Punkto#02 - Destruction (1)

7/29/2019 Punkto#02 - Destruction (1)

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Architecture will never Abolish chAnce

destruction number 2 mAy2011


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PROGRAM

T Dstrctv CharactrWalter Benjamin

Atlas 1 - Gordon Matta-Clark : memory

Dstrctn: a wrk n prgrss

Jos Brtolo

Dstrctn: nts n th trama Rral Prtgals Lsslvaro Domingues

Atlas 2 - DGEMN (1929 - 60) : restoration

Vll Pbl Niago Lopes Dias

PlttngDavid Knight & Cristina Monteiro

Atlas 3 - Auschwitz : testimony

Archtctr|Art|Dstrctniago Casanova


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3

It could happen to someone looking back over his lie that he realized that almost all the deeperobligations he had endured in its course originated in people who everyone agreed had the traits oa destructive character. He would stumble on this act one day, perhaps by chance, and the heavierthe shock dealt to him, the better his chances o representing the destructive character.

Te destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearingaway. His need or resh air and open space is stronger than any hatred.Te destructive character is young and cheerul. For destroying rejuvenate, because it clears away thetraces o our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete

reduction, indeed a rooting out, out o his own condition. Really, only the insight into how radicallythe world is simplied when tested or its worthiness or destruction leads to such an Apollonianimage o the destroyer. Tis is the great bond embracing and uniying all that exists. It is a sight thataords the destructive character a spectacle o deepest harmony.Te destructive character is always blithely at work. It is Nature that dictates his tempo, indirectly atleast, or he must orestall her. Otherwise she will take over the destruction hersel.Te destructive character sees no image hovering beore him. He has ew needs, and the least othem is to know what will replace what has been destroyed. First o all, or a moment at least, emptyspace the place where thing stood or the victim lived. Someone is sure to be ound who needs thisspace without occupying it.

Te destructive character does his work; the only work he avoids is creative. Just as the creator seekssolitude, the destroyer must be constantly surrounded by people, witnesses to his ecacy.Te destructive character is a signal. Just a trigonometric sign is exposed on all sides to the wind, sohe is exposed to idle talk. o protect him rom it is pointless.Te destructive character has no interest in being understood. Attempts in this direction he regardsas supercial. Being misunderstood cannot harm him. On the contrary, he provokes it, just as ora-cles, those destructive institutions o the state, provoked it. Te most petty bourgeois o all pheno-mena, gossip, comes about only because people do not wish to be misunderstood. Te destructivecharacter tolerates misunderstanding; he does not promote gossip.Te destructive character is the enemy o the tui-man. Te tui-man looks or comort, and the case

is its quintessence. Te inside o the case is the velvet-lined trace that he has imprinted on the world.Te destructive character obliterates even the traces o destruction.

the destructive character*

WALTER BENJAMIN


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punkto - DESTRUcTIoN

4

Te destructive character stands in the ront line o traditionalists. Some people pass things downto posterity, by making them untouchable and thus conserving them; others pass on situations, bymaking them practicable and thus liquidating them. Te latter are called the destructive.Te destructive character has the consciousness o historical man, whose deepest emotion is an insu-perable mistrust o the course o things and a readiness at all times to recognize that everything cango wrong. Tereore, the destructive character is reliability itsel.Te destructive character sees nothing permanent. But or this very reason he sees ways everywhere.Where others encounter walls or mountains, there, too, he sees a way. But because he sees a wayeverywhere, he has to clear things rom it everywhere. Not always by brute orce; sometimes by the

most rened. Because he sees ways everywhere, he always stands at a crossroads. No moment canknow what the next will bring. What exists he reduces to rubble not or the sake o rubble, but orthat o the way leading through it.Te destructive character lives rom the eeling not that lie is worthing living, but that suicide isnot worth the trouble.

* ext published original ly in the Frankurter Zeitungat 20th November 1931.

Waltr Bnjamn (Berlin, 1892). Philosopher. Literary Critic. Sociologist. ranslator. Wrote among others Te Work o Art inthe Age o Mechanical Reproduction, Teses on the Philosophy o Historyand the unnished work Te Arcades Project. Committedsuicide while running away rom the Nazi Secret Services in 26 September 1940 in Portbou, Spain.


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Holland House, London, ater a Nazi air Raid, September 1940


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-Office

Baroque,

1977

-

-

Days

end,

1975

-

-

Bronx

Floors:

Threshole,

1972

-

Matta-Clar

k

fragments

or

splintersa

rchitecture,

turning

it

into

ak

ind

of

reverse

Cubism

or

anti-monument,

but

one

whoset

ask

is

to

reconsti-

tute

memory

,

not

conventional

memory

asi

n

the

traditional

monument,b

ut

that

subversive

memory

whic

h

has

been

hidden

by

social

and

architectural

faa-

des

and

the

ir

false

sense

of

wholeness

.

-

Dan

Graha

m


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ATLAS

1

MATTA-

CLARK

DESTRUIO

AS

MEMO

RY

I

see

the

work

as

a

special

stage

in

perpetual

metamorphosis,

a

model

for

peoples

constant

action

on

space

as

much

as

in

the

space

that

surrounds

them.

Buildings

are

fixed

entities

in

the

minds

of

most

the

notion

of

mutable

space

is

virtually

taboo

even

in

ones

own

house.

People

live

in

their

space

with

a

temerity

that

is

frightening.

Home

owners

generally

do

little

more

than

maintain

their

property.

Its

a

baffling

how

rarely

the

people

get

involved

in

fundamentally

changing

their

place

by

simple

undoing

it.

Im

experimenting

with

alternati-

ve

uses

of

space

that

are

most

familiar...This

work

reacts

against

a

hygienic

obsession

in

the

name

of

redevelopment

which

sweeps

away

what

litle

there

is

of

an

American

past,

to

be

cleansed

by

pavement

and

parking.

What

might

have

been

a

richly

layered

underground

is

being

excavated

for

deeper,

new

building

foundations.

Only

our

garbage

heaps

are

soared

as

they

fill

up

with

history.

-

Gordon

Matta-Clark

-

Circus-Car

ibbean

Orange,

1978

-

-

Conical

Intesect,

1975

-


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Poster oTe Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS), London, 1966, organized by Gustav Metzger


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9

JoS BRToLo

here is a kind o vital experience timeand space experience, o us and o theothers, o lie possibilities and dangers that isshared by women and men all over the world,today. o this group o experiences we can callcontemporaneity. Maybe we, the contemporary,arent living something substantially dierentrom the ones that came beore the ones thatcame beore us the moderns lived.

Te environmental experience o the con-temporaneity in what it has o return to themodern and o awareness o the impossibilityo such return is marked by the crisis andresistance to the models, categories and valuesthat rom the political to the economi-cal, rom the religious to the artistic driveourselves into a conrontation with orms oproduction, circulations and archive that,

echoing Marx suggest us, that everything that issolid melts in the air.

For the ones that have come beore us andater the moderns, the dissolution was not ananguishing shadow, but a whole program. Tereduction to the concept, carried out by a younggeneration o artists and architects by theend o the 50s, expressed such programmaticconcern o returning, by radical means, to the

modern project original concern o construc-ting the synthesis between lie and art, being

this twentieth century second hal neo-avant--garde ideologically closer to the XIX centuryutopiststhan o the historical avant-gardes romthe beginning o the last century.

Te object destruction was the recurring strate-gy in this reduction to the concept process thatLuccy Lippard describes very well, in ull pro-cess, in the beginning o the 70s1. Te objec-tives pursued by the conceptual program werediverse but, as recalls Suzi Gablik, deprivingthe works o art rom their aura or singularityand, thereore, preventing that they transormthemselves in objects o consumption, was oneo the main objectives o the conceptual art2.As Robert Barry expressed, in 1968, the worldis ull o objects and I dont intend to addany other. Tis trail, we know it now, wouldreveal us some perversions. Te dematerializa-tion, but mostly the destruction o the artisticobject, through an anti-artistic interventionover an object (everyday object or work o art)instead o removing it rom the commercialchain, exempting it rom the condition ogood, generated a new value dimension (ironi-cally, a certain aura) that, rapidly, would ndits own production system, circulation, tradeand archive. o the production o objects,

the conceptual art, intended to oppose twoalternative creative processes: the productiono ideas and the destruction o pre-existing

destruction

A WoRk IN pRogRESS


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10

objects. In 1969, Robert Barry presented hiselepathic Piecethat consisted in the eort ocommunicate, by telepathy, a work o art.Tree years later beore the presentation o theelepatic Piece, Gustav Metzger organized in

London the DIAS Destruction in Art Sym-posium particularly animated by actions asPainting with Explosion in which Pro-Diazpro-ceeded to some creative detonations or by theViennese Actionistsperormances that aimed, aswell, a kind oexplosion through the abruptliberation o big amounts o energy.

Te recourse to explosion was one o the most

symbolical means and radically actual o thecontemporary art, working with a reerentialtriangle that dominates the second hal othe twentieth century culture energy/pro-duction/consumption. Te approach to theliterality and to the explosion imaginary andthrough it the construction o creative proces-ses based in the controlled and intentional actdestruction built one o the most contusingrepresentations o the contemporary culture,

that Peter Sloterdijk, already in this century,called the ast burn culture.

Te destruction o the object by the contem-porary art appears, in this way, as a repre-sentation, between the melancholic and theunusual, o a process o ast combustion, ex-plosion and destruction o enormous amountso energy that characterizes the industrial and

liberal culture o the XX century. Te ormso destruction were, as we know, the mostdiverse, as very well enunciates Metzger intheManiesto Auto-Destructive Arto 1960:Materials and techniques used in creatingauto-destructive art include: Acid, Adhesives,Ballistics, Canvas, Clay, Combustion, Com-pression, Concrete, Corrosion, Cybernetics,Drop, Elasticity, Electricity, Electrolysis, Feed--Back, Glass, Heat, Human Energy, Ice, Jet,

Light, Load, Mass-production, Metal, MotionPicture, Natural Forces, Nuclear Energy, Paint,Paper, Photography, Plaster, Plastics, Pressure,

Radiation, Sand, Solar Energy, Sound, Steam,Stress, erra-cotta, Vibration, Water, Welding,Wire, Wood.

Tis drop drop dropping o HH bombs was,in this way, developed in several ways: by dis-solution (as in the Metzger or Mark Boyle andJoan Hill paintings with acid); by incineration(as in the Pyromania Projectso Ben Vautier,in the Burnt Instrumentso Armand or in thePeintures de Feu de Yves Klein); by split (as inthe project Passageo Saburo Murakami); bysmashing (as in the works o Csar Baldaccinior John Chamberlain); by dismantle (as in the

Piano Destruction o Raael Ortiz); by cut (asin the compositions o Arman); by penetration(as in the anti-buch o Herbert Zangs); bystrangulation (as in the Implosionso EwertHilgemann) and nally by explosion, recoursethat rom the Hommage New York(1960) oJean inguely to the recent works o KendekkGeers is still recurrent.

o Metzger the auto-destructive process wasa path to the total conception, being the idea,by chance paradoxically, o a total conceptualwork o art, slowly dened since mid 50s:Auto-destructive art is primarily a orm o pu-blic art or industrial societies. Sel-destructivepainting, sculpture and construction is a totalunity o idea, site, orm, color, method, andtiming o the disintegrative process.

Auto-destructive art can be created with natu-ral orces, traditional art techniques and tech-nological techniques. Te amplied sound othe auto-destructive process can be an elemento the total conception. Te artist may collabo-rate with scientists, engineers.

Sel-destructive art can be machine producedand actory assembled.

Auto-destructive paintings, sculptures and

constructions have a lie time varying rom aew moments to twenty years. When the disin-


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11

tegrative process is complete the work is to beremoved rom the site and scrapped.3.

In 1973, ater a decade o massive destruc-

tion, the energetic crises conront us radicallywith the crisis o over-abundance It will notbe simple coincidence, the act that the Post--modernity arms itsel, through CharlesJencks, in the same year that the oil crisisreaches its peak. An organization paradigm othe energy/production/consumption reerentialtriangle, that reached a declared exhaustion.Almost orty years ater this point o exhaus-tion, there was no real paradigm modication.

Te creative processes o intentional and con-trolled destruction were gone in the last threedecades extinguishing it and becoming merelyresiduals. We remain inside aast burn culture,but evolved in the vertigo o this combustion,maybe we lost the ability o representing it andpotentially create a critical alternative.

Ater this experience o critical destruction, to

us, it seems only to be let the experience okeep the ashes or to ree them in the air.

1 Lucy Lippard, Six Years: Te Dematerialization o the ArtObject rom 1966 to 1972, London, 1973.2 Suzy Gablik, Ha muerto el Arte Moderno?, Herman Blume,Madrid, 1987, pp. 39.3 Gustav Metzger,Auto-destructive art maniesto, 1959.

Available online : http://www.391.org/maniestos/1959metzger.htm.

Js Manl Brtl (1972) develops work o investigation, teaching and curatorship in the areas o contemporary art, archi-tecture and design. Its author o the blog Reactor ( HYPERLINK http://www.reactor-reactor.blogspot.com www.reactor--reactor.blogspot.com) o the books Corpo e Sentido and Design and editor o PLI Magazine.


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13

LVARo DoMINgUES

It is said that an act o destruction is an actthat makes something to disappear. I onedoesnt ask anything else about the circums-tance and reasons o that disappearing, therewill be ew clearing up. It can even be pureillusion, or are not the illusionists themselvesthe real specialists on disappearance.

In a martial view, destruction is the enemysannihilation..., but there are other meanings

much more positive where destruction is anecessary condition or rebirth and creation.So has thought the good God when He war-ned Noah that He would destruct mankindwith a ood that restarted everything, like theSun in each dawn, and the creation reconciledwith the creator, once or all. It came to no-thing, judging by what happened meanwhileand by the results o multiple oods and ca-tastrophes that occurred.

Te ragments o image/text that are pre-sented belong to Vida no Campo [Lie inthe Countryside] (Domingues, 2011, Dane,Porto), an essay about the destruction or, in amore psychological record, about the loss oRural Portugal. Vida no Campo is, thereore,a metaphor about the loss o that Rural Por-tugal and an antidote against this bad livingabout depopulation, abandonment, or, in

an another record, the deep metamorphosisthat is ploughing throughout the (ex)-armerscountry, the loss o their ancestral practices,

ways o living, territory and landscapes.Ruins, in many cases.

It is not a minor matter. Like Language orHistory, landscape is a powerul identitymark, a common house. Yet, there are noeternal landscapes. Landscapes are a record othe changing society and i the change is sobig, so deep and accelerated, there will be arecord o it and ew time and plenty o spaceto understand and digest every marks and theway, either relics either disposals, mutuallyrun-over.

At the same time, i we change the landscape,the stable reerents that the landscapes imagesproduce all into a mess, in a speeding up odierences where, requently, it is more recog-nizable what is lost than what it is gained andthe way that this gain is evaluated, because

it seems weird or exotic, non-belonging, nonvernacularlike the Romans said about theslaves that where home born by counterpointto those who were recruited somewhere.

Tis is why its so common to talk about thedestruction in course, the de-characterization,the loss o supposed authenticitiesthat aterso much mystication seem to have belongedto a primordial time, with no history or anyother reerent except this pluperect pastwhere lie in the countrysidewas the image oParadise and o the wise good People, poor but

destruction

REcoRDS oN ThE TRAUMA of RURAL poRTUgAL LoSS


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14

honest, that lived in its simplicity, joy andcommunion with Nature and praying to thegods.

Te marks and memories o that Rural Portu-gal are decomposing with the de-ruralizationand its track o collateral eects: depopula-tion, ageing, abandonment o elds and agri-cultural production, disappearing o certainliestyles, knowledges and cultural practices

the interior, in the more requent words aboutthese matters. Te ew that stay live rom anassisted economy between pensions, subsidies,savings, amilys helps and those who can,leave because employment is rare, and thebucolic mirage and the lost paradise image ismuch more rom those who are out (o thatinterior) and think that the rural and natureare places or vacation and tourism.

In a dierent record rom this one whenabandonment o agriculture doesnt mean theabandonment o people , rurality transormsitsel rom inside or its absorbed by what it isusually named urbanization. Tispost-ruralityis so strange that there is no way we can ad-jectiythe landscapes it builds. ransgeniclandscapes, new territories that like GMOs(genetically modied organisms) combineand reproduce distinct genetic reerences and

remix them in an unusual way. Tose whousually look dont understand, and becausethey dont see in there the beautiul cities

or the good and pretty villages, become sadand call it ugly. Let us leave the aestheticsor later on; people say that one cannot lovewhat they dont know and, in this case, whatsmost unknown is the most present thing. Aparadox.

Vida no Campo is about all o this: myths othe last rural country in Europe that persistsin inscribing in the collective imaginary (andat the same time), the bucolic images and thedisposals o that lost world, variating betweencalamity and res, resorts or all tastes withlots o grass andgreen space, rural tourism,desertication or, on the contrary, housesand roads everywhere like in the NW oPortugal. I 97% o the economy is not rural,the country, the society and the territory, areurban (by deault and as while as we cannotleave this dichotomy). It seems bafing, but towrite an essay it is quite enough.


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15

1Was is the past o the indicative o the verb to be.Had been is the pluperect past, o a primordial timewhere the rural had been a time out o time. It was inact a stone house with inscriptions on the door lintelwhich probably had met other times o prosperity andabundance. Meanwhile, since long ago theres a vine-yard where beore there was the rst oor pavementor the oak wooden ceilings; an interior vineyard likethe garden o a convent cloister.

oday it is just one more real estate productcommer-cialized by an international business network: localproducts in global commerce, like it is common inalmost everything. In this case, what would be orsome the disgrace o a ruin, or others is the charmo the ruin itsel. Te theme is not rom the present.Since the aesthetics o the antiquity, disposals wereproduced and ed in European Renaissance, until theRomanticism (that amplied its senses and poetics),and the ruin kept its museum patina and aura o

sacralised things. Its dicult not to eel a certainnostalgia, the same that is able to eed the interest andraise o cost o this and other ruins. Greater than theloss, is the conscience o the loss that truly matters.

2Te Voo do Arado [Flight o the Plough] is the nameo a 1996 exhibition at the Museu Nacional deEtnologia [National Museum o Ethnology] and alsoan indispensable book to understand the ading outo traditional agriculture in Portugal rom the 1950sdecade1.ransmuted to a condition o ying object or decora-tive adornment o padiment o the entry o the house,the plough jumps rom reality and rom the museum

to the ready-made world and the symbolic programso architecture and domestic space. With the , ploughan object that constitutes a strong symbol o thecivilization process itsel, everything that comes romarts and crats o agriculture wheels, cars, millstones,

jars, pipes, barrels, granaries, etc converts into anobject whose symbolic record unolds simultaneouslyinto relic, exorcism, identity, memory,...

1 J. Pais Brito; Oliveira Baptista; Benjamim Enes Pereiraorg. (1996), O Voo do Arado, Museu Nacional de Etnologia,Instituto Portugus de Museus, Lisboa


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3How it is beautiul my village

It is so beautiul my village, the place where I was bornUnder the light o a candle, I remember the land where I lived inIt is so beautiul the dawn, the sun alls on the armsTere you couldnt live, today you cry that loss

In the Holy Mary time, when the bells are ringingIt has arrived the end o the day, our people will pray

At that time o joy, soon we prepare the meal

At the Holy Mary time...how it is beautiul my village

Oh olive trees garden, guard your beautiul wheat feldsYoure the true hope, youre my parents landIt is so beautiul the dawn, the sun alls on the armsTere you couldnt live, today you cry that loss

In the Holy Mary time, when the bells are ringingIt has arrived the end o the day, our people will pray

At that time o joy, soon we prepare the mealAt the Holy Mary time...how it is beautiul my village2

2 Roberto Leal, Canto a Portugal, 2003

4Tis thing o an art o the eld and o a eld o art hasplenty to be said: without understanding the eld oart we dont understand art, or the eld, or anythingelse3. Bourdieu says that the eld o art is like anyother social eld, a private arena where each one playsthe game rules to stand a position ace to ace to theplayers that legitimise the authority rom who are theartists, the arts and the properties o those symbolicgoods. Marcel Duchamp knew about the iconoclast

weight o his Fountain, reused by the IndependentSalon, 1917, New York; to increase its (counter)powerat the Salon, he plotted with a wealthy riend o histo oer a good amount o money by the Fountaineo Richard Mutt (the company that produced theurinal). It was just the beginning o a long story aboutart and its narrative power, or those who see and orthose who give to be seen. Is it possible to do worksthat arent art? questioned Marcel o the elds [Mar-cel Duchamp] while installing this readymade train o

troughs to some meanwhile mad cows.3 Jos Olaio Correia Carvalho, O Campo da Arte segundo

Marcel Duchamp, Departamento de Arquitectura da Facul-dade de Cincias e ecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra,Coimbra, 1999Pierre Bourdieu, La production de la croyance. Contribution une conomie des biens symboliques, Actes de la recherche ensciences sociales, n 13, 1977, p. 3-43Pierre Bourdieu, Les rgles de lart : gense et structure duchamp littraire, Ed. du Seuil, Paris, 1992

J-Franois Lyotard, Les ransormateurs Duchamp, Ed.Galile, Paris, 1977

http://www.centrepompidou.r/education/ressources/ens-duchamp/ens-duchamp.htm


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17

5It is urgent to help the villages tomorrow it will belate, tomorrow well have railroads, the disordered inva-sion o new ideas, the new uses and habits; tomorrowthere will be ashion (), obliteration o pure kinds,ruin o homemade industries, pottery, textiles, embroider-ies and canvas, kept with some much care4.It is urgent to help the villagesis an expression thatcould be rom our present days, in the set o manynostalgics that dont see in the villages the old typical

villagesthat they still think that exist. Some locals those who live in villages but are not any more realvillagersin the real sense o the word , build theseminiature replicas o their own churches and chapels.It is not to override the loss eeling o the real chapel;it is to recharge and celebrate the existence o thechapel itsel; to highlight its eeling o identity andsel-esteem; to detach rom the reality that which isbeyond that reality. Its like this, sacred things.

4 Joaquim da Vasconcelos, 1882, cit em J. Leal,Metamoro-ses da arte popular: Joaquim de Vasconcelos, Verglio Correia eErnesto de Sousa, Etnogrca, Vol. VI (2), 2002, pp. 251-280, p.261

6From my village I see how much rom the land that canbe seen rom the Universe...So my village is as big as any other,Because I have the size o what I see

And not my height...

In the cities lie is smallerTan here in my hillside house.In the city the big houses close down their view,

Hide the horizon, push our look ar away o all heaven,Make us small because they take us what our eyes cangive,And make us poor because our only wealth is to see.5

5 Alberto Caeiro, s/d, O Guardador de Rebanhos. In Poemasde Alberto Caeiro. Fernando Pessoa. (Nota explicativa enotas de Joo Gaspar Simes e Luiz de Montalvor.) Lisboa:

tica, 1946 (10 ed. 1993), 32.

Photos taken by the author

lvar Dmngs (Melgao, 1959) is a geographer and Proessor at Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade do Porto(FAUP).


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-

So

Mar

tin

ho

de

Ce

do

fe

ita

Churc

h

-

-

So

Frut

uoso

de

Mon

tlios

Churc

h

-

-

San

ta

Clara

Conve

nt,

San

tar

m

-

-

So

P

edro

de

Ra

tes

Churc

h

-

-

San

ta

Mar

ia

de

Agu

iar

Mona

stery

-


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ATLAS

2

DESTRUCTION

AS

RESTORATION

DGEMNs

Intervention

(1929-1960)

Res

tora

tion

wa

s

the

name

chosen

to

charact

er

ize

the

new

po

litica

l

power

f

irs

t

years

of

ac

tion.

Res

tora

ti

on

tha

t

shou

ld

ex

ten

d

to

all

sec

tors

of

na

tiona

l

life.

The

res

tora

tion

of

monu-

men

ts,

bes

ides

of

be

ing

an

ac

ti-

vity

vis

ible

almo

st

imme

dia

te

ly,

allowe

d

a

new

rea

ding

of

His

tory

s

na

tion,

la

id

in

its

mos

t

glory

moment

s,

true

lesson

of

the

lusa

race

va

lue,

signs

of

warran

t

an

d

trust

in

the

New

Sta

te,

jus

t

an

dt

rue

cap

ta

in

of

the

Na

tion

-

Mar

ia

Jo

o

Bap

ti

sta

Ne

to,

O

Res

tauro

dos

Monume

ntos

Nac

iona

is

(1929-

1960).

-

San

tiago

Churc

h,

Co

im

bra

-

-

Domus

Mun

ic

ipa

lis,

Bragan

a

-

-

Por

to

Ca

the

dra

l

-

-

So

Mar

tinho

de

Mouros

Churc

h

-


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21/32

21

TIAgo LopES DIAS

veLL poBLe nou

It was hard, or those who visited the Agbarower in Barcelona, a ew years ago, tobe indierent towards a small settlemento constructions that surrounded it. Tisragment, uncomortable reminiscence oan obsolete city, disturbed the image o themodern Barcelona rom the beginning othe century, on which the Jean Nouvelsbuilding would be a high ag. I remembered,in one o my local wanderings, o a passage

o the recently published book rom theanthropologist Manuel Delgado. I rememberedthe meaning o the words but not with theirwhole accuracy, which I conrmed, as soon asit was possible: standing at the eet o singulararchitectonic volumes, around them, the un-wished but real city extends1. oday, standingat the eet o those singular architectonicvolume there are no more gratis, thechurreriaor the kiosk that sells lottery tickets:

it all vanished to give place to one moresingular architectonic volume.

It was equally hard, or those who walkedthrough the Poblenou neighborhood inBarcelona, to be indierent to the amounto abandoned buildings that there were.No catastrophe, natural or man-made, hashad place; just that Mighty Sculptor, ime(paraphrasing Marguerite Yourcenar) wasworking relentlessly, transorming twohundred hectares o industrial buildings intoruins. On this scenario, suggestive as a bucoliclandscape rom the late-renaissance, one couldwander like dandys, with eyes lost in the past.Te cult and poetics o the ruin, legacy oEuropean Romantism that reached its climaxin the end o the 18th century, was requentlyconused with simple nostalgia; yet, as DaliborVesely explains, the ragment, to romantics,was not a goal, but an incomplete project that

was intended the conclusion at a high level osynthesis and perection as a part o a totalityand an organic system 2. Giving as an examplethe rocaille, Vesely stands that unnishednature is intentional, because it expresses apossibility o achievement in the uture, in thesame way that an organism reaches plenitude,realization and perection by growth 3.I believe that it is this idea o hiddensignication, latent in ruin, that is behind the

unload o Juan Jos Lahuerta in his love letterto the city o Barcelona4. More than a modelo an already dead and ended lie, ruin mostlymeans the possibility o an interpretation, oa denitive explanation an interpretationo the whole by the part. Its this desire oplenitude that Lahuerta sees as the essenceo the kitsch that demands that everythingmust have a solution5. And the solution, inthis case, passed through the redenition o

what should be the newPoblenou: a districto innovation that oers modern spaces or thestrategic concentration o intensive activitiesaround knowledge6. Conservation, by thenew singular architectonic volumes, o theindustrial chimneys crystallized, totemic solved that incomplete projectthat was the ruino the productive city.Isnt this scenario (that seems to mimic aGiogio Di Chirico painting: an astronomy

o anchored objects to the planet only by theatal gravity law)7 a result o the essence oa policy that presents physical destruction,trivialization and selling o the city as theway without solution towards the happinesso living in a store, the showcase ecstasies omodernity8, like Lahuerta mentions? Isntthe newPoblenou an example o the relationbetween destruction and disappearing o thelie that lives the city and commercialization or

marketing o the same?


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22

Lahuertas mistrust towards the way withoutsolution o the happiness was possiblytransmitted by the one that best expresses the

hate against that (illusory) doctrine o progress:Charles Baudelaire. Who, better than therench poet, sang, in the 19th Century Paris,that uture where all is past, where everythinghas already happened and limits to repeatitsel?

Paris change! Mais rien dans ma mlancolieNa boug! Palais neus, chaaudages, blocs,

Vieux aubourgs, tout pour moi devient allgorie9

Baudelaires poetry, as so well Benjaminresumed, made appear the new in the always-the-same and the always-the-same in thenew 10. Te Baron Haussmann works willalso be, one day, ruins; they wont be able toescape the inexorable cycle o destruction andconstruction that characterizes the great city and lie itsel. It is not strange that Baudelaire,in a small exercise, wrote that it pleased him

more Edgar Allan Poe drunk, poor, chased andaliened than calm and virtuous Goethe 11. Heknew that, in the thick curtain o opium and

alcohol, the north-American master had seenthe last ruin, the ragment with no possiblereconstruction: the interior o modern man.Te crack in the Uscher house aade, thatannounces the imminent collapse, is not more

than a metaphor o its trust-less and tormentedsoul.

I travel back to Poblenou by a series o picturesthat I lightly took in the last our years. And Iremember, this time, the incisive observationo Susan Sontag about the relation betweenphotography and destruction: Cameras

started to double the world in a momentwhere the human landscape started to suer avertiginous rhythm o transormation 12 - themoment when Baudelaire wrote Fleurs du mal.Someone wrote as well, this time in the wallso what was once a house, te quiero Poblenou(I want you, Poblenou). Tis urgent declaration,possibly o someone that didnt possessedany other mean than a quick grati, is nowcertainly gone as Im writing these quick

notes. As a consolation, I have let the abilityo photography to record what is about todisappear.

ag Lps Das (Porto, 1978). Architect, graduated in Porto Faculty o Architecture, where was teaching de design unit.

Is currently developing his PhD Tesis in Barcelona.

1 Manuel Delgado, La ciudad mentirosa. Fraude y miseria del Modelo Barcelona, Madrid, Los Libros de la Catarata, 2007,p.239.2 Dalibor Vesely,Architecture in the Age o Divided Representation, the MI Press, 2004.3 Dalibor Vesely, op. cit., p. 330.4 Juan Jos Lahuerta, Destruccin de Barcelona, Barcelona, Mudito & Co., 2005.5 Lahuerta, op. cit., p.14.6 www.22barcelona.com.7 Giorgio De Chirico, On Metaphysical Art. Citado por Dalibor Vesely, op. cit.8 Lahuerta, op. cit., p.14.9 Charles Baudelaire, Le Cygne. In Les Fleurs du Mal. Publicado originalmente em 1857.10 Walter Benjamin, Central Park.11 Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, Coimbra, Editora Alma Azul, 2008. Entre 1852 e 1865 Baudelaire traduziu a obrade Poe para o rancs.12 Susan Sontag, Sobre la Fotografa, Barcelona, Debolsillo Contempornea, 2010, p.25 (orig.1977).


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Poblenou (Barcelona) between 2006 and 2010 - author: iago Lopes Dias


24/32

Aerial photograph, Pruitt-Igoe, 1968


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25

DAVID kNIghT & cRISTINA MoNTEIRo

pLottinG

he collective lie o buildings in time, whatcould be called their metabolism, has aproound relationship with their plots - theareas o ground that they occupy. Destructioncan become a charged moment when suchpatterns o ownership can be redrawn, amoment which requently overwhelms thesubsequent intent o the architect or designer.It is a potent reminder that construction is the

beginning, rather than the end, o a buildingslie.

Te size o a plot, or the complexity o itsownership, is intimately related to processes ochange in any city or built environment. Smallchange has a small eect and can happenrequently: a building can accommodateseveral lietimes worth o dierent unctionsat street level while the residential uses

above continue undisturbed, whilst a singleterraced building can change entirely withoutdamaging its neighbours or its street. Incontrast, the demolition o an entire terraceis almost inevitably an act o violence to itscontext1.

Te built environment industry (with thenotable exception o demolition contractors)ideologically prioritises construction overdestruction. Demolition, though a complexand artul process, is requently ignored inthe representation o the built environment,

unless it serves as the prelude to a story oreconstruction2. Tis phenomenon is echoed inthe way we date works o architecture - by theircompletion rather than their lietime.

Plot size provides an eective critique othe comprehensive redevelopmentprojects othe post-war period: the widespread land-parcelling o areas o city to orm new districts

and estates. Te history o their ailure hasbeen written many times, but requently theailure is described in purely spatial or aestheticterms. What is not requently discussed is thechange in plot size inherent in such projects,the shiting o land rom multiple ownershipto single ownership, and the massive all-in-onedestruction and site preparation that it entails.Tis change unites the post-war developmentboom with new business districts like Canary

Whar (1988-): opposing versions o modernitythat both depend upon the parcelling togethero previously disparate land ownerships.Te replacement o ne-grain with coarse-grain can be considered a characteristic oall modernism, and is ound in projects romthe building o the railways to HaussmannsParis (1852-, g.1), rom Plan Voisin (1925) toPruittIgoe (1954-76).

Tis understanding o the metabolism oplaces may sound obvious but it is not widelyunderstood by the people with the power


26/32


26

g.1 - Haussmann plan, Paris, 1852

and inuence to change them. Colin Warddescribes how the centre o Birminghamwas ruined not by the stylistic precepts omodernism but by the principle o land-parcelling, and recent attempts to recoverthe city rom the dark dayso its post-warmakeover have led to more, not less o thecity centre passing into sole ownership: entirestreets passing into the private sector3. Tis

example raises the issue that once plots havegot big, they are hard to subdivide, not becauseo ownership but because Ater a generation ortwo, the whole environment becomes obsoletesimultaneously, so that total destruction andreplacement have to happen all over again4.

Similarly, New Urbanist experiments likePoundbury (1993-) in Dorset attempt toreplicate the piecemeal growth o an English

village, but do so with a ully-detailed plan andan incredibly constraining design code whichexplicitly orbids ad-hoc development5. AldoRossis Quartier Schtzenstrasse(1998-) mimicsthe growth o a Berlin urban block but was allbuilt at once, as artully composed as a Palladioaade. Tis latter project recognises the visualdiversity o small plots whilst apparentlymissing their social diversity, a characteristico much o the current rehabilitation o

central Porto, where patchworkheritagestreet elevations entirely a product o theeconomy o small plots - are being retained as

the ront acades o land-parcelled apartmentblocks- a change which almost invisibly, yetundamentally, alters the character o the cityto the point where its whole social structurewill have changed without any publicly visibledierence.

Tis is not necessarily to demonise largebuildings or large plots, but to place them

into a complex economy o spatial change, tobetter understand their consequences or urbanlie. Te process can o course go both ways.Te commercial reality o land-parcellinghas its opposite in property laws across theworld that create ever-decreasing plot sizes bysplitting inheritance rights among children othe deceased: a phenomenon that can stranglethe city through complexity. Tis, however,is the exception rather than the rule, and in

the contemporary city the bigger violence isproduced by the bigger plot. As noted earlier,once land has been parcelled up, theres verylittle going back: the delicacy and complexitylost through this process is very hard, i notimpossible, to recover. Tis simple act givesthe lie to so much urban design guidance,which can describe in idealistic terms thevalue o adiverse streetscapewithout anyunderstanding o the processes that created

our most lively and diverse urban places in therst place. In its place we might imagine sub-division systems like the burgage tenements


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27


Davd Knghtis a designer and currently a researcher at the Royal College o Art. He is the author o the orthcomingWallpaper* City Guide: Porto. Crstna Mntr is a designer currently working with mu architecture/art. She has taughtat Syracuse University (New York) and Kingston University (London). www.dk-cm.com

ound in medieval market towns, enduringurban orms derived rom eld sizes that, byusing a long narrow plot, allowed or exibleand individual occupation o the site whilstretaining a narrow, but vital presence on thestreet or market place (g.3).

Until a campaign led by Cedric Price, the onlyarchitect member o the National Federation

o Demolition Contractors, it was against theRIBA6 code o conduct or an architect toadvise a client to do nothing. It was assumed,until Prices campaign, that i a client engagedan architect then the only possible outcomewould be the production o new architecture.o go against this assumption would be equal,in theory, to taking a bribe or alsiying abuilding permit7. With this intervention, Pricedraws attention to the articial limits o an

architectural practice concerned only withthe production o new architecture withinpredetermined constraints. In giving architectsthe reedom to do nothing, he is thereoreasking them to do more.

It is time to recognise the humility o buildingdesign in relation to the overwhelmingsignicance o plot size. Engaging with the

political and territorial scale o our builtenvironment, rather than just its aestheticscale, is one way o living up to Prices request.It also suggests a renewed engagement with themethods, positive and negative, by which theprocesses o planning and property subdividethe world.

1 For a broader discussion o this phenomenon, see Anne

Vernez Moudon, Built or Change: Neighborhood Architec-ture in San Francisco (Cambridge: MI Press, 1986) andBrand, Stewart, How Buildings Learn: What happens atertheyre built(New York: Viking Press, 1994)

2 Te demolition o post-war residential blocks as a spec-tacle is well documented by Joe Kerr. Joe Kerr, Blowdown:Te Rise and Fall o Londons ower Blocks, in London:From Punk to Blair, ed. By Joe Kerr and Andrew Gibson(London: Reaktion Books, 2003)

3 For an excellent description o this situation, see AnnaMinton, Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the wenty-First Century City(London: Penguin Books, 2009)

4 Colin Ward, Welcome Tinner City(London: BedordSquare Press, 1989), p.23.

5 For ad description o this see Finn Williams, DavidKnight and Ul Hackau, Building without Bureaucracy,lArchitecture dAujourdhui378, June-July 2010.

6 Te Royal Institute o British Architects, www.architec-ture.com (Accessed 27.01.2011)

7 For an introduction to the lie and work see Mathews,Stanley, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: Te Architecture oCedric Price(London: Black Dog, 2007)

g.2 - Bologna Quartier g.3 - Square, Chipping Norton


28/32

Auschwitz

Concentration

Camp,

1941-1945

Drawing

discovered

in

a

bu

ilding

of

Berlin

in

2008.

Drawn

between

194

1-43

they

show

the

calculated

and

systema

tic

way

in

which

the

the

6

millions

jew

gen

ocide

was

plan-

ned.

Plan

of

the

complex.

Faade,

basement

plan

and

Crematorium

II

section.

1.

Gas

chamb

er;

2.

Morgue


29/32

Of

course

that

all

the

horror

that

emerged

in

the

Nuremberg

Trial

about

the

6

million

Jews,

and

people

of

other

faiths

and

beliefs

who

lost

their

lives.

All

that

struck

me

as

very

shocking.

But

I

wasnt

able

at

first

to

see

the

connection

with

my

own

past.

I

still

felt

somehow

con-

tent

that

I

had

no

personal

guilt

and

had

known

nothing

about

it.

I

had

no

idea

of

the

extent

of

what

happened.

But

then

one

day

I

was

walking

past

the

memorial

in

Franz-Joseph-Strasse,

to

Sophie

Scholl,

a

young

girl

that

opposed

Hitler,

and

I

realized

that

she

was

the

same

age

as

me

and

that

she

was

executed

the

same

year

I

started

working

for

Hitler.

At

that

moment

I

really

sensed

that

it

is

no

excuse

to

be

young,

and

that

it

might

have

been

possible

to

find

out

what

was

going

on.

Traudl

Junge,

Testimony

of

Hitlers

secre-

tary

in

the

documentary,

Im

toten

Winkel,

2002.

ATLAS

3

AUSCHWITZ.

AFTER

THE

DESTRUCTIO

N:

THE

TESTIMONY

1.

Gas

chamber;

2.

Fuel

tanks;

3.

te

chnical

area;

4/5.

Dissection

rooms;

6.

Elevators;

7/8.

Morgues;

9.

Ventila-

tion

System.

7

4

8

1

9

2

3

5

6


30/32

30

TeamPedro Levi BismarckPedro OliveiraCarlos Castro

DesignPunkto

ConTribuTionsJos Brtololvaro Dominguesiago Lopes DiasDavid Knight &Cristina Monteiro

iago Casanova

PrinTMinerva

PrinTing1000 copies

DisTribuTion

Free

Coverimage

Radiation internationalsymbol

ConTaCTs

[email protected]

ISSN 2182-1887MetA

ARchitectuRe

ObseRvAtORy

SPoNSoR: ASSoCiAo De eSuDANeS DA fACuLDADe De ARquieCuRA DA uNiVeRSiDADe Do PoRo

LIVRARIAaeFaup

DEScoNToS AT 20 % pARA ScIoS AEfAUp

ABERTA DE 2 A 6 fEIRA | 9h00M - 17h30M

assia de estudantesda auldade de arquitetura da universidade d rtRua d glta 215,4150-351 prt, prtualT: [email protected]@aeau.t

punkto n2

May 2011

Porto


31/32

TIAgo cASANoVA

ag Casanva(Madeira, 1988) studies at FAUP. His work relates architecture practice with art, mainly photography. Colla-borates with CCRE and organized various architecture and photographies events. Is assistent director o Scopio - MagazineInternacional de Fotograa.


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JOSBRTOL

OWalter

BenjaminDES

TRUC

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cri

sis

degreez

ero

buc

oli

c

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uschwitz

lan

dscap

e

Rura

lP

or

tuga

l

capita

lism

preservation

testimony

Pru

ittIgoe

plot

thed

estru

ctivechara

cter

rehab

ilitation

romanti

cism

progress?

marketing

fragmentnostalgypoblenou memory autodestructive

art

conce

ptualart

Alberto

C

aeiro

Roberto

Leal

Edgar

A.Poe

Haussm

ann

Baudela

ire

Lahuerta

Ced

ricPrice

Marx

GustavMetzger

MattaClark

TIAGOCASANOVA

KNIGHT&MONTEIRO

TIAGOLOPESDIAS

LVARODOMINGUES

DGEM

N

fastburn

cultu

re

Documents

Punkto#02 - Destruction (1)