Stanislaus von Moos

(Fr.1gmcms d'un:t conferenciJ

pronuncildl J I'ETH de Zuric.

el mar~ de 1988,

on es comenten qestions

pllmejades .11 nmero 177 de cQuaderns, Srr.,.t .\".;rr.:tz.

La rebci amb 1.1 discussi

alli tnceuda JUSttficl b

nOStr.J. publicaci ;a mJnclil

de CJrtJ al director,

encara que origin3riamem

no va ser plantej;ada aix.)

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..--.

2 u "" e

Stanislaus von Moos

(Fragmems of a lecture given in

Mrch !988 at ETH Zrich

in which were discussed severa.!

ideas that appeared

in to:Quaderns No. 177 on New Narration.

The subject of this lecture

and its relation with our magazine

justify iu publication hcrc as a

letter to the Editor- though it wa, not

original! y conceivcd as such).

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' Understanding the architectural project as a means by which to understand the city just as it is? lt is cer-tainly true that in recent years this focus has proved to be unusually productive. This focus>>: one thinks of a certain fascination for the present-day city, from the point of view of its rupture, of its irreparable for-mal disorder and, therefore once again, of its monotony. One thinks also of a scepticism regarding autocratic or social-romantic ideas about town plann-ing and order. Finally, one has also thought about re-nouncing the rash application of fundamentalist ar-chitectural Utopias, and about breaking away from neo-archaic worlds of evasion, which set out to heal the city, Nature and man by constructing isolated villas in Tesino, conspiring together with the totemic earth and cosmos.

Outstanding among the manifestoes of the Neuen Optik (New Focus) is James Wines' 1987 book, in which the co-founder of the SITE group of architects (New York), under the title of Dearchitecture, propases a radical decharming of the language of our architecture, or at least a rejection of t he autonomy>> of the discipline, so pursued in the seventies. Indeed, the work of the SITE group, which produced narrarive>> ar-chitecture even before this term was coined, acquired a theoretical foundation ( alt hough its results were somewhat diffuse): With rhe help of rheroric ir is quite easy tO garher around oneself the nervous and critica! body of vorers of any group of professionals. By contrast, ir is much more difficu lt ro poim a number of useful, non-academic oprions, formally undefined and non-tautological, inspiring and non-repressive, clarifying and non-esoteric, concerning the evolution of architecture in the furure.

Almost by way of a specification, in the latest issue of Quaderns>> (no. 177, published in Barcelona) and in his article entid ed Reality and the Project, Josep Llus Mateo puts forward t he following programmatic theses on the evolurion of architecture as from approximate-ly the year 1980. During this period the desire has emerged to:

define the characteristics of a new narrat i ve that is emerging at a time when the postmodern projecr is

realitat tema i de la reducci i sequedat , to de la seva acnv1tat. Algunes de les seves caracterstiques serien les segents: l. La voluntat de recollir d'allo vulgar, quotidia, brut, t rencat, produ'it per la civilitzaci contemporania, les condicions d' una nova arquitectura. 2. Antisentimentalisme, fredor i duresa ( ... ) 3. Reducci i sequedat expressiva que pretn aconseguir l'emoci mitjans;ant la presencia inaprensible de l'essencial i no mitjans;ant la multiplicitat retorica d'efectes."

S'endevina, si ms no a l'ltim punt, la voluntat d'emancipar-se de la generaci de Venturi i Stirling, per a la qual cosa Mateo - a qui, com es pot veure, li s tan sospitosa l'apellaci ritual a !

fading away; a narrative that will make the new evaluation of reality the theme, and reduction and dryness the tone of its activity.

Dome of its characterisrics are the following: l. The will to retrieve from amongst the 7.mlgarity, day lo-dayness, and dirt produced by comemporary civilisation the conditions for a new project ( ... ); 2. Antisentimentalism, coldness and hardness ( ... ); 3. Expressive reduction and dryness that set out to achieve emotion through the indefinite presence of rhe

essemial rather than through a rhetorical multiplicity of effects.

One detects, at least in the last poim, a desire to get away from che generation of Vemuri and Stirling. To this end Mateo - for whom, as we can see, the ritual ap-peal to autonomy is as suspicious as for his American colleague Wines- centres his search on a new idea of reality in literature, cinema and art; for example, on the dirty realism of the North American writer Ray-mond Carver, on the films of Wim Wenders and on the sculpture of Joseph Beuys.

It would seem that there is a proliferation of a new critical contextualism, above all among those architects faced with tasks belonging to che field of minor interven-tions; in other words, among younger architects. To the question how we must imagine an architecture that responds to a programme of this type, one would have to reply by pointing out certain works by Herzog and De Meuron in Basle and her outskirts, and perhaps also che Foto Studio Fre in Weil (precisely on the other side of the border). These show how it is possible to gather up the chaos of che periphery as a formal theme and transpon it to the image of a cheap architec-ture thought out with precision, instead of confron-ting it with the hypothetical ideal of an architectural order no longer recoverable in the outlying districts, and therefore doomed to failure.

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Another possible reply wouJd be the projects of the Of-fice for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), for the Berlin IBA, as examples of an architecture which, in-accordance with the trend for urban centres to become depopulated, addresses the non-compact structure of postwar reconstruction, in opposition to the official planning strategy of the IBA, which dreams of re-establishing the courtyards and blocks of 1880.

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In theory, understanding architecture as a new narrative means using as one's argument the city as it is, and not as ic should be (it is obvious that chis stance also implies certain theoretical traps). It is based on con-crete experiences, for example, in which global pro-jects for the city hardly have any chance of being brought to fruition, unless the architectural realisation remains faithful to the original intentions.

The Berlin architect, Hans Kollhoff, illustrated his idea abouc Berlin chrough the expressive verism of che im-ages of Rainer Fetting's great city, and goes into it in depth in his conversation with Wim Wenders centered on the film Himmel iiber Berln (Wings of Desire). For this reason Marcel Meili, from Zurich, instead of il-lustrating his reflections on his nacive cicy with bis own (or other people's) projects, does so with a series of good photographs by Heinrich Helfenstein, phocographs which do not exactly show good ar-chitecture>>, but rather the architecture of the fringe belt: little fifties houses with adjoining roofs, surround-ed by cars whose gleaming coachwork stands in bizarre contrast and inverse proportion to the national ar-chitectural honour, or forgotten sites on which light, provisional structures are built as mini-cities according to the demands of the momem.

Meili writes beneath one of these photographs:

The progressive isolation of our works in the city has forced us to analyse ways of accepting the modern

legacy without falling imo the trap of applyings it in an eclectic fashion exploitation.

And in the same text he cominues:

can scarcely be distinguished from the typological point of view, any distinction between w hat is good architecture>> and

quitecrura i el planejamem Correcte>> en oposici a la construcci merament especulativa es converteix en una farsa. Llevat que en arquitectura s'aconsegueixi definir la qualitat sense haver de recrrer als conceptes de llen-guatge formal i tipologa, sa dir, per exemple (de nou Meili a A+ U, nm. 11, 1988), com la precisa ma-nipulaci de condicions existents en el semit de ]'es-trategia d'una ampliaci i transformaci artstica del familiar>>. El fet que d'aquesta manera no es poden re-soldre tots els problemes s una altra historia, com tam-b el fet que les imervencions a ]'estructura de l'en-torn constru"it que la nostra societat haura d'afromar, probablement no seran de tipus arquitectonic, sin eco-logic i de poltica del sol en sentit ampli.

Comparada amb la situaci que regna al disseny gr:Hic d's quotidia, a ]'arquitectura s fins i tot acceptable la inflaci de signes existent i la progressiva desapari-ci de convencions optiques i normes esteriques que comporta. Martin H eller ha resumit la seva opini so-bre el Llenguatge dels cartells, 1978-88 (Anschlage, Wegleitung des Kunstgewerbemuseums der Stadt Z-rich, 1988) ( Cartells, oriemacions per recrrer el Mu-seu d'Arts i Oficis de la ciutat de Zuric, 1988) amb les paraules segems:

Correct planning as opposed to merely speculative building becomes a farce, unless it becom es possible to arrive at a definition of quality in architecture w ithout having recourse to the concepts of formal language and typology, that is, for example (once again M arcel Meili in A+U,,, no. 11, 1988) the precise manipulation of existing conditions in terms of a strategy of extension and artistic transformation of what is familiar. The fact that it will not be possible thus to solve all problems is another question, in the same way that the interventions in the structure of the constructed environment which our society will have to face will probably not be of an architectural nature, but rather ecological and pertaining to ground policy in the wide sense.

Compared to the situation prevalent in everyday graphic design, in architecture it is even possible to accept the infraction of existing standards and the progressive disappearance of optical convemions and aesthetic norms this carries with it. Martn H eler provides us with a summary of his opinion about the Language of Billboards 1978-88 (Anschlage, Wegleitung des Kunstgewerbem useums der Stadt Zrich, 1988 -Billboards, guidelines for a visit to the Arts and Crafts Museum of the city of Zurich, 1988) in the following words:

lt becomes difficult to tolerare the enormous amount of insignificance that convens the vast production of billboards -over 2,500- imo a monument to self-aware consumer economy. One becomes almost grateful for everything that manages to last rhanks to unflagging, tenacious optimism, such as the Marlboro cowboys, who for ten years have ridden rhe nicotine prairies, impervious to the passing of time and immune to rhe inclemency of rhe wearher.

What the Marlboro cowboys represent for the world of billboards is the same as what Total filling-stations represent for the outlying districts of Ticino: the last farewell of an architectural language whose signs are still intact.

It is clear that the architect, as opposed to the art critic, cannot retire to the ivory tower of the city's ethnologists, from which everything is relative. The architect must face a task that nobody can take away from him: giving form to the built surroundings. Fur-

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thermore, since the mere freezing and embalming of existing rural and urban typologies in m ost cases of-fers no solution to the problem - or, if it does, it is only valid for the Prince of Wales and his Swiss sym-pathisers, amongst whom there are many members of the defense committees for the artistic heritage- the chaos>> described above is the only opportunity still remaining for architecture.

The challenge les in finding ingenious ways of using in-terstitial spaces, a challen ge wh ich has been met by numerous architects up to the present day. -