u n c t io n

The MIT Press Ce m bri dge,Massachusetts London,E ngl i nd

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S paceeand E Yen t s

Can one attempt to make a contribution to architectural

discourseby relentlessly stating that there is no spacewith-
out event, no architecture wittout program?This seemsto
be our mandate at a time that has wimessed t:herevival of
historicism or, altematively, of formalism in almost every
architecturd circle. Our work arguesthat architecture-its
social relevance and formal invention-cannot be disso-
ciated fron the events that "happen" in it. Recentproiects
Plog?.m

insist constantly on issues of program and notation. They

stress a critical attitude that observes,an lyzes, and inter-
prets some of the most controversial positions of past and
presentarchitecturalideolog,res.
Yet this work often took place against the
mainstream of the prevalent architectural discourse. For
throughout the 1970sthere was an exacerbationof stylistic
concems at the expenseof programmatic ones and a reduc-
tion of architecture as a form of knowledge to architecture
as knowledge of form. From modemism to postmodernism,
the history of architecture was surreptitiously tumed into a
history of styles. This pewerted form of history borrowed
from semiotics the ability to " read" layerc of interpretation
but reduced architecture to a system of surface signs at the
expense of the reciprocal, indif{erent, or even conflictive
relationship of spacesand events.
This is not the placefor an extensiveanalysis
of the situation that engulfed the critical establishment.
However, it should be stressedthat it is no accident that this
emphasis on stylistic issues correspondedto a double and
wider phenomenon: on the one hand, the increasing role of
the developerin planning large buildings, encouragingmany
architects to become mere decorators,and on the other, the
tendency of many architectural critics to concentrate on
surfacereadings,signs, metaphors, and other modes of pres-
entation, olten to the exclusion of spatial or programmatic
concems. These are two faces oi a single coin, tlpical of an
increasing desertion by the architectural profession of its
,y responsibilities vis-e-vis the events and activities that take
r- place in the spacesit designs.
rd At the start of the 1980s,the notion of pro-
Sramwas still forbidden territory. Programaticconcemswere
IC rejectedas leftovers from obsoletefunctionalist doctrines by
)r those polemicists who saw programs as mere pretexts for
tc stylistic experimentation. Few dared to explore the relation
between the formal elaboration o{ spacesand the invention
:e of programs, between the abstraction of architectual
l, thought and the representation of events. The popular dis-
semination o{ architecturd images through eye-catching re-
d productions in magazines often tumed architecture into a
n passive obiect of contemplation instead of the place thet
.e conJrontsspacesand actions. Most exhibitions of architec-
I
ture in art galleriesand museums encouraged'/surface"prac-
tice and presentedthe architect's work asa {orm of decorative
ll
painting. Walls and bodies, abstract planes and figures were
t. rarely seenas part of a single signifying system. History may f
s one day look upon this period as the moment ol the loss of (
T
d innocence in twentieth-century architecture: the moment
t.
f when it became clear that neitfier supertecbnology,expres-

v sionist functionalism, nor neo-Corbusianism could solve so-

ciety's ills and that architecture was not ideologically
n neutral. A strong political upheaval, a rebirth of critical
i- thouSht in architecture, and new developments in history
and theory all triggered a phenomenon whose consequences
rI are still unmeasured.This generalloss of innocenceresulted
s in a variety of moves by architects accordingto theirpolitical

s pr c e6 and Ev ent s
 Pr ogr t r n

or ideological leanings. In the early I970s, some denounced

architecture altogether, arguinS that its practice, in the cur-
rent socioeconomic context, could only be reactionary and
reinforce the status quo. Others, influenced by structural
linguistics, talked of "constants" and the rational autonomy
of an architecture that transcendedall social forms. Others
reintroduced political discourse and advocated a retum to
preindustrial forms of society.And still others cynically took
the analysesof style and ideology by Barthes,Eco,or Baudril-
lard and diverted them from their critical aims, tuming them
over like a glove. Instead of using them to question the
distorted, mediated nature of architectural practice, these
architects injected meaning into their buildings artiffciallt
through a collage of historicist or metaphorical elements.
The restricted notion of postmodemism that ensued-a no-
tion diminished by comparison with literature or art-com-
pletely and uncritically reinsertedarchitecture into the cycle
of consumption.
At the Architectural Association {AAl in
London, I devised a progam entitled "Theory LanSuage,
Attitudes." Exploiting the structure o{ the AA, which en-
couraged autonomous research and independent lecture
courses, it played on an opposition between political and
theoretical concems about the city (thoseof Baudrillard, Le-
fdbvre, Adomo, Lukics, and Benjamin, for examplef and an
art sensibility inlormed by photographn conceptual art, and
performance.This opposition between a verbal critical dis-
courseand a visual one suggestedthat the two were comple-
mentary. Students' projects explored that overlapping

142
ed sensibility, often in a mannersulffciently obscureto generate
lr- initial hostility throughthe school.Of coursethe codesused
nd in the students'work differedsharplyfrom those seenin
ral schoolsand architecturd of8cesat the time. At the end-of-
oy yearexhibition texts, tapes,fiIms, manilestos,rows of story-
:rs boards,and photographsof ghostlike ffgures,eachwith their
to own speciffc conventions, intruded in a spacearrangedac-
ck cordingto codesdisparatefrom those of the profession.
il- Photographywasusedobsessively: as "live"
m insert,as artiffcial documentation,asa hint of reality inter'
he posedin architectural drawing-a reelity neverthelessdis-
se tanced and often manipulated, filled with skillful staging
ty' with charactersand setsin their complementaryrelations.
!s. Studentsenactedfictitious programsinside carefully se-
o- lected "real" spacesand then shot entire photographicse'
n- quencesas evidence of their architectural endeavors.Any
.le new attitude to architecturelad to questionits mode of
representatron.
ln Other works dealing with a critical andysis
of urban lile were generdly in written form. They were
n- tumed into a book,edited designed,printed,and published
re by the unit; hence,"the words of architectutebecamethe
rd work of architecture," as we said. Entitled A Chronicle of
e- Urban Politics, the book attempted to analyzewhat distin-
LN guished our period ftom the precedingone. Texts on frag'
rd mentation, cultural dequalificatior\ and the "intermediate
s- city" enalyzedconsumerism,totems, and representational-
3- ism. Someof the texts announced,severalyearsin advance,
rg preoccupations now common to the cultural sphere:dislo-

Sp. c es .trd Ev c r t s
al6ta .'uaano pue t .tuaH,.oe[oc otoqd pstrltun
cated imagery artificialit, representational reality versus
experiencedreality.
The mixing of genres and disciplines in this
work was widely attacked by the academic establishment,
still obsessedwith concepts of disciplinary autonomy and '/
self-re{erentiality. But the signiff.canceof such events is not
a matter of historical precedenceor provocation. In super-
imposing ideas and perceptions, words and spaces, these
events underlined the importance of a certain kind of rela-
tionship between abstraction and narative-a complex iux-
taposition of abstract concepts and immediate experiences,
contradictions, superimpositions of mutually exclusive sen-
sibilities. This dialectic between the verbal and the visual
culminated in 1974irr a seriesof "literary" projectsorganized
in the studio, in which texts provided programs or events on
which students were to develop architectural works. The
role o{ the text was fundamental in that it underlined some
aspectof the complementing lor, occasionally, Iack o{ com-
plementingJof events and spaces.Some texts, like Itdo Cal-
vino's metaphorical descriptions of "Invisible Cities," were
so "architectural" as to require going far beyond the mere
illustration of the author's already powerful descriptions;
Franz Kalka's Buzow challengedconventional architectural
perceptions and modes of representation; Edgar Allan Poe's
Masque of the Red Death (done during my term as Visiting
Critic at Pdnceton UniversityJ suggestedparallels between
narrative and spatial sequences.Such explorations of the
intricacies of languageand spacenaturally had to touch on
)ames foyce's discoveries.Dudng one of my trips from the

Spac es and Ev ent s

 Pzo g lr r n

United States I gave extracts fuotn Finnegans Wake as the

program. The site was London's Covent Garden and the ar-
chitecture was derived, by analogy or opposition, from
]oyce's text. The effect of such researchwas invaluable in
providing a framework for the analysis of the relations be-
tween events and spaces,beyond functionalist notions.
The unlolding of events in a literary context
inevitably suggestedparallels to the unlolding of events in
architecture.

Spaceversus Program

To what extent could the literary narrative shedlight on the

organization of events in buildings, whether called "use,"
:-
"functions," "activities," or "programs"? II writers could
manipulate the structure oI stories in the same way as they
twist vocabulary and grammar, couldn't architects do the
same, organizing the program in a similarly objective, de-
tached or imaginative way? For iI architects could self-
L,. consciously use such devices as repetition, distortion, or
:.1
iuxtaposition in the formal elaboration oI walls, couldn't
they do the samething in terms of the activities that occuned
within those very walls? Pole vaulting in the chapel, bicy-
cling in the laundromat, sky diving in the elevator shaftl
Raising these questions proved increasingly stimulating:
conventional organizations o{ spacescould be matched to
the most surrealistically absurd sets of activities. Or vice
versa: the most intricate and perverseorganization of spaces
the could accommodate the everyday lile of an averagesuburban
ar- family.
JM Such research was obviouslv not aimed at
in providing immediate engwers, whether ideological or prac-
be- ticd. Far more important was the understanding that the
relation between progra"' and buildi''g could be either highly
:xt sympathetic or contrived and artificial. The latter, oI course,
tn fascinated us more, as it reiected all functiondist leanings.
It was a time when most architects were questionin& at-
tacking, or outright reiecting modem movement orthodoxy.
We simply refused to ehter tfiese polemics, viewing them as
stylistic or semantic battles. Moreover, if this orthodoxy was
he often attacked for its reduction to minimalist formd manip-
ulations, we refused to enrich it with witty metaphors. Issues
rld of intertextuality, multiple readings and dual codings had to
ey integrate the notion of program. To use a Palladian arch for
he an athletic club alters both Palladio end the nature oI the
le- athletic event.
lf- As an exploration of the disjunction between
or expectedform and expecteduse,we begana seriesof proiects
1't oppo-singspeciffc programs with particular, often conflicting
ed spaces. Programatic context versus urban typology, urban
'ry' iypology versus spatial experience, spatial experience versus
i? procedure, and so on, provided a dialectical framework for
8: research. Wq-consciously suggested programs that were im-
to possiblg to hou'settrem: a stadium in
91 the sites that were
Soho, a prison near Wardour Street, * ballroom in. a church-
es yard. At the same time, issues o{ notation became funda-

Sp. c c s rrd Ev eot a

 Pr ogr am

mental: iI the reading of architecture was to include the

events that took place in it, it would be necessaryto devise
modes of notating such activities. Severalmodes of notation
were invented to supplement the limitations of plans, sec-
tions, or axonometrics. Movement notation derived lrom
choreography,and simultaneous scoresderived from music
notation were elaboratedfor architecturd purposes.
If movement notation usually proceeded
from our desire to map the actual movement o{ bodies in
spaces,it increasingly becamea sign.that did not necessarily
refer to these movements but rather to the idea of move-
ment-a form o{ notation that was there to recall that ar-
chitecture was also about the movement of bodies in space,
that their languageand the languageof walls were ultimately
complementary. Using movement notation as a means of
;
recalling issues was an ettempt to include new and stereo-
l-
- typical codes in architectural drawing and, by extension, in
its perception; layerings, iuxtaposition, and superimposition
t of imagespurposefully bluned the conventional relationship
between plan, graphic conventions and their meaning in the
-.1
built realm. Increasingly the drawings became both the no-
tation of a complex architectural rcality and drawings {art
works) in their own right, with their own frame of reference,
deliberately set apart from the conventions of architectural
plans and sections.
The fascination with the dramatic, either in
the program (murder, sexuality, violencel or in the mode of
representationlstrongly outlined images,distorted anglesof
vision-as if seen from a diving airforce bomber), is there to
ne force a response.Architecture ceasesto be a backdrop for
se actions, becoming the action itselL
ln All this suggeststhat "shock" must be man-
u{acturedby the architect if architecture is to communicate.
m Influence from the mass media, from fashion and popular
ilc magezines, informed the choice of programs: the lunatic
asylum, the fashion institute, the Falklands war. It also in-
ed fluenced the graphic techniques, from tle straight black and
ln white photography for the early days to the overcharged
ly grease-pencilillustration of later years, stressing the inevi-
'e- table "mediatization" of architectural activity. With the dra.
lr- matic sense that pervades much of the work, cinematic
devices replace conventional description. Architecture be-
ly comes the discourse oI events as much as the discourse oI
oI sPaces.
o- From our work in the early days, when event,
in movement, and spaces were analytically luxtaposed in mu-
)n tual tension, the work moved toward an increasingly syn-
rP thetic attitude. We had begun with a critique of the city, had
te gone back to basics: to simple and pure spaces,to barren
o- landscapes,a roomi to simple body movements, $'alking in
rt a straight line, dancing; to short scenarios. And we gradually
increased the complexity by introducing literary parallels
el and sequences of events, placing these programs within ex-
isting urban contexts. Within the worldwide megalopolis,
LN new programs are placed in new urban situations. The pro.
of cesshas gone full circle: it started by deconstructing the city,
of today it explores new codesoI assemblage.
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