BRUSSELS 1958:

A DOUBLE PERSPECTIVE

Prof.: Gaia Caramellino A.Y.: 2015-2016 R.A.: Nicole De Togni Dep. A.I.C.U. Politecnico di Milano

Students: Valentina Mori, Federica Ponticelli, Alice Zoe Ricci, Rossella Scalise

I just came back from Oliviero Manetti’s funeral. It was a truly saddening day, today. I feel as if I have lost a part of me, along with him. He was such an important person in my life, and I’ll treasure everything he taught me in my soul.

I inherited the logbook he wrote during the trip we made together in 1958. I’m going to compare it with mine when I get home. I was his assistant at the time, and I was asked to go to Brussels with him and to write a journal myself. During my 14-month traineeship, at the Architectural Devices, I had been so naive and excited by everything, and I must have changed so much from that experience.

Mine starts like this:

“We’ve finally arrived in Brussels! After all of that decision making in London, we’ve just this moment set foot in our hotel rooms for the night. Every inch of the city has been covered with advertisements and adds! There are so many people around: the Fair has really started.

The aggressive cloudburst typical of late June is so depressing: I wanted to go out, but I had to wait in my hotel room alone. The sound of the rain on my windows frame the view of the Alps, and the hills and rivers of the Belgian landscape.

I can’t believe I’m here, in Brussels, the city moulded by Cambrai’s bishop, strategic hub between Cologne and Bruges: it had always been one of my greatest dreams. It had been erected on Caudemberg’s hills, residence of Dukes of Brabante and Lorena, dominated by France and Austria, flattened by Louis XIV, finally it is independent. Cradle of Gothic Brabantine architecture, with the Grande Place City Hall, the Tour Inimitable, the Maison Du Roi.

I booked our hotel just in the Brussel centre, in order to live the atmosphere of a city that is changing and transforming towards modernity in first person, and to see with my own eyes if all the planned interventions, which I had read about, have been developed or were just a non honoured promise.

I seriously think Mr Manetti despises me. I asked him if he wanted to go get an ice-cream earlier on, and he looked at me, with a dreadful expression, looked away from me and started walking away. He didn’t even answer, he didn’t even explain! I was so embarrassed. Why did I decide to work with him in particular? I really can’t recall.

He’s a sad middle aged man, greying hair and a stern look upon his face. I like the way he writes, and he also has a very good way of thinking, but, for the love of God, he doesn’t have an ounce of humour in him! I want to learn everything from him - he has interviewed so many people in the world of architecture, like Mies Van Der Rohe and Behrens, just a few months before he died. He

Advertisements were everywhere around the city centre.

even got the chance to interview Mussolini, and his article was published on Il Popolo d’Italia.

Anyway, I really wanted that ice-cream, so I decided to go and get it by myself. As I was roaming around, I got lost for a couple of hours, I think, but I enjoyed it! I had the opportunity to see how the city has undergone many changes after the war and it is being improved towards a modern post-war appearance. I went through Boulevard de Berlaimont, and I noticed the city in its transformation - it is brand new and buildings are under construction, giving the perception of a great city growing towards a new modernity, although it is not yet fully visible and accomplished.”

And now we change dates:

“This morning, Oliviero surprised me by proposing a tour through the places of the Brussels’ World Fairs from the 19th century to the one that we are looking forward to. I didn’t know what to think about this, I was both excited and suspicious, but the fear he would have killed me soon passed.

We rented a Peugeot 203, and while I was driving it, Mr Manetti was holding on to the handle of the car, telling me where to go and recounting the history of Belgium, that has been one of the few countries organising its exhibitions not only in the capital, but spreading them all around its territory, from Antwerp to Liege.

Under a cloudy sky, we went to Parc du Cinquantenaire, where Brussels First World Fair took place. Mr Manetti told me that it had been a folkloristic and innovative exposition, in occasion of the fiftieth anniversary for Belgian’s Independence. Closing my eyes, I could almost imagine what people like me could hear, see and live one century ago.

Just outside the park, in Avenue de Tervueren, I was able to imagine the 1897 Congolese Exhibition experience, which was a completely different scenario. For the first time King Leopold II organised this exotic and picturesque fair, setting up a showcase of his colonial ambitions.

Back in our car, we reached the Brussels World Fair of 1910 area, at the edge of Bois de la Cambre, and the comparison with the present is immediate: today’s exhibition should give a new shape to the Belgian capital, the same happened at the beginning of the century. This site was chosen for the desire to urbanise the city and to expand it towards the suburb of the time. It came into my acknowledge that even if a great fire on the night of 14th-15th August damaged numerous pavilions and the folklore district, and the exhibition’s success was compromised, it was an opportunity to inaugurate the Musèe Colonial, whose mission, according to the Minister of the Colonies, was to present an overview of all the knowledge concerning the colony, arouse the public’s interest in it, provide industry and commerce with all the useful information, and to provide scholars with a

The city and its new streets.

documentation as complete as possible: concerned by the need to educate people about the colony.

We reached the Heysel, in the North part of the city, used as the site for the first time for the Brussels Exhibition, in 1935. Again, with the choice of this site, the will and the need to carry on a process of modernisation and urbanisation appeared clear: this started a century ago and that has continued until today. I came to know that the 1935 Brussels Exposition, set the opportunity to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the first Brussels-Mechelen railway line, and the fiftieth anniversary of the Independent State of Congo. It was the first time that a Belgian world Fair took place at the Heysel; the first time that Congo is celebrated as independent and not only as colony; it’s the first time that the colonial section was not in avenue de Tervueren but it is incorporated in the main Expo site. Well, many “first time” occasions took place during that expo!

I remember the expression on Oliviero’s face when I asked him if I could buy a book regarding all these topics: he was quietly surprised, but he let me do it. In that way, all the images and the thoughts in my mind took shape: aesthetic and architectural choices for the design of the pavilions, reflecting the cultural and political trend of the era. Strong nationalist assertions, monumental academicism borrowed from art deco and evidence of nationalist arrogance that was dominating during the post war period.

After an enlightening lesson about the strong relation between world Exhibitions, city transformations and social changes, I could finally look towards Brussels with a totally different awareness: around me was not just new buildings realised to embellish the city for a great event, but it was the face of a post-war city where the way of living and the state of mind of its inhabitants were radically changing. The new economic well-being lead to a growingly consumeristic city; spreading optimism and improvement of the standard of living are the rallying cries, translated in the diffusion of the so called American wellbeing. Walking through the small streets of the centre, we were surrounded by the juxtaposition of contrasting buildings: from the more traditional buildings, that follow Horta’s Art Nouveau language, to the 20s style of the white box building, and various traditional or even hybrid styles.

Yesterday evening was so warm I couldn’t help but buying a refreshing typical Belgian sweet by a smiling baker while strolling in a boulevard filled with new shops. Everyone is so friendly and full of optimism, that I can’t understand how this atmosphere doesn’t rub off on Mr Manetti.

From the way in which Oliviero described the same experience, one could say we had visited two different cities:

“My new assistant, Richard Anson, and I arrived in Brussels, after an eighty-six minute flight. It was an excruciating trip: Mr Anson wouldn’t shut up about anything, and I wasn’t able to read the book on Xenakis I had thought about reading. At the beginning of the flight he had asked me if he could sit next to the window, and I let him, because I didn’t want him to lean over to see the view, and because ’m afraid of flying, but he kept leaning over me when he started ordering things to eat at the on-board trolley, and he even spilt his hot tea on my trousers. He’s such a pain. Why did I take him as my apprentice? And why didn’t I select Andrew Morris instead? He was duller than Richard in the way he wrote, but he seemed like a calm and competent person.

He booked the rooms for both of us, so I was put in one of the most expensive hotels in Brussels, Le Meridien. The only good thing about this is the fact that it is close to everything in the centre, and it is easy to reach the Central Station from here. So when we will go see the Expo, it won’t be too difficult to get there.

In the afternoon, we went out for a walk around Brussels. It had been raining before we left the hotel, so it was pretty muggy, but the sky was clearing so we decided to go out, against our initial prepositions.

The city of Brussels had undergone many changes from the last time I saw it before the wartimes. It looks like a completely new city, with new buildings and boulevards springing from the war torn city fabric. It’s really amazing how much war can devastate a place, and how fast humanity starts working again incessantly like ants.

As we travel the city centre, my interest in the way the city has changed grows. The occasion of the Fair of 1958 was important for the city of Brussels and also for the government of Belgium, for another reason other than the event itself - it has given way to many projects which had been stalled until now.

The event has helped with the construction of prestigious buildings in the central areas of the capital, and as a result the whole country of Belgium was put under the spotlight. The Belgian Welfare State is using the Exposition, the new infrastructures and the administrative buildings as a way to show itself and its power, even with the use and diffusion of flyers and booklets.

The exhibition site is situated seven kilometres away from the city centre, but the area which got the most advantage from the construction of new roads and from the expansion of public transport is clearly the centre of Brussels. The aim of this

Top view of the city.

infrastructural project was to allow Brussels to appear as “the crossroads of Europe”, with the creation of one of the first highway systems in the Old Continent. This system of new roads is not only for the Fair and for National Prestige but it will permit to solve the critical traffic problems which riddle the city.

Because of the economic boom and the spread of the “American dream” ideals, social differences between people have started being less visible: almost all the families can afford to buy a car (and this has been generating big problems of traffic in the small streets of the centre). In 1947, the Belgian’s economy had been able to grow back to the same level of industrial production of the pre-war period, because of the exponential economical growth it had in the last period. Almost ten years ago, there was the so called “Belgian miracle” and the first plans for Expo 58 started. I understand why the Belgian government had wanted to organise the exposition: its great ambition was to promote the image of a state of the wellness among Belgian citizens and abroad. In the twelve years which brought to the finalisation of the exposition, many projects which didn’t concern the Expo directly, were carried out in the nation and in the capital: the exposition became the deadline for all the infrastructural works, such as the completion of the Brussels North-South underground railway connection, the Junction, in 1952. After finishing the Junction, five other buildings were planned for this area, and some of the most prominent examples are the Monts des Arts, the National Bank complex and the Cité Administrative, all of which had been expected to be ready in time for the opening of Expo. The new administrative front, the Cité Administrative, was devised in order to show the whole world a new modern image of this city. However, its first foundation stone was laid one week after the beginning of the Fair, so I won’t be able to see it. Another important project for this progress of renovation and enhancement is the Detour of 1956, a further development project which aims to solve the problems of traffic this city has acquired in the last decade: this new detour will not have only solved these dilemmas, but it will also lead the supplementary flux of visitors of the Fair. The new street network was presented as a matter of national prestige.This Fair will influence urban planning and architecture for many years to come. I believe International Exhibitions are not isolated events but they are the opportunity to interact with other existing urban projects.After strolling around the city for two hours, Richard takes off to get an ice-cream. I don’t go with him, because I don’t want one, and because it’s not hot enough for one. He might have taken me for angry, and I was a little, for the accident with the tea, but when

The new enhancements of the city.

he didn’t come back I got worried and I progressively got angry. He got lost, he said when he came back in time for dinner in the mess hall of the hotel.

After waiting near the place where he had left me, for a quarter of an hour, I decided to leave and start roaming about the city on my own, preferring my solitude to that hurricane of chatter.I decided to make my way towards the famous Atomium in the Expo site.According to what is reported on a big descriptive panel, the massive structure, designed by the engineer André Waterkeyn and the architects André and Jean Polak, symbolises a frame of mind that combines aesthetic daring with technical mastery.It reflects the democratic will to maintain peace among the Nations, the faith in progress, both technical and scientific, and an optimistic vision of the future of a modern, new, super-technological world for a better life for mankind.I’m not particularly fond of this work of art: I find it quite insignificant and it doesn’t bare the symbol of the discoveries of the time. It is the mere physical translation of the infinitely small in a different enormous scale. It is not something to be considered innovative, but rather an exercise of style - it’s the attempt to make something magnificent, but ending up in making something that humanity has already seen. It is a commercial act, to induce people like Richard to look at it in awe, but when they turn their eyes on something else it lies forgotten. In a recent article, written by Rogers, I find my self being completely in synch with what he believes: “Expo ’58 is interesting because it shows the limits of our era and not only the tastes, but also the sense of plastic expression, and in a larger sense of the possible decisions in the sphere of culture”.What sense does a hundred meter tall structure have, in a world where the Empire State Building stands four-hundred meters tall? None.I doubt it has an important role, and I believe the Atomium denotes a deeper crisis in the theme of the progress of architecture. This Expo in particular should have been a place in which all of the most recent discoveries in the world of sciences and planning are shown, but the symbol of it is an empty representation of them. I can understand how people, who don’t have an eye as critical as mine, will see this structure: it’s gigantic and it looks as if it could fall from the pedestal. I will admit it is interesting, but I still feel as if it is the futile attempt of modernity to make something of immense importance.I’m also amused by the coincidental inappropriateness of this sculpture in front of the most recent and tremendous murder which took place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the end of WWII. Waterkeyn, the designer said something interesting about this sculpture “The completely steel-clad Atomium is a kind of UFO in the cultural history of Humanity, a mirror turned simultaneously towards the past and the future, comparing our Utopias of yesterday with our dreams for tomorrow”. I still don’t appreciate it, though.”

The Atomium, by night.

Oliviero was such a downer. I was much more enthusiastic:

“Anyway, today is the great day and I can’t wait to visit the fair and all the pavilions of the different countries. We’re finally here. From the Brussels central station to the gare d’autobus in front of the porte des Grands Palais, I can feel a sense of excitement in the air.

Two months ago, the 17th of April I saw a broadcast on the Television of a long report on the inauguration of Expo ’58, transmitted all over Europe, with many reporters from each country. After a short introduction by King Baudouin, the general commissioner Moens de Fernig presented the main aims and themes of the Fair: “The world has lost its faith in the innovations produced by science and industry, and the trust in technology common during the pre-world period is now an illusion.

There is no need of being pessimistic and discouraged by the technological and scientific progress. If they are developed in relation to the human scale, they can be used for the everyday life of people and contribute to the spiritual wellbeing of humanity. This new hope is what we want to show at the first post-war Exhibition, entitled “Review of the world with a view to a more humane world.”

Yes, I remember that day very well: I had great expectations coming from some articles I had read on Casabella and Domus concerning that event. I also tried to be as informed as possible to impress my mentor, good times. Oliviero, who was more analytical than me, wrote:

“After we bought the tickets, 20 francs each, we enter in the Grands Pailais halle d’accueil, and we are in front of an overall view of the main themes, events and exposition of the fair. There is a enormous board with the list of events that are going to take place today. The majority of them concerns people’s entertainment, such as the World’s Film Festival and an exhibition of the star of the Bolshoi Ballet Galina Ulanova, and cultural and intellectual conferences, as the World convention on childhood, with the presence of the Indian premier Indira Gandhi. The business card of Brussels world fair highlights how this is not intended to be an architectural and industrial showcase but also and especially a place for the exchange of knowledge between different countries about technological, cultural and social themes. It offers visitors an interesting exhibition entitled “50 years of modern art”, about the history of art of the first half of 20th century. The organisation of the Fair appears efficient enough: if someone gets injuries, competent medical staff carries you to the closest first aid spot, and even those places are exploited by advertisement companies; particular attention is given to children, to which there are devoted areas with a team who takes care and entertains the young visitors. In front of this nursery we

The Expo site from the top.

can see the starting point of the “expo-train” that guides people to the main points of interests, sparing you from the 27 kilometres walk, necessary to visit all the attractions of the site. My ankles won’t be happy after it. However, at least the warmth of the June sun and a gentle breeze are pleasant pals for this long visit. We access to Avenue de Belgique characterised by the monumental Atomium. We are thrown by flux of people in the industrial sector of the Expo and it is immediately recognisable its leading organisational principle; as told in the inaugural speech, Expo 58 does not want to be a trade fair: the most important Belgian companies who decided to take part in the Exhibition were required to gather together according to some generic themes, in order to remove any kind of references to individual companies. On our left, I show Mr Anson the Expochimie Pavilion organised by the Chemical Industries collective, and on our right the steel construction of Electricitè 58, provided by the group of metallurgy factories.

Ah, Oliviero was so annoyed by the amount of people visiting the Expo. I can’t stop laughing if I think I thought his bad moods were all because of me. How much I tried to convince him to enjoy that experience by keeping on underlining all the positive aspects of it! Some years later, when we became good friends, he confessed he was actually amused by my enthusiasm, and after the first few days he let himself get carried away, even if he didn’t show it: he held on to his pride. On the other side, I was truly bewildered by the atmosphere, the noise, and everything in general.

A turmoil coming from the feet of the Atomium catches my attention: as we get closer, looking at the advertising posters I become aware that the 45th tour de France has just started. But what is most striking and staggering is the magnificent grandeur of such a huge architectural and engineering sculpture representing a giant model of a unit cell of an iron crystal, with each sphere representing an atom. A short walk through Avenue du Congo leads us to the Avenue Des Nations, where the “Section Étrangères” begins. Walking towards the Square of Nations, even through my unskilled eyes, the lack of a shared modern architectural language and the sentence I read the in the articles “Expo 58: Between Utopia and Reality” is clear: in this section the pavilions do not respect the idea of modern architecture that should be determined by an objective program and an internationally accepted construction techniques. France, Italy, Germany, United States of America and Soviet Union reflect radically different socio-political situation in the use of the dissimilar architectural styles.

What strikes my attention especially, is the impressive structure of United States pavilion with a broad oval pool in the plaza in front of it, next to the Soviet Union one. On the back of a postcard, given by an hostess at the entrance of the exhibition space, there is a quotation by the architect, Edward Durell Stone, describing the basic concept of his design: “My aim is to design a “more than modern” architecture, answering a need for richness, exuberance and freshness. I design a geometrically simple volume, impressive through its sheer size.”

The image of American society that I got from this pavilion is of a relaxed and rich atmosphere, in my opinion it is the same that characterises the

interior exposition. It houses the very creative impulse of American life, through large photographs and models of modern buildings for private and public use. The exhibition speaks of the American values of democracy and freedom, and it is provoking contrasting reactions: if I have liked and celebrated the success of this kind of approach, that in my opinion brought honour to USA, Mr Manetti obviously highlighted the lack of high quality objects by American industrials.

The visit to the Soviet Union Pavilion was not planned, but I saw a huge crowd of visitors moving from the exit of the United States lot to its neighbour pavilion, and getting curious, I decided to follow them while Mr Manetti rested on a bench; I was looking for a possible relation between the two, due also to the tense political situation among them.

The first difference that I notice, thanks to the studies I’ve made, is that in contrast with the American pavilion, this one occupies entirely its site and is just placed on a pedestal, that serves as a podium towards the square.

During the visit inside, a guide explains to me that the aim of the government was to represent a post-war powerful and advanced Soviet Union, and an image in contrast with the one of a “relaxed” American society. The USSR building wants to illustrate the new soviet doctrine on architecture, forwarded by Stalin’s successor, and the result was an image that reflected the capacities of the soviet construction Industry.

I ask for more information about the relation between the two pavilions, and the person in charge of the visit explains me that they have been designed and built independently one from the other, but a comparison by the visitors and press was inevitable.

After I described the USSR pavilion to Mr Manetti, while having lunch, he told me that in his opinion, the overall impression is of an American superiority to the Soviet, more modern and with a wealth and easy way of living. Modern architecture was the medium to express conflicting visions of contemporary man, of modern humanism: a communist post-war socialist realism versus capitalist neo-classical modernism.”

I didn’t describe The Italian pavilion, but how could Oliviero not?

“At least, we visited my motherland pavilion, the Italian one, which I read a lot about, in particular on Casabella the article by Reima Pietilà in which she properly describes the basic concept of this section as a polemic against formalistic structuralism and a desire of the architects Belgiojioso, De Carlo, Gardella, Peressutti, Perugini, Quaroni and Rogers to maintain a continuity with the Italian tradition. Indeed references to the architectural language of the rationalist period, the new tendencies of organic architecture, the neo-realist The Italian Pavilion, in Expo 1958.

style and Olivetti’s industrialism, are visible. The visit basically consists of a tour in the five little buildings covering the lot, articulated on one storey, and the delegation building of two storeys.

Knowing that the architect and musician Iannis Xenakis will be at the Philips Pavilion tomorrow morning, we go back to the hotel to have dinner and rest. I must admit, having dinner and discussing with Mr Anson about the fair was more interesting than what I expected.”

With the time spent with Oliviero, I acquired a new spirit of observation, and I wrote:

“At last, the most awaited moment of our visit arrives: the tour of the Philips pavilion, designed by the leading figure of the European modern season Le Corbusier.

The guide responsible of the visit, introduces us to it speaking about how this Pavilion represents an improvement of architectural plan, of the optical effects of movement and of the ideology of progress respect to his purist houses of the 20s. Then the guide describes that this building was the result of a collaboration between two artists with totally different ideas: Le Corbusier designed the plan and Iannis Xenakis the building. This professional friction between the two designers produced a variation of the promenade architecturale, whose tension is not between multiple formal readings anymore, but between the smooth exterior and the “narrative” experience of the interior. The amazing journey through Le Corbusier’s stomach plan starts by passing through a short corridor: we came across the extraordinary machinery designed by Edgard Varese, that generates sounds, light, colours and rhythm in the darkness of the pavilion. Here, Mr Manetti tells me how Le Corbusier had already designed pavilions for other world expositions, and he had little interest in the architectural challenge of the project, but he saw it as the opportunity to envision a poeme electronique, a combination of architecture music and light to express the problems of that period in a provocative mass experience. The main characteristic of Le Corbusier’s idea was the combination of references to show the evolution of the human species and of the artistic expressions of faith, with the destruction of war and the need for redemption. The initial concept of Le Corbusier was entirely based on this machine, and he conceived the pavilion as the “container” for this spectacle. He’s definitely a genius. Outside he thought to a total neglecting of architectural from, but soon he abandoned this idea because of the inadequate acoustical insulation. He proposed a curved plan instead, designed to conduct the flow of people from one part to the other as in a stomach.

The Philips Pavilion, by Xenakis and Le Corbusier, 1958.

Oliviero wrote:

“I must say that I can actually understand the reason of the fight between Le Corbusier and Xenakis, because Le Corbusier had a lot of other works and designs in that moment, he charged Xenakis to develop the appropriate building for his plan. But the result was the opposite of what he would expected: a total lack of communication and language between the two parts. From outside Xenakis’s design didn’t give any hint of what could lay within, while the dark interior would not allow a clear view of the building’s form.

In the main room, some panels with the first sketches made for the pavilion are shown, and two totally different approaches to this design are visible: on one side Le Corbusier wanted to evoke the appearance of mathematical complexity, and on the other Xenakis aimed to make calculation part of the design process.

Xenakis saw the stomach plan of his colleague as a constraint from which to optimise the shape for a greater acoustic quality. The surface generated was made of nine hyperbolic paraboloids read as spliced surfaces, instead of distinct volumes, with three peaks protruding from their intersections: at the entrance, the exit and on the central room stomach shaped, which now appears as the effect and no more the origin of this volume.

Xenakis’ building reveals his disagreement with Le Corbusier’s idea of the promenade architecturale: the smooth surface and the unclear composition are designed so that a moving observer cannot distinguish a clear architectural progression.

I feel a sense of littleness under its main curves and surfaces. This recalls the romantic concept sublime: the path through Philips Pavilion offers continuous discontinuities because of the lack of coherence between outside and the inside.

Ah, this is my favourite part, written by Oliviero:

“The first thing you notice about the figure of Iannis Xenakis, is the scar on his left cheek and his glass eye. He walks around with a calm demeanour; he’s sure, assertive. When I find him, he’s showing a woman around, pointing to the ceiling and explaining something. I don’t want to interrupt them, so I opt for eavesdropping, trying to hear what they were talking about. His idea on music is the focal point of the conversation, when I reach them, and the woman inquisitively asks him how music interlaces with the theme of the Expo.

“The integration of arts and sciences, is not only a matter of applying scientific principles to artistic activity. Rather, we initiated an investigation of what I’m used to calling a ‘global

Iannis Xenakis in his studio.

morphology’, which I intend as a search for forms that strive to provoke a thought or a manifestation. Architecture make it possible to represent the imaginative world of music. Music is intangible, and therefore there is a distinct feeling when one listens to music, and when one sees something which stimulates an emotion. Music is closer to the soul, because it is less connected to reality, to the real world: it is the most fine sense, the closest to another dimension of understanding. The Philips Pavilion, which I designed along with Edgard Varèse, writing electronic music to animate all these futuristic-looking parabolas, swoops, curves. The maths underlying its construction, and the shapes it makes, have a direct correlation in the way I used the instruments of the orchestra in Metastasis, organising the entries of the instruments, and the pitches they play, according to the working-out of mathematical and statistical formulae, translating the space of architectural planes into musical time.”

At this point I can’t help intervening in their conversation: “Mr Xenakis, let me introduce myself: I’m Oliviero Manetti, and I write for the magazine Architectural Devices, and this is my apprentice, Richard Anson. I was listening to you, I couldn’t help it. May I ask you a few questions?”

Iannis Xenakis turns around to look at me, and give me a big smile “Of course, it would be a pleasure.”

What brought you close to the world of music?”

“I was always very attracted to the world of music. My childhood was permeated by rich folk music of my native region as well as mathematics and engineering, which was the reason why I ultimately chose to study engineering in the Athens Polytechnic. I began to seriously pursue music in this period, actually. My parents, my mother especially, taught me to appreciate the world of music. When I was smaller, I started singing in the school choir, and that was a good experience to understand what music meant to me. My whole life was imbued with music, architecture and mathematics, and my music is the fruit of this fusion of apparently opposite themes. I worked with Le Corbusier for a long period of my life, he was very inspiring for me and for my development as an architect. I was very attract to the possibilities of music in other spheres of action, and i started experimenting with architecture. I was also very impressed by the way it connected to the scientific discoveries of the last period. There is a certain kind of poetry to the way everything interacts with everything it is surrounded with in order to create something bigger, like a mass, in the case of the atoms for example. I believe that these unions, these agglomerations of people, animals, the infinitely small and lastly of musical notes, will create something which will surpass the aesthetics we’ve reached until now, a more fertile one. and above all a composer, whose craggily, joyously elemental music turned collections of pitches and rhythms and instruments into a force of nature, releasing a power that previous composers had only suggested metaphorically but which he would realise with arguably greater clarity,

ferocity, intensity than any musician, before or since. This is the music of Iannis Xenakis.

What is your drive when writing music? You say you compose mathematically: how does that work?

Take my Metastaseis for example. I was inspired by the combination of Einstein’s studies on the matter of time and space, and my experience with warfare, but it was also connected to the world of architecture, and especially with the world of Le Corbusier. It is played backwards, so it looses its connotations as a piece of music. People don’t recognise it anymore, it’s too cacophonous to be understood by a common listener. It’s not to be enjoyed: it’s the description of my life and my experience in wartimes. Music, as the common listener knows it, is a linear process: one note after the other, simple, and understandable. But mine is a new kind of listening: it’s music and the discoveries of our times, as the new discovery of the relativistic view of time is. I say that it is connected to my times in the war zone, because it is a distorted representation of what I heard and lived everyday of those moments. It drips with dread and fear, and you can hear bullets being shot, in the background, even thought you can’t hear the individual cartridges being shot. Taken as a whole, you can understand that is the sound of gunfire. The order in which they were fired is unimportant, they could have been combined in different patterns, but the result would have been the same.

What is your Stochastic Music, Mr Xenakis?

In 1954, I originated a music which was constructed on the principle of indeterminism, and two years later I named it "Stochastic Music". The laws of the calculus of probabilities became part of my composition process because of necessity. But other phenomenons also led to the same crossroads: first of all, there was the inspiration by hand of natural events such as the collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. The sound I’ve just described are a whole created by the juxtaposition of many smaller sound, like single raindrops. When they are put together they become a new sonic sound, aa a totality. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen as totality, is a new sonic event. This mass event is articulated and forms a plastic mould of time, which itself follows aleatory and stochastic laws. If one of then wishes to form a large mass of point-notes, such as string pizzicati, one must know these mathematical laws, which, in any case, are no more than a tight and concise expression of chains of logical reasoning. Everyone has observed the sonic phenomena of a political crowd of dozens of hundred of thousands of people. The human river shouts a slogan in a uniform rhythm. Then another slogan springs from the head of the demonstration; it spreads toward the tail, replacing the first. A wave of transition thus passes from the head to the tail. The statistical laws of these events, separated from their political

or moral context, are the same as those of the cicadas or the rain. They are the laws of the passage from complete order to total disorder in a continuous or explosive manner. They are stochastic laws.

What brought you to work in architecture?

I studied architecture and engineering in school in Athens, where I studied piano as well. After graduating in Engineering I had to flee to France and I started working in Le Corbusier’s studio when i got there, I had started as an engineer, but, you know, working with architects becomes a greta source of inspiration. However, while in Paris, I kept studying music, and I think my fascination for Architecture stemmed from it. Some relations between music and architecture are very simple and intuitive to understand, some are very delicate to define, and there is no actual way to refuse or validate them, because everything which has to do with aesthetics os uncertain. To me, they’re clamourous. Music and architecture are both noble art which don’t need to imitate things. They are arts in which forms and matter have a stronger and more intimate link between each other, because they connect to a general kind of sensibility: they amaze and stupefy the senses until annihilation. They both work with the grandiose and the intense. Lastly, their nature allows a great number of combinations and regular developments that link them together or they interweave them to geometry and analysis.

I will not report my version of the encounter with Xenakis, because I was such a childish enthusiast that I described everything without even writing the questions I had made. I only wrote one, which was the most important to me at the moment.

I had never had the occasion to meet Le Corbusier, and I was fascinated by the great mind of the man, that I couldn’t avoid asking Xenakis about him. Later on, Oliviero told me that my question was a great risk, because of the nature of the relationship between the two architects, but he also praised me for my courage (or stupidity) for asking such a question.

I was so excited that I almost couldn’t talk. I needed to prove my competence to Oliviero, because I had to change his mind about me, so I could keep from him. I think he’s starting to appreciate me more, anyway: yesterday, I asked him if he wanted to eat a fish and chips and he said nothing but walked towards the fish and chips booth. Real progress.

Mr Xenakis, what can you tell me about your cooperation with Le Corbusier?

At this, Iannis Xenakis looks at me, with a strange look on face, and says: “Well, I had already worked with Charles-Edouard before this moment in time, did you know? Although I was an illegal immigrant in Paris, as I told you, I cooperated with him for other projects like the apartment block in Nantes, parts of the government buildings in Chandigarh, The church of La Tourette and so on.

Iannis Xenakis and Le Corbusier.

Yeah, I know what people say about our strange way of working together, and we didn’t actually work together for this pavilion. Le Corbusier only gave minimal input into the details of how the interior of the pavilion would work, giving a vague concept of what the experience should accomplish; the only guidelines given by him, to both me and my collegue Varese, were that the interior was to be shaped in a manner similar to the stomach of a cow, with the form coming from a basic mathematical algorithm. Charles-Edouard was busy with the planning and design of Chandigarh, so the majority of the decision-making was made by me. And, guess what? He didn’t really like when I took control of the project, so we argued until I definitely left his office to further pursue my individual work within architecture and experimental musical composition. If you’re wondering what Le Corbusier is like, I can tell you about the time when the Philips Electronics Company turned to his office for the final commission for the pavilion. He replied by saying that he would have not made a pavilion for them, but a Poem Electronique, a vessel containing the poem; light, colour image, rhythm and sound joined together in an organic synthesis. Le Corbusier would take on the sole task of developing the interior of the vessel, leaving the exterior design of the pavilion my responsibility. For the composer of the Poem Electronique, he commissioned my colleague Edgard Varese, choosing him over other well know composers of the time such as Benjamin Britten and Aaron Copland, both of whom the Philips company preferred over Varese. As I told you, Le Corbusier’s personality is not an easy one. However, we found a way to cooperate in order to put an end to this project, and honestly I hope it is the last one I have to share with him.

I will not report anything else from my point of view, because, as I had said before, it is riddled with a much younger me fawning over everything that was happening. Reading Oliviero’s part now, I see just how much I have changed from the Expo of ’58. It is also interesting to see how much architecture and the public opinion of Expos has changed in this time. These thirty-eight years have brought so much change in the world.

“At that point I couldn’t decide if my assistant was a complete fool or a genius. He acts as if there are no consequences to his actions, but in this particular case, he was able to extort a true revelation by Xenakis, which took me by surprise. After the initial shock of the moment, I continued with my questions.

One last question, Mr Xenakis: what is your opinion about this Expo in Brussels?

Ah, I was waiting for this one. Pay attention and write it down faithfully.

Honestly, I think the expositions in general are a good way to share new ideas and technology, they give people the possibility to learn, to be updated with the last innovations in both the artistic and scientific fields. But, let me say one more thing: this Expo in particular had a great potentiality, because the leading architect of the General Commission of the Exposition, Paul Bonduelle, believes in a contemporary Belgian architecture with roots in the classical tradition, in strong opposition with the modernist tabula rasa, but it wasn’t developed properly: Expo 58 is the way through which the infrastructure of the new “state of well being” should be finally visible to everyone: the exposition is presented as a national endeavour, as the masterpiece of the modern state and so it should show a coherent, democratic and united Belgium. But even if everything is promoted as modern, there are too many incongruences between the desire of modernity and the style used to express it. The whole event lacked in coherence in the urban planning and it appears clear that the modern architecture actually is not as modern as we thought, but steel rooted in the national tradition.”

Mr Xenakis, thank you for your time. This was very in-sighting.

You’re welcome.

Richard shook Mr Xenakis’s hand so excitedly, i thought he would have broken his hand. Straight after, he asked Xenakis’s assistant to take a picture of us in front of the Philips Pavilion… I couldn’t believe it, but I was so shocked that I accepted. Mr Anson, Richard, is definitely the worst and best apprentice a journalist could ask for.”

When we got back to London, Oliviero hired me and we worked together for the following five years. After them, we continued reading each other’s articles and analysing them together.

I still believe Expo 58 was a great experience, both from the point of view of the young man I was and from who I became today. It was a good occasion for the city of Brussels, it brought tourism and great innovations to the whole of Belgium.

Map of the Brussels Expo 1958

Grands Palais, halle d’accueil

URSS pavilion

USA pavilion

Italian pavilion

Philips pavilion

The Atomium

Thematic map of the Expo of 1958.

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