Why Does Modernism Refuse to Die- Kazuo Shinohara

Session 4

International Modern

Moderator: Professor Ricardo Castro

102 ACSA Northeast Regional Meeting October 4-6, 2002 McGill University, Montréal

aBefore and Beyond the Modern:Japanese Society, Culture, and DesignLawrence Bird, McGill University, [email protected]

Any discussion of the survival and re-birth of Modernarchitecture begs the question “what is Modernism?”, aquestion problematic enough in itself. Yet when weconsider Modernism’s pervasiveness in non-Westerncountries the question becomes much more difficult, forit demands consideration of its social corollary: the morefundamental query of “what is Modernity?” This paperwill attempt to illustrate, with reference to traditionaland contemporary Japanese architecture, how a numberof qualities of Japanese society and culture problematizeour definitions of these terms. A rethinking of ourpreconceptions of Modernity and Modernism cansuggest how it might be that Modernism is still with uswhen so many of the values on which it is based – valuesof Modernity – have been called into question. Much ofwhat will be discussed below may also be manifestedin other societies of the East and South, from Korea andChina to Latin America. The focus on Japan is merely astarting point.

Japan has long challenged preconceived notions ofModernity. By remaking itself into a great success atmany aspects of the Modern game it became arguablythe first non-Western nation to successfully rebuffEuropean and American domination. What is interestinghowever is the extent to which Japan is not and was nota merely Modern culture. Japan today has beencharacterized by different commentators as a pre-, post-, or even trans-Modern society, though one engaged inmany aspects of the Modern project. A debate continuesin the social sciences about whether we are today in acondition which can be described as one of HighModernity – a more pronounced, accelerated, oraccentuated version of the Modern condition – or of Post-Modernity – post some kind of paradigm shift which hasproduced a qualitatively different way of and view ofthe human experience. Whatever stance one takes onthis issue, it is clear that Modernity is not what it once

was, and has not been for a long time. For the purposesof argument, I will use the term “Post-Modern” to referto contemporary social and cultural characteristics,generally at odds with the rationalizing project ofModernity, which some commentators term“postmodern” and others see as still embedded in theModern condition. As will be seen, many of thesequalities are arguably indigenous to Japanese cultureand are manifested in material culture both traditionaland contemporary. We will begin, however, by lookingat some examples of Japanese society and design whichmight be considered Modern.

Modern Before: historical and cultural roots ofModernity in JapanIn the late 1860s the ports of Japan, after over twocenturies of isolation, were thrown open before thedetermination of the United Kingdom and United Statesto include its markets and resources in their expandingempires of industry and capital. This began a swiftprocess of social and industrial “Modernization”. Withina few decades Japan had produced modern industries,defeated a European power in war, colonized many ofits neighbors, and embarked on the Pacific War. Thoughutterly defeated this time, it rapidly became a leadingmanufacturing and economic power and, for a periodtoward the end of the last century, was hailed as a new,more successful paradigm for economic success. Insignificant ways it had mastered the Modern game andarguably outdid its Western mentors in the process. Thereasons for Japan’s rapid acceptance of many strategiesof Modernity are complex, but in short it can be arguedthat Japan in the 1860s was in many ways alreadyModern. It was a sophisticated, highly urbanized societywith a highly educated population and a leadership ofwhich certain factions, reacting to political and socialstresses internal to the country, were poised to initiate

103Why Does Modernism Refuse to Die? Session 4 International Modern

sweeping change. While the definition of Modernity isa contentious issue, there is no question that arationalization related to technological development andsocial control is an essential part of it. This aspect ofModernity in Japan, evolving during two centuries ofisolation from what are usually considered the “Modern”,Western, countries, stemmed in part from a culturaldisposition which embraced the rationalization andperfection of materials and human behaviour, and in partfrom political events producing developments inknowledge and technology paralleling those in Europe.

One example of the historical process ofrationalization is the systematization of the buildingindustry, which occurred in the 17th century as part ofmajor social & political restructuring undertaken by theTokugawa Shoguns to consolidate their hold on power.This included the publication of carpenter’s manuals andpattern books (previously techniques had been handeddown as secrets through the apprentice system), thespecialization of trades, and the development of auniversal system of details, measures, and materials1 .Similar projects were undertaken to systematize weightsand measures and systems of land measurement2 .Projects such as these, it is argued, predisposed thecountry to accept mass-production, standardization, andindustrialization; they can be considered proto-industrial.They were roughly contemporaneous with similarschemes to rationalize knowledge and technique inEurope which formed an integral part of the emergingModern project there.3

But these historical events built on a culture whichalready demonstrated a clear leaning toward theperfection of organization of behaviour and of technique.Examples include the consciousness of minute detail inritual including ritualized processes of making and acting(kata) in the arts, whether those of design or war; thesocial and pedagogical discipline demanded ofapprentices in almost any traditional field and in manyfields today; and the emphasis on cleanliness and purityin a culture where a single word expresses the twoconcepts “clean” and “beautiful”. Discipline, precision,accuracy, control at the micro-level are all examples ofwhat Modernity does to the actions of the individual.These “Modern” qualities were already present in Japanand had been privileged by religious, social, and culturalattitudes for centuries. They were among thecharacteristics which made the Japanese populationuseful to both indigenous and foreign-based powers ofcapital and industry.

Just one aspect of the highly rationalized materialculture evolving out of this history and this ethos is thetatami-based system of design, about which much hasbeen written. Japan developed, hundreds of years beforeEuropean industrialization, a design system based onincremental additions of a standardized unit. It sharesmore with the industrial module – a single, repeatingunit which rationalizes growth – than it does with theWestern Classical module, which is based on the divisionof a unity. It is flexible and pre-fabricated. The dimensionsof this unit, which once varied from region to region,were rationalized and nationalized to meet the needs ofproto-industrial development during the period describedabove. A unit originally based on the dimensions of thehuman body became systematized instead to meetpolitical and economic ends4 . Like the design system,Japan was in many respects ready for Modernity, andits material culture spoke about many of the issues withwhich Modern architects were obsessed.

Among the qualities of Japanese architecture praisedby Western visitors such as Wright, Gropius, Taut, andAntonin Raymond were those of flexibility, cleanliness,clarity, simplicity, and rationality. These qualities seemedto embody almost presciently the vision of Modernarchitecture as a manifestation of the forces ofproduction and movement which had been set in motionby the Modern age and, simultaneously, a transcendenceof those forces in a form which spoke of the eternal andthe universal: uniting process, change, and eternity. Toan extent, the very definition of what makes a Modernarchitecture became infused with a (partially) understoodsense of what is Japanese architecture.

Beyond-Modern qualities of Japanese society andcultureWhile Western architects did express a recognition ofthe spiritual and historical aspects of Japanese design,this was almost always articulated in terms of thehonesty and rationality inherent in it5 , often to thedetriment of its other qualities. These qualities includethose described by Junichiro Tanizaki who refuted theEnlightenment in literal terms in his work “In Praise ofShadows”, lauding the dimness, darkness, vaguenessand opacity of traditional culture6 . The cultural obverseof these qualities are those praised by Kisho Kurokawa,and almost always denigrated by early Modernobservers, manifested in works such as NikkoMausoleum, and in art forms such as kabuki:exaggeration, spectacle, polychromy7 . Mainstream


Western appreciation of these other aspects oftraditional Japanese design, even to this day, tends toemphasize their pre-Modern qualities of ritual,handicraft, and tradition. These same qualities, however,have an aspect which is arguably Post-Modern. LikewiseJapanese society has many characteristics, arising outof indigenous social traditions, which arguably exemplifythe condition of Post-Modernity. To make such anargument is complicated by the fact that commentatorscan not quite agree on what are Post-Modern qualities,but they debatably include non-logocentrism, eclecticism,the privileging of play over efficiency, culture overscience, aesthetic over function, surface over depth,commoditization raised to high art, nature as artifice,intermingling of subject and object, the equivalence ofhigh and mass culture, a sense of continuity with thepast if only as a source of “visual mirages”8 , and aninterest in irony, pastiche, allusion, ephemerality,spectacle and parody.

A rationality with boundaries

In fundamental ways Japan’s acceptance of Modernitywas always limited. Touyou no doutoku, seiyou nogakugei “eastern ethics and western science” was oneof the slogans used to promote the opening of the countryin the 19th century. Such watchwords did not just reflectan attempt to control politically and socially the processof modernization, though that was one of their purposes,they reflected a fundamentally anti-Enlightenment thesis.The Enlightenment’s was a totalizing view of the worldin which there was to be consistency between conditionsof knowledge and of society.9 In European terms, onecould not separate technological modernization frommodernization of society and of the individual. Japan is

an inheritor of an epistemological framework which isnon-totalizing. According to this model, newly acquired,alien, knowledge can be accumulated withoutrestructuring the entire system of traditional knowledge.The result can be the rapid accumulation of newknowledge; this served well Japan’s project ofmodernization. The multiplicity, hybridity, and open-endedness of this attitude toward knowledge parallelsthe Post-Modern rejection of the failed Modern attemptto totalize the world.

An illustration of this difference can be found in acomparison of the modular and organizational system ofthe tatami with that of Western architecture. Neo-classical architecture, one can argue, embodies theprinciples of a totalizing rationalism, in which anyaddition is made consistent with the existing system, isforeseen by it, must be incorporated in the originalscheme. The space of Modern architecture is alsototalizing: it implies a homogenization of space and theextension of one rational order to infinity. In classicalJapanese architecture, in contrast, additions are irregularand loose, and unlike Western classical and industrialmodules they do not accord with an overall plan of thesame rational order as the unit. This is not to say thatthere are no principles of design beyond a localized rigour.There are, but their application and importantly theevaluation of the results is of a different order. The wayof designing, like the system of knowledge, is loose andopen-ended. Both have a hybrid, eclectic qualitymanifested in material culture in many ways, for examplein the grafting on of Western spaces to residentialarchitecture a century ago, and the embedding oftraditional tatami-matted spaces in “Western style”residences in Japan today.

Figure 1, L to R: Katsura Villa (17c); Villa Rotunda (16c); West-in-East (19c), and East-in-”West” (20c) hybrids


A space beside rationality

Implicit in this Asian epistemology, and this relates toanimist religions like Shinto, without a highly structuredintellectual framework, and Zen Buddhism, which isdecidedly anti-intellectual, is a de-privileging of reason,of logo-centrism and of meta-narratives. Grandrationalizing systems are replaced by local ones,rationalism at the small scale, with defined objectives -what has been termed a teleological rationalism. Ifscientific knowledge is not privileged as the dominantmode of knowing the world, aesthetics becomes a moreimportant mode of knowing. A situational emotionalism,not reason, becomes privileged as the mechanismthrough which this knowing takes place.10

Within this kind of epistemological framework thereis no, or a weak, demand for reason to, as Barthes putsit, “pierce meaning”11 , to carry through to the totality ofthe world. It is fine if there is an inconsistency betweenform and content, between the way one acts and theway one is, between the detail and the general.Experiential worlds do not have to be systematized withthe technological. There can be, and is, a breach betweendifferent paradigms of knowledge. In contrast, thetotalizing project of Modernity, the attempt to rationalizeall, implied a consistency, an organic relationship,between form and content, between behaviour and theinner workings of the soul, between what one was andwhat one did, what is inside (content, function, self) andwhat is outside (form, behaviour); and a rationalitycommon to the two. Architecturally this relationship wasarticulated in the dictum “form follows function”. TheJapanese, and also Post-Modern, condition contradictsthis fundamental tenet of Modernity relating the content

to form, within to without. There is an implicit gap, adiscontinuity, between the two.12

It has been argued by many Japanese architects thatone of the characteristics of “Japanese Space”,traditional or contemporary, is the accommodation ofambiguity and multi-valency in intermediary spaces, thephysical corollary of this gap13 . A common example fromtraditional design is the engawa, or verandah, a spaceof indeterminate function which intermediates betweenin and out, between built form and nature. This kind ofsensitivity toward a “gap” is well illustrated in theTanikawa House by Kazuo Shinohara, whose work likethat of many of his contemporaries rejected the technicalfocus of the Metabolists, which they equated with theinterests of the Japanese technocracy. Instead theirinterest was in small, intimate projects. This building isat first glance Modern: it displays its structure clearly,abstractly, and it does not make overt reference to thepast – in fact the diagonal bracing and cathedral ceilingcontradict principles of traditional construction. Yet it isalso most un-Modern. It has as its signature element aso-called “summer space”, an intermediary, sectionallyirregular space between inside and outside. It is a spacewhich implicitly turns Modernity on its head and withinwhich according to one critic “illogical functions emergefrom the gap between (the) slope and the geometricspace”.14 This space appears to be purely utilitarian, yetit is functionless. It absurdly occupies most of the buildingfootprint. It makes subtle if distorted reference totraditional typology: its floor of bare earth suggestingthe kitchen floor of a traditional farmhouse or the entryhall (genkan) of a traditional residence. It is acontemporary, but ambiguously Modern/Post-Modern,work which suggests the simplicity and austerity of muchtraditional architecture. It is simple and shell-like, a

Figure 2: Tanikawa House, Naganohara, Gumma Prefecture (1974)


structure within which a spirit of a different order canemerge.

A space within rationality

Freedom within structure is a crucial concept in Japan.Social ties are highly structured but the inner life muchless so, a phenomenon related to conceptions of identityderiving from Confucianism (the self is social), versusShinto/Taoism (soul or spirit wells up spontaneously froman inner nature).15 There is an inherent tension betweenthe requirement to act in accordance with prescribedsocial norms, and one’s personal desires. The conflictbetween conformity to rules and an emotional/spirituallife which is arguably freer than that of the West, becauseless structured, is one of the factors which produces anindulgence in Play. The Japanese word for “play” is“asobi”, and like the English word it indicates, as wellas indulging in fun, the mechanical sense of “play”- theslight tolerance necessary to allow the parts of astructure to work as intended, the gap or give necessaryto allow movement. Game playing, hiding behind masks,indulging in fantasy, parody, irony, pastiche, and campare means by which this necessary condition is achieved.The popular cityscape which has been produced toaccommodate this ludic attitude is a collage of visualdiversions, entertainments, and spectacles. It has beendescribed by one sociologist as “an aesthetic thatfluctuates between pure functionalism and fun”16 , adescription which underlines the hybridity of a builtenvironment which is neither clearly Modern nor Post-.Play is reinforced by the Japanese language and writingsystems which are well-suited to the expression ofambiguity, multiplicity of meaning, simultaneousperception of phenomena, vagueness, and what one

might describe as linguistic collage: all of which implyan order of knowledge different from that of linear logic.17

One aspect of this is the idea of mixing codes, ofquotation, and of referencing the past. Such referencing,in varying degrees of subtlety, is a staple in a popularculture which collages the past as well as the future in amanner which is not merely nostalgic and escapist. It isalso critical – as recent popular films such as theanimated Princess Mononoke and Metropolisdemonstrate.

Parody, irony, language games imply criticism, eventhe negation of meaning, yet it has been said that inJapan “formal characteristics of postmodernism …(including) eclecticism and the mixing of codes, parody,playfulness, repetition, celebration of surface,‘depthlessness’, coexist within a culture still committedto the preservation of meaning, especially of thecollectively situated type.”18 Japan has been describedas a Utopian society, one in which there is a greatinvestment in the idea of a collective project – hardly acharacteristic of Post-Modernity. There is a faith inauthenticity and sincerity expressed in popular culturewhich leads at times to a literalness of imagery –literalness being perhaps characteristic of accessible,mass culture – which has a precedent. Kisho Kurokawacites the term mitate, which according to him means atransposition of thematic materials from one genre ofart to another, frequently in a more literal fashion thanin Western art and in a manner which comes close toparody.19 The result is an art, and there are manyexamples in Japanese popular culture, which walks theline between parody and homage, criticism andindulgence, magic and realism. So hand in hand with aplay of meaning which is implicitly critical of the social

Figure 3: Yamanashi Fruit Museum, Yamanashi Prefecture (1992-1995)


project is a directness, a taking of things at face value,which can seem naïve but is not.

A space for society

A work of architecture which I believe illustrates suchaccessibility, literalness and playfulness is theYamanashi Fruit Museum by Itsuko Hasegawa.Hasegawa is a complex, sophisticated, and criticalarchitect. Yet the image which ties together this projectis, simply put, a bowl of fruit. One cannot imagine a moreliteral image for such a program, a more direct,straightforward, uncritical parti. And in this lies theproblem of assigning a “style” to the work. It epitomizesVenturi’s definition of a “Duck” – the High Modernbuilding become virtual sculpture – to the point ofabsurdity20 . Yet unlike the typical High Modern buildingit uses an imagery which is easily accessible to a massaudience, as does the kind of architecture which many“postmodern” designers advocate. And unlike much“postmodern” architecture it neither talks down to itsaudience nor whispers wry jokes to a knowing culturalelite backstage. It speaks directly to both high and massaudiences with an imagery which is both subtle andaccessible.

Accessibility is integral to Hasegawa’s work. She hasexplicitly opposed her approach to that of the generationof Modernists preceding her, working as elite auteurs.Her projects tend to be generated out of extensiveconsultation with local residents, as a multilogue ratherthan a monologue. This approach is always locallydirected, specific to a place and a community – arguablyPost-Modern. Yet it also speaks of a Utopianism whichis consistent with the idealism of much Modern design.And it engages with a social context in a manner which

suggests a firm acceptance of the validity of socialmeaning. According to Hasegawa the most importantissue with which her architecture attempts to engage iscommunication. By this she means not information flowper se, though the form of the project does suggest theflux of an information society, but the flow ofrelationships. In Japan “communication” very oftenrefers to the mediation of harmonious humanrelationships through discourse rather than thetransmission of positive data. And the assumption is thatthose relationships and to a great extent the societywhich they bind together (even though, as Hasegawa isaware, it is an unstable society) are valid.

This approach reflects a Japanese obsession withrelationships, an obsession stemming from an extremelydense social context and also from Buddhism. Thereflection of these relationships in built form – thecarefully poised harmony of simultaneously similar anddissimilar elements - suggests a historical imagerybeyond the literal image of the bowl of fruit. Thefollowing argument may seem to be based on a too-literalformal analogy. It is literal, but it draws on the sharedconceptual issue of inter-relationships. The epitome ofartificial nature in Japanese design tradition is thekaresansui or “whithered mountain water” garden. Therock garden embodies the Buddhist principle that theworld is an illusion, a flux, in which nothing is solid, allis relationships. It is no garden in the normal sense ofthe world, no plants, but an interconnection betweeninanimate objects, a relationship and a space in which alife which transcends life is generated – and byappreciation of which the observer, or participant, canalso achieve a kind of transcendence. One might contrastthe life generated out of the inanimate in the rock gardenwith the death generated out of life in the still life, a

Figure 4: Ryouanji Garden (1499)


genre of Western but not Japanese art – which alsotends to involve bowls of fruit. This genre involves thestilling, stopping, of life, its preservation for eternity andthe implicit warning that the observer will not be sopreserved. It implies a withdrawal from the world ratherthan a joyful participation in its sad beauty, and an object/subject relationship of artist to nature and world, ratherthan an interaction of subject and object, artifice andnature.

So the imagery of the bowl of fruit proves to be bothsimple, direct, almost facile; yet complex and many-layered. It achieves many of the goals of “postmodern”design but maintains a faith in Modernism. Its attitudetoward technology is also Modern. It makes its technicalaspect an integral part of the design – it is not a“decorated shed”. The Fruit Museum actually revels inits technology: its irregular, non-Euclidean glass and steelforms would be impossible to execute without some ofthe most sophisticated computer technology. Yet itcontradicts the identity of form and function, andprivileges the emotional, illogical, and ludic over therational. It does not imply as does much Modern design(and Modernity itself) the separation of Man from, andhis domination of, Nature. The Fruit Museum suggestsinstead a Post-Modern New Nature, part nature, partartifice.

Like the Tanikawa house it makes reference to thepast, though an oblique reference made more complexby the fact that both works are quoting a tradition whichshares much with Modernism, for example in therelationship between structure and content, permanenceand change. Hasegawa has described the role ofarchitecture as a “container for the movement ofsociety”21 , a metaphor which echoes Corb’s “machinefor living in”, a neutral vessel for the flow of life. Yet it isan attitude inherent in traditional Japanese design, inwhich “The reality of the room is its void…and the realityof the teacup is its hollowness… Vacuum is all-potent,because it grants infinity of use and freedom ofmovement, both in spirit and material.”22 In thisarchitecture structure frames the void within which flowsanother order of knowledge and experience. InHasegawa’s architecture, the container mediates therapid changes underway in Japan and other post-industrial, Late- or Post-Modern societies.

Such works are neither clearly fish nor fowl. Theremay be similar examples in the West, but they areinteresting in the Japanese context because they ariseout of a social, cultural, and industrial tradition which

contradicts many of the precepts of Modernity withoutbeing simply pre-Modern. Even today this social contextoverturns an assumption which is at the heart of theModern project, that the West’s technical and industrialsuperiority drives the development of the rest of theworld.

Local roots of global Post-Modernity

Arguably, the society which produced a design cultureso well-suited to the accommodation of the Post-Modernin Modernism also produced a culture of capital andindustry which itself is a significant factor in theproduction of Post-Modernity out of Modernity. Jamesonhas described the Post-Modern condition as “the culturallogic of late capitalism”23 which emerges as aconsequence to changes in the way we work, in theeconomic and industrial conditions around us. Many ofthe economic and manufacturing strategies characteristicof the late capitalism and industry were adopted fromJapanese models of labour and production. These includeattention to detail, groupwork vs in-sequence assemblyby specialized workers, “just in time” delivery,outsourcing, the emphasis on image, aesthetics and theproduction of desire in marketing, a highly volatile fashioncycle, selling of services rather than goods; and themarketing of tradition, nostalgia and simulacra24 . Whatwe have is, in addition to a cultural influence on the West(art, religion, entertainment), a more recent economicand industrial impact of the East onto the West whichhas been a major influence in the restructuring of theWestern countries along Post-Modern lines. It is a turningaround, then, of the idea that a Modern and inherentlyWestern science will reform the world in its own image;now another framework plays a significant role inrestructuring the West into something much richer andstranger than the Enlightenment vision.

Modernism beyond ModernityWe return to the theme of our conference, the survivalof Modernism and, implicitly, Modernity. The Modernproject to rationalize the world in one system ofknowledge bore within it the seeds of its owndestruction. Modernity’s grasp brought together andsuperimposed disparate cultures and world views – theforcing open of Japan in the 1860s and the subsequentimpact of Japanese art on Impressionism is an example– in what David Harvey refers to as a “time-spacecompression”25 which ultimately defied a homogenizing


rationalism. It is this condition in which we still live. IfPost-Modernity is the Modern condition stripped ofrationalism, deprived of the coherence it derived from afaith in science and the meta-narrative of the rationalordering of the world, how can Modernism inarchitecture, which takes as one of its primaryassumptions the privileging of rationality in our attemptsto engage with the world, continue to be valid in morethan just an economic sense? How can a movementwhich derives so profoundly from a faith in rationalitycontinue to be viable in a society which has lost thatfaith?

If there is a way, it is through a recognition of thelimitations of rationality and an accommodation of othermodes of knowing in the rational space of Modernism.Japan offers a social and cultural model in which reason’slimits are acknowledged, indeed underlined; yet reason,and the respect for the technical, are given their place.This is manifested in work which does not facilelycontradict the tenets of Modernism but manages totranscend them by, in the spaces within and aroundtechnical accomplishment, addressing issues which gobeyond those with which the Modern movement wasprepared to engage. These issues include irrationality,accessibility, the integration of nature and artifice, theacceptance of absurdity with truth, magic with realism,and a utopianism which is also ludic.

Thus works which, at a stylistic level, might beidentified in many respects as Modernist can servepurposes which are more subtle and which engage withour High- or Post-Modern social and experientialcondition. They imply and accommodate not thereformation of non-Western cultures along the lines ofa knowledge system born out of the West, but areformation of global society along a multiplicity of linesfrom all points of the compass. While there may be otherreasons why Modernism still survives, this is the reasonthat it can still be interesting.

Notes:1 Kisho Kurokawa, Rediscovering Japanese Space (Tokyo:

Weatherhill, 1988)2 John Whitney Hall, Japan from Prehistory to Modern Times

(Rutland and Tokyo: Tuttle, 1992)3 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge MA

& Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)4 Heino Engel Measure and Construction of the Japanese

House, (Rutland and Tokyo: Tuttle, 1985)

5 For example Antonin Raymond’s writing on the Japanesehouse, which emphasizes its “exteriorization of an idea” – anexpression which seems to be an imposition of the Modernform-content relationship discussed below – and purity:“(matter)…is at all times subservient to an idea…matter onlyexists as a symbol of spiritual truth…”, suggesting a senseof material/spiritual relationship deriving from ChristianEurope rather than from Japan. (Antonin Raymond, AntoninRaymond: His Work in Japan 1920-1935 [Tokyo: Nakamura,1936], 17)

6 Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, (Stony Creek CT:Leete’s Island Books, 1997)

7 Kisho Kurokawa, Rediscovering Japanese Space, (Tokyo:Weatherhill, 1988)

8 Frederic Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the cultural logic oflate capitalism” in New Left Review 146: 53-92

9 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity10 John Clammer, Difference and Modernity: Social Theory and

Contemporary Japanese Society (London and New York: KeganPaul International, 1995), 65

11 Roland Barthes, The Empire of Signs, (New York: Hill andWang, 1997), 72

12 according to Frederic Jameson for example the “DepthModels” (inside / outside hermeneutic model; dialectic ofessence and appearance; Freudian world of latent andmanifest; existential model of authenticity and inauthenticity;semiotic opposition between signifier and signified) have beenrepudiated by contemporary theory. (Frederic Jameson,“Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism”)

13 This claim is usually made with the implication that it isproduced out of cultural attitudes and sensitivities whichsome, actually many, Japanese commentators assume to beexclusive to Japan. I do not share this assumption.

14 David B. Stewart, The Making of a Modern JapaneseArchitecture, (Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International,1987) 254, 274

15 John Clammer Difference and Modernity: Social Theory andContemporary Japanese Society, 7

16 Ibid., 5617 Ibid., 41-4218 Ibid., 4219 Kisho Kurokawa, Rediscovering Japanese Space20 Robert Venturi et. al., Learning from Las Vegas, (Cambridge

MA and London: The MIT Press, 1977) 87-10421 Itsuko Hasegawa in Hans Ulrich Obrist, Itsuko Hasegawa

Interview, Tokyo (http://www.eyebeam.org)22 Heino Engel, Measure and Construction of the Japanese

House, 6923 Frederic Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of

late capitalism”24 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 285 - 30225 Ibid., 260-307

BibliographyAzuma, Takamitsu. Nihonjin no Kenchiku Kuukan. Tokyo:

Shoukukosha, 1981


Barthes, Roland. The Empire of Signs. New York: Hill and Wang,1997

Bognar, Botond. Tokyo, edited by Maggie Toy, World Cities. London:Academy Editions, 1997

Clammer, John. Difference and Modernity: Social Theory andContemporary Japanese Society. London and New York: KeganPaul International, 1995

___. Contemporary Urban Japan: A Sociology of Consumption.Oxford: Blackwell, 1997

Coaldrake, William H. Architecture and Authority in Japan. London:Routledge, 1996

Engel, Heino. Measure and Construction of the Japanese House.Rutland and Tokyo: Tuttle, 1985

Goulet, Patrice. “Introduction”, in Itsuko Hasegawa, edited by AnneSchéou, pages 7-12. Basel; Boston; Berlin: Birkhäuser, 1997

Hall, John Whitney. Japan from Prehistory to Modern Times.Rutland and Tokyo: Tuttle,1992

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge MAand Oxford: Blackwell, 1990

Itoh, Teiji. “The Pillar and the Mat”, in The Roots of JapaneseArchitecture, Yukio Futagawa, pages 108-125. Tokyo: BijutsuShuppan-sha, 1963

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fFour ObservationsEven a cursory glance at a range of works by FrancoAlbini, including ornament, furniture and building plans,suggests his influence on the works of later and betterknown architects. I do not intend to argue that Gehry,Koolhaas, and Johnson were knowledgeable aboutAlbini’s work, but through closer inspection of selectedprojects I want to suggest the currency of the ideas andtalents of this lesser known modern architect.1

As a designer with a lasting legacy, Albini’s workdeserves more critical consideration, which I hope toadvance through studies of his museums, housing,interiors, furniture, private and public commissions, andteaching. His prolific career extended from pre-warrationalism to post-war progressive modernism locatedin Italy with few exceptions. In this paper, I will lookspecifically at his domestic interiors from the early 1930sthrough the 1950s. This subset of his work is of interestin the context of this conference for at least threereasons. First, the dwelling is the domain of architecturethat has most resisted modernization, especially in NorthAmerican popular culture. Secondly, Albini and partners’

Seeing Through Franco AlbiniDomestic Modernity in Rationalist ItalyKay Bea Jones, The Ohio State University, [email protected]

most important design contributions during the post-warperiod, evident in their public museum commissions,reflect the influence of his pre-war domestic experimentsin interior design. He initiated themes in these minorprojects that require modern transparency and love ofcraft.2 Finally, the nature of the modern room, largelysubverted by the breakdown of the box and theelimination of the wall in seminal modern icons, is intactin Albini’s interiors and works to reinforce the room asthe unit element of architecture.

Manfredo Tafuri credits Albini with leading the wayin one of the architectural breakthroughs of hisgeneration: modern museum design. Tafuri recognizeshis “houses of art” for achieving equilibrium betweennovel space and exhibition function, and betweenmemory and innovation. Albini produced Italy’s first whitebox gallery in the Palazzo Bianco in Genoa. The 16th

century palace on the Renaissance Strada Nuova housesa civic museum collection of historic artifacts. Tafuri alsonoted Albini’s extraordinary contribution in the exampleof the Treasury of San Lorenzo Gallery built just afterPalazzo Bianco (1950) in the same city. Characterizing

Albini’s “Gaia”, Albini’s “Margherita” Frank Gehry’s “Power Play”


what he calls “magical abstraction” in Albini’s rationalistsensibility, Tafuri writes:

Albini managed to sublimate the esoteric natureof his referents. The dialectic between spaces,the variations of light, the dialog between theglass cases and the ambiguous suggestivenessof the interconnected organisms articulated oneof the most original ingredients of Albini’s poetics:a surrealism all the more subtle in that it wasresolved in technically faultless vocabulary.Albini’s ‘buried architecture’” possesses its ownlanguage. Isolated from the external world, itelicits a dialogue between technologicalelegance—a further tool for achieving supremedetachment—and forms. This dialogue exalts anunreal dimension: the dimension to be precise,of abstraction as ’suspended image.’ It was thesame abstraction that characterized Albini’sinteriors: ephemeral containers for magicallytransported historical objects. … Albini createdmasterpieces of representational virtuousity anddreamlike suggestiveness. His lyricism resided inthe erect, suspended, and reinforced frames…Albini’s severity alludes to an absent without everbecoming tragic.3

How does Albini’s work offer poetic alternatives to thepurity of enigmatic modern minimalism and the abstracttransparency characteristic of International Stylearchitecture? Like many from his generation in Italy, Albiniproduced furniture, interiors, exhibitions, affordablehousing and spaces of high culture using a variablepalette of modern materials and methods of construction

with careful attention to craft. His cultural frame ofreference from futurism to arte povera supplied adecidedly different conceptual background from ColinRowe and Robert Slutsky’s understanding of cubism asthe heritage for modern architecture. Albini’sarchitectural language was more directly shaped by hisidentification with the rationalists with whom he wastrained and collaborated, including Gardella, Persico,Pagano, and Palanti, during the 1930s and early 40s. Hisunique contributions become progressively apparent inhis post-war projects, produced first on his own, thenlater with his partner, Franca Helg. Their later projectsdemonstrate a fresh freedom from the stylistic dogmaof pre-war rationalism, revealing a perpetuation of hisown motifs developed during the prior period. Albinieffectively interiorized transparency. He entered pictorialspace to weaken and enrich the literal language of theabstract void. By focusing within, he explored new usesof ephemeral materials with emerging technologies,maintained privacy as an urban imperative, andestablished a recurring tension between the artifact andthe room. Albini’s use of glass and fabric employed forhorizontal and vertical layers offered sophisticatedvariations of spatial transparency, that part ofcontemporary architecture that cannot be suppressed.

As a material practice, the work of Franco Albiniembodied a pluralist language of transparency all hisown yet also belonging to the Italian tendenza. Albiniproduced numerous installations, exhibition interiors,trade fair pavilions and temporary constructions inspiredby the theories and practices of the Milanese school.His insistence on subdividing a large room withscaffolding-like steel or wood armatures provided ameasuring device to break down the scale of monumental

Albini’s door handles 1954, Koolhaas’ door handles 2001

Franco Albini’s Treasury of SanLorenzo in Genoa, Italy1950-52

Phillip Johnson’s PaintingGallery in New Canaan, CT1965


spaces. His featherweight columns served to supportdisplayed subjects at eye level with directed sources oflight. At the same time, and while teaching in Veniceand Turin, Albini produced urban mass housing and beganto receive more important commissions. He worked forindustry and cultural ministries, and built large residentialquarters. Yet among his theoretical interiors, includingone realized for himself, are some of his most compellingprojects suggesting the role of the good modern roomas the elemental unit of new architecture. Characteristicof Albini’s poetic pragamatism is his fearless delight intextures, patterns, colors, materials and light. Selectedarticles of furniture, two experimental rooms, and severaldomestic interiors will be considered here to exemplifyAlbini’s use of non-utopian relational transparency andfrom which the following observations about his workcan be made:

1. Internalized transparency refocuses attentionaway from Miesian exterior/interior phenomenato interior/interior spatial relations that maintainseparation between public and private domainswhile exploiting weightlessness, transparency ofdisplays, and visual connectivity within.2. The composition of “pure space” is mediatedin favor of deferential treatment of the containerto the contained, where a weakening of edge issought to privilege the contents of the room andits perceiving subject over abstract form.3. Careful negotiation of radical form andmodern materials within historic structurestranscends ideals of simple purity or erasure torealize more complex themes with non-standardized assemblages.4. Tectonic solutions for built spaces exhibitconviction in the empirical role of materials. Detailprecision and craft are essential to thediagrammatic clarity, legibility, and endurance ofhis work.

La Casa all’ Italiana and first tendenciesThe intellectual and social climate that produced FrancoAlbini was fascinating and complex, albeit contradictoryand beyond full analysis here. Fascism evolved into aregime under Mussolini’s dogma that sought to“nationalize” Italian social, family, and cultural life.4

Therein, the modern dwelling provided a paradigm andbecame the primary site for revolution of the Italianlifestyle. Open to continuous scholarly investigation are

questions about the predominance of nationalism vs.international influences in the quest for progress amongthe Italian design community. Yet there exists little doubtthat the nationalist fervor and patriotism that persistedto shape discussions of the tendenza directed theintentions of prominent designers leading to and duringthe war.5 Journals flourished in provoking the battlebetween false opposites of tradition vs. transition andreflected the culture’s anxiety in the flux of change.Writings and exhibition fairs paralleled building designin the search for national identity. Edoardo Persico,antifascist architect and critic, wrote: “The greatestobstacle to the integral affirmation of Rationalism in Italywas the inability of its theoreticians to pose rigorouslythe problem of the antithesis between national andEuropean taste.” 6

Modernization in Italy suggested scientific andtechnological progress, which eventually rationalized thedwelling as both a formal and an economic construct.Throughout the 1920s, before terminology such as the“new dwelling,” “exitenz-minimum” or “machine ahabiter” were common in Italy, foreign models broughtscientific principles for organizing domestic life withinfluences on hygiene, family size, and women’s roles. 7

Milanese architect Gio Ponti published his essay entitled“La Casa all’Italiana” in the first issue of the journalDomus in 1928 in which he distinguished the modernItalian house from its neighbors north of the Alps. Heclaimed that Italy’s mild climate diminished the need fordistinction between inside and outside, consequentlyforms and materials are often continuous. Probablyresponding to European influences and to the Rationalistsmanifesto published the prior year, Ponti insisted thatthe “new spirit” should not focus on what was purelyfunctional but attend to “spiritual comfort,” overpragmatic practicalities. Maristella Casciato hasidentified Ponti’s three primary concerns in the evolutionof the modern Italian house regarding aesthetic, socialand technical programs all aimed at the sense of style.8

Ponti’s focus on lifestyle was considered bourgeois bythe progressive young architects of the Gruppo 7, sinceit ran counter to the rationalists’ ‘adherence to logic andorder.’9 Terrragni’s controversial Novocomum apartmentbuilding in Como in 1929 was quickly recognized as atangible example of rationalist principles, yet only itsfaçade as built presented alternatives to the traditionalItalian apartment building. Its interior rooms were notpublished and probably without significance in defininga new dwelling type. Enrico Griffini provided architects


with a manual of new domestic form in his outline ofprinciples entitled costruzione razionale della casa in1931 and applied his proposals in collaboration withGruppo 7 members.10 Yet the most influential ideas aboutthe modern Italian house were disseminated via theexhibition for a vacation house sponsored by Societa’Edison, the Casa Elettrica.

Produced for the IVth Biennale in Monza in 1930 byseveral members of Gruppo 7 ; Figini, Pollini, Frette,Libera, and Bottoni, the Casa Elettrica was the first trulyglass house, programmed for domestic inhabitation, andrealized only a year after the Barcelona Pavillion.11 Theexhibition house was streamlined, economical, andefficient, with special emphasis placed on dining, forwhich Bottoni designed an assembly line of production,distribution, and collection. The machine-like kitchen wasnot visible to diners who were served from blind revolvingdoors. The sala da pranzo (dining rooom) was part of theopen central room that separated day and night zones inthe dwelling. The entire room expanded upward towardclerestory windows and outward with a vista linked tothe landscape through a continuous glass wall. A darkcurtain could be drawn to isolate the dining area fromthe stanza di soggiorno (living room).

Albini’s beginnings: interior transparency anddomestic relationsAlbini had completed his architectural studies at thePolitecnico di Milano only one year prior to the MonzaBiennale. In forthcoming exhibitions, Albini wouldcontribute to three experimental shows and realizeseveral domestic interiors during the same decade. Theseprojects trace the evolution of his transitional motifs forthe modern room. For the Vth Triennale in1933, Albiniparticipated with 6 architects on a team headed by

Giuseppe Pagano to produce the four-story steel framehouse. Persico singled out the project for ‘providingpractical solutions to national problems.’12 On the thirdfloor, the sala da pranzo was separated from the corridorby a veil-like transparent curtain. During the same year,Albini transformed an artist’s studio into a studioapartment with a single room accommodating functionsof sleeping, writing, sitting and eating. Albini used blackwaxed sailcloth to isolate the bedroom nook, while asmoked glass and metal partition flanked the dining tablemade of black glass. The dark materials afforded greatervisual privacy in a compressed area, while their glossysurfaces reflected light.

In 1936 the VI Milan Triennale was coordinated byGiuseppe Pagano, whose interest in rationalistfunctionalism and mass production guided his selectionof young colleagues for commissions in the exhibition.13

Albini was charged along with Giancarlo Palanti andRenato Camus to design a “Room for a Man.” In 1940for the VII Triennale, Albini alone designed the “Living


Room of a Villa.”14 Both designs exhibit the nature of astage set with curtains and perceptively contrivedparameters. Each space had a floor grid and a bilateraldivision of juxtaposed programs as if to separate dailylife into dialectic domains. The mind and body of themonastic individual where polarized in “Room for a Man.”A black transparent curtain suspended between the twoareas addressed the ambiguity of separating mind andbody. The room was 5 meters tall, forming a square endelevation. At 4 meters high a delicate white griddelineated an airy ceiling above eye level. The squareend wall was faced in rough-cut stone, as though theearth’s surface had slid sideways and upwards to groundthe “body” end of the room, giving depth to the scenicbackdrop. Wood was used for closets and shelving, butfully refined and finished as part of the technologically-precise machined, rather than organic, domain. The bedwas suspended above all other activities to float as in adream. A see-through book-wall spanned from floor-to-faux ceiling, suspending books on glass shelves. Thelibreria was slid off the grid into the “mind” zone of theroom and was the only element positioned symmetricallyand on center within the space.

In his next series of domestic commissions, Albiniused the stair as both section organizer and expressivemotif to accentuate linear movement along slippingboundaries. Horizontal pliability (curtain) shifted attentionto diagonal thrust (stair). The profile of the stairwaycomposed the room’s end elevation for the Villa Vanzetti

in 1935 (Como), while at the Vanzetti apartment (Milan)the next year, Albini opened the risers. For Villa Pestarini(1936-38) Albini suspended Carrara marble treads whileopening the risers, balustrade and adjacent wall, tointegrate dynamics of movement and light. A similarmarble ramp stair later organized Albini/Helg’s SanAgostino Museum in Genoa. Albini’s stairs proved aflexible medium for material and tectonic compositionand the lyrical suspension of weight.

His fluency with the language of Italian Rationalismguided Albini to manipulate the rules of mass and gravitywithin phenomenally transparent space. Employing veils,curtains, sheers, glass shelves and tables and his ownfurniture, he explored possibilities that lie betweenphenomenal and literal layers marked with ephemeralboundaries. But he largely avoided the polemics ofcompromised privacy and interaction with the city or thevoyeur. His internalized subdivisions suggested apsychological rather than sociological journey from hereto there, as he simultaneously compressed activities ofbody and mind, culture and nature, and the organic withthe man-made. His rapt attention to the artifact and itsposition within the space served his play of whimsicalalignments and suspension structures challenging therigors of point, line and planar geometries. Two piecesof furniture produced between 1938-40 characterize hisserious playfulness where pragmatics embrace realityto form poetry. Each design also demonstrates Albini’s


transparent aesthetic and flawless attention to detailand craft.

Albini’s radio places the operational necessities ofspeaker and transmitter into a naked body.15 The essenceis revealed as the designer addresses only what is hisdomain and leaves technology to exist on its own,resulting in a visually dynamic dialog between opposites.Two planes of Securit glass hold the perceptually heavierrectangle over the circle, both of which appear suspendedin air, allowing sound, music, and voice to emerge as iffloating into the room. His tensile bookshelf called“Veliero,” or sailboat, was designed for his ownapartment.16 At once poetic and pragmatic, the piece offurniture is both an artifact and a transparent wallextending the room’s space. The balanced ‘V’ is formedby two brass-tipped wood tensile columns that supportsuspended glass shelves. The bookshelf is more stable

when loaded with books, which can stand, lie flat orremain open. Even the base slab is detailed to appearnot to rest on the ground, heightening the tension andgravity as dynamic elements of form. Each artifact statesAlbini’s thesis that there are no passive objects.Predominant in his later museums, relationaltransparency depends upon the dynamic interaction of aroom with its contents. A static, universal container ofobjects or bodies is not Albini’s idea of modern space.The room as the unit element of architecture is therebydefined as a closed container of controlled proportionswith subdivisions of varying degrees of permeability andvisual penetration of the functions and forms within.

Albini’s furniture appears in his own 1940 apartmentdesign accompanied by his transparent curtains-as-walls.Designed between the two Triennale projects, Albini’sMilan apartment displays leitmotifs observed in his


theoretical projects, and includes his transparent radio,bookshelf and glass-topped tables.17 In addition, heintroduced a single floor-to-ceiling white steel rod tosupport frameless paintings at eye level and overheadlight fixtures. The apparatus, borrowed from hisinstallations, reduced the repetitive frame to a singleinstrument. In the context of a small apartment theintervention appears to be inspired both by the need formore exhibition space than wall surfaces allowed andthe opportunity to float such weighty subjects asMadonna and Child. He also introduced a means todematerialize the wall surface while transforming atraditional functional form into a modern one. Sheerwhite curtains hang the entire dimension of the outsidewalls reaching corner-to-corner and suspended fromceiling to floor with concealed hardware. The effect ofveiling the entire wall was to reduce the quantity andcool the quality of window light while making an etherealplanar edge. Windows appear more distant as framedviews yet detached from the public realm, while the wallis rendered ambiguous focusing attention inward. Anopaque azure interior curtain in the salon is positionedperpendicular to the outside wall to provide separationbetween dining and living functions but maintainingopenness and flexibility. The pair of curtains adds colorand texture while respecting the desire for privacy fromwithin and beyond. Albini is comfortable combiningmodern abstract elements and textures with antiquefurnishings and artifacts, foreshadowing his radical

encounters after the war when he is commissioned tohouse historic collections in revitalized monuments andto intervene with modern themes in historic churchesand palazzi.

In the same year, Albini produced the experimentalinterior acclaimed by the critics as the only example inthe VII Triennale capable of defining principles ofmodernity.18 Like his previous Triennale statement,“Living Room for a Villa,” (soggiorno per una villa) wascomposed using a gridded frame to provide perspectivalstructure in plan and section. In this scenario, the 6 x 7bay plan was divided exactly in half as two 3 x 7 baysand demarked to represent exterior and interior spacesusing different floor materials and set pieces. The sectionwas also bifurcated with a mid-level platform made withopen-spaced wood slats, suspended over the “indoor”half of the room and from which two swinging chairswere suspended into “outdoor” space. Transparenciesof all sorts and materials merged interior and fauxexterior space for a sublime domesticity reflective ofPonti’s earlier la casa all’italiana depiction. Glass wasagain used only horizontally as reflective table surfaces“inside” and as the floor of the outdoor “ground” whereglazed panels were supported by a metal grid over grassyterrain. A tree and stair connected the two levels insection. Beneath the platform an aviary made of tensilespan netting brought birds indoors. Light passed betweenthe slats of the platform shadowing the zone underneath.A hammock and swing chairs, cantilevered bookshelf,


suspended stair treads that did not touch the ground,and “natural” and man-made elements defined thelightweight sensuousness atmosphere of Albini’s idealspace for living.

In 1949 Albini was invited to Genoa and eventuallyawarded four prestigious museum commissions by thedirector of the cultural ministry for the city, CaterinaMarcenaro.19 Marcenaro had significant insightregarding the Italian tendenza along with the authorityto intervene on several monuments in a relativelyconservative cultural environment. It was herresponsibility to revitalize bomb-damaged historic sitesin the city center for the purpose of accommodatingmedieval and Baroque collections held by themunicipality. She found sympathy in Albini who sharedher aims to modernize the experience of viewing thehistoric collections. Marcenaro awarded him projects forthe Palazzo Bianco, recognized throughout Italy as theintroduction of the essential white gallery box intomuseum design, the Palazzo Rosso (1952-60), theTreasury Museum under the Cathedral of San Lorenzo(1952), lauded by Tafuri, and later the San AgostinoMuseum (1963-79).20 Of particular interest regarding theproblem of the architecture of the modern room, Albinialso designed Marcenaro’s apartment in thereconstructed penthouse or “attico” of the 17th centuryPalazzo Rosso. Since interventions in the existing palazzoand apartment buildings were restrictive, especiallywhere the plan and structural walls were largely in tact,Albini was left little freedom to redefine the overallbuilding form. However in the domestic space for thedirector, vestiges of his earlier ideas, reconceived afterrationalism’s popularity had waned, provides further

insight into his strategies for magical poetics thattranscend the functions of a well-designed room.

The bomb-damaged original roof of the palazzo hadalready been reconstructed by Mercenaro’s predecessorbefore she attained oversight of Genoa’s artisticpatrimony. Prior to 1954 Albini removed the new“historic” roof and replaced it with low concrete beamsspanning a compressed open volume. Marcenaro’sapartment, therefore, received minimal exterior light andsat too high above the street for views of the narrowviccoli (alleys) outside. Detached from the city, she wasindeed physically joined to her museum since the semi-public apartment linked directly to the semi-private publicgallery sequence, paradoxically added to a formerlydomestic palace. She had become a part of the buildingthat defined her profession and her life, which wereinseparable. Marcenaro’s space was neitherclaustrophobic nor oppressed by the history on which itwas supported. Albini repeated his suspension ofartifacts and furniture, choreographed as protagonistswoven into sublime modern space, using a web of


delicate “allestimento” or finish details made from blacksteel tensile members. Once again, overcoming weightis thematic and can be seen in visual relationships offloating objects, including the fireplace hearth and cap,which defy gravity and allow unobstructed views acrossrooms. The loft stairs and fireplace hover but do not rest,and antiquities are married to modern motifs.

Conclusion: just the beginningThe persistent question that accompanied the search fora unique Italian modern design in the early years can beseen in Albini’s modern dwellings. If a distinctive Italiancharacter exists, Albini’s response to la casa all’Italianawas overtly influenced by both the rationalists ‘logic andorder’ and Ponti’s call for attention to style, design, andspiritual comfort reflected in Albini’s recurrent motifs.Pre-war isolation and social realities of the war’saftermath served to provoke Italian architects pressuredby new needs and economic constraints as catalysts fortheir maturing complex modern language. Umberto Ecoaffirms the significance of Italianita’(Italianness) duringthe modern Italian metamorphosis:

“An Italian character does exist. The first is atranshistorical characteristic that relates to‘genialita’ (ingenuity) and ‘inventivita’(inventiveness)…and consists in our ability tomarry humanist tradition with technologicaldevelopment. What has undoubtedly acted as abrake on our culture, the predominance of thehumanistic over the technological, has alsopermitted certain fusions, eruptions of fantasywithin technology and the technologization of

fantasy. Secondly, Italy is a country that hasknown enormous crises, foreign domination,massacres, and yet (and for this reason) hasproduced Raphael and Michelangelo….whatoften fascinates foreigners is that in Italyeconomic crises, uneven development, terrorismaccompany great inventiveness.”21

For Albini, the ‘new spirit’ awakened every dimension ofeveryday life. Even product design in Albini’s handsbecomes architecture, not only because he defines spacewith furnishings, but because his objects speakpoetically, linking function to fantasy. The most prosaicprograms invited dream-like buoyancy and magicalabstraction. His stairs dangle in suspension preferringnever to touch ground. Artworks float, sometimesframelessly, challenging the weight of their baroquesubject matter to complement the relational tension ofthe object to the space and the inhabitant to the dwelling.Albini’s motifs suggest a plethora of models in responseto function, material, site and scale. While many modernmasters aimed for the great building as the elementalunit by erasing spatial subdivisions, Albini sought anddefined the modern room. With the loss of the formalroom went scale, surface, and proportional relationshipsof interior space. Mies van der Rohe’s architecture linkedthe detail to the building as a whole and effectivelycollapsed the room. Albini designed not only many worthydetails but saw them crafted to create a poeticarchitecture of a new social order. His ingenuity andinventiveness are everywhere apparent as his designwork grows to maturity after the war.


Notes:1 Although I know of no scholarship that has connected Philip

Johnson to the work of Franco Albini, this project gives causeto believe that Johnson was aware of and interested in Albini’swork during Johnson’s own peak, when he learned thelanguage of transparency from Mies. His 1965 Painting Galleryburied on the grounds of the New Canaan estate bears astriking similarity in plan to the tholos diagram of Albini’s crypt.Beyond the plan similarities of four circular rooms withidentical radii, its location underground and the floor pavinggraphics render the similarities between galleries uncanny.[While this possible relationship is the subject of anotherresearch project, it is worth noting here since Johnson’s worksof architecture are far better known and have received morecritical attention than those of Franco Albini.]

2 Many of Albini’s projects were continued by his office, led byFranca Helg, Marco Albini, and Antonio Piva, after his deathin 1977. See Franco Albini 1905-1977, Antonio Piva and VittorioPrina (Milan: Electa, 1998).

3 Manfredo Tafuri, p. 50. History of Italian Architecture 1944-1985 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989).

4 David Horn, Social Bodies, Science, Reproduction and ItalianModernity, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

5 Dual forces were at work in the determination to identifyaesthetic trends and forms that maintained the thread ofItalian tradition. Italianita’, those quintessential qualities thatdefine and distinguish being Italian, and mediterraneita’, thatwhich is culturally unique to southern European geographyand climate, were recurring themes in the struggle to directemerging new forms of architecture, and in particular, moderndwelling in fascist Italy.5 Aggiornamento called for bringingItalian architecture up to date with other progressive Europeantheory and practice.

6 Dennis Doordan, Building Modern Italy, Italian Architecture1914-1936 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988) p.111.

7 Taylorization and fordism introduced through venues such asthe Fourth International Congress on Household Economy heldin Rome in 1927 served the social programs of the regime.Management of the household was linked to the well-beingof the family which supported parallel directives regardingthe education of the housewife and the efficiency of domesticorganization. See Maristella Casciato “The ‘Casa all’Italiana’and the idea of modern dwelling in fascist Italy,” The Journalof Architecture Vol 5 Winter 2000, pages 335-353.

8 Casciato p. 338.9 In December 1926, Rassegna Italiana published the manifest

of Italian Rationalism signed by seven young architecturestudents form the Milan Politechnic. The members of theGruppo 7 were Ubaldo Castagnoli (later replaced by AdalbertoLibera), Luigi Figini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano Larco, GinoPollini,Carlo enrico Rava, and Giuseppe Terragni. Doordan p.45.

10 Doordan, p. 112.11 The central glazed façade allows the interior to extend outside

to the lakefront, much like the spatial intentions in the laterFarnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe and in Philip

Johnson’s New Canaan house. But the glass is actually a pairof planes housing a greenhouse inside. Doordan pp 60-63.

12 Doordan p 119.13 Stephen Leet, “Pagano and Temporary Architecture of the

Triennale,” Franco Albini 1934-1977 Architecture and Design,(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1990). pp. 24-25.

14 Franco Albini 1905-1977, “Stanza per un uomo, VI Triennaledi Milano, 1936,” pp. 86-87, and “Stanza di soggiorno peruna villa, VII Triennale di Milano, 1940,” pp. 145-147.

15 Piva and Prina. “Apparecchio radio trasparente,” p. 110.16 Ibid. Liberia ‘Veliero,’” p. 123.17 Ibid. “Appartamento Albini. Via De Togni, Milano, 1940,” pp

140-142.18 Ibid. “C. Zanini in ‘Costruzioni Casabella’ del 1941 definisce

l’ambiente di Albini come l’unico esempio che mostra ‘principidi modernita’…” p. 145.

19 Piero Bottardo, current director of the Palazzo Rosso Museum,and Clario di Fabio, director of Albini’s later San AgostinoMuseum in Genoa, have each written about Marcenaroaddressing her term as sopritendente di beni culturale from1949-1971. They consider the architect’s and curator’s earlydecisions and problems in the historiographic analysis andresponse in “Una protagonista della scena culturale genovesefra 1950-1970:Caterina Marcenaro fra casa e musei.”di Fabio,and “Palazzo Rosso dai Brignole-Sale a Caterino Marcenaro:luci ed ombre di un caposaldo della museologia italiana,” byBottardo. Original unpublished papers provided to author.

20 Tafuri addressed Albini’s achievements of museology as highpoints that unleashed repression during this period, andspecifically credited Albini’s contribution to the renewal ofmuseum design whose themes ranged “from the ‘civil’ roleof form to the encounter between memory and innovation.”Manfredo Tafuri, History of Italian Architecture 1944-1985(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989) p. 49.

21 Umberto Eco, “You must Remember This….” in GuggenheimMuseum catalog for the exhibition “The ItalianMetamorphosis 1943-68” (New York: The Soloman R.Guggenheim Foundation, 1994) by Thomas Krens. p. 3.


tFrom the Internal to the Radical:Autonomy and Alterity in the Local ModernJavier de Jesús-Martinez, Universidad de Puerto Rico, [email protected]

“The alterity, the radical heterogeneity of theother, is possible only if the other is other withrespect to a term whose essence is to remain atthe point of departure, to serve as entry into therelation, to be the same not relatively butabsolutely”Emmanuel Levinas

“The other is inside or outside, not inside andoutside, being part of our interiority whileremaining exterior, foreign, other to us.Awakening us, by their very alterity, their mystery,by the in-finite that they still represent for us. Itis when we do not know the other, or when weaccept that the other remains unknowable to us,that the other illuminates us in some way, butwith a light that enlightens us without our beingable to comprehend it, to analyze it, to make itours”Luce Irigaray

AbstractThis essay attempts to revise/reformulate, and what Iwill argue, as a radicalization, the principle of autonomy.After reviewing the philosophical basis and the historicaldevelopment of the principle of autonomy in theemergence of the modern movement and its essentialperformance in the philosophical discourse of theavantgarde and neo-avantgarde movements, this essaythen focuses on a discussion of an unexploreddimension/ramification/rhyzome in the evolution of theconcept of autonomy.

I propose that the radicalization of autonomy is anadvance state in a conversion processes, evident in aseries of architectural projects produced between 1948and 1958 designed by Henry Klumb. Henry Klumb,F.L.Wright’s collaborator from 1929 to 1933, arrived to

the island of Puerto Rico in 1944. Immersed in a historicalturning point within a trascendental political and socialprocesses, embodied in the modernization,descolonization and the new constituition of Puerto Rico,Henry Klumb became a protagonical figure in thearticulation of an architecture for the new political status.The emergence of the new status, based on reachingautonomous political plateau, permitted the intellectualdebate and ideological atmospheres for the redefinitionof this central principle in the formulation of a newmodernity. The architectural ideas of this architect,transformed the autonomous condition of the modernistaxioms in a wide range of his projects.

A series of three projects, the Faculty RecreationalCenter (1948), Klumb’s own house (1948) and the StudentCenter (1948-1958) reflect a transformation in theaesthetic and ethical considerations of architecturalformation in relation to the cultural, political and physicalcontext. These projects in particular manifest threeintensities of autonomy, as a result of radical changes inhis attitude towards the notion of context. In this seriesof projects, autonomy, as a concept and as an ideology,neither is privileged nor neglected, but rather it becomesan experiment in itself. The radicalization of autonomywill be analyzed in reference with a framework of threelevels of intensitiy: Internal Autonomy, ExchangableAutonomy and Radical Autonomy. Instead of becominga process that negated exterioties and differences,Klumb’s radicalization of autonomy directs one towardsthe recognition and reconsideration of Alterity.


aMostmodernismJohn Srygley, Morgan State University, [email protected]

and inspiration — but to be accurate we need to createa second category for the “other” modernism tooubiquitous to be dismissed, too insistent to be ignored.

The universal beneficence that the pioneers of theModern Movement foresaw in the industrialization ofthe means of production has been usurped by thecorrosive effect of the economics of late capitalism. Thepower of commercialization has induced the widely heldcynicism that the soul of architecture today is itseconomics. Modernism is a product; its early utopiansocial agenda exchanged for the profit motive implicit ina society that often appears to value consumerism oversocial responsibility. Projects of great importance to thebuilt environment—public buildings, universities,schools, churches, malls and shopping centers areincreasingly assembled from internet catalogs byarchitect specifiers with ever fewer real choices.Undistinguished as architecture, but notable for theirreliance on pro-forma realities, critical path schedulesand mass production, I will refer to them as“mostmodernism” throughout this discussion since theseunpublished, unheralded examples of modernismrepresent the preponderance of built works, professionalfees and opportunities available to architects today. Theagencies of the status quo appear more powerful thanthe agents of change. Their interactions are complex,but at the intersection of the various spheres of influenceare mostmodernism and the consumer. Without question,architects of passion and skill make socially conscious,environmentally responsible works of sensitivity andgrace everyday. When considered in context of thecontribution the construction industry makes to the grossnational product, however, 1.6 trillion dollars in 20012 ,it is clear that we are losing the battle for the builtenvironment. It’s just math. The Gehrys, Koolhaases,Cutlers and devoted practitioners, large and small, havea positive effect, but are relatively invisible against the

Architecture is stifled by custom.Le Corbusier, Vers Une Architecture 1

The ostensible purpose of this conference, to examinewhy modernism refuses to die, cannot be achievedwithout consensus on the meaning of the word. LewisMumford noted that the Renaissance City is a myth: theRenaissance was a few individuals of uncommon genius,whose isolated works became the model for severalcenturies of imitation. Indeed, anyone who has traveledin search of the Renaissance knows what hard, butrewarding, work it is seeking out its icons. We can saythe same of modernism. The real thing is hard, butrewarding, to find. Still modernism by any definition thatincludes a skeleton of steel or concrete, freestandingcolumns, open floor plan, the “façade libre”, a skin withfree arrangement of windows — is all around us, generic,dull, bland, devastating. At the campus of a typical stateuniversity, an architect’s achievement is likely to besubordinated to the demands of facilities management,and “vision” superceded by the pragmatics ofmaintenance and economy known as value engineering.Financial rewards go to the architects who keep theirpractices focused on business, and their efficientparticipation in a production process. Archibusiness isto architecture what agribusiness is to the small farm.Like the computer and automobile industry, modernismhas become a fundamental part of our global economy,a river of money springing from the confluence of power.Modernism prevails; it will die when it is no longerprofitable. Modernism may indeed outlast the continuedrelevance of architects as a species related to itsproduction. Frank Lloyd Wright once said modestly ofhimself: “it’s been five hundred years since there’s beena genius in architecture, it will be five hundred more tillthere’s another.” Surely in discussing modernism’spersistence we need to acknowledge genius, hard work


onslaught of mostmodernism. I am thinking of outgoingPresident Eisenhower’s 1961 speech warning the nationto beware the insidious power of the military industrialcomplex “the total influence—economic, political, evenspiritual—that is felt in every city”. What of the insidiouspower of the financial/industrial/construction/government and academic complex that perpetuatesmostmodernist thinking and practice that has beenproved wrong on every main point?

By law, architects are involved in the design of mostof the environments we inhabit. Paradoxically, manypeople, even men and women of sensitivity, intellect andeducation, have never experienced a work of “real”architecture as defined by its academics and glossypublications. This is the plight even of the privileged thatlive in wealthy suburbs, shop at prosperous malls, workat a thriving corporations, holiday at exclusive locales.Mostmodernism is ubiquitous substitute. Foam andstucco froth, medieval-towered or Italianate big box retaildominate the landscape from New York to LA. At itsworst, this process appropriates and decontextualizeshistorical architectural forms, mimicking the most salientcharacteristics of the original, often resulting in self-satire, unintentional parody, urban and suburban cross-dressing, the dominance of the box, geometricalabsurdities, poison technologies, dysfunctional systems,and the irrational acceptance of life in a built environmentlargely unexamined. Perhaps this is the manifest destinyof the bourgeoisie, cultural homogenization, genericplace and cyberspace. If you’re part of the system it’s

hard to point fingers, but we have everything to gainfrom being judgmental. In a capitalist society, the cashregister is the real ballot box; we vote every time wespend a dollar. Well, there’s a market for thismostmodernist stuff, this is an idea many people have“bought” into, and others, not so fortunate, dream about.They seem to be happy living in their little utopias, drivingfrom point A to B in their leather lined SUVs with themusic on and air conditioning blasting. The vote is in,and mostmodernism is the clear winner. Wasn’t that thepoint of modernism, the achievement of a democraticideal through economic and technological determinism?

Critics, including myself, don’t seem to appreciatethat the modernist utopian vision has been realized;we’re left standing outside the plate glass windowlooking in. We’re raving at the sky like the guy on thestreet corner in rags who lives in a cardboard box (amedium, incidentally, still not fully explored for its valueas temporary housing). The modernist dreams ofefficiency, standardization and mass-production havebeen realized. Modernism, with some iterations andtransformations, has achieved a near pervasivehegemony like unto a utopia in its ability to createexclusive environments. Chandigarh, Disneyworld, andthe local mall share a piece of the utopian vision: theyoffer an alternative to messy “reality”. “Exclusive”housing, shopping, resorts and office blocks offerconvenience, security and freedom from anxiety.Exclusivity is a characteristic common to class “A” officespace, suburbs, business parks, islands and all utopias,

Table 6.1C. National Income Without Capital Consumption Adjustment by Industry Group [Billions of dollars]


fictional or non-, from Thomas Moore’s original Utopiato Butler’s Erewhon to B.F.Skinner to the Shakersettlements in America. Exclusivity ensures the utopiaits primacy by removing the utopian space from theintrusion of reality. Corbu’s utopian vision for Parisproposed the obliteration of its historic context. Althoughthe Left Bank remains, the set of logics that generated ithave been neutralized, such that the Left Bank must beconsidered outside of the context of modernism ratherthan the other way around. Utopia admits neithercomplexity nor contradiction, proffering rather a hyper-or surreality in which nothing is moot; substituting theabsolute for the imperfect, the universal for thedifficulties of the specific. Exclusivity ensures a rigiddegree of self-control by controlling the means ofperception, limiting the possibilities of internalcontradiction and therefore the creation of criticalviewpoints in opposition to it. And there’s money in it.

Most troubling is that the technology ofindustrialization has failed to produce a healthful builtenvironment while despoiling the natural one. Like thesorcerer’s apprentice, the would-be master ofmodernism’s knowledge is incomplete. He has only halfthe magic. The concepts, ideas, partis, and formal poetrythat feed the creative idealism of the future practitionersoon give way to the systematic and efficientmanufacture, delivery and assembly of most modernbuildings. Not all, but most. Although the Bauhauseducational program still prevails in North Americanschools, the former emphasis on understanding thenature of materials and the ritual of their connection hasceded to a system so efficient that architect studentsneed “awareness” rather than knowledge of constructionmethodology to meet graduation requirements fromaccredited schools. The Bauhaus taught that you had tounderstand the “nature” of a material before you coulddesign with it. What is the nature of vinyl, plasticlaminate, EIFS, or any other synthetic building material?Industrialization not only divorced architecture from handcraftsmanship, but also from an understanding thediscrete processes involved in the correct execution ofevery trade on the job site. Despite heightenedawareness and an increasingly complex regulatoryenvironment, the practitioners of mostmodernismcontinue to ignore environmental concerns with theconspicuous consumption of land and energy.Sustainable design concepts will reduce the quantity ofpolluted water, despoiled environment and lost habitatthat plague the developed planet. One can hope for

improvement as we shift toward a post-industrial statewith greater emphasis on holistic planning and ecologicaldeterminism. Unfortunately the shift in the WesternWorld toward the post industrial state has in many casessimply shifted the industrial event to developing countrieswith less restrictive environmental covenants. Thefamous inner harbor in my city of residence, Baltimore,is sedimented with chromium and other pollutantsdischarged from the former Allied Chemical Companyplant. When regulatory and development pressures madethe plant uneconomical, it was simply dismantled andshipped, piece by piece, to South Korea. Let’s hope thatmodernism will be transformed into a benign (if notinspired) form before, piece by piece, it covers the restof the planet.

Notes:1 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. By Frederick

Etchells, Praeger Publishers, New York, seventh edition, 1974,first published by the Architectural Press, London, 1927.

2 Source: United States Bureau of Economic Statistics

Documents

Why Does Modernism Refuse to Die- Kazuo Shinohara