Jean Baudrillard: Can we speak of truth in architecture? No, at least not in the sense
that architecture would have truth as its goal or culmination. There are things
an architecture wants to say, things it claims to accomplish, signify.... Where
is the radically of architecture? What is it that constitutes the radicality
of architecture? That's how we should pose the question of truth in architecture.
That truth is to some extent what architecture is trying to achieve without
wanting to say it—which is a form of involuntary radicality. In other words,
it's what the user makes of it, what happens to it through use, when in the
grip of an uncontrollable actor. This leads me to introduce another aspect of
things, which is their literality. To my mind, literality means that aside from
technical progress, aside from social and historical development, the
architectural object as an event that has taken place is no longer susceptible
to being completely interpreted or explained. Such objects express things literallyj in the sense that no
exhaustive interpretation is possible.
What does
"literally" mean? I'll use the example of Beaubourg again. OK, we
have Beaubourg. So what does it express? Culture, communication? No, I don't
think so. Beaubourg expresses flux, storage, redistribution, and Piano and
Rogers's architecture expresses those things literally. What it expresses
literally is almost the reverse of the message it supposedly expresses. Beaubourg
represents both the fact of culture and the thing that killed culture, the
thing it succumbed to, in other words, the confusion of signs, the excess, the
profusion. It's this internal contradiction that translates Beaubourg's
architecture, which I call its "literality." Similarly, we can say
that the World Trade Center alone expresses the spirit of New York City in its
most radical form: verticality. The towers are like two perforated strips. They
are the city itself and, at the same time, the vehicle by means of which the
city as a historical and symbolic form has been liquidated—repetition, cloning.
The twin towers are clones of each other. It's the end of the city, but it's a
very beautiful end, and architecture expresses both, both the end and the
fulfillment of that end. That finality, which is both symbolic and real, and
situated well outside the project that the architect's drawing embodied, far
beyond the initial definition of the architectural object, is expressed literally.
Jean Nouvel: It's worth asking if Beaubourg really signified culture. When you look
at Beaubourg from within the world of architecture, you realize that it's one
of the first attempts to concretize the theory of Archigram's city-as-machine.
In a way, Beaubourg is the culmination of functionalist theories, where architecture
translates the truth of the building, which is a kind of hypertruth. The
skeleton is visible, with all its guts on the outside, and the nerves,
everything is exposed to view, to a degree that's never been surpassed. English
high-tech reached a peak in the seventies, but Beaubourg is the only building
that took so much of a risk, aside from the Lloyds building, perhaps, which
shares the same sense of exhibitionism. Richard Rogers extended the movement to
factories. But the most interest- irig thing in the Beaubourg concept,
originally, was the freedom within, in the way the space was conceived. We felt
that this machine for housing art—or hopefully for manufacturing art—was going
to work. Completely unpredictable events were supposed to take place within the
building, the floor areas were supposed to coexist with added sections,
supports, movable extensions, everything was supposed to be optimally
organized within a dialectic of support-supply. Beaubourg was primarily a
support. But the space, subsequently made "functional," completely
altered its initial meaning. It's worth pointing out that in January 1999 an ad
was designed—while they were working on the restoration—which for the first
time completely covered the facade with an enormous photograph on canvas that
was more than two hundred meters long and thirty meters high. Beaubourg's
mission is to capture these exterior and interior events, events of all kinds,
which are supposed to be free or of limited duration. The implosion you spoke
about occurred in a completely unexpected way. The thing that was killed before
it even got off the ground was the exposure to other possibilities, the play
inherent in the possibilities of space, its total vacuity. The fact that they
reconstructed the interior space using ordinary partitions, turning it into a
space that is completely conventional, meant that Beaubourg would become the
opposite of a simple architectural support, to the extent that they've now put
G-strings on the beams so they appear more dignified, so they can erase any
industrial or mechanical reference! Every freedom that existed within the space
has been wrecked by the fire department, which insisted that the floor area,
which was 150 by 50 meters—which is huge!—be divided by a wall. The space was
simply cut in two. This alteration alone removed the necessity, and therefore
the meaning, of putting the ducts on the outside—they could just as well have
been stuck inside the service core or between two walls. But in the beginning
it was much more relevant. Everything that was supposed to interact with this
support and change rapidly didn't happen, and Beaubourg is experienced as if it
were a building made of dressed stone. Because it was overconsumed, because of
the incredible number of visitors every year, its enormous size, the building
has been exhausted very quickly. This accelerated aging is also a
characteristic of the building. But it's interesting to see the enormous
discrepancy between the architectural intentions and the reality. At the same
time, it was Renzo Piano, one of the two architects who designed Beaubourg, who
is responsible for the building's restoration—if you can call it that— in its
current, rather than its conceptual, state. It's difficult to imagine the energy
of the seventies today.
J.B. Yet in its flexibility, Beaubourg did reflect its
original intent.
J.N. No, it hasn't played its role; the building is
static. Maybe it will happen one day.... But no one wanted to play with that
flexibility; it was too dangerous, too spontaneous. Everything has been reframed,
resealed. Imagine a building with large windows built in 1930. The same thing
would have happened then, assuming there was a large flat roof with a beautiful
belvedere. Of course, its status as an urban artifact remains. Beaubourg
functions as a cathedral, with its buttresses, a nave, a "piazza."
It's a call to the public to come inside, to consume the views of Paris and the
art. A call to consumption.
J.B. Yes, it's also a draft of air pulling things along in its wake. And
locally it's still a kind of hole, an air inlet As
for sheltering or provoking culture, I'm skeptical. How can you recapture the
subversiveness that the space seemed to call forth as it was originally
designed?
J.N. Can the institution accept subversion? Can it plan
the unknown, the unforeseeable? Can it, within a space as open as this,
provide artists with the conditions for something that is oversized, an
interference; can it agree to not set limits? Architecture is one thing; human
life another. What good is an architecture that is out of step with
contemporary life?
J.B. Still, even though we can effectively express
the relationship of architecture, or a given building, to culture, to
society... how are we going to define its "social" impact? It's
precisely the lack of a possible definition of the social that should produce
an architecture of the indefinable, in other words, a real-time architecture,
characterized by randomness and the uncertainty that drives social life.
Architecture can no longer "monumentalize" anything today.... But it
can't demonumentalize anything either, so what role does it play?
J.N. Some people have tried to provoke this
real-time, random architecture. We're trying to do this in an industrial
building that everyone finds hideous, although it's absolutely remarkable: a
group of derelict buildings that no one wanted, a Seita factory. It's an
abandoned factory complex, located in one of the most popular quarters of
Marseilles, known as "la Belle de mai." Eighty thousand square meters
of empty space! The place was empty and unsafe. The city was handling security,
and people had begun to squat in the buildings, until one day, quite spontaneously,
the artists got involved—people from theater, choreographers, painters and
sculptors. So now there was a clear desire to create a kind of open cultural
space, based on a living culture, just the opposite of the kinds of buildings
that are usually reserved for culture, with scheduled hours, and designed for
conservation. The place would be open day and night, the artists would live
there, some would be invited as a group by producers and would have an
opportunity to continue their work jointly. There was a clear mandate for the
project to initiate new work, giving preference to younger artists, creators,
students, the unemployed, with a very clear intercultural dimension. But this
type of approach and this type of architecture have the greatest difficulty
obtaining financing, and funding for maintenance and development. The
contradiction is difficult to resolve because the people who start the project
would prefer not to get involved in some sort of institutional operation, but
they're required to ask for approval, for permission from institutions, whether
they involve the city or the government—which reject such radicality.
Nonetheless I think the project is part of the dynamic of what must become a
contemporary cultural space. The hypercentralized, hyperinstitutionalized
places we're surrounded with are sterile.
On Modification: Mutation or Rehabilitation
J.N. I think the debate going on about what I call
"modification" is essential. We built heavily throughout the century,
very quickly, very badly, anywhere, anyhow. We produced and reproduced a
number of things in record time: spaces, buildings, suburbs, and nonplaces as
well. Now we're in a situation, in all the northern countries, where growth is
just about over. But urban and suburban spaces, the rural landscape, et cetera,
are subject to constant modification. We find ourselves with a body of architectural
material—things that were built, abandoned, rebuilt— which have to be modified
or demolished; in any case, that's what we have to work with. It's not a
question of any prior intention to conserve a certain number of signs of the
past, nor of "rehabilitating," in the conventional sense of the term,
some sort of "refined bourgeois taste, the essence of the
picturesque." It's about creating architecture, meaning and essence, from
some raw, unworked material. If we look at what's going on in Marseilles, we
see an industrial building that could be considered a cultural facility that is
80 percent complete. The simple fact of changing its use and sticking a certain
number of objects inside, applying a few finishing touches, various
architectural signs, alters the meaning of the place completely. To give you an
example, there were large rooms 150 meters long and 40 meters wide. Before, the
space was saturated with machine tools; now that it's empty, it's sumptuous. It
would be impossible to create a cultural space like that from scratch today. It
would cost too much. We chose to consider this interior-exterior urban ensemble
as a piece of the city. People live there as if it were a small city. And we
feel that the architectural act revolves around settling into a repurposed architecture.
This could involve something that's built inside or on the roof or even on a
terrace. Nonetheless this process of sedimentation is a form of creation and a
complete qualification of the space. It's not only a modification; it's a
mutation. The space is no longer experienced the same way, there are different
things inside; we play with scale differently, change the meaning, and starting
with what was a large, poorly defined, purely functional volume, we've
gradually managed to produce a regenerative recreation that no one would have
thought possible. This process of fabricating cities today should be
encouraged. It allows us to escape dimensional standards, to obtain this sense
of "excess," this superfluity that is essential and unplanned. It
provokes a sense of excess: too big, too high, too dark, too ugly, too stiff,
unforeseen, radical.
J.B. But this mutation, as you call it, is often part
of a cultural plan. In fact, what we call "cultural" is ultimately
only a bunch of polymorphous or, who knows, perverse activities!
J.N. When the mutation isn't really a mutation, it
becomes perverse; it becomes rehabilitation. Rehabilitation, in the legal
sense of the term, is the process of providing something with qualities that
had been denied to it previously. In fact, all the public housing built during
the sixties and seventies has now been "rehabilitated," which means
that they're maintained—something that had been overlooked for years—that
someone applies a little color to the facade, a couple of awnings, and
that"ghettoization" is perpetuated by allowing the urban social
fabric around them to degrade and violence to spread. We continue to promote an
approach to housing that we know doesn't work, and we solidify and perpetuate
all the problems we have. Moreover, to reduce costs, we contract the work out
to companies who cap expenses as much as possible. The building is insulated on
the outside. We pretend to make a number of improvements, when all we've done
is patched things up: we touch it up here and there, and it's good for another
twenty years, even though the buildings were only designed to last twenty years
when they were built.
J.B. The large urban spaces that have sprung into
existence without any preliminary planning, like New York's Lower East Side or
Soho, have been taken over by the middle class over the past twenty years,
often artists, who have changed the lifestyle and appearance of those
neighborhoods: is that rehabilitation or mutation? It's easy to see that this
kind of mutation is most often accompanied by a gentrification of the
neighborhood, which was also the case in Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. They
saved the facades, but behind those facades, everything changed.
J.N. Look at Paris, for example. This city has been
characterized by what I call "embalming." This consists in preserving
a series of facades that have some historic value and building new structures
behind them—this happened in Rue Quincampoix, and in the Marais, near Saint-Paul.
It's obvious that this served only one purpose: to get rid of the poor who
lived there and replace them with people who had the means to pay. We're well
outside the framework of rehabilitation when we radically change usage and move
in the direction of greater space, increased pleasure, the conquest of new
qualities. Embalming is the opposite. We break up small apartments, cut the
windows in two with new floors, et cetera. New York isn't exactly the same.
There the industrial spaces were turned into dream apartments, unique spaces
three hundred square meters in size. You can live in a building that's thirty
meters deep. Once you have good lighting at either end, you can accept the fact
that there are darker areas in the center, contrary to the hygienic theories
favored by modernity. But what's happening in this case is more than a
rehabilitation; it's also a mutation, and that mutation initiates a real shift
in the way we understand a place aesthetically. In such spaces, a table, three
chairs, and a bed are sufficient to create a poetics of space that differs from
what it was when it was saturated with merchandise and machinery.
J.B. The modification you describe is an interesting
approach to the situation. Can it be generalized? Could it politicized?
J.N. To politicize it, you would need to create an
awareness on the part of "politicians." Can they understand and
accept that every transformative act, every modification, is a cultural act as
essential as creating something from scratch? Can they accept the fact that
architecture is expressed and must increasingly be appreciated from within, a
privileged space of enrichment, of nuance?... History provides us with
beautiful examples of architectural forms that culminated in sedimentation, complementarity.
The most convincing demonstration, a brilliant proof of the theory, maybe the
work of Carlo Scarpa. The first political question becomes: "What do I
destroy? What do I preserve?" As a foil we have the memory of two
grotesque periods of utter dreariness: the "destroy everything" period
of the sixties and seventies, bulldozer renovation, followed by the
"embalming" period—"Let's keep everything," let's create a
pastiche, let's try to economize the architectural act.
J.B. Today things are designed for change; we have
mobile, flexible, open-ended devices. We need to design an architecture based
on computer logic, which is happening everywhere anyway. Then there's
multiculturalism, the possibility of changing one's identity, of putting a
number of computer avatars into play, which is supposedly an essential aspect
of modernity, or trans- modernity, I'm not quite sure.
I've been thinking a
lot about this lately. There must be a difference between things that change
and things that become. Yes, there's a fundamental difference between change
and becoming. Things that "become" are rare, exposed to
misunderstanding, and possibly disappearance. Becoming is not the same as
importing change, initiating it, wanting it at any price, imposing an
imperative of change on people—which is the credo of fashion, for example—from
which they never escape. That's not necessarily how things become something.
Can a city change before our eyes? Of course we can transform it, modify it,
but does it "become" something, then? We can say that cities have
"become" things over time. It's not a question of creating nostalgia,
but cities, in the past, ended up acquiring a kind of singularity, while here,
now, before our eyes, they change at top speed, in a state of confusion. We're
watching their characteristics erode. Even modification may be a way of reintroducing
things into the process of change, where they would have risked being either
destroyed or purely and simply "museified," which is another
miserable fate. Can we counteract change with another kind of need? Maybe we
can go further: What will the city become?
J.N. Working on what a city will become implies
having a heightened awareness of its identity and requires that we help direct
change. Change is fatal, automatic, inevitable, and many of our leaders,
including city mayors, demand change because it's a sign of vitality, a form of
growth that can excuse a range of absurdities. What a city becomes is decided
on the basis of what came before, not some hypothetical future designed by a
long- term planning effort. What it will become provides opportunities for the
expression of a contextual and conceptual architecture that is both anchored
and enriching. Change for the sake of change provides all sorts of excuses for
just about anything; in that sense, it's part of the lapse of architectural
reason. It can come about through the automatic reproduction of market models,
as well as from a conception of the future based on the cloning of preexisting
buildings.
J.B. The lapse of architectural reason would be
clone architecture.
J.N. The historical development of cities, their
evolution, has always bothered architects. It's a strange paradox. Architects
are constantly modifying the urban fabric, yet they resist its evolution. They
generally reproduce the previous period. They want to continue to build the
city that was, and every time the city changes, they say, "It's no longer
a city, it's a suburb, its shameful...." The evolution of the city in the
twentieth century is supposed to have resulted in violent upheaval. Yet we've
witnessed an architectural caste that has clung to the twentieth-century city,
the reconstruction of the European city; they still want to build streets and
squares as they did before But they're streets
and squares devoid of meaning.
J.B. Yes, but
that's not cloning, if you look at what happens
J.N. It's a form of reproduction, duplication.
Architects always stick to earlier forms used in the past; they're terrified of
seeing the city move in ways they've worshiped, ways that they reproduced
themselves. The evolution of the city—I'm being somewhat anticipatory—will
continue to cause them anguish because a process of complete
deterritorialization is taking place.
We are all urban.
What characterizes a city today is a space shared by a certain number of people
in a given period of time: the time it takes to get there, move around, meet
other people. From the moment we—many of us—can access or share a territory,
we belong to that territory, and that territory becomes urban. We belong to a
city. We're going to end up urban even if we live in the country, on our little
farm twenty kilometers from the nearest village. We will also be part of the
"city." Time, not space, will determine our being a part of urban
life in the future.
J.B. Only in the vision you've just given of the city
to come, the city is no longer a form in the process of becoming; it's an extended
network. That's fine, you can define it as you have, but that urban life is no
longer the life of the city but its infinite possibility: a virtual urban life,
like playing on the keyboard of the city as if it were a land of screen. I saw
it as the end of architecture ... by pushing the concept to its limit and
primarily by using the photograph as a point of departure. This is reflected in
the idea that the great majority of images are no longer the expression of a
subject, or the reality of an object, but almost exclusively the technical
fulfillment of all its intrinsic possibilities. It's the photographic medium
that does all the work. People think they're photographing a scene, but they're
only technical operators of the device's infinite virtuality. The virtual is
the device that wants nothing more than to function, that demands to function.
And to exhaust all its possibilities. Doesn't the same thing happen in
architecture, with its infinite potential, not only in terms of materials but
in terms of models, all the forms that are available to architects (postmodern
or modern)? From that moment on, everything is arranged according to ... We can
no longer even speak of truth, in the sense that there might be a finality to
architecture, but we can't speak of radicality, either; we're in the realm of
pure virtuality.
Virtual Architecture, Real Architecture
J.B. So is there still an architecture in the
virtual sense? Would it still exist? Or should it exist? Can we continue to
call it architecture? We can combine things, techniques, materials, configurations
in space indefinitely, but will it produce architecture? I finally realized
that the Guggenheim in Bilbao was typically the type of object made of complex
compositions, a building established using elements whose modules are all
exposed, all the combinations expressed. You could imagine a hundred museums
of the same type, analogous, obviously none of which would resemble one
another.
J.N. You can rely on Frank Gehry to surprise you!
J.B. He's
wonderful—it really is marvelous—and I'm not making a value judgment about the
object itself, but the structure of production and fabrication that made the
building possible. As I see it, this architecture no longer possesses the
literality I was talking about, that is, the presence of a singular form that
couldn't be translated into another form. The Guggenheim itself is infinitely
translatable into many other kinds of objects, as part of a chain. You get the
impression that there could be a possibility of architectural evolution in this
way. But let's say, to go back to my photography example, that the camera itself
generates a nearly uninterrupted stream of images. If we accept this, the
device could reproduce everything, generate images endlessly. And within that
visual stream we can hope that there are one or two exceptional images that
don't obey this indefinite, exponential logic of technology. But isn't this
similar to the risk architecture is exposed to? At bottom, since we were
talking about readymades, I would say that the Guggenheim is a readymade. All
the elements are there from the start. The only thing we need to do is
transpose them, permute them, play with them in different ways, and we've made
architecture. Only the transposition itself is automatic, a bit like an
automatic writing of the world or the city would be. We can imagine whole cities
built on this principle In some
American cities, this is already true. And it's no longer just an engineering
question. In the past we could say that engineers constructed, generation
after generation, based on minimal standards. But in the Guggenheim example, something
else is going on that starts with a creative model that is already virtual. We
descend from virtuality to reality, in any event toward real existence—with the
difference that, unlike information technology or mathematical modeling, in
architecture, we end up with an object.
J.N. In the Bilbao Guggenheim, we're witnessing a
new computer revolution in the service of architecture. That is, a new
computer- based approach that would give substance to the idea, would lock or
fix the most fleeting things, regardless of their immediacy. What's great
about Frank Gehry is that he will make a sketch, crumple the paper, start over,
and connect the sketch on paper or the relief drawing to an enormous program.
From that point, the computer takes over and will begin to weave it all together,
constructing an image in space, materializing something that is instantaneous
and unstable, opening a direct passage from desire to the built reality. With
Frank Gehry, we're watching this shortcut as it takes place, which is quite
rare.
J.B. Even so, he has an extraordinary playing field to
work with. J.N. That's an optimistic assumption.
J.B. When you walk around the Guggenheim, you realize
that the building is, as far as its lines are concerned, illogical. But when
you see the interior spaces, they are almost completely conventional. In any
case there is no relation between those spaces and the building's ideality.
J.N. Some of them are conventional because they have to
obey museographical conventions. We haven't found a better way to exhibit
Kandinsky, Picasso, and Braque other than on bright walls in quiet spaces. But
there are also singular spaces: the lobby, the large hall, which is 250 meters
long. Finally, there's also an attempt to adapt dream to reality, as always, but
a very
beautiful
adaptation However, where I do see a
danger— and I'm talking about 90 percent of global production at this time,
certainly for all the large buildings—is in this way of making architecture by
recycling existing computer-based data and coupling that with an extremely
curtailed design procedure for the building. We're currently experiencing a
wave of architectural cloning. From the moment an office building is made on
the basis of an existing typology, whose technology and price and the conditions
for its realization are known, we can duplicate that building and have it
constructed without having to pay for a new design. This has resulted in the
introduction of well-defined technical procedures that enable companies to
enter the international market. In Asia, South America—look at Sao Paulo, for
example—buildings are going up where there is no sense of architectural intent
at all. It's a form of architectural sabotage, prostitution. You used film and
the world of politics as examples, both of which are also undergoing wholesale
sabotage. Well, here I see architectural sabotage. You get the impression
that architects themselves are going to produce the types of buildings that
totally counter anything that could result in quality or a sense of nobility
for a city. This type of architecture is proliferating at an alarming rate. The
most efficient economic models are moving in that direction
Computer Modeling and Architecture
J.N. Is there anything easier than reusing existing
data, given the fact that the computer can modify that data so quickly? You
change a parameter here, another there, and after a few hours, it's done. The
system is ready for a new building. Consequently, buildings are not really
thought out; they are based on immediate profitability and hasty decision
making. This also involves the complete sacrifice of a dimension that many feel
belongs to another time There
is no further need for public spaces, no further need to compose; all we have
to do is accumulate. I need to buy a building. This is the way I can have it
for the lowest cost and as quickly as possible. The parameters are simple,
there's no need for any equations.
J.B. Within that architectural space, does the
possibility still exist for the architect to make his mark?
J.N. Most of the time there is no architect in the
sense generally understood. There are engineers who are pretty efficient at
working with the standards. And those standards are associated with certain
humanist or behavioral attitudes. In Europe, for example, you can't sell an
office building that doesn't have direct light. In the United States, for a
variety of reasons, standards can differ considerably from those in Europe. For
example, you're authorized to use artificial light. In other words, let's say
you have a building that's fifty meters deep and your offices are in the center
of the building; you'll see the first window twenty meters away, and you'll be
in artificial light all the time. Those buildings, which are the cheapest to
build, sell well in Asia and South America. But no consideration is given to
human comfort. And it isn't the "developed" countries that have the
most advanced humanist standards! Often it's in the poorest cities that you
find spontaneous acts of creation. These can be considered magnificent
architectural achievements, even when they use corrugated sheet metal or pieces
of rag. Here we can identify a poetics that is really a form of creation,
whereas in the other cases, we're getting pretty far away from that.
J.B. So what constitutes a particular space today,
assuming architects still have any creative freedom?
J.N. Fortunately, all the conditions aren't in place
yet for eliminating architecture. Within the evolution of the city there will
always be a marginal place left for a handful of aesthetes-—aesthetes in their
own life and in their behavior—within highly privileged environments. What I
wonder most about is what those cities will become. In the near future, they
won't be anything like what we're familiar with today. If the South is going to
develop and catch up to the level of the cities of the North, using the same
methods, it's going to take generations, and I don't see where the money is
going to come from. No, I think there we're going to witness a true mutation.
J.N. I even think that the next architectural and urban
mutation will affect our relationship to matter. Other forms of mediation will
be involved, and the mutation will shift toward the immaterial. Everything
that is immaterial, virtual, sonorous, and part of the world of communication
is already mutating. For example, anything that doesn't involve the creation of
complex infrastructures will have an advantage. Everything that avoids pushing
energy through enormous conduits, high-voltage lines, that sort of thing. Our
thoughts for the future should be focused on autonomy, lightness. This will
lead us to the promotion of emerging and environmentally friendly forms of
energy such as solar or wind energy, satellite communications for the transmission
of data, everything that fosters the local breakdown of waste rather than its
centralization. It is this kind of thinking that can give rise to new
strategies that will completely alter our current notion of urban development,
an evolution that will result in the appearance of a "noncity" city,
an urban territory. This kind of development can take into account the need for
stable development. I'm describing a growing trend, and we're still a long way
off from its realization, but it seems to me that this is one example of a
realizable Utopia.
J.B. Unfortunately I feel that in the future, as you
mentioned, the great majority of construction, of building needs, will be
technocratic, modeled. We will also have a luxury architecture reserved for a
handful of privileged individuals. We see this happening in a number of fields,
society, art... and the trend is toward increasing discrimination—contrary to
what we believe—a discrimination that runs counter to the objectives of
democracy and modernity. I'm not sure whether or not architecture can play a
role in all this. Even so, it has wanted to play a role in these developments,
an equalizing role, if not a humanist one.
J.N. Yes, but then this would be a result.
Unfortunately it's not through architecture that we're going to change the
world!
J.B. Yes, that's true, but I'm an idealist, I still
believe we can change the world through architecture. It's
Utopian for all intents and purposes, yes. Utopian architecture
was ultimately a realized architecture. But in the future, doesn't the trend
risk moving in the opposite direction? Isn't there some danger that architecture
may become a tool of discrimination?
J.N. Although architecture may be unable to influence
politics to change the world, politics has a responsibility to make use of
architecture to achieve its social, humanitarian, and economic objectives. The
economic dimension of culture—whether it's architectural or not—is taken into
account in the industrialized countries. Since I'm an idealist as well, I dream
about programs for quickly resolving the living conditions of those who are
most disadvantaged. But not using traditional poured-concrete solutions, which
end up cloning monotonous seventies-style towers and linear block buildings in
Seoul and Sao Paulo. No, I'm praying for genuine self-awareness. Only the
readymades can provide very, very low production and distribution costs through
automated production that can generate millions of copies. In today's
shantytowns, it's easier to have a car or a television than a sink I dream of project requirements that incorporate
the use of the least-expensive materials, the lightest, most flexible, easiest
to cut and assemble, drill or handle corrugated
tin, ribbed plastic, lightweight channel, cables, sheet metal, project
requirements that include the hardware, small ready-made machines produced by
the millions, which can make the best possible use of our knowledge of energy
self- sufficiency. ... I dream about habitat packages that can be parachuted
in, along with a few tools, but don't predetermine the shape of the structures
that can be built. I'd like to replace the old concept of the seventies of an architecture
designed for the greatest number with an individual architecture not based on
some cookie-cutter model I don't know of
a single UNESCO program today that's pushing this in any radical way. Still,
we're not heading for disaster; we're already in the midst of total disaster.
J.B. This year, in Buenos Aires, I spoke about the
future of architecture. Yes, I believe in its future even though, as you
mention, it won't necessarily be architectural, for the simple reason that we
haven't yet designed the building to end all buildings, we haven't yet created
the city to end all cities, a thought to end all thoughts. So as long as this
Utopia remains unrealized, there's hope, we must go on. We have to recognize
that everything that's happening now on the technological side is dizzying, the
modification of the species, and so forth. However, in twenty years we will
have succeeded in making the transition from sexuality without procreation to
procreation without sexuality.
J.N. Let's change the mode of reproduction for
architecture! Let's invent a sexual reproduction of architecture.
J.B. Procreation
without sexuality challenges the idea of sexuality without procreation—which
has been the essence of eroticism. As the laboratory grows in importance, the
field of eroticism will, for the most part, start to implode_________________________________ But
sexuality isn't the only thing. With genetic engineering, they're in the process
of studying genes for future modification. American clinics already exist where
people can type in the characteristics of their future infant so that it
doesn't turn out homosexual. Obviously, most of it is a scam, but that doesn't
matter because there is total belief in the fact that we'll be able to improve
the species, that is, invent another species. If we look at the human species
as it is, or architecture as a historical form, or the city as a symbolic form,
what comes afterward? An exponential proliferation of things in combinatorial
fashion? At that point, we've entered an abstract mental space, but one that's
realized. 1116/re not just formulas.
J.N. We can make an analogy. Imagine the cloning of
genetically programmed buildings; it's easier with buildings than with people.
It's a kind of new superfunctionalism, virtual functional- ism, which is not
the functionalism of the old organic and social functions, use value, et
cetera. It's something different. We need to determine if the new data are
going to remain significant, since we're currently witnessing the sacrifice of
architecture. Perceptible data are becoming a thing of the past. We can be
optimists and assume that we're going to become true virtuosos of this new programming
and we'll be able to integrate a whole range of information and assumptions
capable of producing an absolutely terrific space, articulated around the
problematic of the environment that's been eating at us. It's a question of survival.
We have to integrate modern ecology.
J.B. The environment, ecology... I'm prejudiced against
them. I feel that ecology exists precisely through the disappearance of
"natural" data. Everything that is part of nature or natural must be
eliminated if we are to build a perfect artificial world, where natural species
will exist in "artificially protected" reserves.
Architecture as the Desire for Omnipotence
J.B. You get the feeling that the desire for omnipotence that drives
architecture—look at large government projects, for example— no longer has
anything to do with the image of itself it wants to project, a bit like what's
going on in genetic engineering. A geneticist today thinks he's replacing the
mother and the father: he's the one who creates the child! He's the deus ex machina that creates the
child, a child who originates with him and is no longer embedded in a sequence
of natural descent.
J.N. It's been a long time since architects thought
they were gods! Their only fear is that someone is going to snatch that dream
away. Architecture is simply the art of necessity. Three-quarters of the time,
aside from the necessity of use and custom, there is no architecture—or it's
sculpture, commemoration.
J.B. There's a
funny little museum—I'm sure you're familiar with it—that was built by Kenzo Tange in Nice. It's
adorable. It's a delicious little building that sits on a body of water, not
far from the airport. It was built about three or four years ago and has
remained empty since then because there was never any funding to buy content
for it. So the museum has remained empty, and it's marvelous, a jewel. Over the
past five or six years, Kenzo
Tange hasn't built anything himself. So this maybe the last project he
accepted He had reached his zenith.
J.N. Sometimes the name of a great architect is like a
brand. So we continue to build under the Kenzo Tange brand. I'm in a very good position to know
this because I discovered a bad clone of one of my projects in Tokyo. The basic
project involved the grid of the horizon used for the Tкte Dйfense, the perspective
background for the historical axis between the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe, a project that was
awarded second prize in the president's competition in 1982. Sprekelsen won
first prize for the Grande Arche,
which is now completed.
My design was an attempt to go beyond traditional
Albertian perspective, where the sky is an always unfinished canvas. During
the classical period, unfinished canvases revealed a checkerboard network of
fine lines behind the painting that served as a grid so that the original
cartoon could be enlarged. In my case, I imprinted a disembodied network on the
horizon, dividing the void in the Arc de Triomphe into barely visible squares. The building was a
three-dimensional orthogonal grid, like a gigantic Sol LeWitt sculpture. The
sun set along the axis, directly to the west, to create what I call
"mathematical sunsets." From a distance, it was two-dimensional,
without depth; from up close it provided a sense of hyperperspective, a bit
like an Escher drawing. So in Tokyo they built this three-dimensional grid and
included, following the same proportions as La Dйfense, a building at each
end. But since the building wasn't carefully situated with respect to the
setting sun, they built an artificial sun into the grid, a ball of shiny steel
that, in the evening, was artificially illuminated with red, violet, orange
light When I saw the building one
evening, from a distance, I thought I was
hallucinating_ But as fate would have it—and you should
enjoy this—the fatal element is that on the other side of Tokyo Bay, just a few
kilometers away and separated only by the water, I was building a large, airy
tower. From my project in Tokyo, I could see my grid, my mathematical sunset,
and an artificial sunset!
J.B. And what about your projects for the Universal
Exposition in Germany? We have a pretty good script about the work: the living
work, the dead work, the spectral work. The spectral is self-perpetuating, like
life; death is scattered among all the virtual productive forms. Some thought
went into that project.
J.N. I explained that to Frйdйric Flamand, the choreographer, who
is going to stage this living spectacle like an exposition. The big question
that remains is the freedom of artists working with partnerships that only
provide financing if they like the message This
is no longer traditional sponsorship But
that's the way exhibitions will be financed in the future. They will sponsor
set design We're inside the subject.
We'll have to provide subtitles.
J.B. Does Berlin have any special meaning for you, as
part of contemporary Europe?
J.N. Berlin's destiny is an intimate part of the
century. It's a historic capital with a fabulous heritage—much of it due to K.
F. Schinkel—that became capital of the Third Reich, was given the once-over by
Speer, was partly destroyed, but survived, a captive abandoned to its
conquerors. The city was martyred, cut up in pieces, and it still bears the
stigmata. Then the city was freed and
betrothed to Europe once again a queen. It's a great story, straight
out of Dumas—the Countess of Monte Cristo!
J.B. And what about the center of the city? Is there
any stated political or urban plan that's been expressly implemented?
J.N. The urban policy referred to as "critical
reconstruction" goes something like this: "Let's pretend nothing ever
happened Let's reconstruct
traditional buildings, opaque walls and small windows. Let's triumphantly fill
everything that's empty. Let's put the cupola back on the Reichstag."
There had been some vague impulse to establish an urban strategy when the Wall
came down. One of the major dailies organized an appeal for ideas directed to
seven or eight international architects. I proposed to them that they
transform the no-man's-land near the Wall into a long "meeting line,"
which would serve as a place where all the city's cultural events, sports,
leisure activities, bars, restaurants, nightclubs, would be concentrated,
face-to-face. By reversing the previous situation, the dividing line would become
a weld, fullness would succeed the void, joy follow sadness, freedom prohibition But most of all, the city's history would
remain embedded in its streets and stones I
feel that the desire to wipe away those years is antithetical to the development
of Berlin's identity and specificity. The city has plenty of reasons to be proud
of its uniqueness, to demonstrate that it was able to make the most of a tragic
past.
J.B. In Berlin
there has been a temptation to historicize everything, to include even the
most horrible things in the city's heritage. This reminds me of the time they
thought one of Brazil's largest favelas was part of the world's patrimony.
J.N. Yes, before
the fall of the Wall... But at the scale of the neighborhood, Berlin has shown
a great deal of good sense in the way it has dealt with vegetation and water.
The Germans are more fastidious than we are in working out microstrategies for
innovation and management of the city on the day-to-day level.
J.B. Which is very different from Frankfurt and the
other cities. Moreover, in 1968, when the same movements were under way in both
Germany and France, there were more communities in Germany, but there were also
larger apartments with common kitchens, and living was easier. In France we
never succeeded; the big apartments were too expensive. By the way, it seems
that the windows in the Galeries Lafayette ...
Architecture as the Art of Constraint J
J.N. Now, if the buildings are well-known, as soon
as something happens, everyone knows about it. Still, you should be aware of
the fact that the glass is designed to fall without injuring anyone. Like a car
windshield. But I get the feeling that, in our age of hypersecurity, we're
going to need more than safety glass! In fact, we've turned security into a key
factor. Architecture is the art of constraint; we have to deal with that. I
often use the example of film because we function much as movie directors—directors
and architects are the ones who work with the most constraints in this cultural
universe. We have roughly the same relationship to a client, or a producer, or
a promoter. They give us a certain amount of money to work with, and they like
to see it multiply, without having any disasters on their hands. We have crews
that need to be directed within a given amount
of time, and there's censorship. It's a very special situation, and ultimately
quite different from anything a writer encounters.
J.B. If it's a question of security, then yes, it is.
J.N. The writer, the man of letters, the philosopher—they don't need to
ask anyone's permission.
J.B. You seem to think that writing takes place without constraints.
It's true that I have fewer than you, but as a writer, thinker, or researcher,
I'm dependent on a system, for example, an editorial system, that is becoming
increasingly incomprehensible.
J.N. The essential thing is that you, you can write a book that may be
forgotten for thirty years if no one wants to publish your work, but it still
exists, whereas a building in a drawing doesn't
exist_ A manuscript, even
when it's locked in a drawer, exists.
A filmmaker who only writes treatments or an architect who only
constructs drawings accomplishes nothing.
J.B. In that sense, the book is a prehistoric product! It's true that
the book is not delivered to the reader or listener in real time, it only
exists somewhere. But within a real-time hegemonic culture, the book exists
for no more than a few weeks. That's the price we pay: it simply disappears.
J.N. There are miracles: Emily Dickinson was rediscovered many years
later.
J.B. The science of security has total control. It's everywhere; it
exercises control in the form of censorship. Health is also involved, all
those so-called positive functions like protection, the environment. They can
backfire dangerously by using censorship to fight singularity.
J.B. Take the idea of transparency, for example.
It's something extraordinary that expresses the play of light, with something
that appears and disappears, but at the same time, you get the impression that
it also involves a subtle form of censorship. This search for "transparency"
with which our era is fascinated is at the very least ambivalent in its
relation to power.
J.N. Obviously that's not exactly my ideological
view of transparency! It's true that transparency can be awful if it is used
incorrectly. What interests me in the evolution of architecture right now is
the relation between matter and light, which can become something highly
strategic. I'm much more interested in the relation between matter and light
exposed by the transparency or opacity of glass, for example, than by formal
spatial parameters. Throughout the century, we have explored a variety of
techniques, and now we know just
about where we are, and there's no apparent reason to choose one form rather
than another. But the problem of "essence" (of a form, an architecture,
a given space) is a much more contemporary problem, associated with the
evolution of our knowledge about matter and quantum physics, the discovery of
fractals, et cetera. These are the consequences of the advance science and
technology have on our awareness of how we apprehend the world, space, time,
which are also going to change our perceptual relation to space. The trend
today is to consider that constructing a piece of architecture means becoming
part of a continuum, it means building in space.
J.N. You have to think of light as matter—and God
knows, even for quantum physics, that's the crux of the problem. Physicists are
currently trying to determine if a photon has mass, and they'll continue until
they find its mass. For now, that mass is beyond what researchers are capable
of determining, but they"re pretty sure it exists. So what does
"transparency" mean? If we use certain materials,
we'll be able to program a building differentially over time and play with
ephemeral effects. You could say that traditional or classic architecture has
always played with the permanence of architectural effects. More and more,
we're trying to work with concepts involving the programming of complex
architectural effects for the same building. And working with transparency involves
nothing more than working with matter to give a building different appearances.
If I am working with glass, I can program what I'm going to see. It can depend
on whether I light it from the front or the back; I can play with depth of
field, with transparency in the strict sense of the term. I can work with
backlighting and a number of other things. There's a way of treating
transparency by interpreting it strictly: "I'm going to do something that
won't be seen, and I'm going to see everything through it." On the
architectural level, it's nothing but pornography....
J.B. The opposite of a secret, obscenity.
J.N. My buildings try to play with the effects of virtuality, appearance.
Viewers wonder if the material is present or not. We create virtual images, we
create ambiguity. A building can play with transparency effects, but it does so
through another element, which is reflection. At the Cartier Foundation
building, the viewer never knows if they're seeing the sky or its reflection.
Generally, you see both, and that ambiguity creates an interplay of multiple
appearances. At the same time, the building makes use of the most trivial
function of transparency for the exhibition space. There, you know that what
is exposed in the interior is going to change the nature of the building, or at
least one's perception of it—but it's designed for that. Walking in front of
the building, you see a display.
J.B. That's what was so
extraordinary about the opening of the Issey Miyake exhibit, because you had
the designer's mobile elements inside, then you had a figurative representation
formed by the guests themselves—most of the women were dressed in Issey
Miyake—which created a second element in the overall design. But you also made
the entire building transparent, which served as the general set design.
Standing outside the building, you saw the action unfold in the space where the
items were displayed and which had itself become an object in the exhibition.
J.N. It would be very interesting to have a picture
of the building that reveals all the exhibits that have taken place inside.
One image I get a great deal of satisfaction from, in terms of understanding
the Cartier Foundation space, is the By Night
exhibition that took place there. The entire ground floor, plunged in
darkness, remained completely dark for three months. That was part of the
project. Transparency is also trans-appearance
We shouldn't consider this an ideology based on our
ability to reveal everything, control everything.
J.B. But that sense is still included in the idea
of transparency, whether you want it to be or not.... And it implies a good
deal more than just architecture. It implies all the means of information, a totality
of information about oneself.... The idea of setting the attractions, the
secrets of transparency against the dictatorship of transparency, of
contrasting the interplay of the visible and the invisible against absolute
visibility, is quite subtle. There are constructions that yield to the most
trivial transparency, as a vector of power, focusing on the elimination of
secrets. It only serves to reveal that it is no longer part of what we see.
J.N. What interests me about transparency is the
idea of evaporation. Ever since man became man, he has fought against fate,
against the elements, against matter. He started off building stone by stone,
then made windows with small pieces of oiled paper, then learned how to do
other things. There is a kind of architectural "Darwinism" at work,
which is an evolutionary process through which man attempts to cover the
maximum amount of space, the largest surface, insulate the most but with the
least amount of material, without looking like he did anything. There's been a
tremendous push forward that still isn't over and never will be. We can
summarize it as follows: how can we resolve the most material problems with the
greatest amount of elegance? It involves the domination of matter. For example,
the progress made in glass technology during the century has been astonishing.
Among other advantages, it's made from sand, and it doesn't require colossal
amounts of energy. Glass has good durability, and now we are able to do more or
less what we want with it. We can do a great job insulating glass because it
contains particles that can't be seen with the naked eye. Glass can be opaque
or transparent; it can change color. Glass is also a kind of language, a kind
of mutant material, a material subject to a wide range of subtle treatments. Glass
is a significant trend.
J.B. Isn't there a danger of seeing a proliferation
of glass the way there was for plastic? A danger that it will become a
universal material?
J.N. Yes, because it's very flexible in the way it
can be used; you can do whatever you want with it. Because of this
architectural Darwinism, glass has acquired a number of qualities; it lends
itself well to the interplay of materials because it's the only material that
allows you to visually program a building by giving it different looks. One of
the trends in architecture today is to capture everything that can affect this
awareness of the moment. We're also trying to capture variations of time, the
seasons, the movements of visitors, and all of that is part of the
architectural composition. There's also the idea of fragility, which is
conveyed by the glass or by transparency—in the sense of a more living, more
poignant reality. Even though, ever since banks started using glass for
protection, transparency has taken quite a hit.
J.B. At least we still have the idea. In fact, like
many others, the word "transparency" has undergone considerable
semantic evolution. Previously it stood for a kind of absolute ideal. We could
believe in the transparency of our social relationships or our relation to
power. Now it's turning into a form of terror.
J.N. Yes, now
it's become a pretext, and this didn't just begin today. Stained-glass windows
were also used to similar effect. The Sainte-Chapelle was there long before we
were! But if we consider that architecture involves creating a poetics of
sorts, an instantaneous metaphysics, then transparency assumes a different
meaning. You have the idea of the solid and the ephemeral. The concept of
perennity still remains the characteristic of architecture that is most often
acknowledged. Consider a pyramid
J.B. We want architecture to be something that
survives us. However, that's no longer a factor for modern architecture—at
least this is the way it seems to me. Or it's a factor that's been disguised,
diverted; it's been turned into something like "saving time."
Overtaking the moment.
J.N. Yes, but why is a building preserved? A
building is preserved as soon as it's loved.
J.B. Humans, too!
What Does Architecture Bear Witness To?
J.N. When a building serves as a witness to a
bygone era, it is preserved. If a building is considered a suitable prospect
for bearing witness, even if it's very fragile, like Katsura or, an example
closer to home, the Eiffel Tower or Beaubourg, it is preserved. The fact that
we maintain it, spruce it up, repair it, preserve it in perfect condition, is
part of a ritual of conservation. Once a building has reached this dimension of
"bearing witness," it is, at least in a sense, archived, put under
seal. Just because it's made of reinforced concrete or granite doesn't mean it
will resist the depredations of time—the buildings constructed around the time
of the Second World War are already in pretty bad shape, whatever Paul Virilio
may think. In Berlin, for example, Bauhaus buildings have been preserved,
while those from the fifties are being leveled left and right.
J.B. Le Corbusier's Villa Savoy has never been as
lovely. It's been perfectly maintained and is more beautiful now than it was
originally, more mature. I'd go as far as to say that our architectural heritage
has been enriched. Look at the Oriental influence in Frank Lloyd Wright, wood
and brick. Consider the destiny that would have had At the time, the avant-garde in architecture was involved
with organic forms, made with ephemeral materials that weren't destined to
last, like Las Vegas. For me, since I've known the city for thirty years, it's
been a real massacre.
J.N. Sometimes the Americans are so outrageous that the result is really
outstanding. We'll continue to complain about this outra- geousness until the
day we wake up in shock In any case,
architecture is, paradoxically, unviewable; only a very small part of what's
built counts Even Frank Lloyd Wright,
who had considerable influence on the century, who built hundreds of houses,
including Falling Water, a handful of large buildings such as the Johnson Wax
building and the Guggenheim ... Even with him, it's not so easy to uncover his
tracks in the United States.
J.N. Speaking of which, I very much liked what you said
about our expectations of architects: that they are the ones still creating
"singular objects."
J.B. I don't
deserve the credit The object,
in an unfortunate sense, is to an extent the end of architecture as something
capable of translating a form belonging to the human community. Now, you mention
"singular objects," which reflects a different quality of the object.
J.N. For more than twenty years, I've been
defending the notion of the object's "hyperspecificity" contrary to
all the typological, ideological, and dogmatic information that it comprises.
J.B. At some point, architecture is like poetry:
you can provide all the interpretations of the poem you like, but it's always
there. The object is literal in the sense that it is fully exhausted in itself.
You no longer wonder about architecture or poetry;
you have an object that literally absorbs you, that is perfectly resolved in
itself. That's my way of expressing singularity.... And it's essential that at
a given point in time this singularity become an event; in other words, the
object should be something that can't simply be interpreted, sociologically,
politically, spatially, even aesthetically The object may be quite beautiful
and not be a singular object. It will be part of the general aesthetic, of
global civilization. Yes, I think some can still be found But we also have to take into account
the way the individual's singular perception divides the world. There are no
standards, there are no formulas, there's no aesthetic or even functional matrix
you can apply. The same object can satisfy all the functions we assign to it.
That doesn't prevent it from possessing this extra quality.
J.N. Could we go so far as to say that the greater
its singularity, the greater the chance it will be appreciated? That would be a
consequence more than anything else.
J.B. Anything can be appreciated; I'm very
skeptical about the notion It's not
a question of relations, affects. You can have an affect for any object
whatsoever that singularizes it for you. But at some point, what's needed is a
different kind of awareness. If you like it, it becomes your dog and not
someone else's. But this is something different, which is harder to articulate,
because it can't be grasped intellectually.... It even seems to me that there's
something a bit demoniacal in it, in the German sense of the word.
J.N. In the case of singularity, the aesthetics of
the object is not fundamental to the extent that aesthetics obeys a type of convention,
a type of judgment. You may feel an object is ugly, very ugly, uglier than
ugly, monstrously ugly, and yet it can become in itself an entity that is
absolutely essential. By that very fact, the object will become beautiful.
Fortunately, it's not necessary to respect aesthetic codes to define
singularity. The interesting thing is the ability to differentiate yourself
from them and transgress them.
J.B. Take the Louvre Pyramid. At one point there was a movement to prevent its construction,
because it was ugly. Then everyone calmed down.
J.N. It became widely accepted through use. But to me,
it's not an example of a singular object.
J.B. It's obviously an academic object. But
audacity, or the lack of audacity, is something that belongs not solely to an
isolated object but also to the space it generates. At La Dйfense, in spite of
everything, we can say that a strange space has been generated. Moreover, at
first we don't know whether an object will become singular or not. This is what
I referred to previously in terms of "becoming," of becoming—or not
becoming—singular. It's a question not of change but of becoming. And this is
something we can't determine. Sometimes even circumstances, whether they're
historical, sociological, or whatever, trigger an object's singular becoming.
J.N. Pure event, "I perceive architecture as
pure event," you said.
J.B. I'm interested in the things that shock me. I
was writing about architecture as pure event, beyond beauty and ugliness.
J.N. But you contrast the "singular" with
the "neutral" and the "global."
J.B. Yes, I differentiate global, universal, and
singular.
J.N. And with respect to the neutral, you were kind
enough to add: "We don't need architects for that!"
Neutrality, Universality, and Globalization
J.B. I would say the same for literature, thought,
art, et cetera.
Neutrality is assured; there's no problem with that. It's the total security
we're offered day after day. Neutrality has never had a good reputation because
neutral things are indifferent. At the very least, it signifies an absence of
quality, the nonqualitative. It's not the kind of thing you can like; we
perceive the mass, conformity. But now we're seeing the emergence of another
form of neutrality, which appears in the literal sense of the term this time.
In fact, all it can do is appear;
since it is defined within a domain where all possibilities neutralize one
another. This domain is different than before, when there was neither quality
nor relief. Here it's the opposite. You have a "dynamic" neutrality
that is open to so many possibilities that they are all neutralized, like the
history of the still camera I mentioned earlier, a device that allows you to
take all possible photographs. From that point on, you are neutralized as a subject.
This neutrality, for me, is the baseline of the human species—and we can reach
the same point in architecture, as well. It's a cultural effect, a choice, our
choice. It's true, I contrast the singular with the neutral, but I also
contrast it with the global. We need to be clear about our terms. There is a
considerable difference between the universal and globalization. The universal
remains a system of values, and in principle, everyone can access it. It's
still the object of certain conquests. But little by little, it's becoming
neutralized; cultures are being juxtaposed. Nonetheless the result is still a
top-down equalization, through value, whereas in the process of globalization,
we're witnessing a bottom-up leveling, according to the lowest common
denominator. This is the "Disneyfication" of the world.
Unlike the values
that drive universalization, globalization will be a theater of intense discrimination,
the site of the worst discrimination. It will be a "pyramidal"
globalization, so to speak. The society it generates will always be dissociated
and no longer a society of conflict. One has the impression that between the
two, that is, between those who will have access to information technology, the
future "wired" world, and the others, the connection will have been
broken. The two halves of society will become disconnected. They will each go
down their own path, in parallel, and one will tend increasingly toward sophistication
with respect to knowledge, speed, while the other will live with its
exclusion—but without conflict, without any gateways.
It's more dangerous than a revolt because it neutralizes conflict itself.
Forget about class struggle! There won't even be any "clashes."
Forget revolution. There won't be any relations of force; the fuse has melted.
That's globalization. In the English-language press, the term refers primarily
to economic markets. I mean something much more comprehensive. But it's the
same underlying process if you look at it conceptually. It's an identification,
a totalization—of the field of neutrality—it stands in contrast to the
universal, which was an idea, a value, a Utopia.
This is the dimension of "realized" objects. In the case of the
universal, it's the particular that stands opposite; in the case of
globalization, if s singularity, a radicality of a different order. And one
that doesn't enter into direct conflict with antagonistic forces. This isn't a
revolutionary force; it exists elsewhere, is developed elsewhere, disappears.
It's interesting to observe what remains of the irreducible in this process of
globalization, this irreversible movement. This movement is a system, contrary
to what the term would seem to imply, for the term "globalization"
appears to imply that everything is comprised within it. But that's not the
case. This movement is going to create a virtual hypersociety that will have
access to all the resources—this much is clear—and all the power. Members of
this hypersociety will be an absolute minority, an increasing minority, and in
the majority of cases—in generic terms—the rest will remain excluded. So we'll
be moving toward these parallel, dualistic societies, where things no longer
function the same way on either side of the divide. What will that mean for
life on earth? I don't know, but I have the impression that it's happening now
in cities.
In this sense, the cities are prophetic. They are moving toward a kind
of virtuality in terms of real, natural, traditional space. On the plane of the
real, of reality, space is shared, while the most abstract virtual space is
never shared. It's the privilege of those who have access to it. We won't be
dealing with a dominant class any longer, but a computer-rich intelligentsia
that will give free rein to complete speculation. Yet ultimately that's how
Europe is being created. The euro, which is so much in the news today,
is the epitome of the virtual object, imposed from above. All imposed decrees
are established without any relation to actual opinion, but who cares, it will
happen, and it did happen! Everyone will operate within a parallel market, a
kind of black market, with its markups; everyone will organize their escape as
well. Increasingly we'll see parallel sites spring up: parallel markets,
parallel work, moonlighting, peripheral capitals, and so on. And in a sense,
that's fortunate, because if control of one over the other were total, it would
be an unbeatable defense strategy.
You almost get the
impression that things were predestined to be this way.
J.B. For me, destiny is something that cannot be
exchanged. This is true up to and including construction: what can't be
exchanged for its own end is subject to destiny, to a form of becoming and
singularity, a form of destiny. Predestination is a little different, for it
claims that the end is already present in the beginning, but doesn't eliminate
the end. In one sense, the end is already there; a cycle of predestination is
then established. Destiny is what can't be inscribed within a finalizing
continuity, something that can't be exchanged, whether for better or worse. I
feel that thought, theory, is inexchangeable. It can't be exchanged either for
truth or for reality. Exchange is impossible. It's because of this that theory
even exists. However, there are many cases where exchange is possible Maybe this reflects the history of the
city, architecture, space—there has to be a possibility of exchange so that
things can be exchanged with one another. But sometimes they don't get exchanged
at all. There may be no equivalent to a given building, there's no need, it
can't be exchanged against anything else. They'll build another one, but as it
stands, it can't be exchanged for something else. It's an unhappy fate, a
failure in a certain sense. However, singular things can't be exchanged,
either; they're autonomous. Only in this case, we can say that we're dealing
with a fully realized form.
J.N. There's something that amused me in all this talk
about destiny and fatality: when you finally advise the architect to not think!
J.B. Ah, yes!
When I said that we have too many ideas. I say the same thing about
philosophers, as well You have to
differentiate thought from ideas. I don't recommend that they not think; I
advise them against having too many ideas.
J.N. We know that this is difficult territory. We
know our fate isn't clear to us, and yet we still need a minimum amount of
strategy to deal with it. And that's what's actually going on. What kind of architecture
can survive, what kind will still have meaning in tomorrow's world, in a
context that we are in large part familiar with.
J.B. That we know almost too well. That's the problem. The Idea of
Architecture and History
J.B. One of the problems with today's architecture
is that we can no longer make architecture without having an idea of architecture
in mind, the history of architecture. In philosophy, for example, you have to
take history into account, the references to which ideas are subjected by history,
any number of heteroclite issues. That's where I say, "Let's not think too
much!" Whenever you have an architectural project in mind, different data
about space, history, the environment, the elements of the project, objectives,
finalities, all of that provides you with the information to produce a disconcerting
object that will be something quite different than the initial project. But if
you project too much, if your conceptualization is too narrow, the lode runs
out, and I think this is just as true in the field of theoretical research.
People who accumulate every reference they can lay their hands on, multiplying
the amount of data, carefully delineating the path they'll follow out toward
infinity, exhaust themselves before they can say... what? Nothing.
J.N. Yes, we can make architecture that is not about
architectural theory. Architecture is no longer an autonomous discipline. But
that doesn't force us to
think more, to broaden our field of investigation. The majority of the
buildings in our cities weren't thought out in that sense. They arrived there
through a kind of automatism, a lack of attention So I think, if we want singular objects, then we'll have to
use various kinds of analysis, reflection, connotation; we'll have to establish
relationships among contradictory objects. In short, we'll have to start
thinking.
J.B. Look, I don't want to make a mystery of
spontaneity. In fact, we should abdicate to serendipity.
J.N. Serendipity?
J.B.
Serendipity,yes. In fact, no one knows the exact definition
It's the idea of looking for something and finding
something completely different.
J.N. But I'm a big fan of the sport! I've been
practicing serendipity all my life without knowing it.
J.B. The important
thing is to have looked. Even if you miss what you were initially looking for,
the direction of the research itself shifts, and something else is discovered. The
concept is primarily applied to the sciences, but it's also the name of a
store in London, where you can find all sorts of things, except whatever it is
you're looking for. The word comes from the Sanskrit. It's a beautiful way of
saying "wisdom." It has been anchored in sacred Indian literature
for centuries.
J.N. At bottom we're looking for something, but we
never know what. When we find it, everything is all right Fortunately, in architecture there's
never a single correct response. There are millions of pathetic and a few thousand
exciting responses. All we need is to find one that can be realized. But these
responses are rarely simplistic. Paradoxically they are trying to be obvious
but indecipherable. There's nothing worse than a building whose recipes we know
by heart. In architectural conferences, you often hear people discuss kitchen
recipes that result in the creation of a building. People don't always want to
tell you "how," they don't want to reveal their strategy, but rather
want to create an aura of mystery that's essential for a certain type of
seduction.
J.B. In Buenos Aires the presentation of buildings
by different architects, all of them well-known, lasted five days. There was
never a question of the mystery you speak of, only the nature of the projects,
the development of a program, the results obtained, the international career
of the person exposing his or her work. With respect to this sense of mystery,
what we saw was incredibly impoverished.
J.N. We are dealing with thickness, something that
will never be totally elucidated, deciphered. There will always have to be
things that remain unsaid and things in which we lose ourselves. At the same
time, an architectural work should be capable of being experienced by people
with very different sensibilities. So we have to set up a certain number of
markers that can capture the attention or the interest of this highly diverse
group.
J.B. In a number of fields, this land of
sociological calculation is barely functional. The entire field of advertising
is focused on this type of approach, but in reality they have no idea what
they're doing.
J.N. It's true of literature, painting, music. The
great works, the great books, are universal. They affect people from all
cultures and all levels of education.
J.B. Yes, but to the extent that these artists are
able to create without giving in to the farce of art, art history, or
aesthetic codes. So it's possible, ultimately. It's as if the architect were
able to build without first reviewing the field of architecture, its history,
and everything that is constructed. The ability to create a vacuum is
undoubtedly the prerequisite for any act of authentic creation. If you don't
create a vacuum, you'll never achieve singularity. You may produce remarkable
things, but the heritage you have to deal with is such that you'll have to pass
through a whole genetics of accumulation.
J.N. Yes, but that doesn't rule out a strategy to flush
out...
J.B. Architecture can't be as spontaneous as writing.
J.N. Certainly. Still, what characterizes
architecture is its writing, the fact that we are able to recognize any detail
at all. This doesn't only involve an exterior shape. And if you look at all the
great architects of this century—Wright, Le Corbusier, Aalto, Kahn—you can
recognize them by the details. This singularity of their architecture is
remarkable. There must be something natural and spontaneous in it, but at the
same time, it's planned, worked on, premeditated.
J.B. You could say predestined.
J.N. This activity of premeditation is the thing
architecture needs the most at this time. It will prevent its banality,
mindless repetition, autism.
J.B. Not just anyone has the means to make his mark on
a building, but anyone can write a bad article. Facility, in this case, is
dangerous.
J.N. No, but many people are under the illusion that
depth, thought, comes about through omnipresent decoration. Decoration is used
to palliate this absence of intent, the incoherence of architecture. Generally
the architecture is hidden behind an ersatz facade. It's the obsession that
makes the difference; with decoration you can mimic anything, any universe.
There are decorators who could be considered architects. They work at revealing
the spirit of the place. This was true during the thirties, and it's still
true today when people like Starck succeed in transforming a place.
J.B. Do they
still speak of style in architecture? Because compared to singularity, I would
like to know what style is_______________________________________ We
recognize someone who has style, but the work
produced won't necessarily be the embodiment of a singular vision.
J.N. Except if
the style happens to be a singular vision It's
one of the big questions in architecture. Style addresses the problem of the
evolution of architecture. We can say that architects, in the twentieth
century, have positioned themselves as artists in the plastic arts. They've
appropriated the field; they5ve pretended it was also their own.
Once this formal identification was made, the number of caricatures began to
multiply: the ones who made everything white or everything blue, all in garlands,
and so on. That's how myths get started. For example, historically Meier's
architecture always turns out white. You're familiar with Ungers, who only does
squares; Baselitz, the artist, turns things upside down. Those are perfectly
identifiable styles that conceive of architecture as a preexisting vocabulary
that can be used according to a preexisting code. A style, in my sense of the
term, is something different. Style is a way of doing. But I can also suggest
another definition.... Personally, I'm very interested in the way a style
works, which has presented a problem— concerning me—for certain critics or
certain individuals, who wondered, "What's this guy doing?" When an architect's
way of doing something is identified, the way we recognize his style is as
well. If these artist-architects build, their building will always be
particular, since it will become their signature, in a way; but their approach
has no relation to other particularities that they could exploit but don't.
They are enclosed within a system. Style should reflect a singular way of
thinking the world.
J.N. You've said that you prefer complicity to
complexity. I like the idea very much. It reflects a real problem in
architecture. We manage to make things that are profound only through complicity,
and perhaps only through this complicity do we achieve a certain degree of
complexity, which isn't an end in itself. Often things are complex when they
have to be, quite simply. This preliminary search for complexity has long been
associated with a theory that claims that interesting things have to be complex
because we then escape from a completely repetitive form of simplicity. The
idea of complicity in architecture is more unusual, more uncommon. Complicity
is the only guarantee that we'll be able to push the boundaries. But we need to
consider this in a very broad sense. If this complicity is established, it
means that something more than simple comprehension is going on between
people, a shared meaning, mutual assistance. Obviously, I can't build the
Cartier Foundation building if I don't establish a relationship of complicity
with the person who conceived and manages it. And this complicity has to exist
among the crew, an enterprise, a global project There has to be a shared
dynamic, one that's often unspoken but translated into actions. However, the
word "complicity" is not always well received. In this world, where
everyone is trying to find their place, if you start weaving privileged links,
you're accused of plotting, of cheating. If you set up relationships that are
more than contractual, if you begin to enjoy doing something, you're called on
the carpet You're not supposed to have
fun while doing architecture! And you're especially not supposed to talk about
desire before talking about the project requirements. However, all the great architects
made their careers by exploiting this sense of complicity between contractor
and client. For example, look at Gaudi or Gehry: contractor and client were
inseparable.
J.B. Like seduction, "complicity" is a term
with a bad reputation. Both are contrasted with an ideology of transparency.
The complicity of a connection can't be "exposed," but at best suggested.
Personally, I'm not sure how free we are to accept such complicity. Obviously I
have a kind of prejudice against freedom. Against liberation, in any case.
Freedom has become the ideal of modernity. And this no longer seems to pose any
problems. When the individual is freed, he no longer knows what he is. Be
yourself! Be free! That's part of the idea, the new diktat of modernity. Under
the constraints of this new liberation, the individual is forced to find an
identity for himself. Today we still live with the ultimatum that we find our
identity, fulfill ourselves, realize our full potential. In this sense we are
"free" because we have the technical means for this realization. But
this is a prodigal freedom and culminates in individualism. It hasn't always
been like this. The freedom of a subject struggling with his freedom is
something else. Today we have an individual who isn't struggling with anything
but who has set himself the goal of realizing himself in every possible
dimension. We can't really postulate the problem of freedom. It's no more than
a kind of operationality.
J.N. Is that what you mean when you write,
"Ultimately, we exist in a society where the concept of architecture is no
longer possible, the architect no longer has any freedom"?
J.B. No, not exactly. What would freedom mean within an
ideological field that is no longer the same? Freedom in a state of subjection,
want, is an idea and, at the same time, a kind of destiny: you desire it, you
look for it. Liberation is not at all the same thing as freedom. That's what I
wanted to make clear. When you're free, when you think you're living a realized
freedom, it's a trap. You are standing before a mirage of the realization of
various possibilities.... Everything that was once idea, dream, Utopia, is virtually realized. You are
faced with the paradox of a freedom that has no finality. It's simply the consecration
of your identity.
J.N. What are you saying?
J.B. Well, that you have the right to fulfill
yourself in the name of this freedom. Simply put, at some point in time, you no
longer know who you are. It's a surgical operation. The history of your identity
helps set the trap. The sexes find their sexual identity, and nothing more is
shared between them, they exist in their own bubble. Alterity? Freedom is
charged with a heavy load of remorse. And the liberation of people, in the
historical sense of the term, is also a fantastic deception. There is always an
element of the unthinkable that won't have been evacuated. So there's a kind of
remorse because of what's transpired. We're free—so what? Everything begins at
the point where, in reality, we have the impression that something was supposed
to be fulfilled. Take the idea that the individual becomes free—every man for
himself, of course. At that point there is a terrible betrayal toward...
something like the species, I don't know what else to say about it. Everyone
dreams of individual emancipation, and yet there remains a kind of collective
remorse about it. This surfaces in the form of self-hatred, deadly
experimentation, fratricidal warfare ... a morbid state of affairs. There is
even a final requirement that this state of affairs itself be questioned.
Liberation is too good to be true. So you look for a destiny, an alterity,
which is artificial, most of the time. You're forced to invent the alterity,
to invent something risky, to rediscover at least a kind of ideal freedom, not
a realized form, because that really is unbearable. The absence of destiny is
itself a fatality! So what can the architect do with this freedom?
J.N. The architect is not free himself.... And men
are not free with respect to architecture. Architecture is always a response to
a question that wasn't asked. Most of the time, we are asked to handle
contingencies, and if while handling these needs, we can create a bit of
architecture, so much the better.... But we also realize that three-quarters of
the planet is not actively thinking about architecture. And where it is too
present, people resent it. Where is the point of balance between these two
extremes?
J.B. It's not a handicap; it's a strategic value.
J.N. Regardless of the future form our civilization
takes, there will always be a place for architecture, there will always be a
particular strategy for inhabiting it, a territory to defend. Even if we start
with the assumption that the city will disappear, in the sense that it will no
longer be physically present as a territory—which doesn't lend itself to an
urban vision of architecture—there will still always be architectural acts that
assume some relation to the new data and which will be a source of pleasure.
We've been told that the book would disappear with the Internet, but we'll
always need a home, some place to live Even
if the architectural gesture tends to become increasingly automatic.
J.B. For cloned encephalons!
J.N. An automatic architecture created by
interchangeable architects. This fatality doesn't bother us; it's an essential
part of today's reality. We still have the exception to invalidate the rule