E-Day reviews, and couple of other things...

Ok, so I still haven't mentioned last weeks' readings on semiotics, but it has been pretty busy preparing for interim reviews of our design work, with Peter Eisenman as visiting tutor.

Eisenman got very interested in one group's title of Marseille Archipelago, referring primarily to Ungers' Berlin as green archipelago. Thanks to my friends at Raumbureau, I know a little about it, through their exploration of the idea in Pilzen. However, Tom and I do not understand Marseille in the same way - in what we have seen, we think that there is far too much overlap of different communities and architectures to be able to draw out separate islands. So when faced with the question, 'what urban idea do we follow?', I am at the moment inclined to return to Lefebvre's heterotopias, or differential space. Looking at Cours Julien (model below), we see an area where many different cultures overlap, something that we were even able to identify from a distance by looking at the distribution of different types of musical performance across the city.

A theme that came out in reviews, and more so in Eisenman's lecture was one of architectural grammar. The key question he asked us was around what it means to design in Marseille; what about our projects reflect the grammar of Marseille? In his lecture, he argued that currently we have a new rhetoric, but not an architectural grammar to deal with it. This reminded me a lot of Eco's essay, in particular his description of the anthropological approach, in which the architect must first understand the codes around which a society works, in order to develop an architectural response that is aware of its meaning in the society. Part of what Tom and I have been looking at in Cours Julien tries to gain an understanding of what certain things mean in that context; in particular, void and casing.

Whilst drawing to get ready for the reviews I've been listening to Kafka's The Trial. One line in particular reminded me of the previous week's readings on the surveillance society. Whilst talking to the painter, K is interrupted by a group of young girls, trying to listen in on their conversation. The painter then explains to K that 'these girls too belong to the court.' In other words, everyone around him is involved in the mechanisms of discipline and control within the city. Kafka's writing often seems to predict a world of bureaucracy and power which is becoming more prevalent today.

Again, preceding the update on semiotics, I came across this project in China, based around the piano. If I ever produce anything like this, then please stop me!! To use Jenck's terms, it is not an enigmatic signifier, but a definite one-liner. Its lack of appeal perhaps comes from its instant comprehension and dismissal as something very trivial, the idea too obviously translated into built form. Its overcoding makes it liable to become redundant very easily.

Strangely, Eisenman heard that someone in the class was interested in Liszt, and without hearing any more detail, described the terrible city that he imagined this student to be designing based on music translated directly into architecture via some strange computer algorithm... I was very tempted to point out that this particular student had no inclination to do that whatsoever. Or perhaps even more tempted to play along with the idea to see what would happen...

Week 2: Capsules, Networks, Surveillance

Key Readings:

Castells - Space of Flows, Space of Places

de Cauter - The City in the Age of Transcendental Capitalism

de Cauter - The Rise of Heterotopias

Foucault - The Eye of Power

This week, a much darker set of texts about the contemporary city. Castells' essay lays out key issues surrounding urbanisation and globalisation, pointing out the possibilities and dangers of a society that is increasingly fragmented. Whilst it has strong points, it did feel like a highly repetitive essay with each point being repeated over and over again. Also to bear in mind when reading, it was written in 2004, and much has changed since then - social networking and twitter, to name only a couple. The two essays by de Cauter, both angry in style, describe the rise of a capsular society. However, the second text, on heterotopias read a bit too much like a review of a few books that the author had read (thats what this is... sort of). The interview with Foucault is an illuminating text on panopticism and the surveillance society, which he argues is diagrammed architecturally in Bentham's Panopticon prison.

A frustrating point in Castells' essay is when he starts to discuss the role of architects in society - apparently, our most important task is that of creating 'meaningful forms.' (Castells, p. 452) Is this too reductive a statement? Perhaps I take it too literally as form-finding, which I would find too narrow an idea to by our primary task.

What can we as architects do within these conditions? We don't (and perhaps shouldn't) have the power to change society, politics, or economics. But we need to be able to work with and around these trends. It may be that buildings we design make small changes, which are part of the seeds of greater changes. Importantly, we need to be aware of the politics of space, since if we are unaware, then we can be easily manipulated against our own ideals.

The surveillance society is a very modish theme in the press at the moment. As one of the most watched societies in the world, there are cameras wherever you go. But is anyone actually watching? The idea of a self-disciplining society reminded me of a news story from October last year, about a website where members of the public are able to earn money by spotting crimes on live CCTV feeds. And then people start getting upset, when members of the public take photos... On a similar note, two fantastic recent(ish) films about surveillance societies, both questioning who the beneficiary of surveillance really is: Red Road, and Das Leben der Anderen

Back to the design studio, de Cauter's attack on cultural capitals is very relevant, with Marseille holding the European title in 2013. This spectacle of culture is already being greeted with suspicion - the musicians we spoke to there saw very little positive coming out of it. Presumably someone, somewhere is making a lot of money out of it, and its resulting in projects which probably won't benefit the city in the long term (at least, not as much as better housing, infrastructure...). The culture of fear that pervades a surveillance society is also evident in Marseille - many gated communities surround the centre, with the aim of reducing crime and reducing their insurance premiums. Paradoxically, the gates signify wealth, and in some cases the crime rate has risen since they shut themselves away. As France's second largest city, with a very diverse population, the interaction between flows and places is highly complex. I don't know what I will end up designing, but these issues will almost certainly become relevant. Still looking at the aural architecture of Marseille, where musicians find it too loud to record music, the government policy focuses almost entirely on quantitative measures of sound reduction. The politics of silence (balance of freedom of expression, against a right to silence, or at least a right to good quality sound) is a theme that I'd be interested in exploring, one which would strongly affect our understanding of the city.

Quite a long post for this one - so many issues to contend with, and I've only picked out a couple... De Cauter's capsular dystopia is quite depressing (note to self: must design for integrating societies). The obvious music for the readings is Hard-Fi's Stars of CCTV - any better suggestions welcome!