effaced: erased from the algiers’ drawings, defaced at cap martin. significantly, le corbusier describes drawing as the occupation of a “stranger’s house.” in his last book, creation is a patient search, he writes: “by working with our hands, by drawing, we enter the house of a stranger, we are enriched by the experience, we learn.”30 drawing, as has often been noted, plays a crucial part in le corbusier’s process of appropriation of the exterior world. he repeatedly opposes his technique of drawing to photography: when one travels and works with visual things architecture, painting or sculpture one uses one’s eyes and draws, so as to fix deep down in one’s experience what is seen. once the impression has been recorded by the pencil, it stays for good entered, registered, inscribed. the camera is a tool for idlers, who use a machine to do their seeing for them.31 clearly, it is statements such as this that have gained le corbusier the reputation of having a phobia for the camera, despite the crucial role of photography in his work. but what is the specific relation between photography and drawing in le corbusier? the sketches of the algerian women were not only redrawings of live models but also redrawings of postcards. one could even argue that the construction of the algerian women in french postcards (fig 7), widely diffused at the time,32 would have informed le corbusier’s life drawings (f i g 8 ) in the same way that, as zeynep çelik notes, le corbusier precisely reenacts the images of foreign cities (istambul or algiers, for example) constructed by postcards and tourist guides when he actually enters these cities. in these terms, he not only “knew what he wanted to see,”33 a s ç e l i k s a y s , b u t h e s a w what he had already seen (in pictures). he “enters” those pictures. he inhabits the photographs. the redrawings of the femme de algiers are also more likely to have been realised, as von moos points out, from postcards and reproductions than from the original painting in the louvre.34 so what, then, is the specific role of the photographic image as such in the fetishistic scene of the femme d’algiers project? the fetish is “pure presence ,” writes victor burgin, “and how many times have i been told that photographs ‘lack presence,’ that paintings are to be valued because of their presence!”35 clearly this separation between painting and photography is what organises the dominant understanding of le corbusier’s relation to photography. what these accounts seem to ignore is that here the drawing, the hand-crafted artistic meditation, is done “after” the photograph, the art reproduction, the postcard. i n f a c t , t h e whole mentality of the femmes de la casbah drawings is photographic. not only are they made from photographs. they are developed according to a repetitive process where the images are systematically reproduced on transparent paper, the grid o f the o rigin a l gra p h p a p er allowing the image to be enlarged to any scale. this photographic sensibility becomes most obvious with the murals at cap martin. traditionally, they have been understood as paradigm of le corbusier the painter, the craftsman detached from mechanical reproduction, an interpretation to which le corbusier himself has contributed with the circulation of that famous photograph of him, naked, working at one of the murals (f i g 9 ). (this is the only nude image of him that we know. that it had to be here, in this scene, is in itself telling.) but what is normally omitted is that graffite à cap martin interstices 4 battle lines: e.1027 6 was not conceived on the wall itself. le corbusier used an electric projector to enlarge the image of a small drawing onto the 2.50m x 4m white wall where he etched the mural in black. it is said that, in using black, le corbusier was thinking about picasso’s guernica of the year before, and that picasso, in his turn, was so impressed with the mural at cap martin that it prompted him to do his own versions of the femmes d’alger (fig 10 ). apparently, he drew delacroix’s painting from memory and was “frappé ” t o f i n d o u t l a t e r t h a t t h e figure he had painted in the middle, lying down, with her legs crossed, was not in delacroix.36 it was, of course, graffitte à cap martin that he remembered, the reclining crossed-legged women (inviting but inaccessible), le corbusier’s symptomatic representation of eileen gray. but if le corbusier’s mural had so impressed him, how come picasso chose not to see that a swastika was inscribed into the chest of the woman on the right? the swastika may be yet one more sign of le corbusier’s political opportunism (remember that the mural was done in 1938). but the german soldiers, who occupied the house during wwii, may not have seen the swastika either, for it was this very wall that was found riddled with bullet holes, as if it had been the site of some execution. t h e m u r a l w a s a b l a c k a n d w h i t e p h o t o g r a p h . l e corbusier’s fetish is photographic. after all, photography too has been read in term of the fetish. victor burgin writes: fetishism thus accomplishes that separation of knowledge from belief characteristic of representation; its motive is the unity of the subject. the photograph stands to the subject-viewer as does the fetished object ... we know we see a two-dimensional surface, we believe we look through it into three-dimensional space, we cannot do both at the same time there is a coming and going between knowledge and belief.37 so if le corbusier “enters the house of a stranger” by drawing, could “the house” be standing in here for the photograph? by drawing he enters the photograph that is itself a stranger’s house, occupying and reterritorialising the space, the city, and the sexualities of the other by reworking the image. drawing on and in photography is the instrument of colonisation. the entry to the house of a stranger is always a breaking and entering there being no entry without force no matter how many invitations. le corbusier’s architecture depends in some way on specific techniques of occupying and yet gradually effacing the domestic space of the other (fig 11). like all colonists, le corbusier does not think of it as an invasion but as a gift. when recapitulating his life work five years before his death, he symptomatically wrote about algiers and cap martin in the same terms: from 1930 l-c devoted twelve years to an uninterrupted s t u d y o f a l g i e r s a n d i t s f u t u r e . . . seven great schemes (seven enormous studies) were prepared free of charge during those years. and later, 1938-39. eight mural paintings (free of charge) in the badovici and helen grey house at cap martin.38 no charge for the discharge. eileen gray was outraged, now even her name had been defaced. and renaming is, after all, the first act of colonisation. such gifts can not be returned. p.s. in 1944, the retreating german army blew up eileen gray’s apartment in menton having vandalised e. 1027 and temple a paiella (her house in castellar). she lost everything. her drawings and plans were used to light fires. p.p.s. on august 26, 1965, the endless redrawing of the femmes d’alger still unfinished, le corbusier went down from e. 1027 to the sea and swam to his death. p.p.p.s. in 1977 a local mason in charge of some work in the house “mistakenly” demolished the mural graffitte.39 i like to think that he did it on purpose. eileen gray had spend almost three years living on the site in complete isolation, building the house with the masons, having lunch with them every day. then again, she did the same thing when building her own house at castellar. the masons knew her well; in fact, they loved her, and hated the arrogant badovici. they understood perfectly what the mural was about. they destroyed it. in so doing, they showed more enlightenment than most critics and historians of architecture. p.p.p.p.s. since then, the mural has been reconstructed in the house from the basis of photographs. it re-emerged from its original medium. the occupation continues. interstices 4 battle lines: e.1027 7 1 martin heidegger, the metaphysical foundations of logic trans. michael heim (bloomington: indiana press, 1984), p. 208. 2 friedrich nietzsche, “on the uses and disavantages of history for life,” untimely meditations trans. r. j. hollingdale (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1983), p. 63. 3 camillo sitte, city planning according to artistic principles trans. george r . c o l l i n s a n d christiane crasemann collins idem camillo sitte: the birth of modern city planning (new york: rizzoli international, 1986), p. 183. 4 josé ortega y gasset, the revolt of the masses ( n e w york: w.w. norton & company inc, 1932), pp. 164-5; cited, j.l. sert “centres of community life,” ciam 8: the heart of the city, towards the humanization of urban life e d . j . tyrwhitt et al. (new york: pellegrini and cudahy, 1952), p. 3. 5 sert, “centres of community life,” p. 6. 6 sert, “centres of community life,” p. 8. 7 peter adam eileen gray: architect/designer (new york: harry n. abrams, 1987), p. 174. 8 marie louise schelbert, letter to stanislaus von moos (february 14, 1969); quoted stanislaus von moos, “le corbusier as painter,” oppositions (1980), n. 19-20, p. 93. 9 james thrall soby, “le corbusier, muralist,” interiors (1948), p. 100. 10 le corbusier, my work trans. james palmes (london: the architectural press, 1960), p. 50. 11 samir rafi, “le corbusier et ‘les femmes d’alger,’” revue d’histoire et de civilisation du maghreb (algiers: january 1968), p. 51. 12 jean de maisonseul, letter to samir rafi, (january 5, 1968); quoted, von moos, “le corbusier as painter,” p. 89. 13 from several conversations of both le corbusier and ozenfant with samir rafi in 1964; quoted, rafi, “le corbusier et ‘les femmes d’alger,’” p. 51. 14 von moos, “le corbusier as painter,” p. 91. 15 conversation of ozenfant with samir rafi, (8 june, 1964); quoted, rafi, “le corbusier et ‘les femmes d’alger,’” p. 52. 16 von moos, “le corbusier as painter,” p. 93. 17 rafi, “le corbusier et ‘les femmes d’alger,’” p. 54-55. 18 rafi, “le corbusier et ‘les femmes d’alger,’” p. 60. 19 le corbusier refers to the mural as “graffiti at cap martin,” le corbusier, my work; stanislaus von moos labels the mural “three women” (graffite à cap martin), von moos, “le corbusier as painter;” and samir rafi labels the final composition from which the mural was derived “assemblage des trois femmes: composition définitive. encre de chine sur papier calque. 49.7 x 64.4 cm. coll. particulière. milan,” rafi, “le corbusier et ‘les femmes d’alger.’” 20 marie louise schelbert, letter to stanislaus von moos, (february 14, 1969); quoted, von moos, “le corbusier as painter.” 21 le corbusier, vers une architecture (paris: crès, 1923), p . 1 9 6 . t h e passage here referred to is omitted in the english version of this book. 22 adam, eileen gray: architect/designer p. 311. 23 see adam eileen gray: architect/designer p. 334-335. n o caption of the photographs of the murals published in l’architecture d’aujourd’hui mentions eileen gray. in subsequent publications, the house is either simply described as “maison badovici” or credited directly to him. the first recognition of e gray in architecture since the twenties came from joseph rykwert, “eileen gray: pioneer of design,” architectural review (december 1972), pp. 357-361. 24 for example, in an article entitled “le corbusier, muralist,” published in interiors (june 1948), the caption of the murals at cap martin reads: “murals, interior and exterior, executed in sgraffito technique on white plaster, in a house designed by le corbusier and p. jeanneret, cap martin, 1938. and still in 1981 in casa vogue n. 119, milan, the house is described as “firmata eileen gray-le corbusier” (“signed eileen gray and le corbusier”), and an eileen gray sofa as “pezzo unico di le corbusier” (“unique piece b y l e corbusier); quoted, jean paul rayon and brigitte loye, “eileen gray architetto 1879-1976,” casabella (may 1982), n. 480, pp. 38-42. 25 “quelle réclusion étroite que m’a faite votre vanité depuis quelques années et qu’elle m’a faite plus particulièrement cette année”. badovici, letter to le corbusier, (december 30, 1949), fondation le corbusier; quoted, brigitte loye, eileen gray 18791976: architecture design (paris: analeph/j.p. viguier, 1983), p. 86. english in adam, eileen gray: architect/designer p. 335. interstices 4 battle lines: e.1027 8 26 ... vous réclamez une mise au point de moi, couverte de mon autorité mondiale, et démontrant--si je comprends le sens profond de votre pensée ‘la qualité d’architecture fonctionnelle pure’ manifesté par vous dans la maison de cap martin et anéantie par mon intervention picturale. d’ac (sic), si vous me fournissez les documents photographiques de cette manipulation fonctionnelle pure: ‘entrez lentement;’ ‘pyjamas;’ ‘petites choses;’ ‘chaussons;’ ‘robes;’ ‘pardessus et parapluies;’ et quelques documents de castellar, ce sous-marin de la fonctionnalité: alors je m’efforcerai d’étaler le débat au monde entier ... le corbusier, letter to badovici, fondation le corbusier; quoted in loye, eileen gray 1879-1976: architecture design p . 8 3 8 4 . english translation in adam, eileen gray: architect/designer p. 335-336. 27 le corbusier, letter to eileen gray, cap martin, (28 april, 1938); quoted, adam, eileen gray: architect/designer pp. 309-310. 28 “j’admets la fresque non pas pour mettre en valeur un mur, mais au contraire comme un moyen pour détruire tumultueusement le mur, lui enlever toute notion de stabilité, de poids, etc.” le corbusier, le passé à réaction poétique catalogue of an exhibition organised by the caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites/ministère de la culture et de la communication, (paris: 1988), p. 75. 29 “mais pourquoi a-t-on peint les murs des chapelles au risque de tuer l’architecture? c’est qu’on poursuivait une autre tâche, qui était celle de raconter des histoires” le corbusier, le passé à réaction poétique p. 75. 30 le corbusier, creation is a patient search (new york: frederick praeger, 1960), p. 203. 31 le corbusier, creation is a patient search p. 37. 32 about french postcards of algerian women circulating between 1900 and 1930 see malek alloula, the colonial harem (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1986). 33 zeynep çelik, “le corbusier, orientalism, colonialism,” assemblage (1992), n. 17, p. 61. 34 von moos, “le corbusier as painter,” p. 93. 35 victor burgin, “the absence of presence,” the end o f a r t theory: criticism and postmodernity (atlantic highlands, new jersey: humanities press international, 1986), p. 44. 36 rafi, “le corbusier et ‘les femmes d’alger.’” p. 61. 37 victor burgin, “modernism in the w o r k o f art,” 20th century studies (december 1976) n. 15-16. reprinted in the end of art theory p . 1 9 . s e e a l s o stephen heath, “lessons from brecht,” screen (1974), v. 15, n. 2, pp. 106 ff. 38 le corbusier, my work p.50-51. my emphasis. 39 von moos, “le corbusier as painter,” p. 104. br16_hartoonian_int10_final.indd interstices 10 the judicious eye: architecture against the other arts by joseph rykwert review by gevork hartoonian no contemporary account of architecture’s rapport with the other arts will be able to do justice without considering adolf loos’ remarks on the subject. exasperated by the secessionist and art nouveau movements, and the utopian claims underpinning the objectives of the reformist schools of the time, loos made a characteristically modernist distinction between art and architecture. in his opinion, art has no responsibility to anyone. thus, it can be radical or even revolutionary. architecture, however, is responsible to everyone. there is a purpose to it, it is a public art. this was enough for loos to depict the art of building as a conservative, and yet, collective practice. karl kraus, an artist and friend of loos, underlined the difference between art and architecture, saying that what he and loos were trying to do was to “show the difference between the urn and a chamber pot”. the distinction turned out to be signifi cant, considering loos’s design strategy, the raumplan, where interior spaces are theatrically juxtaposed in plan and different levels. loos also believed that a building should evoke the sentiment proper to its purpose. still, the interiors he conceived would restrict the inhabitant from a closer visual proximity to any external relation to the environment of the metropolis. loos’ theorisation of architecture suggests that the res publica was no longer available, at least in the way public space was appropriated and experienced before the “fall of the old regime”, to recall the title of the fi rst chapter of the judicious eye. the opening pages of joseph rykwert’s text speak for the untold story of how the bodies of contemporary cosmopolitan cities are tattooed with electronic images. this in conjunction with the author’s modest claim that he has no intention of inviting the reader to consider “whether the reconstitution of a useable public space is possible or desirable”. rykwert’s judgement is rooted in history, even though it is not spelled out in reference to the conventions of historicism. starting with the title of the book, one is reminded of the renaissance discourse on disegno and guidizio. considered the father of the three arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, giorgio vasari wrote, “we may conclude that disegno is not other than a visible expression of and revelation of our inner conception or that which others have imagined and given form in their ideas”.2 first, we have the notion that the foundational arts are embedded in disegno. then we have the issue of giudizio, or judgement, where the visual turns out to be the critical aspect of any public judgement. therefore, what we have here are two juxtapositions: one between visible expression and revelation and the second between judgement and eye. of further interest is the iconographic dimension of the two concepts of disegno and giudizio. in the renaissance treatises, a well-dressed person holding a 1. a different version of this review appears in architectural theory review 14 (1), 2009 2. quoted in ackerman (2002:16) br16_hartoonian_int10_final.indd 132br16_hartoonian_int10_final.indd 132 11/3/09 2:41 am11/3/09 2:41 am 133 compass in one hand and a refl ective tablet in the other represents disegno. giudizio, by contrast, is represented by the fi gure of a naked old man sitting on a rainbow holding a square, rule and pendulum. what is implied here is the possibility of reducing the secret of disegno to the skills of the artist. this was believed to be the case with donatello’s abacus (1400), at least until the artist revealed that the alleged secret lies in his capacity to hold on to what is called “the judgement of the eye”. in the dictionary, the word “abacus” is defi ned as both a fl at slab and a device for solving arithmetical problems. more interesting, and related to how i would like to end this short review, is the hebrew origin of the word, meaning “dust”.3 rykwert might not like to have anything to do with the naked fi gure of giudizio described earlier. this is too visible an association, which in the manner of vasari has to be balanced with the notion of revelation. to this end, i would like to draw your attention to a short essay rykwert published in the summer issue of october, 1984. i will skip the autobiographic account in an article titled, “on first hearing about hermeneutics”. toward the end of the essay, we are cautioned against the hazards of “matter-of-fact piety and rationalised sifting of sacred laws”. instead we are told that every utterance could contain “a coded revelation”, and that a “text could fl ower into gesture and excess”. rykwert concluded that only the person who sees the possibility that the whole world “may well be a succession of theophanies come nearer the truth” (rykwert 1984). having said this, the intention of his book, the judicious eye, is to unfold a rationalised argument against the nihilism of modernity, which should be interpreted in reference to donatello’s abacus. here, i am interested in the hebrew meaning of the word, connoting “dust” which, if removed, might make a revelation that should be decoded “against historical realism”, to recall an essay by hayden white (with whom rykwert might not want be associated). for white, history unravels itself without any moral or metaphysical purpose. to understand history one should endure it, “if lucky” (white 2008). in his last chapter, rykwert makes a comparison between the sistine chapel and a work by monet. the french painter’s water-lilies is presented as an example of a work that has the capacity to provide “the totality of a sensory experience through which every member of the audience should be able to overcome his individuality and have access to another, an ambiguous transcendent reality” (299). what is involved here does not concern rykwert’s long lasting dislike of instrumental rationalism. at stake is a theoretical mind that inclines to a quasiphenomenological approach to everyday life and a critique of modernism that draws from anthropological structuralism, popularised by claude levi strauss. this is spelled out not only in his review of the 15th triennale di milano published in domus, 1974, but also discussed in an introductory essay for a book titled meaning and building, 1960. in this latter text, rykwert resonates with aldo van eyck, the dutch architect, who in 1950 wrote that the time has come for architecture to reconcile basic values. in his essay published in 1960, however, rykwert famously said that, when entering his house, a person needs to have the conviction that “he is, in some sense, at the centre of universe”. whatever the statement was intended to convey at the time, it demonstrates, as one reads through the fi nal pages of the book, the diffi culty in reconciling architecture with other arts even in a revolutionary situation of the magnitude of post-october 1917. the urge to create a different “man” under circumstances that were marked by feverish events of making and unmaking ended, ironically, 3. dictionary.reference.com br16_hartoonian_int10_final.indd 133br16_hartoonian_int10_final.indd 133 11/3/09 2:41 am11/3/09 2:41 am interstices 10 with an offi cial decree that architecture by defi nition should conduct a conservative practice (compare this to the work produced by painters and sculptors, let alone the agitprop quality of the fi lms produced, and the plays staged, during the fi rst fi ve years of the russian revolution). we are back full circle to loos and the fact that, in modernity, architecture has little to do with the business of changing the scope of everyday life, let alone creating a totalised ambience of the kind the author attributes to monet’s painting. the judicious eye is informative and demonstrates the author’s comprehensive knowledge of the history of art and architecture. rykwert also challenges the state of architectural education. he reminds architects of their ethical responsibilities. more importantly, the author exhorts academics to take architectural historiography more seriously without reducing it to a story telling, or formulating an operative criticism that reduces history to an intellectual enthusiasm for a particular period or, for that matter, a particular architect’s work. references ackerman, j. s. (2002). origins, imitations, conventions. cambridge & london: mit press. rykwert, j. (1984). on first hearing about hermeneutics. october (29), 117-119. white, h. (2008). against historical realism: a reading of ‘war and peace’. new left review (46), 109-110. br16_hartoonian_int10_final.indd 134br16_hartoonian_int10_final.indd 134 11/3/09 2:41 am11/3/09 2:41 am in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 24 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n andrew douglas on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire from pattern to territory this paper considers surface and its patterning by way of territorial images. the amalgamating of image and territory in this context coins a relatively under-considered yet significant notion, with both “territory” and “image” tapping dense worlds of reference. arguing against their apparent divergence—territory typically associated with ground conditions, and image with representation and/ or modes of imagining—the paper argues for their irreducible proximity. read together, in fact, they point to a foundational task—that of inscribing sufficient distance and difference in the domain of reality to make it experienceable at all. territoriality is the multileveled action of managing and distancing the unapprehended—for, as elias canetti (1988) argued: “there is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. he wants to see what is reaching towards everything is like a door swinging backwards and forwards. —samuel butler, 1882 fig. 1 mesopotamia station, canterbury [photo: author, 2016] in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 25 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n him, and to be able to recognise or at least classify it” (15; emphasis in original). all territoriality entails distancing of the unascertained and an everyday management of the touch of its surrogates. hans blumenberg (1985), in a different context, suggested an “absolutism of reality” makes imaginable the evolutionary difficulties faced by early humanoids in their shift out of the diminishing forests and onto the expanding savannah. having acquired a bipedal gait, they faced not just a widened horizon for perception but the absolute limits of perceivability as such (4). outside the old territorial certainties of the forests lay an anxiety-laden world, where the “intentionality of consciousness” was unable to populate with recognisable certainty the open planes running out to distant, and as yet unknown, horizons (4). borrowing neurological insights from kurt goldstein, blumenberg considered the key adaptive mechanism to be the ability to convert a general, “existential anxiety” into anticipatable and therefore manageable fears, thereby substituting calculable scenarios for the incalculable, and names for the unnameable (5). in short, metaphoric naming builds stories that fill out terrain in an “art of living” that makes a world—at the behest of an existential anxiety testifying, ultimately, to world-uncertainty (6–7). against this absolutism of reality, registered enduringly in the last horizon, or “mythical ‘edge of the world’”, is pitted not primarily homo faber—the maker of tools—but a “homo pictor”, the “creature who covers up the lack of reliability of his world by projecting images” (8). by this account, territory was from the beginning image-production, a projective intervention built initially through magic, animalism and wish-fulfilment, a labour repeated in the absolutisms of theology and later science (9–10). blumenberg’s absolutism of reality makes imaginable the kind of de-essentialising of territory andrea mubi brighenti (2010) considered necessary to grasp the complexity of territoriality per se: “territory is not defined by space, rather it defines spaces through patterns of relations” (57). in this, he borrowed gilles deleuze and felix guattari’s tripartite framework underwriting territoriality—itself understood as being composed of infra-assemblages (inscriptions made on and out of underlying qualities or forces), intra-assemblages (interiorising mechanisms manifest not just physically but imaginatively), and inter-assemblages (expressive manifestations that commune or couple with outside domains, 1987: 312). resonating with canetti and blumenberg’s management of the unknown via distancing, deleuze and guattari held territory to be “first of all the critical distance between two beings of the same species”, a distance necessarily inscribed or marked out, but which ultimately expresses a need to keep “at a distance the forces of chaos knocking at the door” (319–320). in short, territory builds out of milieus or mid-places between chaos and organisation, transitional states closer to music than geography: “every milieu is vibratory […], a block of space-time constituted by the periodic repetition of the component” (313). for territory to arise, it must territorialise or “bite into” the milieus, subjecting them to a consistency in which rhythms take on an expressiveness indicating substantive relational meaning and ultimately dimensional stability (315). imagining consistent places this rhythmic patterning underscores the extent to which territory is not merely a “physical-spatial” phenomenon but results from a territoriality making in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 26 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n consistent a highly variable relational and expressive nexus (brighenti, 2010: 68). inherent in this consistency is “an act of imagination” that effects “a prolongation of the material into the immaterial” (68). yet, what precisely is this imaginative import, and how does it prolong? in answer, deleuze (1994) suggested that what endures spatially rests in fact on a temporal genesis. for the present to be experienced here and now it must sit within a larger synthesis of instances, themselves organised into recognisable patterns indicative of a before and an after (70). synthesis is in fact the “difference that the mind draws from repetition”, a mode of recognition and anticipation deleuze attributed, after hume, to the imagination (70). more complexly, any synthesis implies a subjectivity or point of view, itself an involuntary contemplation and imagining of patterns induced by repetition. before there is an active subject (human or otherwise), there is the “subjectivity of a passive subject” founded on the sheer repetition of habits. further, habits, as so many contemplations or souls, enact a certain possessive pleasure in the binding of rhythms, a pleasure indicative of a territorial principle (74). as david lapoujade has read deleuze, “habit creates territorialities, themselves pleasure complexes” (2017: 85). understood this way, territories are indicative of psychic desiring-patterns— where, for instance, the ego as centre of enduring consciousness arises as a hallucinatory image secondarily formed by the work of a repetitious habit/time itself imaginable as an id or unconsciousness (deleuze, 1994: 97): “we speak of our ‘self ’ only in virtue of these thousands of little witnesses which contemplate within us: it is always a third party who says ‘me’” (75). here deleuze rendered something like the genesis by which the repetition of patterns makes available the space-time of the surface-extension we take as territory. yet this presents a problematic grounding, precisely because place builds, not on or out of ‘ground’ as self-evident foundation, but on an empiricism of time whose ‘soil’ is fundamentally groundless and shifty—only imagination can bind place-consistency (lapoujade, 2017: 83). pattern repeat: between habit and memory source for aspects of deleuze’s thinking on habit was samuel butler (1835–1902). in life and habit (1878), butler asserted that all individuation entails a type of contemplative knowing, itself a conceit arising only with habitual action: …for even the corn in the fields grows upon a superstitious basis as to its own existence, and only turns the earth and moisture into wheat through the conceit of its own ability to do so, without which faith it were powerless (82; similarly cited in deleuze, 1994: 75). yet, if contemplation arises as the possessive pleasure of an habitual capacity enacted in the here-now (itself always passing), another mode of time must be necessary to consolidate territoriality. in deleuze’s genesis, what organises habit into a broader continuity and coherence is memory—what he referred to as a past in general, or transcendental conditionality, underpinning the empirical present (81). hence the paradoxical formula underwriting deleuze and guattari’s notion of territoriality is a transcendental empiricism, a world of particularities or actualities sustained by the virtuality of a past in general, itself incapable of manifest placement as such. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 27 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n butler, in his rethinking of darwinian evolution, similarly appealed to an immemorial past, or “unconscious memory”, rich in platonist implications anticipating henri bergson—whose thinking is key to deleuze’s temporal genesis. so for butler, the production of the past parallels the present as its reverberation or echo, just as memory accumulates with the present as its very precondition: “memory is a kind of way (or weight—whichever it should be) that the mind has got upon it, in virtue of which the sensation excited endures a little longer than the cause which excited it” (1917: 58). similarly, memory is the ground by which the present is thinkable at all: “to live is to continue thinking and to remember having done so. memory is to mind as viscosity is to protoplasm, it gives a tenacity to thought—a kind of pied-à-terre from which it can, and without which it could not, advance” (58). as the french term suggests, memory literally provides a “foot on the ground” amidst the travails of time. particular or conscious memory provides contingent points of traction in a moving temporal plethora, both intergenerational and inclusive of organic life and inorganic matter. descending ground and national rising territory, then, is the consequence of surface rhythms finding their ground in the deeper repetitions of memory—a memory nevertheless running all the way into the groundlessness of forgetting. the broader founding of habit in memory, though, rests on recollections themselves always already lost. memory, calls on more than the desiring-patterns and pleasure formations of habit; it is the domain of recovery, of longing, of lost objects and desired attachments indicative of the “good”. reworking freud and lacan, deleuze took the repetitions of memory as being driven by “eros-mnemosyne”, a pleasure-principle that seeks satisfaction and stabilisation of temporal flux in “virtual symbolic objects” themselves repeating displacements masking what cannot be ultimately possessed or recovered (106–108). what lacan termed the phallus—the thing that “is always missing from its place”—became in deleuze the “[virtual] object=x”, the phantasm object setting all our loves in motion and is the attracting force that bends the linear trajectory of habituated pleasures into circulating centres (105). paradoxically, if habits are the “moving soil” upon which the present is built, their grounding in memory comes from above, from “the summit to the foundations” (79). binding cosmos to ground, such over-under traffic is the very basis of myth—the transcendent excess orchestrating pattern and adornment no less than territorial regimes. it establishes the appeal of the natal, the native place, the homeland that resists all dissipation and into which one sinks as if into the immemorial earth, itself an ungraspable “ur-refrain”, generative of all territorial assemblages (deleuze & guattari, 1987: 339). consider the myth-rich assemblage composing the nation-state. as benedict anderson (1991) noted, the intersection of image and territory is key: “[for] it is an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (6). with the 18th century lapse of “divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm[s]” (7), territorial delimitation became a precondition for imagining a largely anonymous national citizenry. a “deep, horizontal comradeship”, necessary to nationhood, could only be produced if a literate citizenry shared a territorially-specific language in which it could imagine, via print media such as newspapers and novels, both sameness across single in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 28 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n territories, and divergent fraternities beyond national edges (19–25). national sameness has a temporal correlate: in place of experiences of simultaneity (as an all-at-once-eternality tying destiny to pre-defined, divine providence), nations craft a “simultaneity-along-time” (or, as anderson borrowed from walter benjamin, “homogeneous, empty time”) whose binding patterns are measured by clock and calendar (24). within bounded horizons, everyday living habits were, and remain, chronologically staged refrains, each satiated in the pleasure of actual and imagined commonality. yet, despite the relative newness of nations as a territorial form, they draw their legitimacy out of “an immemorial past” by turning “chance into destiny” (11–12). appealing to a perennial identity, nations fashion beginnings from “’up time’” (205) in a “reverse ventriloquism” (198) that relies on “remembered” originators. the natal deepens and grounds the “horizontal-secular” habitation to modern simultaneity (37) and, via narrated and not actual memory, it bends the infra-assemblages of chronological habit around the intra-routines of memorial occasion and scripted desires for (national) lineage. time’s third repeat—unfurling patterns beyond collective routines and their interiorising within circles of memory, a third temporal mode structures territory. despite grounding empirical experience in memory, ultimately no masking or making-good covers the abyssal nature of time, for what repeats in and through it is a futuring force. time in essence “events” by rupturing chronology no less than it unravels the mnemonic circuits shaped by eros: “it is as though it had unrolled, straightened itself and assumed the ultimate shape of the labyrinth, the straight-line labyrinth [where time is…] empty and out of joint” (deleuze 1994: 111). what repeats and returns as pattern is the break in all patterning—an eternal return testifying to the chaotic unbinding of being itself, a temporal refrain forcing the question, “what happened?” (293). in a pointed reversal of the 19th century hegemony of empire, anderson offered a correlate to this temporal disjunction relative to national imagining. the notion of the nation-state was a subaltern mode of imagining developed in the americas long before its adaption in the “age of nationalism” in europe (itself spanning “1820–1920”) (69). yet the “nation” as a pattern of imagined sovereignty, as anderson identified, was “an invention [with no…] patent” (67). as ‘pirated’ carapace in europe, it was distinctive, firstly, for “national print languages” and, secondly, a “renewal of antique forms of life” via humanism (68). an “historical perspective in depth” prevailed, one comparatively tuned to autarchic forms of collective life (68). reconciliation with “discovered” civilisations and peoples enduring beyond and before the west, established awareness of an “irremediable human pluralism”, one flatly “unassimilable to eden” (69). yet more readily assimilable was an imagined politic ideality given as print-commodity—in short, “good societies” as “tongue-in-cheek utopias […] ‘modelled’ on real discoveries […] not as lost edens” (69). from thomas more’s utopia (1516), a succession of “found”, if estranged utopian places, were remarkable for their presentation as “contemporary societies”, places imaginable within a shared “meanwhile” (69). as satirical vehicles they presented (despite plato’s republic as precedent), a counter-discourse capable of short-circuiting “vanished antiquity”, a break in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 29 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n itself preparing the ground for the revolutionary deterritorialisation of european political economies and the national reterritorialisation of europe post-enlightenment (69–70). erewhons territory, as “interactional and evental” arises, brighenti insisted, through inscriptive practices (2010: 61). territory emerges in the criss-crossing of multi-layered, multi-intentional patterns that are stabilisied by iterative performances implicating actors and audiences (66). concomitantly, for anderson, print media are key to rehearsing and tracing out founding, habituating and bounding performances of national place-making. the commonplace presumption that territory provides the “setting” for stories warrants chiastic reversal: stories both ground and sustain place. this is particularly evident where places are patterned by utopian fiction—a significant literary mode not just for reimagining europe via nationalism, but for colonial settlement and post-colonial settling of accounts (see ashcroft, 2017). rendering geography a thought-experiment and not a spatial given, utopias recalibrate the evident and the possible, as deleuze and guattari (1994) argued, by explicating in cults of place-origin their reductive synthesising and veiling of diverse milieus (96). utopias thus imminently transport a revolutionary potential, if not always this actuality. deleuze and guattari (1994) named butler’s satirical utopia, erewhon (1872/2013)—‘no-where’ spelt in close reverse—an exemplary figure for the immanent deterritorialisation underwriting every ‘here-now’ (1994: 100). deleuze (1994) credited to butler’s novel the notion that every “now” is but a displacing mask, written over an “originary ‘nowhere’”, an untimely void itself capable of wresting from the present a (better) time to come (xxi). crossing empirical particulars with the groundlessness of virtual ideas, “erewhons” bridge between “phantasms and simulacra” and actual experience. against the universal aesthetic categories of space and time, which, so kant thought, render perception consistent, erewhons are “complexes of space and time [that…] impose their own scenery [and…] are therefore the objects of an essential encounter rather than of recognition” (285). that is, erewhons participate in “a phantasmagoria of the imagination” imposing in place of a priori transcendentals a nomadic synthesis of particulars that undercut the sedentary habits of perceptual recognition (285). the turn of terrain, or, butler’s empiricism paralleling this mobilisation of butler’s title, though, is a critical topographic reference—erewhon, or, over the range. the novel, in fact, is a satirical utopia set in aotearoa/new zealand’s southern alps, amongst the tributaries of the rangitata river. it resulted from butler’s 1859 immigration to christchurch, where he made claim to a series of land runs beyond the regulated properties established by the canterbury association—land thought to be of minimal economic utility, and referred to as “waste lands”. exercising a classical education, butler promptly named the sheep station he established “mesopotamia”, thereby calling up the fertile cradling of the tigris-euphrates river system—and a similitude (literally the middle, meso, between rivers, potamos) with high country ground at the intersection of the rangitata river and forest creek. hence, mesopotamia founded a leaping off point for erewhon the fiction—itself an a-topical vacancy, or as in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 30 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n j. hillis-miller characterised it, “a place you cannot get to from here”, other than through words (1995: 7). erewhon is, after all, a traversal of “nowhere”—a chiastic reversal of thomas more’s utopia (1516/2012), from the greek no (ou) and place (topos). reversed, too, is the setting, a perilous crossing of mountains, rather than water, giving spatial discontinuity. in a complex mirroring, the book counters new zealand’s rudimentary colonial settlement and refigures its indigenous others, simultaneously satirising victorian manners and its technological fetishism. the intractability and isolation of colonial place-making is animated via an imaginative resurfacing of distant vistas. in place of an alpine passage to the west coast (attempted and abandoned by butler, ansley & bush, 2012: 38), butler substitutes a fictional world. as a minor explorer and cartographer of note in new zealand (shaffer 2012), he bluntly indicated where “utopia” could be found. surrounding his utopia, actual places carry a rich toponymic legacy—mount butler, the butler range, butler’s saddle—and then there’s a map merging “true geography” and “feigned features” (fig. 2), all within a contemporaneous “meanwhile”. fig. 2 samuel butler (n.d.). a map of part of new zealand to illustrate erewhon & erewhon revisited. [samuel butler collection, st john’s college, cambridge: photo of original, author, 2017] consistent with butler’s primarily inclination towards painting, erewhon offers a pictorially reconfigured terrain, utilising the range as both a disruptor of routine perception and as a means of reworking substantive ground in favour of “landscape”. as john sallis has noted, if “landscape” emerged in the early 17th century, (relative to a minor painting genre depicting “natural inland scenery”, 2015: 18), by the 18th, the word described natural places without “reference to pictures or painting” (19). consequently, for sallis, “there is no pure perception of landscape”; it always already carries a sense of the withdrawing and displacing of nature into “a place that is no place”, in other words—like landscape painting itself—a place that “is inescapably utopian” (20–21). if landscape fronts as image, it necessarily rests on topography, itself the horizon of horizons exceeding all description and presence. as david leatherbarrow put it: “topography continually gives itself otherwise” (2004: 249). similarly, if perception is an intentional focus drawn off ambient horizons always already in in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 31 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n excess of what can be perceived, and forms recognisable patterns by synthesising the shifting frontal profiles given by objects and settings—otherwise known in phenomenology as sensible monstration—landscape takes the viewer and/ or reader one step closer to monstration and the bringing-forth of diverse lateral horizons and larval impressions overlooked in the routines of recognising—a bringing-forth sallis called “sensible shinning” (2000: 122), and a foundational experiencing deleuze and guattari called “haeccity” (1987: 282). beyond representation, imagation rendered poetic presences by “hovering between opposites in such a way” that what is exorbitant in perceiving as such is evidenced (sallis, 2000: 218). rather than blumenberg’s distant horizon as surrogate for unknowing, shinning, like haeccity, calls up a horizonal disarticulation managed imaginatively within every act of perception. ambilateral motion, or, butler’s palladianism if butler’s landscape fiction intends to undercut the normative ground of perception, the term “or” in the book’s title acts as a logical operator rendering the operands on either side equivalent. in other words, place and non-place turn indeterminately about each other, in a virtualising paradox consistent with deleuze’ erewhons and deleuze and guattari’s utopia of immanence. in short, the title stages the irresolvable “hovering between opposites” sallis found perturbing the surface routines of perception. not coincidently, ralf norrman considered butler a compulsive, indeed psycho-pathologically-inclined user of chiasmus (1986: 3–4). arguing against a “‘decorativist’ [understanding…] of rhetorical figures”, norrman asserted that chiasmus is “structured into” the language practices of certain authors, eras, and cultures (5). the nature of chiasmus—“to order in the shape of an x”—favours dualisms antithetically doubled to produce troubled, irresolvable symmetries—a vacillation he termed ambilateralism (5 & 11). parrying without resolve, ambilateralism has a characteristic pattern: “two bilaterally symmetrical halves (2), with a dividing line between them (+1)” (21). with butler in mind, norrman pictured an architectural analogue: “a pattern in which a central entity is flanked by two symmetrical wings, as in palladian architecture” (20). yet, in butler’s case, this three-part model (aba) harbours a malfunction: the middle does not balance and stabilise paired components. instead, his “‘palladian’ thinking” throws the whole picture into alternating seriality: “the aba-structure is the beginning (the minimal unit) of alteration”, producing an “extended form abababab … (ad infinitum)” (21–22). here, david leatherbarrow’s (2004) recognition of a drive in 18th century landscape discourse and practices associated with british palladianism towards topographical synthesis, in excess of its classical antecedents, is suggestive. the irregularity of situation in the setting and form of classically modelled buildings was affirmed, so that the varying of topography coursing through its natal structuring could instil the potential for an unfurling of the canon itself—rather than the edifice projecting a centring dynamic over place (175). in short, a circling sensibility uncoiled in favour of linear traversals called up by varying terrains. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 32 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n dis-locating utopia, or, butler’s satire given the echoes of moore’s utopia in erewhon’s title, what spatial-topographic resonances might the two fictions sustain? moore leaves the location of the island, somewhere between old and new worlds, open. louis marin, reflecting on moore’s construction of an indeterminate, middle place, notes that “utopia” is itself a middle locale between the greek term outopia (no place) and eutopia (good place) (1984: xvi). fig. 3 unknown (1516). title woodcut for utopis written by thomas more. [source: wikimedia commons] butler’s erewhon—an undiscovered, country of towns and cities, arrayed on a gentle plain hidden beyond mountains—stands as an imaginative dividend to butler’s quest for further commodifiable land. yet, this is utopian satire, and the novel plainly parodies a commodifying will, as the conclusion demonstrates. here, an advertisement seeks public subscriptions to fund the conversion of erewhonians—not only into good christians but indentured labour for queensland’s sugar-growers (2013: 147–148). in fact, parodied here was a times article of 1871, describing “indentured polynessians in queensland sugar plantations” (robinson, 2006). discovery, rather than the desire for closure in utopia, ostensively shapes erewhon’s narrative, but there is a broader working out. the english imagination, as peter ackroyd has argued, transmits a “territorial imperative” that routinely merges “landscape and dreamscape” (2013: 463). while ackroyd groups moore’s utopia and butler’s erewhon within the same oneiric tradition, it is clear that they foster divergent topographical languages. utopia, as michèle le doeuff recognised, gives an account of the island as if in a daydream-like “‘afternoon discourse’” occuring in a private garden (2002: 21)— the kind of space, ackroyd claimed, that has long modelled the “secrecy and enchantment” critical to the english imagination (2002: 426–427). erewhon offers an entirely other oneiric trigger, whose centrifugation flips enclosure and in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 33 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n intimacy on its head. preceding the mountain crossing that would lead to the discovery of erewhon, the novel’s nameless narrator recounts: i dreamed that there was an organ placed in my master’s wool-shed: the wool-shed faded away, and the organ seemed to grow and grow amid a blaze of brilliant light, till it became like a golden city upon the side of a mountain, with rows upon rows of pipes set in cliffs and precipices, one above the other, and in mysterious caverns like that of fingal, within whose depths i could see the burnished pillars glowing. (2013: 15) “in the garden, there cannot be any landscape”, jean luc nancy wrote (2005: 52), and erewhon plainly eschews appropriative territorial imperatives of the garden type. instead, playing up the musicality of terrain offers a satirical nod to the “one-alone” sonority romanticism attributed to the subterranean and its celebration of the “hero of the earth” whose task was to summons up a new peopling, as deleuze and guattari put it, in the manner of an “orchestral-instrumental whole” (1987: 340–341). reflecting newlands, or, butler’s mirror contrary then to the centripetal dynamic of utopia, erewhon is patently centrifugal, riding the outward impetus of an anticipatory consciousness ernst bloch (1986) centred in european utopianism. butler’s “discovery” in the antipodean alps foregrounds a starkly gendering, cultural anticipation of this sort—compounding, as bloch put it, “hiding-places”, breaking away, and wonder at indistinct, faraway places (23). to daydream is not to stay rooted to the spot; it is to put a dream of betterment into motion and to achieve, against the odds and against others, the “glittering bowl” as bloch put it (1986: 26)—a prize bluntly parodied in erewhon (see 2013: 14). evidenced, in fact, is a division fredric jameson (2005) drew between utopian programmes and utopian impulses in modernity—both stemming from more’s utopia (2–4). while erewhon telegraphs programmatic references (texts, demarcated spaces, and radically contrary communities), on the impulse side—a strand of utopianism jameson linked to bloch—it questions “existential experience” and immediate ties with temporality and futurity (6–7). colonial new zealand was famously rich in such impulses, as john lucas noted, the country being seemingly “like britain [but…] without the corruptions of modernity” (2012: 216). expanding on this ground-up utopianism, james belich (2009) has argued that the settler movements sweeping the anglophone world from the first half of the 19th century rode a wave of “booster literature”—promotional pamphlets, news stories, advertisements, etc.—that advocated a climate of abundance (fertile land, financial reward, work and societal autonomy, 153–154). drawn on was a “paradise complex” in which newlands were imbued with an edenic character spanning from “virtuous rural arcadia [to…] more organised and urbanised utopia proper”—a character in fact, not matched by colonial conditions on the ground (154). the result was little tolerance of “‘high ups’”, a longing for justice, and a world of everyday plenty (patrick joyce cited in belich, 2009: 159). butler, the disenfranchised son of a clergyman, who emigrated to canterbury refusing entry to the clergy himself, likely found in the disingenuousness of populist booster literature a “ground-up” prompt for his satirical vision. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 34 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n an inside-out world, or, butler’s fancy responding to these anticipatory hopes, erewhon amalgamates two literary modes—a narrative of imaginary travel and utopian fiction (mudford, 1985: 11). the “world-improving” impetus of the latter (bloch, 1986: 91) never quite dissociates itself from dream. once at the summit of the discombobulating ranges, erewhon’s narrator finds himself above a genteel plain announced through an “exquisite and tranquillising” twilight sunburst (2013: 22). subsequently revealed is an arcadian, “quasi-european” world (25). beyond this initial descriptive framing, the interlude in erewhon centres on the cultural and social mores of inhabitants who appear to turn on their head victorian prejudices, values, common names, beliefs, and ideas. literalising its antipodean siting—anti (opposite) + pous (foot) as the greek etymology indicates—erewhon composes a place of opposite footing, or upside-downness consistent with gilbert highet’s notion of the “distorting mirror” of satire, which, in erewhon, reaches its heights once well over the range (1972: 161). the satirising of footing and foot traffic in butler’s travel narrative can be read against bloch’s linking of anticipatory consciousness, as he argued in relation to karl marx, with a world set on its feet and marching. in this context, marx wasn’t indifferent to new zealand and its colonisation, drawn as he was to edward gibbon wakefield’s “the art of colonization”—a contributing 1849 blueprint for the new zealand company’s proposed systematic colonization of aotearoa/ new zealand. as gabriel piterberg and lorenzo veracini have noted, wakefield’s answer to the revolutionary crisis building in britain was the replication of non-revolutionary “englands” elsewhere (2015: 459). whereas marx called for the critique of, and anticipatory solution to, the contradictions of capitalism, in a revolutionary “world-turned-upside-down”, wakefield response to capitalism’s crisis entailed a “world-turned-inside-out”—in other words, “settler colonialism” as displacement pre-empting revolution (1968: 460). butler’s topographical language responds in large measure, to this vacillation between upside-down and inside-out worlds, opening utopian closure to the centrifugal vectors of colonial landscape, in line with serialising, chiastic desire. accordingly, erewhon’s narrator escapes back over the range, via a makeshift hot air balloon for a chance rescue well out at sea to the east. symmetrically doubling the earlier arrival, the return voyage is pictured as “dream-like and delirious” (2013: 142). outstanding is the motive power of the crossing itself, with the tasman sea’s prevailing westerly (“trade”) winds rendering the return possible. thus, “no-where” resists any semblance of enclosed space; it is a place turned inside out with the course of the narrative running between two ocean-facing plains, themselves conjoined by the earth’s vertical upthrust—itself a surrogate, natal pivot. a leibnizian turn, or, butler’s chiasm concluding this necessarily brief encounter with erewhon’s chaistic labour, the notion of territorial image can be more fully elucidated. if the coordinating conjuntion “or” of butler’s title is a logical operator at one level, establishing vacillating equivalences, at another, its etymology suggests a trail of disjuntive terms (“either, or”, “nor”, “neither”, and “not of two”)1 written under or behind equivalence. while the mirror has its dark back or tain making doubles observable, in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 35 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n landscape arises on the back of topography as a manifestion of the earth, itself, as sallis described it, “the primal ark”, resistent to penetration, yet the grounding support of all things (2015, 4). moreover, to the extent that the earth shows itself, it does so as a “surface over a closed-off depth”, a showing insistently compounded non-showing with the “light of manifestness” (4). hence: the darkness of earth is not, like that of the night, a darkness that with the coming of day will give way to the light. earth remains ever dark, and only its surface is open to the light of day. (4) concomitantly, territory cannot be other than surface-work picturing a possessive domain brought to light on an otherwise “sealed-off-depth”, the patterning of which accrues via habits, memory, and modes of rupture. rather than a thing to look out from, the range in fact displaces the horizon of unknowning inwards, firstly via the imagined fancy it harbours, but secondly as a horizon opened to an exorbitant imagining in excess of subjective fantasy. as sallis has said of place, it does not contain in the manner aristotle assumed, but is rather drawn up and out of a matrix in the ancient sense of mater, a womb or “place before place” out of which something complexly develops (224). erewhon, as a parody of place-fancy, calls on the complex grounding topography sustains; one, as deleuze recognised, indicative of a “more profound origin than a single [scripted] beginning” (2015: 175). this looking-in is suggestive of gottfried leibniz’s (1646–1716) monad, a philosophical similitude le doeuff credits to moore’s utopia—a closed world where the outside is inside, but as a restricted viewpoint on an obscure whole (2002: 23). erewhon also exhibits a leibnizian variant. its territorial image constructs divided worlds without window onto each other, save for the curtaining range. in this, it mirrors the baroque house deleuze (1993) associated with leibniz. drawing on butler again, deleuze recognised how a wild, neo-platonic variant of empiricism renovates the monad according to an emerging discordant baroque (78). having lost its vertically securing (theological) pivot, the monad persists, but now as a thing turned inside out. deleuze used the analogue of a car speeding along a dark highway at night for this neo-leibnizian world. its windscreen posits a viewpoint on a landscape narrowly called out by headlights flashing up serialised images in transit (136–137). while butler had no such analogue at his disposal in the 1860s, the conjoining of habit and memory is amongst the rejoinders addressed at darwin’s evolutionary thesis (1917: 39–55)—a satirical theme driving erewhon. here monadic darkness would correspond with butler’s own musings on phenomenalization. as robert rattray has argued, butler was earliest amongst 19th century thinkers to consider the crossing between consciousness and the unconscious (1914: 371). in a monad-like formulation, butler “finds an inside to the universe, which is one and continuous with the ‘inside’ in us” (373). however, this universe arises as an unconscious surfaced by habits, themselves indicative of a submerging domain of memories running all the way into archaic, pre-human history and “invertebrate ancestry” (371–374). consciousness is that component of phenomenalization that arises with a perturbance in environment sufficient to force awareness from habit. concomitantly, place as expression given in and through the action of territorial images must necessarily proceed by phenomenalization, understood to rest on a temporal domain far deeper than subjectivity (see fig. 4). in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 36 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n facing the ancient mobility of the “main divide”, erewhon emerges then as a landscape opened up by the suspension of passage—a crossover not permitted by the terrain. recast in a satiric mirror, it shows up as a populous place ready for the taking; taken, that is, for a ride. in line with a chiastic desire for an ambilateralism in all things, the mirror mimes darkly, more than england over there. equally at stake is the here-now of a colony itself charged with making a world turned inside out via systematic colonialism and land remade as primitive accumulation. yet such systematism does not occur without cycles of transfer and dispossession, dispossession and alienation of the indigenous particularly. while butler staged a parody of primitive accumulation across the dividing range (one he was plainly a beneficiary of ), on show in fact is a deeper accumulative draft—that which hovers exorbitantly as horizon in every perception. chiasmic desire, with its incessant criss-crossing of the middle, was, in butler’s case, a means for unsettling the now-here of his time—an immanence contrarily conditioned by colonial capitalism and imagination. call this butler’s chiastic gathering, or no-where here, a nowhere made out of topography. key a ) here-now as time-horizon mediating the consciousness/ unconsciousness & bridged by the body b ) territorial image assembled at a picturing plane c ) consciousness rising above habit & echoing back as shimmering horizons of perception d ) the sealed-off depth and perpetual darkness of the earth e ) erewhon f ) the ‘range’ as upsurge of horizon of unknowing and natal narrative pivot g ) limit of territorial passage and leaping off point for an image-world h ) prevailing ‘trade winds’ as animating grain i ) imaginative sheathing extending the gathering of conscious u ) more’s utopia over u ) rising utopic, colonial ground fig. 4 author (2017). erewhon as topographical chiasm. [pencil sketch] in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 37 on territorial images: erewhon, or, chiastic desire s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n endnotes i gratefully acknowledge the insights of two anonymous reviewers in the production of this paper, and the very able editing of tina engels-schwarzpaul. the origin of this paper lies in conversations with bruce mitchell petry, whose voice continued to inspire its production. 1 etymology of the conjunction “or” runs to “old english oþþe ‘either, or,’”, and is itself linked to “nor”, a contraction in middle english nauther or “neither” (or, n.d.). references ackroyd, p. (2002). albion: the origins of the english imagination. new york, ny: random house. anderson, b. (1991). imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london, england & new york, ny: verso. ansley, b. & bush, p. (2012). a fabled land: the story of canterbury’s famous mesopotamia station. auckland: random house. belich, j. 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(2006). erewhon or over the range. in r. robinson & n. wattle (eds.), the oxford companion to new zealand literature (online edition). retrieved from http://www. oxfordreference.com.ezproxy. aut.ac.nz/view/10.1093/ acref/9780195583489.001.0001/ acref-9780195583489-e376?rskey=fmdow0&result=2 sallis, j. (2000). force of imagination: the sense of the elemental. bloomington & indianapolis, in: indiana university press. sallis, j. (2015). senses of landscape. evaston, wa: northwestern university press. sassen, s. (2006). territory, authority, rights: from medieval to global assemblages. princeton, nj: princeton university press. scheffer, e. s. (2012). samuel butler’s fantastical maps: erewhon, the new jerusalem, and the peripus of odysseus. words & image: a journal of verbal/visual enquiry, 4/2, 510–522. wiseman, b. & paul, a. (eds.) (2014). chiasmus and culture. new york, ny & oxford, uk: berghahn press. wakefield, e. g., lloyd prichard, m. f. (ed.), 1968. the collected works of edward gibbon wakefield. glasgow & london: collins. https://www.etymonline.com/word/or https://www.etymonline.com/word/or http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/view/10.1093/acref/9780195583489.001.0001/acref http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/view/10.1093/acref/9780195583489.001.0001/acref http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/view/10.1093/acref/9780195583489.001.0001/acref http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/view/10.1093/acref/9780195583489.001.0001/acref http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/view/10.1093/acref/9780195583489.001.0001/acref in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 85 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m gill matthewson where do you go to?: the class of ’76 in 1976, each student in the university of auckland school of architecture received a booklet (see fig. 1) with the names, addresses and phone numbers of all the students (auckland school of architecture 1976). spread across the four professional years of the degree are 310 people, 74 of whom were first-year students, including the author. this article tracks that first-year cohort over the 40-plus years since; a time span that gives an opportunity to trace the ins and outs, and ups and downs of architectural study and careers. it also allows the outcomes of this cohort to be compared with available statistical data (including some incomplete data from the 1978 and 1980 student contacts booklets) to help test and understand that data. there has traditionally been a mismatch between the social stereotypes of architects held by the public and the actuality of being an architect, which means that many students who begin architectural study do not complete it (cuff 1991: 117). for those who graduate and wish to participate in the profession, economic and other conditions sometimes render a continuing career in architecture difficult. so, what happened to the first-year students of 1976, and how might their journeys illustrate the complexities of architecture, its education, and practice? in 1976 the school of architecture at the university of auckland was established in 1917 and was until the mid-1970s the only school in new zealand. those arriving in 1976 came into a school that had recently had its “narrow” professional training focus questioned by student protest in 1972, which subsequently ushered in a wider range of course content and options (francis 2016). this period at the school is described by bill mckay in the formal history of the school as “the loose years”, marked by hippiedom and a somewhat anti-intellectual kind of humanism (mckay 2017: 98). perhaps one sign of that looseness is the contacts booklet itself. twenty-first-century privacy legislation means that such a document would be very unlikely to be formally distributed today. even in the 1970s, there must have been some awareness of the potential for the booklet to permit both privacy invasion and unsavoury behaviour because it is titled “old heavy breather network/annual”, and the cover graphic by geoff fletcher fig. 1 the auckland school’s old heavy breather network/annual, 1976. [cover graphic by geoff fletcher] 86 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e (a final-year student in 1976) of an eye-popping, salivating, archetypal “dirty old man” leaves little to the imagination.1 protests in architectural schools across the world of the like that occurred in auckland in 1972 were not unusual at this time when the post-war consensus that modernism was the best (only) basis for an architectural education was seriously and, at times, aggressively challenged. as mary mcleod argues for north america, all architecture schools there were affected by the convulsions caused by the civil rights movement, anti-vietnam war protests, and second-wave feminism (mcleod 2012: 163). separately, and collectively, these led to the questioning of many aspects of architecture including its role in the exploitation of resources and people (francis 2016: 282), and its alliance with power elites (mcleod 2012: 163). the impact of feminism was particularly visible in one of the most notable characteristics of the 1976 first-year intake: the number of women. of the 74 students, 24 (very nearly one-third) were female. at the newly opened victoria university of wellington school of architecture women were similarly around one-third of their intake (d. cranko, personal communication, september 11, 2017). the 1970s saw significant growth in the number of women entering and succeeding in professional education across the world. unpacking the situation in the united states, stacey jones argues that a complex combination of socio-economic shifts in the late 1960s and early 1970s contributed to rocketing female enrolments in professional schools (jones 2011). these included changing and loosening expectations of women’s role in society, the availability of reliable contraception, a decline in demand in the teaching profession (the traditional destination for most university-educated women), and civil rights legislation leading to a broadening of challenges to all discrimination, including that of gender. in 1972, those challenges resulted in a ruling that rendered blocking the entry of women into education programmes funded by the u.s. federal government illegal (as cited in stratigakos 2016: 21). jones maintains that once in the professional schools, women attained a critical mass that made previous deterrent factors, such as isolation and discrimination, less sustainable (jones 2011: 349). the effect of all these shifts and changes is clearly visible in the composition of graduates of u.s. architecture schools over the decade: in 1970, women made up a low approximately 7% of graduates, but by 1979 that figure had jumped to 27% (stevens 2014). in new zealand, there was also a particular structural/cultural impediment to women entering the university of auckland’s school of architecture. from 1961 to 1970, candidates for architecture were required to complete an intermediate year comprising physics plus two subjects from a prescribed but broad list of offerings from across the university (university of auckland 1961: 308; university of auckland 1969: 451). at the time, many all-girl schools in new zealand did not offer physics as part of their curriculum, nor was it a particularly popular subject for girls in co-ed schools where it was on offer. physics was, at the time, simply not seen as a “suitable” subject for girls to study. this cultural norm interacted with the structural condition to form an impediment to women entering architecture, because without a foundation in physics at high-school level, success in the subject at university level was difficult. however, from 1971 candidates for architecture selected one subject from each of three groupings, and physics was 87 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e grouped with mathematics and applied mathematics (university of auckland 1970: 492). with physics now optional, more women were able to successfully complete the intermediate and apply for the four professional years of study at the school of architecture. this single change in the entry requirements strongly contributed to a significant jump in the number of women accepted into the school in 1972, from a handful a year (if any) to double digits for the first time: 13 out of approximately 70, or 18% (civil 2016). fig. 2 shows the depressing effect this combined structural and cultural barrier had on the proportion of women graduates from the school over the decade it was in place, and their rise once this (and other constraints) were removed. the latest figures show women comprising around 60% of the auckland school’s graduates, a figure that is much higher than the 51% average for the three new zealand schools (australian institute of architects 2015). auckland is also an outlier among schools of architecture in australasia (average 47% in 2014), the united kingdom (41% in 2014–15) (mirza & nacey research 2017), and the united states (44% in 2012) (stratigakos 2016: 21). fig. 2 proportion of female graduates from the auckland school of architecture (known since 2006 as the school of architecture and planning). the data have been “smoothed” by taking the average for the year plus the previous two years. smoothing evens out abrupt year-onyear changes and allows the overall pattern to be discerned. [sources: university of auckland calendar (1958–61); university of auckland convocation for the conferment of degrees and diplomas (1959–98); and architecture schools of australasia (2001–15)] the high number of women (24 or 32%) in the 1976 first-year intake did not, however, signal a trend. the 1978 and 1980 student contacts booklets give partial information on the gender makeup of the school in those years as, unlike the 1976 booklet, full names are not given in these years except for the first-year class of 1978. in 1978, there were just 12 women out of 71 accepted (auckland school of architecture 1978)—half the 1976 figure and similar to the 1972 intake. women were approximately 21% of the first years in 1980—57 of the 70 are gender-identifiable, 12 of whom are women (auckland school of architecture 1980). the high number of women in the 1976 intake meant that women’s proportion of the school’s students that year lifted to over 20% for the first time (65 of the 310) (auckland school of architecture 1976). the school as a whole roughly kept this proportion into 1978 (299 students, with 60 women out of the 287 who are gender-identifiable), mainly because many of the 1976 intake were still present at the school, now in their third year. however, by 1980, the proportion of women dropped to under 20% (approximately 18%; 290 students with 48 of the gender-identifiable 264 being women). the high number of women in first-year architecture in 1976 was so unusual that some featured in an article (see fig. 3) in the auckland star (untitled 1976), 19 58 19 60 19 62 19 96 19 94 19 92 19 90 19 88 19 86 19 84 19 82 19 80 19 78 19 76 19 68 19 66 19 64 19 70 19 72 19 74 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1970s 1980s1960s 1990s 2000s 20 12 20 10 20 08 20 06 20 04 20 02 20 00 19 98 % 88 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e where the novelty of women on a building site (albeit a training one) posing with hammers was indicative of the changing nature of sex roles over the decade—notwithstanding the condescending comments of the head of carpentry at carrington technical institute in the accompanying text. the following sunday, another member of the class was also pictured in a newspaper as the naked “sunday male” in the weekly tabloid sunday news (1976)—another indication of the changing social attitudes towards gender of the decade. fig. 3 women architecture students profiled in the auckland star, august 9, 1976, p. 5. [stuff/auckland star] acceptance into the school and successful completion are two separate matters. by the end of 1976, 11 of the 74 (or 15%) had not been successful in first-year studio, according to the passes published in the new zealand herald (university passes, studio i 1976), which appear to be reasonably accurate. some of those who successfully completed the year did not continue, and at least three who were not successful or dropped out, returned. by the beginning of 1978, another 15 of the 74 (a further 20%) had either failed or decided not to continue with their studies in architecture. class cohort sizes fluctuated from one year to the next with some students joining (or leaving) through repeating a year, or returning after some time out, either working in an office, travelling, or both. while a year out working was a requirement in many architecture degrees in australia at the time, this was not the case in new zealand. there was little financial or academic penalty involved in breaking continuity of study in whatever manner, because tertiary education was in effect free and students were well supported. some also entered the degree with advanced standing, such as those with the new 89 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e zealand certificate in draughting who were exempted from the intermediate and first professional year (university of auckland 1976: 354). consequently in 1977, approximately a dozen “draughties” joined the cohort’s second year. these movements meant that by 1978, in the third professional year of the degree, there were 79 in the year group, 42 (or 57%) of whom were from the first-year class of 1976. another eight of the original cohort took some time out in 1978, but returned to complete the degree at a later date. according to the passes listed in the new zealand herald, 18 of that third-year cohort, or nearly one-quarter (23%), were not successful (university passes, studio 3 1978). this was an abnormally high failure rate for the school; my recollection, and that of my peers, is that this failure level came as a great shock. the high level of failure can be seen when compared with the third years in 1976 and 1980 of 17% and 16% respectively (university passes, studio iii 1976; university passes, studio 3 1980). by the mid-1970s, due to pressures on space and the 1972 shake up of the school, studio teaching was divided into three sub-schools, each with a different pedagogical philosophy and design programme. this variety was a result of, and contributed to, the “looseness” of the school, which meant there was an eclectic openness to different ways of teaching. the sub-schools were named after the construction of the building in which they were housed and, roughly speaking, timber studio was conservative and profession focused, brick was highly experimental including vertical studios, and steel was somewhere in between (mckay 2017: 81–84). member of staff john hunt describes some of the meetings for moderating student studio grades becoming battlegrounds for the differing philosophies (as cited in mckay 2017: 98). many in the cohort believed that those who were victims of the high failure rate in 1978 were the collateral damage of these battles where scores were settled, and results bore little relationship to students’ ability. given that two-thirds of the 18 who failed returned, graduated, and have become successful and award-winning architects, there is perhaps some merit in that belief. critically, the shock of failure was not evenly spread across the cohort: as cohort member anna kemble welch pointed out to me, women were particularly targeted (a. kemble welch, personal communication, july 11, 2017). women comprised 11 (or 61%) of the 18 not-successful/failed in 1978 and thus were disproportionally represented in this group. as a result, by the end of 1978, women fell from constituting one-third of the year group to one-quarter. in 1976 and 1980, third-year women also had a higher failure rate than their proportion in the class, but not nearly as disproportionate as in 1978—in both years, women comprised 16% of the year, 14 students were not successful, three (or 21%) of whom were women. women did, however, comprise eight of the 12 who returned after their failure in 1978 to repeat the year and graduate. but two transferred to the school of architecture at victoria university to do so. of the 310 students listed in the 1976 contacts booklet, 252 eventually graduated, three from victoria and these three were all women. kemble welch explicitly transferred to the wellington school because of the presence of two female staff there—wendy light and helen tippett (a. 90 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e kemble welch, personal communication, july 11, 2017). in contrast, there were none at the much larger auckland school, where the first female staff member, sarah treadwell, was not appointed until 1981 (barrie 2017: 103). earlier in the school’s history, women starting architecture study were told that many of them would drop out, and/or that they could be a woman or an architect but not both (matthewson 2010: 178). such overt discrimination (often delivered under the guise of “friendly advice”) was perhaps less prevalent by the late 1970s, but clearly the path for the women students at the time was not unproblematic, despite their increased numbers. graduation of that first-year class of 1976, 47 of the 74 (or 64%) graduated with a degree in architecture (university of auckland 1959–1994). of the 27 who did not, 24 had decided to leave study sometime within the first two years of the fouryear professional degree. these non-graduates went into careers including art, book illustration, maths, accountancy, draughting, property and project management, and social work. juliet newson switched to geology and was the president of the international geothermal association from 2013 to 2016 (twose 2015). at least two—jackie gilmore and phillip thomass—went into the film industry. gilmore was the assistant art director for the multi-award-winning new zealand movie, the piano (“jackie gilmore” n.d.). a move into film for those who had studied or graduated from architecture was not unusual at this time before there were qualifications in film in new zealand. at least another four people listed in the 1976 contacts booklet have had very successful careers in film—stuart dryburgh, neil kirkland, kirsten shouler, and kim sinclair—with sinclair receiving an oscar for his work on the blockbuster movie avatar (“kim sinclair” n.d.). in an analysis of australian student graduation data from 1987 to 2013, i extrapolated an approximate figure for the percentage of first years who do not graduate to be around 40% (matthewson 2017: 174). the 36% non-graduation rate for the first-year class of 1976 is a little lower than that figure. this may be due partly to the structure of the degree in new zealand during the 1970s being different from that of australia (intermediate year plus four professional years at the auckland school compared with generally a full five years at a school of architecture in australia). mainly, however, in the australian calculation i assumed that the degree is completed within a defined number of years, as i compared first-year numbers to graduation numbers a set number of years later. while i acknowledged that this makes it a very approximate calculation because this is seldom the case, the first-year class of 1976 clearly demonstrates just how seldom this happens and therefore how approximate that calculation is. the individuals in the class graduated over a period of five years. only just over half of the 1976 first-year cohort (55%) completed the degree in the minimum numbers of years, with their degrees conferred in 1980 (26 of the 47), 11 graduated a year later, three the following year, four the next, two were conferred in 1984, and one outlier finally graduated in 1994. this dispersal pattern appears to be similar for others listed in the 1976 contacts booklet: 68% of second years completed the degree in the minimum number 91 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e of years for their stage of study. even for the third-year students, who had just two years to go, nearly one-quarter of them (24%) took longer. this “stretching out” of graduation for architecture cohorts complicates the calculations of the australian data. perhaps the best illustration of that complication comes when examining the 47 graduates from the first year of 1976 by gender. women were eventually a high 34%, or 16 of the 47, of the first-year cohort who graduated, but measured as a proportion of each graduating year, women did not reach over 30% until the mid-1990s (see fig. 2). this was partly because the 1976 intake level of nearly one-third women was not matched in the immediate following years, as previously noted. and partly because women over this period took longer than men to complete the course of study. table 1 shows how for almost every year group listed in the 1976, 1978, and 1980 contacts booklets, and the school overall, a lesser proportion of the women completed within the minimum time than the men. this was not necessarily due to failure (although it was for eight of the women in the 1976 first-year cohort), but also to taking time out. that more of the women seemed to do this than the men is another sign that things were awry for women in the school at that time. they were, perhaps, taking a breather from the world of “old heavy breathers”. in fact, the women in the original 1976 first-year class were slightly more successful at graduating than their male classmates. they comprised 34% of all those who eventually graduated but were 32% of the class in 1976. i did not expect this result because multiple studies have maintained that more women than men dropped out of architecture study, particularly at this time, due to harassment, gender bias, and discrimination (ahrentzen & anthony 1993; anthony 2001; shannon 1996). the australian data i analysed also strongly suggest greater attrition for women students of architecture: the difference between the proportion of female first years who do not graduate averages out at between 3.5% and 4% higher than the males (matthewson 2017: 174). if women were simply taking longer to complete the degree, then perhaps the attrition of women was not as severe as these earlier studies, and my more recent analysis, suggested. there are, however, several caveats to this interpretation. first, small numbers can create instability in generating percentages. second, the women of the class of 1976 may have been a particularly tenacious group, but they also had some advantages over previous groups of women at the school. within their cohort they comprised 32%, comfortably over the commonly touted critical mass figure of 30% that marks a shift in culture, reducing isolation and discrimination. drude dahlerup argues that the concept of a “critical mass” of women representing a definitive tipping point is debatable, but the principles that more women table 1: completion within the minimum number of years, by gender, for graduating students listed in the 1976, 1978, and 1980 contacts booklets. 1st year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year all school m f total m f total m f total m f total m f total 1976 61% 44% 55% 74% 42% 68% 76% 75% 76% 92% 100% 93% 78% 62% 75% 1978 43% 38% 42% 31% 44% 33% 81% 57% 74% 93% 100% 94% 64% 60% 63% 1980 38% 42% 39% 50% 43% 49% 60% 58% 59% 85% 60% 80% 58% 51% 57% 92 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e reduces isolation and that negative stereotypes lose some of their potency still pertain (dahlerup 2006). third, and importantly, the cohort had the example of some particularly strong women as role models in the years above them, notably fiona christeller and amanda reynolds. role models are crucial for naturalising the presence of women in a profession or holding a particular position (ely, ibarra, & kolb 2011: 477). in 1979, reynolds and christeller along with ’76 cohort member janet thomson also battled misogyny in the school and the profession head-on by setting up the women’s institute of architecture (matthewson 2009; mckay 2017: 92). finally, looking at all the women who were in the school in 1976 (rather than the smaller number in the first-year cohort), although they did indeed take longer to complete, fewer of them overall did so. of the 310 students, 56 (or 18%) did not graduate; 23% of the women and 17% of the men. effectively, women tallied 21% of the school in 1976, but 19.7% of all those who eventually graduated. both calculations demonstrate a higher attrition rate for the women students. for the 1978 contacts booklet, women comprised 19.1% of the graduates and 20.9% of those who were gender-identifiable in the school, again indicating a higher attrition rate for women students (there are too many in the 1980 booklet that i am unable to gender-identify to do the calculation for that year). notwithstanding the attrition rate of all architectural students (not just the women), the number of graduates per year heading out into the population rose over the 1970s and continued to rise. around 1970 there were 40 graduates a year, for a population of 2.85 million, giving a rate of 1.4 for every 100,000 people and women were just 0.02 of that 1.4 figure (statistics new zealand 2017; university of auckland 1959–1994). by 1980, there were 70 graduates per year (including those from victoria university of wellington) generating a 2.3 rate (women 0.5, and men 1.8). the rate for 1990 was 2.9 (women 0.8), and currently sits at around 4.0 with that figure almost evenly split between men and women (australian institute of architects 2015). while women have increased their impact on this figure, men have stayed relatively stable—a similar result to australia where women graduates have accounted for most of the growth of architectural graduates relative to the population (matthewson 2017: 172). so what happened to the 47 graduates? where did they go? and what did they do with their architectural education? registration registration or the license to practise architecture is one of the few measurements of participation in the profession. it is a rather crude measure because it is possible to work in architecture and not be registered—it is only required legally for calling oneself an architect and running a practice in new zealand, as is the case in australia and the united kingdom. registration also does not track the alternate routes that those who study architecture can find open up to them across their careers. nonetheless, a study of registration helps to delineate what happened to some of the class of ’76. of the 47 graduates, 26 (55%) have new zealand registration (nzrab n.d.), although four have relinquished it.2 another seven can call themselves architects in the united kingdom or australia (arb-nsw n.d.; arb-uk n.d.; arbv n.d.; boaq n.d.). the cohort’s level of 55% registered in new zealand is higher than the rate that others have calculated. in 2010, errol haarhoff tracked every graduate from new 93 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e zealand architecture schools between 1987 and 1999 and found an average rate of 38% registration for those who graduated; no single graduation year exceeded 50% (haarhoff 2010: 18). this figure is higher but similar to registration rates found for australian graduates: in new south wales, rob cowdroy concludes that “the proportion of graduates eventually registering is unlikely to reach thirty percent” (cowdroy 1995: 12). and a recent south australian study found a 26% registration rate for all graduates in that state from 1999 to 2011 (shannon, webb, zeng, & holder 2014: 1544). was the class of ’76 more committed to obtaining the title of architect and participating in the profession in this formal way? to answer that question requires considering the registration data further back than haarhoff ’s date of 1987. fig. 4 plots the percentage of each graduating cohort from the auckland school of architecture who registered under the architects act 1963 and shows overall declining rates of registration for graduating cohorts since the beginning of the data in the 1960s. until the mid-1970s, well over 70% of auckland graduates registered. for the next decade until the mid-1980s, the average was over 60%. this means that at 55% registered, the first-year class of 1976 was actually below the average for graduating cohorts of the decade. it is also below that for all the graduates listed in the 1976 booklet, 62% of whom registered. in comparison, 63% of all graduates from the 1978 booklet and 68% from the 1980 booklet registered. fig. 4 shows the registration rate dropping again for those who graduated in the mid-to-late 1980s, perhaps due to the registration process changing to include logbooks in addition to the traditional interview. the trajectory overall continues down for the rest of the century. this declining rate of registration for graduates is undoubtedly affected by the increasing number of graduates per head of population (discussed earlier), as well as the changing nature of the profession where the increasing dominance of large firms (cuff 2014) means that registration is less important for employees. in addition, perceptions of the importance of registration vary among graduates (shannon et al. 2014: 1548–49). fig. 4 percentage of auckland graduates registered under the new zealand architects act 1963. data smoothed by taking the average of prior three years. [source: nzrab (n.d.)] there is some discrepancy between the fig. 4 figures and those of haarhoff ’s study, partly because he aggregated all the new zealand schools, and partly because graduates can become registered many years after graduating; a period of working overseas, for example, might delay new zealand registration. for the class of ’76, over half (14) of those who registered had done so within five years, 19 67 19 68 19 69 19 86 19 85 19 84 19 83 19 82 19 81 19 80 19 79 19 78 19 77 19 76 19 72 19 71 19 70 19 73 19 74 19 75 80’ 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1980s1970s 1990s 19 94 19 93 19 97 19 92 19 96 19 91 19 95 19 90 19 89 19 88 19 87 % 94 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e but four took longer than 10 years. typically for graduates in the 1970s and 1980s, around two-thirds registered within five years, and less than 10% took longer than 10 years. the cohort of ’76 deviates from this pattern, generally taking longer. however, with small numbers (just 26) such deviation does not necessarily signify much. the gender breakdown is curious—half of the 14 who registered within five years were women. there were two lines of thought at the time about registration that i recall. one was that to register was to “sell out” and conform to an old-fashioned, conservative, and oppressive vision of architectural practice—another hangover from a certain kind of anti-authoritarianism prevalent at the time and a serious will to practise in a non-exploitative manner (francis 2016: 282; mckay 2017; shannon 1996: 58). the second (and opposing) line of thought was strong among women graduates: an impetus to register in order to boost the ranks (the military analogy is deliberate) at a time when there were strong doubts that women could or should be architects (matthewson 2009). clearly, some of the women of the class of ’76 heeded that call. nonetheless, the two taking the longest time to register were both women. for all those who graduated between 1965 and 1997, a bare 1% of graduates registering took longer than 20 years, and women comprised one-third of that 1%. just as women took longer to complete their studies, some took longer to become registered. speed of graduating or registering is less an indication of “success” or otherwise for the graduates, but that women typically took longer at both does indicate that they faced barriers to becoming architects. there is also typically a gender difference in the overall attainment of registration. from 1965 to 1997, women constituted 20% of graduates (405 of 1,992) but 15% of all those graduates who registered (169 of 1,151); 62% of all the male graduates over that period registered, compared with 42% of the females. this repeats the findings from both haarhoff (2010: 23) and shannon et al. (2014: 1544) that women are significantly less likely to register than men. the latter study delved into reasons why women were more hesitant to register and found that gender bias in the profession and the construction industry contributed. such biases may be less blatant in the twenty-first century than in the period in which the class of ’76 graduated (matthewson 2009), but nonetheless continue to contribute to women being less likely to register. curiously, the women in the class of ’76 make up 38% of those of the cohort who registered. this is again a higher proportion than expected. but again, this is measuring against a first-year intake cohort (and generated with small numbers). over the period of time that all but one of the cohort graduated (1980–84), the proportion of women graduating averaged 18% (279 graduates, 49 female). over the same period, women’s percentage of those graduates who registered was 13% (173 registered, 23 women). once again, the high proportion of women in the first-year class of ’76 who went on to register is not reflected in an analysis of the graduating cohorts. the year was clearly anomalous for the number of women and also for their eventual success as measured by graduation and registration. lives in architecture registration is a formal measurement and gives no indication of the wide variety of lives in—and stemming from—architecture of the 47 graduates from the class 95 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e of ’76. these lives are more difficult to trace and i have relied on email addresses from the new zealand registered architects board (nzrab) register, google, and the recall of those acknowledged at the end of this paper. this kind of search also raises questions such as what does success in architecture mean, and what ought a career look like compared to what it does look like. like those who did not graduate, some graduates used their architecture education to launch into other often related fields. alan brown became a painter and printmaker as well as architect (“alan brown” n.d.), rob morrison was a project manager with the new south wales government (r. morrison, personal communication, august 28, 2017), and paul hamilton “looks after” a self-contained oil-company town in bahrain dealing with everything from rubbish collection to the water supply, security issues to new buildings, and houses to hospitals (p. hamilton, personal communication, july 2, 2017). anna kemble welch mixes standard architectural work with organising wellington’s newtown festival, the largest community festival in the country, and considers building community to be as much architecture as designing and constructing buildings (a. kemble welch, personal communication, july 11, 2017). geographically, the graduates are spread across the world. although nearly half worked overseas at some stage, some of those returned to new zealand and twothirds are now based in the country that educated them. there is a cluster of seven in australia, two in the middle east, two in europe, and one in the united states. some have been involved with formal matters concerning architects: pip cheshire was president of the new zealand institute of architects (nzia) from 2014 to 2016; simon crispe established the arabian gulf chapter of the royal institute of british architects and was the first chair of the chapter (s. crispe, personal communication, august 16, 2017); and jane aimer was the last chair of the architects education registration board prior to its disestablishment in the mid-2000s. the majority of those whose lives i have been able to trace are still in architecture in some way: 29 in practice (nine women and 20 men) and four in architectural education (three women, one man). i have been unable to track six, three have died, and one retired. just three no longer work in architecture, leaving during one of the all-too-numerous economic slumps that have occurred since their graduation (including the one into which the majority of the cohort graduated in the early 1980s). it appears that only one never used the degree in any direct way since graduation, although she argues that her architectural training and skills were useful in the other fields she ventured into (j. thompson, personal communication, july 4, 2017). over 70% of the graduates opted to become architects in the more formal sense through registration (if overseas registration is included), but their practices range widely demonstrating the breadth of possible careers within architecture. of the 29 graduates of the class of ’76 who are still in some form of practice, 20 are directors of their own practices (including six women) and these range from small local ones to very large international firms. eight of the cohort’s businesses have three or fewer in the practice, five consist of four to nine people, three of 10 to 15 people, two of 16 to 30, and two in excess of 100 employees. there are no women owners of practices of more than 16 people—this spread is typical as women owners tend to cluster in smaller practices (civil 2016; parlour 2017). 96 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e eight of the practices owned by the class of ’76 are named after their owners, either by their full name or surname only—a long-held naming tradition in architecture. but this convention was challenged in the 1970s—along with much else—and some formed collectives, while others have selected names that bear no relation to that of the owner/s. nine of the cohort are owner/directors in such practices, including graeme fanselow of fat parrot, anna kemble welch of red design architects, john leijh of architos, and jane aimer and lindley naismith of scarlet architects. another three have become directors of large older firms that retain the names of their founders, a sign of stability and continuity important for the kind of clients that large practices serve. there are two routes to this outcome. one is by moving up the hierarchy, such as chris bowkett at walker group architects and simon crispe at atkins global. the other is by being parachuted in from a small, usually award-winning practice, a kind of head-hunting by the larger firms to refresh design talent, as was the case for andrew barclay at warren & mahoney architects. dana cuff calls working for oneself the “guiding vision” for architects (cuff 1991: 137), as this gives access to the mechanisms the profession uses to reward architectural work: awards and media. the most successful of the ’76 cohort in these terms is pip cheshire, who has the highest architecture profile within new zealand. he is a multi-award-winning designer and the recipient of the nzia gold medal in 2013 (nzia n.d.). the work of his practice appears in a number of books about new zealand architecture (lloyd jenkins 2004: 253, 256, 276–79; shaw 1991: 193–94, 210–11, 226; walker 2005: 217), and he has written one himself (cheshire & reynolds 2008). however, mal bartleet was the first of the ’76 cohort to have built work appear in a book, the elegant shed, published a scant four years after his graduation (mitchell & chaplin 1984: 100). bartleet, cheshire, barclay, and richard priest all appear in douglas lloyd jenkins’ romp through twentieth-century new zealand design, at home: a century of new zealand design (2004). cheshire’s career (and that of some of the others named above) adheres to the classic “ideal” image of an architect as a single person of outstanding design ability and vision, author of work that is identified and published as his. it is an ideal that is promoted by architectural history, award systems, and the media, but it is both fraught and anachronistic for many reasons (boyle 2000: 90; willis 1998). it is not the norm for an architectural career, as many of the class of ’76 demonstrate. much of the work of architects gains no public plaudits or publication of any kind and extends beyond the well-publicised and glamorous scenarios of starchitects or award systems. it is nonetheless a powerful and persistent narrative and reared its head when some of the ’76 first-year cohort seemed a little reluctant to talk to me, aware that their life in architecture did not match that narrow ideal. another from the cohort forged an alternate route towards recognition in the architectural world in a manner that was uncommon at the time of graduation. mark wigley has international renown as professor of architecture and former dean at the columbia university graduate school of architecture, planning and preservation in new york (faculty n.d.). within eight years of graduating with his bachelor of architecture (and with a phd also from auckland under his belt), wigley was in new york co-curating with philip johnson the influential 97 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e deconstructivist architecture exhibition at the museum of modern art (johnson & wigley 1988). in the early 1980s, postgraduate study was only just beginning to be seen as an option by graduates (mckay 2017: 98). wigley is well-published and an often-cited architectural theorist, and has influenced generations of architecture students both nationally and internationally (barrie 2017: 114). another three of the cohort—diane burgess, diane brand, and myself—entered academia, although after a period in practice, and, like wigley, are concerned with improving the quality of architecture through shaping the education of architects. some of the cohort have not followed either this or the established route that leads to traditional architectural acknowledgement, as nearly one-third (nine) of those from the cohort who are in practice are employees, not owners. there are risks and obligations involved in ownership with which not all architects are comfortable. ownership involves hustling for work in a highly competitive environment. or it can be a role that is typically more about management than architecture. matt adams characterised his ownership role in a practice with five employees as “dogsbody, run-around and gap-filler” (m. adams, personal communication, july 6, 2017). at the other end of the scale, simon crispe claimed his role was mainly wrangling staff of over 2,500 construction professionals (s. crispe, personal communication, august 16, 2017). instead, those of the graduate cohort who are employees are to be found at the next level down from ownership in trusted associate positions typically in medium to larger sized firms. such firms tend to offer the opportunity to work on challenging and interesting projects, “getting things done”. morgan mckewen described himself as an “engine room” person (m. mckewen, personal communication, june 29, 2017). the practise of architecture at this level, particularly of ushering in a built work with all its complex problem solving, can lead to rewards other than awards, publication, or identifiable authorship. these include the satisfaction of contributing to important buildings, a sense of adding to society, and the formation of social relationships with others (caven & diop 2012). architectural sociologist paul jones argues that the work of the architecture profession is incredibly diverse, but culturally the profession valorises just one aspect of what architects do (jones 2009: 2523). the graduates of the first-year class of ’76 show that diversity and in doing so reveal the narrowness of the “ideal” image of an architect as the identifiable singular author of work. there is much talk about the expanded field of architecture—architecture is already expansive, it is just that, collectively, but the profession values a small portion of it. given that part of the aim of the 1972 protest at the school was to open up architectural education from its intense professional focus, the high number of those who graduated from the class of ’76 who are still strongly connected to the architecture profession, suggests that perhaps the opportunities offered by this “looser” education were not taken up. yet the variety of practices that the graduates encompass is very wide (perhaps even very loose), ranging greatly not just in size but from the corporate to the community-focused. and if we look at that number (33) compared to the original class of 74, less than half remain in the field. this has implications for architectural education—if less than half of a cohort stay in traditional practice, then how a school understands and communicates what the profession is has lasting ramifications. there have always been tensions between schools and the profession, and probably always will be, 98 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e but the class of ’76 demonstrates the sheer breadth of the range of options, both within the profession and outside of it, with which those with an architectural education engage. conclusion narrowing the focus onto one class of first-year students or those who were enrolled in a particular year allows a relatively fine-grained examination of what happens to those who study architecture. however, it can also throw up anomalies because small numbers can cause statistical aberrations and a year group is not necessarily representative of a time period. for example, the 1976 intake saw significantly more women enter the school than in previous or subsequent years and these women were comparatively successful in terms of the formal measurements of graduation and registration. as a group, the class of first-year students in the auckland school of architecture in 1976 demonstrates the high fall-out rate while studying. the women of the group were slightly more tenacious than the men and proportionally more of them graduated, but this was not typical for the period. they did, however, take longer to complete, which was typical. after graduation, the class of ’76 shows the wide variety of possible lives in architecture. some have come close to the “ideal” of the acknowledged architect of known (at least in new zealand) buildings, but the cohort reveals much more of the wide diversity possible in architecture well beyond that ideal. all those in practice have applied their architectural thinking to their work across a wide range of buildings in new zealand and across the world. and those who did not graduate, and some of those who did, have used their education in ways other than traditional practice. overall, the class of ’76 is loosely of its “loose” time. it was also a time when graduates were rarer in the population than they are currently, which means that the statistics and lives of those in the cohort cannot be extrapolated to represent all those who have passed, or may pass, through an architecture school. but the cohort does highlight some of the issues that still confront those who choose architecture as an education and a career. acknowledgements for their input into this article, i thank matt adams, jane aimer, sara antonievich, andrew barclay, mal bartleet, diane brand, pip cheshire, simon crispe, graeme fanselow, paul hamilton, heather ives, anna kemble welch, lyn maltby, morgan mckewen, rob morrison, lindley naismith, roger thackery, janet thomson, lucy treep, stephen ullrich, and paul walker. 99 where do you go to?: the class of ’76 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e endnotes 1 g. fletcher (personal communication, september 10, 2017) denied that the cover might be a caricature of a member of staff, but every female student 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(1998). invisible contributions: the problem of history and women architects. architectural theory review, 3(2), 57–68. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 39 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s daniel grinceri tracing the border: excursus on the wall introduction in june 1989, as cold war tensions were in decline, authorities in budapest began dismantling the electrified fence on the border with austria, inspiring thousands of east germans to seek refuge in hungary in the hope of migrating to west germany. soon after, czechoslovakia also opened its borders, placing increasing pressure on east german authorities to follow suit. people began protesting all over east germany, with an estimated 300,000 gathering in leipzig and another half a million in berlin to demand democratic reform (judt, 2010: 613). exasperated by the government’s inaction, the full east german cabinet resigned. in an attempt to stabilise the situation, gunter schabowski, the socialist unity party chief in berlin, held a press conference where he inadvertently announced the immediate removal of travel restrictions for all east german citizens (sarotte, 2014: 127-128). evening protests were by now a regular occurrence, but the announcement served to send thousands more demonstrators into the streets and to the wall. overwhelmed by the sheer size of the crowd, the guards stood down and on 9 november 1989, the wall was breached for the first time in 28 years (1961-1989) as thousands of east germans flooded into the west. in celebration, germans climbed atop the wall and took to it with sledgehammers in what is now a symbol of the collapse of communism in europe. schabowski later explained that authorities saw opening the border as a “relief valve” that might potentially secure more time for authorities to propose reform and secure some popularity amongst east german citizens (moulson, 2015: 56). as historian tony judt appositely identified, “the wall was opened for much the same reason that it was erected and closed a generation earlier, to staunch a demographic haemorrhage” (2010: 615). in 1961, the wall was erected to keep east german citizens from leaving for the more economically prosperous west germany. however, in 1989, a western vision of freedom and economic well-being abetted eastern desires for modernisation, so the german democratic republic gambled that a taste of liberalisation and token economic reform would be enough to maintain the status quo. instead, what resulted with the demise of the berlin wall, was the principle catalyst for the collapse of east germany. 40 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 three decades ago, it was believed that the fall of the berlin wall and the reconfiguration of international relations would open an age of globalisation, ushering a new age of freedom of movement, free trade, and borderless states. instead, we are witness to the emergence of border walls and barriers, to an extent not heretofore seen; razor-wire fences, concrete security walls, offshore detention centres, security checkpoints and surveillance systems at airports, roadways, or anywhere that crosses international lines (nail, 2016). yet the advent of soft border controls in the early twentieth century, such as passports, visas, and customs, provided the means for effectively regulating civilian movement (zimmermann & vernon, 2019). as a consequence, solid forms of border control in the period leading up to and during world war 2 were not seen as effective means for preventing immigration, but rather were built primarily as defence against invasion. between world war 2 and end of the cold war (1945-1989), a further nineteen border barriers were built, with their main purpose to prevent citizens from escaping, like the berlin wall or barriers between hungary and austria, czechoslovakia and west germany, as well as between north and south korea. (see table 1) even in the decade that followed the collapse of european communism, walls did not significantly increase, with only ten constructed mainly due to rising tensions in the middle east (table 1). however, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 11 september 2001, the implementation of surveillance and security proliferated, and legal measures were established allowing for illegal immigrants to be detained and treated like criminals (parker & fellner, 2004), while borderlands became a theatre for violence and war (gregory, 2011). at the same time, soft forms of border control, like e-borders and e-passports embedded with biometric information such as facial, fingerprint, and iris recognition, have become a normalised part of international travel (graham, 2003). although largely ineffective, solid borders have become a visible means for governments to be seen to be in control. in fact, in the two decades following september 11 and the ensuing conflict in the middle east, which triggered a flood of refugees seeking asylum in the west (cammack & dunne, 2018), 81 border walls or security fences have been built and many more planned (table 1) (vallet, 2017: 2). the refugee crisis in europe (2015) has seemingly justified the erection of an ever-increasing number of electrified barbed wire fences and virtual walls, equipped with high-tech surveillance systems, drones, and weaponry, presenting an image of division many hoped had disappeared at the end of the cold war. walls and fences reinforce borderlines all over the globe, demarcating boundaries that were once cartographic in nature as closed, solid barriers. walls are not simply about security and keeping immigrants out, they are not even very effective or, in many cases, visible to the general public. nevertheless, their presence provides a symbolic effect in favour of preserving identity, which explains why governments are so quick to build walls as a solution to unwanted people movement as opposed to tackling issues at their source (jones, 2016). the “war on terror” provided justification for increased securitisation, and although this event may have sanctioned wall building as a political instrument, their rapid proliferation suggests the existence of an underlying predilection or fear that authorities were able to leverage in their favour (aly & green, 2010). while border security might provide some sense of protection from the outside world, their effects are tokenistic, rather, they seek to reinforce differences and construct an image of national identity by casting outsiders as dangerous, drug smugglers, and terrorists, and a threat to traditional ways of life (brown, 2010). 41 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 table 1. border walls between the world wars (1918–1945) dates denotes construction and demolition dates. absence of a second date means the wall still exists as at the time of writing. 1920-1940 finland constructed two lines of fortified defence on the soviet border. the mannerheim line built with fallen trees and boulders, and the salpa line, which consisted of 3-ton rocks. 1929-1938 france constructed the 380km maginot line comprising bunkers, tunnels, tank obstacles, artillery casements, and machine gun posts along the german and italian borders. 1930-1942 italy built the alpine line, a system of defence fortification along its borders with france, switzerland, austria, and yugoslavia. 1935-1938 czechoslovakia built border fortifications with infantry blockhouses and antitank obstacles. 1936-1941 greece built the 155km metaxas line to protect against bulgarian invasion. 1938-1945 sweden built the skane line on its borders and coastline with barbed wire and concrete bunkers. 1942-1944 germany built the atlantic wall equipped with batteries, artillery, and positioned troops along the coast to protect against invasion. border walls from the end of ww2 to the collapse of the berlin wall (1945–1989) 1945-1991 the “iron curtain” was a self-imposed physical, legal, and informational barrier between the soviet union and the west, intended to prevent trade and stop immigration. it also included 240km of electrified fencing between hungary, austria, and west germany. other walls to come down at the collapse of communism in europe include hungary-austria, czechoslovakia-west germany, russiafinland, and russia-norway. 1953 north korea-south korea: the korean armistice agreement made provision for a buffer zone or demilitarised zone (dmz) between north and south korea, which is still heavily fortified. 1957 france built the morice line, an electric fence with minefields to prevent the rebel guerrillas from entering algeria from tunisia and morocco. 1961 cuba-us guantanamo bay: cuba built a barbed wire fence with landmines to prevent cubans from escaping to the us naval base. 1961-1989 east germany-west germany: the berlin wall built by east germany was a 150km long system with sensors, barbed wire obstacles, anti-tank ditch, access road for vehicles, 186 guard towers, a control strip of raked sand, and a 3.6m high concrete wall. 140 people lost their lives attempting to cross. 1962-2018 hong kong-china: consisted of barbed wire strung into a maze. the wall was removed in 2018 as hong kong has transitioned to chinese rule. 1967 israel built a 150km defence system known as the bar lev line, a massive sand embankment supported by a concrete wall along the suez canal. 1969 northern ireland: the “peace wall” is a separation barrier keeping catholics separated from protestant neighbourhoods in belfast. 1973 oman built a 50km mined hornbeam line against guerrilla insurgents. 1974 cyprus—between the turkish and greek halves: a 2m high wall dividing the city of nicosia. 1975 south africa-mozambique: during apartheid south africa erected a 3,500-volt electric fence that is said to have killed hundreds of people. 1980 morocco-western sahara: the structure is a 3m high sand wall or berm with bunkers, fences, and landmines built to prevent the movement of guerrilla fighters. 1985 south africa enforced border controls against illegal refugees and guerrilla infiltration by installing a 2,800-volt electrified fence on its borders with zimbabwe and lesotho. 42 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 border walls from after the collapse of european communism to 9/11 (1990–2001) 1990 us-mexico: construction began in 1990 on a section of the border. however, barriers had commenced as early 1910 and have been continuously added to throughout the bush, clinton, and obama administrations. 1990 iran-afghanistan: iran commenced construction of a physical barrier to stop the transportation of narcotics into the country. 1991 kuwait-iraq: post-gulf war, the un established a demilitarised zone to separate the two countries. the border barrier is 4.6m high, consisting of an electrified fence, concertina wiring, and an earth berm. 1993 india-bangladesh: india constructed a 3m high, barbed-wire electrified fence along its 3,406km border with bangladesh to deter illegal immigration, smugglers, drug couriers, and human trafficking. 1994 israel-gaza strip: a security barrier intended to control the movement of people between gaza and israel and to stop the entry of arms into the territory. in 2019, israel began construction on the third and last phase of a new barrier. president netanyahu said the fence is to “protect ourselves from wild beasts”. the wall is constructed of three layers of galvanized steel barriers, sensors, and underground walls. 1998 spain-morocco: spain constructed border walls at ceuta and melilla adjoining morocco, which is seen as a gateway for african migration into europe. 2001 uzbekistan-afghanistan: uzbekistan built a barrier along the afghan border consisting of barbedwire fence and a second taller 380-volt electrified fence, and mines and armed patrols over fears of taliban insurgency. 2001 turkmenistan-uzbekistan/kazakhstan: the turkmenistan president ordered completion of a border fence to keep out illegal migrants and smuggling. 2001 israel-lebanon: started constructing a 9m high concrete security wall on its lebanon border. border walls since 9/11 (2002–2020) 2002 uae-oman: the uae announced that it was installing a 4m high barbed-wire fence along the oman border to curb the flow of illegal migrants, illicit drugs, and terrorists into the country. 2003 bagdad sunni-shiite barrier security wall. built by the us military to prevent suicide bombers and death squads from launching attacks across sectarian lines. 2003 china-north korea: chinese authorities began building wire fences on major defection routes along the tumen river, and in 2006 added 20km of concrete and barbed-wire fencing, 4.6m high, near dandong. in 2007, north korea started building its own fence along the yalu river. more walls have been built on either side over the past decade. 2003 botswana-zimbabwe: botswana started erecting an electrified fence on part of its border with zimbabwe to stop an influx of humans and livestock. 2003 saudi arabia-yemen: after the deterioration of security on the border with yemen, base of alqaeda, the saudis built a “giant” razor-wire fence from the red sea to oman. 2005 uae-saudi arabia: the uae erected a fence along its border with saudi arabia to block extremists from entering the country. 2006 kazakhstan-uzbekistan: kazakhstan announced the commencement of work on a 2.5m high barbed-wire fence along the kazakh border with uzbekistan, to keep smugglers out of the towns and villages. 2006 italy padova: constructed a 3m high “ring of steel” to divide african immigrants from other areas of the city. 2009 uzbekistan-kyrgyzstan: after islamic militant incursions 1999, uzbekistan sealed its border and commenced constructing a barbed wire fence along its border with kyrgyzstan. in 2009, authorities decided to strengthen security on the kyrgyz-uzbek border by digging 3m deep ditched and 5-7m high walls. 2009 russia-georgia: facing political unrest, border guards from russia began constructing a fence to demarcate the “international border” with georgia. the territorial line has since been in dispute. 2009 egypt-gaza: with support from the us, egypt started building a steel wall along its gaza border. in 2020, egypt started construction on another 7m high steel wall equipped with electronic sensors and another concrete wall 8m away. 2010 israel-egypt: israel built a barrier along its egyptian border aimed at stemming the flow of african immigrants into the country. 43 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 2010 myanmar-bangladesh: construction began to prevent illegal entry. tensions have increased at the border due to the treatment of the rohingya. 2011 pakistan-iran: pakistan commenced construction in areas of the border with iran, to stop human trafficking, smuggling, and cross-border militancy. 2012 greece-turkey: greece completed a 4m high fence to stop immigrants from entering. 2012 israel west bank barrier: the israeli government claims the barrier’s purpose is to prevent violent attacks by palestinians in israel. land for construction inside the west bank was requisitioned from palestinian landowners and impedes access to many services and resources, disrupts family and social life, undermines livelihoods, and compounds the fragmentation of palestinian territory. the structure consists of a multi-layered fence system with pyramid-shaped stacks of barbed wire on the two outer fences and lighter-weight fence with intrusion detection equipment in the middle, an anti-vehicle ditch, patrol roads on both sides, and a smooth strip of sand for intrusion tracking. on average the wall contains a 60m wide exclusion area. the width of exclusion zones is 3m in urban areas where there is an 8m high concrete wall. 2013 israel-syria: israel constructed a border defence system with syria to protect from military insurgents. 2013 oman-yemen: the omani government stated it would initiate a project to build a fence along the border with yemen to deter the possible treat of conflict. 2013 india-myanmar: india commenced construction of a border fence with myanmar to counter insurgents. 2013 namibia-botswana: namibia proposed the erection of a border fence with botswana to prevent spread of disease in livestock. 2013 brazil announced its border protection programme to create a virtual wall with all ten of its shared borders (argentina, bolivia, colombia, french guiana, guyana, peru, paraguay, suriname, uruguay, and venezuela) to prevent illegal immigration, drug smuggling and other illicit activities. the virtual border, which will consist of satellite technology, electromagnetic signalling, tactical communication, drones, and increased army presence, was chosen because of the difficulty of the terrain. a pilot project began along the bolivian and paraguayan borders in 2007. 2014 ukraine-russia: ukraine announced a defence border with russia, but lack of funds prevented completion, with only 15% completed in 2018. 2014 turkey-syria: turkey commenced construction of a 3m high concrete and razor-wire wall on their syrian border as part of measures to increase border security and combat illegal smuggling and illegal border crossing. the wall consists of an electronic surveillance system, thermal cameras, land surveillance, remote controlled weapons systems, line-length imaging systems, and seismic and acoustic sensors. 2014 turkmenistan-afghanistan: turkmenistan’s government clarified its border policy, with afghanistan adopting the same approach as its neighbours and sealing the border to keep out the taliban. 2014 tajikistan-afghanistan: security fence to keep out taliban insurgents. 2014 turkey-iran: turkey built a concrete wall on the iranian border to secure its border against smuggling, illegal immigration, and militant infiltration. 2014 saudi arabia-qatar: border tensions between the saudis and qatar has resulted in the construction of a barbed-wire fence to prevent immigrant workers entering the country. 2015 austria-slovenia: border fence to stem the flow of refugee migration through slovenia. 2015 slovenia-croatia: erected a razor-wire fence to stem flow of migrants. 2015 latvia-russia: started construction on a steel fence for protection against illegal immigrants. 2015 estonia-russia: estonia announced construction of a 2.5m high barrier on the border with russia for security and protection from illegal border crossings, smuggling, and human trafficking. 2015 hungary-serbia: electrified fence barbed wire divides hungary from serbia to stop immigrant flow. 2015 hungary-croatia: hungary finished building a fence along its border with croatia to shut out migrants moving across europe. 2015 hungary-romania: hungary started construction on a razor-wire fence on its serbian boundary across the main land route for migrants from the middle east. 2015 macedonia-greece: the macedonian army constructed a fence on the border with greece to control the flow of migrants. 2015 saudi arabia-iraq: saudi arabia built a combined fence and ditch to separate the country from iraq, with five layers of fencing, night vision cameras, and radar cameras, as well as 30,000 troops positioned at the border to prevent raids by islamic state in saudi territory. 44 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 2015 israel-jordan: israel began construction of a security fence along its border with jordan as part of israel’s “national security interests”. 2015 algeria-libya: amid heightened security algeria announced it would build an electrified fence with its northern neighbour, libya. 2015 kenya-somalia: the kenyan government announced construction of 700km long wall along its border with somalia to put an end to terrorist infiltration. after three years only 8km had been built. 2015 namibia-angola: namibia proposed erection of a border fence with angola to prevent spread of disease in livestock. 2015 argentina-bolivia: argentina proposed construction of a giant dirt mound along the border with bolivia to prevent the flow of illicit drugs. 2015 brunei-malaysia: brunei built a security fence along its malaysian border to control illegal immigration. 2016 us-mexico: in his presidential campaign trump promised the construction of a “big beautiful wall” on the southern border to keep out illegal immigrants and drug smugglers. to date, 177kms have been completed. in 2020, trump stated he wants the wall to be black and covered in spikes.. 2016 uk-calais: the british government announced a 4m high wall in the french port city to prevent migrants stowing onboard trucks crossing the english channel. 2016 sweden-denmark: border rail fence built to prevent illegal immigrants attempting to avoid security checks by crossing the tracks at railway stations. 2016 norway-russia: 4m high steel fence built to tighten security and prevent illegal immigration. 2016 finland-russia: agreed to temporarily close border restrictions due to illegal immigration. the border is patrolled by guards and electronic surveillance. 2016 austria-hungary: border fence built to prevent people claiming asylum. 2016 austria-italy: austria announced plans to erect a fence at its alpine border with italy (south tyrol) to prevent the flow of immigrants. troops gathered at the border in 2017 to stop migrants from crossing. 2016 bulgaria-turkey: bulgaria constructed a 3.5m high razor-wire fence to prevent migrants trying to cross from turkey. 2016 czech republic-slovakia, hungary and poland: began discussion to construct border fences to keep illegal immigrants out during the refugee crisis. 2016 bulgaria-greece: bulgaria constructed a 1.5m high razor wire fence due to concerns that other border closures could force migrants entering the eu through bulgaria. 2016 tunisia-libya: tunisia announced completion of barrier along its border with libya, designed to deter islamic militants, consisting of water trenched and sand banks. 2016 china-mongolia: border is entirely fenced to prevent the flow of people and sex trafficking. it presents a significant barrier for the movement of large herbivores. 2016 thailand-malaysia: thai leaders agreed to boost security by building a border wall to combat transnational crime and smuggling. 2017 lithuania-russia: steel fence built to prevent russia from conducting military exercises on lithuanian territory. 2017 lithuania-belarus: lithuania announced it would reinforce its kaliningrad border with a static barrier, a 3m high fence built alongside the barbed wire russian fence built five years previously to deter smuggling. 2017 turkey-iraq: same wall as the iran border. 2017 iraq-syria: built to prevent jihadists and smugglers from illegally entering the country from syria. 2017 india-pakistan: india commenced construction of a new steel fence along its border with pakistan, employing comprehensive integrated border management system (cibms) that entails deployment of smart fences, advanced surveillance, and anti-infiltration alarms. 2017 ecuador-peru: ecuador built a 1km long 4m high concrete wall alongside a canal on the peruvian border, which they say is to protect against flooding. 2017 malaysia-indonesia: reports surfaced that malaysia planned to build a wall on its border with indonesia in sabah to ensure its borders are secure. 2018 latvia-belarus: officials in latvia said they would construct a 120km 2m high barbed-wire fence along the border with belarus to deter the smuggling of illegal immigrants from afghanistan. 2018 poland-belarus: poland decided to build a wall on its border with belarus, which they claim is to restrict the movement of disease-carrying animals. 45 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 2018 poland-ukraine: the polish government is building one of the largest fences in the world to protect against disease-carrying wild boar. 2018 bosnia-serbia: border police setup a fence to stop migrants and refugees entering the eu. 2018 jordan-syria: us funded, jordan built an electrified fence to stem the flow of refugees and stop isis. 2018 jordan-iraq: us funded barrier wall. 2018 india-bhutan: the indian government decided to erect a barbed wire fence along “sensitive” sections of the bhutan border to control insurgent and militant groups. 2018 algeria-morocco: algeria announced it had deployed a barbed-wire fence along its border with morocco, equipped with surveillance cameras and control towers, as well as mobile radars and drones to protect against extremist groups inside morocco. 2018 costa rica-nicaragua: costa rica commenced construction on a “containment wall” in response to an increase in migration 2018 belize-guatemala: belize announced the commencement of works to improve border security with guatemala. 2019 denmark-germany: denmark erected a 1.5m high border fence to prevent the movement of wild boar carrying swine flu. however, many have suggested that the fence is to appease the growing antiimmigrant sentiment. 2019 croatia-bosnia: croatian authorities raised a high metal fence on the border with bosnia to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country. 2019 pakistan-afghanistan: built in response to increasing concerns about the security situation, to stop militants and drug traffickers from entering pakistan. 2019 mexico-guatemala: mexico has deployed forces at its southern border to prevent migrants entering after trump threatened tariffs if it did not prevent migrants from crossing through the country from central america. 2020 south africa-zimbabwe: south african authorities said they will build a fence along its border with zimbabwe to prevent undocumented migrants from entering and spreading coronavirus. 2020 south africa-mozambique: south africa commenced construction on a concrete wall along its mozambique border in an effort to curb theft and the movement of illicit goods across the border. 2020 bosnia-srpska: the constitutional court of bosnia and herzegovina inter entity boundary declared that the republic of srpska could use border instead of boundary 46 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 i argue that border walls are the consequence of liberal markets: despite the evocation of global mobility and economic prosperity, the state has ceded control to multinational corporations and thus turned its focus to identity politics and the securitisation of territory to maintain the vestiges of sovereign power. the aims of privatising government existed well before 11 september 2001, but the attacks on the world trade centre accelerated the process and further weakened government control by outsourcing surveillance, security, and warfare to the private sector (klein, 2007). for example, the australian government privatised offshore detention centres for asylum seekers on nauru and manus island to international security companies like serco and g4s. these multinational corporations, based in britain, were not able to be held accountable to the australian parliament, despite their failure to achieve adequate standards of care for detainees and thus relieved the australian government of responsibility for mistreatment of asylum seekers (loewenstein, 2015: 277). seeking new markets, the private sector, looking to step in where government failed, has also sought to fund and build sections of the us/mexico wall (schwartz & trevizo, 2020: 3). through this lens, this paper locates the current political climate, with its penchant for the theatrics of border walls, as the consequence of globalisation and neoliberalist regimes making for the rise of what has been given varying labels; the populist (müller, 2017), authoritarian (sunstein, 2018), autocratic (gessen, 2020), fascist (stanley, 2018), or mafia state (magyar, 2016). liquid modernity globalisation was supposed to inaugurate an era of unprecedented physical and virtual-electronic mobility: free trade and personal freedom were supposed to grow together. instead, the global triumph of neoliberal capital has stimulated the greatest wave of wall building and border fortification in history. (davis, 2005: 88) timing the publication of his book, modernity and the holocaust, with the dismantling of the berlin wall, sociologist zygmunt bauman (1989) contends that the holocaust was only possible in modernity. he argues that modern society generates an ambivalence to suffering that occurs almost on a daily basis, to the point where genocide becomes conceivable. here, the use of the term modernity, which bauman subsequently labels as “liquid modernity”, signifies society’s transition from solid structures to fluidity and fragmentation. in other words, from state-sanctioned systems to privately owned corporatised systems of governance. modernity, therefore, sustains a system where the ability to act freely within the global community is only available to those who can afford it. this highlights the dichotomy between the fluidity of capital and its proponents, the wealthy elite who are unbound by territorial constraints, and the settled majority who have limited capacity for movement. by extension, the world’s poor and those seeking asylum are least afforded extra-territorial mobility, making their exclusion, via means of securitisation, detention, and border walls, permissible. in a study on the language of populist leaders, in particular hungarian premier victor orban, the international relations expert bruno mendelski (2019: 1-24) argues that orban deliberately misrepresents complex issues by defining them within a bipolar discourse of inside vs. outside. outsiders are typically immigrants, or the “eu left-liberal elite”, who represent all that is threatening to 47 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 hungarian identity. orban describes these people as anti-nation, in the sense that they “hate hungary” and anti-border, because they are willing to allow “terrorists and criminals” into the country (mendelski, 2019: 6). the outside is an anathema to the establishment of hungarian identity as christian and peaceful. thus, orban presents himself as the protector of the hungarian people, shielding them from the outside and whose xenophobic policies affirm hungarian sovereignty by closing its borders to outsiders. this language, displayed by orban, has much in common with other populist leaders, such as trump, bolsonaro, erdogan, and johnson, all of whom have border security as one of their main platforms. reading from the same playbook, hungary in 2015 commenced construction of security fences on the borders of croatia, serbia, and romania in order to stave off immigrations from its southern neighbours and further isolate itself from the eu. for bauman (1998), the apparent insecurity brought about by globalisation is reduced to issues of “law and order” in which personal safety is overwhelmed by anxieties generated by the other. globalisation is thus negative, in that it seeks to extinguish barriers relating to global capital, the movement of goods, information, and privacy, while at the same time placing greater restrictions over individuals through the dereguation of privacy laws and increased surveillance of daily activities. making things worse, the traditional political and judicial establishment is not equipped to deal with the range and consequences of globalisation, essentially allowing the market to prioritise its own interests as opposed to more humane yet unprofitable considerations. indeed, early acolytes of globalisation anticipated wealth and prosperity stemming from the free circulation of capital via deregulated markets or the decentralisation of the internet (ferdinand, souch, & wesselman, 2020: 4). however, the economic prosperity as forecast by trickle-down economics has not eventuated (byttebier, 2019: 54). instead, the type of anxiety associated with globalisation today has emerged as the consequence of inadequate government regulation and the potential of global economic collapse, like the global financial crisis (gfc) of 2008 and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 (judge, 2020). major corporations, like australia’s banks, were given taxpayer funds by the government to guarantee record profits during the gfc (johnston et al, 2010). the sense of insecurity in times of crisis has its apotheosis in border security, which is supported by multinational corporations looking to profit from the commodification of personal information and surveillance capitalism (a term coined by shoshana zuboff ). take, for example, the syrian refugee crisis in which multinational companies, such as european homecare (a german housing company exporting shelters to refugee camps) or ors services (a swiss company running the migration reception centre), disguise expansion opportunities into new markets as contributing to humanitarian aid (loewenstein, 2015a). the world bank has been enticing western companies to launch “new investment” opportunities in jordan and syria, in order to profit from the labour of stranded refugees (lazare, 2016). speaking of the zaatari syrian refugee camp in jordan, a spokesperson for the overseas development institute proudly declared: “there is a new breed of corporate involvement in humanitarian work targeting refugees where they realise there is a real potential for profit” (gavlak, 2014). a london-based private equity firm also touted a new opportunity with “promising organic acquisitive growth potential” by investing in the management of refugee camps (troianovski et al, 2015: 1-13). these multinational companies argue that refugees benefit from having access to services 48 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 like mobile phones, money transfers, social media, and other commodities, but it also renders their behaviours and digital footprint increasingly susceptible to surveillance and therefore more predictable and easier to control, while companies profit from these so-called new markets (kaplan, 2018). cultural theorist mckenzie wark (2019) argues that globalising technologies produce a specific kind of apparatus that farms people’s information so that it can be used to control, measure, and predict what they will do, how they behave and what they consume. wark revises marx’s thinking by arguing that the ruling class no longer maintains power through ownership of the means of production, but rather through the control of information (2019: 79). globalisation, deindustrialisation, and outsourcing have allowed capital to expand beyond the constraints of the labour market and create a new kind of production facilitated by the financialisaton of everyday life. in this framework, all aspects of everyday life have value so long as they can be monetised, for example, social relations have become mediated through social media, which enables behaviours to be observed, analysed, and commodified. this information is essential for what might seem less nefarious, on the one hand, like targeted advertising, but on the other, a threat to democracy, as demonstrated by cambridge analytica’s influence over numerous elections. similarly, for social psychologist zuboff, surveillance capitalism encompasses market-driven processes that commodify personal data that is captured and produced via the mass surveillance of the internet (2019). zuboff also revises marx’s outmoded image of capitalism as the exploitation of labour, instead arguing that we are now faced with a new economic order that exploits every aspect of the human online experience, including social media, internet search history, purchases, and emails. commonly the image of surveillance is overt and coercive, like orwell’s big brother, however, instead of using violence and fear, surveillance capitalism distracts us from any sense of exploitation by having us voluntarily hand over our personal information. it does not require human labour, but rather, access to our private data, so that it can nudge us in the direction of its predictions. thus, solid forms of border barriers are not the only means employed for border security. more successful but less overt strategies identify illegal immigrants via tracking digital data and other forms of social media. a recent new york times article shows the extent to which, just like so much else in the modern sphere, the citizenry is defined by surveillance and data collection for the specific purpose of immigration control (funk, 2019: 1-15; graham, 2003). journalist mckenzie funk (2019) claims that ice (immigration and customs enforcement), like other federal agencies not only in america but throughout the world, has access to information from hundreds of disparate databases, from government to private brokers and social networks, in order to create a complex profile of individuals in a particular area. the article reveals the monitoring of mobile phones as well as the use of facial recognition technology for determining a person’s legal status and whether they should be detained and/or deported from the us. here, the control of information and the collection of data are used not only to influence consumerism, but to determine the composition of society, the type of people who are permitted to live in a community, and who should be excluded. strict border security reconciles the effects of capital with the working class because it works to determine the individual’s rights to mobility and social inclusion. specifically, surveillance capitalism through commodification of personal data 49 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 prevents disruption to market growth as it regulates people’s conduct by developing ways to reward good behaviour and punish bad (zuboff, 2019a: 2). this kind of capital is derivative of what is perhaps best described as authoritarian neoliberalism (a term coined by wendy brown) and remains unregulated by government and therefore exploits surveillance, security, and border control to predict and control human behaviour. these activities disadvantage the most vulnerable. most people, through their active participation and use of “smart” technologies, are unwitting participants. liquid modernity, as defined by bauman, creates inequality whereby the most defenceless, those affected by poverty and conflict, become the subjects upon which governments might implement strict measures of population control and surveillance in order to be seen as self-guarding national identity and individual freedom. wall building and border security play a significant role in attempts to invoke and justify a sense of lawlessness and insecurity in times of crisis. however, this combined with neoliberal ideologies of privatisation, deregulation, and the free market, has resulted in the rapid rise of multinational corporations, in particular tech giants like google, facebook, and amazon (kari & rushe, 2020: 1-4), at the expense of governance and democracy, placing the interests of profit making over that of the people. waning sovereignty the work of political theorist wendy brown provides useful commentary on how the rise of multinational corporations, aided by neoliberal regimes, have engendered a narrowing sense of national identity, inducing insecurity in the interest of self-preservation. brown (2010) argues that traditional views of sovereignty have been eroded as a consequence of the removal of representative control over the market, due to deregulation and privatisation. accordingly, the nation-state is placed in the role of “entrepreneurial decision maker”, which she argues, “displaces legal and political principles (especially liberal commitments to universal inclusion, equality, liberty, and the rule of law) with market criteria, and fig. 1 justin mcintosh (2004). israel west bank barrier [photograph] 50 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 demotes the political sovereign to managerial status” (brown, 2010: 22). writing after the attacks of 9/11, philosopher giorgio agamben argues that politics has been steadily neutralised due to the gradual surrender of traditional roles typically carried out by the state. for agamben (2002), security has quickly become a state priority and the sole criterium for political legitimacy. the role of the state is therefore relegated to the creation and protection of conditions that produce the most effective political climate for capital growth. typically, this involves the implementation of laws that advantage profit-oriented, market-mediated accumulation, with the capacity to stamp out unfair competition. such favourable conditions are contingent on being able to maintain economic stability and social cohesion, yet as neoliberalism mutates into authoritarianism, the state deprioritises social cohesion over profit-making (jessop, 2019). this one-sided emphasis on profit inevitably leads to financial crisis, as the 2008 gfc demonstrates, following which the state invoked exceptional powers to bail out companies too big to fail rather than letting them go into administration, as the standards of capitalism would normally dictate. during this time, the population should have (rightfully) focused their resentment on ceos and the corporate elite. instead, the people facing low wages, job insecurity, inequality, and exclusion were persuaded by wealthy media owners to impugn immigrants, muslims, and other externalities for the loss of jobs and decreased wages (monbiot, 2020: 1). in many cases, technology companies and media outlets stoke anxieties and fears by perpetuating misinformation as justification for tougher border security, the construction of walls, and even military intervention. in this scenario, distrust in expertise grows because it potentially contradicts the economic interests of the market (nichols, 2017). thus, misinformation perpetuated by otiose media and foreign governments enters the popular rhetoric, promoting conspiracy theories and extremist movements. at the same time, politicians create chaos as a distraction from their failures to serve people. thus, in an attempt to maintain authority, the nation-state places increasing emphasis on the demarcation of territory, strict border control, and the exclusion of those considered a threat to its perceived way of life. the berlin wall, however, provided an obvious demarcation of east german territory through strict border control by preventing its citizens from escaping, in order to preserve the body politic from the globalised free market. by contrast, brown (2010: 42) argues that border walls post the collapse of the berlin wall are an illusory projection, or at the very least, a bid at securing the very power that eludes the state due to the ungovernable forces of globalisation. paralleling brown’s work, sociologist saskia sassen (1996) also proposes that the state is being destabilised by globalisation. sassen claims that sovereignty is being decentred and redistributed to other entities, particularly multinational corporations, international accords, and human rights commissions that limit state autonomy. neither brown nor sassen suggest that states do not continue to play a significant and powerful role in world affairs, but rather, that the role and status of states in domestic and international politics have been transformed as a consequence of “denationalised economic space and renationalised political discourse” (brown, 2010: 66). as the sovereign comes apart from the state, it begins to prioritise its own interests, despite its obligations to the international community. for philosopher jacques derrida, this status constitutes the “rogue state”, in that it neither “respects its obligations as a state before the law of the world community nor the requirements of international law, 51 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 a state that flouts the law and scoffs at the constitutional state or, state of law” (derrida, 2005: xiii). under this framework, the state may renege on its commitments to human rights and international treaties on refugee in order to detain undocumented arrivals and turn back boats using armed naval vessels as exemplified by australia’s operation sovereign border under the abbott government in 2013. as sovereign political power deteriorates, states indulge in the theatrics of wall-building, as political expert joan cocks reminds us, so that people who feel threatened can identify with its possible strength and fortitude (2014: 27). indeed, border walls endeavour to project an image of sovereign jurisdictional power and the appearance of a bounded and secure nation. yet, as opposed to the physical manifestation of the nation-state’s strength, border walls are icons of its attrition. indeed, walls are a theatrical display of sovereign power that conceals the racialised violence they intend to inflict (denman, 2020). ultimately, border walls define both conceptually and materially their contradictions, like defence and safety, and globalisation and nationalism. still, border walls are not always physical. as urban theorist stephen graham (2010, xi) argues, “e-borders” too signal the “militarisation of civil society” as much as concrete border walls do. much like surveillance capitalism and the commodification of information, border security represents the sovereign’s dramatic attempt to transmute longstanding aspirations of dominance and control into a high-tech program for governing modern society in competition with the free market. without digital technologies, surveillance, and the militarisation of the border, walls would not be nearly as effective, for these barriers are not necessarily a successful means of preventing border crossings as they have always been breached. outsiders do not get in because borders are lax, rather they simply find another way through, often increasing their risk of fatality by doing so. despite inherent dangers of migrant journeys, millions of people continue to cross borders all over the globe without authorisation. the fact that this continues to occur, despite the plethora of new walls, suggests walls are not necessarily a practical prevention. borders are often very long and extremely difficult to fence as well as requiring the necessary maintenance for their continued upkeep. as at february 2020, only one-third of the us-mexico’s 3,170km border had been completed (miroff & blanco, 2020). even the heavily fortified 708km israeli-west bank barrier was only two-thirds finished after 15 years of construction (jones, 2016: 4). in addition, border barriers are not effective because terrorists or drug smugglers do not enter through the land border, but rather, a significant share of unauthorised arrivals in oecd countries enter with a valid visa and never leave (krishnadev, 2019: 1-9). likewise, illegal goods enter through shipping ports and airports as well as through tunnels built underground. to this end, israel has started construction of a subterranean wall along the gaza strip to prevent people from tunnelling under (estrin, 2018: 1-6). in fact, the tunnels into gaza supply everything from building materials to food, clothing, computers, and livestock, as well as weapons. work in and around the tunnels is believed to sustain 15,000 workers, and trade through the tunnels is estimated to raise as much as $750 million a year in taxation alone for the hamas government (verini, 2012: 42). given these barriers are designed to prevent, but ostensibly to deter, smugglers and immigrants from attempting entry into the country by making their journey as difficult as possible, the deterrence effect has ostensibly failed, as the number of 52 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 people embarking on migration journeys has not declined. in fact, the number of people risking their lives in dangerous journeys has been increasing. between january 2014 and october 2019, the missing migrants project recorded 33,686 migrant fatalities around the world (migration data portal, 2020). these deaths are not accidental but directly related to the construction of border walls and implementation of high-tech border security to not only physically prevent potential crossings, but also deter people from attempting in the first place. fig. 2 mani albrecht (2019). usmexico border wall, construction on the replacement wall, tecate [photograph] state of exception writing on border walls, geographer reece jones (2012) argues that neighbouring countries are portrayed as ungoverned spaces with uncivilised populations where modern sovereign-state practices of order and stability are essentially non-existent. he states: “the borders of the state come to be seen as the margins of modernity, as the last place to mark the boundary between the modern, civilised world and the perceived barbarity on the outside” (2012: 2). although borders have always been in place in some way, shape, or form, growing fear and uncertainty has provided legitimation to sovereign-states to accelerate the securitisation process of their borders. jones further speculates that not only is sovereignty waning, but also, the mass movement of people globally who have no option but to defy border restrictions represents a transition of the old order and potentially the beginning of a new system; a world without borders at all (jones, 2019: 2). however, in the wake of covid-19, such optimism appears grossly misplaced, and for good reason, as global movement has ground to a halt. following multiple travel bans from china and other countries around the world, agamben published his reaction in february 2020, and received heavy criticism for wrongly declaring the epidemic to be a fabrication designed to spread panic and to invoke a state of exception. he writes: “in a perverse vicious circle, the limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for security that has been prompted by the governments themselves who now intervene to satisfy it” (agamben, 2020: 1). although agamben’s remarks understated 53 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 the gravity of the virus, his broader point raises the question of just how many of the limitations placed on the daily lives of individuals during the pandemic were necessary to stop the spread of the virus. for example, the inability to peacefully protest, and keeping safe distancing, might be seen as serious infringement of democratic rights, of which their prevention serves to render authorities less accountable. as of writing this paper, australia’s second largest city, melbourne amid a resurgence of the coronavirus has enforced strict lockdown measures in suburban areas with outbreaks in new cases. in one public housing tower, home to some 3,000 people, mainly immigrants of african descent, 500 police were deployed to prevent anyone from leaving their home. however, outbreaks in more affluent areas have not been met with the same restrictive policing measures, with residents saying they are being targeted and “treated like criminals” (murrayartfield, 2020: 1-6). here, the invocation of the state of exception to prevent the spread of the virus has resulted in never seen before levels of state-sanctioned surveillance and control, which, despite the attempt to contain the virus, contributes to the perception of the public housing system in which residents have been neglected and stigmatised by the government and media for decades (kelly, 2020: 1-5). to make things worse, the populist political figure pauline hanson, appearing on morning television, claimed that most social housing residents are drug users and alcoholics, “from war-torn countries who know what it’s like to be in tough conditions” (yussuf, 2020: 4). this sentiment suggests that these individuals and families should be treated differently from those from predominantly white english-speaking neighbourhoods, thus, warranting the police presence and the strict quarantine of these already stigmatised people. by contrast, populist administrations like the us and brazil seemingly bear little regard for the health of their citizens, preferring to downplay the threat of the virus in preference of reopening the economy. considering this, journalist masha gessen is concerned with our inability to adequately communicate such inconceivable events, even though they appear to have become part of daily life. gessen asserts that the difficulty with absorbing this kind of information comes down to the limitation of words, “which have a way of rendering the outrageous ordinary” (2020: 6). similarly, sociologist balint magyar, who while attempting to describe the rise of the national conservative party after the collapse of communism, realised that the language used by the media and intellectuals alike was not sufficient to appropriately describe what was happening. he argues that after the fall of the berlin wall, political commentators adopted a language of liberal democracy and assumed that concepts such as free elections, legitimacy, the rule of law, and public opinion had meaning to those who had never experienced them (magyar, 2016). at the end of the cold war, it seemed inevitable that eastern bloc countries would become like western states. however, hungary’s representative form of government is under threat, leading the eu to describe the state as a “systematic threat to democracy” (lehotai, 2020: 3). drawing similarities with other authoritarian nations like russia and israel, gessen notices that there is not necessarily one single event to explain such a turn, but rather, the rise of authoritarianism in hungary occurred through the gradual disintegration and failures of government institutions. similarly, in the us, government institutions have been slowly undermined by the neoliberalist didactic, resulting in growing distrust in politicians and the consequential rise of a strongman, whose status is 54 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 built on the cult of personality and absolute contempt for government processes. regarding this scenario, one might invoke brown’s notion of the “theological remainder” (brown, 2010: 26) and a merger of carl schmitt’s “state of exception”. the “exception”, a concept introduced by political theorist and nazi jurist carl schmitt in the 1920s, is, he posits, not part of the existing legal order, but best described as a case of extreme peril and a danger to the existence of the state. the exception exists outside the law and since the rise of the modern state, it provides relevance to the question of sovereign authority (schmitt, 1985). liberalism disguises who the real sovereign is and allows for the allusion of freedom so long as “others agree with us” (west, 2019). the hope of liberalism, schmitt declares, is to eliminate the sovereign and undermine the community’s political existence, making for a constant state of exception. this is no more evident than in the united states, where the declaration of a state of emergency has triggered exceptional presidential powers to redirect military funding to the construction of the southern border wall. to conclude, despite their pretensions, walls do not result in a more secure and safer environment (as those who seek to legitimise them claim). rather, they are the apogee of declining sovereignty in comparison to the ever-increasing economic control of multi-national corporations. border walls and tough border policy, and all that it entails, so it is assumed, provide legitimacy to the sovereign at a time when its ability to govern wanes. while walls propound a physical demarcation between us and them, as well as security and protection, they only serve to dichotomise division and promote a discourse of exceptionalism and national unity that projects sovereign strength. ultimately, border walls are a physical manifestation of authoritarian trope and largely ineffective at preventing immigration, but perhaps more successful at solidifying national identity. walls do not quell violence and criminal behaviour, but serve to cause harm and stoke political unrest, as in the case of the hungarian border walls, the israeliwest bank barriers or the us-mexico southern border wall discussed in this paper. border control can be a complex proposition, as there is need to balance contradictory issues of openness and transparency with security and protection. therefore, i acknowledge that some form of border control is necessary in certain situations, like during a pandemic, in order to prevent the human transmission of the virus between states. however, the prospect of improved international relations as a consequence of cross-border cooperation due to globalisation, post the demise of the berlin wall, has not eventuated. in the wake of september 11, surveillance and security have proliferated, and governments have managed to perpetuate irrational fears in order to stay in power. border walls reinforce division wherever they are located, transforming an arbitrary line between states into a closed, solid border wall. 55 tracing the border: excursus on the wall p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 references agamben, g. 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(2019a, august 21). the threat of surveillance capitalism, and the fight for a human future. abc religion and ethics. 2009 symposium brochure11.indd 2009 interstices under construction symposium auckland, friday 13 to sunday 15 november the tracti on of drawing manus occulata in andrea alciato (1546) emblematum libellus, venice (negative) interstices under construction: “the traction of drawing” is jointly organised by the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland and the school of art and design, aut university (tina engelsschwarzpaul and ross jenner). the traction of drawing why raise the issue of drawing again? with the proliferation and maturation of digital technologies, what is the use of the hand and the traces it makes on clay, stone, wood or paper? this symposium seeks to examine the technologies of drawing – their marks, lines, scratches, furrows, incisions, touches, dots and dashes, inscriptions, string lines, stains and blotches; pencilled, inked, chalked, brushed, illuminated or erased on diverse grounds. what is made in acts of drawing comes into being through the sapience of a facture, not through cartesian processes of mathème. conceived thus, drawing is based on an intimate knowledge of material manifestations. tangible lines become carriers of fl uid and invisible links that guide intangible thought. pulling in pieces of geometry, geology, philosophy, politics, biography, biology, mythology, and philology from alien fi elds, one should write and draw with hesitation, discovering the multiple aspects of graphesis, a generative graphic process understood in its slow making. the fruitful vagueness of graphesis comes from the line’s ambiguity. lines are heuristic devices, as a line of writing, a line in a drawing, or the pulling of a line on a construction site. architecture results from their miscegenation: images are written and words are drafted; cultural events and material expressions cross. graphesis is a course of actions, factures which actualize future and past. the ink’s luminosity, graphite’s fatness, watercolour’s lightness, tempera’s density, the screen’s pixellation, the fl exibility or rigidity of supports … readers of the drawings indirectly see and savour them all. they foster “inferences from facture”. to consider an artefact in terms of its facture is to consider it as a record of its own having been made. “the traction of drawing” will examine the technologies of drawing and how they exteriorise the mind and emotions, makes present the invisible. how they forecast, predict and aim at a destination. how drawing throws itself forward in orthogonal or oblique lines; how it severs, as in sections and plans. how it seeks enactment and how it translates: from drawing to building and building to drawing. the keynote address by prof. marco frascari (carleton university, ottawa), “drawing: the sapience of facture and the neurological paradigm”, draws on his latest book, a study of the interface between traditional drawing experiences and contemporary digital expertise during the conception of buildings. assoc. prof. laurence simmons’ (the university of auckland) keynote address “drawing has always been more than drawing” will investigate the italian artist valerio adami’s rendering of jacques derrida’s texts. friday 13 november opening address jenny dixon dean of nicai, the university of auckland patrick clifford president elect of the new zealand institute of architects drawing practice today with jessica barter, pip cheshire, patrick clifford, lynda simmons, simon twose chair: fleur palmer drinks & launch: interstices10: on adam’s house in the pacifi c introduction to professor marco frascari ross jenner drawing: the sapience of facture and the neurological paradigm marco frascari dinner vivace restaurant, level 1, 50 high street, auckland 4:00 4:30 pm 4:30 6:00 pm 6:00 6:45 pm 6:45 7:00 pm 7:00 8:00 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 8:30 pm saturday 14 november presenting | making visible 1. drawing imagination and the imagination of drawing federica goffi 2. seeing in section shelley f. martin 3. summoning daena stephen loo morning tea mediation | intersection 1. “to keep the clay moist” ross jenner 2. takohi ‘okusitino māhina 3.tatau sēmisi f. potauaine lunch at the conference centre 9:00 10:30 am 10:30 11:00 am 11:00 12:30 pm 12:30 1:30 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland saturday 14 november enactment | translation 1. against drawing albert l. refi ti 2. previous enrolments carl douglas 3. a priori / a posteriori michael milojevic afternoon tea exteriorisation | representation 1. scale as the representation of an idea susan hedges 2. architectural drawings do not represent anything mike linzey 3. drawing distinctions linda tyler drinks “drawing has always been more than drawing”: derrida and disegno laurence simmons dinner at o’ sarracino, 3-5 mount eden road, auckland 1:30 3:00 pm 3:00 3:30 pm 3:30 5:00 pm 5:00 6:00 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 6:00 7:00 pm saturday 14 november planning 619, school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland 3:30 5:00 pm graphesis | facture 1. drawing the haunting philippe campays & stephanie liddicoat 2. blank sheet: the pristine sou muy ly 3. the limitless field katica pedisic 7:30 pm sunday 15 november techniques | technologies 1. folded space andrew barrie 2. maintaining the abstract critical facility michael davis 3. diagnostic imagings and invisibilities christine mccarthy alr5, school of architecture and planning the university of auckland miscegenation | migration 1. entrails michael chapman 2. scratches in space-time kate linzey 3. fixed: techniques of drawing deborah cain design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland concluding comments marco frascari lunch yum cha at dynasty chinese restaurant 57-59 wakefi eld street, auckland 10:00 11:30 am 11:30 am 12:30 1:30 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland folded space andrew barrie in edo period japan (1603-1868), construction was carried out by family-based carpentry workshops. building design was determined more by conventions and practical constraints than by the arbitrary design intentions of the carpenter. these conventions were embodied in the kiwari systems of proportions and modules that guided traditional practice and a practiced builder could visualize and construct an entire building using a just a diagrammatic plan and his measuring tools; detailed architectural drawings were not necessary. the ruling elite, however, created certain building types for which the predetermined patterns were set aside and innovation was encouraged, notably those built in the sukiya style. the most important infl uence on sukiya architecture was the teahouse. these small spaces were intended to create a heightened sense of awareness in their occupants, and their design and construction demanded intense consideration and attention to detail. in order to consider and communicate such detailed design intentions, a new type of drawing emerged. okoshi-ezu—literally “folding drawing”—were models made from sheets of paper cut to the shape of walls fi xed onto a detailed plan drawing. holes were cut into the walls for windows and openings, and minor elements such as shutters, raised fl oors, and steps were sometimes fi xed into place on the walls. drawn onto both sides of the paper walls were the various elements of the room—structural members, windows, shelves, fi ttings, wall surfaces and the like. stored fl at, the models were erected by folding the walls up and fi xing them into place with tabs and slots. this resulting representation is at once a three-dimensional drawing and a collapsible, portable model. this paper will trace the development of the okoshi-ezu technique, and examine its particular representational qualities, and use these as the basis for a reading of certain streams of development in contemporary architecture. andrew barrie is an auckland-based practitioner and professor at the university of auckland school of architecture and planning. after completing doctoral studies at tokyo university in 2002, he spent several years working at toyo ito & associates. on returning to new zealand, he worked at cheshire architects in auckland, and is a regular contributor to architecture and design journals. he has authored two books on the work of toyo ito. 10:00 11:30 am deborah cain the focus of this paper will be two artists who have used the process of tattooing as a way of engaging with diverse notions of mark making and its documentation. specifi cally, lisa benson’s twenty minute spin (dvd, 2006) will be juxtaposed with the digital presentations of tagny duff’s living viral tattoos (2008) and her cryobook archives (2009). both these artists provide opportunities to consider the techniques of drawing on bodies as vectors of information, and involve issues of technology and sculpture, of staining skin, and its display. while duff’s initial production was located in the bio-technology laboratory and benson’s work was done in the art gallery under tattoo-parlour conditions, both are mediated by their complicit forms of exhibition, incorporating performative aspects that include shifts in space and viewing. benson’s work allows us to follow the rhythm of the tattooist marking the white line on a body part and mesmerizes the viewer into spending time watching the dvd fi lm footage. in contrast with this, duff’s work with living tissue involves bio-technologies and the imprintation of viral cells. looking at such work in its digital form is different to ‘being-there’ in the presence of pathogens as when duff moves from the lab to the exhibition space. whereas, the sterile environment of the tattooist is temporarily moved to the gallery for the making of benson’s twenty minute spin. rather than technologies of digital manipulation, both these art works concern the archival format for their imaging, but are different in their temporal outcomes. and, although fi xed at a point in their production on skin, they are differently prone to the natural elements of fading and decay. the relations of skin, technique, and tattoo, to further conceptual ideas about dermagrapisms are a key part of my discussion. deborah cain teaches in foundation studies at the university of waikato. she was awarded her doctorate in art history by the university of auckland in 2007, for a thesis titled semiotics of self: refl ections on the work of louise bourgeois. she has published articles in third text, sites, art new zealand, and other locations, and has produced an experimental video on the artistic and poetic work of john pule. fixed: techniques of drawing on skin, and other surfaces drawing the haunting philippe campays & stephanie liddicoat haunted spaces can be defi ned as places that hold high emotive content. this paper argues that the process of drawing the invisible conditions of architectural space, such as air, temperature and moisture, can be employed as a strategy to develop knowledge about the concept of mood. this paper examines one project of visual representation of mood determinants in the haunted space. in this exploration, the creation of visual images engages the viewer in the experience of the haunting itself. this then promotes a greater understanding of such phenomena. overall, the project’s intention is to fi nd ways of mapping, decoding and eventually translating scientifi cally collected environmental data acquired from this ‘spirit of place’ into architectural representation. initial fi ndings from this interdisciplinary project link the concept of mood and ghost to emotion, interiority of body and space and to the notion of time. this relationship then becomes central to the representational investigation of the embodied emotional experience in the haunted space. the project generated representations of the surveyed haunted environment as an experiential system. multiple screenshots were projected to transport the viewer to the different sites and time frames where emotional conveyance was refl ected by solidity of form. metric data governed the solidity of the geometry. as a result of this process, an aura of the represented space appeared. the authenticity of the aura oscillated between an archaic form resulting from a subconscious process and a designed spectacle. the power of drawing aesthetics on the emotional experience that it can trigger is an issue raised in the abstract expressionist tradition. in this project, the drawing, originally a tool of interpretation and understanding of mood in the domain of ghost, appeared itself as a representational artifact. it became the embodied haunting, objectifi ed. this project therefore questions whether the viewer’s experience of visual images can lead to the experience of the haunting itself. philippe campays received his architectural education in paris at the ecole speciale d’architecture. in 2001 he was awarded a masters degree by thesis from the university of auckland. he is currently lecturer at the school of architecture at victoria university of wellington. philippe has lectured in paris, auckland and wellington and has practiced architecture in burundi, africa, throughout the south pacifi c, australia and new zealand. entrails: drawing and architectural space in the transgressive experiments of dada michael chapman george baker argues that the well-known dada experiments with drawing were conscious and deliberate movements away from the medium of drawing; an attempt, in the work of francis picabia in particular, to escape the confi nes and values attached and specifi c to the medium of drawing. there is a fascination, to the point of obsession, with architectural space in the drawings of the dada movement: from the crude scratchings on the walls of the cabaret voltaire to the projected shadows and tracery of duchamp’s large glass, architectural space serves as the primary canvas through which dada experiments with space were explored and articulated. in the dada forays into drawing, the line no longer resides passively on the edges of architectural space but assumes an instrumental role in shaping and conditioning it. baker associated dada practices with a “libidinisation” of the act of drawing which provided a framework through which desire was integrated into artistic production. as part of the recent re-evaluation of the infl uence of the historical avant-garde (and in particular the transgressive avant-gardes of dada and surrealism), the relationship between space and drawing in dada provides an important bridge that connects these practices with architectural space and a broader discourse about spatial representation. this paper will look at drawings and processes of three artists from the dada movement and demonstrate the importance of architectural space to their radical approaches to line and drawing. focussing on selected works by max ernst, francis picabia and marcel duchamp, the paper will demonstrate how space functions as a 3-dimensional canvas through which the medium of drawing is transgressed. in each case architectural drawing techniques, as well as the specifi c foreshadowing of architectural space, provides a framework for interpretation and integration within the broader history of architecture. michael chapman is a lecturer at the university of newcastle where he teaches architectural design, history, theory and research methods. he is currently fi nishing his phd in architecture concerned with the relationship between surrealism and architectural theory. his research has been published in journals such as arq, architectural science review and form/work and has been presented at conferences nationally and internationally. together with michael ostwald and chris tucker he is the author of residue: architecture as a condition of loss, which was published by the rmit press in 2007. maintaining the abstract critical facility in post-digital drawing practice michael davis while drawing exists at the core of postdigital architectural design practices, it does so in a signifi cantly altered state relative to pre-digital disciplinary understandings. this situation presents the imperative of scholarly discussion, an imperative compounded by the need to bring balance to the weight of technical hype that has shrouded digital media. this paper seeks to address the problem of how to maintain the abstract critical facility of drawing in a post-digital design environment – a space containing a plethora of devices geared toward the ‘effi cient’ production of images. what is drawing in this environment both in an abstract sense and as an instrument? the paper will argue that post-digital drawing practice operates across an expanding range of techniques and media in increasingly fl uid relationships. the craft of drawing has shifted from protracted accumulation in a single medium to the quick production of multiple entities through multiple media. mastery in this model of post-digital design practice has to do with the application of multiple tools, each producing fewer effects, and (perhaps more signifi cantly) the management of the relationships between tools and effects. it is these relationships that facilitate the shifting of design entities between media, and it is the nature of these shifts which propel the development of design as much as the focused crafting of any individual entity. stan allen presents post-digital designers with imperatives to be critical of their technique, and to maintain the abstract qualities of drawing. this paper will argue that the critical application of the expanded range of techniques and media facilitates greater levels of control and awareness of abstraction in drawing practice. the argument will be demonstrated through a drawn case study project for a new industrial complex for ecostore, a producer of environmentally sound household products, on a brown fi eld site in avondale, auckland. michael davis is a registered architect and lecturer at the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland, where he teaches architectural design and architectural media. his research focuses upon the instrumentality of media in relation to generative design techniques. he holds a master of architecture from the architectural association’s design research laboratory, london. he is currently undertaking phd studies at rmit, melbourne, australia. previous enrolments: drawing as collective formation carl douglas this paper presents a close reading of a drawing by preston scott cohen, rectilinear spiraculate (1998), and a drawing by enric miralles of his apartment calle mercaders (1995). the two drawings are characterised by their crowdedness. in each case the drawings are densely packed with lines. projection planes are fragmented: elements of miralles’s plan are elevated in place, while cohen’s nominally perspectival drawing is a mess of vanishing points and picture planes. analysis of these drawings will explore the proposition that architectural drawing can be analysed as a collective formation, in the sense derived from sociologist gabriel tarde, who, in monadologie et sociologie, wrote of collective formations like crowds that individual elements, “soldiers of those various regiments, provisional incarnations of their laws ... escape from the world they constitute”. tarde describes individual elements as always having “other leanings, other instincts coming from previous enrolments”. lines, marks or gaps may be enrolled into fi gures, but this enrolment does not exhaust them. they are unruly, they compete and collaborate, have other allegiances, enrolments, potentials. bruno latour argues that acting is not an exclusively human capacity. a glass ‘holds’ water, a balustrade ‘prevents’ falling, a line on a page ‘divides’ it—and saying so is not merely engaging in anthropomorphic metaphor. according to latour, describing any state of affairs is tracing a network of interactions between actors. a drawing, then, could be understood as an active, intensive fi eld of interacting actors rather than a static transcription of thoughts residing elsewhere. a drawing, according to cohen, is a scene for calculating and resolving contingencies. cohen’s and miralles’s drawings will be examined for the traces of this contingency and unruliness which expose the drawing as a crowd of active participants. carl douglas is a lecturer in spatial design at the school of art and design, aut university, where he teaches spatial theory and studio (concerned with the intersections of architecture, interior, landscape, infrastructure, and urbanism). recent research has addressed the parisian barricades of the nineteenth century; theorised lateness; and explored the spatiality of archaeological sites. drawing imagination and the imagination of drawing: the role of ambiguity and the unfi nished federica goffi it is a mistake to believe in photo renderings as the best way of accessing a building. it is possible to enter a building through ambiguous imagery and unfi nished representation, experiencing a kind of real transitus that religious icons allow. tiberio alfarano’s 1571 hybrid-drawing of st. peter’s basilica in the vatican, combining traditional architectural drawing with decoupage and representation techniques typical of icon paintings, goes well beyond representing a one-time likeness, providing a metaphysical gate into this building. he draws a plan as transparent veil, exploiting the ambiguity of metaphoric transparency. the ichnography allows ‘multiple readings’, detecting literal and metaphorical presence of a building within another building and is a ‘track-drawing’, providing memory traces on the ‘drawing-site’. through unique colour renderings the ichnography makes the passage of time visible, revealing different time-layers, and the meaning of drawing as unfi nished palimpsest in-the-making. the signifi cance of colour in alfarano’s drawing has never been discussed in scholarly literature. by blocking out the element of colour, scholars have focused on one predominant element, i.e. geometric form, thus eluding the question of iconographic signifi cance. alfarano factured a bi-stable image, revealing the presence of old st. peter’s within the new. the ambiguous reading of two plans forms a ‘double-image’ enhanced by colours, which facilitate switching the reading, making the viewer an active participant. currently the practice of conservation — once a form of invention and imagination where memory was not simply an archive for posterity, but was always in-the-making — has turned conservation into a form of ‘still-preservation’. alfarano interpreted drawing as a window through time, allowing insight into the ‘multi-temporal’ dimension of architecture, experienced as memory of the past and revealer of future presence. this offers the possibility to critically reassess architectural conservation in present practice as a form of invention and imagination. federica goffi is assistant professor, azrieli school of architecture and urbanism, carleton university. her research concerns relationship between music and architecture; technologies of wood construction; researching material imagination and representation; restoration of historic timber structures; restoration and rehabilitation projects. scale as the representation of an idea, the dream of architecture and the unravelling of a surface susan hedges scaled drawings can demonstrate an architectural idea, when the architect attempts to fi x fragmented dreams in logical sequences, building understanding step by step. in a system of scaled logic, eventually the nature of forms that are too complex to be seen at a single glance becomes clear. the scaled drawn detail becomes an act of clarifi cation, of unravelling, a visualization of the imagined. in his book invisible cities, calvino’s version of scaling relies on procedures of partial seeing, scoping, rescaling and extending. a single work can appear at once assured and ordinary, or near and yet strangely remote, it may affect vast areas, yet simultaneously seem in danger of disappearing. a drawn detail can be at a miniscule scale or at a 1:1 detail, the dimensions of a future building. focusing on a single object may change the sense of scale and require imaginative scale shifting to show the relationship between the drawn and its link to ideas. scale also invites the inhabitation of a drawing, the anticipation of occupation. architectural drawings are considered as a medium of thought and can be understood as a primary clue to thought processes and ideas. the drawn is a tangible speculation that experiments with scale as the labour of the hand and eye attempts to bring dreams into the built world. scale, it is argued, is the representation of a dream and the complicating of a surface with which architecture comes into being. the drawing not only presents ideas of architectures past but also represents them through the un-built. this paper attends to the drawing archive of the auckland university for smith and caughey department store (1927) and, in particular, two drawings of the elevations to the department store. susan hedges is a phd candidate at the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland. the thesis will address the notion of the narrative through a close study of preliminary and fi nished drawings focusing on issues of detail in relationship to wider spatial conditions in the drawings. susan lectures in interior design at the department of design + visual arts, faculty of creative industries + business, unitec. “to keep the clay moist”: drawing as possibility ross jenner jean-luc nancy has recently posited that “drawing is the opening of form”. it is, he argues, an opening in two senses: opening as a departure, origin, start, burst or raising, and opening as availability or capacity itself. according to the fi rst direction, it evokes more the gesture of drawing than the traced fi gure; according to the second, it indicates an essential in-completion, a non-closure or non-totalisation of form. either way, the word ‘drawing’ keeps in itself a dynamic, energetic and inchoate value. the words ‘painting’ or ‘fi lm’ or ‘cinema’, for example, he notes, do not. words like ‘music’, ‘dance’ and ‘song’, by contrast, are closer to this dynamic or potential value. in drawing, act and power are mixed. the sense of the act, the state, or thing under consideration cannot be entirely detached from the sense of gesture, movement, becoming: form in a state of formation and form forming. yet in the word ‘drawing’, and perhaps even more , that of ‘sketching’, there is an essential suspense of completed reality designated. mallarmé, valéry (and even ruskin) had probably already expressed as much in their theorisation of drawing. with this in mind, we will examine works from two periods. first, the italian rationalist exhibitions and installations, the allestimenti (a word which itself implies form ‘suspended between construction and representation’, a ‘preparation for an event’, an ephemeral process) of albini and persico, where a state of potentiality is evoked in the guise of ‘building-drawings’. these installations take on the characteristics of drawings, retaining a sense of incompletion and form-in-process. secondly, the work of alvaro siza, a master sketcher, who says about his designs that “one must, like a sculptor, keep the clay moist”. such potentiality, it is suggested, may in fact be a pathosformel of modernity. ross jenner is deputy head (research & postgraduate) at the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland, and occasionally practises. he has a ms and phd from the university of pennsylvania under the supervision of joseph rykwert and marco frascari. he has worked in europe, taught at various institutions in australia and the u.s. and was commissioner for the new zealand section of the xix triennale di milano. he has chapters in various books (published by, for example, routledge and electa) and journals, including the journal of architecture, lotus, transition, architecture australia and interstices, which he co-founded in 1990. scratches in space-time: len lye’s ‘free radicals’ and temple art kate linzey ‘particles in space’ (1978) and ‘free radicals’ (1958/1978) are animations created by scratching directly into 16mm du pont leader tape. starting with the exposed and processed fi lm, which carried no images or frame registration, len lye made lightning white marks, to dance and vibrate through black space. one effect of the primitive hand animation, where each frame is individually and uniquely formed, is a juddering movement evocative of lye’s own description of atoms: “the facts of physical reality... nothing whatever exists at bottom in static form,... the identity of all forms and entities... is held together by countless electrons in motion.” despite signifi cant success, lye announced later that he was ‘going on strike’ from fi lm making; an expression of his frustration with the conservative american fi lm industry. behind this public declaration, however, lye’s focus may already have shifted to making ‘tangible motion sculpture’ as, by 1961, the museum of modern art in new york was able to host a solo ‘performance’ of several of lye’s kinetic objects. he came to conceive of these at a massive scale, either mounted on the facades of buildings, as dry fountains in civic squares, or assembled in parks. this paper will ask of lye’s work: what is the particular relationship between the scratched lines of his fi lm and the wild materiality of his sculpture? an architectural perspective will be brought to his work arguing that the scratch fi lms were actually studies for art mecca architecture. as architectural drawings these scratches can be seen delineating enclosures, creating the potential for occupation, and describing relationships between the enduring/static/inanimate of architecture and the transient /mobile/living which inhabits it. lastly, as architectural drawings these animations will be shown to fail, that is, to not-be the art mecca they preceded, nor, alternatively, to be merely complete as art-fi lms. kate linzey is currently undertaking phd study with at the university of queensland. her phd topic explores the architectural implications of kinetic parks designed by len lye (1901-1980) between 1958 and 1970. she is teaching in the centre for creative technologies, weltec (wellington, new zealand). architectural drawings do not represent anything michael linzey it is not uncommon that an architect’s drawing reveals unexpected consequences; a new idea comes to light in a drawing which had previously been unintended. drawings can take on a life of their own just as characters in a novel are sometimes said to lead a novelist into unexpected plot developments. drawings do not re-present ideas, since the subjective ideas have not yet been presented to the world in any other medium. drawings present objective ideas (along with possible future implications) to the world for the fi rst time. the paper argues that drawings are what heidegger called the being of an architectural experience, the horizon, the boundary, the delineation which bring meaning into presence in time, for the fi rst time. vitruvius was more sanguine: he said that drawings are the ideas of an architectural discourse. vitruvius conceived of architectural ideas as drawn objects in a popperian sense rather than representable subjective entities in a cartesian sense. according to karl popper, architectural drawings are objective products of the kind of human experience that we call architecture; architectural drawings either are or contain objective knowledge. but ever since descartes we have been persuaded that ideas are equivalent to subjective thoughts, they exist only as the contents of some mind. provisionally, therefore, we have to posit two possible kinds of ideal entity: subjective ideas as usually understood in the humanist tradition, and post-humanist (popperian and heideggerian) objective ideas. for martin heidegger, the kinds of aesthetic experiences that he called thinking are inescapably in the world, linked with (and simultaneous with) dwelling. the paper discusses a hypothetical set of drawings that iktinos may have prepared for the parthenon and presented for the fi rst time to pheidias. when a discourse about temples, gods, earth and truth is located in the time of the drawing, heidegger’s existentialist poiesis is shown to be integral with popper’s view of objective knowledge. michael linzey is a senior lecturer at the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland. he has been engaged in aesthetic theory since midway through his phd at melbourne university. from 1979, he applied aesthetic theories to māori and polynesian architectural forms and developed an interest in the cultural philosophy of korean traditional architecture and japanese medieval teahouse architecture. since about 2000, a succession of papers dealt with the classical roots of aesthetic theory in greek and roman architecture. summoning daena: drawing the parallel stephen loo to draw is at once productive of lines, replete with potentiality, which call into visibility that which is to-come. this sense of drawing is more often than not romanticised as the stroke(s) of genius that summons the material world and incarnates the spirit to form a continuous landscape of possibilities. the persistence of this sense of drawing means its corollary sense as incision, a cut in the sense of starting into something, is symptomatically forgotten. in fact, drawing is etymologically related to traction, a movement or passage that is perhaps violent as it involves a wresting or tearing away (as in to draw-out or to draw blood). it is argued that such an incision is however not an intersection but the delineating diagram is the parallel, and heidegger’s image is the furrow. drawing is an incision by which a non-dialectical separation between two conditions (for heidegger they are thinking and poetry) is set out and the drawing can only draw itself, is itself, as it performs this demarcation. this paper outlines the implications of the parallel as the diagram of drawing in the aphoristic works of the italian rationalist massimo scolari. in scolari’s drawings, the parallelism of instrumental and imaginative universals de-monstrates what marco frascari sees as the “transmutation of angles into angels”. to attempt the study, this paper performs a close reading giorgio agamben’s concept of ‘genius’ as an impersonal but inseparable pre-individual component to being human. drawing work is not the human soul bearing witness to genius, but is performed in order to become impersonal. to agamben, genius is not in the image of christian guardian angels (one good and the other evil) but the iranian angel daena, the heavenly archetype in whose likeness the individual has been created, but whose face changes with the individual’s every gesture, word, and thought. stephen loo is associate professor of architectural design, school of architecture, university of tasmania. his research is located at the intersections of philosophy, architectural theory, contemporary visual art and experimental digital practice. he has published in international journal of humanities, architectural theory review and interstices. stephen has practised as an architect in australia, malaysia and the south pacifi c. blank sheet: the pristine sou muy ly there is something about a clean sheet of white paper, the crispness of the white, pure, alien, so completely and absolutely without colour, untouched, precious, uncontaminated, and utterly powerful in its untainted whole. i cannot bring myself to touch it, to press the tip of my pencil against it, or drip that tiny drop of ink on its smooth surface. my fi ngers, my hands, my body, repelled from it, i stare at it mesmerized. i cannot muster the strength to taint its untarnished surface. there is some invisible force, daring me, challenging my bravery, asking me make that fi rst move, to be the fi rst to breach its deathly whiteness. the blank sheet, white, without touch, asking for my acquaintance. it is too painfully and strangely familiar to be trustworthy. this paper is a refl ection upon this encounter with the white blank page. it is through this blank page in which we explore the pristine in drawing and architecture. this is to be examined through the bodily experiences of both the act of drawing and the act of experiencing that which lacks the human touch. in order to do so, the essence of pristine is looked at as that which is both ‘of something natural’ and ‘of man-made objects’. pristine is a condition describing such a ‘thing’ to be of untouched pure state, and thus suggests that which is characteristic of an earlier time or condition. the pristine is intertwined with complexities of its own, and in depicting the blank page, suggests a convergence of both natural and manufactured. this paper proposes an understanding of the dialogue between body and pristine, natural and manufactured, corporeal and cerebral, presence and absence. it is an interplay of these paradoxical thoughts, to identify why this mysterious ‘act’ of ‘non-act’ plays a role in our everyday material practices. sou muy ly has a bas and a barch (hons). she is currently undergoing her research in the masters program in architecture at the university of auckland, new zealand. she also tutors design at the school of architecture, the university of auckland. takohi: drawing in tongan thinking and practice hūfanga ‘okusitino māhina the tongan concept and praxis takohi, translated as drawing will be critiqued in the broader context of the new general tā-vā, time-space theory of art, a derivative of the tā-vā, time-space theory of reality. philosophically, a general tenet of this theory of reality states that all things, in nature, mind and society, stand in eternal relations of exchange, giving rise to confl ict or order. these ever-lasting exchange relations formally and substantially exist in physical, psychological and social terms, such as intersecting lines, opposing ideas and competing human demands. art can be generally defi ned as tā-vā, time-space transformation, where confl icts in the form (fuo) and content (uho) of things are symmetrically arbitrated in the creative process. as a tool of line-space intersection, takohi will be refl ected upon, in terms of both its varied abstract and concrete manifestations, with specifi c examples drawn from across the three divisions of tongan art, viz., material (tufunga), performance (faiva) and fi ne (nimamea`a) arts. both takohi and tatau (the english equivalent of symmetry) are constitutive of temporal and spatial entities, demonstrating that time (tā) and space (vā) are indivisible in mind as in reality. the separation of mind from reality, spatio-temporality or four-sided dimensionality amounts to dualism of the rationalist, idealist and relativist sort. however, the term takohi can be generally accounted for as the tempo-marking (tā) of space (vā) by means of lines. specifi cally, the word takohi points to the rhythmic production of images (`ata) through line-space intersection. the temporal production of images involves the mediation of opposing formal and substantial tendencies at the interface of line and space. by symmetrically mediating tensions in the creative process, they are spatio-temporally transformed from a condition of crisis (felekeu) to a state of stasis (maau). this sustained state of harmony (potupotutatau) is itself beauty (mālie). hūfanga `okusitino māhina holds degrees from the university of auckland and a phd from the australian national university. he taught at tonga’s `atenisi university and auckland’s massey university before he was appointed at uoa 1994, where he taught pacifi c political economy and pacifi c arts. dr māhina is founder-director of vava`u academy for critical inquiry and applied research (vaciar) where he is professor of tongan studies. seeing in section: the practice of the photogrammatic drawing shelley f. martin laszlo moholy nagy’s initial material practice of recording the form of light revealed a surface constructed solely by means of drawing. nagy was the fi rst to produce the photogram as a “diagram of forces”, an act that inscribed tangible and intangible qualities of light, surface, and profi le. sectional records present the instrumentality of light by moving between technical and imaginative states of lines and spatial occupation, continually recording, regulating and propagating material illuminations. this paper considers the material record of light as a programme for drawing, and examines drawing as a vessel for veridical and non-veridical modes of thought and material inquiry. moving between richard wollheim’s “seeing-in” and a type of nonveridical imaginative resurrection of what already may exist, the photogram considered as a basis for drawing understands the sectional projective action. in this photographic space, drawing studies the transformation of the original object, and seeks to materially express both interior and exterior, volume and profi le, and to engage construction as a fi eld of inquiry. a new space of drawing is made where light records the consequence of sectional space prior to material existence. this record is not based on technical correspondences, but instead continually constructs and re-constructs an interplay within the picture and the line, the gramma, and the gramme. just as principles of photogrammetry mine geometric properties from photographic records and project them as formal gestures, the direct transposition of a three dimensional object onto a surface examines light as a tectonic object, and produces a fi eld of inquiry rich in spatial consequence. the instrumentality of drawing acts as a carrier to read these consequences through the graphic processes of construction, and the productive nature of drawing acts as a speculative venture that moves the act of drawing from the form of poetry to that of prose. shelley f. martin is associate professor in the school of architecture + design at virginia polytechnic institute and state university. she teaches architecture studios, theory seminars and an introductory architecture course. she writes on the practices of image making in architecture and produces photographic studies and 16mm fi lms investigating material properties and sectional dimensions of landscapes as propositions of form and shape. diagnostic imagings and invisibilities: medicalisations of the architectural section drawing christine mccarthy medical imaging of the architectural section has a long and invasive history situated as analogous to anatomical dissection by writers as diverse as ackerman, bloomer, derrida, frascari, tavernor, wang, powell and leatherbarrow, and roberts and tomlinson. the architectural section has variously been described as a cut, the “drawing pen ... a knife” (frascari), and drawing as surgical (derrida); the building implicitly a body: animal or human. this paper will re-examine this metaphorical dependence and propose that images made from more recent, and less explicitly invasive medical visioning apparatus: the x-ray, ultrasonography (ultrasound), computed tomography (ct), magnetic resonance imaging (mri) and positron emission tomography (pet), challenge the persistance of the sectional discourse within the rhetoric of a simplistic and physical dissectional removal. bloomer’s suggestion, in “vertex and vortex,” of the section as: “a screen or window for seeing through” is rethought with this examination of the section as a technologically enabled and displaced view of the inside of building. in contrast to dissection, contemporary medical imaging produces avisual sectioning to extract vision from the physical characteristics of the body, which are instead reinterpreted by vhf sound, radiation, and nuclear magnetic resonances. vision is thoroughly mediated. gradations of visibility and invisibility place the viewer to imagine an occupation of the non-spatial materiality of architecture; an experience or anticipation a pre-occupation of architectural intimacy. the paper will consequently argue that, rather than a dissection of an architectural body, the section drawing is a mechanism of the selective, and speculative boundary-making of the visible and the invisible. equally, the architectural section drawing insists on a more intimate relationship to the human body, rather than proposing the drawn building is a body. christine mccarthy teaches interior architecture at the school of architecture, victoria university, wellington, new zealand. a priori / a posteriori: elin and carmen corneil’s drawings for vestmannaeyjar and kashagawigamog michael milojevic the canadian-norwegian architects and teachers elin and carmen corneil draw on an exceptionally wide range of formats, materials and techniques enriching their parallel and collaborative transatlantic practices in trondheim and toronto. their reticence is very noticeable; through drawing they communicate wordlessly. for the corneils drawing and dislocation are complimentary: they have done eleven competitions from the critical distance of the opposite side of the atlantic. by drawing at a (critical) distance they take the time and space to respond in such a way as to make sense of their physical dislocation and cultural distinction. the corneils’ vestmannaeyjar competition boards [skjalasafn bókasafn vestmannaeyja, heimay] are an immediately engaging and detailed reading of the status quo of the town’s surviving urban fabric following a catastrophic volcanic eruption. for a site the architects had not actually visited their allencompassing urban narrative included: largescale fi ne-grained geological and archaeological reliefs showing both the land and building as one; abstract charcoal sketches of the new volcanic landscape and surviving structures; superwide fi sh-eye perspective panoramas of urban vistas; detailed shop drawings for hexagonal street pavers and street light bollards. stitching modest interventions closely into the damaged urban fabric, indeed by drawing vestmannaeyjar together as it were, the corneils submission was a totalising a priori vision. the mcmullen summer house project record [corneil fonds, canadian architecture archive, calgary] shows the corneils engaging drawing as both a participatory tool and as diagrammatic guidelines for play and assembly. their building store process rejected the traditional role of the architect’s documentation of working drawings and specifi cations. to initiate the process the client was given a set of large plain playing cards to decide the building footprint automatically by throwing them down onto a surveyor’s site plan. the builders were left to assemble the building freely working at 1:1, the corneils asked only occasionally for ‘rules’ interpretations and ‘refereeing’ faxes from norway. building plans and elevations were only drawn a posteriori for publication. michael milojevic is a senior lecturer at the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland, and specialises in ancient and medieval architecture and the architecture of canada. he is a regular contributor to the annual [north american] byzantine studies conference and the annual conferences of the society for the study of architecture in canada. he has recently curated the travelling exhibition e+c architecture: the work of elin and carmen corneil 1958-2008. the limitless field: we are in the midst of reality responding with joy katica pedisic in light of the increasing uptake of digital technologies in architectural drawing, this paper considers the apparent paradox occurring in certain recent drawing practices. architects sotirios kotoulas and matthew shlian and artist silke schatz give emphasis in their drawn work to an artifi cially digital aesthetic and a repetitive work process verging on the mechanistic. attained, however, not through the use of digitally enacted drawing or digital software, but laboriously by hand. evoking the precisions and perfection of line found in digital technologies, these architects and artists turn away from the imprecise mark of the hand, towards an exploration that seems to esteem the standardised line-work offered by the digital as drawing tool. this paper explores these moves in reference to and draws parallels with the drawings of agnes martin of the early 1960’s to the late 1980’s. martin’s drawings are almost exclusively based on the format of a grid. the relationship between martin’s grid drawings and digital architectural drawing emerging at the time are re-examined with reference to rosalind krauss’ writings on the grid and helene cixous’ writings on the emotive force of the drawn line. it suggests that the rigidity of such work and its repetitive nature provides a vehicle by which artists and architects can explore the inherent vulnerability and imperfection of the hand and the marks it makes. in martin’s grid drawing, for instance, the marks of her hand emerge almost imperceptibly at the edges, where the grid breaks down and destabilises the framework of the work. accepting the limitless fi eld, situated in the midst of its reality, martin makes implicit in the grid the intimations of human expression in the hand, the inherent gesture of the hand drawing, the delicate sense of frailty. katica pedisic is a registered architect who has worked as an associate at con bastiras architects in adelaide. she established her own practice, antidote, in 2008, specialising in small-scale high-end residential and commercial projects with an emphasis on interdisciplinary collaborations, intense research and process-based conceptual, contextual and formal explorations. she has lectured in architecture at the university of south australia (2008-9) and is currently undertaking a phd by project at rmit. tatau: symmetry as confl ict-mediation of line-space intersection sēmisi f. potauaine this paper deals with the tongan concept and practice of tatau (symmetry, mirror-image, image, copy, same and equal). my theoretical inquiry into tatau revolves around the tā-vā, time-space theory of reality, which basically recognises the philosophical fact that all things in reality stand in eternal relations of exchange, giving rise to order or confl ict. the theory also takes into account that, by virtue of these never-ending exchange connections, order and confl ict are of the same logical order. relations of exchange between all things across nature, mind and society are expressed in terms of time (tā) and space (vā), on the abstract level, and by way of form (fuo) and content (uho), on the concrete level. the unending exchange relations between things exist by means of intersection, where spatiotemporal, substantial-formal (and functional) confl icts, on both the abstract and concrete levels, are symmetrically reconciled by means of tatau. this state of noa (zero-point), i.e., order, is a counterbalance of equal and opposite forces. the use of tatau as a mediation of confl icts at the crossing point of things applies as much to the colliding objects in nature as to the opposing ideas in mind and competing demands in society. in abstract ways, these contradictory tendencies are expressed at the shifting interface of line (kohi) and space (vā), such as the mediation of intersecting bodily movements (vaa`ihaka) in dance, interlacing tones (vaa`itā) in music and confl icting human meanings (vaa`i`uhinga) in poetry, on the concrete level. my paper will deal with the intersection of kohi and vā, line and space, where the mediation of contradictions are done by means of tatau (symmetry). i will critically examine specifi c instances of tatau, such as wringing (tatau), hanging (tautau), role-modelling ([faka]tatau) and saying-goodbye (tatau), all of which are connected with the mediation of confl icting tendencies. sēmisi fetokai potauaine was born and bred in tonga, in a rich cultural environment, where he had an early exposure by way of “critically lived experience” to a number of tongan material, performance and fi ne arts. he left tonga for new zealand in pursuit of tertiary education and holds a ndat diploma in architectural technology from unitec (2000), bas and barch degrees in architectural studies and architecture from the university of auckland (2007), where he is now an m.arch student. against drawing: line-making and the tufuga guild albert l. refi ti this paper will examine the samoan builders guild, the tufuga-fau-fale motto of “leai ni tusiga-ata” – there are to be no drawings – in their opposition to graphic representation as a mode of outlining, conveying and demarcating a building before it can be made. these architects are direct descendants of the progenitor tagaloa-a-lagi and are therefore considered the companion of the gods (agai o tupu). drawings as ata or graphic representation were not tools that existed in their craft. this was because graphic representation in samoan thought came under the category of ata or becoming-shadows, which had an important relationship to light, ancestor worship and their place in the structure of knowledge as predicting a future, therefore it was forbidden to be drawn or ‘marked-down’. if there were a relationship between the tufuga guild and drawing, it would have to do with line-making: moving lines around by drawing-out and unfolding materiality and form, by hands and feet: a body practice. this type of line-making had little to do with a representative line that predicted an outcome. this type of body practice is a form of graphism. graphism is bound up with techniques of the body, which is part a memory system that the body makes active by storing them in activities such as storytelling, song and dance. these body performances as mnemonic techniques were crucial in making the body pliable to ‘take-on’ and shape physical matter. these can still be seen today in the way buildings are made in samoa and the pacifi c. the paper will also explore the idea that an epiphylogenetic system emerged with the absence of drawing as representation. an exposition of the use and worship of tools by the tufuga guild will be established via a reading of bernard stiegler’s theory of epiphylogenesis as an external artifi cial mnemonic apparatus that humans and tools share. albert l. refi ti is currently enrolled in a phd at aut university, where he is head of department in spatial design. apart from working in architecture in auckland and london, albert has taught at the university of auckland, manukau school of visual arts and unitec school of architecture. albert has published his research in a number of books and journals for the last ten years with a focus on pacifi c architecture and art. drawing distinctions: ernst plischke’s line drawings for design and living linda tyler caricature is a term used to describe an exaggeration, a skilfully stretched and intentionally deformed alteration of a familiar form. plischke’s design and living, a book published under the auspices of the department of internal affairs in 1947 in wellington used caricature to show how existing new zealand cities were a pastiche of architectural styles so badly planned as to be beyond remedy. plischke caricaturing of the moderne plays an important role in the drawings for design and living. his caricature deformations rest on the notion of art deco as a degradation or perversion of a “healthy” original form, which is his own version of modernism. a relationship is indicated between the drawings in design and living and the work of the popular british humorist osbert lancaster whose illustrated books exaggerated the characteristics of different architectural styles for comic effect. the similarities of style and approach are suffi cient to suggest that lancaster’s pillar to post (1938) and homes sweet homes (1939) offered plischke a model for reaching a broad audience with recourse to architectural caricature. however, while lancaster uses line drawing to amuse and entertain, both design and living and a second design book published in 1947 d.e. barry martin’s more prosaically titled modern decoration and furnishing are intended to instruct in good taste. plischke set out to celebrate modernist form at its most existential level in his drawings for design and living. he uses caricature as a medium of expression that is subtle, implicit, connotative and indirect, yet powerful, expressive and emotional. because of the highly connotative nature of plischke’s caricatures, their power lies not only in the presence of formal architectural features but also in the subtle argument presented by their absence. linda tyler is director of the centre for new zealand art research and discovery at the university of auckland. previously, she was curator of pictorial collections at the hocken library at the university of otago. she is co-editor of a recently published compilation entitled treasures of the hocken collections. she now administers the university of auckland art collection (including the former auckland college of education collection). drawing the lines of theory: francesco di giorgio’s imagination at work (poster) pari riahi while the quick spread of digital media has led to an alienation of drawing by hand, understanding the potentials of manual drawing becomes more critical than before. it appears that the change lies in the medium itself (computer vs. hand), but the intentionality and the ultimate use of drawing are also undergoing major changes. the present paper intends to examine the work of francesco di giorgio martini, renaissance architect and theoretician, who demonstrated a precocious and unique understanding of drawing not only as a medium for representation, but also as a vehicle carrying forward architectural thought and its proliferation. such an investigation is instructive as francesco’s modes of operation might be relevant to modes of drawing in digital media. francesco di giorgio’s main body of work, trattati di architectura, ingeneria e arte militare, provides the fi rst systematic prototype of an architectural theory wherein drawings are equal to the text. francesco believes that drawing is an infi nitely inventive medium that looks at nature and draws from the mind while fusing past, present, and future. his emphasis on the importance of the reader’s active imagination in understanding the drawing indicates an ‘embedded’ time, dormant and yet actively present, in the body of drawing. thus drawing becomes an open ended process rather than a fi xed one. the most signifi cant feature of francesco’s work is, however, the linkage between theory and practice through drawing. his widely diverse drawings reveal and present notions of architecture that can be accessible only through images. this is what matters most in establishing our rapport with digital media wherein the predominant trends, focusing on using the media through a specifi c ‘process’, have undermined a deeper attachment to a given ‘theory’ of architecture. pari riahi initiated her architecture studies in iran, continued in france and eventually moved to montreal, where she received bachelor, professional and academic masters degrees from mcgill university. she is a phd candidate at mcgill university. she is a registered architect and has been teaching at rhode island school of design since 2007. the inter-relationship between drawing and film (poster) simon welch drawing and the origins of fi lm are related through the camera obscura and the audiovisual fi eld involves drawing in various ways. most movies are based on storyboards and rely on costume and set design. thus it could be argued that fi lm is as dependent on drawing as a preparatory tool as painting is. film is the best medium for recording the activity of drawing. numerous documentaries have recorded artistic activity and drawing often features in fi ction fi lms in which it is employed to important narrative and aesthetic ends. in the draughstman’s contract by peter greenaway, the hands of the director are shown drawing sketches of a house and garden which reveal important clues pertaining to the plot. the relationship between perspectival drawing and cinematic representation is explored in the seven samurai where ancient japanese norms of pictorial representation inform the manner in which kurosawa fi lms various scenes. drawing plays a major role in the fi lms of michael powell such as a canterbury tale, i know where i’m going and black narcissus whereby the past evoked in drawings is transformed into a cinematic present, facilitating the transition in time and space between scenes. similarly, a print, in last year in marienbad by resnais, is used to create a mise en abîme in that it depicts the setting for the fi lm. the use of geometric drawing helps to set particular visual themes during the opening credits of various hitchcock fi lms. hitchcock began his career as a title card designer and mostly considered the planning/storyboard phase of fi lmmaking to be the most interesting part of the process. this conception of fi lm reveals the extent to which hitchcock’s approach to fi lmmaking was a form of mental drawing process. using the above examples of issues arising from the interface between drawing and fi lm, my intention is to examine the ontological implications for both media. simon welch lives in strasbourg, france, where he teaches video & cinema studies at the university of strasbourg. having obtained a ba in fine art at liverpool polytechnic in 1988, he pursued his studies at strasbourg university where he was awarded a masters in visual art in 1997 and a doctorate in arts in 2005. simon welch regularly publishes articles and has participated in academic conferences and fi lm and video festivals and exhibitions. we gratefully acknowledge receipt of the university of auckland distinguished visitor’s award, as well as the contributions made by the universities of melbourne, adelaide and new south wales to professor marco frascari’s airfares. our thanks to all who have generously contributed advice and time: arlette galich, azadeh emadi, emily priest, gunhild itergen, judy cockeram, leong kim choo, lin ma, linda tanoai, megan ritchie, petelo esekielu, sara lee and others. marco frascari (2009) architect as a neuro-demiurge artifice artifice: architecture, film, theory, photography, design, history, art and things. christine mccarthy interstices 4 review: artifice 1 artifice: issue 2 (london: bartlett school, university college, 1995) issn 1357-0498 a woman's eyes look through the plastic cover. exotic markings delineate her face. this face, or mask, or skin, covers the surface of artifice: a booklet and a cd-rom (fig 1). a b o o k l e t a n d a c d r o m , artifice points to, but makes unclear, the relation of one media to the other. the cd-rom appears not to be a book. it uses movement, video and sound to enact the disguise and construct the skin which pretends an easy severance from the printed form. it is a mask which flaunts the technological promise of the computer age, that of the cutting-edge coloured by the illusion of the exotic the tattoo manifest in the soft focus of the covergirl. the technological, the primitive and the pornographic, construct this interplay of masking cut by the cover girl's tattoo an exotic tattoo which anticipates cosmetic cuttings for these exotic marks are not those of the conventional colonised subject t h e y a r e t h e w e s t e r n t a t t o o o f t h e facial surgery initiate. the cutting-edge of technology becomes literally, we find, the cutting-edge of the plastic surgeon. it cuts, like the tattoo, perpendicular to t h e s u r f a c e s o f t h e m a s k a n d f a c e . i t i s a cutting which both joins and separates an architectural section contaminating any easy separation. this is orlan whose work prompts initial comment in the "foreword" of the booklet which iterates the cd-rom and her face as its cover. explained as not "so easily refuted if placed in ... feminist and art historical contexts,"1 orlan's work is proudly announced "as 'blasphemous'"2 a s s h e s e t s a b o u t t o reconstruct her 43 year old face in compliance with conventional "ideals of feminine beauty"3: diana, europa, the mona lisa, venus and psyche. presented in the cd-rom through morphing, these beauties become orlan and iterate "the edison effect companion" a head which turns: younger and male or older and female. this fascination with turning particularly a turning into something else through movement (a physical turning) and surface (the site of turning) prevails in artifice, and is ironically situated within an electronic medium whose virtual lack of physicality enables it a seemingly endless capacity for depth. nowhere is this more marked than in the now new offering of electronic space: the new infinite, eternal design with no bounds, no walls, infinite frontiers, no stopping.4 yet rather than depth, this "new offering of electronic space" relies heavily on the circular (the turning and returning of the surface). cycling and recycling, loops of sound, image and movement, construct impermeable surfaces reinforcing notions of an impenetrable skin and mask. yet moments exist of the cutting of this skin a sectioning which anticipates an exotic both beyond and within contemporary western culture a "voodoo [where] the deepest cut on the doll results in the sharpest pain in the body."5 westernised, the pain is not referred to some distant victim of the curse, instead the pain and cut coincide. both doll and cursed, orlan "puts herself in jeopardy, fiddles with mortality and propels her body into severe discomfort,"6 literally playing out the bizarre and painful rituals so many, who seek similar aspirations to embody feminine beauty, are prepared to experience to attain an allusive and sought after female ideal. validating this grotesque and disturbing phenomenon as feminist and art historical, the location of her 'work' denies the horror of the grotesque incisions, tucks and stitchings of plastic surgery: adorning her surgeons and herself in couture clothing ... [she sites] translators in bizarre conical hats around the bed; and ... [entertains] a voluble stream of faxes and oral communications from herself and others, some coquettish and self-conscious, others more earnest quotations from pycho-analytical texts.7 interstices 4 review: artifice 2 here the masquerade of the academic endorses and promotes, as art, the disturbing and violent manifestations of beauty, each performance becoming literally "more life-threatening than the last."8 the viewer is swung further and further into anxiety as the incisions begin; an anxiety heightened because the wounding is evidently 'real,' but also confused because of a number of theatrical effects devised by the artist herself.9 the operation of the theatrical, the mask and of artifice, displaces the architecture of the operating theatre; violation is supplanted and legitimised by play: it may look as if there is a kind of violation going on, but i think it is only there because one has this idea of sanctity about architecture, and when that sanctity is challenged one is more aware of violation. but it is never malicious; it is just a case of physical play.10 this play of surface allows the confusion of the body and architecture. the physical violation of orlan's body becomes architecture, the pencil markings on her face become "chartings, at once graffiti, anatomical diagram and architectural plan"11 anticipating the sectional cut. the body becomes architectural and architecture is made bodily as peter cook locates cj lim's work, in "... they came to london," within the rhetoric of the body: "his buildings were essentially to do with skin and bones" and "his immense talent with skins and surfaces suited the mood."12 violation and play, bodies and buildings, are substituted and exchanged. they cut through the surfaces of skins as conventional constructions of the body and the cosmetic are confused. the surface and the object are seemingly mistaken, as the packaging of hoete, yuji and hallman's temple of laughter entry is given a weighting similar to the entry itself (f i g 2 ), a billiard table supplants the surface of a concrete floor in richard wilson's watertable installation at matt's gallery, 1994 (fig 3), and manslaughter, sectioned by the gun shot and bullet, is (mis)read as mans laughter. this moving and cutting of the skin, this play, is the electronic manipulation of paul panhuysen's "pattern primer," and the deployment of computer and surgical technology which locates orlan's work at a cutting-edge. layers cut and pasted construct literal cutting-edges which strive to reinstate traditional notions of beauty of the female and the land (f i g 4 )13 a cutting-edge which, by its very desire to be new, is inherently nostalgic: the desire to be new has become so old hat as to form a bizarre paradox sustained by the now rather rickety crutch that is called progress ... this apparent nostalgia-free zone is, in fact, nothing if not nostalgic, a repression of 'homesickness' so extreme that something is not quite being covered up.14 this 'not quite' covering up of home-sickness is, in fact, the location of the cutting-edge the 'as yet' unseamed, leaking the desire for home. around and beneath the electronic edges of artifice this domestic leak is found in the unlikely site of the academic, the physical origin and source of artifice: t h e booklet which is its foundation and authority. beneath, founding and supporting the technology of the cd-rom-mask, the booklet, is this site of comfort. as foundation, it is the site of discourse from which the academic emerges: the printed word. as the orthodoxy which allows technology to exist superficially, it accomodates the more conventional representations of academic work dr. jian fei zhu's "japan and the convergence of eastern and post-humanist paradigms" (p. 106-119), jonathan hill on yves klein and donald judd in "licking space" (p. 80-89), peter cook's writing "...they came to london" (p. 64-79) and "richard wilson interviewed by jeremy till" (p. 20-31). supplied within conventional notions of text, these allow the cd-rom to appear to exist as "contemporary, speculative, playful," apart from the "serious," separated by the conjunctive "and."15 this appeal to convention through the written text simultaneously supports the cd-rom and disables its ability to stand on its own. as face and foundation, the booklet allows the cd-rom to be a superficial layer of face-mask and make-up a cosmetic accessory dependant on the face beneath its surface. miniaturised and promoted as "magazine," the booklet both pretends to be, and is a be-littling of, conventional academia. physically stunted, and occupying (as magazine) the genre of the woman's weekly, a more popular and readily consumed discourse, its positioning as academic is displaced, as homely and suspect, locating electronic space within a lineage from the domestic. domesticated, technology and theory are consumed by a rhetoric of the cosmetic and household economies, sites where make-up is put on and technology is appliance: the microwave, the television (fig 5) and the washing machine "and we know there are too many washing machines in the world you know."16 existing excessively, the cosmetic and the technological interstices 4 review: artifice 3 become applications which exist in and of themselves constructing the domestic rather than applied to it. they construct the 'home' which is the point of reference for cutting-edge technology of electronic space. these references to 'home' pervade the electronic space of artifice (fig 6) compliant with a technological tradition which institutionalises the electronic within notions of domesticity. it is a '"home hearth concept [which] has become detached from the material paraphernalia of dwellings,'"17 b u t which is still located within conventional and nostalgic images of home. it is, as matiu carr defines it, "a place where you know where you are."18 i t i s a relocation of self within the electronic which comforts the fear of getting lost. no matter how far one ventures into the chronological or geographical distance, there is at every point, or moment, the possibility of a loop in the itinerary that returns to the starting point. this home base, this safe domestic space, is an implicit but necessary condition of the picturesque tour, that parallels that of the cyberventurer.19 in artifice, the 'home' page (fig 7) utilises the rhetoric and imagery of the alien and of sciencefiction, in an attempt to surplant conventional images of domesticity and of home. objects orbit20: a coloured ball, blocks, alphabet letters, and a crude rendition of a house. but these abstractions reminscent of children's toys surplant the alien and site the home and origin as an interior which is a nursery rather than the apparent exterior of a science-fictive landscape. domesticated, these alien objects become familiar, they become "a place where you know where you are."21 this rhetoric of an unfamiliar surface, the mask which pretends to be something or someone else, is in fact that which already is apparently known but is made unfamiliar in electronic space the way home taking us always to that place which is constructed as most familiar. here every moment of play is both a disguising and embodiment of the way home. they are that "possibility of a loop in the itinerary that returns to the starting point."22 "and now ... you know where to go."23 home notes 1 “foreword,” artifice (1995), n.2, p. 7. 2 anna price, “orlan,” artifice (1995), n. 2, p. 46. 3 price, “orlan,” p. 46. 4 jennifer bloomer, "the matter of the cutting edge," interstices (1995/6) n. 4 5 jonathan hill, “licking space,” artifice n. 2, p. 88. 6 price, “orlan,” p. 47. 7 price, “orlan,” p. 48. 8 price, “orlan,” p. 47. 9 price, “orlan,” p. 47. 10 richard wilson, “richard wilson interviewed by jeremy till,” artifice (1995), n. 2, p. 28. 11 price, "orlan," p. 47. 12 peter cook, "...they came to london," artifice (1995), n. 2, p. 71. 13 the relation of the cutting edge to images of the l a n d a n d the f e m a l e b o d y a r e made explicit by jennifer bloomer: the persistent metaphor of the cutting edge belongs partially t o t h e heroic narratives of conquest of the unknown, that is, the unexplored. and in the narratives of the exploration of the “new world,” the protruding blade ever inscribing the frontier is the protagonist of a consistent allegory: the sexual conquest of a virginal female body of seductive material richness. (vid 12) bloomer, “the matter of the cutting edge” 14 bloomer, “the matter of the cutting edge” 15 “foreword,” p. 7. 16 beaconsfield, “a conversation between greg hilty of the hayward gallery and nicholas logsdail of the lisson gallery with interjections by vienese artist franz west,” "public and private," accompanying dialogues, artifice (1995), n. 2. 17 john mchale quoted, mark wigley, “recycling, recycling,” interstices (1995/6), n. 4. 18 matiu carr, personal correspondence (3 april 1996). 19 bloomer, “the matter of the cutting edge” 20 the action of orbit locates specifically the orbit which constructs contemporary notions of the solar system specifically that which sites the earth which mchale, as wigley points out, constructs as one interstices 4 review: artifice 4 house. the artifice ‘ h o m e ’ p a g e p e r h a p s enlarges this already inflated house siting the galaxy as interior and home. 21 matiu carr, personal correspondence 22 bloomer, “the matter of the cutting edge” 23 bloomer, “the matter of the cutting edge” interstices 08 85 as exemplified by tokyo, the japanese city tends to be seen as an unrestricted laboratory for experiments in urban and architectural form. in reality, like most cities, the shape of tokyo is influenced and determined by an invisible array of forces and constraints. many of the city’s unusual building profiles are simply the outcome of thoughtless compliance with building codes. although severely limiting the architect’s options, these legal regulations may also be consciously instrumentalized in the design process. although the visual incoherence of contemporary urban japan has many sources, to a large extent it is the result of the firebombing campaigns in the final months of the second world war. the sheer urgency of providing shelter, with scant resources, produced a haphazard, chaotic condition that became the basic template for future urban growth. this has long been a subject of both criticism and celebration. despite the nation’s rapid economic progress in the postwar decades, tokyo was widely considered to have serious aesthetic and functional problems. however, a revisionist attitude that saw the disorder as positive and productive soon appeared. as early as the 1960s, architect kazuo shinohara asserted that postwar tokyo had a unique vitality, and the visual chaos should be regarded as a kind of beauty. shinohara’s statements were an epiphany for many architects and thinkers in japan, and became a theme that he and others elaborated on over the following decades. in a 1981 essay entitled “towards architecture,” shinohara described tokyo as possessing a “progressive anarchy” (he used english for this phrase, in an otherwise japanese text) that was the source of inspiration for his own architectural design: no other city has the diversity of buildings that comprise its streets, or the disorder of decorative surface colors and forms on their facades. chaos is the only appropriate word to describe it. but i do not unconditionally dismiss this as chaos. in essence, chaos contains a portent of ruin. yet in so many places within this “vast village” of a city before us, the streets are full of “vitality”. tokyo has now become one of the most exciting cities in the world…. in the design of a single building, the method of expressing anarchy as the theme can be established as an architectural logic (shinohara, 1981: 140-141). published together with the essay was a design by shinohara named the house under high-voltage lines. paradoxically, the house is a direct manifestation of – and obedient submission to – one of the city’s many constraints: specifically, the letter of the law: constraints on architectural form in japan tom daniell house under high-voltage lines, kazuo shinohara, 1981 (courtesy office of kazuo shinohara). interstices 08 87interstices 08 87 a regulation that stipulates the minimum distance a building must maintain from overhead power lines. this, in effect, defines an invisible cylinder along the axis of each cable, within which it is illegal to build. shinohara located the nearby power cables, deforming the roof profile, and the interior spaces, in accordance with the code. this approach to generating architectural form is, of course, reminiscent of a famous set of renderings by new york architect and illustrator hugh ferriss. in 1922, ferriss was commissioned by the architect harvey wiley corbett to draw a sequence of four perspective images, depicting the effects on architectural form of the pioneering 1916 new york city zoning resolution. prior to the enactment of this law, there were no restrictions on the bulk or height of buildings in manhattan. by forcing building profiles to step back diagonally as they rose vertically, the zoning resolution was intended to guarantee a degree of sunlight and air to the lower levels of the buildings and to the streets. the law provided simple formulas that defined maximum building volumes. the entire area of a given plot could be extruded vertically to a height that was a set multiple of the adjacent street’s width.1 above this point, the building envelope sloped inward at an angle determined by drawing an imaginary line from this height to the centre of the street below, forming a sloping setback known as a “sky exposure plane”. in the middle of each plot, a tower covering no more than a quarter of the site was permitted to rise without any upper limit. ferriss’ four sketches became the core of his 1929 book, the metropolis of tomorrow, which contains many evocative architectural images extrapolated from the legally defined envelopes. ferriss notes that the zoning resolution: … was based on purely practical consideration. ... the law as a whole was directed to securing an increase in public safety, convenience, efficiency and health. from the viewpoint of design, it is interesting to recall that the zoning movement having its genesis in just such considerations as have been mentioned was not at all inspired by concern for its possible effects on architectural design (ferris, 1986 [1929]: 72). yet, by defining maximum volumes within a context that implicitly demands maximization, the law had direct and immediate effects on the aesthetics of architectural form. ferriss first drew the envelope of a single city block: “a representation of the maximum mass…” hugh ferriss, 1929. “… over all the blocks of a city.” hugh ferriss, 1929. 1. depending on location, there were five possibilities: one times street width; one and a quarter times street width; one and a half times street width; two times street width; two and a half times street width (garvin, 2004, n.p.). interstices 08 87 interstices 08 87 … a representation of the maximum mass which, under the zoning law, it would be permissible to build over an entire city block…. it must be understood that the mass thus delineated is not an architect’s design; it is simply a form which results from legal specifications (ferris, 1986 [1929]: 74). he then showed what would happen “if the maximum masses which are permitted by the new york zoning law were erected over all the blocks of a city” (ferris, 1986 [1929]: 82). as required by their clients, the architects of the time did indeed try to achieve maximum usable floor area while complying with the code, but in practice they built ziggurats that only approximated the angled setbacks depicted by ferriss. the end points of the stepped profiles traced the invisible sky exposure planes. new york was the first us city to impose zoning laws, but most others soon followed. in each case, local code variations led to differing formal results; a well-known example is the comparatively boxier skyscraper typology of chicago, the forms of which are equally a product of zoning laws (willis, 1995). elsewhere in the world, legislation intended to ensure a fair distribution of natural light and air has given rise to characteristic architectural typologies: urban courtyard blocks, thin modernist slabs, terraced townhouses, low-density suburbia, or the residential complexes of hong kong’s new territories that comprise vast podiums supporting multiple residential towers. in 1961, new york city introduced a new zoning ordinance based on floor area ratios (far, the maximum allowable floor area defined as a multiple of the site area). although no longer mandating pyramidal forms, and indirectly encouraging the design of skyscrapers with straight vertical profiles and street plazas in front, the new code also entailed the first height restrictions ever imposed on manhattan (albeit parametrically defined).2 however, tokyo currently uses setbacks very similar to the 1916 new york zoning resolution. the japanese system was officially implemented with the enactment of the building standards law in 1950, although it is based on japanese studies of western cities that go back more than a century. having undergone several revisions, the code now comprises detailed regulations for the bulk, height and density of buildings, as well as site coverage, floor area ratios, street setbacks, side-yard widths, structural types, safety and usage. the volumetric controls are known as shasen-seigen, which literally means “diagonal line regulations” (although they are in effect planes rather than lines). just as in new york, they were not conceived as aesthetic controls, but to prevent buildings from blocking sunlight and air from their neighbours. according to one source, the primary motivation for the shasen is to allow all citizens to hang their laundry in direct sunlight for part of each day (nakamura, 1992: 85). there are three basic types of shasen: from the north (kitagawa-shasen), from the road (douro-shasen), and from the adjoining sites (rinchi-shasen). they generally slope at 1:0.6 or 1:1.25 in residential zones, and 1:1.5 in commercial zones. in terms of effect on the built environment, the most important is the north shasen. it starts 5m above ground level (in residential areas; it can be up to 10m in commercial areas) at the northern site boundary, and then slopes toward the south. naturally, most sites are not perfectly aligned with the cardinal points, so the north shasen 2. “in new york, the first finite limits on volume (and therefore on height) were imposed in 1961, when the 1916 zoning ordinance received its first major revision … the far formula effectively ended the standard setback massing, not because the new code prohibited it, but because sheer-walled towers in open plazas became more profitable.” (willis, 1995: 140141). an example of the volumetric modelling required by shasen regulations (diagrams taken from the building standards law guidebook). “… over all the blocks of a city.” hugh ferriss, 1929. interstices 08 89interstices 08 89 will also have some impact on either the eastern or western boundary. the road shasen starts from ground level at the opposite side of the adjacent streets. the wider the street, the less impact it will have on building form. if the building is set back from its own street boundary, the starting point of the shasen is shifted correspondingly further away on the other side of the street, and it is further affected by irregularities in road widths and intersections. finally, the adjoining site shasen applies at every non-street boundary. it starts either 20m or 31m above ground level, and thus is usually irrelevant in residential areas. while smaller elements such as balustrades and billboards are permitted to project through the shasen, as are penthouse towers of no more than 1/8th the building footprint, the building standards law also sets overall maximum building heights (zettai-takasa-no-seigen). the height limit in residential areas is generally 10m, but above a height of 7m (or two storeys, whichever is lower) the shasen are supplemented by additional volumetric controls known as sun-shadow regulations (nichiei-kisei). these place further restrictions on the building volume, according to the amount of shadow it casts between 8am and 4pm (or 9am and 3pm, if it adjoins a road) on the winter solstice. lines are drawn at 5m and at 10m from the site boundary line, at a height above the ground plane of 1.5m (residential) or 4m (commercial). the shadow cast by the building must not exceed these lines for more than a defined time period: usually, more than 3 hours of shadow should not pass the 10m line, and more than 5 hours of shadow should not pass the 5m line. if the shadows exceed these limits, additional chunks must be removed from the building volume – a common cause of irregular building forms in urban areas. to avoid an extended period of reiterated trial-and-error design, it is common for japanese architects to begin by modelling the allowable building envelope, and then use this as the basis for design. the limits for total site coverage (kenpei-ritsu) and total floor area (youseki-ritsu) are both given as ratios of the site area. each district is assigned a pair of numbers that indicate maximum site coverage and floor area as percentages of the total site (e.g. 60/200). however, it is not uncommon for sites to span more than one zoning, in which case the floor area ratios are averaged for the entire site. in commercially zoned districts, it is often impossible to achieve the maximum allowable floor area within the volumetric constraints, so economic pressures mean that the allowable building envelopes are almost always filled. unlike early 20th century new york, ziggurats are rare; the japanese preference is to precisely follow the shasen-seigen, producing the ubiquitous wedge-shaped volumes of the tokyo skyline. private houses are less noticeably affected by shasen, typical bevelled building forms in japan (photo by tom daniell). shadow distribution limits according to the nichiei-kisei regulations (diagram by tom daniell). interstices 08 89 interstices 08 89 below: decoding the effects of shasen regulations (courtesy yasutaka yoshimura). bottom: decoding the effects of nichi-ei regulations (courtesy yasutaka yoshimura). because in residentially zoned districts the floor area ratios are relatively low, and the maximum allowable floor area can be achieved without entirely filling the building envelope. a house that does swell to occupy the allowable volume will usually produce excessive floor area, and a common solution is to insert internal voids or exterior courtyards into the house volume. although the code might be expected to cumulatively sculpt a group of buildings on a given city block into a more-or-less coherent overall profile, anomalies in the shasen and other regulations mean that adjacent buildings often appear to be subject to differing sets of laws. in many cases, bizarre building forms are no more, interstices 08 pb and no less, than built diagrams of precise applications of the code. these have long been a source of frustration, and fascination, for local architects. over the last few years tokyo architect yasutaka yoshimura has had his students catalogue some of the odder examples, which he calls “super legal buildings,” into a book of the same name (yoshimura, 2006). reversing ferriss’ method of extrapolating hypothetical building forms from the code, yoshimura takes existing buildings and attempts to derive the code that generated them. the raw forms of tokyo are generally far less elegant than ferriss’ renderings of an imaginary new york, but in the hands of a skilful designer they can be manipulated to good effect, as in herzog & de meuron’s prada aoyama epicenter. to quote jacques herzog: we then started in earnest, checking out just how much leeway we had within the zoning laws. we discovered rather complex virtual machinery, which literally shaped the permitted building volume…. in early versions, we tried to move away from the zoning shape, but returned to it later when we discovered that we really needed every square meter of the given volume. as it turned out, it made a stronger impact than that of a fantasy shape. (celant, 2003: 81). beyond mere compliance, the law can also serve as the basis for sculptural form making, as in tadao ando’s uncharacteristically irregular hhstyle.com/ casa building. in its balance between conformity and experimentation, the sky trace house designed by kiyoshi sey takeyama is exemplary. on a typically tiny site, the building simply delineates the three-dimensional zoning envelope, with one exception: the outward-leaning slice at the corner is a deliberate design move. with, quite literally, a single stroke, a clumsy code-defined lump has been transformed into a poised, asymmetric crystal of concrete. laconic yet iconic despite themselves, code-defined building forms are not necessarily the extrapolation-to-absurdity of a “datascape,” nor merely a passiveaggressive display of frustration. at best, they are built diagrams of democracy at work (or even better, at play), mapping the interactions between individually motivated desires and collectively determined limitations. a confrontational compliance with the code will demonstrate the merits or injustices of the status quo, and delineate, by omission, the potential alternatives. references celant, g. (ed.). (2003). prada aoyama tokyo: herzog & de meuron. milan: fondazione prada. ferriss, h. (1986 [1929]). the metropolis of tomorrow. new york: princeton architectural press. garvin, a. (2004). regulating in the public interest. perspecta 35, unpaginated insert. nakamura, k. (1992). townscape of tokyo: the influence of the building code and of culture. arquitectura 294, 82-87. shinohara, k. (1981). kenchiku e. japan architect 56 (9), 139-146. translated from japanese by tom daniell. willis, c. (1995). form follows finance: skyscrapers and skylines in new york city and chicago. new york: princeton architectural press. yoshimura, y. (2006). chougouhou kenchiku zukan. tokyo: shokokusha. prada tokyo, herzog & de meuron, 2003 (photo by tom daniell). hhstyle.com/casa, tadao ando, 2005 (courtesy office of tadao ando). sky trace house, kiyoshi sey takeyama, 2006 (photo by tom daniell). interstices 11 maintaining the abstract critical facility in post-digital drawing practice mike davis introduction drawing practice has been significantly and irrevocably augmented through the advent of digital technologies. the term “post-digital” refers to a condition in which those technologies have been subsumed into the suite of tools at the disposal of designers. such a condition renders the polemic of traditional versus new media, of pencil versus mouse, redundant. building information model, diagram, render, collage, equation and script – each is understood as a form of drawing, each has its own predispositions and purposes. the qualities of the project that unfolds through the focused application of these tools is, as ever, a reflection of the abilities of designers to pursue ideas through drawing. and yet the “traditional versus digital” polemic, and the well-turned ground of the problem of the digital lying with its general tendency toward the production of visually-realistic images, is sustained by a lack of critical scrutiny based upon active engagement. with a critical base which relies solely upon observation grounded in conventional drawing, the digital remains “new” but somehow grows tired. this text proceeds on the understanding that what is required to address this broader concern is to accept the gift to drawing practice that its digital augmentation is and, through practical engagement, to deal with the related imperative of critically (re-)evaluating and (re-)negotiating the role that each tool plays in drawing practice, and indeed of developing understandings of relationships between tools. this paper sets out to articulate a hybrid digital-analogue drawing practice operating in a design project. it does so through a discussion of a preliminary design proposal for a new factory complex for ecostore – a producer of environmentallyfriendly household products – to be sited in avondale, auckland. stan allen has argued that digital techniques operate indifferently in relation to established techniques, often with the effect of compromising the power of conceptualisation which was particular to traditional drawing. … these techniques of visualization ignore what has traditionally given architectural representation its particular power of conceptualization – that is to say, its necessary degree of abstraction, the distance interposed between the thing and its representation. design does not operate on the basis of resemblance, but on the basis of abstract codes and a complex instrumentality. (2009: 75) allen thus problematises digital visualisation techniques in relation to traditional architectural representation, in terms of their operation in the design process. 83 greg lynn writes to similar effect when he defines the difference between an abstract machine (a diagram in the context of his discussion) and a concrete assemblage. concrete assemblages are mechanistic and already technical where abstract machines are conceptual statements with many possibilities for reconfiguration and transformation. (1998: 230) the use of the term abstraction here is not intended to be confused with a purist or modern notion of abstraction. in those instances, abstraction involves a reduction to fixed formal essences – involving a kind of paring away. instead, abstraction is used here in a more generative, evolutionary and productive manner – involving a kind proliferation, expansion and unfolding. (1998: 225) while in their respective texts allen is concerned with contrasting digital and analogue techniques, and lynn is particularly concerned with the potential of the diagram in relation to design, this paper is concerned with post-digital drawing practice and the contingent relationships between the tools and techniques through which design is pursued. what it shares with allen and lynn is a concern for maintaining the abstract critical facility of drawing and, through this, pursuing explorative design processes. the ecostore project demonstrates five strategies for the maintenance of the abstract critical facility of drawing. they have been apprehended via a reflective interrogation of the making and outcome of the project. from these strategies three broader propositions are extrapolated with regard to post-digital drawing practices in architecture. ecostore from auckland’s north western motorway the ecostore factory complex reads as a vegetative wedge extruded from the site, above which are suspended three timber-clad and perforated blocks of equal widths but varying heights. each block is the output of a projected stage in the development. conversely, the programmatic imperatives and opportunities of the project are vertically stacked – office over carpark over factory on site. this spatial condition of separation renders the necessary connection of these programmatically-related elements problematic and thematic to the project. the complex is a maximum built condition designed to utilise the maximum amount of space available on the site. it is a response to the conditions of its inception driven by a negotiation between regulations and requirements. the intention here is to discuss how the project developed through a demonstration fig. 1 ecostore: aerial perspective of the digital mass model from the north east fig. 2 ecostore: programmatic imperatives fig. 1 fig. 2 interstices 11 of the strategies that operated to maintain the abstract facility of drawing throughout this early phase of design. strategy 1: specialise and collaborate the ecostore project was developed to its current state through collaboration between patrick loo, ian scott and myself. patrick’s and ian’s demands for information about the project forced me (as project leader) to articulate and address – through drawing and modelling, in diagrams, autocad, foam and rhinoceros – issues that i had been unable to see or had resisted addressing. the outcome of this intra-disciplinary endeavour is a preliminary design project that is understood as an open system intended to be further developed through the input of specialists, those with the necessary knowledge to bring it to a positive ecological and economic realisation. in this way the project retains a sense of the diagrammatic. this paper works toward a proposition (proposition 2: shift content) to focus on the relationships between tools and techniques, toward developing a critical inter-instrumentality, a condition that requires both a depth of understanding (born of particular technical virtuosity) and yet ambivalence toward the tools and techniques concerned. but the passion required to take up the technical workload needed for designers to develop and maintain a depth of knowledge across the entire expanding raft of tools and techniques available precludes ambivalence, and tends to throw out the fragile balance between the development of technique and the development of the design. yet the outcomes of these more technical specialisations are compelling. collaborative design practices emerge out of this compulsion, with each collaborator operating with their chosen tool or technique to define their particular role in the design process. the effect is to resolve the paradox of understanding coupled with ambivalence. strategy 2: delay the “real”, explore the possible linguistic constructions are merely postponed, not abolished, and a regime of abstract, schematic statements are seen to pre-empt and sponsor them. from the particular discursive formation of multiple diagonally intersecting statements some form of expression emerges. (lynn 1998: 227) design might be understood as a search (facilitated by drawing and making practices) for resonances between the conditions (site, brief, regulations…) and designed responses to those conditions. in lynn’s terms these resonances are instances of a “particular discursive formation of multiple diagonally intersecting statements” (lynn 1998: 227). there was a tacit recognition working through the ecostore project that the deployment of digital visualisation techniques to produce visually-realistic images (visual realisms) would run the serious risk of dramatically reducing the potential for the emerging design proposition to develop substantially beyond the condition in which it was depicted in such a visual realism. in other words, the fig. 3 ecostore: interior collages 85 concern was that a visual realism introduced at this early stage of design could curtail the search for resonances sought through the design process. qualities of abstraction were consciously cultivated in the design process through the tools and techniques brought into play. these qualities were maintained through the design process to allow the design proposition to unfold in response to the conditions of its inception and development – those evident at the outset and those emerging through it. abstraction was a means of delay, of creating space in time and of resisting the “real” so that the design proposition could develop, rather than be thrust forward and bound prematurely at any one point through the imposition of a photo-“real”-istic image. the project is presented through differing disciplinary specific outcomes, each privileging a level of abstraction, and telling a different story or developing a different aspect of the project. the exploded isometric, the sections and the diagrams are abstract by nature; the aerial shots present an un-materialised mass; and the nature of the perspective collages, their rough-ness, the juxtaposition of the components and the resulting level of abstraction inhibits a sense of the “real” but they simultaneously project possible atmospheric qualities of the space in question (allen 2009: 89). collectively the drawn outcomes suggest or invite extrapolation toward a whole proposition but do not default to a single image in order to do so. the effect is to keep the project in the realm of the possible rather than the predetermined. strategy 3: retain disciplinary specificity the purpose of the ecostore preliminary presentation drawing is primarily to demonstrate a projected performance. what it provides are multiple means through which to do so. each of the drawings selected for inclusion in the preliminary presentation drawing consciously retains its own specific role. what results is the framing of the space between the selected drawings as the space of potential productive differences. fig. 4 ecostore: process material interstices 11 fig. 5 ecostore: preliminary presentation drawing 87 at the core of the content lies a detailed rhinoceros model based upon twodimensional autocad plans and sections, which were based on drawings made on butter paper over outline templates or datums, taken from both autocad and rhinoceros and physical models based upon the same. tools and techniques were deployed according to their predispositions – to explore the advantages of each in the context of the project. for example, on the basis of a raft of more time-consuming physical foam models, rhinoceros was used to quickly produce multiple iterations of one particular foam option. in this instance the physical model lent itself to the consideration of the larger formal issue, while the speed of modelling successive massing iterations in rhinoceros lent itself more to the consideration of the next level of detail. in the same way autocad was used to project material into sections that in rhinoceros would have been unnecessarily time-consuming and processor-intensive. the examples provided are not intended to give the impression of a linear, nor seamless, design process. on the contrary, the seams (the space between the tools and techniques) and the circularity of this design process were pronounced. selected drawings are arranged in strips: a rhinoceros-based exploded isometric coupled with autocad-based sections, into which is keyed a perspectival narrative, and a sectional-diagram and model-based composite. at this early stage in the design process the different drawings are held in tension conceptually and graphically. they are not permitted to completely correspond with each other, slight discrepancies are embraced. this tension further retains in the project a sense of openness, of further exploration to be undertaken, of development to occur in response to the inevitable raft of impacts to be encountered as the project proceeds. strategy 4: aggregate drawings traditionally the separate sheets of paper or film on the drawing board offered a repository of critical design thought developed and collected during the course of a project – sketches recorded the development of plan, section and elevation adorned the sheets containing the same. with the complex of tools and techniques designers now encounter there is no longer a core medium in which this repository may reside but the essential demand for it still exists. with the ecostore project the folders containing successive iterations of the rhinoceros model and the autocad drawings were literally, digitally folded away and rendered opaque. yet the knowledge they contained required exposure and evaluation to be useful in the development of the project. the project repository was established in a booklet format – the operative material document was the means to keep the material active. the document served to process, record and present selected material, to work as an augmented repository of knowledge which existed separately from the media in which the content was originally produced. the secondary level of processing, of collating the content into booklet format, was the means to develop understandings of each facet of the project and their potential relationships to one another. fig. 6 ecostore: operative material document interstices 11 strategy 5: expose the diagram i will focus on the use of intermediate techniques; or what will from this point forward be referred to as conceptual diagrams. diagrams should not be understood as instrumentalized ideas, as this could be construed as deterministic. instead, diagrams should be understood as conceptual techniques that come before any particular technology. (lynn 1998: 223) the preliminary design process of the ecostore project was distributed across analogue and digital diagrams, autocad drawings, rhinoceros models and physical foam models. diagrams provided the initial impetus for the design, but through the operative material document the diagram as an instrument was also consciously exposed as the means to connect and achieve coherence between the differing media through which the design process operated. in other words, the diagram held the contingent assemblage of collaborators, tools, techniques and outcomes that together were the design process through this preliminary design stage. diagrams ranged in quality from the notational to the pictorial. it was expedient and critical, analytical and synthetic – the only instrument quick enough or integral enough to simultaneously be complicit in, keep up with and not detract from the thought as it developed. the concern was not for what each diagram looked like but what the diagrams did collectively. the conscious release of more pictorial diagrams from any burden of perfection they may have acquired in relation to traditional drawing practices facilitated the proliferation of diagrams. they occurred in multiples, each allowed to exist in its own state of rawness and “imperfection”. concern for the aesthetic qualities of the diagrams remained, but as an emergent property of the collective. this shifted concern for the abstract facility of the collective, rather than the material quality of singular representations, allowed the exposure and discussion of the pursuit of what was possible in the project. the abstract critical facility existed in the drawing of the diagram, in the processing of the diagram into the operative material document (or in other words in between the diagram and the booklet) and in the ability to review those diagrams in the context of the document in relation to one another. the strategies outlined above were developed both as the ecostore project progressed at differing levels of consciousness and through critical observations and reflections on the work after the fact. while they perhaps remain bound to this particular project, they offer the opportunity to project broader propositions as to how the abstract facility of drawing might be maintained in post-digital design environments. proposition 1: draw drawings (noun) still work. they provide the key to grasp a concept of what might but is yet to be. fig. 7 ecostore: diagrams from the operative material document 89 drawing (verb) still works not only to produce the representation of concept, not only to test and develop the concept, but to develop in the designer sensitivities to those resonances sought between project conditions and responses. the difference in a post-digital design environment is that drawing practices which do this work now consist of an expanding range of techniques in increasingly fluid relationships. drawing no longer only has to do with using a single tool in multiple disciplinarily-bound ways to produce varying effects. post-digital design practice has to do with the application of multiple tools, each producing fewer effects, and the management of the relationships between designers, tools and effects. in other words, the focus is shifted from particular tools to relationships between them. this amounts to a sort of “what if i cross this, with this, with this?“ speculative approach to architectural drawing. proposition 2: shift content the concept of the “craft” of drawing applies across all drawing practices, digital and analogue. however, post-digital drawing practices shift the craft of drawing from the accumulation of information in a single medium to the quick production of multiple packets of information spread across multiple media. the necessity of post-digital drawing practices is to be literate enough in terms of any new tools or techniques so as to recognise the qualities of craft in them, a necessity that can only occur through practical engagement. the craft of drawing now consists of abilities to shift design content between tools as much as it does to develop design with any one particular tool. the operational discontinuity that is forced through the shifting of design content between collaborators and tools, and the resulting necessity with each shift of reworking the design content, is the means to develop the design. further, the nature of the shifts – the speed, the levels of precision, the levels of reinterpretation required or pursued – directly impacts upon the design content. it may be argued then that design develops as much between tools as it does within any one tool – in other words, through inter-instrumental operations. proposition 3: differentiate drawing practices the assumption that there is a uniform space through which meaning may glide without modification is more than just a naïve delusion however. only by assuming its pure and unconditional existence in the first place can any precise knowledge of the pattern of deviations from this imaginary condition be gained. (evans 1997: 154) the tools and techniques of design have never been neutral. each is prone to producing particular, often identifiable end qualities. software is no different. the problem outlined in the introduction of this paper of the “same-ness” and the “tired-ness” of the digital lies neither with the computer nor with software. the problem lies with the users, those who draw with these tools. the issue is not one of digital versus analogue but of the designer’s understanding of, and sensitivity toward their instruments and their use – it is about the development of drawing craft. the challenge is two-fold: to get beyond the interface (allen 2009), to use the software in a manner which allows the design to remain focal and the development of technique to be secondary, and to establish and exploit connections between interstices 11 instruments (digital and analogue) in a generative manner. success in this regard yields the potential for differentiated drawing practices and outcomes through recombinant configurations of tools and techniques. conclusion a hybrid digital-analogue drawing practice has been articulated through a discussion of the preliminary design process for the ecostore project. the discussion has been structured in terms of five strategies the project demonstrates for the maintenance of the abstract critical facility of drawing. three further propositions with regard to post-digital drawing practices have been extrapolated. specialise and collaborate; delay the “real”, explore the possible; retain disciplinary specificity; aggregate drawings; expose the diagram ... so the abstract critical facility of drawing was maintained in the ecostore project. draw; shift content; differentiate drawing practices ... to the effect of developing drawing practices that hold the tools and techniques we have at our disposal in a dynamic tension, managing the influence each exerts in relation to the other strategically, according to the stage and nature of the design process. this collectively may present a sense of the familiar. the digital augmentation of the toolkit at the disposal of designers has not affected aims of achieving an open, explorative and responsive design process for those who carry such a concern. what the digital augmentation of drawing practices may be understood to have provided is more choice in terms of the tools and techniques that may be used in a project. selection is a question of strategy concerning the potential application of tools and techniques, and potential relationships between them, in relation to the design project as it unfolds. the critical evaluation of one tool or technique relative to another in the project context also brings to drawing practice a greater critical awareness of the agency of the tools and techniques. more tools, more choice, more awareness equates to more dynamism in the relationships between them, and a heightening in the task of managing drawing practice. what this expanded choice and awareness effects is a shift from a focus more trained upon the tools and techniques themselves, to a focus equally trained upon the tools and techniques and the relationships between them. references allen, s. (1995, 2005). terminal velocities: the computer in the design studio. in s. allen, (2009) practice: architecture, technique + representation. expanded 2nd version (70-93). oxfordshire: routledge. evans, r. (1986). translations from drawing to building. in r. evans, (1997). translations from drawing to building and other essays (153-193). london: architectural association. lynn, g. (1998). forms of expression: the proto-functional potential of diagrams in architectural design. in g. lynn, (1998) folds, bodies & blobs: collected essays (223-233).brussels: la lettre volée. ecostore project credits project leader: michael davis assistants: patrick loo and ian scott all drawings are by michael davis, patrick loo and ian scott 91 refereed drawings “destroying and constructing are equal in importance, and we must have souls for the one and the other”.1 large-scale urban violence is a tumultuous, messy and distressing affair. materials and patterns of everyday life are blown apart. amongst death and disarray, important spatial operations that take place in urban conflict are easily overlooked. however, the construction of street barricades and boulevards in paris between 1795 and 1871 transformed the city. the struggles over these transformations can be described as both the disruption and the policing of what rancière calls the “distribution of the sensible”. 2 the barricades built in the streets of paris in the revolutionary years that followed the great revolution of 1789, and closed with the suppression of the paris commune in 1871, were not the first or the last artefacts of urban insurgency. nor was paris the only city in history – even european history – to be barricaded. however, in paris, barricading became a revolutionary technique, the develop ment and decline of which can be traced with some precision. barricading served complex social purposes, of which defense was only one, and not always the most significant. thus, barricades are also an ephemeral city-scale architecture occasioned by, and changing, the social.3 history and tectonics of a rubbish heap at first, the parisian barricades were temporary barriers, or walls erected quickly across streets. they were built by anonymous groups of insurgents from whatever loose materials could be found nearby: carts, furniture, barrels and, most typically, paving stones torn up from the roadway. they were constructed en masse. in july 1830 there were over 4,000 barricades; in june 1848 there were as many as 6,000. 1. paul valéry, quoted in pallasmaa (2003: 6). 2. for rancière’s political philosophy, see disagreement: politics and philosophy (1998), and the politics of aesthetics (2004), which contains a useful glossary of ranciére’s terms. 3. the barricades’ history is in some ways distinct from the history of ad-hoc fortifications (trenches, seige works, emplace ments) in general. for the barricades, see corbin and mayeur (1997) and mark traugott (1993). in addition, nearly all historical accounts of the french revolutionary period mention the barricades, but few consider their significance in a sustained manner. for the general historical context, see hobsbawm (1962) and (1975). barricades and boulevards: material transformations of paris, 1795-1871 carl douglas interstices 08 33interstices 08 33 the first recorded instance of barricading in paris occurred in 1588, when the popular comte cossé de brissac lead parisians in a rebellion in response to the posting of soldiers in the streets of the city. chains were sometimes used to close streets to traffic, and these points of closure were reinforced with barrels (barriques) filled with stones to restrict military movement. in 1648, the arrest of a popular politician lead to the erection of over a thousand barricades in the city. thereafter, barricades did not recur for nearly 150 years, playing no part in the revolution of 1789. when they did reappear, with the jacobin uprising of 1795, it was in a different context. while civil disobedience had previously been used as a way of gaining leverage over political leaders, the intention was now the complete overthrow of the state. between 1795 and 1871, historian mark traugott records twenty-one instances of barricading (1993: 315). the most famous of these incidents were the july days of 1830 (portrayed by delacroix in his 1830 painting la liberté guidant le peuple), and the revolutions of february and june 1848. according to traugott (316), while barricading, by 1848, had achieved ”a genuinely international status as a tactic of revolt”, it was already losing effect in the face of mobile artillery and improving military tactics.4 in the streets of paris, the last time barricades were used in a major way was during the paris commune of 1871, when the socialist government of the city declared itself independent of versailles. although barricades continued to be used in other cities in europe, including barcelona and berlin, and reappeared in paris in 1945 and 1968, barricading as a technique had ceased to be decisive in urban insurgency. between 1795 and 1871, when barricading was a common revolutionary tactic, france alternated between revolutionary governments and periods of centralized imperial rule. george-eugène haussmann’s famous urban restructuring of paris, which occured during one of the latter periods the second empire of louis napoleon (1852-1871) was, in part, an explicit response to the threat of barricades.5 haussmann cut wide new boulevards through the fabric of old paris, 4. the french uprising of 1848 sparked others in cities across europe, incluing brussels, vienna, berlin, munich, milan, naples, budapest, frankfurt, prague and dresden. 5. for haussmann, see jordan (1995). the barricades and haussmann’s boulevards are two of the key coordinates in walter benjamin’s study of the emerging spaces and structures of the bourgeoisie. see benjamin (1999) and (1986). schematic plan of paris in 1871 following haussman’s works. interstices 08 33 interstices 08 33 buying and demolishing whatever was in the way, setting up axes and monuments, and clearing space around buildings like notre dame and the palais du louvre. by cutting into the body of the city with his boulevards and promoting unimpeded circulation, haussmann hoped not only to alleviate the social pressures which produced unrest, but also to make the construction and defense of barricades impossible. barricades and boulevards are conflicting regimes of materials, spaces and performances. architecture does not merely mirror social relations: it acts to produce them. henri lefebvre describes how the production of social relations is already the production of a space for those relations, through practices and representations. instead of acting as a container, within which all kinds of relations could take place, space defines subjects and the range of possible relations they can have with one another (lefèbvre, 1991). walter benjamin recognised the reconstructing of the civic subject in the haussmannization of paris. he writes, only partly in jest: ”the widening of the streets, it was said, was necessitated by the crinoline” (1999: 133). in haussmann’s paris, the bourgeois subject of the boulevards is opposed to the placeless labourer, who does not truly belong to the city; and the reconfiguration of the city’s materials and spaces reconfigures social relations. it would be too simple to contrast haussmannization, as the imposition of centra lized state law on the city, with the barricades as exuberant or violent disobedience to that law. in his “critique of violence” (1986b), benjamin argues that law and order cannot be opposed to violence. rather, they must be seen as essentially violent themselves. law is even an essential condition of violence, and violence is not the absence or failure of law; rather, it is a law being imposed: ”lawmaking is power making, and, to that extent, an immediate manifestation of violence“ (295). in benjamin’s thought, the opposition of the destructive, violent space of the cumulative plan of barricades, after philippe (1989). interstices 08 35interstices 08 35 barricades to the lawful, constructive space of hausmann’s paris is false. in fact, he notes that haussmann referred to himself as an ”artist-demolitionist“ (1991: 128), and gathers second empire sources who describe the scale of destruction involved in haussmannization. similarly, the violence of the barricades contains the violence of a new lawmaking. destruction and construction are equally capable of violence insofar as they both mark the operation of law. if haussmannization and the barricades are both recognized as material and spatial transformations of the city, then they must both be appreciated not only for their violence, but as conflicting impositions of law. jacques rancière articulates a theory of politics which is benjaminian in its understanding of conflict. the city’s materials and spaces do not simply bear the imprint of politics, and the city is not a neutral surface which is only inflected and marked politically. instead, the very perception of there being a city – what a city is, how it is assembled, who inhabits it – is the result of ”a distribution of spaces, times, and forms of activity” (rancière, 2004: 12). if lawmaking is conflict for benjamin, for rancière, conflict is a dispute over the distribution of what can be perceived within a given regime. this distribution of the sensible (le partage du sensible) is described by rancière as an “implicit law” (1998: 29). rancière’s distribution of the sensible closely parallels henri lefebvre’s production of the space of social relations. the production of space is the production of the ground against which social relations can be seen to resolve. social relations, argues lefebvre, cannot exist except in and through the production of space.6 for rancière, social relations are rendered conceivable only through the distribution of what can be sensibly apprehended. the work of maintaining a certain existing distribution of the sensible is carried out by what rancière calls ”the police”: the police is essentially, the law, generally implicit, that defines a party’s share or lack of it ... the police is thus first an order of bodies that defines the allocation of ways of doing, ways of being, and ways of saying ... policing is not so much the ‘disciplining’ of bodies as a rule governing their appearing, a configuration of occupations and the properties of the spaces where these occupations are distributed (1998: 29). benjamin also describes the role of the police in upholding the law, not simply enacting laws: ”rather, the ‘law’ of the police really marks the point at which the state ... can no longer guarantee through the legal system the empirical ends that it desires at any price to attain” (1986b: 287). policing marks the edge of law, the line at which practices or bodies are brought under law. following benjamin, if we see the barricades and the boulevards as equally violent practices of law-making and, following rancière, we see lawmaking as the policing of a distribution of the sensible, then new questions can be asked of the actual, material transformations of paris between 1795 and 1871. how did barricades and boulevards redistribute materials and spaces? thus, what became visible? how did the lawmaking and share-allocating roles of the police work on the transformations of paris in the period in question? 6. “man does not live by words alone; all ‘subjects’ are situated in a space in which they must either recognize themselves or lose themselves, a space which they may both enjoy and modify” (lefebvre, 1991: 35). interstices 08 35 interstices 08 35 the following sections stage a conflict between the barricades and the boulevards, with a view to the performative nature of the barricades in their historical context: the ways in which the material configurations of barricades and boulevards produce certain kinds of perception; and how perception renders subjectivity. historical performances romantic images of the barricades, like delacroix’s la liberté guidant le peuple, reflect the important symbolic role of the barricades. an obvious observation about delacroix’s painting is that the greatest mass in the image is made up of human bodies: heads, arms and bayonets blend into the dim depths; bodies anchor the image on the left, underline it, and are silhouetted against the smoke in the centre. architecture, as materiality, is reduced to an emblematic presence: in the distance, at the far right of the frame, a row of houses and the towers of notre dame emerge from the smoke. human figures are not constrained or enclosed by buildings, even though the streets of paris in the 1830’s were notoriously narrow. the paved surface of the road is visible only along the bottom. the barricade itself is barely more than knee-high and mostly obscured. some paving stones are heaped up with pieces of lumber, but they certainly do not form a wall. there is no sense that the barricade is a blockage; rather, it is little more than a dais for liberty to stand on. narrative accounts of uprisings suggest that a barricade was a space in which dramatic events were performed. great anecdotal importance is attributed to what happened ‘on the barricades’, where figures harangue the mob, and people find noble or appalling deaths: baudin stepped forward to the barricade and said, “stay there a minute longer, my friend, and you’ll see how a man dies for eugène delacroix, ‘la liberté guidant le peuple’, 1830. interstices 08 37interstices 08 37 twenty-five francs.” a column of soldiers approached from the bastille and rushed the barricade. baudin was killed (duveau, 1967: 163). thus, the barricades were rhetorical constructions, not only military-strategic devices. friederich engels, in his introduction to marx’s the class struggles in france, 1848-1850, considers the successes and failures of urban insurgency, and concludes: even in the classic time of street fighting, therefore, the barricade produced more of a moral than a material effect. it was a means of shaking the steadfastness of the military. if it held out until this was attained, then victory was won; if not, there was defeat (1934: 14). according to engels, the barricades’ effectiveness declined partly because ”the spell of the barricade was broken”. whereas before, soldiers facing the barricades would be convinced that they were not merely facing a gathering of individuals, but a manifestation of ‘the people’, once the rhetorical spell was broken, they saw only “rebels, agitators, plunderers, levelers, the scum of society“ (14). traugott consciously seeks to lift this ’spell’, in order to reveal the production of social movements from collective actions.7 he argues that barricading became, with each repetition, an increasingly ritualised act loaded with ”symbolic and sociological functions“ (1993: 317). each new instance of barricading was also a re-enactment of previous barricades. during the paris commune, the commu nards were eager to have themselves photographed with their barricades. in doing this, they reinforced the spectacular and performative nature of their constructions.8 haussmann spent the years leading up to 1871 converting paris into a network of linked monuments, which were cleared and set apart, freed from their engagement in the fabric of the city. an image space was created for viewers to stand back and see the monuments as free-standing sculptures: paris became a monumental gallery. in contrast, the barricades aligned more closely with 7. see traugott (1978), in which he sets out his position regarding social movements; and (1985) for an example of his empirical method. 8. in one anonymous photograph, taken on the rue des amandiers, we see a barricade of pavingstones, covered with earth dug out from in front of the mound, and with castellations for the cannons. all along the barricade stand men in a semi-regular uniform. to the far right of the frame, observers have gathered to see this spectacle. the camera provided a means to expand the symbolic reach of the barricades. by posing for photographs, the communards reinforced the performative role of the barricades. jeannene pzyblyski writes “the communards posing on the barricades explicitly laid claim to the theatricality that is intrinsic to photographic reality, to the performativity that is the counterpart to its opticality” (przyblyski, 2001: 64). a barricade of the paris commune, on the rue des amandiers, 1871. interstices 08 37 interstices 08 37 benjamin’s description of the new arts – the mass media: they were reproducible, and their ability to function even depended on their reproduction. for benjamin, like architecture generally, they were perceived in a state of distraction, as a background or stage for events: ”a man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it ... in contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art” (1999: 232). as performance, the barricades were oriented towards the masses, whose interpretation and participation was invited. in contrast, the boulevards divided the city into segments, in which preselected art objects could be apprehended with the gaze of the gallery patron. material constructions victor hugo’s les misérables (1862) includes a fictionalized account of an uprising and descriptions of the monumental barricades of the 1848 june days, of which hugo was an eyewitness. the saint-antoine barricade was three storeys high and seven hundred feet long: it ran from one end to the other of the vast mouth of the faubourg – that is to say, across three streets. it was jagged, makeshift and irregular, castellated like an immense medieval survival ... everything had gone onto it, doors, grilles, screens, bedroom furniture, wrecked cooking stoves and pots and pans, piled up haphazard, the whole a composite of paving-stones and rubble, timbers, iron bars, broken window-panes, seatless chairs, rags, odds and ends of every kind – and curses ... the saint-antoine barricade used everything as a weapon, everything that civil war can hurl at the head of society ... a mad thing, flinging an inexpressible clamour into the sky... it was a pile of garbage, and it was sinai (hugo, 1982: 989-990). an 1848 military reconnaissance report similarly notes mounds up to five metres wide and of widely varying heights (price, 1996: 90). their basic material was the street paving, which was torn up and piled, stacked or mounded. mounding was typically supplemented by piling up whatever material was to hand: construction materials, furniture, rubbish, carriages, and the whole of hugo’s heterogeneous litany. sometimes, barricades stretching part-way across the street were staggered, permitting revolutionaries to pass without needing to climb over. the patch of bare earth left by tearing up paving stones was occasionally dug out to form a pit in front of the barricade. some barricades were built as walls with eyelets, firing slots, or larger holes for improvised pipe-cannons and appropriated artillery.9 in contrast, the two-storey barricade of the faubourg de temple was built with military precision: a view from above enabled one to ascertain its thickness: it was mathematically even from top to bottom. its grey surface was pierced at regular intervals with almost invisible loopholes, like dark threads. the street bore every sign of being deserted: all doors and windows were closed. the wall, erected across it, a motionless, silent barrier, had made of it a cul-de-sac in which no person was to be seen, no 9. for the construction of the barricades, see corbin and mayeur (1997), price (1996: 90), descrip tions collected by benjamin (1999: 120-147), and photographs collected by pryzblyski (2001: 54-78). interstices 08 39interstices 08 39 sound heard. bathed in the dazzling june sunshine, it had the look of a sepulchre ... immaculate in design, flawless in alignment, symmetrical, rectilinear and funereal, a thing of craftsmanship and darkness (hugo, 1982: 991). for hugo, these two constructions expressed two aspects of the revolution: defiance and silence; the dragon and the sphinx; ”a roaring open mouth” and a mask. these oppositional pairs align with the two poles of barricade construction: the mound and the wall. barricades disrupt the proper relations of the city. things are displaced and repurposed, weaponised and, as hugo puts it, hurled at the head of society. engravings of the fighting in the region of saint-antoine show the air filled with cabinets, tables, chairs and paving stones. on the second and third floors of buildings overlooking the barricade, armed insurgents took up position and fired or threw material down onto the heads of advancing troops. a network of supporting passages was established through gardens and houses, disused land and alleyways. interior passages were made by breaking through the walls of the houses alongside the barricade, so barricaders could move up and down the street rapidly under cover. barricades and boulevards produced two distinct regimes of perception in the city. under the regime of the barricades, the city became visible as a continuous field of material: a landscape. in 1915, irish revolutionary james connolly, recommending barricading as a tactic, argued that the city was, strategically, a landscape: ”a mountainous country has always been held to be difficult for military operations owing to its passes or glens. a city is a huge mass of passes or glens formed by streets and lanes” (1915). under the regime of the barricades, divisions into tenancies and properties were no longer respected. space and materials were appropriated, shared and stolen as the barricaders converted the city into a continuous field of urban matter, to be traversed or tunnelled through. in view of the city as a continuous field, previously obvious partitions and distinctions suddenly appeared irrelevant, incomprehensible. in the wake of 1848, the boulevards were the state power’s forceful response to such disruption, reinforcing civic order and shoring up the existing distribution of the sensible. everything was allocated its proper place in the new urban structure, a place determined according to imperial coordinates. if the distribution of the sensible acts to allocate places, to determine what is visible and invisible (what can be perceived or apprehended and what cannot), then how did the boulevards determine social relations? in his memoirs, haussmann wrote with pride about having erased certain locations from paris: the rue transnonain, site of a massacre in 1834, and the rue de rempart, where haussmann himself had been caught in the fighting in 1830. in their place, his works made visible the sites of centralized power. the rue de rivoli, for example, was extended to form a broad road and a line of sight from the courbevoie barracks to the place de la bastille in the region of saint-antoine, that hotbed of discontent. visual axes and perspective served as focussing tools. on the boulevards, people were subjected to vanishing-points made to coincide with the monuments of power. a joke of the period was that the avenue de l’opéra was positioned to afford patrons a view of the emperor’s gatehouse (see jordan 1995: 185-210). interstices 08 39 interstices 08 39 the new city privileged the shoppers in the arcades, the opera patrons and all who had leisure to stroll the boulevards. at the time of haussmann’s work, some described the latter as being like deserts.10 the new spaces of paris – broad, open, gas lit – and particularly the new meeting-places, such as charles garnier’s opéra, not only made individuals visible, but showcased them. haussmann perceived the city as a body to be operated on. to him, civil unrest was an urban malaise, a sickness resulting from a cramped and insalubrious urban fabric.11 under the fresh autocracy of the second empire, haussmann cut strategic routes that separated out and surrounded troubled areas, relieved pressure points and alleviated density. the lines and crossings of the new boulevards set the parts of the city into proper relations. long perspectives connected distant parts of the city into a well-defined figure. as the state took on the role of oversight and action, a distinction became apparent between those operating in the city, and those operating on the city.12 collective subjectivity on the other hand, the barricades produced a view of the city which rendered visible a collective subject, as a communal construction. the number and anonymity of the barricaders, and the speed at which barricades were constructed, lead to a tendency amongst historians to refer to instances of barricading as almost spontaneous eruptions: “barricades were springing up all over” (duveau, 1967: 167). the barricades were not just individual structures but formed an architecture at the scale of the city. their distributed nature and anonymity enabled those behind them to say ‘we’ at an urban scale. during barricade construction, passers-by were each invited to contribute a paver. construction became a means of engaging the disengaged, of converting observers into participants. no wonder haussmann was suspicious of the masses. a document from his office describes them as, ”a floating mass of workers … of nomad renters ... an accumulation of men who are strangers to each other, who are attracted only by impressions and the most deplorable suggestions, who have no mind of their own” (in jordan, 1995: 217). to him, only cultured individuals counted as citizens of paris, and he complained of the displaced masses ”who compromise the signification of the vote by the weight of their unintelligent votes“ (334). since the masses could not articulate their democratic voice correctly, they were a burden on paris, fouling up the democratic process. as long as people remained part of the ”floating mass ... attracted only by impressions and the most deplorable suggestions” (217) and without a mind of their own, they could not appear as individuals. gustave le bon inaugurated one of the most influential nineteenth century theories of collectivity, crowd psychology, which arose from his studies of the great revolution of 1789. in the crowd: a study of the popular mind (1895), le bon writes: under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics 10. le corbusier writes of haussmann’s reception by the chamber of deputies: “one day, in an excess of terror, they accused him of having created a desert in the very center of paris! that desert was the boulevard sébastopol” (cited in benjamin, 1999: 129). 11. “the urgency of urban renewal infused the language of critics and reformers the discourse of salubrity, cleansing, aerating, movement – with political meaning. paris was sick, moribund, suffo cating” (jordan, 1995: 185). 12. haussmann “did not make a practice of visiting the various municipal projects except on ceremonial occasions, when he conducted the emperor or some visiting dignitary around a building site. his plans for the city were realized abstractly, geometrically, on a map. his working map was not a physical map of the city, with buildings and monuments depicted, but an abstract expres sion of the space occupied by paris” (jordan, 1995: 174-175). but all of haussmann’s labours could not prevent the barricades of the paris commune in 1871. “what haussmann’s destruction of the rabbit warren of streets in eastern paris had done was transform barricades and urban insurrection from a cottage industry to a substantial and sophisticated undertaking” (jordan 1995: 181). the barricades of the commune clot the body of haussmann’s city, obstructing the flow of pedestrians, vehicles and commerce; and disrupting the structure of public and private space once again. on cleaning up after the barricades, see chauvaud, ‘l’élision des traces. l’effacement des marques de la barricade à paris’ in corbin and mayeur (1997: 267-281). interstices 08 41interstices 08 41 very different from those of the individuals composing it ... a collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics ... it forms a single being, and is subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds (le bon, 2001: 4). le bon regards the subjection of the individual personality to the psyche of the crowd as an actual physical effect. the body enters a primitive state of suggestibility close to hypnosis. by “the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd,” a man descends several “rungs in the ladder of civilisation. isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian – that is a creature acting by instinct” (le bon, 2001: 19). a crowd attains its mental unity at the expense of individual civility and intelligence. it is an act of barbarism to resign one’s individual will in order to participate in a crowd, and there is no communicating with a barbarian. le bon’s theory of collectivity invalidated the voice and presence of collectives, and helped police the existing distribution of the sensible.13 rancière refers to those who are assigned not merely a subordinate role in society, but the role of voicelessness, as the sans part “the part of those who have no part”(rancière, 1998: 9). the sans part are those rendered incomprehensible by a given distribution of the sensible. in the boulevards, it was for ‘the mass’ to play this role: there was no place assigned to collectives. ‘the mass’ was not strictly the poor, although the two often coincided (money being one of the key mechanisms for gaining purchase in the city and attaining the status of an individual). although subordinate within the structures of imperial paris, the poor were thinkable as objects of charity, crime, or labour. it was the collective that was unthinkable, sans part, in the boulevards. the partition of the sensible, paris’ material urban elements, was distributed to assign places to individuals, not to masses or crowds. however, with the barricades, the collective, as sans part, rose and insisted on its ability to speak. the ends of barricading the barricades instituted an active, participatory and dynamic version of the city. in contrast, the boulevards policed a static and hierarchical order. the barricades were what rancière calls a moment of politics, a disruption by the sans part of the distribution of the sensible that excludes them. the boulevards were on the side of the police, of the implicit law that reinforces the existing distribution of the sensible. in staging the conflict of the two regimes here, they are compared on more or less equal terms. however, this is not fully representative of the situation. while haussmann’s regime persisted into the twentieth century, the regime of the barricades only ever lasted for short intervals. sometimes these intervals ended with the overthrow of the state, and the substitution of an alternative order, and sometimes they were brought to an end by failure. after 1871, the barricades’ strategic function had lost much of its effectiveness. although haussmann’s interventions had not been able to prevent barricading, 13. for crowd psychology in the nineteenth century, see van ginneken (1992). interstices 08 41 interstices 08 41 they had certainly made the city less hospitable towards it. also, military techniques and tools had improved. few barricades could hold out against artillery and regular infantry. nevertheless, the barricades maintained a symbolic afterlife in communist writing and practice. barricades always had a literal and strategic, as well as a metaphorical, performative function. by 1871, the balance had shifted significantly towards the metaphorical. metaphor exists in the passage from the literal to the figurative (see goodman, 1968, and grey, 2000, for example). when meaning is carried over from a concrete context to a non-literal one, it disrupts the familiar and generates new perception. to remain effective, as goodman puts it, ”metaphor requires attraction as well as resistance” (69). it is only in the interchange between attraction and resistance, between the literal and figurative contexts, that metaphor enables us to see differently. in rancière’s thought, according to brian holmes, ”the place-changing action of metaphor – one thing or person for another – is what allows the creation or extension of a community of speaking subjects” (holmes, 2001). in rancièrian terms, the large-scale spatial contention in paris in the nineteenth century was “a conflict over what is meant by ‘to speak’, and over the very distribution of the sensible that delimits the horizons of the sayable” (2004: 4). the conflict enacted between the barricades and the boulevards is a conflict over what ‘the public’ is: how it is visible, and what ability it is accorded to speak. this specific instance points to the role of architecture in general. what is it, if not the arrangement and distribution of spaces, times and forms of activity? architecture engages in distributing and redistributing the sensible: making visible, audible, perceptible. the city is not merely a reflection of a political conflict that occurs at another level; and the ephemeral architecture of the barricades effected a redistribution of the sensible, of a material politics that was not merely the mirror of an abstract politics occurring elsewhere. references benjamin, w. (1986). paris, capital of the nineteenth century. in reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings (e. jephcott, trans.). (146-162). new york: schocken books. benjamin, w. (1986). critique of violence. in reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings (e. jephcott, trans.). (277-300). new york: schocken books. benjamin, w. (1999). the arcades project (h. eiland & k. mclaughlin, trans.). cambridge: belknap press. benjamin, w. (1999). the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. in illuminations (h. zorn, trans.). (211-244). connolly, j. (1915). street fighting – summary. workers’ republic, 24 july 1915. text available online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/rw/stfight.htm corbin, a. & mayeur, j. (eds.). (1997). la barricade. paris: publications de la sorbonne. duveau, g. (1967). 1848. the making of a revolution (a. carter, trans.). london: routledge and keegan paul. engels, f. (1934). introduction. marx, k. the class struggles in france, 1848-1850. london: m. lawrence. interstices 08 pb grey, w. (2000). metaphor and meaning. retrieved october 1, 2007, from http://www.ul.ie/ ~philos/vol4/metaphor.html goodman, n. (1968). languages of art: an approach to a theory of symbols. indianapolis: bobbs-merrill. hobsbawm, e. (1962). the age of revolution, 1789-1848. london: random house. hobsbawm, e. (1975). the age of capital, 1848-1875. london: random house. holmes, b. (2000). hieroglyphs of the future: jacques rancière and the aesthetics of quality. cabinet magazine (4, fall). retrieved october 1, 2007, from http://www.cabinetmagazine. org/issues/4/hieroglyphs.php hugo, v. (1982). les misérables (n. denny, trans.). london: penguin books. jordan, d.p. (1995). transforming paris. the life and labours of baron haussmann. new york: free press. le bon, g. (2001). the crowd. a study of the popular mind. (b. miall, trans.). kitchener: batoche. lefèbvre h. (1991). the production of space. (d. nicholson-smith, trans.). oxford: blackwell. pallasmaa, j. (2003). constructing essences. pamphlet architecture 25. new york: princeton architectural press, 6-7. philippe, s. (1989). les barricades. architectural review, 186 (1110, august), 84-86. price, r. (1986). documents on the french revolution of 1848. london: macmillan press. przyblyski, p. (2001). revolution at a standstill: photography and the paris commune of 1871. yale french studies (101), 54-78. rancière, j. (1998). disagreement: politics and philosophy. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. rancière, j. (2004). the politics of aesthetics. london: continuum. traugott, m. (1978). reconceiving social movements. social problems, 26 (1, october), 38-49. traugott, m. (1985). armies of the poor. determinants of working-class participation in the parisian insurrection of june 1848. new jersey: princeton university press. traugott, m. (1993). barricades as repertoire: continuities and discontinuities in the history of french contention. social science history, 17 (2). van ginneken, j. (1992). crowds, psychology, and politics 1871-1899. cambridge: cambridge university press. 85 places, spaces, baggage john walsh let’s come clean: when we go to look at places and spaces (architecture, that is), we drag along a lot of baggage and, especially if we’re there to write about these places and spaces, quite a few undeclared items. our prejudices and preconceptions, for instance – our values and agendas, our ethics and our politics. this discretionary approach to disclosure, most apparent in the treatment of domestic architecture, is at odds with the modus operandi of other writers who deal with places and spaces. travel writing, for example, is now a confessional genre. at this stage of the game, everyone expects that a traveller’s tale will be about not what the traveller finds, but what he brings. that is, the accoutrements of a personality or, more likely, the trappings of a persona. travel, for writers, used to be what the foreign legion was for fugitives: a means of escape from an old self. contemporary travel writing, though, is based on the profitable acceptance of the realization that, in a world that’s thoroughly known, there’s no point in trying to escape the inescapable. that guy in the mirror: why try to get away from him? the self and its psychic freight – that’s the story. in architectural writing – ‘popular’ architectural writing, that is, although the audience is hardly substantial – we proceed as though the place is still the thing. the journey is beside the point, and our ‘baggage’ is meant to be checked at the door. of course, this is an unrealistic, if not impossible requirement. much like the endangered principle of journalistic objectivity, though, it does offer a disciplinary counter to self-indulgence, and does engender some productive tension. for what one has to resist, or at least monitor, when encountering and then wri ting about residential architecture, is the rush to normative judgement. this is not a concern for the ‘lifestyle’ school of house literature, a critical kindy in which cheer-leading is the only subject on the curriculum, but it is an issue for anyone who approaches the subject with some seriousness. a commentary on a building can easily morph, via a critique of the inhabitants’ aesthetic sensibility and the presumed size of their bank balance, into a moral tract. bespoke residential architecture provokes complicated reactions, as do the publications dedicated to it. admiration is one response, although respect is rarely accorded without reservation, sensibly enough. unsurprisingly, in a small society with folk memories of egalitarianism and homogeneity, envy is a more common and more visceral response. the spectrum of resentment ranges from mild social democratic disdain, through pursed-lipped, petit-bourgeois puritanism, to full-blown rage over the manifest inequality exemplified by a large, architectdesigned house. lately, such buildings have faced criticism on another front: not only are they offensive to a putative natural order, but they affront nature herself. ‘big a’ residential architecture, especially if realized on a big scale, is unsustainable, its critics rejoice. if god or man won’t stop it, gaia will. interstices 09 the moralistic denunciation of new domestic architecture extends to representations of it. architectural photographers, and their publishers, are, apparently, engaged in pornography. ‘soft-core’ porn, that is. (which does beg some questions: is there ‘hard-core’ architectural porn? do the monumental erections flaunted by the gulf sultanates earn the appellation?) architects themselves are particularly partial to this analogy, a trope that suggests a certain degree of professional selfloathing – unresolved baggage, perhaps. the problem seems to be that houses in magazines or books look too good. the sun is out, the sky is blue; frequently – normally – the houses are photographed without their occupants. there’s stuff, but there’s no mess. there’s style, but there’s no life. really, you’d have to be a bit of a wanker to find this pornographic. what seems to be occurring is the wilfully naïve mistaking of the conventions of a genre for a pernicious world-view. as architects well know, there are good reasons why people and their baggage are absent from architectural photographs. in part, it’s because architects want viewers to see the architecture; in part it’s because inhabitants don’t want viewers to see them; and in part, it’s because publishers have to sell books. unmade beds, unwashed dishes, unlaundered undies – that might be how we live, but it’s not, unless our tastes do indeed run to the scatological end of soft-core porn, what we’ll pay to read about. sadly, the magazine and book-buying public is also resistant to washed-out photographs taken on the drear days typical of our pluvial isles. no doubt it would be morally improving for readers to confront houses in their more dishevelled states and at their less photogenic moments, but as for paying for the privilege – why should they? it’s only natural that readers of architectural books and magazines prefer to view the subjects of those publications as we all tend to remember the days of our pasts, that is, as lit by the sun. if writers and photographers, and their publishers, seem to conspire to pretend that the occupants of architect-designed houses live without traces, how do architects themselves approach their clients’ baggage? this is a more serious concern: while publishers trade in appearances (how could they do otherwise?), architects design for real, and particular, lives. quotidian duty takes me to quite a few new houses, and rather melancholy these visits can be. i’ve ruminated upon this tristesse; i don’t think it’s occasioned by jealousy (however impressive a house may be, i understand it hasn’t been made for me), or incompetence (the standards of design and execution are often very high), or the shortcomings of the site or my reception (usually stunning and invariably courteous, respectively). i think the sadness – and i may be too sensitive on this point – derives from a certain incongruity between the clients and their houses. a sense of bemusement is often palpable: the clients’ houses might be brand new, but they’re not. they definitely have excess baggage. at their age – and architectural patronage is a mature pursuit – clients are built for comfort. their houses, however, especially if designed in the neo-modernist style, are more uncompromising. the tell-tale sign of true middle-age, upper middle-class inclinations is the huge plasma tv: its inclusion is the one demand clients are sure to make, and it’s the one concession that otherwise strict architects know they had better offer. seeing these big screens, the question does occur: are the clients seeking to escape from themselves, or from the hard, angular spaces that their bright, young architects have designed for them? a depressing choice, maybe, but let’s not be too snooty; as we pass through people’s houses we should resist the temptation to put them in their place. interstices 08 109interstices 08 109 bill mckay, in his 1999 paper, “a possum in the kiwi bush”, critiqued the role played by the university of auckland’s school of architecture in the formation and promotion of one particular story of the history and development of modern architecture in new zealand. this story centred on vernon brown and the group, at the expense of a range of other players: robin simpson, tibor donner, henry kulka, brenner and associates, vladimir cacala, rigby.mullen, mark-brown & fairhead, the firm of newman, smith & greenhough, and others. mckay pointed out, quite rightly, that because the auckland school was new zealand’s only school of architecture until the mid-1970s, the line taught there was widely accepted by the country’s practitioners and educators, until well after the establishment of a second school. he has not been the sole critic of the groupcentred canon or its formation: lloyd jenkins (1998), clark and walker (2000), clark (2004) and others have further elucidated the basic premise. the purpose of this article is not to defend the school, its history or the canon, but to consider the latter with reference to one of the school’s courses. in 2006 and 2007 i taught archdrc 301 measured drawing, a third year elective that requires students to measure extant buildings and to produce a set of plans, sections and elevations based on their measurements. many of the drawings produced by students enrolled in this course since the 1930s are accessioned in the university’s architecture library. they form an invaluable record of many buildings for which original design drawings do not survive, as well as buildings to which changes have been made over time. as the docomomo new zealand registers coordinator, i have a particular interest in the documentation and conservation of new zealand’s modern buildings. it seemed to me that measured drawing could be usefully focused on modern buildings, at a time when their heritage values are becoming increasingly recognized, locally, nationally and, indeed, internationally. the focus would ensure that the students would be experiencing and analyzing not just any old buildings, but exemplars of modern design, often with the clever planning that characterizes post-war buildings as a result of materials shortages and building size constraints. positive roll-on effects would include a record of changes being made to the measured buildings over time and, potentially, the extension of the library’s existing collection of measured drawings through the production and acquisition of plans, sections and elevations for significant modern buildings not measured and drawn in previous years. to achieve this, i needed a sense of what had been studied in previous years. i learnt that, to a certain extent, the library’s collection of measured drawings did accord with the thesis regarding the auckland school’s privileging of the group. up until 2005, the modern buildings that had been measured and drawn new measures for other moderns julia gatley interstices 08 109 interstices 08 109 new measures for other moderns julia gatley included seven houses by group members: the rotherham house (in 1983, 1990 and 1992); the thompson house (in 1983); the first house (in 1984); devonport navy housing (in 1988); the catley house (in 1993); the mallitte house (in 1995); and the worrall house (in 2002). other architects associated with the auckland school whose buildings have been measured and drawn include: richard toy’s all saints’ church, ponsonby (in 1995); mike austin’s chapple house (in 1995); and david mitchell’s music school and gibbs house (in 1987 and 2000 respectively). vernon brown is a surprising absence from the collection. other surprises, given the canon, include the presence of tibor donner’s ellen melville pioneer women’s hall (measured and drawn in 1992 and 1995) and savage memorial (in 2000); newman smith & greenhough’s wanganui war memorial hall (in 1994); and mark-brown & fairhead’s newton post office (in 2000). not enough to challenge the thesis, but just enough to complicate it. it should also be acknowledged here that more recent initiatives within the school such as michael milojevic and sarah treadwell’s 2003 exhibition and catalogue, the house, and charles walker’s 2005 exhibition and catalogue, models for living, have demonstrated a more inclusive approach. my analysis of the library’s collection of measured drawings confirmed that there was plenty of scope for pursuing the measuring and drawing of modern buildings within the course. thus, in 2006, three of the 14 buildings measured and drawn were modern: one at my suggestion, a second at a student’s suggestion, and a third at another academic’s request. these included the robin simpson house in greenlane (1938-1939). a floor plan had been published in home and building in 1940, but it is believed that none of simpson’s original drawings have survived. thus, the measurements and drawings by daniel bosher, patrick loo and james pearce have a value above and beyond the learning objectives of a student assignment. in 2007, i pursued modern buildings more overtly, writing to the owners of 15 such buildings (group as well as non-group), domestic in scale though not necessarily houses, asking if i could include their buildings in the course. i was delighted to receive eight affirmative replies. a student added a ninth building to the list. those measured and drawn this year were: tibor donner’s own house and studio in titirangi (1947 and ca. 1950s respectively); the second group house in takapuna (1950-1951); james hackshaw’s thom house in mt albert (1953); albert robin simpson’s own house, greenlane (1938-1939). measured by daniel bosher, patrick loo and james pearce; west elevation drawn by patrick loo (2006). interstices 08 111interstices 08 111 and/or john goldwater’s jewish centennial memorial chapel in karangahape road (1953); rigby.mullen’s rayner house in remuera (1954); vladimir cacala’s kay house in remuera (1960); lillian and david chrystall’s yock house in remuera (1964); and marshall cook’s howard house in meadowbank (1969). it is my pleasure to be able to publish a selection of the drawings here. three students worked on each building, together producing a set of plans, sections and elevations and a range of details. i stipulated a1 sized paper, but did not impose traditional drawing techniques on the students. rather, i allowed them the freedom to pursue the creative presentation that they enjoy in the design studio, including hand or computer drawing and the use of pen or pencil, monochrome or colour. for record purposes, i encouraged the inclusion of the main dimensions on the drawings and analytical annotations regarding design, materiality, additions, alterations and current condition. there will always be varying degrees of accuracy in the measurements and a range of finesse in the drawings, but the work being produced in the course is already making a useful contribution to the library’s records of these individual places. i believe it has been a valuable learning experience for students to date, and i hope it will encourage further research in the future on modern architecture in new zealand. references clark, j. (2004). ephemera: the elusive canon of new zealand architecture. fabrications: the journal of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand 14 (1/2), 4757. clark, j., and walker, p. (2000). looking for the local: architecture and the new zealand modern. wellington: victoria university press. lloyd jenkins, d. (1998). rebuilding robin simpson. in j. willis, p. goad and a. hutson (eds.). firm(ness) commodity de-light?: questioning the canons; papers from the fifteenth annual conference of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand. (pp. 183-188). melbourne: sahanz. mckay, b. (1999). a possum in the kiwi bush. in r. blythe and r. spence (eds.). thresholds: papers of the sixteenth annual conference of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand (pp. 209-212). launceston, tas: sahanz. robin simpson’s own house, greenlane (1938-1939). measured by daniel bosher, patrick loo and james pearce; section drawn by daniel bosher (2006). interstices 08 111 interstices 08 111 measured drawing collection, architecture library, the university of auckland. milojevic, m., and treadwell, s. (2003). the house: architecture archive. auckland: school of architecture, university of auckland. simpson, w. r. (1940). an architect designs his own house. home and building 4 (4), 5-7. walker, c. (2005). models for living, 1905-2005: a survey of 100 years of new zealand residential architecture. auckland: agm publishing. tibor donner’s own studio, titirangi (1950s). measured by pio faalogo, adam morrow and kirsten smedley; drawn by adam morrow (2007). tibor donner’s own house, titirangi (1947). measured by deborah graham, kuhu gupta, nickolas morris; drawn by kuhu gupta (2007). interstices 08 113interstices 08 113 rigby.mullen, rayner house, remuera (1954). measured by victor eng, tim yun yunny luk and derek yichi zhang; drawn by victor eng (2007). lillian and david chrystall, yock house, remuera (1964). measured by felicity brouwers, adelle hammond and julian legg; drawn by felicity brouwers. interstices 08 113 interstices 08 113 vladimir cacala, kay house, remuera (1960). measured by kit kwan leung, dajiang tai and junpei zhao; drawn by dajiang tai. 111 just looking john walsh drawings by malcolm walker there’s nothing like editing an architecture magazine to turn you into a lookist. i should know – for almost a decade i edited architecture new zealand, and by the end of my tenure i was a chronic breaker of all those age-old folk commandments anathematising superficiality. (every magazine editor not only believes you can indeed judge a book by its cover, but also has an almost mystical belief in the charisma of the cover.) i spent a good part of my working day judging buildings by their appearances. or, more accurately, by photographs of their façades. seated at my desk, my relationship to many buildings was necessarily distant. twice removed from reality, i was connected to architecture through photography, a linkage that in genealogy might be represented by the broken line of illegitimacy. it’s not that all photographers are bastards, but, with their filters and framings and post-shooting fiddlings, they’re dodgy characters all, spin-doctors with lenses. every photograph of a building should come with a caveat: after magritte, it could read, “this is not a building.” of course, photographers, with their acute commercial instincts, won’t supply what’s not demanded. editors are full partners in the exteriority business, as are the architects whose work they cover. architectural publishing is, literally, show business. when presenting projects, editors, with the encouragement of architects and their clients, customarily exercise a preferential option for beauty over truth, certainly over the whole truth. architectural publishing is a synergy of two different but highly compatible impulses. on the one hand, an editor’s desire and an art director’s compulsion to produce an attractive publication preclude selection of any pictures that might stink up the title. on the other, an architect’s professional ambition and pecuniary interest are reasons to proclaim a building’s heroic qualities and to suppress its less successful elements. the symmetrical purposes of editor and architect can happily conjoin if there’s a positive response to the gatekeeper test: will a building look good on a page, or even better, across what the publishing industry lasciviously describes as a double-page spread? that is, of course, will a photograph of the building look good in print? this question leads to another: what sort of buildings are photogenic? even a surface-level architectural trawl would net some camera-friendly types: buildings from the bauhaus, for instance, and from the recent iberian masters, contemporary japanese houses ... all give it up for the camera, in their own way: from the interstices 12 bauhaus, that austere clarity so suited to monochromatic representation; from spain, those blindingly white surfaces against a startlingly blue sky; from japan, those exquisite houses with their model looks. the camera loves these buildings, but, in the hands of a skilled photographer, it can find something to love in just about any building. and if a building is hopelessly unprepossessing, if it has no redeeming features, the photographer can always shoot past it, drawing on the view to distract from the architecture. in architectural publishing, commitment to the cause inevitably has some effects. for one thing, editors become converts to formalism – they’re not only lookists, they’re also shape-ists. it’s just that much easier to follow the line, and no type of architecture gives you easier lines to follow than modernism. the movement was a godsend to architectural publishing – you could say they were made for each other. a perfect illustration of the happiness of this marriage is arts & architecture, the los angeles-based magazine which, under the influential editorship of john entenza from the 1940s to the early 1960s, showcased the work of architects such as richard neutra, paul rudolph and craig ellwood. with its black and white photographs, simple plan drawings, spare layout and sans serif fonts, arts & architecture looked as cool as chet baker sounded. entenza was a conviction editor – he was a founder of the case study programme – but you can see why lesser editors like what he liked, even though they don’t know what he knew, and why four decades later publishers here colluded in the local renaissance of a formal modernism. they found second-(third-?)time-around modernism congenial because it is so photogenic, even on the inside. inside: for the photo-addicted editors of architectural magazines, inside is a problem. step over the threshold, of a house, especially, and it’s a whole other game. there’s all that stuff to deal with – possessions, clutter, the vagaries of personal taste; there’s the furniture, its vintage, quality and proportions cruelly exposed by the new architecture; and there’s the debt, tacit or explicit, owed by the guest to the host. there are three ways in which editors can respond to the publishing challenge of the interior, which is really the challenge of habitation. the first is avoidance: the photographer takes advantage – rather like a thief in the night – of the window of opportunity between a building’s completion and its occupation. japanese editors and architects are partial to this approach, which focuses attention on the architecture, pure and simple. another way to deal with the interior condition is 113 to wilfully ignore it: hold your nose, don’t publish too many photographs of the inside and don’t give them much space. this tactic is, usually, not very satisfactory; providing a little photographic information only invites suspicion about why there’s not more. the third tactical response to the interior question is celebration. this is the editorial posture of the nesting magazines, and it requires either the selection of residences whose clients have a furniture fund commensurate with their building budget, or the borrowing of expensive chattels, whose provenance will be duly advertised in the magazine. there’s still the question of how to present the people. new zealand house titles populate their pictures with children lounging, running or jumping into swimming pools, and adults hanging out in the kitchen, dicing vegetables and drinking wine. (careful with that knife! who’s watching that toddler?) the cheerful and rather gormless materialism favoured by local publishers contrasts with the approaches of some leading international shelter titles. architectural digest, for example, plumps for a higher-level vulgarity; world of interiors mines the deep seams of british aristo-boho idiosyncrasy; and dwell specialises in vignettes of minimalist urbanity so leached of animation that readers can only think they’re witnessing an existential crack-up induced by contemporary architecture. editors working in architectural publishing know all about this. for myself, a decade was more than enough time to spend wrestling with the genre’s twin threats to the psyche: an exteriority complex, a sense of shallowness caused by the persistent selection of buildings according to the photo-worthiness of their faces; and an interiority complex, a corrosive self-loathing prompted by the obligation to edit people’s lives according to the photo-worthiness of their possessions. i’m in recovery now, and if i’m ever back in charge of an architecture magazine, i resolve to do things differently. the magazine will comprise only words. maybe some drawings, but no photographs. well, perhaps just a few. very restrained, in classic black and white, like the photos julius shulman took. that can’t hurt, can it? full page might be nice – silly to be mean. no people, though; well, maybe one or two, as long as they’re not fat or old or badly-dressed. that’s okay, isn’t it? after all, a magazine has to look good. 131 1 alexander gottlieb baumgarten and his meditationes (1735) on “aesthetics”, as quoted by frascari (2011: 178). 2 “to draw means literally to involve oneself in a practical experience with signs.” (frascari 2011: 98) 3 luigi pareyson (1954), as quoted by frascari (2011: 15). eleven exercises in the art of architectural drawing: slow food for the architect’s imagination by marco frascari review by maurizio sabini “drawings are clearly a confused representation of architecture.” (frascari 2011: 178) with such a disquieting definition, marco frascari concludes in his postface his fascinating journey into the meanderings of architectural theory, taking drawings as a pretext. in fact, his book, which only apparently is about drawings (and indeed it also goes into the details of specific, meaningful drawing exercises), is about architectural theory. in dissecting, with tafurian lucidity, the theoretical density around the experience of drawing, frascari demonstrates with this book what i tried to suggest in one of our past conversations, thematised by frascari himself as “drawing as theory”: to be precise, i argued that “drawing is theory” (sabini 2011). the oxymoron about the “clear confusion” to which frascari refers, using alexander gottlieb baumgarten’s definition of “clearly confused aesthetic concepts”, reveals all the density of theory that any non-trivial architectural drawing (to use one of frascari’s favorite definitions) brings with it.1 it is a density of complex mental constructions, ambiguous meanings, mysterious relationships and layerings of signs that reflect architecture’s nature as “embedded storytelling” (68).2 the density of such “confusion”, i would argue, may be analogous to the “thick description” elaborated by clifford geertz as a potent theoretical image for anthropological studies (geertz 1973). k. michael hays has already discussed the potential impact on architecture (“slowing thinking down”) that the assumption of such a metaphor may imply (hays 2007). frascari’s journey is in fact a “thick description” of the very processes by which architecture is imagined and experienced. as the anthropologist, following an ethnographic methodology, needs to immerse him/herself into the conversations that unfold within a given ethnic group, in order then to record and elaborate the narratives that form the group’s culture (thus producing new knowledge), so the architect, according to frascari, needs to immerse him/herself synaesthetically into the simmering of tectonic ideas that, only slowly, may emerge from the exercising of non-trivial architectural drawings, which are “the very condition of architectural experience” (9). repeatedly using culinary metaphors (a synaesthetic experience indeed, involving all the senses) that well exemplify how, out of many elements, a new whole is formed, frascari is able to demonstrate the “formative nature” of architectural drawings as “factures”. the concept of “formativity” is appropriately borrowed from the turinese philosopher luigi pareyson, whose definition of the concept (“a way of making such that, while one makes, one invents the way of making”) resonates particularly well within frascari’s discourse.3 the 11 exercises that frascari proposes are indeed non-trivial processes of discovery, within the complexity of the architectural experience. from the use of food, liquids or powders to dip nibs or brushes; to the construction of a pantograph; the drawing of scale figures; the mosaic of boards necessary to delineate (with alberti, through “denoting lines”, as frascari convincingly argues) a building on the scale of 1:1; the drawing for a blind person; the palimpsest of the single drawing for a building; or the recto/verso exercise (the ultimate assertion of authority of the drawing vs. the digital representation), all frascari’s exercises are meant to marco frascari 2011 eleven exercises in the art of architectural drawing: slow food for the architect’s imagination. milton park, england: routledge. interstices 12 show how drawings are “sapient factures”. precisely by means of a discussion of the theory of the making of architectural drawings he is able to infer that “architecture is not a work of art, but the art that makes the work” (11). carlo scarpa’s teachings (which frascari experienced first-hand at the istituto universitario di architettura in venice – iuav) are often recalled and embedded in his argument, along with some critical concepts by the eighteenth-century philosopher giambattista vico, whose famous motto (verum ipsum factum – only what is made is true) was borrowed by scarpa himself as an inscription for his design of the iuav main entrance. the book also contains illuminating chapters and passages on the history of the theory of representation and geometry, such as monge’s descriptive geometry and the russian multi-faceted vkhutemas intellectual pavel florensky’s “inverted perspective”, or even james joyce’s notion of “geo-mater”, which combines “matrix, mater (mother) and meter with geo-(earth) in a pregnant metaphor making geometry a discipline of measurement, prediction and conceiving” (45). here too, though, we are invited to follow, with frascari, a non-trivial approach (to geometry) in a discourse that is thus able to include filarete’s powerful metaphor for architecture, “the architectural patron is the father and the architect the mother” (46). this notion of the architect as “geomater”, and therefore of the fundamentally humane nature of architecture, with all its approximations, helps frascari call into question the celebration of exactitude displayed by the contemporary practice of parametric design. buildings, as constructed things, in their materiality, are “exactly approximate” (49). they are imperfect (like architectural drawings), yet “there is no easy way to add imperfections to the [computer] model [of a building] because the lines that give shape to volumes are created by strings of numbers” (49). however, beyond the many philosophical stimulations and practical suggestions contained in the book and the new light cast on the experiential value of drawing in the digital age, the book’s main merit lies, i believe, in a broader ambition. in the midst of waves of accelerated informational and representational flows of thought, processes washing over us daily, frascari’s “slow food for the architect’s imagination” is a refreshing reminder that the “idea of architecture is not a building, for architecture to exist in human consciousness, someone has to draft a story” (12). and by definition, a story needs time to be conceived, imagined, construed, constructed, experienced, and shared. references frascari, m. (2011). eleven exercises in the art of architectural drawing: slow food for the architect’s imagination. milton park, england: routledge. geertz, c. (1973). thick description: the interpretive theory of culture. in the interpretation of cultures (pp. 3-30). new york: basic books. hays, k.m. (2007). notes on narrative method in historical interpretation. footprint, delft school of design journal, autumn, 23-30. luigi pareyson. (1954). estetica, teoria della formativita’, turin: edizioni di “filosofia”. sabini, m. (2001). drawing from experience. in “critical conversation: drawing as theory” (marco frascari, key-panelist). association of collegiate architecture schools annual meeting, march 2001, baltimore. unpublished position paper. r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 65 what’s in a name? the first house in new zealand architectural discourse1 julia gatley in the writing on new new zealand houses of the 1990s and the opening years of the twenty-fi rst century, frequent reference was made to “the group”, taking in the architectural group (1946), group construction company (1949-51), group architects (1951-64) and sometimes wilson & juriss (1964-68). architects of award-winning houses acknowledged the infl uence of the group on their work, and comparisons to group houses became an accepted practice among critics. meanwhile, historians of new zealand architecture focused particular attention on one group house: their fi rst, designed and built by the group construction company in the north shore, auckland, suburb of takapuna and known as the first house. in this later historicising literature, the 1948 assertion by the acknowledged group leader, bill wilson, that “there is no architecture in new zealand. none!” was framed as anticipating the 1949-50 design and completion of the first house. justine clark recognised that the first house “is now understood ... as the moment that modernism came to new zealand” (2004: 51). in the 1990s and early 2000s, then, the group in general, and the first house in particular, were entangled in a discourse about the origins of new zealand architecture. this paper considers the two bodies of literature: that on award-winning houses and origins; and that of history and the first house. it shows that in the case of the houses, recourse was to the notion of the group rather than to specifi c group houses. that is, the group were cited as an origin, but an actual house was not. unlike rykwert’s origins, however, which were “memor[ies] of something which cannot but be lost” (1972: 14), there really was a first house – it existed; it still does. for a time in 1992-93, there was even a second version of it, a partial recreation within the walls of the auckland city art gallery. in considering the house’s privileged place in architectural history, this paper gives particular attention to its name. as clark observed, using juan pablo bonta’s ideas about canon formation, “the first house is embedded in the new zealand canon partly because of the rhetorical potential contained in its name.” (2004: 50) this paper, in following one of bonta’s suggested approaches of arranging texts in chronological order to identify changes over time (1979: 131), shows that the group were not the ones to elevate their fi rst house with the capitalised and categorical name, first house. it identifi es the original name, experimental house, as well as two subsequent name changes, showing that the capitalised name only came into use in 1991-92. this is important because the name has captured architectural imaginations and has had subsequent effects. in particular, the assumed link between wilson’s claim about the country’s lack of architecture and the completion of its “fi rst house” a short time later, hinges upon the name. to question the purposefulness or intentionality of the name, is to destabilise the house’s primacy. 1. acknowledgement: many thanks to rowan fraser and jun ho park for research conducted for this article; andrew barrie, justine clark, bill mckay, peter shaw and paul walker for reading and commenting on drafts; the auckland city art gallery, rick pearson, the university of auckland architecture archive and allan wild for images; and the two blind referees for suggestions on the text. r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 65r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 65 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am interstices 10 the “jesus christ of new zealand architecture” in the mid-to-late 1990s, three award-winning new zealand houses were interpreted and discussed in terms of reference to and infl uence of the group: the clifford house, auckland, 1991-95, designed by architectus: bowes clifford thompson for architectus director patrick clifford; the livingstone street townhouses, auckland, 1996, by felicity wallace; and the heatley house in the bay of islands, 1997, by pete bossley architects. the three were home and building’s home of the year for 1996, 1997 and 1998 respectively and the clifford house was also the winner of an nzia-resene national award for architecture for 1997. of the clifford house, debra millar wrote: “there are strong, and acknowledged, links to the group architects’ houses from the 1950s; houses with a humble, make-do quality and directness of purpose.” (1995: 56) kevin brewer interpreted the house solely in terms of references to the group, quoting bill wilson at length, referring to the group’s “rationalisation”, “structural honesty” and “clear articulation of the post and beam structure”, and concluding that “[t]he development of these techniques is the (real) beauty of the clifford house” (1997: 92). pete bossley himself acknowledged the group’s infl uence on his heatley house: “house and sleepout are concerned with modernism’s investigations of transparency, combined with a critical use of timber construction which develops some of the explorations of new zealand architects from the 1950s onwards, especially the group.” (1999: 103) the references to wallace’s livingstone street townhouses being in the tradition of the group are more subtly worded: “firmly rooted in the new zealand tradition [of “the 1960s and 1970s”], it is a home that makes use of materials – concrete block, rough-sawn timber and corrugated iron – that are commonly associated with a ‘kiwi’ vernacular.” (home of the year: 61). however, wallace was soon to be more heavily entwined in the discourse by giles reid, who suggested that in every lecture he had ever heard her give, she had cited the group as an infl uence on her work (1999: 70). in response, she made a plea for the continual comparisons to end: “the diffi culty i have with the group is that they – ‘it’ – has become the jesus christ of new zealand architecture. all our architecture has become referenced to this period ... and for christ’s sake, do we need to be compared to them?” (1999: 6) wallace’s plea was to no avail. indeed, such comparisons were not limited to award-winning houses but were de rigueur for reviews of houses more generally in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. for example, in 1997 ken davis suggested that gerald parsonson’s gibbs house “appears to owe a debt to … the extruded form of the houses by the group architects.” (61) jasper van der lingen, chris kelly and amanda hyde de kretser, writing of architecture+’s wairarapa fi shing cabin, stated that “[r]elevant precedents are well understood and interpreted, from le corbusier’s petite maison through to glenn murcutt, with an awareness of the typical new zealand 1950s group home.” (ahi roofi ng 2000: 62) architecture workshop’s andrews house, blenheim, was a winner because: “in the spirit of the group houses of the 1950’s this building is stunningly clear in its thinking and immaculately detailed.” (nelson/marlborough 2002: 60) more generally, amanda reynolds referred to the group in a comment on origins: “i’d particularly like to see some reference to the origins of new zealand architecture, post-50s housing architecture and that’s vernon brown, the group, r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 66r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 66 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am 67 and ... baches.” (everybody’s talking, 1998: 115) the g4 exhibiting unit, under the title connections: the house in the auckland scene, combined an exhibition of 23 mostly recent houses designed by auckland architects including bossley, clifford and wallace, with a catalogue celebrating the 1950s houses of the group, wilson & juriss and others, reiterating the lineage of the 1990s houses in 1950s and ’60s houses in general and group houses in particular. in 2001, the nzia awarded its gold medal to the architectural group. the 1990s houses attracting these comparisons were predominantly by graduates of the auckland school of architecture in the 1970s or early ’80s, when former group member, allan wild, was dean, and infl uential commentator on the group, david mitchell, was teaching at the school. mitchell wrote about the group in the aaa bulletin in 1977, his article published alongside an interview with wild. the six-part television series and book, the elegant shed, followed. perceptive and engaging, the tv series reached a general audience while the 1984 book remains that decade’s “watershed” publication on new zealand architecture (wood 2005: 72-79). within its geographic structure, mitchell and chaplin identifi ed the group as auckland’s leading architects after world war ii. at the school, mitchell taught a course on new zealand architecture with content including the group. this is not to suggest that he was solely responsible for teaching this generation about the group, but to acknowledge that he in particular was liked, admired and had infl uence. the aaa’s symposium “in honour of the group” was also held in this period (extracts, 1982). speakers included wild and mitchell, as well as former group members jim hackshaw and ivan juriss. students and members of the aaa attended. notable through the “group guru” (wallace 1999: 6) articles of the 1990s and early 2000s is the extent to which the comparisons were to the group in general rather than to particular buildings, and certainly not to the first house. and clearly, there was expectation that new zealand architects (auckland-trained ones, at least) had some sense of what a group building looked like. first and foremost, it was assumed to be a house, even though the 1950s architects did produce other building types. the imagined group house was usually of timber, but sometimes it was of brick or concrete block. when built of timber, it might have had a post and beam construction. the imagined house often had a wide gabled roof, but on other occasions it had an extruded plan and a skillion roof. a range of other attributes was often cited: structural and aesthetic economies; minimum materials and maximum spans; open plans; effi cient plans; modular plans; and an overall simplicity, directness, clarity or honesty.2 this reading of the group as an origin for 1990s and early 2000s practice casts them as what rykwert has termed “hero-inventors” and “primitive builders” (1972: 16), appropriate in that the group were not only the designers but also the builders of the fi rst couple of houses. photographs record and celebrate the act of building (fig. 1). this reading might also seem to imply the location of their 1950s and ’60s houses – suburbia – as some kind of paradise. but this was not the case. the group themselves had railed against the suburb in their 1946 manifesto: “we new zealanders live in a chaos of unplanned speculative building under an unthinking, self-seeking system of land-subdivision. our suburbias spread their tentacles along all city traffi c routes.” (architectural group 1946: 2) suburbia has been the subject of much criticism since this time, yet the detached house has remained auckland’s desired norm. if there is paradise in here, then it is in the idealised new zealand dream of the detached house and garden rather than the reality of the location of such houses in suburbs. 2. setting them apart from the 1950s precedents, the 1990s renditions were often for wealthier clients, with the group’s moral imperative, the egalitarianism and the unpretentiousness articulated by wilson (1957: 28), often overlooked or forgotten, recalling the loss of early modernism’s social underpinning as it was taken up by the corporate world, particularly in the united states. r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 67r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 67 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am interstices 10 from experimental house to first house if the elegant shed was one of the key moments in the mythologising of the group, the auckland city art gallery’s 1950s show (september 1992-march 1993) was among those that focused explicitly on the first house, including as it did a partial recreation of it inside the gallery walls: a building within a building. clark describes it as the “most public manifestation” of the house’s canonisation (2004: 49). exhibition-goers walked through the recreated house to experience other parts of the show. to refl ect upon the complexities of this rebuilding, it is useful to fi rst step back to 1949-50 when the house was designed and built, and to trace its changing name. the group construction company were not the ones to capitalise the name, first house. the original 1949 drawings were labelled “house at … northboro rd takapuna” (shaw 1992: 25). in 1950, when the young designers and builders pursued the publication of the house, they clearly gave some thought to giving it a catchy name. as it was built speculatively, it could not follow the established practice of taking the name of the client. instead the name experimental house was used (group construction 1950: 27; fairburn 1950: 6). the selection of this name followed the precedent set by wellington’s architectural centre inc., in naming its 1948-49 student-designed and -built house, the demonstration house. the architects’ journal described the wellington and auckland houses together as “experimental houses” (house built: 362). the name experimental house continued to be used in the 1950s. in the exhibition, home building 1814-1954, for example, recent graduate james garrett labelled it “experimental house, takapuna, 1950” (1954: 22). in 1966, in his entry on architecture in the encyclopaedia of new zealand, garrett made reference to the group’s “two experimental houses in northboro’ road, takapuna” (1966: 69). two years later, graham pitts, in his b.arch. building report on the group, did not use the name experimental house, but instead referred to the building as their “fi rst house” (1968: 10, 36, 53). though an undergraduate assignment, pitts’ report nonetheless signalled important changes in the writing on the group. garrett had been their near contemporary and had written about them with currency, whereas pitts’ report acknowledged wilson’s death that year and provided a survey of their work. more than 40 years later, it remains the most substantial source on the group. it has been repeatedly consulted by subsequent writers and has had much greater infl uence than an undergraduate report would normally enjoy. fig. 1: the first house under construction in 1950. source: architecture archive, the university of auckland. r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 68r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 68 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am 69 indeed, from this time on, the name experimental house was largely replaced by the name, “fi rst house”. this occurred in a wave of published references that were increasingly retrospective. they begin in 1977 with mitchell’s article, “group architects: hot and cool,” and the associated interview with wild; and continue with miles warren’s 1978 article, “style in new zealand architecture”; and mitchell and chaplin’s 1984 book, the elegant shed. mitchell’s 1977 article does not mention the house by name, even though it is the subject of all four photographs used to illustrate the article and interview. wild referred to “the fi rst house we put up” (wild 1977: 9). warren (1978: 2) and mitchell and chaplin (1984: 32) referred more explicitly to the “fi rst house”. responsibility for the third wave of publication on both the group in general and their fi rst house in particular lies with curator and writer, peter shaw, whose metro article, “the group architects and the auckland house”, appeared in mid1991 and whose extensive survey of new zealand architecture was launched later that year. the following year, shaw curated the architecture section of the 1950s show at the auckland city art gallery – designed by mckay pearson architects – and wrote the accompanying essay on architecture in the special issue of home and building that served as the exhibition catalogue. it is in shaw’s work of this period that the capitalised name, first house, fi rst occurs. in the metro article and in the fi rst edition of his history of new zealand architecture, the capitalised name was used only in the captions to photographs (1991a: 121, 122; 1991b: 155). a year later, in the 1950s show catalogue, it featured in the main body of the text – not once but three times – along with its sibling, the now also capitalised second house (1992: 26-27). shaw (2009) acknowledges that the capitalisation was a conscious decision on his part. on the one hand, in print publication, it made these (the fi rst and second) houses typographically consistent with the many houses named after their clients. the name “first group house” would have served this function adequately and accurately, but shaw also recognised that dropping “group” left behind two words with the potential to capture the public imagination, a particular consideration for someone conscious that he was taking architecture beyond the profession to general audiences: readers of metro and of an accessible survey text on new zealand architecture; and, particularly, visitors to the auckland city art gallery. the capitalised name adorned the recreated house. photographs capture it in the foreground with quotations from wilson’s 1948 essay printed on the wall behind, ensuring that the link was made between his claim regarding the country’s then lack of architecture and the subsequent completion of its “first house” (figs. 2 and 3). this dominant exhibit attracted attention and etched itself on the memories of exhibition goers, including reviewers. tim nees concluded that: “as this house was the seminal local modern work it was the appropriate choice for such treatment.” (1993: 9) seminal is a potent word. its use was not supported by evidence or rationale, implying that readers were expected both to know and appreciate why it was the appropriate choice. yet other authors have found primacy in other houses. for example, in 1942, h. courtenay archer identifi ed the robin simpson house, auckland (1938-39), as “one of the most uncompromisingly conr06_gatley_int10_final.indd 69r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 69 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am interstices 10 temporary buildings in new zealand, yet built in timber” (55), the “yet built in timber” implying local difference from international models. simpson’s house was of course too early to have been included in the 1950s show, but even other authors representing the group with just one building have used a range of different houses: garrett (1958: 42) chose the all-pine prefab; nikolaus pevsner (1959: 213) chose the mallitte house; john stacpoole and peter beaven (1972: 91) chose the robertson house (too late to have been a candidate for the 1950s show); martin hill (1976: 37) chose the catley house; terence hodgson (1990: 83), like pevsner, chose the mallitte house; and jennifer taylor (1996: 1665) chose the rotherham house. from recent (2009) conversations with shaw and mckay, it is clear that the name of the house and its link to wilson’s 1948 claim was just one factor governing the decision to recreate the first house. another was that, with its group-designed and -made furniture, and anthony treadwell mural, this house best demonstrated modern architecture’s dialogue with art and other design disciplines, and this relationship was therefore refl ected in the one exhibit. pragmatics were also a factor: a portion of the first house would fi t within the gallery space whereas some of the other houses, such as the two-storeyed rotherham house, would not. during and after the 1950s show, individuals writing about the first house adopted the capitalised name (packer 1992: 9; nees 1993: 9). philip thomas, in his b.arch. research report on the house, recognised shaw’s capitalisation and its effect in raising the house to “an exalted position” (1993: 20, 39). paraphrasing wilson (1948), he suggested that “nz goes from architecture none to architecture one” (1993: 30). he chose not to follow shaw’s lead, referring to the “fi rst group house” except when quoting shaw’s “first house”. this clarity of attribution was lost from the article he contributed to modern new zealand two years later, where the capitalised version of the name appeared without specifi c mention of shaw (1995: 20, 25). by the late 1990s, the capitalised name, first house, was entrenched and widely used (shaw 1997 [1991]: 200; mckay 1998: 260; mckay 1999: 211; clark & walker 2000: 30-33, 70-74, 87; lloyd jenkins 2003: 22-23; lloyd jenkins 2004: 118-19, 309; clark 2004: 48-52; lloyd jenkins 2006: 47). creative interpretation had made a seamless transition into the canon as a result of iteration. more than this, the capitalised name was assumed to have been used intentionally: the group’s fi rst house, built without client at … northboro rd, belmont, had been given the emphatic name first house. the house was their fi rst but the name also signalled that this was the fi rst house of a new new zealand approach to architecture. the claim was bold. (lloyd jenkins 2003: 22) fig. 2: the photograph of the recreated first house that illustrated reviews of the 1950s show. source: auckland city art gallery. r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 70r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 70 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am 71 indeed it was bold: boldly made in the 1990s. and it was not adopted universally. a smaller number of commentators, particularly those of the group’s generation, continued to refer to the building as the “fi rst group house” or the “group’s fi rst house” (petry 1993: 51; lasenby 2001: 93; beard 2004: 12; rotherham 2004: 16). peter bartlett, who as a student had worked on the 1954 home building exhibition, resurrected the name experimental house (1998: 15). allan wild, one of the builders of the house, has been consistent in using lower case letters for both the “fi rst” and “second” houses (wild n.d.: 6; wild 1999a: 17-18; wild 1999b: 7-8). indeed, he commented on this very matter thus: “what did we call them? our fi rst house, and our second house; no capital initials, no implications of ‘negating the past’.” (2004: 2) he also commented that the group quite often called themselves “group architects”. similarly, their manifesto and their magazine were both published with titles written in lower case letters: on the necessity for architecture and planning 1. this consistent use of the lower case followed developments in typography, a particular interest of group member, bruce rotherham, who did their graphics. as the editor of long live the modern, i hereby admit to capitalising wild’s “fi rst house” and “second house” for the publication in that volume (wild 2008: 57). typographic consistency was my priority. conclusions the fi rst part of this paper has suggested that for architects who trained at the auckland school in the 1970s and early ’80s and rose to profi le in the 1990s, group-designed houses operated as an origin. the return to origins was part of a renewal in new zealand architecture, combining the rejection of the decadence of post-modern architecture with the rediscovery of the modern (see clifford 1995: 2-5). the particular modernism rekindled was that which had been admired, discussed and taught to them by an earlier generation. in the 1990s and early 2000s, the infl uence was interpreted and communicated in terms of general attributes rather than specifi c references to one or more particular houses. yet there really was a first house. or was there? the second part of this paper has questioned the privileged status of the fi rst group house by showing that it was only given its current name comparatively recently. the change from experimental house to “fi rst house” followed wilson’s death and marked the beginning of the group as an historical phenomenon; that from “fi rst house” to “first house” confi rmed their fate as historical fact.3 having traced the changing name of the house, a later comment by wilson takes on new and perhaps greater importance than the famous lines of 1948 regarding new zealand’s lack of architecture: 3. meanwhile, wellington’s demonstration house retains its original name. this house is not embedded in the new zealand canon in the way the first house is. rather, it was largely forgotten until the mid-1990s when it was recovered through archival research conducted in conjunction with the architectural centre’s 50th anniversary celebrations. for information on this house, see gatley (1996). fig. 3: a visitor to the 1950s show gazes at a state house and bill wilson’s 1948 words: “there is no architecture in new zealand. none!” photograph courtesy of rick pearson. r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 71r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 71 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am interstices 10 this sort of question [about fi rsts] belongs after the event, to be answered by critics and historians, not by the practising architect. he cannot properly say, ‘now i shall build a new zealand house’ any more than the writer can say, ‘now i shall write the great new zealand novel.’ (1961: 11) as theorised by wilson, it had indeed been left to critics, historians and commentators to decide which house would be recognised as the fi rst house of the new zealand modern. they – we – have read and written this signifi cance into the house, its changing name both refl ecting and reinforcing its evolving place in the historical record. to recognise the introduction and then increasingly collective and consensual use of the capitalised name, first house, is not to pin down the canonisation of this one building, but rather to confi rm the “shaky foundations”4 on which the current interpretation rests. references ahi roofi ng residential homes award: commended (2000). architecture new zealand, (november), 62-63. allan wild: an interview (1977). aaa bulletin, (86) (december), 6-11. archer, h. c. (1942). some recent buildings: architecture in new zealand. architectural review, (march), 52-58. architectural group (1946). on the necessity for architecture: the manifesto of the architectural group. auckland: s.p. bartlett, p. (1998). the mid-century modern house in auckland. in m. nordeck & s. twose (eds.). connections: the house in the auckland scene (pp. 12-27). auckland: g4 exhibiting unit. beard, j. (2004). anthony treadwell. architecture new zealand, (january), 12. bonta, j. p. (1979). architecture and its interpretation. london: lund humphries. bossley, p. (1999). private house, bay of islands: architect’s statement. architecture new zealand, (november), 103. brewer, k. (1997). untitled comments. architecture new zealand, (september), 92. clark, j. (2004). ephemera: the elusive canon of new zealand architecture. fabrications: the journal of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand, 14 (1 & 2) (december), 47-57. clark, j. & walker, p. (2000). looking for the local: architecture and the new zealand modern. wellington: victoria university press. clifford, p. (1995). a decade without a frame. aaq: auckland architects quarterly, (3), 2-5. davis, k. (1997). romantic reponse [sic]. architecture new zealand, (december): 58-62. 4. “shaky foundations” are bonta’s words. he concludes that “the canonical interpretation of barcelona [i.e. mies’ barcelona pavilion] was based on somewhat shaky foundations” (1979: 203). fig. 4: the international modern room within the 1950s show, a counterpoint to the regional modernism of the first house. source: auckland city art gallery. r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 72r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 72 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am 73 everybody’s talking (1998). architecture new zealand, (august), 114-15. extracts from tapes of bill wilson’s lectures compiled especially for the 26th march 1982 meeting of the architectural association auckland in honour of the group (1982). unpublished transcript, architecture library, the university of auckland. fairburn, a.r.d. (1950). another student house. new zealand listener, 22(568) (12 may), 6-7. garrett, j. (1954). home building, 1814-1954: the new zealand tradition: catalogue of the exhibition group, school of architecture, auckland university college. auckland: pelorus press. garrett, j. (1958). home building – our tradition. home and building, 21(5) (october), 33-45. garrett, j. (1966). architecture. in a.h. mclintoch (ed.). an encyclopaedia of new zealand, vol. 1 (pp. 58-70). wellington: government printer. gatley, j. (1996). a contemporary dwelling. in j. wilson (ed.). zeal and crusade: the modern movement in wellington (pp. 88-95). christchurch: te waihora press. group construction architects (1950). year book of the arts in new zealand, (6), 26-27. hill, m. (1976). new zealand architecture. wellington: school publications branch, dept. of education. hodgson, t. (1990). looking at the architecture of new zealand. wellington: grantham house. home of the year (1997). new zealand home and building, (april), 57-65. house built by new zealand students (1951). architects’ journal, 113(2925) (22 march), 362. lasenby, j. (2001). a clearing house for the arts. architecture new zealand, (july), pp. 91-96. lloyd jenkins, d. (2003). housing change: grew from a vision. heritage new zealand, (spring), 22-23. lloyd jenkins, d. (2004). at home: a century of new zealand design. auckland: godwit. lloyd jenkins, d. (2006). the motivator. new zealand home and entertaining, (february), 45-47. mckay, b. (1998). the whare face of modernism. in j. willis, p. goad et al (eds.). firm(ness) commodity de-light? questioning the canons: fifteenth annual sahanz conference (pp. 25962). university of melbourne, vic: sahanz. mckay, b. (1999). a possum in the kiwi bush. in r. blythe & r. spence (eds.). thresholds: papers of the sixteenth annual conference of sahanz (pp. 209-12). launceston, tas: sahanz. mckay, b. (2009, february 24). pers. comm. to the author. miller, d. (1995). home of the year. new zealand home and building, (december), 52-59. mitchell, d. (1977). group architects: hot and cool. aaa bulletin, (86) (december), 4-6. mitchell, d. & chaplin, g. (1984). the elegant shed: new zealand architecture since 1945. auckland: oxford university press. nees, t. (1993). 50/50 fifties: the 1950s show. auckland city art gallery. glory glory, (1), 7-9. nelson/marlborough awards (2002). architecture new zealand, (november), 60-61. packer, c. (1992), editorial. architecture new zealand, (november), 9. petry, b. (1993). auckland’s 1950s show: architecture and design. art new zealand, (66, autumn 1993), 50-52. pevsner, n. (1959). commonwealth i: special issue. architectural review, 126(752) (october). pitts, g. l. (1968). a review and assessment of the work of group architects, unpublished b.arch. building report, the university of auckland. reid, g. (1999). icons and iconoclasts. architecture new zealand, (march), 70-74. rotherham, b. (2004). as i see it. architecture new zealand, (march), 16. r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 73r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 73 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am interstices 10 rykwert, j. (1972). on adam’s house in paradise: the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history. new york: museum of modern art. shaw, p. (1991a). the group architects and the auckland house. metro, (june), 120-28. shaw, p. (1991b). new zealand architecture from polynesian beginnings to 1990. auckland: hodder and stoughton. shaw, p. (1992). modernism in new zealand architecture. in d. daley (ed.), the newstalk 1zb 1950s show, auckland city art gallery, new zealand home and building, souvenir edition. special issue of home and building (pp. 22-31). auckland: associated group media. shaw, p. (1997 [1991]). a history of new zealand architecture. 2nd ed. auckland: hodder and stoughton. shaw, p. (2009, february 28). pers. comm. to the author. stacpoole, j., & beaven, p. (1972). architecture, 1820-1970. wellington: a.h. & a.w. reed. taylor, j. (1996). oceania. in d. cruikshank (ed.), sir banister fletcher’s a history of architecture (pp. 1646-70). 20th ed. oxford; boston: architectural press. thomas, p. l. (1993). aspects of the grotesque within the first group house. b.arch. research report, the university of auckland. thomas, p. l. (1995). fi rst house first house. modern new zealand, (2) (july), 19-25. wallace, f. (1999). isn’t it iconic. architecture new zealand, (july), 6. walsh, j. (n.d. [2008]). felicity wallace in profi le. house new zealand, (7), 85-100. warren, m. (1978). style in new zealand architecture. new zealand architect, (3), 2-15. wild, a. (n.d.). post-war generation. unpublished paper. wild, a. (1999a). the group: a modernist memoir. cross section: nzia news, (april), 16-19. wild, a. (1999b). a tale of two cities: wellington and auckland in the forties; a student discovers the modern movement. in proceedings from the new zealand historic places trust launch of docomomo new zealand. (10 pp.). wellington: new zealand historic places trust. wild, a. (2004). letter to douglas lloyd jenkins, auckland, 5 november. copy in group & allan wild box, the university of auckland architecture archive. wild, a. (2008). first and second group houses. in j. gatley (ed.). live the modern: new zealand’s new architecture, 1904-1984 (pp. 56-57). auckland: auckland university press. wilson, w. d. (1948). the small house. kiwi: offi cial organ of the auckland university college, p. 28. reprinted in aaa bulletin, (80) (december 1976) 10-11. wilson, w. d. (1957). a holiday by the sea. home and building, 20(7), 28. wilson, w. d. (1961, november 1). a century of housing. new zealand herald, p. 11. wood, p. (2005). watershed: of buildings and stories and elegant sheds. in c. walker (ed.). exquisite apart: 100 years of architecture in new zealand (pp. 72-79). auckland: new zealand institute of architects. r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 74r06_gatley_int10_final.indd 74 11/3/09 2:12 am11/3/09 2:12 am interstices 08 119interstices 08 119 one of the difficulties facing criticism is that it must always connect, and it has to do this precisely where the dimension of liaison is no longer in evidence. perhaps, this is why the problems facing criticism can reveal not only the difficulties, but also the opportunities inherent in modernity as a whole and not just theoretical modernity. we know that to criticize is to examine: krinein, to judge, to match a predicate to a subject, a quality to a substance, etc. however, criticism is also a gestural activity; it takes hold of an object, looks for values and meanings, and establishes close and distant connections between the two. a critique of criticism should always recognize the fact that criticism is never simply concerned with the presence of a thing or a work; nor is it ever simply a critic judging, or a penetrating subjectivity, but it is, above all, a gesture that the critic makes with regard to the thing or the work, or what the thing or work invites them to make. therefore, the problem is: where does the possibility for the liaisons that the critic must make come from? where can the possibility for legitimizing the critic’s gesture be found? and here a kind of withdrawal takes place: we need to attach the activity of judgement to “something” that can, itself, attach a quality to an object; but to what is this gesture connected, or what connects to it? the critic acts in the name of a transcendental authorization that they can never make fully explicit, about which they can even be totally unaware, but which, nevertheless, is the basis for the gesture – rendering it possible, inaugurating it and giving it meaning. the multiplicity of liaisons produced by the act of judgement is preceded by: “it is possible to connect” (most often unspoken); or, indeed, by a, “you have the right to connect”, and perhaps even more fundamentally, by a usually implicit, “you must connect”. these are the in-junctions that open and render the critical junctions effective, but which generally remain exterior (except when critical discourse questions the precise reasoning behind criticism, its foundations and its authority; in other words when it exceeds its immediate exercise and concerns itself with its own limits). therefore, for example, when criticism talks about things, works of art, or architecture, it is also speaking about itself, in the sense that it responds to the problem of its own legitimacy. since it speaks and criticizes at the same time, it must have solved the problem of what gives it the authority to judge: criticism, in so far as it criticizes, must always make its judgements as if the validity (the predication) needed to do so was already established elsewhere. perhaps, this is why there is really no criticism that is absolutely negative: even when something is linked to a negative attribute, even when the predication is pejorative, criticism, as such, is inexorably positive, at least in regard to itthe judgement of architecture daniel payot translation by tim adams the source for this translation is daniel payot, le jugement de l’architecture, le portique: revue de philosophie et de sciences humaines: 3 (1999). many thanks to dr trudy agar-mendousse for pointing out many areas where improvements could be made to an earlier draft of this translation. naturally any errors that remain are entirely my own. – trans. interstices 08 119 interstices 08 119 self; it must have already assured itself of its own right to judge. therefore, it seems possible to support the thesis of an essential and constitutive positivity of all criticism. this hypothesis seems completely at odds with what we so often hear today: that judgement has become so difficult that we may have even lost this faculty altogether; that art criticism, and architectural criticism in particular, have become decadent, mute and little more than pointless gossip: our critics no longer teach us anything. obviously, these assessments seem to contradict the tentative suggestion made above: if criticism was so positive, it should always be able to make judgements without too much difficulty. however, perhaps there is a way of answering this dilemma that will at first seem provocative, but may nonetheless lead to a solution. it would be to reply that the problem of criticism today – the biggest problem it faces, besides the too easy and too frequent diagnosis of “decadence” – finds its cause in the very positivity that constitutes criticism: it is because criticism cannot avoid being positive that it is so poorly considered today. if the critic is indeed more hesitant, timid, powerless and mute, it is not because they have run out of things to say about works of art and architecture. on the contrary, in general, we know much more about them now than during those earlier periods of history when criticism seemed to flourish and have an immediate impact; nor is it due to the application, to particular cases that interest it, of the models, rules, canons and laws upon which criticism was founded. rather, it is because criticism itself no longer knows what meanings to give the positivity that constitutes it, and which can only be avoided by denying any role for the critic, which thereafter can never be filled. the problem, then, would be the inalienable remainder and burden of positivity, whose persistence becomes more obvious the less confident criticism becomes of finding external criteria able to guarantee its legitimacy in a “transcendent” normativity. in a certain sense, this difficulty is a consequence of “reflective” judgement. kant defined it in these terms: judgement in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal. if the universal (the rule, principle, or law) is given, then the judgement which subsumes the particular under it is determinant…. if, however, only the particular is given and the universal has to be found for it, then the judgement is simply reflective (kant, 1952: 18). because it must formulate itself prior to any concept of the beautiful being given, aesthetic judgement can only be reflective; it isnot preceded by the presentation of a principle by which it would then only need to select particular things to order to declare them beautiful. the exercise of reflective judgement is im mediately confronted by an absence, by a primary non-given. it has to evaluate while lacking the measure for evaluation; it is unable to refer to a previous principle that, alone, would guarantee and give assurance to judgement. nevertheless, this could be considered to be not the most difficult problem, since despite the irreducible distance opened up between the need to formulate a judgement and the failure to present the principle behind its formulation, interstices 08 121interstices 08 121 2. note: the emphasis is kant’s. judgement can still get by with analogies and substitutions, and the use of the “as if”, with reflection to be precise. according to kant, judgement does not collapse when it fails to present its principle of evaluation: instead, it discovers the means for its survival; it presents things as particular cases of a general law, by means of which it becomes possible to make a judgement legitimate and universal (although not objective). certainly, determinant judgement, since it refers to previously applied rules, always appears more certain – and is in deed “objective”: that is to say, it does know something about its object, which is not the case for aesthetic judgement, which, being “subjective”, translates the state of the subjectivity that judges – and this is not a property of its object. however, this apparent handicap creates the possibility that judgement evaluates itself, a possibility not offered by the determinant judgement, since its exercise of judgement is ordered according to the application of laws or norms. reflective judgement is subjected to the test of having to present itself to itself (hence the term “reflective”), a test that places it in a moment of peril (the critical moment where the evaluation evaluates itself and the examiner is summoned to the examination of their right to examine), though, according to kant, it emerges from this test the victor. in the end, its legitimacy is even more strongly established, since it was not given in advance and since it had to win this for itself. how does this work? in kantian terms, the answer to this question is: by means of “common sense” as the following two extracts will define: were judgements of taste (like cognitive judgements) in possession of a definite objective principle, then one who in his judgement followed such a principle would claim unconditioned necessity for it. again, were they devoid of any principle, as are those of the mere taste of sense, then no thought of any necessity on their part would enter one’s head. therefore they must have a subjective principle, and one which determines what pleases or displeases, by means of feeling only and not through concepts, but yet with universal validity (kant, 1952: 82, § 20). now, for this purpose, experience cannot be made the ground of this common sense, for the latter is invoked to justify judgements containing an ‘ought’ (ein sollen). the assertion is not that every one will fall in with our judgement, but rather that every one ought to agree with it. here i put forward my judgement of taste as an example of the judgement of common sense, and attribute to it on that account exemplary validity. hence common sense is a mere ideal norm. with this as presupposition, a judgement that accords with it, as well as the delight in an object expressed in that judgement, is rightly converted into a rule for every one. for the principle, while it is only subjective, being yet assumed as subjective universal (a necessary idea for every one), could, in what concerns the consensus of different judging subjects, demand universal assent like an objective principle, provided we were assured of our subsumption under it being correct (kant, 1952: 84-85, § 22).2 interstices 08 121 interstices 08 121 the expression, “a subjective principle”, perhaps summarizes most of the problems usually formulated about criticism. unless one proposes, like baudelaire, that “to be in focus, in other words to justify itself, criticism must be partial, passionate, political, that is to say it must adopt an exclusive point of view” (baudelaire, 1992: 50),3 it seems, in fact, inevitable to agree with kant that subjectivity is, in the act of judgement, preceded by a principle of determination. if that was not the case, the enunciated critique could not claim any “necessity”, it would only be the expression of an immediate sensible state and, therefore, entirely individualistic. criticism, then, would consist entirely of a discursively enunciated set of personal feelings, emotions and affects without any pretension to universality. kant suggests this would not be criticism: the statement would not be predicated and the proposition would not be, strictly speaking, a judgement. however, since the enunciating subjectivity is not completely confined to the immediacy of its affects and confronts other dimensions, it finds the resources for a gesture of attribution and determination. it is because the subjectivity that judges refers to such a principle that the judgement can take the form of a duty or a requirement. because it is no longer simply the expression of a particular subject, it can claim the universality of the impersonal, the neutrality or generality of a principle. now the principle in this case cannot be objective: determination in aesthetic matters cannot be made by a concept. the principle dimension that precedes judgement, that informs it and gives it its predicative status is not the type of liaison that constitutes the unity of a given diversity prior to the encounter with the object of judgement: aesthetic judgement is not a knowledge judgement. furthermore, the principle does not belong to an order that would be exterior to subjectivity: it is only ever located in it. how, then, can it still be a principle? does not its subjective constitution remove all pretension to legislate from it? what, in fact, is its necessity if it cannot be the “unconditioned necessity” of determinant judgements? and in what sense can it be universal? the main thrust of kant’s argument consists of sustaining the idea of a dimension which must be subjective (since it is a matter of relating to something which does not have any concept, and the method of this relation is no longer simply feeling), but which, nevertheless, allows for a determination, “with universal validity” being “assumed as subjective universal” (otherwise we cannot maintain the proposition that, properly speaking, they are judgements when we do not have any concept for them). it is, therefore, necessary that this universality be found in the only domain established here: in other words in feeling, sensation and subjectivity. the “common sense” is a communication of feelings that, instead of leaving each person in the particularity of their sensible experience, constitutes an “ideal norm” that each person can claim, and in the name of which they “could, in what concerns the consensus of different judging subjects, demand universal assent like an objective principle.” despite these explanations, it is still quite difficult to put aside the scepticism we no doubt have about the sense of uselessness we feel whenever “taste and preferences” are discussed. today, the predominant subjectivism is largely a form of nihilism: the right to feel and to like whatever one wants is certainly recognized, but, often, this comes at the cost of rejecting any principle whatsoever, which is to say any judgement as well. that is why it is important not to stop with the kantian 3. to do it justice, let us quote the end of the sentence, the further examination of which would lead to other consider ations: “…it must adopt an exclusive point of view, provided always the one adopted opens up the widest horizons.” interstices 08 123interstices 08 123 affirmations about the existence of such a principle, or such an ideal norm; it is necessary to rediscover kant’s explanation of the mechanism of common sense: for where any one is conscious that his delight in an object is with him independent of interest, it is inevitable that he should look on the object as one containing a ground of delight for all men. for, since the delight is not based on any inclination of the subject (or any other deliberate interest), but the subject feels himself completely free in respect of the liking which he accords to the object, he can find as reason for his delight no personal conditions to which his own subjective self might alone be party (an die sich sein subjekt allein hängte). hence he must regard it as resting on what he may also presuppose in every other person; and therefore he must believe that he has reason for demanding a similar delight from every one. accordingly he will speak of the beautiful as if beauty were a quality (beschaffenheit) of the object and the judgement logical (forming a cognition of the object by concepts of it); although it is only aesthetic, and contains merely a reference of the representation of the object to the subject; – because it still bears this resemblance to the logical judgement, that it may be presupposed to be valid for all men (kant, 1952: 50-51, § 6). it is obvious that, here, common sense does not mean consensus. it is not a matter of proposing that the whole world will, in the end, agree to share the same assessment because the whole world applies a common criterion to everything – that would make aesthetic judgement become a determinant judgement again, and would therefore contradict everything that went before. the argument here is a lot more subtle because it is exclusively reflexive. there is nothing other than the delight that i feel in the presence of the object, nothing other than a subjective pleasure. and nothing else will intervene in what follows it: everything takes place in the domain of subjectivity. however, this is not an immobilized totality, an arrested identity: on the contrary it is a power of reflection. the above quote describes the process of this reflection: the delight felt by the subject is independent of his particular interest or any individual inclination; if i feel pleasure in front of this object it is not because it responds to a craving that i had prior to encountering it, that its presence then fulfils. the presentation of the object is not preceded by a will, or a desire, that would have rendered its presentation desirable or necessary. the object does not occur for my satisfaction, quite simply it occurs and it satisfies me by coming from elsewhere, from a region not previously circumscribed by me, independent of any predetermined end. the thing happens to me, it does not happen for me. and this is why it does not only occur to me. the delight that i feel is not the satisfaction of a craving or a will that would be mine exclusively. i am not satisfied because the thing responded to my expectations: in fact i did not have any expectation regarding it. rather, it is that i am in the position of responding: i respond by feeling pleasure that will then be translated into the form of a judgement (of the type: “this thing is beautiful”), to the free presentation of something independent of all ends. this presentation is primary. and since it gives me pleasure, despite it being independent of my desires and my expectations, i can suppose that it will give others the same pleasure, and even that it will satisfy all others, since this pleasure will always be independent of the particular desires and expectations of individuals. interstices 08 123 interstices 08 123 here, we need to pay special attention to the precision, and even at times to the apparent complication, of the expressions chosen by kant. the subject, he writes, “must regard [his delight] as resting on what he may also presuppose in every other person; and therefore he must believe that he has reason for demanding a similar delight from every one” (kant, 1952: 51). this “must” is not strictly speaking a constraint, but rather a kind of logical invitation; it is a concession, but one that sometimes, without taking anything away from its pleasure, introduces the subject to a distribution of its delight. the delight is founded, which is what the text says; it is preceded by a principle. this foundation is not in me; although this principle is subjective, it is not in me. it is in the relation that is established, without me willing it, between the presentation of the thing and the way that this presentation affects me. however, since i do not decide for myself the way in which it affects me, rather, it is the presentation itself that decides, i can “suppose” an affection, an identical reception in any other, and therefore “attribute” to all the others the delight that i felt from the presentation of this thing. these two verbs – to suppose and to attribute – complete the device of reflection: in the end something is projected, and it is only at that very moment, when i launch my pleasure beyond the strict limits of my individuality, that an operation takes place that is rigorously a judgement. i never judge alone: i judge when the i that judges expands to the dimensions of “every i”; when i am the one that will be able to be every i in the same situation. therefore, the one who judges is common, and judgement proceeds from the community that is in me, that i shelter in some way and that i then liberate. i liberate the community in me, since the delight that i feel from the presentation of something is not for my interest alone. reflection is, in fact, a double movement: on the one hand, delight is strongly related to something (no pleasure without movement, without the relation of pleasure to something other than to itself, so it must in the end make an account, form a judgement). on the other hand, this first relation is projected (by attribution or supposition) onto other subjects. and, for the final projection to be possible, it is not enough – otherwise it would be the presupposed principal of complete explanation – that the delight be related to my interest alone, but be for the community that awakens in me. since the pleasure is not related to me alone, it can be supposed to belong to all: as soon as there can be an effective relation of the delight, independent of an exclusively individual interest, this delight belongs, by right, to all. the negative (a pleasure exempt of interest) immediately converts into a positive (a shared pleasure), and judgement can take place (the formulation of the judgement: “this thing is beautiful” then has the form of an objective judgement. it seems to say something about the very thing itself, although it rests only on a subjective foundation. however, this foundation is really a principle, and the enunciated products that follow are really universals: as if the subjective universal of common sense spoke for itself, in a way that, in the objective form of the judgement, is both correct and illegitimate). it is obvious that this way of understanding aesthetic judgement poses a formidable problem for architectural criticism. however, the way this difficulty is usually accounted for is, doubtless, insufficient. for example, when someone says, leaning heavily on the few passages in the critique of judgement that mention architecture, that the presentation of the architectural work, in contrast to the presentation of pictorial, musical or sculptural works, cannot be separated from interest and inclination, and is therefore unable to give rise to a disinterested delight in the interstices 08 125interstices 08 125 subject, so architecture cannot be the occasion for this projection of the delight by which, as we saw, common sense expresses itself. the specifically architectural affect would always be too interested to correspond to the processes of aesthetic reflection as described by kant, who, in fact, had to resort to other forms of art in order to describe it. and therefore the conclusion is: either a “kantian” critique of architecture is possible, but it will never consider an architectural work to be a disinterested aesthetic presentation like a painting or a symphony, as an unforeseen event independent of any previously formulated end, but it will consider that which is not specifically architectural (the façade, or more generally the building reduced to its exterior representation, uninhabited we could say, literally, outside of its use); or else that criticism will treat architecture as such, but then it will only be able to account for its use, function, purpose, and its responding to a need, and therefore it will cease being “kantian”. not all of this is absolutely false. however, the fact remains that the architectural thing is no more reducible to my interest, to my inclination than any other artistic work. the delight that the presentation of an architectural work provokes in me is never just my delight alone, and the pleasure that i feel is no more immediate than the one that i feel when presented with a pictorial, musical or sculptural object. in other words, the architectural pleasure in me is also related to something else. if i say that a building is beautiful, that it is well conceived, that it responds to a need in a satisfactory way, i am doing something quite different from simply acknowledging an immediate feeling of well-being. i relate the pleasure that i feel to “something” in me, to that which is not exclusively me – this is, we discovered, the “definition” kant gave for “disinterestedness”. since, concerning architectural presentation, we noted the effectiveness of the first moment of reflection – the rapport with or relation to – why should we deny ourselves the second moment – the projection, the supposition, the granting to “all the others” – and therefore the possibility of a judgement resting on a subjective principle? this line of argument will, nonetheless, seem excessively sophistic: doesn’t it try to rediscover a disinterestedness in architecture that is manifestly not found there? but we need to be more precise: it is not a matter of architecture in relation to itself, but the nature of the delight than it provokes (or doesn’t) in us. we are not speaking here about a relation other than one which a subject maintains with the architectural thing, not of the thing itself. and, in fact, in this relation, we notice a movement that diverts the subject from the sole consideration of itself, or the sole experience without thinking about its affects. why, then, do we continue to presuppose that this deviation, which is undisputable, is not entirely of same nature as the one at work when considering a musical or pictorial work? because it is never disputed that the delight provoked by the architectural thing has even the smallest moment of “disinterestedness” (a moment when the subject does not keep this delight to himself, but relates it to something else), we cannot avoid presupposing that it is a matter of another type of disinterest from the one at work in music or painting. how then to think the difference between these types of disinterest? at this point, we can risk the following hypothesis: the delight provoked by the architectural object would also be a relation to, but it would, nevertheless, not be possible to project it onto, “all others”. why? not because this delight is too individual or too private, but on the contrary because, for architecture, the common interstices 08 125 interstices 08 125 is always too immediately present to be the object of a projection. for architecture, the community cannot be considered as the horizon of a supposition or an attributing to, because it is already present in the very presentation of the thing. the community here is not the object of a duty (“he must regard it as resting on what he may also presuppose in every other person”), for it is not ahead of, in the future of the subject, but already there in the very presentation. the common is not presumed, postulated, or supposed, it is in the presentation of the thing, in its very presupposition. and this is why the mechanism of reflection, to the extent that it experienced rapport and projection, cannot be effective: in architecture, from the outset, there is already what, in reflective judgement, had to be exhumed by the double movement of a suspension, and of an attributing to: the fact of the common in the presentation. the difficulty would then be that, if the obviousness of the common prevents the judgement of architecture occurring with any precision, reflective judgement could no longer consist of the exposition of laws, rules or norms that would make architectural judgement a determinant judgement. the community is neither a need nor a concept: it is a fact. architecture is the presentation of this fact. as such, architecture is not, or it is not exclusively, an aesthetic phenomenon, nor is it an object of science. its evaluation is not exclusively related to either subjective universal principles upon which aesthetic delights are based, or objective universal principles upon which knowledge is constructed. thus, how can architectural criticism comprehend its own positivity, which, as hypothesised, is unavoidable, if this positivity cannot depend on any of these principles? where will this criticism find its own legitimacy, if it cannot rest its judgements on one side or the other, and only ever misses its target when it tries to be artistic, just as much as when it tries to be scientific? obviously, these questions are not trying to invalidate architectural criticism. on the contrary, they show its inestimable interest, as an example of a discourse that is truly, constantly and constitutively confronted, in the very presentation of its object, by a necessary, and therefore unconstructible, presupposition of the fact of the community. can we then suppose what its proper object will be if it is neither exclusively artistic nor exclusively scientific? from this point of view, what follows is only a tentative, hazardous and cautious attempt at a beginning. let’s suppose that architectural criticism relates to what, in architecture, proposes an experience of the fact that there is something in common. it would no longer be interested in architecture as a simple object, nor simply as an occasion for applying predetermined rules; rather, it would feel what, in architecture (in its visual aspects, certainly, but also in its use and in its potential for ethical and political invention in general), gives rise to, authorizes or emerges to open experience up to the presupposition of the common, and to evaluate – quite probably without any objective criteria – the particular quality of this invitation.4 perhaps, something of this kind did try to emerge, at the end of benjamin’s famous text on the work of art, in the notion of a “tactile” reception distinguished from visual apprehension: buildings are appropriated in a twofold manner: by use and by perception – or rather, by touch and sight. such appropriation cannot 4. let us specify that this proposition is not only limited to collective architecture: there are individual constructions that inform the common from which they originate, just as there are, obviously and unfortunately, collective constructions that can destroy it, cover it over or to stifle it under pomposity or poverty. interstices 08 127interstices 08 127 be understood in terms of the attentive concentration of a tourist before a famous building. on the tactile side there is no counterpart to contemplation on the optical side. tactile appropriation is accomplished not so much by attention as by habit. as regards architecture, habit determines to a large extent even optical reception. the latter, too, occurs much less through rapt attention than by noticing the object in incidental fashion (benjamin, 1969: 240). what is interesting about this distinction, which, by itself, can seem too simplistic and even naïve, becomes more apparent when we relate it to a remark made a little earlier in the text: that “architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art, the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction” (benjamin, 1969: 240). here, there is the indication of a solidarity between this kind of habitual, tactile, distracted reception and the experience of the community. this is not something that can be felt with the effort of attention, with the concentration and contemplation that corresponds more to an individual experience. the common is not what we place in front of ourselves, like an isolated object to be examined at our leisure, but it is what we are in, to which we belong before we have even made the decision to examine it. and, perhaps, this is the reason why architecture is such an experience of the common. in contrast to what happens, for example, with a picture, the reception that we give to a building does not consist of placing it in front of us as something separate. here, the experience takes place precisely without placing the object at a certain distance in order to make it have an effect, without any defining or delimiting it. we are in the building, we touch it and are touched by it in a dimension of participation or, better, of com-motion: we move together without criticizing architectural models: tim adams at models for living, 19052005, the auckland museum, 2005. photograph by elizabeth cheng. interstices 08 127 interstices 08 127 ever being able to grasp, by ourselves, what the building is in its entirety. even the powers of representation, by which i could assure myself of my mastery over the building, are insufficient here: architecture, as such, having spaces that can be traversed and divided, is always beyond its image. we cannot isolate it as we do when framing a picture to be mounted on a wall and later appreciated. we are in architecture even before we notice it; before we decide to observe it, it has already proposed itself to us and we are already affected according to our least reflective and least analytical sensibilities. we move ourselves in it, and it delivers itself to us according to such displacements, as an inseparably spatial and temporal suggestion: a com-motion that would therefore need to take into consideration the fact that this suggestion immediately addresses itself to a plurality, not just to a singularity. the only architecture is one that is distributed, since it can only authorize a multiplicity of journeys. each one of these journeys is a collective adventure: an experience of the community in so far as it is not constructed like a work, in so far as it is not reducible to a body of laws that could be enunciated a priori. it is already there, experienced in the variety of journeys and the necessarily divided character of each one. it is never presented truthfully by itself, never figured in a illustrative or exemplary manner (except in architectural publicity, but even then things are not as simple as they seem); it is what can be experienced in its presentation – even if the presentation itself contradicts this experience, instead of supporting it. benjamin then adds an obviously essential remark about this absent-minded tactile reception: this mode of appropriation, developed with reference to archi tecture, in certain circumstances acquires canonical value. for tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is by contemplation alone. they are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation (benjamin, 1969: 240). this was to suggest some important issues about architecture and that we should take responsibility for them. the text was written in 1936. the question of knowing what could be made from a presupposition of community in architectural presentation was then a burning issue. are things qualitatively any different today? is the idea that architectural criticism should again confront such questions only a ridiculous anachronism or, on the contrary, is it necessary to assert that it has to if it is to participate in a very necessary resistance? references: baudelaire, c. (1992). the salon of 1846. in charles baudelaire: selected writings on art and literature (p. e. charvet, trans.). harmondsworth: penguin books. benjamin, w. (1969). the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. in arendt, h. (ed.). walter benjamin, illuminations (h. zohn, trans.). new york: schocken books. kant, e. (1952). introduction. in the critique of judgement (j. c. meredith, trans.). oxford: oxford university press. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 11 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s ian buchanan architecture and control society the influence of michel foucault’s discipline and punish (1975) in the humanities and social sciences cannot be overstated. its two core essentially architectural theses, that (a) sites of confinement and (b) practices of surveillance define our era, are largely treated as both factually correct and inarguably true. in the four decades since its publication, the consensus view seems to be that evidence of the continuing pertinence of foucault’s theses can be seen with the naked eye in the built environment of practically every city in the world. however, while it is true that sites of confinement are proliferating (there are literally more prisons today than there were when foucault wrote his book) and practices of surveillance have attained a level of intrusiveness and scrutiny that foucault himself (a gloomy pessimist on this issue) could not have imagined, that does not mean our age is unchanged from the one foucault documented. in his essay “postscript on control societies”, post-scriptum sur les sociétés des contrôle, gilles deleuze (1995) argues that contrary to appearances, things have indeed changed—sites of confinement are breaking down even as they are proliferating, and surveillance practices, although they have increased in intensity, no longer follow the old pattern. this is testament to the extent to which foucault is seen to have grasped something essential about our time. deleuze’s challenges to the received status of foucault’s theses have either been ignored or simply batted away as mistaken because, to put it bluntly, any fool can see that sites of confinement and practices of surveillance are as much a part of today’s society as they were in foucault’s time, if not more so. in what follows, i want to suggest, firstly, that this response is wrong inasmuch as it stems from a misreading of both foucault and deleuze, and secondly, that it is a missed this audio includes the symposium keynote talk recorded on 18 july 2019 in addition to an interview with ian buchanan in december 2019. we’re told businesses have souls, which is surely the most terrifying news in the world (deleuze, 1995: 181). 12 architecture and control society p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 opportunity to cast a weathering eye over our current situation, and more particularly the state of contemporary architecture. my real starting point, though, is the observation that when you read foucault and deleuze side-by-side, there is an obvious gap in deleuze’s essay. while deleuze argues against the view that the architectural categories of confinement and surveillance are the defining categories of our era, he offers no thoughts on the transformations the built environment has undergone since the disciplinary forms foucault identified began to break down. the question that interests me, then, is precisely the one deleuze neglects to ask: has control society given rise to its own architectural forms? i use form here in the sense that it has in literary studies (my background), where it refers to precisely defined discursive entities like novels and poems, which nevertheless remain open to considerable variation. there are, however, real limits to this variation: there is a point at which a novel ceases to be a novel and becomes either meaningless gibberish or a poem or a play. the forms themselves have their own history—the novel in the eighteenth century is quite different from the novel of the twenty-first century, both in terms of the language used, but also the formal structure. wholly new forms are rare, and most often they are permutations of existing forms that are “strong” enough in their own right to be counted as new. in order to answer the question of whether control society has yielded new architectural forms, i will try to do two things—i will briefly explain how (according to deleuze) control society differs from disciplinary society; then i will try to determine which (if any) new architectural forms have arisen in the transition from discipline to control. i will go through the specific empirical differences between the two modalities in more detail below, but first i want to spell out the main conceptual difference because it appears from the arguments against deleuze that this is not generally well understood (it is often foucault as much as it is deleuze who is misunderstood). the key to both of their positions is this: discipline concerned the correct training and placement of individuals, whereas control is concerned with the maximum exploitation of what deleuze calls dividuals (nameless, faceless, data points), regardless of their formation or placement. so, while it is true that sites of confinement and practices of surveillance continue to shape contemporary existence, they do not function in the same way as they did in disciplinary society. the title of deleuze’s essay offers a useful, albeit cryptic clue as to how it should be read, because while he titled it “postscript on control societies”, he did not specify what it is a post-script to. the fact it is appended to his book negotiations (1995) makes it seem it was intended as a discursive addition to a collection of his interviews, but i think this is just a matter of publishing convenience. it had already appeared in l’autre journal (1990), so it clearly wasn’t written solely for the occasion of his book. in my view, it makes more sense to read it as a postscript to foucault’s discipline and punish (1975), and not his own book, because its aim is quite obviously to speculate about what his friend might have said, were he still alive to write it himself. this is not an idea i’m going to try to defend with either biographical or bibliographical information, though i will note that dosse (2010: 330) gestures in this 13 architecture and control society p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 direction, without putting it in so many words, in his biography of deleuze and guattari. i merely offer it as thought experiment (if you will) that reframes the way we think about the relation between the two pieces of work, which despite their differences cannot really be thought in antagonistic or polemical terms. deleuze’s essay functions more as a continuation of foucault’s book than a critique, albeit a continuation that begins by drawing a definitive line under what went before. one could say that it is tributary in both senses of the word—it flows from foucault as the original source, and it is offered in homage to a great thinker. it is important to stress, too, that deleuze does not claim that foucault is wrong, or in error; his claim is that during the course of the twentieth century the world entered a new era, one that is organised differently from disciplinary society, and he insists that foucault himself knew this and was already saying that the disciplinary society he had written about had ended and that a new kind of society was emerging to take its place. as deleuze describes: foucault has thoroughly analysed the ideal behind sites of confinement, clearly seen in the factory: bringing everything together, giving each thing its place, organising time, setting up in this space-time a force of production greater than the sum of component forces. but foucault knew how shortlived this model was: it succeeded sovereign societies with an altogether different aim and operation (taking a cut of production instead of organizing it, condemning to death instead of ordering life); the transition took place gradually […] but discipline would in its turn begin to break down as new forces moved slowly into place, then made rapid advances after the second world war: we were no longer in disciplinary societies, we were leaving them behind. (1995: 177-178) in a more critical voice, byung-chul han (2017: 23) agrees that foucault “recognized that disciplinary society did not reflect the times in every respect”, which is why he turned to questions of biopolitics and population (which are implicitly post-disciplinary in their construction). in doing so, however, he failed to grasp what is distinctive about neoliberalism in han’s view because in contrast to biopolitics, neoliberalism “is not primarily concerned with ‘the biological, the somatic, the corporal’. it has discovered the psyche as a productive force” (2017: 25). here i think one can agree with the conclusion, that neoliberalism is focused on the psyche, without necessarily accepting the premise, because it is false to say that biopolitics concerns the body in the same way discipline did. as agamben (2000) has clarified, biopolitics is interested only in the bare fact of life itself, not the body.1 its aim and function is to reduce the subject not merely to a body, but to a set of attributes that can be quantified and ranked (agamben, 2000: 7-8). public health campaigns targeting obesity, to take a contemporary example of biopolitics in action, are not concerned with whether or not bodies are fat or thin, but only whether they are at increased risk (which is calculated statistically rather than by any actual assessment of actual bodies) of particular diseases, which are expensive to treat (berlant, 2011: 106-114). as deleuze (1995: 182) puts it, the new medicine will have neither doctors nor patients, just cases and subjects at risk. i mention han (2017) here because despite his misdirected criticisms of foucault and agamben, his theses are not only compatible with deleuze’s account of 14 architecture and control society p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 control society, they update and clarify deleuze’s insights in a number of quite useful ways. he argues persuasively that our situation now is very different from disciplinary society because: (a) it concerns the psyche rather than the body— it is our imagination not our body that is subject to capture; (b) it is permissive rather than inhibitive—we are constantly exhorted to be “ourselves”; (c) the panopticon is perspectival—it relies on an embodied viewer, whereas control does not (it sees patterns not people); (d) disciplinary society lacked the means of keeping records, whereas control society records everything, down to the most trivial; and lastly (e), it is business rather than the state that controls surveillance (han, 2017: 25; 14; 56; 62; 65). it is surprising, therefore, that even though he acknowledges deleuze’s concept of control, he does not embrace it in his account of the effects of contemporary forms of surveillance, but instead speaks of it as a form of digital panopticon (han, 2017: 38). this is a regressive step, it seems to me, because it blurs the very distinction he—and more importantly deleuze—is trying to make between two very different specular regimes. in point of fact, as han seems to be aware, the panopticon is child’s play compared to the digital technology we are immersed in today, and which is unprecedented in history in its surveillance capacity. in disciplinary society, surveillance was coercive, hence the need for confinement, but today we willingly carry surveillance technology (as han notes) with us at all times, allowing it to record our every movement, our conversations, our financial transactions, our health data, and even how we feel about a wide variety of subjects. not only that, we willingly pay for the privilege of giving all our data to private corporations (zuboff, 2019). this is the true face of control society. we have entered an era in which surveillance is desired rather than feared and privacy has lost most, if not all, its meaning as an organising concern. one key difference between foucault and deleuze, which is essential to understanding the latter’s formulation of control society, is that whereas foucault tended to shy away from speaking directly about capitalism, deleuze did not. control society is explicitly defined as a mutation in capitalism: nineteenth-century capitalism was concentrative, directed toward production, and proprietorial. thus it made the factory into a site of confinement, with the capitalist owning the means of production […] but capitalism in its present form is no longer directed toward production […] it is directed toward metaproduction […] thus it is essentially dispersive, with factories giving way to businesses. (deleuze, 1995: 180-181)2 i would argue deleuze does not go far enough here in his account of the transformation of capitalism, and he doesn’t adhere closely enough to his own insights. in anti-oedipus (1983), he and guattari complain that not enough importance is attributed “to banking practice, to financial operations, and to the specific circulation of credit money which would be the meaning of a return to marx, to the marxist theory of money” (230). deleuze’s essay is guilty of the same failing, inasmuch as he focuses on changes to manufacturing—the shift from production to metaproduction, which can be grasped simply as the movement away from inhouse production towards outsourcing, and even more so as the shift from local production to offshoring—rather than changes to the structures of ownership, which are more far-reaching in their effects. today, corporations are owned by shareholders, those shareholders are very often other corporations such as hedge 15 architecture and control society p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 funds and pension funds that are themselves owned by shareholders who purchased the shares using money borrowed from credit institutions. what matters now is not who owns the means of production (the pivotal factor in marx’s analyses), but rather who controls the platforms (srnicek, 2017).3 ours is the age of bankers, derivatives, hedge funds, and debt, but above all it is the age of data and its crucial complement the algorithm. deleuze identified three paradigmatic differences between disciplinary society and control society: (1) confinement is an analogical system, whereas control is digital. in disciplinary societies, one is constantly starting over, as one moves from school to the army to work and so on, but in control societies, one is never finished—lifelong learning has replaced the idea of graduation with a perpetual cycle of training. in disciplinary society, school, the army, the factory, were analogous, inasmuch as they were organised along similar lines and according to similar principles but remained essentially different—the student was not a soldier, the soldier was not a worker, and so on. but in control society, the school, the army, and the factory, along with virtually every other aspect of society, have become businesses, measured in terms of their financial bottom lines rather than their outputs. success in education, to take only one example, is measured in economic not pedagogic terms. what matters is not whether the student has learned their curriculum and graduated with specific capabilities and genuine expertise, but whether that curriculum was delivered in a cost-efficient manner and according to protocols recommended by employers. (2) confinement is a form of moulding, whereas control is modulation. deleuze says this can be seen most clearly in the breakdown of trade unions, and the corresponding breakdown of the wage-bargaining process that has been replaced by individual workplace contracts (i.e., the “gig economy” beloved of platform corporations like uber and deliveroo) that pit worker against worker in a situation of infra-class antagonism rather than infra-class solidarity. as he puts it, “if the stupidest tv game shows are successful [and let’s not forget that it was literally a stupid tv game show that helped put trump into the white house], it’s because they’re a perfect reflection of the way businesses are run today” (deleuze, 1995: 179). in contrast to the old duality of management and trade unions, today’s businesses “are constantly introducing an inexorable rivalry presented as healthy competition, a wonderful motivation that sets individuals against one another and sets itself up in each of them, dividing each within himself ” (179). competition for its own sake is affect driven, it lives and thrives on the intermittent highs of transitory victories (e.g. employee of the month), and never concerns itself with whether or not these victories add up to something meaningful like competency or a vocation. not even education, to continue with my previous example, is immune from this trend, deleuze laments. schooling has been replaced “by continuing education and exams by continuous assessment” (179). to which he adds, showing uncanny prescience: “it’s the surest way of turning education into a business” (179). (3) control mechanisms have replaced disciplinary apparatuses. disciplinary society is organised by the signature (of the individual) and the number (one’s place in a social hierarchy), whereas control society is organised by codes (algorithms, metadata, gps, and so on) and it takes no interest in either individuals or social 16 architecture and control society p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 entities. control society is far more advanced in its development today than it was when deleuze first penned his essay. the more we come to understand the power of the major platforms like google and facebook, the more we realise that there is still so much they could and probably will do to infiltrate, shape, and ultimately monetize our daily lives.4 if confinement has broken down, it is because new technology has facilitated vastly more intrusive and exploitative forms of what i will call “open capture”. this amounts to a new iteration of primitive accumulation that treats culture—or more specifically cultural practices—in the same way extractive capitalism treats nature (jameson, 1991: ix). as shoshana zuboff (2019) argues, google’s co-founder larry page understood that human experience could become (as indeed it has) google’s natural resource, which it could extract at almost no cost. how have these changes been reflected in the built environment? in a necessarily preliminary way, and aggregating the work of several theorists, i will suggest that control society has yielded four key architectural forms: the mall, the theme park, the cloud, and the camp. the mall. the mall is arguably the first architectural form control society gave rise to in the immediate aftermath of world war 2, when the commodity-led boom began in america. it inaugurated a new kind of space that is, as chun puts it, public but privately owned. people are encouraged to enter the space, but most do so according to the terms laid out by the mall’s owners (2006: 38). the mall has been theorised as a panopticon by mike davis (1992: 242-243), among many others, because of the tight security measures many of them deploy, both to keep out so-called “undesirables” (i.e., poor people) and prevent theft. but these measures were not part of the original design idea that sought to combine the galleria (milan’s famous galleria vittorio emanuele ii is the prototype), the department store (which is modelled on the museum), and the piazza, to create a self-contained space that functioned as a city within a city, in which people could mingle freely with commodities. in contrast to the panopticon, the primary purpose of the mall is to facilitate “looking”. as part of this, the mall fosters the kind of display (by both its vendors and customers) that encourages the look. covert surveillance is in this sense anathema to its central organising premise. mall-goers want to be seen! the mall is essentially a machine and its day-to-day operations are utterly dependent on machines too—it cannot function in the absence of the transport networks that connect it to its customer base, which is implicitly greater than the immediate vicinity can supply; it also depends on long logistics chains that invariably stretch around the globe; and it depends on air-conditioning, escalators, and bar codes for the comfort and convenience of its customers.5 the theme park. related to the mall and born at almost the same time, the theme park is nevertheless distinct because it is predicated not on physical commodities, but rather on the intangible commodities of film and television. if the mall was built to enable people to mingle with commodities, then the theme park was built to enable people to enter the imaginary space of their favourite films and tv shows and mingle with the characters. the extension of this idea into every aspect of daily life was accomplished when it was realised that the imaginary space did not need to originate with a movie, it 17 architecture and control society p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 could build on fantasized notions of the past and the future and in a sense fantasized versions of films that have not yet been made, as was the case with disney’s pirates of the caribbean, which was a ride long before it was a movie, but was clearly built as though it replicated a movie. other examples include starbuck’s coffee shops, which have spread their fantasized simulacrum of an american corner café, that probably never existed, all over the world like a virus.6 this style of architecture and design has been theorised as “hyperreality” by umberto eco and jean baudrillard. it can be understood as an absolute reversal of benjamin’s notion of aura because its key principle is precisely that the replica triumphs over the original, not merely as its replacement or substitute, but as the preferred object. the pinnacle example of this is perhaps the franchised “fake” irish pub which was invented outside of ireland but has lately been imported there, doubtless because the tourists expect to see such places and not the actual more modern pubs that evolved in the decades since the “fake” version was fixed as the image of what a pub should look like. the cloud. platform capitalism is enabled by computer technology, which, far from being weightless and frictionless as techno-utopians like to proclaim, actually sits rather heavily on the earth. as benjamin bratton (2015) puts it, the cloud is a “terraforming project, covering the globe in subterranean wires and switches and overhead satellite relays, simultaneously centralizing and decentralizing computing and data storage and the social relations that depend upon them” (116). it has very specific infrastructure demands too. among other things it needs “cheap energy, cheap space, proximity to ocean passage, lax regulation on data storage, earthquake and flood avoidance, perimeter security, ideal temperature control” and so on (116).7 in many ways, the server farm is the most typical architectural form of control society. undoubtedly, it is also the least noticed. in part this is because it is usually hidden from view, built into old coal mines, ice caves, disused shopping malls, and office buildings, but also because it is often very drab and looks like an ordinary warehouse. but there can be no question that these structures are among the most important buildings on earth: global communications would collapse without them. if they look like ordinary warehouses, it may perhaps seem wrong to suggest they are a new form. in one sense this is obviously true, but only if we look at them from the outside. when we consider what goes on inside these buildings, it is clear they are in fact a new form and one that is going to proliferate as our global use of the internet and data processing services increases (carroll, 2020). their most important characteristic, which perhaps makes them unique, is that they are not designed with humans, or indeed any living creature, in mind, yet they contain within them a vast record of human activity. they are windowless, airless, dark (“lights out” is their dream), soulless places where machines hum and whir and humans are on hand solely to attend to the needs of the computers. control spaces are ultimately ahuman spaces.8 i include under this category so-called fulfilment centres (amazon’s word for its distribution and warehouse centres—it is perhaps worth adding that amazon is one of the largest providers of cloud services, which constitute nearly a third of its business), too, because they are similarly designed for robots, even if they still employ humans, and offer nothing but blank walls to the outside observer. if the mall was the first form of control architecture, then 18 architecture and control society p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 the cloud may well be the last, because it is the single most powerful threat to the urban fabric yet produced. people who shop online, work online, entertain themselves online, and so on, do not need or want malls, theatres, stores, or even high streets. the camp. the commodities boom underpinning the aforementioned spaces has its dark but nonetheless “open secret”, which is the fact that it is premised on camps. contemporary society exhibits several varieties of camp—refugee camps, asylum camps, workers camps, sweatshops, and slums, to name a few. as deleuze puts it, “[o]ne thing, it’s true, hasn’t changed—capitalism still keeps three quarters of humanity in extreme poverty, too poor to have debts and too numerous to be confined: control will have to deal not only with vanishing frontiers, but with mushrooming shantytowns and ghettos” (1995: 181). camps are not recent inventions—as agamben (2000: 38-39) notes, historians debate whether the first concentration camps appeared in cuba (1896) or south africa (1899-1902)—but they have become ubiquitous in the period since the second world war and as mike davis (1992) documented with care in his book planet of slums, they are proliferating. they are defined by their hostility toward life. in most cases, they only barely meet the minimum requirements for sustaining life. what sets them apart, though, from the slums and prison camps in times gone past is the fact these places exist amidst absolute abundance—we have more than enough wealth, food, and resources on a planetary scale for all people to live well (this does not mean to a so-called “american standard” necessarily, but it does mean to a standard capable of sustaining a good life). we might blame religion and racism and geopolitics, but ultimately it is simply a failure of hospitality toward the other. it is the ultimate form of the closed door. lastly, these four forms are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive—doubtless other forms could be adduced: for example, i am tempted to nominate transport hubs like airports, or freeway interchanges (à la banham), as possible candidates, and i expect there are other plausible candidates too. by the same token, the line between malls and theme parks is blurred, as michael sorkin’s great collection of essays variations on a theme park (1992) demonstrated. but so is the line between the cloud and the camp inasmuch as each tends toward the inhuman in their own way. if disciplinary society yielded spaces designed to survey and form humans into subjects, then we can say by way of contrast that control society is yielding spaces that transform those subjects into customers, data points, and finally redundant bodies that can be piled on the scrapheap. acknowledgements my thanks to farzaneh haghighi and nikolina bobic for commissioning this essay and inviting me to speak at their conference. i would also like thank chris l. smith and gareth abrahams for commenting on an earlier draft of this essay. 19 architecture and control society p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 endnotes 1 han (2017: 24) taxes agamben (unjustly in my view) for failing to recognise that contemporary technology is no longer disciplinary in its mode of operation. 2 by business (l’enterprise), deleuze means what we would today refer to in english as a corporation, which is a very different kind of entity from the organisations that existed in the disciplinary era, for which marx was both poet laureate and vivisector. 3 i do not necessarily agree with all of srnicek’s arguments, but there is no doubting the insightfulness of his notion of platform capitalism. 4 writing almost two decades ago, wendy hui kyong chun (2006: 6-9) argues that deleuze gives too much credit to the powers of control society’s capabilities. while there may be some truth in that, i would say that the issue isn’t whether control society can do the things we imagine it is capable of, but whether it would do the things it might be capable of. in other words, i think the ethical question is more important than the technical question, which is in any case in a constant state of being overcome. on this score, it is clear that there are no implicit moral or ethical limits to the lengths data companies will go in pursuit of profit. this can be demonstrated in any number references agamben, g. (2000). means without end: notes on politics (v. binetti and c. casarino, trans.). ma: university of minnesota press. berlant, l. (2011). cruel optimism. durham, nc: duke university press. branley, a. (2019) google search data used by pharma giant to bombard users with ads for addictive opioids. abc news, 13 july 2019. retried from https:// www.abc.net.au/news/2019-0713/searches-data-mined-bypharma-giant-to-promote-newopioid/11300396. bratton, b. (2015). the stack: on software and sovereignty. boston, ma: mit press. bridle, j. (2018). new dark age: technology and the end of the future. london, uk: verso. buchanan, i. (2006). practical deleuzism and postmodern space. new formations, 57, 26-38. buchanan, i. (2005). space in the age of non-place. in i. buchanan and g. lambert (eds.), deleuze and space (pp. 16-35). edinburgh, uk: edinburgh university press. carroll, r. (2020). why irish data centre boom is complicating climate efforts. the guardian, 6 jan 2020. retrieved from https://www.theguardian. com/environment/2020/ jan/06/why-irish-datacentre-boom-complicatingclimate-efforts?cmp=twt_aenvironment_b-gdneco. chun, w. (2006). control and freedom: power and paranoia in the age of fibre optics. boston, massachusetts: mit press. davis, m. (1992). city of quartz: excavating the future in los angeles. ny, ny: vintage books. deleuze, g. (1990). post-scriptum sur les sociétés des contrôle. l’autre journal (no.1, mai). deleuze, g. (1995). postscript on control societies. in g. deleuze, negotiations 1972-1990 (pp. 177182). ny, ny: columbia university press. deleuze, g. and guattari, f. (1983). anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia (r. hurley, m. seem and h. r. lane trans.). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. dosse, f. (2010). gilles deleuze and félix guattari: intersecting lives. ny, ny: columbia university press. foucault, m. (1975). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (alan sheridan trans.). ny, ny: vintage books. han, b. (2018). psychopolitics: neoliberalism and the new technologies of power (e. butler trans.). london, uk: verso. sorkin, m. (1992). variations on a theme park: the new american city and the end of public space. ny, ny: hill and wang. srnicek, n. (2017). platform capitalism. london, uk: polity. zuboff, s. 2019 ten questions for shoshana zuboff. the guardian, 20 jan 2019. retrieved from https://www.theguardian. com/technology/2019/jan/20/ shoshana-zuboff-age-ofsurveillance-capitalism-googlefacebook. of ways, so i will just offer one particularly egregious example of a drug company, mundipharma, using google searches to identify possible opioid users suffering from constipation by tracking their search and then sending them targeted ads for their laxative laced product. see branley (2019). 5 it is has been theorised in these terms by koolhaas and jameson, among others, as i discuss in buchanan (2006). 6 i have written more extensively about the simulacrum and space in buchanan (2005). 7 in 2015, it was estimated that the world’s data centres combined used 3% of the world’s electricity supply, which is greater than the total amount of electricity consumed by the uk (bridle, 2018: 63). 8 for example, amazon, which is both the largest retail company on earth and the largest provider of data services, organises its fulfilment centres according to a machine logic known as “chaotic storage” that is impenetrable to the humans, though not the robots, who work there (bridle, 2018: 114-115). 59 1 see finn forham (2011), which focuses on the labyrinth in the novel and examines heidegger’s relevance to house of leaves. inscapes: interiority in architectural fiction stefanie e. sobelle the dream of discovering a hidden room in one’s house is common, but what would happen in reality if one’s domestic interior began proliferating doorways, rooms, and hallways where previously there were none? mark z. danielewski’s 2000 novel house of leaves examines this proposition. the novel centres on the notorious (but missing) documentary by a celebrated photojournalist, will navidson, in which navidson leaves new york city in a vain attempt to rescue a troubled marriage. the bourgeois navidsons – “will, karen, chad, and daisy” – move into a peculiar old country house in virginia, which turns out to be larger on the inside than on the outside, an uncanny and unfortunate source of horror for its inhabitants. yet the interior/exterior disconnect of the navidson house also allegorises the heideggerean difficulty of dwelling after the advent of modernism. according to heidegger in “building, dwelling, thinking” (original translation 1951), building has ceased to concretise dwelling as a remaining or staying in place, a troubling development then exacerbated in the second half of the twentieth century, when building seemed to serve instead an incessant human uprooting or mobility, a consequence of late capitalism and globalisation. along these lines, heidegger suggests that: … the real plight of dwelling does not lie merely in a lack of houses. the real plight of dwelling is indeed older than the world wars and their destruction. … the real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell. (heidegger 1997: 109) the plight of habitation then rests in the false assumption that building, constructing more shelter, will resolve this questionability in dwelling. danielewski explores this challenge of facing dwelling anew in house of leaves, a novel remarkable in its condensing of this plight.1 while house of leaves presents a series of characters challenged by their attempts to inhabit constructed spaces, danielewski conceives of the book object, like the house itself, as another form of building in which we might dwell. therefore, the book faces a similar dilemma as other forms of shelter. at the turn of the twentieth century, danielewski presents the book object itself as in danger of extinction with the exponential rise of media technologies, technologies that potentially render the traditional book structure obsolete for readers, who now must learn to dwell anew in narratives presented by digital formats. both the navidson house, with its infinitesimally shifting and expanding interior spaces, and house of leaves, dense with allusions and footnotes that suggest another kind of infinity, preclude habitation or a comfortable residing within – at least in any traditional sense – as the novel’s opening epigraph hostilely suggests: “this is not for you.” yet house of leaves is a provocative case of an author representing an architectural interior as a means for exploring the possibilities of the novel form, and in turn the complexity of dwelling as suggested by heidegger. this essay argues that as much as house of leaves articulates an impossible residence, it also affirms potentiality, challenging the reader to inhabit the novel – and by extension, the world – in newly attentive and intentional ways. in literary studies, the development of the novel can be tracked through a type of literature i have referred to throughout my scholarship as the “architectural novel,” for which the thematic instability of domestic space merges with the formal interstices 12 2 woolf often uses such spatial analogies to talk about reading and writing fiction: in jacob’s room (1922), she uses the objects of an uninhabited room to represent the absence – and profound loss – of a young soldier killed during world war i; in orlando (1928), the inheritance of a house is in parallel with the protagonist’s development as a writer; in a room of one’s own (1929), most famously, woolf suggests that a private room and an independent income are the two most important factors for a woman’s ability to write; in her rather opaque short story “the haunted house,” reading and narrative are in an interplay of haunting and habitation. mrs. dalloway (1925), however concerned it is with the relationship between the collective passing of a single day and the life memory of an individual, also privileges its interior spaces; the two climactic occurrences of the novel, septimus’s suicide and clarissa’s moment in her little room, are each the realisation of a subject’s connection to the outside world from the position of the house’s interior. 3 for further elaboration on danielewski’s use of criticism in the novel, see steven belletto (2009). construction of the novel, a term that certainly applies to house of leaves. twentieth-century writers such as virginia woolf and georges perec found architecture to be a useful medium through which to rethink the novel form and its relationship to modern society. woolf, as an example, draws a plan for to the lighthouse (1927) in her journals – a large block h – that she refers to as “two blocks joined by a corridor” (hussey 1996: 306).2 for la vie mode d’emploi (1978; life, a user’s manual, 2008), perec employs a section of a nineteenth-century apartment house across which he plays a game of chess; each flat in which the knight lands corresponds to a particular chapter. both works tease out the relationships between book and novel, house and home, structure and inhabitant, thus daring readers to explore how and why domestic space is constituted in particular ways. a valuable approach to understand the architectural novel’s treatment of interiority is through the concept of “inscape,” a term that has been used historically in several ways: gerard manley hopkins’s romantic, poetic sense of inscape meant the inherent quality of a thing (higgins 2006), while roberto matta’s surrealist, aesthetic term referred to the representation of an artist’s mental landscape (cernushi 2004). for my purposes here, however, the term describes the realm of the interior in opposition to a surrounding exterior – inscape as opposed to landscape. my definition, while evocative of its predecessors, extends the treatment of domestic interiority beyond prevailing readings of the home as a metaphor for the psychological. i argue that instead, an author’s efforts to depict inscape aims to capture interiority as experienced on two registers: first, by the characters in the novel and second, by the reader of the book. like the novel, the home is an imaginative space with limitless possibilities, as opposed to the more rigid structure of the book or house that contains it; the architectural novel is then a novel that treats the rigid book object as a clearly delineated spatial domain whose containing action nevertheless holds an expansive, imaginative novel within. the navidson house on ash tree lane analogises narratives in general; house of leaves, as i have suggested, is a parallel project of two structures (book and house) that are both bigger on the inside than on the outside, just as the actions of reading and living are necessarily larger than the objects that enclose them. its content, or story, parallels and even interacts with its form, or construction; the novel masquerades as an assemblage of texts consisting of multiple narrators, namely a semi-itinerant 25-year-old in los angeles, johnny truant, who finds and reads a pseudo-scholarly account of the film by a deceased blind bibliophile, zampanò. the whole collection includes truant’s introduction and one set of footnotes; zampanò’s notes, borrowed from mock and real sources that range from literary journals to popular media; an appendix of the letters from truant’s institutionalised mother; and notes presented by some unnamed “editors” along the way. danielewski includes not only multiple narrators, characters, plots, settings, and fonts, but also a variety of novelistic genres: the horror novel, the epistolary novel, the angry young man novel, the road trip tale, the adventure, the romance, et. al. a reader of house of leaves can find within zampanò’s criticism of the film derridean, freudian, marxist, and even heideggerean analyses, among others.3 this inclusion of criticism implicates the collaborative nature of reading – the consulting of secondary materials. however, the included criticism preempts the reader’s ability to “leave” this book and enter another. this excess contributes to danielewski’s efforts at representing all states of the novel – all states of the reading process. although the architectural novel is not a nation-specific genre, house of leaves is exemplary of its particular import for united states literature. navidson and his 61 wife have chosen a now outdated structure in which to work on their relationship; their choice of a nineteenth-century domicile reflects a prevalent american nostalgia for an imagined restorative domesticity that does not in fact easily extend to contemporary living. indeed, twentieth-century united states literature very rarely depicts modernist architecture at all. while the architecture within the novel belongs firmly in the nineteenth century (as does its most prominent narrative genre – the gothic), the architecture of the novel – a collaged collection of footnotes, interviews, poems, letters, graphic play, and visual images – has its footing firmly in the twentieth. through this formal experimentation, the “book” – a threatened literary medium and an alternative space in which to explore the questionability of dwelling, in heidegger’s sense – finds renewed importance. house of leaves then finds its roots in an earlier, more canonical american text – william faulkner’s absalom, absalom! (1936) – which also suggests that the anachronistic nineteenth-century house does not ultimately satisfy the mandate of twentieth-century habitation, or what beatriz colomina has argued is the “modern transformation of the house [that] produces a space defined by walls of (moving) images”. as colomina writes, “to be ‘inside this space is only to see. to be ‘outside’ is to be in the image, to be seen.” (colomina 1996: 7) the anachronistic house is at odds with this visual modern and its public propagation of the private interior as a readily circulated image. in absalom, four characters narrate over 70 years of local history, and the central house in the novel, sutpen’s hundred, exists primarily through their gossip and stories. while the narrators all consider sutpen’s hundred to be a mausoleum too grand for its own good, characters live only in a very few of its rooms, and the novel’s most significant events occur at its thresholds rather than its interior. the narration of architectural inscapes in absalom plays at the border between characters’ experiences of these domestic spaces and the storytellers’ perceptions of those characters and of themselves. the novel’s dense, repetitive structure becomes, analogically, a literary house in which the reader is kept outside certain rooms of knowledge, allowed only into the zones of inherited information that the narrators have to offer. in turn, absalom’s houses are not capable of sheltering their inhabitants but instead tend toward the stuffy, the ominous, the inescapable, and the uninhabitable. while faulkner’s overlapping blocks of story attempt the same experiments artistically – simultaneity, dynamism, multiple perspectives, stream of consciousness – and are concerned with the same issues socially and culturally as those of figures ranging from james joyce and gertrude stein to pablo picasso and marcel duchamp, he uses these spatial, temporal, and narrative tools of modernism to depict a vernacular landscape still mired in the pre-modern, in the same way that european modernist architecture arriving in the united states around the time he was writing did not at first change the ordinary landscape so much as change the way in which it could be understood. that is, the innovations of modernist houses, even though they do not show up in the plot of absalom, called for a rethinking/reworking of how one dwells in a house much as the literary avant-garde rethought/reworked how one dwells in a book. absalom’s innovative structure suggests another mode of habitation, a resistance to the implicate limitations of the domestic settings it appropriates, and as such offers the modern reader an escape from the sorry fate of its characters. faulkner, through his treatment of inscape, suggests alternatives to the conventional narrative and, like danielewski, new possibilities for dwelling. colomina writes of mass media culture, “this new condition in which one knows ‘everything about everything’ represents a critical transformation of traditional culture.” (1996: 160) faulkner and danielewski both explore architectural interiors through interstices 12 the arrangement of information – an exploration of what we know and how we know it. as i have suggested, house of leaves, running to more than 700 pages, is a complex analogue for the wider possibilities of dwelling. danielewski says of his own project, really the only thing challenging about my book is the idea of a book itself … but books don’t have to be so limited … multiple stories can lie side by side on the page … hell pages can be tilted, turned upside down, even read backwards. i’d love to see that. someone on the subway spinning a book as they’re reading it … [but] books have had this capability all along … hell, go open up the talmud. books are remarkable constructions with enormous possibilities … but somehow the analogue powers of these wonderful bundles of paper have been forgotten ... i’d like to see the book reintroduced for all it really is. (danielewski 2002) danielewski’s novel is the result of a 10-year exploration into “the analogue powers of these wonderful bundles of paper,” that is, into the forgotten possibilities the book format has to offer, especially as their resurrection impinges on a future for the novel. in so doing, he creates a text that is in many ways a house of leaves – a structure full of leaves (as in pages), a living organism (leaves as foliage), an architectural, combinatorial structure (leaves as hinges or movable sections), an emotional catalogue (love letters in the book are referred to as “leaves of feeling,” (2000: 350)), and even something active or agent, conjuring “leaves” as a verb (to cause or allow to remain; to give over to another; to abandon; etc.). house of leaves enacts a unique relationship between the book (as material object) and the novel (as non-material object). the book, then, is the reliable container, the novel within an excessive uncertainty – the novel within larger and more unruly than the container itself. such experimental literature disrupts expected entries into the text, in turn creating a more profound invocation of interiority, one with, perhaps, more potential than our traditional habitats. with house of leaves, danielewski pointedly disinvites his reader with the aforementioned epigraph and interrupts subsequent entries by appropriating and then revising the collage form, a form dependent on the materiality of its fragments, such as it was understood and effected by the historical avant-garde. he is then innovative in drawing out the analogue powers of the book by maintaining his commitment to the untapped resources of the material object. consider the difference between a digital watch and an analogue watch: the former represents the movement of time in flashes, discretely, which cannot capture every state of time’s progress. the analogue, its opposite, represents the movement of time spatially, continuously; no state of time goes unrepresented. danielewski is interested in the conflation of time and space for representation, particularly as it is enacted by the reader’s corporeal movement among the pages, for the spatial configuration of the book can be made to represent every state of the novel, or at least attempts to do so. meanwhile, the content of house of leaves, like its postmodern predecessors, reflects the problem of the book’s relation to the novel and helps us to think about it: the central narrative concerns how a house (as material object) does or can represent a home (as immaterial object), suggesting that a house capable of representing a home in such an analogue fashion – in all its states – is an uncanny, unhomely place, but a total event, located in both time and space, nonetheless. homes are generally represented digitally by the discrete structure of rooms and hallways, but house of leaves represents home in an analogue form, thereby showing every state of being at home. 63 the more the navidsons unpack, organise, and settle in, the more previously-nonexistent hallways appear, and then grow, and then grow to unimaginable, unmappable sizes and directions. any attempt at habitation thus turns into a problem of representation for, as one character puts it, “the house as a trope for the unlimited and the unknowable” (danielewski 2000: 6). the proliferation of the house in virginia interrupts habitual activity – the family’s attempts at both habitation and habitude. the house refuses to be experienced distractedly and instead absorbs its own inhabitants, who become obsessed with and lost in its spaces. likewise, the readers of navidson’s house become obsessed with and lost in the spaces of narrative, first truant and zampanò (who each descend into a kind of madness) and then the reader of house of leaves (which, 10 years after its first publication, maintains a cult following and obsessive fan base set on decoding its myriad riddles and allusions). for danielewski, the actions of reading and living are necessarily larger than the objects that contain them. form – what in literature one might consider the container – and content interact with and represent each other to become inextricable. in chapter ix, danielewski progressively represents the architecture of the house visually on the page and plays on the relationship between a container and its contents. here, the actual layout begins to look like a kind of section of a very confused building. zampanò begins listing famous architectural sites in one column on the left page, from top to bottom. inverted and in italics on the far right page, he lists famous architects, in no relation to the building sites from the left. both columns serve visually as structural support for the centre, as between them are the overlapping stories of truant’s narrative and zampanò’s account of navidson’s, and these are broken up further by other doorways and windows, which in this example consist of an upside down list of films on page 132 and a sideways list of novels on page 133, each in turn cataloguing spaces of horror. the windows themselves are the most explicit example, the text (which lists building tools and materials) reading front to back on the right side and backwards when one turns the page, as though the text is literally written on glass that can be seen from the front and the back. the text continues to offer a variety of openings, passages, stories, and entries, any one left: page 132. from house of leaves by mark z. danielewski, copyright © 2000 by mark z. danielewski. used by permission of pantheon books, a division of random house, inc. right: page 133. from house of leaves by mark z. danielewski, copyright © 2000 by mark z. danielewski. used by permission of pantheon books, a division of random house, inc. interstices 12 4 mark hansen (2004) also briefly alludes to winchester. of which the reader can follow, either singularly or dynamically. not only are the two narratives intertwined, both characters lost in a labyrinth of pursuing knowledge, but the reader too must follow multiple paths, the act of reading itself progressively personal and internal. house of leaves demands a corporeal and active engagement with its readers – a literal movement among its passages. danielewski’s assertion of such a bodily relationship with the book – the act of spinning it on the subway, of interacting with it spatially and temporally – is why the book’s materiality is so important here: the immediacy and physicality of a book both resists and transcends the passivity and flaccidity that are, as i suggested in the opening, so dangerously a part of contemporary culture. a built precedent for the literary exploits undertaken in house of leaves can be found in the winchester mystery house (1884-1922), which similarly expresses a proliferating complexity, a restless mobility of form, and a perplexing operational logic. the winchester house was constructed in the late nineteenth century at a site near san jose, california. its owner was the superstitious sarah winchester (heir to the winchester repeating arms company) who, having lost her husband and child prematurely, believed that the victims of the company’s guns were now ghosts looking for revenge. the winchester repeating arms company was famous for inventing the rifle of choice in the “wild west,” and thus the name winchester implies a nineteenth-century westward expansion that mobilised violence, lawlessness, and a break from the civilised order of the east.4 at the advice of a psychic, winchester believed that unless she built a dwelling configured both to trick and contain the spirits – which meant endlessly rebuilding and modifying it – she herself would fall prey to their vengeance. as a consequence, she moved west and began construction, a process that continued for four decades. as a result, the house became a bizarre maze of corridors leading nowhere, doors opening onto nothing, stairs leading into walls, etc., resembling architectural collage. the house, a testament not only to turn-of-the-century superstition and colonial guilt but also to diligence and tenacity, has become a major tourist attraction in northern california. far from being a sanctuary from chaos, the winchester house was nonetheless an act of resistance – a site that was strictly maintained as a bulwark against social upheaval. what danielewski and winchester have in common, not only contextually but also formally, is an obsession with passages that almost always fail to perform their function, to close in adequately on a particular destination. danielewski’s house is both claustrophobic and agoraphobic: confining, yet so expansive as to cause terror. its passages, not its inhabitants, generate more passages; the house turns against its inhabitants.5 the navidson family members are seen and see left: “exterior photo of mansion.” winchester, s. (1884-1922). winchester house. san jose, ca. used by permission of the winchester mystery house, llc. right: “staircase to ceiling.” winchester, s. (1884-1922). winchester house. san jose, ca. used by permission of the winchester mystery house, llc. 65 5 the house literally consumes navidson’s twin brother tom, and in another instance, attacks claustrophobic karen green: “karen avoids the threat in her bedroom only to find herself in a space rapidly enlarging, the size swallowing up all light . . . the darkness almost immediately crushes karen. she collapses.” (danielewski 2000: 341) each other, but primarily through video recordings. at the same time that truant feels paralysed, the family has become increasingly homebound, living and working in an ever more impersonal space. in his treatment of an interior larger on the inside than on the outside, and in his interest in multiplying passages, danielewski finds predecessors in something like stephen millhauser’s 1997 novel martin dressler, in which the title character designs a hotel, the grand cosmo, that rivals the world, mimicking it in its entirety, past and present. one might think also of rem koolhaas’s description of the downtown athletic club in delirious new york (1977), where in the undifferentiated, repetitive scheme of the skyscraper, there exists the possibility for endless variations and superimpositions of an eternal interiority that includes everything, even “eating oysters with boxing gloves, naked, on the 9th floor” according to koolhaas (quoted in hays 2000: 327). an even earlier example might be walter benjamin’s massive passagen-werk (1927-1940; the arcades project, 2002), a dense collection of passages about passages. indeed, danielewski uses juxtaposed textual passages to think about – write about – architectural passages. passages, themselves transitory, are spatial and temporal, transporting a subject from one location in one time to another location in another time. textually, time and space collide, as a reader can revisit different passages slowly, quickly, backward, etc., particularly in a non-linear, collaged work. the interaction of passages on the page allows the events in the navidson record to occur simultaneously with johnny truant’s narrative and even with his analyses of zampanò’s footnotes. as zampanò intrudes not only on the passage of the body text with a footnote, he has interrupted the reader’s journey through that passage by providing interpretation himself, both closing doors to one route and opening passageways to others. truant, reading this shifting or interruption of passages, responds to this textual moment with sickness, as he, our fictional interpreter, like the reading process, has been violated: . . . this morning, when i went into work, i didn’t feel at all myself. it’s probably just a coincidence–i mean that there’s some kind of connection between my state of mind and the navidson record or even a few sentences penned by a former nazi . . . i’ve no fucking clue. . . . i walk out into the hallway. that’s a big mistake. i should of stayed near people. . . . instead i’m alone . . . then my nostrils flare with the scent of something bitter & foul, something inhuman, reeking with so much rot and & years, telling me in the language of nausea that i’m not alone. something’s behind me. of course, i deny it. it’s impossible to deny. i wanna puke. to get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don’t let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you . . . something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact you can only hear it as silence. johnny has been reading an extended passage from heidegger’s being and time (1927) excerpted by zampanò; he in turn offers an english translation in his footnotes, an act then followed by the above episode. here, reading – a private and thus vulnerable act, usually temporal – becomes a spatial violation. one is trapped interstices 12 in and by text, unable to read without the spectre of criticism, previous and forthcoming, “quietly closing in”. entering passages – literary and fictional – becomes progressively shadowy, anxiety producing. passages only purport to take the reader through the narrative but instead lead further and further away from a singular clear exegesis. the very process of interpretation, for johnny as well as for the reader, is replicated in the maze of passages within the book: textual (citations, overlapping commentaries), visual (page layout), fictional (the house itself proliferates the further into the book one goes), and physical (the reader’s spinning, browsing, turning of the book to read it). danielewski does more here than merely disrupt the temporal linearity of a novel; he takes up the three-dimensional space of architecture and attempts to translate that to literature, including not only its spatial qualities, but also an analogue movement through its passageways. in so doing, danielewski causes the usual space-time continuum of passages to break down, as they fail to perform their linear transitional function, instead breeding a swarm of movement possibilities. these movement possibilities, as it turns out, are infinite. the novel offers the following quotation by dagobert frey: every home is an architecturally structured “path”: the specific possibilities of movement and the drives toward movement as one proceeds from the entrance through the sequence of spatial entities have been pre-determined by the architectural structuring of that space and one experiences the space accordingly. but at the same time, in its relation to the surrounding space, it is a “goal,” and we either advance toward this goal or depart from it. (danielewski 2000: 153) frey emphasises the simultaneous time-space experience of moving through a passage and the personal, intentional quality of that experience. if every home is an architecturally structured path, every architecturally structured path is a kind of home, including the novel itself. cognitive scientist douglas r. hofstadter, another voice in the novel, describes the design or layout of the house as a version of zeno’s paradox: oh it’s very simple. if the arrow is here at a and the target is here at b, then in the course of getting to b the arrow must travel at least half that distance which i’ll call point c. now in getting from c to b the arrow must travel half that distance, call that point d . . . you realize that you can keep dividing up space forever . . . until . . . well, the arrow never reaches b. (danielewski 2000: 356) under this logic, the house in all its renditions pursues a goal but never reaches it and is thus infinite in potential. house of leaves, a multitude of architecturally structured passages always emphasises the process of reaching that goal. yet such infinity also produces a profound anxiety, an anxiety that is the ultimate pathos of the american novel at the end of the twentieth century. the only solution to that anxiety, danielewski seems to argue, is to behave like benjamin’s angel of history surveying the ruins that lead to the present, to uncover the possibilities that have been thus far passed over, in order to develop the material conditions antecedent to a given institution (home and novel). as truant takes 67 to the road in search of the house that has been haunting him, he interrogates the history of its location (virginia) and the very founding of the nation; he finds “no ash tree lane” (danielewski, 2000: 499), only the jamestown colony and colonial williamsburg of early america (danielewski, 2000: 500-2). the anxiety produced by the text comes from the tensions between privacy and public events, between attempting interpretation and the weight of literary and critical history, between expansion and solipsism, safety and violence, passages and stories. the architectural novel offers more than a metaphorical relationship between building and book; rather, it recognises that books are buildings and, as such, enact conditions of living at the end of the twentieth century. the architectural novel allows for the question of dwelling to become dwelling itself, rather than its certitude or its banal repetition. house of leaves embraces, exemplifies, and demonstrates these concepts through its excess, its hyperness, its exorbitance, suggesting that literary inscapes, and their infinite possibilities, will rescue the novel – and perhaps civilisation as well – from potential extinction. references belletto, s. (2009). rescuing interpretation with mark danielewski: the genre of scholarship in house of leaves. genre (99-117), fall/winter 42, 3-4. benjamin, w. (2002). the arcades project (h. eiland & k. mclaughlin, trans.). cambridge (mass.): belknap press. cernushi, c. (2004). mindscapes and mind games: visualizing thought in the work of matta and his abstract expressionist contemporaries. in e. goizuet (ed.), matta: making the invisible visible (48-80). boston (mass.): mcmullen museum of art, boston college. colomina, b. (1996). privacy and publicity. cambridge (mass.): mit press. danielewski, m. z. “a conversation with mark danielewski.” conducted by sophie cottrell. april 28, 2002. retrieved july 9, 2006, from http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0400/ danielewski/interview.html danielewski, m. z. (2000). house of leaves. new york: pantheon. faulkner, w. (1990). absalom, absalom! new york: vintage books. forham, f. (2011). katabasis in danielewski’s house of leaves and two other recent american novels. in j. bray, j. & a. gibbons (eds.), mark z. danielewski. manchester: manchester university press (33-51). hansen, m. (2004). the digital topography of mark z. danielewski’s house of leaves. in contemporary literature, volume 45, number 4 (597-636). hays, k.m. (ed.). (2000). architectural theory since 1968. cambridge (mass): mit press. heidegger, m. (1997). building, dwelling, thinking (a. hofstadter, trans.). in n. leach (ed.), rethinking architecture: a reader in cultural theory (100-109). london: routledge. higgins, l. (ed.). (2006). the collected works of gerard manley hopkins: volume iv: oxford essays and notes 1863-1868. oxford: oxford university press. hussey, m. (1996). virginia woolf a to z. oxford: oxford university press. koolhaas, r. (1977). delirious new york: a retroactive manifesto for manhattan. new york: the monacelli press. millhauser, s. (1997). martin dressler: the tale of an american dreamer. new york: vintage books. perec, g. (2008). life, a user’s manual (d. bellos, trans.). boston (mass.): david r. godine. woolf, v. (2002). “a haunted house.” in a haunted house and other stories (3-5). london: harcourt, inc. woolf, v. (2002). mrs. dalloway. london: harcourt, inc. woolf, v. (1989). a room of one’s own. london: harcourt, inc. woolf, v. (1973). orlando: a biography. london: harcourt, inc. woolf, v. (1989). to the lighthouse. london: harcourt, inc. interstices 09 125 [arc/sec]: reactive architecture st. paul st gallery aut university 12 september – 4 october 2008 review by carl douglas above all we must remember that nothing that exists or comes into being, lasts or passes can be thought of as entirely isolated, entirely unadulterated. one thing is always permeated, accompanied, covered, or enveloped by another; it produces effects and endures them. and when so many things work through one another, where are we to find what governs and what serves, what leads the way and what follows? (johann von goethe, in hensel & menges, 2006: 16). new zealand is geographically a small and isolated place; it is difficult to arrive at, and requires effort to leave. isolation has attained the status of a cultural myth here: the image of architecture standing alone against a sublime landscape has proved remarkably durable. maybe there is also a certain isolationism at work in our enthusiastic adoption of the detached experience of suburbia. [arc/sec], a recent exhibition of environmentally-responsive architectural systems at aut’s st. paul st gallery, is premised on the value of interconnectedness instead of isolation. as goethe recognized, few things make sense in isolation. in his morphological studies, he concluded that natural form could only be understood in the context of the forces which have given it shape. to understand something, we need to understand how it engages with everything else. aligning with this view, each of the projects in [arc/sec] is conceived as a response to contextual forces: social, cultural and especially natural. they are understood in terms of formation rather than form, morphogenesis rather than morphology. the exhibition is unabashedly high-tech, with almost every exhibit hooked up to a fat bundle of cables of some kind. an array of digital tools (projectors, cnc machines, laser-cutters, servo-motors, scripted modelling and software interfaces) are employed. uwe rieger, the impetus behind [arc/sec], writes in his introduction to the catalogue (a basic document, but well-illustrated) that these tools have “redefined” not only the range of forms available for architecture, but its fabrication, its flexibility, sensitivity and capacity for communication as well. the intent is a long way from arbitrary blobbery, the exuberant and entertaining but ultimately expensive and unrewarding play of complex forms permitted by digital modelling. blobs are now entirely unremarkable, if not yet ubiquitous in the built environment. in [arc/sec] digital tools are used to explore materiality and environmental processes, not simply experiment with form. many of the projects in this exhibition are in fact entirely agnostic regarding form. arch[id], a project by barrington gohns, fraser horton, julian legg and rayneil singh (fourth-year students at the university of auckland) hangs overhead like a skeletal reef glowing red in the darkened gallery (fig. 1). made from a kit of laser-cut perspex parts assembled into a flexible frame using penrose tiling, the shape of the surface could be arbitrarily extended and is capable of flexing into a wide range of doubly-curved geometries. mounted in this frame are pneumatic brushes which splay out and retract in delayed response to movement detected by an array of sensors. when a group of brushes burst into flower, the whole structure shudders momentarily, recalling similar installations by philip beesley (his hylozoic soil, similar in materiality and operation, has tendrils that coil and uncoil in response to the passage of observers).1 trailing from the back of the structure are tubes, like so many intravenous drips, connecting to a compressor hidden somewhere in the ceiling. the catalogue outlines one potential use of this technology as a “light modulating facade” for a residential tower at north head (a large-scale gesture somewhat at odds with the fragile filigree structure on display in the gallery) ([arc/sec], 2008: 22). archi[id] seems to be closely modelled on wideshut, by xth-berlin with jannes wurps and kai bergmann. here too an extensible system of lightweight components acts as a dynamic filter and screen which responds to variations in light. each module is an umbrella driven by a servo-motor connected to a light sensor. the umbrellas, onto each of which is projected an image of a daisy, wilt and retract when the light is interrupted and bloom again when the shadow has passed. there is a steampunk charm to the combination of the prim, even victorian, parasol and the sci-fi control system. the phototropic screen was developed as a prototype for a low-energy skin, and in the catalogue it is shown providing an animated wrapping for an otherwise mundane laboratory building. the socks-and-sandals sustainability of last century was dominated by the idea of minimizing environmental impact. through ever-increasing efficiency it was hoped that eventually humans could exist without traces. this philosophy is coming under question. as environmental advocates mcdonough and braungart write, “is our goal to starve ourselves? to deprive ourselves of our own culture, our own industries, our own presence on the planet, to aim for zero?” (2002: 90). instead, in their book cradle to cradle, they call for rich and intelligent 1 hylozoic soil (montreal, 2007) can be seen at http://www.philipbeesley architect.com/along with other examples of beesley’s intriguing work. fig. 1 fig.1: arch[id]. photograph by carl douglas interstices 09 127 interactions with the environment, so that everything we produce or construct increases ecological and cultural richness. could sustainability be re-imagined in terms of the delight of touch rather than the guilt of contamination? luka hinse’s carrera, a slot-car track powered by gym cycles, could serve as a model for this kind of participation. the visible flow of energy from one place to another becomes a kind of haptic play. the body is directly engaged. in addition, the project starkly exposes the immeasurable irony of a society that displaces the exertions of travel into the parodic labour of the gym, fretting about energystarvation while anxiously burning off an energy surplus. the calculus of energy loss and gain is most explicitly addressed in zeroplus, “an international research initiative to design, build and monitor new zealand’s first zero energy house” ([arc/sec], 2008: 24). zeroplus demonstrates that responsive architecture does not necessarily imply electronics and curvy surfaces. “we should not forget,” says rieger, “that dynamic reactive or sensitive architecture has been around for thousands of years.” (2008: 5) vegetation is used as for climate control. the house, a simple box-and-deck arrangement enclosed by a light mesh outer envelope, is embedded in a massive hedge, which divides it into two residences, and acts as an environmental regulator. citysail, a collaboration between xth-berlin and duncan lewis, is imagined as a slice of auckland’s leafy suburbs, reoriented as a vertical sail on the harbour (fig. 2). indebted to richard toy’s view of auckland as a water city, citysail responds to the maritime climate by swivelling like a wind vane. each apartment in citysail has access to a sliver-shaped garden high above the water. as the self-stabilizing structure pivots, the garden is always kept sheltered from the wind. like zeroplus, citysail uses plant mass as a dynamic component; the vertically-stacked garden would change in appearance with the seasons. a 1:25 investigation of this proposal occupies the centre of the main gallery. it is a wing-like assembly built by rieger, fraser horton and alexander wright. the wing is a lightweight tensegrity structure; the tensile skin and the irregular network of hexagonal compression struts are mutually supporting. counterbalanced by weights, the entire wing can be pivoted by hand, triggering changes in the imagery projected onto its surface. shippinglandscape also makes use of plants as living elements of construction. another collaboration between xth-berlin and duncan lewis, shippinglandscape proposes a network of massive barges which gather and convey fresh water, using it to grow plants en route. the barges can be temporary supplements to coastal sites, or can become permanent parts of the landscape, catalysing changes of land-use. the wideshut system is used to mediate sunlight, and the layered construction accommodates dense masses of plant growth which envelop and protect a range of event, exhibition and hotel spaces. the principle is similar to lewis’ 1997 design for a summer house in angers, france, where the bulk of the residence is vegetal (baird, 2000: 232-33). cunningly-aligned projections allow the large model to be seen gliding through waterways, and pulling alongside the shore. the model is constructed of fine mesh, which allows the projections to work volumetrically; the materiality of the skin appears to shift as the projections play out the patterns of seasonal growth and temporal variation. projected images are everywhere in [arc/sec]. moving through the gallery, there is always the glint of a ceiling-mounted projector hard at work. rieger says we occupy an edge between the virtual and the real, writing that “reactive architecture integrates data as a new building material”, and that there is a “fusion of digital media and physical reality” (2008: 5). this edge-condition, the flickering back and forth between the virtual and the real, seems to express a desire to dissolve the concrete presence of matter, to render material ephemeral, fleeting, even if only in the rarefied space of the gallery. architecture in [arc/sec] is concerned with the permanence of impermanence. architecture exists in time, as rieger signals by evoking in the exhibition title the idea of an architecture measured by the second. there is a sense of belatedness about the arrival of this exhibition. this form of experimental systems-based research has been commonplace in schools of architecture in europe and the united states for some years now. arguably the foremost amongst these is the architectural association in london, where the fig. 2 fig. 2: citysail. photograph by carl douglas interstices 09 design research lab run by michael hensel and achim menges has served as a think-tank, generating a string of books and research projects.2 hensel (who was recently in this part of the world, speaking at critical visions, the 2008 conference of the royal australian institute of architects) is at pains to assert the absolute practicality of the systems under development. with menges, he writes: while plan organisation, envelope form, and fittings and finishes may have become more varied, material and building systems are not being critically reviewed; they are still geared towards established types and mono-functionality, while uniformity prevails in the interior climate and condition zoning. architecture thus remains ‘neufertised’ – as does our social environment. (hensel & menges, 2006: 18) in the aa drl, emphasis is placed on the production of systems, tools and processes, rather than hypothetical acts of architectural virtuosity. the work is analytical and experimental. virtual models and physical prototypes are used to empirically test ideas rather than represent them. rather than treating universities as places to rehearse or simulate that ill-defined bogey, the ‘real world’, this form of work uses them as laboratories for speculation. the work collected in [arc/sec] shares many of these premises. it is hoped that this exhibition marks an increased commitment to these areas of architectural research. there is good reason to believe they will flourish here: themes of ephemerality and contingency have a long history in new zealand architectural discourse. goethe’s description of a world where everything is “permeated, accompanied, covered, or enveloped” perhaps has a particular resonance in our strange and rich ecosystem. it is noteworthy that in spite of the undeniably high-tech bent of [arc/sec], the exhibition makes reference to some of the most basic, even primitive forms of shelter: the nest, the hedge, the umbrella, the bird’s wing, the shade of a tree. [arc/sec] reconnects to elemental reactive forms of architecture. architecture, as [arc/sec] presents it, is not simply a cause or an effect, but an environmental participant: both catalyst and reactant, stage and performer. references [arc/sec] – reactive architecture (2008). auckland: st. paul st gallery. baird, i. (ed.) (2000). 10 x 10. new york: phaidon. hensel, m. & menges, a. (2006). morpho-ecologies. towards an inclusive discourse on heterogeneous architectures. in m. hensel & a. menges (eds.), morpho-ecologies (pp. 16-60). london: architectural association. hensel, m., & menges, a. (2008). versatility and vicissitude. london: wiley-academy. hensel, m., menges, a. & weinstock, m. (2004). emergence: morphogenetic design strategies. chichester: wiley-academy. hensel, m., menges, a. & weinstock, m. (2006). techniques and technologies in morphogenetic design. london: wiley-academy. mcdonough, w. & braungart, m. (2002). cradle to cradle. new york: north point press. rieger, u. (2008). [arc/sec]: architecture per second. in [arc/sec], (pp. 4-5). 2 the progress of this ongoing research can best be tracked by looking at the series of issues of architectural design which have been guest-edited by hensel & menges, two with michael weinstock (2004; 2006; 2008). microsoft word 2012 iuc abstracts and bios collated.docx                       interstices under construction symposium 2012:  immaterial materialities    abstracts and presenters’ biographical notes      adam jasper  school of architecture, university of technology sydney      spatial relations and materialist ethics    in 1913 the catholic theologian max scheler published his first major volume on materiale wertethik, or  materialist value‐ethics. it would prove to be a germinal book in the development of phenomenology. the central  idea of materialist ethics is that affects (including feelings, emotions and moods) have an inherent ethical meaning.  how we feel about material events, things and spaces is not derived from abstract reflective judgment, nor do  feelings impoverish our judgments, rather, they are the absolute basis for the possibility of judgment as such.  scheler thereby granted immediate ethical importance not only to the affects produced by spatial relations and  sensual materialism, but opened the possibility for meaningful discussions of the transformation of our experience  of space through mood, a discussion obliquely reflected in the bizarre sets of german expressionist cinema.  in 1927 the marxist designer el lissitzky produced a series of photomontages that conveyed emotional states  solely through their titles and the spatial relations embodied in the image. eifersucht, or jealousy, shows a figure  occupying his own skin like a homunculus, his real body alienated from him and projected onto an imaginary third  party who occupies the space next to the woman of his desire. the imaginary third party, an inversion of his own  self, is both a paranoid projection and a barrier whose imaginary status is underscored by the apparent  obliviousness of the modern woman who is both the largest figure in the picture, and spatially subordinated to the  plague of phantasies that surround her. in lissitzky, a particular emotion can not only be depicted through the  spatial arrangement of elements, but perceived spatial relations show themselves to be a direct product of  affectual states.  heidegger praised scheler as "the strongest philosophical force in modern germany" in 1928, and karol wojtyła,  later pope john paul ii, wrote his doctoral thesis on scheler's work in 1954. in between those two dates, scheler's  work was suppressed by the national socialist government, and alternately neglected and appropriated, not least  by heidegger himself. lissitzky, for his part, has suffered less posthumous neglect, but the relationship between  affect and spatiality in his montages has never been properly addressed. this paper proposes an exploration of  materialist ethics through the spatial depiction of affect in lissitzky's photomontages. this unlikely combination of  catholic and marxist thought presents a kind of counterfactual history of materialism and spatiality that takes  elements from (but is not directly derived from) the central tradition of phenomenology as it evolved in the  twentieth century.        dr adam jasper is a contributing editor to cabinet, and a regular contributor to frieze and art & australia. for these publications he  has written on art criticism, material culture and the anthropology of the banal. he is also a lecturer on the faculty of design,  architecture and building, university of technology sydney. he teaches subjects on aesthetics, art history and criticism within the  faculty. his most recent article is a case study on the sequence of events via which an obscure biological entity (in this case a  microscopic fungus) can become a significant geopolitical player. "what is fusarium?" was published in cabinet, issue 46 "punishment"  (summer 2012). he also contributed an essay on giacometti and fetishism to the publication of "the golden thread", the book  accompanying hany armanious' pavilion at the 2011 venice biennale.      amy campos  california college of the arts in san francisco, ca      "material waste: considering designed obsolescence and excess as a way out"    much attention in the last few years has been focused on environmental change, material waste, economic  disparity, and the rapid migration of industry. planned obsolescence, disposability, biodegradation and similar  progressive material processes can provide a new model for reconciling cultural desires for more with a  sustainable mandate for less.  rather than viewing the design of the built environment as means to a single,  complete “finished product”, transformative material processes can be applied as opportunistic and systematic  strategies for designed environments that can productively evolve over time.    there is an abundance of underutilized built space in the world today, particularly in areas with shifting industrial  and economic resources.  as buildings in these areas are abandoned, recyclable materials are stripped from them  leaving the bulk of the building material left unprotected and exposed to accelerated decay.  ultimately, the ability  to recycle proportionately small amounts of the building material renders a large portion of the material unusable  again, producing a huge amount of unnecessary waste. because we design for a building’s durability in terms of  total assembly, we overlook opportunities to think of the built environment in terms of replaceable assemblies of  varying durabilities.  one useful model for a component‐based way of designing is found with the widespread use of paper collars, cuffs  and shirtfronts in men’s fashion in the mid‐19 th  century. the restructuring of the shirt to provide for single  disposable components lengthened the life of the body of the shirt and allowed for durability to adjust according  to the use patterns inherent in particular areas of the shirt structure.  by acknowledging a variation of needs for  durability in this case and making something strategically and variably disposable, overall durability and  functionality were extended with minimal waste.      this presentation will examine new modes of material and spatial assembly in the built environment that embrace  obsolescence, disposability and biodegradability and design for varying permanence in built environments that can  accommodate modern migrations of industry, capital and population.      amy campos is a practicing architect and designer, and is an assistant professor in interior design, architecture and visual & critical  studies at california college of the arts in san francisco, ca. her work focuses on critical issues of durability and design with an  emphasis on full‐scale installation and
fabrication. the work spans a variety of scales and platforms from urban to architectural and  interiors to object and furniture design.  campos is a registered architect and is leed accredited. she received her master of science in  advanced architectural design from columbia university and a bachelor of architecture from cal poly, san luis obispo.        andrea connor  university of technology sydney      faith in steel: the fragmented afterlife of the world trade centre, mediating modernity after 9/11.   from its earliest inception the skyscraper has worked as a powerful symbolic agent and material loci from its  earliest inception the skyscraper has worked as a powerful symbolic agent and material loci around and through  which to mediate the dreams and utopian visions associated with modernity. skyscrapers embody the promise of  technology and what the architect rem koolhaas famously referred to as the dream of “free movement in space.”  in this paper i consider the ongoing mediating agency of one such skyscraper, the world trade centre (wtc),  through the trajectory of its remnants, the steel beams that once formed the internal, structural skeleton of the  buildings.   one of the most recyclable commodities in the world, the strength and malleability of mass‐produced, industrial  strength steel is as elemental to a form of modern, industrial capitalism, and the development of the very tall  building as money. but steel is not only a physical commodity it is also a cultural substance, a material imbued with  wider social meanings and historical residues including: the idealized cultural values associated with modernity—a  ‘spirit’ exemplified by the skyscraper; its general association with ‘building’ and by extension its metaphoric and  imaginative association with nation‐building; its identification with a form of robust, entrepreneurial capitalism,  characteristic of the 20 th  century, and iconic industrialists like j.p. morgan and andrew carnegie, who got their  start in steel; and its popular cultural associations in characters like superman – ‘the man of steel,’ defender of the  urban, american, metropolis.   these historical and cultural residues have been made visible since 9/11, through the circulation and deployment  of wtc steel in new highly symbolic contexts. in this paper i trace the emergence of steel as a privileged agent of  mediation, in a context of heightened vulnerability post‐9/11 and its transformation as sculptural memorials,  sacred relics and artifacts in the social space of a number of commemorative environments. i aim to understand  not only its physical transformations but also how the cultural materiality associated with a modernist skyscraper  has been preserved, re‐animated and put to work through these durable steel fragments.       andrea connor currently teaches researching design history in the faculty of design, building and architecture at the university of  technology in sydney. her phd in cultural studies from uts explored the afterlife of two monumental social objects, the mostar bridge  in bosnia and the world trade centre, in new york, and their reconfiguration post‐destruction as significant sites of collective  remembering and forgetting. andrea has taught and lectured and several universities in australia and has also worked as a journalist in  radio and television for the sbs and abc.           ashley paine  atch research centre, university of queensland’s school of architecture    striped effects: articulating the material and immaterial  the striped interior of siena cathedral is often cited as a wondrous experience: the intensity of its patterned  surfaces striking the viewer as both dazzling and disorienting. it is a remarkable demonstration of the psycho‐ perceptual effects of stripes, and their capacity to assert both the physical and visual conditions of space in a  dialectical interplay that oscillates between materiality and immateriality. of course, a striped pattern can itself be  understood in such dualistic terms: as a physical organisation of matter into banded chromatic oppositions; and as  an optical structure independent of its physical support. with this duality in mind, the paper examines the  relationship between stripes and materiality, and the complex effects, both physical and perceptual, produced by  architectural surfaces articulated with bands of materials.  fundamentally, these effects emerge because stripes are intensely conspicuous. they draw attention to  themselves and lead our eyes across a given surface. such operative qualities of stripes can amplify, unify and  clarify building form, but they can also overwhelm it, destroy its unity and obfuscate its extents. stripes also  enhance the directionality of architectural space—by asserting the frontality and flatness of the façade, or by  exaggerating the phenomenal rotational movement of the building—enabling a kind of control over the perception  of form, achieved through the patterning of its material and construction. this control extends over the observer,  compelling them to stand before, or to move about the building, according to its frontal or rotational directives.  the paper is located within the broader contemporary context of resurgent interest in pattern and ornament.  while the use of stripes has its origins in roman construction, it will be shown to have significant implications for  contemporary “surface” theory and practices. in particular, it will be argued that the effects produced by stripes  actually constitute a unique kind of ornamental condition. this might be understood in terms of “perceptual  artifice,” in which the organisation of materials into stripes, can locate the viewer and choreograph their  movement through space, by exerting its control over the visual perception and affective phenomena of  architecture.       ashley paine is a phd candidate in the atch research centre at the university of queensland’s school of architecture. his research  combines historical and theoretical investigation, with design research methods and practice, to examine the compositional and spatio‐ visual effects of stripes on the architectural façade. ashley is also a practicing architect, establishing phab architects in 2010.      claudia perren  school of architecture, university of sydney, australia      information material    this  paper  investigates  the  dematerialising  capabilities  of  information  in  the  realms  of  art  and  architecture.  it  considers the role of information in both disassembling the material/substantial character of architecture as well  as the activation of materials through observation. furthermore, it explores the implications of new technologies  which,  when  applied  to  traditional  materials,  engage  the  human  body  in  a  reciprocal  data  exchange  with  its  immediate environment.  the art of thomas demand is one of dematerialization and in this sense, one similar to the architecture of peter  eisenman’s cardboard houses. demand challenges the material quality of his subjects by building 1:1 scale models  of real spaces entirely out of cardboard; often thereby ignoring and subverting their original material composition.  this process of abstraction is only conducted to a degree whereby one can still recognize an “original” space, as  the replica still contains enough information for one to “see” and read, for example, a curtain even if there is no  drapery or a letter even if there is no real writing.   peter eisenman, especially in his early houses from the 1970s, approaches his work conversely to that of demand.  his catalysts are often abstract compositions in both two‐ and three‐dimensional media, which seek concretization  through physical form, in order to become architecture. in his developmental process eisenman withholds pieces  of material information and avoids details where possible, creating inhabitable yet programmatically unspecified  spaces. this resulting architecture remains self‐referential and scaleless until its actualizing inhabitation. different  areas are more or less suitable for different functions, yet cannot be recognized as a bedroom or kitchen due to a  deliberate lack of programmatic information. only through inhabitation is sufficient information added via details  such as door handles, knifes or books and materials such as drapery, carpet or timber.  jurgen mayer h is taking dematerialisation further by combining the physical and digital components of our urban  environment. in his urban vision ‘a.way’ mayer arrives at a new understanding of activated space where layers of  digital information are added to building materials; transforming the city and its inhabitants into a data flow;  blurring the boundaries between architecture and its inhabitants and digital and physical information.      dr.  claudia  perren  is  a  curator,  architect  and  lecturer  in  architecture  at  the  university  of  sydney.  her  research  areas  focus  on  conceptual  art  and  architecture,  moving  architecture,  and  modernism.  she  is  interested  in  hybrids,  in  questioning  architecture  through other disciplines, and challenging the traditionally fixed relationship between form and matter for the benefit of an integration  of  time,  variation  and  development  of  form  into  architecture.  her  writings  have  been  published  in  australia,  germany,  the  netherlands, the czech republic, singapore, spain and switzerland.          dijana alić   school of architecture, university of new south wales      a role of historical materialism in materialising communist yugoslavia’s architectural aspirations     marxist critique of mechanical materialism questions the separation of object and subject. mechanical  materialism, raymond williams has argued, isolates the objects and ignores the subjects, namely human activities  as subjective endeavours. the distinction between this mechanical materialism of the past and new marxist  historical materialism, which incorporates human activity as a primary force, establishes the grounds upon which  dialectic materialism is premised (williams, keywords, 1976).   in the seminal text on the modern architecture of yugoslav socialism, architecture of bosnia and the way towards  modernity” (grabrijan and neidhardt, 1957), co‐author and architect juraj neidhardt presents his design method  as based upon a ‘dialectic’ relation between the heritage fabric (a material past) and the socialist present. he  argues that traditional historic fabric should be used as a vehicle in developing new ideas: creative thinking  grounded in previous decades’ design and construction being relevant to the local environment. neidhardt and  grabrijan argued that separating the ‘positive’ values of the heritage fabric (physical qualities) from the ‘negative’  values (associated with cultural and religious practices) produced a useful set of architectural ‘elements’ through  which to develop new ideas.   ultimately, they argued that a formulaic re‐arrangement of elemental architectural components would facilitate an  active relationship between the object of analysis – heritage built fabric – and the new society. the method would  provide practical and useful information for developing an artistic superstructure for the emerging socialist society.   neidhardt’s proposals could be easily dismissed as opportunistic exercises promoting the rationalism and scientific  methodologies valued by the ruling communist party. however, closer examination of his design methodology and  his writings with grabrijan demonstrate their capacity to successfully dissociate human activity and built form in  order to transform the meanings aligned with traditional heritage fabric.       dr. dijana alić holds a senior lecturer position in design, history and theory in the faculty of the built environment at the university of  new south wales in sydney, australia. her research interest focuses on the relationship between modernity and national expression in  architecture, particularly in the context of (post‐world war 2) 'eastern' europe. dijana has published in significant international  journals such as the journal of the society of architectural historians (jsah), open house international and centropa.            gevork hartoonian  school of architecture, university of canberra, australia      materiality matters: if only for the look of it!     this paper will discuss the presence of a digitally reproduced perception of lightness in zaha hadid’s projects,  arguing that the dialectics between materiality and image is inherent to architecture even though its mode of  operation and appropriation have varied throughout architectural history. the paper will pursue the importance of  material and its transformation into materiality in two historical moments, renaissance and early modernism, and  in the writing of l. b. alberti and j. ruskin respectively.   i will discuss alberti alongside ruskin in order to demonstrate how image is domesticated in architectural theory,  and that there is always an element of excess in architecture, which is the locale of materiality. having established  the schism between architecture and building, the paper will then present tectonics as a theoretical paradigm in  which, according to gottfried semper, the materiality of architecture attains significance when it is comprehended  in the broader aesthetic experiences of the cultural. but what if the cultural is already saturated with image  building, as is the case today, through which architecture is turned into an ornament? i will offer an answer to this  dilemma through exploring hadid’s architecture. her occasional inclination for sculpted tectonics is important in  two grounds: firstly, it provides a good case to demonstrate the recoding involved in the use of concrete beyond  the traditions of new brutalism. secondly, a critical assessment of her work is useful in opening up the discussion  of materiality to include aspects of the architecture of brutalism that might have political connotations beyond  that suggested by ruskin.        gevork hartoonian is professor of architecture and the deputy head of design, faculty of arts and design, university of canberra,  australia. his research is focused on a critical archaeology of modern architecture's appropriation of the nineteenth century  architectural discourses, the tectonic in particular. he is the author of numerous books and book chapters. his most recent book is  titled, architecture and spectacle: a critique, ashgate, 2012.        john roberts  school of architecture and built environment, university of newcastle australia       white table / white aalto     late in life alvar aalto wrote a brief text ‘the white table’, recalling his surveyor father’s white drawing table: a  childhood play space, a refuge, a realm of fantasy and imagination. aalto noted its special quality of liberty: ‘a  white table is as white as white can be; it has no recipe, nothing obliges man to do this or that. in other words, it is  a strange and unique relationship.’ white, like finland, seemed always to be with aalto, finding expression in  different material strategies in his architecture. aalto exploited the material and immaterial potentialities of white:  historical and natural significances of white resonate in his buildings. a visitor sees how aalto rarely left areas of  white untreated; he would mark, ornament, overlay, overgrow and even deface white surfaces, inside and outside,  denying their pure expanses and restlessly animating their potential blankness.   leatherbarrow and mostafavi in surface architecture propose that ‘forms in architecture arise out of the  production methods and applications of materials’. for aalto, white seems more than applied hue or pigment; it  becomes a material for architectural thinking, making, and experience. this paper problematizes material and  spatial poetics of white in selected aalto buildings.   and when we wonder about aalto’s ways with white, emotional associations of landscape experience of white  seem to be especially recalled and re‐materialized: reflected light, shadow, haze, spatial and atmospheric  presences of snow, ice, fog, clouds, waves. white is not background or tabula rasa in natural landscape, but is  actively present, full of purpose. aalto’s methods in deploying white raise visual and spatial problems, perhaps  even doubts: of containment and contained; of inside and outside; of solidity and evanescence; of absence and  presence, figure and ground; and of haptic perceptions (rough, smooth, cold). the paper aspires to open a  discussion of materializations of aalto’s – and perhaps our own – ‘strange and unique relationship’ with white.    john roberts currently teaches architectural design and advanced drawing & model making, in the bdes(arch) program at the school  of architecture and built environment, university of newcastle, nsw. he also lectures in site studies, and supervises march research.  other teaching interests include health and housing, landscape history, art and comics, infra‐local landscapes, sustainable design and  workshop‐related learning. john roberts’ research interests concern historical and theoretical spaces between architecture and  landscape; his mphil thesis considered prospect and refuge symbolism in alvar aalto’s architecture. recent publications have  considered topics including: landscape aesthetics and house architecture; the houses of alvar aalto and jørn utzon; high‐rise work by  aalto and utzon; clouds, sky, waves and architecture; the art of colin mccahon; and prospect and refuge in australian architecture.       matthew mindrup  marywood university, u.s.    bauhaus exercises on the material imagination  one of the most important schools for architecture, design, and art in the 20th century, the german bauhaus  developed a common basic course in 1919 to introduce creative people to design through exercises that trained  their material imaginations. the german architect, walter gropius conceived this unique approach to design  education as an alternative to the normative beaux arts study of exemplars in antiquity. after the departure of  johannes itten in 1922, the hungarian artist, lászló moholy‐nagy changed the emphasis of itten’s exercises on a  metaphysical speculation of form and color to an objective, assessment of material effects and affects. inspired by  the austrian born botanist and nature philosopher raoul francé’s concept of ‘bio‐technique,’ moholy‐nagy  intended that students would extend this study of materials to the creative imagination of form in different media.  one can find examples of the creative transfer moholy‐nagy intended in his use of a harp’s audible gradation of  tones as inspiration for the design of a screen wall at his 1935 dutch rayon manufacturers exhibition and the  wood springs developed by students at the new bauhaus school in chicago based upon a study of rubber. in these  instances it is not the visible form of materials that are transferred from one substance to another but an  architect’s immaterial memories of their effects, affects, and methods of facture. employed like metaphors in their  greek etymological sense as metapherein, or “transfers” of sensory information from one modality to another,  moholy‐nagy’s professional and pedagogical work demonstrate a use of immaterial materialities to inform the  imagination of factures in architecture and product design. this paper explores how moholy‐nagy’s pedagogical  exercises at the bauhaus sought to develop an architect’s ability to think with materials in order to counter the  repetition of normative designs and arbitrary willfulness of a sometimes overly rampant formal imagination.    dr matthew mindrup is an architect, researcher and pedagogue who lives in waverly, pennsylvania where he is helping found a new  school of architecture at marywood university. in 2007, matthew completed a ph.d. in architecture at virginia tech university on the  physical and metaphysical coalition of two architectural models assembled by kurt schwitters in the early 1920s. matthew’s ongoing  research in the history and theory of architectural design locates and projects the implications that the making and use of models have  in the design process. he has presented some of this research at conferences while other parts have been published in english and  translated into chinese.             nugroho utomo   school of architecture, university of canberra      beton‐préfabriqué: on the appropriation and  expansion of brutalist materiality in australian architecture    the new brutalism promoted the notion of materials ‘as found’ and professed the virtues of the ‘ordinary’ – in  tune with contemporary interest in the notion of the ‘everyday’ in architecture. this propensity toward materials  ‘as  found’  was  noted  by  reyner  banham  and  was,  despite  their  differences,  corroborated  by  alison  and  peter  smithson who retrospectively stated that “we were concerned with the seeing of materials for what they were: the  woodness  [sic]  of  wood;  the  sandiness  of  sand.”  for  banham  in  new  brutalism  “every  element  is  truly  what  it  appears to  be...” this matter‐of‐fact  approach echoed a  wider  shift towards the expression  of  materials  which  occurred in post‐war modern architecture, and to a large extent is concerned with the question of surface and, in  the case of the new brutalism, the presentation of materials ‘as fact.’ imported  into the australian context the  term ‘brutalism’ was simply reduced to any use of exposed concrete with no distinction between pre‐cast and in‐ situ nor board‐formed and uni‐formed. this inclusive attitude can on the one hand be interpreted as a dilution of  the early brutalist position on materiality. however, it can also be traced back to jean dubuffet’s art brut work  which is acknowledged as being one of the key sources of the new brutalism.   establishing the historic premise of the ‘as found’, the essay explores how this mode of evaluating materials for  their  inherent  properties  and  processes  eventually  permeated  australian  architecture  where  tropes  such  as  ‘material honesty’ were already commonplace. focusing primarily on town hall house (1977), the essay discusses  how  architect  ken  woolley  masterfully  articulated  pre‐cast  concrete  to  create  exaggerated  window  reveals,  spandrels, brise‐soleil and other repetitive elements to animate the surface of large block‐like masses that have  come to typify brutalist architecture  in australia. further, the essay  will elaborate  on  how the project displays  tendencies that are  indicative of an emphasis on surface, which can be read as being  in  line with the broader  genealogy of brutalism and the ‘as found.’ town hall house, however, reveals modifications to the raw materiality  of the original brutalist canon, and alludes to the notion of delay and displacement which is associated with the  appropriation of foreign attitudes toward the art of building. the building is an example of how in australia the  new brutalist sense of materiality re‐emerged in the new found plasticity of beton‐préfabriqué.        nugroho utomo is a phd candidate at the university of canberra, australia. his research builds on more recent historiographies which  have highlighted the need for further inquiry into the later developments of post‐war modern architecture, primarily focusing on the  brutalist phenomenon and its importation into the australian context. he is also a graduate architect practicing at the canberra office  of cox architecture and design tutor at the university of canberra’s faculty of arts and design.            peg rawes   bartlett school of architecture university college london, u.k.      immaterial material ‘ecologies of mind’  buckminster fuller’s dymaxion maps (1943‐54) and agnes denes’s planetary projections (1974‐6) bring to light  material and immaterial ecological concepts in their cybernetic ‘architectures of life’ which are more ecologically  urgent now than when they were first produced.   buckminster fuller’s utopian material networks – or ‘ecologies of mind’ (cf. bateson) – attempted to capture the  ‘universal’ complexity of planetary, human, technological and environmental relations through the axiomatic and  projective power of material geometric systems or architecture. thirty years later, conceptual and environmental  artist, agnes denes’s isometric maps examined the planet’s material resources, especially global food trade, in  distorted space‐time projections, such as her immaterial ‘alien’ ‘hot dog’ or ‘egg’ ecology‐projections. her site‐ specific project, rio earth summit, tree mountain – a living tim capsule – 11,000 trees, 11,000 people, 400 years  (1992‐96), then repurposed this immaterial geometric method (or, what could be called her ‘ecology of mind’) to  create a living material architecture of trees, human custodianship and reclaimed waste‐land, that she intended  should physically record the effects of climate change, environmental protection and damage by current and  future generations.   underpinning the discussion is gregory bateson’s pioneering cybernetic theorisation of immaterial material  ecologies or ‘architectures’; for example, his conceptualisation of the immanent co‐constitution of immaterial  psychic ecologies and material biological ecologies in, what he called, ‘information’ or ‘pattern’ in steps to an  ecology of mind, 1972. thus, the paper argues that the ecological and geometric immaterial materialities that  fuller, denes and bateson developed for cultivating and projecting human and environmental  biodiversity/difference, resonate with architects and artists today who seek to produce immaterial ecological  ideas/thinking and materials ecology‐practices that address the over‐consumption, pollution and resource‐ depletion of our human and non‐human environments.     dr peg rawes is senior lecturer, and thesis history & theory coordinator, march architecture (riba part 2), at the bartlett school of  architecture ucl. her teaching and research focuses on interdisciplinary links between architectural design, philosophy, technology  and the visual arts, and has been developed into publications that examine: spatiotemporality and embodiment; minor traditions in  geometric and spatial thinking; new aesthetic and material practices; relational architectural ecologies. publications include: relational  architectural ecologies (ed.) (routledge, forthcoming 2013); ‘spinoza's architectural passages and geometric comportments’, in b. lord  (ed.) spinoza beyond philosophy (2012); space, geometry and aesthetics (2008) and irigaray for architects (2007).       rebecca uchill  independent curator, phd candidate   massachusetts institute of technology    art(i)facts versus fictive factures: alexander dorner’s immaterialities   a broad spectrum of early and mid‐20 th  century art preservation philosophies variously favored the original  intention, original form, and original material of cultural objects. from erwin panofsky’s suggestion that  experiencing artistic meaning (sinn‐erlebnis) was achieved independent of retaining echtheitserlebnis  (experiencing the fidelity of authenticity) – to kurt karl eberlein’s hyperbolic argument for the value of rieglian  alterswert of aged materials –the full range of positions on artistic authenticity, material and otherwise, was  represented in a compressed series of debates published in german art journals between 1928‐1930. at the center  of these conversations was the director of the hannover kunstsammlung, alexander dorner. dorner vouched for  restorations and reproductions alike, arguing that these were no more in violation of an artwork’s original  sensibility than the regular recontextualization of historical cultural materials within modern exhibition  environments.  upon emigration to the united states in the late 1930s, dorner brought his defense of restoration to bear on the  rhode island school of design museum of art (risd)’s collection objects, restoring artistic fragments to their  (estimated) full contours. dorner also extended his polemic against the veneration of original materials by  prioritizing ever more elaborate contexts for museum viewership: drawing both on his work in hannover as well as  on contemporaneous exhibition devices in north eastern united states museums, dorner developed immersive  environments in which to display objects and enhance viewer engagement. dorner’s post‐risd years were  characterized by his explicit endorsement of art and museum experience, with particular recourse to american  pragmatist john dewey’s notion of transaction‐based encounters. however, this paper will argue that dorner’s  productions of gallery contexts for visitor experience stemmed equally from a desire to shift the conversation  about material objecthood as from the theories of perception or democracy that he so often cited. dorner’s  tenure at risd thus offers a rich focal point for considering shifting midcentury euro‐american discourses about  the materiality of art as well as the subjective experiences of audiences.    rebecca uchill is an independent curator and phd candidate at mit, in the department of architecture’s history, theory and criticism  of art discipline group. her research focuses on the institutional conditions for art production, display and dissemination. uchill is co‐ founder of the cultural event production series experience economies, and she has held curatorial positions at the list visual arts  center, the indianapolis museum of art, and mass moca. in fall of 2012, she will be developing her research on alexander dörner a  visiting scholar at the leibniz universität hannover, with support from the deutscher akademischer austauschdienst.      ross jenner  executive editor of interstices, senior lecturer  school of architecture, university of auckland    ambient atmospheres    concepts of ‘immateriality’ in architecture arose with those of ‘space’. the relation immateriality/materiality  parallels that of space/material. this pairing of matter and that “most immaterial of properties – ‘space’” 1  would  seem constitutive of modernity. generated here are notions of ambience, envelopment, atmosphere, setting,  surroundings and context, which in the sciences became those of environment, milieu, medium and habitat.  schmarsow’s 2  extension of empathy from solids to void offered a notion of bodily experience at the core of a space  “whose co‐ordinates intersect in us”. hildebrand’s 3  conception of space as extension led to that of spatial  continuum “as a body of water” in which individual solids are immersed ‐ a correspondence anticipating valéry 4   and sloterdijk 5 . hildebrand’s wish to make “visible the appearance of this natural space” implied that the void exist  “not as something externally limited but rather as something internally animated” where “the boundary of an  object is, strictly speaking, also the boundary of the body of air surrounding it”, anticipating heidegger’s notion of  the boundary as that from which presencing begins.   the focus of this paper lies outside the classic conceptions of space in modernism: can a spatiality of atmosphere  and relation, felt space, specifically, in the works of italian architects edoardo persico and franco albini be the seen  as an adumbration of today’s ‘immaterial materialities’? critics noted persico’s “impressionistic sensibility” in  installations such as the “hall of the gold medals” (1934) and the “hall of honour” (1936) where “the voids have a  compositional value even more alive than the solids.” his was an “aspiration towards an architecture of voids, a  spatial architecture which (…) can be identified with his preponderant longing for the freest airy independence of  the spirit.”  albini’s installations from 1935‐60 tend to the experience of a linear abstraction subtle to the point of being almost  purely graphic and animated by contact with an “atmospheric sensibility” of space rather than solid materials. a  colleague, discussing albini’s apartment in via milan, emphasized an ‘essentially spatial’ expression, repeatedly  using the phrase ‘atmospheric spaces’ (spazi atmosferici) to characterize its rooms “delimited ideally even just by  hints.” 6 such works are the legacy of impressionism and the spatial interpenetration of crystal palace. they make  atmosphere perceptible as a poet might the ineffable.   “atmospheres”, notes böhme “are something that defines the human‐in‐the‐world as a whole, i.e. its relationship  to the environment, to other people, to things and works of art.” 7 put otherwise, “the admission into space is a  giving of the thing to relation.” 8  albini’s notion of space as rapport is an attuning of the body to the works  exhibited, focusing and interpreting them through the “setting of a particular atmosphere (un ambiente di  atmosfera particolare)”. this “ambientamento” –acclimatisation‐ must arouse an atmosphere which “must not be  fixed or stagnant but pulsate and the public must find itself immersed and stimulated here without noticing it.” to  achieve this, he argued, “it is the very voids which must build ‐ air and light being building materials.” 9     ross jenner teaches at the university of auckland. he has practised in britain, finland, switzerland and new zealand. his phd from the  university of pennsylvania was on italian rationalism. his writing and projects have been published in several books and numerous  journals, including transition, architecture australia, lotus, the journal of architecture. having published on buildings by peter  zumthor and ruskin’s stones of venice, he is currently working on a book on italian architecture between futurism and rationalism.  with tina engels‐ schwarzpaul, he is executive editor of interstices, journal of architecture and related arts.                                                               1   forty, a. (2000); words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture.  2   schmarsow, a. (1894); "das wesen der architektonischen schöpfung"  3   von hilderbrand, a. (1893); das problem der form in der bildenden kunst  4   valéry, p. (1921); eupalinos ou l’architecte  5   sloterdijk, peter (2006); “architektur als immersionskunst”  6   romano, g. (1941); "la casa di un architetto."   7   böhme, g. (2006); architektur und atmosphäre  8   mitchell, a. (2010); heidegger among the sculptors : body, space and the art of dwelling.   9   franco albini “le mie esperienze di architetto nelle esposizioni in italia e all’estero”  ross mcleod  senior lecturer  rmit    field affects: shaping spatial experience  the paper documents the findings from a series of experimental design projects which have sought to question the  basis of creative thought and expand the perceptual and cognitive tools that may be brought to the manipulation  of objects and spatial phenomena. the foundation of this body of work involved the development of a theoretical  and perceptive base to design, which eschews the conception of materiality and physical form as the central  concern in the fashioning of objects and spaces, and embraces the comprehension of the physical fields that affect  sensorial experience as its primary concern. a key to the development of this ethos is the idea that the design of  our physical environment can be enacted through the manipulation of fields of wave‐like phenomena.  in this  process the conceptual base for design is envisaged as the harnessing of fields of energy rather than the shaping of  inert matter.   through the iterative and exploratory nature of design thinking, the projects addressed the inherent physical  connection between light, sound, form and materiality and developed design methodologies in which the  observation of the field‐like behaviour of one kind of spatial phenomena could be employed to develop an  understanding of another. addressing the foundations of the design process in such a way exposed a creative  methodology in which the consideration and manipulation of the material and immaterial aspects of the physical  world transcended the traditional boundaries that lie between the distinction of matter and phenomena. in this  approach to design thinking, the essential creative act is seen as a marriage between the precise manifestation of  phenomenal fields and the perceptual affects that they create. in such a schema, the designer’s role is considered  to be a cross‐disciplinary and trans‐modal practice that is involved in the shaping of spatial experience.    dr. ross mcleod has spent the last twenty years engaged in a practice that has sought to extend the boundaries of design thinking.  this practice has been enacted through the teaching of undergraduate and postgraduate students, the curation of exhibitions, the  organising of conferences, the writing of essays, the editing of books and the design of furniture, sculpture, installations and interior  spaces. works include the publications interior cities (1998), intersection (2002) and the sensuous intellect (2006) and the  international exhibitions hybrid objects (2002), tyranny of distance (2004) and design life (2010, 2012).  recent design projects have  included: auroral, stylecraft showroom, 2010; transience of light, euroluce melbourne, 2011; string theory, dedece, 2012; and  animate activate, stylecraft showroom, 2012.            ruth mcdermott  lighting designer and doctoral candidate, university of technology sydney    translucency, brilliance and sparkle: an exploration of the interplay between light and materials    the sun never knew how wonderful it was until if fell on the wall of a building.  louis kahn  there is something of a romance between materials and light. light reveals the particular texture and patina of  materials. materials give light character and shape the ways in which it functions in our lives.  historically, most  light technologies have found or invented a material that best complements and enhances their particular  properties. prior to the 18th century candles were an important light source, but it took the invention of glass with  a lead content ( “lead crystal”) cut into prismatic shapes and used in chandeliers to give sparkle to their soft light.   the light was refracted by a multitude of prisms, making it possible to light whole rooms.     designers are currently coming to terms with a new light source – light emitting diodes sometimes known as solid  state lighting. leds were originally developed as indicator lights but are now considered the future of lighting in  architectural and interior applications due to their energy efficiency and low life.  leds pose significant challenges in creating acceptable light for interior settings as they are essentially tiny pin  points of high glare with highly directional light. their small size means that they cast strong well defined shadows  and the actual light source itself needs to be shielded from direct view.     leds perhaps more than any other light source will rely on highly differentiated interactions with materials to  generate light quality appropriate to particular contexts. in the following i explore the relationship between light  and materials drawing on the fundamental optical principles of refraction, reflection and diffusion.   in this paper i argue that we need to enrich the repertoire of designers in the fields of architecture, interior design  and lighting design so that they become aware of how to make use of the rich interplay of light and materials as  lighting technologies evolve.     ruth mcdermott is a sydney based designer and academic with an industrial design background.  after working in many product  design areas she now creates site specific lighting works for festivals and clients and has exhibited in milan, tokyo,  seattle and  throughout australia. she is currently undertaking a doctorate in design at the university of technology sydney on the use of led light  sources in architectural applications. her research is exploring how new typologies of light fitting could exploit this new light source  more effectively.  she has presented papers based on her research at connected 2010, iasdr 2011 and at lightfair ( the largest lighting  conference in the world) in 2010.        sophia psarra  reader in architecture and spatial design  the bartlett school of architecure, university college london/u.k.    self‐organisation and theoretical reflection: the (im)material architecture of venice and the venice hospital    new developments in architecture and digital design technologies since the 90s emphasize a shift from theory to  practice, and from object‐oriented architecture to ‘field conditions’ where what matters is not the geometry of  elements hierarchically  disposed to  form  wholes,  but  ‘fields’  of self‐organisation based  on  local‐scale relations.  drawing from biological analogies and complex theory in mathematics and physics, these design paradigms turn  away  from  the  material  object  to  immaterial  social,  ecological  and  experiential  phenomena,  such  as  user  behaviour,  interactive  environments,  atmospheres,  ecologies  and  evolutionary  networks.  these  paradigms  are  often illustrated by speculative projects of the 60s, such as le corbusier and julian’s venice hospital. i will explore  venice and the venice hospital in relation to two questions: what does happen to materiality and immateriality  when architecture is conceived as a ‘field’ instead of being seen as an ‘object’? is it possible to conceptualise these  notions within specifically architectural theory instead of borrowing theories from other disciplines?   combining  spatial  network  analysis  with  historical  records  i  will  discuss  the  hospital  and  venice  as  its  urban  context. i will first analyse the hospital as a formal and spatial system to show that it is a product of consciously  applied  rules  that  if  built  would  result  in  a  spatial  culture  of  un‐programmed  events  and  serendipitous  social  encounters. such a collective  immaterial outcome can provide a new definition of the architectural programme  based  on  social  co‐presence,  institutional  flexibility and  improvisation.  i will then  analyse  venice’s  spatial  form  alongside historical information to reveal an evolutionary pattern of urban form. this pattern  is centred on the  nodal position of urban squares in the pedestrian and water networks, their key economic and cultural function,  and corporeal treatment since early times. i will then suggest that the architects of the hospital retrieved the self‐ organising dimensions of venice and creatively reconfigured them in a new design reality.   finally,  i  will  extend  this  discussion  to  the  notions  of  conception  and  perception  ‐  and  to  contemporary  architectural ideas based on emergence and self‐organisation. the latter might catalyse architecture and broaden  the imagination, but divorce conscious thought from the generative process of design reiterating an old division  between the material world and the mind. conception refers to the immaterial aspects of form, often seen to be  rational; perception refers to experiential aspects of the environment, and is often seen as material and sensual.  as  the  case  of  the  hospital  shows,  the  conscious  development  of  space  and  form  and  the  unconscious  self‐ organising  patterns  in  cities  and  architecture  are  not  separate  but  intertwine.  aside  to  theories  of  design  generation, we need theories of explanation, if we are to understand architecture through its own material and  immaterial  dimensions,  instead  of  attaching  ideas  to  architecture  as  scientific  appendices.  i  will  conclude  that  theory  exists  within  the  practice  of  design  itself  guiding  answers  to  the  questions  about  user  behaviour,  experiences  and  social  relations.  the  key  to  architectural  design  lies  in  the  comparative  understanding  of  the  products  of  architecture  as  spatial,  social  and  experiential  entities.  this  can  be  found  in  reconceptualising  materiality and immateriality to take into account how architecture is conceived, how it is perceived, and how is  informed by processes that are self‐organising.   dr. sophia psarra is a reader in architecture and spatial design at the bartlett, ucl. previously, she was associate professor at the  university of michigan and senior lecturer in cardiff university. her research explores the relationship between spatial characteristics,  patterns of use, social relations and cultural meaning. she has collaborated with cultural institutions on the relationship between  layout, exhibition narratives and visitors’ experience (moma, new york, the natural history museum, london). her activities in these  areas have resulted in publications, (architecture and narrative –the formation of space and cultural meaning, routledge 2009),  creative installations and design projects.  she has won first prizes in international architectural competitions. her work has been  exhibited in venice biennale, the george pompidou center, nai rotterdam, london, berlin, milan and athens, greece.  stephen loo  professor of architecture  university of tasmania    impersonal geometries    there is a disposition in contemporary digital architecture towards a ‘flattened ontology’ where the milieu of  design performance is composed of continuously relational immaterial entities, whether they are parameters and  their abstractions, associations and the algorithms that represent them, or digital forms and the images that  express them. and this immaterial realm of information and process has a tendency to take precedence over  actual material objects as outputs of digital architecture.    this condition of absolute immateriality in digital architecture can be seen, in deleuze’s philosophy, to be a  variation of the ontology of immanence in which there is an “equality of being.” (deleuze, expressionism in  philosophy, 1992: 173) proponents of a current movement called ‘object‐oriented ontology’ (ooo) have  appropriated this deleuzian proposition in support of a ‘speculative materialism.’ speculative materialism sees the  world as completely made up of objects, the ontologies and agencies of which are impersonal, that is, independent  from that defined by human beings, thus positing a critique of anthropocentric thinking in the material world.  speculative materialism is paradoxically appropriated by some parts of contemporary digital architecture to  eschew authorial intention of the architects and to release architecture from humanist determinants, towards and  auto‐emergentist attitude to digitally designed objects.    this paper mounts an argument resisting the appropriation of object‐oriented ontology that supports the  impersonality of immaterial digital architecture. it will attempt this, ironically, through an investigation of the  geometry and mathematics of the immaterial milieu. geometrical abstraction – the mathematics of differential  and infinitesimal calculus in particular – posits the digital milieu in what quentin meillassoux calls ‘absolute  contingency’: the digital milieu as something that “can be described and has to be described” (meillassoux, after  finitude, 2007: 5) by geometry. here, it is impossible to conceive the reality of the object in itself is because we  cannot “distinguish between properties which are supposed to belong to the object and properties belonging to  the subjective access to the object.” the impersonal geometry of the immaterial milieu of digital architecture  comes to possess a factuality imbricated in personal material effects. it is a moment when the abstract extensivity  of the discipline is made into the intensivity of individuation or subjectivity, requiring a altogether different  economy of attention.      dr stephen loo is professor of architecture at the school of architecture & design, university of tasmania. he has published widely on  affect and the biophilosophy of the contemporary subject, ethico‐aesthetic models for human action, and experimental digital  thinking. his current research (with undine sellbach) concerns the connections between ethics, psychoanalysis and the space of  the entomological imagination with forthcoming publications in angelaki and parallax.        steve harfield  associate professor in architectural theory   university of technology sydney    a deceptive surface: photography, materiality, and inference  such supposed information retrieval from the subject matter of the photograph leads us to assert an effectively  uncomplicated  ‘perception’  and/or  ‘interpretation’  of  the  photographic  content  –  based  perhaps  on  the  ‘mechanical’ nature of such reproduction,  and  irrespective of our knowledge and appreciation of the ability to  ‘tamper’ with such content.  ‘perception’ here  is understood to signal a relatively uncritical  level of  information  availability, whereas ‘interpretation’ suggests a more sophisticated and self‐aware level of comprehension. what  we see, we therefore convince ourselves, is what we get; what is in the photograph is precisely that which we can  easily draw out from it; what the photograph clearly shows provides unequivocal evidence for and reinforces our  understanding of its content.   yet all of this is mere assumption. what we perceive is no more than a ‘surface’ perception, a statement of the  apparently obvious content of the photographic image based on no evidence beyond our own assumptions about  that  content.  what  we  ‘get’  –  or  so  we  believe  –  is  precisely  what  we  ‘see’,  although  this  seeing,  and  our  concomitant interpretation, is both depthless and inferential.  and while a given photograph may, in key respects,  be transparent to its referent – this image is of a woman in her ‘fifties, of working class background, photographed  in a less than salubrious environment – we cannot know from the photograph itself that this is the case. it could –  just as easily, though perhaps less convincingly or less ‘apparently’ since we have a tendency to rush to the most  direct  and  ‘self‐evident’  explanation  –  be  a  ‘set‐up’  photograph  constructed  by  the  photographer  for  some  particular purpose, a still from a television series, a fancy dress ball, and so on. as such, our understanding of, our  interpretation of, and our simple belief in any of the above, is thus inferential rather than evidential.   photography is thus, par excellence, a medium of materiality and ‘presence’ on the one hand, and of inference and  self‐constructed  ‘knowledge’  on  the  other.    and  while  our  belief  in  the  ‘meaning’  of  photographs  is  almost  inescapably reinforced by the apparent content of the image itself – the self‐imposition of evidence, rather than  the analysis of demonstrable and unequivocal ‘fact’ – our supposed understanding of any photograph comprises  the  (super)imposition  onto  the  image  of  our  own  assumptions  and  beliefs,  preferences  and  prejudices,  expectations and desires.    inference, therefore, rules; and belief – neatly and, too often, uncritically – follows!  drawing on a variety of sources the paper argues that our engagement with the photographic image is not merely  interpretative but simultaneously both assumptive and  inventive.   the photograph thus constitutes a deceptive  surface, a veritable plato’s cave of triggered possibilities. and it is on the basis of the supposedly indexical, but by  virtue of the  ‘supersensibility’ and self‐imposition of the viewer, that the  image  is re‐animated, re‐vivified, and  drawn back to life, albeit a life of supposition, potentially far different from its beginnings before the camera lens.  steve harfield is associate professor in the school of architecture, faculty of design, architecture & building, at the university of  technology sydney where he has lectured on theory, design and history since 1988. his primary research interests focus on the analysis  of design and design thinking from a theoretical perspective. specific foci are the ontology of design  (exploring the nature of design  and of design concepts); design, problems and ‘problematization’ (investigating problem solving and the structure of problems, the  nature of design problems, and the issue of problem construction in design); normative positions in thinking systems (explicating and  theorizing the role of ideology, tacit knowledge, personal constructs, regimes of truth, etc., in design thinking and design decision  making); and theorizing design processes.  associate professor harfield has presented papers at major local and international  conferences and has been published in international journals such as design studies and the journal of architectural education.  ongoing projects include work on complexity and emergence in relation to design thinking; on the dislocation between generation and  justification in design processes; on the nature of design problems; and on relations between architecture and music.    thomas mical  associate professor  university of south australia        transparency in glass: medium, message, symptom    the characteristic trait that marked modern architecture's difference from the lure of antiquity was the collapse of  transcendence into the immanent and nearly invisible materiality of glass. the surfaces of modernity are the skins  of desires, the translucent surfaces of sense. in the case of architecture, where the modifications of the skin are  conceptual and constructed, the modernist tendency of asceticism manifests itself in the skin becoming  transparent, an infrathin tissue that promises the revelation of truth, of the real, through the optical negation of  the surface.   the compulsive repetition of glass surfaces, simultaneously an avant‐garde "culture of negation" and a "projective  utopia" was a response to the metaphors of transparency within modernity, now recognized as an overarching  myth, in that transparency is always partial, contingent, and masks something else. rowe and slutzky's influential  retroactive identification of architecture's bivalent literal / phenomenal transparency is challenged by lefebvre's  writings on transparent space, and most recently revised by architect‐theorist toyo ito, who proposes further  tropes: liquid, erotic, and opaque transparency.   transparency‐in‐glass is more accurately historicized following mcluhan as a medium whose message is a previous  medium, paradoxically concealed in plain sight. the transparent surfaces of sense sustain the optical models of  enlightenment subjectivity, and are therefore most accurately analyzed using the lacanian "symptom" ‐  "symptom" performing as metaphor, as censor and truth of a suppressed signified. the symptomatic “delay in  glass” is also here proposed to be the interruption of the glass surfaces, in concept and affect. the "massage" of  transparency will be exposed as the repressed irrational desires that were smoothed over in the fantasy of a  homogenous universal spatial continuum of modernity.  thomas mical is associate professor of architecture at the university of south australia’s school of art, architecture, and design. he is  the editor of surrealism and architecture (routledge, 2005). he completed his professional master in architecture at harvard  university graduate school of design with a thesis on blade runner and tokyo cyborg urbanism; his first doctorate at georgia tech on  nietzsche and de chirico, and his second doctorate at the european graduate school in media‐philosophy. he has taught at the  technical university of vienna, university of chicago, university of florida, carleton university, rensselaer polytechnic institute, illinois  institute of technology, and georgia tech. his professional design experience has been in chicago and tokyo. his research examines  some intersections of architectural theory, surrealism, transparency, and hauntology.  mina yaney  phd candidate  vienna university of technology, austria        post‐parametric architectural, aesthetical and sociopolitical configurations    in considering how materiality has been fabricated and deployed throughout modern technoscience, one observes  an underlying operating deterministic‐analytical anthropocentrism bending nature according to human’s  intentional will. variants on such a claim are reminiscent of heidegger's critique of modern technology, in the  seventies, where he describes the essence of modern technology as enframing, [ge‐stell], which transforms the  world into an instrumental “standing‐reserve”. hence, organic materiality has been conceived of as passive, inert,  and therefore subject to intentional configuration and organization into desired ends, such as products, objects,  and habitable structures. perhaps the imagery of the vitruvian man and of the concomitant model of the machine,  as modern guiding metaphors for the production of built environments, depicts how the modern project has been  distinctly based on a cognitive approach to materiality.  however, the history of british cybernetics offers a different conception of materiality as well as a concomitant  form of technology and science that attempted to generate propositions to circumvent a modern domination of  nature through knowledge while incorporating the morphogenetic and adaptive intelligence of embodied matter.  the projects of britain’s leading cyberneticians, gordon pask and stafford beer, as well as their approach of what  one may call embodied or biological computation, are most indicative of such cybernetic approach to materiality.  the paper critically investigates the interrelation of materiality, information, interactivity, and interfaciality in the  case of pask’s notion of chemical computers while characterizing his approach as generating quasi‐organic  electrochemical interfaces.   subsequently the paper attempts to expand the paskian conception of electrochemical interfaces by the  introduction and evaluation of the notion of metabolic biotechnical interfaces. this introduction seeks to expand  on the interfacial (and nondual) opportunities provided by recent developments in biotechnology as potential  source of technology, methodological, theoretical, and material transfer. the paper concludes with speculations on  how architectural design might, thereby, be rethought as biotechnical interface between intentionally‐dependent  and intentionally‐independent systems while inducing organic habitable structures from within – via modulation  and interfacing ‐ rather than mechanically and intentionally imposing rigid form from without.  mina yaney is an architectural designer and a phd candidate at the vienna university of technology. his thesis becoming skin: cultivating interfaciality grapples with the undertheorized philosophical notion of the interface as ontological  and epistemological device while relating it to recent developments in biotechnology. his work attempts to create propositional  synergies between architecture, philosophy, social sciences, media theory and emerging biotechnologies. he is co‐founder of the  vienna‐based association implantat and collaborated with architect wolfgang tschapeller at the international competition bauhaus  europa, was awarded at the international competition techtextil, (2009) and gained 2010 the distinguished fohn‐fellowship for  extraordinary projects in vienna.    matthias ludwig  professor of architecture  hs wismar, germany        ulrich müther : cast in concrete (invited contribution)     for a long time the work of ulrich müther has received little attention.  the main reason for this is not ignorance,  but the fact that he has worked as a structural engineer in east germany ‐ behind ‘the iron curtain”. his buildings  stand out not only for their constructive aspects, but also for their exceptional spatial and architectonic  characteristics that are defined by their construction material – concrete. müther’s skills in bringing concrete into a  well‐considered and structurally‐optimized form allowed him to design architectural objects with outstanding  aesthetic qualities. his architecture generated an aura of experimentation and cosmopolitanism that stood  diametrically opposed to the ubiquitous “plattenbau” of the former gdr.     müther referred to himself as formwork virtuoso (schalenbaumeister) to underscore his comprehensive skills as  both engineer and architect. over a period of 30 years, he designed more than 60 concrete formwork buildings, all  of which were designed and fabricated by his own company veb spezialbetonbau on rügen – with specialist  machinery imported from the “capitalist west”. mostly conceived as prototypes for serial production, only few of  his constructions are free standing architectural objects. the current state of his buildings ranges from expertly  executed renovations to deliberately instigated demolitions – the most negative example being the destruction of  his so‐called “maple leaf” building in berlin in 2000.    following the political changes after the opening of the east german borders, müther’s work has gained increasing  recognition in western europe. particularly in switzerland, numerous publications and exhibitions  (architekturforum zürch) testify to a growing interest in his architecture.  i will argue that, despite his isolation,  müther wrote an important chapter in the history of precast concrete construction with his unbelievably light  formworkand  his buildings are to be regarded as of equal importance to the cast concrete works of felix candela  outerino in mexico and heinz isler in switzerland.    matthias ludwig is professor of architecture at the hochschule wismar and partner in the stuttgart‐based architectural firm büro für  architektur. the work of his practice has won multiple national awards and has been named by wallpaper magazine as one of the  “top  25 architect practices around the world".
he studied at sac under peter cook, at the university of applied science, stuttgart and the  bartlett, university college london . matthias held a fellowship at the akademie schloss solitude in stuttgart and has taught at the  university of western australia in perth and at the state art academy in stuttgart before his professorial appointment at wismar. his  research focuses on mobile architecture and prefabricated buildings and he is author of the book mobile architektur ‐ geschichte und  entwicklung modularer und transportabler bauten. in 2011, he was appointed as the director of the ulrich müther ‐ archive in wismar.          andré bélanger  school of law, université laval, québec/canada    anne bordeleau  school of architecture, university of waterloo, ontario/canada      material antagonism: art, law and architecture (presented as a film during breaks)    we are interested in the materiality of the architectural project and the legal contract as social artifacts, here  contrasting their materiality to their possible reification. shadows in an economically driven world, the  architectural project and the legal contract can too often merely serve a society promoting ent’art’ainment. and  yet, they both bear the potential to act as indexical signifiers in complex social realms. studying art works that are  situated at the junction of law and architecture, our intention is to foreground the critical role of the contract and  the architecture as social artifacts, tangible traces of the subjective and intangible in‐between.  to question the desocialization currently affecting both these practices, our study considers artistic uses of the  contract in different architectural settings (e.g. art galleries, museum, art fairs, street art). in particular, we turn to  the work of santiago sierra, an artist who has been paying homeless people, illegal immigrants, prostitutes or black  people to perform in various artistic venues. operating in a blurred legal and spatial zone, sierra reveals that the  capacity of the artist to critic, reinvent, and reinterpret the world is clearly part of the legislative process.  his practice also exposes the distance between artistic venues as institutional frameworks that somehow open a  normative space in which some illicit activities may exceptionally surface, and the actual walls and floors of the  architectural setting against which these activities are cast. his work thus points to architecture’s and the  contract’s material significance, both bearing effects that extend much beyond the codification and limitation of  social behaviors and spatial movements.  learning and building from claire bishop's criticism of relational aesthetics and her emphasis on antagonism, the  intention is to explore how sierra's juridical‐based performances, displayed as spectacles in different artistic  venues, bring to the fore the crucial, complex and material dimensions of the contract and of architecture as social  artifacts.      professor andré bélanger has been teaching law at université laval since 2002. he was awarded a doctoral degree in law at université  laval, after completing a dea at the university of montpellier i. his research and teaching activities centre on contract theory. some  recent publications include interdisciplinary studies on the relation between linguistics and law (bakhtin and scapoline), incursions in  sociology (mauss, honneth), and critical considerations of literature and statistics in relation to the theory underlying contract.    anne bordeleau is an architect and professor at the school of architecture of the university of waterloo, where she teaches design  studio and cultural history. a postdoctoral fellow at the paul mellon centre for studies in british art, she holds a phd in architecture  from the bartlett school of graduate studies, and a professional degree as well as a post‐professional masters in the history and theory  of architecture from mcgill university. her work on nineteenth‐century architectural history and theory, on the indexical nature of  architecture and on architectural representation has been published in architectural theory review, footprint, journal of architecture  and architectural history.      agnieszka mlika  artist and phd candidate  central saint martins college of art and design, university of the arts london        painting architecture: material modes of projective thinking (presented as a film during breaks)    is it possible to imagine a work which behaves like architecture, without 'looking' like architecture? with this  question, stan allen suggested a new line of affiliation for architecture: painting, based on an analogous effect to  architecture’s functioning rather than its materiality. this paper, as part of a practice‐based phd, builds upon  allen’s suggestion by analysing how contemporary painting can contribute to ‘design thinking’ by its potential to  simultaneously visualise the material and the immaterial qualities of architecture. it is argued that the architectural  discipline has not developed the appropriate methods to visualise a holistic understanding and experience of  space, but rather developed a rational, reductive and abstract visual language. however, the visualisation of  architectural projection ought to reflect the wider realm in which architecture functions, if we are to accept cedric  price’s claim that the best solution to architectural problems is not always a building. the presented project  ‘painting architecture’ is analysed to understand whether, and how, painting ‐ in its threefold meaning of medium,  form and practice ‐ can reflect and contribute to a larger paradigmatic shift in the architectural profession from an  autonomous art of design to a practice which embraces social responsibility and contingency in its processes. by  borrowing from fine art the concept of relational aesthetics, the paintings are produced during dialogues by  visually tracing the process of spatial thinking. as such, the painting functions as a mediator, reflecting ‘design  thinking’ as an interactive process of confrontation, negotiation and collaboration, thus anticipating contingency  and potentiality. while this shifts the interpretation of the painting from an aesthetic object to a functional tool, it  suggests for the architectural discipline a material mode of thinking that reflects an increasingly immaterial  architectural practice as spatial agency.    agnieszka mlicka is an artist and phd candidate at central saint martins college of art and design, university of the arts london,  following initial research at the school of architecture and the built environment, university of westminster. the practice‐based  research investigates what contemporary painting can contribute to the process of architectural design. this builds upon ma research  into the motives and methods of drawing cities at wimbledon college of art, ual. prior to this, she received an ma in fine art from the  ruskin school of drawing and fine art, university of oxford. for further details: www.agnieszkamlicka.com       interstices 08 63interstices 08 63 and the open bridge: labour, enchantment, there forever linda marie walker and stephen loo the bland does not utter the things of the world – does not paint the world – except at their point of assimilation back into the undifferentiated, where they shed their distinctive traits, integrate their differences, and give reign to their propensity for fusion. an imponderable quality … blandness is, of necessity, fugitive … (jullien, 2004: 91). introduction this essay draws upon a project we were both closely involved with as curator and project manager titled there forever.1 it was an ephemeral public art project, commissioned for a local community festival, namely the inaugural port adelaide festival in april 2007. the project, made possible by a grant from arts sa (the south australian government’s arts funding body) involved the curating of eight artists from the city of adelaide, several of whom knew the local situation in port adelaide from living there, but all of whom were aware of the significant and enigmatic suburban history of the port within the context of the city. writing a paper by drawing upon a project, in this case an ephemeral art project, raises critical issues of ‘use’, and, for us, this idea of ‘use’ carries with it a feeling best described as ‘reticence’. this reticence is about writing itself: what it is, what it does, how it can be ‘voiced’; and how it is productive of a politics between what can be sensed and how that appears as work. in this essay, two different voices literally come together (there was no pretence at conventional composition), to operate together: left aligned, linda marie walker, right aligned, stephen loo. a question of use the project was, and is, at the mercy of what ‘use’ is: what ‘use’ is ‘impermanence’ (what ‘use’ is death); what ‘use’ is investment – money, time, space, thought – in the fleeting, the temporary, the virtual (in other words, life). and integral to the project was: how to ‘use’ the given conditions; to think with continually, and to make a set of independent ephemeral artworks, with limited means, limited space, and limited days, so as to form an event without resolution; or, in other words, to form a substance, an awkward or elegant shape, a community of voices, or/and a gathering of moods. last night teri hoskin, an artist in the project, read from her writing-work for the project. the piece she read came from the evening of day 8: 1. the website of the there forever ephemeral public art project, designed and constructed by teri hoskin, is at http://www. ensemble.va.com.au/thereforever interstices 08 63 interstices 08 63 and the open bridge: labour, enchantment, there forever linda marie walker and stephen loo waterways around the world are changing – artists and academics sink their teeth into these rich sites of transformation, often funded by developers, local government and councils – cynically one could say we are moved in to make smooth the transformation – yet something else happens which will take a little longer than this time to unfold. the story goes something like this: as sites of transformation post-industrial areas present a rich ground of competing forces of global capitalism, urban renewal, changing work/leisure practices, the impact of new technologies, memory, memorial, etcetera (all those labels that roll so easily off an academic tongue).2 the project’s institutional raison d’être is overtly political: to find other ways to commission public art than memorializing (literally) through monuments in space; to tap into the affectual register and thus reify the singularity of the architectural remains of an historic port, as justification for the conservation of place; to engage with a community (and they are not one) whose identity is inscribed in ‘historic port adelaide’ as a name, and so forth. if one has to write the project as an historical event, how can this writing remain within jacques rancière’s notion of politics as a process of democratic emancipation from the structures of policy (laws, codes, governance) that deny equality, when writing itself cannot escape from appearing as the material effectuation of/as policy? more importantly, how can i, as project manager – one already charged with the task of mobilizing policies belonging to sanctioned codes of practice, which in turn relate to ‘proper’ activities by stakeholders (the governmental art body who funded the project, or the state road and transport authority whose mandate is to police the ‘correct’ use of public infrastructure) – write the project as political? the political force of the project is not an identifiable community (the project does not ‘represent’, as such, those who have been dispossessed or forced to relocate by rampant urban rejuvenation of the port), but rather it is the population that has been variously named, and therefore has the possibility of being misnamed (the generic other that each time falls outside a particular distribution of the sensible, whose identity is being invented, or is not yet invented). these are highly specific categories of the public which, paradoxically, exist because of a certain partitioning in the way things can be seen and spoken, internal to institutionalization or governmentality; a public, who by being named, is continuously negotiating its equal status within a given space of community. it is through the subjectivization of the variously and continuously changing public, as a never ending site of verification of equality, that the political emerges (rancière, 2004b:93). to remain so-touched listening – as the almost-accidental curator of the there forever project – reminded me of the duty (the love for what is created) one has toward something as delicate and tenuous (and tenacious) as this project was – and still is. overall, the project, as a work-of-art named ‘ephemeral’, had a permanency similar to, but at odds with, the named ‘permanent’ art-work (it is ‘there’, permanent, and then vanishes). the ephemeral work offers its absence, its afterwards, as ‘real’: it appeared; it disappeared. one could fight for its sites 2. the writing goes on to say: “the question is: how do these sites become choral? chora – the filter – is an unnameable, unfigurable device (a metaphorical concept invented by plato and developed by derrida and after him [gregory] ulmer … through which questions can be framed in such a way that the questions themselves activate thinking action around problems specific to a place and a time.” teri hoskin’s daily venue for her writing was two-fold; first it was the site she chose at port adelaide and visited twice a day (dawn/ dusk) and recorded as digital images; twice a day she published a set of images and the writing produced by the commitment to the ‘work’ of visiting (travelling from her home in the city to the site of the project, the port) on a web-site (b part renaissance: http://ensemble.va.co.m.at/9days/ about.html). interstices 08 65interstices 08 65 so-touched to remain so-touched (a lighthouse, a bridge, a building, a wharf, a basement, an archive): they would be ‘afterwards’ works. (they do remain, in some shape or other, although vaguely ‘touched’ forever). a site is imagined (the rowboat did not have to be seen; it became sound);3 the touched-site is elemental, it continues to be ‘the work’. the ephemeral art-work’s passing does not make it any less visible (or desirable); its variable duration is not unlike ‘an exhibition’ in a gallery – it’s scheduled, and then it’s gone – a minute, twenty five years, or forever (it passes). perhaps it is only through a rancièrean disagreement that i can arrive at the political in writing about the politics of the project: that is, to enact an interruption to the distribution of the sensible. we do not set out a disagreement of known political positions, nor are we enacting an oppositional practice, but rather a ‘dissensus’ over the givens of a particular situation made visible by a particular distribution of the sensible. touching lightly, the writing(s) enact disjunctions and conjunctions between what is meant to speak and to understand, between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible. writing about the project affords an encounter which causes the objects and utterances to be deterritorialized from their original contextual space of discourse and temporal designations, so that thinking, as reterritorialization, can begin (again). thinking is always a rethinking (rancière, 2000: 120). fading it was critical that the project did not cohere into a single state or objective: its times of ‘openings’ and performances varied; its physical locations were multiple; information was delivered by invitation, website and word-of-mouth. these were not deliberate complications; complexity emerged as forces of containment faded (immediate structure, overarching mood, clear meaning). in such rethinking is the question of relations and their implicit repetitions and tensions, as manifest in the following conditions: firstly, the elusive material presence of the project (there were many who claimed that they were unsure if they had missed it altogether); secondly, its presencing as writing, whether representational or otherwise (rancière would say that writing is always on the way to an incarnation that lies ahead of both writer and reader: “the population of the novel [writing] is also the promise of a people to come” (rancière, 2004a: 157)4); and thirdly, the present, the here and now, given by this essay as an evental site. to unravel the project would make of it what it did not have the propensity to be; it would impose upon it an ‘atmosphere’ ruled from elsewhere: the world of art; the world of local-interest; the world of politics (re-development, tourism, business, for instance). isabelle stengers, writing about the “passing fright that scares self-assurance”, says that even though fright makes “an interstice in the soil of good reasons” it does not mean “fright is sufficient” to know how to proceed in order to provoke thought and slow down (so as to become aware of “the problems and situations mobilizing us”). because, “[i]nterstices close rapidly” (stengers, 2005: 994-996). 3. james geurts’ work titled bridge drawing water went through several iterations due to weather; the work eventually became an almost-imagined work; a public bridge was opened by negotiation, a number of ordinary events occurred as a consequence, a very small ‘sound-situation’ on the water passed beneath the open-bridge, and then the bridge closed (just as it has been doing for decades). 4. here rancière is outlining the contradictions inherent in deleuze’s poetics: on one hand deleuze hopes for an “innocent” multiplicity in texts, on the other he installs the figure of the eccentric as the hero of this multiplicity. for rancière, the political stake in literature is in the multiplicity in writing’s incarnation that arrives from the non-preferential but haecceitic movement of the text in the specific (named) public and text. interstices 08 65 interstices 08 65 the project kept its diffuse beginning, but with exuberance: talk, disquiet, meetings, excursions, eating, etc. it gathered over time to see what could appear, and to see how not to, if possible, exhaust oneself, and in so doing exhaust the project, the place, the subject; although exhaustion did occur, as did inexhaustiveness to see what else could be done, with what was understood and by making, performing, and exhibiting the works. the category of art, as work, whose visibility is primarily given by the image of material instantiation – there-being (of) something on the ground – is frequently appropriated to uncover, represent, enunciate, the politics of public space. a corollary question is whether a work of art can inherently be political? it seems the question of the aesthetics of a work of art can be found to hover between the enactment of the politics, and being political in its enactment, resulting in a certain irresolvable undecidability in the politics of aesthetics. it is this metapolitics which rancière says gives art work its possibilities (2006: 45). the dream to remain that is, ‘the work’ did not complete itself; it just came to a specified date, a pre-set hour. the permanence of the ephemeral is ‘contained’, in this instance, in its slowness to sustain a continuation (of making), and to fade from the ‘governance of art to manifest non-process, non-transitoriness. the dream to remain, to stay (alive), is not an avoidance of product or market, but is an johnnie dady, the cardboard piano shop. interstices 08 67interstices 08 67 acknowledgment that what arrives at the set-hour is, wonderingly, on ‘the way’ to something/where else. therefore, it is implicit to honour what appears by giving it as good a chance as possible to stay-alive (venue, empathy, curiosity, context). for the artist who has taken to heart, or is in the midst of, issues of community, conflict, sadness, anger, loss, and their political effects, determinations, and arguments, ‘dissensus’ rather than resistance (as a stance, or reaction, in the form of an artefact) is a possible mode of thinking: … a way of reconstructing the relationship between places and identities, spectacles and gazes, proximities and distances. … the problem, first of all, is to create some breathing room, to loosen the bonds that enclose spectacles within a form of visibility, bodies within an estimation of their capacity, and possibility within the machine that makes the ‘state of things’ seem evident, unquestionable (rancière, 2007: 261).5 within the modernist paradigm of public space, the politics of art work is collapsed into the ‘public’ as an inherently political category: public art effectuates the public politics. under this regime of effectuation, the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘politics’ per se remain coherent, their integrity unquestioned, and they are, in this way, able to afford aesthetics a visibility, as they make available the ground for structuration (for speaking, showing, writing, and making – of essays, research, sculpture, design and architecture, etc.). however, the ground as a place for (other) types of structures, or movements of labour, is never felt or experienced. degrees of freedom the artists6 in the there forever project combine mediums – sound, text, drawing, video, objects, light, painting, weaving, photographs, performances. they are not ‘multi-media’ artists, nor are they artists who primarily work as ‘public’ artists.7 5. “a dissensus is not a quarrel over personal interests or opinions. it is a political process that resists juridical litigation and creates a fissure in the sensible order by confronting the established framework of perception, thought, and action with the ‘inadmissible’, i.e. a political subject” (rancière, 2006: 85). 6. the artists: johnnie dady, julie henderson, yhonnie scarce, angela valamanesh, michael yuen, james geurts, teri hoskin, jessica wallace; with bridget currie as research assistant. 7. they are also not artists who meet the “… market’s need for ‘spectacle’” (rancière, 2007: 262). james geurts, bridge drawing water. interstices 08 67 interstices 08 67 the world has laws of circulation, and degrees of freedom,8 and it appreciates the placement of one’s feet on the ground: “… of knowing what one is doing in a particular place, in a particular system of exchange. one must find ways to create other places, or other uses for places” (rancière, 2007: 263).9 the rest of my writing for this essay consists of eight fragments written during the making of the project, to help ‘feel’ my feet on the ground. (1) the labour of others an expanding practice, where one thing leads to another – a proliferating practice that affects the relationship between things – everything for/to itself, gaps and separations, exact places for thought … looping to the outside world, the way the body does (connecting to the air); the performance done … perhaps the question becomes: how can we make the ground, as the movement (literally, as kinesis) of labour, political? or, how do we work with accepted structures and institutions to create new movement structures, ones which are of non-representative politics?10 what the project is (in search of), is a politics of movement not already inscribed with a partisanship, or militancy, or citizenship, but one without a recognized political subjectivity. in the project, the politico-aesthetics of movement arrives not from planned demonstrations and orchestrated performances, but from the general capabilities of the human being (for example, the ability to communicate, improvise, hold dissonant beliefs, etc.), as it labours in moving from one definition or name, given in governmentality, to another. … or not done, the risk is elsewhere, in how we dress, labour, the appearance of labour as art, as the past before us, that things are not over, ever, the making of arrangements, the stories we tell each other, are artefacts, there is no secret, 8. “freedom is not about breaking or escaping constraints. it’s about flipping them over into degrees of freedom. you can’t really escape the constraints” (zournazi, 2002: 222). 9. “the idea of emancipation implies that there are never places that impose their law, that there are always several spaces in a space, several ways of occupying it, and each time the trick is knowing what sort of capacities one is setting in motion, what sort of world one is constructing” (rancière, 2007: 262). 10. as deleuze says of intellectual work relating to institutions (he was talking about mental asylums to foucault), “representation no longer exists, there is only actions – theoretical and practical actions which serve as relays and form networks” (1977: 206-207). julie henderson, continuous wave, forms of a dialogue. interstices 08 69interstices 08 69 nothing missing, and we float out, away, we can do this, bringing enchantment to the ground of matter, of using the body uselessly (weakly), our own labour (working) with the labour of others. why is constructing new political forms from movement, or giving political form to diverse experiences of movement, an important concern for public art as an aesthetic practice? to answer this we must return to the partitioning of the ways we can say and speak, which regulate the governance of social, economic and psychical configurations. we need to find political forms that possess new consistencies, because the uncertainty of our affectual relations, owing to the circulation of the sensible, makes us succumb too easily to the security afforded by forms of institution and the state. more specifically, we need to understand that these political forms are immanent to the search, as processes which interrupt the current distribution of the sensible, not by establishing other partitionings that need to be policed, but by throwing in to the distributive mix other names, categories and structures, to make visible the (‘wrong’) names (rancière, 1999: 21-42) that have been imposed on the public. names, as the ‘wrong’, summon the dēmos – the ‘common’ identified as outside of the names imposed, plebeians supplementary to the named democracy – who, in the events that make up ‘public’ life, will challenge their exclusion by the ‘wrong’. the ‘wrong’ brings us to the limit of politics, not to get to the other side (the ‘other’ is after all identified by the ‘wrong’ names which are set in place by particular distributions of the sensible), but to inhabit the constant to-ing and fro-ing between outside and inside as a kind of non-teleological labour. such a) yhonnie scarce, fanny graham. b) teri hoskin, b part renaissance. c) jess wallace, buoyancy. b) a) c) interstices 08 69 interstices 08 69 movement is work that needs to be done – an obligation imposed by the metastable system of individuation (simondon, 1992) as we negotiate belonging to a space. our citizenship of public space is reliant upon the contingent experience of kinesis (from work associated with drifting migration and emigration, to experiencing artwork, to the use of certain infrastructures and not others, etc.). (2) the bridge watching us the world comes into view; the things of the world come into view to be acted and touched upon, to be worked ‘with’, in concert, so as to bring about through constellation, conjunction, intersection, something else again, slight, to the side, upward, or more centred, an image, a slowing of time, a bringing of silence, to listen, to make-out a figure, a boat, who/what that might or might not be, to feel it as oneself, as the self that brought that to its moment, movingly, the aspects, the stopping, the pausing, the resuming, our breath, our willingness, our sadness, our aloneness, and the extreme force of each aspect (a flash, like lightning) – the weight and mechanism of the opening bridge, the pleasure of the bridge-controller, the lights lining the bridge, the sirens and bells, the cars waiting, the rain, the deep currents, the lighthouse weirdly behind us, and the sound of the rower in the boat, passing, and (perhaps) seeing the tiny star-flash of the man on the bridge watching us watching. (3) without brief(s) there was no brief, no document intended to guide the artists in the project. there were already many shaping conditions though: location, time, festival, money, mediums. and the job was to bring work into existence, from the location itself, work that arose in response to the environment of the port. the public gathered in the square, well before time, anticipating a large flash. after all, this was the name of the work: flash. port adelaide, australia, 22 april 2007, 8:02 pm. there was going to be light, and sound.11 the space of this almost instantaneous work, and thus the public space in 11. “flash … is a new ephemeral public work by michael yuen. at this place and time: a large flash of light and burst of sound.” michael yuen, artist’s description, flash. port adelaide, australia, 22 april 2007, 8:02 pm. at http://ensemble. va.com.au/thereforever michael yuen, flash, port adelaide, australia, 22 april 2007, 8:02pm. interstices 08 71interstices 08 71 which the work occurs, is registered by a one-to-one correspondence between light and sound. at 8.10pm, 8 minutes later than expected, the sensuous experience of the work – its movement contained to a couple of seconds by this correspondence – was over. the audience remained motionless for quite a while. ‘did i miss something? is there more; should there be more [experience]? can i move; should i move? i am unsure, as this is an art work; but this is public space; and so on.’ at 8.18pm, it happened again, unplanned. many were caught unawares. the sound triggered sensuous registration: the flash was not fully perceived, but experienced nevertheless in a non-sensuous way; it was presumed to have occurred with the sound. here is the work’s actual durationality: the space-time disjunction that is felt in the anticipation, then dissipation, of the work; the shifting of bodies in the crowd, the walking away and turning back again; the disturbance of the idea of a beginning and a completion of the work; all of which call into action the public’s general capacity for improvisation, non-linguistic communication, adaptation and alteration of the environment. this sort of (in)attention of public art and public space is politically non affirmative, figural rather than figurative, and it is felt rather than known. a new political composition unfolds, owing to an interruption from within the institutional structure. (4) the open labour as a practice, it (a thought), tried to stay open (unlike the bridge that had to close again), to offer, as an invitation the chance to change, alter, stop, re-make, or break the work – at the moment of viewing or encountering. to offer the angela valamanesh, new metaphors. interstices 08 71 interstices 08 71 invitation, carefully, to an-other to be/come with the work, as the work, as an aspect of, a component … (interrupted) … of framing room for another to enter so as to assist, and therefore assist (and change) ‘the work’, the labour (of the aesthetic) of the work. (5) community of communities the project was not a community-art ‘project’. however, it was hoped from the start that there would be contact with communities from the area. at the same time though, there was no imperative to engage, literally, at the ‘community’ level. community was a question. there are strong and deeply loved historical roots, ones that temper the entire sense of the place: working class, maritime, football, abandonment and so on. respect was required, but more deference, honour so as, at least, no grand impositional ‘artworks’, from the ‘outside’, would come to bear, show-up, and undermine, or overmine perhaps, the ‘ground’ of the port. this, also, was not a ‘rule’. the political is the negotiation, not to negate the governing institution, but to embrace it in the search for the conceptual networks which cause reality to appear, and in creating fictions using the signs that belong to a local reality which show up their contingency. jess wallace spoke with locals about the pollution of the river. she was dissuaded from diving. she shot her video in a public pool in another suburb: the people involved came to the port to see the work. other viewers recounted their stories of the port river as a playground and as a place of death. julie henderson spent ten weeks with the radio club members. she attended their weekly meetings. she also met rick, who works in the boat shed behind the radio shack, and recorded his stories. the radio club members agreed to open their shack to the public several times, and helped julie with her sound installation there. they provided special lights in the shack as well as objects for display. port adelaide. interstices 08 73interstices 08 73 in this way the project work gives. i am reminded here of jane bennett’s notion of enchantment: “enchantment is a feeling of being connected in an affirmative way to existence; it is to be under the momentary impression that the natural and the cultural worlds offer gifts, and in so doing, remind us that it is good to be alive” (bennett, 2001: 156). enchantment is valuable for ethical life because it can supplement, though not replace, a code-based approach to ethics, providing it with a motivational basis and a spirit of generosity that moral rules cannot generate on their own. ‘deano’ worked closely with julie, supplying spotlights and a generator for her performance on the wharf, and then he spontaneously joined in her performance on the night so as to ‘help’ her cart the water bottles from the shack to the wharf. rick built julie a frame for the door to his shed so she could install a tv and video-player to show her film of him talking about his work and the development of the port. julie placed an advertisement in the local newspaper calling for old tvs. she received an aster plymouth and two lamps, one a small desk lamp. the astor and the desk lamp became key components of her installation at headquarters (hq).12 johnnie dady’s cardboard pianos gently protested against (the) tension that exists between the old port and the new port: aspirations, renaissance, new-life coming from an old-life. you will need a baby grand, surely. and if you’re poor, a cardboard one will ‘do’. the seven pianos became a community, and they were silent. what does a community have to turn itself into so that you will hear its worth; what does one have to become (beautifully poorly grand) to have a say? (6) the worry of being worried the surface of the space within which this project makes itself and shows itself is not a public or a ‘common’ space. unless a specific space is ‘designated’ a public one ‘for art’ – agreed upon officially, and then officially offered for the reception of a public work of art that must, to a large extent, meet predetermined interests (monument, commemoration, general good, environmental message) – the surface of the earth, the bits one can find to work with, are subject to highly regulated (impossible) conditions. what the project gives are the signs, which give visibility to the sensible, a visibility that is not necessarily there: an image. these signs do not go towards the remembering of historical events. to jean-luc nancy, the image is a re-presentation of the thing to which it owes its ontology, but which competes with the thing in its showing. the image interrupts the self-presencing of the thing, by bringing the latter to presence; the image is essentially monstrative (nancy, 2005: 21), a force which deforms the things it shows. an image, in the presentation of itself, forcefully differentiates itself, and the thing it demonstrates, from the chaotic pool of entities or beings. everything is, from the outset, approached from the position of ‘trouble’. and when one speaks of it, worries what to do, responses are, surprisingly, that this ‘trouble’ is expected-trouble. the surface, or ‘field’, upon which one works – to 12. ‘headquarters’ was the project’s main venue, a vacant bank building of architectural significance. interstices 08 73 interstices 08 73 produce from and for – appears amidst appearances and is a plane upon planes; it is, actually, dynamic, transitory and replete. the ‘public’ is a weave of immense complexities: each complexity is an instrument that rules and regulates; each addresses important issues of danger, damage, injury, liability, not issues to ignore, and issues that one must care for; issues for discussion and generosity, not contention and contestation. there is only police/d space. (7) trying to speak julie henderson (and michael yuen) spoke to a group of students. julie talked about the men and women of the radio club (at the radio shack), and how her work is slow, and may not have an outcome, even though a performance is advertised for 8pm, 26th april on fisherman’s wharf. the talk was part of the performance; the artwork is scattered, made of un(in)determinate things and events of different substances that dissolve and spread. jean luc-nancy writes: “sense is in the exscription of the book, sense is that sense does not stop coming from elsewhere and going elsewhere …” (1997: 191). there are many signs given by the project – images of community, place, history, ecology, architecture, life/lives, death – whose work staves off revelation by signs. these are signs for forgetting, not through emptiness or the void, but by a forestalling of closure that restores the life to remembering. as jorge luis borges says: in forgetting is the hope that there is nothing to reveal (there are no pre-empted relations), nothing but the revelation that itself does not come about (nancy, 2005: 26). the artist labours, is a labourer-artist who can labour differently; the artist can be “… along the surface of this coming of sense. … praxis is not lacking in him whether as reform or revolt, migration or habitation, pain or joy, invention or routine, or as decision endlessly replayed” (nancy, 1997: 191). that is, there is ‘free’ labour, where one is truly (or thereabouts) in the-place or in-servitude (serving place), as one might think one’s subject/audience/other is. but it is not so simple, even though, in all evidence, it is also not the reverse. for the moment, it remains – and it seems to me urgent – to say the following: let us not decipher the world in terms of our philosophical melancholy – no more than in terms of a maniacal optimism that is another form of the same thing. but let us learn to think toward the world (nancy, 1997: 191). here, the relations are imminent, always coming, hovering. (8) a man on an open bridge a man walks halfway across a bridge from a long way away someone sees a man walk halfway across a bridge there were biomorphic pinnacles in a dark basement. and two sun deck chairs. interstices 08 75interstices 08 75 he stops to watch someone a long way away, across the water he thinks someone is watching him there he thinks they see him new metaphors is an interplay between the enchantment by the image which holds apart the actual landscape, and the interconnectedness of art and the ecosystem in a best fit selection. in the first condition, the material appearance of angela valamanesh’s work may be read, rationally, as symbolic images of an ecosystem. as a man standing on a bridge he thinks of a boat in the water beneath him he stops to look across from him, to slow down, to see the other one he thinks he sees he hears around him what he has never heard before it sounds like he is what he hears that this is what he is, inside himself in the second, the morphological transformations in the art work mirror an ecology of practices involving environmental, social and mental systems, which, owing to the constant presence of ambiguity in reading, create conundrums in attempts at a platonic theory of beauty associated with truth. perhaps it is yhonnie scarce, in her fanny graham, that demonstrates most clearly the work of art as political, through its transformations between human affectual or biological relations, and non-human materiality, not only in imaginative terms, but also in terms of real relations, as actively constituting the places in which we live. he hears himself as a man on a bridge across the water someone hears what there is to hear that they have never heard before it is the sound of a man on a bridge they think of a boat in the water beneath him the red yarn, worked with, at times, difficult human labour13 into a material surface that itself bears the marks of human movement (being trod, danced, tripped on), and the movement of the work itself (it was dragged to various locations, folded and unfolded, hung). as the ground, surface or terrain for movement that is the confrontation between what can be sensed (by way of names, institutions, culture, habits) and the attempts by the public to verify their worth, ‘use’, and, therefore, equality in such partitionings of the sensible, the work of art emerges as a political agent with which we, as the named public, are entwined, and it is complicit in the emergence of our public places (its aesthetics is immanent to ‘being-there’), and the ways we comport to these places. 13. yhonnie scarce’s two black painted canvasses were slowly stitched with red thread (this thread pushed through the hard material surface, causing the whole hand to feel pain, and to have to find ways to manage this process; the stitches bear the inscriptions of various affectual forces related to the challenges faced by the artist in the duration of the work, including questions concerning the cultural nature of the work, and threats to the artist’s personal security), following intuitively an inner ‘track’, based on her own indigenous family’s itinerant story, and working the red lines back and forth; working on the floor in public for hours and days, and having to feel the presence of others attending to her work or ignoring her; and then these pieces being suspended at hq on closing night, where they formed an internal shelter of some strange solid kind. interstices 08 75 interstices 08 75 it sounds to them like something they’ve heard before too, somewhere else they take a photograph of him, they take a photograph of the sound of a man on a bridge, a man they think they see on a bridge he takes a photograph of someone he thinks he sees a long way away, inside the sound of himself, then he walks back across the bridge (everything else happens in the world)14 references bennett, j. (2001). the enchantment of modern life: attachments, crossings, and ethics. princeton: princeton university press. deleuze, g. (1977). intellectuals and power. in foucault, m. language, counter-memory, practice: selected essays and interviews by michel foucault, d. f. bouchard (ed.). ithaca: cornell university press. jullien, f. (2004). in praise of blandness: proceeding from chinese thought and aesthetics (p. m. varsano, trans.). new york: zone books. nancy, j. l. (1997). the sense of the world (j. s. librett, trans.). minneapolis & london: university of minnesota press. nancy, j. l. (2005). the ground of the image (j. fort, trans.). new york: fordham university press. rancière, j. (1999). disagreement: politics and philosophy. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. rancière, j. and panagia, d. (2000). dissenting words: a conversation with jacques rancière. diacritics 30 (2, summer), 113-126. rancière, j. (2004a). the flesh of words: the politics of writing (c. mandell, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. rancière, j. (2004b). the politics of aesthetics: the distribution of the sensible (g. rockhill, trans.). london and new york: continuum. rancière, j. (2006). the aesthetic revolution and its outcomes. in heart of darkness: kai althoff, ellen gallagher and edgar cleijne, and thomas hirschhorn. minneapolis: walker art centre. rancière, j. (2007). art of the possible: in conversation with jacques rancière. art forum (march), 261. simondon, g. (1992). the genesis of the individual. in j. crary and s. kwinter (eds.). incorporations, zone 6. new york: zone books. stengers, i. (2005). the cosmopolitical proposal. in b. latour and p. weibel (eds.). making things public: atmospheres of democracy. cambridge: the mit press. zournazi, m. (2002). hope, new philosophies for change. annandale: pluto press australia, annandale. 14. this last fragment was written in response to the performance work bridge drawing water by james geurts on 29th april 2007. 2013 interstices under construction symposium auckland, aotearoa/new zealand friday 22 to sunday 24 november moved: on atmospheres and affects etienne-jules marey (1830-1904) 2013 interstices under construction is jointly organised by the school of art and design, aut university, and the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland (andrew douglas, tina engels-schwarzpaul and ross jenner) moved: on atmospheres and affects considerations of feeling, intensity, affect and immanent experience have gained importance across a range of disciplines over past decades. in architecture and related arts, peter zumthor works with atmosphere as the means by which emotional sensibility is registered, and which offers orientation faster than any critical faculty. olafur eliasson, james turrell, jean-gilles decosterd & philippe rahm, herzog & de meuron, diller & scofidio designers, and theorists as diverse as juhani pallasmaa and tim ingold find common reference in the thinking of german philosopher gernot böhme. “moved: of atmospheres and affects” addresses questions such as, what are the roles of emotion and imagination and the immersion in affective states? what is the role, politically, culturally, creatively, of felt or non-conscious states and excesses of affect in our cities? what does being moved mean, historically and today, for the thinking of design practices spanning cities, architecture, scenography, interiors, objects? in his keynote address, “the aesthetics of atmospheres”, gernot böhme will provide an introduction to theories and applications of atmospheres. atmosphere demands a co-presence that necessary engulfs the terms of any subject/ object division; it is this primary reality, where moods and affects play a key role, that aesthetics (understood as a general theory of perception) must deal with. such a theory must confront with longstanding bifurcation of what the greeks defined as physis and techné, or nature and technology, and indeed calls for something like a revision of what mediation as perception entails. affective immersion seems to correspond with a double movement in modernity’s technological civilization. this civilization relies on a “decidedly unemotional stance” while it fosters the “development of an enormous imaginary domain” nurturing an otherwise truncated emotionality (böhme 2012). affectively calibrated environments, then, are inseparable from “invasive technification” and the externalisation of social constraint. gernot böhme, a world-renowned and influential writer, is emeritus professor of philosophy at darmstadt technical university (germany). böhme has been guest professor at many universities in europe, the usa, japan, and australia. in 2003, böhme received the denkbar-preis für obliques denken (denkbar prize for oblique thinking). he has risen to prominence through his work in aesthetics, the philosophy of embodiment and technology, and practical philosophy. his book architektur und atmosphäre (2006, architecture and atmosphere) is increasingly influential in art and design practice internationally. friday 22 november panel discussion “feeling good: the architecture of ambience” chair: john walsh. participants: melanie lochore (lochore priest limited), john coop (warren and mahoney architects), malcolm walker (malcolm walker architects), pete bossley (pete bossley architects) 4:00 5:30 pm 7:00 8:00 pm design theatre, conference centre, the university of auckland 22 symonds street. 5:40 6:00 pm 6:00 7:00 pm 8:30 pm mihi whakatau, opening address dr moana nepia and professor dianne brand keynote address the aesthetics of atmospheres: theory and applications professor gernot böhme drinks & launch interstices 14: immaterial materialities dinner (optional registration necessary) saturday 23 november introduction and overview tina engels-schwarzpaul, andrew douglas and ross jenner grounding atmosphere chair: ross jenner 1. earthquake weather, floating rocks and other atmospheric anomalies sarah treadwell & laura mclauchlan 2. reverie michael tawa morning tea 9:30 10:30 am 11:00 12:30 pm place effects (s 1) chair: tina engels-schwarzpaul 1. art into nature: elementalism in contemporary public art and architecture eu jin chua 2. negotiated atmospherics anna boswell 3. suspension of place peter chivers 1:30 3:00 pm 3:00 3:30 pm streams 1&2: level 6, sir paul reeves building aut university, governor fitzroy place 10:30 11:00 am saturday 23 november 1:30 3:00 pm 12:45 1:30 pm design theatre, conference centre, the university of auckland 22 symonds street. 9:00 9:30 am ephemeral materials chair: albert refiti 1. making clouds: rethinking urban contexts as differential and participatory fields hannah hopewell 2. contingency & experiential solicitation. from atmospheric awareness to immersive field of experience izabela wieczorek 3. on disgust and odour philippa nicole barr lunch tree house, level 4, sir paul reeves building aut university, governor fitzroy place embodying (s 2) chair: carl douglas 1. impressionable atmospheres: a felt phenomenology anthony brand 2. found subjects: the architectural object within a (spatial) knowledge society michael chapman 3. pleasure in reading tradition mirjana lozanovska afternoon tea 3:30 5:00 pm spinozan after-effects (s1) chair: andrew douglas 1. constructing atmospheres a spinozist’s drift margit brünner 2. designing for affect akari kidd & jan smitheram 3. strategic atmospherics: the built pedagogy of auckland’s ‘learning quarter’ sean sturm & stephen turner conducting (s 1) chair: hannah hopewell 1. the political aesthetics of police kettling scott sørli (by skype) 2. boringness and boredom: the political affections of modern architecture christian parreno 3. inorganic collections carl douglas saturday 23 november 3:30 5.00 pm 5:00 6:00 pm 7:00 pm sunday 24 november 9:00 10:30 am 9:00 10:30 am 10:30 11:00 am streams 1&2: level 6, sir paul reeves building aut university conference dinner: vivace’s, 50 high st, auckland (included in full registration) streams 1&2: level 6, sir paul reeves building aut university performance milieus (s 2) chair: rafik patel 1. between architecture and its lived experience. the construction of the interior as tableau vivant popi iacovou (by skype) 2. digital atmospheres: rethinking public place in light of locative and pervasive communication technologies farzad gharaghooshi 3. cadenced horizons: adolphe appia’s scenic architecture ross anderson drinks conference dinner end moves (s 2) chair: sarah treadwell 1. on being moved: memorials, affect and activation alison atkinson-phillips 2. black sun: postnatural atmospheres stephen loo 3. affective remembering luiza nader morning tea abstracts the abstracts in this brochure are shorter versions of the original, refereed submissions (http://interstices.ac.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/iuc-2013-programme-draft-upload.pdf) sunday 24 november rarefaction (s 1) chair: andrew douglas 1. drawing of breath: a provisional diagram for the reciprocal relations between atmospheres and affects chris cottrell 2. air and architecture: everything together and simultaneously nothing ainslie murray 3. the cultural production of atmospheres tim adams (non-refereed presentation) 11:00 12:30 pm 12.30 12:50 pm 1:00 2:00 pm 2:30 5:00 pm level 6, sir paul reeves building , aut university closing address: wg126 lunch: jin hai wan seafood restaurant pacific spaces: outside wg126 concluding remarks gernot böhme lunch (optional registration required) pacific spaces & sacred houses participants: albert l. refiti, deidre brown, tina engels-schwarzpaul, mike austin, michael goldsmith, jeremy treadwell, tēvita ka’ili, sean mallon, karlo mila-schaaf, hūfanga ‘okusitino māhina, moana nepia, karamia muller, bruce moa, athol greentree, sēmisi f potauaine, raukura turei & elisapeta heta. cadenced horizons: adolphe appia’s scenic architecture ross anderson cadenced horizons presents a close, historically cognizant reading of swiss stage designer adolphe appia’s (1862-1928) scenography, and particularly its primal or elemental atmospheric qualities. appia created his austere, enigmatic stage designs initially for richard wagner’s ‘word-tone’ dramas and the refined them for emile jaques-dalcroze’s abstract eurhythmic performances at hellerau (germany). renderings held in the swiss theatre collection depict monumental stone block steps, platforms and terraces rising from shadowy chthonic depths towards horizon and luminous sky. devoid of the pictorial symbolism of traditional stage design, they emerge from the sober minimalist properties of silence and earth. whether about the vestiges of an ancient, vanquished culture or the anticipation of a new one to come, the designs exemplify modernity’s will to absolute newness alongside its nostalgia for a primordial past: “in the absence of an explicit and shared transcendence susceptible to the sort of sustained mediation one sees in such works as gothic cathedrals ... one is left only with the appeal to the transcendence of the chthonic” – “since the advent of ‘space’, the principal reference to continuity has been ‘ground’ or ‘earth’” (carl 1991: 60; 2006: 26). a possible antecedent to appia’s work are the drawings of german architect friedrich gilly: ostensibly passionless demonstrations of perspectival method, they embody a protomodern weltanschauung in which nature is able to be progressively understood. a collection of differently sized rectangular prisms clutter the foreground as perspectival rays issue towards distant lake shores on a stable horizon. appia relies equally on perspectival method to depict his rhythmic spaces in his renderings and, more importantly, to position actor-dancers on the three dimensional stage and to consider their movements. the hellerau theatre employed an innovative apparatus to control and modulate light and walls and ceiling were made of taught, backlit diaphanous screens, fashioning a luminous space around actors and audience. photographs of christopher gluck’s performance orpheus and eurydice (1912) show the fully spatial nature of the stage design, revealing an affinity with later modernist architecture. appia’s atmospheric designs guide the eye from inky depths toward a promising sky, through multiple and shifting cadenced horizons – the domain of human understanding and experience. alison atkinson-phillips when visiting the vietnam veterans memorial, “[b]e prepared to weep” (danto 1985: 155). creation and release of emotion are intrinsically part of the ritual of mourning, at least in western cultures, and public memorials play an increasing role in commemorative practices negotiating private emotions and public (national and post-national) identity narratives (doss 2012). critiques of memorials and other forms of commemoration tend to fall within two main frameworks: one, informed by psychoanalysis, explores memorials as responses to grief or trauma; the other assumes that memorials are essentially political sites for the contestation of national identity (ashton and hamilton 2010: 96). neither ask what public memorials, as art objects, have to offer that a simple plaque, for example, does not provide. i consider this question with reference to foucault and deleuze, via jill bennett’s work. bennett regards affect not as opposed to critical thought “but as the means by which a kind of understanding is produced” (2005: 36) in performance, aesthetics and affect. public memorials are to move us, to produce affect as an intrinsic part of the creation of meaning. when considering the emerging genre of memorials commemorating traumas of lived history (rape, forced adoption, abuse of children) questions of affect become ever more complex. unlike traditional memorials (including those using non-traditional forms) designed for mourners left behind, non-death memorials commemorate pasts that continue to make themselves felt in the present. deborah britzman’s term difficult knowledge (from lehrer et. al., 2011) is a reminder that such memorials bring to the public sphere stories that have often been purposefully forgotten or considered too private to share. aiming neither for straightforward, therapeutic story-telling, nor for an ‘acting out’ which maintains the presence of trauma, contemporary public memorials draw on diverse elements to create affect, rather than simply tell a story. this presentation explores how memorials to difficult knowledge in the australian context move us in order to create an entry to a journey where affect can lead to activation rather than emotional release and tidy closure. on being moved: memorials, affect and activation on disgust and odour philippa nicole barr atmosphere is pliable, always becoming, always withdrawing from what it touches. atmospheres are experienced primarily by the body, they are acknowledged physically and also incorporated. they seem to be constituted particularly by intangible, indivisible things that are inevitably shared: water, light, colour, temperature, and even odour. the intangible is known to us by affect, by the physical reactions it provokes, involving all the senses. this has diverse consequences for all design disciplines. this paper examines the peculiar nature of disgust in relation to atmospheres produced by sanitation and urban development, and specifically the cross-cultural significance of disgust in a rapidly transforming urban landscape during a disease epidemic in sydney. the intangibility and permeability of atmospheres are useful for rethinking our notion of the public sphere. mary douglas’s analysis of the symbolic value and function of dirt and julia kristeva’s concept of the abject help to conceive of disgust as experienced physically, before it is given an identity in discourse. the paper will show how this status as an embodied, spontaneous reaction is also judgement of something previously evaluated as disgusting. the paper goes on to look at norbert elias’ analysis of the spatialisation of this affective regime in urban industrial contexts, and his claim that the expression of repulsion and disgust were harnessed to regulate the pacification of a public space. one of the most transgressive, potent and diffuse disgust stimuli is odour. an outbreak of the bubonic plague in sydney, in 1901, prompted a particularly energetic project of sanitation, quarantine and renewal. the removal of slums and the businesses of chinese immigrants and the connection of suburbs to the sanitation system forever changed how we come to understand public and private atmospheres. it is thus necessary to account for the intangible and for collective atmosphere, not just in our design practices, but in our very notion of the public sphere. as james russell lowell said in his speech democracy in 1884, “democracy in its best sense is merely the letting in of light and air”. negotiated atmospherics anna boswell in the long history of aotearoa, the northernmost part of the country, te rerenga wairua (cape reinga), holds sacred status as the departure point of the spirits of the dead on their homeward journey to hawaiki. the shorter history of european settlement in the far north began in the 1830s. since this time, settler culture has adopted and reconstructed te rerenga wairua as a place of emotional connectedness and patriotic pilgrimage. settlers and tourists go there to be ‘moved’ and to find themselves ‘at home’; its angle of access is theatrically orchestrated, its atmosphere felt as enveloping and palpable, and its spiritually sensorial valence unparalleled in this country. while geographically remote from centres of population, this site is affectively ‘central’ for both settler and indigenous cultures, and it instantiates some publicly shared or collective properties that are key to affective experience. beginning in the 1980s, explicit māori dissent has surged in relation to the site’s latterday architectural and infrastructural accretions. mounting objections to scarring of the land through tourism developments have forced the un-making of forms of settlement and thus the “voiding”, for settler culture, of attendant notions of “narrative, continuity, selfhood, location” (turner 2010: 2). this paper takes up paul carter’s proposal that places ought to be perceived as “dynamic compositions” (2009: 6), crosshatched and written-through in partially recoverable ways. tracing the recent changes enacted at te rerenga wairua—including tar-sealing of the northernmost stretch of state highway 1, demolition of existing buildings and facilities, and installation of on-site display and design features in lieu (or as ghosting) of an absentpresent museum, it examines how technological, commercial and sentimental imperatives to make this place over ‘in the nation’s interest’ were thwarted in practice. in particular, the paper meditates on te rerenga wairua’s uneasy symbolic function as a shimmering ‘space’ of settler desire (muecke 1997: 125), looking at what culturally incompatible structures of affect have rendered materially possible and impossible in this place. ‘attunement’ (stewart 2010: 340) to the negotiated atmospherics of such sites of public pedagogy, i argue, reveals a great deal about compromised modes of being, longing and belonging in a settler colonial context. impressionable atmospheres: a felt phenomenology anthony brand “architecture is defined by atmosphere” claims mark wigley (1998). indeed, contemporary architectural discourse is littered with allusions to ‘atmosphere’ with seemingly little need for further consideration or explanation of what it is, how it is expressed or, more importantly, how it is perceived. we feel it. it touches us. this expression of intimate reciprocal contact implies a reflexive exchange – essentially embodied, or haptic perception. this paper will explore the perception of atmosphere as a “felt phenomenology” (paterson, 2007) and the impressionable architecture of the body as the ductus of atmospheric experience. we have become well versed in atmospheric appreciation of space and place, and can instantly form a lasting impression of how an environment feels, in a visceral ‘gut-reaction’, a kind of tacit knowledge learnt from first-hand experience. communicating the immersive experience of an artwork or pictorial representation through culturally enforced codes of optical contemplation and concentration (benjamin 2006), we may say that the viewer is moved by the image, that together they may forge an empathetic relationship (hill 2006). this is participatory exchange at its most diluted. to appreciate the limitations of visual reception, one only has to close one’s eyes – to shut off the sense of sight – and recognise that the agency of that image has become dulled, if not entirely muted. a haptic perception of atmosphere, by contrast, requires the entire body and sensory schema, as an impressionable, thinking-body and is not dependent on direct lines of sight, levels of illumination, or directly tangible or material. it is an embodied experience that actively engages and flows from one atmosphere into another, as one body among others. the swiss architect, peter zumthor practices what he preaches: he has written on the subject of navigating the atmospheres of his own designs (2006), and his work is often referenced as an exemplar of atmospheric architecture (pallasmaa, 2012). i will draw upon my own experience of zumthor’s therme vals, as a vehicle for answering the question – what is a haptic atmosphere, and what is its architectural significance? constructing atmospheres a spinozist’s drift margit brünner “… the alchemist works on himself as well as his external materials” – so neil spiller defines a new generation of architects who “have no truck with concepts that have defined architecture for millennia” (2010: 50). at the beginning of the twentieth century, quantum physics confronted the scientific world with a radical new paradigm, suggesting that the conscious mind plays a role in determining reality. a fundamental participatory reality comes as a shock to perceptive faculties long-conditioned by aristotelian logic, euclidian geometry, and newton’s mechanical universe. scientific thought struggles to accept states of immersion in spatio-temporal flows (see hallward 2006: 37) and dualistically tends to dissect the world into opposing pairs, drawing borders between mind and body, inside and outside, material and immaterial, self and ‘other’ – contributing to current global capitalism and the ecological crises attending it. my practice-based research into atmospheres is concerned with the co-production of collective spatial realities and the material processes that constitute personal perception. drawing on baruch spinoza’s philosophical hypothesis explicated in ethics (1677) and carried forward by gilles deleuze, my practice of ‘constructing atmospheres’ puts to the test spinoza’s fundamental conception of substance as a self-creating universal principle that expresses itself through self-modification (spinoza 1992: 40, 46/e.l.15, e.l.20). in taking philosophical theory as a base for concrete spatial experimentation, i follow gilles deleuze’s prompt to bypass identities and directly spring into “the middle of spinoza” so as to better install myself as atmospheres within atmospheres (1988: 122-123). constructing atmospheres entails spatial immersion – becoming the moving and the moved, the affecting and the affected, the observer and the observed. it means adjusting my perception to an inter-dependent, shared, and malleable spatial reality to bring forth experimental percepts of joy. spinoza’s alchemical formula of active affect [= joy] implies only two basic movements: towards joy and away from it. the task of composing joyful constellations requires alertness and implies transformation (deleuze 1992: 309). the presentation will explicate tactics i employ in my apprenticeship as a spinozist or practitioner of atmospheres. i suggest that to the extent that architecture concerns itself with spatio-temporal relations, it is capable of pursuing active affects, giving rise to an immediate autonomous architecture suited to the slow material self-expressing of joy. found subjects: the architectural object within a (spatial) knowledge society michael chapman two important features mark opposing corners of coop himmelb(l)au’s recently completed busan cinema center in korea. the first, on the south-eastern corner, is a simplified sculptural model of the building that carries a plaque acknowledging the building as the guinness book of records world’s largest cantilever roof. a few hundred meters away, at the south-western perimeter of the site, is another circular plaque set into the paving which outlines two feet and which carries the inscription “take photo here”. this second plaque marks the vantage point where the jarring spatial composition forms into a recognisable image, one that became known internationally through evocative competition renders well before the building was constructed. between the two “plaques” a sophisticated fly-through was made in 2009 as part of the winning competition entry that evoked a range of spatial and temporal atmospheres by incorporating night, day, water, land, light and shadow views. if the first plaque acknowledges the singular uniqueness of the building (its “world” record), the second acknowledges its reduction to an easily reproducible media image eschewing the construction’s actual experiential complexity. the notion of atmosphere provides a framework through which to reconceptualise the architectural object staked out between these vantage points. in gernot böhme’s 2002 essay “a fourth basic cultural competency”, a critical discussion of the knowledge society is undertaken by unpacking the categories of knowledge and information. böhme makes a distinction between ‘objectified’ knowledge, which directly participates in reality, and “second-order” knowledge that builds on “an already objectified” knowledge and therefore has no direct relationship to reality. böhme’s essay argues that this second-order knowledge is now dominant due to the proliferation of digital technologies. this paper will explore the role of the architectural object in relationship to the various representations of coop himmelb(l)au’s busan cinema center. juxtaposing the “real”, “virtual”, “hypothetical” and “tourist” experiences of the building, the paper will explore the role of knowledge and information within architectural aesthetics and the continually shifting “presence” through which it is represented. the paper will look specifically at the role of atmosphere as a condition of both presence and space and investigate the complexities of this relationship for the architectural object when representations precede experience and experiences, to a large extent, have become homogenous and mass-produced. peter chivers suspension of place “one cannot speak of beauty, one has to experience it.” gernot böhme, 2010 gernot böhme, in “on beauty”(böhme, 2010), draws from two motifs: that “beauty itself ” should be treated as atmosphere (böhme, 2010: 31), and that otherness is atmospheric via excess or remainder (böhme, 1992: 113). as such, the concept of beauty is tied to experience. rather than being apprehended as a permanen property of objects, beauty is conceived of as the experience of the indeterminate, yet one given “a sense of being present” (böhme, 2010: 29). this paper develops the themes of experience, atmosphere, otherness finding them central to the conceptualisation of place. böhme is critical of plato’s description, in the phaedrus, of beauty as eros: “for if love is the desire to possess the beautiful, it will only remain alive for as long as its possession is at risk” (böhme, 2010: 31). but this suspension between the poles of possession and risk is analogous to the atmospherics of place and is developed in my paper by means of a reading of two verses of walt whitman’s “as i ebb’d with the ocean of life” (whitman, 2004) and interpretations of otherness and proximity in levinas (2011), and of risk and experience in nancy (1993). an understanding of atmosphere as the experience of dislocation and suspension preceding the attention to place is thereby developed. the atmospherics of place are found in a movement across a margin, in the interval between the known and the known not, and the paper connects an experience of dislocation to the moment of the initiation of place. architectural place-making has commonly been described as the drawing and calling up of place as chart, as map, as theme, and as a gesture of possession. atmosphere, understood as the inauguration of place, allows otherness, which in its nature remains essentially hidden and irreducible to the consolidation of things, to be intimated in a way which is an awareness of proximity: not exposed thematically but revealed as the cresting of ephemeral experience. art into nature: elementalism in contemporary public art and architecture eu jin chua in the study of ancient or pagan thought, the term “elementalism” is sometimes used to refer to the personification of nature’s elements. could there be a new elementalism at work in contemporary art? recent artists have pursued often in public works atmospheric manipulations of elemental effects: clouds, sky, air, water, light, or smoke. common to the recent work of contemporary artists such as olafur eliasson, roni horn, and rachel whiteread, is a reductivist approach that strips aesthetic objects down to phenomenal percepts. a similar tendency can be seen in contemporary architecture, with diller+scofidioís blur (2002) being notable for its reduction of the built in favour of elemental effects. for gernot böhme (1993) the idea of atmosphere can serve to supersede foundational western conceptions of the aesthetic that are founded in subject/object distinctions (experiencing atmosphere doesn’t require one to be a subject counterpointed against an object). recent elementalist works could be said to stage precisely such a superseding of classical aesthetics through their dissolution of art or architecture into nothing but atmosphere. aesthetic objectivity or subjectivity is replaced by the apprehension of fields of affect. my primary interest in such works, however, is that this dematerialization of the aesthetic object is more than a dissolution into affect it is also a dissolution into nature. the art-nature distinction is alongside the subject-object distinction one of the key premises of western thought. kant long ago held that, whereas nature is the realm of mere ungoverned effects (effectus), art is the deliberate human transformation of such arbitrary effects into determined objects ensouled by reason and meaning. the art-nature distinction therefore endorses the subject-object distinction and shores up the supposed superiority of the former over the latter. recent elementalist works ignore this classical policing of the line between art and nature. many contemporary artists apparently want their works to approach the ostensible indeterminateness of nonhuman nature. the dissolution of the object into atmosphere and affect thus seems to imply a a ‘naturalization’ of art perhaps a dehumanization, or perhaps a post-humanism? this paper explores the idea that, in their annulment of the art-nature distinction by means of elemental atmospherics, the new elementalists might also be intuitively conducting an advanced kind of posthumanist naturphilosophie. drawing of breath: a provisional diagram for the reciprocal relations between atmospheres and affects chris cottrell from a young age i have always enjoyed exhaling into the cold dry air of wintertime and delighting in how breath, made visible, dissipates into the wider atmosphere. evidence of the atmospheric differences within and without gives rise to wonderment, and in turn, a will — to the point of hyperventilation to create more and more breath–clouds. this play of breath examples the distinctions between affects and atmospheres and their reciprocal folding together. the commonplaceness of breathing offers productive ways of understanding the remaking of self and environment and their ambiguous placement. the act of breathing is an intimate, energetic exchange between the world and our bodies; sustaining us, it is also a distributed act of collective connection. to breathe in is to draw the world inwards, to take in its forces and to draw sustenance from it. to breathe out is to expel something very personal into the public domain, where others may in turn draw it inwards in a constant process of exchange. absorbing and being affected by diffuse, ephemeral qualities of space, means making sense of atmospheres and affects requires understanding bodily engagement. numerous art and architectural projects make specific use of breath as a motif or modus operandi, two of which i will examine in detail. a discussion of decosterd and rahm’s hormonium will focus on how the drawing inwards of atmospheres via the respiratory and endocrine systems creates internally registered bodily affects. the second project, diller scofidio + renfro’s extension to the hirshhorn museum in washington, dc, emphasises the registration of breath as a collective act in the public sphere. they see the project as making visible the “air of democracy,” via an inflatable public space for lectures and discussion. these projects, while using breath in quite different registers, build on an understanding of bodies and environments as being intertwined, if still separable. this condition of being together-butseparable is explored in ben anderson’s essay affective atmospheres. i similalry investigate the always in-process nature of atmospheres in this paper, drawing conscious attention to the process of breathing as a specific mechanism for becoming aware of the interrelationships between affects and atmospheres, bodies and environments. inorganic collections carl douglas auckland’s suburban streets are only intermittently places of public assembly, personal encounter, or common use. they are primarily part of an infrastructure of mobility and circulation. pedestrian infrastructure is vestigial; cropped grass verges and trees provide a conventionalised landscape veneer. in planning rhetoric traceable to nineteenth century europe, streets were reconceived as bundled technical systems that “bind the metropolis into a functioning ‘machine’ or ‘organism’” (graham and marvin 2001: 53-55; kostof 1994: 11). auckland’s streets are formed according to this model; but who and where are we when we’re in them? this paper will approach these spaces of coexistence as what peter sloterdijk (2011) calls “atmospheres”. he gives the term “atmosphere” a broader sense than böhme (1993), using it to refer not only to experiential environments, but to “air-conditioned” spaces in which coexisting and fragile subjects form. for sloterdijk, as for böhme, atmospheres are affective—“we find ourselves seized” (böhme 1993: 119) not merely enclosed, by “air conditioning systems in whose construction and calibration it is out of the question not to participate” (sloterdijk 2011: 46). the technics of the street are no less atmospheric, harbouring a very particular air conditioning that not only produces lived experience, but defines the terms of that experience. to inquire into the atmospherics of suburban streets is not only to describe their ambience, but also to treat them as a growth medium for a particular kind of coexistant urban subject. this paper observes a suburban street event: inorganic waste collections. regularly held by the auckland council to capture waste that cannot be robotically whisked away from kerbside plastic bins, inorganic collections. entitle households to put out “one small trailer load” of inorganic waste (auckland council 2013). proscribed for collection are car parts, organic matter, building waste, but commonly piles reach monumental proportions, supplemented by illegal dumping. the streets become messy, strange and clogged, and new behaviours emerge. people drive the streets, moving from pile to pile, scavenging (and perhaps redumping). concepts of function are overtaken by practices of making use. many studies of waste have emphasised its correlation with consumption (gille 2010), but this is to oversimplify the role of “practices of divestment” (gregson, metcalfe and crewe 2007) in suburban experience. waste is not simply the husk of use-value, but a vital element in the formation of suburban subjects. by disturbing the usual air-conditioning of the streets, inorganic collections provide an opportunity to discern its mechanics and conceive of alternatives. digital atmospheres: rethinking public place in light of locative and pervasive communication technologies. farzad gharaghooshi where digital technology is found in architecture it is typically treated as neutral infrastructure, deployed and managed alongside technical instrumental devices and other amenities. sometimes, it strongly emerges in the architectural materiality exploiting its communicative features in theatrical digital streetscapes, facades and billboards. the resulting digital atmosphere can be interpreted like a desire town, “the town, which is nothing more than an immense script and a perpetual motion picture”(baudrillard cited in proto, 2006). yet, as baudrillard (2006) critically observed, that desire generates counterfeit realities like disneyland and thereby manipulates the imaginary world of a society. architecture has traditionally elaborated poorly the problem underlined by baudrillard. as a consequence, it now experiences difficulties in interpreting and articulating the changes wrought by digital technology on spatial practices, and in turn, misses the potential in the new imaginary, memory and emotion attending it (zumthor 2006). digital atmospheres, in their fusing of physical spaces with virtual ones, emphasises how the public sphere permeates architecture practices. consequently this paper explores how ‘digital atmospheres’ constitute public space politically, culturally and emotionally. in particular, the paper considers how digital network potentially offer a democratic atmosphere of freedom and can support a political mechanism that in a “baudrillardian” sense – entangles the public and the entire society in a controlled virtual distraction from reality. to develop this point habermas’ (1987) public sphere theory will be utilised as a framework to rethink public place and for analysing the impact of communication technology on architecture. william mitchell (1995), manuel castells (2000) and richard coyne (2010), will similarly be drawn on. digital atmospheres are further deepened by mobile devices. the paper will analyse the affect of these atmospheres on sensible qualities of public places such as cafes and public squares. breaking away from viewing technology as neutral infrastructure or commodified spectacle, this paper will interpret the new dynamics of sociability in light of the impacts of digital technification on the bodily experience of the urbanism and architecture of public place. making clouds: rethinking urban contexts as differential and participatory fields. hannah hopewell this paper asks how can broader registers of thought can be introduced into urban design and its theoretical foundational? it seeks to resituate the much-used operative term urban context, as a differential and participatory field of which the designer forms a part. this expands spatial thinking towards intensive environments were cognitive and sensorial perceptions meet and raises the role of affect in the production of space. two theoretical threads are considered: firstly, the rethinking of environments via process philosophy and new materialism; and secondly, implications for urban design practice arising from theories of affect. with affective force i suggest the unrecognized, the unthought and unformed begins to find its way into urban analysis beyond acknowledged spatial or social structures. attention to affect, as a form of thinking, elevates and authorizes sense as a mode of knowledge production that is fruitful for design thinking and the constitution of urban context (deleuze, 1994, 1995; thrift, 2008). atmosphere’s pre-exist the designer and offer a vague, spatially discharged context unregistered in design practice. these fields of immersion emerge as quasi-autonomous indeterminate affective excesses, (bohme, 2004) open to manipulation. as impersonal or transpersonal, (mccormack, 2008), atmosphere provides a sensory impression of situations as a form of unifying coherence and character, (pallasmaa, 2011). this gestures towards an ephemeral understanding of collective space held by shared experiences rather than defined by euclidian means. this paper considers fieldwork on two atmosphere’s situated in the city of auckland one triggered by material means and one by immaterial. in the first i locate the issue of atmosphere at auckland’s waterfront, investigating the prevalence of mud at the city’s foreshores. the ‘urban’ subverts the intertidal zone especially where conditions of mud predominate. the presence of mud conditions an in-between threshold state whose presence results in a distinctive range of atmospheres important to place, and therefore place making. in the second example i look to the capacities of planning documents, (the auckland plan 2012 and the unitary plan 2013) to propagate atmosphere. here focus is on intensification of waterfronts and the augmentation of atmospheres of desire. auckland’s waterfronts represented by the plans’ as spaces of catalytic salvation are highly affective and demonstrate a palpable relationship between atmosphere and the apprehension of urban context in design. between architecture and its lived experience. the construction of the interior as tableau vivant. popi iacovou the gap between architecture and its lived experience is difficult to bridge in design practice and yet is a creative place for architects to occupy. this paper discusses architecture as a performative field occupying precisely this gap. utilising the concept of the performative, i propose that architecture be understood as a stage for everyday life which is constantly informed, transformed and re-performed by the changing needs and desires of users through time. as example, this paper examines the casa malaparte the house of italian writer curzio malaparte. built between 1938-1942 at capri, italy, the house has been attributed to italian architect adalberto libera. however, recent research by marida talamona indicates that libera was completely uninvolved in the construction, and that malaparte, along with his master builder adolfo amitrano, decisively transformed libera’s proposals. suggestively, libera never include casa malaparte in his projects’ collection, and nor did he ever claim authorship of it; alternatively, malaparte stated many times that he considered the house his best self-portrait – in fact a “a house like me”. building on my visits to the house, i argue that it stages malaparte’s life and emotions. his life there became the script of the house and the house his living built portrait. as a non-architect, malaparte, in collaboration with friends, artists and builders, used unconventional methods of building design, something i consider through the performative device of the tableau vivant – a genre that became popular in the second half of the eighteenth century. tableau vivant literally means ‘living pictures’ and began as a genre between art and entertainment (blurring the boundaries between art and life) by enacting themes from literature, painting and sculpture into staged live scenes. initially, the tableau vivant was a type of mime that would animate (bring to life) a scene from history as truthfully as possible by creating direct similarities between the copy and original. in contemporary performance art the tableau vivant deviates from its mimetic character by aiming, not to mime a scene from history, but to create a new vision of it. the tableau vivant, used as an interpretative device for considering malaparte’s construction of the interiors, aims to expand understandings of spatial atmospheres in architectural design beyond phenomenological approaches. rather tableau vivant is proposed as a vehicle for discerning the role affect and sensorial engagement in history. black sun: postnatural atmospheres stephen loo the impending interplanetary disaster in lars von trier’s melancholia (2011), the psychological damage inflicted by solaris’ ocean in andrei tarkovsky’s 1972 film, and the black monoliths catastrophically affecting human evolution in stanley kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey, can all be seen as confronting, through cinema as a techno-material practice, crises in human existence meaning associated with impending extinction or the end of time ushered in by natural catastrophes. cinematic imaginings of catastrophes at the end of human thought – that end human thought – contain within them affects and atmospheres that emerge from a tussle between the ‘transhuman’ extension of current structures of meaning, and the ‘posthuman’ eradication of old ones, for the sake of new images of existence (ashley woodward, 2012). this paper reflects on the connections between thought, materiality and existence to posit a way out of the trans/post-human dyad. it posits alternatives to a western millenarian attitude in which time levers outside forces. against the notion that nature is something to be controlled because it is something seemingly beyond control, the paper explores modes of thought that combine the human and the nonhuman in other than a catastrophic framing – an approach, for instance, found in the latourian imbrication of “nature-culture.” to do this, the paper refers to two pieces of writing on disaster: firstly, lyotard’s “solar catastrophe” – the death of our sun in several billion years – that he uses to defend a “rational pluralism” in which aesthetic and ethical thoughts are historically specific, heterogenous to and incommensurable with the cognitive; and secondly, kristeva’s black sun, a state of narcissistic melancholy in which the depressive mourns not the object but a kind of archaic, unnameable pre-object. designing for affect akari kidd & jan smitheram discourses on affect, from cultural theory, geography, and social science to architecture, have focused on the question of atmospheres. drawing on a spinoza-nietzsche-deleuzian lineage, affect can be understood as the varied and transferable capacity to affect and be affected. in modern discourse, affect was predominantly thought to be essentially pre-personal, autonomous, unqualified and imperceptible. contemporary notions of the space and condition of affect have been explored through the fleeting, formless and immersive ambient qualities of atmosphere. while the strength of the ‘autonomy’ of affect and the transient nature of atmosphere is acknowledged, it is important to question the assumption that both affect and atmosphere are unlocaliable. this paper argues for a consideration of affect, not strictly as an abstract concept to analyse design, but as a potentially materialized and localizable condition we can design for. student works from the ‘atmosphere’ stream of the fourth year design studio at the victoria university of wellington will be explored to argue that paying increased attention to materiality may help in grounding and locating affect in more concrete realities. this requires a more expansive engagement of ‘affect’: “materiality is always something more than ‘mere’ matter: an excess, force, vitality, relationality, or difference that renders matter active, self-creative, productive, unpredictable” (coole and frost, 2010: 9). specifically, this paper seeks to highlight the relation/intersection between affect and matter at two levels – within theoretical discourse and within a design studio. composed of three sections, the paper will firstly map how affect and the rethinking of matter/materialism are currently theorized within the humanities and the social sciences. secondly, the paper will address the implications of these writings for architectural design. thirdly, moving beyond these theoretical discourses, notions of affect and renewed materialism are then expanded within a design studio context. here, student’s works that activate and capture the spatial condition of affect through the process of dematerializing (through drawing /projecting) and re-materializing (through the built form) of atmospheric qualities are used in order to ground certain claims about materialized and localized affect. pleasure in reading tradition mirjana lozanovska it is well known that le corbusier’s travels in the balkans in 1911 were inspirational and informative for developments in his thinking and practice of architecture. the sensory richness of vernacular building and craft traditions was a key creative source. of particular note was his interest in slavic peasant pottery whose forms he found “voluminous and swollen with vitality”. with a focus on the relationship between european subjectivity and other non-european subject positions, postcolonial theory has often read such interaction with vernacular and indigenous traditions negatively. building on an alternative approach, this paper has evolved out of field research of balkan village life and its vernacular traditions. the paper asks if there are pleasures in reading such traditions that are other than those defined critically by postcolonial theory? what other possible exchanges can there be between subjects and objects in the reading of the vernacular? the church of the holy mother (sveta bogorodica) in the village of zavoj reveals byzantine-orthodox traditions in architecture and liturgical practice. the interior of the church testifies to a merging of ceremony, incense, iconography and architectural geometry to produce a thickly veiled mysticism or ‘spiritually aesthetic act’ (serafimova 1995: 110; see also, ouspensky & lossky 1952). the viewing of icons generates an inverse perspective with the pictorial space emphasising surface breadth and immensity rather than perspectival penetration (ouspensky & lossky 1952: 41; see also, alpatov 1978). this aesthetic inversion was further emphasised by the habitual and ritual movements of women who dissolved the geometric, architectural fixity by placing food, flowers and clothing within the church. everywhere the smell of flowers and food, the heat of burning candles and of bodies breathing, along with the ringing of bells, bodies brushing against iconographic saints and lips touching painterly surfaces erode architectural fixity (lozanovska 1995). how can such integral atmospheres and affects be read against architecture’s stark materiality? this paper will examine how the church interior, as an embodied place of plenitude, renders architecture immaterial and transcending. it will read, against the backdrop of postcolonial and gender theory, an inherited eroticisation in vernacular architecture. air and architecture: everything together and simultaneously nothing ainslie murray this paper examines air-related tensions within a range of architectural spaces. through a consideration of the instability of moving bodies and their relationship with the pervasive air, i will propose a phenomenological sense of architectural space that is constructed from imagining the intangible condensations, stratifications and undulations of air. this sensing will be offered as an alternative mode of ‘reading’ architectural space and the built environment; it will redirect attention from built fabric to the invisible mass of air in which we reside. toyo ito once remarked that designing architecture is an act of generating vortexes in the currents of air and wind. this notion prompts consideration of how we might actually shape the air not only in our gestures as designers, but actually through our movement as we inhabit the built environment. if air is viewed as the fundamental physical substance of architectural space, then ‘architecture’ may be formed not through traditional modes of edgeconditioning with built form, but rather through the movement of inhabiting bodies as they stir air masses into states of flux. situated broadly within the field of transdisciplinary art and architecture practice, and drawing on a range of motion-based practices that span conceptual art, land art and performance art, architectural space will be proposed as a spontaneous, temporary condition of the air shaped by inhabitation – a physical doing of breath and body that simultaneously forms and disperses, emanates and agitates. cecil balmond’s notion of “structure as trace” and vladimir krstic’s reflections on the “construction of temporariness” will be engaged with to consider how air might be approached in an architectural context where space is articulated through the imagining and sensing of ultimately immeasurable atmospheric elements. the paper will move from etienne-jules marey’s studies to the photodynamic techniques of arturo and anton giulio bragaglia, and expand paul souriau’s notion of the “visible wake” to better explore how air and architecture are inextricably bound. the spatial echoes evidenced by marey and the bragaglia brothers will be linked to the contemporary works of francis alÿs, janet cardiff, hamish fulton, richard long and oscar muñoz and their investigation of fleeting, impossible and unknowable dimensions of spatial inhabitation. the instability of the body will be shown to affect a corresponding instability of air-filled architectural space, with space emerging not as a silent, pristine stage for action, but rather as a fleeting and turbulent consequence of movement. affective remembering. władysław strzemiński’s to my friends the jews. luiza nader władysław strzemiński, one of the most prominent polish avant-garde artists, spent most of his time during world war ii in lodz, next to the litzmannstadt ghetto. his extraordinary work – the cycle to my friends the jews was created just after the end of the war. it consists of ten collages, neither signed nor dated, in which strzemiński combines drawings, photographs and expressive descriptions. all the photographs document the ghetto and the death camps assuming varying vantage points victim, bystander or aggressor. my paper considers strzemiński’s grounding in the specific atmosphere of post war poland riven by the atrocities of war and a postwar brutality towards jews. it asks: what the political context and historical atmosphere in post war poland was?; what type of memory does strzemiński’s work create?; what did it mean in 1945-46 to dedicate an art work “to my friends the jews”?;, what types of affect operate within this work; and, how are they influential in the remembering of shoah? in pursuit of an affective framing of post war poland – one where a passion for life, and a drive to love and reconstruct was evident in addition to resentment and hate – i will utilise jan gross, helena datner and alina skibińska’s valuable research on the brutal anti-semitism in poland between 1945-1949. amongst a range of antijewish incidents, i will rethink strzemiński’s works in relation to such tragic events as the pogroms in cracow (1945), kielce (1946). in my analysis i will involve ruth leys (2007) divagations on guilt and shame in their biographical, cultural and political dimensions. my presentation takes affect to mean, intensities as registered on the surface of the body in its interaction with divergent entities (van alphen 2008). i assume affects to be both personal and social, and built on a trans-subjective, interactive process that is easily transmittable through inanimate objects such as artworks, texts or environments. taking strzemiński’s cycle as case study, i will show how a theory of affect can illuminate these events and experiences contrary to the patterns identified by trauma studies, and how certain affects saturate memory. referencing susan sontag’s (2004) reflections on photographic representations of war atrocities, my analysis will create a category of “affective remembering” which aims to situate strzemiński’s work as a challenge for the present and an horizon of hope and subjective/political possibility for the future. boringness and boredom: the political affections of modern architecture christian parreno despite boredom often being defined as a negative reaction, its qualities are not exclusive of the ‘boring’ object or the ‘bored’ subject. boredom constitutes a relation that exposes an involuntary deficit of meaning. boredom is a state of ambiguity and ambivalence, of idleness and restlessness. its pervasiveness as a popular affection, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, has exposed the paradoxes and contradictions of modern experience. the overpowering processes of progress, including capitalism, industrialisation, secularisation, rationalisation and urbanisation, have resulted in an everyday life characterised by monotony and habit. within this context, boredom arises as an alternative sensibility to the values and visions of modernism. american political theorist and social critic russell kirk (1918–1994) posed boredom as characteristic of post-world war ii architecture. in an article published in the conservative journal modern age, titled “the architecture of servitude and boredom”, this condition was identified as a symptom of political and social decadence. the capitalist interests of developers, the ambitions of planners, the annihilation of the past, the incapacity of moral imagination and the dissemination of the architecture of the ‘international style’ were said to have brought about desolute urban situations that fostered antisocial behaviour and lapsed communities. pointing to ‘bad architecture’ as the cause of the 1981 racial riots in edinburgh, kirk highlighted similar qualities of boredom in cleveland, detroit and london. the adoption of function as prime value in architectural design and urban planning was said to have produced standardised and monotonous everyday life. this, in turn, prompted the abandonment of public spaces, their civic potential and, by extension, criticality – the lack of social communion entailed servitude. the architecture of boredom was qualified as ‘shoddy’, ‘badly designed’, of ‘sham’, of ‘scale previously unparalleled in times of peace’, ‘featureless’, ‘grim’, ‘universalised’, ‘impoverished’, ‘grey’ and ‘unskilfully constructed’. conversely, kirk prescribed a built environment that provided security, tradition, a sense of home, individuality and, above all, human scale. this paper will juxtapose kirk diagnosis with martin heidegger’s (1889-1976), philosophical reflection on boredom in his lectures spanning 1929-30 and titled the fundamental concepts of metaphysics.. distinguishing ‘boringness’ as a certain aesthetical qualiy of buildings, from ‘boredom’, as a partly objective, partly subjective, precondition of space, the paper investigates two aspects of modern architecture: firstly, how does the subject relate affections to the material and ideological processes involved in the creation, inhabitation and perception of the built environment?; and secondly, can architecture trigger, question or contribute to the existential quest of attaining meaning and significance? the political aesthetics of police kettling: an architectural analysis scott sørli a police kettle is a cordon made into an encirclement. a wall of police bodies with shields, truncheons, and kevlar, and adjacent fixed urban infrastructures, constitutes such encirclement. in contrast to a cordon aiming to keep people out, a police kettle is designed to keep people in. three formal characteristics are evident: its relatively small size (anything between 500-1000 peopel); its relatively long duration (from three to thirteen hours possibly even longer); and its constant impermeability. derived from the german polizeikessel, the term ‘police kettle’ translates literally as ‘police cauldron’ (polizeikette, a closer homonym, translates as ‘police cordon’). the spatial and linguistic source descends from the specific military use of the term ‘encirclement’, which comes from kesselschlacht ( ‘cauldron battle’). the metaphor of an impermeable container whose contents are heated up over time by an external source is the precise analogy of a police kettle. since the first documented police kettling in hamburg, 8 may 1986 (on people demonstrating against restrictions to the right to demonstrate), the strategies employed by the police have evolved. hyper-kettling applies a compressive force on the people within. a mobile polizeikessel is called a wanderkessel. in this development, police arrange themselves along both sides, in front of, and behind the marchers, taking control of the route. bridge kettling was first deployed on lyon’s guillotière bridge, 20 october 2010, and utilised the river’s water as barriers. in a similar situation, young students protesting tuition fee increases were deployed by the police to westminster bridge on 9 december 2010 and made to experience plunging temperatures as the vote on those very same tuition fee increases passed in the warm house of commons facing them. fauna are amongst the ‘materials’ contributing to kettling, with attack dogs and police horses contributing to the atmospherics. phenomenological tools are deployed by the police as well: tear gas and pepperspray are released; high volume sound is transmitted through bullhorns and long range acoustic devices; hunger is manufactured by the withholding of food; washroom breaks are not permitted; tactile sensations are delivered with truncheons. these and other technologies generate affect. over the time of the kettle, emotional states produced include confusion, anxiety, fear, and despair. this paper will explore such instances where politics is rendered aesthetic. strategic atmospherics: the built pedagogy of auckland’s ‘learning quarter’ sean sturm and stephen turner progress, potential, openness, discovery: these four “key platforms” (auckland city 2009: 4) mark the strategy outlined in the learning quarter plan 2009 for the so-called “place of enlightenment” (1) that is auckland’s learning quarter, comprising aut university, the university of auckland, and environs. the plan is a statement of what we have called elsewhere “built pedagogy” (sturm & turner, 2011), one that represents the “entrepreneurial ecosystem” (barton, 2008) of the university of auckland’s business school writ large to teach its inhabitants the value(s) of entrepreneurial education. but what most interests us here is the design-drive through which the affective gamut of this ecosystem — its collective “conatus,” to borrow spinoza’s term (2006: 66-67) — is narrowed into an unconditional positivity, never to reach the extremes of joy and sorrow that, for spinoza, mark bodily encounter (see deleuze 1988: 19; deleuze 1997: 140-141). as a result, the learning quarter aspires to be a world without accident, a world of what catherine malabou calls “constructive plastic[ity]”, or gradual, superficial transformation to the mantra of “change” (2012: 38). yet what we teach for — and what we see all around us in the learning quarter — is a “destructive plasticity” (malabou 2012: 2), namely the accidents “happy” or otherwise (virilio, 2007: 4) – that are all-but-invisible to the entrepreneurial university and that suddenly and deeply transform the university as a collective body of affects (see sturm & turner 2013). as virilio puts it, “the accident is an unconscious oeuvre, an invention in the sense of uncovering what was hidden, just waiting to happen” (2007: 9). what such accidents reveal is that we “cannot be without being affected” (malabou 2012: 22), or, rather, that the university cannot “be a university” without being affected (barnett 2011). reverie michael tawa if, as etymology suggests, atmosphere is vaporous circumambience, it must be something like the mist that renders a landscape indistinct and evanescent, permeating and liberating form by rendering its contours indeterminate and immanent: or else a sphere of arousal: the ‘great trepidation’ that blurs the moon’s outline and marks its advent as emergent radiance or parousia. (wilkins; böhme, 2013). yet atmosphere is not something that ‘fills’ empty space, nor a quality added to the neutral contours of an object or environment; rather, it is constitutive. it is the halo or emanation of place as it is spatialised and temporalised; it is the palpable manifestation of a medium or situation (böhme, 2010). böhme’s treatment of atmosphere as an aesthetics of reception (1993: 120) raises a significant difficulty: how can atmosphere be designed as well as apprehended? böhme’s theatrical metaphor of design as “scene-setting” can be problematic since architecture exceeds scenography and mis-en-scene. architecture works atmospherically to produce frameworks for the reception and conveyance of emergent phenomena, temporalising and mobilising static, material space, and paralleling mnemonic experience. the faculty equal to the perception and production of atmosphere, then, is not ratiocination but reverie. we are captivated into reverie’s ambit as into the indeterminate folds and contours of atmosphere, where we lose ourselves in the rhythms and partitions of departure and infinite recommencement. likewise, design happens in the startle of renewed starting-over and the wonder that transit and transition make possible. the astonishment that breaches the quotidian and habitual releases architecture from aesthetics and representation – into reverie, ethics and transactional presence; that is, into a manner of making and inhabiting the space of a world. earthquake weather, floating rocks and other atmospheric anomalies sarah treadwell and laura mclauchlan the term ‘earthquake weather’ has had a fluctuating history, being understood as both an observable event and a recurring fiction. aristotle is said to have first promoted the idea that winds trapped in underground caves caused earthquakes. nineteenth century reports on the occurrence of earthquakes in aotearoa new zealand frequently linked seismic activity with carefully detailed weather conditions. the nature of earthquake weather is variable with claims of calm expectancy, hot sultry weather or storms. earthquake clouds currently have had some technical backing even as scientific reports largely deny associations between weather and earthquakes. the desire for such an association between the two events is of interest to this paper. elizabeth diller writing about the blur project pointed out that “contemporary culture is addicted to weather information. … our cultural anxiety about the weather can be attributed to its unpredictability” (2001). while weather is easily imagined as affective, we seek to illuminate the obdurate material atmosphere associated with earthquakes in an attempt to navigate the indeterminate divide between stability and movement. peggy kamuf, writing on approaches to hélène cixous’ work, models a potential attitude for such a material writing project. it is necessary to acknowledge gravity. however, kamuf equally suggests that one’s subject not be crushed by the weight of approach but, rather, be permitted to “escape the force of our gravity” (2005: 114). from such an angle, “the most responsible and serious approach advances carefully and slowly, but above all lightly which may mean obliquely, or imperceptibly, or even not at all” (2005: 114). here, as hiddleson argues, cixous’ works “participate in the genre of theory, but allow the object of their theorising to shift and mutate, in their enjoyment of poetic associations, parallels and allusions” (2010: 51). like kamuf ’s dilemma of the love note, in which one does not wish to crush one’s lover under the weight of one’s own desires, victorian and edwardian correspondents of earthquakes and weather offer, time and again, paths of escape. unexpected weathers and seismic activities are delicately laid together, but with a marked silence about the nature of their relationship. in this paper we explore the relationship offered by the correspondents through a tentative poetics of atmosphere consisting of text and accompanying images. contingency and experiential solicitation. from atmospheric awareness to immersive field of experience. izabela wieczorek according to mark wigley, constructing a building also means constructing an atmosphere (wigley 1998: 18). for gernot böhme, the knowledge about the production of atmospheres is very seldom explicit (1993: 123). taking as an example the theorie der gartenkunst of christian cay lorenz hirschfeld, which böhme uses to illustrate the self-conscious pursuit of atmosphere and which could be understood as its instrumental taxonomy, we might ask then what determines an atmospheric physiognomy in architecture? what tools and design methodologies do we have as architects to approach atmosphere consciously? böhme sees in the creation of atmospheres a magical materialisation (1995: 42). alison and peter smithson (1979) similarly stress such magical qualities, explaining how architecture can invite affection and stimulate activities. this might provide an insight into the affective qualities of atmosphere – bearing in mind that they evoke not only feelings and emotions, but also responses – bodily action and impulses. since sensing atmosphere is related to the sense of “whereness”, in the sense of spatial character (böhme 2005: 402), to design considering an atmospheric approach means to focus on how space is going to appear, to be experienced or to be felt. hermann schmitz defines atmosphere as a sum of ephemeral occurrences contributing to an integral and synesthetic perception of our surroundings (1995/1980). these assumptions imply shifting attention away from expression towards effects and intensities, enlarging the domain in which architecture manifests itself and revealing that the relation between the material and the immaterial is not accidental and extrinsic, but internal and meaningful already in the design process. in this context, architectural space is conceived as a contingent construction – a space of engagement that appears to us as a result of continuous and complex interferences revealed through our perception. use of the word ‘atmosphere’ in architectural discourse is mainly associated with contemporary examples. there is a need to read back into previous architectural conceptualisations, our contemporary understanding and concern with atmospheres. in this context, bruno taut’s belief in the affective capacity of the materials, gio ponti’s concern for their performative qualities, arne jacobsen’s obsession with ambivalent interiors, aldo van eyck’s modes of involving phenomena, or werner ruhnau’s notion of ‘scenic qualities’, are to be used – among others – to illustrate this particular projective genealogy, one that builds upon ‘atmospheric awareness’. references agamben, g. 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(2006). atmospheres: architectural environments surrounding objects (i. galbraith, trans.). basel, switzerland: birkhäuser. biographies: dr ross anderson is senior lecturer in architecture: design, history and theory at the faculty of architecture, design and planning at the university of sydney. alison atkinson-phillips is a first year doctoral student at the university of technology sydney, within the faculty of arts and social science and with a focus on public history. she is interested in memorials and memorial art work in the public arena, particularly the emerging genre of public memorials which commemorate non-death loss and trauma in the australian context. alison completed her ba(hons) at curtin university, perth, during the nineteen nineties, and has spent the last decade working as a communications professional before re-entering academic life. philippa nicole barr is an architect and the interior architecture programme director and the architectural programme academic director at victoria university of wellington. her research considers the relationships between physical senses, emotional experience of space and architecture. she explores these issues by intersecting theoretical text and built space in pursuit of new forms of architectural survey. she has published widely in the area of liminal architecture, built ecologies, somatic spaces and architecture of the sacred. anna boswell teaches in the department of english at the university of auckland where her research interests include critical theory, comparative settler-colonial studies, history and memory, contemporary culture and public pedagogy. she has published widely on new zealand literature and its cross-cultural implications. anthony brand completed his bachelors and diploma of architecture at the university of nottingham (uk), where his final year thesis work received an honourable mention in a national student design competition 3dreid (2009). after coming to new zealand in 2009 and working with habitat for humanity, he joined the university of auckland in 2011, where he is working on his phd. entitled “touching architecture: a holistic approach to leprous design,”. his thesis explores the sense modality of touch (and embodied perception) in the design and experience of contemporary architecture. anthony has presented at birkbeck university, london, at the victorian tactile imagination conference. he also teaches architectural design studio part-time at the university of auckland where he has recently collaborated with susanne hoffman (technical university berlin), and peggy deamer (yale school of architecture). margit brünner is a performance-based installation artist. her work explores spatial relations by the means of performative drawing and focuses on the affective character and potential of specific sites. her research practice has been exhibited in a range of contexts and she holds a ma in architecture and has experience in contemporary dance. publications include ‘the joy of atmospheric manoeuvring’ in exposure: design practice based research landscape architecture, marieluise jonas, prof. rosalea monacella, rmit university (forthcoming july 2013), ‘my experiences as spinozist constructor’ in subjectivity, creativity and the institution, ed. christopher crouch, brown walker, (2009), ‘note from margit’ in cinematic folds: the furling and unfurling of images, firoza elavia, pleasure dome, (2008), let’s twist again. was man nicht denken kann das soll man tanzen, in performance in wien von 1960 bis heute, carola dertnig, stefanie seibold (2006). in 2012 she completed her doctorate, titled ‘becoming joy: experimental construction of atmospheres’ at the school of art architecture & design at the university of south australia. since 2012 she is a visiting research fellow at the school of architecture and built environment at the university of adelaide, where she also teaches design. michael chapman has taught architectural history and theory, and been a design tutor at the university of newcastle since 2008. he is the program convenor for the bachelor of design (architecture) and the course coordinator for the first year of the masters of architecture. his research focuses on the crossovers between art theory and architecture, and he has a particular interest in the historical avant-garde and its ongoing influence. more recently, he has been concerned with the broader issues of industrialisation and its impact on architectural history and theory. the themes of marxism, autonomy and the philosophy of the frankfurt school are a central current in his work. michael’s creative work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the venice biennale and he is a director of the architectural practice hrmphrdt. peter chivers is an architect and principal of architectural practice assemblage. he has taught at the school of architecture at unsw, exhibited at the venice biennale and published in architectural theory review. currently he is a phd candidate in architecture at the university of sydney undertaking research titled “architecture: place and alterity” eu jin chua is a lecturer in the history and theory of design and visual arts and postgraduate programme leader at unitec school of design and visual arts. he has published widely in the areas of moving image and film, cultural studies and visual arts. he is has also curated a range of exhibitions on film and video in both the united kingdom and new zealand. he is currently completing a phd at the london consortium, birkbeck college, university of london. chris cottrell’s practice engages in the relationship between our bodies and the spaces we inhabit and move through. specifically, in how our bodies make unique and personal measures of space and time , and the effects this has on how we experience the world. i use the notion of atmosphere to think and talk about this idea of experienced emotive space . a continual exploration of atmospheric conditions forms the common thread that links my teaching, research, and creative practices. carl douglas is a lecturer at aut university’s school of art and design and postgraduate strand leader for spatial design. recent work has examined infrastructure as a determinant of public space, made a case study of urban transformations of revolutionary paris, and researched archaeological sites as scenes of architectural production. current design research attends to the structuring, or rather the infrastructuring of the city, through speculative project investigations into possible futures and potential reconfigurations of auckland’s mangere inlet. farzad gharaghooshi is a phd candidate in digital architecture and design at the university of auckland. he received an march in digital architecture at the university of nottingham and a b.sc. at the art university of isfahan, isfahan, iran. his current research discusses the impact of digital social spheres on public places. he is concerned with how urban spaces and architectural environments converge with expressions of democracy and citizenry in the information age, for which the social theory of habermas is a key indicator. hannah hopewell is a phd candidate and studio tutor in spatial design at aut university having turned to research mid career. with a bachelor of landscape architecture from unitec institute of technology, and a masters of urban design from the university of auckland, hannah’s professional practice has interdisciplinary foundations. her research investigates the agency of collective sensorial experience in relation to registers of design thinking in the production of urban space. hannah’s interests collect around indeterminacy correspondening to habits of marking collective space outside the normative boundaries of ownership and architecture. she gives particular regard to the tension of constancy and change in waterfront situations and the contemporary pacific city. popi iacovou is an architect interested in interdisciplinary models of thinking and practicing architecture. she is associate lecturer at central saint martins college of art and design, at the ba architecture spaces and objects. she is completing her phd by architectural design at the bartlett school of architecture, ucl, funded by a.g leventis foundation and the ffwg (uk). she holds a diploma in architecture from aristotle university of thessaloniki and an mphil in architecture and the moving image from the university of cambridge. her films and design work has been shown in various film festivals and exhibitions. akari kidd is currently a phd candidate in the school of architecture at the victoria university of wellington. her subject of study explores the architectural and theoretical relations that can be drawn out when architectural practices are viewed through the lens of affect. she has experience teaching in the areas of architectural design and architectural criticism and theory at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at the victoria university of wellington. akari has worked under architect kengo kuma in japan and holds a bachelor of architecture from the cooper union in new york. stephen loo is professor of architecture at the university of tasmania. he writes on instinct, affect, ethics and the biophilosophy of the contemporary subject. recent publications include deleuze and architecture with hélène frichot (2013); articles on instinct and ethics in angelaki (2013) and parallax (2013). he is currently working on a monograph with undine sellbach on psychoanalysis, ethics and the entomological imagination, and an edited volume on poetic biopolitics with peg rawes (2014). dr. mirjana lozanovska is a senior lecturer and leads the cultural ecology research group at the school of architecture and building, deakin university. her research has developed multidisciplinary theories of space for the study and interpretation of architecture. these include critical theories on visual representation and psychoanalytic theories of human subjectivity that are drawn upon to examine migrant houses, villages and ethnic aesthetics; war and memory; and the spatial body. laura mclauchlan has an honours degree in social anthropology and a masters in creative writing, both from the university of auckland. she is particularly interested, creatively and academically, in the urban as a site of both conservation and multispecies interaction. starting in 2014, she hopes to be studying towards a phd in social anthropology at the university of new south wales, looking at hedgehog conservation in urban britain. this will include consideration of animal street art as a site of longing and of multispecies inclusion as a growing concern of the built environment. ainslie murray is a lecturer in the architecture program of the faculty of the built environment, unsw, and has exhibited widely in australia and in canada. she has also presented and published on walking and place-relations amongst other things. ainslie received her phd from the university of sydney in 2011. luiza nader is an art historian and an assistant professor at the institute of art history, warsaw university. her interests focus on avantgarde and neoavantgarde art (particularly in eastern europe), posthumanism, theories of affect, the relations between memory and archive. she is the author of konceptualizm w prl (warsaw, 2009) and numerous other texts dedicated to art in poland after 1945. currently she is working on her habilitation book dedicated to władysław strzemiński’s cycle to my friends the jews and the question of art history and affect. christian parreno has practices architecture in london and ecuador. he has studied at the architectural association, the bartlett school, ucl and is currently a phd candidate at the oslo school of architecture and design, norway. he has published on the question of boredom and architecture. jan smitheram is a senior lecturer in the school of architecture at victoria university of wellington where she teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate students. extending work from her ph.d. she looks at the relationship between performance, performativity and affect within the context of architecture. her recent research in collaboration with simon twose looks at architectural practice through the lens of performativity and affect. her work is published in international journals and conference proceedings. scott sørli is an architect and principal of sørli associates. he holds professional degrees in architecture and in process control engineering, and a postgraduate degree in design research from the university of michigan. his practice is operative across scales and among disciplines. he has exhibited and curated in numerous venues exploring architecture, urban, and civic realms. he is currently an adjunct assistant professor, university of waterloo school of architecture. sean sturm and stephen turner teach at the university of auckland, stephen in the department of english and sean in the centre for learning and research in higher education (clear). they have co-taught most recently an upper-level undergraduate course on ‘writing technologies.’ they are currently working on a book on the university as it is and as it could be, tentatively titled the university beside itself. apart from their joint work, stephen has published on the relation between law, history and media in the context of the settlement of new zealand, while sean has published on settler literature, writing and critical pedagogy. michael tawa is an architect and professor of architecture at the university of sydney. between 2006 and 2009 he was professor of architectural design at the university of newcastle upon tyne, uk. he has practiced and taught architecture in alice springs, adelaide and sydney. recent publications include agencies of the frame. tectonic strategies in cinema and architecture (2010) and theorising the project: a thematic approach to architectural design (2011), both with cambridge scholars publishing. current projects include the web-based design lexicon and research on the concepts of emergence and translation in architectural design. he is currently editing a forthcoming issue of architectural theory review on emergence and architecture. sarah treadwell is an associate professor at the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland. her research investigates the representation of architecture in colonial and contemporary images. her work proceeds with both writing and image making and considers representations of motels, suburbs and volcanic conditions of ground. she also has a long-standing interest in gender related issues in architecture. sarah has published in various books and journals including architectural theory review, architectural design, space and culture and interstices. her book revisiting rangiatea was the outcome of participation in the gordon h brown lecture series in 2008. izabela wieczorek is an architect, and a co-founder of g +w arquitectura together with m. auxiliadora gálvez. the relationship between atmosphere and materiality provides the framework for her research, teaching and practice. she is a phd candidate at the etsam in madrid/spain, and holds an associate professorship at the aarhus school of architecture/denmark, where she staged a pedagogical project called al! atmospheric laboratory within the frame of the bachelor program. she has taught and lectured at several universities in spain and collaborated in planetabeta, weekly radio show conceived as a space for debate and dissemination of architecture in the radio círculo in madrid. notes we gratefully acknowledge receipt of the university of auckland distinguished visitor’s award, as well as the contributions to professor gernot’s böhme’s airfares made by the universities of melbourne and tasmania, aut university, monash university, uts sydney and the new zealand goethe institut. we are also grateful for grants received from the nicai conference and creative event fund and the aut school of art and design research fund. our thanks to all who have generously contributed advice and time: akilah clarke, jordan cocker, judy cockeram, heather crawcour, carl douglas, azadeh emadi, natalie guy, blake hall, hannah hopewell, mark jackson, tara ngari, fleur palmer, rafik patel, ashlin raymond, albert refiti, annabel setefano, laurence simmons, lourdes de souza, sarah treadwell, and others. brochure design: tina engels-schwarzpaul and azadeh emadi video still from kehua wahangu by moana nepia (detail), screening on level 6 and video wall, entrance level [image: nepia, 2012] 2017 interstices under construction symposium surface / pattern a pursuit of material narratives. keynote speaker associate professor spyros papapetros school of architecture princeton university 2nd 4th june 2017 auckland new zealand 2017 interstices under construction is jointly organised by the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland and the school of art and design, auckland university of technology (susan hedges, tina engels-schwarzpaul and ross jenner) pattern / surface a pursuit of material narratives surface and ornament have been extensively reviewed, admonished, discarded and pursued. more recently there has been a renewed interest in the writing of aby warburg and alois riegl, while numerous studies have addressed these issues relative to semper, adolf loos, hermann muthesius, and le corbusier. they have been made prominent by issues of animation (see, for example, papapetros 2012, payne 2013, van eck 2014) and digitation (see for example spuybroek 2008 and schumacher 2009). incrustations, protuberances, textured expressions, smoothed surfaces, surfaces enlivened as screens, are they ornament or cladding? the 2017 interstices under construction symposium, “surface – pattern” pursues the tension between ornament, adornment, object enlivenment, cladding, surface and pattern, and an exploration into the strange animations inherent in surface-pattern continua. the symposium is motivated by the renewed fascination with the architectural surface and the expressive effects it mobilises – effects that both eschew and uneasily dabble in the decorative. material mediation has become a means for experimentation, a way of teasing out smooth geometries, tessellated patterns, iconic figures and textures, which may all also perform technical functions, like joining or harmoniously accommodating incremental and differential movement. if, following paul virilio, the built, like the social, is inseparable from a politics of speed (in which surfaces, ways, and conduits at every scale are ‘policed’ in order to arrest impediments to an accelerating commerce of motion and passage), we might wonder what role patterning plays today. associate professor spyros papapetros joined the faculty of princeton’s school of architecture in 2003 and is an art and architectural historian and theorist whose work focuses on the historiography of art and architecture, the intersections between architecture and the visual arts, as well as, the relationship between architecture, psychoanalysis and the history of psychological aesthetics. papapetros is the author of on the animation of the inorganic: art, architecture, and the extension of life (the university of chicago press, 2012), the co-editor (with julian rose) of retracing the expanded field: encounters between art and architecture (the mit press, 2014), as well as the editor of space as membrane by siegfried ebeling (aa publications, 2010). friday 2 june drinks & launch interstices 14: immaterial materialities opening address tina engels schwarzpaul / ross jenner / susan hedges keynote address associate professor spyros papapetros “ornament as portable ecology: bodily and architectural adornment on a global scale” wg buidling room 126 sir paul reeves building auckland universitytechnology 6.30 7:00 pm 7:00 8:00 pm 6:00 6:30 pm saturday 3 june drawing / digital pattern / surface chair: ross jenner natalie haskell: pattern and the digital narrative: the impact of digital innovation on pattern and placemaking carl douglas: superficial immersion: flat ontologies and the picture plane yannis zavoleas + mark taylor: skin deep 3d printed surfaces morning tea11:00 11:30am level 1, wg126, sir paul reeves building aut university, governor fitzroy place 9:30 11:00am power, agency, surface chair: sue hedges dorita hannah: agonistic ornamentation: street art as resistant patternation farzaneh haghighi: architecture’s mourning skin manfredo manfredini, tanyalak chalermtip and angelo bueno: the “mediated shed” public space and “the forgotten symbolism” of post-consumerist architecture of hyprermediated interspatial patterns. lunch break colour / texture/ no texture chair: tina engels schwarzpaul anuradha chatterjee: for and against pattern: ruskin’s ambivalent theory of constructional polychromy johanna abril: resurfacing rachel carley: gloss conference dinner 11:30 1:00 pm streams 1: level 1, wg126 sir paul reeves building aut university, governor fitzroy place saturday 3 june stream a 2:00 3:30 pm 7:00 pm trace and narrative chair: farzaneh haghighi nicholas skepper: material narrative in drawn and built surface anthony brand: building character: narratives of use and inhabitation lunch break local surface chair: carl douglas susan hedges: micro-structures, building blocks and the sculptural relief sue gallagher: urbis porta: extending my self and home as animated surfaces of salmacis and hermaphroditus andrew douglas: traversting erewhon: territorial image & chiastic desire conference dinner 11:30 1:00 pm streams 1: level 6, wg608 sir paul reeves building aut university, governor fitzroy place saturday 3 june stream b 2:00 3:30 pm 7:00 pm pacific patterns keynote: tēvita ka’ili chair: albert refiti / chair tina engels schwarzpaul nooroa tapuni: [my] face and the foreign body ross jenner: staging the face albert refiti: the binding of animals and gods with encircling aether and eyes in pacific architecture (non-refereed abstract) morning tea chair : albert refiti tina engels-schwarzpaul: binding and arresting – surface and pattern in contemporary traditional pacific buildings keri-anne wikitera: whakairo rangatira – patterns of the chiefs semisi potauaine & ‘okusi mahina: patternsurface and repetition-rhythm: a tāvāist criticism (non-refereed abstract) round up & lunch sunday 4 june 9:3010:15 am 12:40 1:15pm level 1, wg126 sir paul reeves building aut university 10:15 11:15 am 11:15 11:40am 11:40 1:15pm abstracts resurfacing johanna abril when someone is immersed in a contemporary philosophy, movement, or practice, it is hard to detect whether these manifestations were previously introduced or they are present inventions. as giorgio agamben suggests by the example of being in fashion or the observation of a star, being contemporary is to be part of a discontinuity. being “in fashion” means being two or three seasons behind; similarly the observation of a star is actually the projection of light that has traveled light years before being observed. from these examples it follows that a contemporary person is not someone who only perceives the projected light, but someone who can recognize the darkness of his own time. in accordance with agamben’s philosophy, this paper questions whether contemporary surface treatment shows the “light” of a past theory and practice, or whether contemporary surface treatment performs the “darkness” of the present. to be contemporary as well as to identify inventions demands similar awarness of the past. the art historian george kubler in his book the shape of time (2008) explains that the development of things is ruled by the change of attitude towards the process of invention, repetition and discarding. each process participates in the advancement of a society, however invention requires essential ingredients. first, it requires us to be aware of a previous position, and second, it needs one to be familiar with the actual body of knowledge in order to determine a field of study. in addition, when an invention has been accepted, it produces serial propositions that halt other inventions. in congruence with kubler’s thought, a question is asked as to whether contemporary surface treatment is a present invention or a serial practice which begun in the modern period. through the comparison between the a&a building (1963) by paul rudolf and the edison residence (2014) by kanva architects in terms of drawing technique, construction technology and visual-haptic effects, i observe that contemporary surface treatment constitutes the “light” of the modern architectural thought. in other words, when ornament was strongly disparaged in modernity, a new invention of ornament resurfaced in architecture. this invention emerged through tectonic values and surface treatment, which has produced serial practices that persist to the current day. to support that idea, the writings of alina payne, spiros papapetros and antoine picon provide a theoretical framework about the development of the concept of ornament from xix to xx century, and its current classification. furthermore, the comparison emphasizes the conception of the building as an expression that maintains relationships with theory, drawing and technology. lastly, contemporary surface treatment displays potential to be interpreted not just as the result of the digital age or collective values like sustainability,3 but to enhance multisensorial perception which connects deep aspects of the human being, one of which is memory. anthony brand to grasp the expressive character of a building is to feel its significance, to know what its character is like, to feel the inward resonance of an idea or way of life […] the man who cannot so ‘enter into’ the character of a building […] will be like the man who is able coldly to attach names to the feelings which he reads in the faces of his fellows, but who has no knowledge […] to understand expression in art requires empathy. (scruton 1979: 205) how is it that the surface of a building may express its character? and what role does empathy play in our perception of it? in the eighteenth century, character and composition were considered the two most essential aspects of successful architecture. initially they were conceived as means through which information, such as the function of the building, the mode of construction or the status of the owner, could be expressed in the formal language of details, ornamentation, and symbolism (parlante). another theory however, maintained that the impression we have of a building’s overall comportment is born from our more primitive and mimetic impulses, in response to the physiognomic expressions that accompany a particular emotion or affective disposition (boffrand 2002). by the mid-nineteenth century, this perceptual faculty became known as “einfühlung” or “empathy” (vischer 1994 [1873]). these theses have been ratified more recently by research in cognitive neuroscience, which confirmed that the neurological processes mapping our actions, emotions and sensations internally are also activated when we perceive similar actions, emotions and sensations elsewhere (gallese 2009: 520). this has prompted something of a return to empathy aesthetics within architecture (mallgrave 2013; robinson & pallasmaa 2015). however, with the affirmation comes the risk that designers may take “the facile road of isomorphism, isotopy, and metaphoric representations” (frascari 1991: 4). in addition, when these elements are simply means to an end, the narrative dimension ends with the completion of construction, and any affective potential atrophies with time and exposure (hale, 2014a). i present an alternative mode of ornamentation here, which is created after the building is constructed through acts that leave traces: the visible patterns naturally emerging over time through the “the tectonics of use” (hale, 2014a). this, i argue, is more aligned with the etymology of character (kharakter, a tool used for engraving and leaving a mark or impression) and more meaningful to us, the inhabitants and users, as a means for recording the narrative history of our user-object relationships (chapman, 2005). drawing upon findings in neuroscience and embodied cognition, i explain that it is through empathetic perception that these tectonics of use actively contribute to the character of a place, and “remind us of the potential of architectural materials to act as meaningful surfaces of inscription and communication” (hale, 2014b: 312). building character: narratives of use and inhabitation on disgust and odour rachel carley this paper examines a selection of glossy interiors to discern how this surface treatment facilitates spatial experiences that are expansive, invigorating and also troubling. it will highlight how a sheen that is integral with or applied over a substrate material can transform the space it envelopes. the paper will consider the following question: what role do glossy surface treatments play in evoking unsettling commercial, institutional and domestic spaces? discussion will focus upon dimorestudio’s glossy teal interior for the aesop magenta store in milan (2016), a selection of photographs from the omega suites (1991-1998) by lucinda devlin and michael parekowhai’s sculpture, the lighthouse (2017). shiny spaces return our gaze, drawing attention to ourselves. we become coincident with these lustrous interior surfaces. a liminal coating of gloss paint applied uniformly to floor, ceiling, and wall surfaces will appear to dissolve the ground plane, raise the roof and freight us beyond the confines of the interior. thus, glossy interiors are prone to exaggeration. they can be explicitly employed to augment an embarrassment of riches: consider, for example, the surfeit of effulgent surfaces and gilded interior decoration championed by the trump conglomerate of hotels. in some instances, high sheen interiors are contrived to bring into focus what is out of place: the residues of blood left in operating theatres are foregrounded against the glossy surgical green floors and sometimes walls on which they reside. blemishes give themselves away on shiny surfaces: such surfaces highlight imperfections. they bring us closer to them yet they are coy. the proximity between cleanliness (shininess) and godliness is endangered when shiny surfaces are damaged: this damage deposes the glossy interior or object back to the terrestrial realm. dust gravitates toward shiny surfaces, drawn to their liquidlike sheen due to electrostatic. compelled to inspect them, and excoriate them when necessary, we might prefer to keep our distance. we appear quick to judge shiny interiors, things, and people. shiny people are treated with suspicion: beads of sweat are ensigns of nervousness, dishonesty, lassitude or, worse still, an overabundance of enthusiasm where level headedness and moderation are lauded. gloss has a bad reputation. the word is often enlisted to suggest that something is being treated superficially, in an attempt to conceal something or whitewash over it. political strategists are adept at using this tactic to respond to difficult questions by minimizing their importance. to gloss over is to dissemble, to dismiss and mislead. gloss is superficial. it is associated with surface treatments: facades, veneers, and smokescreens. this once over lightly (glossing over gloss) might be understood as one-dimensional and yet this might be its very strength. to treat something disturbing or troubling, one dimensionally needs further investigation. the projects discussed in this paper provide evidence of a critical engagement with this surface treatment to facilitate a sense of disturbance, provocation and unease. for and against pattern: ruskin’s ambivalent theory of constructional polychromy anuradha chatterjee pattern was an important constituent of applied and constructional polychromy – a key motif in victorian architectural practice and theory, championed by william butterfield in his church of all saints margaret street. constructional polychromy is defined as the use of inherent properties of materials to achieve decorative effects, in the form of bands and zigzags, and diaper patterns and stripes. while this was motivated by the exposure to greek polychromy and geological discoveries, the key impetus was theological rationality (jackson 2004, crook 2003). architects sought to express the moral pursuit of truth in architecture by using coloured bricks and marble to create decorative patterns on interior and exterior surfaces of buildings. george edmund street’s brick and marble in the middle ages (1855) repeatedly declared the “intense love of reality and truth” in medieval buildings, which sought to explain the “real mode of construction” by the “veneering of brick walls with thin layers or coats of marble”. ruskin is identified as one of the initiators of this debate (jackson 2004, van zanten 1970). however, what is not known is that his approach to polychromy and pattern was a lot more ambivalent than is commonly assumed. karen pinkus (2010) advocates an alchemical model of ambivalence, which relies on the “coexistence of two different and perhaps irreconcilable elements”, and that resists the forced synthesis and resolution and the “death of difference”. ruskin’s productive ambivalence accommodated often conflicting narratives that were aimed at transforming the discipline of architecture. the paper develops this argument in its three sections, by delving into an inter-intratextual reading across ruskin’s oeuvre, seeking out alignments between his literary, historiographical, and visual strategies, and extending this to the analysis of significant historic buildings. firstly, ruskin argued against architecture as the third art: he advocated architecture as the synthesis of the arts of painting and sculpture (chatterjee 2009). hence, the surface/wall was now the architectural ‘proxy,’ which had to absorb this transformation by integrating colour and low relief ornament into textured flatness and surface pattern. secondly, he argued that buildings were like dressed female bodies. hence, the cladding had to signify the wall’s affinity with textile and fabrics. the rhythmic pattern of the diagonal chequered white and pale pink marble slabs in ducal palace in venice evoked the alternation of coloured threads in woven fabrics. thirdly, and most importantly, as surface was like dress, it had to suggest the blushing colour and tonal variations of the female skin. polychromy was critical in achieving this. however, the conflict between the softness and amalgamated quality of colour harmonies, and the unambiguous intelligibility of patterns needed mediation. ruskin handled this by advocating the use of natural stones, over paint and coloured bricks, because these materials did not possess the innate translucency needed to create a lustrous composition. in effect, the paper brings forth the issues in the operations of visuality, and complexifies established differences and polarities between flatness and texture; painting and sculpture; canvas and textile; and pattern and effect. traversing erewhon: territorial image & chiastic desire andrew douglas in a pioneering consideration of nineteenth century author samuel butler, ralf norrman (1986) reads butler as compulsively, indeed psycho-pathologically, inclined towards the rhetorical figure of chiasmus—characteristically a crosswise arrangement (abba) found in linguistic, but also non-linguistic, structures (wiseman & paul, 2014: 23). understanding rhetorical figures as more than ‘decorative’, norrman argues that chiasmus is ‘structured into’ the language practices of certain authors, eras, and cultures. building on the implications of butler’s deployment of chiasmus, this paper considers the patterning of place by stories, particularly utopian fiction. it extends characteristically chiastic approaches to place-understanding (carter, 2015; hillis miller, 1995) that reverse the assumption that places host or background stories, insisting instead that places arise firstly as told entities, entities that characterise, pattern and structure topography. erewhon: or, over the range (1872/2013), is a satirical utopia by butler set in aotearoa/ new zealand’s southern alps beyond the tributaries of the rangitata river. it’s title, an anagram of ‘nowhere’, signals an inverting will characteristic of chiasticism, one that reverses thomas more’s title, utopia (1516/2012)—an amalgam marrying the greek no (‘ou’) and place (‘topos’)—but its island setting too, with over the range opting for a mountainous crossing, rather than water, to assert spatial discontinuity. over the range in fact is found a complex english palladian mirror, one that counters new zealand’s rudimentary colonial settlement, that refigures its indigenous others, and which satirises victorian imperialism and its technological will. the intractability of colonial place-making finds relieving animation in an imaginative resurfacing of distant vistas. in place of a fabled, alpine passage to the west coast (attempted and abandoned by butler—ansley & bush, 2012: 38), an alternative penetrative gesture is substituted: fictional image and its deepening. drawing on jean-luc nancy’s (2008) investigation of the chiastic ground of images generally and louis marin’s anatomy of the utopic image particularly, this paper will think, in the context of erewhon, the implications of chiasmus for territorial images. working through a crisscrossing of proximity and depth as they play out in topography and its patterning, the paper will investigate what marin sees as utopia’s positing of the neutral—a place where an infinite, imaginative free play is contracted with closed totalities (1993: 403). thought through at the level of desire, deleuze and guattari (2000) find in butler’s chiastic quest for non-opposition—itself indicative of the neutral—“a point of nondifference or dispersion”, one capable of dismantling “both vitalist and mechanist arguments” in favour of a “difference in union” (2000: 284-285). in this way, they argue, butler shows how operations of desire may be radically rethought. to the extent, as nancy characterises, modernity can be understood as an on-going quest for the “effacement of simple oppositions and a transgression of boundaries” (2005: 18), erewhon as a territorial image offers more than a chiasmus indicative of amelioration and reconciled difference as norrman reads it. in butler’s fiction chiastic desire may be read as a critical animator in the constitution of surface patterns generally. superficial immersion: flat ontologies and the picture plane carl douglas a drawing constructed according to the techniques of descriptive geometry is a special kind of surface: a marked substrate doubled by the device of the picture plane. simultaneously window and blade, the picture plane was devised first in perspective methods, and subsequently generalised as an abstract surface through which three-dimensional objects can be passed, apprehended and manipulated (pérez-gómez and pelletier, 1997). we don’t merely design surfaces, we design by means of superficial operations. but such drawings are not only flat in the sense that three dimensions are squished or elided into two. they also entail an ontological levelling and mobilising. flattened onto a shared surface and governed by an “optical consistency”, things are drawn into relation and mobilised towards some end (latour 1981: 8; latour and yaneva 2008). james corner’s description of maps as “massive collection, sorting, and transfer sites” is apt as a general account of systematised drawing (1999: 215). by means of the drawing’s “facture”, disparate things are loosened from their contexts, brought together, and slide into new configurations (frascari 2009: 200). can insight into this flattening be gleaned from recent philosophers who espouse a “flat ontology” (de landa 2002, bryant 2011)? flat ontologies insist on a “pure heterogeneity that breaks down all differences of degree or intensity in favour of differences of nature” (meillassoux 2012: 15). this brings them into conflict with both cartesianism, for which extensity is primary, and deleuzian monism, with its emphasis on intensity. rather than undermining or “overmining” — seeing things either as a sum of their parts or of their relations — a flat ontology invites the most irreducibly diverse entities to share a “transformational space” (harman 2013: 45, douglas 2011: 45). in seeking to illuminate the operation of drawn surfaces in light of flat ontologies, and to demonstrate the practical value of such a theoretical framework, i offer a discussion of a recent speculative drawing: a proposal for a composite stone column marking the edge of two historic reclamations on the northern edge of the māngere inlet. the column is not articulated primarily as a three-dimensional form, nor as a perceptual experience, but as one aspect of an extended spatio-temporal choreography: a constellation of far-flung things set in motion. the drawing operates more as table than screen: in place of the depth produced by a picture plane, the drawing foregrounds horizontal relationships. flat ontologies posit the condition of being immersed in the surface. rather than discovering significance or substance behind or below the surface, they invite accounts of mobilisation and assembly, selectively neutralising the dichotomy between surface and depth. binding and arresting: surface and pattern in contemporary traditional pacific buildings tina engels-schwarzpaul in classical pacific buildings, figures or textures like lalava (lashings) performed iconic and technical functions simultaneously. what happens when the latter are performed by other means? the fale pasifika at the university of auckland (opened 2004) shows that the figures’ binding features outlast their technical necessity. perhaps because the building, in the right constellations, can still bind together ancestral knowledge and present practices, despite many concessions to alien rules and regulations, the building attracts diverse types of audiences – including non-pacific people. what conditions enable arresting patterns on refined surfaces “to symbolise and effect relations of mana” (tomlinson & tengan 2015: 17) and to channel affective force – even beyond the initiated? how can the notion of iconic power (alexander, bartmanski, & giesen, 2012) be a valuable strategic resource and an ordering principle in the juxtaposition of contradictory perspectives? how does iconic power relate to indigenous pacific concepts? integrating aspects of materiality, performativity, atmospheres and non-human agency in the fale pasifika with more traditional, structuralist insights this paper produces cross-overs between architecture and anthropology. in western culture, patterns are commonly considered to be as flat as the surface that carries them. tongan lalava tofunga (lashing expert) filipe tohi disputes this; he asserts that lalava is “deeper than just the lashing”, more connected to a changing world and cosmos-in-motion than given credit. patterns extend into cosmological, social, technological and subjective realms. some samoan tufuga fau fale (master builders) use carving to produce strange animations, stirring surfaces and producing patterns that “generate relationships over time between persons and things” (gell 1998: 80). these patterns can arrest and ensnare a viewer (gell 1998: 82) through the experience of a “mimetic passing over into the object” (rampley 1997: 45). boundaries between a subject and her world dissolve when images and things converge and the appearance of things is seen as part of their materiality (payne 2014: 317, 310). the surfaces making space for patterns and textured expressions often have to be produced, first, made fine and even. in samoa, the surfaces of measina (treasured objects) are smoothed and bleached, then elevated and revealed (refiti 2015: 128). a house that is measina stands at the centre of a community and embodies its mana. its patterns can develop durable relationships between decorated building and the people relating to it. since patterns “slow perception down, or even halt it”, the building “is never fully possessed at all, but is always in the process of becoming possessed” (gell 1998: 81). thus, iconic pacific patterns and forms based on “repetition, balance and complementarity” (tomlinson & tengan, 2016: 17) not only contribute to a buildings’ aesthetic quality but transfer and channel mana. for their communities, they establish and maintain linkages between the living, the dead and the cosmos. repetitions, then, “symbolise and effect relations of mana”, in classical houses in their original context and also in contemporary fale in the diaspora. this paper traces “correspondences between heterogeneous images”, regions and cosmological events (papapetros 2010: 42) through a consideration of the fale pasifika in interviews, site visits, and theoretical sources. urbis porta: extending my self and home as animated surfaces of salmacis and hermaphroditus sue gallagher i sense my body as being different from any other bit of creation. the act of realising myself both as a separate unique entity and a composite, a manifold, only occurs when i have configured myself in my fellow. joseph rykwert this paper undertakes a consideration of surface animation by way of ovid’s metamorphoses, specifically the mythical union of salmacis and hermaphroditus in book iv. the story of the water nymph salmacis’ advance and rejection by hermaphroditus, and her eventual capturing of him in a reflective pool through divine force, plays out a curious amalgam of surface effects – the grooming of hair, the shedding of cloths, the play of light on disturbed water and immersed skin, sensuous and coerced contact, the merging of bodies and the confounding of corporeal gender markers – all in the context of a storytelling enacted by the sisters of minyas as they weave in violation of a release from work intended to celebrate the bacchic rites. this tale calls into question the fixity of bodies and, with the supernatural weakening and transformations of the pool of salmacis, a certain un–grounding. the tale, then, speaks to the creation of androgyny, where bodies are no longer stable and genders fixed, where bodies become fluid and are transformed. on this background, the paper considers a similarly aqueous transformation of auckland city’s urban body, a watercolour produced by the design office of gummer and ford featuring the dilworth building, a neoclassical commercial building constructed 1925-27. the watercolour, dated 1922 and titled urbis porta, features a mirrored double to the dilworth building on the opposing corner. the reflection proposes a theatrical, grand gateway, symmetrically framing the city as it opens into the depth of the queen street. curiously, the watercolour itself, with its golden hues and gradated blue sky, dissolves the actual urban fabric beyond. it idealises and fixes with an architectural gesture the otherwise rough animation of early twentieth century auckland. while the speculative urbis porta was never completed, in its beholding, a transformation occurs: auckland appears as a half–city, a weakened whole messily unfolding, not under an eternal, watery blue sky, but in the changeable conditions of commercial development and speculation. yet the watercolour prompts another transformation. the distancing spectacle of the urbis porta, all surface and illusionary depth, calls up another orientation and counter–dwelling: my own occupancy of an apartment within the dilworth building. there i live and work, not on the surface, but from the inside out, in a reworking of the normative configuring of home as a reproductive crucible patterning family, social, and cultural relations. folding spectacle and embodied life into each other, this paper explores how self–relation and sexual difference can be housed differently – in the sense of alternate modes of productivity and world–making. how might the un–grounding characteristic of both salmacis and hermaphroditus’ amphibious crossing, and the lived androgyny it implies, be rethought at multiple scales in the doubled siting of the dilworth building. architecture’s mourning skin farzaneh haghighi this paper explores the ways through which the architectural surface might be used as a significant source for power to make the past legible. in doing so, it examines a renovation project in the tehran bazaar that employs particular patterns, textures and forms to associate the bazaar with an islamic origin. initiated in 2011, the street façade improvement is a restoration project that expanded across the whole 110 hectares of this marketplace and led to the construction of internal and external archways reminiscent of the security mechanism of town-gates to regulate the circulation of commodities in a walled city. built in the sixteenth century, the tehran bazaar in the south of tehran is mainly conceptualised as a linear marketplace structure and as a united socio-political entity consisting of several public buildings that vary in form, function and historical value (keshavarzian 2007). the investigation of this restoration project is important for two key reasons: first, the tehran bazaar emerged as a socio-political point of opposition against the government during crucial urban uprisings in iran modern history (the tobacco rebellion of 1891-92; the constitution revolution of 1905; the oil nationalism movement of 1953; the white revolution of 1963; and, most importantly, the islamic revolution of 1979). in recent years, it has become a target for restoration projects that are seeking to transform it to a neutral historical-cultural touristic centre. second, the key architectural tool for the restoration in implementing their project (constructing a site of nostalgia) has been the façade. by opening a discussion on origin, truth and memory, this paper examines the power relations seeking to establish a specific origin for the tehran bazaar. theoretical exploration will be informed by french philosopher michel foucault’s problematisation of a pursuit of origin; american literary writer eduardo cadava’s invitation to learn mourning; and iranian photographer azadeh akhlahi’s creative reconstruction of historical events. although these three perspectives might seem disconnected, they serve to associate two diverging notions; that is, on the one hand, that remembering the past is essential for any culture; but, on the other hand, that each image of a memory is a construction. by defamiliarising frame and framed as constructed facts and not intrinsic truths, foucault (1984) disturbs the immobility of the origin and describes it instead as a site of confrontation of multiple forces. cadava emphasises the need to learn mourning and engaging in the politics of memory – not only because of a loss, but because this act is a conduit for finding the possibilities for future identities (cadava 2003, 1997). akhlaghi’s photographic project acknowledges the fictive character of any historical narration. she recreates tragic deaths – markers in iran’s modern history – that have not previously been visually documented. by being present in all projects she emphasise the fictive representation of events. in this paper, i will only focus on one specific photograph from akhlaghi’s project, that is, the murder of three students at tehran university in december 1953 – a significant event whose commemoration give rise to student protest every year. agonistic ornamentation: street art as resistant patternation dorita hannah in ornament and order (2014) rafael schacter opposes ‘consensual ornamentation’ with ‘agonistic ornamentation’ when discussing graffiti and street art. this second term refers to the productive friction advocated by michel foucault and chantal mouffe; replacing the consensual agora with the competitive agon as a new means of practicing democracy. as a dissensus, rendering visible what the dominant consensus wishes to conceal and eradicate, street art also challenges the propriety of urban design and architecture as well as their servitude to power; foreclosing on plurality and difference in the what schachter calls “the deadening vacuity of the ostensibly ‘public’ sphere” (p103). this paper therefore looks to the defiant and fleeting acts undertaken by street artists ‘against architecture’ and how they also suggest new forms of spatiality and urban detail through what stephen bottoms and matthew goulish name “small acts of repair”. as performative utterances, the agonistic ornamentation of graffiti not only speaks to power but establishes its own speech acts regarding neighbourhood, nationhood and borderline subjectivity. this is particularly evident in banksy’s month-long ‘residency’ in new york during october 2013, as well as ‘his’ interventions on the west bank wall. it can also be seen in the more sanctioned works of french street artist, jr, particularly via the extended and globally dispersed project, women are heroes. both banksy and jr ornament architecture – undermining its monumentality through momentality – in such a way that we have to look and look again: rendering the built environment an unseemly spectacle while unearthing the hidden histories, mythologies and living realities of time and place. this ranges from well-placed singular images and textual slogans to temporary embellishment that enacts a more relational dialogue with architecture. rather than rhythmic patterning, such agonistic ornamentation undertakes a deliberately arrhythmic approach, speaking back to adolf loos’ 1908 critique of ornament as erotic, primitive, infantile, feminine, degenerate and excremental: as a smearing of supplemental matter that threatens to seep in and deny surface itself. such spatial speech acts are therefore formulated as patternation; a recalcitrant babel undermining and offering alternatives to architecture’s complicity in the homogeneity of neo-liberalism and hegemony of dominant power relations. pattern and the digital narrative: the impact of digital innovation on pattern and placemaking natalie haskell griffith university, queensland college of art, design. natalie haskell is a designer and higher degree researcher at griffith university, australia. research areas include investigating the intersection of materiality and digital fabrication technologies and the impact on design practice to create customised and localised products and solutions. digital processes allow for experimentation with, and representation of, place, culture and identity in readily customized design and production workflows that support the incorporation of localised, site specific pattern within the built environment, across all design scales. with an increasing ability to create diverse, complex and easily replicated forms, the digital process enables and has in turn defined a new pattern narrative. this parametrically and digitally fabricated driven workflow has generated a suite of pattern approaches that exploit the digital possibilities and concurrently generated an identifiable pattern narrative, such as cross-disciplinary approaches to include science and biomimetics. where technologies were originally employed to replicate what could be done by hand, “advancements in modelling spatially complex 3-dimensional shapes has affected our design thinking” (thomas 2007: 140) and, in turn, the patterns we can create and manufacture. the rise of fabrication technologies such as 3d printing has further impacted on the control over shape and composition (lipson & kurman 2013) and influenced aesthetics of complexity (warnier, verbruggen & klanten 2014: 38-39). drawing on gombrich’s (1984) theories, the use of pattern is a key factor influencing how an environment or object is perceived and interacted with, and how it impacts on human experience. ryan et al. (2014: 68) discuss the idea of complexity and order with reference to replications of natural forms and the “associative relationships between the patterns, structures, flows and rhythms – that provide, support and organize information – and human perception.” to consider the role of pattern as a signifier of place and culture one can examine design processes that elevate space to place. considering the impact of pattern and the ways in which emerging technologies facilitate diverse prototyping, the paper explores what a surface, cladding and structure can be when its ability to incorporate patterned responses is increased. this can be discussed through the works of key practitioners and their localised site responses, such as digital grotesque, the icd/itke research pavilions, king abdullah financial district (kafd) metro station, and the portrait building in melbourne. ben pell (2010: 12), for example, investigates translations of ‘digital surface’ and patterning generated both through digital models and digital fabrication processes. given the possibilities of digital technologies, this paper argues that a new pattern narrative has been established – influenced by a globalised digital aesthetics. key exemplars are discussed along with challenges and opportunities for site-specific and culturally reflective localised design responses. micro-structures, building blocks and the sculptural relief susan hedges surface articulation is a critical issue for architecture, and this paper sees the wall as a point of intersection where art and structure may converge and collide. a place of experimentation, a site of performance where built volumes and surface embellishments blur and reinforce edge conditions, in which ornament, as embellishment, and essential structure merge. a survivor of the recent wellington earthquake, jim allen’s seven-metre-long relief of sculptured concrete panels (allen, 2014: 76) was created in 1995 for the new zealand head office of the british company ici (imperial chemical industries). it was cast in 36 panels from a worked clay surface, the relief ’s physical integrity a single material substrate. the negative forms offer an elemental imagery, a worked clay surface filled with cement, giving sharp profiling to the modelling. complex, infinite, interlacing geometrical forms spread across the surface – a large microscopic lens that peers at the structural makeup of the building blocks of copper crystals. the surface articulation becomes a place for architectural invention where the skin becomes independent and the sculptural relief becomes part of the work, as well as its support. following the building’s failure, the relief survived a 5,000-tonne demolition. construction, size and position of the work have contributed to its survival, partly because the relief shifted from surface activation to structural member. this paper investigates the relief as it protrudes from the surface of the building’s interior. surface, layer and structure extend beyond the planar, producing a range of complicated effects. visible and invisible incrustations, geometric forms and structural matrices transform and become linked to depth, substance, mass and thickness (papapetros 2013: 3). the demarcation of the essential and inessential is blurred and a perception of ornament as dangerous during earthquakes is subverted. this paper focusses on material mediation, where the whole is built as an accumulation of parts, and the part is a portion of the whole, which has become a place for architectural experimentation, a site for smooth geometries, tessellated patterns and material textures that also perform technical functions as joints, details, joining patterns and structure. staging the face ross jenner this paper examines two modern and two contemporary versions of the façade, especially through tattoo and its afterlife in the between of pacific and western knowledges. face and façade are treated not for their formal and aesthetic values, nor as signs and visual cues to be deciphered. instead, the focus is on their agency in changing the world by acting on emotions rather than by articulating sense, logic, or construction. for alfred gell, art objects are social agents, so that buildings act and perform in networks of social relationships. exercising agency, then, means exercising the power to influence spectators and make them feel or act in certain ways. buildings can be made to share characteristics of living beings when they are conceived to be alive as agents (van eck: 2015) and to possess “intentional psychology” (gell 1998: 131). life has always been attributed to buildings. agency was already at the core of traditional definitions of ornament as “furthering” its carrier, and bodily behaviour has been projected into architectural form at least since classical greece. as a bodily schema, a building elicits an empathetic response (payne 2014: 314) and, in renaissance profiles, the classical schema was enlivened by facial proportions. traditionally, the job of ornament has been to provide movement, motivation, vividness. the background of this paper is the facial tattoo (gell 1993; thomas 2005, te awekotuku 2007) – from sydney parkinson, to owen jones’ tattooed māori head, to alois riegl’s discussion of examples of tattooing, to adolf loos’ iconoclastic polemic against ornament, to patrik schumacher’s “parametric patterns” (2009: 7). in this example, schumacher writes about zaha hadid’s azerbaijan cultural centre, baku, “(t)he utilization of seaming as accentuating device is comparable to the feature accentuating maori facial tattoos.” animate form returns with the demise of the machine paradigm in architecture. in certain representations, māori architect, rewi thompson, animates his own house (1985) with the vividness of red – the vitality of blood. he variously likened the building to face, body and pā (fortification). iconic figural elements activate cultural memory in the way they stage a play enacted before one’s eyes. here, as with my other examples, the building is a living being, attributed with skin, face and personhood. the inanimate unsettlingly appears as animate, but thompson goes beyond this. like giuseppe terragni in his unbuilt palazzo littorio, he makes the face act as persona, or mask. in terragni’s project, the principal façade is composed of a suspended screen, a curtain of blood-red stone, split at its point of equipoise for the emergence of one actor, il duce. manfredo tafuri notably described the vast wall as “tattooed” (1978). it is a curtain, mask and scaene frons. its ‘lines of force’, represented by the diagram of isostatic lines, stage the intrusion of the future into an ancient past. for thompson, “the shape of the house is not a person or head necessarily, though if it was a head it would have no eyes. therefore, it does not look out onto the street in a day-to-day way” and, in this resistance, confronts suburban expectations (1995: 26). convex brick concave stone: beauty in the irregularity of surface patterns in south fujian, china naibin jiang in terms of both construction and aesthetic appeal, south fujian traditional architecture possesses a unique and evocative character embodied in its distinctive surface pattern, namely convex brick concave stone. this mixed-material construction utilizes a combination of brick and stone, creating extraordinary surface patterns which are simultaneously random and rhythmic, contrasting yet harmonic, resulting in a distinctive decorative effect that leads one to question the underlying meanings and motivations of the design. interestingly, it was neither aesthetic intent nor artisanal prowess, but rather a response to natural disaster that led to the unique designs. the stones and red bricks that create the distinctive surface patterns were remnants of structures that had collapsed following earthquakes and were utilized to quickly rebuild buildings. the reuse of these locally produced materials was common practice. there were no special shapes or size requirements, as the materials were plucked directly from the ruins, but their earthquake resistance was proven. intentionally or not, the placement of random stones and bricks formed irregular yet rhythmic patterns, generating perfect geometric effects and aesthetic features, among which texture and contrast are the most distinctive. irregularly shaped horizontal red brick and vertical grey stone were joined together, forming a creative rhythm that goes beyond planar fixity. the pattern itself is flat, but because of the convex bricks and concave stones, the plane becomes three-dimensional, forming rich spatial layers on the surface. even though the outward layer is not polished, the red brick and light-coloured stones combine together to provide a rich and contrasting effect, forming a unique surface pattern of contrast and harmony, generating beauty in irregularity. it is not only found in private residences, but is also popular in palaces, mansions, and even religious buildings. evidently, this approach was not simply a civil construction method, but was also a regionally widespread decorative and constructive surface pattern, gradually regarded as a cultural symbol. people also attributed different auspicious meanings to the patterns. traditionally, there is clear boundary when it comes to mixed-material construction, so that the complete fusion of materials in this case is very worthy of investigation. the paper will draw on a brief introduction concerning culture, construction and layout of fujian buildings in traditional architecture of south fujian (cao chunping 2006); the decoration pattern analysis in red-brick residence decoration aesthetic (chen yingjiao 2008), which illustrates this pattern in aesthetic ways; and case studies of reused waste materials from waste-materials recycling in traditional building (wuxing 2013), which provide methods for recycling from traditional architecture. the paper focuses on south fujian traditional surface decoration, analysing its motivations and patterns. more specifically, it analyses materials, forms, textures, contrasts, constructions and expressive methods by researching geographical and historical backgrounds, material properties and construction technology. thus, this paper adds a new research perspective and firsthand research data to the analysis of surface pattern, and it discusses possibilities for recycling waste materials and exploring innovative development of this traditional surface pattern. the “mediated shed” public space and “the forgotten symbolism” of post-consumerist architecture of hyprermediated interspatial patterns manfredo manfredini, tanyalak chalermtip and angelo bueno fifty years after the publication of debord’s society of the spectacle, the key role of surfaces in constituting alluring spatialities in commercial assemblages has increased from the superficial to the atmospheric, and from the architectural to the hypermediated. this shift has particularly affected urban centres dominated by the new enclosures of integrated consumption that progressively polarise citizens’ associative life: the latest generation of shopping malls. there, the static and two-dimensional material interface of traditional architecture has expanded its domain into dynamic and multimodal entities. meta-surfaces of extended interspatial apparatuses now form multiple interlocked sub-systems of enclosures. each sub-system is a precinct with a finely tuned spectacular programme, each ambience constitutes a part of the overall eventful commercial/lifestyle ensemble. its spaces are scripted (norman klein) and articulated through looping paths that control behaviours and coordinate emotional drivers, such as belonging, excitement and enjoyment, as well as bodily rhythms, such as those related to movement, fatigue and hunger. their performance hinges on communication forms that embrace the digitally augmented lifestyle and its gamification (deterding et al 2011). this paper discusses findings of an investigation from a spatial perspective of the latest generation of shopping and entertainment enclaves, to answer the following questions: how do the new hybrid/augmented meta-surfaces of post-consumerist shopping environments effect changes in the of territorialisation in our cities? is the contemporary augmented spectacle exacerbating the simultaneous de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation of the modern mall? the paper reflects on conditions found in post-consumerist environments in auckland, new zealand. it analyses the production of new multidimensional spatial patterns, focusing on embodiments in the digital realm. it provides a description of the changing relations between perceived and experienced spaces in emerging forms of territorial appropriation and association. it uses evidence found in the analysis of the mediated public realm, using geo-located data generated by the most popular image-based social media application, instagram, and the most successful augmented reality gaming application, pokémon go. the discussion concentrates on the effects of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation found in the new, experientially augmented “spectacular” realms. we interpret de-territorialisation as the agency responsible for fragmentation of proximity-based territorial configurations. whilst profoundly disturbing socio-spatial relations, this fragmentation increases territorial segmentation, producing new topological geographies of networked meta-surfaces. conversely, we consider re-territorialization to result from antagonistic forces of territorial recombinations of a topological kind, which cross the boundaries of the disjoined apparatuses and scales (body, precinct, enclosure and city). the concluding notes reaffirms a relationship between the transformations of relational life in our “society of augmented spectacle” and the spatial agency of new enclosures with ambivalent hybrid/augmented meta-surfaces. empirical evidence regarding the steady reconfiguration and instability of hypermediated socio-spatial chains of associations is used to shed light on the unprecedented scalar shifts in the emerging topological relations that make the mall a prime node of emerging, digitally pervaded, more-than-consumerist post-civil society. pattern-surface and repetition-rhythm: a tāvāist criticism (non refereed abstract) semisi potauaine & okusi mahina this paper sets out to interrogate pattern as repetition, and surface as rhythm, from the perspective of general tā-vā (time-space) theory/philosophy of reality. it critiques the confined treatment of the ontological entities of space as pattern, on the one hand, and surface and time as repetition and rhythm, on the other, strictly by way of material narratives to be epistemologically ego-centred, singular, linear and three-dimensional as opposed to their being treated independently albeit ontologically as reality-based, plural, circular and four-dimensional. the latter denies the historicity, plurality and circularity of tā-vā (time-space) and fuo-uho (form-content), as well as their fluidity, inseparability and four-sided-dimensionality, in both abstract and concrete ways. these are made evident in tongan arts and its categories as faiva (performance), tufunga (material) and nimamea’a (fine) arts, meaning repeatedly “doing things in space,” “beating space” and “hand-marking space” respectively. in abstract ways, tā (time) is spatially-composed, verb-based and vā (space) temporally-marked, noun-led and, in concrete terms, fuo (form) is substantially-formed, verb-defined and uho (content) formally-demarcated, noun-driven. all things in reality as in nature, mind and society enter into eternal relations of intersection or connection and separation in the form of mata (eye) or ava (hole), functioning as an artistic device for their mediation in the creative process. their mediation through sustained symmetry and harmony to create beauty transforms them from a condition of chaos to a state of order, as in the use of the mata matangi (eyeof-the-winds)-ava matangi (hole of the winds) intersections or connections and separations, on the one hand, and the mata peau (eye-ofthe–waves)-ava peau (hole-of-the-waves) intersections or connections and separations, on the other, where the performance art of faiva fānifo (surfing) is performed by means of the mata (eye)-ava (hole)-like papa fānifo (surfboards) and mata‘i hui (eye of the needle) or ava‘i hui (hole of the needle) in the material and fine arts of tātatau (tattooing) and nimamea‘a tuikakala (flower-designing) respectively. all the kupesi, designs or patterns, such as the tokelaufeletoa, manulua and kefukefu, are abstract manifestations of concrete objects as fortress-of-feletoa, two-birds-flying and wave-ripples-in-constant-motion through intersecting or connecting and separating kohi/tohi (line) and vā (space) in the form of mata (eye) or ava (hole). this is clearly seen in the tu‘a-loto, loto-tu‘a (outside-in, insideout) movement of concrete objects such as the fortress-of-feletoa, two-birds-flying and wave-ripples-in-constant-motion respectively into the abstract kupesi, designs or patterns such as the tokelaufeletoa, manulua and kefukefu, basically as intersecting or connecting and separating kohi (line) and vā (space). it follows that both tā (time) and vā (space), like fuo (form) and uho (content), as mere ontological or metaphysical (and epistemological or metaphorical) entities are, in their multifarious manifestations, reality-based, plural, circular and four-dimensional in modus operandi, constantly yet inseparably moving in multidirectional, multidimensional ways, as in the behaviour of kupesi, designs or patterns. in fact, they are not ego-centred, thought to subjectively move in singular, linear and three-dimensional ways nor are they confined to only materiality but rather, by virtue of existence, a necessary condition of the whole of reality, including mentality and sociality. the binding of animals and gods with encircling aether and eyes in pacific architecture (non-refereed abstract) albert reftit the paper contends that, in pacific architecture, the iconic value of buildings is their capacity to signal ideas of relations and kinship ties. pacific material culture is obsessed with generating and making connections across time and space to create effective images or icons of the structure of belonging. the iconic signifies the weaving and fortifying of relations gathered under one roof, one name, through the custom of binding motifs. lashed from cords and strings, powerful symbols weave and impress social and genealogical memories into the building itself (shore 1988) and evoke ‘association’ and ‘congregation’ (valeri 1985). thomas powell made a connection between the etymology of the name tagaloa, the samoan progenitor, and the samoan cosmology by suggesting that tagaloa stands for “the encircling aether” (powell & fraser 1892). by dividing the name into two parts – taga and loa – he produced a series of meanings: taga or taga’i is to ‘wind round’ like an ulcer encircling a limb, and ta’aiga is a ‘roll’ of fine mats. tagai is also a ‘bark’ or ‘rind’, something that ‘envelopes’ and is a ‘wrapper’. loa denotes longevity or endless. his analysis intimates that the samoan progenitor is reflected in the image of a textile container that envelopes and encloses eternity – ‘the god that encompasses all things’, or ‘the encircling aether’. it is this essence of covering and encircling or, more importantly, linking, binding and knotting, that i will explore in the paper. in striving to connect ‘the social’, pacific architecture produces apparatuses (foucault 1980) that corral and bind genealogies and the cosmos into and to a place by forming rings on paepae platforms underneath spreading woven roofs. the fale (hourse) provides a covering roof, stretched and extended over all who come under the name of the founding ancestor. the paper analyses the fale’s lashed and woven patterns, with faces and eyes as totems linking the building to blood sacrifice (hersey 1989). the sumu pattern (krämer 1994, collocott 1922) in architecture, for example, is explored to show that it is, first, a mythological sacrificial icon and symbolic connector between the heavens (lagi-tua-iva and the diamond-shaped outline in the southern cross) and the clan who gathers in the fale. second, these lashed patterns produce all-seeing-eyes and faces that shine from all corners of the building, reflecting the concept of the community as a panoptic habitus. pacific buildings, here, are examined as assemblages of fitted timber pieces lashed together to resemble a woven cloak thrown over ceremonial and ritual spaces. marked by ‘ritual attractors’ and repositories “for maintaining, holding, and augmenting the tangible and intangible property of the ‘house’ [with] cosmological features linking the dwelling structure and the social group with ancestors” (kahn, 2008), these buildings produce patterns that weave the architecture together, “shaping space around ritual” (dodds & tavernor 2002). the architecture becomes the living embodiment of the divine, a ‘cult-statue’ or visible image, “ set up there in order that the god might come and dwell in it” (cornford 1977). material narrative in drawn and built surface nicholas skepper how do made surfaces hold meaning and narrative? how is that significance borne out of the materials and processes through which the surface is made? this paper will explore the notion that surfaces hold ideas and meaning in the traces accrued in the act of making. the term making in this context refers not only to buildings but also other surfaces, including drawings. attitudes and tendencies towards surface over the past century have been well documented in architectural discourse – from the eradication of ornament in modernism (payne 2012, papapetros 2013) to the re-engagement with surface, ornament and pattern by contemporary architects over the past two decades or more, including a renewed interest in the symbolic, political, cultural and environmental function of surface (zaera polo 2008, pell 2010, taylor 2009). a fascination with surfaces formed through repeated patterns has pervaded this renewed interest in surface. often driven by developments in computeraided fabrication, these patterned surfaces privilege visual representation and lean heavily on image making, often by means of cutting, perforating, etching and printing. the application of images (abstract or otherwise) by digital means to architectural surfaces is, for example, starkly evident in the 36 built projects analysed in the articulate surface (pell 2010). often missing from this conversation is a discussion of how the processes and materials by which the surface is made can develop a narrative and give meaning to the work. to address the underrepresentation of such issues within current discourse, the paper will discuss works that demonstrate the capacity for surfaces to hold material narratives in the traces of their making. initially, this discussion will take place through an examination of the drawn surface. a discussion of drawing is useful here because it demonstrates the capacity for even a flat surface of minimal material depth to construct narrative and meaning in the marks that accrue in the actions performed upon it. architect pier vittorio aureli’s non-compositional drawings and the drawings and paintings of artist agnes martin serve as cases in point here. following this, two buildings by contemporary practice 6a architects will be discussed; the albemarle street shop front for paul smith and raven row, contemporary art exhibition centre, spitalfields, london. the former project draws on the ubiquity of cast iron as a building material in london, and the textures, structure and craftsmanship of fashion garments in the making of a subtle but highly patterned cast iron shop front. the latter references the traumatic history of fire damage in an eighteenth century silk mercers’ house with the use of fire treated timber linings in the renovation works. both projects can be positioned, with respect to the re-emergence of surface pattern and ornament, as a central preoccupation in contemporary architecture. they can also be shown to be concerned with surfaces that manifest as expressions of making processes (casting of iron and charring of timber), rather than representation. [my] face and the foreign body nooroa tapuni coon, cunt, nigger, savage: a pattern i used to incise an ephemeral surface that functioned as an interactive digital selfportrait. this abstraction, an othering of self where the identifiers of art and artist are brought to face, brought to surface, disassembled itself through the presence of a ‘foreign body’ (viewer/participant). the paper seeks to tease out a complex reading of untitled interaction, [no. 1] (2014) a work in a series of interactive digital self-portraits. it employed the words coon, cunt, nigger, savage in a repeated sequence to construct a face. the face would disassemble as the words fluctuated in size. the motion of the viewer/participant, ‘foreign body’, triggered this transformation. this discussion is centered on the work as an installed interactive installation. it questions the face as surface and the notion of the “foreign body” in relation to an indigenous ontology of interconnection in the mangaian cybernetic continuum . the self-portrait of disseminating pixels rendered the face as surface through the abstraction and reduction of information, through software, digital coding and real-time data capture. in line with deleuze and guattari’s (2004) discussion of faciality, the face here is not a head but a surface that is separate from the body. the ‘foreign body’, within the interactive installation, has in itself been reduced to a surface through the function of its capture. it operates at the level of ‘faciality’ to induce a means of control (tapuni, 2010, 2016). that is surface, controlling surface. however, this reading of face as surface is rendered more complex through the mangaian cybernetic continuum, where the role of the artist is that of a conduit to ancestor. here, connection is encoded via the body, into material art making processes. that is, through the lens of the mangaian cybernetic continuum, the material process of the medium is encoded in connection to the body and ancestor. hansen (2003) contends that affective interfacing through the digital-facial-interface in digital interactive installations circumvents the technical mechanism (that which renders surface). in doing so, it allows the body to interact with the information to create images. this notion allows the ‘foreign body’, the viewer/participant, to function as a medium for the interface between the embodied human and encoded digital media. here, the embodied relation is faced with, and disturbs, the artist’s face made surface. the embodied relation disturbs the dis-embodied face. how does face, as surface and ‘foreign body’, manifest itself in the embodied presence of ancestor? how does the ‘foreign body’ manifest as medium for this interface? could this mean a return to surface or does surface become something other than a 2d plane? does it become implicit to body and ancestor? whakairo rangatira – patterns of the chiefs keri-anne wikitera marae in aotearoa new zealand are māori tribal gathering places that continuously reaffirm cultural identity, tribal solidarity and connection to one’s tūrangawaewae (ancestral place). central to the marae complexes are tūpuna whare (ancestral houses), which are considered symbolic embodiments of being māori. they represent ancestral connections in their naming of eponymous ancestors and, in physical form, through whakairo (carvings), tūrapa,(woven panel patterns) and kowhaiwhai (painted panels), embracing spiritual dimensions in māori cultural practice, traditions and protocols (hakiwai 2007, hooper-greenhill 1998). referring to the relationship between māori identity and taonga (treasures), arapeta hakiwai (1996) asserted that, while taonga can be viewed as just objects, historical experience and cultural context establish the artefact as more than that for māori: as a living phenomenon, a taonga adds to the ‘storehouse of knowledge’. likewise, alfred gell (1998: 252) argued that these houses “objectify the organic connectedness of historical processes” and act as collective indices of agency. in context, whare therefore highlight the material mediation or relationships between people, culture and socio-political environments. the symbolism in whare provides a pivotal connection of māori to their ancestry, their homelands, their culture and traditions, and so provide a unique view of the world (carter 2013). the reality, however, is that 80% of māori reside away from their marae, away from these iconic whare that encapsulate their ancestral histories, and often experience a total disconnect from their whakapapa or kin based relationships (emery 2008). therefore, how are māori cultural identities maintained in the absence of ‘traditional’ kin based frameworks of knowledge, which are primarily based on a mediation between place, built iconic references and tribal social contexts? this paper explores the complex strata of memories and narratives connected to the whare called hinemihi o te ao tawhito. through a semiotic analysis of the whare, it seeks to demonstrate how the symbolic meanings of the carvings, panels and patterns continue to sustain māori identities albeit outside of traditional kin-based connections of people to these iconic cultural references. extending upon homi bhabha’s (1994) third space this paper examines meanings through ‘discursive conditions of enunciation’ where “the meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew” (p. 11). this challenges simple ‘inside/outside’ or ‘self/other’ divisions and posits the analysis within “a complex overlapping landscape of containment” (engelsschwarzpaul, 2011, p. 11). the paper offers an indigenous framework of knowledge bringing together the meanings and interpretations of the taonga drawn from two distinct communities connected to this whare, the tribal peoples of ngāti hinemihi of aotearoa and the current communities who now care for the whare in england. this māori centred approach to understanding how the different taonga, found in whare, align to and represent changing sociocultural contexts, provides a model of māori cultural identity through the material mediation of both the traditional tribally inscribed signs, symbols, and patterns of the taonga as well as contemporary meanings and interpretations. skin-deep: 3d printed surfaces and the end of flatness yannis zavoleas + mark taylor with the demise of expressionist plasticity it is generally conceded that modernism, presented through the international style, promoted flat surfaces. walls, roofs, floors and ceilings were defined as planes of constant thickness. the appropriation of cartesian geometry to define shape and to manage construction resulted in the elegance of modern aesthetics. flatness was further aligned with a preference towards standardisation, prefabrication and an engineering ideology about mass-production, repetition, efficiency and quality control. surface was purified to a rectangular plane, which defines space horizontally and/or vertically, whereas establishing connections requires cutting the surface by following the geometry, construction logic and aesthetic rules of overall form. this paper aims to examine this concept, and through the use of advanced computational methods test the notion of surface as an elastic, malleable skin, whose shape is produced through interactions with data inputs, embodying a continuous comprehension about space and form. the works of parent and virillio, candilis, josic and woods of team 10, doxiadis and late le corbusier over the 1960s were latemodernist attempts to break from sheer flatness by defining surface as a responsive terrain that unites spaces together by adjusting to local conditions. these examples presage data-driven design approaches long before computers entered the workplace. the surface was subdivided by dynamic patterns interacting with data inputs to alter its shape. patterns introduced oblique, gridnested, mat topologies producing variations as means of negotiating between different sizes, inside/outside, open/closed, public/ private, setting the ground for a “topological” comprehension about surface. these works offered systemic linking between the edifice, the dweller and the environment. since the 1980s, folding techniques also offered ways to rethink surface as a dynamic entity that hosts diversity within its niches, while maintaining overall continuity. however, the above endeavours were exceptions to the geometric uniformity imposed by modernism’s creed. the introduction of cnc fabrication technologies including full-size printing of buildings has caused a new turn. designs of any shape may be printed directly from the digital file at real scale, suggesting that “geometricism” may no longer be a prerequisite for on-site construction. the prospect to abandon cartesian geometry coincides with an increasing interest in natural patterns. for example, the smooth geometry of the human body is captured in the elasticity of the skin as it outlines the inner organs. other concepts define surface as being “soft,” manipulated via form-finding techniques applied onto malleable materials to express responsiveness, transitioning and unobstructed fluidity. this paper reports on some fieldwork experiments that use dynamic simulation to expand upon surface’s recent topological definitions. the presented prototypes are created by real-time inputs and printing technologies to generate and to materialise form into one self-supporting structure. these experiments invoke earlier studies that treated surface as an integrated element that resolves spatial, aesthetic and structural functions in one topological whole. by elaborating on the notion of dynamic patterns, surface acquires elasticity and depth. the notion of “skin-deep” surface is introduced to reflect the changes brought by digital fabrication, further capturing the 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(2008). the politics of the envelope. log (13/14), 193-207. biographies: johanna abril is a first year student of the master of architectural studies at carleton university. she received a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a restoration diploma at the university of cuenca in ecuador. her recent publication include heritage inventory as the base for a monitoring system in the world heritage city of cuenca (sahc-ku leuven, 2016) and documentation techniques for registration and monitoring (llactacamp2.0, 2015). her current research interests include the historical role of ornament through the work of architects and craftsmen. anthony brand completed his bachelors of architecture and diploma of architecture at the university of nottingham (uk).after coming to new zealand in 2009 and working with habitat for humanity, anthony joined the university of auckland in 2011, where he has recently completed his phd. entitled “touching architecture: a felt-phenomenology of affective atmospheres and embodied encounters”. his thesis elucidates the ways in which we touch (and are touched, affected and effectuated) by our surroundings.anthony also teaches architectural design studios and supervises masters theses at the university of auckland. angelo bruno has graduated with a bachelor of architectural studies from the university of auckland, where he is currently teaching architectural design while completing the master of architecture. his research interests focus on gaming and public space in the current architecture and urban transition. rachel carley completed her phd in architecture in 2006. her thesis, whiteread’s soundings of architecture, moulds a series of contours between the british artist rachel whiteread’s sculptures and architectural discourse. soundings are taken in order to explore the complex ways in which the artist enlists architectural drawing and modelling practices to shed light on the rich interior lives of quotidian spaces and typological structures frequently overlooked. current post-doctoral research critically examines the use of constraint as a pedagogical tool in interior design studio, and the critical appraisal of surface treatments in contempoarary interior, fine art and design practices. rachel is currently employed a a parttimetutor in the spatial design deparment at aut university tanyalak chalermtip has graduated with a bachelor of architectural studies from the university of auckland, where she is currently teaching architectural design while completing a master of architecture. her research interests focus on utopia and play in the city anuradha chatterjee completed her m.arch and phd from the university of new south wales. anu has founded online refereed journal, the eighth lamp: ruskin studies today. she has authored three books (john ruskin and the fabric of architecture, routledge, forthcoming in 2017; built, unbuilt, and imagined sydney, copal publishing, 2014; and surface and deep histories, cambridge scholars publishing, 2013) and chapters on surface in two forthcoming routledge anthologies. anu’s recent grants include: publication grant, 2016 and research support grant, 2013, paul mellon centre for studies in british art; stones of venice research, lancaster university, 2014; and david saunders founders grant, sahanz, 2008. her research interests include architectural surface, dress, textiles, and ruskin. andrew douglas at the school of art+design at auckland university of technology. he is coordinator of the urban practices undergraduate minor, a member of the turnspace collective, andcontributor to the making public research cluster. he is also an executive editor of interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, and a trustee of the enigma: he aupiki trust, and the greg bowron trust, along with being a director of the interior design educators association and an editorial advisor to the idea journal. he has practiced architecture in both auckland and london and maintains specialty skills in critical urban thinking and design particularly. he has pursued postgraduate studies at the university of auckland and goldsmiths, university of london. his research ranges across fields associated with urban and greek philosophy and history, aspects of poststructuralist thinking—particularly the work of gilles deleuze and felix guattari—critical perspectives on socio-spatial practice, and gender and sexuality as these pertain to literature, cinema and the urban imaginary. his doctoral research investigated observation and reflectivity in modernity and its linkages with human motility in european urbanism since the seventeenth century. his current research includes the role of affect in emerging forms of publicness and governance, colonialurban formations in new zealand, and various aspects of an urban-interior synthesis carl douglas is a lecturer in spatial design at aut university’s school of art and design. his research concerns public space under the prevailing infrastructural spatial paradigm of the 21st century city. infrastructure has been interpreted as both corrosive to public space and constitutive of it. he treats it as a mode of spatial operation that anticipates the future as a field of contingent possibilities rather than a fixed image. previous research has studied competing spatial orders in revolutionary paris, and discussed archaeological sites as scenes of architectural production. he is currently working on a series of speculative proposals for auckland’s māngere inlet, investigating its possible futures and potential reconfigurations. contact carl at carl.douglas@aut.ac.nz tina engels-schwarzpaul is professor in spatial design and postgraduate studies at auckland university of technology te wānanga aronui o tāmaki makau rau, aotearoa/new zealand. with leali’ifano dr. albert l. refiti, she leads pacific spaces (http://www.pacificspaces.com/), a research cluster at the school of art and design which explores space from pacific perspectives. details about research interests and publications at http://www.aut.ac.nz/profiles/art-design/professors/tina-engels-schwarzpaul and aut.academia.edu/tinaengelsschwarzpaul farzaneh haghighi is a lecturer in architecture (theory and criticism), at the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland. she holds a phd in architecture from the university of sydney, australia. her research is concerned with the intersection of political philosophy, architecture and urbanism. currently, she is exploring the architecture of the act of exchange (of words, things, bodies) by deploying the political philosophy of michel foucault through her teaching and writing. dorita hannah is research professor of interdisciplinary architecture, art & design at the university of tasmania (australia) and adjunct professor of stage & space with aalto university (finland). working between the spatial, visual and performing arts, her practice-led research focuses on live performances, installations and exhibitions as well as specializing in theatre architecture. focusing on spatial performativity, dr hannah is completing event-space:theatre architecture & the historical avant-garde, to be published by routledge press (2017). natalie haskell is a designer and higher degree researcher at griffith university, australia. research areas include investigating the intersection of materiality and digital fabrication technologies and the impact on design practice to create customised and localised products and solutions. susan hedges is a senior lecturer in spatial design in the school of art and design, auckland university of technology, new zealand. her research and publication interests embrace an interest for architectural drawing, interior architecture, notation, dance, film and critical theory in regarding drawing and visual culture. these seemingly divergent fields are connected by an interest in the relationship that exists between the body condition, surface, pattern, architectural notation and visual images. naibin jiang graduated from university of hawaii at manoa, and now is an assistant professor in dept. of architecture, qingdao technological university. naibin has been focused on chinese traditional and regional architecture for years through research and critical exploration on its materials, construction technologies, and its relationships with local environments, history, ethnic culture and traditional philosophies, and at the same time, the preservation and inheritance of its spiritual meaning and construction methods. naibin has been active in international forum and magazine, advocating for the preservation and reestablishment of traditional architecture. ross jenner teaches at the university of auckland. he has a phd from the university of pennsylvania, has practised in the uk, finland, switzerland, and new zealand, taught at various institutions in australia and the us, was commissioner for the nz section of the xix triennale di milano, published in several books and journals, and is an editor of interstices. okusitino māhina is now affiliated with vava‘u academy for critical inquiry & applied research as founder-director and tonga international academy, where he is professor of art, culture and critical anthropology. hūfanga is his tehina young brother chiefly title for his service to education and art in the community. he holds a ba in sociology and anthropology and an ma (hons) in anthropology from the university of auckland (uoa) (1983; 1986) and a phd in pacific history from the australian national university (1992). he has won a number of prestigious awards, which include creative nz pacific heritage arts award for poetry (2007). hūfanga taught moana pacific political economy and moana pacific arts at tonga‘s ‘atenisi university and aotearoa nz‘s massey university – albany and uoa for many years. hūfanga was appointed director of ‘atenisi institute, where he was dean of ‘atenisi university and professor of tongan studies1997-99. he has authored, co-authored and co-edited some ten books (including his book of tongan poetry, with some translated into english and maori) and co-guest-edited two journal‘s special issues, with one on the soon-to-be-out tā-vā theory/philosophy of reality, as well as many book chapters and journal articles. hūfanga is co-authoring with a colleague a book on tongan arts from tongan perspectives. he has been actively engaged (now with many others) for some sixteen years in the development and refinement of the new general tā-vā theory/philosophy of reality, tongan for time-space, for which he is writing a book about. his research interests include, inter alia, time and space, art and literature, culture and history, economic development and political governance, education and inquiry, and trans-cultural aesthetics and transcultural psychology, as well as reviving ancient tongan musical instruments, including the minor tune. manfredo manfredini is a director and lecturer at the school of architecture of the uni veristy of auckland, new zealand and honorary professor of architecture at the hunan univeristy, changsha, china. he studied architecture and urbanism (msarch and phd) in milan and berlin. he published more than 40 journal and book papers and received prestigious awards, such as the first price at the biennale di venezia, sironi group. he taught and gave lectures in leading european and asian universities, such as milan technical university, university of stuttgart, tsinghua university and chinese university of hong kong. sēmisi fetokai potauaine was born and raised in tonga, where he successfully completed both his primary and secondary schooling. sēmisi grew up in a rich cultural environment, where he had an early exposure by way of “critically lived experience” to a number of tongan material, performance and fine arts, ranging from tool-making, house-building and kafa-sennit-plaiting through music, oratory and dance to mat-weaving, bark-cloth-making and traditional healing and many others. he moved to new zealand in pursuit of tertiary education and research. sēmisi holds several qualifications: ndat diploma in architectural technology from unitec (2000) and bas, barch (hons) degrees 2007, and a march (hons) degree 2011 from the university of auckland. sēmisi has held a variety of positions in the creative industry, which includes working as a landsurveying and civil engineering technician and now an architecture, art and design consultant. sēmisi as a master of architecture supervised and examine thesis at various universities. he works concurrently as a multi-media artist, across a number of arts, notably architecture, sculpture, painting, weaving and computer graphic designing. sēmisi won a coveted commonwealth connections international arts residencies award for 2009, which he had taken up at the cambridge university museum of archaeology and anthropology, cambridge, uk, 2010. he has co-authored a book and book chapters, and authored journal articles, as well as the principal illustrator of a new pacific book series on children’s stories. his research interests centres around time and space, culture and language, theory and practice and, art and literature amongst others. albert l. refiti is a researcher and lecturer in art and design ethnography and material culture with a particular focus on pacific spaces, art and architecture. he is currently a senior lecturer at auckland university of technology school of art and design, new zealand. albert has written for a number of journals and books on indigenous knowledge and identity formation in architecture and art of the asia pacific region. after i completed a phd on the anthropology of samoan architecture and cosmogony in 2014 he is now researching the links between traditional pacific thought and contemporary art and architecture in the pacific diaspora. nicholas skepper is a practicing architect, and co-director of zuzana&nicholas architects, a small, brisbane based practice engaged in commissioned work, competitions, research and exhibitions. the practice has been recognized and awarded for its competition work and residential architecture, including a short-listing in the international ideas competition for the royal adelaide hospital site in 2013. nicholas recently completed a phd by practice at rmit that examined concerns of making processes and materials in architectural discourse. nooroa tapuni is a multidisciplinary artist currently lecturing in aut spatial design department. tapuni’s current research area seeks to map indigenous epistemology with emergent technologies with a particular focus on interactive installation. mark taylor is professor of architecture at university of newcastle, australia. he currently holds an australian office of learning and teaching grant, and an australian research council discovery grant (2017-19). his writing on the interior has been widely published in journals and book chapters including co-editor intimus: interior design theory reader (2006), editor interior design and architecture (2013), co-editor designing the french interior (2015) and co-editor flow: interiors, landscapes and architecture in the era of liquid modernity, (2017). he has published in architectural design (ad), interiors: design, architecture, culture, and idea journal, and book chapters in diagrams of architecture (2010), domestic interiors (2012), and architectures of display (2017). keri wikitera is a lecturer/researcher working in the school of hospitality and tourism at aut university. her doctoral research focussed on how māori identities can be found and nurtured outside of what are considered traditional māori places. her māori tribal affiliation is tūhourangi of te arawa. this tribe is from the rotorua region and are recognised as one of the nation’s principle drivers of māori tourism. as such her personal and academic interests are specifically positioned within promoting and enhancing māori cultural identity, intercultural exchange, the tourism industry, indigenous history and knowledge systems. yannis zavoleas is a graduate of mit, ucla and ntua, and is currently based at the university of newcastle, australia, where he teaches theoretically informed digital design techniques and processes. his experimental design research has been widely published and exhibited. in 2014, he was awarded the pvc’s award for excellence in research creative works. dr zavoleas is author of machine and network as structural models in architecture (2013), editor surface: digital materiality and the new relation between depth and surface (2013), and has published papers in asa, eaae, caadria, and ecaade. recent book chapters are also included in architectures of display (2017) and perception in architecture: here and now (2015). notes brochure design: andrew lowe and susan hedges we gratefully acknowledge contributions from he nicai conference and creative event fund and the aut school of art and design research fund our thanks to all who have generously contributed advice and time: mark taylor, sue gallagher, andrew douglas, derek kawiti, nooroa tapuni, sam spurr, suzie attiwell, stan fung, adrian lowe, mark dorrian, gvoor hartoonian, christoph schnoor, daniel naegele, diedre brown, paul memmet, carl douglas, robin skinner, sarah treadwell, simon twose, julieanna preston, sandra loschke, charmaine i’liau, jake culbertson, farzaneh haghighi, peter wood, mark jackson, paul walker, jonathan lamb, keri wikitera and others. interstices 12 1 this aligns with peggy phelan’s contention that theatre is “a kind of mausoleum, a space designed to summon the phantasmatical charge of the immaterial” (1993: 2). the summoning of theatre’s phantasmagoria also exposes excess – expressed through violence, ecstasy and death – which resists rationalisation and containment. 2 through a contractual and communal suspension of disbelief, the staged performance witnessed by the gathered collective within the ‘house’ integrates the here and now with the there and then. 3 javier tellez’ intermission was commissioned as part of one day sculpture, a series of temporary, place-based public artworks involving new zealand-based and international artists – each of whom were invited to produce a new work that occurred during a discrete 24-hour period over the course of one year. led by the litmus research initiative (massey university, wellington) and claire doherty (uk-based curator, writer and director of situations at the university of the west of england, bristol), one day sculpture was produced in partnership with art institutions and curators across new zealand and realised in auckland, wellington, taranaki, christchurch and dunedin from june 2008 to june 2009. intermission: interstitial moments in creative and cruel practice john di stefano and dorita hannah sudden death on the pavement on september 10, 1985, four near-naked, powder-white bodies were in the process of being gradually lowered from seattle’s mutual life bank building on the corner of first avenue and yessler way. suspended by their ankles high above a gathered crowd, these butoh dancers from the company sankai juku were beginning “sholiba” – a slow 30-minute descent to the ground – when one of the ropes broke, sending the body of yoshiyuki takada hurtling 80 feet to the pavement, where he died instantly. dance theorist, michelle dent, who witnessed this event, has written that many in the crowd “gasped and clung to the possibility that this was not a human being lying at our feet, but a simulation, some sort of macabre and tricked up theatrical dummy” (dent 2004: 129). in this moment held between death and its mimesis, dent maintains, the audience on the street occupied a “liminal space”. in the ritual process, victor turner rendered liminal space as a caesura where time and place are suspended and spectators inhabit a gap “between two thresholds, between two worlds” (dent 2004: 178): between the everyday and the staged spectacle: between the threat of danger and its inevitable promise. sankai juku’s director ushio amagatsu referred to this interstitial condition when he wrote, three years before the seattle accident, “butoh belongs both to life and death. it is a realisation of the distance between a human being and the unknown.” (quoted in hoffman and holborn 1987: 121) the liminal experience of theatrical death on the city pavement is both psychic and spatial as it involves that literal gap between a risk of falling and its credible realisation. but what happens within the seemingly safe confines of the purpose-built theatre, where audience expectations are socially and spatially regulated, when theatre’s controlled container – the auditorium – is unsettled by the incursion of that which it “plays” out?1 this paper is organised around two events in which terror literally took to the theatre, shaking our notions of live performance as a carefully controlled event, orchestrated for the reception of a safely distanced and somewhat passive audience. in the architecture of the cinema/theatre’s auditorium – a container for the inherently uncontainable performing body (of assembled collective and performer) – we explore the eruptive and transformative moment that occurs when the staged event is destabilised by what lacan refers to as an “irruption of the real” – the unexpected act that momentarily ruptures the field of symbolically constructed representations with something that exceeds it (1990: 36). this uncanny presencing takes place when the constructed homogeneity of theatrically focused space and time within the theatre’s interior is interrupted and broken by an unscripted and unimaginable “exterior” element.2 we refer to this interruption as an “intermission” – defined not only as a pause between acts but also as a traumatic interval that involves a momentary spatiotemporal cessation. the paper’s title refers to intermission (2009):3 a work of venezuelan artist javier téllez in which a live lion encounters a live audience in a small-town cinema in rural new zealand. this piece opens up the interior space of the theatre – a temporal site traditionally negotiating between the staged fictive performance (there and then) and lived reality (here and now). the encounter dangerously blurs the line between the imagined and the real. disrupting the continuity of narrative and 85 4 in november 1947, a few months before he died, antonin artaud recorded pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu [to have done with the judgment of god]: a radio-play in which he resorted to alarming howls and glossolalia; a primordial disembodied scream in the placeless space of the airwaves. 5 this has been discussed in more detail by dorita hannah (2011). assumed spatial practices of both performers and spectators, it recalls antonin artaud’s demand for a theatre that enacts a more immediate, dangerous and difficult relationship between performance and public. this gains a particular resonance when discussed alongside the 2002 siege of moscow’s dubrovka theatre in which a staged performance was violently disrupted by chechen rebels who took performers and public hostage within the auditorium. here the interruptive moment causes a discontinuity between the fictive and the real within the more overtly socio-political context of a global media event. enter artaud (screaming) our theory of “intermission” is strongly influenced by the writings of surrealist artist and actor, antonin artaud, who called for a theatre of cruelty in order to establish a more direct relationship between spectator and spectacle, summed up by andré green as follows: he aims to provoke in the theatrical event, at any price, a frisson that shakes the spectator out of his passivity, out of the softening seduction that anesthetizes him by way of the pleasant, the picturesque and the decorative. the theater of diversion must give way to a corrosive theater that will gnaw away at the shell that is constricting it and give us back a forgotten aspect of the spectacle. this is the theater of cruelty. (1997: 145) artaud, who wished to undo the theatre of rehearsed representation, was determined to mine spatial depths in order to reveal and release an inherent violence as a restorative force. after exhaustive writing around the subject, his address finally took the form of a scream so extreme it filled what slavoj žižek names the “hole in reality which designates the ultimate limit where ‘the word fails’” (1992: 239).4 artaud’s theatre of cruelty, as both art form and built form, sought to activate spatial volatility in order to confront and combat cruelty. this paradox is reinforced in his manifestoes that reveal an architecture of cruelty as a site of recovery, constituted by a body in peril, space in fragments and form without a centre.5 the stage – the auditorium: we abolish the stage and the auditorium …. so direct communication will be re-established between spectator and the spectacle, between the actor and the spectator, from the fact that the spectator, placed in the middle of the action, is engulfed and physically affected by it. this envelopment results, in part, from the very configuration of the room itself […]. the spectacle will be extended, by elimination of the stage, to the entire hall of the theatre and will scale up the walls, will physically envelop the spectator and immerse him in a constant bath of light, images, movements, and noises. the public will be seated in the middle of the room, on mobile chairs which will allow them to follow the spectacle which will take place all around them. (1958: 96-7) helen finter points out that what some saw as “the unbearable exhibition of a mental patient” was, for artaud, “the unprecedented attempt at exploding the boundaries of a theatrical event” (2004: 48). his failed attempts at a “manifestation of the real” on stage, where he shocked audiences with improvised actions of extreme suffering, highlighted the impossibility of making himself heard in the theatre. in frustration he contended that only bombs could produce the desired effect (2004: 48). artaud’s scream, like a bomb, was an attempt to challenge the symbolic and tear the fabric of representation through a cruel intrusion on the stage, akin to what alenka zupancic describes as “a ‘materialization’ of something interstices 12 6 lacan referred to the real as an “impossible” condition exceeding language, which is associated with the preverbal and lost with the entry into language. artaud, who resisted representation in the theatre and rejected the logic of language, resorted to the scream as a means of fracturing reality and theatrical space (weiss 2004: 158). 7 derrida has also referred to spacing (1987: 333-4), as both noun (constructed space) and verb (its active creation), thereby articulating architecture as a performative reality. concealed or repressed … the intrusion of some ‘foreign reality’” (1992: 79). this unexpected act, summoning the real into reality, interrupts the stage fiction with an “alien reality” and disturbs the passivity and clarity of the spectator’s vision.6 artaud’s scream became a weapon against the aristotelian mimetic theatre, actively disrupting its focus on the fictive, repetitive and imitative. its full sonorous force within the traditionally mimetic space of the stage triggered his demand for a theatre that utilised reality rather than representation as the principal medium, allowing architecture to play a more active role in performance itself. however, for artaud the reality of the “real” included the real – both interiorised perception and its primordial external dimension – whereby spectacle had to act “not as reflection, but as force” (1976/1984: 4, 297). while his scream was not a literal explosion, it triggered a complex spatial disruption by bringing reality and the real into fictive staged constructions, performing a complex theatrical architecture of eruption through what derrida refers to as “spacing [espacement] … the archi-manifestation of force, or of life” (derrida 1997: 46).7 the restorative theatre that artaud proposed offered possibilities to reconcile life with a universe out of control, working with “the underlying menace of a chaos as decisive as it is dangerous” (1958: 51). contemporary theatre had become decadent because, captivated by illusion and representation, it had broken away “from effects that are immediate and painful – in a word from danger” (1958: 42). acknowledging and embracing the danger and difficulty inherent in live practice, he wished to create resistant work, transforming the passive spectator into an active creator. a theatrical environment that also physically resists and provokes, challenges the relationships and preconceptions of the body of its audience, which is exposed and acknowledged as a collective of individuals, physiologically affected by performance: disturbed, discomforted and displaced … dis-eased. imagine an audience purposefully corralled within the auditorium of a small town awaiting the thrill of danger that comes from extreme and unexpected action. javier téllez’ intermission on sunday 22 march, 2009, the quiet and remote town of opunake in rural new zealand that would normally be deserted, found itself teeming with people queuing up to enter everybody’s theatre, a quaint but rundown 1920s’ cinema still in operation today. the local community was mobilised by expectations of seeing something extraordinary that would certainly not repeat itself again in opunake – an event that promised to become the stuff of legend. upon entering the interior of the movie theatre, the audience notices that the entire ground floor is vacant except for a small cluster of theatre seats facing the movie screen, which is surrounded by a high, cage-like chain-link fence. the spectators are directed to their seats, both in the stalls and in the balcony area where they have an elevated view of the ground floor. after everyone has been seated, the audience is asked to “stand up for the king” as a vintage film clip of god save the king, played by the buckingham palace guard band, is projected on the movie screen. after the anthem has finished, and the audience seated, a moving spotlight is illuminated and a side door opens. oddly gentle utterances of a lion are heard outside – halfway between a roar and a purr – and then “the king” enters the theatre accompanied by his handler, dalu mncube. the place is silent and the spotlight follows the lion as he moves around the “cage” where the audience is seated. often, the animal comes right up to the fenced area 87 that begins to feel more and more precarious. seated audience members and lion stare at each other through the chain-link, only inches away. the screen lights up again and the well-known mgm film studio opening credits with roaring lion fills the theatre, interrupting the lion circling the audience. as the handler cajoles the lion around the cage again, he lingers for a while continuing to observe the audience with an intense curiosity. there is an undercurrent of suspense, and after a few more minutes, the lion leaves through the door from which he entered. because of the unpredictability of the lion’s behaviour, each performance, lasting 10 to 15 minutes, is different. during one sitting, the lion picks up the scent of a small, sleeping baby in the arms of his father seated at the edge of the chain-linked fence. the lion becomes utterly motionless and stares intensely at the child only a few feet away. the audience seated on the ground floor soon becomes aware that they are just as much part of the spectacle, “caged” into a space where the screened performance interfaces with real danger and potential death. it is in the tension between real lion, and preconceived image of “lion” – much of which we have acquired through film – that a powerful undertow of the work emerges. fluid moments like this – between distance and proximity, real and imagined, predator and prey – begin to unveil the parameters of téllez’ “spectatorial” event that chips away at the clear distinctions between performance and real life. téllez mines the schism between the familiarity of the lion’s iconographic representation, and the unfamiliarity (even uncanniness) of the real object in our midst. here the rupture caused by the lion’s absolute reality introduces the incomprehensible real into everybody’s theatre. prior expectations that the audience may have had of a lion performing something for them within the realm of entertainment are displaced and reconfigured in favour of something more tangible and unpredictable with elements of danger, and thus somehow more real. indeed, it is the potential for danger that makes tellez’ work more “real”. intermission is informed by tellez’ earlier work, el león de caracas (the lion of caracass, 2002), which records the parading of a taxidermic lion, procession-like, javier tellez, intermission (2009). photo: steve rowe. interstices 12 8 schechner writes: “dark play occurs when contradictory realities coexist, each seemingly capable of cancelling each other out […] its end is not integration but disruption, deceit, excess and gratification.” (1993: 36) through one of caracas’ shantytowns by militia-like policemen. winding its way through the barrio, the lion (also the heraldic symbol of caracas) is met with fascination and intense interest by the local children who revel in their ability (and permission) to touch and “encounter” the lion as it comes to rest at the bottom of the shantytown. hands are placed in the lion’s open mouth; fingers poke the glass eyes and run through the mane, etc. the (taxidermic) lion here becomes a mediating device by which the local population can interact in a non-violent way with the policemen who are the custodians of the lion, and who would normally have little opportunity to engage with these citizens other than within the confines of aggressive law enforcement. in this work, the lion is transformed into a symbol that embodies the future hope and possibilities for relations – no matter how fleeting they may be – between the disenfranchised and the instruments of power. tellez’ intermission (2009) not only disrupts the continuity of narrative and assumed spatial practices but provokes an experience that, like the social interactions facilitated in el leon de caracas, is akin to artaud’s radical strategies. the artist presents an opportunity for a localised community to experience something out of the ordinary, and thus opens up the possibility that something “unimaginable” might have the potential of becoming reality. like the momentary agency the children of the caracas shantytown found, when they faced their fear of a repressive police force via their encounter with the lion of caracas, in opunake too we might begin to understand the potential agency the encounter with a real lion may illicit. by bringing something “foreign” to opunake, and eliciting a quasi-traumatic event to provoke a precarious yet rich experience where danger, curiosity and awe converge, téllez opens up the possibility for its inhabitants to imagine the unimaginable, and in this understated yet radical gesture, offers an opening within the local imaginary of an otherwise isolated community. an unfortunate but telling postscript to téllez’ work emerged several weeks after intermission ended. on may 29, dalu mncube, the lion-handler in téllez’ artwork, was fatally mauled by a white tiger at the zion wildlife gardens where he worked. mncube’s death became headline news and certainly added to the impact and resonance of téllez’ work for the opunake residences due to its wide media coverage. as with the fallen butoh performer, the mauled lion-handler fulfills death’s promise inherent in the high-risk actions and “circus hyperbole” into which performance company and artist play. through what performance theorist richard schechner names “dark play” – inherently risky acts that confuse the theatrical frame – subversion, risk and fragility in performance are exposed and thereby realised (1993: 36).8 here we get a glimpse of how the uncanny presencing in lacan’s “irruption of the real” manifests at the porous borders of theatrical and mass media space and time. mncube’s expected-unexpected death – recalling the expected-unexpected death of the butoh performer – acts as a shock, creating a liminal space of disbelief made only that much more “real” by its mass media dissemination. artaud’s undoing of the conventions of representation is again revisited. for the opunake residents who witnessed the lion and his handler directly, mncube’s actual death causes something like a delayed reaction in which a repressed vulnerability on the part of the audience is displaced onto (an)other victim. the delayed manifestation of horror and death in the theatre – the intermission – emerges nevertheless, an example of artaud’s art merging with life. 89 9 for several long seconds the audience assumed the gunmen in ski masks were part of the show. a woman in the audience, who was interviewed on the television documentary (america undercover – terror in moscow, dir. dan reed, hbo, 2003), recalls thinking “what a clever theatrical concept”. 10 the rebels themselves had become captive in the space, unable to escape once they had entered (many as mem-bers of the audience) and taken it over. violence takes centre stage (in the auditorium) on october 23, 2002, in the auditorium of moscow’s dubrovka theatre, as on the corner of first avenue and yessler way in 1985, the audience could not believe their eyes. the theatre was seized by chechen rebels who infiltrated it during the musical performance of nord-ost, disrupting and transforming the show into a prolonged spectacle of terror that ended with russia’s spetsnaz soldiers storming the building, having filled it with a narcotic gas that killed over 170 people. in the midst of act two, 35 armed guerrillas, with 18 “black widows”, burst into the auditorium and onto the stage firing guns and declaring themselves chechens “at war”. at this moment the audience was unsure as to what was theatrical artifice and what was real, who was performer and who was terrorist, who was spectator and who was hostage.9 they became part of an event that called into question the parameters of the theatre’s auditorium, not dissimilar to téllez’ artistic strategy, only here, the shift had much more overtly political overtones. in moscow, the theatre shifted from site of entertainment to site of warfare. in this moment of radical interruption the very space that the spectators occupied was also called into doubt. no longer an arena for the fleeting acts of entertainment, the 1100-seat auditorium held captive over 800 spectators, performers, theatre workers and terrorists10 in a three-day standoff that became a significant historic event ending in tragedy. the interior space of the auditorium, perceived as a house for leisure and amusement or, in this case, a palace of culture, was here exposed as an essentially carceral space for all its occupants, emphasising its intrinsic disciplinary nature. the violent event revealed the inherent violence of an architecture ironically designed to control a captive audience. as a moment of crisis, the dubrovka theatre siege exposed the gap between architectural and theatrical realities, unsettling the highly regulated interior designed for the simultaneous and seamless apprehension of art form and built form. akin to foucault’s “events of thought”, such incidents summon something new through the unprepared – unforeseeable, singular, unique and transformative (1972: 215237). transcending the notion of a logical sequence of actions, they are isolated in what bernard tschumi identifies as “the moment of erosion, collapse, questioning, or problematization of the very assumption of the setting within which a drama may take place – occasioning the chance or possibility of another, different setting” (1998: 256). likewise, the spatial ideas in artaud’s theatre of cruelty challenge the conventions of the auditorium and suggest an alternative approach to the disciplinary nature of the archetypal modernist theatre that was besieged in october 2002. cruel machine as a cruel and impossible mechanism, artaud’s theatre was to be “rebuilt” upon “extreme action, pushed beyond all limits” (tschumi 1998: 85). its true and only value was to be found in an “excruciating, magical relation to reality and danger” (89). video stills from footage taken by the chechen rebels during the siege of the dubrovka theatre (moscow: october 2002). interstices 12 this theatre of cruelty is not one of bloodshed or martyrdom but a cruel apparatus built to combat cruelty, through what derrida refers to as “the irruptive force fissuring the space of the stage” (1997: 53). and within this opening, the real, as a traumatic surplus, makes its unbearable presence felt. the invasion of the dubrovka theatre, which storms the prescribed limits of a house of entertainment, presents a moment when theatrical and lived realities coincide to reveal the ultimate intrusion – that of death. the stage becomes what alenka zupančič calls “a perfect place to die”, by taking advantage of “the public setting par excellence, where everything that is said is intended for the audience” (1992: 81). the realm of this particular stage then expands through international media coverage, into a phantasmatic global platform upon which a spectacle of politics is played out. adam dolnik and richard pilch call the dubrovka theatre hostage crisis an “expressive act” which, like a theatrical production, was planned, rehearsed and enacted. but unlike the conventions of the conventional theatrical “show”, any pre-arranged scripting of action in this case was always subject to the unpredictabilities of re-action, despite any number of possible scenarios that may have been taken into account and practiced. certainly, the selection of this site by the rebels was highly strategic, not only for its centrality and proximity to the kremlin, but because it guaranteed a large collection of people within a space ideal for “barricade hostage-taking” (dolnik and pilch 2003: 577-611).11 as a well-planned and rehearsed event it revealed the overt theatricality inherent in such terrorist events, evident in the affective timing, combat uniforms and conspicuous incorporation of weaponry. this is reinforced by the powerful presence of the “black widows” as spectral forms of terror-in-mourning with their veils and bomb-belts. the rebels exploited the familiar interior of the proscenium theatre to dramatically present body and building as explosive and deadly weapons. they wired the clearly marked exits with charges, planted two conspicuous bombs on central seats within the auditorium, and placed the armed bodies of the “black widows” in tactical positions. observation occurred from points throughout the auditorium and was aided by the self-surveying quality of the space itself. the hermetically-sealed interior space of the auditorium, and its immediate environs, then became a container for the lethal narcotic gas that drugged and eventually killed many of its inhabitants, allowing the armed forces to raid the theatre and execute the rebels who detonated neither bodies nor building. the spetsnaz’ deadly raid inside the theatre concluded the siege. it was enacted because the authorities were faced with enemies who were not only prepared to sacrifice themselves and others for their cause but “staged their operation with the ultimate goal of their own dramatic demise” (dolnik and pilch 2003: 604). zupančič explains how suicide, as a “borderline act”, is “something completely different from ‘doing’ or ‘action’. it incorporates some radical no! to the universe which surrounds it and involves an irreducible moment of risk” (1992: 93). she points out that lacan’s model of the acte came from the act of suicide: every real act is a “suicide of the subject” allowing the subject to be born again as a new subject. this notion is aligned with peggy phelan’s ontological unrepeatability of performance (1993: 146) and artaud’s desire to erase repetition, which “separates force, presence, and life from themselves” (derrida 1997: 54).12 as a political act, the dubrovka theatre siege was cruel in the most obvious sense of the word, rendering the dis-eased spectators no longer passive witnesses, but, as bodies-in-peril, unwilling participants implicated in the force of the event. dislocated, they are made brutally aware of their disciplinary location. 11 dolnik and pilch argue that, in staging a successful nationalistic musical, the theatre was also a place that guaranteed middle to upper class hostages, reinforcing the perception that any citizen can become a target (2003: 604). 12 derrida writes that this is “the profound essence of artaud’s project” (1997: 54). 91 both the dubrovka theatre siege and javier téllez’ intermission are contemporary examples that highlight the politics of theatre as space and action. as potentially or actually irruptive and violent stagings, both events illustrate how a truly radical political gesture, defined in its broadest terms, might find its place in the interior architectural space of the theatre today. if we are to understand this new paradigm as a break, interruption or suspension, then we must ask ourselves what it disrupts. this new type of theatre/space sets itself up as a counter-point to the homogenising forces of today’s mass media, as a place of potential agency. creating unforseen breaks in the repetition of performance and bringing something “foreign” into representational space, our macabre fascination with violent and disastrous events is revealed, exposing what slavoj žižek names “a thing in a lacanian sense: the material leftover, the materialization of the terrifying, impossible jouissance, a kind of petrified forest of enjoyment” (1989: 27). whether or not we are prepared to admit that the pleasure and anxiety of irruptive acts link terror with desire, such events perform a strategic rupture – an intermission – which reconfigures the audience’s expectations, opening up the possibility for them to imagine the “unreal” as very real indeed. references artaud, a. (1958). theatre and its double. new york: grove press. artaud, a. (1976/1984) oeuvres completes, vol 1 (part 1): 1946. paris: gallimard. dent, m. (2004). the fallen body: butoh and the crisis of meaning in sankai juku’s ‘jomon sho.’ falling: women & performance, 14(1/27), 173-200. derrida, j. (1987). point de folie: maintenant l’architecture. in n. leach (ed.) rethinking architecture: a reader in cultural theory, 324–36. (originally published in bernard tschumi (1986) la case vide: la villette. london: architectural association). derrida, j. (1997). the theatre of cruelty and the closure of representation. in t. murray (ed.), mimesis, masochism and mime: the politics of theatricality in contemporary french thought (40-62). ann arbor (mi.): university of michigan press. dolnik, a. and pilch, r. (2003). the moscow theater hostage crisis: the perpetrators, their tactics and the russian response. international negotiation, 8(3), 577-611. finter, h. (2004). antonin artaud and the impossible theatre: the legacy of the theatre of cruelty. in e. scheer (ed.), antonin artaud: a critical reader (47-58). london: routledge press. foucault, m. (1972). archaeology of knowledge and discourse on language (a.m. sheridan, trans.). new york: pantheon books. green, a. (1997). the psycho-analytic reading of tragedy. in t. murray (ed.), mimesis, masochism and mime: the politics of theatricality in contemporary french thought (136-162). ann arbor (mi.): university of michigan press. hannah, d. (2011) towards an architecture of cruelty: mining the spatial of antonin artaud. in b. kenzari (ed.), architecture and violence (93-122). barcelona: actar press. hoffman, e. and holborn, m. (1987). butoh: dance of the dark soul. new york: aperture. lacan, j. (1990). television. (d. hollier, r. krauss, and a. michelson, trans.). new york: w.w. norton and co. phelan, p. (1993). unmarked: the politics of performance. london: routledge. reed, d. (2003), terror in moscow. hbo documentary film, “america undercover”. schechner, r. (1993). the future of ritual: writings on culture and performance. london: routledge press. tschumi, b. (1998). architecture and disjunction. cambridge (mass.): mit press. weiss, a.s. (2004). k. in e. scheer (ed.), antonin artaud: a critical reader (151-158). london: routledge press. žižek, s. (1989). the sublime object of ideology. new york: verso. žižek, s. (1992). everything you always wanted to know about lacan (but were afraid to ask hitchcock). london: verso. zupančič, a. (1992). a perfect place to die: theatre in hitchcock’s films. in s. žižek (ed.) everything you always wanted to know about lacan (but were afraid to ask hitchcock) (73-105). london: verso. r01_refiti_int10_final.indd interstices 10 r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 8r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 8 11/3/09 1:47 am11/3/09 1:47 am 9 whiteness, smoothing and the origin of samoan architecture1 albert l. refi ti introduction in samoa, architecture arises from the directive to house the ancestors,2 who are presumed to inhabit everything, everywhere, simultaneously. architecture’s ritual performance plays important roles in demarcating and ordering space relative to the ancestors’ occupation in time and, at the same time, en-abling a technical apparatus that makes possible a becoming-ancestor. in this context, how does samoan architecture relate to the tenet that architecture continually returns “as guarantee of renewal: not only as a token from the past but as a guide to the future” (rykwert, 1981: 191)? rykwert’s text interprets humanity’s ability to “build or adopt enclosures [and] … take possession of enclosed volumes” as a will to ‘return’ to origins. the latter can be witnessed in the psychological development of children: when at play, they turn tables and chairs into “a ‘cozy place’ for making a ‘home’,” a manifestation, perhaps, of a desire for the mother’s womb (191-2). rykwert believes that this desire to ‘return’ is directed by the “memory of something which cannot but be lost” (14), a notion and not a thing, which is why he refers to this place as paradise: “a promise as well as a memory” (192). the proposition, then, is that the primitive hut is continually made and remade, in our desire to rediscover our original state, and brings a sense of renewal. the promise of paradise reaffi rms our existence in the present. one could say that ‘forgetfulness’ and ‘return’ combine in western thought to imprison the ancients forever in paradise, suspending them in mist: mythos.3 to analyse samoan architecture through rykwert’s return to (lost) origins is problematic. any concept of time that poses the past, present and future as separate moments is incompatible with samoan thinking. the ancestors do not recede into a lost time: in fact, as will be shown below, they are continually available. the question of origins in samoan thought and, by extension, architecture, is always a question of becoming, a question of the ancestors’ weaving and making of time. this paper sets out to explore how samoan architecture and craft operate by fashioning material things: they are stripped (olo) and organised (teu) towards a ‘whiteness’ (sina or malama), because they are to be placed before the ancestors, who are continually present via the circle of fa’amatai.4 the paper explores samoan thought5 regarding the genealogy of beings existing within the matai system, to develop new insights into the discourse on ‘origins’ and architecture’s role in samoa and the pacifi c generally. 1. i would like to acknowledge tina engels-schwarzpaul whose expert editing helped shape this paper into a manageable article. the paper is dedicated to my late father, palaiali’i fotuoa’ana falani refi ti. 2. see buck (1930: 52), tofaeono (2000: 32-33), allen (1993: 49) and tcherkézoff (2005: 256-257). i refer specifi cally here to the faletele (oval council house) and the faleafolau (long council house) because they are made to the confi gurations of the fono council of the fa’amatai and are generally accepted as the fi rst order of samoan architecture. barnes and green (2008) discuss the difference between these two houses; buck, krämer (1994) and allen cover their construction in detail. 3. it is interesting to note the structure of on adams house in paradise, which begins with le corbusier and then recedes to the 18th century, the greeks and romans, until we arrive at the hebrew religious rituals. these are compared with the waninga totems of the aranda aborigines of central australia. it uses historical moments in the primitive hut’s many returns, like notches in the string of time to trace a lost beginning. 4. for samoan terms, refer to glossary. 5. in this context, samoan thought includes the work of aiono fanaafi , tui atua, aumua simanu, albert wendt and others. it has links with pacifi c thought in general through the work of futa helu, epeli hau’ofa, kona thaman-helu and ‘okusi mahina in tongan; mason durie, witi ihimaera and ngahuia te awekotuku in māori; john pule in niuean; vilisoni hereniko in rotuman. r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 9r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 9 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am interstices 10 panoptic habitus6 in samoan thought, architecture is related to performing a material manifestation of ‘space-towards-the-ancestors’,7 marked by an opening, the vā. the vā is a space-event enacted by the fa’amatai, or gathering of family chiefs in the circle of the fono (council; tofaeono 2000: 32).8 this vā, or co-openness,9 located at the centre of every gathering, every sociality, structures samoan identity. mamalu,10 a concept related to this co-openness, is a singular panoptic gaze at the core of samoan values. it inhabits the centre of social space and exposes and discloses the being of tagata (human); being human in samoa implies an exposure of tagata to this co-openness of the vā. as will become evident, everything must go towards this centre, and be lit up, to have any meaningful existence in the social world of samoans.11 according to serge tcherkézoff, the vā’s co-openness is formed by the council of matai (chiefs), the “circle of fa’amatai” (the circle of becoming-matai). an eloquent visual example is the way in which people throughout western polynesia arrange themselves when they come together in a socially recognised group: they form into circles. samoans speak of a ‘sacred circle’ (alofi sā). this fi gure is well suited to showing a single belonging: in which each person sits around the circumference and at the same distance from the centre, which is the place of the divine. yet the circle is oriented, simultaneously and contrary to the geometry we are familiar with, by axes of value which divide the circumference into clearly differentiated arcs. within these arcs, each point is different from the next. in samoa, these points are represented by the posts holding up the conical roof of the ceremonial house, itself comprised of a circular base, a circle of posts and a roof, without internal partitions (2005: 246). this “circle of fa’amatai” is a transposition of the fi rst fono held between the god tagaloa-a-lagi and the architects of the fi rst house (krämer 1994: 259; buck 1930: 85). the prefi x fa’a, like the māori whaka (biggs 1969: 102-103), denotes an action or a manner of becoming, so that fa’amatai means “becoming-matai”. mata (literally: eye, point, spot, or centrality) is related to the word amata, which is "to-begin" or "to-become". to orient oneself towards the ancestor is to become a–mata, or to be at the centrality of becoming-ancestor. thus, in polynesia, the concept of space-time suggests that we move towards a future by orienting our being to a collective opening that continues with us. some call it the past, but i suggest that this past is not static but an ever moving ancestor-duration, which is always already woven within us and endures within our becoming. this constellation is commonly explained by the metaphor of walking with our backs to the future as we face the past (whiteford/barns 1999: 214; salmond 1978: 10; metge 1967: 70). this conception places time in the service of the ancestors. together, we and they mark and make time, making it evolve as duration. it opens and "view of the inside of the meeting house of apia" interieur de la maison publique d'apia, ile opoulou. drawing by goupil; lithograph by p. blanchard, in j.s.c. dumont d'urville, voyage au pole sud et dans l'oceanie, paris, gide, 1848, plate 84 6. marcel mauss uses the term habitus (mauss 2006: 80) to refer to techniques of the body. the point here is that the body in samoan thought is seized and taken up by something other than itself. 7. architecture belongs to a technical system performed and perpetuated by the tufuga-fau-fale builders guild (krämer 1994: 265; buck 1930: 85-87). bernard stiegler developed the concept of an ‘epiphylogenetic system’ to describe the emergence of technics (tools and systems of know-how) as an external artifi cial mnemonic apparatus, through which people and tools share a memory. architecture performs exactly this role in inscribing, recording, marking and fabricating space: a technical system which performs (stiegler 1998: 17). this can be seen in the way tools were treated as being of sacred origins by the tufuga and tohunga cults of polynesia. the cults were secretive about their trade, especially in relation to the tools; in one story, the tufuga fl ed when discovered in the act of gnawing timber with their teeth (stuebel, 1976: 14-17). 8. for writings on the vā see wendt (1996), mageo (1998: 81) and tuagalu (2008: 107-126). 9. sheehan reads heidegger’s fi nitude as ‘co openness’, or ‘co-extensive with fi nitude,’ as the “fi rst gift which makes it possible and necessary to take-as and to understand ‘is’ … the basis for all forms of interpersonal togetherness, the eyeball-to-eyeball of political struggle, the face-to-face of moral obligation, … what lets us live a co-history, …living and working together and making communal decisions” (sheehan 2001: 200). 10. mamalu goes hand in hand with pa’ia and is often cited as having dignity and sanctity (tcherkézoff, 2005: 254). 11. see albert wendt’s important discussion of the vā as a concept encompassing samoan culture especially in relation to tattooing (wendt 1996). r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 10r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 10 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am 11 contracts relative to our engagement: this is the meaning of the polynesian word for time – tau. outside our involvement, time becomes ta, unmediated action. therefore, a collection of individuals gathered in space is a neighbourhood of ancestor-becoming, a duration – woven time – within the co-openness of the vā. the samoan choreographer lemi ponifasio12 suggests that rituals readily activate this vā opening and, if this is the case in performance, then it should be added that architecture is, as its setting, the instrument of this opening. architecture, in samoa,13 solicits the art of building from the tufuga cult, to allow the dwelling to appear – to prise open the vā, and delay/defer the ancestorbecoming in the present,14 thereby forcing the ever-moving present into the coopenness of the vā. the trick that samoan architecture must perform here is not the necessary protection of the ancestors, as some might imagine, not the making of temples to house and delay the ancestors – but the opposite. architecture as instrumental agency must expose the ever-moving present to the becoming-ancestor to submit the “now” to the panoptic gaze of the ancestor, to light it up and let it be enveloped by mana. building is an apparatus for the becoming-ancestor. tufuga and technical culture according to rykwert, the idea of reconstructing the original form of building was deeply connected with the religious life of people. the hut, as the place where the divinity was worshipped, elaborated an “identifi cation with a body, … human or some perfect supernatural one” (1995: 83), which reveals “a volume which man could interpret in terms of his body, … an exposition of the paradisal plan, … [which] established him at the centre of it” (rykwert, 1981: 190). in western thinking, the human body has served as the manifestation of a divine plan and canonic proportional system of construction since antiquity.15 building was supposed to reveal man as he is: the abstracted ratio that gives rise to the edifi ce itself. the human body also plays a part in samoan architecture but, rather than a universal ratio embodied within the building itself, the body becomes immersed/ seized within the ‘co-openness’ emanating from the centre of the architecture. the body must not fi rst be fused to the building for architecture to exist, because space already determines a particular ratio: demarcating a circular or oval form, which it must provide for the circle of the fa’amatai. an important point in samoan thought is that the body is a divine agent of one’s ancestors. architecture is something required, but is other to the co-openness – the building is not the agent of the ancestor: the body is. architecture is a technological system that materialises the tau (ordering) of space.16 tau means counting, recitation, order12. “for example, samoan dance is not so much just the correct execution of a movement, but more importantly your appropriate state of awareness to the multiple relationships. awareness is valued over the artistic. knowing dance is knowing how to sit, walk and talk – to understand your relationship with humans and all things.” (ponifasio 2008) 13. i refer specifi cally here to the faletele (oval council house) and the faleafolau (long council house) because they are made to the confi gurations of the fono council of the fa’amatai and are generally accepted as the fi rst order of samoan architecture. barnes and green (2008) discuss the difference between these two houses; buck, krämer (1994) and allen cover their construction in detail. 14. delay and/or defer by way of an epiphylogenetic system, an organized inorganic system that concerns tools and the technology of construction which activate a memory exchange between the human body and technology (stiegler: 140). as well as being guardian of the knowledge of building, the tufuga cult was also concerned with the technological culture of art-making in samoa, tattooing, boatbuilding and navigation (krämer 1995: 239; handy: 15, 22). 15. building was supposed to reveal man as he is: the abstracted ratio that gives rise to the edifi ce itself. rykwert explores this later in the dancing column: on order in architecture (1995). 16. koskinen explores tau as a protopolynesian word related to recitation and song that bring things to life (koskinen 1967: 34-40). tau is to count, to recite, to order, to make time. all of this is also the task of the tufuga-fau-fale. the tufuga-fau-fale has to expose the materiality of the world – its organised matter – to the overwhelming glare at the centre. top: village malae. photo: thomas andrews r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 11r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 11 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am interstices 10 ing, making time, and this was the task of the tufuga-fau-fale. the tufuga-fau-fale has to expose the materiality of the world – its organized matter – to the overwhelming glare at the centre of all spectacles. architecture as a technical system submits nature and its materiality to the co-openness of the vā.17 traditionally, to achieve this, the tufuga had to negotiate, evaluate, manipulate and fabricate.18 negotiate: this began with a fale agai (contract) between the tufuga and taufale (the chief commissioning the house) guaranteeing payment and delivery of goods between the builders and family. the contract bonded the tufuga cult to the family during the construction period. fale is house; agai means “a-facing-with-one-another”. together, these words denote a bond consummated during the kava drinking ceremony between the parties, after which the guild members became extended family members and were housed and fed by the family. this ceremony usually took place at the fono discussed above. evaluate: the selection of materials and timber for the house was made only after a formal contract or fale agai had been agreed. the tufuga chose the appropriate timber for the house, but the felling was left to the family. the builders took over responsibility when all materials arrived on the site (allen 1993: 109-110; handy 1924: 15). manipulate: all building components were shaped and dressed with notches and grooves for joints before they were assembled. this was predominantly the tufuga’s and apprentice’s task, as it concerned shaping and cutting with tools – and tools were part of their responsibility. a well-dressed house was synonymous with the work of the tufuga cult. the manufi li (scaffolding) was erected at the centre, around the central posts, and aided in the shaping of the house before all the components were fi xed and lashed in place. fabricate: locating the manufi li scaffolding at the centre of the site allowed the builders to shape the building from the inside out. the scaffolding acted as a prop and ladder structure while the house was being shaped, joined and lashed together. the last parts to be made were the outer posts, the thatched roof and the paepae (house platform). since no tools were required for these fi nal tasks (except the lashing of the thatch to the roof and the fi nal trimming of the excess thatch), they were carried out by the family.19 it is clear from evidence in buck and krämer that the cult’s contribution to building was mainly in tasks that required tools: the shaping of architectural components and determination of the overall form of the building. tufuga dealt with those parts of the house which were generally referred to as being dressed or teu. according to the samoan creation story solo o le vā, the tufuga were descendents of the progenitor tagaloa-a-lagi and responsible for house and boat building (fraser, 1897; krämer 1994: 539-544). the story recounts how the cult members were present at the very fi rst fono convened by tagaloa-a-lagi, the supreme god of the samoans, in the ninth heaven. some 1000 tufuga attended and were served the fi rst cup of kava (fraser 1897: 28; krämer 1995: 543). the tufuga cult was thus accorded the status of agai o tupu (companion of gods and kings). agai comes from the word feagaiga (facing together); it was this fi rst open faciality that oriented the cult to the progenitor.20 not only were the tufuga in charge of making form appear, these skilled craftsmen, whom we might recognise in a rykwertian sense as the clan of adam,21 were expected to keep the gods and kings company. the tufuga cult became known as sa tagaloa (clan of tagaloa). the cult was sometimes granted permission to descend to the islands of upolu, savai’i and manu’a to construct a number of houses and boats,22 until a few of 17. it is important to note allen’s analysis of samoan social space, which suggests a formal order that divides the materiality of the world into smaller compartments, “like a pomegranate, a macrocosm which contains within it many macrocosms, the seed that possesses the potential for production” (allen: 3). she suggests that is how architecture comes about in the work of the tufuga: “their work, which results in the divided space we call architecture” (157). 18. these were the four parts of their role discussed in buck (87-96) and krämer (1995: 266-269).19. according to legends the tufuga cult was the fi rst to be in possession of tools (krämer 1994: 543). 20. i use deleuze and guattari’s terminology here because of the equation that the body (tino) “is” the face of the ancestor (foliga) in samoan thought (tui atua 2009: 71-72): a face does not belong to a single individual but as a membrane/ tissue connected to the ancestor and distributed through the familial tissue, much like the complex machine of faciality as a signifying system in deleuze and guattari. see the diagram of maritime subjective authoritarian face (after tristan and isolde) where the face can become a reference point for the system of relations. “a face refers back to a landscape, … recall[s] a painting, … a piece of music” becoming a “faciality line, a consciousness line, a passion line etc.” (deleuze & guattari, 185) 21. rykwert’s analogy of adam's house in paradise suggested that since adam was exiled from paradise he had to build the fi rst dwelling to protect himself and his children from the elements (118). 22. tagaloa sent down the tufuga cult to build a boat for his daughter mataiteite (steubel: 14-17). r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 12r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 12 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am 13 them decided to build a house for the tui manu’a – king of manu’a. this angered the god, who destroyed the house and banished the cult from heaven (fraser 1897: 28). the forbidden house was a faletele (council house) called faleula (red or crimson house; krämer 1994: 528; buck, 1930: 84), which was thatched with red feathers. some believed that the posts were also stained with sacrifi cial blood. by all accounts, this fi rst house lacked all the rustic naturalism of the primitive hut. it was not a supposed cradle of mankind, but a well-dressed, bright red house that gathered together the fi rst technicians of the samoan world. exiled from heaven and without their traditional home, the cult roamed samoa, offering their skills to the highest bidder.23 its members were – and still are – known for their wanton reputation of moving from patron to patron to be housed, fed and entertained by anyone who wished to acquire their services. being descendants of a god and companions of kings and princes, these men were afforded respect but were also always seen in a special category of the fallen. smoothing and clearing: the light of the world24 members of the salemalama tuf uga clan were present at the fono meeting in the ninth heaven (buck 1930: 84; handy 1924: 15).25 in the a’ana district, the title salemalama was thought to have originated from the fi rst house built on upolu, in the village of faleolo, for the tui a’ana (king of a’ana). members of the sa’anapu tufuga clan believe the house was built with driftwood found by the taupou maiden lemalama on the seashore, who suggested that they be used by the craftsmen to construct a house for her father tui a’ana lilomaiava. the builders’ guild was given the title salemalama (family of lemalama) thereafter.26 this fi rst house was named faleolo,27 because the sea had smoothed the timber (olo means the act of smoothing, or the rasping of something, for instance when timber is being dressed; pratt 1883: 94). the savai’ian version of the story proposes that the tui a’ana sent for the tufuga brothers segi, leifi , moe and solofuti from fitiuta to build his house.28 this became the fi rst house to be dressed, olo. because the men wore no clothes during construction, they were forbidden to erect the house during the day. therefore, the house was built at night and at daybreak the house would miraculously appear in various stages of completion (refi ti 2007: 36-37). the tui a’ana bestowed the title salemalama upon the brothers at the fi nal feast. it is important to note that the tufuga are experts in manipulating raw materials and bringing the materials to an openness and display, clearing away and presenting the materiality of the world towards the openness of mamalu inside the matai circle.29 the tufuga expose things to this co-openness to make them malama – whitened or illuminated. therefore, salemalama, the title of the fi rst architects, can be read as “the one who exposes the world to the light of the ancestors”. if we look at the name salemalama itself, we fi nd another meaning. sa (sacred or forbidden in terms of tapu), and malama (light) suggests the meaning “forbidden to see the light of day”.30 this reinforces the notion that things oriented towards the ancestors are to be exposed/disclosed and made light by being stripped and rubbed, as in the faleolo house, stained and thatched with redness, as in faleula, the crimson house, the fi rst house that was brightly lit in heaven like a beacon. there is an interesting relationship here with tools and tooling that the tufuga activate by way of to’i (felling the timber with axes) and the subsequent fash23. tufuga were involved in houses made especially for overseas consumption. (see engels-schwarzpaul and wikitera in this issue, p.42) 24. the ”light of the world”, a basic metaphor for divinity in egyptian and early christian thought, was later associated with the european enlightenment and employed by philosophers such as husserl, heidegger and henry. being exposed to light, or coming into light, however, is a fi gure of thought used much more widely, as, for instance, in samoa. 25. there are 10 heavens in samoan cosmology, tagaloa-a-lagi the progenitor resided on the tenth, the tufuga cult built the fi rst house faleula on the ninth, but they lived in the eighth heaven (turner: 3-9; fraser: 25-27). 26. this is the belief of the tufuga clan in sa’anapu, upolu, relayed to me by matua faiva faivaaiga kilifi iuma in an interview in february 1998. 27. an old village, faleolo, inland from the samoan international airport in the a’ana district, was the most probable location of this house. 28. fitiuta is located on manu’a island where the tui manu’a – king of manu’a – resided. there is a view that fitiuta in ancient times was actually fiji. 29. the malumalu, a smaller building type which did not differ greatly from the faletele, was set aside in every village (later replaced by the christian chapel) for housing village gods in the form of objects, e.g. stones, baskets, sennit strings. worship was usually carried out in the family faletele, though, where the matai chief would act as a priest. (turner 1984: 240; freeman 2004: 133) 30. this was the belief of matua faiva segi tutufaiga of savai’i, who also suggested that the house was located in faleolo. (refi ti, 2007: 36) r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 13r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 13 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am interstices 10 ioning and dressing with scrapers and adzes made from shells and rocks. the building is broken up into smaller components, so that every detail is worked and smoothed by the tools. with joints and grooves completed, the fi nal work is a gathering of all components to be lashed in place using sennit ropes. sennit is made of coconut and other natural fi bres that have been bleached in the sun and then woven into rope. one might be curious why so much attention is paid to stripping the timber of its bark and making it smooth, when the more natural state of the timber would give the house a rusticated appearance blending in with the green and lush surroundings. i want to suggest here that the function of smoothing is related to the samoan notion of teu. teu has a number of interrelated meanings: “to adorn”, “to embellish”, “to save or to store up” (pratt 1893: 307), and “to cultivate” when used in the plural teuteu. when applied to craft, teu has to do with smoothing, bleaching and tidiness. teu is commonly associated with fi ne mats. the fi nest of fi ne mats, ‘ie sina or ‘ie toga (krämer 1995: 342; tcherkézoff 2004: 167), are made from pandanus leaves soaked in sea water and then left to bleach in the sun; they become lighter in colour, or sina (white). a mat made from these materials by an expert weaver is considered the most precious of treasures and becomes the most revered form of teu that exists. teu happens in the context of relationships invoked by the motto “ia teu le vā” (wendt 1996), which means adorn and embellish the vā and the networks of coexistence that are housed by architecture.31 at the centre of the architecture is a clearing, which allows a co-openness of the vā towards the ancestors. within the circle of the fa’amatai is the mamalu (dignity) and pa’ia (sanctity) of the community. from here emanates the highest form of mana. to teu is to make things tatau (proper), to make them appear in a display before and ‘in-front’ of this openness of the community. in the context of “teu le vā”, all things placed before the community demarcate and fi x space towards the ancestors in an orientation, a faciality. what happens immediately behind or away from this openness is “tausi le vā (to support or look after the vā), which occurs outside the great openness.32 the faletele was considered to be the most important stage for teu (embellishing) the vā of the circle of fa’amatai. in its construction, bleaching was an important technique. the making of space, by extension, was oriented towards the production of things that were white, smooth and open, because these were to be placed before the circle of the fa’amatai, towards the ancestors. teu was also an obligation to perform the rite of clearing, making order from the materiality of the world; to perform is to teu in readiness, and in readiness something is stored up, which is the other meaning of teu: storing and saving. architecture has to perform, or teu, the co-openness of the vā. captive whiteness the architecture of the primitive hut is premised on man’s exile from paradise: he is thrown into the “light of the world”,33 and this gives rise to a future for architecture, which revolves, represents, repeats and progresses without being able to still a lingering nostalgia. 34 in western metaphysics, the self appears in the world as a being “showing itself … becoming visible in the light … the there of an outside … in the world” (henry 2008: 84). the exterior nature of the “light of the world”, which, as a source of understanding, distinguishes objective thought, 31. see okusi mahina’s work on the vā and its relationship to tā in tongan and pacifi c art-making which shares a close relationship with the samoan notion of vā. (mahina 2002) 32. the work of ka’ili and others have made what i believe to be a mistaken assumption that tauhi le vā equates to teu le vā (ka’ili 2005 & 2008). teu in samoa happens before and in front of the circle of fa’amatai; tauhi (tongan), which is tausi in samoan, happens outside this circle, therefore it cannot be teu; the wife of a matai chief is known as a tausi and she sits outside and away from the circle of fa’amatai. 33. see note 24. 34. rykwert makes an analogy to this in le corbusier’s primitivism. (1981: 15-16) r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 14r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 14 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am 15 is reversed in samoan thinking. 35 light, as knowledge and understanding in samoan thought, is not something that comes to us from outside. rather, it appears as a divine (pa’ia) force emanating from an interiority or, more precisely, from a centrality, as discussed above, a co-openness at the heart of the circle of fa’amatai. to its glare, objects and the materiality of the world are exposed. architecture, with its task of teu, fashions things towards this centrality, which radiates beauty and order. following marshal sahlins, tcherkézoff contends that polynesian notions of beauty emanate from those of chiefl y rank: “such beauty is properly called divine, for … it causes things to be seen” (2004: 122). what is a source of light if this source fi nds nothing to illuminate? what is a god without a world that he has created? ... a light is not seen unless it rests on some being or on some object. in the same way a polynesian chief without dependants has no existence. but the relationship is directional: one of the participants is the source of light and the other becomes visible because he is illuminated. the dependant fi nds a way to participate in life (the world of ‘light’ ao) solely through his relationship to the chief: he is then illuminated ... the same goes for the chief in relation to the gods. (124) tcherkézoff describes the fi gures in the circle of fa’amatai as a “source of light”, because they are incarnations of gods, heirs to the legacy and names of the ancestors (124). objects exposed or touched by this very sacred circle become measina, luminous-white things. measina, like the māori tāonga, are highly treasured persons or things. the three most important ones in samoan thought are, fi rst, fi ne mats, which are named in relation to a prominent woman of a matai family. secondly, faleula, discussed above as the fi rst council house built in heaven and thought to be the most important measina in origin stories.36 measina is now used to describe traditional knowledge and art more generally, but this was not the case before european contact. then, the concept was used only to denote things related to women of important stature: they were thought to be related to the origin of light and whiteness.37 therefore, thirdly, the taupou (ceremonial virgin) is presumed to possess all virtues of light and whiteness. because of her value, she was confi ned to the interior of the faletele, attended to by young female assistants and chaperoned by the elderly women of the village. she was the main tenant of the faletele: her whiteness was to be preserved under its arched roof. krämer noted that: [the taupou] normally does not have to subject herself to coarser work ... that is why … sina (white) is the name of such elevated girls. that also accounts for the slender well cared for hands and the soft velvety skin, constantly kept clean and fragrant by the use of fi ne perfumed oil prepared especially for her. (1994: 34) the taupou, as measina, is to be cared for and cultivated as teu (adornment and saving); she is to be dressed and chaperoned for the cultivation of social manners. confi ned to the interior of the house, she becomes a captive of the circle of matai, and paradoxically this will, in turn, make her increase the fi nesse and lightness that are required of measina. measina, as the bleaching and whitening of the materiality of the world, turns things and people into treasures, to be presented and touched and exchanged by the ancestor-beings that sit at the circle of fa’amatai. 35. see michel henry’s radical revision of metaphysics in his material phenomenology, which breaks away from representation (exteriority) as a mode of articulating the self; he advocates a radical immanence (interiority) based on affectivity – a self for itself. (henry 2008: 130) 36. faleula is now used to describe the gathering of important matai of all of samoa. 37. this was the meaning of the name sina (hina, tina, hine), which is the most common name for the heroine of polynesian mythology. in these stories sina is usually described as a young virgin highly prized for her virtues and courted by gods, men and creatures – the most famous in polynesia being the story of sina and the tuna. r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 15r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 15 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am interstices 10 at the house’s mata, or central interior focus, people and things are exposed to the co-openness of the circle of fa’amatai. the most central spot, the inner-most part of the house is, paradoxically, also the most public of places.38 interiority becomes externalised, everything is drawn towards, and exposed in, this grand internal openness. however, this interiority is externalised again: space does not recede into an interior but is thrown back onto the surface of the world. so is time: the past, the time of the ancestors, is not located in the vanishing horizon of a time that was, but takes place in the present. it endures in what albert wendt describes as the ”ever-moving-present” (1996).39 this is the mode in which space and time function in samoan architecture. the house cannot be fi xed in time. the matai or chief is the spatial and temporal manifestation that enables ancestors to be here in the present. the faletele and the mythical faleula are one-andthe-same house, an architectural construct that teu the present towards the ancestor. teu, in this house, occurs fi rst by providing, storing and saving the time of the ancestors in its interior, making the circle of fa’amatai possible under its roof. secondly, it displaces and discloses this time in the present. the world is adorned, from the centre to the periphery, by lighting it up and obliterating the shadowy materiality of the world. architecture: central openness so, what role does architecture perform? in samoan thought, architecture is fi rst and foremost an apparatus, which sets out and sets in motion the becomingancestor. as a technical apparatus, it performs by locating points, or situatedness, in the ever-moving present and articulating time through space. the simultaneity and ubiquity of the ancestors is momentarily focused and housed. points (mata) alone fashion the plan of the house: they are the posts that denote ancestors and become the generator of space. the materiality of the world is corralled around these points, shaping a hut, a building. the building is measina, of whiteness. it is also teu, of smoothness. by being smoothed and whitened, the materiality of the world comes to face the ancestors. the architectural apparatus performs by teu.40 a collection of individuals gathered in space is a neighbourhood of ancestorbecoming, which each must always orient to the other in an open faciality, within the co-openness of the vā. houses orient us. in samoa, faleula, faletele and faleafolau fi x the orientation of the world, they force the body to orient itself to a central openness. there is something in the centre, which will never escape our gaze: rather, it will seize our gaze. samoa’s primitive hut allows matai to be gathered close to this central openness. one cannot get any closer to the centre when one sits in the faletele in a group. one’s tua (back) must rest on a post, the ancestor, so that one’s back is concealed, or, to put it in another way, one’s back is taken. with one’s back taken, one is now opened up and made into a face – made to face other faces, one’s companions in the circle. openness, now, is not something located elsewhere, but right there, on the faces of the others. all are oriented towards the ancestors. in establishing this orientation, architecture plays a particular role. it ensures, through the circulation of time and space, that origins are articulated and dispersed. origins are everywhere, all the time. 38. i have discussed this central space elsewhere as being a forked centre. (refi ti 2008) 39. present-ness becomes radical exteriority, which complicates a simple reading of the binary opposition between interior and exterior. (richter 2007: 119) 40. the other meaning of teu is “to put away” (pratt) or to store away when items pertaining to teu are not on display. r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 16r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 16 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am 17 glossary agai to face or head towards something or another person alofi sā sacred circle fa’amatai hierarchy of ancestral names and titles associated with rule and government of samoan society faleafolau long council meeting house fale agai building contract faletele oval or round council meeting house faleula ritual name of the fi rst house, meaning the “crimson house” feagaiga a sacred covenant, usually between brother and sister fono a council meeting malama light, illumination mamalu dignity manufi li building scaffolding mata eye or centre matai an individual vested with an ancestral name measina treasure or a thing of utmost value olo, olo’olo smoothing, honing or rasping pa’ia sanctity paepae house platform salemalama name of a branch of the builders’ guild sa tagaloa ritual name for the builders’ guild tagaloa-a-lagi, tagaloa samoan god to‘i axe, adze tāonga māori word for treasure tapu sacred or forbidden tatau proper or apt tau to arrive or to count, also time of the seasons teu adorn or embellish, also to put or store away tufuga, tufuga-fau-fale builders’ guild tua back or behind vā opening between or space between, to denote relationships r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 17r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 17 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am interstices 10 references: allen, a. (1993). space as social construct: the vernacular of rural samoa. unpublished dissertation for the degree of doctor of philosophy, colombia university, nyc. barnes, s. & green, r. (2008). from tongan meeting house to samoan chapel. the journal of pacifi c history, 43:1, 23-49. biggs, b. (1969). let’s learn māori: a guide to the study of the māori language. wellington: a.h. & a. w. reed. buck, p. (1930). samoan material culture. honolulu: bernice p. bishop museum bulletin. davidson, j. (1969). settlement patterns in samoa before 1840. journal of the polynesian society, 78: 44-82. deleuze, g. & guattari, f. (1987/2007). a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (b. massumi, trans.). minneapolis, london: university of minnesota press. fraser, j. (1897). solo o le va: folk-songs and myths from samoa. journal of the polynesian society, volume 6, no. 1, p19-36. handy, e. & handy, w. (1924/1971). samoan house building, cooking, and tattooing. honolulu: bernice p. bishop museum bulletin 15. henry, m. (2008). material phenomenology (s. davidson, trans.). new york: fordham university press. freeman, d. (2004). on missionaries and cultural change in samoa. the journal of pacifi c history, 39: 2, 241-250. ka’ili, t. (2008). tauhi vā: creating beauty through the art of sociospatial relations. unpublished dissertation for the degree of doctor of philosophy, university of washington. ka’ili, t. (2005). tauhi vā: nurturing tongan sociospatial ties in maui and beyond. the contemporary pacific, vol. 17, no. 1, university of hawai‘i press, p83–114. koskinen, a. (1967). linking of symbols: polynesian patterns 2. helsinki: the finnish society for missionary research. krämer, a. (1994/1999). the samoan islands: vol. 1, (t. verhaaren, trans.). auckland, nz: polynesian press. krämer, a. (1995). the samoan islands: vol. 2, (t. verhaaren, trans.). auckland, nz: polynesian press. mageo, j. (2001). the third meaning in cultural memory: history, identity, and spirit of possession in samoa. in j. mageo, (ed.) cultural memory: reconfi guring history and identity in the postcolonial pacifi c. honolulu: university of hawaii press. mageo, j. (1998). theorizing self in samoa: emotions, genders, and sexualities. ann arbour: university of michigan press. mahina, o. (2002). tufunga lalava: the tongan art of lineal and spatial intersection. in s. rees (ed.) filipe tohi: genealogy of lines hohoko e tohitohi. new plymouth, nz: govettbrewster art gallery. mauss, m. (2006). techniques, technology and civilisation. new york & oxford: berghahn books. metge, j. (1967/1976). the māoris of new zealand: rautahi. london: routledge & kegan paul. ponifasio, l. (2008). nz listener, february 2-8 2008 vol. 212, no. 3534. pratt, g. (1893/1984). a grammar and dictionary of the samoan language. papakura, new zealand: r. mcmillan publisher. refi ti, a. l. (2008). forked centre: duality and privacy in polynesian spaces and architecture. alternative: an international journal of indigenous peoples. vol. 4, issue 1, p97-106. refi ti, a. l. (2007). the origin of samoan architecture. in e. lehner et al (eds.), das architektonische samoas. vienna: neuer wissenschaftlicher verlag, p32-37. richter, g. (2007). thought-images: frankfurt school writers’ refl ections from damaged life. stanford, california: stanford university press. r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 18r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 18 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am 19 rykwert, j. (1995). the dancing column: on order in architecture. massachusetts & london: the mit press. rykwert, j. (1981/1997). on adam’s house in paradise: the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history. massachusetts & london: the mit press. sheehan, t. (2001). a paradigm shift in heidegger research. continental philosophy review, 34, pp.183-202. salmond, a. (1978). te ao tawhito: a semantic approach to the traditional māori cosmos. the journal of the polynesian society, 87: 5–28. stiegler, b. (1998). technics and time 1: the fault of epimetheus (r. beardsworth & g. collins, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. stuebel, c. (1976). myths and legends of samoa: tala o le vavau. wellington, sydney & london: a.h. & a.w. reed. tcherkézoff, s. (2005/2008). culture, nation, society: secondary change and fundamental transformations in western samoa. in s. tcherkézoff & f. douaire-marsaudon (eds.), changing south pacifi c: identities and transformations. canberra: anu e press, p256-257. tcherkézoff, s. (2004). first contacts in polynesia: the samoan case (1722-1848): western ååmisunderstanding about sexuality and divinity. christchurch, nz: macmillan brown centre for pacifi c studies. tofaeono, a. (2000). eco-theology: aiga – the household of life, a perspective from living myths and traditions of samoa. erlangen: erlanger verlag für mission und ökumene. tuagalu, i. (2008). the heuristics of the vā. alternative: an international journal of indigenous peoples, vol. 4, issue 1, p107-126. tui atua, t.t.t. (2008). more on meaning, nuance and metaphor. in s. suaalii-sauni et al, su’esu’e manogi: in search of fragrance. samoa: centre of samoan studies, nus, 70-78. turner, g. (1891/1984). nineteen years in polynesia. papakura, nz: r. mcmillan publisher. wendt, a. (1996). tatauing the post-colonial body [electronic version]. span 42-43, 1529. retrieved march 23, 2007, from http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/wendt/ tatauing.asp whiteford, g. & barns, m. (1999). te ao hurihuri: new zealand’s first time. in w. e. pentland et al (eds.), time use research in the social sciences. new york: kluwer academic/ plenum publishers, p211-230. r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 19r01_refiti_int10_final.indd 19 11/3/09 1:48 am11/3/09 1:48 am \ wo single dwellings: ji1~,cr~~hou_se and,'·;;;ls*hi&f00-fu+"i0>>i¥#8,,,, i bowes clifford tno.r1. son!' 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9nian!lninio'z wooiinfls"! onion '-..... ---.r.r ljt~...,oq..l-hil'·qjll ,r'"-ir~, d 2009 symposium brochure final_spread.indd friday 13 november opening address jenny dixon dean of nicai, the university of auckland patrick clifford president elect of the new zealand institute of architects drawing practice today with jessica barter, pip cheshire, patrick clifford, lynda simmons, simon twose chair: fleur palmer drinks & launch: interstices10: on adam’s house in the pacifi c introduction to professor marco frascari ross jenner drawing: the sapience of facture and the neurological paradigm marco frascari dinner vivace restaurant, level 1, 50 high street, auckland 4:00 4:30 pm 4:30 6:00 pm 6:00 6:45 pm 6:45 7:00 pm 7:00 8:00 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 8:30 pm saturday 14 november presenting | making visible 1. drawing imagination and the imagination of drawing federica goffi 2. seeing in section shelley f. martin 3. summoning daena stephen loo morning tea mediation | intersection 1. “to keep the clay moist” ross jenner 2. takohi ‘okusitino māhina 3.tatau sēmisi f. potauaine lunch at the conference centre 9:00 10:30 am 10:30 11:00 am 11:00 12:30 pm 12:30 1:30 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland saturday 14 november enactment | translation 1. against drawing albert l. refi ti 2. previous enrolments carl douglas 3. a priori / a posteriori michael milojevic afternoon tea exteriorisation | representation 1. scale as the representation of an idea susan hedges 2. architectural drawings do not represent anything mike linzey 3. drawing distinctions linda tyler drinks “drawing has always been more than drawing”: derrida and disegno laurence simmons dinner at o’ sarracino, 3-5 mount eden road, auckland 1:30 3:00 pm 3:00 3:30 pm 3:30 5:00 pm 5:00 6:00 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 6:00 7:00 pm 7:30 pm saturday 14 november planning 619, school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland 3:30 5:00 pm graphesis | facture 1. drawing the haunting philippe campays & stephanie liddicoat 2. blank sheet: the pristine sou muy ly 3. the limitless field katica pedisic sunday 15 november techniques | technologies 1. folded space andrew barrie 2. maintaining the abstract critical facility michael davis 3. diagnostic imagings and invisibilities christine mccarthy alr5, school of architecture and planning the university of auckland miscegenation | migration 1. entrails michael chapman 2. scratches in space-time kate linzey 3. fixed: techniques of drawing deborah cain design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland concluding comments marco frascari lunch yum cha at dynasty chinese restaurant 57-59 wakefi eld street, auckland 10:00 11:30 am 11:30 am 12:30 1:30 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 10:00 11:30 am interstices 09 117 la construction des villes christoph schnoor review by tanja poppelreuter la construction des villes (the construction of cities) is the title of a manuscript written by the young le corbusier while living in germany in 1910-11. prompted by his teacher l’eplattenier, le corbusier critically analyzed the literature on city planning, with the overall question in mind of how cities establish spaces that the inhabitants perceive as beautiful or sublime. christoph schnoor, senior lecturer at the school of architecture and landscape architecture at unitec in auckland, teaches – among other subjects – architectural theory and history. in la construction des villes, schnoor publishes le corbusier’s original french text and a careful translation of it into german, and in doing so makes the manuscript amenable for further research. in order to be accessible to a larger scholarly community, an english translation of the manuscript would also be highly desirable. the experiences and education le corbusier drew from in later life can be linked to two early events. in 1907 he departed on a grand tour that led him to italy, greece, turkey and other places. in the course of two years, he drew and made watercolours and notes of the highlights of architectural history that he visited. this would be a source for ideas and images for his later publications and helped to shape his architectural standpoint. the second formative event was the period of 1910-11, during which le corbusier wrote la construction des villes. this part of le corbusier’s writing and education is now, with the publication of schnoor’s book, fully accessible for the first time. le corbusier researched and wrote most of the manuscript in munich and berlin. he summarized the discourses on city planning around 1900 by karl henrici, albert erich brinckmann, camillo sitte and others. le corbusier’s main research interests lay in the aesthetic and artistic impacts of city planning. in a concise and careful analysis of the primary and secondary texts, schnoor succeeds in reconstructing le corbusier’s understanding and interpretation. the reason the manuscript for la construction des villes was not published by le corbusier himself lay in his personal life, as well as political developments and the beginning of world war one, which made it impossible to publish a book on a german-centred discourse in france. the manuscript then disappeared in le corbusier’s estate and was discovered in 1977, but until now was neither wholly published, nor exhaustively analyzed. schnoor’s book consists of two parts: a critical analysis of the synthesis of the manuscript, and the manuscript itself, together with the images chosen by le corbusier. in the first part, schnoor carefully retraces le corbusier’s steps as he researched the manuscript, gives insights as to which texts the swiss-french architect consulted and what he took from each, and shares his overall understanding of le corbusier’s interpretation of the earlier texts. the second part comprises the actual manuscript. this part is very clearly arranged by setting the original french text next to the german translation and using different type-faces and colours. however, the overall design and especially the handling of the images, which are all equally tinted in a greenish hue, make it obvious that this book is primarily about the text rather than the drawings, photographs and sketches. the original manuscript pages and drawings could have been reproduced at a larger scale to aid in readability. some lack contrast so that details cannot be seen and the greenish hue additionally equalizes and disguises details. overall, schnoor’s in-depth analysis of this manuscript sheds new light on the fundamentals of le corbusier’s intellectual education and background. his understanding of the sixteenth-century italian architect andrea palladio and his reading of the essai sur l’architecture (1753) by the architectural theorist abbé laugier are two of the new findings. in addition, the manuscript conveys background and context for le corbusier’s urban projects such as ville contemporaine (1922) and plan voisin (1925) and will also, in all probability, be used by scholars aiming to reassess the ways he used space in the design of his villas. the book thus belongs with the most significant publications on le corbusier and early twentieth-century city planning that have been published in recent years. christoph schnoor, la construction des villes, le corbusiers erstes städtebauliches traktat von 1910/11 (zürich: gta verlag, 2008). 648 pp. in german and french. br17_kawiti_int10_final.indd 135 this is not a book review māori architecture: from fale to wharenui and beyond by deidre brown review by derek kawiti i was approached by tina engels-schwarzpaul to review dr deidre brown’s book māori architecture: from fale to wharenui and beyond. it was hoped that, as a reviewer, i would offer a perspective on the book, which lies outside of general publishers’ and distributors’ review formats. after reading the book, i met with colleagues to discuss the merits and implications of a more in-depth engagement with what i consider an important work (which is referred to as the fi rst of its kind). as a person of māori descent, and being involved in the fi eld of architecture, i consider it crucial that this book be assessed and evaluated in a more culturally specifi c and appropriate way, which the general review format does not envisage. in short, it was agreed to postpone a detailed discussion of the book’s content to the next issue of interstices, by which time we expect to be able to include a range of perspectives and interpretations. it is possible that these will highlight the dilemmas and issues facing māori researchers and authors when reading and writing about this type of subject matter. signifi cantly, the book has opened up an opportunity for us to discuss these issues within the context of an academic architectural discourse initiated by māori practitioners and designers. the latter are at present lacking greatly in numbers. however, the advent of nga aho (the network of maori design professionals) has recently provided a critical forum, in which deidre’s book can act as a catalyst for creating an ongoing research peer support system. such peer support would help to consolidate māori research, especially in areas involving sometimes sensitive material. we yet are to develop protocols and processes for dealing with sources of historic-cultural information that are often non-written accounts which operate in parallel with documented/written sources. often, though, it is the role of the author to substantiate process or rigour and, for māori, an important component in any publication is the issue of appropriate processes when undertaking research work of a cultural nature (e.g., citations, endorsements, etc.). the emerging māori research support network will hopefully develop defi nitions and interpretations of processes and parameters that will offer consistency and support for researchers and authors regarding the assessment, adoption and framing of māori cultural material. māori research ethics, for instance, are still not well known within architectural academic discourse. nevertheless, they do exist and are able to borrow from consistent and established frameworks and procedures, such as those developed by postgraduate students in conjunction with graham and linda smith (department of māori education) some 20 years ago, at the university of auckland. māori research ethics, and wider māori cultural ethics strongly inform each other, highlighting issues not so far removed from the 1990s discussions of cultural a raupo book, penguin group, north shore, auckland. br17_kawiti_int10_final.indd 135br17_kawiti_int10_final.indd 135 11/3/09 2:42 am11/3/09 2:42 am interstices 10 appropriation and authenticity. these ethics can also inform any assessment of process, methods and content as they apply to māori writing and ensure that important protocols and standards are upheld. obviously, such culturally appropriate ways of working will usually be of a consultative nature, which may be seen as an obstacle by some. however, even if such consultations may be lengthy, they can provide a positive testing of any material and ideas, and ultimately enhance research process and outcome. this approach can, in turn, contribute to an overall strengthening of the collegiate of māori architectural academics or, even, a singular academic study or career. finally, the processes and protocols guiding research and writing on māori culture also have implications for readers. while reviews of māori architecture mostly suggest a wider ‘coffee table’ audience for the book, it will also come to infl uence the views and approaches of students and practitioners – just as peter shaw’s a history of new zealand architecture became a key text informing architectural academic discourse. it will stimulate discussion and raise new questions. the nga aho academic forum provides a timely and fertile ground for such discussions. br17_kawiti_int10_final.indd 136br17_kawiti_int10_final.indd 136 11/3/09 2:42 am11/3/09 2:42 am 111 interview with manuel aires mateus marianne calvelo “architecture is the art of permanence, not ephemerality. the principle it is subjected to can be eternal. having a clear idea is essential in architecture.” this was the last piece of advice the internationally acclaimed portuguese architect, manuel aires mateus, left his students with after an intensive two-week design studio this winter semester 2012 in the university of auckland school of architecture and planning. mateus, following an early collaboration with architect gonçalo byrne in 1988, founded the office aires mateus & associados with his brother francisco. their projects variable in scale and characterised by an austere play of mass and materiality have helped shape contemporary architecture in portugal, and increasingly influence architecture globally. known for translating traditional portuguese forms into detail-free surfaces and for an emphasis on sculptural austerity, the work of the practice has molded the contemporary architecture of portugal and has received numerous awards both nationally and internationally. besides his professional activity, he has held professorial roles at prestigious universities including harvard university, usa, university of ljubljani, slovenia, accademia di architettura di mendrisio, switzerland (since 2001), universidade autónoma and universidade lusíada, lisbon (since 1997). mateus’ design approach always begins with the call of instinct. he firmly believes in working with what is already known and to hand: drawing from the existing, the now, the here, is of prime importance. referencing an internal and self-reflective starting point while confronting the immediacy of the programme, the site, materiality, etc., in fact amounts to a search for permanence, and for mateus this means resisting time. his is an architecture that seeks to both be in continuity with, and transcendent of, the now something that gives his work a timeless quality. marianne calvelo, a masters student who took part in the intensive studio in auckland, interviewed mateus shortly before he left. manuel aires mateus in conversation, the university of auckland, school of architecture and planning, 2012. [photo: gkhc photography] interstices 13 how did you get into architecture? was there a specific time in your life when you decided to become an architect? my answer is not very interesting because my whole life has always been around architects. my father was an architect and my mother was a painter. there wasn’t really a particular time, it just sort of flowed naturally. i started early – i made and sold my first model when i was 14. it was a model of stairs for the house of the brother of gonçalo byrne.1 many years after, he became my boss. i started working very early in an office, which was common at the time anyway. i have a very common background. i’m from lisbon. i grew up in lisbon. i studied in lisbon school of architecture. i started working in lisbon. how did you establish your office with your brother? it was more or less obvious in the beginning, that we would share work together. i started to work with gonçalo byrne while studying, and it wasn’t long until my younger brother fransisco joined me. we were very lucky to work with such a generous man. when we had enough to work on our own, we moved out and opened our own practice. even after we left, i continued to collaborate with gonçalo on some other projects. he became a great friend, someone i would consider part of the family. we also decided to have two small offices, in order not to have a big office. the idea behind it was to have a common investigation in which you have two different physical places you can work. this allows you to move from one office to another to really focus on a particular project. in a way, the strategy worked. with the architectural work you are doing, do you feel you are moving with the times, or trying to react to or criticise current architectural trends? i think that we are always trying to establish a position in any given moment. we try to react to every single thing that is going around. it is also important not to accept that we have too much of a fixed position about anything. of course, we have our principles and we live according to them. it is important to understand that every process taken on every project is always different to another. no two projects are alike. we like to work inside the possibilities of every project. we always try to understand the limits of each situation. it’s sort of like working on the question or working on the problem. we begin by thinking about the underlying question in every project that gives rise to the need of architecture. we try to make it as clear and as defined as possible. it then becomes easier to arrive at an answer. where do you find inspiration? i think architecture is driven by instinct. this notion of instinct is very important. we don’t have time; we have to react to things. to have instinct is to have knowledge. we should have knowledge in many fields and understand that it is possible to use it in a free way. we combine theory and other technical subjects and pick from the fields we want and need and use it with a certain freedom. this is instinct. for example, i have no knowledge in cooking; therefore i have no instinct in the kitchen. if you put me in a kitchen, i wouldn’t know what to do! [laughs] i have an instinct only about things i know how to control. we are driven by instinct. inspiration is instinct. but to have instinct we must have knowledge, and then we react. 113 your projects are primarily characterised by materiality. is this a deliberate theme in your works? how did you come to this thinking? i think it is something you cannot avoid. it is a common mistake to avoid this idea – the need to build and define space by materiality. if you look back to the beginning of the 20th century, they were trying to achieve a limit where it was possible to define interior and exterior by the use of glass. but now we know, we can differentiate the two conditions of space through materiality. we have to use it as a sort of a field. we are not only dealing with the relation to the inside of space but also the relation to the outside. it is very important to understand that architecture is about life. it is about common sense. we have to design it from the centre, from the interior. architecture is about living in it and is never just about the design. too often, we place it by an idea of an interesting shape or mere design. we are always talking about real life in architecture – this notion is often neglected. i am aware that you are a strong advocate of permanence of architecture although some could oppose that architecture has ephemeral qualities. could you elaborate or further justify your ideas on its permanence? this idea of permanence in architecture must be considered beyond the physical qualities of the building. architecture moving from time to time, like fashion and its trends – does not make sense in this context! architecture is about ideas that have a connection to things that do not move at all! the way we live or move is not so different from the way our parents or grandparents move. we are different in many aspects, but not in our basic use of space. we still sit and stand in the same way. but also at the same time, architecture is sort of a base, subject to new and unexpected things happening. we have to have an open field that allows many different things to happen at the same time. its permanence often forces the building to take on different uses. it has an ability to respond to different demands making it timeless. a good building is a building that could be transformed by many functions. i believe that architecture is not really eternal, but its principles and ideas can be eternal or permanent. architecture must be seen from this standpoint, where the ideas embedded in its architecture could last more than the physical aspect the building. the permanence of idea. you’ve talked a lot about good architecture, could you now define for us a good architect? a good architect would be hard to define. in reality, he or she is one who is able to resist time. one who is clear and always precise. as a result, one could create good architecture – that is clear, strong, logical and efficient. i think good architecture is always about an idea that we all could understand. which architectural movement do you think are you part of? imagine 20 years from now, students who will be studying your work intensely, what period do you think you would belong to? i hope it would still be contemporary! i hope i am still alive and making! [laughs] ideally, i would like to escape from this definition of time. i think once you define an architect being part of a certain time, you are already putting certain limits on interstices 13 the architecture. quality architecture requires resistance to trendy or fancy ideas of our own time. we have to understand that through history we have to make links and connections, and not simply aim to create a sheer iconic image, which will only be lost in a few years. what advice would you give to students studying architecture? when you have young fresh architects applying in your office, what sort of person do you look for? well, for me the most important requirement for somebody to be part of the office is the commitment to working. architecture is a profession that could allow you to live a wonderful life but it has to be done by being committed to it, done to the end. otherwise it is a waste of time. this doesn’t mean that we suffer, it simply means committing to something that is really important. you are all able to do extraordinary things. the most important advice i can give to you is to maximise your own capacities. use your memories and your own experiences. don’t just combine things that everybody already knows! aim to reach the maximised potentials of a human being, an artist, and create an identity for yourselves! leiria house renders and section, leiria, portugal 2008-2010. [courtesy of aires mateus e associates & francisco aires mateus arqitectos, with photography by fg+sg – fernando guerra, sergio guerra] 115 0 2 5 10m section section interstices 12oculus from below. photo: author, 2011 147 1 “ich stelle mir den himmel vor wie eine bibliothek” (in renner 2004). law faculty library at the university of zürich by santiago calatrava ross jenner can there be an inside without an outside? caves, underground constructions and interiors inserted into other buildings seem to be examples of such. then there are more speculative configurations: monads, for example, or the library conceived by jorge luis borges where the notion of nicholas of cusa lurks (as it does in sloterdijk’s sphären) of a being whose periphery is infinite and whose centre is everywhere, which is to say, where there is nothing outside of ‘it’. as borges writes, the universe (which others call the library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. from any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. (borges 1972: 51) the law library by santiago calatrava at the university of zürich is a notable example of an embedded and (for the most part) hidden insertion of a public interior space. it is difficult to understand why the building has not received greater attention. perhaps, probably, this neglect is due less to a calatrava-overload than to the absence of an exterior, that is, of a conspicuous thing, object or ‘icon’. this library, moreover, owes something to borges. calatrava, rephrasing borges at the building’s opening as “i imagine heaven like a library”,1 we may speculate, had his idea in mind when designing it. of the siting, calatrava deemed it “wonderful to build in the university quarter of zürich, in this context rich in the tradition of karl moser and gottfried semper. i have attempted to make something contemporary which corresponds with this historical fabric.” the intervention ties in “with the tradition of inner courtyards in the university and eth” (calatrava & buchmann 2004). when asked if it was views from ground floor. photos: author, 2011 interstices 12 a pity that such a precious work was hidden humbly in a courtyard, scarcely visible from outside, he replied: “when you say ‘humbly’, you’re quite right. this library originated under delicate circumstances, since herrmann fietz’s building is under conservation protection. i tackled the project with great respect for the existing structure.” fietz’s original l-shaped building dates from 1908 and was designed as a chemistry laboratory. twenty years later, it was complemented with a further addition (lower by two stories), creating a central courtyard. such constraints led calatrava to think along semper’s lines: “i believe i have made a virtue of necessity.” (calatrava & buchmann 2004) the solution was to leave the existing building untouched (apart from integrating the disjointed rooflines), building the new library “as a completely independent structure, suspended within the inner courtyard and supported against its walls at just four points” (calatrava 2004), so that the distinction between old and new is unmistakable.2 the separation works both statically and organisationally: since a library can have only one entrance and exit, the professors alone have keys to the connecting doors on each level. the galleries are supported from the two lateral concrete cores and by steel columns on the side, partially integrated with book stacks. a lift (à la john portman), staircase and access to the building services are located at each end of the galleries. on entry,3 the gaze is drawn upwards, automatically, inevitably, to the building’s most striking accent, technically and artistically: the lenticular, glazed cupola with hydraulically activated lamella sun-shading. below it, as if freely suspended in air, hover six elliptical galleries. typical of calatrava, the upper structure draws on natural analogies: the main girder resembles a spine and the individual cantilevered beams are welded to its ribs. this oculus would seem also to bring together primordial metaphors of bodily apertures, including the ungendered: the eye and eyelid. calatrava’s aperture has an element of intelligent design: it opens and closes to admit or reflect light, letting the building regulate its own climate. a good amount of natural light is provided during the day, with or without shutters, reducing the need for artificial 2 the illuminated interstices between the lenticular ‘exterior’ of the library and the orthogonal interior of the former courtyard lead to unpredictable encounters. 3 the new entry to the building is downplayed, as if arrival and departure were irrelevant by comparison with the serene immanence of the interior. in fact, the entry is somewhat counter-intuitive: either the patron walks around the building to the street behind, in order to descend to reception, or winds from the original main entrance through a series of dark and compressed passages to it. top: interstice between library and preexisting courtyard. photo: author, 2011 right: top level gallery work stations. photo: author, 2011 149 light and thus lending the space a greater vividness. the passing of the day and the varying light and weather conditions follow almost tangibly. a thermal stack principle is employed in ventilation: air at four to six degrees warmer than outside concentrates at the cupola and passes out by vents, drawing up fresh air sucked in at the bottom of the building. fresh air entering the building is modified passively by a heat exchange system connected to ground sensors, 43 of which are installed at a depth of 100 metres to heat or cool the water to about 18°. this then passes through a heat exchanger, which in turn cools or heats air taken from outside. the fresh air is either fed directly into the library or used for the cooling ceilings built into the attic story, maintaining the temperature of a dantean paradiso.4 expanding upwards in a funnel to the cupola, the galleries accommodate individual reading stations orientated inwards, around the rim of the timber parapets facing the atrium. on all levels up to 500 readers may be seated around it; those on either side, however, are shielded from view while only a few on the opposite side of the building’s empty core are visible. herein, as well as the spiral, stands a key difference from what might be presumed a precedent, wright’s guggenheim, where a restless procession of circulating spectators is put on display around the central atrium. by contrast, also, in the vastness of asplund’s stockholm public library, attention is drawn to the peripheral enclosure, the cylinder of books. 4 for further technical information, see strehler and niederer (2006). section and plans (left: level 0; right: level 6) by calatrava office. courtesy corbin-hillman communications, ny interstices 12 the book, in the intense silence of reading, is another interior without an exterior. in a university, however, this interiority is part of a larger configuration: the solitary reader is immersed in a collective: reading is a linear experience, and an individual one. a library, especially one built for a university, must therefore be a place where the collective experience can give way to solitary reflection. students and faculty should be able to feel they are part of a shared scholarly enterprise, and small gathering places – parlatoria – should be available for discussions. but the library as a whole must be a quiet place, which encourages intimacy between the reader and the book. (calatrava 2004) the study areas are closed off at the rear by bookshelves, behind which is another light well bringing daylight into the old part of the building. the book stacks are pushed against the outer perimeter, establishing a simple grid that makes locating books easy while contributing (together with the acoustic baffles formed by the timber slats with their substrate) to the reading areas’ quietness. top: gallery workstations. photo: thomas stein, 2007. flickr bottom left: top level gallery. photo: author, 2011 bottom right: gallery soffits. photo: renato silver, 2007. flickr views at top level. photos: author, 2011 151 the hovering (levitating, even) character of the interior derives not only from the self-supporting statical configuration of the galleries, but also from the daylight flooding in, reflecting off the white stone of the ground floor, the white-painted steel and the light maple surfaces (canadian maple for the floors, european for the balustrades and soffits). these finishes combine to produce a warm glow of reflected light between the platforms. the very vacancy of the bottom kindles the desire to ascend. calatrava mentions – and seems to enjoy – the paradox that books are heavy but knowledge immaterial, that is (presumably), weightless. he elaborates: the library floats in the courtyard as if it were an enormous piece of furniture. the library as furniture – this idea was already there in the renaissance and baroque. think of the medicean laurenzana in florence or the stiftsbibliothek in st. gallen. (calatrava & buchmann 2004) no, calatrava’s library is not the library of which borges writes (even an inattentive reader will have noticed from the start): the air shafts are not vast, nor the railings very low at all. the geometry is baroque but the galleries are elliptical, not hexagonal. the floors, above all, are not interminable. but borges’ library, of course, is un-buildable (or already built – infinitely). his is devoted to utter, anonymous, expressionless, silence.5 calatrava has built a cosmological image here, amply, with ease, and with greater anonymity and silence than he has ever achieved before, and maybe since. references artìs, c. m. (2002). borges nel suo labririnto. in silenzi eloquenti. borges, mies van der rohe, ozu, rothko, oteiza (pp. 17 – 27; s. pierini, trans.). milan: christian marinotti edizioni. borges, j. l. (1972). the library of babel. in donald a. yates and james e. irby (eds.), labyrinths; selected stories and other writings [translated from the spanish]. harmondsworth: penguin. calatrava, s. (2004). architect’s statement (unpublished manuscript). courtesy of corbinhillman communications, new york. calatrava, s. & buchmann, s. (2004). “wissen ist schwerelos – das wollte ich sichtbar machen”. interview with calatrava. uzh news, 21.11. 04. retrieved september 5, 2011, from http://www.uzh. ch/news/articles/2004/1363.html renner, s. (2004). der himmel ist eine bibliothek. retrieved september 5, 2011, from http://www. uzh.ch/news/articles/2004/1392.html strehler, r. & niederer u. (2006). the new law library of the university of zurich, liber quarterly, volume 16 issue 2. retrieved september 2, 2011, from http://liber.library.uu.nl/ 5 see artís (2002). view across interstice to workstations at first half-level. photo: thomas stein, 2007. flickr in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 121 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s review / sandra kaji-o’grady angelika fitz & elke krasny (eds.) critical care: architecture and urbanism for a broken planet the mit press, 2019 critical care: architecture and urbanism for a broken planet accompanied the exhibition by the same name in vienna between 24 april and 9 september 2019. curated by the book’s editors, angelika fitz and elke krasny, the exhibition showcased twenty-one projects that, “prove that architecture and urban development do not have to be subservient to the dictates of capital and the exploitation of resources and labour”.1 the exhibition was designed by the next enterprise architect with graphics by alexander ach schuh and employed large format photographs, posters of didactic text, and architectural models. the exhibition and the book were the culmination of a longer research project and were clearly conceived together, with half the book made up of the exhibited material. the visually attractive book is not, however, simply an archival record or exhibition catalogue. its first half comprises twelve essays by practitioners and scholars from architecture, geography, anthropology, the visual arts, feminist studies, and environmental science. the editors helpfully detail their ambitions for the exhibition and, more polemically, their hopes for wholesale culture change towards what they are calling an architecture of “critical care”. the terminology is borrowed from feminist and critical theory, and is called forth by ecological catastrophe and economic inequality. with petrocapitalism, identified as “the force that has led to the anthropocene-capitalocene predicament” (14), fitz and krasny invited authors to explore and connect histories of resisting capitalism and its power. the responses are organised in four sections according to their relative focus on questions of care, labour, ecology, and economy. tronto delivers a strong theoretical framework and krasny sketches the historical ideological underpinnings of architecture that see the profession in the service of power and its disciplinary forces. other essays are extended meditations on specific projects or problematic sites, although none of these overlap with the exhibition’s case studies. gibson’s “speculations on architecting care beyond the anthropocene” is exemplary in its use of a single example to develop and illustrate broader arguments. she describes how the construction of a permanent concrete bridge over the mekong river in cambodia has displaced the traditional annual building of a bamboo bridge. what appears to be pragmatic infrastructure improvement enabling efficient year-round access not only masks the political motivations of in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 122 review / angelika fitz & elke krasny (eds.) critical care: architecture and urbanism for a broken planet p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s its chinese investors and realtors, as gibson points out, it comes at the cost of local workers who made, managed, used, and unmade the bamboo bridge each year. unfortunately, the example is one where an architecture of care has been replaced by one of development. where gibson asks us to look beyond the appearance of the artefact, graziano and trogal challenge us to look behind what appears to be worthy community activity. in “handling replacement: tending to a local library and repair centre”, they examine the seemingly valuable community engagement found in an english library that has been turned over to the repair and recycling of broken household goods by volunteers. they conclude that it veils the withdrawal of the state from the democratisation of knowledge. it is a pertinent warning because the case studies that follow are, like the social enterprise in the former library, routinely enabled by unpaid labour. those “giving care”, be it architects, artists, aid workers, or ngos, do so without adequate compensation. it would be far better if the wealthy one per cent paid taxes and global corporations were held accountable for the environmental damage they have inflicted, than the current situation in which a small fraction of ill-gotten profits are ostentatiously “gifted” to the kinds of projects celebrated in this book (indeed, for the architekturzentrum wien itself ). this brings us to the book’s core dilemma. capitalism sponsors alternative practices that mediate and distract from its more insidious consequences. the forces of capitalism and neoliberalism that this book critiques are so pervasive that every architectural project is soiled by them to some degree. i’ll look at one of these case studies in closer detail. two weeks before receiving the book for review, i had the privilege of visiting the psychiatric center caritas. the caritas psychiatric hospital in melle, belgium, was established in 1908, and comprised several two-storey buildings with mansard roofs and banded brickwork in a garden setting. by the 1990s, the original buildings had become obsolete and all but two were demolished. one was in the process of demolition when asbestos was discovered. during this stay of execution, the management of the centre changed and the new director sought design ideas for a “public square” for the campus. dvvt architects proposed a solution in which the half-ruined building serves the new campus vision. they stabilised its structure, added new stairs and chain-link fences for safe access, and inserted three glasshouses in its stripped rooms for social and therapeutic activities. pc caritas was completed in 2016 and published in archdaily in may 2017, with beautiful photographs by filip dujardin. dvvt’s venice biennale freespace exhibition primarily featured the caritas project, for which they won silver lion, and it was the subject of a review by douglas murphy in architectural review in september 2018. murphy (2018) noted that dvvt’s use of contrasting materials to arrest the building’s decline resembles the ad hoc “outsiderish” repairs that, ironically, give architects “great aesthetic pleasure”.2 in fact, as i’d seen at the veterinary clinic at nearby malpertuus, designed ten years earlier, dvvt have an abiding interest in the juxtaposition of everyday materials, such as bricks and concrete blocks, and exploit the awkwardness of their intersection. they also like to insert moments of bright contrast—a bright yellow steel stair at the vet clinic, green steel girders at pc caritas. given the context of the group exhibition, pc caritas is recast as an example of caring architecture selected because it preserved an old building. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 123 review / angelika fitz & elke krasny (eds.) critical care: architecture and urbanism for a broken planet p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s if we follow the counsel of the book’s editors and contributors, however, we must also ask who funded the project, how workers were engaged, how the process of design unfolded. we must ask about its economic and political underpinnings. in this case, the building is funded and operated by the vatican-based caritas internationalis, the so-called “care” arm of the catholic church. the catholic church is implicated in the problems concerning this book, including overpopulation in developing countries and the political conflicts that are the aftereffects of colonisation. overshadowing the pc caritas was the live scandal of father luk delft, a belgian priest convicted in 2012 of child abuse and possession of child pornography. the church sent delft—whilst on an 18-month suspended jail sentence—to work for caritas in the central african republic (car), where he rose to national director. after credible allegations of child abuse in africa emerged in june 2019, united nations aid groups suspended cooperation with caritas in africa. the church’s response has been characteristically defensive and evasive.3 the editors claim that the project shows care in the way it serves “new healthcare concepts”. if the centre is consistent with mental healthcare globally—which it likely is—then this means that the original carceral asylum concept has been replaced by one that couples a pharmaceutical regime with reflexive self-fashioning through individual and group counselling. in this context, the restoration of the building as a “public square” for the institution is an integral part of a therapeutic ecosystem of medication and socialisation. this ecosystem is ultimately aimed at restoring the patient to a normative model of subjectivity in which he or she is an active consumer and producer, for what is illness in capitalism but the inability to work? this is not to say that the architects of pc caritas are in any way compromised by the catholic church’s behaviour or questionable mental health regimes. but other projects in the book are put forward because of the caring values held by their clients or the programmes they facilitate. my point is not to single this project out for criticism, it is mere coincidence that it is the only one i have visited. when i did, i appreciated its tectonic subtlety and atmospheric decay. things get wobbly only when it is held up as an example of resistance to capitalism and critical care. no project can embody each of the criteria of care listed in the book. undoubtedly the editors understand this. their purpose is not to propose this set of projects as beyond reproach. nor are they arguing that these twenty-one alone can repair our broken planet. the examples are too modest, dispersed, and compromised to bring about the system change necessary to heal the planet. only by inspiring thousands of other projects that address questions of ecology, community, and labour can any tangible impact be realised. the book is, thus, more manifesto and provocation than it is scholarly anthology or conclusive review. in this spirit it is audaciously optimistic. that readers might think of better examples to demonstrate their arguments should only be cause for celebration. endnotes 1 architecturzentrum wien (n.d.). exhibition precis. retrieved from: https://www.azw.at/en/event/ critical-care-architektur-undurbanismus-fuer-einen-planetenin-der-krise/ 2 murphy, d. (2018). frame of mind: de vylder vinck taillieu’s caritas psychiatric centre, architectural review, 17. retrieved from: https://www. architectural-review.com/ buildings/frame-of-mind-devylder-vinck-taillieus-caritaspsychiatric-centre/10035199. article 3 luxmoore, j. (2019, november 28). belgian salesians defend decision to send convicted paedophile to africa. 28 november 2019, catholic herald. retrieved from: https://catholicherald.co.uk/ news/2019/11/28/belgiansalesians-defend-decision-tosend-convicted-paedophile-toafrica/ interstices 13 simon twose & andrew barrie, “familial clouds” in traces of centuries & future steps, palazzo bembo, venice, italy, 2012. [photo: simon twose] 123 familial clouds an exhibition by simon twose and andrew barrie review by tom daniell new zealand has no permanent presence at the venice architecture biennale, no national pavilion in the giardini, yet in 1991 its first (and, until now, only) contribution was an incredible success. as part of an exhibition of selected architecture schools from around the world, auckland was awarded the “venice prize” at the urging of arata isozaki and other members of the jury – no doubt to the shock and chagrin of all the inestimably more famous architecture schools favoured to win. disappointingly, this wasn’t enough to convince those with the authority to make such decisions that it would be worth funding regular new zealand participation in venice (though, to be fair, in recent years new zealand artists have been showing in the “real” venice biennale, an international art show that alternates with the architecture biennale). it did, at least briefly, put the auckland school of architecture front and centre within the world architectural community’s consciousness. the demonstrable brilliance of the work proffered by auckland in 1991 aside, one has to hand it to isozaki. as a frequent juror for major architecture competitions, his insistence on championing the most radical, unlikely designs has led to the recognition (though not always the realisation) of some of the most influential projects of recent decades – bernard tschumi’s parc de la villette, zaha hadid’s peak, itsuko hasegawa’s shonandai cultural center, foreign office architects’ yokohama international port terminal, toyo ito’s sendai mediatheque, for example – not only jumpstarting the careers of relative unknowns and allowing established figures to produce definitive works, but accelerating the evolution of the discipline itself. twenty years after auckland’s 15 minutes of fame, a few of the protagonists were back together at the 13th venice architecture biennale in 2012. isozaki was joined by simon twose and andrew barrie (members of auckland’s original student team, and now academics at victoria university of wellington and the university of auckland respectively) in an exhibition called “traces of centuries & future steps”, which included about 60 architects from 26 countries. organised by the global art affairs foundation, a dutch non-profit organisation that “aims to heighten the awareness about the more philosophical themes in contemporary art”, this was described as a “collateral event of the 13th international architecture exhibition”, one of several independent exhibitions that took place parallel to the biennale proper. it was located in the magnificent palazzo bembo, a restored fifteenth-century aristocratic home facing the grand canal, a few steps from the rialto bridge and about 15 minutes by vaporetto from the biennale venues. the double title comes from the two centrepieces of the exhibition. on the lower floor was “traces of centuries” by chinese artist ying tianqi, a multi-room, multimedia reflection on the modernization of china. on the upper floor was “future steps” by arata isozaki, showing his urban development proposal for zhengzhou, china – an interactive installation that invites visitors to physically alter it, thus forming a trilogy with his 1962 “incubation process” and 1997 “mirage city” exhibitions. the other 30 or so rooms contained projects from selected architects, each working in collaborative pairs or small groups. the exhibits ranged from conventional displays of architectural drawings and models to sound-and-light media installations, in some cases escaping their assigned galleries into the adjacent familial clouds, by simon twose & andrew barrie traces of centuries & future steps – collateral event of the 13th international architectural exhibition, la biennale di venezia palazzo bembo, venice, italy, august 29 to november 25, 2012 interstices 13 corridors or courtyards. all were invited as a result of an open call for proposals – twose and barrie were there on their own merits, not as representatives of a nation. nonetheless, the installation explicitly presented itself as a component of the wider new zealand architectural scene and its historical development. titled “familial clouds”, the room was dominated by a large white plinth acting as a backdrop for a diagrammatic diorama of the historical lineages that weave through new zealand architecture from the colonial period onward. lineages of people, that is, not styles. like a genealogical chart of marriages and offspring, we were shown working partnerships and collaborations, generational sequences of students and teachers, and the shifting relationships between employees and employers, all presented as a complex (and, barrie admits, controversial) web of mutual influence. well-suited to the 2012 biennale theme “common ground”, this was the latest iteration of research begun by barrie in 2008, initially as a flow chart of names, now manifested as an array of labelled human silhouettes complemented, for more-or-less obscure reasons, with stylised trees, animals, furniture, flags, musical instruments, and so on. all the figures are black, with two exceptions: twose and barrie are both shown in red, the focal points of the display and the culmination of the lineages. in a characteristically kiwi mixture of modesty and egotism, the exhibit is an extraction of their own disciplinary family trees from the wider new zealand architectural community. even as straight documentation lacking critique or analysis, this has a certain value for future historians. now that the circuitry is so revealed with such clarity, we can better address the information being passed along it: the ways in which the stylistic and technical evolution of new zealand architecture has been facilitated and advanced by its substrate of personal relationships. a first step has been made here by the inclusion of simple paper models of key buildings standing next to the figures of their architects. models of two designs each by twose and barrie blended in with the other artefacts. twose showed a pair of award-winning simon twose & andrew barrie, “familial clouds” in traces of centuries & future steps, palazzo bembo, venice, italy, 2012. [photo: patrick loo] 125 houses, one in wellington and the other in auckland. as well as models set on the plinth, they were dissected into hundreds of tiny pieces dispersed across the walls, showing the design processes and built results: a cloud of fragmentary models, 35mm slides, shrunken hand sketches and computer drawings, all set at odd angles and interspersed with tiny mirrors necessary for seeing some of the images. barrie presented finely crafted models of two intriguing unbuilt projects. though given nominal programs and locations, they were essentially experiments in using rationalised structural elements to achieve formal interest or surface articulation with minimal effort and resources. that’s a strategy that underlies the whole project. twose and barrie prefabricated most of the installation in wellington and auckland, then, like george jetson’s flying car, folded it into a parcel that weighed less than a kilo and carried it in their hand luggage to venice. in both its content and method, the installation is an ingenious demonstration of the kind of nimble, unpretentious approach that can enable a small, often overlooked pacific nation to participate in a global discourse. from some angles, “familial clouds” might be seen as a slightly discomfiting attempt to establish credibility through provenance rather than material results. nonetheless, in emphasising the wider ecology and history of architectural practice in new zealand, twose and barrie suggest the ways in which any individual design is constrained and enabled by being unavoidably embedded within a specific place and time. ultimately, it’s less a show of work than a presentation of evidence that work is being done. arata isozaki toured the palazzo bembo before the exhibition opened to the public, and met twose and barrie. when he learned where they were from, he mentioned that many years ago he had been on a biennale jury and found “one excellent project” deserving of the venice prize, an installation in the shape of a cloud from a school in new zealand. to then discover that he was encountering new clouds from two of those original students was a small yet invaluable vindication for everyone involved. simon twose & andrew barrie, “familial clouds” in traces of centuries & future steps, palazzo bembo, venice, italy, 2012. [photo: patrick loo] interstices 2017_symposiumschedule_final symposium schedule 2017 friday, 2nd june 2017 time presenter chair opening night – wg126, sir paul reeves building 6.00-6.30pm drinks 6:30-.7:00pm opening address – sue hedges / tina engels-schwarzpaul / ross jenner 7.00 – 8.00pm keynote: spyros papapetros saturday, 3rd june 2017 wg126, sir paul reeves building registration 9.00-9:30am wg128, sir paul reeves building session 1, drawing / digital surface / pattern 9:30 -9.50am 1 natalie haskell: pattern and the digital narrative: the impact of digital innovation on pattern and placemaking ross jenner 9.50-10.10am 2 carl douglas: superficial immersion: flat ontologies and the picture plane 10.10 10.30am 3 – yannis zavoleas + mark taylor: skin deep 3d printed surfaces 10:30 – 11am questions/discussion morning break wg128, sir paul reeves building stream a: wg126, sir paul reeves building session 2a, power, agency, surface 11:30 -11:50am 4 – dorita hannah: agonistic ornamentation: street art as resistant patternation sue hedges 11:50 -12.10pm 5 – farzaneh haghighi: architecture’s mourning skin 12.10 -12.30pm 6 – manfredo manfredini, tanyalak chalermtip and angelo bueno: the “mediated shed” public space and “the forgotten symbolism” of post-consumerist architecture of hyprermediated interspatial patterns. 12.30-1.00pm questions/discussion lunch break session 3a, colour, texture, no-texture 2.00-2.20pm 7 – anuradha chatterjee: for and against pattern: ruskin’s ambivalent theory of constructional polychromy tina engels-schwarzpaul 2.20-2.40pm 8 – johanna abril: resurfacing 2:40 – 3:00pm 9 – rachel carley: gloss 3:00 – 3:30pm questions/discussion conference dinner – 7pm stream b: wg608, sir paul reeves building time presenter chair morning break session 2b, trace and narrative 11.30-11.50am 4 – nicholas skepper: material narrative in drawn and built surface ross jenner 11.50-12.10pm 5 –anthony brand: building character: narratives of use and inhabitation 12:10pm – 1:00pm questions/discussion lunch break session 3b, local surface 2.00-2.20pm 7 – susan hedges: micro-structures, building blocks and the sculptural relief carl douglas 2.20-2.40pm 8 – sue gallagher: urbis porta: extending myself and home as animated surfaces of salmacis and hermaphroditus 2.40-3.00pm 9 – andrew douglas: traversing erewhon: territorial image & chiastic desire 3.00-3.30pm questions/discussion conference dinner – 7pm sunday, 4th june 2017 stream 1: wg126, sir paul reeves building time presenter chair session 4, pacific patterns 9.30-10:15am keynote – tēvita ka’ili albert refiti 10.15-10:35am 1 – nooroa tapuni: [my] face and the foreign body tina engels-schwarzpaul 10:35-10:55am 2 – ross jenner: staging the face 10.55-11.15am 3 – albert refiti: the binding of animals and gods with encircling aether and eyes in pacific architecture (non-refereed abstract) morning break wg128, sir paul reeves building session 6, pacific sur/faces 11.40-12.00pm 4 – tina engels-schwarzpaul: binding and arresting – surface and pattern in contemporary traditional pacific buildings albert refiti 12.00-12.20pm 5 – keri-anne wikitera: whakairo rangatira – patterns of the chiefs 12.20-12.40pm 6 – semisi potauaine & ‘okusi mahina: pattern-surface and repetition-rhythm: a tāvāist criticism (non-refereed abstract) 12.40-1:15pm questions/discussion round up & lunch programmeforweb 2013 interstices under construction programme friday 22 november 2013 design theatre, conference centre, the university of auckland, 22 symonds street 4.00 – 5.30pm professional panel discussion “feeling good: the architecture of ambience” chaired by john walsh. participants: melanie lochore (lochore priest limited), john coop (warren and mahoney architects), malcolm walker (malcolm walker architects), pete bossley (pete bossley architects) 5:40 6:00 pm mihi whakatau, opening address dr moana nepia and professor dianne brand 6:00 7:00 pm keynote address: “the aesthetics of atmospheres – theory and applications” professor gernot böhme 7:00 8:00 pm drinks & launch interstices 14: immaterial materialities 8:30 pm dinner (to be confirmed) saturday 23 november design theatre, conference centre, the university of auckland, 22 symonds street. 9:00 9:30 am introduction and overview tina engels-schwarzpaul, andrew douglas and ross jenner 9:30 10:30 am grounding atmosphere chair: ross jenner 1. earthquake weather, floating rocks and other atmospheric anomalies sarah treadwell & laura mclauchlan 2. reverie michael tawa 10:30 11:00 am morning tea 11:00 12:30 pm ephemeral materials chair: albert refiti 1. making clouds: rethinking urban contexts as differential and participatory fields hannah hopewell 2. contingency & experiential solicitation. from atmospheric awareness to immersive field of experience izabela wieczorek 3. on disgust and odour philippa nicole barr move to aut wg building, governor fitzroy place 12:45 1:30 pm lunch tree house, level 4, sir paul reeves building aut university, governor fitzroy place streams 1&2: level 6, sir paul reeves building aut university, governor fitzroy place 1:30 3:00 pm place effects (s 1) chair: tina engels-schwarzpaul 1. art into nature: elementalism in contemporary public art and architecture eu jin chua 2. negotiated atmospherics anna boswell 3. suspension of place peter chivers 1:30 3:00 pm embodying (s 2) chair: carl douglas 1. impressionable atmospheres: a felt phenomenology anthony brand 2. found subjects: the architectural object within a (spatial) knowledge society michael chapman 3. pleasure in reading tradition mirjana lozanovska 3:00 3:30 pm afternoon tea 3:30 5.00 pm spinozan after-effects (s1) chair: andrew douglas 1. constructing atmospheres a spinozist’s drift margit brünner 2. designing for affect akari kidd & jan smitheram 3. strategic atmospherics: the built pedagogy of auckland’s ‘learning quarter’ sean sturm & stephen turner 3:30 5:00 pm performance milieus (s 2) chair: rafik patel 1. between architecture and its lived experience. the construction of the interior as tableau vivant popi iacovou (by skype) 2. digital atmospheres: rethinking public place in light of locative and pervasive communication technologies farzad gharaghooshi 3. cadenced horizons: adolphe appia’s scenic architecture ross anderson 5:00 6:00 pm drinks 7:00 pm conference dinner vivace’s, 50 high st, auckland (included in full registration) sunday 24 november streams 1&2: level 6, sir paul reeves building, aut university 9:00 10:30 am conducting (s 1) chair: albert refiti 1. the political aesthetics of police kettling scott sørli (by skype) 2. boringness and boredom: the political affections of modern architecture christian parreno 3. inorganic collections carl douglas 9:00 10:30 am end moves (s 2) chair: sarah treadwell 1. on being moved: memorials, affect and activation alison atkinson-phillips 2. black sun: postnatural atmospheres stephen loo 3. affective remembering luiza nader 10:30 11:00 am morning tea 11:00 12:30 pm rareification chair: andrew douglas 1. drawing of breath: a provisional diagram for the reciprocal relations between atmospheres and affects chris cottrell 2. air and architecture: everything together and simultaneously nothing ainslie murray 3. the cultural production of atmospheres tim adams (non-refereed presentation) 12.30 12:50 pm concluding remarks gernot böhme 1:00 2:00 pm lunch (not included in registration) yum char at jin hai wan chinese seafood restaurant 2:30 5:00 pm pacific spaces & sacred houses participants: albert l. refiti, deidre brown, tina engels-schwarzpaul, mike austin, michael goldsmith, jeremy treadwell, tēvita ka’ili, sean mallon, karlo mila-schaaf, hūfanga ‘okusitino māhina, moana nepia, karamia muller, bruce moa, athol greentree, sēmisi f potauaine, raukura turei & elisapeta heta. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 145 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s bios endriana audisho endriana audisho is a lecturer and interdisciplinary electives course director in the school of architecture at the university of technology sydney (uts). endriana’s teaching, writing, and creative work underscore her advocacy for making things public. concerned with the politics of representation, endriana uses her work as a forum, platform and testing ground to expose colonial legacies implicit in contemporary cities. she is currently completing a dissertation titled “screening architecture”, which traces the transformation of journalistic accounts of conflict within the middle east and their relationships to architectural discourse since the 1990s. in 2019, endriana was awarded the nsw architects registration board’s byera hadley travel scholarship, a research residency and grant by the canadian centre for architecture (cca) andrew benjamin andrew benjamin is distinguished professor of architectural theory at the university of technology, sydney (and emeritus professor of philosophy at monash university, melbourne).  anthony brand anthony brand is a lecturer at the university of auckland, specialising in history, theory, and criticism. anthony completed his bachelor of architecture and diploma of architecture at the university of nottingham (uk) before moving to new zealand in 2009, where he worked for habitat for humanity and completed his phd (entitled “touching architecture”). his core research interests are phenomenology, embodiment, and situated cognition (how and why we feel the way we do and ways in which architecture can influence this). his current research centres around architectural “traces”: the perception of time in architecture and the sense of memory, character, and nostalgia associated with this. specifically, how buildings can develop through our collective memories and establish cultural heritage. sarah breen lovett sarah breen lovett spends time being a curator, artist, and academic, and is currently lecturer and manager of the research group, future building initiative, at monash university, australia, an initiative funded by the faculties of art, design and architecture and engineering. breen lovett has instigated and been included in many exhibitions, symposiums, and publications at the interdisciplinary meeting point of art and architecture, with a focus on shifting consciousness in relation to surrounding environments. recent publications include chapters in flow: between interior and landscape (bloomsbury), inter and transdisciplinary relationships in architecture (aitner), mediated identities in the futures of place: emerging practices and spatial cultures (springer), and architecture filmmaking (intellect). nikolina bobic nikolina bobic is a lecturer in architecture at the university of plymouth. her research delves into the historical and theoretical concepts to do with politics, violence and space. more specifically, to do with balkanization (geopolitical fragmentation), borders, and (post)conflict— how these notions manifest at the complex intersection of architecture, urbanism, military, media, economics, technology, literature and film. nikolina’s authored balkanization and global politics: remaking cities and architecture was published in 2019 by routledge. at present, she is the co-editor of the forthcoming two volumes of routledge handbook of architecture, urban space and politics (2021 and 2022). ian buchanan ian buchanan is a professor of cultural studies at university of wollongong, australia. he is the author of deleuzism: a metacommentary (edinburgh university press, 2000); michel de certeau (sage, 2000), fredric jameson: live 146 biographies p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 theory (continuum, 2006); deleuze and guattari’s antioedipus: a reader’s guide (continuum, 2008); oxford dictionary of critical theory (oxford university press, 2010) and assemblage theory and method: an introduction and guide (bloomsbury academic, 2020). he is the founding editor of the international journal deleuze and guattari studies (edinburgh university press). christina deluchi christina deluchi is a lecturer in interior architecture, school of architecture at the university of technology sydney (uts). her research is situated in the expanded field of urban politics and operates at the intersection of architecture and visual culture. christina’s current research project, “a tale of new cities: medellín”, questions the radical transformation of medellín, colombia, by tracing the commonalities and discontinuities in the urban strategies shaping the city since the 1970s. carl douglas carl douglas is a senior lecturer in spatial design at auckland university of technology. his research circulates around two themes: unprofessional space (informal, ad-hoc, illicit, and amateur space-making); and procedural design techniques (cartography, design computation, abstraction, drawing, and intuition). his phd, strange relations, explored relational design approaches for public space, and he is currently affiliated with the material imaginaries research collective. a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul a.-chr.engels-schwarzpaul was born in germany but has spent most of her academ-ic career in aotearoa new zealand, where she teaches and writes on ideas and projects at the intersection of indigenous pacific thought and western thought. tina is currently a professor of spatial design. she has published of other thoughts: non-traditional approaches to the doctorate (co-edited with michael a. peters), and from 2005 to 2014, was executive co-editor of interstices: journal of architecture and related arts and co-convenor of the annual symposium. xavier ellah xavier ellah is a designer and artist based in tāmaki makaurau auckland. he uses a multi-disciplinary drawing practice to understand the potential of intimate field observations to forge connectedness in cities. he completed his master of design (spatial) at auckland university of technology in 2019, where he is now a part-time teaching assistant. his research around drawing and walking has led to current investigations into the relationships between garden-making, stewardship and urban temporality. daniel grinceri daniel grinceri is a full-time practising architect and teaches architectural history and theory at the university of western australia (uwa). he completed a bachelor of architecture (hons) at curtin university in 2000 and a phd at uwa in 2012. in 2016, he published a book with routledge entitled architecture as cultural and political discourse: case studies of conceptual norms and aesthetic practices. his research focuses on issues of immigration, in particular, discursive forms of identity politics and how they inform certain types of spaces for the inclusion and exclusion of various kinds of people. farzaneh haghighi farzaneh haghighi is a lecturer in architecture at the school of architecture and planning, university of auckland, new zealand. she holds a phd in architecture from the university of sydney, australia. her research is concerned with the intersection of political philosophy, architecture and urbanism and her first book is the tehran bazaar dead? foucault, politics, and architecture was published in 2018 by cambridge scholars publishing. her research seeks new avenues to enrich our creative analysis of complex built environments through investigating the implications of critical and cultural theory for architectural knowledge. farzaneh is the co-editor of forthcoming two volumes of routledge handbook of architecture, urban space and politics (2021 and 2022). susan hedges susan hedges is a senior lecturer in spatial design at auckland university of technology. her research and publication interests embrace an interest for drawing, architecture, notation, film and critical theory. these seemingly divergent fields are connected by an interest in the relationship that exists 147 biographies p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 between the body, surface, architectural notation and visual images. sandra kaji-o’grady sandra kaji-o’grady is professor of architecture at the university of queensland, australia, where she teaches design. she was the dean and head of school at uq between 2013 and 2018, and previously held similar roles at the university of sydney and the university of technology, sydney. her research on the expression of science in laboratory architecture culminated in two recent books: laboratory lifestyles: the construction of scientific fictions, co-edited with chris l. smith and russell hughes (mit press, 2018), and laboratory: speaking of science and its architecture, with chris l. smith (mit press, 2019). her next book examines buildings that serve as sites of interspecies work and leisure, primarily with a focus on companion animals. in her spare time, she makes art and has exhibited in sydney and singapore. frank liu frank liu is a spatial design graduate who completed his master of design at auckland university of technology in 2019. during his final year of  study, he interned at warren + mahoney architects and is now a junior interior designer having been involved in several retail projects across nz. frank’s interests lie in digital art, design story-telling and the conversations between narrative, materiality and identity. he is also a part-time illustrator.  cameron logan cameron logan is an urban and architectural historian at the school of architecture, design and planning at the university of sydney. his work is concerned with the ways in which city-dwellers articulate their citizenship as place connection or protection. a new project extends this work beyond the domain of historic preservation activity, focusing on the planning and design of venues for crowds. cameron is the author of historic capital: preservation, race and real estate in washington, dc (university of minnesota press, 2017) and co-author, with julie wills and philip goad, of architecture and the modern hospital: nosokomeion to hygeia (routledge, 2019). gerard reinmuth gerard reinmuth is a founding director of the architectural practice terroir (1999-) and professor of practice at the school of architecture at the university of technology, sydney (2011-) where he is also currently associate head of school. terroir emerged from conversations between the founding directors around the re-examination of place in light of contemporary cultural and environmental questions. the practice has been featured in numerous international publications and biennales, and has received numerous awards for its built work. gerard’s research and teaching specifically explore the agency of the architect given contemporary economic and political tendencies. the intersection of these two bodies of work has culminated in gerard’s current research project, “towards a relational architecture”, in collaboration with professor andrew benjamin, which suggests that in re-thinking how we understand the discipline, a new and more relevant conception of the profession might emerge. stephen walker stephen walker trained as an architect and worked for architectural and design practices in the uk and spain. he is currently head of architecture at the university of manchester, uk. his research broadly encompasses architectural and critical theory and examines the questions that theoretical projects can raise about particular moments of architectural and artistic practice. a developing methodology has brought together aspects of theory with a range of practical work including mediaeval breton architecture, ring-roads, and the work of contemporary artists (in particular gordon matta-clark, helen chadwick, and warren+mosley). more recently, he has been developing a project on the architecture of travelling street fairs and fairgrounds, with support from the riba research trust. he is an advisory board member for the national fairground & circus archive (nfca). interstices 08 95interstices 08 95 the search for a mode of architecture particular to new zealand has been much prized for as long as architects have been building there, but it enjoyed a dramatic and popular resurgence in the wake of david mitchell and gillian chaplin’s 1984 book, the elegant shed. the nationalist genealogy – from “humble bach” to the experiments of group construction, group architects and their offspring, to contemporary modernist-revival celebrations – became well-rehearsed at all levels of new zealand’s architectural culture and was, at least until recently, firmly embedded in auckland’s two schools of architecture, and in wellington’s since the end of the 1990s. the fundamental work of justine clark and paul walker, in looking for the local (2000), to extend further south the locus of the rhetorical marriage of nationalism to modernism, and to historicize the architectural centre’s one-time selection of new zealand’s exemplary modern architecture, has lent a firm scholarly basis to a broad desire to isolate the seeds of a modern new zealand architectural identity. so too have douglas lloyd jenkins’ unparalleled efforts to share a more complicated view of new zealand’s modernist architectural history with a wider readership, most notably in his at home (2004), but also in the anthology new dreamland (2005), and his articles in the new zealand listener. nevertheless, the broad tendency in new zealand architectural culture is to dismiss this complexity in favour of a search for national origins, and for local innovations within international phenomena: a desire that mirrors much popular cultural commentary in new zealand, and, in turn, the general outlook of any number of cultural settings that revel in the rhetoric of being “exquisite apart”. that the popular architectural historiography of new zealand has moved in this direction over the last two decades is understandable, and certainly has been beneficial for expanding, for instance, the hitherto overlooked worth of post-war architecture and urban planning, even if all but a handful of specialists follow a troublingly simplistic historiographical line, such as we find in the centennial history publication of the new zealand institute of architects, edited by charles walker (2005). however, in the long-term practice of documenting and challenging the history of new zealand architecture, it is not without its problems; this criticism holds true both within the academy and beyond it to professional and general audiences. the myth of the nation andrew leach interstices 08 95 interstices 08 95 peter wood, in his article, “the bach: the cultural history of a local typology” (2000), works backwards from the “bach” – as the small holiday house in new zealand is called – to a “birth of the nation” bound tightly to the anzac myth, anchored at gallipoli, in order to argue alternative, cultural starting points for determining an independent, national, architectural character.1 for wood, the endurance of the bach as an architectural type owes much to the extent to which it is historically embedded in a widely appreciated period of cultural adolescence – in which the first world war figures largely. while wood’s explicit line of argument is that the broader context of the bach’s emergence after new zealand’s participation in an imperial war, under an independent australasian banner, lends the history of this typology a relevance beyond architectural discourse – an admirable and important observation – he also entrenches the type by heaping national myth upon architectural. wood’s typically speculative and instrumental approach to his topic does not, generally speaking, undermine the argument he advances for an “indigenous architectural nationalism in aotearoa/new zealand” (walker, 2005: 246). he tells us what we want to hear: that the bach, as an architectural type, is more rooted than we imagined in the national psyche – a mentality that privileges industry, invention and isolation. for this, the bach is a perfect fit. as such, it acquires authority as an autochthonous architectural typology – and here i write both of wood’s analysis, as well as the popular uptake of this idea – which, in turn, reinforces the new zealand-ness of those architectures that build upon it. in this sense, if wood’s essay is not wholly inventive, neither is it as damaging to the broader goals of architectural historiography – the slow filtering of evidence as a gradual test of historical narrative – as the knee-jerk, ill-informed invocations of this “moment” by professional discourse, as it cashes in on the values that wood, and others, supply to it. few, beyond the profession, would disagree that charles walker’s volume functions appallingly as a history of 100 years of new zealand architecture: a love letter, largely written in an obscurantist prose, from the institutional bastion of architectural practice to the myths that, like a moat, surround it.2 it is not the job of architects to question the histories handed down by academics, walker writes in his introductory essay: “architecture is essentially about the future” (walker, 2005: 12). yet, with no effort whatsoever, the structure of walker’s book belies the projective under pinnings of architectural practice, negating those aspects of its history that fail to conform to present day values. of the fifteen chapters that add up to a history of the architectural profession in the century since the founding of its institute, only the first considers that century’s first four decades. this six-page contribution by sir miles warren, “one of new zealand’s greatest architects” (walker, 2005: 246), announces that “the period is best exemplified by three architects [cecil wood, william gray young and william henry gummer] whose work dominated each of their cities” (warren, 2005: 18).3 among institutional histories, the book is atypical, precisely for refusing to offer a history of the nzia’s foundations, not to mention its smaller oversights: setting aside the once-close relationships of architects and planners; or considering the role of the profession in setting up the early twentieth century infrastructure of the country’s towns and cities – libraries, court-houses, schools, and so on. indeed, to be generous, those values represented by walker’s history belong squarely in 2005, and epitomize the mechanisms described more generally above. the institute’s former president gordon moller prefaces the book 1. the argument was widely tested in a nationwide lecture tour with jeremy treadwell in 1999, sponsored by unitec and the new zealand institute of architects. 2. for published reviews of this book, see clark (2005) and jenner (2005). 3. the heavy level of illustration (the book’s only asset) accounts for the other six pages. interstices 08 97interstices 08 97 by writing that, “the architectural profession has responded [to new zealand’s development] by developing a unique language for the built form for this country, in the way we inhabit our buildings, towns and cities.” that this language is an unchallenged closed-code is a fault of decades’ worth of academic historiography being lumped into two categories: that which supports myths, and is celebrated; and that which undermines them, and is ignored. queenstown architect, ed elliott, recently suggested in architecture new zealand (2007) that the bach myth had run its course. however, immediately, he turned to another architectural type, reinforcing the same simplistic qualities associated with the bach. treating this “replacement” – back country huts – under the same terms as the bach brings the kinds of correspondences between cultural value and architectural type directly back to the task of “reforming” the origins of new zealand architecture. he writes of “these stunning little gems … that take an architect back to the basics of architecture. pure forms, the essence of practicality, built with a limited palette of materials (that is, with whatever could be carted in), and with an absolute minimum of adornment” (elliott, 2007: 93). of course, in searching out its origins and floating the contenders for those examples, types, forms and materials (not to mention “spirit”) that would satisfy the local architectural profession’s thirst for histories easily absorbed – a thirst too often treated by extremely simplified forms of the academic architectural historiography to which the profession pays scant attention – the problem remains the same. in his recent novel underground, queenslander andrew mcgahan (2006) describes the sinister, reactionary motives that are rarely far behind those forms of historiography that seek identity in moments of rupture, while ignoring both the conflicts inevitably found in “uniqueness”, and the continuities that can exceed the event. mcgahan’s observations float to the surface of a novel that is both too cynical and too silly to take seriously. however, his underlying unease with the readiness with which a national culture – in this case a dystopic forecast of a right-wing australia – can translate instances of national differentiation into moments of national formation, and thus into the range of measures that, on both sides of the tasman, determine whether or not one can boast the simple hard-headedness and ingenuity of the anzac spirit, is pertinent to this issue. of course, the legends of gallipoli feed parallel, and often diverging, values in the two countries that celebrate them, rather than values we might understand as thoroughly interwoven. few would speak of an australasian spirit, rather of characteristics firmly aligned with one nation or the other. in the same vein, few would lay claim for the origins of an australasian architecture, and yet it is precisely this concept – of an open cultural exchange preceding the maturity of either country (australia with its federation in 1901; new zealand with its new status as a dominion in 1907), and of new zealand as one of a number of interdependent british colonies in the south pacific – that has been suppressed by the rise of a nationalist architectural historiography in both places. despite the various factors that render it sensible to differentiate between australia and new zealand as national cases, with their own histories and cultural specificities, there is good reason to turn back to a generously regional approach to their history. does anyone really believe that what have become the national differences between the architectural histories of australia and new interstices 08 97 interstices 08 97 zealand are greater than the formerly colonial differences between, say, tasmania and queensland, or new south wales and victoria (australia’s infra-national version of the more celebrated trans-tasman rivalry)? the number of migrant architects travelling back and forth across the tasman might be more than ever before, but the apparently seamless movement between south pacific colonies that distinguished the profession’s history for many of the nineteenth century’s most important architects – which is not even to factor in the relationship of the australian and new zealand colonies to london – describes a decidedly anti-national reality to a history that has been sectioned off to suit later twentieth century narratives. to conclude, these observations are simply examples of the more general challenges facing historians of architecture working in the present moment. my topic here has been the myth of new zealand’s “nationality”, but it corresponds to any number of flimsy historical bases on which architectural culture – academic, professional and popular – builds solid edifices that, to invoke a well-worn idea, treat quick-sand as bedrock. the issue does not lie in the speculation and referential freedom that marked history writing of the 1990s, and persists in some quarters today, but in the way it lends the profession the tools with which to dig itself deeper and deeper into a mire of rhetoric and fables. it is at the very moment (now long since passed and thoroughly evidenced) that the profession needs this mire more than any kind of real contact with architecture’s past that we have a problem. references clark, j. (2005). there is no history in new zealand. architecture new zealand (may-june), 128. clark, j. & walker, p. (2000). looking for the local: architecture and the new zealand modern. wellington: victoria university press. elliott, e. (2007). splendid isolation. architecture new zealand (march-april), 92-94. jenner, r. (2005). 100 years on. cross section (october), 12-13. lloyd jenkins, d. (2004). at home: a century of new zealand design. auckland: godwit. lloyd jenkins, d. (ed.). (2005). new dreamland: writing new zealand architecture. auckland: godwit. mcgahan, andrew. (2006). underground. crow’s nest (nsw): allen & unwin. mitchell, d., & chaplin, g. (1984). the elegant shed: new zealand architecture since 1945. auckland: oxford university press. walker, c. (ed.). (2005). exquisite apart: 100 years of architecture in new zealand. auckland: balasoglou books, for the new zealand institute of architects, inc. warren, m. (2005). the first fifty years. in c. walker (ed.), exquisite apart: 100 years of architecture in new zealand (pp. 16-27). auckland: balasoglou books, for the new zealand institute of architects, inc. wood, p. (2000). the bach: the cultural history of a local typology. fabrications: the journal of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand 11 (1), 44-61. 133 whare māori: reflections on the television series carin wilson maku ano hei hanga i toku nei whare, and i will build my house, ko nga poupou he mahoe he patete, and the pillars will be made of mahoe and patete, ko te tahuhu he hinau. the ridgebeam of hinau. me whakatupu ki te hua o te rengarenga it shall grow and blossom like that of the rengarenga me whakapakari ki te hua o te kawariki. and be strong and flourish like the kawariki. tukaroto matutaera potatau te wherowhero tawhiao in true kingly fashion, tawhiao makes an aspirational statement. “i will build a house, but not any old house. no, this one will have pillars of mahoe and patete and we’ll find a tall straight hinau for the ridge. from the ngahere (bush) nearby, of course. where we’ll offer a karakia (prayer) to our atua (god), tāne mahuta. for our whakapapa (genealogy) to him is unbroken, and these timbers are his children. then the life in and around this whare can flourish and we will be nurtured and protected.” never is this whare static or inanimate or even purely material in form – it is dynamic, resonating with the life force of mauri, the spiritual energy of its transition from te kore (nothingness) through te po (the dark night) to te ao marama (the world of light). tawhiao: a reluctant visionary elected to succeed his father in 1860 to lead the kingitanga movement in a time of deep crisis. his tongi (prophetic saying) was not composed to show off his knowledge of native species in the ngahere. as the incumbent leader of māori during that awful period, when the familiar routines of sporadic tribal conflict had to be set aside to bring a unified front to the common threat of colonial rule, he looks to the imagery of the forests of tāne mahuta and the prospect of a house as a defensive symbol of cultural survival. rakau (timbers), children of the forest – mahoe, patete, hinau – didn’t need explanation; māori understood this reference to their performance and their suitability for certain functions. that a house of these materials will perform well, uniting and empowering the people who gather in it in their decisions, was a given. there were few better ways to evoke a sense of what it will take to gather the energies of a people under huge pressure, to consolidate their energies to maintain unity, and to form the resolve that would build a steadfast nation. — the key to comprehending this decidedly māori world is in the seamless track linking the creative source with stories about the journey, tales of arrival and a connection made. only then do we see attention turned to the design and fabrication of shelter, as in this whakatauki (proverb) from the cooks group: interstices 12 taka’i koe ki te papa ‘enua you step onto solid land akamou i te pito ‘enua affix the umbilical cord a’u i to’ou rangi and carve out your world tawhiao’s tongi suggests that the challenge of defending values and insulating against pillage by stealth is not likely to be achieved through an abstract process that doesn’t hook into the knowledge system it references. the tongi obliquely calls upon the whakapapa that connects people with the materials of the natural world – and their protective army of kaitiaki (guardians) – drawing the expressive whole together in spiritual concepts such as mauri (life force) and wairua (spirit). none of this needs to be stated because it is implicit in the ever-present background to the statement. in this context, tohunga/architect, user, materials, form and purpose all fold in together as one. in every language i’ve studied – and possibly many i haven’t – there is an insistent desire to connect the dimensions of place, time, and space in a successful relationship with the built world. these efforts are at full stretch when it comes to measuring success in achieving this link with the environmental context. it seems to come down to evaluating invisible qualities, an ‘essence of being’. the condition incites a need to turn to poetic language to capture this characteristic of form (relative to time and space) with word pictures; to call up images that will convey a sense of satisfaction in the experience of a successful marriage of these dimensions. architecture being involved with everything is like life itself when it is real. architecture – alive, fresh, exhilarating – yet solid and enduring. john lautner almost as economical with words as tawhiao, lautner manages to encapsulate in this one pithy statement what cannot be bettered by any amount of learned rhetoric. getting near the end of his career, he tries to capture in his notes the essence of what it had meant to spend his life developing work that met his benchmark: “architecture being involved with everything is like life itself …” — television is not bound by this limitation to words alone. māori television recently took us on a journey through our two principal islands and to some of their most picturesque locations. the series whare māori rested on dialogues that unselfconsciously led us into the territory that defines a culture.1 thirteen episodes drew on examples of unusual inventiveness in art, skilled craftsmanship, customs, religion, boldness, revival of lost arts, values, role exchanges between client and principal, characters and personalities – while at the same time delving into many uncharted areas of history – and rau hoskins delivered all this as an architect’s take on life. it was a mighty bold move, and only māori television would have dared. thankfully, the channel that takes us hunting in the bush, asks aunties for advice, gives us the best current affairs, and subjects us to excruciating moments of karaoke, sometimes takes extraordinary risks with what it delivers, which makes it the best 135 1 thirteen episodes of whare māori were broadcast between 8 may and 7 august, 2011. they can be downloaded at http://www.maoritelevision.com/default. aspx?tabid=649 channel in this country. whare māori gave us moments that genuinely gathered in the breadth of a culture, looking through a lens that observed the full spectrum of life as it happens. the picture it drew really was about “being involved with everything”, unselfconsciously revealing an inside story without drawing us into excessive opinion or critique. the series showed that there is no predictable form to the whare māori. the familiar gabled roof form of tahuhu (ridgepole) and poupou (poles), pitched at anything from 5-35 degrees, is certainly part of the story, and the echo of its ubiquitous influence is evident throughout. however, it is nowhere near as definitive as common assumptions might have it. what then is the whare māori if not that? the series preferred to pose this question, rather than answer it. even its title has an implicit message – a contradictory mix of explication and subtlety. whare māori? easy. that’s a māori house isn’t it? well, maybe yes, but only superficially and, more likely, no. for whare has meanings that can be widely applied in relation to almost anything that collects or contains, from the wharepuni for sleeping to the wharepaku (toilet) out back; the wharehinu’s simple storage functionality in a gourd, and the even more esoteric wharehou (bank of clouds) heralding the approach of wind. and māori? far beyond the notion of “native” or “indigenous” lies a cluster of meanings essentially proposing nothing spectacular; a thoroughly ordinary world, not confined by restraint or ceremony; to be māori in this sense is not to be tied to notions that define connection or identity by materiality – it is all about being. a normal house? shelter beyond ceremony or definition? māori use of language might be elliptical but it is seldom casual. the whare māori series invited us to relate not just to the form, proportions, angles and materials of the building alone, or to the hands that shaped it. it traced and retraced connections with “life itself”, with the whare’s cultural context. reflecting its true purpose, the series challenged poorly considered assumptions, so that we might connect with the māori world: with a world where processes akin to architecture are viewed, not as a means of protecting capital or ratcheting value, but accepted as normal. in this world, the structures defining space are no more nor less than a fundamental background element, the stage that allows tangata (people) to embrace in a common social and cultural intent. they are like a filament in the fabric of community purpose that lights up whenever the energy that weaves the aho (weft) of activity and people kicks in. — there’s a lot to be said for seizing an opportunity to redefine territories of information when the detritus of incomplete understanding has been hanging around for too long. the power of a documentary series spread across 13 episodes is that it has enough stretch around the edges to pick up bits of misinformation and straighten them out. where whare māori scored well for me is in the way it allowed local figures to give us the back-story straight, in candid conversations that urged us to understand the nuances of our unique bicultural world. through its conversations based around architecture, it invited us to investigate what drives the formula of tangata, wāhi (place) and wā (time/space); what it is that quickens an architecture, embracing a complex web of connections that reach far beyond the glossy magazine images of trophies of arrival; ambitions realised and statements of style, where ordinary life is conspicuously absent. we begin to understand what differentiates the world-view that gave us these māori structures from the contrived urban architecture that – perversely, and in spite interstices 12 of its professed ambitions – eschews notions of culture and association (preferring its paste-up armoury of resources, defaulting thoughtlessly to the formulaic solutions of pure functionality, delivering incomplete results devoid of any real sense of place). in this series, no site was entertained without reference to its historic associations, no space presented without people. no building merited closer inspection without its narrative context, no opportunity was lost to weave the characters and personalities who will bring colour and humanity to our understanding. the inference of the series is that the māori world of habitation and functional space does not rest at meeting the elementary criteria of place and space, but looks beyond these needs. before we have matched up all of the inputs of an authentic, and viable, waihanga/architecture, the specifics of tangata + whenua + wairua + tatai/koronga (purpose) = wāhi must be achieved. this distinction is important to māori. the proposition that two of these drivers – whenua, acknowledging connection with the land, and wairua, accepting of an extra, indefinable, dimension to that relationship – are disposable and can be superseded by an alternative evaluation process driven by analysis and pure building mechanics is not valid. you could say that the capital drive of most investment buildings – i won’t call them architecture – proceeds down a monodirectional path that studiously ignores any inference of a detrimental effect on the land or an unwelcome impact on the balance of any number of invisibles. this is categorically not the architecture of place. nor is it excused by the insidious influence of interfering regulatory structures or the pervasive interests of the supplier industries that further distort the practise. these may have created distance between architect and builder, and disturbed the intimate relationship between builder and materials, but spirit and place remain fundamental to the practice of architecture. it may have come as a surprise to some to learn that there are long-established, formal mātauranga (knowledge) process models with which to strategically plan development around our whenua (land). they have been embraced for generations and they may point the way towards future sustainable practices. they call on an understanding of those complex multi-layered drivers that include seeing space as a dynamic function of the relationship between rangi and papa; drawing on the extra-sensory capacity to engage with the wairua of a place; knowing every track formed by the waewae (feet) that tramped the land; knowing who lived here 10 generations ago; excavating an elevated knoll with a perfect understanding of how to minimise the impact of the fresh contours, while conceiving the structures that will fit a broad cultural kaupapa (agenda) ... with hoskins’ sure commentary as anchor, whare māori succeeded in taking us on that hikoi (stride) of discovery and offered us the opportunity to build a better informed picture by joining in some new dots. yet there was a time, not so long ago, when the proposition of an even match between the body of knowledge handed down to those chosen to carry on the traditions of the tohunga whakairo (master carver) and the more formal training of the architect was considered an affront to the status of the profession. thankfully, with recent progress in integrating cultures and trading the self-conscious put-down of insecurity for more generous acknowledgement of the skills of a different cultural epistemology, that quaint view is losing currency. hoskins did not challenge this divide directly, preferring to let the camera do the persuading, as it focussed on the sheer diversity of expression from location to location, carver to carver, construction to construction. 137 high points in the series? the women’s whare te rongomai wahine near mohaka was inspirational for its unique circular form – later to be acknowledged in the octagonal te rau aroha tribute to the tipuna wahine of the deep south by cliff whiting – and for the typically ingenious roof structure developed around a spare ship mast; the evocative faded-by-time hand-painted images on the poupou of a small, earthen-floored whare on the banks of the whanganui river; the intriguing influence of the two principal māori religious movements and their leaders, ringatu under te kooti and ratana under tahupotiki ratana, on their followers and places of worship to this day; the extraordinary tapu te ranga marae in island bay, wellington, an astonishing structure built almost entirely from found or recycled timber and ranging over something like 13 levels. all fascinating. but for me, the sublime detailing and perfect poise of the domestic and church architecture of john scott would be deserving of a nomination for the pritzker prize, if he was still practising. a sampling of the body of his work, spread across 200 projects, would be material for a follow-up series in its own right. john scott captured that essence of a house that “grows and blossoms ... to be strong and flourish” with an approach to architecture like that lautner described as “being involved with everything, like life itself”. in what appears to have been a careful and meticulous practice, he may have unintentionally written the manual on the quintessential new zealand house: essentially modest, nestling quietly in its landscape, and effortlessly achieving a synthesis of two cultures on quite different paths but holding the common aspiration to a life involved with everything. this series had plenty of “wow” – but not the glossy wow of blown budgets, big mortgages and grand designs. the series showed that there was clearly considerable thought and effort behind what found its way to each 25-minute episode and i’m proud of māori television for commissioning it. since 2005, it has steadily raised the bar and is well beyond the reach of the time fillers and empty-headed twaddle that take up more than 80% of the programming time of other channels. i found whare māori engrossing for the way it shifted common perceptions, similar to how james belich managed to change many misconceptions about our history and frontiers helped with our understanding of the dynamics of settlement. it would be refreshing to see more of this kind of television. production shots in te rongomai wahine marae, mohaka (video stills. courtesy scottie productions) <l:mds2u!ahjom<l!i\ 209 -, grace and mccrae houses: a review \ paul walker -::' the grace house is small, two storeys, built for a single occupant in the garden of an old auckland villa. it seems straight forward, even elegant. one simple gabled form contains a garage, kitchen, and toilet and shower downstairs; bathroom and bed up._ a second volume, single storey, houses the living room and, separated by a wide sliding door, a sun room-cum-spare bedroom. all the rooms are in fact well disposed to catch sunlight and views even from the bath tub, i suspect, a view may be had of the top of mt eden while the building organises the site intelligently to create a forecourt at front and a small private garden at back. fenestration is generous, well-proportioned, disciplined. materials, colours and finishes are disciplined too: dark-stained weatherboards, corrugated metal roof and white-painted trim outside, more white paint and ply-wood surfaces inside. all in all this is apparently a house of commodious simplicity. but a taste for simplicity seldom lasts for long and it is some time now since we were taught that the zero degree of formal rhetoric is the most contrived position of all. this tastefully minimal house is, then, not quite the open book, the black and white thing, it first appears to be. it is not simple. it is over-detailed. it is occupied not just by a modem, economical sensibility, but also by all kinds of associations and memories, that dull patina called 'meaning'. amongst others, the ghost of a bachelardian archetypal house lurks here, though there is no fireplace for it to gather at. the garage has become the densely unknown chthonic space that the cellar used to be. its unseen interior (there are no windows and i did not go into it on my visit) and the machine it shelters have a palpable presence in the house by dumbly intruding into it you have to move along and past the garage negotiating your way into and then through the place. attics, those other essential attributes of the story-book house, have a presence of sorts here, too, in the upstairs bedroom and porch overlooking the roof over the living spaces below. these have somehow slipped out of the vertical equation of the oneiric house, preferring the existence of a cottage in a garden to anything more urbane. nooks and crannies are necessary for the accumulation of domestic memories. there are many of them in the grace house sills, bays, shelves. it is over-detailed. a sort of zone in the house alongside and under the stair (clear in the plan) has accumulated these small places. there is plenty of storage, plenty of space for family secrets or for dead vacuum cleaners and other skeletons in the disciplined consumer's cupboard. 210 if this building is intrigued by ideas of houses that are essentially literary (and i think this may have been instigated in part by the client who, for instance, insisted on going upstairs to go to bed) it is also preoccupied, to a degree, with high architectural ideas. these, also, have a distinctly retro flavour. the stair participates in the dreamy psychology of the house, but by occupying its own distinctive form rather than being tucked into the rest of the house fabric it also partakes in that kind of architectural modernism in which the chief adornment of the body of the building is its dismemberment. the interesting new zealand architecture of the sixties was of this kind. the house seems mindful of this period not only in its articulation and re-articulation of elements but in various other ways too roof pitch and window proportions and placement have a 'christchurch school' flavour. the materials and colours can take us back further still, to a strain of creosoted 'georgian' suburban houses of the forties and fifties on the one hand, and to vernon brown's auckland sheds of the same time on the other. by inviting us to make these comparisons the grace house indicts its own assertion of simplicity: here, black and white are merely shades of grey. i the mcrae house in judges bay appears to engage in many of the same games as the grace house. it also looks back to the suburban domestic architecture of the fairly recent past. the vertical boards, window and door treatments, and even the direct relationship of house and car are reminiscent of the expansive suburbia of twenty-five years ago. but unlike the grace house and unlike those sixties houses which in part it mimics, the mcrae house is not composed within any vision of coherent domesticity. consider, for example, the dining room: it has no obvious, direct relationship with the other living spaces but is so immediately connected to the parking deck adjacent as to be an extension of it. you eat in the garage. guests can drive in for dinner. the kitchen and dining area has its own wooden volume. likewise, the bedrooms and the bath have their own separate box, as does the living areas half a storey down from entry level. there is no interaction in plan between them. from the exterior, too, each zone maintains formal independence at least in the drawings of the house through different roof treatments. the dining space is to have three steep top-lit truncated pyramids above, theliving room two rows of hooded skylights. the bed/bath box is already asserting its individuality with a butterfly roof, floating on glass as they always do. the butterfly is, of course, also an inversion and 211 \ rejection of the gable which is almost inevitably used on new zealand houses to contain whatever formal work may be occurring below. all of this is not to say, however, that the mcrae house is not composed or lacks coherence. but such composure as it does have is derived from the abstract disposition of its forms and not from theiconology of a typical or an archetypal house. but this suggests, again, a rather atavistic quality. these days formal procedures are usually set up only so their rules can be distorted or violated. this does not happen here. t central to the composition of the building is a three storey tower made of block as opposed to timber, painted baby blue with blotches. though it looks like a vertical circulation core to nowhere from the outside, it in fact contains three small stacked rooms, the purpose of which apart from filling a formally necessary shape is, as we say now, 'undecidable'. (the architect has, as a matter of course, assigned uses to _ them.) this oddness marks the whole house. the grace house and the mcrae house are interesting insofar as they deploy to rather different ends forms which purport to be a-semantic as well as repertoires of recent, domestically charged architectural motifs. but in neither is anything "overt. 103 interview with taira nishizawa andrew barrie since opening his tokyo studio in 1993, taira nishizawa has established himself as a leading figure among his generation of japanese architects. nishizawa’s work, which ranges from small houses to large sports facilities and makes particular use of innovative timber structures, has attracted numerous awards, including the prestigious japan institute of architects young architect of the year award in 2005, the architectural review emerging architecture award, and selection by architectural record as one of the world’s 10 “design vanguard” architects. a practitioner, academic and critic, nishizawa teaches at a number of universities in tokyo and has lectured and exhibited internationally. his work has been the subject of two monographs: taira nishizawa 1994-2004 (2004) and taira nishizawa: wooden works 2004-2010 (2011). nishizawa lectured in auckland as part of the university of auckland school of architecture & planning’s annual communiqué lecture series. supported by nz wood, he also lectured in wellington and christchurch. on may 24, 2012 he gave a seminar to students at the university of auckland school of architecture & planning, of which this text is an edited transcript. barrie [to the audience]: during my student days, it struck me that it wasn’t terribly helpful to learn how to design exceptional buildings like museums or concert halls. what i needed to know was what to do next – how to use my time at university, how to land a job, how to get established as a young architect. it’s often difficult to learn about the early days of the architects we’re interested in, so the intention of this seminar is to carry on the series of interviews we’ve done with architects focusing on their youth, and to ask nishizawa-san what advice he has for those starting out on their architecture careers. barrie [to nishizawa]: when did you decide to become an architect? what influenced this decision? any particular architects or buildings? nishizawa: actually, i haven’t decided yet. [laughs] maybe around the time i turned 40, i realised i was no longer able to do any other type of job. that was my final decision. during my high school days, i was kind of a “small genius” in mathematics. i really loved maths. other science subjects like physics and chemistry taira nishizawa and andrew barrie in conversation, the university of auckland, school of architecture and planning, 2012. [photo: melanie pau] interstices 13 bored me – they weren’t creative enough. for me, maths was the most creative field among human intellectual endeavours. then i met a great “small genius” – he was one of my high school classmates. i realised then that i wasn’t enough of a genius, and changed my direction. until then, i hadn’t had any understanding or knowledge of architecture, but in comparison to physics or information science or chemistry it sounded a little bit interesting, so i decided to study architecture. i met a certain japanese professor called kazuo shinohara. he’d actually switched his career from mathematics to architecture in his early 20s. i was surprised to hear of someone who’d made such a conversion. after meeting him, i started studying architecture seriously. barrie: so you met shinohara at university? nishizawa: yes, when i was 19 years old. barrie: when you’d already started studying mathematics? nishizawa: i stopped dreaming about maths, and began to concentrate on architecture. i was lucky because shinohara was very famous in japan. he’d built many beautiful small houses. he was not modernist – he was anti-modern – but his houses were beautiful and he had a certain kind of charisma. shinohara was, for instance, a great idol for toyo ito and kazuyo sejima. he was a very influential and important person. when i was studying architecture under him, i didn’t have much knowledge but i knew that this opportunity might be important for my life. this was during his last three years before retirement from the university, so he wasn’t serious about giving reviews or lectures to his students, but i wanted to talk to him about his thoughts about architecture. i wanted to check out his performance. i thought about how shinohara was old and must always go to the bathroom. so… i always waited for him in the bathroom at the university. in the mornings, i didn’t go to the studio but to the bathroom on his floor. i would sit on the toilet and read his books. [laughs] when he came in, i’d say, “good morning, professor. what do you think about modernism?” barrie: you had conversations over the wall of the toilet cubicle? nishizawa: sometimes. [laughs] i’d ask, for instance, “what do you think about aldo rossi?” [laughs] but you students – don’t do that! barrie: as a student, you were in shinohara’s laboratory? nishizawa: yes, the lab of shinohara and kazunari sakamoto. barrie: you were taught by them both? nishizawa: yes, shinohara was a famous architect so he invited important japanese architects such as fumihiko maki, yoshio taniguchi, arata isozaki, and shiro kuramata to give lectures. i was lucky. barrie: were there any particular experiences during the design classes that were important for you? nishizawa: the most impressive thing was that we were always reviewed by three architects – shinohara, sakamoto and a visitor such as maki or isozaki. these 105 three guys would give us comments that were different – absolutely different! it was so confusing, but it was interesting. i thought it worthy of really thinking about. that was a good experience. barrie: when you graduated, how did you go about getting a job? nishizawa: that was during the middle of the 1980s. during the mid-80s, japan was in the midst of an economic bubble, and in those days we were rich! so most of my friends went to big architecture firms such as takenaka or kaijima, but i didn’t want to go in that direction. i wanted to learn more. i wanted to go to a small architecture studio to learn about how to design and how to control a construction site. when i was 22 years old, during my last year at university, i read a certain interview between shinohara and a publisher. the magazine wasn’t a normal architectural journal but a construction company magazine. shinohara’s answers used the specific idioms of japanese construction sites, and i couldn’t understand any of it. i discovered that i needed to learn how to control and to communicate with carpenters, and so on. if i went to a big firm, that would be difficult. you can learn about the management of people – designers, consultants, and so on – but you can’t talk directly to builders or craftsmen. in those days, toyo ito and sakamoto were shinohara’s supporters, but they were almost the same age as i am now – around 45 or 46 years old. this was the time of the economic boom, so their studios were already too big – they employed more than 10 or 12 people. i thought that would make it difficult to learn quickly and directly as there were many experienced senior staff. in such offices, you must work for a few years before managing a project. so, i tried to find someone from a younger generation. kei-ichi irie is about 10 years older than me and had studied in shinohara’s laboratory. i asked many of my shinohara laboratory senpai who the best young architect was from our lab. barrie: to explain for the students – a senpai is an older student of the same professor as you. they’re a kind of classmate, but even if you’ve never met them they are your senpai. nishizawa: everyone suggested irie, so i went to his office and spent seven years there. i was lucky. i was the studio’s first member of staff – the rest were three or four foreigners – so i could be a project leader. it was a good time for japan’s economy, so there was lots of work, lots of chances to build. i gained good experience with every type of building private houses, public projects, huge private housing developments, private clients, huge companies, government. everything except cheap construction and poor clients! [laughs] barrie: so what were your important memories working from that office? what did you learn? nishizawa: my first goal was to learn how to draw sectional details. to me, sectional details look fantastic, but at university we’d traced them. we couldn’t learn enough to think about or to create new types of sectional detail. our education was inadequate for learning how to protect against rain and moisture, or how to calculate structures. so, my first goal was to learn to draw those details, which i spent one or two years doing. we didn’t have computers, faxes, or copy machines so we had to use our hands. always. i drew so much, every day … interstices 13 barrie: what made you decide to establish your own office? nishizawa: the biggest reason was that i’d experienced everything, meaning i’d experienced every situation and type of client. so i asked irie to let me leave his studio. that was the day the japanese economic crisis occurred. that was when i realised that the only thing i hadn’t experienced in irie’s studio was a cheap project for a poor client. after establishing my own office i had to begin with cheap projects and poor clients. that was unexpected. [laughs] barrie: so, you already had a project to work on when you left? nishizawa: i set up my office first, and then started meeting with people in order to get jobs. my first client was a good friend of my sister. it was a small private house. barrie: was this process of setting up on your own and doing small houses common in japan at the time? nishizawa: yes, the small private house has always been important for young architects establishing their own office. barrie: a few years earlier it had been very easy for young architects. after the economic bubble burst, it became very difficult. how did you feel about that? nishizawa: my goal was not to make money but to keep thinking about architecture, so i didn’t take the economic situation seriously. i felt as long as they were building something somewhere in the world, there was no problem. as long as they were building, they’d require new ideas to keep going. basically, i was very optimistic. barrie: did you feel that the work you were doing was moving with the times, or trying to react or criticise the architecture of the time? nishizawa: i belong to a certain generation in the japanese architectural world. the generation just older than us were very commercial architects such as kengo kuma, kazuyo sejima, and jun aoki. their work is nice, but it wasn’t enough for me. for me, architecture is more frustrating. it has huge capacity to control everything, every aspect of the environment for the humans and for all other creatures. but these older folk always concentrated on small, aesthetic aspects of space. i wasn’t strongly critical of them; it was just that they weren’t interesting enough. i always thought, “let’s be different.” barrie: what was your relationship with other architects in your generation? when toyo ito was here, he said one of his most important experiences was to meet with his friends to drink and talk. nishizawa: one of my classmates was yoshiharu tsukamoto of atelier bow-wow. tsukamoto is a nice guy. he’s far from intellectual; he’s an activist, going off to every possible place. his character is very interesting for me. we are good friends. also, i have a brother named ryue who’s two years younger than me. he collaborates with kazuyo sejima – actually, i recommended him to sejima. mark dytham came to japan after just graduation following england’s economic crisis in the ’80s. he’s also an old friend. barrie: at that time, were you interested in collaborating with those colleagues? or just talking? 107 nishizawa: no, not collaborating. most of the important cultural trends happen not around one person but between two people. thinking about rock musicians, paul mccartney and john lennon were a pair. they began something together without mccartney, lennon wouldn’t have done anything. at the beginning of classicism, brunelleschi had a good friend when he shifted from the gothic style. he and his friend donatello, a sculptor, suddenly became fascinated with ancient buildings and talked creatively about them. finally, they escaped the guilds of florence and went to rome to study the ancient ruins. so classicism began not with one person but two people. if brunelleschi hadn’t had donatello, he wouldn’t have done anything. of course, lennon and brunelleschi had great talent, but talent isn’t enough to begin something. if you have a good, deep friend, what you’re thinking can be something of a reality between you. we need deep friends to think and to talk with. barrie: do you have any advice for students who are just beginning to start their architectural studies? nishizawa: stop clicking!! on the computer. you’re better to use your hands. you have to! every time. if you write or draw something – use your hands every time. this is the biggest difference between apes and humans. it’s a very important influence on your brain. i’ve never met architects who just click, but i’ve met many who’ll grab a pencil or draw with a pen. barrie: mark dytham loves his apple products. he has an iphone in one hand, a laptop in the other, and operates his ipad with his knees. [laughs] nishizawa: i mean, you should control it. you should know how to use these instruments and tools, but just clicking is dangerous. you lose something. you must use your hands at the same time as clicking. barrie: i remember being very shocked when i started at toyo ito’s office. his reputation was as the “architect of the electronic age”, but he received email from his secretary in printed-out form. he’d then write the answer on the bottom in pencil and give it back to her. when designing, the staff would make a simple paper model and draw a diagram using a really fat pen not a beautiful drawing, but something basic and simple so that the concept was really clear. i remember being shocked at this. we had computers, of course. i’d expected a very high-tech office but it was actually quite a primitive system… nishizawa: i think human beings are very weak against the influence of tools. if you use a mobile phone, you can’t remember telephone numbers any more. it becomes a kind of “outside brain”. so you can use new stuff, of course, but you’d better control it. which part of your brain is outside and which part is inside is something you must control. don’t outsource everything. [laughs] student: i’ve noticed a very progressive thickening of the roof and wall in your later wooden buildings. it seems to be quite progressive, from 400mm at the itabashi house to 760mm at church sun-pu. was that multi-layering deliberate? nishizawa: it just happened. when i was designing the itabashi house, i realised that if i used a thicker wall and roof, i could control the various qualities of the space. so after that, i began to concentrate on that thickness, its performance, or the way it influences the relationship between inside and outside. the church interstices 13 sun-pu required specific spatial qualities. just thinking functionally about a church, it’s not much different from a classroom. but the space must feel very different, so i needed a strategy to control that environment directly. i manipulated the performance of the external walls and roof to control the light and sound conditions, which are what distinguishes a church from a normal classroom or meeting place. i’m always thinking about the natural environment. that is the big rival for architects. there are so many different varieties or types of environment in the natural world, but in comparison, within architecture there isn’t sufficient variety. we should create different types of space in our buildings. student: another young japanese architect, hiroshi sambuichi, has a similar interest in the natural environment, but at a greater scale. how do you compare yourself to him, in terms of bringing the climate into your buildings? nishizawa: he is a nice guy. [laughs] i like his personality. i like his work better than sanaa’s because he sometimes alters his style to incorporate new things. normally, an established architect has a defined style, but they then struggle to do anything outside of that. selling your style is an effective way to make money, but it’s the end of thinking or developing ideas. sambuichi’s style is not stable sometimes he alters it or makes a mistake. it’s a quality of leading architects not to have a style. so watch out! i remember when i was 21 years old, in my third year of studying architecture. i was at the architecture library reading a french magazine that showed my professor kazuo shinohara’s recent work. he sometimes changed his style drastically. it was the first time i’d seen his “last style” in a magazine. i couldn’t read the french exactly just the title and the architect’s name. the model looked like his work, but it was quite different from what i’d known until then. i felt kind of scared. it was the moment when i understood how a living architect works. living architects change day by day. until then, all i’d known about were dead architects. we’d studied le corbusier, for instance, but he was dead so we knew everything, every style. but if you lived with le corbusier, he was always changing his style and you’d always feel scared. well, not always, but he changed his style drastically several times. can you imagine how you’d feel living at that time, in the 1940s or 1950s? you might feel some horror. that’s a living architect. as a new architect, style is a little bit dangerous. living architects don’t care about style. they just care about how to keep going, how to reach out, how to extend the capacity of architecture. student: where do you find inspiration? nishizawa: from nature. nature is fascinating. the ability of artists can be compared with the performance of nature. i always feel jealous towards nature. it’s a very important inspiration. barrie: so you’re interested in outdoor activities such as hiking or skiing? nishizawa: no, i don’t like those kinds of activities. [laughs] but i mean what is happening in the natural elements – the effect of light, for instance. even in the city, you can find many types of light and sound effects – noise, wind, humidity, everything. those are all important for the space or environment. if we can gain enough control of them, we can create different types of space. those kinds of natural qualities are interesting. 109 church sun-pu, shizuoka (2008). taira nishizawa architects. [photo: hiroshi ueda] fig. 4 forest hall, to-mochi, kumamoto (2004). taira nishizawa architects. [photo: hiroshi ueda] interstices 13 void meeting room1 meeting room2 training room storage lobby reception 1st floor 1/300 2nd floor training room 88 65 gl section plan1/80 forest hall plan and section, to-mochi, kumamoto (2004). courtesy of taira nishizawa architects interstices 08 91 here, on our little sliver of land, last vestige of terra australis, we live in a place the very existence of which has been the subject of speculation since the western world realised earth might be round: but as to the fable that there are antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground credible. and, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but rather by scientific conjecture… (augustine, 413-426: n.p.). augustine should be the patron saint of architecture, not that doubter thomas, because we architects, like him, crave above all else, solid ground and certainty. augustine’s certainty was not derived from science, and i have observed how architects, too, have hung on to an old fashioned notion of the universe, even when this puts us at odds with the scientific developments of the last few hundred years or so. this is in contrast to the other arts, which have been transformed by this new knowledge, and it is particularly the case in little new zealand, where we still agonise about our identity, and our supposed distance from the rest of the world. augustine was discussing terra australis incognita, the great southern land mass assumed to be necessary as a counterbalance to the northern continents. when tasman touched our shore he called us staten land (south land), assuming we were the western edge of a vast plain, the other coast of which was just off the tip of south america, where another glimpse of shore had also been dubbed staten land. cook’s circumnavigation was not so much a discovery of land, but rather a whittling away of european dreams of the great southern land. he made a famous map of our islands, but erased much more: a continent. from the beginning then, new zealand has been a disappointment, not just to explorers, but to hunters of moa and whale, missionaries, wakefield’s settlers, diggers of gold and amber, māori, immigrants and almost everyone and everything else. and we have continued in that dour tradition: new zealand is a place where ideas come to die. just when the world is giving them up, we buy them and plant them here: colonialism, monarchism, socialism, the garden suburb, modernism, the free market, post modernism, minimalism, motorways, stucco. ... new zealand is a shaky land lurching from one crisis to the next. we mowed down our kauri forests to make farms; now our hills, nibbled raw by sheep, are falling into valleys. we planted new forests that are only good enough for pulp and paper. we can’t get a grip on our climate: all our buildings are too hot or too cold or leak. a short venting of the spleen on the subject of the architect and science bill mckay interstices 08 93interstices 08 93 here at western world’s end, we hang on to the techniques and beliefs of old europe: we are like the last of the flat earthers. we deny our beautiful sphere, and our place in the impossible antipodes. as we make our plans, they lie flat with no hint of the earth’s curvature; the tumble of terrain is combed into contours. our plans are drawn looking down, we are obsessed with the ground; we sift through the entrails of the plan, our drawings never look up. with each plan we draw, we reiterate our belief that this object, this building, this earth is at the centre of the universe. our earth is flat, stationary and immovable: all things revolve around it. we draw the sun rising in the east over our building, in a firmament revolving around our handiwork, then bowing, retreating, setting in the west. we are full of fake science, the precision of the ignorant engaged in old ritual; we reject the heretic copernican system, we cling to the rock of geocentricity. and, even still, we believe that gravity exists, a notion science dispensed with years ago. we architects believe that our precious earth emits some force of attraction that binds our buildings to it, as we stack floor on floor like a little kid balancing their blocks. we cling to the primitive celestial mechanics of the clockwork newtonian universe: we haven’t embraced the einsteinian one. in general relativity, it is the curving of space-time, due to the presence of matter, that creates the effects of gravitation. the building doesn’t sit solidly on earth; rather, through the twist of space-time, the two accelerate together. but we worship the static, the solid, the straight line; we eschew the geodesic, the complex geometries of the multidimensional multiverse. we will not abandon our little rock for the elusive shifting sands of space-time. this is why we still like paper. we seek refuge in the gross simplifications and flattening effects of that medium; the way it reduces the multiverse to a couple of scratches in the dirt, absent of the complication of people: plan, elevation, section, detail. we have been drawing like this since the pyramids were piled up, and we do not acknowledge the reductive aspect, the limiting effect of this form of representation, on our conception of architecture. then, we fold up our rectilinear buildings from the drawing; we turn two dimensions into three and think we have performed a marvellous trick, as curnow (1943) said, of standing upright here. our architects are like butchers with brown paper. before a building can be born into our world we flay the idea, we dissect the conceived body into separate elements, skins and bones, plans and details. what conception can endure this before birth? like primitive surgeons we underestimate the effect our blunt tools of representation have on stifling life, on limiting our ideas and the scope of what architecture can be. we demand that every detail be stripped bare and scrutinized and when we, in our grimly deterministic way, put the bag of bones back together, we get frankensteinian buildings, the living dead. sausages. chops. mince. that is our architectural diet here. as rem koolhaas said, the art of working drawings is not to document, thoroughly, the building, but rather to put off the act of resolution to the last possible moment, and keep design alive. and as long ago as 1927, werner heisenberg established that one cannot be certain about both a particle’s position and its momentum, not everything can be resolved and nailed down. this principle of uncertainty is at the heart of modern physics, has pervaded philosophy and the arts, but has not permeated the stony walls of architecture. interstices 08 93 interstices 08 93 we are builders, we adopt a common sense approach to the world, and this suits our little newtonian neighbourhood. but darwinian intuition is out of step with the quantum universe, that vast expanding bubble. that a block can sit on top of a block, that a stone has a certain trajectory through the air, has been drummed into us through years of evolution on earth. however, local common sense and intuition have left us grossly ill equipped to conceive of, let alone deal with, the physical realities of the quantum universe. the top of a building, for instance, is travelling faster than the bottom; time dilates, those at the top will not age as fast as those in the street, time will pass more slowly. in a lift, in a car, in an aeroplane, these effects of space-time are even more pronounced, but we are blissfully ignorant of them. however, we don’t live in an objective stream of time, we don’t even live in a universe anymore, we live in a multiverse. our world is constantly shattering, splitting into a multitude of possibilities, and none of this disturbs us as we plod along the old familiar path. i work as a critic of contemporary architecture, and each week i walk into an office, and have to smile at architects, and nod over their drawings, and listen to what their little briefs entail. i want to shake them, wake them up to the world, open their eyes to the universe. we live with myths: that australia is the closest country to new zealand; that there is only one time zone in new zealand; that hillary conquered the highest point on the earth’s surface. these are all untrue. we are living in the antipodes, an impossible place on the watery side of the world, where normal rules shouldn’t apply. this is a new land, a new world of possibilities. we spin around our star; we can walk upside down here. we are the antipodeans, the opposite footers, and even the indigenes can show us how everything is the other way round here: their word for the future means what is behind; their word for the past means in front; their word for south means above; their word for north means below (williams, 2006 [1957]). to the first europeans, the pacific was a vast emptiness dotted with isolated islands, but to those who live here it is a rich and textured connective meniscus, whose currents and waves guide us home. their vessels and buildings are just as fluid, permeable, flexible: impermanent, but real. although science leads the way in questioning our conception of the world, both practically and metaphysically, these cultural notions of time and space can open our eyes to new alternatives too; together they can influence, and transform, western ideas of architecture, time, space and our methodology, open up the possibilities of new architectural form, and enrich our understanding of how one can live in the unbelievable world of the antipodes. references: augustine. (413-426 ad). whether we are to believe in the antipodes. the city of god. de civitate dei. book xvi, chapter 9. (m. dods, trans.). christian classics ethereal library. www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.iv.xvi.9.html. curnow, a. (1943). the skeleton of the great moa in the canterbury museum, christ church. in vincent o’sullivan (ed.). (1976). an anthology of twentieth century new zealand poetry. wellington: oxford university press. williams, h. w. (2006 [1957]). a dictionary of the māori language. wellington: new zealand electronic text centre. interstices 12 on modernism’s secret anxieties gerrit confurius translated by a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul the moderns looked upon strong and enveloping, closed forms with suspicion. these forms have been ideologically suspect ever since – even though we usually respond positively to them and, on holidays, even seek them out in traditional cities. the modern avant-garde was obsessively occupied with opening, perforating and de-materialising walls. meanwhile, a fashion for neo-romantic, literary nightmares centred on anxious atmospheres in excessively closed rooms. openness, though, causes us no less discomfort. a lapse in the ability to locate and recognise space (when one no longer knows what to expect to happen in rooms) and the lack of boundaries between different spheres of action are experienced as a loss of security and personal identity. the mere fact that a room is accessible to anyone at will can cause feelings of subjection, since one can only develop coherent expectations if spaces are adequately differentiated according to their use. thus, the troubled relationship between spaces and actions, already evident in flaubert’s madame bovary (the declaration of love at the agricultural show, for instance), turns into complete dissonance with kafka. spaces switch purpose arbitrarily. the court sits in the attic, the neighbour fräulein bürstner’s room is used for negotiations. the case against joseph k. is heard in an everyday world, in backyards or waiting rooms, always in different and unexpected places which the accused does not so much enter as find himself in by mistake. one day, for instance, he finds himself in an attic. the galleries are packed full of people who have crowded in to follow the proceedings. they have come expecting a lengthy session, but conditions up there are almost unbearable. the ceiling (ceilings are almost always low in kafka) presses down on them … ” (benjamin 2005: 495-6, translation modified). we still feel kafka’s unease in the face of the dislocation of sense from space, perhaps even more so today. by contrast, the discomfort caused by rigidly defined, overly mapped-out and enclosed space appears strangely stale and dated to us. this tight link-up of space and action, which seems to render free will a chimera (as we sense it in fritz lang’s films where, without exception, people are caught up in ineluctable situations), no longer strikes a chord with us. 2 whence did the avant garde derive their certainty about the course they set for the future? recalling post-war discussions about germany’s denazification, one has to ask how anyone at that time could confidently determined how architecture could have best contribute to democracy. with a conviction that today seems grotesque, le corbusier and scharoun’s designs were associated with an un-neurotic liberality. their designs were thought to address the preconditions necessary for a fostering of democracy – something that was to be further stabilised through the establishment of town planning. 121 1 see also le corbusier (1943). the congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (ciam) were initiated by le corbusier, gabriel guévrékian and the art historian sigfried giedion (who became the first ciam general secretary). the conferences took place in chateau de la sarraz, close to lausanne (switzerland), between 1928 and 1959, as a think tank to address important architectural and town planning issues. considering the formal properties which were to characterise the ethical and political tasks of town-planning and architecture – zeilenbau (open rows of housing), orientation, light and air, formal restraint, exorcism of ornament; meandering footpaths and streets; and the strict separation of car and pedestrian traffic, dwelling and working – one realises that all these principles were later abandoned, for good reasons, in favour of a return to, for instance, perimeter block development and increased urban density. as ideological principles, zoning and the separation of functions determined all formal characteristics of modernism. in a critical light though, the dogma of the differentiation of zones with mono-cultural use becomes recognisable as a nervous and neurotic response to an excess of openness – indeed, as a conservative reaction to a kafkaesque surplus of openness. le corbusier gives himself away in his writings. in his own words, he hates the theatrical throng of the old city. the inhabitants of his radiant city were to be spared the sight of so many people, so many faces and desires. through the glass wall of a luxurious monastic cell, they were to enjoy, in “tranquillity, solitude and light” (1923), a landscape composed into the city. latent anxiety shines through his optimistic vision of the future when he observed that everything in the cities of his time was confused, everything being piled on top of each other and mixedup – and thereby compromised. these urban mixtures, caused by a rampant lack of planning, turned into a chaos that needed urgently to be opposed with order. for le corbusier, the therapeutic prescription was a “will for organisation” copied from industry. the efficiency of the city had to be improved. the city will take on the character of an enterprise that has been carefully studied in advance and subjected to the rigor of an overall plan. intelligent forecasts will have sketched its future … and the increase in its population figures will no longer lead to that inhuman melée that is one of the afflictions of the big cities. (le corbusier 1942)1 “the cycle of daily functions” (1942) in the urban areas was to be allowed to occur separately, as a chain of operations, as it could be admired in the modern factories of north america. 3 this segregation, modelled on factory organisation, served as the epitome of a healing order. le corbusier on the ville radieuse: “in the ford factory, everything is collaboration, unity of views, unity of purpose, a perfect convergence of the totality of gestures and ideas.” (quoted in ford, 2003: 13) le corbusier adapts the ostensible motif for increased efficiency through fordization – by which industrialists like michelin, thoman bat’a or henry ford had declared war on waste and loss of time in their workforce – in order to do battle against frictional losses in the radiant city, where (not missing a single chance) a diabolical tyranny of disorder is unceasingly at work. the slightest opportunity will suffice – for instance an unsuccessful arrangement of building and access ways, which serve no other purpose than providing a pretext for idle walks or the unnecessary traffic of products and materials. what is proclaimed as freedom and openness here is meant to abrogate the freedom and openness ‘raging’ in the city. not surprisingly, then, the interstices 12 2 regarding the phenomenon of the masses, see also gabriel tarde, gustav le bon, charles mackay, boris sidis, and elias canetti. calm and soothing view from up above, through a plane window on the way from one lecture to the next, becomes the model for planning. suppressed behind the drawings of designers like le corbusier or hilbersheimer lies the question of the emergence of the mass – how can intelligent individuals turn into an irrational mass? a mass, according to tarde and le bon, is a creature with altogether different characteristics from its constituent elements. the mass is susceptible to the slightest suggestion or rumour, to superstition, to the venting of spleens, to obsessions, to spectacles. sociologists and psychologists speak of the madness of crowds.2 at the nineteenth-century new york stock exchange, a new configuration emerged when european migrant masses, with an orientation towards the future and the unknown, turned themselves into individual speculators. “curbstone brokers” had capital ranging “from one dollar to ten thousand” (smith 1868: 47) and they filled “alleys, gutters, and curbstones, making a motley crowd” (48), shouting, yelling and quarrelling. the stock exchange and the streets surrounding it were dominated by the crowd, and represented all that modernist planners would come to fear: impassable sidewalks, a boisterous overflow of commotion. however, the crowd’s behaviour was no different from that of the stock brokers inside the stock exchange building: “they speak all at once, yelling and screaming like hyenas ... pandemonium is not wilder, or more disorderly.” (46) (inside, though, it takes only the call “order! order!” (47) to hush the chaos in an instant.) this throng becomes the synonym of the market, of speculation. here lurks the demon of all demons. traditionally, this phenomenon was contrasted with the educated audience of the bourgeois public. this was a public to be cultivated and conserved. attempts were made to draw a clear demarcation between a democratic public and an outside that was incapable of democracy – an outside reduced to its base corporeal materiality. amongst the public were the propertied classes, while those without property were suspected and demonised as being susceptible to mob mentality. life in the modern city was to make the existence of the mob unthinkable. today we know that those included in the public do not suffice for the integration of societies and the maintenance of economies in the bourgeois sense. a certain degree of unleashing has to be allowed: it is not enough that the rich speculate, the common people, too, must buy shares. investment is imperative: in the countries joining the european union; in the poor who are persuaded to buy houses on credit; in developing countries who must run into debt. the question is what methods are being used today to neutralise the fear of the masses; how can they be made admissible without becoming irreversibly dangerous; on what basis can trust be established and what role can architecture and town planning play? the nazis and fascists first conceived the total population (as a mass: as suggestible and manipulable) as volk and placed it under architectural direction. monumentality, mass ornament and housing estate served as guiding principles for fascist architecture. today’s intellectual reservations towards contained and monumental forms go back to these. but in the modern democracy, too, the bounding limit of the public has to be pushed out further and further, the mass has to be made collectively capable of inclusion. in the drive towards universalisation, the constitutive outside of this distinction must be integrated further and further. however, the once celebrated, critical middle-class itself now threatens to block this expansion. the latest vision is the idea of an all-inclusive democracy as it was sketched out by walt whitman: the communitarian masses are the indispensable foundation of democracy; all-embracing affect replaces conflict-ridden democratic the war of wealth (broadway poster). c.t. dazey, 1895. (flickr) 123 3 see also hans blumenberg (1997). judgement. this affect is to be safeguarded and, at the same time, controlled by participation in the money market (stäheli 2007). the crash has shown us how vulnerable this strategy is, though it could not really call the concept itself into question. now the question is how the triggers of this contagious and uncontrollable dynamic of the mass are to be minimised within this economic system, while the possibility of their emergence has to be allowed to continue to an ever-increasing extent. modern society is even especially afraid of those mechanisms because it needs the suggestibility of the masses. its non-attributable processes rely on blind obedience in order to function. blind obedience is a social virtue (stäheli 2007: 197). it is therefore no longer possible simply to contrast order with chaos – one has to acknowledge that the constitution of the social has its own dark underbelly. one order can be converted into another: both belong to the nature of the social, which can no longer be perceived without the mob that lurks under its surface. “suggestion and suggestibility are therefore not pathological conditions but rather describe basic modes of function within the social.” (stäheli 2007: 198) 4 the ‘rational’ minority of speculating experts and the masses who speculate under suggestion should appear as a unity at the money markets. the all-inclusive ideal of the popular must banish the susceptibility of this imaginary unity to hearsay and panic attacks. at the same time, though, it nurtures the need for a demarcation from the masses (and consequently the distinction between masses and public). both aspects, the proliferation of players through the admission of the masses and the demarcation of rationality from irrationality, are two sides of the same coin and have to be rebalanced over and over again. the individual has to be able to act autonomously on his or her own account, and to be suggestible and manipulable at the same time. the weakening of the border between individual and environment that occurs during the formation of masses is to become a permanent condition. outsiders must be incorporated to become amenable to calls for order. while in some ways extinguishing individual traits in favour of the mass, the stock exchange nevertheless thrives on the confidence of each individual to be better than all the others, an over-confidence in one’s own abilities and intuition, and a trust in the mass mentality of others. the shared illusion of limitless wealth serves simultaneously to foster individuation and integration. when this over-confidence collapses and turns into its opposite, panic is contagious. but in panic, too, there is individuation. further, panic greatly attracts outsiders. “panic cannot be imagined without observers taking shivering delight.” (stäheli 2007: 223)3 panic’s theatricality reinforces aspects of equality while its contagiousness tends to suspend boundaries between the individualist mentality in the bourgeois public and the mob mentality of the masses. affects, as integral aspects of the social, can be found on the side of the public as much as on that of the masses. before the amphitheatre in verona, goethe described a self-referentiality that increases and perfects itself in the phenomenon of the spectacular: … when i wandered about on its highest rim, i had the peculiar feeling that, grand as it was, i was looking at nothing. it ought not be seen the arena, verona, italy, ca. 1890 – ca. 1900. library of congress prints and photographs division interstices 12 empty but packed with human beings … such an amphitheatre, in fact, is properly designed to impress the people with itself, to make them feel at their best.” (1970: 52) for when “crowded together”, the people were … astonished at themselves. they are accustomed at other times to seeing each other running hither and thither in confusion, bustling about without order or discipline. now this many-headed, many-minded, fickle, blundering monster suddenly sees itself united as one noble assembly, welded into one mass, a single body animated by a single spirit. (52) this architectural form seems so daedalian and indispensable to goethe that he imagines it originating naturally in people’s needs and social actions. when something worth seeing is taking place on level ground and everybody crowds forward to look, those in the rear find various ways of raising themselves to see over the heads of those in front: some stand on benches, some roll up barrels, some bring carts on which they lay planks crosswise, some occupy a neighbouring hill. in this way in no time they form a crater. should the spectacle be often repeated on the same spot, makeshift stands are put up for those who can pay, and the rest manages as best as they can. to satisfy this universal need is the architect’s task. by his art he creates as plain a crater as possible and the public itself supplies its decoration. (52) the mass enjoys itself. 5 the task assigned to architecture – to concede the emergence of the masses and, at the same time, make them appear to be controlled and dominated – shows modernist conceptions to be insufficient. architecture must no longer functionally carve up the masses and channel or zone them into parts – the crowd must be allowed to enjoy itself in all its complexity. and this includes its increased suggestibility and vulnerability for spectacles. modernism promised that the impending chaos on the streets and squares could be met with ‘openness’ (though any form of openness was split at the cost of complexity into homogenous parts, which were then spatially isolated) and the fear of chaos thereby banished. today, we demand an architecture capable of bringing together the attractions of enclosed forms, the spectacularity of monumental forms, and the presence of spontaneously populated spaces. this was once propagated in the renaissance and baroque. if it were true, as current consensus suggests, that contemporary society differs from renaissance and baroque societies by a higher degree of individuation, then (insofar as one understands individuality as autonomy) precisely this socio-psychological assumption should be questioned. the self-referentiality of the mass, the self-admiration of individuals in speculation, the suggestibility toward special attractions, the over-reliance on flows of imitation, all these might reveal new possibilities when framed by donald winnicott’s psychoanalytical concept of transitional space (1953, 1967). winnicott observes an original protected space of interaction in the relation between mother and infant, later recurring in the psychoanalytic setting and also, more generally, in everyday situations and relationships. transitional space is experienced by the infant as a holding relationship; in psychoanalysis it facilitates transference, a 125 ceding of control to another who might then provide a support, as the mother did in the early symbiotic constellation, providing through her responses the first cues for self-recognition. as a spatial correlate of such interactions, the city can be conceived as a transitional space in which transference processes take place. in psychoanalysis, previously repressed perceptions of self and affect resurface in fragile and tentative ways and gain greater space; they may fuse in the imagination with the fantasised perfect selfhood of another person. in similar ways, the emotional atmosphere of the city encourages a greater degree of dependence and suggestibility. and precisely this regression to a pre-oedipal, dyadic form of existence might be what is required for the reproductive process of society today. if this is so, then this is what architecture must respond to. so far, this development has not been sufficiently thought through in architectural theory. the cause of this blind spot might just be the misrecognition of the original intentions of the modernist pioneers and their secret anxieties. if we believe today that we have overcome the errors of modernism in our re-densified cities, we only succumb to new errors. fear of the regime of the market and the capitalist economy’s uncontrollable propensity for crisis was the unconscious of modernist architecture. we can decode modernist architecture as a strategy serving the repression of a narcissistic hurt (formulated by karl marx): that, although we make history, we are powerless in the face of our own product. we, too, repress and contemporary architecture, too, is a symptom of the repression of a hurt (helping us to avoid suffering). during modernism, the ideal of the city was the factory, with good light and air and few frictional losses. today, the whole city is a casino, in which all are invited to participate, and all are registered as participants, but where only a few are winners – just as in kafka’s “nature theatre of oklahoma”, the last chapter of his novel amerika. architecture is complicit when our increased disposition towards transference makes us succumb to believing in the fallacy of the existence of an all-inclusive society. it helps us avoid awareness that a large part of the population remains in fact excluded – even though there is no rational base for this any longer. and, thus, we can avoid noticing a hurt caused by the recognition of the return of a class-society, based on the deception of the masses. references benjamin, w. (2005). franz kafka: beim bau der chinesischen mauer (h. b. jovanovich, trans.). in m. w. jennings (ed.), walter benjamin: selected writings 1931-1934 (vol. 2, pp. 494-499). cambridge, mass.: belknap press of harvard university press. blumenberg, h. (1997). schiffbruch mit zuschauer: paradigma einer daseinsmetapher. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp. ford, e. r. (2003). the details of modern architecture: volume 2: 1928 to 1988 (details of modern architecture). boston, mass.: mit press. goethe, j. w. (1970). italian journey (w. auden & e. mayer, trans.). london: penguin. le corbusier (1923). vers une architecture. paris: g. crès & cie. le corbusier (1942). charte d’athènes. ciam iv 1933. translated as le corbusier (1973), the athens charter. retrieved from http://modernistarchitecture.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/ ciam%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cthe-athens-charter%e2%80%9d-1933/ le corbusier (1943). urbanisme de ciam, charte d’athènes. paris: plon. stäheli, u. (2007). spektakuläre spekulation. das populäre in der ökonomie. frankfurt/m: suhrkamp winnicott, d. w. (1953). transitional objects and transitional phenomena—a study of the first notme possession. international journal of psycho-analysis, 34, 89-97. winnicott, d. w. (1967). the location of cultural experience. international journal of psychoanalysis(48), 368-372. 129 jun aoki interview andrew barrie ab [to the audience]: as a student, it always struck me that it wasn’t necessarily very helpful to learn how to design a museum or a concert hall. what i needed to know was what to do next – how to use my time at university, how to get a job, how to establish myself as a young architect. it’s often quite difficult to learn about the early days of the architects we’re interested in. so, given that this is a seminar for students, we thought we’d talk to aoki-san about his youth, and ask what advice he has for those starting out on their architecture careers. ab [to aoki]: when did you decide to become an architect? what influenced this decision? any particular architects or buildings? ja: when i was a high school student, i knew i couldn’t work for an ordinary company, because i wanted to be creative and because i can’t wake up at the same time every day. so, my first choice was to be a film director, and my other ideas were to be a novelist or a writer, or perhaps an architect. for me, directing films is very, very interesting because when i was a child i really liked to watch tv [laughs]. however, i didn’t know how to become a director, so i had two options – novelist or architect. i thought that if i studied architecture then i’d have a route towards becoming an architect. so, for me, becoming an architect was easier, so that’s the decision i made. anyway, in my family being an architect isn’t so special, because my aunt and one of my father’s best friends are architects. during my high school years i visited architects’ studios several times, so i knew a little bit about what they do. for me it was very, very interesting, and it didn’t look like work but like play. what kind of education did you have at middle school and high school? it was very typical for japan. we start going to school from the age of six, and it’s compulsory until children are twelve or thirteen years old. i was a very ordinary student. at that time, i very much liked art and i liked to paint. do you still have time to paint? actually, no! [laughs] nowadays, i don’t want to paint but to make models, even just very conceptual models. after i decided to become an architect, my approach to art changed. when i was a child, art was painting pictures, but now it’s threedimensional things. i prefer sculpture or installation art to paintings. you went to tokyo university. perhaps kiwis won’t understand the significance of that. tokyo university is japan’s number one university, and is extremely tough to get into. schoolchildren spend years going to cram school and staying up late studying to get in. did you go through this kind of process? when i was in my last years of high school, my aunt told me i couldn’t enter tokyo university like my father – he had studied at tokyo university. so, i suddenly decided to try for tokyo university. at that time i didn’t want to be an architect, so i applied to the literature department. my test for japanese went exjun aoki is principal of jun aoki & associates. after graduating with a masters degree from tokyo university in 1982, aoki worked at arata isozaki & associates before establishing his own tokyo-based practice in 1991. his celebrated early projects include the yusuikan swimming pool complex (1993) and the fukushima lagoon museum (1997), which won the architectural institute of japan annual award. aoki is best known for innovative boutiques for louis vuitton and the recently completed aomori museum of art (2007), a commission he won through a major international competition. aoki’s work has been the subject of an exhibition at galley ma in tokyo, and a number of monographs including complete works volume 1 (2004) and volume 2 (2007). several volumes of his writings have been published. andrew barrie interviewed jun aoki at the school of architecture & planning, the university of auckland, on 31 march 2008. interstices 09 131 university. i just made drawings and models, and one day a week i’d go to the university to show my ideas. that was my university experience. who were the professors of architecture at tokyo university at that time? when i began the architecture course, yoshinobu ashihara was a professor – he’s a kind of father of japanese modernism. then fumihiko maki came to the university, so we learned from maki-san and ashihara-san. we also we had guest professors like arata isozaki, kazuo shinohara and other architects. tokyo is a huge city, and 80 percent of japan’s architects live there, with only 20 percent living in osaka – like ando-san – or other areas. i think tokyo is a very special city – at tokyo university, lots of architects were invited to teach the students. when those outside architects came into the school, how did they teach? it was very, very interesting, as it was a kind of presentation of the architects themselves. i remember shinohara-san’s class – his kadai proposed that if you believe originality grows from the process of copying, what kind of architecture can you make? so, everybody had to make a copy, but in a very original way. it was very, very interesting – it wasn’t so much teaching as a presentation of shinohara-san’s own philosophy about architecture. how did you come to work for isozaki-san? i graduated the undergraduate program and entered the masters course. after two years of masters study, i entered the doctoral course. i wanted to be an architect but i had no work – nobody asked me to design anything. so, little by little, i concluded that i had to go to a real studio to learn to be an architect. so, i asked my university professor to find out the possibility of my entering arata isozaki’s office. i met isozaki-san, and he told me his office was then fully staffed, but he said, “if you want to wait to enter, that’s ok, but i can’t say whether or not you’ll be successful.” so, i had to wait three months or so, and one day he called me and i went to his office. tremely well. however, my test for mathematics went very, very badly – i scored zero [laughs]. the test takes about 90 minutes, but i couldn’t understand the questions. so, i forgot about being a writer and decided to become an architect. after graduating from high school i decided to re-sit the entrance exam, and studied very, very hard for a year – we call it ronin [master-less warriors]. i spent this year attending a cram school to prepare for the test. back when i was at high school i was in a band, and had no time to study. what kind of band? rock. i’m now 51, but when i was at high school led zeppelin was the most famous and interesting band in the world, so i played guitar like jimmy page. i even had the hair [laughs]. anyway, when i decided to apply for university i sold all my instruments and stopped playing. after i passed the entrance test, i bought a piano. do you still play? no. it’s too difficult to learn the piano… tell us about your time at university. in japan, tokyo university is special because the undergraduate course is four years long. the first two years aren’t specialized architectural training – it’s exactly the same course for all the engineering disciplines. this is the general course within the school of engineering… yes. you then have to decide what specialization to do, and have just two further years of study. when i began the architecture program, i was very shocked by the kadai [studio project]. this involved some virtual project, for which the students had to prepare a proposal to meet the requirements. it was the first time i felt really enthusiastic about something. i didn’t want to sleep or to eat, because i was having so much fun [laughs]. it was very, very interesting. i didn’t want to go to university for structural courses or mechanical courses – just design. i knew very few of the professors – i never met them because i didn’t go into the fig 1: andrew barrie and jun aoki in conversation in the university of auckland’s design theatre. from video by josh stewart. fig 2: jun aoki during his university years. photograph courtesy of jun aoki. fig 3: jun aoki at isozaki’s atelier. photograph courtesy of jun aoki. fig 4: jun aoki, mamihara bridge, mamihara, kumamoto, japan, 1995. photograph courtesy of the japan foundation. fig. 1 fig. 2 fig. 3 fig. 4 interstices 09 133 what contact do you have with the other architects of your generation? well, my generation is kazuyo sejima, kengo kuma, shigeru ban, and a few others. we can really only meet outside japan – in foreign cities like zurich – at the presentations for competitions [laughs]. i think the last time i met ban-san was in new york, and before that we met in switzerland. we don’t have so much contact in japan. you talked a little bit about magazines. because we in new zealand are so far from the rest of the world, we’re very dependent on magazines to find out what’s going on. but you suggested that maybe it’s not so useful to look at magazines. of course, when you’re a student it can help you. however, when you graduate from school, you have to have some originality – you have to find out what you want. so the information in magazines isn’t so important. well… this is definitely the case in tokyo. if we compare tokyo as a city with osaka, everyone in osaka is very attentive to information from all around the world – i’m often shocked by their knowledge of architecture. of course, the important thing isn’t to know the new architectural trends but the most interesting things in the world. if these things aren’t architecture, that’s ok – art is ok, i think, or something about chemistry or physics or biology – anything. anything that you’re very, very interested in is ok – these things become the seeds of your inspiration. do you have any advice for students who are just beginning to start their architectural studies? well… for me, the most interesting and most important training in architecture is a kind of testing. you need lots of discussion or comments on your projects, not only in terms of architecture but from other faculties or other people. if you receive lots of comments on your projects, you can analyze your situation and your natural tendencies in architecture. from this you can clarify the image of your own architecture – creating your own image is the most important thing. what’s your definition of a good architect? a good architect has to provide some new translation of space or of material. everybody has a common understanding of space or materials or … everything, really, and the role of a good architect is to change these preconceptions. when you are looking for young graduates to join your staff, what kind of person do you look for? my studio has from twelve to fifteen staff members, all very young. each person can stay in the office for just four years, which makes it like a kind of university. so, it’s a very, very young firm. about 100 people send us resumes or portfolios each year, and i meet several of those applicants to decide if they can enter the studio. the criteria aren’t secret – it’s very much the usual stuff. for me, i like students who will make almost the same things in the studio as they did when they were a student. looking at the portfolios, sometimes not-so-smart guys use the same idea for every project. they have one idea, for example, in a house project, but for their museum they use the same idea, and their commercial market, the same idea, and so on. these students have only one idea, but it’s very strong. i like them very much, because they are tough. if they were smarter, they’d change their minds and find a trendier architecture, but there’s some reason why they can’t move on, so i’m very curious about them. this is my only criteria. i should clarify for the kiwis that ‘entering’ this kind of office in japan is not a clear cut process. it’s usually provisional, and not everyone makes the grade. but you obviously did… i worked at isozaki-san’s office for about seven years, including several very interesting projects such as the tokyo city hall competition. however, i wasn’t such a good member of his staff. for example, if isozaki-san thinks someone is the best member of his staff, then they’ll work on international competitions – there are lots of competitions – but isozaki-san asked me to design very small projects – very, very small [laughs], like private houses, the renovation of his own house, and the renovation of the office. but, it was very good for me because i learned from the contractors how architecture is built. otherwise, a lot of the work in isozaki-san’s office is very, very big, so the staff don’t know about the architectural details but just work on the planning and think about landscape or urbanism. but i started from the details – it was a great chance to learn about architecture. how did you establish your own office? after seven years working in isozaki’s office, i became independent. however, i had no idea of what kind of things i could do, but i was keen to do anything interesting. so, my first project was a study of office space – not design, but thinking about future working styles, and so on. my second job was thinking about virtual architecture. i worked for three years or so, and eventually i got my first project in japan. it was mamihara bridge – a small bridge that was part of the kumamoto artpolis project. as you were establishing yourself, did you feel you were moving with or against the general current of contemporary architecture? i didn’t care about my position. when i started my own work, rather than becoming a famous architect, i just wanted to make something interesting. so, i don’t read architectural magazines at all. of course, publishers send us copies of their magazines, but it takes me only about one minute to get through each magazine, and so i don’t know much about architectural trends or architecture in general. what was your relationship with other architects in your generation? i think you all know about tadao ando and toyo ito. ando-san and ito-san are from the same generation. they’re the same age – i think they are now about 67 years old. sejima-san and i are the same age – we have almost the same birthday. my birthday is october 22nd 1956. these students will all send you a birthday card… sejima-san’s birthday is october 29th. when we were university students we’d celebrate our birthdays at the same party [laughs]. anyway, there is a very large and important gap between ito and ando’s generation and our generation. after the second world war, japan’s cities had all been reduced to ashes by the bombing. every architect needed to build new buildings and new cities from this tabula rasa. but by the 1980s or 90s japan’s modernization was complete, so when our generation started working almost every piece of land in japan was built up. so we didn’t want to make new designs, but to renovate something or to make something from our own private interests in architectural space. ando-san and ito-san feel some kind of responsibility towards japan as a nation, but honestly speaking i don’t feel much of this kind of responsibility. 87 czechoslovakian crystal in pavlova paradise: vladimir cacala, 1926-2007 linda tyler characterizing new zealand as the half-gallon, quarter-acre, pavlova paradise in 1972, british writer austin mitchell distilled the essence of national aspiration (mitchell, 1972). during the holyoake years, a detached house on a separate parcel of land had somehow become identified with what it meant to be a true new zealander. low-interest state advances loans after the second world war meant that this ideal suburban existence was an achievable goal even for those on low incomes. but as a writer in design review cautioned in 1953, over 40 percent of the population of cities were people “for whom a detached house standing in its own grounds is not necessarily the most practical proposition. its maintenance is too costly in terms of time, money or ability” (your new house, 1953: 88). the writer advocated building flats as an alternative: multi-unit housing development in the cities is as important to the economy of the country as a single-unit development in the suburban areas; such development has sometimes been carried out successfully in the past but it carries the stigma of the overcrowded slum with it. the need for well-designed flats is more pressing than ever before and the people who need them most are least in a position to finance their erection. this must be a task for local or national government, or for the larger private investment agencies. (your new house, 1953: 88) high-density housing was considered foreign, associated with europe and hard to assimilate, although the labour government had undertaken experiments with large-scale rental developments in cities in the 1940s. austrian architect ernst plischke later reported that the new zealand suspicion about apartment blocks was that only prostitutes or intellectuals wanted to live in them.1 housing these particular groups within the larger society was not a priority for post-war planners. with the change of government to national in 1949, opportunities arose for private investors to develop urban blocks to accommodate flats that would be affordable for low-to-middle income groups. in auckland, émigré czechoslovakian architect vladimir čačala (1926-2007) (fig. 1),2 who arrived in the city at the end of 1952, spearheaded this development. well-recognized for his glamorous avant-garde designs for homes such as the blumenthal house (1958), čačala is less well-known for his pioneering of the new materials and methods of modernism to produce a higher density of housing for private clients. in this article, čačala’s biography is sketched and his most significant designs for houses, factories, shops and churches are assayed against the proposition that the extent of his involvement in multi-unit design had implications for his modernism. appropriately enough – since apartment blocks were considered fit only for bohemians in new zealand – čačala was an immigrant from the country previously known as bohemia. vladimir oldrich čačala was born in prague in 1926, only the author would like to acknowledge the considerable help she had in preparing this article from vladimir cacala's four daughters: shas cacala, liza clark, tanya healey and vicki wallace. 1 in his self-published memoir, plischke recalls the words of a visiting housing official: “in auckland leben nur prostituierte und intellektuelle in flats” (plischke, 1989: 283). this is corroborated by cedric firth who wrote in 1949: “to the ordinary citizen, the term ‘flat’ is indelibly associated with a tall barrackslike structure with poor accommodation and poor appearance and with little to commend it.... a title, then, is required to cover flats planned to meet the modern requirements of the family – a title devoid of so many unattractive associations. it is hoped that the term ‘multi-unit’ will suffice” (firth, 1949: 37). 2 born 23 march 1926, married 9 may 1957, died 27 may 2007. ˇ ˇ ˇ ˇ interstices 09 89 later be acclaimed for their use of new materials and structural elements, were also students at the time. interviewed in 2004, čačala described his architectural training in post-war prague as being heavily influenced by the bauhaus: when the bauhaus was closed by hitler in 1933, all the students and the professors spread away from germany. a lot went to prague and that’s where i was lucky. i had those teachers to learn the clean lines and the simplicity from. the architecture school in prague was more or less run by the guys who were bauhaus. (binsley, 2004: 72) for many europeans of čačala’s generation, the bauhaus4 introduced the concept of the design studio as a kind of industrial laboratory, where ideas for mass production could be trialled. marcel breuer’s cantilevered armchairs, which were made of tubular steel and leather and were light, transparent and easily moved, with the base of the frame acting as a skid, epitomized the bauhaus aesthetic. neither fascism nor marxism proved conducive to modernist architectural design. czechoslovakia became a satellite state of the soviet union in february 1948. the economy was committed to centralized planning, and private architectural practice was banned. čačala’s father was denounced as an enemy of the people, his factory was closed and he disappeared. seven months later, in september 1949, his son escaped across the border to american-occupied bavaria. from there he travelled to hamburg and in 1950, with the assistance of the united nations international refugee organization, he gained passage to melbourne from naples on board the sitmar liner fairsea.5 he travelled under the displaced persons programme which brought 170,000 immigrants to australia between 1947 and 1953. in sydney, čačala worked as an architectural draughtsman before discovering that his father, who had left czechoslovakia six months before, had already settled in new zealand. on christmas day 1952, they were reunited in auckland, a city around a third the size of prague with a population of about 300,000 people. as an industrial designer with skills in plywood furniture manufacture from his years working in his father’s factory, čačala had no difficulty finding employment. he joined the architectural partnership of brenner associates6 which had been formed in 1949. des mullen, stephen jelicich and milan mrkusich (the latter two of dalmatian-croatian descent) had been joined by ron grant in 1950, and worked mostly on interior fit-outs, with their showroom at 79 hobson street. čačala found brenners the ideal vehicle for his ideas about modern architecture and he became a design partner in 1954. he soon found his first independent clients as well. austrians ernst gelb and his wife ilse, a seamstress, had arrived in new zealand as refugees from hitler in 1939 and prospered. they bought a north-facing section in mt albert road, opposite historic alberton, and sought to build a sophisticated house which reflected their european origins. perched atop a solid masonry basement, the wooden house is clad with vertical cedar boards and has a flat roof. a timber deck cantilevers out over the garden along the length of the house at the back, opening up the living room and master bedroom to the distant views and sunlight through french doors (reid, 1992: 75-83). two years later, in 1958, čačala was commissioned by fellow czechoslovakian émigré ernest blumenthal and his canadian speech therapist wife rachel raye blumenthal (née ginsberg) to design a contemporary house for modern living (figs. 2, 3 and 4).6 on a private st heliers section with panoramic views, čačala eight years after the austro-hungarian empire had ended with the defeat of germany in 1918. the new union of bohemia, moravia and slovakia created one of europe’s most industrialized countries, and by the 1930s, czechoslovakia was at the forefront of new thinking about architecture, design and the application of modern technologies. wooden furniture, and in particular marquetry, had a long tradition in the region, but was beginning to be superseded by a demand for chrome-plated steel and lacquer promoted by the exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes held in paris in 1925.3 as well as changing the face of czechoslovakian furniture, prosperity facilitated controversial architecture. in prague, building was controlled by a central planning authority which favoured proposals for projects that could express the prestige of the city through dramatic design. as the middle child born to furniture manufacturer vladimir t. čačala, the young v. o. čačala had a privileged insight into contemporary design in the capital city. he visited many of the newly built and most remarkable examples of architecture with his father, including adolf loos’ villa mueller (1930) and the dutch architect mart stam’s palicka house (1932), which was part of the baba housing estate (1928-40), the czech equivalent of the weissenhofsiedlung. a three-hour bus ride away was mies van der rohe’s tugendhat house (1930) in brno. built with a steel and concrete skeleton frame, with screens of translucent onyx and marquetry in exotic woods on the interior, the most impressive feature of the tugendhat house for the young boy was that the glazing at the front had been designed to retract into the floor to turn the whole living space into an elevated porch. these informal lessons in modernism were interrupted, along with čačala’s formal education, in the late 1930s when the universities in his country closed and remained closed for six years during the second world war. invaded, annexed and generally appropriated by nazi germany, czechoslovakia was not liberated by the red army until 1944. čačala enrolled at the czech technical university in prague when teaching resumed on 4 june 1945, under professor emil králik (1880-1946). karel prager (1923-2001) and karel hubáček (born 1924), who would fig. 1: vladimir oldrich čačala. čačala family collection. fig. 1 3 the furniture of bohemian cabinetmaker and marquetarian anton seuffert (1815-87), who arrived in auckland in 1859, exemplifies this fine woodworking tradition. 4 at the bauhaus in dessau in 1927, an architectural department had been set up by hannes meyer (1889-1954), a champion of functionalism in architecture, but his marxism led to his being replaced as director in 1930 by ludwig mies van der rohe (1886-1967). 5 the passport issued to vladimir oldrich cacala is dated 2 january 1950. 6 named for the mountain pass through the alps between italy and austria, where mussolini and hitler met to celebrate symbolically their pact of steel in 1940. 7 another czech architect, heinrich kulka (1900-71), had been the best man at ernest blumenthal’s wedding, yet it was cacala, who was chosen to design the house. ˇ ˇ ˇ ˇ interstices 09 91 the external vertical cedar cladding on three sides of the house with a mixture of creosote and stockholm tar, but painted the front with bands of primary colours. as a result, the north elevation was thought by the international architectural press to resemble a composition by the dutch de stijl painter, piet mondrian. named the mondrian house, it featured in the prestigious los angeles periodical, arts and architecture, which had marcel breuer, walter gropius and richard neutra as editorial advisors (house in new zealand, 1960: 26); as well as in gio ponti’s domus, published in milan (il verde “fuori scala”, 1962: 47); and the local magazine, the mirror (interior-exterior harmony, 1961: 50-51, 58).8 čačala’s reputation was assured with this commission, and he set up his own architectural practice in partnership with walter leu in 1959. as čačala, leu associates, they created high modern design for fashionable clients: an interior for vladimir and yvette kozak’s store, form, in high street (fig. 5); and a fitout for the blumenthal’s coffee shop on queen street, the kottage kake kitchen. the partnership was also responsible for the design of a factory for men’s tie manufacturer john webster in exmouth street (john webster & co., 1963: 12). in otara, south auckland, they completed a brick factory for cabinetmakers g. c. goode and co. which maximized natural light along the assembly line (g. c. goode & co., 1967: 58-59), as well as the radical a-framed church of st peter on the hill (fig. 6) and the church of st albans with exposed steel structure, both in manurewa and both designed in 1965 (bond, 1965). featuring in the parade of homes in manurewa in 1964 was the remarkable exhibition house contempora, with two-storey lounge and windowless brick west wall, which, like the blumenthal house, had an indoor garden that extended under the stairs (exhibition house, 1966: 34-37). the kay house (1959) in victoria avenue, remuera (uncluttered look, 1965: 11), čačala’s own house in lucerne road (1959) (sensitive unity, 1963: 20) and houses designed for his friend bernd koningham (konigsheimer), first at shore road, then lucerne road, showed his ability to create elegant and classic domestic designs for a new zealand lifestyle (fig. 7). created the masterpiece that has earned him his place in the annals of practitioners of the international style in new zealand. making spectacular use of cantilevering and large areas of glass, the blumenthal house creates the illusion of light construction and airy spaciousness. cars are parked under the overhanging living area, and the front door opens into an indoor garden, lush with banana plants and tropical palms. this entry is a two-storeyed space which provides light into the hall and the west wall of the living room. at the back, a wall of dark stone anchors the house centrally, with timber stair treads supported on steel members cantilevering out from it. as with some of his later blocks of flats, here the staircase in its garden has a space-forming role, creating a heart for the whole building from which the other areas are derived. čačala’s use of bluestone cladding on the staircase wall in the blumenthal house, to create a centre of power for the house, derives from european prototypes. like the marble walls of mies van der rohe or the utah rock used by richard neutra for the interior of his desert homes, čačala’s volcanic stone is both functional and decorative. sourced locally in a typically modernist fashion, this indigenous material relates the house to its auckland geological context. rather than it becoming a heavy, dark presence in the house, its surface is enlivened with white pointing in the living room area. finishes throughout the house combine natural and cultural references. built-in furniture in the bedrooms and wall panelling have a mahogany veneer, while the cabinets in the living area were painted red, grey, white and black and suspended miraculously clear of the floor, being dubbed a “suspended utility entertainment wall”. like the dark-stained timber houses of vernon brown and the group from this period, čačala finished fig. 2 fig. 3 fig. 4 fig. 2: blumenthal house, 1958. čačala family collection. fig. 3: blumenthal house at night. photograph by ted mahieu. čačala family collection. fig. 4: plans of the blumenthal house, 1958. čačala family collection. fig. 5 fig. 6 fig. 5: interior of vladimir and yvette kozak’s store, form. čačala family collection. fig. 6: church of st peter on the hill, manurewa, 1967. čačala family collection. 8 the ladies’ mirror (1922-26) was superseded by the mirror: new zealand’s national home journal which was published by henry kelliher of dominion breweries as a vehicle for his views on monetary reform. the last issue was march 1963. interstices 09 93 to extend to high-rise developments continued to grow. a 27-unit block of flats at 49 st stephens avenue was completed in 1969-70. next, for e. lichtenstein & co ltd., an onehunga wool scouring company, he designed the six-storey block of 60 one-bedroomed flats in gladstone road, parnell (now the barrycourt motel), which was one of the tallest buildings in auckland to use concrete block structurally. by 1978, also for the lichtensteins, the northcrest apartment block of nineteen flats at the corner of kepa road and kupe street in orakei was finished, proving the reliability of the material and even (controversially) slightly exceeding the height restriction for the area. a cursory tally of the developments listed in čačala’s job book for the two prosperous decades from 1954 until 1978 shows that the inner-eastern suburbs of auckland were populated with over twenty čačala-designed apartment blocks, with others appearing on the north shore and in herne bay.11 generously proportioned, with floor areas typically of 1400, 1600 and 2000 square feet (or 131, 150 and 185 square metres), these were distinctive and luxurious flats, which peter shaw describes as presenting a “convincingly ‘modern’ look to their inhabitants. much use was made of textured wall finishes, including hessian, exposed aggregate and a variety of sprayed-on surface finishes, which could be highly effective if used sparingly.” shaw concludes, “cacala, employing a minimal analogy, advocated a certain amount of repetition of motifs in order to produce a unified effect in matters of form, texture and colour” (1991: 125). this tendency towards standardization shows that as a european modernist working in new zealand in the post-war period, čačala endeavoured to overcome distance by reiterating the bauhaus aesthetic which had nurtured him. his interpretations of this abstraction in the local context were circumscribed by the limited tastes and resources of his period, but amongst his fellow émigrés, he found a sympathetic clientele. his multi-units introduced the principles of functionalist architecture to the private housing development context. the rethe distinguished designs for individual houses from the 1950s have somewhat eclipsed čačala’s reputation for multi-units later in his career. he had a longterm interest in rental housing, and even his most glamorous homes often included self-contained flats which could be rented out to provide owners with income. providing his fellow investors with good returns,9 čačala’s approach was bold and innovative. in his multi-units, it is possible to see an antipodean parallel to mies van der rohe’s low-rise townhouses and pavilion apartment designs in illinois, where the introduction of externally projecting mullions at the module reference points makes the elements of the building’s structure visible. as early as 1954, čačala built his first block of four two-bedroomed apartments at 100 st stephen’s avenue in parnell. using first brick, then concrete and finally reinforced concrete block in combination with large areas of glass, čačala moved towards a miesian fusion of structure with transparency over the next twenty years. unlike mies, his uppermost concern was always affordability. with his first multi-units, he took care to comply with the conditions for a state advances loan by keeping the cost of each to £1000 so that they could be individually purchased. his next development of eighteen one-bedroomed flats at 16-18 st stephen’s avenue complied with the town planning department’s restriction on the number of occupants zoned for that area of land but was also a commercial proposition for a small number of investors. the trend here was capitalizing on valuable land by increasing the density of development, often beginning by buying a section with a single house, removing it and building multi-units in its stead. this approach is epitomized by the reinforced brick paritai drive development of 1965 (fig. 8). similarly, the ‘seabreeze’ flats at birdwood crescent10 represented a kind of system-built housing, based on european models. constructed in reinforced concrete block with winstone vibradec floors and long-run roofing, these flats were quickly and economically erected, and were the prototype for the larger scale apartment buildings. čačala’s confidence in the potential of his materials fig. 7 fig. 8 fig. 7: koningham house, 1960. čačala family collection. fig. 8: home units in paritai drive, 1965. čačala family collection. 11 the job book includes the following: 1954 four two-bedroomed apartments, 100 st stephen’s avenue, parnell 1958 eighteen one-bedroomed apart ments, 16-18 st stephen’s avenue, parnell 1960 fifteen one-bedroomed apart ments, 13-15 freemont street, parnell 1962 seafield flats, nine apartments, 3 birdwood crescent, parnell 1962 two apartments, titai street, orakei 1962 fifteen apartments, milford road 1963 four apartments, glendowie 1963 rodnal flats and house 1963 eight apartments, gillies avenue, epsom 1963 apartments, hamilton road, herne bay 1964 six apartments with shops, coates avenue, orakei 1964 three apartments, 5 hempton drive, orakei 1964 27 apartments (eight studio, eleven one-bedroomed, seven two-bedroomed and a penthouse), 49 st stephen’s avenue, parnell 1965 apartments, 11 mt eden road, epsom 1966 thirty apartments, view road, mt ßeden 1967 twelve apartments for wiseman, edenvale road, mt eden 1968 thirty apartments, 49 esplanade 9 rents are documented as £7.10s for a one-bedroomed and £8.5s for a twobedroomed flat in 1967. 10 jointly developed by cacala with the blumenthals as investors, this scheme comprised six two-bedroomed and three one-bedroomed flats with sundecks and living rooms facing over the city and waitemata harbour. ˇ ˇ interstices 09 sulting architecture responded to the reality of commercial imperatives without compromising the way in which the visual logic of the architecture derived from the qualities of materials and the nature of construction processes. by maintaining the aspirations of modernism in this way, čačala demonstrates his lasting commitment to the international style, creating a crystalline architecture which endures in its pavlova paradise setting. references binsley, j. (2004). straight edge. new zealand home and entertaining, (august-september), 72. bond, s. (1965, july 24). church affairs: plans for two new manurewa churches; latest styles. auckland star. čačala family collection. exhibition house at manurewa (1966). new zealand home and garden, (november), 34-37. firth, c. (1949). state housing in new zealand. wellington: ministry of works. g. c. goode & co. ltd, factory at otara (1967). home and building, 29(12), cover, 58-59. house in new zealand by v. o. cacala, architect (1960). arts and architecture, (december), 26. il verde “fuori scala” (1962). domus, 391(6), 47. interior-exterior harmony created by planting an indoor garden and repeating inside colour outdoors (1961). the mirror (august), 50-51, 58. john webster & co., factory at exmouth street (1963). the new zealand draper, 43(517), 12. mitchell, a. (1972). the half-gallon quarter-acre pavlova paradise. christchurch: whitcombe & tombs. plischke, e. a. (1989). ein leben mit architektur. vienna: locker verlag. reid, g. e. (1992). vladamir [sic] cacala and the gelb house (1955). interstices, (2), 75-83. sensitive unity emphasized by auckland architect vlad cacala (1963, june 10). auckland star, p. 20. shaw, p. (1991). new zealand architecture from polynesian beginnings to 1990. auckland: hodder & stoughton. tyler, l. (2007). vladimir oldrich čačala, architect, 1926-2007. architecture new zealand, (september-october), 29-30. the uncluttered look – inside and out (1965, november 13). auckland star, p. 11. your new house … or would a flat suit you better? (1953). design review, 5(4), 88-89. road, mt eden 1970 eighteen two-bedroomed apart ments, 9a esplanade road, mt eden 1970 fifty apartments, 33a edenvale crescent, mt eden 1970 sixty-one apartments, 18 gladstone road, parnell (now barrycourt motel) 1973 two flats and a house for mr bennett, 69 ngapuhi road, remuera 1973 five apartments, 33 arthur street, ellerslie 1973 four apartments, 12 coleridge street, grey lynn 1974 northcrest apartments, 160 kepa road, orakei interstices 13 writing (lines) alive linda marie walker first half, four scenarios scenario one where to be – personally, as a person, as a living-creature, or how to-be, how to hold oneself physically, mentally, emotionally, when writing a text, this one, now – is the thought this writing begins with, that initiates, or initialises, this collection of words, and temperamentally affects further thoughts as they come to mind. this makes writing, in its making (and in public form), propositional; propositional in its sense, its language, its relation, or reticence perhaps, toward (its blows upon) the body (like weather, voices, health, sleep) – and in its incapacity, or tenderness, to do what writing’s supposed to do, or meant to achieve. two “difficulties” arise, whose images, as ideas, may crinkle-up what comes after their vague descriptions. “difficulty” though is already contestable, as in “difficulty” lies a type of work; this is work that paves the way for ease, or so as to come to ease, to “doing” and “making” inside “difficulty” itself. nevermind, and, in fact, this “technic” of the-difficult may only suggest a “plying”, a way of working, handling, weaving, constructing, joining, a “going-on” into the medium (or material – of fibers, cell, words, memories, forests, etc), of cracks, fissures, knots, holes, splits.1 difficulty splits: di = apart (or not) and facilis = doable, makeable, yieldable (and then “facilitate”, to make easier); and so difficult (caulked) gives: apart from (or not) easily doable. the first “di-facilis” is: i take care of who or what i am in the scenario of the writing; the second “di-facilis” is: i easily (facilitate) slip and fall and cause a scenario that will have to be taken care of too, or will in some unknown way help or hinder me and the writing (i can fall apart, seize up, require repair (maybe even caulk up the crack)). where does one put oneself, or leave oneself, to write a text about “something” even though, simultaneously “something” has to-do with one’s self (being one’s time, and thought, and labour); nevertheless, it is the “topic of something” that the writing is usually used for, the “topic” is the “about” of the writing, or so it seems, and one’s self is not the “about” of the writing (or not announced as such). writing takes fits and starts, bits and pieces, adding and subtracting, scratching and scribbling, glue, sticky tape; time is the heart of the process, the passing of life, the life-span. the time of life comes into writing, and writing comes into the life of time, into the taking-to-heart (or, taking-into-heart) of living: at what point in life is the person-state, and what “governs” this point amongst other infinite governed points in the world; this is an issue at play in the writing of writing (in imagining that writing has its own imaginative life), or the conduct of life as a life writes-writing.2 scenario two in michel foucault’s lecture from february 17, 1982, one in a series of 24 lectures given as a course titled “the hermeneutics of the subject”, he talks about the careof-self in relation to knowledge-of-self, and this knowledge necessitating what he calls a return to (one)self. this return is an ancient return, and care is not “care” as commonly understood; rather, it is a type of preparation for this world, for the self who is in “this world”, and for the self who must be free to leave “this world”: 1 leonard cohen’s lyrics for “anthem”, from the 1992 album the future, includes: “ there is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.”; hélène cixous writes, “the ark has a crack, where the worms that chew our lives during our lifetime come in. i caulk it” (2011: 76). 2 i am touching upon the work here of james hillman (2007). 45 it is not just a matter of attending to yourself, of focusing your gaze on your self, or remaining alert and vigilant with respect to yourself, as in the … “naked” idea of the care of the self. it involves a real shift, a certain movement of the subject with regard to himself, whose nature we will have to investigate. the subject must advance towards something that is himself. (2001: 248) i was already wondering who was writing this text at the time of coming again to foucault’s lecture. the wondering, initially, was not so much “who”, but “how”: how is it that writing, a writing, comes to be what it is; where does it begin, for how long has it been coming, and in the wake of what pleasures and displeasures and their conscious and unconscious affects; that is, what is a writing’s passage, what is its life before life, as it comes to life, into the rhythms of phenomena, of things and conditions; what is it in the minuteness of its substance, in the face of the vastness of existing writing, and what am i in its eyes. one absorbs the loss of oneself in the writing-topic; one ignores or side-lines one’s self (out of sight and sound, feigns one’s disappearance) for the produced-thing. soon one forgets that one has vanished for the “interests” over one’s own live body (one has died right before one’s work). and yet, only i can be the one writing, the one enmeshing in the process of conjuring words, of trying to remember me, as i pass before my own eyes on the page. this remembering is, in the relationship (or return) to self (me), an act (however small) to recall-to-memory what has happened, what is happening now – with the animals, the weather, the law, the food, the family, the garden; what is to-be remembered is to-be evident, to be the-person and to-be at-ease ( facilis) in being the-person, implicated, and at various distances from what i see and what enframes me as a subject of subjectivity. this governing, of and by oneself, that comes into writing (as a fact of being part of many institutions) is compelling – and into the body as the “being” compelled – in terms of “history”; this governing might be vague or strident. foucault writes: … if we understand by governmentality a strategic field of power relations in their mobility, transformability, and reversibility, then i do not think that reflection on this notion of governmentality can avoid passing through, theoretically and practically, the element of a subject defined by the relationship of self to self. (2001: 251) i negotiate (with) my self (in this body) in a complex field of infinite and unexpected powers, some sympathetic, others antipathic – this is the world close-by (in direct touch with the-person-me), this then is the world of myself (a continual affected body in radiating space); the-person that writes contemplates herself (watches herself search for words to extend sense here, and fail): we must [says seneca, in foucault] turn around to contemplate the self, in the very moment of flight … it is the flight of time that is involved here, rather than the sage’s flight or retreat. in the movement of time that carries us to the final point of our life, we must turn our gaze around and take ourselves as the object of contemplation. (2001: 263) this “turn” would require practice, or a (creative) practice, an activity, to contemplate with (in the company of its material needs and limitations), to be in concert with, so as to watch (to experience) my/self as “something” making “something”, to see how i “do my work” in time, as time passes; to watch making, to watch my/ interstices 13 self in “the flight of time”. this “turn” is turned (around; it is pivotal; it circles, or faces the other way) in gravity; practice might entail moving through and against the forces of gravity – like an athlete or a dance (or a writer; or in the act of ordinarily walking, running, jumping) – everyday practices of attention to the tiny “bones” and soft “tissue”. practice is learning, turning (going around) is, as well, a movement of the soul as well as the development of freedom and calmness to “depart”.3 there are techniques to learn – systems and arts, complex labyrinthine knowledges notions and concepts (like recipes and formulas for magic (the transformation of energies: the seeing of colours, shapes, ghosts; the hearing of trees, animals, stones) – for mind and body’s imagination, its image-making heart-role, during the brief time given to create “self” and the tiny space “self” occupies in the world. scenario three i began this writing before the two scenarios above; that beginning is now later in the paper and begins with a sentence i was trying to resolve as a sentence: “alchemical moments; the alchemy of writing; that is, not ‘the writing’ but the activity, the mixing and stirring, the waiting.” i meant that writing is not, as a text, alchemical – although eventually it is (in its taking place somewhere in time-past) – but that the labour of its production is alchemical. i was “trying” to write an underside or a thin (convoluted) skin or an interior space (something that is usually hidden or at least unsaid); trying-out, attempting, endeavouring.4 i was trying, in the sentence, to connect the doing of “writing” to another old practice that puts various substances together, in various proportions and strengths, through a long process (of ritual, spell, heating, cooling) to make them something else, unimaginable even: i was putting a story into a sentence. now this “story” is later in the text, below the scenarios, or substances. “trying” is a practice, an endless attempting, in this instance, to write with a technic-without-technic tracing-movement (small moves toward/with small moves; perhaps then, “a scenario” is a small-event, or a small-shape, in history). however the beginning of the second half of this text – influenced by francois jullien’s the silent transformations – (about the slow cumulative changes that turn love into hate, strength into weakness, light into dark), and, as mentioned, michel foucault’s lecture of “17 february 1982, first hour” – made possible a pause, a suspension, as someone (i remembered) was writing the writing, and was therefore a “topic” with the topic being written about (writing); there was silence, memory-without-memory, forgetting-without-forgetting. scenario four the writing that begins with the alchemy-sentence is aware of scenario one and scenario two although it was being written before the scenarios, to some degree. initially, the text aimed to write about the writing of hélène cixous as a-life-writing, a-life-in-history, a land/personscape, a transforming-selfscape; this emerges in non-linear time, in fractal “figures”; shards of thought and feeling are caught, like dust, as they flow (onto and through matter) like dreams (not great big jumps, but tiny shifts as if “turning”: how limited the imagination is. ‘go with him to the last train’ had just taken the place of the last hour, now put off to the station, and never had i felt so poor in spirit so dried up, so lacking in great and admirable ideas, so ill served by memory, vain regrets needled me, i haven’t prepared for the exam, nothing comes to mind, ah if only i could reread plato, 3 “this is to say, we should seek our objective, happiness and ultimate good in ourselves, in our minds, in the quality of our soul … what is important is to be free to depart, to have the soul on our lips. … and being ready to die” (foucault 2001: 265). 4 the macquarie dictionary, 3rd edition, the macquarie library pty ltd., university of nsw, sydney, 1999: 2270. 47 montaigne, here we are, a reprieve is granted me, i mean him, a day is rendered deific, and in advance unforgettable, and there i am thwarted by the advent of a delay which fills me on the one hand with archangelic bliss, on the other hand and at the same time with the inertia that prefigures death. (cixous 2011: 18) these “shards”, as they come-and-go, create “circumstantial” writing that forms and unforms. however, i returned to self (perhaps though not to the “real-self”) via making, like objects – vaguely imagining the four sculptural works below, from a series by louise haselton, titled “veto group 1 & 11”5 – scenarios 1, 2, 3 (& 4) to see if i could see what i become in writing, or have already come-to-be; writing though writes beyond me-subject, far ahead. fig. 1 louise haselton, veto group 1 & 11 (2011) [selected objects]. second half, many lines alchemical moments; the alchemy of writing; that is, not “the writing” but the activity (the labour, labouring), the mixing and stirring, the waiting.6 what i’m “trying” to come-to in writing is unscripted (as a form), is unintended (as an outcome), and is a compound body, impermanent, probably excessive and emotional and dependent. the text, in its making, becomes always-other (in its passing), being momentarily here, and in a sense, “plastic”, having form that bursts its own form, and yet is also a resistant (having visible and invisible attributes and subsequent laws). this writing is an artwork (paintingor drawing-like, only suggestively so) rather than an informational vehicle for a “topic” – it represents itself as itself and is 5 extracted from louise haselton, “veto group 1 & 11”, in the exhibition titled errand workshop, contemporary art centre of south australia, adelaide, july 2011; materials include: coral, straws, sea sponge, clay, rubber, cork, brass, bronze (see also, footnote 7). 6 the use of the word “alchemy” here is intended in the spirit of its commonsense: any magical process of transmuting/ transforming; with “magic” meaning an act, an activity, of producing effects by supernatural agencies or forces (or irresistible influence), a reality outside “reality” (extra-real, magic-realism), and of course “reality” is a realm at issue; “chemical” plus “al” (the) = the-chemical; “chemical” from the greek base kheo, to pour, flow, melt; and from the greek khumos, the juice, an infusion: the-mix of juices that become other than themselves; substances touched by substances. see: taussig 2011; antonin artaud’s spell-casting in derrida and paule thévenin 1998; brian massumi 2011 for fine sprinklings/ripples of the magic of processes of life throughout – via alfred whitehead, william james and gilles deleuze: “you have to open [things] back up. you have to give the thing its distances back ... [deleuze] quotes francis bacon: you have to make a sahara of it. you do this, in bacon’s words again, as a “matter of fact”. not as a matter of principle. not as a matter of opinion. … not to represent. not to reflect. instead, as an event. in a drop of lived relation that has a style all of its own, that exemplifies its own singular-generic logic, and is as really appearing as it is infinitely expansive.” interstices 13 its own subject; in that mode it seeks and keeps company, it is sociable – words, thoughts, sentences, orders, punctuations, senses, appearances, times, contexts.7 the care of the life of the “thing/text/self”, of its movement toward, or away from, what it “is” (in that it already is on or within a trajectory, acknowledged or not) is an art (better perhaps to say “fiction” or “poetry” or “space”) – the establishing of a tekhne (a set of practices, that are dependent themselves upon the actual state of the self) for which a sense of health is primary, whether robust or fragile. writing moves from one point to another, traveling, traveling, negotiating as if aiming for a place, somewhere unknown and temporary. this shelter, or port, that is sought is a home (a home on the way home). this invokes the setting-out, the writing, to be something of an over-the-sea-passage, exhausting, time-consuming, and hopefully funny and joyful, a longing for arrival/rest. it is simultaneously a trip for the self: … this idea of navigation [i have used the word ‘negotiation’, thinking less of destination] … this dangerous journey to the port [of the self advancing towards something that is (her)self] … implies a knowledge, a technique, an art, in order to be undertaken well … a complex, both theoretical and practical knowledge, as well as being a conjectural knowledge, which is very close … to the knowledge of piloting. (foucault 2001: 263) the use of these ideas (“navigation”, “piloting”) might help glimpse another sort of life; a life that doesn’t give-up “the self”, as a requirement of engagement (and value). tension gathers around the task of navigation/negotiation, amidst the conditions of political power, and of remembering the relationship with oneself that includes the things one thinks about, imagines, and makes (often to the governed beat of a governed drum).8 can writing learn about itself, discover what it is (or how it might otherwise-be) and how it can conduct its life, so as to “… investigate what ought to be done … [rather] than what has been done” (foucault, quoting seneca, 2001: 269); what does writing turn to (or away from) so as to best spend its life (so as to be ready to die); to live then, for-life: “… an enterprise of [delicate] health …”, writes deleuze (1997: 4); be/fore life perhaps, writing that is just before oneself, just before one gets to oneself as life, there, it leads, but is also that which is right before/under one’s nose (or eyes). a writing that, in its coming to be, becomes writing: “the ultimate aim of [writing] is to set free, in the delirium, this creation of health or this invention of a people [to which i must belong], that is, a possibility of life” (deleuze 1997). writing works with form (it works into form, it works in the community of forms), it appears, is visible, has affects. if we keep repeating, to more or less degree, the same form, then what “idea” or “limit” or “prejudice” are we blind to (blind in that we cannot see we cannot see), in that the form as the “acclaimed” form, hides within it a way of structuring knowledge (or living), a way of constructing meaning in terms of particular framings of time and of space (linear (beginning, middle, end) or circular (with a centre, a receptacle), tenses, organisation, clarity, etc). how, asks catherine malabou, can we “… think form itself in a more subtle and supple manner?” (2010: xviii). jacques derrida and jean-luc nancy (and others) conceive of time as spacing (“the becoming-time of space and the becoming-space of time”) (malabou 2010: xxi); a way opens for thinking around “plasticity”, around the materiality of form (and not opposing and matter), a plasticity that is both elastic and resilient, explosive and proliferating. writing materially, in terms of plasticity 7 louise haselton’s objects in her exhibition “errand workshop” (see footnote 5) provide the visual occurrences for this “sociality” – they are purposeless, yet fascinating, they give pleasure. michael newall asked haselton: “reappraising the cast-off and overlooked seems a kind of strategy in your work. is that right? it seems at the root of many of the pleasurable surprises and uneasy moments your work delivers.” haselton responded: “re-presenting the overlooked is important in my work. i’m interested to see if the simple act of presenting something cast-off can be restorative. it’s very satisfying to scrounge for unloved materials and objects and then resuscitate them. that can be simply through giving them new company, by combining a rock with some packaging, say, or some shells with chain; to point to another life or function something could hold. the potential of things can lie latent and be animated through a simple act” (extracting response: michael newall in conversation with louise haselton, in louise haselton, errand workshop, contemporary art centre of south australia, adelaide, august, 2011: 22). 8 “…. what i mean is this: if we take the question of power, of political power, situating it in the more general question of governmentality understood as a strategic field of power relations in the broadest and not merely political sense of the term, if we understand by governmentality a strategic field of power relations in their mobility, transformability, and reversibility, then i do not think that reflection on this notion of governmentality can avoid passing through, theoretically and practically, the element of a subject defined by the relationship of self to self” (foucault 2001: 252). 49 – giving, taking, shattering – is a branching or diverging endeavour; derrida, in the foreword to his book on jean-luc nancy, sets out this way: hypothesis: it’s going to be a lengthy tale with mythological overtones – ‘one day, once upon a time …’ pruning, omitting, retelling, lengthening, with little stories, with a succession of touches touched up again, off on one tangent and then another, that’s how i’m going to sketch the recollections of a short treatise dedicated to jean-luc nancy that i have long been dreaming of writing [on aristotle’s on the soul] – a murky, baroque essay, overloaded with telltale stories (wanting to spell trouble), an unimaginable scene that to a friend would resemble what has always been my relation to incredible words like ‘soul’, ‘mind’, ‘spirit’, ‘body’, ‘sense’, ‘world’, and other similar things. (2005: 7) it’s endless; writing becomes un-enclosed and not re-enclosable, spaced-out, deferential – awaiting more life-living, awaiting the blossoming of a different brain; a writing that is inconsistent (and re-worked and re-edited, re-cycled, re-composed). from cixous’s writing i feel how life moves within thought; i feel the movement of thought in writing as writing comes to live in the world; i feel how the world moves through the circumstances of a body at the time of its time, in writing. the philosophy/poetic of writing orients her writing from within (inside-out); her writing writes orientation, slips and slides over-the-seas of languages, tenses and sensations. writing like cixous (or anyone else) would be unproductive, and would miss the purpose of “circumstantial” writing, a writing that must always be itself, in relation to the one-writing; each writing is then of its “own-itself”, a “re-presentation” as a presentation unlike any other presentation – that is, how something is (uniquely, personally) seen, what it is (the seen) as “remains”, as marks, as traces; for example, what have i been told/read, why was it told/written like that, how (with my disposition) do i then tell/write? when writing writes (as if) fiction-writing non-fiction, when writing re-calls, callsout, it is humble, as it gathers ground, bit by bit, inside the idea or/and the self; it can’t keep its distance from demons, ghosts, secrets, pain, murder, loneliness, ecstasy, love, birth, death, addiction – from the hauntings, from the heart and soul, from being unstuck. cixous writes: … i don’t stick to the side of conceptual reasoning, even if there is a certain capacity for abstraction there. in my text everything remains stubbornly concrete. the material for any text of mine is the raw stuff of everyday life. there are cars and very specific makers of car[s], saucepans, jam jars, plane tickets – all the accessories of life, both as common objects and as metaphors. (2009: 9) this writing is spread-out, close to the ground, and in-memory of its subject, and of the subject who-writes. derrida, writing on the death of his friend paul de man, and on his use of the phrase in “memory of”, writes that “… any name, any nominal function, is ‘in memory of’ – from the first ‘present’ of its appearance, and finally, is ‘in virtually-bereaved memory of’ even during the life of its bearer” (derrida, in royle, 2009: x). writing is in-memory of others and their memory of memories (of others). interstices 13 writing emerges in writing by differing speeds, textures, inserts, erasures, coming into shapes and forms one after the other, as “objects”, as “entities”, with their own internal qualities and durations, and affected by their specific close-encounters (their place in the writing’s arrangement). the text alive, a world of space and time in which strange situations and events can arise and dissolve. if the text looked back, what would it be as a creature/world (at every new appearance); what would look at me (and with what type of eye), and what would it see; if i looked into its gaze what would i see, and what would i be in that turned-back gaze; in the meantime there is this arrangement, a preparation for trying-again – lines making (for care) pockets, receptacles, cavities, of lineages; linings in/for the world. references cixous, h. (2004). the writing notebooks (s. sellers, trans.). london, new york: continuum. cixous, h. (2009). white ink: interviews on sex, text and politics. new york, ny: columbia university press. cixous, h. (2011). hemlock: old women in bloom (b. bie brahic, trans.). cambridge, england: polity press. deleuze, g. (1997). literature and life. in essays critical and clinical (d. w. smith & m. a. greco, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. derrida, j. & thévenin, p. (1998). the secret art of antonin artaud. (m. a. caws, trans.). cambridge, mass.: the mit press. derrida, j. (2005). on touching – jean luc nancy (c. irizarry, trans.). stanford, ny: stanford university press. foucault, m. (2001). 17 february 1982: first hour. in the hermeneutics of the subject: lectures at the collège de france, 1981-1982 (g. burchell, trans.). new york, ny: picador. hillman, j. (2007). the thought of the heart and the soul of the world. new york, ny: spring publications, inc. jullien, f. (2011). the silent transformations (k. figalkowski & m. richardson, trans.). london, new york: seagull books. malabou, c. (2010). plasticity at the dusk of writing: dialectic, destruction, deconstruction (c. shread, trans.). new york, ny: columbia university press. massumi, b. (2011). semblance and event: activist philosophy and the occurrent arts. cambridge, mass.: the mit press. royle, n. (2009). in memory of jacques derrida. edinburgh, scotland: edinburgh university press. taussig, m. (2011). i swear i saw this. chicago and london: the university of chicago press. interstices 12 an early version of this paper was presented at the conference the intimate metropolis: domesticating the city, infiltrating the room at the architectural association, uk. the final scene of rossellini’s rome open city (excelsa film 1945) life at the periphery: the urban politics of neorealism in post-war rome annmarie brennan the traumatic disruption of everyday life caused by world war ii and the reconstruction that followed reconfigured the relationship between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ spaces in post-war rome. this transformation was projected onto the neorealist screen in different forms, reinforcing the crucial shifts between centre/ periphery, domestic/urban, interior/exterior. films such as roberto rossellini’s rome open city (roma città aperta, 1945), vittorio de sica’s bicycle thieves (ladri di biciclette, 1948), umberto d. (1952) by de sica and cesare zavattini, and pier paolo pasolini’s mamma roma (1962) presented realistic experiences of the city, demonstrating the effects of economic development and how the traditions of the italian domestic interior were forfeited for economic and social mobility. the peripheral, which included the group of citizens relegated to the periphery of society and distanced from any access to political and economic advancement, was set in opposition to a literal and metaphorical centre of power. ironically, this centre was not the dictatorial remnants of mussolini’s fascist regime. corrupted power was portrayed as either german nazism or the equally violent effects of an imported neo-capitalism. despite these hardships, the characters in these films attempted to preserve the interior domestic realm and protect it from the threat of political and economic upheaval. to the neorealist directors, the slogan “take your camera into the streets” meant pursuing a certain social realism, but it also produced a range of emblematic, outsider characters, for whom the street was the centre of life (armes 1986: 184). cesare zavattini, screenwriter with de sica, and one of the founding theorists of neorealist film, described his working method: “i go out into the street, catch words, sentences, discussions … afterwards, i do with the words what i do with the images. i choose, i cut the material … to capture the essence, the truth.” (zavattini 1966) zavattini’s summoning up of the streets was a response from an industry that had previously been confined to shooting in mussolini’s cinecittà studios. these films, shot outside the studios and in the streets, featured characters whose psyches were in turn formed by their interaction within the city. such figures included giorgio manfredi, the resistance fighter in rome open city, who would move throughout the city at night along rooftops, mamma roma, who earned a living as a prostitute walking the streets at night, and antonio ricci, the poster hanger whose job was to assist in introducing a new economic order of consumers by applying layers of advertising to city surfaces (armes 1986). based on these observations, this essay examines key neorealist films for their structure, layered meanings, and discourses in a quest to better understand the urban politics at play, and, more importantly, to demonstrate how the city was used as a means to understand new modes of temporal and spatial cognition. in one direction, the neorealist cinematic tactic of using spatial elements of the city to narrate the plot foreshadows the “cognitive mapping” of kevin lynch and, in the other, inaugurates what gilles deleuze (1989) has termed the “time-image”. 69 lynch’s research, conducted during the 1950s, was contemporaneous with many neorealist films. his book, the image of the city (1960), was the result of a series of studies into the “perceptual form of the city” funded by a grant from the rockefeller foundation and conducted by the joint center for urban studies, a collaborative effort conducted by harvard university and mit (appleyard 1978). the research was ground-breaking in that lynch, in a spirit similar to neorealism, based his studies on empirical data taken from people on the street who he would ask to “draw maps, make sketches, describe routes, [and] recognize photographs” of the city (appleyard 1978). more importantly, he introduced to the field of urban planning the value of “imageability”, which described the enduring visual perception of a city by its occupants. this way of envisioning the city corresponds with the analysis of film critic andré bazin, who proclaimed that directors such as rossellini and de sica created a new type of cinematic image, a “fact image” that portrayed everyday life as a form of “reconstituted reportage” (bazin 1967). building upon bazin’s insight, deleuze argues that this new image, the time-image, signals the collapse of what he calls “the sensory-motor schema”, overturning an earlier cinematic concern in pre-war cinema with “movement-images”, images that depict a direct correlation between what characters perceive and react to, and which typically affirm a chronological unfolding of the past, the present, and the future. conversely, the time-image blurs this temporal sequence and it was in neorealism that these new temporal images were first employed. deleuze recognises in them the inauguration of modern cinema along with a new type of character – the onlooker as opposed to a person of action, a “character as spectator”, and attributes this propensity to observe, rather than to act, to a new range of discontinuous, or disrupted spaces in the post-war environment that called for an intensified cognition (deleuze 1986: 120). the time-image is what results from this break in spatial co-ordination and responds to a new type of urban condition that deleuze refers to as the any-space-whatever. as he explains: another [image], more specific to the cinema … arose from a crisis of the action-image: the characters were found less and less in sensory-motor ‘motivating’ situations, but rather in a state of strolling, of sauntering or of rambling which defined pure optical and sound situations. the action-image then tended to shatter, whilst the determinate locations were blurred, letting any-spaces-whatever rise up where the modern affects of fear, detachment, but also freshness, extreme speed and interminable waiting were developing. (1986: 121-122) it is in the context of the any-space-whatever that lynch’s urban cognitive markers are particularly poignant. with this in mind, the analysis undertaken here of the spatial politics and the urban imageability of neorealist film is structured upon a series of markers lynch and his team identified as enabling inhabitants to navigate their living environments – specifically, paths, districts, edges, nodes, and landmarks. lynch’s study of cognitive urban markers is applicable for this study since his original research was based on establishing a method of examining how people negotiate their way through the city according to their own mental maps. it will be shown that the creators of neorealist cinema employed similar urban indicators in their films, using the city as a vehicle to advance the plot, and more importantly, as an animated palimpsest to play out the changes in the social and interstices 12 gestapo officer bergmann in rome open city (excelsa film 1945) the gestapo’s schröder plan (excelsa film 1945) political landscape. by examining the role of the city, its layers of neighbourhoods, districts, and landmarks as portrayed in neorealist cinema through lynch’s cognitive urban markers, this paper explores how the mapping of spatial politics in these films premise deleuze’s theorisation of the neorealist time-image as representative of a new mode of modern thought. district rosselini’s rome open city depicts the lives of resistance fighters in rome during the nazi occupation of the city in june 1944. the term “open city” refers to this period where the germans proclaimed rome to be an “open city”, a zone without military control. however, despite this declaration, the germans continued to occupy the city, and, as depicted in the film, each side had their own plan to reclaim what was cynically characterised by rossellini as the “open city” (gottlieb 2004). representative of the nazi regime is the gestapo officer major bergmann, who devises a strategy of occupation according to the schröder plan, where rome is divided into various sectors with a clearly defined centre and surrounding outer districts. his idea is to carve up and conquer the city in order to capture the resistance fighters. he declares to the italian police commissioner sitting before him, “the city will be divided into 14 sectors. the schröder plan, which we have already applied in several european cities, allows us, using the minimum effort, to comb scientifically through large masses of people.” the nazi forces implement the reterritorialisation of the city, through districts, as a main war tactic (rossellini 1973). for the germans, military control and power is cognitively mapped out in rome open city through what lynch came to describe as “districts”, or what he defined as “medium-to-large sections of the city, conceived of as having two-dimensional extent, which the observer mentally enters ‘inside of,’ and which are recognizable as having some common, identifying character”. moreover, as lynch notes, these districts are characteristically “identifiable from the inside, [while this difference is…] also used for exterior reference if visible from the outside” (lynch 1960: 47). the resistance also has a plan, as evidenced by a map of the lazio region pinned on the apartment wall of one of the resistance fighters, pina. the map is larger than the gestapo’s, encompassing more of the region and perhaps foreshadowing their attack from the outside. implementing guerrilla warfare tactics, the resistance had no need for portioning off the city into districts. this would have limited much of the movement’s advantages such as extraordinary mobility and the ability to launch ambushes from outside along the city periphery. the meaning behind the appearance of the maps in this canonical neorealist film is twofold. the maps not only point out the difference in military tactics between enemy and compatriot, but they also suggest, to future generations of neorealist filmmakers, how the city can assist in the story’s narration by using recognisable urban markers. a similar type of mapping occurs in mamma roma, a film that was pasolini’s response to rosselini’s rome open city. pasolini alluded to this historic cinematic precedent when he cast anna magnani, who originally performed the motherly heroine role of pina, for the role of mamma roma, a reformed prostitute. for pasolini, this decision was a statement about the deterioration of rome as embodied in magnani’s character – from a martyr of the resistance to a prostitute of the italian economic miracle. mamma roma overcomes her situation by accumulating the map of the resistance in the background encompasses rome and the entire lazio region (excelsa film 1945) 71 enough wealth to purchase a new apartment in the new ina casa housing developments in the tuscolano district. this move facilitates her retirement from prostitution and permits her teenage son, ettore, to return to live with her after years of separation. the relocation to this new apartment (by architects mario de renzi and saverio muratori) marks a critical step in the journey to that version of the city centre that accords with mamma roma’s bourgeois aspirations. unfortunately, however, mamma roma’s former pimp returns, threatening to reveal her secret and thus forcing her to go back to the streets. ettore, discovering his mother’s previous profession, is thrown into a downward spiral leading to petty thievery, jail and, ultimately, his death. mamma roma’s hope for a better life hinges upon living within a district of rome where she is surrounded by others with similar class aspirations. her upward social mobility is not enough to overcome their doomed existence within this area of rome where the laws of destiny will not allow them to belong. for pasolini, these housing developments located outside rome’s city walls symbolised all that was wrong with italian society: its false materialistic aspirations and its superficiality that resulted from the economic miracle. he attempted to illustrate the ugly nature of what he saw as the rise of petty individualism and express the tragic sentiment that “no sooner do marginal cultures come into contact with the centre than they are destroyed” (viano 1993: 85). landmarks landmarks are another important means by which the viewer is oriented within these films. lynch describes these cognitive markers as being used as points-ofreference where: … the observer does not enter within them, they are external. they are usually a rather simply defined physical object: building, sign, store, or mountain … some landmarks are distant ones, typically seen from many angles and distances, over the tops of smaller elements, and used as radial references. (lynch 1960: 47) rossellini is adept at using landmarks to narrate his films. rome open city contains an explosive scene that takes place in mussolini’s abandoned and incomplete eur development. resistance fighters set up an attack of a german truck transporting resistance prisoners outside the city near the tiburtina bridge. the scene purposefully presents mussolini’s new capital outside rome, with the palazzo della civiltà italiana (by the architects ernesto b. la padula, giovanni guerrini and mario romano) and, in the following scene, the palazzo dei ricevimenti e congressi (by adalberto libera) in the background, both serving as identifying landmarks. these sites and buildings are noteworthy since the existence of this neighbourhood originates from mussolini’s desire to create a new centre of governmental power upon land outside the city’s historic centre. the selection of the setting, with its characteristic landmarks in the background, assists the viewer in locating the scene within the eur district. it also suggests that the enemy, once drawn out from the centre into the forsaken territory of the periphery, can be defeated. in the final scenes of rome open city, the parting shot follows a bunch of young boys who had just witnessed the execution of one of the film’s main characters – the resistance fighter and priest don pietro. the boys walk toward the centre of the resistance fighters wait to attack german soldiers in the periphery of rome near the tiburtina bridge in the shadow of the palazzo della civiltà italiana, an icon of fascist architecture (excelsa film, 1945) mamma roma and her son ettore in pier paolo pasolini’s mamma roma (arco film 1962) a bored ettore lies with his head upon an aqueduct ruin with new housing developments in the background (arco film 1962) the view from mamma roma’s new apartment of the church of st. giovanni bosco (arco film 1962) the resistance fighters ambush the german soldiers in the periphery in rome open city, (excelsa film 1945) interstices 12 rome with the dome of st. peter’s in the background, suggesting to an italian audience that the future of italy resides within the catholic church. pasolini alludes to this final moment in the final scene of mamma roma, where the main character, upon hearing the news of her son’s death in jail, attempts to jump from her apartment window. all the while, she stares at the paradigmatic view of another church, st. giovanni bosco, a landmark which had mesmerised her throughout the film. the view of the distant church can be read in many ways, but its key significance is that it performs as a character within the narrative. for mamma roma, the st. giovanni bosco church represents the ‘inside’, the centre, and the attainment of a chaste soul accompanied by the petty bourgeois lifestyle with all its trappings. however, as david bass notes, unlike st. peters in rome open city, st. giovanni bosco is cast as a landmark signifying misplaced hope: even though the view from her window, at which she despairingly throws herself as the film ends, seems rome-like enough – the modern church of st. giovanni bosco’s cupola appearing like a displaced st. peters on the horizon – it will never be the ‘rome’ after which she is named. (bass 1997: 91-92) paths before world war ii, mussolini moved the urban poor residents from the centre of rome to newly-built neighbourhoods at the periphery in order to make way for more prosperous development. this ultimately came to be termed by italians as the sventramenti, or “disembowelment” of the city. one of the biggest problems resulting from the operation was that the new neighbourhoods had no substantial transportation links to the centre (sassoon 1986). de sica highlights this situation in his film bicycle thieves, where bicycles become the means of overcoming a lack of transportation planning and therefore the only hope for survival. the film tells the story of antonio ricci and his son bruno’s scouring of post-war rome for their stolen bicycle. the search creates a wandering narrative tracking various indeterminate paths and leaving the viewer without a clear understanding about their location. paths, according to lynch, function as “channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially moves. [such as …] streets, walkways, transit lines, railroads” (1960: 47). where for lynch such paths are key to framing our sense of location in urban space, in bicycle thieves, the loss of definitive destination, like the absent bicycles themselves, induces a lapse of framing. the itinerary of antonio and bruno’s search includes the police station, trade union headquarters, the open markets of piazza vittorio and porta portese, a church, the apartment of a psychic, a brothel, and via panico, where the thief is finally found, though without the bike – therefore allowing him to escape arrest. ricci’s avoidance of the city centre throughout the search is suggestive of his immigrant status (he migrated from the south in hope of work and a better life), but it is also testament to the centre’s capacity to ultimately determine his circumstances. the periphery then serves to metaphorically underscore the distance between ricci’s potential success in building a new, prosperous life, and his inevitable failure. the film suggests, by its wandering viewpoint, that it is no longer possible in the post-war urban landscape to conjoin pathways and overcome distance – both physical and cognitive. much as deleuze suggests of the time-image, it is exactly the “dispersive situations, the deliberately weak links, the voyage form, the consciousness of clichés, [and] the condemnation of the plot” which occur through one of the first scenes of vittorio de sica’s bicycle thieves at the val melaina development in the periphery of rome (produzioni de sica, 1948) 73 and along paths in bicycle thieves (emphasis in original, 1986: 210). he specifically cites de sica and claims that the post-war economic crisis inspired the italian director to disrupt the connection between action and situation: “there is no longer a vector or line of the universe which extends and links up the events of the bicycle thief [sic]; the rain can always interrupt or deflect the search fortuitously … ” (211-212). layers and thresholds in post-war rome we do not suddenly see a totally new urban landscape, induced by war and the marshall plan. rather, through a type of porosity, a new capitalist society seeps through the surfaces of an older rome. a scene depicting ricci’s first day on the job shows him hanging a poster for a film featuring the glamorous american actress rita hayworth, covering over an existing illustration of a round-faced italian woman. in the next cut, we see the remains of another poster on the wall, a propaganda poster for american aid, stating “aid from america: grain, carbon, provisions, medicine. they help us to help ourselves.” whether it is ricci applying additional layers of posters onto the walls of reconstructed rome, or his wife tugging at layers of linens to sell in order to retrieve his pawned bicycle at the start of the film, the emphasis of surface layers and their application to the walls and surfaces of rome reveals the meaning of this cultural, urban-economic changeover. an allegorical layering of spaces and surfaces can also be seen in the film umberto d. de sica portrays the troubled life of umberto domenico ferrari, a retired government worker trapped by his economic situation. he is a bachelor without children or income and unable to pay the rent owed to his landlady, who threatens to evict him, despite his claims that he supported her during the war. umberto’s room is the locus of the film and the source of his impending disenfranchisement. his landlady’s desire to shed the memories of war as quickly as possible and to pursue a new bourgeois lifestyle, is complicated by umberto’s presence. for de sica, the target of the film’s withering critique is not the italy of the fascist regime, but rather the new country formed by the economic miracle, which not only required the physical eviction of characters such as umberto from the centre of rome to some peripheral abode, but also their psychological occlusion from the conscience of italian society. perhaps no other italian neorealist film depicts this savage, post-war societal transformation by way of an interior more clearly than umberto d. viewers are made to stand in the room with umberto, agonisingly observing every banal gesture of a man heading to an outside more absolute than the exterior of his apartment. the long hallway outside his room stands in for the impossible passage to another societal world; archways, layers of satin draperies, door handles, keyholes, all make up a variously scaled, landscape of impenetrable thresholds. the analogy between umberto’s life and his room is further compounded when umberto returns from treatment in the hospital to find his room in total disarray, with layers of wallpaper torn off, and a huge hole in the wall. his dishevelled room, which had recently survived the violence of war, is left as abject testament to the violent effects of capitalist development. as roy armes depicts it, “umberto’s interior life and its exterior manifestation in the ‘cameretta’ are doomed to extinction by the landlady’s empire-building schemes.” (1986: 154) the film concludes with umberto roaming in the park, finally resigned to the forces that have rendered him centre-less and peripheral. the ironic overlapping of the hayworth poster over the image of the traditional italian woman points to a larger cultural invasion experienced by italians. ricci asks his wife to trade in the object of italian tradition and family life – le lenzuola in order to obtain the bicycle which will provide her husband with physical mobility within the city. de sica and zavattini repeatedly frame umberto d within thresholds in order to exaggerate the long perspective shots, as seen in the interior of the hallway, as the gateway to the city of rome at the piazza del popolo in umberto d. umberto returns to his room, only to find that it is being demolished for impending renovation plans which do not include him. again using a long perspective view, umberto finally retreats from his room in the city centre (rizzoli, produzione de sica, and amato film 1952). interstices 12 any-space-whatever imported consumer capitalism, brought about by the marshall plan and the resulting rise in real estate values, transformed rome and the italian household. a politics of space became a vital issue in the representation of the city via the new cinematic realism. as suggested above, deleuze’s notion of any-space-whatever is apt here, particularly, as he puts it, because it is a “space in which the source of control, the centre of power, is curiously difficult to apprehend. it is a space in which the intangibility of global capitalism is particularly apparent.” (1986: 172) it was these transformations, and the changing nature of urban society, that neorealist film sought to measure. capitalism was, at that stage, in the process of finding new ways to successfully exploit any-spaces-whatever – characteristically empty, isolated, or demolished places. neorealist cinema, for its part, amounted to a reflecting glass where italians were presented with their transformed cities and the new relationships of inclusion and exclusion necessary for their inhabitation (restivo 2002). “in the city which is being demolished or rebuilt, neorealism makes any-space-whatevers proliferate – urban cancer, undifferentiated fabrics, pieces of waste ground – which are opposed to the determined spaces of the old realism.” (deleuze 1986: 212) for lynch, any-spaces-whatever are antithetical to the cognitively coherent maps induced by clear urban markers – they are spaces of disconnection, inaction and temporal paradox, in which disenfranchised characters are subtracted from meaningful and comfortably enclosing routines. at the peripheries of the transforming urban centres, any-spaces-whatever proliferate. this is evident in mamma roma, where pasolini layers ancient themes within the film’s modern context by placing mamma roma’s new white apartment block adjacent to an abandoned field. the site mimes the vacancy and absence of substantive connection at the centre of mamma roma and ettore’s new life together. anyspaces-whatever can also be found in pasolini’s first film, accattone (1961), which takes place in the borgate, the outermost ring of the city, where the very poorest of the country live. it presents a realistic view of life in the remote, ragged edges of society, where inhabitants are not in conflict with an interior or centre – their concerns are much more basic: hunger and despair amidst the affluence of the early 1960s. almost the entire movie takes place in the borgate, where even the surface of a building covered in graffiti cries out, “we want housing!” conclusion the reign of neorealism lasted less than 10 years, later to be revived and referenced by directors such as pasolini, michelangelo antonioni, and ermanno olmi. the genre’s demise can be attributed to political pressure (dalle vacchi 1992): in 1949 – with the christian democratic party in power – the hostility towards films depicting social injustice in italy increased. more precisely, the government did not want images of misery exported to the rest of the world as it was attempting to rehabilitate itself. giulio andreotti, head of the department of cultural affairs, created the “andreotti studio law”, which gave the government the power to halt the export of any italian film which “might give an erroneous view of the true nature of our country”. it also precluded films from being shot anywhere else but inside the studios at cinecittà with trained actors and skilled labour (armes 1986: 28). with a silhouette of roman aqueducts on the horizon, ettore and a newfound group of friends begin to explore the any-space-whatever in mamma roma (arco film 1962). a scene from pier pasolini’s film accattone, where the main character walks by a building, its graffiti calling out “we want housing” (arco film 1961). 75 neorealist cinema, with its mobilising of professional and non-professional actors in actual roman locations, provided deleuze with the model of the “character as spectator”, an observer caught up in the strange eruptions of time that post-war cinema was intent on capturing. for deleuze, neorealism revealed a new mode of thought, a cognition forced to think through the lapses of causation evidenced everywhere in public and private urban life. contemporaneous with the making of many neorealist films, lynch discovered, through a study of the perceptions of individuals in urban streets, that the city was cognitively mapped through a series of urban markers. with lynch’s research into the city’s “imageability”, as well as bazin’s “fact-image”, we witness how a post-war convergence of city and cinematic “images” sought to confront, and in key ways make sense of, the strange environments deleuze conceptualises with the time-image. references appleyard, d. (1978). the major published works of kevin lynch: an appraisal. the town planning review, vol. 49, no. 4. armes, r. (1986). patterns of realism. new york: garland publishing. bass, d. (1997). insiders and outsiders. latent urban thinking in movies of modern rome. in f. penz and m. thomas (eds.), cinema & architecture: melies, mallet-stevens, multimedia. london: british film institute. bazin, a. (1971). an aesthetic of realty: neorealism (cinematic realism and the italian school of the liberation). in what is cinema?, vol. ii, (h. gray, trans.). berkeley: university of california press. dalle vacche, a. (1992). the body in the mirror. shapes of history in italian cinema. princeton, n.j.: princeton university press. deleuze, g. (1986). cinema 1. the movement-image. (h. tomlinson & b. habberjam, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. deleuze, g (1989). cinema 2. the time-image. (h. tomlinson & r. galeta, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. gottlieb, s. (ed.) (2004). roberto rossellini’s rome open city. cambridge, u.k.: cambridge university press. lynch, k. (1960). the image of the city. cambridge, ma.: technology press. restivo, a. (2002). cinema of economic miracles. durham, n.c.: duke university press. rossellini, r. (1973). robert rossellini. the war trilogy [screenplays] (j. green, trans.). new york: grossman publishers. sassoon, d. (1986). contemporary italy. politics economy & society since 1945. new york: longman group. viano, m. (1993). a certain realism. making use of pasolini’s film theory and practice. berkeley: university of california press. zavattini, c. (1966). some ideas on the cinema. in film – a montage of theories, r. d. maccann (ed.). new york: dutton. interstices 09 105 no longer rely on space as the platform for communication and culture-sharing but rather on time. for mackenzie, "all performance is electronic … [and it is] precisely the digitisation of discourses and practices" which is of interest (2001: 243). in a transnational world where community and culture operate without regard for territorial boundaries, the sole requirement for meeting is time, and more specifically the now. space, being overcome by telecommunications, becomes ancillary and contingent to time. time is the agent of unification in the contemporary world. for telecommunications the greatest importance is temporal alignment: one needs someone in the realtime now with whom to communicate. transnational community meets in the now but very seldom in the here (5.45 p.m. but never mind the place). in this manner here becomes subordinate to now. this overcoming of space is certainly dependent on our technology. throw it all away, and space resurges like a mistreated animal. the relationship between technology, society and the city is well established: a sturdy and weathered ménage à trois. in 1957, wittfogel used the discovery of subterranean stone granaries in the middle east to explain the mutual interdependence of technology, society and the city (167-78). these granaries dated from the third millennia bc and were used to store the surplus grain generated by the improved irrigation techniques of the farmers. childe notes that the generation of surplus was critical in the development of the city, and of society, as it allowed for certain individuals to absent themselves from farming duties in order to specialize and acquire expert knowledge (2001: 4-8). mumford talks of the way in which thought is made concrete in the form of the city, and how in turn thought is conditioned by the urban form that surrounds it (1938: 77). the city is at once an active agent in the technological output of a society and a passive three-dimensional canvas onto which socio-technological forces are printed. it acts and receives the action. but how does the marginalization of space inform the contemporary city? space, de-spatialized by the now, waits in the wings of the city. it is relegated to the banks of the rivers, wrapped up with the blue tarpaulins of the informal settlements. it waits to be beckoned from under the fly-overs. it is no longer necessary. it attends its own funeral in the epistemological parlour of the downtown. we might therefore call it afterspace, like an afterthought or an aftertaste. it is the afterspace of the city, and it coats like a façade the tower blocks and is plastered to the street signs in the suburbs. it is found down alleyways and in doorways, like the threshold of the city. its defining characteristic is that it is derived from the present. afterspace cannot exist beyond the present. nor can it be invested with meaning, or loaded with data. it is non-memorial, instant now-space. traditionally the present has come after something, namely the past. afterspace by its intense presentism is, however, synchronic, simultaneous space. it is not at all independent. it is space without the spatial element, just a spatialized tempo rality, an instant, a crossing. it is a happening that is non-localizable and entirely contingent. in the city the general level of contingency is very high. everything is waiting to be experienced and nothing happens independently. the individual is complicit in this contingency. afterspace could be considered the spatial home of the transnational. certainly it is the contingent here of the supreme urban now. our bodies still occupy physical newtonian space, but the space of culture and the development of our community occurs in the despatialized situation of now. it is exactly this openness to plurality that transnationalism demands and this is the great freedom to be transnational world: imagining an afterspace rowan fraser in our increasingly transnational world we are all made migrants by the eradication of place. the supremacy of the now over the fumbling here has remodelled our spatio-temporal set up. the result is a thin layer of afterspace and the constant duress of the present. transnationalism has a long history in the form of international migration. it is nevertheless being reconsidered in light of recent technological advances as something utterly contemporary. it now refers broadly to the networks, connections and ties that exist at present between individuals, institutions and corporations across borders, existing in realtime. this reticulation is facilitated by the globalization of capital and the spread of information and communication technologies. telecommunications are integral to transnationalism. bataille sardonically argued that the purpose of modern science, and the sole criteria by which to judge its efficacy, was the extent that it “makes impossible a definitive image of the universe” (goetz, 2001: 75). einstein’s theories relativized and revolutionized our definitive image of the universe. the prodigious enlargement of this image and the incredible precision with which our universe is now studied move it into the unimaginable. we may never have owned a completely secure cosmology, but we have never lived under such an extreme absence of one as we do today. the destruction of our collective worldviews is not without repercussion. we can no longer hang meaning onto our fluid, hyper-defined world. consequently we arrive at the paradox where the only certainty is that nothing is certain. in the absence of meaning caused by the breakdown of absolutes, we have been asking ourselves where are we? it was the greeks, beaufret suggests, who “were the first to ask themselves where they were” (beaufret, 1973: 164). what is remarkable is that this question of being was not asked in relation to essence (what are we) but in relation to locality (where are we). being comes into question when we are no longer sure of the place, when the world becomes strange, incomprehensible. if we ask ourselves where we are it is because the nature of the place is not assigned. tradition, myth and science are no longer authoritative in telling us where we are. plato, in sophist, states that philosophy begins when we stop telling ourselves stories. philosophy brings with it the loss of orientation and the crisis of localization. this crisis of localization is compounded and rendered more complex by the freeing of both culture and community from the traditional obligations of geographic locality. indeed the deterritorialization of culture is in large part responsible for transforming our notion of what constitutes community. community now assumes a more fluid nature and distance is no longer an impediment to it. the local is compelled to rethink itself. place is replaced by an imagined or symbolic unity built around shared or individual meanings, and where historically this place has been spatial, or at least geographic, it now has become temporal. we interstices 09 107 references beaufret, j. (1973). dialogue avec heidegger. paris: les éditions de minuit. childe, v. g. (2000). the urban revolution. in m. pacione (ed.), the city: critical concepts in the social science, vol. i, (pp. 1-14). london: routledge. cooper, j. m. (ed.) (1997). the complete works/plato. indianapolis: hackett. goetz, b. (2001). la dislocation. paris: les éditions de la passion. hubbard, p. (2006). the city. london: routledge. mackenzie, j. (2001). perform or else: from discipline to performance. london: routledge. mumford, l. (1938). the culture of cities. new york: harcourt brace. sassen, s. (2000). global cities. london: routledge. wittfogel, c. a. (1957). oriental despotism: a comparative study of total power. new haven, ct: yale university press. found within a globalized world; the opportunity to entertain a pluralist existence. but it is a voluntary pluralism with which we engage as we choose. in response to the where are we of the contemporary migrant, and the where are we of the floating transnational, one must answer that we are now. as migrants in a placeless world we exist only in the now supported by a vagrant afterspace. new zealand’s bi-culturalism has been criticized from the perspective of multiculturalism. however multi-culturalism itself still demands certain qualities of social construction which transnationalism has done away with. afterspace as a transnational product is not concerned with cultural protectionism; rather it advocates a freer exchange of culture. it is in favour of cultural swapping, sampling and upgrading. it is a spatial server from which we distribute culture. thus it adheres to a general and controversial digitization of culture in which the city as a site of cultural generation is lodged squarely as a structural facilitator. these developments are deplored by some. virilio et al, in a sort of noir urbanism, shout geriatrically from their chairs (hubbard, 2006: 139). people rightly complain of virilio’s relentless negativism and his moral approbation is tiresome. but society is not being eroded by new technologies, rather it is being recreated – the ménage à trois has purchased a digital toy. his are the pessimistic outcries of an older generation, their jackets lined with victorian felt. despite them, however, we are rushing headlong into an enamoured gesellschaft whose backdrop is a neo-spatial afterspace and whose temporal enacting is the continual, exacting, urgency of the now. fig. 2: afterspace 2. drawing by rowan fraser. fig. 1: afterspace 1. drawing by rowan fraser. interstices 09 23 from far east to middle east: revitalizing metabolism tom daniell while the architectural concept of metabolism can be viewed as essentially grounded in a linear conception of time and growth, wherein both the expression and the experiment are considered part of a fundamentally linear process, ‘post-metabolism’ suggests a nonlinear conception of time, that is, the time of the eternal ruin. there are two primary points to be considered: the first refers to a linear, teleological time of growth; the second proposes a model of organic totality. akira asada (1997: 80) the resemblance between arata isozaki’s design for the qatar national library (doha, designed 2000-2, under construction) (fig. 1) and his earlier clusters in the air (tokyo, designed 1960-2, unbuilt) (fig. 2) project raises a number of issues relevant to regions currently undergoing intense architectural and urban development. the form of isozaki’s qatar national library is a deliberate echo of metabolism, the short-lived 1960s japanese avant-garde architectural movement with which isozaki was peripherally involved. the library has a tree-like silhouette comprising a 100m-wide, 9m-high podium (intended to house the museum of contemporary art and the museum of science and natural history), standing on which are three 18m-wide and 120m-tall cylinders that act as vertical circulation routes. they support vast cantilevered platforms containing the five floors of the library, layered in order of increasing floor area: children’s library, machine rooms, offices, closed stacks, open-stack reading rooms. the platforms project further out as they rise, to a maximum 68m cantilever for a total width of 170m. in his clusters in the air project, designed precisely four decades previously, isozaki proposed an array of buildings with similar tree-like shapes: central “trunks” containing circulation and services, and “leaves” of cantilevered residential units. this was part of a series of projects developed by isozaki in the early 1960s using what he called the “joint core” system, one of the most important and influential metabolist concepts – although ironically isozaki was never an official member of the movement. mischievously labelled “the only non-white avant-garde in 3,000 years” by rem koolhaas (1995: 1044), metabolism was conceived in response to the phenomenal, apparently unlimited, economic growth japan underwent in the decades im mediately after world war ii. attempting to harness and focus the effects of rapid urbanization and modernization, the metabolists advocated building forms that could fluctuate and expand in response to their environments. the forms of metabolism were clearly influenced by the megastructural projects then dominating global architecture discourse. though the term megastructure is often employed to mean nothing more than ‘very big building’, it properly refers to a specific organizational type only incidentally related to scale: a rigid infrastructural frame supporting moveable (and potentially replaceable) modular spaces (banham, 1976). the metabolists extended the concept of megastructure, proposing buildings in which every element was to be replaced at longer or shorter intervals – that is to say, at differing metabolic rates. more of a shared sensibility than a coherent group, the four central architects were kisho (then known as noriaki) kurokawa (1934-2007), kiyonori kikutake (1928), masato otaka (1923) and fumihiko maki (1928). it was kenzo tange (1913-2005), their inspirational teacher and sometime employer, who produced the two seminal projects that bracket metabolism’s existence: tokyo plan 1960 (a proposal to extend the city out across tokyo bay) and the vast space-frame roof over the grounds of the 1970 osaka expo. metabolism effectively existed for this one decade: officially launched at the 1960 world design conference in tokyo, coinciding with the publication of the bilingual manifesto metabolism 1960: the proposals for new urbanism (kikutake et al, 1960), and unofficially moribund by the time of the 1970 expo, which included a number of metabolist design contributions. the technological fantasies presented at the expo were seen by the japanese public as painful revelations of shortfalls in the reality of life in postwar japan (yatsuka, 1981). explicitly or implicitly rejecting their earlier proposals, the metabolists went their separate ways, with only a handful of nominally metabolist projects realized belatedly during the 1970s. ideologically, metabolism regarded the production of buildings and cities as analogous to natural cycles of growth, decay and regeneration, entailing the constant replacement of parts. the 1960 manifesto begins: ‘metabolism’ is the name of the group, in which each member proposes future designs of our coming world through his concrete fig. 1: arata isozaki, qatar national library, doha, designed 2000-2 (under construction). courtesy arata isozaki & associates. fig. 2: arata isozaki, clusters in the air, tokyo, designed 1960-2 (unbuilt). courtesy arata isozaki & associates. fig. 1 fig. 2 interstices 09 25 ultimately, the biological metaphors of metabolism were more of a transitional polemical statement than a plausible design strategy – the built examples are scenographic rather than truly metabolic. conceptually, metabolism has far more applicability as an approach to urban planning than in the design of individual buildings. though the proposals of the metabolists comprised a serious attempt to deal with new conditions of urban growth predicated on unprecedented speed and unpredictable change, the magnitude of ambition ensured that no urban-scale metabolist projects were ever commissioned. outside japan, metabolist ideas had a brief but significant influence in the far east and the middle east. just as the modernization of japanese cities was approaching a degree of stability, nations such as korea, malaysia and singapore were beginning the same kinds of delirious development that had initially provoked the metabolists. east asian architects adapted metabolist ideas in their own designs, and major projects in the arab world attracted the involvement of japanese metabolists such as kenzo tange (kuwait international airport, an unbuilt sports city in kuwait), kisho kurokawa (sarir bedouin housing in libya, an unbuilt conference city in abu dhabi), and kiyonori kikutake (an unbuilt floating hotel in abu dhabi). in the mid-1990s, more than two decades after the disappearance of metabolism as a vital presence in architectural discourse, arata isozaki was given the opportunity to confront and critique his earlier involvement through a commission for an urban project in china. the municipal government of zhuhai (one of china’s special economic zones) approached isozaki in 1993 with a proposal to develop the southern part of hengqin island, located in the south china sea, into a centre for international exchange that would encompass designs and illustrations. we regard human society as a vital process – a continuous development from atom to nebula. the reason why we use such a biological word, the metabolism, is that, we believe design and technology should be a denotation of human vitality. we are not going to accept the metabolism as a natural historical process, but we are trying to encourage active metabolic development of our society through our proposals. (kikutake et al, 1960: 5) despite ideological resonances with archigram and their ilk (i.e. other architects who celebrated and instrumentalized impermanence), metabolism was presented to the world as specifically japanese, the outcome of a buddhism-inspired philosophy of transience intimately in tune with the natural world: “as trees come out new buds, then fall down leaves, in accordance with the circulation of the four seasons, the living unit will belong together with the inhabitant’s life” (kikutake et al, 1960: 19). in a later essay, founding metabolist member noboru kawazoe (1926) implicitly connects metabolism with the periodic reconstruction of ise shrine, a ritual that has been carried out intermittently since the seventh century and currently takes place every twenty years (kawazoe, 1965). as architectural historian jonathan reynolds notes: kawazoe cited ise as a prime example of a tendency in japanese building to perpetuate architectural form without undue concern for the preservation of the actual building itself. for kawazoe this suggested an appreciation for the mutability of all things and the recognition that the practice of building should be attuned to natural processes. the ability to add new rooms without upsetting the order of the whole meant, conversely, that rooms could be removed at will. the design, one might say, had its own metabolism, which allowed it to keep pace with the cycles of life in nature and society.… when kawazoe described architecture maintaining its basic structure but regularly replacing materials (in a manner similar to the metabolic processes of a living creature) and adding or subtracting parts as needed, this was a clear expression of the core principles of metabolist theory. and by equating japanese architectural practices with natural processes, kawazoe could trump the seemingly mechanical or unnatural methods that predominated in the west. (reynolds, 2001: 331) the most emblematic of the metabolist projects actually built in japan is kisho kurokawa’s nakagin capsule tower (1972) (fig. 3), which comprises a pair of concrete spines supporting steel containers hoisted by crane and bolted into place with the intention that they would be replaced at 25-year intervals. the technology quickly became obsolete, and the building has never been altered, or even maintained – it has fallen into a sad state of disrepair, largely used as private storage, with piles of junk visible through the porthole windows. in 1996, docomomo (the international working party for the documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the modern movement, a non-profit organization established in 1988) short-listed it for preservation as a world heritage historical monument – surely the ultimate irony for this icon of mutable, regenerating architecture. in 2005, docomomo lost the battle at unesco, but negotiations continued between kurokawa and the current owners of the building (a us hedge fund that bought out the nakagin company) up until his death in october 2007. it is scheduled for demolition in 2009. fig. 3 fig. 3: kisho kurokawa, nakagin capsule tower, tokyo, 1972. courtesy kisho kurokawa architect & associates. interstices 09 27 more initiated a literary genre in which – sheltered from the modern world, usually among the ‘noble savages’ of the south pacific or the americas – modern man could shed the accretions of culture and return to a ‘natural’ state. the ideal republic was effectively a ‘pre-contact’ society – i.e. one miraculously preserved from inclusion within the western monoculturalist orbit; and it was in this that it was able [to] represent that ‘primitive’ or essentially human quality that the classical mentality residually valourised: the inherently closed and arbitrary nature of human ideology. (fausett, 1991: 16) utopian discourse was thus formulated as a commentary on, or critique of, western expansion, with its concomitant processes of cultural assimilation and commercial exploitation. yet the possibility of isolation evaporated almost as quickly as the concept was formulated. geographical knowledge was effectively complete by the eighteenth century: the world map had no more blind spots, no more unknown lands, no more frontiers. without the possibility of limitless territorial expansion, the world of independent cultures – each defined only in relation to some external, unknown ‘other’ – began to disappear, and the concept of utopia expanded from local to universal. as jean baudrillard puts it, with characteristic hyperbole, “when there is no more territory virgin and therefore available for the imaginary, when the map covers the whole territory, then something like a principle of reality disappears” (1983: 158). the classical utopia became inconceivable. there was no longer a localized culture to be perfected, only the future, universal utopia to be created. mirage city sir thomas more, who invented the original utopia, set his imaginary place on an island discovered after a great voyage. our artificial island will similarly be set in the sea, in our case, the south china sea. the former was conceived in an age when people still believed in frontiers and the possibility of discoveries still existed, while our ‘island’ is a fictional construct fabricated on a sea where the possibility of discovery has been exhausted. arata isozaki (2001: 227) located at the western tip of the zhu jiang kou (pearl river delta), isozaki’s mirage city (a name that seems less than optimistic about its ultimate realization) is explicitly utopian, its ambitions humorously manifest in the form of the design itself. the island in more’s utopia was originally a peninsula, sliced away from the mainland then reconnected with bridges, and mirage city is connected to hengqin island by two bridges that mimic the layout shown in the frontispiece to the second edition (1518) of the book. mirage city was conceived in collaboration with critic akira asada and developed by the center for science and engineering at waseda university. isozaki used the commission to explore themes that have occupied him since the beginning of his career: growth, chance, collaboration, the dubious viability of any kind of deterministic urban planning and the notion of authorship itself. mirage city (figs. 4 and 5) is a metropolis without master plan in any conventional sense, intended to avoid the imposition of a singular, rigid vision. the desired indeterminacy is achieved by a process of layering in which each successive intervention reinforces, contradicts or subverts the preceding ones. urban form business, convention, cultural, scholastic, resort and residential facilities. isozaki’s response was a proposal for a new city on an artificial island off the coast of hengqin island, which, he says, can be seen as a “utopia, because a city on the sea evokes a world totally detached from contemporary political institutions and social conventions” (asada & isozaki, 1996: 25). named mirage city, or haishi jimua (in chinese, haishi literally means “sea city” but implies “mirage”; the name is itself a reference to a poem by song dynasty chinese poet su dongpo), it reinterprets metabolist principles to create a new, ideal place on an empty site; that is, to produce a utopia. like much of isozaki’s work, it is simultaneously a concrete proposal and a critical statement. an analysis of isozaki’s intentions warrants a brief examination of the history of utopian discourse as it relates to architecture. another utopia utopias afford consolation: although they have no real locality there is nevertheless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to unfold; they open up cities with vast avenues, superbly planted gardens, countries where life is easy, even though the road to them is chimerical. michel foucault (1994: xviii) for the utopian architect, there is an implicit correlation between spatial and social structure, a relationship that the french philosopher louis marin has named “utopics” (marin, 1990). create a harmonious, ordered environment, and a harmonious, ordered society will inevitably follow. from the ideal cities of the renaissance, inaugurated by filarete’s concentric, symmetrical plan for sforzinda (1465), to the potentially infinite cartesian grid of le corbusier’s ville contemporaine proposal (1922), there is a consistent faith in the deterministic relation ship between space and society: “utopia is first and foremost a spatial organization designed for complete human dwelling, an activation of a sort of dwelling fantasy” (marin, 1990: 203). in recent decades, visions of unification have become suspect; the hubris of the regimented urban fantasies of the modern movement is as embarrassing as it was once inspiring. proponents of utopias are generally seen as engaging in naïve fantasy, or worse, latent totalitarianism. pre-seventeenth-century utopias were not prescriptions for social change but fine-tuned versions of the existing status quo. the classical architectural utopia was symmetrical, ordered, static, ahistorical – an ideal society operating in equilibrium. with society fixed in a perfect state, it was the individual who was required to adapt. by the nineteenth century, the situation was reversed. utopias became radical rearrangements of society itself, only indirectly concerned with the individual. addressing a speculative future rather than an idealized present, architectural utopias were understood to be dynamic, universal, and – most importantly – realizable. this shift occurred during the enlightenment ‘crisis of modernity’. for enlightenment thinkers, the ideal society was one that had avoided contamination by western civilization. geographical isolation was the usual strategy: sir thomas more, originator of the term “utopia” with his 1516 treatise of the same name, placed it on a remote island discovered only by accident: from the time of more’s book, utopias have tended to begin with a travel, a departure and a journey, most of the time by sea, most of the time interrupted by a storm, a catastrophe which is the sublime way to open a neutral space, one which is absolutely different. (marin, 1993: 14) interstices 09 29 for asada, and perhaps for isozaki himself, the conceptual base of the project is an update of 1960s metabolism. indeed, mirage city has obvious similarities to kenzo tange’s metabolist urban plan for tokyo bay – an intense, dynamic programmatic mixture placed on reclaimed land and connected to the mainland by bridge infrastructure. conceived within, and predicated on, the accelerating modernization, urbanization and economic growth of japan’s spectacular recovery from wartime devastation, the weakness of the original metabolist projects lay in their reliance on megastructural principles – that is, the requirement for an enormous (size, cost, risk) fixed framework into which the various flexible components were to be plugged. the initial investment could never be returned, as technological advances would eliminate the benefits of modifying the existing architecture (as with kurokawa’s nagakin capsule tower). attempts at biological complexity were frustrated by the near impossibility of conscious design activity replicating natural processes of growth and evolution, a point convincingly argued in christopher alexander’s 1965 essay a city is not a tree. at a diagrammatic level, metabolist designs were limited to essentially treelike structures: while metabolism intended to radicalize function, its structural model was the organic whole, based on a hierarchy – stem (or spinal cord), branch, leaf, organ, cell. no matter how complex metabolist projects seem, this hierarchical schema of the organic whole can be easily detected behind that complexity. (asada, 1997: 64-65) asada believes that mirage city adumbrates the possibility of a contemporary, reinvigorated metabolism. borrowing terminology from the french philosophers gilles deleuze and félix guattari, he distinguishes a new “molecular” metabolism from the earlier “molar” metabolism – the former implying a nonhierarchical, rhizomatic interlinkage, and the latter implying a treelike, branching structure. isozaki’s own suspicion of the underlying rigidity of metabolist appears as a kind of interference pattern. having established a basic functional zoning, isozaki applied various techniques to create specificity and variety. ranging from the traditional chinese geomantic techniques of feng shui to experimental environmental technologies, some of these overlays are based on economic or contextual issues while others are entirely arbitrary. in one version, feeding a diagram of church locations in venice through a computer-based genetic algorithm created a pattern of building density. in another, giving randomly scattered particles mutually attractive properties proportional to their size transformed them into a web of vectors usable as a layout of streets and plazas. isozaki exhibited a preliminary version of the project at the 1996 venice biennale, and then expanded it to become the inaugural exhibition of the ntt inter communication center gallery in tokyo (april 19 to july 13, 1997) (fig. 6). it was a test of the limits of indeterminacy and randomness in the design process: visitors were invited to modify the exhibits physically, while twelve guest architects and artists also added their own layer to the island, working directly in the gallery on duplicates of the main model. perhaps the most radical contribution was from diller + scofidio (collaborating with dbox and lyn rice), who infested the plan with drugs, gambling, piracy, prostitution – every undesirable (or ‘dystopian’) activity conceivable. it was built on the reverse side of the model, metaphorically the grimy underbelly of paradise. forty-eight international architects were directly invited by isozaki to independently place their own projects in mirage city as part of an internet component of the exhibition; the site boundaries were created by superimposing a portion of the figure-ground composition of piranesi’s famous campo marzio of ancient rome (1762) onto the profile of the island. the invited architects either created new conceptual works or, more often, simply provided current projects from their offices. without any realistic relationship to the zhuhai municipal government’s requirements, the process was an attempt to foster dialogue and collaboration as architects on adjacent sites negotiated their respective boundaries, smoothing the initial cadavre exquis. the mirage city plan was also freely available on the internet, and design ideas sent via email were incorporated in the exhibition. as isozaki strayed from the original commission, he called into question its underlying premises. fig. 5fig. 4 fig 4: arata isozaki, mirage city sketches. courtesy arata isozaki & associates. fig. 5: arata isozaki, mirage city computer image. courtesy arata isozaki & associates. fig. 6 fig. 6: arata isozaki, mirage city exhibition, ntt intercommunication center gallery, tokyo, 1997. courtesy ntt intercommunication center. interstices 09 31 in both cases, isozaki attempted to destabilize authorship – that is, to simultaneously disempower the putative designer (himself) and enfranchise as many other participants as possible – as a critique of the totalizing vision that inevitably causes utopian order to devolve into disciplined tyranny.1 the gulf sand and sea along the gulf, like an untainted canvas, provide the ultimate tabula rasa on which new identities can be inscribed: palms, world maps, cultural capitals, financial centers, sports cities.... rem koolhaas (2007: 7) a great deal has been written in recent years about the speed and ostentation of architectural and urban developments in the gulf region. in a matter of decades, entirely new cities have emerged from the desert, extending vertically in clusters of discordant tower profiles as they simultaneously spread into the water on surreal artificial islands. these extraordinary juxtapositions of built form are largely inhabited by a population in flux – tourists, guest workers, transients and mercenaries outnumber the ‘natives.’ as in las vegas, modern technologies and practically unlimited funds have transformed barren desert into fertile ground for utopian fantasies. the sheer speed, quantity and quality of construction underway in the gulf would seem to provide an ideal laboratory for testing urban planning principles that do not rely on fixed master plans, but place emphasis on channelling the energy and volatility already at work. indeed, following the initial metabolist forays into the gulf during the 1960s and 70s, many of the conceptual propositions embedded in mirage city are being realized here, albeit in debased, thoughtless ways. by evoking the metabolist “joint core” system and the profile of clusters in the air, isozaki’s design for the qatar national library might be seen as an optimistic gesture, a symbolic replanting of the dormant concepts of metabolism in fertile ground. however, isozaki admits that the impetus to recycle the design came from his client, the emir of qatar: the emir looked in my book and pointed at a project. ‘i like it. i want something like this.’ it was clusters in the air, my project from the early 60s. the huge columns of vertical infrastructure look as if big tree trunks were growing branches and leaves out in the air. i said, ‘no, no, this is my student time project.’ the emir said, ‘it doesn’t matter.’ it became the national library. i didn’t mind developing an idea for a seemingly mismatched condition. (isozaki in reisz & ota, 2007: 113) clearly reminiscent of metabolism in form, it is diametrically opposed in intent: the library is a predetermined, static object rather than a contingent manifestation of dynamic, free processes. spectacular and iconic, it will become merely one more idiosyncratic tower on the gulf skyline.2 the clusters in the air project was intended as a forest, not a single tree: a multiplicity defined by complex interconnectivity, not a particular built profile. similarly, mirage city is not about the composition, but about the process – about communication, collaboration, and interaction between architects and thinkers worldwide. the value of metabolism and its contemporary reinterpretations does not lie in their forms, or at least not in their forms alone. the displacement of metabolism designs, and indeed of any design method with a single author, has been present from the beginning of his career. his contribution to the 1962 metabolist exhibition mirai no toshi to seikatsu (cities and lifestyles of the future), held at the seibu department store in tokyo, clearly prefigures the 1997 mirage city exhibition. entitled incubation process, it comprised a supply of hammers, nails and coloured wire next to a huge aerial photo of tokyo. “observers were asked to drive nails wherever they liked into the photograph and other people were then asked to connect those nails with wires as they saw fit” (isozaki, 2004: 118). by the end of the exhibition period, the entire space was a massive tangle of wires, over which isozaki symbolically poured plaster: a new incubation process begins with the engulfment and destruction of a city of virtue and ease by viscous, formless matter welling up from the earth.... the task we are fated to undertake is to give dynamic order to formless matter. (isozaki, 2001: 46) comparing the two exhibitions, held 35 years apart, he writes: the city was once assembled by hand. now it is visualized using electronic media. however the process is the same: a city that is not the product of intellectual decisions by some single controlling body inevitably becomes a complex system and form. (isozaki, 2001: 260) fig. 7: arata isozaki, incubation process (detail), cities and lifestyles of the future exhibition, seibu department store gallery, tokyo, 1962. courtesy arata isozaki & associates. fig. 7 1. although serious efforts were made to solicit developers and investors, the mirage city project has quietly faded away. since 2005, the las vegas sands corporation has been negotiating with the zhuhai municipal government on their own utopian master plan for hengqin island, currently known as the venetian hengqin international convention and resort project – accidentally and ironically continuing isozaki’s venice theme. 2. to be fair to isozaki, a singular, monumental form is justifiable for a significant cultural facility, and elsewhere in doha he has invited a wide range of international architects to contribute to his master plan for the ongoing education city project (a multi-university campus on a 14-square kilometre site on the outskirts of the city), thereby enabling the possibility of architectural serendipities as well as conflicts. interstices 09 33 from an indigenous japanese phenomenon to a globalized method highlights the failure of a utopian image (as with the qatar national library), yet evinces the critical potential of a utopian process (as with mirage city). whereas the classical utopia is predicated on isolation from the rest of the world and the modern utopia is intended to transform the entire world, mirage city is based on an awareness of the impossibility of either position. a desire for a self-imposed quarantine from the negative effects of modernization – though combined with an unwillingness to relinquish any of its benefits – thus reanimates the classical utopia in a contemporary form. neither remote, reactionary arcadia nor global, gleaming technopolis, mirage city is isolated yet integrated, in a kind of conditional surrender to globalization. the barrier to implementing earlier forms of utopia – the perfect society, the ideal city, the ultimate ideology – is the requirement for a more-or-less stable group of inhabitants who will take on the social form implied by the urban form. marin argues that any utopian proposal acts as a perfected version of an existing community and simultaneously a critical commentary on that community. mirage city’s fluctuating plan presupposes a population of global nomads, perpetual change: the constant flow of people as energy source, and community itself as mirage. if isozaki had been successful, mirage city might have been a truly ‘other’ place – perhaps no utopia but surely, to use foucault’s term, a “heterotopia” (foucault, 1986). ultimately, all planning is utopian in intent. to design without believing you are improving the world in some way, however small, would be intolerably cynical. isozaki’s promiscuous hybridization of the design process is radically yet realistically utopian. by revitalizing and relocating metabolism, he presents an expatriated architectural methodology ideally suited to expatriate inhabitants, the deliberate dilution of its local, cultural and authorial aspects producing results of far greater robustness. references alexander, c. (1986 [1965]). a city is not a tree. in m. feher & s. kwinter (eds.), zone 1/2 (pp. 128-149). new york: zone books. asada, a. (1997). emerging complexities. in b. tschumi (ed.), d: columbia documents of architecture and theory (vol. 6, pp. 80-84). new york: columbia university press. asada, a., & isozaki, a. (1996). haishi jimua. in c. davidson (ed.), anywise (pp. 24-31). new york: anyone corporation. asada, a., & isozaki, a. (1997). from molar metabolism to molecular metabolism. in c. davidson (ed.), anyhow (pp. 64-73). new york: anyone corporation. banham, r. (1976). megastructure: urban futures of the recent past. london: thames and hudson. baudrillard, j. (1983). simulations. new york: semiotext(e). fausett, d. (1991). two visions of utopia. interstices: a journal of architecture and related arts, (1), 11-20. foucault, m. (1986). of other spaces. diacritics, 16(1), 22-27. foucault, m. (1994). the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences. new york: vintage. isozaki, a. (ed.). (1997). kaishi/haishi: the mirage city – another utopia. tokyo: ntt publishing. isozaki, a. (2001). hankenchikushi [unbuilt]. tokyo: toto publishing. isozaki, a. (2004). incubation process. ga document special issue arata isozaki, (77), 118-19. kawazoe, n. (1965). the ise shrine and its cultural context. in k. tange & n. kawazoe (eds.), ise: prototype of japanese architecture (pp. 165-206). cambridge, ma: mit press. kikutake, k., kawazoe, n., maki, f., ohtaka, m., & kurokawa, n. (1960). metabolism 1960: the proposals for new urbanism. tokyo: bijutsu shuppansha. koolhaas, r. (1995). singapore songlines: thirty years of tabula rasa. in r. koolhaas & b. mau (eds.), s, m, l, xl (pp. 1008-89). rotterdam: 010 publishers. koolhaas, r. (2007). last chance? volume: al manakh, (12), 7. marin, l. (1990). utopics: the semiological play of textual spaces (r. a. vollrath, trans.). amherst: humanity books. marin, l. (1993). frontiers of utopia: past and present. critical inquiry, 19(3), 397-420. reisz, t., & ota, k. (2007). gulf survey. volume: al manakh, (12), 70-373. reynolds, j. m. (2001). ise shrine and a modernist construction of japanese tradition. art bulletin, lxxxiii(2), 316-41. yatsuka, h. (1981). a critical introduction to japanese architecture after modernism. oppositions, (23), 3-35. r08_adams_int10_final.indd interstices 10 benoît goetz: a french reader of rykwert’s on adam’s house in paradise tim adams introduction: the end of theory when joseph rykwert started teaching his history and theory of architecture course for masters students at the university of essex in 1968 this marked, among other events, the beginnings of a profound shift from the way history was being taught in architecture schools.1 no longer would history be taught as a study of precedents purely for the sake of guiding future architectural practice (condemned by manfredo tafuri as “critica operativa” or the ideological use of history to defend current bourgeois practices of architecture): from now on architectural history and theory would be intertwined as a critical engagement with cultural ideas for their own sake. and in place of the iconographic connoisseurship of the courtauld method, well known to rykwert since he was taught by rudolph wittkower at the courtauld institute, he would establish a “socially committed art history in which you start off by looking at objects … and treat them all as evidence of how they were made in their context.”2 what historians like rykwert and tafuri did, in effect, was to take the history of buildings out of the design studio and expose it to all the cultural and political ideas of the day. their method was to immerse themselves in the archives and a hitherto impossibly-wide range of texts and intellectual currents in order to create a legitimate role for the architectural historian, independent of architectural practice. if we heed the calls for the end of theory in architecture – and these calls are now too numerous to ignore – then this period of intertwining history and theory is itself being eclipsed by another way of teaching history within architecture schools.3 theory is being replaced by research, which is once again intended to be directly useful to the practice of architecture, and masters theses and phds are fast becoming design theses and creative practice phds. whether this is a return to ideologically naive critica operativa that predates rykwert and tafuri, or whether practice is now itself refl ective, is a question that needs to be asked with a seriousness and a sophistication that we no longer possess. whatever the case, it is timely to re-examine the history and theory of architecture through a reading of rykwert’s early work on adam’s house in paradise, in particular as it is read by someone well-qualifi ed to appreciate its nuances and far-reaching consequences: the french philosopher, benoît goetz. the four kinds of primitive hut before beginning any discussion of the primitive hut it is helpful to keep in mind that there are in fact four kinds of primitive hut. firstly, there is the purely historical object treated dispassionately as simply a stage of building left behind in the progress towards today’s house forms, by constructing better and better kinds of huts, the meliora genera casarum of vitruvius.4 secondly, there is the hut revisited 1. for the origin of this claim and for an account of rykwert’s early years of teaching at the university of essex see thomas (2004). rykwert was not the only catalyst for this change because tafuri published his teoria e storia dell’architettoria in the same year, and four years earlier an american institute of architecture teacher’s seminar, and later book, used the term “history, theory and criticism” in the context of architecture, see whiffen (1965). many thanks to my anonymous referee for pointing this out to me. 2. joseph rykwert, quoted from an interview with helen thomas, 21 january 2003, in thomas (2004: 39). 3. for the claim that theory is dead in architectural education see pasnik (1999), varnelis (1999) speaks (2005), vallier (2005) and pavlovits (2005). 4. vitruvius pollio (1931) on architecture: ii.i.3. see page 78 for the latin version and page 79 for granger’s translation. r08_adams_int10_final.indd 88r08_adams_int10_final.indd 88 11/3/09 2:22 am11/3/09 2:22 am 89 in our imaginations in order to make an unfl attering comparison with today’s over-sophisticated and overly self-conscious architecture. this is the famous rustic cabin, marc-antoine laugier’s petite caban rustique (1753: 12). thirdly, there is the anthropological hut, an actually existing non-western pre-industrial dwelling, dissected in order to rediscover the universal elements of architecture, for example the caribbean bamboo hut of gottfried semper’s bambus-hütte (2005: 666). finally, there is the primitive hut as a continuously inaugurating event, something that reoccurs every time we make a place for ourselves or construct a building that is both unconsciously naïve and self-consciously sophisticated. this is the meaning that joseph rykwert gives to the primitive hut in on adam’s house in paradise and, as benoît goetz (2001) makes clear in his book dislocation, this condition affects all human habitation. when on adam’s house was fi rst published it received a surprisingly hostile reception simply because this new meaning of primitive hut passed unnoticed. ernst gombrich (1973, not paginated) wrote in the new york review of books, “it is pleasant to think of adam, the perfect man, living in a perfect house in paradise ... alas, like so many other pleasant fantasies this one must be heretical. adam no more had a house in paradise than eve had a dress.”5 note that this does not in fact invalidate rykwert’s thesis; the house in paradise is indeed heretical because, in goetz’s terms, the house introduces heterogeneity into a fi eld of purity. once inside paradise it brings paradise to an end. strictly speaking, the fi rst house is situated on the threshold of paradise and the fall of man. the failure to notice the implications of this new meaning of the primitive hut also led kenneth frampton (1973: 9) to surmise that “rykwert’s erudition seems to become gratuitously recondite. the structure becomes diffuse and the reader is projected into an anecdotal morass of facts, the relative relevance of each to the discourse at hand being left inexplicit.” in effect, frampton admits here that as a reviewer he had failed to grasp this new meaning. rykwert’s french reader one who does not fail rykwert as a reader is benoît goetz.6 in his 2001 book la dislocation: architecture et philosophie (dislocation: architecture and philosophy), goetz makes it very clear that rykwert does indeed know that the bible makes no mention of any house in paradise, and he continues: we should allow this allegory to be subjected to a slight modifi cation of detail: in paradise adam did not have a house. or if he had one, it would not have been outside, and consequently would not have constituted an inside either. paradisiac space is without division, strictly speaking it is nowhere and only the tree of knowledge introduces rupture into the fi eld of immanence such that an anywhere, a “this is paradise” becomes possible. on leaving this place, on leaving place, the fi rst man and fi rst woman did not only discover suffering and shame, they discovered an outside, and by trying to construct an inside they then, and only then, invented architecture. the meaning of this apologia is that the partition of space that constitutes “the fi rst dislocation” is constitutive of architecture itself. (2001: 27)7 goetz extends rykwert’s theme of the persistent haunting vision of the fi rst house, which concerns everyone involved with building, into the theme of dislocation, which is the precondition of all human contact with the world. in both 5. gombrich’s review demonstrates that he himself had been researching the topic of the primitive; he points out several references that would have helped rykwert and even corrects the misspelling of the 14th-century monk’s name “opicimus de castris” which should have been opicinus de canistris. we now know, with the release of the preference for the primitive (2002), that gombrich did indeed share this area of interest with rykwert his entire life but nothing major in this area was published until after his death in 2001. 6. benoît goetz is a senior lecturer in philosophy at the paul verlaine university of metz. 7. this and all subsequent excerpts translated by the author. r08_adams_int10_final.indd 89r08_adams_int10_final.indd 89 11/3/09 2:22 am11/3/09 2:22 am interstices 10 cases, however, it is something more fundamental than the nostalgia for a lost origin that can never be retrieved, the imagined hut that is used to show up the pretence of our over sophisticated luxury-dwellings, or the anthropological hut as a demonstration of the primal elements of architecture. goetz states that there was no adam’s house in the garden of eden because, prior to the expulsion from paradise, there could not have been any division of places nor any inside or outside. paradise lacks nothing, so every space in it is equivalent to all other spaces; paradise is, in other words, an indivisible fi eld of immanence without otherness and without limit. the expulsion, the fi rst dislocation, creates the fi rst division of inside and outside. adam and eve have to leave eden. now, therefore, the world is fragmented for the fi rst time into eden and non-eden. this fi rst division is constitutive of architecture as such, so it is only after the fall that adam can build the fi rst house. the expulsion from paradise is also the fracturing or singularisation of spaces. space is “architectured”, and this architecturality of space is the precondition for architecture. thinking from architecture so, rather than a single event, dislocation is something that never stops taking place. this is how goetz thinks from architecture rather than refl ecting on it. architecture for him is not an object to be encountered in some pre-established philosophical fi eld, it is the fi eld of thought itself. so, instead of confi ning architecture to aesthetics and academic problems of form and style, goetz’s strategic shift makes architecture become what he calls an “ethical substance”,8 a physics of space touching the very heart of existence, because existences cannot be disposed and dislocated without there fi rst being an “architecturalisation” of space that makes the world a place of heterogeneous spaces with multiple insides and outsides. “the ‘doctrine’ that would render architecture worthy of consideration,” writes goetz, would not belong to the technological register nor the aesthetic register. it would lie in this affi rmation that architecture is a way of setting up a modus vivendi between man and the space in which he moves. it would consist of hazarding a proposition that architecture is an ‘ethical substance’, to borrow one of michel foucault’s terms. (2001: 86) architecture, in goetz’s view, is the very thought of space, therefore well able to teach us about the art of living or the way of being in the world. so, by thinking from architecture, goetz arrives at an architectural physics of space (the theme of the second chapter of his book), an architectural ethics (chapter three), a political theory of places (chapter four), and a noetics or spatial condition of thought (chapter fi ve). because thought cannot be everywhere and nowhere as if we were still in paradise, thought must be placed somewhere, it therefore depends on certain preconditions of space. therefore, all great thinkers also invent a singular way of dwelling, they “make the world” in different ways and this is above all, claims goetz, what makes their thought essentially different. heidegger makes the world differently from how levinas makes the world, to use goetz’s example. goetz’s redefi nition of architecture as an endlessly recurring event of dislocation at once solves the problem of where architecture sits in relation to the other arts and, curiously, this takes us directly to the heart of the matter of rykwert’s latest book, the judicious eye: architecture against the other arts (2008). the judicious eye 8. goetz borrows this term from michel foucault, see the foucault reader, edited rabinow (1991: 353), where foucault gives the following examples of “ethical substances”: for the greeks it was aphrodisia, the acts, gestures and contacts that produce pleasure and for christians it is fl esh, the carnal body as a source of sinful temptation. the point being that in both cases (aphrodisia for the greeks, “fl esh” for the christians) the “ethical substance” is the material to be worked over by the practice of ethical living. r08_adams_int10_final.indd 90r08_adams_int10_final.indd 90 11/3/09 2:22 am11/3/09 2:22 am 91 chronicles, with rykwert’s typical thoroughness and characteristically digressive style, the decline of architecture as the synthesis of the arts or gesamtkunstwerk and revisits the many failed attempts to bring art and architecture together. the implicit yardstick for such a synthesis is of course disegno (investigative drawing), the defi ning concept of the renaissance. disegno is the art of drawing that uncovers the platonic eidos or ideal form behind appearances, which alberti, vasari and others saw as the unifying technique underlying architecture, painting and sculpture. this unifi cation through disegno, however, cannot be sustained outside a platonic world view. if we no longer believe in the existence of any underlying essence, how can the arts be unifi ed by their search for it? so the location of architecture among the arts is once again cast adrift in the romantic period and we still carry the burden of this legacy today. for example, in a small sample of the many discussions on architecture taking place after the renaissance, by two philosophers who have been very infl uential in the discourse on the arts, we fi nd kant placing architecture alongside sculpture as a kunstoffkünst or “plastic art”. kant inherits the french opposition between beaux-arts, the fi ne arts, and arts mécaniques, the mechanical or applied arts. he then divides the fi ne arts into a further three categories consisting of the arts of speech (rhetoric and poetry), the formative arts, and the play of sensations (music and colour). the formative, or form-making, arts are further divided into plastic arts (sculpture and architecture) and painting. the plastic arts use fi gures in space, the “sensuous truth”, while the non-plastic art of painting relies on “sensuous semblance.” sculpture differs from architecture in that only sculpture directs our attention to purely aesthetics ends. “in architecture,” kant (1988: 186) explains, “the chief point is a certain use of the artistic object to which, as the condition, the aesthetic ideas are limited.” then there is hegel’s (1975) well-known placement of architecture on the bottom rung of all the arts, which are now placed in a serial and teleological development towards ever more fl uid ways of capturing the human spirit (fi rst architecture, then sculpture, then painting, music, drama, poetry and so on). this is a position from which architecture has struggled to elevate itself ever since. so, for example, in our own time it is hard to imagine architecture holding the attention of the public for long, since they now have such easy access to the faster-moving arts of music and fi lm, and efforts to make architecture more musical or fi lmic by making it reactive or mobile seem to have their basis in a system of the arts that precludes anything other than failure in advance for architecture. so, once again, when placed alongside the other stronger and less constrained arts, architecture is presented as a frail and overburdened art form. the singularity of architecture in place of these regional descriptions of architecture as one (usually quite minor) art or discipline among other arts and disciplines, goetz gives us, based on his reading of rykwert in heideggerian terms, the singularity of architecture. according to this view, architecture need no longer be compared unfavourably to other stronger, more developed and more expressive forms of art. firstly, because architecture forms the framework for all the arts and secondly, because it is not itself framed in the same way. nevertheless architecture is not in a position to judge or control the arts in any way simply because it is the stage, the workshop, the theatre, the studio, the gallery and so on: it only appears with them as part of the same situation or event. architecture is the framework for the r08_adams_int10_final.indd 91r08_adams_int10_final.indd 91 11/3/09 2:22 am11/3/09 2:22 am interstices 10 an example of buildings being droll: the adams cheng residence under construction, avondale, auckland. photo: cheng. other arts and disciplines but architecture is not itself framed. it passes beyond the boundaries of built form to participate in all human activities, as “a space that surrounds the bodies that inhabit it”, as goetz so delicately puts it: a work of architecture is not limited by the envelope of the building, but that it works on the fi eld outside the envelope, that it makes itself explicit with the outside. architecture is, in essence, bordered by the space that surrounds the bodies that inhabit it. any work of architecture is an opening to that which it is not, to that which it neither relates to nor comprehends. it listens with surprise to what it calls forth and provokes. above all it makes something happen that is not of the order of art. thought, actions, attitudes are carried and sustained by it. thus there is no architecture without a non-architectural assemblage that architecture thereafter contributes to the construction of. sébastian marot is not uninspired when he speaks about a “constructed situation” to name a space in the singular (as a synonym for architecture). the difference therefore is this, works of art take place in the world, a work of architecture is one moment of this world where we, works of art and other things coexist. (2001: 20–21) in place of architecture taking a minor place among the arts we have an architectural singularity, a moment of the world in which everything takes place including the other arts, ourselves, our thoughts, our actions and attitudes, a moment in time when everything coexists. architecture is the condition of our existence, says goetz. little wonder, then, that he adds that architecture listens with astonishment (étonnement) to what it calls forth, what it frames. this sense of astonishment refl exively leaves its mark on the works of architecture themselves because “edifi ces sont de ’drôles de choses‘” (“buildings are ’droll things‘”), says goetz (2001: 23). when one searches in google for images under the title drôles de choses one r08_adams_int10_final.indd 92r08_adams_int10_final.indd 92 11/3/09 2:22 am11/3/09 2:22 am 93 will fi nd pictures of, among other things, a small car mounting a truck tyre, a square of sidewalk splashed in paint that looks like a beautiful abstract painting, and an old tradesman’s boot with a nike label attached to it. invariably, these are scenes from everyday life that are unexpectedly funny or beautiful. buildings are strangely humorous and beautiful because “our existence resides in and concerns itself with architectural spaces.” this is why architecture is always, in some way, a hollowed out cast of those beings whose essence resides in and concerns itself with its existence. architecture is a technology of beings whose essence lies in existing between the walls of architecture.” (2001: 23) in brief, buildings are droll because we witness with astonishment what they bring forth as negative imprints of own selves. dislocation as factical dispersion the dislocation inherent in human existence is an event that has two aspects, the fi rst of which has nothing to do with architecture. the fi rst dislocation is a property of human existence, our essential dispersion, our scattering and distraction towards a multiplicity of spaces. in heideggerian terms it is dasein’s faktische zerstreuung or factical dispersion/distraction (goetz: 30). heidegger has this to say about it in being and time: dasein’s facticity is such that its being-in-the-world has always dispersed [zerstreut] itself or even split itself up into defi nite ways of being-in. the multiplicity of these is indicated by the following examples: having to do with something, producing something, attending to something and looking after it, making use of something, giving something up and letting it go, undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing, determining … (heidegger 1990: 83) heidegger differentiates the “factual” (tatsächlich), the fact of being present-tohand, from the “factical” (faktisch), taken up into human existence, but not necessarily proximally close. factical dispersion is, therefore, the human ability to expand the individual’s sphere of concern beyond the body’s immediate vicinity to ever-increasing numbers of spheres until we are in a state of continuous distraction away from our present location. to exist is therefore to (self) dis-locate, existence is dis-location. dislocation is our essential dispersion; we are scattered, expanded, distracted by a spatial multiplicity … . a “factical dispersion” (faktische zerstreuung) belonging properly to dasein. this dispersion is no different from the original spatiality of dasein (from its räumlichkeit). (goetz 2001: 30) the second aspect of dislocation does involve architecture: it is what we do with the fi rst existential dislocation. we dispose of it. we cover over human distraction with compositions that hide the fi rst dislocation. so, where dasein’s facticity is dispersed into a multiplicity of ways of being-in – having to do with, producing, attending to, looking after, making use of, and so on – buildings used as structures to house these multiple ways of dwelling pull dasein together and unify its spheres of concern. it is no surprise, then, that heidegger’s list of ways of r08_adams_int10_final_replacement.indd 93r08_adams_int10_final_replacement.indd 93 11/4/09 7:58 pm11/4/09 7:58 pm interstices 10 being-in should sound very much like the necessary steps that an architect must take in designing a human habitat: fi rst they have to do something with the existing habitat, then they must produce something new which is attended to, drawn up, and further looked after and improved upon until it is fi nally made use of by others, and then they have to let it go, leaving others to inhabit what they have built but also clearing their minds, offi ces and schedules in order to be able take on new projects. goetz thoughtfully applies heidegger’s uncovering of dasein’s ontological dispersal to architecture and fi nds that: architecture ‘composes’ with this fi rst dislocation of the existents from existence, by dis-posing their places, in other words by distinguishing them, separating them, specifying them. the ‘dis-’ of dis-location is not therefore, to start with, anything destructive … not therefore a catastrophe, an annihilation, an apocalypse ... it is an event, a cascade of events that has always occurred from the beginning, but one that architectural modernity will leave uncovered. because architecture has also been the activity that most fi ercely resists the remembering of the fi rst ontological dispersion, by erecting fortresses against the outside, monuments to tyranny and temples to house the gods. (goetz 2001: 30) as the etymological origin of the term archi-tecture indicates an art of control, goetz adds, “all power is exercised architecturally”. any power able to give things a location is, in effect, architectural, and this power is synonymous with religious ritual and the sanctifi cation of places. dislocation, from this point of view, is the moment when a space becomes de-sacralised. this is why the primary existential dislocation is left uncovered by modernity and the death of god. here goetz’s thinking might fruitfully lead us towards the profound spectulations of jean-luc nancy (1991: 110–150) on divine spaces and massimo cacciari’s (1993) neglected work on architecture and nihilism, both of which well deserve to be reexamined in more detail for their architectural implications. note that nancy did in fact contribute an excellent preface to goetz’s book which deserves to be analysed in its own light. microspherical architectural space architecture composes, and disposes of, the fundamental human quality of being dispersed among many places and many spheres of interest. it responds to the fi rst dislocation by making many re-locations for human activities: factories for working, libraries for reading, schools for learning, hospitals for convalescing, giving birth and dying in, and so on. thus, it is part of an effort to cover over the original dislocation with a multiplicity of locations. the relocation of human activities in specifi c locations, however, requires great force and is traditionally bound up with religion and the making of sacred places, or with the tyrannical building of walls and the necessary policing of movement through their openings this brings. the spatiality of human life is split into an ever-increasing multiplicity of places, as is attested by the third volume of peter sloterdijk’s sphären (spheres), which deals with today’s human microsphere in a section headed “foam architectures”.9 “one can speak of the presence of an egosphere,” sloterdijk tells us elsewhere, 9. for small translated selections of sloterdijk’s sphären (2004) see sloterdijk (2007a and 2007b). r08_adams_int10_final.indd 94r08_adams_int10_final.indd 94 11/3/09 2:22 am11/3/09 2:22 am 95 when its inhabitant has developed elaborate habits of self-pairing and regularly moves within a constant process of differentiation from himself – that is, in erleben (experience). such a form of life would be misunderstood if one were to fi xate only on the attribute of living alone in the sense of being partner-less, or incomplete as a human being. the nonsymbiosis with others that is practiced by the single occupant in the apartment turns out, after closer investigation, to be an autosymbiosis. here, the form of the couple is fulfi lled in the individual, who, in constant differentiation from himself, perpetually relates to himself as the inner other, or as a multitude of sub-egos. (2007b: 96–97) according to sloterdijk’s analysis, the individual adapts to the contemporary dislocation into multiple microspheres by narcissistically self-pairing. sloterdijk names some of today’s microspheres: that zone close to hand, which is now overfl owing with handy and essential appliances; the individualised sound bubble of portable players and cell phones; the zone of autoeroticism in which the individual becomes both the lover and the object of love; the private gym for the trainer-trainee; and the sphere where the autodidact performs cognitive self-care. reading rykwert’s on adam’s house alongside goetz’s dislocation, it appears that sloterdijk’s innovative spherology is, strangely, a continuation of rykwert’s exploration of the primitive hut as a recurring concept as old as architecture itself. the primitive hut is a perennial theme in architecture because it exposes the permanent dislocation of human existence into multiple spheres of interest. the primitive hut is, after all, where one can be, if one wants to be, an historian, anthropologist, archaeologist, horticulturalist, primitivist and so on, each activity corresponding to unique spheres of concern.10 the hut promises to locate us in nature, yet it fails to return us to a state of unknowing nature since it must take place after the fall from paradise and after the introduction of the heterogeneity of inside and outside into any fi eld of immanence. instead, it returns us to our existential dispersal into multiple spheres of interest: hence the incessant attraction of the japanese tea house in the mountains or the new zealand bach by the sea. their knowing naivety draws us in by promising to return us to some kind of therapeutic harmony with nature and at once reveals this desire to be the very product of our highly self-conscious and refl ective existence. the primitive haunts our work whenever we are self-consciously naive: the adams cheng residence, avondale, auckland, design and photo: elizabeth cheng 10. for a well-documented argument that the new zealand bach is a site that provides the time and opportunity to enable its inhabitants to become masters of multiple disciplines, see cox (1995). r08_adams_int10_final.indd 95r08_adams_int10_final.indd 95 11/3/09 2:22 am11/3/09 2:22 am interstices 10 references cacciari, m. (1993). architecture and nihilism: on the philosophy of modern architecture. (s. sartarelli, trans.). new haven and london: yale university press. cox, n. (1995). at the bach. new zealand geographic, 25 (january-march), 34–52. frampton, k. (1973). review of on adam’s house in paradise by joseph rykwert. architecture plus, 1 (6 july), 8-9 and 73. goetz, b. (2001). la dislocation: architecture et philosophie. paris: les éditions de la passion. gombrich, e. (1973). dream houses. the new york review of books, 20 (19 november), not paginated. retrieved 31 october, 2008, from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9669 gombrich, e. (2002). the preference for the primitive: episodes in the history of western taste and art. london: phaidon. hegel, g. w. f. (1975). aesthetics: lectures on fine art. (t. m. knox, trans.) oxford: clarendon press. heidegger, m. (1990). being and time. (j. macquarie and e. robinson, trans.). oxford: basil blackwell. kant, i. (1988). the critique of judgement. (j. c. meredith, trans.). oxford: clarendon press. laugier, a. m.-a. (1753). essai sur l’architecture. paris: duchesne. nancy, j.-l. (1991). the inoperative community. (p. connor et al, trans.). minneapolis and oxford: university of minnesota press. pasnik, m. (1999). who’s afraid of architecture theory? cornell journal of architecture, 6, 108 – 121. pavlovits, d. (ed.). (2005). the end of theory? haecceity papers, 1 (1 fall). retrieved 5 october, 2009, from http://www.sup.usyd.edu.au/journals/haecceity/pdfs/1/intro_1_1.pdf rabinow, p. (ed.). (1991). the foucault reader. london: penguin books. rykwert, j. (1972). on adam’s house in paradise: the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history. new york: museum of modern art. rykwert, j. (2008). the judicious eye: architecture against the other arts. london: reaktion. semper, g. (2004). style in the technical and tectonic arts; or, practical aesthetics. (h. f. mallgrave and m. robinson, trans.). los angeles: getty research. sloterdijk, p. (2004). sphären iii: schäume. frankfurt: suhkamp verlag. sloterdijk, p. (2007a). foam city. log, 9, 63–76. sloterdijk, p. (2007b). cell block, egospheres, self-container: the apartment as a co-isolated existence. log, 10, 89–108. speaks, m. (2005). after theory. architectural record, june 2005, 72–75. thomas, h. (2004). invention in the shadow of history: joseph rykwert at the university of essex. journal of architectural education, 58 (2 november), 39–45. vallier, j.-p. (2005). the end of theory? the duplicity of the relationship between presence and theoretical subversion in architecture. haecceity papers, 1 (1 fall). varnelis, k. (1999). critical historiography and the end of theory. journal of architectural education, 52 (4), 195-196. whiffen, m. (ed.) (1965). the history, theory and criticism of architecture. cambridge, massachusetts: the m.i.t. press. vitruvius p. (1931). on architecture (f. s. granger, trans.). london: w. heinemann ltd.; new york: g. p. putnam’s sons. r08_adams_int10_final.indd 96r08_adams_int10_final.indd 96 11/3/09 2:22 am11/3/09 2:22 am 11 building memory jeff malpas introduction: architecture and ontology what is the ontology of architecture? one way to understand this question is to take it as asking after the basic elements of architectural practice – the basic elements of design or construction. yet the question of the ontology of architecture can be viewed in another way also, as directed at an understanding of the being of architecture, at uncovering its proper limits and grounds (see malpas 2012a). it is in this latter sense that i wish to put the question here. moreover, when taken in this sense, it seems there can be only one answer: more so than any other mode of human activity, architecture has its being in the human engagement with place, and more specifically, in the engagement with place as opened up through building. i say “place” rather than space, because it is place, as i note below, that is the more basic concept here. moreover, in talking about architecture as founded in an engagement with place, i do not mean that architecture is simply to be understood as “place-making” – architecture is as much a response to place, a conversation with place, as it is a making of place. although the claim might surprise some, it seems to me that the question concerning the ontology of architecture is not often raised. much contemporary reflection on architecture, when it goes beyond technical and professional concerns, remains at the level of architectural narrations that are more concerned with the deployment and elaboration of metaphorical and metonymic constructions than with the analysis of the ontological underpinnings to architectural practice. the proliferation of architectural discourse around notions of “criticality” (see e.g. hays 1984), or “post-criticality” (see e.g. somol & whiting 2002, and baird 2004), has little to do with ontology in either of the senses i have invoked here, being focussed instead on the political and discursive positioning of architecture. such discourse may well be productive in a variety of ways, but it has little directly to do with any increased insight into matters ontological. the tendency that is exemplified here is not restricted to discussions of “criticality” and “post-criticality” alone. for the most part, and in spite of some notable exceptions, when contemporary architectural discourse extends beyond practical design concerns, it seems characterised by a preoccupation with contingent discursive and rhetorical formation, in particular a concern with architecture’s own discursive self-formation and self-representation – especially as this is bound up with the character of modernity (what the german term neuzeit understands as “the time of the new”) – rather than with questions concerning architecture’s enduring grounds or limits. what happens when we turn back to the ontology of architecture, and especially when we try to understand architecture in terms of the engagement with place through building? what underpins this engagement and in what is it founded? it is my contention that any such inquiry must pay special attention to the connection of place, and hence also building, with memory. the connection of memory with place is not peripheral nor is it contingent. place and memory are integrally connected such that one cannot understand one without reference to the other. any inquiry into the ontology of architecture that attends to the character of architecture as an engagement with place must, therefore, give special attention to memory. indeed, one might say that architecture cannot itself be understood unless its own connection to memory is acknowledged and articulated, and so the inquiry into the ontology of architecture must take the form of an inquiry into interstices 13 the relation between memory and place. the argument that i will advance here can thus be simply stated: there is no place without memory; no memory without place; and since there is no architecture that is not engaged with place, neither is there architecture that is not engaged with memory. what matters, however, are the considerations that support and articulate this set of claims (as well as the consequences that follow from them), and the most important considerations concern the connection between memory and place, so let me begin there. memory and place – place and memory there is a long tradition that connects place to memory. it is a connection famously exemplified in the ars memorative – the art of memory – and the associated “method of loci” according to which memory is enabled through the connecting of particular images or ideas to be remembered with specific locations (see yates 1974). it is also a connection that appears in the work of many twentieth-century thinkers. in the work of gaston bachelard (1969), for instance, memory is explored as it is given in the intimacy of domestic places; in the writings of walter benjamin, memory appears in its embeddedness in the materiality of things, and especially in the materiality of the city, in its buildings and streets (see malpas 2007). the exploration of memory is also central to the work of marcel proust (1995) and, more recently, w. g. sebald (1998) – the one surely standing in an essential relation to the other, both as it arises in the form of public history and private recollection, and as it is formed in and through specific locations and locales from combray to paris, from norfolk to vienna. yet although the connection of memory to place is clear in these thinkers and writers (and in the work of many others, including those working within what is now known as “material culture studies” – see for instance hicks & beaudry 2010), the exact nature of that connection, and whether it is a necessary or a contingent one, often remains much less clear. moreover, in spite of the work of writers and thinkers like proust, sebald, bachelard, benjamin, and others, there is also a common tendency to assume that because memory is of the past, so memory is primarily a temporal phenomenon rather than having any connection to the topographic, that is, to place. even if memory were taken to have a special relation to time, still this would not itself imply the priority of that relation over the relation of memory to place. the reason is simple: time does not stand apart from place any more than does space. indeed, both time and space, even while they may be opposed to one another, should both be understood as grounded in place, and perhaps even as abstractions from it (see malpas 2012b). nonetheless, the tendency to think of memory as primarily temporal is undoubtedly one of the factors that encourage a forgetfulness of the essentially topographical character of memory. this tendency is in turn underpinned by what i refer to as the “temporalist” prejudice within modern thought, according to which subjectivity is itself understood as essentially temporal in character (see malpas 2010a & 2013). temporality, and so also memory, is thus viewed as tied to the subjective interiority of human existence whilst spatiality is associated with objective exteriority. there is a much longer story to tell here, but if we retain the focus on memory alone, and especially on the idea that memory might be tied primarily to time rather than place, then even if we leave aside the complication that consists in the dependence of time on place, the prioritisation of the temporal still gives rise to a problematic conception of memory. edward casey makes the point that the focus on temporality leaves out the need for embodiment, and embodiment requires emplacement (2000: 182), but, more fundamentally, i would argue that, as memory is meaning ful or contentful, so memory is only constituted through the embeddedness of the one who remembers in place, while 13 the necessary interdependence that obtains between self and place, coupled with the essential role of memory in the formation of the self, means that memory and place are thereby also brought into intimate relation (see malpas 1999). put briefly, the argument at issue here is one that looks to the holistic constitution of meaning or content as this applies to memory no less than it does to beliefs, desires, actions and so forth. as meaningful or contentful memories are embedded within networks of memories and attitudes, so those networks are also embedded in, and inter-related with, the objects and entities in the world that cause them and that are also their objects. the very idea of meaning or content thus depends essentially on the connectedness of those who remember – and who also act, think, believe, and experience – to the world, and so to objects and entities in the world. on this basis one might say that the “mind” is itself externalised, and meaning and content have to be understood, not as given in some separate, “inner” realm, but only in the space of worldly engagement. inasmuch as the self is constituted through the dynamic integration, even if always impartial and incomplete, of memories, beliefs, actions and the rest, so the self also turns out to be constituted through its worldly involvement – who and what we are is thus dependent on where we are. memory cannot be prised away from the world any more than can the self, but more than this, memory is also given in the world, in the concrete materiality of things, since it is there that self and identity, meaning and content, are jointly constituted and articulated (see malpas 2010b). memory is thus only to be found through the placed materiality of the world and this is equally true of both private and public memory. understood more explicitly in relation to place, one can say that place is precisely that which gathers self, others, and things in a way that opens them both to the world and to each other. the placed materiality of memory that appears here has a number of consequences – although they are consequences that go against some established and taken-for-granted assumptions in many contemporary treatments of memory. first, memory is not “subjectively” determined nor does it belong to the “subject” alone. by this i mean that memory is not something that is to be understood as merely a product of subjective experience. certainly memory is an essential element in our interior life, but it is not constituted only in terms of such interiority. memory arises through our interactive engagement with the world in which we find ourselves – an involvement that does not come after the formation of the self, but is the very means by which the self is formed. in this respect we make ourselves through our engagement in the world, which implies also that we do not wholly make ourselves, since, as i indicated above, who and what we are is itself a function of the world in which we are engaged. second, memory is not socially “constructed”, in spite of the prevalence of such social constructivism in contemporary thought. sometimes, of course, social constructivism entails no more than the idea that what is taken to be constructed in this way arises through a process that necessarily involves the “social” (almost all human activity depends upon language, and since language is intrinsically social, so one might say that almost all human activity is “constructed” socially because it is “constructed” linguistically – although here “construction” seems to be used as a synonym for “shaped through or in relation to”. such constructivism is relatively unproblematic. more often, however, social constructivism, and here we can include the supposedly socially constructed character of memory, involves the stronger idea that memory is determined by the social, that it is, in effect, a product of social forces alone. the difficulty, however, is that if the social constructs memory, it is equally true that memory constructs the social – that is, only in and through memory is sociality even possible. more broadly, and given the interconnection of memory with place, interstices 13 one ought to say, not that memory is determined by either the subjective or the social (or the “intersubjective”), but rather that subjectivity and sociality (and also objectivity – see malpas 1999) emerge only within the overarching structure of place. place is just that within which self and the social are reciprocally constituted, and in which they are both constituted in essential relation to the materiality of the world. memory, one might say, begins in place, yet so too does place begin in memory. to be in place is already to remember. place itself never appears other than as it is already taken up in memory, even if the memories that attach to any particular place are fragmentary, associative, or recent. moreover only on the basis of memory are we oriented, and only as we are oriented are we placed. we thus find ourselves in the world, which means we only find ourselves at all, in and through memory, and although memory is itself only to be approached in and through place, we cannot approach place independently of memory either. it is as remembered that place first appears, and even the experience of place is always suffused with memory, shaped by memory, directed by memory. there is thus no place without memory; no memory without place (see malpas 2013). in an important and often overlooked sense, memory is always nostalgic – and so always melancholic. this is so, not in the sense that memory involves a desire to regain what cannot be regained (what is sometimes termed “restorative nostalgia”), but rather in the sense that memory always involves a sense of loss (hence the melancholia) – to remember is to attend to what is past, what is no longer present as it was, but if present still, is present in a different way. to attend to what is remembered is thus to attend to the dynamically unfolding character of place. the nostalgia that is associated with memory – and as genuinely nostalgic so it combines a sense of ‘home’ (for the loss at issue here is also a loss directly related to the self) together with the pain that comes from the inevitable estrangement from home – is thus an essential feature of human engagement in the world. it cannot be escaped any more than we can escape the world or ourselves (see malpas 2012a). the nostalgic is that which marks the dynamic opening of the world in place in terms of both freedom and limit – and so too in terms of our own character as active beings and yet also as possessed of an existence that is finite and fragile. from an ethical perspective, it is here that the idea of responsibility has its essential origin. bachelard asserts, and casey repeats the claim, that memories do not move (casey 2000: 214-215). yet even if this is so, memory is always at the beginning of movement, containing the possibility of movement within it. casey argues that the supposed immobility of memory is given through its connection to place. thus places fix memory (casey 2000: 215). yet as it is only in and through places that memories have form, so places are themselves given form only in and through memory. the idea that places fix memory seems to presuppose an asymmetry in which it is place that has determinacy and fixity. yet neither memory nor place has a fixity that belongs to either of these alone – memory always carries multiple possibilities that accord with the multiple possibilities of the places memory opens up and in which memory is itself opened. this point is an important one, since it is often assumed that memory and place possess, if not a fixity, then a perduring character or even a determinacy that is alien to both. precisely because of the relationality that characterises memory and place, as well as the self, none of these have an absolute determinacy either over time or at a time. place, and memory and the self with it, are dynamic structures – neither we nor our memories are fixed in place like insects in amber, and places are not static structures that stand as the unmoving backdrops to our lives. 15 the latter is one reason to be wary of some appropriations of heideggerian thought that emphasise the character of place as a source of authentic and enduring rootedness – if we do indeed look to heidegger, we should attend to his own emphasis on the character of homecoming as always a return to the indeterminate and the questionable. this does not mean that there is nothing at issue in the idea that there is a human “need for roots”, as simone weil put it (1971; see also améry 1998), but only that this is a need that demands a more careful and complex examination than it is usually accorded. moreover, although home is a place primarily characterised in terms of the possibility of rest and repose, of internality and intimacy, it is never wholly so – its “homely” character is never secure and may contain within it the very deepest melancholy. one might thus be led to claim that home is always “uncanny”, but we have to be careful about what this is taken to mean. the “uncanny” has become such a common term with which to conjure the spirits of modernity – and perhaps nowhere more so than in relation to architecture – that the term is in danger of losing any real meaning. the “uncanny” is now used – as in anthony vidler’s (1992) nevertheless intriguing discussion of “the modern unhomely” – to encompass a wide range of different, even if related, moods, attitudes, tropes, and dispositions. moreover, not all of these are specific only to the modern – and here the tendency to view the modern as in some sense “exceptional” (as indeed “new”) is indicative of the same disregard of ontological considerations as that to which i alluded above. certainly the modern is different, but its difference has to be understood against the background of that which is constitutive of the possibility of historical existence as such. inasmuch as “home” contains within itself the capacity for its own disruption as home, then this does not show that home is therefore “unhomely”, but rather that home is indeed a mode of place, and as such, contains an essential indeterminacy and openness within it, even an essential fragility and tendency towards loss – home is never just home, just as no place remains utterly self-enclosed within its boundaries. memory is impossible without forgetting, just as the salience of place is impossible without its withdrawal. as the coming into salience of something within the space opened up in place is also for other things to withdraw into the background (a phenomenon familiar from phenomenological analysis as well as studies of sensory perception), so memory and forgetting are not separate, but two sides of the one process. to forget is to remember, and to remember is to forget. this is one reason why the idea of an “absolute” or “complete” memory in which there is no forgetting – the sort of “memory” that one finds exemplified and explored in borges (1962), as well as luria (1987) – is perhaps best understood, not as memory in any genuine sense at all, but rather as a distorted form of memory in which all that is left is a debilitating retentiveness that undermines the capacity for action and the sense of self. no memory is completely private, because all memory is placed, and the placed character of memory means that every memory has some dimension that is accessible to others, even as it also has a dimension that resists such access. in part this reflects the fact that memories are related differently to different modes of human identity and narrative – to identity and narrative as personal and as collective. memory is also given in ritual and event – it is performed – and the performance of memory connects modes of personal and collective life. we see this in forms of collective celebration – both those celebrations and festive occasions where we celebrate collectively as well as when we celebrate in the same or similar ways among family, with friends, or within other groups. once again the performative character of memory relates directly to the dynamic and indeterminate character of place as well as memory, and so also, one might say, to the performativity interstices 13 of built form. if place is not static, but dynamic, then neither is the built. indeed, it is largely through the dynamic and performative character of place, memory, and building that these are bound together. the ontology that appears here is thus an essentially relational and dynamic one, and it is this ontology that belongs to place, to memory, to building, and to architecture. it is moreover an ontology that remains irrespective of whether or not it is recognised or represented. what grounds and limits existence is often just that which is forgotten, or even denied, within existence. the memory of the built this view of the relation between memory and place that i have sketched here is one that i have sometimes characterised as a form of “romantic materialism”. it is romantic in that it holds that materiality appears as material only through being taken up in and through the meaningful and the remembered, whilst it is materialist in that it holds that meaning and memory are, in turn, given in the very materiality of things. if we turn back to architecture, and particularly to a consideration of the built form of the architectural (since my concern here is with the materiality of memory as given in and through place), then such “romantic materialism” suggests that we should think of buildings not as inert structures that stand apart from remembrance, from felt experience, sentiment, or affect, but as constituted romantically and materially at one and the same time. in terms of memory, buildings carry memory as an essential and inevitable part of what they are, and they do this in several ways. the very sensory properties of built forms – their shapes, structures, and materials – have a memorial character. this is not only true of the sensory properties of buildings as they may be given visually (although this is certainly important), but also in terms of other modes of sensory presentation. the smell of a building, the touch of its surfaces and shapes, the acoustic properties of its spaces – all of these contribute to memory, but also serve as the carriers and triggers for remembrance. sometimes the relation to memory may be direct – this particular angle of a wall, this juxtaposition of doorway and window, this fall of light, may immediately evoke a memory of our own. sometimes the relation to memory may be via certain archetypal forms or schemas that are typically felt and recognised through generalised modes of bodily engagement and responsiveness. the complex interplay of memory in building, as well as the role of the body here, is given explicit recognition in peter zumthor’s work and writing, so much so that, for zumthor, architecture might be seen to be constituted in terms of bodily remembrance (see zumthor 1999). (zumthor is particularly attentive to the remembrance of certain archetypal forms, hollows, mounds, caves, platforms, nests and tents, as exemplified in the womb-like interior space of his recent bruder klaus chapel.) memory is given, not only in the felt or sensed qualities of a building – in the concrete qualities of its presencing – but also in its symbolic and semiotic elements, whether they belong to the particularities of site, orientation, ornament or style. in one sense, such elements are not strictly the material of memory – at least not insofar as they remain at the level of the abstract or generic – but since they are invariably embedded in, and evocative of, collective as well as personal history and remembrance, and so also given specific materiality, so they never stand wholly apart from the memorial, and from the shared understanding of forms and structures that are part of materialised cultural memory and tradition. often the forms of memory that are at work here are so mundane and commonplace that they are readily overlooked – the remembered narratives that are encoded in the floor plan of a building and the arrangement of rooms within it or that differentiate different 17 aspects of a building’s relation to the street play a basic role in the functioning of buildings and in our ability to engage with them. memory is given too in the inscriptive and dynamic elements of building – in the effects of weathering, decay and renewal, of extension and re-use (see leatherbarrow & mostafavi 1993). the ruin, or the evocation of ruination, provides an extreme instance of this mode of presentation of the built as the concretisation of its own history, and so of the history of a place, as well as of building as itself the operation of the historical. built form is always remembered form. the opening up of place through building that occurs in the architectural engagement with place is thus also an opening up of memory. consequently memory is itself formed in and through building. the infusing of building with memory and memory with building means that building is never just “objective”, and never just “subjective” either – it always operates between the two and in the space in which both are themselves opened up. at the level of australian domestic architecture, richard leplastrier’s “lovett bay house” at pittwater, new south wales, built on the site of an earlier dwelling destroyed by wild fire, provides a striking illustration of a mode of architectural practice that consciously draws on memory, building memory into the forms it constructs, allowing memory to emerge in and through the site – and doing so on a multiplicity of levels (see fig. 1). here memory also means a memory of continuity of settlement – the memory of a belonging that is not and cannot be proprietorial. as leplastrier writes: … the house continues a history of simple living on the site, which i suspect has continued for thousands of years: small shells that litter the place give testament to that fact. the form of the building is simple – its central core room restrains a broad cantilever roof that surrounds the building, the lack of columns allowing the line of the landscape to continue unbroken. being inside the house is like sitting under a strong over-hanging tree. (quoted in lehtimaki & neuvonen 2004: 18) for all this, however, much of the contemporary practice of building, and of architecture, often remains enmeshed in a “presentism” that refuses memory as it fig. 1 lovett bay house, richard leplastrier. [photo: leigh woolley, 1998 – thanks to richard leplastrier for allowing the image to be reproduced.] interstices 13 frequently ignores place. such “presentism” can be discerned in a particular way in the material forms of many modern and contemporary buildings. if memory is given in and through sensory quality, which means through the materiality of things, a materiality that is always evident in surface, and depth of surface, then one of the features of many modern and contemporary buildings is their tendency towards the effacement or loss of such materiality and depth of surface. the use of glass is one of the ways this is sometimes manifest (although glass also has “surface effects” of its own), but it is evident too in the widespread use of a range of homogenous and homogenising materials, from colour-bonded steel and rendered finishes to pre-cast concrete panels. often the use of such materials is driven by concerns of efficiency or cost, but sometimes their use is also the result of stylistic and aesthetic considerations that are indeed geared to certain conceptions of the modern and the new. moreover, the loss of depth in surface materiality might also be seen to give a heightened emphasis to more formal properties of built structures, so that the building comes close to being itself almost an abstraction, an “idea”, rather than a materialised “thing”. within modernist architecture, one can sometimes discern a tension between the tendency to prioritise such abstracted form in the built and a continued concern with material quality – even in the work of such a committed modernist as mies van der rohe who emphasises formal structure on the one hand and yet still makes use of marble and other materials with a high “depth of surface” on the other (although these comments only touch on a much larger set of issues that are relevant here – see especially andrew benjamin 2006). partly because of the tendency toward the loss of surface depth, and partly because of the associated tendency towards a certain form of abstraction, so contemporary buildings often seem designed to appear more as images of buildings than as the real buildings they nonetheless are images of buildings that come from nowhere and belong to no-one. if such buildings evoke the uncanniness so often said to characterise the built forms of modernity, then this is largely because of the way in which they appear as their own doubles – refusing to allow that there is any building other than the one that is imagined or represented. as is the case with so much of modernity’s own self-representation, the uncanniness that appears here is actually a form of forgetting – a forgetting that, in its more sophisticated forms, has become almost wilful, extolling its own forgetfulness as now a virtue. the idea of the building as its own image, its own representation, or that its character as a building may be submerged in its imagistic or representational character, itself constitutes another form of architectural presentism – and here the architectural tendency to engage in ‘story-telling’ returns. there can be no doubt that story and memory are related – as are narrative and place – but there are stories and stories, and not every story secures or is secured by memory, just as not every story told about a place belongs to it. many (although certainly not all) of the stories told about buildings and the designs that supposedly underpin them seem to depend on taking the built form as something other than it is – not as a concrete form that does indeed engage with a certain place, but rather as almost a piece of text, carrying a script that is to be read in one way and one way only. understood thus, the building as “text” (or as “image”) is no longer constituted by its materiality, but rather becomes that which determines its own materiality through being inscribed into it. it is thus that the materiality of so much built form recedes, in modernity, in the face of the primacy of the image, the text, the representation. there is indeed nothing outside the representational, and the representation has become the form of the architectural. 19 the dominance of what i have here called ‘story-telling’, but which is actually the dominance of a certain form of narrativist textualism or representationalism, and the problematic character of that dominance, should not be confused with the centrality of narrative form in meaning production in general. there could be no design, no building, no engagement with place, were it not for the narrative. yet, to repeat: there are narratives and narratives. the centrality, even indispensability, of narrative does not licence any and every narrative or any and every narrative practice. the question to be asked of every narrative is the extent to which it is indeed embedded in that which it also aims to narrate – to what extent does the story belong to the material and the material to the story. in many cases, the connection at issue is tenuous at best, and the materiality of the built is lost in the narrated fabric with which it is clothed. the materiality that is obscured or forgotten in so many architectural narrations is not only the materiality of the built as it evades any and every narrative (even as it also comes to appearance in and through narrative), but also the materiality of the built as it contains and sustains memory. in this respect, however, the fabricated narrative that has no genuine foundation in the material and concrete is unlikely itself to be remembered. there is something especially ironic here, since often the design intention that is encoded in a particular architectural narrative is one that it is usually expected will continue to shape the life of the building even after construction. in some cases, this can signify another form of architectural presentism in terms of the idea that a present narrative (regardless of the strength of its embeddedness in the materiality of a building) might be able to determine the future narratives, and so the future uses and meanings, accruing to a particular built form. yet the only narrative that can reliably continue to have power in the life of a building is the narrative that the building itself remembers, that the building itself embodies and contains – the narrative that is given in the singular materiality of a specific built form and the place it occupies (a point that follows from the general character of the relation between creative intention and creative work – see malpas 2011). the ontology of building and the ethics of memory the implication of memory with building concerns the very nature of building, as well as of the human. it provokes a number of questions. how, for instance, is one to build in a way that acknowledges the implication with memory? what memories and forms of memories pertain to different forms of building? what difference would it make to the built environment if memory were to become an explicit element in architectural thinking and making? these seem to me to be important questions even though they are not commonly asked or addressed. just as much of my account here has remained at the level of a sketch rather than a fully realised study (and nowhere more so than when it comes to matters of architectural practice), so i have not the time or space to try to respond to these questions here – although some indication of the direction in which i might move should be evident by my comments above. there is, however, another matter that comes to the fore once one begins to take seriously the connection of place with memory, and of both with building as well as architecture: the matter, not only of ontology, but of ethics. as i use it here, ethics is not about some theory of the “good” or the “just”. instead it essentially concerns our attentiveness to the remembered place and the placed memory – our attentiveness to the placedness of the human and the human-ness of place. once we understand the essential interconnection of the interstices 13 concepts at issue here, and once we understand the materialised, placed character of human being, then the task of building, and of architectural design, becomes a task from which the ethical can never be excluded, and that is fundamentally tied to matters concerning the very formation of the human. when we build we do indeed build memory, and every building carries memory within it. what this means, however, is that when we neglect the memorial character of building, and so the way memory must also enter into building construction and design, we neglect an essential element in what it is to build. we thereby misunderstand building, and we also misunderstand ourselves. the implication of the self in architectural practice is, of course, part of a larger hermeneutic structure of self-implication that characterises all modes of understanding, inquiry, and creation. yet such self-implication takes on a particular form in architecture, since the working out of the self that occurs in architecture is also externalised and concretised – it is a reciprocal shaping of self and built form as that occurs in and through the engagement with place. here is the real reason for the importance of the investigation into the ontology of architecture: that investigation cannot but force us back to an investigation of the properly human context of architectural practice, since that is what is at issue when we inquire into the character of architecture as an engagement with place. the engagement with place is also, by its very nature, an engagement with the human. the human dimension of architecture is something that the presentism of modern architectural theory and practice often effaces. that it does so is no accident, for the effacing of memory is indeed an effacing of the human. it is also, by the same token, an effacing of both ontology and of ethics. 21 references améry, j. (1998). how much home does a person need? in j. améry, at the mind’s limits: contemplations by a survivor on auschwitz and its realities (s. rosenfeld & s. rosenfeld, trans.). bloomington: indiana university press. bachelard, g. (1969). the poetics of space (m. jolas, trans.). boston, mass: beacon press. baird, g. (2004). criticality and its discontents. harvard design magazine, 21, 16–21. hays, m. (1984). critical architecture: between culture and form. perspecta, 21, 14-29. benjamin, a. (2006). surface effects: borromini, semper, loos. journal of architecture, 11, 1-35. borges, j. l. (1962). funes the memorious. in a. kerrigan (ed.), ficciones. london: grove weidenfeld. casey, e. s. (2000). remembering: a phenomenological study, 2nd edn. bloomington: indiana university press. hicks, d. & beaudry, m. c. (eds.). (2010). the oxford handbook of material culture studies. new york, ny: oxford university press. leatherbarrow, d. & mostafavi m. (1993). on weathering: the life of buildings in time. cambridge, mass.: mit press. lehtimaki, k. & neuvonen, p. (eds.). (2004). richard leplastrier spirit of nature wood architecture award 2004 (g. griffiths, trans.). helsinki: rakennustieto publishing. luria, a. r. (1987). the mind of a mnemonist (l. solotaroff, trans.). cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. malpas, j. (1999). place and experience. cambridge: cambridge university press. malpas, j. (2007). heidegger in benjamin’s city. journal of architecture, 12, 489-499. malpas, j. (2010a). the beginning of understanding: event, place, truth. in j. malpas & s. zabala (eds.), consequences of hermeneutics (261-280). chicago, ill.: northwestern university press. malpas, j. (2010b). truth, narrative, and the materiality of memory: an externalist approach in the philosophy of history. journal of the philosophy of history, 4, 328-353. malpas, j. (2011). objectivity and self-disclosedness: the phenomenological working of art. in j. parry (ed.), art and phenomenology (54-76). london: routledge. malpas, j. (2012a). heidegger and the thinking of place. cambridge, mass.: mit press. malpas, j. (2012b). putting space in place: philosophical topography and relational geography. environment and planning d: society and space, 30, 226-242. malpas, j. (2013, forthcoming). the remembrance of place. in a. cruz (ed.), essays in honor of edward s. casey. new york, ny: continuum. proust, m. (1995). in search of lost time (l. davis et al., trans.). london: penguin. sebald, w. g. (1998). the rings of saturn (m. hulse, trans.). london: the harvill press. somol r. & whiting s. (2002). notes around the doppler effect and other moods of modernism. perspecta, 33, 72-77. vidler, a. (1992). the architectural uncanny: essays in the modern unhomely. cambridge, mass.: mit. weil, s. (1971). the need for roots: prelude to a declaration of duties toward mankind (a. wills, trans.). new york, n. y.: harper & row. yates, f. (1974). the art of memory. chicago, ill.: university of chicago press. zumthor, p. (1999). thinking architecture. basel: birkhäuser. my thanks to the anonymous reviewers at interstices for their comments and advice on the original draft of this essay. i am also extremely grateful to mat hinds and leigh woolley for their suggestions and corrections – and for their continuing willingness to respond so generously to my “naïve” approach to architecture and design. 23 1 for “transcendental capitalism” as more than global or transnational, as omnipotent (“generic”) and orbital (“hovering”), see de cauter (2002: 273) and hage (2001: 4). the term thus combines a philosophical and an everyday sense: transcendental capitalism seems a kantian a priori (necessary) condition of our experience, and a lofty, almost supernatural, phenomenon. 2 see irigaray on the “forgetting of air” (1999, passim). 3 see hage (2003: 18-20). 4 for “construction,” see toscano (2004: 110), who draws on deleuze and guattari’s “what is "philosophy?” (2003) for his “materialism of the concept.” “built pedagogy”: the university of auckland business school as crystal palace sean sturm and stephen turner bodies in air “all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.” (marx and engels, the communist manifesto) thus karl marx and his guardian angel announce modernity – an annunciation, winged and with a halo of capital. they were half right: today, transcendental capitalism, omnipotent and orbital, encloses the solid (the local worlds of producers) in the airy (the global world of corporates).1 we consumers go about our business enclosed in the atmospheres of offices, malls, gyms, apartments and cars, all air-conditioned “immune systems” (sloterdijk 2009a). we are all somata in atmos: bodies in air. but, pace marx and engels, no-one today is actually “compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind”. modernity is intoxicating, etherising. as engels puts it, “[t]he real motives impelling [us] remain unknown to [us]” (1968). we cannot see the air we cannot but breathe.2 if all is unthinking busy-ness, the exception that constitutes its rule is the logos of capitalism, a death-dealing breath, an inverse hau (māori “air, wind, spirit”) that hovers above the chaos in the “orbit of capital” (harvey 2006: 415). when the winds are favourable, that is, when local conditions are attractive (cheap labour, low taxes, a favourable exchange rate, an amenable government, etc.), transcendental capital touches down from on high – and just as easily takes flight when they’re not.3 what this tells us, the authors, is that politics today – hegemonic and counterhegemonic – concerns space, or more precisely, topology (greek “place[d] discourse”). in on the shores of politics, jacques rancière reads the politics of philosophy through its spatial metaphors to generate a topology of philosophy. while he talks philosophy as foundation, the “set[ting] down [of politics] on terra firma,” we talk philosophy as construction, namely, the geopolitics (and thus biopolitics) made visible in the relation of architecture to a place (1995: 1).4 in the new business school of the university of auckland, we construe a certain “distribution of the sensible,” to use another phrase of rancière’s: an “apportionment of parts and positions … based on a distribution of spaces, times and forms of activity”, a distribution of “what is seen and what can be said about it, [and] who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time” (2006: 12-13). what, then, can be seen and said (or not) about the university of auckland’s business school, and who can see and say it (or not)? it might be nobody else’s business but the business school’s if its building were not the very temple and template of the transcendental university 2.0. if the university 1.0 is the old university of the guilds, which survives in the oxbridge model, the university 1.5 is the national university modelled on wilhelm von humboldt’s kantian “university of culture”. our local universities were interstices 12 university 2.0: the transcendental idea of the university – excellent/ transparent, transportable/transcendental (gollings 2009). 25 5 for the effects of econometrics in the university, see sturm and turner (2011). 6 see sloterdijk’s comment in “something in the air” (2009b): “the london crystal palace … is for me the major symbol of the postmodern construction of reality.” in short, sloterdijk (2009b) takes the crystal palace to symbolise the step from “the primitive [parisian] arcade of the early 19th century” to “the modern shopping mall” in that its assemblage of imperial artefacts (for the original exhibition) in an “artificial interior” embody “the power of interiorization” in “postmodern capitalism.” instituted in its spirit, with the aim of creating cultural capital for the nation (readings 1996: 11). witness the university of auckland’s landmark clocktower and onetime arts building, opened in 1926. the university 2.0 (hereafter “u 2.0”) is the “university of excellence” that aims to produce intellectual capital for the market. no longer the bricks-and-mortar ecclesiastical edifice of old, it is glass and modular, (supposedly) transparent and transportable in its protocols, processes and practices: a transcendental university. witness the owen g. glenn building of the university of auckland business school, the flagship building of the university’s enterprise that was launched – or landed – in 2007. for a comprehensive set of architectural drawings and photographs, see saieh (2010). the u 2.0 is thoroughly and transparently market-oriented and -driven – econocratic: in other words, it is governed economantically and econometrically, that is, by means of prophetic (mantic) mission statements, policy documents, even course outlines that are formulated in the language of performance metrics – aims, objectives, outcomes, etc.5 its built environment works likewise to produce a certain academic atmosphere – and “atmospheric politics” (sloterdijk 2004). that is to say, its academosphere is vacuum-packed for the market. we will argue that this “distributive” impetus or design-drive dislocates the present from the past, people from place, work from life, and learning from teaching in the university. the business school, as the temple and template of the u 2.0, discloses this design-drive, its very openness seeming to close off other kinds of talking and thinking, and its architectural vectors to generate a vortex into which all academia is drawn. (we say “seeming” because we will argue that a certain kind of democratic talking and thinking cannot be captured by this econocratic design-drive.) the crystal palace [t]he enormous crystal palace – the valid prophetic building form of the nineteenth century … already pointed to an integral, experience-oriented, popular capitalism, in which nothing less was at stake than the complete absorption of the outer world into an inner space that was calculated through and through. (sloterdijk, “the crystal palace”) the backdrop to this tableau is peter sloterdijk’s theory of globalisation, in particular, his analysis in “the crystal palace” of the “global inner space (weltinnenraum) of capital”, embodied in the image that he takes from fyodor dostoyevsky’s “baal” (1997: 37) and notes from underground (2009: 23, 32-33) of the apocalyptic crystal palace (built for the great exhibition of the works of industry of all continents in hyde park, 1851, and recycled in penge common near sydenham as a tourist attraction, 1854-1936). for sloterdijk, the palace was both “a giant hothouse and an imperial cultural museum”, the enclosed atmosphere where the biopolitics of transcendental capitalism began (2008: 12).6 sloterdijk takes the word weltinnenraum from rainer maria rilke, for whom it implies a pantheistic space, “one space,” in which everything communicates psychically with everything else (rilke 2008: 193). in the weltinnenraum of capitalism, says sloterdijk, everything communicates capitalistically with everything else: through financial, intellectual, cultural and human capital (recall the “logorithm” of the academosphere: the language of the market). university 1.0/1.5: the traditional idea of the university – ecclesiastical/cloistral, rooted/national (colin rose, 2007) interstices 12 7 for new zealand’s “fast following,” see skilling & boven (2007: 40-41). the upshot: it seems that we are thoroughly owned. though we moderns think we believe nothing, we serve a jealous god unawares. dostoyevsky’s description in “baal” of the colossus of the crystal palace at sydenham, as he saw it on a visit to london in 1862, captures the seemingly totalising, triumphant, global, posthistorical – and thus postpolitical – spirit of this premonition of transcendental capitalism: you feel a terrible force that has united all these people here, who come from all over the world, into a single herd; you become aware of a gigantic idea; you feel that here something has already been achieved, that here there is victory and triumph. […] it is all so solemn, triumphant, and proud that you begin to gasp for breath. (1997: 37) the crystal palace as icon of empire exhibits par excellence, then, what harold innis calls a “monopoly of space” (1995: 358), a bias toward the “less durable and light” media, suited to “administration and trade”, toward “centralization” and “government less hierarchical in character” (2007: 26-27). this is not unlike the telematic (wired; greek, “acting at a distance”) business school, which, as befits our national penchant for fast-following, transplants neoliberal business practice from the “centre” of neoliberalism (whether we take that to be chicago or washington or, rather, their transcendental equivalents, the school and the consensus).7 to grow right, such a species requires a glasshouse – in sloterdijk’s terms, an “immaterialized” and “temperature-controlled” enclosure (2008: 12). according to the principal architects of the business school, richard francisjones and jeff morehen, the exterior is “open and inviting” and fits with the landscape and site, “creating a new public domain”; the inside emphasises “exchange, transparency, openness and collegiality”; and, between, an “environmental breathable skin” that “mediates” inside and out: the design has embodied some key environmental and social sustainability initiatives consistent with the university’s aspiration: • an open and inviting building form inspired by the landscape and “flow” of the site … creating a new public domain; • emphasis on exchange, transparency, openness and collegiality in the design of all spaces; • the environmental breathable skin that mediates the conditions. […] the crystal palace at sydenham. (delamotte 1854) 27 the new business school focuses upon the process of learning. it combines the structured and unstructured, the formal and informal, an environment characterised by fresh air, comfort and natural light. [...] this new “built pedagogy” represents the vision and architectural embodiment of the university’s educational philosophy. (fjmt and archimedia 2010) more than a public domain, then, whose exchange of inside and outside makes the enclosed space feel “natural,” the business school embodies a “built pedagogy” – and it offers us an education in topology. as we move from outside to inside, we will consider its “perceptible atmosphere,” as merrifield described the crystal palace, in order to discern the principles that guide its construction of public space (1970: ii). to wit, in its “monopoly of space” there is no outside because the outside is already inside. enclosure as disclosure the transparent glass walls of iron and glass buildings like the crystal palace … do not visually define the barrier between inside and out sharply. from the outside we can see whatever goes on inside or vice versa. [...] the walls of glass direct the flow of visitors through the building and their transparency denies any sense of enclosure, giving a feeling of space and light throughout. (conway and roenisch, understanding architecture) transcendental architecture encloses a space for transcendental capital, but it also discloses the space it encloses. its buildings exhibit a negative monumentality, the grandeur of which comes from a feeling of light and space in excess, an excess that bespeaks an elseor an everywhere. this is the new – read neoliberal – gothic of the u 2.0, a hybrid of high-tech and deconstructivist architecture. the business school is template neoliberal gothic. three features bespeak its excess: the capacious atria, the predominance of curved over rectilinear surfaces and the use of glass as prima materia. there are several atria, from the lobby (with its image of the master of the house, owen g. glenn), and the plein-air café inside to the foyer of the lecture theatres – a chapel, as it were, to the ancestral spirits of the school, with its new zealand business story wall installation, “celebrating new zealand’s entrepreneurial spirit” (messiah ltd. 2006); not to mention the giant stairwell, a dead space, an excess, seemingly, for excess’s sake. it encloses a space full of natural light supplemented by full-spectrum lighting that mimics natural light, which illuminates the subterranean spaces through stairwells and indoor-outdoor flows at various levels. for levien de cauter, such atria embody our “capsular civilization”: “the postmodern atrium is the prototype of capsularization. it is external space simulated within a sealed-off piazza. the capsule abolishes the public sphere.” the side effects, he says, are two: genericity (sameness) and anaesthetisation (“numbness”), which together lead to apoliticality. (2002: 275) at the business school, even the supposedly open external spaces bespeak a generic and anaesthetising excess when ornamentalised like the grassy “knoll” of the john hood plaza. ordinarily, no one much uses this lawn, though it was designed to “create a sense of scholarly community” (saieh 2010), perhaps because it looks like a work of art to be looked down upon from the school that gives onto it. closed in by the hyoid (horse-shoe) superstructure of the school, the lawn encloses, in turn, the vertical light and air, inside and out. all photographs, unless otherwise stated, are by caryline boreham, 2010. dead space transcendental park interstices 12 8 for an example of the planned spontaneity that goes on there, see the some other places performance (november, 2010) by dance students (“events” 2010). 9 for sloterdijk on the relation of space to posthistory and -politics, see couture (2009). space of the forecourt in such a way as to encapsulate nature – and, in some sense, the atmosphere by which it is nurtured (air, moisture, room to grow). the forecourt’s columnar volume is a microcosm of the monocultural species-islands engineered by transcendental agriculture. in capsules such as these, says de cauter, “the everyday is abolished”: there is no room for idle talk or any other “unplanned spontaneity,” it seems (276), however the university tries to engineer it.8 while the school’s architecture thus discloses the space it encloses, it does not do so uniquely: its design wasn’t new but transcendental by design. in a nz herald article on the opening of the building, “the building means business”, chris barton reported that its spiritus rector, barry spicer, the then retiring dean of the faculty of business and economics, “brought the atrium idea back from boston after looking for the best in design from business schools around the world” (2008). business schools in and around boston are a seedbed of transcendental university architecture: from the hult international business school to the simmons school of management and mit’s sloan school of management. best practice in transcendental architecture is the new neoliberal gothic, like old gothic “a transcendental architecture composed of space, light, line, and geometry”. however, its aspiration is not upward – toward heaven – but outward – to all points of the compass. (trachtenberg & hyman 1986: 252) hence the curved surfaces and the use of glass as prima materia, to which we now turn. if inside such buildings, to quote sloterdijk, there seemingly exists a “gigantic hothouse of détente” (2008: 13), a space that promises an end to history (posthistory) and thus to politics (postpolitics),9 outside no quarter is given – whence barton (2008) on the business school: “the building cuts and thrusts. its facade, in bands of shiny glass and aluminium, curves as a bay out to jutting headlands. glass blades sweep past the building’s ends, slicing the air. it means business.” from the rear elevation, it is all gentle lines, such that the building appears to embody the architects’ design of “[o]rganic and flowing forms … which anchor the building and reinterpret the natural topography of the … site” (fjmt & archimedia). they stress the “heritage of cultural exchange and flow” embodied in the curvilinear perspective aeolian harp 29 10 see merrifield (1970) on the crystal palace. resemblance of its “organic flowing ribbons” to the waipapa stream that once flowed through the area down to the auckland harbour, and that was a site for trade between early european settlers and ngāti whatua, the local māori (saieh 2010). but from the front elevation, the school looks like a lyre that receives the winds of transcendental capital or, more fittingly perhaps, a sickle that sweeps out to reap the city that is its target market – and beyond. its seeming “gesture of invitation, outreach and optimism” turns sinister (saieh 2010). it means business. what’s more, such a temple to transcendental capital ought to look effortlessly weightless, as marshall berman describes the crystal palace in all that is solid melts into air: what we see is a glass structure supported by barely perceptible slender iron beams, a structure with gentle, flowing lines and graceful curves, light almost to the point of weightlessness, looking as if it could float at any instant into the sky. (1982: 237) there ought to be none of that architectonic monumentality that tries to impose itself on the landscape. hence, the glass of the business school serves both to refract and reflect its environs, to combine the window and the mirror. its quasi-divine transparency bespeaks the blue haze of sea and sky to which its curved lines lead the eye.10 but, as spicer said at its launch, it also reflects the university, into the midst of which it landed: “now the school [or rather, the university] sees itself.” (barton 2008) indeed, the business school originated in a proposal drawn up by spicer and john hood, then vice-chancellor of the university, for a public-private partnership for “building a world-class business school.” during hood’s tenure, there was a move afoot in the university to add a “third stream” to the traditional streams of teaching and research, whereby “universities run more like businesses and in partnership with business to develop money-making spin-off companies”, and thus to nurture an “entrepreneurial ecosystem” (barton 2008). however, where the crystal palace was visionary, a triumph of modular construction, not to mention new, the business school is capsular (in de cauter’s sense) and thus generic – a “space capsule” imported wholesale from elsewhere. and whereas the palace (at least, interior of the crystal palace, sydenham, c. 1854 interstices 12 11 for more on the global reach of the transcendental, a.k.a. the transnational, university, see whiteley, aguiar & marten (2008). when at hyde park) contained all the objects of the empire – flora, fauna and artefacts – the business school building encloses only the empty space of ideology: its ecosystem is an econosystem. thus, its “massive use of glass seeks,” as befits a temple to transcendental capital, “to allude to the integrity and reliability of the company that inhabits the building” (presas 2005: 26). at once robust and transparent, the design of the business school suggests a template not only for university architecture but also for the university per se. enclosure as closure the crystal palace was a thing of wonder; as chris otter puts it, here was sensuous force in abundance: 293,000 windows generated an experience of radical excess, making the crystal palace a disorienting, shimmering, emotive thing rather than a mere utilitarian object. this experience could intensify into disarming transparency, of a “shadowless, limpid, indefinable medium … like living in an underwater world.” (2009: 96, quoting armstrong 2008: 152) likewise at the business school, though it’s not an underwater world: excepting its glass and aluminium superstructure, it is is an underground world, a teaching and learning bunker. all the machinery of teaching and learning – teachers, classrooms and cloisters, books, projectors, source code and operating systems, wires and other technological equipment – are placed behind screens of various kinds, translucent to give the appearance of transparency. we see only surfaces: hosts and personalities; “open” spaces and open plan offices; terminals, real or virtual; images, projections, guis, and panels. the thaumaturgic (wonder-working) power of transcendental capital doesn’t end there. its real magic is to make its distribution of light, air and space seem natural, unquestionable, ecological. the atria, curved surfaces and glass of the business school seem at once to open it up to its place, to settle it naturally (see hardy 1995), and to evoke other characteristic spaces of transcendental capital like airports, hotels and conference centres, to naturalise an “in-transit condition” (oma, koolhaas & mau 1995: 1252). paradoxically, such spaces close off the local as they disclose the transcendental. their capacious, curvilinear, well-lit enclosures disclose the odd weightless weight – the vacuum – of transcendental capital. the business school’s vacuum-packed econosystem compresses local space to maximise the return on capital to the market. thus, its econocratic design-drive ensures an academosphere of “constructive alignment”: the very architecture ensures that teaching and learning are calculable and replicable – econometric and economantic, that is to say – in accordance with international best practice (biggs 1999: 11). so, here, we are acted on telematically. the template, writ large in the business school as the temple of the university, is vectoral, its out-reaching arcs tracing the flight lines of transcendental capital that puncture and striate, and so redistribute, local space.11 such a design aims to crystallise transcendental capitalism as immutable and eternal – posthistorical. as sloterdijk suggests, arnold gehlen foresaw this outcome in his essay “on cultural crystallization”: airport, hotel or conference centre – or university? 31 12 for “modernity triumphant,” see touraine (1995). 13 see kant (1992). i am predicting that the history of ideas has come to an end and that we have arrived at the post-histoire. … in the age in which the earth has become optically and informationally surveyable, when no event of importance can happen unnoticed, there are no more surprises. (gehlen 1963: 323, quoted in sloterdijk 2008: 13) yet, newness and progress are normalised in such econosystems through their neoliberal fetish for growth and innovation, review and restructuring; there seems to be no place for critique. to repeat dostoevsky’s “baal”: “you feel that here something has already been achieved, that here there is victory and triumph. […] it is all so solemn, triumphant, and proud that you begin to gasp for breath”. (1997: 37)12 there is no hau here. the geometry of bodies “all space is occupied by the enemy. we are living under a permanent curfew. not just the cops – the geometry.” (kotanyi and vaneigem, the “manifesto of unitary urbanism”) how, then, can we circumvent the “curfew of geometry” under which we live in the transcendental university 2.0, the laboratory of transcendental capitalism? we need something akin to what raoul vaneigem calls a “true urbanism”: “true urbanism will start by causing the occupying forces to disappear from a small number of places. that will be the beginning of what we mean by construction”. (quoted in gray 1998: 26) when we, the authors, think construction (the geopolitics, and thus biopolitics, of the place that we have described), we think about being and breathing in the u 2.0, but also about what the u 2.0 excludes: affect, ignorance, sharing, fallibility, just talking, idleness, invention, etc. dostoyevsky’s underground man thinks similarly: “i’m advocating … my own caprice … [ellipses given]. in the crystal palace, it’s unthinkable: suffering is doubt, negation, and what kind of crystal palace would it be if doubt were possible in it?” (2009: 32) what room is there in the business school for doubt or negation, let alone caprice … or idleness (we imagine a student in it, underground, having underground thoughts)? the business school makes sitting around and just thinking or talking – about anything, business-orientated or otherwise – transparently business talk, always already orientated to and, thus, circumscribed by the aims and objectives of the building. instead, we need “idle spaces” to allow us time to talk – and think (lafond 2010: 61). as innis argues in “a plea for time,” to redress this imbalance of space and time, we must reinvigorate the oral tradition in universities (1995: 358). for him – as for kant in the conflict of the faculties – genuine dialogue within the university, between individuals and across faculties, is “the blueprint for the modern research university” (rand 1992: vii)13 and can contest “any concept which threatens to become a monopoly” (innis 1946: xvii). such talk implies that space itself must be critically constructed, not merely deconstructed by critics. if to be critically literate is to speak truth to power by contesting, and thereby prescribing, what counts as true, then we would argue that to be “positionally” literate is to speak one’s truth in power by describing, that is, giving an account of one’s position in space, space being a field of positions of relative power (a “distribution,” in rancière’s terms. needless to say, our essay is just such an account – and gives the lie to sloterdijk’s claim that we cannot but be posthistorical and -political in such a space as the business school). such a positional literacy traces the topology of templated education as it is manifest in the built interstices 12 14 for the role scenography plays in local topology, see park on “theatre country,” the “nature-controlling, nature-as-theatre imperatives” implicit in settlers’ ways of seeing landscape (2006: 157). environment of the university. our position is not unlike what kenneth frampton calls “critical regionalism,” which demands in building a critical adoption of the idea of transportability and a selective adaptation to place: the fundamental strategy of critical regionalism is to mediate the impact of universal civilization with elements derived indirectly from the peculiarities of a particular place … in such things as the … quality of local light, or in a tectonic derived from a particular structural mode, or in the topography of a given site. (1983: 21) by way of an example, let us walk wynyard st (parallel to symonds st in the university campus), from the (now gated) alten st entrance toward the business school, which blocks its end (this is still possible, despite the fact that wandering around the business school means soon to encounter no-go areas). begin with waipapa marae on your left and you will pass on your right side a series of buildings that are testament to the local make-over of metropolitan desire: the 1930s’ stucco concrete of the history building, the brutalist international style of the human sciences building, the 1980s pomo pagoda of the arts building and the twenty-first century neoliberal gothic of the business school. the history of the place has no effect on the the architecture. in the business school images above (figs. 7 and 8) you may have noticed two buildings that uncomfortably abut the owen glenn spaceship, namely the administration building on grafton st and the arts building on the corner of symonds st and grafton rd. the business school bears no relation to these. but our local makeover culture has inured us to the jarring effect of moving from one to the other (see turner 2007: 86): one should not pause in auckland, which is a city, above all, of business. to back up to the marae would be to beg the question as to what was here before wynyard st, namely a place with a long history, in which the business school is just another instalment. it is on the basis of this sense of place that we consider positionally literate architecture to be “up-building,” a term that embraces well-built spaces, not to mention the democratic virtues of talking and thinking. up-building attends to topography (land, buildings, orientation) and meteorology (light, wind, water): positioning rather than mere scenography.14 it adds the sense of touch (not to mention sound and smell) to an architectural sensorium ruled by vision. most importantly, it heeds the hau of history, the air we share: not for nothing do māori call home te hau kāinga – literally, “the home wind” (mead 2003: 220). simply opening up the business school to allow air to circulate inside and out (rather than giving the illusion of circulation by using glass), as did the designers of the fale pasifika next to the marae, would have invited in the hau (jasmax 2011). such positional literacy counters transcendental capitalism’s makeover of living spaces. to its “non-places” (augé 1995) or even the expressive polis of vaneigem’s true urbanism, we prefer what frampton calls a “bounded place-form,” which conceives itself in view of makeover culture 33 its suburban and rural neighbourhood (1983: 25). for us, atrium and plaza, not to mention “perimeter block … galleria … forecourt and … labyrinth,” emptied in the architectonics of transcendental capitalism of a true public, are potentially political places (jasmax 2011). so too, we think, is the university. references: armstrong, i. 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(2008). the neoliberal transnational university: the case of ubc okanagan. capital & class, 32.3, 115-142. technics// memory// history//and the architecture of program// friday// 25.11.2011 school of architecture + design 4.00pm 4.15pm opening address// 4.15pm 5.45pm frame// stuart king: the landscapes of tasmanian architectural history nicole sully: destruction of the dialectics of memory: reimagining and re-remembering the works of minoru yamasaki hannah lewi: “deranging oneself in someone else’s house” 5.45pm 6.15pm interstices 12// journal launch and cocktails school of architecture + design foyer 6.15pm 7.30pm key speaker// rory spence lecture theatre (school of architecture + design) alessandra ponte: the archives of the planet: cinema, photography and memory, 1908-1931 interstices// under construction symposium university of tasmania launceston 25-27.11.2011 01. 02. saturday// 26.11.2011 school of visual + performing arts school of architecture + design john roberts: the ruins are wonderful so why worry? ruins as historical ‘image-objects’ for aalto and utzon 2.30pm 3.00pm afternoon tea// school of architecture + design foyer 3.00pm 4.30pm session 1//spirit seminar room level 1 (school of architecture + design) anuradha chatterjee: birth, death, and rebirth: reconstruction of architecture in ruskin’s writings hayley wright: catastrophic facadism: the authentic imitation fiona gray: paper and fire: the images and ashes of rudolf steiner’s architecture 3.00pm 5.00pm session 2//icon seminar room level 2 (school of architecture + design) iman al-attar: between the ‘represented’ and ‘representing’: the crisis of urban history and the techniques of historiography tania davidge: catastrophe and memorialisation: reflecting on the architectural after-effects of september 11 james lewis: understanding the iconic icon tanja poppelreuter mneme of space 5.00pm 5.30pm drinks// school of architecture + design foyer 5.30pm 6.30pm key speaker// rory spence lecture theatre (school of architecture + design) peg rawes: spinoza’s geometric ecology saturday// 26.11.2011 school of visual + performing arts school of architecture + design 9.00am 10.30am landscape// school of visual + performing arts foyer gini lee: re-enacting stonescapes: territories under construction brought to presence linda marie walker: untitled procedures (working title) jacqueline power: intertwined: ring trees in wadi wadi country 10.30am 11.00am morning tea// school of architecture + design foyer 11.00am 12.00pm key speaker// rory spence lecture theatre (school of architecture + design) jeff malpas: building memory 12.00pm 1.00pm lunch// school of architecture + design foyer 1.00pm 2.30pm session 1//cinema seminar room level 1 (school of architecture + design) micheal tawa: to be two. interstice and deconstitution in cinema and architecture. jane madsen: the space of collapse: a two part terrain nikos papastergiadis: transnational public spheres: large screens and aesthetic cosmopolitanism 1.00pm 2.30pm session 2//psyche seminar room level 2 (school of architecture + design) jen brown: projecting brisbane: lines of f/light in the 2011 post-flood festival simon bourke: interstices and the aerial viewpoint: reconstructing the complexity of the ‘normal’ experience 03. 04. 05. 06. sunday// 27.11.2011 nualla o’flaherty theatre, the queen victoria museum and art gallery school of visual + performing arts 9.00am 10.30m ‘domestic’// sean pickersgill: a memory of entropy: architecture in tarkovsky’s stalker sandra löschke: techniques of display: on constructing and mediating cultural and aesthetic values in exhibition environments kirsty volz: the french polisher and the unsentimental interior 10.30am 11.00am morning tea// school of visual + performing arts foyer 11.00am 12.00pm key speaker// karen burns: signs, symptoms and the index: depicting past and present at purrumbete, 1901-02 12.00pm 1.00pm lunch// school of visual + performing arts foyer 1.00pm 2.00pm key speaker// william taylor architectural typologies and the mnemotechnics of rebuilding in recent post-disaster scenarios 2.00pm 3.00pm plenary session// 71 shotgun houses and housing projects: architectural typology and memory techniques of two new orleans reconstruction scenarios1 william taylor this world has never been short on disaster. nevertheless, given recent events and trends in scholarly literature and popular media, one can argue that urban disasters are acquiring new and complex meanings. this situation is partly due to the global expansion of urban societies where–in “the city”–the impacts of disastrous events are most clearly recognised (davis 2002: 360-99; schneider & susser 2003). the topicality of disaster is also most likely partly due to the mix of seemingly universal 24-hour television news coverage, remote sensing and digital and novel social media that create new and ever larger publics and possibly public ‘demand’ for catastrophic events (ashlin & ladle 2007). making for an even more complex picture, the growth in disaster studies, drawing on these and other sources, brings an array of conceptual frameworks and concerns (like risk and urban vulnerability) to the fore. the growth in number and authority of agencies responsible for the delivery of disaster relief, mitigation and planning, and for directing reconstruction efforts, has come to impose different agenda and interventions on disaster-struck populations. these include multiple levels of government, corporate and private agencies, and ngos. to this mélange of different ways of knowing, representing and managing disaster, architects, planners and allied design professionals bring their own varied perspectives. their expertise is often in competition with other authorities, with commonplace reasoning and popular belief on the best course of action following a disastrous event and, increasingly, with so-called ‘community-led’ design and reconstruction initiatives. community-led design and reconstruction is problematic, practically and ethically, at the best of times (taylor & levine 2011: 174-7) and made even more so when rebuilding involves different kinds of communities, and mixed public and private interests. while the stock-in-trade language of architectural and urban form may sometimes provide for common ground between these different authorities and interests, there is nothing to guarantee consensus on any single vision, urban plan or building type for the re-emergent city. this is not surprising given that all such plans are value-laden and unavoidably fraught with ethical decisions at virtually every stage. this essay enlarges on the connection between reconstruction discourse and renewal of typological analyses. in architectural history and theory, the utility (but also imprecision) of typological methods was acknowledged by its early proponents among enlightenment scholars and architects (leach 2010: 62). more broadly, opportunities for categorising and formally describing material artefacts like buildings in a number of ways speak to the epistemological confines of empirical understanding in an indeterminate field. knowledge of distinctive building forms and reasoning used to relate building types to historical and performative contexts is generated (though not always sharpened) by catastrophic episodes in which urban fabric and ‘normal’ ways of inhabiting it are made tenuous or entirely destroyed. typological analysis and reconstruction strategies initiated by ascertaining the ‘right’ architectural forms with which to rebuild invariably highlight aspirations for civil society and these are invariably mixed. these aspirations are as likely driven by wishful thinking, false memory and hopes as by sound design plans based on competing values. 1 the author is grateful to michael levine, james o’byrne and oenone rooksby for their assistance and advice while preparing this essay. research was funded in part by a grant from the australian research council. interstices 13 this essay outlines one set of case studies: two “typologies of katrina” that informed debate over the reconstruction of new orleans. it questions the roles that architectural type, community and memory play in these two reconstruction scenarios. arguably, katrina introduced a new genre of dystopia into popular and political thinking, where the failure of a society was written large. katrina was distinctive insofar as it was less a natural catastrophe (due largely to flooding, etc) than it was a largely preventable social and political one–driven and made possible by poor decision-making (engineering, social, political/ethical) before, during and after the event. equally, given the scale of katrina’s devastation and impact on the social imaginary, the building types proposed for the city’s reconstruction acquire an even greater utopian–and hence, propositional (also ‘unreal’)–character for manifesting beliefs about how people are supposed to live. historically, in western discourse, utopian and dystopian thinking were often intertwined–the idealism of the former was seldom far from an alternative reality of seemingly insurmountable challenges–and this holds true when contemplating these two scenarios. design for traumatised communities the broad literature of disaster studies suggests there are significant historical and cultural circumstances that make each disastrous episode unique. nonetheless, historical research can articulate broad patterns of perception, reflection and choice that are characteristic of particular settings and times. when looking to recent developments, much disaster commentary–at least in western media–has come to resemble a set of problems organised around the needs of traumatised communities. this is an object of governance and planning conceived in different ways. on the whole, it is presupposed to be an organic unity that connects urban populations, their past and place in a meaningful and socially significant manner (for example: furedi 2007; glavovic 2008). in august 2006, one year after katrina, the journal of architectural education dedicated a special issue to new orleans and its reconstruction. the opening editorial includes claims presupposing enduring links between a community conceived as an organic unity, its building heritage imagined as a mnemonic vehicle, and the city’s unique setting. though largely unsupported (and perhaps unsupportable, as they are fundamentally existential assertions), the following proposition would likely find agreement across the range of disaster studies and resonate in commonplace reasoning: the culture of new orleans is unique. it is a mix of ancient heritage with layers and adaptations added by successive generations, resulting in a singularly beautiful cultural mosaic of elements. hurricane katrina destroyed buildings–though not in the city’s historic core–and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, but it cannot wipe out the memories and spirit of the citizens. (allen 2006: 4) allowing for civil liberties to enter this mix of ideas, the journal’s editor, barbara allen, adds, “it is necessary to enable every citizen to come back to this exceptional city if they so desire.” (2006: 4) given that such memories and desires are not univocal–and indeed they both often contain competing visions of what was and should be after a disastrous event–it is not surprising they should result in competing expectations for reconstruction efforts. the “right of return” for new orleans refugee residents featured in heated debates over the city’s future, alongside concerns expressed for the possible violation of rights behind what was regarded by many observers as the hasty and possibly 73 unwarranted demolition of thousands of storm and flood-damaged houses during the first year after the storm (allen 2006: 4-5). the situation of poor tenant-occupiers was in many ways even worse, their dispersal and diminished political voice making it difficult to re-assert a community’s voice into local and national decision-making. for housing activists, the situation of many new orleaneans made for the environmental and bureaucratic (both governmental and corporate) equivalent of ‘urbicide’. this is a term which circulated in the 1990s to describe the systematic destruction of urban communities and places as a strategy of war. it is typically reserved for places like sarajevo, mostar and fallujah, but has a lineage reaching back to 1960s north american precedents when it signified the destructive effects of modernist urban renewal schemes (huxtable 1972; graham 2003). herscher writes: resuscitated in the context of post-yugoslavia’s violent conflicts, however, the destruction signified by urbicide radically expanded. against the idea that post-yugoslav cities were destroyed because of military necessity or through collateral damage, urbicide posed the target of destruction as the city itself–as an ensemble of architecture, a community of citizens, a medium of collective memory, or even the site of civilization as such. the concept of urbicide provided a new category to conceive of political violence, a violence that could be framed as at once urban, deliberate, and illegitimate. (2006: 18) what is intriguing about claims such as allen’s and the concept of “urbicide” is a common, underlying intellectual project that subsumes psychological and sociological domains of reasoning under a distinctive experience of community, place and memory. in other words, the common belief that memory is an intrinsic part of the human condition of shock and loss gives form to a theory of how urban communities experience disaster. this seems to be problematic as it invites thinking that it is largely anachronistic, in that communities are believed to be formed partly by memories of a place, but memory is neither a collective faculty nor is it necessarily geographically bounded. whose memories are included and whose are not? are these truly memories of one place or do they also draw on other real or imagined places? the shotgun house the first typology of katrina speaks to the ambiguous place of official histories in post-disaster reconstruction and the tendency to justify rebuilding projects as restoring communities by somehow reinstating building fabric. writing on new orleans rarely fails to mention the distinctive character of its timber-framed houses, including its elongated “shotgun” houses, one of the city’s more ubiquitous residential building types. the shotgun has long featured in writing on the towns and rural landscapes of the southern united states, particularly the delta region. this tendency contributes perhaps to a prevailing and overly-romanticised view of the region’s past in accounts that risk downplaying some aspects of the building’s history–for instance, its association with slave quarters and the slave-holding plantation system. painting an idyllic picture of delta life in his account of southern rural architecture (specifically, the country store), historian thomas clark described towns where “there was no wiser spot on earth than the porches which jutted out from the long shotgun buildings.” (1944: 56) writing in 1974 on the state of race relations in the south, a correspondent for the times (of london, january interstices 13 14: 12) begins by confirming a popular caricature of the region: “the american south is still unmistakably southern: words with the edges rounded off, magnolias in the front yard, grits at breakfast, blacks living in shot-gun shacks, locals nodding hello to strangers.” scholarship on new orleans architecture commonly emphasises the provenance of the building in the unique circumstances of the city’s history and culture, and the alluvial environment of the gulf coast states–though varied reasons are given why so many of the houses were built there. for much of its history the crescent city was an entity bounded, physically and conceptually, on all sides by water, with swamps and marshlands encircling only limited buildable land, particularly before the arrival of technology in the 1920s that allowed large-scale draining of wetlands and other technical, socio-economic and political developments that facilitated outward suburban development. this was where, in times past, cut from indigenous cypress forests long since buried by suburbia or from the pine woods that still stretch far to the north, reserves of timber were available to build these narrow forms that fit restricted building sites. variations on the type, owing to the circumstances of site, family size, the measure of wealth or the personal tastes of residents, add to assessments of the city’s architectural heritage. new orleans is a place where most likely every native can distinguish between a “double shotgun” where two dwellings are attached, a “camelback shotgun” where a second floor is added at the rear of the plan, and a shotgun with a wraparound porch (vogt 1985: 22-23). fig 1. f. b. kniffen, (1936). louisiana house types. annals of the association of american geographers 24 (4) (december), p. 186 75 histories accounting for southern regional and new orleans architecture commonly yield a partial or undiscerning view of the shotgun house. they render it as both an inherently functional building type and autochthonous or organic, growing from the roots of longstanding tradition–hence, its adoption and interpretation as a vehicle for memory. in his now classic paper “louisiana house types”, geographer, anthropologist and folk historian fred kniffen constructs a typology of the state’s vernacular buildings, in post-european settlement (fig. 1), and a qualitative and quantitative mapping of its built environment he described as “culturogeographic” (1936: 179). while kniffen’s paper accounts for the number and distribution of nine louisiana house types across the state, its descriptive narrative and maps were also, in the end, aiming to arrive at “an [aerial] expression of ideas regarding houses–a groping toward a tangible hold on the geographic expression of culture” (1936: 192). however, without a historical accounting of the sources for and history of this culture, the paper merely outlines their geo-spatial diffusion (vlach 1976: 47-49). seventy years after kniffen’s paper was published, designers of post-disaster housing for new orleans searched for such a tangible “expression of culture” in their appropriation of the shotgun building type. reconstruction plans for the city’s flooded districts included assorted allusions to, copies of and reinterpretations of the building type (figs. 2 & 3). the design competition brief for 150 new houses in the lower ninth ward (where approximately 4000 houses were destroyed) sponsored by american actor brad pitt and his “make it right” foundation allowed for only two models to be emulated: single-family detached units derived from the shotgun type and “the duplex”, a multi-family home. results show wide-ranging formal interpretations of these models with added features, making both building types “modern”: aesthetically innovative, and responsive to demands for ecological sustainability and twentyfirst century environmental risks: the thirteen architects who contributed to single family home designs all hewed to the traditional new orleans shotgun house format–simple, narrow and fashioned to fit the long skinny lots in the lower 9th ward. they also all include porches–a feature highly valued in the neighbourhood that places a premium on sociability and connectedness to the community. all of the homes have more complex floor plans, solar panels, rain water collectors and other green features. (make it right 2009: ‘building green’) as stephen verderber (2010) explains, the origins of the new orleans shotgun house may owe more to contingencies of cultural importation than any obvious and necessary organic link between a people and a place. consequently, the building type’s re-interpretation in the lower ninth ward could be viewed as historically anachronistic, fundamentally impractical (particularly in katrina’s fig. 2. lower ninth ward, new orleans. [photo: kukame mckenzie (july 2010)] fig. 3. project for make it right foundation (mir) in the lower ninth ward, new orleans. trahan architects. the architects’ description of the project on the mir website begins: “the shotgun typology is a resultant of site constraints, environmental conditions and efficient planning. the approach to the project was to identify these main characteristics and represent them in a more contemporary fashion.” [photo: kukame mckenzie (july 2010)] interstices 13 wake) or possibly self-indulgent on the part of its architects and sponsors. verderber cites john vlach’s 1976 study of the shotgun that challenged received wisdom regarding the building type’s origins and argued that: … in the development of the shotgun house we find an afro-american artefact that has been adopted by whites and effectively incorporated into popular building practices. the significance of this postulated cultural borrowing cannot be overlooked for it represents an important contribution of afro-americans to the cultural landscape. (vlach 1976: 47) this connection to african-american identity and the building type’s likely historical provenance in places far removed from louisiana, like haiti and other caribbean islands, does not in itself render the shotgun irrelevant as a model for reconstruction (at the time of its inundation and near complete destruction the lower ninth ward of new orleans was largely black, supporting one likely argument for the building’s legitimacy). however, the building’s ambiguous provenance does raise questions why one should accept prima facie the iconic status of the shotgun and privilege its continued use as a model when other features of the ninth ward’s sociology and urban morphology were so radically altered by katrina and the tabula rasa that followed in its wake? while many of the former residents wishing to return to new orleans may still speak in words “with the edges rounded off” as the reporter for the times observed in 1974, is it ideal they now be obliged to live in “shot-gun shacks” reproduced in such exotic variety? historical anachronism aside, there are at least two problems, neither one strictly architectural (or subject to a designer’s control), with outcomes from the make it right scheme that are wrong for new orleans–that work against the design brief’s aspirations for “sociability and connectedness to community”. firstly, the protracted pace of reconstruction coupled with an overall redevelopment drive that must be recognised as ad hoc has resulted in the replacement of only a small number of the 4000 houses lost in the lower ninth ward. designs by international architects and competition winners sit alongside the few additional houses built by other means and the greater number of vacant, neglected and weed-ridden lots, resulting in a community that appears spread too thin and proves hard to service with public utilities, fire prevention and police services. secondly, in the absence of agreement on a strong, centralised planning regime for the entire region–of the kind able to undertake a full range of initiatives, including the permanent depopulation and ecological restoration of some areas if necessary–commendable, but nonetheless piecemeal efforts such as brad pitt’s will continue to apply band-aid remedies to a gaping wound. these problems render any appeal to memory as the basis of placefulness and heritage particularly tenuous. housing projects the second typology of katrina raises questions more about the buildings that are destroyed after a disastrous event and histories forgotten or only partially remembered, than about models for rebuilding per se; it raises more fears for the purposeful erasure of history than the past’s reinstatement. a curious aspect of post-katrina reconstruction was that while efforts were being undertaken to devise and build new building types responsive to the heritage of the place and its venerable stock of residential architecture, remnants of the city’s public housing still standing after the storm were being torn down. at a time when much of the pre-storm population was unable to return home owing to the shortage of 77 habitable accommodation, both activities–the building of neo-shotguns and further destruction of housing and its replacement by quasi-traditional buildings– were justified as means of restoring community. targeted for whole or part destruction before the storm, four of the city’s biggest public housing estates dating from the 1940s and 1950s provided accommodation for about 3077 families. some residential units in some parts of the older estates were subsequently flooded, but otherwise survived intact, or so it seemed to outward appearances. the solid-looking forms and brick walls of the residential blocks provided a rallying point for housing activists and some former residents protesting their demolition at a time in which emergency housing was sorely needed. this outcome figured in broader debates over the likely political alienation of the city’s african-american population if the public housing estates were to be destroyed (gardner, irwin & peterson 2009). circumstances surrounding the demolition of one estate, the magnolia or c. j. peete projects located in the 11th and 12th wards of new orleans, are indicative of conditions impacting on the other sites. originally named for the tree-lined street along its northern border, the magnolia projects was built in 1940, then expanded and nearly doubled in size in 1955. it was one of six public housing projects opening that year and one of four (along with the calliope, lafitte, and st. bernard projects) designated for black tenants in accordance with segregationist practices of the time (the other two projects, st. thomas and iberville, were reserved for low-income white residents). the magnolia projects was conceived as part of a nationwide program formed in the 1930s aimed at alleviating the deplorable living conditions experienced by many of america’s lowincome residents. on the site of the magnolia projects, knowledge of prevailing design standards and functional relationships for attached, single-family dwellings, coupled with cost-effective building methods and planning and construction practices exercised by national and municipal housing authorities established (in the 1930s) for the purpose, resulted in a total of 1403 standardised residential units accommodating approximately 2100 people. mahoney writes that: the early new orleans projects were some of the most attractive and best constructed in the nation. they were designed as a mixture of townhouses and apartments in 2and 3-story buildings, arranged in courtyards built around grassy lawns. some had curving driveways. on most of the sites, trees had been preserved. (1990: 1268) located in an uptown district commonly known as mid-city, the site contained a significant african-american, but nonetheless mixed, population. the historical urban morphology of mid-city was characterised in many areas by smaller-scale housing typically occupied by poorer citizens (and in some places grouped around a neighbourhood cemetery), with larger and more elaborate houses surrounding these and finally, mansions for the city’s wealthy elite lining the avenues and boulevards that connected one district to another. new orleans was racially segregated from an early date–socially, culturally and politically. spatially, the dispersion and mix of races and classes was commonly more finely-grained than in other cities, though this heterogeneous condition was dynamic and variable. it was affected, for instance, firstly, at the larger scale of the new orleans metropolitan area by the phenomenon of “white flight” which gained speed in the 1960s. secondly, localised developments like the magnolia projects altered the racial composition of urban districts–including perceptions of the character of resident populations–providing sites for the further formation of racial and socio-economic identities as well as racial prejudices. interstices 13 the construction of the public housing estates in new orleans contributed to a more pronounced racial, spatial and symbolic order in the city. conceived largely as an internalised domain, the building of c. j. peete furthered what would subsequently be called by urban sociologists the “ghettoization” of urban space. site planning resulted in the closing of thoroughfare streets and the creation of linear parks and common yards around which the new residential buildings were grouped. by the 1980s and 1990s, the worsening physical condition and deteriorating infrastructure of the development, as witnessed in many public housing estates across the united states, was coupled with high rates of crime and chronic unemployment among residents, alcohol and drug dependency and a host of additional social problems. in the years just before katrina, crime rates there had become legendary. plans to partly or wholly demolish and then redevelop the project for local residents were initiated in the 1990s, though by 2005 only the 1955 expansion had been razed. many of the remaining buildings were vacant and fenced off when the hurricane hit and the city’s failed storm defences flooded the area with between two and four feet of water and water-borne contaminants. c. j. peete was initiated in 1941 with an act of “slum clearance” but ended up providing rubble for a second wave of urban and social reform. by 2007, when an “environmental justice” report commissioned by the us department of housing and urban development delivered a comprehensive assessment of the project’s physical state and future potential, the elusive goal of social reform had become further complicated. it was broadened to accommodate not only updated design standards, but ruling neo-liberal expectations for market-led redevelopment. the report found that: the c.j. peete housing development suffers from high density, overpopulated units, deteriorated buildings and infrastructure, obsolete building components, hazardous building materials, and building envelopes that are not energy efficient. demolition and reconstruction of the development will convert a conventional public housing development into a new, mixed-income and mixed-use community that includes fig 4. harmony oaks (formerly c. j. peete) housing estate, january 2012 [photo by the author] 79 rentals and home ownership units in new orleans. the final master plan must create a blueprint for a successful, stable, diverse, safe, attractive and sustainable mixed-income community. (us department of housing and urban development 2007: 12) in a move suggestive of the marketing common in much commercial residential development, but also highlighting the desire to distance the new complexes from their impoverished, crime-ridden pasts, the four public housing estates were renamed. c. j. peete, having acquired its name through re-christening in honour of its african-american manager who administered the estate from 1952 to 1978, was made-over a second time and called harmony oaks (fig. 4). expectations that the resulting design should satisfy multiple demands for relatively low-cost housing and market desirability, security along with consumer choice and the aesthetic trappings associated with “community”, resulted in a neo-traditional architectural style common to commercial projects throughout the united states. this was sanctioned by government authorities, including the requirement that all proposed construction design have prior approval from the louisiana state heritage preservation office and the american council on historic preservation. guidelines required the “louisiana vernacular, victorian, and classical styles … in a combination of single, double and small apartment buildings” (us department of housing and urban development 2007: 12). a back-cover advertisement appearing in the new yorker by investment firm and financial backer for harmony oaks, goldman sachs, reveals only part of the story behind the project: after one of new orleans’ oldest public housing developments was devastated by hurricane katrina, we invested in rebuilding it from the ground up. our urban investment group partnered with an experienced developer, mccormack baron salazar, as well as former tenants, neighbourhood organisations, and state and local housing agencies to enable families and businesses to return home. today, harmony oaks is a community where neighbours can come together–on their new front porches, at the local community center or the nearest playgrounds. (june 6, 2011) while the condition of much new orleans public housing was truly deplorable by september 2005, its dereliction was only partly due to katrina and the impact of stormwater and floodwater on building fabric. its redevelopment, though generally praised as delivering positive social outcomes (residents are reported as experiencing greatly reduced rates of crime and other improvements improvements, see reckdahl 2006), has failed in other regards. however, this failure is not so much a consequence of physical infrastructure, or the availability of consumer “choice” allowed for by buildings for purchase or rent that are clothed in a range of historicist styles, but rather a broader range of circumstances. interstices 13 by august 2011 many residents had not returned. among the former residents of the “big four” public housing estates, roughly half–1512–of the 3077 households there before the storm had returned to the city. roughly seven percent of these original families have returned to the four sites, including 70 families to harmony oaks (reckdahl: 2006). the new developments may look historical, but they cater to the modern reality of private car ownership to a far greater degree than their predecessors on the sites. thoroughfare streets have been re-established in some places while the rear areas of some residential zones have been formed into large parking lots (two design features which also facilitate enhanced surveillance and policing). resembling many “new urbanist” projects across the us, tenancy in harmony oaks requires adherence to regulations of a kind commonly found in more upper-class gated communities and aimed at controlling “anti-social” behaviour. following interviews with returned residents, one observer reports on the outcomes, both positive and negative: for instance, they said, at harmony oaks, residents can’t use outside water to fill a kiddie pool or let their grandchildren run through the sprinkler. nor can they dig up their backyards to plant gardens, a source of frustration for the sisters, who grew up helping their mother pick crates of strawberries and hampers of beans. but, on saturday, just as jennings worked up a head of steam about other nettlesome rules, including one that limits how many people can sit on a porch and when they can do it, a granddaughter toddled up to her, removed a pink pacifier and puckered her lips for a smooch. (reckdahl 2006) crime, though considerably reduced on the estate, has returned–and by some accounts has equalled or exceeded pre-storm rates–across broader swathes of the city. arguably, in terms of this one indicator of community security and well-being, new orleans has itself become “the project” within which harmony oaks and the other housing estates (fig. 5) are an ideally conceived and just partly realised reserve of relative tranquillity (naughton 2006: 230). fig. 5 columbia parc (formerly st. bernard) housing estate [photo: author, january 2012] 81 conclusion the destruction of large parts of new orleans in 2005 sparked interest in reviving historical building forms, with many, like the timber-framed shotgun house, having been destroyed or hastily condemned after the inundation. however, questions arise over just what was being revived. does the attention given to a single building type, row of shotgun houses, or a sprinkling of homes designed as contemporary “updates” on vernacular or historicist styles, ignore bigger issues relating to the reconstruction of entire urban districts, the return of their inhabitants and the accommodation of diverse needs and desires for community? for instance, is it historically anachronistic and possibly irresponsible to focus on rebuilding districts like the lower ninth ward, when their abandonment and rehousing of former residents elsewhere is more likely to reduce overall urban vulnerability and enable communities to develop their own distinctive character, free from longstanding risks? there are not only practical aspects to these and comparable efforts to revisit or adapt historical building types in order to restore urban infrastructure after a disaster, but also ethical or moralising agendas, in which notions of history, individual recollection and public memory are freely–and often unthinkingly–mixed. there is often an underlying imperative to repair shattered lives and restore historical continuities disrupted by catastrophic events; there is accompanying rhetoric describing elusive goals to facilitate individual emotional recovery and social cohesion by making the built environment ‘whole’ again. conceivably, one of the effects of this tendency is to highlight, but also obscure, boundaries between domains of social and psychological reasoning, so that memory becomes something less than precise–less amenable to analysis by one or other theory of the past, cognition or collective mnemonics. rather, in these instances memory provides a humanist gloss, more or less explicit in reconstruction plans, that substantiates a range of ideological, economic and/or political agenda served by rebuilding. arguably, the wide variety of possibilities, concepts and terms for describing an architectural or building type–like such comparably abstract entities as community, place and memory–accounts for the conventional status of such terms in urban, architectural and disaster reconstruction discourses. clearly, when urban disaster strikes, ambiguity may accommodate a mixture of motives for re-building, commemoration and social engineering. in the context of post-katrina new orleans, efforts to revive or reinstate and adapt the forms of historic housing were not only varied as aesthetic interventions (to revive, to adapt, etc.). they were also mixed in terms of underlying motives and social outcomes. some efforts called upon the architectural history of new orleans, in the attempt to restore or reinvigorate what was presumed to be the organic link between the city, its cultural heritage and built environment. others called upon images of shotgun houses, french quarter townhouses or garden district cottages for their popular appeal or marketability, or for their connection to new urbanist ideals and other prevailing planning movements. in each case, typological analysis (being a manner of descriptive classification) slides quickly into topological assertion: the study of places and the assumption that each place has a distinctive character that is potentially generative of building forms. topology was once understood as, “the art of assisting the memory by associating the thing to be remembered with some place or building, the parts of which are well known.” (oxford english dictionary 1989) observing the ambivalence of these terms and analyses raises possibilities for aesthetic, ethical and political criticism of particular recovery settings and scenarios. interstices 13 references allen, b. (2006). new orleans and katrina: one year later. journal of architectural education, 60 (1), 4. ashlin, a. & ladle, r. (2007). natural disasters and newspapers: post-tsunami environmental discourse. environmental hazards, 7, 330-41. clark, t. d. (1944). pills, petticoats and plows. the southern country store. indianapolis and new york: bobbs-merrill co. davis, m. (2002). dead cities, and other tales. new york, ny: new press. furedi, f. (2007). the changing meaning of disaster. area, 39 (4), 482–489. gardner, t., irwin, a., & peterson, c. w. (2009). no shelter from the storm: reclaiming the right to housing and protecting the health of vulnerable communities in post-katrina new orleans. health and human rights, 11 (2), 101-114. glavovic, b. (2008). katrina recovery experiences: imperatives for building sustainable, hazardresilient communities. paper delivered to the 4th international i-rec conference building resilience: achieving effective post-disaster reconstruction. christchurch, new zealand. retrieved from: http://www.resorgs.org.nz/irec2008/papers/glavovicb.pdf graham, s. (2003). lessons in urbicide. new left review, 19, 63-78. herscher, a. (2006). american urbicide. journal of architectural education, 60 (1), 18-20. huxtable, a. l. (1972). will they ever finish bruckner boulevard? a primer on urbicide. new york, ny: collier books. kniffen, f. b. (1936). louisiana house types. annals of the association of american geographers, 26 (4) (december), 173-93. leach, a. (2010). what is architectural history? cambridge, uk: polity press. mahoney, m. (1990). law and racial geography: public housing and the economy in new orleans. stanford law review, 42(5), 1251-1290. make it right foundation (2009). building green. retrieved from: http://www.makeitrightnola.org/ index.php/building_green/architecture/ naughton, a. (2006). trends in new orleans psychogeography. anthropology and aesthetics, 49(50), 229-30. oxford english dictionary (1989). online version june 2012. retrieved from: http://www.oed.com/view/entry/203426 reckdahl, k. (2006, sunday august 21). new c. j. peete complex is solid, shiny–but not as social, some residents say. the times picayune (new orleans). retrieved from: http://www.nola.com/ politics/index.ssf/2011/08/new_cj_peete_complex_is_solid.html schneider, j. & susser, i. (2003). destruction and reconstruction in a globalized world. new york, ny: berg. taylor, w. m. & levine, m. p. (2011). prospects for an ethics of architecture. london and new york (ny): routledge. us department of housing and urban development (2007). environmental justice study. c. j. peete housing development new orleans, louisiana. us risk management: new orleans. retrieved from: http://www.hano.org/documents/environmental justice study final/15060164 cj peete env justice study final.pdf verderber, s. (2010). five years after – three new orleans neighborhoods. journal of architectural education 64(1), 107-120. vlach, j. m. (1976). the shotgun house: an african architectural legacy. part i. pioneer america 8 (1), 47-49. vogt, l. (1985). new orleans houses. gretna, la: pelican publishing company. 47 so high you can’t get over it: neo-classicism, modernism and colonial practice in the forming of a twentieth-century architectural landmark michael findlay amyas connell (1901-80) was a new zealand-born architect and a leading figure in british modernism. his first commission, high and over (1929-31), for the archaeologist and classical scholar bernard ashmole, is among the earliest modernist houses built in england and one of the few buildings by a new zealand architect that commands a significant place in international architectural history. this paper examines high and over from a new zealand perspective. connell’s critical profile has been partially shaped by the soubriquet ‘wild colonial boys’, used to frame the work of connell and others by the english architectural historian dennis sharp. such an interpretation overlooks the depth of connell’s experience prior to high and over and arguably overplays his antitheoretical and outsider status. this paper explores the design sources for high and over. it was an unusual fusion of classical geometry, beaux-arts planning, corbusian aesthetic, and parisian décor and landscape. connell’s interest in the villas of hadrianic rome was evident in high and over’s centralized plan, which reveals a regard for classical geometry that transcends the usual explanations for such practices in the beaux-arts teaching systems adopted in british architectural education. this rich combination of elements has polarized opinion on its merits as a piece of modernist architecture. the high and over project also included a number of related structures set in a landscape plan not usually included in analysis. the landscape plan is considered here, with reference to french modernist garden design of the 1920s, including the designs of the armenian architect gabriel guévrékian at the paris exposition and the villa noailles at hyères (1927). high and over occupies a place where the traditions of classicism and the emergent features of modernism intersect. connell may have produced a distinctively british form of classical modernism, but it is also an artefact of new zealand origin, with its roots in rural taranaki. *** amyas douglas connell (fig. 1) was born in the taranaki dairy town of eltham in 1901, where his father was a professional photographer and landscape artist. amyas also wanted to be an artist but was unsure of his future direction, and after his final year at school, laboured on a dairy factory construction site over interstices 09 49 viewed le corbusier’s pavillion de l’esprit nouveau. in his recollections from the 1960s, ward was dismissive of the exposition apart from le corbusier’s contribution. this is a retrospective view from his position as theorist and historian of the practice, expressed at a time when art deco was still regarded as an inferior manifestation of modernism (ward, 1967: 74). there was much at the exposition to excite young colonial architects. amongst the most talked about sights was a cubist garden, le jardin d’eau et de luminiére, by the armenian architect gabriel guévrékian (imbert, 1993). this densely organized triangular garden used a revolving faceted glass sphere, tiered triangular concrete pools, horizontal water jets, coloured electric lights and the optical vibration of complementary colour planes to explore notions of space and time. as with other french modernist garden designs, this was nothing to do with horticulture or the picturesque. it was an ‘instant garden’, constructed from metal, glass and hard-edged concrete. avant-garde french garden design had a close relationship to the contemporary visual and plastic arts. exhibited elsewhere were parisian architect rob malletstevens’ sculptures that resembled cubist trees made from slabs of concrete. connell and ward chose to study at the architectural atelier associated with the bartlett school of university college, london. the atelier has been described as an add-on to the bartlett, surviving from the aspirations of reginald blomfield (1856-1942) to apply the architectural teaching systems of the french école des beaux-arts to british architectural education (campbell, 1989: 133). blomfield has often been simplistically characterized as a bombastic reactionary. while adamantly opposed to modernism, he was also an admirer of progressive french architecture and its teaching methods and used his influence to reform british architectural education along those lines. studying at the atelier did not require formal enrolment or lead to any qualifications, but it was considered a useful place to network and establish connections as well as for preparing the large and complex drawings required for competitions. the atelier was led by french-born and beaux-arts trained hector othon corfiato, whom both connell and ward regarded highly (ward, 1967: 78). corfiato built relatively little in his lifetime but his teaching was influential over the generation of students that came together at the bartlett. corfiato was cosmopolitan in outlook and ensured that the focus was on france and northern europe as opposed to the concentration on american models at the competing liverpool school of architecture under c. h. reilly. connell’s new zealand experience seems to have measured up well against his british contemporaries, as it became his intention during 1925 to compete for the prestigious rome scholarship in architecture (ward, 1967: 78). connell was informed that he had been awarded the rome scholarship in june 1926 (shaw, 1926). ward had also entered the competition and gained second place but had neglected to join the riba and was therefore ineligible for the henry jarvis travelling studentship. he was awarded a special studentship from the jarvis fund instead (personal, 1926: 10). the rome scholarship provided an annual stipend, board and lodging – financial support that was crucial to connell’s extended stay in europe as he had no private means. connell and ward celebrated by taking three months leave of absence and returning to new zealand where civic receptions were held to mark their wins (shaw, 1927). they arrived back in london for christmas 1926, working their passage once again, this time on the ss ruapehu (connell, 1926). despite being “the highest tree in the orchard”, personal rifts in its management and declining standards in its teaching programmes had shaken the status of the british school at rome. as louise the summer of 1918 (j. connell, 1985). the site is unknown but taranaki was in the midst of a construction boom led by eltham architects j. w. rough and j. duffill, who designed over 100 dairy buildings in this region alone (bartle, 2006). many of these were built in steel reinforced concrete. pease’s building in bridge street, eltham (1910), was designed with a fully suspended concrete floor; and the slightly later wilkinson’s building (1913) was a row of five two-storey shops with a total frontage of 41 metres, using monolithic construction with beams cast into the floor slabs (south taranaki district council, 2000). this ferro cement building with its classical façade incorporated the two main threads of connell’s early practical experience in new zealand: advanced construction and neo-classical formality. his brother jock recalled that this first job ended following a disagreement with the foreman over the correct way to lay foundations, but the experience focused amyas’ interest in architecture. in 1919, he travelled to wellington to be articled to the firm of young & fearn, where he was offered a four-year term and a relatively generous salary of £2.3.4 per month, rising to £5.8.4 at the fourth year (item 54, 1916-40: 8). it was common for articled pupils to receive no payment at all under these arrangements and connell’s remuneration suggests that stanley fearn expected to get good work from him. british-born fearn was the first recipient of the new zealand institute of architects (nzia) gold medal in 1927, awarded for the william booth memorial training college in wellington, a project actually completed in 1913 (walker, 2005: 30). connell received an up-to-date training with the firm and at night classes organized by the wellington branch of the nzia. this atelier training followed the model established by the royal institute of british architects (riba) and the university-based schools of architecture. connell’s first-year course of study included the history of architecture, practical mathematics, structural mathematics, building construction, freehand drawing and an oral examination. solutions to design and construction problems were also submitted in the form of a ‘testimony of study’ (item 57, 1916-40: 65). connell won a competition organized by the wellington branch of the nzia for a war memorial in 1921 (nzia wellington branch, 1921: 12-13), followed by a third place in an nzia-sponsored national competition behind f. gordon wilson (1900-59), the future government architect (notes, 1922: 75). fearn was a strong advocate of young architects travel ling abroad, and advised the students of the atelier to, “let it be the aim and object of everyone to eventually get to the beaux arts, paris, even if only for six months, for that is the fountain head of the world where architectural knowledge is concerned” (untitled, 1921: 86). fearn was acknowledging that the atelier method of training had its limitations and that talented students would benefit from exposure to british architectural teaching. the outward flow of new zealand architects to britain was increased after the first world war when places in the schools of architecture were offered to demobilized ex-servicemen and an expatriate colonial presence began to form in london and liverpool. connell met his future professional partner basil robert ward (1902-76) through the wellington architectural students association. with fearn’s encouragement, both decided to seek further opportunities in london and it added to their myth in later years that they worked their passage as coal trimmers on the ss karamea. connell rented a room at clements inn passage in central london and worked for arts and crafts architects william and edward hunt (news and topics, 1926: 872). although money was tight, connell and ward visited the 1925 l’exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes in paris, where they fig. 1: amyas connell and sister beatrix, 1926. eltham historical society. fig. 1 interstices 09 51 attention to the villa’s complex hilltop setting. the largest of tiberius’ numerous structures on the island, the villa originally stood five levels high and was a demanding structure to represent. even at 1/16”:1’0” scale, the plan sheet measured 7 x 6 feet, and was accompanied by elevations and sections almost as large. these drawings were left incomplete when connell resigned his scholarship in january 1929 to return to london and commence his first architectural commission. connell’s first client was the retiring director of the british school at rome, the classical scholar bernard ashmole (1894-1988). ashmole was young, energetic and liberal – an unusual combination of attributes in a director of the rome school – but he had been appointed in 1925 in order to rescue the school’s failing reputation. he regarded connell as the star of the rome school and later wrote that connell’s study of the capitol in rome revealed “their subtleties perhaps more thoroughly than anyone before, except perhaps their creator” (ashmole, 1994: 51). connell returned to london and re-established contact with a fellow colonial student from the atelier, stewart lloyd thomson (1902-90). connell and thomson set up at 11 mecklenburg place in the heart of bloomsbury, conveni ently close to university college and ashmole’s office as the newly appointed yates professor of archaeology. while the first existing drawings for high and over, dated june 1929, are signed connell & thomson (connell & thomson, 1929),1 neither mentions the other in any known source and their working relationship is therefore conjectural. apart from high and over, the outlook was bleak. jock connell recalled that his brother had failed to hold on to a major potential client in philip sassoon, who had commissioned him to design a garden at his restored mansion house, trent park (sharp, 1994: 62). thomson only records on his ariba candidate’s statement that he began professional practice in 1929 and made no claims for collaboration on high and over (thomson, 1939). his first british commission, the house st raphael in hornchurch, london, did not eventuate until 1932, by which time connell had moved on, rejoined by basil ward. even so, thomson can be counted as another significant colonial practitioner of the flat-roofed, thin-walled, reinforced concrete modern house in britain. thomson has disappeared from the published account of connell’s early career, but their brief association is further evidence of the colonial nexus that formed at the british schools of architecture after the first world war and had such great influence over the shape of british modernism. aside from thomson and ward, connell’s milieu formed around a network of mainly colonial and foreign modernist architects. he was a friend of the australian raymond mcgrath and 1. see also a perspective drawing in sharp (1994: 26) campbell has noted: “within a decade of its creation (in 1912), the faculty began to use the rome scholarship not simply to encourage systematic working methods, clarity of planning and good draughtsmanship but actually to discourage what it termed ‘modern tendencies’” (1989: 131). as well as being chronically underfunded, there was no consistent educational policy and the instruction tended to reinforce the divide between architecture as a profession and an academic discipline. the course was criticized for its lack of relevance to practice and a large number of rome and jarvis prize-winners went back to teach at schools of architecture. in 1924, the term of the scholarship was shortened to two years, with a third year available on application, in an effort to meet the requirements of students keen to enter practice. despite its flaws, the rome prize seemed to be created for individuals like connell and ward. the scheme was established to foster talent in young architects who found it difficult to pay their way through articled training and university-based education, and was open to any british subject under the age of 30. connell and ward were not the first new zealanders to achieve success in this field. edward armstrong (1896-1992) was awarded the jarvis scholarship in 1921 but resigned in five months and returned to new zealand for the robert mcdougall art gallery commission (campbell, 1989: 151). the same honour went the following year to akaroa-born george checkley (1893-1960) who, like armstrong, entered the liverpool school of architecture on an armed forces serviceman’s grant (sharples et al, 1996: 168). both armstrong and checkley went on to contribute to the british modern movement, checkley through a pair of early houses at cambridge and armstrong as the designer of sensitively detailed blocks of working-class flats in and around london. checkley, although a retiring individual, was an important link for the colonials of the late 1920s. he was part of the influential architectural set at cambridge that included the australian raymond mcgrath (1903-77) and his client mansfield forbes, whose remodelled georgian house finella (1929) was an early rallying point for british modernists. the main focus for architecture students at the british school at rome was the restoration through drawings of ruined ancient sites. this was carried out in an interdisciplinary manner alongside students from art and archaeology departments. in his first year, connell completed drawings of the campodoglio including its roman remnants, and researched the archaeological bibliography of capri in preparation for his restoration of the villa of tiberius (fig. 2). summarizing his year’s work, connell wrote of his admiration for “the great villas of imperial rome”, due to their interesting layouts and “purity of style” (connell, 1927). the rome scholarship included funding for travel and connell reported visiting naples, salerno, amalfi, ravello, genoa, florence, lucia, pisa, siena, venice, ravenna, bologna, padua, turin and milan. additionally he spent ten days in paris at the école des beaux-arts studying drawings, and managed to visit dijon, lyons, marseilles and the riviera (connell, 1928). under the terms of the rome prize, connell was obliged to apply for a renewal of his scholarship for a third year. london-based secretary of the school, evelyn shaw (1882-1974), wrote that, “connell’s case appears to be so strong that i am quite prepared to do my best to get it through even if it is necessary to ask sassoon or someone else for the money” (shaw, 1928). shaw was referring to a private donor of the school, sir philip sassoon (1888-1939), an mp and cousin of the poet seigfried sassoon. connell worked on his major reconstruction during 1928, with particular fig. 2 fig. 2: connell’s drawing of the villa of tiberius, capri, prepared as part of his final year of study at the rome school, 1928. british school at rome archive. interstices 09 53 the internal space. each wing housed a separate function, and circulation for the ashmole family was via the direct route of the central hall and stair while servants were obliged to take the long way around through a complex arrangement of corridors and secondary stairs. despite the understandable temptation to make the three-winged arrangement completely symmetrical, connell could not contain the kitchen in the same wing as the dining room and this was pushed out into a single-storey projection that adds an interesting imbalance to the plan. connell’s manipulation of the hexagon into a plan answering the ashmoles’ functional needs was both sophisticated and true to pragmatic roman practice (fig. 4). while connell’s post-rome school landscape commission for sir philip sassoon was constrained to formal english design tendencies by the client’s desire to remodel his house, trent park, in neo-georgian style, connell was highly conscious of the natural landscape setting for high and over and how features that related to the hexagonal geometry of the house might be added to it. terraces were planned on two levels to manage the slope, lending a second level of geometric complexity to both house and garden. the terraces were to be linked to a pair of triangular flowerbeds and to other garden structures including pools and a pergola (fig. 5). in this solid rooting of the house to the site and the elaboration of garden structures, connell’s work differs markedly from that of le corbusier, who was more concerned with the standardization of his houses so that they could rest on piloti, with minimal contact with the ground and on any type of site. connell was more focused on mediterranean villas on their stony hillsides, where walled and terraced gardens extend architectural space into the environment. connell’s interest in french modernist garden design is reflected in a 1934 drawing that presented a complete garden plan for the extensive grounds (connell & ward, 1934). this extends an earlier plan prepared with the design of the house and which was well under way by the time high and over was publicized in 1931. the garden close to the house was based on two equilateral triangles divided into terraced beds, one on the gentle slope rising to the left of the entrance and the other filling the steeper grade down to the base of the chalk pit. these structures strongly recalled guévrékian’s garden at the paris exposition as well as his better known courtyard at the villa noailles at hyères (1927), one of the few surviving modernist gardens and thus well recognized today (brown, the urbane russian serge chermaeff (1900-96)mwhose romantic design ten dencies mostly placed them outside the emergent branch of heavily theo rized modernism. architect and industrial designer christian barman (1898-1980) was also among connell’s circle. the site chosen by the ashmoles was part of the shardeloes estate in amersham, a buckinghamshire town at the northern end of london’s metropolitan line. the 12-acre site was elevated but bare of trees or other significant features apart from a hollow marking the position of a disused chalk pit. the decision was made to build on the level area above the pit and connell began work late in 1928. the initial design for high and over was later described by ashmole as “an elizabethan plan, e-shaped, the two projecting wings forming a courtyard which would be open to the south” (ashmole, 1994: 51). this first proposal was turned down as it did not make effective use of the terrain and exposure to sun. no drawings survive of this scheme, but it would seem that the basic elements were in place. the combination of hovering roof canopies, punched out slot windows and plain white walls epitomized the new architecture of the 1920s and it seems probable that these formal elements would have been present in the discarded first proposal. ashmole’s account of the planning process has the y-plan as his suggestion, taken up by connell who understood the potential of the 120-degree arrangement of the main parts of the building around a centralized hexagonal hub (ashmole, 1994: 52). reference has been made to the edwardian free plan and british houses built with modified y-plans (thistlewood & heeley, 1997: 86). it is likely that connell was aware of these but he was more inclined to draw directly from classical roman sources, particularly the novel geometries of the hadrianic period, a subject that he had mastered while in rome. an appealing notion to the modernist planner in connell was that roman geometry was used when it brought tangible practical advantages. a hexagon has the useful feature of containing the greatest area within the shortest perimeter. it may also be multiplied and composed into a regular pattern or subdivided into equilateral triangles. hexagonal room shapes were incorporated into roman baths and one particular example of hexagonal planning, the sala trilobata, adjacent to the baths of trajan (fig. 3), might be considered as a model for the planning of high and over (jones, 2000: 92). in this instance, rooms coming off the central space were constrained in size by the length of the straight-line segment forming the perimeter of the hexagon. this set of proportions would not be effective for a plan that demanded an appropriate scale relationship between the entrance hall of a modern house and its major rooms. connell instead expanded the hexagon to define the outer walls and drew a double square starting from the future fountain spigot, so that the spaces leading off were proportioned according to their function. the fountain has posed a critical dilemma for those striving to fit high and over into the conventional narrative of modernism. robert esau surmises it “may be a deliberate evocation of some roman or italian prototype known only to ashmole and connell” (esau, 1994: 61) and it is clear that water plays a particular role in the planning of the house and the garden. the hall floor was laid with black marble cut into triangles, and an illuminated circular glass fountain was set in the centre of a six-armed star. the larger hexagon was extended into an equilateral triangle that delineated the canopy over the front entrance and the shape of the stair tower. a circle exactly half the width of the hall was cut from the ceiling and allowed light from the stair tower to flood fig. 3 fig. 3: the geometry of roman villas was a major influence on connell’s radial plan for high and over. the sala trilobata adjacent to the baths of trajan (ad 109) is an example of roman planning based on the hexagon (jones, 2000: 92). fig. 4 fig. 5 fig. 4: the geometry of high and over is based on a double-square rectangle rotated 120-degrees from the plan centre. connel & thompson (1929); regulating lines added by michael findlay. fig. 5: connell’s design for high and over included a complex garden plan which was largely carried out by client ashmole and garderner marlow. the terraced rose garden was to be matched with another descending into the chalk pit but was left uncompleted. architect and building news, p. 431. interstices 09 55 minor figure in french modernism but his design philosophies on architecture and gardens were carefully studied in britain during the late 1930s (imbert, 1993: 185). in his 1929 publication terrasses et jardins, he argued against living on the damp and unhealthy earth and, instead, building towards the sky where the benefits of light and sun could be enjoyed from the roof terrace (imbert, 1993: 188). the strongly socialist lurçat believed that even the most modest house was incomplete without a garden and the landscape design of high and over can be seen as connell’s rejection of corbusier’s tabula rasa. the height that is such a striking feature of high and over accentuated the impression that the garden was essentially composed to be seen from above, from the top of the water tower or with the roof terrace of the main house as a horizontal façade, rid of the clutter of complex roof lines, chimneys and the other accoutrements of the country house (fig. 7). also constructed by 1931 were the lodge (lived in by george and may marlow; fig. 8), the water tower (fig. 9) and a generator house. the lodge, unpublished as a plan but photographed for an extensive article in the architect and building news in 1931 (robertson, 1931: 433), was a two-storey cubic design with corner slot windows and a striking angled wall that sheltered a private courtyard from the roadway. the generator house continued the theme with an engaged wall projecting towards the front of the site. this small cubic form was cut through with ventilation slots, and its abstract geometry effectively introduced the unfolding drama of the main structures, made more striking by the bareness of the hill on which they stood. high above the road stood an astounding object which resolved into a cylindrical water tank on a slender concrete pole combined with a pump house and racquet court. this highly irregular structure caused the local authorities to baulk but was forced on ashmole due to the failure of the council to supply a water pipe sufficient to service the swimming pool (ashmole, 1994: 55). water emerges as crucial element in connell’s planning for high and over, with many parts of the complex scheme being able to be read against guévrékian’s garden. connell’s landscape plan for high and over also reveals his interest in the disciplined but modern designs of paul vera (1888-1971), who was concerned to bridge the gap between the modern world and the classical french paysager, with its geometrical beds and shaped plantings. according to dorothée imbert, vera prescribed a “‘vernacular modernism’ that praised labour” (1993: 73), a proposition that certainly describes connell’s plan and ashmole’s physical efforts alongside george marlow to reshape the surroundings of high and over. vera’s new formulation of the jardin régulier acknowledged labour, reflected in connell’s raising of the water tower to its prominence in the landscape plan and the positioning of the vegetable garden between the formal axes of the pergola and the broad walk. tradition was not abandoned. these various garden rooms were served by the pergola and lawns edged by low hedges of box, controlled shrubs and tall clipped green walls, as were the neo-classical gardens of the past. concrete was used as a modern substitute for stone masonry, and ashmole recounted that, “he [marlow] and i together cast several thousand square feet of deep concrete edges for the beds, and several thousand square feet of cement paving for the paths” (ashmole, 1994: 59). the extension of the interior plan of high and over into this heavily constructed synthetic environment, occurring at various levels of abstraction, was intensely architectural in terms of space-time. movement and physical activity of all types were celebrated. the fives court at 2000: 38). connell was on the riviera in 1928 when the house, designed by rob mallet-stevens (1886-1945), was newly completed. the similar hilltop position and framing of the garden from the roof terrace make comparison between the two projects highly tempting. both gardens are heavily delineated, using white concrete walls and borders to create strong contrasts between ground and beds. the original plantings at hyères were similar to connell’s plan for high and over and used groupings of specimen plants rather than the pebbles that dominate the restored garden today. connell’s perspective drawing shows clipped shrubs adding a regular spherical feature that punctuates the descent, a device also used by guévrékian. three flights of steps were to lead down to a small circular pool sheltered by a stand of trees. a long pergola extended the axis of the library wing while a maze filled in another triangular space above the rose garden. these features were linked to a rectangular lawn that ran on a shallow 15-degree angle off the main axis towards the water tower at the top of the site, where a large rectangular pool was constructed. between the lawn and the pergola was an extensive vegetable garden divided into rectangular beds. an arrow-shaped lawn intersected the main drive to the house where a fruit orchard dropped steeply into the chalk pit and was in turn bisected by a path laid out with rectangular sections of box hedge. plants were chosen for both their practical and architectural form and the fruit trees and juvenile irish yews planted by ashmole are visible in photographs taken of the site in 1931. these elements were connected by a serpentine path that wound through the site and finished at the far end of the broad walk that was protected by a hedge. connell placed these features sparingly on the large site and they were separated by large areas of roughly mown grass. much of this ambitious scheme was achieved. a fascinating aerial photograph taken in the mid-1930s shows ashmole and the indefatigable gardener george marlow removing rocks and developing connell’s ambitious landscape plan (sharp, 1994: 26). in the end, ashmole changed the position of the swimming pool to the foot of the stairs descending the chalk pit and did not proceed with the main terraced garden or the maze (fig. 6). connell’s use of roof terraces, classical vistas from the three-storey house itself and retaining walls to create exterior promenades is related to the landscape theory of french modernist andre lurçat (1894-1970), whose maison guggenbuhl at 14 rue nansouty, paris (1927), had influenced other details at high and over, including the roof canopies and bay window. lurçat is now regarded as a fig. 6 fig. 7 fig. 6: connell’s landscape plan for high and over was developed in 1929. this plan from 1934 shows the intended landscape elements with four speculative houses on the high and over estate. riba library. fig. 7: the view from the high and over roof terrace, including the lodge, 1931. architect and building news, p. 429. interstices 09 57 been viewed as something marginal to the work he would produce in england, the impression being that he somehow had to forget his training and relearn the principles of modernist design. connell’s five years of practical experience in new zealand took place under a particular set of circumstances that smoothed the transition from edwardian design values to corbusian modernism. unlike many of his english peers, connell was informed about and experienced in reinforced concrete construction techniques, having worked on sites as a labourer and as part of fearn’s busy practice. visiting present-day eltham and viewing the existing architectural fabric of the town leaves little doubt that connell moved towards early maturity as a designer with a comprehensive understan ding of the properties of concrete as a construction medium. when connell saw corbusier’s domino system (1914), with its point-load foundations and cast-in floor beams, it cannot have seemed altogether foreign to him. it must have been galling for connell that no firm in britain could provide a satisfactory price for monolithic concrete construction on high and over (ashmole, 1994: 55) when he had seen buildings of this type successfully and economically built in rural new zealand. it is also clear that connell’s training and emergent approach to design favoured the axial symmetry of neo-classical planning that shaped other early british forays into modernism. connell’s conception remained firmly rooted both in the ground and in classical architectural tradition. connell was attempting moderation between the european avant-garde and the neo-classical english country house, with its cultural connections passing back through andrea palladio to the villas of ancient rome. this dualism has engendered two misunderstandings that are now deeply imbedded in the interpretation of high and over – firstly, that connell’s effort to bridge the gap between modernism and classicism in the late 1920s was an ill-judged compromise, and secondly, that the design was, relatively speaking, a failure owing to its conservatism. connell’s design certainly contains distinct modernist and conservative modes, but the piecemeal reading of the whole project in terms of disparate parts offers an incomplete and flawed understanding of connell’s intention. similarly, the segmentation of connell’s career into what has been characterized as a juvenile period of experimentation progressing later into a more ‘respectable’ modernism misreads high and over and the richness of its conception as a bridge between classicism and modernism. this reflects a rather well-worn cultural belief that colonials achieve success by ignoring the rules, a personal narrative which connell and ward later took up themselves. connell’s status in architectural history is therefore marked by the simultaneous presence and absence of the expatriate from both cultural spaces. his formative experiences in rural taranaki and wellington were both repressive and rich with possibilities, ensuring that when he left the orbit of new zealand, he did not return. new zealand was an ideal training ground for architects who would find their skills in demand in britain, a fact borne out by the presence of so many expatriates during the 1920s and beyond. while most went simply to improve their prospects, some, like connell, found the timing right to take the lead. the base of the water tower, regarded by some as a bizarre novelty, makes perfect sense in this context. the climb to the brow of the hill 40 metres above the road was rewarded by the sight of the field, called the ‘velvet lawn’, across the misbourne valley (ashmole, 1994: 59). the most exciting vista was that from the top of the water tower, accessible by an internal ladder. this sight line took in the large circular pool that ashmole and marlow excavated at the foot of the garden steps where the family swam and exercised. this vantage point also reinforced the two-dimensional nature of the modern garden, designed to be appreciated from the roof terrace as a geometrical pattern on the land. the plan reveals both connell’s observance of french trends in modernist garden design, the beauxarts tradition of geometric planning and enfilade, and the english landscape tradition within the fragmented gestalt of early modernism, where both foreign and nationalistic influences were deployed together in the rush to experiment with the new architecture. in an effort to recoup some of the considerable expense of developing the estate, ashmole approached connell to develop a planned subdivision on the lower part of the site. this was a risky venture as the worst effects of the great depression were only just beginning to lift and the british house-buying public was sceptical about the new architecture. with ashmole’s brother-in-law charles de peyer investing in the project, four houses were built on the slope leading up to the lodge (connell & ward, 1934). with the sun houses complete in 1935, work continued on the development of connell’s landscape plan until ashmole’s efforts were slowed by his other commitments. marlow was injured in an accident on the property that left him an amputee and this unfortunate event also weighed heavily on ashmole (ashmole, 1994: 61). the maintenance demands of the house and garden became oppressive. after the ashmoles sold the property, high and over deteriorated under a succession of owners. the house was divided into two flats in the early 1960s. the garden was built over, although the circular swimming pool remains a feature of the remnant landscape. the question remains: why would ashmole trust an untried architect with such an ambitious first project when he had the choice of any practising architect in britain? connell was somewhat reticent himself in pinpointing the reason for his client’s faith, but the combination of connell’s deep understanding of classical architecture alongside the emergent themes of modernism as seen in france and germany in the mid-1920s was surely compelling. connell’s colonial pragmatism also appealed to ashmole, who was used to hard physical work and was no doubt reassured about his architect’s practical experience with an unconventional construction medium. connell’s formative experience of architecture has fig. 8: the lodge, built for george and may marlow, 1931. architect and building news, p. 435. fig. 9: the water tower stood above the main house at the top of the rise. it housed a squash court and an elevated platform from where the garden was viewed. architect and building news, p. 435. fig. 8 fig. 9 interstices 09 59 shaw, e. (1928). letter to b. ashmole (july 15). a. connell file, bsr archive. shaw, e. (1929). letter to a. hamilton smith (january 15). a. connell file, bsr archive. south taranaki district council (2000). wilkinson’s building, 150 high st, 1913-1914 (item h1). eltham heritage inventory. hawera: s.p. thomson, s. l. (1939). form of application for admission as a fellow. riba library, ref. 3673. thistlewood, d., & heeley, e. (1997). connell, ward and lucas: towards a complex critique. journal of architecture, 2(1), 83-102. untitled (1921), new zealand building progress, xvii(4), 86. vitou, e. (2006). guévrékian, gabriel. grove art online. oxford university press. retrieved november, 23, from http://www.groveart.com/ walker, c. (ed.). (2005). exquisite apart: 100 years of architecture in new zealand. auckland: balasoglou books. ward, b. (1967). connell, ward and lucas. in d. sharp (ed.), planning and architecture: essays presented to arthur korn by the architectural association (pp. 73-86). london: barry & rocliffe. references ashmole, b. (1994). bernard ashmole, 1894-1988: an autobiography. malibu: getty museum. ashmole, p. (2005). e-mail to michael findlay (november 27). bartle, r. (2006). the house that jack built: how one designer changed the face of hawera and the dairy industry forever. taranaki stories: business and industry. retrieved november 5, from http://pukeariki.com/en/stories/businessandindustry/default/asp benton, c. (1999). review of jean-louis cohen, l’architecte andré lurçat. journal of the society of architectural historians, 58(1), 98-100. brown, j. (2000). the modern garden. london: thames & hudson. campbell, l. (1989). a call to order: the rome prize and early twentieth century british architecture. architectural history, (32), 131-51. connell, a. (1926). telegram to evelyn shaw (november 14). copy on b. r. ward file, the british school at rome (bsr) archive, rome. connell, a. (1927). application for renewal of scholarship at the british school at rome. a. connell file, bsr archive. connell, a. (1928). application for renewal of scholarship at the british school at rome. a. connell file, bsr archive. connell, a. (1929). letter to a. hamilton smith (december 29). a. connell file, bsr archive. connell & thomson (1929). proposed house at amersham, buckinghamshire. plans and elevations. riba library, london, ref. on3121. connell & ward (1934). high and over estate, station road, amersham, bucks. proposed layout of first section. plan. riba library, ref. on3122. connell, j. (1985). pers. comm. to m. findlay (june). esau, r. (1994). connell, ward and lucas and the emergence of the british modern movement in architecture. unpublished dissertation for the degree of doctor of philosophy, bryn mawr college, philadelphia. giovenco, a. (2005). pers. comm. to m. findlay (november 12). imbert, d. (1993). the modernist garden in france. new haven: yale university press. item 54, nzia minute book articles 1916-1940, p. 8. nzia archives, j. c. beaglehole room, victoria university of wellington. item 57, nzia minute book articles 1916-40, p. 65. nzia archives. jones, m. w. (2000). principles of roman architecture. new haven: yale university press. new zealand institute of architects wellington branch competition for war memorial (1921). new zealand building progress, xvii(1), 12-13. news and topics (1926). architects’ journal, lxiii(june 30), 872. notes (1922). new zealand institute of architects journal, 1(3), 75. personal (1926, november 18). otago daily times, p. 10. robertson, h. (1931). amoenitas: ‘high and over’ at amersham. architect a. d. connell. architect and building news, cxxvi(june 26), 428-35. sharp, d. (ed.) (1994). connell, ward and lucas. london: book art. sharples, j., powers, a., & shippobottom, m. (eds.). (1996). charles reilly & the liverpool school of architecture, 1904-1933. liverpool: liverpool university press. shaw, e. (1925). letter to a. connell. a. connell file, bsr archive. shaw, e. (1926). letter to a connell (june 29). a. connell file, bsr archive. shaw, e. (1927). letter to unknown recipient (september 19). a. connell file, bsr archive, ref. h27. programme symposium rykwertrev1 o n a d a m ’ s h o u s e i n t h e p a c i f i c s y m p o s i u m i n h o n o u r o f j o s e p h r y k w e r t t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f a u c k l a n d f r i d a y 1 4 t h & s a t u r d a y 1 5 t h n o v e m b e r 2 0 0 8 f r i d a y 1 4 n o v e m b e r design theatre, conference centre university of auckland 4.00 pm — 4.30 pm opening address professor sharman pretty, dean nicai richard harris, president nzia 4.30 pm — 6.00 pm alive and relevant today 1. david mitchell & julie stout 2. andrew patterson 3. patrick clifford 6.00 pm — 6.45 pm drinks 6.45 pm — 7.00 pm introduction to professor joseph rykwert ross jenner 7.00 pm — 8.00 pm rykwert lecture s a t u r d a y 1 5 n o v e m b e r conference centre university of auckland 9.00 am — 9.30 am tea/coffee 9.30 am — 11.00 am what is this pacific? 1. fale tonga beget fale ‘amelika charmaine ‘ilaiu 2. building the pacific hut jeremy treadwell & mike austin 3. whiteness, smoothing and the origin of samoan architecture albert refiti 11.00 am — 11.30 am morning tea 11.30 am — 1.00 pm perpetual reconstructions 1. the contracted joint carl douglas 2. on the nature of security mark jackson 3. material origins of new zealand modern architecture emina petrović 1.00 pm — 2.00 pm lunch 2.00 pm — 3.30 pm cultural accumulations 1. conflictual signs: finding ambivalence to a natural architecture robin skinner & paul james 2. windows to the wonder country: a challenge to romantic dwelling paul hogben 3. nature and minimalism sam kebbell 3.30 pm — 4.00 pm afternoon tea 4.00 pm — 5.30 pm sheds, cabins and villas 1. benoît goetz: a french reader of rykwert’s adam’s house in paradise tim adams 2. a big house in the pacific: the new zealand pavilion at expo 70, osaka julia gatley 3. thinking and doing: situating the houses of feron hay architects in the writing of joseph rykwert and the paradise of new zealand peter wood 5.30 pm — 6.00 pm concluding comments ross jenner 7.00 pm — 10.00 pm conference dinner gpk ponsonby road, ponsonby abstracts & bios fale tonga beget fale ‘amelika charmaine ‘ilaiu although, the fale ‘amelika departs from the structural origins of its predecessor the eighteenth century fale tonga; the contemporary fale archetype remains a legitimate progeny of the fale tonga. the fale ‘amelika—an appropriated western suburban house constructed in many modern tongan villages—embodies many indigenous ideas of the fale tonga. certainly, one particular inherent idea stems from what joseph rykwert calls ‘primitive notions’ or what i interpret as the tongan paradigm that motivates what is built and how it is constructed. simply, the notion recognises that one elevates their status in order to survive culturally in tonga’s hierarchical society and often architecture is the medium to achieve this. architecturally, the importance of social status was first articulated, literally, when the fale arose from the ground and the rested its oval roof structure on posts. the tongan architect tomui kaloni interprets these changes as the alleviation of societal burdens and corresponding with the reformations in tonga’s political hierarchy during that time (kaloni1990). furthermore, the highly crafted lashings and neatly woven walls of the fale tonga exceed the simplicity of earlier structures. this concern for good architectural appearance again reinforces the social concern of displaying status. likewise the fale ‘amelika articulates the primitive notion of cultural survival through modes of architectural appropriation, exaggeration and over-embellishment. essentially the fale ‘amelika embodies the appropriated western idea of a dream house. similar to its predecessor, the ideologies of the suburban home signify a sociopolitical change, particularly with the emergent of the middle class in tonga. often scale is exaggerated beyond the original plan; amplifying a four-bedroom suburban home into a large mansion. fale ‘amelika are also over-embellished with an unnecessary quantity of architectural elements. indeed the embellishment of the home also enhances the status of the residents. in overlooking the fale ‘amelika’s departure from an indigenous fale form one can begin to understand that it can trace its lineage back to architectural origins through inherent notions, such as cultural survival. charmaine ‘ilaiu is a trained architect, avid researcher, creative entrepreneur and developing artist. her work contributes to the discourse of pacific architecture and art in new zealand and the pacific islands. she has presented her research at various international and national art and architectural symposiums including pacific arts association hosted in musée du quai branly in paris, 2007. as an architectural designer, she has worked on residential projects in tonga and recently designed the concept for manukau institute of technology’s pasifika centre. recently selected by manukau city council’s art source creative entrepreneurial programme, charmaine is establishing a consultancy for pacific architecture, which she hopes to advance more research-informed architecture that is responsive to our oceanic region. whilst practicing architecture with the auckland firm design tribe, charmaine continues to teach part-time in architectural design at unitec institute of technology and university of auckland schools of architecture. building the pacific hut jeremy treadwell & mike austin the search for a history and theory of architectural origins is characterised by propositions of foundational acts and technological moments. common to these moments are the ideas of the unsheltered human, the necessity for enclosure and the notion of a technical and creative genesis. nineteenth century theorists propose that the act of creating shelter is a germination of technological and aesthetic thinking, an architectural ground zero, and that shelter is essential for providing the stasis of settlement. in the pacific, as rwkwert’s discussion of the japanese ise temple seems to suggest, other circumstances might apply. here, where the need for shelter as the western world understands it is not inevitable, an architecture might have other contexts than the enclosing wall, the cliff and the cave or the reproduction of nature itself. this paper argues that instead of the stasis and enclosure that is embedded in ideas about western architectural origins, in the pacific an architecture that emerged from mobility and sought openness might be found. it is proposed that rather than being an origin of technical practice, in the pacific, architecture might itself be the result of transformation from other technologies. specifically this paper seeks to connect the tectonics of the pacific building to the technology of the canoe and the openness of the ocean. with detailed reference to the construction of the fale samoa and the haus tambaran of the sepik district of papua new guinea, this paper proposes a architecture from the pacific that is technically and conceptually distinct from the grounded architecture of the west. whiteness, smoothing and the origin of samoan architecture albert refiti samoans believed that the first craftsmen or tufuga were sent from heaven by the god tagaloa to build a canoe for his daughter mataiteite. these men had no axes or tools to smooth and remove the roughness in the wood therefore they gnawed the timber with their teeth (kramer, p.239). in upolu and savaii, it is generally believed that the first house to be built was called faleolo meaning, “house made of smooth timber”. this house was build with driftwood found by the maiden lemalama by the seashore who suggested that they be used by the craftsmen to construct her fathers house and thereby the builders guild or tufuga-fai-fale became known as the “family of lemalama” or salemalama. this paper will explore the origin of samoan architecture by looking at the attempt in samoan craft at dressing and the smoothing of materials in the construction and raising of architecture. the paper suggests that in samoa, what is considered architecture (which has recourse to the first house), must be dressed and be smoothed out. this is not because of a fascination with the “return to origins” and the “renewal of human activity” that joseph rykwert suggested as the impulse of human development and architecture in on adams house in paradise (rykwert, 192), but has to do with what samoans considered “proper” or teu which allows things to be put in order so that they turn towards the ancestors. space-making in samoan is inclined towards the production of things that are of whiteness, smoothness and openness because these are to be placed before the ancestor and the community therefore things-towards-the-ancestors must have a directionality, a smoothing out, that binds together the past and present. references: kramer, a (1905/1995) the samoa islands, vol. 2, trans., theodore verhaaren. honolulu, hawaii: university of hawaii press. rykwert, j (1997) on adam’s house in paradise: the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history. mit press. albert refiti is a phd candidate at aut university and has worked in architecture and design in auckland and london. he has lectured at the university of auckland school of architecture, unitec school of architecture and manukau school of art and design. he is currently the head of department in spatial design at aut university. albert has published articles and papers on design, architecture and art in a number of publications. the contracted joint carl douglas rykwert argues a correlation between jean-jacques rousseau's account of the origin of civil society and marc-antoine laugier's account of originary architecture. this paper will speculate on the architectural construction of collective identities with reference to the material practice of jointing; and apply this speculation in a new zealand context. in his drawing for the 1755 edition of the essay on architecture, laugier's hut is conspicuous for its structural self-sufficiency. the individual elements: the still-living columns, the cross-beams and the rafters, all rest together naturally, without pins or bonds. simplicity of structure is a lack of ties. these joints express the same tension between natural unconstrained freedom and the desire to institute co-dependence which we see at the beginning of rousseau's social contract (1762): a text that begins with chains, and remains entangled in questions of binding. in place of bondage, rousseau seeks a relationship of free dependence which inaugurates collective identity and motives. this elemental social relation begins in the family hut, when familial bonds are replaced by the maintenance of a joint contract. the joint rousseau seeks is held, but not constrained a freely chosen dependence which could be withdrawn at any time. we might describe this kind of connection as a structural logic of the 'contracted joint'. in looking for the local (2000) clarke and walker discuss the idea that 'straightforwardness' is a specific characteristic of architecture in new zealand. conspicuously, this argument turns on the condition of the joint, which is seen once again in primitivist terms, and recalls the mythical status accorded to isolation in new zealand. this paper explores the correlation between the proper jointing of architecture and proper social relations, and concludes by raising the question of the crowd (understood in some accounts as an improperly-jointed social construction) and collective space in new zealand. carl douglas is a lecturer in spatial design at the school of art + design, aut university, where he teaches spatial theory and leads unit 2, a speculative studio concerned with the intersections of architecture, interior, landscape, infrastructure, and urbanism. recent research has addressed the parisian barricades of the nineneenth century; theorised lateness; and explored the spatiality of archaeological sites. he is also a member of the emergent geometries experimental practice group, and coedited interstices 09. on the nature of security mark jackson in his on adam’s house in paradise, joseph rykwert traces successive engagements in the question of the origin of architecture as this question opens to the more primordial one of the origin of being human. being human and the primitive hut, whether articulated by vitruvius or le corbusier, have a complex and essential relation and one that opens a space for articulating an understanding of the meaning of ‘nature’ in whatever epoch or era. with this paper i aim to address rykwert’s reference to laugier’s essay on architecture and his understanding of the primitive hut. while rykwert mentions that laugier described himself as a philosophe, that is to say, associated with what we term the physiocrats, the paper aims to amplify the significance of the french physiocrats, particularly in the writings of françois quesnay, on the first systematic understanding of what we now call economics. it is not simply that this invention of economics held that all wealth derived from nature, from cultivation and the land, to the extreme exclusion of manufacture as a source of wealth. nor is it simply that this economics held the fundamental productive unit to be the family. in both of these we would simply see laugier’s quaint image of the primitive hut as an all too literal manifestation of physiocratic economy. rather, with quesnay, a new horizon of an understanding of the human emerges, one that displaces the rule of mercantilism that had dominated the 17th century, and that relocates the essential nature of the human. there develops, in the 18th century, a new term for understanding precisely what seems to escape the sovereign exercise of power. that term is ‘population.’ this paper will critically assay the extent to which a bifurcation in an understanding of territory, power and sovereignty, that revolves around the human as subject and as population, opens a radical engagement with laugier’s understanding of ‘origins,’ impacting on the discourse of origins in architecture that unfolds in modernity. particular reference will be made to michel foucault’s 1977-78 lectures at the college de france, security, territory, population. mark jackson is currently associate professor of design in the school of art and design and associate dean (research & postgraduate) for the faculty of design and creative technologies at aut university. prior to this he has held lecturing positions at the faculty of architecture, university of adelaide and at the sydney college of the arts, the university of sydney. he gained his phd in architecture at the university of sydney in 1994 and was a visiting scholar in the faculty of architecture at mit in boston in 1996, and a visiting professor in the faculty of architecture, university of karlsruhe, germany in 2003-04. he has published in the fields of design history and theory, the visual arts, film and media as well as architecture and landscape architecture. he has had a number of film and video works exhibited internationally. his current research focus is on ethics and design cultures. conflictual signs: finding ambivalence to a natural architecture robin skinner & paul james in his posthumous text, an historical essay on architecture (1835), where he discussed and appraised architectural development from antiquity to the greek revival, thomas hope began: “the savage, on the shores of new zealand, possessed of no goods; indifferent to wife and children; with no care beyond that for his own hideous person, and for that person merely requiring, during the hours of repose, shelter against the fury of the blast or of the bird of prey, digs in the sand, for his living body, a hole little larger than that which he might require for his grave.” rousseauesque terms, which were often used to describe the ideal of a natural architecture within the pacific, are used here to condemn both pacific people and their architectural traditions. despite references to a paradisal origin, an examination of lateeighteenth and early-nineteenth century aesthetic theory relating to the architecture of the pacific reveals ambivalence towards the notion of a natural architecture. citing pre-1840s architectural texts and accounts of discovery (including the often published images of the pa on the natural arch at mercury bay), this paper considers how and why this shift from a positive to an ambivalent relationship occurred. benoît goetz: a french reader of rykwert’s adam’s house in paradise tim adams joseph rykwert brought to our attention the primitive hut as a perennial theme in the theory and practice of architecture in on adam’s house in paradise. benoît goetz, senior lecturer in philosophy at the paul verlaine university in metz, picks up and expands this theme in his recent book la dislocation: architecture et philosophie. goetz observes that there could not have been a house in the garden of eden (rykwert himself admits that the bible never mentions it) because prior to the expulsion from paradise there could not have been any division of places nor any inside or outside. paradise lacks nothing so every space in it, goetz concludes, is equivalent to all other spaces. paradise is in other words an indivisible field of immanence without otherness and without limit. this explains precisely why the primitive hut or first dwelling is so endlessly fascinating, it conveys the fundamental truth that human beings have acquired the sin of knowledge and have thus become increasingly alienated from the continuum of unknowing nature. the primitive hut seems to hold out the promise of some kind of direct access to nature but it is in fact the very product of our own sophistication. little wonder then the attraction of the japanese teahouse in the mountains or the new zealand bach by the sea, they combine in a singular architectural type both the promise of a therapeutic return to an unknowing and unquestioning nature and are the very product of our sophisticated knowledge about the architectural nature intrinsic to all space. goetz’s updating and expanding of rykwert’s original thesis can shed new light on the new zealand bach and give it the philosophical underpinning that it currently lacks. a twenty-minute talk illustrated by stephan sinclair’s play the bach and various baches around new zealand. tim adams teaches history and theory in the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland where he is also a phd candidate. his specialist areas include theories of architecture from vitruvius up until mark goulthorpe, the writings of western philosophers concerning architecture, 20th and early 21st century architecture and urbanism, japanese architecture, california architecture, and french philosophy after 1968. his essays and translations have appeared in interstices and the german magazine der architekt. his phd is on the writings of daniel payot, a french philosopher who specialises in the history of philosophical discussions about architecture. a big house in the pacific: the new zealand pavilion at expo 70, osaka julia gatley expo 70, held in osaka in 1970, is remembered for the mainstreaming of metabolist-influenced architecture and the concurrent combustion and demise of the metabolist group. in contrast to many of the expo 70 pavilions, the new zealand pavilion was understated. comparatively small, comparatively simple and comparatively low cost, it was designed by the comparatively little known ministry of works architect, john newnham. while national pavilions at international expositions tend to celebrate and promote the culture, identity and design traditions and innovations of the subject nation, the new zealand pavilion was interpreted as having an asian character, a japanese character even, its points of reference being seen to lie not with the subject nation, but with the host nation. twenty years earlier, japan-ness had informed a self-consciously locally-inflected new zealand modernism, of which the group were the best known protagonists. their new zealand modernism combined references to whare, huts and baches with homage to overseas architectures with mature timber building traditions – not only that of japan, but also scandinavia and california. newnham was not associated with the group. his japan-ness was not a continuation of theirs. this paper proposes a new zealandness in the new zealand pavilion – but again, a new zealandness that was not a continuation of that for which the group were known. rather, the paper proposes that the new zealand pavilion can be read as a house – a big house – or at closer inspection, five houses, for it in fact comprises five smaller buildings or huts. this is consistent with an ongoing fascination with the house in new zealand architecture, yet ironically the building met with a lukewarm response from new zealand’s architectural and design community, who celebrated the new zealand exhibits but cringed about their island nation being represented on this international stage by a small, simple, low-cost and seemingly japanese-inflected building. this paper teases out these ironies, analysing the design of the new zealand pavilion with reference to period reviews of the building, comments by members of the design team, and recent scholarship on national identity, japan-ness and new zealand-ness in architecture. the paper reveals that the apparent simplicity of the new zealand pavilion belies a range of complexities and contradictions. dr julia gatley lectures in the school of architecture & planning at the university of auckland. she has degrees from victoria university of wellington and the university of melbourne, and previously worked at the university of tasmania. julia is docomomo new zealand’s secretary and registers coordinator. her edited book, long live the modern: new zealand’s new architecture, 1904-1984, was published by auckland university press in 2008. she is also a co-editor of interstices 08 (‘disagreement’) and 09 (‘expat: places/spaces/baggage). thinking and doing: situating the houses of feron hay architects in the writing of joseph rykwert and the paradise of new zealand. peter wood joseph rykwert begins on adam’s house in paradise with the hypothesis that the original house resided inside the garden paradise of eden. identified by rykwert in the biblical references to ‘dressing’ and ‘keeping,’ this theory is at best (by his own admission) substantive only as a ‘shadow’ or ‘outline.’ rykwert presents an unarguably erudite and highly compelling case for the epistemological role of the primitive hut that recurs throughout architectural discourse, but his is an argument that hinges on the first house, and therefore architecture, originating from within paradise. but what if it were the case that the ‘shadow’ of a house in eden is nothing more than that; just a trick of light and dark? moreover that adam neither required, nor desired, a house in paradise at all? i offer two positions on this matter, neither of which is particularly flattering to architecture. firstly, that paradise (eden) is the first house; that the garden is the proper place of original dwelling, and that architecture did not emerged against a natural state but that it is a natural state, for which buildings stands as proxies. secondly, we must also be prepared to entertain the possibility that paradise does not require architecture; that there was no house in eden, and indeed that the first house was a function of exclusion from paradise. that is, the house originated because the sanctity of eden was violated, and it continues to be defined by its desire for a return to paradisiacal state. i would note that neither of these positions undermines the significance of rykwert’s thinking in on adam’s house, but they do suggest alternate ways to interpret the significance of the motif of the primitive hut in architectural discourse. it is beyond the scope of this forum to develop such an argument here, but i would like to enter into this debate by way of an argument in two parts. in part one i make a close reading of chapter one of on adam’s house in paradise in order to show how rykwert’s hypothesis of the hut in eden creates a set of values that create a stable if contested alliance between building and nature. in part two i compare some well publicized new zealand houses by feron hay architects to this position. despite their celebrated international style mannerisms and woodland settings i argue that these projects frequently display a particularly parochial insecurity toward building and nature. i find in the houses of feron hay examples of a counter origin for architecture in the new zealand where nature dominates architecture’s validation, and the houses cited genuflect to a view that architecture has been denied a place in paradise. 49 the merz mill and the cathedral of the future matthew mindrup introduction kurt schwitters’ small cathedral model from 1920, haus merz (house merz), provides an extraordinary point of entry for the study of a key moment in german architectural history when artists and architects set aside their divisions to project a new german architecture as a gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). it is during this time that one witnesses a fundamental change in the approach of german architects towards the use of materials for conceiving new architectural form. compared to normative design practices that employ drawings and models to materialise an architect’s ideas in physical form, schwitters proposed that architects should find inspiration for new designs in the process of assembling their materials. haus merz demonstrates this approach to constructing architecture by reusing materials that have been found already transformed into the products of everday life – a set of gears, a trouser button and a spinning top. in the imagination of the architect, the selection and placement of each material is dependent upon its abilty to change identities and represent an element of architecture. early musings on this approach emerged from bruno taut whose 1914 article “eine notwendigkeit (a necessity)” promoted a turn to architectural building materials fig. 1 kurt schwitters (1920). haus merz (house merz) [photograph, kurt schwitters archive, sprengel museum, hanover, germany, © 2013 artists rights society (ars), new york / vg bild-kunst, bonn] interstices 14 as inspiration for the invention of new architectural form. to this end, taut encouraged his fellow architects to follow the contemporary expressionist painters in developing a new architectural spirit. what taut had in mind was not the painting of facades or an “adoption of the external forms of painting” to architecture but to emulate the artistic processes of “construction” in painting in the construction of architecture (1914: 174-5). holding up the gothic cathedral as the favoured prototype, taut called on architects to lead the other arts in creating a new crystalline architecture of glass that would unify architecture, painting and sculpture into a single artistic form (1914: 174-5). after the end of the first world war, his call for a new architecture was again taken up by german artists and architects in the arbeitsrat für kunst (working council for art). these individuals rallied themselves around taut’s manifesto, ein architektur programm (an architecture program) and gropius’ proposal for a new german architecture as a gesamtkunstwerk. for gropius, this new architecture would manifest itself as the zukunftskathedrale (cathedral of the future), a structure whose effect on the design of all things he compared to the emmanation of light from a crystal (july 1919).1 following closely on the heels of the arbeitsrat für kunst, schwitters identified a similar aim underlying his new merz art. for an exhibition at the expressionist sturm gallery in 1919, schwitters explained that “merz” denoted his artistic transformation and re-assemblage of discarded man-made and found materials into new matrixes. for schwitters, each object in a merz work began as a unique combination of material form and immaterial idea that had to be lost through a mental process he would describe as a kind of “milling”. like taut and gropius, the ultimate manifestation for schwitters’ merz milling of found materials was the creation of a “merzgesamtkunstwerk”. contrary to gropius’ use of a crystal to describe the effect the zukunftskathedrale would have on the making of a new german architecture, schwitters sought to use haus merz as a model for the imaginative projection of architecture through the constructive assembly of its materials. this paper explores a confluence of themes concerning the role of the material and immaterial in haus merz that has been largely overlooked by scholarship on schwitters’ oeuvre. in comparison to gropius’ zukunftskathedrale, schwitters approached his materials not as a receptacle for an architect’s ideas but a determinant source of inspiration for the discovery of new form. merz and its figurative experiments schwitters’ merz art and architecture emerged after 1918 following explorations in several genres of art, including academic painting (1909–1914), impressionism (1914–1917), expressionism (1917) and abstraction (1917–1918).2 reflecting on the years leading to his invention of merz, schwitters suggested that a new sense of freedom following the end of world war i led him to quit his architectural studies at the technische hochschule hannover (hanover technical college), and his job as a mechanical draftsman, to devote himself full-time to being an artist.3 during this time, he developed a method of assembling found objects into art that he called “merz”, a term coined after a word fragment in his first collage (1927: 99100). for schwitters, “merz” meant “the combination of all conceivable materials” into a physical ausdruck (expression) of art.4 however, as schwitters would later explain, the materials in his merz art already had an individual immaterial identity he called an eigengift (inner poison) (1923: 8-11). for schwitters, in order for an object to be included in a merz work, this eigengift had to be lost through a mental process by which its identity or purpose changed even as the physical appearance of the thing remained unaltered.5 1 my english translation of “zukunfstkathedrale” as “cathedral of the future” contrasts with wingler’s “structure of the future” (1978 : 31-33). 2 this chronology of dates is developed by john elderfield (1985: 14). 3 for schwitters’ military service and employment as a mechanical draftsman see: schwitters (1926). typewritten manuscript reproduced in schwitters 1981: 240-42, especially 241; also see webster 1997: 29, 40). for schwitters’ enrolment in the study of architecture at the technische hochschule hannover see schwitters (1926). typewritten manuscript reproduced in schwitters (1981: 241). 4 in “die merzmalerei”, schwitters explained that the term “merz” meant “the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes” (1919: 580). this english translation (hereafter denoted simply as ‘et’) by elderfield (1985: 50-1); later, in “merz”, schwitters claimed every combination of materials has a unique “audruck” (expression) that was ineffable (1921: 5). 5 ibid. 51 with the exception of a few merz collages from the same period, schwitters’ merz works between 1919 and 1921 tended to obscure the original identities of the materials assembled in them. in these instances, schwitters collected discarded objects, including torn and cut pieces of printed matter, and pasted them onto canvases in various angles or directions making their uses as utilitarian objects, photographs or pieces of text unimportant (2001: 213-433).6 as schwitters explained in his article “merz”, the materials in a merz assemblage were “not to be used logically in their objective relationships, but only within the logic of the work of art” (1921: 7).7 compared to these constructions, the selection criteria that schwitters intended to employ for the found objects used for a merz collage differed from those he assembled in his early three-dimensional work that tended to retain their original identities. shortly after the first exhibition of his merz art at the sturm gallery in july of 1919, schwitters began experimenting with found materials to create sculpture and architecture (1919: 580). as he explained in merz, this expansion into three dimensions meant to modellieren (to sculpt or model) (1921: 6). in the text that followed, schwitters introduced haus merz as his “first piece of merz architecture” and included a quote from his friend, the art critic christof spengemann, who published a photograph of the small assemblage in his article “merz: die offizielle kunst” (merz: the official art) and identified it as die kathedrale (the cathedral) (1920: 40-1). schwitters’ statement in merz was the only explanation he made of the small assemblage’s intended role in his merz oeuvre. the photograph of haus merz included in spengemann’s article shows an open metal structure filled with gears standing next to a tower-like object supporting a trouser button on one of its sides, confirming schwitters’ own description. the tower of haus merz also appears to have the same proportions as a common children’s toy building block from the popular german anker anker stone toy building block set (7.5 cm x 2.5 cm x 2.5 cm), making the tower clock only 1.4 cm in diameter, and the spire 4.5 cm tall (mindrup 2007, 164). these are the approximate sizes of what spengemann has identified as a trouser button and other scholars recognise as a small spinning top.8 the entire construction was mounted on a rough wooden base inscribed with a title, date and signature: “haus merz 20. k.s.” as architecture, the choice and selection of found objects for haus merz appears to have been based on schwitters’ decision that they could take on the forms and motifs associated with an actual cathedral. yet, unlike the normative practice of tranforming materials into specific architectural elements, the objects schwitters found and assembled in haus merz were not originally made to represent buildings or their parts, while the gears in its nave would leave little room for people to congregate in it. many of the elements that schwitters used to compose haus merz were frequently depicted in his watercolour and stamp drawings from the same period of time. for example, wheels figure prominently in two watercolor drawings from 1919 including aq. 21: anna blume und ich (water colour 21: anna blume and i) and aq. 30: dies ist das biest das manchmal niest (water colour 30: this is the beast that sometimes sneezes) while in the stamp drawing ohne titel: mit rot vier (no title: with red four) from the same year, they take on the appearance of gears. art historians found these items similar to the gears in francis picabia’s 1919 print réveil-matin (alarm clock) that was published on the title page of der dada 4-5, an issue which schwitters undoubtedly owned.9 whether or not schwitters’ haus merz was directly inspired by picabia’s réveil-matin, its overall appearance is remarkably fig. 2 francis picabia (1919). réveilmatin i (alarm clock no. 1) [illustration: © 2013 artists rights society (ars), new york / adagp, paris] 6 there are many merz collages in which a word or number pasted into the collage have become the title. these, however, do not appear to be directing the organisation of the other elements in the work of art but merely as a way to name it. 7 et by ralph manheim in schwitters (1981: 407). 8 for the different identifications of the objects in haus merz see spengemann (1920: 41); elderfield (1985: 113-4); burns gamard (2000: 74); dietrich (1993: 170). 9 elderfield (1985: 45-47. see elderfield especially p. 47, n. 72); dietrich (1993: 86, n. 9); gamard (2000: 75). interstices 14 similar to the small, naively drawn churches that emerge in his watercolour drawings from 1920: aq. 11: bild frau-graus (water colour 11: picture woman-scare) from 1919 and aq. 24: der kopf unter der mühle (water colour 24: the head under the mill) while in the stamp drawing ohne title: drucksache (no title: printed matter) from 1919, a cross on the steeple indicates that they are christian buildings.10 unlike the objects depicted in schwitters’ watercolour and stamp drawings that maintained their identities as cathedrals, wheels, coffee grinders or candles, those that he assembled in haus merz represented the parts of another object, a cathedral model. nevertheless, despite its scale and schwitters’ naming of haus merz as “architecture”, architects and historians discussing his merz oeuvre have not come to terms with its purpose. those who mention haus merz refer to it as a “sculpture” of “a model church” or an “assemblage representing a church edifice or cathedral”, but not a model for creating architecture.11 haus merz and the zukunftskathedrale that schwitters created his first piece of merz architecture as a cathedral model is to be understood not as the promotion of a religious belief but as the representation of a new german architecture. after germany’s defeat in world war i and the abdication of kaiser wilhelm on november 9, 1918, many architects sought to join with the socialists in berlin to help forge a new german republic.12 these architects aimed for direct power within a decentralised government made up of workers’ and soldiers’ councils by forming into groups such as the novembergruppe (november group) and the later arbeitsrat für kunst.13 in the founding manifesto for later organisation, taut promoted a faith in the power of architecture to create a better future, a clear commitment to breaking down artificial divisions between the arts and argued for the architect to remain in control of the final design (1918: 16-19). under gropius’ leadership, the arbeitsrat für kunst continued to strive for reform by organising exhibitions and working to conceive a new german architecture. for his colleagues, the model for this new architecture was embodied in a unity of the arts as a single structure – the gothic cathedral. as early as 1914, taut proposed the gothic cathedral as the greatest example of a new unification of the arts (1914: 174-5). in the postwar period, taut revived this idea of synthesising the arts as a major component of ein architektur-programm that he wrote as director of the arbeitsrat für kunst.14 when gropius later took over as director, he again used the image of a cathedral in the pamphlet for the april 1919 ausstellung für unbekannte architekten (exhibition of unknown architects) (franciscono 1971: 146-7). here, gropius echoed taut’s original call for “architects, sculptors and painters” to break down the barriers between the arts and be unified as the “architect” whose work, he explained, would create a total work of art as the zukunftskathedrale (gropius 1919). in a speech delivered to the bauhaus students three months later, gropius claimed that the aim of their work was to create this zukunftskathedrale as a crystalline expression of a spiritual idea that would metaphorically radiate its light into the design of objects for everyday life (july 1919). it was this conception of the zukunftskathedrale that lyonel feininger synthesised into his famous woodcut for the cover of the 1919 bauhaus manifesto (periton 1996: 189-205). a few years earlier, gropius described the work to be created in the new bauhaus academy as “impregnated with an intellectual idea – with form”.15 the conviction that one structure could embody all the various arts as the unity of transcendental idea and physical form ties schwitters’ haus merz to the zukunftskathedrale of gropius, taut and feininger. 10 dietrich reinforces this observation (dietrich 1993: 171). 11 see elderfield (1985: 113-4); gamard (2000: 74-76); dietrich (1993: 170); schmalenbach (1967: 129 and 184). 12 weinstein (1990: 1-25); rigby (1993: 1734); boyd whyte (1982: 95-102). 13 the programs and writings of individuals involved in these groups emphasised the spiritual revolution of art and a symbiotic relationship with the worker. see taut (1918); gropius (1919: 134-6) and behne (1919: 2). 14 for a discussion of taut’s ein architektur-programm and his involvement in the arbeitsrat für kunst see whyte (1982: 99-102). 15 walter gropius, paper sent to grand ducal saxon ministry in weimar in january 1916. after periton, 190, n. 5. fig. 3 walter gropius (1922). plaster model of einfamilienhaus (single-family house) [photo: © 2013 artists rights society (ars), new york / vg bild-kunst, bonn] 53 shortly after the arbeitsrat für kunst’s acceptance of the total work of art as the model for the new german architecture, schwitters identified a comparable aim underlying his own work. my aim is the merzgesamtkunstwerk that embraces all branches of art in an artistic unit. first i married individual categories of art. i pasted words and sentences into poems in such a way as to produce a rhythmic design. reversing the process, i pasted up pictures and drawings so that sentences could be read in them. i drove nails into pictures so as to produce a plastic relief apart from the pictorial quality of the paintings. i did this in order to efface the boundaries between the arts. (1921: 7)16 notwithstanding their similarities, schwitters was not a member of the arbeitsrat für kunst nor can it be certain that he had any familiarity with its members or gropius’ zukunftskathedrale when he invented merz in december of 1918. conversely, curt germundson locates the beginnings of the cathedral theme in schwitters’ merz oeuvre to the early part of 1918 through his exposure to german romanticism and his introduction to wilhelm worringer’s concept of abstraction and empathy (germundsen 2007). yet, it is hard to imagine that schwitters’ sudden identification of the cathedral and total work of art as important themes in his merz oeuvre during 1920 were merely a coincidence. during the opening of his first merz exhibition at the berlin sturm gallery, schwitters would have become familiar with members of the arbeitsrat für kunst and gropius’ newly founded bauhaus school. since 1914, the sturm gallery enjoyed the patronage of taut and his arbeitsrat für kunst cofounder, adolf behne, when, after the end of the world war, it became a source of faculty for gropius’ new bauhaus school, including feininger, johannes itten, wassily kandinsky, paul klee and oskar schlemmer. two months before writing an article on haus merz, spengemann published a review of taut’s book die stadtkrone, which is probably where schwitters became familiar with taut and his work in the arbeitsrat für kunst. later, taut himself must have recognised the relevance of schwitters’ merz architecture to his own aims when he invited schwitters to contribute the short article “schloss und kathedrale mit hofbrunnen” (castle and cathedral with courtyard well) for the spring 1922 issue of his architectural journal frühlicht (schwitters 1922: 87). in his article, schwitters sought to extend his merz method of assembling found materials into art as an approach for architects to employ in creating a new german architecture as a gesamtkunstwerk. within a year after his first merz exhibition, he began to explore the cathedral theme in a small book of eight lithographs from 1920 entitled die kathedrale (the cathedral). schwitters did not include a religious structure on its cover, but a hastily drawn flat-roofed industrial mill. that spengemann published his review of haus merz in the previous month indicates that schwitters’ model and portfolio were exploring similar themes. yet, compared to the lithographs of die kathedrale that depict abstract compositions of hand-drawn wheels, coffee grinders, clocks, windmills and words, and stamped or printed materials, haus merz is a model of architecture that challenged a normative practice of using solid mass models for its conception. by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the use of solid wood, clay or plaster massing models to study the relationships of exterior building forms was a common practice among architects in germany (schreiber 1982: 91 and 95 ff.). in addition to conventional techniques, plaster models were also used by avantgarde architects including taut, gropius and hans poelzig.17 in these instances, the plaster model required that the architect already had an idea of a proposed 16 with my inclusion of ”merzgesamtkunstwerk”, this et by manheim in schwitters (1981: 407). 17 mass models are pictured in the fourth issue of taut’s architectural journal frühlicht between 1920-23. see also emmons and mindrup (2008: 44-45). interstices 14 project so that the forms of the model could be accurately fashioned to represent it. unlike members of the arbeitsrat für kunst who viewed their modeling materials as impregnated with an intellectual idea of architecture, the found objects haus merz proposed were already transformed into something and would hinder the ‘impregnation’ of any predetermined idea on them. like his contemporaries wassili luckhardt and herman finsterlin, schwitters’ merz architecture fostered the use of modeling materials to inspire new architectural ideas.18 this concept of architecture as a unity of material and intellectual idea was an important attribute of haus merz that schwitters sought to affirm. when schwitters gave his only description of haus merz as “his first piece of merz architecture”, he repeated almost verbatim what spengemann, had written about it in “merz: die offizielle kunst”: i see in haus merz the cathedral: the cathedral. not the church building, no, the building [bauwerk] as an expression of a truly spiritual intuition [anschauung], of the kind that raises us to the infinite: absolute art. this cathedral cannot be used. its interior space is so filled with wheels that people cannot find space in it …this is absolute architecture, with an exclusively artistic sense. (schwitters 1921: 6)19 in this instance, spengemann interpreted haus merz not as the description of an architectural form, “the church building”, but as a work of “absolute architecture” that had only an “artistic sense”. as spengemann suggested, haus merz is “not the church building” in the literal sense, but the “expression” of a “spiritual intuition” he called “the cathedral”. elizabeth burns gamard argued in her book, kurt schwitters’ merzbau, that spengemann’s interpretation of haus merz as an “expression of a truly spiritual intuition, of the kind that raises us to the infinite: absolute art” had parallels with the “anagogic perspective of gothic cathedrals and romantic art” (2000: 76). during the twelfth century, abbot suger gave one of the most celebrated descriptions of this anagogic function for gothic art and architecture that caused him to “reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial” and to be “transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner” (1979: 46-49 and 64-65). this perception of art and architecture essentially derived from a dictum attributed to the early christian theologian, origen of alexandria, that “the visible world contains images of heavenly things in order that by means of these lower objects we may rise to that which is beyond” (origen 1973: 278-9). during the nineteenth century, early german romantics attributed a similar function to art as a guide for the perception of immaterial archetypes becoming in nature.20 conversely, schwitters’ haus merz and spengemann’s interpretation of it were not based on a christian conception of the immaterial in cathedral architecture but an extension of the anagogical interpretation to the imaginative conception of the zukunftskathedrale in the assemblage of found objects. for his review of taut’s book, die stadtkrone from 1920, spengemann underlined the spiritual role that a cathedral should embody during the early twentieth century, arguing that “it is not anymore the time to build churches and temples”, but instead a “new art” should be created that would replace “religious thought” with the secular thought of socialism (spengemann april 1920: 15). schwitters, who was familiar with spengemann’s book review, frequently wrote about the spiritual role of the found objects in his merz oeuvre not as a representation of suger’s “higher world” or origen’s “heavenly things”, but as a set of criteria for making new architecture. for schwitters, the selection of found objects depended 18 for the materials and methods these individuals employed in making their models, see mindrup (2007: 34-5). 19 see also spengemann (1920: 40-41). 20 for a summary of these concepts, see “die dritte stufe der romantischen theorie” in walzel (1908: 37-65). fig. 4 hans poelzig (1921). plaster model of wegkapelle (roadside chapel) [photo: badisches landesmuseum, karlsruhe, germany] fig. 5 wassili luckhardt (1920). konzerthaus modell (model of a concert hall) [photo: public domain] 55 upon “the demands” of a picture, since art was an invisible, immaterial “urbegriff (archetypal concept) elevated towards divinity” that came about as a unique combination of “lines, forms, and colors” (schwitters 1921: 5). the determination of this “archetypal concept” in a work of art was very different from the gothic and romantic perspective of immaterial ideas that were transcendental and a priori. for schwitters, it was not the visible appearance of a small cathedral itself that was the primary concern in making haus merz, but how the assemblage of a button, spinning top, and gears describe the interpretation of found materials as art or architect. by including a set of gears in the nave of haus merz, schwitters was reinforcing his coupling of a mill with a religious structure in his die kathedrale portfolio of lithographs. schwitters’ pencil and watercolour drawings from the same period reveal that the mill was an important theme in his work, and was used to describe the creative transformation of found objects in a merz work. the merz mill shortly before his creation of haus merz, schwitters frequently depicted gears, people and windmills in watercolour and stamp drawings to describe the transformation of discarded materials into merz art and architecture. of the drawings that schwitters produced between 1919 and 1923, the gears that he included in his stamp drawings and watercolours from 1919, closely resemble the one in ohne titel: ferienkolonie für taubstumme (no title: vacation colony for deaf-mutes) from the same year.21 in the case of the stamp drawing, ohne titel: mit rot vier, the circular impressions are comparable to those in ohne titel: ferienkolonie für fig. 6 herman finsterlin (1916). stilspiel (the play with styles) [photo: © 2013 artists rights society (ars), new york / vg bild-kunst, bonn] 21 see for instance ohne titel: mit rot vier and aq. 9: windmühle (water colour 9: windmill) from 1919. interstices 14 taubstumme that are not gears in themselves, but schwitters adds spokes and teeth to them.22 compared to the other objects depicted in aq. 9: windmühle, schwitters partially shaded the triangular spacing between the spokes of a set of gears that bear a striking resemblance to those in a 1917 logo for the german bavarian motor works (bmw), inspired by the propeller of a plane in motion. in a separate watercolour from 1919, aq. 10: ich mühle, du mühlst, er mühlt (water colour 10: i mill, you mill, he mills), schwitters makes a concrete association between a mill and a person by suggesting that he and everyone else are active “mills”. likewise, on a 1921 postcard to walter dexel, schwitters placed the pie-shaped wheel motif found in aq. 9: windmühle directly on his forehead denoting the location of this milling in his mind.23 the repeated inclusion of coffee and windmills in schwitters’ drawings should not be seen as the copying of an artistic motif popularised by marcel duchamp and francis picabia, or as the mere inclusion of a familiar object from his daily life into art. instead, the “mill” motif in schwitters’ drawings is an indication of his interest in mills that transform raw substances (grain and coffee beans) into material necessary for making something new (bread and coffee). with the development of a windmill pictogram in 1923, schwitters sought to synthesise his mediations on the transformation of found objects as an essential description of his merz art and architecture. he first used the pictogram on the title page of the 1923 “holland dada” issue of his magazine merz between the words “holland” and “dada”. the drawing consists of a black square surmounted by a diagonally rotated cross in which the spaces between the arms are filled with the letters “da”. this image recalls the windmills frequently seen on dutch landscapes and in schwitters’ watercolour drawings. schwitters continued to use his windmill pictogram in an advertising poster for his magazine merz from 1923 that included the word “merz” below the black square and again in the january 1924 issue in which the letters “da” and word “merz” were removed. in this manifestation, dada art is the wind that moves the four sails to turn merz, the mill. as a windmill, the berlin dada activities that “began by shocking the bourgeois, demolishing his idea of art, attacking common sense, public opinion, education, institutions, museums, good taste, in short the whole prevailing order” compare to the gusts of wind moving the propellers (janco 1971: 36). the propellers drive the mill, or the imagination, to destroy the immaterial, conventional meanings of the objects schwitters assembles in a merz work. however, unlike the dada wind that only destroys, the original identities of the found objects schwitters collects are milled to become material for new merz art. in “merz”, schwitters began to develop a comparison between the interpretations of a found object as art or architecture and the workings of a mill. for schwitters, the extraction and reinsertion of a found object from one context to another was likened to the assemblage and re-assemblage of words in a poem: “as in poetry, word is played off against word, here factor is played off against factor, material against material.” (1921: 7)24 three years later, in the “die bedeutung des merzgedankens in der welt” (the meaning of the merz-thought in the world), schwitters elaborated on this comparison and explained how “in poetry, words are torn from their former context, entformelt (dissociated) and brought into a new artistic context, they become formal parts of the poem, nothing more” (1923: 8-11).25 here, the disassociation of an object from its original context was an important step in making merz work. for schwitters, all materials had an “individual character” or eigengift – as streetcar tickets, cloakroom checks, bits of wood, wire, twine, bent wheels, tissue paper, tin cans, chips of glass, for example – that had to be lost as 22 ohne titel: mit rot vier and aq. 9: windmühle are also similar in that both gears and a windmill appear in the same drawing, although in aq. 9: windmühle, the gears are not separate from the windmill but, as in haus merz and the church in ohne titel: ferienkolonie für taubstumme, are integrated into its base. 23 this postcard is variously titled “gears” by dorothea dietrich or “pleasure gallows” in the exhibition catalog kurt schwitters: merz – a total vision of the world. see dietrich (1993: 159, fig. 83) and schwitters (2004: 53, cat. 153). 24 et by manheim in schwitters (1981: 407). 25 et by elderfield (1985: 43). fig. 7 kurt schwitters (1919). aq. 9: windmühle (water color 9: the windmill) [photo: kornfeld collection, bern, switzerland © 2013 artists rights society (ars), new york / vg bild-kunst, bonn] fig. 8 kurt schwitters (1919). ohne titel: ferienkolonie für taubstumme (no title: vacation colony for deaf-mutes) [photo: galleria blu, milano, italy, © 2013 artists rights society (ars), new york / vg bild-kunst, bonn] 57 they were assembled into a merz work.26 this does not mean that the objects must disappear but that “by being evaluated against one another” their “individual character” is “dematerialised” (schwitters 1923: 8-11). consequently, the eigengift of found objects was not something material but immaterial, and could be lost while the physical objects, “as they are”, did not change. in this way, schwitters’ “dematerialisation” of the immaterial eigengift of a found object compares allegorically to the milling of grain into flour. in the same way wheat is milled into flour to bake bread, so is the eigengift of a found object “dematerialised” in the architect’s imagination so that it can be used as material to make merz art or architecture. conclusion schwitters created haus merz during a period in german architectural history when his peers at the berlin sturm gallery embraced the crystal of taut and gropius as a metaphor for the construction of a new post-war german architecture. like his colleagues in the arbeitsrat für kunst, schwitters conceived architecture as a combination of material and immaterial idea. yet, unlike gropius and taut, whose new architecture would become a medium for the exploration of architecture as impregnated with an intellectual idea, the found objects schwitters’ cathedral proposed to use would hinder the imposition of any pre-determined idea upon them. as his 1919 watercolour drawing das herz geht von zucker zum kaffee (the heart goes from sugar to coffee) indicates, schwitters had a strong preference for milled over crystalline substances. rather, haus merz emerged during a period of time in schwitters’ oeuvre when he was exploring the metaphor of a mill in his drawings and watercolours to describe the interpretation of an immaterial content for the found objects that he could use as material for creating art or architecture. by including a set of gears in the nave of haus merz, schwitters created it not as a description of the effect his cathedral would have on the making of a future architecture but as a model for the use of materials to inspire new architectural ideas. references behne, a. 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(1979). e. panofsky (ed.), abbot suger on the abbey church of st.-denis and its art treasures (2 ed.). princeton, nj: princeton university press. taut, b. (1918). ein architektur-programm. mitteilungen des deutschen werkbundes, (4), 16-19. taut, b. (february 1914). eine notwendigkeit. der sturm, 4(196-7), 174-5. walzel, o. (1908). deutsche romantik: eine skizze. leipzig: b. g. teubner and company. washton long, r. (ed.), (1996) german expressionism, documents from the end of the wilhelmine empire to the rise of national socialism. new york: g. k. hall; toronto [etc.]: maxwell macmillan, cop. webster, g. (1997). kurt merz schwitters: a biographical study. cardiff: university of wales press. weinstein , j. (1990). the end of expressionism; art and the november revolution in germany, 1918-19. (pp. 1-25). chicago: university of chicago press. wingler, h. (1978). the bauhaus. cambridge, mit press. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 84 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a review / paul james chris l. smith bare architecture: a schizoanalysis bloomsbury academic, 2017 bare architecture: a schizoanalysis by university of sydney academic dr. chris l. smith will be of particular interest to those engaged with connections between gilles deleuze and félix guattari’s philosophy and architecture. smith’s study opens up ways of thinking about architecture as both a profession and as a subject within humanistic research. he places emphasis on the way that architecture engages with the communicative space of culture, drawing out its links to philosophy, art, literature, and medicine. during a period marked by increasing pragmatism in research generated within the discipline of architecture, this book is noteworthy for resisting any simple-minded utility. the key contributions of the book will probably prove to be smith’s formulation of the category of “bare architecture,” and his impressive commentary on symptomatology. in his foreword smith states that the book is a work of schizoanalysis. while he does provide a brief description of what schizoanalysis is, it is too succinct to be useful for readers less familiar with deleuze and guattari’s theory. familiarity with the processes and objectives of schizoanalysis is necessary to discern the logic governing both smith’s mode of writing, and the organisation of the book. the inclusion of stream-of-consciousness writing and highly fragmented arguments in the early stages of the book may baffle readers without this knowledge. architectural students, in particular, will find smith’s book more accessible if they consult an explicative account of schizoanalysis prior to trying to process his text. deleuze and the schizoanalysis of literature by ian buchanan, tim matts and aidan tynan (2015) would serve this role admirably. the research approach of the book will divide readers. readers familiar with schizoanalysis will likely gain pleasure from smith’s strategic combination of stream-of-consciousness prose, authoritative descriptions of deleuzian arguments, and sensitive descriptions of case studies, due to the novel insights into the transcendental consciousness that they provide. readers less familiar with deleuze, who are looking for an explicative academic text that explicitly states the utility of deleuzian concepts to those engaged with the production of architecture may be alienated by the post-modern mode of writing. i encourage readers in the latter group to persist with the book as the highly stylised writing of the early book is toned down as the text progresses. the majority of the text is written in a relatively conventional academic manner with linear arguments 85 review / chris l. smith bare architecture: a schizoanalysis t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a explicated through the examination of architectural case studies. the book doesn’t seek to provide a tool kit for applying deleuzian concepts to generate architectural designs. for those whose primary interest is architecture, the value of the book may lay in the shifts it forms in their understanding of architectural case studies. for those primarily interested in philosophy, the application of architecture as a lens may activate insights into the political and social potential of deleuze’s thought, which may be less evident when considered in relationship to other areas of culture. smith’s interpretation of deleuze’s analysis of medicine, through the lens of the praxis of architecture, provides a key example of this productive contribution of the book. smith’s engagement with philosophy isn’t limited to deleuze; with agility he threads his arguments amongst the networks of thinkers associated with post-structuralist, post-modern and psychoanalytical theory. a key contribution of smith’s study is the development of his concept of “bare architecture”. this concept is elaborated in nuanced ways through intricate interpretations of examples. gathering his obscure definitions together provides the category of “bare architecture” with an amorphous form, without over-determining it. smith acknowledges the origin of his concept of bare architecture, stating that it was derived from giorgio agamben’s expression “bare life” (xvi). for smith “bare architecture” occurs during the raw experience of how architecture locates us within a place and a position, and simultaneously generates an experience of losing and destabilising of our sense of self (5). later in the book he declares: what is at stake in the project of bare architecture is the passing of the subject as we know it and a resuscitation of the forces of the asubjective impersonal. of making our literature, art and architecture itself breathe, eat, speak, shit and fuck, spit, sing, stammer, stutter and spasm. making it, itself, intensive. alive and incorporeal. a prosthesis-heart that throbs. (61). smith’s engagement with terms associated with the erotic and the scatological are mobilised within his critique of what he views as the sanitised accounts, of the architectural phenomenologists. the polemical force of smith’s “bare architecture” is illustrated through a series of case studies that emphasise the erotic in predictable and less predictable places. case studies enlisted to illustrate the erotic are: göteborg sauna and zumthor’s serpentine pavilion. the corporeal is related to darden’s oxygen house, while the mémorial des martyrs de la deportation is aligned with the impersonal. smith generously builds bridges for his readers. strategically he includes a summary of deleuze’s interpretation of bacon’s paintings, to draw a pathway for the reader to follow his extension of deleuze’s arguments to include architectural examples. smith embraces zumthor (the golden light of architectural phenomenology) to parasitically insert a deleuzian sensibility into the discursive ground formed by architectural phenomenologists’ ruminations on affect. as a researcher engaged with the philosophy of phenomenology, i find smith’s critique of the architectural phenomenologists the least convincing part of his otherwise excellent study. his critique seems glib at times: “their accounts can have us thinking that the world is a very genteel place indeed. that our most intense pleasure come from handrails or door-handles (53).” additionally smith notes; “the body parts the architectural phenomenologist’s focus is upon too, are 86 review / chris l. smith bare architecture: a schizoanalysis t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a as quaint as the architectural intensities to which they respond (53).” while smith does bring to presence the latent sexual dimensions within his experience of case studies he is not immune from the charms of handrails; “we swim to the tower because it is empty without us. a ladder always yearns to be climbed. a handrail always desires to be held (xv).” the relationship between architectural phenomenology and post-modern theory, including smith’s own, is more ambiguous and complex than he acknowledges. he also needed to be more self-reflexive of the marked resemblance between his detailed descriptions of his haptic experiences of case studies and the interpretive tropes of the architectural phenomenologists. smith appears to have lapsed into the intellectual fashion for trivialising the political objectives of the phenomenologists. there is a tendency to characterise the tradition as fuzzy apolitical commentary on spatial affects rather than a means to challenge reductive representations of complex reality. i have in mind here edmund husserl’s critique of the mathematisation of reality and the way that phenomenology was framed by jan patočka to guide political dissidents resisting totalitarianism within the communist bloc. smith’s critique of the architectural phenomenologists would have been strengthened had he acknowledged both the gaps and continuities between the arguments of the philosophers associated with phenomenology and their translation by key architectural phenomenologists. dalibor vesely, for example, was attentive to the political significance of patočka’s philosophy, when he adapted it to issues associated with architecture. acknowledging the political significance of phenomenology (particularly in france and eastern europe) would have exposed a less polite, more politically charged legacy of phenomenology that has a closer relationship to the political investment in the erotic and the scatological of smith’s “bare architecture” than he admits. unsurprisingly given smith’s ongoing research interest in the relationship between architecture and biomedicine the chapter titled “symptomatology” is one of the most convincing in the book. within this section he draws out the nuanced relationship between architecture and medicine. for deleuzian academics i imagine that smith’s unfolding of the significance of symptomatology to architecture will prove to have the most impact. this chapter may also prove to be of most interest to postgraduate students engaged in design research, as the utility of deleuze’s arguments become most evident in this section. smith’s critique of the value of pragmatism underpinning architectural research was also most clearly stated in this chapter. smith draws on symptomatology to challenge the diagnostic tendency deployed in the training of architects: he problematised the normative assumption that it is the architects’ role to locate and anticipate problems, and subsequently to design solutions for them. symptomatology, he contends, prioritises the interpretation of signs over causal thinking (107). this constitutes a challenge to the ethical role often associated with architecture and awards additional resonance to the political significance of the “a subjective impersonal” that he attributes to his category of “bare architecture”. the utility of deleuze’s theory to architecture was most clearly expressed in relationship to symptomatology: an architecture posited as symptomatology might engage with immediacy of the present by exploring and experimenting within the world and its ‘symptoms’. this architecture would express new ways of thinking about life and experiment 87 review / chris l. smith bare architecture: a schizoanalysis t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a with novel ways of living. such an architecture might operate not as a backdrop or stage-set to life but rather would be implicated in life itself (108, abridged). bare architecture: a schizoanalysis makes a valuable contribution to architectural theory and deleuzian studies. smith has provided useful tools for reflecting on the limitations of pragmatism and the naturalised ethical values that underpin diagnostic approaches to architecture. in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 124 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s review / stephen walker swati chattopadhyay & jeremy white (eds.) the routledge companion to critical approaches to contemporary architecture routledge, 2019 the routledge companion to critical approaches to contemporary architecture is a big book—464 pages. it contains essays, split across six sections: design, materiality, alterity, technologies, cityscapes, and practice. the contributing authors hail from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, but the majority have found some sort of home in, or associated with, schools of architecture. the essays brought together here do not amount to an account of “global architecture” so much as a collection of examples from various locations around the globe that can support discussions of the complexity and flexibility of architecture. there is far too much in here to name check all the authors, or to outline the numerous responses to specific socio-cultural and environmental situations and differences, but it is important to give at least some indication of the flavour of contents and the breadth of interest and examples. essays address architecture as this relates to buildings, but also explore architecture and architectural questions in a wide range of other situations that expand conventional definitions of what architecture might be, where it might be found, what architects might do, and who they might be. examples range from: one-off architect(capital a) designed homes (alice t. friedman, “public face and private space in the design of contemporary houses”) to humanitarian architecture (andrew herscher, “designs on disaster”); refugee and transit camps (charlie hailey, “camps: contemporary environments of autonomy, necessity, and control”); films (aron vinegar, “habit’s remainder”); exhibitions and installations (rohan shivkumar, “a eulogy for the present”, or joshua neves, “watching the city: a genealogy of media urbanism”); border politics and barriers, temporary festivals, alternate currencies (andrew herscher again), gun control, opportunistic developments in the shadow of megaprojects (max hirsh and dorthy tang, “when the megaproject meets the village: formal and informal urbanization in southern china”; polyethylene balls covering ivanhoe reservoir (heather davis, “life and death in the anthropocene”); disability legislation (jeremy white, “edges: body, space, and design”); ruined vanity projects in monrovia, liberia (danny hoffman); diasporic supermarkets, computer modelling and material/sub-particle engineering (ljiljana fruk and veljko armano linta, “future architecture: biohybrid structures and intelligent materials”, or t. f. tierney, “networked urbanism: definition, scholarship, in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 125 review / swati chattopadhyay and jeremy white (eds.) the routledge companion to critical approaches to contemporary architecture p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s directions”); storytelling (craig wilkins, “bi-space”); infrastructure and public facilities/services, the media, hedgehogs (laura mclauchlan, “urchins in the infrastructure: building with hedgehogs in the multispecies city”); alternate forms of practice… and much more. critical approaches to contemporary architecture thus feels fairly encyclopaedic in its scope and ambition, and this started to raise unfair questions in my mind concerning what is left out. one debate that does seem to be conspicuous by its absence is (architectural) education. it is raised tangentially as an issue—arguably the issue—in the introduction, and is touched on in passing by a couple of essays in the “practice” section, such as despina stratigakos’ sobering essay, “is it really that bad? the status of women in architecture and the gender equity movement”. certainly the focus of this essay is on the continuing, abysmal underrepresentation of women in practice, architectural education, and the organisation and culture of architectural schools. expanding away from formal educational settings in their essay, “collaboration: unresolved forms of working together in contemporary architectural practice”, sony devabhaktuni and min kyung lee argue for the importance of agonism, understood not as continuous conflict but as a process that should encourage us (whoever we are) “to value the struggles that emerge in any creative process of learning, for it is these necessarily unresolved interstices of a friendly relation that yet unimagined acts can materialise” (402). while the editors’ introduction dwells on what it means to be contemporary, the issue of critical approaches as signaled by the title is more present elsewhere, touching on many critical projects (and critical spatial practices) as well as describing one of the broader editorial strategies at play. this strategy explicitly positions the collection as a counter to the “architect-centric lavishly illustrated volumes” that have dominated architectural publishing over the past two decades (1). while this is something of a straw man, the breadth and richness of the architectures, and of architectural thinking set out here, is invigorating. side-stepping an inquiry into how much this observation about architectural publishing is borne out in practice, or on the bookshelves, the collection as a whole mounts its challenge by practising a certain mode of critique, addressed to the still-dominant model of architectural criticism and associated homogeneity of framing and output, with its associated hierarchies of practices, territories, and training. instead, architecture as it is presented here in specific examples, and as it emerges from the collection as a whole, is a wide-ranging and complex practice: networked, extended, temporary, ongoing, heterodox, contingent, and operating across a wide variety of scales. swati chattopadhyay’s own essay (“ephemeral architecture: toward radical contingency”), for example, follows the annual hindu festival of durgpuja in kolkata. although the festival only lasts for five days, preparations occur all year around, and chattopadhyay draws attention to the huge complexity and sophistication of the temporary pavilions (or pandals), which “can put any architectural biennale to shame” (141). redeploying the vocabulary of traditional architectural and urban design practice, she unpacks the multifaceted material, social, and economic import and impact of the festival. similarly, mechtild widrich’s “after the counter-monument” brings together traditional approaches and products of commemorative architecture and sculpture with recent examples of counter-monuments, holding these together in ways in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 126 review / swati chattopadhyay and jeremy white (eds.) the routledge companion to critical approaches to contemporary architecture p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s that amplify the motivations of the latter while also developing a wider critical discourse that bears on the former, and the complex debates concerning cultural specificity and memory that are often elided by them. the criticality of the collection is enacted and sustained by its heterogeneity, and it sets out to pass on something of this architectural complexity, to share some thinking, to generate and sustain arguments and counter arguments. there is no answer, no easy takeaway. there is no clear party line, and it is all the better for this. criticality is also an ingredient or motivation in some of the projects and practices that are discussed, as well as other contributions that discuss critically various examples that were in themselves uncritical. examples of the former include george f. flaherty’s “borderlands architecture: territories, commons, and breathing-spaces”, which introduces a number of artistic and critical-architectural responses to complex (mostly national) border conditions. examples of the latter include karen piper’s “the architecture of water”, which examines how the control or colonisation of territories in california and india was (and continues to be) enacted through the apparently benevolent projects to supply fresh water; or rachel hall’s “architectures of risk and resiliency: ‘embedded security’ in the redesign of sandy hook elementary school” which offers a close, critical reading of the unintended consequences of gun control legislation on a politically charged example of recent school (re)design. there are other approaches still that enact this critical dynamic more implicitly, reading apparently straightforward, everyday situations against the grain: max hirsh and dorothy tang’s “when the megaproject meets the village: formal and informal urbanization in southern china”, or arijit sen’s “recasting the ethnic retail street: analyzing contemporary immigrant architecture in the united states”. in these essays, the authors examine very different examples that nevertheless reveal certain inventive, informal or opportunistic characteristics in common: how various creative, unplanned facilities have sprung up around and across guangzhou’s university town/higher education mega-centre’s imprecise border with existing “village” architectures. these facilities are more nimble, attentive, and responsive to the actual needs of users than those anticipated by “official” architects, planners, bureaucrats, and politicians. or how the given architectures of “main street” have been repurposed over time to serve the economic and cultural needs of different diasporic populations in the usa. implicitly, the collection addresses issues of knowledge production and circulation, as much as it does direct approaches to contemporary architecture. it is more or less book-ended by essays that touch on these themes. the challenges of and to the project of historicism, and the role of history, in contemporary practice and education are opened up by alice t. friedman, whose essay, “public face and private space in house design”, opens the section on design. friedman explicitly situates her consideration of physical and digital boundaries, privacy, sexuality and household composition, community, surveillance, and so on, within and against the “standard” trajectory of architectural history and the motif of the primitive hut, from vitruvius through to le corbusier. rohan shivkumar (“a eulogy for the present”) analyses the exponential growth of architectural practice and education in india, with more explicit reference to the locations of knowledge production, conferences, and journals (437). few other essays are quite so explicit in situating their concerns against the context of existing or accepted architectural history. it would have been interesting to follow endnotes in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 127 review / swati chattopadhyay and jeremy white (eds.) the routledge companion to critical approaches to contemporary architecture p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s up with a more direct address to the complex ways in which critical approaches to contemporary architecture can (indeed, have to) extend into the production of theory, writing, and publishing. many of the accepted, traditional practices of architecture that are implicitly or directly criticised here are underpinned and maintained by an extensive, institutionalised network of publications, events, museums, and archives that controls the message and keeps it circulating. the extension of the political work represented in the essays and undertaken by the editors would bring about significant changes and challenges to them. this is enacted by the collection, but more explicit, extended reflection on it would have made me happy. in this respect, as with many of its other ramifications, the book is left to do this work without any extensive or laboured editorial signposting. the introduction is short and fairly enigmatic (on the contemporary, as already mentioned), and there is no conclusion or epilogue; inevitably, some contributions more than others drew my attention, my interests. my thinking was best stimulated where essays operated to extend and to challenge, to suggest what if and to solicit counter readings. the work of the editors is done very quietly— there are no instructions for use, and no attempts to “guide” the reader through particular connections or to suggest particular conclusions. i was probably an unusual reader in that i read the book as a heavy hardcopy and from start to finish. its very small print testifies to the editors’ stated intentions that this is aimed at younger eyes than mine—“primarily at undergraduate students, and secondarily at graduate students and faculty” (4). the audience is clearly going to be different from the book’s intended market. with a list price of £190, or $nz390 (currently on offer at £152 or $nz312), it is only going to be consumed via institutional libraries, probably read on screen, and at this length it is probably only going to be consumed partially, and in ways that are mediated or guided by faculty. so here we are back to the blind-spot of education. i have already pointed several of my own students, in different contexts and at different stages of their education, towards several different essays, so it is proving a useful and invigorating resource, and will continue to be so. indeed, i am writing this at the bottom of my garden. the sun is out, and i am in covid-19 lockdown. this has given me pause to reflect on the role of this kind of companionship, something we are all going to be seeking out, whoever and wherever we are. in addition to daily news reports full of scientific experts, graphs, and numbers, we are starting to hear more in the media here about how we are not going to be going back to the old “normal” (if, or of course, it was ever “normal”). the companionship offered by this collection feels appropriate and timely: it adds its voice to others countering the comfortable platitudes that still circulate in our discipline and profession—the architect as sole author/genius, the building as a solo, self-contained object, and so on. it poses a whole range of questions and provides few answers, but does this in ways that demonstrate and articulate the importance of this kind of reflective, wide-ranging, rigorous, and creative questioning. by doing so, it will help its readers, future architects, to imagine how they might become very different practitioners. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 42 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a carl mika a māori reflection on spinoza’s primordial māori  philosophy is at an exciting point as it looks to other sources for inspiration. in this paper, i refer to some key māori  concepts and terms i have worked with in the past and bring them into discussion with spinoza’s notion of primordial substance in mind. some māori  terms such as ira (the manifestation and persistence of a thing), whakaaro (indebtedness to a primordial substance) and papatūānuku (primordial substance) are relevant here. approaches to cross-cultural philosophising—a foreword there are ethical issues to consider before leaping into conversation with a western philosopher. firstly, there is something to be said for keeping western philosophers at a distance, thereby prioritising the discussion as a māori one. however, it is debatable whether simply bypassing western theories is sustainable given their ongoing presence in academic contexts. further, there is something a bit subversive—or at least playful—in working with a ground of thought that comes from the west, but which is largely accepted in māori scholarship as colonising. in this paper i pursue the latter precisely because working playfully with difficult thinkers from other cultural philosophies may be useful for māori. whether we strictly follow the ideas of the western writer, or use them as a springboard for some of our own thinking is also important to consider (mika, 2013: 23). do we stand in service to the ideas of others, or is there a more nuanced relationship at play between western and māori thinkers? the position i argue is that staying within the conceptual and material grounds of existence is an important existential and ontological ethic for the indigenous self (mika, 2017: 13), no less than the scholar. in other words, we need to stay firmly within the generative plane of existence that our first ancestral entities provide. the point of this article is to negotiate both styles as a māori  philosopher who wishes to attend to the immanence of those primordial entities, whilst acknowledging that much good can come from ‘throwing oneself outward’ towards divergent scholars. spinoza is a renowned philosopher in western traditions who nevertheless resonates with māori  thought at critical points, while diverging at others. coinciding with a māori perspective, he can be seen to examine the phenomenon of existing within the substance of the all whilst thinking it. 43 a māori reflection on spinoza’s primordial t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a as such, i propose to carefully engage with him in a way that reflects the reality of māori cross-cultural discussion (mika, 2014b: 24)—not necessarily directed by or in full commitment to him, but in respectful dialogue with him. like spinoza, i advocate that one can think something and abide within the all, but indicate that there are key points where māori—either through the subtlety of the māori  language or simply through a difference in concepts—diverge from spinoza. hence, there is a mercuriality involved in engaging with spinoza and a certain volatility for me as a māori  philosopher because, although he may be more sympathetic than, say, many of the classic greek thinkers, i still have to contend with him as having particular boundaries that do not correspond with my own. he resonates with the early german romantic poet and philosopher novalis, for instance, because they both propose that divinity resides within things in the world (beiser, 2002: 419). as in my thinking with novalis, though, in my spinoza-māori  encounter i don’t set out just to give comparisons as such between māori  thought and spinoza’s, but to also be productive in my development of māori notions of the primordial. spinoza and māori primordiality for māori, philosophy starts frequently with acknowledging the ground of the all—what spinoza calls “god” or “nature”. spinoza clearly thought a rational approach to this foundational substance was of such importance that he made some enemies among his own, with inflammatory comments such as: […] he, who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and endeavours, like a scholar, to comprehend the things in nature and not, like a fool, to wonder at them, is everywhere regarded and proclaimed as a heretic and an impious man by those whom the multitude reverence as interpreters of nature and the gods. (1894: 69) spinoza treads a difficult line between establishing the apparent irrationalism of being within the all on the one hand, and the reason associated with coming to know this fact on the other. but in some respects, use of terminology is extremely important here; spinoza does not ascribe “irrationality” to immanence, but to an inability to construct knowledge on the basis of affect. distance from the world— which may result in knowledge—is not possible because we all relate through primordial substance. but his insistence that the all is immanent puts him at odds with many of his contemporaries. proposing something other than the dominant discourse is also a poignant issue for the māori scholar. by this, i don’t simply mean that it is a fraught issue to be proposing something counter to what the west declares, but also against what māori  commonly declare. philosophy is especially inclined to critique dominant ways of talking about things, and although it sits quietly in the backdrop of māori  academia, it nevertheless arises as a problem for empirical work—for example, where scientific thinking, broadly conceived, keeps demanding our philosophical attention. thus, the aim of māori philosophy is to ruffle established ways of talking about things. alongside others’ ideas, the self is disturbed in that process, because māori metaphysics is so bound up with the presence of western thought (mika, 2017: 13). this thinking about the primordial is uncomfortable for most of us because it challenges how we represent things. 44 a māori reflection on spinoza’s primordial t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a so much for the antagonism that any of us might face in relation to fundamental propositions or unpopular first principles, but what of god itself ? māori, of course, have a number of names for the phenomenon that spinoza referred to—including, since colonisation, the name “god”, which is problematic for a number of māori  because of its relationship with judaeo-christianity. but it is here that i really want to focus for this paper, because spinoza wants us to conceive of primordial substance as giving rise to all things. it is precisely spinoza’s sustained emphasis on god as it exists as things in the world that sparks my own interest. nature is a whole, existing necessarily, which for spinoza means that it exists without cause. this proposition opens up a complication for māori thought in the sense that its translation into the māori  context has major consequences. one immediately relevant entity here is papatūānuku. it is currently entitized to mean earth mother, and this entitizing in itself is not a problem for spinoza, but it becomes a detrimental concept if we think of papatūānuku as material in the conventional, physical sense. papatūānuku is matter itself, but, interestingly for the māori  thinker, it can be interpreted as being “beyond cause”. the term “matter”, having taken on coat-upon-coat of static property and cause, is inappropriate for what we are discussing. māori  theologian and philosopher māori  marsden (2003: 22) has noted—with different terminology to that of spinoza’s—that papatūānuku is endless and uncaused. while papatūānuku or primordial substance takes up breadth and length, this does not rule out papatūānuku as an existential ground. however, these two attributes are the same in māori philosophy. when i envisage this primordiality, i can only approximate it through thinking about myself as a colonised being alongside it; i can’t think of it from an entirely traditional māori  perspective. i can make declarations about it, but it would be disingenuous of me not to acknowledge that i am making those declarations through an outline of cause and effect, and a drive to represent the properties of a thing. spinoza was aware of this danger. thus, i envisage myself as a colonised speaker on this theme, talking about papatūānuku as if i am separate from it. this is a colonised undertaking because māori  prior to colonisation would have been much more focused than i can be on actually presenting infinitude through various mediums, rather than being encouraged to represent it, despite my attempts at presenting papatūānuku as a decolonising project. strangely, when i try to imagine the full extent of papatūānuku, i can only envisage it as a sort of formal patterning, where i am implicated as a thing emerging from it even as i make those declarations on it. perhaps, then, papatūānuku is a very real form within my thinking. where spinoza would say that the attributes thought and extension are to be considered distinct yet the same (in that they are constituted by the infinite substance—see fullerton, 1894: 14), māori could argue that whakaaro—which is loosely translated as “thought” —is in itself simultaneously extension. their similitude is unsurprising; whakaaro is as much material as conceptual (mika, 2017: 13), in much the same way as papatūānuku is. in our genealogy, whakaaro is noted as an entity and thus is an extensional embodiment of papatūānuku. it is useful at this point to indicate a huge difference between “to think” and the māori term for that english verb (or for “thought” if we are using the noun). “whakaaro” might be translated as “to think”, but it points to an entirely different world. admittedly, it is probably the closest term in māori  that conveys 45 a māori reflection on spinoza’s primordial t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a something of “to think”. but it comprises the two words “whaka” and “aro”, which do not meet up with “to think” on their own. there is a difference in “density” between “whakaaro” and “to think”. “aro” is a material orientation towards other things in the world, in the sense that all things are one (mika, 2014a). it is often taken to mean the field in front of the self that can sense things, but it also indicates a mutual engagement between things such that they are unified consistent with such terms as “ako” (teach/learn) (thrupp & mika, 2012: 210). in short, they are manifestations of the primordial substance. this eternal engagement with each other derives from the prefix “whaka”. there are a number of interesting possibilities with this prefix, because it is nearly always defined as “to cause”. of course, because we live in a highly teleological age, the assumption is that “to cause” is of a particular type which does not correspond with māori  thought. but this mutual engagement has always already occurred, not because of papatūānuku but through its embeddedness within all things in the world. to that extent, “whaka” closely resembles spinoza’s immanent cause, which advocates for a view of god as without cause, completely within the world. of course, this is incredibly difficult to describe using academic terminology, as novalis and his group, for example, were also aware, which is why they used poetic discourse—it retains the unity of things in the world as a focus. to try to describe the extremely dense nature of māori  causation, which runs counter to everything colonised discourse tells us, we have to give long, drawnout explanations. amazingly, though, just that one māori  term is enough to convey this complexity, especially if there is a background critique going on that tries to prevail against its colonised and commonsense definition. perhaps the most frequently used concept that uses the term “whaka” is “whakapapa”. “whakapapa” is nearly always translated as “genealogy”, but just as its counterpart “whakaaro” is something different to the english “to think”, so “whakapapa” differs from “genealogy”. the reader will see, again, that i am less concerned about the meaning given to a term and more with how it sits as a materiality. “whakapapa” may well include something of “genealogy, but it is far more oriented towards the all than that. it may instead refer to a phenomenon of infinite substance-manifestations. by that i mean whakapapa is the always-already immersion within the infinite substance (see for example mika, 2017: 13). all things in a māori worldview have a genealogy-plus-all; all things are manifestations of a togetherness with papatūānuku. indeed the “papa” in whakapapa is an abbreviation of papatūānuku. primordiality is thus fundamental to whakapapa. rather than being a first designator of other, subsequent entities, papatūānuku is both first and simultaneous. conversely, given that all things share in her, all things are first and simultaneous (mika, 2017: 13). senghor argues similarly that african indigenous philosophy emphasises the materiality of things as indications of the all (2010: 479). in māori  thought, as i have noted, this all, in turn, comprises its things. this apparently-first-but-simultaneous phenomenon reflects a māori view of time as collapsed and presents a difficulty for anyone who wants to adequately express te reo māori, with its spiritual and material impact, in modern academic convention (for example, see mika & southey, 2018: 6). i have argued elsewhere that, in māori  thought, this phenomenon of the self ’s encounter with the limits of a thing because of its relationship with papatūānuku can be conceived through the term “ira” (mika, 2015: 93-94). commonly defined as “essence”, “ira”, i argued, deals with the unknowability of things in the world 46 a māori reflection on spinoza’s primordial t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a but, more importantly, is the drive of the self to come to terms with his or her limits of knowledge in relation to it. it is “over there!”—a meaning of “ira”, used in an exclamatory sense. with “ira”, we strive to speculate on the unknowability of a thing due to the fact it is part of the all, thus ensuring it remains mysterious. spinoza’s notion of conatus, which depicts the pursuit of a thing for its further perfection in relation to god, is somewhat different, despite also reading broadly from the notion of “essence”. especially in colonised times, the retention of mystery and uncertainty is important as an existential characteristic of the māori self. papatūānuku brings to the fore the uncertainty of the self ’s relationship with the thing, which is in fact an embodiment of papatūānuku. one uncertain thing encounters another. our genetic relationship—“ira” is often glossed as “gene”—is less important in “ira” than that passion of the human self to run up against the limits of his or her knowledge. it is at this point that “ira” diverges from conatus, for although “ira” can “take […] pleasure in its own enhanced power of understanding” (ravven, 2013: 234), the mind itself is bound up in its inability to know a thing—keeping in mind that the thing is unknowable due to its immediate embodiment of the all. this raises the question of spinoza’s denouncement of “foolish wonder”, referred to earlier. spinoza believes that a transcendent god encourages a silly belief, where we are at the whim of miracles and so forth. incidentally, here is a marked difference between spinoza and novalis—novalis paradoxically advocates for a primordial substance that the world is within, but also transcends. but in māori philosophising, there may be less of a difference between what may be thought of as a spinozan “foolish wonder” and its more valid relative, affective wonder. the term for wonder in māori, “mīharo”, connotes both at once: a sense of inertia in the face of something magnificent that simultaneously constitutes the self (and hence provides the movement as a necessary component of affective wonder). wonder—which is the enactment of the thoroughly constitutive all, to the extent that we are helpless in the face of it—is a crucial aspect of our philosophy. it brings us to realise, for instance, that even though we might have proven god exists through steps in our reasoning, as spinoza reputedly did, that very phenomenon of reason takes place within the phenomena of “drive” or “predisposition”, which are in turn manifestations of the all, as all things are. we are acting within provability’s domain. we are forced to discern and to switch off emotion; however, that tinge never disappears. the reasoning we have employed is dependent on infinite contingencies, and i reiterate here that māori philosophy may be more intent on exploring the speculative outcomes of not knowing in relation to grasping any particular contingency at any point than dominant western philosophy. it then happens that these contingencies constitute the proven phenomenon, to the extent that our means of proving it—reason—is not particularly reasonable or reasoned. the drives we have sought to extinguish in favour of the intellect—emotion, the spiritual, the recognition of the non-human worlds and so on—persist throughout the method and outcome of reason. the drive towards nature or primordial substance that “whakapapa” ordains comes to the fore in the way we are predisposed towards our relations—other things in the world besides humans—which is encapsulated in both “whakaaro” and the exclamatory drive of “ira”. this intuitive orientation, as i have already outlined, is not a definitive one. for māori, as for spinoza’s affect, it calls for that first non-rational intuition that māori often talk about, even though they may 47 a māori reflection on spinoza’s primordial t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a perhaps go on to discuss rationally. it is always implicated with the colonising lens, the grappling with which, i suggest, also brings about a weird kind of satisfaction of mind because it adds to the uncertainty of knowledge generally. if i encounter a phenomenon—for instance, “mountain”, in itself it is beyond my complete knowing because it is pervaded by the all. here, we diverge from spinoza because for him the mountain cannot be infused with the all; it is instead an aspect of the all. for spinoza there must be a distinction between substance and its modes because, otherwise, the mountain would be the all, and the all would be the mountain (and thus wouldn’t be the all any longer). wonder for spinoza depends on difference between, say, myself and the mountain, where for māori the “mīharo” i noted before constitutes myself as the other thing in its totality, together with its (and my) constitution by the all. thus, as māori we can represent the mountain using a quick and easy template of “mountain-ness”, but that is different to grasping the entirety of the mountain. when i add colonisation to the mix, then the calling of the phenomenon a “mountain” rather than “maunga”, the fact (perhaps) of its european name, its manifestation within a colonised soil, and so on, are all complicating features to knowing it in its entirety. colonisation has an element of thrill to it because it imposes further limits on what is already beyond us, but it also further inclines us towards or within the object or idea being considered. conclusion for māori, passions and agency may be the same. they are both constitutive of and by papatūānuku, no one more than the other. because māori have always thought that things outside us are in fact part of us, then what goes on without, happens within and vice versa. this is illustrated in raerino’s (1999: 73) belief that one never talks about a mountain as if separate, but as if he or she were in direct relation with it. it is also partially illustrated in the recent decision (see for instance davison, 2017) where the whanganui river was given personhood in law and in the unity acknowledged between that river and the iwi (tribal) members. whilst it is easy to state this, it is much harder to find the language to reflect its integrity and gravitas. i alluded to the early german romantic poet and philosopher, novalis, earlier on, and i conclude by declaring one of the many similarities between him and spinoza. i am acutely aware that they held the metaphysical in not just their propositions about the world but also within the way they framed those propositions. i suspect that there is much to be learned from their example for those pākehā who become squeamish at the mention of metaphysics. māori have not yet succumbed to making the topic of metaphysics off-limits—but the challenge lies for all of us in retaining it in our academic writing. there are several reasons for this abandonment which are outside the pragmatics of this paper but i can summarise by noting that spinoza does not have to limit our own thinking on the way in which an object can be perceived in relation to the whole. instead, he can act with other provocations to stoke the fires of thought that encourage māori to consider what is basically imponderable. it is this process, i suggest, that spinoza brings to the fore and challenges us with; the spinozan retention of the metaphysical is itself a manifestation of papatūānuku, and the importance of that, spinozan or otherwise, should thus take precedence in māori thought and expression. 48 a māori reflection on spinoza’s primordial t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a references beiser, f. (2002). german idealism: the struggle against subjectivism, 1781–1801. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. davison, i. (2017, march 15). whanganui river given legal status of a person under unique treaty of waitangi settlement. new zealand herald. retrieved from https://www.nzherald. co.nz/whanganui-chronicle/ news/whanganui-river-givenlegal-status-of-a-person-underunique-treaty-of-waitangisettlement/jl3qkswvzpa 7xw6en33gku4jj4/ fullerton, g. (1894). brief exposition of spinoza’s system. in g. fullerton (ed.), the philosophy of spinoza: as contained in the first, second, and fifth parts of the ‘ethics’ and in extracts from the third and fourth (pp. 13–22). new york, ny: henry hold and co. marsden, m. (2003). the woven universe: selected writings of rev. māori marsden. otaki, new zealand: estate of rev. māori marsden. mika, c. 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(1999). “pure” and “karakia” as a window to māori epistemology: koi rō pure me karakia e oke ana (unpublished thesis, the university of auckland). retrieved from http:// hdl.handle.net/2292/2961 ravven, h. (2013). the self beyond itself: an alternative history of ethics, the new brain sciences, and the myth of free will. new york, ny: the new press. senghor, l. (2010). negritude: a humanism of the twentieth century. in r. grinker, s. lubkemann & c. steiner (eds.), perspectives on africa: a reader in culture, history, and representation (pp. 477–483). malden, ma: wiley-blackwell. spinoza, b. (1894). of god. in g. fullerton (ed.), the philosophy of spinoza: as contained in the first, second, and fifth parts of the ‘ethics’ and in extracts from the third and fourth (pp. 25–73). new york, ny: henry hold and co. thrupp, m. & mika, c. (2012). the politics of teacher development for an indigenous people: colonising assumptions within māori education in aotearoa, new zealand. in c. day (ed.), the routledge international handbook of teacher and school development (pp. 204–213). london, england: routledge. 93 disorientation and disclosure david leatherbarrow my aim is to reconsider an important but neglected dimension of architecture’s spatiality – orientation – and to do so by examining a range of interiors, buildings, and urban settings. my thesis is this: that the alternation between disorientation and orientation provides the key to the sense of contained space, or the “constitution of interiority”. one does not need an advanced degree in urban history to know that today’s cities are troubled by conflicting patterns of order: remnants of pre-industrial settlements, fragments of modernist utopias, and post-industrial alternatives. just about any large town presents a version of this patchwork, no matter which country you visit. while we might want matters to be otherwise, i believe we must accept this state of affairs as our point of departure in contemporary design and theory. despite the inferior metal of our urban and suburban landscapes we must resist the magnetic pull of more attractive patterns that existed in the past or might come to be in future. instead of possible realities we should focus on real possibilities. why: because when creative work takes dissonant conditions as its starting point, it can disclose unforeseen continuities within the places and experiences of contemporary life. how: a basic premise will guide my answer; the places that are most likely to sustain the work of what i call ‘world building’ are those that initially seem unpropitious, because they resist simple description, lack clear structure, and defeat understanding – or seem to. important, then, are not the rooms, buildings, and neighbourhoods that possess significance but the conditions under which they obtain it. no special preference for fragments prompts this interest, instead a hunch that situations of spatial disorder serve as the birthplace of spatial significance. in the arguments that follow i will rely on an un-argued premise: that both the building and its interior are co-determined by the wider landscape that envelopes them. this co-determination does not defeat the work’s internal definition, it only conditions it. in the traditional vocabulary of our discipline, the building’s involvement in its encompassing milieu was named orientation. this familiar term assumes exactly what must be explained: how the work achieves its involvements, how its internal arrangements discover and define their place in a world that is beyond their control and not of their making. the practical and expressive unity of a room or building gives it character or decorum; perhaps mood as well, as le camus de mézières (1992), adolf loos (1982), and more recent architects have suggested. i propose calling this equipmental and expressive totality the inner horizon. yet, unity of this kind never results from the configuration of architectural elements alone, but equally from the cultural and historical order of the situations and institutions they accommodate and represent. the same can be said for any outer horizon: for it, too, frames typical practices, a building’s public or urban aspects. unlike the inner, the outer horizon often changes in unforeseen ways, through several agencies, with results that are alternately welcomed and regretted. orientation mediates these two horizons. orientation has been a familiar term in architecture for centuries. temples, vitruvius insisted, should be positioned on their sites “so that those who approach with offerings and sacrifices will look toward the image within the temple beneath the eastern part of the heavens” (vitruvius 1999: 59). the verb ‘to orient’ derives from david leatherbarrow presenting the keynote address at the 2010 interstices under construction symposium in auckland. interstices 12 the latin word for ‘east’ or ‘dawn,’ which in turn comes from the verb ‘to rise,’ and is closely related to ‘origin.’ orientation, then, is inaugural, a movement that interrupts prosaic affairs, beginning something new. obviously, the path of the sun is key in this etymology. the beginning of this inauguration (my second point) is that orientation overcomes a prior sense of unawareness, indifference, or being lost. disorientation may be said to be the beginning of the beginning. in conventional usage ‘getting oriented’ means making sense of new circumstances; more basically, noticing that the conditions have changed. the nautical task of ‘finding one’s bearings’ seeks just this sort of awareness. joseph conrad wrote in mirror of the sea that embarkation requires all the skill of naval science, in the absence of which shipwreck is more or less certain (conrad 1926). there is a geographical meaning of the term, too, coupling unfamiliarity with distance. for centuries pilgrims have sought the holy land in the orient, also paradise. today this estimation survives in accounts of the east as exotic. my next point refers to orientation’s more local significance. it indicates a fundamental sense of direction, like the french and italian versions of the english word ‘sense’. when oriented, i know where i have been and where i am going, also what i have done and am about to do. orientation determines and indicates one’s inclination, also one’s spatial relations to both things and people. achieving orientation in this more local sense presupposes a landscape in which bearings can be discovered. earlier i suggested that orientation mediates inner and outer horizons. an outer context can provide direction, but also a framework for practical, historical, and cultural action. orientation is the means by which a person aligns him or herself with or against others and things. the outer horizon in which we find our bearings is not only encompassing, but differentiated into a field of contrasting values. facing, levinas has shown, is particularly poignant when the person being confronted is especially different, desired maybe, or despised (1969). part of my aim is to show that interiority also depends on a field of differentiated figures. before i turn to specific rooms and buildings, i want to say a little more about differentiation. etymologically, to differ means “to set, carry, or tear apart or away”. wholeness is cleaved through differentiation. when understood temporally, differing means deferring, as derrida often argued (1982: esp.1-28). like differing, deferring creates distance; people or things are put off, delayed, set before or after. behind is before, ahead, not yet. this realisation indicates that time and history are essential dimensions of the horizon to which we orient ourselves. here, with the matter of difference, it is plain that i have approached a rather large philosophical problem. heidegger devoted an entire volume to the matter of identity and difference (1969). derrida’s early work largely hinges on this issue. and levinas returned to the theme repeatedly; a key chapter in his totality and infinity addresses the face of the other, notably the asymmetry of the relationship (1969: esp. 194-208). in a paper called “meaning and sense”, he described orientation as a form of movement: a movement “going outside the identical toward an other which is absolutely other” (1987: 91). this was also for him the very definition of a work. for my part, i want to show that architectural settings depend on differentiation, in the midst of which orientation can be discovered. my thesis, again, is that architectural settings – especially interiors – make sense when orientation is disclosed in the midst of discordant conditions. in what follows, i will introduce and 95 interpret several buildings. i have organised my examples in three pairs: the first two will indicate different ways in which a building’s situations are co-determined by its spatial horizon, the second two will describe a work’s dependence on its historical horizon, and the third pair will take up the problem of the project’s cultural horizon. while these three dimensions will be treated separately, the distinctions are artificial. architectural orientation depends on all three together. i will conclude by arguing that the building is largely defined by its measure of engagement with conditions it cannot possibly comprehend. i believe that this unfulfilled reach is the building’s fate and essence. i will try to show that orientation puts us in touch with places we do not occupy but still feel part of. good design requires a kind of seeing that grasps what is unapparent. orientation/disorientation anyone who has visited frank lloyd wright’s “prairie style” houses and early public buildings will remember the disorienting character of their entry sequences. wright was not the only modern architect to use a labyrinth to join sidewalk to fireplace, nor did he acknowledge the long tradition of the labyrinth’s use as a spatial type, he just employed it repeatedly. not only do his vestibules, halls, and passages turn in on themselves, their ceilings are also strikingly low, like the lighting levels, the darkness of which slows one's pace and quickens one's anticipation. coloured or faceted glass in the windows not only denies brightness but prevents external markers from providing wider awareness. entry into the robie house in chicago is strikingly indirect. joseph connors wrote: the robie house confounds expectations of what a house should look like. it has no street façade and no obvious door ... getting in ... is no easy matter, since the doors are located in out of the way places ... one [must] walk deep in under the shelter of the house before encountering the doors ... and the visitor is forced close up against massive blocks of brick, so much so the simple act of ascending is turned into an intense experience, something like scaling the face of a cliff. (1984: 30) the sense of being out of place in such a passage does not result from indefiniteness of location, but from the fact that the space in itself is all that is known or felt. the sense of being un-situated results less from being enclosed than being isolated. wright knew this perfectly well. his entry meanders were preparatory – delayed, deferring, and discomforting – but for that reason were perfect pretexts for arrival, making the first full disclosure all the more striking and significant. here, the spaces of approach and arrival form contrasting complementarities. left: frank lloyd wright, robie house, 1910, approach walk. photo: carlos eduardo comas right: frank lloyd wright, robie house, 1910, living room. photo: author interstices 12 orientation depends on isolation and overcomes it through a spatial de-severance that creates continuity between a setting and its horizon, an interior and topography. i will explain this further and deepen the problem with reference to another well-known building from the early twentieth century. cut into one of the hills of prague, adolf loos’ villa müller hides its entry below street level. the absence of upper level apertures and the simple planarity of the volume make the building look top-heavy, and no evidence of adequate support is apparent from the street. one reason for the concealed base is the sloping site. another is the street wall, the height of which nearly aligns with the canopy over the entry. any hill climber knows the safest descent is diagonal, thus the angle of the sloping drive, which inclines a full two metres. entry involves losing sight of the street and the houses nearby. orientation begins with a preliminary reduction of awareness, a blinkered prolepsis. at the edge of the driveway, the entry steps through a low wall, down to a walk that rings three sides of the house. the canopy shelters and shades the approach, while a travertine vault carved into the façade’s thickness encloses and compresses it. if thought of as a half-grotto, it is oddly symmetrical: a raised planter on the right, a bench in the middle, and the entry door on the left. while symmetry and centrality are asserted by the façade and proposed by the cave, the latter fails to yield entry at its centre, for that spot is occupied by the bench. shifting sideways and entering, two rooms lie ahead: first a narrow vestibule, then a larger coat room, which opens sideways. if the entire passage is seen as axial, the coat room’s spread to the left balances the porch’s spread to the right, but sensing that requires spatial recall. movement occurs at the margins of the setting, suggesting that places are central, not passage. space does not flow in a raumplan – rather, settings are stable and movement is structured. straight ahead, the path terminates in steps that twist in half-light. like the travertine embrasures out front, this threshold is equipped with over-sized frames that squeeze passage. approach is again compressed into the thickness of a wall, having been delayed twice and deprived of external reference. all of this makes the salon magnificent: twice the height of the passage, filled with light, lined on the long side with a symmetry of three windows. the strong sense of orientation that arises at the moment of arrival is based on the preceding lack of wider awareness – the blinkering. a series of delays caused this, as did denials. from a distance the façade seemed deprived of its base. inside the gate, the descending drive detached itself from the street. the half-grotto was unmatched to the façade, even though it borrowed some of its thickness. the entry passage was both marginalised and phased, and the whole sequence immunised left: adolf loos, müller villa, 1930, entry. photo: author right: adolf loos, müller villa, 1930, central stair. photo: author 97 against lateral contacts. arrival to the main room reversed all of this by renewing connections: the street level is regained, natural light and amplitude of dimension are restored, the prospect to distant locations reopens, and a set of new opportunities (conversation, reading, and dining) makes itself apparent. as with the robie house approach, a complementarity of contrasting conditions is significant here, but even more important is the role of preliminary isolation and absence of reference, without which orientation could not be regained. with these two examples in mind i now want to discuss a few cases that achieve orientation differently. spatial orientation giuseppe terragni’s asilo sant’ elia was designed to occupy as much of its corner site in como as possible. the entry façade is oblique to each street, the extreme edge of the front canopy was to extend all the way to the corner. as built, though, the canopy is a rather minor affair. the little canopy casts a shallow shadow, even though its vertical reach is no more than half the height of the frame to the left. that frame covers a long thin porch on which children wait for their parents. although skeletal, this apparatus was intended to reduce interior solar gain. between the bony frame and the chunky stones, the entry doors rest lightly on a raised platform, three steps above a gravel path. for all its delicate functionality, this entire contrivance seems almost incidental to the glass screen. the glazing is so insistent on its own geometry that its pattern determines the size and shape of the main door. yet, it can be said to be inaugural, for it is the first of several window walls that succeed one another through the plan. once entry is gained – it takes just a second – another thin layer of space parallels the entry wall. this one is not defined by a glazed partition but a line of columns and skylight above. these three supports are coupled with another set deeper in plan, which divide the entry hall from the building’s centre. beyond this edge, a line of classrooms begins on the right and the refectory hall on the left. having reached this point, one can say arrival has been accomplished, but the space, at least the view through the space, continues into the courtyard garden ahead and obliquely into the dining hall. in fact, there is no final limit to the expanse, for the rear of the garden court is open toward the block interior and the hills in the distance. has orientation been achieved through these means? do the glazed partitions, lines of columns, and skylights reset awareness? inaugurate a new sense of the world? before answering these questions, let me turn to a different case. the brazilian press association (abi) in rio, designed by the roberto brothers, also occupies a corner site, though much more urban than the prior examples. the block lies within the city’s central district planned by alfred agache, whose guidelines stipulated both dimensions and configuration, notably, accessible block interiors. the massive building gives the impression of great solidity, though a structural frame supports it. the weighty walls never meet the ground, but shade the left: giuseppe terragni, asilo sant’ elia, 1937, entry façade. photo: author right: giuseppe terragni, asilo sant’ elia, 1937, interior. photo: author interstices 12 shops and entry below. within the bays of the entry façade, a number of possibilities present themselves: retail shops at both ends, a driveway to the block interior in the second bay, and the entry loggia. each of these conforms to the measure of the structural bays, but changes in elevation signify the relative importance of each to the neighbourhood and institution: the loggia is two-storeyed, the shops just over half that. the loggia’s prominence is also indicated by changes in materials: whereas the main body of the building is rendered concrete, the walls of the loggia and the columns are clad in brazilian granite. the deepest wall, which surprisingly presents elevators to the upper floors – as if this were the building’s lobby – is clad in stainless steel. halfway into the depth of the loggia there is an intermediate cross axis, with the members’ meeting room on the left and the concierge desk on the right. each of these is recessed, however, and this cross-axis is barely noticeable. what is apparent, though, despite its depth in plan, is the elevator wall, partly because of its surface, which must have been very striking in 1938. the writing on the wall also endows it with prominence, as do the elevator doors, clad in the same expensive brazilian woods as the interiors to indicate their decorum. although ambiguous as a type (lobby, loggia, walk, and court) the space has fascinating content. because no physical barriers other than a short step separate it from the sidewalk, it can be said to widen the street. moreover, the driveway into the block interior extends traffic through the space. still, the cantilever and ceiling darken, quiet, and cool it, giving it room-like character. the writing on the wall puts the press on the street. the steel elevator wall is penetrable – only not by one's view, as was terragni’s building. consider the two buildings together. the first shows almost everything, the second almost nothing. differences between what is inand outside have been largely eliminated in como, greatly strengthened in rio. if we shift from spatial differing to temporal deferring, we can say that terragni rushes us through his project as soon as we enter it, while the roberto brothers interrupt passage, re-starting the entry clock with the close of the elevator doors. the first building offers its engagements without delay, the second makes us wait. on the matter of depth, the space of the first is largely un-occluded, that of the second indifferent to the principle of continuity – despite its adoption of the structural frame and so-called free plan. lastly and most generally, the first insists on affirming the same kind of setting throughout, and the second makes promises about upper level settings being different from those on the street. although these projects construe orientation differently, neither makes use of preliminary disorientation, as did the robie and müller houses. they rely on the city for that. left: marcelo and milton roberto, brazilian press association (abi), 1938, street level. photo: author right: marcelo and milton roberto, brazilian press association (abi), 1938, entry loggia. photo: author 99 historical orientation le corbusier’s swiss pavilion sits at the edge of the cité universitaire in paris. a park-like campus and sports fields can be seen from the student rooms, but just in front of the building runs one of the university’s access drives. the land on which the building sits is not exactly level. le corbusier’s reluctance to waste resources was the cause of its unevenness: he decided that the earth excavated for foundations should be kept on the site to re-shape it. i note this because it affected the design of the entry sequence: mounds of earth prevent direct access and views, or, put positively, this new topography allows for a number of vantages along a meandering approach. the building’s base platform surmounts these preliminaries. it is level, slightly larger in plan than the block above, built of rough aggregate and paved with tile where shadows are cast – the same tile as the entry hall. the outer spread of this second, tiled surface is limited by lines that extend the hall’s geometry. standing on the platform in shadow, one has arrived somewhere but not yet to the building. as with the abi, arrival is delayed, but less categorically, given the continuities of material and geometry. orientation for le corbusier has a temporal index, it involves perception of what is directly apparent, coupled with recall of what can be seen no longer and anticipation of what is yet to come into view. entering the enclosure means leaving the deck. the glass entry wall is co-planar with the raised block’s rear façade. paralleling the continuation of the floor are the co-planar ceilings of the entry hall and block underside. the typical emblem of arrival – a dramatically raised ceiling height – was unnecessary in this case. instead, le corbusier opened the horizon and presented its opportunities in an intimate but panoramic foyer: a small lounge to the immediate right, an enclosed garden beyond that, the bar and administration rooms diagonally ahead to the right, the refectory straight on (terminating in a painting that replaced a photo mural), and, on the left, first the elevator, then (obliquely) an opening into the distance, the stairway up to the rooms, and the stair down to the basement. all in all, the low and sweeping space offers a spectrum of availabilities, inviting choice, but providing one's decision with full understanding of what is at hand. within the panorama, one surface advances from the horizon, the photo mural (now a painting) that frames the building’s common space. this room allows students to overcome the isolation of their rooms above. given the content of the mural, one suspects that le corbusier also meant the place to restore a lost sense of community among the residents, maybe even identity, for the representations included emblems of their homeland, switzerland. orientation is not only co-ordination of the several opportunities within the building, but with others far beyond, such that the students re-establish both community and communication. left: le corbusier, swiss pavilion, 1932, entry platform. photo: author right: le corbusier, swiss pavilion, 1932, entry hall. photo: author interstices 12 communication with distant locations and times is also evident in the next building, the fondazione querini stampalia in venice by carlo scarpa. the project, a conversion of an old palazzo, involved re-arranging the foundation’s ground floor and rear garden. scarpa’s design also provided the building with a new entrance, while keeping the lower entry for boat arrivals. entry commences with the bridge, but it preserves canal passage below. despite the elegance of the approach, the new doorway is marginal on the façade, for the pre-existing paired doors remain significant and central, with their prominence reinforced by the grand balcony above. yet, the point of arrival is not lacking in importance for orientation: it opens onto the only straight vista from the building’s front to back. it connects the campo on the landside to the canal and foyer, and each of these to the elements that give the building even greater depth: the stair, rear garden, and ancient well-head. this well-head was the historic centre of the palazzo, serving as the source of fresh water and social encounter. the foyer itself has a double orientation, forward but also sideways, toward the old entry and its lower level, but still further to the northeast room, the site’s most ancient. an oblique view opens beyond the threshold to the left, into the main exhibition/lecture hall. water isn’t confined to the front room, however. the well-head is in the distance and the room ahead, with its patterned floor, is ringed by a channel that conducts flood water. floating ceiling panels brighten and lighten the space, through reflection and the impression of weightlessness. the whole ensemble can be described as a mixing of opposites: several shifting levels below (each of them quasi-liquid) and weightless brightness above. paradoxically, the garden sits above all of this, providing an upward orientation to movement, while the interiors seemingly sink. the past cannot be escaped in venice any more than the sea, and scarpa seems preoccupied with both. the stature this palace once enjoyed is gone. but the new entry, the extended prospect, and the connections to past practices are both recalled and renewed – practices of arrival and departure, collecting water, commerce, and gathering around the well. jan patočka (1998: 35) writes that horizons allow us to live amid possibilities, to transcend self-givenness. i believe this little foyer is an instance of a setting transcending itself into its historical foundation, the consequence of which is a profound sense of where one is in the city and the world – even if that wider location and deeper history seem not to be actually present. here, latent depth is vividly manifest. left: carlo scarpa, querini stampalia, 1963, entry bridge. photo: author right: carlo scarpa, querini stampalia, 1963, exhibition/lecture hall. photo: author 101 cultural orientation my last two examples were finished recently, one in ireland and the other in england. in their different ways this pair will allow me to show how orientation serves as a source for finding one’s bearings in a cultural milieu, even if that horizon seems profoundly disorienting. john tuomey and sheila o’donnell designed the lewis glucksman gallery at university college cork to take advantage of its position on the edge of campus, alongside a small river, facing the city and surrounding hills. in plan, one line of movement connects the river to the road that climbs to the campus. this line edges the entry platform, which is at once an elevated deck and an open forecourt that offers views of the town and campus. but the key function of the deck is to give access to the building. the entry is positioned between the marginal walk i just mentioned and two rather massive stairway blocks. all of this passes below the wide wooden bulk of the galleries because their base aligns with the canopy of the trees all around. the doorway, then, opens below an arboreal boat. it is one among a number of passages that run horizontally and vertically. inside the door, there is a comparable left: o’donnell and tuomey, lewis glucksman gallery, 2004, entry platform. photo: author right: o’donnell and tuomey, lewis glucksman gallery, 2004, entry hall. photo: author interstices 12 doubling of prospects: straight ahead, a view toward the town on the other side of the river; above, the gallery (with works on show, plus a patch of sky); to the right, the grand stair that ascends to the galleries; and further to the right, the elevator. between the stair and the elevator, a door opens into a river-side room. i have listed these opportunities as i did those of the swiss pavilion because i think this space is similarly panoramic. but added to le corbusier’s horizontal style of presentation is a vertical arrangement. the glass wall to the left reveals the lateral descent to the river, while the stair on the right ascends to the mezzanine, which in turn opens toward the gallery window and tree tops above. sky and soil are thereby coupled with campus and city, unsettling and orienting a collection of paintings and sculpture. the transparencies and accelerated views allow comparison with terragni’s school, except for the fact that the enclosures to the extreme right and left, to say nothing of those below the platform, shelter settings and images still to be discovered, the content of which is only intimated at the point and time of arrival. the foyer seems equally dedicated to quickened and delayed disclosure, showing and suggesting what the building and its vicinity have to offer, the crossover and coordination of conditions and sensibilities that are generally thought to be opposed: a collection, campus, and city. eric parry’s office building at stockley park near oxford also sits on a site that connects artificial and natural conditions. wider oppositions are also present. once surrounded by farm lands, the site is now reached by a major motorway, a route that joins england’s north and south, and is spliced by one of the world’s major airports, heathrow, the horizon of which is global. orientation in this case reaches toward each of those distances and – i will show – still farther. the side approach to the building turns toward the actual entry at a bend in the front façade, a bend that divides the plan, or slides a wedge between two halves, opening them. the left (north) side of the building has been left open to allow for future expansion, and the right (south) is flanked by terraces for parked cars. what might be called a double-bar plan type unfolds on either side of a two-part central space – basically an entry vestibule and an atrium sandwiching a stairway. rentable office space opens on either side, on both floors. the other salient aspect of the building’s basic configuration is a skylight that parallels the entry axis, the alignment of which appears from a distance, when looking at the main façade. left: eric parry, stockley park, 1991, façade detail. photo: author right: eric parry, stockley park, 1991, entry hall and mural. photo: author 103 as it stands now, the atrium is a reduced version of what the architect intended. originally, the skylight was to be paralleled by a channel of water cut into the slate floor, emerging from a low wall behind the stair, running through the vestibule and the base of the façade, into the depression that is now filled with lavender, and then into the weir, over the falls, and into the lake. along its length it would have mirrored the sky, matching not only its brightness but darker aspects, from clear blue to cloudy, or placid to rumbling. budget restrictions prevented the construction of this channel, but one can detect its intended course in the alignment of some of the building’s key elements: the skylight and stairway, as i have said, but also the columns and short wall on the right side of the vestibule, the bend in the façade, and lavender parterre. still another significant figure is missing from the atrium in its present form. originally there was a mural at the far end of the atrium, covering the full height of a slightly concave wall. the building’s first tenants painted it, as well as the other coloured walls, white. the intentions behind this exedra-like curve are fascinating. in a small diagram, parry indicates that he saw the whole building as a camera obscura, with the façade as the lens and this curve as the mirror. his brief text describes the subject matter captured in the curve as foundational, which partly explains why the image he painted depicted the rape of europa (parry 2002). presumably, the hills of crete are what we see far away, the mediterranean blue in the middle distance, and europa astride zeus-as-a-bull in the foreground, with a pair of dolphins leading the way. many versions of the story report that the virgin kept her balance by holding a horn. here we see just the un-held one, also a single eye (lens-like), and a spread of acorns that shields and shows europa’s maternal abundance – acadians were known as acorn-eaters. what sense do these distant references or references to distance make? the building houses rental offices. the companies who lease them have global interests. office work here is largely telecommunication. the main axis of the building parallels one of england’s main motorways and points toward heathrow. the atrium seems to grant orientation and obtain definition by centralising the site’s several distances. vertically, the atrium connects clouds and dirt through its skylight and slate, also the blue and brown of the mural. the water channel would have strengthened these connections. horizontally, there are complementary connections, or displacements. the plan accelerates the perspective toward the wall on which the mural was painted. the curve, however, returns the view toward the landscape behind and still farther toward heathrow. ever wider horizons were opened by the subject matter of the mural. perhaps this latter range of distances also explains the effort to make the upper level of the front façade appear to float (the lowest range of glass blocks hides the edge of the floor slab), also why the wall’s height is divided so consistently by a ribbon window and levelled off at the horizon of office work inside the building and the base of the hills in the distance, coupling, once again, near and far. obviously, this coupling is not a matter of fact, far is not near. nor is the inscription of several distances into a small atrium plainly evident. the greece to which the mural refers is mythical, but it is not for that reason insignificant. the building is what we see, what we see is the building. obvious and unassailable as this truism seems, it amounts to an admission of defeat. architecture’s task is to offer more content than a building can reasonably give. its job is to augment the reality it interiorises by showing how the conditions it limits are part of a wider horizon, part of something entire, a topography that has the potential to overcome banality and restructure the discordance of our lives. interstices 12 at the outset, i said that orientation is the way we find our place in the world. that definition is trivial. what is less well-known, but apparent in the examples i have described is another sense of orientation in which we not only find our bearings in given conditions, but witness a richer world coming into being, once its latent depth – spatial, historical, and cultural – has been disclosed. for this to be understood one must overcome the categorical view of things. window walls spread into the depth of an urban block, for example, must be allowed to accelerate passage and bring what is far near, overcoming metric distance. public spaces and opaque surfaces must be seen to imply or indicate the qualities of private territories and intimate surroundings. present conditions must transcend themselves into their historical grounds, and the prosaic affairs of our lives must evoke their mythical foundation. orientation in these larger and deeper senses is what the better buildings of our time offer experience. they do so because they accept as given conditions that evoke a sense of profound disorientation. references connors, j. (1984). the robie house of frank lloyd wright. chicago: university of chicago press. conrad, j. (1926). landfalls and departures. in mirror of the sea (pp. 3-12). new york: garden city. de mézières, n. l. c. (1992). the genius of architecture; or, the analogy of that art with our sensations (d. britt, trans.). santa monica, cal.: getty center for the history of art and the humanities. derrida, j. (1982). margins of philosophy. chicago: chicago university press. heidegger, m. (1969). identity and difference. new york: harper & row. levinas, e. (1969). externality and the face. in totality and infinity (pp. 187-219). pittsburgh: duquesne university press. levinas, e. (1987). meaning and sense. in collected philosophical papers (pp. 75-108). dordrecht: martinus nijhoff. loos, a. (1982). the principle of cladding. in spoken into the void (pp. 66ff.). cambridge, mass.: mit press. parry, e. (2002). in w. wang (ed.), eric parry architects (pp. 52-65). london: blackdog. patočka, j., & dodd, j. (1998). body, community, language, world. peru, ill.: open court publishing company. vitruvius. (1999). chapter 5. in i. d. rowland & t. n. howe (eds.), ten books on architecture (vol. 6). cambridge: cambridge university press. interstices 12 1 kevin o’brien has argued that ross’ edition of wilde’s lectures are incomplete, incorrectly titled, and misleading in that he failed to acknowledge that he was printing only the first version of “the english renaissance”, that his “art and the handicraftsmen” is the first version of “the decorative arts,” and his “house decoration” is a later version of the same lecture (o’brien 1974: 396). 2 o’brien’s reconstruction is based primarily on ‘oscar wilde lecture,’ montreal daily witness, 22 may 1882, 2. cosmopolitan interiors: oscar wilde and the house beautiful deborah van der plaat in 1882, the irish poet, writer and aesthete, oscar wilde (1854-1900) travelled to the united states and canada to promote, in an early example of indirect marketing, the american showing of gilbert and sullivan’s comic opera patience. funded by richard d’oyly carte of the savoy opera company, the highly recognisable wilde was to educate the american public on the principles of aestheticism, a reference point for humour in gilbert and sullivan’s opera (gere and hoskins 2000; haill 2011). travelling throughout america and canada over a 10-month period, and lecturing in diverse and often unconventional venues, including the “trimmed hat department” of the eric bros., department store in new york, wilde delivered variations of four basic lectures: “the renaissance in english art”, a presentation on the pre-raphaelites and the grosvenor gallery artists, “irish poets and poetry of the nineteenth century”, “art and the handicraftsman” and “house decoration”. first delivered in chicago in may 1882, the latter was later retitled the “house beautiful: the practical application of the principles of aesthetic theory to exterior and interior house decoration, with observations upon dress and personal ornaments” (hofer & scharnhorst 2011; gere & hoskins 2000). while robert ross, wilde’s literary executor, published the first two lectures in 1908, no manuscript of the latter has survived.1 a reconstruction of the text, however, based on first person reports in the american press of 1882, has been produced (o’brien 1974).2 the aim of this paper is to consider how the lecture “the house beautiful” unsettles existing conceptions of the aesthetic interior by focussing on victorian theories of cosmopolitanism rather than an “art for art’s sake” ethic. the importance of the lecture lay in its expansion of the conceptual intent of the house beautiful beyond what maureen francis moran has described as one of “self-culture” and napoleon sarony, studio portrait of oscar wilde in new york, january 1882, albumen print 30.6 x 18.4 cm 49 3 quotes from wilde’s “house beautiful lecture” will be referenced hbl and taken from o’brien’s (1974) reconstruction, unless stated otherwise. “mind building” (2007: 292; gere & hoskins 2000). it incorporated a broader critique of late nineteenth century nationalism and race politics. metaphorically raising the blind on the late nineteenth century aesthetic interior, and conceptually linking it to an outside world, wilde’s lecture positions the interior as no longer the counterpart of, or retreat from, the global consciousness of empire but as participating in a broader critique of cultural hierarchies and difference. coupling ideals of cosmopolitanism to the aesthetic interior, the lecture also reveals wilde’s affinity with present day attempts to position cosmopolitanism as a conceptual method or process (fine 2007; platt 2009; cheah 2006). at the same time, it offers a new rationale for late nineteenth century eclecticism and its use for both the aesthetic interior and the urban façade. the house beautiful: a lecture wilde opened his lecture with a series of statements regarding the nature of beauty (that which gives pleasure to both the maker and the observer), the ennobling qualities of art, the education of the worker and the problems of modern production (ideas indebted to the earlier writings of john ruskin, 1818-1900, and william morris, 1834-1896). he went on to identify a “general sameness” as the primary failing of the modern dwelling (hbl 401-2).3 “the first necessity of any system of art,” he argued, was the “impress of a distinct individuality; … every home should wear an individual air in all its furnishings and decorations”. such singularity could, however, function within “certain broad principles of art” (hbl 402-3). considering these, somewhat prescriptively, wilde described in some detail his vision of the ideal aesthetic interior. starting with the entry hall, which should have a red tile floor, a hat rack and no pictures or stuffed animals under glass cases, wilde then outlined the appropriate colour according to room type (“the problem with america”, he concluded, “is the entire want of harmony or a definite scheme in colour”); the style of furniture to be used (queen anne); the treatment of ceilings (papered or painted); floor coverings (carpet squares, preferably from china, persia and japan); window size and colour (to avoid glare); lighting (a gas chandelier will “discolour and ruin all that you do”); the hanging of pictures (never in a row); the treatment of paintings (photographs are “libels on great masters”); the arrangement of flowers (never artificial or crowded together); the ornamentation of the mantle (with shelves to the ceiling for rare china ornaments); and the importance of old japanese or blue and white china (hbl 405-413). suggesting the inclusion of “some good casts of old greek work” and books (“an old library is one of the most beautifully colored things imaginable”), he concluded his commentary with the observation that “beautiful surroundings” should not be “marred” by “gloomy dress” (hbl 414). wilde’s lecture appealed to his american audience. ironically, it seems to have also undermined his reputation, and more broadly that of the aesthete, as indulgent and contrived – a persona his tour was intended to promote. one commentator, writing in the st john daily sun (halifax, october 13, 1882), described wilde’s lecture as “honest” and went on: the proper style of house decoration is dwelt upon in a thoroughly practical manner, – details of construction, painting, furnishing, decorating, heating and lighting abound; in short, the whole lecture is full of useful hints and suggestions, which will be readily appreciated and turned to account by the refined and beauty-loving housekeeper (quoted in snider 1940: 19) interstices 12 4 o’brien has noted that this idea is first introduced by wilde in a special introduction given to a special matinee for ladies in san francisco and montreal (o’brien 1974: 402, note. 14). a second observer writing for the st john’s daily telegraph (october 6, 1882) noted that the lecture examined such “serious questions as the conciliation of capital and labour” and “the elevation of the masses”, and thereby revealed wilde as “a man of a gentle and humane disposition, … an admirer of the honest workman” rather than “a mere aesthetic trifler and a reputed snob …” (quoted in snider 1940: 16-17). many of the ideas that informed wilde’s lecture were not new and even well rehearsed by the 1880s. his debt to ruskin and morris has been described by some as “blatant plagiarism” (gere & hoskins 2000: 88; o’brien 1974: 400). the formal parallels between wilde’s lecture and the earlier decoration manual the house beautiful (1878) by the american art critic clarence cook (1828-1900) has also been documented (gere & hoskins 2007: 92). the wide appeal of these earlier sources offers some explanation for the accessibility of wilde’s ideas to his american audience. yet within the lecture, wilde introduced a series of interrelated themes that fall outside the discourses of ruskin and morris, as well as the practicality of the design manual. they remain largely unexamined until now. the first of these ideas is his consideration of the interrelationship between women and the decorative arts. linking quality in the decorative arts to the status of women – arguing that “fine” and “delicate” work can only be produced when women are “highly honoured” and “occupy high social positions” – wilde also claimed for the female gender a heightened aesthetic sensibility.4 it has been from the desire of women to beautify their households that decorative art has always received its impulse and encouragement. women have natural instincts, which men usually acquire only after special training and study, and it may be the mission of the women of this country to revive decorative art into honest, healthy life. (wilde quoted in o’brien 1974: 40, note 14) alexandre sandier, ‘much in a little space,’ illustration from clarence cook the house beautiful: essays on beds and tables, stools and candlesticks, london, 1878 51 wilde aimed to locate an aesthetic sensibility and its acquisition, not in the traditional avenues of study and training, but in the everyday use of beautiful objects. thereby, wilde broadened the aesthetic project to include previously excluded groups: in the above instance, women. later in the lecture, he seeks to incorporate the working class and non-western cultures. this was achieved by advocating a system of “practical instruction”, in which young minds were no longer “burdened with long hours of study in the sciences and … european history” (lawrence t. smyth reporting on the lecture “the decorative art”, quoted in snider 1940:11). wilde, like many before him, linked the reformation of design to the collective display and study of diverse art forms from multiple eras, styles, and geographical regions. “an invaluable school of art” he suggested, would be: … a museum, which, instead of showing stuffed giraffes and other horrible objects which scientific men wish to see gathered together, would contain all kinds of simple decorative work, different styles of furniture, dress, etc., made in different periods, and especially in the periods when english artists made beautiful things, and where local artisans and handicraftsmen could go and study the styles and patterns of the noble designers and artisans who worked before them. (hbl 410-11) such “efforts of cultivation” were illustrated, each saturday night, “by the scene in the south kensington museum … where artisans [were] to be seen, notebook in hand, gathering ideas to be used in their next week’s work,” demonstrating that a good museum can “teach your artisans more in one year than they would learn by means of books or lectures in ten” (hbl 410-411). however, the ameliorative function of the decorative arts could, in wilde’s view, be extended beyond the workings of such an institution. observing that the “handling of coarse objects begets coarse handling”, wilde also argued that the everyday use of beautiful objects had the potential to elevate skills and sensibilities. the “use [of] delicate things”, he suggested, will “accustom your servants to handling them securely”: … it will be a martyrdom for a long time at first, but you may be content to suffer in so good a cause. i bought venetian glass when i was at college, and for the first term my servant broke one glass every day, and a decanter on sunday, but i persevered in buying them, and during the succeeding terms of my whole stay at college, he did not break a single piece. (hbl 412-13) linking class to race, wilde observed how “in a restaurant in san francisco a chinese navvy [drank] his tea out of a most beautiful cup as delicate as the petal of a flower”. wilde commented that the “navvy”, unlike his own servants, did not break the cup as he was “accustomed to handling” such fine porcelain. he also inverted the paradigm of improvement by noting that he himself, who “was staying in a first class hotel in which thousands of dollars was spent on gaudy colour and gilding” was forced to drink “out of a cup which was an inch and a half thick” (hbl 412-13). challenging the exclusiveness of the aesthetic agenda – its middle to upper-middle class and western orientation – wilde also questioned the accepted cultural hierarchies of late victorian britain and their assumed patterns of improvement. wilde’s conclusions built both upon the reforms put in place at south kensington by henry cole and the commissioners for the 1851 exhibition (an institution driven by the dual objectives of skill and taste building, see bonython & burton 2003; hobhouse 2002) and the ideology of pleasure underpinning the doctrines interstices 12 of ruskin and morris. his linking of the above thesis of improvement to the representation of a “common intellectual atmosphere between all countries”, however, is new (1882: 417). wilde described such objectives in later writings as “cosmopolitanism” (1891a: 212) and thus revealed his debt to a broader victorian discourse of cultivation and improvement centred on the liberal principles of “many-sidedness” and critical detachment (thomas 2004, anderson 2001). in doing so, he also offered new insight into the conceptual workings that underpinned his aesthetic ideal: an analogical process of comparison and contrast motivated by the desire to identify sameness across difference. further, he suggested a new rationale for the eclectic flavour of the late nineteenth century aesthetic interior and its urban façade. cosmopolitanism in his 1882 lecture, wilde also challenged the view that the aesthetic movement sought to disassociate art from a moral function and located art’s morality in its ability to build intellectual bonds across multiple cultures. wars and the clash of arms and the meeting of men in battle must be always, but i think that art, by creating a common intellectual atmosphere between all countries might, if it could not overshadow the world with silvery wings of peace, at least make men such brothers that they would not go out to slay one another for the whim or folly of some king or minister as they do in europe: for national hatreds are always strongest where culture is lowest. (hbl 417) revisiting this theme in his later essay, “the critic as artist” (1891), and noting that it is “only by cultivation of the habit of intellectual criticism that we shall be able to rise superior to race prejudices,” wilde labelled this phenomenon within art as “cosmopolitanism”. this note, sounded in the modern world by goethe first, will become, i think, the starting point for the cosmopolitanism of the future. criticism will annihilate race prejudices, by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms. if we are tempted to make war upon another nation, we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy an element of our own culture, and possibly its most important element. as long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. when it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. (wilde 1891a: 212) to be cosmopolitan in mid to late nineteenth century england, as david wayne thomas (2004) and amanda anderson (2001) argue, was to believe in an alternative mode of artistic agency that was no longer restricted to the romantic notion of genius but accessible to a wider audience. central to this ethic, according to both authors, was the cultivation of an ambivalent disposition, a detachment or distance from one’s own culture. as thomas suggests, what distinguishes victorian “manysidedness”, or cosmopolitanism, within the broader discourse of liberal agency was the idea of “plural forms of life”. this subjectivity took up “a critical position from which various positions – even positioning in general – can be thought”. to declare a place in that habitat is to lay claim to what … is a distinctly liberal aspiration to many-sidedness, a vision to which [the english essayist walter] pater has it ‘all the ends of the world are a matter of interest and concern’. (2004: 47) 53 the advantages of such a disposition were threefold. firstly, it enabled a cultivated distance from one’s own culture, encouraging critical reflection, judgement and potentially improvement (anderson 2001: 61-63). secondly, the occupation of dual or multiple ‘lives’ made explicit intellectual and aesthetic processes that have subsequently been described by scholars as synecdochic: the particular and local are positioned as indices of the common (thomas 2004, bullen 1992; connor 1989). finally, victorian many-sidedness identified a tempered subjectivity that was seen to be genuinely democratic and accessible to those lacking genius, a group previously excluded by romantic definitions of artistic agency. the emergence of this alternate sensibility, thomas argues, is evident in john stuart mill’s on liberty (1859), where an “incessant oscillation between two antithetical values” is enacted: … on the one hand, a vision of genius, understood as a heroics of individuality; and on the other, a practice of liberal many-sidedness, a kind of tolerance and cosmopolitanism that had to be understood itself as another kind of accomplishment”. (thomas 2004: 33) several of these ideas appear to inform wilde’s understanding of cosmopolitanism. like the broader victorian debate, his thesis is grounded in a larger discourse on cultivation and self-improvement. writing that “self-culture is the true idea of man” (an idea he again attributed to goethe) and that the “english race was a degraded one – sunk under a mess of facts”, wilde also argued that the only action that could improve this situation was the “growth of the critical instinct” (1891a: 180 & 209, 1891b: 19). in his earlier lecture on the “house beautiful”, this idea was made explicit by the ameliorative function of the beautiful object – venetian glass or blue and white china – and its capacity to foster across gender, class and race a heightened aesthetic sensibility. importantly, the operation of such a function appears for wilde to have been based on synecdochic or analogical processes. this is suggested by his identification of plato as the source for such thinking in his writings. drawing on plato’s observation that the true aim of education was “the love of beauty”, and that the best methods to achieve this were the “development of temperament, the cultivation of taste, and the creation of a critical spirit”, wilde also repeated plato’s conviction that such processes were intimately linked to the beauty of one’s physical surroundings. [raised in the midst of] fair sights and sounds … there is to be engendered … such a temperament as will lead him naturally and simply to choose the good in preference to the bad, and, rejecting what is vulgar and discordant, to follow by fine instinctive taste all that possesses grace and charm and loveliness. ultimately, in its due course, this taste is to become critical and self-conscious, but at first it is to exist purely as cultivated instinct … and with a taste that cannot err while he praises, and finds his pleasure in what is good, and receives it into his soul, and so becomes good and noble, he will rightly blame and hate the bad … (wilde 1891a: 194-5) barbara maria stafford, in visual analogy, consciousness and the art of connecting (2001), explains how plato’s thesis of education is determined by the ancient ideal of participatory analogy. in contrast to proportional analogy (a method based “on establishing quantitative proportions using a geometrical language of equality and inequality”) the rhetoric of participation “employed a mimetic vocabulary of similarity and dissimilarity” (2-3). stafford identifies the latter specifically with plato, who “declared that analogy was the most beautiful bond possible”, and interstices 12 goes on to describe analogy as a “metaphoric and metamorphic practice for weaving discordant particulars into a partial concordance” that “spurs the imagination to discover similarities in dissimilarities”. importantly though, and in direct contrast to the practices of allegory or metaphor proper, analogy at the same time avoids the “subsumption of two inferior, dichotomous terms into a superior third” by continuing to acknowledge difference (8-9). she further suggests that participatory analogy is celebrated by plato in the timaeus (29-30) and the republic (472 b-e), where he develops the notion of an “image sharing or partaking in a pattern”. stafford argues that for plato participatory analogy represented both a “metaphysics and a logic, a vision and a form of reasoning that allows us to infer the ontological and phenomenological likenesses binding seemingly unrelated things” (89). it is important to recognise the contribution of plato to wilde’s thesis, as it offers some insight into his understanding of cosmopolitanism. seeking visual connections across multiple design traditions, analogy offered a ready tool for establishing a common intellectual atmosphere across multiple cultures. that he avoided synthesis through a continued acknowledgement of difference also demonstrated his positioning of cosmopolitanism within an intellectual process, rather than a fixed style or material outcome. in negotiating the dual poles of similarity and difference, wilde prezured present day attempts to define (new] cosmopolitanism as a “both-and”, rather than an “either-or” process (platt 2009; fine 2007; cheah 2006). more pragmatically, however, it opens up new interpretations of what has been described as the “oppositional eclectics” of the aesthetic interior. in her paper on the oxford poet and painter walter pater (1839-1894), which draws on author mary ward’s 1870s description of pater’s home, moran observes the coming together of objects within the aesthetic interior: morris wallpaper, spindle-legged tables and chairs, blue plates and pots from holland, framed embroidery, engravings by renaissance artists and simple flower arrangements. moran sees a deliberate attempt here to set up a careful juxtaposition of the natural and the artificial, the medieval and renaissance, and the handmade with the mass-produced. she argues that such displays announced for the oxford intellectuals a new art of discrimination and their rejection of the “overstuffed values of mid-victorian design” (2007: 291). moran also draws parallels between pater’s literary descriptions of the house beautiful and the environmental determinism of the ‘genetic’ psychologist james sully (1842-1923), who argued “the contents and order of arrangements of environments … determine the form of our mental life”, and links such arrangements to nineteenth century theories of mental progress (moran 2007: 295). taking into account wilde’s interest in plato and, by extension, analogy, gives rise to some additional insights or questions into the mental life that was intended for the occupant of the aesthetic interior. for instance, was this oppositional display intended to have a cosmopolitan function, to encourage an intellectual process that mapped sameness and difference across a diverse range of objects? support for such a suggestion is importantly found in wilde’s simultaneous alignment of critical temperament and aesthetic sensibility with common or universal values and the recognition of their dependency on an intellectual and emotional stance that is many-sided, multi-dimensional and complex. wilde suggests the role of the critic is to “distil… into finer essence” the “cumbersome mass of creative works” and to identify the thread that will “guide” one through such material (wilde 1891a: 210). he also stresses how important it is for the critic to accommodate multiple viewpoints. unlike the artist, who is unable to escape his own mode of production (a quality which disqualifies the artist from the act of criticism; 1891a: 185-6), wilde’s critic must occupy multiple lives and view points at any one time, 55 nos. 35-45 harrington gardens, southwest kensington, 1882-85. no. 39 (with crowning detail of sailing ship and sea monsters) for w.s. gilbert (of gilbert and sullivan). photo: gordon wong, 2011 be they defined by categories of race, place or time. because the development of the critical spirit was dependent not only on an understanding of the nineteenth century, but also of “every century which preceded it,” and because to “know oneself, one must know about all others,” wilde also insisted that the critic must empathise with the art of all ages and places. “there must be no mood with which one cannot sympathize, no dead mode of life that one cannot make alive”. (wilde 1891a: 172 -3) for wilde, a formal device for achieving this weaving of “discordant particulars” (decorative artefacts) into partial concordance was the use of keynote colour. this had the advantage of integrating the various features of a room, including its decorative artefacts, into “a harmonious whole” (“it must be decided beforehand what scheme of colour is desired and have all else adapted to it”; wilde 1882: 405). the use of a keynote colour also opened the room to a multitude of readings: “mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.” (wilde 1891a: 147-8) cosmopolitan exteriors if we accept wilde’s argument that the moral function of the house beautiful interior lies in its cosmopolitan function – its fostering of a “common intellectual atmosphere”, using a vocabulary of sameness and difference – we are also forced to rethink the inward-looking ideal of self-culture that is more commonly associated with it. wilde’s thesis of cosmopolitanism does not negate such objectives within the aesthetic interior. in fact, he supports a central thesis of cultivation and self-improvement, but he expands its concerns beyond the containment of the domestic interior and its occupants (primarily women and children), inverting these outward to an exterior world of national politics, racial prejudice and conflict. the occupant of wilde’s aesthetic interior is not only required to cultivate an aesthetic sensibility critical of existing design norms but also to develop a new empathy for aesthetic cultures other than her own. interstices 12 while the attachment of cosmopolitanism to wilde’s understanding of the house beautiful lifts the blinds, so to speak, on the aesthetic interior by suggesting new links between it and the outside world, these relationships were not solely conceptual. remember the full title of wilde’s 1882 lecture: “house beautiful: the practical application of the principles of aesthetic theory to exterior and interior house decoration, with observations upon dress and personal ornaments” (gere & hoskins 2000: 12). including the exterior of the house within the reach of his lecture, wilde spent a significant portion of his lecture time dealing with the preferred materials, colours and ornamentation of the urban façade. as with his consideration of the interior, his suggestions are often straightforward and practical. first, he dealt with materials and described the appropriate and best use of marble, stone, wood and brick. if marble is to be used, it should not be treated like ordinary stone as a “mere building block”, a practice that produces “great, plain and staring white structures”. instead, “i hope you will employ workmen competent to beautify it with delicate tracings and that you will have it beautifully inlaid with colour marbles, as at venice, to lend it colour and warmth.” turning to the use of stone, wilde encouraged his audience to take advantage of the “natural hues” that could be found in america, “from pale yellow to purples, red to orange, [and] green to grey and white”. “ingraining them” would produce “beautiful harmonies” (wilde 1882: 403-404). when marble or coloured stones were unavailable, there remained the option of red brick or wood. wilde identified wood as a “universal material” and discouraged americans from painting their houses white or grey: both “are dreary in wet weather and glaring in fine”. rather, warmer colours, “the rich browns and olive greens found in nature”, should be used. in a manner reminiscent of the stone or marble house, enriched with ingraining and carved tracery, the wooden house should also be made “more joyous to look upon with the aid of the carver”. red brick, “which is warm and delightful to look at, and a simple form for those who do not have too much to spend”, was the fourth material considered. an advantage of the cut brick, wilde observed, is that it “gives you the opportunity of working in terracotta ornamentation, the most beautiful of all exterior decorations – the old lombard’s special pride, and an art we are trying to revive in england”. he strongly suggested that all exterior ornament should be “carved” and not cast or machine-made and concluded his discussion of the exterior with the proposition that the common use of the “black-lead [door] knocker should give way to a bright brass one” (wilde 1882: 404). the house exterior evoked by wilde, of coloured variety, carved tracery, ornament, and juxtaposed materials (inlaid marbles, ingrained stone or red brick and lombardic terracotta), reflects the growing visual complexity and eclecticism of the urban façade in london of the 1880s. this eclecticism actively challenged the monochrome and often monotonous italianate façades of the city’s terrace housing, as demonstrated by the houses of richard norman shaw (1831-1912), philip webb (1831-1915), edward godwin (1833-1886) and george aitchison (1825-1910) (saint 1976; kirk 2005; service 1975; gere 2010a & b). yet, wilde’s discussion of the house exterior also suggests another meaning. his reference to the inlaid marbles of venice, together with the terracotta ornamentation of the lombard (“a tradition currently undergoing a revival in england”), is reminiscent of john ruskin’s earlier and well-known discussion of the ducal palace in the stones of venice. described by ruskin as “the central building of the world”, the palace represented the accommodation of multiple design cultures, of “roman, lombard and arab”, within a single building (ruskin in cook and wedderburn, 1903-12: vol.9, 38). mark crinson argues that ruskin, acquainted with the idea of italy as “a stage” for racial struggle and with the aid of a geological metaphor, developed in his reading of the palace the notion of “racial mixture or hybridity as the very source of architectural 57 achievement”. an infusing and enrichment of cultures, where the “lava stream of the arab … warmed … the northern air”, the history of gothic architecture in venice is conceived by ruskin as “one of refinement and spiritualisation of northern work under [a southern or arab] influence”. ruskin wrote his interpretation of the ducal palace at a time when his view of islamic culture was positive. it not only presents, as crinson observes, such racial and design juxtapositions (a cosmopolitanism perhaps) as productive, it also countered the often “violent dialectic of aryan and semite” more common in victorian thinking (crinson 1996: 51-53). such ideas, i assume, must have appealed to wilde’s interests in cosmopolitanism. more importantly, they also offered him architectural concepts – the harmonious discord of juxtaposed colour, materials, and styles – to externally articulate the critical strategies of cosmopolitanism. inverting the container of the house beautiful, both conceptually and materially, allowed him to read the urban façade not only, to borrow moran’s words, as a “mark of civilisation” but also as an intellectual “method” (moran 2007: 292): a process that motivated the observer to mentally map the similarities and differences binding (or separating) architectural traditions over time and place. linking the house beautiful to ideals of cosmopolitanism, wilde also associated the aesthetic interior with a broader discourse of cultivation and improvement that sought to identify an intellectual atmosphere common to all cultures. in doing so, he conceptually challenged the sole association of such spaces with (feminine) domesticity and self-culture and reconnected them to an exterior and (masculine) world concerned with politics, trade, nation states and race relations. drawing on plato’s ideas of education and beauty and, by extension, analogy, wilde demonstrated his intent to identify not only what is universal and common, but also to map similarity and difference. this observation offers new insight into wilde’s understanding of a cosmopolitanism centred on process and method – a mode of reasoning and negotiation, rather than fixed form or style. it also offers opportunities to reread the eclecticism of the aesthetic interior. finally, by offering detailed descriptions in his american lecture on the exterior decoration of the house beautiful, wilde suggested that such concerns apply not only to the aesthetic interior but extend to the urban façade. it is perhaps in this final point that the true extent of wilde’s cosmopolitan project can begin to be appreciated. references anderson, a. (2001). the powers of distance. cosmopolitanism and the cultivation of detachment. princeton & oxford: princeton university press. bonython, e., & burton, a. (2003). the great exhibitor. the life and work of henry cole. london v&a publications. bullen, j. b. (1992). ruskin and the tradition of renaissance historiography. in m. wheeler & n. whitely (eds.), the lamp of memory: ruskin, tradition, and architecture. manchester: manchester university press, 54-76. cheah, p. (2006). cosmopolitanism. theory, culture and society, 23, 486-496. connor, s. (1989). conclusion: myth and meta-myth in max muller and walter pater. in j. b. bullen (ed.), the sun is god: painting, literature and mythology in the nineteenth century. oxford: oxford university press. cook, c. (1878). the house beautiful: essays on beds and tables, stools and candlesticks. new york. cook, e. t., & wedderburn, a. (eds.). (1903-12). the collected work of john ruskin. london: george allen. crinson, m. (1996). empire building: orientalism & victorian architecture. london & new york: routledge. interstices 12 dowling, l. c. (1996). the vulgarization of art: the victorians and aesthetic democracy. charlottesville, va.: university press of virginia. fine, r. (2007). cosmopolitanism. new york: routledge. gere, c. (2010a). artistic circles: design and decoration in the aesthetic movement. london: v&a publishing gere, c. (2010b). three artists’ studio-houses in london: for leighton, millais and alma tadema. in d. robbins (ed.), closer to home: the restoration of leighton house and catalogue of the reopening displays, 2010 (pp. 6-13). london: the royal borough of kensington and chelsea. gere, c., & hoskins, l. (2000). the house beautiful: oscar wilde and the aesthetic interior. london: lund humphries and geffrye museum. haill, c. (2011). ‘patience’ and the theatre. in s. calloway, l. f. orr & e. whittaker (eds.), the cult of beauty. the aesthetic movement 1860-1900 (pp. 220-221). london: v&a publishing hobhouse, h. (2002). the crystal palace and the great exhibition. art, science and productive history. a history of the royal commission for the exhibition of 1851. london and new york: continuum. hofer, m., & scharnhorst, g. (eds.). (2010). oscar wilde in america. the interviews. urbana and chicago: university of illinois press. kirk, s., webb, p., & charles, m. (2005). philip webb : pioneer of arts & crafts architecture. chichester: wiley-academy. moran, m. f. (2007). walter pater’s house beautiful and the psychology of self -culture. english literature in transition, 50(3), 291-312. mill, j. s. (1859). on liberty. london: john w. parker & son. o’brien, k. h. f. (1974). “the house beautiful”: a reconstruction of oscar wilde’s american lecture. victorian studies, 17(4), 395-418. platt, a. (2009). cosmopolitanism, by robert fine (a review). contemporary sociology: a journal of reviews, 38, 78-79. ross, r. (ed.). (1908). the collected works of oscar wilde. london: methuen & co. service, a. (1975). edwardian architecture and its origins. london: architectural press. shedd, w. g. t. (ed.). (1871-1875). the complete works of samuel taylor coleridge new york: harper bros. snider, r. (1940). wilde’s progress down east. the new england quarterly, 13(1), 7-23. stafford, b. m. (2001). visual analogy: consciousness as the art of connecting. cambridge: mit press. sully, j. (1889). outlines of psychology with special reference to the theory of education (6th ed.). london: longmans, green & co. thomas, d. w. (2004). cultivating victorians: liberal culture and the aesthetic. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. wilde, o. (1891a). the critic as artist. intentions (pp. 95-217). new york: prometheus books. wilde, o. (1891b). the decay of lying. intentions (pp. 3-55). new york: prometheus books. recycling recycling recycling recycling mark wigley interstices 4 recycling recycling 1 sarah treadwell mark wigley is teaching at princeton university, at which institution he has recently been awarded tenure. in 1988 he was one of the curators at the exhibition at the museum of modern art entitled deconstructivist architecture. in addition to the publishing of a book by that title, he’s been widely published in architectural journals. you will know of his book the architecture of deconstruction: derrida’s haunt which was published by mit press in 1993, and forthcoming by the end of this year, is his latest book which is titled white walls designer dresses: the fashioning of modern architecture from the same press. it is particularly nice to be able to welcome mark because, as a teacher here, i am very aware of the extent to which work within the department of architecture has been both stimulated by and is indebted to mark’s thinking and writing. it is also personally very nice to have him back in auckland. please join me in welcoming mark wigley. mark wigley t h a n k s f o r t h e k i n d w o r d s . i t i s v e r y n i c e to be here. auckland remains aggressively beautiful, even in this lousy weather. it’s good to see so many old friends after so many years. it has been particularly nice to spend some time with mike austin, my one and only teacher, to whom i owe everything. i’ve seen mike in new york a few times, but it’s about seven years since i’ve been back here. it’s not as if i had the seven year itch but when this intriguing invitation came it was a great excuse. and it has been a fine conference. mind you, i knew that it would be because the theme is such a special one. “accessory” is subject that’s very dear to my heart, or wherever that place is in there that is close to where the heart should be. so i thought, this would be easy because i’m always thinking about accessories, or at least ornament, the structural role of ornament. i thought tonight’s talk would be a piece of cake. it wouldn’t be difficult to choose what to talk about. of course, it turned out to be a big problem. which ornament? which ornament here in new zealand? which ornament for our time? which ornament for tonight? the perennial question. what to wear tonight? eventually, i decided just to do what i’m doing anyway, which is not that grand. i’m going to talk about accessory in the sense of prosthesis, which is to say, extension of the human body. and when i say human body we are, of course, already getting into deep trouble because there is no natural human body that simply gets extended. it is only the extensions, from clothes to artificial hands to cyberspace, that construct the sense that we are human. the accessory produces the thing it appears to “merely” accessorise. or, to put it another way, you are what you wear. and nobody simply chooses what they wear. this research into prosthetics is part of a project that i’ve been working on for a few years in an attempt to wean myself away from the question of the white wall. i am reexamining the legacy of the architectural discourse of the late 1950s and 1960s. the basic idea is that if we forget what happened in the discourse of the recent past then we don’t stand a chance in dealing with contemporary issues. much of what was said and done in the 50’s and 60’s has had to have been forgotten for people to make the kind of pronouncements that they do today, advertising themselves at the leading edge of some progressive tendency or another by clumsily suppressing the past. i’m interested in reexamining that past. indeed, the suppression is itself an interesting symptom that needs to be analysed in detail. that’s the project. the part of it that i have selected for tonight is about ecology, a “made in new zealand” subject if ever there was one. and here we are on the eve of france’s resumption of the systematic detonation of bikini atoll. but i am not going to save the planet in 55 minutes. i am not even going to talk about green architecture. rather, i’ll drift around between three words: ecology, prosthetics and architecture. for the faint of heart, there are number of well marked exits that could be used at this point. for the rest, here we go. what is it to talk about ecology and architecture? what is there to say that hasn’t already been said, and said well? what is there to say that is new? in fact, i’ve got nothing new to say about ecology. i just want to recycle some ideas, some ideas about recycling precisely. by recycling ideas about recycling, we can explore hidden aspects of the interstices 4 recycling recycling 2 relationship between ecological discourse and architectural discourse. the exploration begins with john mchale, the author of two influential books on ecology at the end of the 1960s. mchale is a curious figure. when his the future of the future came out in 1969 and the ecological context a year later, he was swimming in a number of well backed think tanks, making presentations at high profiled conferences, lobbying at power cocktail parties, and smoothly operating within a clearly defined milieu of futurists. he was exerting a strange kind of influence on a very particular discourse about the future that was going on at that time. his agenda was clearly spelled out by the books. they advocated recycling, both in the familiar sense of “reuse” and in the sense of “no-use,” knowing when not to use a resource, knowing when to say no. effective recycling also involves removing things from circulation. furthermore, the books argued for the need to increase energy input on a g l o b a l s c a l e a n d t o improve the efficiency of the distribution of that energy. the two things go together. to more efficiently distribute resources is to more efficiently distribute energy, to make more energy available. this leads to a call for refashioning the food chain on a global scale. this redistribution of energy flows would require “eco-monitoring and control centres” aligned with new networks of strategic planning, global organisations in which some kind of elite infrastructure of technicians and administrators would transcend traditional political structures in the interests of efficiency and humanity efficiency understood as humanity. the argument was based on a particular understanding of prosthetics. the pivotal chapter of t h e b o o k is entitled “man plus,” as in man plus accessory, accessorised man. mchale is fascinated by the prosthetic attachment of artificial limbs (f i g 1 ). though these attachments are usually made in response to some kind of human defect (through birth, degenerate disease or amputation), they are capable of much further amplification, an amplification and diversification of the human organism that offers a general model of cultural production and restructuring. when the chapter presents a whole succession of prosthetic attachments, each is understood as a model for the enhancement of the human condition. the argument passes from artificial hands to the way in which machines can be controlled through body electricity. to accessorise and extend the body is not to simply attach prosthetic limbs to the outside of the body or to place bodies inside a prosthetic apparatus. it also means passing that apparatus right into the internal nervous system and letting the nervous system control it, letting the machinery of the body interact with the machinery that is outside it, producing a new kind of super body. accessorised man as superman. the limit between interior and exterior, organic and machine, gives way. the inevitable consequence is the “extension,” as mchale puts it, of the control capacities of the human nervous system into electro-mechanical devices which in turn grow into a generalised cybernetic system. in fact, he says that it is precisely by generalising this cybernetic extension of the human nervous system into a model for all technology that technology will be transformed into an organic system. ecologists will no longer simply talk about plant life, mineral deposits, atmospheric conditions, and so on. everything that we think of as artificial would be addressed as the new nature, the artificial nature that needs to be analysed and reconfigured in ecological terms. the implication of mchale’s argument is that the artificial body becomes the natural landscape, the space that people inhabit. the successive extensions of the body transform the space the body occupies. indeed, it collapses the distinction between body and space. from an ecological point of view, the body is but an event or interruption in the continuous redistribution of energy. the new global space is that of the artificial body. the global ecological space whose energy flows require management is produced by hyperextended flows of nervous energy. mchale theorises “extension” in all its forms, the word seemingly appearing in every second sentence. it is used, for example, to describe the use of hallucinogenic drugs as an extension of the body. it must not be forgotten how many articles were written in the sixties about the positive effect of the use of drugs on both the experience and production of architecture, as in an arts and architecture article on lsd. for mchale, such drugs have to be understood as an extension and transformation of the body’s nervous system. likewise, cryogenics, the freezing the body immediately after or before death, is understood as an extension of life, and therefore the body, that constructs some kind of after-life landscape. it is the last move in what mchale describes as the “vertical extension” of the body into inner and outer space the extension down into the underwater depths and up into outer space. all of these extensions produce a “species extension,” a fundamental transformation of the morphological and social conditioning of the human being. it’s not simply that human beings will change in the future. the extension of the species is also an extension in time. mchale argues that these diverse technologies interstices 4 recycling recycling 3 enable both an extension into the future and an extension into the past. t h e p o i n t o f the “man plus” chapter is that the accelerated growth of the prosthetically extended body necessarily leads to networks of overlapping technological systems that will, in the end and probably quite quickly, envelope the entire globe as a single system. images of prosthetic hands develop into images of the globalised media. the simple hand leads to a more sophisticated set of hands, then a set of hands that are detached from what they can manipulate at a distance, then a body mirrored by its prosthetic extension in human driven robots which gives way to communications systems, a primitive fax machine combined with television developed by bell telephone, video phones based around a card reading system, and so on. before long, we find images of radar systems and radio telescopes understood as enormous ears, which give way to spacecraft, remote extensions that fly around the globe doing our work f o r u s . o r , m o r e p r e c i s e l y , t h e y a r e p a r t s o f o u r body that float above and around the planet, eyes and ears on the loose. the artificial body is globalised into a cybernetic network of electricity understood as a strange kind of mirror of the internal electricity of nervous system. the result is one body at the scale of the planet, one ecosystem. if there is now one ecosystem in which the distinction between culture and nature cannot be simply made, it needs a new kind of management, if not a whole new class of managers and mchale’s books lay out the preconditions of that management. the polemic is clear. the uneven distribution of resources has to be combated at every level and the villain is the nation state. in a single ecosystem, the nation is an anachronism, an institution that inherently interferes with the complex flows that sustain an equitable distribution of resources. at one point, mchale insists: “there are no local problems any more, the only problem is the global problem.” the very idea o f p r o b l e m c a n o n l y b e u n d e r s t o o d a t t h e g l o b a l level. conflicts are melted by easing the flows. even war is washed away. it supposedly disappears with the emergence of a single global system because the system would have no competitors. indeed, politics itself becomes obsolete. the construction of an ecologically balanced environment presupposes the destruction of political structures. the structure of human interaction changes with the ever changing structure of the body. now there are one or two problems with this position, most of which you can already guess and we could sing them along together but let me quickly note some of them. of course, mchale presents a globalising theory of the globe which effaces difference. i mean difference at the most obvious level race, gender, class, and sexual orientation but also difference in general, if we can say that. there is a very particular politics to mchale’s attempted effacement of politics, a politics of denial if you like, a denial that includes the denial of its own political state. exactly what is the new class of ecologically sensitive managers up to? where did they come from? who are they acting for? indeed, what would constitute an act in an infinitely flexible economy of self-levelling flows? to put it crudely, will the equal distribution of resources between what used to be nations also be an equal distribution between genders, between sexual orientations? will these differences be as redundant as the nation state in the age of artificial bodies? does difference itself become obsolete or will differences be multiplied indefinitely? does an infinitely responsive set of flows efface or emphasise difference? a related problem is that mchale presents a boy’sown argument. these are all boys’ toys after all. it’s a k i n d o f scientific american v i e w o f t h e world, a fetishism of the glories of science. the guys in the white lab coats tweaking those prosthetic arms in mchale’s illustrations are understood as quietly spoken but heroic leaders of the new world. not by chance are mchale’s books full of charts and diagrams, chapters ordered 1.1; 1.1.2 and so on. there is a glorification of global and millennial statistics, the bigger your statistics the more your credibility. big is good. to be bigger than anyone else is to dominate. despite the fact that it is not supposed to be about domination because we are all one happy family, right? this leads to another related problem, the quasimilitary and corporate rhetoric that is deployed. most of the images, like the data cited, are taken from these domains, as is typical of so much discourse of the time. mchale was a promoter of particular technologies and particular attitudes to technology that were actively sponsored by military and corporate interests, interests precisely opposed to the equitable distribution of resources and the effacement of political barriers to the flow of people, resources and ideas. mchale republishes highly loaded documents and images as if they are innocent records of reliable analysis. his stance is often that of the accountant. for example, he calculates how many lumens of light energy arrive at the earth’s surface at any one moment, divides it by the number of people on that surface and suggests interstices 4 recycling recycling 4 that by hanging the appropriate number of mirrors up there in space, the energy could be evenly distributed around the world. the starkness of the statistics is used to prop up the radical nature of the proposal, one that takes its inspiration from a number of nasa proposals that were in turn used for, and used to mask, certain military objectives. the depoliticization of the statistics becomes the basis for the depoliticization of the projects based on them, even, especially, of portraying those projects as the mechanism for getting rid of politics in general. it would seem all too easy to criticise the two books as if we today understand what is politically and ethically correct or incorrect in the formulations of the sixties. but it is not so easy. mchale was aware (even if he succumbed to the dangers) of what he called the overprofessionalisation of the future and the militarisation of ostensibly objective knowledge. indeed, his warnings against this formed a crucial p a r t o f his argument. he explicitly presented his argument as a displacement of resources away from the corporate and military world, a reuse or recycling of corporate and military thinking, a displacement from “weaponry” to “livingry.” after a l l , w e h a v e to take into account that when he describes his idealised global economy, it is not just an ecological economy of material resources in the traditional sense. the hyperextended nervous system is also an ecology of ideas. from the beginning, his argument about prosthetics is a social argument. language, for example, is described as the first prosthesis. it is not surprising that the central issue becomes the latest communication technologies. when he heads into all these technological extremes, mchale does not mean to leave the social world behind. on the contrary, he believes that he is describing the contemporary social condition. physical technology is social technology. it is not that social life deploys various technologies to sustain i t s e l f o r t h a t s o c i a l l i f e c a n e v e n b e f o u n d within technological space. rather, social life can only reside in prosthetic accessories. as mchale puts it: “man is a social animal only through his extensions.” prosthetics are “psycho-physical extensions” of man, by which organised human thought now covers the globe as a fundamental part of the overall ecological system. mchale speaks about “conceptual extension” as often as he speaks about physical extension. ideas, like bodies, can be prosthetically transformed and dispersed. inside the ever larger, interconnected and entangled network that envelops the globe are layers of concepts that evolve and move like the weather. it is in this intricate play between organic processes, economies, technologies and concepts that the nuances of mchale’s understanding of ecology lies. ok, so the obvious question is what on earth does this have to do with architecture? well, there is an architectural dimension to this ecology of prosthetic accessories. when the scientist haechel coined the term “ecology” in 1873, he described its etymological sources in the greek oikos house or household economy and logos knowledge. ecology is knowledge of the house, of the household economy. from the beginning, ecology is a thinking about a space, a domestic space. for mchale, the globe is a single space, one house with one family, a potentially happy family. this is a standard fantasy of the time. think of the extraordinarily successful family of man photo exhibition at the museum of modern art in 1955 where ordinary people from every race and country were portrayed as living out the same life cycle and sharing the same dreams under the same threat of nuclear devastation marked by the exhibition’s final image, a large colour transparency of a nuclear explosion. if you look at mchale’s rhetoric, this image is clear. he says at one point that “the home planet has become a minimal conceptual unit of occupancy for the whole human family,” insisting that we all live in one big electronic house. furthermore, “the feeling of at home has been mobilised round the planet.” even the sense of belonging to a place has been mobilised and then generalised. mchale presents an image of the domestic economy and literally describes his ecological agenda as “planetary housekeeping.” the polemic about ecology, which was very influential at the time, was based on the idea that the world has become a kind of architecture. indeed, it is an interior, the interior of a house, one that needs to be redesigned. the concluding chapter of the ecological context, which is entitled “ecological redesign,” argues that “we need to design our way forward” and symptomatically ends with the claim that we need to establish “what are the ecological or housekeeping rules that govern human occupancy.” to talk about ecology in architecture is not to bring the thinking of ecology to architecture. rather, ecology is, from the beginning, a certain kind of thinking about or from architecture. mchale constantly deploys an architectural rhetoric. in fact, the future of the future was first published as a special issue of the english journal architectural design t h a t was edited by mchale in 1967 and entitled 2000+. other sections of the book appeared in the same yea r in a n a rticl e ca l l ed “wo rl d dwelling” which was published in perspecta , t h e j o u r n a l o f t h e y a l e school of architecture, and was republished in a special issue of design quarterly which mchale edited under the title towards the future. likewise, the interstices 4 recycling recycling 5 ecological context is a reprint of document number 6 o f a series of reports, produced between 1963 and 1967 by “the world resources inventory” that was based at southern illinois university and directed by john mchale. the institution was founded at the international union of architects (uia) congress of 1961 when buckminster fuller made a speech that called for what he called a “design resources decade.” if you look at mchale’s thinking throughout this time, it is essentially a reworking of the program that buckminster fuller outlined in the uia speech. architectural ambitions underpin it at every turn. in fact, the world resources inventory was basically the institution that promoted and published fuller’s ideas for a while. it is not by chance that the 2000+ i s s u e o f architectural design begins with a transcript of a speech by buckminster fuller. the series of documents of which it was originally part is largely made up of the writings of buckminster fuller and john mchale. it was mchale who wrote the first monograph on fuller in 1962 (republishing part of fuller’s speech of the year before) and his writing is everywhere completely entangled with that of fuller, who he describes as “research associate” (fig 2). if you read fuller’s writing at the same time, he has exactly the same attitude towards mchale. they never sign together or fully acknowledge the other, despite the fact that they seem to be saying the same thing and even using the same charts. it often becomes unclear who is writing what. fuller, for example, was also into prosthetics. in document number 1 of the world resources series, published in 1963, he describes organ transplants and the ever increasing sophistication of the body with its “various prosthetics attachments,” such that it eventually be attached to the computer networks. like mchale, he argues that we will soon plug ourselves into the net or, more precisely, plug it into us, absorbing and recirculating information intravenously. in document number 2, mchale publishes a graph entitled “the velocity of the american family’s acquisition of the mechanical extensions of its apprehending faculties and physical capabilities” (f i g 3 ). it monitors the growth in the number of cars, radios, telephones, refrigerators and tv sets in american houses at any one time, each being understood as a prosthesis. by constructing a sense of the “velocity of acquisition” of prosthetics, human beings are portrayed as relentlessly accelerating towards their cybernetic, if not cyborgian, future. fuller constructs the same image. in fact, he soon republishes the same diagram without reference to mchale. mchale’s argument is both completely entangled with that of a well known architect and yet strangely detached from it. each haunts the other’s texts without ever appearing as such. the special issue of architectural design t h a t begins with a speech of fuller’s doesn’t refer back to fuller’s work. in fact, there doesn’t appear to be any architecture as such in either the future of the future, which is where the material ended up, or in the ecological context, even though both were published by george brazillier, one of the most important architectural publishers of the day, who had published mchale’s monograph on fuller. the books appeared in an architectural context but did not have any architecture in them. or, to be more precise, did not have any recognisable architecture in them. the architecture of the ecology is elusive. but there is an architectural argument there. like fuller, mchale was concerned for the survival of architecture as a discipline. while he may not be discussing specific designs, he is speaking about the n e e d t o k e e p t h e discipline alive by extending it, prosthetic extension being, of course, the very condition of survival. what is presented is a prosthetically enhanced architectural discourse. when mchale describes the need to redesign the planet, since it is one big house that needs to be reorganised for its new multinational family, the discipline of architecture is being called on to transform itself. the moment that the discipline takes responsibility for the globe, it will have grown. and it can only do so by absorbing, reconnecting to and deploying new technologies, like those of statistics. new forms will emerge out of new forms of calculation, new models of structural harmony, models of flow, distribution and reuse, dynamic models that supersede those of gravity. architecture must lift off. mchale offers an institutional argument, a polemic about the status of architecture rather than specific designs. the strategy is simply to give the world to architecture. the planet is transformed into one big architectural site by the new technologies of communication in which the world family needs to be rehoused. if the world is a house, it needs designers. if designers need commissions, what better commission could there be than the whole planet? the architectural implications may be unclear but the appeal to architects is very clear. the architectural world couldn’t help being attracted to the idea of the world having an architecture. the already grandiose dreams of fuller’s contemporaries (like le corbusier, who likewise used the latest systems of communication as a model for architecture and saw the apparatus of modern life, from clothes to television sets to buildings, as prosthetic extensions, “artificial limbs,” a s h e p u t s i t ) c o u l d b e t a k e n t o a n e w l e v e l . t h e interstices 4 recycling recycling 6 generic fantasy of an international architecture could be extended to a new scale. as mchale puts it in the opening lines of his book on fuller: world architecture, in the unitary sense employed today, is a phenomenon of quite recent origin. increased speed of communication in the 20th century has made it possible for the architect or engineer to operate in world terms ... this acceleration in communication, however, is but one facet of the vast technological revolution which has long been transforming not only our society but the physical environment within which that society functions. this transforming agency has been the direct application of science through industrial technology to human affairs ... in translating the context of architecture, from a local to a global scale, this agency of change has also enlarged the role and widened the responsibility of the architect. m c h a l e g o e s o n t o n o t e t h a t t h e f i r s t s k e t c h t h a t fuller privately published, in 4d timelock of 1927, is o f “ a ‘ o n e w o r l d ’ town plan.” it shows a globe covered with multi-deck “4d house” units that are airlifted into place by dirigibles and interconnected with small aeroplanes that circulate the planet. not by chance is the sketch annotated with an accounting of the 2,000,000,000 “new homes” needed to house “the whole of the human family” within 80 years. the world is available, waiting for architecture. time is of the essence. fuller uses the label “4d” because he understands time as the “extension” of the physical. the architect of the prosthetically extended world has to operate in and with time. the rate of change in the new technologies that have transformed the world into a house that needs an architect need to be studied by architects if they want to become designers for the new age. statistics become the very stuff of design. this involves a complete re-thinking of the house. specifically, it rethinks the relationship between material shelter and the technologies that have redefined the meaning of shelter. this rethinking, which supposedly precedes any thinking about architectural form, can be seen in mchale’s books on ecology. a new attitude to architecture surreptitiously emerges out of the ecological philosophy. indeed, a quite specific manifesto for the house lies within the discourse. at one point, mchale follows fuller in describing the house as “a rentable fully serviced facility like the telephone,” the telephone network being the ideal of the architectural condition. at another point, he refers to houses as “expendable and expandable.” in another, he explicitly rejects the idea of home ownership. furthermore, he describes the particular space that is produced and defined by projections and drugs. at one moment, the house is a prosthetic device understood as a mobile skin and at another point the car is described as “a mobile extension of the house.” even the extension is extended. elsewhere, he says “car, boat, plane, motel, vacation cabin, trailer, restaurant, theatre, etc. are extended home roofs.” the roof of the house rests on all these different types. what is left of the traditional house, the home sweet home that every child is encouraged to draw? all that is left is a “services pack,” “a dwelling services unit which will operate with equal facility in the earth or on the moon.” the pack can go anywhere, anytime. and just as the house is mobilised and heads out into the world, the world comes into the house through all the new technologies of communication. the house is simply, “the home base” in some kind of network. the end result is, as mchale puts it at yet another point, “the home hearth concept has become detached from the material paraphernalia of dwellings.” the future of the future illustrates this detachment with a sound-proof suit that isolates the body from the world of sound. likewise, it presents a suit that is liquid conditioned so that regardless of where you are you just plug it into the right kind of conditioning. when the suits were first published in the 2000+ issue, they carried a commentary by robin middleton that reads “architecture as we know it is likely to become redundant, space is a hostile and uninhabitable environment for man, he must carry his own environment with him if he is to survive ... the space suit...offers a vision of the future ... we may at least survive and enjoy living with no more than adequately designed clothes no houses, no homes even ... already clothing is available in britain that offers amenities and comforts l a c k i n g i n a g r e a t m a n y o f u s . ” t h e prosthetically enhanced and mirrored body is again deployed. in the 2000+ issue, the “+” invokes both the future and the prosthetic accessory as in the plus of “man plus” that promises extension, life, health and harmony. the space suit becomes the model of the architecture of prosthetics. indeed, it starts to take a more recognisable architectural shape when it is plugged into a space ship. the accompanying image shows modern man sitting in a capsule on a body-contoured chair wearing a slick suit connected to all the domestic plumbing hidden behind him. the truly modern interior is that of the space ship. the next step is obvious, the newly mobilised house settles into a suburban development on the moon. then even the outside of the house is brought in and domesticated. an artificial nature is developed that reproduces a chocolate box environment on the inside of enormous doughnut shaped space stations. interstices 4 recycling recycling 7 even the landscape has been mobilised and starts to drift through outer space. and so on and on. the architecture of prosthetics takes shape in a series of images. clearly this is not just the application of ecological arguments about technology to the specific technology of the house. rather, it is the prosthetic extension of the house that produces the idea of a single ecosystem, a singular space that can be managed. a theory about the extension of the house makes a globalising theory possible. if you can imagine that the world is one house then you can imagine that a single theory is appropriate to it. one planet, one philosophy. the suppression of difference in the name of ecology required a very particular architectural argument. the radical extension of the house that supposedly transforms the status of the discipline of architecture has very particular political consequences. the image of the house that mchale constructs is far from innocent. to reconsider this image, we have to go back earlier in mchale’s career. while he published his first promotional article on buckminster fuller in a 1956 issue of architecture design, his particular take on architecture only became clear a year later when he did the cover for a special issue of the same journal called “machine made america” (fig 4). he presented an artificial body made up of a collage of images, which as he says on the flyleaf, “reflects the world of infra-grilled steak, premixed cake, dream kitchens, dream cars, machine tools, power mixers, parkways, ticket tapes, sparkplugs and electronics.” the image was followed by two pages of what he called “marginalia” which linked popular culture to architectural culture. there are images of houses built from catalogues, loudspeaker designs by architects, buckminster fuller domes, car styling, push button automatic transmissions, office desks with pushbutton panels for lighting and temperature, waste and tv controls, dream houses by architects, mechanical beds, rotisseried sunbathers on a huge lazy susan, highway interchanges, and so on. here we have the critical link between architecture, popular culture and prosthetics the production of artificial bodies that is reinforced by the image mchale published of himself at the top of the article in which he appears alongside a robotic head described as his “sparehead” (fig 5). mchale was an artist at the time and was obsessed with the artificial body, as can clearly be seen in numerous photograms and collages of the 1950s (fig 6). and this obsession cannot be separated from his commitment to popular culture. in fact, since 1954, mchale was the convenor of the independent group discussions at the institute of contemporary art in london along with lawrence alloway, a role that he had taken over from reyner banham. he visited the united states in 1955 and returned to england a year later with his partner, the artist magda cordell. they brought back a huge trunk filled with american magazines, catalogues, elvis presley records, and odd bits and pieces of what we would call today “pop” culture. in fact, the term is unthinkable outside that very trunk. richard hamilton promptly cut advertisements out of those magazines and used them to construct his famous collage “just what is it that makes today’s homes so appealing?” that was a centrepiece of the 1956 this is tomorrow exhibition and has been canonised as the first significant work of pop art. the very expression “pop art” was first coined by lawrence alloway at the independent group meetings and first published in an article that symptomatically appeared in an architectural journal. not by chance does mchale’s article juxtapose the space-ship atmosphere o f h o u s e s b y b r u c e g o f f , a l b e r t f r e y a n d joseph waugh and fuller with the latest in consumer technology and styling. the bond became even more explicit in an article mchale published in the same year entitled “technology in the home.” it begins by saying that “technological changes in the home have accelerated in the post-war years, keeping pace in this with the home extensions like the automobile, the espresso café, the wimpey bar, the movies and even the pub.” these internal and external extensions of the home have occurred without help of architects. the a p p e a l t o p o p u l a r c u l t u r e i s a n a p p e a l t o a n e w l y emerging architecture for the prosthetically extended human body that the discipline of architecture cannot comprehend. mchale insists that “where the penetration of the home by technology has occurred to the great degree, i.e. the kitchen, the architect’s part has come down to providing a roof for a completely ‘packaged’ mechanical utility.” the architect merely provides the package for the package. unsurprisingly, fuller is immediately identified as the one architect who has been able to extend the limits of the discipline, an extension that was launched by a series of house designs developed “outside of standard architectural practice.” a crucial feature of these houses is the reorganisation of services. mchale catalogues the 4d single house of 1927 (later named “dymaxion”), which consolidates all the services in the single mast and the 4d multideck apartment house of the same year, which likewise has all the services (elevators, air conditioning, waste disposal, lighting, energy outlets) interstices 4 recycling recycling 8 i n t h e c e n t r a l m a s t f r o m w h i c h t h e t e n d e c k s a r e suspended and into which various bath and kitchen units can be plugged. this mechanical core is seen to be taken to its limit in the 1946 wichita house, with its prepackaged kitchen and bathroom units. each project is defended with a kind of ecological argument about the minimal use of resources, the maximisation of efficiency, and so on. they are all demountable and highly mobile, if not recyclable. mchale points to the “autonomous living package” of 1949, a services pack that can be packed up onto a 24 foot trailer, off loaded, reassembled in numerous combinations and gift-wrapped on site in one of fuller’s geodesic domes. fuller’s “far out” projects that refuse to make concessions to popular taste and styling are then contrasted with mchale’s colleagues in the independent group, peter and alison smithson, whose house of the future for the daily mail ideal homes exhibition of 1956 is seen to bridge the gap between science and popular culture. while its prefabricated plastic interior defined by a continuous moulded surface is reminiscent of the form and principles behind the bathroom/services units that fuller developed between 1931 and 1937, the house is presented as an appliance, to be styled for the taste conscious market like any other piece of domestic equipment. mchale’s reference point is the 1956 motorama kitchen of tomorrow developed by general motors and frigidaire. what impresses him is the seamless organisation of all the new technologies right through the living space whereby you cook your meals by putting in precoded computer cards into a reader which would then control the selection, combination and preparation of the ingredients. likewise, the house is kept under surveillance by television, allowing the children and intruders to be monitored. the technologies of communication reconfigure and define the house: “separation between cooking and eating was indicated by the planning/communication centre, which provided serving space on the dining side, and on the other, a swivel tv, with remote control, to keep an eye on the playroom or the front door; a loudspeaker telephone, answerable anywhere in the kitchen, that records messages, as well as a device for sending and receiving written messages.” mchale refers to it as a “conning unit” in the same way as fuller described the study of the dymaxion house, as a “conning” or control room containing radio, television, maps, globes, typewriter, mimeograph and calculators in revolving storage units. the technologies of communication redefine the shape and operations of the house and provide a model of its new role. the smithson’s house of the future is, like the dymaxion house, an industrial product to be rented “on a service, repair, and new model replacement basis rather like a telephone company” as mchale’s monograph on fuller puts it. likewise, fuller argues that his 1940 mechanical wing house, a mobile extension of the suburban house that sits on a trailer and cleans itself automatically with a jet spray, must “employ as scientific an approach to cleansing and heating the human being as is employed in the design of present electronic communication apparatus.” the bridge between science and popular culture is the communication technologies that act as the role model, redefining the houses they inhabit. along with the radical mobility of the house comes new forms of intimate contact with the globe through wires and airwaves. indeed, for mchale the “increased circulation of mass-communication devices have restored the importance of the home as a social centre even the movie, through the drive-in, becomes a private home-extension.” the architecture of prosthetics at once consolidates and disperses the house. this double movement is inseparable from the rise of popular culture. it is precisely by embracing the “styling” of consumer products that the smithsons are able to grasp the technology transformation of the house. science and marketing are bound together in 1959, mchale published the two parts of an article called “the expendable ikon” in successive issues of architectural design. once again, it is significant that this argument about the role of images in mass culture is made in an architectural magazine. but while the essay begins by announcing that “architects and designers are professionally concerned with communicating visually and, where not actively engaged, we are all participants in the process of mass-communications,” the only explicit reference to architecture is the inclusion of cathedrals in the list of the old forms of stable imagery that have been displaced by the contemporary media. mchale argues that the relationship between fine art and mass culture has been transformed by the new “environment extensions,” insisting that the rise of mass communication and consumption parallels the rise of technologies that have “pushed man’s frontiers almost to the stars.” the essay examines the economy of images in an age in which “the whole range of the sensory spectrum has been extended man can see more, hear more, travel faster experience more than ever before. his environment extensions, movie, tv, picture magazine, bring to his awareness an unprecedented scope of visual experience.” the survey of potentially ikonic images and their new forms of circulation begins with a sequence of images of robots, aliens and cyborgs that leads into a interstices 4 recycling recycling 9 sequence of images of special suits produced by the space program for surviving extremes of speed, heat and contamination. the new extensions of body are understood as new form of clothing. the “man/machine” mixture or “mechano-morph” that develops “mechanical adaptions of his processes which are become almost part of his body” extend life into hostile environments in an analogous way to the circulation of images themselves. the ikonic value of particular images is replaced with the “alchemy of the moving image in the rectangle,” whether it be mammoth screens at mass rallies blowing up the image of a single figure, the mass of flickering monitors from which the tv director assembles a program from live feeds arriving from different places all over the continent, or a drive-in cinema. old forms of security, like the image provided by a cathedral, a mask, or a ritual dance, is displaced by the flow of imagery in these new frames. the frames themselves become the only stable image. mchale elaborated his position in a 1961 talk at the ica entitled the “the plastic parthenon” that explored the way plastic replicas of architectural monuments have ended up having more cultural significance today than the monuments that they replicate. the talk, which would become well known when it was published in dorfles’ 1966 volume on kitsch, begins with a restatement of the “common cultural environment,” the “planetary culture” that is being produced by the technological extension of the human body through new forms of communication. a whole new sense of the environment, indeed a whole new environment, is supposedly being constructed in time and space: “besides the enlargement of the physical w o r l d n o w available to our direct experience, these media virtually extend our physical environment, providing a constant stream of moving, fleeting images of the world for our daily appraisal. they provide psychical mobility for the greater mass of our citizens. through these devices we can telescope time, move through history and span the world in a great variety of unprecedented ways.” in this new environment, a new economy, if not ecology, operates. products become as expendable as images. indeed, products are images. even buildings succumb to the logic of obsolescence rather than scarcity. the “machine aesthetic” of the so called international style is described as just that, an aesthetic, an “image of functional modernity rather than its actuality,” an image that could circulate the globe in an unprecedented way but will give way to other images. mchale is picking up on the point that banham made in his theory and design and the first machine age of the year before that modern architecture, which was itself explicitly based on the proposition that architecture should be a prosthetic technology, was in the end just an image of technology. in other words, that it was an image of prosthetics rather than a form of prosthetics. banham’s mission was to produce a truly prosthetic architecture that would at the same time engage the new culture of images hence his simultaneous commitment to the state of the art in technology and the state of the art in styling. fuller was always the reference point. not by chance does banham’s book end its sustained critique of modern architecture by pointing to fuller a s t h e o n l y r a y of hope in architecture. in fact, mchale had invited fuller to give a lecture at the ica in june 1958 called “man plus.” once again, it remains unclear whether the title is coming from mchale or fuller, whether mchale was inviting fuller because he was talking about prosthetics, or whether it was that fuller entered into the discourse about prosthetics that was going on. after all, the independent group’s interest in the artificial body long preceded their encounter with fuller. they had a l w a y s b e e n i n t o r o b o t s . a l l o w a y h a d o n e o f the largest collections of material on robots. the undocumented exchange between fuller, mchale and the rest of the independent group about prosthetics was an exchange between two kinds of science fiction, as can be seen by comparing one of fuller’s domes constructed in 1969 and one of the many science fiction images used by the group. not by chance was there all this talk about outer space. the real science of buckminster fuller’s designs was exactly that of the so-called science fiction. fuller and the independent group have to be understood as offering two rival forms of science fiction. in the attempt to avoid the error of high modern architecture by getting beyond an image of prosthetics to the prosthetic technology itself, including especially the technologies of images themselves, the independent group and its offspring didn’t abandon the image as such. on the contrary, they were obsessed with the structure of images. mchale’s “expendable ikon,” for example, linked the idea of prosthetics to that of the image by drawing on marshal mcluhan’s work. of course mchale’s thinking about prosthetic extensions had been influenced by mcluhan, whose 1964 understanding media was symptomatically subtitled the extensions of man. it made explicit the implicit assertion of his earlier books that with the explosion of communication networks that endlessly circulate images throughout the globe, man had literally interstices 4 recycling recycling 10 extended his central nervous system: “today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself into a global embrace.” mchale cited this passage at the conclusion of the “man plus” section of the 2000+ issue of architectural design in 1967. in the same year, he reviewed mcluhan’s book for progressive architecture, emphasising mcluhan’s role in the early development of pop art. so the question of images in popular culture cannot be detached from the questions of prosthesis and ecology. it was precisely when mchale offered the plastic pop simulation of the parthenon, along with reconstructions of the taj mahal in los angeles and medieval castles at disneyland, as the paradigm of the new ecology of images that he was finishing his book on fuller. the “cyclical mobility” of images through space and time is linked to the reconfiguration of architecture on scientific principles, principles that would later be understood as ecological. this intense discourse about what would all too easily today be called post-modernism (and has been forgotten to make much of the recent discourse about simulation and virtual reality seem new), is linked to a discourse about ecology. in the “plastic parthenon” and “the expendable ikon,” the age of simulation is understood in terms of survival. mchale argues that the expendability of images is explicitly linked to the non-expendability of the body. the capacity to survive new environments and new time frames is directly linked to the capacity to use, re-use and discard images. images are literally consumed as a form of nutrition. the prosthetic extension of the body that enables it to survive is precisely its ability to reconfigure the environment. the environment can be, indeed has to be, endlessly reconstituted. everything gains an afterlife, many afterlives. this is even true of the supposedly irreproducible ikons of the past, as exemplified in the gothic cathedral which succumbs to its own reproduction in digital archives: “most of europe’s main cathedrals, if destroyed, may now be reconstructed from the detailed photogramatic records.” the gothic cathedral, so often the paradigm of the inescapable presence of an auratic object, the immediate, unforgettable, irresistible, irreproducible and uncontrollable experience of authentic presence, simply gets recycled. furthermore, the “plastic parthenon” points out that recycling allows the same materials to be transformed from one object to another, such that the materials move, as he puts it, through cultural space. materials are, as it were, morphed through space and time. culture is understood as a set of flows. the culture of architecture is but a rhythmic ecology of images, even if they are not simply understood as visual images. architecture becomes plastic, a morphing communication system that moves around the globe and in so doing defines a space, an artificial nature that is inhabited on an everyday basis. while “human consciousness has expanded electronically,” it does so precisely to oppose the “economics of scarcity.” the expendable image circulating through popular culture becomes a model for an ecology of resources. mchale did not abandon the pop images of his early years for the later analytical and accountant-like discourse on the rigours of science and ecology. on the contrary, his introduction to the 2000+ issue suggests that “the imagery of technology may be as powerful an agency of change as the rational understanding of a scientific and technological basis.” he goes on to speak of the need for “image makers” and is attracted to fuller (whose speech is inserted between the introduction and the main body of the text), precisely because he is an “image maker.” in a 1973 interview with elvin toffler, mchale literally describes himself and fuller as artists producing images that take over the old role of fine art. yet again, the claim is linked to a certain understanding of architecture. they talk about taking a room and transforming it with projections, plastics that have memory, drugs, and so on, into a louis xiv interior. this very image of a space defined by redeploying certain image making technologies is understood as an artwork. when mchale writes about the future, he is trying to put into circulation a very tightly organised metaphoric set of images. fuller is a role model because he is able to construct series of fantasies that have the sense of quantifiable reality, a believable science fiction, just as, “nasa knew that it was really producing an artistic extravaganza.” all of mchale’s charts and statistics have to be understood as works of art. with fuller, this is obvious. every project is a polemical manifesto. take the cloud structure of 1961, the same year as “the plastic parthenon” talk. it is a giant airship one kilometre in diameter that is supposed to float around the world and occasionally anchor itself to a mountain top. four years later, there is the tetrahedral city with sides of 3.2 kilometres. these are really images of huge houses. fuller even conceives of them from an ecological point of view. in 1964, he literally described the skyscrapers of manhattan as “but crops in a farm that needed to be rotated, turned over, ploughed under, and the elements reused and replanted, recycled into a new crop.” and five years later, he proposes to construct a one mile high dome over manhattan to interstices 4 recycling recycling 11 house 300,000 families in a more efficient manner (fig 7). while fuller and his associates were able to construct a number of domes, the dome is, above all, an image, an image of a single world, following the single world single house polemic. it is not by chance that so many of fuller’s projects take the same shape as the planet. this concern for the image of the world, the world as house, house as surrogate, becomes most explicit in the geoscope project which was promoted by fuller at the 1961 international union of architects (uia) congress where he argued that architectural s c h o o l s a r o u n d t h e w o r l d s h o u l d s p e n d t e n years studying, as he puts it, “how to render the total resources of the world.” again, it is a planet rendering problem. architectural schools are the places where you produce architects and architects are the people who produce images of houses. images today are houses and you live in images, so schools of architecture have to produce a rendering, a single representation of the single world. furthermore, to produce such a rendering, such an accounting of the world’s resources, would already be to redesign the world, to change the architecture. to inhabit the world is to render it. to render is to inhabit. the particular rendering proposed was a two hundred foot diameter globe, the surface of which would inventory all the available resources. since 1952, a sequence of schools of architecture had been involved in this project (cornell, minnesota, princeton, colorado, nottingham) as fuller moved from institution to institution (fig 8). a series of prototypes were developed with ever increasing sophistication in the representation. the idea was to build up a data display out of layers of information located within the flat surfaces that make up the globe. when fuller promoted the idea to the executive committee of the uia, calling for an international exhibition of each school’s attempt in 1965, he predicted that: its interior and exterior surfaces could be symmetrically dotted with ten million small variable intensity light bulbs and the lights controllably connected up with an electronic computer ... at 200 ft. minimum distance away from the viewer, the light bulb’s sizes and distance apart would become indistinguishable, as do the size and distances between the points in a fine half tone print. patterns introduced into the bulb matrix at various light intensities, through the computer, would create an omnidirectional spherical picture analogous to that of a premium television tube but a television tube whose picture could be seen all over its surface both from inside and outside. the geoscope is a glorified television tube whose picture can be seen all over its surface, from both inside and outside. it is a two hundred foot tv, not so much sitting in your living room, as being your living room. indeed, everybody’s house is inscribed on it. the scale was determined by the fact that at that particular size, each individual house on the world would be discernible on 35mm aerial surveillance images. the representation of the global house is only possible at the moment that it can account, and remember that this is an accounting job, for every single house. it is reliant upon the particular sophistication of surveillance photographs at the time, the ability to register a certain level of detail in the 35mm negative size. when every house is visible you can see the outside of the house, the world outside. the modern architect’s dream to bring the outside in takes a quantum leap. the idea of this project was, as fuller says, “to afford the viewer a swift and comprehensive awareness of man in the universe, to provide a world view.” the world in a glance, then. very satisfying. i suppose. remember, it is precisely at this moment that images o f t h e p l a n e t were playing a crucial role in the ecological movement. think of the famous image taken from the spacecraft looking back at earth. without that image, many of the arguments behind the movement, the global movement, may have floundered. a couple of years ago, a space “probe” got so far away from earth that it could turn around and produce the first family portrait of the solar system, looking back at all the planets. who knows what the long term impact of that image will be. at one level, it is a real estate shot, defining the new site for architectural operations. like its predecessor, it is seen as a beautiful image, one to be preserved with ecological management strategies. diverse groups are united around the preservation of this image. it is symptomatic that no one sees the images as ugly. a quasi-theological view underpins the unquestionable sense of the beauty of the “natural order,” the “harmony” of the cosmos. ecology is a form of theology in the end. anyway, fuller proposes a huge tv set which will represent the world, and in so doing, redefine architecture, if not become the architectural project. it is the world as a single space, an interior with a domestic economy to be regulated or controlled. in a sense, it reproduces, at the level of image, what was already in operation in the computer networks. the philosophy of networks was well established in the military at that time. in fuller’s hands, the diffuse architecture of the network is transformed into an aesthetic object, an artwork. even the interstices 4 recycling recycling 12 drawings of the globe are artworks, as were the nasa photographs. fuller wanted this enormous artwork to be suspended on wires over the east river in new york, directly opposite the united nations headquarters (fig 9). one year after the manhattan dome, he is still focussing on manhattan, proposing interventions because it is a political and cultural centre, a centre for the production and redistribution of images. elevators would supposedly lift people right up (from ferries, bridges or tunnels) into the centre of the geoscope where they could witness the presentation of stars, satellites, earthquakes, electromagnetic and astrophysical patterns, economic, demographic and sociological displays, world news and events, 24 hours a day. mchale was the co-ordinator of this project as it went from school to school. a year before the 1965 paris exhibition of all the different geoscope projects from around the world, which demonstrated that “the ‘ecology’ of universities is now global,” mchale published the university of colorado prototype that he had directed. it used fuller’s dymaxion air ocean map projection (a map in which, by the way, n e w z e a l a n d i s t h e o n l y c o u n t r y n o t cut by the triangular panels) folded onto a small icosahedron. layers of information were located into, above and below the triangular plexiglass surfaces on mylar sheets (fig 10). the layering of these “data planes,” along with hinged planes that provided sectional information where needed, produced a complex record of atmospheric, ground and subterranean conditions, one that was then filmed by mchale to demonstrate dynamic trends in human population since 4000 bc at 30 years per second. fuller and mchale literally ended up working on technologies o f a representation. they studied multi-projection devices, flat screen data displays, triangular faced television tubes, new kinds of photography, multislide machines, 8mm cinema units, video tape mechanisms for film, data storage, and so on. they were deploying the state of the art of image making, storing and distribution. ecology is a question of images in the end, images of architecture and the architecture of images. to raise the question of ecology again in architectural discourse is already to raise the question of the image. the first technological issue is the technologies of image, which include all the institutionalised technologies of discourse itself, of architectural discourse in particular. lectures like this one, for example, are no more than the exchange of certain kinds of images. we need to think about the politics of such exchanges. more precisely, we have to think about the intersection between such institutionalised technologies of imagery and institutions (like this school of architecture here in auckland) which are themselves technologies with specific agendas and mechanisms to realise those agendas. more precisely still, we have to think about the images of domestic economy that these various technologies sustain and circulate. the politics of ecology is the politics of images, images of houses that need to be interrogated very closely. mchale and fuller’s happy family model cannot accommodate difference inasmuch as it effaces domestic violence. the production of a single house can only be understood as the eradication of all military and political conflict if violence is understood as something that only occurs between houses rather than within them. indeed, politics is seen to be between houses and therefore there is no politics with the idealised future of the single house. but the very idea of the house is structured by a very particular politics, a very particular violence. if ecology is really knowledge of the house, it also has to be acknowledge of this structural violence. after all, the “natural” ecosystem is always so so brutal. ecological design would be a rethinking of the house, or perhaps just a starting to think about the h o u s e i n a d i f f e r e n t o r multiple way rather than simply re-circulating an old image, an ancient image, of the house that is itself constructed by, and responsible for, considerable violence. it’s not that mchale simply ignores the politics of the house. on the contrary, he exercised and mobilised those politics, politics of effacement, entrapment, ritualistic brutality, closets and so on. it is important to note that while certain inequities in the organisation of the house can be addressed, there can be no such thing as the politically correct house. the very idea of the house is premised on the certain violence whether physical, emotional, conceptual or ideological. this violence takes the most obvious f o r m s b u t a l s o t h e l e a s t o b v i o u s , a n d i n t h e end, perhaps the most lethal. it is not just a matter of finding a better image for the house. there is a need for different forms of exchange, which is to say, different forms of imagery as well images of difference that do not surreptitiously efface difference in the end. ecology, after all, is only ever artificial. it’s an institution, the institution of the house, and there are always designers involved. all of this is complicated by the fact that the household is our culture’s paradigm of institution. if we think of institutions as houses, it becomes doubly difficult for us then to interrogate the discourse about houses sustained by particular institutions. furthermore, the actual design of houses has an extremely complicated interstices 4 recycling recycling 13 relationship to this institutional deployment of the image of the house. i wouldn’t want to underestimate the complexity of the relationship between what it is to design or even talk abo u t a house and the sense in which we always live in certain kinds of images of houses whose consequences we cannot face to such an extent that it is the very way in which we don’t face them that produces this sense of “at home.” these complications have always organised, and perhaps surreptitiously disorganised, architectural discourse but i think it becomes increasingly difficult to neglect them as our houses, the everyday spaces we inhabit, are increasingly defined by images. it becomes ever more obvious that architecture is almost literally carved into the flow of images. while taking account of this new architecture, it would be a mistake to recycle recycling today without understanding the extent to which the overt politics of ecology, which is to say the equitable management of resources, preserves particular regressive ideological formations. the essentially imperialistic and patronising structure that much ecological discourse preserves by definition never distributes resources equitably. perhaps architectural discourse can help in monitoring this regressive tendency rather than simply reapplying ecological discourse to design as if architects are just waiting for inspiration or legitimation from above and beyond. perhaps some of the enigmas of architecture that architects are aware of but rarely discuss could be used to rethink ecology. sarah treadwell i’d like to thank mark very much for his riveting talk. member of audience mark, i was just wondering what happens to those that don’t want to move, to extend themselves... mark wigley can you give an example? you cannot simply choose not to extend yourself if you are already, and always, nothing but an effect of extensions. our identity is constructed by extensions. there is not simply a pre-existing identity that is extended by various technologies. the accessory is everything. in the beginning there was the accessory. it’s not that the world changed overnight and cyberspace changes the whole condition of identity. it’s just a new set of prosthetic extensions to interact with all the older ones. and its not so new anyway. these technologies have been around for a while now. member of audience why have we forgotten this recent history ... i mean w h y d o y o u t h i n k w e a r e n o t a w a r e o f t h i s o l d e r discourse as we go through this cyberspace? mark wigley the cynical view, which is to say the realistic one, would be that architectural discourse is responsible for preserving a certain image of architecture, an i m a g e w h i c h m i g h t f a l l a p a r t i f w e l o o k a t i t t o o closely. our job is to make sure that nobody looks at architecture too closely and the best way of doing that is by claiming to be looking at it while allowing certain things to slide on by. when faced with technological innovations, we make sure that the old image keeps going. we preserve the image of a secure house, for instance, which plays such a crucial role in the way our culture, let’s say western culture, regulates itself. in the face of cyberspace, we have to make sure that the “new” architecture is actually the old architecture. we have every reason to forget. precisely by pretending that cyberspace is new we can preserve particular images of architecture and neutralise certain historically specific forms of resistance to them. so much hype. just how many books have been written on cyberspace and the dream of internet in the last five minutes? what is that euphoric glaze that comes over so many people in architecture when faced with these possibilities? if you compare what is being said now about the brave new world with the same kinds of claims being made back in the sixties, it becomes clear that world is not so new and its promoters not so brave. member of audience d o y o u t h i n k t h a t t h e l e g a c y h a s b e e n continuing through the schools? mark wigley well, many of the protagonists, and their thinking, are still alive. member of audience the legacy hasn’t really disappeared as far as i know. interstices 4 recycling recycling 14 mark wigley i would argue that slightly differently. we are all children of that discourse. i could be quite specific, for example, about the ways in which i was influenced by that discourse through people who were very involved in it. but that knowledge, and the sense of what people like reyner banham, archigram and cedric price were on about, is very different than the on-line discussion of electronic space today, which acts as if all that didn’t happen. to put it another way, if architecture as a discipline can’t handle television, how the hell is it going to handle computers? in fact, there was quite an elaborate discourse about television in the late 50’s and early 60’s which has been forgotten and i think there are particular reasons for that. the fundamentally conservative stance of the discipline is maintained by its sponsorship of ostensibly avantgardist types that systematically neglect the history of the discipline in order to appear radical. only through such manoeuvres can the discipline maintain itself as a gratuitous accessory to our culture while claiming responsibility for the entire built environment. but this responsibility is nominal. architects control a negligible proportion of the environment and tend not to get paid. nevertheless, we act as the guardians of some of the most central concepts that organise everyday cultural life. member of audience w h a t i n f a c t i s t h e f u t u r e o f y o u r o w n d i s c o u r s e because it seems to me that you’re incredibly well placed institutionally. we were told that you were tenured. are you part of this conspiracy? mark wigley you tell me. if i was, would i tell you? i don’t think that if you’re working in a place like that you are necessarily empowered all the way down the line. it is undoubtedly a risk but that doesn’t mean that if you’re at another institution, or even outside such institutions, that you are less susceptible, less implicated in the uneven distribution of resources. it’s the dilemma that has to be faced, faced all the time, and addressed with certain forms of misbehaviour. if you say, “but if you had really misbehaved you’d be out,” i’ll squirm a little. but the margins are not so innocent you know. some of the suspect assumptions and procedures are more entrenched in the margins than anywhere else. if you are willing to keep an eye on my operations, i’ll keep an eye on yours. member of audience it’s quite strange being turned into a thesis. i came to the school of architecture when all of this happened, late 50s early 60s. we even had fuller arrive and talk to us but what fascinates me is there was another thing going on that in fact won the battle of styles. by the time i had left the school of architecture in auckland in 65 or whenever it was, it was completely taken over by vernacular architecture. and that vernacular architecture moved through postmodernism and it was almost as though that discourse that you’ve been describing tonight was quiet and forced underground, in architecture a n y w a y , u n t i l t h e r e s t o f t h e w o r l d j u s t f o r c e d i t back upon us again by the continuous technological change that had taken place. but it was quite strange and quite conscious, this triumph of the vernacular, the way in which archigram for instance, was regarded as something laughable, which perhaps it was. but it’s as though some wave is going through, we’re pushed so far into the future and then suddenly pulled back into the past again and are now coming out into the future, the millennial thing. it was just fascinating watching all those slides, you know, my childhood being presented to me. mark wigley we could all contribute our sense of what went on and what was happening, who was forcing who and who gave way. indeed, it would be possible to imagine the flow of ideas in mchale’s sense, thinking of it as continuous circulation, an ecology in which institutions act like organisms, defending themselves by absorbing certain ideas and rejecting them precisely when they run the rise of being realised and thereby upsetting the delicate balance. if the theory of ecology gave us something, it is probably the ability to think about the ecology of theory. if there is a point here, it is probably that. thanks. 2010 interstices under construction symposium auckland, friday 8 to sunday 11 october unsettled containers: aspects of interiority image based on leonardo da vinci: studies of embryos, c. 1510-13 interstices under construction: “unsettled containers” is jointly organised by the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland, and the school of art and design, aut university (tina engels-schwarzpaul and ross jenner). unsettled containers: aspects of interiority is architecture a cult of the externalised object? only four of 46 images of prize winning entries on the 2009 world architecture festival website show interiors. this object-cult and neglect of the interior is symptomatic of architecture’s domination by a polarised nineteenth-century conception of containment. so efficiently are interior and exterior sealed off from each other that they are frequently treated as discrete professional domains. however, inside and outside are always ready to be reversed – their boundaries full of tension and at points occupied by beings who awaken “two-way dreams” (bachelard). in benjamin’s arcades project, 19th century petit bourgeois encased themselves in their interior as in a “spider’s web, in whose toils world events hang loosely suspended like so many insect bodies sucked dry”. today’s spaces can seem more involuted, fragile and unsettled. phenomenological theories focus on the proximate qualities of architecture and a possible avenue for a new emphasis on the interior. other approaches highlight different modes of proximity like digital, intimate involvements. the ability to say “we” may be a fundamental condition of space, which creates interior spaces as spheres for dwelling (sloterdijk). like immersive plants, they elaborate human existence and embed human relationships. opposite forces create the climatised hothouses of luxury consumption, relaxation and privileged cosmopolitanism familiar to us today, in which nature and culture are indoor affairs and history and the other are left outside. how can interiority be conjugated in new ways? how do we draw the lines today? what constitutes interiority? what does it have to say about the institutionalised containment of refugee centres or gated communities or, indeed, the openness of the pacific? what is it like to negotiate the pae from inside? where are the spaces of self and other? how do global and regional flows circulate in interiors? is there a special relationship between interiority and possession? when is a set of walls an interior, when is an object a container, and when is a container a world? the keynote address, disorientation and disclosure, by professor david leatherbarrow seeks to unsettle the boundaries of the interior in urban spaces. david leatherbarrow is chair of the university of pennsylvania school of design postgraduate committee. he is a world-renowned writer whose influence is recognisable in debates about the appearance and perception of architecture. he is currently working on a book about the relationships between architecture and the city, arguing for the primacy of topography in both areas of design. friday 8 october opening address professor jenny dixon dean of nicai, the university of auckland rewi thompson architect, school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland interior | interiority rick pearson, michael major, jennifer walling, peter were, christina mackay chair: julieanna preston school of design, massey university drinks & launch: interstices11: the traction of drawing introduction to professor david leatherbarrow dr. ross jenner, school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland disorientation and disclosure keynote by david leatherbarrow dinner vivace restaurant, level 1, 50 high street, auckland 4:00 4:30 pm 4:30 6:00 pm 6:00 6:45 pm 6:45 7:00 pm 7:00 8:00 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 8:30 pm saturday 9 october containment | exposure 1. foreign bodies julieanna preston 2. ancient modernists and a dark interior dianne peacock 3. holey interior michael milojevic morning tea interior | world 1. a temporal inflection suzie attiwill 2. fourth wall removed kirsty volz 3. excessive baggage michael chapman lunch conference centre, the university of auckland 9:00 10:30 am 10:30 11:00 am 11:00 12:30 pm 12:30 1:30 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland saturday 9 october glass house | hot house 1. outside in / inside out john roberts 2. crystal capital sean sturm and stephen turner 3. restless containers tina engels-schwarzpaul afternoon tea boundary | control 1. dizzy immensities sandra lösche 2. dividing evidence christina mackay 3. musings on indoor-outdoor flow kara rosemeier drinks conference centre, the university of auckland dinner o’ sarracino restaurant, 3-5 mount eden road, auckland 1:30 3:00 pm 3:00 3:30 pm 3:30 5:00 pm 5:00 6:00 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 7:00 pm saturday 9 october alr5, school of architecture and planning the university of auckland 3:30 5:00 pm inside | out 1. staying indoors with sloterdijk and latour tim adams 2. samoan thought and the notion of the interior lealiifano albert refiti and i’uogafa tuagalu 3. to free borders of interiority azadeh emadi sunday 10 october representation | apparatus 1. inscapes: interiority in architectural fiction stefanie sobelle 2. in’a-space judy cockeram and judyarx scribe 3. inside the book marian macken alr5, school of architecture and planning the university of auckland work-in-progress sue gallagher: head space. home body. albert l. refiti: the ring of faciality ross jenner: inner poverty jacky bowring: going under isabel lasala: architecture as landscape design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland concluding comments david leatherbarrow lunch yum cha at dynasty chinese restaurant, 57-59 wakefield street, auckland 10:00 11:30 am 11:30 am 12:30 1:30 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 9:30 11:30 am abstracts the abstracts in this brochure are shorter versions of the original, refereed submissions. access the full abstracts at http://intersticesjournal.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/2010iuc-abstracts-published01.pdf staying indoors with sloterdijk and latour tim adams in our era of universal paucity of time, more and more philosophers are finding they have the time to consider architecture. at the forefront of this tidal wave of new philosophical interest in architecture are peter sloterdijk and bruno latour. sloterdijk has devoted a large section of his book sphären iii: schäume (2004) to “foam architecture”, an investigation of contemporary co-isolated existence that takes place inside of apartment buildings. for his part, latour has written a series of articles for domus magazine directly addressing an architectural audience. in february of 2009 the two joined forces to lecture together at the harvard university graduate school of design and this led to two essays being published in the harvard design magazine (2009). this introductory essay will examine all these articles to find out just what sloterdijk and latour have been saying to architectural readers and practitioners alike. both thinkers are in fact focusing on the interiority of architecture. this presentation proposes that in the wake of his spheres trilogy, sloterdijk interprets architecture as the most important component in his revisionist history of man as the sphereproducing animal. latour’s interest in architecture starts with laboratories and the media network that connects them. science cannot take place without this interiority claims latour, yet this architectural interior is systematically erased from the scientific process. the presentation concludes that instead of the architectural interior being something that is forgotten or downgraded, it is in fact the very centre of attention for this new generation of architectural philosophy, therefore we should not overlook this important contribution to the current re-evaluation of the architectural interior. tim adams teaches history and theory in the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland where he is also a phd candidate. his specialist areas include theories of architecture, the writings of western philosophers concerning architecture, 20th and early 21st century architecture and urbanism, japanese and california architecture. his essays and translations have appeared in interstices, sahanz proceedings, cross section: nzia news, z/x: journal of the manukau school of visual arts, deleuze studies and the german magazine der architekt. his phd is on the writings of daniel payot, a french philosopher who specialises in the history of philosophical discussions about architecture. suzie attiwill this presentation addresses the question of interiority through the discipline of interior design. it is motivated by the prevalence of phenomenological theoretical frameworks in the discourse and thinking of interior design. they assert a self who perceives and reflects the sensorial world through lived experience. ideas of working from the inside out, and of the discipline as human-centred design, are frequently encountered in the discourse and practice of interior design. a different trajectory for thinking about interior and interiority is offered by gilles deleuze’s writings. deleuze critiques the concept of interiority as something which exists independently. this could be taken as a dismissal of the concept of interiority. however, he also writes of the constitution of interiority as ‘alimentary’. in foucault, deleuze describes interiority as a process of inflection; an act of folding and unfolding a line of an outside, affected by and affecting external forces. this shift engages the practice of interior design in different ways – highlighting interior and interiority as a question of design – and design as a process of selection and arranging in the process of form-making. containers of space, subjects and objects are unsettled and the potential for the practice of interior design is amplified and opened. interior design becomes a critical practice, where the question of interior as a creative production (as distinct from a given self/subject, architecture/object) connects with contemporary concerns. the presentation examines and critiques the implications of phenomenological ideas in relation to interior design and the potential of a re-positioning of interiority through deleuze’s writings. associate professor suzie attiwill is the program director of interior design, rmit school of architecture and design, melbourne, australia. she holds a ma (design, rmit), ba (interior design, rmit) and ba (art history / indian studies, uni melb), certificate in applied arts (textiles) and is currently completing a phd by research project in the school of architecture and design, rmit university. suzie has an independent practice which involves the design of exhibitions, curatorial work, writing and working on a range of interdisciplinary projects in australia and overseas. from 1996 to 1999, she was the inaugural artistic director of craft victoria. she is chair of idea (interior design/interior architecture educators association – www.idea-edu.com) and a founding member of the urban interior research group – www.urbaninterior.net. . a temporal inflection excessive baggage: the architecture of the suitcase in surrealism and its aftermath michael chapman a storehouse of memories and of the literal embodiment of transience, the suitcase became, between 1918 and 1939, a container of avant-garde experimentation. it was an important motif in early avant-garde strategies, hounded from place to place by the various political regimes. the suitcase was a surprisingly recurrent theme in surrealism (a movement obsessed with displacement and unfamiliarity), essential to the reconstruction of the values of home, and all of the associations accompanying that term. two important friends of the surrealist circle – marcel duchamp and walter benjamin – both used the suitcase as a reflection of a broader cultural ‘homelessness’. it was not only a storehouse for domestic and bodily necessities, but for creative practice in general. in their work, the suitcase defined the limits of possession, identity and, most importantly, creativity allowing the individual to package their current projects in a nomadic and transitory form. drawing from peter bürger’s theory of the avant-garde, this paper will look at the intersection of architecture and interior in the suitcase projects of marcel broodthaers and diller + scofidio. foreshadowed heavily by the work of marcel duchamp, these projects embody the subtle shifts that reconstructed notions of space and home in this tumultuous period of creative production. the paper will chart the transformations through which the suitcase became an architectural vessel where the cultural and political notions of homelessness were first conceptualised, and later demarcated and reproduced by the neo-avant-garde. michael chapman is a lecturer at the university of newcastle where he teaches architectural design, history, theory and research methods. his research has been published in journals such as arq, architectural science review and form/work and presented at conferences nationally and internationally. his individual and collaborative work was exhibited at the venice architectural biennale, federation square in melbourne, the museum of melbourne, the state library in sydney and the lovett gallery in newcastle. together with michael ostwald and chris tucker, he is the author of residue: architecture as a condition of loss, which was published by the rmit press in 2007. he is also the director of hrmphrdt which is an architecture practice focussing on residential projects and art collaborations. in’a-space: where cad package met alice, sally and bob judy cockeram and judyarx scribe the paper discusses the generation of architecture in-world, in an attempt to identify as many variations in space as real time allows. the in-space is the living sketchbook, held currently on linden labs second life, which slides out into the actuality of some recent cross reality projects. using the writing of boyd (2009) and mallgrave (2010) the paper show through case studies how, as we move between an inner-space and the middle-space of evolutionary experience in architecture, the inner world will be dragged out into the cold light of the ‘homo-technologist’s’, the architect’s, gaze. in evolutionary terms, ground and stone gave way to the tools of geography and abstract property boundaries. once, the experience of walking on gridded lines enabled those of sturdy physic and careful eye to map and claim ownership of the world. the twentieth century watched the stories of the world in film and reality television. the 21st century begins with avatar, the unmanned weapons of war and a very different type of spatial experience through interactive fantasy in virtual worlds. by comparing mallgrave’s observations with digital production in the living sketchbook, the paper argues for the force of the stone of virtual space, the materiality of the virtual world, in the development of human behaviour. the paper concludes with an exploration of the real-time writing of meaning into the ‘simena’ (simulation & cinema) experience as a new playground for an old thrill: architecture. judy cockeram (march, pg cert acadprac) works at the school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland. she has been engaged in the delivery of architectural education for 15 years. in that time, the creative use of computers in architecture has become a topic too wide to cover in one career. she has specialised in the consideration of the space of learning and of shared creative practice in the virtual worlds of cad packages and online multiuser interfaces. currently she runs the living sketchbook project as a space for the development of creative collaborative behaviours and exploration of simena events. judy has been known to do some graffiti knitting. to free borders of interiority: western and islamic approaches toward the ‘line’ azadeh emadi this paper explores aspects of cultural interiority through moving image. interiority exists by acts of control and selection that produce a desired space of security and familiarity. it necessitates a boundary to limit or to exclude the foreign, to shape and differentiate interiority from exteriority. we can think of this boundary as just a line, which holds qualities of both interior and exterior – but is neither. as an open horizon, it provides points of exchange, points for something new to start. perceived as unoccupied and rigid, the boundary aims to exclude the unfamiliar in favour of the known, for a sense of security and comfort. however, familiarity contains unfamiliarity, or the uncanny, and, at the very moment of suppression of the unknown (the stranger), interiority is endangered. western modern culture has a long ‘islamic’ genealogy, which shaped the foundations of contemporary western civilisation. therefore, the current wave in western politics to exclude elements of middle eastern culture comes too late: the strange is already inside. a lack of acknowledgement may serve to protect a sense of interiority, familiarity and security, but it risks excluding significant contributions middle eastern culture can make to the world. the line’s lack of substance can, in islamic art, offer freedom. by contrast, the lines bounding the interior tend to embrace and entrap. can the freedom of line in islamic art be productively explored to bring movement and flexibility to the borders of interiority? can this exploration give rise to a new territory, a new interiority? born in 1980 in tehran, iran, azadeh emadi immigrated to new zealand to begin her studies in spatial design (performance design). her work revolves around issues of transnational space and space between cultures. her quest is to explore and better understand the effects of a widening gap between middle east and the west, and middle easterners’ experiences and feelings in exile, in-between. explorations of the body and its relation to space are important when she uses performative and cinematic installations to engage audiences through aspects of moving image. aspects of her current phd project developed while she lived in a space of displacement for eight months, in germany and her country of origin, iran. restless containers: how to think interior space? a.-chr. (tina) engels-schwarzpaul in his spheres trilogy and in im weltinnenraum des kapitals, philosopher peter sloterdijk deliberately set out to produce a grand narrative about globalisation and the crucial role of lived space for philosophy. this presentation explores specific scenes arising from the differentiation of interior and exterior at different times and in different places, taking its overall structure from sloterdijk’s exploration. in sloterdijk’s grand narrative, the sphere’s spatiality is a central motif in the changes caused by “terrestrial globalisation” between the 16th and 20th centuries. sloterdijk traces the changing relationships to the world at large in parallel with ontogenetic aspects of space in human existence. predispositions towards interior and exterior arising from these circumstances will shape the perception of actual interiors and their relationship with exteriors. each globe in 18th and 19th century european interiors manifested a new way of looking at the world. in 19th and early 20th century apartments, mirrors and curtains regulated the interpenetration of interiority and world, filtering and shifting interior and exterior. at this time, too, interior decorators made their appearance, as professional versions of the ‘wild interior architects’ as which sloterdijk regards all humans. paxton’s crystal palace prefigured new instantiations of interiority: artificial islands of glasshouses and hothouses, theme-parks and resorts. emerging towards the end of sloterdijk’s “terrestrial globalisation”, they interiorise the world on a global scale. sloterdijk has been accused of arguing from a euro-centric perspective. the paper will test this charge by juxtaposing his concepts with those that are original or germane to the pacific region – where neither the material spaces nor the inherent conditions of interiority function in the same manner. dr. tina engels-schwarzpaul is associate professor of spatial design at the school of art and design, aut university, auckland. her research interests cluster around thresholds and interfaces in design, architecture, theory, and everyday life across cultures. recent publications include “‘a warm gray fabric lined on the inside with the most lustrous and colourful of silks’: dreams of airships and tropical islands”, “tillers of the soil/travelling journeymen: modes of the virtual”, “at a loss for words? hostile to language? interpretation in creative practice-led phd projects” and “take me away … in search of original dwelling”. dizzy immensities: multi-dimensionality and inverted space in focillon and el lissitzky sandra löschke the traditional conception of architecture is that of an absolute object – a static, solid form which delimits space by means of its concrete materiality: its walls, roof and floor. architecture cuts space and creates a material boundary dividing an inside world and an outside world. this basic dichotomy has been seen as the basis of the aesthetics of architecture and has been considered tantamount to the pragmatic function of enclosure. but the very nature of materiality and objecthood came under scrutiny at the beginning of the 20th century – a crisis brought about by new discoveries in science and by the emergence of psychology. architecture, although undoubtedly objective in its concrete materiality, was subjected to this crisis of the object, too, and began its course of progressive dematerialization. although contemporary interest in architecture focuses on the dematerialization of the external envelope, the paper suggests that the first push towards the immaterial came from the interior and can be traced in the writings of henri focillon and the first experimental rooms of el lissitzky in the 1920s, in whose works the materiality of architecture is eroded from within. here, ideas of the interior in relation to “multidimensionality”, “fluid space” and total “environments” are foregrounded. what role does interiority play in the translation of abstract pictorial space into the space of architecture? how do we construct what focillon termed “fluid space” in terms of real materials? what are the psychological underpinnings which allow us to conceive of the geometric impossibility of spatial inversion a world within a room? sandra karina löschke is an architect and lecturer at uts (sydney). she studied at the bartlett/university college london and the architectural association and now writing her phd thesis at the university of new south wales. her research focuses on aspects of immateriality and atmosphere in modern architecture. before coming to australia, she worked for foster and partners and stephan braunfels on award-winning projects. her own work was shown at the 2008 venice architecture biennale and selected for the abundant highlights exhibition (2008-2010, shown in sydney, melbourne, canberra, singapore, bangkok, and kuala lumpur). it was also included in the australian architecture association’s 2010 tour program. she is a member of the royal institute of british architects and registered in the uk. dividing evidence: an investigation of interior-exterior interplay in a century of alterations in new zealand villas christina mackay in housing alteration, the power play between desire for exterior form and interior realm is a struggle. this study investigates the dynamics of this interplay by examining the detail of the changing occupation, built form and decoration of sixteen timber villas in wellington, new zealand. originally, highly prescribed and articulated facades made strong public statements, but in subsequent alterations interior agendas had the upper hand in determining changes to the building form. using one hundred years of ownership records, historical photographs, building consent documentation plus measured and photographic surveys undertaken in 2010, the evolution of the design of the interior, the exterior and their inter-relationship is exposed. these dynamics are examined with reference to the writings of bachelard, pallasmaa and leatherbarrow. as leatherbarrow proposes, the exterior image takes second place to accommodate requirements of everyday life. the interior usually extends out but rarely does the exterior claim back lost space. when the exterior form is manipulated for interior ends, this can be a private act or a brazen statement, the interior coercing the exterior with notions of grandeur and status. many alterations seem to evolve naturally through the owners’ experience of dwelling. after a century, exterior cladding and features appear more intact than their interior counterparts. perhaps this skin is more distant and therefore matters less to the occupants. perhaps the strength in the design of the facade resists change. analysis of past and present interventions provides hints of emerging attitudes and renovation tactics. christina mackay is a senior lecturer in the interior architecture programme, school of architecture, victoria university of wellington. she teaches in the areas of design fabrication and architectural practice. her teaching and research is based on 25 years professional practice in architecture & interior design in uk, middle east and new zealand. christina’s interests include the design of outdoor living spaces (with particular focus on protection from uv radiation) and the dynamics of building alteration, renovation and remodelling. recent publications include ‘kitchen remodelling in new zealand: issues of sustainability’ and ‘environmental shade for protection from uvr – a design & teaching resource’. she is presently completing a branz funded research project ‘tracking house alterations (1890 – 2010) – case studies of 16 villas in wellington, new zealand’. inside the book: the interiority of representation marian macken this paper presents the production of artists’ books as a form of alternative, complementary three-dimensional architectural representation. the object and the archive are inherent aspects of the artist’s book. there is interiority to the book and to its contents. conventional architectural documentation creates an envisaged building through drawing and modelling the location of scaled materials. the viewer gazes at these drawings and summons up the interior: we are asked to twodimensionally infer our inhabitation of space. a model is picked up and held, giving it a sense of closure and completion. artists’ books alter the ‘apparatuses of representation’; in doing so, they bring interiority to the representation of space, which tends to be lacking in the conventional set of design presentation panels. the openable codex format of the artist’s book offers both containment and exposure. the book does not try to offer a single image, or aim for the totality of grasp that a model does, nor does it aim for a synthesis of comprehension. books offer a sequential, episodic narrative that is codex-based, rather than plan-based. the book may also operate as a ‘folded model,’ which begins to have a spatiality quite different from the objecthood of the model. the book operates as a 1:1 object, yet may be made and read with scale and representation admitted. this paper proposes the artists’ books as a lens through which architectural representation may be examined and critiqued: an alternative, complementary representation to be explored as a new means of investigating spatial interpretations and propositions in threedimensional form. marian macken is undertaking her phd (by thesis and creative work) at sydney college of the arts, university of sydney, examining the role of artists’ books as a documentation of architecture. she completed her master of architecture (research) at the university of technology sydney on the topic of representation. she is a designer, part-time educator and maker of artist’s books, recently the winner of the national artist’s book award of the 2010 australian libris awards. she has undertaken various visiting artist residencies, including the australia council visual arts board tokyo studio (2010); at university of the arts, london (2008); and at wai-te-ata press, wellington (2009). holey interior: public space in the canadian metropolis michael milojevic canonical histories of western architecture generally commence with interiors, natural cave interiors that is, while the urban public places we study are almost exclusively open air networks comprised of the interstices between ground-level structures. nolli’s 1748 pianta di roma reminds us that some urban public spaces are, indeed, fully interior. the undergrounding of essential utilitarian service spaces beneath brown’s famously ‘smooth’ contiguous surfaces ‘class-stratify’ the site by reserving the park’s visible surface as ‘a place of appearance’ within prescribed vistas which masked critical utilitarian operations from the dominant view. early 19thc interior and undergrounded public spaces were generally linked to transportation infrastructure and these strata, in response to aerial bombardment technology, were ‘armour plated’ in le corbusier’s design to protect the city’s vital arteries within fully interiorized plena below the cities’ proposed primary surface. the extensive modernist interior public space networks beneath the open air roadway-sidewalk-plinth-lobby continuum of metropolitan canadian cities, in particular the +/30km villes souterraine or underground cities of montréal’s réso and toronto’s path, are both strongly interior and public. unremarkable, narrow and low with frequent changes of level, direction, dimension, finish and lighting these subsurface interiors offer the tactile, aural and olfactory stimulation of small-scale retail activity at close quarters. these subsurface assemblages reference the overhead surface condition, be it a government building, department store, bank tower, mall, hotel, etc. but while holey [á la deleuze and guattari] they are, ironically, the most easily and closely electronically-surveilled and policed spaces in these cities. michael milojevic specialises in ancient and medieval architecture and the architecture of canada. he is a regular contributor to the annual byzantine studies conference and the annual conferences of the society for the study of architecture in canada and has recently curated the travelling exhibition e+c architecture: the work of elin and carmen corneil 1958-2008 which is currently hanging at the architecture gallery, dalhousie university, halifax ca after opening at the carleton university azrieli soa ottawa and at the university of toronto daniels foald earlier this year. he has presented at a number of specialist nordic conferences including ‘the universal versus individual’: 2002 aalto research symposium at the university of jyvaskyla, the 2003 first utzon symposium at the university of aalborg and heritage at risk, docomomo moscow 2006. ancient modernists and a dark interior: junction dam and a grave dianne peacock this presentation features two structures documented and filmed by the author. the first, junction dam (1943) in the kiewa hydro-electric scheme in north east victoria is an engineered concrete buttress dam wall located in the sub-alpine australian bush. a late 19th century grave in melbourne’s st kilda cemetery is the second. the grave is capped by an elongated pyramid, an architectural form suggestive of loos’ “mound in the woods, six feet long and three feet wide, raised to a pyramidal form by means of a spade”. the grave is inhabited by a swarm of bees. scenarios of occupation of two interior spaces are generated through observation, the taking of measurements and the processes of photography and video. images are reconfigured to prompt imaginatively engaged responses; ways of seeing each structure as other than it is understood to be. from here an account of settled–in unsettling containers is offered. passages in benjamin’s arcades project relate volcanic lava to upheaval, revolution and the subsequent flowering of culture. the discovery and exhumation of herculaneum and pompeii provoked the adoption of a rediscovered style. the presentation seeks to draw these readings of burial and discovery through a discussion of the sealed but porous container of the grave and the interiority of a wall, through to the possibilities offered by interiors re-discovered and re-imagined. the presentation incorporates images and excerpts from two short videos: ancient modernists and dark register (bees). the first video depicts junction dam from a point of view suggestive of a scene more characteristically architectural than infrastructural. the second focuses on the threshold of the beehive. [1] loos, a. (1910) architektur. dianne peacock is an architect based in melbourne, australia, where she is a phd candidate in architecture and design at rmit university. her thesis spatial mystery and parallel works is undertaken through creative practice. her practice has produced exhibitions, installations and zines in addition to built and unbuilt work. dianne teaches architectural design studio and at rmit developed ‘paper, scissors, blur’, a course in collage and mixed media in architecture. she has written for architecture and art journals in australia and new zealand, including architecture australia, subaud and natural selection. in 2009 she established subplot, a melbourne based architectural practice. it operates alongside the production of writing, collage, and video works. foreign bodies, somewhat unpacked julieanna preston with stuart foster, jessica payne and wendy neale j.g. ballard’s 1966 story the drowned giant observes the process of ‘going inside’ an enormous cadaver washed ashore. over a short period of time, the body is excavated, dissected and strewn across the city as structural and ornamental elements. in april 2010, three forty-foot containers holding the somewhat different: contemporary design and the powers of convention exhibition were deposited in the parking lot adjacent to the old museum building in wellington. over the course of four days a team unloaded, unpacked and set up the exhibition. the initial thrill of touching, playing and sitting on objects made by some of the most famous designers in the world was soon clouded by the objects’ familiarity. though clever, the objects appeared dated and amongst them lingered promotion of modernist and northern european values seemingly unaware of the context, the island, on which they had just landed. instead, attention was drawn to the practical, precise, fugal and calculated designs of the crates. our presentation builds upon the coincidence of ballard’s story and the experience of unpacking this exhibition. it offers another story constructed as a visual adaptation of fictocriticism which “performs as well as problematizes the key manoeuvres of fiction and criticism… as an interplay of writing ‘positions’ and with the specific or local contexts that enable the production of these ‘positions’.”[1] the visuals factually report upon the shipping crates as if they were the body of the giant under close inspection. the crates tendered a proposition about interiority: what could live in here? [1] robb, s. (2001). fictocritical sentences. julieanna preston’s research investigates material agency within interior environments and politics in the form of site-situated installations and published essays. stuart foster explores digital modes of construction infused with traditional craft methods. he has recently launched a series of curated interactive exhibitions for the 2011 prague quadrennial. dr. jessica payne is a material responsive designer whose work confronts preconceptions of textiles. julieanna and jessica’s visual essay “hypo-matter” (2010) exemplifies their mutual concern for the power of material play to reveal meaning in the creative process. wendy neale is a furniture designer focussed on concepts of recycling and the generation of narratives by objects, often engaging in forms of trade and exchange in keeping with her own design philosophy. interiority: samoan thought and the notion of the interior lealiifano albert refiti and i’uogafa tuagalu this paper argues that the notion of the interior is highly fluid in samoan thought, traversing the concept of vā and its applications to samoan spatial practices. dichotomies of interior/exterior, inside/outside are common in architecture. it is also commonplace to regard these binaries as polar opposites, in which one term or state necessarily excludes the other. by contrast, space is a foundational concept in samoan thought. the term vā translates as space, which is conceived as relational, a space between. there are two types of vā: vā fealoaloa’i (social space) and vā tapuia (sacred/ spiritual space). in terms of interiority, these are not opposite poles of a continuum, but can be thought of as a double helix-like, intertwining series of relations: for every social vā, there are sacred underpinnings; for every sacred vā, there are social expressions/forms of that vā. there are positional and directional binaries that locate the vā in question: tai (seaward)/ uta (inland); i totonu (inside)/fafo (outside); periphery/centre. there are also tuaoi (boundaries) whose shifting and negotiated borders separate (and merge) the vā between entities. interiority, in psychological terms, takes on a different meaning in this context. the samoan self is social: the individual’s sense of self only has meaning in relationship with others. so, samoan behaviour should be determined by the actors’ understanding of their social context. interiority in samoan thought is therefore very fluid. the paper explores the spaces of the malae (village green) and the interior of the faletele (meeting house) as sites of this interior fluidity. i’uogafa tuagalu (ma hons, dip libr) has parental affiliations to the samoan villages of satuimalufilufi and tauese. he studied pacific history under dr hugh laracy at the university of auckland and has long been interested in the use of samoan concepts in the telling and understanding of history. he currently provides academic support to students at aut university. lealiifano albert refiti is a senior lecturer and a phd candidate at aut university, researching the spatial and cultural dimensions of samoan architecture. albert has a b.arch (hons) from the university of auckland and studied towards an ma in architecture at the university of westminster, u.k. he lectured at the university of auckland school of architecture and planning, unitec school of architecture and manukau school of art and design before taking up his current position. outside in / inside out: landscape, aesthetics, and architectural interiority john roberts gottfried semper argued that large indoor spaces were, historically, external spaces. vincent scully points out that classical greek temples both housed an image of the deity, and formed an image of his qualities in the landscape. semper’s notion can be extended to suggest that the conceptual roots of ancient indoor spaces may lie in landscape spatiality and the enclosure of exterior spaces. alvar aalto, hans scharoun and jørn utzon have taken landscape form and outdoor space as design resources: indoor spaces in their work can be seen as outdoor spaces enclosed with ceilings and roofs. in a more recent example in a local landscape, richard leplastrier’s 1975 palm garden house embodies ideas of landscape, architecture, ideal living, and the interweaving of cultures. david leatherbarrow notes the deep-seated presence of natural space in architecture in “space in and out of architecture” (2009). his reflections suggest the presence of a profound human feeling for the natural world, a sense which offers a radical foundation for understanding the aesthetics of architectural space. this paper considers the interplay of outdoor and indoor space in ancient architecture, in works by aalto, scharoun and utzon, and in the palm garden house. it suggests that architectural aesthetics may be closely tied to landscape aesthetics, to human empathy for natural spaces. there appears to be a surprising continuity, from ancient to recent times, of an idea that the beauty of the natural world provides a template for the aesthetics of the built world. john roberts teaches architectural design, drawing, and site studies, and supervises rhd students in the m.arch program, at the university of newcastle, nsw. he recently completed an m.phil (arch) on the role of landscape in architectural aesthetics, titled alvar aalto’s muuratsalo house, understood through jay appleton’s prospect-refuge theory. john roberts is currently researching sky, clouds, terraces and horizons as they contribute to architectural design and experience. other research interests include the chinese garden, the architecture of alvar aalto and jørn utzon, and contemporary house architecture in eastern australia. recent papers include “prospect and refuge in chinatown: landscape aesthetics in sydney’s chinese garden of friendship” and, for sahanz 2010, “clouds and sky ceilings: landscape symbolism and the architectural imagination. musings on indoor-outdoor flow kara rosemeier is indoor-outdoor flow a virtue? interchange between these spheres is – if real estate agents are to be believed – exceedingly desirable for residential dwellings in new zealand. it is facilitated with large apertures that render the building envelope transparent and almost invisible. the epitome of indoor-outdoor flow is the ability to move away a boundary to the outdoors completely – ranch sliders are the preferred architectural solution – thereby turning the home functionally into a cave, while seemingly extending the living quarters with an annexation of the outdoors. often overlooked in this conception is the fact that an only notional circumference utterly fails as a semi-permeable membrane, allowing the resulting appropriation to be bidirectional: weather and creatures can go with the flow, too! indoor-outdoor flow is very much a new zealand calling, and thus has to be classified in a new zealand context. this paper explores the drivers of the desire to surrender containment, and its obvious trade-offs like loss of privacy and comfort, intrusion by contaminants, insects and rodents, and other forms of leakiness. it will take into account the heroisms of “roughing it”, the myth of living in a winterless climate, the narrative of new zealanders as outdoorsy people, comparing this with the notion of “my home is my castle”. also put into the mix is the elevation of nature as a respected, noble antagonist: are we at battle with nature, or in its bosom? does this all fit together somehow, or are new zealanders’ aspirations for their abodes in need of being turned inside-out? kara rosemeier, dipl. ing. (architecture), mplanprac(hons), is a phd candidate in the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland and part time lecturer in the architecture programme at unitec (auckland). her thesis evaluates parameter of indoor environmental quality, and the relation between ventilation strategies and indoor air quality. she has been managing director of a company specialised in energy efficient buildings; advisor to a german federal state regarding energy efficiency in the building sector; lecturer at germany and new zealand universities; and seminar provider for builders and architects. her research has been published widely. she moved to new zealand permanently in january 2005. inscapes: interiority in architectural fiction stefanie sobelle the term ‘inscape’ can be used to describe the realm of the interior in opposition to a surrounding exterior landscape. the paper will discuss these architectural inscapes as they are presented in fiction, under the premise that a novel is another container inhabited, challenged, and subverted. writers have long portrayed houses as haunted and penetrable. in william faulkner’s absalom, absalom!, houses are not capable of sheltering their inhabitants but become characters themselves. as faulkner imagines the complexities of domestic space, both novel and home become volatile, uncertain constructions rather than sources of refuge. for faulkner, any merging of inside and outside is threatening and dystopic. such literary unhomeliness is exacerbated in the late twentieth-century when the theoretical discourses informing literature became progressively intertwined with those of architecture. the houses of architect peter eisenman, for example, aim to complicate the relationship between inhabitants and structures, mirroring the textual constructions of postmodern novelists, such as don delillo’s. for delillo, interior space is a frontier of exploration into the future of the novel. the meeting points between literature and architecture provide new perspectives and lead to an evocative sub-genre, which privileges domestic architecture as an organizing principle for narrative construction and explores the aesthetic and political implications behind the arrangement of inhabited space. i will discuss the treatment of architecture by several writers who treated the book as a physical structure in which we dwell – with its own interior and exterior. new literary forms give way to new textual spaces, spaces that become sites of protest and possibility. dr. stefanie sobelle received her phd in english and comparative literature at columbia university (new york), where she taught a course on space in the american literary imagination. she has also taught courses at the cooper union and sarah lawrence college in new york, and at gettysburg college in pennsylvania, where she is currently an assistant professor of american literature. she has published in bomb, bookforum, and the financial times and her essay “the architectural fiction of alain robbe-grillet and georges perec” is forthcoming in writing the modern city: perspectives on literature, architecture, and modernity (routledge, 2011). she is working on a book, the architectural novel: postmodernism’s literary construction sites. crystal capital: the business of university building sean sturm and stephen turner for peter sloterdijk, the crystal palace expressed the “global inner space (weltinnenraum) of capital”. what is disclosed in the enclosure of the splendid university of auckland owen g. glenn business school building is the pantheistic affect of transnational or “transcendental” capital. the architecture of this glasshouse is transcendental, a negative monumentality, affording a crystal palace-like sense of transparency, lightness, flotation, vacuum. its pantheistic affect is generated by three main features: generous atria, curved rather than rectilinear surfaces, and the use of glass as prima materia. this is the negative theology of neo-liberal gothic, now aspiring outward to all places, rather than upward to heaven. neo-liberal gothic aims both to immaterialize and interiorize, to capture a positive void of investment space for transcendental capital. the glass and steel exterior displays the transparency and integrity of its inner processes, practices and products. today the university is business. however, the design-drive of transcendental capital makes human fallibility an excrescence. all the machinery of education is screened out; the all-but-translucent architecture is mirrored in the apparent transparency of its processes, practices and products. education approximates to thaumaturgy. the human scale is discounted, via amplification and wireless connection, in favour of the telematic and the telemetric. the danger of this disclosure of the one space of the transcendental university, a space that grows in us and in which we grow as teachers and learners, is that it closes out the many human foibles by which education flourishes: just talking, being idle, sharing, charity, invention. dr. stephen turner teaches in the departments of english and of film, television and media studies at the university of auckland. dr. sean sturm teaches writing at the university of auckland and at the manukau institute of technology. stephen and sean research postcolonial and writing studies. stephen has published essays on settlement and indigeneity in local and international journals and anthologies. sean has published essays on settler literature in local and international journals. they are working together on a book about teaching writing in the university. at bottom, their research interests are united by a concern with pedagogy, with the education of writers in the classroom and of good citizens in the national arena. fourth wall removed: womens’ liberation or entrapment? kirsty volz 1950-1960s australian dramatic literature heralded a new wave which canonised a unique australian identity on local and international stages. the suburban home provided the back drop for this post-war evolution. little has been written about how the spatial context may have influenced this movement, as australian playwrights transcended the outback hero by relocating him inside the post-war home. 1960s mass produced homes subscribed to a new aesthetic of continuous living spaces extending from the exterior to the interior. they employed spatial principles of houses designed by le corbusier, mies van der rohe and loos. writing about loos’ architecture, beatriz colomina described the “house as a stage for the family theatre” which involved “both actors and spectators of the family scene” [1]. audiences were also accustomed to being spectators of domesticity and could relate to the representations of home in the theatre. additionally, the domestic setting provided a space for gender discourse; a space in which contestations of masculine and feminine identities could be played out. this paper investigates whether spectating within the domestic setting contributed to the revolution in australian dramatic literature of the 1950s and 1960s. the concept of the spectator in domesticity is underpinned by beatriz colomina and mark wigley’s writings. interviews and biographical research contribute to an understanding of how playwrights may have been influenced by spectatorship within the home, exploring the playwright’s own domestic experiences and seeking to determine whether seeing into the home played a vital role in canonising the australian identity on the stage. [1] colomina, b. (1992) the split wall: domestic voyeurism. in sexuality and space. kirsty volz is a master of architecture student at the queensland university of technology. while having worked in both architecture and interior design for a number of years, kirsty has also worked with theatre companies in set and production design. having experienced the tension that often exists between the designer and the dramatist she developed an interest in the relationship between architecture and the theatre. kirsty currently works as a tutor in architecture and interior design studios as well as running a collaborative studio in theatre production design. notes we gratefully acknowledge receipt of the university of auckland distinguished visitor’s award, as well as the contributions to professor david leatherbarrow’s airfares made by the universities of melbourne and tasmania, vuw and aut university. our thanks to all who have generously contributed advice and time: arlette galich, azadeh emadi, belinda robinson, benita kumar simati, christopher titford, desna jury, divya purushotham, elizabeth tjahjana, hana hong, jessica mentis, judy cockeram, julia gatley, mark jackson, megan ritchie, natalie guy, rachel ruckstuhl-mann, rameka tuinukuafe, ross collinson, sarah treadwell, sharee martin, tracey holdsworth and others. david leatherbarrow: green line café in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 20 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s a. -chr. engels-schwarzpaul peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently introduction at the beginning of spatial struggle is separation: a perception of what is in, or outside, one’s body, one’s house, intimate group, kin, neighbourhood, and polity. we all have vague or even detailed ideas of that separation—but that this we performs the very separation we imagine often goes unnoticed.1 for instance, we tend to associate a territory with a nation state and a homogenous population, while a periphery appears to lack connection and substance. thus, aotearoa new zealand was for some time peripheral to a colonial centre in the atlantic world, from where non-western worlds were attributed “congenital and even delinquent peripherality” (said, 1994: 317). then as now, metropolitan centrality relied on urbanisation and industrialisation, involving “massive and multifarious movements, migration and transfer of people” (geyer & bright, 1995: 157). ignoring this history has contributed to xenophobia in western societies, and—together with prejudices grounded in religion and scientific racism—eventually led to events like the 2019 christchurch and halle terror attacks. yet, supposedly homogenous nations have always resembled “archipelago[s] of small islands” more than coherent land-masses; today, those sharing a territory are mostly “fated to coexist” (hobsbawm, 1992: 157). many societies find this a difficult challenge after forty years of global neoliberal politics. natural catastrophes and violent conflicts have displaced an estimated 92.8 million people worldwide (pladson, 2019; suliman et al., 2019; unhcr, 2019), while marginalised groups in the developed world fear globalisation for its impact on the “existential frailty and precariousness of their social standing and prospects”, and migration for “yet more competition on the labour market” and diminishing chances for improvement (bauman, 2016). if architecture is “thinking applied to the space […] we inhabit” (biennale di venezia, 2017), then these issues are deeply relevant for architecture. they concern freedom, because “freedom of movement is historically the oldest and also the most elementary”, but also a certain free space that is necessary to establish a world where many voices tell the “events and stories that develop into history” (arendt, 1955: 9). against this backdrop, this paper explores the politics of place and mobility, 21 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 exemplified by one site each in the mediterranean and the pacific, to raise an urgent contemporary question: how can a balance be found between the freedom of movement, on the one hand, and the protection of indigenous land rights and self-determination, on the other? sovereign borders in settler societies, in particular, populist demands for sovereign borders are beset by internal contradictions. for example, the very nation conducting operation sovereign borders and deporting immigrants to extraterritorial camps, namely australia, owes its sovereignty and territorial control to a violent land appropriation still contested by aboriginal australians and torres strait islanders (chambers, 2015: 412). the settlers, who, by a cruel irony, themselves arrived by ship, had no claim to citizenship under the legal fictions of jus solis (citizenship by birth) or jus sanguinis (citizenship by bloodline)—by which they now deny refugees entry. rather, their rights, under the now universal kantian principles (first published in 1795), would have been those of all citizens of the world, namely “restricted to conditions of universal hospitality”, the mere right to visit (kant, 1897: 115). today, australia’s national presence in the pacific demonstrates the paradox of the nation, which “makes nativity or birth (that is, of the bare human life) the foundation of its own sovereignty” (agamben, 1995: 116). this dilemma was exasperated by the initial denial of citizenship precisely to those who were born on australian territory. australia also demonstrates a connection between “the cruelty of a policy that interns refugees in hellish pacific-island camps” and devastating, authoritarian environmental politics: protesters against the causes of bushfires (which environmentally impacted the pacific region) “face up to 21 years in jail for demonstrating” (flanagan, 2020). in the longer term, mass migration from europe to the colonies (not only to australia, of course) caused counter currents.2 paradoxically, the migrants from the peripheries are perceived as the avant-garde of ominous global forces at their destination and remind locals “irritatingly, infuriatingly and horrifyingly, of the (incurable?) vulnerability of [their] own position and of the endemic fragility of [their] hard-won well-being” (bauman, 2016). and so, border patrols (sometimes calling themselves “hunters”, agier, 2016: 5), operate camps and detention centres, at the us-mexican wall, on the mediterranean and in the pacific, filtering friends from enemies.3 border walls indicate failures across zones of “in-between, exception and uncertainty” (agier, 2016: 36), where relationships are articulated and negotiated. normally, such negotiations institute individuals’ places in relation to their environment and produce varying constellations of inside-in-relation-to-outside, inscribing “a given collective, a ‘group’ or ‘community’ of humans in the social” (agier, 2016: 18) and establishing relationships with others. walls, like other non-negotiable lines of inand exclusion, are intended to bring these negotiation processes to an end. michel agier argues that the “obsession with borders” is really the obsession with identity, producing a “desire for walls” (2016: 17) and cements identity-based distinctions and discriminations. for populations bearing the brunt of neoliberal politics, collective experiences of feeling insulted, ignored, or humiliated can erode self-worth and increase vulnerability. they may compensate by asserting a special, superior identity which is, by definition, “closed to others” 22 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 (mazlish, 1999: 25). thus, western identitarians use white identity to vindicate exclusion and remigration of non-white migrants.4 in aotearoa new zealand, the mythical unity and purity of a european people served to justify the terrorist attacks on the al noor mosque and linwood islamic centre in christchurch.5 the terrorist’s argument is absurdly twisted: the european culture he wanted to defend was imported to aotearoa—and chronically operates in breach of the treaty between māori tangata whenua (people of the land) and the british crown. the “massive [nineteenthand twentieth-century] out-migration of europeans to the americas, north and south, and in lesser numbers, to africa, asia, and oceania” not only “sealed off ‘native’ populations in enclaves or compartments” (geyer & bright, 1995: 1055), but created political boundaries that led, more or less directly, to today’s “push factors” of migration (casas-cortes & cobarrubias, 2019). furthermore, while ethnic identity movements may often be “reactions of weakness and fear, attempts to erect barricades to keep at bay the forces of the modern world” (hobsbawm, 1992: 170), these responses are structurally and substantially different in different constellations.6 specifically, the respective prevalence of individual and collective aspects of identity may well play a crucial role in border negotiations. liberal and neo-liberal thought is “blind to the political because of its individualism” (mouffe, 2013), which leaves scant room for plural identities and connections with the natural world that still prevail in large parts of the globe. yet, grasping worldly reality from a single perspective is impossible: if someone wants to see and experience the world as it ‘really’ is, he can do so only by understanding it as something that is shared by many people, lies between them, separates and links them, showing itself differently to each and comprehensible only to the extent that many people can talk about it and exchange their opinions and perspectives with one another, over against one another. (arendt, 2005: 129) relational conversations also facilitate collective identifications across different positions and temporalities. crucially, not everyone can talk to everyone else at all times, and conversations at the centre often differ from those at the peripheries: what can be talked about in each case depends also on the conceptual apparatus available. recall said’s (1994: 317) above argument that the atlantic world once seemed central and that “congenital and even delinquent peripherality [was assigned] to non-western regions”. such attribution of stable power to territory, and diminishing power and significance to periphery, is typical of imperial practices. today, we cannot afford to perpetuate assumptions of western superiority; we need adequate concepts for a multi-centred, globalised world. the etymological relationship of the german word for territory with the cultivated earth around a settlement (pfeifer, 1993) might provide clues; or the surprising association of periphery with movement (peripheria, “carrying around”, from peripherēs, “rounded, moving round, revolving”, see periphery (n.), in harper, 2001-2017). then, relationships between regional centres can emerge—across space, through “ocean and deserts”—creating “zones of transition” to neighbouring and distant others (geyer & bright, 1995: 1045). in the pacific, epeli hau‘ofa (2008) has vividly described how polynesian peoples traditionally built and sustained vast relational networks between multiple centres; for millennia before colonisation, 23 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 the ocean was their highway in a “sea of islands”. elsewhere, regional autonomies, “maintained by spatial distantiation and linked by specialized mediators and interlopers, organized the world at least until the middle of the nineteenth century” (geyer & bright, 1995: 1045). each part of this world was in relationship with others, but the connections looked different from every vantage point (1047). transitional zones have shrunk significantly. first, colonialism brought massive waves of european migrants to the colonies; then, the industrial metropoles (built with colonial resources and labour) received immigrants as recruited labour migrants or as part of the “boomerang effect of imperialism” (arendt, 1950: 155).7 in the process, “the gaps between the west and the rest, once established by distance” morphed into transnational exchange channels, along which “migrants move back and forth across borders” (geyer & bright, 1995: 1056). regional migration also affects settler societies, so that aotearoa new zealand residents, for instance, are increasingly born overseas (25% in 2013, 40% in auckland). the country is the fifth most ethnically diverse in the oecd (nz on air & research new zealand, 2018), with visible and firmly established diaspora cultures. globally, the “basic human condition” seems to be returning as mass migration— under industrialised and environmentally precarious conditions (mazlish, 1999: 23). to think in terms of national identities, bounded to territories by sovereign borders, has become utterly inadequate; a global consciousness of “relationships of interdependence and overlapping” (said, 2005a) is no longer just a conceptual possibility, but an experience shared by the millions traversing borders, too often forced by violence and catastrophe. catastrophe like the imperial boomerang effect, catastrophes in the human world can be an effect of human fabrications striking back (arendt, 2005: 107).8 some, though, are not simply misfortunes but turning points: impactful reversals of expected trajectories and unanticipated unfoldings. the two catastrophic scenes i want to present here both changed direction during the drafting of this paper. the first is cara di mineo, a camp in italy that—as part of europe’s extended system of sovereign borders—processes refugees. the second is ihumātao, a māori ancestral landscape south of tāmaki makaurau (auckland) and the scene of occupation since 2016. on both sites, opposite movements of keeping-in and keeping-out converged in attempts to deal with, but also to evade, the consequences of earlier histories. at its peak, cara di mineo in catania province (sicily), one of the largest migrant reception centres in europe, housed over 4,000 migrants in facilities designed for 2,000 (garelli, 2015). the name reflects an italian discourse of hospitality (debono, 2019): cara stands for centro di accoglienza per richiedenti asilo, and accoglienza means welcome or reception. yet, it was established in 2011 to curb the “human tsumani” (silvio berlusconi) from north africa, and to keep (most) migrants out of europe. the italian civil protection, in its north africa emergency plan, presumed not that “the body of the refugee” was vulnerable first and foremost, but that italy was at risk from “the refugee influx” (garelli & tazzioli, 2013: 1008). the policy developed a “precise formula for spreading the refugee influx over the vulnerable body of the nation” but little to assist the 24 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 refugees (1009). the “territorial border workers” (debono, 2019: 351) receiving the migrants too often practice a “plastic hospitality” that masks europe’s implication in the push factors driving migration. it renders hospitality as cosmopolitan, paternalistic and voluntaristic benevolence: “by definition, the guest can never be the one dictating” (debono, 2019: 351). by contrast, ahmed, a refugee from sudan, appeals to something much closer to pre-modern traditions of european hospitality (murphy, 1965: 13, 42): “what kind of hospitality is this? where i come from, guests are treated well, they are given the best seats at table. but […] i have to beg for closed shoes because i feel cold with these flip flops” (debono, 2019: 340). the guests at cara di mineo lived in 404 pink-and-orange houses, with front davide mauro, wikimedia commons (2017). cara di mineo [photograph] and back yards. idyllic looking from a distance, they were overcrowded and under intense surveillance. as in other refugee camps, migrants were reduced to mere bodies (luhmann, 2013: 26) or “bare life” (agamben, 1995) and made to spend their lives waiting, their indeterminate status stretching out indefinitely. in circumstances where everyone creates a place of their own in a new situation, stable identities dissolve and new communities emerge—if only momentarily (agier, 2016: 154). this condition, which hannah arendt knew from experience, can be exemplary for a “new historical consciousness” (agamben, 1995: 114): refugees, having lost all rights, yet unwilling to assimilate at all cost, gain “one priceless advantage: history is no longer a closed book to them”; “expelled from one country to the next [they] represent the avant-garde of their people” (arendt, 1994: 119). arendt, for whom politics is an art in which subjectivity arises through the performance of deeds (1998: 206), draws attention to the power of “moments of initiation” and unexpected new beginnings: when cara di mineo residents joined locals in demonstrations in the streets of the nearby port of catania, claiming space and rights, they and their allies “created davide mauro, wikimedia commons (2017). a closer view of cara di mineo [photograph] 25 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 relational spaces of freedom […] where none existed before” (beltrán, 2009: 3). in these moments, a momentary space of appearance arose, in which those reduced to “bare life” (agamben, 1995), as new emerging subjectivities, regained initiative to influence their place in the world (agier, 2016: 18). residents in catania (where 100,000 rescued migrants went ashore in 2014 alone) were “largely sympathetic to the migrants’ plight”, remembering sicily’s own history of poverty driven emigration (williams, 2015). conversely, descriptions of the camp’s operations are a chilling read. mafia boss salvatore buzzi remarked that “[d]rug trafficking is less profitable” (in garelli, 2015: 109)—unsurprisingly, several managers were charged with embezzlement of public funding in the mafia capitale scandal.9 in july 2019, using the violent operations of mafia capitale and associated nigerian gangs in mineo as pretext, far-right minister, matteo salvini announced the camp’s closure—returning sicilian territory, in his words, “to sicilian citizens” (paynter, 2019).10 a return of territory was also the goal of the soul (save our unique landscape)led occupation of ihumātao, a māori ancestral landscape south of tāmaki makaurau (auckland), in aotearoa new zealand. another commonality between the two antipodean sites is the institution of new beginnings. in july 2019, when police moved in to evict, one might have felt reminded of operation sovereign borders were it not for the different directions of these forces: offshore detention centres are to keep migrants outside of territorial borders, so that, inside, “the life of trade may continue to grow, accelerate, and intensify, with as little impedance as is possible” (chambers, 2015: 432). the role of police at ihumātao, by contrast, was to remove tangata whenua (local people) and their supporters from the territory, so that international capital could operate undisturbed (mccreanor, hancock, & short, 2018: 147). the term territory may, however, be ill-fitting: until ihumātao was confiscated, its relationship with auckland was neither territorial nor peripheral, even though tangata whenua in the 1850s cultivated the land to supply auckland settlers; there were different forces at play. hiruka komunikazio-taldea (2018). expanding borders demonstration, catania [photograph, flickr.com/ photos/hirukaeus/29716416658/in/ album-72157698946704594/] 26 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 in a nutshell, ihumātao belongs to the oldest continuous human settlement in the area, dating back about 800 years. it is tūrangawaewae (place where one belongs, with a right to stand and speak) for several groups who were evicted by colonial troops during the 1863 waikato invasion. the crown confiscated the land in 1865 under the new zealand settlements act 1863 and granted it to a settler in 1867 (waitangi tribunal—te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi, 1985). in 2014, his descendants sold ihumātao to fletcher residential ltd, conditional on a re-zoning as a special housing area—a scheme created in response to auckland’s affordable housing shortage.11 soul intends to preserve public access to the land as a heritage site. as the controversy unfolded, it became obvious how the original violent dispossession is everything but a dead fact, and how current business, local, and government politics repeat colonial patterns: misinformation, duplicitous dealings, and threats. it also revealed the weakness of government vis à vis the demands of (national and international) capital.12 indeed, it articulated “the tensions, irresolutions, and contradictions in the overlapping territories” that said identified as consequences of imperialism (1994: 332).13 the notion of overlapping territories seems crucial here, yet western imaginations of territory and periphery simplistically presume unambiguous and unequal relationships. there is no space here to explore this dilemma adequately; suffice it to say that, before the introduction of “inflexible boundaries” through anglo-settler courts, relationships in aotearoa were regulated by an intricate system of “layered and overlapping whanau, hapu, and iwi rights” (waitangi tribunal te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi, 2009: 107), in which iwi and hapū (extended kinship groups) negotiated land rights—be they in perpetuity, or temporal occupational or usufructuary rights (197).14 however, even those sophisticated protocols could not satisfactorily regulate relationships after ihumātao’s misappropriation through the crown. intense overcrowding—compressing “two iwi and several hapū into two marae” (taonui, 2019c)—overstressed already complex webs of mutual rights and obligations. eventually, both council officials and fletcher ended up consulting with the wrong people and ignoring others, and misleading media reporting replicated an erroneous comment by a former minister, that he had signed a 2014 treaty settlement including ihumātao (taonui, 2019b).15 power and place work differently in te ao māori (the māori world). mana (power), for instance, is fundamentally reciprocal (mika, 2017). mana whenua (power relating to land) both derives from the land and obligates its holders to care for the well-being of everything there. thus, significant differences exist between whenua and the instrumental conceptions of land underlying fletcher’s, local council’s, and the new zealand government’s strategies. mana tangata (power relating to people) “recognises and validates the overlapping kin rights possessed by different hapu and iwi over certain lands” (waitangi tribunal—te rōpū tuputau lelaulu (2020). kaitiaki (guardians) and protectors karanga (call) towards tūpuna maunga (ancestral mountain) puketaapapatanaga-a-hape during day seven of the reclamation [photograph] 27 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi, 2009: 87). for māori, people and land as taonga (a kin group’s treasures)16 belong to each other in various ways—in contrast to colonial and neo-colonial systems, where people own land and relationships between land and people are regulated through exclusive possession and capitalist exchange. the occupation at ihumātao has brought into focus questions about the relationship between tūrangawaewae and mana whenua under the conditions caused by confiscation and subsequent, ongoing treaty breaches. however, as public discussion has amply demonstrated, māori tikanga facilitates the confrontation of hoariri (angry friends) over diverging positions. this is one crucial difference between ihumātao and cara di mineo: at the refugee centre, a faceto-face encounter of the two sides of hosts and guests, to put it euphemistically, was difficult even to imagine. tuputau lelaulu (2020). police defensive forces encroach upon kaitiaki sleeping quarters, two days after kaitiaki and whānau (extended family) were evicted from their whenua [photograph] another difference concerns the relationship to territory: fortress europe, with its deep pockets of processing centres, relies on exclusive access rights (and their defence through borders), even at the cost of human life and human rights violations. at ihumātao, two contrasting forms of relationship clash—one based on exclusive property rights consistent with an extractive, individualistic world view, the other claiming self-determination of a collective (though still allowing public access) consistent with historical precedent, current plural identities and a reciprocal relationship to land. the first approach resembles the establishment of non-negotiable border lines in that it tends to end negotiations as soon as possible. the second approach aims at indefinite negotiations based on reciprocity. these sets of relationships rely on very different forms of identity. they produce different understandings of we (e.g., matteo calvini’s versus soul’s) and thereby different filters through which to conceive the world. cosmopolitanisms with some re-rigging of terms, the occupation at ihumātao fits with agier’s observation that territorial struggles are about “opposite legitimacies” between “an 28 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 open world versus protection, or national sovereignty versus cosmopolitism” (2016: 6). to begin with, the state protected international capitalist interests in real estate at ihumātao—this type of cosmopolitanism was put back on the agenda by neo-liberal globalisation (2016: 155). however, there are other forms of western cosmopolitanism that focus on practical morality and global justice (e.g., nussbaum, 2019), or human rights and cosmopolitan ethics and politics (e.g., benhabib, 2006). they recognise, after kant, a “common possession of the surface of the earth”, on which humans cannot spread indefinitely “but must finally endure living near one another” (1897: 115). in his seminal text, “eternal peace”, kant laid out the conditions for peaceful cohabitation: in a world approaching “a state of world-citizenship”, people must have visiting rights, which include the right not to be treated with hostility or to be expelled if that could cause destruction. however, guest rights depend on the “degree of social intercourse with the old inhabitants” (115).17 since kant, competing forms of cosmopolitanism claim to respect global plurality, yet many foreground a (eurocentric) universalism.18 martha nussbaum, for instance, identifies some flaws of classical cosmopolitanism, like the omission of a duty of material aid (2019: 5) or problematic aspects of kantian personhood (2002-3).19 her proposed alternative, the capability approach, nevertheless centres on a list of capabilities that takes their (unacknowledged) western basis as universal and ignores contextual particularity (charusheela, 2008; menon, 2002). it also disregards alternative, sophisticated models of rights, like the laws granting legal personhood to land, mountains, or rivers in aotearoa (winter, 2019) or bolivia and ecuador (mignolo, 2011). nussbaum overlooks that “globality has always been organized [and articulated] locally, in one place after the other, according to particular circumstances and conditions” (geyer & bright, 1995: 1057). that most western intellectuals took this unacknowledged eurocentric basis for granted, and lacked interest in the objections of their colleagues from the global south,20 did not help the reception of cosmopolitanism outside the west—nor that its reinvigoration ran parallel with the neoliberal advocacy of globalisation (mignolo, 2011: 13). hannah arendt and chantal mouffe offer alternative versions of cosmopolitanism—that is, of politics as active engagement with differentiated perspectives and positions, involving particular kinds of space. arendt, in contrast to nussbaum, was concerned that kant’s moral imperatives are based on a single truth and cannot take account of the plurality and embeddedness of human life. nevertheless, she discovered plurality in his work on aesthetic judgement, where he first “consider[ed] men in the plural, as living in a community” (arendt, 2003: 1420). their in-between, as she calls it, first makes worldly reality possible. the in-between is bounded, yet its borders are constantly reconsidered from positions that are open to all sides and from standpoints that can be (ex) changed. training one’s imagination to go visiting across borders is part of a politics that includes many perspectives and opinions. by strengthening, but also constantly transforming, identity and plurality, it changes the world (herzog, 2004). whenever the power of people to act and speak together is actualised, a space of appearance arises from infinitely complex, “intersecting and interfering intentions and purposes” (arendt, 1955: 147)—as long as words are used “to disclose realities”, and deeds “to establish relations and create new realities” (1998: 199-200).21 action, operating on the world, creates relationships—of which each 29 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 enters “a web of ties”, triggers new links, and changes “the constellation of existing relationships” (2005: 186-7). mouffe argues that arendt, despite her emphasis on political plurality and difference, fails to acknowledge plurality as a source of antagonistic conflict. the consensus by persuasion producing public space has hegemonic traces and at some point inevitably leads to antagonism (mouffe, 2013: 15), often fuelled by collective identities. hence, no understanding of democratic politics is possible without “acknowledging ‘passions’ as the driving force in the political field” (13). in fact, us/them distinctions are constitutive of politics—in question are their compatibility with pluralism and the recognition of conflicts arising from pluralism. it is crucial that: the others are not seen as enemies to be destroyed, but as adversaries whose ideas might be fought, even fiercely, but whose right to defend those ideas is not to be questioned. to put it in another way, what is important is that conflict does not take the form of an ‘antagonism’ (struggle between enemies) but the form of an ‘agonism’ (struggle between adversaries). (14) this corresponds to the conceptual underpinnings of the māori notion of hoariri, as someone with whom one fights but “whose mana in defending their position is respected” (hoskins, 2012: 94). every political act involves a moment of decision, the “determination of a space of inclusion/exclusion” (mouffe, 2013)—and this is what mouffe thinks arendt overlooks, thereby failing to recognise a necessary closure and to address thorny questions about the conditions of radical democracy. in mouffe’s view, cosmopolitan approaches generally postulate “the availability of a world beyond hegemony and beyond sovereignty” and consequently negate conflict and antagonism. if the political is always concerned with the formation of collective identities (every identity is relational, every “us” requires an opposing “them”, mouffe, 2013), politics must include a degree of antagonism: “consensus around one single model eliminates the possibility of legitimate dissent, thereby creating a favourable terrain for the emergence of violent forms of antagonisms”. however, mouffe notes new types of cosmopolitans that recognise the realities of power and foster political solidarities, bringing “cosmopolitanism down to earth” (mouffe, 2013). walter mignolo, for instance, urges that cosmo-politics must be geopolitically diversal and pluricentric and connect the former peripheries from below: if you can imagine western civilization as a large circle with a series of satellite circles intersecting the larger one but disconnected from each other, diversality will be the project that connects the diverse subaltern satellites appropriating and transforming western global designs. (2000: 765) no longer will territory and periphery be organised in relation to a single centre; rather, the movements circling the peripheries, and traversing overlaps with the territories of other centres, become discernible. in māori thinking, this is not unusual or novel, as we know from waitangi tribunal reports (2002, 2009) describing overlapping regimes of simultaneous usages, rights, and obligations by different groups. agier explores an ordinary cosmopolitan condition “born in border situations” 30 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 (2016: 137), arising de facto, without intent, from the uncertain relationships and in-between spaces of the borderland. it intersects with “the debate on cosmopolitism and cosmopolitics” (8), yet the contestation here is not about global integration generally, but about who determines the terms and conditions (geyer & bright, 1995: 1058). another cosmo-politics is born in occupied or settled territories, where people exist “between the old empire and the new state”, with the tensions and irresolutions caused by imperialism layered onto already overlapping territories (said, 1994: 332). all these writers (including arendt, mouffe, mignolo and agier) are still oriented by or against a western perspective. comparisons with local, indigenous perspectives and decolonial approaches are required that offer conceptions of plural, relational, and embedded identities, cognisant of the realities of power and the importance of political solidarity. the remainder of the paper explores some implications of this situation. common worlds if globalisation, climate change, and mass migration extinguish the transitional zones on the earth’s surface, and if personal and collective identities need some form of territorial base (mazlish, 1999: 22), our global challenge is to imagine the world differently. respecting already existing home-lands, we need to create new, non-exclusive, locally specific, and reciprocal relational spaces. if there are to be common worlds, they will not be found ready-made but have to be built from multiple existing and anticipated ones (latour, 2004: 455). overlapping territories and interdependent relationships not only exist factually but offer a useful metaphor for thinking about a world in common. climate change currently creates a greater and more inclusive sense of urgency to understand local and global relations in a shared world. when the “great oceans were opened up” by and for europeans (schmitt quoted in chakrabarty, 2015: 150), europe’s (previously land-based) division and distribution of space changed. a desire to know and to master led to the expropriation of land and sea, and to the subjugation of indigenous peoples. exploration of the ocean, however, does not have to take this path. polynesians, who crossed the pacific on their waka centuries before the europeans, retained in their cosmologies connections to sea and land that function very differently from the political and spatial boundaries “carved out in europe from the seventeenth century” (waitangi tribunal te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi, 1999: 133-4). these latter, though, were subsequently imposed on colonial territories. the re-negotiations of a common world at ihumatāo are thus also about the rejection of an alien, simplistic spatial order, which cannot adequately reflect complex changing spatial relationships over time. more generally, a greater “awareness that we are not always in practical and/or aesthetic relationship with this place where we find ourselves” (chakrabarty, 2015: tuputau lelaulu (2020). after seven days behind police borders, kaitiaki and protectors gain access to their whenua, where they join in karakia (prayer) and waiata (song) [photograph 31 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 183) is required to curb indifference, alienation, and homelessness. the occupation/reclamation at ihumātao is also an attempt at prising open a public space of freedom, an active, agonistic, and relational border space arising out of confrontations about indigeneity. debates about definitions, lineages, and formations (the emplacements and displacements agier refers to) highlight questions about how cosmo-politics might accommodate all people on the surface of the earth. the new zealand human rights commission (2019: 6)22 recommends strengthening mana whenua and continuing the 26 july 2019 halt on construction to create space for negotiation. it recognises that ihumātao can be “a turning point for the protection of indigenous rights in aotearoa new zealand” and “a real opportunity to move the nation forward” on a new trajectory. many have observed manaakitanga (hospitality) during the occupation at ihumātao: looking after participants and visitors took place beyond monetary concerns. by all accounts, the occupation also generated extensions of personal and collective identity through whakapapa (genealogy, lineage), whanaungatanga (relationships), utu (reciprocity), and reciprocal connections with papatūānuku (the earth, the natural world, see mika, 2016 for a more complex discussion)—that is, “between people (past, present and future generations)” and natural resources (new zealand human rights commission, 2019: 10). another outstanding feature was the acceptance and cultivation of plurality: difference featured as strength rather than weakness. not surprisingly, the occupation was supported by many different ethnic, political, and cultural groups, who often recognised not just a particular injustice but the systemic failure of a neo-colonial, neo-liberal society. tuputau lelaulu (2020). waves of protectors meet the boundary demarcated by police officers. protectors join in waiata as they show their support for the whānau of ihumātao [photograph] both cara di mineo and ihumātao can help identify blind spots in western societies and develop new imaginations.23 the migrants moving towards europe’s borders are in “places of encounter, crossing and conflict”, where a cosmopolitan reality takes shape (agier, 2016: 156). there, relationships “require unprecedented translations and exchanges” through which the border can regain its “fundamental role as a space, time and ritual of relationship” (156). european 32 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 locals’ engagement with alterity, their participation as official or volunteer border workers in these relationships, decides not only individual migrants’ fates but that of a common world. if “global foreigner[s], invisible and phantom-like” (156) transform into persons to whom we relate in spatio-temporal continuity, their perspectives may disturb the prevailing consensus and help us to see our world in new ways. in a different local constellation, māori have already dealt with displacement in their own country and developed survival strategies. pre-colonial māori communities did not rely on dividing boundaries but on whakapapa (genealogical ties), and their organising principle was not exclusivity but association. the determination of “dividing lines was usually a matter of last resort” (waitangi tribunal—te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi, 1999: 131).24 in recreating local worlds after colonisation, māori shared with other colonised peoples selective patterns of collaboration and resistance. at times, they appropriated the colonisers’ ways to their own ends, “creating in the process a more integrated world”, though not “as western imperialists had intended” (geyer & bright, 1995: 1049). throughout those transitions, they retained a common ground in which “the individual is understood as integrally woven into a collective fabric based on whakapapa (kinship) and relationships” (thornley, ball, signal, lawson-te aho, & rawson, 2015: 30) including “trees, rocks, birds, reptiles, fish, animals or human beings” (salmond, 2003: 244). kinship of this sort includes environmentally responsible relating—in imagining, planning, and action.25 within such relationality, space is neither clearly delimited nor definitely limited, and the possibility of a different, more generative, and energetic way of imagining space opens up. with space no longer perceived as a finite, contested resource, migrants no longer have to be experienced as a threat and can instead help cultivate a shared territory, bringing with them new knowledge, or wisdom the locals may or may not have lost sight of. indigenous and land-based traditions across the globe (including some pre-modern or minor european ones and some alternative modernities) share approaches to land, people, and the entire cosmos that have been forgotten in dominant western thinking. arendt provides a hint at the possible recovery of forgotten european traditions; for her, the meaning of past events “remains potentially alive in the reproductive imagination” and can be activated, shared, and experienced vicariously, revealing the “past’s presence in the world” (kohn, 2005: xii). thus, the inspiration pacific people can provide might help europeans to retrieve aspects of their own history that diverge from currently prevailing versions of western thinking. andrew benjamin argues that the latter’s “founding form of singularity” leaves forms of primary plural relations unthought (2015: 1). yet, relationality is not a lost possibility, for through the “almost archaic presence” (2) of an original mode of existence, “being-in-common […] and being-in-place” (219) can be recovered. simultaneously, the recognition of the social (non-natural) foundations of borders, as a condition of being in the world, is as crucial as the “reciprocal recognition of self and others” (agier, 2016: 16). only in relationships do self and other, us and them, arise; politics is established between people, in the “back-and-forth of exchanged speech”, in the “space in which everything else that takes place is first created and then sustained. what in political language is called a ‘breakdown in relations’ is the abandonment of that in-between space” (arendt, 2005: 193). even if both cara di mineo and ihumātao result from a mixture of politics 33 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 serving a (western) will to power and possession, and an unwillingness (and/ or inability) to comprehend overlapping territories (see taonui, 2019a; berbner, 2017), and even if neither are simply misfortunes but also unexpected turning points, their stories nevertheless unfold differently. little is known about the guests at cara di mineo because, while some reports mentioned protests (2014) and demonstrations of solidarity (2019), the overall media coverage rendered “undocumented people’s existence ‘invisible and inaudible’” (rinell2016: 45). by cruz and forman’s criteria (2019), and by comparison with the successful model of riace, calabria (2018), the cara hosts stayed on the gestural side of hospitality, falling well short of manaakitanga. and yet, in the few reports discussing details of the migrants’ situation, there are glimpses of the irruption of other subjects in changed contexts, of regained initiative through political action—influencing places, lives, and communities – the very opposite of victimhood imposed by circumstance (agier, 2016: 154).26 reporting on ihumātao became more nuanced, detailed, and conceptually informative since july 2019, due partly to the occupants’ media savvy and their ability to engage with public institutions and stake holders. their successes at re-telling and re-casting the story, and garnering support from varied sources, are exceptional and will influence history at ihumātao and beyond. political action at ihumātao has highlighted how, in our global age, “the world’s pasts are all simultaneously present, colliding, interacting, intermixing” (geyer & bright, 1995: 1042), and demand intelligent and generous understanding and solutions. by contrast, australia’s so-called “pacific solution” (deporting migrants to extraterritorial outposts) is neither a solution nor informed by pacific values. clearly, in a world where too many people are already compressed into place and/or displaced, such imaginations of territory and periphery are deadly for migrants and dead ends for most people. we need better ways of realising connections between people and place, and, to develop alternatives to a politics of blame or hostility, we need to understand overlapping territories (said, 1994: 19), collective, plural identities and rights (mouffe, 2013: 12), and relational selves (strathern, 1999: 40-41). the waitangi tribunal’s report on the te rohe pōtae, a nearby district on the west coast of the north island, makes an interesting connection between commonly overlapping and interwoven territorial rights and roles in māori nineteenth-century social organisation (2018: 53, 60) and the perception and intention of rangatiratanga (leaders) who signed te tiriti o waitangi: in the pre-settlement order, each hapū had “their own kāinga and spheres of influence”, yet “the boundaries were fluid, resources were shared, and responsibilities overlapped” (55). by extension, the tribunal found, rangatira saw the treaty as providing “distinct māori and crown spheres of influence within a single state […] for ‘two authorities, two systems of law, and two overlapping spheres of population and interest’”. the areas of overlap were to be managed “through dialogue and negotiation, in a spirit of partnership” (175). the aspiration was a “mutually beneficial alliance with common and overlapping interests” and benefits, providing a place “for both peoples—and for their cultures, traditions, systems of law and government, and relationships with the natural world. it was an arrangement that allowed both forms of authority to co-exist” (187-8). such fluid forms of spatial separation between us and them would allow for a different and better appreciation of the relationships of interdependence that are part of the human condition. however, naïve expectations of a world beyond hegemony and sovereignty are 34 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 not likely to bring about peace—the unavoidable antagonisms that plurality also produces need to be brought into a space of appearance where the effects of power are visible and solidarities possible. māori tikanga for the confrontation of hoariri (someone with whom one fights but whose mana and diverging position one respects) is a local example from aotearoa, but there are other indigenous perspectives and decolonial approaches that offer new concepts and processes as solidary alternatives to the cosmo-politics of power 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(2019). italy’s shutdown of huge migrant center feeds racist campaign to close borders. the globepost, 16 july 2019. retrieved from https:// theglobepost.com/2019/07/16/ italy-closure-mineo/ pladson, k. (2019). displaced persons: 2019 will be one of the worst years on record. dw.com, 13 september 2019. retrieved from https://p.dw.com/p/3py47. rancière, j. (2004). the politics of aesthetics: the distribution of the sensible (g. rockhill, trans.). london, uk: continuum. rinelli, l. (2016). african migrants and europe: managing the ultimate frontier. abingdon, oxon: routledge. said, e. (1994). culture and imperialism. london, uk: vintage. said, e. (2005a). criticism, culture and performance. in power, politics, and culture: interviews with edward w. said. london, uk: bloomsbury publishing plc. said, e. (2005b). orientalism and after. in power, politics, and culture: interviews with edward w. said. london, uk: bloomsbury publishing plc. salmond, a. (2003). māori epistemologies. in j. overing (ed.). reason and morality (pp. 237260), london, uk: routledge. schaap, a. (2012). hannah arendt and the philosophical repression of politics. in j.-p. deranty & a. ross (eds.). jacques rancière and the contemporary scene: the evidence of equality and the practice of writing (pp. 145-165). london, uk: continuum. schwartzburg, r. (2019). the “white replacement theory” motivates alt-right killers the world over. the guardian, 5 august 2019. retrieved from https://rb.gy/imcwnl . stavenhagen, r. (2002). e/ cn.4/2002/97 indigenous issues human rights and indigenous issues. report of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, mr. rodolfo stavenhagen, submitted pursuant to commission resolution 2001/57. fiftyeighth session, item 15 of the provisional agenda. retrieved from https://digitallibrary.un.org / record/458806?ln=en strathern, m. (1999). property, substance, and effect: anthropological essays on persons and things. london, uk: athlone press. suliman, s., farbotko, c., ransancooper, h., elizabeth mcnamara, k., thornton, f., mcmichael, c., & kitara, t. (2019). indigenous (im) mobilities in the anthropocene. mobilities, 1-21. taonui, r. (2019a). ihumātao | tangata whenua vs mana whenua. waateanews.com, 2 september 2019. retrieved from https://www.waateanews.com/ waateanews/x_story_id/mji1oti=/ ihumatao-|-tangata-whenua-vsmana-whenua. taonui, r. (2019b). no treaty settlement opens three-way solution. waateanews.com, 27 september 2019. retrieved from https://www.waateanews. com/waateanews/x_story_id/ mji3ote=/ihum%c4%81tao%7c-no-treaty-settlementopens-three-way-solution taonui, r. (2019c). te riri pākehā | the white man’s anger. waateanews.com, 9 august 2009. retrieved from https://rb.gy/ pyxbbo thornley, l., ball, j., signal, l., lawson-te aho, k., & rawson, e. (2015). building community resilience: learning from the canterbury earthquakes. kotuitui: new zealand journal of social sciences online, 10(1), 23-35. unhcr. (2019). 2018 in review. trends at a glance. global trends in forced displacement. retrieved from https://www.unhcr. org /5d08d7ee7.pdf vallet, e. (2016). introduction. in e. vallet (ed.), borders, fences and walls: state of insecurity? (pp. 1-10). milton park, abingdon, uk: routledge. varadharajan, a. (2000). the ‘repressive tolerance’ of cultural peripheries. in m. battiste (ed.), reclaiming indigenous voice and vision (pp. 142-149). vancouver: ubc press. waitangi tribunal—te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi. (1985). report of the waitangi tribunal on the manukau claim (wai-8). retrieved from wellington: https://forms.justice. govt.nz/search/documents/wt/ wt_doc_68495207/the%20 manukau%20report%201985.pdf waitangi tribunal—te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi. (1999). the ngati awa raupatu report (wai 46). retrieved from https://forms.justice.govt.nz/ search/documents/wt/wt_ doc_68458811/wai46.pdf waitangi tribunal—te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi. (2002). ngati awa settlement cross-claims report (wai 958). retrieved from https://forms.justice.govt.nz/ search/documents/wt/wt_ doc_68003530/nasccreport. pdf waitangi tribunal—te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi. (2009). te urewera (wai 894). pre-publication, part i. retrieved from https://www.waitangitribunal. govt.nz/assets/documents/ publications/wt-te-urewera.pdf waitangi tribunal—te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi. (2018). te mana whatu ahuru report on te rohe pōtae claims (wai 898). wellington: waitangi tribunal. 37 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 williams, m. (2015). refugees hold out in sicily’s catania. dw top stories, 24 april, 2015. retrieved from https://p.dw.com/p/1feu7 winter, c. j. (2019). decolonising dignity for inclusive democracy. environmental values, 28(1), 9-30. world inequality database. (20152017, 4 june 2020). retrieved from https://wid.world/data/ endnotes 1 kia ora and much gratitude for critical support to carl mika, charl hirschfeld, nina corsten, amiria salmond, ross jenner, vincent o’malley, pita turei, brett graham, the anonymous reviewers, and to all who patiently heard me out as i was trying to trace connections. kia ora also to tuputau lelaulu for letting me use his images. we (like here) is a shifter, and changing positions are a characteristic condition of our times and, indeed, central to this paper. 2 the destabilisation of whole regions like the middle east, another effect of “miscalculated, foolishly myopic and admittedly abortive” interventions by western powers from nineteenthcentury colonisation to present day trade wars (bauman, 2016), add to the flows. “we are here, because you were there” (benhabib, 2011: 191; varadharajan, 2000: 146) proclaim those who have reached the (post)colonial centres. 3 globally, border walls have tripled since the cold war (vallet, 2016: 2). 4 the identitarian movement spread, after the 1960s, from france across europe and then the us, australia, and aotearoa new zealand. 5 the shooter’s manifesto was entitled “the great replacement” claiming that “black and brown migrants are invading europe to destroy white culture” (darby, 2019). the great replacement assumes that, due to european women’s low birth rates, an ethnic replacement by migrants from africa and the middle east will ensue. (schwartzburg, 2019). 6 agier does not really consider indigenous resistance against colonialism, or today’s neocolonial regimes. he claims that “no human has ever been ‘indigenous’” (2016: 34). by contrast, unesco endorse criteria for indigeneity proposed by wgip in 1995 (stavenhagen, 2002: §99). carolin emcke, who thoughtfully distinguishes between collective identities based on (1) difference (in the field of tension between universalism and particularism), (2) individual self-determination (in the tension between liberalism and communitarianism), and (3) issues concerning the rights of ethnic-cultural group rights of indigenous peoples in the us, canada and new zealand (2010: 17), still does not engage with the difficult question of descentbased identity and connection with land as an important aspect of indigenous forms of identity. there is a substantive difference between appeals to traditions by indigenous populations resisting neo-colonial encroachment and attempting to regain misappropriated lands, on one hand, and nativist, white supremacist claims to territorial rights, on the other, under which non-whites exist only on sufferance. james baldwincalls “the negro problem”, an invention by white americans to “safeguard their purity”, motivated by “a guilty and constricted white imagination”, a “bottomless and nameless terror”, perhaps related to unacknowledged crimes of slavery and to the uncomfortable fact that the us infrastructure and economy have only become what they are due to the forced or cheap labour of generations. “my blood, my father’s blood, is in that soil” (baldwin & peck, 2017). 7 effectively, they have “become host to growing numbers of the world’s poor” (geyer & bright, 1995: 1056) 8 arendt, whose concern is primarily the human world, would presumably agree that otherthan-human elements of the world participate in collective human fabrication. 9 see https://www.eurofound. europa.eu/observatories/emcc/ erm/factsheets/cara-di-mineo. 10 some residents protested against the closure – partly out of solidarity, and partly over the loss of employment generated by the cara. 11 given the type of projected residential units, increased real estate value is a more likely motivation for development (malva, 2018). 12 rod drury, ex-ceo of tech company xero, reported that all senior us vcs he has met “own property down here [ . . .] billionaires in the us do treat new zealand as a bit of a bolthole” in anticipation of a global catastrophe. murtola (2018) attributes to aotearoa new zealand the role of canary in the coal mine, whereby the intensity of the global elites’ interest indicates the general outlook for the world. 13 for overviews of the developments prior to occupation, see waitangi tribunal—te rōpū whakamana i te tiriti o waitangi (1985), mccreanor (2018) and o’malley (2019). documents concerning the claim (number 2547) to the waitangi tribunal can be accessed at https://forms.justice. govt.nz/search/wt/. 14 additionally, the status of land could and can change from noa (unrestricted, ordinary) to tapu (restricted, sacred) and back. 15 the media reported partially erratically and, in the early years of occupation, sparsely. 16 english renderings of taonga have evolved over the last decades to “include all resources of the land and seascape, prized, tangible, material items such as canoes, carved meeting houses, cloaks and other woven items, and intangible things such as knowledge and tikanga […] encapsulates notions of ancestral associations and reciprocity” (kawharu, 2000: 364-5). 17 in this text, kant (though racist elsewhere) condemns colonialism and the colonisers’ assumption of terra nullius and the fact that “the [old] inhabitants they counted as nothing” (115). in a world in 38 peripheral territories: imagining common worlds differently p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 which the community of men is no longer separated by distance and time, “an injustice in one part of the world is felt in all parts”, so that cosmopolitical rights become necessary to regulate the coexistence of states and peoples (116). 18 for a detailed critique of universalism, see appiah, benhabib, young, & fraser (2007), benhabib (1992, 2006, 2011), appiah (2006), mignolo (2011), and de sousa santos & rodríguez-garavito (2005). 19 nussbaum comes frustratingly close to the possibility of recognising flaws in her own conception of social justice, for instance its unreformed individualism and eurocentrism. 20 see nussbaum’s comment about the merely ancillary role of cross-cultural discussion (2001), as well as carusheela (2008) and menon’s (2002) analysis. 21 while rancière parts ways with arendt over what he regards a repression of politics in her thinking (schaap, 2012)uk</publocation><publisher>continuum</ publisher><urls></urls></ record></cite></endnote>, he nevertheless shares with her a conception of necessary disruptions and new beginnings. these happen through politics, which he defines as a disagreement over the distribution of the sensible, about what counts as speech and who can share in “what is common to the community” (rancière, 2004: 12) and thus affect reality. 22 see the un special rapporteurs on the right to adequate housing and the rights of indigenous peoples. 23 social theories of modernity wrongly assume universal developmental paths. this false universalism “cannot be uncovered by looking at europe from a european standpoint” but only from non-european perspectives, “that is with ‘asian eyes’ (or ‘african eyes’, etc.), in other words by practising methodological cosmopolitanism! methodological cosmopolitanism not only includes the other’s experiences of and perspectives on modernization but corrects and redefines the selfunderstanding of european modernity” (beck and grande, 2010: 424). migrants can, in a meeting of alterities, not only highlight the particularity of assumed universalism but also help locals to imagine differently. 24 many of these factors also applied to the pre-colonial social organisation of many of the migrant groups now present at italian caras. 25 it also helps, after some re-articulation, to build resilient diasporic communities, able to respond to public crises better than mainstream society. this was evident when te puea marae took the lead in housing the homeless during the winters of 2016-8. 26 as one of my interlocutors pointed out, the comparison of māori and refugees in europe could be seen as a reinforcement of colonial ideology if it suggested that “all people of colour are homogenous and engaged in struggle, or incapable of expressing xenophobic attitudes themselves”. this is clearly not the case, and there are many differences between and amongst them. however, there are some values and practices that most in the first two groups would subscribe to, distinguishing them from the advocates of international capitalist freedom of movement. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 3 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a editorial / eu jin chua introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa in the course of working on this project, i realised there were a number of hesitancies or even skepticisms to overcome when dealing with a scholarly endeavour in aotearoa new zealand involving a long-ago philosopher from faraway europe— benedict de spinoza (1632–1677). particularly so when addressing themes of art, architecture, urbanism, and the environment. in what follows i outline some of these hesitancies, suggesting that they’re opportunities for generativeness rather than signs of barrenness. this will be my way of introducing this issue, which was co-edited with farzaneh haghighi, and which carries the considerations of many others who have similarly found generative potential in spinoza’s think-ing. i hope some of this addresses more general questions perhaps hovering in the mind of the presumed reader such as “why spinoza now?” or “why spinoza here?” or just plain “why spinoza?” since academic philosophy is not my bread-and-butter world—nor that of interstices—such answers as i can provide here will necessarily entail directing the reader to other material, whether the papers in this issue or texts elsewhere. i try to address architecturally-inclined readers of interstices in the section on architectural hesitancies, giving reasons for why spinoza’s thinking contains important resources for architecture. the aesthetically-minded hesitancy for readers of this journal it may be of interest to know that there remains a hesitancy over spinoza’s value for aesthetics, even amongst the philosoph-ically-minded. there’s a school of thought in spinoza studies that says this particular conjunction between philosopher and theme is fated to be an exercise in futility. this argument is most notoriously described in james morrison’s es-say “why spinoza had no aesthetics” (1989), which argues that spinoza’s system of thought is inhospitable to aesthetic reflection since it doesn’t recognise artistic or creative endeavour as metaphysically distinct or worthy of note. moreover, for morrison, spinoza seems to disparage as irrational those forms of cognition and perception associated with the arts— namely the sensory and the imaginative. where spinoza talks about beauty, it’s to warn us against indulging in sensual pleasure (tdie §4), or to argue that beauty is an entirely relative category capable of wrongfooting us if we imagine it to have any transcendent or intrinsic reality (e1app). when spinoza does talk about the arts—e.g. in e4p45s where he says it’s in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 4 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a helpful, in moderation, to refresh oneself by means of “decoration, music, sports, the theatre”—it seems he is only talking about the arts in an entirely incidental way (he’s really talking about the principle of moderation). such passages might seem to confirm the impression that spinoza is an aesthetic killjoy, an ascetic rationalist “hostile towards art and beauty” (morrison 1989: 359). today the scholarly climate is rather different in many quarters of spinoza studies. when i first proposed “the arts of spinoza” as a possible theme for the “interstices under construction symposium”, i wasn’t aware, until i invited them to be keynote speakers, that moira gatens and anthony uhlmann had recently instigated a funded research project on a similar theme. some of the work from their project has since been published in special issues of the journals textual practice (2019), and intellectual history review (2020). i’m grateful to professors gatens and uhlmann for accepting my out-of-the-blue invitation to present their work at the symposium. neither was i aware that there were so many other scholars concurrently working on similar themes. in addition to new publications, i’m aware of at least two other recent similarly-themed conferences.1 the subject of spinoza and the arts seems to be incredibly fertile ground for current scholarship, suggesting there is indeed something untapped in spinoza’s thinking. this is one answer to the prod, “why spinoza in interstices now?” recent scholarship hinges on several key issues. firstly, anachronism. spinoza’s philosophy emerged prior to modern eighteenth-century philosophical aesthetics, prior, that is, to baumgarten and kant. it preceded the modern way in which we in the west today tend to restrictively use the word “art” to describe a certain domain of human creative endeavour, and it preceded the modern use of the word “aesthetics” to mean the philosophy of art or of sensation and the sensible. a developing consensus in spinoza studies identifies prolepsis as key to the modern misconception that he had no aesthetics: certain assumptions about art and aesthetics tend to be retroactively projected upon his seventeenth-century texts, which are then unsurprisingly found to be lacking because being tested against unsympathetic yardsticks from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. in christopher thomas’s words, “spinoza’s philosophy has often been said to lack a theory of art, but statements on spinoza’s theory or lack of a theory of art have been made from the basis of modern aesthetic assumptions of what the form and content of a theory of art ought to look like” (2017: 20). anachronism begins with the basic issue of historical semantics and extends into the substantive issue of spinoza’s fundamental views. historical semantics: the latin word ars had a much broader meaning in spinoza’s time. ars, for spinoza, would have meant “skill”, “craft”, “technique”, “ability”, “ingenuity”, “device”, “cunning” or “proficiency”, a range of meaning aslant to most contemporary uses of the word “art” or “arts” (curley, 2016: 615; gatens, 2015: 3). in early modern europe pre-baumgarten and pre-kant, there wouldn’t have been a tendency to assume, as today we might assume, that ars refers to a particular set of spiritually elevated and meaningfully ensouled creations made according to the free and purposive will of a self-professed human artist of particular genius, which are displayed or published in whatever venue is understood as operating within and given sanction by a putative literati, cognoscenti, or “art world”. the more substantive issue beyond historical semantics is that spinoza’s in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 5 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a philosophical views rule out many of the underlying premises above. spinoza’s doctrines preclude any understanding of “art” as being exclusively the domain of: (1) human beings; (2) classically sovereign individuals, let alone human geniuses;2 (3) beauty, disinterested purposefulness, and teleological production; (4) a divinely inspired spirit, soul, or mind that issues controlling directives upon raw matter, extension, or body; and (5), the sensory, imaginative, and affective, conceived as faculties autonomous from intellect and transcendent reason. among the principles in spinoza that are subversive of these post-idealist assumptions about art are his uncompromising naturalism, his propositions about “transindividuation” (a term étienne balibar [2020] develops via simondon), his anti-teleologism, his necessitarianism, his mind-body parallelism, and his tripartite model of knowledge or cognition. in spinoza’s thoroughgoing naturalism, there are no qualitative distinctions between human nature and nonhuman nature, since the laws by which the world operates are “always and everywhere the same” and all human actions must be considered exactly as we’d consider “lines, planes, and bodies” (e3pref ). under spinoza’s premises about transindividuation, my individual essence arises only by dint of the particular ways in which that essence is determined and modulated by other individuals, plus the particular ways in which i in turn determine and modulate other individuals—an apparent contradiction in terms, but only if one assumes that individual essence and external determination are antithetical, which spinoza doesn’t (see balibar 2020). in the tripartite model of knowledge (cognitio), spinoza is simultaneously a denigrator of images, imagination, and the sensory—thus indeed a disdainer of the foundational materials of the arts, as per morrison’s view—and an affirmer of their primacy and elementality, thus arguably also an advocate of sorts for the power of art and the sensory, and for the need to properly understand the nature of the aesthetic (e2p40s2, e2p17s). spinoza’s picture of passionate images and fictions as being so powerful in human beings that we have to work hard to avoid being overmastered by them has the obverse effect of emphasising their electric and dangerous splendour, their inescapable role in our everyday lives and social formations. in spinoza’s anti-teleologism... but i have to truncate further attempts at explication here and instead refer the reader to studies now available by gatens, uhlmann, thomas, davidson, kerr, james, and others. from these new studies we glean a putative spinozist theory of the imaginative arts as nothing more (and nothing less) than a complex outgrowth of the “necessity of nature’s [i.e. god/ nature’s] activity” (thomas, 2018: 371) whereby complex bodies affect other complex bodies as part of their transindividual and non-teleological self-striving and self-perfection (a self-perfection that might also include political ends and effects, e.g. the strengthening or weakening of social bonds, the “self ” understood as composite body politic). in short, when we look to spinoza, we discover an alternative aesthetics (if we can still call it that) derived from a time before the entrenchment of eighteenthand nineteenth-century notions. this alternative aesthetics might be more congenial to our time than the latter or might at least give us more options (it puts the eighteenth-century option into historical perspective for example). this is what i understand warren montag (2020) to mean when he says that spinoza represents in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 6 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a a “counter-aesthetics”. but montag gives us the “strong” version of the idea of an alternative: spinoza, for him, isn’t a harmless “option b” that augments the legacy of eighteenth-century aesthetics. spinoza’s ideas aren’t supplemental but oppositional. one would no more use spinoza to augment the premises of eighteenth-century european aesthetics than one would use a hammer to finish a construction made of modern plastic; there were hammers before plastic and they’re better at smashing it. readers may find something familiar in this sketch of an aesthetics extrapolated from spinoza: doesn’t this sound a bit like gilles deleuze’s aesthetics? my colleague farzaneh haghighi—co-editor, co-organiser, and cornerstone of this project—asked me: why not read deleuze instead? mentioning this feels worthwhile, since (1) this would count as a general hesitancy of the “why spinoza in interstices?” sort, and (2) i myself, like most students in the arts, first encountered spinoza through continental rather than anglo-american channels (as many of my references make obvious). i first read spinoza to lessen my befuddlement about deleuze and nietzsche—a world-class case of inadvertently going from the frying pan into the fire, yet, as it turned out, obviously a helpful move. spinoza’s naturalism, for instance, and his account of the flow of all activity, human or otherwise, from a single substance, explained why deleuze and guattari’s art theory (1994) didn’t seem to resemble any other account of art i’d read up to that point. the peculiarities included the apparent absence of a qualitative distinction between human art and nonhuman nature; the stresses on acts of arranging, ordering, composing, affecting, framing and deframing rather than on semiotic or spiritual expressiveness. so the first answer to “why not deleuze?” is: why not, indeed? second answer is: “yes, but...” why not read deleuze—yet we’d have to do so with acknowledgement that, although it’s true that for those weaned on contemporary continental aesthetics (as may be the case with interstices readers), deleuze seems the preeminent intellectual descendant of spinoza’s and likewise spinoza seems the preeminent ancestor of deleuze’s philosophy of immanence, their differences are neither negligible nor mutually reducible. thus surely better to read deleuze alongside spinoza, rather than instead of. deleuze’s spinozism has eccentric emphases that many spinoza scholars still consider idiosyncratic and disputable. his reading of spinoza through the lens of “expressionism” (1992) was initially so fascinating and illuminating because a curveball; yet many accounts of deleuze continue to take expressionism as a given in spinoza rather than as an interpretative emphasis. it even appears that, for certain spinoza scholars, the ostensibly unassailable commitment to “immanence” isn’t necessarily self-evident in the seventeenth-century texts, whereas this commitment is often presumed by those whose greatest familiarity or allegiance is with deleuze’s interpretations.3 and although “the spinoza of the affect” looms large for many—the popular version of spinoza in which the concept of affect is foregrounded—some scholars have noted that this particular spinoza may again be an artefact of the specific interpretative emphasis emanating from vincennes-st.denis.4 conversely, many deleuze scholars are understandably vexed when deleuze is reduced to his spinozism, not least since this would mean they are foot-soldiers twice over: scholarly foot-soldiers of a philosopher who was himself foot-soldier to an earlier philosopher, the latter of whom therefore claims conceptual and chronological primacy. see, for instance, jones and roffe who express their in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 7 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a bitterness about this by wilfully casting out spinoza from their edited anthology, deleuze’s philosophical lineage, each of whose chapters is devoted to all of deleuze’s major philosophical influences, except spinoza and bergson (2009: 3). they aren’t wrong to the extent that, from the little i can tell, deleuze’s account of difference indeed goes beyond what we find in the letter of spinoza. my attempt at a reconciliatory tone in midst of this deleuze-spinoza minefield is to just say: those places where two philosophers are in agreement is as helpful as where they negate each other. realising that deleuze and spinoza aren’t the same person, yet also agree with each other on many points, should be taken as a low bar to clear. why wouldn’t we read the historical relation between deleuze and spinoza as dialectical rather than as identical or oppositional? surely deleuze’s self-professed “buggering” of spinoza could be taken as another way of describing a “dialectics of the positive” (deleuze, 1995: 6; macherey, 2011; ruddick, 2008)? in short, our theories of art are benefited by reading spinoza alongside deleuze without reducing the one philosopher to the other—though further work of parsing this won’t be done here by me.5 i direct the reader instead to articles in this volume that productively refer to deleuze on spinoza: e.g. jonathan lahey dronsfield’s account of his public readings of the ethics performed as artwork, which becomes a spur for reflections about the affective nature of reading this book, as per deleuze’s remark (1995: 164–166) that there are at least two—in fact, three—parallel reading registers in the ethics, e.g. the formidable geometric register, but also the more fiery and stirring undercurrent. the architecturally-minded hesitancy i hope these remarks above are taken as also relevant to architecture, that is, as equally an address to architecturally-minded hesitancies about spinoza headlining interstices—as far as architecture is understood to involve art, artistry, or artificing. however i can try to further crystallise this into three possible ways spinoza might be architecturally helpful. firstly, spinoza’s naturalisation of art objects would apply equally to architectural objects; likewise his precepts on transindividuality and univocity. the quick way of putting this: spinoza helps us perceive every built artefact as continuous with the world, in fact individuated only because of this continuity—which would be a trivial point were it not that architectural modernism tended not to operate on this basis. secondly, the concept of affect, which has proved so inexhaustibly fascinating for recent architectural theory, has one major source in spinoza, as already mentioned. affect’s significance for architecture might, arguably, be more fully appreciated if these sources were more fully parsed. in fact, it’s been argued that contemporary affect theory has often failed to fully absorb spinoza’s theses even when it claims to do so (gatens, 2014). thirdly, the social and political functions of architecture and design may find explanation or prospectus in spinoza’s social and political theory. with regard to the first issue, i’d point to texts that have introduced to architectural theory words such as “flow”, “field”, “atmosphere”, “indeterminacy”, “open systems”, “landscape urbanism”, “topology”, and similar.6 these are keywords intended to propose new answers to old questions about what a building is and does, answers that undermine presumptions about the built object’s autonomy. i’d suggest that spinoza fits somewhere in these trends. peg rawes has written in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 8 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a that spinoza gives us a picture of a kind of “‘living’ architecture or geometry [...] imbued with [...] nature’s irreducible powers” (2012: 66). for gökhan kodalak, spinoza compels us to ask, “what are the peculiar ecological enmeshments of a building? how does an architectural construct constitute its associated milieu?” (2018: 101, 106). these last quotes are really my way of truncating discussion by passing the buck to professor rawes and dr. kodalak, who have put more thought into these issues than i have—and also my way of thanking both for participating in this project; the latter has contributed a fascinating essay in the present volume deriving from doctoral research on spinoza and architecture. the second issue, the theory of affect, may be another way of restating the first. saying that architecture is affective is to, once again, downgrade a building’s ostensible autonomy and to instead emphasise its transversality, to promote the view that even the most bulwark-like building is nothing but the misty sum of its affective powers and capacities. to reverse this formulation: the powers and capacities of god/nature are sometimes determined in such a way as to express themselves in the form of those concrete modifications called buildings. maybe my job here is to push the point—in hopes of further dispelling architecturally-minded hesitancies—that spinoza’s concept of affect is still stranger and more productive than contemporary architectural and affect theory has yet acknowledged. an account of spinoza’s model of affects might begin as follows: affections (affectio)—not synonymous with affects (affectus), which follow secondarily—are modifications or states of god/nature’s attributes. i, a human being, am an affection in this sense; i’m a part of the world that’s the world expressing itself in a particular way. but since i experience myself in time, i experience myself undergoing changes of state, transitions in the nature of my existence. these aren’t necessarily “internal” states as against “external” states; spinoza thwarts easy distinctions between subjective interiority versus objective exteriority. the most important point about changes of state, for spinoza, is whether they increase or decrease the power of acting. any change of state that increases or decreases power of acting—and only this kind of change—is called an affect. but as in a flowchart, spinoza asks: for any particular affect, are you or are you not the adequate cause of the affect? when i change state, this is usually owing to my being knocked about by the world; in such cases, i’m not the adequate cause of the change. however it’s possible that my state-change arises from something in me that hasn’t been (or cannot be) knocked about by the world; in such cases, i am the adequate cause. if my state-change arises totally from something unshakeable in me—if i am the adequate cause of my affect—then the change is called an action (agere) or active affect. if, on the other hand, my state-change is a bedevilment arising from constraints or knockings-about unrelated to my nature or essence—if i am not the adequate cause of my affect—then the change is called a passion (passio) or passive affect; in this case, i am, in a sense, suffering the change (passio is derived from pati, the latin for “suffer”). for spinoza, the vast majority of human affects are passive since they arise from our shakeability. this includes both “negative” and “positive” affects—anger, shame, and hatred, but also ordinary love, hope, and cheerfulness. many affects that increase power of acting, e.g. the first flush of romantic love, nonetheless arise only by way of a bedevilling external cause, e.g. one’s lover. indeed most human life is suffered under affectual states of passivity since each of us is, after all, a tiny in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 9 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a and extinguishable speck in the larger scheme of things, buffeted about by the world’s implacable forces (e4app6; ttp ch.16/g3:190-91). and, in order to cope, most of us live under the delusion that things are otherwise, that we’re masters of our own states and fates. but the highest good of a human life is to try to move, if only ever partially, towards active affects and the conditions that make them possible—which in large part involves the relinquishing of those aforementioned delusions. it’s only in doing this that we have the chance to become truly free. the extreme difficulty of this task is indicated by the peculiarity of the names spinoza gives to those very few affects that are truly active, that are genuine indices of freedom properly arising out of the only things in us that can be understood as unshakeable (yet common to all): for example, the amor dei intellectualis or intellectual love of god/nature, and the untranslatable acquiescentia, which has connotations of self-contentment, stillness, peace of mind, and beatific acceptance of and submission to the nature of the world and one’s finite place in it (carlisle, 2017: 210-11; lebuffe, 2009: 204-05). finally, spinoza argues that the highest good of a civil state is to create the social conditions that, as far as possible, permit lives to be lived in pursuit of these highest human goods. i’m hoping that if aspects of this sound peculiar or unfamiliar, this might help dispel simplifications i encountered when mentioning the name spinoza, that supposedly archaic and overly difficult philosopher out of whom nothing more can be wrung except for the point that everything is affective, for example architecture. the more pointed way of making my case is to say that it’s worth reading spinoza as a corrective to contemporary affect theory’s frequent sin of profoundly vitiating the politics of affect. the keyword above is power. affect, for spinoza, is a diagnostics of power—it isn’t simply a neutral matter of the metaphysics of form and relation. yet the tendency, in some quarters, has been to turn it into the mere notion that everything (such as architecture) is relationally and affectively interconnected, and that nature consists of aesthetically interlaced morphogeneses and morpho-phenomena, end of story. indeed much talk of affect gives us either the empty celebration of relationality and interconnectedness, or else the empty fetishisation of feelings and mere sensory cognition simpliciter. in such talk, as sue ruddick has noted, spinoza’s insistence on an “affective-evaluative coupling” falls away, i.e. we lose the political diagnostics necessarily embedded in spinoza’s non-cartesian definition of affect as always weighted with ethical and political value (the volitionality of power and dysfunctions in power): if this affective-evaluative coupling falls away, politics is evacuated from spinoza’s framework, and the schema risks drifting towards one of two poles. at one extreme, in ignoring affect, one risks rendering spinozism as a kind of complex systems theory [...] at the other extreme, if we celebrate the fullness of the capacity to be affected [...] the risk is a simple inversion of descartes—a kind of “i feel therefore i am”. in their distinct ways, both these approaches might be commended for celebrating life—one for its complexity and the other for the universal capacity to be affected—but the tools to change it remain underdeveloped at best. (2010: 27) one area of architectural theory that seems particularly culpable in this regard is the trend that zeynep çelik alexander has called architecture’s “neo-naturalism”. that is, the discipline’s recent infatuation with concepts of dynamic emergence, complexity, flow, field, neural affect, neuroplasticity (plus corresponding technologies of data visualisation and parametric modelling). architectural in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 10 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a neo-naturalism claims to be novel, but for alexander, amounts to nothing more than depoliticised, free-marketeering formalism: “the world is rendered as an unbroken, uninterrupted field devoid of politics” (2014: 29). alexander doesn’t mention spinoza, but he could well be indicted as the criminal mastermind here, since he is often recruited as precursor by contemporary affect theory—which alexander does indeed ridicule for its view that dynamic self-organisation (autopoeisis! interconnection! relationality!) is enough to guarantee “emancipatory and creative politics” (2014: 28; quoting papoulias and callard). but this version of spinoza is the vulgarised, vitiated version. to recover the properly emancipatory politics embedded in the naturalism—not just for historical accuracy but also for contemporary purposes—one might need to go back to the mastermind’s original words, which often say more than what the followers draw out. unfortunately i can’t draw out any more myself: this will have to serve as another sketchy and polemical answer to the prod “why spinoza in an architectural journal?” there’s more work to be done if, as seems to be the case, architectural theory has recruited spinoza in the name of its hollow neo-naturalism and neo-vitalism, often leaving unaddressed the politics of affect or indeed politics per se. but this is also my way of seguing to the third architectural issue: architecture thinking politics through spinoza. there’s only room to offer a volley of further reading recommendations and associated thank yous. i thank professors beth lord and peg rawes for participating in the auckland symposium, and i refer the reader to lord’s work on spinoza as thinker of economic and political inequality (2014, 2016)—which has been extended into a collaboration with rawes on housing inequality (see their film equal by design which was screened in auckland and is available at http://www.equalbydesign.co.uk/). the issue of housing is one place where the political rubber hits the architectural road. spinoza, per lord and rawes, gives us resources for thinking about the design and planning professions as not just apolitical aesthetic practices, but as integral players in society’s distributive apparatuses—apparatuses which either fairly parcel out the material conditions for the pursuit of freedom or else unfairly withhold or suppress the same (secure housing surely counts as such a material condition). the ecological hesitancy the invited paper here by professor ruddick, whom i likewise thank greatly for her contributions, comes from her ongoing work on spinoza and climate crisis (2017, 2020). ruddick brings us to the subject of spinoza as ecological thinker. ecologically minded readers may already know that spinoza has a reputation as such. yet this is another conjunction of philosopher and theme as fraught as the previous. the hesitancy about spinoza and ecology is simply his apparent rubbishing of some of the most cherished tenets of modern environmentalism. indeed, in the 1970s and ’80s, a new breed of thinker known as the environmental ethicist enthusiastically pointed to spinoza as a precursor, but spinoza specialists replied with a “hang on, not so fast.” at issue is an apparent contradiction. on the one hand, spinoza made pronouncements seemingly tailor-made for modern environmentalist sloganeering. “man is a part of nature” is the talismanic phrase (ttp ch.4/g3:58; e4p2, passim). man, moreover, is a tiny and insignificant part of nature, a mere “speck” in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 11 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a or “particle” (particula; ttp ch.16/g3:190-91). not only are human beings continuous with nature (spinoza’s naturalism), but human beings aren’t even qualitatively special in the larger scheme of things (spinoza’s copernicanism or anti-human-exceptionalism). could we take this apparent elevation of nature and corresponding demotion of human beings as grounds enough to call spinoza an “environmentalist”? he seems to talk up nature more than he talks up human beings. more significantly, he apparently thinks that everything is one and interconnected (the famed monism) and that divinity is everywhere in nature (the purported pantheism). surely he must be venerated as paterfamilias of all nature-lovers and treehuggers? the sticking point is his apparent bashing of what we today call “animal rights”. for spinoza, a blanket proscription against killing animals is irrational. we could take spinoza to just mean that sometimes we need to kill the bear that’s about to maul us. but the more complex issue is spinoza’s equating of virtue with striving for self-advantage, and his conception of the inalienability of natural right. these aspects of his philosophy give rise to his unequivocal statement that it never makes sense to abase our own self-advantage by making a fetish of the supposedly preeminent “rights” or “intrinsic value” of animals: […] the law against killing animals is based [...] on empty superstition [...] the rational principle of seeking our own advantage teaches us to establish a bond with men, but not with the lower animals [...] we have the same right against them that they have against us. indeed, because the right of each one is defined by his virtue, or power, men have a far greater right against the lower animals than they have against men. not that i deny that the lower animals have sensations. but i do deny that we are therefore not permitted to consider our own advantage, use them at our pleasure, and treat them as is most convenient for us. (e4p37s1) in fact, this stance extends beyond animals. more generally, the environmentalist’s credo that all nature has intrinsic value simply has no support in spinoza. for more, i direct the reader to lloyd (1980/2001) who was responsible for rebutting earlier claims (e.g. naess, 1977/2001, sessions, 1977) that spinoza could easily be celebrated as granddaddy of “deep ecology”, indeed as avant la lettre flag-carrier for “ecocentrism”, i.e. the notion that nature, having intrinsic value, should be endowed with rights, and that these values and rights should always be placed above our own. this is how i’d put it: spinoza was no ecocentrist because he realised that ecocentrism was blind-alley thinking. a simple thought-experiment illustrates the blind alley: we’re told that there’ll be winners as well as losers in climate change. contra the idea of “saving” all of nature by preventing anthropogenic climate change, in fact some parts of nonhuman nature—jellyfish, mosquitoes, warmth-loving algae—will likely thrive if global temperatures keep rising (johnson, 2012). now if i were really an “environmentalist” who truly cares for the “intrinsic value” of nature, i’d have to care about the intrinsic rights of jellyfish (jellyfish are part of nonhuman nature).7 consequently i’d have to promote greater global warming, not less. i’d have to defer to the thriving of jellyfish at the expense of the thriving of humans. in this case, “ecocentrism” turns us into cheerleaders for, rather than preventers of, global warming. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 12 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a if not ecocentrism, then is it, gulp, anthropocentrism that we find in spinoza? yes and no. as lloyd pointed out, the thrust of spinoza’s ethics is that nonanthropocentric perception is wise, but nonanthropocentric ethics isn’t. only human-centred (anthropocentric) ethics makes sense for humans. nonanthropocentric perception: i come to understand that human beings aren’t the centre of the universe and that there are vastly more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in my philosophy. anthropocentric ethics: despite this and despite my best efforts to claim that my heart bleeds only for the other, i still find that my wisest actions are always done, in the first instance, for advantage of myself and my purlieus. the key thing here is spinoza’s still startling precept that a truly rational ethics can only be based on self-advantage and self-interest, never on self-mortification nor self-sacrifice. morality, for spinoza, is relative, meaning that, in order to not fall into the death spiral of self-mortification, it must be centred on the self-advantage of the creature or community claiming to be moral. “intrinsic” or absolute morality, values, rights, etc., is an illusion. this is borne out by my reductio ad absurdum about jellyfish. we find ourselves advocating for less global warming at the expense of the jellyfish, mosquitoes, and algal blooms who would want more, and that’s because climate-change ethics, for us humans, cannot help but be an ethics of human self-interest. climate-change prevention measures are ultimately in the interests of preserving the specific environmental conditions that permit survival and flourishing of humans, not principally in the interests of nonhuman nature.8 what appears to be advocacy of “ecocentrism”—privileging or “saving nature”—in fact turns out to be, in the first instance, anthropocentric. ruddick’s theme—the composite body—tells us why spinoza’s endorsing of self-advantage isn’t equivalent to the valorisation of selfishness or self-aggrandisement. self-advantage, in spinoza, is always social, that is, composite and compositely negotiated. the simple way to think about this is that my wellbeing is bound up with the wellbeing of others because, in spinoza, sociality—the need for social enlargement and complementarity, as opposed to bulletproof self-sovereignty and individualism—is the law of all things (e4p18s/g2:222-23). this principle expands what counts as self-advantage: since “self ” is composite, my self-advantage includes looking after my friends so defined (and repudiating enemies). in ruddick, there’s a further expansion of self-advantage. where spinoza only wrote about human-to-human sociality and dismissed animals, ruddick argues that the principle of socialised self-advantage shouldn’t exclude the nonhuman; we’d do well to cultivate mutually beneficial human-nonhuman composites, not least in our cities. more of what i understand of this: spinoza transmogrifies the model whereby self-advantage is sought by sovereign individuals who pre-exist that seeking. rather, the striving for self-advantage is the process of individuation. and since self-advantage is social and composite, so too is the individual who can thus only be simultaneously understood as transindividual. this leads, moreover, to the realisation that it’s futile to ask whether spinoza is ecocentrist or anthropocentrist. the distinction is false. the either-or logic of ecocentrism-vs-anthropocentrism makes no sense for spinoza; one can’t simply choose to be either on the side of human self-interest or on the side of nature’s interests, since the striving for human self-advantage is just a modal expression of god/nature’s own conatus. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 13 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a humans killing malarial mosquitoes for human survival is as much part of god/ nature’s expression as our bolstering of bee populations that pollinate the plants that give us nutriment; human ethics merely consists in wisely handling both in service of self-advantage. neither is intrinsically good nor bad; neither is exclusively altruistic-ecocentric nor selfish-anthropocentric. per balibar, “[t]he opposition of ‘selfishness’ and ‘altruism’...never exists” in spinoza (2020: 42) i hope the truncated brevity of the above: (1) gives at least some explanation for spinoza’s scorning of “animal rights” (we care about the canary in the coalmine because we are in the coalmine, not because our hearts should bleed for the illusionary intrinsic value of nonhuman entities); (2) offers another answer to “why spinoza now?” by rehearsing spinoza’s robust thinking about “ecology” (counterintuitively robust because his thinking runs against the grain of modern environmentalist pieties); and (3) puts into relief his inversion of conventional morality. equating virtue with self-mortification remains orthodox to this day, yet spinoza insisted on the opposite: virtue lies in the (social) seeking of self-advantage (e4p20, e4p24, e4p35c2). thinking otherwise is thinking gone wrong. since i’ve only been able to sneak spinoza’s moral theory into a discussion of ecology, i direct the reader to michael lebuffe’s work on this topic and send out the associated warmest thank yous to professor lebuffe for his contributions: his invited paper in this issue, on how states aid citizens in their transition to rationality, draws from his most recent book (2017). the postcolonial hesitancy the postcolonial hesitancy was the most pervasive hesitancy i encountered in aotearoa new zealand—entirely justifiable, unsurprising, yet also confounding. the objection had to do with the encroachment of a european philosopher upon non-european contexts (and not just any non-european context, but rather aotearoa, with its violent colonial past, its fraught bicultural present, and its primacy nowadays as one of the world’s intellectual centres for the project of decolonisation and indigenous self-determination). it wasn’t hard to detect, in the air, the bristling insinuation that spinoza in aotearoa was surely another instance of intellectual recolonisation. strictly speaking, i can’t deny this; it may be true that nobody really needs spinoza here when there are many other intellectual resources better suited to local purpose, not least indigenous ones. i’ll say something, though, about why i was initially confounded: spinoza’s “anomaly” or “dissonance”—his outsiderishness—is so patently obvious once one has read him that it hadn’t even occurred to me to lump him in the category of thought-colonising european philosophers.9 from my vantage point, equating a spinoza conference with the thought-colonisation of aotearoa by europe was a bit like accusing a martian of entrenching earth ways of thinking. consider spinoza’s biography: he would likely have been “othered”, that is, perceived as different, by his northern european contemporaries in the dutch republic of the seventeenth century: he was a sephardic jew who may have spoken accented dutch. he was what we’d today think of as a second-generation immigrant from a “visible minority” family of under-assimilated immigrants. spinoza’s parents were exiles from spain and portugal, having been expelled from iberia by inquisitorial anti-semitism. his father spoke broken dutch, and in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 14 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a he and siblings had to help their parents negotiate the cultural and linguistic difficulties arising from being culturally and linguistically foreign (a filial situation that second-generation immigrants will be familiar with to this day, as i myself attest). leibniz, who met spinoza in 1676, made a point of describing him as having “an olive-coloured complexion, with something spanish in his face” (nadler, 1999: 46-47, 155). this outsider was, moreover, on the outside of the outside: spinoza was excommunicated and banished, when in his early twenties, from his own jewish community, possibly because of his precociously blasphemous views (the actual reason for excommunication is lost to history). for the rest of his life, he lived in rented rooms outside of every professed religion, at a time when it was dangerous to do so given that all europe was a theocracy. spinoza, in short, was a maverick and a radical, and may have been perceived as a brown man by his contemporaries. the latter, admittedly, isn’t in itself an argument to read spinoza in aotearoa (no more an argument than you should read me because i’m a “person of colour”, to use a term anachronistic to spinoza)— though, as i said, the biographical factoids give context to my initial double-take (i’d so absorbed the image of spinoza as marked by outsiderishness rather than establishmentarianism). but the former, spinoza’s justified reputation as radical, leads to the more substantive question: is there anything in spinoza’s radicalism that might recommend and connect him to those interested in postcoloniality and decolonisation? yes: there are at least two points of connection. the first is slight but historically instructive. there’s a passage in spinoza that has been taken as emblematic of early modern philosophy’s awareness of the european colonial project. this is a 1664 letter to a friend in which spinoza describes a dream he once had about a “black, scabby brazilian” (ep. 17). spinoza’s intention was to temper his friend’s claim that dreams predict the future and to illustrate instead how dreams are non-supernatural manifestations of bodily perturbations. but some contemporary readers have interpreted spinoza’s image of the “aethiops” (“black man”) as symptomatic in a different way: as sign of spinoza registering colonialism’s historical reality. further, what we’d think of today as spinoza’s casual racism (“black scabby brazilian” is hardly a complimentary image of the racialised other) could be taken in two ways. either we take it as forgivable because spinoza wasn’t exempt from attitudes of his day and it’s incidental to his philosophy anyway. or else we take it that spinoza’s philosophy is tainted by racism to its core and deserves wholesale rejection. rosenthal (2005) offers a third approach: since all early modern texts were fissured by historical problematics that couldn’t be resolved in their own time, what we can do instead is constellate them with our own historical moment in order to awaken their political power. rosenthal’s approach, in my reading, is akin to what walter benjamin called the “dialectical image” of history, or what some historians describe as the advantages of “presentism”, i.e. the historian’s best option is to interpret the past in strategically anachronistic ways that avoid, on the one hand, the scylla of whiggishly celebrating the past’s victories, and, on the other, the charybdis of sanctimoniously condemning the past’s politically incorrect indiscretions. when we take this third approach, we draw out the past’s complexities and ambivalences rather than simplifying them. thus do we recognise the symptomatic ambivalence of spinoza’s image of the black brazilian: the backdrop of spinoza’s day-to-day life in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 15 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a was the european colonial project of unfreedom (he lived in the dutch republic, one of its founts), yet he was, at the time of his dream, formulating an unprecedented theory of human political freedom involving a rationale for emancipating all human beings, black brazilian or otherwise (rosenthal; goetschel; montag, 1999: 87-89; gatens, 2009: 202-03). this is the second, more substantive connection between spinoza’s radicalism and the contemporary project of decolonisation: spinoza’s ideas are a historically attested intellectual resource for what we now call decolonisation. short version of this: spinoza is a bifurcation point in western political thought because, unlike hobbes, he insists that the claudication of right in a social formation is an impossibility or unstable irrationality, not a constitutive fact of the civil state— meaning slavery, colonisation, and oppression are in nobody’s interests. for more, i refer the reader to nesbitt’s work (2008) on spinoza as origin of the idea of “universal emancipation” (others, even up to hegel’s time, found it difficult to posit such a thing), and on the attested connection between this idea and the haitian revolution. since, according to nesbitt, the haitian revolution (17911804) marks the inauguration of decolonisation—as the only slave rebellion that resulted in a transition to self-government—his argument is that spinoza stands at decolonisation’s intellectual wellspring. again, i hope this gives further abbreviated clues to “why read spinoza?”. but, as i said, my position in light of the postcolonial hesitancy is: nobody needs to read spinoza. i don’t intend to overcome the postcolonial hesitancy by means of the above arguments; perhaps better to leave it in tension. this tension is already latent in the field of comparative philosophy: on the one hand, to say that any work on european philosophy in non-european contexts is a colonising imposition is to doom the project of comparative philosophy, which could after all be conceived, in spinozist fashion, as the necessary discovery of fellow travellers rather than the raising of the ghosts of colonisers. (i haven’t even mentioned that spinoza has been interpreted as friend to eastern and buddhist thought.) yet, on the other hand, to try to defend comparative philosophy in this way is to neglect the fact that history creates profound and unignorable asymmetries between the fellow travellers ostensibly being compared on equal footing. it may in fact now be correct to perceive spinoza as part of the european establishment. though i hope it’s clear why it was initially so confounding for me to encounter this insinuation (could such a singularly dissident figure really now be perceived as oppressor?), spinoza himself tells us that a thing is known through its effects. in other words: follow the money. that is, this interstices project was possible only because scarce institutional resources were thrown at yet another european thinker, possibly at the expense of neglected others. this is what my postcolonially hesitant colleagues meant; my counter-arguments (spinoza was so anomalous that he may be labelled a colonising european only by technicality of having lived in europe) can only go so far. nonetheless i again thank all sponsors and supporters of this project; their support wasn’t misdirected. saying that the postcolonial hesitancy must be left in unresolved tension is another way of saying it was incredibly generative. to my knowledge there’s no other existing work that reads spinoza in juxtaposition with māori thought apart from the invited paper here by carl mika; my deepest thanks to professor mika for his total lack of hesitancy when participating in in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 16 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a this project (and see mika, 2019, for more on the encounter between indigenous and western philosophies). gratitude is similarly owed to others who put energies into the pacific spinoza symposium panel in auckland—as speakers, albert refiti and jacob culbertson, and as hosts, ngahuia harrison, beatriz santiago muñoz, charlotte huddleston, balamohan shingade, and abby cunnane. sean sturm and stephen turner are likewise pacific spinoza agents (see their essay in this issue) whom i need to further thank. i have learned enormous amounts from all the above. outline of this issue’s contents carl mika’s “a māori reflection on spinoza’s primordial” is one of three invited papers in this issue. mika considers concepts such as ira (“the manifestation and persistence of a thing”), papatūānuku (primordial substance) and whakaaro (“indebtedness to a primordial substance”), juxtaposing them against spinoza’s monism and rationalism. sue ruddick’s “common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants” reflects on urban environments from the perspective of their more-than-human cohabitants, making us aware of cities themselves as synthesising and sustaining composite bodies. michael lebuffe’s “citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza” tackles a crux in spinoza’s political theory, namely spinoza’s ambiguous position on the fact that a state will inevitably be comprised of citizens who have not attained the kind of full rationality he describes as the highest good of human beings. what is society to do about this? does spinoza advocate cold-turkey methods (wrenching people away from their deeply cherished irrationalities and superstitions) or a gradualist-additive solution (gradually adding more adequate ideas to the inevitable store of inadequate ideas which are, at some level, never fully relinquished)? lebuffe’s discussion of this problem clarifies our understanding of the role of passions and the imagination (and recall that these latter concepts are, in turn, a crux for recruiting spinoza for aesthetic thinking). following the issue’s invited section are three reviewed papers. the first, “to see or be seen? the grounds of the place-based university” by sean sturm and stephen turner, investigates the confluence of knowledge, visibility and control in the context of the neo-liberal university, but from the perspective of what is occluded in its prevailing drive towards “transparency”. next, gökhan kodalak’s “spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life” reflects on spinoza’s articulation of affective interactions, “plications”, and morphogenetic processes, which he argues has considerable consequences for contemporary aesthetics. jonathan lahey dronsfield’s “what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text”, offers a philosophical reflection on a public reading of the ethics, inspired by deleuze’s account of spinoza. concluding this special issue is a review by paul james of chris l. smith’s bare architecture: a schizoanalysis (2017). linking architecture to the schizoanalytic project of gilles deleuze and felix guattari, james notes in the text both a will to overturn phenomenological overtures in architecture and a desire to link the latter with alternative philosophical framings of the corporeal. 10 in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 17 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a conclusion: the historical hesitancy there is one other hesitancy i suspect always hovers over spinoza: he was so long ago, his painful lucubrations seem dry as dust, one may as well attempt to reread the rosetta stone. perhaps some of what i’ve said above illustrates spinoza’s contemporaneity, but i’d also like to apply peer pressure: there are probably more people interested in spinoza now than any other time in history. it seems more true than ever that spinoza is a philosopher of our time; toss a stone, hit a spinozist (even in new zealand). there is a “current flourishing of spinoza studies all over the world” (steenbakkers, 2018: 20). carlisle and melamed even suggest that the spinoza resurgence constitutes a paradigm shift: “in many ways, spinoza is now replacing kant and descartes as both the compass and the watershed of modern thought” (2020: 9). the recognition of spinoza as a watershed owes something to jonathan israel’s work (2001), the argument of which, supported by a vast range of historical documents, might be summarised as: spinoza was the invisible demiurge of modernity since everyone had read him, yet he was so heretical that no-one could admit it. perhaps this is one practical matter that explains the burgeoning of spinoza: we can now all admit it. meaning there’s never been a better time to study spinoza. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 18 editorial / introduction: the arts, architectures, affects, and ecologies of spinoza in aotearoa t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a references alexander, z. ç. 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(2020). spinoza on art and the cultivation of a disposition toward joyful living. intellectual history review, 30(3), 429–445. endnotes 1 see spinozaandculture. wordpress.com and www.westdenhaag.nl/ exhibitions/19_10_spinoza_and_ the_arts. 2 but see uhlmann & gatens (2020) on spinoza’s concept of ingenium. 3 carlisle and melamed point out it may be inaccurate and anachronistic to apply the term ‘immanence’ to spinoza: “spinoza may force us to reconceive divine transcendence, but he does not deny it. indeed, the theological concepts of immanence and transcendence, considered as opposing terms, did not emerge until late in the eighteenth century” (2020: 9). but see lærke (2017) who argues that the “platonizing interpretation” of spinoza, i.e. the reading of spinoza as covertly transcendentalizing, is mistakenly based on a chimeric misreading of the concept of formal essence. 4 peden suggests that deleuze gave us “the spinoza of the affect” (2008: 66). 5 my one suggestion is that spinozist theories of art could take into greater account concepts of time, eternity, and perdurability; this is the path suggested by deleuze and guattari (1994) when they define art in terms of the perdurability of perceptions and affections. the concept of a “complex body” can cover many things (a human being, too, is a complex body), but deleuze & guattari suggest that what distinguishes an artwork qua complex body from other types of complex body has to do with how it endures in time and the nature of the content (affective) made perdurable. 6 allen, 1997/2013; boehme, 2005; connolly, 2005; and latour and yaneva, 2008. 7 i capitalise “nature” when caricaturing the view that such an entity exists monolithically; i use lower case when referring to nonhuman entities. 8 the “saving” of other communities—polar bears, frogs, corals, etc.—who share our evolutionary preference for these climatic conditions, is a collateral benefit, but should not be misrecognised as the ethical foundation. this might be understood in terms of spinoza’s principle of “common natures” (e4p29&d, e4p31c). 9 “anomaly” is negri’s (1991) word; “dissonance” is gatens and lloyd’s (1999: 1). acknowledgements thanks to the interstices editorial team for allowing me to perpetrate this entire project on them, but especial gratitude to susan hedges and andrew douglas who were patient and persistent despite unforeseen circumstances and unexpected obstacles. i thank the contributors for similar levels of patience and forbearance. additional thanks to ingrid boberg and melissa laing, and to his excellency rob zaagman, former ambassador of the netherlands in new zealand, for opening the auckland symposium. last but not least, copious thanks to my tireless coorganiser and co-editor farzaneh haghighi, who kept things going and whose example has spurred me to try to become as attentive with spinoza as she is expert on foucault. technics// memory// history//and the architecture of interstices// under construction symposium university of tasmania launceston 25-27.11.2011 book of abstracts// key paper abstracts// abstract// the example of “archives of the planet”, perhaps the most significant legacy of the lifework of the french jewish banker of albert kahn (1860-1940), provides an extraordinary entry point for the study of one of the key moment in the history of representation when the introduction of new technologies of mechanical reproduction induced a radical transformation in the thinking about memory, perception and knowledge. inspired by the philosophy of henri bergson, lifelong friend and tutor of albert kahn, and functioning under the scientific direction of the human geographer jean brunhes, the archives de la planète operated between1908 and 1931. completely funded by kahn, eleven independent photographers and cameramen including the biologist jean comandon, a pioneer in the fields of micro-photography and scientific cinema-, collected an immense ethno-geographic visual catalogue of the planet composed of 72,000 colour autochrome photographs, 4,000 stereographic images, and nearly 100 hours of mostly black and white documentary films. in two decades, the teams of the archives of the planet visited more than 40 countries to fulfill the mission defined by albert kahn in one of his rare written pronouncement, i.e. to record the traditional costumes, modes of production and ways of life that rapid processes of modernization were erasing all over the globe. beyond the opportunity of reconnoitring the redefinition of memory prompted by new technologies, the case of kahn’s collections offers therefore an opening to explore and scrutinize a crucial phase in the history of the twentieth century re-foundation of the notions of archive, milieu and habitat. the archives of the planet: cinema, photography and memory, 1908-1931 alessandra ponte bio// alessandra ponte is full professor at the école d’architecture, université de montréal. she has taught history and theory of architecture and landscape at pratt institute (new york), princeton university, cornell university, instituto universitario di architettura (venice), and eth (zurich). she has written articles and essays in numerous international publications, published a volume on richard payne knight and the eighteenth century picturesque (paris, 2000) and co-edited, with antoine picon, a collection of papers on architecture and the sciences (new york 2003). for the last four year she is been responsible for the conception and organization of the phyllis lambert seminar, a series colloquia on contemporary architectural topics. she has recently organized the exhibition total environment: montreal 1965-1975 (canadian centre for architecture, montreal, marchaugust 2009). she is currently completing a series of investigations about the north american landscapes and preparing a show and catalogue on françois dallegret (aa school, london, fall 2011). 02.01. spinoza’s geometric ecology dr peg rawes abstract// this paper explores the construction of a radical and ‘technical’ expression of nature/substance in spinoza’s geometric text, the ethics (1677). it suggests that spinoza’s seventeenth-century geometric analysis of subjectivity provides a fascinating historical technicity in discussions of aesthetics, matter and subjectivity, which engages with contemporary ecological politics and agency in the production of the built environment. spinoza’s geometric method is driven by his powerful theory of substance through which he locates a complex biodiversity of life. substance constitutes a kind of protomaterialist theory insofar as it is the primary univocal ‘cause’ of all realities, the immanent ‘life-force’ in all things, including architectural design practice and geometric thinking. ecologists and philosophers (e.g. arne naess and eccy de jong ) have discussed the ‘deep ecology’ of spinoza’s metaphysics of substance or nature. however, this paper considers spinoza’s invention of these ethical ecological relations through a geometrical technicity in which a plenitude of geometric figures and human, living and natural subjects are constructed. this genetic method therefore opens up the space to discuss geometric thinking, not just as a reductive technical operation of form-making, but as an exemplary mode of biological and material diversification. an ethical technicity of human emotions or affects is also developed through his psychophysical understanding of geometric relations, constituting a radical critique of subjectivity and ecological relations. as such, spinoza’s thinking resonates with contemporary visual arts and spatial practices, including, agnes denes’ wheatfield: a confrontation, 1982, which re-purposed new york’s battery park into urban agriculture and which was reconstructed in london in 2009 as part of the radical nature exhibition at the barbican. under these terms, denes’ critical and aesthetic (that is, sense-based) spatial intervention recalls spinoza’s promotion of radical geometric ecologies. each demonstrates the capacity for a ‘natural’ geometric technicity to generate new figure-subjects and critical spatiotemporal relations and, consequently, to contribute more productively towards contemporary discussions about the wellbeing of diverse modern subjectivities and societies. in addition, considering spinoza’s own formidable technical and aesthetic labour in geometric thinking (which bergson identified with the force of a ‘dreadnought’ and an immaterial ‘lightness’ of thought) we might wish to explore the value of his radical aesthetic technicity for generating critical geometric ecologies for contemporary visual arts practices. might spinoza’s ‘natural geometry’ enable debates about the need to design for the diverse social and environmental needs, for example, by contributing to contemporary critiques of agency, or for developing diverse cultures of dwelling? might his ethical thinking about nature and geometry also help to rethink the commercially-driven fascination in formal geometric production that continues to dominate the discipline (trends which still operate on the basis of understanding geometry as an abstract disembodied set of functions)? in the face of these, and other pressing questions of human difference and well-being, together with the need to protect ecological difference, this paper suggests that spinoza’s philosophy may provide opportunities through which architecture, and the visual arts, can rethink and value human and environmental biodiversity in the built environment. bio// peg rawes is a senior lecturer in architectural history and theory and director of architectural research at the bartlett school of architecture, university college london. abstract// memory and place are inextricably linked. moreover, memory stands in a special relation to built places – to corridors, rooms, buildings streets, neighbourhoods, towns, cities. thus bachelard explores memory as given in the house; benjamin as present in the city and its streets. to understand both, one cannot treat memory as merely some subjective quality attached to the built. the built is formed from memory and memory from the built. often overlooked in those forms of architectural practice given over to the technical and the representational, the intimate connection of building and memory nevertheless indicates the centrality of building in the formation of the fundamental fabric of human life. the weave of memory and of meaning is accomplished in the built form of house, street, and city, rather than in some inner sanctum of the mind. building memory prof jeff malpas bio// jeff malpas is professor of philosophy at the university of tasmania and distinguished visiting professor at latrobe university. he has written extensively on issues of place and space and his newest book, heidegger and the thinking of place, will appear in january 2012 with mit press. 03. 04. failure. this paper seizes on two contradictory moments in the commissioning and work of the mural cycle as symptoms “the suddenly manifested knot of associations or conflicted meaning” of the mural cycle’s sudden aporias around settler activism in frontier violence and the racialised borders of the new australian state. this paper examines the role of architecture at purrumbete in framing the boundaries of past and present, in accommodating the mural cycle’s shifting viewing positions – from intimate witness to minority white australian – and of the homestead as a powerful indexical referent constructing the meaning of the mural images as documentary site histories. the skilful architectural composition maintains and absorbs the mural cycle’s contradictions without having to resolve them. ideology is the logic of the dream not analytical reason. signs, symptoms and the index: depicting past and present at purrumbete, 1901-02 dr karen burns abstract// this paper examines the wall mural, a traditional medium for constructing spatial exchanges between architecture and images. i focus on an unusual 1901-02 mural cycle designed by walter withers for the manifold family at purrumbete in victoria’s western district. the cycle was commissioned as part of an extensive rebuilding of the late victorian homestead, culminating in a set of public reception rooms decorated with imagery of the pastoral frontier. in situ murals were key forms of architectural decoration until the late twentieth century. murals can narrate both the sited-ness and virtuality of architecture. since the late medieval period, western architecture’s window frames, doors and enfilade systems have framed the mural as a view, and later as a picture, making the mural’s otherness consonant with the logic of the interior. however murals can also have a powerful immersive quality, projecting the viewer into another world: in media res. another function was found for murals as the medium was reinvented towards the end of the nineteenth century when in-situ images were fashioned as external projections of interior psychic states. the purrumbete murals reveal another function of the architecture/in-situ image intersection. in the withers decorated reception room architectural systems of spatial articulation produce a powerful counter-weight to the image, constructing a cohesive interior that mitigates against the inconsistencies of the interior image world of the mural narrative, its ideology and viewing positions. in his book confronting images (2009), georges didi huberman argues against art history’s desire to discover legible, coherent narratives in the surface of images, to make the art image “identical to the work of symbolic reason” (bryson, 1993) norman bryson reviewing huberman’s text was rightly suspicious of any generalised claim for the failure of images to represent, but persuaded by huberman’s endeavour to historicise “the text or image that builds representational failure into itself”. (1993) whilst huberman rightly identifies the widespread failure to represent he also gives meaning and legibility to that bio// karen burns is a senior lecturer in architectural history and theory in the department of architecture at monash university, melbourne, australia. her current research projects include a history of anglophone feminist architectural theory, practice and research from 19742010, a study of fortified civilian architecture on the port phillip and van diemen’s land pastoral frontiers and a book length study of architects, commodities and the industrial marketplace: the industrial muse: architects, aesthetics and manufacture in britain, 1842-1862. her essays have been published in assemblage, ad, transition ,architectural theory review and the journal of architectural education (forthcoming and in the following books: postcolonial spaces, desiring practices and intimus. 05. 06. abstract// reconstruction discourse for a number of post-disaster settings and scenarios has led to a renewal of typological studies. this has commonly involved a turn to architectural history and analyses of vernacular architecture in the effort to propose novel building types more likely to protect communities against loss of life and property. varied arguments for the adaption and ‘improvement’ of traditional southeast asian village architecture, the new orleans raised cottage or queenslander (to name a few cases) prompt a number of questions relating to conference themes. how does the appropriation of historical building forms engage different pasts in order to predict and forestall future catastrophe? what building types are chosen, how are they adapted and how does this process elicit understandings of memory and architectural heritage? how are communities defined as socio-logical and psychological entities by the selection of building forms that aim not only to resist cyclonic winds, floods and earthquakes, but also provide for community recuperation and emotional catharsis following a catastrophic event? how can culture and politics enter the picture? architectural typologies and the mnemotechnics of rebuilding in recent post-disaster scenarios prof william taylor bio// william m. taylor is professor of architecture at the university of western australia where he teaches architectural design and history and theory of the built environment. recent publications include the vital landscape, nature and the built environment in nineteenthcentury britain (ashgate 2004) and a coedited collection of essays an everyday transience: the urban imaginary of goldfields photographer john joseph dwyer (uwa publishing 2010). a co-authored book prospects for an ethics of architecture (routledge 2011) results from his collaboration with professor michael levine (philosophy uwa). he is currently researching the subject of architecture and transience. abstracts// 07. 08. abstract// an enquiry into the appropriate methods for understanding and representing architectural and urban histories is complicated. these questions increasingly dominate the field of history studies of the insufficient and contradictory tendency in conventional historiographies that rely upon iconic recollections of history, which utilize the ‘visible’ and the materialistic approaches in representation rather than opening up to approaches that maintain strong and diverse relationships with vast range of social and human sciences. the growing debate on the significance of historical studies that challenge the loss of memory in modernity emphasizes the role of history as a cure to the problems of humanity despite the fact that it is a realm of ambiguity. michel foucault considers history as “the mother of all the sciences of man” (foucault, 2002). he suggests that “all knowledge is rooted in a life, a society, and a language that have a history: and it is in that very history that knowledge finds the element enabling it to communicate with other forms of life, other types of society, other significations”, and that “the different positivities formed by history and laid down in it are able to enter into contact with one another, surround one another in the form of knowledge” (foucault, 2002). however, the concept of history is abstract itself, as history cannot communicate itself directly to people; it relies on the historians who collect, constitute, and transmit historical ideas through societies. the knowledge, intentions, and methodologies used by historians have great impact on historiography. in relation to the crisis of architectural history representation, paul rabinow suggests that the problem was in the shift of the vocabulary of architectural forms from architectural type and its historicization and formalization, to architectural style: “the meaning of style in architecture gained an entirely new value, or more accurately, took on value” (rabinow, 1989). yet for mark crinson, the problem is in the extreme memory loss and the loss of familiarity, as post-modern urbanism “treats the past as something to be quoted selectively, something already deracinated” (crinson, 2005). and for sibel bozdogan the between the ‘represented’ and ‘representing’: the crisis of urban history and the techniques of historiography iman al-attar problem is that architectural history is mainly eurocentric and historiography emphasizes cultural difference rather than cultural diversity. (after an elaborated discussion of the matter, she concludes that “history of architecture is a particularly fertile ground for new interpretations”) (bozdogan, 1984). the wide use of terminologies like ‘past’ and ‘memory’, and the application of affixes like ‘pre’ and ‘post’ establishes a huge cut in the concept of the time flow and give the impression of greatly separated periods of time that lack any sign of unity or coherence. i believe that this approach is among the obstacles that hinders the advancements of integrated urban history studies. yet the distinctive aspect of all historians’ critiques of conventional historiography is its vague and incomplete image of social histories, which urges for a search for unconventional methods of representation. this paper attempts at a discussion of the possible methodologies to establish alternative methods in historiogrphy. the paper focuses on the urban history of baghdad in late eighteenth century as an exceptional example of an indistinct urban history representation. references bozdogan, s 1984, ‘architectural history in professional education: reflections on postcolonial challenges to the modern survey’, journal of architectural education, vol. 37, pp. 207-215 crinson, m 2005, urban memory : history and amnesia in the modern city, routledge, london [england] ; new york, ny. pxi foucault, m 2002, the order of things : an archaeology of the human sciences, routledge, london ; new york. rabinow, p 1989, french modern : norms and forms of the social environment, mit press, cambridge, mass. p47 bio// iman al-attar is a phd candidate at the university of tasmania’s school of architecture and design. iman research is largely focused on the textual representation of the socio-urban history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in baghdad. 09. 10. abstract// in light of massive catastrophes, tragedy, and the question of reconstruction that invokes the uncertainty of remembering, i wish to respond with a personal experience, one i recently investigated resulting in a phd on the subject. i used the case study of the 1979 mt erebus aviation disaster in antarctica to explore degraded visual functioning, a condition resulting from variable perceptual experiences. the landscape of northern tasmania was surveyed from the cockpit of an aircraft – mediation by technology – the ‘flight view’, where sound recordings and video data were collected as raw material for the project. “barega, my childhood home, is only minutes away. barega, winds from all directions, where my mind and body begin to understand nature, even before i give it another thought…light falling on landscape, linking me to place and space, forming my perceptions. barega, is part of my mental set.” (extract taken from world beyond the horizon. the journey: the pilot as artist, 2010) part of the project was to reconstruct the childhood experience, image-objects of the past intervened with the present. this reconstruction included a visitation to my childhood home in northern tasmania – this time from the air. barega was the place where i spent my childhood and my adolescence where my mind formed an understanding for things – they became part of my mental and psychological sets – my past shaping the present. to alva noë, contemporary philosopher and cognitive scientist, such events can be defined by the science of phenomena in the context of something that impresses itself upon the observer as being ‘extraordinary’ – a remarkable thing or a particular happening. these concepts can be applied to the way individuals perceive their environments. alternatively (as i have done), they can find expression of these ideas through the creative processes of painting, photography and new media. as individuals, when in the process of negotiation and reconstruction we call upon mental sets that have been successful in the past. wayne weiten, psychologist defines: ‘a mental set exists when humans persist in problem-solving strategies that have worked in the past’. our mental sets become key image-objects that assist in the conceptual structure of our methodology – one that informs our narrative history. american contemporary video artist, bill viola seeks to reconcile the power of video with human consciousness by combining visual, aural, and temporal elements with technology as he probes the essence of being. functioning as a surrogate for the mind’s eye, viola’s video explores the interaction of image and memory, the subconscious and its dreams. i attempt to create this experience within the framework of my work world beyond the horizon, with a new architecture of imagery and sound relating to environmental systems that are in concert with my own sensory experience and mental sets. the result was a reconstructed landscape – a synthetic journey of a past landscape – relocating a notion of the past into the present as seen through the flight view and its associated technics. the connection between the two (the past and present) has been demonstrated in this immersive, engaging and transportive video sound installation. these technical processes took the work out of the realm of pure documentary resulting in a project that i consider speaks for itself regarding its effectiveness as an artwork in an attempt to memorialise the past triggered by the flight view concept. bio// dr. simon bourke has a phd from the university of tasmania’s school of visual and performing arts. simon’s research is an investigation into light and its effect on the landscape, including a project is entitled ”the world beyond the horizon.” interstices and the aerial viewpoint: reconstructing the complexity of the ‘normal’ experience. dr simon bourke. abstract// this paper reflects on santos city of lights, a performance event created by lighting designer john rayment, which ran nightly for the duration of the 2011 brisbane festival. the work gives rise to a number of questions that pivot within broader discourse about the capacity of urban arts festivals for re/constructing senses of place, community identity, optimism and collective memory. there is the issue of whether and in what sense the arts have a role to play in assisting communities in trauma recovery, the case in point being the major brisbane flood of january 2011 in which thousands of homes and businesses were inundated. festival promotional material and media releases from the premier’s department certainly made claims in this direction and were clearly keen to encourage positive public reengagement with the river and its urban precinct, southbank. santos city of lights provokes consideration of the boundaries between ‘art’ and ‘design’ in a festival context and ways in which public expectations of and responses to specific events may be directed accordingly. sponsored by santos, one of the biggest mining and energy supply companies in the country, the work could be read as a piece of extravagant advertising, with the company motto “we have the energy” blazed in neon lights at the entrance to the public viewing area on southbank. in promotional material, the work was positioned as a spectacle of novel lighting design – “the first laser light show of its kind in australia” one created with brisbane’s unique geography in mind. yet without ‘santos’ in the title of the work, city of lights could arguably be experienced as a site-specific art installation, with an invitation to more heightened reading of its cultural content and critique from aesthetic and ideational perspectives. there are further complexities to be teased out around the technicity of the festival spectacle – the productive processes and the commercial agendas that support high level resourcing, impacts of technologies employed and ways in which audiences are enabled/constrained by projecting brisbane: lines of f/light in the 2011 post-flood festival dr. jen brown them, the detritus of images and sounds captured by media active audiences and their potential to serve as mnemonic devices via social networking sites on the internet. as a native of brisbane who grew up beside, in, on, across, under and over the muddy brown waters of the river, i have a particular interest in contemporary positionings of the river in the cultural life of the city. bio// dr. jen brown is a designer and educator who works with soundscapes, interactive multimedia, video and photography. she holds a phd in creative arts and is currently undertaking her second phd jointly between the university of tasmania’s school of architecture and design and school of visual and performing arts. jen frequently collaborates with tas dance and freelances in design & development. jen is currently based in launceston, tasmania 11. 12. abstract// the construction and reconstruction of urban environment after calamitous events and urban shifts is a historically persistent phenomenon, one that can be slow/abrupt, confronting/intangible, material/spiritual, and literal/ abstract. john ruskin responded to the erosion of the historical fabric in european cities, particular venice, by promoting preservation, through delayed physical deterioration, complemented significantly by parallel practices of collection and documentation, such as writing, drawing, photographing, and taking plaster casts. ruskin presented his rejection of the practices of reconstruction and/or restoration in five dense pages of “lamp of memory”, seven lamps of architecture (242-247). these declarations were either dogmatically adopted by institutional framings (such as the international committee for monuments and sites), for instrumental purposes of decision-making, or construed by historians as advancing the picturesque ideal of the ruin. the paper focuses on the premise that repairing the surface of a historical building was like patching up a dead person, and therefore unthinkable. it was a form of architectural uncanny where the building hovered indeterminately between animation and lifelessness. however, this death was reversible. if the cladding and the ornamentation was completely ripped off and the structure re-skinned, the building could be ‘reborn’, as a different building. the paper will explain this seemingly unusual premise by presenting ruskin’s theory of life, death, and rebirth in architecture, through multiple lenses of dress, labour, gender, and spirituality. it argues that for ruskin life was not innate to an object. the building was brought to life through surface ornamentation, which was the life and the energy of the craftsperson imparted to the building through creative labour. the ornamentation was disposed as dress like veneer and the analogy of clothing had gendered orientations. the building was a humanized and a feminized entity, dressed and brought to life by the male craftsperson. hence, not unlike pandora, the mythical first woman, architecture was born dressed. also following thomas carlyle’s sartor resartus (1843), birth, death, and rebirth: reconstruction of architecture in ruskin’s writings dr anuradha chatterjee ruskin believed that dress was the soul of a human being, which meant that the destruction of the ornamental dress like veneer of a building marked its death. this alluded to the key premise in ruskin’s writings that spiritual life was more potent than biological life. ruskin’s writings have often been considered as specific historical utterance. however, their potency is palpable and has wider relevance. first, ornament is viewed as more than formal object. instead it is considered as a discrete event, which could not be replicated, only succeeded by a subsequent event. second, the notion of birth, death, and rebirth cuts through the dichotomy between the original and the copy in debates on authenticity, disabling forever the possibility of return. the paper will discuss the implications of these lesser known theoretical alignments in ruskin’s writings. bio// dr anuradha chatterjee is an architect, academic, and writer/critic through her teaching and writing, anu is pursuing simultaneous research agendas of ruskin studies; dress, body, and gender and architectural theory; cultural history of surface and vision through architectural theory; and emergent practices (australia and asia). she is the founding editor of the eighth lamp: ruskin studies today (rivendale press), and the author of ‘travelling the surface: john ruskin and the production of the new theory of the adorned “wall veil”’, ruskin, venice and nineteenth-century cultural travel, eds keith hanley and emma sdegno, venezia: libreria editrice cafoscarina, 2010; and ‘ruskin’s theory of the ideal dress and textile analogy in medieval architecture’, persistent ruskin – studies in influence, assimilation and effect, eds keith hanley and brian maidment, ashgate 2012 (in press). abstract// on september 11, 2001, when the world trade center towers came down, i was at columbia university in new york city. in the immediate days following the tragedy, new yorkers responded in many ways – posters of the missing were plastered on every surface and spontaneous memorials emerged on every street and in every park. in the subway strangers struck up conversations eliciting connection in a city that has as much potential to render the individual anonymous as it does to create fifteen minutes of fame. in the city, underlying the grief and disbelief, there was a feeling of a vast interconnected and international camaraderie – a physical manifestation of the aspirational spirit and defiant enthusiasm that led america to imagine and construct a city of glass and steel skyscrapers. that feeling, of aspiration and defiance, is a powerful thing – it has the power to create great things but it also has the power to manifest a vast silence and leave criticality and discursive nuance in its wake. in the months following the event the american popular media, in line with the bush administration’s political agenda, re-positioned an event that was international in its scope – the missing and the dead from the world trade centre alone formed a micro-demographic of the world’s population – rewriting it as a wholly american event. this ‘americanisation’, through the exploitation of defiant sentiment and patriotism, created a singular metanarrative that galvanized the bush administration’s war machine and silenced any critic. the twin towers were by no stretch of the imagination exemplary models of architecture. instead, their power resided in their iconography. as objects transmitting meaning their images proliferated in a global media economy and were traded upon in their physicality and in their destruction. in many ways, the architectural responses to the fall of the twin towers were part of this spectacular consumption. in light of this, the ‘heroic’, well intentioned visions originally put forth for the master planning of the world trade center site seem empty and catastrophe and memorialisation: reflecting on the architectural after-effects of september 11 tania davidge devoid of critical engagement. this paper will explore processes of media memory and memorialisation in relation to the architectural responses to the events of september 11. in light of this it will examine the initial master planning proposals for the site, the world trade centre memorial proposal, the pentagon memorial proposal and two speculative proposals i developed while living and studying in new york in the years following the event: a world trade centre archive and a proposal for the world trade centre memorial competition. positioned as counter narratives these proposals were developed as a critique of the singular narrative espoused by the mass media and investigated ways an architectural proposal could articulate the complexity of the narratives that surrounded the tragedy. in light of the 10 year anniversary of the tragedy it seems relevant to re-visit and re-assess the architectural responses to the event, including my own, and to explore and discuss the potential an architectural project might have to act as a tool for political critique. bio// tania davidge is a registered architect and sessional academic at monash university and rmit. in 2002 she completed a master’s of science in advanced architectural design at columbia university in the city of new york. in 2009, tania founded openhaus architecture with christine phillips. described as an ‘alternative’ or ‘nontraditional’ architectural practice openhaus does not currently make buildings but engages in architectural activism and advocacy. the practice’s primary aims are to explore the relationship of the public to architecture and to develop new ways of engaging the public with architectural practice and architectural ideas. in 2012 tania hopes to begin a phd at monash university exploring, through the design, development and execution of ‘architectural events’, innovative and non-traditional ways in which the public can actively engage with architecture. 13. 14. abstract// on new years eve, 1922, the massive double-domed timber structure of rudolf steiner’s first goetheanum was engulfed in flames and reduced to ashes. in an effort to make his spiritual teachings accessible to all people through the medium of architecture, steiner had dedicated ten years to the project. growing hostility towards his occult philosophy however, pointed to arson as the probable cause of the blaze. not to be defeated, steiner embarked upon a new design for a second goetheanum that endeavoured to fulfil the same aim as its predecessor but on an even grander scale. yet despite being borne out of the same ideational basis, the architectural expression of the second building was vastly different from the first. this paper examines these differences and investigates how the methods steiner used to create his architecture influenced the final architectural products. steiner recognised drawing as a creative instrument that could enrich the conceptual potential of his theoretical work, however, with no formal training as an architect and limited drawing ability, this exchange was somewhat limited. the ambiguity of steiner’s drawings is countered to some extent though by the maquettes and models he produced, which help negotiate the gap between the immaterial idea and the material object. the shared three-dimensional nature of model making and architecture allowed steiner a more direct means of articulating and mediating his esoteric ideas in built form than the two-dimensional nature of drawing, particularly given the undulating organic forms he enthusiastically employed. nevertheless, models are still a form of architectural abstraction capable of leaving their own trace on the built work and the distinctive character of steiner’s non-conventional models serve to illustrate this point. a comparison between steiner’s models and the buildings themselves reveal the intimate relationship between process and product that exists in his work. while the loss of the first goetheanum came as a crushing blow to steiner, its destruction and reconstruction offered him a unique opportunity to reconsider aspects of the design that may have been flawed in the first instance – a situation he embraced unequivocally. what images recurred in his work and why? how did his architecture evolve? this essay paper and fire: the images and ashes of rudolf steiner’s architecture fiona gray will demonstrate how paper and plasticine were utilised in a highly individualised manner by steiner as a bridge between idea and artefact, to allow new architectural forms to rise from the ashes and produce one of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary buildings. bio// fiona gray is a phd candidate in architecture and building at deakin university, geelong. her research investigates how the architectural theories of austrian philosopher, rudolf steiner, are translated into built form, within the context of both twentieth century modernism and contemporary architecture. she is also an architect and director of soul dwellings, an architectural practice dedicated to environmental, economic and social sustainability in the built environment. abstract// this paper examines the ways in which visions of idealised landscapes have shaped the historiography of tasmanian architecture. since early european settlement and the expansion of settlement and agriculture across the former colony, colonial buildings have been understood as framed by a re-shaping of the tasmanian landscape, based on a remembering of a foreign land. yet as recently argued by james boyce, while early colonists re-worked of the tasmanian landscape, the environment simultaneously reshaped them. more than a century later, in the 1950s and 1960s, the presence of the environment was re-asserted in the formulation of local architectural discourses, at this time shaped within a wider community of environmentalists, photographers, artists, architects, designers and political activists, among them: landscape photographers and activists olegas truchanas and peter dombrovskis; heritage photographer frank bolt; artists steve walker and max angus; as well as architects including dirk bolt, barry mcneill, peter dermoudy, terry barwick, brian and bill howroyd, jimmy moon and bob nation, among others. here, the state’s powerful natural environments provided an essential point of reference and resistance. when hobart hosted the 10th national convention of the raia (1960), tasmanian architect invoked the potentially restorative effects of a near and ever-present tasmanian wilderness against the perceived scourge of a place-less, technologically-derived modernism. more recently still, the significance of landscape for understandings of tasmanian architecture has been reified in contemporary architectural photography of hobart urban designer and architect, leigh woolley. in woolley’s images, architectural objects are self-consciously located within multi-layered cultural and physical landscapes, inevitably framed by (or with buildings positioned to frame) the theatre commonly afforded by the tasmanian topography. for woolley, such images serve as visual documentation, as well as tools for the interrogation of place. of course, tasmanian landscapes – both constructed and the landscapes of tasmanian architectural history dr stuart king wild – aren’t constant. for example, shifting perceptions of the iconic structures of the former port arthur penal settlement have been affected by shifts in the immediate landscape, which have included a series of bushfires in the late nineteenth century; the maturing of an exotic plantings on the site; and most recently – in july 2011 – a rare storm surge that inundated the historic ruins and provided a new ‘ground’ for the remembering of difficult colonial and recent pasts. in this last dynamic instance the constructed landscape was momentarily erased, simultaneously reframing and threatening the historical image-objects of the memorialised site. this paper examines the viewing and positioning of objects against the particularised terrains of the tasmanian environment, at certain moments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, contending that such images have framed a specific historiography of architecture in the island state. bio// dr stuart king lectures in the school of architecture & design at the university of tasmania, in launceston. he graduated with a b.arch (hons i) from the university of queensland in 1996 and a phd in architecture at the university of melbourne in 2010. current research interests include the history and theory of nineteenth century architecture and the history and historiography of australian architecture, with particular interests in queensland and tasmania. 15. 15. abstract// over the past year or so the stony rises project, devised to bring the histories and cultures of the volcano country around camperdown, victoria to presence, has been touring as an exhibition of crossing practices and multiple visions. a program of fieldwork, unaccustomed collaborations and production of visual and installation work has produced new readings of the indigenous, settler and contemporary landscapes of the region. the underlying material is stone, volcanic stone, in all its forms; as topographic flows, cone shaped hills and field detritus, interspersed with architectures such as caves, houses and the ubiquitous walls for which the cultural landscape is known. the project reveals the presence of stone that inculcates the land with both promise and pathos and suggests uncertain futures. this paper and installation proposes to review one of the stony rises projects, a deep mapping for the stony rises, as it explores the layers of existence that wrought such change across the landscape. seeking to test cliff mclucas’ deep mapping methodology of ten conditions about deep maps, a deep mapping is ‘…an experiment in the superpositioning of gathered and invited material interleaved with a stratigraphy of text – as a kind of writing over writing over writing where points once separated in time are made adjacent. the ten elements for a deep map are guides for peripatetic travelling through stony terrains shaped by curatorial fine-tuning and further informed by instructions from collaborators, when such advice exists. arrangements of collected, invited and offered fragments of impressions gathered across these landscapes are ordered and layered onto conceptual ground – the mat to be folded up and carried about as necessary.’ii at each installation in the gallery tour the resulting works, gathered and at times offered by fellow travellers, are repositioned to suit the confines of gallery space resulting in material superimpositions that curate and re-write histories each time. a deep mapping also juxtaposes the stone country of another place, the high country of the flinders ranges, resulting in an abstract yet material tuning of the stone topology of these dissimilar territories. re-enacting stonescapes is a textual examination of the mapping methodology and accompanying traversing field practice written of the historical record, reframed through three elemental stonescapes which bring a consistent thread to the work: hill topography, aboriginal working ground and the gardened landscape. the proposed installation transports the volcanic stony rises mapping to interstices and laid out on an available floor, with the intent to commence a corresponding stone country mapping for the launceston region. the intent is to seek out hill, garden and working ground and invite a range of collaborators into the open-ended project: an under construction work for the symposium. a deep mapping for the sedimentary and dolerite stone country of northern tasmania will be generated over time; its genesis arising in the interstices community. ihttp://metamedia.stanford.edu/~mshanks/projects/deep-mapping.html, accessed 26 april, 2008 iibyrne, l, edquist, h and vaughan, eds, designing place an archaeology of the western district, melbourne books , melbourne, 2010 bio// dr gini lee is a landscape architect and interior designer and is the elisabeth murdoch chair of landscape architecture at the university of melbourne. prior to this she was the professor of landscape architecture at queensland university of technology (2008-2011) and head of school at the university of south australia (19992004) as a researcher and lecturer in cultural and critical landscape architecture studies and spatial interior design. her phd entitled the intention to notice: the collection, the tour and ordinary landscapes, investigated ways in which designed landscapes are incorporated into the cultural understandings of individuals and communities. focusing on the arid environments of australia, her multidisciplinary research into the water landscapes of remote territories contributes to the scientific and cultural and indigenous understanding and management strategies for fragile landscapes. she is a registered landscape architect, executive editor of the idea journal, a councillor of the queensland heritage council and chair of art + place for arts queensland. re-enacting stonescapes: territories under construction brought to presence prof. gini lee abstract// the proposed presentation reflects on iconic or significant houses that in some way or another have been transformed into a genre of image-object that ‘architecturalise historiography’. of particular concern are twentieth century houses that have been preserved or embalmed in their eternal state of newness because of their importance to the historiography of modernism: a history intimately bound up with elevating the domestic and the private to the realm of architectural significance. the paper will tease out often made claims about the potency of shared memories that reside in museum-houses, and the role they play as document-objects of history. this is also an account of how interpretation techniques deployed in museumhouses – that seek to show and tell us stories of historical and architectural significance – borrow from the genre of drama and performance to create environments that are, inevitably, part ‘real’ and part ‘fabrication’. the paper will focus on one close study of one particular house that is part of a longer-term project investigating the modern museum-house. the manning clark foundation has been the custodian of manning clark’s house since 2000. the house, designed by robin boyd in 1952 and located in suburban canberra is now valued for its architectural significance alongside its biographical attachment to one of australia’s most well known and most controversial historians. the account documents the author’s unfolding experience over the duration of a three day stay to understand how museum-houses blur the boundaries of embodied personal and collective memory to, sometimes, uncanny effect. and how, in this particular scenario, the house as dwelling and place of work became intimately entwined in the process of producing history and the interiority of the psychic of clark the historian. appropriate (albeit if self-indulgently) to the unraveling of the notions of house as public history and home as private contemplation, the mode of research and documentation here has been concerned with charting my own intimate experience of such houses over the course of an extended visit – in words and photographs. the presentation will therefore experiment with a somewhat episodic and unorthodox narrative approaches that allow for the voicing “deranging oneself in someone else’s house” assoc. prof. hannah lewi of the narrator alongside the more traditionally disengaged academic author. there are some awkward bumps of personal experience and revelation that stray across academic territories of biography, history and architectural documentation, in order to – quoting the historian john docker – ‘derange oneself’ and ‘cultivate methods as a kind of madness’. bio// dr. hannah lewi is an associate professor in the faculty of architecture, building and planning at the university of melbourne. her research interests span heritage theory; new media technique in the representation of place and australian architectural history. she is the co-editor and coauthor of the book community: building modern australia, unsw press, 2010, and is the current chair of docomomo australia. 17. 18. abstract// australia was booming in the 1950’s. the television and the car gave the australian populace new found freedom and opened their minds to ideas and influences from overseas like never before. in many respects, however, this inundation by other cultures swamped the fledgling australian identity and without a solid cultural base many of the ideas from abroad appeared in australia as undigested lumps of mimicry and duplication. within the realm of architecture robin boyd, in his book “the australia ugliness”1 described this phenomenon as featurism which he believed stems from the desire, either consciously or subconsciously, to display something but without the knowledge of how best to display it. the object becomes a self justifying showpiece, a feature for the sake of featuring. this is then compounded by the desire, especially in the suburban home, to display an eclectic mix of accentuated, selected, separate features, creating a fractured veneer of features that subordinates the essential whole. it would appear that this idea of ignorant exhibitionism does not reappear in architectural literature until charles jencks explores the idea of the iconic icon in his book “the iconic building: the power of enigma”2. jencks tracks the development of this particular strand of controversial post modern architecture and presents a compelling argument for the iconic building as the natural product of the consumer based, media driven, international society that is prevalent today. through his writing jencks tracks the development of this typology from its beginnings as structures such as the colossus of rhodes then through the monumental architecture of pre-industrial history. the iconic building experiences drastic transformations firstly by the technological upheaval of the industrialisation of civilisation then again by the creation of the capitalist consumer society. the development of the architectural corporate image and the branding of architectural practices all become part of the iconic icon. this essay will look to expand on jencks’ analysis, one that is very much concerned with the visual, to include a deeper reading of both the social and the spatial context within which these buildings crystallise. this analysis will be aided by the writings of robin boyd, a renowned australian architect, author, critic, and public educator who’s theories on featurism offer critical insight into the social environment that preceded the rise of jencks’ iconic architecture and anthony vidler the dean and professor of the irwin s. chanin school of architecture at the cooper union in new york, who’s writings on spatial violence3 serve to reveal some of the innate tensions between the iconic building and its immediate context, largely unexplored in jencks’ writing. 1. boyd, robin. 1960. the australian ugliness f.w. cheshire pty, australia 2. jencks, charles. 2005. the iconic building: the power of enigma. frances lincoln ltd, uk 3. vidler, anthony. 1993. spatial violence assemblage no. 20. 84-85 bio// understanding the iconic icon james lewis abstract// everything new simultaneously contains a regression, since it evokes reactions from long unused layers [of memory]. a tectonically new art will awaken suppressed memories of earlier tectonic tendencies: sumerian, greekarchaic, byzantine art will be moved closer thanks to the present...history is formed from the present and the selection of things past is made in accordance with their contemporary relevance.i i einstein, carl. 1926. die kunst des 20. jahrhunderts. 1931 edition. berlin: propyläen-verlag. my own translation, p.210 adorno suggested that the german word museal connotes ‘objects to which the observer no longer has a vital relationship and which are in the process of dying’. museums are understood as places where past and present are portrayed as distinct and separate entities in an attempt to factually represent a singular historic reality. in contradistinction, carl einstein acknowledges that the relation between the past and the present is one of imbrication. museums and exhibitions are understood as environments that have the capacity to construct meaning from contemporary perspectives through their curatorial choices. the spatial experience of the exhibition environment its architecture, spatio-temporal organization, materials and techniques of display mediates historic, aesthetic and cultural values to audiences by presenting art objects in particular ways to demonstrate evolving relations and construct changing narratives. in that sense, a museum or exhibition is more about the various methods it utilizes and the experiences it stages than about the art objects it contains it is essentially ‘alive’. donald preziosi identifies two fundamental ways of staging history in museum and exhibition contexts, each deploying different techniques of shaping the space and time of memory and corresponding to distinct methods of knowledge production and mediation: the first is the psycho-analytical model based on an interpretative approach that construes art objects as visible indicators or symptoms, and that permits an open system of infinite relations; the second is the scientific model techniques of display: on constructing and mediating cultural and aesthetic values in exhibition environments sandra karina löschke with a causalistic-deterministic approach similar to an evolutionary progression, where there is a prototype or ‘vorbild’ and a series derivatives and whereby the last element in the sequence is the most derivate and directly results from the influence of the ‘vorbild’ in relation to form, style etc.. against this context, the paper investigates three exhibition spaces with distinct display strategies: alexander dorner’s ‘atmosphere rooms’ at the provinzialmuseum hannover, and two exhibition rooms commissioned by dorner: el lissitzky’s ‘abstract cabinet’ (1927), and moholy-nagy’s ‘room of the present’ (1930). both rooms had been originally constructed as part of temporary, international exhibitions the internationale kunstausstellung dresden 1926 and the deutsche werkbund exhibition in paris 1930, but they were not mere reconstructions of the previous spaces and represented further developments of the original concepts that bear witness to dorner’s influence, and point to synergies as well as differences in their respective curatorial approaches and techniques. bio// sandra karina löschke is an architect and academic. she has studied at the bartlett school of architecture/university college london and the architectural association london where she was awarded the aa bursary. a doctoral candidate at the university of new south wales, her research focuses on aspects of materiality and mediality and in modern german museum and exhibition architecture. her architectural work includes projects for foster and partners/london, where she has been responsible for technologically innovative façade designs (tower place) and interior/ workplace designs (electronic arts). prior to fosters, she has worked on museum and cultural buildings in england and germany for avery associates/ london (british film institute) and stephan braunfels/ munich (pinakothek der moderne). her own architectural work has been exhibited at the 11th venice architecture biennale and in galleries in sydney, melbourne, canberra, singapore, bangkok and kuala lumpur. 19. 20. abstract// i. kleist’s ‘earthquake in chile’ as an architecture of collapse the moment of recognition for this research was reading the late eighteenth century writer heinrich von kleist’s (1777 – 1811) observation that an arch is only held in place because the stones that construct it want to collapse. this image-object by kleist engenders the unsaid of architecture: that an arch as something technical, devised and engineered is collapse held in temporal abeyance consequently his remark is provocative and transgressive. kleist’s seemingly empirical reflection holds in it the seeds of its own philosophical, metaphorical and material destruction. kleist’s concept of the immanently collapsing arch appears at a significant historical moment at the turn of the eighteenth century. when kleist read kant’s critical writing his understanding of the world collapsed. kleist’s tormented transition between empirical and critical thinking became the foundation of his writing. this paper considers the construction of architectural and temporal space as destruction in kleist’s story earthquake in chile (das erdbeben in chile) 1807. this early story was based on the historical event of the earthquake that devastated lisbon on all saints day, 1st november 1755. rather than his later critical work, it is likely kant’s earlier writing on natural phenomena led to the themes explored by kleist. soon after the lisbon earthquake kant wrote three essays applying practical scrutiny to observations by survivors, revealing his evolution from natural to critical philosopher as he worked to reconstruct and advance scientific knowledge. in earthquake in chile collapse occurs as earthquake levels a capital city and as social collapse caused by superstition and disorder. the earthquake in lisbon displaced the earth’s crust and european thought, creating a crack into which the certainties of the enlightenment disintegrated. most of the devastation in an earthquake lies in the connection between people and architecture, in earthquake in chile kleist gives literary form to the terrain of collapse in space and time. the space of collapse: a two part terrain jane madsen ii. portland as a time-image of collapse portland as a site made by architecture’s uses applies the image-object of collapse to space, time and material. portland is identified as a landscape that demonstrates kleist’s vision of collapse. recurrent costal landslips exposed the strata of portland’s jurassic limestone showing its potential as architectural material. four centuries of quarrying have left portland scarred by dislocation and absence. portland’s landscape has been created by the removal of its stone, it is a built environment made from the voids left by quarrying. i have been exploring the island of portland as an unstable space of collapse. the time-based medium of moving image is used to survey portland as place and material inscribed by time. in 16mm film installations showing technical and material images of stone being quarried, the spaces left behind in the quarries, and cracks in the cliff faces as sites of immanent or potential collapse and will be projected continuously as approximately two to five minute loops on plate projectors. the duration and mechanics of the film running through the projectors makes the material of the film scratch, deteriorate, and break down: collapse continues to occur in time and in the presence of the viewer. bio// jane madsen is a film maker whose work includes experimental films, installation and documentary. she is researching a practice-based phd at the bartlett school of architecture, ucl. she teaches at the university of the arts london. originally from melbourne, she has lived and worked in london since the early 1990s. she has exhibited widely and written and published on film, art and architecture. portland no. 3 west weares 16mm loop 5 mins portland no. 2 independent quarry 16mm loop 5 mins transnational public spheres: large screens and aesthetic cosmopolitanism nikos papastergiadis abstract// in the past decade the visual form of urban spaces have been transformed by the proliferation of large screens. the use of bright neon signs that announced the commercial triumphalism in places such as times square in new york has now been overtaken by the rapid rollout of large screens in cities all over the world. these large screens have been used to display information, advertise products and telecast major events. large screens also provide a new medium for extending the boundaries of architectural and aesthetic forms. as a step towards exploring the role of large screens in the formation of transnational public spheres we initiated a unique creative and intellectual partnership between two organizations, federation square in melbourne and art center nabi in seoul. this project was designed to address the logistical issues concerning the compatibility between different communication systems, civic policy issues of public display, as well as aesthetic concerns over what would be meaningful and attractive to different audiences. against this awareness of the technical, curatorial and artistic challenges there was the recognition that urban space is already a media rich environment, and that everyday life is increasingly shaped by new patterns of global mobility and transnational communication. there is already extensive discussion on the formation of transnational cultural spaces. our aim was to commission artworks that utilized the technical possibilities for establishing a mediated transnational public space. priority was given to artists because there is now a strong trend in contemporary art practice that engages with issues of global scope, proposes interactive methods of public participation and experiments in critical forms of cross-cultural dialogue. by bringing together these globally oriented art practices with the communicative potential of large screens we expect to witness the emergence of new forms of ‘publicness’ and transnational cultural agency. the focus of this presentation is on recent theories of cosmopolitanism and the forms of globally oriented contemporary art practices. in particular, i will situate our project within the context of recent tendencies within contemporary visual art and argue that the philosophical and aesthetic discourses on cosmopolitanism can provide the vocabulary for a conceptual framework for the new forms of transnational public spheres. bio// nikos papastergiadis is professor at the school of culture and communication at the university of melbourne. he studied at the university of melbourne and university of cambridge. prior to returning to the university of melbourne he was a lecturer at the university of manchester. throughout his career, nikos has provided strategic consultancies for government agencies on issues relating to cultural identity and worked on collaborative projects with artists and theorists of international repute, such as john berger, jimmie durham and sonya boyce. his current research focuses on the investigation of the historical transformation of contemporary art and cultural institutions by digital technology. his publications include modernity as exile (1993), dialogues in the diaspora (1998), the turbulence of migration (2000), metaphor and tension (2004) spatial aesthetics: art place and the everyday (2006) as well as being the author of numerous essays which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues such as the sydney, liverpool, 21. 22. abstract// andrey tarkovsky’s 1979 film stalker, relates an expedition of three men into a location in which the promise of wish fulfilment can take place. the context from which the three men travel and the landscape they traverse, the zone, is littered with the detritus of a post-apocalyptic event. the journey takes them through an uninhabited postindustrial landscape to a location, the room, in which, their innermost desires may be made real. while the event of this transformation is functionally implied almost to the end of the film, it is a deferred promise of cause and effect in an environment where all other forms of technology are completely useless and in various states of decay, including architecture. while the state of decay in stalker is the effect of failed attempts to control the unknown presence in the zone, tarkovsky’s employment of specific architectural settings is a salutary lesson in the persistence of the material of (an) architecture’s history. in the film every object is subject to the corrosive effect of entropy, in part a demonstration of the zone’s power but also as evidence of the despair of the world that is now having to contend with this presence. and though the film eerily predates and predicts the events surrounding the chernobyl nuclear disaster, this is not an allegory on the (mis)use of the environment. instead stalker presents a persistent argument for the abandonment of all modes of instrumental recovery and of the effectiveness of technical apparatuses as gathering points, doing so by painstakingly showing the dissimulated forms and fragments of the buildings through which the protagonists travel. tarkovsky creates this world by specifically employing a form of film-making that foregrounds the material, diagetic reality of the narrative world. within film theory, diagetic and non-diagetic elements constitute components of the narrative that respectively are internal and external to the narrative-world of the film. in stalker, the characters, location, actions and events are all diagetic elements. tarkovsky consistently employs shots that scrutinise the diagetic richness of the world the characters inhabit, making the synaesthetic experience of a memory of entropy: architecture in tarkovsky’s stalker dr sean pickersgill the architecture and landscape one of over-determined materiality, relentlessly and unwaveringly present. his opposition to eisenstein’s theory of montage presents itself as a ‘time pressure’ that occurs within the duration of the take. as the camera pans, usually slowly, over a scene, the inherent visual and acoustic rhythms of the image present a narratival pace that is, inherently, spatial . it is not the pace of the editing itself that determines the (un) reality of the narrative world, but its very lack of a tempo. inevitably this means that we look closer at the interaction between the characters, their actions and the environment. in stalker every fragment of the decayed world has time to appear as an argument for the enduring events of entropy . this paper will closely read a number of scenes from stalker and show that the superfluity of visual elements present a narrative world in which, paradoxically, their insistent material presence shows how close they are to decay from unseen forces. it will be shown that the technical aspects of tarkovsky’s directorial approach afford us time to see the temporality and mortality of the film’s architectural environment. ultimately it will be argued that the final mesmerising scene gathers together and validates the fundamental surreality of stalker. biographical note bio// dr sean pickersgill is a senior lecturer in art, architecture and design at the university of south australia. he conducts research into the relationship between architecture, digital culture and critical philosophy. sean’s work has been published nationally and internationally in peer reviewed journals and conferences. he is currently, with jennifer harvey, the journal manager and editor of ultima thule: journal of architectural imagination,(www. ultimathule.com.au ). abstract// in 1928 the austrian architect and engineer franz löwitsch (1894-1946) published the article “sensation of space and modern architecture” in imago, the psychoanalytical journal edited by sigmund freud. although mostly forgotten today, löwitsch was a prolific writer, critic, and urban planner as well as a designer of stage costumes and sets. his contribution to architectural theory of the 1920s consists of numerous texts. based on richard semon’s theories of mneme, which löwitsch connected to psychoanalytical theories, the prevalence of dissimilar sensations of space throughout the stages of the development of western architectural history is presupposed, and löwitsch offers an explanation of how their symbolic meanings reflected psychological conditions of a particular time and culture. semon’s notion of mneme encompassed more than the conventional understanding of memory as a collection of remembered events that occurred in the past. its scope includes habits, instinctive behaviour and other phenomena that semon observed and which led him towards the hypothesis of mneme as a form of inherited memory that connects an organism to its predecessors. based on semon’s assumptions löwitsch concluded that, if some engrams (stimuli that the mind receives through the senses) were inherited, there would have to be some that relate to perceived space. by connecting semon’s theory with psychoanalytical deliberations that equip the inherited memory of spatial sensations with pleasurable or unpleasurable emotions, löwitsch furthermore argued that spatial sensations produce spatial concepts, and that the dominating shapes and forms of the architecture of a time therefore reflect the dominance of a particular inherited sensation of space. the unifying psychological make-up of a populace thus leads to spatial concepts that form an architecture which reflects these concepts and contain symbols that possess ‘satisfying powers’ valued by the majority of people of that particular time and place. the probable reasons for the publishers of imago to have accepted löwitsch’s paper for publication can be found in freud’s 1922 essay “some remarks on the unconscious” in which psychoanalytic theory is not only put forward as a discipline that focuses on the investigation of the unconscious as a therapeutic method, but also as a method through which aspects of culture can be researched. but löwitsch’s theory speaks of more than a mere justification for the usefulness of psychoanalytic theory as a methodology for the humanities. löwitsch contrasts his findings meticulously with oswald spengler’s controversially critiqued book the decline of the west, karl scheffler’s the spirit of the gothic and eckhart von sydow’s primitive art and psychoanalysis. the discussion of these contemporaneous writings that essentially sought to find the driving forces for the development of styles helps in formulating löwitsch’s final hypothesis. here, he proposes the emergence of an ‘energetic space’ in architecture, which is the prevalent sensation of space that he predicts to emerge in the near future. his ultimate aim, however, was not to enter academic discourse but rather to provide a scientifically based explanation with which the impact of space on the inhabitant can be measured, explained and utilized in architectural practice. bio// dr. tanja poppelreuter is lecturer in architectural history at the university of ulster in belfast, northern ireland. previously she was at the department of art history at the university of auckland in new zealand where she conducted courses on 20th century art, theory, and methodology. her research interests are situated in 20th-century art and architectural theory with the focus on the impact of politics, sociology and medicine and on the question of how utopian ideas developed and took shape in modernism. recent papers have analysed walter gropius’ appropriation of the sociology of franz müller-lyer, theo van doesburg’s defence of ‘superfluous’ space, and the concepts of a ‘new man’ in german architecture of the 1920s. mneme of space dr. tanja poppelreuter 23. 24. abstract// outmost care must be taken to negotiate the terrain between memory, culture and sustainability. whilst recalling the past, the eyes of the viewer should also survey the present and the future. ring trees located along the murray river in wadi wadi country provide an opportunity to explore the nexus between memory, culture and sustainability. ring trees are culturally significant trees that have had their branches fused together to form ring-shaped openings. these trees occur at carefully designated locations, marking culturally significant sites and boundaries. ring trees provide a tangible expression of a cultural practice that no longer continues. yet the trees continue to play an important role in wadi wadi culture. ring trees mark locations where ceremonies are performed and provide the opportunity for elders to pass on cultural knowledge. however, these highly significant trees have not been recognized under state based cultural heritage management and are not listed on the heritage register. somehow these trees fail to meet the criteria to be regarded as the ‘right’ kind of image of the past (and present). the continued importance of the ring trees to the wadi wadi community and their need for future protection has failed to be recognized. who are the gatekeepers to these image-objects? why do some image-objects fail to be regarded as valuable? what happens when our memory is selective and non-inclusive of that which falls outside the orthodoxy? this presentation will explore these questions taking the form of a photographic installation. the photographs will be presented at a small scale presenting an intimate interstice between the image and the viewer. the installation will be accompanied by a short wall text of several hundred words. the photographs will include not only ring trees but also the rich landscape surrounding these trees that form their broader curtilage. aspects of this broader curtilage include scarred trees, bush foods and clay balls. a ring tree beyond the forest will also be shown (figure intertwined: ring trees in wadi wadi country jacqueline power 1), highlighting the impact of colonization. like a number of the ring trees it is no longer living, and many of its branches have been removed. although no longer fully intact, the tree remains significant in its vulnerable state and metaphorically speaks volumes about memory, culture and sustainability. ring trees are little known beyond the wadi wadi community and few representations of them have been published. the installation of the photographs will provide the opportunity to show a number of these trees as well as create a space for exchange and intertwining of ideas. bio// jacqueline is a lecturer in interior design in the school of architecture and design at the university of tasmania. she is currently completing her phd. her phd research is investigating australian indigenous interiors. figure 1 koraleigh ring tree, 2010. the ruins are wonderful so why worry? ruins as historical ‘imageobjects’ for aalto and utzon john roberts abstract// architects alvar aalto and jørn utzon embraced the past as a creative resource, referring to experiences and images of ruins in various works of architecture. two key ‘imageobjects’ provide vehicles for us to think about architects’ transpositions of history, and history’s role in architectural aesthetics: the courtyard of aalto’s muuratsalo house; and the platforms of utzon’s sydney opera house. these architects’ imaging of the past is evident in aalto’s travel sketches of classical and vernacular fragments, and in utzon’s images of pre-columbian ruins. both saw the aesthetic values of site, landscape and poetic memory in this historical material. this paper discusses how such ruin-related ‘image-objects’ are used to form strategies to deal with (read, comprehend, exploit) history – firstly, as drawn ‘image-objects’ used by architects to imagine and make architecture; and secondly as built ‘image-objects’, cited by historians to make the narratives of architectural history. this investigation is informed by writing on the methodology of history by greg dening and hayden white: their approaches to writing history offer frameworks for looking into the image-objects of aalto and utzon, and their reception by architectural historians such as demetri porphyrios, william j. r. curtis and richard weston. the aalto and utzon drawings and images are of architectural fragments, in landscape settings: buildings, ruined through human and natural agency, can turn into landscape-related elements. aalto’s courtyard and utzon’s platforms inhabit an in-between zone where discourses of landscape (‘nature’) and architecture (‘culture’) interlace, producing meaning out of drawn, built and written materials. understood as tropes (metaphor, metonym, synecdoche, irony) of ‘the past’ élided into architecture, ruins can suggest either melancholy and endings, or latency and beginnings. aalto maintained that his buildings had to be experienced to be understood; john dixon hunt suggests that landscape needs an ‘addressee’ to feel and sense its qualities. curtis, remembering utzon in 2009, wrote in first-person, to suit his rhetorical needs; and dening’s first-person historical ‘performances’ tell stories from both sides of real and metaphorical ‘beaches’. here, where the work of architecture is ‘the beach’, first-person narrative negotiates both experience of built works (in ‘the present’), and words and images about ruins (from ‘the past’). this ‘fragile’ kind of story-telling presents evidence in a way that allows doubt and ambiguity about ‘historical truth’ to permeate its performances. aalto and utzon, in exploiting ruins as tropes for the past, may be said to ‘perform’ both landscape and history in their architecture. this paper tells a story of architectural images, objects, image-objects and experiences, from the author’s and other perspectives. its narratives and reflections concern not only architecture and architects, but also history and landscape, whose nuanced presence in works of architecture is interesting, subversive, and always too rare. bio// john roberts is a lecturer in the school of architecture and built environment at the university of newcastle, nsw. he teaches architectural design, advanced drawing, and site studies. he also supervises m.arch research students. john’s research interests are in the historical, theoretical and technical spaces between architecture and landscape. his 2009 mphil thesis was a study of landscape aesthetics in the architecture of alvar aalto. recent publications have considered the chinese garden; prospect and refuge in australian architecture; and courtyards and high-rise in the work of aalto and jørn utzon. 25. 26. abstract// soon after the destruction of the world trade centre towers in september 2001, architects and architectural commentators began to comment on the loss of these buildings. while many focussed on the questions that the circumstances of their destruction posed for the future of the skyscraper as an architectural form, what should be rebuilt, or how this event might be commemorated, others took the opportunity to reflect upon the buildings themselves. in many cases these reflections were in distinct contrast to the reception of the complex during its lifetime. many of these comments nostalgically involved a misremembering, or a ‘discursive reimagining’, of the buildings with fond declarations for the lost towers. prior to their destruction, these buildings had been widely criticised for their form, scale and aesthetics – likened by mumford to “filing cabinets” and by another as “a parody of the modern skyscraper”, even prompting environmentalists to lament the trauma the towers caused for migrating birds. paradoxically, the reversal of critical and public opinion towards the world trade center buildings following their destruction inverted the response to the earlier destruction (under very different circumstances) of another set of buildings by the same architect – the pruitt-igoe housing estate. these buildings that were widely celebrated upon their completion, were demolished in disgrace only sixteen years later. yet it was five years after their demolition that these buildings would undergo their most famous critical transformation, with the assertion by charles jencks in his 1977 book the new paradigm in architecture that “modern architecture died in st. louis, missouri on july 15, 1972 at 3.32pm (or thereabouts) when the infamous pruittigoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite.” in 1991, recognizing these stages in the historical reception of the buildings, katherine bristol argued that the accounts of the problems of the infamous pruitt-igoe housing estate in the popular media as well as by architectural historians transformed historical events into a myth that transferred blame from complex social circumstances to an architectural issue. bristol argued that this constituted destruction and the dialectics of memory: reimagining and re-remembering the works of minoru yamasaki dr. nicole sully what she termed ‘the pruitt-igoe myth’. while destruction of the pruitt-igoe complex was responsible for discrediting yamasaki, the destruction of the world trade center towers, arguably represented the redemption of his architectural reputation. this paper will consider the misremembering and discursive reimagining of two twentieth century building complexes designed by minoru yamasaki, each destroyed in circumstances more iconic than their architectural forms. it will argue that despite the differing circumstances, the demolition of the pruitt-igoe housing estate and the destruction of world trade centre buildings both represent a dialectical median in critical and public opinion of the architecture of each complex. examining the critical reception of each project, this paper will discuss the role destruction, and its representation, has played in the transformation of these projects, with particular emphasis on the reimagining and re-remembering of these buildings. bio// dr. nicole sully is a lecturer in the school of architecture at the university of queensland and a member of the atch research centre. nicole’s research focuses on the interdisciplinary relationship of architecture and memory, the pathologies of place and the ethics of heritage. in 2005 she was awarded a doctorate from the university of western australia for her thesis titled: architecture and memory: a philosophical and historical inquiry. recent publications include: leach, moulis & sully (eds) shifting views: selected essays on the architectural history of australia and new zealand (uqp, 2008); sully, ‘travelling within memory: vicarious travel and imagined voyages’ in anderson (ed) crossing cultures: conflict, migration, convergence (miegunyah press, 2009); and sully, ‘memorials incognito: the candle, the drain and the cabbage patch for diana, princess of wales’, arq: architectural research quarterly, (june 2010). abstract// jean-luc godard contends (via virginia woolf) that cinema exists and is thinkable only in the intervening sequences between shots and acts—in the entr’acte, the interval. cinema is therefore an art of the interstice. its proper sense does not emerges in a scene as such, but in its transition to other scenes or shots, whether through long sequences, cuts, superimpositions or transpositions—that is, in the passage and passing away of the image. in-be-twixt, to be two, to be radical ambiguity: the interstice stands as a zone of indiscernibility that is simultaneously present and absent, that separates and affords access between regions in the same dimension and that yields passage through into other dimensions and worlds. this deterritorialising capacity of the interstice produces the radically uncanny. the interstice is the foundational architectural condition, since architecture is not possible aside from the interval, aside from difference. in the interstice, and in the interim, architecture encounters the strange and irremediable catastrophy of its own deconstitution. the cinema of andrej tarkovski provides an instructive parallel. mirror (1975) achieves such an intensity of overlay in the image that the coordinates and logics of space and time begin to waver, become undecidable, fold and yield into worlds within worlds. these instances convey what it might be like to experience that moment betwixt remembrance and forgetfulness when a memory withdraws into oblivion at the same time as it presents itself with the highest certainty of delineation. memory is poised on forgetfulness and remembrance is in fact the iterative, rhythmic play between appearance and disappearance, recollection and oblivion, presence and absence. this is why the proper field and operation of memory is not ascribable to the contrast between light and dark, but to the gloaming—an ambiguous and precarious, interstitial condition, or shade of darkness, wherein delineations fluctuate and become indeterminate. the experience might be like awaking from a dream that, at the same time as it is present to us as sharp recollection, fades and withdraws into uncertainty and erasure. we seem to know it with certainty—we have a definitive sense of it, of its shadows and contours, of its narrative—but at the same time as we are unable to articulate it in any coherent way. each time we try the narrative is dismantled into incoherence. or the experience might parallel one’s presence and attentiveness to the systematic withdrawal of another in death; of one who is palpably present and with us while simultaneously fading and absenting themselves. such moments require delicacy and care. they call for a kind of disengaged solicitude that watches, wakes and waits; that cultivates a countenance of being-with and beingfor whatever eventuates. this is the ethical power of the interstice that architecture remains to confront. bio// dr. michael tawa is an architect and professor of architecture at the university of sydney. between 2006 and 2009 he was professor of architectural design at the university of newcastle upon tyne, uk. he has practiced and taught architecture in alice springs, adelaide and sydney. recent publications include agencies of the frame. tectonic strategies in cinema and architecture (2010) and theorising the project: a thematic approach to architectural design (2011), both with cambridge scholars publishing. current projects include the web-based design lexicon and research on the concepts of emergence and translation in architectural design. he is currently editing a forthcoming issue of architectural theory review on emergence and architecture. to be two. interstice and deconstitution in cinema and architecture. prof. michael tawa 27. 28. abstract// in january 2011 a swollen brisbane river broke its banks flooding riverside houses and buildings. the river’s water spread and rose up through storm water drains inundating some 20 000 houses in low-lying land. as the water receded those residents affected by the floods returned to their homes to assess the damage. while some returned to find their personal belongings and homes intact, others were devastated by the overwhelming damage. over the next few weeks the landscape of brisbane was altered not merely by the mud and debris left by the torrent of water, but by the piles of domestic contents occupying brisbane streets. beds, toys, cabinets, plasterboard, tiles and household furniture lined curbsides waiting for collection. later they would accumulate in public parks and sports centres to await disposal, temporarily creating an unsettling landscape of discarded domestic interiors. thousands of volunteers flocked to help those affected by the floods to purge the damage left by the water – removing wall and floor linings, discarding furniture and spoilt belongings. in a collective effort between volunteers, government organisations from all levels and those directly affected, the aftermath of the floods were cleaned away in a remarkably short amount of time. for many of the postflood restored homes and buildings entire interiors have been replaced, eradicating any trace of the significant event that disturbed them only months earlier. items that would have survived the floods were discarded and with them the patina that marked an important event in history. the patina is beyond technological reproducibility and as walter benjamin writes, this being the whole premise of genuineness1. it is the patina that is most valuable in its ability to narrate the history of an object and it is the role of the french polisher to maintain the patina. the french polisher works to maintain, but not repair the surface of the artefact, preserving the appearance of significant damage and markings inflicted on the piece over time. if the patina is a record of an important happening, how do we recount history in the absence of these artefacts? how does the patina reflect a collective and individual memory of a significant event? this research investigates the dying trade of the french polisher through a series of conversations with furniture restorers and a visual study of flood damaged objects. exploring the processes of maintaining the patina and its relationship to memory. 1. from walter benjamin’s essay “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.” bio// kirsty volz is a research masters of arts student and a graduate from the masters of architecture program at the queensland university of technology. kirsty currently works as a research assistant at the university of queensland while also tutoring design, theory and technology subjects at qut in both architecture and interior design. the french polisher and the unsentimental interior kirsty volz abstract// i propose in this paper a consideration of writing as a making-of-space, or a process of building, so as to slowly awkwardly invent another living; this means, the writing of another writing. and, the inviting of writings of different (other) kinds into the public realm (of publishing/reading), into what comes to be the history of texts within a particular field of practice. writing, as a field of practice in its own right, is a mutable substance, expressive of existence as plastic/ity, as the “… very material of presence (… capable of receiving any kind of form, and [with] the power to give form to itself”.(1) what is curious in/about writing is what it is conditioning (how its tone or orderly procession affects) of what-it-is-to-know (and possible to be): what it inscribes into the thinking of ‘the problem’ or ‘the time’ or ‘the subject’ – what it inherits and what it is as inheritance; for example, how one comes to speak about something – a thing, an event, an issue, a topic, etc. memory is fragile; memory exaggerates. what is not-written about, what is not-witnessed (when do i not do my best to bear witness to …)? what is not-broached, what is excised, assumed or cancelled from our possible creative resources in the name of function, program, plan, value, or ‘the real’. writing is mythical, magical, it is art, and yet it is used/wielded as if soulless (as if inanimate, as if dumb instrument), as if the enemy of art (as if art is its enemy), as if a system (to be feared; and, fear it can incite). writing is human, it is the human-one and the human/animal-other who/that tells or pours a history into the collective fact of living and dying, into the collective fact of impermanence, into the collective fact of terrified and alarmed authority (of disaster, sadness, mourning, and administration). the writing of another writing does not look different on the page, instead, it’s an internal act, it’s in the way it tells what it tells, the way it forms, the way it composes words and sentences, the way it swirls and swishes ideas, the way it impossibly remembers, the way it connects, relates, imposes, puzzles. writing that (just) leaves a small bare image may be ample, plenteous. hélène cixous says of the writing of marguerite duras: “what … duras creates is what i’d call the art of poverty. the further you get into her work the more monuments and wealth she strips away. … meaning that she whittles away more and more decoration, furnishings, ornaments until it’s so impoverished that something remains lodged there and then gathers up, gathers together everything that refuses to die. it is as if our every desire were being reinvested in something very small indeed that at the same time becomes as big as love. and i don’t mean the universe – i mean love. and this love is nothing at all that is everything.”(2) it was duras’s writing that i first glimpsed as ‘writing’ – where the bareness of writing was the very space within which one could be oneself without loss or nostalgia. that in the bones and cells of that writing, i/one was not expelled (or on the other hand immersed), but was, rather, intensified in my/one’s awareness that nothing was demanded of me, there was no past, no development, no climax, no future, one was reading the writing. it was writing for reading, for fascination, and for the acceptance of death. through cixous’s philosophy/theory/poetic of writing, and with reference to the written life-space of duras’s narratives, i will discuss writing without-method, without memorializing – yet wandering (presently) like various bodies and voices (who are memory), in various tenses and times; an indeterminate writing/making. 1. catherine malabou, plasticity at the dusk of writing, trans. carolyn shread, columbia university press, new york, 2010, p. 81 2. hélène cixous, white ink, interviews on sex, text and politics, ed. susan sellers, columbia university press, new york, 2009, p. 158 bio// dr linda marie walker teaches in the school of art architecture design at the university of south australia. she also practices as an artist/curator, and writes in the areas of the arts, academia and literature. she likes to live near the sea, and has a dog called lily. her writing aspires to be a garden of some peaceful sort. untitled procedures (working title) dr linda marie walker 29. 30. abstract// the new zealand villa is a significant cultural icon of new zealand. its architecture encapsulates a rich story of new zealand’s’ colonial heritage, but preserving this legacy requires respect and understanding in the face of societal change. currently, villas are being ‘modernised’ by owners pressured to maintain the public respectability of the traditional villa, while simultaneously demanding that their private realms reflect contemporary concerns. differing expectations and conflict in architectural values results in an irretrievable loss of the villas cultural integrity; a loss that we might well look back one day and describe as catastrophic. catastrophe, as a process of rapid change stimulates crisis through systematic destruction. the result of change associated with static cultural values can be predicted and controlled prior to loss or regret. as the villa becomes permanently entrenched in new zealand’s cultural heritage, an ‘authentic’ depiction of the architecture becomes subjected to facadism. heritage conservation becomes an element of catastrophic behaviour. the method of facadism is presented to the nation as a positive approach to architectural change, however it is being applied without people understanding the long term implications. this paper questions the nature of facadism and its resultant impact on architectural heritage in new zealand. a methodology for rendering an authentic depiction of the villa will be supported by the catastrophe theory, originated by rene thom in the 1960s. it will be combined with the theory and matrix of authenticity presented by contemporary academics joseph gilmore and james pine. this will further be strengthened by the minkowski space and time model, originated by herman minkowski and reinterpreted by gilmore and pine in their depiction of authenticity. an architectural model will be developed from this theory and based on the change associated with contemporary society and the consequences associated with architectural alteration. we use this model to predict the catastrophe before it occurs, using qualitative, not quantitative, attributes of the relationship between time and change relative to time. the desire to achieve an ‘authentic’ image of an idealised streetscape results in a potemkin city: replicated façades, without sufficient appreciation of new zealand’s architectural history. district plans and heritage rules promote the ‘authenticity’ of facadism; however the term authentic is presented to the populace under a false pretence; resulting in spurious imitation forced upon villas. architecture of the past will never regain its original state. a reproduction of a past typology disrespects the aging architecture and is not suitable for contemporary living. an understanding of catastrophic behaviour, combined with the theory of authenticity will help define how we can enrich an architectural integrity to the villa in its present state. bio// hayley wright is a masters of architecture (prof) student currently completing her final year at victoria university of wellington, new zealand. her skills and research are based in 5 years of architectural study including both a university exchange to rhode island school of design and architectural work experience in london. hayley’s research interests are linked to national identity and the issues that restrict architecture from aging with society. she is currently in the process of completing her master’s thesis ‘catastrophic facadism’. her thesis addresses the position of the new zealand villa in contemporary society. it questions the nature of facadism as a method of achieving an authentic depiction of the past. catastrophic facadism: the authentic imitation// hayley wright notes// interstices 14 athfield architects by julia gatley review by marshall cook the precious history of architecture in new zealand is rarely explored as comprehensively as in architectural historian julia gatley's book on athfield architects. it is both a catalogue of design projects and a portal to the authors of the works. but essentially, it is about the prime protagonist ian athfield. although broken down into four progressive parts from “formative student” and “early practice” to “boom times” and “public works”, it really is about athfield the architect and then athfield the assemblage. his architectural beginnings are clear, blunt and seemingly counter-cultural. illustrations of his student work that expose the raw nerve ends of a devoted designer are signed off as i. charles athfield or simply ath. his early unbuilt works that remain as designs on paper carry the full illusion of reality. influences of the christchurch masters beaven and warren appear, disappear and re-appear but within a unique palette of materials used in original ways. sometimes stressed to their limits the buildings under construction form the inverse case to ruins. the ad hoc nature of the construction process, the light and shadows of framing, the laying of scaffolding, the smell of newly-sawn wood, and that incomplete state of construction which gives hope and anticipation is the apparent driving force behind athfield in the early years. it is an architecture that stands against or at the very least in contrast to a cultural trend to continually re-invent its history. early encounters with adaptive re-use of heritage buildings explored both the financial and social values of the existing fabric of the city: “heritage starts with a good idea julia gatley, athfield architects / julia gatley. auckland, n.z. : auckland university press, 2012. isbn: 9781869405915 (hbk.) 125 tomorrow”. as comfortable as athfield is with the new and the old he was equally at home with pubs, churches and the odd brothel. “my thinking has always been comprehensive and inclusive not focused and exclusive.” the most significant work, a regrettably unbuilt housing project in the philippines in 1975, was a turning point for architecture. international interest in the design principles and the technical advances made it a benchmark for social housing in developing countries. other competition-winning entries such as school of the future, also unbuilt, were equally significant designs that would have changed the learning environment of the 1990s. also illustrated are a few unbuilt buildings that would have challenged the contemporary city. it was also the period when athfield was an active partner in a number of development projects. it is in the final section of the book that the work of athfield architects displays the firm’s depth of design skills. given the volume of work passing through the practice it would be easy to adapt standards to suit work load. it would appear that the opposite happened. as the office has evolved so have the skills of the design managers. as much as it is obvious that wellington is athfield’s city, the firm has a strong design-led foothold in auckland and christchurch. it also produced the brilliant war memorial in london’s hyde park. there are a number of projects produced in collaboration with other practices that are clearly acknowledged and brief introductions to future projects show the possibilities and hopes of the staff. although presented as a democratic working family there have been financial hard times when the cards had to be shuffled. in all work it is easy to experience the sense of ownership and the aspirations of the designers. but the ringmaster is always present, especially in public spaces where he does not dictate how to use them but provides the tools to enable the possibilities of encounter. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 88 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a bios jonathan lahey dronsfield jonathan lahey dronsfield is a philosopher-artist. he has a phd in philosophy from the university of warwick, with a british academy scholarship, and a postdoc from the centre for research in modern european philosophy, london, with a leverhulme special research fellowship. he has held positions at the universities of southampton and reading, the forum for european philosophy at the london school of economics, the zürcher hochschule der künste zurich and, most recently, the a.pass institute of art research, brussels. he is author of three books, cryptochromism, the materiality of theory, and spinoza lector, and many papers. a long-term art-philosophy research project, the swerve of freedom after spinoza, comprising more than 50 performative readings, papers, videos, interventions, collaborations and dance, is in the throes of completion. paul james paul james is a phd candidate at the university of queensland affiliated with the atch research centre.  gökhan kodalak gökhan kodalak is a theorist, teaching philosophies of architecture, nature, and cities at pratt institute; an architect, directing design studios at parsons school of design; and a historian, having recently completed his phd dissertation titled “spinoza and architecture” at cornell university. his discourse is published in journals such as deleuze studies (2018) and footprint (2015), in books like spinoza’s philosophy of ratio (2018) and architectures of life and death (2021), and most recently, kodalak has guest-edited a multi-issue project at log (2020-21), introducing the understudied thinking of spinoza, a. n. whitehead, and gilbert simondon to cultivate alternative approaches to the interfused questions of nature, philosophy, and design. michael lebuffe michael lebuffe is professor and baier chair in early modern philosophy at the university of otago. lebuffe has recently supervised work on spinoza, bacon, kant, descartes, sympathy, and personal identity. his work is primarily on spinoza and includes from bondage to freedom: spinoza on human excellence (oup 2010), spinoza on reason (oup 2018), and spinoza’s ethics: a guide (oup forthcoming). carl mika carl mika is professor of māori and indigenous studies, in aotahi, university of canterbury. his research focus is on māori and indigenous philosophies, aspects of western philosophy, and on novel research approaches to postgrad research. he is of the tuhourangi iwi. sue ruddick sue ruddick is a professor of geography and planning at the university of toronto. ruddick studied architecture at the university of waterloo (b.e.s.), geography at mcgill (m.a.) and planning at ucla (ph.d).  ruddick’s recent research focuses on the rethinking of the human nature divide in the context of emerging human-wildlife relations in the city. ruddick’s scholarly publications rethink the subject through the conceptualizations of power, affect and the human-nature divide in the writings of spinoza, deleuze, agamben and negri. sean sturm sean sturm teaches and leads the higher education programme in the school of critical studies in education at the faculty of education and social work at the university of auckland. he is a philosopher of education who researches at the intersection of critical university studies, writing studies and settler studies. stephen turner stephen turner teaches at the leiden university centre for the arts in society. he researches in the fields of settler studies, third cinema and critical university studies. eu jin chua eu jin chua has a background in film studies and architecture, and has been teaching fine arts at the university of auckland and spatial design at the auckland university of technology. he has published in postmodern culture, screening the past, and in various book volumes and exhibition catalogues. when based in london, he was a founding associate editor of moving image review and art journal. he is completing a project on anti-anthropocentrism and naturalism in the history of film theory. s p i n o z a s p e c i a l i s s u e interstices 15 3 mihi whakatau moana nepia e rau rangatira mā, ngāti whatua, ngāti paoa, ngā manuhiri tūārangi, e gernot… e mihi kau atu ana rā ki a koutou. talofa lava, kia orana, willkommen … welcome! to the many chiefs gathered here, including those from ngāti whatua and ngāti paoa, distinguished visitors from afar, gernot böhme…. greetings and welcome to you all. i’ve chosen today to share some poetry with you that gathers ideas regarding atmospheres evoked through māori ritual greetings and lament, and to touch on some of the themes that this symposium is addressing.1 when we talk about atmosphere in māori, one of the words we use is rangi. rangi is also day, weather, sky, and sky father, one of our ancestors. rangi also translates as air and melody. when we are talking about atmospheres, we are talking about ourselves, not something that is separate from us. there are many atmospheres in māori thinking, many states and names for rangi. rangi, our father, is also an ancestor from whom perception arises in whakapapa or genealogies. our connection to atmospheres both outside and inside, the nature of perception and existence are all understood in terms of whakapapa, a relational way of understanding the world. the first poem i’d like to share with you, tangi, is by new zealand māori poet hone tuwhare, who was from te tai tokerau, the northern region of aotearoa/nz. he wrote in english and was a master at evoking senses of atmosphere and place. tangi is a lament, a crying and weeping. one of the first things we do in a formal māori address is to draw together our many ancestors, those who have passed away. sharing this way, we also come closer together. tangi i did not meet her on the bordered path nor detect her fragrance in the frolic of violets and carnations. she did not stroll riverward to sun-splash and shadows to willows trailing garlands of green pathos death was not hiding in the cold rags of a broken dirge nor could i find her in the cruel laughter of children the curdled whimper of a dog but i heard her with the wind crooning in the hung wires interstices 15 4 and caught her beauty by the coffin muted to a softer pain in the calm vigil of hands in the green-leaved anguish of the bowed heads of old women.2 the second poetic reference i want to make is to rangiuia, who was a nineteenth-century tohunga (scholar) from ngāti porou at the rawheoro whare wānanga (school of learning) at uawa (tolaga bay), a part of the country that my ancestors come from, and that i call home. in a waiata tangi (lament) he wrote for his son,3 he refers to a particular state of rangi in cloud formations from the south. people who know the history, or who are from the ngāti porou region, may know how this state of rangi was also used to refer to a portent of doom. in the last poem i will share with you, titled grief, i refer to the separation of rangi or ranginui (sky father) and papatūānuku (earth mother) as a space and source of continual lament, perceived in the movement of rain, water and cloud. this is a short extract: grief carries us home, ebbs and flows with the tide, paddles and surges through veins, powers and floats, surging through water. grief takes charge, inspiring command, declaring another call, to arms, to action, to move again, to haul and lift up over rocky shore. rise and fall of this melody is rangi, hugging, hovering, soaring, yearning over land. grief trembles, expanding air, thunders and tumbles clouded. grief howls wind over sand, galloping in from the sea, swoops up to smother views from the edge of an abyss. above and below, towards and away, resoundings shudder to land torn, numb, dripping to sodden dust. tangi a lament moves and cries.4 in ritual acknowledgements of those who have passed, we are not just lamenting, we are coming together as the living faces of our ancestors. we are the embodiment of atmosphere. interstices 15 5 endnotes 1. this is an edited version of the mihi whatakatau (opening address) for the 2014 interstices under construction symposium, 22 november, 2013, at the design theatre, nicai, the university of auckland. thanks to moata mcnamara for editorial support. 2. tuwhare, h. (1994 ). deep river talk: collected poems. honolulu, hi: university of hawai‘i press, p. 22. 3. ngata, a. (1958). the origin of māori carving. te ao hou. vol. 22, p. 35. 4. nepia, m. (2012). te kore – exploring the māori concept of void. phd thesis. aut university, auckland. vol. 1, pp. 9-10. http://aut. researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/5480/nepiam_vol1 in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 148 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s interstices: journal of architecture and related arts is an open forum for the dissemination of architecture and thought. it is a non-profit journal published once a year. to remain independent, interstices relies upon institutional and private support to fund its editorial production. annual individual sponsorship is available from $500; corporate sponsorship from $1,000; and institutional sponsorship from $3,000. sponsors will receive full acknowledgement of their contribution in each issue of interstices for which they are a sponsor and on the journal’s website (https://interstices.ac.nz/ index.php/interstices). this issue is supported by school of art + design, auckland university of technology, school of architecture & planning, university of auckland (institutional sponsors) and acs architects, architectus, augustus services, cheshire architects, moller architects, salmon reed architects, warren and mahoney, jasmax (corporate sponsors) co-ordinating editor susan hedges issue editors farzaneh haghighi, nikolina bobic contributors this issue endriana audisho, andrew benjamin, anthony brand, sarah breen lovett, ian buchanan, tina engels-schwarzpaul, carl douglas, xavier ellah, christina deluchi, daniel grinceri, susan hedges, frank liu, sandra kajio’grady, cameron logan, gerard reinmuth, stephen walker design and typography catherine griffiths typefaces founders grotesk, tiempos text klim type foundry production nikolina bobic, andrew douglas, julia gatley, catherine griffiths, farzaneh haghighi, susan hedges, joanne mathers published by enigma : he aupiki, auckland, new zealand december 2020 issn 1170-585x (print) issn 2537-9194 (online) this work is entitled to the full protection given by the copyright act 1962 to the holders of the copyright and reproduction of any substantial passage from the work except for the educational purposes therein specified is a breach of the copyright of the author and/or publisher. this copyright extends to all forms of photocopying and any storing of material in any kind of information retrieval system. interstices: journal of architecture and related arts takes a nonexclusive copyright in the papers submitted and accepted, i.e., we reserve the right to publish and republish the paper (for instance, electronically). authors are welcome to upload their papers in published form into their institution’s research repository. they retain the right to republish their papers elsewhere, provided that they acknowledge original publication in interstices. all applications by third parties, for reproduction in any form, should be made to the executive editors. submissions the editors invite submissions of articles, reports, book and project reviews, and translations. all correspondence should be addressed to the editors, interstices, school of art + design, aut university, private bag 92006, auckland 1020, new zealand. books for review and advertising should be forwarded to the executive editors, above. notes and guidelines for contributors can be found at https://interstices.ac.nz/index. php/interstices/information_for_ contributors acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the support of the very many people who have contributed to the realisation and quality of interstices 20 in various ways—including, dijana alic, katerina antonopoulou, tom baker, andrew barrie, irina davidovici, peggy deamer, carl douglas, hélène frichot, mark jackson, sandra kaji-o’grady, sepideh karami, markus kip, stavros kousoulas, jeff malpas, manfredo manfredini, mohsen mohammadzadeh, michael ostwald, ioana popovici, simon sadler, nicola short, cathy smith, chris l. smith, tijana stevanovic, ninik suharitini, goran vodicka, stephen walker, paul walker. thanks to catherine griffiths and joanna mathers for designing and copy editing this issue. if we have inadvertently overlooked anyone, we apologise. thanks also to the school of art + design at auckland university of technology, and the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland. finally, a big thank-you to all the contributors to interstices 20. www.interstices.ac.nz editorial advisory board aotearoa/new zealand mike austin (unitec institute of technology), gavin hipkins (university of auckland), anthony hoete (university of auckland), ross jenner (university of auckland), a.-chr. (tina) engels-schwarzpaul (auckland university of technology), dan fleming (university of waikato), robert jahnke (massey university) australia suzie attiwill (rmit university), hélène frichot (university of melbourne) jillian hamilton (queensland university of technology), stephen loo (university of tasmania), mirjana lozanovska (deakin university), john macarthur (university of queensland), jeff malpas (university of tasmania), jules moloney (deakin university), vivian mitsogianni (rmit design research institute), deborah van der plaat (university of queensland), sam spurr (university of new south wales), paul walker (university of melbourne) germany ursula baus (frei04-publizistik, stuttgart), uta brandes (köln international school of design) italy renato rizzi (università iuav di venezia, architect trento), nigel ryan (architect, rome) tunisia bechir kenzari (united arab emirates university) uk mark dorrian (edinburgh college of art), jonathan hale (university of nottingham), sally jane norman (university of sussex), peg rawes (the bartlett school of architecture), joseph rykwert (emeritus paul philippe cret professor) usa peggy deamer (yale university), mark goulthorpe (mit, decoi architects paris), jonathan lamb (vanderbilt university), david leatherbarrow (university of pennsylvania), moana nepia (university of hawai’i at mānoa) executive editors andrew douglas, julia gatley, susan hedges colophon interstices 12 site plan of kingsland basin, london (1871) showing past industry. e. morris. pencil on trace 139 the archive of atmosphere: installation as an interior architectural event installation at the bartlett, london, september 2010 emma morris to create an interior micro-ecology, this archival project uses the technique of installation and an organisational strategy analogous to the ‘natural archive’ of an ice core. ice cores archive climate history: the ‘memory’ of past temperatures is encoded in air bubbles, and trapped in ice crystals. scientists analyse this ‘information’ to forecast future global climate patterns. the longest ice core from antarctica is “3207 metres long and covers the last 650,000 years” (chandler 2005). the archive the archive of atmosphere is an eccentric scientific endeavour. installed at the bartlett, the archive used materials sourced from the kingsland basin off the regent’s canal, a remnant of the industrial revolution in east london. the timebased system operated by collecting water from the canal, feeding it into water catchers and mixing it with various chemicals. as “an access to the remains of the past” (shanks 2010), it sought to make the site’s historical narrative visible. the solution crystallised into solid forms through capillary action and evaporation. the atmospheric particles within the water became embedded in the crystal lattice structure, and preserved for the future. crystallisation produces a slowly growing build-up of material: as an emergent building technology, it is a synthetic analogue system which manufactures matter (armstrong 2009). the archive is a chemical computer, a machine-for-remembering (borges 1984: 72). the human technician as archivist interacted with the installation, activating the water flow and phase changes, controlling light, wind flow, and humidity, generating a micro-ecology in the room. left: diagram of the molecular structure of ice, a hexagonal lattice, which forms a container for air bubbles. e. morris. pen on paper. right: crystal specimen study. chemical mix on pewter. interstices 12 141 diagram of molecular change during crystallisation. e. morris. watercolour and pencil on paper. interstices 12 the archive is an open system, which “interchange[s] matter and energy with the outside” (fernandez-galiano 2000: 104). its collection is sourced from the canal and its form continuously reconfigured according to the crystallisation produced by chemical reactions, as well as the internal climatic conditions of the room. by recording activities, the installation produces its own ‘drawings’. on the paper placed on the floor, there are piles of particles, elements drawn in from the canal: clay, lead, carbon, ash, spices from past industrial trading. water overspills, drips onto the particles that provide the medium for the drawing. archival practices are researched in this project to investigate their creative potential for an architectural strategy. archival practice is an active and ongoing process of collecting, storing and interpretating of information, where information is “an action which occupies time (barlow 1994). archival practice examines the repetitive, obsessive, immersive nature of collecting. it challenges the architect to consider her work as both contributing to and co-producing “an archive in the making” (foster 2004). the installation the installation makes reference to the “archival impulse” (foster 2004) of kurt schwitters’ merzbau, his studio as a growing, living archive, a continuous process of collection and transformation (meyer-buser 2000); gerhard richter’s atlas, his dense installation of work creating a spatial “environment” (dietrich 1985: 130); and cornelia parker’s cold dark matter: an exploded view (1991), a transformation of objects found on site, reassembled and installed in the gallery (parker 1996). gego’s use of steel wire to draw in three-dimensional space is directly referenced in the geometrical structures of the installation (ramirez 2006). installation as a technique reveals the archive as an immersive, interior experience, engaging directly with those who access it. it “force[s] the visitor, both mentally and physically, to enter the work and to succumb with all their senses to the rules of the game” operating in it (meyer-buser 2000). for an architectural proposition, the power of the installation is its potential to create an interior immersive experience through the viewer’s physical and sensory engagement with the space. the archive of atmosphere’s ambition is to investigate the potential of archival strategies in these contexts. the archive of atmosphere can be read as an architectural event which gives a physical presence to the invisible – the fragile and unstable atmosphere. archives, as interior conditions, are a necessary safe-keeper of past collections enabling the prediction of vast external change. analysis of atmospheric particles. e. morris. pencil on paper. 143 references: armstrong, r. (2009, august 8). material (or chemical) computing: protocell example. rachel armstrong living architect scrapbook. retrieved june 10, 2010, from http://grayanat.posterous. com/material-or-chemical-computing-protocell-exam barlow, j. p. (1994, march). the economy of ideas. wired. retrieved august 18, 2011, from http:// www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas.html borges, j. l. (1984). atlas. london: viking. chandler, d. (2005, november 24). record ice core reveals earth’s ancient atmosphere, new scientist. retrieved june 10, 2010, from http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8369-recordice-core-reveals-earths-ancient-atmosphere.html dietrich, d. (1985). gerhard richter: an interview. the print collectors newsletter, 16(4). fernande-galiano, l. (2000). fire and memory, on architecture and energy. cambridge, massachusetts: the mit press. foster, h. (2004). an archival impulse. october, 110. cambridge, massachusetts: the mit press. parker, c. (1996). avoided object. cardiff: chapter. meyer-buser, s. (2000). on disappearing in space, walk in collages from schwitters to the present day. in s. meyer-buser & k. orchard, (eds.), merz: in the beginning was merz: from kurt schwitters to the present day. ostfildern-ruit: hatje cantz publishers. ramirez, m. c., manrique, j., de zegher, c. (2006). gego: between transparency and the invisible, houston: museum of fine arts. shanks, m. (2010, february 18). animating the archive. retrieved june 10, 2010, from http:// documents.stanford.edu/michaelshanks/186 left: residue of activity on floor: water drips into particles of various elements. photograph e. morris. right: wall drawing traced from projections through installation. e. morris. pencil on paper. interstices 12 installation, photographs by nina morris. steel wire, plastic, filter paper, laboratory glassware, crystals. 145 in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 166 f i x i n g review / tim nees aaron paterson, sarosh mulla, and marian macken drawing room based on the premise that architects do not make buildings, they instead make drawings, at its simplest interpretation this exhibition presents architectural drawing practices that do not lead to building. three installations that can loosely be categorised by the term “drawing” exist in space without designing space, drawings in their own right, drawings that exist purely for their own art. this premise has a reliance, whether intentionally or not, on the host space, the quality of space and light and atmosphere in the rooms of the building that support and frame the drawings on display. in this case, the coca building in christchurch—a brutalist gem by architects minson henning hansen & dines recently restored with nearly all of its original spaces and rigorous details intact—becomes a strong silent-type character in the visitor’s experience of the exhibition, its success lying in the interaction between the two. coca’s boldly hewn architecture, its materiality and atmosphere, lends vigour and robustness to the no-less-bold installation on display. i visited the exhibition on three separate occasions and with each visit my response was more or less the same. which is to say there was no diminishment of my experience through familiarity. there were instead variations of surprise, exploration, puzzlement, and the partial unpicking that leads not to an understanding but to a personal interpretation that included cataloguing all of the things from past experience that the work reminded me of. on each occasion my admiration for the conceiving and executing of these alternative drawing practices was reinforced, and my enjoyment of the work oscillated between the sensual and the cerebral, from the experiential dance—light, sound, and movement that entertains and leads the visitor to explore the gallery—to the implied narrative—a story that seems to contain all the familiar tropes of film noir, yet cannot finally be pinned down. throughout there is an assured handling of line and detail, of light and shadow. though mainly shadow. shadow in atmosphere and in narrative. does it make sense to say there is an assured handling of ambiguity? in the exhibition catalogue, fritha powell succinctly writes: “i am an emerging idea; you, yourself have created a version of me as you travel and traverse the gallery.” we the visitor, however, cannot help but think we make an unreliable interpreter, that if we were called upon to articulate our thoughts we would falter, for surely toi moroki centre of contemporary art, christchurch, november 28, 2020– february 20, 2021 in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 167 review / aaron paterson, sarosh mulla and marian macken drawing room f i x i n g there is an official version tethered to the drawings that will trump us. anything we proffer will remain speculative. the anxiety of what we think we are supposed to think pushes what we actually think to the side and this is where the collaboration with the gallery’s spaces becomes so deft, for the atmosphere arising from building and exhibition together is both fit and reassuring, prodding and comforting, emerging and confining … in a good way. we can relax, enjoy, let go. the largest and first gallery i enter after climbing the stairs has height and breadth and is almost misty with gloom. particular lights flash and i hear a soft whirr along with the tinkling of upper register music, somehow watery, and because i’m looking through the darkness at a giant metal contraption that could be a piece of space junk, but which is moving, though moving slowly, i find the sounds otherworldly. the scale is important. a large arm (fig. 1). small wheels. and it is tethered. as it follows an arc across the room it inscribes, or imprints, a line. the wheels marking the floor, layer upon layer, back and forth. an impressive level of engineering to complete a simple task, perhaps, but it is not just engineering. it is a relic, a remnant, a prop. which is why the shadow is so important, and the sound, and the points of light. the shadow is a cushion that encourages my mind to wander as i watch the pairs of wheels blind in their task. the atmosphere constructed quickly transports me to the lunar surface, to an abandoned oil field, to the perverseness of archigram’s walking architecture. this could be where neil armstrong and ron herron engage each other in conversation. the atmosphere resonates, though it could just be my mind, resonating, and the shadow thick in the room cloaks me with nostalgia. i briefly wonder about paterson, mulla, and macken’s pretentions, whether they fig. 1 drawing room: drawing machine. [photograph by simon devitt (2020)] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 168 review / aaron paterson, sarosh mulla and marian macken drawing room f i x i n g see themselves as cutting edge artists or provocative set designers, though i realise that if they can combine all the qualities required to create memorable architecture and marry them ephemerally to an existing architectural space, and by so doing create a palpable murky energy as demonstrated in this exhibition, their skill as architects is unquestionable. their ideas articulate. their production values top shelf. attracted by light flickering in my peripheral vision, i turn and make my way to the smaller galleries fitted tightly behind the stair and beneath some mezzanine offices. my mind crouches as i leave the high space and enter the low. i discover a transparent screen with digital perspectives winding/unwinding. i circle around both sides, search for differences. i notice another screen with a headset and another drawing (fig. 2). an assistant helps me put the headset on. i move, manipulate the images i see, and feel simultaneously expansive and claustrophobic, vertiginous. the images resemble the drawing beam. in vr, the past is still present. i search for differences but a cartesian grid holds it all together in a retro kind of way. i can still hear the soundtrack tinkling from the other room. i’m helpless to the creep of nostalgia; the works of piranesi, cedric price, and superstudio surface. in the final space, on the back wall, a film is screening (fig. 3). an agitated woman paces through a commercial office of some kind. the props seem obvious yet fig. 2 drawing room: edge of shadow. [vr projection, photograph by john collie (2020)] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 169 review / aaron paterson, sarosh mulla and marian macken drawing room f i x i n g enigmatic, the action circuitous, the narrative open. the sound design emphasises the background sounds, heels clack, a plastic bottle drops to the floor. the camera zooms in too. i realise there are two different locations in the film, a kind of mirroring, a repetition, a circling. everything is polished, elegant, unsettling. on the cusp. i’m sure i’ve seen an arthouse movie that looks like this and for not only that reason i’m impressed. to call the exhibition “an alternative kind of architectural drawing” sidelines the other creative disciplines that have been engaged by its creators. sound, sculpture, lighting, graphics, writing, film, and all of the art direction required for film—the ability and professionalism of the curators to bring all these things together is really quite astonishing. it is to their credit that placing their work in coca’s spaces leads to neither subservience nor domination, but an appropriate pairing that makes the experience of the exhibition all the more stirring. fig. 3 penumbral, short film, brendan donovan, sarosh mulla, and aaron paterson (2018). [photograph by simon devitt (2020)] 10_rykwert_int10_final.indd 109 adam’s house again joseph rykwert the vision of a paradisical and hypothetical hut has motivated many thinkers, reformers, and – yes, even architects – to give body and vigour to their proposals for a return to a natural, organic community, as well as to a way of building which might be its home. a house as home: our demand for such an option has been questioned recently: “… since the enlightenment we have no longer needed a universal house in order to fi nd the world a place worthy of inhabiting. what suffi ces is a unité d’habitation, a stackable number of inhabitable cells …” here is a doctrine to encapsulate the individual in a world, not so much of the essentially sociable, even aspiringly communitarian corbusier’ian unités, but in the manner of a high-tech or emiratestyle conglomerate. unlike a unité, such high and bulky buildings almost inevitably desertify their immediate surroundings. this doctrine therefore speaks of an environment which is designed to deny the inter-active nature of social space. only the sports stadium can offer any shelter to sociality in such a world. public social space in a city so constituted is constantly eroded by private interest: any conspicuous building is expected to act as a carrier of advertising. some buildings are effectively solidifi ed advertisements, and a whole skyscraper might even be seen as a trade mark which will inevitably have to be fancifully and often arbitrarily shaped. such buildings require no response from the passer-by beyond that of bewildered astonishment at their sheer height and bulk. and the force of their impinging on the public realm is only as effective as it is destructive of sociality. the constant demand for ever higher high-rises intensifi es the atrophy of the public realm that i mentioned earlier. in such palsied regions, works of art cannot solicit the visitor’s attention, never mind appreciation. and indeed, such products, however defi ned, have in the last few decades of the twentieth century grown in bulk and changed in their nature. they may be: sectioned animals in huge formaldehyde tanks, dead children hung on trees, pneumatic canons shooting liquid wax, or even vapid acrylic still-lives painted on oversize, infl ated canvases. such works, or for that matter the happenings which have to some extent replaced them in public attention, cannot be incorporated into the physical setting in which we pass our daily life. they require specialised spaces: great warehouses, disused factories and bus or train depots, where they can be isolated from the everyday social round; even the museums in which the older paintings and sculptures are displayed and conserved will not quite do. they are much too small for them. some artists have even ensured that their whole production will be gathered together in an isolated location so that you need to make a pilgrimage to be able to experience them at all. 10_rykwert_int10_final.indd 10910_rykwert_int10_final.indd 109 11/3/09 2:29 am11/3/09 2:29 am interstices 10 their growing bulk corresponds to the exponential rise of commodity art-work prices. like the buildings, they are all products which testify to a blind belief, which has already motivated society in the second half of the twentieth century, the belief in the dominion of the free market and the ever-growing benefi ts of its unlimited growth. the association between this kind of art and the buildings with which they are contemporary is exemplifi ed by the nature of the public attention that is directed to them: they occupy as much – if not more – space in the real estate and fi nancial pages of newspapers than as in the cultural ones. bulk aside, you may think that i take too solemn, too grave a view of those objects, many of which, as my description of them suggests, are playful emulations of marcel duchamp’s irony. he memorably and mythically signed a urinal so as to exhibit it as a work of art (the art being in the act of choice, not in any quality of the object). he also bottled – and sold – his breath; while piero manzoni tinned his faeces and, guaranteeing their freedom from additives, sold the tins for their weight in gold. with time, the irony has been turned against their originators. an ‘artist’s work’ turned out to be to pee into duchamp’s urinal at an exhibition. he claimed that he was reversing duchamp’s choice by returning the urinal to its original use … and when an art dealer used a can-opener on one of manzoni’s tins, he found it fi lled with dried plaster, not faeces. the relatively modest prices originally charged for such productions have been so infl ated that their sale at auction for mind-blowing sums is considered by some later artists as a ‘happening’ in itself. irony has often been invoked in the discussion of twentieth-century art; artists like damien hirst or maurizio cattelan (i quote among the most expensive) have appealed to duchamp as their forerunner. yet when their graceless happenings involve tons of material and millions of dollars, then the sly smile of irony may turn to the snarl of sarcasm. if there is power in symbolic coincidences, it might just be worth noting that the colossal auction sale, in which damien hirst acted as his own dealer, netting the sum of £111,000,000, the highest achieved in a single-artist sale, happened to coincide with the collapse of lehman brothers, one of those catastrophic failures to which we have become inured, but which then marked the opening of the great fi nancial melt-down of 2008. whether the changed economic climate will alter the way we perceive our environment is not yet clear. perhaps it will require a deeper social change than can be provoked by a mere fi scal crisis. but the dominant faith of the last half century in the self-regulating and wholly benefi cent free market has been shaken. this can neither be forgotten nor repaired, though we have yet to come to terms with the chasm it has opened in our world. it will, at some point, force us to set public authority above the operations of the economy. that, i suspect, will imply the erection of some visible and tangible index of the social good in our social realm. some of you may be aware of straws in that wind. the vast and chaotic city of sao paulo, the largest in brazil, has forbidden all advertising in its public spaces in 2007. electric signs have been switched off, bill-boards and hoardings blanked out, even shop signs restricted. paulistas, if their vocal reactions are to be believed, love their cidade limpa, their clean town, and some even hope that the mayor’s modest proposal to reintroduce posters on bus stops and bollards will never be accepted. 10_rykwert_int10_final.indd 11010_rykwert_int10_final.indd 110 11/3/09 2:29 am11/3/09 2:29 am 111 when buildings are stripped of their motley, what will appear? will we, once we have to face the stripped public space, demand that our buildings, our streets and squares take up some quite different organisational principle? it is too early to tell if the sao paulo precedent points to a trend which will be followed elsewhere, but it certainly does seem as if the model which has served for urban development in the free market has had its day. if we now look to a notion of urban sociality in which the citizen takes freedom of assembly for granted, to a place of personal, face-to-face exchange quite different from that of the football stadium (and which therefore requires quite other considerations from those we have come to accept as a commonplace – a space that is the leftover of private development), we may be able to formulate one that will actually welcome the inhabitant on his daily round. but we will then also need to look again at the ways in which the public realm was created and occupied in the past. it is worth recalling -– and some of the speakers will surely remind us – that the southern pacifi c once offered seventeenthand eighteenth-century travellers the spectacle of adamic ease within a friendly physical environment, as well as a free sociality unwarped by the trammels of constricting civilisation. the thinkers of the enlightenment were the most enthusiastic proponents of this vision, and however idealised their picture may have been, it seems again to exercise a new attraction in the twenty-fi rst century. it may be, though, that the reported rise in the sales of the books of karl marx and maynard keynes provides no real demonstration of a cultural shift, and for that matter the demonising of bankers throughout the anglo-saxon world does not indicate anything more – as yet – than a glitch in the fortunes of the market, but the signs do seem to be pointing to a dissatisfaction with the shopping mall as the image of public space. can we believe, then, that the model which adam’s house and its elaborations once offered can become relevant again? it is not only as the family home but as a ‘great house’ that the pacifi c offered enlightenment thinkers a shelter for sociality and a community which they envied and wished to emulate, one which throughout the nineteenth century returned in the writings – and the designs – of political reformers and of utopians. perhaps a close look at its variation throughout the region will help us to understand this fascination and indicate why we need to examine this model again in the light of our present condition. 10_rykwert_int10_final.indd 11110_rykwert_int10_final.indd 111 11/3/09 2:29 am11/3/09 2:29 am interstices 13 architecture and violence bechir kenzari (ed.) review by sean pickersgill at the outset it is worth noting the title of the book reviewed here. it is architecture and violence, not ‘architecture or violence’, ‘architecture for violence’, or even ‘violent architecture’. the conjunction “and” tells us immediately about the conflicted and ambiguous relationship between the practice of architecture and the effect and events of violence. this is both the strength and the weakness of this book, but is probably a position taken with full knowledge of the difficulty in conjoining two forms of experience that are not conventionally, in an institutional sense, brought together. as the editor bechir kenzari admits, or perhaps celebrates, in the introduction, there has been no attempt to thematise the content or to address issues regarding the varied nature of the two subjects. instead he adopts a default position of sequencing the chapters alphabetically by author name. whilst polite in terms of editorial control over the contributors, it leaves the reader with the task of determining the relevant thematic strands that may be gleaned from the individual chapters. further weakening this approach is the uneven quality of the essays that are contained in the book. the nature of this i will discuss in the review only generally, but it is unfortunate for a topic which, as kenzari notes in his introduction, seems to be particularly appropriate subject matter for contemporary architectural theory. in a period in which there are significant challenges regarding issues of post-criticality, the need for texts to bring academic precision and consistent, cumulative argument to a topic is especially important. violence itself is a topic that, by its immediacy, requires our attention since its relationship to questions of moral and ethical behaviour, and to culpability by unauthorised perpetrators, fill our daily lives. the question remains, of course, as to the scale and form of violence being enacted. is it violence that has been carried out by an individual, by a group of persons, by a systemic organisation? is it deliberate, is it accidental; is it destructive or creative; is it gendered, racially profiled? as you cycle through the variations possible on the thematics of violence, the term clearly points towards the idea that in each case, violence can be recognised by the manner in which particularly egregious events take place. the question remains, is it the consequence of random conflict or of organised hostility and antagonism? perhaps we can assume that if a violent act takes place within an architectural setting, then the architecture is no more than a witness. but if the violence is the product of deep structural chauvinisms then architecture may well be a principal instrument of the employment of violence. in any respect, the need to clearly define “what is violence?” in any analysis of architecture and violence seems crucial. perhaps if we are able to refine our understanding of these categories of experience, the effect of violence, and practise, the making of violent circumstances, it would seem we could understand how actions within one (de)constitute effects in another. these questions should constitute more than an academic parlour game of demarcating meanings, particularly in a text that has cast its net as wide as architecture and violence. the essays range from: specific historical studies of events (libero andreotti on the italian fascist exhibition of 1932; dorita hannah on the chechen siege of the moscow dubrovka theatre in 2002; andrew herscher on the use of contemporary satellite imaging in the analysis of war crimes; william b. millard edited by bechir kenzari 2012 architecture and violence. barcelona and new york: actar. 117 on the new jersey environment of the sopranos television series; sarah treadwell on a maori/english battle in new zealand in 1864); critical analyses of architectural projects, including annette fierro on recent projects in london and elie haddad on the beirut nightclub b-018; and also studies on immanent aspects of violence within the culture of architecture, with bechir kenzari on the idea of rivalry, donald kunze on immanent topographies in architectural thinking, and nadir lahiji on autoimmunity. while the range of subject matter is broad, it is not clear whether the exercise of bringing such disparate subject methods and modes of analysis together is successful. if it were even possible to define the precise nature of how each of these authors collectively addressed the idea of architecture and violence, it is likely that the description would be so loose and indeterminate as to be inapplicable in other contexts. there are some consistencies, but these tend to reinforce the separation between specific studies and general observations. kenzari, kunze and lahiji share an interest in the vicissitudes of thinking architecturally and critically. they, particularly kunze and lahiji, explore the recognition that the task of bringing architecture and violence together is problematic, not because it is fruitless to look for anything to say about architecture in this context, but because there is a surfeit of material to draw upon. to look at any specific example of architecture and violence is to recognise its rhetorical function in parallel discourses on hope, aggression, despair, stoicism, continuity, etc. if, by contrast, we turn to the specific analyses to search for more focussed and demonstrative presentations of architecture and violence, the essays that address this (andreotti, hannah, herscher, millard, treadwell) vary wildly in their application of the term. for andreotti, violence is the inherent bombastic and bellicose imagery of italian fascism; for hannah it is the conjunction of the dubrovka siege, the significant number of deaths that occurred in the botched rescue and the ideas of antonin artaud; for herscher it is the dehumanising recognition that the violence of war crimes can only be legitimated through remote sensing; for millard it is the argument that a fictional series about violent new jersey mobsters is situated in a real environment; and for treadwell it is the employment of successful military defense strategies by the maori in their wars with colonial trespassers. for andreotti, hannah and millard, their argument is not of the same order as the other essays since clearly there are differences between actual events and their characterisation. whilst the events of the dubrovka siege were tragically real, and so too were the actions of the italian fascists and the actual new york mafioso, the authors’ attempts to connect these to a general theory of violence seems strained. i was not convinced of the need to link artaud’s theatre project to dubrovka just because it occurred in a theatre, nor to see a fascist exhibition as being inherently violent simply because of its subject matter (itself quite abstractly realised), nor to see how the fiction of the sopranos contributed to a critique of new jersey as an inherently violent landscape. herscher and treadwell, at least, show how a particularly specific spatial and material strategy inherently recorded a pattern of violence, but these instances do not occur within an overall narrative within architecture and violence that demonstrated their relevance to an architectural practice that drew upon and developed military practice. since we know there are clear architectural precedents in this field, perhaps their essays might have been situated in a meta-narrative that started with situated historical examples and finished with methodological questions on future study of the entwinement of architecture and violence. the essays by kunze and lahiji would serve admirably for this purpose. interstices 13 whilst i think there is a tremendous amount of excellent and provocative thinking, my criticism of the text is similar to the one that could be made of one of the precedents cited by kenzari, architecture of fear (1987, arbor house), edited by nan elin. though architecture and violence has, arguably, more rigorous scholastic effort in its individual essays, both texts suffer from a lack of governing and contextualising narrative that would still allow the individual essays space to explore their hermetic interests. in particular, since the material in architecture and fear is more intellectually challenging in some instances, the need to connect between the different voices becomes even more crucial. the presence of a meta-narrative, an introductory passage outlining the purpose of an essay that will follow and a summary reflection that draws parallels with other texts would have benefitted the essays individually and the book overall. as it is currently organised, the alphabetical listing isolates each of the essays within their particular scope of definitions, leaving them the task of presenting their individual idea of violence and architecture as conjoined states-of-affairs that share coeval beginnings. the subject matter of architecture as the site of violence, a record of its effects, and a model for emulation or avoidance is exceptionally important. making the presumption that the goal of enlightened individuals is to avoid hobbesian doomsday scenarios, it would be valuable to have a text that addressed some core issues in a logical fashion if only to describe how one would distinguish between historical, contemporary, metaphorical, simulated, etc. forms of situated violence. there are two examples of the need for a systematic text of this order; each addresses a real and a simulated encounter with violence. in terms of a real encounter, the relationship between cities and violence are incredibly complex, and the ties between particular urban patterns and human behaviour are proper subjects for the range of intellectuals, officials, planners and strategists. when the spanish-language website otrameric.com asks why 41 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are located in south america, central america and the caribbean, it is clear that there are some consistencies at play here. just as key works such as eyal weizman’s hollow land (verso, 2007) have scrutinised the spatial and military practices of recent events in israel and palestine in a systematic fashion, there is clearly a need to find consistent relationships between violence and urban/architectural form in these cities. in terms of simulated encounters, we should ask ourselves why there is no parallel investigation into the rehearsed violence of digital game environments whose very functionality, in particular in first person shooter examples, relies upon the design of architectural and landscape environments. commercially successful games have finessed the relationship between violence, ontological engagement, moral behaviour, rewards and their environments. though it may have been beyond the scope of architecture and violence to cover all aspects of these two examples, they remain notable omissions. in summary, the book is a brave attempt to bring together a diverse array of scholarship on terms that inherently, i argue, need quite careful terms of reference for the observations to be meaningful. those essays that force the relationship between architecture and violence confirm suspicions that there are no inherent relevant theoretical relations within architecture when it comes to topics of urgency such as violence, while those who understand the complexity needed the editorial framing to allow their depth to have sense within an overall narrative. the topic deserves this. this symposium intends to consolidate the recent intensifications of interest in the philosophy of benedict de spinoza (1632-1677), and to reaffirm his status as an enormously powerful thinker of contemporary relevance. the idea is to address general aspects of spinoza’s philosophy, but to also coalesce these around two specific themes: firstly, spinoza’s importance for the domains of study parsed by interstices journal, namely arts and architecture. secondly, spinoza’s relevance within the particular locus of new zealand, australasia, the south pacific, and the pacific rim. http://www.interstices.ac.nz/spinoza2017 http://aucklandspinoza2017.eventbrite.com the arts of spinoza + pacific spinoza thursday 25 may preliminaries 10.00 – 13.00 masterclass / seminar with susan ruddick, followed by lunch. ontology lab (building 302, 5th floor, room 551), university of auckland science centre, 23 symonds street. hosted and generously supported by the school of environment, university of auckland. friday 26 may preliminaries 11.00 – 12.30 masterclass / seminar with moira gatens. wf202, 2nd floor, aut business building, 95 governor fitzroy place, auckland university of technology. 13.00 – 14.30 ‘women in philosophy + women in architecture & planning’ lunch with moira gatens and susan ruddick. ima cuisine, 53 fort street, auckland. hosted and generously supported by architecture+women-nz. conference begins 16.00 17.00 registration neon foyer, conference centre, 20-22 symonds street, university of auckland please arrive promptly by 17.00 for the mihi whakatau (formal māori welcome) 17.10 17.35 mihi whakatau & opening addresses engineering lecture theatre 439, bldg 401, conference centre, 20-22 symonds street, university of auckland friday 26 may, cont’d opening plenaries 17.35 18.30 keynote address engineering lecture theatre 439, bldg 401, conference centre, 22 symonds street, university of auckland. susan ruddick, professor of geography and planning, university of toronto followed by discussion / q&a. chair: tba. 18.30 19.20 reception drinks and finger food opening plenaries, cont’d 19.20 19.50 film screening: equal by design a documentary film about equality, wellbeing and the uk housing crisis, by peg rawes and beth lord, dir. adam low. engineering lecture theatre 439, bldg 401, conference centre, 22 symonds street, university of auckland. 19.50 20.45 keynote addresses + film discussion and q&a (via video-conferencing) peg rawes, professor of architecture and philosophy, bartlett school of architecture, university college london beth lord, reader in philosophy, university of aberdeen chair: dieneke jansen (aut) and tba. saturday 27 may 9.15 – 9.30 registration (self-service) 9.30 – 11.00 parallel sessions rooms wg607 and wg609, 6th floor, sir paul reeves building, governor fitzroy place, auckland university of technology. 11.00 – 11.30 morning tea -6th floor, sir paul reeves building 11.30 – 13.00: parallel sessions rooms wg607 and wg609, 6th floor, sir paul reeves building, governor fitzroy place, auckland university of technology. painting, film, the pluriversity (wg607) chair: ingrid boberg (aut) sean sturm & stephen turner, university of auckland. stefano papa, university of vienna (video recording). eu jin chua, auckland university of technology. landscape, placemaking (wg609) chair: tba peter connolly, victoria university wellington. margit brünner, university of adelaide. verarisa ujung, victoria university wellington. 13.00 – 14.00: lunch (not provided -see map overleaf for suggestions for eateries) structure, architecture, ethics (wg607) all speakers this session via videoconferencing. chairs: mark jackson (aut) and michael lebuffe (otago). sasha lawson-frost, university college london. gökhan kodalak, cornell university. raphael krut-landau, princeton university. pacific spinoza (wg609) chair: tba joe gerlach, oxford university. anna boswell, university of auckland. saturday 27 may cont’d pacific spinoza plenary 14.00 – 15.45 pacific spinoza / pacific spaces panel and roundtable st paul st gallery two, 40 st paul street, auckland university of technology carl mika, tuhourangi, ngati whanaunga; senior lecturer, education, university of waikato. albert refiti, senior lecturer, spatial design, auckland university of technology. jacob culbertson (via videoconferencing), visiting assistant professor, haverford college. followed by discussion / roundtable. chairs: tba. 15.45 – 16.45 afternoon tea / exhibition finissage st paul street galleries one and two, 40 st paul street, auckland university of technology. centrepiece plenaries 16.45 – 18.30: keynote addresses: the arts of spinoza engineering lecture theatre 439, bldg 401, conference centre, 22 symonds street, university of auckland. moira gatens, challis professor of philosophy, university of sydney anthony uhlmann, professor, writing and society, university of western sydney followed by discussion / q&a. chairs: tba. 18.30 – 18.45 contingency 19.00 conference dinner (registration only). mezze bar tapas restaurant, 9 durham street east, auckland.. sunday 28 may 9.45 – 11.15 parallel sessions rooms wg607 and wg609, 6th floor, sir paul reeves building, governor fitzroy place, auckland university of technology. literature (wg607) chair: tba michael strawser, university of central florida. horst lange, university of central arkansas. christopher norris (video recording), cardiff university. architecture & environmental design (wg609) chair: farzaneh haghighi andrea wheeler, iowa state university. guido cimadomo, universidad de málaga. remy leblanc, victoria university wellington. 11.15 – 11.45 morning tea -6th floor, sir paul reeves building 11.45 – 13.15 parallel sessions rooms wg607 and wg609, 6th floor, sir paul reeves building, governor fitzroy place, auckland university of technology. 13.15 – 14.15 lunch (may be provided - otherwise, see map overleaf for suggestions for eateries) performance / bodies / labour (wg607) chair: sue gallagher (aut) m. mirza y. harahap, monash university. ed frith & caroline salem, arts university bournemouth. amy pennington, independent / kingston university. sources & interpretations (wg609) chair: tba joe keith green (video recording), eastern tennessee state university. christopher davidson, ball state university. dimitris vardoulakis, western sydney university sunday 28 may cont’d closing plenary 14.15 – 15.15 keynote address engineering lecture theatre 439, bldg 401, conference centre, 20-22 symonds street, university of auckland. michael lebuffe, baier chair in early modern philosophy, university of otago followed by discussion / q&a. chair: tba. 15.15 – 15.45 afternoon tea -neon foyer, university of auckland roundtable 15.45 – 17.15 roundtable: spinoza here & now engineering lecture theatre 439, bldg 401, conference centre, 20-22 symonds street, university of auckland. chairs: peter connolly and eu jin chua end friday 8 october opening address professor jenny dixon dean of nicai, the university of auckland rewi thompson architect, school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland interior | interiority rick pearson, michael major, jennifer walling, peter were, christina mackay chair: julieanna preston school of design, massey university drinks & launch: interstices11: the traction of drawing introduction to professor david leatherbarrow dr. ross jenner, school of architecture and planning, the university of auckland disorientation and disclosure keynote by david leatherbarrow dinner vivace restaurant, level 1, 50 high street, auckland 4:00 4:30 pm 4:30 6:00 pm 6:00 6:45 pm 6:45 7:00 pm 7:00 8:00 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 8:30 pm saturday 9 october containment | exposure 1. foreign bodies julieanna preston 2. ancient modernists and a dark interior dianne peacock 3. holey interior michael milojevic morning tea interior | world 1. a temporal inflection suzie attiwill 2. fourth wall removed kirsty volz 3. excessive baggage michael chapman lunch conference centre, the university of auckland 9:00 10:30 am 10:30 11:00 am 11:00 12:30 pm 12:30 1:30 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland saturday 9 october glass house | hot house 1. outside in / inside out john roberts 2. crystal capital sean sturm and stephen turner 3. restless containers tina engels-schwarzpaul afternoon tea boundary | control 1. dizzy immensities sandra lösche 2. dividing evidence christina mackay 3. musings on indoor-outdoor flow kara rosemeier drinks conference centre, the university of auckland dinner o’ sarracino restaurant, 3-5 mount eden road, auckland 1:30 3:00 pm 3:00 3:30 pm 3:30 5:00 pm 5:00 6:00 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 7:00 pm saturday 9 october alr5, school of architecture and planning the university of auckland 3:30 5:00 pm inside | out 1. staying indoors with sloterdijk and latour tim adams 2. samoan thought and the notion of the interior lealiifano albert refiti and i’uogafa tuagalu 3. to free borders of interiority azadeh emadi sunday 10 october representation | apparatus 1. inscapes: interiority in architectural fiction stefanie sobelle 2. in’a-space judy cockeram and judyarx scribe 3. inside the book marian macken alr5, school of architecture and planning the university of auckland work-in-progress sue gallagher: head space. home body. albert l. refiti: the ring of faciality ross jenner: inner poverty jacky bowring: going under isabel lasala: architecture as landscape design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland concluding comments david leatherbarrow lunch yum cha at dynasty chinese restaurant, 57-59 wakefield street, auckland 10:00 11:30 am 11:30 am 12:30 1:30 pm design theatre, conference centre the university of auckland 9:30 11:30 am interstices 15 107 beyond the state: new zealand's state houses from modest to modern by bill mackay and andrea stevens michael austin the new zealand state house is a strange mythological beast. some of the myths are that the 1935 first labour government wanted it to be ‘as good a house as those bastards in remuera’, and consequently it was to be a well-built cottage (english origins are usually assumed for the designs, but peter middleton believed they were based on cape cod cottages). the auckland university labour club criticized the decision as out of touch with international architecture. modernist blocks were built from 1940, but they were regarded as unpopular with families, who wanted each house to be distinguishable from its neighbours. opponents claimed this was so that drunk workers returning from the ‘six o’clock swill’ could recognize which house was theirs. the latest book on the state house doesn’t indulge in these myths, but concentrates instead on the architecture of the houses, for which it has only appreciation and praise. the book is in two parts: the first is by bill mackay and is arranged chronologically; not quite a history of the house that we think we know, but exposing eclectic variations and a little known prehistory. particularly the sections on the petone housing, and another one discussing the little known railway housing, make for interesting reading. the second part, by andrea stevens, illustrates a selection of the original state houses with their current occupants – academics, artists and professionals. not the working class, and not those who are currently ‘allocated’ state houses and who, according to contemporary myths, are without work. the text in section, which has no conclusion, is followed by the plans of the houses, both original and altered, in an appendix of sorts. this arrangement is awkward for readers who have to shuffle back and forth to see what was done with the original architectural designs. however, the book is not aimed at architects but at a wider readership, almost a coffee table publication for those of us who read home making magazines. many captions accompanying the images photographed by simon devitt seem to be struggling to find something to say, perhaps a consequence of an absence of argument or theme in the work as a whole. frequently, there are photos of books in piles or in bookcases, providing clues about the current inhabitant’s tastes, and the book meticulously acknowledges every painting and art piece. the women are still shown in the kitchen, but they are now accompanied by partners and children. the huge respect with which the original houses have been treated is quite extraordinary. where additions have been made, they keep the original house intact, in one way or another. common is the addition of outside living areas, which were lacking in the originals. all examples in this book show the current occupants’ affection of for their houses, as well as the varied ways in which people use them. what a contrast with architects’ attitudes to state houses half a century ago, when they were considered beneath contempt. no architect in the sixties could have been persuaded that state houses had “wonderful proportions and gentle human scale” (105). interestingly, it is difficult to discern what the criticism of state houses aims at. in other words, criticising the houses is an implicit criticism of their occupants. a common criticism over the decades has been the lack of variety. however, there have actually been many innovative state house designs in the half century since the early cottages, some of which even made it into architectural magazines, but the book explores neither these nor how current state houses are occupied. interstices 15 108 the state houses in this book are owned and occupied by pākehā, in contrast with the present day occupants of state rental houses. the book has a section discussing māori housing, but the situation is more complex. houses for māori were among the first goals mooted by the first labour government, and they were ‘pepper-potted’ in pākehā suburbs. the māori affairs programme envisaged that the occupants would purchase the houses, but māori (and pacific islanders) applied instead for state rental houses. as a result, state house suburbs, such as ōtara and porirua, are predominantly occupied by a polynesian population. this book has a chatty style, addressing the reader directly with the use of ‘we’ and ‘our’. and it cheerfully discusses ‘style’, an issue modernism was supposed to eliminate. generally, this book leaves the reader wanting to know more, with its gentle discussions and abrupt endings. photography: simon devitt penguin: auckland, new zealand, 2014. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 89 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l book review / andrew douglas securing urbanism: contagion, power and risk by mark laurence jackson and mark hanlen springer, 2020, 483 pp. unsecured reading securing urbanism: contagion, power and risk is a book i read mostly at 35,000 feet or so in planes flying between regional centres in the uk—glasses fogging from a mask only i felt compelled to endure—and, if not airborne, then in the waiting spaces of airports, post-security screening. my overweight checked luggage couldn’t quite stand the extra grams this weighty hardback contributed; carry-on was how we continued journeying together. between covid-indifference, petty security despotism, and the crude herding underpinning inter-urban air travel, though, reading this way seemed entirely in tune with the disquieting conditions pictured by securing urbanism—our everyday acquiescence to commercially inflected risk management and its shuttering and productive shaping of urban possibility. in setting this review initially then within the actuality of my engagement with a text and self in transit, it occurs to me that such a setting-up usefully captures a particular unease its reading impressed. while everything to do with airline travel is geared towards reaching a calculable destination securely, no such security existed in my reading relationship with securing urbanism, tasked as i was with not only getting from front to back, page upon page, but also saying something about this page turning on time and with the sophistication its address called for. reading depth completed in aotearoa new zealand in 2020, securing urbanism is a profound meditation on the long arc of western urbanism and its most immediate global convolutions. at almost 500 pages, the book reads, relative to typical academic essay publishing, akin to the “long read” offered by certain papers like the guardian or the washington post. with such journalism, you know you’re in for a lengthy engagement when, after some immediate exposition on a current topic, the text announces, “it was back in [such and such a time] that …” securing urbanism’s deep dive is announced thus: one of the aims of this book is to draw out this ontology [in urban depiction] of urbanism and security, an ontology whose securing may be determined in in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 90 book review / securing urbanism: contagion, power and risk by mark laurence jackson and mark hanlen u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l the greek founding of western metaphysics with plato and aristotle, along with platonic, and especially aristotelian, understandings of the city and political thought.1 “one of the aims”! this commencing ontological ‘draw-down’ hardly meets the book’s concluding chapter, “cruel festival,” via any mundane, chronological line-up:2 the text makes a great show of wandering expansively and seemingly effortlessly—although the intricate footwork bringing all this together perhaps owes something to the labyrinthine dexterity of leopold bloom in james joyce’s ulysses (why not? securing urbanism and i did happily weave our way through dublin too). on homeric comparisons, it is noteworthy, as declan kiberd comments: “as he wrote ulysses, joyce sometimes wore four watches, each telling different time.”3 multiple temporalities course through securing urbanism too, and the ‘what-o’clock’ of things was not always discernible to my travel-pitched mind. nevertheless, the parrying of temporalities in securing urbanism, much like joyce’s doubling of a certain urban-single-day-ness with deeper temporal and journeying echoes, aligns, in key ways, with a radical shake-up of the contemporary ‘now’ sought by jackson and hanlen. as they say, present circumstances offer a veiled persistence rich in “revealing, or unconcealing” possibilities.4 3x3x3 how is this revealing approached? in outline terms, the book is divided into three parts: “politics of contagion”; “securing the urban”; and “post-political urbanism”. in a neat decanting, each part is further shared across three chapters. so, for instance, part one addresses: firstly, the broader situation of the urban across political, ontological, and inhabiting registers; secondly, an entanglement of the urban with social medicine, issues of governmentality, an evolving thrust towards selfor personal governance in certain liberal western contexts; and thirdly, the overlap of practices and discourses on human contagion and financial health evident within neoliberalism. roughly, part two addresses the intersection of power and space, and its conceptualisation by way of michel foucault’s evolving thinking on discipline and normalisation, and the decisive emergence of biopolitics as a mode to life management. and part three—likely the most complex philosophically (although no part of the book escapes that attunement)—urban unveiling and an overlap in thinking between foucault, giorgio agamben, and martin heidegger, ancient greek truth-telling and the problems of democracy, and states of exception with their post-political shaping of urban spheres. working complexly this is a lot, and in a phrase that might well serve as the book’s motto, the authors caution, “everything is more complex than that” (emphasis in original),5 meaning more complex than what might typically pass for academic summary and scrutiny. footnotes frequently running halfway up the page, and not infrequently more, testify to just how nuanced and intricate that complexity can get. nevertheless, despite the striking breadth and depth ambitioned by jackson and hanlen, what they are at pains to impress is resistance to any grand synthesis or universal ‘theory’ of the urban, or that one is indeed desirable at all. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 91 book review / securing urbanism: contagion, power and risk by mark laurence jackson and mark hanlen u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l consequently, there is no enduring or definitive answer to the “‘what is’ question concerning the urban” as they say.6 following foucault instead, they look to maintain a “disjunctive … non-homogeneous … non-isomorphic” approach, one that looks to the urban as a thing practised before it can be described, “named or known.”7 getting at such varied practices and the resulting urban morphological and thought contours needed to know them, even provisionally, does, of course, need the measure of time but also the labour time of their unpicking. not that time is the sole register of concern here: as teachers and practitioners of spatial practices, for the authors, foucault’s own reframing of a philosophical bias for the temporal over the spatial is no doubt activated in the text too: that is to say, for foucault, there is a thinking of space that construes and makes possible a more fundamental relationality than either [temporal] structure or genesis, that yet provides the space for either encounter and differentiations.8 attending to spatial differentiations is one way of sidestepping the fixing and security of the temporal (read enduring) ‘truth,’ with spatiality better capable of articulating, in jackson and hanlen’s words, “the spacings within which games of the true and the false are played.”9 spacing, with its foregrounding of distributed life energies or “way of life,” in turn opens towards the authors’ valuing of the ancient greek notion of áskēsis or discipline and a certain malleability or reworking of the self and its worlds—even, and especially, against the grain of normalisation and their disciplinary strictures. this working-towards-a-reworking and the redistributive spatial intersecting it flourishes on is, of course, no better depicted than in the confluence of the authors themselves: a good deal of securing urbanism arises from mark hanlen’s not long completed doctoral research and mark jackson’s career-long, philosophically inflected investigation of urbanism, itself finding companionship in the writing of favourites like foucault, agamben, and heidegger—to name just a few of the thought-champions making an appearance. a generous burden despite the rigorous and complex scholarship underpinning the book, evident from the beginning is an ethos of generosity: the generosity of a doctoral graduate and their supervisor co-authoring, but also, the making-space for diverse perspectives on the urban in the text itself—what the authors refer to as an attendance on “manifold urbanisms” or working in a “plural register.”10 in turn, across the book are numerous in-depth explications on particular critical perspectives, expositions that are then unpicked in patient, considered ways designed to correct or capture possible missteps—including missteps the authors themselves suspect they may have made while addressing particular vantage points in their argument: “we may be forgiven for wondering if we somehow missed something along the way”;11 or, say, “have we now strayed too far from our concerns with covid-19, wandered too far into errancy?”12 i found this directness disarming and compelling in an argument itself intricate and easy to lose my own way in! on the other hand, such empathetic plurality comes at a price, one that had this reviewer continuing in the space of discourse with in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 92 book review / securing urbanism: contagion, power and risk by mark laurence jackson and mark hanlen u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l some trepidation: had the writers and their reader reached a culminating point or orientation that could be rested upon? instead, was some other correction or reorientation coming? if proceeding this way across 500 pages is straining—and the continually corrected terrain covered by securing urbanism is undoubtedly stretching—i should add that this challenging abundance was also thrilling. accruing and suspending i say thrilling firstly in the sense of just finding in one place so much detailed knowledge that i had wanted to better grasp. no doubt, securing urbanism across its numerous chapters, will offer an abundance of thinking resources to readers irrespective of their particular engagement with specific aspects of the book’s argument. sections that i found of acute value personally included chapter 1’s “urbanizing,” with its patiently detailed survey of an array of urban orientations spanning social, governmental, and infrastructural dynamics, and chapters 3–6 of part two with their detailed engagement with the work of foucault. and secondarily thrilling here is the uncertain way this multiplex assemblage of critical concerns and its arresting erudition might find a summation. particularly intriguing at the level of endings is a hunch offered early on in securing urbanism concerning the contemporary urban and a politics jackson and hanlen suggest may now be beginning to come into view. a certain aristotelian inheritance around kinesis, growth, and change understands cities as “essentially [managed and understood in terms of ] movement, flow, whose securitizing at times requires impediments to flow and at other times requires unimpeded flow.”13 on the other hand, a richer, truer, perhaps more apposite urban motivator—although none of these adjectives are exactly right i realise—can be thought to rest on “pre-platonic lḗthē,” or what in ancient greece meant a kind of oblivion or forgetting—the underworld river of lethe traversing, as it is said to have done, the cave of hypnos, the deity commanding sleep. in fact, jackson and hanlen pitch this ‘urbanizing’ dynamic as itself something like a ‘sleeper notion,’ introduced at the beginning in passing but with the intention of rousing it to be “discussed at the book’s conclusion.”14 seeded and then suspended as it is, what exactly do the authors intend with this appeal to pre-platonic lḗthē for grasping the work of the urban today? the backgrounding relays are complex—there is reference to classicist marcel detienne, but also jacques derrida, along with heidegger, foucault, and agamben of course—and perhaps my struggle with the intent could be forgiven too, given the authors’ own deferral. on the other hand, richer articulation is offered in chapter 7, “indistinct politics,” in discussion with agamben’s consideration of the growing indistinction between the ancient conditions of zōē (or bare, animal, or in specifically human terms, household life) and bios (the life of the citizen or that life understood more broadly as political). doubled back with foucault’s notion of biopolitics, or the direct governance of life by extra-political agencies and mechanisms, the point of jackson and hanlen’s part three is to recognise how the securing of urban place is increasingly, perhaps exclusively, achieved through post-political means: that is via militarisation, staged strategies of consensus and dissensus, through a governmentality articulated according, as they utilise agamben’s framing, a state of exception whose “exclusionary inclusion” puts the agonistic dynamic of politics—as working through of differences democratically—and the political institution sustaining it to sleep.15 still, as rich and as provocative a set of positions as these are, running up towards in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 93 book review / securing urbanism: contagion, power and risk by mark laurence jackson and mark hanlen u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l the concluding chapters of part three it really couldn’t be anticipated how this argument would ultimately come to rest. 3x3x2+1 contingency in fact forced an answer. in place of a three-by-three-by-three poise anticipated for securing urbanism, a perturbing +1, or what eventually found expression as chapter 9, “cruel festival,” was called on to close the covers. as jackson and hanlen themselves describe the circumstances leading to this realisation: in summarizing our, admittedly limited development of paradigms of urban theorizing, we emphasized a series of critical concerns that we thought would carry us through the book … what we did not engage, or foresee as critical, or even glean as something we were ignoring or overlooking in the literature, was what happened to, or within, our urbanizing “fabrics”, our “circulating metabolisms”, our “conflict cities” or urban stasis, when the planet, more or less simultaneously, or over the “space” of a few months, encounters a pandemic that simply brings most cities on the planet to a halt … it seems as if nations once again define the insularity of their borders, tear this planetary “urban fabric” into territorial pieces, in a situation, somewhat ironic and tragic, where a virus becomes a planetary phenomenon.16 if i quote the authors at length here, it is because they more than anyone else capture the pathos of a writing project and trajectory of inquiry brought into caesura by a planetary urban dynamic shorn, in large measure, of its correspondingly globality. in the severely truncated circumstances of that first year of stay-at-home orders, radically reshaped economics, and the terrible effects of illness, death, and amplified societal inequities, the collapse of common life into what the greeks considered the domain of household living or oikos—for those fortunate enough in our contemporary pandemic to have viable versions of ‘home’—must certainly have looked like darkly mirrored confirmation of how bare-faced a polity of disposability at every level (from consumer items to types of persons) would run its reign of exclusionary inclusions.17 jackson and hanlen’s response in “cruel festival” movingly captures the radicality of the moment, although reading it now, some two-and-a-half years after its publication, i am compelled to imagine what a postscript might have to say about the astonishing forgetting of this so recently endured global seizure. irrespective, the last thirty odd pages composing securing urbanism’s +1 present a kind of whirl, a calculated gamble even. new authors appear, whole other strands of argumentation are spliced in, earlier portions are dropped or left in suspension, even a reconceptualisation of historical revolution versus the time of revolt (the cruel festival) is introduced, explicated, compared, critiqued, and put to work, on a dime. counting down remaining pages, so much seemed still to warrant saying. and yet, as if in a virtuoso tap finish, the strands are wound abruptly into a resonant whole and stood precariously balanced as, and at, the finish. quite what happened here? i’m not sure i know exactly, but there are urban/critical insights enough in these last pages alone to mine for an appreciable time to come. amazing. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 94 book review / securing urbanism: contagion, power and risk by mark laurence jackson and mark hanlen u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l statement of interest i wish to acknowledge long-held professional and personal connections with the authors of this book. notes 1. mark jackson and mark hanlen, securing urbanism: contagion, power and risk (singapore: springer, 2020), 5. 2. for one of many instances of jackson and hanlen’s eschewing of homogeneous, linear or regularly circular time, see securing urbanism, 386. 3. declan kiberd, ulysses and us: the art of everyday living (london, uk: faber & faber, 2009), 230. 4. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 338. 5. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 310. 6. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 47. 7. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 3. 8. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 234. 9. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 234. 10. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 6. 11. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 385. 12. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 408. 13. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 5. 14. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 5. 15. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 11–22. 16. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 432. 17. jackson and hanlen, securing urbanism, 458. interstices 12 1 hilde heynen discusses le corbusier’s law of ripolin and the desire for ‘inner cleanness’ (2005: 20). 2 jeremy hansen, editor of home nz magazine, suggests that a preference for illuminated interior images may also be due to an inability of print processes to render details in dark, shadowy images appropriately (pers. comm. 23.8.11). 3 tanizaki (1886-1965) laments the eradication of shadow from the interior in japanese architecture due to the influence of what he regards as a western preoccupation with light. 4 ‘māori’ architecture is not separated here from that of the “pacific region”. while there is clearly a uniquely māori architecture, which developed separately from the architecture of other, also diverse, pacific cultures, for the purposes of this discussion of contained shadow and interior darkness, the similarities are important. while i cannot speak with authority about pacific architecture, it seems important to me to look at architecture with a concern for pacific space and its influence on contemporary new zealand architecture. see publications by mike austin, deirdre brown, tina engelsschwarzpaul, rau hoskins, albert l. refiti, jeremy treadwell, sarah treadwell, and amanda yates, among others. interior darkness / contained shadow lynda simmons one reason for a tendency in new zealand architecture to feature brightly lit interiors is perhaps an association of sunlight with health, cleanliness and wellbeing;1 another the perception of openness to the landscape as an authentic ‘kiwi’ outdoors dwelling experience. this tendency certainly became an obsession of the new zealand architectural media from the 1950s: professional photography increasingly produced images of light-filled spaces in step with the building industry’s shift to larger glass panel sizes. as each decade brought advancements in technology, both in building and in print, images of interiors became ever brighter.2 as modernist ideas gained influence in new zealand, a shadowy interior became, more and more, a sign of some sort of architectural failure, an inability to eradicate darkness. my attention to shadow here is not to deny the beauty of the new zealand sunlight, with its blue-based colour spectrum and strong contrasts, around which has been constructed a sense of national identity (pound 2009: 95-96). instead, it is to take notice that the beauty found in “the secrets of shadows” (tanizaki 1988: 33) has been overlooked. dark interiors, in combination with strongly illuminated planes, carry their own powerful aesthetic, and i want to argue here that this, too, is an important character of new zealand architecture. dark interiors here rely on the co-existence of strong pacific light and the glare that occurs at the overlap. jun’ichiro tanizaki, a japanese novelist, considers the predisposition towards an aesthetic which favours shadow and interior darkness in in praise of shadows.3 he suggests that climate and available materials historically provided the reasons for deep, low eaves and recesses of shadow in japanese buildings. but then, “our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, … came to discover beauty in shadows, [and] ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends” (1988: 31). the term ‘shadow’ can apply to three separate conditions: the cast shadow, modulation or shade, and the contained shadow. i am particularly interested in the last condition here. the first type, the cast or projected shadow, is essentially two-dimensional in character and created by a light source, a castor object and a screen (casati 2004: 1387). the second, shade, refers to the protective qualities offered through light modulation and has generally undefined, soft edges. the shade of a canopy, for instance, or the modulation of light across a form are spatially protective and occupy the realm between two-dimensional and three-dimensional form. third, contained shadow requires three-dimensional boundaries and is three-dimensional itself. tanizaki’s notion of the beauty of darkness is found in many aspects of japanese interiors, and it relates to this third condition of contained shadow. an example of this aesthetic approach is the alcove, which is filled with blackness rather than flooded with light. tanizaki recognises that, if the shadow were “to be banished from its corners, the alcove would in that instant revert to mere void” (1988: 34). shadow in pacific buildings new zealand, like japan, is located on the edge of the pacific rim, and there are similarities between the deep, contained shadows described by tanizaki and those found in other pacific interiors. there are numerous and complex layers of “pacific architecture”4 and the recently fashionable label “pacific” can be top: architect g. tarrant, photographer p. reynolds. bottom: architect b. hulena, photographer t. eyre (home nz october/november 2008). 127 5 bachelard discusses the way shadow can take on a sense of materiality: “water becomes heavier, darker, deeper; it becomes matter … then night becomes a substance as water is a substance.” (bachelard 1983: 20 & 53) 6 aesthetic pleasure relates to concepts of prospect and refuge (see hildebrand 1999). misleading. for instance, it is increasingly applied to buildings characterised by nautical elements, lightness, membrane technologies and temporary materials. i propose, however, that the reverse is also true: pacific buildings are not necessarily, or even primarily, tensile structures of lightness – they are also part of an architecture of shadow, characterised by the same heavy darkness found in japan. the bounded porch space of a māori whare nui (meeting house) is at times filled with shadow, even when the roof line is surrounded by the glare of the contrasting new zealand bright sky. this defined, three-dimensional shadow becomes a threshold moment between the expanse of the marae atea (open area in front of the whare nui) and the near-complete darkness of the whare’s interior. as a transition space, the deep porch mediates between the space of debate (marae atea) and the space of peace (interior) (brown 2009: 54). from the interior, the glare through the window and door openings is in stark contrast with the dark inside. in this inner realm, a world of formal richness, ritual ordering and material texture reveals itself only slowly on a bright summer’s day, as the eye adjusts to the light conditions. until then, the richness of the interior remains at the very edge of darkness, and the darkness itself assumes a sense of materiality.5 the glare, separating and connecting the inner realm and the illuminated plane beyond, is part of the aesthetic pleasure derived from the shadows set against the exterior brightness.6 in a samoan faletele (council house), tanizaki’s heavy darkness hanging beneath the eaves is particularly palpable. seen from inside, the contained shadow seems in fact lifted from the ground plane and suspended within the curved roof, which is pushed up from the paepae (raised platform) by the posts. as light slides in from the transparent edges, the heavy darkness appears to be lifted from the floor. the glare at the edges is powerful and further exaggerates the black depth held within the roof. again, though, the eye adjusts and the complex texture of the inside surfaces is revealed. in both the faletele and wharenui, as well as many other building types of the pacific region, to be inside is to experience deep shadow, contained and held above head height, and set against a rich textural interior. the contrast with the glaring pacific sun is both a relief and a difficulty. in new zealand, there are some beautiful architectural examples which celebrate this condition of “interior darkness”, despite the popular pursuit of cleanliness and purity through light. one notable example is john scott’s (1924-1992) futuna chapel in karori, wellington (1958-61). faletele interiors and exterior, salelologa, savaii, samoa nuku-teapiapi, whakarewarewa photo: auckland museum (r. neich) futuna chapel, karori, wellington. designed by john scott (1961) exterior photo: tony wills, interior photos: l. simmons interstices 12 7 see walden (1987), brown (2005) and rennie (2010). 8 the terms “inward”, “personal”, “private” and “deep” are used in this essay with reference to the spatial terminology developed by john dickson (1982). the building’s complex and folding interior-exterior articulations appear to reverse the threshold between inside and out. although based on a clear geometrical diagram, the roof form seems to turn inward and outward, creating a moebius strip-like confusion. and yet, the interior is strongly delineated: it is a dark, inward space, clearly defined with solid walls, which leave no doubt about the separation of the interior from the exterior and from the natural light. from the exterior, the deeply triangulated eaves hold shadow in a defined volume – this contained shadow appears to be part of the roof form itself. the shadow takes on a condition of materiality, with a sense of density and solidity usually ascribed to materials such as oil, and some metals and granites. the contained shadow continues inward, to the core of the interior. many critics have commented on similarities between the chapel and a wharenui, but the reference points are usually the large central pole and small-scale entrance; the characteristic of a contained interior darkness is not usually discussed and analysed. light is allowed inside only through carefully composed openings. the building behaves almost as an internal sun-dial, tracing the sun as it slices the undulating interior spaces. much has been written about this light and its spiritual nature,7 but i have found nothing yet about the interior’s contained shadow. for me, the shadow conveys a familiar and welcoming sense of personal, yet shared space. sitting under the low part of the hip roof near the solid enclosing wall on my first visit to the futuna chapel in 2011, and experiencing the soaring vertical space towards the glare, i was reminded of being in the home of my childhood, designed by my father, neil simmons, in 1964. i saw links, in era and design approach, between the chapel and the simmons house, a connection i had never made when looking at the published images of the chapel. in the simmons house, this shadow is defined by the reveals and projections to the northern corner, and continues into the interior, culminating in the living room corner. eschewing contemporary trends towards interior brightness, this home was intentionally designed with darkness at its core. the living room is located under the lowest corner of the hip roof and performs as the literal and metaphorical anchor to the home. there are no windows at all in the living room (apart from the strip glass detail at the roof/wall junction), yet there is no sense of claustrophobia; this area is connected to the shared space and to the brightness of the glazed wall beyond. solid walls without windows (like in the futuna chapel) are a point of difference from the majority of new zealand living rooms, which are generally oriented towards ‘the view’. the gaze is inward and personal.8 the kitchen bench unit floats between the living room corner and the bright glazed wall, allowing the light to slide along the tiled floor. to someone sitting in the living room, the ceiling angles upwards and outwards towards the light, and a cave-like space is created. protected and personal, it is nevertheless visually connected, past the free-floating ‘fireplace’, to the bright exterior which amplifies the glare, both uncomfortable and reassuring. the resulting aesthetic appeal is due to both conditions. the success of design with darkness at its core seems to be reliant on two accompanying conditions: first, free space in the plan and, second, the relationship to the glare of an illuminated plane. thus, the brightly lit ground surface of the marae atea is adjacent to the dark interior; in the faletele, the illuminated plane extends horizontally under the contained shadow of the roof; and, finally, the vertical planes of light in the futuna chapel are set above and into the dark, solid interior. in the simmons house, illuminated plane and shadow are juxtaposed in both the horizontal and the vertical planes – the ground surface of the yard, and the glass-walled corner to the north of the house. equally important is the free space 129 9 about space as empty and space arising from ritual, see engels-schwarzpaul on p.17 in this issue. 10 despite the shadowy interiors being shown in print, tv and video footage (home nz, campbell tv3, 3.8.2011, home nz show reel), the subject of darkness or shadow is not directly addressed. the architect, though, does refer to the “intensity of the interior”in an interview on the show reel. 11 see john walsh on p.111 of this issue. simmons house interior, ground floor. eastern beach, auckland. designed by neil simmons (1964). photos by l.simmons of the plan, as it seems that the intrusion of obstacles may destroy the beauty of interior darkness. this absence of objects and the clear centre-space is typical of architecture in the pacific region, which is often described by western observers as ‘empty’. in the simmons house, three corner-forms are pulled apart to create a cleared, central space, which has no function or object to define it, into which the mind can project, and through which bodies can move. shadow, with its ability to become ‘material’, provides a quality of fullness to such interior spaces – they are therefore far from empty.9 modernism and an invisible tradition modernist-conditioned fears of dark interiors are foreign to this home, in fact the shadowy interior is welcome and provides a sense of personal comfort. in my own experience, this personal comfort extends not to the individual, but to a shared space. the separation from public life here does not create privacy but nurtures the family group. this is in contrast to walter benjamin's, sigfried giedion's and others’ calls to abandon “… dwelling as seclusion and security ...” in favour of transparency and egalitarianism (heynen & baydar 2005: 18). it is tempting to align the brightening of western interiors over the last century, and the presentation of this brightness in publications, with the gradual ‘making public’ of domestic life. not only do the objects displayed become less and less personal but so, too, does the spatial character of the interior itself. sunlight chases all shadow away from the interior, along with possible fears of ill-health or immorality associated with it. the result is a lack of those intensely personal spaces typical of both individual and shared family life. yet, the use of building forms with deep, shadowed reveals and dark interiors does contribute to a particular character of new zealand architecture, one with a sense of interior intensity. recent work by michael o’sullivan draws upon the beauty of shadow when, in the design of his family home in mangere, he sets up what peter wood describes as a “classic prospect/retreat scenario” (2009: 71). in his design for a house in the waitakere ranges, which has recently been awarded the title of home of the year 2011 (hansen 2011: 64-76), o’sullivan again employs dark interior spaces. this has not been discussed in any publication to date.10 the very nonpublic nature of interior darkness has possibly created a self-imposed exclusion from mainstream magazines, and thereby from the public eye. in my experience, it is not usually productive to discuss interior darkness with clients, who also tend to favour the idea that more light will produce a better space. there seems to be a collusion of sorts, between the publishers of architectural images and architects themselves.11 nevertheless, further investigation may yet reveal that the beauty of shadows has not been banished from new zealand architecture but only from the published images and discussions of architecture. simmons house floor plans – ground floor and mezzanine. drawing by neil simmons 1968. simmons house interior studio and first level covered deck, eastern beach, auckland. designed by neil simmons (1964) photos by l.simmons interstices 12 references bachelard, g. (1983). water and dreams: an essay on the imagination of matter (e. r. farrell, trans.). dallas: pegasus. brown, d. (2009). māori architecture: from fale to wharenui and beyond. auckland: penguin (nz). brown, d. (2005). john scott: inventing an idiom. heritage new zealand, 98, 8-13. campbell live, tv3, 3 news. (2011). a peek inside the 2011 home of the year. retrieved 20 august, 2011, from http://www.3news.co.nz/a-peek-inside-the-2011-home-of-the-year/tabid/817/ articleid/220935/default.aspx casati, r. (2004). the shadow knows: a primer on the informational structure of cast shadows. perception 33, 2-4. dickson, j. (1982). the mastery of space, part one: space, shape, movement and their social implications. study paper 66. auckland: the university of auckland school of architecture. unpublished paper. dickson, j. (1982). the mastery of space, part two: material – texture and colour. study paper 67. auckland: the university of auckland school of architecture. unpublished paper. dickson, j. (1982). the mastery of space, part three: environment – light, sound, heat, water, taste & smell. study paper 68. auckland: the university of auckland school of architecture. unpublished paper. engels-schwarzpaul, a.-chr. (2011). restless containers. interstices, 12, 11-22. heynen, h. (2005). modernity and domesticity: tensions and contradictions. in h. heynen & g.baydar (eds.), negotiating domesticity. spatial productions of gender in modern architecture. (pp 1-29). abingdon and new york: routledge. hansen, j. (2011). between sea and sky. home nz, aug/sept, 64-76. hildebrand, g. (1999). origins of architectural pleasure. berkeley and los angeles (ca.): university of california press. home nz (2011). home of the year [showreel]. retrieved 20 august, 2011, from http:// homenewzealand.blogspot.com/ pound, f. (2009). the invention of nz. art and national identity 1930-1970. auckland: auckland university press. rennie, j. (2010). silenced by coloured light. auckland: unitec. first international conference 2010 proceedings. tanizaki, j. (1991). in praise of shadows (t. j. harper & e. g. seidensticker, trans.). london: jonathan cape. walden, r. (1987). the voices of silence: new zealand’s chapel of futuna. wellington: victoria university press. walsh, j. (2011). just looking. interstices, 12, 111-113. wood, p. (2009). doing it yourself. home nz, aug/sept, 62-71. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 2 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l editorial / julia gatley and elizabeth aitken rose urban historical interstices last published an issue dedicated to things urban in 2015. titled “the urban thing,” it foregrounded cities as sites of both misery and wellbeing; of both anxiety and emancipation.1 this issue revisits the urban, but through historical lenses. it explores matters of interest across the fields of architectural history, planning history, urban design history, and heritage conservation, including historical moments of cross-disciplinary exchange that engage specifically with the urban. architecture, planning, and urban design have similar dna. in the shadowy and culturally partial world of historical interpretation, aristotle credits the greek “architect” hippodamus of miletus (fifth century bce) for inventing “the art of planning cities” and as “the first person not a statesman who made inquiries about the best form of government”2 in the rational arrangement of city form towards the harmonious integration of competing uses, circulation efficiencies, and socio-political engagement. as in any family, dna diffuses and mutates over time. architecture’s distinct identity took shape in the renaissance, although it was only formalised through professional associations and educational programmes in the nineteenth century.3 modern planning originated in the nineteenth century in response to industrialisation, the rapid growth of cities, and the associated social and environmental disintegration. industrialisation and urbanisation also prompted increased envisioning of towns, cities, and urban areas, in the form of factory towns, giant new parks and boulevards replacing the finer grain of the old, garden cities and suburbs, whole areas dotted with modernist high-rises, and postwar new towns. professional bodies and specialised academic programmes in planning often emerged at the impetus of architects sympathetic to urban concerns—in australasia, from the mid-twentieth century, but earlier elsewhere.4 the close relationship between architects and planners finally frayed in the midto-late twentieth century. despite shared concerns with people and place, their directives diverged according to emphasis, scale, timeframes, and realpolitik. architecture benefits from a defined focus—the design and execution of physical structures for clients. the urban planning mandate is more diffuse, with intergenerational plans, strategies, and policies entwining factors such as land use, in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 3 editorial / urban historical u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l infrastructure, economic productivity, property rights, and, significantly, equity. to some architects, urban planners seem besotted with statutes and processes, providing regulatory impediments, and with a tendency for functional and bureaucratic bias. conversely, to some urban planners, architects seem mesmerised by style and oblivious to holism and risk. both disciplines have engaged in “turf wars” over claims to urban design—around how ideas are best represented, communicated, and actively turned into beneficial policies and projects; captivating images versus dense text. the reviewed papers for this issue were selected from the 73 presented at the ngā pūtahitanga / crossings conference held at the university of auckland waipapa taumata rau in november 2022.5 the conference crossed boundaries as the first combined meeting of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand / ngā pou whare / wangkalangkalarna wardlirnaitya (sahanz) and the australasian urban history planning history group (auhph). the intent is captured in amber anahera ruckes’ conference graphic, a stylised purapura whetū,6 against te-ika-o-te-rangi, the celestial milky way, and māhutonga, the southern cross constellation critical to south seas navigators (or anyone lost in the wilderness today) and a national icon for both australia and aotearoa new zealand. ngā pūtahitanga / crossings provided an opportunity to explore scholarly interests common to sahanz and the auhph: the examination of individuals, movements, and events of significance in our disciplinary histories and the crossroads between them; the analysis of visions and policies, and the processes underpinning them; and, crucially, the contemplation of singular and comparative outcomes. indigenous and marginalised histories, infrastructure, and community activism were all particularly welcomed. the extended family joined the event: landscape architects, heritage experts, and other disciplines. independent public historian dr ben schrader delivered the invited keynote address, on the history of heritage preservation in aotearoa new zealand.7 academics and practitioners connected—in person and virtually—from australia, fig. 1 amber anahera ruckes (2022). ngā pūtahitanga / crossings conference graphic. [digital image] in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 4 editorial / urban historical u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l new zealand, and wider regions. the walls cracked to let in the light. while the conference was multi-disciplinary, this related issue of interstices consistently attracted papers from authors with architecture backgrounds—although one now lectures in a planning programme—rather than from the range of disciplines. the walls have remained more intact than we had imagined they would. all the papers utilise archival research and include the analysis of archival documents. however, most of the history discussed herein is comparatively recent: all the topics are post-war, two are from the 1970s, and two are twenty-first century. indeed, several of the papers are concerned quite explicitly with current debates, where history (and heritage) are pivotal to an understanding of the contemporary situation and to potential policy changes. history matters, not just for the careful and interpretive documentation of the past, but towards awakenings in the present, and a platform for speculating on the future.8 this issue’s reviewed papers the issue opens with athanasios tsakonas and anoma pieris’ paper, “eucalypts of hodogaya: organic cultural diplomacy at yokohama war cemetery.” war graves honour those who died in conflict. they mark the human cost of battles. the yokohama war cemetery is the primary japanese site commemorating allied casualties of the second world war. tsakonas and pieris explore the australian contribution to its design and construction. it was a place of ambivalence for australians initially, given its distance and the painful memories of the wartime cruelty japan inflicted, along with the anonymity of the cemetery’s creators. tsakonas and pieris argue that it differs from conventional war cemeteries, involving a process described as “organic cultural diplomacy” and the “mutual acclimatisation” of co-creators “to the place-making practices of a former foe”—a foe then burdened with its maintenance and the imprint of military defeat. the reconciliation of troubled memories is tempered through landscaping and planting (a hybrid of the japanese garden and australian eucalypts), and vernacular materials. the paper is part of a wider project examining the architectural contribution of the commonwealth war grave’s commission across asia. from japan, the issue moves to italy, with hamish lonergan’s “participation and/or/against tacit knowledge: ilaud, 1976–1981.” italian architect giancarlo de carlo founded the international laboratory for architecture and urban design (ilaud) in urbino, southeast of bologna. each year from 1976 to 1981, it held summer workshops that brought together architects and planners as well as students and academics from both disciplines, with discussion and activities focused on user participation and how designers of the built environment should engage with those who use it. lonergan explains that the emphasis on user participation was intentionally in opposition to what de carlo called formalism, later subsumed under the umbrella of postmodernism. utilising period sources such as ilaud’s annual reports, lonergan exposes disagreement among the workshop delegates on both geographical and disciplinary lines, even as they were united in their commitment to including user participation in the design process. concurrently in australia, the federal government was running its competition for the design of parliament house in canberra. in “diagrams in the field: three conceptual approaches in the entries for the 1979 australian parliament house design competition,” luke tipene’s primary concern is the ways in in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 5 editorial / urban historical u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l which the competition entries did or did not respond to canberra’s isolation and walter burley griffin and marion mahony griffin’s 1912 plan for the city. he finds three conceptual approaches within the lesser-known competition entries—autonomous, symbolic, and representational—and illustrates each with examples. he also teases out the ways in which they interpret democracy, and the risks and potential gains involved in attempting to represent such forms of governance in architecture and urban planning/design. susan holden and olivia daw’s paper is also concerned with australian government initiatives. titled “watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004,” it explores a single calendar year designated for understanding, appreciating, and addressing issues relating to the built environment. stemming from intense lobbying by the architectural profession, it was held in a period when sustainability, design quality, and the import of collaborative effort gained political traction. nearly two decades on, it is opportune to evaluate whether this action was merely an empty political flourish or an initiative leading to positive change. holden and daw show that the year of the built environment (ybe) elevated the imperatives for “sustainability” and “design” in political and popular discourse, and that there were incremental shifts in appointments (state architecture positions) and processes but, ultimately, only modest progress in overcoming perennial professional silos and fragmented policymaking, and the precedence given to the “built” ignored the criticality of the “natural” in the urban ecosystem—an oversight keenly highlighted in the climate crisis today. while holden and daw’s focus is australia, many of their observations resonate in aotearoa new zealand, which had its own year of the built environment in 2005, when the urban design protocol was launched. it was an opportunity to highlight the importance of the urban, so often disregarded in a country where the natural environment is fundamental to national identity. however, the policies attending to ecological sustainability are partial, and government appointments explicitly championing design are few and fleeting. indeed, the national policy statement on urban development 2020 and resource management (enabling housing supply and other matters) amendment act 2021 effectively trumped much of the progress made in quality design aspiration. the 2020 policy and the 2021 amendment inform the final reviewed paper, carolyn hill’s “the ‘soft edge’: heritage, special character, and new planning directives in aotearoa cities.” her focus is on tāmaki makaurau auckland’s highly contested special character areas. she provides a historical overview of preservation and conservation in aotearoa from an initial concern with scenic landscapes, expanding across the twentieth century to include buildings, objects, and neighbourhoods, along with respect for māori ontologies and a broader conception of significance values. she argues that special character areas reinforce gentrification, with the aura benefits captured by affluent elites. historic “character” is undoubtedly subjective and inherently political. hill’s provocative paper doesn’t dismiss “character,” but opens the possibility for architects, planners, and heritage practitioners to redefine, remake, and expand the concept towards “reinvigorating” and “fortifying” urban life equitably. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 6 editorial / urban historical u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l postgraduate creative design research projects the issue includes two postgraduate design research papers, drawing from thesis projects completed in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master of architecture (professional) at the university of auckland waipapa taumata rau and victoria university of wellington te herenga waka respectively. tom collins’ work, “spectral urbanism,” was supervised by andrew douglas and responds to the clearance of some 15,000 houses from the inner-auckland suburbs of grafton and newton in the late 1960s and the 1970s to make way for a major motorway junction known colloquially as “spaghetti junction.” collins’ project includes the design of an archive facility to house a collection of historic wallpapers and a pedestrian walkway bridging to a replication of a previous colonial villa on a traffic island in the motorway junction, a locale itself undergoing regenerative natural growth. the multi-media design work aims to reveal history through narrative and storytelling. ella jones’s project, “drawing ground,” was supervised by simon twose and takes inspiration from the legal personhood given to date to three aotearoa natural landscapes and geographical features. jones gives personhood to the whenua (land), calling it ground rather than ground, and thinks through her relationship to ground through drawing. thus we see ground’s mapping, ground’s surface, and ground’s thickness, culminating in ground’s architecture, the redesign of gummer and ford’s dominion museum in wellington’s buckle street (1930–36). reviews and interviews completing the issue are two book reviews, one exhibition review, and one interview. the first of the book reviews, by samer wanan, considers nikolina bobic and farzaneh haghighi’s edited collection, the routledge handbook of architecture, urban space and politics, volume 1: violence, spectacle and data, published by routledge in 2022. the second, by andrew douglas, reviews and responds to mark jackson and mark hanlen’s securing urbanism: contagion, power and risk, published by springer in 2020. sēmisi fetokai potauaine and ‘ōkusitino māhina offer a tāvāist response to the exhibition, oceanic architectural routes: the photographic archive of mike austin, curated by albert refiti and shown in late 2022–early 2023 at objectspace. the interview with ian athfield (1940–2015; in 2015, sir ath) and sir miles warren (1929–2022) was conducted in the adam auditorium, city gallery wellington te whare toi in 2012. in the wake of sir miles’ death in 2022, it is published here as a tribute to both architects. the ngā pūtahitanga / crossings conference, the collaboration between sahanz and the auhph, and this issue of interstices were all premised on inter-disciplinary dialogue. but trans-disciplinarity is now the catch-cry; the walls are set to continue coming down. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 7 editorial / urban historical u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l notes 1. hannah hopewell and andrew douglas, “introduction: the city without qualities,” interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, no. 16 (2015): 1–6. 2. aristotle, in roger paden, “the two professions of hippodamus of miletus,” philosophy & geography 4, no. 1 (2001): 25–26. 3. spiro kostof, the architect: chapters in the history of the profession (new york: oxford university press, 1977). 4. robert freestone, urban nation: australia’s planning heritage (collingwood, vic: csiro publishing in association with the department of the environment, water, heritage and the arts, and the australian heritage council, 2010); julia gatley and lucy treep (eds), the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning (auckland: university of auckland, school of architecture and planning, 2017); peter hall and mark tewdwr-jones, urban and regional planning (abingdon, oxon; new york, ny: routledge, 2019). 5. te pūtahitanga, te waihanga, te whakamahere me ngā tāone expresses confluence and convergence (pūtahitanga); to make, build, generate (waihanga); and to plan, chart, or map (whakamahere). 6. the latticed tukutuku pattern found in wharenui (māori meeting houses). see julia gatley and elizabeth aitken rose (eds), proceedings of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand: 39, ngā pūtahitanga / crossings (auckland: sahanz, 2023). 7. ben schrader, “fabricating identities: a short history of historic preservation in aotearoa new zealand, 1890–1990,” presented at ngā pūtahitanga / crossings on 25 november 2022. schrader is an independent public historian based in wellington. in 2022, he was the j. d. stout fellow at victoria university of wellington te herenga waka. for the followship, and in 2023, he is writing, with michael kelly, a history of historic preservation in aotearoa new zealand. in addition, his conference address is being published in john h. stubbs, william chapman, julia gatley, and ross king, architectural conservation in australia, new zealand and the pacific islands: national experiences and practice (new york: routledge, forthcoming). 8. this is exemplified by critical heritage studies, which situates heritage (and history) firmly in the production of the present, as “future-making” practices. see: rodney harrison, heritage: critical approaches (new york: routledge, 2013); rodney harrison et al., heritage futures: comparative approaches to natural and cultural heritage practices (london: ucl press, 2020). interstices 14 in memoriam: marco frascari (1945-2013) marco frascari was born in mantova to the sounds of war and in the shadow of the dome of alberti’s sant’andrea, on 29 march 1945. he graduated from the i.u.a.v in 1969, where his most significant teacher and later employer was carlo scarpa. with his family, he moved to the usa where he pursued a ms in architecture at the university of cincinnati, followed by a phd at the university of pennsylvania. he became professor at the latter, then director of its doctoral programme, teaching there for almost two decades. he was visiting professor at columbia, georgia tech and harvard. in 2005, he left his position as truman ward professor at virginia tech to become director of the azrieli school of architecture and urbanism at carlton university, ottawa. his innumerable students all over the world remember him as one of the sincerest, most inspirational and generous of teachers. “l’occhio” (the eye) from the serie piccolo (with kind permission of paola frascari) 127 a prolific scholar, marco wrote on architectural theory, history, representation and tectonics in most leading journals and, notably, in two books, monsters of architecture (1991) and eleven exercises in the art of architectural drawing: slow-food for the architect’s imagination (2011). he contributed “gee wizz” to interstices 06 and “the splendour and miseries of construction drawings” to interstices 11. marco was a lover of cats, above all, herriman’s krazy kat who often crept into his writing and drawings. truly eclectic, he explored relations between architecture and such topics as food and divination (the tarot, the cathars...). i once arrived at a library terminal at penn he had just vacated to find an extraordinarily extensive list of searches on carribean voodooism. his favourite preoccupations were dream, magic, storytelling and imagination. he excelled in aphorisms. one guiding thread in his thinking was the embodied wisdom of the ancient italians, which he set before the rationalism of the greeks, cartesians and neo-greeks. he explored the split between science and skill, a creation of plato’s, in some of his finest papers. not without a tinge of melancholia, he conceived architecture not only as a form of making (poièsis) but also of world-making (cosmopoièsis). a voracious reader endowed with a remarkable memory, marco always crossed historical knowledge with a sense of the fantastic, and critique with irony, creativity and enchantment. in 2009, we invited marco as a distinguished visitor of the university of auckland and keynote speaker for the interstices under construction symposium “the traction of drawing”. it was wonderful for me to watch my former phd advisor mixing with my colleagues. during his stay, he aroused our imagination and won our hearts. ross jenner interstices 13 introduction: technics, memory and the architecture of history stephen loo in the light of massive catastrophes – the earthquakes near sendai and christchurch, the tsunamis of aceh, and katrina’s devastation of new orleans – the question of urban and architectural reconstruction invokes the question of remembering. what is this “past” that we remember and on which we base our future reconstructions? what images of the past do we call upon in our decisions to rebuild or not to build – and how do they negotiate the terrain between memory and history, and in corollary, between nature and culture, technology and sustainability, planning and responding, tradition and innovation, foundations and interstices? to bernard stiegler, the image that we recall in/as history is not an “image in general” (2002: 147). the “mental image” of what has passed in/as history is inseparable from the “image-objects” associated with that history, constructed in architecture, film, photography, art or the media. image-objects themselves therefore possess a technical history. while mental images and image-objects are phenomenologically imbricated, a temporal difference exists between the two. mental images are fleeting and their length of retention varies depending on individual circumstance and physiological capacities, whereas image-objects persist as material abstractions indexical to the development of technological devices. while it is difficult to fathom an image-object without a mental image, stiegler’s more remarkable claim is that there has never been a mental image which is not, in some way, the return – a re-collection – of an image-object (2002: 148). we can albrecht dürer (1514). melancholia i [wikimedia commons] 5 extrapolate to say that the image-objects of history are given to us: we “inherit” them, they are imposed on us, we make them our own in the construction of our mental images, in our practices of remembering. the images of memory possess a technics, and they carry with them traces of their construction, their architecture. in aristotle’s categorisation, humans are the only beings who possess the “noetic” soul, of a higher order from the “vegetative” and the “sensitive” souls. noeticity, or the ability to think, is a specific power that leads humans to know themselves, making them the only species who can exteriorise. thinking confers to human beings a peculiar status as an organic creature “that has no defining characteristic except for the fact that he knows that he is human” (van camp 2009: 4). as carl linnaeus contends, “man is the animal that must recognize itself as human to be human” (cited in agamben 2004: 26). through language as a means for expression, bodily gestures as a means of communication, and tool or object-making as a means of “designing” the future, the capacity of the noetic soul is inextricably linked to the “outward” transduction of internal conditions. this process of human self-definition through exteriorisation – since its origin, or more accurately in efforts to postulate its origin, its history – has always relied upon technical prostheses, an exterior realm of tools, techniques, language, inscription and representation. it is difficult, if not impossible, to fathom the evolution of what is called – or what is sensed, or in fact what is the human away from the evolution of “technics”, an exterior organised realm of technical inorganic matter, in which the internal conditions of being human is supported by technical or artificial apparatus (1998: 18). stiegler posits that technical artefacts make possible, or in fact are, the retention of human experience and memory. arguing through a reconfiguration of husserl’s categorisation of the three thresholds of memorisation, stiegler considers technics as a tertiary level of memory retention, a retention by objects, tools and concepts exterior to the human being, that supports the retention of sense perception of temporal objects such as a melody, a written text or behavioural patterns, namely primary memory; and the conventional sense of retention of an experience or sensation which is “remembered” as the past, namely secondary memory. primary memory is configured in a sequential temporality of present and immediate conscious perception, while secondary memory requires a selective imagination and a capacity for differentiation in which the past is recalled, modifying the experience of the temporal object currently in experience. therefore technics as tertiary memory both makes possible and is constitutive of primary conscious perception as well as the imagination in secondary recollection. stiegler proposes that perception is akin to cinematic “post-production”, where consciousness montages disparate elements from the senses, imagination and technologically “retained” memory (2010: 29). following this line of argument, the individuation of the historian would consist of the imbrication of interior psychic and exterior technical collective dimensions, which are in effect two sides of the same coin. that is, what is perceived as if from the position of an interior is an effect of exteriorisation. the past is made up of both deeply personal inheritances that arrive without being called for, with events that we did not choose to participate in; and where we find ourselves addressed by a language imposed on us. jean laplanche argues that the address of this “otherness” can be conceived as a demand, one whose indeterminate origin pressures – or “drives”, as he says, appropriating a freudian concept – the workings of the unconscious (1999: 33). the alien-ness of history as an image-object arriving form interstices 13 the outside is something that the internal self cannot fully assimilate because it was never fully experienced, processed or translated, but yet it drives us to think and act in relation to it. the task of the historian becomes more complex in the light of such mnemotechnics. recalling the past is an action that does not separate mental images from image-objects and their associated technics of construction and dissemination. in the extreme circumstances of catastrophe, the mutuality of image-objects and mental images is made markedly evident. the imaginary of catastrophic collapse and associated reconstruction is governed by images, narratives and myth conditioned by media and constructed by historiography. the extreme circumstances of catastrophe highlight the contribution of the tertiary machinery of externalisation on perception, which on one hand governs the way we can apprehend the unspeakability of the catastrophe, and on the other influences the ways in which we can image reconstruction, all of which make survival possible. tertiary memory as externalisation means the act of remembering is always situated and therefore spatially bounded. there is an architecture of historical memory that produces an already-there of the past that is not lived but imposed, thus rendering problematic historical accounts of civic values and democratic processes that allude to fundamental truths. this condition also challenges the status of personal testimony, witnessing and autobiography in epistemology and the politics of knowledge (code 2006: 172). contributors to this volume of interstices were asked to contemplate history and historiography in architecture, design and art in terms of memory and the various temporal ruptures implicate with it. it asked what alternative mechanisms of memorialising the past are imaginable: narratival, conversational, oral, gestural? similarly, it asked what image-objects are “inherited” by the historian and what are the ontological conditions surrounding their construction and dissemination, and their effects on remembering the past? jeff malpas frames the overarching theme of memory through a philosophical demonstration of how human memory is inextricably connected to places and built form beyond a purely subjectivist position or as temporal-experiential additions to them. the act of remembering is always situated and thus topological because meaning depends on those who remember objects and entities in the external world. moreover place is itself what is orientated in and by memory. the weave of memory and of meaning is therefore accomplished in the built form of house, street, and city, rather than in the inner sanctum of the mind. that is, the question of memory becomes a question of the externalisation of the mind. jane madsen follows on with the recollection of un-building or collapse brought about by the earthquake disaster which turned the philosopher kant from natural to critical philosophy; and writer-poet heinrich von kleist, upon reading kant’s account of earthquakes, from empirical to critical writing. the essay demonstrates the locatedness of memory and the imagination – through the author’s personal recollection of portland, through the medium of film – as it plays on the fibrillation between immanent spiritual and social collapse with material and actual collapse. in the arch that remains after collapse is a building simultaneously present and absent. michael tawa shows that this interstice is a zone of indiscernibility that yields passage into other dimensions and worlds. through tarkovsky’s cinema and lewerentz’s architecture, tawa demonstrates how at the interstices, 7 architecture in encountering the uncanny and its deconstitution, reveals that the apparatus of memory resists being defined by re-presentation, and attends instead to memory as the making-place for recollection. in that space of difficulty we find barely-there images fragile yet laborious memories. this is the space of writing for linda marie walker, whose writing in this volume attends to its (and writing’s) quiet potential to form and un-form, impose and puzzle, in the interstices of things and events, disaster and celebration. writing is a technique of the self, which means that writing turns around to contemplate the self, it is a practice of turning the self in the company of materials, to condition what-it-is-to-know (and be): literally to re-collect oneself, one’s self, oneselves. continuing the resistance of architecture and the built environment to being a predeterminable stage for memory, michael chapman’s essay describes how architecture is a found, rather than intentional, context against which creative acts and works in surrealism and dada are projected and reconstructed. the production of the avant-garde proceeded from the negation of architecture through both time and function, through strategies of the readymade, collage, montage, drawing and photography. surrealism developed a radicalised architecture, and concomitantly a radicalised idea of memory that connects the visual and the lived. the result is a psychophysical understanding of place and memory, transacted by material, space, emotions, affects and bodies. peg rawes provides a philosophical account of such geometries through spinoza. spinoza’s geometrical philosophy, firmly constituted in the sensory and sensible realm, provides a description of the myriad of human, living and natural subjects constructed through living ecological relations, and through these ethical relations. spinoza’s geometry is not technical in a reductive sense as is the convention in architectural form-making, but a technics of biological and material diversification, imbricated in lived habits and habitats, whether architectural, economic, social, or cultural. memory in spinoza’s geometrical ecology is not an internal condition of the unified human, but is part of the constitution of a durational reality without recourse to an instrumental anthropological account of life. in this issue, we invited a paper by william taylor who provides an account of architecture as mnemotechnics through an investigation into novel appropriations of historical building forms in the face of future natural disasters or climatic variations. architecture becomes an externalisation of the remembered past in order to predict or forestall a catastrophic future. typologies of architectural form retain the traces of hopes, desires, affect, and attitudes to risk. memory is therefore architectural, formed by the relations between discursive and non-discursive conditions, between interiorities of the psychic subject and externalisations of the material practice. hannah lewi opens the non-peer reviewed section with “deranging oneself in someone else’s house”, a meditation on intimate occupations of memorialised modern houses – in this case the former home of australian historian manning clark in canberra, designed by architect robin boyd in 1952. in “birth, death and rebirth: reconstruction of architecture in ruskin’s writings”, anu chatterjee finds in john ruskin’s critique of the restoration of historical building fabric a renovation of the “tectonic language of architecture” by a “language of tailoring and upholstering”, one that paradoxically aims at a compensatory male self-engenderment. japan-based architect and academic tom daniell considers responses to the march 11, 2011 earthquake and the precarious hold architecture and infrastructure ambition in the face of overwhelming natural force in “after the aftershocks”. interstices 13 andrew barrie interviews renowned japanese architect taira nishizawa during his new zealand visit in 2012 to participate in a lecture and seminar programme. marianne calvelo similarly interviews acclaimed portuguese architect manuel aires mateus while he was at the university of auckland, school of architecture and planning in the winter semester of 2012. sean pickersgill reviews architecture and violence (2012), edited by bechir kenzari. john walsh similarly reviews my desk is my castle (2011) edited by uta brandes and michael erlhoff. lastly, tom daniell reports on “familial clouds”, an installation by simon twose and andrew barrie in the traces of centuries & future steps exhibition held at the palazzo bembo in venice, italy as collateral event of the 13th international architectural exhibition, la biennale di venezia. while these contributions speak in their own ways about the relationship between mnemotechnics and the architecture of history, all demonstrate the various modalities of the spatialisation and temporalisation of the image-object and its absorption into the spheres of production in architectural practice and theory, and the indeterminacy of images that carry the technics of inter-human relations. these essays invoke the theatre of the historian’s individuation alongside history’s mnemotechnics that organise the world which appear whenever memory is invoked. abandoned vessel near kookynie, western australia (photo: stephen loo) 9 references agamben, g. (2004). the open: man and animal (k. attell, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. code, l. (2006). ecological thinking: the politics of epistemic location. oxford: oxford university press. laplanche, j. (1999). essays on otherness. j. fletcher (ed.). new york, ny: routledge. stiegler, b. (1998). technics and time, 1: the fault of epimetheus (r. beardsworth and g. collins, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. stiegler, b. (2010). technics and time 3: cinematic time and the question of malaise (s. barker, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. stiegler, b. (2002) the discrete image. in j. derrida and b. stielger, echographies of television (j. bajorek, trans.). cambridge: polity press. van camp, n. (2009). animality, humanity and technicity. in transformations: journal of media and culture no. 17 at http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_17/article_06.shtml 85 image credit: all images in this paper by the author, manning clark house visit, 2011 deranging oneself in someone else’s house hannah lewi such a house, killed by its very emptiness and the superstitions that have built up in the region, is a haunted house [une maison visionee]. the devil comes there in the night. (anthony vidler 1992) the following piece of writing is part of a larger project that reflects on iconic or significant houses that have, in some mode or another, been transformed into a genre of image-object that architecturalises and disseminates historiography, primarily through the art of mnemotechnics. the research asks how we come to know and experience houses that are not necessarily our own, but that we have more than limited access to because they have been retained as embalmed objects of shared interest? of particular concern to my study are twentieth-century houses that have been preserved in a suspended or memorialised state of seminewness because of their importance to the historiography of modernity: a history intimately bound up with elevating the domestic and the private to the realm of architectural significance. the writing teases out claims made about the potency of shared memories residing in museum-houses, and the roles they play as document-objects. i have set myself the research program of attempting to stay for extended periods in a range of these modern heritage or museum-houses. the rationale is to chart the unfolding experience of sites that are on the one hand still homes, yet also acknowledged as public places. these houses are therefore somehow familiar yet also strangers. j. g. ballard imagined in his story the thousand dreams of stella vista (1962) a psychotropic house equipped with sensory memory cells that could adjust the ambient mood of the house to the pleasures or anxieties of those who inhabited it. however, even without such wizardry, houses are potent domestic sites of embodied histories, memories and experiences that also frame our own inner identities, anxieties and memories. what follows is a story about coming to know such a house as an “image-object”: the house where the australian historian manning clark lived in canberra for his later life. it is written in part as a travel diary documenting personal experience, interstices 13 in part as a theoretical explication, and in part as notes towards an unfolding three-episode play. although perhaps unconventional, this mode of writing seems appropriate for heritage interpretation which, as a mode of history-telling, borrows heavily from the dramatic genre to create displays that are part “real” and part “fabrication”. by self-consciously exploiting alternative narrative voices, this piece contributes to the exploration of topologies of memorialising the past that are sensory, gestural and imaginary, and that perhaps uncover some glimpses into the psychic character of such museum-houses for the architectural historian. the writing is intentionally fragmented and episodic, and retains all the awkward bumps of personal experience and revelation. the writing wants to dangerously stray across academic territories: history, biography, and architectural documentation. as john docker has advised on the writing of history: … to potentially derange texts from the usual kinds of treatment they receive – one has to take risks – one has to derange oneself, make sideways moves, go over the top and keep going, journey deep within oneself. one has to cultivate method as a kind of madness. (2000) episode one: first impressions i held no particular regard for the now somewhat infamous historian manning clark before this visit. i was more interested in his house, designed by robin boyd in 1952. navigating my way through the ring-roads of canberra i arrive outside the discretely engraved manning clark house sign in tasmania circle in the suburb of forrest, the original heart of walter burley griffin’s plan of the southern residential area of the city. there are other small signs of organisational formality not usually found in a private house: a poster of upcoming manning clark foundation events; a portrait of clark; a visitor sign-in book on the entry table. i drop my bag and laptop on the rug inside the door. through the glazed hall i see a man sitting at a wooden table in the courtyard on the other side of the house. he is reading with a large pot of tea in front of him. he gets up and shakes my hand enthusiastically, and introduces himself as one of manning clark’s sons: “would you like a quick tour of the house?” what is he doing here? does he live here? do i have to share my weekend with him? he tells me that this outside courtyard is a long-time favourite place to sit and catch some northern sun. interspersed between staccato questions about who i am and what i am doing here, he offers to show me around the house before he needs to catch his bus back to sydney. at a quick glance the house uses a familiar boyd palette: lightly bagged brick walls, pale painted timber frames, expressed raked ceilings and timber floors. i tell him of my interest in robin boyd, so he obliges by talking a little about the architecture. why boyd? well, so the story goes, his mother dymphna clark had already noticed boyd’s work in home beautiful magazines. and then manning came home from a party in 1948 saying he had just met a marvellous architect, and that if they ever built another house he would be the architect they would use... “yes, dear,” 87 said dymphna, with skilled indulgence. axel clark described boyd as a “fastidious, thin-lipped man who despised beer drinking, mateship and the crudity of so much that passed for culture in australia”. we start with the manning clark foundation’s office which was originally manning and dymphna’s bedroom, and then peek into two other single bedrooms – one he calls “the boys’ room” and points to the ample built-in wardrobe space and built-in shelves that house the hundreds of books in each room. books: shelves in every room full of orderly labelled collections of literature, australian history and geography, bibles, art books .... some 10,000. benedict clark recalls: “dad was always buying books … mum would see a pile of books come through the door and she’d sort of faint, then go around and show him the place on the bookshelf where he already had them all.” these books already begin to give an uncanny feeling of another family home – a creeping hunger that overtakes the children’s bedrooms. and this feeling grows and adds to my disquiet over the duration of the weekend. we tour the bathrooms and i try to sound knowledgeable by pointing out boyd’s characteristic layered combination of glass louvres, fly-screens and breeze blocks. i am then directed down the hall, past many family photos and two busts of manning and dymphna sitting on a dresser, and invited to climb with care the vertical ladder up to father’s study. perched away from and above the rest of the house, it forms an eyrie. my first impression is of a full room: full of work, full of books, objects, papers, and full of the egotistical presence of someone. on the bookshelves are rows of copies of various imprints of clark’s own books. and much space is devoted to russian works of literature – tolstoy, dostoyevsky – displayed as a literary lineage or destiny, i wonder? a large wooden desk overlooks the broad window with a view onto the garden. the “computer” is pointed out to me as the ink pen in the drawer of this desk. i am invited to “touch that”: father wrote just about everything he ever published at this desk – ink stains seeping through into the wood-grain – there is a smooth patch on the desk, where father’s hand always rested while writing … one phd student who stayed here had to turn the desk away from the window so she could get any writing done. it is not possible to take in this room at first glance and i make a note to myself that i must return if i want to get to know this house at all. we climb back down the step-ladder. the kitchen still has all original cabinets and old cooker. it is modest and cheerfully domestic with blue spotted curtains, blue and white crockery and glasses on show. it is welcoming and easy, not like the study. boyd wanted dark soft red for the living room ceiling. dymphna settled for galah pink. he wanted as much light as possible. she worried about the 10-square-metre glass window in the living room, and the bagged interior walls, and the brick outside which she thought would need to be painted too often. boyd reassured her: “bricks look good when the paint is peeling off”. the house was surprisingly interstices 13 expensive for the early 1950s, but it was very unpopular with the neighbourhood when first built because of its bald modern design and materials. modest, comfortable, liveable and architecturally transparent – it is a series of simple skillion boxes set on the slope and linked by a glazed entry hall that joins sleeping and living wings, with study perched above to form the only striking vertical element. later, when on my own, i begin the process of letting the house, its architecture and memories, unfold through my experience of being there and asking it to accommodate to my domestic routines. and through my photographing of it by roaming in a series of ever increasingly intimate cycles: house as container; house as lived space; house as my lived space? also i come to know it better through the reading of a small monograph written on the house that gives a rich biographical story that no experience of the place alone could reveal. in this book, manning clark’s research assistant for the last 20 years of his life remembers the family in the house. she peoples the garden with stories of vegetables, pets, and cricket on the lawn. she directs the reader to go up to the small kitchen area, remembering: “once the orders for the day had been completed, i was told to go downstairs and put the jug on for a cup of tea. this was shared with dymphna if she was at home.” and in the evening late-staying guests such as nolan, boyd and humphries assisted dymphna with the mountains of washing up. or go up the step-ladder to clark’s study for a memoire of struggles with health and personal demons, and sparring matches with patrick white. episode two: some haunting dreams this house is getting a bit overwhelming so i leave it and go out to a twilight viewing of the ballet russe exhibition of costumes at the national gallery – including the famous ballet “le pavillon d’armide”. so the story goes, during a storm, a young vicomte rené de beaugency seeks refuge in a castle owned by a magician. he spends the night in the room of a castle where a tapestry hangs on the wall. while asleep he dreams that the tapestry comes to life: the figures become animated around him in his room. the beautiful sorceress armide dances before him and gives him her scarf. when he awakes in the morning he finds he still holds the scarf, and armide’s likeness that is woven into the tapestry no longer wears the same scarf. rené collapses with horror. i am slightly dreading my first night of sleeping in this house, of dreaming of manning clark and in the morning finding his familiar hat has gone from its hook in the kitchen. i don’t believe in ghosts but i lock the door to the bedroom just in case. in the morning i go to check the hat is still hanging in the kitchen. as the bedroom door shuts i realise i have locked my keys inside the bedroom and myself out. i fight my way through the overgrown bushes on the side of the house with a plastic chair and climb back through the bedroom window – always with the thought of being watched. breakfast: the kitchen drawers are deceptively shallow, and the contents of one spills on the kitchen floor. i hurry to carefully replace it – always with the thought of being watched. bedtime: the shower sets off the smoke alarm with the escaping steam. i de-alarm it by standing naked on a chair with the book step-ladder in hand – always with the thought of being watched. 89 peter freeman writes: i still expect to see them both when i come into the house. manning sitting in that old brown chair with the reading light switched on, listening to the abc news or to his music, or reading a book or a newspaper. dymphna up in the kitchen area, either preparing food (always wearing an apron) or working at the typewriter. and i also expect to see axel there too, making cups of strong coffee in the kitchen in the morning. axel died in october 2001 of a brain tumour. (2002) uncanny houses? haunted houses? what makes them so? the heritage home slips between genres, all the more so when spending time in the slightly illicit occupation of eaves-dropping on the intimate memories of the deceased that are powerfully bound up in a home. familiarity and unfamiliarity make for the uncanny experience. not easily translatable – not direct terror or mysticism. more a sense of what vidler describes as lurking unease: “an uncomfortable sense of haunting rather than a present apparition”. the heritage house as an uncanny house? a dead home, a house as crypt for domestic routine? by the third morning i have established a few of my own domestic routines in an attempt to create a small space of living in the present. but the only place that feels comfortable is perched at the table and chairs in the courtyard – half outside. after three days, though, i do start to think presumptuously of the house possibly becoming my own. i daydream of occupation by expunging away layers of previous inhabitation by cleaning and renovating away vestiges of the house’s quirks and mannerisms. julie myerson, writing on the historical biography of the many occupants of her own home, puts it better: most of us live in our homes knowing we’re not the only ones to have done so. but we rarely confront those shadows in any significant way. why should we? this is us and that was them. their clutter, their smells, their noises, and their way of doing things is long gone. we’ve painted, plastered, demolished and constructed or converted … our moments have blotted out theirs. maybe this is a necessary element of domestic living – maybe it’s the only was we can co-exist comfortably with each other’s past lives, each other’s ghosts. (2005) but here, in this preserved object, you must creep between those quirks and mannerisms. it reminds me of staying in my own former family home that carries an emotional burden around which the quirks and mannerisms must be endured because they are partly yours. all the while mindful of updating your own strategies for keeping memories contained and isolated from the everyday of here and now. all the while mindful of future strategies for managing this container of objects and memories. does this act of staying in someone else’s home illustrate the divide between memory and history? do occupation and duration open receptivity to memory rather than history? interstices 13 bachelard says that houses are experienced not from day to day, but through dreams. and only after we inhabit a new house do memories of other places we have lived in come back to us. we are never real historians, but through poems we touch the ultimate poetic depth of the space of the house. well, here i think i am doing something else: capturing domestic functionality by use not by poetry: boiling the kettle, having tea and biscuits in the son’s bed, climbing through windows and listening to the old stereo. the resurrection of mundane rituals seems to unlock my memories of other homes. in bachelard’s terms, staying in this house in contrast to touring this house unlocks a “topoanalysis”; a more systematic psychological study of sites and intimate lives. episode three: climbing the stairs as robin boyd was leaving canberra at the airport, manning shouted to him across the tarmac: “robin, is the house going to be single storey with my study in the basement?” after a moment’s thought boyd shouted back “single storey with the study upstairs.” and so it was prophesised that a lot of books would indeed be written in this room of great intellectual labour. history is the staging of events to a dramatic script. it is a drizzly sunday morning and by this third day i conquer the fear of the vertical extremities of the house and summon the courage to climb the steep stepladder designed to discourage “frivolous visitors” to the study – always with the feeling of being watched. clark says: “the historian was like a person looking out of a window at the last. what he saw was human chaos. like god he imposed order on the chaos.” looking out of this picture window, i see only the white cockatoos squawking in the trees. sitting at the desk, i fit my hand into the worn patch of grain on the desk and i set myself the task of transcribing some of clark’s words into my own hand-writing in the way that le corbusier used to incessantly trace over and re-trace, in his own sketchy hand, views taken from photographs and postcards as an act of immersion and appropriation. a good place to start seems like an abridged version of manning clark’s history of australia. for clark, the exploration of other voices – at times deranged – was done as a covert operation. clark believed that in order to tell a story well, the historian needed to create what he called indirect narrators. but he also admitted: “now i want to write history as a story – as an art”. i look around the study again. it holds to the illusion of having been barely disturbed since 1991. yellowed and curling paintings and photos of russian writers, australian explorers and family members, all framed and pinned like specimens behind the door. kept some 20 years after death like a furtive shrine or memorial to descendants and mentors and survivors. clark admits to a series of “reading binges” here – dostoevsky, tolstoy, shakespeare, hardy and dickens. by sitting here clark takes ghostly shape as an active protagonist in the tragedies of his own writing. paul carter suggests that, “what clark gives us, in fact, is a series of stage directions in which historical heroes are actors … author included.” clark said: “the historian puts sinew and flesh on the dry bones of the dead. he performs the miracle of breathing life into dead bones.” 91 is this house haunted? yes, in the last years of her life in the house dymphna found it so: “it was as if something was springing from the shadows”. clark was everywhere in the house. dymphna had changed it little since he had died, and facing her own death in the same house she felt clark’s presence more than at any point since his death. myerson suggests that: “past, present, and future collide in a single family house.” this may be so in a “normal” house, but in museum-houses there is no hope of a future. in their uncanny state of suspended display, these houses attempt the impossible – to hold the dying breath of home for eternity and posterity. in conclusion, i agree with david malouf, who writes about attempts to open this door to collective memories and histories in any house as inevitably reaching limits – limits on how far we can or cannot physically penetrate as a witness. but we can open some door in ourselves. the taking up of slightly deranged, autobiographical writing in this piece is revelatory of an uncanny house experience, and an unexpected unlocking of a kind of topoanalysis. whether this mode of documenting personal experience holds the key to the unlocking of other museum-houses remains to be tested more fully through more extended weekends! references bachelard, g. (1997). poetics of space. in n. leach (ed.). re-thinking architecture. london: routledge. carter, p. (1987). the road to botany bay. london: faber and faber. clark, m. (1992). a historian’s apprenticeship. melbourne: melbourne university press. creighton, t., freeman, p., & russell, r. (2002). reflections: manning clark’s house. canberra: manning clark foundation. docker, j. (2000). writing from fragments. in a. curthroys & a. mcgrath (eds.), writing histories: imagination and narration. melbourne: monash university press. goffman, e. (1986). frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. boston, mass.: northeastern university press. light, a. & smith, j. m. (2005). the aesthetics of everyday life. new york, ny: columbia university press. malouf, d. (1985). 12 edmonston street. london: penguin books mckenna, m. (2011). an eye for eternity: the life of manning clark. melbourne: melbourne university press. myerson, j. (2005). home: the story of everyone who ever lived in our house. london: harper perennial. vidler, a. (1992). the architectural uncanny: essay in the modern unhomely. cambridge, mass.: mit press. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 89 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a interstices: journal of architecture and related arts is an open forum for the dissemination of architecture and thought. it is a non-profit journal published once a year. to remain independent, interstices relies upon institutional and private support to fund its editorial production. annual individual sponsorship is available from $500; corporate sponsorship from $1,000; and institutional sponsorship from $3,000. sponsors will receive acknowledgement of their contribution in each issue of interstices for which they are a sponsor and on the journal’s website (https://interstices.ac.nz/ index.php/interstices). this issue is supported by school of art + design, auckland university of technology, school of architecture & planning, university of auckland (institutional sponsors) and asc architects, architectus, augustus services, cheshire architects, moller architects, salmond reed architects, warren and mahoney, jasmax (corporate sponsors) executive editors andrew douglas, julia gatley, susan hedges co-ordinating editor susan hedges issue editors eu jin chua, farzaneh haghighi contributors this issue sue ruddick, michael lebuffe, carl mika, sean sturm, stephen turner, gökhan kodalak, jonathan lahey dronsfield, paul james design and typography catherine griffiths typefaces founders grotesk, tiempos text klim type foundry production catherine griffiths, susan hedges, joanne mathers published by enigma : he aupiki, auckland, new zealand october 2021 issn 1170-585x (print) issn 2537-9194 (online) this work is entitled to the full protection given by the copyright act 1962 to the holders of the copyright and reproduction of any substantial passage from the work except for the educational purposes therein specified is a breach of the copyright of the author and/or publisher. this copyright extends to all forms of photocopying and any storing of material in any kind of information retrieval system. interstices: journal of architecture and related arts takes a nonexclusive copyright in the papers submitted and accepted, i.e., we reserve the right to publish and republish the paper (for instance, electronically). authors are welcome to upload their papers in published form into their institution’s research repository. they retain the right to republish their papers elsewhere, provided that they acknowledge original publication in interstices. all applications by third parties, for reproduction in any form, should be made to the executive editors. submissions the editors invite submissions of articles, reports, book and project reviews, and translations. all correspondence should be addressed to the editors, interstices, school of art + design, aut university, private bag 92006, auckland 1020, new zealand. books for review and advertising should be forwarded to the executive editors, above. notes and guidelines for contributors can be found at https://interstices.ac.nz/index. php/interstices/information_for_ contributors acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the support of the very many people who have contributed to the realisation and quality of interstices special issue the arts of spinoza + pacific spinoza in various ways—including, mark jackson, andrew douglas, chris braddock, julieanna preston, helene frichot, chris l. smith, rod barnett, carl douglas, ruth watson, ross jenner, maarten delbeke, giuseppe fallacara, michael milojevic, andre brett. thanks to catherine griffiths and joanne mathers for designing and copy editing this issue. if we have inadvertently overlooked anyone, we apologise. thanks also to the school of art + design at auckland university of technology, and the school of architecture and urban planning at the university of auckland. and, finally, a big thank-you to all the contributors to interstices special issue the arts of spinoza + pacific spinoza. www.interstices.ac.nz editorial advisory board aotearoa/new zealand mike austin (unitec institute of technology), moana nepia (james henare centre at university of auckland), gavin hipkins (university of auckland), anthony hoete (university of auckland), ross jenner (university of auckland), a.-chr. (tina) engels-schwarzpaul (auckland university of technology), dan fleming (university of waikato), robert jahnke (massey university), sally jane norman (university of victoria, wellington) australia suzie attiwill (rmit university), hélène frichot (university of melbourne) jillian hamilton (queensland university of technology), stephen loo (university of tasmania), mirjana lozanovska (deakin university), john macarthur (university of queensland), jeff malpas (university of tasmania), jules moloney (deakin university), vivian mitsogianni (rmit design research institute), deborah van der plaat (university of queensland), sam spurr (university of new south wales), paul walker (university of melbourne) germany uta brandes (köln international school of design), ursula baus (frei04-publizistik, stuttgart) italy renato rizzi (università iuav di venezia, architect trento), nigel ryan (architect, rome) uae bechir kenzari uk mark dorrian (edinburgh college of art), jonathan hale (university of nottingham), peg rawes (the bartlett school of architecture), joseph rykwert (emeritus paul philippe cret professor) usa peggy deamer (yale university), mark goulthorpe (mit, decoi architects paris), jonathan lamb (vanderbilt university), david leatherbarrow (university of pennsylvania) colophon i n t e r s t i c e s jo u rn a l o f a rc h it ec tu re a n d r el a te d a rt s s p i n o z a s p e c i a l i s s u e s p i n o z a s p e c i a l i s s u e 2 0 2 1 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 136 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s review / cameron logan green square library and plaza, sydney stewart hollenstein in association with stewart architects the enveloping influence of covid-19 in the early part of 2020 has rendered attempts to describe tendencies in public architecture, for the time being, somewhat pointless. who can say where we are headed? yet, prior to the shutdown of public gathering places around the world in february and march 2020, nothing seemed clearer in the domain of architectural production than the continued rise of the municipal library as a key site for architectural production and fostering shared resources. both where i am in sydney, and in a range of other places around the world, new libraries have been widely awarded, discussed, and embraced over the past decade. this renewed interest in public libraries has been a feature not just of architectural discourse, but also wider public discussions about the meaning and provision of public places. against a background of continuing privatisation of government-owned assets in australia, the example of the public library seemed to offer a sliver of evidence that governments have some ongoing appetite for funding genuinely public places. moreover, unlike in other domains, such as the stadium and sporting arena, or schools and universities—where generic, programmatic considerations and specialised consultants have dramatically narrowed the possibilities for architecture—the creative architectural (and urban) designer seems to be exercising meaningful influence in the planning and delivery of libraries. internationally there were a number of harbingers of the current library moment going back to the early years of this century. bibliotheca alexandrina (19892001), or the new alexandrian library by snøhetta, and oma’s seattle central library (1999-2004)—designed in association with seattle’s lmn—were two of the most prominent. in the past couple of years, libraries have been among the most prominent projects in international architectural awards. lochal library (2019) in tilburg (the netherlands) by civic architects, an adaptation of a vast 1930s locomotive shed, was the winner of the world architecture festival building of the year in 2019. meanwhile the hunters’ point library (2019) in queens, new york, by steve holz architecture, created such a stir in that city and encouraged such high levels of visitation last year that it became almost unmanageable for the librarians. local governments and local architects have also provided sydney with a slew of architecturally distinguished new libraries in this century. the city of sydney, in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 137 review / green square library and plaza, sydney p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s the biggest and wealthiest local government area (lga) in metropolitan sydney, has been the most active. in 2006, with architects lacoste & stevenson, the city completed an adaptation of the colonial-era customs house building at circular quay for use as a library and visitor centre. a few years later, they opened the surry hills library and neighbourhood centre (2009), designed by fjmt. that firm was also the architect of a major new project for a local government in sydney’s southwest, which adapted an existing council office building for use as the bankstown library and knowledge centre (2014), and a much-awarded conservation and adaptive reuse project for the historic houses trust (now sydney living museums), that included the museum’s caroline simpson library (2004). as with the international scene, the past couple of years in sydney have also seen continuing and architecturally stimulating activity connected with library projects. the city of sydney opened its darling square library, designed by bvn in october 2019, just a few months after another bvn-designed facility, marrickville library and pavilion (for the neighbouring inner west council) opened to wide acclaim from locals and the profession. but the new sydney library that has arguably attracted the widest attention and most acclaim in recent years is green square library and plaza (stewart hollenstein, 2018). the result of a 2012 international design competition, the library and plaza are the civic centrepiece of the massive green square urban renewal project on former industrial land in sydney’s inner south. the new mixed-use neighbourhood involves $au 13 billion worth of planned construction and over 30,000 new residential units. the library and plaza precinct, which will ultimately also include the gunyama park and aquatic centre, is connected directly to the green square train station and adjacent to the most easily recognisable tower in the urban renewal project, the infinity commercial development. as such the library occupies a strategically significant position and carries a lot of responsibility for the success of the area as something more than a densely packed dormitory. the library and plaza are integrally connected and much of the programme of the library itself is tucked below. the architects conceived the scheme as a set of children’s blocks scattered across the plaza. but just two main elements rise above the ground plane. one is a modestly scaled, six-storey, prismatic tower containing bookable community spaces, including a recital room with sprung fig. 1 julien lanoo. looking east over green square library and plaza [photograph] in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 138 review / green square library and plaza, sydney p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s floor, a computer lab, flexible meeting room, and a small reading room. the other is the wedge-shaped entrance and café at the busy botany road end of the site. while below the plaza, the main library space—including children’s area, and all of the books, magazines, and other resources—is generously daylit by a central circular lightwell and garden. this space is zoned but entirely flexible, with a continuous service grid enabling complete reconfiguration as needs change. the pair of crisp geometric objects carefully counterposed against the circular lightwell cut into the plaza is the most photogenic aspect of the project. but the real significance of this library-plaza is in the work it does as a piece of urban design. the building has several access points, all of them leading into the library proper. this is unusual as most libraries, in fact most public facilities, rely on a single entrance/exit to maintain easy active surveillance from a fixed point. frequently, architectural intentions to use a new building to orchestrate a series of intersections and connections to surrounding urban space are actually undermined by client preferences for such single-point access control. here, in contrast, the architects have been able to persuade the librarians to work with multiple access points and so enable the set of surrounding connections on which the basic design concept depends. the full implications of the permeable library facility for green square are not yet evident—or they weren’t before it closed in march—as the eastern end of the plaza is still dominated by construction sites. (the library was deliberately developed early in the scheme to provide some sense of community and civic belonging). but once development of the surrounding blocks is complete and the swimming pool and recreation centre to the south are operating, the library promises to become a heart for the new neighbourhood. the library was busy upon opening and is a much needed and already highly valued place in this rapidly growing part of sydney. if there is a question that remains about the ultimate success of the project, however, it is whether the building provides sufficient refuge for the users who need or desire quiet and secluded reading and study space. an earlier wave of library building in sydney included col madigan’s dee why library (edwards, madigan torzillo, and partners, 1966). that outstanding public building is conceived as an acropolis, rather than a crossroads, and it is much more internal in character, a true refuge lit from above fig. 2 hollenstein stewart in association with steward architects. green square library and plaza proposal [volumetric diagram] fig. 3 tom roe. amphitheatre and stair to the eastern entrance of the library [photograph] in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 139 review / green square library and plaza, sydney p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s and walled off from the surrounding suburban environment. the green square library arguably lacks that quality; or provides it in very small doses. green square, like the surry hills library (2009), takes its cues from a very different precedent, the contemporary café. cafés in sydney typically engage the street as much as possible and minimise barriers between inside and out. the wedgeshaped café that is part of the green square library is an exemplary instance, separated from outside by the most transparent glazed skin. in fact, it was conceived by the architects as part of the plaza and its outdoor lighting conditions are arguably a bit too bright. the stair down to the main library space provides an extra layer of separation from street and plaza, but the plan as a whole is something of a thoroughfare. the furnishing and nooks, as good as they are—and the joinery in this project is very beautiful—have a lot of work to do. libraries today are expected to do more and more different things while maintaining their traditional functions. they lend dvds, tools, and video game consoles in addition to books; they are used as cafés and host community groups and small musical events as well as children’s story time. obviously, they cannot be all things to all people. green square library and plaza does many of these very well. it is a highly successful public meeting place and children’s play space, and contains an important set of resources for local residents. if it also proves to be a sustaining refuge for readers and students, then the architects will have achieved something quite extraordinary. fig. 4 tom roe. story-time circle showing bench seating and toy storage units [photograph] fig. 5 julien lanoo. wedgeshaped library entrance and cafe [photograph] 105 originally published as sloterdijk, p. (2006). architektur als immersionskunst. arch+, 178 (june), 58-63. many thanks to tim adams, who drew our attention to this paper. architecture as an art of immersion peter sloterdijk translated by a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul immersion and immersionskunst (immersive art or art of immersion) are relatively new terms. they originate from the discourses of contemporary computer art, where immersion into synthetic perceptual worlds has been a lively topic since the late 1980s and early 1990s. we are dealing, therefore, with an arts practice that has come to be called immersion. immersion, in this context, means to engage with one’s immersion in artificial environments, assisted by technical equipment, for instance a virtual reality helmet or an electronic visor. through these technologies, humans are finally taken seriously as beings for whom it is natural to immerse themselves – and not only in water, the ‘wet element’, but in elements and environments generally. the method has been common for some time, for instance in the context of pilots’ training in flight simulators; however, the modern problem of hallucination management and immersive change was already anticipated in nineteenth century panoramas. a core aspect of artificial immersion, as a phenomenon, is the potential replacement of whole environments – not only of the images, usually framed, one looks at in galleries. immersion as a method unframes images and vistas, dissolving the boundaries with their environment. this necessarily leads us on to architecture, for it is properly considered, together with music, the original form in which the immersion of humans in artificial environments has been developed into a culturally controlled process. house building is a sort of basic version of immersion technology, while urbanism is the developed stage. beyond urban development, however, there is also something like empire-building – that is, an architectonics of grand political forms, in whose construction military, diplomatic and psycho-semantic (or religious) functions all participate. empire building becomes most visible when a large political structure is manifestly entrenched behind a long wall – one thinks automatically of the roman limes and the great wall of china. obviously, the immersive relationships of roman and chinese life were supposed to be performed behind such walls – being understood as the being-in-the-empire of its citizens. we have meanwhile realised that one needs to be immersed in an empire’s foundational narratives to experience it from inside. one cannot plunge into an empire’s psycho-semantic immersive context without participating in its history. in this sense, history itself is nothing but a diving tank shared with cavorting fellow swimmers, and what is commonly called participation is, seen in this light, merely a naïve dipping into a one-dimensional context (while so-called critique can only be learnt through immersive changes, through bathing in alternating pools or contexts). at this point, i would like to suggest an ad-hoc definition of modern totalitarianisms – a definition which seems obvious in this context. the twentieth century provided a series of attempts to dissolve the bipolarity or contradiction of european traditions, with the aim of telling one-dimensional power narratives yet again. this was perceivable in the mono-history of communism as much as in the monohistories of racial movements. the so-called totalitarianisms were attacks against the two-realm ontologies of ancient europe, against the freedom of changing contexts, against the ambiguity of double citizenship in the material and ideal realms. the twentieth century’s most powerful ideologies were egalitarian and anti-dualist in orientation – they aimed at the construction of a monological context of success and power, which would no longer be vexed by changing perspectives and double existences. it is in this very context that the question of architecture’s interstices 12 meaning and function becomes poignant yet again. for, let us not forget, architecture is inherently a form of totalitarianism, a totalitarian practice by nature. why? because it is concerned with immersion, that is, with the production of an environment into which its inhabitants submerge, body and all. when one builds a house for oneself, one creates, as it were, the space-demon by which one will subsequently be possessed – and the architects aid and abet the production of various forms of an obsession with choice. in this context, i would like to recall a philosophical dialogue from 1921 by the poet and philosopher paul valéry: “eupalinos, or the architect”. two figures from antiquity are conjured up, whom we know from the corpus platonicum: socrates, on the one hand, and phaedrus, on the other. this personnel isn’t chosen entirely arbitrarily: the two had an unfulfilled love story in antiquity, and thus it seems plausible to bring them together, once again, under different circumstances. you may remember: phaedrus was the only young man towards whom socrates temporarily lost his self-control, on the occasion when, in a famous passage of the dialogue with the same title, socrates felt a hint of dionysian emotion – an admission plato is otherwise not easily willing to make. this phaedrus, of all people, is on the spot when it comes to talking about architecture. but why? because the building of houses constitutes a problem of love – at least indirectly and subtly. architecture’s totalitarianism is a totalitarianism of love, of the love of space, of being enraptured by that which not only stands over against us but which envelopes us. by attempting to produce the space where we “open up completely”, architecture articulates what bachelard calls a topophile feeling. to build one’s house amounts to generating the place and the envelope for one’s own self-abandonment. this surrender to the built environment is commonly misconceived as the privately-owned home – reading paul vaiéry, however, provides us with reasons to distrust this superficial interpretation of dwelling. to my knowledge, the neo-platonic dialogue, written at the time of the weimar bauhaus and the early designs of le corbusier, represents the first lucid document of what i would call the dawn of immersion in the twentieth century. eight years later, the young heidegger picks up the thread in being and time, in his analysis of being-in-the-world and being-attuned – a provocation to which heidegger’s teacher husserl will oppose the analysis of the “life-world” soon after (in his 1936 crisis of european sciences). already in 1921, valéry has socrates say in his eupalinos: i feel compelled to chat about the arts. … a painting, my dear phaedrus, only covers a surface (like a plate or a wall) … but a temple – approaching its forecourt, or even the interior of this temple – gives rise for us to a kind of absolute greatness in which we live. … we are, we move, we live in the work of a human being! … we are taken in and mastered by the order he has chosen. we cannot escape him. (valéry 1921) here, the totalitarian motif is clearly articulated. incidentally, you may hear in socrates’ speech, somewhat anachronistically, an allusion to st paul’s address on the areopagus in athens (see chapter 17, acts of the apostles, new testament). in a daredevil act of theological piracy, st paul claims in this address the unknown god of the greeks (for whom an altar had been erected in athens – one never knows) for his lord jesus christ. paul, greatest of all pirates, looked for the weak spot in the greek pantheon and found it. whereupon he suggests to the athenians: you, the citizens of this proud city, you have, without quite knowing, already worshipped the true god too, namely the unknown god whose pseudonym i have the honour to disclose today. and here follows the great formula of the god in whom we live, 107 and move, and have our being – i am quoting luther’s translation now, which older german speakers, who grew up in the protestant cultural ether, will still be able to hear. “in him we live and move and have our being” – that is the unsurpassable, fundamental assertion of a christian philosophy of space. it declares that humans aren’t in the world just like that, that they do not lie about in the world like pebbles and other self-contained entities. humans are in the world ecstatically, they exist in the mode of openness towards the world. and to be open is to be simultaneously here and in another place – there and here at once. this extends as far as thinking, according to the theologically honed statement, that humans or their souls wellnigh are and live in god, that is, in an alternative space, a super space which penetrates the profane and physical space. now, valéry has his socrates state just this – or, rather, a variation of this – when the latter speaks about how we live, move and have our being in the work of a human being when we are in a building. valéry knows exactly what he is quoting here and, by letting st paul speak indirectly, he effectively appropriates the theological, psycho-semantic and immunological definition of the house. this has far-reaching consequences. the house is a diving facility, as it were, in which the immersive comportment of humans towards the world is attended to. dwelling is the original relationship of humans with their designed environment – a fact, though, that is specifically elucidated only through the building of houses. to dwell in houses implies the art of substituting the original environment with a designed space. what the designed space has in common with nature is that it takes on the role of total environment. by being thoroughly man-made, however, it is at the same time nature’s complete antithesis. i propose that philosophy is a general theory of situations. to philosophise means to theorise situations. a situation is defined quite generally as a relationship of coexisting elements. the factors in this relationship can be listed in this way: situations are forms of coexistence of someone with someone and something in something. what does this mean? the first two figures are immediately intelligible: someone with someone – that indicates a personal association or a primitive social relationship; one also speaks occasionally of a dimension of intersubjectivity – a term that should be used only with care. the case of the two somethings is more complicated. the first something is meant to indicate our accessories, our equipment, thus the whole escort of objects that are attached to us and which, incidentally, were discovered as an independent theme for thinking and designing only during the twentieth century; philosophically, this occurred via husserl’s theory of the life-world and heidegger’s teachings on things that are ready-to-hand. practically, it came about via the applied arts, which we meanwhile call design. the second something, however, refers to the spaces in which the togetherness of someone with someone takes place, it is the theme of topology, that is, the theory of space, of containers, of atmospheric wholes – all of which are, by the way, relatively recent inscriptions on the maps of philosophical disciplines. thus, the philosophical theory of situations is a theory of the togetherness of someone with someone and something in something. we can now see how this broaches the phenomenon or, rather, the basic relationship of immersion – and it should be clear that immersion only becomes genuinely interesting when collectives are caught up in shared immersive baths, from twosomes to dictatorships. it is fascinating to watch how valéry’s socrates interlaces this with an acoustic analysis. according to him, architects not only build houses in which humans stay like interstices 12 bodies in bodies; they create spaces that are filled with life sounds, with language and music. to build is always also to produce a phonotype, a sonorous site which resonates with its inhabitants. valéry remarks: to be in the work of a human being like fish in the wave, to bathe in it thoroughly, to live in it, to belong to it, … were it not as if you lived in a mobile building, constantly renewed and reconstructed, in itself completely dedicated to the metamorphoses of a soul that would be the soul of space? … would it not appear as if [entities] surrounded you – you, a slave to the distributed presence of music? … would you not be enclosed together with it, and forced to be like a pythia in the [oracle’s] chamber of vapours? (valéry 1921) these comments on the sojourn of humans in something with something and other(s) reveal the outlines of aesthetic totalitarianism in an artificial environment. architecture is nothing else. it always implies voluntary bondage in a manmade environment. when you show people plans of houses, you propose to them their own enslavement. this proposal will be modified until the principal (wrongly so-called) says: “this is precisely the proposal for enslavement i would like to dwell in.” the house in which i feel at ease is the demon i choose to be possessed by. but this does not only apply to the building of houses. there are two art forms, says valéry, which envelope man in man: in the medium of stone in architecture, in the medium of air in music. both art forms fill our space with synthetic truths. it seems to me that the significance of valéry’s phrases can hardly be estimated highly enough. if the design of dwellings implies the proposition of a welcome surrender to the ambience, then this activity includes both an anthropological and a political function. as installations of immersive baths, dwellings explicate human being as a three-dimensional project. in this regard, the architect works as a designer of immersions. this is particularly evident in the case of so-called interior architecture, which is in principle all about the artificial production of embedding situations. how far the necessity of this activity has spread into general awareness is demonstrated by the vast literature about interior fittings that has by now reached even the bookshops in railway stations – the countless publications about living in style, about adaptive use of old buildings, about luxurious kitchens and decorative images, air-conditioning, lighting design, the design of holiday homes and furniture. taken together, they reveal how widely the message of embedment in self-selected micro-milieus, as the therapeutic maxim of the second half of the twentieth century, has reached the public. the entire industry of the intérieur stands by to awaken and differentiate such demands. significantly, the awareness of being embedded became suddenly depoliticised after 1945 and disappeared from the lofty collectivist spheres – as though people never wanted to hear again that there are art forms which encase man in man. it is as though the collective memory had preserved the intuitive insight that the prominence of the totalitarian temptation grows in tandem with the extent of immersion in pooling units. today it is obvious that the people living in the second half of the twentieth century no longer have any regard for empire-building. they seem to live according to the motto: no more grand success stories. they prefer to assemble those elements from home improvement centres which help them build immunity against totalitarian forms of immersion. to them, it seems immediately evident that they must weave the fabric for their happiness in smaller, more private dimensions. from this perspective, the building supply centres are the real surety of democracy. they house the popular support of everyday anti-totalitarianism. the moral of the story is obvious. literally it would go like this: “dwell in your own place and refuse 109 the immersion in false collectives! do not dwell in racial totalities! do not engage with super-collectivisations, choose your furniture from your own supplies, take responsibility for the micro-totalitarianism of your dwelling circumstances. and never forget: in your homes, you are the infallible popes of your own bad taste.” we may no longer be citizens of two realms, but we still remain commuters between situations. however, since the being-in designed spaces constitutes our fundamental condition, it seems obvious that architecture must remain conscious of its responsibility for the shaping of situations. architecture is, above all, the design of immersions. part of the ethics of the production of space is the responsibility for the atmosphere. to do the latter justice demands openness, ease of relocation, an appreciation for reversibility. anthropologists can counsel architects always to take into consideration that humans are beings who oscillate between the desire to be embedded and the desire to break free. reference valéry, p. (1921) eupalinos ou l’architecte. wikisource, la bibliothèque libre. retrieved from http:/ www.livres-etebooks.fr/ebooks/eupalinos_ou_l%27architecte-4461/ interstices 12 reflective interiors: the pepsi pavilion and the tower of the sun kate linzey japan’s recovery from the destruction of world war two resulted in swift and radical transformations in society and its built environment. osaka expo ‘70, like the olympic games which preceded it in 1964, was an event designed to demonstrate the strength of the emerging post-war economy, and the resilience of the japanese people (urushima 2007:394). the expo theme “harmony and progress” was developed to integrate the national identity of traditional japan (harmony) with new technologies, something viewed as western and destructive (progress). while the theme was initially proposed by an independent “theme committee”, kenzo tange and nishiyama uzô, who led the compelling elaboration of this vision by the “planological committee”, enlarged their influence to the extent, as pieter van wesemael notes, that the architects became responsible for both theme and design, a first in the history of world exhibitions (2001: 570). this essay will compare two interior spaces built in this context. they are, firstly, the tower of the sun by tarô okamoto, and secondly, the pepsi pavilion, by experiments in art and technology (e.a.t.). while it is common for nationalised projects to explore how design can produce identity, osaka expo ‘70 presents an unusual instance where that identity was defined as unsettled, divided and pointedly anxiety-producing. both works utilised ideas from psychoanalysis with the intention of soothing this anxiety. where the first, though, relied on principles of surrealism, presenting familiar objects in strange and uncanny ways, the latter aimed to modify the very act of communication, transforming how things are recognised in relation to the self. isometric view of the expo osaka 70 site showing the location of tarô okamoto’s tower of the sun on the festival plaza, and e.a.t.’s pepsi pavilion (all drawings by the author). 77 osaka expo '70: progress and harmony in his historical survey of world exhibitions from 1798 onwards, van wesemael presents osaka as the culmination of an evolving world exhibition model. his survey has an architectural focus, exploring how architecture was used to frame each exhibition as, in his words, “a secluded universe” of fantasy and technology, entertainment and education (2001: 17). van wesemael tracks the transformation of the eighteenth-century pedagogical model, based on the panoramic display of global culture and didactic demonstrations of technology, through to osaka’s more nebulous pedagogy of engagement and self-realisation through play. rather than merely educate the populace, the intention at osaka was to “adjust ... the self-image of the japanese with regard to themselves, their society and the future” (2001: 566). uzô and tange’s site planning of expo osaka ‘70 sought to demonstrate an ideal circulation infrastructure for japan’s growing urban centres. ordered by a clear hierarchy of transportation methods, the expo site was divided into four lobes, rather like a heart. according to van wesemael, the architects sought to avoid any narrative or thematic structure in the distribution of pavilions (the placing of the u.s.s.r. and u.s.a. pavilions at diametrically opposite points on the site might be seen as an exception). by renouncing narrative or thematic devices to mediate between exhibitors and visitors, the design of the expo site became, at least in theory, an architecture without qualities. designers of individual pavilions were given maximum design flexibility and autonomy. this flexibility, angus lockyer (2007) argues, can be linked to the expo architects’ concern, not for what was represented, but for the spectacle of circulating signs. “progress and harmony” was to be achieved, lockyer implies, due to an architecture which only appeared through its ability to “account for contingency”, that is, imperceptibly to incorporate and dissipate any disturbance (2007: 586). this principle of contingent architecture was further developed by arata isozaki in his design of the “festival plaza” within the “symbol zone”. lockyer and andrea urushima (2007) attribute the concept of a central elevated area, or “symbol zone”, to uzô’s early planning influence. it provided a gathering axis for transportation and, by incorporating the “festival plaza” for live performances, could provide a space “where the vibrant and charged energy of the people [could be] discharged” (uzô cited in van wesemael 2001: 819, n49). as urushima explains, uzô’s concept for the plaza had no precedent in japanese cities or towns, but was created as a synthesis of shinto matsuri festival tradition with uzô’s experiences of italian piazze. tange delegated the task of interpreting uzô’s “festival plaza” to isozaki who proposed a mega-structure canopy, which would permit the “plugging-in” of high-tech, multi-media and multi-sensory entertainment. ordered by the grid of the space frame canopy, which was supported by piers expressed as circulation stairs, isozaki’s design was an architecture of coordinated systems. van wesemael has described it as “imageless” (2001: 598), lockyer as “a system of interchangeable parts” (2007: 583), and kisho kurokawa as something like a flight simulator on which people train to occupy the technological future (van wesemael 2001: 594). tower of the sun: an opaque interiority or bombastic kitsch years later, isozaki described the festival plaza concept as “totally uncool” (2006: 71). he felt that the osaka expo '70’s “battle for modernity” was lost on the plaza – primarily due to the inclusion of the work of senior artist, okamoto (isozaki 2006: 56). from an older generation, and imbued with a very different modernist sensibility, okamoto responded to uzô’s invocation of the matsuri festival tradition by producing designs referencing monstrous folk imagery. these, he hoped, interstices 12 would “shock visitors out of the complacency and anomie of everyday life” into celebratory festival (lockyer 2007: 579). most significant of these designs was taiyo no to (tower of the sun), located centrally in the festival plaza. described by isozaki as “a giant phallus”, as anti-modern and “bombastic kitsch”, this tower is the only structure remaining on the expo site today. its persistence, along with the festival plaza as an urban form, has led isozaki to complain that “the gaze searching for japan-ness ... [discovers] itself most dramatically in the realm of bad taste” (2006: 72). in photographs, the smoothly plastered, anthropomorphic mass of the tower is an ambiguous monster overseeing activities on the festival plaza. apparently monolithic, the tower contrasts forcefully with the “‘imageless’ aesthetic” (van wesemael 2006: 598) of isozaki’s megastructure. its sculpting is bulbous: a fat belly trunk rises up from the crisp flatness of the plaza, and conical arms, like branches, stretch out on either side of a face carved in a roundel mask. the tower protrudes upward through a clean hole in the plaza canopy. above the canopy, the tower is crowned by another face-like mask, but this one, geometrically abstract, gleams with a brassy metal surface like an ornamental antenna dish. we think of the tower of the sun as a closed monolithic form but, during the expo, it provided a sequence of interior spaces for an exhibition curated by okamoto. visitors entered at the plaza level, and then descended to an exhibit called the “world of harmony”: a display of scale models, archaeological specimens and re-constructions of prehistoric sites (van wesmael 2006: 598). travelling on escalators, visitors entered the tower itself and climbed past okamoto’s “tree of life” sculpture: a fantastically illuminated, caricatured tree with sinuous branches in a range of bright colours. at the base of this tree were flowers and models of single cell organisms. higher up, dinosaurs perched precariously, too big for their branches, while primates and early humans appear to play at the top. gantries led visitors along the arms of the tower where, stepping out of the dimness, visitors would then arrive in the clear light of the glazed truss space of the roof, into the “world of the future”. here they would discover images and models of “progress”: satellites, diagrams of the brain, and metabolist house-capsules (van wesemael 2006: 598; lockyer 2007: isometric section of the tower of the sun, drawn from a section of the tower published in pieter van wesemael (2001). 79 1 referencing many styles from the primitive origins of art through to advanced ‘oriental’ cultures (which included japan), worringer suggested that abstraction was a reaction that expressed dissatisfaction with the world, in contrast to the “happy … confidence” (1953:15) of naturalism. early twentieth-century movements like surrealism drew on worringer’s argument to explain abstract art as a response to alienation from new technology, urbanism and global war. okamoto’s engagement with surrealism during his time in europe in the 1930s was reflected in the references to traditional shinto matsuri festival figurines in the tower of the sun. by adopting an abstract style, okamoto responded to a fear, or at least awe, that visitors held of past, present and future, and to an anxiety concerning their place within the progress of history. 2 current interest in the work of okamoto has also led to a scaled reconstruction of the tree of life for exhibition in 2011 (taro okamoto museum), which suggests okamoto's work is of more value to contemporary japanese, the very subjects of osaka expo '70, than lockyer or isozaki are willing to admit. 3 an exception to this tradition had been the new york world fair of 1965. 578-580). van wesemael suggests the image of the tower was of a japanese culture with its “feet in tradition and its arms in the future” (2006: 598). for isozaki, however, okamoto’s style could only express primitive superstition. in 1955, okamoto set out a thesis of culture and tradition in an essay on jômon ceramics. initiating a rhetorical structure that persists to this day, okamoto favourably compared the “complex and manifest boldness verging on ugliness” of jômon culture to the traditional “quiet and balanced … tranquility” of the yayoi style, which had conventionally defined japan-ness (2009: 51, 54). okamoto’s argument self-consciously referenced european surrealism and gestalt psychology. he suggested that, by framing japanese tradition in the culture of the hunter-gatherer jômon rather than the agrarian yayoi, a stronger contemporary culture would emerge: the deceptive and feeble, flat emotionalism and formalism of the longstanding “japanese” tradition has no connection with reality. henceforth, artists will, by means of wisdom grounded in a primal vitality, open up that blind alley and grasp the true reality of the world. (okamoto 2009: 59) okamoto’s desire for “primal vitality” may be traced back to wilhelm worringer’s 1907 proposition, in abstraktion und einfühlung (abstraction and empathy, 1953), which associated abstraction with the “immense spiritual dread of space” (1953: 15).1 the tower and its exhibitions did not present an image of well-founded progressivism or confident naturalism. rather, it was abstract, even cartoonish and deprecating. while the models presented dna, dinosaurs and digital technologies, they also held them at a distance, as symbols of change and alienation. okamoto’s tower provided a paradoxically uncanny and comforting distortion of the reality that “progress” would bring. lockyer comments that the tower became the most iconic remaining trace of the expo on site even though its style was already out of date in 1970 (2007: 581).2 the pepsi pavilion, by contrast, which was absolutely new, is barely remembered in popular culture. transparent interiority: the pepsi pavilion collectively authored by the experiments in art and technology (e.a.t.), but led by robert whitman, robert breer, billy klüver, david tudor and frosty myers, the pavilion aimed to bring artists and their work into a synthesis with new technologies and engineers. the aspiration was to humanise technologies through art providing the means through which individuals might acclimatise to the coming technological world. in similar terms, randall packer has described how the pavilion presented visitors with “mind-altering ‘realities’ in [a] transformative ‘theatre of the future’” (packer 2004: 252). for klüver, the pavilion was art becoming “laboratory environment” (1972: preface), where the role of the visitor would be that of participant and performer. underpinning this new role for art was a shift in the definition of the work: from an object to be read or viewed to a system or environment to be engaged in. from an art historical perspective, barbara rose describes this shift as a breaking down of art historical boundaries and a rejection of the concept of “aesthetic distance” (rose 1972: 61). since the 1893 world’s columbian exhibition in chicago, world exhibitions had been accompanied by a concession zone, or theme park, outside of the exhibition grounds.3 at expo osaka ‘70 the concession zone was called expoland. located in this zone, the pepsi pavilion took on an ambiguous commercial/fine art status, appearing as both a branding exercise and an avant-garde joy ride. e.a.t. organisers interstices 12 were concerned by these commercial implications, and resolved in early discussions that the best way to avoid producing a branded image was to make the structure disappear (pearce 1972: 256). the final solution was to shroud the faceted white structure in fog, a similar technique to that which diller and scofidio would apply in their 2002 blur building. visitors entered the pavilion via a tunnel which descended approximately two metres to a subterranean clam room. so-called because of its circular shape and an enclosing curvature in the roof and floor, this grotto-like space was darkened for a laser display. the interior’s size, depth underground, and exact limits, were intentionally obscured. travelling to the far side of the room, and taking another tunnel-stair, visitors proceeded upward to a large space, on a level slightly above that of the exterior ground and directly over the clam room. here, visitors entered a spherical mirrored dome, an “other-worldly creation”, which “mesmerized, delighted, terrified, intrigued, baffled, entranced and bewildered” (packer n.d.). this journey in, down, and then up (similar to that in the tower of the sun) caused disorientation and was unsettling. john pearce, the project architect, recounts that his role was to meld the discontinuous elements of the pavilion, allowing the flow of visitors to move from one space to the next without obstruction (1972: 246). defending the clam room from efforts to trim the budget, pearce recognised its importance as a dim antechamber that would radically differentiate the interior from the exterior while maintaining this continuity. the disjunction between interior and exterior was also accentuated by the pavilion’s construction. whereas the exterior was hard and crystalline reinforced fibreglass, the mirror dome within it was rounded and soft. the dome’s inner surface was balloon-like, fabricated in melinex, an aluminised mylar, and kept aloft by pneumatics. an access and services void isolated the airtight interior dome from the crystalline exterior. there was no obvious volumetric relation between the two parts of the building: while the interior dome is recorded as 27.5 metres in diameter, the exterior breadth was over 35 metres. though intended to host choreographed performances, the unchoreographed performance of visitors became the design’s focus and most remarkable feature. as isometric section through the pavilion drawn from images published in klüver (1971). 81 the narrator suggests in the opening scenes of eric saarinen’s 1970 documentary the great big mirror dome project: all of us have had the experience of standing in front of a mirror and seeing ourselves as others see us but how many of use have stood inside a mirror and seen the world all around us as a reflection of ourselves? in the documentary, robert whitman, who had first suggested the mirrored interior (klüver 1971: 2759, n.2), explained his ideas for the space as an open environment in which people were to be free to do what they wanted; … and you want them to understand that, and want them to accept that responsibility, you want them to be able to look at what they want to look at, see what you want to see, … to escalate [their] mental involvement into a real one, in the real world. it’s a philosophical machine that i think everybody knows, works. (saarinen 1970) what did visitors see in this “philosophical machine”? armed with listening devices and a light-switching mechanism to play with, visitors found no object to see on arrival, and no performance beyond their own responses. all that remains of their experience today are the descriptions of the pavilion’s designers (joseph 2006: 91, n16). according to klüver (1971), the dome’s spherical mirror returned the visitors to themselves as multiple, weird and composite images, composed of “virtual” and “real” reflections. concept and experience relied heavily on these optical phenomena: a “virtual image” (e.g., a reflection in a flat mirror) shows the object reversed, left-to-right, but the right way up. appearing behind the surface of the mirror, the reflection gets smaller as the viewer moves away from the mirror surface, and recedes into the distance. “real images” (e.g., reflections on the concave side of a spoon) are reflected in front of a reflective surface, and the reflected object appears to hang in space like a hologram. seen upside-down, the reflections grow as the viewer moves away from the mirror, reaching a maximum size as the viewer reaches the radius, or centre, of the sphere. section diagram showing the “egocentric viewpoint” at r (the radius). interstices 12 4 lacan argued that language sets in train a similar process of alienation, where what can be said is necessarily different from what may be thought, and where verification of understanding is sought through speech. like the child, who lacks the unity of image and thought that the mother exhibits, users of language forever desire unity and commonality between expression and interpretation. 5 holm, however went on to state, "it can only be understood metaphorically or at most analogically when applied to the subject of perception”. the light rays reflected as “real images” have a focal depth relative to the radius of the curve. elsa garmire (1972: 204), the project’s optical engineer, described the focal point at the centre of the mirror dome as “ the egocentric viewpoint”. visitors standing at this focal point of the dome would see their reflected image dispersed over the entire dome surface. while this must have been a strange experience, according to klüver the more unnerving effects were “second order” reflections, which occurred when virtual and real images were reflected more than once, producing real-virtual images, real-real images or virtual-real images. whitman was particularly fascinated by the possibilities offered by “real images”, which he described as ghost-like (joseph 2006). their proliferation in the dome suggests an analogy between his “machine” and a “funny experiment” described by jacques lacan in 1953 (le gaufney 2005: 276-7). elaborating on the mirror phase, lacan pinpointed a moment of alienation, when a child becomes aware of itself as an image/reflection detached from its own inner thoughts and feelings. bruce fink (1997: 45-6) explains that this moment constitutes the child’s subjectivity as a split between consciousness and appearance. when the child looks to the mother for assurance that she, too, recognises the reflective schism, she may not receive this confirmation. thus, the interiority of thought is revealed as distinct from the exteriority of appearances.4 lacan’s “funny experiment” with curved mirrors is described as a complicated arrangement through which an illusion of unity or harmony was to be generated, subverting the mirror stage. an inverted vase, located beyond the focal distance of a concave mirror, could be used to create a “real image”, floating in space, of a vase. meanwhile, flowers, held the right way up and located within the focal distance, might reflect a “virtual image”, so that the flowers appear to set inside the vase (holm 2000: 55-56). lorens holm proposes that lacan’s “device ... would be a fantastic model for an architecture (in league with the camera obscura and plato’s cave, or laugier’s primitive hut, or absalon’s [cells])” (2000: 56).5 perhaps the mirror dome was just such an architectural fantasy. klüver also described the compound reflections in the mirror dome in a manner which recalls lacan’s “funny experiment”. he described instances when dome visitors could converse face to (reflected) face with people who were standing at a distance behind them, reminiscent of the rhyme “backto-back they faced each other”. the non-linear reflective architecture generated dramatically different perspectives, even for those standing close together (klüver 1972: 247-254), such that no two visitors could ever predict how, or where, an image effect would appear. this emphasised individualised experiences of perception at the expense of processes of collective recognition. conclusion a comparison of these two experimental spaces at osaka’s 1970 expo shows that they used similar techniques of enclosure to produce radically different attitudes to interiority. both sought to internalise the expo theme “progress and harmony” by presenting visitors as the subjects and performers of the theme. ecce homo, see yourself, and what you can become! okamoto’s tower of the sun disclosed a jomônal space of “primal vitality”, via a symbolic, surrealist language that can provide new critical readings even today. by contrast, the pepsi pavilion experiment, for all its interior surface appearance of mesmerism and delight, seems to have failed in effecting permanent change in the visitors’ sensibilities. like the designers of the osaka expo ‘70 infrastructure, e.a.t. set out to supersede traditional symbolisms and to address instead the opticality of communication itself. by turning their focus away from the messiness of traditional interpretation, they 83 hoped to create a frame for meaning out of experimental optics. however the hermetic interiority of the pepsi pavilion could only produce feedback loops without end: the potential narcissism of seeing one’s self reflected everywhere while, everywhere else, the struggle to differentiate real from reflected, and self from object, must have pushed visitors toward the legendary psychasthenia of roger callois (2003: 100-3). references callois, r. 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(2001). architecture of instruction and delight : a socio-historical analysis of world exhibitions as a didactic phenomenon (1798-1851-1970). rotterdam: 010 publishers. worringer, w. (1953). abstraction and empathy: a contribution to the psychology of style. london: routledge and kegan paul. interstices 14 striped effects: the articulation of materiality and directionality in striped architecture ashley paine introduction the striped interior of siena cathedral is often described as a wondrous experience: the intensity of its black and white surfaces striking the viewer as both dazzling and disorienting (fig. 1). it is also a remarkable demonstration of the psycho-perceptual effects of stripes, and their capacity to assert the physical and visual qualities of space in a dialectical interplay that oscillates between materiality and immateriality. this is to say that the banding of light and dark stone draws particular attention to the physical qualities of the building material – its thickness, mass and, above all, its colour – as well as the construction technique of stone blocks laid one upon another. at the same time, the incessant repetition of stripes highlights the interior as a visual surface, and brings into one’s consciousness an experience of the space as a shimmering field of optical sensation, perspectival tricks and immaterial effects – effects that are quite distinct from the physical qualities of the masonry wall. of course, any striped pattern can be thought of in such dualistic terms: both as a physical organisation of matter into banded chromatic oppositions, and as an optical structure independent of a physical support. while this paper is not about siena’s remarkable cathedral, its dramatic interior opens up a broader discussion on the articulation of architecture using the material and immaterial effects of stripes. the spectacular display of interlinear colour at siena cathedral is but one particularly intense example from a long history of striped masonry architecture. many others exist.1 the earliest known are roman constructions dating from the first century bc. these structures employed a technique known as opus vittatum in which walls were built with a facing of banded brick and stone, ostensibly for constructional and decorative purposes. it was from this ancient practice that stripes emerged, forming what is arguably one of the oldest and most enduring methods of ornament in occidental architecture. remarkably, stripes continue to be used today, although they are most commonly associated with only a small selection of historical works: the medieval churches of northern and central italy (such as siena); the polychrome brickwork of the high victorian movement; loos’ unbuilt josephine baker house; and the work of certain post-modernists including, most notably, swiss architect mario botta. despite their frequent occurrence and visual impact, the presence and significance of stripes have been largely overlooked by architectural historians and theorists. and, while there are some reasonably consistent formal typologies that may be identified in the tradition of horizontally striped buildings, it is difficult to attribute any stable meaning or intent to them over the past 2000 years. this paper takes a synchronic approach to the striped building canon, and focuses on mario botta’s watari-um museum of contemporary art in tokyo (1985-1990) as its main object of discussion. while the building has been widely published, its stripes typically attract only passing mention.2 elsewhere, i have begun to address this gap in the discourse, arguing that botta’s use of stripes reveals certain post-modern 1 key episodes of this history have been discussed in paine 2011. 2 for example: pizzi 1998; sakellaridou 2001; watari 1990. 69 fig. 1 siena cathedral (thirteenth century). [interior. photo: author, 2012] tendencies and a latent historicism in his work which contradicts the architect’s ostensibly modernist agenda (paine 2012). for the present discussion, the watarium’s façade highlights a series of significant issues regarding the effects of stripes applied to architecture. but there is another more fundamental problem for this paper. while we can observe their spatio-visual effects, we do not have the conceptual tools or critical discourse with which to examine striped building surfaces in a meaningful way. here, some of the early writings of rosalind krauss will be used to begin to unpack the perceptual effects of striped architecture, beyond a merely intuitive response to their spatio-visual phenomena. the ambitions of this paper are three-fold. first, to examine the perceptual effects produced by the interaction of stripes and architectural form; second, to consider their perceptual effects in their interaction with architecture and space; finally and perhaps most importantly, to draw upon visual art theory to establish a conceptual groundwork and discursive vocabulary with which to describe the formal, material and visual effects of striped buildings. hence, by bringing together botta’s watari-um and krauss’ texts, the paper attempts to redress the use of stripes in architecture, and provide the means through which we may examine their effects on form, space and the viewer. it also enables a discussion on the significance of these striped effects within a broader contemporary discourse on the architectural surface. we must begin, however, by establishing a more general understanding of the visual function of stripes. interstices 14 the visual function of stripes fundamentally, stripes are conspicuous. they draw attention to themselves, and lead the viewer’s eyes across a given surface. this salience brings with it a capacity to affect the perception of both form and space, enabling stripes to reveal, to highlight and to amplify those things to which they attract our eye. at the same time, this can also be an act of concealment, as stripes obscure that from which our attention is taken.3 such illusory properties are also popularly understood. for example, the patterning of a zebra, or the “dazzle painting” on some world war i battleships, demonstrate the camouflaging, or confusion-producing, effect of stripes. similarly, illusions such as the helmholtz square are well known, and explain how horizontal and vertical stripes can cause an overestimation of a figure’s height or width respectively. figure 2 demonstrates the illusion: a appears taller than b, even though both conform to a square figure of identical size. however, such effects can be undermined, even reversed, depending on how they are used. as john vredenburgh van pelt points out, the efficacy of the helmholtz square illusion, for example, depends on the arrangement of stripes in relation to one’s reading of the overall figure that bounds the pattern (1902: 140). this might explain why, contrary to the helmholtz principle, vertical rather than horizontal stripes are commonly used to make a small room appear taller. figure 3 demonstrates van pelt’s idea, and shows how stripes that are indifferent to their support’s boundaries (here shown dashed) can form a new and independent figure with its own horizontal or vertical bias. indeed, this consonance or dissonance between the support and the striped figure appears to lie at the heart of the clarity or confusion-inducing effects of stripes. most of these effects, however, deal only with stripes on isolated, two-dimensional surfaces, and seem to demonstrate the same thing: the inherent capacity of stripes to demand our attention or deceive our eyes. on three-dimensional surfaces, the effects of stripes become more uncertain, demonstrated by the continuing popular fig. 2 helmholtz square illusion. [drawn by author, after helmholtz (1925: 193)] fig. 3 striped square figures. [drawn by author, adapted from van pelt (1902: 139)] 3 michel pastoureau comes to similar conclusions in his history of striped textiles (2003: 91). 71 conjecture on the ‘slimming’ effect of striped clothing. applied to architecture, stripes can interact with two-dimensional surfaces and three-dimensional forms in even more complex ways, and are perceived dynamically by a moving observer. it is in this context that the paper will now focus on the production of frontality and rotation. these are two significant spatial conditions that are brought to the fore by striped building surfaces. they are also two important concepts that help us to understand the visual behaviour of stripes, and to describe their material and immaterial effects on the perception of architecture. botta’s watari-um and the assertion of frontality and rotation ostensibly, stripes can enhance the expression of frontality in a given building simply by asserting the planarity of the façade. this is evident in the watari-um – botta’s first museum project – where the stripes provide a visual register of the flatness of the building surface (fig. 4). located on a tiny triangular site of just 157m², the watari-um’s five above-ground storeys face a busy street in tokyo’s shibuya district with a flat pre-cast concrete façade, striped with inlaid bands of black granite. while botta has repeatedly used stripes to secure the frontal primacy of his projects, the combination of pale concrete and dark stone on the watari-um marks it as a particularly bold example. indeed, the façade appears imposing, monumental, and much taller than its actual number of floors. harald szeemann describes the building’s surprising grandeur as a “magic act” that has transformed its small urban site with the building exhibiting an almost sacred presence (1990: 37-8). fig. 4 mario botta (1985-1990). watarium museum of contemporary art, tokyo [street view. photo: author, 2010] interstices 14 this paper contends that the visual impact of the watari-um emerges as a direct result of its stripes, which enhance the severely frontal composition through their consonance with the figure of the façade, and form an almost perfect reproduction of the helmholtz square. indeed, such an emphatic declaration of the façade seems to have been botta’s intention. beginning in october 1985, he spent some five years and 20 iterations to achieve his final design (pizzi 1998: 3) – the stripes appearing as early as the second scheme (watari 1990). writing to his client, ms shizuko watari, upon the completion of the museum, botta notes that: from the first drawings on i followed a strong and precise sign that had to resist the confusion and the contradiction of languages, styles and forms present in tokyo … the main front is axial and stretched for its maximum frontal extension (as if it were the search of a maximum wing span for a bird). (botta 1990: 8-9) at the watari-um, the use of frontality and stripes appears to be an assertion of strength and an exaggeration of scale, deployed to simultaneously confront and resist the building’s context: the façade faces the street head-on, and provides a mask to the internal workings and organisation of the gallery. it even conceals the reading of individual floors, further complicating the perception of the building’s scale. however, botta’s gallery is also of interest because of its three-dimensional rotation. this is discernible on the gently curved fire stair located to one side of the main façade, where thinner bands of black granite form an index of the contoured building surface, and differentiate the stair as an independent compositional element. here the stripes exaggerate a sense of phenomenal rotation and movement through their emphasis on curvature, obliqueness and spatial depth. this rotational condition is distinctly less aggressive than the frontality of the façade: it is subdued by the reduced scale of the stripes, but also by their inherent denial of any possible frontal view. what is important in the watari-um’s use of stripes is that they clearly demonstrate the way in which banded ornament can draw attention to both the twoand three-dimensional conditions of the architectural form. yet this is not simply a matter of the flat as opposed to the round. the concept and experience of frontality and rotation each imply much more complex spatio-visual conditions that require closer examination. frontality and rotation: concept and experience the oppositional pairing of the terms “frontality” and “rotation” appears to be have been first used by art theorist and critic, rosalind krauss, in her essay “leger, le corbusier, and purism” from 1972, although she tackled the same issues in the 1968 essay “on frontality”, where she contrasts the notion of frontality with the concept of the oblique. while neither text is about stripes, she illustrates the earlier text almost exclusively with images of striped paintings, including works by kenneth noland and frank stella composed variously of stripes, banded arcs and chevrons. while this engagement with stripes appears incidental, krauss’ writings remain central to this paper for their examination and theorisation of the spatial and phenomenological effects of frontality and rotation. it should be noted that the concepts of frontality and rotation have also been paired by other key twentieth-century architectural writers and theorists. for example, kenneth frampton used the terms in his essay “frontality and rotation” from 1975, to describe the shared compositional techniques of the new york five. in his later discussion of works by michelangelo and le corbusier, colin rowe made use of the concepts in much the same way but replaced “rotation” with the 73 term “contrapposto” (1996). the point is that the attention given to these ideas by frampton and rowe, and their use by such important figures in architectural history, highlights the broader significance of frontality and rotation for the practice of architecture, despite being largely ignored in contemporary practice, and never before addressed in relation to stripes. there are parallels that can also be drawn with other discourses on perception. these include heinrich wölfflin’s much earlier formal division of the “linear” and “painterly” – terms which parallel key aspects of krauss' “frontality” and “rotation” respectively – in his principles of art history (1932). indeed, we can borrow from wölfflin’s text to help characterise some of the formal and spatial qualities of these two terms, as well as their fundamental distinction between the concept and the experience of the twoand three-dimensional conditions of form. to summarise, the idea of frontality (“linear”) emerges not simply as a two-dimensional condition, but implies a frontal two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional form that, like an architectural elevation, enables a precise understanding of the object, is dimensionally accurate, and as we know it to be. by contrast, the concept of rotation (“painterly”) suggests a more contingent point of view that – more like a perspective drawing – provides a visual semblance to the object, which is less precise, less defined, but true to how we actually see it (wölfflin 1932). while wölfflin maintains a strict separation between architecture conceived in a linear or painterly mode, it is interesting to note that krauss, frampton and rowe each recognise the interplay of frontality and rotation within a single work of architecture. and, despite some differences, all three acknowledge the important, formative co-existence of frontality and rotation in the works of le corbusier. we will return to the significance of their juxtaposition in the case of the watari-um, but for the moment, krauss' writings, which link stripes to frontality and rotation, demand more detailed consideration. stripes, frontality and rotation of all the writers who have described the conditions of frontality and rotation, it is only krauss who—specifically in her description of a few banded paintings of the 1960s – provides a connection to stripes. in the essay “on frontality”, krauss points out that the assertion of frontality is assisted by the use of certain types of symmetry. in particular she compares the early striped chevron paintings of noland, which employed vertically symmetrical triangular forms, to his later works that used similarly striped forms but with a horizontal plane of symmetry. regarding the earlier paintings, krauss says that the balance of the left and right hand sides reinforces the latent frontality of the image, whereas the left-right imbalance of the later works undermines it. she writes: now turned sideways, the chevrons act to pivot the canvas so that the physical distance between the viewer and the right and left points of the picture’s edge appears unequal. the uncertainty about the painting’s shape which this illusion provokes seems to be a function of the horizontal axis itself. (1968: 45-46) in other words, the difference between the left and right hand sides of the painting means that we can never confirm that we are looking at the picture front-on, and the ambiguity of this view introduces a sense of movement, or rotation, towards and away from the viewer, destabilising the picture’s frontality. admittedly, the interstices 14 use of stripes in these pictures is not critical to the effects, but they do play a part in establishing and asserting the symmetry of the works. more importantly, the geometric regularity of the stripes enables us to see these symmetries more clearly; it draws attention to them, obliging the viewer to recognise the frontality of the early pictures, or its denial in the later ones. further observations on the nature of frontality and rotation are developed in krauss' discussion of architecture. regarding le corbusier’s villa roche, krauss describes the movement through the house as a careful combination of both prospect and promenade: concepts that she equates with frontality and rotation respectively. krauss writes: le corbusier insists upon the rigid frontality of all objects experienced from a distance, and further, that frontality and distance combine to allow knowledge of the real only by inference. against this he pits the separate kind of knowledge one can have of proximate space by means of rotation through it. so that, for le corbusier, the counterpoint between frontality and rotation equals the contrast between ideation and experience. (1972: 52) for krauss, this ideational nature of frontality in architecture is much like the pictorial space of a painting: it establishes an illusionistic depth that cannot be entered physically. rotation, on the other hand, is connected with spatial experience, corporeal perception and movement. likewise, in painting, krauss identifies an opposition between the illusory spatial depth of a frontal view – whether the literal depiction of space or a phenomenal sense of depth in abstract works – with the material fact of a painting’s literal surface. whereas a frontal view provides access to a fictive space, the actual materiality of the painting as a thing-in-space is more readily recognised from an oblique perspective (see krauss 1968: 42). hence, to “see” into the spatial illusion of the picture, the viewer must defeat the perception of a painting as a three-dimensional object and, instead, identify with its frontality. but striped building surfaces do not have an illusionistic depth in the sense krauss describes. if we are to maintain the idea that stripes do indeed help to establish frontality, we must also question its correlation with distance and imagistic space. thomas puttfarken’s more recent text on pictorial composition offers an alternative way to think through these issues (2000: 1-42). in particular, he critiques concepts of frontality that emerge (like krauss') from an understanding of pictures as if they were a distant scene viewed through an open window. while such scenes may take on picture-like qualities, puttfarken argues that the frontality of images on two-dimensional surfaces emerge from very different conditions. in short, he suggests that a picture’s frontality is achieved not through the perception of distance, but rather, through a fixed relationship between the elements of the picture and the picture plane itself. unlike a scene viewed through a window, this conception of surface-bound frontality is stable: it is neither lost nor changed as we move about in relation to the image (puttfarken 2000: 20-30). indeed, puttfarken likens this correlation between an image and its surface to a “façade” (24). we might therefore conclude that while distance might offer a sense, or semblance, of frontality, it is not ultimately dependent upon distance as krauss seems to suggest. this point is important to the current discussion because it reveals that the frontality of striped architectural surfaces might be similarly constructed through the correlation of stripes with the plane of the building façade. 75 stripes, directionality and the interaction of the viewer thus frontality can be achieved not only by highlighting the planarity of a surface, but also by establishing certain symmetries, obscuring the perception of materiality, and by establishing a consonance between stripes and the building surface. returning to botta’s watari-um as an example (fig. 4), the eye is attracted to the stripes which, like noland’s chevron paintings, help to establish an ideal position in front of the façade where the viewer’s plane of vision is parallel to the plane of the building. from this position, the distortions of perspective are minimised and the elevation is made symmetrical and precise. moreover, the graphic quality of the stripes draws attention to the two-dimensional figure of the building, and distracts attention from the materiality of the surface – it is not immediately apparent that the black stripes of the façade are composed not only of inlaid panels of dark granite, but also incorporate the shadowed voids of deeply recessed windows (fig. 5). such details become insignificant, and the watari-um’s layers of concrete and black stone are transformed into a two-dimensional surficial construction. moreover, while frontality is not dependent on physical distance from the building surface, krauss helps us to recognise that frontality still has a distancing “effect” at the watari-um. it produces an ideational separation that excludes the viewer, and encourages the striped façade to be perceived at a remove. indeed, botta appears to be conscious of these effects of his stripes. in a recent interview with the author he confirmed that he uses stripes to stress “the monumentality of the elevation. in the case of the watari-um in tokyo, the dark stripes … enlarge the dimensions of a small building with respect to the surrounding fabric” (botta 2012). in short, the watari-um façade is intended to be an impressive sight, not an intimate experience. the converse is true when stripes are used to amplify the rotational qualities of a given space. as it has already been argued, stripes can highlight the contour of a surface. but, stripes can also confuse the reading of the form. as krauss suggests, this ambiguity draws us closer in, and encourages us to move around the object, and to recognise its materiality and physical mass. in the case of the watari-um, the striped stair curves away from the observer, and literally leads visitors in to the building entrance. however, at siena cathedral, the stripes all but obliterate the architectural form. its stripes even overwhelm the strong axial plan by demanding the viewer’s constant attention on oblique and tangential views: the appearance of the interior shifts and changes with every movement of the observer (fig. 6). the richness and complexity of these fleeting images encourages the viewer to keep fig. 5 mario botta (1985-1990). watarium museum of contemporary art, tokyo [street view detail (left) and façade detail (right). photos: author, 2010] interstices 14 moving through the space to explore its optical possibilities. here, the capacity of stripes to assert the rotational qualities of space is most clearly illustrated – they emphasise the visual and sensual experience of form, at the expense of the clarity of that form – in stark contrast to the watari-um’s overt assertion of frontality. in this light, frontality and rotation are not simply another pair of visual effects of stripes that operate through clarifying or obscuring form, attracting or diverting attention. rather, they clarify and obscure; reveal and conceal at the same time. they might be therefore thought of as “meta-effects”, that emerge as the combined result of the range of visual phenomena produced by banded materials. what krauss' writings also make clear is that these meta-effects of frontality and rotation also have implications for the observer. as the watari-um example has demonstrated, frontality implies the orientation of an object towards the viewer, and the positioning of the viewer to meet it. it also suggests that the viewer stands before the object in a fixed position, as one might stand in front of a picture. furthermore, krauss argues a frontal view is a contemplative stance that distances the viewing subject – it is ideational and pictorial. it also has a temporal dimension: a frontalised façade compels the viewer to pause, to stand still. in the case of rotation, and as the watari-um’s fire stair and siena cathedral both demonstrate, there is no ideal position in which to stand. rather, the viewing subject is encouraged to move and explore an infinite number of possible views. the experience is phenomenal, haptic and dynamic. the use of stripes to reinforce the directionality of form, affirms that viewers must not only consider their capacity to manipulate perception of that form, but also that they exert a degree of control. the striped façade encourages and anticipates the viewer standing before, or moving about the building, according to its frontal or rotational directives, demonstrating the fundamentally interactive possibilities of striped materials. this interactivity of frontality and rotation gains even greater potential when the conditions are deployed together. while the two may not be perceived simultaneously – krauss says it is impossible to see, or to experience, both at the same time (1968: 42) – frontality and rotation can co-exist. this has already been observed in the work of le corbusier, and in the watari-um. used together, frontality and fig. 6 siena cathedral (thirteenth century) [interior detail. photo: author, 2012] 77 rotation create a theatrical play, made up of spatial tensions, formal contradictions and different temporal rhythms. importantly, this play can also choreograph movement, and articulate the journey through space with moments of pause, reflection and stillness. this is the essential lesson on frontality and rotation that krauss identifies in le corbusier’s work, arguing that: “what le corbusier demands of architectural composition is that it should acknowledge the mutual interdependence of the one on the other” (1972: 52). stripes, articulation and perceptual artifice it is clear, however, that krauss' interest in frontality and rotation is limited to the formal qualities of le corbusier’s architecture, rather than the use of ornament – such as stripes – to amplify or reinforce their presence. in conclusion, i would therefore like to move beyond krauss by speculating on the particular significance of stripes and their capacity to assert (or deny) materiality and directionality. in particular, i would argue that what emerges most strongly from the discussion of striped architecture is ultimately an idea about articulation. by this, i refer to the material and immaterial effects of stripes on architecture that articulate the appearance of form through perceptual interference, and that choreograph movement through space via the assertion and interplay of frontality and rotation. i would contend that these complex spatial and perceptual effects of stripes constitute a unique kind of ornamental condition. this might be described as “perceptual artifice” – a term with which i am attempting to name the particular type of control that stripes exert over the perception and affective phenomena of architecture. this idea builds upon the two-dimensional illusory principles of stripes, such as the helmholtz square illusion, and extends these concepts to the three-dimensional space of architecture. it also exceeds the optical limits of these illusions: perceptual artifice combines an understanding of the visual function of stripes with krauss' insights on frontality and rotation, to capture their effects on the phenomenal, dynamic and temporal experience of architectural space. the term, and concept, of perceptual artifice therefore provides us with a new tool that unlocks the possibility of rhetoric concerning the nature of stripes, bridging the gap between existing fields of knowledge in visual art theory and architectural practice. it provides us with the conceptual groundwork upon which we may build a theoretical and practical understanding of the effects of stripes on architectural form, and describe their manifestation of the material and immaterial conditions of architecture between haptic and visual sensation. perceptual artifice also exposes stripes as an a-semantic device for articulating architecture – a kind of lens through which we perceive, and therefore interact with, space. this is important for the understanding and discussion of the effects of striped buildings, such as the watari-um, but it is also relevant to much contemporary architecture. in particular, it adds to the lexicon of ideas and concepts of recent decades that are used to describe the material and immaterial conditions of the architectural surface. indeed, the surface has become a locus of design experimentation and architectural intent for many architects working today. the idea of perceptual artifice also implies a certain compositional potential for the use of stripes in architecture, through their ability to articulate, punctuate and provide structure to the viewer’s experience, movement and sensation. this too has implications beyond the use of stripes, particularly in the context of a resurgent interest in ornament and the typically decorative application of phenomena-producing materials. it also challenges the all-over patterning exhibited interstices 14 by much architecture today, which appears to shun compositional control in favour of an unrestrained deployment of sensual materiality and elaborate surface treatments. moreover, perceptual artifice obliges us to re-examine the use of compositional tools to effect interaction with users. presently, ideas about interactivity in architecture tend to focus narrowly on technological means, or are substituted for the visual gratification and material pleasure provided by the building surface. rarely does the architecture of today combine such rich visual and material experiences with the particular spatial effects of frontality, and its unique pleasures of control, articulation and exaggeration. perceptual artifice therefore returns us to these all but forgotten ideas for a performative architecture; ideas previously employed so effectively by the likes of le corbusier. it is also a timely and important reminder of the inherent and affective power of architecture that lies in the (im)material depths of its surface. references botta, m. 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(2011). façades and stripes: an account of striped façades from medieval italian churches to the architecture of mario botta. paper presented at audience: 28th annual conference of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand, brisbane. pastoureau, m. (2003). the devil’s cloth: a history of stripes (j. gladding, trans.). new york: washington square press. puttfarken, t. (2000). the discovery of pictorial composition: theories of visual order in painting 1400-1800. new haven, conn.; london: yale university press. rowe, c. (1996). the provocative façade: frontality and contrapposto. in a. caragonne (ed.), as i was saying: recollections and miscellaneous essays (pp. 171-203). cambridge, mass.: mit press. sakellaridou, i. (2001). mario botta: architectural poetics. london: thames & hudson. szeemann, h. (1990). a sounding triangle. in e. watari (ed.), mario botta: watari-um project in tokyo 1985-1990 (pp. 37-39). tokyo: watari-um. van pelt, j. v. (1902). a discussion of composition as applied to art. new york: the macmillan company. watari, e. (ed.). (1990). mario botta: watari-um project in tokyo 1985-1990. tokyo: watari-um. wölfflin, h. (1932). principles of art history: the problem of the development of style in later art (m. d. hottinger, trans.). new york: henry holt and company. interstices21_callforpapers_politicalmatters_14aug2019 call for papers interstices: journal of architecture and related arts issue 20 political matters: spatial thinking on the alternative theme editors: farzaneh haghighi (university of auckland) & nikolina bobic (university of plymouth) deadline: 9th december 2019 5:00pm political matters: spatial thinking of the alternative at a time when the western political climate is synonymous with brexit, donald trump and boris johnston, the christchurch terrorist attack, australia’s manus island detention centres, the us-mexico border and the global refugee crisis, the urgency of addressing the relationship between politics and space is more pressing than ever. to answer the question of what it means for space to be political beyond it merely being an expression of hegemonic orders, we follow hannah arendt’s celebration of political action, and her stance that political questions are far too serious to be left to politicians (1970). we draw upon chantal mouffe’s concept of agonism and the impossibility of a final reconciliation in thinking the political (2013). we acknowledge paul virilio’s thinking on negative horizon whereby perception is not just dependent upon the framing and mastering of the rhetoric of media and memory, but rather this mastery is also framed and dependent upon seeing abysses (1989, 2005, 2009). finally, we emphasise michel foucault’s reconceptualisation of power as being productive rather than oppressive (1980). to make sense of, and come to grips with, this contemporary landscape requires a detailed reflection and analysis at different levels – individual, social, cultural, environmental, technological, medical, economic or legal. comprehending the complex forms of surveillance and governance in the age of contemporaneity requires one to problematise the limits of spatial politics in the society of control (1995). indeed, it may require a different placing and questioning of ideas, events and spaces than the norm. questioning and disrupting the limits of the norm may enable frictions and generate new knowledge. this issue of interstices seeks papers that address the complexity at the nexus of architecture, urbanism, sociology, human geography and political philosophy, and focuses on the following themes: • power, memory and identity • the spectacle and the screen • housing, urban commons and the social • events, flows and public space • territories, walls and peripheries discussion on the convolutedness of control societies are also oriented towards formulating the hopeful, active and productive role space may have in the formation of social movements and in transforming everyday life – in other words, where we become active participants in the cities we live in, rather than passive designers or consumers serving the interest of market economies. it is where liberating spaces for thinking differently can thrive. likewise, it is where access to, and dwelling in, space is enabled. it is where we can engage with questions of conflict, security and territorial stability, however, not at the expense of dehumanising the other. moreover, the implication of these explorations for architectural pedagogy remains a fruitful opportunity for political agency and we encourage submissions on this topic as well. the thematic call on political matters: spatial thinking on the alternative for issue 21 of interstices: journal of architecture and related arts seeks ambitious, innovative and rigorous scholarship of 5,000-word papers. the proposed schedule is outlined below: 14th august 2019: call for 5,000-word papers issued 9th december 2019: deadline for 5,000-word paper submissions july 2020: estimated journal publication for journal submission guidelines see: https://interstices.ac.nz/index.php/interstices/style_guide for all interstices matters see: https://interstices.ac.nz/index.php/interstices reference: arendt, hannah. men in dark times. london: cape, 1970. deleuze, gilles. “postscript on control societies.” in negotiations, 177 – 181. translated by martin joughin. new york: columbia university press, 1995. foucault, michel. “truth and power.” in power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writing, 1972 – 1977, edited by colin gordon, 109-33. new york: vintage books, 1980. originally published in 1977 entitled vèritè et pouvoir. mouffe, chantal. agonistics: thinking the world politically. london: verso, 2013. virilio, paul. negative horizon: an essay on dromoscopy. translated by michael degener. london: continuum, 2005; war and cinema: the logistics of perception. translated by patrick camiller; london: verso, 1989; the aesthetics of disappearance. translated by philip beitchman. new york: semiotext(e), 2009. 51 (re) findings: discovery and memory in the architecture and legacy of surrealism michael chapman it is in discovery alone, that one recognises the marvellous headlong rush of desire. it alone can enlarge the universe, causing it to relinquish some of its opacity, letting us discover its extraordinary capacities for reserve, proportionate to the innumerable needs of the spirit. daily life abounds in exactly this sort of small discovery … you only have to know how to get along in the labyrinth. (breton 1987: 15-16) historicity, specifically the construction of images and their subsequent remembering, has a special relevance for the endeavours of dada and surrealism, two movements which sought to reconstruct the everyday through a disassembly of images and their values. the architecture of the city was an important part of this process. it was celebrated by the surrealists for its residual qualities that not only evoked historical time but spatial and lived experience more generally. while studies of architecture and surrealism have focussed, to a large extent, on the “objects” that they selected to substitute for buildings, there is an equally rich counter-current within surrealism that used memory and the found object as a strategy to dismantle the homogenising forces of modernist architecture. within this is a re-discovery of the historical trace and its power as a polemical tool in the construction of images and their dissemination. this paper investigates the role of the objet trouvé within the activities of the avant-garde, with an emphasis on the theoretical discourse that was attached to surrealism in the 1970s. the objet trouvé—literally “found object”—became a fascination for both dada and surrealism in the 1920s. both movements used the discovery of objects (and the associated psychological displacement) to challenge bourgeois conventions of the art object and contemporary expectations of lived experience. in the 1970s there was, for the first time, a dedicated discourse on avant-garde practice which set out to diagnose the specific practices of the historical avant-garde and the philosophical motivations underpinning them. if modernism was characterised by the autonomy of the artistic object in this discourse, avant-garde practices in this period were defined by the conflation of art and life in artistic production and the rejection of aesthetic categories more generally. in this sense, the avant-garde can be seen as a distinct trajectory from modernism: a fact that has been made explicit in the theoretical positions of both hilde heynen (1999) and andreas huyssen (1986), amongst others. the “discovery” of images is an important aspect of this discourse and central to the avant-garde project. there are numerous examples of the way that “images” of the city function in the reconstruction of memory. they are replete in surrealist fiction. the “tour saint jacques”, for instance, becomes the “psychological fulcrum” (krauss 1981: 33-34) in breton’s l’amour fou, where the poet’s fear of an unknown woman turns to lust. the tower also functions to trigger memories of an earlier poem that the poet had forgotten—reignited by the site and his pursuit of romance across it. interestingly, an iconic photograph by brassai records (or reconstructs) this “moment”, and was published with the text at the time. the confluence of words and images that is constructed in l’amour fou was replicated interstices 13 throughout the surrealist journals, supplementing the texts of the primary poets and artists with visual proof of the experience. one characteristic of this visual material is the continual presence of architecture and the city as the backdrop to surrealist experience and, inadvertently, the reconstruction of surrealist history. the exact nature of an architecture of the historical avant-garde remains contested, especially in relation to dada and surrealism where, despite the scholarly interest in the topic, there is a virtual consensus that architecture was not their primary concern (vesely 1978: 138). numerous authors retracing the connections between architecture and the historical avant-gardes have lamented the failure of dada and surrealism to produce architecture,1 or have focussed on architectural objects that are historically (rather than definitively) surrealist.2 as early as 1978 vesely had argued that the surrealists were “not particularly interested” (1978: 138) in architecture and by 2010 had concluded that architecture “did not become an integral part of surrealist endeavour” (2010: 31). frampton, in vesely’s edited volume on the subject, had maintained that “the surreal in architecture does not exist” (frampton 1978: 98), while thomas mical, in his later volume on the same subject, argued that architecture is the “unfulfilled promise of surrealist thought” (2005: 2). even anthony vidler conceded that “architecture did not apparently play an extensive role in surrealist concerns” (2003: 1). the surrealists’ preoccupation with the work of cheval, gaudi and even guimard has further tended to narrow investigations in this field, providing a stylistic model that the philosophical concerns of dada and surrealism can be accommodated within but without any deeper scrutiny of the architectural possibilities that lie beyond it. given this, there is a failure in the scholarship of dada and surrealism to place an appropriate emphasis on negation in avant-garde activities, especially as it relates to architecture and the construction of images. vesely acknowledges the role of negation in dada and, like many scholars of art history, sees duchamp as a pivotal figure on this path, instrumental for separating the independent trajectories of modernism and the avant-garde (1978: 88). evoking walter benjamin,3 vesely quotes breton, who identifies a “line of demarcation between the two [positive and negative] spirits that will tend to oppose one another more and more in the very heart of the modern spirit” (breton 1978: 14). however, for vesely, negation functioned in a productive capacity in surrealism, transforming the conventions of life through imagination and experience. vesely argues several decades later that: “the relation of surrealists to architecture was limited almost exclusively to the discovery of buildings and places appreciated as a result of objective chance (objet trouvé )” (2010: 40). this aspect of vesely’s argument has a particular overlap with aesthetic theories of the avant-garde, and particularly those of the frankfurt school. it is clear that the historical avant-garde already understood and articulated the psychoanalytical aspects of the objet trouvé and its transformative qualities. in 1905, freud had written in his three essays on sexuality that the “finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it” (255) and, in the 1930s, breton had compared the act of discovery to the transformative experience of the dream (1987: 32). while vesely acknowledges the role that discovery played in surrealist attitudes towards architecture, he neglects the transformative nature of this discovery, which indelibly altered the avant-gardiste work of art and shifted the emphasis onto an unprecedented spatiality in creative production. given this, it is productive to further explore the role that architecture plays within broader theories of avant-garde production, with a particular view towards the role of memory and image in the architectural fascinations of dada and surrealism. 1 the exception is kurt schwitters’ merzbau, which has attracted a large amount of scholarly interest in the last two decades, especially in relation to its avant-garde credentials. see, for instance: macarthur 2010: 283-300; burns gamard 2000; dietrich 1991: 14. 2 le corbusier’s house for beistegui or adolf loos’s house for tristan tzara are two clear examples (frampton 1978: 138; gorlin 1982: 58-60). 3 benjamin’s quote from passagenwerk linking breton and le corbusier captured this: “to embrace breton and le corbusier … would be to draw the spirit of contemporary france like a bow which strikes with knowledge to the heart of the present.” (benjamin quoted in vidler 1992: 151; vidler 2003: 12.) 53 theories of the avant-garde peter bürger’s argument in theory of the avant-garde (1984) has not attained much traction in the scholarship of architectural history, despite its ready adaptability to architecture. despite this, bürger’s short work is instructive for the scholarship of architectural history as it promotes an investigation of the historical categories of architectural production, rather than the aesthetic categories of architectural form. if, as bürger asserts, the avant-gardiste work of art negated the aesthetic “production” of art, then it followed that the avant-gardiste work of architecture was, similarly, not linked to the production of architecture but to its rediscovery or negation. as the avant-garde discovered the objet trouvé and presented it as an affront to bourgeois aesthetics, dada and surrealism drew upon a forgotten architecture, which was repackaged as an affront to the aesthetics of modernism, retaining the baggage of the nineteenth century, while simultaneously reconnecting the avant-garde with the experiential stimulation that they craved.4 bürger had a particular fascination with surrealism. while his book is relatively brief, bürger cites the works of marcel duchamp, the collages of early berlin dada and the evolution of montage through the lens of surrealism as the primary evidence in support of his theory. of the limited illustrated examples in theory of the avant-garde, dada and surrealism (including duchamp, magritte and heartfield) account for half. while bürger reads surrealism primarily through the genre of surrealist fiction,5 there is an emphasis on the objet trouvé that permeates his work and analysis. this is also a recurring theme in the english language reception of bürger’s work, and especially in the investigations of the octoberist critics. architectural space is a perennial theme within this, as the dissolution of medium is made to intersect with a cultural “spatiality” that characterises the most recent reworkings of dada and surrealist practice. rosalind krauss, for instance, has argued for a spatiality in the work of duchamp which is antivisual in nature (1994) and hal foster has drawn attention to the outmoded as a spatial model through which to reposition surrealist practice (1995: 157-191; 2002a: 195-196; 2002b: 138-139). in both readings, architecture exists as a found context against which creative acts and works are projected and reconstructed. as early as 1929 walter benjamin had argued that surrealism was an avant-garde not of the new, but of the old, radically repositioning the outmoded objects of everyday life in opposition to technology and the rampant consumer fetishism that absorbed increasing percentages of the visual landscape (1978: 192). for benjamin, architecture—understood primarily through the work of giedion (1995)—was a critical but overlooked aspect of surrealism that had been instrumental in articulating its radicalised relationship with history (see mertins 1999: 196-221). giedion (1995) returned to this theme after benjamin’s death and, in his postwar discussion of the collages of ernst (whom he knew personally), giedion concluded that: “drops from the nineteenth century flowed in his veins” (1969: 361). this outmoded revolutionary “nihilism” is a significant theme in the work of bürger who demonstrates that adorno’s (1997) theory of modern art has an overdependence on the category of the new.6 historically, as in the case of greenberg (1971),7 the new was entwined with the concerns of the avant-garde and central to its definition and interpretation. negating the influence or value of the outmoded, adorno’s 1956 essay on surrealism had argued that it was “paradoxical for something modern, already under the spell of … mass-production, to have any history at all” (1991: 88). for bürger, however, the new was not a characteristic of modernism but a prerequisite of all historical epochs. and it was of little use in explaining the tactics of the historical avant-garde as they were radically outside of the established 4 in this regard, jane allison (2010: 21) refers to a maison trouvée as a surrealist trope. 5 focussing primarily on the literary works of early surrealism, bürger’s prior book (from 1971) is, four decades later, still awaiting translation into english (bürger 1971). subsequent works by bürger have addressed surrealism and dada directly and with some authority (1985-86; 1992; 2002). 6 bürger is primarily concerned with the passage at the start of aesthetic theory where adorno explains the new as a dialectical opposition to tradition (adorno 1997: 45). in an extended analysis of adorno’s theory in relationship to the avant-garde, peter osborne (1989: 23-48) has argued that adorno constructs a theory of modernism divided between dissonance and the new. 7 see, for instance, the contemporaneous “counter avant-garde” (greenberg 1971: 1619). the focus of both greenberg and michael fried (1982: 217-234) was “presentness” which was indelibly entwined with the new. interstices 13 traditions against which the new could be evaluated. poggioli makes a similar argument, several years earlier than bürger. in the final section of his own theory of the avant-garde, poggioli argues that: “[w]hat characterises avant-garde art is the myth of the new … there is no great difference in the concrete concept that the ancients and the moderns have of the new; but there is an enormous difference in their respective evaluations of it” (1968: 214). pre-empting bürger’s position, poggioli concludes that: “nothing is more new and modern than the modern cult of the new” (214). by placing unprecedented importance on the sublation of art and life as an avantgardiste preoccupation, bürger inadvertently provides the dialectic through which a theory of architecture in the historical avant-garde can be established. architecture, as the predominant frame of social praxis, is connected to art not as art, but as a fragment of reality that becomes a recurring strategy of both freedom and constraint. the dada assault on the institution of art was not simply a critique of aesthetic production, but an exhibition of the architecture in which art was displayed, as well as its spatial operations and prejudices. architecture was interrogated for its attached “bourgeois” values in some contexts as much as for its social and functional symbolism in others. the systematic negations of dada and surrealism challenged the autonomy of the architectural object but at the same time embraced the experiential and symbolic characteristics of nineteenth-century commerce, allowing habermas to argue that the sublation of art and life that the avant-garde intended was ultimately ineffective due to the limited sphere in which its influence was felt. referencing the work of bürger, habermas asks whether the “failure of the surrealist rebellion” is symptomatic of a “farewell to modernity” and equally a transition towards postmodernity (1981: 11). the work of habermas is centred around a basic faith in the idea and implementation of modernism and the modern project, characterised by the articulation of independent spheres—science, art and morality—which are, for the first time, isolated and “autonomous”. in habermas’s critique (1981: 11), he argues that the activities of the avant-garde, while radical, were only ever directed at one of these spheres—the sphere of art—and as a result their impact would never amount to a universal collapse, but purely to the collapse of this one distinct field. this is contrary to the way that the surrealists saw their activities, especially in regard to architecture and the city. architecture and life the argument presented here is that for the surrealists, architecture functioned as a contextual backdrop to the praxis of life. operating outside the concerns of both aesthetics and the institution of art, architectural space was deployed for its oppositional relationship to these categories and primarily in the visual frameworks of collage, montage, film and photography. there is no doubt that these categories – defined to a large extent by the stewardship of breton and formalised in the scholarship of both vesely and bürger – are contested and imply an artificial harmony to the highly diverse activities of the avant-garde. current scholarship, however, under-appreciates how architecture functions as a recurring motif in all these activities. throughout the avant-garde’s broad range of aesthetic production, architecture appears as an objet trouvé, used selectively (but strategically) to reconnect aesthetic practices with life processes. the emergence of these techniques, in the years immediately after the first world war, provides a critical moment in framing a theory of architecture within the avant-garde. this is indelibly entwined with the cultural history of the image. 55 bürger’s writing on the tactics of dada and surrealism (1984: 109n) places a specific emphasis on the time period that spans between the origins of dada (primarily in the readymades of duchamp) and the migration to early surrealism as the period in which the claims of avant-gardism were first formulated and pursued. this timeframe – characterised by the emergence of distinctive avant-garde techniques and especially those of collage and montage – was one of productive invention where the traditional strategies of artistic production were radically challenged.8 contained in an extended footnote, bürger provides an important passage that synthesises his theory and the extent to which dada and surrealism are the principle examples of it. bürger writes: the concept of the historical avant-garde movements used here applies primarily to dadaism and early surrealism … a common feature of … these movements is that they do not reject individual artistic techniques and procedures of earlier art but reject that art, in its entirety, thus bringing about a radical break with tradition. in their most extreme manifestations, their primary target is art as an institution as such as it has developed in bourgeois society. (1984: 109n) vesely, on the contrary, denies the relevance of the “avant-garde” period of surrealism in architecture, arguing that “surrealism does not begin in 1919 or 1924, but much earlier, in the romanticism of the nineteenth century and, to some extent, even earlier in the esoteric hermetic traditions of the renaissance” (1978: 89). for vesely, surrealism needs to be considered outside of the doctrines that were produced by “surrealism” and its most prominent members9 and be regarded as a philosophical and psychological strategy for seeing the world, rather than a specified historical phenomenon. vesely argues that: … attempts to reduce surrealism to a set of principles and goals—such as automatism, objective chance, transformation of the world and life—do not reveal the primary goal of the movement: to reach an absolute point of reconciliation of dream and reality. (1978: 87) at stake is the schism between the aesthetic direction of breton (towards a tightly defined and strategically aligned movement) and the divergent directions of its individual members which challenged all forms of overriding theoretical dogma. despite this, vesely sees the relationship between dada and surrealism as part of a historical framework, whereby the negative tactics of dada were transformed, through surrealism, into positive affirmations of life. for vesely, the nihilistic tendencies of dada, which figure centrally in the dialectical approach of bürger,10 predate the primary concerns of surrealism and are disconnected from the real world and the experience of life that structured much of surrealist doctrine. this is antithetical to bürger’s reading, which sees the negation of art process in dada as the direct conflation of art and life (and the origins of avant-garde radicalism). as both authors acknowledge, there is a tension between the discourse of the 1920s and its often accidental and frequently conflicting practices. arguing for surrealism as a sublation of dream and reality, vesely contends that architecture was not a primary concern of dada and surrealism as it was “so much embedded in every-day life” (1978: 91). vesely observes that “reality was always a bitter encounter for the surrealists” and that, while the mediums of poetry or painting could achieve this sublation in the viewer’s consciousness, architecture was unable to transcend its status in the real world, marginalising its relevance as a disciplinary activity. however, this neglects the fact that architecture was 8 dada and surrealism are, by nature, difficult historical paradigms. a number of the historiographical issues in relationship to surrealism are central to recent scholarship (baker 2007: 25-64). 9 the capitalisation here refers to the surrealism movement, officially led by andré breton and whose membership is restricted to the signatories to the various manifestoes of surrealism. 10 bürger (1984: 22, 53, 56) evokes dada as the most extreme manifestation of the avantgarde on a number of occasions. interstices 13 a powerful and recurring “dream-image” within surrealism and it provided an important and structural role in organising the visual fantasies of the key proponents. this is far more significant than any of the built structures which are the legacy of much of the scholarship in the field. while accepting the formative emphasis that vesely places on reality in dada and surrealism, there are a number of aspects of this position that are underdeveloped. by focussing on architecture as a solitary medium—independent of drawing, painting, the readymade or literature—vesely imbues architecture with a privileged (built) status that was far from representative of the merging of experimental strategies in the period or, for that matter, the evolution of visual techniques where architecture was fundamentally entwined. in this sense, bürger’s work is critical, as it not only stresses the dissolution of autonomous techniques (and their merging into hybrid and fragmented forms of each other) but it also proselytises the sublation of art and life through the avant-gardiste work of art, demonstrating that “reality” and “functionalism” were specific strategies of the avant-garde assault on bourgeois aesthetic conventions.11 while vesely is sceptical about the role of architecture in the formation of explicitly avant-garde aesthetic strategies, he does illustrate the importance of the readymade object to the historical relationship between architecture and surrealism. vesely demonstrates that the readymade provided a bridge between the negations of dada and their positive redemption in the surrealist object and functioned as “[a reminder] of the link which once existed between the spirit of dada and surrealism, between negation and [the] positive exploration of the new” (1978: 89). as may be clear, vesely’s emphasis on the exploration of the new as a surrealist strategy for overcoming the nihilism of dada is not without its problems. the category of the new, as bürger concludes, is both “too general and nonspecific” (1984: 63) and ties interpretation to a particular development of technical ability that is counterproductive in relationship to dada and surrealism specifically, and art history at large. however, it is not just the dialectical relationship between old/new (dada/surrealism) that is problematic but the attempt by vesely to redeem surrealist practices in the name of the new. new architecture was subjected to continual ridicule by the surrealists, especially by breton and dali. breton had famously listed contemporary architecture as the most ineffective of the creative practices and refers to modern architecture as “the most violent and cruel automatism” (1972: 259).12 at no point was this “a positive exploration of the new”. if the theoretical discourse of surrealism and its associated artistic production were frequently misaligned, they operated in unison on this issue. while vesely is aware of this ancestry, what he considers the “exploration of the new” was in fact an exploration of the old because, as vesely is also aware, it was historical and ruined architectures that became the primary inspiration for surrealism and the source of much of its imagery. however, there is also a deeper distinction that needs to be made and one that is critical to the relationship between architecture and the avant-garde. although the strategies that are associated with the avant-garde are historically tied to the first decades of the twentieth century, they are distinct from the history of modernism and frequently a negation of modernism itself.13 the historical characteristics of modernism emerge in the wake of the enlightenment and it is customary to associate the project of modernity (to employ habermas’s terminology)14 with a series of transformations that first began in the closing decades of the eighteenth century. the avant-garde, by contrast, occupies a much tighter historical focus and, more significantly, has its own internal historical forces that, while overlapping with the historical 11 after diagnosing the avant-garde tendency to conflate art and life, bürger (1984: 50) also articulates the dangers of this process, including the loss of criticality that art assumes with the collapse of its autonomy. 12 a famous example occurs in breton’s “surrealist situation of the object” (1972: 259). dali also launched a reclamation of art nouveau architecture in opposition to modernism (fanés 2007: 90-91; 162-164). 13 the emphasis on bataille in contemporary readings of surrealism is testament to this. his anachronistic position, celebrated disproportionately in french poststructuralism and american critical theory, is as much a critique of modernism as a radical attack on morality (spiteri 2009: 1-27; sulieman 1994: 61-79. 14 first raised in his influential “modernity: an unfinished project” (translated as “modernity and postmodernity”), the paper has been the source of ongoing debates concerning modernism and the avant-garde (passerin d’entréves & ben-habin 1997; bürger 1985-1986: 5-33). 57 development of modernism, are essentially unique.15 in this regard, the emphasis that bürger and adorno place on negation is significant, defining the extent to which avant-garde practice is differentiated from modernism (calinescu 1977: 140). in architecture, in particular, there is evidence of an alternate consciousness to history outside of the hegemonic structures of academic scholarship, which reveals a deep-seated relationship to avant-garde practice. it is with this “historical consciousness” in mind that an expanded critical framework binding architecture and the historical avant-garde can be constructed. despite being generally opposed to the inclusion of negation as a strategy of surrealism,16 vesely does hint at the prospect of architecture operating as an objet trouvé in surrealist practice, shifting concerns away from the production of architectural form and towards the creative reappropriation of its fragments. it is this aspect of vesely’s historicisation of dada and surrealism that, when framed in regard to bürger’s theorisation of the avant-gardist work of art, forms an important trajectory in architectural history particularly in regard to the mechanics of memory and discovery. given this, the experimental period of dada and surrealism that vesely dismisses (1912-1924) is of primary importance, as it is in the discovery of the strategies of the readymade, collage, montage, drawing and photography, that the role of architecture becomes explicit as a central concern of avant-garde activity. through the construction of highly-structured and deliberate spatial practices, surrealism developed a radicalised architecture to connect the visual and the lived. it is with an understanding of the importance of this transformation that the historical relationship between dada, surrealism and architecture can be recast. 15 one of the primary limitations of poggioli’s theorising of the avant-garde is its inability to apply a more precise differentiation between the broad history of modernism and the narrow moment of the historical avant-garde. for a critique of this, see jochen schulte-sasse’s “theory of modernism versus theory of the avant-garde” (1984: vii-xv). 16 again dispelling the nihilism of dada, vesely argues that “surrealism, unlike dada, exploited the results of negation for its own positive goals, developing and cultivating the technique of surprise and bewilderment toward [the] surrealist crisis of the object” (1978: 91). interstices 13 references adorno, t. (1991). looking back on surrealism (r. tiedemann & s. weber nicholsen, trans.). in notes to literature (pp. 86-90). new york, n. y.: columbia university press. adorno, t. (1997). aesthetic theory. (r. hullot-kentor, trans.). minneapolis: the minnesota university press. allison, j. (2010). the surreal house. new haven, ct: yale university press. baker, s. (2007). surrealism, history, revolution. bern: peter lang. benjamin, w. (1978). reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings (e. jephcott, trans.). new york, n.y.: schocken books. breton, a. (1978). what is surrealism?: selected writings (f. rosemount, trans.). london, united kingdom: pluto press. breton, a. (1987). mad love [l’amour fou] (m. a. caws, trans). nebraska: the university of nebraska press. breton, a. (1972). manifestoes of surrealism (r. seaver & h. lane, trans.). ann arbor: university of michigan. bürger, p. (1992). the decline of modernism. university park: the pennsylvania state university press. bürger, p. (1971). der französische surrealismus: studien zum problem der avant-gardistischen literatur. frankfurt am main: athenaum. bürger, p. (1981). the significance of the avant-garde for contemporary aesthetics: a reply to jurgen habermas. (a. huyssen and j. zipes, trans). new german critique, 22 (winter), 19-22. bürger, p. (1985-1986). the institution of ‘art’ as a category in the sociology of literature. cultural critique, 2 (winter), 5-33. bürger, p. (1990). aporias of modern aesthetics (b. morgan, trans.). new left review, 1 (184, november-december), 47-57. bürger, p. (2002). the thinking of the master: bataille between hegel and surrealism (r. block, trans). evanston, ill: northwestern university press. bürger, p. (1974). theory of the avant-garde (m. shaw, trans.). minneapolis: minnesota press. burns gamard, e. (2000). kurt schwitters’ merzbau. new york, n.y.: princeton architectural press. calinescu, m. (1977). faces of modernity: avant-garde, decadence, kitsch. bloomington: indiana university press. dietrich, d. (1991). the fragment reframed: kurt schwitters’ merz-column. assemblage, 14 (april), 82-92. fanés, f. (2007). salvador dali: the construction of the image, 1925-1930. new haven, ct.: yale university press. foster, h. (1993). compulsive beauty. cambridge, massachusetts: the mit press. foster, h. (2002a). the abc of contemporary design. october, 100 (spring), 191-199. foster, h. (2002b) design and crime and other diatribes. london: verso. frampton, k. (1978). has the proletariat no use for a glider. architectural design profile: surrealism and architecture, 11, 2-3, 96-100. freud, s (1905). three essays on the theory of sexuality. in standard edition of the complete works of sigmund freud, 7 (j. strachey, trans.). london: hogarth press. fried, m. (1982). how modernism works: a response to t. j. clark. critical inquiry, 9 (september), 217-234. giedion, s. (1969). mechanisation takes command: a contribution to anonymous history. new york, n.y.: w. w. norton company. giedion, s. (1995). building in france: building in iron—building in ferro-concrete (j. duncan berry, trans.). los angeles, ca.: the getty centre for the study of art and the humanities. gorlin, a. (1982). the ghost in the machine: surrealism in the work of le corbusier. perspecta, 18, 58-60. greenberg, c. (1971). counter avant-garde. art international, 15 (may), 16-19. habermas, j. (1981). modernity versus postmodernity (s. ben-habib, trans.). new german critique, 22 (winter), 3-14. habermas, j. (1975) legitimation crisis (t. mccarthy, trans). boston, mass.: beacon press. harvey, d. (1990). the condition of postmodernity. london: blackwell. hecht, b. (1987). dadafest. in m. gordon (ed), dada performance (80-81). new york, n.y.: paj publications. 59 heynen, h. (1999). what belongs to architecture? avant-garde ideas in the modern movement. journal of architecture, 4 (summer), 143. huelsenbeck, r. (1987). a visit to the cabaret dada. in m. gordon (ed), dada performance (pp. 83-85). new york, n.y.: paj publications. huyssen, a. (1986) after the great divide: modernism, mass culture, postmodernism. bloomington: indiana university press. krauss, r. (1981). nightwalkers. art journal, 41, 1, 33-34. krauss, r. (1994). the optical unconscious. cambridge, mass.: the mit press. macarthur, j. (2010). schwitters and benjamin: the modernity of the baroque and romanticism. the journal of architecture, 15, 3, 283-300. mertins, d. (1999). walter benjamin and the tectonic unconscious: using architecture as an optical instrument. in a. coles (ed.), the optic of walter benjamin (pp. 196-221). london: black dog publishing. mical, t. (ed.). (2005). surrealism and architecture. london: routledge. osborne, p. (1989). adorno and the metaphysics of modernism: the problem of a postmodern art. in a. benjamin (ed.), the problems of modernity: adorno and benjamin (pp. 23-48). london: routledge. passerin d’entrèves, m. & benhabib, s. (eds.) (1997). habermas and the unfinished project of modernity: critical essays on the philosophical discourse of modernity. cambridge, mass.: the mit press. poggioli, r. (1968). the theory of the avant-garde. cambridge, mass.: belknap press. schulte-sasse, j. (1984). theory of modernism versus theory of the avant-garde. in p. bürger, theory of the avant-garde (vii-xv). minneapolis: minnesota press. spiteri, r. (2009). georges bataille and the limits of modernism. melbourne art journal, 4, 1-27. sulieman, s. r. (1994). bataille in the street: the search for virility in the 1930s. critical inquiry, 21(1), 61-79. vesely, d. (1978). salvador dali: on architecture. architectural design profile: surrealism and architecture, 11, 2-3, 138. vesely, d. (2010). the surrealist house as a labyrinth and metaphor of creativity. in j. allison (ed.), the surreal house (pp. 34-41). new haven, ct.: yale university press. vidler, a. (1992). the architectural uncanny. cambridge, mass.: the mit press. vidler, a. (2003). fantasy, the uncanny and surrealist theories of architecture. papers of surrealism, 1 (winter), 1-12. interstices 15 92 the theory of atmospheres and its applications gernot böhme translated by a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul 1. theory a. origins it might be of interest to know how i started to grant atmospheres a systematic significance. it was in the context of my critique of ecology (böhme 1989/1999). ecology emerged as a science, at least in germany, as a response to the need to engage with environmental problems, and it was tasked with providing solutions. although interest in it was therefore from the outset determined by the context of human life, ecological theory (drawing on older approaches like ernst haeckel’s) was developed exclusively in the natural sciences. the insights gained from this approach are no doubt very important; they also amount to a correction of traditional biology’s focus on the individual organism. considering organisms in the context of their symbioses and their biological and climatic conditions (and, from there, progressively the interplay of many organisms in a region – that is, the ecosystem) was an important scientific advance. however – and that was our critique1 – approaches emanating purely from the natural sciences are insufficient when the human environment (umwelt) is at issue, and the concept of ecosystem might even be misleading. for the parts of nature put in question in that instance are not determined by natural boundaries like ecosystems alone; rather, they are delineated by social and political boundaries, particularly by property boundaries. further, those parts of nature (we ended up calling them ecological fabrics, ökologische gefüge, see böhme & schramm 1985) are not, or not only, determined by natural, that is bodily, reproduction and systemic goals arising in natural sequence, but by social and particularly economic ideas about what the respective part of nature is supposed to be: arable land, a park or recreational landscape. it follows, then, that the scientific consideration of human environments cannot rely solely on the categories of the natural sciences but must also involve concepts from the humanities. particularly interesting in our present context is the fact that aesthetic categories apply when dealing with human environments. by aesthetic categories, i mean everything that arises from the sensory presence of humans in their environment. in this context, the issue is no longer simply whether an environment is acceptable to humans because it accommodates the life of human organisms but also how one is in a respective environment, whether one feels comfortable or not.2 i have introduced the concept of atmosphere (atmosphäre, see böhme 1989/1999) to designate that which mediates the objective qualities of an environment with the bodily-sensual states of a person in this environment; the environment in its entirety generates an atmosphere in which i, as a human, feel in one way or another. in german, the word befinden expresses this well: in my state (befinden) i sense in which environment i am located (ich mich befinde). the concept of atmosphere is, according to this etymology, a concept concerning the in-between (zwischen): between objective conditions and subjective states, between object and subject. in the context of developing an ecological aesthetic of nature, the introduction of the concept of atmosphere is part of wider philosophical and scientific developments. thus, hermann schmitz (1964) advances a interstices 15 93 phenomenology of atmospheres as part of his theory of perception within new phenomenology.3 for schmitz, atmospheres are quasi-objective sentiments. they involve spatially extended, pathetic powers that remain undetermined. since schmitz, for his part, builds on rudolf otto’s studies of the numinous (1917/2004), the experience of atmospheres is dominant in his thinking; the question is how we can speak of an aesthetic theory of atmospheres when he is concerned with an aesthetics of reception. in a scientific context, the concept of atmosphere occurs first in psychiatrist hubert tellenbach’s book geschmack und atmosphäre (taste and atmosphere, 1968). the term taste generally refers to oral phenomena but tellenbach is, in fact, primarily interested in olfactory atmospheres. his paradigm is nest odour (nestgeruch ), a smell that conveys to organisms, humans included, a feeling of comfort and wellbeing. b) the term atmosphere originally, though, the term atmosphere was coined in meteorology to denote the upper mantle of air. its metaphoric use, designating mood conveying spaces, goes back to the eighteenth century. the metaphorical transition from meteorology to a theory of feeling is mediated in the common idea that weather conditions can induce certain states of mind, as when a looming thunderstorm brings with it an agitated mood (böhme 2003b). after more than 200 years of language development, the term atmosphere is so well established, in almost all european languages, to describe spatially extended moods that it is hardly recognised as a metaphor any longer and its meteorological background is almost forgotten. from this discussion of the term and concept of atmosphere follows an initial definition: atmospheres are attuned spaces. this immediately denotes their in-between status. we are dealing here with quasi-objective sentiments, with feelings that are suspended in the air. while one might be generally inclined to regard feelings as something purely subjective, internal to the soul, atmosphere is, by contrast, something external and thereby accessible to many subjects: one can argue about the atmosphere that prevails in a space. and if one is further accustomed to regard feelings as something non-spatial and even non-localisable, atmospheres are essentially spatial; more precisely, they are spaces pregnant with a mood. it follows from these characteristics of atmospheres – namely, that they are quasi-objective and spatially extended feelings – that one can apprehend atmospheres only by entering the respective spaces. this inference also gives a hint about how one can recognise atmospheres: the basic modes are ingression and discrepancy. ingression refers to entering a space (be it a building or a landscape) and recognising at the threshold what mood wafts from it. discrepancy refers to the fact that one explicitly notices atmospheres in their character when (or, particularly when) one is already immersed in a mood which is different from that wafting from the space. one is, of course, always already in spaces, and one therefore also always already participates in their mood character – as is the case, for example, with the nest odour of one’s own dwelling. it is just that, then, one does not notice the atmosphere, precisely because of its ordinariness, even though one’s own mood is influenced by it. the mood character of a space becomes explicit in the modes of ingression and discrepancy because it is surprisingly new and unexpected. thus, we have explicated the ways in which atmospheres are recognised by their characteristics. the character of an atmosphere is the mood into which i tend to be drawn when i expose myself to it: a bright valley tends to make me feel cheerful; a magnificent hall tends to put me into a festive mood; the atmosphere of a company of mourners can move me to tears. the characteristics of atmospheres can be ordered into five main groups: first, moods in their narrow sense, like serious, cheerful, interstices 15 94 melancholic. second, synaesthesia, that is, states like cold, warm, soft, hard. they are called synaesthesia because they can be produced by different sensory qualities in an environment. thus, a room can appear cool because it is entirely painted blue, or is clinically sterile, or is completely tiled, or else has a low room temperature. a third group of characteristics are suggestive of movement, such as wide, narrow, uplifting, oppressive. here, the geometrical forms and distributions of volumes in space, above all, make such conditions palpable. a fourth group consists of intersubjective atmospheres: a certain atmosphere always arises in the encounter of two persons, even before any conversation begins, as its background. these atmospheres are determined by a “first impression”, that is by the physiognomy of a person, her or his height, volume, etc. lastly, i want to mention conventional characteristics, such as elegant, petit bourgeois, poor, rich. they are generated by objects and symbols whose emanation is culturally conditioned. this may concern already the sensual moral effect (sinnlich-sittliche wirkung) of colours, according to johann w. von goethe (2012), but it applies equally to the use of materials and, finally, symbols more specifically, for instance, christian symbols. and with that, we have already touched on the last, and most important point for this theory, namely, that atmospheres can be produced, and that it is possible to identify generators of atmospheres with specific characteristics. this view of atmospheres starts, in contrast to the earlier ones discussed above (which considered atmospheres from the perspective of aesthetics of reception), from an aesthetics of production. the fact that one can produce atmospheres, and that there is also a body of knowledge concerning how one can do that, turns the art of the stage set into a paradigm that can, or even must, orient any theory of atmospheres. scenographers have always known how to generate in a performance space an atmosphere (which they often call klima, climate) that, on one hand, attunes the audience to the events to come and, on the other, provides the actors with a resonant ground for their performance. the art of the stage set teaches us to appreciate objects and qualities, less with respect to their characteristics, than with respect to their emanation into space, namely their ecstases (böhme 1993). further, as particularly the developments in scenography since approximately 1900 have shown, the most important generators contributing to the realisation of atmospheres are light and sound, that is, more specifically: music and illumination. 2. applications a) scenography not only is scenographic art an historical paradigm for the theory of atmospheres, it also demonstrates concretely that atmospheres can be produced and, further, that what they produce (namely, a certain mood pervading the performance space, the so-called klima) is something quasi-objective or, better, intersubjective. for if everyone in the auditorium perceived the atmosphere on stage in a different way, the whole of scenography would be meaningless. another historical paradigm relevant to contemporary scenography, aside from the stage, builds on the same intersubjective qualities of atmospheres: garden and landscape art. one could even interpret garden art, and particularly that of the english garden, as the first application of a theory of atmospheres. in his five-volume theorie der gartenkunst (theory of garden art, 1779-85), christian c. l. hirschfeld portrayed his subject as a practice using very specific means to create scenes in a park or garden. the term scenes indicates that scenography serves hirschfeld as a model for garden art: namely, to create garden areas as scenes with a specific character, such as cheerful, serious, gentle, melancholic, heroic. thus, he allocates moods to scenic arrangements and emphasises that the use value (if one can call it that) of the english garden lies in its provision of places that provide resonance chambers for one’s own moods. important in this context, as in scenography generally, is his production interstices 15 95 aesthetics approach: hirschfeld explains in detail how a natural scene can be given a characteristic mood through the use of certain plants, trees, water courses, light angles, sounds and so on. garden art, then, is a first application of a more general scenography. another is the political sphere. the staging of politics, too, has a long tradition in which one has to include at least the court rituals since the renaissance. during the baroque period, in particular, politics were staged like theatre. for our purposes, though, it only gets serious in more recent times, with the aestheticisation of politics criticised by walter benjamin in his 1936 essay the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (1969). benjamin focused predominantly on the fascists’ parades and mass assemblies, but his critique was equally aimed at the mega events and mass rallies of soviet socialism. in democratic states, too, politics has turned theatrical, due particularly to the mass media’s central role. here, the production of images and scenes is part of politics itself, rather than simply serving as information about politics. so much for theatre, garden art and politics. meanwhile, however, scenographic art has expanded to include the staging of almost all areas of life. this obviously applies to large sports events, like the olympics and the soccer world cup, and to music events and discos. however, scenography has also long since reached museums and exhibitions. in these contexts, it is no longer just a matter of showing objects and art works to an audience but, rather, of stage-managing them. the issue is, then, the how of representation. b) commodity aesthetics benjamin pointed out that commodities were already as stage-managed as in a theatre, in nineteenth-century world exhibitions and the architecture of parisian arcades around 1900: the window display as stage-space. around 1970, an explicit commodity aesthetics began to take shape on the background of benjamin’s earlier investigations in the fragments of his arcades work (benjamin 1999). wolfgang fritz haug, in particular, demonstrated in his book kritik der warenästhetik (critique of commodity aesthetics, 1972) that, under conditions of increased capitalist competition, commodities appear in a getup designed to render them attractive in a sales context; they also imply, though, a promise of use value that far exceeds their real use value and that is therefore illusory. today, we have advanced far beyond these beginnings of a critique of commodity aesthetics, along with the enormous expansion undergone by commodity aesthetics itself. the most remarkable dimension of this expansion is the spread of commodity aesthetics beyond its point of origin, the market, to take hold of the productive sector. there are cases where production itself is stage-managed and thereby comes under the sway of aesthetic imperatives. the main example would have to be the transparent factory (gläserne manufaktur) in dresden. here, in the so-called great garden (a baroque garden, it should be recalled), volkswagen have built a plant for the final assembly of their model phaeton. before the eyes of the visitors, who follow the process from behind the glass partitions of the integrated restaurant, the production of motor vehicles takes place as an aesthetic performance: the factory floor of parquet, the workers in white suits and kid gloves, the interplay between conveyor belt, workers and the silently gliding carts for tools and parts … a polonaise. at the other end of the spectrum, commodity aesthetics expand – and this may be even more significant than their penetration of the sphere of production – into consumption. while it was once possible to distinguish, with marx, two values in the commodity, namely the use value and the exchange value, more recently, and in the wake of the expansion of commodity aesthetics into the use context, a third value has taken shape, which i have called stage value (inszenierungswert, see böhme 2003a). for it is no longer the case that the commodities one has purchased are either consumed or used instrumentally in some work or circulation context; rather, they now serve, for the interstices 15 96 most part, as furnishings for life and as props for the stage-management of a particular lifestyle. the aesthetic value of a commodity, which in an exchange context initially served the realisation of its exchange value, is now also significant in the context of use. whereas haug still believed that, post-purchase, the commodity is divested of its exchange value along with its packaging, as it were, we can say that, in our current contexts of use, the aesthetic appearance of a commodity is decisive; that is to say, its aesthetic appearance creates, in a sense, a new use value. we, the consumers, stage ourselves (or our lives) via commodities. in the process, commodities not only serve as status symbols (as was believed in an earlier phase) – they do that, too, of course – rather, with their help, the consuming individuals endeavour to position themselves properly in the limelight (mahayni 2014, forthcoming). c) advertising, marketing the stage-management of commodities, already observed by benjamin, has fundamentally altered advertising and marketing strategies since approximately 1900. whereas then, and for some decades thereafter, the advertisement for a commodity always highlighted the solidity of its production and material, along with its usefulness or use value, we can see today that individual commodities normally no longer appear separately in commercials and advertisements but, rather, only as components of a scene. thus, it takes some effort to discover in a commercial representing a picnic or travel scene the vuitton bag, which is the object of the advertisement. likewise, one discovers almost in passing – as an ingredient, as it were – the beer bottle in a sailor’s hand during an animated and adventurous yachting scene, an advertisement for becks beer. this type of advertising invokes the idea that consumers do not simply acquire an object they want to use when they purchase a commodity, or a substance providing nourishment; rather, in buying this commodity, they want to align themselves with a particular group or social stratum, or distinguish themselves from other groups or individuals (böhme 2008). what is presented in this type of advertising is the commodity’s stage value, completely irrespective of its use value. and the staging is not simply about consumption: it concerns the contribution of consumer goods to the production of a particular living atmosphere. d) art the staging of art works, too, is an application of the aesthetic theory of atmospheres – i have already mentioned this. from this perspective, though, a new way of looking at art arises. thus, the 1995 exhibition das bild und sein rahmen (the image and its frame) in amsterdam represented a critical pointer to the way in which established art history traditionally pretended that it was possible to consider the art work in itself (mendgen 1995). this assumption was not only held in the discipline of art history itself, of course; it was applied to reproductions of art works in books or during lectures where, as a rule, the naked art works were displayed. meanwhile, though, the influence of an aesthetic of atmospheres has expanded, and this has led to a relativization of conventional modes of accessing art works, through semiotics or hermeneutics. the latter always endeavoured to find meaning or intent in a work of art: singular elements within an image or the image as a whole refer, according to this mode of access, to something else, namely the meaning. hermeneutics is intimately linked to semiotics, except that, as an art of interpretation, it also brings into play the historical periods, the history of a sign’s effects and reception (wirkungsgeschichte, gadamer 1975), as well as its intertextuality. by comparison with semiotics and hermeneutics, structuralism already introduced a novel aspect, as it were, by appreciating individual signs (or signifiers) appearing in an art work as belonging to a system of signs, or better, as part of the play between them. an example is the iconology proposed by aby warburg, but also the depth hermeneutics (tiefenhermeneutik) following on from jacques derrida. from a radically interstices 15 97 new perspective, the aesthetics of atmospheres enquires into the experiences a visitor might have in the presence of the art work. this development, of course, is also influenced by the fact that museum and exhibition guides, who bombard their customers with information about the artist and the history of reception, deprive them of their own experiences in front of the art work. on the other hand, contemporary mass exhibition strategies do not target, with their exhibits, a traditional, educated middle-class (bildungsbürgertum) but often an audience which is no longer able to ask questions about the meaning of art works. whatever the frameworks of these recent developments, one can say that the aesthetics of atmospheres has opened up a new feature of art works, namely, the experiences that can be had before and in the presence of a work of art. if the aesthetics of atmospheres open up a new dimension for the consideration and discussion of art works, one can also observe that particular types of art works and trends are beginning to orient themselves towards that dimension. thus, there are contemporary art works that can only be accessed through corporeal presence. the designation performative art emphasises the performative and event character of such works. because the expression performative art highlights the temporal element, though, it does not include all directions along which artists align themselves explicitly with experiential values: one has to be present at the time at which the art work is performed. in the case of some other works within this genre, this temporal factor does not carry as much weight as a spatial factor: one has to be in the place where the artwork is, or is performed, in order to be able to experience the work adequately. this is particularly the case with installation art and land art. installation art is concerned with concrete, that is, for example, sculptural arrangements or with the design of total environments; land art concerns the staging of landscapes or the embedding of art works into natural scenes. the latter may well include performative aspects, as in the works of andy goldsworthy. in sound art, the interpenetration of spatial and temporal presence is even stronger. sound installations create acoustic environments and thereby spatial atmospheres. earlier, in the discussion of the art of scenography, i already pointed out that sound, noise and music are amongst the main generators of atmospheres. in sound-installation, two developments concur: on the one hand, the soundscape movement (murray schafer) is concerned with the exploration of existing acoustic landscapes, and, on the other, the concrete music of, for instance, john cage, seeks to create acoustic landscapes or, at least, environments, as it were. here, in the realm of the acoustic, it becomes particularly clear that the proper evaluation of a work of art consists of exposing oneself to the atmosphere that is, in this case, created by acoustic means. meanwhile, the experiences gleaned from the soundscape movement and acoustic installations have shown us how important acoustic environments are for the wellbeing of individuals and humans generally. thus, the efforts to achieve good lighting design in cities have now been joined by efforts to achieve a ‘tuning of the city (see schafer 1994) through sound design. 3. conclusion thus, we have come full circle. the theory of atmosphere amounts, on the side of social practice, to the stage management of everything and anything: from commodity aesthetics to the staging of our selves in terms of a particular life style; to the staging of art and art as staging; to the staging of politics and whole architectural complexes, from shopping malls to cities. the theory of atmospheres clarifies what is at stake, namely: the staging serves to create atmospheres that permit a specific affective participation in our world. the increasing contribution of an aesthetics of atmospheres to theory corresponds to the immense expansion of artful staging, far beyond the realm of theatre. the common key in both is the aesthetic economy, which takes as its theme questions concerning the dominance of stage value vis à vis use value and exchange value in our present era of advanced capitalism (see böhme 2003a). interstices 15 98 references benjamin, w. 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(2014 forthcoming). dialektik zwischen individualität und konsum. in g. böhme & u. gahlings (eds.), wie leben wir in dieser gesellschaft? bielefeld, germany: aisthesis verlag. mendgen, e. (1995). in perfect harmony. bild und rahmen 1850-1920 (catalog). in van gogh museum amsterdam (ed.). zwolle, netherlands: waanders uitgevers. otto, r. (2004). das heilige: über das irrationale in der idee des göttlichen und sein verhältnis zum rationalen. münchen, germany: beck. (original work published 1917) schafer, r. m. (1994). the soundscape: our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. rochester, vt: destiny books. (original work published 1977) schmitz, h. (1964). system der philosophie. bd. iii.1 die wahrnehmung. bonn, germany: bouvier. schmitz, h. (2011). emotions outside the box the new phenomenology of feeling and corporeality (trans. rudolph o. müllan and jan slaby). phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, 10(2), 241-259. tellenbach, h. (1968). geschmack und atmosphäre. medien menschlichen elementarkontaktes (taste and atmosphere. media of elementary human contact). salzburg, austria: otto müller verlag. von goethe, j. w. (2012). theory of colours. new york, ny: courier dover publications. interstices 15 99 endnotes 1. by “our“, i mean the working group soziale naturwissenschaften (social natural sciences), see gernot böhme and engelbert schramm (1985). 2. the term befinden brings several dimensions into play: to be located, to feel, to find oneself placed, but also to decide. 3. schmitz called his work new phenomenology to distinguish it from versions of classical phenomenology like edmund husserl’s. central to new phenomenology is the concept of leib, the felt body (körper is the material, observed and often objectified body). husserl, heidegger and, to a lesser extent perhaps, merleau-ponty, have in his view not fully overcome the mind/body dualism at the basis of western philosophy since 400bc. schmitz, then, is particularly interested in the interconnections between bodily experience, subjectivity and existence, “ the shared sensible space around us: significant situations, affective atmospheres, meaningfulness, concrete possibilities” (slaby and müllan in their introduction to schmitz 2011, p. 244; see also blume 2010, pp. 307-309). interstices 13 the space of collapse: a two-part terrain jane madsen introduction taking as a starting point heinrich von kleist’s empirical observation that an arch remains standing because the stones all want to collapse at the same time, this paper analyses ideas of collapse as history, architecture, material and concept. the image of collapse became a recurrent trope in kleist’s writing. after reading kant’s critical philosophy, kleist made a traumatic transition from empirical to critical thinking. following the 1755 earthquake in lisbon, kant concentrated on inquiry into natural phenomena; this was a decisive moment for the progression of his critical thinking effecting a transition from natural to critical philosophy. focusing on the site of portland in dorset, united kingdom, and the eighteenth-century ideas of geological mapping used to record it, i read the site as a demonstration of kleist’s notions of immanent and actual collapse. i argue that at portland the material histories of place and the histories of material are traced on to constructed, empty spaces as a disrupted landscape of collapse. occurring in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these two terrains demonstrate collapse as material for modernist thought. the first terrain kant and kleist: earthquake and architectures of collapse i was walking back to the city, lost in my own thoughts, through an arched gate. why i asked myself, does this arch not collapse, since after all it has no support? it remains standing, i answered, because all the stones tend to collapse at the same time…1 heinrich von kleist, berlin november 16, 18, 1800 (1982: 76) so kleist wrote to his fiancé, wilhelmine von zenge, noting what he thought was an empirical as well as a metaphorical reflection about the optimism he felt early in their betrothal. in this compelling image of the immanently collapsing arch he inadvertently identified a trope that would recur in his writings: that of collapse. this observation by kleist engenders the unsaid of architecture: that an arch as a technical, engineered, construction is collapse held in temporal abeyance—consequently his remark is provocative and transgressive. kleist’s seemingly empirical reflection holds in it the seeds of its own philosophical, metaphorical and material destruction. kleist’s concept of the immanently collapsing arch appears at a significant historical moment at the turn of the eighteenth century when europe was riven by war and chaos. the arch is an object in time, it is possible to suggest that the unity of the system may ultimately fail, that it can collapse. in earthquake in chile (das erdbeben in chili) (1807), kleist gives literary form to the terrain of collapse where architectural and temporal space is represented as destruction. the opening lines locate it in the real event of the 1647 earthquake in santiago, chile. however, the story drew on knowledge derived from accounts of the historical catastrophe of the earthquake in lisbon sometime after 9 o’clock in the morning on all saints day, november 1, 1755. the epicentre was in the atlantic west of lisbon; recent seismologists calculate the scale close to magnitude 1 emphasis in original. 23 nine. the earthquake, as well as the fires and tsunami that followed, left much of lisbon and its harbour in ruins, and other places on the atlantic coast of portugal and morocco were also badly affected.2 there was considerable loss of life; an estimated ten to fifteen thousand perished from a population of about 275,000.3 the earthquake had serious consequences for portugal’s economy, which was wealthy, but badly regulated and mainly reliant on gold from its colonies in brazil. the lisbon earthquake caused the certainties of the enlightenment to fragment;4 it was, after all, the destruction of a rich european capital.5 as the largest natural disaster of the eighteenth century, this event has been described by dynes as the first “modern disaster”, because its outcome disrupted progressive thinking and, importantly, it provoked action by the state to organise disaster relief and reconstruction. (svec 2005: 34-39) the lisbon earthquake, while not the cause of subsequent upheavals in western europe, was a substantial historical marker denoting the beginning of a period of uncertainty, disorder, physical, economic and social collapse lasting 60 years – the most far-reaching being the french revolution and napoleonic wars, which ended in 1815, four years after kleist’s suicide. the best-known representation of the earthquake is voltaire’s candide (1759). kendrick suggests that candide is a satire on the demise of the “optimistic” thinking advanced by leibniz, which is characterised by voltaire as “tout est bien” (1956: 119-141).6 additionally, the earthquake appeared in the work of “sturm und drang” writers jakob lenz and johann uz. shortly after making the arch observation, kleist read kant’s critical writing and his faith in his understanding of the world collapsed. some literary theorists have over-determined and personalised the link between this incident and the story earthquake in chile, confusing fiction and kleist’s state of being; for example, frank states, “kleist’s kant crisis was for him an intellectual and spiritual earthquake.” (svec 2005: 268)7 for kleist, reading kant’s critical work was a thought-changing event causing great anguish and wretchedness. but to suggest that six years later when he wrote earthquake in chile, he was unable to integrate that new knowledge underestimates his application and insight into kant’s critical theories. kleist’s tormented transition between empirical and critical thinking became the foundation of his writing. by early 1756 kant wrote three essays on earthquakes, applying practical scrutiny to observations by lisbon survivors hypothesising the cause of the calamity.8 rather than his later critical work, it is likely kant’s earlier writings on natural phenomena led to the themes explored by kleist. kant’s earthquake essays consider the event only as natural philosophy and endeavour to amass scientific knowledge of earthquakes. reinhardt and oldroyd note kant’s opinion that in the voids under the earth and sea there was “a considerable amount of material – sulphur and iron – which could ‘ferment’ when acted upon by water, leading to subterranean conflagrations and upheaval of the earth’s crust” (1983: 249).9 kant proposed a chemical explanation. reinhardt and oldroyd conclude that while kant’s writings on earthquakes and vulcanism did not contribute much to the development of geological understanding, their importance rests in, “kant’s manner of thinking about nature in his early, pre-critical phase, evidencing his wish to formulate a ‘universal natural history’” (1983: 252). the importance of identifying kant’s “pre-critical” thinking suggests the progress of hypotheses about nature was important for his development of autonomous reason. this early “pre-critical” writing has all the hallmarks of an empirical method, and represents a “scientific turn” (larsen 2006: 362). kant’s intellectual progression from empirical observation to critique was not straightforward or unproblematic. this resonates with kleist’s trajectory after encountering kant’s ‘critical’ writing. kant’s essays may also be a source for the location of the story: 2 further evidence that this was kleist’s source is poirier (2006: 178) who notes there were not devastating fires or tsunami in santiago in 1647, as there were in lisbon. 3 estimates of the fatalities vary wildly – some sources suggest 60,000-70,000 – but approx. 10, 000-15, 000 is generally agreed. 4 see kendrick 1956; braun & radner 2005. 5 in 1755 lisbon was the fourth largest city in europe. 6 frank notes kendrick’s 1956 discussion of candide and the lisbon earthquake. she notes further references connecting kleist, voltaire and leibnitz by bourke, hamacher and herrath, note 7 (svec 2005: 266). 7 frank discusses analyses of the “kant crisis” in her scholarly essay on earthquake in chile (svec 2005: 268-27, notes 15-21). 8 published as: 1756 von den ursachen der erderschütten bei gelegenheit de ungücks, welches die westliche länder von europa gegen das ende des vorigen jahres betroffen hat (ak1:417-27) (‘concerning the causes of the terrestrial convulsions on the occasion of the disaster which afflicted the western countries of europe towards the end of last year’), 1756 geschichte und naturbeschreibung der merwürdigsten vorfälle des erdbebens (ak1: 429-61) (‘history and natural description of the most remarkable occurrences associated with the earthquake’), 1756 fortgesetzte betractung der seit einiger zeit wahrgenommenen erdesschütterungen (ak 1:463-72) (‘further observation on the terrestrial convulsions which have been for some time observed’). 9 this idea is advanced by other scientists: see, for example, nicholas lémery. interstices 13 chile was specifically not lisbon; and therefore perhaps a means for kleist distancing himself from previous representations, such as candide. for example, kant says “peru and chile are more subject to frequent quakings than all the other countries in the world.” (1983: 255) curiously, proliferation of these rapidly published personal experiences of the lisbon earthquake did not manifest into a long-lasting collective memory of this catastrophe. the position of the 1755 lisbon disaster in the annals of cultural history may have been displaced by the 1748 (re-) discoveries of pompeii and herculaneum. while more than a millennium aestheticised ancient collapse, the contemporary disaster was too close and tangible to be enshrined in the shared narratives of the time. for kleist, there is no special interest in contemplating the ruin as an aestheticised architectural space, but in his writing there is a deep and mordant interest in the ruination of his characters. earthquake in chile is a grim and violent tale of cruelty, arbitrary disaster and revenge; collapse occurs as an earthquake levels a capital city; and is mirrored in the disorder of social breakdown. representations of space, place, and displacement, and the disruption of social order are repeating themes for kleist. in earthquake in chile, architecture is spatial and political—something that can confine, conceal and be destroyed. in kleist’s writing style a relentless matter-of-factness drives the narrative: there is no concern for inner states of being. the first sentence opens: in santiago, the capital of the kingdom of chile, at the moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands lost their lives, a young spaniard called jerónimo rugera was standing beside one of the pillars in the prison to which he had been committed on a criminal charge and was about to hang himself. (1983: 51) when jerónimo gives up hope and contemplates suicide, a space is created into which imminence the earthquake strikes. notably, kleist's first paragraph parallels the opening statements of kant's first earthquake essay, which speaks of the precariousness of architecture: “we dwell peacefully on ground the foundations of which are battered from time to time. we build unconcernedly on vaults whose pillars sometimes sway and threaten to collapse.” (reinhardt & oldroyd 1983: 253) kant's hypotheses on the cause of earthquakes are based on the instability of subterranean materials leading to the possibility of collapse, and similarly as the foundation is uncertain, architecture may also be unstable. in the story, jerónimo's predicament occurred as tutor to doña josefa, the only daughter of the richest nobleman in the city. he was accused of becoming too close to her and dismissed; she then is forced into a convent, where a chance encounter in the garden allows the lovers to consummate their liaison. subsequently josefa has a baby, causing “an extraordinary public stir” (1983: 51). the archbishop insists they are tried and they are condemned to death. the narrative is spatial and architectural: the father's house, the convent, the cathedral and the prison. these buildings are the family, the church and the law. kleist demonstrates the prurient interest in an aristocratic execution: “in the streets through which the culprit was to be led to her execution the windows were rented, the roofs of the houses were partly dismantled.” (1983: 52) the earthquake destroys this morbid and grotesque spectacle. meanwhile, jerónimo's desperation is delineated by the insurmountable architecture of his confinement: locks, bars, and walls. he hears the bell toll for josefa's execution. time is desperately poised between immanence and advancement, “when suddenly, with a crash as if the very firmament had shattered, 25 the greater part of the city collapsed, burying every living thing beneath its ruins” (1983: 52). the moment of the earthquake inverts jerónimo's circumstances from certain death to seizing life: … great cracks appeared in the walls all round him, the whole edifice toppled towards the street and would have crashed down in to it had not its slow fall been met by that of the house opposite, and only the arch thus formed by chance prevented its complete destruction. (1983: 53) this is simultaneously experienced and observed by the horror-struck jerónimo as he witnesses the progression of the collapse of the prison: the frightful circumstance of the earthquake has made time stand still. the “arch formed” by the random disaster creates a threshold through which jerónimo survives and escapes, demonstrating how architecture can be remade by the cataclysm of collapse. earthquakes in cities, towns or villages are massive architectural events. kleist has depicted the consequences of an earthquake on a city and its inhabitants with considerable understanding, which could only come from reading first-hand accounts by survivors. kleist describes the kind of death and destruction occurring with earthquake, where crushing, entrapment, burning and drowning, cause most of the casualties circumstances well documented in lisbon in 1755. kleist identifies the concept of separate tremors10 within the earthquake and these become temporal spaces momentarily inhabited by the narrative. jerónimo darts and weaves through the collapsing santiago, which is represented as an architecture in turmoil. in the moments following the earthquake, kleist changes time from the linear movement of the tolling bell, to one of simultaneity. returning to kleist's observation concerning the arch which “remains standing … because all the stones tend to collapse at the same time” (1982: 76) the earthquake has caused the city to behave as if it were the arch collapsing, where collapse occurs “at the same time”. in his essay on the lisbon earthquake benjamin quotes an english survivor: there was a shattering noise, as if all the buildings in town were collapsing at the same time … i truly thought my last moment had arrived, for the walls were bursting apart and great stones were falling out of the joints – all the beams seemed to be supported by thin air. (1999: 539) these comments parallel kleist’s description. in a contemporary german engraving depicting the aftermath of the lisbon earthquake of 1755 (fig.1) the background shows the effect of the earthquake on architecture; buildings are without roofs, and among the tidy debris the striking and repeated visual motif is that of the arch shown as both an architectural survivor of the destruction, and as the strange image of half-arches in the air in a state of partial collapse. jerónimo reaches the rural outskirts, faints in exhaustion, regains consciousness, and sees josefa who has escaped execution and rescued their baby from the convent: “she was just about to embrace the abbess when the latter was ignominiously struck dead by a falling gable, together with nearly all her nuns.” (1983: 56) the death of both the merciful abbess and the archbishop who condemned them to death, highlights the contradiction that good and bad are killed by the earthquake. the fact that in lisbon casualties occurred while congregations were worshipping on all saints day in 1755 caused consternation for the church, which avowed that the earthquake was god's retribution on a godless city. following the earthquake, the surviving populace fled the city en masse. kendrick notes that 10 kant did not deduce the concept of separate shocks from his analysis of lisbon survivors’ accounts. interstices 13 there was a “desperate scramble to get out of lisbon by frightened mobs of hysterical people, clutching crucifixes and images of saints, and bits and pieces of belongings, all trying to reach open country” (1956: 36-37). outside lisbon, people lived for many months in tents and huts, too frightened to dwell in anything more substantial: the open country offered a sense of safety from precarious architecture. even the royal family were not exempt from this abject fear, they evacuated into tents for nine months, subsequently moving into a large wooden lodging, itself another provisional structure. in the ruin of lisbon 1755 (fig.1) the foreground shows the establishment of a tightly-packed makeshift tent city. survivors are carrying large bundles to the tents, families are in various states of activity or immobility, people with arms raised are imploring heaven, and one woman is caught as she falls in a faint; in the upper left background of the engraving figures are shown still escaping the devastated city. while sheltering in the forest, the lovers meet an aristocratic acquaintance of josefa’s and are taken into don fernando’s family. following the earthquake they hope there might be a “spirit of reconciliation” (1983: 59). at a mass in the only church left standing, the canon decries the prior “outrage” in the convent garden, declaring the sinners’ souls should be consigned to hell, “pointing to a crack in the wall of the cathedral, he called yesterday’s earthquake a mere foretaste of doom” (1983: 63). the cracked cathedral presages disaster for the church; the damage is architectural and political. the priests stand by as the congregation becomes a vengeful, frenzied mob—jerónimo's father identifies and kills him, josefa is slain by her family's cobbler who persists until he “seized one of the infants by its legs after whirling round in the air above his head, dashed it against the edge of one of the pillars of the church” (1983: 67). thus the deaths of jerónimo, josefa, their friends, and mistakenly, the child of don fernando are absorbed into the fabric of the church. in this murderous outcome to earthquake in chile, kleist identifies the catholic church as a social order that can itself collapse. within days of the earthquake in lisbon, in order to establish power over a frenzied populace, and to prevent opportunistic looting, the state executed as many as 35 people (kendrick 1956: 50). a grim demonstration of this can be seen in the middle ground of the the ruin of lisbon (fig. 1) where two figures are shown being strung up on a gibbet. fig. 1 the ruins of lisbon (1755) german copperplate engraving, artist unknown. [source: national information service of earthquake engineering (nisee), university of california, berkeley] 27 in his 1763 essay, ‘the only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of god’ kant again refers to earthquakes, emphasising: … the wickedness of a city has no effect upon the fires concealed within the bowels of the earth … the event in question was a misfortune, not a punishment: man’s moral conduct cannot be a cause of earthquakes according to a natural law, for there is no connection here between the cause and the effect. (1992: 147) in earthquake in chile, kleist follows kant’s logic, demonstrating that the lovers are not really wicked, do not deserve to be punished by the church, that their moral laxity is not to blame for the earthquake. the random collapse of santiago created provisional architectures made by the earthquake and, briefly, the disaster provided the protagonists with a means of escaping their fate. the lovers grasp on to life, only to die in the collapse of the society itself. at the centre of this catastrophe kleist creates a paradox: at the very moment of the collapse of the prison walls an arch is created, and instead of falling down, a structure and a space is made. by considering the 1755 lisbon earthquake, kant’s earthquake essays and kleist’s story together, the destruction of foundations of thought and space can be linked to the material disruption of collapse. the second terrain portland: material, landscape, collapse in the second and most substantial of the 1756 earthquake essays kant clarifies his concern with the material ground affected by earthquake: “we know pretty completely the surface of the earth, when the ampliation* is concerned. but we have under our feet a world still, with which we at present are but little acquainted.” (1799: 96)11 the question as to what lay beneath has parallels with emerging theories of the earth in the seventeenth century12 which were revived by the lisbon earthquake. kant identifies the limits of knowledge about what exists at a deeper structural and material level. concurrently, these inquiries began to focus on the substance of the earth. james hutton (1726-1797) published his first geological observations in 1785, theory of the earth, identifying geological time by suggesting layers were incrementally formed over vast periods; later geological thinking took a different turn with georges cuvier (1769-1832), who proposed the idea of extinction after comparing the anatomy of living and fossilised vertebrates. the cultural context in which cuvier advanced his hypothesis of “catastrophism” in essay on the theory of the earth (1812), lay in the aftermath of the lisbon earthquake and the contemporary turmoil in france. an adherent of cuvier’s catastrophism, william smith, a west country surveyor excavating canals, noticed that the layers of fossils in stone could identify strata, and lead to the first geological map of britain. the fossil material in jurassic limestone from the dorset coast was key to his project. smith’s 1815 geological map was the first of its kind; by mapping strata, he charted volume rather than surface and consequently, he mapped space and time. portland, on the dorset coast, is a landscape of disruption, a site made by architecture’s uses, and as such demonstrates images of collapse in space, time, 11 translator’s note: enlargement of knowledge, in contradistinction to exactness; extension opposed to intension. (1799: 96) 12 kant wasn’t proposing a theory of the earth as advanced in the seventeenth century. see burnet 1635-1715; leibniz protogaea 1693; hooke’s second lecture series 1667–1668; oldroyd 2006: 25, 30, 36. interstices 13 material and topography. portland’s landscape materialises kleist’s vision of collapse. malpas and thiel identify the spaces and boundaries of kantian geography: “the manner in which kant characterizes the idea of boundary invokes the geographical … but kant’s characterization is also explicitly topographical inasmuch as the idea of boundary is directly connected with the idea of a location or place.” (2011: 198) the volumes of fossils that comprise portland stone are also boundaries of chthonian histories, dead creatures falling to the bottom of a warm sea as life collapses in time. recurrent costal landslips exposed the strata of portland’s jurassic limestone, showing its potential as architectural material. four centuries of quarrying have left portland scarred by dislocation and absence. portland’s landscape has been created by the removal of its stone: it is a built environment made from the voids left by quarrying. this site has been studied as an unstable space of collapse giving material, architectural, historical and literary representations of these eighteenth-century ideas suggested by kleist and kant. … he sometimes cast his eye across the thames to the wharves on the south side, and to that particular one whereat his father’s tons of freestone were daily landed from the ketches of the south coast. he could occasionally discern the white blocks lying there, vast cubes so persistently nibbled by his parent from his island rock in the english channel that it seemed as if in time it would be nibbled all away (1997: 41). in the well-beloved (1897), thomas hardy describes stone arriving from his fictional portland, ‘isle of slingers’. hardy captures the incremental disappearance and shrinkage of the island, as the stone is carted away piece by piece the island may collapse in on itself, buried under leftover rubble, becoming its own cenotaph. portland is characterised as an uncertain place, always changing as another absence is made. portland has been a working, industrial site since the late seventeenth century, pre-dating the industrial revolution; the quarrymen have worked to provide stone for the architect, artist and artisan. the spaces left behind by quarrying are a reminder that taking material in order to build or fabricate is in itself not only an act of construction but also the generation of surplus. a distinctive feature of portland’s landscape is the collapsed material from the cliffs, called “weares”. brunsden et al noted that “27% of portland is affected by landslips (c. 317 ha out of a total area of c.1130 ha) this includes most of the coastal fringe”, adding that there have been 72 landslips since the earliest recorded landslip in 1615. their study points out that portland’s coast has the greatest number of landslides in britain (1996: 214). distinct horizontal sedimentary layers with vertical joints characterise limestone; this is both advantageous and dangerous for fig. 2 portland : london (cheyne weare/greenwich hospital) [photos: author, 2011] 29 quarrying, as the joints can facilitate the removal of stone, but are also unstable. a proportion of existing buildings on the island have structural problems. brunsden et al outline how the geomorphology of portland further adds to the propensity for the joints or “gullies” in the limestone to enlarge and weaken, causing coastal collapse. this geology of landslip links with paul carter’s thoughts on the study of coasts: the coast was primarily conceived as an arena of intellectual inquiry; in this form it was the line that enabled the scientist to draw other lines.... its very disarray, the mimic resemblance of its productions to the specimens arranged in a cabinet de curiosités … suggested a museum in the making. (2002: 132) carter creates an evocative picture of the relationship of science to the delineation of coasts as both real and abstract, suggesting that coasts, as edges under constant battering by the sea, elude fixity. portland as a site is contradictory: an island that is not an island, there is a paradox in the durability of the stone against the instability of the cliffs. portland is a terrain of scars; quarrying has irretrievably changed the topography of the island. the term “weares” also applies to layers of debris at the quarries, and used as partial infill across the island. the “weares” look as though something has collapsed, that disaster has occurred, like a battlefield; but the “weares” are also constructed, the abandoned rubble making unintended, random sculptures, abstract arrangements from the piles of stone. architects chose portland stone for its durability as a fine-grained oolitic limestone. inigo jones chose portland stone to stand in for the whiteness of classicism, whereas christopher wren used it for its intrinsic qualities. a series of significant historical disasters accelerated the wholesale requisition of portland stone: best known is the reconstruction after the great fire of london in 1666. using portland stone as the primary material, wren rebuilt more than 50 churches, as well as st paul’s cathedral completed in 1710. a large coastal landslide in 1636 made the stone workable from portland’s northeast cliff and wren took six million tons of stone for the rebuilding of london. less acknowledged is the use of portland stone for war memorials following the first and second world wars; it was the principal material for gravestones and memorials for the missing dead because it was reliable, cheap, and—importantly—british. the process of quarrying created a series of double absences: where quarries were constructed absences and the use of stone for architecture and memorials was a manifestation of absence made material. in order to commemorate the absent body, absence was created by the removal of the stone. distributed in foreign fields around the world, there are between 700,000 and 800,000 grave markers of portland stone. fig. 3 portland : london (independent quarry/st pauls cathedral) [photos: author 2011] interstices 13 the landscape of the quarries is a built environment constructed from the voids of absent stone: it is the negative space of architecture, but there are no architects or builders present in their construction. the walls of the quarries—scarred by drills, cutters and saws—show the history of quarrying, and the geological strata exposed evoke the levels of a building. at the abandoned and working quarries space is a remainder: a history, it is both the absent material and the material absence and, as such, space becomes something; at the quarries space is made. this slightly diverges from kant: one can never represent that there is no space, although one can very well think that that there are no objects to be encountered in it. it is therefore to be regarded as the condition of the possibility of appearances, not as a determination dependent on them. (1998: 158) and rather than the immanence of “appearances” an image is suggested here from the “possibility” of absences. kant suggests that space is the outward appearance of possibility, of something impending, that in the future something might come into being; however, this does not necessarily have to be an actual form, though this is not absolutely ruled out. the sheer scale of the space left behind compels the viewer of the quarry to re-imagine the stone that has been taken, to re-build the landscape out of the absent blocks of free stone, looking into these big, dusty voids and debris it is possible to generate images of architecture over the emptiness, to make images and objects in the spaces of the quarries and to trace in the absent blocks of stone. conclusion the theme of collapse suggests a premise for tracing a route towards modernist thought. kleist’s observation that an arch is only held in place because all the stones want to collapse at the same time is a compelling image—that the arch only stands because it wants to collapse. for kleist collapse also came about by reading kant’s critical writing and the loss of the certainty of empirical observation. in earthquake in chile, kleist turned to the historical event of the disastrous 1755 lisbon earthquake, using this source to represent disruption and collapse of architecture and social order. kant’s response to the earthquake was a defining moment and contributed to the foundation of his critical thinking. the lisbon earthquake revived research questioning what is beneath the earth’s surface and why it may fail—leading to critical developments in geology and the history of science. focussing on the site of portland as one of convergent histories of architecture, geology, fig. 4 portland: london (independent quarry/waterloo bridge) [photos: author 2011] 31 and material in the eighteenth century, i argued that this disrupted landscape demonstrates kleist’s notion of immanent and actual collapse. in the histories of the fragmentation and reconfiguration of european thought at the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, kleist’s image of collapse generates a recognisable image of modernity. references benjamin, w. 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(2005). the lisbon earthquake of 1755: the first modern disaster. in t. braun and j. radner (eds.), the lisbon earthquake of 1755: representations and reactions. studies on voltaire and the eighteenth century (svec 2005: 02). oxford: the voltaire foundation. frank, l. no way out: heinrich von kleist’s erdbeben in chile, in t. braun and j. radner (eds.), the lisbon earthquake of 1755: representations and reactions, studies on voltaire and the eighteenth century (svec 2005:02). oxford: the voltaire foundation. hardy, t. (1997). the well-beloved. london: everyman paperbacks. kant, e. (1799). essays and treatises on moral, political, religious and various philosophical subjects (from the german by the translator of the principles of critical philosophy), vol. ii. london: william richardson royal exchange. kant, i. (1998). critique of pure reason (p. guyer & a. wood, trans.). cambridge: cambridge university press. kant, i. (1992). theoretical philosophy 1755–1770 (d. walford ed. & trans.). cambridge: cambridge university press. kendrick, t. d. (1956). the lisbon earthquake. london: methuen. kendrick, t. d. (1956) the lisbon earthquake, in t. e. braun & j. radner (eds.), the lisbon earthquake of 1755: representations and reactions. studies on voltaire and the eighteenth century (svec 2005: 02). oxford: the voltaire foundation. kleist, h. von. (1982). an abyss deep enough: letters of heinrich von kleist (p. b. miller, ed. & trans.). new york, ny: e. p. dutton. kleist, h. von. (1983). the marquise of o and other stories (d. luke & n. reeves, trans.). london: penguin. larsen, s. e. (2006). european review, vol. 14, no 3, p. 359-367. malpas, j., & thiel, k. (2011). kant's geography of reason. in s. elden & e. mendieta (eds.), reading kant's geography (pp. 195-214). albany, ny: state university of new york press. poirier, j.-p. (2006). european review, vol. 14, no 2, p. 169-180. reinhardt, o. & oldroyd, d. r. (1983). kant’s theory of earthquake and volcanic action. annals of science, no. 40, p. 247-272. voltaire. (2001). candide. london: penguin. 170 in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 f i x i n g bios sibyl bloomfield sibyl bloomfield (waikato tainui, ngāti maniapoto and ngāi te rangi) has a bachelor of design (interior architecture) and master of landscape architecture (professional) from victoria university of wellington. she is a landscape architect and lecturer, currently working in the school of architecture at unitec institute of technology, auckland. her research interests include climate change and coastal communities, land stewardship, indigenous concepts of land ownership, resilience, community development, and pedagogy/ design education. luciano brina luciano brina is an architect for the faculty of architecture and urbanism, la plata national university, argentina. he is an alumnus of the strelka institute for media, architecture and design, moscow. he has been a visiting professor at the school of architecture and urban studies, torcuato di tella university. he is founder of abiogenesis, a design research practice focused on speculative cartography and post-carbon futures. he has published his research in arq. jeanette budgett jeanette budgett is a registered architect and senior lecturer at unitec institute of technology, where she teaches design and technology in the master of architecture programme. in previous research, she has investigated digital technologies, missionperiod and modern colonial architecture of the pacific, and new zealand’s early twentieth-century urban architecture. she often collaborates with artist allan mcdonald. her recent architectural practice includes a prefabricated transportable building (2020). timothy burke dr timothy burke is a lecturer in the school of architecture and the built environment at the university of newcastle, nsw. he has been researching and teaching at newcastle since 2015, and in 2019 was awarded a phd in architecture through creative practice research that examined the role of making, drawing, and play within design processes. michael chapman dr michael chapman is a professor in the school of architecture and the built environment at the university of newcastle, nsw. his research explores architectural drawing and its theory and scholarship, specifically in relationship to politics, industrialisation, and modernism. carl douglas dr carl douglas is a senior lecturer in spatial design at auckland university of technology. his research circulates around two themes: unprofessional space (informal, ad-hoc, illicit, and amateur space-making); and procedural design techniques (cartography, design computation, abstraction, drawing, and intuition). he is currently affiliated with the material imaginaries research collective. chris french dr chris french is a lecturer in architecture and contemporary practice at esala, the university of edinburgh. his research explores how forms of representation and the architectural project institute and perpetuate particular social imaginaries. he has collaborated with maria mitsoula on projects exploring the intersection of architecture and landscape, and the manner in which representational conventions frame and condition these intersections. they are founders of the atelier for architecture, aporia, and are co-founders and editors of the architectural research-bydesign e-journal drawing on. julia gatley dr julia gatley is an associate professor of architecture at the university of auckland. she is an architectural historian, with research interests in twentieth-century architecture in general, and the history and heritage value of twentieth-century new zealand architecture in particular. she has written widely on new zealand architecture, and has published four books with auckland university press. with andrew douglas and susan hedges, she is an executive editor of interstices. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 171 biographies f i x i n g bachelor of architectural studies degree from te whare wānanga o wairaka/unitec: institute of technology in 2016. karl then completed his architectural studies at te herenga waka/ victoria, university of wellington, where he found a new interest in speculative architecture and drawing. karl discovered the essay ‘the task of the translator’ by walter benjamin in the summer before starting this research. this text became a key source from which to draw ideas. completing the research in may 2021, karl went on to gain his master of architecture (professional) with distinction. louisa king louisa king is a landscape architect with a master of landscape architecture from rmit university. her research explores the potential of the picturesque and postrepresentation thought for contemporary landscape practice. by applying critical materialist attention to the global, distributed influences of climate change, she examines the role of design within extreme climatic landscapes. this includes work with the australian antarctic division to explore the collaborative potential of science and landscape design. maria mitsoula dr maria mitsoula is an architect, tutor, independent researcher, and architectural photographer. her phd in architecture, conducted by design and funded by the interprofessional education program (ipep) and the eugenides foundation, explored marble as a complex material image-opsis central to various athenian and attic mythologies. with chris french, maria is a founder of the atelier for architecture, aporia, and a cofounder and editor of the e-journal drawing on. jules moloney dr jules moloney is associate dean research and innovation at the school of design, rmit university. his research extends from architectural digital design to spatial design in a range of applications including exhibition design, installation art, simulation of human interaction, and the immersive analytics of spatial data. he is the author of designing kinetics for architectural facades: state change (routledge, 2009) and has published extensively on research through design. tim nees tim nees is a practising architect and a member of the christchurch city council urban design panel. recently he was architect-inresidence at the university of canterbury’s college of engineering, was a founding director of bartley nees gallery in wellington, and has been a recipient of several new zealand institute of architects (nzia) national awards for excellence in architecture. he is a fellow of the nzia. julieanna preston dr julieanna preston is professor of spatial practice at toi rauwharangi/college of creative arts, te kunenga ki pūrehuroa/massey university and holds a phd through artistic practice from rmit. her creative and scholarly practice draws from art, architecture, philosophy, material science, geology, and landscape studies. her work is shown and published widely in the form of experimental live art performances, sound art, siteresponsive installations and interventions, moving image, and performance writing. tamsin salehian tamsin salehian is a sessional lecturer teaching design, theory, and communication in the landscape architecture program at uts, sydney. her research explores ontologies of place and multi-species collaborations, and she has a particular interest in the registrations of intersecting geographic bodies with ecological thinking. mark southcombe dr. mark southcombe is an associate professor in architecture at te herenga waka/victoria, university of wellington in the te kura waihanga/school of architecture. mark is also a principal of southcombe architects. he is a design teacher in the architecture and interior architecture programmes. he leads the design lab research cluster focused on design-led research theory and practices, and their testing through design in architectural and interdisciplinary realms. he is a co-author of the book ecologies design: transforming architecture, landscape and urbanism (2020). he has for many years supervised master’s research primarily focused on urbanity, landscape, and housing. mark was karl hoffman’s principal supervisor for the thesis titled, translating a post industrial landscape: the rebirth of pukewā (2021). anastasia globa dr anastasia globa is a lecturer in computational design and advanced manufacturing at the university of sydney. she works with digital media, including algorithmic design, advanced manufacturing, and virtual immersive environments. she is a member of the cocoa research lab and sydneynano research centre, with close involvement in the computer aided architectural design in asia community and caadria. she has experience in data visualisation and creating innovative concepts and prototypes, focusing on extended reality (xr) applications related to architectural design. lawrence harvey lawrence harvey has had a multifaceted practice-led research career as a sound designer, curator, performer, and artistic director while also producing traditional research outputs. he is artistic advisor to the rmit sonic arts collection, for which he curates high-profile public installations and performances, and leads academic publications on the collection. as director of rmit’s sial sound studios, he has curated over 30 public speaker orchestra concerts and has presented installations, theatre performances and concerts in melbourne, brisbane, toronto, seoul, the uk, germany, and holland. karl hoffmann the author of this thesis, karl hoffmann, grew up in the township of waihi, attending waihi college from 20062012. he graduated with a in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 172 biographies f i x i n g simon twose dr simon twose is an architect and an associate professor in the school of architecture, te herenga waka | victoria university of wellington. his work focuses on drawing, particularly in the territories between art and architecture practices. his creative practice research has transitioned from traditional drawing and built projects to spatio-temporal drawing installations, combining physical and digital media. twose has published and exhibited widely, including invited contributions to five venice architecture biennales as well as the prague quadrennial of performance design and space pq15. verarisa ujung verarisa anastasia ujung is a graduate of universitas indonesia and victoria university of wellington. she is a teaching and research assistant at the department of architecture, faculty of engineering, universitas indonesia. her research focuses on the complex relations between interior and landscape. her work has three main strands— traversing interiority, weaving interiority, and framing interiority—demonstrating her interest in the potential for poetical encounters between interior and landscape. yue yu yue yu received a bachelor of landscape architecture (honours) from unitec institute of technology in 2019. she is currently enrolled in the master of urban planning (professional) and urban design programme at the university of auckland. her research interests include urban resilience, sustainable housing, eco-districts, and urban morphology. ° 1 0 1 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° architectural projects of marco frascari: the pleasure of a demonstration 2015, sam ridgway farnham: ashgate, 2015, pp.109. isbn 978-1-4724-4174-4 hardback this is a useful collection of commentaries on the fascinating work – both written and built of the italian architect and academic marco frascari, who died in 2013. frascari, born in 1945 “under the shadow of the dome of alberti’s sant’ andrea in mantua,” graduated as an architect from the iuav in venice in 1969, initially working in both the design office and the teaching studio of his mentor carlo scarpa. after completing his phd at the university of pennsylvania, he taught at a number of north american universities, including georgia institute of technology, virginia polytechnic institute and state university, and again at the university of pennsylvania alongside joseph rykwert and david leatherbarrow in the mid-1990s. his final appointment was director of the azrieli school of architecture at carleton university in ottawa. like scarpa, throughout his career frascari had something of an obsession with the articulation of the construction detail, which he saw as a kind of compositional unit from which whole buildings could be progressively assembled. but what raised his work beyond the crude idea of repetition – the building as a simple ‘piling up’ of individual details – is a deeper understanding of the detail itself as a kind of hybrid composition of elements. in a typically mischievous move, frascari preferred to call these hybrids ‘monsters’, which allowed him to play various etymological games that linked terms like demonstration (which can mean both a drawing or a building) with the italian word mostre (exhibition). if the detail is a monstrous union of dissimilar materials brought together into some sort of unlikely expressive relationship, frascari likewise treated the building as a whole as a collage-like composition of distinctive fragments. it is this idea that drew him towards working with historic buildings, again in an echo architectural projects of marco frascari: the pleasure of a demonstration j o n a t h a n h a l e of scarpa’s approach to the layering of historic and contemporary fabrics – perhaps best exemplified at the castelvecchio museum in verona. the three projects featured in ridgway’s book all involve new interventions within existing structures; for example, the stanza rossa involved a major remodelling of a disused silk factory in vicenza, just a few hundred metres from palladio’s famous theatre, the teatro olimpico. the focal point of the reconstruction is the insertion of an altar-like central bathroom, raising the normally mundane act of bathing to a self-consciously spiritual level. in place of what in a cooler climate would more likely have been a central fireplace, the reference to a sacred well-spring at the centre of the house recalls gaston bachelard’s meditations on the archetypal four elements. also featured in the book are two projects from frascari’s time teaching and practicing in the usa: a remodelling of a master’s apartment in a student hall of residence at the university of pennsylvania and a major reworking of a single-family house for his own use on the outskirts of alexandria in virginia. in both cases the spaces are transformed by a single dominant idea, which in the first is the opening up of a central light-filled stairwell that allows the journey up to the main living space to take on a ceremonial quality. in the villa rosa in alexandria an alternative approach is taken, effectively wrapping the existing volume in a series of discrete but distinct new elements. the plan geometry is the driving principle in this latter example, with the aim of reorienting the kitchen and master bedroom to align with the north-south axis. the rotation of these key elements highlights another of frascari’s design preoccupations: the role of geometric drawing instruments in the ‘drawing out’ of an idea. the humble compass becomes an instrument of divination in frascari’s very personal history of the ‘crafty art of architecture’, where he makes a direct connection between the geometric construction of the drawing and the actual setting out of the building at 1:1 on site. the compass therefore takes on the role of mediator or messenger between the realms of the actual and the possible, a function analogous to that performed by angels in the art and literature of the christian tradition. frascari again makes much of the play on words between angel and angle in one of his best known published writings, while many of his drawings feature compasses with angelic wings ° 1 0 2 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° attached, transforming them into quasi-magical tools of discovery and communication. as a book, its format as an essay collection brings with it some minor if obvious drawbacks, one of which being a degree of repetition in the introductions and conclusions to the early chapters. by contrast the book cuts off rather abruptly at the end of chapter 6, without an overall conclusion to draw the various strands of the story together. but overall it still constitutes a much needed and timely reminder of the singular achievements of an influential figure. for me, as a former student of frascari’s as well as an occasional collaborator, his work has been a huge source of inspiration, as well as an ongoing challenge to try to continue. i am happy to say that sam ridgway has also taken up this important task and offers here a highly engaging and insightful analysis that should make his work available to a new generation of researchers. interstices 15 36 fractured atmospherics anna boswell angles of arrival as the caption explains, figure 1 documents a scene at cape reinga or te rerenga wairua, the northernmost tip of aotearoa/new zealand. it may seem relatively easy to identify the material elements depicted here: asphalt, a concrete waharoa or gateway, interpretative display panels, native vegetation, sea, sky, a gull. it is perhaps less easy to specify what the photograph is ‘of’. is this a picture postcard vista? a remote stop on a tourist itinerary? a national site of pilgrimage? a point of oceanic departure or return? an ancestral pathway? a sacred terrain? a ground of bitter historical dispute? such connotative uncertainties have strong implications for what may be construed as the scene’s atmosphere – which is in turn linked to its affective charge. is a visitor invited to enter or warned against entry? is the mood welcoming or foreboding? should one look through the waharoa and imagine seamless passage? or should one look at it, or be stopped short by it? affects and atmospheres are inter-implicated. they involve “lived circuits of action and reaction” (stewart 2010: 339), traversing bodies and worlds, and the forces and intensities that permeate or shuttle between. as an experiential mode, affect dissolves firm boundaries: while one is moved to feel something on the inside, it will seem to come from the outside, as though the world is pressing in through the senses. affect is individual, personal, interior, yet at the same time, it is collective, atmospheric, exterior; it is picked up and given off and involves the triggering of responses in individual and social bodies. for these reasons, affect is bound up with environmental fields and with fig. 1 waharoa gateway to te rerenga wairua [courtesy virtualtourist.com] interstices 15 37 ideas of mutuality and commonality, and while it is predicated on movement, it also has positing power. ‘something’, it insists, is ‘there’. the challenge of capturing or conveying this ‘thing’, or this sense of ‘thereness’ – its valences, vectors, shimmerings, cracklings, pulsings – can make language go flat ("words fail me"), or it can give rise to effusion, metaphor, poiēsis. affect thus evades or exceeds semantic representation. it is extra-linguistic, a sign of surplus or surfeit, a modality of the sublime. the task – or the trick – of putting into words that which isn’t ordinarily registered on the level of language is impelled by the prospect of gaining access to a heightened, more complete experience – of a place, say, or of something one intuits sharing with others. striving to make sense of the inside-out-ness and outside-in-ness of affects and atmospheres, sara ahmed observes that when we enter a room we may “feel the atmosphere”, but what we actually feel is dependent on the angle of our arrival. or, she explains, “we might say that the atmosphere is already angled; it is always felt from a specific point of view” (2010: 37). this paper mobilises ahmed’s notion of angles of arrival to examine incompatible structures of affect that underwrite a settler-colonial place. it asks: what if what is ‘there’ for you is not the same as what is ‘there’ for me? how might my experience of ‘thereness’ come under strain if i become aware that it offends (or is offended by) your sense of ‘thereness’? and how might i be differently moved if what is there for me turns out to be an absence, or a negative imprint, which reveals the limits of our shared experience and the brokenness of whatever might be said to be between us?1 invasive design in disagreement (1999) and the politics of aesthetics (2004), jacques rancière develops a framework for mapping “the distribution of the sensible”, or what might be termed ‘the sensible order’. according to rancière, there are implicit laws that parcel out forms of participation in common social worlds, and they do this by inscribing modes through which these worlds can be apprehended or perceived. the distribution of the sensible, then, produces and regulates what can be seen, said, heard, felt and thought in a given situation or context. importantly, for rancière, “sensible” refers not to good sense or good judgement (although it will inevitably relay these connotations), but rather to what is capable of being apprehended by the senses. drawing extensively on examples from the ancient greek world, rancière’s scholarship operates on the model of the polis, or city state, in which everyone is said to agree in principle on the sensible order that pertains (this, for rancière, is the necessary basis for political disagreement; see 1999: x). the settler-colonial state – of which there were many in the ancient greek world, and which cannot likewise be said to possess a ‘common’ commons – remains beyond the purview of his theorising. wilfully repurposing rancière, however, and bridging his ideas with ahmed’s, we might say that while affect and atmosphere are interconnected, it is not the case that one can encounter or experience a place and feel absolutely anything at all. rather, our responses are likely to be predisposed, based on the sensible order at work in and on and through us. our bodies simultaneously “sense” and “make sense” (massumi 2002: 2), but there is nothing universally given about how we arrive in an environment or react to what we will perceive as being its affective charge. in the first instance, our “personal sensibilities” (zumthor 2006: 21) are culturally and historically patterned. affect, then, is a matter of social aesthetics (which are, necessarily, political), as well as a matter of design. such reflections are of foundational significance in a place like aotearoa/new zealand. when europeans first turned up here in the late eighteenth century, they encountered tangled forests, boggy swamps and a landscape crosshatched with tribal boundaries and the workings of tapu. encounters documented in early voyaging accounts signal the visitors’ inability to read the complex ways in which this place was already “written” through (carter 2009; boswell 2014). the violence of these encounters served to confirm european prejudices that the country and its inhabitants interstices 15 38 were anarchic, barbaric, primitive, savage. having turned up in another culture’s sensible order, these early european visitors, or “intruders” (smith 2007), felt threatened by a local sensible order that they did not understand – by indigenous ways of going about the place and organising life within the place. successive waves of settlers set about imposing their own order. by necessity, settlement is as much an imaginative undertaking as it is one of physically taking up residence, since settlers have to be able to respond in the right kinds of affective registers to the environments they construct in order to feel properly ‘at home’. imaginative and physical modes of occupation converge in activities such as mapping and surveying lands, felling forests, draining swamps, laying down communities, establishing institutions (churches, schools, governments, museums) and imposing a new language. several key points can be noted in relation to this invasively transformative agenda: 1. in a so-called new world place, “enabling absences” (rose 1999: 10) justify the reconstruction of landscapes and lifeways in order to supply what is deemed to be lacking (wheat fields, herds of livestock, urban centres, tourism resorts, recreation areas, etc.), as though the ‘empty’ land is crying out to be purposed in these ways. 2. settler-colonial re-ordering is predicated on an assumed distance between humans and their environments. since it involves converting supposedly idle ‘space’ into productive ‘place’, it is strongly tied to capitalist imperatives concerning property, ownership, individualism, economisation, and the binding acquisition or alienation of land as divisible and tradable commodity. 3. the re-ordering of place has powerfully geometric dimensions. laying out lines, grids and templates across the surface of the land, it produces mathematicised topographies insensitive to existing contours and idiosyncrasies – the actual “lie of the land” (carter 1996). 4. space-time co-ordinates shift through this work of re-ordering. settler culture is particularly concerned with ease of access in order to transport people in and resources and commodities out. the embedding of roading infrastructures, for example, will change how place is experienced temporally, and proximities will alter as a result. 5. there are pedagogical or instructional dimensions and a securing aspect to this work. settlers have to be taught how to ‘be’ and to ‘belong’ in a so-called new world in order to allay their recurrent and palpable anxieties around identity, futurity, solidarity and groundedness. settlement is, in other words, a thoroughly affecting and affective business, and it is bound up with longing (to be able to ‘feel’ the place, to have feelings for the place, to sense that you feel the same way as others do about the place). 6. because european cultures privilege ways of seeing-as-knowing over the proximal senses, this re-ordering is primarily concerned with the visual dimensions of whatever the place seems to ‘be’. textual traces from early phases of european exploration of aotearoa/new zealand disclose vivid affective responses to place. the reverend samuel marsden, for instance, visited the bay of islands as head of the church missionary society in new zealand in 1819. distinct surges are discernible in his journal when he arrives at the newly-founded mission station at kerikeri. marsden registers elation upon seeing a weatherboard house constructed from neatly sawn lengths of timber and marked out with gardens and picket fence. momentarily torn in the classic affective bind between speechlessness and outpouring, he proclaims “our hearts overflowed with joy and gratitude”, explaining “[w]e viewed the various operations with inexpressible delight, and considered them as the dawn of civil and religious liberty in this land of superstition, darkness and cruelty” (1932: 15051). this tableau is, for marsden, an oasis of familiarity in an otherwise unintelligible place, and his interstices 15 39 response articulates the workings of a settler sensible order. marsden reads the scene through an internalised template which in large part determines the nature of his affective response. importantly, the atmospheric charge associated with this scene intimates a nostalgia for the future. in his mind’s eye, marsden can already picture a not-yet-marked-out mission school adjacent to the homestead, and an agronomic patchwork of rolling maize and wheat fields – tended by māori converts – blanketing the surrounding hillside; this is the ‘thereness’ which becomes virtually tangible for him. settlement, then, is about transformation – it involves take-over and make-over or re-design – and settler culture tends to be up-beat about this, framing it, as marsden does, as a future-oriented story of progress and advancement. such temporal logic comes unstuck, however, because – as marsden shows – settlement is always both ‘before’ and ‘after’ its own moment, and this selfdiscontinuity reveals that what is really at stake is reinscribing the place – writing over what is already there – with a new sensible order. in a setting like aotearoa/new zealand, such a sensible order may become dominant over time, due to the vigour with which it is pursued and the sheer weight of settler numbers, as well as the weight of the europeanised structures of governance to which the place is increasingly subjected. confident as this re-ordering may seem, however, settler culture cannot ever quite dispel the threat that the modes of belonging effected or enabled by its own sensible order are somehow – perhaps grossly – inadequate to the place. fig. 2 kiddy-kiddy [i.e. kerikeri] new zealand, a church missionary establishment [courtesy national library of australia] in relation to kerikeri, this threat is conveyed in a panoramic painting by augustus earle, an itinerant artist who visited the area a decade after marsden’s first trip. from a twenty-first century perspective, earle’s image possesses a nostalgic atmospherics of its own (velvety light, muted palette, the patinated aura that goes with being the oldest surviving artwork of the oldest surviving european building in the country). the painting gazes across the kerikeri river towards the tiny stockaded mission on the other side. the ‘absence’ of an agronomic patchwork spreading over the hillsides may be read back on itself, as a sign of the slow progress of the mission. importantly, because of its vantage point from kororipo pā, the image also includes a carved māori burial shelter on the neighbouring hillside, which stands as a marker of tapu and the tenacious hold of māori funerary practices (binney 2007). the painting is, in other words, shot through with the crackle of competing forces.2 within the past decade, in fact, the privately-owned tourism ventures that presently occupy the burial ground at kerikeri have been notified that they must relocate. under mounting iwi pressure, the department of conservation has officially acknowledged that such ventures are “inappropriate developments or activities” on this sacred site (2007: 14). indigenous sensible orders, earle shows, may persist or resurface and fracture the superimposed atmospherics of place, bringing settler culture and its reconstructive agenda up short. as this suggests, relations between affect and atmosphere, mediated by a settler sensible order, do not denote static or boxed-in positions which amount to “gridlock” (massumi 2002: 3). rather, they interstices 15 40 point towards ways in which affect can itself be moved. from a settler perspective it might seem, at kerikeri, as though something has risen up out of the ground, spectre-like, or as though the ground itself has risen up in some spectral way. it is not the case that the ground itself is changed through this process, although, as tim ingold notes (2007: 45) in conceptual terms, cuts or breakages can reveal or create new surfaces, new ‘faces’. what is changed is the way settlers themselves are able (or constrained) to experience the place. in facing whatever else might now seem to be ‘there’, they are in turn re-faced by it. habituated affective responses to place might, in other words, be shifted as a result of precisely these kinds of sensible or atmospheric disjunctions. brokenness published sources offer at least five māori expressions for atmosphere, and roughly forty for affect.3 these terms, however, are not strictly translatable. for iwi, the experience of place is characterised by hau (imperfectly glossed as wind, breeze, spirit, “the air we share”, sturm & turner 2011: 32), which connects all entities within an environmental field. hau involves a drawing in and releasing of breath which binds one to the long history of place and to the prior and primary forces that suffuse the lifeworld. connected to the flow of mana (energies, presences, power) in the world, such forces may materialise in the mauri, or vitality, that animates all things, as well as in the responsibilities and regulatory codes associated with tapu. as with european notions of atmospheres and affects, tapu is felt rather than seen, and it is experienced as and through the workings of an operative sensible order – although it exceeds and refuses european notions of atmospheres and affects in key ways: 1. tapu is an integral aspect of tikanga māori, or first law (mikaere 2011: 109), and it is bound up with rights and rightfulness (going about the place in the right way). 2. tapu works explicitly in terms of sacredness. making things ‘uncommon’, so that they can no longer be put to common use, it is twinned with noa (ordinary, common, non-sacred), producing a lifeworld characterised by spiritual balance (211-12). 3. tapu and noa configure the lifeworld as a domain of social forces. they insist that all experiences and relationships are place-based, and that all places are experienced relationally (shore 1988).4 4. tapu carries the capacity to fracture or rupture other ways of understanding or experiencing place (such as those associated with the shorter history of european settlement). one of the oldest representational traces of tapu-as-social-force is the oldest surviving māori map, drawn by the northern chief tuki in 1793.5 (fig.3) this map transcribes an oral history, denoting a transitional phase in the indigenous adoption of european technologies of writing; there is more than one sensible order operative here. the map is cosmological, metaphysical and mnemonic, inscribing tribal boundaries, whakapapa connections to land, chiefly residences and burial sites, as well as food, water and flax-gathering resources – all variously subject to the workings of tapu. key among the elements detailed are te rerenga wairua, the northernmost tip of the country and departure point of spirits of the dead on their homeward journey to hawaiki; te ara wairua, the spiritual pathway that runs the length of the country, culminating at te rerenga wairua; and the pohutukawa tree used by the spirits to lower themselves into the water. what lies beyond the boundaries of the page – but is nevertheless implied – is the diagramming of the country in relation to a pacific homeland. marsden’s journal attests that europeans initially struggled to grasp tuki’s teachings about te rerenga wairua. in 1834, a kaitaia-based missionary did, however, record a journey undertaken with the stated intention of cutting the sacred pohutukawa: interstices 15 41 fig. 3 tuki’s map [courtesy alexander turnbull library and ministry for culture and heritage] the scenery round the place where i stood was most uninviting; not only so, but calculated to inspire the soul with horror. the place has a most barren appearance, while the screaming of the numerous sea-fowl and the sea roaring in the pride of might, dashing against the dismal black rocks, would suggest to the reflecting mind interstices 15 42 that it must have been the dreary aspect of the place that led the new zealanders to choose such situations as this for their hell (w. g. puckey, in smith 1910: 464-65). more recent settler accounts of visitation to the area, which was acquired by the new zealand government in the 1960s as a scenic and scientific reserve, typically run along these lines: arriving at the cape in the later afternoon, we sat quietly and contemplated the elemental nature of the experience. the last of the day trippers were at our backs [. . .] the halt and the lame were trying to make their way down the tracks to get as close to the point as they could; with faltering steps and laboured breathing, they fixed their eyes on the distant sea beneath a sign that points to the equator 2066 nautical miles beyond [. . .] there is a sense of desolation at the cape and yet it is exhilarating and frightening and awesome too. on that first journey we sat for a long time looking out to sea [. . .] i stood on the edge of the land feeling all of new zealand behind me and i was almost tempted to leap myself, pushed by some sense of profound isolation to the world beyond (kidman & ussher 1984: 75-78). despite being separated by 150 years, these two responses are internally templated in strikingly similar ways. both are preoccupied with the fact that this locale is distant, elevated, exposed to the elements, windswept and ’godforsaken’, and they construct the experience of place as constitutive of a deep individual self (‘i’ find myself here). from a european perspective, these surging affects connected with te rerenga wairua have little to do with the hau of long history. rather, they will likely be bound up with imported ideas about christian wilderness, scenery appreciation and the sublime, and a subject who is given to ‘feel’ his or her own subjecthood through direct communion with nature. they are also likely to do with leisure, travel and tourism as antidotes to settled urban life, and with remoteness and “edgeness”6 – implying a set of coordinates which diagram the place hemispherically, as antipodes. as the two responses also indicate, in accordance with its own changing needs (particularly national distinctiveness and connectedness-to-place), settler culture has adopted and reconstructed te rerenga wairua as a place of emotional, patriotic pilgrimage. since the 1960s, increasing numbers of settlers and tourists have journeyed to the northern tip of the country to be ‘moved’ and to find themselves ‘at home’. indigenous ideas about the site’s spirituality have, in other words, been co-opted to produce a newly needed atmospherics of place. to some extent, then, there appears to be consensus across settler and indigenous cultures that te rerenga wairua is special, and it is clear that the place maintains deep spiritual significance for all iwi. the place is not, however, a “common object” (rancière 1999: xii) since the terms in which it works will differ depending on one’s angle of arrival (i.e. what kind of sensible order is operating in each case). as mason durie has noted, the imposition of an imagined “universality” of feeling by settler culture in relation to such places mistakes māori understandings of the nature of relationships between entities in a linked-up environment (2010: 239). at base, it misrecognises the fact that, following the pathway of te ara wairua, iwi angles of arrival at this place emerge from long history itself. perhaps unsurprisingly, significant problems have flared in the space of this disjunction. grievances concerning the site’s ownership and governance by the crown were lodged with the waitangi tribunal in the 1980s, as part of the muriwhenua land claim. visible signs of progress (from a settler perspective) are, for ngāti kuri and other muriwhenua tribes, a form of scarring or defacement and a desecration of the place. accordingly, iwi representatives requested that the lighthouse and other residential and commercial properties marking the area be removed. when progress in this direction proved too slow, graffiti and arson were deployed in response. despite this increasingly fraught atmosphere, or perhaps as a strategy to ease escalating tensions, the new zealand government announced in 2000 that te rerenga wairua would become the site of the first iwi museum in interstices 15 43 the country. a tender was held, an architectural design was produced, and preparations reached the advanced planning stage. the development, however, has proven un-implementable, which is to say that – in opening splits between new country and old, short history and long – it exposed unbridgeable cracks between operative sensible orders. circumstances surrounding the decision not to proceed with the museum are complex and involve unresolved disputes over the site’s ownership and management, as well as conflicting commercial aspirations (boswell 2011). what is perhaps most striking, however, is that the planned museum development fundamentally mistook the tapu nature of the site itself. the prospect that existing desecrations would be removed only for the site to be re-desecrated became particularly contentious. at public meetings, iwi representatives talked about their wairua, or spirit, being made heavy and saddened by this. “who do we think we are to tutu with the spiritual world? to put land marks over the marks of nature?”, ran one anguished vein of questioning (marika 2008). as is the case at kerikeri, the tapu associated with te rerenga wairua is such that visitation must be discouraged by its kaitiaki, or guardians, as a precondition for maintaining the site on behalf of a larger social body. ngāti kuri concerns have centred on the actions of department of conservation contractors in transforming pae, the sacred mountain at te rerenga wairua, into “a crater” (2008). in accordance with the invasive logics of settler design, the top of this mountain was levelled in order to supply the soil used to re-contour the visitor car park and to create the banks within which the concrete waharoa has been set. such wounding of the place, in violation of tapu, points towards the limits of european notions of affect, understood as the experience of a person or persons within a place, rather than as a property of the place itself. in other words, te rerenga wairua – in the tapu figure of pae, ancestor, spiritual entity and symbol of identity (mead 2003: 67) – possesses wairua and has the capacity to be corporeally and spiritually affected by an unfolding history of use and care. the implications are considerably more far-reaching than those associated with european anthropomorphisms conventionally overlaid on the land and embodied in the romantic conceit of nature personified. in the terms of an indigenous worldview, people and place are placentally connected – ‘of’ each other.7 for tangata whenua, or indigenous people, this bond means that the land feels you before or at the same time as you feel it. you press on its senses in the terms of a living relationship that is ethically binding, and you are subject to – both faced and given a face by – its own sensible order. as a flashpoint, then, ngāti kuri distress at harm perpetrated through the ‘remediational’ earthworks, which triggered the department of conservation abandonment of the proposed iwi museum development, marks a moment where settler culture has been confronted by the fact that it cannot feel the place, or that it feels the wrong way for the place – in part because it has failed to understand that the place itself is charged with feelings that demand consideration. the place and its longer and ongoing history of indigenous habitation exceed settlers’ feelings for it and their designs on it, which offer only circumscribed modes of longing and belonging. what is ‘moved’ is the imagined ground of a shared understanding that functions, ordinarily, as the “national orthodoxy” (barclay 2003: 9). faced with the assertion of pre-existing and ongoing ‘uncommonness’, the settler response to place is reduced to something less than the wholeness which it has hitherto conceived itself as constituting. at such moments, what settlers feel amounts to a splintering of their own sensible certainties, precipitated by an upwelling of alien affect. the land is re-experienced as an interior place of history and habitation, to which the secondary, exteriorising, future-oriented work of settlement cannot lay claim, and which it cannot contain or subdue.8 what is returned to settlers, in affective terms, is the shaky grounds of their place within this place – an atmospherics of precarity and self-disorder which isn’t reducible to the profoundly european category of the sublime.9 interstices 15 44 disabling absence the logic that would have produced the iwi museum at te rerenga wairua is bound up with “enabling absence”, although again, as with earle’s painting, it is possible to read this absence back on itself. the museum, then, is a disabling and disabled absence. it is a ‘thereness’ which must remain virtual, an object of nostalgia for a future-that-can’t-be. in practice, as the levelling of pae rehua attests, te rerenga wairua has been re-ordered. tar-sealing of the northernmost stretch of state highway one did go ahead, although facilitating ease of access by linking the site to a “navigable” path of asphalt (solnit 1999: 365) was bitterly contested. existing buildings at te rerenga wairua except for the lighthouse have been removed, and a handful of interpretive panels have been installed. as a compromise between competing sensible orders, these measures of ‘un-doing’ mark the limits of whatever can be said to be shared at te rerenga wairua. there lingers, however, a distinct atmosphere of unease: department of conservation files specify that these developments must be arsonand chainsaw-proof (see boswell 2011: 236), and bodies were laid on the line in protest when the bulldozers arrived. the key element of the originally-commissioned design that has been implemented at te rerenga wairua is the monumental concrete waharoa, or portico (fig. 1). withholding immediate views of the ocean, this waharoa seems intended to appear ‘at home’ in its surroundings and to orchestrate drama in the visitor’s encounter with the site. as a mechanism for angling arrival, however, its function is complicated by the enlarged renderings of tuki’s map imprinted on its concrete surfaces. problems also coalesce around a new ablution block adjacent to the waharoa (just out of view in fig.1). the department of conservation insisted on this noa facility as critical infrastructure for visitation purposes, but it is incompatible with the tapu nature of the place. it, too, is adorned with renderings of tuki’s map. such uses of this tribal taonga, or prized possession, have been publicly condemned by ngāti kuri representatives, who note that the department of conservation agents have “built a shit house by any other name in the midst of an ancient map of aotearoa, embellished with [. . .] sacred symbols whose significance is lost to them” (gregory 2009). the orientation of the waharoa itself is erroneous, ngāti kuri further point out (2008). the structure faces in the wrong direction and is misaligned with te ara wairua, impeding and obscuring the hau of long history. of paramount concern to iwi representatives, however, is the fact that the bank within which the waharoa is set, and the ground which it occupies, embody – at the same time as they conceal – the desecration of pae rehua. the waharoa, then, is perhaps materially most significant for the “absent presence” it marks – for what lies beneath the surrounding surfaces of asphalt and flax, are the grounds of knowledge instantiated in the disfigured entity of the sacred mountain. if tuki’s teachings about forces of tapu associated with te rerenga wairua remain largely opaque or illegible to settler culture, what affect seems to reveal at this place is the brokenness of settlement history itself. the imaginative construction of this place by settler culture as a source of ‘fullness’ and ‘commonness’ in affective and atmospheric terms is, quite literally, predicated on the interment of indigenous knowledge and the effacing of prior modalities of response. interstices 15 45 references ahmed, s. (2010). happy objects. in m. gregg & g. seigworth (eds.), the affect theory reader. london, uk: duke university press. (pp. 29-51) barclay, b. (2003). celebrating fourth cinema. illusions 35, 7-11. binney, j. (2004). tuki’s universe. new zealand journal of history, 38 (2), 215-32. binney, j. (ed.) (2007). te kerikeri 1770-1850: the meeting pool. wellington, nz: bridget williams books. boswell, a. (2011). ‘shakey notions’: settlement history on display [unpublished phd thesis, the university of auckland]. boswell, a. (forthcoming in 2014). the sensible order of the eel. settler colonial studies special issue, other people’s country: law, water, entitlement. calder, a. (2011). the settler’s plot: how stories take place in new zealand. auckland, nz: auckland university press. carter, p. (1996). the lie of the land. boston, ma: faber. carter, p. (2009). dark writing: geography, performance, design. honolulu: university of hawai’i press. department of conservation (2007). sustainable development plan for the kororipo-kerikeri basin [unpublished report]. durie, m. (2010). outstanding universalvalue: how relevant is indigeneity? in r. selby, p. moore & m. mulholland (eds.), māori and the environment: kaitiaki. wellington, nz: huia. gregory, b. (2009). te rerenga o nga wairua aka cape reinga nz jan 09 movie. maori.org.nz. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqiedk_eeoo [accessed 21 august 2014] ingold, t. (2007). lines: a brief history. london, uk: routledge. kelly, j. (1999). maori maps. cartographica: the international journal for geographic information and geovisualization 36 (2), 1-30. kidman, f. & j. ussher (1984). gone north. auckland, nz: heinemann. marika, a. (2008). excavation devastation at the cape for $14.5m tourist centre etc from the original whakapapa club. questions and answers on cape reinga work (posted 01/03/2008). http://www.maori.org.nz/papapanui/ archives/viewthread.php?topic_id=3710&page=13 [accessed 16 sept, 2014] lamb, j. (1991), a sublime moment off poverty bay, 9 october 1769. in g. mcgregor & m. williams (eds.), dirty silence: aspects of language and literature in new zealand. auckland, nz: oxford university press. marsden, s. (1932). the letters and journals of samuel marsden, 1765-1838, j. r. elder (ed.). dunedin, nz: coulls somerville wilkie. massumi, b. (2002). parables for the virtual: movement, affect, sensation. durham, nc: duke university press. mead, h. m. (2003). tikanga māori: living by māori values. wellington, nz: huia. mikaere, a. (2011). colonising myths – māori realities: he rukuruku whakaaro. wellington, nz: huia. moorfield, j. c. (2011). te aka: māori-english, english-māori dictionary and index. auckland, nz: pearson. nga hapu o ngāti kuri. (2008). te rerenga o nga wairua aka cape reinga, nth is nz. maori.org.nz. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5sb8vuftjo [accessed 19 sept 2014] ngata, a. t. (ed.) (1901). complete manual of maori grammar and conversation, with vocabulary. christchurch, nz: whitcombe and tombs. ngāti kuri. (2008). te rerenga o nga wairua aka cape reinga, te hiku o te ika (nth is nz) maori.org.nz. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feszkmbtmco [accessed 21 august 2014] park, g. (2006). theatre country: essays on landscape & whenua. wellington, nz: victoria university press. rancière, j. (1999). disagreement: politics and philosophy, j. rose (trans.). minneapolis, mi: university of minnesota press. rancière, j. (2004). the aesthetics of politics: the distribution of the sensible, (g. rockhill trans.). new york, ny: continuum. rose, d. b. (1999). hard times. in k. neumann, n. thomas & h. ericksen (eds.), quicksands: foundational histories in australia and aotearoa new zealand. sydney, nsw: university of new south wales press. shore, b. (1988). mana and tapu. in a. howard & r. borofky (eds.), developments in polynesian ethnology. honolulu: university of hawai’i press, 137-73. smith, j. (2007). post-cultural hospitality: settler-native-migrant encounters. arena journal 28, 65-86. smith, s. p. (1910). the maori wars of the nineteenth century. christchurch, nz: whitcombe and tombs. solnit, r. (1999). savage dreams: a journey into the landscape wars of the american west. berkeley, ca: university of california press. stewart, k. (2010). worlding refrains. in m. gregg & g. seigworth (eds.), the affect theory reader. london, uk: duke university press. sturm, s. & s. turner (2011). “built pedagogy”: the university of auckland business school as crystal palace. interstices 12, 23-34. turner, s. (2010). the truth of waters. reading room 4 (10), 112-23. turner, s. (2002). being colonial/colonial being. journal of new zealand literature 20, 39-66. williams, h. w. (1957). a dictionary of the maori language. wellington, nz: government printer. zumthor, p. (2006). atmospheres: architectural environments, surrounding objects. basel: birkhäuser. this paper has been double blind reviewed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqiedk_eeoo http://www.maori.org.nz/papapanui/archives/viewthread.php?topic_id=3710&page=13 http://www.maori.org.nz/papapanui/archives/viewthread.php?topic_id=3710&page=13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5sb8vuftjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feszkmbtmco interstices 15 46 endnotes 1. i am indebted to turner’s work on broken history (2002). 2. while my analysis builds on calder’s (2011: 46), i am explicitly concerned with tapu as social force, and with its capacity to rupture modes of belonging associated with short history. 3. see ngata (1901), williams (1957) and moorfield (2011). 4. shore makes this observation in the context of the wider pacific. it is linked to the “epistemological bias” that things be known “in their specific contexts and through their perceptual effects in the world rather than in terms of essential, intrinsic features” (shore 1988: 138). 5. see kelly (1999) and binney (2004). 6. “edgeness” is a branding strategy for the settler nation. see http://www.nzedge.com/about/ [accessed 20 august 2014]. 7. whenua, the māori term for land, also means afterbirth. see park (2006: 240-44). 8. i draw here on barclay (2003) and turner (2010). see also paragraph 2 of this paper. 9. the sublime suggests that whatever settlers feel isn’t ‘of’ the place. see lamb (1991) for an alternate analysis of the settler-colonial sublime. _ref398703505 _ref398651852 25 material aesthetics and agency: alexander dorner and the stage-managed museum sandra karina löschke i intended to show that there are much more profound forces of change at work in life, which unite past and present in a much intenser way, than we are accustomed to see. this wholly relative, wholly dynamic interpenetrative history has a new power to direct us. history indeed is able to tap a substratum of positive, new – and badly needed – energies for our conduct of all life, artistic and otherwise. (dorner 1958: 18) at stake for the museum in the early 1920s, alexander dorner suggested, was much more than art historical erudition and connoisseurship but the adequate resolution of the only thing that mattered – “ourselves and our vital problems” (1958: 147). the purpose of the museum was to aid the improvement of selfawareness and a deeper understanding of the present situation, he insisted, and this could only be accomplished if “the energies that, surging up from the past, have invaded our own lives” (147) were uncovered. it was apparent to him that the museum would have to utilise “all possible sensory and intellectual resources of representation” (146) to achieve this aim. the particular challenge identified by dorner appeared to be one of method – how could historical and cultural content be mediated adequately in order to become relevant for the present? something beyond scientific organisation and representation was at issue – something that materialised immaterial energies that lay dormant in our cultural heritage and that, once activated, had the capacity to improve human life and facilitate social progress. it is dorner’s own curatorial response to these challenges that is under investigation in this study, which focuses on dorner’s reorganisation of the collections at the provinzialmuseum hannover during the 1920s. dorner’s grouping of period works in discrete atmosphärenräume (atmosphere rooms)1 and the introduction of an evolutionary itinerary have been considered conventional and comparable to earlier reorganisation efforts (flacke 1993: 137; klonk 2009: 94; scholl 1995). similarly, his concurrent deployment of atmospheric immersion and an evolutionary itinerary have been seen as incompatible and a grave inconsistency in his curatorial approach: on one hand, the audience’s identification with an epoch precludes the possibility of a continuous consciousness – the viewer is expected to empathise; on the other hand, it is precisely the cognition of a historic continuity that is evoked with the realisation of a concept of historic development (flacke-knoch 1986/87: 137). counter to these arguments, this study suggests that it is possible to attain a more nuanced reading of dorner’s strategies by pursuing a detailed analysis of elements of his curatorial practice – in particular, central display elements such as the use of wall colour and reframing. when unravelled in relation to his museum guidebooks and other information material, his practice emerges as a calculated staging of intellectual insights and sensory impressions. however subtle, dorner’s strategies marked a turning point in the presentation of artworks in museums by going beyond issues of representation and taste that governed the work of his peers.2 his stage-managed environments transformed the way the audience interrelated 1 dorner used the term atmosphere room to describe the grouping of artworks from historic periods/styles in discrete rooms. unlike period rooms, these were not stylistically homogenous. they were given an identity through colourful appointment and fitted with modern furniture and everyday objects to reflect the self-understanding and spatial conceptions of their respective time as seen from a present perspective. see dorner 1924. 2 for a discussion of dorner’s curatorial work in the wider context of other museum re-organisations see scholl 1995; flacke 1993. interstices 14 with the art objects presented to them – a material dialectic intended to promote empathy and immersion whilst simultaneously encouraging active reception and awareness of reality. the state of german museums in the early 1920s: excess and disorientation having spent his early years at the provinzialmuseum cataloguing the drawing and painting collections as a research assistant, dorner had formed a comprehensive idea about the museum’s holdings when he began to restructure the collections and gallery spaces of the provinzialmuseum in 1923. at the time, the collections were still in a state of disarray. more reminiscent of a curiosity cabinet than an art collection, the provinzialmuseum was described by staff as a “trash room” (flacke 1992: 51) where one could find an altar next to a stuffed boar and a painting. the museum’s “high walls”, as dorner later observed, “threatened to collapse under the load of the good and the bad” (katenhusen 1993: 71). as a consequence of complex ownership structures and loan agreements (see cauman 1958: 30-31), the provinzialmuseum functioned essentially as a depository for an array of diverse objects that were exhibited as singular items without meaningful interrelations – a “loose aggregate”, as dorner termed it (1958: 16).3 visitors found themselves not only overwhelmed by the plethora of objects on display, but also entirely left to their own devices in engaging in a meaningful way with the diverse exhibits they had encountered. the situation in hannover was symptomatic of the wider museum landscape at the time that was caught between tradition and rapid change (mai 2010: 365). museum reform efforts had already commenced in the 1880s (joachimides 2001), but in the more radicalised political climate of the early weimar republic, the call for “the activation of museums as educational establishments for the people” (taut 1918) grew louder. the museum, increasingly regarded as a predominantly educational institution, had to leave behind its passive position and engage in what dorner described as an active museum practice, whose primary goal was to find new ways to evaluate art collections for the general public – ways that would make art historical developments not only visible but comprehensible (see dorner 1924). this active practice meant a shift of attention from the representation of objects to the mediation of ideas inherent in these objects. dorner’s raumbild concept according to dorner, art and culture were primarily manifestations of the prevalent historic conceptions of space and thus represented immediate expressions of how people conceived of themselves as being in space and time, and in relation to objects and one another. thus for dorner, the history of art and architecture mapped the history of human relations to space and materialised the image of self that was formed in relation to it. thematised under the heading of raumbild,4 the idea of historically evolving space-time relations was highly implicated in dorner’s curatorial work. literally translated as both spatialised image and image of space, the notion of raumbild resides between object and image, between the perceived and the imagined, between the material and the immaterial. in the same way that a raumbild could be articulated in an artwork, its underlying concept could also be rematerialised as part of the exhibition room. the raumbild’s fluctuation between image and space can be seen as the enabling assumption for dorner’s curatorial practice. 3 owners often insisted on the separate display of their collections. they often resisted the relegation of qualitatively less valuable works to “study collections” forcing museums to display the entire collection. see alexander dorner's proposal for a re-organisation of the duke of cumberland's collections, dated 3 april 1923. (niedersachsisches landersarchiv: hann.152 acc. 2006/013 nr.1) 4 in the english-language publication of his book the way beyond ‘art’, which summarises his life’s work both as an art historian and as a museum director, dorner described the idea of raumbild more loosely as “reality concept” (1958: 17). 27 dorner’s concern with changing and increasingly dynamic concepts of space can be traced throughout his writings, in which he developed an extensive vocabulary around this theme. in his 1923 publication die romanische baukunst in sachsen und westfalen (roman architecture in saxony and westphalia), the changing interrelations between baukörper (built object), and raum (space) towards their equilibrium in the concept of raumbau (space building) were explored as the decisive aspect in the transition from the roman to the gothic raumbild. the accentuation of the built object customary in roman art, dorner noted, was reversed in westphalian gothic where space assumed an all-embracing unity and “the built object recede[d] into the background as subservient” (1923: 9). this shift in emphasis from object to space was paralleled in the sensory impressions imparted by the architecture – the sense of “expansion and calm” apparent in roman architecture was replaced with “intensity and movement” in gothic architecture (8).5 dorner’s correlation of spatial and empathic conditions is not new and can be linked to his self-confessed partisanship of alois riegl – an enthusiasm he developed during his studies in berlin under adolph goldschmidt (dorner 1958: 15). in a series of lectures on the origins of baroque art in rome, riegl had advanced a parallelism between tiefraum (deep space) and empfindung (sensation) that he termed raumwirkung (spatial effect) (1908: 43). observing a tendency to only look at the physical in architecture, riegl suggested that beyond architectural composition, buildings also had a psychological effect upon us. in other words, it was possible for the viewer to receive sensory impressions from the building that pointed to an intimate relationship between architectural composition and reception. exclusively focused on historic art, riegl’s art philosophy did not offer a model for the art and life of the present. thus when it came to dealing with the inclusion of contemporary art, dorner found that he could not rely on riegl to provide a theoretical basis for the museum re-organisation and the practical curatorial challenges at hand (see dorner 1958: 16). inspired by the dynamic space-time experiences of the modern world, many of the avant-garde works dorner acquired for the museum were informed by the emerging imagination of a four-dimensional space prompted by scientific discoveries (the discovery of x-rays, electricity, einstein’s theory of relativity, and other scientific advances) and promoted radical ideas based upon energetic interrelations between human beings and their environment (see henderson 1990). in dorner’s own words: we feel that the capture of our environment from a rigid, fixed standpoint, as in the perspectival image construction, results in a constricted space stage (raumbühne) with massive scenery… captured only in front elevation which no longer correlates to the expansiveness of the space in which we move. (ca. 1926: 2) to support a wider understanding of contemporary art and its promotion of a new raumbild, dorner set out to materialise the dynamic interrelations that inspired these works and make them comprehensible as part of a larger historic development. 5 yet the central problem of raumbau (space building), dorner suggested, was not fully addressed in german renaissance architecture; only italian renaissance architecture resolved “the problem of the equal confluence of einheitsraum (unified space) and einheitsmasse (uniform mass)” (1923: 10). interstices 14 materialising the energies of the past: an intensely integrated knowledge in an article was sollen heute kunst-museen?, published in 1924, dorner outlined the experiential and intellectual objectives for this curatorial strategy, which he summarised under the heading of atmosphere rooms. the emotional objectives for the spatial arrangement of artworks were: 1. to display the individual artwork in its context in such a way that it exerts the greatest possible emotional effect. 2. in addition, the individual periods of art development should be mediated to the visitor emotionally. through this uniformity he receives the impression of clarity and through that the feeling of stability and calm. 3. finally, this clearly-represented sequence of art periods shall be experienced as a whole in their transition and in the consequences of their change. (dorner 1924) to frame these emotional encounters, accompanying textual information was required: 1. each individual artwork must be explained in its provenance, subject matter of its pictorial representation, and the uniqueness of its style; 2. each artistic period must be explained in its historical facts and the achievements of its style, and; 3. the entire development of art has to be revealed as a consistent sequence of styles, that build upon another, so that the entirety will be a survey of the growth and advancement of the human spirit in the area of the plastic arts. (dorner 1924) in his dual focus, dorner judiciously recognised the degree to which a re-organisation could not simply be understood as a straightforward application of scientific and aesthetic criteria to the existing collection, but that some form of synthesis of intellectual and sensory impressions had to occur to engage new audiences. the two elements – the implicit knowledge gained through emotional experience and the explicit knowledge acquired by reading – had to be “co-ordinated as smoothly as possible” (dorner 1925: 4). dorner did not provide much information about a rigorous methodology behind the translation of his objectives into specific curatorial choices, nor did he refer to other curatorial models or scientific research on colour or perception. taking its clues from the above objectives, the following analysis will investigate dorner’s curatorial interventions and how they can be related to the intended emotional and intellectual effects. ‘unframing’ artworks: the immersion of the viewer the first objective outlined in dorner’s article requested the isolation of the artwork for maximum emotional intensity. primarily, this meant a significant reduction of the number of paintings to be hung on the wall space either as single-tiered hangings or other discrete arrangements – a form of display that was already practiced in germany at the time. widely-spaced and mounted at eye level, generally only one artwork occupied the visual field of the viewer, confronting him one-to-one. once isolated, paintings were re-framed. similar efforts had been undertaken previously by wilhelm bode and ludwig justi, both of whom abandoned elaborate, gilded frames in favour of simple, modern ones that enhanced the colours and aesthetic of the painting (klonk 2009: 238).6 in contrast, dorner’s reframing strategies revealed 29 his disinterest in the aesthetic considerations of his colleagues, and instead highlighted his attempts to reconfigure frames as conceptual devices that materialised historic conceptions of space by evoking architectural effects. this translation of an artistic raumbild into an actual architectural arrangement is most clearly demonstrated in his treatment of paintings from major historic periods. in particular, the works of the italian renaissance and the dutch baroque which were well represented in the collections and whose underlying spatial logic was discussed in detail in dorner’s museum guide books. they were exemplary for his use of sophisticated framing detail to attain spatial impact, set these styles apart from their predecessors, or highlight regional differences. the italian renaissance paintings were discussed at the beginning of part ii of dorner’s museum guide which covered the period “from the renaissance to 1800” (1930, part ii: 1). focussing on ”the registration of external appearance” (1927: 10), dorner suggested that these works represented a decisive break with the medieval desire to reflect what was spiritual and hence beyond sensory perception. to him, renaissance art almost signified a reversal of medieval conceptions of space – a turning point when “the capture of space became the artistic objective [and] the invention of perspective … made it possible to portray bodies and all other objects clearly delimited in space [both] in their full plasticity and in their relations to one another” (10). the increasing importance of space and nature during the renaissance period, as dorner understood, was clearly articulated in its documentation of “the factual matter of the visible world with sharp outlines and hard and clear colours” (ca.1930, part ii: 1). the absolute viewpoint of the renaissance raumbild captured space as the homogenous expansion of three-dimensional volumes – clearly defined solitaires layered and overlapping – and this, dorner claimed, not only instigated a break with medieval spatial imagination, but more importantly, represented the prevalent conception of space valid up until the then-present day. in this pervasive raumbild “the image is a view out of a window; the picture frame represents a window frame; the segment of [depicted] space lies in front of us like a stage seen from a fixed viewpoint” (dorner 1932: 30). even film, as dorner later noted, had not been able to free itself from “the disadvantage, that it always generates perspectival images of space” (1932: 37). to translate this emphasis on cubic space and geometric volumes at the level of the exhibition space, dorner selected frames that looked like window frames (albeit modern ones).7 intended to simulate openings in the walls of the room, the paintings were integrated as architectural elements to evoke in the viewer the impression of looking out through a window onto a stage set (see flacke-knock 1985: 52; cauman 1958: 89), prescribing a statically defined position for the visitor, and materialising the renaissance raumbild as a viewing experience. in contrast to his intense emphasis on frames in the renaissance rooms, dorner abandoned them almost entirely for the baroque paintings of the dutch by selecting a black-brown colour to match the edge colour of the canvases. he believed that in dutch baroque, the perspectival frame of the renaissance was “fused together … to form a total unity of space and physical masses” (ca 1930, part ii: 12). to attain this homogenising spatial effect, the dutch painters developed two main innovations that fundamentally transformed the geometric raumbild of the previous period. according to dorner, “tone [was] one of the means, with which dutch art achieve[d] its new, big effects ... light-dark contrast [was] the second”(8). masters like rembrandt and his pupils synthesised these two techniques to achieve maximum impact. in their paintings, they sought to capture the forms of figures and objects through a variation of the degree of tonality within the brown overall 6 during his relatively short time as director of the städel in frankfurt, ludwig justi reframed extensively, a practice he had learned during his time in berlin as an assistant to wilhelm bode. the reference to bode’s reframing practices is mentioned in klonk 2009: 238, note 68. 7 it should be noted that in principle this treatment reflected renaissance practices whereby frames were “invariably designed as parts of an architectural interior and were frequently meant to harmonize with door and window surrounds”. paintings were often mounted in tabernacle frames that were in keeping with the architectural styles of gothic cathedrals and elevated the picture from the wall. styles ranged from elaborate to simple depending on the specifications of clients. later, renaissance paintings were frequently re-framed to match the interiors of their owners. see newbery, bisacca & kanter 1990:11. interstices 14 colour of the painting that could be lightened completely to attain white, or darkened to attain black, as dorner observed (8). but it was in the fusion of spatial layers that dorner saw dutch painting’s fundamental departure from the geometric raumbild of the renaissance which, he believed, still persisted in the baroque paintings of the neighbouring flemish provinces. in the paintings of the dutch, the objects in the foreground gradually disappear in darkness towards the edges, leaving behind the three-partite structure of foreground, middleground and background still favoured by the flemish. for dorner, this effect signalled that, apart from “the unsurmountable synthesis of plasticity and spatiality, the idea of something unbounded and infinite arises” (8). the two innovations of the dutch tonal gradient and contrast – permitted them to step from the “stage set to unbounded scenery” (6). and although their art dealt with similar issues than the neighbouring flemish, it is this unlimited conception of space that “allow[ed] them to go further”, and that made them appear “more modern” (7) from the perspective of the fluid space-time conceptions of the present, he observed. with the re-framing of the paintings of the italian renaissance and the dutch baroque, dorner achieved two effects: first, the spatial concepts present in respective art periods were transferred with ease onto the actual space of the museum. in attempting to reproduce the baroque techniques of contrast and gradient, or the renaissance conception of geometrically framed space in the relationship between painting and wall, he paid particular attention to details that extended the geometric and visual systems of a period to the design of the exhibition space, and reproduced painterly concepts as room-embracing aesthetic systems. since all art was regarded by dorner as a direct articulation of a particular raumbild, both painting and curatorial practice could be thought of as spatial practices that worked with identical ‘building materials’ – colour, light, tonality, contrast, volume, geometry. by materialising the concepts of painting within the arena of the museum space, a raumbild could be experienced at the scale of the room, at one glance, upon entering, and without perceiving anything in detail. second, in blending the frame colour with the colour of the painting’s perimeter, dorner ‘unframed’ the dutch paintings, extending the pictorial space beyond the frame and into the sphere of the viewers.8 equally, we can speak of ‘unframing’ when the renaissance picture frame became dissociated from the artwork and re-associated with the exhibition architecture as a window frame, effectively turning the painting into a ‘view’. the anthropomorphising effect caused by the immediate encounter with the unframed works is comparable to that of earlier optical devices such as panoramas and dioramas which equally “cancelled the visual distance and made the viewer feel that he was right inside the picture” (schivelbusch 1995: 217). sloterdijk closely associated this method of ‘unframing’ with the phenomena of artificial immersion whose core aspect “is the potential replacement of whole environments – not only of the images, usually framed, one looks at in galleries. immersion as a method unframes images and vistas, dissolving the boundaries with their environment” (2011 (2006): 105). in paying particular attention to the perceptual details of his display techniques, dorner attempted to engage with the psycho-perceptual ideas also promoted by avant-garde and commercial art of his day and provided familiar connection points for new audiences. in subtle ways, the unframing techniques deployed by dorner address what margarete vöhringer described as the “the technological access of the human psyche” explored by the avant garde and science at this time (vöhringer 2007: 20). 8 it is possible to imagine that dorner could have discarded frames entirely and matched the dark edges of the paintings with a black wall colour, which would have achieved an even greater sense of unboundedness. however, in the absence of electrical lighting at the provinzialmusem at the time, a black wall might have darkened the rooms to an unacceptable degree. 31 fig.1 alexander dorner. room for italian renaissance art after its reorganisation [photograph courtesy of niedersächsisches landesmuseum hannover landesgalerie]. fig.2 alexander dorner. room for dutch baroque art after its reorganisation [photograph courtesy of niedersächsisches landesmuseum hannover landesgalerie]. fig.3 alexander dorner. room for flemish baroque art after its reorganisation [photograph courtesy of niedersächsisches landesmuseum hannover landesgalerie]. interstices 14 colour – the activation of the viewer the second objective was implemented at the scale of the gallery room and required the emotional mediation of “individual art periods by creating a clear impression and a sense of calm” (dorner 1924). for this, dorner used room-specific wall colours to create the setting against which all other elements were to be staged. steeped in a uniform hue, the rooms intensified the spatial effects imparted by the artworks. by formally organising rooms and their contents as unified milieus, a harmonised context was provided for each period or style. apart from its formalising function, dorner also assigned an “activating effect” to colour and employed it as a sensory aid for the instruction of inexpert viewers: a more passive attitude is seen in galleries where works of art are allowed to “speak for themselves” through being placed, in all their wealth of stylistic variety, against neutral backgrounds. this treatment is more satisfying to the scholar or specialist, who often resists intrusion of a museum director’s philosophy, than it is to the general public, which welcomes such intervention as a help towards understanding. but the work of art isolated by its neutral background is a fish out of water. the more passive the attitude, it appears, the more likely the museum to revert to the uniform enfilades of the academic galleries. (cauman 1958: 83) it is important to note that dorner’s colour choices were unrelated to the colour preferences of period interiors (although sometimes his choices coincided) (flacke-knoch 1986/87: 135). instead, he abandoned attempts at objective-historical registration in favour of an entirely interpretive history focussed on the evolution of concepts of space. these ideas represented a distinct break with the period room, a widely used display model, which aimed at a truthful reconstruction of historic spaces with furnishings that corresponded to the prevalent historic style of a period. the use of colour in the context of exhibitions was not unusual at the time, and monika flacke-knoch suggested that it is possible that dorner was inspired by comparable efforts at the museum für kunst und gewerbe in hamburg by max sauerlandt (1986/87: 145 note 95), who had introduced colour to represent a period’s predominant attitude towards life (klonk 2009: 94). sauerlandt’s colourful appointment of the hamburg rooms intended to epitomise the specific weight of the period’s spiritual timing. thus, medieval art was shown against a dark blue background accentuating religious seriousness and baroque art against deep red brown emphasising its splendour. in these instances, correspondences between sauerlandt’s and dorner’s respective colour schemes can be observed. in other instances, however, substantial differences can be detected, particularly in their respective treatments of rooms for renaissance art, where dorner used cool whites and greys to represent the sober, geometric character of renaissance art (cauman 1958: 89) which contrasts with sauerlandt’s use of an energetic, golden yellow to represent manly, worldly joy (klonk 2009: 94). but more importantly, fundamental differences in intent can be noted. dorner’s main concern lay in materialising the evolution of the raumbild as spatial experiences. in that, he differed from sauerlandt’s representative approach that regarded art as the result of the artist’s “urge to plastically shape inexpressible feelings” to which a larger “symbolic significance for the feeling of an epoch” was assigned (sauerlandt 1921: 11). sauerlandt’s plans for the addition of fragrances and music to complete the impression of the artworks too, contrasted with dorner’s much more pragmatic idea of disseminating information via radio broadcasts transmitted by loud speakers (flacke-knock 1986/87: 125). 33 dorner’s striking arrangements of a few paintings against a surface of continuous colour created a saturated ambiance that pervaded the room – something the visitor would absorb at a glance. this idea of a “total overview” is evident in dorner’s resolve to minimise distractions so that nothing would disturb the atmospheric impact of the space and the immediate formation of a mental image. everything was kept simple – all elements of the room were subordinated to the larger logic of the atmospheric image. black linoleum floors minimised the reflection of daylight. simple custom-designed benches and modern chairs were executed in a black colour to visually merge with the linoleum floors. designed as low as possible and positioned at the centre of the rooms and at maximum distance from the paintings, these furnishings minimised any interference with the viewing experience. thus the entire horizontal plane was dematerialised and in its “blackness” almost receded from sight. in the vertical plane, windows were covered with opaque curtains in wall colours to regulate the light, avoid glare and keep out distracting views to the outside world as much as possible, so that these would not compete with the paintings (cauman 1958: 90-91). with these calculated manipulations, dorner attained complete control over the internal environment, encouraging the viewer’s identification with the themed environment. in contrast, other manipulations were introduced to the opposite effect. back and forth – atmospheric immersion and awareness of reality reviewing the development of space from the renaissance to the present in his 1934 article die neue raumvorstellung in der bildenden kunst (the new imagination of space in the plastic arts), dorner concluded that the idea of a four-dimensional space and, with it, the “demonstration of a new experience of reality”(37), was most adequately captured with the animating effect and flowing change of perspective in film. it is through this lens that dorner understood his historical re-organisation of the entire museum, where “a walk through the art collections of the museum unrolls the almost complete development of art from the year 1000 up until our day, and in beholding the artworks, we experience the great fig.4 alexander dorner. custom-designed bench in the room for expressionist art after its reorganisation [photograph courtesy of niedersächsisches landesmuseum hannover landesgalerie]. interstices 14 transformations that have occurred in such profound ways” (dorner 1927: 9). in using the term “unroll” (“entrollen”), dorner hinted at a perceived analogy between museum experience and modern film. indeed, the provinzialmuseum’s carefully edited itinerary emerged as a succession of differentiated experiences that no longer provided continuity in the fashion of traditional museum narratives. dorner’s careful staging of the gallery spaces provided a sequence of emotional experiences intended to amplify harmony and continuity between different periods on one hand and conflicts and discontinuity on the other hand: in the museum guidebook and other information material, dorner eliminated potential feelings of ambiguity by making the viewer aware of intended juxtapositions. for example, right upon entering the first room of the art collections, the viewer is alerted about the antagonistic relationship of antique and medieval art: “with the memory of a greek marble statue, we enter the romanic hall (1), here we are face to face with a spirit, that relates to antiquity like fire with water.” (dorner ca. 1930, part 1: 2) similarly, the fundamental differences between regional variations of baroque art were evoked together with the contrasting colours and emotions of the respective exhibitions spaces. augmenting these contrasts, dorner takes the viewer by the hand, noting: when we move from the red room of the flemish into the light grey room of the dutch, then we come from a magnificent festivity to a silence that is solemn but not gloomy. there are rarely more striking contrasts, and yet both are baroque. (dorner ca. 1930, part 2: 7) fig.5 alexander dorner. poster in coloured paper hung in doorway between exhibition rooms. [illustration by author; text translated from german (see katenhusen & reuning 1993:27). 35 in addition to the colours and the information provided in guide books, other formal and informal devices underlined the respective distinctness or relatedness of rooms and their art. between contrasting rooms, colour-matched door curtains separated different rooms as discrete milieus and these had to be drawn open upon leaving and entering (see cauman 1958: 91). interrupting the viewer’s historic identification with a period and foreshadowing change, the curtains functioned as instruments for physical and mental activation. this rupture was augmented by small coloured posters with slogans which were mounted in door openings between rooms. these addressed the viewer directly and gave instructions: do not regard this art as in competition with the art of our time; it was created under completely different conditions, but has advanced beyond the art of the previous period in its conception. please consider this and then look at the exhibition… (alexander dorner). (see katenhusen & reuning 1993: 27; cauman 1958: 93)9 together, door curtains and posters prompted the viewer’s awareness of reality by interrupting the illusory, immersive experience of the atmosphere room. the short slogans complemented the intermittent “sequential locomotion” (bennett 1995: 43) necessitated by the consecutive arrangement of rooms and offered a form of immediate reading that alluded to the graphic language of mass media encountered in everyday life. looking back at this strategy 30 years later, dorner observed: “i can see quite clearly today that my innovations, which involved the arrangement of objects, lettering, etc., were designed to introduce the concepts of modern science into the humane study of art history” (1958: 17).10 the experiential changes along the sequence of atmosphere rooms can be compared with what sloterdijk has described as bathing in alternating pools: one cannot plunge into an empire’s psycho-semantic immersive context without participating in its history. in this sense history is nothing but a diving tank shared with cavorting fellow swimmers, and what is commonly called participation is, seen in this light, merely a naïve dipping fig.6 alexander dorner. ramberg room after its reorganisation showing door curtains [photograph courtesy of niedersächsisches landesmuseum hannover landesgalerie]. 9 cauman mentions the poster text as the last page of a colourful “gallery book” that replaced the earlier guidebook (1958: 93). in contrast, in the exhibition catalogue “überwindung der ‘kunst’ zum 100. geburtstag des kunsthistorikers alexander dorner (hannover, germany: sprengel museum hannover, 1993: 27), this text is mentioned as an example of a poster hung in the door openings of the atmosphere rooms. dorner’s own notes on the re-organisation mention boxes with notes that would be hung in the door openings (notizen zur neuordung juli 1924, in: archiv sprengel museum hannover (cited in flacke 1992: 52). 10 with dorner’s growing collaboration with avant-garde artists and the bauhaus, the provinzialmuseum became increasingly implicated in the rise of modern display tactics used in commercial exhibitions, advertising and film, and the associated interest in psycho-perceptual experimentation. these fields of interest had increasingly moved to the forefront of dorner’s thinking from the early 1920s onward and can be traced in his atmosphere room concept, which, as this study suggests, foreshadowed the interactive environments commissioned by dorner during the later stages of his re-organisation work from 1926 onward: first, el lissitzky’s abstract cabinet in 1927, a display environment, where multicoloured striated walls in modern industrial materials, movable paintings and coloured lighting provided dynamic spatial experiences for the viewer; and second, moholy-nagy’s unrealised multi-media environment – the “room of the present” – in which film and photography completely replaced traditional art works (see gebert & hemken 2009). lissitzky’s demonstrationrooms – the abstract cabinet and an earlier version, the room for constructivist art at the internationale kunstausstellung dresden 1926, have been discussed in detail by numerous authors. in particular see giedion 1929: 103-106; gough 2003: 77-128; hemken 1990: 46-55; bois 1988: 160-181. interstices 14 into a one-dimensional context (while so-called critique can only be learnt through immersive changes, through bathing in alternating pools or contexts). (2011 (2006):105) in the back and forth between immersion and self-awareness, dorner recognised the phenomenon of what he referred to as “an evolutionary psychology in action” (cauman 1958: 88). the alternation between empathic identification on one hand, and rational recognition of reality on the other hand, materialised as the actual innovation of dorner’s curatorial ethos. with it, he recast fundamental assumptions about the reception of art as either rational (via distanced contemplation and visual) or empathic (via experiential immersion and haptic) by providing immersive changes and interruptions that encouraged a critical reception rather than the delivery of pre-mediated content. references bennett, t. (1995). the birth of the museum. london, england: routledge. bois, y.-a. (april 1988). el lissitzky: radical reversibility. art in america, 76(4), 160-181. cauman, s. 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(2007). avantgarde und psychotechnik: wissenschaft kunst und technik der wahrnehmungsexperimente in der frühen sowjetunion. göttingen, germany: wallstein verlag. translations from german by author unless otherwise indicated. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 10 f i x i n g luciano brina pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance introduction the greek word pharmakon simultaneously signifies remedy, poison, and scapegoat. the first two senses refer to the everyday meaning of pharmacology, a combination capable of unleashing the productive potential of metabolism, here understood as a dynamic process of energetic and material transmutation, the outcome of which is not easily predictable. the third, according to jacques derrida, corresponds to an entity representing the sum of corruption and poisonousness. originated during the aforementioned transmutation, and as a sub product of it, the scapegoat’s eventual dismissal is by means of depurative protocols acting as a form of remediation (derrida, 2000: 63–71). if the scapegoat is an inevitable consequence of the interaction between remedy and poison, then it is not its existence that remains problematic, but rather the ways in which it is metabolised, processed, planned, and disposed—in short, the ways in which it is deliberately embraced. pharmakon invites us to be opportunistic and systemically inclusive towards the leftovers of our metabolic regime, the one we perform while we extract, produce and consume, through scales which go from our own body to cities, landscapes, and the whole earth system. this essay is a development of the content and topics in the homonymous visual essay produced during mid-2020, in the context of the terraforming postgraduate programme, at strelka institute for media, architecture and design, in moscow (brina, gong, & tetekin, 2020). it presents the idea of a territorialising pharmakon, as a medium both for imagining alternative narratives, about our disbalanced, planetary metabolism, and a way to convert unwanted waste into vibrant, restorative landscapes. the initiatives presented in pharmakon could pave a path towards a viable future on earth. waste, or the restorative potential of anthropogenic externalities according to a 2016 world bank study, the average person produces an average of 0.74 kg of human waste on a daily basis (2019). that does not sound like a lot. now, imagine you had to store that waste where you live, whether it be a flat or a in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 11 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g house. in one year, you would have accumulated 270.1 kg of waste, which is more than four times the average body mass of a person. imagine that four new people move to your place every year. that amounts to a lot of human waste. waste is not as nice as people—it pollutes, stinks, rot, harms—but luckily, you are privileged enough to have a public waste management service, so you are not confronted with its abject materiality. waste is somewhere else, somehow externalised. waste, the ultimate externality, is unaccounted, unmapped, and ungoverned poison. however, as robert pietrusko argues, in a truly metabolic cycle there is no waste: only excess, reproduction, transformation and vital will (2020: 2). this excess is wrongly acknowledged as waste because its manifestation has not yet been valorised by any of our life-support systems. the creation of value in our current metabolic regime is characterised by a highly unjust capture of benefits by entities—individuals, companies, global cities, and industries—that hold a privileged position within a network of worldwide extraction, production, consumption, and externalisation. at the other end of this relay chain, we find the peripheral hinterlands, towns and communities these entities exploit and feed on, which is precisely where so-called waste finds its burial site (katsikis, 2014: 5–12). in effect, the infrastructure that maintains the connection between the global city and the exploited periphery is so absent from the narrative, sustained by our carbon-intensive regime, that without doubt we are facing (actually refusing to face) what ghosn and hazairy argue to be a convergent calamity: environmental, social, and aesthetic (2020: 10–27). there is no outside in which the unwanted consequences of our actions can disappear as, right now, waste has become a geological layer (parikka, 2015: 141–153). an enforcement mechanism capable of bypassing subjective decisions must be created, probably even a non-human one: subject-less, border-less, metabolic and geological. we need to adopt waste both as an operational measuring device, as a grounded, transformative geo-bio-chemical means of governance (bratton, 2021: 56–60). we need to embrace the pharmakon now. but, how could we do that? let us ask james lovelock, father of gaia theory: if permitted, i would happily store high-level [nuclear] waste on my own land and use the heat from it to warm my home … i have wondered if the small volumes of nuclear waste from power production should be stored in tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by greedy developers (2001). these quotes from lovelock allude to an alternative rationale towards waste. his radical pragmatism is a call for de-dichotomising pollutants’ disposal and climate change mitigation. for him, the precondition for ecological remediation, counterintuitively, begins with the deliberate and opportunistic management of waste. in the terms described in this essay, one could say that he is positing waste as a pharmakon, as a phenomenon which requires to be planned in order to be remediatory. to use russia as an example: unfortunately, there are only a small number of temperate rainforests in russia’s far east, which would be clearly insufficient to securely contain its nuclear waste, let alone all the pollutants coming from its hinterlands and its urban centres (brenner, 2020: 23–25). where do the waste products of russia’s hardcore extractivism go, then? surely anywhere they can’t be perceived: the vast russian periphery. considering that in such a centralised in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 12 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g country every place but the main cities is thought as peripheric, one might be facing the largest dumpster on the planet, as russia’s total area compromises 11.48% of the earth’s land mass. there is a more precise category for this vast, forsaken landscape: it is called the inner periphery. entering the inner periphery the current territorial expression of poison in russia is what geographer vladimir kaganskiy has coined the inner periphery (2013: 23). it consists of once-developed, now declining territories, originated by the misplanned redistribution of human activities and industries during the ussr (kaganskiy, 2013: 24–25). these territories have already lost their artificially sustained potential (i.e. their subsidy-based economy), their social capital, and any chances of normal economic self-development. as former collective and state farms they are in decline; the material and social infrastructure that once supported production is steadily degrading (kaganskiy, 2013: 26). geographically speaking, the inner periphery’s connectivity and accessibility is complicated because its administration is not within it, but surrounding it. from an economic point of view, it is possible to confirm that the limits of the inner periphery act as barriers rather than filters or buffers. however, seen from an ecological point of view, these limits form an environmental threshold, enclosing a vigorous and effervescent landscape. these dichotomic conditions—a decaying socioeconomic fabric and ecological effervescence—are what imbue this territorial model with outstanding attributes for playing a key role in ecosystemic remediation and greenhouse gas (ghg) sequestration, one that fosters the spontaneous landscape rewilding and natural self-recovery of woods and steppes in former agricultural lands. given its extensiveness and massive ecological performance, and considering that metabolism is a concern at planetary scale, i argue that the inner periphery could make an important contribution to climate change mitigation and waste management. in a sense, russia’s landscape may be the only one in the world able to, literally, digest the industrial era. following rodoman’s proposal, fig. 1 luciano brina, andrey tetekin, yu gong (2020). artificial hill of by-products from the iron smelting industry. [film still: andrey tetekin, 2020] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 13 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g russia has the possibility to shift its intra-border colonialism—both in terms of metabolic output and added value allocation—towards becoming an internationally-funded, planetary ecological donor (2017: 18–43). however, the absence of concrete planning of the distribution of waste within the inner periphery has led to the collapse of russia’s metabolic regime. this clarifies the need for a conceptual and operational scaffolding to turn the russian landscape’s decline into an operational ecological landscape, one that can lay the foundations for a co-dependency between poisonous conditions and long-term remediation. pharmakon landscape: modelling geo-bio-chemical governance by means of waste management pharmakon landscape is a model of intense territorial intervention for climate change mitigation and geo-bio-chemical governance which, rather than reclaiming the decayed inner periphery for its former rationale and imaginary, aims to reorganise and enhance its ongoing poisonous, everyday practices, enabling them to have a positive terrestrial effect, across a timespan longer than human (social) time. pharmakon landscape is a model that comprises waste management, infrastructural repurposing, rewilding, curated direct human presence and self-funded relocation, remote and in-site sensing, and military enforcement. it is a geo-design initiative that challenges the clear boundaries between remedy, poison, and scapegoat. here, pollution and human exclusion equates with accelerated remediation, increased biodiversity, and ghg digestion, so the ambivalent coexistence of this conceptual triad becomes figured by beneficial co-dependency. pharmakon landscape aims to institutionalise the geo-bio-chemical regime of the inner periphery by means of five speculative, interrelated strategies. 1. military and satellite repurposing since the maintenance of the metabolic cycles of the pharmakon landscape requires a permanent performance audit, functions such as territorial enforcement, remote sensing, surveillance, and protection against environmental fig. 2 luciano brina, andrey tetekin, yu gong (2020). abandoned greenhouses, pharmakon landscape. [film still: andrey tetekin, 2020] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 14 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g aggressors could be undertaken by the russian military forces. the russian defence ministry is one of the largest social organisations in the world, directly employing about three million people, as well as the largest consolidated land user in the world, with about a tenth of the total area of the country under its control. the ministry is in charge of two-thirds of russian satellites and has 143 test ranges—mostly located in nature reserves or protected landscapes. currently, however, environmental protection for climate change is an issue practically absent from the ministry’s agenda (brzoska, 2012: 43–54). although the average temperature of the arctic is increasing 2.5 times faster than the rest of the world (conley, 2017), the ministry’s initiatives focus on securing the arctic for naval and trade purposes, rather than addressing environmental protection as a matter of planetary ecology. 2. solid, gaseous, and liquid waste management controlled contamination from strategic waste processing and human depopulation due to the risk of exposure to chemical threats would turn the pharmakon landscape into a human exclusion zone, where only flora, fauna, and essential part-time personnel coexist. in russia, municipal landfills are the main waste management strategy. only four percent of waste destined for these spaces is recycled, while the rest is dumped without additional classification or management (ifc, 2012: 5–7). official subsidies and programmes were abolished after the collapse of the ussr: recycling and sorting facilities are now 50–70 percent obsolete, and waste collection services in small settlements and villages are now cancelled (ifc, 2012: 9). as a result, illegal dumping has become common practice. according to the federal service for the supervision of natural resources, there are currently more than 17,000 illegal dumps in russia, and between 2000 and 2015, the deposition in these dumps has doubled (mcgee, 2018). pharmakon landscape proposes to reverse this trend. in these landfills the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter produces methane gas (nh4), and the installation of equipment to capture this gas would not only significantly reduce ghg emissions, but would also provide an alternative source of energy. this could be distributed to other regions or, alternatively, to the few permanent settlements and industries within the pharmakon landscape. in addition, fig. 3 luciano brina, andrey tetekin, yu gong (2020). pharmakon landscape. [film still: author, 2020] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 15 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g composting would play a fundamental role in the nutritional recovery of the soil, a prerequisite for the resilience of this degraded landscape. the absence of concrete planning regarding waste has resulted in a complete misallocation of poison within the inner periphery, which has led to a collapse of its metabolic layer. pharmakon landscape aims to restore this layer by establishing an everyday geoengineering practice based on systematic waste zoning and classification, in order to take advantage of the geo-bio-chemical composition of media that traverses its soil, its trees, its inhabitants, and its infrastructure.1 accelerated and intensively planned pollution results in an equally accelerated metabolic recomposition towards ghg reduction, soil nurturing, and energy production. 3. forestry, ecosystemic regeneration and remote sensing pharmakon landscape proposes to configure a homeostatic cycle based on chemical processing through the photosynthetic capacities of native flora. the landscape displays a formidable number of air pollution removers: forests, steppes, and grasslands. russia owns 19 percent of the world’s forest reserves. this percentage could be increased through reforestation and replanting in abandoned or low-yield arable areas, or in already exploited quarries. according to the russian federal ministry of forests, at least 50 to 55 million hectares formerly used for agriculture are suitable for afforestation, while of the 76 million abandoned arable hectares registered in 2018, 30 million of them have already been spontaneously covered by new forests (korotkov, 2018: 7–11). however, spontaneous afforestation is insufficient both in quantity and pace to capture the amount of ghg required. additionally, illegal logging and forest burning are a huge problem worldwide, and russia is no exception. there, the former represents up to four percent of total felling, while the latter is presumed to amount to 25 percent of the loss of forest (brzoska, 2012: 54). from satellite images, it is clear that in the last 20 years the rate of deforestation caused by fires in russia has reached 400,000 hectares per year. again, the russian military forces could take responsibility for policing this. on land, they could install and maintain sensor networks, providing an immediate fig. 4 luciano brina, andrey tetekin, yu gong (2020). pharmakon landscape. [film still: luciano brina, 2020] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 16 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g response to clearing and intentional fires, just as their chinese counterparts have been doing (brzoska, 2012: 55–57). in the air, russia’s satellites could verify the health of each ecosystem and audit its ghg removal capacity. in addition to the locations where afforestation and reforestation initiatives could be carried out, as mentioned earlier in this paper, ecological buffers between different inner peripheries could be established. these could achieve a separation between toxic conditions in the pharmakon landscapes and surrounding human-inhabited areas. despite being almost as unsuitable for permanent human settlement as the landscape they circumscribe, these green belts would displace population, commerce, recreation, and habitat to their outer edges (thus along road infrastructure), creating ecologically protected environments, with higher population density, and greater economic activity. 4. infrastructural and industrial repurposing russia’s main product is not commodities, but heat. whether as a by-product of any of its extractive industries, or to heat housing complexes within the country, the generation of heat is an unavoidable requirement for the maintenance of life and production in the federation. however, heating a country the size of russia is an incredibly demanding task, and naturally produces a dangerous by-product: greenhouse gases. according to climate transparency, almost 40 percent of russian ghg emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels for the generation of electrical and/ or heat energy (2019, 4–8). the capacity of this industry far exceeds current demand, which has been significantly reduced since the collapse of the soviet union in the early 1990s, and 40 percent of thermal power plants are now more than 50 years old (mckinsey & co, 2009). in addition, half the emissions from the oil and gas industry come from leaks and losses during their distribution. these situations have enormous consequences in terms of efficiency, and therefore, in increasing ghg emissions. the russian industrial complex has to be called upon not only to clean up its own environmental disasters, but also to immediately shift to a negative ghg emissions scenario. the decrease in the participation of industry in the russian gdp, compared to that of services since the last decade of the current millennium, indicates a necessary re-functionalisation of the manufacturing establishments and the infrastructure located in the internal periphery. firstly, underused or even unused factories across pharmakon landscape would shift their prior main activity towards carbon capture and sequestration (ccs), residual heat recovery to be used for residential heating, and methane capture to replace fossil fuel usage. carbon capture and storage (ccs) is not just a singular technology, but rather a practice that combines several verbs: capture, transport, store, monitor. for example, decommissioned oil and gas pipelines in the inner periphery could be repurposed for co2 transportation, abandoned mines and reservoirs could be repurposed as carbon sinks. steel plants could utilise their residual blast furnace gas (bfg) for power and heat production. attaching ccs equipment to existing chemical and steel plants, and selling the co2 retrieved for enhanced oil recovery (eor) could not only reduce emissions, but also decrease the co2 price per ton. then, methane produced by biomass fermentation could be recovered and distributed to provide energy to facilities and residential buildings. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 17 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g secondly, with waste being the main resource of the pharmakon landscape, large-scale recycling could be performed in ore and cement sectors. regarding the former, metal scrap could be gathered and sold to steel and copper producers. regarding the latter, retrieving specific by-products such as slag and fly ash to replace clinker, the main component of cement, could reduce co2 emissions by 55 percent. iron smelting mineral by-products could be repurposed as well. after all, if growth results in a rising atmospheric concentration of co2, the reverse of growth is not degrowth, but carbon-negative growth. capturing, injecting, and remineralising soil with co2 is a deep-time, deliberate poisoning of the geological layer of pharmakon landscape, facilitated by misused factories within the inner periphery. 5. human exclusion and relocation just as the inner periphery is the land of ecological terrorism, where polluting companies get away with it, it is also the land of environmental racism. there is a clear spatial correspondence between ethnic minorities and/or low-income groups, and the distribution of environmental hazards (lerner, 2010: 4). these inhabitants experience severe exposure to all types of toxic agents, a condition diametrically opposed to the inhabitants of highly urbanised and privileged regions, such as moscow. but environmental racism is not limited to chemical exposure, it is a multi-causal situation that includes three critical characteristics of the urbanisation of russian territory during the 20th and 21st centuries: cold, remoteness, and migratory processes. regions such as siberia or the far east, characterised by their low temperatures and lack of transport infrastructure, are territories in which direct private investment would not flow de facto, since the costs associated with maintenance, operation and habitability are extremely high compared to warmer, more urbanised regions. however, during the centralised soviet administration, planners overinvested in areas of the country that were either too cold or too remote to sustain themselves in the context of a market economy: during this period russia became economically “colder” (hill, 2003: 37). in this sense, human settlements were conceived as a hierarchical network organised along the route of the trans-siberian railway. take the case of the main cities such as tomsk, novosibirsk, or omsk, which were urban centres of the first hierarchy, capable of concentrating specialised health, cultural and educational services. somewhat further from the railway, small towns such as surgut and nizhenevarstovsk acted as a link between the main settlements and the most remote outposts along the arctic. with the collapse of the ussr, investments shifted to places where production could have a quality and cost efficiency capable of competing in the global market: russia became an economically “warmer” country. the economic decline suffered in the northwest regions, in the urals, and in the arctic circle, was accompanied by simultaneous and massive emigration. between 1979 and 1994, about twothirds of russia’s urban centres experienced an abrupt population decline, even to the point of abandonment (mikhailova, 2012: 11–13). thus, highly urbanised regions, diversified cities, and specialised r&d towns prospered, while monotowns, company towns and besperspektivnyye (unpromising towns) perished. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 18 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g the combination of meagre labour opportunities, cuts in state subsidies, geographic disconnection, and low urban quality resulted in a social and habitational catastrophe. without sufficient concentrations of people, not only is the provision of normal municipal services extremely expensive but urban life itself begins to break down. with fewer taxpayers, revenues are lower, often leading to higher taxes per capita, resulting in an overall deterioration of services. more people depart, and the downward spiral continues. most russian migrants in the 1990s moved from remote villages and small towns and cities in the north and the far east to the frost belt—in other words, from extremely cold places to other, somewhat warmer, larger settlements (mikhailova, 2012: 26). however, not everyone departed, or were able to, even if they wanted to. the decline in the eastern economy left large portions of population without the means necessary to relocate to more prosperous regions: they were tied even more to their current locations. residents from besperspektivnyye villages were persuaded to leave, while the economically disadvantaged were often left behind because they could not afford to abandon their plots or their family networks. for them, even if they had the resources to move elsewhere, finding themselves in a new location, but far away from their remaining social networks of family and friends, had serious consequences. after all, this is the social, economic, and territorial background of the inner periphery: decay, stagnation, emigration, pollution, obsolescence, aging, remoteness, solitude, defunding, degrowth, and extremely low temperatures. how might a pharmakon landscape reverse or at least propose an alternative, more qualitative scenario for this forsaken territory and its inhabitants? fig. 5 luciano brina, andrey tetekin, yu gong (2020). pharmakon landscape. [film still: luciano brina, 2020] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 19 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g funding pharmakon landscape the choice is simple: to develop production and increase the extraction of raw materials so as to eventually give siberia and the far east to china; or not to carry out any activities in order to keep these lands as a nature reserve under the patronage of the united nations, in alliance with europe and the united states. (rodoman, 2017: 37) in this provocative statement, russian geographer boris rodoman posits two very different possible paths for russia. one is to continue depleting its natural resources in the name of profitability, thus accentuating the inequities between centre and periphery, with the guarantee of confronting an economic, social and environmental crisis in the short term. the other path is for russia to become an internationally funded environmental donor, capable of providing ecological services for the entire planet. this alternative proposes that, given pollution is an unequally distributed, planetary produced phenomenon which affects commodity-based economies, and given the formidable ecological capacity of the russian green infrastructure to contribute to planetary sanitation, both the russian state, its companies, and its population (for that matter, the inhabitants of the pharmakon landscape) have to invest in and monetise its environmental potential. as an example, firms such as microsoft, amazon, glovo, softbank and others listed in the s&p 500 index transfer their ghg emissions by financing green infrastructure in latin america thanks to ngos and platforms such as pachama (https://www.pachama.com) or restor (https://www.restor.eco). these leverage geospatial information, artificial intelligence and local communities, in order to provide accurate information on the ecosystemic capacity of landscape projects, to determine the cost of each ton of co2 sequestered, and what investments are needed to enhance these landscapes. for this, yandex, the largest internet-related service provider in russia and the fifth largest worldwide, could take advantage of its extensive network of satellite, on-ground coverage, and its horde of programmers to carry out the geospatial audit necessary to allow government organisations and ngos to monetise the pharmakon landscapes. this initiative would contribute to the creation of new jobs, necessary for the few and impoverished communities that would continue to live in the inner periphery. the second has a more participatory, democratic and horizontally-managed character, engaging civilians, professional and local organisations in the restoration of the ecosystems they inhabit. restor offers a free online platform for analysing ecosystemic performance by means of georeferenced information, as well as being a platform for economically supporting different projects and ngos around the world. this alternative would be extremely valuable for the organisation and coordination of the inner peripheries’ inhabitants seeking to recover their environment and quality of life, maintain their socio-emotional ties, and reconvert their productive matrix from toxic extractivism to planetary care and maintenance. both cases demonstrate how different layers of technology (geospatial, platform-based, and financial) could contribute to the interaction between material and human resources, one aimed at the development of what we can understand as a territorial technology: the pharmakon landscapes to come. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 20 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g for those inhabitants who feel their future is somewhere else, emigration has to be promoted instead of being resisted or delayed. the question, then, is how to properly plan this emigration, and by what means to sustain and finance it. as mentioned, emigration from colder to warmer, and from decaying monotowns to larger and economically diversified cities had been happening for some years prior to the collapse of the ussr. however, in a country such as russia, with birth and growth rates declining since the mid-20th century, and in which two thirds of its territory have less than one inhabitant per square kilometre, human migratory flows are a real concern and require proper planning. thus, it is a responsibility of pharmakon landscape to relocate its former inhabitants and guarantee them a better quality of life, a responsibility extended to the host cities. the hosts could be what are known as “one million-plus cities”: regional, emergent cities with more than one million inhabitants, whose growth could drive substantial development to country’s economy. research conducted by strelka kb showed that 15 percent of russia’s gdp is produced by these cities (excluding moscow), though their productivity is not accompanied by sustained investment, urban environment quality, and financial resources (strelka kb, 2017). this imbalance between productivity and investment signals that these cities have a lot of remaining potential, that could be fulfilled with an inflow of highly qualified workers and consumers from the pharmakon landscapes. relocation could be tailored so that newcomers land in a city where their skills are needed. to that end, strelka kb’s research states that sets of cities have specific specialisations, as follows: krasnodar and ekaterinburg specialise in trading; omsk, ufa, and kazan in manufacturing; krasnodar, samara, kazan, nizhny novgorod, ekaterinburg, and novosibirsk in construction and real estate. conclusion pharmakon landscape stands as the reification of the transition from an extractivist territorial and economic model, to one based on planetary caretaking. in an attempt to propose an alternative development model for a viable planet, pharmakon landscape puts forward remediation and restoration of what has been contaminated, degraded or left over. rather than building anew, it invites us to put further attention on the opportunities that waste holds for climate change mitigation. in a pharmacological sense, planetary remediation must emerge from the remains of the most mis-planned and least overseen territories in our globalised productive regime: the hinterlands and operational landscapes in general, and russia’s inner periphery in particular. internationally funded environmental services could be provided by russia, by converting these territories into pharmakon landscapes, i.e., multi-layered green infrastructures, on which rewilding, carbon capture, energy production and depollution could be performed. in parallel, newly curated exclusion zones, created from the remains of the inner periphery, would promote an urban and demographic intensification around its buffer zones (i.e. the administrative borders between different inner peripheries) and towards one–million-plus cities, which would be co-responsible of providing a better life to communities that suffered the collapse of the soviet union, the transition to an open market economy, and the poisoning that decades of living next to highly polluting industries produced in their bodies. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 21 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g to quote bernard stiegler, “technology is our pharmakon, an inescapable poison that has curative potential, and culture is a therapeutics that must recover from its colonisation by the digital-audio visual processes of cognitive capitalism” (2013: 4-11). pharmakon landscape proposes a shift from using technology for advertisement, individual surveillance and narcissistic self-validation, to using it for to audit, support and promoting landscape restoration initiatives. as shown in the case of internet-based environmental restoration platforms, pharmacological conditions could be traced and taken advantage of all over the earth, as a global territorial model, one not limited to russia’s national borders. this essay proposes pharmakon landscape as an experimental scaffold for ecosystemic governance, a toolkit for identifying metabolic phenomena, an invitation to configure and imagine new narratives for renewed landscapes to come, and a grounded platform for empowering communities and their culture. it is a proposition that would require taking a leap towards addressing the complexity of waste and its connection to territory and human endeavour. this is the point where an expanded form of architectural discipline must come into play, one that considers the earth’s system as an architectural project (sarkis, 2020: 10-17). maybe, if architecture follows the poison, if it embraces the city outside the city, it will find a pharmakon landscape to be configured. fig. 6 luciano brina (2020). metabolic regime of a pharmakon landscape. [diagram: author, 2020] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 22 pharmakon landscape. an emerging territorial model for deep-time geochemical governance f i x i n g ibp institute. (2008). russia ecology, nature protection laws and regulations handbook 1. boston: ibp usa. international finance corporation russia. (2012). municipal solid waste management: opportunities for russia. moscow: ifc russia. kaganskiy, v. (2013). inner periphery is a new growing zone of russia’s cultural landscape. regional research of russia, 3 (1). moscow: pleiades publishing ltd., 21–31. katsikis, n. (2014). on the geographical organization of world urbanization, monu: geographical urbanism, 5–12. korotkov, a. (2018). the russian forests: organizational structure, property rights and assessment. washington: sage publishing. lovelock, j. (2001, thursday august 16). we need nuclear power, says the man who inspired the greens. retrieved from https://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/science/sciencenews/4765409/we-neednuclear-power-says-the-manwho-inspired-the-greens.html lerner, s. (2010). sacrifice zones: the front lines of toxic chemical exposure in the united states. cambridge, ma: mit press. mcgee, rylin (2018, wednesday june 13). recycling and waste recovery in russia: policy and infrastructure challenges. geostorytoday. retrieved from https://geohistory.today/ recycling-waste-recovery-russia/ mckinsey & co. (2009). pathways to an energy and carbon efficient russia. moscow: mckinsey & co. mikhailova, t. (2012). where russians should live: a counterfactual alternative to soviet location policy. mpra paper 35938. moscow: new economic school. pietrusko, r g. (2020, march 16). territorial metabolism. seminar brief presented during the terraforming postgraduate programme at the strelka institute for media, architecture and design, moscow. parikka, j. (2015). a geology of media. minnesota: university of minnesota press. references bratton, b. (2021). the revenge of the real. new york: verso books. brenner, n. (2020). operational landscapes: hinterlands of the capitalocene. architectural design, 1:2020, 23–25. brina, l., gong, y, and tetekin, a. (2020). ttf 2020—pharmakon landscape [video]. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ygakbe0d4tg brzoska, m. (2012). climate change and the military in china, russia, the united kingdom, and the united states. bulletin of the atomic scientists 68, 43–54. conley, h. (2021). climate change will reshape russia. centre of strategic & international studies (csis.org). retrieved from https:// www.csis.org /analysis/climatechange-will-reshape-russia/ derrida, j. (2000). dissemination (b. johnson, trans.). chicago: university of chicago press. easterling, k. (2018). medium design. moscow, russia: strelka press. ghosn, rania, el hadi hazairy. (2020). geostories: another architecture for the environment. new york: actar publishers. hill, f. (2003). the siberian curse: how communist planners left russia out in the cold. washington: brookings institution press. endnotes 1 following parikka’s a geology of media (2015) and easterling’s medium design (2018), here media is understood as a material vector embedded with specific properties, whether they be intensive or extensive. this standpoint allows including the history of material processes and the ones from the formations emerging from them. here i focus on matter itself as a means for human and non-human recomposition, mediation and intermingling. rodoman, b. (2017). ecological specialization as a desirable future for russia. russian peasant studies, 2 (3), 28–43. sarkis, h. (2020). the world as an architectural project. cambridge, ma: the mit press. stiegler, b. (2013). what makes life worth living. on pharmacology. cambridge, uk: polity press. strelka kb (2017). the economy of million-plus cities: the right to develop. retrieved from https:// media.strelka-kb.com/gdpcitiesen world bank (2019, thursday september 23). solid waste management: a brief. retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org / en/topic/urbandevelopment/ brief/solid-waste-management cfp the arts of spinoza the arts of spinoza + pacific spinoza interstices under construction symposium, 26-28 may 2017 auckland university of technology and university of auckland, new zealand www.interstices.ac.nz plenaries / keynotes include: moira gatens challis professor of philosophy, university of sydney michael lebuffe baier chair, early modern philosophy, university of otago susan ruddick professor, geography & planning, university of toronto anthony uhlmann professor, writing and society, university of western sydney plenary panel jacob culbertson visiting assistant professor, anthropology, haverford college albert refiti senior lecturer, spatial, auckland university of technology carl te hira mika tuhourangi, ngati whanaunga senior lecturer, education, university of waikato by skype beth lord reader, philosophy, university of aberdeen peg rawes professor, architecture, bartlett, university college london we invite scholarly submissions on the philosophy of benedict de spinoza (1632-1677), for a special issue of interstices journal and the annual interstices symposium to be held in auckland, new zealand, 26-28 may 2017. the intent is to further consolidate the recent revival of interest in spinoza’s thought, and to reaffirm his status as an enormously powerful thinker of contemporary relevance. papers on any aspect of spinoza studies are thus welcomed. but the more specific aim of the symposium and journal issue is twofold: firstly, to extend the burgeoning scholarship on spinoza into the domains of study parsed by interstices, namely arts and architecture, and secondly, to situate spinoza’s philosophy within the particular locus of new zealand, australasia, the south pacific, and the pacific rim more broadly. each of these aspects will be tackled in separate sessions or separate days of the symposium. with regard to the first aim, we welcome submissions that put spinoza’s philosophy in productive proximity with a particular artform or an individual work of art, whether literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, film, music, dance, performance, etc. — or that have an especial focus on any of the numerous artistic and literary figures who are known to have read spinoza appreciatively and in whose works spinozist shadings might be discerned (goethe, coleridge, george eliot, thomas hirschhorn, etc.). contributors might like to think of this event and journal issue as extending, in the direction of arts and architecture, the very fine work done by the anthology spinoza beyond philosophy (2012, ed. beth lord). since interstices’s particular interest is in architectural studies, we would be keen to see contributions that consider spinoza as helpful for thinking any of the design and spatial disciplines (architecture, urban design, landscape, geography, interior design, and so on). contributors might also choose to take ‘architecture’ in the sense of ‘structure’, in which case not only would built environments and tectonics be the subject of analysis, but also the very structure of spinoza’s texts, the extraordinary way in which his texts are wrought (the famous geometric architecture of the ethics, for example). we also invite submissions that don’t necessarily fall under any of the artistic disciplines listed above, and that interpret “arts” in the broadest possible sense. spinoza’s philosophy predates the modern idea of a differentiated domain of the arts, and so the latin word that spinoza uses — ars — has the older and broader sense of skill or craft or ability or proficiency.[1] we thus welcome submissions that are about ‘arts’ in this more general sense — for example, about what spinoza teaches us about the arts of living (ars vivendi) or the arts of constructing a liberal polity (ars politica, government, statecraft). with regard to the second aim, we invite submissions on any aspects of spinoza studies that have a connection to new zealand, australia, the south pacific, or asia-pacific and the pacific rim more broadly. such papers might, for example, examine the historical reception and interpretation of spinoza in new zealand, australia, the oceanic “sea of islands”, or any proximate sister region.[2] the idea is to give geographic concreteness and local specificity to the interpretation of spinoza — to see how spinoza might be or has been read in new zealand and the pacific, and inversely to see how our ways of thinking about new zealand and the pacific might be productively inflected by reading spinoza. a fuller call for papers / discussion document is attached as a pdf file, or available online at www.interstices.ac.nz/news-events/ abstracts of 300 words, along with a short biographical statement of 100 words, to be sent to pacificspinoza@gmail.com, by midnight nzst, 30th january 2017. for purposes of peer review, the abstract should be sent in a separate self-contained file with no identifying information in it. please send microsoft word files only (doc or docx). abstracts will be vetted through a process of blind peer review. selected papers from the symposium will be invited for revision, peer review, and publication in the subsequent issue of interstices. if you are unable to attend the symposium in new zealand, but wish to submit a paper for the journal issue, please send the full and completed paper to pacificspinoza@gmail.com by 31st may 2017. further inquiries can be directed to the convenor eu jin chua, echua@aut.ac.nz, farzaneh haghighi, f.haghighi@auckland.ac.na, or to susan hedges, the coordinating editor of interstices, shedges@aut.ac.nz. www.interstices.ac.nz [1] see moira gatens, “spinoza on goodness and beauty and the prophet and the artist”, european journal of philosophy 23, no. 1 (2015), p. 3. [2] the reference is to epeli hau’ofa’s “our sea of islands”, the contemporary pacific 6, no. 1 (1994), 147–161. interstices 09 61 in may 1939, the austrian architect ernst plischke, his jewish wife, anna, and her son heinrich went to new zealand as refugees. plischke had trained under oskar strnad and peter behrens and had worked for behrens and josef frank in vienna and for jacques ely kahn in new york. plischke had designed several significant projects in austria which had been published internationally. it is unsurprising, then, that once in new zealand the architect was swiftly employed by wilson at the dhc. however, in line with royal institute of british architects (riba) policy, the new zealand institute of architects (nzia) did not recognize plischke’s architectural qualifications and he was employed as a draughtsman. when plischke arrived, work on the berhampore flats was underway. design had commenced in 1938 and this scheme of 50 apartments was completed in 1940. as gatley notes, these flats can be interpreted as a transitional development that bridges the existing georgian detached tradition of the conventional state house with that of the international style (gatley, 1996: 54). while the flat-roof aesthetic was modern, the planning of the units was similar to the standard state house. occupant density of the oneto three-storeyed scheme was between that of detached suburban housing and the later multi-storeyed blocks of the dhc. with 116 apartments in a substantial multi-storeyed block, the dixon street flats were a more ambitious scheme. archival records indicate that: • the site was acquired in february 1940. • drawings were being prepared by march 1940. • working drawings are dated september 1940. • the contract was let on 30 december 1940. • construction commenced early the following year. • with war slowing progress, the building was formally opened on 4 september 1943. • the final completion certificate was issued on 26 june 1944. as is well documented, relations between plischke and wilson were strained. wilson was domineering and he freely amended the designs that his staff produced (noonan, 1975: 223). while plischke described being severely circumscribed and professionally suppressed in the office, the relationship between wilson and plischke was complex and there is evidence that wilson took the émigré’s suggestions into account (plischke, 1969: 127; tyler, 1986: 42-43). wilson may have been somewhat threatened by the sophisticated, articulate and worldly architect, yet at times he showed him significant support. wilson gave plischke a copy of j. m. richards’ modern architecture (1940) when he found the austrian mentioned in its pages (plischke, 1989: 247). in the late 1940s, wilson reputedly spoke to a branch meeting of the nzia for plischke’s admission to the institute (dawson, 1991b: 9). in early 1947, wilson wrote, what appears to be, a glowing reference supporting plischke’s application for the position of professor at auckland university college (auc); although, arguably, this document can be seen to contain traces of ambivalence.3 3. it is a perplexing document. with statements such as, “i have the highest regard for his ability as an architect and town planner and for his manner of arousing enthusiasm in all those associated with him”, wilson’s reference appears to be very supportive. however, he made no explicit recommendation for appointment. instead, he advised that plischke’s application be given “very careful consideration” because he doubted that there was a more suitable person available (wilson, 1947). today, such comment would be read as a coded statement communicating concern and reservation. while davis saw this reference indicating wilson’s “enormous respect” (davis, 1987: 29), i think it may indicate ambivalence. further investigations into an authorship: reassessing the dixon street flats archive robin skinner the identity of the principal designers of the dixon street state flats in wellington remains controversial. in some circles it is held that it was designed by the émigré austrian, ernst plischke,1 while others suggest that it is the work of the chief architect of the department of housing construction (dhc), gordon wilson.2 without an explicit reference, certain attribution has not been possible. reputed scholars have successively stated differing and at times controversial positions. this is not surprising because there is a lot at stake. ascribing authorship brings focus upon significant issues relating to the introduction of modernism in new zealand (gatley, 1995); however, this is not the focus of this paper. instead, i review the scholars’ positions, re-examine the archival record and identify further evidence in order to argue that plischke’s involvement was highly significant. background to the project the dhc was established in late 1936 to provide rental housing for a population emerging from the throes of the great depression (fig. 1). in addition to designing the detached state houses of the 1930s and 40s, the dhc designed thirteen large blocks of flats beginning with the berhampore flats, wellington, designed by gordon wilson (gatley, 1997: 89). i thank bill alington, ken davis, julia gatley, monika knofler, andrew leach, john saker and linda tyler for their helpful advice and discussion. 1. ernst anton plischke (1903-92). for biographical information, see tyler (2000). 2. francis gordon wilson (1900-59). for biographical information, see gatley (2000). he was, and is, often referred to as ‘gordon f. wilson’. fig. 1 fig. 1: draughting staff at the dhc, dominion farmers building, wellington, 1940s. photographer: w. hall raine. aalf 6112, 24/2/1, 830, archives nz/te rua mahara o te kāwanatanga, wellington. interstices 09 63 but his influence was strong. it is believed that he [plischke] was the original designer of the dixon street flats, though the final design was not his. (porter, 1963) writing ten years later, john saker (who had grown up with a copy of design and living in his family home) also acknowledged the rivalry between plischke and wilson. he noted that sometimes plischke’s drawings “would be passed across a dozen other desks and altered at each before being considered complete.” he added, “in this way, the design for wellington’s dixon street flats, though basically ernst plischke’s won a gold medal for gordon wilson” (saker, 1985: 59-60). in researching her 1986 ma dissertation on plischke, linda tyler interviewed the architect, documenting his account of events. she referred to “plischke’s dixon street flats”, stating that it was: … plischke’s only major housing department design to be built largely according to his conception; it was altered only slightly with flowerboxes being provided for each unit, and applied to the front façade of the block in a manner that seems apologetic for the severity of the form. (tyler, 1986: 49) she continued, “dixon street was a success for plischke, although he received no credit personally for the design” (tyler, 1986: 51). she footnoted that “the ‘eap’ signature was removed from the designs after submission to the main draughting room. plischke had copies of the original drawings made which are held in his archive, vienna” (tyler, 1986: 52). she accepted this alleged erasure, without considering standard government draughting practice.6 title blocks listed the initials of those who produced the working drawing, traced the drawing onto film or linen, added amendments to the sheet at a later date and checked the drawing for errors. it was standard that the principal name would be that of the head of department. if drawings were copied from a preliminary sheet, the subsequent draughtsperson would include their own initials without reference to the author of the earlier study. it seems likely that this is what happened to early studies for the dixon street apartment block. in 1991, the architectural historian peter shaw repeated tyler’s assertions in his history of new zealand architecture (shaw, 1991c: 143). plischke did not include the dixon street project in his 1969 monograph, although he did in those of 1983 and 1989 (piechl, 1983: 102; plischke, 1989: 248-49). in this last work, plischke commented, “in dixon street in wellington baute mein department den ersten kontinental-europäischen block von wohnungen. (in dixon street, wellington my department built the first continental european block of dwellings)” (plischke, 1989: 249). this magisterial reference to ‘my department’ has further fuelled doubts about the soundness of his claim for an involvement in the project. the 1989 monograph prompted shaw to write a substantial journal article in 1991, stating that “it was ironical that plischke’s dixon street flats (1943) were to win gordon wilson, as head of department, an nzia gold medal and that plischke’s design was further adapted when the gordon wilson flats were built on the terrace in 1952” (shaw, 1991a: 64). several retired architects responded with memories of plischke and discussed why he was not admitted to the institute, although none commented on the dixon street apartment block issue (dawson, 1991a; dawson, 1991b; reynolds, 1991; wild, 1991). 6. jim dawson made this point. see e. v. dawson (1996). competing views on authorship for over 60 years the dixon street project has been attributed to gordon wilson, to ernst plischke or to the dhc architects collectively. one official account from september 1943 records: the architects of the department of housing construction made many studies of the problem before the design was finalized. it has been their aim to develop a multi-unit block scheme that would provide the advantages that flat-planning makes possible, without the disadvantages. (dhc, 1943: 37) other publications made reference to either “architects”, “the department of housing construction”, “gordon wilson for the new zealand state housing department” or “gordon f. wilson, supervising architect” (one hundred homes, 1944: 20; dixon street flats, 1943: 20; archer, 1942: 55; two apartment houses, 1946: 69). when the nzia honoured the project with their gold medal for 1947, they awarded it to “g.f. wilson as the architect to housing branch (pwd)” (nzia, 1948b: 12). after this, wilson’s name was more strongly associated with the project; how ever, some outside the dhc held that plischke was the designer. in the mid 1940s, the under secretary of the department of internal affairs, joe heenan (who held plischke in great respect), had the impression that the project was the work of the austrian, although during 1948 he was corrected that it was wilson’s work. writing to the timaru architect, percy watts rule, who had been campaigning to have plischke admitted to the nzia, heenan noted this reattribution while stating that the mclean flats on the terrace, wellington, were by plischke.4 he did not name the source of this new information, although it was obviously one he judged reliable. some of plischke’s most fervent advocates were wellington intellectuals, émigrés and students. in 1950s new zealand, aesthetic sophisticates were easy to identify: they possessed copies of his 1947 publication, design and living. it was also eagerly read by young architects, many of whom attended his lectures.5 an advance excerpt was included in the first and only issue of planning: the magazine of the architectural group, of 1946. students in particular championed plischke. they protested at auc when he was not appointed professor in 1947 (wild, 1991), and students at victoria university college (vuc) campaigned to have him design a new student association building (barrowman, 1999: 312; vuc minutes, 1947: 121, 165). many of these people continued to connect plischke’s name with the dixon street project. in 1963, at the time of plischke’s departure for a professorship at the akademie der bildenden künste in vienna, wellington architect george porter (who had worked with plischke at the dhc in the mid-1940s) attempted to correct the supposed misperception that the austrian had designed dixon street. he wrote: here [in the dhc] he worked under the late gordon wilson, a man of strong personality. it was perhaps unfortunate that a clash of personalities and the anonymity one assumes as a public servant caused his work during this period to be absorbed into the general mass of that done by the department. 4. heenan wrote, “further to our recent correspondence regarding plischke, i now find that in one regard i have done friend wilson of state housing an injustice. i was under the impression that plischke had done the design of the dixon street flats for which the gold medal was awarded. this is not right. he did the subsequent terrace flats [the mclean block], wilson being a man responsible for dixon street” (heenan, 1948b). plischke’s drawings of an early mclean flats scheme are held in the plischke-archiv, akademie der bildenden künste, vienna. 5. in 1945, 235 people enrolled to hear his ten lectures on home design and decoration at the wellington wea (shearer, 1947). interstices 09 65 c; gatley, 1997: 153-54, 157). unable to locate his name on any files or in any contemporary publications, she suggested there was no conclusive evidence of his design input. she supported this view citing: architect, jim beard, who had heard wilson claim the building as his own; ester einhorn, who was married to an architect employed by the government; and architect, graham dawson. of these sources, only dawson worked in the dhc office at the time of the design and his recounting of events is therefore crucial. writing on the dixon street project in his and eva ottillinger’s monograph, august sarnitz acknowledged the uncertainty over the authorship (sarnitz & ottillinger, 2004: 143, 148). he remained circumspect, writing that the designer’s identity remains unclear, although he ascribed drawings and photographs of the project to “ernst plischke in the department of housing construction” (sarnitz & ottillinger, 2004: 143-48). when the ernst plischke architect exhibition was mounted at the wellington city gallery in 2004, locally supplied photographs of the building were shown although no drawings were included.9 in the entry tyler wrote on plischke for the dictionary of new zealand biography and in an essay she wrote to accompany the 2004 exhibition, she made no explicit reference to the dixon street project (tyler, 2000; tyler, 2004b). however, she discussed the project in another essay that she wrote in the building research association of new zealand magazine, build. with respect to his involvement in the design of the dixon street flats, she stated that, while working for the government, he spearheaded the design of the government apartment blocks, and she further observed that his influence is evident in the dixon street interior and exterior working drawings of september 1940. she discussed his recently published interior perspective of a dixon street apartment (fig. 4) (sarnitz & ottillinger, 2004: 144; tyler, 2004a: 32). some new evidence in the early stages of the project, records of the design are limited although it appears that a scheme for the dixon street site was publicly displayed at the new zealand centennial exhibition which opened in november 1939. this mono lithic slab with a symmetrically stepped parapet line (fig. 5) appears awkward and ungainly and shows little of the project’s later elegance. there appears to be a significant shift from this design to the project that was subsequently constructed. in march 1940, it was reported that drawings were being prepared; 9. the exhibition was presented by the nzia and ran from 5 september 28 november 2004. i thank gregory o’brien for supplying caption lists from this exhibition. in his 1987 barch research report on gordon wilson’s work (where he sourced drawings, files, articles and interviews), ken davis included memories of a former dhc and ministry of works architect, graham dawson (fig. 2). dawson recounted: so far as i can recall berhampore, dixon st. and grey’s ave were mainly wilson’s. symonds st was mainly nieumann7 (sic).... i do not think plischke was involved much in greys av. flats and i think dixon st was designed before he joined the team. plischke (with whom i shared a room in dominion farmers bldg for a year or two) was engaged on new house types, 2 to 6 unit housing, shopping and community centres, site layouts imaginatively aimed at comfortable communities.... (g. f. dawson, 1987: 3-4) [dawson’s underlining] dawson roundly added, “however, in discussions with the team and with wilson, plischke’s influence must have been considerable.” davis interpreted this account with reservation. delivering a very sound, thorough analysis of the composition of the dixon street complex, he drew a more even-tempered verdict on plischke’s involvement: since the working drawings were not completed until september 1940 and plischke arrived in new zealand in may 1939 ... it is probable therefore that he had some months to be involved in the sketch design. however the apparent lack of purity, a tendency uncharacteristic of plischke, suggests the eclectic hand of wilson. given wilson’s propensity to change design at will, it is likely that plischke did the original design, with alterations made later... (davis, 1987: 35-36) in the mid-1990s, as part of research for her march dissertation on new zealand state rental flats between 1935 and 1949, julia gatley investigated archival sources to establish plischke’s involvement (gatley, 1995; gatley, 1997: 121-2, 159-60). researching government files and reports, newspapers, journals, architectural drawings and interviews, she could find no clear evidence for plischke’s involvement. she reported that, apart from an exterior perspective shown in fig. 3 (which she dated at 1942, after the project’s design) and some working drawings reproduced in antony matthews’ sub-thesis (which he also dated at 1942), she found no dixon street drawings by plischke8 (matthews, 1986: appendix 7. the austrian born frederick hugh newman né frederick hugo neumann (1900-64) also worked at the dhc. for information on newman, see leach (2003: 8-21). 8. these working drawings from september 1940 were not drawn by plischke. fig. 2 fig. 3 fig. 2: graham dawson at the dhc, 1940s. photographer: w. hall raine. aalf 6112, 24/2/1/21, 832, archives nz/te rua mahara o te kāwanatanga, wellington. fig. 3: e. a. plischke, exterior perspective of the dixon street apartment block. plischke-archiv, vienna, nr 30.888. fig. 4 fig. 4: e. a. plischke, interior perspective of a dixon street apartment, ca. 1940. plischke-archiv, nr 30.996. interstices 09 67 davis appears to infer that the use of regulating lines on the east elevation of dixon street indicated gordon wilson’s concern for the composition and proportion of the elevation. i have found little evidence of this proportion system in wilson’s other work at berhampore and in his own house in karori (1940).16 this system is in obvious accord with le corbusier’s ‘tracés régulateurs’ presented in the fourth chapter of vers une architecture (1923). in 1984, plischke told tyler of the book’s momentous impact on his work (sarnitz & ottillinger, 2004: 258).17 regulating lines superimposed on the principal façade of the dixon street block show how similar rectangles may have been used to determine the step-down point in the parapet (fig. 6). this analysis takes account of the sloping terrain of the site. plischke also made use of a 2x1 proportion system,18 which determines the parapet drop (fig. 7). where the first analysis takes account of terrain, the other takes account of the void above the southern lower section. both establish the consistent step-down point that acts as a fulcrum about which the proportional blocks, discernible within the building’s elevation, maintain equilibrium. plischke appears to have used a combination of regulating lines and squares in other projects. for example, his elevation of the employment centre at liesing (1930-31) reveals a set of similar proportional relationships that determine the composition of the façade (fig. 8). he drew the parallel diagonals to emphasize and to communicate these relationships, noting that “the proportions of the elevation are controlled by a common diagonal” (plischke, 1969: 12). the elevation outline corresponds to a 4x1 rectangle. analysis of the plan further indicates that he used a system of regulating lines and squares to determine some of the spatial arrangement (fig. 9). similar proportional systems are also found in plischke’s other work, including the henderson house at alexandra in the south island (1950) (figs. 10 and 11). analysis of other dhc apartment blocks reveals that the facades of the greys avenue flats were also determined by systems of regulating lines and squares (fig. 12).19 the working drawings were mostly produced by the recent graduate george porter in august-september 1944, while the concept drawings date from 1941 (gatley, 1997: 213). there are differences of opinion about who designed the block in the initial stages.20 the other large government apartment blocks do not show regulating lines. i have not found them with the berhampore, mclean or hansen street flats, or with f. h. newman’s symonds street block.21 while these analyses do not decisively identify plischke as the designer, they support the however, none of these remains. the file record is not helpful. because the first three parts have not survived, the extant record begins at june 1944 with the project completion certificate.10 comparison with other dhc flat files suggests that if the earlier dixon street files had survived, it is unlikely that they would record the early sketch design phases of the project.11 plischke certainly worked on the project to some extent. sometime in 1940, prior to the preparation of the working drawings, he produced the previously mentioned exterior perspective (fig. 3). although plischke dated this project at 1942 (piechl, 1983: 102; plischke, 1989: 248), a wellington newspaper published the image as “the architect’s perspective” in october 1940 (block of flats, 1940: 9, 12).12 comparison of this perspective with the working drawings of september 1940, and with plischke’s account of events, helps in tracing the project’s development. after the centennial exhibition model there must have been a monolithic scheme without balconies. the working drawings include two amendments to the scheme shown in the 1940 perspective which are reminiscent of the detailing on the berhampore flats: the small rectangular balconies on the south façade were reshaped to a semi-circular plan and the building’s south-west corner appears right-angled in the perspective but was later curved. although it is not certain, the entrance canopy also looks to be more rectilinear than that constructed.13 when plischke returned to vienna in 1963, he took a print of the perspective, signing it in ink.14 coupled with his drawing of an apartment interior (fig. 4), it seems likely that these were the drawings that he copied after his name was removed. the other dixon street drawings in the plischke-archiv are two working drawings of plans and sections of the entrance foyer, although neither bears his initials. that he retained them may indicate his involvement with this part of the project.15 further research may be fruitful. regulating lines in his research report on gordon wilson, ken davis annotated the block’s elevation with some ‘regulating lines’ showing how the composition can be interpreted as a system of proportional rectangles (davis, 1987: 117; davis, 2008). 10. ‘dixon street flats’, hd w1353 124/10/2 pt 4, archives nz, wellington. 11. cf. ‘mclean block flats’, hd w1353 10/426/1, archives nz, wellington. the sac file 35/152/3 pt 1 begins with a memo of tender prices dated 20 december 1940. 12. plischke’s perspective was also published in the architectural review article of 1942 (archer, 1942: 55). 13. the constructed curved entrance steps also seem inconsistent with the aesthetic spirit of the perspective. 14. the print also includes some vegetation, drawn onto it in pencil. it is signed at the lower right although this signature is not reproduced in publications (knofler, 2008b). 15. these are working drawings dated september 1940, drawn by rab (bob barton) and checked gfw (gordon wilson) (knofler, 2008a). fig. 5 fig. 5: dixon street apartment model displayed at the new zealand centennial exhibition 1939-1940. photographer: w. hall raine. aalf 6112, 24/3, 984, archives nz/te rua mahara o te kāwanatanga, wellington. 16. i have found a somewhat inconclusive regulating line relationship between the living room and the meals area in wilson’s own karori house plan (designed to catch the sun, 1943). wilson’s later extension for the house does not show this kind of relationship at all (family house, 1951). 17. on plischke and le corbusier, see sarnitz & ottillinger (2004: 47-49). 18. according to bill alington, frederick newman also worked on a system of double squares (alington, 2008). josef frank also used this system. 19. i thank andrew leach for suggesting this line of enquiry. this finding may not suggest that plischke necessarily worked on the greys avenue flats, but rather that the dixon street design strategy had impacted upon the auckland project. 20. dawson told davis that they were mostly by wilson (g. f. dawson, 1987: 3). he told me that they were by wilson and himself “to an extent”. (g. f. dawson, 1994a). frederick (fritz) farrar could have been involved as well. 21. in a paper discussing, amongst other things, scale, rhythm and proportion, newman mentioned the golden section but made no reference to regulating lines (1952: 72-73). fig. 6 fig. 7 fig. 6: regulating lines superimposed on the east elevation of the dixon street flats. gatley, 1997: 153; regulating lines added by robin skinner. fig. 7: a 2x1 proportion system also determines the parapet drop. gatley, 1997: 153; squares added by robin skinner. fig. 5 interstices 09 69 of work, together with certificates and their respective syllabi. they added that complete exemption from all examinations had not been granted on the strength of a foreign diploma or certificate (nzia minutes, 17 oct. 1946). in early 1947, the nzia education committee passed a resolution that refugee architects should sit all papers in the institute’s special examination (nzia minutes, 29 jan. 1947). minutes from meetings of the nzia executive include several discussions specifically relating to the possibility of plischke’s admission to the institute in the 1940s. as noted earlier, in the late 1940s percy watts rule lobbied for plischke’s admission to the institute “on account of his high qualifications” (nzia minutes, 17 dec. 1947).22 the matter was turned over to the next annual meeting where it was moved that the nominee be advised to apply by the usual channels (nzia, 1948a).23 after that meeting, when watts rule wrote asking what steps should be taken to have plischke admitted, he was instructed to apply in the usual way, citing the appropriate section of the institute’s regulations (nzia minutes, 30 jun. 1948). watts rule also wrote to heenan asking him to exert his influence in wellington (rule, 1948). heenan replied that the prime minister, peter fraser, was much taken aback that the institute insisted on plischke sitting an examination (heenan, 1948a). in reality, the institute could have admitted plischke under a little-used regulation that awarded membership to a person who had “in the opinion of the [institute’s] council attained great eminence in the profession of architecture” (nzia act, 1913: sec 8.1.i). inline with the riba lead, the executive resisted doing so.24 the institute hierarchy also considered other issues relating to plischke. in february 1947, the council discussed the professorial position at auc which plischke was applying for, although the nature of their discussion can only be speculated upon. the garbled minutes record: claim that he exerted significant involvement or influence in the dixon street and greys avenue scheme designs. this accords with davis’ earlier-stated verdict on plischke’s contribution to the dixon street design. plischke and the nzia plischke’s difficult relationship with the nzia is also relevant in interpreting the various comments made by graham dawson. as is widely known, plischke never joined the nzia because he would not condescend to sit an exami nation that he deemed inferior to those he had sat in austria. in 1939, the issue of refugee architects was discussed by the institute’s executive with the decision reached that only people who would qualify for membership of the riba could qualify in new zealand (nzia minutes, 5 jul. 1939). a year later, it was moved that refugee architects could not sit the institute’s special examination until they became naturalized british citizens (nzia minutes, 6 nov. 1940). in response to a request for clarification, the riba informed the nzia that they did not recognize foreign certificates and instead asked that candidates provide evidence fig. 12: the greys avenue flats elevations appear to be determined by regulating lines and a 2x1 proportional geometry. gatley, 1997: 214; regulating lines added by robin skinner. fig. 10 fig. 11 fig. 12 fig. 8: labour exchange, liesing (1930-31). plischke-archiv, nr 30.419. fig. 9: regulating lines and square geometries determine the planning of the labour exchange. plischke, 1969: 71; regulating lines added by robin skinner. figs. 10 and 11: henderson house, alexandra (1950). plischke, 1969: 154; regulating lines added by robin skinner. 22. the grounds for admission were recorded in the written minutes as “by virtue of a nominee holding a foreign diploma” (nzia, 1948a). the matter was not reported in the written minutes (nzia, 1948b). 23. ironically this was the meeting where wilson was awarded the institute’s gold medal. 24. on plischke and nzia membership, see e. v. dawson (1996). fig. 8 fig. 9 interstices 09 71 is no indication in the minutes if they voted for or against plischke. in later life, dawson described plischke as “a sensitive soul” and downplayed his involvement with the flats (g. f. dawson, 1987; g. f. dawson, 1994b).27 my impression is that plischke and dawson’s relationship was complex and problematic, and that this must be taken into account when considering his recollections.28 to my knowledge this has not been explicitly identified by any earlier writer. in conclusion, in this survey of the archival record, new evidence has been presented that supports the claim that plischke had a significant involvement with the design of the dixon street block. the design process took a noticeable shift about the time that he joined the office and, significantly, the final project exhibits some of the particular compositional strategies that he rigorously employed in his other work. rather than being taken as a snapshot of the final design, his exterior perspective has been re-dated from 1942 to 1940 and identified as a key document that helps trace the development of the project. furthermore, i have presented evidence that complicates our understanding of his contemporaries’ recollections, which has hitherto not been considered. plischke’s part in the design of the dixon street flats did not make the official record. while his early input is clearly discernible, from the working drawings onwards he appears to have been kept off the job. he was assigned no task where his name would be explicitly recorded. given that plischke’s influence was fundamental, this absence becomes especially intriguing. rather than interpret this as a sign of detachment, it may indicate that his participation was crucial. acknowledgement of even a minor contribution by plischke would have left a discernible trace of his input, which could have challenged the formally assigned authorship to the chief architect. this may be why his name was not recorded in the official record. references alington, w. h. (2008). pers. comm. to r. skinner (march 9). archer, h. c. (1942). new zealand architecture. architectural review, 91(march), 52-58. barrowman, r. (1999). victoria university of wellington, 1899-1999: a history. wellington: victoria university press. block of flats: state housing project in dixon street: details announced (1940, october 12). dominion, p. 9, 12. davis, k. j. (1987) a liberal turn of mind: the architectural work of f. gordon wilson, 1936-1959: a cultural analysis. unpublished barch research report, victoria university of wellington. davis, k. j. (2008). pers. comm. to r. skinner (march 9). dawson, e. v. (1991a). letters: plischke pr. architecture new zealand, (july-august), 5. dawson, e. v. (1991b). letters: plischke recalled. architecture new zealand, (march-april), 9. dawson, e. v. (1996). pers. comm. to j. gatley (february 24), as cited in gatley, 1997: 151-52. dawson, g. f. (1987). letter to k. davis (july 13), as cited in davis, 1987: appendix. dawson, g. f. (1994a). pers. comm. to r. skinner (october 4). dawson, g. f. (1994b). pers. comm. to j. gatley (december 10), as cited in gatley 1997: 122. department of housing construction (1943). general report on state housing in new zealand. wellington: government printer. mr dawson mentioned the appointment of a professor of design to the auckland university college. mr massey said that when the institute had a member on the faculty of architecture he would be in touch with the school of architecture and he would be able to submit to the education committee similar suggestions. the institute could only advise the university on appointments. (nzia, 1947: 51) later in 1948, possibly referring to plischke’s earlier work in the government service, the canterbury branch of the nzia wrote complaining that community centres, which were being developed as war memorials, were being designed by unqualified men (nzia minutes, 25 aug. 1948). the executive responded, quoting a ministerial circular that indicated that these plans were merely for guidance and information, and that local councils should “engage experts” themselves (nzia minutes, 8 sep. 1948) [their underlining]. this may partly explain why none of plischke’s community centres was built. in 1949, when plischke was asked to design a writing desk as the wedding present from the people of new zealand for princess elizabeth and prince phillip, the executive complained to the prime minister that “it was regrettable that the government entrusted the designing of such a token of loyalty to one who was not a natural born new zealander of british origin” (nzia minutes, 6 apr. 1949). the prime minister responded that the designer was a new zealand citizen at the time of appointment (nzia minutes, 13 jul. 1949). that same year, following the earlier lobbying by the vuc students to have plischke design their (now stalled) student union, the institute’s executive expressed concern to the college registrar that an unregistered architect was being considered for the project, provoking doubts over the availability of government building subsidy, should he be appointed (nzia minutes, 29 jun. 1949; vuc minutes, 1949: 127, 1950: 90, 1952: 160). this alert was spurious, because in 1947 plischke had left government service and gone into partnership with registered architect, cedric firth. in 1953, upon the advice of the retired government architect, r.a. patterson,25 the job was awarded to structon group architects (barrowman, 1999: 312). it is not known if plischke was aware of all of the nzia discussions, although he almost certainly would have understood the institute’s culture.26 while the position regarding the wedding present was obviously xenophobic and was possibly personally motivated, the principal issue could have been easily resolved: if plischke had sat the nzia’s special examination or the riba’s examination, he would not have had such a troubled relationship with the institute. other émigrés such as porsolt and newman sat examinations and worked as officially recognized architects. plischke’s pride did not help in these matters. as far as the institute members were concerned, they were simply upholding their rules. here it is pertinent to recall that, in response to shaw’s 1991 article, retired architect ian reynolds wrote, “smug and self-satisfied the local community might have appeared to be, but it was much too innocent to be devious” (reynolds, 1991). the executive of the nzia had about eight members. at most of its meetings of the late 1940s and at the annual meeting of 1948, graham dawson and l. e. brooker (who was the chief architect at the state advances corporation – the government department that administered state housing) were present. there 25. in 1952, gordon wilson succeeded patterson as government architect in the ministry of works. 26. heenan informed plischke of watts rule’s “battling” at the 1948 agm in dunedin, for which wilson wrote that plischke was “deeply grateful” (heenan, 1948b). 27. i telephoned dawson once in 1994, principally to discuss the work of the auckland city council architect, t. k. donner. our conversation continued for some time. my notes indicate that he described plischke as a “sensitive soul” and when i asked about the dixon street block, he said “plischke worked on for a …”, before breaking off in mid-sentence (g. f. dawson, 1994a). 28. in 1968, when the wellington branch of the nzia learnt that plischke, by then resident in vienna, was visiting new zealand the following year, they recommended unanimously that he should be made an honorary fellow of the institute. as nzia president, graham dawson hosted a luncheon in the austrian’s honour (nzia, 1968). interstices 09 73 saker, j. (1985). rediscovering ernst plischke. wellington city magazine, (september), 58-61. sarnitz, a. & ottillinger, e. (2004). ernst plischke: modern architecture for the new world: the complete works. munich: prestel. originally published as ernst plischke: das neue bauen und die neue welt: das gesamtwerk. munich: prestel, 2003. shaw, p. (1991a). plischke in new zealand. architecture new zealand, (january-february), 61-64. shaw, p. (1991b). letters: plischke slights. architecture new zealand, (may-june), 9. shaw, p. (1991c). new zealand architecture from polynesian beginnings to 1990. auckland: hodder & stoughton. shearer, j. o. (1947). letter to the registrar, auc (january 23). heenan papers. two apartment houses in wellington, n.z. (1946). architectural forum, 85(august), 69-72. tyler, l. (1986). the architecture of e. a. plischke in new zealand, 1939-1962. unpublished ma thesis, university of canterbury, christchurch. tyler, l. (2000). plischke, ernst anton 1903-1992. in c. orange (ed.), dictionary of new zealand biography, volume five 1941-1960 (pp. 414-15). auckland and wellington: auckland university press and department of internal affairs. tyler, l. (2004a). built to last. build, (august-september), 32-34. tyler, l. (2004b). ernst plischke international modernist. in ernst plischke architect. wellington: wellington city gallery. victoria university college council, minute books 1946-1952, victoria university of wellington, wellington. wild, a. (1991). letters: twopence. architecture new zealand, (july-august), 5. wilson, f. g. (1947). letter to the registrar, auc (january 31). heenan papers. designed to catch the sun and dodge the winds (1943). home and building, 7(1), 10-11. dixon street flats (1943). home and building, 7(1), 20-21, 23, 47. family house and garden (1951). design review, 3(5), 112-15. gatley, j. (1995). privacy and propaganda: the politics of the dixon street flats. interstices, 4, 11pp. gatley, j. (1996). for modern living: government blocks of flats. in j. wilson (ed.), zeal and crusade: the modern movement in wellington (pp. 53-68). christchurch: te waihora press. gatley, j. (1997). labour takes command: a history and analysis of state rental flats in new zealand 1935-1949. unpublished march thesis, victoria university of wellington. gatley, j. (2000). wilson, francis gordon 1900-1959. in c. orange (ed.), dictionary of new zealand biography, volume five 1941-1960 (pp. 566-67). auckland and wellington: auckland university press and department of internal affairs. heenan, j. w. (1948a). letter to p. watts rule (march 24). heenan papers, ms papers 1132-200, alexander turnbull library, wellington. heenan, j. w. (1948b). letter to p. watts rule (april 2). heenan papers. knofler, m. (2008a). pers. comm. to r. skinner (march 28). knofler, m. (2008b). pers. comm. to r. skinner (july 4). leach, a. (2003). frederick h. newman: lectures on architecture. ghent, belgium: a&s books. matthews, a. (1986). e. a. plischke – the connection between theory and form. unpublished barch research report, university of auckland. new zealand institute of architects (1947). year book 1947: including proceedings of annual conference, 1947. wellington: whitcombe & tombs. new zealand institute of architects (1948a). minutes of the thirty second annual meeting, 3 march 1948. nzia papers. j. c. beaglehole room, victoria university of wellington. new zealand institute of architects (1948b). year book 1948: including proceedings of annual conference, 1948. wellington: whitcombe & tombs. new zealand institute of architects. executive minutes. nzia papers. new zealand institute of architects (1968). wellington branch annual report 1968. wellington branch minute book 1965-69. nzia papers. new zealand institute of architects act (1913). newman, f. h. (1952). social factors in architecture and their implications for new zealand. in leach, 2003: 67-89. noonan, r. j. (1975). by design: a brief history of the public works department, ministry of works, 1870-1970. wellington: government printer. one hundred homes in one (1944). new zealand listener, (january 14), 20-21. piechl, g. (ed.). (1983). e. a. plischke. vienna: akademie der bildenden künste. plischke, e. a. (1969). vom menschlichen im neuen bauen (on the human aspect in modern architecture). vienna: k. wedl. plischke, e. a. (1989). ein leben mit architektur. vienna: löcker. plishke [sic], e. a. (1947). design and living. wellington: department of internal affairs. porter, d. g. (1963, april 6). exile brought fresh vision to n.z. architecture. dominion, p. 10. reynolds, i. (1991). letters: in context. architecture new zealand, (september-august), 5. rule, p. w. (1948). letter to j. w. heenan (march 14). heenan papers. ° 0 2 4 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° in 2008 the united nations predicted that within the year, “for the first time in history the urban population will equal the rural population of the world” (1). as hodson and marvin observe, urbanisation “totally dominates the huge metalogistical systems … that make up the contemporary world” (hodson and marvin 2010: 300). soja and kanai contend “more than ever before, it can be said that the earth’s entire surface is urbanized to some degree … no one on earth is outside the sphere of influence of urban industrial capitalism” (soja and kanai 2007: 62). as human population and its urban apparatus proportionately expand, so too do ecological susceptibilities, social ills, and the foment of political unrest. philosophers jean luc nancy, henri lefebvre and bruno latour, while critical of the terminal tendencies of techno-capitalist urbanisation, each reimagine the urban as a locus for open-ended ‘world forming’ resistance. with their theoretical underpinning, this paper undertakes a site-specific analysis of the applied sciences new york (asny) civic innovation initiative. it argues this new brand of digital urbanism, one designed to be emulated by ‘smart cities’ the world over, offers abundant opportunities for the kinds of resistance speculatively identified by nancy, lefebvre, and latour. for jean luc nancy, the central problem with the current urban imaginary is its prioritisation of market over political considerations. in the creation of the world or globalization (2007), nancy identifies urbanisation as the material expression of globalisation, a process that in its “unitotality” (nancy 2007: 28) signals “an unprecedented geopolitical, economic, and ecological catastrophe” (nancy 2007: 50). this “indefinite growth of techno-science”, which reduces “the circulation of everything” to “the form of commodity” (nancy 2007: 37), can only result in “correlative exponential growth” and the “worsening of inequalities of all sorts” (nancy 2007: 33-34). globalised urbanism not only homogenises sense and flattens meaning (madden 2012: 776), it “invades and erodes what used to be thought of as globe and which is nothing more now than its double, glomus” (nancy 2007: 33-34), a form of planetary cannibalisation, “an anarchic, polluted dystopia” (madden 2012: 776) that is “not a nice place” (madden 2012: 777). a cursory glance at the evening news on any given day renders nancy’s the internet of politicised ‘things’: urbanisation, citizenship, and the hacking of new york ‘innovation’ city r u s s e l l h u g h e s observations difficult to refute. yet the proselytisers of the urban millennium do negate such claims, and do so with gusto, espousing the virtue of the new urban condition to be capable of not only solving all the world’s urban ills, but making manifest its social utopia idealistically foretold by h.g. wells more than a century ago (1901). this optimism toward a panaceaic new urbanism will not, however, emerge evenly from a vast undifferentiated global conurban ecumenopolis, but from site-specific urban centres or ‘cities’ that are ideally positioned to bring urbanism’s nascent promise to fruition. for this new urban imaginary, nancy’s glomus is not so much a problem as it is a fortuitous opportunity for commercial solutions, in particular those that navigate cities as dense concentrations of scientific and entrepreneurial ‘innovation’. this increasingly prevalent civic story, rising to prominence in the first decades of the 21st century, has its origins in the latter half of the preceding century and is the iterative extension of what was a project to revitalise the first victim of urban sprawl, that being the city itself. t h e s e c o n d c o m i n g o f t h e w e s t e r n c i t y as industrial mass production slumped during the 1960s and ‘70s, cities in western developed countries that were home to the factories and workshops of the post-wwii manufacturing boom descended into a period of rapid decline. vacant buildings, abandoned docklands, and brownfield sites joined forces with mass unemployment to escalate rates of crime, social dissonance, and the ghettoisation of inner city space. cities became less viable economically and less attractive places to live. urban planning, which up to that point had concentrated its energies and attentions on regulating and limiting urban growth, beginning in the united states initiated a remarkable about-turn, swiftly reinventing the discipline from being the robust adversary of development to become its complementary collaborator. the buzzword for this renaissance, derived from american rhetorical ingenuity, was ‘urban revitalisation’. re-designating the city’s abandoned areas as ‘enterprise zones’, urban planners used incentives such ° 0 2 5 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° as subsidised land, cheap rents, the reduction of entry and exit fees, and tax exemptions to lure companies that had fled to the suburbs back to their natural domicile. these manoeuvres also catalysed a residential return as the rise of young professionals, frustrated with the mundane banality of sub-urbanism, sought adventure in the dynamism of the metropolis. to attract more people, and keep them there, cities envisaged “entertainment” precincts as a central strategy to treat the inner urban space like a “constantly changing theatre” (hall 2002: 386). perhaps most critical to the success of this urban return was the new economic staple: information and communication technologies (icts). in the 1980s and 90s so-called ‘new economy’, peter hall argues “access to privileged information” (hall 2002: 409) became the key criteria for success. the transfer of this critical currency was, ironically, facilitated by what informational economies were supposed to supplant: face-to-face communication. the recipe for success in the ict economy, “like all creative activities … depended on interaction, on networking, on a certain amount of buzz and fizz, which [is] more likely to be found in [cities] than anywhere else” (hall 2002: 408). this perception highlights not the ‘placelessness’ of the conurban condition, but the richness of site-specific concentrations of urbanity that cities, in all their idiosyncratic glory, are ideally positioned to provide. as icts faltered in the aftermath of 1998’s dotcom crash, the digitisation and commercialisation of biology soon became the best hope for a new era of science-based profitability. since then, these post-fordist models of ‘flexible’ economic accumulation have further broadened the imagination of ‘innovation’ in its totality by way of a “spiral vortex” (calit2 2015) of ‘info’, ‘bio’, ‘nano’, and ‘robo’ technologies. it is these ‘machines’ as the engines of urban aspiration that will drive the post-industrial global economy. it follows that what is required of 21st century planning is not so much a concentration of particular industries or technologies per se, rather the spatial and social engineering of ‘cultures’, ‘clusters’, ‘ecosystems’ or ‘ecologies’ of interconnected innovation industries. though focusing on the development of exurban science parks in the latter half of the 20th century, and later science precincts within cities in the first decade of the 21st, today the city in toto is imagined as the ideal site in which to make innovation manifest as an urban innovation ‘laboratory’. analogous with, and proportionate to, the ambitions of 21st century science that cities now accommodate, this spatial shift is not only ‘best practice’ for scientific socialisation and entrepreneurial stimulation, but critically positions the city as the subject of scientific endeavour: that is the problem for ‘science’ (innovation) to solve. central to this move is the quantification of activity within cities by corporate giants ibm, cisco, general electric and siemens, who, through the ‘smart’ mining of civic big data, claim to be able to make cities more productive, liveable, equitable, and resilient. with over half the world’s population now living in cities, and the need to accommodate another three billion people in the next 30 years (united nations 2012: 1), civic administrations across the globe are wholesale investing in the imagined benefits ‘smartification’ will produce. what becomes apparent, however, is that the mere appearance of ‘smart’ as semantic veneer is crucial to the task of attracting the global flows of capital and talent upon which 21st century notions of innovation depends. urban smartification is as much a recruitment strategy designed to draw these critical resources of innovation in advance and independent of anything tangibly innovative or beneficial actually accruing. of the increasing number of cities retrofitting and rebranding themselves in this regard, the singularly most comprehensive, aggressive, and selfaggrandising ambition for technocratic civic transformation and global innovation domination, is new york city (nyc). through explication of the origins and organisational elements of nyc’s self-appointment as the vanguard of this new global urban imaginary, the following foregrounds how projects such as asny agitate and open the potential for new forms of citizen engagement. d i g i t a l u r b a n i s m n y c s t y l e in 2002 nyc’s wealthiest citizen, michael bloomberg, was elected mayor on the basis that he could leverage his entrepreneurial talents and industry connections to re-establish the city as an economic world leader. though he initiated a suite of new policies to achieve this end (smith 2013: 1), perhaps the most impactful were changes to nyc’s public school system. dogged for decades by mismanagement and corruption, in the six years after taking over the city’s public schools, bloomberg’s ‘children first’ initiative raised graduation rates by 20%, improved reading and math scores over 10%, and closed the achievement gap between ethnicities (bloomberg 2008: 1). bloomberg also initiated a series of new, complementary vocational programs, including opening technology high schools and vocational training centres to serve local technology industries. these policies underpin subsequent changes to the city’s tertiary system announced in 2010 that spearhead nyc’s bold declaration to transform itself into “the new technology capital of the world” (cornell chronicle 2011: 1). one of bloomberg’s key aims was to diversify the city’s economy to reduce its reliance on the financial sector. under bloomberg’s mayoralty, nyc’s traditional secondary industries such as tourism, film, and television had all grown impressively. when 2007’s sub-prime mortgage-lending debacle took effect, the financial industry still accounted for a third of total personal income in the city’s private sector. about to lose $54b of market capitalisation and a quarter of its employees in the september 2008 collapse of lehmann brothers, bloomberg overturned the law limiting his mayoral service to two terms and successfully campaigned as an independent to undertake a third. part of his re-election platform was flagging the burgeoning technology startup sector in the city as the key industry to drive economic recovery. the success of home-grown tech companies gilt groupe, etsy, tumblr, and foursquare, and the organic blossoming of high technology startup districts such as silicon alley and dumbo, signalled nyc was the place in which to merge the worlds of finance, advertising, and media with emergent mobile platforms. city hall learnt that in order to capitalise on the current tech boom, nyc would need to generate a critical mass of digital engineering talent. though home to several high-ranking engineering schools, nyc does not produce the volume of engineering graduates that successful innovation districts like silicon valley and boston’s route 128 do, nor does it have the necessary industries and/or associated incentives to keep them after graduation. to this end the bloomberg administration drafted an audacious plan to not simply make nyc competitive with other booming high-tech centres but to eclipse them. speaking to this plan at its announcement in december 2010, u.s. senator charles e. schumer declared “look out silicon valley, look out boston, new york will be second to none” (cornell chronicle 2011: 1). one year into bloomberg’s third term as mayor, the city announced the applied sciences new york (asny) competition. it requested expressions of interest from academic institutions or joint consortiums to partner with the city to create a state-of-the-art applied science campus (new york city [nyc] 2010: 1). designed to increase the probability that a high-growth ° 0 2 6 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° company such as google, amazon, or facebook will emerge in nyc (new york city economic development corporation [nycedc] 2015: 1), the city offered acreage on a number of prime real estate sites and up to $100m in capital infrastructure expenditure and/or city backed loans as incentive. the campus had to accommodate a minimum of 93,000m² of wet and/ or dry labs, provide teaching and conference facilities, and demonstrate a commitment to sustainability and community engagement initiatives with the wider nyc populace. the request stressed the importance of articulating links to corporate partners who would be “co-located” on site. it “strongly” encouraged “proposals that also include space for related commercial activity such as business incubators, corporate research and development facilities, and spin out companies” (nyc 2010: 1). a little over one year later, bloomberg announced the joint proposal between cornell university and technion israel institute of technology as the winner. pledging to build a $2b, 204,000m² campus to educate 2,500 postgraduate engineering students annually, the city anticipated cornell tech to create “some” 600 spin-off companies and $23b in nominal economic activity within the next 30 years (cornell chronicle 2011: 1). such was the strength of the unsuccessful proposals, that eighteen months later bloomberg announced a second stage of asny; a new center for urban science and progress (cusp) to be built in downtown brooklyn (nyc 2012a: 1). led by new york university, it partnered with a broader academic consortium, including the city university of new york, carnegie mellon university, the university of toronto, the university of warwick, and the indian institute of technology bombay. two further projects have since been announced: the columbia institute for data sciences and engineering (nyc 2012b: 1) within the morningside heights and washington heights campuses and the carnegie mellon/steiner studios digital media program (nyc 2013: 1) to be located in the former brooklyn navy yard. collectively the four asny projects are expected to generate over $33.2b in nominal economic activity, more than 48,000 permanent and construction jobs, and approximately 1,000 spin-off companies by 2046 (cornell tech 2014: 1). critical to the urban concerns of this paper is the way in which a memorandum of understanding between cusp, its corporate partners, and the city, establishes the concept of nyc as a ‘living laboratory’. with financial and mentoring support from technology companies ibm, cisco, conedison, national grid, siemens, xerox, aecom, arup, and ideo, cusp and its corporate partners will concentrate on researching and developing technologies that address the critical challenges and emerging growth opportunities in the provision of civic infrastructure, technology integration, energy efficiency, transportation, congestion, public safety, and public health. cusp has access to nyc’s civic data as the raw material by which to isolate [lucrative] targets for research in the aim of developing smart solutions for the growing multitude of aforementioned urban challenges. city hall’s brokering of complementary ventures in the city, such as the partnering of cusp with the $20b hudson yards ‘quantified community’ redevelopment (murray 2014: 1) and the relocation of cusp partner ibm’s third generation cognitive computing program ‘watson’ to manhattan, further buttress cusp’s endeavour to lead the emerging field of ‘urban informatics’. with the global market for intelligent city systems and infrastructure estimated to be in the vicinity of $350 trillion over the next three decades (world wildlife fund 2010: 1), asny’s state-academyindustry partnership seeks to swiftly ‘transfer’ r&d into lucrative products exportable to all other ‘urban laboratories’ across the globe. by positioning such goods and services as its vehicle for 21st century economic success, the potential ramifications of nyc’s aggressive brand of ‘digital urbanism’ upon the political experience of civic citizens globally, cannot be underestimated. as smart cities author anthony townsend points out however, “looking smart, even more than being smart [is] the real force driving mayors into the arms of engineers” (townsend 2013: 68), “the mere appearance of control … key to economic survival in a world where cities compete for talent and investment” (townsend 2013: 71-2). as the move to becoming smarter suggests, cities are increasingly cognisant of, and proactive in, their roles as the powerhouses of the post-industrial new economy. they are also key sites in which new forms of citizenship and political involvement—or the lack thereof—are played out. in its nascent, nebulous ‘innovative’ imaginary, nyc’s digital urbanism concomitantly becomes the focal point for new types of political contestations over individual and collective identity, belonging, and right. if, as richard sennett contends, cities need to become more open, enabling citizen participation “by virtue of their own agency” (sennett 2006: 1), the remainder of this paper will address asny’s digital urbanism in the context of the citizen circumvention of it, identifying recent incidences of such resistance that gesture toward possible openings for a bottom-up politicised ‘world forming’ to occur. t h e p o l i t i c s o f t h e c i v i c e n v e l o p e as holsten and appadurai indicated as early as 1996, with the nation state appearing “increasingly exhausted and discredited”, it is cities that “engage most palpably the tumult of citizenship” (holsten and appadurai 1996: 188). nyc’s quest for innovative civic transformation is especially volatile in this regard, exemplified by bloomberg’s transformative, techno-centric agenda extending from the engineering of the city’s major economic industries, to the social engineering of the citizenry of the city itself. nyc’s primary, secondary, and now tertiary education reforms seek to equip local students as tools for the 21st century digital economy. they are part of the city’s highly manicured posture and projection, which has the intention of attracting the requisite ‘mature’ techno-entrepreneurial talent to bolster its innovative agenda. these sweeping policy initiatives threaten to disempower and disenfranchise the non-innovative many who currently reside in the city, potentially excluding those who lack the necessary capital and talent required for nyc’s aspirational innovation economy. just as the new species of technology, in particular the componentry of ‘internet of things’, are designed to seamlessly integrate, skeuomorphlike, into our everyday lives, so too does asny’s intricately interwoven state-academy-industry ‘triple-helix’ partnerships. through the opacity and obfuscation of such complex organisational arrangements, it becomes nearly impossible for citizens to identify, let alone contest, the overarching determinations that govern everyday life. as adam greenfield, author of against the smart city (2013) contends: by obscuring the meaningful distinctions between the two [state and market], the ‘seamless integration of public and private services’ makes it very difficult for any of us to determine which set of actors is able to operate more effectively on our own behalf, which effects we would wish to see sustained and which is more responsive to our demands (greenfield 2013: 737-40). ° 0 2 7 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° similarly, artist james bridle suggests, “those who cannot perceive the network cannot act effectively within it, and are powerless” (huffington 2014: 1). layered in a complex labyrinth of bureaucratic entanglement, the target/s for any kind of citizen-based critique or interrogation have become increasingly difficult to discern. what hope do citizens as selfdetermining subjects have, if the market and its panoply of co-iterative extensions and apparatuses render citizenship purely a matter economic inclusion and exclusion? given traditional forms of direct resistance and outright revolution appear no longer tenable, what, if any, opportunities are available for citizens to challenge the chimerical conflation of the state and the market, defined by latour as “two flanks of the same beast” (latour 2014: 8)? as david madden argues, urban economic transformation must concomitantly aspire to political transformation, for without it, “the affirmation of urbanism can easily degrade into cheerleading for conspicuous neighbourhood consumption, ‘smart’ technocracy, or renewalas-gentrification” (madden 2012: 783). instead of promotion of “neo-liberal lifestyle politics”, madden urges a new kind of urban imaginary that privileges citizen-based political potential over the pursuit of economic rationalism at all cost. though henri lefebvre’s analysis of the global urban fabric identifies an irreducible remainder and opportunity in what he calls the “non-closing of the circuit” (lefebvre 1984: 188), madden contends such a transformation must be “actively sought, rather than only experienced” (madden 2012: 781). such speculative opportunities vis-à-vis asny will now be ventured. michael bloomberg, a trained engineer, successful entrepreneur, indeed nyc’s wealthiest citizen responsible for building the digital products that transformed the city’s financial sector, was brought to public office, not so much on a political agenda, but upon his promise to install a model of corporate economic governance. though it could be said that bloomberg, like lefebvre, believes “[u]rban life has yet to begin” (lefebvre 1996: 150), and furthermore wants a “radical urbanism” that “make[s] a space for audacious, utopian, unrealistic” (madden 2012: 782) “planning projects” (lefebvre 1996: 155), these two figures’ urban aspirations could not be any more polarised. if, as madden laments, “the horizon of politics lies in the development of progressively smarter solutions” where “political contentiousness, like pollution, is one more problem to be solved”, then, in the context of bloomberg’s ‘innovation’ city, the task for citizen-based political contestation is to rethink that horizon, and the means by which citizens as a collective arrive at that frontier. one means toward realising sennett’s anti-teleological ‘open city’ is via the political philosophy of bruno latour. his manifesto for understanding the urban world as one made up of ‘things’ is particularly useful in this regard. as latour suggests, “a simple look at them clearly proves that the ‘body politik’ is not only made of people! they are thick with things: clothes, a huge sword, immense castles, large cultivated fields, crowns, ships, cities, and an immensely complex technology of gathering, meeting, cohabiting, enlarging, reducing and focusing” (latour 2005: 6). latour sees in ‘things’ or—to use the old icelandic word “dings” meaning an assembly of politically charged ‘things’ (latour 2005: 12)—an opportunity to revitalise politics via different ways of assembling. as he states, if “those makeshift assemblies we call markets, technologies, science, ecological crises, wars and terrorist networks … are already connecting people no matter how much they don’t feel assembled by any common politics” (latour 2005: 7), then accordingly once an “assembly of assemblies is deployed, that which passes for the political sphere … will appear as one type among many others, perhaps even a rather ill-equipped type” (latour 2005: 24). at this formative stage, would it appear that the global civic trend toward smart cities is merely a ‘smarter’ way for triple-helicoid partners to stealthily track and control the flows of their capital and influence? following latour’s dingpolitik, could a politicised network of interconnected things serve to disrupt these flows with assemblages that defy the logic of asny’s transformative civic algorithm? but how, or more importantly what method would a dingpolitik need to use to do this? latour suggests, “[w]hat if we had to imagine not an assembly of assemblies, not even an assembly of ways of assembling but an assembly of ways of dissembling? would not that be a call for disassembling instead?” (latour 2005: 25). this may seem an anachronistic return to a late 20th-century style of francophilian deconstruction, yet latour’s suggestion could in fact be more prescient than first appearances indicate. if today’s urban condition can be one defined as a “data-industrialacademic-complex” (woolrich 2014: 1), where, according to parsons professor of urban ecologies bill morrish, “those who control the digital portals in essence control the world” (morrish personal communications 2014), a myriad of high profile contemporary examples show these portals can be hacked. just as computer viruses like ‘stuxnet’ can be deployed to turn an opposing regime’s weapons upon itself, so too have celebrity cyberwhistle-blowers julian assange and edward snowden used informational platforms to very publicly subvert the foundations of the nation state. in more modest ways, the destabilisation and diffusion of traditional power strongholds is apparent in a myriad of examples extant in the urban everyday. from eco-philic guerrilla gardeners and environmental health clinics, to the aesthetic interventions of internet yami-achi or the jocoserioso of unfit bits, disruptive social agitators leverage cyberspace in a multitude of ever-evolving ways to politically impact upon the experience of civic space in three dimensions. as oli mould’s urban subversions and the creative city (2015) suggests, if today’s ‘maker’ citizens are the benchmark, tomorrow’s netizens will be unruly, mutative, politicised in-formations par excellence. asny’s recruitment of the ‘best and the brightest’ (cornell tech, 2011: 1), is an invitation to the next generation’s digital natives to plumb the city’s algorithm for technocratic success. asny’s ambitions, predicated on capturing the precocity of digital wunderkinds to serve the stateacademy-industry triple helix, may well see politically primed students not so much serve their burgeoning intelligence to co-location corporate partners, as supplant them with it. latour asks, “[p]rogress and succession, revolution and substitution, neither are part of our operating system any longer. and yet where is the alternative os? who is busy writing its lines of code?” (latour 2005: 30). in this context asny’s intention to harvest the ingenuity of the next generation’s most creative thinkers could train what morrish describes as “the most radically informed radicals on the planet”, people who “may not all become quiet republicans” (morrish personal communications 2014). asny could be unwittingly creating the conditions ripe for a digitised citizen circumvention the likes of which we cannot yet imagine, and latour’s prescience comes to the fore with the suggestion, “when we say ‘public matters!’ or ‘back to things!’ we are not trying to go back to the old materialism of realpolitik, because matter itself [in the new digital imaginary] is up for grabs as well” (latour 2005: 14). it is precisely in this post-analogue space, where “our usual definitions of politics have not caught up” (latour 2005: 27), that politics will be most adeptly played by ‘infants’ speaking in a swiftly evolving silent language or ‘code’. if the most durable forms of innovation, and of politics, are sourced from the “power of the crowd” (wakefield 2013: 1), the ‘smartest’ cities will be those that empower the richest ingredient of innovation they have, their citizens, by sponsoring their ability to forge new types of individual and ° 0 2 8 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° collective identity, belonging and right. as carlo ratti, head of mit’s senseable cities suggests, next generation urban centres will become “more like a shifting flock of birds or shoal of fish, in which individuals respond to subtle social and behavioural cues from their neighbours about which way to move forward” (wakefield 2013: 1). ‘open’ to innovation, as mandated in its operating program, asny is not a problem, but a digital opportunity for next generation wunderkinds to playfully, and powerfully, hack out. viewed in this way, is new york ‘innovation’ city in its nascent state a potential precursor to a contra philosophy for the 21st century, a wide open “crack for freedom to slip through, silently filling up empty spaces, sliding through the interstices” (lefebvre, 1995 [1960]: 124)? acknowledgements i acknowledge professor sandra kajio’grady of the university of queensland, and professor bill morrish of parsons, for their support in the production of this article. disclosure statement no potential conflict of interest is reported by the author. ° 0 2 9 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° appadurai, a., & holston, j. 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(2014, thursday june 26). the great android invasion. abc news. retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-26/the-great-android-invasion/5553720 world wildlife fund. (2010). reinventing the city: three prerequisites for greening urban infrastructures. retrieved from http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_low_ carbon_cities_final_2012.pdf 119 my desk is my castle: exploring personalisation cultures uta brandes and michael erlhoff (eds.) review by john walsh in the late nineteenth century two young oxford egyptologists began excavating some middens west of the nile, on the site of the greco-roman city of oxyrhynchus. bernard grenfell and arthur hunt were looking for the lost literary masterworks of classical antiquity, and over the next few decades they did unearth some treasures – poems by sappho and comedies by menander, for example, and bits of plays by sophocles and euripides, along with old and new testament apocrypha (including the gospels of thomas, mary and james). but for the most part the vast trove of papyrus dug up by the dogged englishmen recorded the quotidian intercourse of a bureaucratic society: wills and bills, codes and edicts, licenses and petitions, along with personal letters and horoscopes. searching for the sublime, the trackers of oxyrhynchus had discovered a load of old rubbish. if it was any consolation, grenfell and hunt could consider themselves pioneers in a new field. detritus studies, it could be called. my desk is my castle is an oxyrhynchian type of endeavour. it’s a rummage through the stuff, well, let’s be honest, the junk that clutters up the modern workstation. the book’s authors – 21 of them are credited – have pored over the items deployed on and around the desktops of wage slaves and salary men and women, counting and categorising the small, but often numerous tokens of office-worker self-assertion. as its subtitle says, the book is an exploration of “personalisation cultures”, which means it’s an expedition into behavioural territory lying somewhere between pathos and pathology. it’s a landscape both all too familiar and easily ignored, for it is, sad to say, the environment in which many of us pass half our waking hours. first, a note about the scope of the project. the contributors to this “international desk project” are affiliated with academic institutions in 11 cities around the world: auckland; barcelona; cairo; cologne; curitiba; fukuoka; hong kong; milan; new york; pune; and taipei. in each place, teams of students were despatched to offices in four types of workplaces differently tolerant of personal idiosyncrasy: banks and insurance companies (traditionally uptight working environments); administration departments of unspecified but presumably generic enterprises (characteristically a little more forgiving of “personalisation”); call centres (vigilantly alert to any signs of individualism); and design studios (self-consciously permissive of spatial customisation). the “methodological concept” of the exercise was “the interpretation of visual data”. that is, the office visitors took photographs of desks and their accretions of objects and then the authors tried to make sense of this material, in part by sorting items into “clusters” – “toys and figurines”, for example, “life accessories” and “plants and greenery”, the latter also defined as “personal horticultural organisms”. (advertently or not, the book does have its funny moments.) altogether, 686 desks were photographed, and 9246 “non-work related, two or three dimensional objects ... were identified as private items”. uta brandes and michael erlhoff (eds.) 2011 my desk is my castle: exploring personalisation cultures. birkhaüser, 2011 [isbn: 978-3-0346-0774-2] [320pp] interstices 13 the authors describe the desktop items as “telling objects”. the problem is, they’re talking in sign language, and that may be interpreted in many ways (all of them, the authors apologise, “western-based”). therefore, although the book has a method, it’s not exactly scientific. the authors’ practice of imputing meaning is directly related to the passive way in which information was recorded. desks were photographed, but their users were interviewed in a very cursory manner. only two questions were asked of the desk users: which object on your desk would you miss the most if removed? and which the least? the answers weren’t much help, the authors report: “to our surprise ... these short interviews added little-to-no additional information about the employees’ motives.” it’s not clear whether this tentative inquisitorial approach was the product of timidity or intentional disinterest. in a sense, the teams visiting workplaces were despatched as reporters, but any cub reporter returning to an editor as emptyhanded as these researchers would expect an ear-reddening tirade. the fear factor certainly seems to have been a research impediment in new york, where office visitors encountered a typically abrupt big apple reception. on this note, one of the collateral pleasures of my desk is my castle is the book’s rather ingenuous confirmation of stereotypes. in the book new yorkers are rude, aucklanders are laid-back, milanese designers are obsessed with style, and office workers in hong kong and fukuoka are terminally addicted to big-eyed furry toys. and it wasn’t a total surprise that the book’s most overtly sexual object – a dildo-shaped eraser – should have been found in the drawer of a german desk. (with a typically straight face, the text treats this bizarre discovery as “part of a peculiar and secret male gender narrative”.) the silence of the desk operatives has allowed the authors to speak volumes. as substantive explanations from object-owners were not sought or gathered by the teams carrying out the hit-and-run “research”, the authors were free to speculate freely about object-deployment motives. thus a plenitude of desk-top objects is linked variously “to the fear of poverty or at least of losing these objects and not being able to find them”, to memories of deprivation in newer boom economies, to the constant threat, in some countries, of natural disasters that will sweep away any possessions except those close at hand, and in hong kong, to “a palpable degree” of post-colonial anxiety. the ascription of motive occurs at an individual as well as a general level. for example, on the desk of a taipei female employee, a figure of “a little man with white hair and a long moustache wearing a simple long robe with a mandarin collar” – a kitsch object, the authors declare, but “from a european perspective”, they quickly add – “could express the desire to get married or the happiness about being married”. but, “on the other hand”, and rather disappointingly, “the little figurine might have sat there simply because its owner liked it”. well, yes. who knows? ignorance isn’t always a barrier to omniscience, however: “one male japanese employee had prominently placed a ferrari mouse-pad on his desk, alluding to his desire for mobility and, because it is not a toyota, to his dream of travelling the world.” perhaps he just liked the logo? or perhaps he’s a fan of formula one? and is eschewing a mouse-pad advertising toyota – surely the standby brand of the world’s rental fleets – really an expression of a yearning for international travel? 121 talking of dream analysis, the leeway allowed by the book’s untethered interpretive approach of course accommodates a freudian divagation. this occurs in the chapter on “gender staging” and is prompted by a consideration of that ubiquitous desktop accessory of female employees, the handbag. to a freudian, a handbag is never just a handbag. “handbags are concave containers with a large ‘throat’”, the authors write, “that may evoke the fear of being swallowed up and that leads into a dark cave whose contents remain a mystery to the outsider.” male office-workers should be very nervous. does the presence of so many handbags, with their capacious and “taboo-like” interiors, explain the counter-deployment of erect little action figures? and what’s with all the bananas? each desktop, it seems, is a potential battleground in the gender wars. while the sight of a woman fossicking around in her “concave container” might be unsettling, there is an even scarier office scenario to contemplate. “if we look at all the stuff sitting on desks, as recorded in the photographs and studies in this book, the question arises as to whether these things might have a life of their own.” the unknown author of this remark – mostly, it’s impossible to know who wrote what in my desk is my castle – cites marx’s observation in capital that in developed markets objects seemingly assume an autonomous existence, but he or she could just have easily, and perhaps more amusingly, referenced the folkloric trope of the secret lives of inanimate objects. from the adventures of pinocchio and the steadfast tin soldier to toy story and a night at the museum, there’s a long tradition of psychologically fecund tales of toys coming to life. there is a dark side to these stories but, my god, their nightmarish quality would pale against the horror show that would result if the battalions of figures in my desk is my castle leapt to life. the book, in a way, is a victim of its own plenitude. because it has so many authors its tone is uneven, and its focus skittish. amidst the rather tendentious speculation there are some welcome ideas that promise to give the book a bit of heft. for example, an interesting comparison is made between the english focus on the protection of private space and the european struggle for public rights. it doesn’t go anywhere, this discussion – there are no english desks in the book – and it doesn’t do the rest of the content any favours, because it highlights its lilliputian concerns. and that’s not meant pejoratively: this is an account of small things, and small protests of individuality. the world of work is precarious, in these days of financial crisis, globalised out-sourcing and casualised employment. in response, office workers attempt to humanise their space – denied lebensraum, they try to create their own little heimat. it’s an understandable reaction, but this reviewer had another one. after reading my desk is my castle, i promptly cleared all the crap from my desk. false consciousness is as precarious a defence against the realities of modern employment as a castle is against the realities of modern warfare. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 38 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n from product packaging to individual tattooing, ornamental motifs and images pulled from pacific arts and crafts, like barkcloth, tattooing, carving or weaving, have become popular and efficient means by which to mark a wide range of carriers and media with a “nesian” identity. this appears to be the outcome of several decades of indigenous and exogenous appropriations, re-appropriations and revitalization enterprises occurring among pacific and other cultures around the world (kuwahara 2005, awekotuku & nikora 2007, mangos & utanga 2011, salvador-amores 2013, krutak 2014). the transfer of images from one medium to another and their diffusion far beyond pacific islands communities changes their mode of reception and the way they mediate social relationships. in this context, the question of iconic power also brings up a range of other controversial issues among tattoo practitioners and tattoo wearers. the most contentious one relates to the economy of images and the professional ethics ruling the circulation, appropriation, and copying of images. given the global proliferation and appropriation of pacific tattoo imagery and hand tapping techniques, it is important to understand the effect of these processes on the meaning and agency of tattoo designs. what kind of social relation is mediated by samoan tattoo iconography? what kind of sign predominates in samoan tattooing? what does it stand for, and what kind of action and mental operation does it provoke? this papers draws on my fieldwork conducted between 2001 and 2013 in samoa, new zealand and europe over a period of 28 months. other sources of data are my curatorial activities involving pacific and samoan tattooing and my personal engagement as an assistant (toso) during several tattooing operations. starting from previously published work on ritual efficacy (galliot, 2015a) and ritual transmission (galliot, 2015b), this paper aims to examine changes in the mode of reception of samoan iconography by questioning the changing status of pacific tattooed images. to this end, i will first give some contextual information about contemporary pacific tattooing. then i will clarify the theoretical framework i used to explore the way images work, before addressing in more detail what i have called the multimodal reading of samoan tattoo iconography. i will highlight some key ethnographical insights about the ritual production of the images to show how the global (re)appropriation of pacific designs has caused a change in its mode of reception. sébastien galliot from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 39 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n pacific tattooing and the emergence of a tattooscape the development of the polynesian tattoo is closely linked to that of the euroamerican. especially, “the mutual relationship between a changing market and innovation” (sanders & vail, 2008: 29) had tangible consequences on the 1980s polynesian tattoo revival. one of the most striking patterns of change is probably the mutual borrowing between indigenous tattoo practitioners (pacific, south east asian and japanese iconography) and western ones. the most significant of these exchanges for this paper are based on thirty years of friendship and mentoring relationships that were established and consolidated thanks to tufuga tā tatau (tattoo experts), like sulu’ape paulo ii and his cousin, tavui pasina iosefo in new zealand. other samoan tufuga also frequently participated in pacific cultural festivals and tattoo conventions in europe and united states (mallon, brunt & thomas, 2010). since the 1980s, exchanges, contacts and patronages have contributed to a cross-fertilization of the art—so that, nowadays for example, māori-polynesian designs are included in western repertoires. on the other hand, pacific tattooists who proclaim and emphasize the indigenousness of their work have adopted not only western standards of hygiene and technology, but also what one could consider as a western understanding and interpretation of tattooed images. for instance, a now widespread practice among tattooists using machine and hand-tapping tools involves creating pacific design patterns by drawing from traditional iconographies and modes of assemblage and rearranging them to fit with the personal aims and biographies of their customers. this is similar to the earlier professionnalisation of western tattooing, in which standardized popular imagery was adapted to the individual aims of a client. in samoa, the continuity of ritual tattooing and hand-tapped techniques throughout christianization and colonisation, as well as its mediatisation in the western world of tattooing during the 1980s, has propelled samoan tufuga tā tatau forward onto the global scene as the main representatives of this knowledge. consequently, tufuga tā tatau were considered as the custodians of pre-modern polynesian tattooing and have acted as mentors and patrons for international newcomers to their craft, providing apprenticeships, bestowing titles, granting rights to perform ritual or ornamental custom creations (mallon, 2005). in the 2010s, the number of self-taught tufuga tā tatau and tattoo practitioners from diverse ethnic origins using a hand-tapping technique similar to the samoan one continues to increase steadily. this includes samoans operating in new zealand and australia, as well as westerners who learned the craft without the guidance of a matua o faiva (established elder) from one of the two main tattooing clans (su‘a and tulou‘ena). the emergence of these tattooists without the patronage of a matua o faiva causes not only debates about their legitimacy, but also concern regarding what appears as a global trend of (mis)appropriating indigenous heritage. in this context, newcomers and long-time established tufuga are urged to think about the ethics of their profession, particularly with regard to knowledge about the images, their diffusion and their copyright. in the last decade or so, pacific tattoo iconographies have participated in a global movement of traditional tattoo revival, in which practitioners of an ethnic ancestry perform ancient tattoo techniques to apply images that are considered part of their culture’s traditional repertoire. at the same time, western tattoo practitioners have started to promote themselves as specialists in one or several of these ancient techniques and iconographies, http://context.reverso.net/traduction/anglais-francais/professionalization in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 40 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n reproducing or creating new arrangements of ‘ancient designs‘ for their customers and experimenting with non-electrical techniques such hand poking, hand tapping or skin stitching using reconstructed ad hoc tools. while evolving into an entrepreneurial activity, polynesian tattooing has also become a trade in images, and their semiotic status changed in due course. the most striking illustration of this fact is the frequency with which tattooed images are interpreted as pictograms today, or in the fashion of a visual language, for which every sign should be associated with a referent. in other words, for most wearers, tattoo designs must either contain a meaning, deliver a message, symbolize something, or they must match with their intention, their history, experiences, affects, etc. this also affects wearers of custom-made samoan tattoo (the taulima, arm band, or tauvae, leg band, for example), so much so that parts of the indigenous iconography could be qualified as floating signifiers, i.e. signifiers that absorb rather than emit meanings (levi-strauss 1999 [1950], falk 1995, sweetman 1999). samoan tattooing technique and iconography are particularly affected by this global trend in the re-appropriation/re-interpretation of images and new process of learning. in today’s world, where migrations, media and mobilities tend to multiply models of action, consumption and identification, tattooing (and pacific tattooing especially) requires us to consider global contemporary practices within what i would call a tattooscape. inspired by appadurai’s notion of scapes (1990), a tattooscape is best understood as a relatively unstable network of actors (practitioners, clientele, media, equipment manufacturers, promoters of events) whose mobilities and modes of association depend on their respective “historical, linguistic and political situatedness” (296). so, addressing the case of samoan tattooed images simultaneously opens a space of debate that also encompasses other polynesian tattoo iconographies. i cannot address in detail the question of techniques here, but it goes without saying that questions concerning appropriation, transmission and circulation also apply to techniques and their transformative consequences. this is precisely the process i wish to investigate. what happens to ritual prototypical images (such as pe‘a and malu) when they are broken down into smaller units of pattern? how does their circulation and relocation affect their iconic power (i.e., in this context, their evocative potentialities)? meaningful or powerful images? to tackle the question of the iconic power of these images, i follow the line of thought drawn by david freedberg (1989) who claimed that to understand this power one has to abandon an art historical, kantian orientation for a pragmatic approach to images. this implies exploring images within a field of practices, their context of production and reception, restoring anthropological thickness to the images. by this i mean that the image cannot be understood outside its practical and social context. regarding the process of perception and its sociological components, bourdieu and delsaut (1975) have established that, for an image to be “read” efficiently, to be readable, its formal elements must meet the dispositions of the receptor. thus, to understand how the rather enigmatic notion of iconic power actually works, one must investigate the conditions of production of the image (the formal, the technical), as well as the conditions of in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 41 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n the production of dispositions towards it (bourdieu, 1979). further, the referent and the distance between the image and the referent have been a central concept in art history and in the practice of art itself. i want to stress that this theme is also one of the crucial functional operators for samoan tattooing. to clarify the notion of iconic power, i return to charles s. peirce’s three semiotic categories of signs: an index has a metonymical or a causal relationship with the object to which it refers. an icon has a relation of likeness, and a symbol has an arbitrary, conventional relation with the object it stands for (the meaning of a symbol relies on the knowledge of a code). crucially, all categories involve an interpretant, an understanding of the sign/object relationship held by someone. i will try to give some insight into the specific power of these images and into the changes of their semiotic status between a (reconstructed) pre-christian understanding of tattooing and contemporary responses to tattooed images. in other words, i will try to show how the socio-historical context of the interpreters influences not only the image itself (which is, as we will see, a mimetic repetition of a prototype) but its semiotic status, its content and, finally, its agency and capacity of acting in the world. alexander and bartmański have recently emphasised the dual nature of iconicity as an “interaction of surface and depth” (2012: 2). this remark is particularly relevant when applied to tattooed images, which make this interaction obvious. whatever the function or intention related to the sporting of a tattoo, the mark inscribed on the skin does have an effect and often a (loose) meaning—located, as it were, beyond visual perception. whether magical, eschatological, therapeutic or associated to one’s sense of identity (collective or individual), the efficacy of tattooed images stems from a kind of experience called iconic power by jeffrey alexander, or iconic difference by gottfried boehm. that is to say, tattoos, as icons, are simultaneously meaningful and practical (in the material sense, perceptual and palpable): the recipients both experience the visual saliency and perceptual properties of the patterned skin surface and project meanings at the same time. as alexander notes, “iconic power depends on the seamless intertwining of surface aesthetic and depth meaning at the same time.” (alexander 2012: 32) thus, samoan tattooing epitomizes a process of change in iconicity and provides a relevant case to test the conception of iconic power. fig. 1 su‘a loli misitikeri (2007). pe‘a or male tattoo. [photo: sébastien galliot] fig. 2 su‘a loli misitikeri (2007). malu or female tattoo. [photo: sébastien galliot] in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 42 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n production and reception of the ritual image pe‘a/tatau (male tattoo, figure 1) and malu (female tattoo, figure 2) result from two standardized configurations of patterns. each occurrence of these images reiterates an invariable model of zoning the body with specific vāega (zones, or groups of motifs). they are made by a tufuga tā tatau, an expert with the same ceremonial prerogatives and social status as tufuga fau fale (house builders) and tufuga fai va’a (boat builders). the tattoo experts’ status derives from a genealogical link with the tutelary deities taemā and tilafaigā who, during a mythical voyage throughout the samoan archipelago, met several individuals from different villages and granted them a basket of tools (atoau) and the ceremonial right to be served the first cup of kava during gatherings. samoan tattoos are the result of a ritual which is organized in the fashion of a three-step initiation as theorized by van gennep (1905), turner (1969) and bloch (1992), to name only a few. in peircean terms, the full pe‘a and malu can broadly be qualified as indexes of a completed ritual. in fact, in this regard and despite the complexity of the assemblage of patterns, the images’ efficacy depends primarily on their completeness. i would even add that formal aesthetic judgments are secondary—these are not so much decorative surfaces than entities with their own agency. as albert wendt (1996) puts it: “the tatau and the malu are not just beautiful decoration, they are scripts/texts/testimonies to do with relationships, order, form and so on.”3 the ethnographic data i gathered on many occasions between 2001 and 2013 also point to an indexical priority of the tattooed mark over its iconic and its symbolic content. pe‘a and malu are, at first glance, indexes of a ritual that has been conducted well: a ritual where the two parties managed to maintain respectful and caring interactions throughout the process. tattooed marks are primarily an index of good relations and the strength (both physical and psychological) of the wearer. of course, these tattooed images are now emblematic themselves, to the point of carrying ideas of cultural pride, sense of identity, distinctiveness of the samoan bodies, and so on—but this is the result of historical change. in the first half of the nineteenth century, a tattooed mark covering the body from the loins to the knees was worn by most men in western polynesia, precisely as an index of a successful ritual. tongans used to travel to samoa to undergo the same ritual, and people from uvea and futuna also wore the same kind of tattoo. in fact, throughout western polynesia the pe‘a was not the sign a specific ethnicity but rather instantiated a shared ancestry and a shared religiosity based on life cycle rituals. let us now have a closer look at the way in which smaller pattern units actually work as signs. in the men’s tattoo, the pute (or blackened navel) has a metonymical relation with the tattoo as a whole, and so has the pe‘a design (a small triangle in the middle of the back), to the extent that they indicate a completed tattooed image.4 the diamond shape in a woman’s popliteal area shares the same characteristics. thus, any individual of a group can, at only a very brief glance, identify what can be called, in this case, an initiate. however, as a whole, these shapes are not designed to be deciphered. there is no esoteric grammar that would reveal deep meanings. or, if this was once the case, today the symbolic interpretation of the images is excluded from the interactions during the ritual. thus, in this cultural setting, images in the male and female tattoo are both indexical and, literally, transformative: by being inscribed through a very painful method, they in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 43 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n produce an effect on the recipient’s response to bodily pain. as gell noted, the images strengthen the integument and magically fortify young men (1993: 57). they also render visible moral disposition: mental and physical toughness. as i will stress below, completion or non-completion of the image stands as an index of the quality of the relations the wearer entertains with his social environment. simultaneously, however, the adornment confers an aura, an attractiveness, a surplus of existence on the wearer (simmel quoted in wolf, 1950: 339). translated into local terms, the tattoo visibly confers on the wearer a surplus of dignity, mamalu, as well as moral and social responsibilities. ‘o vāega ma ‘ava‘ega ma mamanu o le mālōfie: zoning, putting up and the patterns of the tattoo what kind of iconic experience does samoan tattooing offer viewers and wearers? if we examine how the image is composed, we can formulate further statements regarding the iconic power of the samoan tattoo. fig. 3 su‘a loli misitikeri (2005). pe‘a or male tattoo. [photo: sébastien galliot] figure 3 shows the construction, or ‘ava‘ega, of a male tattoo, which follows a very rigid plan prescribed by tradition, and within which the expert has a little freedom to introduce ornamental variations. the ‘ava‘ega usually starts with the va’a motif on the back and it ends with the pute on the navel. in between these motifs, the tufuga is expected to perform a succession of vāega (sections or portions, the sequence is indicated by the numbers) over a period of five to ten days, depending on the expert’s timetable and the tolerance of the ta‘oto (the one laid down). the construction of a female malu is quicker and prone to more variations. however, it also proceeds through a standardized construction and can be conceived as a horizontal or vertical arrangement of mamanu (pattern motifs), most of which are extracted from a female iconography (however, some mamanu are common to men and women). the popliteal area, at the back of knees, is always marked with a malu, the lozenge-shaped design which (just like the black triangle in the middle of men’s back called pe‘a) entertains a metonymical relationship in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 44 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n with the malu as full tattoo. local informants have various interpretations for it, but the most common one relates to the indigenous division of space in a fale samoa (samoan house), which is composed of two tala (the rounded end sections of a fale), and two itu (two middle sections of a fale). although the application of pattern intensified during the twentieth century, the overall structure of the image has remained the same since the first detailed descriptions made by german ethnographers (luschan 1897, marquardt 1899) and by the following generation of anthropologists (handy & handy 1928, hiroa 1930). the nomenclature of mamanu and vāega is known by most experts. however, their meaning and possible symbolic content is neither subjected to an elaborate exegesis nor transmitted during the ritual. the ritual, rather, proceeds by a succession of technical actions and physical perception, silent worshipping (tāpua‘i), and very few speech acts. as far as design meaning is concerned, the participants are kept in the dark. this situation is quite striking, given the remarkable potentiality of the samoan language and the skill of orators in the fields of metaphor, allegory and esoteric speech. regarding the degrees of iconicity (i.e., likeness between the sign and the object) of vāega and mamanu, samoan tattooing is very suitable for the elaboration of a poetic or allegoric discourse by the ritual expert. however, this does not happen. in order to understand this rather paradoxical fact, one has to remember that pe’a and malu are not only made for the sake of beautification or cultural pride, but are first and foremost the outcome of a painful ritual that is oriented towards the transformation of the person. this leads me to the question of ritual encoding. discussing formality in human rituals, roy rappaport distinguishes canonical messages, which belong to an invariant, eternal body of information that is not encoded by the participants but already encoded in the “liturgy”, from self-referential messages, which relate to the current physical, psychic or social state of the participants (1999: 52–53). the samoan ritual of tattooing is a very silent form of ritual (even though the high volume of a stereo during a tattoo session may suggest the contrary). images are not explained, no secrets are revealed to the initiates, but both actions and images are strikingly stable and unchanging. this is what can be called the liturgy. by comparison, what the participants understand and interpret for themselves about these immutable components can vary indefinitely, according to their aspiration, background, memories, knowledge, etc. in this particular ritual context, as they are applied to the body surface, pe’a and malu allow attention to be applied to different levels of the image. tattooing and healing processes directly point at the person undertaking the “journey”. the resulting image eventually delivers cues about the value of the wearer, but it also acts, physically and psychologically, on him or her. for example, the completed image reinforces the tattooee’s self-confidence and disposition to serve his or her family, or to get involved in customary tasks, or to display his or her changed physical appearance publicly on some specific occasions. in this respect, the tattooed image represents an index for self-referential messages. on the other hand, by repetitively displaying a complex image, which does not depict anything recognizable in the phenomenal world, pe‘a and malu are the central element of a non-verbal, aniconic ritual, but still they are conventional signs representing canonical, prototypical and, dare we say, transcendental images. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 45 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n i would like to add a few words about this statement. a tatau or a malu, as a whole, does not refer to anything outside itself. rather, it is the outcome of the repetition of a prototype which is stored as a mental image in the tufuga’s mind (his māfaufau) and exists temporarily on a body surface. thus, tatau and malu belong to a category of images for which there are no referents. local discourse can sometimes associate the shapes broadly to a flying fox (wendt, 1996) or the sections of a samoan house. there is clearly no unified cultural perspective, though, on the resemblance between the tattooed image pe‘a and the animal species flying fox, or between the malu and an actual samoan house. however, a closer look at the smaller units that constitute the overall images seems to increase their degree of iconicity. the mamanu do have names and shapes that suggest a closer likeness with the material and natural environment. in figure 3, va‘a (1), pe‘a (3) and ulumanu (animal’s head, 17), as well as fa‘amuliali‘ao (end of a trochus shell, figure 4), gogo (frigate bird, figure 5), alu alu (jellyfish, figure 6), atualoa (centipede, figure 7) and anufe (caterpillar, figure 8) do have an existence outside the tattooed image, and their shapes as tattoo motifs recall the shapes of the natural objects they stand for. exploring an image in detail, one notes that, even in the same context of reception, it can display a different semiotic status at different levels: the status of index (of a prototype, of a successful ritual, of good relationship between the ritual participants, of the morality of the wearer), as well as the status of icon (by virtue of the likeness of its patterns with samoan material culture, fauna and flora). although obviously different in their visual properties and thematic orientation, male and female iconographies seem to be guided by a similar figurative technique. while the male tattoo presents itself as a combination of artefacts, animals and plants, the female one is more oriented towards celestial bodies (stars) and animals (caterpillar, jellyfish, frigate bird). however, they both visually restore a large amount of what makes up the environment, without grammar but with the idea of using the surface of the human body to make visible a dense network of entities. the quasi-systematic repetition of patterns produces a dynamic effect in the way different items are ordered. this, in turns, leads the anthropological analysis of this visual strategy towards what philippe descola has called fig. 4 fa‘amuliali’ao fig. 5 gogo fig. 6 alualu fig. 7 atualoa fig. 8 anufe in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 46 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n an analogical figuration. an analogical figuration contrasts with animist, totemic and naturalist ontologies insofar as each entity in an analogical regime (visible or invisible) is conceived as singular and separated. in this ontology, the goal would be to “make present an encompassing relation that condenses disparate relations” (descola, 2009: 10). in other words, the visual strategy that presides over the construction of a tattoo is directed toward the restoration of relations between things that are traditionally thought as separate entities endowed with a certain kind of amio (behaviour) and agency. if one tries to relink this theoretical proposition with samoan pre-christian religiosity, the samoan male and female tattoo seem to encode an iconic repertoire, i.e. pictograms that have a likeness with their referents, in order to express the invisible “correspondence between human qualities and cosmos properties” (2009: 11), or the broad idea of an interspecific generative relationship. the ritual mode of action and the relational background of the image the samoan tattooing ritual proceeds by a combined presence of distinct modes of participation or a dual mode of action (agent/patient), where the poles of agency are distributed as follows: the tufuga and his assistants occupy the pole of fai (making), and the supporters occupy the pole of tapua‘i (silent prayer). (the recipient is the only participant with no specific task, which is why one can call him a patient. an indigenous justification of that term is the frequent acknowledgement of his patience through the phrase, malo le onos‘ai!). my own participation in several tattooing rituals in samoa and in new zealand involved both positions. what struck me about this ritual was the contrast between the apparent routinization of the expert’s actions and the constant care expressed concerning the well-being of the expert by the patient’s family. the goal here is to provide the tufuga with respectful attention and gifts until he finishes the work, in order to maintain his motivation and express the family’s ability to end the ritual with a great retribution. i cannot enter into a more detailed discussion here, but suffice it to say that the samoan tattooing ritual seems to be more focused on the relations between the two parties and on the technical process of marking the body than on the actual artefact—its shape is known in detail by heart, but its implementation has to be carried to the end and heal properly. the maintenance of good relationships is more important to the ritual than the visual quality of the finished work. in this sense, every finished pe‘a or malu, whatever the intricateness of its design, or its symmetry, is actually mānaia (attractive and beautiful). however, in the current context of the appropriation of samoan iconography by tattooers and tattooees of multiple origins, and its recombination for customized body projects in a very competitive globalised market, virtuosity and hygienic conditions have come to occupy an increasingly important place in the evaluation of finished work. while they have been applied more or less rigouroulsy, these norms have been imported by the tufuga within their activities as ritual specialists. this had, in turn, the effect of neutralizing the risk and the ritual power of the image, to the advantage of a more imagistic one, which i now call iconic efficiency, and this applies to the tattooing ritual itself in samoa, in the diaspora or to the tattooing of german or a french tourist in apia. in an interview conducted in apia, august 2013, practitioner su’a sulu’ape alaiva’a described the changes resulting from the replacement of materials for in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 47 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n more hygienic ones—i.e. the replacement of boars’ tusks by steel needles and traditional candlenut soot by sterile tattooing ink—as follows. sébastien galliot: does the use of aunila (samoan tools made out of steel needles) affect in anyway the power of the ritual ? su’a sulu’ape alaiva’a: it does, it does. but we can’t do anything about it. it is time that we […] make a change: an appropriate change that will benefit everybody. but i know deep in my heart that the mana is still in the nifo pua’a [boar’s tusk], and even the traditional ink. so i still keep those things and i told my sons and my family: “keep the plant alive! plant more lama [candlenut trees]!” in the concluding comments of his book wrapping in images. tattooing in polynesia (1993), alfred gell made a fruitful distinction between three kinds of technical schemata of tattooing which give rise to divergent symbolic practices ultimately related to social configurations. in the universal process involved in the acquisition of tattoo marks, (1) wounding, 2) scab formation/healing, 3) permanent mark, gell tends to attribute more importance to phase (2) when it comes to samoan ritual. since “samoan tattoo is more traumatic and places a greater emphasis on the qualities of heroism and endurance” than, for example, that in the society islands, “the key to this ritual would be the notion of sealing the person of the young warrior, who was subjected to an assault from which he emerged stronger than before, i.e. healed in a marked way” (1993: 308). on the other hand, by virtue of its material form, tattooing contributes to the production of political, and social subjection—to what gell called “passive heroism” (53–8). in this way, the complex structure of the image acts as the index of a strengthened integument, which reflects a male preoccupation. one could add that local interpretations of several contemporary cases of infections and flesh eating bacteria, attributed as they were to the behaviour and the supposed moral (and/or sexual) conduct of the wearer, also lead to an understanding of the tattooed image as communicating something else than the patterns inscribed on the surface of the skin. here, the pe‘a is similar to a revelatory device pointing to the internal component of the social person (his amio or behaviour and his aga or disposition), iconic in bartmański and alexander’s sense, but indexical in peirce’s. in the context of a growing popularity of indigenous tattoo design at a global level, we need to consider how such iconography, naturalized as it is in its primal inscription on the skin surface, has become a valued transcultural body ornament—while still keeping its efficiency to epitomize cultural value and localness and remaining ritually efficacious. how does this very cultural mark gain prestige outside its community of origin, still maintaining its ability to carry a sense of ethnic pride and identity? might there be a conflict in the mode of interpretation and use of this iconography? my hypothesis, which is linked to my earlier remark about the change in semiotic status, is that the growing popularity of samoan tattooing outside a strictly ritual context has lead samoans themselves, and especially those experiencing life in the diaspora, to reconsider the meaning of being tattooed. in this, they may apply a somewhat westernized gaze, which automatically regards tattooed images as symbols of identity. thus, the interpretation of samoan iconography has not simply been westernized but has, rather, become multimodal and context dependent, delivering various layers of information depending on the context of production and recipient’s knowledge. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 48 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n conclusion: contemporary global applications i will conclude with a few words about semiotic status by complementing my earlier questions by the following: what happens to the semiotic status of tattoo iconography when it is recombined for other media, such as advertising? a large part of this paper dealt with the explanation of what we might consider the performative role of the image, that is, the way it participates in affective and ritual efficacy. now, i will briefly comment on a few cases of its contemporary mobilizations. first, these images, together with a limited number of artefacts —such as fale tele (ceremonial house), va‘a, fue (orator fly whisk), to‘oto‘o (orator wooden staff ), tanoa (kava bowl)—have become ‘iconic’ insofar as they were repeated as a common visual repertoire in various media. in that way, they ended up representing ancient samoan traditions, epitomizing samoan-ness and (at least to those who know about samoa) a commitment to a shared body of values that are summed up by the term fa‘asāmoa (the samoan way). samoan tattoo designs, but also marquesan and māori designs, are nowadays used in marketing strategies for a great variety of products (beer bottles, clothing, and even on the engines of aircrafts) in order to enhance their attractiveness, as well as for the marking of territorial origin. although arranged in a new shape, or even fragmented as in the taula beer bottle, the tattoo motifs keep their iconic evocative power though they remain beyond readability. if several commercial items, such as fabrics, tatau brand, vailima pure and the taula beer, or even the virgin samoa engines, are decorated with tattoo designs, this is certainly so because the iconography is mobilized for its ability to effect cultural anchoring in a very direct way. without precise meaning, the images nonetheless contain an iconic power, or iconic efficiency. in roland barthes terms, and in opposition to his understanding of the term denotation (which refers to the external objects represented by signs), these fragmentary tattoo designs have a connotation which refers to all the surplus values carried by the signs. they rely on an affective language, and they fall within the scope of an aesthetic appreciation in alexander gottlieb baumgarten’s sense: the message is both perceptual and cultural. the perceptual properties affect the viewer according to their visual arrangements. the connoted cultural message conveys the idea of authenticity. this is a wide spread but unreflected notion in marketing strategies; it also implies the disturbing idea of ethnic purity. the same applies to māori, marquesan or kalinga tattoo iconography and, more generally, to other forms of indigenous heritage. of course, to understand how these images have reached such iconic efficiency (i.e., such ability to be received and processed as epitomizing cultural value or ethnic origin), one has to consider how they have circulated, through which interactional configurations and social contexts. the polysemous nature of iconic signs precisely calls for anthropological insights about the interactional context of their production and display. the issue of tattooed images, if scrutinized within the field of visual studies and with a close attention to its anthropological implications, can be complementary to semantic approaches which are often too much founded on the presupposition that each sign must have meaning, either esoteric or exoteric. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 49 from ritual efficacy to iconic efficiency: ritual encoding, surface/pattern and global perceptions of pacific tattoo iconography s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n references alexander, j. (2012). iconic power and performance. the role of the critic. in j. alexander, d. bartmański and b. giesen. (eds.), iconic power. materiality and meaning in social life (pp. 25–37). new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. alexander, j. & bartmański, d. (2012). introduction. in j. alexander, d. bartmański and b. giesen. (eds.), iconic power. materiality and meaning in social life (pp. 1–13). new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. appadurai, a. (1990) disjuncture and difference in a global cultural economy. theory, culture and society, 7, 295–310. atkin, a. (2013). peirce’s theory of signs. in e. n. zalta (ed.), the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/sum2013/entries/peircesemiotics/ awekotuku, n. & l. w. nikora (2007). mau moko. the world of maori tattooing, honolulu, hi: university of hawai‘i press. bloch, m. (1992). prey into hunter. the politics of religious experience. cambridge, uk:cambridge university press. descola, p. (2009). l’envers du visible : ontologie et iconologie [online], consulted 19 june 2017. url: http://actesbranly.revues. org /181 falk, p. (1995). written in flesh. body and society, 1, 95–105. freedberg, d. (1989). the power of images. studies in the history and theory of response. chicagolondon: university of chicago press. galliot, s. (2015a) ritual efficacy in the making, journal of material culture, 20 (2), 101—125. galliot, s. (2015b) le tatouage samoan et ses agents. images, mémoire et action rituelles. gradhiva 21, 156–181. gell, a. (1993). wrapping in images. tattooing in polynesia. oxford, uk: clarendon press. gell, a. (1998). art and agency. oxford , uk: clarendon press. hīroa, te rangi. (1930). samoan material culture. honolulu, hi: the museum (bernice p. bishop museum bulletin 75). handy, c.e.s. & handy, w.c. (1924) samoan house building, cooking, and tattooing. honolulu, hi: the museum (bernice p. bishop museum bulletin 15). krutak, l. (2014) tattoo traditions of native north america. ancient and contemporay expressions of identity. arnhem, nl: stichting lm publishers. kuwahara, m. (2005) tattoo. an anthropology. new york, ny: berg. levi-strauss, c. (1999 [1950]). introduction à l’œuvre de marcel mauss. sociologie et anthropologie. paris, fr: puf. luschan, f. von (1897). beitrag zur kenntniss der tättowirung in samoa, sonderabdruck aus den verhandlungen der gesellschaft für anthropologie, ethnologie und urgeschichte, 21, 551–561. marquardt, c. (1984 [1899]). the tattooing of both sexes in samoa, papakura, nz: macmillan. mallon, s. (2005). samoan tatau as global practice. in thomas, n., a. cole and b. douglas (eds.), tattoo. bodies, art, and exchange in the pacific and the west. durham, uk: duke university press. mallon, s., p. brunt & n. thomas (eds.) (2010) tatau. wellington, nz: te papa press. mangos, t. & j. utanga (2011) patterns of the past. tattoo revival in the cook islands. auckland, nz: punarua productions. mcgavin, k. (2014) being “nesian”: pacific islander identity in australia, the contemporary pacific 26 (1): 126–154. rappaport, r. (1999). ritual and religion in the making of humanity. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. salvador-amores, a. v. (2013). tapping ink, tattooing identities. tradition and modernity in contemporary kalinga society north luzon, philippines. quezon , ph: the university of philippines press. sweetman, p. (1999). anchoring the (postmodern) self ? body modification, fashion and identity. body & society, 5, 2–3, 51–76. sander, c. & vail, a. (2008) customizing the body. the art and culture of tattooing. (expanded and revised edition). philadelphia, pa: temple university press. turner, v. (1969). the ritual process. chicago, il: aldine van gennep, a. (1905). rites of passage. chicago, il: phoenix books. wendt, a. (1996) tatauing the post-colonial body, span, 42–43: 15–29. wolff, k. h. (1950), the sociology of georg simmel. glencoe, il: the free press. endnotes 1 mcgavin has coined this term to signify pan-pacific islander ethnicity (2014 : 127). 2 this status is usually determined by whether or not they were recorded or collected during a remote period by early ethnographers or explorers. 3 as peirce began to suspect in his 1903 harvard lectures, icons and indices are always partly symbolic or conventional and the icon/index/symbol trichotomy is an abstraction. he realised that any sign may have a combination of iconic, indexical and symbolic characteristics (atkin, 2013). in the present case, indexical or iconic aspects dominate, depending on the contextual relationships between sign, object and interpretant. 4 this is a generalised statement. in fact, many pula‘ū (un-tattooed men) often have their navel blackened for the sake of experimenting the pain of the ritual as well as covering this anatomical part which grown men usually avoid displaying. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 118 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l interstices: journal of architecture and related arts is an open forum for the dissemination of architecture and thought. it is a non-profit journal published once a year. to remain independent, interstices relies upon institutional and private support to fund its editorial production. annual individual sponsorship is available from $500; corporate sponsorship from $1,000; and institutional sponsorship from $3,000. sponsors will receive acknowledgement of their contribution on the journal’s website (https://interstices.ac.nz/ index.php/interstices). this issue is supported by school of art + design, auckland university of technology te wānanga aronui o tāmaki makau rau, and school of architecture + planning, university of auckland waipapa taumata rau (institutional sponsors) executive editors andrew douglas, julia gatley, susan hedges issue editors julia gatley, elizabeth aitken rose contributors this issue tom collins, olivia daw, andrew douglas, julia gatley, carolyn hill, susan holden, ella jones, hamish lonergan, ‘ōkusitino māhina, anoma pieris, sēmisi fetokai potauaine, luke tipene, athanasios tsakonas, simon twose, samer wanan design and typography catherine griffiths typefaces founders grotesk, tiempos text klim type foundry production louise belcher, julia gatley, catherine griffiths, susan hedges published by enigma : he aupiki, auckland, new zealand august 2023 issn 1170-585x (print) issn 2537-9194 (online) this work is entitled to the full protection given by the copyright act 1962 to the holders of the copyright and reproduction of any substantial passage from the work except for the educational purposes therein specified is a breach of the copyright of the author and/or publisher. this copyright extends to all forms of photocopying and any storing of material in any kind of information retrieval system. interstices: journal of architecture and related arts takes a nonexclusive copyright in the papers submitted and accepted, i.e., we reserve the right to publish and republish the paper (for instance, electronically). authors are welcome to upload their papers in published form into their institution’s research repository. they retain the right to republish their papers elsewhere, provided that they acknowledge original publication in interstices. all applications by third parties, for reproduction in any form, should be made to the executive editors. submissions the editors invite submissions of articles, reports, book and project reviews, and translations. all correspondence should be addressed to the editors, interstices, school of art + design, aut university, private bag 92006, auckland 1020, new zealand. books for review and advertising should be forwarded to the executive editors, above. notes and guidelines for contributors can be found at https://interstices.ac.nz/index. php/interstices/information_ for_contributors acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the support of the very many people who have contributed to the realisation and quality of interstices issue 22 : urban historical in various ways— including all those who supported, participated in, and refereed papers for the ngā pūtahitanga / crossings conference held at the university of auckland waipapa taumata rau in november 2022. this was the first joint conference of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand / ngā pou whare / wangkalangkalarna wardlirnaitya (sahanz) and the australasian urban history planning history group (auhph). many thanks to amber anahera ruckes for the design of the ngā pūtahitanga / crossings conference graphic. many thanks to andrew douglas for leading and editing the postgraduate creative design research section. thanks to catherine griffiths and louise belcher for designing and copy editing this issue of interstices. if we have inadvertently overlooked anyone, we apologise. thanks also to the school of art + design at auckland university of technology, and the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland. and, finally, a big thank-you to all the contributors to interstices 22: urban historical. www.interstices.ac.nz editorial advisory board aotearoa/new zealand mike austin (retired), gavin hipkins (university of auckland), ross jenner (university of auckland), dan fleming (university of waikato), robert jahnke (massey university), moana nepia (james henare centre, university of auckland), anthony hoete (university of auckland), sally jane norman (victoria university of wellington) australia suzie attiwill (rmit university), jillian hamilton (queensland university of technology), stephen loo (unsw sydney), mirjana lozanovska (deakin university), john macarthur (university of queensland), jeff malpas (university of tasmania), jules moloney (deakin university), vivian mitsogianni (rmit design research institute), deborah van der plaat (university of queensland), sam spurr (unsw sydney), paul walker (university of melbourne), hélène frichot (university of melbourne) germany uta brandes (köln international school of design), ursula baus (frei04-publizistik, stuttgart), a. chr. (tina) engels-schwarzpaul (auckland university of technology) italy renato rizzi (università iuav di venezia, architect trento), nigel ryan (architect, rome) tunisia bechir kenzari (united arab emirates university) uk mark dorrian (edinburgh college of art), jonathan hale (university of nottingham), peg rawes (the bartlett school of architecture), joseph rykwert (university of pennsylvania) usa peggy deamer (yale university), mark goulthorpe (mit, decoi architects paris), jonathan lamb (vanderbilt university), david leatherbarrow (university of pennsylvania) colophon i n t e r s t i c e s 2 2 jo u rn a l o f a rc h it ec tu re a n d r el a te d a rt s urban historical http://interstices.ac.nz in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 64 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a gökhan kodalak spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life there is a peculiar aesthetic undercurrent traversing baruch spinoza’s philosophy, harbouring untapped potentials and far-reaching implications for contemporary discussions on aesthetics.1 the relationship between aesthetics and spinoza’s philosophy, however, has been nothing but a huge missed encounter, resulting in the publication of only a few books and a handful of articles for more than three and a half centuries.2 this begs the question: is there, despite our persistent negligence, much more to the relationship of spinoza and aesthetics than first meets the eye? i will argue that there might be. for once spinoza’s philosophy as a whole, ranging from his philosophical and political treatises to his private letters and unfinished manuscripts, is read between the lines, latent seeds of a peculiar aesthetic theory become visible—an aesthetic theory that moves beyond subjective and objective approaches that have come to dominate the field, and rather grounds itself on affective interactions and morphogenetic processes. that is, although spinoza did not work on an independent theory of art and architecture built upon conventional aesthetic values, he developed, and grounded his philosophy on, a highly elaborate logic of affective operations, from which all aesthetic interactions immanently arise, including creative and experiential activities of art and architecture. a subterranean journey through spinoza’s affective aesthetics constitutes the subject matter of this paper, which interweaves subtle aesthetic hints buried deep within his philosophical archive, while unfolding relevant ramifications of these promising discoveries in relation to confluent artistic and architectural approaches for the current aesthetic discourse.3 i. implicating affectivities in spinoza’s philosophy, modalities of existence (modus)—whether humans, animals, artworks, or architectural constructs—are all constituted by an immanent process of substantial individuation, which gives them their singular capacities, potencies, and rhythms. so, morphogenetic individuation of artistic and architectural modalities, that is, their coming into being, begins with a process of implication—as in plicating inwards, as in enfolding substantial forces of life. this is the initial voyage when artists and architects encounter an affective continuum beneath everyday forms, confront constitutive forces underlying 65 spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a extensive environments, and expose themselves to this chaotic dimension, to this turbulent undercurrent. in spinoza’s terminology, this process deals with substantial affectivities (substantiae affectiones), that is, how substantial forces of life (being) are translated into everyday forms and events (beings) (e1d5).4 what is peculiar to spinoza’s approach is that formative potencies of cosmos (natura naturans) are immanent to their formed expressions (natura naturata) (e1p29s, kv 1.8–9). which is to say, substantial affectivities that individuate everyday modalities are not situated above or beyond cosmos, do not transcend individual artworks or architectural buildings, but subsist in each and every process of individuation, like magmatic flows underlying tectonic mountains (kv 2.26, tp 2.2). cézanne, who obsessively painted mont sainte-victoire again and again in a series of oil paintings for more than twenty years at the turn of the twentieth century, shares spinoza’s morphogenetic concern, when he defines his obsession in this mountain as follows: “look at sainte-victoire there. what élan… these masses were made of fire, and fire is in them still” (quoted in gasquet, 1991: 82– 83). this is the aesthetic vision that accompanies each process of implication, the vision that does not only see a mountain’s extensive contours, colours, and forms, but more importantly, recognises what caused that mountain to be, and what still flows beneath its unbending posture. at the beginning of each aesthetic implication, an encounter takes place; artists and architects come across substantial affectivities or tangled forces of life. this encounter is not initiated by a brush, a pen, or an instrument; it is anterior to the first sketch, the first line, the first melody. what initiates it, rather, is an overwhelming confrontation with formative forces before they have assumed their actual forms. yet why is this confrontation overwhelming? for it does not take place in zones of comfort, but in underground passages. for it does not rely on ready-made experiences of actual forms, but grounds itself on elusive experiences of substantial affectivities. in conceptual confluence with spinoza, olga rozanova, the early twentieth-century abstract painter and theorist, explains this initial process elegantly: “how does the world reveal itself to us? how does our soul reflect the world? in order to reflect, it is necessary to perceive…. the artist’s primary aspiration to create arises from this confrontation with nature” (1976: 103). and lászló moholy-nagy, the bauhaus artist and architect, shares this intuitive trajectory, when he argues that architecture is not construction of buildings “from visible, measurable, and well-proportioned volumes;” rather, “real spatial experience rests...on the often invisible play of forces,” that is, “space creation is an interweaving of the parts of space, which are anchored, for the most part, in clearly traceable relations extending in all directions as a fluctuating play of forces,” rendering architecture “the medium of space-creating relations” (1947: 62). does not moholy-nagy refer to what spinoza calls substantial affectivities and formative forces of life, when he talks about “fluctuating play of forces” and “space-creating relations” in architecture? in a way, he does. for artists and architects are peculiar personae who find their own way to dive deep and witness subterranean affectivities beneath extensive landscapes and final forms, who endure extreme pressures and come back up from the fiery depths, with ringing eardrums, bloodshot eyes, and singular sears of their own. yet it is also important to recognize that aesthetic implication is not a unilateral process, in which all forms of agency are consolidated within artists, architects, namely, within conventional subjects. for affectivities also express their presence in this encounter as formative events, as play of forces surrounding singularities of attraction and 66 spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a bifurcation. affectivities strike artists and architects, not with their beauty or ugliness, but with their magnitude, radiance, and potence. and the humble role of artists and architects at this initial stage is nothing but to take notice, to affirm that aesthetic production does not begin with their subjective invention, but with a laborious discovery of substantial forces of life. but on its own, an encounter with substantial affectivities means nothing, if it is not supplemented with a selective gesture. despite its onto-epistemological focus, spinoza called his magnum opus the ethics, for what interested him was to make conceivable new ways of being and thinking, insofar as this conception makes way for a new ethos of surfing and curating one’s own encounters in life. this means, at its core, ethics is an exploration about how to harness substantial affectivities from everyday encounters, and select empowering compositions over weakening ones (e4pref ). this is spinoza’s ethico-aesthetic journey, in which the art of living and the life of art tend to become two expressions of one and the same reality.5 in other words, spinoza’s ethics of curating one’s own life runs parallel to his aesthetics of curating the life of artistic and architectural modalities. but how does this curation, this selective gesture function? once artists and architects come to notice substantial affectivities, they start supplementing their discovery with activities of vigilance and selection; they recognize different levels of magnitude and luminescence, capture them according to their radiance, enfold them according to their intensities, and channel them according to their potence (potentia) towards the genesis of their aesthetic production.6 paul klee, the modernist abstract painter, addresses a shared problem with spinoza, when he defines this relationship as follows: “our pounding heart drives us down, deep down to the source of all,” but “what springs from this source...must be taken seriously only if it unites with the proper creative means to form a work of art” (klee, 1966: 51). subterranean encounters are incorporated into aesthetic productions only if they can be captured via creative selections. and for this reason, artists and architects capture topological curvatures underlying topographical landscapes; they take in subsisting forces of life; they channel radiant affectivities to pass through their alembic. all to prepare the generative conditions of their artwork-in-the-making. all to affirm the blending of the art of living and the life of art. but who are these artists; who are these architects? are they autonomous subjects or privileged authors, who command substantial affectivities from above, and create aesthetic artifacts with their omnipotent will? they are not, in spinoza’s aesthetics. for spinoza argues that individuals, whether artists or architects, are not discrete, self-contained subjects, but entangled modalities that expand and contract via dynamic interactions within a distributed network of affective agencies. that is, if two or more modalities come to share compatible rhythms of existence, they might as well constitute a novel collective modality with emergent capacities of its own (e2p13def ). this means that an artist or an architect is never a solitary subject, but an enmeshed multiplicity, made of human bodies and minds, painting brushes and drawing pens, canvases and blueprints, artist studios and architectural offices, cultural inputs and economic exchanges, and all the common habits, specific discourses, and singular techniques emerging out of these interactions. spinoza’s philosophy neither endows aesthetic authors sacred roles and transcendent thrones, nor professes the death of the author by reactively rushing to the opposite pole, but presents nuanced ways of distributing agency and authorship within dynamic milieus.7 this conception implies 67 spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a that the author of an aesthetic production is not a human subject; it is not an entity, but an affective activity: a distributed network of aesthetic agencies and substantial affectivities, an entangled event evolving through the interaction of artists, architects, and all the actors that come to affect and be affected by this creative process. from spinoza’s peculiar lens, all modalities are aesthetic authors, albeit with different capabilities. ii. complicating affections as substantial affectivities are implicated into aesthetic production, another process emerges en route, a process of complication—as in plicating together, as in folding affectivities into complex compositions. in spinoza’s terminology, this process deals with modal affections (affectio). modal affections are trans-individual encounters, in which the activity of an affecting modality, an external cause, is enveloped by and transcribed in the affected modality as an affective trace (e2p16). during this process, artists and architects complicate substantial affectivities by expressing them via modal affections. through their creative exchange with canvases, constructs, and rhythms in the making, they orchestrate artistic sensations, architectural formations, and musical compositions. this is the stage of transmuting subterranean forces into terrestrial relations, the stage of expressing topological dynamics via topographical gestures, the stage of going back and forth between immaterial relations and material expressions. at this stage, artists and architects transform the vitality of their initial encounters into aesthetic affections expressible within their specific medium. yet there is a danger here, the danger of complicating via reduction rather than contraction. if the vitality of substantial affectivities is reduced while being translated into lines and colours, into sounds and rhythms, into forms and materials, then the artwork suffers, loses its intensity, becomes weakened. reduction comes in many guises, diluting the intensity of aesthetic production. imitative techniques may reduce artworks to derivative copies; symbolic representations may subordinate them into carriers of meanings external to their mode of existence; seductive clichés may curb their exuberance by channelling them towards paths already taken. according to spinoza, moving beyond inadequate comprehension and reduction can only be attained via contemplating substantial affectivities, immanently, by contracting and expressing them in modal affections (e5p36). artists and architects always run the risk of limiting substantial forces of life with weakening transformations, whereas their primary pursuit is to contract affectivities without depriving them of their singular intensity. john cage, the experimental composer and music theorist, shares this insight of expressive contraction, as he argues that the musician’s role is to “give up the desire to control sound,” so as to “set about discovering means to let sounds be themselves rather than vehicles for man-made theories or expressions of human sentiments,” which is an affirmation of sounds in their substantial intensity, and hence, “an affirmation of life” (cage, 1961: 10–12). this is the latent ethos underlying processes of complication from the viewpoint of spinoza’s aesthetics: an affective transformation that, rather than reducing and subjugating life forces, affirms and contracts them. during aesthetic complication, contracting and transforming substantial affectivities run parallel to experiments in constructing and composing modal affections. composing modal affections on a specific artistic medium is the 68 spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a moment when the infinite speed of substantial affectivities finds a characteristic rhythm in finitude. only by framing an acquired portion of chaos, by marking a partial multiplicity of substantial affectivities, works of art and architecture can contract the infinite, immanently, in a finite composition. this composition amounts to an aesthetic artefact’s singular potence, characteristic rhythm, or conatus in spinoza’s words, which constitutes its mode of existence, affective capacities, and what its body can and cannot do in everyday relations (e2p13, e3p6–7). artists and architects compose artworks and architectural constructs by way of framing their web of affective interactions. during this act of framing, however, a new danger arises, the danger of assuming the frame of composition an absolute limit that confines affections, rather than a permeable interface that catalyses contracted forces to open themselves up from within. for spinoza, the characteristic rhythm or conative potence of an individual modality does not amount to, as is sometimes interpreted, an inward-looking mechanism foregrounding self-preservation and conservative autonomy. rather, conative potence means the capability of an individual modality to open itself up to outside forces, affect and be affected by its environment, endure internal fluctuations and surf external oscillations, while at the same time acting and persisting in its own dynamic mode of being.8 spinoza’s memorable remark, that “nobody as yet has determined the limits of the body’s capabilities: that is, nobody as yet has learned from experience what the body can and cannot do” can be interpreted, not only as a frontal attack against mental supremacy over bodily experience, but also as a novel way of envisioning bodily capabilities in affective and conative terms (e3p2s). we cannot know what the body of an aesthetic artefact can and cannot do, because its infinite capacities are actualized in finitude only through affective interactions with other bodies. accordingly, an individual artwork or architectural construct cannot be limited with pre-given properties or reduced to fixed modes of behaviour—despite how much effort goes into these activities of limiting and fixing—because its capacities, tendencies, and affects will unfold only through trans-individual interactions on the fly. this means that each interaction with a work of art or architecture harbours the potential to unravel emergent capabilities beyond our initial predictions. cedric price, the eccentric architect of postwar england, addresses a shared problem with spinoza, when he argues for “calculated uncertainty” in architecture, which means affirming and augmenting affective openness of spatial interactions, rather than limiting and controlling them.9 calculated, because there is, indeed, a finite frame of composition. yet what is calculated is uncertainty; what is composed is openness of affective interactions; what is pursued is rendering open-ended relations as generative and empowering as possible. for spinoza, this affective experimentation constitutes our ethico-aesthetic journey in life: pushing the limits of our power always to new heights, opening up to as many affective relations as possible, and rendering these affections, to the best of our capability, empowering interactions for all the parties involved (e5p39–40). the agency of an artwork-in-the-making makes itself felt to its artist the most during the process of complication. for an artwork is not a passive surface that registers the transcendent imposition of an artist’s will, nor is an architectural construct a neutral container shaped by the autarchic order of an architect’s pre-conceived plan. at every turn during the process of composition, an artwork-in-the-making renders unforeseen trajectories visible, develops deflecting resistances to certain approaches, reveals enticing tendencies for certain others. 69 spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a francis bacon, the painter of affectively charged raw imagery, argues that each painting “has a life completely of its own,” and adds: “in the way i work, i don’t in fact know very often, what the paint will do, and it does many things, which are very much better, than i could make it do” (sylvester, 1987: 17). this gesture reminds us, once again, that aesthetic production is a developmental field charged with a myriad of intersecting agencies. and in this sense, spinoza’s ontology is pan-affective in composition, acknowledging the agency of each and every modality and affirming their equal share in existing, acting, affecting, and making a difference. this means artworks or architectural constructs are no longer devoid of agency; no longer mere reflections of cultural conventions; no longer mere receptacles mirroring their creators’ subjective intentions. from spinoza’s aesthetic lens, artworks and architectural modalities are all singularly “alive, albeit in different degrees” (e2p13s). iii. explicating affects as modal affections are complicated, yet another process of aesthetic production emerges, the process of explication—as in plicating outwards, as in unfolding. this is the time when artworks and architectural constructs stand up on their own, present new sensations in expanded magnitude, and turn life back in on itself. in spinoza’s lexicon, aesthetic explication deals with affects (affectus). affects translate modal affections, or affective traces of external causes, into a passage of power, into a modification of one’s existence (e3d3). that is, affects are empowering or weakening transitions that result from modal encounters; they are what come to traverse interacting parties during the expressive unpacking of aesthetic experience. at this crucial point, we need to be careful not to confuse affects with feelings or emotions in the conventional sense of these terms. rather, affects are unfolded expressions and explicated intensities of life penetrating our bodies and minds, which we only subsequently translate in the form of feelings. affects are immanent modifications in our modes of being and acting, as we come face to face with a painting that overwhelms us, with a musical piece that takes us over, with a literary text that cracks our skull open, with an architectural building that astounds us. explication process begins, as soon as aesthetic artefacts come to attain their singular modes of existence. a painting comes to life, an architectural construct emerges into space, with complicated affections composed into lines and colours or forms and materials, as these artefacts start unfolding substantial affectivities enveloped in their newly constituted body through affects and sensations. as works of art and architecture come to interact with their audience, with us, a myriad of affections surge forward, a selection of which infiltrate our body and mind, affecting us, altering our power of existence, modifying our rhythm of life. this is how activities of affecting and being affected bring together processes of aesthetic production and aesthetic reception. once we come face to face with aesthetic artefacts that perform an intensive explication, we witness an unfamiliar affect taking hold of our body, sending shock waves through our senses, twisting our nerves from within, showing us a sudden flash of what lies beneath. what is curious about this affective impact is that it is not limited to a single moment. affects have their untimely dimension of their own; artworks and architectural constructs produce ever-changing affects at different times, in different places, in interaction with different individual and collective modalities (e4p9–10). this 70 spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a means that once works of art and architecture come to life, they no longer rely on their initial producers or immediate audience for their indefinite existence. from then on, they continue to express and unfold ever new affects. artworks and architectural constructs are monuments, neither to their conceivers, nor to their perceivers, but to affective activity of life itself. during aesthetic explication, the frame thrown over substantial affectivities is deframed once again; artworks and architectural constructs present their affective potence back to excessive forces of life; aesthetic interaction blends into life expressing and expanding its own affective repertoire. in spinoza’s words, auto-affectivity of life by way of modal explication is called beatitude (beatitudo) (e5p35–36). beatitude has nothing to do with beauty in its conventional sense, as beatitude does not emerge from subjective judgements or objective qualities as beauty is believed to do (ep. 54). rather, beatitude is an affective procedure; it is the expression of explicated affects becoming one with their substantial affectivities; the journey of infinite multiplicities passing through finite modalities and reaching back to their substantial infinity. artworks and architectural constructs participate in beatitude, in ecstatic expansion of life, insofar as they render sensible affectivities hitherto insensible, make visible forces previously invisible, make experienceable spatial relations that were formerly inexperienceable. with each explication of unforeseen affects, and sensations unheard of in their emergent intensity, life expands; works of art and architecture bring forth new ways of being; affective capacities of life are enriched. what aesthetic explication achieves, as virginia woolf the modernist writer subtly puts, is to “saturate every atom,” that is, “to put practically everything in; yet to saturate,” so as to return forces of life more vigorously back to life itself.10 this is the primary struggle of aesthetic production: how to harness imperceptible forces from substantial affectivities; how to extract modal affections from infinite fluctuations; how to convert these affections into intensified affects; how to compose these affects into aesthetic constructs; and how to make these constructs instigate affective journeys of beatitude, by expressing and intensifying the superabundance of life itself. implication of substantial affectivities, complication of modal affections, explication of expressive affects.11 enduring an overwhelming exposure, constituting a complex composure, orchestrating an explosive release. for centuries now, scholars and commentators have pointed out that spinoza does not pay attention to conventional aesthetics from the viewpoint of subjects or objects.12 and i am willing to grant that this is largely right. but what they have overlooked are latent seeds of a different aesthetic theory that moves not only beyond aesthetic judgements made by ready-made mental faculties of autonomous subjects, but also beyond aesthetic values found inherent to essential qualities of independent objects. spinoza’s aesthetic theory, rather, grounds itself on affective interactions immanent to and distributed within the interlacing of substantial and modal fields, which includes the agencies of both subject-based and object-based actors, yet is irreducible to one, or the other, or even both together. this is an aesthetic theory grounded on what goes in-between dimensions, processes, agencies, and milieus; an aesthetic theory of relationality, interactivity, and affectivity. spinoza’s philosophy potentiates affective aesthetics, not from the viewpoint of subjects or objects, but, in his subtle words, sub specie aeternitatis; that is, aesthetics from the viewpoint of life (e4p38, e5p29–36).13 71 spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a references barthes, r. (1977). the death of the author. in, image, music, text (s. heath, trans.) (pp. 142–149). london, uk: fontana. benjamin, w. (1970). the author as producer. new left review, (62), 83–96. boethius. (2008). the consolation of philosophy. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. boscherini, e. g. (1970). lexicon spinozanum. hague, netherlands: nijhoff. cage, j. (1961). silence: lectures and writings. middletown, conn: wesleyan university press. certeau, m. d. (1988). the practice of everyday life (s. rendall, trans.). berkeley, ca: university of california press. cusa, n. (2001). de docta ignorantia. in j. hopkins (ed.). complete philosophical and theological treatises of nicholas of cusa, vol.1 (pp. 1–160). minneapolis, mn: the arthur j. banning press. deleuze, g. (1988). spinoza: practical philosophy (r. hurley, trans.). san francisco, ca: city lights books. deleuze, g. (1990). expressionism in philosophy: spinoza (m. joughin, trans.). new york, ny: zone books. deleuze, g., & guattari, f. (1994). what is philosophy? new york, ny: columbia university press. foucault, m. (1984). what is an author? in p. rabinow (ed.), foucault reader (pp. 101–121). new york, ny: pantheon. gasquet, j. (1991). joachim gasquet’s cézanne: a memoir with conversations. london, uk: thames & hudson. gatens, m. (2015). spinoza on goodness and beauty and the prophet and the artist. european journal of philosophy, 23(1), 1–16. klee, p. (1966). paul klee on modern art. london, uk: faber and faber. lord, b. (ed.) (2015). spinoza beyond philosophy. edinburgh, uk: edinburgh university press. lord, b. (ed.) (2018). spinoza’s philosophy of ratio. edinburgh, uk: edinburgh university press. mignini, f. (1981). ars imaginandi: apparenza e rappresentazione in spinoza. napoli: edizioni scientifiche italiane. moholy-nagy, l. (1947). the new vision and abstract of an artist. new york, ny: wittenborn, schultz. morrison, j. (1989). why spinoza had no aesthetics. the journal of aesthetics and art criticism, 47(4), 359–365. plotinus. (1989). enneads. cambridge: harvard university press. price, c., & littlewood, j. (1968). the fun palace. the drama review: tdr, 12(3), 127–134. rice, l. (1996). spinoza’s relativistic aesthetics. tijdschrift voor filosofie, 58(3), 476–489. rozanova, o. (1976). the bases of the new creation (1913). in j. e. bowlt (ed.), russian art of the avant-garde: theory and criticism 1902–1934 (pp. 102–112). new york, ny: viking press. schlerath, f. (1920). spinoza und die kunst. münster: hellerau bei dresden. spinoza, b. (1985). the collected works of spinoza (e. curley, trans. e. curley ed. vol. i). princeton, nj: princeton university press. spinoza, b. (2002). spinoza: complete works (m. l. morgan ed.). indianapolis, ind: hackett. spinoza, b., curley, e. (ed.). the collected works of spinoza, vol. ii (e. curley, trans.). sylvester, d. (1987). the brutality of fact: interviews with francis bacon. london, uk: thames & hudson. wolfson, h. a. (1969). the philosophy of spinoza: unfolding the latent processes of his reasoning (vol. ii). new york, ny: schocken. woolf, v., bell, a. o. (ed.), 1980). the diary of virginia woolf, vol.3 (a. o. bell ed.). london, uk: hogarth press. endnotes 1 for english translations, i will use, and modify as necessary, the works of samuel shirley and edwin curley (spinoza, 2002) (spinoza, 1985, 2016), while referring to lexicon spinozanum by boscherini for close reading of latin terms (boscherini, 1970). 2 for the limited scholarship on spinoza’s aesthetics, see, for starters: schlerath (1920), mignini (1981), rice (1996), and gatens (2015). see also the chapters on art and architecture in beth lord’s edited books (2015 and 2018). finally, deleuze’s peculiar aesthetic theory that operates via dual conceptions of percepts and affects (as in what is philosophy?, 1994) or affections and affects (in his books on spinoza, 1988 and 1990) can be deemed to largely flourish on spinoza’s affective grounds (while partially drawing from nietzschean aesthetics, phenomenological trajectories like that of maldiney, and his own singular tendencies). so, although deleuze already connected certain dots and laid some of the groundwork for unpacking spinoza’s aesthetics for which i am grateful, what i construct in this paper, in the form of a tripartite affective system (implicating substantial affectivities, complicating affections, and explicating affects) is not based on deleuze’s dual constructions or any other previous scholarship on spinoza’s aesthetics (deleuze & guattari, 1994). 72 spinoza’s affective aesthetics: art and architecture from the viewpoint of life t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 3 for the sake of a concise introduction to spinoza’s aesthetics, this paper focuses less on operational singularity of each aesthetic field (albeit implicitly laying the groundwork for this future analysis), and more on how art and architecture constitute a single continuum when it comes to affective processes of aesthetic construction and perception. 4 in e1d5 spinoza says: “by modality, i mean substantial affectivities [substantiae affectiones], or that which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself.” this notion, substantiae affectiones, is highly overlooked in spinoza scholarship: it is usually translated either as “modifications of substance” (as in elwes), or “affections of substance” (as in curley and shirley), and reduced to being equivalent to modalities. yet, while trying to establish the primary distinction between substance and modalities, spinoza is making a further conceptual gesture here. he defines substantial affectivities not as modalities themselves in the modal dimension, but as the self-causation of substance [causa sui], as expressed in the modal dimension. that is, substantial affectivities are substance affecting itself, which also equates, by way of immanent causation, to modalities. so, substantial affectivities as selfcausation and self-affectivity of substance (1), is formally distinct from yet immanently expressed by and as modal existence (2). hence, developing substantial affectivity as a full-fledged concept grounded on this subtle distinction promises interesting insights into spinoza’s latent aesthetics. for this reason, i am translating substantiae affectiones, as substantial affectivities deliberately, for “affections of substance,” “modifications of substance,” and “substantial affections” can be very confusing to readers who are not well versed in spinoza’s philosophy, and might be easily mixed up with “modal affections,” which refer to efficient causes and inter-individual relations, as will be defined in the next section. therefore, distinguishing substantial affectivities from modal affections is a task as crucial as distinguishing modal affections from affects. by doing so, we arrive at the curious trilogy of affectivities, affections, and affects. 5 to see the development of this argument about the art of living (ars vivendi) being spinoza’s aesthetic motor, see gatens (2015) and mignini (1981). 6 spinoza concept of potence (potentia) corresponds to the definition of a modality by what it can do, or set of potentialities that define an entity’s capability of action and modification (potentia agendi, or vis existendi). 7 for the modern evolution of discussions on authorship, see for starters: benjamin (1970), barthes (1977), foucault (1984), and certeau (1988). 8 see wolfson for how spinoza expands the meaning of conatus to all human and nonhuman modalities while previously, from stoicism to hobbes, it was only reserved for humans and animals (wolfson, 1969: 195-201). and see deleuze for an interpretation that does justice to spinoza’s dynamic conception of conatus (deleuze, 1990: 230–31; 1988: 98–102). 9 cedric price articulates his concept of calculated uncertainty at the concluding remarks of a speech called “has the architectural profession a future?” that he gave at aa, london, in 1975: “what worries me is that our profession doesn’t like the idea of uncertainty. if something is uncertain, they call it crisis and panic... now unless architecture realizes that calculated uncertainty is one of the great generators of what it should be doing in the future, then i think the profession has no future. but i think, architecture has one. thank you.” to witness the epitome of price’s approach to architecture, see his fun palace project (1963-74), which explores how architecture can not only undergo, but also instigate constant change with the help of user potentiation and cybernetic intelligence (price & littlewood, 1968). 10 this entry is from woolf ’s diaries, dated “wednesday, november 28th, 1928” (woolf, 1980: 209-210). in his aesthetic discussions, deleuze likes to often refer to this passage as well, as part of his idiosyncratic strategy of revealing how artists are as intuitive of affective operations as philosophers, albeit with unique sensitivities of their own. 11 the conceptual triad of implication-complicationexplication addresses the problems of ontological individuation and the relationship of being and beings, which has a long history of evolution in western philosophy before spinoza radicalized it in his own work. the latent seeds of these concepts lie in the neoplatonic problem of emanation of the one and participation of the many, developed by plotinus, and published by his student porphyry in enneads (ca. 270). following this trajectory, boethius applied the terms comprehendere and complectiri to unity and eternity of being in consolation of philosophy (de consolatione philosophiae, 523 a.d.), which are in turn subordinately unfolded as plurality and temporality of beings. in the following centuries, boethius’s commentators developed his conceptual couple of complicatio-explicatio, culminating in the rigorous teachings of ecole de chartres in the twelfth century. inheriting this conceptual mechanism of folding from the school of chartres but channeling it away from emanation towards immanence, nicholas of cusa argued in bk. ii, ch.3 of on learned ignorance (de docta ignorantia, 1440) that “god is the enfolding of all things in that all things are in him; and he is the unfolding of all things in that he is in all things.” finally, bringing together a variety of sources from neoplatonism and cartesianism to radical abrahamic and scholastic traditions, spinoza pushed this relationship to its own limit by grounding it on absolute immanence. with spinoza’s radical gesture, which was most rigorously uncovered and developed by gilles deleuze, the successive and hierarchical emanation of neoplatonism gave way to adequate expression and immediate co-presence of three movements: modal beings, while remaining in substance, implicate (imply, involve) and explicate (explain, express) substance, and substance, while remaining in itself, complicate (comprehend, contain) modal beings (ttp, ch. 4). by focusing on the conceptual triad of implication-complicationexplication, this paper argues that spinoza’s conception of ontological individuation runs parallel to his conception of aesthetic individuation. for more information on this conceptual triad, see plotinus (1989), boethius (2008), cusa (2001), deleuze (1988: 68-69). 12 see especially how morrison (1989), based on his rationalist reading, goes as far as declaring that spinoza cannot have an aesthetic theory, as he is not interested in subjective intentions and judgements. 13 sub specie aeternitatis is usually translated in spinoza scholarship as “from the viewpoint of eternity.” what spinoza means with this term, however, is to see things from the viewpoint of substantial forces of life, or which amounts to the same thing, from the viewpoint of how things are immanently generated, from the viewpoint of life. and by “life” here, in the title, and in the entire text, i follow spinoza’s definition from metaphysical thoughts, in which he equates life both to conative potence of each modality and to the substantial continuity of god or nature itself: “so we understand by life, the force through which things persevere in their own being,” and “because that force is different from the things themselves, we say properly that things themselves have life,” and hence: “so they speak best who call god life…. god is life, and is not distinguished from life….” (cm 2.6 / g1:260). interstices 15 6 being moved andrew douglas a man is a passing mood coming and going in the mind of his country; he is the twitching of a nerve, a smile, a frown, a thought of shame or honour, as it may happen. samuel butler for samuel butler, as he wrote in his notebooks (1917), humanity is an ultimately unknowable substance, but one in whom feelings are foremost and sensed according to transitioning motion: “he [humankind] is a substance in a statical or dynamical condition and feeling the passage from one state into another” (1917:78-79). writing in the era of transport steam and in the wake of the emerging science of thermodynamics, no less than darwinism, butler might well be expected to have seen the world through the lens of mobility and redeployments of energy and matter. yet his attentiveness points to a greater prescience. his was a world no less imagined according to non-equilibrium transactions (machines evolving according to natural selection and closed worlds coopted by global mercantile forces), a world that breaks with, and opens beyond, what michel foucault described as the old disciplinary “enclosures of civil society” – “schools, manufactories, armies, etc.” (1991: 103) – and which in butler’s case included an explicitly personal paternalism of the church and english civil society in general. where butler parodically rebuked darwin for an overly mechanistic evolutionism, suggesting he had taken “the life out of biology” (1923-26), michel foucault in turn recognised an eighteenth-century shift in governmentality that precisely sought to take hold of life. augmenting existing familial models of sovereignty, a bio-political instrumentality was increasingly fitted to modes of life, measuring and modifying the affective behaviours and corporeal capacities of populations. inherently nebulous, the “problem of populations” (1991: 99), and the political economies spawned by it, can be imagined to have bypassed individual perspectives and interests in favour of governing control indexed to tendencies and movements indicated by large numbers of persons. if one consequence of this shift in governmentality was a disjunction between society and the individuals comprising it, norbert elias was drawn to investigate how societal bodies might be understood, on one hand as more than simply a large aggregation of individuals, and on the other, as distinct entities with contrary psychologies. rejecting the notion of a founding social contract entered into by autonomous individuals in pursuit of collective benevolence, elias recognised in societies themselves a “tissue of mobile relationships” and dependencies that might explain an evolving historical patterning of individuation (2001: 23). this “invisible order” in fact configures, as he noted, precisely engineered “types of individuality”, and in the case of the modern west, one defined by minutely calibrated interdependencies calling for high levels of “psychical control” and affect management, but also a characterising sense of self autonomy and independence from others (2001: 1432). in such an individual, affect appears as both acutely one’s own, but also, seemingly frustrated by societal forces. gernot böhme, building on elias’ investigation of the civilising process historically, noted how in twentieth-century modernity, the self-constraint attributed to civilising interdependency is in fact overlaid by returning forms of “external constraint” and control – particularly “technical constraint” (2012: 4-5; emphasis in original). the consequence of this escalating technification is both a reduction in ethical (self-)constraint and a growing dependence on “technical norms”, rather than moral ones. hence “technological civilisation” builds in modernity towards an affective conflict, for on one hand, such a civilisation is predicated on a “decidedly unemotional stance”, and on the other, it fosters the “development of an enormous imaginary domain” nurturing an otherwise truncated emotionality (2012: 27; emphasis in original). a shift towards technological norms opens the way for affectively interstices 15 7 geared and mediated environments where a “relaxation of intra-psychical constraint” also potentiates a manipulable subjectivity released from the ideal of subjective integrity and closure along with new technologies of societal control (2012: 26-27, 223). what these particular facets make imaginable are how affective registers become inherent to consolidating powers and modes of governance. while for raymond williams (2001), the importance of subtle structures of feeling for understanding of cultural complexity and social agency were evident more than 50 years ago, an “affective turn”, as it has more recently been termed (clough & halley 2007), makes manifest their blunt pervasiveness. as brian massumi wrote, in media-saturated society media no longer mediates per se; it shuttles and amplifies affective or “empathy-based” responses directly between political and everyday domains in a feedback that obscures “moral reasoning and critical thinking” (1998: 44). legitimation of governance comes to rest on felt responses collectively coordinated and orchestrated in accordance with a certain gratuitous mediation – for which the “circulation of violence-legitimating affect” is key (1998: 45). where the disciplinary enclosures referred to previously bind a constituent body of persons within places defined by prescriptive routines and relations, affective legitimation presumes a less defined incorporation, favouring instead one drawn together empathetically and ambiently via spectacle and felt effects. so too is legitimation married to ever-expanding cycles of deterritorialised circulation of capital and reterritorialised surpluses drawn from commodification, though not without causing, as massumi quoted gilles deleuze, a “crisis of enclosure” and the need to control or manage something like an open field of affects at once chaotic and productive (1998: 56-57). in what deleuze (1992) referred to as societies of control, the task is to maintain hyper-mobility but within normatively recognisable – and therefore manageable and profitable – parameters, though even what counts as normative (a quality no longer antithetically paired with the ‘abnormal’) is rendered serially mutable (1998: 57). if mutability then can be thought of as the very ground condition of capitalist societies of control, and our being together defined by modes of enclosure themselves contingent and variable, appeals (experientially, aesthetically or conceptually) to atmospheres – themselves indicative of a nebulous and contingently binding of things – carries a certain symptomatic valence. they are the carriers of affective traffic, and in turn, belonging through beholding. and indeed the scenographic underpinnings of this type of being together finds an early architectural precedent in gottfried semper who argued in 1860 that: “every artistic creation, every artistic pleasure, presumes a certain carnival spirit, or to express it in a modern way, the haze of carnival candles is the true atmosphere of art” (2004). as model for this “modern way”, he may have had in mind an earlier participation in the design of exhibition stands for the crystal palace, erected in london’s hyde park in 1851, a structure mrs. (mary philadelphia) merrifield famously described, in an essay titled “the harmony of colours”, as being “the only building in the world in which atmosphere is perceptible” – the distant interior appearing “to be enveloped in a blue haze” (1851/1970: ii). her point was that only the subtlety of an atmosphere could bind such a gigantean whole together without garishly conflicting with “the arrangement of colours on the walls” (1851/1970: ii). certainly, the role of these exposition-type spaces, as giorgio agamben has argued, was to create “enchanted scene[s]”, places where art and industry might merge and where a conversion of the use value of things to exchange value would approach something like an “epiphany of the unattainable” – an auratic hue today routinely infusing media and retail spaces alike (1993: 38). tracking an advance in atmospheric concern into contemporary contexts, agamben’s epiphany of the unattainable warrants comparison with what jean baudrillard, in the context of a sublimity found in exhibition show homes, has termed a “contemplation without hope”, one that aligns interior design with the “general concept of atmosphere” (2002: 311; capitalisation in original). here the modeling of interior ‘ideals’ sets in play varying generic, space-mobilising norms, norms that displace an older patriarchal-domestic symbolism staged as a “caesura between inside and outside” (2002: 309). in the modern domestic interior, as baudrillard noted contrastively, there is an increasing lapse of harmony or stimmung between self, objects and the world of association they centre. the pockets of interiority that once stabilised these associations increasingly answer to an “unrestricted combinatorial” imperative, not closure nor subjective reflection, but an open field of linkages with no interstices 15 8 predefined syntax, propriety or taste. what a “sociology of interior design” reveals – as he imagined this new disciplinary enterprise – is not the tasteful signature of the bourgeois master of the familial crucible, but a new de-subjectified domain over which the occupying subject is both “actor and manager” (2002: 316). becoming literally “an active engineer of atmospheres”, space “is at his disposal like a kind of distribution system” (2002: 316). in such environments the rhetoric of ‘personification’ reigns – as baudrillard parodied, “the atmosphere will be yours alone” – yet this appeal to agency arises precisely in contexts where the inverse predominates and where ‘the interior’, far from sheltering, makes up one of any number of modes of interiority geared to imparting invasive, affective states. if for mrs. merrifield, the crystal place was atmospheric precisely because it “resembles the open air” (1851/1970: ii; emphasis added), the atmospheric engineering baudrillard attributes to the ‘new’ interior design might be understood to respond to emerging modes of within-ness arising with the open field of a self-organising complex constituting control society. what baudrillard recognised in the modern interior in the late 1960s were the effects of economic liberalism rapidly shedding its keynesian, work and welfare consensus, one in which society more generally turns from object ‘form’ (with its interior/exterior dichotomies), and from a symbolic system indexed to the predetermination of the world (in fact the order of nature filtered anthropomorphically), towards a world increasingly defined instead by “practical computation and conceptualization on the basis of total abstraction” (2002: 317). supplanting the older, given world, is its abstract antithesis, one needing to be “produced – mastered, manipulated, inventorised, controlled: a world, in short, that has to be constructed” (2002: 317; italicisation in original). “man the interior designer” – an improbable entity to be elevated to the level of a new human type! – toils, not in or on interiors as such, but in the abstract field of mobile, affective surpluses engendered by the information and communications revolution. if for massumi the societal aspect of control society is composed of three dimensions – firstly, a political/governmental domain engineering command and control of life-affirming and life-diminishing forces, secondly, an economic domain indexed – in the name of “productivity and efficiency” – to monetary liberalism, and thirdly, a cultural domain of managed affects bridging the previous two dimensions – the new sociology baudrillard anticipated might well be understood to entail reading into and across the constructed reality of the far from stable “self-organising system of systems” that is advanced capitalism (massumi 1998: 47). yet how might we conceive undertaking this task? as böhme makes clear in the invited essay in this issue of interstices, the insistent drive towards “the stage management of everything and anything” in contemporary society (spanning commodity aesthetics, politics, art and design practice, supermarkets and cities, no less than the self ), points up the need for a “theory of atmospheres”, one that can grasp what is critically at stake – the expanding scope of “affective participation in our world” (2014: 98). tonino griffero, in a recent survey of phenomenological and ontological approaches to atmospheres – or what he defines as spatialised, objective feeling – offered a particular corrective to any fledgling “atmospherology” (2014: 101). if atmospheres persist as the in-between of objective and subjective states (as böhme similarly asserts; 2014: 93), two errors must be avoided in grasping their significance: the first is a projectivistic explanation that recognises in atmospheres “nothing but inner feelings projected onto the outside” (2014: 103); the second, is an introjectionist error, that in fact underwrites the first by taking everything that was once attributed to external, pathic forces and redistributes them in the subject’s inner, psychical domain. as griffero rehearsed the well-known transformation of fifthcentury bc greek culture, the introjectionist stance arises with a transition from an archaic sociality resting on mythical relations and a world saturated by imposing, magico-religious forces, toward one re-centred by an “anti-pathic” logos or reason (2014: 103). the reversal of mythos to logos – the tensions and risks of which were exemplarily tracked in the oedipal tragedy – amounted, as jean-joseph goux has argued, to the institution of a post-traditional, “anthropocenter[ed]” world, where human “auto-reflection” and “self-consciousness” become the new measure (1993: 119-120). it is a reversal that transfers inwardly – in a process goux termed “deprojection” – all that the mythical world externalised and hence makes possible a long history of the soul and its subsequent double, the psyche. outwardly the result is a knowing subject, as goux put it, “with no master but himself ” (1993: 160), interstices 15 9 and for whom the world is a thing to be remade precisely via an autodidactic virtuosity, yet inwardly is condensed all that once made up an external, cryptophoric (or monstrous/divine) domain that was managed culturally and collectively. introjection and projection make up two sides of the same coin impressed precisely according to a long-exercised historical drive aiming to keep knowledge and pathos apart. the price, on one hand, is a society for whom “‘progression’, ‘development,’ or permanent ‘innovation’” is imperative, and on the other, a subject fundamentally defined by psychical rupture and a synthesising will seeking an ameliorating abridgement with the world (goux 1993: 204-205). hence the dichotomy between civilising impulse and an affective proliferation recognised by elias and böhme, in griffero is described this way: a psychic self-referentiality that is not at all contradicted by today’s media exhibitionism of one’s intimate life, by an ‘emotional capitalism’ that supplants the public sphere, ignores the manipulated character of what it claims to be authenticity and transforms emotions, including the atmospheric ones, in ‘entities to be evacuated, inspected, discussed, bargained, quantified and commodified’, thus generating an emotional freeze that is not a corrective, but is the unexpected ‘commercial’ outcome of the introjectionist illusion. (2014: 106) in a variety of ways, the essays gathered in this issue of interstices grapple with, and contest, such an introjectionist illusion and the projectivistic capitalisation subsisting with it. if for griffero, atmospheres are “quasi-things” (and “quasi-objective” for böhme 2014: 94), it is because they are no more ‘there for the taking’ than they themselves totally possess their beholders; instead they facilitate an ebbing transferal always in excess of capitalisation (griffero: 109 & 149). in this issue michael tawa considers a growing but imprecisely defined interest in the theme of atmosphere in architectural theory and practice, setting out the terms for conceiving an anatomy, inventory and codification of atmospheres. perhaps not surprisingly, given the commentary above, in his appraisal tawa aims to bypass the typical alignment of atmosphere with scenography and theatricality, seeking an affective spatiality in architecture’s existential concrete presence, a presence spanning formal, geometric structures and spatio-temporal patterns. laura mclauchlan and sarah treadwell tackle an altogether different engagement, one that maps the possible congruence between earthquakes and weather. the term “earthquake weather”, as they note, has had a fluctuating history, both as as an observable phenomenon and a noted fiction. exploring the ultimately inconclusive alignment of these terms, mclauchlan and treadwell argue, by way of reportage and correspondence on the subject, for a certain space of delay or indetermination that resists “destroy[ing] an unknown through writing” (2014: 33) paralleling their exercise of a less dominating account of terrestrial shifts, a series of images explore earthquake weather by articulating certain pauses in conglomerating matter. anna boswell, similarly concerned with incommensurate intersections – in this case cultural ones – utilises jacques rancière’s concept of the “distribution of the sensible” and sara ahmed’s notion of “angles of arrival” to consider the settler-colonial enterprise and incompatible structures of affect that incongruously underwrite settler-colonial place-making. rethinking the synthesising presumption of atmospheres, she investigates an atmospherics of fracture specifically questioning the translatability of affect and atmosphere to indigenous worlds. by comparison, carl douglas thinks through a certain derailing of atmospheric stability, specifically the interruption of the smooth infrastructural governance of urban place by auckland’s kerbside collections of inorganic waste. what such collections bring into view, he argues, is the conditionality of public space, itself built on a certain administrative rationalism track-able to the nineteenth century. if the result is an urban hygienism that insistently expels waste from public sight, inorganic collections temporarily countermand this waste regime. disrupting the policed order of the street for a short time, waste ceases to be a private matter, instead becoming something that affectively activates the otherwise tempered domain he terms “atmostechnics”. chris cottrell, likewise working to exploit the limits of laminar smoothing – in this case a gallery setting rather than the street – advocates for turbulence as a productive, creative agent. expanding on his installation work cloud sound (2012), undertaken at the bundoora homestead art centre in victoria, australia, he develops a critical commentary concerned with “thresholding” and the significance of an affective and atmospheric traffic established between the gallery and its suburban context. working with the affective potential of interior space interstices 15 10 too, mirjana lozanovska examines the performative nature of a byzantine church in zavoj, macedonia. based on field notes taken there on the day of the holy mother, an event celebrated annually on august 28, she considers the intertwining of ceremony, incense, song and prayer, geometry, volume, surface, iconography, and the movements of women’s bodies. faced with this atmospheric complex, she asks how architecture is moved beyond its material enterprise, and further, how the pleasure of observing, experiencing and describing such complexes are necessarily mediated by reading processes. concluding the referred papers, akari kidd and jan smitheram pick up on a distinction böhme makes in the invited section of this issue – that atmospheres are not only receptive entities; they can be produced (2014: 84). specifically, kidd and smitheram explore how affect moves us and, specifically, how we can design affective environments rather than use affect as a tool for interpretation, analysis or description. referencing a studio design project from the victoria university of wellington, school of architecture, they examine discourses on affect and new materialism, developing in turn, design strategies they term “de-materialising, diagramming, and re-materialising”. what these papers collectively point to is the astonishing lability of affect and the mobility it exercises over setting and selves. eve kosofsky sedgwick, reviewing the work of silvan tomkin on affect, made a pertinent observation relative to this question of shiftiness: if the predominant understanding across the last century of the introjectionist condition has focused on psychical drives, particularly sexuality as a driver (the oedipal scenario being the reigning trope), affect has tended to be understood as a secondary ‘colouration’ of these primary ‘instincts’ – instincts sedgwick identified as binary or on-off in the instrumental directness of their satisfaction (2003: 99-101). conversely, given the plethora of configurations in which affect appears, it can be thought of by comparison as analogue in nature – in other words, “graduated and/or multiply differentiated” (2003: 101). without object per se, affect amplifies and diminishes in fickle and roundabout ways and in fact, as sedgwick argued, much of what freud attributed to the id in terms of drives is closer to an analogue/affect system (2003: 21). further, the drives themselves are better understood as responsive and even secondary to affective motivations. psychically this would mean something like a double system – drive and affect, digital and analogue, driven control and ambiguity – constantly enfolding with itself. perhaps not surprisingly, this systems analogy – itself a product of the development of cybernetic feedback or enfolding between the 1940s and 1960s (sedgwick 2003: 105) – seems to closely mirror the systematicity of control societies that deleuze diagnosed and the affective capitalism sustaining it. if disciplinary power moulded individuals in its determinant environments, the emerging potency of control societies is its “free-floating” subtlety, a subtlety that perpetually modulates modes of individuality rather than whole persons, producing, setting by setting, variously managed “dividuals” as deleuze termed it (1992: 4-5). acknowledging the confounding logic of this emerging power – a complexity allegorised as serpent-like – deleuze concluded with a challenge to “young people”: “it’s up to them to discover what they are being asked to serve, just as their elders discovered, not without difficulty, the telos of the disciplines” (1992: 7). nearly 25 years on, a theory of atmospheres, or as griffero nominates it, an atmospherology, would seem to offer at least one avenue for grasping a projectivistic capitalisation of affect and the serial, generic norms it trades in. interstices 15 11 references agamben, g. (1993). stanzas: word and phantasm in western culture (r. martinez, trans.). minneapolis, mn & london, england: university of minnesota press. baudrillard, j. (2002). structures of interior design [1968]. in b. highmore (ed.), the everyday life reader (pp. 308318). london, england & new york, ny: routledge. böhme, g. (2012). invasive technification: critical essays in the philosophy of technology (c. shingleton, trans.). london, england: bloomsbury. böhme, g. (2014). the theory of atmospheres and its applications (a.-chr. engels-schwarzpaul, trans.). interstices 15, 92-99. butler, s. & jones, h. (eds.) (1917). the notebooks of samuel butler. new york, ny: e. p. dutton & co. (reproduced by cornell university library, digital collections). butler, s., jones, h. & bartholomew, a. t. (eds.) (1923-26). shrewsbury editions of the works of samuel butler. new york, ny: dutton. clough, p. & halley, j. (2007) (eds.). the affective turn: theorizing the social. durham, nc & london, england: duke university press. deleuze, g. (1992). postscript on the societies of control. october, vol. 59: 3-7. foucault, m. (1991). governmentality. in, g. burchell, c. gordon, & p. miller, (eds.). the foucault effect: studies in governmentality (pp. 87-104). chicago, il: the university of chicago press. elias, n. & schröter m. (eds.), (2001). the society of individuals (e. jephcott, trans.). new york, ny & london, england: continuum. griffero, t. (2014). atmospheres: aesthetics of emotional space (s. de sanctis, trans.). farnham, england & burlington, vt: ashgate. goux, j. j. (1993). oedipus, philosopher (c. porter, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. massumi, b. (1998). requiem for our prospective dead: (toward a participatory critique of capitalist power). in, e. kaufman & k. heller (eds.). deleuze and guattari: new mappings in politics, philosophy, and culture. minneapolis, mn & london, england: university of minnesota press. merrifield, m. p. (1851/1970). essay on the harmony and contrast of colours. in, the arts journal illustrated catalogue: the industry of nations, 1851 (i-viii). london, england: david & charles. sedgewick, e. k. (2003). touching feeling: affect, pedagogy, performativity. durham, nc & london, england: duke university press. semper, g. (2004). style in the technical arts; or, practical aesthetics (h. f. mallgrave & m. robinson, trans.). los angeles, ca: getty research. williams, r. (2001). the long revolution. london, england: vintage books. interstices 2012: immaterial materialities materiality and interactivity in art and architecture symposium program 28-30 november 2012, hosted by uts at aia /tusculum 28 november 3.00 3.30 introduction – sandra karina löschke 3.30 5.30 materialism (moderation: steven loo) bauhaus exercises on the material imagination matthew mindrup marywood university, u.s. materiality matters: if only for the look of it! gevork hartoonian school of architecture, university of canberra spatial relations and materialist ethics adam jasper school of architecture, university of technology sydney a role of historical materialism in materialising communist yugoslavia’s architectural aspirations dijana alić school of architecture, university of new south wales 5.30 6.00 interstices journal launch and pre-lecture drinks 6.00 keynote jonathan hill 29 november 9.00 11.00 eco systems (moderation: sandra karina löschke) immaterial material ‘ecologies of mind’ peg rawes bartlett school of architecture, university college london, u.k. material waste: considering designed obsolescence and excess as a way out amy campos california college of the arts in san francisco, u.s. post-parametric architectural, aesthetical and sociopolitical configurations mina yaney vienna university of technology, austria art(i)facts versus fictive factures: alexander dorner’s immaterialities rebecca uchill massachusetts institute of technology, u.s. 11.00 11.30 morning tea 11.30 1.00 media (moderation: suzie attiwill) transparency in glass: medium, message, symptom thomas mical school of art architecture and design, university of south australia information material claudia perren school of architecture, university of sydney a deceptive surface: photography, materiality, and inference steve harfield school of architecture, university of technology sydney 1.00 1.30 lunch 1.30 3.00 process (moderation: steve harfield) self-organisation and theoretical reflection: the (im)material architecture of venice and the venice hospital sophia psarra the bartlett school of architecture, university college london, u.k. impersonal geometries stephen loo school of architecture, university of tasmania field affects: shaping spatial experience ross mcleod school of architecture and design, rmit 29 november (cont.) 3.00 3.30 afternoon tea 3.30 5.00 concreteness (moderation: ross jenner) ulrich müther: cast in concrete matthias ludwig school of architecture, hochschule wismar, germany beton-préfabriqué: on the appropriation and expansion of brutalist materiality in australian architecture nugroho utomo school of architecture, university of canberra faith in steel: the fragmented afterlife of the world trade centre, mediating modernity after 9/11 andrea connor school of design, university of technology sydney 6.00 keynote philip ursprung (at mca) 7.15 panel discussion: rachel kent (senior curator mca) and others 30 november 9.00 11.00 atmosphere colour light (moderation: claudia perren) ambient atmospheres ross jenner school of architecture, university of auckland, new zealand white table / white aalto john roberts school of architecture and built environment, university of newcastle striped effects: articulating the material and immaterial ashley paine atch research centre, school of architecture, university of queensland translucency, brilliance and sparkle: an exploration of the interplay between light and materials ruth mcdermott school of design, university of technology sydney 11.00 11.30 morning tea 11.30 12.15 architectural practice session (moderation: olivia hyde/bvn) 12.15 1.00 plenum session 1.00 close film presentations painting architecture: material modes of projective thinking agnieszka mlicka central saint martins college of art and design, university of the arts london, u.k. material antagonism: art, law and architecture andré bélanger, school of law, université laval, canada anne bordeleau, school of architecture, university of waterloo, canada in partnership with: supported by: in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 20 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a sue ruddick common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants “animals are good to think with.” —adapted from claude levi-strauss, totemism, 1964: 89 in a 2007 video from bbc world, narrated by david attenborough,1 we see a crow adapting to the complex choreography of the modern city, using the rhythms of the city to bring together a food source it could not previously eat with a technology that was invented for other purposes. viewed 1.7 million times on youtube at time of writing, shared on sites from the uk to north america, japan, and australia, the video invites us to rethink the relationship between nature and culture, blurring the boundary between the urban and the wild, as the crow first learns that it can drop a nut (too hard to break with its beak) into ongoing traffic, using passing cars to crack it open. as the traffic proves too dangerous to navigate in the retrieval of the nut, the crow eventually learns, through a process of unclear duration, to drop the nut from a perch above a crosswalk and wait for the green crossing light to access the nut in safety. this inspiring, if all too infrequent, example of an interweaving of human technology, the rhythms of the city, and the ingenuity of urban wildlife, might provide us with a different way of imagining the city and the relationship between the urban and the wild. it is also, we might argue, a contemporary expression of spinoza’s concepts of how the composite body is constituted through a common notion, a common notion that enables very different species—beings who are (to borrow from e2p13s) “of different natures”—to thrive in a collaborative context. here the common notion exists in the functioning of the crosswalk—crows and cars are in common agreement about the usefulness of the crosswalk for their own different forms of thriving, and so constitute a composite, collaborative body. writing in the 1660s, spinoza was explicit in his project of renaturing the human—“consider[ing] human actions and appetites just as if it were an investigation into lines, planes and bodies” (e3pref ) and with this, dismantling the cartesian view that the universe was divided into two substances, a divine realm 21 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a and an earthly existence, and dethroning humanity from its presumed hierarchical rule over nature—its position as “a kingdom within a kingdom” (e3pref ). but he was less clear about collaborations with non-human others. in thinking the composite body through the common notion, however, we can begin to think about an ethics of collaborations beyond the human—and derive a spinoza for our time, a spinoza beyond spinoza. the common notion, for spinoza, was an expression of the collaborative possibilities between beings, each coming to an adequate and active understanding of the others’ capacities and operating in concert in a way that produced a sense of joy—an active rather than passive understanding. the task for spinoza in arriving at a common notion was to know how to move from the passive experience of affect, the “sad passions” (which might even include love), to active joy. affect, constituted passively, does not comprehend its cause adequately and ultimately limits the capacity to act. if an encounter is grasped passively—by happenstance and without reflection, we do not know how to reproduce a joyous encounter (or avoid a dangerous one). we are at the mercy of random encounters. the common notion is a powerful concept for it undoes the idea of mind over matter—undoes the idea that emotions are something to be suppressed or overcome through reason. active joy is itself a function of an adequate understanding of something, and this understanding enhances our capacity to act. the common notion emerges in the encounter with other beings, a practical kind of knowledge expressing a relationship between mind and body, a knowledge that necessarily involves the body. one must have an adequate knowledge of the nature of the body to understand this union adequately (e2p13s). it is through this knowledge that we become active: to become active is a state of becoming, not being; a social act, a co-production in our encounters with the world around us. in the case of this assemblage of beings around a crosswalk, each of the participants in this choreography comes to an active understanding of the context. for the pedestrian, the crosswalk enables safe passage; for the driver of the car, the timing for free movement; for the crow, safe access to an otherwise inaccessible food source. but these are diverse beings with different ways of knowing—different manners of mind and body. the crosswalk assemblage is therefore also illustrative of a second concept that spinoza offers us: the idea of the composite body. this is one of the few times that spinoza (focused as intently as he was on the task of human freedom) explicitly addresses the relationship between beings who are of different natures. we in the twenty-first century are beginning to appreciate that even the human body itself is a composite individual composed of diverse natures, among other things comprised of 39 trillion bacterial cells and only 30 trillion human cells. we are a collaboration from our very beginnings. in nature, moreover, nothing exists but composites: we are not aggregated from simple bodies. there is “no pre-social state of nature from which previously isolated individuals could emerge” (montag, 1998: xviii). instead we are always already in a state of composition. indeed, spinoza suggests this in his correspondence with oldenburg, in the discussion of the worm in the blood, arguing that our separation of things into parts and wholes is a matter of perspective, based on the extent to which we understand how things come to agree with one another (ep. 32). the example of the crow at the crosswalk invites us to think of complex collaborations at the level of the composite body, a social body that dissolves any preconception about hard 22 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a distinctions between human and nature, nature and technology. and although spinoza insists at many instances and in different ways that there is nothing more useful “to man […] than man” (e4p18s), he does suggest that there is an advantage to humans in collaboration with beings of diverse natures: the greater your capacity to affect and be affected, the greater your power to act (e4p38).2 this is evident in the ways we have come to understand more fully the evolution of our species: how, for instance, collaborations with beings of different natures (the coevolution of humans and dogs as hunting pairs, for example) combined different capacities to affect and be affected in ways advantageous to both. in the crow-car-pedestrian-crosswalk, there is then a composite body wherein the crosswalk acts as a kind of prosthetic intermediary in the constitution of that body, conferring different kinds of advantages and different meanings to its varied participants. here the crosswalk expresses a kind-of surplus code—an excess of meaning, with varied but nonetheless adequate understandings for the pedestrian and car whereby the crosswalk mediates or choreographs the flow of traffic in a way that both can move through the city effectively. for the crow, the crosswalk and the timing of the lights enable it to adapt a tool (the car) designed for one purpose to another, namely the crushing and safe retrieval of a nut that it could not crack open itself without the car and that it could not retrieve safely without the crosswalk. seen this way, we understand the composite body truly as a composition of forces, made active through a choreography, expressing a multi-temporality and manifesting in a convergence—a node or coming together with no strictly defined border. in a batesonian reading, the composite body is a pattern which connects (bateson, 1979). we might argue that—unlike the coevolutionary collaboration between dogs and humans—the mutual benefits in the crow-crosswalk are not immediately recognisable. this is not an obvious exchange; rather, as a species (i am speaking here of western man), we are becoming increasingly aware of the previously unacknowledged benefits of non-human others, or “nature” in its popular conception, to the state of human health and even human existence. here spinoza’s framework anticipates contemporary arguments supporting biodiversity. for spinoza, the greater capacity that a body has to be affected, the greater the possibility for forming alliances (or common notions) with a variety of bodies that are external to it (e2p14). although spinoza is speaking here strictly of the human body, we might think this in relation to a composite body, or in this case an ecosystem. a complex ecosystem involving complex interdependencies between bodies exhibits greater capacity than a simple one. the more complex the ecosystem in its patterns of exchange, the greater its capacity. while we cannot, strictly speaking, accord an ecosystem a “mind” in this understanding of interdependencies, we can think of complex communicative systems at a more general level—in a batesonian sense, a communicative web, or a peircean sense of a sign system (a world composed of nothing but signs, or composed through signification), or, in the thinking of maturana and varela, a communicative system (bateson, 1979; peirce, 1907, 1982; maturana and varela, 1980). *** but why specifically should we care about reimagining urban natures? and why turn to spinoza for an understanding of relations between humans and 23 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a non-human nature? arguably spinoza in his own time was more concerned about human freedom and equality. his insights on relations between humans and non-human nature are only fleeting. and as genevieve lloyd argued, “anyone who looks to the ethics for a viable, coherent metaphysical system to ground a belief in the rights of the non-human will look in vain” (1980: 294). in examining how spinoza helps us to think through these aspects of our historical moment, we might note, firstly, that the notion of biodiversity might look somewhat different under a spinozist lens. the idea of biodiversity as being significant for human health has now become part of mainstream opinion and settled science—whether we are thinking about its implications for food security, water quality, climate mitigation, or psychological wellbeing—and is endorsed by organisations like the united nations (united nations, 2019), the world bank (berthe et al., 2018) and the world health organization (world health organization, 2015), albeit somewhat narrowly conceived of through the idea of ecosystem services. yet while we might be encouraged by this shift, we have to be careful that single-source instrumentalist valuations of aspects of the non-human world (e.g. trees produce oxygen and shade, green roofs reduce runoff ) do not blind us to a much more complex picture of composite collaborations. this more complex picture might consequently help us to rethink how to deal with habitat fragmentation. habitat fragmentation is a leading cause of extinction: following the logic of the species area curve, the larger the area, the greater the species diversity; likewise, the smaller the fragment of habitat land, the more likely the species will suffer local extirpation and eventual extinction. and with urban areas projected to cover 60 per cent of the globe by 2060 (united nations, 2017), urbanisation will continue to play a leading role in this. the expansion of cities will fragment wildlife habitats and interrupt migration routes—not only existing and long-established routes but also new migration routes necessitated by climate change. we have to be able to think clearly about—and design for—those circumstances in which the composite body of an urban environment does not function well to benefit all parties. the crosswalk-adapted crow tells us, by way of spinoza, that, in certain circumstances, urban nature can indeed comprise a mutually beneficial composite body in which animals have learnt how to match their “speeds and slownesses” alongside the speeds and slownesses of human beings (e2p13l1). but while crows are particularly adept as a synanthropic species—a species that benefits from living in close proximity to humans—not all animals are that adept. to put it another way, cities are a problem for most animals; humans have not designed them with animals in mind. my current research is on the fate of wildlife in urban environments with particular attention to the design of urban infrastructures. the project area, the greater toronto area (gta), is an excellent urban laboratory for the above questions pertaining to the relations between human cities and non-human nature. the gta—the fourth largest city in north america—is home to around 4.18 million people and is one of the fastest growing urban regions in canada, projected to absorb 60 per cent of the nation’s population growth in the next twenty years (ministry of public infrastructure renewal, 2005). it also happens to contain rich wildlife habitats sustained by the great lakes and an extensive local ravine system. it is, significantly, at the centre of a complex node of existing local and 24 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a global wildlife migration routes, including an emerging climate-change-induced migration route: as global temperatures increase, wildlife is moving northward at an estimated rate of 7 kilometres per year—very roughly—and these routes are interrupted by existing or anticipated urban and suburban development in the gta. like it or not, the gta already functions, well or badly, as a composite body, or as deleuze (1992: 17) might say, a badly analysed composite. it is perhaps not surprising that the toronto wildlife centre, the largest wildlife outreach, rescue, and rehabilitation centre in north america, fields approximately 12,000 hotline calls a year from urban residents encountering wildlife in distress, and takes into care (into its capture and release programs) somewhere in the range of 5,000 wild animals per year, which include roughly 300 distinct species. these animals have been injured in road accidents, caught in frozen ponds or on freeways, or subjected to whatever endless means for abuse and affliction is possible in heavily urbanised environments. from an animal welfare point of view, this is an undesirable situation. from a spinozist point of view, however, the gta is not necessarily a dysfunctional composite body. rather it is a composite body that functions perfectly well— it is just that it functions in the service of specific aspects of human urban life at the expense of non-human wildlife. but, if we agree that human health and planetary biodiversity are intimately intertwined, then our objectives to design cities to support human health must also take into consideration our wild cohabitants. cities are a complex choreography involving the timing and spacing of different beings—this is what spinoza means by a composite body—but by design or by default, most modern cities constitute a particular kind of composite time-space too often at odds with the rhythms of non-human ecologies (may and thrift, 2001). the precise timings and spacings within an urban composite will vary depending on the local particularities of geography and animal ethology. thus, the task is to develop a design language with multiple grammars that allow the composite body to be expressed in mutually empowering ways, that is able to organise time and space in way that is mutually enhancing for sets of different beings, in ways that are attentive to maximisation of mutually reinforcing benefits. this process involves a selective process of composition to create emancipatory assemblages (ruddick, 2012, 2017). here it would be helpful to think also in terms of prosthetics. a city is a system of empowerments and limitations (as an occupant in a city, you are empowered or constrained depending on who and where you are, and when). accordingly, every element of a city can be understood as a prosthetic instrument of empowerment or of constraint. to design a modern city is thus also to design a grammar of prosthetic instruments. elizabeth grosz pushes thought in this direction in one of the earlier accounts to think bodies and cities through a deleuzian lens, arguing that there is a “twoway interface” between bodies and cities “in a series of disparate flows, energies, events, or entities [...] in temporary alignment”, comprising an assemblage of sorts (grosz, 1992). to my mind while this reformulation pushes against classical-humanist notions of the city, it does not go quite far enough: the separation between the human and the urban is first defined and then combined—first things and then their interrelation. if, however, we think of the city as a 25 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a composite body from the outset, this distinction begins to collapse and the sequence inverts. things (e.g. body and city) do not come together in a relationship in which they pre-exist, or rather, put more precisely, they become differently in relation—as any resident of a suburb who moves to a dense urban area understands immediately. relationships constitute things, not in terms of their physicality per se but rather in the way these relations enhance or constrain capacity to act. bodies (whether cells, humans, plants, freeways, cities, or regions), in this sense, are thought in terms of their capacities and the ways they “extend to the limits of their powers.” this is not to imply, of course, that a “body” dissolves on leaving a “city” (as grosz defines them), but rather we are constituted differently in and through our relations—to each other, to physical affordances, to wind and weather, and to how we share sites and spaces with a vast array of cohabitants. this view follows more closely a spinozist conception of the composite body (e2l7s). modern cities, as currently constituted, tend to comprise prosthetic instruments that constrain some species of wildlife and support others in ways that are wholly unintended. we must think the semiosis of the city—the surplus code it expresses—from the point of view of a vast array of species, in terms of the different ways they read the landscape (ruddick, 2017). synanthropic species such as geese, rats, raccoons, or crows thrive in our cities not because we have designed spaces for them, or with them in mind, but because urban landscapes and affordances quite by chance mimic environments to which they are most suited, that enhance their capacities to act. songbirds, on the other hand, face extirpation and even extinction, death by skyscraper, as they die yearly in the millions in their migration between northern and southern hemispheres. on genetically embedded flyways that pass through major cities, they collide with the phalanx of glass office towers and reflected landscapes that they are unable to read as obstacles. in order to design a city that can encourage the thriving of a diverse urban wildlife (and not just human occupants), we must consciously think in terms of designing a series of prosthetics of empowerment that enables us to overcome the existing aspects of the modern city that intentionally or unintentionally have attempted to reinforce a human-nature divide. it is these prosthetics that have been one focus of my research, some emerging by design, some by accident, or rather unintended, each offering a different kind of grammar of the composite body. by accident? of course, the concept of accident is incompatible with spinoza’s thinking—there is always an efficient cause that produces an effect. in spinoza, accidents are an illusion; an event appears to be an accident only because we are not fully cognisant of all contributing causes, and because we misguidedly compare this poorly understood event to an ideal that does not exist and find it to be lacking. but we might nonetheless be justified in speaking of accidental urban composites in the sense that quite often we have not designed the city with the view to enhancing urban natures, but rather have come to recognise only in hindsight the benefits for wildlife inherent in certain urban formations. the crosswalk has so far been my primary example of this: an element of the city that, by unplanned “accident”, has benefited crows as well as human beings and which we recognise as such only after the fact. (we human designers of cities have tended to come to an understanding of how we share common notions with such non-human beings only after the initial encounter with them.) two 26 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a examples in the greater toronto area may serve to further illustrate what i mean: the city’s famous ravine system and the leslie street spit, both of which may be understood as composite formations that “accidentally” benefited local wildlife. each city has its own contextual landscape that implicates non-human others in distinctly different ways. toronto may be unique among major world cities in being built on a vast system of ravines (which has led to the depiction, in the popular imaginary, of toronto as a city within a park). this ravine system was preserved quite as an afterthought. during two centuries of city-building, back when toronto was spending large on infrastructure, the city filled in many minor branches of toronto’s ravines and channelled storm sewers through them. however, the urge to build over the ravines was quelled after an unprecedented hurricane, hurricane hazel, flooded toronto in 1954 and caused eighty-one deaths. a regional conservation authority was created to manage the city’s floodplains; legislation was drawn up to prohibit building on or along ravines because of their potentially unstable nature. this legislation led to the preservation of the ravine system, the last remnants of a great forested area covering the region (figures 1 and 2).3 the ravines remain one of the few residual spaces that act as migration corridors for wildlife and are home to coyotes, deer, great horned owls, opossums, foxes, porcupines, minks, and beavers. here the prosthetic is expressed predominantly, though not exclusively, through conjunction (to use a word from deleuze and guattari4): what we conventionally think of as the urban and the wild overlay one another, but in a relationship that must be constantly mediated—a conjunction within the composite body. the leslie street spit, essentially a man-made peninsula, was first constructed in 1959, intended as a breakwater for shipping traffic and to act as an extension of toronto harbour (figure 3). when container trucking caused the role of the port to collapse, the spit continued to grow due to the dumping of detritus from demolished buildings and from the excavations of subways, underground parking fig. 1 the don valley, one of toronto’s ravines, with prince edward viaduct and the don valley parkway [image from flickr (https:// www.flickr.com/photos/38693531@ n08/4672897942), taken by jess, 2010, creative commons licence (cc by-sa 2.0), no changes made, used here for non-commercial purposes]. fig. 2 little rouge creek, one of the ravines in the greater toronto area, in rouge national urban park [image from wikimedia commons (https://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/file:rouge_nup_little_ rouge_creek5.jpg), taken by mykola swarnyk, 2014, creative commons licence (cc by-sa 4.0), no changes made, used here for non-commercial purposes]. 27 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a lots, and sub-ground levels of buildings. it is now largely a semi-wild parkland, tommy thompson park, which over time has been colonised by local flora and fauna. a large portion of it is presently classified as an environmentally sensitive area (esa) and it is recognised as an important bird area—a classification, as per an internationally agreed set of criteria, that means it is globally important for the conservation of bird populations, with over 300 species of birds using the spit. this is again a case of an “accident”, since naturalisation was never planned. but instead of a process of conjunction or overlaying of human occupancy on top of urban natures, as in the case of the ravine system, here we can think of the relation between the urban and the wild, in the spit’s initial phases at least, as operating in a process of disjunction or bifurcation that serves multiple uses. it is more the case here that the urban form bifurcates into areas for human occupancy on the one hand and areas for wildlife on the other. as the city grows up, the spit grows out. at the same time, the naturalisation process is now actively managed by the toronto region conservation authority—thus the spit is also in a conjunctive relationship with human processes. this takes the form of a complex spatial and temporal choreography. dumping grounds for urban detritus are allocated along the eastern edge of the spit. wildlife areas are inland from that edge and along its western side, including grasslands, marshes, and forested areas. trucks move daily from monday to friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., transporting and depositing waste from urban construction (concrete, rubble, granite, etc.) that builds out the spit. on evenings and weekends, the spit is open to the public, with certain prohibitions (e.g. no dogs, in order to protect wildlife), meaning people can hike and bike through its landscape. fig. 3 tommy thompson park, leslie street spit, toronto [image from flickr (shorturl.at/ajrrv), taken by roozbeh rokni, 2018, creative commons licence (cc by-nc-nd 2.0), no changes made, used here for non-commercial purposes]. 28 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a it is possible to think of other examples of the human-non-human composite acting in the urban realm at a more fine-grained level, for instance, the opportunistic colonisation of human structures by wildlife: peregrine falcons, say, taking up residence on hotel balconies, or swifts roosting by the hundreds in chimneys. the practical point here is to always first look for opportunities in urban design and planning for the mutual enhancement of both human and (selected) non-human life—especially where these might not be immediately and obviously apparent—and to amplify their potentials. or to put another way: spinoza’s concepts of the common notion and the composite body are useful as diagnostic tools for design and planning. to think—and design and plan—the urban as a composite body that supports its non-human cohabitants raises additional challenges, specifically around how we bound the spatiality and temporality of the object. firstly, how are we to think— and delimit—its temporality, its rhythms? it is not just that we can see how the composite body expresses the convergence or syncopation of different timings (as in the coming-together of crow, crosswalk, and car) but that these temporalities themselves express the continuation or introduction of different kinds of durations. urban nature as a composite body might involve, in part, wind and weather patterns that have persisted over thousands of years. or it might involve evolutionary processes among species that express a continuation of life from inception, that express a species in continual becoming—a repetition-differentiation that persists not just in the thousand tiny acts that bring life from life but also (to further the idea of city as a composite body) in the larger connective tissues of the city. here, in a manner similar to spinoza’s epistle about the worm in the blood (ep. 32), we must become attentive to the myriad processes that compose and connect the city, that comprise its whole. this city as a vast weave of processes, whose imbrication in and significance to the whole we often are aware of only when they are absent or shift in intensity (for instance in a blackout or power outage). these are the processes that effectuate this composite, whether we are thinking of how rhythms of migration or hibernation are calibrated with the presence or absence of food on arrival or awakening, or how prosthetic technologies such as a crosswalk can serve as “common notions” that enable specific but mutual forms of thriving. designing or planning the city with wildlife in mind is to make material these temporal problems. secondly, how do we—or must we?—draw spatial boundaries around the composite body? where does it begin and end? western ways of thinking are often seduced by the false certainty of geopolitical boundaries, but when we begin to think urban natures as a composite body in the spinozist sense, such boundaries begin to dissolve. in spinoza’s thought, the composite body extends itself not to a predefined boundary but to the limits of its powers (ruddick, 2008, 2016). extension may be congruent with materiality, but this is a materiality that is constantly expressing itself in an infinite variation of modes, that is, in an infinite variation of bodies in becoming, in transformation, going to the limits of their powers. in a deleuzian reading, for instance, one does not think of a forest as “bounded” by its edge, but rather as a forest that gradually peters out, going to the limit of its powers. as deleuze notes: the edge of the forest is a limit. [is] that the forest [...] defined by its outline? it’s a limit of what? is it a limit to the form of the forest? [no] it’s a limit to the action of the forest […] the forest that had so much power arrives at the 29 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a limit of its power, it can no longer lie over the terrain, it thins out […]. the forest is not defined by a form: it is defined by a power: power to make the trees continue up to the moment at which it can no longer do so. the only question that i have to ask of the forest is: what is your power? that is to say, how far will you go? (deleuze, 1981, my translation). this may be why, interestingly, spinoza speaks a great deal of bodies and extension in the ethics, but uses the term “space” rather sparingly. space, for spinoza, is a secondary function of potentia and potestas—the expression of the composition of forces. what then is the limit of the composite body? if we begin to think of our city, for instance, as partly composed through the migration patterns of birds whose vast routes span northern and southern hemispheres, then where are the beginnings and ends of our ethical responsibilities? and of our political alliances? thinking of the city as a composite body causes us to question the juridico-political limits of our ethical responsibilities: how we respond in specific urban localities has implications for life far beyond our boundaries. *** to think the city as a composite body in spinoza’s terms is to become open to an awareness of the city as a composition of forces—a choreography of bodies that are constantly interweaving and overflowing imagined boundaries, struggles that are fought as much over time as space, the accommodation of the temporalities and spatialities of other life processes, other rhythms and cycles that would, without a recalibration, sync uneasily with the pacing and spacing of human requirements. it is to become aware of the city as a chronology fought over and fixed in concrete (such as the construction of freeways) and as a choreography enacted through legislation (the timing of dimming of city lights in spring to reduce collisions of migrating birds with tall buildings). it is to become aware of the deleterious effects that certain taken-for-granted features of urban life have on both humans and non-human cohabitants (noise and light pollution figure centrally here), and to design and plan accordingly. it is an invitation to think about collaborations beyond juridico-political boundaries and to begin to connect with creaturely processes very different from our own, yet sharing common notions whose potentials can be amplified by design. (if the “fatal confusion” of the west [mckibben, 2003] in thinking about time is to think of nature as stasis and humans as progress, then, in reimagining and redesigning the urban through the concept of the composite body, we are simply addressing the prosaic, pragmatic problem of coordination.) finally, to become open to the multiple durations of the composite body is, nowadays, to confront the challenge of extinction—what happens when (what we now understand as) parts of the composite die off ? it is to confront the challenge of extinction along what thom van dooren calls its dull edge—the “slow unraveling of intimately entangled ways of life that begins long before the death of the last individual and continues to ripple forward long afterward, drawing in living beings in a range of different ways” (2014: 12). this challenge needs to be confronted through the design and planning of the prosthetics of an alternatively conceived city—an alternatively conceived composite body—that would enable the coordinated thriving of beings of different natures. not just a challenge, but also an opportunity. 30 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a acknowledgements this research was presented as a keynote paper at the arts of spinoza and pacific spinoza conference in auckland on may 26-28, 2017, sponsored by auckland university of technology and the university of auckland. many thanks to eu jin chua for coordination of the conference and thoughtful comments on a final draft. the research was supported by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada through the funding of the insight grant, “crossing boundaries: human wildlife encounters in the greater toronto area.” as principal investigator of that project, i work with a team of colleagues including professor sue bunce (university of toronto) and professor leesa fawcett and professor justin podur (york university), and our graduate research assistants. we explore a range of factors (legislative, educational, organisational) that influence human wildlife relations in the region. 31 common notions and composite collaborations: thinking with spinoza to design urban infrastructures for human and wild cohabitants t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a endnotes 1 www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bgpgknpq3e0 . 2 “that which so disposes the human body that it can be affected in more ways, or which renders it capable of affecting external bodies in more ways, is advantageous to man, and proportionately more advantageous as the body is thereby rendered more capable of being affected in more ways and of affecting other bodies in more ways.” (e4p38) 3 also see mary grunstra’s map of the toronto ravine system, which may be viewed at https:// www.thestar.com/content/dam/ thestar/life/homes/ opinion/2018/09/28/considerthe-future-of-green-spaces-asyou-consider-your-vote/_2_ green_map.jpg, or in davies, et al. (2018). 4 the idea of “conjunction” in one well-known passage from deleuze and guattari’s a thousand plateaus: “the tree imposes the verb ‘to be,’ but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, ‘and… and…and…’ this conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb ‘to be.’” (1987: 25). lloyd, g. (1980). spinoza’s environmental ethics. inquiry: an interdisciplinary journal of philosophy 23(3): 293–311. maturana, h.r., & varela, f.j. (1980). autopoesis and cognition. london: d. reidel. may, j. & thrift, n., eds. (2001). timespace: geographies of temporality. london: routledge. mckibben, b. (2003).worried? us? granta 83 (autumn): 7–12. ministry of public infrastructure renewal (ontario) (2006). places to grow: better choices, brighter future, proposed growth plan for the greater horseshoe area. toronto: government of ontario. montag, w. (1998). preface. in e. balibar, spinoza and politics. london: verso. peirce, c.s. 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(2014). flight ways: life and loss at the edge of extinction. new york: columbia university press. world health organization (2015). connecting global priorities: biodiversity and human health: a state of knowledge review. geneva: world health organization press. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 105 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s review / michael milojević mirjana lozanovska (ed.) ethno-architecture and the politics of migration since we’ve had migration longer than architecture, the latter’s history is a palimpest inscribed by the histories of migrations. the canonical western history of architecture in the old world is a succession of migrations—the dynastic egyptian migrations up into nubia, greek migrations west into ancient sicily, umayyad and almohad migrations north into iberia, and of course reversals and re-reversals. in ethno-architecture and the politics of migration, mirjana lozanovska reminds us that an important facet of cultural hegenomies is the reading and control of urban space and architecture. in this volume, she gathers the research of fourteen scholars, each of them carrying out micro studies into the ethno-architectures of transnational migrations across the past few decades. while all her contributors engage with the city, not all can be said to have engaged explicitly with architecture, and none engages in a sustained reading of form, space or materiality. lozanovska articulates this loose assemblage of materials over three sections—the first and third concerned with expansive ethno-landscapes in metropolitan centres, with four case studies focussed on smaller scale domestic topics across the middle section. though lozanovska’s publication does not include studies which focus on the architecture of prominent or longstanding transnational migrant communities, two chapters focus on ‘third world-looking’ facets of melbourne. ian woodcock’s piece on the particularity of sydney road as an urban armature of ethno-architecture analyses its exceptional density and diversity, noting that the original two-story narrow frontage mainstreet building stock, the retention of which is now supported by heritage controls, endorses the need for adaptivity and reads as a palimpsest of simultaneous readings, quite literally. in another chapter, david beynon’s case study on the rebuilding of emir sultan mosque in the suburb of dandenong highlights issues around the visibility of minorities. unpicking the cultural disinclination to appreciate neo-ottoman architectural forms, he highlights the council’s biased planning application process. he points out that the new project was deemed “not in keeping with the character of the neighbourhood” even if the law said that there was no distinction to be made between christian and muslim places of worship. in his account of the ‘indianisation’ across a part of queens, new york, john frazier highlights in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 106 review / mirjana lozanovska (ed). ethno-architecture and the politics of migration r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s the irrational racist response to the transformation and renewal of commerical and domestic properties by indian immigrants. the scenario involving waves of immigrants moving gradually through the city neighbours, before dispersing in subsequent generations, is common internationally where the closing of ethnic ‘institutions’, be they jewish delis, italian bars, or austro-hungarian patisseries, are replaced by ‘strange’ new businesses catering to an entirely different migrant clientelle. mark gillem and lyndsey pruitt report on this phenomenon—the highly concentrated and visibly coherent migrant settlement areas such as san francisco’s chinatown, where shopping, political, cultural and spiritual pursuits had been concentrated within a few blocks—to the dispersed communities of the biggest ethiopian-americans zone in atlanta, and the even more extensive migrant landscape found in america’s largest lebanese-american community of detroit. arjit sen reports on the incremental expansion of the extended patel family businesses in the medium density fine grain urban fabric of devon street, north chicago, as an example of “spatial temporality”. now, two generations on, the patels are an extended family each fronting a facet of the national patel brands, supplying to a much broader ethnic spectrum nationally, disengaged from their original clientelle to the point where devotional songs and vegetarian stricture is long gone. in contrast with the patels’ immersive experience retail formula, karen franck and philp speranza’s survey into the latest iteration of mobile food vending in new york and portland notes how, in a bid to enter hospitality, the food trucks and carts of the cash-strapped migrant support the semblance of an informal city and its unpredictably pleasureable urban experiences. but where the truck or cart format cannot support an ethno-architectural atmosphere or sustained client contact, these busineses often branch into immobile restaurants. the co-authors recommend that more cities actively support these endeavours as they tend to serve a significant sector of the low wage earners, who claim otherwise be priced out of the market by high restaurant prices. the four “materialities of home” chapters sit together more comfortably. using vista hermosa in the mexican state of jalisco as a case study to better understand the aspirational aspects of migrants’ remittance projects, sarah lopez points out that the landscape of migration is double-ended in that some properous mexican migrants, not only mexicanize their american neighbourhood, but through sustained philanthropic involvement in seed-funding via a mexican government urban development program, also engage in the americanization of their hometowns by the construction of luxurious vacation homes, the renovation of a plaza, and the construction of a sports and entertainment faciliity. critical responses and ambivalent results suggest that economic infrastructure might be a wiser investment. christien klaufus’s contribution concerns remittance architecture in the peri-urban zones of three mid-size latin american cities—cuenca in equador, quetzaltenango in guatemala and huancayo in peru. applying “demonstration effect” analysis, it is noted that whilst the owners of these unconventionally large and non-traditional residential forms are re-investing in their hometowns, they are simultaneously jumping up the social ladder. architectural form and ornament re-emerge in iris levin’s readings of two domestic interiors in tel aviv. deriving socio-political meaning from the ornamentation of the “moroccan rooms” synonymous with sephardi in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 107 review / mirjana lozanovska (ed). ethno-architecture and the politics of migration r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s moroccan-israeli immigrants, she points out that these private havens of nostalgia do not challenge the long-dominant european ashkenazy culture like the outwardly morrocan cultural sites of bab-sali shrine at netivot. marcel vellinga’s study of two unrealised pseudo-indisch style neighbourhood developments in the dutch city of almere set out the projects’ intention to satisfy the late life nostalgic inclinations of first and second generation indisch immigrants to live out their days with each other within a visibly distinct environment. while rejecting the objections of the dutch press to ersatz-indonesian design, the author evokes notions of domestic comfort, of being ‘at home’, without an analysis of the projects’ urban or architectural design. the contributions of the first and last chapters of lozanovska’s volume highlight the opportunities that the study of the representation, images and their interpretation provides the researcher in this field. ayona datta’s piece on photo-narratives of london by polish migrant construction workers, and yannik porsché’s account of mounting a temporary exhibition on the history of immigration in paris, and later berlin, points out the gulf between a migrant’s view of the everyday city and official narratives projected by institutions. as one might expect, lozanovska’s own final chapter is both the most broadly framed and most closely argued piece in this volume. in it, many important questions of her topic and material are asked. in her repositioning of ethno architecture alongside the prevailing understanding of vernacular architecture, i found myself wondering how she might see this in the broader context of the pseudo-ethnic and pseudo-historic architectures, and other reinterpreted and debased forms by long established and fully integrated communities, each punctuating the urban panorama of our cities. as an ex-toronto and vancouver serbian-canadian architect, i carry personal experience of two examples lozanovska calls upon, these being the tendency among balkan migrants to increase the success of their relocation in western industrial cities by leaving and arriving in clusters, and the ironic indignation of shaughnessy residents in their reactions to wealthy immigrant chinese “monster houses”. such phenomena from distinctly different socio-political urban contexts suggest that the coherence of ethno-architecture as a study is critically important, and that research of this kind be strongly contextualised in time and space. interstices 13 after the aftershocks tom daniell in november 2010, i was asked by the chief editor of volume (a dutch-american architecture journal for which i’m an editorial advisor) to contribute a short text based on my spontaneous, unconsidered response to a swatch of pale blue he had sent to me by e-mail. many other people received the same request: artists, architects, graphic designers, writers, philosophers, and so on. to me it simply suggested the sea – not a particularly original reaction, to be sure – and i sent him this paragraph: spending most of my life on island nations (new zealand, japan), i’m always close to a coast. on the best days, a tessellating, coruscating field of blue stretches from your feet to the horizon, then curves back as a smooth canopy gradually deepening in hue. the ground shakes violently from time to time, as if suspended in a precarious equilibrium, and then you watch for the horizon itself to rise – the ironically named pacific ocean always threatening to return everything to blue. the collected responses were published the following month, in volume issue 26. on march 11, 2011, the pacific ocean did rise and inundate part of the northeast coast of japan. there is no cause and effect here, obviously. it was (is) always just a matter of time, but nonetheless the timing gave me a chill. i was in china that day, reaching the end of a month-long design studio at a local university. as i walked into the room for the final review, the students immediately told me a large earthquake had just hit japan, measuring 8 on the richter scale. i didn’t yet know the epicentre, but i knew the potentially horrific implications of that number if it was anywhere near a city (in fact the magnitude was later determined to have been 9 – a barely conceivable 10 times stronger – and considered the most powerful earthquake ever to have struck japan). at that point, there was nothing to be done. we began the review. within 24 hours i was back home in kyoto, having flown on a half-empty plane, waited in an almost non-existent queue for the “foreigners” desk at immigration, and encountered a series of sober but admirably good-humoured airport staff, train passengers, and taxi drivers. only a few weeks earlier i had spent several days making and fielding phone calls and e-mails reacting to the christchurch quake. i now did the same regarding japan. to avoid clogging the overburdened phone lines, facebook and twitter became ideal ways to check on the status of acquaintances closer to the disaster area, their updates letting us know about the situation in real time, as well the simple fact that they were alive. as the death toll headed into the tens of thousands – entire villages erased from the earth – it became terrifyingly clear that the real problem was nuclear. a cracked reactor at fukushima was releasing unknown quantities of radiation into the air and sea. even amid the panic and misinformation of those early days, it was obviously going to be a profound catastrophe for japanese society, and a long-term problem for the entire world. since then, in almost every lecture, every email, every conversation, i am asked to comment on the situation in japan, my home for the last 18 years. of course, it’s impossible for me not to say something, but in a sense it’s also impossible for me to say anything at all. by that i mean: words are inadequate to capture this level of 101 devastation and tragedy. every description, no matter how it’s phrased, seems too weak or else trying too hard, like disaster-movie advertising copy. our vocabulary for such events is irredeemably clichéd. i’m reminded of the author martin amis, who has spent his career in what he calls “the war against cliché” but in his memoir experience makes the very insightful remark that – i’m paraphrasing from memory – you know you are experiencing a transformative moment when tired clichés suddenly regain the power that they must have possessed when first formulated. hundreds of kilometres away in kyoto, we experienced very little hardship in the weeks following the quake. there were occasional shortages in the supermarkets and temporary quotas on bottled water as supplies were redirected to the survivors. via television and the internet, we tracked the aftershocks and followed progress at the fukushima reactor as a small group of workers diligently tried to staunch the leaking radioactivity, exposing themselves to levels that effectively meant committing slow suicide for the sake of the nation. in conversation with an american friend, i described them as heroes and their behaviour as quintessentially japanese. he agreed that they were heroes, but insisted that you would find a similar group of volunteers in the united states if something similar happened there. true enough, but i suspect that american (western) heroism emerges partly out of a desire for personal, and possibly posthumous, fame – and is no less admirable for that – whereas japanese heroism emerges from a sense of anonymous humility and solidarity. indeed, one of the recurrent clichés about the aftermath is the orderliness, cooperativeness, and stoicism of the people. there was no rioting or looting, almost no opportunistic crime of any kind. as with the kobe earthquake in 1995, there is a surreal quality to seeing a nation in which everything seems so precisely controlled overwhelmed by brute natural forces. but japan has always lived with imminent disaster: earthquakes, fires, floods, typhoons, tsunamis. the natural world is regarded with awe and fear. japanese traditional culture’s reputed “harmony with nature” – one of the most persistent clichés – is in many respects a sophisticated attempt to filter and tame the unpredictability of nature. the aestheticisation of the natural environment (bonsai trees, landscaped gardens, the katsushika hokusai (1760-1849). a version of the kanagawa wave from the 36 views of mt fuji [wikimedia commons] interstices 13 rituals associated with seasonal change) is intended as symbolic control of essentially uncontrollable wildness. long-term survival depends on social harmony, discipline, hierarchy, loyalty, and consensus. and, all too often, on the willingness of individuals to sacrifice themselves for the good of the collective. for better or worse, this set of attitudes is, i think, the source of japan’s incredible resilience and inventiveness, its capacity to constantly rebuild itself, even redesign itself. the aftershocks continue sporadically even as i write. in a sense, this has all been one long quake varying in intensity over many months. sooner or later japan is guaranteed to experience something similar all over again – and again, and again. elsewhere and differently, perhaps, but inevitably. the northeast coastline of japan is dotted with “tsunami stones”: megaliths up to three metres tall and six centuries old, engraved with warnings to run inland the moment an earthquake hits, or not to build any closer to the sea than where they are embedded. over the centuries, the latter warnings had been increasingly ignored, sea walls and modern communication technologies supposedly making them redundant. with the 20/20 hindsight of an armchair expert it’s easy enough to criticise the complacency and willful ignorance, the unpreparedness of the populace, the shocking vulnerability of the nuclear facility, and so forth. at the same time, we shouldn’t lose sight of the astounding lack of earthquake damage to buildings in tokyo and elsewhere, the minimal loss of life due to the earthquake alone. a year on, the degree to which the afflicted regions have recuperated is astonishing and moving, though not altogether surprising – recall that the hiroshima branch of the bank of japan was open for business within two of days of the atomic bombing in 1945. so, what to do now, once the mess has been cleaned up, the dead buried, and the survivors housed? the crucial issue, or at least the one most under human control, is nuclear power. following the meltdown, many of japan’s nuclear plants have been shut down pending safety tests, while germany, for example, has vowed to permanently close down all its plants within 10 years. statistics may attribute more deaths to coal mining than nuclear energy, but coal-mining deaths are almost entirely confined to the miners themselves, with no impact on the wider public, no long-term poisoning of the environment, no genetic damage to children in the womb. to be sure, we are bombarded with radiation constantly – a transatlantic flight supposedly exposes you to more radiation than a visit to tohoku today, and rome on any given day is still more radioactive than tokyo after the quake. debates among the experts about the relative dangers of nuclear power leave laypersons with little option other than to subscribe to the view that best fits their own prejudices. but no matter how sophisticated our defensive measures become, there is always going to be a tsunami bigger than any sea wall, an earthquake stronger than any building foundation. in japan, and elsewhere, all that can be done is to create architecture and infrastructure that demonstrates intelligence in its construction, respect for its users, and humility toward the blind forces of the natural world. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 67 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s ross jenner & patrick clifford in memoriam rewi michael robert thompson (19 january 1954–2016) of ngāti porou and ngāti raukawa descent, born and raised in wellington, architect and also academic at the university of auckland, school of architecture & planning from 2002, rewi thompson passed away in mid-october 2016. rewi completed a new zealand certificate of engineering through the wellington polytechnic, having previously worked as a structural and then architectural draftsman for structon group before attending the university of auckland. after graduation, he joined structon’s auckland office where he became a registered architect and then, in 1983, established his own practice. throughout his career, he received over 25 design awards. by 1986, his work had achieved sufficient renown to gain him an invitation—along with a group of well-known new zealand architects, ian athfield, john blair, roger walker—to participate in a lecture programme in the united states, facilitated by architect stanley tigerman, who had recently visited new zealand at the invitation of the nzia. from marae to public housing, from town centres to healthcare facilities, from exhibitions to event architecture—rewi produced, for instance, the temporary outdoor pulpit in the auckland domain for the visit of pope john paul ii (1986)— his work favouring the inclusive and the diverse was always slightly beyond what was imaginable and achievable in the built public realm. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 68 in memoriam / rewi michael robert thompson r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s apart from his own practice, he was an important collaborator engaging with a broad range of colleagues across a variety of projects—for instance, the plan of the wellington civic square (te aho a maui, 1988) with athfield; the city-to-sea bridge (1990) with john grey, master planner for wellington waterfront, and paratene matchitt; and the te papa project (1990) with frank gehry and athfield, which was blindly and stupidly thrown out in the first round of selection. a decade later came the olympic park war memorial in newmarket, auckland, completed with isthmus group (2001) and the city mission proposal undertaken with stevens lawson for hobson street, auckland (2006). he created works that, beyond exploring biculturalism, built relationships that enabled others to do so also. as such, he was a bridge connecting and bringing into close proximity multiple worlds. his te wero bridge proposal for quay street, auckland, for instance, with warren & mahoney and holmes consulting, was conceived of as an overarching hīnaki (eel trap) and offered a figure for connecting and spanning a diversely configured and populated city. among rewi’s unique traits was a very personal understanding of materials, often in models, where, for example, he employed paua (abalone) and oyster shell, pounamu (jade) and other stone, and various states of wood, as in his models for the wellington waterfront. in this work, piers break out, and ramps, tilted planes and other fractures narrate the emergence of land from sea. timber-work resembling drift wood suggests the arrival of canoes and sailing ships. rewi delighted in the sheer exhilaration of improvisation. he caught things in the act of making; they often appear inchoate and temporary, but they retain the immediacy of that act. his projects do not begin in form or geometry but in an impromptu play of provisional elements, where materials have important lifecycles. his understanding of place, moreover, involved negotiation—rites of foundation and of construction. place is not not something simply found but made. places, like buildings, are events. place is a matter of placing and marking, where the beginning often lies in nominating something, in naming it, in putting down a thing (like a stone or a stick) that marks or allows us to think about putting something on that site. but the thing you put there for the purpose of just starting, might also have abstract architectural qualities that you keep because it is the thing that in the process, has taken on some meaning for those involved. (thompson, 1995: 26) while his projects make visible traditional sanctities of places and their relationships to an over-arching cultural matrix, his understanding of place was not one of nostalgia, archaeological recovery, or the disclosure of what already exists as some sort of permanent background. even though māori understanding of landscape may have been pre-urban, it is, as rewi demonstrated, still perfectly capable of animating the most banal and sterile anglo-saxon urban planning and building forms. to live and make architecture between cultures is to recognize that any fixed ‘original’ tradition cannot be realised by any process that translates it. on the question of negotiation, he wrote of his own house: the house or the project, then, is the object of negotiation. the object is a part of this reconciliation that is central to the process of culture: they have to get used to it or burn it down. (1995: 25) rewi’s work always had an element of the iconic, a term which implies something sacred, ritualistic, or worshipped, a suggestion of mystery, ‘presence’ or in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 69 in memoriam / rewi michael robert thompson r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s ‘aura’. indeed, at its best, his works embody these qualities. traditionally, the iconic also implies an image on a flat surface or background. in order to achieve a hieratic force, a certain flattening and diagrammatic condensation is needed. among very many examples, this is demonstrated by the image of the waka in the ngāti poneke marae project (a wonderful reversal of stanley tigerman’s titanic, where the iconic postmodernist image of mies’ crown hall (1978) sinking into lake michigan became instead the arrival of māori into wellington harbour), the severed fish at otara town centre (1987), the mountain in wellington’s civic square, the kotouku (white heron) as papal pulpit, the suspended letter of the wishart house (1987–99), the baskets of knowledge at pukenga, māori education department (1991), or the hīnaki project (2007). in māori culture, voice, language and land are connected. a matrix forms over the features of the landscape (mountain, river, swamp, etc.) and their sites are defined by their relationship to them. similarly, within the tradition of oratory and oral literature, kōrero are required, specific stories whereby things are animated, made into cultural objects by a process of clothing with words. over time, a thing becomes invested with talk, transformed “by building words (korero) into it and by contact with people, into a thing maoris class as a taonga” (mead 1984: 20–21). buildings, too, are animated, and this means that they have agency. since the demise of modernism, we have come to understand that agency in architecture means more than the simple functional workings of a building. the paradigm of the building as machine is well passed; rewi lived through that era and overcame it. an idea of animation arose that was typified in various tendencies: ‘animate form’, parametrics and ‘vital beauty’. yet, for rewi, this return to the animate took a different slant. for example, as well as toying with it as a person without eyes, he presented his own house (1985) as site of warfare: the stepping terraces of the volcanic pā (hill forts), whose remnants are scattered throughout auckland, are effective in the stepped terraces of the house. a sectional model, with the facade removed to show the design of the interior screens, reveals violence, the fig. 1 rewi thompson. elevation of thompson house. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 70 in memoriam / rewi michael robert thompson r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s violence of the region, its geology, its volcanoes and their myths, and the blood spilt over successive occupations of auckland: “maori vs maori and later maori vs the colonists. but now it is violent, where people fight over land, they fight a war for a view of the water. i didn’t want any windows” (1995: 26). the vivid red paint in the drawing, on the model and on the screens, animates the house by the evocation of blood. perhaps this is a form of security, a living-on from the primeval cosmogony when papatūānuku (earth) and ranginui (sky) were cut apart. rewi put it thus: “blood brings the violence into the soul of the house.” (pers. comm.) rewi’s works may appear stark and diagrammatic, but at an intersection of cultures—as questions posed—they remain a rich call to attend to the limits of one’s own thinking—and above all, to the encounter with what lies outside it. ross jenner fig. 2 rewi thompson. model of thompson house screens. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 71 in memoriam / rewi michael robert thompson r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s eulogy delivered by patrick clifford at tātai hono marae/church of the holy sepulchre on friday 21 october tena koutou. to lucy, des and the whanau, on behalf of the architectural community, particularly of course, those who could not be here personally, and on behalf of the new zealand institute of architects, the collective guardian of our craft, i offer you our thoughts, our support, our love. too young and too soon rewi leaves this physical world. his presence, however, will remain palpable—in constructed works, projects and writings, in the many students he inspired and mentored, in the colleagues he influenced and guided, and in the memories we all hold. rewi is a hugely significant figure in the culture and architecture of aotearoa— new zealand. his exploration and defining of a way to express bi-culturalism lies at the core of this legacy. of it, he said, our practice is interested in what this might mean architecturally. how you would discuss the sort of relationships this might produce in a spatial way. does it mean that instead of having only one door you have two? where would people go when you have two different doors? they would have to make a decision as to which door they belong to (1995: 25). rewi had an ability to reduce and represent issues and ideas in incredibly simple and powerful ways. in some ways i think, of these as being like parables appropriate to today. his work is raw and elemental—literally expressed as earth, water, wind and fire, conceptual and abstract, heroic and challenging. formally inventive and technically daring. neither his work nor his words were ever delivered in a strident or assertive way but were offered with respect and dignity. lots of gently posed questions challenged any assumptions or too quickly reached conclusions. rewi was not about answers but about the process. he was great collaborator, there are many here like me and my colleagues who worked with him. he created not only works that explored biculturalism but relationships that enabled others to do so—he was a bridge to connect our worlds. rewi was a great colleague, too. des, i can’t imagine how many of those models you two made together … he was also a great friend. he first entered my life wearing pink jandels, having arrived late for the start of architecture school in march 1978 (38 years ago), fresh from the national surf lifesaving championships representing worser bay as i recall. he came directly into second year and produced a stream of striking projects—the first a bach at piha illustrated with a highlighter that matched his jandels. we got to know each other that year and shared a studio in 3rd year. the studio structure at that time involved the students’ picking a project from those offered at the beginning of each term. rewi would do them all and still fit in a reasonable number of visits to the kiwi! he redefined studio. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 72 in memoriam / rewi michael robert thompson r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s rewi was not only a member of the architectural profession ( the nzia ) but also of the “380 group”. we fell under the spell of john williams at the end of 1979— if friendship is about shared experience, then we had enough to last a lifetime after that summer! malcom bowes, michael thomson, tim nees, ti lian seng, rewi and i were chatting in the studio about holiday job prospects when john popped up and off we went to our first demolition job which paid $3.80 per hour. when the summer ended, we had demolished quite a few things, sold and partly put together a modular house in patumahoe and bought a substantial but rather run-down boarding house in parnell. rewi had the only car, a mini, we needed to get to patumahoe each day—with five of us in it, it wasn’t speedy—rewi was always known as ‘fangio’ from then on. i also stayed with rewi and leona that summer—they were so generous and welcoming—and so committed to each other and their families. over the last 30 years and more, we enjoyed happy times—from the tolaga bay motor camp to a lot of mondays in the corner bar of the globe tavern or a catch up in the office—and there have been sad times… aside from having a few laughs about the 380 days, every conversation we shared from then until the last time i saw him—a few weeks ago—no meeting went past without his saying “how’s the family?—that’s what is important”. he was right about that. vale rewi references thompson, rewi. “rewi thompson architect” [collection of two articles on two projects, the puukengu māori education centre at carrington polytechnic and the housing complex at rata vine, wiri, for the housing corporation of new zealand] (1995). transition, 47, 20–31. mead, sidney moko.te maori: maori art from new zealand collections, auckland, nz, heinemann, new york, american federation of arts, 1984 ° 0 0 1 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° if all those leaps of attention, flexing of eye muscles, fluctuations of the psyche, if all the effort it takes for a man just to hold himself upright within the flow of traffic on a busy street could be measured, he thought – as he toyed with calculating the incalculable – the grand total would surely dwarf the energy needed by atlas to hold up the world, and one could then estimate the enormous undertaking it is nowadays merely to be a person who does nothing at all. at the moment, the man without qualities was just such a person. robert musil, the man without qualities (1930-43) writing in the age of the metropolis and the great urban concentration spawned by industrialisation and imperial expansion, musil sketched a scene of super-saturated, sensory life in which, beyond any personal purview, “a world of qualities without a man has arisen”, a world in which private experience, indeed personal experience tout court, dissolves into a systematised grab for human attention run to the limit (musil 1996: 158159). in the intervening three quarters of a century the urban itself has assumed in many instances a ubiquity worthy of the title, the city without qualities. if one consequence of the truncation of human agency musil figured he was seeing in people as “passionate and detached at the same time” was a calculatedly implanted will to irresponsibility attending an exhausting immersion in spectacle (musil 1996: 159), another is a macroscaled collapse of civil responsibility and civility once upheld by the term urbanity. for jean-luc nancy, while ‘the city’ spreads to envelope “the orb of the world”, it displaces the old “religious christian bond” found in the west – expressed through the papal benediction addressed to the urbi et orbi (to the city and the world) – instituting instead an “agglomeration” or piling up that crowds out the possibility of the civility and hospitality once i n t r o d u c t i o n : t h e c i t y w i t h o u t q u a l i t i e s h a n n a h h o p e w e l l & a n d r e w d o u g l a s aspired to in a city-world conjoining. in place of well-being, he suggests, urban conglomeration ushers in a quality that more commonly “bears the quite simple and unmerciful name of misery” (33). in establishing the theme for this issue of interstices, it is this uncertain dichotomy in the urban between wellbeing and misery — a dichotomy seemingly linked to its expanding, de-formation as figure — that we aimed would be teased out and tested. as lewis mumford long ago claimed, the idea of the urban itself is linked to a protean impulse – to live a civic life, one where accumulating abundance might lead to social enjoyment and symbolic richness beyond mere subsistence. in short, the urban has, and ought to still, enlarge, as mumford reflects through aristotle, “the good life in embryo” (16). yet despite contemporaniety’s manifest loss of such collective largesse, it warrants seeing in the urban the virtual equipment for the ‘eruption’ of broadly effected agency and enrichment. in this regard, the sheer volume of discourses on the urban point to both deep cultural anxieties about the worth, utility, or even sense of cities and their persisting, emancipatory appeal. yet the plethora of claims on the value and sustained identity of urban place potentially operates as cover for something far more disconcerting – something that saskia sassen calls the savage sorting effected by cities (a sorting out of the trustworthy from the suspicious, the haves from the have-nots, and the new productive and cultural elites from the rest). further, if we follow arjun appendurai for instance, cities are both antithetical to national territoriality and are incubators for working out the tumult of citizenship against a backdrop of highly contested, sometimes violently contested, identity claims. yet if cities test citizenry difference and work through what gets popularly instituted and affectively consolidated at a national-territorial level, they are themselves at the front line of a contestatory political-economic regime channelled through governance mechanisms. in a recent essay in the guardian, sassen for example, sees (in the context of a buy up of urban land by corporate interests) city-ness itself being ° 0 0 2 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° subjected to a radical remaking. as complex places where, as she said, “those without power [also] get to make a history and a culture”, cities have long harboured a cosmopolitanism in excess of prevailing socio-economic and governmental force. it is their longevity and sheer persistence that gives cities an open, emancipatory edge: a city is a complex but incomplete system: in this mix lies the capacity of cities across histories and geographies to outlive far more powerful, but fully formalised, systems – from large corporations to national governments. (sassen 2015) as sassen warns, the possibility of exercising and consolidating a “complexity in one’s powerlessness” rests on the very possibility of a commons or domain maintained as diversely and fully ‘public’ – something we risk losing in the current appropriation of shared urban space and its over-determination formally, fiscally and socially. the very incompleteness of the urban as that which defines its most valuable and vulnerable version of cosmopolitanism is similarly recognised by richard sennett (2010) in his deliberations on “the open city”. in the current closed mechanisms taking hold of urban space, he sees an escalating brittleness and inflexibility that does away with the deep redundancy and reusability of city fabric and the diverse cultural practices vested in it. worse, within the neo-liberal rhetoric of ‘freedom from constraint’, is a quest to manipulate “closed bureaucratic systems for private gain by an elite” (sennett 2010: 5). for sennett, openness, by comparison, means finding in cities something like a liquid substance or “colloid” in which, suspended, the matter or physical substance of places interacts indeterminately and at times ambiguously with social behaviour (sennett 2010: 6). in this sense definitive and fixed form, no less than normatively policed behaviours or desires, stand in the way of the densely diverse and disorderly dialogics necessarily voiced by cities when they presence the promise of city-ness. it is with precisely this sense of incompletion in mind that had us calling for an engagement with the idea of the urban as thing, a thing preceding object certainty and full knowing. we hoped to open up, in the context of an urban ubiquity that everywhere presses close, a distancing or problematicity in nomination as such. in short, how does the urban thing? t h i n g i n g bill brown, facing up to the difficult task of “‘thinking thingness’” in the context of cultural theory and literary criticism, recognised a tendency already well in play from mid-century to relinquish theory in favour of a grappling with things (brown 2004: 2). where poets like francis ponge – the ‘poet of things’ might have found the prospect of dealing with ideas nauseating and things, by comparison, delightful (if not compelling in an abyssal sense)1, historicism, no less seduced by the substantive, longs for a “return of the ‘real’”, while studies in material culture and art practices indexed to a reworking of the ordinariness of objects proliferate (brown 2004: 2). yet beginning with, or getting back to, things – things taken in their material certainty as objects – doesn’t get around or on top of thingness; as brown’s unpacks, objects are what we see through untroubled by any opacity of sense, while things, far from windowing onto the expected, interrupt or breakdown causing us to wonder after them, and well… think (brown 2004: 4). thingness would be in this sense, what sits excessively in things, temporalised as brown put it, “as the before and after of the object” except that this latency in fact subsists as an “all-atonceness”, a simultaneity undoing even now-ness as a refuge (brown 2004: 5). with kant, thingness would side then with, but elude, “phenomenal form” thereby setting in play a long rehearsed release from the demand to think precisely there, while simultaneously impelling types of thinking (phenomenological, psychoanalytic, and more recently speculative realist) that potentially could (brown 2004: 5-6). if the subject and its hold on the world is put centre-stage (or tactically pushed off-stage in the case of speculative realism) in this seesaw, things stand out as alienated entities (sometimes withdrawn, sometimes animated depending on cultural perspectives) uncannily persisting, in any case, aside, if not entirely apart, from human affairs (brown 2004: 8). earlier still, martin heidegger in the essay “the thing” recognised that the proliferation of actual things arising with industrialisation – commodities – and “the frantic abolition of all distance” associated with the circulatory mandate of urban life, in fact served to alienate us from things themselves (heidegger 1975: 165). further, while science might purport to get closest to “the real in reality”, in fact the “thingness of the thing remains concealed, forgotten” (heidegger 1975: 170). for as obliterating as the “atom bomb” is, as he noted, it is “only the grossest of all gross confirmations of the long-since-accomplished annihilation of the thing” (heidegger 1975: 170). by reading into a modest object a jug – the complex ways it holds open a space to gather or keep and give out or gift what is held (not just a liquid substance but an elemental associational nexus implicated with it)2, he argued that things reveal their thingness by standing out as conduits capable of drawing together into nearness an interconnectedness he called the fourfold “earth and sky, divinities and mortals” (heidegger 1975: 173). in other words, thingness gathers or brings together an arena of common or public concern in which incommensurate, yet integral dimensions of the world commingle despite their difference remaining intact as distance (heidegger 1975: 174-176). the thing-ness of a jug, say, is not in it per se – which reduces the issue to matters of representation; in gathering it actions a “thinging” or bringing forth of a broader adjacency. the urban too, might claim a jug-like summonsing of a void that holds and the gifting of outpour. mumford has claimed as much in the context of the early mesopotanian cities where irrigration channeling and the invention of pottery vessels were crucial to agricultural production and its stockpiling or storage permitting a dense and specialised peopling.3 linked to maternal hollowing and veneration of a bountious earth, mesopotanian clay tablets too became the first substance for recording inscrition and storing language – that mecahanism as maurice blanchot (1981) has written by which names murder things putting them within nominal grasp while casting things themselves into a shadowy domain beyond signification. if key amongst adam’s sin at eden was his transposing the world and its things into names (see schwenger 2004: 138), his expulsion from the garden set in play a series of lapses, the most critical of which is access to a bountious earth and the need, for subsequent generations (from enoch on), to secure sustenance by making cities. urban life in this context would amount to a hollowed out place standing in for an absence of countanence as much as nourishment. following lacan’s reading of the heidegger’s jugthing, while the potter could be said to craft a vessel around a hole that longs for and prompts filling (see schwenger 2004: 147), the urban itself in its biblical conceiving might be understood as that which has been assembled about a lost object (a divine correlation) and the gathering it calls up a psychical mechanism for managing longing. born of a departure seen through the eyes of “israel’s prophets”, urban history can be thought to stage in the west a break with the oikoumenē (or cosmic household as jan patočka has termed it; 1996: 35) and an edenic series peculiar to the judeo-christian tradition, where “imbalance” and “eccentricity”, in michel serres’s account, engenders both an itinerant line and an aberrant course consequent to an alienation from a nutritive earth (serres 1989: 10). if heidegger’s calling up of a fourfold echoes this cultural-psychical ° 0 0 3 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° disequilibrium and a broader project to recover in language an openness that withdraws, bruno latour building on serres’ history of science rejects heidegger’s mere fourfold in things, arguing instead that to think thingness in contemporary life it is necessary to engage with a thousandfold convening (latour 2004: 160-161). as he puts it: my point is thus very simple: things have become things again, objects have reentered the arena, the thing, in which they have to be gathered first in order to exist later as what stands apart. (latour 2004: 161) the arena he has in mind is that encircling of common or (human and non-human) public concern enveloping every phenomon; the fact of their standing rests on a gathering, a thinging, that adhers and insists manifestly so. or put another way, as w. j. t. mitchell does contra the errosive undermining of things heidegger saw: “the slogan for our times then is, not things fall apart, but things come alive. the modernist anxiety over the collapse of structure is replaced by the panic over uncontrolled growth of structures – cancers, viruses, and other rapidly evolving entities” (232). a difficult to conceive, yet alone manage, material vitalism erupts across the scene. for mitchell it is the legacy of a not yet finished romanticism that resonates in the plethora of appeals to things, materiality and physical objects, a resonance that confirms, as latour has claimed, a not yet arrived modernity (244). i n i s s u e an invited paper by mark dorrian and adrian hawker titled “the exhibition as an urban thing’” takes up the question of whether thingness and the urban can be exhibited? noting bruno latour’s reworking of martin heidegger’s essay “the thing”, dorrian and hawker similarly tease out a thing-object distinction seeing in latour’s contrasting of “matters of fact and concern” and its parallel demarcation between a will to master, in the case of objects, verses a tendency inherent in things to gather— the possibility that thingness potentiates both depending on how we chose to orientate to them. on the other hand, some things are more readily taken as things in the gathering sense, while others insistently draw us into object appreciation. cities of course are both bundles of facts (or can be made so) no less than a convening (a parliament in fact to borrow latour’s sense) of concerns, as identified above. as a quasi-object, half animated and self-organising, half plastic substance ‘man’-made, cities might also be seen as quasi-subjects, convening qualities in excess of persons as musil had it. in dorrian and hawker’s exposition of the exhibition on the surface by metis, at stake as they say, is a complex convening of retrieved things (a retrospective gathering of previous work) situated on, and in a certain sense within, a large floor drawing itself capturing multiple projects. the curatorial strategy worked to unsettle ground and scale drawing visitors into quasi-relations, relations undermining of the distancing that upholds objects. amongst the peer reviewed papers, mark jackson and mark hanlen diagnose an unsettling instability in modalities of planning and designing the future upon which government rationalities and design, as a predictive and derivative procedures, rely. through a mapping of relations between space, power, contingency and writing, they critically trace the emergence of statistical and predictive modelling to better take hold of that erosive thing subsisting within all urban futures – risk. robert hughes paper questions forms of civic innovation, and by proxy politics, emerging from unmetered ambition for technocratic civic transformation. with an explication of the origins and organisational elements of nyc’s selfappointment as the vanguard of a new global urban imaginary, the paper, speculates how applied sciences new york (asny) agitates and opens potential for new forms of citizen engagement. hughes argues this new brand of digital urbanism, designed to be emulated by ‘smart cities’ the world over, reinvigorates the urban as a potential locus for open-ended ‘world forming’ resistance. if the preceding two papers develop the socio-economic dimension of cities, maria koutsari, elena antonopoulou, and christos chondros in a paper titled “the urban creative factory: creative ecosystems and (im) material design practices” further push into the consequences of postfordist work practices and an evolution towards immaterial production in the areas of information, knowledge, and affective, creative commerce. de-industrialised cities in the global north, they argue, are subject to a radical makeover, one that sees them assume a factory-like organisation, but one recalibrated according to a biopolitical optimisation of productive capacity that takes up the entirety of living labour and commoditises via the production of ever-customised lifestyles and identities. recognising the integral role of creative and design professions in this commodification, they ask what new worker categories and collectives might emerge in the creative urban factory and what emancipatory strategies and collaborations might exist for designers? in the first of two papers that are broadly project-orientated, simon twose offers an exposition of his installation, concrete drawing exhibited at the adam art gallery in a show titled “drawing is/not building”, running april 24 – june 28, 2015. drawn to think through material agency and certain economies of digital and analogue making, he unfolds the normative productive sequence that sees drawings lead to building, working instead from built work into drawings, that in turn engender further made objects. arising via iterative design that foregrounds a variety of material engagements the work is shown to problematise objects, materials, scales and subjects in a parallel with built things and new designs for the city. in the second, carola moujan draw’s the urban into question by asking can digitally augmented furniture support place-making practices now that digital informational devices, installed as things of the urban, are increasingly commonplace? her critical commentary dispenses with technological performance to advocate the relational-orientated capacities of such devices as essentially aesthetic. through the proposition of the notion of interspace [entr’espace]—experience of multiple dimensions coexisting within an integrated perception of realities— moujan envisions augmentation as a form of polarisation of space through design that shifts from device, to spatial event. the final two papers of the peer reviewed section take tāmaki makaurau /auckland as subject. in the first, andrew douglas looks to the colonial founding of the town recognising in its formation a particularly poignant mixing of metropolitan and state imperatives or solutions aimed at heading off the systematic colonisation ambitioned by the new zealand company for wellington and other colonial towns in the country. in a detailed reading of the largely unrealised ‘felton mathew plan’ for auckland, the paper seeks to contextualise the proposal relative to classical romantic european precedents and what can be thought of as lyric-epic sensibility transposed to the tāmaki isthmus – a sensibility it is argued that persists in an ongoing, topographically sensitised (sub)urbanism. where douglas’ paper charts circumstances setting the city’s founding, manfredo manfedini and ross ° 0 0 4 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° jenner attend to the latest configurations of public expression in tāmaki makaurau /auckland. shopping centres they argue actualise emerging forms of urban public space particularly attuned to low-density cities within neo-liberal political frameworks. as integrated urban enclosures devoted to lifestyle consumption, they pointedly develop heterotopic qualities mobilised by spectacle in pursuit of a post-consumerist associative life apposite to the digital era. concluding the issue are two non-peer reviewed papers exploring projects indexed to situated urban encounter. in the first, sophia banou’s drawing practice interrogates the material and temporal limits of conventional codes of architectural drawing to address the urban as a transitory condition within a gallery installed project. the work stages a dynamic representational field constituted by situated transcription of the city of edinburgh, the actual city of edinburgh, and the movement of spectators through the gallery. banou asserts this trialectic confluence as a mode of inhabitation within the space of representation afford material recoding to emerge and persistently renegotiate between the city’s actuality and its drawn image. in the second, hannah hopewell, locates the urban thing as a material thing of thought itself to engage an encounter with the notion of encounter at the urban intertidal space of juhu beach, mumbai. drawing from françois laruelle’s non-standard thinking methods, the project labours inscriptive practices of photography, and philo-poetics to exemplify a mode of thought that presents things without being about them. hopewell trials thingness to actualise an urban address that distresses the transcendent primacy of human gaze in urban diagnostic claims on identity, and thus makes space, not for a new mode of perception, but a radicalised ‘experience of thought’, which is to say, an experience of immanence. collectively, what these papers foreground is something of the open indeterminacy of urban relations and the spatial, fiscal and relational configurations upheld there. if the task of thinking the thingness of the urban has drawn out a certain inability of the phenomenological subject to put consciousness into all things as musil had anticipated, the city without qualities might be seen less as a ubiquitous everyplace (what marc augé (2009) has termed a “non-place”), or as an empirical place given by ‘the facts’, but as a site of problematicity or concern opening the experience of thought. if the question of a thinging of the urban turns on its substantiveness, its ontological configuring, musil’s world “of qualities without a man” suggests, not a place where “being = is” (flaxman 2000: 47), but one engendered for better or worse immanently. ° 0 0 5 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° e n d n o t e s 1 s c r u t i n i s i n g w h a t i s n e a r t o h a n d , p o n g e w r o t e , m e a n s a t t e n d i n g t o i t s s i n g l e n e s s , a s i n g l e n e s s w h a t t e n d s t o g a p e i n o r d i n a t e l y, b e c o m i n g , a s h e s a i d , a p r e c i p i c e o f a s s o c i a t i o n s . fo r i n s t a n c e , i n t h e p o e m “ t h e p e b b l e” h e c o n c l u d e d : “o n l y t o o h a p p y t o h av e c h o s e n f o r t h e s e b e g i n n i n g s t h e p e b b l e : f o r a m a n o f w i t c a n n o t f a i l t o b e a m u s e d , a n d a l s o m o v e d , w h e n my c r i t i c s s ay : ‘ h av i n g u n d e r t a k e n t o w r i t e a d e s c r i p t i o n o f s t o n e , h e g o t b u r i e d u n d e r i t ’ ” ( p o n g e 1 9 7 2 : 7 7 ) . 2 f o r e x a m p l e : “ t h e g i v i n g o f t h e o u t p o u r i n g c a n b e a d r i n k . t h e o u t p o u r i n g g i v e s w a t e r, i t g i v e s w i n e t o d r i n k . t h e s p r i n g s t a y s o n i n t h e w a t e r o f t h e g i f t . i n t h e s p r i n g t h e r o c k d w e l l s , a n d i n t h e r o c k d w e l l s t h e d a r k s l u m b e r o f t h e e a r t h , w h i c h r e c e i v e s t h e r a i n a n d d e w o f t h e s k y. i n t h e w a t e r o f t h e s p r i n g d w e l l s t h e m a r r i a g e o f s k y a n d e a r t h ” ( h e i d e g g e r 1 9 7 5 : 1 7 2 ) . 3 a s m u m f o r d p u t i t : “ u n d e r w o m a n’s d o m i n a n c e , t h e n e o l i t h i c p e r i o d i s p r e e m i n e n t l y o n e o f c o n t a i n e r s : i t i s a n a g e o f s t o n e a n d p o t t e r y u t e n s i l s , o f v a s e s , j a r s , v a t s , c i s t e r n s , b i n s , b a r n s , g r a n a r i e s , h o u s e s , n o t l e a s t g r e a t c o l l e c t i v e c o n t a i n e r s , l i k e i r r i g a t i o n d i t c h e s a n d v i l l a g e s [ … ] i t w a s i n p e r m a n e n t c o n t a i n e r s t h a t n e o l i t h i c i n v e n t i o n o u t s h o n e a l l e a r l i e r c u l t u r e s ” ( m u m f o r d 1 9 8 4 : 2 5 ) . ° 0 0 6 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° appadurai, a. and holston, j. (2003). cities and citizenship. in n. brenner, b.jessop, m.jones, g. macleod (eds.), state/space: a reader (pp. 296-308). malden, ma: blackwell. augé, m. (2009). non-places: an introduction to supermodernity (j. how, trans.). london, england and new york, ny: verso. blanchot, m., adams sitney, p. (ed.), (1981). ‘the gaze of orpheus’ and other literary essays (l. davis, trans.). barrytown, ny: station hill press. brown, b. (2004). thing theory. in brown, b. (ed.), things (pp. 1-22). chicago, ill & london, england: the university of chicago press. flaxman, g. (2000). introduction. in g. flaxman (ed.), the brain is the screen: deleuze and the philosophy of cinema. minneapolis, mn and london, england: university of minnesota press. latour, b. (2004). why has critique run out of steam? from matters of fact to matters of concern. in brown, b. (ed.), things (pp. 151-173). chicago, ill & london, england: the university of chicago press. mitchell, w. j. t., (2004). romanticism and life of things: fossils, totems, and images. in, brown, b. (ed.), things (pp. 151-173). chicago, ill & london, england: the university of chicago press. mumford, l. (1984). the city in history. harmondsworth, middlesex, england: penguin books. musil, r. (1996). the man without qualities. new york, ny: vintage international. nancy, j.-l. (2007). urbis et orbi (f. raffoul & d. pettigrew, trans.). in, the creation of the world or globalization (pp. 31-56). new york, ny: suny press. patočka, j., & dodd, j. (1996). heretical essays in the philosophy of history (e. kohák, trans.). chicago & la salle, il: open court. ponge, f., archer, b. (ed.), (1972). the voice of things (b. archer, trans.). new york, ny: mcgraw-hill. schwenger, p. (2004). words and the murder of the thing. in brown, b. (ed.), things (pp. 135-149). chicago, ill & london, england: the university of chicago press. sassen, s. (2014). expulsions: brutality and complexity in the global economy. cambridge, ma & london, england: harvard university press. sassen, s.(2015 ,tuesday 24 november). who owns our cities – and why this urban takeover should concern us all. guardian. retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/ cities/2015/nov/24/who-owns-our-cities-and-why-this-urban-takeover-should-concern-us-all sennett, r. (2006, november). the open city. urban age. berlin. retrieved from http://downloads.lsecities.net/0_downloads/berlin_richard_sennett_2006-the_open_city.pdf sennett, r. (2010). the public realm. in gary bridge and sophie watson (eds.), the blackwell city reader, (pp. 261-272). london: blackwell. serres, m. (1989). detachment (g. james & r. federman, trans.). athens: ohio university press. r e f e r e n c e s 114 bios martin bryant martin bryant is the professor and programme director of landscape architecture at victoria university of wellington. he is a multi-award winning practitioner with numerous built landscape architectural projects in australia and new zealand over 30 years. his academic work includes publications concerning the role of landscape architecture on resilience, including the un habitat iii policy paper on urban ecology and resilience. patrick clifford patrick clifford was a fellow student of rewi thompson at the university of auckland school of architecture in the late 1970’s. together with malcom bowes, michael thomson and tim nees they have collaborated on numerous projects over the many years since. patrick is a founding principal and design director of australasian architectural practice architectus. michael davis michael davis is director of architecture programmes at the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning. he teaches and researches in the areas of architectural design and architectural media. mike holds a phd from rmit in melbourne and a master of architecture in architecture and urbanism from london’s famed architectural association. davis co-founded architecture and design practice ‘ark’ with vanessa ceelen in 2004 and has practiced his trade in new zealand, canada and the netherlands, while being involved in projects from ethiopia to new caledonia. andrew douglas dr andrew douglas is a senior lecturer in spatial design at the school of art+design at auckland university of technology. he is coordinator of the urban practices undergraduate minor, a member of the turnspace collective, and contributor to the making public research cluster. he is also an executive editor of interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, and a trustee of the enigma: he aupiki trust, and the greg bowron trust, along with being a director of the interior design educators association and an editorial advisor to the idea journal. he has practiced architecture in both auckland and london and maintains specialty skills in critical urban thinking and design particularly. he has pursued postgraduate studies at the university of auckland and goldsmiths, university of london. his research ranges across fields associated with urban and greek philosophy and history, aspects of poststructuralist thinking— particularly the work of gilles deleuze and felix guattari— critical perspectives on socio-spatial practice, and gender and sexuality as these pertain to literature, cinema and the urban imaginary. his doctoral research investigated observation and reflectivity in modernity and its linkages with human motility in european urbanism since the seventeenth century. his current research includes the role of affect in emerging forms of publicness and governance, colonial-urban formations in new zealand, and various aspects of an urban-interior synthesis graham farmer graham is professor of architecture and director of the architecture programmes. graham’s diverse research and teaching interests encompass sustainable design, materials, tectonics and architectural pedagogy. a key theme in his work is the social production of the built environment, with an emphasis on understanding how the built environment is socially sustained. graham is interested in the ethics of sustainability, and in particular how environmental values relate to the specifics of place and the pragmatics of design practice. penelope forlano penelope forlano is a phd student at curtin university with a special interest in inalienable public and private artefacts, design anthropology and object agency. she has over 20 years practice as an award-winning artist, furniture designer and interior designer. her work has been exhibited widely, including a coveted spot at london’s 100% design, craftact, the john curtin gallery, form, and a solo show in 2004 at the esteemed salone satellite, milan’s international furniture fair. receiving the prestigious australian design award in 2006, her ‘terrain’ table was acquired for permanent collection by the art gallery of western australia in 2011. sue gallagher sue gallagher is a senior lecturer in spatial design, and previous associate head of school academic in the school of art & design at aut university. trained as an architect (bachelor of architecture first class honours, the university of auckland) and as a performance designer (master in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 115 bios / abstracts r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s of arts scenography with distinction, central saint martins london and in partnership with the hogeskool van kunsten), sue has explored performance based spatial practice in various projects including; the nz national pavilion at the prague quadrennial of performance design and space in 2007, 2011, 2015, the auckland arts festival; set design for the inaugural performance of the new zealand dance company, and is a past chair of idea: interior design educators association. ross jenner ross jenner teaches at the university of auckland. he has a phd from the university of pennsylvania, has practised in the uk, finland, switzerland, and new zealand, taught at various institutions in australia and the us, was commissioner for the nz section of the xix triennale di milano, published in several books and journals, and is an editor of interstices. sam kebbell sam kebbell is a senior lecturer at victoria university of wellington and a founding director of kebbell daish. architects. he is currently working on his ph.d. at rmit university in melbourne, and in 2015 was an adaptr research fellow at the university of westminster in london. he graduated from victoria university of wellington with a b.arch (1st class hons), and completed his masters of design in history and theory at the graduate school of design (distinction) at harvard (cambridge, usa) in 1999. sam worked in boston, new york, and amsterdam before returning to practice and teach in wellington. ashley mason ashley mason is a phd candidate in architecture by creative practice at newcastle university, uk. her work engages the potentials of textual-spatial practice in addition to exploring absent-present narratives within architecture. alongside her research, she is also editorial assistant for the journal arq: architectural research quarterly. yasser megahed yasser is currently in the writing up phase of a phd in creative practice at newcastle university’s school of architecture, planning and landscape. he is one of the team comprising design office—a design research practice operating out of the university. previously, yasser worked as a senior architect and design team leader with the architecture and urbanism group in cairo. yasser has a ba and msc in architecture from the architecture department of cairo university. his research interests include questions of quality in architecture, modes of practice in architecture, and shifting relations between theory and practice in architecture. michael milojevic michael milojevic is a professional teaching fellow at the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning. growing up in the little italy area of toronto, he designed event installations for large multicultural events on fifty sites across the city, also overseeing balkan related projects in his hometown, as well as abroad in chicago and auckland. sean pickersgill dr sean pickersgill teaches architecture within the university of south australia’s school of art, architecture and design. with a focus on developing innovative design approaches at all levels of the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, his work on the inter-relationship between modes of critical thinking in philosophy and design practice has been published internationally, alongside literature on the consequences of contemporary digital technology in the practice and understanding of architectural design. grace salisbury mills grace salisbury mills is an architect and urban designer, originally from wellington but currently based in brooklyn, new york. having recently finished a msc. in architecture and urban design at columbia university on a fulbright scholarship, she now works as a designer at wxy studio in manhattan, focusing efforts on the interface between public space, urban infrastructure and architecture. she is also a teaching fellow in the urban design program at columbia university. grace completed her m.arch between victoria university of wellington and the royal danish academy of fine arts in copenhagen. rachel sari-dewi murray rachel sari-dewi murray is a recent graduate of the m.arch (prof ) programme at victoria university of wellington. having completed a 5-month in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 116 bios / abstracts r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s exchange programme at paris’ école spéciale d’architecture in 2013, she is currently rounding off an architecture internship in helsinki, where her residence just so happens to overlook a swampland. adam sharr adam sharr is the head of the school of architecture, planning and landscape and professor at newcastle university. he is editor-inchief of cambridge university press’ international architecture journal arq: architectural research quarterly, series editor of thinkers for architects, published by routledge, and principal of adam sharr architects. adam is author or editor of six books on architecture including heidegger’s hut (mit press, 2006), reading architecture and culture (routledge, 2012) and demolishing whitehall: leslie martin, harold wilson and the architecture of white heat (co-written with stephen thornton, ashgate, 2013). alongside his own architectural practice, adam works with apl’s design office research consultancy. dianne smith dianne smith is associate professor and director of research and graduate research studies at curtin university’s school of the built environment. dianne’s research focuses on discriminatory design (with particular reference to everyday design for the cognitively impaired), environmental meaning and experience, as well as the impact of colour. additionally, she is interested in how creative practices enable alternative ways to see situations and associated problems. recently she co-edited and co-authored m2: models and methodologies for community engagment (springer, 2014), perspectives on social sustainability and interior architecture: life from the inside (springer 2014); occupation: ruin, repudiation and revolution (2015) and has been a core member of the lakhnu sustainable development project in northern rural india (2011–2016). dianne has also undertaken leadership positions with the design institute of australia (dia) and idea (interior design/interior architecture educators association). mark southcombe mark southcombe studied architecture at the university of auckland and victoria university of wellington. he is architecture programme director at the school of architecture victoria university of wellington, an award winning director of southcombe architects in wellington, and a fellow of the nzia. he teaches design studio and research methodologies courses at victoria university of wellington. his current design and research is focused on collective urban housing. jeremy treadwell jeremy treadwell is a senior lecturer at the school of architecture and planning within the university of auckland. he teaches design, architectural history, and building technology. his current areas of study focus on the tectonics of polynesian architecture. sarah treadwell sarah treadwell is an associate professor at the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning. her research investigates the representation of architecture through consideration of ground and spatiality. she focusses on turbulent ground, both politically and literally, as well as on the atmospheric and the allusive, specifically grounds which are not contained by conventional categories of site or foundation. her work is carried out across both written and visual practice, with much attention afforded to the relationships between text and image. with a longstanding interest in gender related issues, sarah has written on the work of contemporary artists and on representations of motels, suburbs and interiority. her work has been published in various books and journals including architectural theory review, space and culture and interstices. sarah’s visual work has been exhibited at te tuhi, pakuranga, the gus fisher gallery, university of auckland and the adam art gallery—te pātaka toi in wellington. simon weir simon weir is a lecturer of architecture at the university of sydney, australia. seen most prominently in his study of surrealism, weir’s theoretical research focusses on the foundational mythologies of architectural culture and the philosophy, art and architecture of classical antiquity. ° 0 7 2 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° 1 . p u b l i c s p a c e s i n t h e p o s t c o n s u m e r i s t c i t y : t h e ‘ o t h e r n e s s ’ o f a u c k l a n d ’s s h o p p i n g e n c l a v e s shopping centres emerge in our cities as hegemonic social places, prodigiously magnifying the characteristics of the “worlds in miniature” that walter benjamin found in the parisian arcades of the 19th century (benjamin 2002: 3; böhme 2012). the recent spatial metamorphosis of that introversion of ‘worlds’ is at the centre of this study and is elaborated through the theories, concepts, and notions of scholars engaged with its agency in the contemporary transition of urban public space. its exploration focuses on the transformations of the physical, social, and psychological spatialities of our post-industrial cities, examining the relationships between architecture and the new forms of consumption emerging in the main centres of shopping, entertainment, and socialisation in the suburban space of auckland, new zealand. particularly important for its discussion is the concept of “urban otherness” as proposed by michel foucault in the context of “heterotopia” – the place where the ordinary meets the extraordinary in conditions of simultaneity, juxtaposition, ambivalence, and dispersion (foucault 2008: 21). this concept is adopted in the elaborations proposed by graham shane (2005) – who identified heterotopias as constitutive elements in the contemporary city’s system of enclaves and armatures – and dehaene and de cauter – who reconceptualised the heterotopic device as disentangling instrument to understand the “equally treacherous and fertile condition” of the public space of our “post-civil society” (dehaene & de cauter 2008: 3). further key references framing our theoretical interpretation of this phenomenon are: the concept of “postmodern hyperspace,” as developed by fredric jameson (1984) to describe the dramatic territorial mutations created by the disjunction of body and built environment; elaborations on the “paradox of isolation” and the critique of spatial publicness and overdetermination as central to contemporary urbanity, as proposed by david harvey (2006), sharon zukin (2010), and richard sennett (1977); and the recent descriptions of post-consumerist society and interpretations of related emerging practices by el hedhli, chebat, and sirgy (2013), miles the virtual public thing: de-re-territorialisations of public space through shopping in auckland’s urban space m a n f r e d o m a n f r e d i n i ( f i r s t a n d c o r r e s p o n d i n g a u t h o r ) r o s s j e n n e r (2010), and ritzer (2013). overall, the attempt here is to describe the idiosyncratic formal and semantic aspects that are emerging in the new ‘public’ places of the metropolitan centres of new zealand’s largest city. this discussion is based on the results of an empirical investigation1 of spatial elements that, given the growing digital realm, deserves particular attention to the new media. the hypothesis articulated here is that we are witnessing a profound change in the geographies of urban public space as conceived (i.e., planned, implemented, and managed), daily practiced, and steadily re-described. these changes are the result of processes of continuous deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation occurring in places with the most intensely activated spatial and digital realms – the latest generation of shopping enclaves. to validate this hypothesis, we searched for evidence of spatial representations of these enclaves that reflect the collective shift of references in the shared image of the city. accordingly, we sought correlations between three phenomena: (1) the contribution of shopping enclaves to urban fragmentation and the consequent physical and social dis-embedding of urban territories (giddens 1991); (2) the introversion of public space operated by shopping enclaves through a powerful set of agencies of social and cultural recontextualising (bryman 2004: 15-56); (3) the support by shopping enclaves of emerging collective references at an urban geographic scale, one that reflects the fundamental semantic turn of the post-consumerist notion of public space. through an analysis of the physical contexts, social practices, and heterotopic attributes (functional, experiential and semantic) of these enclaves, this study explores how key urban public spaces are becoming increasingly introverted, externally disconnected, yet somehow integrated environmentally, socially and culturally. such analysis examines the city of auckland since it represents a relevant case study due to its peculiar socio-economic, cultural, and environmental conditions: it is a city topranked for liveability and mobile digital technology usage, with a social life polarised in a few centres often dominated by large-format retail, and with a very active retail sector that includes one of the world’s leading shopping mall operators. the study of these places, ultimately, intends to provide evidence of the ways these centres produce new forms of public ° 0 7 3 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° re-identification by being continuously re-scripted by the organisations controlling their combinatory logics (i.e., mall operators), and re-written by the public of interpreting participants (i.e., the new consumers). methods and tools of spatial analysis are used here to assess their introversion and disconnection, as well as their unconstrainedness and hyper-connectivity granted by modern infrastructures – particularly in relation to the digital public sphere. this interrelation between the physical and the digital spatialities of the malls is also interpreted considering the profound changes in the retail sector that have recently given primacy to the emotions and experiences of citizens and consumers, not only in the conception and management of shopping enclaves but of entire cities (richards & palmer 2012; rigby 2011). 2 . t h e e x p e r i e n t i a l t u r n : e x p e r i e n c e a s c o m m o d i t y a n d n o r m a l i s a t i o n o f s p e c t a c l e the current post-consumerist age has been described as a global phenomenon that brings substantial changes to shopping patterns and deeply transforms people’s behaviour in their broader private, public, social, cultural, and recreational lives (el hedhli et al. 2013: 861-862; ritzer, dean, & jurgenson 2012: 381-386). one of the most important factors in its evolution is the advancement of the technological framework and, in particular, the digital infrastructure that has recently saturated our environments with mediated communication (kang & cuff 2005: 109-112; soukup 2012: 227). the intensification of personal digital communications has also contributed to an urban segmentation – itself initiated by transport infrastructures – that has exacerbated the isolating tendency of the modern shopping mall type – what kim dovey has referred to as the “reversed worlds” of enclosed retail environments (dovey 1999: 123-138). the recent development of these ‘heterotopic reversions’ has been achieved through conflation of spaces, activities, and institutions, which has led to the production of extremely large, integrated, and mixed-use enclaves that are the prime centres for the provision of goods and services in the vast majority of developed countries (feinberg & meoli 1991). the magnitude of their development has eventually reached a scale that, according to george ritzer, is comparable to that of religious centres of traditional civilisations, qualifying them as “cathedrals of consumption” (ritzer 1999: 7). their growth has been accompanied by what ash amin and nigel thrift call a “performative push” (amin & thrift 2002: 125) that aims at a condition permeated with performative, creative, evocative, and always variating events designed to stimulate, excite, surprise, entertain, indulge and, ultimately, generate a positive emotional state in shoppers (arnold & reynolds 2003, 2009; wakefield 2015; wakefield & baker 1998). accordingly, the retail operators of these centres strive continuously to renew sources of value for their consumers, creating scenographies that recombine the multiple layers through which locality and community are lived, interpreted, and represented. yet these ‘scenes’ have an ambivalent relation to the contexts they borrow from, for they are conceived as iterable models that thinly economise resources and reinforce brand identity (ng 2003; schwartz & hochman 2014; voyce 2006). the evolution of the mall type, with its continual growth in size and social articulation, comes close to victor gruen’s original ideal of the integrated civic and cultural centre. however, to the extent that this occurs, it does so in the form of heterotopias that coalesce elements of public and private, house and city, ‘normalising’ them all within enchanting ambiences that colour daily routines. they are ambiences with what can be thought of as the “unpolitical extraordinary” (classen 1996: 52), feeding our contemporary anxieties of choice and attenuating the power of actuality (crewe 2003: 353; jansson 2002; slater & tonkiss 2001: 191). institutions that once set the civic framework of cities, such as schools, public libraries, and police stations, are now belittled, dispersed, and decentred, yet re-activated within steadily revised grand spatial narratives articulated within the closed fields and pseudo-public space of dead-end shopping places. the architectural response to this transition has meant a revision of traditional typology of malls facilities rem koolhaas describes as being lost in the continuum of junkspace (koolhaas 2001) – one that replicates with a twist what has recently been brought about in the tourism sector. in that sector, after the 1980s crisis of gaming industry resorts, the world’s largest short-term accommodation establishments and major hospitality businesses shifted from being service-based providers to lifestyle and entertainment ones. shopping centres have followed a similar path, suburbanising the enticing, secure, and clean realm of goods deployed by 19th-century department stores (sennett 1977: 141-149). becoming firstly key places for social, cultural, and entertainment activities, with programmes including exhibitions, performing arts, lifestyle, and wellness (bloch 1994: 38-39; crawford 1992; goss 1993: 35-29), they eventually integrated commercial spectacle with all the everyday acts, needs, and desires of public life in an age of telepresence. this latest evolution parallels the changing role of consumers, who have profoundly transformed their shopping practices and strongly increased their market power. their empowerment has increased their autonomy, awareness, and choice mainly through new digital functionalities that include instant access to product information, price comparison, remote purchasing, and, ultimately, to on-line retail (emarketer 2015). consequently, as this has a direct impact on the very economic base of retail, operators have been pushed to make an additional effort in reorganising the market logic, structure, and landscape (chung et al. 2001; wedel & kamakura 2000). their efforts were then directed to establishing synergies between the real and the digital creation of eventful shopping environments and to implementing high performing amalgamated realities with multiple hybrid platforms for the interaction between consumers and spaces, organisations, and peers. this has also comprehended the provision of services complementary to digital retail that emphasise emotional and sensorial aspects, ranging from instant purchase gratification to immersive participation in spectacular events. the mix of physical and digital agencies has supported the experiential dimension in supplanting the mere money–goods transaction as the prime form of commodity and constitutes the ideal framework for the development of the new post-consumerist acts described as “prosumption” by ritzer (ritzer 2013; ritzer et al. 2012). the new type of mall operates as catalyst for all the practices in the public life of the ‘prosumers’ – this other to the consumer – that include co-production of information (through contributions on webbased media) and events (with participation in grassroots festivals), as well as labour performances (with participation in electronic group–buying). from the spatial perspective, such prosumption is particularly important since it is deeply involved with the collective construction and representation of new urban geographies. prosumption can in fact be considered the response to the contemporary version of the “over-stimulation of the sensory apparatus” georg simmel (2002) previously attributed to the modern metropolis. hence digitally implemented “flâneuring” (böhme 2012) being the full exploitation of commercial spaces saturated with communications (sacco 2011; stikker 2013), where each sign, environment, act, and event can be captured, recorded, named, analysed, broadcast, stored, modified, and represented almost ubiquitously, with a wide range of commonly available devices. consequently – given that a large proportion of mall visitors use smartphones2 – the development of innovative retail ecosystems with integrated digital realms is routine amongst leading operators. ‘shopping assistant’ apps allow customers to easily navigate centres by selecting and finding their preferred retailers, restaurants, and events, and to receive personalised offers and discount vouchers directly via the phone. digital kiosks with interactive mega-displays in key locations of the mall provide links to e-commerce services, 3d navigation tools, and multifarious information on offers and events (johnson 2014; moin 2014). free wi-fi access and the malls’ active deployment of multiple internet and social media platforms (including facebook, foursquare, twitter, and instagram) complete the offer to incessantly inspire, inform, and guide prosuming publics. ° 0 7 4 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° this communicational framework has triggered a reconfiguration of overall mall architecture which moves beyond the allegorical pastiches of post-modernist architecture and the utilitarian clustering of anonymous built volumes (jameson 1984: 82). new malls are increasingly complex elaborations of spatial and decorative patterning that favour ostension and originality in pursuit of memorability and imageability. prosumers, less lost and disorientated in their consumerism, are insistently ‘located’ in easily intelligible spatial structures with distributed landmarks, just as they are drawn to relay their experience of these territories. at the urban scale, mall architecture is also called upon to compensate for a constitutive loss of authenticity (zukin 1995, 2010). it creatively elaborates the tension between the introversion of commercial enclaves and required indexical memorability within the urban landscape. using the very same means that foucault found in the most extreme form of heterotopias, malls dissipate reality by showing themselves as hyper-real illusions, in turn resurrecting in the ‘network city’ something like bruno taut’s radiant, kaleidoscopic stadtkrone. paradigmatic examples are jerde’s “kanyon” in istanbul, hadid’s dongdaemun design plaza in seoul, and renzo piano’s ‘il vulcano buono’ in naples. the first centre achieves the effect of boundlessness with its curvilinear gorge/main street providing dramatic spatial sequences, the second transfigures the civic into a striking seamless field of pixellation and perforation patterns, the last introduces a new prominent topography in the periurban semirural area of the city, asserting the iconic role of the new element by figuratively mirroring the main feature of the city skyline – vesuvius – and using the crater as central market piazza. in any case, no matter what the form or location, most of these places have been able to become in a short lapse of time hyper-active, prime urban venues for the new form of social interaction – as demonstrated by the findings on digital media usage in the newest auckland malls discussed later in this paper. 3 . t h e t r a n s i t i o n f r o m e n c l a v e s t o h e t e r o t o p i a s i n a u c k l a n d ’ s u r b a n s p a c e in new zealand the modern retail sector developed following the north american model and, accordingly, in recent times its most innovative operators have similarly embraced the experiential turn. however, the introduction here of models consolidated overseas seem to trigger the growth of peculiar interpretations that respond to idiosyncratic aspects of auckland’s context. two contrasting sets of structural background aspects are particularly relevant: on the one hand, globally, the city stands out socially and culturally for its high quality of life and education, as results from assessments of educational attainment (oecd 2014), use of mobile digital technology,3 work-life balance,4 multiculturalism,5 and high and overall liveability show (economist [the] 2015; mercer 2015); on the other, the city also presents problems in the decay of the public of urban commons and the geographical polarisation of persistent social inequality (atkinson, salmond, & crampton 2014; spoonley & meares 2011). social life in suburban areas is increasingly moving to centres dominated by large-format retail clusters that are led by very active protagonists, such as scentre group – one of the world’s leaders in the shopping mall industry (colliers 2015; fairgray 2013; scentre 2015). from an economic perspective, the recent development of the retail sector has seen a consistent and steady growth in revenues, shop numbers, and total floor area,6 leading to very positive forecasts for the coming decades.7 this situation is mainly due to the combined effects of steadily increasing population8 and moderate availability of retail area per capita, which we estimated in 2014 as approximately two thirds of that in the us. the overall growth, however, is not evenly distributed throughout the sector and shows a growing divide between a positive prime and a languishing secondary group.9 main agents of the divide are emergent ‘new breeds’ of retailers adept at adapting to the rapidly evolving framework (colliers 2014: 1, 2015:1). information concerning different attitudes of these operators is substantive in understanding the drivers of change in the conception and implementation of the new retail centres. their differences inform the way malls vary in intensity of spatial, social, political, and cultural dis-embedment. at the urban scale, the prime group aims to dominate the physical configuration and establish key nodes in the spatial structure. their centres therefore exaggerate spatial disjunctions, creating strong morphological and typological mismatches between mall and context (manfredini & hills 2016) f i g . 0 1 f i g u r e g r o u n d m a p o f a l b a n y m e t r o p o l i t a n c e n t r e s h o w i n g t h e s p a t i a l r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n t h e m a l l a n d t h e u r b a n f a b r i c . ° 0 7 5 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° at the social and political level, the new agents strive to perfect principles of rationalisation and introduce criteria of high efficiency and control described by ritzer (1996) as social mcdonaldisation. this results in the creation of places that, concentrating key urban amenities and overpowering the role of the commons as civic agency, minimise social interaction and engagement among the consumer multitude (the largest centre, sylvia park, has over 12 million visitors per year). at the cultural level, the focus on maximising attraction leads to the creation of closed ambiences with strong ‘experiential’ transductions, often using prosaic semantic means to magnify the heterotopic experience. aiming to interpret how this difference relates to the emerging heterotopic sociability and memorability of these places, the study comparatively analysed the prime centres in auckland – the group of a malls, composed of the top 10 shopping and recreational enclaves of the city.10 the study concerned eight of them – six located at the core of respective metropolitan centres (albany, henderson, sylvia park, newmarket, botany and manukau) and two in secondary town centres (st lukes and glenfield).11 the analysis of these enclaves and their context included a collection of information on population, built environment, and digital realm. a detailed investigation aimed to evaluate the emerging socialisation component in the practiced spatialities regarded the structure and configuration of their environments. assessment and mapping of people’s practices were supported by studies on urban permeability and accessibility, physical and social infrastructures, building typology and morphology, and function of spaces. eventually, each individual business and amenity of the selected enclaves was analysed and classified according to its basic characteristics: range of traded goods and provided services, business type (chain store/ independent shop), targeted customer group/s, brand, location, floor area, and operating times. as regards sociability, these results were then referred to four macro categories of consumer/prosumer practices: basic shopping (e.g., grocery store/grocery shopping), consumerist shopping (e.g., fashion store/fashion shopping), lifestyle consumption (e.g., movie theatre/ cultural entertainment consumption), and socialising consumption (e.g., lifestyle hospitality services/socialising consumption). data concerning activities and practices were collected in 2014 then normalised and analysed, and results were synthetised in charts and maps. a summative map was then produced to visualise results with multilevel pie charts, where size variation comparatively reflects the relative score of each mall in the socialising consumption index f i g . 0 2 s a m p l e o f i m a g e s p o s t e d o n s o c i a l m e d i a ( i n s t a g r a m ) i n 2 0 1 4 w i t h i n t h e m a l l s p r e c i n c t s a n d c l a s s i f i e d i n d i f f e r e n t s o c i a l i s i n g c o n s u m p t i o n s u b c a t e g o r i e s . [ c o u r t e s y : m a n f r e d o m a n f r e d i n i a n d j i s o o j u n g .” ] ° 0 7 6 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° as regards memorability, the results of the studies on structure and configuration of the malls were used to elaborate data spatial representation. considering digital communication as the preeminent access to the public sphere, visual communication on social media was used as a primary source for data on spatial representation. data were sourced using instagram, the most popular online mobile photo and video sharing social media platform. all images posted from each mall in 2014 (from 1/01 through 31/12) were collected, using geo-tagging attributes. data were critically analysed and images classified according to characteristics of contents, tags, and accompanying texts, identifying the character and memorability of each spatial representation. results were then synthetised in graphs; a summative index – of spatial memorability – was created and represented in a map that visualises results with multilevel pie charts, where the score of each mall is shown by the size of each pie. the score is the relative proportion of the memorable posts (with normalised values for low, high, and medium classes). the proportion of each class of spatial images for each mall is represented by the thickness of each pie sub-ring f i g . 0 3 m a p o f a u c k l a n d m a l l s ’ s o c i a l i s i n g c o n s u m p t i o n i n d e x i n 2 0 1 4 , r e p r e s e n t i n g t h e r e l a t i v e v a l u e o f h e t e r o t o p i c f u n c t i o n a l i n t e g r a t i o n . [ c o u r t e s y : m a n f r e d o m a n f r e d i n i a n d j i s o o j u n g .” ] ° 0 7 7 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° f i g . 0 4 s a m p l e o f i m a g e s p o s t e d o n s o c i a l m e d i a ( i n s t a g r a m ) i n 2 0 1 4 w i t h i n t h e m a l l s p r e c i n c t s a n d c l a s s i f i e d i n d i f f e r e n t s p a t i a l m e m o r a b i l i t y s u b c a t e g o r i e s . [ c o u r t e s y : m a n f r e d o m a n f r e d i n i a n d j a m e s l e e .” ] f i g . 0 5 m a p o f a u c k l a n d m a l l s ’ m e m o r a b i l i t y i n d e x i n 2 0 1 4 , r e p r e s e n t i n g t h e r e l a t i v e v a l u e o f h e t e r o t o p i c s p a t i a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n . [ c o u r t e s y : m a n f r e d o m a n f r e d i n i a n d j i s o o j u n g .” ] ° 0 7 8 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° detailed results of this part of the investigation are available in other publications (manfredini, jenner, & litterick, 2015). overall, the findings showed a high consistency across the spectrum of analyses, confirming the anticipated higher heterotopic intensity of the three a+ centres – westfield albany, sylvia park, and botany town centre. the higher performance of these malls stood out remarkably in both the measured indices of conceived (the physical and digital frameworks set by the operators) and practised (the consumer usage of the amenities) spatialities, with no other mall reaching comparable values. a similar result was found for the index of described spatialities (the interpretation, elaboration, and sharing of spatial images by prosumers) with only one mall scoring near the top three. these results confirmed the research hypothesis, since the data cover the three main areas of investigation. the index of conception addresses the contribution to dis-embedment, measuring urban fragmentation, community disconnection, and formal non-homogeneity. the index of spatial practices concerns the re-embedment agencies, measuring the functional integration of elements of public relational life. the index of spatial description concerns the emergence of a hyper-spatial collective urban geography and measures consistency of representation, magnitude of participation, and memorability. 4 . a u c k l a n d ’ s e n c l a v e s o f s h o p p i n g , e n t e r t a i n m e n t a n d s o c i a l i s a t i o n to support the interpretation of the correlation between the changes in these new public spaces, the study included an investigation into the attributes of their spatial conceptions. it aimed to verify whether the malls with the highest degree of consumption and socialising, together with their memorability, have distinctive configurations and supporting management strategies. it also examined evidence of the participation of the overperforming a+ malls in the global experiential turn. major differences between these three malls and the others emerged from the analysis of their basic data: they are the largest and newest flagship centres of the main competing organisations and are all conceived, planned, developed, and managed to expand the shopping and entertainment realm with means that provide potential for high identification and socialisation. their designs are indeed the only ones that include semi-open plans in the form of pedestrian lanes, squares, and plazas. they also follow an ambivalent model that favours new prosumption activities, having the highest presence of iconic features that use subtle theming strategies to strengthen their identity and memorability. common space theming generally focuses on obvious re-embedding narratives of civic dignification – in urbanscapes of the introverted exteriors – but also of domesticity – in homely spatial pockets of fully branded interiors. the first is used to inform grand civic gestures proposed with introverted plazas and activated streets, f i g . 0 6 to w n s q u a r e i n s i d e b o t a n y to w n c e n t r e i n 2 0 1 4 . [ c o u r t e s y : m . m a n f r e d i n i ” ] ° 0 7 9 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° as in the stately ‘patte d’oie’ urban structure arranged around the selfproclaimed ‘town square’ of botany mall this square is an ample round open space, accessible by traffic, with a vibrant pastiche of various juxtaposed elements: a sequence of façades in different styles, continuous interspaces with porticos and overhangs, a sprinkling fountain, and a fringe of beer and cappuccino parterres. the second, conversely, is usually found in small-scale environments of pseudoprivate homely cosiness, such as the small size rest-areas interspersed throughout the aisles. inside sylvia park these rest-areas help set the tone of each specific retail precinct, being either ‘lordly’ in high-end fashion areas (with timber floor, high backed upholstered leather armchairs, ottomans, and flower vases) or ‘informal’ in the young areas (with boldly coloured carpets and varieties of fancy modern chairs and amorphous seats). all these forms of augmented heterotopic introversion are presented by marketing as the ultimate social places “where lifestyle meets the latest style”12 and reflected by their inclusion at the top of the list of desirable places to visit in the city compiled by the public administration.13 the antagonistic position of these enclaves to traditional urban centres is also amplified by their separation from existing centres, being situated on key nodes of the primary road infrastructures of the low-density periphery – sylvia park,14 westfield albany,15 and botany town centre,16 are respectively placed in the southern, northern, and eastern quadrants. however, the low potential for sociality is compensated by active event management that, adopting the new experiential paradigm, introduces multidimensional activities at all levels with large use of digital means.17 thus exceptional events, such as street shows, creative performances, and semi-grassroots manifestations, guarantee a vibrant all-encompassing framework for ordinary civic life. these events are, in fact, designed to suggest a traditional urban life and instigate a certain sense of community and belonging. examples in botany town centre include programmes like the 2010 animation with performances of 20 meticulously selected buskers; the 2009-established fun run & walk, an annual running event for all; the 2015 yank tank thursdays, showing american classic motor vehicles in the main street of the mall on the first thursday of every second month; and the 2012 ceremonial start of the silver fern rally, one of the major new zealand motorsport events. free community-based programmes are also included and range from farmers’ markets to parenting groups and wellness activities, such as sylvia park’s “mums with bubs” and the ‘mall fit’ walking squads. besides those programmes, malls also host a series of grassroots events: the asian-style night markets. these markets, which started in 2009 with weekly events at pakuranga’s mall, have since developed into an itinerant series, moving every weeknight to a different site. their popularity, also favoured by the participation of local agencies, transforms the empty carparks from desolate and deserted tarmacs into the most vibrant gathering places on the periphery, providing an extraordinary yet ephemeral reversion of malls’ disembedding effect (anm 2015). the condition of the three a+ enclaves is particularly relevant to the ongoing developments of several other malls and urban centres. the a+ malls set the benchmarks introducing the new experiential paradigm. particularly affected are the remaining a malls, most of which already follow these models with important transformation phases. four older, closed malls will shortly become semi-open, integrated, multifunctional lifestyle centres. st lukes will double in size, with the addition of a major open air mall to create a town centre antagonistic to the nearby historical one. newmarket’s mall has a planned expansion to include a large multi-storey building and a development on public streets to add a new commercial urban precinct at the southern edge of the second largest shopping area of the city. suburban lynnmall added a new lifestyle and entertainment precinct with a seventheatre cinema complex and a range of cafés and restaurants in 2015 to reaffirm its primary role in the recently redeveloped new lynn town centre (gibson 2015a). lastly, the downtown shopping centre, located at the very centre of the cbd, will be completely redeveloped with an expansion onto a recently alienated public square to “kick-off the creation of a world-class downtown area” that will include new open public space and transport facilities (council 2014: 15; council 2015). the above findings reveal a consistency between the results of the qualitative and quantitative analyses on the heterotopic aspects of shopping enclosures: the coherence between the high intensity achieved by the three significantly outperforming centres as regards practices of socialisation and memorability, and higher support by the thorough strategies and actions of developers and operators. this further confirms our hypothesis that the production of spaces, both highly deterritorialising and reterritorialising, is having strong and tangible effects to the transformation of the urban geography. this is a distinctive effect of the extremely illusionary and compensatory spatial function provided by the new pseudo-public places as a response to their constitutive contradiction of being formally instituted as civic poles but substantially disjoined from their urban contexts. the epitome of this condition was found in the central places of the consumers’ relational life in these enclaves. as the study of their spatial attributes is ultimately confirmed, architecture and urban design have a high relevance in shaping the physical structures, which means in these spaces contributing to virtualising normality in the “(atopic) network space” of our city (dehaene & de cauter 2008: 5). therefore, given the capacity of the new heterotopic enclaves to transform the spaces of our daily life, we hope that the results of this research stimulate a fundamental re-thinking of the way architects conceive and plan them. an increased effort to understand this concretisation of spatial aporia accompanied by a social, cultural, and design responsibility is demanded: the enactment of heterotopia par excellence – a place without a place “that is self-enclosed and at the same time is given over to the infinity” (foucault 2008: 22) and comprises the exceptional dimension of dream, imagination, and pleasure. ° 0 8 0 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° e n d n o t e s 1 t h i s s t u d y i s f r a m e d i n t h e r e s e a r c h p r o j e c t t i t l e d “a u c k l a n d ’s p u b l i c s p a c e s : r e t a i l l a n d s c a p e s a n d s o c i a l l i f e i n t h e u r b a n c e n t r e s ” d e v e l o p e d a t u n i v e r s i t y o f a u c k l a n d s i n c e 2 0 1 4 . 2 we s t f i e l d e s t i m a t e s t h a t 7 5 % o f t h e i r c l i e n t s u s e i n t e r n e t f e a t u r e s , w h i l e 6 2 % f a c e b o o k a n d t w i t t e r ( we s t f i e l d l a b s , 2 0 1 5 ) . 3 n e w z e a l a n d e r s ’ e a r l y a d o p t i o n o f n e w t e c h n o l o g y i s r e f l e c t e d i n t h e h i g h u s e o f s m a r t p h o n e s , t h a t i n 2 0 1 4 c o n c e r n a l m o s t 6 0 % o f t h e p o p u l a t i o n ( n i e l s e n , 2 0 1 5 ) . 4 a c c o r d i n g t o t h e n e w z e a l a n d g o v e r n m e n t “ g u i d e t o l i v i n g & w o r k i n g i n n e w z e a l a n d ,” t h e c o u n t r y ’s “ t h e w o r k l i f e b a l a n c e i s j u s t r i g h t ” ( n e w z e a l a n d i m m i g r a t i o n , 2 0 1 5 ) . 5 2 0 1 3 c e n s u s d a t a s h o w e d t h e i n c r e a s i n g c u l t u r a l d i v e r s i t y o f a u c k l a n d ’s p o p u l a t i o n , w i t h t h e e u r o p e a n p r o g r e s s i v e l y d e c l i n i n g t o 5 0 % o f t h e t o t a l ( s o c i a l a n d e c o n o m i c r e s e a r c h , 2 0 1 4 ) 6 a r e c e n t c o l l i e r s i n t e r n a t i o n a l r e p o r t h i g h l i g h t e d h o w, w i t h t h e c o n t i n u o u s g r o w t h o f t h e r e a l g d p o f t h e r e t a i l s e c t o r, n e g a t i v e o n l y i n 2 0 0 9, a c r o s s n e w z e a l a n d i t s d e v e l o p m e n t a c t i v i t y i s r i s i n g i n a l l i t s f o r m s ( c o l l i e r s , 2 0 1 4 , 2 0 1 5 ) . 7 a s t u d y o f t h e r e s e a r c h , i n v e s t i g a t i o n s a n d m o n i t o r i n g u n i t o f t h e a u c k l a n d c o u n c i l e s t i m a t e d t h a t i n 2 0 1 2 t h e c i t y ’s a l m o s t 4 m i l l i o n m 2 o f r e t a i l f l o o r s p a c e o f f e r e d a s h a r e o f 7.7 9 m 2 p e r h o u s e h o l d , a n d p r e d i c t e d a g r o w t h b y 3 5 p e r c e n t b e t w e e n 2 0 1 2 a n d 2 0 3 1 , w i t h l a r g e f o r m a t r e t a i l , a l r e a d y a c c o u n t i n g f o r o v e r o n e t h i r d o f t h e t o t a l , t a k i n g o v e r h a l f o f r e t a i l f l o o r s p a c e g r o w t h ( f a i r g r a y, 2 0 1 3 ) . t h e p o s i t i v e t r e n d i s a l s o c o n f i r m e d b y a s t u d y b y c o l l i e r s i n t e r n a t i o n a l t h a t p o i n t s o u t t h e s u c c e s s o f h i g h p r o f i l e p r e m i s e s , w i t h v a c a n t s p a c e i n r e g i o n a l c e n t r e s a t j u s t 0. 3 % ( c o l l i e r s , 2 0 1 4 ; l t d , 2 0 0 8 ) . 8 f o r t h e n e x t 3 0 y e a r s s t a t i s t i c s n e w z e a l a n d h a s p r o j e c t e d a m e d i u m p o p u l a t i o n g r o w t h o f 7 0 0,0 0 0, w h i l e t h e a u c k l a n d c o u n c i l h a s d e v e l o p e d t h e p l a n f o r i t s f u t u r e d e v e l o p m e n t o n t h e h i g h p o p u l a t i o n g r o w t h p r o j e c t i o n o f o n e m i l l i o n p e o p l e ( c o u n c i l , 2 0 1 2 ) . 9 t h i s i s t h e c a s e o f t h e m a l l s , w i t h t h e l a r g e r e x p a n d i n g a t a v e r y h i g h p a c e ( c o l l i e r s , 2 0 1 5 ; g i b s o n , 2 0 1 5 c ) . 1 0 t h i s c l a s s i f i c a t i o n o f c e n t r e s i s a g e n e r i c d i s t i n c t i o n w i d e l y u s e d i n t h e s e c t o r t o d i s t i n g u i s h s t r u c t u r e s t h a t r e s p e c t i v e l y h a v e t h e b e s t c o n s t r u c t i o n a n d l o c a t i o n ( a ) , h i g h q u a l i t y o f o n e o f t h e t w o a b o v e ( b ) , a n d e v e r y t h i n g e l s e ( c ) . 1 1 t h i s s t u d y c o n s i d e r s 8 o f t h e 1 0 m a l l s c o m m o n l y i d e n t i f i e d a s r e g i o n a l r e t a i l c e n t r e s ( t h e c b d a n d n e w l y n n a r e e x c l u d e d a s c u r r e n t l y u n d e r r e l e v a n t e x p a n s i o n a n d r e d e v e l o p m e n t ) . t h e y a r e l o c a t e d i n t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i v e a r e a s o f t h e p r e 2 0 1 1 a m a l g a m a t i o n c i t i e s o f n o r t h s h o r e ( a l b a n y a n d g l e n f i e l d ) , wa i t a k e r e ( we s t c i t y ) a u c k l a n d c i t y ( s t . l u k e s , n e w m a r k e t a n d s y l v i a p a r k ) a n d m a n u k a u ( m a n u k a u a n d b o t a n y ) . t h e s e m a l l s a r e r a t h e r e v e n l y d i s t r i b u t e d t h r o u g h o u t t h e u r b a n a r e a , w i t h r e l a t i v e d i s t a n c e r a n g i n g f r o m c a . 4 t o 7. 5 k m , c o m p r i s e d i n a n i n t e r v a l o f t o t a l l e a s a b l e a r e a r a n g i n g f r o m c a . 3 0,0 0 0 t o 7 0,0 0 0 m ² , a n d c o m p r e h e n d i n g a n u m b e r o f s h o p s r a n g i n g f r o m c a . 1 1 0 t o 2 0 0. 1 2 t h i s l a r g e s c a l e s t a t e m e n t i s l o c a t e d o n t h e f r e e s t a n d i n g g a t e a t t h e m a i n c a r p a r k e n t r a n c e t o t h e s t l u k e s m a l l . 1 3 t h e l i v e d e m o t i o n a l a n d a e s t h e t i c c o m p o n e n t o f a m a l l v i s i t i s r e c o g n i s e d b y t h e at e e d, t h e e c o n o m i c c o u n c i l c o n t r o l l e d g r o w t h a g e n c y f o r t h e a u c k l a n d r e g i o n , w i t h t h e i n t r o d u c t i o n o f f o u r m a l l d e s t i n a t i o n s ( s y l v i a p a r k , b o t a n y t o w n c e n t r e , t h e we s t f i e l d c e n t r e s , a n d t h e d r e s s s m a r t f a s h i o n o u t l e t ) i n t h e l i s t o f d e s i r a b l e p l a c e t o v i s i t i n a u c k l a n d , u n d e r t h e c a t e g o r y “ e x p e r i e n c e ” ( h t t p : // w w w. a u c k l a n d n z . c o m / t h i n g s t o d o ) . m o r e o v e r, b o t a n y t o w n c e n t r e i s p r o m o t e a s “ m a j o r a t t r a c t i o n ” f o r t h e l a r g e r h o w i c k l o c a l b o a r d a r e a ( c o u n c i l & b o a r d ) . 1 4 s y l v i a p a r k , d e s i g n e d b y j a s m a x a n d n h a r c h i t e c t u r e , o p e n e d i n 2 0 0 6 , o w n e d a n d m a n a g e d b y k i w i p r o p e r t y, i s t h e l a r g e s t m a l l i n t h e c o u n t r y, w i t h a p p r o x i m a t e l y 7 0,0 0 0 m ² o f l e a s a b l e a r e a , 1 9 0 s t o r e s a n d 4 0 0 0 c a r p a r k i n g s p a c e s . i t i s d e v e l o p e d o n a s i n g l e a x i s , o f m o r e t h a n 6 0 0 m e t e r s i n l e n g t h , i n t e r r u p t e d b y a n o p e n c o u r t y a r d a n d a h i g h w a y v i a d u c t . i t i s m a i n l y o n o n e l e v e l , w i t h s o m e p a r t s o n t w o , h o s t i n g t h r e e m a i n a n c h o r t e n a n t s a n d a c i n e m a . 1 5 we s t f i e l d a l b a n y, d e s i g n e d b y wo o d h a m s , m e i k l e a n d z h a n , we s t f i e l d d e s i g n a n d j c y a r c h i t e c t s , w a s e n t i r e l y o p e n e d 2 0 0 8 . i t i s o w n e d ( 5 1% ) a n d m a n a g e d b y s c e n t r e g r o u p , a n d i s t h e l a r g e s t m a l l i n t h e n o r t h s h o r e w i t h a p p r o x i m a t e l y 5 3 ,0 0 0 m ² o f l e a s a b l e a r e a , 1 4 5 s t o r e s a n d 2 3 0 0 c a r p a r k i n g s p a c e s . i t i s d e v e l o p e d o n t h r e e a x e s c o n v e r g i n g a t t h e m a i n e n t r a n c e , l e a d i n g t o t h e t h r e e m a i n a n c h o r t e n a n t s a n d a c i n e m a . i t i s m a i n l y o n o n e l e v e l , w i t h s o m e p a r t s o n t w o a n d h a s a n o p e n p l a z a f a c i n g t h e a l b a n y l a k e s c i v i c p a r k . 1 6 b o t a n y t o w n c e n t r e , d e s i g n e d b y a l t o o n + p o r t e r a n d h a m e s s h a r l e y, o p e n e d i n 2 0 0 1 , i s t h e l a r g e s t m a l l i n e a s t a u c k l a n d . i t i s o w n e d b y p s p i n v e s t m e n t s , c a n a d a , a n d m a n a g e d b y a m p c a p i t a l . i t h a s a p p r o x i m a t e l y 2 0 0 s h o p s a n d 2 4 0 0 c a r p a r k i n g s p a c e s . i t i s d e v e l o p e d a r o u n d a c e n t r a l o p e n a i r s q u a r e a n d h a s t w o m a i n a n c h o r t e n a n t s a n d a c i n e m a . i t i s m a i n l y o n o n e l e v e l , w i t h s o m e p a r t s o n t w o . 1 7 t h e e n g a g e m e n t w i t h t h e d i g i t a l r e a l m i s r e f l e c t e d b y t h e n u m b e r o f a c t i v a t e d i n t e r n e t s e r v i c e s , p o s t s , a n d f o l l o w e r s o n s o c i a l m e d i a . h o w e v e r, a l s o b e t w e e n t h e m t h e r e i s a r e l e v a n t d i f f e r e n c e , a s r e s u l t s f r o m t h e i r r e a c h i n g v a l u e s o f f o l l o w e r s o f t h e m o s t p o p u l a r p l a t f o r m , f a c e b o o k , r a n g i n g f r o m s y l v i a p a r k ’s 1 6 .0 0 0 t o b o t a n y t o w n c e n t r e ’s 6 , 3 3 7, a s o f a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 ( we s t f i e l d m a l l s f i g u r e s a r e v e r y d i f f i c u l t t o e s t i m a t e t h e y a r e a l l m e r g e d i n a s i n g l e a c c o u n t ) . ° 0 8 1 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° r e f e r 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(2010). naked city : the death and life of authentic urban places. oxford, england; new york,ny: oxford university press. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 50 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s tina engels-schwarzpaul binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building fale pasifika, university of auckland approaching the fale pasifika through a gateway with commissioned works by tomui kaloni and jim vivieaere, and passing by the pacific studies complex with prints of john pule’s drawings on various windows, it is the fale’s great roof that impresses when crossing the malae (a potentially sacred, open space), designed by tania short whose paved patterns signal the ocean, asserting it as a ground of identity (fig. 1). watching all approach is a pou (pole) by fatu feu’u (refiti, 2015: 24). one can enter the fale (house) both from the wide front, in the samoan way, or from its narrow side in the tongan manner. on a summer’s day, the interior is dark against the glare of the lower strip of light until the eyes adjust and the roof volume becomes discernible (fig. 2). structurally this upper space echoes the poles, beams and crossbeams of a samoan fale afolau and fale tonga (24) yet it fig. 1 south-west approach to the fale pasifika, university of auckland [photo: author, 2017] in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 51 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n has no ’au’au (ridgepole), nor do its poles penetrate the earth—they rest in metal sleeves bolted onto the roof of a carpark below. while community representatives participated in the design and construction through a planning committee, no tufuga faufale (master builder) was involved. instead, architect ivan mercep consulted te rangi hīroa buck’s samoan material culture (1949) to determine the fale pasifika’s roof shape and proportions. nevertheless, the building projects a “particular iconic presence” (refiti, 2015: 5). the structural framework and the lalava (lashings) are characteristic primarily of samoa or tonga, but some patterns are shared with other polynesian, micronesian and melanesian cultures. a pan-pacific identity is in the process of becoming here. for the non-initiated, the lalava contribute to a complexely patterned enclosure that makes the fale a desirable venue at the university of auckland (pers. comm. melani anae, 10.5.2017). the institution regards the fale pasifika as one of its “more iconic buildings” and an important “touch-point between the university and pacific communities” (university of auckland, n.d.). it provides common ground for staff and students and brings “pacific issues and identity into the heart of the university’s affairs” (university of auckland, n.d.). the rich layering of structural, contextual, performative, material and symbolic features contributing to the fale pasifika’s iconicity is striking: its setting in the open space; the roof shape and the transparent base over the stepped platform; the materials and semiotics of its internal structure; the processes connecting it with pacific communities within and outside the university—they all make up an integral whole from which it is neither fully possible nor desirable to extract any particular facet or feature. however, in this paper, i will investigate the particular role surfaces and patterns play in the production of affective and effective relationships indicative of a pacific sense of place and identity, and how they tangibly represent, not only for pacific users, “something ‘pacific’” (mallon, 2010: 27). in the process, i will argue for a different understanding of iconicity (bartmański & alexander, 2012: 11), which offers new and relevant insights into processes of identification and community building through material things. fig. 2 fale pasifika interior [photo: author, 2017] in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 52 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n surface and pattern traditional surfaces and patterns are important aspects of the fale’s iconic presence. however, traditional is, of course, an english word and may or may not describe a pacific phenomenon adequately. such terms come with their “own histories and own ways of being thought about”, which owe much of their thrust to a “colonial trade with wildness that ensures civilization its savagery” (taussig, 1993: xix). to use such notions (even to pair them with pacific correspondences in a spirit of conceptual openness without claims of strong adequacy, see ricœur, 2006:10), inescapably activates these histories and profoundly influences practices of representation (taussig, 1993: xix). albert wendt, for example, when asked in a 2017 interview about his thoughts on fa’atupua and tupua as equivalents to icon or iconic, noted that the missionaries probably translated god as atua, rather than tupua, because the latter was more commonly used and more decidedly plural (pers. comm. 19.4.2017)—a notion incompatible with christian theology. fa’atupua seemed particularly problematic to wendt, for its associations with idol or fetish by the missionaries served to distinguish their god from the heathens’ idols. this distinction still impacts pacific and western concepts, because “the manner of seeing decides what can be seen”, and the mode of apprehension decides “everything between the idol and the icon” (marion & tracy, 2012: 9). under the continued influence of a tradition in which tradition is a dirty word, wendt took care to call samoan architecture classical, rather than traditional. modernist disdain for tradition is now itself recognisable as tradition, and the related derision of ornamentation, similarly, lacks reliable theoretical foundation (see gordon, 1992). both were nevertheless used (in anthropology and art theory) to disqualify the art of traditional, ‘primitive’ societies. calling someone’s pattern ornament can still cause offense and, in the late 1990s, māori design educators i interviewed vehemently rejected this term when applied to things māori. by contrast, futa helu (founder of ’atenesi university, tonga) regarded tradition as the manifestation of a wish for “some degree of permanence” in an ever-changing life, in which everything ultimately disappears (2012 @ 1:02:1052). hannah arendt similarly observed (earlier and at the antipodes) that the wish for permanence beyond an individual’s life span motivates the making of things, particularly art (1958/1998: 152, 173). in the fale construction, this includes the production of refined surfaces (see fig. 26 in refiti, 2015: 163), where time and tradition are indispensable for the accretion of meaning and value in pattern. further, people are sustained ‘in place’ by specific “historical connections and disconnections”, which provide them with agency (clifford, 2000: 96). situated use of language, objects and practices creates specific meanings that are intimately bound up with local life (wittgenstein, 1958). with the intensification of modernisation in europe, mobility and changing social spheres in europe rendered tradition problematic (see clifford, 2000: 98). at the beginning of the twentieth century, with collective systems of meaning weakened, ornament itself lost much of its social import—a condition often felt as irreversible (engels-schwarzpaul, 2001: 102). an echo of such loss is also palpable in malama meleisea’s comment a hundred years later: “the loss of oral traditions, artefacts, records of past events, art and music can only result in the spiritual impoverishment of a nation” (1981: 123). in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 53 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n meleisea in samoa and helu (1993) in tonga have both clearly identified a link between increasingly complex social systems and the loss of certain elements of tradition. yet, is this loss the same as the earlier one in europe? while meleisea seems to share a modernists view that “culture cannot be preserved by trying to make people re-create and imitate past forms” (1981: 123), he continues on in a different direction: living cultures grow and develop creatively from traditional heritage, and heritage continues to give meaning to people’s life, as traditions (123). not surprisingly, perhaps, meleisea reverses the temporality ascribed to tradition in the west; rather than the past being put behind, from a pacific perspective, one walks backward into the future with the past firmly in sight (hau'ofa, 2008: 66). gathering up and performing traditions—“never simply backward-looking”, but as part of “belonging to some discrete social time and place in an interconnected world” (clifford, 2000: 97)—helps link pasts and futures. forms of indigenous traditionalism engage pacific material culture more creatively than the nostalgia engendered by western beliefs in progress. they are kin to the european renaissance, which “returned to a classical past to innovate a dynamic future” (100). aby warburg showed in the early twentieth century that the florentine renaissance was not a rebirth following extinction, as the word would suggest, but the selective activation of a nachleben (afterlife or survival) of images and motifs (didi-huberman, rehberg & belay, 2003: 273). nachleben involves “forgetting, the transformation of sense, involuntary memory, and unexpected rediscovery” (275), forming a web of memory, rather than an account of a particular history, that includes pauses, crises, leaps and periodic versions. the past constantly marks the present, and the process can either run regressively towards an imitation of the past or progressively and creatively to rework a tradition (rampley, 2001b: 102). less like an unbroken river, which accumulates from upstream to downstream, this dialectic tradition unfolds “between the river’s flow and its whirling eddies” (didi-huberman et al., 2003: 276). a form can survive its own death: disappear at some historical moment and reappear later— thus surviving in collective memory (didi-huberman, 2002: 68). displaced yet persistent, in a new mode of signification, surviving images testify to their past as ghostly manifestations (65). seen as survivals, the fale pasifika’s iconic elements (shape, material surfaces, patterns or ornaments) are “form[s] of temporal turmoil” (papapetros, 2003: 169), a play or knot of heterogeneous temporalities, themselves vested in collective memory and recoverable to varying degrees and in different ways (see engels-schwarzpaul, 2001: 11–12; rampley, 2000: 90–97). as artefacts, these iconic elements embody, as alfred gell has noted, “residues of complex intentionalities” (1996: 37), particularly in diasporic situations, where iconic objects and patterns acquire additional layers of meaning. when customary life has to be abandoned, traditions can be crucial, “because those who don’t have a past won’t have a future” (syrian refugee in sinjab, 2016 @ 12:25mins). edward b. tyler (whose notion of survival warburg most likely appropriated) noted that “multiple pasts” are interwoven in the “vertiginous play of time in the present […] ‘surface’ of a given culture” (didi-huberman, 2002: 63). as parts of the current surface of a culture, objects can help recover traditions, intentions, memories and emotions—in short, to build a future. in english, surface, as a noun, designates the visible outside of something that encloses its invisible elements—hence the phrase “on the face of it”. the verb in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 54 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n surface, by contrast, indicates a depth relationship, implying that something invisible becomes visible. the verbal form, closer to tyler’s use of surface, relates to a pacific conception that tattooing and other art forms activate “a (sur)facing that allows the body [and certain objects] to look towards the world” (refiti, 2007). but surface must first be produced, refined, made even to make space for outward, textured expressions. in samoa, the surfaces of measina (luminous-white and treasured objects) are smoothed, whitened and bleached, then elevated and revealed (refiti, 2015: 15 & 128). as production, this is a “marking off of value” (clifford, 2000: 99) requiring an investment of labour, which has the effect of removing things from the ordinary and making them stand out against the flow of nature and change. the smoothing of surfaces mirrors an adornment by ornaments—the first being the condition of possibility for the latter. in samoan culture, measina asserts a surface condition in which “the present is woven with multiple pasts” (didi-huberman, 2002: 63). without surface, pattern cannot emerge. refined surface without pattern remains pure possibility. yet, when patterns intertwine sensuous surface with depth-meaning, they can be understood simultaneously (alexander, bartmański & giesen, 2012: 32). surface, then, is “the necessary interface of the material feeling of meaning”, which remains “connected to other symbols and whole constellations of meaning” (bartmański, 2015:17). iconic power, thus, crucially concerns materiality—skin and blood in the case of tattoo, wood and sennit in the case of the fale—hence icons are bundles of material/aesthetic surface and immaterial/spiritual, moral or intellectual depth. in the “performative fusion of surface and depth” (17), iconic aspects of patterns in the fale pasifika are activated in specific experiential clusters (24). surface, here, is the indispensable interface across which meaning, labour and value converge with “often visceral collective feelings” (27), and on which pattern fuses material, narrative and social significance in iconic performativity. surface patterns are not merely traditional but living iconic survivals, in which collective feelings can consolidate and “become conscious of themselves” (durkheim & fields, 1995: 421). the iconic: binding and arresting patterned surfaces, then, do not simply enclose objects but reveal them—in energetic mediations of past and present, individual and collective meanings, aesthetic affect, material experience and cultural representation (bartmański, 2015: 28). in the fale pasifika, they mediate obvious meanings understood by most people, yet they also hint at something less obvious. iconic power, according to charles s. peirce, relies on the excitement of ideas that are naturally allied with the associations an object or building would itself excite (1998: 13). an icon represents its object mainly by its sensory similarity (273), which is commonly taken as visual. however, icons can also be diagrams that do not “resemble their objects […] at all in looks” (13)—instead, their likeness consists in “the relations of their parts” (13). samoan fale tele (great house) routinely shelter and perform relationships, and their diagrammatic layout allocates specific pou (posts) to particular fanua (families). the pou re-present descent lines and enact connections between them. the combination of visual and diagrammatic iconicity, in a “felicitous performative arrangement of visually arresting phenomenon and socially potent meanings and their references” (bartmański, 2015: 3), involves material objectifications of thoughts and feelings. in this way, the fale pasifika is able to in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 55 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n activate aspects “invisible yet still alive in local hearts and memory”, aspects that are “still there” (tengan & roy, 2014: 315, 322) in the present surface of diasporic culture. its formal and material qualities are much more than remnants of classic pacific architecture. for gell, the decoration of objects is a particular social “technology of enchantment” (1998: 74) adding to an object’s psychological functionality. gell rejects distinctions between the beautiful and the useful arising out of a western cultural heritage of judeo-christian and islamic histories of images (1998: 4–6, 96). his theory of pattern, which addresses the physical agency inherent in non-representational decorative forms, speaks to some elements of the fale pasifika. patterns allow the physical body of an object to become “a ‘living thing’” through “visual properties of repetitiveness and symmetry” (76–77). in a similar vein, warburg argued that ‘symbolic images’ are neither ornamental nor ultimately explicable by iconographic methods—rather, they play an “originary, constitutive role for thinking, interpretation, and […] being”, like metaphor constantly renewing intuition (johnson, 2012: 18; brody, 1987). this constitutive role of symbolic images for thinking may explain both the fale pasifika’s iconic appearance and the development of a concept central to pacific identity formation in the diaspora, the vā. this “unity-that-is-all” (wendt, 1996) is the space in which all relationships unfold. as one of the alternative concepts indigenous populations in the pacific region use to confront prevailing western geographies of power/knowledge, the vā manifests desires for “a common space of belonging, based on mutual respect” (refiti, 2015: 14) in diverse but related communities. the samoan maxim, “ia teu le vā” refers to the orientation of people in that space, the proper order in which “to face the ancestors” (refiti, 2009: 16). teu, producing, “embellishing and adorning the space of the ancestor”, is also the tufuga’s task of opening and orienting space in the fale tele by dressing the timber, measina (“the bleaching and whitening of the materiality of the world”, 15). constantly reworked interpretations of such central concepts, which preserve both differences and identity, increase the fale pasifika’s iconic power to serve, shelter, extend and adorn the vā. wendt, a key person during the planning phases, recalls that the fale owes its classical forms to the influence of pacific community members on the committee, so that tufuga lalava filipe tohi created classical tongan lalava which, though no longer serving structural purposes, lashed-up cultural meanings with group and personal identities. fig. 3 lalava patterns at the fale pasifika [photo: author, 2917] in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 56 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n several forms of signification operate simultaneously: first, the fale diagrammatically represents cosmic relationships (refiti, 2015: 206f, 219f, 223f ) and relationships of families with their lands. in the diaspora, such iconicity acquired a stronger look-alike aspect: the building looks like classical buildings in the homelands, which served as communal meeting spaces. at the same time, only some initiated community members or visitors would understand the lalava patterns’ highly conventional form of diagrammatical representation. for those who do not understand the specific cognitive or emotional relationships, the patterns still act on perception, thanks to their specific relationships of parts exploiting “particularly (visually) salient part-to-part relationships produced by the repetition and symmetrical arrangement of motifs” (gell, 1998: 76). the lalava’s application to the beams’ surfaces “multiplies the number of […] parts and the density of their internal relationships” (76). establishing an agentive disposition of internal reference that animates the patterns, it brings them to life in a non-representational way, and draws our perception into the relationships in and between the motifs. these relationships, binding forces between arresting figures, ensnaring ground and viewers, are founded on the experience of a “mimetic passing over into the object” (rampley, 1997: 45). we are trapped or hooked (gell, 1998: 80), and our relationship to the artefacts bearing the pattern changes: ‘unfinished business’ (caused by the cognitive gap in grasping the pattern’s complexity) becomes a binding force that is never resolved but always in a “renewed, residual imbalance” (81). patterns slow down perception; the object “is never fully possessed” but “always in the process of becoming possessed”, setting up biographical relations between artefact and recipients (81), as well as between recipients. iconic consciousness always involves an understanding “by feeling, by contact, by the evidence of the senses rather than the mind” (alexander, 2015: 4). materiality, however, also enables abstract thoughts: in order “to express our own ideas even to ourselves, we need to attach those ideas to material things that symbolize them” (durkheim & fields, 1995: 229). collective feelings “become conscious of themselves only by settling upon external objects” and by taking on some of their traits, their physical nature, so that they come to mingle “with the life of the physical world” (421–22). cultural content, therefore, is principally material, entangled, and embedded in specific practices (bartmański, 2015: 26). how icons “participate in the invention or the re-invention of the real” (pier, 1997: 213), and how or whether they can provide a model for its elaboration, depends on their relationship with meaning and practice more widely, and on their participation in a ”dialectic of negation and preservation” (rampley, 2001a: 307). thus, while some of the fale’s visual aspects effectively anchor meaning and memories, visual likenesses can also float as generalized signifiers, meaning different things in different contexts to different people. moreover, there is always a productive, enigmatic rest that interpretation or translation cannot exhaust. this is both a failure of signification and the fertile groundswell of the iconic mode, whose elaboration invariably involves some form of appropriation and/or mimesis. fau, in tufuga faufale, means “bind together, build” (pratt, 1893), and a tufuga faufale is an expert in binding a house together. filipe tohi did just that, even though the lalava no longer structurally bind the posts together. in the fale pasifika’s technical production, an advisory group and a team of engineers, architects, quantity surveyors and project managers replaced the tufuga faufale. tohi, in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 57 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n however, self-consciously lashed-up cultural meanings with group and personal identities. that the fale was planned and built with the ongoing support of an advisory committee representing different pacific groups helped build a community. its members assemble in the fale and materially and experientially mediate, or trans-late, traditional processes, structures and materials to this new environment. the building increasingly becomes a catalyst for a nz-born, pasifika identity and produces effective and affective ties between the communities, students and academics it serves. their resulting sense of belonging is simultaneously indebted to an original setting and committed to a new community (refiti, 2015: 5). displacement necessitates new interpretations, alignments and configurations, as people seize hold of material objects from their homeland to keep them going and manage times of crisis. the success of this project, its iconicity being a contributing factor, amounts to symbolising and effecting “relations of mana” (tomlinson & tengan, 2016: 17) for pacific communities in auckland, as well as channelling affective force through the creation of lasting relationships. tomlinson and tengan note that forms based on “repetition, balance and complementarity” not only operate aesthetically but can transfer and channel mana (2016: 17). for communities able to participate, the lalava patterns establish and maintain linkages between the living, the dead and the cosmos. repetition “symbolise[s] and effect[s] relations of mana” (2016a: 17), not only in traditional houses in their original context but also in contemporary ones in the diaspora. the continued survival, the nachleben, of roof shape, proportions, structural framework and lalava testifies, in their very displacement, to the permanence and persistence of mana in pacific diasporic culture. these forms are instrumental in making visitors “recognize and acknowledge the sovereignty and mana of whose space [they] are in at all times” (tengan & roy, 2014: 327). in this way the iconic, including the iconic surface, captures and binds new communities. fig. 4 lalava covering post/beam connection [photo: author, 2017] in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 58 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n transformative appropriation: harnessing iconic power objects and buildings have iconic power when they function both at an immediate, sensory level and at the level of collective consciousness. as a catalyst for community building, they are both theoretically and practically important. yet, the iconic has long been neglected and misunderstood in the western intellectual tradition, which conceived of icons as “superficial, deceptive, and ultimately even as socially dangerous”, despite the fact that non-experts have found them inspiring (bartmański & alexander, 2012: 11). like ornament, icons were attributed to the non-educated or to non-western cultures (engels-schwarzpaul, 2001: 3, fn. 10). ironically, with its pejorative context removed, the association may describe modes of identification and solidarity that modern, rationalist analyses misrecognised or discarded prematurely, for ideological reasons. re-appropriating the iconic promises not only a different understanding of the processes it supports (e.g., specific surface/pattern phenomena) but also a starting point from which to engage them in practice. if the fale pasifika’s overall shape and details still have the power to bind participating communities (although important aspects are neither traditional nor classical), this is due also to tohi’s transformative appropriations. tohi followed tohunga whakairo (māori, master carver) paki harrison’s example, who carved tane-nui-a-rangi, the māori wharenui (meetinghouse) on the university of auckland campus, and chose traditional patterns shared by different communities from in-and-outside the pacific. the wharenui’s pou relate not only to different māori groups, but also to pacific homelands and european places of departure and tohi, like harrison, carefully provided multiple entry points for diverse audiences (pers. comm. 29.3.17). he was clearly aware of iconic power as valuable strategic resource and ordering principle and used iconic patterns to galvanize narratives and juxtapose perspectives. thus, unlike an “apparatus that gathers and controls” hierarchical village relationships (refiti, 2015: 229), the fale relates different groups in the diaspora horizontally. as diagram, and through visual similarity, it continually re-presents and shapes a pasifika identity. an important and interesting question in this context concerns the relationship of the iconic with mana. tomlinson and tengan describe, in their introduction to new mana (2016b), processes of mana’s “transformation in appropriation” (14) in politics, religion, art and commerce. they note that, in the iconic 2010 exhibition of three temple images of kū in honululu, “modernday hawaiians” worked, in aesthetic terms, “to ‘read’ the designs that were unfamiliar to many”, realising that “patterns and motifs were not just decorative but spiritually potent and practically useful” (2016: 22). they refer to wendt’s definition of mana as an “artistic and imaginative energy” drawn from the totality of the artist’s environment, reconstituted and then transmitted back into the community—a power to explore “unfettered by accepted conventions” (xvi). this take on mana is worlds apart from anthropology’s supernatural power (codrington) or floating signifier (lévistrauss; at first sight, it also seems contrary to customary pacific use). mana now empowers contemporary pacific artists and activists, who re-appropriate and transform an anthropological technical term to their own ends. similarly, there might be value in taking hold of the concept iconic to return to it an imaginative, generative power able to energise communities. according to tengan, the creative, aesthetic work of understanding “the mana of kū aesthetically” can be “an opportunity for reconnection and recreation of culture and mana” (22). in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 59 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n if mana is, in the widest sense, a spiritual and creative energy or power that circulates between individual, community and cosmos, and if it can contribute to the (re)building of culture and community (tengan, 2014: 217), then iconic practices may, in certain contexts, support the circulation of mana. maccannell argues that icons “cannot be suspended in a single consciousness but can only exist in a group setting” (1992: 237). an iconic image is exalted by the co-participating members (240) and it is through this exaltation, the participation of “real people in real situations” in the “living present” and a “particular unification of audience and performance” (242), that the icon derives a power that can then be circulated back into the community. an iconic building that is an integral part of diasporic community life can thus be charged with energy and iconic power and, in turn, galvanize the community. while the appropriation of classical pacific architecture by the “cultural revival industry” (refiti 2015: 180) leads, in most cases, to nostalgic, vaguely exotic spaces that could be easily exchanged for similar floating signifiers, buildings like the fale pasifika seem to demonstrate the generative potential of iconic power. despite lacking important elements, the fale activates invisible, but still present facets of diasporic culture with its multiple interwoven pasts, unexpected as they may be. in their very displacement, its iconic forms—roof shape, proportions, structural framework, lalava—testify to the permanence and persistence of mana in pacific diasporic culture (warburg’s observations would support these claims; see endnote 4). old concepts with pejorative uses can sometimes be salvaged as serviceable analytical tools. in other cases, it may be necessary to create new terms within the appropriate cultural context. thus, replacing icon with tupua, for instance, may help staying clear of missionary histories and traditions that could otherwise taint the discussion. tupua, meaning “a riddle and also to originate” in samoan, is a state in which a being “begins to open and acquire life”, demonstrating life’s animation (refiti, 2010). relationships might exist between terms like tupua, pule/kupesi (pattern) and heliaki (metaphor) that correspond with those between pattern, icon and metaphor in the english language. such “correspondences between heterogeneous images”, regions and cosmological events (papapetros, 2010: 42) are likely to be crucial and generative in the diaspora, where “there is no direct connection between ancestral land and the circle of the matai”, between the ancestors’ mana and the sacred circle. in its absence, samoan identity is created and maintained through tofiga (refiti 2015: 222), which in the homelands locates, gathers and appoints “things and people to places” (7). in the diaspora, tofiga instead “extracts meanings from cultural objects (fale) and concepts (vā, …)” (222) and bonds them to identity, rather than place. refiti’s example is, indeed, the fale pasifika, in which the survival of the (iconic) fale form, in one sense a ‘floating signifier’, nevertheless represents pacific identity in new zealand, underpinned by the “displacement of form, and the persistence of the sense of belonging attached to it” (refiti, 2015: 5). to understand its iconic power, particularly through concepts generated from within pacific thought (like tupua, heliaki, or pule/kupesi), allows an appreciation of iconic surface/pattern’s participation in the re-invention and articulation of diasporic realities that concepts like traditional, or even classical, obscure. in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 60 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n references inscriptions: alexander, j. c. 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(1958). philosophical investigations. philosophische untersuchungen (2 ed.). oxford, uk: basil blackwell. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01229512 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01229512 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01229512 http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1666968 http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1666968 http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1666968 https://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/9248 https://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/9248 https://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/9248 https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/pacific-at-the-university/our-fale.html https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/pacific-at-the-university/our-fale.html https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/pacific-at-the-university/our-fale.html http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/wendt/tatauing.asp http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/wendt/tatauing.asp http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/wendt/tatauing.asp in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 62 binding and arresting: surface and pattern in a contemporary traditional pacific building s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n endnotes thanks to two anonymous reviewers, and to ty tengan, ross jenner and carl douglas, who provided important feedback on the draft. carl suggested that the iconic could help address “the mirroring role of material productions in producing situated identity”, thereby shifting established ideas about ‘traditional’ places and identities. 1 fale pasifika designates a house dedicated to the people of the pacific, that is, the indigenous peoples of polynesia, micronesia, and melanesia. pasifika is a term coined by the new zealand government to refer to groups of pacific new zealanders living in aotearoa new zealand. the pacific, of course, is itself a european construction, and a pan-pacific identity would cover a huge area, with diverse cultures and perspectives. 2 at the same time, as one reviewer noted, it is insufficient simply to introduce new terms to avoid heavily discursive western ones, given that any term—traditional or modern— that is introduced to describe a phenomenon more closely, and with more ontological integrity, still runs the risk of colonised description, since it is itself constituted by the problem. 3 “from a general point of view, the whole of the art work of the maori [came] under the head of ornament” because it failed as realistic representation (cont...) (hamilton, 1901: 6). just as the denigration of non-western art as merely ornamental impacts on discussions of ornament in cross-cultural contexts, terms like traditional and authentic are highly problematic yet influential on western discussions of art, architecture and design (see engels-schwarzpaul & refiti, forthcoming, 2018). 4 at the threshold to modernity, european renaissance identities formed in the interval between historical continuities and discontinuities (rampley, 2001a: 312). the renaissance not so much preserved classical cultures as transformed them in a “dialectic of negation and preservation” (307). classical forms were not simply repeated; rather, collective cultural memory was appropriated and transformed, while inherited images, charged with psychic and symbolic energies, were reactivated from dormancy “in the imagination of a new age” (de la durantaye, 2009: 71). the nachleben of traditional forms, which can have an “irresistible power” in moments of cultural crisis (van eck, 2015: 179), points to both pasts and futures. in the “dual possibility of tradition”, (as amnesiac repetition or memorial construction, rampley, 2001a: 324) (324) ancient motifs, “inherited narratives, symbols, icons and motifs” (rampley, 2001a: 322) are (re)assembled, transformed and integrated into a new period’s cultural sense of self. meaning, in these constellations, relies less on individual figures but on interrelationships and compositions (johnson, 2012: 28). 5 this distinction is historically specific; it is, for instance, not present in gottfried semper’s work but very much in the foreground in adolf loos’ writings. 6 as layton (2003) notes, gell’s rejection of symbolic, conventional aspects of artworks was perhaps unresolved but likely to have been resolved had he not died so soon. less generously, fehrenbach (2010) criticises gell’s reliance on binary structures and algebraic models/diagrams. he appears to misread mitchell and hooper’s discussions of gell’s work, which generally validates most of gell’s theoretical moves. alexander and bartmanski support gell’s argument about agency, emphasising a class of agentive social phenomena, not only reflecting but partaking in the social construction of reality; these “visually arresting objectifications” are often striking in form and highly charged in content, with both spheres interwoven and contingently performed, not just conventionally implemented (bartmanski, 2015: 7). 7 since animated images and their agency can dissolve the boundaries between viewer and world (payne, 2014: 310), patterns can arrest and entrap (gell, 1998: 82). 8 artists took on important tasks of the tufuga, making art “the new ritual attractor, replacing the central posts and the ridge beam [of the fale tele] in this function” (refiti, 2015: 229). tufuga faufale would traditionally have been involved in gift-payment sequences marked by important communal events during the completion of sections (like the ‘au’au’s setting-into-place, marking the connection of earth and sky). in the fale pasifika, a horizontal air vent replaced the ‘au’au, and published precedents and cad programmes, rather than a tufuga faufale, controlled the fale’s roof shape. its posts, no longer dedicated to specific ancestors linking house to place, are purely structural, load bearing devices, not lashed but bolted to the beams. the lalava adorning beams and post/beam connections have, for their part, been relieved from structural tasks. 9 trans-lation, literally, is a process of displacement and transport from one place to another (callon, 2007; harper, 2001-2015). 10 anthropologists have recently claimed that iconic signification predominates in the cultures they studied: goslinga (2006) confirms the “significance of the iconic in producing meaning through relationality” in tamil culture, endorsing daniel’s argument that iconicity tends to be “the dominant or valued mode of representation” (1984: 231). likewise, keane (2005) observed in indonesia that icons are powerful signs drawing force from their materiality and embeddedness in concrete circumstances. as bundles of forces, icons give rise to and transform “modalities of action and subjectivity” (186). 11 ty tengan considered the term tupua not appropriate for the hawai’ian context, however, and suggested ki’i instead (pers. comm. 1.7.17, munich). interstices 15 100 the notion of atmosphere offers a cogent conceptual manifold for something that is sensually manifest, yet ambiguous, cloudy and unstable.1 atmospheres function like apertures of immediacy; they hang in space and time as elusive agents of intimacy, resisting manipulation or capture. in this experiment, i take the question of being moved by atmosphere to a brief photographic encounter with a liminal place, and stillness of time, on the slippery ground between the lowest ebb of the tide and the not-yet fullness of day. my intention is to ‘sample’ atmosphere, as a spatially discharged ‘meeting space’, from the intertidal zone of the mangere inlet, auckland, new zealand. this shallow, broad tidal catchment, marked by incessant processes of human discharge and abandon, expresses complex convergences of often back-grounded bodies, quasi-objects and anonymous forces. i explore whether the diffused intensities circulating in this unremarkable landscape can disclose atmosphere by drawing my intimate attentiveness to the undeterminable. can this corporeal encounter, the placement of my body and the lens of my camera, impress a present into photographic composition? can it incite an immanent alterity and make audible the silent, impersonal ‘voices’ constituent of localized atmosphere? atmosphere overflows into apprehension via affective circuits,2 and to re-present or image its formlessness is challenging. whilst atmosphere expresses a palpable territory, there is no singular object or hierarchy around which to organise my photographic focus. this recognition directed my thinking towards the agency of atmosphere as a mode of suspension or interruption of habits of perceptual encounter (anderson 2009) and prompted me to search for modes of ‘looking’ outside seeing. atmosphere might then play a role in de-stratifying the human gaze and its patterns. perhaps it could decentre, or at least make anthropocentric vantages a little wobbly.3 since full theoretical elaboration lies outside the scope of this paper, i focus on demonstrating how provisional thinking generated a method to catch a momentary quotidian reality unawares. in my brief encounter with mangere inlet in june 2013, at a dawn low tide, i correlated atmosphere with the shady and ephemeral characteristics of thresholds. photographic acts, edits, and archival selection were organised by three conditions: the orientation and still motion of my body; the automatic settings of my leicav-lux40; and the limits of the transitioning frames within iphoto. maximising light, i initiated the image capture orientated skyward. moving from a bridge above the inlet, i then lowered the camera into the folds of the tidal fields, mud and mangrove. this traversal orchestrated the sequencing. i used the auto settings of my camera and shot very rapidly to suspend normalised seeing and cognitive decision-making. in the serial organisation of the frames, the most incoherent images were deleted and transition into movement was effected with iphoto’s slowest speed of dissolve. moved on: intertidal atmosphere hannah hopewell interstices 15 101 references anderson, b. (2009). affective atmospheres. emotion, space and society, 2(2), 77–81. böhme, g. (1993). atmosphere as the fundamental concept of a new aesthetics. thesis eleven, 36(1), 113-126. deleuze, g. (1986). cinema 1: the movement image (h. tomlinson, b. habberjam, trans.). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. deleuze, g. & guattari, f. (1994). what is philosophy? (h. tomlinson, g burchill, trans.). london: verso. laruelle, f. (2012). photo-fiction, a non-standard aesthetics (d. burke, trans.). minneapolis, mn: univocal publishing. endnotes 1. “atmospheres are indeterminate above all as regards their ontological status. we are not sure whether we should attribute them to the objects or environments from which they proceed or to the subjects who experience them. we are also unsure where they are. they seem to fill the space with a certain tone of feeling like a haze.” (böhme 1993: 114) 2. deleuze and guattari note that ‘‘affects are no longer feelings or affections; they go beyond the strength of those who undergo them’’ (1994: 164). 3. see deleuze’s commentary on perception and vertov’s cine-eye (1986: 80-84). in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 173 f i x i n g interstices: journal of architecture and related arts is an open forum for the dissemination of architecture and thought. it is a non-profit journal published once a year. to remain independent, interstices relies upon institutional and private support to fund its editorial production. annual individual sponsorship is available from $500; corporate sponsorship from $1,000; and institutional sponsorship from $3,000. sponsors will receive acknowledgement of their contribution in each issue of interstices for which they are a sponsor and on the journal’s website (https://interstices.ac.nz/ index.php/interstices). this issue is supported by school of art + design, auckland university of technology, school of architecture & planning, university of auckland (institutional sponsors) executive editors andrew douglas, julia gatley, susan hedges co-ordinating editor julia gatley / susan hedges issue editors jeanette budgett, carl douglas, simon twose contributors this issue luciano brina, jeanette budgett, sibyl bloomfield, yue yu, verarisa ujung, julieanna preston, carl douglas, timothy burke, michael chapman, louisa king, tamsin salehian, chris french, maria mitsoula, anastasia globa, lawrence harvey, jules moloney, simon twose, julia gatley, tim nees design and typography catherine griffiths typefaces founders grotesk, tiempos text klim type foundry production catherine griffiths, susan hedges, joanne mathers published by enigma : he aupiki, auckland, new zealand march 2022 issn 1170-585x (print) issn 2537-9194 (online) this work is entitled to the full protection given by the copyright act 1962 to the holders of the copyright and reproduction of any substantial passage from the work except for the educational purposes therein specified is a breach of the copyright of the author and/or publisher. this copyright extends to all forms of photocopying and any storing of material in any kind of information retrieval system. interstices: journal of architecture and related arts takes a nonexclusive copyright in the papers submitted and accepted, i.e., we reserve the right to publish and republish the paper (for instance, electronically). authors are welcome to upload their papers in published form into their institution’s research repository. they retain the right to republish their papers elsewhere, provided that they acknowledge original publication in interstices. all applications by third parties, for reproduction in any form, should be made to the executive editors. submissions the editors invite submissions of articles, reports, book and project reviews, and translations. all correspondence should be addressed to the editors, interstices, school of art + design, aut university, private bag 92006, auckland 1020, new zealand. books for review and advertising should be forwarded to the executive editors, above. notes and guidelines for contributors can be found at https://interstices.ac.nz/index. php/interstices/information_for_ contributors acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the support of the very many people who have contributed to the realisation and quality of interstices issue 21 : fixing in various ways—including, marnie badham, tanja beer, sibyl bloomfield, luciano brina, jeanette budgett, timothy burke, wonsoek chae, michael chapman, carl douglas, daniel elkin, chris french, beth george, louisa king, michael louw, rebecca mclaughlan, maria mitsoula, tania gutierres monroy, julieanna preston, tamsin salehian, sarah stevens, simon twose, verarisa ujung, yue yu thanks to catherine griffiths and joanne mathers for designing and copy editing this issue. if we have inadvertently overlooked anyone, we apologise. thanks also to the school of art + design at auckland university of technology, and the school of architecture and urban planning at the university of auckland. and, finally, a big thank-you to all the contributors to interstices 21: fixing. www.interstices.ac.nz editorial advisory board aotearoa/new zealand mike austin (unitec institute of technology), gavin hipkins (university of auckland), ross jenner (university of auckland), dan fleming (university of waikato), robert jahnke (massey university), moana nepia (james henare centre at university of auckland), anthony hoete (university of auckland), sally jane norman (university of victoria, wellington) australia suzie attiwill (rmit university), jillian hamilton (queensland university of technology), stephen loo (university of new south wales), mirjana lozanovska (deakin university), john macarthur (university of queensland), jeff malpas (university of tasmania), jules moloney (deakin university), vivian mitsogianni (rmit design research institute), deborah van der plaat (university of queensland), sam spurr (university of new south wales), paul walker (university of melbourne), hélène frichot (university of melbourne) germany uta brandes (köln international school of design), ursula baus (frei04-publizistik, stuttgart), a. chr. (tina) engels-schwarzpaul (auckland university of technology) italy renato rizzi (università iuav di venezia, architect trento), nigel ryan (architect, rome) tunisia bechir kenzari (united arab emirates university) uk mark dorrian (edinburgh college of art), jonathan hale (university of nottingham), peg rawes (the bartlett school of architecture), joseph rykwert (university of pennsylvania) usa peggy deamer (yale university), mark goulthorpe (mit, decoi architects paris), jonathan lamb (vanderbilt university), david leatherbarrow (university of pennsylvania) colophon microsoft word interstices fixing workshop programme as at 17 july 2001 i n t e r s t i c e s journal of architecture and related arts “fixing”: workshop programme for 14 august 2021 (as at 17 july 2021): new zealand time paper to be discussed reviewer 1 reviewer 2 8:20:00 am welcome 8:30:00 am 07 from vulnerable to resilient: ‘fixing’ mechanisms and ‘unfixing’ practices 15 18 8:55:00 am 15 pharmakon landscape: an emerging territorial model for deep-time geo-bio-chemical governance 18 8 9:20:00 am 18 the hidden realities of maintenance 8 20 9:45:00 am 08 bodies, shawls and train cars: women and the travelling homes of the mexican revolution 20 31 10:10:00 am 1/2 hour break 10:40:00 am 20 unfixing space through sympoiēsis 31 23 11:05:00 am 31 prefix: parallel projections of decay, entropy and obsolescence at wangi power station 23 32 11:30:00 am 23 remote care through the cartographic reach: ecologic thinking with the geo-microscopic life of the west antarctic 32 26 11:55:00 am 32 second hand space 26 15 12:20:00 pm 1 hour break 1:20:00 pm 26 in the service of … 5 6 1:45:00 pm 05 parktopia: children’s active ecological and social contribution to place through socially engaged art 6 22 2:10:00 pm 06 designing spaces for end of life: materials, maintenance and the communication of care 22 29 2:35:00 pm 22 interiority of caring relations in mangokal holi tradition: interiority, fixing and ritual schemata 29 17 3:00:00 pm 1/2 hour break 3:30:00 pm 29 the politics of the pile: material imagination and improvisation in the 1871 paris commune 17 19 3:55:00 pm 17 tectonic agency in africa: reinvigorating collective making through repair 19 11 4:20:00 pm 19 (un)fixing aloula: maps, images and paradigms of the attic (marble) landscape 11 7 4:45:00 pm 11 typology of fixing 7 5 5:10:00 pm finish up in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 140 p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s review / sarah breen lovett boris b. bertram (dir.) human shelter good company pictures, denmark, 2018 for me, human shelter is a deeply poignant documentary film about transcendence. that is, transcending beyond different climatic, political, or social contexts of human shelter into a broader awareness, of varying kinds. while the notion of transcendence is spoken about directly by only one of the homes’ occupants in the film, it is alluded to by all situations presented to different degrees, and is drawn out more explicitly in this review through reflection upon the filmic content in relation to the writing of abraham maslow. the notion of home being the catalyst for transcendence can be understood as a rethinking of maslow’s well-known hierarchy of needs (1943: 370-396), extended by his lesser known the farther reaches of human nature (1971) and most specifically “various meanings of transcendence” (1971: 259-269). if we are fortunate, our hierarchy of needs—physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualisation (1943: 372-384)—are met, at least partially, by our home. but, contrary to maslow’s notion of pre-potency (1943: 370), rather than seeing a deficiency in needs (such as physiological, safety, and love) as a blockage to other needs (such as esteem and self-actualisation), they can be considered a catalyst for transcending toward these, and beyond. this is articulated in maslow’s later writings about transcendence as an experience of shifting from the deficiency-realm to the being-realm (1971: 245-253). to clarify, maslow’s focus on being is not an end goal, as in to be in a static transcendent state, but rather transcendence is the process of flux, of simultaneously becoming and being (1971: 56-57, 108). i shall briefly outline each of the human shelters, to illustrate how the contrasting contexts are communicated as a basis for different types of transcendence to occur. on the norwegian horizon a vivid pink sun breaks through crisp white clouds. an iridescent field of light lilac snow spans as far as the eye can see. variations in icy texture mark movement across the landscape. small trees outline the filmic frame, and groups of static reindeer are almost indecipherable. once they begin to move, a silhouetted human on an ice mobile becomes visible amongst the herd, and the whole seem to move together as one. here, human shelter is a very small moveable hut covered in ice, but it is experienced in the broader context of the arrival of different seasons, and the sublime nature and the community of reindeer that lives within it. here it is said that “time is of little importance”. this experience of transcendence through the home can be reflected upon in terms of in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 141 review / boris b. bertram (dir.), human shelter p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s maslow’s concepts of being in the present moment, and transcending time (1971: 59-60, 124, 259), as well as the notion of being deeply connected to nature as something beyond the self (1971: 60, 124, 265-266, 321). here, due to the freezing conditions, lack of human community, and small living quarters, transcendence occurs due to a deep connection with the environment, a unique awareness of time and awareness of self in relation to it. a curator from moma in new york city brushes teeth and makes a warm bed adjacent to a vast library of books while coffee boils. the curator says that his understanding of home is as a place you can leave and come back to. however, this comfortable home in a developed city also provides this curator with the opportunity for transcendence beyond one’s own life and concerns, into the concerns of others. this curator’s quest is to find out when a “shelter becomes a home” and what defines “home” for the 60 million refugees roaming the earth, searching for a place to feel more secure. this reminds me of maslow’s concepts around transcendence of self, to focus on something which is at service to broader humanity, or a meta-motivation (1971: 261, 289-291). this curator’s concerns are expressed through his sensitive and thorough exhibition called insecurities: tracing displacement and shelter at moma, which shows documentation of the global refugee emergency and features a flat-packed unicef home designed to house refugees, and featured in the next scene. amidst dust, rocks, and sandy dunes, barbed wire circumvents refugee tents in iraq covered with plastic tarps and reflective foil. concrete blocks hold down satellite dishes on tin drums. the importance of safety is most acutely felt in these homes; we are told that if this place did not exist, these occupants would be dead. a young poet pleads, “dear god, help me to be able to be with all the people [ . . . ] please help me, help me so i can get to my community.” here the needs of being in a warm, stable, safe environment with one’s family and familiar community are not met, but this situation is transcended and other needs of self-esteem and creative expression are fulfilled. here, i cannot help but think of maslow’s notion of transcendence through adversity (1971: 262). the ability of the human spirit to transcend this difficult situation is evident when the poet asserts that “[h]ome is the place where i live. welcome to my home, everyone’s tent and mine.” the tents are adorned in ornamental fabrics and rugs, businesspeople continue to get dressed boris b. bertram (dir.). in norway, a reindeer herder removes ice from a miniature moveable hut in a landscape of light lilac snow [film still] in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 142 review / boris b. bertram (dir.), human shelter p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s in suits, young children dance and play games despite the circumstances of being confined to a refugee camp, and hoping to return to a life, as it was—one day. a similarly barren rocky landscape of brown earth and grey sky sits in contrast to a small white dome fed by solar power and yellow tubes. this is the mars simulated nasa camp on the edge of a volcano in hawaii. here, future astronauts attempt basic human inhabitation amidst alien atmospheric conditions for eight months. relying on oxygen supply and hermeneutic envelopes, plants are grown in the dome, not purely for physical survival, but also as a psychological escape, a connection to what is home and ultimately what it means to be human. once released from the simulated experiment and allowed to go outside without oxygen tanks, an astronaut begins to play violin in the empty landscape, she reflects “if we are creating, then we are human”. in this scene, the astronauts are transcending human culture, seeing their own experience through a distant lens, to understand it in maslow’s terms of a simultaneously experiencing and self-observing manner (1971: 260). the astronaut’s occupation of space and display of human creativity sit in stark observable contrast to the inhabitable environment and scientific means of habitation. fig. 2 boris b. bertram (dir.). in iraq an occupant of the dusty desert adorns a refugee with ornamental fabrics and rugs [film still] fig. 3 boris b. bertram (dir.). in hawaii on the edge of a volcano a future astronaut plays violin outside a hermeneutic home [film still] in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 143 review / boris b. bertram (dir.), human shelter p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s a cacophony of country and western music, cicadas and tropical birds, overlay images of peeling green paint, loose timber boarding, and filtered sunlight in a tree house in uganda. seemingly without facilities such as bathrooms or kitchens, it is built on a constantly growing and moving structure—a tree. the occupant of the house reflects it was made to communicate to people that we should respect the environment, not only trees, but all living things. the occupant says the reason for this choice to live in a tree was “inspired by the environment, or to be the environmentalist.” here transcendence may resonate with maslow’s shift from the meta-motivation of environmental injustices into self-actualisation (1971: 267-268, 291-296). transcendence is realised through the home, the beliefs one holds, and expression of who one is; it is communicated through a palpable bliss experienced by the occupant. a japanese buddhist monk chants and rings bells on a busy tokyo street, where passers-by are more interested in their mobile phones. a shared apartment of fifteen occupants, full of comradery and communal meals, is placed in contrast to a lonely photographer, who lives and works in a six square metre capsule hotel. photographing lovers on the streets from a distance, and returning to this small home to process film in the same space where teeth are cleaned, the occupant, when reflecting upon her lone existence in contrast to the business of the world outside, says, “i get to a point where i forget myself and kind of transcend.” this kind of transcendence can be thought of by maslow’s notion of transcendence through dichotomy (1971: 263), where contrasting extremes can lead one to a state of transcendence, of moving beyond the situation of place into another space of consciousness. stilted timber slats and corrugated iron homes sit alongside overflowing garbage mounds and smoking fires that float upon the water in nigeria. to go anywhere one must use a canoe. paper thin and half-height walls in the homes make privacy a luxury, and the extremes of weather are felt explicitly. despite this, the feeling of community is remarkable, and occupants praise the pleasurable sensation of a floating home. it is described as a “cool feeling of floating”, a “fresh soothing sea breeze blows in, calms your nerves and makes your night restful”. rather than focusing on the unstable, cramped living conditions, concentrating upon community and natural phenomena enables a transcendence to an fig. 4 boris b. bertram (dir.). in nigeria, a boater navigates through a floating community of stilted houses [film still] in t e r s t ic e s 2 0 144 review / boris b. bertram (dir.), human shelter p o l i t i c a l m a t t e r s appreciation of what one has. this type of transcendence can be thought through maslow’s merging of sensation of place with identification (1971: 243, 262). here, the belonging to place and community seems to transcend many less congested, more developed, land-based living arrangements. a landscape of black sand surrounds a seasonal glacier in finland, which is now permanently receding. a lone cabin stands adjacent to it, handed down through generations. the family members reflect upon themselves in relation to the cabin, the position of the glacier, and the smell of spring that arrives with its melting. a father speaks of the effect of this place to the very depths of his soul, saying: “when you go to a small cabin that has nothing and you have nothing with you, you can actually feel most at home. your soul feels most at home.” he goes on to describe his understanding of the home, despite being on the edge of monumental environmental change, as being “in the context of the waves, clouds and rocks, something firm and eternal.” this can be reflected upon in terms of maslow’s notion of a deficiency-realm, to move into a deeper experience of the being-realm (1971: 124, 242, 265). here he literally transcends into a deeper connection with himself and place through having less, but seeing it in the context of all. this closing scene circles back to the sentiment of the opening, that proximity to sublime natural landscapes can lead to heightened experiences of transcendence. however, the real depth of the film, and engagement with the notion of transcendence, can be, as seen in the array of living environments in this film, that transcendence is attained in different ways in all situations despite (and often because of ) its context. this film is recommended viewing, because it gives hope. it poetically and beautifully communicates how transcendence is possible in all situations. further, the film illustrates the complex relationships we have with our environments, which when appreciated at a deep level, can allow us to shift consciousness to a more positive state. references maslow, a.h. (1943). a theory of human motivation. psychological review, 50(4), 370-396. maslow, a.h. (1971). the farthest reaches of human nature. new york, ny: penguin books. maslow, a.h. (1971). various meanings of transcendence. the farthest reaches of human nature. (pp. 259-269). new york, ny: penguin books. 117 in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 117 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s interstices: journal of architecture and related arts is an open forum for the dissemination of architecture and thought. it is a non-profit journal published once a year. to remain independent, interstices relies upon institutional and private support to fund its editorial production. annual individual sponsorship is available from $500; corporate sponsorship from $1,000; and institutional sponsorship from $3,000. sponsors will receive full acknowledgement of their contribution in each issue of interstices for which they are a sponsor. this issue is supported by school of art + design, auckland university of technology (institutional sponsor) and architectus (corporate sponsor) executive editors andrew douglas (andrew. douglas@aut.ac.nz) and ross jenner (r.jenner @auckland.ac.nz) co-ordinating editor susan hedges issue editors andrew douglas, ross jenner, sue hedges contributors this issue andrew douglas, sue gallagher, simon weir, sean pickersgill. sarah treadwell, jeremy treadwell, ashley mason, patrick clifford, ross jenner, rachel murray, sam kebbell, martin bryant, penelope forlano, dianne smith, grace salisbury mills, yasser megahed, adam sharr, graham farmer, mark southcombe, michael milojevic, michael davis design and typography catherine griffiths typefaces founders grotesk, tiempos text klim type foundry production andrew douglas, ross jenner, catherine griffiths, stefan reyners, susan hedges web programming steve huynh published by enigma : he aupiki, auckland, new zealand issn 1170-585x (print) issn 2537-9194 (online) this work is entitled to the full protection given by the copyright act 1962 to the holders of the copyright and reproduction of any substantial passage from the work except for the educational purposes therein specified is a breach of the copyright of the author and/or publisher. this copyright extends to all forms of photocopying and any storing of material in any kind of information retrieval system. interstices: journal of architecture and related arts takes a non-exclusive copyright in the papers submitted and accepted, i.e., we reserve the right to publish and republish the paper (for instance, electronically). authors are welcome to upload their papers in published form into their institution’s research repository. they retain the right to republish their papers elsewhere, provided that they acknowledge original publication in interstices. all applications by third parties, for reproduction in any form, should be made to the executive editors. submissions the editors invite submissions of articles, reports, book and project reviews, and translations. all correspondence should be addressed to the editors, interstices, school of art and design, aut university, private bag 92006, auckland 1020, new zealand. books for review and advertising should be forwarded to the executive editors, above. notes and guidelines for contributors can be found at http://interstices.ac.nz/ information-for-contributors/ guidelines-for-submissions/ acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the support of the very many people who have contributed to the realisation and quality of interstices 17 in various ways —including, but not limited to, the blind refereeing of papers. they are marcus wilson, david leatherbarrow, jeff malpas, mark jackson, gevork hartoonian, jiren feng, peggy deamer, tina engels-schwarzpaul, mike ostwald, paul emmons, hélène frichot, katie lloyd, amanda yates, derek kawiti, anthony hoete, nancy couling, sarah treadwell, katrina simon, carl douglas, mike davis, colin fournier, nikolai popov and farzaneh haghighi. thanks to catherine griffiths and stefan reyners for designing and copy editing this issue. if we have inadvertently overlooked anyone, we apologise. thanks also to the school of art and design at aut university. and, finally, a big thank you to all the contributors to interstices 17! www.interstices.ac.nz editorial advisory board aotearoa/new zealand mike austin (unitec institute of technology), dan fleming (university of waikato), robert jahnke (massey university), laurence simmons (the university of auckland), a.-chr. (tina) engels-schwarzpaul (auckland university of technology) australia suzie attiwell (rmit university), jillian hamilton (queensland university of technology), stephen loo (university of tasmania), mirjana lozanovska (deakin university), john macarthur (university of queensland), jeff malpas (university of tasmania), paul walker (university of melbourne) germany uta brandes (köln international school of design), ursula baus (frei04-publizistik, stuttgart) italy renato rizzi (università iuav di venezia, architect trento), nigel ryan (architect, rome) sweden hélène frichot (kth royal institute of technology) uae bechir kenzari (united arab emirates university) uk mark dorrian (edinburgh college of art), anthony hoete (what_ architecture, london), sally jane norman (university of sussex), peg rawes (the bartlett school of architecture), joseph rykwert (emeritus paul philippe cret professor) usa peggy deamer (yale university), mark goulthorpe (mit, decoi architects paris), jonathan lamb (vanderbilt university), david leatherbarrow (university of pennsylvania), moana nepia (university of hawai’i at mānoa) colophon http://school of art + design, auckland university of technology http://school of art + design, auckland university of technology http://school of art + design, auckland university of technology http://www.architectus.com.au http://andrew.douglas@aut.ac.nz http://andrew.douglas@aut.ac.nz mailto:r.jenner@auckland.ac.nz http://interstices.ac.nz/information-for-contributors/guidelines-for-submissions/ http://interstices.ac.nz/information-for-contributors/guidelines-for-submissions/ http://interstices.ac.nz/information-for-contributors/guidelines-for-submissions/ http://interstices.ac.nz in t e r s t ic e s 1 8 s u r f a c e / p a t t e r n 101 interstices: journal of architecture and related arts is an open forum for the dissemination of architecture and thought. it is a non-profit journal published once a year. to remain independent, interstices relies upon institutional and private support to fund its editorial production. annual individual sponsorship is available from $500; corporate sponsorship from $1,000; and institutional sponsorship from $3,000. sponsors will receive full acknowledgement of their contribution in each issue of interstices for which they are a sponsor. this issue is supported by school of art + design, auckland university of technology, school of architecture + planning, university of auckland (institutional sponsor) and moller architects, reverb consultancy / bruce petry, architectus, warren and mahoney, jasmax (corporate sponsors) executive editors andrew douglas (andrew. douglas@aut.ac.nz) and ross jenner (r.jenner@auckland.ac.nz) co-ordinating editor susan hedges issue editors susan hedges, ross jenner, tina engels-schwarzpaul contributors this issue anuradha chatterjee, andrew douglas, sebastien galliot, tina engels schwarzpaul, spyros papapetros, tēvita ’ō. ka’ili, joanne choueiri, füsun turetken, john de manincor, esther mecredy, sean flannagan, jonathan hale, jan smitheram design and typography catherine griffiths typefaces founders grotesk, tiempos text klim type foundry production andrew douglas, catherine griffiths, susan hedges, ross jenner, olivia labattaglia, joanne mathers and tina engelsschwarzpaul web programming steve huynh published by enigma : he aupiki, auckland, new zealand december 2017 issn 1170-585x (print) issn 2537-9194 (online) this work is entitled to the full protection given by the copyright act 1962 to the holders of the copyright and reproduction of any substantial passage from the work except for the educational purposes therein specified is a breach of the copyright of the author and/or publisher. this copyright extends to all forms of photocopying and any storing of material in any kind of information retrieval system. interstices: journal of architecture and related arts takes a non-exclusive copyright in the papers submitted and accepted, i.e., we reserve the right to publish and republish the paper (for instance, electronically). authors are welcome to upload their papers in published form into their institution’s research repository. they retain the right to republish their papers elsewhere, provided that they acknowledge original publication in interstices. all applications by third parties, for reproduction in any form, should be made to the executive editors. submissions the editors invite submissions of articles, reports, book and project reviews, and translations. all correspondence should be addressed to the editors, interstices, school of art and design, aut university, private bag 92006, auckland 1020, new zealand. books for review and advertising should be forwarded to the executive editors, above. notes and guidelines for contributors can be found at http://interstices.ac.nz/ information-for-contributors/ guidelines-for-submissions/ acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the support of the very many people who have contributed to the realisation and quality of interstices 18 in various ways— including, but not limited to, the blind refereeing of papers. they are peggy deamer, moana nepia, peter wood, marion macken, julia gatley, paul walker, julieanna preston, sue gallagher, hélène frichot, carl douglas, thomas mical, albert refiti, tēvita ’ō. ka’ili, bill ashcroft, jonathan lamb, micah van der ryn, simon twose, carl mika, linda tyler, judi keith, craig moller, albert refiti, kathy waghorn, deborah van der plaat and mark jackson. thanks to catherine griffiths and joanne mathers for designing and copy editing this issue. if we have inadvertently overlooked anyone, we apologise. thanks also to the school of art and design at auckland university of technology, and the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland. and, finally, a big thank-you to all the contributors to interstices 18! www.interstices.ac.nz editorial advisory board aotearoa/new zealand mike austin (unitec institute of technology), dan fleming (university of waikato), robert jahnke (massey university), laurence simmons (the university of auckland), a.-chr. (tina) engels-schwarzpaul (auckland university of technology) australia suzie attiwell (rmit university), jillian hamilton (queensland university of technology), stephen loo (university of tasmania), mirjana lozanovska (deakin university), john macarthur (university of queensland), jeff malpas (university of tasmania), paul walker (university of melbourne) germany uta brandes (köln international school of design), ursula baus (frei04-publizistik, stuttgart) italy renato rizzi (università iuav di venezia, architect trento), nigel ryan (architect, rome) sweden hélène frichot (kth royal institute of technology) uae bechir kenzari (united arab emirates university) uk mark dorrian (edinburgh college of art), anthony hoete (what_ architecture, london), sally jane norman (university of sussex), peg rawes (the bartlett school of architecture), joseph rykwert (emeritus paul philippe cret professor) usa peggy deamer (yale university), mark goulthorpe (mit, decoi architects paris), jonathan lamb (vanderbilt university), david leatherbarrow (university of pennsylvania), moana nepia (university of hawai’i at mānoa) colophon 101 i n t e r s t i c e s 18 s u r fac e / pat t e r n jo u rn a l o f a rc h it ec tu re a n d r el a te d a rt s http://school of art + design, auckland university of technology http://school of art + design, auckland university of technology http://school of art + design, auckland university of technology http://andrew.douglas@aut.ac.nz http://andrew.douglas@aut.ac.nz mailto:r.jenner@auckland.ac.nz http://interstices.ac.nz/information-for-contributors/guidelines-for-submissions/ http://interstices.ac.nz/information-for-contributors/guidelines-for-submissions/ http://interstices.ac.nz/information-for-contributors/guidelines-for-submissions/ http://interstices.ac.nz in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 108 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s review / sarah treadwell mark dorrian writing on the image: architecture, the city and the politics of representation london and new york: i. b. tauris, 2015 in writing on the image: architecture, the city and the politics of representation, mark dorrian brings a specific shaping of language to bear on some memorable and strange urban events and objects (dorrian, 2015). each essay in the brightly yellow volume observes and articulates objects framed as spectacles through language. according to theorist paul carter, “all the objects in dorrian’s book are spectacles in a double sense: they draw attention to themselves in order to bring into focus a new ideological reality.” (dorrian, 2015: xviii). the essays delivered as seminars, articles, and those newly written for the volume, have a wonderfully wide reach—from clouds to ferris wheels via vertigo, transparency, miniaturisation and utopia on ice—the essays look from above, from within, and obliquely. written over a twelve year period, they are mostly attentive to northern and western conditions and the urban. paul carter observes the anti-totalising structure of the book that allows the essay to reclaim “a public space that is no longer the projection of powerful interests but that retains a dissident topology of its own” (dorrian 2015: xix). each essay, he suggests, is conceived of as a “new viewing platform” looking at objects which are often themselves concerned with the act of looking. (dorrian, 2015: x). the small, grey and somewhat dingy photographs in the book seem to stand as indeterminate markers of the objects, and it is rather the corporeal and sharply astute qualities of the writing that bring physical material to the reader. writing on the image is a sort of anti-picture book where the language is at once complex, poetic and explanatory, catching at the history and reception of images, while the grey photographs deny any correspondence to the world evoked through the writing. it would be easy to see a perhaps thwarted material maker at work in the writing, itself formally adroit and structured by the object under consideration. while producing many of the essays, dorrian was working in the architecture department at the university of edinburgh and his research atelier metis. mêtis, as ann bergren has pointed out, is a transformative intelligence associated with architecture and weaving (bergren: 1993). poets are said to be weavers of words and dorrian’s essays practice writing as a form of weaving, a compelling web of architecture and urban politics. the afterword by ella chmielewska confirms the architect at work when she writes, “in their oscillations between detail and in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 109 review / writing on the image: architecture, the city and the politics of representation r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s overview, scales and perspectives, dorrian’s essays construct and perform complex architectural drawings” (2015: 198). in some ways, the book is a companion to an earlier and memorable collection of essays on the visual, seeing from above: the aerial view in visual culture, which dorrian edited with frédéric pousin (dorrian and pousin: 2013). both volumes trace connections between the observer, technology and socio-political conditions. in its attention to viewing, the book also has a lineage in earlier work such as jonathan crary’s techniques of the observer: on vision and modernity in the nineteenth century (1990)—which considers the historical construction of the observer—and martin jay’s downcast eyes: the denigration of vision in twentieth-century french thought (1993)—which also considers how images are produced, seen and understood. both were written at the end of the twentieth century at a time of robust engagement with theory, and dorrian’s books offer contemporary accounts in a similarly complex field. as well as addressing the form of writing he employs in the “open, provisional, speculative and non-totalising” essay, dorrian also comments on his writing as having other trajectories than those initially intended (2015: 2). he acknowledges a sensitivity to the effects of his subjects, and this is an absorbing aspect of the book. the collection of essays is shaped in a sequence, constructing the collection as a developing argument with the first four chapters historically oriented, commencing with “falling upon warsaw: the shadow of stalin’s palace of culture”, a paper delivered by dorrian at auckland university of technology in 2015. the objects of history and the contemporary world are interpreted critically and with wonderfully wilful play in the swinging analysis of each essay as connections are made and elaborated upon, as in his piece analysing transparency and vertigo. the arguments progress in unexpected ways across a discussion on the “blur building” by diller and scofidio, described as pioneering a “new kind of environmental commodification” (2015: 8). he extends this idea in the essay utopia on ice: the sunny mountain ski-dome as an allegory of the future in studying a glass-domed ski resort intended for the deserts of dubai. each chapter has a specific quality with “voice, monstrosity and flaying: anish kapoor’s marsyas as a silent sound work” being particularly harrowing. the essay “adventures on the vertical: from the new vision to powers of ten” exemplifies techniques employed in the volume. dorrian starts by paying close attention to the familiar scene on the picnic rug, noting the proliferating clock faces and titles of the books abandoned by the sleepers. he then suggests links between the scene of the sleepers and goya’s sleep of reason, “a monstrous sleep of reason” or perhaps a “4-dimensional nightmare—it pictures a kind of vertiginous, abyssal collapse of everyday reality” (2015: 74). in the “power of ten in cold war, corporate and national contexts”, dorrian points out how it can be understood “in terms of the domination and control of the domains that it pictures” (2015: 74). in an era of surveillance, questions of the politics and poetics of the visual field and its observers have grown compelling, making this a valuable and entertaining book. visual theorist martin jay suggests that “perhaps the real task these days is […] to probe the ways in which the sense of ‘looking after’ someone is just as much a possibility as ‘looking at’ them in le regard, and ‘watching in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 110 review / writing on the image: architecture, the city and the politics of representation r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s out for someone’ is an ethical alternative to controlling surveillance” (2002: 89). dorrian’s writing is richly engaging throughout, with unexpected revelations and insights across its negotiations between spectacle and detail, providing opportune evidence of a quietly political and benign criticality. references jay, m. (2002). the visual turn. interview with the journal of visual culture. retrieved from http://faculty.georgetown.edu/ irvinem/theory/jay-visualturnjvc-2002.pdf bergren, a. (1993) the (re)marriage of penelope and odysseus: architecture gender philosophy. assemblage 21, 7–23. dorrian, m. and f. pousin, (2013) seeing from above: the aerial view in visual culture. london, uk & new york, ny: i.b. tauris. crary, j (1990). techniques of the observer: on vision and modernity in the nineteenth century. cambridge, ma & london, uk: the mit press. chmielewska, e. (2015). ‘postscript as pretext’. in m. dorrian (ed.), writing on the image: architecture, the city and the politics of representation (pp.186–204). london, uk & new york, ny: i.b. tauris. ° 0 8 4 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° the city [within] the drawing is the last of a series of four installations made in the course of a phd by creative practice.1 these installations posed questions about the material and temporal limits of conventional codes of architectural drawing and together attempted to forge an alternative urban representation. the series concluded in the city [within] the drawing as a cumulated transcription within which the previous installations were embedded. this last installation expressed the negotiations that emerge between the actuality of the city and its image, by engaging with architectural representation2 as an act of inhabitation3 performed through the spatial experience of both city and drawing. as an attempt to ‘draw’ the actual city into representation, mapping was deployed as a kind of inhabitation that promotes a reciprocal close ‘looking’ between the city and the drawing. the city [within] the drawing: the urban in the space of representation s o p h i a b a n o u f i g s . 0 1 & 0 2 s o p h i a b a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . t h e c i t y [ w i t h i n ] t h e d r a w i n g : g e n e r a l v i e w s a c r o s s t h e i n s t a l l a t i o n a n d t o t h e c i t y [ i n s t a l l a t i o n , p h o t o s : a u t h o r ] ° 0 8 5 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° inhabitation, therefore involves engaging with the ‘material’ trace of not only the city, but also the observer and the notation itself. shifting focus from a normative architectural solid-void dualism, the project addressed the urban as a transitory condition between order and event. inscribed elements printed across suspended layers of clear acetate presented a constellation of marks that corresponded to specific trajectories, relationships of vision, and transformations of the materiality of both the city and the (preceding) installations. these markings grafted conventional codes from dance notation, geological mapping, and celestial cartography into architectural convention. f i g . 0 3 s o p h i a b a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . t h e c i t y [ w i t h i n ] t h e d r a w i n g : t h e t o t a l o f t r a c e s u n f o l d e d a g a i n s t a s p r e a d o f t h e g a l l e r y [ i n s t a l l a t i o n , p h o t o s : a u t h o r ] ° 0 8 6 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° f i g s . 0 4 & 0 5 s o p h i a b a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . t h e c i t y [ w i t h i n ] t h e d r a w i n g : p l a n a r t r a c e s o n t h e s u s p e n d e d c l e a r a c e t a t e p r i n t s [ i n s t a l l a t i o n , p h o t o s : a u t h o r ] the nesting of the drawing’s earlier phases within one another was extended to the city through the inclusion of the direct city views from the gallery that layered with the transcribed traces. provisionally reterritorialized upon a transparent substrate material, these signs were constantly repositioned against the city and the space of the gallery through the relational movement of the viewers. ° 0 8 7 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° f i g s . 0 6 & 0 7 s o p h i a b a n o u ( 2 0 1 4 ) . d r a w o f a d r a w i n g : o n e o f t h e p r e c e d i n g r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s , ‘ n e s t e d ’ i n t h e c i t y [ w i t h i n ] t h e d r a w i n g , s t o o d a s a p a r t i a l ‘ k e y ’ t o t h e i n s t a l l a t i o n [ p o r t a b l e i n s t a l l a t i o n , p h o t o s : a u t h o r ] ” ] the multiple layers of the drawing carried the presence of the previous installations, not as mere signs but as distinct situated spatialities. elements of previous sitings such as markings and scars were stenciled on polyester sheets to infuse the transparent layers with the neutral ‘white’ of the gallery. the solidity of the gallery floor afforded the signs of the various layers to become fixed upon the gallery surface, f i g s . 1 0 , 1 1 , 1 2 s o p h i a b a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . t h e c i t y [ w i t h i n ] t h e d r a w i n g : t h e c i t y m o d e l , w h e r e s u r f a c e e l e m e n t s a r e m a t e r i a l i s e d i n p l a s t e r a n d v i s u a l r e l a t i o n s a r e c o n c r e t i s e d i n s a n d e d a c r y l i c , e m e r g i n g f r o m f l o o r [ i n s t a l l a t i o n , p h o t o s : a u t h o r ] whilst modelled elements sought to ‘push through’ the two-dimensionality of the drawing surface. this served to materialise and project back the ‘city’ emerging from within the drawing, as at once ‘other’ to and the same as its onlooker. ° 0 8 8 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° f i g s . 1 3 , 1 4 , 1 5 s o p h i a b a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . t h e c i t y [ w i t h i n ] t h e d r a w i n g : v i e w s o f t h e c i t y m o d e l [ i n s t a l l a t i o n , p h o t o s : a u t h o r ] the installation, as a situated experience of drawing, performed as a ‘mediating object’ between city and spectator, prompting conditions of observation to persistently reconfigure by placing the two in mutually shifting relations. ° 0 8 9 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° f i g s . 0 8 & 0 9 s o p h i a b a n o u ( 2 0 1 5 ) . t h e c i t y [ w i t h i n ] t h e d r a w i n g : v i e w s f r o m t h e c i t y i n t o t h e d r a w i n g / i n s t a l l a t i o n [ i n s t a l l a t i o n , p h o t o s : a u t h o r ] in this recursive process between sites of origin and sites of representation, the medium of installation posed as an opportunity to be immersed in, or rather inhabit, a ‘space of representation’, as the material recoding of the city within an expanded field. this representational field incorporated the kind of objects and conditions upon whose exclusion the coherence of the city had previously depended. ° 0 9 0 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° e n d n o t e s 1 t h e i n s t a l l a t i o n w a s p r e s e n t e d i n m a r c h 2 0 1 5 , a t t h e t e n t g a l l e r y, e d i n b u r g h c o l l e g e o f a r t , f r o m r e s e a r c h u n d e r t a k e n a t t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f e d i n b u r g h , s u p e r v i s e d b y p r o f m a r k d o r r i a n a n d d r e l l a c h m i e l e w s k a . o n t h e p r e c e d i n g i n s t a l l a t i o n s s e e b a n o u , s . ( 2 0 1 5 ) . a n i m a t e d g a z e s : m o t i o n a n d r e p r e s e n t a t i o n i n t h e k a l e i d o s c o p i c c i t y. d r a w i n g o n , 0 1 : p r e s e n t s . r e t r i e v e d f r o m h t t p : // w w w. d r a w i n g o n . o r g / i s s u e /0 1 , a n d b a n o u , s . ( 2 0 1 5 ) . d e e p s u r f a c e : o n t h e s i t u a t i o n o f d r a w i n g . i n f l e c t i o n 0 2 : p r o j e c t i o n , 7 6 8 3 . 2 t h e o b j e c t o f t h i s r e p r e s e n t a t i o n w a s t h e c i t y o f e d i n b u r g h , h o w e v e r, a n d d e s p i t e t h e o p e r a t i v e c h a r a c t e r o f t h e s i t e s p e c i f i c i t i e s t h a t e m e r g e d , t h e q u e s t i o n s r a i s e d a n d t h e e f f e c t s p r o d u c e d s h o u l d n o t b e c o n s i d e r e d a s p e r t a i n i n g t o t h i s p a r t i c u l a r c i t y, a s t h e y h a v e b e e n d r i v e n b y a c o n c e r n w i t h t h e a g e n c y o f d r a w i n g r a t h e r t h a n t h e s p e c i f i c c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s o f t h e c i t y r e p r e s e n t e d . 3 t h e i d e a o f d r a w i n g a s i n h a b i t a t i o n i s b a s e d o n i t s u n d e r s t a n d i n g a s a s i t e s p e c i f i c a c t a n d c a n b e t r a c e d t o n o t i o n s o f s u b j e c t i f i c a t i o n t h a t e m e r g e d i n c a r t o g r a p h i c a p p r o a c h e s t o a r c h i t e c t u r a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a n d s p e c i f i c a l l y t h e u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a s s i t e i n t h e w o r k o f m e t i s . s e e h e i d e g g e r ( 1 9 9 3 ) d o r r i a n & h a w k e r ( 2 0 0 2 ) . ° 0 9 1 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° heidegger, m. (1993). ‘building, dwelling, thinking’. in farrell krell, d. (ed.), basic writings (pp. 356-). london: routledge. dorrian, m. & hawker, a. (2002). ‘postscript as pretext’. in metis: urban cartographies. london: black dog publishing. r e f e r e n c e s in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 79 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s penelope forlano with dr. dianne smith resurfacing memories: mnemonic and tactile representations of family history in the making of new heirlooms the unforgotten is a functional furniture piece that challenges current conventional industry design practices which seek to achieve object longevity and heirloom quality through realising the status of a ‘design classic’. by taking a design anthropology approach to understand the person-object custodial relations, the creative work aims to embed a long-term attachment for the possessor by encouraging emotional attachment and custodian behaviour. as such, research was conducted in the areas of consumer psychology and behaviour, object attachment, inalienable objects and custodianship. anti-obsolescence approaches such as quality craftsmanship and materials no doubt contribute to longevity in terms of durability (pye & nevelson, 1973). however there exists a significant omission in design discourse regarding the potential for object lifespan extension through recommodification (gregson & crewe, 2003) and the inalienability of manufactured objects. even when durable and still functioning, objects that are no longer desired by the possessor are typically assigned to the waste stream, often being replaced with equally short-term products (botton 2004; mugge, schiffersteinn, schoormans, 2010; naish, 2008). however when objects have a “singularised” and “storied life” (epp & price, 2010), fig. 1 author (2013). the unforgotten hall cabinet [front view, photograph, eva fernandez courtesy of form] in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 80 resurfacing memories: mnemonic and tactile representations of family history in the making of new heirlooms r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s and are recommodified or rendered inalienable, their lifespan can be significantly extended (belk 2006; karanika & hogg 2012; mugge et. al., 2010). design discourse often characterises ‘new heirloom’ furniture—that is, furniture that will be intergenerational and evade premature disposal—as ‘classic’ (hebrok, 2014: 213), modernist, and typically non-decorative (schiermer, 2016; simmel, 1997). however this belief is challenged when examined through an anthropological perspective of person-object relationships. anthropological findings indicate that a significant characteristic of inalienable heirloom objects is that they are emotionally laden and mnemonic of significant life experience, rather than being generated from the object’s physical characteristics (csikszentmihalyi & rochberg, halton 1981; mugge, et. al., 2006). objects that are conducive to intergenerational ownership, namely those re-commodified, are not dependent on modernist, visual forms per se (curasi, price, arnold, 2004; epp et.al., 2010; gregson & crewe, 2003). therefore addressing durability and longevity materially, without addressing the individual or social attachment, or conversely how disconnection to objects occurs, potentially results in a mismatch between the material and emotional or social longevity, and thereby premature disposal of functioning furniture. consumer behaviour studies in custodianship and collector behaviour further reveal the importance of memory and experience with objects post-acquisition. in fact, custodian and collector behaviour demonstrate the potential for individuals to invest significant time, energy and care into ensuring object longevity, often with the aim of bequeathing or passing the object on to others (belk, 2006). the findings from these studies of person-object relationships tell a great deal about the potential role designers can play in facilitating object longevity by encouraging custodianship through embedding memory or experiential opportunities. the phenomenon of object attachment has typically been understood in anthropomorphist terms—that is according to correlates with human features or modes of animation (chandler & schwartz, 2010) or, in the case of electronic artefacts, through user experience (ux). however, the unforgotten project developed here exemplifies the opportunities for emotional inalienability present in tactile experience and the mnemonic qualities of objects. fig. 2 author (2013). the unforgotten [detail, photograph, eva fernandez courtesy of form] fig. 3 author (2013). the unforgotten [detail, photograph, eva fernandez courtesy of form] in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 81 resurfacing memories: mnemonic and tactile representations of family history in the making of new heirlooms r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s a hallway cabinet to firstly address the measurable, durable qualities, the object is made of stainless-steel rod and solid american walnut timber to ensure material longevity and potential surface renewal as it ages. the timber is finished in natural, non-toxic furniture oil and wax. as the entry of the home is a powerful signifier of personal space and identity, the unforgotten hallway cabinet was thus designed as an entry marker reflecting the essential concerns of the resident, one that intertwines emotional gravitas with product durability. the geometric and facetted timber front and sides of the cabinetwork facilitate the expression of past memory as a collage of distinct life episodes stitched together in a traditional quilt style narrative similar to previous creative works of the author (forlano, 2015). the cabinet’s form creates a series of variegated surfaces into which the narrative of the client can be read as distinct, yet connected stories, in order to reify social relations and memory. evocative of the incompleteness and disjointedness of memory, some facets are left unmarked whilst others are engraved. custom laser engraving to facets draw the viewer into a detailed attendance, inviting intimacy through a close encounter with textural surface and potential touch. this invitation to be drawn into the work is further reinforced through the intricacy of the surface detailing representing meaningful family possessions, stories, events and places. through an informal interview it was revealed that the client possessed some disparate and highly personal objects kept hidden for over sixty years in a small box. this served as the driving force to reflect personal history and intergenerational narrative in the hallway cabinet—a long-recognised furniture type for holding and retaining. these objects—the only physical possessions remaining of the client’s mother after her passing during childbirth—had been stored away so as not to be damaged through handling, light, or other intrusive environmental factors generated across time. amongst the possessions were her mother’s own handmade silk lace embroidery, hand-written poetry, newspaper cuttings, and hand-drawn diagrams of embroidery never completed. the texture of the silk, now partly decomposed, is captured in the cabinet’s surface treatment. it reflects a moment in time, and the time in between spanning its first completion in 1950 and sometime in the future when it will have completely decomposed. surfaced in the cabinet is both the ‘thing’ (the silk) as a fig. 4 author (2013). photograph of original hand-embroidered silk lace handkerchief fig. 5 author (2013). scan from notebook of handwritten transcribed poetry in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 82 resurfacing memories: mnemonic and tactile representations of family history in the making of new heirlooms r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s tangible object, and the ‘time’ constituting an intergenerational/heirloom object. as a further example, the hand-written words and diagrams on pieces of decomposing paper are now inscribed in a more robust material, whilst also providing a new character not evident in the original possession—that is, the texture of the text as engraved material. through digital processes including 3d laser engraving, the characteristics of the ‘things’ become both visual and textural, eliciting an invitation to touch and become more familiar with the previously ‘untouchable’ precious object. as stewart states: the transitivity and motility of touch are key to legends and myths of animation…there is a carrying-over from experience to experience of the experience a kind of doubling which finds its illustration in the image of a living thing, bringing a dead thing to life through the transitivity of touch. sleeping beauty….and other stories emphasize the vivifying power of gestures of love and attention (through making and reciprocal touch). (1999: 33) combining the various representations as a narrative of personal memory with the intricate and tactile surface qualities, the furniture object ensures an intimate engagement with the work of this other ancestor. furthermore, what was once hidden away has now been recovered, and presents significant life memories, bringing the intimate family stories and the past back into the living present, and therefore into the everyday. the work does not gain its meaning through physically presenting or being a container for personal things, rather inalienable and precious things are presented and embedded within the materiality of the artefact itself. as a result, this contemporary object takes on both the inalienable character of the original decomposing or fragile artefact, and it provides the opportunity for new, richer meaning within its fresh context, meaning that extends the life of the original decomposing artefacts. through simulation and representation of the inalienable, what is precious and potentially erasable is made viewable and touchable every day. in this way, the work demonstrates the potential for new, everyday home possessions to become inalienable and to rethink what the design of the ‘heirloom’ can mean. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 83 resurfacing memories: mnemonic and tactile representations of family history in the making of new heirlooms r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s references belk, r. (2006). collectors and collecting. in c. w. k. tilley, s. küchler, m. rowlands, & p. spyer (eds.), handbook of material culture (pp. 534–545). london, uk: sage publications. botton, de a. (2004). status anxiety. london, uk: hamish hamilton/ penguin books. chandler, j. &. schwarz, n. (2010). use does not wear ragged the fabric of friendship: thinking of objects as alive makes people less willing to replace them. journal of consumer psychology, 20, 138–145. csikszentmihalyi, m. & rochberghalton, e. (1981). the meaning of things: domestic symbols and self. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. curasi, c. f., price, l., & arnould, e. j. (2004). how individuals’ cherished possessions become families’ inalienable wealth. journal of consumer research, 31(3), 609–622. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org / stable/10.1086/425096 epp, a. & price, l. (2010). the storied life of singularized objects: forces of agency and network transformation. journal of consumer research, 36(5), 820–837. forlano, p. (2015). making custodians: furniture as intergenerational objects. in procedings of the unmaking waste 2015; transforming production and consumption in time and place conference held in adelaide, australia, 22–24 may, 2015. adelaide: zero waste sa research centre for sustainable design and behaviour, school of art, architecture and design, university of south australia. retrieved from http:// unmakingwaste2015.org gregson, n. & crewe, l. (2003). second-hand cultures. oxford uk: berg. hebrok, m. (2014). design for longevity: taking both the material and social aspects of product-life into account. journal of design research, 12(3), 204–220. karanika, k. & hogg, m. k. (2012). trajectories across the lifespan of possession-self relationships. journal of business research, 66(7), 910–916. mugge, r., schifferstein, h. n. j., & schoormans, j. p. l. (2006). a longitudinal study on product attachment and its determinants. european advances in consumer research, 7, 641–647. mugge, r., schifferstein, h. n. j., & schoormans, j. p. l. (2010). product attachment and satisfaction: understanding consumers’ post-purchase behavior. journal of consumer marketing, 27(3), 271–282. naish, j. (2008). enough; breaking free from the world of more. london uk: hodder & stoughton. pye, d. & nevelson, m. (1973). the nature and art of workmanship. leonardo, 6(1), 94–95. schiermer, b. (2016). on the ageing of objects in modern culture: ornament and crime. theory, culture & society, 33 (4), 127–150. simmel, g. (1997). the philosophy of fashion. in d. frisby and mike featherstone (eds.), simmel on culture: selected writings (pp. 187–206). london, uk: sage publications. stewart, s. (1999). prologue: from the museum of touch. in m. kwint, c. breward, & j. aynsely (eds.) material memories; design and evocation, oxford, uk. oxford international publisher. interstices 15 102 last loneliest loveliest new zealand at the venice architecture biennale 2014 paul walker the presence at the 2014 venice architecture biennale of a new zealand exhibition is to be gratefully welcomed. rem koolhaas’s challenge to the national pavilions at this year’s venice architecture biennale was to investigate the impact of modernisation over the past 100 years, and to consider whether any national architectural characteristics still exist. working in a compressed time frame and with limited resources, the new zealand curatorial team, led by david mitchell, have resoundingly responded that there is indeed a unique new zealand architecture, emergent in a developing synthesis between new zealand and its pacific context. this is apparent, they suggest, in pavilion-esque buildings, with highly wrought structures and light-weight enclosures. this view is particularly manifest in the interview with mitchell in the small, stylish publication that goes with the show (not quite a catalogue, as much of the exhibited work, frustratingly, is not listed) where he reveals the impact of his own pacific voyages and encounters on his thinking. last loneliest loveliest is a beguiling exhibition, and it has garnered good reports in the international design media. the trouble is, little in last loneliest loveliest historiographically supports the proposition it makes. rather, last loneliest loveliest offers an architectural fable as a response to koolhaas: it does not do the history homework that koolhaas asked the national pavilions to do. for example, the credentials of various beautiful contemporary houses included in last loneliest loveliest (mitchell & stout, bossley, clifford, etc) to be considered uniquely new zealandish are not tested. with articulated structures, elegant assemblages of pitched roofs, timber surfaces, sitting amid trees on sites photographed rhetorically to emphasise isolation (even if they are in suburban or suburbanising locations), all appear to use a language which speaks ‘localness’ in many other places as well – california, british columbia, chile, queensland, japan, you name it… replace the pohutukawa that shroud all those expensive coastal houses with banksias, and australians could be persuaded they were on north stradbroke. an expanded pacificness perhaps? but then the wealthy coastal hinterlands of cape town or perth could just as easily be cited as places where this work could claim a home. if the group could be aware, as they appear to have been, of the ironies in their seeking of localness just as the world at mid-20th century impinged on new zealand to an unprecedented extent (after all, they sent their manifesto for endorsement to richard neutra) why cannot the current neo-group-cum-bay region stylists? do not these beautiful houses which speak new zealand for the curatorial team for last loneliest loveliest rather express a kind of internationalised fantasy of the good life – psychological distance and withdrawal – implying all the resources needed to make it viable? it appears indeed to be a fantasy that has been assigned by the international design media to new zealand architecture to fulfil, just as new zealand landscapes fulfil a certain role in international film production. does anyone think the last samurai or avatar are local cinematic culture? on the other hand, the non-domestic buildings in the show often have a complexity beyond the pacific-lightness-structures-and-cladding line they are made to toe. mitchell points to the connection of the staircase structures in peter beaven’s lyttelton road tunnel administration building to 1950s japanese translations into concrete of traditional timber building elements. the comparison is persuasive, but the hulk beaven’s piers held up was more chandigarh, don’t you think? miles warren indeed said that the complex, internally exposed roof structures of the university of canterbury student union were a kind of structural knitting learned from how new zealand carpentry puts sticks of wood together. but he has also emphasised the significance of learning interstices 15 103 about masonry in his years in england. the articulated, hybrid structural and constructional approach of early warren & mahoney resonates most strongly not with other work in new zealand or the pacific, but with the english, 1960s post-brutalist work of howell killick partridge and amis, a practice formed by the architects who had been warren’s senior colleagues in the london county council architects’ department. equally, the walls of john scott’s futuna, and the stones of its paved floor and monumental altar – as important to its architecture as the flayed gables of its roof – link it to the 1950s hawkes bay masonry work of maurice smith and len hoogerbrug (and maybe thereby to another moment of new zealand trans-pacific fantasy, the strange fixation in pre-war hastings on californian spanish mission). it is these precise ebbs and flows, the complex movements of cultural and technological flotsam and jetsam, that locate this work historically, rather than some generic ‘pacificness’ whose operations are simply left unexplained. so forget last loneliest loveliest as history. it isn’t. is it nevertheless a good exhibition? it’s certainly pleasurable. some things are unconvincing. the cardboard cathedral (shigeru ban) and the auckland city art gallery (fjmt & salmond architects), a famous name and the winner at last year’s world architecture festival, seem to be here just to jolly things along. the separation of these two projects spatially and visually from the rest of the exhibition rather suggests that they are indeed incidental. but mitchell bravely asserts they belong on account of being light, pavilion-like and pacific-y, as if working in auckland or christchurch made fjmt and ban come over all new zealandish. it doesn’t wash. a glassy pavilion for an art gallery is perverse, and the money spent on building an extravagant entry point (for that is what it really is) for acag is a scandal when the project did not stretch to at least one really big, flexible exhibition space. fjmt’s richard francis-jones has made another highly-wrought bauble, more in keeping with the gucci and louis vuitton goodies you can now buy on queen street than the spin given to the other ‘new zealand’ buildings in last loneliest loveliest. but nevertheless last loneliest loveliest is engaging. the buildings and images it has found and brought together, familiar and unfamiliar, are beautiful. they tell a story, but it’s a fable rather than history. a fable about what new zealand architecture could once have been – last loneliest loveliest lost? the fragmentary nature of the various pieces – the artwork ‘oceania’ by kim meek featuring a map of the pacific with its human crossings; a whata-a-rangi containing a model of the auckland war memorial museum; the highly curated selection of work on the surfaces of the mylar tent; the ending of the exhibition in an intricate and clever student project installed on a tower which reputedly models “new timber technology being developed after the christchurch earthquakes”; beautiful brooches made by miriam van wezel – suggest the craftedness, the confection, the aesthetic swoon of the thing, made swoonier still by its being set up in a luscious venetian location. in many ways last loneliest loveliest is a return to and development of themes in mitchell’s the elegant shed of 1984. that book’s episodic structure – drawn no doubt from its origins in a television series – suggested that new zealand architecture had to be thought of as a congeries of local architectural genealogies and trajectories. it left the inference to be drawn that there were others to find and unpack. this was not just good story-telling, it was good history-writing. in particular, new zealand’s venice show is a continuation of the auckland chapter of the elegant shed: after all, it was auckland that drew kipling to sigh “last, loneliest, loveliest’. but here’s the rub. the story is now singular, so it has a certain burden to be coherent. auckland has doubled in population in the past three decades; it looks and feels like a city in a way that it previously hadn’t. it has all the opportunities and discontents of a city, and hundreds of thousands of recent migrants with experiences of urban life in asia. mitchell’s show – while not history – nevertheless looks too much to a past view of new zealand’s architectural prospects; it has nothing to tell us directly about the possibilities wrought by the change most manifest in the sheer growth in interstices 15 104 auckland’s population and cultural diversity. sure, it’s implied: the size and the extravagant sites of those new pavilion-ish houses under the pohutukawa trees have been afforded by the proceeds that successful auckland – or international – enterprise now yields for a few. but this is rather veiled by the nostalgic pleasure that we have all recently taken in the design of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, from which these houses draw. we are not asked in last loneliest loveliest to consider the conditions (of contemporary capital) that make such extravagance possible. thirty years ago, the elegant shed astutely stated that the story it told was particular, and that, as mitchell put it, “some fine buildings and some excellent architects have had to be left out because their work has not fitted the story i have chosen to tell”. no doubt the limitations of the exhibition format are even more pressing than those of a book, the need for the message to be singular made yet more urgent by the constraints under which the curatorial team operated to get last loneliest loveliest to venice. but in one place last loneliest loveliest does break from its general disavowal of complexity and its fixation on loveliness, to point to the contemporary city. just as the elegant shed ends astutely by looking forward through the work of the most inventive architectural graduates of the 1980 generation – noel lane and rewi thompson – so last loneliest loveliest gives a privileged spot to the work of a recent new talent. frances cooper’s 2013 march project ‘architecture of the synthetic, the spectacular and the belligerent’, for the urban reclamation of auckland’s wynyard area, proposes a littoral city that is both urbane and artificial. it doesn’t forget previous generations of architectural indulgence about landscape and pavilion typology but – including them as citations amongst a repertory of other architectures, histories, fables – nor does it simply repeat them. photo credit: john gollings in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 2 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s this issue of interstices, having adjourned specific thematic guidance for the first time since 1990, assembles about an open call. yet attending, if not constraining this opening, we suggested an auxiliary or piloting prompt—return to origin. like all auxilia, it sought to “aid, help, support”—in this case, the thinking of possible contributors (auxiliary, n.d.). we hoped that thinking return and origin might offer a point of dehiscence in an otherwise open contributory field, indeed a means of opening productively the ‘open’ itself. if augmenting mechanisms, for which dehiscence (particularly in its botanical sense) can be thought emblematic, ambition a certain acceleration and surity in fertility or growth, they no doubt resonate etymologically with the older term augere—an augur being, in the context of ancient rome, the dispenser of ritual and the interpreter of omen associated with events at their inception or origin, whether that be in the planting of crops or in the founding of cities (dehiscence & augur, n.d.). the augur wills prosperity by listening and looking in on the original murmur and lie of things, and then interjecting a catalysing break that sets up everything that comes to be as after. arjun appadurai, thinking about the role of inaugerating ritual in the context of a society’s ongoing commitment to the mitigation of risk and contingency, emphasises its “retro-performative” action in which wholes are established after the fact out of dividual, ready-to-hand parts or facets (2016: 116). as an anxiety-diffusing action, the “backwardation” of ritual must necessarily manage the inherent instability of the dividual components it calls on in the production of determinant social wholes—hence the need for a repeated turn to beginnings (116). a homophone with different etymological affiliation and meaning, the term auger offers a further way into this issue’s auxilium: to the extent that the term names a device for hole boring—particularly a hole for the hub of a wheel—it foregrounds an agency that lies with a particular type of turning. the spiral screw of the auger, in fact, enacts a resting turn that voids or subtracts by passing an opening through or into. in contrast to the centrifugal character of augere—its expanding, productivist motivation— the tooling effect of the auger is to centre, literally to spear or pierce into the wheel a nave or passage suitable for a restraining axle (nave, n.d.). implicated in this notion of centrality is of course the word navel and, with it, the umbilicus that draws on the greek term omphalos—a editorial / andrew douglas the turn of beginnings fig. 1 albrecht dürer (circa 1496). man with an auger [drawing, musée bonnat, bayonne, wikimedia commons] in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 3 editorial / the turn of beginnings r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s world-turning navel as zeus in greek mythology is said to have enacted at delphi in his appropriation of chthonic forces from on high (vernant, 2006: 179, leatherbarrow, 2004: 124). the call in this issue, opened in accordance with a return to origin, carries then a complex range of orientating possibilities. as editors, we were concerned to instigate, too, a reorientation or return to an earlier cluster of motivations founding interstices itself—a principal one being the publication of student works (see jenner, 1990: 2). “the spaces between”, as interstices’ first introduction titled itself, saw in the intersecting of academic and professional practices a reorientation of architectural thought, one that would eschew the overly prevalent commercial justifications in favour of an undertaking that would risk, in the context of an absence of “centre and origin” in architecture generally—and with scarcely an architecture culture locally—“‘speaking into the void’” (2). the gap or interstices between things and ideas offered, as hubert damisch was said to have observed in viollet-le-duc, a protean “space between” the matter and form of architecture where ‘truth’ and its styles of appearing might arise (2). rising up, out of the in-between, is a gesture that draws close to the work of both augere and the auger. as tom conley suggests in relation to cartographic practices emerging in the european renaissance, origination finds a potent marker in the protuberance/void that is the human navel, being as it is an anatomical and analogical figure for corporeal beginnings, of centering, of maternal loss, and appropriative self-making or auto-inauguration (1996: 9). as covered “blind alley”, “one-eyed hole”, or “anti-abyss”, it marks before and after—a time-before-(self )knowing, but also the point from which a cardinalization or relational fig. 2 anonymous (n.d.). augur [engraving, nordisk familjebok png—2005, wikimedia commons] in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 4 editorial / the turn of beginnings r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s orientation of the subject becomes imaginable (9-10). no less, it leaves traces of maternal hospitality and its absolute hosting—a hosting which, while irrevocably departed from, persists as a site for return that ultimately leaves the question of origin as such unthinkable. reviewed papers simon weir, in the essay, “on the origin of the architect: architects and xenía in the ancient greek theatre”, not coincidently locates the origins of early greek understandings of the architect in the demands for hosting and hospitality, associated particularly with religious festivities. as he argues, the term xenía— complexly drawing together entities as diverse as “host, donor, guest, friend, stranger, mercenary, and simply man”—exceeds any simple english equivalent; yet it is key to a cluster of material and ethical factors accompanying the emerging role of the architect (p. 10). to the extent that hosting is inseparable from a making space for strangers, and from the structures that shelter such spaces, architects were held to guide and lead groups towards the common good, to select sites for the sanctuary and placement of guests, and materialise these places publically, not just privately. sean pickersgill’s contribution titled, “super architects and dream factories”, proposes that origins be understood as a point of not yet realised complexity, and that a will towards world-making in graduating architecture students—particularly as exhibited on the website super architects—presents a notable form of origin myth for contemporary architectural practice. while the heterogeneous profusion of worlds brought into being by graduating students in culminating studio/thesis projects may demonstrate motivations other than work-ready ones for some, pickersgill suggests that they might better be understood as extending a tradition of the grande rhetorique in architecture—of which the french beaux art system of architectural education is but one strand. on the other hand, a mobilisation of these projects today via sites like super architects points to a new democratisation of an old motivation, “an experimental relationship to orthodox practice” (p. 18). considering the utopian underpinnings of such experimentation, the paper proposes an initial schematization of the facets exhibited by such countering projects. sarah treadwell, in “working with cixous: the cleaner’s grey drawings”, brings together a series of “drawn paintings” and “word pictures” that meditate on the labour of domestic cleaning (p. 32). reminiscing on acts of house cleaning via the words of hélène cixous, the paper captures the complex folding of past and future that arise when looking back on beginnings. concomitantly, the paper charts little-considered acts and persons that sustain home and homeliness: drawing, as prop and prompt that drops away in the effecting of architecture, but also cleaners, as in-between occupants who maintain and sustain, without full admittance into home life as such. extending cixous’ question asking “what is a painter?”, and the answer that she/he is a “bird-catcher of instances”, treadwell posits the cleaner herself as a painter, whose surface attentions to interior residues effects a parallel productive economy of attention (p. 38). drawings, in sequence with the writing, build out of swabs and rubbings spanning the range between the abject and the affectionate. jeremy treadwell’s paper, titled “the rua whetu joint: detail in origin”, notes a in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 5 editorial / the turn of beginnings r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s tendency to counter the uncertainty of contemporaneity by pursuing questions of origin given historically—a phenomenon consistent with appadurai’s consideration of backwardation. his paper proposes a variant route—an engagement with an architectural detail that carries with it a macro-scale and cosmological significance. considering the shifting nature of the junction between the poupou (wall posts) and the heke (rafters) of wharenui (large, nineteenth-century māori meeting houses), a noteworthy convergence of technical and cultural elements is shown to evolve with what is known as the waha paepae and rua whetu joints. more complex geometrically than the western mortise and tenon correlate, these joints are pivotal in forming the interior volume of the wharenui, itself a cosmological modelling of mythological and ancestral origins. the paper tracks the implications of a generalised shift towards the rua whetu joint, in line with both the cultural need for housing larger gatherings and the technical demand for the integrity of large structural elements. in the final paper of the reviewed section, ashley mason’s “craters: between cleared and constructed, between absent and present” an aerial photograph by j. r. eyerman of a meteor crater in arizona (said to have informed the editors or curators of the 1953 london exhibition titled “parallel of life and art”) is drawn into a larger conversation about presence and absence opened up by the site of the exhibition and its place in the bomb-damaged city. drawing out implications of absence (or clearing) and presence (or construction), the paper mediates on the placement of what is marginal in traces or what amounts to the presence of absences. navel-like, the crater’s evidencing of a presenced absence and an absent presencing offers, as mason concludes, a mixed and mixing figure for all inquiry into acts of siting. invited contribution 2016, a terribly tumultuous year in multiple ways, was further saddened by the unexpected death of architect, educator, and contributor to interstices, rewi thompson. as colleagues and friends, ross jenner and patrick clifford offer review and reflection on rewi’s contributions to architecture, education, and life. reviewed postgraduate creative design research projects in this issue, we launch a new peer-reviewed section—the design research of recently completed postgraduate students. in calling for such projects, we offered the same open prompt from which the reviewed papers were selected. to better showcase the collaboration between researchers and their supervisors, submitters were asked to include with their project documentation a synopsis of the research framework and agenda coauthored with a principal supervisor. of the four projects featured in this issue, the first is by rachel sari-dewi murray (with sam kebbell from victoria university of wellington), titled “wetland square, market pier: designing for heritage in the new zealand regional landscape”. the project embodies the notion of return by reasserting the significance, and the collective urban potential, of indigenous wetland and swamp forests, the vast majority of which have been lost in aotearoa/new zealand due to agricultural and town reclamation. working with a site in the kāpiti coast district, north of the capital wellington, the project entails the reconstitution of a threatened in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 6 editorial / the turn of beginnings r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s wetland into a new town square and a market pier. conceived as an archetype for alternative wetland sites, the speculative proposal reasserts indigenous waterway networks and travel routes, ecological resilience, landscape heritage, and colonial settlement forms, all in a quest to rethink the european town square and its societal focusing. the project is remarkable for its nesting of detailed concerns and site specificity within ever-larger scales of critical significance and connection. the second featured project, penelope forlano’s “resurfacing memories: mnemonic and tactile representations of family history in the making of new heirlooms” (undertaken with the assistance of dianne smith of curtin university) tracks temporal return at a different scale and with more intimate materials. depicting a furniture project—a hallway cabinet titled “the unforgotten”—the project pursues an ecology of persistence by considering the role and nature of heirloom significance and “person-object custodial relations”. wondering how intergenerational attachment might register with furniture in the age of shortterm products, forlano’s hallway cabinet draws in (in the sense of containing), and draws from (in the sense of signifying), maternally poignant materials bequeathed by the client’s mother—silk lace embroidery, hand-written poetry, newspaper cuttings, and hand-drawn diagrams of embroidery never completed. as both store and signaller of these artefacts, the hallway cabinet itself is shaped and impressed materially with aspects of these artefacts, thereby becoming a salient, invested thing that spans generations and the time in-between, but, critically also, time to come. grace mills’, “a new agora: a project(ion) on the sub-centre” (also undertaken with sam kebbell from victoria university of wellington) is the third project in this section. begun in late 2011, this project addresses the then particularly urgent question of christchurch’s reconfiguration after the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. with much of the central city damaged and uninhabitable, mill’s project asks, counter to an official will to focus a rebuild on the centre, what can be made of christchurch’s latent polycentrism? focusing on one sub-centre—the suburb of sumner—it enacts a two-pronged doubling back on settlement origins: the first being a little-used sports field that had initially been identified, though not enacted, as a central village green for the nineteenth century’s community being established there; the second, the festive and trading public communal hearth in ancient greece—the agora. bridging these divergent social forums, the project tests and inserts a series of commonplace forms of public/landscape architecture typical of postcolonial aotearoa/new zealand—the sports grandstand and the park pavilion. exploring the potential synthesis of these forms, and their transformation in response to a raft of intensified programmatic possibilities, the project generates an extraordinary energized public urban architecture, sufficient, mills hopes, to seed a new christchurch polycentrism, and to assist architecture with a means back into an essential conversation about the urban possibilities of cities. the final project in this section is yasser megahed’s, “practiceopolis: journeys through the contemporary architecture field” (with adam sharr and graham farmer of newcastle university, uk). in this exceptionally ambitious project, megahed undertakes nothing less than a map of the entirety of contemporary architecture practice and its affiliations with the building industry. figured first as a metropolis and then pictured in a broader geopolitical terrain, the project in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 7 editorial / the turn of beginnings r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s transports both satirical and idealising wills. as an imaginary city—complete with places and institutions indicative of narratives of practice—centred on the island of constructopolis, and represented mostly, though not entirely, in overview, it ambitions a complete placement and fixing of professional relations, but also the comic shifting of those relations into urban form—perhaps something like the “concept city” michel de certeau (1988) writes of when thinking of cities seen from on high, or what thomas more conceived of as the in-between, noplace of utopia. critical to the project as megahed writes, is the production of a “critical instrumental approach” capable of picturing the “incompatibilities and collisions between technical-rational culture and critical culture” (p. 100). key with this critical instrumentation is seeing and valuing practices as diversely exhibiting political values irreducible to the technical-rational remaking of culture. reviews a series of reviews draws this issue to a close: mark southcombe on julia gatley and paul walker’s vertical living: the architectural centre and the remaking of wellington (2014); michael milojevic on mirjana lozanovska’s ethno-architecture and the politics of migration (2016); sarah treadwell on mark dorrian’s writing on the image: architecture, the city and the politics of representation (2015); and, lastly, michael davis on peggy deamer’s edited book, the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design (2015). overall this issue captures the ranging thoughts of designers, writers, and thinkers opening onto an augmenting call to return to origins—a return, like an auger’s screw, that turns upon itself without ever meeting itself in closure. the vacancy of the auger’s extraction, like the tremulous future-proofing wrestled by augurs from the contingent circumstances of beginnings, and their retro-performative reassertion, suggests something of the unfinishable constructions we assemble over the interminable turn of beginnings. lastly, the editors dedicate this issue to bruce mitchell petry whose abrupt and sad departure punctuated its production. fig. 3 sue gallagher (2016). bent auger [silver jewellery, photo by cornelius geraets] in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 8 editorial / the turn of beginnings r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s references appadurai, a. (2016). banking on words: the failure of language in the age of derivative finance. chicago, il & london, uk: the university of chicago press. augur. (n.d.). in online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http:// www.etymonline.com/index. php?term=augur&allowed_in_ frame=0 auxiliary. (n.d.). in online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http://www. etymonline.com/index. php?term=auxiliary&allowed_in_ frame=0 conley, t. (1996). the self-made map: cartographic writing in early modern france. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. dehiscence. (n.d.). in online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http://www.etymonline. com/index.php?allowed_in_ frame=0&search=dehiscence leatherbarrow, d. (2004). topographic stories: studies in landscape architecture. philadelphia, pa: university of pennsylvania press. nave. (n.d.). in online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http:// www.etymonline.com/index. php?term=nave&allowed_in_ frame=0 vernant, j-p. (2006). myth and thought among the greeks (j. lloyd & j. fort, trans.). new york, ny: zone books. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=augur&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=augur&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=augur&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=augur&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=auxiliary&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=auxiliary&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=auxiliary&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=auxiliary&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nave&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nave&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nave&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nave&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nave&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nave&allowed_in_frame=0 http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nave&allowed_in_frame=0 interstices 15 59 turbulent beginnings turbulence is flow plus instability. it is a quality of chaotic flow that occurs beyond a certain limit point in a system. we encounter moments of turbulence throughout our everyday lives — the flow of tap water, adding milk to a cup of tea, turning a street corner in the city and being buffeted by a gust of wind. in a meteorological sense, turbulence occurs when two differing masses of air collide, creating pockets of disruption as the various forces try to reconcile themselves. it is a disruptive process of coming together. seemingly stable objects and systems become disrupted by the chaotic qualities that are introduced by turbulence. instability and unpredictability are turbulence’s inherent qualities, qualities that tend to carry negative connotations compared to the contrasting terms – stability and predictability. although, historically, turbulence has been identified with disorder or noise, more recently it has come to be understood, despite appearances, as highly organised (prigogine & stengers 1984: 141). turbulence occurs across a range of scales, from the very large to the microscopically small. it is dynamic, and dependent on time, occurring as a system evolves and crosses certain threshold conditions. a degree of turbulence is inherent in all situations. typically, life is only manageable because we smooth over this implicit turbulence and look for macro-scale stability in the form of defined, knowable objects, and in predictable events. timothy morton for instance points to this dichotomy when he asserts that instability is an ontological given, saying that “although there is no absolute, definite ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ of beings, we cannot get along without these concepts either” (2010: 38). given this, it is productive to disrupt our habitual grasp of the world through solid, seemingly certain things. attending to the turbulent qualities of all things opens up new ways of thinking about the relationships constituting the world. the multivalent term atmosphere implies turbulent possibilities. atmosphere refers both to the layers of gas surrounding a planet, and to the mood or feeling of a situation or place. while the word atmosphere conflates both these possibilities, in either case it suggests an in-between state, a state, as ben anderson writes, “between presence and absence, between subject and object/ subject and between the definite and indefinite” (2009: 77). as such, atmospheres mediate. they also continually reformulate the various entities and forces that constitute them. making sense of atmospheres invites bodily engagement, whether by absorbing and being affected by diffuse ephemeral qualities, or by recognising our own contribution to, and place within, these qualities. moreover, the perception of atmospheres occurs before, and in fact moves faster than, modes of conscious recognition and its representational outlets. this is because atmospheres condense spatial and temporal relations that implicate us in a moment of immediate possibility. key to this understanding of atmospheres is a recognition that the relationships between entities are always in negotiation, that a degree of turbulence, rather than static arrangement, defines relationality. nothing is fixed or stable, and everything is contingent on everything else. sustaining this uncertainty, keeping things unfixed and in play, and suspending the process of rigid definitions, are parts of an active process that i call thresholding in this paper. further, the practice of thresholding requires working and thinking at the limits of tangible things, and suggests that productive sites for thinking and making can be found at the limit points of material, spatial and conceptual categories. at these edges things become unstable and with this instability is the possibility of knowing things anew. like atmospheres, this process of thresholding requires interior turbulence and the thresholding of atmospheres chris cottrell interstices 15 60 attentiveness to states of co-formation and changes in and between things. thresholding is a particular mode of being on edge. it implies uncertainty and a certain anxiety too, which provokes an ongoing series of questions regarding the spaces and objects around us. interior turbulence what jane rendell calls “critical spatial practices” (2006: 21) have the potential to call into question habitual spatial encounters and conceptions while bringing to the fore subtle or ephemeral characteristics ordinarily overlooked. in this paper i outline a particular example of critical spatial practice – what can be thought of as an atmospheric interior. specifically i explore what can be termed interior turbulence, a phenomenon that highlights three different registers of the atmospheric interior. firstly, interior turbulence suggests an alternative to the typical approach to interiors, which tend to place emphasis on separation and fixed enclosures. secondly, this term implies uncertainty, provisionality and changefulness – even a sense of turbulence within ourselves. thirdly, interiors that are thought and experienced atmospherically require a different approach to space-forming and design. interior turbulence raises a number of questions too. for instance, what is the role of thresholding in the formation of the atmospheric interior? what seemingly stable categories might be thrown into turbulence by thinking of practice in this way? the project outlined here attempts to answer these questions, and in the process, find value for design research in turbulence and uncertainty. fig. 1 cloud sound (2012). [photograph of installation project, bundoora homestead art centre, victoria, australia, all images copyright the author] cloud sound was developed in 2012 for an exhibition at the bundoora homestead art centre, a converted victorian homestead now operating as a regional gallery in greater melbourne. the installation was located in one of the former bedrooms, a high-ceilinged space of five by seven metres. for the period of the exhibition all furniture and furnishings were removed, leaving only interstices 15 61 the fireplace and its ornate timber surround as a key feature in the darkened space. emanating from the fireplace (where a computer screen displayed an image of networked lines) was a whistling sound suggestive of wind passing through the room. on closer inspection, the computer image revealed numbers and graphic objects whose values were erratically shifting and reforming, suggesting the sound’s responsiveness to unseen qualities or forces. further, the windows were blacked out, but featured a small, lensed oculus, turning the darkened room into a large camera obscura that projected an upside-down image of the homestead’s garden and neighbouring suburban development across the interior. incongruously inverted across the walls and decorative timber mouldings were poplar and macrocarpa trees, a rose garden, roof tiles, a garden path, an unused bus stop, suburban rooftops, and the yarra ranges beyond the limits of the city. capturing this outside world in real time, the projected image was subtly but constantly shifting in response to atmospheric states beyond – clouds drifting and reforming, trees swaying in the breeze, cars looping periodically up a wall, over the ceiling and down the opposite side. a person was similarly caught walking along the garden path, while a small wind-generator on a suburban rooftop was seen spinning with an unintelligible blur only to slow almost to a standstill as the wind died. cloud sound was an exploration of the distinct, but inseparable, atmospheres of weather and interior. the project aimed to furnish the otherwise sheltered withdrawal of the bedroom with an outside, contingent atmosphere, one rich in transitional and displaced thresholds. as such, two particular turbulent dynamics were found at work in the project: the first entailed a displacement of spatial propriety, and with it, the normative placements of weather and interior ambience; the second entailed seeing in cloud sound an inscriptive process, one that could be understood as a kind of spatial drawing that foregrounded the complex relations between issues of representation, experience, ideas, matter and immateriality. spatial turbulence starting with the first of these two turbulent dynamics, cloud sound aimed to collide discrete entities and introduce traces of extraneous forces into a sheltered space. the result was a space in-between, one that crossed inside and out, here and there, then and now. with this production of in-between-ness, atmospheric qualities were brought to the fore. the typical distinctions between exterior and interior, weather and ambience, organism and environment were brought into questioning relation in the project. more specifically, this questioning relation became the middle ground of a continual renegotiation. given the incongruous play of light and image fields across the gallery’s interior surfaces, sylvia lavin’s consideration of architectural surfaces in kissing architecture (2011), offers a useful reference for considering cloud sound. lavin is interested in the interactions between digital video installation – particularly by artists such as pipilotti rist and douglas aitken – and existing architectural surfaces. thinking of such interactions as a kind of amorous contact, she writes: [the] kiss is the coming together of two similar but not identical surfaces, surfaces that soften, flex, and deform when in contact, a performance of temporary singularities, a union of bedazzling convergence and identification during which separation is inconceivable yet inevitable. kissing confounds the division between two bodies, temporarily creating new definitions of threshold that operate through suction and slippage rather than delimitation and boundary. (2011: 5) in the installation at bundoora homestead this kiss was played out between the suburban city landscape and a victorian-era interior, although here it was not video projection that was the medium of contact, but instead a camera obscura pressing its image capture into the existing architecture. the project eschewed another facet of video production – the pre-recording of images. instead, the camera obscura of cloud sound transmitted an unpredictable and weather-dependent image repertoire. conversely, the interior offered its own contingent interception in the form of built historical elements and visitors. given this, how might we understand the surface interaction achieved in the work? what is the between of their meeting? as lavin writes of the collision of image field and building, these types of surface interactions are where “architecture gets close to turning into something else” (2011: 26). at stake is an unanticipated vulnerability and in this play of surfaces pulled tightly together a slippage of meaning occurs – a kiss that melds interior surface and projected light. fig. 2 cloud sound (2012). [detail of weather sensors] the audio installation component of the work also acted to integrate and mesh together the exterior and interior atmospheres, converting the changing qualities of the weather beyond the climate-controlled gallery into an ‘aural cloud’ tempering the interior. a box containing a variety of weather sensors (pressure, humidity, temperature and light intensity) was located on the balcony outside the camera obscura, with a cable running into the computer housed within the fireplace. the computer ran a small program specifically developed to translate weather data into sound utilising fluctuating input data converted into audio signals via a process known as granular synthesis. this form of synthesis uses hundreds of very small audio samples of between 20 and 100 milliseconds, whose density, tone and duration are controlled by the software program responding to the inputs of weather data. in this case granular synthesis produced a cloud-like sound structure that emphasised texture and pitch rather than a linear representational sound recording. this component of the project translated air pressure at the macro scale of weather into finer-grain disturbances in air pressure within the gallery’s interior. as such, atmospheric pressure became a way of providing continuity across divergent spatial and temporal scales. the slowly changing soundscape challenged the timescale of human sensitivity, for over the period of an hour or more (the likely duration of any visitor), there were quite minimal changes in the overall nature of the perceivable sound. in larger contexts, micro-changes in the weather’s make-up similarly occur in ways that are beyond ordinary human perception. in such cases, the best we can typically do is catch a scent in the air that precedes the approach of rain clouds, or a subtle, bodily sensing of the drop in air pressure as a front approaches. within human consciousness weather is fairly stable, with slow changes in cloud cover, and very few rapid changes in temperature, pressure or humidity. in the gallery’s interior, the soundscape likewise changed across the course of the day, though interstices 15 63 in a more pronounced way. in these terms, the sound environment of cloud sound aimed to amplify the presence of subtle turbulence that backgrounds all experience. atmospheric ambiguity weather and architecture are intimate companions, particularly given architecture’s long-standing role as a provider of shelter. yet for mark wigley the issue of sheltering entails more than climatic moderation, and as he says: buildings have always been seen to stabilize, to secure, to produce a sense of order in a chaotic world. architectural discourse begins with the thought that the first buildings kept turbulence outside … architecture produces the effect of an outside. it invents the idea of the exterior, the unruly territory that is tamed by a shelter. (2006: 6) what the architectural envelope achieves then is more than just a filtering or tempering of contingent atmospheric states; it consolidates architecture by placing climate beyond the bounds. at stake in this distinction is avoidance of turbulent limit points, and with it, threshold where things get “close to turning into something else” (lavin 2011: 26). cloud sound worked against this impetus to decisively separate interior and exterior experiential fields – an impetus particularly strong with victorian-era buildings whose architectural elements (shutters, verandahs and fenestration) and décor strategies (heavy curtaining and dark interiors) work to distance a climatic outside. this separation was amplified by the homestead’s subsequent adaptation into a public art gallery, requiring even more stringent forms of climatic tempering and regulation of interior weather. contesting this, the installation project sought to blur where interior and exterior could be imagined to reside. this blurring sought to bring the ambiguity between atmospheres as weather, and atmospheres as interior ambience, to the foreground. the conflated term ‘atmosphere’ describes an understanding of the interior as a dynamic, affective condition condensing various forces. fig. 3 cloud sound (2012). [detail of camera obscura image focussed across body. photograph by meg hale] for anderson, atmospheres are remarkable for their interjecting of affective aspects into emotional registers. moreover, as he writes, atmospheric states are “taken up and reworked in lived experience – becoming part of feelings and emotions that may themselves become elements within other atmospheres” (2009: 79). in other words, we are implicated and actively involved in the production interstices 15 64 of atmospheres. in cloud sound, the audience experienced its interior atmosphere via contingently projected light and images resulting from the action of the camera obscura. key in the action of the latter was the focal plane of the lens itself. this plane (or more accurately focal sphere) existed near the middle of the room and spread equidistantly across the walls, floor and ceiling, as well as across the intervening spatial volume. while not immediately obvious upon entering the room, the point at which the image came into focus could be discovered through bodily engagement – in other words, by experientially discovering image-clarity through motion. in this way the focal sphere could be understood to have created an immaterial and contingent threshold or spatial division. just as the projected light bent around the interior elements distorting the images carried with it, bodies and other objects in the room similarly became deflecting agents. by moving around the space and attending to the image projected across one’s body, it was possible to capture and bring into focus a small section of the light-image field. once this focal plane was discovered it encouraged people to inhabit a narrower zone within the interior, one whose boundaries were invisible, but defined by a discoverable, optical phenomenon. further, this conjunction of body, light rays from outside, and the space of the focal plane, served to mesh the three together. like lavin’s kiss though, this union was a temporary one, given the turbulent play of elements involved. in fact the quest for union might be better understood as a union in continual collapse, for, as lavin asserts again relative to kissing, at stake in this type of intersection is “not a collaboration between two that aims to make one unified thing”, but rather, is an “intimate friction between two mediums that produces twoness – reciprocity without identity – which [in turn] opens new epistemological and formal models for redefining architecture’s relation to other mediums and hence to itself” (2011: 54-55). the entanglement of surfaces, spaces and bodies in cloud sound similarly brought into awareness shifting modes of twoness that situates things simultaneously together and apart. “mesh” is a word i have favoured above in describing the connections achieved in cloud sound. it similarly carries with it the paradoxical sense of being together-but-separable that lavin attributes to the notion of kissing. extending my use of the term mesh is morton’s deployment of it in the ecological thought (2010). as he describes: ‘mesh’ can mean the holes in a network and threading between them. it suggests both hardness and delicacy. it has uses in biology, mathematics, and engineering and in weaving and computing … it has antecedents in mask and mass, suggesting both density and deception. by extension, ‘mesh’ can mean ‘a complex situation or series of events in which a person is entangled; a concatenation of constraining or restricting forces or circumstances; a snare’. (28) useful for morton too is the word’s brevity: “‘mesh’ is short, shorter in particular than ‘the interconnectedness of all living and non-living things’” (2010: 28). bypassing rigid, conceptual categories, the term calls up the question of where environments can be thought to begin and end. in fact, can any line be drawn between an environment and its non-environment? radicalising this understanding, environments can be understood to be without limit. they would potentially be inclusive of everything. similarly, it is productive to ask how it is that we are able to think of ourselves as standing out, in the foreground, distinct from an environment. the notion of a meshed existence challenges us to rethink our nature relative to all things. one advantage of this reorientation is that it enables us to rethink all relatedness. for morton, this is what ecological thought entails, “a radical openness to everything“ (2010: 15). so if the notion of the mesh is indicative of an open relatedness, it asserts that there is “no absolute, definite ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ of beings. [and yet…] we cannot get along without these concepts either” (2010: 38). at stake then is the contingent practice of thresholding, one inseparable from a relational turbulence. it is precisely this that cloud sound sought to find and enact through a meshwork of bodies, interior places and environment. interstices 15 65 representational turbulence a key aim of cloud sound was to blur the distinctions between the built, the bodily, and the ephemeral qualities of space. like contemporary projects by olafur eliasson or robert irwin, say, this project exists at the junction between art installation and architectural practice. as such, the gallery space of the bundoora homestead art centre did not simply ‘house’ the project; the architectural form and details themselves shaped the play of images generated by cloud sound. similarly, when bodies within the gallery acted as a receiving screen for the projected images, they too shaped and re-shaped what could be experienced. displacing the familiar surfaces of the room and the appearance of persons was a slowly shifting array of sky blues, the red of roofing tiles and the various greens and browns of the surrounding gardens and suburban rooftops. accompanying this meshing of interior and exterior was the audio component, which more abstractly displaced atmospheric conditions inward as acoustic differentials. the deployment of the camera obscura in cloud sound drew on older representational histories. in particular these devices were originally employed as an aid to drawing before, and then alongside, developing geometric systems that used perspective to represent the three-dimensional nature of space (kemp 1990: 188-199, gorman 2003: 296-299). pre-empting representational drawing, the camera obscura literally captured a living visual field, casting it onto a surface where it could be apprehended by line. however, in cloud sound the drive to fix down was suspended and the flow of images could be imagined to have drawn themselves suspended somewhere between modes of representation and production. in this way, i have attempted to think of the space of the camera obscura as itself a spatial drawing operating at the margins and in the liminal space of the notquite-material, not-yet-drawn. cloud sound’s camera obscura produced a ‘live’ drawing, one that mirrored the constantly changing conditions beyond the gallery interior. this contingency implies a close relationship between designing and making so that the usual architectural procedure in which drawing precedes construction is reversed; the drawing out of images can be understood as space-making in and of itself. jonathan hill, in immaterial architecture (2006), assigns drawing a fig. 4 cloud sound (2012). [photograph of installation project] interstices 15 66 special role in the history of architectural practice; it is the means by which the architect’s activity can be imagined as intellectual, rather than mere manual, labour. questioning this demarcation, hill is interested in recognising in representational processes ones analogous to building – for example, reciprocal actions like “building the drawing” and “drawing the building” (hill 2006: 57). these processes acknowledge that neither the act of drawing or building is discrete and distinct from the other. instead, turbulent inter-relationships exist between these activities. in a similar way, i have attempted to think of the camera obscura of cloud sound as simultaneously drawing and building space through its combining of projected light and inhabitation. fig. 5 cloud sound (2012). [photograph of installation project] by emptying and darkening the room, only then to fill it with projected daylight and synthesised sound, cloud sound, in its redeployment of volume, surface, and interior and exterior placement, created the conditions whereby a visitor was able to negotiate the material or immaterial status of these constituent elements. the project condensed both the immaterial practice of spatial drawing and a tangible modification of spatial and material qualities. at stake for the audience was the renegotiation of both the installation project and the architectural space in which it was housed. if the ‘architecture’ here is an ephemeral one, it was so in the sense that hill envisages an “immaterial architecture” – one that emphasises “the perceived absence of matter more than the actual absence of matter” (hill 2006: 3). acknowledging the creative and formative role played by users of architectural spaces is particularly important in understanding the production of the atmospheric interior as relationally enacted, and not pre-staged by a single designer. rather, in the atmospheric interior the role of the architect/designer is to create conditions in which a user or audiences can contribute to the material or immaterial status and make-up of the ‘architecture’ (hill 2006: 3). in this sense, the light field of the camera obscura foregrounded both a perceived absence of matter, and the potential for enacting an alternative and varying materialisation of space. in this situation thresholding can be understood to comprise a space of suspended decision-making, one whose openness maintains the potential for co-forming the spatiality of the experience. interstices 15 67 disciplinary turbulence consistent with morton’s ecological thought, the inter-relationships constructed by cloud sound sought to play out the complex, sometimes paradoxical, nature of the conceptual categories we use to make sense of things. opening up new possibilities for categorisation, or deferring categorisation altogether, provided an opportunity to think freshly about the status and agency of matter, activity and subjectivity. as such, what i have attempted to undertake with cloud sound is a hybrid critical spatial practice, one that pursues an expanded idea of drawing, material experimentation, and the co-formation of atmospheres. this intersecting of practices – what might be variously understood as inter-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary or cross-disciplinary – better fits what mark dorrian has referred to as a-disciplinarity. noting how all disciplinary practices “register the partial, provisional, and constructed character of any historically situated disciplinary discourse”, dorrian instead suggests an alternative description, one that is defined by what practices are not (2009: 195). on that occasion, dorrian was responding to wigley’s assertion (1998) that atmospheres ought to be at the core of what architecture produces. this seemingly positive claim about what architecture is immediately causes “problems of determination and [disciplinary] capture” by dorrian’s account (2009: 196). alternatively, the figure of the cloud, with its resistance to fixity and determinacy, might operate as a figure for a-disciplinarity because it eschews bounded arenas of knowledge (dorrian 2009: 196). like lavin’s appeal to the in-between, or thirdness of the kiss, there is, at times, value in eliding “a clear conceptual division between outside and inside”, particularly the demarcation of disciplines. commensurate with dorrian’s a-disciplinarity, the edgeless meteorological transpositions in cloud sound aimed to draw out a strange intimacy – an intimacy aligned with morton’s ecological thought. as such, “everything is intimate with everything else”, not in the sense of a diffuse inclusion (for which “spheres or concentric circles” would be figures), but on the basis of a contingent touching brought about by multiplying thresholds (morton 2010: 78). at stake in these diverse theoretical positions are questions of agency enacted at intersections and interconnections. what i have tried to outline are ways of occupying and developing positions that resist pre-existing frameworks. instead, it is my hope that sensitivity to, and engagement with, a practice of thresholding brings us closer to the things around us. in cloud sound is found an attempt to draw out the spatial, material and representational complexity of this becoming-closer. for an audience, this meant finding a richer place within a dynamic, turbulent flux. interstices 15 68 references anderson, b. (2009). affective atmospheres. emotion, space and society, 2, 77-81. dorrian, m. (2009). architecture and a–disciplinarity? a. leach & j. macarthur (eds.), architecture, disciplinearity, and the arts (pp. 193-205). ghent, belgium: a&s books. gorman, m. j. (2003). art, optics and history: new light on the hockney thesis. leonardo, 36(4), 295-301. hill, j. (2006). immaterial architecture. london, england & new york, ny: routledge. kemp, m. (1990). the science of art : optical themes in western art from brunelleschi to seurat. new haven, ct: yale university press. lavin, s. (2011). kissing architecture. princeton, nj: princeton university press. morton, t. (2010). the ecological thought. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. prigogine, i. & stengers, i. (1984). order out of chaos: man’s new dialogue with nature. london, england: heinemann. rendell, j. (2006). art and architecture: a place between. new york, ny & london, england: i.b. tauris. wigley, m. (1998). the architecture of atmosphere. daidalos, 68, 18-27. wigley, m. (2006). towards turbulence. volume, 10, 6-9. this paper has been double blind reviewed. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 2 f i x i n g jeanette budgett, carl douglas, and simon twose almost-always-falling-apart introduction this issue of interstices coincides with a period of crisis: a global pandemic set against a backdrop of climate change and ecological disaster. crises, times of intense difficulty or danger, signal turning or tipping points. they are unstable moments depending on emergent conditions, at which small changes might have big effects. crises frequently demand urgent action, but also destabilise conventional patterns of thought, generating complexity and making simple solutions improbable. previously successful strategies seem suddenly inadequate, and sometimes a surfeit of purported solutions does not change anything at all. crises spill over economic, national, ecological, and biological bounds to form an overwhelming milieu or predicament, rather than a collection of discrete, well-bounded problems. even where solutions are clear (stop burning fossil fuel, vaccinate), the path to those solutions can be unexpectedly complex. on edge, people rush to find certainty in ever-hardening positions; but fixed frameworks seem to generate antagonistic camps more likely to exacerbate crises than defuse them. these crises are bedded in the narratives of the modern capitalist project: stories of progress, human exceptionalism, individualism, and timely technical solutions. the figure of the individual innovator able to identify and overcome problems is a frequent protagonist in these stories, and architects and designers have frequently been seen (and seen themselves) in this light. media ethnographer stephen jackson points to the way stories of innovation obscure the work it takes to keep the world going, and to adapt what already exists for new purposes. redirecting attention to the work of fixing he writes, the question is this: can repair sites and repair actors claim special insight of knowledge, by virtue of their positioning vis-à-vis the worlds of technology they engage? can breakdown, maintenance, and repair confer special epistemic advantage in our thinking about technology? can the fixer know and see different things—indeed, different worlds—than the betterknown figures of ‘designer’ or ‘user’? (2014: 229) fixers, jackson argues, engage in the “subtle arts of repair by which rich and robust lives are sustained against the weight of centrifugal odds”, occupying the fulcrum between an “always-almost-falling-apart world” and a world that is in in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 3 editorial / f i x i n g a “constant process of fixing and creative invention, reconfiguring and reassembling” (222). arguably, architects and designers have tended to understand their primary work as poiēsis, “the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before” (polkinghorn, 2004: 115). but what might emerge from considering spatial and allied practices more akin to fixing, or as sympoiēsis, “making-with… worlding-with, in company” (haraway, 2016: 115). as donna haraway defines it, the term indicates more than merely cooperation or collaborative strategies. it points to an underlying reality in which humans, organisms, and all manner of non-human entities “compose and decompose each other, in every scale and register of time and stuff ” (97). haraway imagines sympoiēsis as akin to making string figures: playing games of string figures is about giving and receiving patterns, dropping threads and failing but sometimes finding something that works, something consequential and maybe even beautiful, that wasn’t there before, of relaying connections that matter, of telling stories in hand upon hand, digit upon digit, attachment site upon attachment site, to craft conditions for finite flourishing on terra, on earth. string figures require holding still in order to receive and pass on (2016: 10). in this issue of interstices, we envision architecture and its related arts as the woven work of the fixer or sympoet. facing our critical moment and drawing on the ambiguities of the verb ‘to fix’, we attend to works, spaces, and practices of composition and decomposition, reconfiguring and reassembling, improvising and empathising. architectural fixations and relations fixing, in the sense of maintenance and care, shades into unfixing: times and places of ongoing relationship and sympoiēsis. design often aims to fix, to produce something that corresponds to a predetermined outcome, to give matter to drawn lines. it also involves close collusion between human actors and nonhuman subject matter and design media, that inevitably throws spanners into the works, inflecting creative practices through an irrepressible, recalcitrant unfixing. what happens if architectural practice is refracted through the lens of fixing, unfixing, maintenance, and care? what new forms might architecture and its related arts take on? to what extent have these forms already existed, perhaps in minor or unrecognised ways? messy tangles and a world that is falling apart may seem inhospitable territory for architects, for whom fixing things in their proper place is a disciplinary priority. the question of how to fix things together into a greater whole is a fundamental architectural metaphor as well as a matter of practical concern. but this does not mean fixing is inflexible. on the contrary, through the concept of tectonics, fixing has also been advanced as a primary site of architectural meaning and play. in marco frascari’s terms, the joint, “the fertile detail, is the place where both the construction and construing of architecture take place” (1984: 34). for gottfried semper, a critical figure in the european tradition of tectonics, architectural form derived not so much from the essential nature of materials, but from culturally freighted processes. he saw walls, for example, as fundamentally conditioned by in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 4 editorial / f i x i n g the knotting and weaving of wickerwork and textiles, even long after new materials had been adopted. joints, fixings, and surface details responded not only to the need for secure and reliable structures, but were woven into a network of meaning and construal. the idea that architects might be concerned with configuring polysemic and multi-performative webs rather than locking things into inflexible frames also resonates with contemporary practices that see architecture not as discrete and autonomous, but continuously woven with social, ecological, cultural, and technical contexts. such practices often look to other domains for methods, concepts, and tools, and the roles they take on can begin to look very different from that of the traditional architect. lacaton and vassal, winners of the 2021 pritzker prize, for example, in their famous response to a 1996 “embellishment plan” from the bordeaux city council, proposed “doing nothing” apart from replacing some gravel, introducing some traffic-calming measures, and instigating a more regular maintenance plan (lacaton and vassal, 1996). in a semperian sense, this response could be seen as atectonic. by querying productivist assumptions, it also counters long-held architectural habit. perhaps less might be enough, as pier vittorio aureli has proposed (aureli, 2013). as robin wilson puts it, “their solution is to disperse investment rather than concentrate it into the manufacturing of a new object” (wilson, 2013: 47). they do not propose an insertion into the context (as if the context were a socket shaped to receive the new), but a re-weaving of the existing threads of place. while this approach may seem novel in the context of modern architectural practice, it has long been intrinsic in indigenous understandings of place. māori architect amanda yates, for example, describes māori spatial practice as working in “an ontological framework that attests to a multi-species lineage where earth, skies, rivers, and mountains, for example, have agency and importance as ancestral entities” (2019). western theory, we might say, is only beginning to discover and take account of the holism of indigenous world-views in which the rich interconnectedness of all things, human and more-than-human, frames new forms of inquiry and creative work. care and ethical responsibilities are not simply between individual human figures. when maría puig de la bellacasa writes that “care is a human trouble, but this does not make of care a humanonly matter” (2017: 2), we might remind ourselves that webs of emplaced care have a long history in the pacific: the samoan motto for ethical behaviour, “teu le vā” (to tend and care for the relationships), dictates the terms in this system of belonging, and thereby the construction of the individual. to participate in the system one has to engage and attend to relationships and connections” (refiti, 2014: 111). speculative (un)fixing creative practice is thought through making, and means becoming entangled with things to hand, be they exotic or mundane: pencil and paper, card, concrete, software, drone, or living matter. creative acts are a complex interplay between the deliberate intentions of human authors (observing or determining form for instance), and the affordance and resistance offered by non-human agents. engaging such things in sympoiēsis is necessarily an open-ended negotiation with results that are unpredictable, irresolute, and unfixed. in other words, it is in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 5 editorial / f i x i n g speculative, oriented towards “the making of a difference, for diffraction rather than reflection of the same, for alternative investments in thinking the possible or the virtual” (puig de la bellacasa, 2017: 111). speculative practices may require us to perceive in new ways, and become sensitive to new registers of affect, perhaps “‘barely perceptible micro-movements at the cusp of awareness …” in which the subject matter being drawn or designed “always remains at the edge of its own explicitness” (artega, 2017: 259). ross jenner describes the way that, “in any form of making, the world is caught in the act of making itself, where the maker is an amazed observer/participant” (jenner, 2013: 210). makers are poised between melancholy and wonder, unfixed and decentred, surrounded by dynamic agencies that speak back to us in languages we can’t pin down. this sense of being suspended or unmoored recalls art historian susan ballard’s “space of appearances where it is possible to both grieve and look to the future” (2021: 63). speculative architecture, ecological art, critical cartography, and other sympoiētic practices reflect their gaze through the eyes of another, making space through a kind of suturing, or drawing together. in doing so, they give us ways to explore intangible, ungraspable things that escape easy representation. speculative practices are modes of research that pursue while maintaining uncertainty; following the “indeterminate flux of ‘no-how’ rather than ‘the methodological steel tracks of know-how” (maharaj, 2009: 3). it is perhaps not a coincidence that many of the papers presented here engage with the unpalatable, the unpresentable, and the unavoidable. waste, decay, death, dirt, erosion, dynamic and entropic processes significantly appear in what are seemingly unfixable and intractable contemporary problems: capitalist over-production and over-consumption, environmental degradation, class conflict, contesting cultural world views. by refusing to turn away from the uncomfortable and undesirable, not to afford oneself the comforting fiction of the tabula rasa, the terra nullius, or the autonomous field, these authors take up the subtle speculative arts of the fixer: pulling on threads, making use of unpromising materials, extending their ethical responsibilities, and finding new ways to weave a world. this issue’s articles interstices 21 contains ten responses to this contemporary territory of fixing, ranging from critiques of our approach to waste to ficto-critical explorations of the politics of maintenance. we have not sought to homogenise these into a single position or argument, but have relished the way fixing as a theme slips through them in various forms. they expand fixing as a notion, burrow into its underpinning of repair, and turning it inside out, to encounter its obverse, the open vitality of (un)fixing. initial forays into the topic were shared at an online workshop hosted by victoria university on 14th august 2021. this day-long event brought together authors to review and discuss each other’s papers, and was orchestrated and administered by julia gatley, susan hedges and simon twose. it was a globe-spanning, constructive, and reciprocal exchange, and we warmly thank all the participants. . luciano brina’s article twists fixing and unfixing together, presenting a speculative solution to global waste that disrupts our preconceptions about waste and its governance: it proposes the landscape of russia’s inner periphery become a in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 6 editorial / f i x i n g vast ‘waste sucker’, storing the residue of globalised production. through such a pharmakon landscape russia acts as “an internationally-funded, planetary ecological donor”. this is a confronting and enormous geodesign scenario in which waste is managed through “geo-bio-chemical governance”, creating uninhabited zones of waste storage in the siberian wilderness where carbon sequestration, rewilding of forests, harvesting of methane and heat are managed through a repurposing of russia’s military infrastructure, including its satellites and remote sensing capabilities. brina’s speculative scenario jolts understandings of waste so they begin to appear as a solution as well as a problem, a scenario in which “pollution and human exclusion equates to accelerated remediation”. confrontations with waste are also presented by jeanette budgett, who looks to art for ways to shift our relation to matter out of place, the “inconvenient and relegated externalities of modern consumer society.” waste disposal landscapes, once regarded unproblematically as passive wastelands, demand new cultural and environmental considerations for their design. in dirt under our fingernails, budgett discusses a proposed new landfill site in dome valley, auckland, crossing it with re-readings of works by billy apple, mierles laderman ukeles, and noel lane “that made visible the matter, politics, and potential of overlooked residue.” their art practice critiques relations with waste and points to a parallel critique of how we manage and conceptualise waste in the landscape. daylighting waste, rather than concealing it, may shift understandings from denial of accumulated residue, to waste being “reconceptualised as continuous with livelihoods, habitats and land”. the urgency of our impact on the land is also highlighted by sibyl bloomfield and yue yu, in their articulation of threats to coastal inundation through anthropogenic climate change. from vulnerable to resilient discusses a speculative project for onehunga, auckland, exploring ways that unfixing practices might enable a transition from vulnerable coastal settlement to a resilient, sustainable pairing of settlement and land. learning from te ao māori, bloomfield and yu present a proposition aiming to fix (in sense of repair) by unfixing, through dissolving property boundary lines that form an invisible network of barriers, with the ultimate aim of “re-establishing reciprocal relationships between communities and their environment”. where bloomfield and yu speculate on ways to care for a landscape, through wider connections to social and cultural understandings, verarisa ujung describes the way that personal, cultural acts of care can constitute spaces in their own right. she gives an account of mangokal holi, a funerary ritual of indonesia’s indigenous batak people, in which the bones of the dead are exhumed, washed, and carefully reinterred. ujung sees this as boundary work that produces a social interior, a place of ethical and cultural obligations, embodied experience, and attachments. her personal descriptions of the mangokal holi ritual map out a culturally rich interior space in which, “through caring touch that has filled my memory with depth, contour, and gesture, i share a space with my ancestors”. julieanna preston tackles themes of class, value, and care in a work of ficto-criticism. exchanging the work of academic production for the labour of professional cleaner ‘maria’ enables preston to comment on capitalist transactional economies. offering to perform maria’s job for a few days, preston muses on the formal and material technique of sweeping, so-called menial labour, and socioeconomic in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 7 editorial / f i x i n g class politics in the form of a series of personal letters. preston performs the fictive maria’s cleaning, occupying her place as she dons the duster coat on the back of the cleaner’s cupboard door. the epistolary narrative shifts become increasingly personal, signalling a (perhaps one-sided?) closing of social distance. the intertwining of social, political, and material relations is given historical context by carl douglas in his examination of 19th century parisian piles: literal piles of refuse that blocked the streets, a pile amassed by french communards to cushion the fall of the monumental vendôme column, and metaphorical uses of piles and disordered matter. in politics of the pile douglas examines the complex slippage between the materiality of the mounds, the “sticks and manure, … heaps of meaningless consumer goods, impromptu barricades piled up in the streets”, and political and social orders. he reveals complex connections between the shared imagination of matter and non-hierarchical political organisation. the pile becomes a metaphor for “cobbling together a new public world and catalysing new collective subjects”. the oscillating imagery of material, social, and political relations also appears in relation to 20th century industrial modernism. in parallax projections, michael chapman and timothy burke make hybrid drawings of a ruined power station in wangi, new south wales, australia. the drawings combine photographs, drone photogrammetry, and pencil-work that foregrounds the “holes left behind in the digital process”. chapman and burke’s work captures a building “torn between its presence as a highly functional machine of the future, and its ruin and obsolescence”. the fixing priorities of architectural representation are destabilised in this project, with drawing becoming a way to chart the building’s entropy, employing it as a lens to “reconstruct the history of the modernist project, its optimism, its pessimism, and its ultimate incompleteness.” creative practice again opens up, critiques, and dismantles conventional modes of representation and understanding in a work of speculative cartography by tamsin salehian and louisa king. in cartographies of care, they project us into the remote, stony world of west antarctica’s dry mcmurdo valleys. their ‘carefull’ drawing deploys unconventional cartographic modes in performances of ‘ecologic listening’ (puig) and ‘re-worlding’ (haraway), illuminating flourishing combinations of plant, rock, and weather in this distant place. through urgent and affecting writing that draws on feminist cartography and ecology, cartographies of care critiques both the troubling history of mapmaking in the antarctic and proposes ecologically sensitive ways to apprehend the natural world. on the other side of the world, images of the mountainous marble ranges of the greek attic landscape have been blended with idealised representations of athens as the ‘white city’. chris french and maria mitsoula lead us up the marble mt pentelicon to the aloula open air museum of quarrying arts, “a site of un-fixing,” where “city-landscape relations” are re-made. eighteenth-century changes in visual perception saw the mountain quarries shift from a “working landscape visited as touristic attraction to an imaged landscape” exemplifying the emergence of what has been called the ‘tourist gaze.’ in (un)fixing aloula french and mitsoula propose that aloula un-fixes such conventional tropes. they deploy jane hutton’s notion of the reciprocal landscape to prehend the situation differently. perhaps, they suggest, the agency of stone might precede imagery, and sympoiētic co-design might elude the ‘fixing’ of orthodox design methods. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 8 editorial / f i x i n g the tools with which we might resist fixity of thought and conclusion are suggested by simon twose’s proposition for the “open sketch”. his collaborative creative practice with jules moloney, lawrence harvey, and anastasia globa explores phenomena that elude concision: unfathomably deep ocean trenches, seismic plate action, the engulfing unpredictability of bushfires. as twose describes it, their practice “aims to extend gestural aspects of the sketch in response to the agency of matter, as a way of capturing unfixed, intangible presences between drawer, sketch medium, and imagined space.” immersive installations deploy multiple modes of making; casting, scanning, digital parametric procedures, vr, ar, and ambient sound tactics to make the resultant sketch-space “bodily appreciable” in what twose calls “habitable drawings”. the poetic force of architectural “sketch space”, as a portal to the not-yet-fully-understood, leverages the sketch’s agency for sympoiētic drawing of the irresolute, incomplete, and un-fixed. in addition to discussions on fixing and (un)fixing, this issue also includes an interview by julia gatley with professor and emeritus dean of columbia university, mark wigley; a review by tim nees of aaron paterson, sarosh mulla and marian macken’s installation drawing room; and a selection of creative research projects from postgraduate students. loose weaving donna haraway reminds us that “it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots” (haraway, 2016: 12). in a similar vein, shannon mattern writes: “to study maintenance is itself an act of maintenance. to fill in the gaps in this literature, to draw connections among different disciplines, is an act of repair or, simply, of taking care—connecting threads, mending holes, amplifying quiet voices” (2018). remaining open-minded and open-hearted seems more important than ever. accordingly, the articles that comprise this issue are sensitive to the minor, irresolute, and under-recognised. it is not our aim to launch a polemic or frame a manifesto, merely to pull on threads that suggest new ways of practising architecture and its related arts. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 9 editorial / f i x i n g references arteaga, a. 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(2013). thought out of bounds. in a.-chr. engelsschwarzpaul., m.a. peters (eds.), of other thoughts: nontraditional ways to the doctorate. a guidebook for candidates and supervisors. rotterdam: sense publishers. lacaton, a. and vassal, j-p. (1996). place léon aucoc, bordeaux. retrieved from https:// www.lacatonvassal.com/index. php?idp=37 maharaj, s. (2009). know-how and no-how, stopgap notes on “method” in visual art as knowledge production. art and research, a journal of ideas contexts and methods, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 1–11. polkinghorne, d. (2004). practice and the human sciences: the case for a judgment-based practice of care. state university of new york press. puig de la bellacasa, m. (2017). matters of care: speculative ethics in more than human worlds. university of minnesota press. refiti, a. l. (2014). mavae and tofiga. spatial exposition of the samoan cosmogony and architecture [phd thesis], auckland university of technology. wilson, r. (2013). not doing/ overdoing: “omission” and “excess” —lacaton & vassal’s place léon aucoc, bordeaux, and construire’s le channel, scène nationale de calais, calais. yates, a. (2019). whanake mai te mauri ora. an expanded wellbeing framework and urban science data tool for integrated wellbeing governance. (report for building better homes, towns and cities: mauri ora and urban wellbeing.). http://buildingbetter. nz/resources/publications.html interstices cfp 2021[1] call for papers interstices: journal of architecture & related art: issue 21 carl douglas (2019), cattle grate #2 being erased. from kuku drafts, in association with te waituhi-ā-nuku and monique jansen. fixing maintenance and care might be imagined to be conservative practices, aiming at stasis or keeping something going in the same track. yet this underestimates the dynamic nature of fixing. to repair or sustain something is to become intimately entangled in processes of decay, aging, entropy; but also, with growth, complexity and otherness, with fallow states, and with regeneration. to develop a fixation with something is to be turned implacably away from oneself. rather than fixing in place, this issue of interstices asks how we fix things together across and through places. donna haraway contrasts poiēsis as “the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before” — with sympoiēsis, a co-creation, a “making things together”. designing space is necessarily sympoiētic, emerging from a complex collusion of the human and other-thanhuman. accordingly, we are interested in shifting our view from individualised moments of creativity to bring into frame how space might be co-authored, negotiated through performances of maintenance and care. what are the spatial possibilities of this continuing dialogue between architecture and other domains? what is the agency of things beyond us? how might divergent scales—the scale of a virus say—jolt us to consider space differently? we welcome contributions from architecture and art practice, philosophy, theory, ethnography, and geography, that speculate on questions of fixing. the intention is to capture a wide spectrum of disciplinary approaches and voices that chart the unanticipated directions and productive suturing of domains considering fixing, maintenance and care. contributors are invited to submit papers, theoretical and critical reflections, and documentation of experimental creative works. topics include but are not limited to: • spaces, sites, and practices of maintenance, care, and kaitiakitanga • indigenous models of co-creation such as papakāinga and talanoa • non-human agency: objects / animals / plants / ai / insects / viruses • decay, aging, entropy • historical narratives of care • architectures of repair and maintenance • critiques of the anthropocene/chthulucene • creative practices configured by co-presence and co-authorship, such as drawing. we invite you to submit a full paper inclusive of an abstract for the forthcoming fixings issue of interstices: journal of architecture & related arts. by 5 p.m. on wednesday 31 march 2021: abstracts of 300-500 words are to be submitted to sue hedges susan.hedges@aut.ac.nz . abstracts will be assessed by an academic panel comprising the issue editors and the interstices executive editors. by 5 p.m. on thursday 15 july 2021: full papers of 5000 words are to be submitted to julia gatley julia.gatley@auckland.ac.nz for refereeing. nb: contributing authors will be asked to referee one or two of the other submitted papers. saturday 14 august 2021: interstices workshop all authors and referees will meet to discuss and workshop the papers. at this workshop, authors will not present their own papers. instead, the referees will present their reports as a means of opening up a group discussion on each paper. full participation in this workshop is an essential requirement for publication in the issue. the workshop will include both in-person participation at the victoria university of wellington school of architecture, 139 vivian street, wellington, and remote participation via zoom. authors will be expected to rework their papers in light of the referees’ reports and this broader workshop discussion, with final acceptance at the discretion of the editorial team. by 5 p.m. on thursday 30 september 2021: final papers to be submitted to julia gatley julia.gatley@auckland.ac.nz . for publishing options and formatting requirements, please refer to the guidelines for submissions on the interstices website www.interstices.ac.nz . issue editors: simon twose – victoria university of wellington, te herenga waka carl douglas – auckland university of technology, te wānanga aronui o tāmaki makau rau jeanette budgett – unitec institute of technology, te whare wānanga o wairaka executive editors: andrew douglas – university of auckland, te whare wānanga o tāmaki makaurau susan hedges – auckland university of technology, te wānanga aronui o tāmaki makau rau julia gatley – university of auckland, te whare wānanga o tāmaki makaurau references: easterling, k. (2018). medium design. moscow, russia: strelka press. franco, b (2020) beyond the breakdown: three meditations on a possible aftermath. e-flux, 31 (march). retrieved from https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/beyond-the-breakdown-threemeditations-on-a-possible-aftermath-by-franco-bifo-berardi/9727. ghosn, r., & jazairy, e. h. (2018). geostories: another architecture for the environment: new york, ny: actar. graham, s., thrift, n. (2007), out of order: understanding repair and maintenance. theory, culture & society, 24:3. retrieved from http://doi.org/fvdqbn. haraway, d. (2016). staying with the trouble. durham, nc: duke university press. hayles, n. k., (2014). speculative aesthetics and object orientated inquiry (ooi). in r. askin, p. j. ennis, a. hägler, philipp schweighauser (eds.), speculations v: a journal of speculative realism (pp. 158-179). new york, ny: punctum. jackson, s. j. (2014) rethinking repair. in t. gillespie, p. boczkowski, k. foot (eds.), media technologies: essays on communication, materiality and society (pp. 221-240). cambridge, ma: mit press. lepawsky, j., liboiron, m., keeling, a., & mather, c. (2017). repair-scapes. continent, 6(1), 56–61. mattern, s. (2018). maintenance and care. places journal, november 2018. retrieved from, https://doi.org/10.22269/181120. thrift, n. (2008). non-representational theory: space | place | affect. new york, ny: routledge. tsing, a. l. (2015). the mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. princeton, nj: princeton university press. interstices 13 being (in the midst of) two: interstice and deconstitution in cinema and architecture michael tawa not knowing the way out or the way in, wonder dwells in a between, between the most usual, beings, and their unusualness, their ‘is.’ it is wonder that first liberates this between as the between and separates it out. wonder–understood transitively–brings forth the showing of what is most usual in its unusualness. not knowing the way out or the way in, between the usual and the unusual, is not helplessness, for wonder as such does not desire help but instead precisely opens up this between, which is impervious to any entrance or escape, and must constantly occupy it. (heidegger 1994: 145) we are human beings because we are outbound (en partance), disposed towards a departure about which we can and must know that no definitive arrival is possible or promised. it is in this impulse (élan), in the obligation of departure, since we cannot do otherwise, and in this risktaking (prise du risque), in the wager of departure, that we can live a life worth living. (nancy 2011: 29-30) interval woodland crematorium, stockholm (asplund and lewerentz 1935-1940)/maldives [all photographs are by the author] sydney/rajasthan 33 the story i wish to put to you today is simple. i would like to begin with the beginning of architecture, which is also the beginning of the possibility of life–that is, the interval which makes space and time possible, which gives us room to be and to breathe. i want to extend this sense of the interval into a common trope, commonly misconstrued–that is, duality, the duality between the interval and the walls it spaces-out: in other words, the duality between the limit and the limited, or in architectural terms, between inside and outside, private and public. i would like to suggest that this duality does not logically, factually or existentially exist. duality arises from the incapacity to hold two conditions simultaneously–light and dark, for example, grief and humour, or self and other. as such it arises when time is conceived diachronically or chronologically as a succession of instants. classical narrative, whether cinematic or spatial/architectural, is founded on the disassociation, in sequential time and linear space, of what is in reality coincident and synchronic. if duality is recast as a condition of being-two, that is of beingsimultaneously-dual–private and public, inside and outside, on screen and off screen, now and then, here and there, virtual and actual–then what first appears ambiguous in its oppositional indeterminacy turns out, for a moment, to eclipse the antinomical in favour of something more complex, indistinguishably interfolded or inwardly-concatenated. beings and worlds are folded, woven or felted out of beings within beings, worlds within worlds, scales within scales and rhythms within rhythms. as such they are states of what gilbert simondon called “surfused” or “supersaturated metastability” that take their fabric (psychosomatic, filmic, tectonic) to a threshold of crisis at which two things happen: the fabric reaches a limit of compaction or intensity and it begins to dilate and unravel (simondon 2007: 16). this unraveling produces a new state or emergent condition that could not have been planned or predicted. the function of a work (a text, a film, a building) is to frame and provide situations in which such emergence is enabled. such framing and providing is a matter of care or solicitude. it is properly speaking a technics, a manner of doing something and the know-how that attends to it, a mnemotechnics that is also mnemoethics–a watching and waiting, being-with and being-for that solicits the coming-into-presence of something: a mood, an atmosphere, an emotion, an insight, an exchange, an idea, a project, a melody, a word, a phrase, an expression, a recollection, a person, a place. this is what any work (text, film, building) is made-for. entr’acte: in medias res (in the midst of things) jean-luc godard’s thinking of the entr’acte, of cinema as the interstitial transition between shots and scenes, situates the cinematographic work as a process of joining images and their traces–that is, as a properly technological (techne) concern (tawa 2010: 136, 165-7, 290-3). greek techne is equivalent to latin ars, and means to woodland chapel (asplund 1918-1920)/ mosque, cordoba (7-10thc)] interstices 13 connect, to articulate, to weave, to create a nexus–all of which are tactics constitutive of a technics; a taxis that refers as much to tectonic assemblage as it does to the tact of an ethical and the tactility of an oneiric practice. this in-between, interstitial site of praxis is neither void nor neutral. it is a terrain with a topography that can be charted and investigated. the milieu is not an intermediate terrain vague, an empty pause or chasm–it is itself a world, or a whorl of worlds within worlds. the mythological tradition is full of such intermittent middle-places–midgard (middle-yard/enclosure), mittelerde (middle-earth) and greek oikomene (ecumene, household economy) all refer to the intermediate world of human existence, poised between giants and dwarfs, gods and demons, heaven and hell. the interstice, or the gape at the core of every junction, is what makes possible the strength of a connection, the capacity of a space and the rotation of a wheel. yet the gap is also a site of deconstruction. deconstitution or deconstruction is fundamentally a process that takes place at the joints–where analysis loosens (latin: ana-lusis = to loosen apart) and liquidates the knots that constitute an assemblage. the shuttle has the same function in weaving. it moves in the gaps and interstices of warp and weft, infiltrates the hollows and fuses or names-together-across (diakrinomen) warp and weft into an interconnected network to weave (sumploxe) the fabric. the nexus is therefore a site of both strength and weakness–a pivot of assemblage and disassemblage, construction and destruction, creation and catastrophe. whorls of worlds i would like to interpret a sequence from andrei tarkovsky’s the mirror (1979) in line with the main narrative i am relaying, proceeding from the deconstitution of the subject, of space and time through intensification and crisis to emergence and solicitude.1 by a systematic concatenation of interstitial discontinuities, tarkovsky builds up and conjugates a series of images that function like resonant metaphors. the film achieves such an intensity of overlay that the coordinates and logics of space and time become undecidable and fold into complex worlds within worlds. simultaneously, the compaction of images and metaphors, paralleling an overlap of reminiscences for the narrator, densify the semantic materiality of the image to such a degree that its consistency begins to develops fault lines, to falter and threaten collapses. in this extraordinary sequence, the narrator remembers himself as a child before his mother’s dressing table mirror. as he looks into it, the scene shifts to the past and to his young mother washing her hair, framed within a dark space glistening with reflections from oil-black walls, wet skin, clothing and mirrors dissimulated into the background. as she stands, dripping, the entire room begins to weep water from all surfaces and collapse. the scene then shifts to a dark room, presumably the same room at a later time, in which the author’s now elderly mother approaches the glass. the mirror doubles a window set alongside it, 1 the autobiographical and political registers of the film have been much commented on, as has its concern for aligning tarkovsky’s personal reminiscences and poetic reflections with specific instances of russian history. see dunne (2008), le fanu (1987), jónsson and óttarsson (2006). here i limit myself to the primary sources of the film and tarkovsky’s own text to frame a reading of the film’s existential and compositional dimensions and show how its tectonic and material qualities are used to foreground the role of the interstice and discrepancy in the operation of memory and recollection (see tarkovsky 2006). my focus precludes literature that deals with other aspects of tarkovsky’s work—for example his concern with space and temporality, evidenced notably in the mirror, stalker (1979) and the sacrifice (1986) by tracking shots through enfilades of architectural interiors which double with the interiority of his subjects; by a concern for the relationship between the spaces and objects that furnish human dwelling and “absorb” its traces; or by the deterioration of world and subject leaving behind apocalyptic conditions of subsistence. see for example the extended treatment of tarkovsky’s use of tracking shots in martin (2011), and “spatio-temporal lapse” and discontinuity across tarkovsky’s work as described by skakov (2011). the mirror (tarkovski, 1979) [all drawings from the film are by the author] 35 suggesting a black night outside. it is unframed and so does not read as an opening in a wall like the window beside it, but as pure surface and pure aperture. the mirror’s position in the room is ambiguous and it appears suspended in space rather than fixed to the wall. its transparent immateriality reflects multiple overlaid images–a painted twilight landscape of clouds, earth or sea, tree and open fire; reflections of a ceiling cornice and floral wallpaper patterns in the room behind; images of the remaining cornice and wallpaper behind its surface; a floating plane like a table that reinforces the threshold; reflections of the arched window and the mother nearing the mirror’s surface, as if from its other side. she raises her hand and places it on the glass. this gesture not only validates but also produces the duality of the two sides and the filmic boundary that separates them. she looks into the mirror as if questioning the materiality of its surface, as if it were on the verge of yielding and giving access to the multiple spatialities and temporalities of memory. the surface of a mirror operates in several ways, but always as a cipher of cinema itself. it is a filmic screen onto which images are projected–but from both directions–and exchanged into both of the spaces that front onto its surface. it is a frame which delimits and veils compossible worlds; a translucent doorway connecting places and times; an apparatus of memory, recollection and projection and a surface of monstration. the collapse of the room marks a crisis in the concrete reality and existential milieu of the scene. the actual time of the sequence is left ambiguous since multiple temporalities are simultaneously fielded. there is clearly a looking back to the author’s childhood in the early scenes. the old mother might herself be looking back, looking forward, returning from the dead or returning to meet her younger self. the question is less a matter of conveying chronological accuracy than of showing the circulation of real and imagined, actual and virtual, remembered and projected places, times and events within a single setting made possible by and within this interstitial rupture. the implausibility of the event amplifies this condition of crisis, enabling the images to convey more realistically what an experience of this rupture might feel like. it is not only the room that collapses but also the spatial, temporal and subjective coordinates of concrete existence. the moment triggers a disorientation in the subject and an avalanche of images which had welled up, to only now break through the resistance of forgetfulness–just as water violates the architectural skin and takes with it all guarantee of stability, shelter and safety. the sequence works metaphorically to convey, through a monstrous architectural catastrophe, the exposure of consciousness to a surfeit of the repressed memory and potentiality of the subject. interstices 13 mnemotecnics these instances parallel a constitutive condition of remembering and a defining characteristic of the apparatus of memory: that remembering and memorialisation–or monumentalisation, since the idea is cognate–is not a matter of attaining or evidencing accurate or even adequate reminiscence. rather, it is fundamentally about making a place for the difficulty and impossibility of remembering; a space in which we can be with memory as it fades and withdraws or evades our grasp, and yet remains just there, on the tip of the tongue; an experience of that moment betwixt remembrance and forgetfulness when a memory withdraws into oblivion at the same time as it presents itself with the highest certainty of delineation. memory is poised on forgetting and remembrance is in fact the iterative, rhythmic play between appearance and disappearance, recollection and oblivion, presence and absence. this is why the proper field and operation of memory is not conditioned by the antinomy of light and dark, but by the gloaming–an ambiguous and precarious, interstitial condition or shade of darkness wherein delineations fluctuate and become indeterminate. the experience might be like awaking from a dream that, at the same time as it is present to us as sharp recollection, fades and withdraws into uncertainty. each time we try to remember, the narrative is dismantled into incoherence. or the experience might parallel one’s presence and attentiveness to the systematic withdrawal of another in death; of one who is palpably present and with us while simultaneously fading and absenting themselves. such moments require delicacy and care. they call for a kind of disengaged solicitude that watches, wakes and waits; that cultivates a countenance of being-with and being-for whatever eventuates. this is the ethical power of the interstice that architecture remains to confront. to accommodate or furnish a space for this calls for a technics of resistance where the materiality of the field we happen to be working (in)–light, time and narrative for cinema, space, time and materiality for architecture; or the gravity of thought and the weight of words for language–plays an impressive, constitutive and formal role. i wish to make the point that the workings of memory are not virtual or insubstantial. they are deeply and intricately material, even as the traces they leave seem evanescent. as lyotard notes, after bergson, “mind is matter that remembers” its origins, interactions, transactions and immanence (1992: 40)–a reading supported by the common linguistic basis of an extensive lexicon: human, man, mind, mnemonic, memory, memorial, monument, moon, month, measure, metre, matter and mother, through the etymons *men = to think and *ma/me = to measure, weigh up, consider, reflect. maldives/sydney 37 that is to say human being is fundamentally mnemonic and recollective (greek: anamnesis = without-forgetting). photography and film might be the preeminent arts of recollection, but cinema differs in that it shows the traces of memory passing, it shows the process of their withdrawal and erasure into oblivion. with cinema we witness time and all that it conditions pass us by and depart from us– personalities, families, communities, peoples, narratives, histories, landscapes, creatures, emotions, melodies, airs, tones, rhythms, beats, ideas, theories, phrases, words, voices, whispers. these all have material being and they affect and impress us materially. consequently we are ourselves mnemotechnical. to use bernard stiegler’s phrasing, we are “retentional apparatuses” that register and record the passage of what has passed us by (2008: 122-3). we are archives and museums, laboratories and studios of recreation and renewal. since architecture is fundamentally a technical undertaking, its key function must be to operate as a mnemotechnical apparatus or infrastructure which tracks, frames and unclenches traces and recollections–of self, of place, of moments, of encounters. how might architecture do this? following his assertion that the proper concern of cinema is not to “realistically” convey the factuality of events but to capture their “reality”, tarkovsky makes a telling observation about the way imagination, dreams and recollections can be conveyed in cinema: how is it possible to reproduce what a person sees within himself, all his dreams, both sleeping and waking? … it is possible, provided that dreams on the screen are made up of exactly these same observed, natural forms of life. sometimes directors shoot at high speed, or through a misty veil … but that mysterious blurring is not the way to achieve a true filmic impression of dreams or memories. the cinema is not, and must not be, concerned with borrowing effects from the theatre. what then is needed? first of all we need to know what sort of dream our hero had. we need to know the actual material facts of the dream; to see all the elements of reality which were refracted in that layer of the consciousness which kept vigil thorough the night … and we need to convey all of that on screen precisely, not misting it over and not using elaborate devices. again, if i were asked, what about the vagueness, the opacity, the improbability of a dream?–i would say that in cinema ‘opacity’ and ‘ineffability’ do not mean an indistinct picture, but the particular impression created by the logic of the dream: unusual and unexpected bullring, ronda/kangaroo island interstices 13 combinations, and conflicts between, entirely real elements. these must be shown with the utmost precision. by its very nature, cinema must expose reality, not cloud it. (2006: 72) for tarkovsky this is not to be sought in special effects or literal translation, but in the focused and intensified working of the materials and technologies of film itself, paying close attention to the inherent logic of the moment being conveyed. cinematographers achieve this quality in very different ways–in tarkovsky’s the mirror by intensifying the material conditions of the image and the time it takes to pass; in nicolas roeg’s bad timing (1980) by switching between multiple timeframes with great velocity; in david lynch’s lost highway (1996) by disestablishing psychic and concrete spatialities and temporalities to produce radically altered, parallel states of being; in carlos reygadas’ silent light (2007) by turning the cinematic frame to pure attention and watching-out-for whatever comes; and in jean-luc godard’s histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998) by montage which juxtaposes, multiplies and densifies narrative texture. in every case, the strategies and tactics of manipulating temporality are deployed entirely within the fundamental limits of cinematic production–the 24-per-second frame-rate limit of image projection–rather than by adopting practices that lie outside the tectonics of cinema. this suggests that a work will persuasively engage with the real only by intensively working its fundamental limits, rather than by eliminating or escaping them. what implications might there be for architecture of this cinematic eclipse of time within time itself? how might the agency of cinema allow architecture to conceptualise a parallel eclipsing of space within space itself, and how might this deterritorialise architecture, opening it up to the strange and the unfamiliar? lighthouse lens/red fort delhi 39 deconstitution much current architectural theory and practice declares an urgency for engaging with contemporary realities in which certainty and stasis no longer hold, where universals have no purchase, where fluctuation and interminable variation condition experience, and where the disconnected and fragmented are commonplace. in response, architects look to formal systems and modes of working which privilege the dynamic and the ambiguous. attracted to so-called non-euclidean geometries and rhizomatic networks, embedding design in the diagramming of fluctuations in global markets, political deterritorialisations or other kinds of statistical analyses and parametric modeling, architects look for relevance in the conditions, needs and demands of a contemporary world in a state of crisis. as a result, architecture becomes a mimetic and formal representation of the dynamic, fluctuating, unsettled, unpredictable and catastrophic lineaments of that crisis. but in doing so, it merely trades one form of mimesis–the imitation or reification of transcendent permanent realities–for another: the imitation of immanent impermanent fluxion. it continues to adhere precisely to the literalness that tarkovsky warned against. it is not a question of finding “elaborate devices” to represent certain conditions or to displace certain accepted modes of working. rather, it is a question of remaining and working with(in) the foundational and familiar existential characteristics, elements and processes of reality in order to convey and amplify its unsettling and uncanny dimensions. the implication for architecture is that the most unsettling, the most unfamiliar and extraordinary experiences happen to take place precisely in the midst of the most ordinary and mundane of circumstances. a musical example of how the uncanny might be produced by working within and through the tectonic conditions of music and into the texture of time itself might be arvo pärt’s festina lente (1988-90). in this composition the same melody is played simultaneously by three groups of instruments at three different time scales–slow, natural and fast. the instruments begin together but the disjunction in tempo causes the three streams to immediately diverge. during the piece, these three will develop radically different dynamic and harmonic relationships as they separate, cross over or align with each other. this simple structural and procedural system results in a disassociated assemblage that sometimes magnifies and sometimes fractures the melodic and rhythmic material. the resulting affects range from resonance and concord to complete discord and chaotic deconstruction of the melody, from dynamic alignment, up-gathering and amplification to extreme opposition and cancellation of energy. festina lente is an investigation of music as the logical playing out of interstitial difference within a tectonics of time. the contradiction in the music’s title–festina lente means “to hurry slowly”– also defines its ambit. by overlaying one melodic pattern with its accelerated and decelerated variations, pärt constructs an enigmatic image of time in the process sydney interstices 13 of unraveling and decompressing–where the present is put into tension and stress by the antagonistic of a propellant future and a restraining past. the piece thus moves from stable regular organisation to irregular coagulations of multiple layers; then inexorably towards deconstitution as the texture of the piece disentangles into broad horizontal sheets of sound decreasing in proximity, separated by intervals growing in distance, eventually fading to an indefinitely deferred and infinitely finishing end. a similar enigmatic quality, spatial this time, is evident in the architecture of sigurd lewerentz. colin st john wilson reads the enigma in terms of lewerentz’ own guiding motto: “mellanspel”–meaning a playing (spel) between (mellan). he contends that lewerentz sets up then plays out various antinomical, oppositional themes to create discrepancy, ambiguity, indeterminacy and obliquity within an apparently simple spatial setup. from that results a sense of inexplicability or “mystery” that st john wilson implies might be proper to the experience of a sacred building (st john wilson 2001: 21). the discrepancies that lewerentz installs in the geometry and materiality of the church of st peter, klippan (1963-66), confirm this reading. the plan is square rather than basilican, therefore centralised rather than linear. in an ideal square no single direction predominates. but lewerentz carefully and forcefully differentiates between several axes that constitutively bisect the space. the single column appears central but is in fact asymmetrical in both north-south and east-west directions within a space that is exactly square (north is uppermost in the plans). the column’s axis of symmetry is offset from the geometric centre and axis of symmetry of the room. the altar is not centralised but located just to one side of this axis. these discrepant axial symmetries produce an extremely charged space. lewerentz works further geometrical alignments, directions and dynamics into the space to contest the apparent simplicity of the square, distort its rational order and install a strange dislocation with tectonic, experiential, theological and liturgical registers. the vaulted ceiling billows in uneven waves due to the alternating pattern of ribs, which expand and contract in plan as well as slope slightly towards the centre of the space from each side. the undulating brick ceiling is read against a pair of deep steel beams that span the full width of the space. these are supported on a primary beam, almost imperceptibly asymmetrical to the single column that supports it. the asymmetry of the column is reinforced by the offset st peter klippan. (lewerentz 1963-66) floor plan and brick paving plan of the main chapel. [drawings by the author] 41 assembly of beams–the two major cross beams also having the effect of countering the orientation of the vaults. this steel assembly effectively subdivides the square chapel into four smaller regions. the altar is marginally offset to the south of the central axis of the room and placed in the quadrant opposite the entry door. the baptismal font is in the quadrant closest to the entry. in both cases this is in accordance with normal liturgical practice. the lectern and organ occupy the third quadrant and the major portion of the congregation occupies the fourth. none of the windows or doors is symmetrical to or aligned with the geometric axes of the whole space, or with the quadrants in which they are located. the combined effect of this highly complex but barely perceptible setup, made of very slight nuanced geometrical shifts and overlays, is considerable. in terms of directionality and dynamics, the ceiling vaults run west-east towards the altar to emphasise a processional direction. at the same time, they rise from each side to a north-south pitching ridge above the column assembly. the combined effect is to stretch the west-east dimension and to gather, centralise and raise the space upward. this tension between two tendencies holds the space in suspense, in an indiscernible state somewhere between stability and dissolution. in the brick floor the bed joints run north-south, but at an angle to the square plan. within this linear pattern lewerentz inserts several areas of paving at other angles–like rugs or patches set within a larger web. despite reading more like a woven multidirectional surface than a linear array, the heterogeneous patterning of the floor counters the orthogonal alignment of the overall space and the altar, as well as the walls. the directionality of the paving resists and decelerates that of the vaults. these contrasting shifts in pattern and geometry create disjunctions and incommensurabilities in the spatial order of the room. this intricate juxtaposition of geometries, spatial directions, tensions and proportions tends to overburden, materialise and condense the space: but also to mobilise st peter. main chapel, brick floor, steel framing and brick vaults. st peter. main chapel brick floor and baptistery interstices 13 its materiality, causing it to fluctuate, alternate and oscillate–but quietly, slowly and in a minor key. tectonic implications exceed any semantic, metaphorical or symbolic readings that could be ventured for the building. the central armature that supports the roof may evoke the cross on calvary but it also zones the space to frame a differentiated collectivity. it produces a weighty, grave ambience that matches the simultaneous grief and joy of reflection, prayer and celebration that define the protestant mass. it turns an abstract spatial structure into a world or place, calibrated to specific modes of being, being-with and -without others and being-with-otherness. the multiple interstices between geometric systems within what appears to be a simple, resolved space produce a disturbance and uncanny presence that parallels the theological condition of a god who is neither immanent nor transcendent, but has effectively withdrawn and abandoned human beings who must henceforth both mourn his departure and await his return. lewerentz does not achieve this architectural metaphor of a complex metaphysical circumstance through formal complexity, large-scale compositional tropes or unusual geometries. the scale of tectonic endeavour is extremely modest yet every move carries considerable weight and enduring affect. he does not abandon architecture’s foundational tectonic dimensions or remit but critically crafts the tectonic by subjecting it to significant strain and working at it until it yields. in each example from cinema, music and architecture, the interstice or gap plays a key role in conveying meaning and narrative. the interstice is produced in the midst of each work, in their very structure and fabric, by arranging component parts so that discrepancies arise to contest the overall order. in pärt’s festina lente the discrepancy is durational and due to three coexisting time signatures or temporalities. these three play out simultaneously to produce disjunctions that sometimes build and amplify and sometimes deconstruct the rhythmic and melodic texture of the music. pärt uses the tectonic potential of music to convey the ambiguous, wavering and enigmatic condition of “hurrying slowly”–as the title of the composition suggests. in the mirror, the discrepancy is found between narrative and image, due to a disjunction between the narrative and temporal conditions of linking scenes. the resulting sequence produces disjunctions in time, in the content of the narrative and subject matter of the images and in the existential state of the subjects who appear to exist across multiple timeframes. the coexistence of these disjunctions with the smooth and often slow filmic sequence produces a discordant texture in the film to convey a limit point with crisis or emergency in the protagonist’s experience of recollection. finally, with lewerentz’ church of st peter, numerous discrepancies are used to disturb the stability of an apparently centralised, masonry building to create an entirely interstitial fabric. the geometric order is built of unaligned centres, axes and symmetries, while the building’s material density and weight is systematically given over to undulation and levitation–for example, in the sloped, heaving floor and the alternating rhythms of the vaulted ceiling that seems to billow above the space. these tectonics parallel a theological motif central to the christian experience–the discrepancy between human and divine that worship is made to address. at the same time, the interstitial discrepancies lead to ambiguous, undecidable spatial and material systems whose incommensurabilities develop a wavering, shimmering quality that eclipses the space’s geometric and material limits–producing tectonic parallels to the mysterious and transformative dimensions of worship. as a result of the deconstitutive interstice, musical time is no longer solely linear and diachronic but also circular and synchronic. it no longer solely advances but also folds back and returns into itself. cinematic time is no longer solely limited by the disassociation of past, present and future but can also enable these to coexist 43 and affect each other. architectural order is no longer solely limited to singular harmonised spatial systems but can also incorporate multiple, unaligned systems to produce indeterminate and ambiguous orders. likewise, masonry is no longer solely compounded by its material weight but can also convey immateriality and levity. such enigmatic qualities are realisable because of the interstice, because of the disassociative capacity of the interstice to enable multiple systems to coexist, to come into productive contact and consequently to fundamentally disturb and challenge the prevailing order. such disturbances are not destructive but productive. they enable complex, nuanced systems of order to coexist within a single assemblage, but without recourse to expanded fields or practices that might seek to eclipse a given art form or discipline. the production of simultaneously consilient and discrepant conditions, mobilised and structured by the interstice and achieved entirely by working the foundational material, tectonic opportunities and tactics inherent to cinema, music and architecture, creates assemblages in which nothing is as it seems and everything remains open to investigation, interpretation and uncanny, emergent potential. references dunne, n. (2008). tarkovsky. london: black dog publishing. le fanu, m. (1987). the cinema of andrei tarkovsky. london: british film institute. godard, j.-l. (2002). the future(s) of film, three interviews, 2000-01. berlin: gachnang & springer. heidegger, m. (1994). basic questions of philosophy: selected “problems” of “logic” (r. rojcewicz & a. schuwer, trans.). bloomington & indianapolis: indiana university press. jónsson, g., & óttarsson, t. (2006). through the mirror: reflections on the films of andrei tarkovsky. newcastle upon tyne: cambridge scholars press. lyotard, j.-f. (1992). the inhuman: reflections on time (g. bennington & r. bowlby, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. martin, s. (2011). andrei tarkovsky. harpenden: kamera books. nancy, j-l. (2011). partir – le départ. montrouge: bayard. st john wilson, c. (2001). sigurd lewerentz: the sacred buildings and the sacred sites. in n. flora, p. giardiello & g. postiglione (eds.), sigurd lewerentz 1885-1975 (17-23). milan: electa. simondon, g. (2007) l’individuation psychique et collective. paris: aubier/flammarion. skakov, n. (2011). the cinema of tarkovsky: labyrinths of space and time. london: i. b. tauris. stiegler, b. (2008). économie de l’hypermatériel et psychopouvoir. paris : mille et une nuits. stiegler, b. (2008). prendre soin : tome 1, de la jeunesse et des générations. paris: flammarion. tarkovsky, a. (2006). sculpting in time: reflections on the cinema (k. hunter-blair, trans.). austin: university of texas press. tawa, m. (2010). agencies of the frame: tectonic parallels in cinema and architecture. newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars publishing. tawa, m. (2011). theorising the project: a thematic approach to architectural design. newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars publishing. 59 labour matters: the politics of materials and making in architecture cathy smith introduction: thinking and engaging matter in architecture, many recent material-based discourses focus on the way in which digital drawing and fabrication technologies facilitate experimentation with the formal and affective capacities of materials, particularly through the use of 1:1 scale prototyping. yet, there is often minimal discussion of the ontological and socio-political issues embedded within these practices; nor how these methodologies might challenge or disrupt established assumptions about materials and, in particular, the organisation of labour during the fabrication process. if the architectural discipline is to aspire to an “inclusive architecture” based on a reconsideration of matter and materials (borden and meredith 2012: 2), then it is also crucial to consider all aspects of practice – including labour. to unpack these issues in more depth, the paper refers to french philosopher gilles deleuze and psychoanalyst félix guattari’s critique of the philosophical model of form and matter known as “hylomorphism” and the association of this notion with the segregation of intellectual and manual labour in western society, including architectural practice. they argue that the hylomorphic concept can be associated with a broader sense of hierarchy within western philosophy: prompting a way of thinking based on “a society divided into governors and governed, and later, intellectuals and manual laborers” (deleuze and guattari 2004: 407). their association of hylomorphism with classical western philosophy establishes a specific theoretical context for the present paper. this paper engages with specific philosophical conceptions in order to draw attention to some problematic assumptions about materials and labour that remain largely unexamined in architectural discourse. the focus is on discourses – philosophical and architectural – that explicitly confront the segregations between form and matter, and designing and making, with a specific concentration on the post-millennium milieu. examples of contemporary material-focused discourses will elucidate the conceptual relation between materials and making in architecture – including texts by lisa iwamoto, katie lloyd-thomas and bernard cache. in particular, this paper aims to make explicit that the ways in which materials are conceived and deployed in architecture can support or disrupt established conceptual hierarchies – not only with respect to conceptions of form and matter, but also to making, particularly labour. contemporary material-focused thinking within the architectural field in her text digital fabrications: architectural and material techniques, architect and academic lisa iwamoto suggests that “digital media and emerging technologies are rapidly expanding what we conceive to be formally, spatially, and materially possible” (2009: 4). many of the project examples within this text involve experiments and 1:1 scale prototyping using cad-cam (computer-aided design / computer-aided manufacture), cnc (computer numerical control) fabrication tools, robotic assembly and other digitally-enhanced production technologies. the projects are similar in positioning a specific material or fabrication technology as the primary generator of architectural form. this focus on form and materials does not necessarily preclude other considerations, such as functional interstices 14 building programme, building typology, project budget and so forth – a point reinforced by architects jesse reiser and nanako umemoto in their 2006 text atlas of novel tectonics (2006: 90). in iwamoto’s words, these projects: “capitalize on material methods as a generator for design” (2009: 7). the projects in digital fabrications are also invested with concerns that are “the purview of the low arts or crafts” (4). in both “low-tech” and digital production methodologies, the designer may be more directly involved in the making of an artefact or building component than in mainstream professional practices, where the designer operates independently of the fabricator and/or fabrication process. the focus on materials, fabrication and form within digital fabrications typifies a reinvigorated interest in materiality within contemporary architectural discourse1 that frequently concentrates on the potential of materials for experiments with “perceptual, spatial and formal effect” (4). the term “material” is often used as synonymous with “building materials” (lloyd thomas 2010: 5) and with only minimal interrogation of its philosophical, ontological and epistemological meanings outside of the architectural discipline. for example, borden and meredith’s comprehensive text matter is explicitly concerned with a conception of materials as distilled from specifically architectural practices and debates (2012: 2-3). they identify a “socio-ecological shift” in architecture prompted by the industrial revolution, and the consequent widening in scope and availability of the architect’s “palette of materials” (1). this concern with architectural materials reinforces, rather than challenges, the traditional focus on the usefulness of materials in architectural form-making and ignores “the cultural and political issues that an engagement with the material might yield” (lloyd thomas 2007: 7-8). historically, the industrial revolution prompted significant changes to traditional production methodologies. this, in turn, generated considerable debate about the attendant issues of labour and craft – as for example in john ruskin’s and william morris’ writings.2 it is important to note that there is little discussion about how digital production methodologies might challenge or disrupt habitual assumptions about interrelations between design, fabrication processes and the organisation of labour. to some extent, this lack of interest on the form-matterlabour relation may be attributed to the prevalent focus on the capacities of actual or ‘real’ materials as a primary generator of architecture and architectural thinking, which testifies to the “desire to construct an inclusive architecture through matter” (borden and meredith 2012: 2). yet, any ambition for a materially-inclusive practice becomes potentially problematic if this discourse excludes other conceptual, social and economic concerns that are intrinsically bound to engagements with matter. architectural theorist lloyd thomas argues that unless the conception of materials and their formations in architecture is explicitly addressed, new production methodologies may simply extend and replicate existing hierarchical assumptions – particularly form’s conceptual dominance over matter (2007: 7-9). accordingly, the paper takes as its focus the conceptual relation between materials and labour as it is engaged in specific examples of philosophy and particular contemporary examples of architectural discourse. the division of labour and architecture any examination of the notion of labour must proceed with some qualification about how the term is deployed. “labour” appears to be a particularly nebulous term which refers to the productive aspects of any endeavour: put quite simply, labour generally refers to “work”. in architectural discourse, labour might simultaneously invoke physical work or labour involving direct contact with materials 1 jon goodun and karin jaschke’s introduction to a 2012 issue of architectural design concerned with material resources refers to the “new, materialist mode of practice” in architecture. other materialfocused texts include: robert sheil’s 2005 design through making; kolarevic and klinger’s 2008 manufacturing material effects: rethinking designing and making in architecture, and; gail peter borden and michael meredith’s 2012 matter: material processes in architectural production. asterios agkathidis’ 2010 edited text digital manufacturing in design and architecture also explores the relation between digitallyenhanced design methodologies, materials and fabrication processes, but there is arguably still a primary conceptual focus on form-making and the “devices which helped to rationalise and systematise the production process of complex geometries” (agkathidis 2010: 4). the recent 2013 australian institute of architects’ annual conference, titled material, was dedicated to the same theme (australian institute of architects 2013). 2 this discourse includes the discussion of handcraft and manufacture elaborated within art critic john ruskin’s 1849 text the seven lamps of architecture (1907); and william morris’ 1891 lecture ‘the influence of building materials upon architecture’ (1996). these discourses do not necessarily directly invoke the philosophical distinctions between form and matter discussed in the present paper, but they do establish a precedent for discussing the notions of labour and making with respect to fabrication and construction in architecture. 61 – for example, the work done by builders on a construction site – and intellectual or work or “thinking”, such as thinking about the shape and assemblage of buildings away from the construction site. in reality, the segregations between different types of labour may seem artificial: one could easily argue that architectural drawing concurrently involves intellectual and manual work. for the purposes of clarity, the present paper will refer to and differentiate between “intellectual” and “manual” labour, as deleuze and guattari do within a thousand plateaus (2004: 407). it is the hierarchical distinction between intellectual and manual labour that appears to be of significant concern to deleuze and guattari with respect to their discussion of form and matter in a thousand plateaus. for them, labour is associated with the segregation, classification and quantification of any productive human activity: specifically, “labor is the quantitative comparison of activities” (489). if labour can be separated, measured and potentially “stockpiled”, a financial and political value can be ascribed to or extracted from it (bonta & protevi 2004: 103). accordingly, segregation and division is at the core of any notion of labour. in the words of sociologist richard sennett: “[t]he division of labour focuses on parts rather than wholes” (2008: 47). instead of focusing on social or political causality, deleuze and guattari turn to the conceptual relation between form and matter as the generator of the division of labour. they are highly critical of the philosophical model of the form-matter relation known as hylomorphism, which distinguishes between the concepts of form and matter. hylomorphism produces a sense that matter is passive and devoid of any formal or organisational capacities of its own; it requires form to be “imposed” upon it. by segregating the notion of form from matter, and by suggesting that form dominates matter, hylomorphism may invoke and promote a broader sense of hierarchy (simondon 2007: 10; deleuze & guattari 2004: 407). while the present paper focuses on deleuze and guattari’s more contemporary problematisation of hylomorphism, it is important to note that the notions associated with hylomorphism have been ingrained in thought since the origins of western philosophy. for example, timaeus and critias outlines plato’s belief that all matter of the world is an approximation (albeit imperfect) of idealised, perfected forms which exist in the realm of the spirits and beyond the everyday material world (plato 1977). the inextricable relation between form, materials and labour is also discussed by french philosopher gilbert simondon, to whom deleuze and guattari refer. in his text the individual and its physico-biological genesis, simondon suggests that the hylomorphic model of form and matter underpins the idea of “social hierarchy” (2007: 10) and the hierarchical thinking typical of western thought. in the words of geographer mark bonta and philosopher john protevi, the form-matter duality is “the viewpoint of a master commanding slave labour” (2004: 97). drawing from simondon, deleuze and guattari also suggest that the duality established between form and matter is part of a broader world view relating to “the organisation of work and the social field through work” (2004: 407). the form-matter model elaborated within a thousand plateaus is part of a larger discussion about different models and approaches to life, invoked through specific examples drawn from construction and architecture. they identify two fundamentally different approaches to the building of gothic cathedrals in the middle ages, based on different conceptions of the form-matter relation. the first approach, termed state or royal science, is directly associated with a hierarchical conception of form and matter. it also appears to be associated with architects (deleuze and guattari 2004: 406-7; protevi 2001: 131; bonta and protevi 2004: 53). royal or state science involves applying general rules and abstract models and theorems derived from “real-life” experience (deleuze and guattari 2004: 412). interstices 14 the state approach aims for “a fixed model of form” and involves “templates”, maths and other quantifiable measures (402). the second approach, nomad science, involves discovering and responding to particular problems encountered in “real-life” situations and sites (406-7, 412). as described by deleuze and guattari, nomadic builders or gothic “journeymen” would travel across the land to cathedral building sites, drawing from experience and intuition rather than following wholly predetermined building plans, representational drawings or engineering calculations (406). consequently, there was no discernible differentiation between intellectual and manual labour, nor a hierarchical approach to materials and their formations. these nomadic builders or journeyman were organised, but operated independently of the state and its hierarchical and social models; as such, “the division of labour fully existed, but it does not employ the form-matter duality” (407). thus the organisation of labour was not founded upon the sense of hierarchy associated with the state science model: the state’s response was to take over management of the construction sites, merging all the divisions of labour in the supreme distinction between the intellectual and the manual, the theoretical and the practical, modelled upon the difference between “governors” and “governed”. (deleuze and guattari 2004: 406) in practical terms, advancements in drawing techniques in the late middle ages enabled skilled draughtsmen to design entire buildings prior to their construction by separate builders. architectural theorist edward robbins suggests that these advancements in drawing were largely responsible for “the social division of labour within architecture” (1994: 16). thus architecture became a specialised, intellectual pursuit based in studios and distinct from the messy manual work involved in construction. in deleuze and guattari’s words: “[t]he ground-level plane of the gothic journeyman is opposed to the metric plane of the architect, which is on paper and off site” (2004: 406). most importantly, deleuze and guattari argue that this hierarchical division of intellectual and manual labour stems from a conceptual schema that presumes that materials receive their form from the master-architect. indeed, it has been suggested by architects jesse reiser and nanako umemoto that architectural practice is premised on the belief that “matter is formless and geometry regulates it” (2006: 88). accordingly, intellectual labour (design) is generally associated with architects and architectural studios: manual labour (construction) is associated with building contractors and manufacturing workshops. the digitisation of labour engaging with materials in a more heterarchic and “inclusive” manner should also prompt a critique of the attendant organisation of labour in building practice. contemporary discussions about digital fabrication techniques tend to focus on the self-organisational capacities of materials and associated technologies, without explicitly discussing the distribution of labour during the design, fabrication and assembly project phases. yet digital production technologies have the capacity to introduce material parameters, production costs and techniques into the digital model (agkathidis 2010: 4). as such, parameters relating to the deployment of labour could be explicitly considered alongside material capacities. digital drawing and fabrication technologies can improve the connection between drawings and material fabrication by introducing a direct relation between both; as seen in the example of the cnc router machine which fabricates building components in direct reference to a cad drawing. there are still inevitable, albeit potentially productive, fissures between what is drawn and what is constructed, particularly 63 when human fabricators post-assemble robotically-produced components. iwamoto does not specifically address the issue of the organisation of labour within digital production methodologies, but she does suggest that there is an inevitable schism between digital visualisation and the subsequent “modes of making” (2009: 4) or assembly. in a 2010 essay, practitioner, theorist and digital-innovator bernard cache engages with the socio-political issues of digitisation and assembly more directly. he criticises the discourse on digital production methodologies for its primary focus on form and universal aesthetics – the “formal curvy-broken style” (2010: 55) – at the expense of other social and cultural concerns. cache associates the limitations of digital production discourses in architecture with a broader tendency to ignore the social and cultural aspects of computers and computerisation (53). for cache, this is not a failure of digital production technology per se, but a problem of its theorisation and application. he suggests that it is possible to use cad-cam in such a way that it could be tailored to address urban issues and social problems by focusing on how architectural components could be deployed or customised to suit “to the specificity of projects, independent of all formal research” (60). while he does not discuss specific examples for the organisation of labour, he does imply that the manufacture and assembly of digitally-fabricated components can be customised for particular projects such that making and assembly might become equally important concerns alongside building shape and form. the problem of generalising and anticipating material performance is a key aspect of deleuze and guattari’s critique of the hylomorphic schema (2004: 451). whether digital or not, architectural “blueprint” drawings and specifications predict probable behavioural tendencies of materials and their combinations. however, on site, there is usually some degree of deviation, however small (willis 1999: 225; alexander 1979: 461-462). even the most basic specifications tend to acknowledge that there are subtle differences and variations in materials otherwise classified as belonging to a single material type or category (lloyd thomas 2010: 52). a case in point is the specification and contract documentation used to construct the experimental stock orchard street house in london (2004), by architects sarah wigglesworth and jeremy till. due to the unique material combinations used in this house, the documentation specified not only materials, but included diagrams prescribing their on-site fabrication, such as the design and operation of the scaffolding needed to assemble the unconventional sandbag wall insulation (lloyd thomas 2010: 176). they explicitly acknowledged that the fabrication processes involved both material performance and on-site labour, and that these determined the final architectural form (lloyd thomas 2010: 180). it is important to note that building contractors were involved in the erection and construction of the building on site. the architect as manual labourer the “design-build” methodology encompasses practices which deliberately integrate the activities of designing with those of fabrication because the designer or architect is also the builder or “labourer”, and, sometimes, also the building occupant (willis 1999: 223). this does not rule out the use of digital production methodologies, although discussion tends to focus on examples of vernacular construction, “low-tech” and small-scale technologies and encompasses a range of often poorly theorised practices including “diy architecture”, “self-build” (willis 1999: 223) and “live/build” (brand 1995: 202). while these practices may not be labelled materialist, the default integration of designing with making focuses interstices 14 attention on material capacities. the design-build methodology in architectural education is often associated with specific north american architecture schools, including the yale building project initiated by charles moore and kent bloomer in 1967; and samuel mockabee’s rural studio based at auburn university, alabama (sokol 2008: 2). self-build or live/build projects associated with professional architects are routinely referred to as “diy architecture” whereby the architect also acts as the builder and building occupant (smith 2012). the design-build methodology is often positioned as a way of overcoming the anachronism between architects, builders, clients and building users (willis 1999: 223). as such, materials tend to be engaged as a secondary and pragmatic concern – in terms of their capacity to be used and shaped, for example rather than being a core conceptual focus. nevertheless, projects constructed using self-build methodologies tend to evolve incrementally in response to changes encountered on site, and therefore the self-organisational capacities of materials are arguably an important characteristic of this methodology (brand 1995: 202). north american critic and writer stewart brand invokes the metaphor of “tailored clothing” to characterise self-build projects which are “fine-tuned” to suit their occupants over time (1995: 202). not only are the specific capacities of individual materials embraced, but also their interrelation with other material conditions and systems. design-build or self-build projects tend to be of a smaller or residential scale, and are less relevant as a production methodology for larger scale building typologies and contemporary manufacturing contexts. architect christopher alexander and his colleagues have argued that it is possible to construct larger projects using a smaller-scale building approach through decentralised governance and “piecemeal growth” (alexander, silverstein, angel, ishikawa & abrams 1975: 67). projects are seen to be shaped by the coalescence of multiple influences that often vary over time, including material availability, costs, weathering and so forth; an approach that resonates with deleuze and guattari’s invocations of nomad science and the attendant blurring of intellectual and manual labour. for nomad scientists, any transformation of matter from one state to another is seen to occur through dynamic encounters and interactions with other forces and, as such, it is difficult to think of matter being passive or disassociated from labour, other materials, tools, techniques and processes: “it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation” (deleuze and guattari 2004: 451; smith 2012: 144). the labours of matter itself a key characteristic of the design-build methodology is the way in which manual labour is intentionally integrated into design processes. the designer-maker exhibits a “willingness to learn from his materials” (willis 1999: 227). while certain construction technologies such as timber framed construction can be easily adjusted by self-builders in reaction to changes in project conditions, advanced materials may possess the enhanced capacity to self-identify building problems or issues and self-adjust over time; capacities that could be embedded in projects of any scale or type. in his discussion of the self-build approach, brand refers to new “[s]elf-sensing and self-healing” materials and technologies – such as concrete that self-repairs and cleans in reaction to changing environmental conditions (1995: 221). as such, the materials themselves provide the “manual” labour normally associated with maintenance workers, in addition to possessing the “intellectual” capacity to identify and respond to environmental changes (however limited this capacity may be). thus the low-tech, hands-on building approach involving self-building could be augmented by new materials with “biological or nano-computerised sensitivity” (221). brand’s observations draw attention to the radical 65 possibilities of contemporary biomaterials and nanotechnologies to radically alter the division of labour within a project site, even if he specifically refers to building maintenance and upkeep. in brand’s example, the human labour usually required for particular maintenance activities can be replaced by the self-sensing and selfadjusting matter itself. another example concerned with the potential of new biomaterials to revolutionise labour and construction practice can be seen in the 2009 ted talk by academic rachel armstrong. armstrong’s visionary talk, titled architecture that repairs itself, focuses on the potential deployment of “metabolic materials for the practice of architecture” (armstrong 2009). her interest is in material innovation, rather than the organisation of labour per se. however, there is an explicit reconsideration of the need for human manual labour in building practice, as armstrong observes, particularly, because most buildings are constructed using “victorian [era] technology” and “teams of workers” (armstrong 2009). in collaboration with architect and academic neil spiller, armstrong hopes to engineer a “living material” that can grow and repair itself, thus replacing the aforementioned “teams of workers”. their project, although still under development, involves the invention of a protocell-based metabolic material that can repair water-damaged and submerged foundations of timber buildings in venice. the particular protocell species used is averse to light, and once deposited in the canal, attaches to the timber piles, potentially resulting in limestone accretion and the growth of a supportive “reef” that could prevent further foundational subsidence. armstrong acknowledges that the protocell has its own self-organisational capacities, and refers to a “conversation” being enacted between the metabolic building materials and the natural environment (armstrong 2009). to borrow reiser and umemoto’s words: “matter proves to have its own capacity for self-organisation” (2006: 88). it is important to note that the protocell is still discussed as instrumental to the goals of the building project, rather than as a sentient independent identity in its own right. a similar proposal was presented at the 2013 aia conference material, by swiss architect and academic matthias kohler who discussed the interrelations between architect and robot during cnc production (kohler 2013). kohler argued that robots could be deployed to execute tasks that are difficult for humans to achieve, and vice versa. with reference to deleuze and guattari’s critique of hylomorphism, it could be argued that the protocell material and the robot might be engaged in similar ways to conventional “architectural” materials – as “slave labour” (bonta and protevi 2004: 97) for the execution of formal concepts envisaged by the architect. if, as iwamoto contends, digital practices can produce a “seamless connection between designing and making” (2009: 4), then this logic must arguably extend to all aspects and phases of an architectural project, including the more heterarchic organisation of labour within the construction site – regardless of whether this labour is metabolic, robotic, cybernetic, or human. thinking and making: both “matter” one might argue that labour’s aesthetic invisibility within the architectural field contributes to its discernible absence within architectural and scholarly discourse. materials have qualities that are readily transcribed into architecture and its visual representations; the organisation of labour may lack an obvious or equivalent architectural aesthetic, although labour has been ascribed an aesthetic form in art practice.3 moreover, any discussion of labour raises questions about authorship and the socio-political relations between architects, builders and materials. it is worth noting that very few publications refer to the essential contributions of 3 for example, since the late 1970s, the artist mierle laderman ukeles has based her “maintenance art” performative and installation art projects on the notion of labour and its distribution. her touch sanitation project of 1978-1980 involved the artist individually greeting sanitation workers. for further details see her 1969 manifesto for maintenance art, 1969! proposal for an exhibition “care” (laderman ukeles 1969). interstices 14 builders and manual workers to architectural projects, nor have the perceptions of builders been reflected in architectural discourse. on the surface, contemporary digital fabrication technologies appear to challenge the habitual distinction between designing and constructing buildings because of the close alignment between the computerised drawing and digitally-enhanced fabrication technologies. nevertheless, digitally-fabricated components must still be assembled within the actual project site and this assembly may be executed by a builder or a separate team of contractors acting under the direction of an architect, and in accordance with building blueprints. as highlighted previously, the establishment of closer ties between drawing and fabrication modes does not, in itself, challenge the customary hierarchies that govern approaches to form, materials and the “organisation of work and of the social field through work” (deleuze and guttari 2004: 407). to challenge these habitual practices and ingrained thought processes, it is important to confront fundamental assumptions about matter and materials in relation to the division of labour within the architectural discipline; irrespective of whether architectural processes involve analogue and/or digital production methodologies. alongside the rapid advances in material and digital manufacturing, it is timely for architectural practitioners and theorists alike to reconsider not only the notion of manual labour, but the very labours of matter itself. 67 references agkathidis, a. 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(1999). the emerald city and other essays on the architectural imagination. new york: princeton architectural press. interstices 13 spinoza’s geometric ecologies peg rawes introduction this article attempts to examine the material and conceptual relationship between the latest evolution of digital architecture, its turn towards “parametric” languages and materials, and the claim that these methods also establish new environmental characteristics in computation.1 set within the context of increasing global pressure for architecture to address environmental issues of sustainability, resource-depletion and pollution, the digital design community has developed a vocal set of agendas through which contemporary high-tech computational architectural design allies itself with environmental interests. i ask if geometry can indeed be ecological, and if so, for whom, and how can it be of value to architectural design in the twenty-first century? i question the seductive rhetoric of the new parametric discourses to ask if their digital geometric techniques really benefit diversity in the architectural community and, more broadly in society, whether they sufficiently address the need for nurturing ecological biodiversity, together with the cultural wellbeing that global and local communities seriously need. i examine a historical example of “geometric thinking” to ask if a “deeper” environmental, conceptual and material mode of analysis exists which can contribute to these debates. baruch spinoza’s ethics (1677) provides an interesting early-modern example of an unusually “ecological” form of geometric thinking in which rational yet biodiverse social, cultural and material realms help to question some of the assumptions that the new geometric architectures claim, including whether more democratic design authorship, material difference and ecological relations are possible. 1. self-same digital parameters for designers who work with the new “relational” geometries generated by software such as rhino and grasshopper, questioning the relationship between geometry and nature may seem a redundant exercise, since “parametric” technologies have been defined as the means through which to achieve complex and self-evolving digital algorithmic or “biological” morphologies. patrik schumacher has defined it as a style that: … finally offers a credible, sustainable answer to the drawn out crisis of modernism that resulted in 25 years of stylistic searching ... as conceptual definition of parametricism one might offer the following formula: parametricism implies that all architectural elements and complexes are parametrically malleable. this implies a fundamental ontological shift within the basic, constituent elements of architecture. instead of the classical and modern reliance on ideal (hermetic, rigid) geometrical figures straight lines, rectangles, as well as cubes, cylinders, pyramids, and (semi-)spheres the new primitives of parametricism are animate (dynamic, adaptive, interactive) geometrical entities splines, nurbs, and subdivs as fundamental geometrical building blocks for dynamical systems like ‘hair’, ‘cloth’, ‘blobs’, and ‘metaballs’ etc. that react to ‘attractors’ and that can be made to resonate with each other via ‘scripts’. (schumacher 2010) 1 i refer to the most recent digital architecture discourses and practices, rather than earlier generations who developed digital architectures, such as greg lynn or bernard cache. mario carpo’s the alphabet and the algorithm (2011) provides a clear outline of these developments. 61 colleagues of schumacher from london’s architectural association, michael hensel and achim menges, have used the term “morpho-ecologies” to define a design “framework … firmly rooted within a biological paradigm … [and] issues of higher functionality and performance capacity” (hensel & menges 2006: 16). alternatively, susannah hagan has proposed urban ecological parametricism, writing: environmental metrics can be used to generate parametrics. parametrics are now firmly embedded in experimental design, especially in the digital avant-garde. here interest is divided between form-finding and the relationship between form and performance in the interests of a new and elegant economy of means. (mostafavi & doherty 2010: 462) lars spuybroek’s recent book, the sympathy of things (2011), attempts to generate a genealogical, and unabashedly romantic, account of nature, technology and biological evolution in design through ruskin and nineteenth-century science. more objectively, mario carpo’s genealogy of digital architecture defines parametricism as a “function which may determine an infinite variety of objects, all different (one for each set of parameters) yet all similar (as the underlying function is the same for all)” (2011: 40). yet for those who are concerned that this most recent fascination with the digital perpetuates the conviction that formal geometric design imperatives can indeed replicate nature, my discussion may also be perceived as misguided on two counts. first, because it appears to continue to restrict ecological architectural research to an idealistic field that falls foul of reductive and market-led, form-driven form-finding, and second, because discussions of advanced technology continue to ignore the real complex political, material, environmental and social concerns which always constitute the production and inhabitation of architecture. also, given the fervour displayed in some uncritical claims for its “genetic” diversification and the close identification with ubiquitous technological progress (see my discussion of antoine picon below; and carpo 2011: 142-3), feminist and ecological critics may see it as an obstruction to critically-engaged practice: for example, parametricism’s seductive appeal to technocratic markets contrasts strongly with feminist or ecological design that promote low-fi resource recycling, collective authorship or client-led design. however, at a time when mathematics, geometry and computation are presented, yet again, as “new” universal forms of innovation, and when women make up 50 per cent of the students who train in the discipline which is increasingly determined by digital modes of design organisation in the office, a critical and engaged debate about these questions is still important. below, i therefore also outline how feminist philosophers have already convincingly shown that complex material, social and cultural concepts of sexed relations and technicities exist in art, culture, and in science, which have far-reaching value for non-anthropomorphic design agendas. these theories of sexed, non-normative biological difference are necessary for digital architecture because it cites biological processes as the driver for computational production: for example, digital code and scripts are identified as computational “dna” that “originate” new complex morphological design. overwhelmingly, however, these discussions also expose the primary purpose to be the generation of new self-similar forms (whether they are topological or geometric). diverse organic life is reduced to the self-same computational matter, and is frequently underwritten by links back to historical sources such as d’arcy wentworth thompson’s classicalal study of evolutionary biological morphology, on growth and form (1915), rather than sexed understandings that society and environment, mind and matter, are irreducible, coterminous and durational, relations. interstices 13 metaphorical alignments between digital code and biological dna are taken as evidence that architects have now been released from the limitations of human authorship in design processes.2 in addition, these supposedly bottom-up, non-anthropomorphic design origins are now being associated with materialist philosophies of manuel delanda (2011), and the recent “speculative realist” and “speculative materialist” philosophies of quentin meillassoux and graham harman, who critique anthropomorphic thinking as negative humancentred perspectives and propose a return to objective “facticity”.3 the aim of these associations is to show that architectural design is further embedded in non-ontological meaning; i.e. non-human notions of production. however, although human responsibility, agency and environmental relations in the built environment are clearly urgent discussions, especially given the complexity of contemporary ecological inter-relationships between human-made “nature” (i.e. the built environment) and non-human nature (i.e. the “natural environment”), whether these particular philosophers’ emphasis on scientific concepts of non-anthropomorphic complexity is the correct way, is not “a given”. rather, these philosophers can be accused of perpetuating logic that still fails to address other modern non-anthropomorphic realities, such as the facticity of capital in architectural design markets, or the depletion of non-replaceable material resources. (digital architects also forget the long aesthetic and materialist philosophical history that has explored the human-nature versus non-human-nature conundrum since the seventeenth century, including kant’s theory of the sublime, and marx’s theorisation of human-nature relations.) more currently, the feminist philosophers i discuss below (including haraway and braidotti) have also shown that western, normative subject-centred philosophy does not address the reality that complex other “post-human” (i.e. nonanthropocene) relations and subjectivities have also always existed. the architectural methods referred to here are therefore linked by the belief that recent computational advances originate new universal solutions for experimental and, by implication, commercial approaches to environmental design. but how can complex material and immaterial architectural or geometric difference really be generated out of these self-same definitions of “biological” and universal differentiation when they still clearly elide the reality that biodiversity is constituted in other kinds of difference, especially, sex difference? surely, these approaches continue to ignore more sophisticated understandings about other kinds of geometric and biological thinking that may aid greater biodiversity in architectural processes, participants and products. uncritical promotion of geometric or topological design technologies as the solution to the state of “authorship” in the profession, the structure of our built environment, and our environmental relations, needs to be seriously addressed by designers working in the field: not least because their own professional “ecologies” also need to become more complex and informed about understandings of real biological sex difference and the political realities that exist for today’s diverse populations and societies. below, i explore how spinoza’s geometric ecology is a highly complex expression of natural biodiversity, common in all beings and entities: neither “designed” to anthropomorphically reflect the subject, nor reducible to universal forms or morphologies, genetic code or algorithms. rather, these geometric and ecological relations generate absolute alterity for all: a special kind of technology – “technicity” (loo 2011) – precisely because nature and the subject are conceptually and materially constructed “in process”. contemporary geometric parametric discourses are therefore distinct from the ecological geometry that spinoza outlines, which resists the desire for instrumentalising “nature” into simple units of production as part of a utopian application of computational processes in the design process. 2 carpo also warns against overstating the radicality of agency in the new software (and web 2.0) technologies, since these have clear authorial hierarchies embedded into them (2011: 126). 3 sanford kwinter refers to parametricism and these ideas as either “atrocious” or “very interesting” (2011). 63 2. processual geometric subjects and nature clearly, spinoza’s seventeenth-century conceptualisation of geometric thinking, subjectivity and environmental relations is not derived from our advanced capitalist, technocratic or global contexts. nevertheless, his thinking is valuable because it challenges the traditional form/matter distinctions that persist in modern non-euclidian geometries, for all the claims that digital morphologies break with this tradition. this is because his thinking is primarily concerned with the production of the subject-in-process, not with the production of idealistic or pure de-ontologised forms of knowledge. two key concepts form the geometric ecology of these powers: first, spinoza’s concept of “nature” or “substance”, and secondly his concept of conatus, or selfdetermining agency. spinoza’s processual geometric ecology is derived from his radical notion of nature, which he calls substance. it is a complex ecological term because it does not merely designate extended material beings, structures or relations: “existence belongs to the nature of substance” (spinoza 1992: 34). instead, spinoza employs it to construct a complex, immanent (i.e. divine) biodiversity of life in nature, most strikingly, in the relation god-as-nature. in conjunction with spinoza’s other wonderfully complex concept of life, “expression”, substance/ nature immanently constitute a plenitude of realities in different modes and scales: from the divine to the common, and from the non-anthropological entity or environment, to the scale of the singular being. substance’s productive power therefore constructs nature’s diversity, its potential for change (natura naturans), and its various modes of existence (natura naturata) (spinoza 1992: 51-2). together, these powers generate a plenitude of ideas, bodies and entities in the world (cf. darwin’s genetic principle). consequently, substance is a “univocal” concept of life in all its material (i.e. biological and physical) and immaterial (i.e. psychic and divine) manifestations. however, while constituting every singular and diverse entity, substance is, in itself, infinite: it is the primary “cause” of all realities, or the immanent “life-force” in all things, including importantly, architectural and geometric processes. so, in contrast to contemporary mathematical and geometric methods that classify natural processes under disembodied/non-ontological mathematical logics, spinoza’s geometric thinking is firmly constituted in sensory realms as well as in rational relations. all modes of life in this “natural” architecture are imbued with substance’s irreducibly material and immaterial powers. in part iv, for example, spinoza explains, in forensic detail, how ordinary people express these qualities in their desires and fears, and in their everyday and common ideas (1992: 156-95). also, interestingly, in the preface to this part, he explains how architectural design judgment is material (built) and immaterial (aesthetic) modes of substance (152-4). spinoza brings all entities, whether they are naturally occurring or human-centred, into a special kind of biophysical process, in a manner that also previews important twentieth-century ecological and vitalist theories, including arne naess’s “deep ecology”, gregory bateson’s “ecology of mind”, and deleuze and guattari’s “geophilosophy”. notably, this life principle is derived from the divine power of god/nature, contrasting with computational architecture’s scripts which are described as selforganised “genetic” code. in spinoza’s “natural” geometry, biodiversity calibrates all entities at all scales, but not reducible to a simple digit or unit of computational code. as a result, he underscores that human subjects and geometric figures are manifestations of nature-in-process. interstices 13 this ecological notion of immanent differentiation produces absolutely unique expressions of substance: such as, the specificity of trees, stones, horses or dogs; or the difference between feelings of delight, disappointment, rage or fear; the capacity of the emotions to generate action and transformation, or the diversity of physical and psychic expression in architectural ideas or designs. spinoza’s geometric ecology is therefore always inherently concerned with diverse living relationships, not just formal or material self-same relations. substance also has a complex ecological meta-structure because it expresses a unique triad of relations between the three special geometric “elements” that spinoza invents – “attributes”, “modes” or “affects”, and “common notions”. these powerful transitive relations also generate an intense diversification into further geometric elements, such as definitions, axioms, propositions, corollaries or scholia. in addition, this complex triadic ecology of relations between the attributes, affects and common notions is an important historical preview of guattari’s influential ecological thinking in the three ecologies (1989): “only an ethico-political articulate – which i call ecosophy – between the three ecological registers (the environment, social relations and human subjectivity) would be likely to clarify these questions” (guattari 2000: 19-20). so, for spinoza, geometric relations of, and between, bodies are not constructed by disembodied transcendental laws of reason (i.e. ratio), but out of the everyday, common and transformative expressions of body within its own singular environment or habitat. consequently, we might also say that his attention to the habitus of the subject-in-process previews haeckel’s 1866 definition of the science of ecology that observes the entity in its home, habits, habitat or milieu, or jacob von uexküll’s theory of umwelt (1909) a “biological semiotics” through which he theorised the coterminous existence of the organism with its specialist habitat (e.g. see deleuze & guattari 1996: 257; and grosz 2011). also, given my concern with a complex corporeal technical historicity of geometric expression in the living architectural subjects, architectural history has a significant tradition of examining geometric technologies of bodily mensuration; for example, pérez gómez’s architecture and the crisis of modern science (1983), or evans’s the projective cast (1995) and translations from drawing to building and other essays (1997). evans, in particular, also finds everyday alterity in these “technicities”, but spinoza’s project is distinct even from his analysis, because of its attention to the sense-based differentiation that constitutes the body in its habitat (rawes 2012). 3. duration, restraint and “sustainability”? in a recent essay, “architecture and mathematics: between hubris and restraint”, antoine picon has observed the shift from classical principles of geometry to modern mathematical forms of calculus in eighteenth-century european architectural design. following leibniz’s and desargues’s respective innovations in calculus and projective geometry, he observes that technical advancements in architectural geometric design fundamentally changed power relations between nature, technology and generative design principles. after calculus, picon notes, design institutes both the potential for “unfettered” invention and “hubris”; it is a loss of “restraint” which, he suggests, bears a resemblance to the contemporary issue of sustainability. he asks if we need a return to mathematic “restraint” in the face of pressing questions about resource depletion, and the need for architectural design which is not primarily determined by the perception that its “power” is located in principles of autonomous genetic digital production. 65 to conclude on this point, one may observe that this polarity, or rather this balance, has been compromised today. for the mathematical procedures architects have to deal with, from calculus to algorithms, are decidedly on the side of power. nature has replaced god, emergence the traditional process of creation, but its power expressed in mathematical terms conveys the same exhilaration, the same risk of unchecked hubris as in prior times. what we might want to recover is the possibility for mathematics to be also about restraint, about stepping aside in front of the power at work in the universe. as picon writes: it is interesting to note how the quest for restraint echoes some of our present concerns with sustainability. the only thing that should probably not be forgotten is that just like the use of mathematics, sustainability is necessarily dual; it is as much about power as about restraint. our contemporary approach to sustainability tends to be as simplistic as our reference to mathematics, albeit in the opposite direction. (2011: 31) picon’s scepticism of the supposed freedom that its proponents attribute to modern computational forms of geometric invention reflects my discussion about whether the power invested in these new digital processes really is new, effective, or even desirable for meeting the challenges that face the architectural disciplines and the planet today. his discussion also connects with my concern that parametricism repeats the long tradition of disembodied, neutral, or “unsexed” reason. picon’s argument opens up the much-needed space to ask if an-other ecology of geometric relations is possible. however, whilst his critique of the relationship between geometry, proportion, god/nature and sustainability certainly reflects the key constituents in spinoza’s geometric ecology, spinoza’s notion of “divine” immanence is more radical than picon’s assessment of the ubiquitous modern geometries. in particular, this is because of the value placed on an ethics of duration in the constitution of reality. spinoza’s unique human mode of existence which is immanent in all human endeavour, the conatus, generates geometric, aesthetic and architectural modes of expression, yet it is not a subsumption of substance’s power to an instrumentalised or anthropomorphic kind of knowledge or power. rather, spinoza defines the conatus through an ecological imperative because it is durational and processual, for example, when he discusses the right of the entity to an ethics of duration: “the power or conatus by which it endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing but the given, or actual, essence of the thing” (1992: 108). spinoza’s elaborate examination of the genealogy between the attributes, affects and common notions also shifts geometric understanding from disembodied logical deduction into a tripartite ecology that generates biodiversity within the living body, and in its transformative micro-scales of differentiation and sense-knowledge. he carefully explains how the emotions or affects produce the most nuanced and singular expressions of these ecological relations in the subject because they are expressed both psychically and physically: for example, at this micro-level, modes are singular, self-caused capacities of mind and body attributes, yet this relation is also expressed uniquely and variously in the affects, depending upon the specific habitat or circumstances. in parts iii and iv, spinoza explains how the affects express the genetic plenitude of substance in detail. crucial to the possibility of a self-evolving subject, the affects – such as happiness, sadness, passion, agency, activity, and passivity – comprise the unique durational ecologies (or ratios) of the individual’s internal and external relations. furthermore, when the affects interstices 13 constitute the common notions, where the differentiated mind and body are in most “agreement”, they establish the third stage of this durational ecology, that is, “sense-reason” (rawes 2008). here, the freedom (i.e. the capacity to self-evolve) accorded to the individual is generated out of a ratio or ecology that is genetic, natural, yet also, durational. these unique human powers constitute the continuously transitive subject-in-process that is essential for this durational ecology. hence, this immanence is not just an “unfettered” principle of plenitude, but is ecological because the relations are always durational. also, importantly, when it is expressed in the common notions, this geometric biodiversity is accessible to all. common ratios or equality are constituted in this third ecological level because these are common-place intuitions, ideas and bodies. spinoza’s natural geometry therefore produces common-place ecologies and common lives. common notions are ecologies or “life-places” (thayer 2003) of diverse human subjectivities and relations. such biodiversity is not just a neutral or value-free materialism, but has the politics of equality at its core. this communal immanence does not inevitably result in unfettered anthropomorphic progress or unethical infinity, but accords with feminist philosophers’ ethical biological, cultural and social ecological thinking for all (not just for those who can access these values through the market). 4. sexed biodiversity as indicated earlier, recent feminist philosophy addresses the productive multiple, aesthetic, political, and material realities of sex difference for all sexes (e.g. irigaray 1994; haraway 1991; braidotti 2006; grosz 2011). in parametric literature there are moments of acknowledging sexual difference, but this is generally just as a scientific biological material, rather than the more radical, bio-political matter: for example, carpo cites greg lynn’s introduction to folding in architecture (2004): “from the identical asexual reproduction of simple machines to the differential sexual reproduction of intimate machines” (2011: 130); and spuybroek acknowledges sex difference in ruskin’s critique of darwin’s theory of evolution, but restricts it to a discussion of beauty (2011: 293-4). thus, despite these brief discussions there is little evidence that it is has been actualised as a real “other” origin of self-determining agency in digital architecture’s practitioners, cultures or artefacts. it is also worth remembering that arne naess identified spinoza’s work as a precursor to his “deep ecology”, especially for understanding the interdependent complexity of human, natural and built relations without recourse to instrumental or human-centred concepts of life: the specific thing to be learned from spinoza ... is, however, to integrate the value priorities themselves in the world ... spinoza was heavily influenced by mechanical models of matter, but he did not extend them to cover “reality”. his reality was neither mechanical, value-neutral, nor value-empty. this cleavage into two worlds ... [of facts and values] can theoretically be overcome by placing, as spinoza does, joys and other so-called subjective phenomena into a unified total field of realities. (naess 1995: 253-4) 67 spinoza’s theory of substance/nature therefore generates not only absolute biodiversity or alterity in all beings (whether they be women, men, animals, trees, stones, geometric figures, etc.), but in his commitment to a “deep” rather than “shallow” value-specific biodiversity, which can be interpreted as a kind of proto-sexed theory of difference.4 feminist philosophers moira gatens, genevieve lloyd, and rosi braidotti have previously explored how spinoza’s affirmation of otherness is indeed a precursor to sex difference (gatens & lloyd 1999; braidotti 2006). as such, its political and materialist biodiversity is a valuable historical example where ecologies of geometry, sense, reason and sex are reconfigured, and which may have valuable consequences for architectural design, especially those practices and theories engaged in geometric thinking. in the ethics, then, geometric ecology might even be a sexed technicity: its psychic and biological modes of differentiation constitute a special kind of technicity for generating ecological biodiversity in the individual, society, the environment, and in contemporary architectural design processes. spinoza’s thinking resists the reduction of difference to simple human-centred (i.e. anthropomorphic) or instrumental understandings of nature and otherness. his affirmation of complex irreducible difference is essential and common in all entities, human and other; although he does not explicitly describe or identify these as sexed (i.e. not gender-neutral) differences. more recent feminist philosophy that develops this sensibility in critical anlayses of advanced technology, such as digital architectures, includes donna haraway’s “sympathetic critiques” of advanced technologies (1991), rosi braidotti’s digital “ethics of care” (2006), elizabeth grosz’s feminist analysis of darwin’s theory of sex difference (2012), and lorraine code’s socio-biological ecological thinking (2006). however, if digital geometric practices continue to remain oblivious to political material and immaterial (i.e. psychic) realities, including sexed difference, their claims for innovation are, paradoxically, limited by weak concepts of production which are seriously out-of-date for the needs of all twenty-first-century architects, and their societies’ umwelts, right across the planet. 5 5. geometries of wellbeing spinoza’s geometric method is also relevant for discussions of “happiness” or, in the current parlance, “wellbeing”, again resonating strongly with contemporary discussions about aesthetic, ethical and environmental relationship between the subject and his or her lived habits and habitats – be they socio-economic, cultural or ecological. in this sense, then, the ethics is also a psychotherapeutic text that explores our capacity for relationships and relations through an examination of ecologies of mind, body, nature, action and rest, in all modes of reality and for all entities, be they human or otherwise (other-wise). in parts ii and iii, this capacity for wellbeing is explored in the union of body and mind in detail. these geometric relations demonstrate his principle of ecological ratio; for example, the “proportionate” activity of the body that is reflected in the mind of its accompanying body to generate an ecology between the body’s affections and its physical expressions (spinoza 1992: 71). again, this is an ecology of sense and reason and spinoza’s attention to the ecology (i.e. ratio) between the mind and body reflects current attention to wellbeing which has become a new biopolitical zone of value: think, for example, of the current governmental and policy focus on “happiness” in driving architectural agendas, together with the need to address space-ratios in modern housing (see, for example, the new economic foundation’s (un)happy planet index (http://www.happyplanetindex.org/), or the riba’s 2011 report on affordable housing space allocation, “the case for space” (riba 2011)). interstices 13 4 fritjof capra writes: “shallow ecology is anthropocentric. it views humans as above or outside of nature, as the source of all value and ascribes only instrumental or use value to nature. deep ecology does not separate humans from the natural environment, nor does it separate anything else from it. it does not see the world as a collection of isolated objects but rather as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent” (sessions 1995: 20). 5 the forthcoming collection, relational architectural ecologies, (rawes 2013) addresses the need for socio-economic, cultural and sexed concepts of nature in architectural and spatial disciplines and includes chapters by rosi braidotti, elizabeth grosz, lorraine code and verena conley. spinoza’s geometric ecologies are therefore not driven by formal values, but by the capacity for the singularity to exist in and through its everyday habits and habitats. unlike traditional understandings of geometry as disembodied forms of intellect/reason, this sustainable duration in the individual (i.e. wellbeing) is formed through an ecology of sense and reason. natural geometries, or ecologies, are constructed out of the transitive nature of human emotions, enabling agency or self-knowledge in the individual. 6. sexed biodiverse geometry and architectures biodiverse sexed geometric ecologies are also significant because of the continuing split between matters of “reason” and technology, versus “sense” and subjectivity politics, in many debates about ecological architecture. if current script-based geometries continue to reinforce the neutral/value-free universalism of western thought, and ignore “other” modes of subjectivity that are not restricted to simple models of anthropomorphic nature, matter or life, they perpetuate the self-same identity of neutral architectural identities, processes or histories from which they claim to break. without a conversation about biodiverse sexed geometry, histories and theories of biodiverse ecologies and technicities that embed real difference will continue to be ignored, and technological and ecological values will continue to be seen as at odds with each other. this discussion also reflects my concern about the way in which feminist theories of relations still often oppose the possibility that sexed ecologies and technologies can exist together, relying upon the essentialist division between sense “as female”, versus reason as an exclusively “male” concern and consequently always negative forms of rational thought. in this formulation, sexed ecologies are effectively consigned permanently to understand ecology as anti-reason (e.g. irigaray’s outright rejection of technology; irigaray 1993). without addressing these schisms, feminist architects (male and female) will continue to be consigned to a-technological realms, rather than offering alternative notions of sexed technicities. the issue of ubiquitous technology versus the political, self-directed agency of the subject in environmentally responsive architecture has also been clearly established since the united nations’ 1987 brundtland report prioritised economic sustainability, enabling the architectural marketplace to generate sustainable development through anthropomorphically-driven “shallow” or “instrumentalised” technological remediation. yet feminist discussions of nature and architecture which continue to view technology as always damagingly instrumental or alienating to society also perpetuate this exclusive split. however, thinkers such as braidotti, haraway and grosz have offered more challenging accounts of sexed technologies and science which are of value to those in architecture who really desire building truly biodiverse ecologies. spinoza’s commitment to a technical sense-based ecology firstly therefore enables building new geometric ecologies in the discipline, and consequently, for the societies, and the human and natural environments in which we live and work. secondly, it enables a re-activation of the relationship between technology and reason for, and by, sexed subjects, and to question the reliance that feminist ecological critique has placed upon the relationship between sense, sex and the environment, yet to the exclusion of sexed reason and technology from these debates. ecological difference, then, for spinoza, is not just concerned with the production of a universal world composed of unique, rational, singular beings. rather, this geometric biodiversity is unique within the history of geometric ideas for reconfiguring disembodied self-same geometry into biodiverse sexed ecologies. 69 references: braidotti, r. (2006). transpositions: on nomadic ethics. cambridge: polity press. code, l. (2006). ecological thinking: the politics of epistemic location. oxford: oxford university press. delanda, m. (2011). philosophy and simulation: the emergence of synthetic reason. new york, ny: continuum. deleuze, g. & guattari, f. (1996). a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (b. massumi, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. evans, r. (1995). the projective cast: architecture and its three geometries. cambridge, mass. and london: mit press. evans, r. (1997). translations from drawing to building and other essays. london: architectural association press. gatens, m. & lloyd, g. (1999). collective imaginings: spinoza, past and present. new york, ny: routledge. grosz, e. (2011). becoming undone: darwinian reflections on life, politics, and art. durham and london: duke university press. guattari, f. (2000). the three ecologies (i. pindar & p. sutton, trans.). london: athlone press. hagan, s. (2010). “performalism”: environmental metrics and urban design. in m. mostafavi & g. doherty (eds.). ecological urbanism. baden, switzerland: lars muller publishers. haraway, d. (1991). simians, cyborgs and women: the reinvention of nature. london: free association books. irigaray, l. (1994). thinking the difference: for a peaceful revolution (k. montin, trans.). london: athlone. kwinter, s. (2011). ecological thinking. at proto/e/co/logics: speculative materialism in architecture seminar, croatia. retrieved from http://vimeo.com/28810672: 2011. naess, a. (1995). ecology, community and lifestyle (d. rothenberg, trans. & ed.). gateshead (tyne and wear): athenæum press. picon, a. (2011). architecture and mathematics: between hubris and restraint. in g. legendre (ed.), mathematics of space: architectural design. architectural design profile number 212: 29-35. chichester: john wiley and sons. pérez gómez, a. (1983). architecture and the crisis of modern science. cambridge, mass.: mit press. rawes, p. (2008). space, geometry and aesthetics: through kant and towards deleuze. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. rawes, p. (2012). spinoza’s architectural passages and geometric comportments. in b. lord (ed.), spinoza beyond philosophy. edinburgh: university of edinburgh press. rawes, p. (ed.). (2013 forthcoming). relational architectural ecologies: interdisciplinarity, architecture, nature and subjectivity. london: routledge. riba (2011). the case for space: the size of england’s new homes. london: royal institute of british architects. schumacher, p. (2010). the parametricist epoch: let the style wars begin. the architects’ journal, 231(16). retrieved from http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/patrikschumacher-on-parametricism-let-the-style-wars-begin/5217211.article sessions, g. (ed.). (1995). deep ecology for the twenty-first century. boston and london: shambhala publications inc. spinoza, b. ([1677] 1992). ethics: treatise on the emendation of the intellect and selected letters (s. feldman, ed.). indianapolis, in: hackett publishing. thayer, r. (2003). life place: bioregional thought and practice. berkeley: university of california press. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 32 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a michael lebuffe citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza suppose that an intellectualistic theory of human wellbeing is true; that is, that human beings are better off to the extent that they possess knowledge. now suppose that the highest purpose of society is to make each human being in it as well off as possible. finally, suppose that the vast majority of human beings in society possess, as their most important beliefs—beliefs that guide their lives—ideas that are among the least rational of all ideas. on the first supposition, such people are not thriving. their lives are hardly characterised by knowledge at all. here are two possible ways in which society might help them: it might, step-by-step, transform the relevant ideas, making them more and more rational until, finally, there are the most rational beliefs there could be in a given citizen. alternatively, society might, while leaving the least rational beliefs untouched, cultivate other ideas—ideas that are rational—so that eventually these other ideas become motivationally as powerful as the original, irrational beliefs, which citizens finally discard only when they need them no longer. the first kind of transition may seem appealing on the face of it: it seems harmful, under the given theory of wellbeing, to be guided by maximally irrational beliefs and so better to get rid of them as soon as possible and to be guided by the most rational beliefs one can at a given moment. this might seem to be especially true for spinoza, who holds versions of all of the background suppositions here and, in addition, famously insists that only very few people attain a significant level of wisdom. after all, for spinoza, there is a question whether, following the second path to greater wisdom, many people will ever acquire sufficiently powerful rational ideas; they may never be able to set aside their powerful, irrational motivating beliefs. i will argue here, however, that the first kind of transition is not open to spinoza and that in fact he conceives of citizens’ transition to reason primarily in the second way. safety and cooperation are, for spinoza, necessary means to knowledge of any degree. only two kinds of human states reliably bring people not to threaten others and to cooperate: states in which our behaviour is guided by ideas of miracles, the least rational beliefs; and states in which our behaviour is guided by ideas of reason, the most rational beliefs.1 spinoza’s convictions in psychology and political philosophy suggest that for ordinary people to lose imaginative religious ideas without yet having gained a sufficient degree of reason would be for them to lack any reliably social motive, that is, any motive to cooperate. such 33 citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a a change would cause ordinary people, and those who live with them, to lose the benefits of society altogether. my thesis is ambitious, and risky, in that it characterises spinoza’s views as a whole, rather than through any particular work. in defending it, i will draw upon several different works and try to explain the connections between them. the first section here will explain the suppositions. the second will present textual evidence supporting the claim that spinoza conceives of these two kinds of transition to greater rationality. the third section will set the conditions that spinoza requires for peace in society together with his conception of how it is possible for citizens to meet those conditions. it will become apparent at the end of the third section, i hope, that spinoza’s convictions in psychology and politics imply that citizens should move to greater rationality primarily by means of opposing rather than transforming their harmful passions. of course, it is one thing to show that spinoza’s views imply this conclusion and quite another to show that spinoza himself draws it. a concluding section will present some slight evidence that he does so. 1. the suppositions although all his works are complex—and the theological-political treatise (ttp) in particular offers views of reason, religion, and the state that challenge readers to find a consistent position—i think that there is relatively clear and straightforward evidence that he maintains versions of the suppositions consistently throughout his writings. in the early treatise on the emendation of the intellect (tdie), spinoza associates his own happiness with a nature characterised by understanding and then goes on to say that the purpose of society is to bring as many people as possible to such a nature: i aim, therefore, at this end: to acquire such a nature and to strive that many others might acquire it with me. it is for my happiness that i work so that many others will understand in the same way that i do, so that their intellects and desires unite harmoniously with my intellect and desire. so that this might happen, it is necessary to understand as much about nature as is necessary for the attainment of such a nature, and, next, to form a society of the desired kind, so that as many people as possible, as easily and securely as possible, may attain it. (tdie §14 / g2:8-9)2 similar views may be found in the ethics, where spinoza’s intellectualism is most fully developed. although the ethics focuses on individuals for the most part, a similar conception of the common good may be found there, at e4p54s, which also shows evidence of the role of religion as a first step toward a life guided by reason. as i understand that step, it is a step away from danger, fear, and chaos and into safety and cooperation. so, of particular importance to me is spinoza’s conviction that the religious are easily led, whereas those guided by other passions, especially anger and hatred, are not: no wonder, then, that the prophets, who cared about the common good and not that of the select few, commended humility, repentance, and reverence so much. really, those who are subject to these affects can be led much more easily than others, so that in the end they can live under the guidance of reason, that is, they can be free and enjoy the life of the blessed. (e4p54s) 34 citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a finally, spinoza defends freedoms of speech and thought in chapter 20 of the ttp on the grounds that they promote rationality: it is not, i say, the end of the state to change men from rational beings into beasts or automata, but the opposite, that their mind and body may perform their functions safely and that they may use this same reason freely, and that they should not quarrel in hatred, anger, or deceit, or hold unkind feelings toward one another. the end of the state, therefore, is really freedom. (ttp, ch. 20 / g3:241) the ttp, as i have mentioned, is notoriously difficult to interpret. some of what spinoza writes in the ttp suggests that a life of religion may be just as good as a life of reason. moreover, in several places, both in the ttp and in the political treatise (see, for example, the final paragraphs of chapter 1 of the latter), spinoza writes that the end of the state is security and convenience; there, freedom is not mentioned. the passages about the life of religion being as good as the life of reason present a problem too detailed to address here, and it may well be in the end that they simply aren’t consistent with other passages that suggest that the life of reason is what we aim at for all citizens. i do not think, however, that the other group of aforementioned passages, passages about the end of the state, pose a deep problem for finding a consistent position in spinoza. spinoza holds that the state brings cooperation and security, which are necessary for bringing as many people as possible to the greatest degree of rationality possible. so, the state’s immediate end is security, but that security has a further purpose: the greater rationality of its citizens, or, what amounts to the same thing for spinoza, their freedom.3 these views are clearest perhaps in paragraphs 4 and 5 of chapter 5 of the political treatise, where, by referring to the lives of subjects in different states, spinoza distinguishes between states that bring security, but not the further end of reason to their citizens, and states that bring genuine peace: a state whose subjects do not take up arms because they are terrified is better said to be not at war than to have peace. for peace is not the absence of war but is a virtue that arises from strength of mind […] when i say, then, that the best rule is that where men pass life harmoniously, i understand human life, which is defined not merely by the circulation of blood and other things common to all animals, but most of all, by reason, the true virtue and life of the mind. (tp, ch. 5, §4-5 / g3:296) 2. the two kinds of transition i will argue that spinoza conceives of an ordinary citizen’s transition to greater rationality as one that occurs in one rather than another of two ways. in order to show the relevance of the issue, i will now introduce several passages from spinoza’s account, in the ethics part 5, of what we can do to manage the passions. he defends accounts of both sorts of transition there. my claim about political states, then, is that, of two kinds of transition that spinoza regards as possible for a given mind, he only finds one appropriate for the ideas that guide most citizens. the first kind of transition is one on which a given, irrational idea is made more highly rational. spinoza conceives of some passions as more harmful than others, and they typically motivate behaviour as well, so a passion will be a good example of such an irrationality: we can overcome hate, which is both an inadequate 35 citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a idea and a harmful passion, by coming to know the passion itself more clearly. spinoza defends the possibility of such understanding at e5p2-p5, at one point recommending without qualification that we should try to understand our passions in this way: we should work especially hard, in order to know each affect clearly and distinctly, insofar as it can be done, so that thereby the mind may be determined from an affect to thinking those things that it perceives clearly and distinctly and in which it may be completely content; and also so that the affect may be separated from the thought of an external cause and joined to true thoughts. (e5p4s) in the case of hatred, the final step is notable. hatred is sadness accompanied by the thought of an external cause (e3p13s). a critical step in making the idea that is hatred clearer is to separate it from that thought and so to transform it. the second kind of transition is a transformation of the mind, but not of the passion in question. in this case, the mind cultivates another idea, which is more powerful than the passion in question. it does not improve the passion, but, insofar as the new idea is rational, the mind itself does become more rational as a result. in terms of practice, the better ideas, when they are more powerful than the passions that they oppose, determine the person’s behaviour. spinoza introduces this second kind of transition at e5p8-10 and offers a clear account of them at e5p10s, where he recommends cultivation of the rational affects of nobility and tenacity: so that we may always have this rule of reason ready when it is needed, we should think and meditate often about common human wrongs and how and in what way they may best be driven away by nobility. (e5p10s) we should think about tenacity in the same way in order to set aside fear; that is, we should recount in detail and frequently imagine the common dangers of life, and how, by presence of mind and by strength of character they may best be avoided and overcome. (e5p10s) in these cases, spinoza does not suggest that we will be able to understand or transform our anger or our fear. sometimes we will not. even then, however, he argues that we can cultivate stronger motives, which despite these powerful passions can motivate us. this, then, is a second way of overcoming highly powerful, irrational motives. in some cases we might understand and so transform the passion. in other cases, we might cultivate a different, more powerful motive while leaving the passion itself untouched. the second way leaves some highly irrational ideas intact, which is why it is not as good as the first way. spinoza acknowledges this point at the beginning of the scholium: the best thing, therefore, that we can do while we do not have perfect knowledge of our affects is to conceive of […] sure maxims of life, to commit them to memory, and to apply them continually to particular cases we frequently meet in life, so that our imagination will be affected by them extensively, and they will always be at hand to us. (e5p10s) while it does not transform our harmful passions, the second method nevertheless makes us better. it gives our rational motives more power. 36 citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 3. the irrational and the rational in society the final pieces of background for the thesis, drawn from the ethics and the ttp, set up the conditions for transitions in society. as i understand spinoza, the initial problem that society—and that includes religion as well as government— must redress is one of a lack of cooperation. although reason guides those who are led by it to cooperate, very few are led by reason. most of us are motivated by passions and, outside of society, passions push us in different directions, can draw us into conflict, and, even when they do not, prevent us from enjoying the benefits of cooperation. spinoza presents the problem in these terms in both the ethics and the ttp. if men lived under the guidance of reason, each might hold [the right of nature] without any harm to another (by p35c1). however because they are vulnerable to affects (by p4c), which far surpass human power, or virtue (by p6), they are often drawn in different directions (by p33) and oppose one another (p34) even while they stand in need of each other’s aid (by p35s). (e4p37s2) it is far from true that everyone can always be led under the guidance of reason alone. for each is drawn by his own delight, and the mind is so often filled with avarice, ambition, envy, anger and so on that no place remains for reason. (ttp, ch. 16 / g3:193) in both places, this presentation of the problem is part of his account of the social contract whereby he suggests that society mitigates this problem: […] if we consider that without mutual aid men must live most wretchedly and without any cultivation of reason, we shall see very clearly that to live, not only securely, but very well, men had to agree in having one purpose. so they brought it about that they would have collectively the natural right each one had to all things. it would no longer be determined according to the force and appetite of each one, but according to the power and will of everyone together. (ttp, ch. 16 / g3:191) in other words, some degree of reason motivates anyone to want to escape the problem of living a brutish, warring life in a state of nature. societies are thus formed for mutual benefit. it is not plausible, though, to suggest that people simply live according to the guidance of reason; most of us cannot. so the above passages really only give half the picture. i think the preface to the ttp hints at a fuller solution. spinoza suggests there that although reason is sufficient for avoiding the worst harms of passion, it is not necessary. something else can do the job, namely whatever involves a kind of “fixed plan” of living: if men could manage all their things by a fixed plan, or if fortune always favored them, no one would be held by superstition. often, though, they are driven into such difficulties that they are capable of producing no plan and usually they desire the uncertain goods of fortune; vacillate miserably between hope and fear; and so have a great tendency to believe anything whatever. the mind, when it is in doubt, is easily pushed this way or that 37 citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a way, and, all the more easily when it is hung up, shaken by hope and fear. (ttp, pref. / g3:5) religion is just such a fixed plan. it is a kind of belief that provides steady motivation of a sort that is more powerful, at least, than most passions, and so allows those who are guided by it to enjoy the benefits of society. reason, of course, also serves as a fixed plan for those who follow it: the truths of reason do not vary. religion, though, need not itself be rational, so long as it provides a strong motive. spinoza takes religion to be based upon powerful ideas of imagination and particularly those that give rise to devotion and wonder: i have shown that scripture does not teach things through their proximate causes but only describes things in the order and in those phrases by which it can most move men and especially commoners to devotion. for this reason it speaks of god and things quite improperly, because undoubtedly its aim is not to convince reason but to affect and occupy men’s fancy and imagination. for if scripture described the ravaging of some state in the way customary of political historians, this would do nothing to move the common people. on the other hand, it will move them the most if, as it customarily does, it embellishes everything poetically and refers it to god. (ttp, ch. 6 / g3:91) there is no doubt that all things that are described in scripture happened naturally but that nevertheless they are attributed to god because it is not for scripture, as we have already shown, to teach things through natural causes. rather it is to describe those things that deeply occupy the imagination and this in the method and style which best serves to enhance wonder at things and consequently to impress devotion in the spirits of common people. (ttp, ch. 6 / g3:90) he is unique. that this also is absolutely required for supreme devotion, wonder, and love towards god is beyond doubt. for devotion, wonder, and love arise from the excellence of one above the rest. (ttp, ch. 14 / g3:177) all of these ideas are ideas of the unique. chapter 6 of the ttp, the source of the first two passages, is spinoza’s account of miracles, unique events in nature. although spinoza denies that there are miracles, he nevertheless takes belief in miracles to be a foundation of religious belief. religious belief is characteristically devotion and wonder, and those passions arise from the idea of a unique thing. similarly, i think, spinoza defends imaginative monotheism in these terms in chapter 14. belief in a single god is a more powerful idea than beliefs in several gods. there, also, he refers to devotion and wonder. turning to the ethics, we can see that these ideas—ideas of the unique—do provide strong motives and that they do so in very nearly the same way that reason does. at e3p52 and its scholium, spinoza discusses such ideas. there he refers to the psychology of association to argue that a mind that has the idea of a unique thing associates the thing with nothing else and, therefore, is unlikely to move to some different object in the way it does with other ideas. so ideas of the unique stay robustly conscious and powerful in the mind: if we have previously seen an object together with others, or we imagine it 38 citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a has nothing but what is common to many things, we shall not consider it so long as one that we imagine to have something unique. dem.: as soon as we imagine an object that we have seen with others, we immediately remember it and the others (by 2p18 and see also p18s). thus we move from consideration of the one immediately to the consideration of the other. and the same reasoning applies to an object that we imagine to have nothing but what is common to many things. for we suppose in doing this, that we consider nothing in this object that we have not seen before in others. however, when we suppose that we imagine something unique, which we have never seen before, we are saying nothing but that when the mind considers that object, it has no other thing in it, by which it can be moved from the consideration of this object to the consideration of it. so it is determined to consider it alone. therefore, if we have previously, etc. (e3p52) in the proposition’s scholium, spinoza goes on to introduce wonder and devotion as ideas of the unique. this shows, i think, why he takes ideas of miracles to have the power that they do. of course the etymological relation between wonder (admiratio) and miracle (miraculum) is clear in latin, making the association more natural. in english, we might call spinoza’s miracles “wonders” in order to secure the same effect: this affection of the mind, or this imagination of a singular thing [rei singularis imaginatio], insofar as it is alone in the mind, is called ‘wonder’ (admiratio) […] if we wonder at the prudence, diligence, etc., of a man we love, the love will thereby be greater, and this love joined to wonder or veneration we call ‘devotion’ (devotio). (e3p52s) reason, although for a very different reason, is psychologically similar to the idea of a unique thing. unique things are always present to mind because the mind associates them with nothing else and so cannot move on from them. ideas of reason are present to mind because they are ideas of properties common to all things, so that whatever it is that we experience, we continue to have, as part of that experience, ideas of reason: affects that arise from or are intensified by reason are, if we take account of time, more powerful than those that are related to singular things that we consider to be absent. dem.: we consider a thing to be absent not because of the affect by means of which we imagine it, but because of this, that our body is affected by another affect that precludes the thing’s existence (2p17). therefore an affect which is related [refertur] to a thing that we consider to be absent is not of such a nature that it surpasses the rest of a man’s actions and power (see 4p6); but, to the contrary, its nature is such that it can be checked in some way by those affections that preclude the existence of its external cause (4p9). an affect, however, that arises from reason, is related necessarily to the common properties of things (see the definition of reason in 2p40s2), which we always regard as present [quas semper contemplamur ut praesentes] (for there can be nothing that precludes their present existence) and which we always imagine in the same way (2p38). therefore, such an affect will always remain the same, and consequently (a1), affects that 39 citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a are opposed to it and that are not reinforced [foventur] by their external causes, must adapt themselves more and more to it, until they are no longer opposed. to that extent, an affect that arises from reason is more powerful. (e5p7) it is in virtue of the fact that ideas of unique things stay present to mind that they are particularly powerful ideas. the same is true of ideas of reason. that is why, in the ttp, spinoza takes religion to be a motivational force comparable to reason. i think that he considers religious ideas that give rise to devotion to have a force comparable to tenacity and nobility. like these active affects, powerful religious ideas, even if they are not themselves adequate ideas, can help us to resist the motivational power of fear, hatred, and anger and to act instead in ways that are good for ourselves and others. 4. theism and the second kind of transition finally we are in a position to see why the first kind of transition cannot work. without a fixed plan, some kind of motivation strong enough to prevent us from being susceptible to easy changes of mind, we will lose the benefits of society and may fall into conflict. ideas of religion are extremely irrational. ideas of reason are ideas of what is true everywhere and at all times, but ideas of the unique are the other extreme. they are ideas of what is true just once, violations of natural law. and of course, they are false: there are no miracles. because spinoza takes knowledge to hold intrinsic value, it is pro tanto harmful to have such irrational ideas. other things being equal, a person is better off without them: as we have seen, spinoza takes the second method for attaining greater rationality to be the second-best method as well. other things are not equal, however. a person without religious ideas who has not yet attained powerful ideas of reason is susceptible to changeable and harmful passions. any gain to an individual from the loss of these highly irrational ideas would be offset by the new dangers, and of course such a person is an unpredictable threat to others in society. so change to the passion of the sort that spinoza recommends at e5p4s is not the way to change imaginative religious behaviour in a society, at least not in the first instance. it is better to follow the recommendations of e5p10s and to cultivate rational motives such as nobility and tenacity. such ideas may be strong enough motives eventually, in some citizens, to allow them safely to gain the additional benefit of dispensing with imaginative religious beliefs altogether. in many— perhaps most—citizens, i think, spinoza considers the two sorts of beliefs to run in train, recommending the same kinds of actions, but providing very different sorts of motives for those actions. this is the conclusion that spinoza’s psychology recommends. whether there is textual evidence suggesting that he himself arrives at this conclusion is a different issue. i think that there is some. first, there is the point that for spinoza genuine religion—as opposed to superstition—recommends the same actions that reason recommends in society. i think that it would not necessarily have to do so if he conceived of the transition from religious motivation to rational motivation as one that starts with the 40 citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a abandonment of religion. we might imagine a society with a kind of division of labour reminiscent of that of the republic, in which many people are guided to do certain kinds of beneficial work from some kinds of ideas and in which other are guided to other kinds of beneficial work from others. spinoza’s society is not like that. the religious majority and the rational few behave in society in the same way, and religion and reason recommend the same sorts of behaviour. indeed, at ttp, chapter 4, spinoza takes genuine religion to be an interpretation of the common notions and the knowledge of god that we all have: “for the love of god arises from the knowledge of him; the knowledge of him, however must be drawn from common notions certain and known through themselves” (g3:61). the common notions, however, just are ideas of reason. so, although it motivates behaviour through the power of highly imaginative ideas, genuine religion recommends the same sorts of behaviour that reason does. this kind of agreement would seem to be a condition for a steady acquisition of ideas of reason in citizens who at the same time maintain their religious beliefs. if religion and reason recommended different behaviours, such people would be conflicted and so lack a fixed plan, something that spinoza wants to avoid. a second possible source of evidence may be found in spinoza’s insistence on a belief in god, which is prominent in the ttp (particularly in the tenets of universal faith of chapter 14) and is strongly suggested also in some of his correspondence with oldenburg. there, where he is pressed on the question of whether necessitarianism leads to atheism, spinoza does not acknowledge any kind of good action that arises from a source other than the belief in god: the inevitable necessity of things destroys neither divine nor human laws. for the moral lessons themselves, whether they are accepted either in form of law or as judgments from god himself, are nevertheless divine and salutary. (ep. 75, 1676) he seems to conceive of citizens either as following the imaginative conception of god or as following the philosopher’s conception, but spinoza does not even contemplate a citizen that followed neither. of course, spinoza might have all sorts of rhetorical and political reasons not to say that one might permissibly not believe in god at all. an insistence that the second sort of transition alone is appropriate in society, however, suggests that spinoza has a basis in his philosophical convictions for this view: to be a good citizen, one must always be motivated either by a belief in the unique imaginative god of the monotheistic religions or by genuine knowledge of god. on the first sort of transition, citizens might lose their strong motivating belief in an imaginative prince-like god as a first step, just as they detach their passion from an external object as a first step at e5p4s. then, they would only attain a new strong belief in the god of part 1 of the ethics, as a final step. atheism would in such a case be large and dangerous middle ground, and atheists would be a threat to themselves and others.4 41 citizen and state in the philosophy of spinoza t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a references spinoza, b. & gebhardt, c. (ed.). (1925/1972). spinoza opera. heidelberg: carl winter. endnotes 1 perhaps there is a third: a state where the government rules by fear. 2 translations here are my own. i draw from the original dutch passages in the standard gebhardt edition of spinoza (spinoza, 1925/1972). 3 spinoza identifies blessedness with understanding at e5p36, e5p36s, and, most clearly perhaps, at e5p42. he defines ‘freedom’ (libertas) at e1def7 in terms of action as a total cause, a notion that, in turn he associates with the possession of knowledge at e3def2 and e3p1. 4 this paper draws upon michael lebuffe, spinoza on reason, new york, ny: oxford university press, 2017. it presents, in a condensed and, it is hoped, widely accessible form, arguments from chapters 2 and 4 of that work. versions of this paper were presented at the north american spinoza society meeting at chicago in 2016 and the interstices under-construction symposium conference on spinoza in auckland in 2017. thanks to those audiences and especially to ericka tucker and eu jin chua. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 111 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s review / michael davis peggy deamer (ed.) the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design london: new delhi: bloomsbury. the latest published offering by peggy deamer, architect, yale university professor, and occasional resident and teacher here in new zealand is the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design. as editor, deamer has gathered a range of authors, including architects, non-architects, professionals, and academics to reconsider the manner in which architecture is practiced from the position of the actual work involved. in her introduction, deamer argues that there are few authors who have addressed the issue of architectural labor. she sets the book directly in relation to those who she considers have previously, including manfredo tafuri and kenneth frampton, and to contemporary thinkers like k. michael hays, reinhold martin, and richard sennett. missing, as she argues, is a necessary examination of “architecture’s peculiar status of material embodiment produced by its immaterial work, work that is at once very personal and yet entirely social” (2015: xxxi). the architect as worker consolidates deamer’s research at yale university in the wake of the slow-to-fade effects of the 2008 global financial crisis. it also extends thinking explored in her earlier architecture and capitalism: 1845 to the present (new york: routledge, 2013), and it provides an expanded context for her and phillip bernstein’s building (in) the future: recasting labor in architecture (new york: princeton architectural press, 2010). the book transcends geographical boundaries and will find relevance anywhere global capital and architecture coincide. while directed toward architects, it presents ideas that have implications for the creative disciplines more generally. the essays are arranged in five parts that progress from discussions of the work of design (that might strike a chord with a range of designers) through to examinations of some of the peculiarities of architectural practice (that may be more pertinent to architects). part i, “the commodification of design labor”, discusses immaterial labour and its treatments. part ii, “the concept of architectural labor”, presents ideas on the varying nature of architectural work. part iii, “design(ers)/build(ers)”, further examines aspects of architecture’s particularity and its current disciplinary condition. part iv, “the construction of the commons”, sets out connections between neo-liberalism, capitalism, and ideas of architectural impoverishment. part v, “the profession”, is more optimistic. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 112 review / the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s it offers strategies in response to the difficult malaise brought into focus in the preceding parts. while the fifteen essays differ in their point of entry into the discussion of architectural labour, they are connected by a marxist thread concerned with the possibility of change across the discipline. highlights in the book are many, but for me, franco beradi, neil leach, and deamer herself make the deepest impression. franco beradi’s “dynamic of the general intellect” paints a picture in which the intellectual, the merchant, and the artist are “the dominant characters of the fable we call modernity” (8). reframing them as the artist, the engineer, and the economist, beradi aims in this demarcation to disentangle their relations with one another to the effect of empowering the artist to better claim their proper role in the triumvirate: that of breaching the status quo and extending knowledge. beradi further takes aim at the academy and the way in which it has succumb to neo-liberalism through a lack of resistance to the encroachment of meritocracy. he writes, “meritocracy is the trojan horse of neoliberal ideology” precisely because it fosters competition over solidarity and a pursuit of research and discovery “dissociated from pleasure and solidarity” (7). neil leach addresses the issue of professional accreditation of academic architecture programmes in his chapter “the (ac)credit(ation) card”. with architecture school accreditation an ongoing, normative measure of professional education, here as elsewhere, leach’s position is challenging. his point is that professional accreditation, by holding the schools firm to existing local knowledge, contributes to the under-delivery of architectural education in a rapidly changing global market. he argues for a more flexible model for architectural education and its quality assurance. deamer’s own chapter, “work”, directly challenges the architectural profession to account for the role and place of labour in design production. the failure to do so, she claims, has resulted in the increasing marginalisation of the profession within the building industry. a necessary first step is to understand the work that designers and architects do as itself work. from this position it is then possible to think work and value in more utopian terms—that is, to rethink the way we do it. this leads, as the final part of her text identifies, to alternative models for architectural practice. no doubt the architect as worker is confronting, precisely because it asks us to question foundational aspects of architectural education and production. moreover, it looks towards ways in which that education and production might depart from prevailing socio-economic and aesthetic norms. yet despite this challenge the architect as worker offers views that are inclusive and engaging. presenting stark “left-right” political distinctions as inadequate measures of current architectural patterns, the juxtaposition of perspectives and analyses open up rather than shut down possibilities for future practice. reviewing the architect as worker, invoked two memories specifically for me. firstly, as a newly employed graduate, i recall walking into the office to begin my twentieth consecutive 12-hour day to find a colleague cleaning up the remains of a coffee cup he had flung at the office wall in a state of fury and exhaustion. together we calculated that we were earning less than $9 per hour having in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 113 review / the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s spent five years at university and having racked up significant debt in doing so. secondly, in a conversation i had with my father just after achieving my nzrab registration i found myself exclaiming to him “i love what i do, but i hate the way i do it”. what the architect as worker articulates for me is precisely why this isn’t the architectural profession i want to send my students out into. its greater achievement may be to answer just how that profession might be otherwise. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 46 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l susan holden and olivia daw watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 the announcement that 2004 would be designated the year of the built environment (ybe) was an important declaration by australian governments of the role of the built environment for future environmental sustainability. it provided an impetus for a whole-of-government perspective on built environment issues that also raised the spectre of past attempts at a federal urban policy agenda. it had been a long interval since the short-lived commonwealth department of urban and regional development (durd, 1972–75) initiated by the whitlam labor government that sought to raise the profile of urban governance as a national policy priority, and the hawke–keating labor government’s building better cities program (1991–96) that piloted a model for intergovernmental collaboration catalysing the role of australian cities in economic development.1 if those previous schemes focused on the role of the federal government in coordinating more strategic resource distribution and incentivising high-quality urban development, what would the impetus of sustainability bring? one of the main priorities of ybe was to activate community engagement in sustainability issues. in this respect, it aimed to cement emerging sustainable principles as a central tenet of urban development. this vision was articulated by the governor-general major general michael jeffery, patron-in-chief of ybe, at its national launch at the 5-star rated green building 30 bond in sydney: “i believe this can be a watershed year that will provide impetus for positive built environment outcomes to flow on to the community for years to come.”2 with 2004 also a federal election year, there was a political context to the activities and debates of ybe, and associated industry-wide calls for a coordinated policy agenda. yet in the lead up to the october election, the urban design forum signalled the lack of ongoing political commitment: the year of the built environment is a whimper, the election year budget offers little more, with practically no leadership for sustainable infrastructure and communities. despite the rhetoric, recent road allocations well outpace public transport, and australia’s response to the international kyoto protocol expectations for reduction of greenhouse gases is mostly smoke and mirrors.3 despite being one of the few national attempts at coordinating resources and fig. 1 year of the built environment logo. [courtesy of warren kerr] in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 47 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l attention around built environment issues, there has been little analysis of ybe or its impact. this paper draws together dispersed data on the events and outcomes of the year, and interviews with select protagonists, to present an account of ybe and analyse the initiative in relation to the evolution of built environment policy in australia.4 to some extent ybe was a politically opportunistic attempt— in the lead up to a federal election—to focus attention and resources on the emerging imperative of environmental sustainability at a time when the concept was gaining popular momentum. its expansive program of events, exhibitions, and demonstration projects engaged communities and industry as crucial actors in achieving sustainable built environments. however, ybe was also the outcome of a concerted effort in the architecture profession, led by warren kerr as royal australian institute of architects (raia) wa chapter president (2001–03) and national president (2004–05), to more effectively influence the quality of the built environment and its legacy for future generations. one of its most important legacies was the re-establishment of government architect roles and the strategic connection of these roles through the government architects network of australia (gana). that ybe has been somewhat forgotten in the professional record can be attributed to more than just the well-recognised problem of institutional amnesia.5 it also reflects how the environmental sustainability agenda was stalled in australia by the politicisation of climate change. a national approach to sustainable cities the 2003 australian government inquiry into sustainable cities 2025 and subsequently initiated sustainable cities program provided an important political context for ybe.6 the inquiry came about as a recommendation of the second state of the environment report of 2001, which recognised the key role of cities in achieving sustainable futures and established a policy impetus for the evaluation of urban environments as part of a broader sustainability agenda.7 during the 1990s, sustainability discourse advanced globally after the united nations brundtland report, our common future (1987), popularised the concept of a limit to growth and the term entered policy lexicon.8 during this so-called “sustainability decade,” australia made significant political commitment to advancing sustainability, albeit with varying levels of success in operationalising policy.9 the sustainability agenda placed the built environment in direct relation to the natural environment and recast the value of a national approach to urban governance. indeed, the inquiry identified the lack of a national approach to policy and strategic coordination for the urban environment as a barrier to achieving more sustainable outcomes.10 in contrast to the integrated approach for the protection and management of australia’s natural environment, the inquiry identified that most government programs and constitutional power relating to factors influencing urban sustainability were coordinated at a state or local level without “high-level, strategic coordination.”11 the federal government committed $168.5 million in its 2003–04 budget “to protect the nation’s built heritage and help make urban life more sustainable.”12 the sustainable cities program was a headline initiative, receiving $40 million of funding over five years to “ensure understanding of, and action for, sustainable australia.”13 federal funding was also made available under the distinctively australian program and the cool communities program that linked the australian greenhouse office with ngos and communities.14 in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 48 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l the federal government’s engagement with built environment issues provided an opportunity for the raia to advance its agenda for sustainable development and design excellence. the raia made a submission to the inquiry,15 and they played a central role in initiating and subsequently organising ybe, in large part through the successful lobbying activities of warren kerr. during his term as raia wa chapter president (2001–03), kerr had developed the idea for a year of the built environment, motivated by the desire to see more cohesive and effective built environment policy in australia and the architecture profession make a bigger contribution to urban governance. he was inspired by the 2002 year of the outback, which aimed to highlight the importance of regional and remote australia and was commemorated with a special $1 coin. kerr had extensive experience with government, having worked as a graduate for the commonwealth department of works and then later for the wa building management authority, and he used his experience and networks, also developed through his leadership roles with the raia and the australian council of building design professions (bdp), to garner support for ybe initially in wa, then from the other states, and ultimately from the office of the prime minister.16 in the lead up to the federal budget delivered in may 2003, the commonwealth government endorsed the initiative as a national activity, recognising an opportunity for policy announcements in an election year and, in turn, 2004 was officially designated the year of the built environment.17 responsibility for the year was then delegated to the australian department of the environment and heritage. in the national environment budget statement 2004–05, david kemp, australian government minister for the environment and heritage, outlined that one of the focuses for the year was the development of national standards for the sustainability of the built environment and working towards the adoption of a national approach to “policies, partnerships and programmes.”18 more specifically, this included legislation for national water efficiency labelling and standards (wels), reviewing additional standards for toxic gas, sulphur, and ground-level ozone standards, and the aim to strengthen environmental aspects of building codes and standards, as well as ensuring access to community and decision makers to national information regarding the urban environment. as the raia national president for 2003–04, david parken chaired the national steering committee for ybe, while kerr, who succeeded parken as raia national president (2004–05), headed up the wa steering committee, which had its headquarters in the western australian department of housing and works.19 the ybe national steering committee established seven themes for the year: towards sustainable communities; healthy environments; excellence in building; our built heritage; imagining the future; design for all; and building regional communities.20 a national ybe exemplars and awards program showcased and celebrated exemplary people, places, and organisations under these themes. ten awards were given at a gala event in november 2004, including the newly revised and illustrated edition of the burra charter published in 2004, and council house 2 (ch2)—australia’s first green building council 6-star rated building— completed in 2006 for the city of melbourne (table 1). the strategy of using exemplars to demonstrate tangible approaches to achieving sustainability in the built environment also informed the numerous built projects that were sponsored during ybe. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 49 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l in addition to the burra charter being acknowledged in the ybe national awards program, the australian government also published adaptive reuse: preserving our past, building our future, which showcased exemplary projects, and there was a strong focus on heritage-themed activities and events in several states.21 education was another important focus of ybe, and an opportunity to advance initiatives developed with prior government support. in victoria the designers in schools initiative was reintroduced.22 the nsw chapter of the raia explored ways to advance the built environment education (bee) program.23 a web-based school sustainable design tool was launched in queensland. developed in collaboration with the department of education, it enabled students to learn about sustainability and contribute information showcasing their hometowns.24 an extensive program of events gave momentum and shape to the year itself. a nationally coordinated website allowed the numerous events and exhibitions organised during the year by diverse groups to be supported by ybe, if not financially, then through endorsement by the ybe state secretariats, as well as numerous related events to be opportunistically brought under the ybe banner.25 youthquake was a national gathering of under-35-year-old future leaders of the property and construction industries that focused on developing a sustainable vision for australia in 2050, and there were several nationaland state-based forums and symposiums on specific built environment issues including coastal urbanisation, project housing, and child-friendly cities.26 the museum of brisbane hosted the 200km city exhibition, organised by peter spearritt and the brisbane institute, which highlighted the pressures of population growth in south-east queensland and the role of strategic planning frameworks in shaping sustainable settlement patterns.27 tasmania’s events program focused on built and landscape heritage with a four-part debate series staged across the year. topics included “old buildings are better than new ones,” and “suburbs: the great australian dream has turned into a nightmare.” (fig. 2) sydney hosted a ybe city talks lecture series across the year with high-profile international speakers, including uk-based sustainability expert john doggart with australian architect danielle mccartney,28 american urban studies theorist richard florida on his recently published book the rise of the creative class (2002), and architectural theorist beatriz colomina, director of princeton university school of architecture, who was in australia as a keynote speaker for category winners commendations towards sustainable communities ché wall ecospecifier, and inkerman housing project, vic healthy environments arup oatsih capital works program humitec, burnie city walking track, tas, and wangka wilurrara, sa excellence in building federation square, vic, and walsh bay, nsw our built heritage burra charter adelaide city council heritage incentive scheme, sa, and canterbury primary school, vic imagining the future council house 2, vic, and chris johnson and the houses of the future exhibition, nsw design for all archicentre, and john mcinerney smart housing queensland building regional communities broken hill heritage cultural tourism program, nsw tahune forest airwalk, tas, and queensland heritage trails table 1 ybe 2004 national awards and exemplars program. [year of the built environment, 2004, electronic resource (perth, wa: ybe 2004, 2003)] yyeeaarr ooff tthhee bbuuiilltt eennvviirroonnmmeenntt public debate #3 ““ oolldd bbuuiillddiinnggss aarree bbeetttteerr tthhaann nneeww oonneess ”” school of visual and performing arts auditorium inveresk 7.30pm thursday 28 october 2004 entry by gold coin donation refreshments provided for information ring 6234 3552 yyeeaarr ooff tthhee bbuuiilltt eennvviirroonnmmeenntt public debate #4 ““ ssuubbuurrbbss;; tthhee ggrreeaatt aauussttrraalliiaann ddrreeaamm hhaass ttuurrnneedd iinnttoo aa nniigghhttmmaarree ”” entry by gold coin donation refreshments provided for information ring 6234 3552 7.30pm thursday 25 november 2004 school of visual and performing arts auditorium inveresk fig. 2 tasmania ybe debate series poster. [https://web.archive.org/ web/20050616084907/http:// www.wsa.tas.gov.au/ybe/ybe%20 debate%20poster%201%20 %202%20.pdf, accessed 16 may 2022; courtesy of the tasmanian conservation trust] in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 50 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l the biennale of sydney. the honourable paul keating spoke in this series in a debate on the future of sydney harbour, a hot topic in the lead up to the east darling harbour urban design competition.29 another significant international visitor was sir stuart lipton, chair of the uk commission for architecture and the built environment (cabe), who visited sydney in february 2004. lipton brought cabe to the attention of an australian audience, and it became something of a benchmark for those pondering the legacy of ybe for australia. ybe legacy projects a focal point of ybe at both national and state levels was the promotion of exemplars through awards, educational material, and demonstration projects. the houses of the future exhibition was a flagship demonstration project led by nsw state government architect chris johnson. johnson and his team, which included sara stace and meredith bennion, chose the lens of the home to address issues of sustainability, where they believed most people had experience and understanding of the built environment.30 following the well-established modernist tradition of housing exhibitions, they commissioned six futuristic houses that were displayed on the sydney opera house forecourt from 15–31 october 2004.31 fig. 3 houses of the future on the sydney opera house forecourt (2004). [photograph by john gollings am, gollings photography pty ltd] each house was designed by a different architect, made from a different base material, and aimed to provoke new thinking on the future of domestic space.32 placing focus on the home was a tangible way to demonstrate lessons on environmental sustainability while showcasing design and material innovation. (fig. 3) the houses promoted sustainability through their use of materials, design for pre-fabrication, and incorporation of passive environmental design strategies and rainwater recycling.33 each house was required to conform with basix, a new building sustainability index being adopted in nsw in 2004 to ensure that new residential dwellings would be designed and built to use 40 per cent less drinking-quality water and produce less greenhouse gas emissions than average homes.34 according to johnson, there was some anxiety and resistance around in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 51 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l the introduction of basix, so the houses of the future exhibition additionally served to demystify the new tool.35 johnson also aspired to influence mass market housing and the exhibition aligned with the topic of the 2004 nsw premier’s forum on suburban and project housing. the houses were delivered by multiplex and a key goal for the exhibition, influenced by colomina’s visit, was to have a broad impact via mass media coverage where johnson hoped the projects would capture the imagination of the public and generate images of the possibilities of housing that would “outlast the reality” of the exhibited buildings.36 johnson’s accompanying book, homes dot com: architecture for all, placed the experimental houses from the exhibition and principles of sustainable design in relation to the ubiquitous “project home” and the broader context of australian suburbia.37 over 75,000 people visited the exhibition, and extensive media interest through television, newspapers, magazines, and major websites brought international attention to ybe.38 accompanying houses of the future, the ybe secretariat assisted the australian institute of landscape architects (aila) and the sydney botanic gardens in developing gardens of the future, an exhibition that addressed similar issues.39 the focus on demonstration projects continued in victoria, where the city of melbourne and archicentre renovated two terrace houses in the inner-city suburb of carlton. the terraces sought to provide tangible “consumer education” on design, construction, and sustainability. the victorian building commission was a partner in this demonstration project and provided secretariat support for ybe activities in victoria, and was involved in several legacy projects. they partnered with heritage victoria to publish the first edition of what house is that?, a booklet highlighting key housing styles in victoria, that aimed to improve design literacy and appreciation of the value of victoria’s built heritage.40 in queensland, the single dwelling was also the focus of exemplar projects, with the queensland state government committing half a million dollars to support the construction of sustainable homes around the state, a program that extended the smart housing initiative established by the department of housing in 1999 to promote sustainability in the design and construction of housing in the private sector.41 thirty-four local councils expressed interest in developing their own demonstration projects under the sustainable homes program, a collaborative partnership between state and local governments and housing industry organisations.42 thirty projects were realised, occupying all four of queensland’s climate zones defined in the building code of australia (bca), and each home was open for a minimum of six months for public viewing.43 adding to queensland’s ybe legacy projects, wayne petrie, who served as chair of the ybe steering committee in queensland for the department of public works, developed the initial vision for the architectural practice academy (apa) during the year.44 as former president of the raia queensland chapter, petrie recognised the need to offer graduates ongoing education outside of academia and developed the experimental program to give graduates an opportunity to lead architectural projects overseen by mentors in the profession.45 federal ybe funding was used for the academy’s establishment, and it was supported by minister robert schwarten.46 the apa ran from 2005 to 2012, admitting six graduates each year for a two-year period, with the office functioning like a small practice as an independent unit within government while receiving assistance in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 52 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l from the project services division. it also functioned as a design-focused internship program in the public service, exposing new graduates to careers in the public sector, while ensuring they gained the post-graduation experience required to achieve professional registration.47 the apa contributed to the design of some of the sustainable houses in regional locations (fig. 4). in 2011, under the new liberal national party government, funding for the apa ceased.48 built environment governance after ybe: design leadership and design policy while the promotion of exemplars was seen as a powerful way to encourage behavioural change in the broader community, the goal of long-term influence through policy was a bigger challenge and ultimately subject to the contingencies of political cycles.49 ybe did provide a framework for the built environment professions to collectively recognise the lack of strategic government leadership on built environment issues, if not to explicitly interrogate why, as susan oakley wrote during the year, “an urban policy discourse [had] not been sustainable in federal government.”50 the planning institute of australia (pia) took the opportunity to launch a revised version of its 2001 national policy statement, liveable communities: how the commonwealth can foster sustainable cities and regions, which also formed the basis of its submission to the sustainable cities inquiry, and called for coordinated national policy to rectify what jago dodson described as the “policy of wilful neglect” that had characterised the years since building better cities.51 for kerr, too, the lack of cohesive and coordinated urban policy had been an important motivating factor behind ybe, and informed his parallel lobbying for state and city architect positions in wa and nationally. as part of ybe 2004, western australia developed a state sustainability strategy, which brought an explicit sustainability focus to the strategic whole-of-government approach to policy development that was occurring at state level across australia.52 the wa strategy was intended to lead to the adoption of a dedicated fig. 4 jo macleod (2004). the zilzi sustainable house by the apa. [photograph by john casey, courtesy of queensland department of energy and public works] in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 53 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l built environment design policy, which had been developed in draft form by the raia wa chapter in the lead up to ybe in 2003, but this was thwarted by a change in leadership of the labor government, and of the minister for public works role.53 while a dedicated design policy would take another seventeen years to arrive,54 ybe was nonetheless a catalyst for decisive action on the establishment of a state government architect position in wa, with geoffrey london commencing in 2004. kerr claimed this as one of the most tangible legacies of ybe for the state: in australia, there is no government policy on the built environment, and the appointment of a government architect to advise ministers on issues to do with the built environment such as heritage, procurement, public-private partnerships and pilot projects is a step in the right direction.55 this had been one of kerr’s priorities as raia wa chapter president and national president and he used these roles to lobby jurisdictions across australia. as part of the launch of ybe in the northern territory, chief minister clare martin announced the establishment of an nt government architect position and bob nation was appointed.56 victoria would follow in 2006, with john denton appointed, and by 2010 all states and territories in australia had a government architect position.57 in the lead up to ybe only nsw and queensland had government architect positions. nsw was the only state in australia where the government architect position had been maintained since the colonial era.58 in queensland the position was re-established in 1999, with michael keniger appointed to the role in a part-time capacity. a significant task of keniger’s tenure was to begin to define a new kind of advisory-focused government architect role. this shift was also acknowledged in the raia wa chapter’s development of a draft policy for the built environment that identified an important role for governments as “custodians of design excellence” and the potential for government architects to advise and assist governments in this responsibility.59 keniger advised several states on the definition of the position in queensland, including wa, victoria, and nt, and contributed to the establishment of an aia government architect policy (2008).60 this ad-hoc approach to knowledge sharing was formalised during ybe with the establishment of the gana. queensland hosted a second meeting of the gana group in 2005, cementing it as an annual event.61 in the ongoing absence of national leadership in urban policy and strategic planning, gana represents one of the few mechanisms for the national coordination of the architecture profession working in government. following visits to australia by representatives of the uk’s commission for architecture and the built environment,62 cabe would become a significant international benchmark for the development of design-led built environment governance in australia in subsequent decades. in 2005, members of the raia nsw chapter ybe future directions committee called for an independent built environment foundation as a meaningful legacy of ybe, taking inspiration from cabe.63 while this did not come to fruition, cabe’s practices and research have nonetheless informed the development of design review processes and design policy in australia. sustainability principles have been embedded in the design principle developed by government architects who guide the design review process for public buildings and infrastructure, state-significant projects, in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 54 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l and housing. the extent to which design-led built environment governance can influence strategic planning and procurement, and address some of the sustainability challenges associated with the mass housing market that chris johnson was concerned with during ybe, for example, remains an ongoing challenge. not to be outdone, new zealand proclaimed 2005 as the year of the built environment there, with a similar collaborative framework between central government, the new zealand institute of architects, and other local government agencies and professional institutes, with over 200 activities held across the year.64 watershed or whimper? in the july/august 2022 issue of architecture australia, the ybe award-winning council house 2 was revisited by stephen choi.65 revisiting this project almost 20 years after its inception gives some perspective on how the sustainability discourse has evolved in the architecture profession. this special issue of aa on the power of regenerative design coincided with the delayed release of the 2021 state of the environment report, after a five-year period in which australia has seen catastrophic bushfires and floods.66 while the release of the report prompts outrage and grief at the ‘lost years’ since australia took an early leading role in the sustainability discourse in the 1990s and highlights the fraught political dimension to australia’s sustainability journey, it is also clear that the climate crisis requires a fundamental shift in thinking and action. sustainability is now, in fact, almost a cliché, and as the aa special issue makes clear, the challenge is to move “beyond sustainability” and beyond the unproductive distinction between the natural and built environment that persisted in ybe. while ybe recognised the key role of cities in achieving a sustainable future, there is now recognition of the crucial role of biodiversity in natural and built environments, including urban ecosystems. while ybe saw heritage conservation as a parallel endeavour to the development of ecologically sustainable design, the international council on monuments and sites (icomos) is now calling for a broader definition of heritage to encompass its potential to catalyse climate action and social cohesion.67 ybe may not have been a “watershed year,” and no commemorative coin was issued, but neither was it a whimper. both kerr and johnson identified the development of design policies and the involvement of architects in built environment governance as important long-term goals. many of the methods explored during ybe to promote the value of good design—such as identifying and awarding exemplary projects, supporting demonstration projects, and promoting public discourse and education—remain valid public policy tools. while the long-recognised challenges of overcoming siloed professional activity and achieving joined-up policy may persist, one of the main legacies of ybe has been in the incremental shifts in built environment governance processes that have made a greater role for architects to contribute design intelligence in the form of advocacy and advice to government. it remains for the architecture profession to further embrace the sphere of design governance in australia as an avenue to achieve a greater impact on the design quality of the environment. the immense cultural change required to underpin climate adaptation remains ahead of us all. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 55 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l notes 1. tom uren (minister for urban and regional development, 1972–75) was a ybe ambassador in nsw and keating would re-enter the fray with a national lecture on the future of sydney harbour as part of the nsw ybe events program. chris johnson and elizabeth farrelly, “year of the built environment: a conversation,” architectural theory review 9, no. 1 (2004): 97–111; “the harbour of the future,” architecture bulletin 3 (2004): 7–8. 2. michael jeffery quoted in “national year of the built environment – 2004: a year to build on,” ecos, no. 119 (2004): 8. 3. bill chandler, “is the federal government relevant,” the urban design forum, no. 66 (2004): 1. 4. interviews conducted under two larger projects: design governance and the architecture profession (ethics approval: 2022/he000293) and leadership in design governance: the future of advocacy and the diversification of the architecture profession (2021/he000992). 5. alastair stark and brian head, “institutional amnesia and public policy,” journal of european public policy, no. 10 (2019): 1521–39; laura tingle, “political amnesia: how we forgot to govern,” quarterly essay, no. 60 (2015): 1–86. 6. australian government, department of the environment and heritage, inquiry into sustainable cities 2025: submission by the department of the environment and heritage (canberra: commonwealth of australia, 2003): 3; australian government, house of representatives standing committee on environment and heritage, sustainable cities (canberra: commonwealth of australia, 2005): 21–22. 7. australian state of the environment committee, australia state of the environment 2001 (canberra: csiro publishing on behalf of the department of the environment and heritage, 2001). see also inquiry into sustainable cities 2025, 5–7. the first state of the environment report (1996) was initiated by paul keating on the back of australia signing the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc, 1992) at rio’s earth summit and reflected australia’s international leadership and credibility in the climate change arena at that time. 8. united nations, report of the world commission on environment and development: our common future (new york, 1987). 9. martin brueckner and christof pforr, “the rise and fall of sustainability in western australian politics: a review of sustainable development under the western australian labour government between 2001 and 2008,” sustainability: science, practice and policy 7, no. 2 (2011): 3. 10. australian government, department of the environment and heritage, inquiry into sustainable cities 2025, 19. 11. australian government, department of the environment and heritage, inquiry into sustainable cities 2025, 17. the raia made a submission to the inquiry, prepared by the new national environment committee chaired by lindsay johnson. lindsay johnson, “design sustainability,” architecture bulletin 1 (2004): 16. johnson and raia national president david parken (2003–04) also appeared before the house of representatives standing committee on environment and heritage during the inquiry. see architecture australia, may (2004). 12. david kemp, “ybe04,” queensland planner 44, no. 1 (2004): 2. 13. david kemp, a sustainability strategy for the australian continent, environment budget statement 2004–05 (2004): 44. 14. “national year of the built environment – 2004,” 8. 15. the royal australian institute of architects, “inquiry into sustainable cities: submission to the house of representatives standing committee on environment and heritage,” december 2003. 16. warren kerr, interview 28 july 2022. the initial idea for a national year of architecture was part of kerr’s successful election platform for the raia national presidency. to secure federal government support, kerr communicated directly with arthur sinodinos, chief of staff to prime minister john howard. 17. “year of the built environment 2004, introduction,” the architect 1 (2004): 13. in addition to project and program funding from the australian department of the environment and heritage, $500,000 was committed to help celebrate the year. 18. kemp, a sustainability strategy for the australian continent. 19. alongside the national steering committee, each state nominated a state steering committee to oversee the program for the year. steering committees included representatives from across the built environment professions and were typically supported by a relevant state government department. state governors were approached to be ybe patrons and some states nominated notable public figures as ybe ambassadors. state steering committees were led by: chris johnson, nsw government architect (nsw); warren kerr (wa) with support from the department of housing and works; wayne petrie (qld) with support from the department of public works; in victoria (vic) initiatives were driven by the department of public works and overseen by the minister for planning; and in tasmania (tas) initiatives were driven by the governor. little is documented on the initiatives of south australia (sa), australian capital territory (act), and northern territory (nt). architect south australia 18, no. 5 (2004): 8–10. 20. “national year of the built environment – 2004,” 8. 21. commonwealth of australia, department of the environment and heritage, adaptive reuse: preserving our past, building our future (canberra, 2004). 22. earlier iterations of this program had been supported by the australia council for the arts. 23. beverley garlick, “bee is up and running again,” architecture bulletin 1 (2005): 22–23. 24. queensland parliament, 51st parliament weekly hansard (2004): 3816. 25. the national and state ybe websites have been discontinued and can be accessed via web archive. see: www.ybe2004.nsw.gov.au; www. builtenvironment2004.org. au; www.ybe2004.qld.gov.au; http://www.wsa.tas.gov.au/ybe (accessed 16 may 2022). 26. some notable symposiums included: the national coastal urbanisation symposium, gold coast, 29 march 2004; the nsw premier’s forum on suburban and project housing, paramatta, april 2004; and the creating child-friendly cities symposium, brisbane, 28–29 october 2004. 27. peter spearritt and k. gum, the 200km city: from noosa to the tweed (brisbane: the brisbane institute, 2004). 28. doggett and mccartney also conducted a national seminar tour supported by the raia continuing education unit in conjunction with the australian greenhouse office. 29. johnson and farrelly, “the harbour of the future,” architecture bulletin 3 (2004): 6–9. jack munday also contributed to this debate and was a ybe ambassador in nsw. 30. johnson and farrelly, “year of the built environment,” 97–111. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 56 watershed or whimper? the australian year of the built environment, 2004 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l 31. chris johnson, “houses of the future and the mass media,” architecture bulletin, no. 3 (2004): 33. johnson made specific mention of harry seidler’s 1954 house of the future and alison and peter smithson’s house of the future, which beatriz colomina had lectured about during her visit to sydney in 2004. 32. the six houses were: steel house by modabode (sarah bickford and paul lucas); clay house by environa studio (tone wheeler); concrete house by nsw government architect office (peter poulet and michael harvey); timber house by innovachi (stephanie smith and ken mcbryde); glass house by j. muir & uts; and cardboard house by stutchbury & pape (col james). 33. “houses of the future: the brief,” ybe 2004 houses of the future, www.housesofthefuture. com.au/hof_houses01.html (site discontinued, accessed via internet archive 16 may 2022). 34. “why be environmentally sustainable?”, ybe 2004 houses of the future, http://www. housesofthefuture.com.au/hof_ what03.html (site discontinued, accessed via internet archive 16 may 2022). 35. johnson and farrelly, “year of the built environment.” 36. johnson, “houses of the future and the mass media,” 31. 37. chris johnson, homes dot com: architecture for all (sydney: government architect’s publications, 2004). 38. architecture bulletin, no. 1 (2005): 2. 39. architecture bulletin, no. 1 (2005): 2. 40. victorian building commission, celebrating our built environment annual report 2003–04 (2004): 15. 41. “triple bottom line,” smart and sustainable homes, www.sustainable-homes.org. au/02_design/triple.htm (site discontinued, accessed via internet archive 29 july 2022). 42. “about us,” smart and sustainable homes, www. sustainable-homes.org.au/01_ aboutus/index.htm (site discontinued, accessed via internet archive 29 july 2022). 43. “projects,” smart and sustainable homes, www. sustainable-homes.org. au/01_aboutus/index.htm (site discontinued, accessed via internet archive 29 july 2022). 44. michael keniger, “mind the gap: the architectural practice academy,” architectural review australia 92, no. 16 (2005). 45. charles rowe, “the legacy of the architectural practice academy,” architectural review, 5 march 2015, http://www. australiandesignreview.com/ architecture/the-legacy-of-thearchitectural-practice-academy (accessed 20 june 2022). 46. rowe, “the legacy of the architectural practice academy.” 47. a government-sponsored intern program for architectural graduates was also implemented in western australia. warren kerr, email correspondence, 2 august 2022. 48. rowe, “the legacy of the architectural practice academy.” 49. ybe was a catalyst for some advancements in national regulation and standards. some key achievements cited by kerr that were advanced during ybe include the australasian health faculties guidelines (ahfgs) which established national standards for hospital design, and a national review of architects acts and approach to continuing professional development. warren kerr, email correspondence, 2 august 2022. 50. susan oakley, “politics of recollection: examining the rise and fall of durd and better cities through narrative,” urban policy and research 22, no. 3 (2004): 300. 51. planning institute of australia, liveable communities: how the commonwealth can foster sustainable cities and regions, february 2004; jago dodson, “pushing planning in the year of the built environment,” queensland planner 44, no. 1 (2004): 12. 52. kuntal goswami and rolf gerritsen, “policy life cycle analysis of three australian state-level public policies: exploring the political dimension of sustainable development,” journal of development policy and practice 6, no. 1 (2021): 9–35. 53. royal australian institute of architects (wa chapter), policies for the wa architecture profession, june 2003. supplied by warren kerr. see also marsha jacobs. “kerr looks to develop understanding,” business news, 5 march 2005, www.businessnews. com.au/article/kerr-looks-todevelop-understanding. 54. western australian department of planning, lands and heritage, state planning policy 7.0: design of the built environment (perth: western australian planning commission, 2019). 55. jacobs, “kerr looks to develop understanding.” 56. the architect, 1 (2004): 13. 57. there was no architect appointed to the role in the northern territory after 2009, and the role was subsequently abolished. the position was also discontinued in tasmania after peter poulet left in 2012. government architect positions have been maintained in nsw, queensland, western australia, victoria, south australia, and the act. 58. the office of the nsw government architect transitioned to operating primarily in an advisory capacity in 2016. 59. raia wa chapter, policies for the wa architecture profession, 8, 17. 60. michael keniger, interview 23 june 2022. see also michael keniger, “queensland government architect,” architect victoria (december 2000): 18–19. 61. queensland parliament, 51st parliament weekly hansard (2004). 62. francis golding visited brisbane as a keynote speaker at the making of the public realm conference convened by keniger in 2000, one of his first initiatives as queensland state government architect. sir stuart lipton visited sydney during ybe for the ybe city talks lecture series. 63. caroline pidcock, “news,” architecture bulletin 1 (2005): 3; chris johnson; “year of the built environment overview,” year of the built environment website, http://www.ybe2004.nsw.gov.au/ ybe2004.asp (site discontinued, accessed via internet archive 29 july 2022). 64. “2005 year of the built environment: celebrating our cities and towns,” www.beehive. govt.nz/release/2005-year-builtenvironment-celebrating-ourcities-and-towns (accessed 29 july 2022). the year aimed to inform government initiatives such as the sustainable development programme of action and urban affairs portfolio. 65. stephen choi, “revisited: ch2 (2006), design inc in collaboration with the city of melbourne,” architecture australia 111, no. 4 beyond sustainability (2022): 86–93. 66. i. d. cresswell, t. janke, and e. l. johnston, australia state of the environment 2021: overview, independent report to the australian government minister for the environment, commonwealth of australia, canberra, 2021, doi: 10.26194/ f1rh-7r05. although handed down in 2021, this most recent iteration of the five-yearly report was not publicly released until july 2022 after the may federal election saw the albanese labor government take office. 67. climate change and cultural heritage working group international council on monuments and sites (icomos), the future of our pasts: engaging cultural heritage in climate action (icomos, paris: 2019), https://indd.adobe.com/ view/a9a551e3-3b23-4127-99fda7a80d91a29e (accessed 12 july 2022). interstices 15 12 fig. 1 things. [photo: author, 2013] tone and emanation – in my terminology, ekstases – determine the atmosphere radiated by things. they are therefore the way in which things are felt to be present in space. this gives us a further definition of atmosphere: it is the felt presence of something or someone in space. for this the ancients had the beautiful expression parousia. thus, for aristotle, light is the parousia of fire. (böhme 2008) the word atmosphere is from latin atmosphaera and greek atmos, meaning vapour or steam and sphaira, meaning sphere. the etymon of atmos implies a sense of blowing, inspiring, arousing: hence of breath or spirit. yet, curiously, the words vapour, quell and kill are cognate; consider for example old english cwealm, meaning murder or agonising death. the vaporous is clearly equivocal. it can equally mobilise the nefarious and constitute a threat; hence the well-known alliance between the vaporous and the miasmic, together with its important role in processes of erasure and ‘disinfection’ that characterise the origins of the modern city. gernot böhme reads atmosphere as the palpable manifestation of a medium, milieu or situation (2010: 27) – as when rays of sunlight enable us to perceive dust-laden air. in architecture, it might be the ‘emotional tinge’ or ‘tuning’ of a space. tinge and tincture are chromatic aspects, a matter of colouring, and hence of calor – of heat and calories. colour is the outward sign of an inner constitution that surfaces and shows itself. tinge and tincture can also be a matter of tuning and tone; in other words, of alignment and resonance. here, sound parallels colour in bringing an inner constitution into audibility; in making it possible for us to ‘hear’ it. likewise stimmung (mood or attunement) is not a subjective colouring applied onto an objective world. we are always ‘in’ a mood as in a particular countenance or disposition that represents a distinctive co-embeddedness and manner of belonging to the world. as heidegger noted, mood “comes neither from ‘outside’ nor from ‘inside’, but arises out of being-in-the-world, as a way of such being” (1962: 176). atmosphere fig. 2 maldives. [photo: author, 2008] vaporous circumambience: towards an architectonics of atmosphere michael tawa interstices 15 13 the chromatic reference is revealing. colour originally meant complexion or appearance; yet, again curiously, the etymon of the word, *kel, to conceal, gives latin colos, a covering or veil and celare, which means to hide. consider the word’s various cognates: cell, clam, helmet, caldron, hall, shell, cellar, hole, hell. complexion is a condition of revealing and concealing; or of simultaneously revealing and concealing, presenting and absenting. to cover is to dress-up, to invest – hence to initiate, install, establish or name. it is a key term in the motifs of decoration and ornament, which are in a sense the ‘complexion’ of the decorated thing or being. the word complexion is itself revealing; the literal meaning being entwined-together, or complicated, through the etymon *plek, to plait, braid, weave, ply, fold. latin complexus, complectere means to embrace, encompass, surround. complexion is a sign of the complex intricacies of a being as they present themselves to view. chromatic is from greek khróma, meaning surface of the body, skin, colour of the skin; a term also used to mean ornaments, embellishments, and which relates to khrós, surface of the body, skin, and khrózein, to touch the surface of the body, to tinge, to colour. here, the etymon is *ghreu, meaning to rub or grind, probably from the sense of obtaining pigment by grinding ochre. more significant is the reference to touch, which connects tinge and tincture to tact, and thus to an entire ethics if not tactics or techne of the surface. greek taktike techne, the art of arrangement, is from the etymon *tag, meaning to touch, handle, set aright; latin tactus, tangere, mean touch, feel or handle, and techne means the art or skill of weaving, webbing, fabricating or carpentry (texture, text, textile) – in each case the pivotal sense is articulating, joining or connecting parts into an assemblage that is complex and that radiates its complexity as complexion, colour and atmosphere. yet this touching is tangential. it is a tactility that defers intersection, com-penetration or commixture. it is a matter of percussion, of the com-pressure of air that affects without violating any intervening boundary. what emanates compresses its circumambient environment. that is how we see it, as an alteration in the density, weave, texture or tincture of the milieu. that is also what makes it touching and affective. to be touched is to experience the compressive circumradiance of another being. what can we usefully make out of these multiple semantic resonances? first, they produce an intentionally unforeclosed inventory functioning as a precise and allusive framework. second, together they produce an ambiance, atmosphere or complexion of sense. third, they do so because of their being multiple and discrete, yet consilient; sense emerges out of the circulation of discrete senses, out of a kind of wavering ambit that condenses meaning into a gossamer mist. fourth, a keynote nevertheless emerges; something firm yet provisional and transitional: that atmosphere is a matter of complexion, colour and tincture; that tincture reveals as it conceals; that the tinge of something or someone or some place is an emergent phenomenon or ekstasis rendering its boundaries indeterminate; that this indeterminacy is produced by multiple senses or systems coexisting without fusing; that this coexistence manifests as a kind of shimmering surfacing or surfactance, ornamenting and embellishing; that the shimmering is also chimerical, evanescent, impermanent – or rather, that it has its own wavering temporality and dilated or aerated spatiality; finally, that this aerated circumambience is the fundamental structure of atmosphere. ambiance it is observed in the solar eclipses, that there is sometimes a great trepidation about the body of the moon, from which we may likewise argue an atmosphaera, since we cannot well conceive what so probable a cause there should be of such an appearance as this ... that the sun-beams were broken and refracted by the vapors that encompassed the moon. (wilkins 1638 in harper 2001-2014) a key theme in the words ambiance and ambiguity is the sense of going-around, a shifting double-meaning, or, literally, being-driven-to-wander. the ambit that connects ambiance and ambiguity to the equivocal also connects it to the metaphorical and the analogical, which are not http:// http:// http:// interstices 15 14 merely tropes of language but fundamental, constitutive tactics. as mary hesse has observed in relation to aristotle’s treatment of analogy, “in a sense all discourse is metaphorical ... all predication is analogical” (hesse 1965: 338). metaphor enables language to be transactional. the different senses that wander within the ambit of a world defer to others to produce webs of interrelated, circumstantial meanings. these interrelations are the discrete, aerated texture of atmosphere. they take place in the gaps and interstices of meaning – through the circulations and circuits of sense that cross those gaps, rather than on any fixed terminology or definition that a particular word ‘has’. sense is not a matter of possession but of sharing. words and ideas ‘make’ sense by producing meanings out of the resonances they mobilise in relation to other words and ideas. if we say that, in architecture, atmosphere is a metaphor, this is not to devalue or dismiss the concept, but rather to say that it makes no sense apart from the circuits of sense that circulate through it. one such ambit, world or whorl of sense is implied by a word often associated with ambiance, the aura. like atmosphere, the aura is related to the anima – the spirit or breath of a being; an aerial emanation that lifts or rises around it; the characteristic impression or mark of its bearing, its mien. walter benjamin famously described the aura as what pertains to originary being, but which can no longer hold in the “age of its mechanical reproducibility”. the aura is a mark of its “presence in time and space”, a measure of authenticity; while its absence or “liquidation” in the reproductions, images, avatars and simulants that follow are a mark of inauthentic, counterfeit being (benjamin 1992: 214-215). hence the aura is the ekstasis of a being, setting or arrangement; such as the complexion of a face, the demeanour of a person or the aspect of a place. this “out-standing” quality evokes the concept of the halo: the eminence and emanation of someone, something or somewhere that is its spatialised and temporalised “being-there” – what giorgio agamben called “the imperceptible trembling of the finite that makes its limits indeterminate” (1993: 56). the etymology of the word halo derives from the greek word for salt, halos – in the sense of hyloclasty, or salt crystallisation. the halo is the nimbus or aureole of icon painting; but it can also refer to other phenomena, more or less sublime, more or less nebulous – for example the platonic music of the spheres, which is the audible sound produced by the ‘mechanism’ that keeps the cosmos on track: that is, the perceptible correlate of an imperceptible order or the ubiquitous hum of unidentifiable servicing machinery in office buildings. both are emergent crystallisations of sorts, both produce halos, both produce atmosphere. these readings of aura and halo imply that atmosphere is not something that skins or hovers, detached, around and outside a being. rather, they are the evidence and announcement of a being’s internal order or arrangement, its constitutive complexities – in short, its taxis: again a matter of touch, tact and ethos. the countenance and look, or the gaze of a being (not only what it looks like fig. 3 cullercoats. [photo: author, 2007] fig. 4 wall. [photo: author, 1994] interstices 15 15 how it looks), convey something fundamental about the person or the place. how we look (whether we calculatedly lock and violate or incarcerate the looked-at; whether we look-after or look-out-for it; whether we look with kind regard, with an eye to solicitude and care) can debilitate or enable, destroy or create. the look of a being, its appearance, is the aura that forefronts it, that brings it into view; but it is also a sphere of influence, with affective powers that can induce change. fig. 7 head. [drawing: author, 2010] fig. 5 lake eyre. [photo: author, 2010] fig. 5 lake eyre. [photo: author, 2010] if, as etymology suggests, atmosphere is vaporous circumambience, it might be something like the mist that renders a landscape indistinct, permeating and liberating form by rendering its contours indeterminate and immanent (jullien 2009: 129); or else a sphere of arousal, the “great trepidation” or haze that blurs the moon’s outline and marks its advent as emergent radiance or parousia (wilkins 1638). greek parousia derives from from paraand indo-germanic prea, meaning through or forward-from-close-beside and ousia, meaning advent, arrival, presence, being, essence. parousia is therefore “anticipated prospect of arrival”, or “immanent presence”, fig. 8 cyprus. [photo: author, 2009] porosity cities are enormous madrepore in whose tangle, and in the midst of whose concrete or chalky matter, there will never pass enough passages and bridges and canals and ventilating chimneys and flowing spaces and interstices and clearings. (gaudin 1992: 122)1 interstices 15 16 but also and is antithetical to the aporetic condition or impasse where we find ourselves “without-passage”. between potentiality and actuality, the material and the immaterial, one idea and another, existence is always through something that resists and prohibits; it is always a trajection of some kind, a perforation of some boundary plus the material obduracy of that boundary. there must therefore be a sort of porous, aerated, permeable materiality to the structure of atmosphere: a distributed network of hollows, a disparate consistency made of gaps which never close up or fuse into a unity. like the vaporous fog that dissimulates everything into an undifferentiated matrix, atmosphere maintains everything in a suspended state of potential, keeping it always provisional and on the verge of arriving. interstice, interval, milieu – these constitute a surrounding or medium; a mathematical mean, a tectonic intermittence and an ethical mediality, mediatedness or mediance (berque 1990): that is, a way of being-with-our-self, with-others and with-the-world. this is heidegger’s mitsein – the authentic manner of being-there-in-the-world as encounter, necessitating attentiveness towards things and others that is characterised by care (sorgen), concern (besorgen) and solicitude (fürsorge). as bernard stiegler notes, “the self is indissociable from care (soin) in as much it has a double dimension that is psychic and social, so that to take care of oneself is always already to take care of the other and of others” (2008: 283). the solicitude which characterises care is caring-for in the sense of having regard for the welfare of the other, to liberate and make room for them to be there also (heidegger 1962: 158-9); to solicit out of potentiality and thus enable something, someone or some ones to emerge and surge-forth-into-presence. the topography of the porous, the interstitial and the inter-ludic must be resolutely ethical. fig. 9 remains. [photo: author, 2012] fig. 10 interval. [photo: author, 2000] fig. 11 maldives. [photo: author, 2008] fig. 12 pip stokes-burgess (1951-2011). a shrine for orpheus. [photo: author, 2010] interstices 15 17 conjugation fig. 13 jackie kultjunyintja giles tjapaltjarri with cracknell & lonergan architects (2009). jjamu tjamu, public artwork, fox studios. [photo: author, 2010] fig. 14 hainan. [photo: author, 2009] there is another sense in which the interstitial and porosity are important for atmosphere. such a sense hinges on the necessary structural condition of unaligned multiplicity – that is, an ordering system of multiple, coexistent components that resonate without fusion, that defer one to the other without ever being resolved into a singularity. such a system might be semantic and consist of multiple coexistent meanings that produce consilience between them while remaining separate; or it might consist of multiple spatial or geometric systems overlaid within a single building but without coinciding. in such cases the resultant order remains discrepant and incommensurable – that is, it maintains porosity. yet, in their interstices, the concatenation or conjugation of these systems within the assemblage begins to produce emergent conditions that were not present in any of its component parts (delanda 2006: 2012). not knowing the way out or the way in, wonder dwells in a between, between the most usual, beings, and their unusualness, their ‘is.’ it is wonder that first liberates this between as the between and separates it out. wonder – understood transitively – brings forth the showing of what is most usual in its unusualness. not knowing the way out or the way in, between the usual and the unusual, is not helplessness, for wonder as such does not desire help but instead precisely opens up this between, which is impervious to any entrance or escape, and must constantly occupy it. (heidegger 1994: 145) fig. 15 south australia. [photo: author, 1994] fig. 16 dissimulation. [photo: author, 2013] interstices 15 18 the interstitial is a necessary condition of otherness and multiplicity. the discontinuities it makes possible by keeping things disseveral are also the potentialities it enables and the capacities it preserves for an interminable process of negotiation, interpretation and reconstitution. the interval makes possible many things. it makes place possible: this space apart from/as well as/and that space, one time rather than/as well as/and another time, this sense apart from/as well as/and that sense. multiple epistemological registers, multiple sedimentations of meaning, multiple narrative lines, multiple arenas of operation, multiple scales of affect, multiple networks of relay, multiple dimensions of a being, multiple transactions of solicitude. the excess delivered by these kinds of epistemological, operational, spatiotemporal and architectonic transactions manifests as surfactant circumambiance and atmosphere. the final sequence in paolo and vittorio taviani’s film kaos (1984) recounts the narrator’s conversation with (the ghost of) his mother, in which she recounts an event in her youth. fleeing sicily in a precarious skiff, the family stops at the island of lipari to rest. on the beach the children head for the high pumice cliffs that back the sea. she is older and has to remain with her ailing mother. seeing her sadness, the mother eventually signals for her to join her siblings. they climb to the top of the blinding white cliffs and, filmed by a rear shot taken diagonally down to the azure sea that excludes the horizon line, they slowly sidestep and dance down the pumice slopes, eventually merging with the ocean. the soundtrack to this extraordinary scene is barbarina’s aria l’ho perduta, me meschina from mozart’s the marriage of figaro. what is the aura, ambiance or atmosphere of this scene? how is it produced? without de-vivifying the scene by anatomising and inventorying its multiple sense-complexes, how might we broach an understanding of what it is exactly that produces such an atmosphere? how might we more precisely theorise it, in the proper sense of seeing it or being captivated by its extantness – what heidegger called the being perceived of the perceived, its perceivedness (1982: 48). the atmosphere of the sequence results from several discrete but coincident conditions inherent within the cinematic setup. first, the narrator, the author luigi pirandello upon whose short stories the film is based, visits his empty family home after his mother has passed away. he remembers a story that his mother used to tell him when he was young. he is in a reverie of recollection, tracing evanescent memories, making sense of who he is. the film then shifts to that earlier time and the narrative voice becomes that of the mother. there are several overlapped stories and voices – the narrator’s journey into the past, pirandello’s stories, the narrator’s mother in her penultimate years, the same woman as a young girl at the pumice beach. and then there is the mozart aria. l’ho perduta, me meschina means “woe is me, i have lost it.2 the libretto refers to a brooch that the peasant girl barbarina was to give to the countess’ maid but which she has lost. a trifling moment in the scheme of things, sung by a minor character, but which mozart scores to produce extraordinary emotional intensity. how is this achieved?3 the affective quality of the music could be ascribed to its being set in the minor mode (f minor). the key of f minor has four flats, and flat keys were often associated with grief and dejection in the vocabulary of the time. the presence of diminished 7th chords and three-note figures produce sharp dissonances, also associated with grief and sadness; while the use of chromatic chords (which include notes extraneous to the mode or key of the piece, hence producing an “alien” or “deviant” presence) add harmonic complexity or ‘colour’. the vocal line is fragmented, with short sighing gestures set against the persistent quaver figures of the accompaniment that together convey a sense of bewilderment and powerlessness. contributing to the quality of unfulfilled and perhaps unfulfillable desire is the dissonance at the first “me-schi-na”: the resolution at “-na” being only partial and the resulting chord being unstable according to the norms of tonality. in fact, the piece never comes properly to an end because of figaro’s interruption. at one level, there is a disparity between barbarina’s trifling distress and the deep scale of sadness in the music. at another, the dissonant (or internally disparate) modality of the music accentuates the emotional tension in the filmic narrative, contributing a great deal to its stimmung. this modal disparity is at odds with the sublimely enveloping imaging of the landscape and the eventual absorption of the children’s joyful abandon interstices 15 19 into its azure field. because of such dissonances, mozart’s score and the tavianis’ scene achieve musical and cinematic expressions of an archetypal motif: the impossibility of fulfilling desire. as deleuze and parnet noted (2004: ‘désir’; see also 1996: 8-15), we never desire one thing (a person, a coat, a fragrance), we always desire an assemblage, a complexion or inter-folding of multiple conditions (a person + a coat + a fragrance); we always desire a milieu, a world – that is, an ambiance. in the film’s exquisite conjunction of narrative, image and sound these disparities parallel the narrator’s desire to recollect his past, his desire for the mother and her youth, the mother’s desire to relive and retell the story, the child’s desire to join her siblings, the desire of the children’s falling and mergence with the sea, and an overarching and tragic desire for surrender and release – a veritable “authentic being-towards-death” (heidegger 1962: 255) that is constitutive of ex-static being-in-the-world. in parallel ways, architecture has the capacity to set up productive conditions based on incommensurable, discrepant assemblages. this is possible across several registers. one is the underlying spatial or geometric system that directs relative arrangement, scale, proportion, symmetry, rhythm, patterns and shapes. another is the material and tectonic system of connections and joints that regulate the formal, volumetric and technical assemblage of parts. a further register relates to the spatial sequences, narratives and experiences that are enabled through the spatial and tectonic setup. there is also a semantic register through which architecture engages metaphorical or symbolic referents, thus relating built form, spatiality and temporality to broader conditions and currents of human knowledge and experience – metaphysical, philosophical, religious, ethical, political, social, scientific and aesthetic among others. the degree to which these different registers are aligned, coordinated and resolved within a single work contributes substantially to its character and complexion. where different registers and references are mobilised to circulate and wander, the texture of the work will trigger an on-going process of curiosity, inquiry and discovery that seeks to understand and relate them to each other, to see how they connect and fit together across the gaps and discontinuities established between them. consequently a work will always produce unexpected resonances, open up new readings and generate new patterns of meaning. conversely, the more resolved and integrated the various registers are, the more stable and singular will be a work’s meaning, the less open it will be to discovery and wonder. my contention here is that atmosphere is driven and produced precisely by the kinds of discrepancies and incommensurabilities that keep meaning virtual, provisional and in a state of unactualised potential. i have written elsewhere on the circulation of referents and metaphors in architecture – for example, the tectonic and constructional misalignments in peter markli’s gallery la congiunta that amplify the heroic character of sculptor hans josephson’s exhibited work (2010: 300-302); the symbolic, metaphorical and formal registers in peter zumthor’s sumvigt chapel that conjugate into a fig. 17 plan of jaipur. [drawing: author, 2007] fig. 18 cockatoo island. [photo: author, 2013] interstices 15 20 considerable semantic texture (2010: 126-130)4 and the geometrical incommensurabilities in the spatial setup of sigurd lewerentz’ st peters that engage with the tragic dimensions of christian theology (2010: 305-309); as well as in cinema – for example the multiple coincident temporalities in nicholas roeg’s bad timing that challenge accepted notions of causality (2010: 70-71, 153-155); the narrative, material and geometrical layers in sergei paradjanov’s sayat nova that translate the film into an iconostasis (2010: 101-103) and the distinctive image and sound juxtapositions of werner herzog’s lessons of darkness that evoke an altered existential milieu, an ekstasis that enables the film to depict the hubris of human excess (2010: 175-176). in his call for scenography (phantastike techne) as a new paradigm for generating atmosphere, gernot böhme implies that architectural and urban settings, alongside the staging of politics, operas, sporting events and commodities, are essentially a matter of skenographia or mise-en-scène (2008: 4, 6). peter zumthor says as much when referring to the “art of seduction ... within the powers of an architect” that hinge on finding “a way of bringing separate parts of the building together so that they formed their own attachments, as it were” (2006: 43). without doubt, in the instances cited above, architecture does construct symbolic, sociocultural and physical environments or conditions that can evoke moods, trigger reactions, promote engagements, convey meanings, prompt the recollection of memories and so forth. architecture is theatrical, operatic and performative in that sense. but is the import of architectural settings thereby reducible to apparatuses for theatricality and conjured-up spectacle? beyond its skenographic register, might atmosphere be deliverable through the consolidated material assemblage of architecture – its inherent geometric and formal structures, its spatiotemporal patterns and dynamics, its existential concrete presence and capacity to frame, reveal and amplify the complexions of place in an enduring, constantly unfolding way? in this regard, the etymology of skenographia is instructive. the word derives from greek skene, curtain or tent – in the sense of something that casts a shadow. the etymons are *skeu, to cover, conceal and *skei, to cut, divide, split. the list of cognates is extensive and builds exactly the kind of incommensurable assemblage that i suggest gives rise to an ambiance or atmosphere of wonder: shadow, shade, shed, shekina/mishkan (hebrew tabernacle, pavilion) sky, scene, scenery, skiagraphy (to trace shadows), skiamachy (to fight with shadows), shine, sheen, sheer, rescind, scission, shear, scotia, scale, skull, shield, shell, skin, ship, skiff, skipper. yet a semantic keynote does permeate this list, pivoting on related antinomical motifs of uncovering/covering, appearing/disappearing, lightening/darkening and separating/connecting. the process of scenography, integral to the symbolic (and magical) character of theatre at its origins5, is therefore charged with tracing and dramatizing the arrival and entry of the sacred – that is, the sequestered, the out-of-frame or off-screen – through a ‘veil of existence’, the skene, from darkness into light. what is most important to retain here is the condition of semantic deferral and play: a kind of inter-ludic transaction between the various, multiplying thematic associations implied by the idea. scenography is only fig. 19 sergei paradjanov (1968). sayat nova. [film still drawing: author, 2009.] fig. 20 werner herzog (1992). lessons of darkness. [film still drawing: author, 2010.] interstices 15 21 pragmatically about setting up tableaus geared to producing atmospheric effects. more significant is the way in which a scenographic (or cinematic, or architectonic) setup makes possible something like a delinquent practice of recuperation, recollection, return and reabsorption of meanings, together with their interminable transactions, transfers and transformations. keeping meaning virtual, provisional and in a state of unactualised potential, as i have suggested above, should not be taken to mean the setup is without accuracy and rigour, or that it is unsystematic in any way. the discrepancies, incommensurabilities and misalignments must be designed-into the assemblage so that they co-operate productively, so that they are afforded the capacity to produce emergent conditions. otherwise, the discrepancies might become counter-productive, they might interfere with or cancel each other out. the organisation of incommensurabilities must therefore entertain a high level of rigour and precision based on a sustained process of predictive modelling of potential outcomes and a reiterative adjustment or tempering of the system. this quite different concept of design(ing) engages the interstices between different layers or registers in the system; it is interested in the capacity and productivity of the in-between, the potential of the milieu, rather than the lineaments, edges or forms that gather around it. without such precision and rigour the outcomes are likely to be tangled, muddled and confused; and this is exactly the difficulty one encounters with the rhetoric of atmosphere in architecture. either the discourse becomes snagged in an unfortunate and unproductive fog of allusion and enigmatic confabulation, or it serves to maintain a mystique of incontestability around the charismatic, even prophetic figure of the architect/philosopher. in atmospheres, zumthor advances a kind of alchemical lexicon to describe the phenomenon of atmosphere: enchantment, emotion, mood, magic, feelings, touch, body, radiance, presence, beauty, seduction, sense of place, sublime, transcendental ... words left in suspense, uncrafted, open to whatever interpretation, their potential meanings wandering and uncontextualised: “i don’t know how to describe it actually, but i’m sure you know what i mean.” (2006: 53) on the other hand zumthor’s reading of what produces atmosphere in architecture does hinge on what he calls “craft and graft” (2006: 21); on a certain rigour to do with the transactional and ‘reactional’ potential of adjacency in the combination of different materials for example; their tendencies to form “their own attachments” (43). this implies a science with distinctive tectonic strategies and tactics, a framework and practice of precision in the understanding and assemblage of component parts, together with their capacity to be, in different ways, in isolation and in conjugation: a systematic architectonics of atmosphere. yet the shape and contents of this framework are not explicitly articulated. they remain latent and dissimulated in the artisan’s innate and silent (hence unchallengeable) practice. what we lack therefore is an anatomy of atmosphere; an inventory, codification or classification of atmospheres – aesthetic, certainly, but also metaphysical, political, religious, ethical, communitarian, theoretical, literary, musicological, spatial, temporal, theatrical, performative, environmental, climatic, civic, technological, computational, and so forth. this important work remains to be done, and must be done to avoid the concept of atmosphere in architecture remaining yet another unproductive trope; a mere figure of speech or turn of phrase whose dissimulated political function is to maintain the status quo of the architect as demiurge or magus, and of architectural design as unaccountably mysterious and hence subject to disciplinary power and control. as the ambiance of unrequitable desire is delivered by the precise musical structure, modal affordances and harmonic narrative of mozart’s f minor aria, in the final analysis atmosphere can only be delivered by the extance of architecture – that is, its concrete materiality and presence, its affective spatiality and temporality and its capacity to move us into the unforeclosed and the unforeseen. interstices 15 22 references agamben, g. 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(2003). atmosphère, atmosphere. in s. may (ed.), olafur eliasson: the weather project (29-42). london, uk: tate modern publishing. ratcliffe, m. (2012). why mood matters. retrieved from http://philosophyofdepression.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/ heidegger-on-mood23rdsep2010.pdf sloterdijk, p. (2011). bubbles:spheres, volume i: microspherology (w. hoban, trans.). new york, ny: semiotext(e). stiegler, b. (2008). prendre soin. de la jeunesse et des générations, paris, france: flammarion. tawa, m. (2010). agencies of the frame. tectonic strategies in cinema and architecture. newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars publishing. tawa, m. (2011). theorising the project. a thematic approach to architectural design. newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars publishing. wilkins, j. (1638). discovery of a new world or, discourse tending to prove that is probable there may be another habitable world in the moon. london, uk: john gillibrand. zumthor, p. (2006) atmospheres: architectural environments, surrounding objects. berlin, germany: birkhauser. interstices 15 23 endnotes 1. madrepore means literally mother of pores. it is a genus of stony coral from the family scleractinia that takes on labyrinthine, folded and porous forms. see b. goetz (2011), 113-136. 2. the lyrics are as follows: l’ho perduta, me meschina! ah chi sa dove sarà? non la trovo. l’ho perduta. meschinella! e mia cugina? e il padron, cosa dirà? (i have lost it, woe is me! ah, who knows where it is? i can’t find it. i have lost it. miserable little me. and my cousin? and the boss, what will he say?). 3. i am indebted to my counterparts at the sydney conservatorium of music, david larkin and lewis cornwell, who generously provided the musicological detail in what follows. 4. elsewhere, i have shown how multiple thematic references may be identified and used to build complex investigations of architectural precedents and frameworks for design. see tawa (2011: 149-207). 5. theatre is from greek théa, a seeing, spectacle, appearance, and -tron, a place, also an agential, instrumental suffix. théa is cognate with theos, god – latin deus, greek zeus, sanskrit, deva. the common etymon is *dyeu, to gleam, shine; which also gives the root of words for sky and day – e.g. latin dies, sanscrit diva, day, diurnal. at its origins, theatre dramatises (effects, produces, conjures-up) the (luminous/ tenebrous) appearance and disappearance of the gods, the ‘shining ones’, for the staging of which an entire machinic apparatus had eventually to be invented. heidegger’s reading of alétheia (veracity/truth as ‘un-concealment’) and its counter (fallacy as ‘forgetting’, aligned with léthé, concealment, ‘lethargy’) is revealing philosophically – theatre shows the unconcealment (alétheia) and sighting (théa) of the god (theos) from covert latency (léthé) – but more so in the kind of tectonic investigations that privilege something like a mythologised antinomy between light and dark evident in both zumthor’s architecture and böhme’s scenographic metaphor. see heidegger (1992): 17-39. 116 in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l bios elizabeth aitken rose elizabeth aitken rose is a senior lecturer in urban planning in the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland. she researches in the fields of urban planning history, cultural policy, and heritage preservation, including house museums and engineering heritage. tom collins tom collins is an architectural graduate and creative design researcher from lyttelton, ōtautahi christchurch, currently living and practising in new york city. he recently finished his master of architecture (professional) at the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning. his research is mostly concerned with urban spectres and forgotten histories. olivia daw olivia daw is an architectural graduate with a bachelor of architectural design and master of architecture. alongside working in small practice, she is a senior research assistant and tutor in the school of architecture at the university of queensland. her research interests include design advocacy, governance, and community-oriented development. andrew douglas andrew douglas is a senior lecturer in theory and design in the school of architecture and planning at the university of auckland. he is an executive editor of interstices: journal of architecture and related arts and currently chairs the enigma: he aupiki charitable trust. he has practised architecture in both auckland and london, and completed postgraduate studies at the university of auckland and goldsmiths, university of london. julia gatley julia gatley is an associate professor of architecture at the university of auckland. her research interests are primarily in twentieth-century architecture and the conservation of the modern. she has published four books with auckland university press. her next book, co-authored with john stubbs, william chapman, and ross king, and forthcoming with routledge, is titled, architectural conservation in australia, new zealand and the pacific islands: national experiences and practice. carolyn hill carolyn hill is an architect and lecturer in environmental planning at the university of waikato. she has worked in various built heritage-focused roles across public and private sectors in new zealand, australia, and the uk. her research centres on urban heritage policy and future directions, with an emphasis on the views and values of young adults in processes of heritage-making. susan holden susan holden (fraia) is an architect and senior lecturer in the school of architecture at the university of queensland where she teaches in the architecture and urban design programmes. she has published extensively on the values of architecture in cultural, institutional, and governance contexts. ella jones ella jones is an architectural graduate who completed her master of architecture (professional) at victoria university of wellington te herenga waka in 2022. alongside her studies, she interned at jasmax architects, working on a diverse range of projects around aotearoa new zealand. ella was a finalist in the 2022 nzia student design awards. her interests lie in graphite drawing and bicultural design processes. hamish lonergan hamish lonergan is an architectural designer and a doctoral candidate at the institute for the history and theory of architecture (gta), eth zürich. his project investigates the concept of tacit knowledge in design studio education since the 1970s, as part of the research network tack / communities of tacit knowledge. his writing appears in oase, gta papers, footprint, and cartha, among other publications. ‘ōkusitino māhina ‘ōkusitino māhina is a professor of philosophy, anthropology, and art. he taught pacific political economy and pacific arts at ‘atenisi university, moana university in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 117 biographies u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l luke tipene luke tipene is an architecture academic at the university of technology sydney. his research centres on the history, theory, and practice of architectural drawings. he has published in leading architectural journals, including fabrications, space and culture, the journal of architecture, and places journal. he is executive editor of idea journal and has peer-reviewed for fabrications and the journal of architecture. athanasios tsakonas athanasios tsakonas is a partner in singapore-based consultancy, tan + tsakonas architects. a practising architect, builder, and writer, his research interests include investigating the spatial impact war cemeteries and memorials have upon commemoration and remembrance; and the architects of conflict. his book, in honour of war heroes: colin st clair oakes and the design of kranji war memorial, was published by marshall cavendish in 2020. simon twose simon twose is an architect and associate professor at victoria university of wellington te herenga waka. he researches architectural drawing, in the territories between art and architecture practices. twose has exhibited widely, including contributions to five venice architecture biennales and pq15, the prague quadrennial of performance design and space. samer wanan samer wanan is pursuing a phd in architecture by design at esala, the university of edinburgh. his research explores the politics of technology, as well as the material and temporal limits of architectural space and its representation within politically charged environments. samer holds degrees from birzeit university in palestine and newcastle university, uk. he previously worked as a faculty member at birzeit university. of technology, massey university, and the university of auckland for over 25 years. he has published extensively across many disciplines, including books, book chapters, and journal articles. he writes and publishes poetry in tongan, with some translated into other languages. he is a leading proponent of tāvāism as a brand of philosophy of reality. anoma pieris anoma pieris is a professor of architecture at the melbourne school of design. her recent publications include the anthology architecture on the borderline: boundary politics and built space (2019) and the architecture of confinement: incarceration camps of the pacific war (2022), co-authored with lynne horiuchi. anoma was guest curator with martino stierli, sean anderson, and evangelos kotsioris of the 2022 moma exhibition, the project of independence: architectures of decolonization in south asia, 1947–1985. sēmisi fetokai potauaine sēmisi fetokai potauaine works as a multi-media artist practising across a number of disciplines, notably architecture and sculpture. sēmisi’s research interests include time and space, culture and language, theory and practice, and art and literature, amongst others. he has co-authored books and book chapters, and written book chapters and journal articles. he is a lecturer at te pūkenga unitec institute of technology school of architecture, focusing on design studio, design fabrication, and design research. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 23 f i x i n g jeanette budgett dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome steven jackson’s formulation of “broken world thinking” proposes that modernity’s structuring of the last two hundred years of human history has led to an “always-almost-falling-apart” world in which entropic breakdown, dissolution and change are the prevailing conditions (2014: 221–2). only through a constant process of fixing and creative reinvention has a fragile stability been able to be maintained. jackson’s observations of sociotechnical complexes suggest that in design and production-focused disciplines, innovation, novelty, and progress are prevailing paradigms. how might this “productivist bias” be countered by taking erosion, breakdown and decay as our starting points? in this article i explore this possibility with respect to a controversial proposed landfill in dome valley, north of tāmaki makaurau auckland. soaring global consumption and massive waste production are problems largely masked: the management of the waste stream in wealthy cities has been rendered invisible. waste is all too visible, however, in the cities of the developing world where waste management infrastructures are often informal and rubbish piles up on roadsides and riverbanks. despite the good intentions of waste management and minimisation strategies enshrined in recent new zealand legislation (waste minimisation act 2008) and auckland’s own zero waste by 2040 policy (auckland council, 2018), the waste stream to nz landfills increased by 47% between 2010 and 2019. in aotearoa new zealand, escalating construction waste and hazardous waste make up 57% of the class 1 landfill waste stream, 33% and 24% respectively (ministry for the environment, 2021:1). this burgeoning waste has prompted a proposal for a new regional landfill in dome valley, north of auckland (tonkin and taylor, 2018). located adjacent to a forest park and a river, local residents including māori iwi (tribal groups), have been catalysed to fight the proposal. the controversial dome valley landfill proposal signals many complex ecological, planning, legislative, technical and design problems, as well as raising cultural tensions. there is no obvious “fix”. relentless urban growth and unremitting consumerism mean material waste streams and the design of the landscapes that absorb them remain intensely problematic. irreconcilable environmental, cultural and developmental trajectories coalesce, no less so in the proposal for dome valley. in the absence of simple solutions, this paper seeks in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 24 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g alternative ways of living with waste, and examines the work of artists and architects who have explored such possibilities. it has been over 50 years since a dawning awareness of modernity’s impacts provoked the artistic experiments of billy apple and mierles laderman ukeles. their work materialised matter, maintenance and labour in strategic (and often provocative) performances, and i suggest, still provides fertile ways to engage conceptually with this field of problems. by reconceptualising waste sites through these artists’ broken-world thinking i hope to proactively reappraise our understanding of waste and indicate possible new perspectives on the dome valley proposal. the dome valley landfill proposal visible waste is contentious. no-one wants a dump in their backyard, even when modern landfills and their associated renewable energy parks meet vastly higher standards than the chaotic tips of the past. landfills are the municipal waste solutions of choice in new zealand over international alternatives, such as incineration (tonkin and taylor, 2018: 22). incineration requires more consistent waste streams than auckland can supply, produces toxic atmospheric emissions, and generates a sizeable ash waste stream to dispose of (bruce middleton, waste not consultants, personal communication, july 10, 2021). notwithstanding aspirational future waste policies that focus on circular economy principles, reduction, reuse, recycling, recovery, and regeneration, “recycling growth has stalled” (tonkin and taylor 2018:16). auckland’s ballooning annual waste stream will exceed current landfill capacity in a few years. a large secluded rural site in the dome valley (1020 ha) was selected to ensure little to no visual sighting of the landfill from public roads, although the trucking of waste to the location, 70 miles outside auckland, will be visible and noisy (142). in reducing visual impacts, the dome valley proposal attempts to render invisible the city’s inconvenient waste. such practices are not new. multi-coloured bins streamline the classifying, structuring and segregating of waste flows that mark a modern society. water-based sewerage systems facilitate effortless and efficient disappearance of human waste. in general, “disposability, denial and distance” structure modern relations with waste and these inflect the current debate on the dome valley proposal (hawkins, 2006: 21). zero waste goals have proved hard to achieve (trickey, 2019). the auckland city council’s zero waste strategy calls for demolition and deconstruction centres to be established, yet it has contracted out much waste management to the private sector. independent commissioners recently granted resource consent to a private waste management company for the dome valley landfill in june 2021, after years of objection by mana whenua (indigenous māori people with ancestral association and authority over the territory) and other community groups (rnz, 2020). ngāti manuhiri object to the unacceptable risks to the ecology of waterways leading to the hoteo river and the kaipara harbour, new zealand’s largest estuary. the harbour’s seagrass meadows are a significant nursery for fish species (morrison et al., 2014), and an exceptionally rich traditional food source for local maori that would potentially be placed under threat. māori have established tikanga (customary values, protocols, and practices) in relation to managing different types of wastes. these “continue to play a role in contemporary life and have a large influence on the way māori have consistently in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 25 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g responded to and involved themselves in dealing with waste management issues” (pauling and ataria, 2010: 19). for example, human waste did not enter into any kind of māori agricultural economy as manure was strictly tapu (under sacred prohibition). a rigorous separation was required between the human food chain and human waste; hence the extreme sensitivity to pollution of waterways by human waste (pauling and ataria, 2010: 19). sewage sludge and sanitary waste (currently 4.5 % of the waste stream to class 1 nz landfills) make this a matter for concern (ministry for the environment, 2021: 1). the integrated kaipara harbour management group, a māori-led partnership of local and territorial authorities, has been shaped and guided by the joint visions of mātauranga māori, (māori knowledge) and western science. their goals have been endorsed in recent years by extensive government funding for harbour restoration to reverse the impacts of sedimentation. the dome valley landfill proposal reconfigures the top of the watershed as a dump, reversing the trajectory of these restorative initiatives. it exemplifies the ongoing appropriation and “re-spatialising” of the land in an exploitative colonial history that prompts rod barnett to ask “how do you design a colonial landscape?” (2021: 1–3). despite proposed measures to mitigate environmental impacts such as planting and protection of 15km of identified streams, ngāti manuhiri settlement trust acting chief executive nicola macdonald says that’s not the point: “auckland council needs to consider, is it proper, is it practice, to establish landfills that are adjacent to natural water sources?” (chiang, 2021). mana whenua argue that the proposal significantly denies their cultural worldview, guaranteed under te tiriti o waitangi/ the treaty of waitangi. as the chief executive of te rūnanga o ngāti whātua, put it, “we can’t continue the sorts of things we’re doing to papatūānuku. imagine putting that on your mother and creating these sorts of landfills and toxic dumps. it’s not acceptable in this day and age” (bell, 2020). in māori tradition papatūānuku, is the land, the earth mother who gives birth to all things. invoking the spiritual life force of the land gives full voice to the concepts of maori kaitiakitanga (guardianship and protection of the environment), which is how iwi maintain their mana whenua. this goal is supported by the framework of whakapapa (genealogical connections of family and relationships between all things in the cosmos). whenua—meaning both land and placenta in te reo māori—is the place from which humanity emerges and to which it returns. these frameworks of whakapapa, creation myths and kaitiakitanga mean “people and communities are one component of this holistic view, and their roles and behaviour are modulated by a system of mutual dependency, reciprocity, obligations and consequence” (allen et al., 2009: 240). māori are not the only objectors. other groups also strongly oppose the siting of the tip near waterways, fearing environmental destruction, and many in this rural community object to being auckland’s dumping ground (rnz, 2021). banishing waste from the city plays out a familiar trope of environmentalism, what gay hawkins would call a “disenchantment story” in which waste is othered as the dark “underworld of capitalist accumulation” (hawkins, 2006: 16, 63). it plays into an environmentalist discourse that posits purity and pollution, nature and culture in oppositional pairs. “dumping waste is an expression of a contempt for nature. humans establish their sense of mastery over and separation from a passive desacralized nature by fouling it” (16). when caught in this dualism, “waste can only be bad […]” (17). in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 26 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g what happens when rather than being disenchanted with waste, we pay close attention to its presence? are there alternative ways to imagine waste in thought and practice that might reconcile such divided views. while ecological science provides one such approach, the work of two artists i suggest may provide another.1 billy apple ®: persistent matter between 1969 and 1973, new zealand artist billy apple made ephemeral installations and processual performance art in his alternative artist-run gallery, apple, in soho new york city. he claimed “every act that took place in the space from the moment the artist entered was considered an integral part of his/her art activity. in the space there was no breakdown between art and non-art activities” (barton, 2020: 136). apple’s arrival in new york coincided with a period of slowing post-war growth: declining manufacturing industries had left the city, and their former factories and warehouses became studios and galleries, cheaply rented by artists and art collectives. a countercultural context: the rise of anti-war, race and gender equal rights and environmental movements had a catalytic effect on the emergent alternative art scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s. in this context, aspects of material consumption and its messy residue came to preoccupy apple. apple’s art from this period involved handling and transferring materials, transforming them in both real and perceptual ways. he used the general title accumulations for a number of these works. apple had previously used neon as fig. 1 billy apple, 1971. matter transformation: glass, earth, stone 1971. [photograph, courtesy of billy apple® archive, jerry vis] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 27 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g a sculptural medium. from compositions of form and light like the neon floors series (1969) he increasingly focused on the light tubes themselves, broken and randomly distributed as glass matter, and this led to acts of sorting, arranging, tidying and cleaning that culminated in grinding the broken glass shards into fine dust (e.g. matter transformations: glass, earth, stone, 1971; fig.1). the dust was eventually laid to rest on a forested back road in upstate new york, in an attempt to finally expunge it. the scene was recorded by photograph and text, a new residue capturing the “conundrum,” as barton describes it, of apple’s work; “the quest for purity and its material remainder: the play or tension between art and life, idea and actuality” (2020: 136). motivated in part by a natural fastidiousness, apple’s attempts to erase matter came from his ontological interest in the “negative condition”, a preoccupation that brought non-art activities into the sphere of art (barton, 2020: 156). he mused about his series spot cleaning, “if you wipe a dirty spot off the wall, you’ve removed it, but you haven’t eliminated it. you’re stuck with a dirty rag you didn’t have before” (10). in manhattan street accumulation parts 1 & 2, 1970 apple collected broken glass from new york streets, meticulously recording weights, colours, and personal injuries sustained. his fieldwork was tightly prescribed by a set of rules that generated processual and formally contingent results. he followed this work with coca cola elimination (1970) in which he collected and redeemed found coca cola bottles, obsessively recording times and places on scraps of recycled paper, in the process spatially mapping an alternative city. bartering bottles for refunds reversed the typical commercial exchange of goods for consideration. barton contextualises this work as a timely critique of rampant consumer culture at the beginning of the 1970s, when the impacts of mass consumption and disposability (which the coke bottle represented par excellence) were becoming increasingly visible (154). apple actively deployed his own bodily waste in this period, famously culminating in work (excretory wipings and bodily activities may 1970–june 1973) that documented his own secretions and eliminations over a period of three years, preserving them on tissue paper. shown at the serpentine galley (london, 6–28 april 1974) this work produced a public outcry. in the absence of institutional support a humiliated apple removed them from the show—duly retitling them a requested subtraction (10.04.74). the project was risky and the apparently wretched material of the serpentine show was too confronting for a london gallery-going public. although he ultimately retracted the work, he upheld his conceptual position that a human life and its abject waste might be art. apple made the show all about himself, but barton contends he did not centre himself as a humanist subject. rather he made himself “nothing more than an organic machine going about the ordinary business of living” (barton, 2020: 175). his work exposed the human body in a way that recalls eco-feminist philosopher donna haraway, who wrote: [b]odies as objects of knowledge are material-semiotic nodes. their boundaries materialize in social interaction. boundaries are drawn by mapping practices; ‘objects’ do not pre-exist as such. objects are boundary projects. but boundaries shift from within; boundaries are very tricky. what boundaries provisionally contain remains generative, productive of meanings and bodies. siting (sighting) boundaries is a risky practice (1988: 595). in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 28 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g apple’s artistic attention to waste matter shows he was alert to the growing environmentalism of the early 1970s: the piles of colour-sorted glass and the rigorous collecting of tissue samples, his careful documenting of time and place. he rejected, however, the dualism between human culture and non-human nature, implicit in many environmental discourses, in which each “ultimately stands as ontologically distinct from the other” (hawkins, 2006: 17). apple signalled a deep ontological continuity between humans and their waste, and implicated waste in the formation of an ethical and aesthetic sensibility. behind the horror that greeted his serpentine show was his public outing of private personal rituals of elimination and pleasure. apple’s alternative (and provocative) artistic experimentation led him to reveal what had been made private and invisible by the modern infrastructural apparatus of bathrooms, drains, sewers and treatment stations. apple thought about “waste not as phobic […] but as things we are caught up with” (20). in haraway’s terms apple presented himself not as a classically sealed masculine body but a leaky “boundary project” (haraway, 1988: 595). mierles laderman ukeles: labour matters an artist who made the politics of maintenance, and in particular the labour of cleaning up, more explicit still, was mierles laderman ukeles, working in new york at the same time as apple. her 1969 manifesto for maintenance art resulted from her experience of motherhood and is considered one of the first artworks to frame the work of home and mother as art. caught between her avid desire to be an artist and the compelling demands of childcare, she was driven to rethink maintenance and care as art. the manifesto proposed an exhibition (to be named ‘care’) and made an important conceptual distinction: b. two basic systems: development and maintenance. the sourball of every revolution: after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on monday morning? development: pure individual creation; the new; change; progress; advance; excitement; flight or fleeing. maintenance: keep the dust off the pure individual creation; preserve the new; sustain the change; protect progress; defend and prolong the advance; renew the excitement; repeat the flight (ukeles, 1969: 1). interestingly this dual formulation of development and maintenance came from an understanding of new york as both a creative force and a planning project. progressive ideals galvanised a group of city planners working for the department of city planning, including ukeles’ husband, jack. this group drafted a plan that identified two outstanding missions for the city’s governors. the first idealised the city as an “opportunity generator” offering a chance for residents to be lifted out of poverty, primarily through development (freilich, 2020: 1). the second provided traditional maintenance services such as cleaning streets, collecting rubbish, protecting water supplies and other key services. while her husband was captivated by development, ukeles found herself compelled by the ordinary work of city sanitation workers and sought to make it visible as art (freilich, 2020: 1). new york’s escalating sanitation crisis of the late 1960s most affected low-income neighbourhoods and resulted in protests and the famous 1968 nine-day strike by sanitation workers that left the city wading in rubbish. a fiscal crisis had already resulted from the loss of manufacturing, and was further exacerbated by a in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 29 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g mass exodus of the white middle class to the suburbs and a resultant loss of city revenue. as social theorists and geographers stephen graham and nigel thrift point out, infrastructure becomes uniquely visible on breakdown: “the sudden absence of infrastructural flow creates visibility just as the continued normalized use of infrastructure creates a deep taken-for-grantedness and invisibility” (graham & thrift, 2007: 8). the cultural visibility of infrastructure, like that of housework, is undermined by its embeddedness, ubiquity and routine practice, and ukeles set about returning it to view. manifesto for maintenance proposed that ukeles would perform domestic chores in the museum, conduct interviews with the public about their relationship to maintenance, and bring a truckload of city rubbish (or alternatively a container of polluted hudson river water) into the museum for rehabilitation and recycling. ukeles imagined the museum as “the secular center of culture, as the fulcrum where the transformation of material of our lives and of the planet becomes robust” (freilich, 2020: 1). radically she proposed that this highly-valorised institution might become a place where the ordinary and necessary work of cleaning could be performed and profound acts of repair occur. ukeles’ vison of bringing together the museum with the infrastructure of waste disposal found an accidental sequel many years later in 2015, when the new whitney museum of american art was established in the former meat-packing district on the west side of manhattan. one commentator appreciated architect renzo piano’s architectural references to the gritty history of the neighbourhood and argued that the new museum on the banks of the hudson river set up a “fundamentally different relationship to the city” through large glass windows (kennicott, 2015). unintentionally granting ukeles’ desire for visibility of the city’s cleaners, these windows overlooked the premises of the new york department of sanitation on the river pier. this fortuitous view of the city’s essential infrastructure was not expected to remain; kennicott eagerly anticipated the gentrification of the waterfront: writing that the “magnificent views of new jersey will only improve as the city replaces functional buildings, including an incinerator, with more park space” (kennicott, 2015). one can imagine ukeles’ disappointment. her desire to make visible “the transformation of the material of our lives… that miraculous transformation” from within the culturally sanctioned space of the museum was only briefly granted (freilich, 2020: 1). ukeles and apple were less interested in making aesthetic objects for exhibition than advancing manifestos and performative processual work. they attested to a difficult cultural relationship with waste; noting in passing the conspicuous consumption that underpins contemporary social life, recognising the daily tasks of managing waste, confronting the distaste and provocation of abject matter, acknowledging the low-status of lowly paid work and addressing the difficulties of disposal. their work requires us to “think about waste as a flexible category grounded in social relations”(hawkins, 2006: 8), and to see the cultural and metaphysical implications of anthropologist mary douglas’s famous assertion that dirt is “matter out of place” (douglas cited in lindner & meissner, 2016: 4). in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 30 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g noel lane: situated infrastructures a decade later in new zealand a postmodern architectural proposal reversed ukeles’ proposal to take the city’s waste to the museum, and instead took the museum to the tip. david mitchell and gillian chaplin concluded their book the elegant shed: new zealand architecture since 1945, with a discussion of an international competition for a hometown museum and culture centre “that will inspire delving into the past, research and growth for the future [. . .].” (1984: 110). noel lane, then an architectural student at the university of auckland, grew up in helensville, a small town on the kaipara harbour. his museum project monumentalised the town rubbish dump, sited on tidal flats where he had hunted for treasure as a child: “the resting place, to him, of helensville’s culture” (109). here amidst smells and squawking gulls, he laid out a walled enclosure with a postmodern classical sensibility, positioned a diagonal portico set against a mirrored wall to reflect the hills behind the town, erected an obelisk to mark the spot where the river crossed the site and laid a hovering black granite ramp for the rubbish fig. 2 noel lane, (1980). hometown museum made of the helensville rubbish tip. [photograph, denise moore] trucks. lane depicted his field of allegorical elements one thousand years in the future, after fire, water and sand had raked the site’s surface. only monumental fragments poking through the midden of matter and memory remained. mitchell was impressed by this poetic and powerful monumentalising of “the processes of everyday life in this country” (109). lane’s cross-programming of museum and tip aspired to the same kind of performative visibility for waste sought by apple and ukeles. lane’s hometown museum of culture memorialised ordinary objects and recognised the potential for a redemptive relationship with cast-off waste. the informal recycling that took place at municipal rubbish dumps in the mid-twentieth century hints at the tip as a source, as much as an endpoint, of value and cultural stories. lane’s view was framed through the postmodern archaeological preoccupations of the 1980s, according to which there is no tabula rasa, only palimpsest. culture is laid down in layers of waste. the project is pervaded by surrealist bricolage and a culture of memory activated by strewn ruins and cultural debris. the rubbish of the past is today’s archaeology. how might today’s discarded artefacts, defamiliarised and made strange, reflect on the present in the future? in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 31 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g hawkins points to walter benjamin’s thinking on “the energy surrealism was able to invest in everyday debris […] and how confrontations with wasted things can crystallise the dynamics of commodity value” (hawkins, 2006: 109–10). she quotes bill brown to make this point again: “benjamin recognised that the gap between the function of objects and the desires congealed there became clear only when those objects became outmoded” (brown in hawkins, 2006: 110). used goods and second-hand artefacts resonate with provenance and are subject to oscillating vagaries of desire. they counter the deadening effects of commodity culture’s cycles of appearance and disappearance, disposal and replacement, offering instead glimpsed cycles of renewal and regeneration. benjamin’s speculations on “how commodity culture has displaced nature’s transitoriness onto commodities” prompt hawkins to speculate that simply seeing wasted things may be enough to “change the destructive logic of commodification, to make us aware of the impacts of disposability as transience without renewal” (108, 110). lane’s helensville museum project rejects the view of the town dump as a passive wasteland. he contributes a new urban imaginary in which waste disposal is a locus of cultural significance and artfully brings transience into view. in(con)cluding controversy over the dome valley landfill proposal, currently caught up in multiple approval and appeal processes, is far from over (rnz, 2021). the issues are complex, involving overlapping fields of care: care for the environment, the city, and the indigenous world view. at present, infrastructural policy premised on making waste invisible frequently trumps these fields of care. how might the toxic waste stream of a contemporary global city be reconceptualised as continuous with the livelihoods, habitats and land to which it is proposed to be returned? how can the handling of waste honour its material origins as well as deepen connections and uphold our responsibilities to that land? (hutton, 2019). this article has tried to indicate some prospects for such a reconceptualisation. the assumption that the valley is an empty passive receptacle for waste has been thoroughly challenged by ancestral occupiers. the lack of timely consultation with mana whenua for whom co-creation of a solution may have opened a productive exchange has not helped. commentators suggest there will be other sites, however objections might apply, in principle, to all sites in the auckland region. the auckland isthmus is sheltered between three harbours, seldom exceeding 40 kilometres across, and is nowhere far from waterways and ancestral māori mahinga kai (traditional food growing and harvesting sites). simply choosing another site is unlikely to avoid the underlying problems. gary taylor of the environmental defence society encapsulates the tensions, “how do you weigh up intangible cultural values strongly opposed to a rubbish dump, when the tangible reality is that auckland desperately needs another landfill?” (chiang, 2021). to instigate a meaningful co-creation between māori and pākeha that honours te tiriti o waitangi; and find a way to resolve these tensions, we need to face the ideologies of waste implicit in policies and practices, and manifest in existing infrastructures. this will require broken-world thinking, understanding ourselves in a material world of constant entropic change, cycling between the new, improvised, maintained, and barely going. as hawkins suggests, zero waste is an illusory goal: wasted states are a necessary precondition in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 32 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g of life itself. in this paper, i have offered the work of apple, ukeles, and lane as provocative attempts to think about what it means to be reciprocally entangled with waste. theirs is an art of transience connecting waste, culture, and the techniques of self in an attempt to find a new ethical disposition for relations with rubbish; one not founded on disposability, denial, and distance. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 33 dirt under our fingernails: daylighting waste at the dome f i x i n g references allen, w. ataria, j. m., marina apgar, j., harmsworth, g., & tremblay, l. a. (2009). kia pono te mahi putaiao—doing science in the right spirit, journal of the royal society of new zealand, 39:4, 239–242 doi:10.1080/03014220909510588 auckland council (2018). auckland waste management and minimisation plan. retrieved from https://www. aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/ plans-projects-policies-reportsbylaws/our-plans-strategies/ topicbased-plans-strategies/ environmental-plans-strategies/ pages/waste-managementminimisation-plan.aspx barnett, r. (2021). utu in the anthropocene, places journal. retrieved from https:// placesjournal.org /article/ redesigning-colonial-landscapes/ barton, christina. (2020). billy apple® life/work. auckland: auckland university press. bell, j. (2020, tuesday november 24). dome valley landfill plan: ngati manuhiri vows to continue fight against dump. rnz. retrieved from https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ national/431369/dome-valleylandfill-plan-ngati-manuhiri-vowsto-continue-fight-against-dump chiang, j. 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(2014). rethinking repair. in t. gillespie, p. boczkowski, k. foot (eds.). media technologies: essays on communication, materiality and society (pp. 221–240). cambridge, ma: mit press. kennicott, p. (2015, 19 april). at the whitney, a new relationship forges a different relationship with the city. the washington post. retrieved from https:// www.washingtonpost.com/ entertainment/museums/atthe-whitney-a-new-structureforges-a-different-relationshipwith-the-city/2015/04/18/ ec59948c-e5d1-11e4-b510962fcfabc310_story.html kunstler, j. (2000). an interview with jane jacobs, godmother of the american city. metropolis magazine, retrieved from https:// www.metropolismag.com/cities/ jane-jacobs-godmother-of-theamerican-city/ lindner, c., & meissner, m. (eds.). (2016). global garbage. urban imaginaries of waste, excess, and abandonment. london, uk: routledge. ministry for the environment (2021). estimates of waste generated in aotearoa new zealand. retrieved from https:// environment.govt.nz/facts-andscience/waste/estimates-ofwaste-generated/ mitchell, d. and chaplin, g. (1984). the elegant shed, new zealand architecture since 1945. auckland, nz: oxford university press. morrison, m., lowe, m.l., makey, l., et al. (2014) habitats of particular significance for fisheries management: the kaipara harbour, new zealand aquatic environment and biodiversity report no.129. wellington: ministry for primary industries. pauling, c., ataria, j. (2010) tiaki para: a study of ngai tahu values and issues regarding waste, landcare research science series. lincoln, nz: manaaki whenua press. rnz (2020, friday september 25). dome valley landfill would have “unacceptable” effect on ecology auckland city council. retrieved from https://www.rnz. co.nz/news/national/426902/ dome-valley-landfill-would-haveunacceptable-effect-on-ecologyauckland-council rnz (2021, friday september 10). dome valley landfill: auckland council declines waste management plan change. retrieved from https://www.rnz. co.nz/news/national/451235/ dome-valley-landfill-aucklandcouncil-declines-wastemanagement-plan-change tonkin and taylor (2019). auckland regional landfill, assessment of environmental effects. retrieved from https:// www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/ plans-projects-policies-reportsbylaws/our-plans-strategies/ unitary-plan/auckland-unitaryplan-modifications/proposedplan-changes/pc%2042%20 %20technical%20reports/ technical-report-a-geotechnicalfactual-report.pdf trickey, e., (2019, thursday november 21) san franciso’s quest to make landfills obsolete. politico. retrieved from https://www.politico.com/ news/magazine/2019/11/21/ san-francisco-recyclingsustainability-trashlandfills-070075 ukeles, mierles laderman. (1969). 1969 manifesto for maintenance art. proposal for an exhibition “care.” retrieved from https:// www.artpractical.com/uploads/ docs/5.4-ukeles_manifesto.pdf waste minimisation act 2008. retrieved from https:// www.legislation.govt.nz/act/ public/2008/0089/latest/ dlm999802.html endnotes as pākeha, it is not my intent to evaluate māori ideas, experiences, or practices; nor to assume they can be conflated with pākeha ones. rather, they have prompted me to inquire into alternatives to the prevailing modern relation to waste. it would be for māori to determine the extent to which the practices and possibilities i discuss are compatible with their own tikanga (values and practices), particularly as regards human waste. in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a 73 t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a jonathan lahey dronsfield what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text “the relationship of bodies is didactic, they must learn, learn each other; such a relationship is also established (i would even say indissolubly so) through the voice.” [jacques roubaud, the great fire of london] “to speak with the words of others... that’s what i’d like.” [jean eustache, the mother and the whore] 0. spinoza lector. in may 2017 i read spinoza’s ethics out loud in public in a gallery space over a period of 24 hours. or rather, i read the transcript of the previous such reading of ethics, including all the discussion it generated, which was itself a reading of the first time spinoza’s ethics was read out and discussed over a period of 24 hours.1 i call such events performative readings. they form part of a “book to come”, the swerve of freedom after spinoza (dronsfield, 2015a). in what follows i offer a philosophical justification for the readings and outline the philosophical stakes of the project, together with the motivation for doing the readings. i. “one dreams of spinoza’s ethics read by alain cuny.” why? because the voice dramatises the concept. so deleuze (2006a, 326). it seems that concepts can be acted as something like characters, “rhythmic characters” as deleuze puts it, because their interaction with other concepts can be dramatised. one of the main concepts of spinoza’s ethics is of course the affect. in what sense can the concept of affect be dramatised? in a number of texts across his career, deleuze sought to show that breaking through the surface of the ethics, disrupting it, fracturing it, is another ethics. this “second ethics” affects the reader. the ethics may be the discourse of the concept of affect, but at the same time it is a discourse which itself affects. the force of this second ethics is to be found, according to deleuze, in one of the specific components of the ethics, its scholia. the task is not to work out how the scholia fit into the overall conceptual development; they don’t (deleuze, 1995b; 165). if all the other component parts—definitions, explications, axioms, postulates, propositions, proofs, corollaries, lemmata, prefaces, appendices—form the discourse of the concept, then the scholia disrupt that discursive flow, dynamise it, intensify it, slow it down or speed it up, turn and de-turn it. they are the site of 74 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a the text’s affective moments. and their action is undercurrent and subterranean: deleuze’s favourite dimension because you cannot see it coming, and before you know it, it is everywhere the ungrounding of what you can see. the rhizome, the stratigraphic, the scholium. and such is the role played by the scholia that by the time we reach the final part of the ethics, part v, titled “of the power of the intellect, or of human freedom”, the geometric method of the previous four parts, one of exposition, has transformed into a geometric method of invention. part v is, in short, the “third ethics” of the ethics. now, not only does deleuze argue that there are two (or three) ethics in the ethics, he also, though less insistently, contends that a “double reading” of the ethics is possible, one which he calls an “affective reading”. the term “affective reading” occurs, to my knowledge, only once in deleuze’s many writings on spinoza: there is a double reading of spinoza: on the one hand, a systematic reading in pursuit of the general idea and the unity of the parts, but on the other hand and at the same time, the affective reading [la lecture affective], without an idea of the whole, where one is carried along or set down, put in motion or at rest, shaken or calmed according to the velocity of this or that part. (1988: 129) so, two ethics in the ethics, and two ways of reading the ethics, where the latter pair are not reducible to or equatable with the former. there would appear to be a determinate relation between them, and it is the scholia that dramatise that relation. it would seem that if the reader of the ethics can be affected in his or her reading of it, then the scholia play a leading role in effecting the affective charge of the text. this is what enables deleuze to say that a non-philosopher can encounter the ethics in such a way that they receive an “immediate” or “sudden” illumination. of what? pleasure for instance (shirley’s translation of the latin laetitia). but we must put into question the temporality implied by deleuze here. the scholia may be the principal site of philosophy’s relation to non-philosophers, they may be the ethics’ direct address to “anyone” to read it, whether philosophers or no (deleuze, 1995a: 139–40), but this directness ought not to be equated with immediacy. ii. laetitia or pleasure (joy in curley’s translation), is one of the three primary or primitive affects in the ethics, along with tristitia or pain (“sadness” in curley’s translation), and cupiditas or desire. the primary affects of pleasure and pain are introduced in e3p11. they emanate from chance encounters, encounters with bodies external to us, they form compositions with other bodies, we passively undergo such encounters, and our affections transition passively, to greater perfection if pleasure, lesser if pain. greater perfection here means a power of activity. but we also experience active transitions, to states of greater or lesser activity. affects, then, can be reactions or actions. in either case, the affects in question are not simply or solely bodily. the transitionings involve ideas. an affect is a relation of body to mind. but spinoza is not a dualist. mind and body are essentially the same. thus, there cannot be a causal relation between them. the body does not determine what the mind thinks (e3p2). the relation is characterised in terms of adequacy and inadequacy, and relation is itself an idea inadequate 75 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a to the “one”, the “one and the same thing” that mind and body are (spinoza, 1982: e2p7s and e3p2s). the mind is an idea of body, and what the mind thinks will adequate or not adequate to the body. if affects are produced by external causes then the mind will be passive with respect to them. we can be led astray by how affects act upon the mind. we can be ignorant of the causes of our affections. we can be unknowing of why we desire the way we do. we are vulnerable to affection. imagination as an act of mind is inadequate and can lead us into error. but we must hear inadequacy, vulnerability, even error, without value, or accept as a task the need to think them positively. we are felicitously vulnerable to the erotic. imagination is an inadequate but necessary form of knowledge. it is possible to have images of things which do not correspond to the external object (e2p47s), but this can be a resource and an enrichment of the mind. reason is adequate ideas. reason can bring us to an understanding of our passions, those things with respect to which we are otherwise passive, such that we can have an active and adequate relation to them, where adequacy implies that we are not slaves to our passions. equally, the passions can lead the mind to have ideas it would otherwise not have, can give it powers of activity it would otherwise not have, can reveal transitions of the body of which we would otherwise not be aware; moreover, to an awareness of how those transitions, powers and passions are themselves constitutive of thought. indeed, the mind would have no notion of transition, and thus of change, and difference between adequation and inadequation, without the affective body. presentness of body, if there is such a thing, is given by affect. but affect is also what divides self-presence. affects can as well be produced by the action of mind in reason. transitions to reason are not separations from or the renunciation of affect. affect is involved in all forms of thought. thus, affect cannot be reduced to immediacy, or predicated as speed over slowness. and affective reading cannot be reduced to immediacy (as is supposed, for instance, by dan smith [2008: 2].) iii. there is at least one other instance of deleuze invoking the notion of “affective reading”, when he says that the close-up in eisenstein gives such a reading. the close-up is “both a type of image and a component of all images” (1986: 87). it is not that with the close-up one sees more closely, it is that a leap is effected; the difference is qualitative not quantitative. it is intensive. the temptation, or the presupposition, is to think this as immediacy. intensivity is not immediacy. what is intensified is the relation of part to whole. the close-up is not partial, not a part of a greater whole, it is the affective relation to the whole, where the affect is expressed as a whole. deleuze compares scholia to snapshots: “photographs suddenly taken, freezing the progress in temporary immobility” (1992: 349). if, as deleuze maintains, the scholia are therefore shown not to correspond to the proposition, or what is given in the proof of the proposition, it is because the discussion is halted, and the concept under discussion seen to work less familiarly. the scholia defamiliarise what is common, and reveal the common otherwise. we should understand this not as immediacy, but as a spacing in time. 76 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a iv. at the end of e2p49s spinoza says that from his account “can be drawn many excellent lessons, most useful and necessary to know” and that these will “partly be disclosed in what is to follow”. if the scholia are lessons to be drawn from what has been demonstrated in the proofs, then they do not repeat what is demonstrated, they double it. they prove it again, as if for the first time. they enjoy a relative independence from what they double. both ostensive and expressive of a first-person spinozan “i”. could we go as far as to say more comprehensible, perhaps even more didactic? if so, they rely on examples drawn from lessons of life. the latin scholium comes from the greek σχόλιον, scholion, itself derived from σχολή (school) in the sense of band, troop, company, a multitude to whom lessons might be given. but thereby do scholia run a risk. in making understood to a greater number that which is otherwise proved geometrically, that is with rigour and precision, the risk run by scholia is what martin heidegger (2012: 97) calls “massiveness”, one of the ways in which modern humanities’ abandonment of being is covered over. the sense of σχολή that heidegger is alluding to is that of time, leisure time or free time, in which those with no practical imperative to do otherwise might spend in gaining wisdom—for instance in discussion or disputation, or in speculative inquiry. the question of speed is imperative here. if the ethics can be read as a composition—of speeds, of slownesses, of differential rhythm—then the way in which the scholia rhythm the text, give time to the text and make time within it, cannot be separated from the time to learn from what it says. if, then, the scholia are lessons of life, they are abstractions from, but not separate from, its practical necessities, ways of giving time in the flow of life. scholia are ways of giving time in the reading of the text, a time which is not reducible to the linear causal one of reason’s demonstrations. thus, in the reading of them out loud, one must give the scholia time to create a time, a time in which to think whether and to what extent spinoza affirms practical joy, for instance, as the outcome of his theoretical method. how, then, is the ethics to be read out loud if an affective reading of it is to be given? if a reading out loud of the ethics that deleuze dreams of is to do justice to it, then the scholia might need to be read in such a way as to allow them their disruptive force; or it could be a reading which would dramatise the concept such as to show the affect upon it of the scholia, or one which accords the scholia a different tone, one of “underneathness”. or maybe the drama occurs only in the final act. or perhaps it would be a rendering of the scholia only. read on their own the scholia would be “spinoza’s anti-bible” (deleuze, 1997: 146). v. paul saenger (1997: 13) points out that ancient texts could not but be uttered out loud if they were to be understood, for their words were not separated, they were written as scriptura continua, continuous and uninterrupted. it was in the written latin of the central middle ages that the orthographical practice of word separation came to be the norm, and with word separation came silent reading. for peter kivy (2006: 18) silent reading is not an ontological break with reading aloud, it is a “logical step” into another kind of performance of the text, but no 77 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a less a performance for that. kivy argues that all silent reading is performance art, that silent readings are performance art works, that silent readers are performing artists. but kivy is eliding the necessity of word separation with reading. texts in their being uttered out loud were not being read in the same way that we might say that we read a book out loud, they were being made into texts. to utter out loud a text written with words not separated was not to perform the text, it was to make it readable. in order to be comprehended, texts written as scriptura continua had to be made to sound out loud, to work out the rhythming and disjoining, the articulation and disambiguating of the writing. and in order to be made to sound out loud they needed to be spaced. the necessity of spatialising text was such that the words had first to be separated from the paper in order to be separated from each other, and at the same time made audible, made public, public to oneself, in order that they could then be uttered internally and said silently. for the “eyes only” to read, the words had first to be made available to the ear. reading-to-oneself as a silent practice may have followed on from reading out loud, but that sounding of the text is not the same as reading it. silent reading can be much quicker than reading aloud, for kivy because it comes closer to the speed of human thought. in her review essay of kivy’s book, susan l. feagin (2008: 94) points out that this is because human thought “can do its cognitive job” without knowing or worrying about how the words should or would sound or be pronounced. but anyone who has seen billie whitelaw or lisa dwan performing samuel beckett’s not i will know that texts can be spoken aloud more quickly than they can be read silently or even thought. moreover, no-one could do a “cognitive job” on not i without wondering how the words sound. it does not necessarily follow that those who perform or vocalise the text, and act precisely those things that enhance the reading, grasp cognitively what is being said. whilst agreeing with feagin’s objection to kivy, that he fails to appreciate the distinction between reading silently and performing silently, we object to her privileging cognition over the material sounding and spacing of words, and we do so precisely through something she herself appeals to in her critique: “affective flexibility”. vi. to read performatively out loud is to read with the affective flexibility produced by the combination of bodies. to read performatively out loud is to read subject to and subject of the affectivity of there being another body in combination with one’s own. and that body can be one’s own. to read performatively out loud is to read with another body with which to combine sensuously in the acts of reading and listening. and that audience can be oneself. in its reading out loud, the self is the sound of a voice which separates one from oneself. conjoined with and disjoined from one’s own body under the condition of affect. one’s voice has the capacity to affect oneself: for the human body is composed of very many individual bodies of different nature, and so it can be affected by one and the same body in many different ways. (e3p17s) from this, spinoza adduces what he calls the vacillation of emotion, correlative with the relation doubt has to imagination. but is there not a vacillation internal 78 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a to the concept of emotion? we feel, then we doubt, whether that be because we are subject to a conflicting emotion, or because the intellect intervenes in order to make itself adequate to the feeling. to this extent we may wonder whether it is possible, temporally, ever to be affected by just a single emotion. we argue here that one’s own body can be both the internal and external affective cause upon itself and be both a direct and indirect affective cause to itself. one such way is through the voice and hearing oneself speak: hearing oneself say something for reasons which are unclear to one, and that one may even disagree with; hearing oneself say something “unintentional”, yet for which one must accept responsibility. why is it that if one is reading out loud the words of another it becomes difficult to listen to the meaning of what one reads? the experience of reading the text of another differs from that of reading one’s own text. but can that difference be explained simply by the fact that one has written what one reads, or that one knows what one has written before reading it? one’s own written words can sound unrecognisable when one hears them read out loud. even one’s ownmost, one’s most intimate written words, if read out loud by another, can sound as if written by another. one’s ownmost written words can seem foreign if one hears them read out loud even by the very addressee of them. when in the closing sequence of michelangelo antonioni’s la notte lidia (jeanne moreau) reads aloud to giovanni (marcello mastroianni) a love letter, he asks who wrote it. you did, she says. he takes his having written the letter as proof that he loves her. she takes his not remembering that he wrote it as evidence that he does not. to try and listen to what one is saying when one reads out loud is not the same as to try and listen to what one is reading when one reads out loud. to try and listen to what one is reading is to try and understand it at the same time as speaking it. if one is reading out loud to another then one might be aware of the tone and the rhythm of the words one reads, but this would be in tension with, if not at the expense of, the meaning of those words. but how could one adjudge how to read apart from what it is one reads, is one not reading the words in order that they become better able to be understood? in reading out loud and at the same time trying to understand the meaning of what one reads, it is as if something of my own body withdraws. if i am to understand what i have read then i must follow this other in me, i must go after the other in me. i must separate myself from my own voice in order to hear it. it is as if i must participate in the collective act of listening to me. vii. to understand what deleuze (2006a: 326) means by the “dramatization of the concept”, we must look elsewhere than in the one-page text in which he says it and turn to his early work (2004 and 2006b). dramatisation is a method derived from nietzsche, specifically nietzsche’s insight that concepts are symptoms of forces without which they could not be thought. to dramatise a concept would be to draw out and make sensible the plural forces acting upon it. to dramatise a concept would be to make explicit those otherwise unseen, unheard forces in terms of their spatio-temporal dynamisms. this involves interpreting and evaluating the differential relation between the forces at work operating on the concept in the one or the text putting it to use, where the one or the text are 79 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a to be understood not psychologically, but perspectivally, as complexes of spaces and times. if as we have discussed the concept is rhythmed by the text which presents it then the actor makes these movements audible in space and time (deleuze, 2006a: 326). do we want to hear spinoza’s words acted, or would we rather hear them simply read aloud, spoken, declaimed? the risk of acting them is that they be interpreted and thus overdetermined as to their truth: each time different. the danger of declamation is that the truth of the text is presupposed and thus essentialised: each time the same. between the identity of the one doing the representing, and the resemblance of what is being represented, what is needed is the creation of a non-representational space of thought with which to encounter spinoza’s words. and that space can be achieved by treating the text as something like a composition or an architecture, formations and ecologies of space organising the movement of flows and intensities. if the reading out loud of a text is to be the production of a space of thought, if one is to set up at least the possibility of understanding what one reads aloud, and of being affected by it, then one must overcome a servility to the text, and rather than wait for the text to speak, or expect it to, become its master in order to make it speak. no, not to “make” a text speak, but to let it speak. letting be is not a passivity in the face of what one reads, it is not a servile imitation or simple repetition of the text, it is to allow to appear what one reads, by giving what one reads an appearance, a face, by giving voice to it. when i speak of a performative reading, i do not intend by that term to imply that the text is acted, still less interpreted. i mean that the problem of which the text treats is performed, and in the case of the text in question, spinoza’s ethics, this requires that the lines are read out under the condition of affect, in the same way that when one speaks to another one does so through one’s face. we have set out how for spinoza thought can never be separated from body, and how body is never without affect. consonant with deleuze, a new concept of affect would be nothing if it did not afford us not just a new understanding of affect, but a new perception of it. a new understanding of affect is not possible separate from a new perception of it. and if we are talking about affect, then a new perception of affect would bring with it an entire conceptual-perceptual affective space within which it is perceived. at the same time, it is not enough to assert this, but to demonstrate it in terms of its effects. or rather, to hold the words open for such demonstration, to incarnate them, to ex-posit them. hence the decision in spinoza lector to read out loud not just spinoza’s ethics, but the entire discussion generated by each previous reading. this in the hope of setting up a space of thought in which the drama of thinking could be seen to be taking place. it is a question of responsibility. simply to read the text reliant on what it has to state about affect as a concept would be an irresponsible reading, it would be to presume in advance that the concept needs only its abstract theoretical presentation, and not an actual affective exposition in order to be understood. hence the call for participants in the reading to “de-abstract and actualise” spinoza’s concepts under what lyotard (1991, xvii) calls “the responsibility of mouths and eyes of the flesh”. the question of whether actualising a concept means dramatising it in the manner of a drama is one that can only be answered in the vocalising of it: in the vocalisation both of the question and of the concept the question is 80 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a addressed to. and the answer will be multiple and equivocal in the sense that there will be more than one voice incarnated. a concept is both differential in itself, subject to and of multiple forces; and differentiated in its actualisation, set in relation to other concepts. a creative reading would need to perform both; a performative reading would need to create both. thus, part of the motivation for spinoza lector is to unfold the question whether an affective reading can be achieved performatively. performative reading is the performance of a problem rather than discussion of or about that problem. one can discourse on the question of what an affective reading is; or one can put into question what it is to read affectively by performing the problem. the question of what an affective reading is, is best approached, we argue, through discussing it under the condition of being affected in the reading. to the objection that what is being talked about here is an affected reading, we say that all reading is affected, that there has never been a reading which is not under the condition of one affect or another. the necessity of an affective reading out loud of spinoza’s ethics of the sort that i have set out might be said to draw support from something spinoza himself says: “nothing exists from whose nature an effect does not follow” (e1p36). it is not enough simply to state or assert what follows. one must demonstrate what follows not just theoretically in terms of a proof, but practically in terms of its effects. warren montag (1999: 3) is right to say that these two activities “depending upon circumstances, do not necessarily coincide”. it is in the non-coincidence that a risk emerges. with respect to the question of an affective reading, the risk is that in reading spinoza in such a way as to draw out the affectivity of the scholia (or any other part of the text), the reason which may produce ideas adequate to what an affective reading is will not be given the time or space to do its work. the economy of the affections could become such as to denude reason of its chance to reveal ideas with which to make sense of the affects we seek to accentuate. but this risk is at once a chance and becomes a necessary risk if we wish to know what effects follow from the affections of the body. we would not know of what the mind is capable unless we were to test the limits of the body. viii. there is another reason why if one is to encounter a text under both aspects of a double reading it is not sufficient simply to read a text out loud word-for-word. for there are words which are given by any text to be read out differently than how they are written, according to the way they are subject to the manners of the time in which they are uttered. such words are to be found in the margin. spinoza discusses this when treating of words which, innocent in the mouths of “writers of old”, came to have an obscene sense “when vice and intemperance were rife”: there was no need to alter scripture on this account, but in concession to the weak-mindedness of the common people they introduced the custom in public readings of substituting more acceptable words for sexual intercourse and excrement, as are marked in the marginal notes. (ttp ch. 9, §18 = 2002, 487) on the one hand we might take this to be an unnecessary and unwanted paternalism (we need no persuading of spinoza’s ambivalence towards “the common 81 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a people”), which raises the unanswerable question “who decides?” but we could also take it as an understanding on spinoza’s part of the materiality of the letter of the word, and that such materiality is as much a matter of its reading as it is of its writing. and again, we may say that the marginalisation of certain words deemed unacceptable by the manners of the time, in favour of what is written in the margin, is another form of spacing, and a space of thought. ix. according to deleuze, spinoza is a paradox because in his method he is “the most philosophical of philosophers”, yet in how he goes beyond method “the one who more than any other addresses nonphilosophers”. and what is meant here by “non-philosophical understanding” is affect. the reader is affected by the intensity of the ethics’ non-philosophical address: absolutely anyone can read spinoza, and be very moved, or see things quite differently afterward, even if they can hardly understand spinoza’s concepts. (deleuze, 1995b: 165–166) an affective reading of spinoza could begin anywhere within the ethics without an idea of the whole. in order to test this proposition the decision was made to read spinoza’s ethics over a period of 24 hours, in a public gallery space which anyone could enter or re-enter at any time. the resultant transcripts (published as books, dronsfield, 2017a and 2017b) attest to the fact that chance encounters and wanderings in and participation of passers-by and non-philosophers in both the reading and discussion all took place. another motivation for doing the performative reading was to ascertain whether the two folds of a “double reading”, discursive and affective, could be enfolded by one and the same reading, whether one could intensify the other. how else to unfold seriously the question that unless the reader appreciates both ways of reading spinoza, then they have not read him. on the one hand, the whole is not possible without an affective reading, without in this case the turnings and de-turnings of the discursive and the temporal spacing within it that the scholia are. on the other, someone without an idea of the whole can be affected by the close-up of the scholia such that they gain an impression of the whole. reading performatively not just spinoza’s ethics out loud, but the discussion generated by the previous reading too, in turn produces more discussion, in other words further disputation, doubt, disorder, chaos, clarity—all good conditions for the emergence of the intellect. it is a space of thought both discursive and affective. but it is important to stress that its being durational over a period of 24 hours makes it extremely difficult to tell where, if at all, the dividing line falls between the discourse and affect, between mind and body. there is a gap, but that gap is not fixed, nor decided in advance of the event of reading. this is another aspect of performativity—to effect a gap, to hold open that gap, and to tense the self by it. it is this gap that is productively exploited by moira gatens (2014) and pierre macherey (1996) with what they have to say about joy in spinoza (and deleuze), in particular “joyful deliberation” and “joyful passions” respectively. 82 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a x. we might say that an affective reading (of, say, a book, for example spinoza’s ethics) is one which opens up a way to assist the subject in attaining subjectivity, an exposure which would open a way for the subject to understand the passions to which she finds herself subject, a way which would enable her to achieve what we might say is the double-genitivity of subjectivity, whereby the subject becomes both subject to and subject of her passions. we find an example of just such an affective reading of spinoza in judith butler, in how she is first exposed to philosophy, as a young teenager taking refuge from the terror of family in the basement of the home and by chance encountering spinoza’s ethics: my emotions were surely rioting, and i turned to spinoza to find out whether knowing what they were and what purpose they served would help me learn how to live them in some more manageable way. (2004: 235) we do not know, she does not say, whether butler reads spinoza to herself silently, or out loud. xi. as is well known, ethics was not published in spinoza’s lifetime, and when it did appear it did so anonymously. indeed, having distributed the manuscript to a small number of friends, his readers, spinoza stopped a translation of it into dutch from being made, in the belief that it was only the fact that it existed in latin that prevented it from being banned. then can we say that the scholia are spinoza’s way of appending his signature to the text? after all, we find there a use of the first-person pronoun which appeals to experience, lessons of life, and to the doing of living. if spinoza is concerned with what follows on one from the other in the order of things, then we might take the scholia as subtle syncopation of lines of thought. and we might say of spinoza that with the scholia he sought to let quietly resonate the human voice in philosophy. a reintroduction of the human voice into philosophy and philosophy to the human voice: silently contra descartes. for spinoza not to sign his work is an autobiographical repression of his signature. as the site of the subjectification of the concept, where the affective is drawn out in its disruptive and productive effects upon the concept, we might say that the scholia are where, in a text which nowhere mentions the voice, and which discusses sound only in the scholia or appendices, spinoza’s voice may be heard, a voice without a name, a writing which sounds the voice in order to make room for a name which could not be written. would it be going too far to suggest that the scholia are the affective dramatisation of the conatus of the proper name “spinoza”? 83 what reading spinoza’s ethics out loud brings to and takes from the text t h e a r t s o f s p i n o z a + p a c i f i c s p i n o z a in t e r s t ic e s s p in o z a references antonioni, m. 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(s. shirley, trans.). indianapolis: hackett books. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 102 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s review / mark southcombe julia gatley & paul walker vertical living: the architectural centre and the remaking of wellington auckland university press, 2014 vertical living draws together, consolidates and rethinks the histories of the wellington architectural centre interwoven with a wider modern architectural history of wellington city. the broader intention, as authors julia gatley and paul walker state, is to begin writing “the city back into the history of architecture in new zealand” (2014: xi). this is the book’s strength but also its inherent limitation—a strength because it broadens the book’s scope and scholastic intent significantly, yet a weakness because, as the authors acknowledge, the writing of the city into new zealand history is an undertaking beyond the scope of a single volume. the first chapters outline the period preceding the architectural centre’s establishment. political and architectural contexts are documented comprehensively alongside major milestone buildings of the city. material on the formation of the architectural centre follows documenting early meetings and social events in private homes, the support of major governmental design ministries, and the active involvement of public servants, students, artists, designers and architects. it is a vivid picture of a nascent revolutionary institution. the architectural centre had visionary and social underpinnings that sought to counter the institutional culture of the 1940s workplace. its forward-looking focus recognised the need to educate students, architects and a wider audience about the potentials of modern architecture. the centre walked the talk from the beginning, establishing a series of summer schools focused on both the training of architects and improving the quality of the wellington built environment. it served as a counterpoint to the perceived deficiencies of the auckland university college course and the alternative professional training course for architecture. its focus on architectural education had a wide influence, proving an important impetus for the eventual establishment of a second school of architecture in new zealand at victoria university of wellington. the book is divided into decade-long chronological sections, themselves organized by themes addressing particular foci pursued by the architectural centre. the 1950s and 60s decade section is augmented by a chapter focusing on publication activities of the centre, particularly the design review and the book projects. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 103 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n sreview / vertical living: the architectural centre and the remaking of wellington this chapter, “bursting into print” by paul walker and justine clark, is followed by damian skinner’s “the gallery” where the history of the centre’s gallery is examined, including its experimental focus, exhibitions, influences and roles. the two decades are further evaluated through consideration of the centre’s advocacy for designed urban environments, or ‘town planning’ as it was known. this urban focus was taken up through publication and well-known visionary theoretical projects such as te aro replanned and homes without sprawl, with the latter exhibited in wellington and toured across other new zealand cities. the 1970s and 80s introductory chapter “the commercial city” is more general. it contains fewer milestone projects and the details surrounding them. the absence of some key projects creates gaps in the architectural history of wellington city the authors are consciously documenting. some of new zealand’s most and least memorable postmodern buildings were built in wellington at this time, and these remain, defining how wellington is experienced today. these include big buildings by warren and mahoney such as mercer tower, 49 boulcott street, and the pivotal bowen house, also structon’s sun alliance building on the terrace, the saatchi and saatchi building on the corner of taranaki street and courtney place, the anz centre and the park royal, as well as craig craig moller’s integration of plimmer house cottage into a larger built composition around the same time. smaller buildings that would help round out the wellington city story of that time would likely include projects such as the willis street village by roger walker and moore wilsons, the latter with its split façade, balancing cube and painted gravesian murals—perhaps the high point of ian athfield’s post-modern period and the beginning of a second phase of the redevelopment of the te aro part of the city. the associated chapters “the centre as a protest and lobby group” and “the recognition of heritage values” partly account for the omission of many key projects of the period. the architectural centre’s focus on the buildings lost in wellington at the time was paralleled by a lack of attention to the new city emerging with the generation of replacement buildings. vertical living’s discussion of the fight for the harbour’s edge in “the centre as a protest and lobby group” chapter records an important historical period for wellington that is all the more remarkable in the light of the extent of change that occurred, and the resulting new public access to the waterfront which now exists. an account of how the architecture centre effectively lobbied for access to the harbour shows a particular and political shift in the centre’s activities—a commitment with significant personal cost for the individuals involved. the account of this period would have been deepened by discussion of the design and realisation of the quirky frank kitts park, the first of the major changes to the harbour’s edge. the final section, “the nineties and beyond”, and its three sub-chapters are appropriately focused on major projects around the waterfront, particularly te papa tongarewa, the civic square, taranaki wharf precinct, and waitangi park, however they miss one of the early big projects—craig craig moller’s huge queens wharf event centre. while referenced briefly with frank kitts park as part of the waitangi park discussion, there is no discussion of the history or design of the queens wharf event centre itself. the twinned building of the centre, originally designed as a retail shopping mall, and the sail-shaded public space between in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 104 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n sreview / vertical living: the architectural centre and the remaking of wellington them introduced major public venues to the waterfront. they also formed a gateway from the city to the waterfront and were a catalyst for further public access to the waterfront. the chapter in the “the nineties and beyond” final section, titled “exhibiting architecture”, showcases the depth of wellington’s growing architectural awareness and design culture in a period when the victoria university of wellington school of architecture had become well established and increasingly engaged with the city from its new vivian street location. the last chapter of this section, titled “turning sixty”, reflects on the period and possible future of the architecture centre. although depiction of the centre’s more recent projects lacks the elaboration and illustration afforded to the work of earlier years, it shows how the architectural centre continues to influence the shape of wellington city today. vertical living’s intention to begin articulating an urban new zealand architectural history is an ambitious and valuable undertaking. the pairing of the architectural centre and its history with the wider, evolving city has resulted in a rich and rewarding narrative. inevitably the dance between the histories of the centre and the city results in some divergence, for the former remains a critical and aspirational mirror of the latter. as such their correspondence must remain an ongoing project. through gatley and walker’s scholarship, the wellington of today can be seen as a city with a self-aware design history. this arose substantially through the ideas and actions of a group of politically astute architectural advocates. city change has clearly been influenced by a series of public activities, events and publications the architectural centre orchestrated across a 70 year period. vertical city, in its documentation of the operation of the architectural centre and the parallel growth of wellington city, is also a valuable contribution to wider discourse on city growth and change over time. references gatley, j. , walker, p. (2014). vertical living: the architectural centre and the remaking of wellington. auckland: auckland university press. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 3 f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m editorial / julia gatley from beaux-arts to bim fig. 1 the entry to the auckland school of architecture in 1991. [university of auckland libraries and learning services, record number 557368] in september 2017, the university of auckland’s school of architecture and planning celebrated its centenary. we launched a book on the school’s history (gatley & treep 2017), and opened an extensive exhibition of drawings, photographs, models, and ephemera, also from the school’s first 100 years (milojevic, treep, barrie, & gatley 2017). there were three further exhibitions: current student work (manfredini & rieger 2017); library and archive collections across the 100 years (milojevic & cox 2017); and a revised edition of the timeline on women in new zealand architecture, prepared by architecture + women new zealand (2017 [2013]). the latter newly named the women who had studied architecture in the school from the 1920s to the 1970s, when the institution started to become less particular about identifying women as such in its lists of student names. this historic reflection followed survey texts on the history of architectural education in the united kingdom (crinson & lubbock 1994) and the united states (ockman & williamson 2012). there is also a tradition of individual schools marking significant anniversaries with their own histories. of these, the architectural association school of architecture (aa) in london has been among the most prolific (summerson 1947; gowan 1973–75, 1975), while the yale school of architecture in new haven, connecticut, has produced perhaps the most exhaustive study of its own past (stern & stamp 2016). the school of architecture at the university of liverpool is one that has attracted the attention of multiple authors, particularly developments that occurred under charles reilly’s leadership (crouch 2002; dunne & richmond 2008; richmond 2001; sharples, powers, & shippbottom 1996). in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 4 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in australasia, the university of new south wales celebrated 60 years of architecture in 2015 (murray 2015), the university of western australia, 50 years of architecture in 2015 (george 2015), and victoria university of wellington, 40 years of architecture in 2016. the school of architecture, design and planning at the university of sydney celebrates its architecture centenary in 2018, while in 2019, the faculty of architecture, building and planning at the university of melbourne celebrates both the centenary of that university’s architecture atelier and the sesquicentenary of its teaching of architecture. the older planning programmes—those originally focused on town planning—were often established in schools or faculties of architecture, while more recent planning programmes have more diverse beginnings. in addition to the centennial history and four exhibitions, the auckland school of architecture and planning celebrated its centenary with a gala dinner enjoyed by 280 people, a series of panel discussions with alumni, and a symposium titled “educating architects and planners, 1917–2017”. this special issue of interstices brings together seven of the 30 papers presented at the symposium. the original call for papers for the symposium established our interests in a broad range of themes, including the formation and early history of schools and programmes, the gradual demise of the pupillage model, the extent to which beaux-arts methods were or were not used in particular schools, and more generally, the reliance on overseas models. auckland’s inaugural professor of architecture, for example, cyril knight, had trained at the university of liverpool school of architecture and worked in new york, and his background influenced the early direction of the school. british qualifications remained common among the auckland staff until the 1950s, when greater diversity started to be seen, including the school’s first european émigré staff. the early reliance on britain extended to the professions, with ties to the royal institute of british architects (riba) and the town planning institute of london (tpi). this changed over time, as the new zealand professions and the tertiary sector both matured. thus, the modernisation and professionalisation of programmes were of interest to us. for most of the twentieth century, the new zealand institute of architects (nzia) was heavily involved in decisions about the opening of new architecture programmes in particular tertiary institutions; now it is hands-off, taking the view that whether or not a particular institution offers architecture is purely a business decision for that institution. schools have also had changing priorities, and have responded to changing technologies, from environmental sustainability to the digital age, as well as changing demographics, including gender, ethnicity, and internationalisation. key members of staff were another obvious theme, with their visions and their public voices, as critics or commentators. the work on our own centennial history had established further specific interests in accommodation, space, and the ways in which physical environments have influenced pedagogies at particular points in time. while the symposium attracted a broad range of papers from across the region, the seven articles presented in this volume are tightly connected, and indeed interconnected, by virtue of their consistent focus on aspects of new zealand architecture and planning education. as the auckland school was new zealand’s only professional school of architecture until the mid-1970s, and also offered the country’s first professional planning programme, this necessarily includes repeated reference to it and its history. 5 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e in the first article, “persisting beaux-arts practices in architectural education”, milica mađanovic investigates the endurance of beaux-arts practices in the auckland school of architecture from 1927 to 1969. she focuses on the school’s teaching of the history and theory of architecture, and more specifically on the books it recommended as reading for the history and theory courses. her start date follows not the school’s opening, but rather the publication of reading lists in its annual prospectuses, and their inclusion of conservative, historicist texts that supported beaux-arts emphases on classicism, composition, and unity. her conclusion is that “the reading lists published between 1927 and 1969 documented three phases of the beaux-arts influence on history and theory teaching at the auckland school: predominance, from 1927 to 1947; transition, from 1948 to 1958; and then decline, from 1958 to 1969.” the second article is by ann mcewan, who is already the author of one of the key texts on the history of architectural education in new zealand, “learning by example” (1999). here, in “learning in london”, she focuses on the new zealanders who studied architecture at the architectural association school of architecture (aa) in london. this included the likes of samuel hurst seager and frederick de jersey clere in the nineteenth century, and a much larger number in the first few decades of the twentieth century. her study is informed by archival research in london, complemented by extensive newspaper searches. she shows that most of the new zealanders who studied at the aa in the early twentieth century returned to new zealand and practised here, with a considerable proportion becoming well known. she compares their experiences to those of the new zealand painters and writers who spent time abroad, and concludes that the aa training would have enhanced the standing of those architects who returned. with his article “ernst plischke as teacher”, christoph schnoor moves the volume to modernism and, more specifically, to the teaching initiatives of the austrian-born émigré architect, ernst plischke (1903–1992). plischke gave public lectures in wellington in the 1940s and applied for the position of professor of design at the auckland school of architecture in 1947. he was unsuccessful in this application, but 16 years later, in 1963, took up a professorial position in design at the academy of fine arts in vienna, and taught there for 10 years. while the auckland school in 1947 sought a professor with academic experience, vienna in 1963 privileged practice experience and design reputation. thus, schnoor asks the question of whether academic experience or practice experience is the more useful criterion for selecting and appointing professors of design. he argues that plischke was more than just an ordinary teacher, expecting his students to produce high-quality work and developing in them a “moral compass” and, he hoped, a “noble mind”. in “imric porsolt: the ‘messenger of modernism’ in exile”, linda tyler focuses on another émigré architect-academic, hungarian imric porsolt (1909–2005). she surveys his career, including his training and early work in prague, and his move to new zealand in 1939, at the age of 30. porsolt worked as an architect in auckland during and after the war, started teaching part-time in the auckland school of architecture in the late 1940s, and then worked full-time in the school from 1950 through to his retirement in 1974. he was important in broadening the scope of the history and theory teaching in the school, newly introducing modernism, the applied arts, and new zealand architecture. he was also active as a writer on new zealand art and architecture. tyler shows that his personal in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 6 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m approach derived from german philosophy and aesthetics, rondo-cubist czech architecture, and the viennese school of art history and criticism. he had a mission to educate others about modernism, evidenced by his instruction for the words “a messenger of modernism” to be engraved on his headstone. in “mud on his boots”, robert freestone focuses on the career and teaching initiatives of a third individual—professor robert terence kennedy (1903–1997), the university of auckland’s first professor of town planning, appointed in 1957 to set up the department of town planning within the faculty of architecture, and running it until his retirement in 1969. kennedy had no formal qualifications, but a wealth of practice experience from the united kingdom. freestone’s research reveals kennedy’s insecurities as an academic, but also the high regard in which others held him; clearly he saw himself quite differently from how others saw him. freestone argues that kennedy was “an archetypal british expatriate architect-planner, somewhat patrician but principled, steeped in old-world planning but not dogma, and striving to adapt best practice to the new zealand environment.” he concludes that the expatriate briton established a “firm footing” for new zealand’s first professional qualification in town planning. the starting point for gill matthewson’s article, “where do you go to?”, was her own experience as a first-year student at the auckland school of architecture in 1976. she was one of 24 women in a class of 74 students. gender statistics in the school had shifted significantly that decade, following a dearth of women students throughout the 1950s and 1960s. second-wave feminism gave women the confidence to imagine and pursue careers in the professions once again. matthewson analyses the gender statistics from her own cohort, from pass and fail rates through to graduation and registration. she also explores the lives and careers of as many of her former classmates as she was able to track, providing a fine-grained reading of one particular student cohort from the school’s history. she argues that the statistics and the stories demonstrate “the difficulty of architecture, both as a field of study and as a career”—for men, and especially for women—and shows that many alumni find rewarding work in architecture’s “expanded field”. the final refereed article in this issue, “propagating a legacy”, by aaron paterson and michael davis, is concerned with the auckland school of architecture’s reputation, earned in the 1980s, as a “drawing school”, with a recognised strength in “teaching and producing architectural media that challenges normative representations of the discipline”. the pair have both taught second-year media in the school in recent years, including form-making and fabrication software such as revit and building information modelling (bim). their fear is that such programmes can encourage the production of work that is descriptive rather than speculative or critical; their aim is to teach the software in such ways as to maintain the school’s critical drawing culture. they describe their response to this challenge, through encouraging “undisciplined drawings” and insisting that bim can be considered “part of a design workflow that informs an idiosyncratic media practice, rather than an end in itself.” it is a pleasure to be presenting lucy vete’s master of architecture (professional) thesis project in this issue, titled “shifting grounds” and completed in the auckland school of architecture and planning in 2017 under jeremy treadwell’s supervision. with this project, vete earned the top prize in the 2017 nzia student 7 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e design awards. in this annual competition, each of new zealand’s three schools of architecture is represented by four finalists, and a jury selects a winner and two highly commendeds. vete’s thesis abstract describes her research on tongan conceptions of home and homeland. the issue’s non-refereed section combines photographs from the auckland school of architecture and planning’s 2017 centenary celebrations; a review, by sam kebbell, of a recent exhibition of work by sarosh mulla and aaron paterson, titled penumbral reflections; and a photographic essay by patrick reynolds, recording the university of auckland’s conference centre building, ahead of its likely demolition in 2019 or 2020. this issue of interstices is a counterpart to the school’s 2017 centennial history publication. it is our conclusion that the researching and writing of histories of architectural and planning education is a worthwhile endeavour, because so many practitioners remember their education and training very vividly; it is formative, and influences careers and both personal and professional networks for many years afterwards. in t e r s t ic e s a u c k l a n d s c h o o l c e n t e n a r y s p e c ia l i s s u e 8 editorial / from beaux-arts to bim f r o m b e au xa r t s t o b i m references architecture + women new zealand, curators. (2017 [2013]). 100 years of architecture by women. auckland: school of architecture and planning, university of auckland, september 8, 2017–july 24, 2018. crinson, m., & lubbock, j. (1994). architecture: art or profession? three hundred years of architectural education in britain. manchester and new york: manchester university press. crouch, c. (2002). design culture in liverpool 1880–1914: the origins of the liverpool school of architecture. liverpool: liverpool university press. dunne, j., & richmond, p. (2008). the world in one school: the history and influence of the liverpool school of architecture, 1894–2008. liverpool: liverpool university press. gatley, j., & treep, l. (eds). (2017). the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning. auckland: school of architecture and planning, university of auckland. george, b. (ed.). (2015). uwa architecture: the first 50 years, 1965–2015. perth: cullity gallery and the faculty of architecture, landscape and visual arts. gowan, j. (1973–75). projects, architectural association, 1946–71. london: architectural association. gowan, j. (ed.). (1975). a continuing experiment: learning and teaching at the architectural association, 1946–71. london: architectural association. manfredini, m., & rieger, u., curators. (2017). design studio in action. auckland: school of architecture and planning, university of auckland, september 8–13. mcewan, a. (1999). learning by example: architectural education in new zealand before 1940. fabrications: the journal of the society of architectural historians, australia and new zealand, 9, may, 1–16. milojevic, m., & cox, s., curators. (2017). 100 years, 100 books. auckland: architecture and planning library, university of auckland, march–december. milojevic, m., treep, l., barrie, a., & gatley, j., curators. (2017). the auckland school: 100 years of architecture and planning. auckland: gus fisher gallery, september 8–november 4. murray, a., curator. (2015). architecture by hand and mind: 60 years of architecture at unsw. sydney: red centre west wing, university of new south wales, 19-25 october. ockman, j., & williamson, r. (2012). architecture school: three centuries of educating architects in north america. cambridge, mass: mit press. richmond, p. (2001). marketing modernisms: the architecture and influence of charles reilly. liverpool: liverpool university press. sharples, j., powers, a., & shippbottom, m. (1996). charles reilly and the liverpool school of architecture [exhibition catalogue]. liverpool: liverpool university press. stern, r., & stamp, j. (2016). pedagogy and place: 100 years of architectural education at yale. new haven, ct: yale university press. summerson, j. (1947). the architectural association, 1847–1947. london: architectural association. ° 0 3 1 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° i n t r o d u c t i o n : t h e u r b a n t h i n g a s a p l a n e t a r y p h e n o m e n o n in today’s increasingly global and interconnected world, over half of the planet’s population now live in urban areas. further profound changes are on the way, particularly regarding the size and spatial distribution of this population. for instance, it is estimated that by 2050, urbanised areas will accommodate 66% of the world’s population, effectively reversing the rural-urban population distribution found in the mid-20th century (un 2014: 7). while this ‘urban thing’ seems to become a planetary condition, there is great diversity in the nature of the world’s urban areas. thus it is misleading to characterise this as a unified urban phenomenon. as such, saskia sassen proposes to substitute the term urbanity – a notion overly charged with western expectations for cityness, a term better able to accommodate forms of urbanity other than the very large body of urbanism developed in the west (sassen 2008: 85). cities themselves are considered to be important drivers of development and poverty reduction in both urban and rural areas, as they concentrate much of the national economic activity, government, commerce and transportation. equally, they provide crucial inter-rural, inter-city and international cross-border links. yet increasingly this multifaceted role is being overturned, with urban areas tending to accumulate wealth and amplify inequalities in comparison with the rural hinterlands they border. in turn, as attractors for hundreds of millions of the world’s poor, cityness commonly equates to sub-standard living conditions and concentrated, extreme poverty. in the evolution of urban phenomena, the new international division of labour (froebel et al. in hardy 2013) plays a crucial role. the deindustrialisation of most of the advanced capitalist countries was a strategic response to the twin crises of declining profitability and overproduction, which surfaced in the 1970s in the form of stagflation and synchronised global recession (smith 2012: 40). the de-industrialisation of the global t h e u r b a n c r e a t i v e f a c t o r y c r e a t i v e e c o s y s t e m s a n d ( i m ) m a t e r i a l d e s i g n p r a c t i c e s e l e n a a n t o n o p o u l o u c h r i s t o s c h o n d r o s m a r i a k o u t s a r i north was combined with the industrialisation of selected developing countries, themselves providing a low-wage workforce, labour-intensive production and expanded markets for industrial products. yet despite a general redistribution of industrial productivity towards the ‘global south’, as jane hardy (2013) argues, global workers remain “powerless in the face of mobile capital” for capitalism’s dynamic pursuit of profits and reduced costs means a constant recalibration in the geographic distribution of industrialised labour in the ‘south’. as such, issues of production and concomitant accumulation are crucial factors shaping urban terrain for the ‘north’ and ‘south’ in the 21st century. as industrial production has been predominantly outsourced – although perhaps not permanently or irreversibly it warrants asking: what ‘industries’ have been left for the global north to elaborate? what is the mode of production in the so-called developed cities? and what conditions do the workers engaged in this production experience? assuming a central position in the urban economies of the developed world are entertainment, cultural and creative industries, financial and business services, and new technology development. filling the vacancy (in both economic and spatial senses) created by de-industrialisation, these cities have sought to capitalise on cultural, symbolic, and creative economies, themselves defined by “immaterial and/or biopolitical production” (souliotis 2013: 91-92). in attempting to describe the processes of these types of productions, coupled with the notion of “cognitive capitalism” and its attendant “knowledge economy”, this paper proposes the notion of the urban creative factory, understood as a critical definer of contemporary urban things. to better understand the key aspects of the urban creative factory, the paper will proceed in three parts. firstly, building on an analogy introduced by antonio negri and michael hardt (1994) – that the contemporary metropolis itself be considered a factory – the paper will examine the nature of biopolitical production and the new affectual economy attending it. secondly, in this context it will attempt to locate various groupings of productive subjects in the biopolitical city beyond traditional and limited understandings of class struggle. thirdly, thinking through the role of ‘creativity’ and social production in post° 0 3 2 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° fordist, economic conditions, a depiction of contemporary ‘work’ will be offered, one that draws attention to the forms of solidarity and exploitation that the urban gives place to. in conclusion, building on this provisional cartography of the urban creative ecosystem, the paper will propose a corrective understood as a designing commons. 1 . t h e u r b a n ( a s ) f a c t o r y the argument pursued in this section is that contemporary, developed urban milieus are commensurate with factories – in other words, they are sites of sustained, ongoing production. insisting on an analogy between cities and factories, hardt and negri argue that the urban factory’s product is design (of objects, services, concepts): the factory can no longer be conceived as the paradigmatic site or the concentration of labor and production; laboring processes have moved outside of the factory walls to invest the entire society. in other words, the apparent decline of the factory as a site of production does not mean a decline of the regime and discipline of factory production, but means rather that it is no longer limited to a particular site in society. it has insinuated itself throughout all forms of social production, spreading like a virus. all of society is now permeated through and through with the regime of the factory, that is, with the rules of specifically capitalist relations of production. (hardt & negri 1994: 9) an equivalent of the factory, the contemporary metropolis, by this reasoning, telegraphs the tensions and economies of an earlier regime of production across large swathes of territory. yet, negri and hardt see in this transformation of the metropolis an intensification of biopolitical production – that is the positing of an artificial commons (inclusive of languages, images, knowledge, affects, codes, habits and practices) (hardt & negri 2009: 250). importantly these relational commons, as everyday, constituent parts of the metropolis, are “entirely inserted in and integral to the cycle of biopolitical production”, production that makes cultural life itself a matter of economic management and capitalisation. hence the space of economic production, along with “the passage to the hegemony of biopolitical production”, is made to precisely overlap with the space of the city producing in turn what amounts to a “biopolitical city”. a . t h e b i o p o l i t i c a l c i t y building on practices that enabled the factory to operate as a contained entity for enacting total economic optimisation and management, the biopolitical city in turn is established as a generic site for immaterial production, a place where non-linear, deliberately open, and networked lines of production draw in and orchestrate the metropolis, making it a place of expanded living labour and its social spaces commodities. under post-fordist regimes of production, older labour solidarities once harboured by the factory are broken down leaving variable and shifting conglomerations of workers and work routines. whereas the factory once left the production of cooperative and able workers to the state or the home, the productive procedures underwriting the biopolitical city now take hold of the subjectivity of producers directly, with the intent of profiting from the reproduction of the entirety of living labour. over and above the production of commodities, at greater stake is the production of lifestyles and identities. as jason read argues, “[t]he contemporary factory is the ‘social factory’” with production being “disseminated across social space as the production of affects, relations, and desires” (read 2003: 159). hence, in spatial and temporal terms it is no longer necessary or useful to replicate a division between the factory and the city, or to demarcate the time of production (clocking in and out from the working day) with that of consumption; the factory is made to assume a diffused state, one that merges with the urban milieu in total. in this context, the immaterial labour and inventive capacity of design takes on new significance. the social factory is in key ways a design factory. with its mandate to shape and reconfigure material conditions relative to social ones, design has become a paradigmatic discipline, one capable of mobilising a raft of affecting and effecting social relations integrally tied to the reproduction and transformation of subjectivity, and with it divergent and flexible redeployments of labour. as christopher hight has developed in conversation with hardt, design with its generation of immaterial goods, particularly forms of knowledge, image, and affect, has meant for architecture a shift from being a service profession centred on problemsolving to becoming a “research based practice focused upon innovation” (hight 2006: 71). in this way design defines for itself a hegemonic role by asserting the primacy of immaterial generation in material production – a hegemony capable of taking the social body itself as a subject of design. b . n e w a f f e c t i v e e c o n o m y a n d b i o p o l i t i c s design more generally effects a variety of corporeal and cognitive consequences on the lives, bodies and minds of the post-fordist workers, one entirely consistent with biopolitical power. in other words, design is integral to a shift from the older, disciplinary forms of governance associated with capitalist production (the fordist factory) towards an emerging affective economy of innovative and flexible social/productive relations (the post-fordist, distributive work field) that capitalises on surplus value extrapolated from immaterial generation and design-led transformations. literally operating everywhere and at any locale ─ though typically applied in urban places since this is where producer-consumers are most prolific ─ immaterial production sets up a problem of valuation, a problem of how to measure an affective surplus associated with the proliferation of a designed commodification of life itself. as negri puts it: the more the measure of value becomes ineffectual, the more the value of labor-power becomes determinant in production; the more political economy masks the value of labor-power, the more the value of labor-power is extended and intervenes in a global terrain, a biopolitical terrain. [...]the more the theory of value loses its reference to the subject ..., the more the value of labor resides in affect, that is, in living labor that is made autonomous in the capital relation, and expressesthrough all the pores of singular and collective bodies-its power of self-valorization. (negri 1999: 79-80) as such, biopolitics is a regime of governance concerned with bios or life and finds immediate expression in the control of and over populations. ° 0 3 3 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° contrary to forms of governance centred on controlling or prohibiting actions, biopolitics as michel foucault first articulated aims to develop the productivity and resourcefulness in any given life so that it may better deliver broader societal utility (foucault 2008: 317). more than a form of power defined by negation and proscription, biopolitics answers to an always open incitement to optimise and invent. akis gavriilidis glosses the inciting nature of contemporary governance this way: “authoritarian power talks to its people”, explicitly encouraging them to “talk, communicate, express their… sexuality and their… imagination, so as to better… be(come) [them]selves” (gavriilidis 2006: 6). as such contemporary sovereignty can be thought to follow a hydraulic mandate for as gavriilidis again puts it, power “lets biopolitical forces express themselves and, at the same time, canalizes them, defining a posteriori borders (which, one should not forget, are simultaneously also prerequisites)” (gavriilidis 2006: 6). 2 . w o r k e r s a n d p r o d u c e r s as the previous section argued, producing subjects are integral with social production and its wielding of affective labour. the proliferation of subjectivities and the increasingly cognitive nature of labour in the biopolitical city have tended to eclipse traditional collectives, class affiliation, and workers representation. yet it is important to acknowledge that not everyone has become or is becoming a cognitive worker, or that these workers are any less caught in exploitive economic structures. as jennifer cotter argues: [c]ontrary to the claims of digital [and immaterial] movements which displace “labor ” with “knowledge” and “services” as the basis of “value” in capitalism, there has not been a fundamental transformation in wage-labor/capital relations or the fact that profit is the product of the theft of the surplus-labor of all productive workers, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, etc. (cotter 2008) to understand the nature of this on-going appropriation of surpluslabour, and to conceive emancipatory strategies, it is necessary to attempt a variant typology of individual producers and political subjects, for despite the general erosion of traditional collectives, commonalities and interests persist. this section considers the most prevalent of actors maintained by the biopolitical city. although they are closely linked, each characterisation highlights a different focus, identifying specific features associated with the contemporary productive mechanisms of the urban factory. a . t h e p r e c a r i a t firstly, as guy standing (2011) describes, there is a distinctive socioeconomic group of persons precariously precluded from the economic agency. the term he uses to describe this aggregate of persons is “the precariat”, a neologism that combines the adjective ‘precarious’ and the noun ‘proletariat’. according to standing, class has not disappeared, for even if the world has moved towards a flexible labour market, inequalities have grown. what emerges instead is “a more fragmented global class structure” (standing 2011: 7). hence, the precariat is a “class-in-the-making”, one consisting of people “who have minimal trust relationships with capital or the state” (standing 2011: 8). further, the precariat cannot rely on the older underpinnings of the welfare state and “has none of the social contract relationships of the proletariat, whereby labour securities were provided in exchange for subordination and contingent loyalty” (standing 2011: 8). for standing, while the precariat remain for now a complex and vague group, questions of class struggle underpin their constitution. b . t h e v i r t u a l c l a s s v s a c o g n i t a r i a t secondly, as franco (bifo) berardi (2009) has identified, a key postfordist labourer is the info-worker or technician engaged in knowledge production and circulation. mobilisers of semiotic flows, these infolabourers work the digital interfaces of the social factory, positing images of happiness perpetually beyond reach. as such for berardi, “the social factory has become the factory of unhappiness: the assembly line of networked production is directly exploiting the emotional energy of the cognitive class” (berardi 2009: 90-92). equally, info-workers, while sharing in the deferred promise of (virtual) happiness, experience a diminution of corporeality. as a “virtual class” – a class without substantive identification or material, collective expression or representation – they collectively lack social corporeal substance. for berardi, what is needed is a recognition of this de-corporealised condition and the development of a concerted solidarity latent in the mental labour of the biopolitical city – the becomingsubstantive of a cognitariat (berardi 2009: 104-105). c . c r e a t i v e c l a s s thirdly, as richard florida (2002) has proposed, a particularly poignant actor-group in the neo-liberal drama is the “creative class” – comprising workers rich in knowledge associated with design and broadly defined, creative endeavour. the distinguishing characteristic of the creative class is that its members engage in work whose function is to “create meaningful new forms” (florida 2002: 38). this class has two distinct constituencies: the “super-creative core” which includes scientists, engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers and architects, as well as the thought leadership of modern society (writers, editors, cultural figures, and more); and the “creative professionals”, who work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive industries, such as high tech, financial services, legal and health care professions and business management. in florida’s view, this group of workers are economically highly valuable and depend on particular urban conditions – places of social gregariousness and networked ease, places, that is, where talent, technology, and tolerance are drawn into close and comfortable proximity. yet despite florida’s appeal to the primacy of the creative class, he misses a key factor in post-fordist, affective labour – a bifurcation in the apparently affluent creative worker, one that sees the promise of secure tenure of employment on one hand, pitted against short-term and tenuous conditions of engagement on the other. increasingly it is the latter that is favoured by the creative industries with the consequence of a growing “proletarianisation” within creative work – a disenfranchisement that brings the creative class into proximity with the precariat (hesmondhalgh 2012: 69). d . m u l t i t u d e fourthly, negri and hardt offer a depiction of an ontologically specific, counter-social body apposite to the biopolitical city the multitude. rather than a class per se, the multitude for negri and hardt composes the metropolitan productive, collective “social body” par excellence (hardt & negri 2009: 254-255). at once singular and multiple, it forms the very ° 0 3 4 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° precondition for a commons, one that despite a plethora of interests, desires and affectual relations, holds together without social contract or unifying bond. free of a “unity-in-consensus” (thacker 2004), the multitude’s aims and interests are co-axial, running along side by side according to tangential, networked lines of flight that self-organise. as negri and hardt describe the collectivity that results: the common is both material, rooted in the ongoing contestation over the production of “life,” and (because of this) affective and experiential. but the multitude’s selforganization does not automatically imply self-governance. what underlies both is [...] the fundamental relationality -or connectivity -of bodies, affects, and subjects. (hardt & negri 2009: 254-255) the multitude, with its strong relation to the commons, introduces novel characteristics into biopolitical production, and producers’ agency. thus, the multitude has the capacity to play a vital role in any reconsideration of production, for which design and immaterial labour are hegemonic. e . i s c l a s s a g e n c y p o s s i b l e ? while the above descriptions indicate particular groupings of subject/ worker-types, the question remains: do they have the potential to act as coherent or consolidated classes? moreover, can the concept of class itself usefully intervene in contemporary struggles around labour, production and the biopolitical shaping of life? in other words, can class still be understood as an organisational strategy capable of intervening in the political sphere? what the above descriptions make possible is recognition of how labour and production constitute common interests in the biopolitical city. at stake is the ability of producers to claim back the value of their productive endeavour. framing ‘workers’ this way serves to identify a raft of common interests submerged in the means of production. currently, cognitive workers have the possibility to possess the means of immaterial production, and progressively perhaps, even of material production. potentiated by the re-appropriation of the means of production is a shift from older forms of workers’ exploitation, to new forms of collective management, ownership and circulation of the products of the biopolitical city. rather than class division, post-fordist labour may find common cause and measure in the production of an all-encompassing life sphere, a sphere finding greater representational validity today in the commons and its multitude. 3 . r e a d d r e s s i n g p r o d u c t i o n a n d c r e a t i v i t y w i t h i n t h e f a c t o r y the assertion that the metropolis is the key post-fordist site of production, and yet the metropolitan multitude constitutes a social body in excess of post-fordist info-workers, is made more profound given the ways in which production is increasingly linked to creativity. on one hand, recent theories on city creativity have emphasised the role of the creative human capital for the competitiveness of the cities (florida 2002: 11), and the urban transformations invoked by creative forces within the metropolitan system (zukin 2010: 17). on the other hand, the emergence of the entrepreneurial, creative worker as a dominant figure in the cognitive, immaterial domain (lazzarato 2006: 133) shows up as a figure dependent on ecosystems of collaboration, networking, and distribution within the urban factory. a . u r b a n a n t a g o n i s m a n d t h e i n f o r m a l c r e a t i v e e c o n o m y the biopolitical production and affective labour framed above sets in play enhanced competitive pressures between cities, not only at the level of their economic power and productive capacity, but at the level of their symbolic capital – in other words, at the level of their imagined cultural and historical prestige. david harvey links this development with post-fordism, flexible specialisation, globalisation, and the collapse of the post-war sociopolitical settlement (harvey 2002: 97). a new economic and social order has emerged, one organised around consumer markets in symbolic goods (for example clothes, cars, food, music, art, etc.), which respond to new forms of social distinction and identity. harvey sees this as a “cultural fix”, one worked out particularly at the level of the city where spectacles, festivals, shopping experiences, and ethnic food quarters transform the derelict industrial places of the developed world into centres of up-market cultural consumption. recognising the implicitly uneven geographical development of capitalism, harvey points to the significance of mechanisms like monopoly rent – a circumstance arising when “one exclusively controls some special quality, resource, commodity or location and can therefore extract rent from others” or uses marketing and advertising to create a sense of uniqueness exploitable through rent (harvey 2002: 94). as capitalism reduces spatial barriers through innovations and investments in transport and communications, many local industries and services lose their local protections and monopoly privileges. in response, cities are forced to compete internationally at the level of their unique identities – what harvey refers to as their “marks of distinction” – rather than according to the products they produce. the uniqueness and authenticity of local culture, heritage, and tradition are more and more entangled with attempts to reassert a symbolic monopoly based on non-replicable conditions. in this way cultural and creative industries are routinely drawn into convergence with place-specific characteristics to better assert internationally addressed “marks of distinction” (scott 2000: 11). as allen scott notes, tying product brands to the monopoly powers of place-identity is often a precondition for their success globally (scott 2000: 11). so complex is this intertwining that, as harvey (2002) puts it, one cannot be sure whether this tendency should be attributed to an ongoing “commodification of culture” or a “culturalization of capitalism”. cities, given their ability to process knowledge and manipulate symbols, are becoming the new global economic powerhouses. further, competition is developing not only between cities (and regions), but also within the same city (or region). given the culturalisation of cities, specific urban areas are becoming more attractive to creative workers than others due to their special characteristics and perceived sense of authenticity (zukin 2010: 15). place, as a privileged locus of culture and image, becomes for them the field in which they build their social relationships and from which they draw symbolic value to incorporate into the self-brand and the brands for what they produce. yet this process of symbolic agglomeration in specific urban areas is far from a friction-less process, as gentrification in fact erodes authenticity, transforming neglected places into happily consumed homogeneous ones. as susan sassen puts it, “we are becoming a planet of urban glamour zones and urban slums” (sassen 2007: 6) – a dichotomy that has come to starkly replace an older tension between suburbs and city centres. ° 0 3 5 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° creative workers themselves also become “marks of distinction” both for specific areas within cities and for whole cities internationally. florida in fact captures this neoliberal transformation of city spaces with his “creativity index” (florida 2002: 253), a measure seeking to describe concentrations of talent, technology and tolerance, themselves taken as preconditions for social and economic prosperity in cities. another less neo-liberally assimilative approach is found in harvey’s theory of the collective symbolic capital which questions, rather than seeks to expand, the types of collective immaterial value and desire produced with urban place-branding (harvey 2002: 102). in fact for harvey, the conglomeration of creative informal workers and the creative ecosystems they compose has a multiplier effect and value in excess of the professionalisation of city places. as sassen similarly sees it, “urban knowledge capital” enables an unforeseen and unplanned mix of expertise and talent, which can produce a higher order of information (sassen 2009: 56). hence, from the perspective of creative ecosystems as opposed to the dominant theories of the creative industries at stake is more than measurable economic activities composing a city’s economic capital; what can be seen are a plethora of divergent, yet cocooperative, creative and productive relationships diffused throughout the urban factory. b . c r e a t i v e w o r k e r s d e v e l o p i n g e c o s y s t e m s the entrepreneurial workers/citizens of the urban factory contribute to what sassen sees as a specialised and networked “urban economic creativity”. agglomeration and networking play an essential role in the creative workers’ professional evolution. hesmondhalgh accepts this position yet refers to this “obligation to network” in a negative way as a force that threatens creative autonomy (hesmondhalgh 2012: 171). the key issue remains that networking is still linked to a specific place and the physical co-presence of involved parties. this explains why creative workers still need a specific urban location to work despite their work increasingly being globalised and digitised. what these locations provide is density and centrality, critical factors for social connectivity, proximity to customers, and for contracting and subcontracting chains. given the discussion of the hegemony of immaterial production above, knowledge itself can be seen to have become a key component of the organisational cycles of labour. further formed is a specialised relationship between knowledge and design, the latter being a decisive factor driving creative labour. nevertheless, digital design tools are themselves changing, making possible smarter, parametric tools with simpler interfaces. the relationship between knowledge and design is being blurred and transformed. the implications of this condition are increasingly challenging authorities, while favouring user’s involvement and expert-user collaboration. by these accounts, new design processes and construction practices demand greater user participation and co-operation, openness, ad hoc customisation of designed objects, an awareness of the interrelatedness of design decisions, plus new types of performance and efficiency of design products. these imperatives diversely dispersed across the fabric of the urban factory constitute the sui generis complexity of the urban order. e p i l o g u e : t o w a r d s t h e p r o d u c t i o n o f d e s i g n i n g c o m m o n s given this radically different way of living implied in the urban commons, one is unavoidably called on to interpret the relationships between productivity and creativity. currently, what is being observed is an overturning of their traditional distinction and opposition ─ ̶ with creativity being associated with the notion of joy, accomplishment, achievement, and productivity with efficiency, rationality, and profitability. in the present state, creativity operates as an enhancement of productivity. in other words, the former extends the capacity of the latter, capitalising further on the minds and souls of a networked populace. based on this, one potential aim would be to redefine what emancipated human capital could be if not captured in regimes of alienation. if the product of contemporary, cognitive labour, namely design, were to be understood in terms of the commons, the tension could be shifted from authorship to co-authorship. then, the dissolution of authority into collaborative and collective processes would become responsible for setting rules, regulations, parameters, and not specific and finalised layouts. hence the abovementioned design procedures would provide the preconditions for the multitude to appear. as one of the emerging forces of production, design becomes explicitly interdisciplinary, even from the beginnings of a design problem. the expert-user distinction comes apart, with users being more and more able to develop and materialise their own designs, without mediation and advocacy or, perhaps, within pre-established boundaries of freedom of thought and decisions. with procedures and roles transforming, designers face a generative complexity ─ an unstable process of design and networked responsibilities. whether aware of it or not, they themselves are drawn into a common, productive multitude: a non-homogeneous productive class of workers. what new tendencies and possibilities appearing in design seem to be indicating are that “a low tech-knowledge intensive collaborative perspective” (papalexopoulos 2011: 1) will lead to a digitallydriven horizontal re-politicisation of design and creativity. this new type of design, understood in terms of the commons, has the potential of establishing new grounds for solidarity, social participation, and creative disagreement in collaboration. ° 0 3 6 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° berardi, f. (2009). the soul at work: from alienation to autonomy. los angeles, ca: semiotext(e). cotter, j. (2008). class, the digital, and (immaterial) feminism. the red critique, 13 (autumn-winter). retrieved from http://redcritique.org/fallwinter2008/classthedigitalan dimmaterialfeminism.htm florida, r. (2002). the rise of the creative class. revisited. new york, ny: basic books. foucault, m., senellart, m. (ed.) (2008). the birth of biopolitics: lectures at the college de france, 1978-79. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. froebel, f, heinrichs, j., kreye, o. (1981). the new international division of labour. cambridge, england: cambridge university press. gavriilidis, a. (2006). the actuality of michel foucault (m. koutsari et al.,trans.). theseis, issue 96, period: julyseptember 2006. retrieved from http://www.theseis.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=950 hardt, m., negri, a. (1994). the labor of dionysus: a critique of the state form. minneapolis, mn & london, england: university of minnesota press. hardt m., negri a., (2009). commonwealth. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. hardy, j. (2013). new divisions of labour in the global economy. international socialism. a quarterly review of socialist theory, 137, 101-125. retrieved from http://isj.org.uk/new divisions-of-labour-in-the-global-economy/ harvey, d. (2002). the art of rent: globalization, monopoly and the commodification of culture. socialist register, 93-110. hesmondhalgh, d. (2012). the cultural industries. london, england: sage. hight, c. (2006). designing commonspaces: riffing with michael hardt on the multitude and collective intelligence. architectural design, 76(5), 70-73. lazzarato, m. (2006). immaterial labor. in p. virno p., m. hardt (eds.), radical thought in italy: a potential politics., minneapolis, mn, london, england: university of minnesota press. landry, c. 2000. the creative city: a toolkit for urban innovators. london, england: earthscan/kogan page. papalexopoulos, d. (2011). digital design commons. international symposium “computational politics and architecture: from the digital philosophy to the end of work”, november 30, 2011, ecole nationale supérieure d’ architecture parismalaquais. retrieved from http://atru.arch.ntua.gr/sites/atru/files/posts/ read, j. (2003). the micropolitics of capital: marx and the prehistory of the present. albany, ny: state university of new york press. sassen, s., donas botto, i. (2007). cities as spaces of possibility: an interview with saskia sassen. spaces of utopia: an electronic journal, 4, 1-10. retrieved from http://ler.letras. up.pt issn 1646-4729 r e f e r e n c e s ° 0 3 7 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° sassen, s. (2009). cities today: a new frontier for major developments. annals, aapss, 626, november 2009 sassen, s. (2008). cityness. in i. & a. ruby (eds.), urban transformation. berlin: ruby press. scott, a. (2000). the cultural economy of cities: essays on the geography of image-producing industries. london, england: sage. smith, j. (2012). outsourcing, financialisation and the crisis. international journal of management concepts and philosophy, volume 6, numbers 1/2. souliotis, n. (2013). symbolic economy in the historic centre of athens: assessment and perspectives for new urban policies. in t. maloutas, g. kandilis, m. petrou, n. souliotis, (eds.). the centre of athens as political stake, 91-117. athens: national centre for social research. standing, g. (2011). the precariat, the new dangerous class. london, england: bloomsbury. thacker, e. (2004). networks, swarms, multitudes (part two). ctheory, a142b. retrieved from http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=423. united nations, department of economic and social affairs, population division (2014). in world urbanization prospects: the 2014 revision, highlights (st/esa/ser.a/352). retrieved from http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/highlights/wup2014-highlights.pdf ) zukin, s. (2010). naked city: the death and life of authentic urban places. oxford, england & new york, ny: new york university press. 81 the ruins of the immaterial jonathan hill building books the architect as we understand the term today was established in italy in around 1450, in france a century later and in britain in the early 1600s. the command of drawing – not building – unlocked the status of the architect. the term “design” derives from the italian disegno, which associates the drawing of a line with the drawing forth of an idea. disegno allowed the three visual arts – architecture, painting and sculpture – to be recognised as liberal arts concerned with individual, intellectual labour, a status they had rarely been accorded previously. in the new division of labour, architects acquired complementary means to practice architecture that were as important as building, namely drawing and writing, creating an interdependent and multi-directional web of influences that together stimulated architects’ creative development. to affirm their newly acquired status, architects began increasingly to theorise architecture both for themselves and for their patrons, ensuring that the authored book became more valuable to architects than to painters and sculptors, whose status was more secure and means to acquire commissions less demanding. in contrast to the architectural drawing, which is seen in relation to other drawings and a building, the painting is unique and need not refer to an external object, thus appearing further removed from the material world and closer to that of ideas. written in around 1450 and published in 1485, leon battista alberti’s de re aedificatoria (on the art of building in ten books) was the first thorough investigation of the renaissance architect as artist and intellectual. francesco colonna’s hypteromachia poliphili (1499), was the second architectural book by a living writer published in the renaissance and the first to be printed with illustrations, establishing the multimedia interdependence of text and image that has been essential to architectural books ever since. one model for the architectural book, hypnerotomachia poliphili is a fictional narrative illustrated with pictorial representations in which love is lost and among monuments and ruins in a sylvan landscape. a second model is the analytical manifesto justified through principles and examples and illustrated with orthogonal drawings, such as andrea palladio’s i quattro libri dell’ archittetura (the four books of architecture, 1570). the relationship between history and design was central to both authors, although they did not aim to be rigorous and objective in the manner of later historians. historical references appear in both books but for different purposes. in one they enrich a specific story, in the other they legitimise generic architectural solutions. a further literary model, the manual conveys practical knowledge and is illustrated with diagrams and calculations. but these models are not hermetic and many architectural books refer to more than one, as is the case in palladio’s attention to practical matters in the four books. things of a natural kind classical antiquity associated the material with temporal decay and the immaterial with timeless, geometric order. consequently, in the renaissance, disegno emphasised the immaterial idea of architecture not the material fabric of building, and the architectural imagination was restricted to the universal, unchanging geometries of ideal forms. but in built architecture, the relations between the immaterial and the material were sometimes considered with great subtlety. modesty scaled farms in most cases, palladio’s villas recall the relaxed rural life interstices 14 evoked in classical antiquity by virgil and pliny the younger, while their elegant but inexact proportions refer to the immaterial and its uncertain presence in the physical world. emphasising this distinction, the buildings drawn in the four books of architecture are each an ideal, not those actually built. subsequently, the baroque drew further attention to subjective interpretation; for example, baroque drama exploited the dialectical potential of allegory, in which meanings are not fixed but endlessly changing and open to appropriation and revision. in a more significant departure, john locke dismissed the search for ultimate truth in an essay concerning human understanding (1690), emphasising that ideas are subject to experience and provisional rather than universal. accepting that there are limits to what we can know, locke argued that conclusions must be in proportion to the evidence: “our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.”1 the enlightenment – the natural light of reason – assumed that nature and humanity are subject to the same divine laws and available for rational investigation. the principal british contribution to enlightenment theory was empiricism, which promoted reason but made it specific rather than generic. offering an evocative metaphor, locke stated that the mind begins as a “white paper”, an empty cabinet, which experience furnishes with understanding, and he distinguished between the simple ideas of sensations, over which the mind has no control, and complex ideas, which the mind creates by selecting and combining simple ideas.2 but, acknowledging the observer’s role in shaping experience, later empiricists came to recognise that empirical investigation without prior concepts is impossible, concluding that personality and morality develop through an evolving dialogue between the environment, senses and mind. emphasising moderation and restraint, locke required a degree of detachment from the natural world, while anthony ashley cooper, third earl of shaftesbury, influenced a further reassessment. previously, uncultivated nature was considered to be brutish and deformed because the immaterial soul, “as a visitor in matter”, could not “be truly at home in nature”, remarks ernest tuveson.3 recuperation in nature found enhanced expression in the early eighteenth century, when nature and moral virtue were linked for the first time. shaftesbury confirmed locke’s appreciation of liberty and reason but tempered his empiricism and egalitarianism. unlike his tutor, the pupil acknowledged an ideal order, reasserting the humanist tradition of renaissance italy and its respect for the “immutable truths” of classical antiquity: “twas mr. locke that struck at all fundamentals, threw all order and virtue out of the world”.4 however, departing from plato, shaftesbury conceived nature not as debased but as a means to contemplate the divine.5 sensitivity to one’s environment became as necessary as sensitivity to others. in the second volume of characteristicks of men, manner, opinions, times (1711), shaftesbury praises nature and weather: “enliven’d by the sun, and temper’d by the fresh air of fanning breezes! … i shall no longer resist the passion growing in me for things of a natural kind.” 6 cultivating landscapes derived from the latin nascere, meaning “to be born”, the term “nature” has numerous meanings in which the principal distinction is between, first, a concept through which humans define themselves in relation to what they think they are not, and, second, the phenomena and processes of which humans are a part, as in, for example, charles darwin’s theory of evolution in the origin of species (1859).7 the term “landscape” initially referred to land managed and cultivated by an agrarian community. expanding its meaning, by the sixteenth century it also 1 locke 1975: bk. 1, ch. 1, 46. 2 locke 1975: bk. 2, ch. 1, 104. 3 tuveson 1960: 11. 4 shaftesbury 1900: 403. 5 plato 1929: 121. 6 shaftesbury 1999: vol. 2, 94-101. 7 darwin 1996: 109. 83 8 whately 1771: 1. 9 bate 2000: 3-5, 11-12. 10 raphael and baldassare castiglione, in hart & hicks 2006: 188. referred to a picture of nature and in the eighteenth century it was applied to a prospect of actual nature, which in 1770 thomas whately so vehemently stated was “as superior” to a mere “painting, as a reality to a representation”.8 in each of these meanings, “landscape” acknowledges a human intervention, indicating why the prefix “natural” is applied to a landscape that is seemingly unaffected by humanity even though this has been impossible for centuries. such a landscape is culturally defined, reflecting what we have learned to see as natural, notably so in britain, the first industrialised nation. the earliest meaning of the term “culture” also referred to farmland, which endured from the middle ages to the late eighteenth century. a further meaning originated in the early sixteenth century and emphasised that the successful and prosperous cultivation of land enabled a person to become cultivated and cultured. both meanings were in use in the eighteenth century, but only the second – human culture – continued into the nineteenth century. jonathan bate describes the picturesque landscape as “a symptom of the growing division between” the two “senses of the word ‘culture’”.9 but as it was conceived holistically in social, aesthetic and ecological terms, the eighteenth-century estate can, alternatively, be understood as a key moment when nature and culture were interdependent in meanings of the term “landscape”. landscapes of architecture in britain, the architect associated with disegno was in its infancy when another appeared alongside it, focusing first on gardens not buildings because they were more clearly subject to the changing natural world. the new reverence for subjectivity and nature, and the association of one with the other, found expression in the picturesque, which is a deceptive term because it emphasises one aspect of the eighteenth-century garden to the detriment of its other qualities, such as the importance of the senses and the seasons to design, experience, understanding and the imagination. an emphasis on pictorial composition may profess a love of nature that forces nature to imitate art, making landscapes appear natural and implying that certain social relations and environmental transformations are natural too. but to dismiss the pictorial aspect of landscape as merely a prospect on property, as some critics have done, is to deny the complex painting history that informed the picturesque and also to ignore the subtlety of garden designs and drawings. in a letter to pope leo x, c. 1519, raphael associated the picture with the painter and the plan with the architect.10 but the value given to experience in the eighteenth century made this distinction less convincing. william kent continued to depict his building designs in orthogonal drawings, but his garden designs – and often his garden buildings too – were presented pictorially. employing multiple perspectives in a single image, and conceiving a network of inter-related scenes and alternative routes, kent designed in response to specific natural settings and incorporated varied themes in a single garden, such as history, politics, love and death. accommodating multiple journeys, abundant allegories and imported trees, the picturesque was associated with the choices and opportunities available to the fortunate and prosperous in eighteenth-century english society, and came to personify the liberty and liberalism they professed. focused on the fleeting pleasures of the present, an increasingly secular age emphasised the seasons of a life as well as the seasons of a year, and encouraged a new type of design and a new way of designing, which valued the ideas and emotions evoked through experience. the picturesque adopted the ruin as its emblem, a hybrid of architecture interstices 14 11 whately 1771: 131; refer to simmel 1965: p. 256. 12 vitruvius 1960: 38-39. and landscape, nature and culture, which was understood to represent growth as well as decay, potential as well as loss, the future as well as the past. rather than a finite object, the ruin acknowledged the effects of time and place, emphasising a symbiotic relationship with its ever-changing immediate and wider contexts that recognised the creative influence of natural as well cultural forces. rather than timeless and distinct from the material, the eighteenth century increasingly conceived the immaterial as temporal and subject to experience, not only in the actual absence of matter but also in the perceived absence of matter seen through mists and storms, establishing a dialogue between the immaterial and material that associated self-understanding with the experience of objects subject to weathering and decay. diminishing an object physically, ruination was understood to expand its metaphorical potential: “for imperfection and obscurity are their properties; and to carry the imagination to something greater than is seen, their effect”, concluded whately.11 britain was so associated with its landscape that the ruin offered a means to negotiate between nature and culture. evoking life and death in a single object, the ruin of a building was linked to the ruin of person or a place, as well as their potential for renewal. for an individual and for an island nation, self-understanding was synonymous with the experience of landscape in all its forms, the air and the sea as well as the land. landscapes change faster than buildings and are more clearly subject to seasonal cycles of growth and decay. an architecture that is conceived as analogous to an ever-changing landscape is more temporally aware than other buildings and will require constant re-evaluation, encouraging particularly questioning and creative relations between objects, spaces and users at varied times, scales and dimensions. the city and the sea architecture’s relations with nature and climate have influenced architects since at least vitruvius in the first century bc.12 but the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries instigated a more intense and profound dialogue with nature, establishing an architectural environmentalism that has significantly influenced subsequent centuries. at first this new environmentalism was specific to the garden, but it led to a much wider engagement with the natural world. at holkham in early eighteenth-century norfolk, thomas coke chose a turbulent coastal setting and commissioned kent to design a landscape before a house, while the threatening sea was moving inland. the estate’s dual orientation established a dialogue between culture – london and the grand tour to the south – and the expansive sea to the north. rather than distinct and sequential, the enlightenment and romanticism were evolving and interdependent philosophical traditions present throughout the eighteenth century and evident in the landscape garden. one cultivated nature but remained detached, staring south towards the placid mediterranean and its piercing light. the other did not discard reason but eulogised nature as the means of spiritual self-revelation, travelling north into the stormy sea and overcast sky. like the picturesque, the term “romanticism” has often been applied pejoratively, suggesting disengagement and retreat from contemporary concerns. claiming to heal the rupture of culture from nature, the romantic imagination may instead misrepresent nature, further its commodification, and prevent critical engagement with the natural world. however, in early nineteenth-century london the collaborations and conversations of painters, poets, scientists and architects indicated their mutual respect and overlapping concerns. the search for understanding led the romantic mind to cultivate a dialogue between the rational and irrational. valuing 85 intellect as well as emotion, invention as well as history, time as well as place, romanticism was promoted in science as well as art, which were not then opposed in the way they have sometimes subsequently been. acknowledging the union of nature and culture, romanticism recognised a responsibility to both. the romantic scientist was not external to nature, and neither were the romantic painter and poet. as romanticism increased the authority of the artist, who more often selected the subject and the site of an artwork, j. m. w. turner’s rising reputation was influential in raising the status of landscape paintings. depicting a myriad of scenes, whether magnificent or mundane, urban or rural, maritime or industrial, turner expanded the meanings of the term “landscape”. in a nation such as britain, with a nationally and globally interconnected infrastructure, a clear division between country and city was increasingly untenable and no longer equivalent to nature and culture respectively. whether at sea or in the city, turner painted what he experienced. in london, his deliberately dilapidated studio enabled him to paint in situ. turner’s subject literally entered his work in pigments and pollution. the dirt and rain that landed on unfinished canvases, and turner incorporated into his paintings, combined with composites of natural and industrial pigments, which he used before any contemporary.13 his subject, site and painting practice were perfectly aligned. rather than a retreat to nature, turner’s romanticism acknowledged the complexity of his time, its climate and weather. immersed in the hybridised atmospheres and energies that defined early-nineteenth century london, which nature and industry had together created, he offered an early image of anthropogenic climate change. factual histories empiricism influenced writing conventions as well as landscape and building design, and informed the relations between them too. describing actual events and others of his own invention, giorgio vasari’s le vite de’ piu eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori (the lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors and architects, 1550), was the first significant history of art and architecture, initiating a new discipline. in the sixteenth century, history’s purpose was to offer useful lessons; accuracy was not necessary. in subsequent centuries, empiricism gave greater emphasis to the distinction between fact and fiction, which came to transform historical analysis. rather than vasari’s focus on individual achievements, historians began to employ a methodical, comparative method to characterise changing cultural, social, political and economic processes in which the deeds of specific protagonists were contextualised. influenced by the empiricist philosopher francis bacon, giambattista vico’s scienza nuova (1725), was the first modern history. by the nineteenth century, the art and architectural historian was established as a distinct practitioner and history was naively assumed to a science capable of objective statements, which led to an emphasis on archival research. science is supported in its claim to objectivity by the presence of its objects of study before the scientist. no archive, however complete, can return the historian to the past and no history is more than an interpretation of the past in the present. our understanding of the past, which is progressively more distant, is inevitably partial. laying bare the processes of construction and decay, a history is both a ruin of the past and a speculative reconstruction in the present.14 any history expresses a particular ideology, as does any scientific statement. selectively focusing on certain information while ignoring others, they cannot be neutral. whether implicit or explicit, a critique of the present and prospect of the future are evident in both historical and scientific statements. 13 hackney 1995: 53-54; townsend 1993: 70; townsend 1995: p. 5. 14 benjamin 1977: p 177-178. interstices 14 15 davis 1996: 213. 16 congreve 1692: . 5-6. 17 locke 1975: bk. 2, ch. 27, 342. 18 foucault 1984: 369. 19 de man 1984: 69. 20 defoe 2007: 87. 21 the chapter “of the association of ideas” appears in the fourth edition, in 1700, although it was written somewhat earlier. locke 1975: bk. 2, ch. 1, 105; bk. 2, ch. 33, 394-401. factual fictions in valuing direct experience, precise description, and a sceptical approach to “facts”, which needed to be repeatedly questioned, the empirical method also created a fruitful climate in which the everyday realism of a new literary genre – the novel – could prosper as “factual fictions”.15 in contrast to the earlier romance, which incorporated classical mythologies, the novel concentrated on contemporary society and the individualism it professed. the focused investigation and precise description that empiricism demanded was applied to the novel, which emphasised specific times, peoples and places and sought justification through reference to a combination of reasoned explanation and intuitive experience. recognising a difference in style as well as content, william congreve remarked that in contrast to “the lofty language, miraculous contingencies and impossible performances” of the romance, novels are “of a more familiar nature’ and ‘delight us with accidents and odd events … which not being so distant from our belief bring also the pleasure nearer us”.16 the uncertainties and dilemmas of identity, as in locke’s assertion that “socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person”, were ripe for narrative account.17 countering locke’s call for moderation, recognition that we make our own reality was exploited for its creative potential. notably, daniel defoe’s robinson crusoe (1719), which is often described as the first english novel, is a fictional autobiography, as is his later novel, moll flanders (1722). the early novels – fictional autobiographies – developed in parallel with early diaries – autobiographical fictions. the novel’s attention to contemporary individualism was also seen in diary writing, which locke recommended as a means of personal development. people have written about themselves for millennia but the formation of modern identity is associated with a type of writing that michel foucault describes as a “technology of the self”.18 as paul de man remarks: “we assume that life produces the autobiography as an act produces its consequences, but can we not suggest, with equal justice, that the autobiographical project may itself produce and determine the life.”19 the life and opinions of john soane, gentleman emphasising a fascination for landscape and its relationship to dwelling that was to become a principal theme of english literature, robinson crusoe even had “my country-house, and my sea-coast-house” on his shipwreck island.20 the early english novel’s relationship to the picturesque garden has not been acknowledged before, even though they were each a response to empiricism and the secular individualism of eighteenth-century society, and influenced each other. self-reflection stimulated questions of identity, fractured narratives and digressions in the garden as well as the novel, although the landscape designer emphasised classical mythologies alongside contemporary events. the picturesque garden was both a novel and a romance, conceived according to ut pictura poesis – as with a picture, so also with a poem – a concept that originated in classical antiquity and acquired further resonance due to locke’s concern for the association of ideas as a stimulus to the mind.21 equally, the picturesque garden was equivalent to a history, formulating an interpretation of the past in the present through classical reconstructions, antique sculptures and mediterranean trees. the influence of the picturesque garden and novel, as well as enlightenment architecture, can be seen in the house, museum and office that john soane created at 12-14 lincoln’s inn fields, london. he described kent as “the father of modern gardening” and an architect of “genius”, and was equally indebted to laurence sterne’s meandering fictional autobiography the life and opinions of tristram 87 22 le camus de mézières 1992: 74; soane, in watkin 1996: 491, 608, 642, 647 and 653; soane 1999: 61-75. 23 soane, in watkin 1996: 194. 24 saisselin 1975: 247-248. 25 gordon 1999: 71-72; watkin 1996: 246. 26 the abbé batteux provided the first detailed categorisation of the fine arts— notably poetry, music, painting, sculpture and architecture—in les beaux arts reduits à un même principe, 1746. 27 colvin 1945: 26-30. 28 colvin 1972, first edition in 1947; colvin, 1970: 220, first edition in 1947; pevsner 1956: 185. shandy, gentleman (1759-1767) and nicolas le camus de mézières’ claim in 1780 that as architecture follows nature’s principles, a house and a garden can be designed in a similar manner and are each equivalent to poetry. soane conceived 12-14 lincoln’s inn fields as a fictional autobiography and picturesque architectural garden, and wrote a novelistic history of his home as a future ruin.22 like a garden, a novel may be emblematic, expressive or a combination of the two. soane valued architecture that can “please generally and at first sight”, while to sustain attention he emphasised that a “building often pleases from its variety and movement whereby the succession of interest is kept up”.23 12-14 lincoln’s inn fields is so excessively emblematic that it is expressive. in conceiving a building as a poem in which emotional and discursive impact is more important than any specific meaning, architects influenced the development of romantic literature.24 hypnerotomachia poliphili was a further influence: soane, like kent, owned several copies.25 a building site for over 40 years, soane conceived his home as a ruin and ruined as much as he built. as he remained on site while the three adjacent buildings were constructed, demolished and rebuilt, 12-14 lincoln’s inn fields was then a living ruin unlike the preserved ruin it became after his death in 1837. soane enrolled to study architecture at the royal academy of arts in 1771, just three years after its foundation, and became the professor of architecture in 1806. the classification of the fine arts in opposition to utility led painters and sculptors to discard the term “design” once it was associated with collective authorship, industrial production and the applied arts.26 among the fine arts, which include the three original visual arts, only in architecture is the term design regularly referred to today. older and newer meanings of design proliferate in the discourse of architects, often in combination with each other. as in soane’s case, influential architects tend to write and draw a lot as well as build, authoring an interdependent network of drawings, books and buildings that inform each other. equivalent to a visual and spatial diary, the process of design – from one drawing to the next iteration and from one project to another – is itself a fictional autobiography, a “technology of the self”, even when a number of collaborators are involved, formulating a design ethos or “creative myth” for an individual or an office. romantic modernism for the next hundred years, the picturesque was largely ignored or suppressed within the gothic revival. but in the mid-twentieth century, british modernism was associated with the picturesque and a burgeoning romanticism, encouraging architects to counter an earlier, didactic and universal modernism by embracing history, landscape and environmentalism. once again, the ruin was adopted as a symbol of hope as well as loss.27 associating the picturesque with liberalism and empiricism, brenda colvin emphasised that just 23 out of 60 “native” trees originated in britain, while nikolaus pevsner offered a human equivalent to her sylvan allegory: “england has indeed profited just as much from the un-englishness of the immigrants as they have profited from the englishing they underwent”.28 while eighteenth-century england advocated liberalism, only a small proportion of the population were allowed a university education, the right to vote, and access to a picturesque estate. in contrast, the post-war welfare state aimed to open these rights and pleasures to all classes and the whole population. commissioned in 1962 to build the new university of east anglia in late eighteenth-century parkland at earlham, norfolk, denys lasdun aimed to design “buildings which interstices 14 29 lasdun 1984: 135. 30 colvin 1970: 34-35, 59, 61; evelyn 1772: 3, 28, 34-37; evelyn 1664: 112–120. 31 alexander redhouse and peter mckinley, “uea, denys lasdun and partners”, lecture, 15 february 1966, quoted in sanderson 2002: 147. 32 lasdun 1965: 273. 33 whately 1771 153–55, 217–2. 34 denys lasdun, “uea development plan, december 1962”. lasdun archive, riba library drawings and archives collections, v & a, london. 35 lasdun, in “interview with denys lasdun”, revised draft, 13 june 1979, p. 11. lasdun archive, riba library drawings and archives collections, v & a, london. 36 gilbert meason used the term in on the landscape architecture of the great painters of italy, 1828, as did john claudius loudon in his edited collection of repton’s writings in 1840. rather than the design of landscapes, meason and repton most likely referred to architecture in a landscape setting. responded almost ecologically to unique and specific situations” and persuaded uea to appoint colvin as its landscape architect.29 she was indebted to john evelyn’s poetic and pragmatic fumifugium: or the inconvenience of the aer and smoak of london dissipated (1661), which recognised mitigation and adaptation as responses to anthropogenic climate change three centuries before these principles were widely accepted, and his subsequent book sylva, or a discourse of forest-trees (1664), which promoted a more sensitive and sustainable modification of nature than before.30 colvin maintained and extended the site’s rich variety of natural habitats, and conceived the integration of landscape and architecture in terms of the interdependence of nature and culture, and natural and human biology, associating physical processes with metaphysical dimensions. lasdun walked uea’s site “in all seasons, in mist, snow, wind and sun” and travelled norfolk extensively.31 in a key design decision with picturesque connotations, he decided that the various architectural elements “were to be disposed on this site with loving care for the configuration and contours of the landscape, its prospect and aspect”.32 holkham was expressive as well as emblematic but later picturesque landscapes, such as earlham, emphasised sweeping topography rather than iconographic monuments because the expressive garden was then assumed to place fewer restrictions on the imagination.33 expressive rather than emblematic, lasdun’s design exactly inverts the sequence at holkham, beginning with a tree-lined linear avenue that runs due south until it reaches a ‘nodal point’ that reveals ‘panoramic views’ across the university and towards the river.34 as at holkham, the southern orientation refers to greece and rome, which at uea also acknowledges their influence on lasdun’s heroes, nicholas hawksmoor, le corbusier and john soane. the north is referred to in terms of climate rather than direction: “as bits get chipped off and bits grow around it, i think it will become part of landscape… on a wet day it may look drab and forbidding, and they might scuttle away from it. on a sunny day it’s magical, but then buildings are like that, they should be.”35 exemplifying the emotive power and allegorical potential of architecture and landscape, and the possibility of growth as well as decay, a monumental, living ruin looks to the future as well as the past, generating an appropriate image for a highly regarded and innovative university that is today best known for creative writing and climate change research. but algae and moss, which soon covered the buildings, also turned a past image of the future – a new university – into one of slow decay that was sadly appropriate to the demise of free higher education, one of the emblems of the welfare state. in the symbiosis of geography and history in an island nation, lasdun recognised that british architecture is both interdependent with landscape and a form of landscape architecture, an enduring and evolving tradition from the picturesque and romanticism to modernism in which the genius of the place has been made as much as found, the fusion of new ideas, forms and spaces with those already in place, which were themselves sometimes the result of earlier migrations.36 architects of history from the renaissance to the early twentieth century the architect was a historian in the sense that an architectural treatise combined design and history, and a building was expected to manifest the character of the time and knowingly refer to earlier historical eras. modernism ruptured this system in principle if not always in practice, but it returned with vigour in the mid-twentieth century. 89 37 le corbusier 1927: 31. 38 rogers 1953-1954: 2. 39 eliot 1941: 26–27; filed in lasdun archive, riba library drawings and archives collections, v & a, london. 40 scully 1969: 257. 41 bradbury 1975: unpaginated. architects have used history in different ways, whether to indicate their continuity with the past or departure from it. even early modernists who denied the relevance of the past relied on histories to justify modernism’s historical inevitability and systematic evolution. to some degree, mid-twentieth century architects merely reaffirmed an appreciation of history that was latent in works such as le corbusier’s vers une architecture (1923).37 but the second world war was a more scientific war than the first, and nuclear devastation undermined confidence in technological progress, which early modernism had emphasised as a means of social transformation. in the search for stability in the uncertain aftermath of 1945, modernism’s previously dismissive reaction to social norms and cultural memories was itself anachronistic. the consequence was not just to acknowledge early modernism’s classical heritage but also to place a concern for history at the heart of architecture once again, affirming the liberal humanist tradition that modernism had once seemed to repudiate, and undermining the unnecessary opposition between tradition and innovation that modernism had once seemed to pose. critical of international modernism, in 1954 ernesto n. rogers promoted appreciation of national and regional architectural cultures. to explain his conception of a building in dialogue with its physical and natural surroundings and contributing to an evolving historical continuity, he quoted from “tradition and the individual talent” (1917), in which t. s. eliot emphasised that the present alters our understanding of the past as much as the past influences the present.38 admired by rogers and equally indebted to eliot’s essay, lasdun noted the value that the poet placed on innovation as well as tradition: “the existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them.”39 confirming the prevalence of such ideas in postwar architecture, in 1969 vincent scully concluded that the architect will “always be dealing with historical problems – with the past and, a function of the past, with the future. so the architect should be regarded as a kind of physical historian … the architect builds visible history”.40 as a design is a reinterpretation of the past that is meaningful to the present, transforming both, each building or landscape is a new history. the architect is a historian twice over: as a writer and as a designer. the creative myth histories and novels each display a concern for the past, present and future. they give meaning to the present and may personify an attitude and an era. the historian acknowledges that the past is not the same as the present, while the novelist inserts the reader in a place and time that feels very present even if it is not. histories and novels both need to be convincing but in different ways. although no history is completely objective, to have any validity it must appear truthful to the past. a novel may be believable but not true. but recognising the overlaps between two literary genres, malcolm bradbury – co-founder with angus wilson of uea’s pioneering creative writing programme – notably described his novel the history man (1975), as “a total invention with delusory approximations to historical reality, just as is history itself” .41 associating designing with story-telling and history-writing, lasdun remarked that each architect must devise his or her “own creative myth”, which should be “sufficiently objective” and also have “an element of subjectivity; the myth must be partly an expression of the architect’s personality and partly of his time, partly a distillation of permanent truths and partly of the ephemerae of the particular moment”.42 the “creative myth” may be a private inspiration or a public, collective interstices 14 42 lasdun 1984: 137. 43 lasdun, in “interview with denys lasdun”, revised draft, 13 june 1979, p. 9; lasdun 1984: 139. 44 ricoeur 1965: 22. 45 edgerton 2008: 212. 46 carson’s principal concern is the effect of pesticides on wildlife. carson 1987: 277-297. 47 norberg-schulz 1996: 154. 48 glover 2006: 22-23, 28-30, 86-88, 246251; hulme 2009: 363. 49 jenner 1995: 544-546. narrative that is disseminated widely, either to architects, or to users, or to society as a whole. emphasising that “i don’t mean myth in the sense that it is untrue”, lasdun concluded: “my own myth … engages with history”.43 as a design is equivalent to a history, we may expect the designer as well as the historian “to have a certain quality of subjectivity” that is “suited to the objectivity proper to history”, as paul ricouer concludes.44 but the designer does not usually construct a history with the rigour expected of a contemporary historian, and we expect the designer to display other qualities of subjectivity as well. instead, the designer creates novel histories. equally, a design is equivalent to a novel, convincing the user to suspend disbelief. part-novelist, part-historian, the architect is the history man. we expect a history or a novel to be written in words, but they can also be cast in concrete or seeded in soil. an architectural book can be a history and a novel, and so can a building or a landscape. conceiving a design as both a history and a novel is not exclusive to the analogy of landscape to architecture but it is central to this tradition because of the simultaneous and interdependent emergence of art forms that are usually considered in isolation: the english novel, the analytical and comparative history, the picturesque landscape, and the associated design practice in which ideas are subject to experience and special emphasis is given to natural forces and the environment. developed in the eighteenth century, this tradition found new emphasis in the mid-twentieth century and continues today, acknowledging innovation as well as continuity. while a prospect of the future is implicit in many histories and some novels, it is explicit in a design, which is always set in the future and imagined before it is built, even if that the future is a nostalgia for the past. the most creative architects have always looked to the past to imagine a future, studying an earlier architecture not to replicate it but to understand and transform it, revealing its relevance to the present and future. twenty-first century architects need to appreciate the shock of the old as well as the shock of the new.45 coproduction from its inception, the weather and climate have been essential to the evolving tradition in which architecture is synonymous with landscape. despite the burgeoning environmental movement in the 1960s, anthropogenic climate was not widely acknowledged by scientists until the mid-1970s.46 in britain and the many other nations where “romantic modernism” remains an abiding influence and enduring “creative myth”, its increasing relevance depends on anthropogenic climate change, which is now the principal means to consider the relations between nature and culture. 47 many of the proposed “solutions” to climate change reaffirm a faith in technological progress that has been a principal cause of anthropogenic climate change, and are unlikely to be implemented due to insufficient scientific knowledge and political inertia due to conflicting agendas of countries and corporations.48 in a parallel scenario, the rhetoric of sustainability tends to reduce architecture to a technical issue and the architect to a technocrat, employing a debased empiricism devoid of the poetic and practical implications of evelyn and colvin’s environmental research.49 climate change is not only a scientific concern. the dangers posed by anthropogenic climate change are real and need to be addressed when and where possible. but climate always changes, whether by human agency or other means. in offering a dialogue with the changing environment, recognising the weather as a stimulus to the imagination, and formulating designs that are equivalent to histories and novels, the landscape-architecture tradition is compatible with a complex, creative and contextual engagement with climate 91 50 dave foreman, referred to in merchant 2003: 230. 51 wilson, quoted in grissell 2001: 124. 52 grissell 2001: 35, 144, 234. 53 steve rayner refers to “coproduction” while carolyn merchant recognises a “partnership” in which “both humans and nature are active” and nature is not gendered. herbert marcuse conceives nature as active, sometimes the “ally” to humanity, sometimes hostile. rayner 2003: 287; merchant 2003: 223-231; marcuse 1972: 65, 69. 54 merchant 2003: 230. change that is not only driven by fear and may stimulate cultural, social and environmental benefits, whether at a local, national or regional level. as an alternative response to anthropogenic climate change, the continuing value of the term “nature” has been questioned recently because nature’s separation from culture encourages its exploitation, while encouraging a burgeoning fascination for unfettered nature that allows some sites to be protected and others to be overdeveloped. however, eradicating the term “nature” will aid not hinder its exploitation because commercial, industrial and national interests would be without restraint. as an idea, “nature” is a human construction. but the places, species and phenomena that we include within nature are real and not solely subject to our imagination and will. just because we’ve named something does not mean that we have made it, or even understand it, however extensive our influence. contemporary technologies – mechanical and digital – influence urban and rural landscapes. for accuracy and efficiency, a modern-day tractor is guided by gps, a satellite navigation system. at a casual glance, a landscape may appear to be subject to human order, and no more natural than another “cultural” artefact. but it is really teeming with life forms that are subject to their own rhythms and intertwined in a complex network of relations with other life forms, including humanity. the english origin of the term “wilderness” is self-willed land.50 according to the entomologist edward o. wilson, “insects are the little things that run the world”.51 thriving everywhere, they so greatly outnumber humans that their combined weight outweighs the human population by six times, and their history with the plant world is 400 million years older.52 even in a suburban garden there are likely to be around 1500 insect species and a much larger total population. human decisions influence other life forms but they do not control them. in newly industrialised england, the moth biston betularia mutated as its habitat was transformed in just a few decades. renamed biston carbonaria, its pale wings had turned black, offering camouflage against predators in soot-clad cities. the term “coproduction” explains nature-culture relations and the cities, landscapes and weathers we inhabit.53 equally, people are natural as well as cultural beings. just as the intermingling of natural and human forces creates the contemporary weather, a building, garden or field results from the relations between nature and culture that arise during its conception, creation and use. as architecture, landscape and the weather are each a product of nature-culture relations, they inform, affect and alter each other in a complex developmental process that is never one way. the term “author” has sustained over half a century of criticism because it has been associated with sole authority. but rather than a term such as agency, which may dissipate creativity, the ‘coproduction’ of multiple authors recognises that natural forces, as well as cultural ones, together create a building or a landscape. acknowledging that authorship involves accidents as well as intentions, the contemporary sciences of climate change, ecology and complexity theory are consistent with the idea of nature as author.54 sometimes competing, sometimes affirming, each author may inform or deny the other, as in a feisty dialogue of distinct voices and unexpected conclusions in which authorship is temporal and shared, and the immaterial is a coproduction of nature and culture. interstices 14 references alberti, l. h. 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(1969). american architecture and urbanism. london, england: thames and hudson. shaftesbury, a. a. cooper, third earl of. (1999). characteristicks of men, manner, opinions, times (p. ayres, ed.). oxford, england: clarendon press. shaftesbury, a. a. cooper, third earl of. (1900). the life, unpublished letters, and philosophical regimen of anthony, earl of shaftesbury (b. rand, ed.). london, england: swan sonnenschein. simmel, g. (1965). the ruin. in essays on sociology, philosophy and aesthetics (pp. 259-266). new york, ny: harper and row. soane, j. (1999). crude hints towards an history of my house in l(incoln’s) i(nn) fields, 1812. in c. woodward (ed.), vision of ruin: architectural fantasies and designs for garden follies (pp. 61-75). london, england: sir john soane’s museum. sterne, l. (2003). the life and opinions of tristram shandy, gentleman (m. new & j. new, eds). london, england: penguin. townsend, j. 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(1771). observations on modern gardening, illustrated by descriptions. london, england: t. payne. in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 87 u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l book review / samer wanan the routledge handbook of architecture, urban space and politics, volume 1: violence, spectacle and data edited by nikolina bobic and farzaneh haghighi routledge, 2022, 630 pp. there has been a longstanding, reductionist reading of architecture and urbanism as passive and neutral reflections of the forces within which they are situated. this reading discards their vital and active role in the construction of events and the politics of their spatialisation. the first volume of the routledge handbook of architecture, urban space and politics, edited by nikolina bobic and farzaneh haghighi, addresses this theme by focusing on the spatial politics of governing and how architecture and urban spaces are deployed as tools to maintain oppressive power relations alongside their violent structures of control, surveillance, and segregation. the volume offers an informative and insightful collection of contemporary case studies and critical perspectives on how different forms of power and their operational systems—specifically hegemonic and oppressive ones—shape environments and bodies subjugated to them across different scales and geographies. divided into five parts, with an opening introduction and a general conclusion, the collection covers multidisciplinary topics discussing colonial and state violence, security and borders, political ideologies and questions of race and identity, politics of representation and spectacle, and surveillance in relation to mapping landscapes and big data. the volume’s introduction explains the crucial need to re-examine architecture and urban space in relation to politics and power, especially within an oppressive environment. through a comprehensive and critical commentary on recent global events, the editors successfully set the ground by providing a general background to introduce the collection’s themes. this is done through reviewing relevant histories and theories whilst connecting them to the contemporary examples that are investigated by the handbook’s contributors. with such an open framework, the volume leaves readers with more questions about the complex associations that come alongside the “spatialization of politics” and “politicizing the space.” in t e r s t ic e s 2 2 88 book review / the routledge handbook of architecture, urban space and politics, volume 1: violence, spectacle and data edited by nikolina bobic and farzaneh haghighi u r b a n h i s t o r i c a l a prominent aspect of the handbook is that it includes a comprehensive collection of contributions, thanks to an editorial approach with a wide geographical reach in selecting the volume’s contributors. as such, the collection combines wide-ranging topics, disciplines, and examples from different cultures and geopolitical situations. however, my hope is to see contributions from different geographic regions in the second volume, for example, the middle east and africa. as well as expanding the scope and geographic reach, this approach would give a voice to scholars from different regions of the world to write about the implications of oppressive powers on their local architecture and urban landscapes. besides that, writing from the ground and the lived experience—as many of this volume’s contributors have done—usually reveals new perspectives and different insights compared with talking about a situation from a distance. the volume explicitly encourages readers to develop an active dialogue with the spatial and operational aspects of oppression across the world. in doing so, the reader starts to uncover the complex entanglements of architectural spatial politics and urban processes in relation to their forms and aesthetics. this kind of reading raises more questions about the volume’s core theme whilst drawing connections and parallels between the different geographies and cultures. by applying this kind of critical mapping to any geography’s specificities and forces throughout the process of scrutinising its architectural and urban situations, a better understanding of its political and cultural complexities can be achieved. my own research interests and concerns led me to pay particular attention to a number of topics discussed in the volume. these are the ones relating to the politics of representation, dispossession, and extractivism. specifically, the use of mediating technology and aesthetics to direct people’s perception of space in favour of a certain political propaganda. with the proliferation of image production and mass media technologies, architecture and urban spaces have played a crucial role in shaping people’s minds and bodies through orienting their perceptions. hence, the violence that comes alongside that by constructing aesthetic images and representations to serve a certain political ideology. these aspects are particularly discussed in the sections “spectacle and the screen” and “mapping landscapes and big data.” for example, christina deluchi argues in her contribution that strategies of replacement, erasure, and disconnection were deployed as a result of urban and architectural interventions, top-down development projects, and the political process of constructing a global image of medellín, colombia. these strategies aimed to reorient both global and local perceptions of the city. similarly, aikaterini antonopoulou argues that the material presence of architecture and public spaces in athens was used as a stage for filming the city, while also representing certain subjectivities as “mediated spectacles” through the use of technology. by looking at the big picture and employing critical mapping techniques, it becomes possible to investigate oppressive spatial narratives and explore the politics and poetics of space. this is an essential step towards imagining alternative spatial practices and potentially transforming current socio-political realities. this volume extensively and insightfully discusses themes in relation to that in an inspiring and thought-provoking way. overall, i would recommend it for students, educators, and practitioners alike, coming from different disciplines related to architecture, urbanism, and politics. it presents new and critical perspectives on a wide range of timely issues in relation to power and spatial practices. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 9 r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s simon weir on the origin of the architect: architects and xenía in the ancient greek theatre introduction seeking precedents for a language to explain architecture’s political and ethical functions, this paper is a historical case study focussed on the earliest ancient greek records of architecture. this study reveals the ethical principle of xenía, a form of ritualised hospitality permeating architecture and directing architectural practice towards accommodating the needs of people broadly labeled foreigners. it will be shown that xenía in ancient greek architectural thinking was so highly valued that even a fractional shift elicited criticism from demosthenes and vitruvius. this paper will use the definition of xenía given by gabriel herman in ritualised friendship and the greek city (1996), then add the four distinct kinds of foreigners given by plato in laws, and consider the hospitality offered to these foreigners by architects. some forms of architectural hospitality such as hostels are closely tied to our contemporary sense of hospitality, but others are contingent on the cultural priorities of their day. when ancient greek authors considered residential architecture and xenía together, it was explicitly in the context of a larger political framework about xenía and architecture; for demosthenes and vitruvius, architectural investment in residences showed diminished respect for xenía. the more unusual alliances between architects and xenía appear in the theatre, both in characters on stage and in the theatre’s furniture and temporary structures. two early significant appearances of architects onstage in athenian theatre were uncovered in lisa landrum’s 2010 doctoral thesis, “architectural acts: architect-figures in athenian drama and their prefigurations”, and her 2013 essay “ensemble performances: architects and justice in athenian drama” which references aristophanes’ peace and euripides’ cyclops. in each case the characters described as architects are not engaged in building or construction, but are seeking to act justly and further a common good while enmeshed in complex situations with foreigners. finally, the evidence of architects working offstage in the sanctuary of the theatre, explained in eric csapo’s 2007 essay “the men who built the theatres: theatropolai, theatronai, and arkhitektones”, are combined with inscriptions to again locate xenía. together these examples outline the varied moral and material expectations of architects, and elucidate one of architecture’s foundational ethical virtues. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 10 on the origin of the architect: architects and xenía in the ancient greek theatre r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s xenía xenía was a long established ethical custom of the ancient greek world. none of the extant forms of the greek word xenía (ξείνία) have a direct translation into english—instead we find host, donor, guest, friend, foreigner, stranger, mercenary, and simply ‘man’ or ‘you’ as the nearest equivalents. none adequately captures xenía’s ancient greek meaning, and nor does the english cognate. the prefix of ‘xen’ in xenía is seen elsewhere in english with xenophilia and xenophobia, both of which bear a negative connotation. in ancient greek, xenía was benign and pervasive, as herman (1996) explained, bringing to mind a fellow traveler, not a foreign adversary. the concept of xenía may be translated as hospitality, however the latin root from which the words host and guest are derived, draw attention to the separation of giver and receiver. xenía equalises the guest and the host. a clear example occurs in sophocles’ oedipus at colonus. blind and destitute, oedipus appealed for aid from theseus, who duly replied, [...] never would i turn aside from a stranger [ξένης], such as you are now, or refuse to help in his deliverance. for i know well that i am a man [ξένον], and that my portion of tomorrow is no greater than yours. (262–267) as well as a pervasive ethical disposition, xenía also described a personal relationship between adults from different social and geographical groups who perform filial obligations, typically hosting and the exchange of gifts. strangers, henceforth xénoi, from different cities meet either by introduction or through a service or gift, like providing help to a shipwreck survivor, which as herman wrote, “put the beneficiary in a state of indebtedness, from which state the beneficiary could only redeem himself by a display of submission and loyalty” (1987: 48–49). in broad strokes, strangers are xénoi to each other, though in a civic context, xénoi are people who visit a city and need to be hosted. in laws, plato described four kinds of xénoi, all especially sacred (1.632d). two kinds of xénoi come as ambassadors from other communities and must be hosted by appropriately senior officials; xénoi who visit for festivals should be hosted at the temples where “priests and temple-keepers must show them care and attention”, and seasonal travellers who come to trade must be hosted at the “markets, harbours, and public buildings” by city officials (12.952d–953d). two of plato’s xénoi, the visiting officials and the xénoi who visit for festivals, attend the theatre. the evidence of xenía in the theatre will be explained after noting how the architecture for these seasonal traders appeared at the intersection of a larger political debate between civic and residential architecture. accommodating xénoi much of the accommodation for visiting xénoi included commercial hostels and private homes. visiting xénoi from any of plato’s groups might have found accommodation for themselves in hostels. these buildings have been described by b. a. ault in “housing the poor and homeless in ancient greece”, and include hostels resembling stoas, a hostel and bath complex appropriately named “xenon”, and hostels in sanctuaries known as katagógia—some of which ault thought to have hosted “officials of some sort” (2005: 152). http://www.lexilogos.com/english/italian_dictionary.htm in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 11 on the origin of the architect: architects and xenía in the ancient greek theatre r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s looking to the hosting of xénoi in residential architecture and noting a surprising phenomenon, the connection between architects and houses is missing from the earliest greek literature. while side remarks by plato and xenophon confirm the existence of architecture as a business, residential architecture is far from certain (plato lovers: 135c; plato gorgias: 455b; xenophon memorabilia: 4.2.10). a sense that the absence is not accidental can be felt in the economics, where aristotle tells us that householders considered the construction and maintenance of their home as their own business, extending into the hosting of visiting xénoi (1.1345a). centuries later, vitruvius noted the emergence of beautiful homes in ancient greece, by which he probably meant architecturally designed homes. these residences were permitted only if public business were carried out there (6.5.2). clarifying, he praised households that did not engage architects. vitruvius reiterated this preference in beginning his book on residential architecture with a shipwreck anecdote, reminding the reader of xenía. in the anecdote, when a shipwrecked philosopher finds a town with splendid public architecture, naturally there are educated people there ready to assist his return home. when the philosopher’s companions set out ahead of him, they asked of what message to send his children. the philosopher replied by saying that, unlike a shipwreck, the best gift one can give children is invulnerable, proclaiming “education” as that gift. the context of his anecdote implies something far more specific. vitruvius was beginning his book on residential architecture with the polite reminder that the best communities produce great pubic architecture, not great houses (6. introduction).1 in his anecdote, vitruvius echoed a sentiment famously expressed by one of ancient athens’ most distinguished orators, demosthenes. looking back to earlier and nobler times, athens was, […] wealthy and splendid, but in private life no man held his head higher than the multitude. here is the proof that […] the sort of house that […] those distinguished men of old lived in […] is no grander than the common run of houses. on the other hand, both the structure and the equipment of their public buildings were on such a scale and of such quality that no opportunity of surpassing them was left to coming generations. witness those gate-houses, docks, porticoes, the great harbour, and all the edifices with which you see our city adorned. (23.206–208)2 to support his claim, demosthenes specified the same buildings plato required for seasonal trading xénoi: “gate-houses, docks, porticoes, the great harbour” (n.d). what demosthenes and vitruvius described is a curious and unfortunate descent. the need for an ethical principle that functioned like xenía did not change, but private homes became more luxurious, and the architecture devoted to these trading xénoi fell into disrepair. architects of xenía in the theatre: i. aristophanes’ trygaeus and euripides’ odysseus play architect the other associations between xenía and architecture, beyond accommodation and contemporary conceptions of architecture, occurred in the athenian theatre. two instances of characters acting as architects identified by landrum occur in aristophanes’ peace and euripides’ cyclops. as will be shown, xenía appears in each, intensified in opposing ways. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 12 on the origin of the architect: architects and xenía in the ancient greek theatre r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s aristophanes’ peace, the comic final act appending a trilogy of tragedies, according to a. w. pickard-cambridge’s the dramatic festivals of athens, was performed for the theatre competitions at the city festival of dionysus, or simply the dionysia (1953: 64). aristophanes’ use of a form of the word άρχιτέκτων refers to the political and social events of the day, especially athens’ engagement in the peloponnesian war. contemporary historian, thucydides, wrote that negotiations for what would eventually become known as the peace of nicias extended into the dionysia of 421b.c.e. (v. 20). during the festival’s suspension of regular life, aristophanes debuted his comedy, peace. in the plot, a farmer named tyrgaeus travels to the heavens to plead with zeus to end the war with sparta. trygaeus soon learns from zeus’ messenger hermes that the goddess peace has been imprisoned by ares in a nearby cave. seizing his opportunity, trygaeus tries to rescue her. realising the scale of his task, trygaeus calls on all the greeks to assist him, and they arrive as a chorus. with our notion of xenía and xénoi established earlier, trygaeus’ full supporting cast were comprised of “farmers who traveled by sea, carpenters, handicraftsmen, denizens, xénoi [ξένοι] and islanders” (aristophanes: 297). excited at this opportunity, the workers fill their time with dance and song, but when the heavy labour of removing the large boulders begins, the disorganised group achieve almost nothing. the men then appeal to trygaeus using the word “architect” as a verb and imperative. in landrum’s translation, “so, if it is necessary for us to do anything, direct us and architect” (2010: 19; aristophanes: 305). trygaeus directs and organises the groups, peace is freed, and trygaeus returns to athens with appropriate ritual and celebration in the play’s celebratory final act. in “performing theōria: architectural acts in aristophanes’ peace”, landrum sees trygaeus’ journey as a mirror of the audience’s experience of the dionysia. in theōria one takes a journey and encounters new ways of thinking, “not only beholding divine spectacles at an involved distance, but also participating directly in a rich variety of interrelated social, political, and religious activities: such as intermingling with strangers; conducting diplomatic exchange.” (landrum 2013a: 32). the process of theōria, of surrounding oneself with xénoi, depicted onstage and occurring as the communal theōria of the audience, heightens the sense of xenía. furthermore, aristophanes’ inclusion of xénoi in the chorus reinforces their inclusion within the community. like peace, euripides’ cyclops was the final comic act following a trilogy of tragedies performed at the dionysia.3 the play retells the story of odysseus’ encounter with polyphemus, the cyclops well known to the athenian audience from homer’s odyssey. odysseus and a few men arrive on a small island seeking food and fresh water—the archetypical xenía moment. when odysseus arrives on the island, euripides’ account differs immediately from homer’s, with odysseus encountering friendly satyrs before returning to homer’s version where odysseus and his men are captured. unlike homer’s version, odysseus appeals directly to “zeus xenios [ζεῦ ξένι᾽]… look upon these things” (euripides: 354).4 odysseus asks the assistance of the satyrs to overcome the cyclops, in landrum’s translation, “be silent now—for you know my scheme completely—and when i command, be persuaded (to follow) the architects” (2010: 134; euripides: 477– 8). when the moment arrives, the satyrs withdraw in comedic fear, but heroic odysseus blinds the cyclops and makes good their collective escape. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 13 on the origin of the architect: architects and xenía in the ancient greek theatre r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s between peace and cyclops, athens had renewed its war with sparta, and suffered catastrophic losses. homer doesn’t name the island of the cyclops, nor clearly describe its location. euripides sets odysseus’ landing at the foot of mount aetna on the island of sicily. for the audience, this would have brought to mind a disaster that happened in sicily seven years earlier. responding to their sicilian ally’s request for assistance against the attacking syracusans, the athenians broke the peace of nicias and set out to sicily. within two years, the entire expedition, over 10,000 soldiers and 200 triremes with their oarsmen, had been killed (thucydides: vi–vii). this was the largest armed force the athenians ever assembled and their largest loss. contemporary historian thucydides wrote that 7000 captured athenian and sicilian soldiers were imprisoned in a quarry cut into the earth, abandoned and left to die (vii, 87). it is in this gruesome context that euripides retold the story of odysseus and cyclops trapping and eating his men in a cave on the side of mt aetna in sicily. the consolidation of a link to xenía from peace and cyclops mirrors this aspect of athens’ changing military successes, and sends a message to the audience that the syracusans are not xénoi. as a metonym for enacting xenía, odysseus’ instruction to the satyrs is an amusing turn of phrase, simple and common enough to avoid confusing or disturbing the satyrs. and finally, like trygaeus, by acting on xenía, odysseus acknowledges that his xénoi, in this case the satyrs, belong to his immediate community. architects of xenía in the theatre: ii. the sanctuary of the theatre’s elected architect depending on inclination and timeliness, three of the xénoi plato mentioned likely attended the theatre. plato indirectly specified one: many of the “xénoi who visit for festivals” would come for the dionysia. the employment of architects in overseeing hostels as part of sanctuaries, or katagógia as noted by ault above, is likely. finally, the evidence of architects located in the sanctuary of the theatre refers to a figure who routinely acted according to xenía. the theatre architects and some of their duties are seen across the following sources. an inscription documents an architect being instructed, under the influence of xenía, to assign theatre seats for a guest at the dionysia (mc.k 1974: 322–3). posed as a rhetorical question, demosthenes directed an almost identical request at aeschines about how he handled a group of macedonian ambassadors, “[should i have] ordered the architect not to give them reserved seats in the theatre?” (18 28).5 the corresponding speech by aeschines reveals that such accommodations in the sanctuary of dionysus were not at the discretion of the architect, but of the senate: demosthenes had “moved in the senate to assign seats in the theatre for the dionysia to the ambassadors” (2.55). a similar example is found in an inscription honouring kallias of sphettos with an assigned seat in the front row at the new stone theatre: “he shall have a front seat at all the contests which the city holds, and that the duly elected architect in charge of sanctuaries shall assign him the front seat” (seg 28, 60, ii. 96–9; shear 1978: 6). while stone-carved stelai record politically significant xénoi, namely those ‘strangers’ assigned privileged theatre seats, there is little evidence of the many other xénoi visiting the city, sitting further away from the stage during the busy in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 14 on the origin of the architect: architects and xenía in the ancient greek theatre r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s days of the dionysia. these “elected architects in charge of sanctuaries” likely gave hospitality to visiting xénoi, overseeing both the construction of the theatre and perhaps many other short-term amenity buildings. however, as csapo explained, architects only appear in records about the theatre after it was built in stone, extending a general trend throughout the ancient literature that, although architects are described as leading groups and selecting sites, the building material associated with their special skills is stone (2007: 98). so, besides whatever xénoi the sanctuaries’ existing masonry buildings could accommodate, the architect’s role in the erection and dismantling of temporary timber structures remains unclear. conclusion as athens grew from town to city, it because increasingly diverse, and the separation between foreigner and local, which xenía honoured, became ever more difficult to distinguish. with each passing century, xenía became more of an antiquated notion, perhaps reminiscent of nobler, and certainly simpler, times. however, though the distinctions of xenía become more difficult to discern, xenía is a principle addressing constant human needs and recognises both the vulnerability of travelling and a community’s need of peaceful and profitable relationships with foreign guests. in the two instances of architecting on stage, the presence of xenía in each situation is easily recognised. by way of a verb, trygaeus ‘architects’ xénoi, directed them to assist in producing peace as the essential political premise. aristophanes meanwhile has hermes remind us of producing architecture (605–18), and where trygaeus directs his community towards peace, odysseus enforces xenía through violence, justified by his imminent danger. in each case, the architect organises labour into projects for the collective good that they would not otherwise accomplish. as landrum noted, these protagonists “are each qualified as ‘architect’ while acting as an exemplary proponent of justice, peace and social order” (2013b: 254). while reflection on xenía and different xénoi may assist a designer today in acknowledging otherwise voiceless users of public and private architecture, there remain systemic problems. as the ancient greeks saw, xenía unambiguously mandated altruism towards the archetypically abject shipwreck survivor, but this group is so rare that it did not need mentioning in plato’s laws. the virtuous cycles of hosting and being hosted function smoothly enough for ambassadors and foreign friends, and the sanctuary of the theatre extended itself towards xénoi in many ways. yet perhaps due to a portion of political moral self-licensing, some xénoi remained in abjection. combining demosthenes’ observation with plato’s categories of xénoi, demosthenes and vitruvius found fault in the city officials who neglected the architecture for xénoi without ambassadorial status or friends at their destination, that is, xénoi with neither political power nor advocacy. they imply in earlier years that architects and officials knew to be vigilant in respecting xénoi through all kinds of architecture. this marks the one piece of education vitruvius reminded his readers was most valuable, and one thing that truly survives a shipwreck. in t e r s t ic e s 1 7 15 on the origin of the architect: architects and xenía in the ancient greek theatre r e t u r n t o o r i g i n s endnotes 1 for an overview: weir, s. (2015) xenía in vitruvius’ greek house. journal of architecture 20, 5. 2 also: demosthenes, olynthiac 3.25. 3 the date of the performance of euripides’ cyclops, is disputed. see: o’sullivan, (2012). scholarship is divided between two plausible dates during the peloponnesian war, 424 b.c.e. and 408 b.c.e., either a few years before, or thirteen years after aristophanes’ peace. the earlier date sets this satyr play as the fourth act of euripides’ hecuba, which also features odysseus and a villain who is blinded. see the date of euripides’ cyclops. the journal of hellenic studies, 182, 161–172, seaford (1982) who argues for the later date based on detailed metrical analysis. 4 zeus xenios also found in plato, laws 5.729e–730a, 8.843a & 12.953e; hesiod, works and days: 225, 327; homer has menelaus invoke zeus with a lengthier term; homer, iliad. 13.622–625. 5 author’s translation, no known english version translates ἀρχιτέκτον as architect. references inscriptions: supplementum epigraphicum graecum [seg] 28, 60, ii. 96–9 all classical inscriptions from: http://epigraphy.packhum.org / aeschines, (n.d.). on the embassy, with an english translation by charles darwin adams, cambridge, ma, harvard university press; london, william heinemann ltd. 1919. ault, b. a. (2005). housing the poor and homeless in ancient greece. in b. a. ault, & l. c. nevett (eds.), ancient greek houses and households: chronological, regional, and social diversity (p. 150–155). philadelphia, pa: university of pennsylvania press. aristophanes, & o’neil, e., jr. (ed.), (n.d.). peace. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts. edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0038 aristotle, (n.d.). economics. retrieved from http://www.perseus. tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0048 csapo, e. (2007). the men who built the theatres: theatropolai, theatronai, and arkhitektones. in p. wilson (ed.), the greek theatre and festivals (87–115). oxford, uk: oxford university press. demosthenes, (n.d.). olynthiacs. with an english translation by c. a. vince, m. a. and j. h. vince. retrieved from www. perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ text?doc=dem.%201 demosthenes, (n.d). on the crown, with an english translation by c. a. vince, m. a. and j. h. vince. retrieved from http:// www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ text?doc=dem.+18.169 euripides, & kovacs, d. (ed.) (n.d.). cyclops. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0094 herman. g (1996). ritualised friendship and the greek city. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. hesiod (n.d.). works and days. retrieved from http://www. perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0132 homer (n.d.). iliad. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts. edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0134 homer (n.d.). odyssey. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts. edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0136 landrum, l. (2010). architectural acts: architect-figures in athenian drama and their prefigurations (unpublished doctoral thesis). quebec, canada: mcgill university. landrum, l. (2013a). performing theoria: architectural acts in aristophanes’ peace. in m. feuerstein, & g. read (eds.), architecture as a performing art (pp. 27–43). new york, ny: routledge. landrum, l. (2013b). ensemble performances: architects and justice in athenian drama. in j. simon, jonathan, & n. temple (eds.), architecture and justice: judicial meanings in the public realm. abingdon, (pp.245–256). new york, ny: routledge. camp, mc. k. (1974). greek inscriptions. hesperia 43, 3, 314– 324. o’sullivan, p. (2012). dionysos, polyphemos, and the idea of sicily in euripides’ cyclops. in d. rosenbloom, & j. davidson (eds.), greek drama iv—texts, contexts, performance (pp.169–189). oxford, uk: oxbow. pickard-cambridge, a. w. (1953). the dramatic festivals of athens. oxford, uk: oxford university press. plato (n.d.). gorgias. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts. edu/hopper/text?doc=per-seus% 3atext%3a1999.01.0178% 3atext %3dgorg plato (n.d.). laws. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0166 plato (n.d.). lovers. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0176%3atex-t% 3dlovers seaford, h. (1982). the date of euripides’ cyclops. the journal of hellenic studies, 182, 161–172. shear, jr. t.l. (1978). hesperia supplement xvii, kallias of sphettos and the revolt of athens in 286b.c. princeton, nj: american school of classical studies at athens. sophocles (n.d.). oedipus at colonus. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0190 thucydides, & jowett, b. (ed.) (n.d.). history of the peloponnesian war. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.04.0105 vitruvius, morgan, m. h. (ed.) (n.d.) ten books on architecture. retrieved from http://www.perseus. tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.02.0073 weir, s. (2015). xenía in vitruvius’ greek house. journal of architecture 20, 5, 868–883. xenophon, & marchant, e. c. (ed.). memorabilia. retrieved from http://www.perseus.tufts. edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0208 http://epigraphy.packhum.org/book/172?location=7 http://epigraphy.packhum.org/book/172?location=7 http://epigraphy.packhum.org/ http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0038 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0038 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0038 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0048 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0048 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0048 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=dem.%201 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=dem.%201 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=dem.%201 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=dem.+18.169 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=dem.+18.169 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=dem.+18.169 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0094 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0094 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0094 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0132 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0132 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0132 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0134 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0134 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0134 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0136 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0136 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0136 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0178% http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0178% http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0178% http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0166 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0166 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0166 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0176%3atext%3dlovers http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0176%3atext%3dlovers http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0176%3atext%3dlovers http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0176%3atext%3dlovers http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0190 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0190 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0190 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.04.0105 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.04.0105 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.04.0105 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.02.0073 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.02.0073 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.02.0073 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0208 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0208 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=perseus:text:1999.01.0208 ° 0 9 2 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° t h i n k t h i s : t h o u g h t i s a t h i n g f r a n ç o i s l a r u e l l e 2 0 1 2 disquiet [of a non-crash site] forms part of a broader experiment with urban inscription—an experiment played out across photography and philopoetics. as such, the project draws divergently from questions of urbanism, the non-philosophy of françois laruelle, and emerging developments in speculative realism1. the practice is offered in three registers, each building on the same 2014 dusk encounter with an inter-tidal space at juhu beach, mumbai, india: firstly, in photographic imagery; secondly, as philo-poetic – or what can be thought of as an intersecting of philosophy and fiction that affords a radicalising of experience2 ; and thirdly, as a brief discursive outline of the project’s motivations and non-standard method. part explication, part performance, this project folds theory and practice in a non-binary mode gilles deleuze (1992) has termed expressionism. françois laruelle has invited a similar reworking of the theory/practice nexus: the aim, he writes, is to put “practice into theory rather than just inserting practice ‘in theory’” (laruelle 2012c: 218). in this case, i have sought to think an encounter with juhu beach intertidal as if the thought itself were a thing, a thing to be observed and inquired into. in this regard the project stakes itself less on questions and materials emerging from the actual site-specificities of the juhu beach intertidal, and more on the agency of thing-ness in thought. what follows unpacks disquiet’s urban encounter in reference to what laruelle names as non-philosophy or non-standard method — a style of thought practise and performance pronounced by ian james as a persistently heretical endeavour of invention that aims to liberate thought from the linguistic or texturalist paradigms otherwise dominating post-structuralist and difference philosophy (james 2013: 178). the works composing this project collectively address a persistent question: how can the materiality of the urban intertidal be seen and d i s q u i e t [ o f a n o n c r a s h s i t e ] n o n s t a n d a r d u r b a n e n c o u n t e r h a n n a h h o p e w e l l thought? through an essentially performative approach, the project aims to renovate earlier epistemological approaches that ask how practices of seeing, speaking and writing produce, and sustain knowledge about the urban – a genealogy that can be traced through foucault (1972), certeau (1984), and augé (1995). the project is an experiment that attempts to divest urban accounts of a long-exercised anthropocentricism. instead, it pursues urban thought as a thing — a thing that faces the nonhuman to testify to a world no longer able to be seen and thought as constitutively “forus” (meillassoux 2008: 54-5). the approach aspires to expand epistemic freedom via modes of thought-production that forego exclusively human perspectives and any economy of subjectivity that obstructs the world subsisting “for-itself ” (meillassoux 2008: 1). in other words, as meillassoux has noted, in trying to think a “thing ‘in-itself ’ it is necessary to think independently of its relation to me.3 (2008:1) this approach aims to make possible both new modes of discovery and to consolidate a form of critique not itself urban-focused. as such, it purposefully resists standard urban approaches and historicist frameworks. firstly, it does this by intersecting photographic and philo-poetic practices, thereby eschewing disciplinary partitions. secondly, it transposes the “radically new mode of thought” established by laruelle (gangle 2013: 6) from philosophy into urbanism. into this situation, what laruelle offers is a radical mutation in thinking methodology, one that commits to a non-foundational understanding of thought that galloway (2014) describes as a movement foreclosing the real as normatively given (48). such thinking changes the nature of what can be thought and opens up how encounter can itself be encountered from a reorientated ‘ground’. for steven shaviro (2014) this mutation amounts to a “nonphenomenology” or a “non-intuitive phenomenality” (130; emphasis in the orginal), which laruelle claims makes manifest “radical immanence” (1999: 141). in this sense, laruelle effects a non-standard method to radically question basic assumptions and practices associated with analytic and conceptual thought (galloway 2014: 47; shaviro 2014: 132). since materiality is not ‘given’ in the way that phenomenology describes, non-standard method doesn’t adhere to naturalistic accounts of the world with modes ° 0 9 3 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° of perception say – instead laruelle seeks an “experience of thought”, which is to say an experience of immanence. immanence for laruelle offers a “manner of thinking” that is “always prior to any determination by transcendence” (smith as cited in mullarky & smith 2012: 26). to the extent that transcendence is given an explanatory place in and of the world, it is so as a limited condition of immanence itself. familar references of thought such as logic and consistancy, themselves integral to transcendent thinking, are therfore avoided in laruelle’s non-standard method (laruelle 2013b: 116) so that thought can abandon the illusory ground of philosophy in favour “of a real base the only real base”, that of the real itself (cited in james 2012:173). critically thought is considered to neither rightly or wrongly represent reality; it instead avails an “ultra-reality” (james 2012:172) from thought as a material variant of what laruelle calls the real (mullarky & smith 2012: 1-3). the real, for laruelle is immanence, and understood as that which is undivided, absolutely autonomous and, of itself, entirely indifferent and resistant to conceptual transcendence (james, 2012: 162). in non-philosophy’s attempt to think this materiality, “thought [is] made stranger” (mullarky & smith 2012: 37), yet despite its abstracted appearance, laruelle’s thinking is intended to be a practical theory, one whose performative orientation aims to do things to theory and perception specifically. laruelle ventures to say that non-philosophy is “almost criminally performative” in the manner that this is the only way it can be demonstrated (cited in ó maoilearca 2015: 3). fundamental to its design is how, non-standard method renders philosophical decision inoperable (rodness 2015: 71) o open thought to a relation of alongside, a correlate of the real, rather than of being (laruelle 1991:20). this study adapts such a posture in pursuit of a [non]urbanism, and in doing so, improvises a clearing for an expanded regime of (urban) thought – even if that thought assumes a difficult visage itself. to better situate non-standard method within urban inquiry, i have firstly sought strategies capable of disturbing phenomenal consciousness – in this case by way of photography. secondly i have sought to transpose urban thinking as itself a material tendency or vector (laruelle 2013b:100). together these strategies stage a re-performance of the urban that is antithetical to personal accounts. urbanism in this mode becomes a ‘not-for profit’ thing, no more privileged than a rock, or a dream in the scale of worldly things. in this project becoming-immanent is privileged over programmatic practise. such an approach is purposed to suspend prescriptive urban disciplinary norms and offer thought a non-foundation. therefore, leveraged by an embodied encounter with the materiality of an urban intertidal space, disquiet ventures through photography and philo poetics, to suspend personalised seeing and thought so it can rerecognise itself under re-scaled referents. to clarify, this experimental non-standard method thinks urban thing-ness by way of three strategies: firstly, a refusal of “natural perception” as exemplified by merleau-ponty (2002: 216; see also gratton 2014; sparrow 2014); secondly, thinking the event as if seen through a “world-without-us” (see thacker 2011); and thirdly, by adopting an economy that “makes nothing happen” (see blanchot 1989, 1993; keats 1958). n o n p h o t o g r a p h y i s n e i t h e r a n e x t e n s i o n o f p h o t o g r a p h y w i t h s o m e v a r i a t i o n , d i f f e r e n c e , o r d e c i s i o n ; n o r i s i t n e g a t i o n . i t i s u s e o f p h o t o g r a p h y fr a n ç o i s l a r u e l l e 2 0 1 1 ° 0 9 4 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° f i g 0 1 u n t i t l e d . p h o t o b y a u t h o r, 2 0 1 4 ] disquiet in photographic register was shot using an iphone 5 at dusk and for the purposes of this paper, cut from its original 9-minute length to 5-minutes. the still images bring climate and urban material accumulation into play shadowed by human form. the photos were captured oblivious to explicate narrative, intentional decision, or intuition, and thereby refuse phenomenological intent. in line with shaviro’s depiction, they “exemplify a mode of thought that presents things without being about them—that is, without representing them or intending them as objects” (shaviro 2014: 130). taken rapidly with the non-philosophic function of stance not eye, they inscribe by drawing from an undivided presence contra to ‘natural perception’. in this re-appropriation of laruelle’s nonstandard method, urban address is accordingly orientated away, not only from a phenomenological perceptual field, but also the predicates of program and social order, and away from social or political engagement per se. consequently the tenure of the urban’s conceptual authority and sufficiency is suspended (not destructed) to render the means and aesthetics of site reading (analysis) inoperable, yet is reopened to alternative modes of mapping. in orientating to ‘sites’, rather than being indexed to normatively evident phenomena, this project follows what laruelle terms a universeorientation, which means attending (by way of an alongside relation) to the real (or the one) that is in excess of the real as proximity found or given (mullarky & smith 2012: 53). laruelle’s real, as radical immanence, always exceeds and escapes human definition, remaining indifferent (undifferentiated), (non)relational and reoriented to otherwise immediate ends or needs. in this project, a photographic stance is sought which attends to this undifferentiated existence of the world, an indifference to the distinction between the world and the body of the photographer (thinker), rather than testifying to or confirming directed intention, position, or decision. as laruelle has identified in relation to photography: the photographer does not throw himself into the world, he replaces himself firstly in his body as a stance, and renounces all corporeal or psychic intentionality. ‘stance’—this word means: to be rooted in oneself, to be held within one’s own immanence, to be at one’s station rather than in a position relative to the ‘motif ’. (laruelle, 2011b: 12) ° 0 9 5 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° thus for laruelle, the photographer is immediately plugged into a field of infinite materialities that remain beyond the complete grasp of any human (philosophical, semiological, analytical, artistic, etc.) cognition or technology (laruelle 2011b: 53). amplifying this stance, in this project the photography does not seek to be filled with representational content, but rather, remains open to a “presentation that has never been affected by and divided by representation” (laruelle, 2011b: 45). in this mode, which amounts to ‘letting things be’, photography is something entirely objective in itself (laruelle, 2011b: 94) and therefore resists vesting transcendent qualities in the urban. disquiet’s radicalised mode of optics and edits borne from this mutated postural matrix privileges a seeing of seeing. it bears relation to seeing the surface of time, not as experience of an authoritatively imposed order tethered by its other, dis-order—what michel de certeau conceptually terms a “sieve-order” where the urban surface is taken as something capable of being “punched and torn open by ellipses drifts and leaks of meaning” (1984:108)—but rather, seeing a laruellian “non-world fully rooted in the present” (galloway 2012: 233). what non-standard method exercised through photographic performance brings to the question, how can urban intertidal materiality be seen and thought? is a disquieting, yet generative orientation that reconfigures the inscriptive gaze (what laruelle calls a vision-force) to see the urban anew. at stake in laruelle’s abstracted photography is a new kind of “irreflective” thought akin to seeing without ‘thinking’ the blind-sight induced by logos. similarly, the juhu intertidal encounter ‘grasps’, via a poetic identification given (always insufficiently) by auto-portraiture, the manifold of intertidal things (see laruelle 2011b, 2012a). using oblique, or tangential framings cut with top-down shots and mobilised through iphoto in partial repetition, disquiet’s transposed non-standard method disorientates and pressures inscription of urban place away from habitual descriptions and categorical precincts through maintaining lapses of recognisable or knowable relations. such a mutation of representation distresses interpretive constructs of normative place/ thing/human recognition, rendering the urban’s relational cartographic navigation inert. non-standard stance ‘reads’ urban discards and tidal material without measure or prejudice to enable encounter to enter a contract with ‘whatever’ material by accepting its fluency, swerve or stasis. vision-force, or “immanence-of-vision” (laruelle 2011b: 54) of the photograph makes everything it presents exist on a strictly ‘equal footing’. it amounts, “outside any ontological hierarchy” (laruelle 2011b: 52), to a flattening out of thought without instigating a homogenisation of experience. as alexander galloway reads laruelle’s approach, the “nonstandard real is rooted in matter” (galloway 2013:235), matter for laruelle that always maintains a real equality. in disquiet i similarly circumvent an economy that distinguishes between waste and productive matter around which the urban political economy is typically coordinated. to this end the study aims to revive the dimensions of indifference as a critical position and democratising force in urban place. laruelle’s “indifference” is a non-philosophical apparatus that reconfigures subjects and object relations without reducing them to absolute alterity (2013: 107). neither does it engender any explicit presence of the other to provide “a structure of the perceptual field” (delueze 1990: 307). as an alternative mode of relationality, the non-philosophical thinker, asserts laruelle, is a force (of ) thought, in which the “bracketed preposition expresses the immanence of thought and force as practise to affirm a (non) relation”, a relation without correlation or reciprocity, a relation outside exchange. to such an end seeing and thought is not given effect in relation to, or about a perceived object or subject. urban thought as thing within (non-standard) method has value given it aspires to bring democracy (or ‘flat’ thinking) into urban discourse not as a theoretical democracy, but a “democracy of theory itself ” (ó maoilearca 2015: 3). to this end disquiet offers a partial, or preliminary aesthetic modelling of ontological and socio-political dilemmas within the urban by releasing the ‘proper’ boundaries of the human towards potentially contingent non-human utopias. such a posture is neither subjective nor objective, neither for-us, nor for–itself, and instead aims to allow a “worldwithout-us” to flicker into view. the human is accordingly not annihilated or isolated from tidal processes taking place in encounter with any doctrines of lack or recovery, but opened to the future by way of troubling the surface of the present—a surface of shared primacy to which we are answerable. disquiet in both photographic and philo-poetic registers mobilise a structure of effacement in their address of urban material things and thoughts that verges upon disappearance in affirming a “world-withoutus”. the never-still intertidal space invokes an effect of the outside, a coexistent non-urban temporality (see crary 2013 on urban time) that resites urban seeing beyond the lived present in a fractional revisioning of the laruellian real. this approach resonates with a rapid increase in the rate of measurable entropy across the planet in line with what bernard stiegler has reported as “a form of systemic mutation referred to as ‘climate change’” (2015). as such it acknowledges the urgent need for changing perceptions of what is possible for urban seeing and thought. extinction is itself a variant of effacement that troubles thinking about the urban. as cary wolfe recognises in the prospect of the demise of human inhabitation, “it comes from the future yet makes demands on the present, is natural, yet somehow never natural” (2015). on the other hand, effacement is deployed differently in this project. rather than mobilising an eschatological “endthinking” resting on literal species extinction, the project pins its hopes on the possibility of deferred identity not lost – on the “not-yet” as an inconspicuous and unstable synthetic space persisting in the present thingly body of the urban. to this end the materiality of effacement and the intertidal space of encounter converge within the components of the project to diffuse a rhetoric of extinction (see brassier, 2007; colebrook, 2014; wolfe, 2015) and subvert a logic of crises – which more often than not means a logic more extremely applied to maintaining current socioeconomic practices. n o t h i n g . . . w i l l h a v e t a k e n p l a c e . . . . b u t t h e p l a c e . . e x c e p t . . p e r h a p s . . . a c o n s t e l l a t i o n s t é p h a n e m a l l a r m é disquiet, in philo-poetic practice, is staged as sutured together lines of questions and statements in pursuit of a textual perform laruelle calls “blind thought” or “irreflective thought” (laruelle 2011b: 30-1). this fully-fledged abstraction of the actual juhu beach intertidal encounter presents no firm division between concrete and abstract, real and imaginary manifestation. the corrosive textual materiality aims to reterritorialise urban, earthbound thought with a non-personal vision-force—a force strange to the normative distinctions between concepts, humans and bodies. the poetics thus augment erosion of propriety, ontological positioning and determined place through an orientation, not to where, but from the multiple subject of the texts productive and destructive appeal (in fidelity with, or in other words a (non)relation alongside the laruellian real). the site of the subject, (including the reader), is troubled via a kinetics of pronoun to invoke ° 0 9 6 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° an unnamed multiplicity with images of a folded, doublet ‘you’—the generic ‘urban human’ and other material guises of the real—alongside two registers of author: first person, and impersonal neuter. operating indifferently to the various ‘yous’ that structure the text, the discursive impersonal neuter functions as a gate between overlapping subjects and objects. dialogue is thus not coordinated in a bilateral relation, of ‘me author’ tethered to the other (site, tide, urban thing, reader...) in a reflexive or reciprocal contract, but by a unilateral relation to the neutral texture of the real whose boundaries can never be fully conceived. hence, disquiet in philo-poetic practise enlists laruelle’s indifference as a site of “descriptive passivity”, a site where nothing happens as an analogous expression referred to by blanchot (1989) as worklessness. in summary, this truncated exploration attempts to locate fecundity in laruelle’s strange but lovely, rigorous rather than authoritative, nonphilosophical method as deployed alongside the urban as a means to map out thought as thing in a new site for spatial practice. it has begun to perform through photographic and textual practice how thought, as an immanent thing in itself, may appear for a [non]urbanism when the non is not a negation, but an amplification and mutation of thought (mullarky & smith 2012: 15). it is too early to conclude with certainty the value of such a radical research practice, yet too late to discount non-philosophy’s egalitarian contours that offer a mode of presence and reception in a realm of immanent, non-cognitive contact—an encounter with encounter potentially significant, for example, in unseating the transcendent primacy of the human gaze in urban ‘interpretation’ and urban discourse. ° 0 97 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° e n d n o t e s 1 s p e c u l a t i v e r e a l i s m i s n e i t h e r a p h i l o s o p h i c a l f i e l d , n o r a u n i f i e d m o v e m e n t . n e v e r t h e l e s s , i t s h a r e s a s e t o f c o n c e r n s a d d r e s s i n g w h a t c o u n t s a s ‘ e x p e r i e n c e ’ a n d t h e n a t u r e o f t h e ‘ r e a l i t y ’ . t h i s w o r k d r a w s o n t h e f o l l o w i n g t h i n k e r s w h o e n g a g e w i t h , i f n o t n e c e s s a r i l y c h a m p i o n , s p e c u l a t i v e r e a l i t y : b r a s s i e r 2 0 0 7, g r a t t o n 2 0 1 4 , l a r u e l l e , m e i l l a s s o u x 2 0 0 8 , n e g a r e s t a n i 2 0 0 8 , s h a v i r o 2 0 1 4 , s p a r r o w 2 0 1 4 , t r i g g 2 0 1 4 . 2 p h i l o p o e t i c s i n t h i s c o n t e x t b u i l d s o n m y o w n i n v e s t i g a t i o n o f f r a n ç o i s l a r u e l l e ’ s “ p h i l o f i c t i o n ” a s p a r t o f m y p h d r e s e a r c h i n t o m o d e s o f e n c o u n t e r w i t h t h e u r b a n i n t e r t i d a l . f o r l a r u e l l e ( 2 0 1 3 ) “ p h i l o f i c t i o n ” i s a r e c o n f i g u r a t i o n o f f i c t i o n t h a t r e q u i r e s a n u l l i n g o f p h i l o s o p h y ’ s ‘ a u t h o r i t y ’ o v e r i t a s o n e w a y o f r a d i c a l i s i n g w h a t c o u n t s a s r e a l i t y a n d e s c a p i n g f i c t i o n a s b e l o n g i n g t o t h e “ o r d e r o f t h e f a l s e ” ( 2 2 8 2 3 0 ) . i n p r a c t i c e t h i s i n v o l v e s t h e r i g o r o r c o n s i s t e n c y o f ( f i c t i o n a l ) i n v e n t i o n , n o t c o n v e n t i o n , o f p h i l o s o p h i c a l p o s s i b i l i t i e s a l o n g s i d e t h a t o f t h e r e a l . 3 t h e b o u n d s o f t h i s p a p e r d o n o t p e r m i t a f u l l a c c o u n t o f t h i s p o i n t t h a t h i g h l i g h t s c o r r e l a t i o n i s m i n t h o u g h t , a n d a n i m p e t u s i n m a t e r i a l i t y t o s e e k t h e n o n h u m a n o r i e n t a t i o n s . s e e g r u s i n ( 2 0 1 5 ) a n d d o l p h i j n , r . , & v a n d e r 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(2014). the thing: a phenomenology of horror. winchester, england: zero books. wolfe, c (2015). the poetics of extinction. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erpnvurnsq4 interstices 15 82 designing for affect through affective matter akari kidd and jan smitheram introduction this paper considers how affect moves us, and specifically, how we can design affective environments rather than use affect as a tool for interpretation, analysis or description of a design project. knowing how affect moves us leads to a better understanding of how space is experienced. in recent years it has become a key theme of contemporary critical thought. following the philosophies of baruch spinoza and gilles deleuze, scholars of the “affective turn” define affect as an intensity (massumi 2002: 27, gregg & seigworth 2010: 2). this main thread of research on affect draws a distinction between affect and emotion where emotion is something that can be enunciated – for instance, statements like “i feel happy” – while affect is understood as autonomous because it occurs before we are able to name. in short, affect precedes emotion and therefore maintains a degree of autonomy from the subject. this framing of affect as autonomous provides a variety of ways of conceptualising the pre-conscious, pre-intentional, pre-verbal processes that occur between bodies. in architecture, affect, for the most part, continues this lineage of defining affect as autonomous, but critically also as an instrument of analysis. for instance hélène frichot’s consideration of olafur eliasson’s interior installations underscore the highly seductive and affective nature of his work where “affects are the transformative shifts in register that allow the subject to recognise his or her subjectivity in transformation” (2008: 34). while this paper acknowledges the utility of the notion of affect’s autonomy – for instance, it allows for the analysis of pre-conscious experiences of the body (human and non-human) – it questions an overemphasis on this autonomy, particularly where “affective atmospheres” are presumed to be immaterial and unlocalisable (anderson 2009: 77). instead of using affect to analyse design or our environment, this paper builds on works like philippe rahm’s honorarium, which designs for affect by looking for what moves us in materialised and localisable conditions. crucially, this paper argues for affect as a force implicit in materials. a growing concern with materiality in architecture is equally an opportunity to engage with affect. as diana coole and samantha frost explain, recent attempts to rethink materiality entail seeing matter as “always something more than ‘mere’ matter”, instead seeing in it “an excess, force, vitality, relationality, or difference” that demands it be understood as “active, self-creative, productive, unpredictable” (2010: 9). two key concepts warrant clarification at this point. firstly, the term “affect” – variously named affectus, affectio, l’affect, affect – holds a rich place in the history of philosophy. from spinoza to nietzsche to deleuze, it has been taken to imply both the active senses of drive, will and desire (spinoza 1982, nietzsche 1968, deleuze & guattari 1987) and the more passive characteristics of passion and feeling (cox 1999: 127). however, deleuze & guattari cautions against seeing affect as “a personal feeling [or…] characteristic”; instead it ought to be recognised as “the effectuation of a power of the pack that throws the self into upheaval and makes it reel” (1987: 240). in deleuze’s reading of spinoza, affects constitute bodies according to capacities and processes of becoming. secondly, the term “materiality” is taken to include both solid matter (for example walls and surfaces) and atmospheric or ephemeral matter (i.e., the felt and the ambient). more recently, new materiality has aimed to redirect “our attention from the materiality of objects to the properties of materials” (ingold 2007: 12). critical in this perspective are the expressive properties of materials – matter’s relational, interactive and affective capacities (barad 2003: 822, latham & mccormack 2004: 706). of course there are other understandings of affect. for instance, in phenomenological approaches, affect is grounded in perception, and with it, subjective, sensory experience (russell 2006: 67). as such, affect shapes what consciousness sees, but also what bodies can do. for example, sara ahmed interstices 15 83 (2004, 2010) considers “happy objects” and their capacity to draw our bodies towards them. she describes, for example, how we orientate towards this or that object, how we move towards an object because we are aiming towards a feeling of happiness that we presume will follow. ethical arguments presuppose an understanding of affect too, affects that are context-specific, influenced by cultural and social formations, and thereby are moulded responses (see hemmings 2005; probyn 2005). when i walk into a room, for example, my gender always exerts a pressure that will mould people’s response to me. however, as massumi notes, both these understandings may conflate emotion and affect, imparting to the latter a “content that is shaped through specific cultural, social, and political contexts” (cited in rice 2008: 201). following rice (and massumi), we assume that affect “does not have a narrative, and neither is it crafted through cultural contexts” (2008: 201). while in architecture affect is largely associated with place and context, in this paper we describe how we have sought to utilise affect in students’ design studios. in this setting, we are interested in design processes, rather than final outcomes. particularly, we examine the design intuitions that drive the process of producing architectural spaces, rather than observe causes and responses to specific places. as such, analysis of student work usefully provides insight into how affect can be designed for. by reference to the design studio and to the theoretical discourse informing the course, this paper seeks to highlight the relationship between affect and what we have identified as new materiality above. to this end the paper is divided into two sections. firstly, it briefly maps out affect and new materialism in the humanities and the social sciences. secondly, moving beyond these theoretical discourses, notions of affect and materialism are considered in a pedagogical context. this paper explores design that activates and captures the spatial capacity for affect. specifically this is done by looking at students’ projects that extract materiality (through drawing/projecting), through diagramming and through atmospheric qualities. from matter-as-entity to matter-in-activity in this section we explore in greater detail the turn towards affect and new materialism. this exploration of the affect of matter (material affect) and effect of affect (affective materiality) is made possible by a raft of discourses centred on “materiality in-process”, including contemporary feminist and cultural theory (see for example, de landa 2004; barad 2001, 2003; coole & frost 2010). recent thinking on new materialism is particularly useful as it undoes the common-sense conceptions of matter as passive substance, favouring instead a conception of matter as actively engendering and always in-process (see for example, barad 2001, 2003). while there are a number of reasons for the renewal of materialism, this paper limits its scope by focusing on the work of manuel de landa and karen barad. specifically, it looks first at matter as being characterised by “intra-activity” (barad 2003: 817), and second, as involving what de landa terms “intensive processes” (2002: 67). for barad, intra-activity doesn’t mean exploring “interactions” between components, as this would imply that there are independent entities from the outset. rather the body and the building, for example, are in lively and varied intra-actions prior to any engagement with them. the innovation here involves shifting from thinking of matter as passive or separate, to active from the outset. de landa views matter not as an object to be quantified, but rather, as something that has a capacity to act, to engage and to be transformed; matter, in this sense, is immanent and intensive. how can matter be understood to be affectively intra-active? karen barad, in an interview, states that “[m]ateriality itself is always already a desiring dynamism … energized and energizing, enlivened and enlivening” (barad interviewed by dolphijn and van der tuin, 2012: 59). critically for barad matter is not mute, or held at a distance, rather it is dynamic and alive. it yearns as well as struggles as it is acted upon and acts on ‘other’ matter through the “stabilizing and destabilizing process of iterative intra-activity” (barad 2003: 822; emphasis in the original). this means that interstices 15 84 matter has an agency. for example, living in a concrete block house involves experiencing a coolness radiating from the concrete mass and this decisively impacts on how we engage with or know the space. concrete blocks, no less than our own bodies, engage with the world exercising force and in turn being affected by adjacent bodies of force. intra-activity suggests that matter is necessarily composed of ‘other’ matter through “reconfigurings/entanglements/relationalities/(re) articulations” (barad 2003: 818). hence matter in barad’s work is active and has a force. her work allows us to focus on the assemblages formed between bodies and the built and the processes that allow affect to commune. useful in de landa’s thinking is his recognition of matter as actively dynamic and the notion that this dynamism is affective. one particular example he uses is the formation and behaviour of metal, which continuously changes “from ductile and tough to rigid and brittle” via heating and cooling processes (2004: 17). matter such as this is not merely self-enclosed, but assumes its characteristic states through intensive processes and transformative thresholds. in another example, de landa considers the formation of soap bubbles which assume spherical shapes in an attempt to minimise surface tension. rather than being complete in itself, the soap bubble reconciles the diverse tensions between individual molecules bringing them into a state of contingent reconciliation. for de landa matter harbours a complex of intensive thresholds that anticipate or preempt particular attractor states or stabilities, states that are nevertheless coursed with “active and affective” forces (2004: 19). the work of barad and de landa together make up one facet of what has been termed new materialism. in architectural design, a new materialist approach, in turn, has much to offer our understanding of materials. further, the notion of intensive, affective formations invites the possibility that space itself may be recognised as bodies of matter sustained according to variable states of rest and transition. these matter-bodies, as deleuze & guattari tell us, can be anything – a body of sounds, light, a gust of wind, human bodies – all of which engage matter in different relations and durations, and different speeds or slownesses (1987: 270). this produces a dynamic field of varying affects, and, parallel to this, a space of affective materiality (latham & mccormack 2004: 706). while acknowledging that all works of architecture have different degrees of affect, some design projects are more affect-abundant than others. in the next section we explore the potential of variably affective spaces via a range of student design studio projects. the design studio the fourth year design studio at the victoria university of wellington, school of architecture was conducted in the first trimester of 2013. the studio aimed to explore architecture through material processes and the possibility that materiality itself could be understood to be atmospheric. by “atmosphere” we follow gernot böhme who defines it as an interstitial condition binding subjects with objects (1993: 114). as such, atmospheres may be thought to confound any straightforward appeal to either subjective or objective accounts. in fact, they foster ephemeral, affective conditions. this raises the question for us as designers of how we might think about material qualities of atmospheres themselves, particularly their agencies and relational processes. while we do not collapse böhme’s notion of atmosphere with de landa’s exposition on the intensive nature of materials, we see a synergy between the two positions around the notion of movement/process. in this sense, both are useful for this discussion, even when de landa speaks of physical materiality and böhme talks about less solid qualities. nevertheless, by using the word “atmosphere” we hoped to give the students a quick way to understand and access the concerns of the studio project. in turn, students were invited to develop their own understanding of what atmosphere was or might mean. to suppor t our discussion on affect and atmosphere they were directed towards par ticular new interstices 15 85 materialist texts to better understand matter’s atmospheric qualities, including readings by, but not limited to, barad, de landa and frichot. more specifically, the project had two stages, both of which aimed to by-pass more conventional design approaches. rather than being programme-driven and plan-orientated, the students were asked to address a process we termed “extracting materialities”. as such, they were asked to identify and explore a particular affective materiality associated with one of four prescribed sites: wellington’s civic square; an empty site adjacent to fidel’s café on cuba street; a corner site on ghuznee and leeds streets; and the left bank arcade. the intention was that students would use different mediums (shifting from drawing to digital rendering, to modelling) to record their selected affective materiality (refer to fig. 1 and 2). in the second stage of the project the students were asked to create territories by shifting their initial experimentations towards a more resolved proposal (refer to fig. 5 and 6). to aid this transition they were asked to adopt a predetermined programme – an art gallery, a supermarket, or an art gallery with a residence. further, students could break these programmes down into constituent activities or events (for example, a bakery in the supermarket). in what we take to be a design-as-research model, the studio moved cyclically through phases of extracting materiality, diagramming their qualities and then using these qualities to create atmospheric territories on which an architectural materiality might be developed. to exemplify these processes, two design propositions are presented in detail below. specifically, engagements with two distinct affective materialities at two different sites in wellington are described: firstly, deteriorating or decaying matter found at the corner of ghuznee and leeds streets; and secondly, wind through the civic square. the first of these projects is by grant douglas, who explored decay on the site. in a new materialist sense, decay offers a significant affective valence because of the strong reactions people have towards it. the second project by kelly lambert deals with the atmospheric turbulence of wind. for lambert wind offered an intangible, yet active material to use in design. common to both projects was a quest to design for and with affects capable of moving us. experimental process: extracting materialities students first engaged with a process that entailed extracting materialities – in other words seeking out instances of immateriality capable of being experienced and explored corporeally. douglas began by capturing instances of decay at the leeds street site via drawing, photographing, and mapping uneven textures. decay such as scratches, traces, and dust pointed to the ongoing inter-activity of matter vested in the site. experimenting with rubbings, scratchings, erasures and tape markings, douglas chronicled a tracery of previous material states, which in turn provided possibilities for crafting future transformations and alterations. by overlaying drawings he was able to describe the material force of decay on the site (fig. 1). at stake was a quest for a deeper impression of the matter of decay than was offered by the existing site traces alone, one that emphasised the ever-changing and interactive valence of materials. fig. 1 grant douglas (2013). experimental process through modelling, drawing and layering. phase 1 to 5 (from the left side): photograph of the model: two drawings tracing over the photographs of the model as the model changed; and finally, two images investigating the in-between areas of decay taken from the site and decay that he represented in his model [model photograph and drawings, grant douglas] interstices 15 86 in lambert’s case, wind itself was seen as a material. the initial capturing process involved the construction of different forms that impede the air’s movement. the models utilised different surfaces and inscribing instruments – paper and ink (fig. 2), machine machinery and ink, sheet and film, bubbles and ink, grass and ink, flax and ink, graphite and water. in this way, wind was rendered an affecting body. as such, this project takes account of the myriad of “intra-actions” (barad 2003: 822) between air and the body and between affecting and affected materials. fig. 2 kelly lambert (2013). capturing wind movement (the images show how wind movement is caught by an instrument constructed by the student out of a tripod, strings, ink and paper. the wind movement is documented on the paper by dropping ink on it and allowing the ink to disperse according to the wind force) [model photograph and drawings, kelly lambert]” in different ways, these two projects both capture their object of examination – decay in one case, wind in another – and in turn re-materialise it via modelling, drawing, and layering. for both students, after this initial experimental process, an intermediary phase of materialising atmospheres through diagramming was pursued. interstices 15 87 intermediary process: materialising through diagramming one way of understanding how these experiments might intersect with issues of building design is through diagramming. as peter eisenman puts it, the diagram “acts as an intermediary in the process of generation of real space and time” (2010: 95). eisenman tries to challenge the routine ways we approach design by inserting diagrams of dna, for example, into design processes. douglas’ drawn capture of materiality was then investigated for potential spatial relations. the resulting diagrams merged the affective reality of the site with the particular spatial requirements of the programmatic activities (fig. 3). yet these diagrams, in materialising new spatial possibilities, fig. 3 grant douglas (2013). diagram of site plan and elevation with texture and programmatic study (for this diagram douglas overlaid the site plan and elevational drawing of the site, further montaging this with textures found on the site and the needs of the programme) [drawing, grant douglas]” themselves became active materialising agents generating expressive potential. for instance, found in this diagrammatic flatness are three-dimensional spatial fields, rich in shifting site data, programme, spatial movement and materiality. interstices 15 88 similarly, in lambert’s project, diagrams are read as maps of moving materials consistent with what latham and mccormack take to be a “cartography [of…] the eventful creativity of materiality” (2004: 708). having built the site at a smaller scale, lambert then conducted a wind test based on data from the site. she used graphite to observe how wind can exert pressure on material. after videoing this she took stills from the video which recorded how far the graphite dispersed over the fig: 4 kelly lambert (2013). diagrams of wind dispersion and form generation (the left diagram shows the dispersion of wind on the site which is overlaid with a drawing generated through the capturing of materiality process. this generated potential forms, as illustrated in the right image) [drawings, kelly lambert]” modelled site. this dispersive action became the grounds for her diagramming (fig. 4) and wind itself as an affective field set up the possibility of imagining different programmatic activities and, in the pushing of lines of force, an alternative basis for establishing built form. design process: creating materialities with these diagrammatic exercises the process of re-materialisation, that is, creating materialities through atmosphere, was potentiated. in douglas’ case, the creating of materialities from decaying matter was projected back on to the existing building as deep incursions into a building interior. for example, one incursion became the backpackers’ lounge where an imagined solid form was carved out according to the weathering trace of the exterior wall. the resulting voided space was further extruded and projected to create a deeper impression of the decay’s trace projected into the interior. building on an ongoing interest in timber, douglas used this material to trace imagined weathering as it would occur after the building was built. as such, timber was imagined to act as both structure and a recording device. as seen in the image below (fig. 5, right) the stud framing is situated at the entrance as a structural element but it also acts as a sacrificial material decaying fig. 5 grant douglas (2013). backpacker’s lounge (rendered sectional perspectives of backpacker’s lounge interior space) [sections, grant douglas]” interstices 15 89 over time. the space formed by this material was a lounge, so not only was it intended that the structure would decay, but it provided a space to collect items that the backpackers might leave behind. in this way, not only is the building’s decay celebrated, so too is the devolving relationship of people to this place. for lambert the active materiality of wind finds re-materialisation through pathways for movement. pointedly, lambert wanted the whole site to be constantly moving and so sought a fluid intervention into the site rather than a fixed building – specifically a speculative programme described as a windmarket. in proposing this wind-market the aim was to draw our attention to the presence of wind by creating structures particularly responsive to it. in this case a crane acted as an indicator of force, resistive, yet shifting in accordance with the contingently active matter of wind. contrastive with the rigid steel of the crane, lambert introduces a second, tensile form to house programmatic demands. much as the crane would respond to the wind direction, the seemingly weak materiality of the fabric would absorb and react to the impact of wind, transforming the spaces it pocketed. lambert intended that people would, in their own way, react to the noise and the movement on the site by moving towards her architecture or away from it. the openness of the spaces allow sudden gusts of wind and fig. 6 kelly lambert (2013). wind market (illustrations of speculative wind market shows how the shape changes from night to day and also when the wind blows) [drawings, kelly lambert]” rain, that is, atmospheric states, to penetrate the space, impacting on the occupants’ experience (fig. 6). these spaces are continually challenged and transformed through the action of the wind. affect is designed for here through this intensification of the awareness between uncontrolled forces (wind) and controlled materiality. rather than imposing form on passive-matter, the active materiality of wind collaborates in the production of the final form and its attendent atmosphere. these projects, built on the extraction of decaying matter and air movement, illustrate approaches to materialising immateriality. in douglas’ project, markings, scratchings, and abandoned objects release and absorb intensities that impact upon and penetrate each other, resulting in spaces capable of producing and accruing roughness and clutter and, in turn, varying states of decomposition and re-materialisation. similarly, lambert’s project proposes a re-materialisation of the atmospheric variables of the wind to create a space highly attuned to wind. interstices 15 90 conclusion in this paper, we have sought to give an affirmative use to affect in the design of environments. rather than seeing affect as an after-effect of given spaces, we have argued for affect as a found (and an always reconstituting) force, one that stands out as a little-utilised, yet always pervasive, generative agent. in summary, three key observations relating to methodological, pedagogical and theoretical factors are warranted: firstly, this paper has argued for the value of engaging with theoretical discourses on affective matter and new materialism. yet in engaging with this material, it was necessary to devise a methodological approach that allowed students to enact its insights. utilising a stepped design process – extracting materiality, diagramming, and recreating materiality through atmosphere – designing with and for affect was achieved. methodically drawing on what de landa sees as an implicit, energistic movement in materials makes possible a rich, if radically different, response to locale, place and programmes (2004: 19). it is through attention to these affective materialities that we can design for affect. potentiated in this design methodology is an advanced way of attending and attuning to what mccormack refers to as the “affectivity of atmospheric spaces” (2008: 427). rather than commencing with a search for concepts or ideas with which to generate a project, this approach draws on the atmospheric and affective capacity of the materially given world to structure a design process. secondly, as a pedagogical practice, attendance on affect – something that routinely goes unnoticed because it is in the background – became for the studio group a way to both renovate existing design methodologies and to find creative resources always already available to them. because of the institutional limits of a university design project, the results of course remain speculative yet further materialisation at built scales, rather than invalidating the findings here, would equally favour designing for affect but with more immediate effects. thirdly, while the study of affect is broad, the recent “affective turn” looks to go beyond the privileging of affect’s autonomy, fostering instead attendance on affect’s materiality and generative valance. we hope this paper further contributes to this call, arguing that a concept of affect should crucially be assessed on its ability to establish how affects are indeed localisable, material and effecting. this argument has been developed by presenting the means through which affect and matter may be connected within theoretical discourse and within a design studio. this paper has explored student works which focus primarily on the transformative particularities of affective materialities – both the material matter of decay and the atmospheric matter of wind. following ahmed’s emphasis on the “material effects” of affect (2004c: 92), and latham and mccormack’s identification of “affective materialities” (2004: 706), we have aimed to give matter its due. affect is clearly not an easy concept to comprehend in relation to matter, but through new materialism we can apprehend how affect may be designed for and how affect may move us. interstices 15 91 references ahmed, s. (2004). the cultural politics of emotion. edinburgh, scotland: edinburgh university press. ahmed, s. (2010). happy objects. in m. greff and g. seigworth (eds.), the affect theory reader (pp. 29-51). durham [n.c.] : duke university press anderson, b. (2009). affective atmospheres. emotion, space, and society, 2, 77-81. barad, k. (2001). re(con)figuring space, time and matter. in marianne dekoven (ed.), feminist locations: global and local, theory and practice (pp. 75-109). new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. barad, k. (2003). posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. signs: journal of women in culture and society, 28(3), 801–831. böhme, g. (1993). atmosphere as the fundamental concept of a new aesthetics. thesis eleven, 36(1), 113-126. coole, d. and frost, s. 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(2010). diagram: an original scene of writing. in m. garcia (ed.), the diagrams of architecture (pp. 92103). london, england: john wiley and sons. frichot, h. (2008). olafur eliasson and the circulation of affects and percepts in conversation. architectural design, 78 (3), 30-35. gregg, m. & seigworth, g. (eds.). (2010). the affect theory reader. durham, nc and london, england: duke university press. hemmings, c. (2005). invoking affect: cultural theory and the ontological turn. cultural studies, 9(5), 548-567. ingold, t. (2007). materials against materiality. archaeological dialogues, 14 (1), 1-16. latham, a. and mccormack, d. (2004). moving cities: rethinking the materialities of human geographies. progress in human geography, 28 (6), 701-724. massumi, b. (2002). parables of the virtual: movement, affect, sensation. durham, nc and london, england: duke university press. mccormack, d. p. (2008). engineering affective atmospheres on the moving geographies of the 1897 andrée expedition. cultural geographies, 15, 413-430. nietzsche, f. w. (1968). the will to power: a new translation (trans. w. kaufmann and r. j. hollingdale). new york, ny: vintage books. probyn, e. (2005). blush: faces of shame. minneapolis, ma: university of minnesota press. rice, j. e. (2008). the new “new”: making a case for critical affect studies. quarterly journal of speech 94 (2), 200212. russell, p. l. (2006). the phenomenology of affect. smith college studies in social work 76 (1/2), 67-70. sponiza, b. (1996). ethics. london, england: penguin. spinoza, b. (1982 [1677]). the ethics and selected letters (s. shirley, trans.). indianapolis, in: hackett publishing company. = this paper has been double blind reviewed. ° 0 1 7 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° i n t r o d u c t i o n s p a c e , p o w e r a n d g o v e r n a n c e : e m e r g e n c e o f p o l i t i c a l e c o n o m y from his early writings on confinement, madness and civilization (1965) and the birth of the clinic (1973), michel foucault’s research has a fundamental concern with space and power, or how an ordering of knowing has its specific correlates in spatial practices. the clinic is invented at that time in the 18th century when a medical gaze undergoes mutation, such that the space of disease, understood as a disciplined and defined medical discourse, and the space of disease recognized as the locus of a body were found to be allusive to one another, able too easily not to coincide. new practices were required in the developing of a new technique or technology of power, a new instrument for a medical gaze. what concerned foucault was the difficult register of how things and words find their simultaneous space of encounter, and how what is found to be visible emerges from the invisible. with the clinic, foucault is particularly concerned with a spacing of the pathological or how pathologies of living things are brought into the orbit of practices of reason. thus he notes the mutation in a medical gaze that happens between the mid-18th century and the early 19th century: in order to determine the moment at which the mutation in discourse took place, we must look beyond its thematic content or its logical modalities to the region where ‘things’ and ‘words’ have not yet been separated, and where—at the most fundamental level of language—seeing and saying are still one. we must examine the original distribution of the visible and invisible insofar as it is linked with the division of what is stated and what remains unsaid. … we must place ourselves, and remain once and for all, at the level of freedom, self-interest and the urban: from political to post-political economy m a r k j a c k s o n , m a r k h a n l e n the fundamental spatialization and verbalization of the pathological, where the loquacious gaze with which the doctor observes the poisonous heart of things is born and communes with itself. (foucoult 1973: xi-xii) foucault here refers to “that full space in the hollow of which language assumes volume and size” (foucoult 1973: xi). he italicizes ‘full’ and ‘hollow’, a kind of reciprocity in which discourse constitutes a doubling and complicating spacing; there is a plenitude construed in the very ways that language hollows out things, filling their radical exteriority with meaning. language is at once empty and full, a spatialising enigma. two essential and formative texts for understanding foucault’s trajectory here are his early essay on maurice blanchot, “maurice blanchot: the thought from outside” (1987), along with blanchot’s powerful understanding of space in his collection of essays, the space of literature (1982).1 there is also foucault’s introduction to the work of georges canguilhem on the normal and the pathological, “georges canguilhem: philosopher of error” (1980).2 this conjunction allows recognition of how the said and the unsaid find their possibility in a fundamental spatialisation and verbalisation of the pathological. foucault suggests that modernity is founded on this essentially biopolitical relation of things to words, that a medical gaze as a regulating and defining discourse enables a complex series of spatial practices, and in fact brings into concert juridical and medical discourses that establish a whole series of spatialisings, from the planning of hospitals as spaces of confinement, to civic ordinances that define building codes related to hygiene and habitation. that new technique was the clinic, a certain space for the coincidence of a medical knowledge and a diseased body. with discipline and punish (1977), the space of confinement of the prison was developed in terms of a more radical extension of this mutation in visibility. this spatialising of relations of power foucault termed panopticism, named after the prison designed by jeremy bentham at the close of the 18th century. the panopticon operates its surveillance continuously and anonymously, allowing anyone to either ° 0 1 8 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° operate it or be subjected to it, via constant self-modification of behaviour (foucault, 1984: 19): in short, to substitute for a power that is manifested throughout the brilliance of those who exercise it, a power that insidiously objectifies those on whom it is applied; to form a body of knowledge about these individuals, rather than to deploy the ostentatious signs of sovereignty. (foucault, 1977: 209)3 panopticism, in short, operates via the very spatial articulations and differentiations of an architectural diagram, which is at once, a diagram of power. thus buildings and urban structures become recognisable in terms of how they determine—and are recognised— through an exercise of power. this work of foucault was translated to english especially in the 1980s and had its ripples through the disciplines of architecture, urban planning and urban geography. in the last ten years research undertaken by foucault during the 1970s and delivered at that time in his lecture courses at the collége de france has been translated to english. especially relevant here are the lecture courses delivered in 1977-78, security territory population (2007) and the 1978-79 the birth of biopolitics (2008). an initial discussion of these introduces concerns that have been more recently taken up by urban planners, architects and urban geographers in developing revised political ontologies of the urban, as well as revised understandings of the political processes and governmental structures of cities. p o p u l a t i o n a n d s e c u r i t y : t h e b i r t h o f l i b e r a l i s m what foucault especially advances in security territory population is the invention during the 18th century of the very notion of population, as that which a sovereign or monarch needs to primarily manage. population becomes not the object of security so much as an effect of the application of a new mechanism of power: “population is undoubtedly an idea and a reality that is absolutely modern in relation to the functioning of political power, but also in relation to knowledge and political theory, prior to the 18th century” (foucault, 2007: 11). if discipline’s target was individuated bodies, security maintains its mechanisms at the level of the milieu and, with techniques of statistics, invents a new horizon of knowing for the agency of those mechanisms in what it comes to name ‘population’.4 foucault develops two notions essential for how this particular lecture course develops and how he subsequently addresses the biopolitical in the following year. those two notions are the ‘governmentality’ of the state, and the notion of ‘apparatuses of security’. during the 1970s foucault had to do battle with political marxists for whom power was that which a state held and that which had to be seized from the state, a governmental model that firstly, has an ontology of power-as-substance, as something one possesses and, secondly, the governmentality of a state understood from the model of monarchical power: a head who holds power, whether the body of the king or an elected representative of a people. foucault’s disagreement with both of these notions was fundamental. this becomes the basis of his understanding of the governmentality of the state, where government itself becomes that which needs to be managed in a complex exercise of power with no centrality. under 17th -century mercantilism, european states developed a reliance on statistics precisely as that which could measure the distributions of individuated bodies and things in a regime known as raison d’ètat, whose political mechanism was termed police and ensured for a sovereign an inventory or visibility of all things within a territory. however, what became increasingly obvious was the necessity to account for not the accumulation of individuated bodies under disciplinary mechanisms of spatial confinements, but an aleatory body, population itself, which seemed, when engaged statistically, to have its own laws that were simply not visible or apparent to a monarch. population was an opacity that could not be governed by disciplinary tactics, though was increasingly understood as that which must necessarily be governed. hence, in foucault’s terms, there emerged the attenuation of sovereign power and the birth of the biopolitical management of population, coincident with the necessary invention of political economy. such relations gave rise to economics as precisely that discipline that determined the peculiar laws of population whilst in turn became governed by population’s statistical measures. these tensions saw the ‘birth’ of liberalism as a governmental reason to radically question the centrality of sovereign power or the centrality of a state’s governance. the name foucault gives to this new regime is ‘apparatus of security’. it is security defined in terms of forecasting via economics, statistics and population as key constitutive figures of what will happen: the fundamental predictive and planning measures in the governmentality of a state. in this sense, government itself may well be posed as an obstacle to good economic planning. probability theory, concern with risk and its management, became the key concern of state management, and a primary organising force, or base rationale of urban management. in this, the art of government and the definition of the sovereign and the sovereign state, coupled with the exclusive role of police in the formation and governance of towns, also undergo fundamental transformations, as does a concern with what the space of government entails. it is here that governmentality emerges for foucault and with it a new understanding of the civic, the social, the urban, the emergence of civil society and the science of political economy.5 the perennial question that liberalism, emerging with political economy at the end of the 18th century, and more so neo-liberalism of the 20th century, asks is: how much can or should centralized government intervene in the state? in its radical forms, neo-liberalism sees any government intervention to be detrimental precisely to those laws that govern population and political economy, which are essentially natural laws, determined by statistical measure. foucault emphasizes that while sovereign rule over territory is somewhat eclipsed by the disciplinary mechanisms of police, a mechanism set apart from, though in the service of, the sovereign, it is in turn eclipsed by emphases on risk and planning, on probability in political economy, yet all three mechanisms maintain a role in the governmentality of the state. his exemplars are urban and taken from the 18th century: the location of the capital of a state, recognised as a decision in territorial strategy; the planning of new towns in france and sweden, on the model of the roman camp, concerned with a series of zones of confinement in an orthogonal grid; and the re-modelling of a port-city in order to increase the possibility of the flows and circulation of goods, people and money, primarily a case of speculative investment in a potential future. in short, foucault suggests that sovereignty capitalises a territory, disciplines structures, and addresses hierarchies of function and distributions of elements, while security plans a milieu “in terms of events or series of events or possible elements, of series that will have been regulated within a multivalent and transformable framework” (foucault, 2007: 20). with this articulation of security, foucault’s understanding of power as action-upon-action, and as practice within networks and mechanisms, increasingly coincides with an articulation of security as a mechanism of power, constitutive of an immanent milieu. s e l f i n t e r e s t with security as a mechanism of power there is a fundamental shift in an understanding of competition. no longer is it competition between sovereigns who command a territory, nor is it competition between nation states regulated by the complex web of regulations of the police who aim to maximise circulation of commodities and production with the state as ° 0 1 9 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° its own end. whilst the state maintains understanding as fundamentally emanating from the will of the sovereign, what arises is a new agency of competition, linked precisely to the emergence of a new understanding of freedom and a new entity to be the principal target for that freedom: competition will be allowed to operate between private individuals, and it is precisely this game of interest of competing private individuals who each seek maximum advantage for themselves that will allow the state, or the group, or the whole population to pocket the profits, as it were, from this conduct of private individuals, that is to say, to have grains at the just price and to have the most favourable economic situation. … it is now a matter of ensuring that the state only intervenes to regulate, or rather to allow the wellbeing, the interest of each to adjust itself in such a way that it can actually serve all. the state is envisioned as the regulator of interests and no longer as the transcendent and synthetic principle of the transformation of the happiness of each into the happiness of all. (foucault 2007: 346) individual interest can no longer come under the gaze of a sovereign will and hence cannot be regulated by police in the form of disciplinary mechanisms, whose arbitrary interventions happened according to the ratio of a sovereign capability. yet individual interest follows a regulatory mechanism no less exacting for it being all the more ‘natural’. the governing or governmentality of decision happens at the level of a micro-physics of power whose exercise happens through a panoply of new techniques and technologies primarily concerned with understanding the future outcomes of one’s immediate and private interests and actions in competition with those of all others.6 in short, the question becomes: what does one risk by acting in this way or that? outside of the regulatory discipline of police there is nothing prohibiting the freedom of one’s actions. that is to say, the sovereign will that commands the welfare of the state is suspended, even if regulation of a judicial nature is still managed by a fundamentally new understanding of ‘police’. the new technologies of power come in the form of amassing statistical and probabilistic calculations that inform decision processes concerning market investments, implementation of hygiene measures, inoculation against disease, applying building regulations, registering and licensing professionals, and so on. t h e e c l i p s e o f p o l i t i c a l e c o n o m y the paper has outlined foucault’s account of the emergence of liberalism within an understanding of state governmentality. the remainder of this paper argues that there has emerged in the 21st century a fundamental mutation to what foucault defined as apparatus of security or a liberalism that has dominated notions of governmentality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a mutation that implicates a radical shift in an ontology of place leading to considerations for rethinking an ontological disclosure of the urban. this can be seen in applying foucault’s understanding of the governmentality of the state to the 2008 global financial crisis in terms of relating our contemporary global financial structures, themselves driven by the management—or impossibility-of-managing—global derivative debt, to an ontological disclosure of place and event as primordial determinations for urban planning. in tracing through to the present, from post great depression legislation in the united states, the extent to which governmental policies on welfare housing, its financing and accessibility, were crucial for determining macro-structural forces in urban development, it is possible to recognise the extent to which neo-liberal policies on housing the poor coincided with the liberalisation of the banking system in the united states. this liberalisation was instrumental for both the 2007-2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis, and the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. this was also coincident with the shift from state-centric approaches to social housing that had become predominant especially after world war two, to new strategies for housing the poor that occurred with the move from keynesian economics to neo-liberalism. these offer two distinctly different approaches to the problem of uncertainty and risk. the former takes an interventionist approach that collectively governs through techniques of social insurance, such as health, income guarantee, and housing. neoliberal approaches sought to individualise these risks with an acceptance of, or belief in, the efficiency of the market, actively encouraging via a series of incentive or disincentive strategies to switch from state services to private enterprises. private enterprise concerns with individual freedom and self-responsibility aim to minimise what is termed ‘moral hazard’, such that individuals can set their own level of risk.7 these changing governmental rationalities opened those affected to new uncertainties and new risks. deregulation of the banking system, coupled with governmental policy that aimed to encourage home ownership, created the ‘sub-prime’ market, essentially a form of higher-risk mortgage lending. the invention of non-vanilla derivatives, such as ‘collateralised debt obligations’ (cdos), allowed higher-risk activities that were vulnerable to economic change.8 t h e e n d o f p r o b a b i l i t y it is especially the economic thinking of elie ayache that resonates closely to something fundamental in foucault’s understanding of space, power and the aleatory: this is a book about writing, pricing and contingent claims. i hold that the writing process and the pricing process are two special kinds of processes that do not take place in possibility or in probability, like the traditional stochastic processes. they fall completely outside prediction. as processes, they keep re-creating themselves and differentiating themselves, yet they do not unfold in chronological time. for this reason, their swan bird, or the event that gives them wings, is blank. it is neither black nor white; it is neither loaded with improbability nor with probability. it can only be filled with writing, as when we say ‘to fill in the blanks’. (ayache 2010: xv) elie ayache wrote a remarkable work on economic theory and philosophical geography in the aftermath of the global cdo failures and the eurozone national economy defaults. that work, the blank swan: the end of probability, targets the fundamental errors of the major financial institutions who devised derivatives packages in terms of two ontological ° 0 2 0 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° determinants: the very use of probability theory as that which determines the event of pricing, and the ontological disclosure of the locale or place of the event of exchange that becomes determinable via probabilistic models. his thesis essentially concerns a fundamental ontology of place and of exchange, to which he gives the originary name “market.” ayache’s argument, or hypothesis, at the outset, is a curious one: pricing, like writing, is outside the domain of probability. it is pure contingency, pure chance. it is for this reason, perhaps, he has as epigraphs to the book two short quotations from french literary and literary-philosophical figures, paul valery and maurice blanchot. from blanchot, he quips: “the necessary book is subtracted from chance” (ayache 2010: iv). there is something strongly resonant with the peculiar ontology that ayache brings to bear on what he defines as the place of the market and foucault’s ontology of space, inflecting to the work of blanchot and what may now define the ontological disclosure of the city. ayache draws closely in his analysis on the philosophical writing on place by the heideggerian, jeff malpas (malpas 2004), in order to develop an ontological horizon for understanding place, self, and event in terms other than those of transcendent-transcendental structures; what malpas adroitly draws out in heidegger’s work up to his 1936-38 contributions to philosophy (1999) attempts to arrive at an ontological disclosure of place from the horizonal disclosure of temporality. ayache recognises uncanny resonance between malpas’s emphasis on the failures of transcendent/transcendental ontologies and the ontologies of derivatives as probabilistic calculability and the event of the market as temporal disclosure, what malpas identifies in heidegger as deficiencies in thinking through ‘projection’ and ‘derivation’. both malpas and ayache emphasise an ontological disclosure of immanence, whereby place becomes a milieu of its own non-originary differentiations, as intensive multiplier of the contingent and nonpredictable, that coincides with foucault’s disclosures of place in terms of security’s production of immanent milieu. the predominant planning methods of city planners, architects, and urbanists conceive of the city as an object or entity capable of projection and derivation one derives, arrives at or realises through projective planning. it is this transcendent/ transcendental procedure that comes most under scrutiny when the full implications of ayache’s analyses are recognised. it is also here that the full import of foucault’s understanding of place or locale as immanent milieu, coincident with ayache’s notion of ‘market’ offers a radicalising rethinking of the ontology of the urban. there is, perhaps, something that happens in the first decade of the 21st century, a movement, paradigm shift even, bringing to a close a governmental rationality inaugurated with those mutations of the 18th century disclosed by foucault, those inventions of population and political economy that rendered, or attempted to render transparent, what was opaque to the governmental reason of mercantile capitalism’s raison d’ètat: sovereign surveillance over the territories and disciplined agencies of a state and its subjects. political economy, biopolitics and governmental techniques of democratic states all emerge and are developed and enhanced with increasing sophistication of techniques of statistics, probability modelling, and planning. the state, its mechanisms and procedures, discourses and agencies become the privileged domain of a series of new design agencies, emerging in the 19th century as the human sciences. the city is their privileged object of empirical enquiry, concentration of potential archives of quarried fact, from which manifold models for development and totalising rationality could be developed. does this first decade of the 21st century take us to the zenith of this metaphysical construct of idealising worlds, only to demonstrate that the only necessity is contingency, that the end-game of algorithmic calculation of probability modelling of derivative packages was the utter dislocation of a real world and an apparent world? as nietzsche might say, both worlds have been abolished (nietzsche 1968). would this suggest, in the sweep of a foucauldian gesture, that a new erasing trace of the human is happening on the shoreline of metaphysical certainty, that becoming-human is currently thrown somewhere between the absolute instrumentalism of a market’s demands for a self to be its own capital and a self as a work of art, courageously and fearlessly inventing the contours of its existence?9 if there is a disconnect between ayache’s market-maker as creative political place-maker and the anonymity of a derivatives debt driver that no-one seems to find stoppable, are we able to respond, which is to say, are we responsible for making our cities, randomly, contingently with a political ethics of the unworkable, or are we unable to respond, response-less, as free self-economic enterprises whose agency is the ongoing calculation of the possible? in what manner can we say the city is open to its derivatives, its technologies of the future? w r i t i n g a s a l e a t o r y u r b a n i s m while working in a foucauldian framework of legal theory, pat o’malley’s risk, uncertainty and government (2004) undertakes a detailed and genealogical account of how risk and uncertainty, as a series of differential practices, has been thought in terms of governance (o’malley 2004: 21-26). o’malley is close to ayache with respect to an ontological disclosure of events, probability, risk, and uncertainty. for o’malley, risk and uncertainty are, from governmental perspectives, radically undecidable: “from a governmental standpoint, risks and uncertainties are neither real nor unreal. rather, they are ways in which the real is imagined to be by specific regimes of government, in order that it may be governed.” (o’malley 2004: 15). ayache calls this “writing.” in this sense, it is by this writing process that urban politics and the build environment are shaped. this inscription process is more akin to blanchot’s ontology of ‘attraction’ or his spatialising of the ‘outside’ than it is to the rationalities of urban design’s inscriptions.10 in agreement with o’malley on how risk and uncertainty are considered to be fundamental to decision and political processes, the problematic of temporality as “assumed indeterminate future” is fundamental in thinking about liberal freedom. risk and uncertainty are technologies of freedom, just as they are, for ayache, technologies of the future. their genealogies show how our freedoms are shaped by those “who paradoxically claim to know the future” (181). the paper commenced with the work of foucault, outlining some fundamental mutations at the end of the 18th century that constituted a transformation to our biopolitical modernity. key to that was a series of techniques of visibility, from the clinic, to the prison, to the invention of statistics and probability modelling as governmental rationalities for planning or designing the future. the paper concludes with an analysis by ayache suggesting that these techniques or technologies of visibility defined by probability theory, contemporary algorithms for economic prediction, have failed, rendering invisible precisely what needs to be governed. questions of the urban, how it is thought, how it is planned and lived are defined by these same determinants that bring into relation fundamental understandings of space and power, as well as design as predictive and derivative procedure, or design as aleatory writing immanent to a particular milieu. that paradox alluded to by o’malley might better be called design’s contingency of freedom. ° 0 2 1 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° e n d n o t e s 1 g i l l e s d e l e u z e ( 1 9 8 8 ) b r i e f l y n o t e s b l a n c h o t ’s i n f l u e n c e w h e n d i s c u s s i n g f o u c a u l t ’s u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e s p e a k i n g s u b j e c t : “ h e r e f o u c a u l t e c h o e s b l a n c h o t i n d e n o u n c i n g a l l l i n g u i s t i c p e r s o n o l o g y a n d s e e i n g t h e d i f f e r e n t p o s i t i o n s f o r t h e s p e a k i n g s u b j e c t a s l o c a t e d w i t h i n a d e e p a n o n y m o u s m u r m u r.” ( d e l e u z e ( 1 9 8 8 : 7 ) . a n n s m o c k , t r a n s l a t o r o f b l a n c h o t ’s 1 9 5 5 t h e s p a c e o f l i t e r a t u r e ( 1 9 8 2 ) , s u g g e s t s c o n c e r n i n g t h e e n i g m a t i c d i f f i c u l t y o f a p p r o a c h i n g t h e s p a c i n g s o f t h i s ‘ s p a c e ’ : “a l t h o u g h w o r d s s u c h a s ‘ r e g i o n ’ o r ‘d o m a i n ’ o r ‘ r e a l m ’ a r e o f t e n u s e d t o d e s i g n a t e t h i s z o n e , i t i m p l i e s t h e w i t h d r a w a l o f w h a t i s o r d i n a r i l y m e a n t b y ‘ p l a c e ’ ; i t s u g g e s t s t h e s i t e o f t h i s w i t h d r a w a l . … n o o n e e n t e r s i t , t h o u g h n o o n e w h o i s a t a l l a w a r e o f i t c a n l e a v e : … i t i s f r e q u e n t l y c a l l e d l e d e h o r s , ‘ t h e o u t s i d e ’ ” ( s m o c k 1 9 8 2 : 1 0 ) . i t i s t h i s s p a c e t h a t o c c u p i e s f o u c a u l t i n d e t e r m i n i n g h o w w o r d s a n d t h i n g s f i n d t h e i r c o h e r i n g , h o w t h i n k i n g t h e o u t s i d e o f w h a t h a s b e e n t h o u g h t i s a t a l l p o s s i b l e . i t i s t h i s s p a c e , o r o n t o l o g y o f s p a c e t h a t c o n s t i t u t e s a r a d i c a l t h i n k i n g o f t h e u r b a n . 2 c a n g u i l h e m ’s f i e l d o f r e s e a r c h w a s t h e b i o l o g i c a l s c i e n c e s , w h i c h c a n n o t b e f o r m a l i s e d i n t h e m a n n e r o f t h e p h y s i c a l s c i e n c e s , o r s c i e n c e s o f t h e i n o r g a n i c , i . e . , w i t h m a t h e m a t i c a l e x a c t n e s s ( g o r d o n , 1 9 7 9 : 3 1 ) . r a t h e r, t h e q u e s t i o n o f t r u t h a n d f a l s i t y f o l l o w s a d i f f e r e n t p a t h , o n e c a n g u i l h e m d e f i n e s , a f t e r b a c h e l a r d , a s “ v e r i d i c a l d i s c o u r s e s ” ( g o r d o n , 1 9 7 9 : 3 1 ) . g o r d o n n o t e s : “ [ t h e s e a r e ] p r a c t i c e s g o v e r n e d b y t h e n o r m o f a s p e c i f i e d p r o j e c t f o r t h e f o r m u l a t i o n o f t r u e p r o p o s i t i o n s . s u c h d i s c o u r s e s a r e s c i e n t i f i c n o t d i r e c t l y t h r o u g h t h e a c t u a l t r u t h c o n t e n t o f t h e i r p r o p o s i t i o n b u t t h r o u g h t h e v e r i d i c a l n o r m a t i v i t y o f t h e i r o r g a n i z a t i o n a s a p r a c t i c e : n o t t h e i r t r u t h b u t t h e i r r e l a t i o n t o w a r d s a t r u t h ” ( g o r d o n , 1 9 7 9 : 3 1 ) . 3 i t i s a g a i n i m p o r t a n t t o s t r e s s f o u c a u l t ’s r e c o g n i t i o n o f a c e r t a i n k i n d o f a n o n y m i t y t h a t o p e r a t e s i n t h e a s s e m b l a g e o f p a n o p t i c i s m a n d t h e p r o c e s s e s o f s u b j e c t i f i c a t i o n t h a t o p e r a t e i n t h e l o c a l e s t h a t m a y b e o c c u p i e d i n t h e m a c h i n e . b e n t h a m ’s p a n o p t i c o n w a s a d e s i g n o f g r e a t s i m p l i c i t y. a c i r c u l a r r i n g o f p r i s o n c e l l s w e r e u n d e r c o n t i n u o u s s u r v e i l l a n c e f r o m a g u a r d t o w e r a t t h e c e n t r e o f t h e r i n g . a s t h e g u a r d t o w e r h a d s m a l l v i e w i n g o p e n i n g s , p r i s o n e r s w e r e u n a w a r e a s t o w h e t h e r o r n o t t h e y w e r e b e i n g s u r v e y e d , h e n c e i n c o r p o r a t i n g a n ‘e y e ’ o f p o w e r a s a b e h a v i o u r a l r e s t r a i n t . 4 s e e p a r t i c u l a r l y t h e w o r k o f i a n h a c k i n g o n f o u c a u l t ’s e n g a g e m e n t w i t h r i s k , c o n t i n g e n c y a n d p r o b a b i l i t y, f o r e x a m p l e , h i s 1 9 8 1 “ h o w s h o u l d w e d o t h e h i s t o r y o f s t a t i s t i c s ? ” 5 m u c h c u r r e n t f o u c a u l d i a n l i t e r a t u r e o n t h e c i t y n o w e m p h a s i s e s t h e p o s t c i v i l a n d p o s t p o l i t i c a l a s t h e c o i n c i d e n t m i l i e u o f n e o l i b e r a l i s m . d e h a e n e a n d d e c a u t e r ’s b o o k o n t h e h e t e r o t o p i c c i t y i s s u b t i t l e d : p u b l i c s p a c e a n d p o s t c i v i l s o c i e t y ( 2 0 0 8 ) . t h e r e a r e a l s o c o n c e r n s w i t h g o v e r n m e n t a l i t y o f t h e u r b a n i n c o n t e x t s o f t h e p o s t d e m o c r a t i c a n d p o s t p o l i t i c a l , f o r e x a m p l e : c o x , 2 0 1 1 ; b o y l e , 2 0 1 1 ; b r a n d , 2 0 0 7; d o n z o l e t , 2 0 0 8 ; f a i r b a n k s , 2 0 1 1 ; k o r n b e r g e r, 2 0 1 2 ; l e m k e , 2 0 1 0 a & 2 0 1 0 b ; m a c l e o d , 2 0 1 1 ; m a c l e o d a n d j o n e s , 2 0 1 1 ; m u r d o c h , 2 0 0 4 . 6 t h i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f i n t e r e s t , s e l f i n t e r e s t a n d e n t e r p r i s e r e c o g n i s e s s o m e k e y o r f u n d a m e n t a l c o n c e r n s o f f o u c a u l t : ( i ) s t r a t e g i c l o g i c a s a l o g i c o f t h e c o n t i n g e n t r e l a t i o n a l i t y o f h e t e r o g e n e o u s e l e m e n t s i n a n a s s e m b l a g e t h a t d o e s n o t s e e k t o b r i n g a b o u t a n h o m o g e n e i t y o r u n i t y b u t r a t h e r a i m s a t a d i s p e r s i o n ; ( i i ) s o m e t h i n g e s s e n t i a l t o f o u c a u l t ’s u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e h e t e r o t o p i c , a n d i n t h i s t o b l a n c h o t ’s u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f s p a c e , l a n g u a g e a n d s e l f , i n t h a t t h e h e t e r o t o p i c a i m s a t m a i n t a i n i n g a r e l a t i o n t o a l l o t h e r r e a l s p a c e s o u t s i d e o f a p r o j e c t o f t o t a l i s a t i o n o r u n i f i c a t i o n ; a n d ( i i i ) f o u c a u l t ’s c o n c e r n w i t h e v e n t a l i s a t i o n a s t h e a l e a t o r y a n d u n c e r t a i n e n c o u n t e r o f a v i s i b i l i t y i r r e d u c i b l e t o a s t a t e m e n t , a n d h e n c e r e c o u r s e t o a q u e s t i o n o f a n o u t s i d e t o s t r a t i f i c a t i o n s o f k n o w i n g i n a q u e s t i o n o f t h e a n o n y m i t y o f l a n g u a g e ’s u n f i n a l i s e d f u n c t i o n i n g a n d v i s i b i l i t y ’s u n f o r m a l i s e d m a t t e r. 7 m o r a l h a z a r d i s t h e c o n c e p t t h a t r i s k y b e h a v i o u r c a n b e c a u s e d b y i n s u r a n c e . a s i n s u r a n c e m i t i g a t e s t h e p r o b l e m o f t h e o c c u r r e n c e o f r i s k o r i t s n e g a t i v e i m p a c t s , t h e i n s u r e d m a y e n g a g e i n f u r t h e r r i s k y b e h a v i o u r. t h i s f u r t h e r i n c r e a s e s t h e p r o b a b i l i t y o f n e g a t i v e o c c u r r e n c e i n t u r n l e a d i n g t o k n o c k o n e f f e c t s w h e r e b y i n d i v i d u a l r i s k y b e h a v i o u r c a n c a u s e i n c r e a s e d c o s t t o s o c i e t y ( r u t h e r f o r d , 1 9 9 2 : 2 7 3 ) . s e e b a k e r ( 1 9 9 6 ) f o r a g e n e a l o g y o f t h e t e r m , w h i c h h a s b o t h a t e c h n i c a l i n s u r a n c e m e a n i n g a n d a l a r g e r c u l t u r a l m e a n i n g , t h e f o r m e r o r i g i n a t i n g i n 1 9 t h c e n t u r y f i r e i n s u r a n c e , i t s e l f b a s e d o n e a r l i e r m a r i n e i n s u r a n c e a n d t h e g r o w t h o f p r o b a b i l i t y t h e o r y ( b a k e r 1 9 9 6 : 2 4 0 ) . t h e l a t t e r, b a k e r s u g g e s t s , f r e q u e n t l y a p p e a r s i n o p e d a r t i c l e s i n a m e r i c a n n e w s m e d i a , w h i c h t a k e s s o c i a l w e l f a r e ( a s s t a t e f u n d e d i n s u r a n c e ) a s a f o r m o f m o r a l h a z a r d . b a k e r s u g g e s t s t h e s e ‘ t r u i s m s ’ l e d t o a c o u n t e r f a c t u a l p o s i t i o n w h e r e t h e g e n e r a l a r g u m e n t i s t h a t l e s s w e l f a r e l e a d s t o l e s s p o v e r t y ( b a k e r 1 9 9 6 : 2 3 8 ) . 8 d e r i v a t i v e s a r e c o m p l e x f i n a n c i a l i n s t r u m e n t s s u c h a s o p t i o n s o r f u t u r e s , w h i c h d e r i v e v a l u e f r o m o t h e r f i n a n c i a l a s s e t s . t h e s e a r e t r a d e d o n f u t u r e s m a r k e t s w h e r e t r a d e r s ‘ h e d g e ’ a g a i n s t f u t u r e m o v e m e n t s i n s h a r e s o r c o m m o d i t i e s , a s a w a y t o m i n i m i s e u n c e r t a i n t y o f f u t u r e p r i c e s . t h e r e a r e a l s o o p t i o n s , w h i c h g i v e t h e t r a d e r t h e o p t i o n o f s e t t i n g a n a g r e e d p r i c e t h a t “ m a t u r e s ” i n t h e f u t u r e e v e n i f t h e a c t u a l p r i c e d r o p s i n d o i n g s o , t h e r e b y m i n i m i s i n g r i s k ( p a s s , l o w e s , & d a v i e s 2 0 0 5 ) va n i l l a d e r i v a t i v e s o r c r e d i t d e f a u l t s w a p s [ c d s ] t y p i c a l l y s w a p c r e d i t r i s k a s s o c i a t e d w i t h a n e n t i t y t h a t m a y b e e i t h e r c o r p o r a t e o r s o v e r e i g n , w h i c h i s t o s a y, f r o m o n e p a r t y t o a n o t h e r. e x o t i c d e r i v a t i v e s a r e m o r e c o m p l e x , m o v i n g b e t w e e n d i f f e r e n t e n t i t i e s a n d d i v i d a b l e i n t o d i f f e r e n t l e v e l s o f r i s k . t h e s e “ t r a n c h e ” g r o u p s e x t e n d f r o m a n a a a r a t i n g t o t h e l o w e s t , w h i c h i s u n r a t e d . 9 i f f o u c a u l t i s c o r r e c t i n h i s g e n e a l o g y o f t h e e m e r g e n c e o f p o l i t i c a l e c o n o m y a s t h a t a p p a r a t u s o f s e c u r i t y t h a t a i m e d a t m e a s u r i n g t h e a l e a t o r y n a t u r e o f p l a n n i n g a t t h e h e a r t o f w h a t p r e c i s e l y w a s n o l o n g e r v i s i b l e t o t h e m o n a r c h , t h e r e b y u s h e r i n g i n a f u n d a m e n t a l l y n e w e x e r c i s e o f p o w e r t h a t h e c o m e s t o t e r m b i o p o w e r, o r a p o w e r e x e r c i s e d i n t h e d e f i n i n g a n d o r d e r i n g o f p o p u l a t i o n s b y a n e w s c i e n c e o f p r o b a b i l i t y, t h e n t h e e v e n t s o f t h e f i r s t d e c a d e o f t h e 2 1 s t c e n t u r y, a n d t h e o r i s e d b y ay a c h e , p o i n t t o t h a t m o m e n t w h e n p o l i t i c a l e c o n o m y f a c e s t h e o p a c i t y o f t h e t e c h n o l o g i e s o f v i s i b i l i t y i t c r e a t e d : a m a t h e m a t i s a t i o n o f t h e f l o w s o f r i s k m a n a g e m e n t . b y 2 0 0 8 , w i t h t h e b a n k r u p t i n g o f l e h m a n b r o t h e r s a n d t h e s u b s e q u e n t $ 8 0 0 b i l l i o n b a i l o u t o f t h e wa l l s t r e e t b a n k s , t h a t v e r y m o d e l o f g o v e r n m e n t a l i t y o f t h e s t a t e t h a t e m e r g e d a t t h e e n d o f t h e 1 8 t h c e n t u r y, a m o d e l t h a t h a d d r i v e n t h e f u n d a m e n t a l o n t o l o g y o f t h e u r b a n i z a t i o n o f p o p u l a t i o n s , i s n o w i t s e l f a t r i s k . i t i s p r o b a b i l i t y t h e o r y, d e t e r m i n e d i n t h e a l g o r i t h m i c f u n c t i o n i n g o f r i s k m a n a g e m e n t t h a t p r e s e n t s t h e f u n d a m e n t a l r i s k . t h i s s u g g e s t s a c r i s i s i n d e t e r m i n i n g w h a t m i g h t n o w c o n s t i t u t e g o v e r n m e n t a l s t r u c t u r e s . h e n c e t h e t u r n i n p o l i t i c a l u r b a n t h e o r y t o p o s t d e m o c r a t i c a n d p o s t p o l i t i c a l p a r a d i g m s a s m o d e l s , o r w h a t g i o r g i o a g a m b e n s u g g e s t s a s t h e p o l i t i c a l d i s e n f r a n c h i s e m e n t o f t h e r e f u g e e , a s t h e v i a b l e e t h i c a l f r a m e w o r k f o r t h i n k i n g u r b a n p l a n n i n g o u t s i d e o f t h e s o c i a l c o n t r a c t a n d e n l i g h t e n m e n t f i c t i o n s o f s t a t e s a n c t i o n e d a n d i n a l i e n a b l e r i g h t s ( a g a m b e n , 2 0 0 3 ) . 1 0 f o u c a u l t n o t e s c o n c e r n i n g b l a n c h o t ’s n o t i o n o f ‘ a t t r a c t i o n ’ : “ i t i s n e c e s s a r y t o b e c l e a r a b o u t w h a t t h e w o r d d e s i g n a t e s : “ a t t r a c t i o n ,” a s b l a n c h o t m e a n s i t , d o e s n o t d e p e n d u p o n a n y c h a r m . n o r d o e s i t b r e a k o n e ’s s o l i t u d e o r f o u n d a n y p o s i t i v e c o m m u n i c a t i o n . t o b e a t t r a c t e d i s n o t t o b e b e c k o n e d b y t h e a l l u r e o f t h e e x t e r i o r ; i t i s r a t h e r t o s u f f e r [ é p r o u v e r ] — i n e m p t i n e s s a n d i n d e s t i t u t i o n — t h e p r e s e n c e o f t h e o u t s i d e a n d … i n t h e f a c t t h a t o n e i s i r r e m e d i a b l y o u t s i d e t h e o u t s i d e . f a r f r o m c a l l i n g o n i n t e r i o r i t y t o d r a w c l o s e t o a n o t h e r, a t t r a c t i o n m a k e s i t i m p e r i o u s l y m a n i f e s t t h a t t h e o u t s i d e i s t h e r e , o p e n , w i t h o u t d e p t h , w i t h o u t p r o t e c t i o n o r r e s e r v e … b u t t h a t o n e c a n n o t g a i n a c c e s s t o t h a t o p e n i n g …” ( f o u c a u l t , 1 9 9 8 : 1 5 4 ) ° 0 2 2 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° agamben, g. 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(1988). foucault. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. donzelot, j. (2008). michel foucault and liberal intelligence. economy and society, 37, 1, 115-134. fairbanks, r. (2011). the politics of urban informality in philadelphia’s recovery house movement. urban studies, 48, 12, 2555-2570. foucault, m. (1965). madness and civilisation: a history of insanity in the age of reason. new york: vintage books. foucault, m. (1973). the birth of the clinic: an archaeology of medical perception. london: allen lane. foucault, m. (1980b). georges canguilhem, philosopher of error (c. gordon, trans.). ideology & consciousness, 7, 33-36. foucault, m. (1987). maurice blanchot: the thought from the outside. in m. foucault. & m. blanchot. foucault/blanchot (7-60). new york: zone books. foucault, m. (1977). discipline & punish: the birth of the prison (a. sheridan, trans.). new york: vintage books. foucault, m. (2007). security, territory, population: lectures at the collège de france 1977-1978 (g. burchell, trans.). new york: palgrave and macmillan. foucault, m. (2008). the birth of biopolitics: lectures at the collège de france 1978-1979 (g. burchell, trans.). new york: palgrave and macmillan. gordon, c. (1979). other inquisitions. ideology & consciousness, 6, 23-46. hacking, i. (1981). how should we do the history of statistics? ideology & consciousness, 8, 15-26. also in burchell, g., gordon, c. & miller, p. [eds.]. (1991). the foucault effect: studies in governmentality (181-196). chicago: the university of chicago press. heidegger, m. (1999). contribution to philosophy: from enowning (p. emad, k. maly, trans.). indianapolis: indiana university press. kornberger, m. (2012). governing the city: from planning to urban strategy. theory, culture & society, 29, 2, 84-106. lemke, t. (2010a). foucault, governmentality, and critique. rethinking marxism: a journal of economics, culture & society, 14, 3, 49-64. lemke, t. (2010b). foucault’s hypothesis: from the critique of a juridico-discursive concept of power to an analytics of government. parrhesia, 9, 31-43. macleod, g. (2011). urban politics reconsidered: growth machine to post-democratic city? urban studies, 48,12, 2629-2660. r e f e r e n c e s ° 0 2 3 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° macleod, g. & jones, m. (2011). renewing urban politics. urban studies, 48, 12, 2443-2472. malpas, j. (2004). heidegger’s topology: being place world. cambridge, mass.: mit press. murdoch, j. (2004). putting discourse in its place: planning, sustainability and the urban capacity study. area, 36, 1, 50-58. nietzsche, f. (1968). “how the ‘real world’ at last became a myth: history of an error” (r.j. hollingdale, trans.), in twilight of the idols, pp. 40-41. harmondsworth: penguin. o’malley, p. 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(1992). routledge dictionary of economics. new york: routledge. interstices 14 staged materiality gernot böhme i. two bookshops in the old city of constance there are two bookshops, only a few hun dred metres apart, but so different from each other that one could believe, going from one to the other, that one was entering another world or time. one, das bücherschiff, is approached by steps and a narrow entrance door. it gives the impression of being jammed into a residential house: one passes through rooms unclearly and crookedly connected to each other by steps. in actuality, the space is articulated not by walls, but by the wooden beams of half-timbering, whose spaces are filled not with bricks and mortar but with books. the beams are what shape the atmosphere of this book-shop: yellowish-brown, rather soft wood, corresponding to the warm light of the incandescent lamps. the wood gives the effect of being well-worn, irregularly hewn, old, but not aged; rather, “matured”. the atmosphere tempts one to linger, to rummage. one feels no sense of being observed; one could belong there oneself. in the summer, they say, one can also drink tea in the back courtyard of this bookshop. as for the other bookshop, gess: entering at ground level, one slides, so to speak, past the sale bins in front, through the glass door, and onto a “conveyor-belt” running at an angle through the entire store, in actuality a marble passage. following it, one passes the stacks of sale books and best-sellers and the cash register, quickly finding one’s way to the various departments clearly indicated on the walls. toward the rear, the store widens and receives a second floor, clearly marked, announcing its presence with a steel platform cutting into the marble path at an angle. glass, marble, stainless steel and metal surfaces clothed in elegant grey define the atmosphere here. the visit, one feels, must be quick and decisive. information is at stake, and this is the place to find it. are these different worlds? yes and no. the spatial organisation and above all the dissimilar materials do in fact produce a feeling of being in different worlds. one result of this difference might be that the two shops would attract quite different clientele and customer personality types. and for people of the sort who have “their” bookshop, the difference in the at mospheres of the two stores certainly will determine their priorities. but the fact that the two bookshops, as is usual, have different areas of specialisation – the one perhaps more visual arts and literature, the other more de sign, languages, travel, and pop psychology – is basically irrelevant. the retail book trade as a whole is so outstandingly organised – there is probably nothing in the entire world to compare to the german book trade – that one can order practically any book in any store and receive it the next day. functionally considered, all bookshops are alike: they are terminals of the major retail booksellers. but in their atmosphere they are not alike at all. on the contrary: their functional sameness permits and indeed necessitates the differences in their aesthetic presentation. precisely because the differences between two bookshops can scarcely be articulated functionally, they must be articulated in the design. the competition is a competition of at mospheres: here wood, rusticality and warm previously published in: daidalos 56 (1995), 36-43. 95 light, there chrome, glass. steel and neon lighting. and so the initial assessment is reversed. for what appeared at first glance to be the old and the new, the conservative and the progressive, the difference between two worlds, proves upon closer examination to be the broad range of variation of a single world, the modern or post-modern. both variations are the product of design, the conscious creation of atmosphere, a theatre of, and by means of, materials. ii. material and materiality considered more closely, neither in the one place nor in the other must the beams carry any load or the steel bridge provide access to something otherwise unreachable. both the half-timbering and the steel are non-functional, i.e. purely aesthetic. or, better said, their function consists in presenting themselves. they help shape the space – they represent themselves, half-timbering and bridge – or rather, their materiality, wood and steel. the materials are, so to speak, emancipated. their functional liberation enables them to exit as pure appearance: they no longer have actually to perform what they promise, as long as the promise is there. and so the old call for the integrity of materials is transformed into its opposite. its demands had forced the materials into inconspicuousness: precisely because they were supposed to correspond to function – of equipment, of buildings – they disappeared behind it. the new sensibility for materiality prevalent in current design and architecture calls for exactly the opposite. materiality is supposed to show itself, to come forward, to help shape the atmospheres in which we live. material and materiality thus part ways, as do the processes of making and perception. material is the stuff of which things are made. its qualities are inconspicuous; they don’t call attention to themselves. what is significant about material is how it responds to manipulation and stress and, no less important, how it fits into legal and economic calculations. qualities that have to do with the manipulation of materials, for example, are malleability, ductility, fusibility. qualities related to stress are elasticity, breaking strength, non-flammability. qualities attributable to a material qua raw matter in economic and legal calculations are above all homogeneity, standardisation and consistency of quality. as such they allow for ordering according to list, price guarantee and warranty. for the production of objects, this triad of working, stress-related and economic-legal qualities renders superfluous the question of what the objects are made of; the material, the raw matter, is defined not by its character, but by functional equivalents. this gives rise on the one hand to the dominance of “characterless” materials in current production – of particle board, concrete, plastics. it leads to the systematic construction of materials according to the qualities demanded. this is the birth of the science of materials as engineering technology: ceramics, alloys, crystalline structures and sophisticated hybrids of all three are developed with great ingenuity for specific functions. on the other hand, the character of materials becomes autonomous: materiality becomes pure outward form. wood, glass, steel and marble as elements of architecture and design no longer designate materials in themselves, but qualities of appearance, the more characteristic, the bet ter. wood may still be wood, but oak is certainly a veneer and red oak a stain. decades ago, jean baudrillard spoke of the valeurs d’ambiance. nowadays this phrase should probably be translated as “theatrical value”. interstices 14 paradigmatic for the rift between material and materiality, between the quality of the raw stuff and its theatrical value, is particle board. but of course the discrepancy between surface and inner structure that it epitomises has precursors reaching back far into the past: not only related veneer techniques, but also architectural facings, stuccoed marble, enamelling. in fact the materialist semper’s own opera house is a prime example of the split between material and the staging of materiality, or materiality as theatre: the marble columns are stucco, the wooden panelling is painted. this could bring us to the premature conclusion that the discrepancy between material and materiality is a perennial phenomenon, a part of culture per se, as it were. after all, weren’t the egyptians already masters of surface finishing, and wasn’t the objective of 2000 years of alchemy the semblance of matter, i.e. the production of materiality? there is certainly truth in this. but one has to recognise that the interest in materiality as the reality of appearance is tied to particular cultural and economically-defined epochs, in short, to epochs of luxurious economy. and as far as alchemy is concerned: the absence of quantitative methods of description left no al ternative but to define materials by the quality of their outward appearance. only such a definition necessitates the warning that “not all that glitters is gold”. materiality is thus revealed as a product of economic development and of the state of science and technology. the economy of developed industrial nations is dependent on the production of luxury articles. when basic needs are satisfied and produc tion for war declines, the maintenance of production levels and, indeed, any growth at all, depends on the demand for luxuries and on their artificial – i.e., fashionable – or technological obsolescence. this leads to the dominance of the appearance value of products, of aesthetics over practicality. on the other hand, the development of science has deepened the rift between essence and appearance and has made the definition of materials independent of their outward form. in effect, the progress of technology has situated the level of human creativity ever deeper within the material. for the greeks, the prototype of creativity was the craftsman giving a particular form to a given material (the carpenter, the stonemason). today, the material itself is the actual object of creativity: what is created is its inner, not its outer form. and so we have electronic devices in wood grain, marble-ised typewriters, express trains in white, gold, and silver, post offices in marble, department stores like castles. this development raises the question as to how ma terials are perceived at all, or rather – approaching it from the perspective of the object – how they present themselves. this could be related to the question of why, in the aesthetics of materials, traditional materials still dominate, i.e., why modern substances are attired in the design of tradi tional materials. iii. the manifestation of materiality materials manifest themselves with a particular character. what we designate as character is the structure of their atmospheric aura. that this character is decisive is shown by the fact that, for example, when one needs wood to create a particular atmosphere in a space – whether to achieve a sense of easiness and warmth or of prosperity and solidity – one has to give the surfaces wood-character. under no circumstances does this simply mean that they must look like wood – although that too, to be sure. here the texture comes into play, already giving us an important element of the charac ter, that is, the specific way in which something displays itself. it may be the linear patterning, otherwise the grain or marbling 97 – or to put it in general, if paradoxical, terms: the typical form of irregularity. the significance of this paradox is currently being studied in fractal geometry and chaos theory. the results are tentative and therefore uninteresting for the aesthetics of reception, but they could become important for the aesthetics of production, particularly when the design of types of irregularity is at issue. this gives us a preliminary answer to the question of the aesthetic prevalence of traditional materials. up to this point, only the one or the other has been possible for human creativity: either the regular – from plato’s ideal bodies to the symmetry of wallpaper design – or the irregular – from the spontaneous idea to peinture automatique – with one exception: handwriting. handwriting – typical irregularity, non-conceptual recognisability. this is one way in which materials show themselves, one which nature performs for us in unending variety but which up to this point has scarcely been successful in industrial production, though perhaps it was never intended. but in order to let a particular materiality appear, it is not only im portant that the surfaces look like ... [this or that]. that would be colourless and flat, and would expose itself as an imitation. to be sure, whether it is an imitation or not is irrelevant when the appearance of materiality is at issue. but clearly there are further dimensions in which materiality characteristically manifests itself, without which an imitation would not be sufficiently watertight: for example, colouration in all its nuances, the microscopic structure of the surface, i.e. the degree to which it isn’t surface at all, its haptic qualities, one could say. the crucial point is precisely that these qualities do not usually have to be verified haptically at all – they are atmospherically perceptible even without the concrete sense of touch. at a physical level this is doubtless connected to the optical features of the surface formation, to absorption, diffusion, refraction. but with respect to the aesthetics of reception, the issue here, as with colour, is what one can call its synaesthetic character: whether a material gives the effect of being warm, gentle, repellant, smooth, damp, obtrusive or reserved. this kind of character always affects several senses, and for this reason can be perceived representatively through different senses, or, from the perspective of the object, can be produced through different material qualities: the cold through blue, the repellant through a glossy finish, the shrill through colour contrasts. if we call the first dimension in which materiality manifests itself its physiognomy, the second would be its synaesthetic character. a third di mension is the social character. materials have a social character to the extent that they, by reason of their use of culture or tradition, stand for something: the 1920s, for example, or cosiness, grandeur, in some cases also the natural. but that brings us to a new subject. iv. the iconology of materials only recently has the discipline of art history become aware that such a thing as “the language of materials’’ exists. inherently, the language of ma terials is surely as old as art itself. up to this point, however, the study of art, with its emphasis on the language of forms, has not given sufficient weight to the fact that materials, too, are carriers of meaning. in any case, since iconology is the study of images, it would be better to speak of the se mantics of materials. the semantics of materials is based partly in their origin, partly in the privileged access of particular strata of society to certain materials, but partly also in sheer convention, whether fashion or ideology. of course it was significant that a material came from the holy land or that the stones of a particular building were fragments of the bastille. and, for example, if the roman emperor had a monopoly on tyrian purple or a particular egyptian porphyry quarry, then purple and porphyry stood for imperial grandeur. interstices 14 what is interesting is how ideology and convention can also invest a material with the semantics of origin, even when it is in fact found everywhere. in the nineteenth century, for example, granite acquired significance as the material of the fatherland, even though the german fatherland or prussia is hardly distinguished by the presence of granite, but more by the absence of any other usable kind of stone. the language of materials in the history of art follows still other cultural patterns besides origin, privilege and ideology: for example, the alchemistic classification of the seven metals or their hierarchical ascription to the ages of the world – the golden age, the silver age, the iron age. through the use of a particular materi al, then, works of art can represent the world order or the hierarchical order of society implicitly, i.e. in addition to or through their sculptural form. to be sure, the language of materials as identified by the history of art is only a very small part of the larger potential of materials for significance in the aesthetic constitution of everyday life. here it is better to speak of a social character than of a language. from the perspective of art history, the effect of a material’s social character presents itself as a code which must be deciphered. this is due precisely to the conventional nature of this charac ter. the difference between a lion of bronze and one of granite is only perceptible to us at the synaesthetic level. but when a viewer no longer shares the convention, the fact that the use of one material as opposed to another is symbolically something can only be mediated through art historical hermeneutics. in contrast, leather as a material for car upholstery exudes elegance, loden cloth conveys a sense of the rustic, while stainless steel is chic. these effects are directly perceptible, but their conventional character can fade and in some cases even turn them into their opposite. a typical example is the history of the aesthetic effect of concrete, “which in the first half of our century was invested with positive, almost messianic significance, and in the meantime has degenerated into a popular metaphor for vices such as contempt for humanity, narrow-mindedness, and heartlessness”. (raff 1994: 15) v. sensing material the creation of an atmosphere through the character of materials can indeed be called magic. what is magic? conjuring, telekinesis, the triggering of effects through signs. magic is puzzling, it is incomprehensible. because cause and effect are not of the same kind, it is dangerous and insidious: it can also work against our will. all of this applies to the effect of materials in the theatre of the world in which we live. most remarkable and incomprehensible of all is how this effect can be had through mere appearance, i.e. through materiality without material. in fact, the pure aesthetic of materials assumes we won’t handle or touch them. what produces an atmosphere of coldness or softness would probably be robbed of its effect if one tried to verify its promises by touching. on the other hand, it is at a very physical level that the synaesthetic character, or the character of the atmosphere produced, moves us. even simply to confirm the qualities of a material on its surface would cause the atmospheric effect, for which it is in fact employed in design and architecture, to collapse. the effect is deep and subcutaneous, as a rule even unconscious. only afterwards, when we already feel a certain way in a space, when the atmospheric effect of the materials has already completely bewitched us, do we perhaps try, irritated, to identify its origin. this is what is eerie and dangerous. the same is true for the social character of materials. as opposed to the discipline of art history, we have asserted that this character is not usually read, but is sensed. the noble, majestic quality of a material, its elegance or old-fashionedness are sensed. but this does not mean merely that the material is able to point to or signal the noble, the majestic, the elegant, or the old-fashioned; rather, it seems to 99 radiate them. they must in some way be connected to, anchored in, its material qualities. this is why it is sometimes difficult to distinguish clearly between the synaesthetic and social character of a material. is solidity synaesthetic or social? probably both. the solidity of the material stands for the solidity of the social conditions in which it is employed. materiality can certainly be used to make magic. designers, interior decorators, set designers do it. but what are they relying on? what gives them the certainty that their magic will work and that their conjurings will reach the public? how is it possible for us to be affected physically by something with which we have no physical contact at all? magic? the answer to all these questions probably lies in the fact that, besides the perceptual and work-related relationships, there is a third relationship to material which we will call the medial. in the working relationship we are involved with the material as raw matter. when we grapple with it, intend something with it, seek to form and change it, certain qualities become manifest: material is elastic, soluble, fusible and brittle. in the perceptual relationship we are involved, not with material i working stuff, but with materiality, the pure form of its appearance. here we encounter its physiognomy, its synaesthetic and social character. but we can also be inside the material, walk on it, sit on it, rest in it and – eat it. this relationship to material is dominant in early childhood, before the working relationship and distanced perception have developed. the fact that we exist as bodies among other bodies and live physically within different media is the basis of our direct physical experience of materials. we experience softness or hardness, wetness, dryness, coolness, and warmth on, or better, in our own bodies. aristotle designated this special perception as the actual touching (haphe). a more precise translation would be sens ing. to sense a material is not to take note of its qualities by touching its exterior. this would involve more than just the surface, as aristotle says, our flesh is simultaneously the medium and the organ of this sensing. thus we experience and recognise firmness, softness, warmth and coolness in our experience of ourselves. the sensing of materials is in this way a sensing of oneself. in this physical sensing of ourselves lies the foundation of the later perception of materials as well. to a certain degree it is never lost, for we remain bodies among other bodies and live within media. but the more distanced approach to material and materiality preserves these experiences only as a background memory. the magic of the material is disclosed, even if we inevitably fall for it again and again. and why not? how impoverished life would be without this element of everyday regression. references raff, t.(1994) die sprache der materialien. anleitung zu einer ikonologie der werkstoffe. münchen: deutscher kunstverlag. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 45 f i x i n g verarisa ujung interiority of caring relations in the mangokal holi ritual in its psychological sense “interiority” refers to the “inner life or substance” of an individual (merriam-webster, n.d). individuals are the originators of interiority; interiority “is responsive to the individual at its centre” (pimlott, 2018: 5). this individualistic conception becomes important in attempting to understand multiple and overlapping dimensions of the self. it is particularly troublesome when attempting to understand how traditions and cultures construct self, and, in turn, how cultures figure interiority, articulate space, and perform caring relations. this paper delves into how the interiority of caring relations is framed and understood in relation to a specific ritual passage, the batak mangokal holi reburial tradition. it foregrounds indigenous knowledge, experience and ways of being in understanding interiority, and in doing so contributes to ethnographic theories of ritual and caring relations. as an indigenous batak researcher trained in interior architecture, i describe my own experiences of mangokal holi and its interiority. i will focus on how the batak, one of indonesia’s many ethnic groups, perform interiority through caring relations. for batak, as anthropologist andrew causey noted, the self or an individual’s personality is multi-faceted: “a combination of one’s physical quirks and character […] [and] […] one’s particular spirit (or tondi) … a complex conflation of individual personality, the particular spirit, and the collective group” (2011: 9-10). tondi is a complex concept which captures the living essence of the individual (sinaga in causey, 2011: 3). acknowledging the duality of a self that is part material body (including personal characteristics) and part spiritual entity (the tondi) is necessary in understanding the interiority of caring relations in batak culture. care in this context is both material and spiritual. to batak, care is also social. arne bendtz, a scholar of batak culture, noted the principal concept within this: that humans are esteemed beings with responsibility to respect and extend goodwill to each other, to nature, to supra-human powers, and the supreme deity (1986: 26). however, this is not solely individualistic, bendtz maintains, because the individual in batak culture “does not have a personal life apart from the collective life of the clan [. . .] loyalty to the community is therefore absolute’’ (26). being batak is being part of the collective, and love of community is love of self: these are not separable. one’s sense of self is inextricably bound to community and family. one’s actions are guided in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 46 interiority of caring relations in the mangokal holi ritual f i x i n g by the community’s laws and regulations, and one supports them as an expression of self. similarly, the self is inextricably bound to one’s family, particularly in the patriline clan relationship known as marga (causey, 2011:32).1 the marga relationship organises how groups engage socially and participate in rituals. a common batak umpama (parable) signifies how important marga is in defining caring relationships: tinitip sanggar bahen huru-huruan djolo sinungkun marga asa binoto partuturan to make a birdcage, one has to cut the reeds to know the kinship, one has to ask the clan further, care is situated. causey writes that “for the bataks, the individual is always part of a group: family, peer group, profession, clan, ethnicity, and nation” (2011: 32). batak are strongly attached to their home base: a crucial philosophy is “mulak tu bona ni pinasa”, which means “return to the homeland”. this ancestral homeland is the cultural and geographical landscape which bataks identify as the origin of their ethnic and cultural selves. returning to the homeland implies drawing close to where ancestors were buried. cultural performances such as mangokal holi pertain to ethnocultural boundaries, becoming a terrain for history and tradition to flourish. in this way, ethnic belongingness is sustained, and conflicts resolved. chinese philosopher of place yi-futuan describes the importance of physical artefacts in this experience: if community embraces the dead as well as the living, we are required to heed the voices of our forebears. artifacts are such a voice. by attending to them we can envisage the needs and aspirations of our predecessors, saddened by their burdens and errors, heartened by their forays into beauty and truth (1986: 110). mangokal holi exposes these caring relations and the way obligations to care are fixed through traditions, narratives, myths, memory, spaces, and communal activities. care is intrinsically bound to performance in a situational and relational context (fisher and thompson, 2020: 12). batak perform their social and cultural interaction within the system of dalihan na tolu, or “the three hearthstones”. just as three stones are needed to support a pot in the kitchen firepit, community rests on multiple relations of care (causey, 2011: 32). these caring relations form an interior, i suggest: a space for collective memory and ancestral belonging, what ionescu calls “a space where all the trajectories of (both the secular and the religious) consciousness as intentional experience unfold, from awareness to remembrance and imagination” (2018: 3). the inner self of batak is not an individual matter, as my opening definition suggested, but a collective interiority of caring relations. the mangokal holi tradition: performative care for the dead among batak there are two categories of deceased marked by two stages of funeral rites. first is the primary funeral or burial that represents the separation between the dead and the living. two decades later, funeral rites continue to be celebrated in a second phase in which the human remains are exhumed, cleaned, and placed in a communal burial place (batu napir) containing the remains of in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 47 interiority of caring relations in the mangokal holi ritual f i x i n g five to seven deceased ancestors. this series of performative events is called mangokal holi (sinaga in simatupang, 2006). the events are organised by the descendants of the commemorated ancestors. because of the ceremony’s cost, it can usually only be staged for those with “the necessary material resources and [a] large kinship network” (van bemmelen, 2017: 128). batak aspire to “a large offspring (hagabeon), wealth (hamoraon), and social esteem through many kinship alliances (hasangapon) which not only determine the power and status of rajas [hereditary leaders] in this world, but also the status of their spirits in the hereafter” (128). these three elements determining the social position of the deceased are strongly related to the fortunes of the living. as it is practiced today, mangokal holi consists of several pre-events before the main ceremony, lasting about seven days and nights. these historical ceremonies or horja turun involve an assembly of musical instruments called gondang sebangunan. to begin, various community groups are invited, to request blessings at the ceremony. next all the participants—village elders, friends, neighbours, related clans, dalihan na tolu relatives, and priests—gather to eat together. these meetings often entail highly technical discussions about the upcoming ritual. fig. 1 mangokal holi and the performative care of the dead in dairi, north sumatra (1998). [photo: author] the main event lasts a couple of days and starts early in the morning with religious leaders opening the ceremony, at the cemetery, with prayers of worship to god almighty. during the exhumation, all participants in the ceremony play a role in digging in search of the bones, starting with the religious leaders, moving through various significant community and family members, and on to parentsin-law, biological children, and female descendants. when the bones are found, the husband of the biological daughter of the deceased is invited to remove the remains and take them to the family yard. male descendants receive and clean the bones in water mixed with kaffir lime and turmeric paste. once prepared, the bones are put in a crate, and arranged into the shape of a living human. no bones can be thrown away. this part is continued by marsipanganon: eating in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 48 interiority of caring relations in the mangokal holi ritual f i x i n g together and discussing batak customary rules, praying and asking for blessings. after this meal, the cleaned and neatly wrapped bones are handed over to either the deceased’s daughter, the daughter of a brother or sister of the deceased, or a daughter-in-law, who carries them on her head from the family yard to the communal monument, the batu napir (the term refers to the top or highest place). this is accompanied by ceremonial dancing. as the ceremony continues, people are appointed to look for sari marnaek, a particular type of wood found in the forest. this wood signifies the regeneration of life. before dawn the next day, a post made from this wood is planted in the ground and a buffalo tied to it. at dawn, after more dancing, the buffalo is slaughtered in thanksgiving. the ritual concludes with ritual speeches and prayers on behalf of the descendants of the deceased. through these rituals, the deceased is understood to cross the threshold to a new ancestral identity, becoming part of an enduring lineage. as an ancestor cult, mangokal holi, not only sets up the unity of temporality by focusing on death— the existential event that marks the beginning of someone’s career as ancestor—but also asserts the unity of temporality by keeping the relative identity of the temporal sequences (geană, 2005: 350). narratives of lineage are important aspects of batak social life, promoting family networks and interactions between batak and their ancestors. ritual passages define the progress and transitions of life (such as birth, marriage and death) that delineate a sociocultural order. ritual passages reveal obligations that manifest spatially and temporally as part of “a heritage that gives prestige, but also imposes an obligation” (author?? 1986: 85; bell, 1997). the complex performative rituals of mangokal holi unfold a relational space of obligations to care. fig. 2 manortor or ceremonial dancing in mangokal holi as the performative care of the dead in dairi, north sumatra (1998). [photo: author] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 49 interiority of caring relations in the mangokal holi ritual f i x i n g framing the performative interiority of caring relations tradition consists of social encounters, modes of expression, situations, and regulations. together, these provide a sense of ethnic belonging (christou, 2006: 71). images, events, stories, objects, symbols, and practices take on special value as cultural components, of individual and social ethnic identity and pride. as a mode of representation and identification, tradition is performed and situated narratively. the basic structural feature of batak tradition involves stories of remembering and acts that fix relations and ways of life according to narrative rules and schemata. tradition is also performed spatially. the continuity of tradition is maintained through the cultural production and consumption of objects, events and artefacts that define space. the physical acts of handling these things—repairing or fixing them—ensures memory and continuity of tradition and also is a way of investing cultural meaning to the places where people inhabit, connect, and interact. in this way, it recalls how built environments in western traditions acquire significance through “a process of equating socio-historical, cultural, and political values to things–buildings, trees, streets, laneways, parks, and even the relationships between these built forms” (chan, 2012: 280). batak traditions maintain an active relationship to the past, defining an inwards space through a performative series of events that maintain cultural continuity through caring. in other words, these traditions have socio-spatial and temporal dimensions articulated through controls, boundaries, exclusion, habitation, bodies, time, and atmosphere. as theorist of the interior christine mccarthy has suggested, interiority promotes the making of relationships, allowing exchanges across boundaries which condition habitation (2005: 113). for mccarthy, spatial experience relates to a temporality that is necessarily variable, through subtle changes in boundary, performance, intimacy, between-ness, and enclosure (2005: 120). i propose that we can understand traditions like mangokal holi by invoking ideas of interior spatiality and temporality. andrea cossu has argued that understanding ritual as action promotes the importance of roles, settings, and “what constitutes the ‘raw cloth’ of ritual: its sequences, its perceptual components, the waves of movements, the sounds and visions enacted in the course of the ritual process” (2010: 35). as performance and action, “ritual is characterised by fluidity, polyphony, use of different media of expression, and an active and selective role of the audience in making sense of what actually happens during its celebration” (2010: 36). mccarthy points to such selectiveness as one of the most important mechanisms of interiority. following this line of thought, we can recognise the way ritual evokes interiority by selectively and collectively detaching a ritual space from ordinary life and transforming social relations by marking time: rituals are ‘marked’ moments of heightened experience […] which punctuate the flow of time and which are characterized, as any sacred thing is characterized in its relationship to the domain of the profane, by difference, opposition and heterogeneity. the flow of time, thus, is internally differentiated, and it is structurally organized by the presence of relevant moments which stand out of the ordinary, and which are characterized not only by a different way of living, [...] but also by a different perception of the self and of the other people cooperating in or experiencing ritual (2010: 39). in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 50 interiority of caring relations in the mangokal holi ritual f i x i n g ritual performances differentiate and separate the flow of time, dynamically producing temporal interiorities through the “emotive, physical and even sensual aspects of ritual participation” (bell, 1997: 73). the sensual qualities of physical movement and bodily practice come to the fore in rituals. in similar ways to interiors, they rely “on the perception and sense-making of boundary features, degrees of enclosure, social conventions, behaviour rules, symbolism, verbal cues, and labelling of spaces” (popov, 2010: 98). ritual happens in a setting, “a force field […] a frame” (grimes, 2004: 260). framing brings meanings into action; for anthropologists such as catherine bell, ritual indicates the way in which some activities or messages set up an interpretive framework within which to understand other subsequent or simultaneous acts or messages. frames, for bateson, are a form of “meta-communication.” for example […] it is the frame placed on a ceremonial blow that makes it clear whether one is initiating war or making peace (1997: 116). frames reveal edges, mark boundaries, and permit the formation of contained elements. as architectural theorist elizabeth grosz explains: the frame separates. it cuts into milieu or space. this cutting links it to the constitution of a plane of composition, to the provisional ordering of chaos through the layering down of a grid or order that entraps chaotic shards, chaoid states, to arrest or slow them into a space and a time, a structure, and a form where they can affect and be affected by bodies (2008: 13). framing articulates a space and time to be experienced. the batak ceremonies frame, and thus produce inward space, by fixing relationships of care. in mangokal holi ritual acts to fix the recognition of roles, relationships, obligations, and settings, organising space, time, and bodies. attentively caring for the dead articulates thresholds and establishes new roles for them. at the same time, the selves of the living (both their embodied character and their spiritual tondi) are collectively balanced (causey, 2011: 35). fig. 3 act of cleansing the bones in mangokal holi as the performative care of the dead in dairi, north sumatra. [photo: author] in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 51 interiority of caring relations in the mangokal holi ritual f i x i n g caring touch, caring space in mangokal holi, the narrative frame and social space are particularly expressed through touch. skin touches dust and bones, triggering sensory experience. as a nine year old, i vividly remember touching and cleaning bones in our family yard. i will never forget my startled fascination on slowly touching them for the first time. in my case, touch prompted an ever-deepening sense of care. mccarthy writes that touch is critical to interiority, as “the point of physical exchange at which body and interior cause change in each other (bruises, contagious diseases, fingerprints, food stains, steamy windows, scent, vibration)” (2005: 119). touch gives nuance to the sensation of attachment between different existences. touch (as the perpetrator of the trace) is a perpetrator of interior transformation. it enables interiority to change and transform, to be a subject of time, and to figure familiarity (closeness) as a literal exchange, wearing body, surface, and space to become threadbare, worn, and nostalgic. touch is the closest form of interiority. it belies habitation while desiring it (mccarthy, 2005: 119). for batak, bone cleansing is also an act of remembering, commemorating the embodiment in time of the deceased, and defining new relationships in the present. it figures familiarity, produces intimacy, and frames a social space. in batak burial ceremonies, the sequence of events, objects, and performances are experienced as caring relations that frame an inward space that is a repository for collective memory. mangokal holi enables the community to place their cultural selves in the continuum of their culture. this is a kind of inwardness, opening to a world where community extends across the threshold between death and life. twenty-three years later, i recall experiencing mangokal holi through the textures of selves, feeling my way into a sense of tondi. through the caring touch that has filled my memory with depth, contour, and gesture, i share a space with my ancestors. in t e r s t ic e s 2 1 52 interiority of caring relations in the mangokal holi ritual f i x i n g references bell, c. (1997). ritual: perspectives and dimensions. new york, ny: oxford university press. bendtz, n. a. (1986). some reflections about the batak people and their beliefs. in sitompul, a. a. and sovik, a (ed.), horas hkbp! essays for a 125-year-old church. pematangsiantar, north sumatra, indonesia: sekolah tinggi teologia hkbp. causey, a. (2011). toba batak selves: personal, spiritual, collective. in k. adams and k. gillogly (eds.). everyday life in southeast asia (pp. 2736). bloomington, in: indiana university press. chan, p. (2012). vancouver’s laneway houses: changing notions of home. in c. briganti and k. mezei (eds.). the domestic space reader (pp. 278-283). toronto, canada: university of toronto press. christou, a. (2006). narratives of place, culture and identity. second-generation greekamericans return ‘home’. amsterdam, netherlands: amsterdam university press. cossu, a. (2010). durkheim’s argument on ritual, commemoration and aesthetic life: a classical legacy for contemporary performance theory? journal of classical sociology, 10(1), 33-49. fisher, a. s., & thompson, j. (2020). performing care: new perspectives on socially engaged performance. manchester, uk: manchester university press. geană, g. (2005). remembering ancestors: commemorative rituals and the foundation of historicity. history and anthropology, 16(3), 349-361. grimes, r. l. (2014). the craft of ritual studies. new york, ny: oxford university press. grosz, e. (2008). chaos, territory, art: deleuze and the framing of the earth. new york, ny: columbia university press. ionescu, v. (2018). the interior as interiority. palgrave communications. 4:33. retrieved from https://www.nature.com/ articles/s41599-018-0088-6 mccarthy, c. (2005). toward a definition of interiority. space and culture, 8, 112-125. pimlott, m. (2018). interiority and the conditions of interior. interiority 1 (1), 5-20. popov, l. (2010). the social production of interiority: an activity theory approach. idea journal 10 (1). 90-101. simatupang, d. (2006). pengaruh kristen dalam upacara mangongkal holi pada masyarakat batak (sebuah tinjauan etnoarkeologi). berkala arkeologi “sangkhakala” 17. 1-16. tuan, y. f. (1986). the good life. usa: madison, wi: the university of wisconsin press. van bemmelen, sita t. (2017). christianity, colonization, and gender relations in north sumatra: a patrilineal society in flux. leiden, germany: brill endnotes 1. as causey puts it: “the bataks’ marga society consists of three conceptual groups: (1) those who share your clan name (dongan sabutuha, translated roughly as “womb sharers,” with whom marriage is impossible because it is considered incestuous); (2) those to whom your clan provides daughters as wives (boru), and who are considered to be slightly inferior socially; and (3) those from whom your clan accepts daughters as wives (hulahula), and who are considered to be socially superior. these relationships are eternal, and cut across geographic distance and socioeconomic class; one may never marry dongan sabutuha, no matter how distant the actual ancestral connection is; one may always expect a favour from the boru; and one must always respect the hulahula.” (2011: 32). ° 0 4 7 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° i n t r o d u c t i o n the possibility of coupling material objects and data opens up new perspectives in street furniture design. many cities throughout the world are undertaking full-scale experiments so as to define and grasp the role and function of a new kind of public equipment. this equipment is expected to improve living environments with new qualities and functions made possible by technological advances. augmented reality, situated media, orientation services, and other information-oriented displays are among the most common forms taken up by city-makers — their deployment within the city however, is not without issues. this paper argues that the technology-driven, content-oriented, screen-based paradigms that underpin most devices today overshadow more powerful and productive design approaches. displacing the focus from content to relationships, and through the case of luciole – a network of augmented public benches – i will consider under which conditions digitally augmented furniture can support place-making practices, expanding them in forms that are both novel and authentic. the first issue stems from the assumption that by adding digital information into a physical location, the place itself is automatically improved and affirmed. this correlation does not take into account a most basic requirement in any sustainable urban policy: place-making. in their seminal work body, memory and architecture, architects kent bloomer and charles moore describe “placeness” as a distinctive quality present in some spaces that is not defined by physical dimensions, services or functional attributes alone, but rather by its capacity to remain itself in spite of the variation of its parts (bloomer & moore 1977: 107). more recently, jeff malpas has further developed the dynamic and productive value of such placeinherency, stressing “the content or character that belongs to place is also such that it encompasses that which is present within it” (malpas 2015:4). this proposition suggests that an inquiry is needed into the relationship between information and placeness. moreover, it causes me to ask: in what ways can information contribute to, enhance, or even generate, feelings of “being there” as a characteristic of true place experience? augmenting the bench c a r o l a m o u j a n a second issue concerns the role of screens as material objects. since information-oriented services require displays of various sorts, and because there is growing demand for information-rich environments, screenpresence is on the increase within urban landscapes. two questions arise here: firstly, are generic screens adequate for urban place-qualities? and secondly, given that screens have typically been developed in the context of interior spaces rather than being shaped by urban practices and functions like mailboxes, benches, light poles, and other traditional street furniture – what form should the distribution of digital information take? at stake in urban situations is loss of coherency built up over time, but also that such devices assume the form of advertising screens thereby adding to the apparent commercialisation of urban place. the recently renovated saintlazare station in paris illustrates exactly this problem. opened in 1837, the station had remained mostly unchanged since the 1970s, when the first commercial area was created below the salle des pas perdus, the station’s main hall. in 2003, the railway company undertook a vast transformation meant to last until 2012 that included a full reprogramming of the salle des pas perdus, which itself became a shopping area. the new commercially orientated [station] design incorporates a dense number of advertising screens that tend to overwhelm the legibility of the original built form. the markers of ‘station’ as an identifiable place become difficult to ascertain. in his popular blog, french artist, developer, and teacher jean-noël montagné reports being accosted by a woman, visibly distressed, presumably late to catch her train, desperately asking where the station was, “because here, we are in a kind of shopping centre, right?”1 whilst such confusion is unlikely to persist as populations become accustomed to this new commercial station typology, the situation highlights the erosion of a station’s transitional space and begs the question: how many screens can a space hold without sacrificing its identity entirely? beyond private appropriation of the public realm is the accumulative cluttering, and redundancy of objects. implementing new screen-based services often means removing older equipment, yet what is to be removed in order to make the necessary space is crucial. while dislodging static maps or obsolete phone booths does not meet much resistance, the progressive disappearance of public benches raises much concern.2 in the 21st-century ° 0 4 8 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° city, the smartphone has taken the place of public phones and printed maps. but this functional advantage can come at the price of isolation; after all, asking strangers for directions, or queuing to make a call was often the starting point of interpersonal exchange. however, i am not suggesting that we should go back to the previous state of things; rather, i am gesturing towards a framing of digital augmentation that does not automatically imply addition (of services, content, surveillance...) but considers removal, in the sense of ‘making room’ for something meaningful to happen. because of the close alignment between digital billboards and outdoor advertising, there is a tendency to associate all screen-based services in such situations with advertising surface. it was the case during the experimentation of nautreville, a full-scale augmented reality panel presented within the mui program conducted by the city of paris in 2012, to which i contributed as a member of the design team.3 as we discussed the project with local users, i was struck by the distrust expressed by many neighbourhood residents despite the device containing no advertising at all. in my design work, i had been focusing mainly on content structure, information architecture and interaction principles, but users’ reactions made me realise that there might be an issue with the screen itself, no matter how engaging the content and refined the interface. the problem here seems to be a global advertising overload that citizens are beginning to reject, and the fact that digital urban screens seem to almost inevitably include commercial messages. reducing the issue to the sole critique of merchandising, however, would make us fall back into the content-based framing from which i am trying to depart.4 f i g . 1 s c r i b b l i n g o n a d v e r t i s i n g p o s t e r f o r t h e m u i p r o g r a m , r e a d i n g ‘ s t o p ! t h e s t r e e t i s c r o w d e d e n o u g h a l r e a d y ’. [ p h o t o : m a r i a l a u r a m é n d e z m a r t é n , 2 0 1 2 , p a r i s ] if we envision the notion of ‘digital augmentation’ as content, we cannot break away from the screen-based paradigm. but i am not suggesting that any use of screens in urban space leads to an impoverishing experience. projects such as urban echo by lustilab (2006), where an array of cameras and screens located in different neighbourhoods across the city enable accidental encounters of a new form (as passers-by happen to cross each other in a sort of digital limbo), offers a good example of meaningful use. the aesthetic power of the project does not derive from telematics as a technical possibility, but instead, and significantly, from the uncanny feeling of continuity induced by the ‘screen-within-the-screen’ effect, which effectively triggers a feeling of spatial extension.5 from a theoretical standpoint, many authors6 have pointed out the new spatial possibilities opened up by screen technologies, yet this paper questions the formalities of the screen-centred design and asks: is it possible to think of digital design without screens? what does it imply for design practice? how would this modify the way we envision augmentation and, more generally, the experience of urban space? returning to the point that digital urban furniture is driven by an assumption that places can be improved with access to more “information”, the screen-based paradigm reveals something of a blind spot in the way we envision digital urban interaction today. here i ask how information threads, maps, notifications from social media, etc. affirm the feeling of place-connection or “being there”. following heidegger’s dasein, french philosopher henri maldiney notes that the time and place of the aesthetic experience is always ‘here and now’. an aesthetic experience is an event, which, as such, does not happen in time, but founds time. for maldiney, when the question of being in the world meets that of being the world, the issue is not to gather information about it, but to exist with it and within it, “to be co-born” [co-naître]7 with it. can we consider then that, the digital information is present, but in a different sense, “the primitive, most concrete sense of the word, where ‘to inform’ does not mean to ‘transmit knowledge’ but instead, to ‘give form’” (maldiney, 1986: 27). information as content, and information as structure can be distinguished as formerly a focus on components, and latterly as potential to trigger and orient processes. embracing this distinction informs design as a discipline beyond material shaping and specific problem solving towards designing places by way of structuring underlying forces of a given situation in order to enable an emergence of augmented urban forms and relations. how then do these digital information technologies contribute to ‘give form’ to place? further, to adapt joseph rykwert’s proposition, what if the goal of urban design is to “find some place in all this space” (rykwert 2002: 3)? as such, the value of digital augmentation in the urban realm (for example digitally augmented urban furniture), ought to be considered placeformation rather than information. such a distinction asserts the difference between a technical object and an aesthetic experience, thus making explicit the specificity and importance of design beyond function or service. d i s p l a c i n g t h e d i g i t a l : f r o m i n t e r f a c e t o i n t e r s p a c e in his influential essay hertzian tales, british designer and theorist anthony dunne defends, through the concept of post-optimal object, a vision where the design of digital and electronic objects “facilitate[s] more poetic modes of inhabitation” (dunne 2006: 20). first published in 1999, dunne’s essay directly opposes the dominant ethics of “user-friendliness” and suggests, following adorno, that “user-unfriendliness” (which is not to be confused with user-hostility), is essential in any aesthetic experience (dunne 2006: 35-36). whilst dunne’s work has catalysed interesting design work, what he terms post-optimal objects are still focused on entities, not experiences. heidegger’s distinction between objects and things helps in the consideration of digital augmentation of public space. a thing implies all the links that exists between beings, while an object is an abstraction, something considered independently from any environment. to think past the technologically grounded ‘optimal object’ (i.e., an object understood as functionality and practicality optimal), but still deploy dunne’s emphasis on aesthetics, we need to understand where the precise distinction between an aesthetic object and a technical one lies. gilbert simondon has discussed this difference in terms of relationships, more precisely, in terms of qualities of inscription within the world, showing that the kind of abstract framing that considers ‘objects’ instead of ‘things’ is typical of technical activity. the fact that a given system performs steadily regardless of context is precisely what characterises a good technical object (simondon 1958: ° 0 4 9 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° 183). however technical performance alone offers little to the life in public places. design, as not solely a problem-solving activity, but an aesthetic one, must articulate the relationships between any technological system and its environment so that “it is no longer the object that is perceived, but the world, [itself ] polarised in such a way that the situation makes sense” (simondon 1989: 89). similarly, tim ingold has described places as “complex knots” where multiple lines of life meet: “lines are bound together in the knot, but they are not bound by it” (ingold 2007: 100). in contrast with the abstract, predetermined framing described by simondon for technical activity, ingold’s emphasis on preposition suggests a mode of relationship that springs from intrinsic, dynamic, spontaneous encounters. to consider places as things, then, implies taking into account the multiple lines that meet there from the perspective of their inter-relationships to envision them not as always available, ready-made experiences, but instead, as events that emerge at a particular location at a given time. consequently, and despite current terminology, adding information, digital services, equipment, wifi access or free terminals to a physical setting does not automatically augment nor consequently improve urban place. there appears to be confusion between “augmentation” and “addition”; two concepts that fundamentally differ in nature. the term “augmentation” expresses a qualitative improvement that is not dependent on addition, which is a quantitative notion. leaning on simondon’s distinction between technical and aesthetic activities, we can envision augmentation as a form of polarisation of space through design, and where an initially chaotic, undifferentiated condition shifts towards a spatial event that i have called interspace [entr’espace]. an interface is a technical word referring to an object that provides access to, and navigation through, heterogeneous layers of information. within this framing, each technological component preserves its own distinctive identity. an interspace [entr’espace], on the other hand, implies the experience of multiple dimensions co-existing within an integrated perception of reality (moujan 2011, 2014). it is unity that makes the difference between addition and augmentation. while the concept of interface is defined and described in relation to its components (content, hardware, software, user...), the notion of interspace [entr’espace] refers to a unique quality that does not come from the parts themselves but, instead, emerges from the complex relationships between the parts. “such relationships produce a new quality, which is ‘design’” (moholy-nagy 1947: 42). thus achieving unity – or what amounts to a meaningful whole despite variation of parts is precisely the design task. designers create experiences; and the defining characteristic of an experience is a pervasive, distinctive quality that gives it its name (dewey, 1934:38). hence, the concept of interspace [entr’espace] is a conceptual tool that steps from the technically grounded terminology that dominates the digital design field. precisely because of its technical roots, the vocabulary of interface inevitably focuses on components and the physical/digital dualism, using common expressions such as “hybrid space”, “virtual reality”, “interactive art”. but language can be an obstacle to the emergence of novel and authentic forms of augmentation. making this distinction is not only a matter of conceptual rigor but one of practise; words are tools, design tools. from an interspace [entr’espace] perspective, augmenting space is therefore not a question of adding something to a pre-existing base, but rather of setting up a field of tensions sufficient for triggering a spatial event. much like what happens in an electromagnetic field, within interspaces [entr’espaces] components lose their substantial identity, disappear as distinct entities in order to make room for an experience. t h e f o r c e s o f o r i g i n how can such event-triggering be achieved? following leibniz and whitehead, gilles deleuze (1992 [1988]) notes that an event emerges from chaos provided that some kind of sieve intervenes. the sieve deleuze refers to can be defined as an agent through which the site’s underlying forces are polarised and directed, allowing the emergence of a singularity, the specific kind of spatial form we name “a place”. deleuze notes that neither chaos nor the sieve pre-exist each other; rather, chaos is a pure many, a disjunctive multiplicity, that the sieve, described using the image of an electromagnetic field, makes become a singularity. let us call that sieve, following walter benjamin (benjamin 2003 [1928]), origin. inspired by husserl, benjamin’s concept of origin does not relate to a chronological beginning but instead refers to a generative force, a source or cause. the notion of origin can itself be examined through the place-as-force-field metaphor. the initial question husserl considered in the origin of geometry (1954), is analogous to the one i raised earlier in relation to placeness: what is it that gives geometry its unity in spite of the variation of the component parts? why do we speak of a singular geometry instead of plural geometries? the concept of origin comes precisely in order to define the source of an active identity, perceptible as a pervasive quality present in the individual parts as well as in the whole something i referred earlier as being typical of real places. benjamin (1925) develops the notion further demonstrating that it is in regards to origin that authenticity can be established. let us follow the vectors now. in husserl’s originary geometry, edges are blurred. proto-geometric shapes are anexact, that is, inexact by essence, not by chance. it is because of, and thanks to, their lack of exactness, that there can be many geometric shapes within one geometry. deleuze and guattari critique husserl’s analysis of anexactness as a primitive, less evolved state of geometry, considering that there is more, not less, in anexact forms than in exact figures. this distinction recalls the one richard sennett makes between a border and a boundary. as he notes there are two different kinds of edge: “in natural ecologies, borders are the zones in a habitat where organisms become more inter-active due to the meeting of different species or physical conditions”. conversely, “the boundary establishes closure through inactivity, by things petering out, not happening; to say that the edge-as-border is a more open condition means it is more full of events in time.” (sennett 2010:267). following this stream of thought, augmenting through design evokes thickening and extension. extension, notes deleuze, is the first condition of the event; “[it] exists when one element is stretched over the following ones, such that it is a whole and the following elements are its parts. such connection of whole-parts forms an infinite series that contains neither a final term nor a limit (the limits of our senses being excepted).” (deleuze 2006: 87). it is in this sense that a place’s quality or character “encompasses that which is present within it”, as malpas puts it or to use maldiney’s phrase it “founds time”.8 this not only means that potential directions of spatial augmentation derive their source from what is already there rather than external content, but also, that the difference between addition and augmentation is a question of dynamics. addition amounts to accumulation and is static in nature; on the other hand, augmentation constitutes a form of production – it amasses organically. through this lens, the concept of place itself appears as a form of augmented space. the idea of a digitally augmented place, then, suggests the possibility of further development of a place’s core qualities in novel directions that were unconceivable before. hence, the notion of origin provides a grounding for a theory of digital augmentation based on ° 0 5 0 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° the authenticity of the relationship between the physical location and the extensions triggered by the digital. we need now to understand how this is done. quite significantly, and in spite of their numerous disagreements,9 both benjamin (1990) and heidegger (1993) envision origin through the image of a void, or “making room”. in both cases, productive tension is central. for benjamin though, destruction is the decisive act of production and is more important than the actual things to come. for heidegger, instead, the void makes room for something, something that dwells, in the context of a symbolically organising fourfold. whatever interpretation we might choose, it is clear that some form of under-determined openness is required for augmentation, further stressing the idea that content or technology as such have little to do with it. rather, it is in the sense of “bringing-forth”, of revealing, of opening up, that digital technologies are capable of entering into the event of augmentation. it is also in this sense that design aligns with techné. as heidegger notes, “what is decisive in techné does not lie at all in making and manipulating nor in the using of means, but rather in the aforementioned revealing. it is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techné is a bringing-forth” (heidegger 1993: 13). interspace [entr’espace] as augmented space, then, comes to existence through revelation rather than construction; what is opened up by it, within it, and through it are a space’s underlying forces, potentialities and tensions. itself an event, it brings forth such qualities, which, structured and polarised, extend over space, colouring it in ways that are both archaic (because they are rooted in origin) and novel (because they did not exist prior to the event of bringing forth). i n b e t w e e n p l a c e m a k i n g with their multiple functionalities, news feeds, and alerts, digital objects often drive us away from the unique atmospheres, mystery, and unexpected encounters that make the wealth and delight of urban experiences. given the above considerations, it warrants asking if it is possible to envision augmented objects that instead reinforce and enhance the capacity of ‘being there’, and, through continuous engagement with the place, expand the objects’ core qualities? in previous articles (moujan 2014, 2015), i have compared examples of digital augmentation projects based on, and respectful of, origin, with others driven by function, content or technology. the examples were chosen from existing places with wellstructured identities; in all those examples, the design challenge was to recognise, respect, connect to, and possibly expand, an existing origin. but what about spaces that are not yet places? is it possible to build origin through digital design? my contention is that, because of the capacity of digital objects to structure urban dynamics, to orient forces, they can act as triggers for new origins. the periphery of many major european cities today offers a particularly fertile field to further examine this issue. very large urban areas will endure long periods of construction work during which inhabitants will have to adapt to uncomfortable living conditions and loss of known reference points. what will happen with those contexts during transition? is it possible to envision them as real places, albeit their impermanent nature? to respond to this challenge, most cities rely on communication about the expected results and effects. such strategies often involve fragments of in-site storytelling, and digital technologies play an important role in this type of initiative (an example being the realistic computer renders printed on worksite’s fences that show what the place will look like once the works are finished). sometimes, more sophisticated representational systems are used. augmented reality seems particularly suited for this purpose, for it pulls visitors away from the messiness of the here and now, and projects them into the bright future planners have envisioned. instead of discussing here the mechanism and value of this type of initiative (something that demands case-by-case analysis), i would like to adapt my own initial question to this particular example and ask whether is it possible at all to use digital technologies to enhance the experience of ‘being there’, while simultaneously transforming and re-defining what “there” means – contrary to projecting users into a different place, in a distant future? beyond narrative, what other forms of digital place making can be explored? luciole (french for “firefly”) is a network of reactive, luminous, connected public benches that suggests such a possible alternative. the project was first intended to reinforce the sense of place in misused, neglected or intransition areas through a network of elements that gather relations and build new ones. comprised of a metal structure, a cocoon-like seat made of metallic mesh and optic fibre, sensors, an arduino board, and a light generator, each luciole bench diffuses light and tweets in response to its own occupancy as well as that of other benches in the network. just like fireflies, luciole benches catch the eye, inviting users to engage in a path or to make a stop, triggering new circulation dynamics and poetic atmospheres. f i g . 2 l u c i o l e . c o n n e c t e d p u b l i c b e n c h p r o t o t y p e . [ p h o t o : a u t h o r, 2 0 1 5 ] in contrast with the imposing form of solid digital screens, luciole has been designed to merge with existing urban contexts. this possibility comes from hollowness (of the benches’ bodies and of the steel mesh that composes ° 0 5 1 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° them), combined with the specifics of the materials. stainless steel reflects and diffuses the light carried by the optic fibre, while the intertwined mesh and fibre complex creates a blurred effect as light variations affect the perceived opacity of the metal. in terms of form, its cocoon-like shape induces feelings of intimacy, making luciole a transitional space, inbetween the public and the private. at a local level, each luciole bench responds to sitting and to movement in the immediate surrounding by changing light colour and intensity. on a network level, the benches communicate with each other, sending local messages every time someone sits or leaves, and responding through light modulations. this particular feature, of little practical value, affords firstly, peripheral awareness of other people’s presence to convey a diffuse feeling of togetherness and secondarily, a wrapping of users in a luminous halo, particularly valuable at night when illumination is key in transforming a place’s atmosphere. yet during the day, it plays a less apparent role in structuring the experience. light variations keep users aware and connected to surrounding activities without attracting their direct attention, thus, enabling them to remain free to chat, read, or just relax instead of closing them within the halo of a screen. simply put, participants can benefit from connectedness without giving up immediate presence. f i g s 3 & 4 l i g h t a n d m a t e r i a l d e t a i l s . [ p h o t o s : a u t h o r, 2 0 1 5 ] yet the value of this design may have further to offer on a deeper level; in his canonical essay designing calm technology (1996), mark weiser wrote that “the most potentially interesting, challenging, and profound change implied by the ubiquitous computing era is a focus on calm”. for weiser, the key to calm technology lies in the articulation between the centre and the periphery of attention. broadly misinterpreted at the beginning, weiser’s theories have regained interest in recent years. his core idea is that if instead of just considering the foreground, we use design to trigger dynamic back-and-forth movement between the centre and periphery of attention, users will be enabled to stay in control and respond by switching focus when necessary. unlike screen-based devices that continuously rely on direct attention, luciole’s light behaviours are designed to remain diffuse and peripheral until a change in focus is required, thus making it a potentially calming piece of technology. because of its collaborative lighting system that responds to occupancy at distance, luciole invites playful and unexpected social interactions. however, many urban encounters come with tension, and frequently anonymity is desired. often enough, we may even simultaneously desire and reject the idea of being with others, an ambiguity that traditional bench design cannot respond to. but, because of the interaction it affords at various distances, luciole reveals an interstitial dimension of placeness, one where users can connect and take part in a collective activity while still preserving interpersonal distance. augmentation here brings forth the possibility of taking a seat with someone without actually sharing physical space. on a larger scale, luciole benches are connected to the internet; after retrieving real-time urban data, they flash lights and tweet context-relevant information such as time remaining until the next tramway reaches the nearest stop, or the number of bikes available for rental, in order to make the most of urban journeys. at the moment luciole’s users are ready to leave, the information they need to make the next move comes into focus. instead of having to look at a smartphone’s screen, information is in the periphery and only reaches the centre of attention when relevant. finally, luciole’s tweets, another seemingly useless feature, offers an additional level of interlinking to the experience of sitting in a public place. tweets constitute a real-time record of a micro-urban atmosphere, the kind of “small” data that adds to the texture of life. luciole’s twitter feed makes visible the rhythm of a place and provides, once again, peripheral information that can become important at some specific moments. a local neighbour, for instance, might want to know whether there are available seats before going down to the park; a researcher studying social dynamics might use the tweets to build data visualisations to figure out activity patterns; passers-by might want to signal their presence so that local twitter friends can join them... moreover, luciole’s messages constitute structured data that could potentially be integrated within a larger network. this means envisioning street furniture in terms of ecosystems rather than individual uses or services; or, to put it in another way, to design things, not objects. selected through an open call, a first prototype of luciole was built and shown during lyon city design urban forum, which took place between march 19th and april 2nd, 2015 in lyon (france) as a part of the saint etienne international design biennial “off ” program. while a longer and rigorously structured study would be necessary to confirm the entire hypothesis, preliminary observations show that users respond very positively to the system. during the event, multiple forms of unexpected appropriation happened, not only in terms of use, but also of body attitudes, which seemed more relaxed and spontaneous than those observed in regular benches. beyond technological obsession, luciole proposes an interpretation of dunne’s post-optimal concept discussed earlier. with a departure from the function and efficiency ideal that rules much digital product design today, luciole explores the poetic possibilities of open data and the internet of things that might be revealed when used to weave dynamic and delicate relationships between the object and its environment. ° 0 5 2 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° f i g s 5 , 6 , 7 & 8 e x a m p l e s o f u s e r a p p r o p r i a t i o n d u r i n g l y o n c i t y d e s i g n u r b a n f o r u m . [ p h o t o s : b y a u t h o r, 2 0 1 5 ] t e l e m a t i c a t m o s p h e r e s luciole’s telematic principle can be seen as analogous to previous artistic experiences with connected benches. artist paul sermon has been working with telematics since the 1990s, connecting distant people in various ways, often enabled through a specific use of materials that gives his work strong tactile qualities in spite of its visual base. in telematic dreaming (1992), sermon uses a customised video-conference system to project the image of each member of a couple of distant lovers onto the other’s bed; the irregular and soft surface of the bed dissolves hard edges and overly realistic effects in order to produce a blurred, dreamy atmosphere. in some of his more recent pieces, telematics take the form of “urban encounters”, like in urban picnic (2010), where people in two distant public areas are brought together for a shared meal. the participants’ behaviours differ from what one can be used to seeing in a regular picnic. according to sermon, “the work encouraged visitors to be playful, interacting with others and the environment in a way that they would not otherwise have done”.10 although both luciole and urban picnic rely on the ambiguous quality of telepresence as a form of distant proximity to trigger social exchanges that otherwise might not have happened, the meaning of distance differs. in sermon’s projects, participants are separated by considerable distance the point is, precisely, to be at once somewhere and elsewhere. luciole, in contrast, connects people who, although physically separated, are within visual reach. the goal is not to take participants away from the here and now but, instead, to enhance the feeling of ‘being there’ through a revealed interspace [entr’espace]. light is not used to represent distant presence; the intention instead is to produce a shared visual atmosphere. a sense of togetherness is induced through a sensorial – rather than symbolic – effect. perhaps closer to luciole in spirit is 21 balançoires, a 2011 project by montreal studio daily tous les jours. first meant as a temporary installation during construction works in the quartier des arts in montreal, the piece features a group of 21 connected swings that, through music and light, function as a collective instrument. the designers worked with luc-alain giraldeau, an animal behaviour professor from the université du québec, to explore the concept of cooperation. participants can use the swings individually; they will light up, emit sound and – last but not least – provide the kind of amusement any swing does. when used in collaboration, however, the system works as a real-time musical instrument capable of playing elaborate tunes and light patterns. as a result, a remarkably inclusive installation that “stimulates ownership of the space, bringing together people of all ages and backgrounds, and creating a place for playing and hanging out in the middle of the city centre”.11 in comparison, luciole’s discrete playful dimension is somehow more diffuse, underdetermined, as are its social ambitions. it does not affirm collaboration as an ultimate goal, since such approach leaves out the possibility of interaction between people not willing to collaborate, such as the marginal, the anti-social, or the aggressive. ultimately, its intentions are to “make room” for unexpected, unpredictable interactions that could even accommodate hostility, but in a way that brings forth the productive power of tension. instead of framing a pre-determined form of desirable social encounters, an anexact manner of playing is involved here, that is, a way of playing that is neither based on rules, nor on a potential reward.12 the goal is less to bring people together in active collaboration and more to reveal an invisible shared space between them. participants may, or may not, choose to get involved in a common activity within this interspace [entr’espace], and the forms such activities might take are unpredictable. moreover, the benches do not play, like urban picnics tables do, as symbolic elements meant to convey a specific meaning; neither is their function to build a whole new situation, as is the case in 21 balançoires where the original swinging for swinging’s sake becomes a way of playing music. luciole’s main function remains that of a public bench, only augmented, but in a sense meant to enhance the object’s original potential and meaning. the goal is not to make an exceptional intervention in public space, but instead to become a permanent piece of street furniture – something that requires a more discrete, lighter approach. on another level, the major difference between luciole and other projects based on local networks is that it connects multiple networks together, across different scales. whilst the light connections on a local level are assuredly the feature that has the strongest direct impact, the tweets and data retrieval from local services makes luciole a meeting point for multiple spatial and temporal dimensions. this might seem anecdotic from today’s perspective, yet transforming usual urban objects into sensors might be a clue in the multi-faceted path to building more resilient cities. instead of being just another isolated, albeit playful, network, luciole becomes a constructive element in a broader urban eco-system. a u g m e n t i n g t h e b e n c h greatly overlooked, the question of authenticity is of major importance for digital design. following walter benjamin, authenticity in the age of digital reproduction cannot be established otherwise than in terms of internal relation to origin. benches are icons of a certain understanding of what living together in the city might be; they are themselves powerful placemaking tools. benches have history, for they are places where people have met, kissed, slept, read, and daydreamed. therefore, to augment a public bench is not a question of adding elements such as power plugs, images, services or functions but, instead, of respecting, revealing and expanding its core qualities. is this possibility restricted to the solely digital realm? of course not. there is a bench in the rosedal (a rosary in the ° 0 5 3 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° palermo neighbourhood of buenos aires) that does not rely on the digital for augmentation. like other benches in the park, its overhead pergola is wrapped by rose plants that, in the right season, augment the experience with a delicate perfume. but this one is special: when sitting on it, users can hear stories by borges. palermo was borges’ home and inspired much of the uncanny ambiance of his writing; in return, his universe has become inseparable from the neighbourhood’s identity. so sitting on that particular bench augments the experience of the rosedal, opening it up and extending it to the whole neighbourhood and beyond. f i g 9 t h e a u g m e n t e d b e n c h i n b u e n o s a i r e s ’ r o s e d a l . [ p h o t o : a u t h o r, 2 0 1 5 ] digital technologies introduce new possibilities of modulation, of development and co-construction over time which, when deployed in dynamic ways, have potential to expand the limits of form. i have asserted the current material/digital divide is a barrier to new directions. looking to the near future, it is likely the physical/digital dualism will be obsolete and new understandings of the role of computing will arise. as such, screenbased devices will no longer be the only gateway; city dwellers may be freed from their current tethering to smartphones and mobile devices without having to give up connectedness and smartness.13 the main concern will no longer be exclusively about information content or technological performance, but, instead, how to achieve higher levels of consciousness – in other words, how to be fully aware, here and now.14 it is conceivable that cities of the future will be defined far less by physical boundaries; they will shrink, move, transform, mutate, leaving gaps and voids. impermanence will be the norm and atmospheres mutable. to respond to this new challenge, urban design ought to adopt new strategies that rely less on planning, physical intervention, and control, and more on the force of origin,15 respecting and preserving it when it is already there, and setting up the conditions for its emergence when it is not. to survive, future cities will have to be resilient, but urban resilience and sustainability are a matter of energy flow and interlinking,16 not of materials or technologies or processes as such. the city of the future will see awareness of this fact grow. networks will be ubiquitous; they will no longer rely only upon public infrastructure, nor on centralised platforms. instead, complex, guerrilla-like, unstable meshes will pop-up. people, living beings, “objects”, will be more interdependent than ever, and relational ecologies will become central. for this city, the augmented public bench may be understood as a test probe, one that extends the horizon of the conceivable without breaking the link with a place’s identity. ° 0 5 4 i n t e r s t i c e s 1 6 : t h e u r b a n t h i n g ° e n d n o t e s 1 h t t p : // h y p e r b a t e . f r /d e r n i e r / ? p = 1 9 7 0 6 . a c c e s s e d o c t o b e r 5 t h , 2 0 1 5 . 2 i n t h e 1 8 t h a r r o n d i s s e m e n t , a p o p u l a r d i s t r i c t i n p a r i s , f o r i n s t a n c e , r e s i d e n t s o r g a n i s e d i n j a n u a r y 5 t h , 2 0 1 3 , a c a r d b o a r d b e n c h s i t i n t o p r o t e s t a g a i n s t w h a t i s p e r c e i v e d a s a h i d d e n a t t e m p t t o e l i m i n a t e s p o n t a n e o u s g a t h e r i n g s i n p u b l i c p l a c e s . h t t p s : //q u a r t i e r s e n t r a n s i t i o n .w o r d p r e s s . c o m / 2 0 1 3 /0 1 /0 5 / l e j o u r o u l e s b a n c s p u b l i c s o n t r e p r i s p a r i s / . r e t r i e v e d j u n e 2 0 1 5 . 3 m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t t h i s p r o j e c t ( i n f r e n c h ) a t w w w. n a u t r e v i l l e .c o m 4 j u l i a n o l i v e r ’s a r t v e r t i z e r ( 2 0 0 8 ) i s a n i n t e r e s t i n g c o u n t e r e x a m p l e . d e s c r i b e d b y t h e a u t h o r a s “ i m p r o v e d r e a l i t y ”, t h e p r o j e c t — a n a d v e r t i s i n g h a c k i n g s y s t e m o f s o r t s – s u p e r i m p o s e s i m a g e s o n t o a d v e r t i s i n g s u r f a c e s . p a r t i c i p a n t s l o o k t h r o u g h g o g g l e s w i t h m a r k e r s w h i c h , w h e n c o r r e c t l y a l i g n e d , c r e a t e a v i s u a l i l l u s i o n t h a t r e p l a c e s t h e a d v e r t i s e m e n t w i t h a w o r k o f a r t . i n t e r m s o f c o n t e n t a n d m e s s a g e t h e e f f e c t i s p o w e r f u l ; b u t t h e p r o j e c t d o e s n o t a d d r e s s t h e i s s u e s o f s p a t i a l i m p o v e r i s h m e n t a n d i s o l a t i o n . 5 “ we b c a m s a l l o w y o u t o s e e i n t o a n o t h e r s p a c e , m i r r o r s a l l o w y o u t o s e e y o u r o w n s p a c e . u s i n g b i l l b o a r d s c r e e n s a n d c a m e r a s , u r b a n e c h o c r e a t e s a h y b r i d o f t h e s e t w o t h i n g s , a l l o w i n g n o t o n l y s e e i n t o a n o t h e r c i t y b u t m a y b e s e e y o u r s e l f t r a n s p o r t e d i n t o a n o t h e r c i t y o r c u l t u r e . a m i d p o i n t b e t w e e n t r a n s p a r e n c y a n d r e f l e c t i o n , i n t r o s p e c t i o n a n d e x t r o s p e c t i o n ”. h t t p : // w w w. l u s t l a b . n e t / , a c c e s s e d n o v e m b e r 1 0 t h , 2 0 1 5 . s e e a l s o h t t p s : // v i m e o . c o m / 2 3 5 7 9 1 4 2 6 l e v m a n o v i c h ( 2 0 0 5 ) , w h o f i r s t c o i n e d t h e e x p r e s s i o n “ a u g m e n t e d s p a c e ”, w r i t e s : “ w e s t a r t s l o w l y s e e i n g t h e d i f f e r e n t s p e c i e s o f a u g m e n t e d s p a c e s b e i n g c o m b i n e d i n t o o n e . a s h o p p i n g c o m p l e x l e a d s t o a n i n t e r i o r s h o p p i n g s t r e e t w h i c h l e a d s t o a m u l t i p l e x [ . . . ] . a l t h o u g h a t p r e s e n t t h e s m a l l e l e c t r o n i c s c r e e n s a r e u s u a l l y d i s t r i b u t e d t h r o u g h o u t t h e s e s p a c e s [ . . . ] , t h e s i n g l e l a r g e r s c r e e n [ . . . ] h a s a p o t e n t i a l t o u n i t e t h e m a l l , o f f e r i n g a k i n d o f s y m b o l i c u n i t y t o a t y p i c a l l y h e t e r o g e n e o u s u r b a n p r o g r a m : a s h o p p i n g c e n t e r + e n t e r t a i n m e n t c e n t e r + h o t e l + r e s i d e n t i a l u n i t s .” m o r e r e c e n t l y, c h r i s t i a n e p a u l ( 2 0 1 5 ) a r g u e s t h a t “ t h e u s e o f s c r e e n s , t h e i n t e r m e d i a l r e l a t i o n s t h e y e n a b l e , a n d t h e d i s c o u r s e s s u r r o u n d i n g t h e m d e f y m e r e l y t e c h n i c a l e x p l a n a t i o n s o f t h e r o l e t h a t t h e y p l a y a s i n f o r m a t i o n s u r f a c e s [ . . . ] . t h e r o l e o f t h e s c r e e n a s a w a t c h f u l a n d r e a c t i v e d e v i c e o r a s a w i n d o w, m i r r o r, o r m e m b r a n e i s n o t o n l y a s s i g n e d b y t e c h n i c a l i t i e s b u t b y p e r c e p t i o n , w h i c h i s p h y s i c a l l y a n d c u l t u r a l l y s h a p e d .” 7 m a l d i n e y u s e s h y p h e n a t i o n t o g i v e a p a r t i c u l a r e m p h a s i s a n d r e v e a l t h e p o l y s e m i c n a t u r e o f t h i s e x p r e s s i o n . ‘ c o n a î t r e ’ s u g g e s t s b o t h t o b e c o b o r n , b o r n t o g e t h e r, a n d ‘c o n n a î t r e ’ w h i c h i s f r e n c h f o r ‘ t o k n o w ’. t h e a u t h o r p r o p o s e s a n i n t e r p r e t a t i o n w h e r e k n o w l e d g e a n d i n f o r m a t i o n a r e a f o r m o f b e c o m i n g . “ l à o ù i l s ’a g i t d ’ê t r e l e l à d u m o n d e , i l n e s ’a g i t p a s d ’e n r e g i s t r e r d e s c o n n a i s s a n c e s à s o n s u j e t , m a i s d e c o n a î t r e à s o n é v é n e m e n t a v è n e m e n t ” ( m a l d i n e y 1 9 8 6 : 2 7 ) . 8 “ p r o p e r t o t h e e v e n t i s t h e f a c t o f n o t b e i n g r e p e a t a b l e , o f n o t h a v i n g i t e r a t i o n w i t h i n t i m e , b e c a u s e i t f o u n d s t i m e ” ( i b i d . e m p h a s i s i n t h e o r i g i n a l ) . 9 k n o w i n g t h e o p p o s i t i o n b e t w e e n b e n j a m i n a n d h e i d e g g e r, a n d t h e l a t t e r ’s i n d i f f e r e n c e , o r d i s m i s s a l , o f h u s s e r l , u n d e r w h i c h c o n d i t i o n s c a n t h e y b e b r o u g h t t o g e t h e r ? h u s s e r l ’s o r i g i n i s k n o w n i n f r e n c h t h r o u g h j a c q u e s d e r r i d a . b u t d e r r i d a h i m s e l f w a s i n f l u e n c e d b y h e i d e g g e r i n h i s r e a d i n g a n d d e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f h u s s e r l . t h e p a r t i a l l y c o n f l i c t i n g d i r e c t i o n s c r e a t e a f i e l d o f t e n s i o n , a n a c t i v e z o n e w i t h b l u r r e d e d g e s . r a t h e r t h a n f o l l o w i n g a l i n e , w e a r e immersed in a conceptual field, with a clear nucleolus – origin as the productive power. 1 0 h t t p :// w w w.p a u l s e r m o n .o r g / u r b a n p i c n i c / . a c c e s s e d s e p t e m b e r 3 0 t h , 2 0 1 5 1 1 h t t p : // w w w. d a i l y t o u s l e s j o u r s . c o m / p r o j e c t / 2 1 b a l a n c o i r e s / . a c c e s s e d o c t o b e r 1 s t , 2 0 1 5 1 2 i n m a n , p l a y a n d g a m e s , r o g e r c a l l o i s o p p o s e s p l a y a n d g a m e a s o p p o s i t e e n d s o f a p l a y c o n t i n u u m . p l a y i n g i s t h e p r i m a r y p o w e r o f i m p r o v i s a t i o n , s p o n t a n e i t y a n d j o y t h a t i s p r e s e n t i n f r e e p l a y. g a m i n g c o n s i s t s o n a f o r m o f p l a y b o u n d b y r u l e s t h a t d e f i n e s w i n n e r s a n d l o s e r s . 1 3 t h i s i s t h e s u b j e c t o f m u c h d e s i g n r e s e a r c h t o d a y. s e e f o r e x a m p l e m o m o , a h a p t i c n a v i g a t i o n d e v i c e t h a t r e l i e s o n l y o n t a c t i l e f e e d b a c k . h t t p : // m o m o b o t s . c o m / 1 4 s e e f o r e x a m p l e s h e p p a r d ( 2 0 1 1 ) , a c o m p i l a t i o n o f d y s t o p i a n f i c t i o n s a b o u t t e c h n o c e n t e r e d s m a r t c i t y p a r a d i g m . a m o r e o p t i m i s t i c v i s i o n i s p u r s u e d a t m i t ’s s e n s e a b l e c i t y l a b , d i r e c t e d b y c a r l o r a t t i . h t t p : //s e n s e a b l e . m i t . e d u / 1 5 o n t h e r o l e o f o r i g i n i n k e e p i n g n e i g h b o u r h o o d s a l i v e , s e e s h a r o n z u k i n , n a k e d c i t y. t h e d e a t h a n d l i f e o f a u t h e n t i c u r b a n p l a c e s ( 2 0 1 0 ) . 1 6 f r e n c h p h i l o s o p h e r a n d s o c i o l o g i s t e d g a r m o r i n ( 2 0 0 6 ) d e v e l o p s t h e n o t i o n o f “ r e l i a n c e ” ( s o m e t i m e s t r a n s l a t e d a s ‘ i n t e r l i n k i n g ’ ) a s t h e k e y t o a c h i e v i n g f e l i x g u a t t a r i ’s c o n c e p t o f e c o s o p h y w h i c h e x p a n d s c o n v e n t i o n a l n o t i o n s o f e c o l o g y t o e m b r a c e a l l d i m e n s i o n s o f e x i s t e n c e . “ t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n s u b j e c t i v i t y a n d i t s e x t e r i o r i t y b e i t s o c i a l , a n i m a l , v e g e t a b l e o r c o s m i c ”. 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