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The MIT Press

Ce m bri dge,Massachusetts

London,E ngl i nd

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Can one attempt to make a contribution to architectural discourseby relentlessly stating that there is no spacewithout 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 dissociated fron the events that "happen" in it. Recentproiects

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insist constantly on issues of program and notation. They stress a critical attitude that observes,an lyzes, and interprets 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 reduction 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 presentation, 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

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responsibilities vis-e-vis the events and activities that take place in the spacesit designs. At the start of the 1980s,the notion of proSramwas still forbidden territory. Programaticconcemswere rejectedas leftovers from obsoletefunctionalist doctrines by those polemicists who saw programs as mere pretexts for stylistic experimentation. Few dared to explore the relation between the formal elaboration o{ spacesand the invention of programs, between the abstraction of architectual thought and the representation of events. The popular dissemination o{ architecturd images through eye-catching reproductions in magazines often tumed architecture into a passive obiect of contemplation instead of the place thet conJrontsspacesand actions. Most exhibitions of architecture in art galleriesand museums encouraged'/surface"practice and presentedthe architect's work asa {orm of decorative painting. Walls and bodies, abstract planes and figures were
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rarely seenas part of a single signifying system. History may one day look upon this period as the moment ol the loss of innocence in twentieth-century architecture: the moment when it became clear that neitfier supertecbnology,expressionist functionalism, nor neo-Corbusianism could solve society's ills and that architecture was not ideologically neutral. A strong political upheaval, a rebirth of critical thouSht in architecture, and new developments in history and theory all triggered a phenomenon whose consequences are still unmeasured.This generalloss of innocenceresulted in a variety of moves by architects accordingto theirpolitical

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or ideological leanings. In the early I970s, some denounced architecture altogether, arguinS that its practice, in the current 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 Baudrillard 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 notion diminished by comparison with literature or art-completely 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 encouraged autonomous research and independent lecture courses, it played on an opposition between political and theoretical concems about the city (thoseof Baudrillard, Lefdbvre, Adomo, Lukics, and Benjamin, for examplef and an art sensibility inlormed by photographn conceptual art, and performance.This opposition between a verbal critical discourseand a visual one suggested that the two were complementary. Students' projects explored that overlapping

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sensibility, often in a mannersulffciently obscureto generate the used initial hostility throughthe school.Of course codes in the students'work differedsharplyfrom those seenin schools and architecturd of8cesat the time. At the end-ofyearexhibition texts, tapes,fiIms, manilestos,rows of storyof boards,and photographs ghostlike ffgures,eachwith their own speciffc conventions, intruded in a spacearrangedaccordingto codesdisparatefrom those of the profession. as was Photography usedobsessively: "live" insert,as artiffcial documentation, a hint of reality inter' as posedin architectural drawing-a reelity neverthelessdistanced and often manipulated, filled with skillful staging relations. and with characters setsin their complementary Studentsenactedfictitious programsinside carefully sese' lected "real" spaces and then shot entire photographic Any quencesas evidence of their architectural endeavors. new attitude to architecturelad to questionits mode of representatron. Other works dealing with a critical andysis of urban lile were generdly in written form. They were printed,and published tumed into a book,edited designed, the by the unit; hence,"the words of architectutebecame work of architecture," as we said. Entitled A Chronicle of Urban Politics, the book attempted to analyzewhat distinguished our period ftom the precedingone. Texts on frag' mentation, cultural dequalificatior\ and the "intermediate city" enalyzedconsumerism,totems, and representationalism. Someof the texts announced,severalyearsin advance, preoccupations now common to the cultural sphere:dislo-

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The mixing of genres and disciplines in this work was widely attacked by the academic establishment, still obsessedwith concepts of disciplinary autonomy and of self-re{erentiality. But the signiff.cance such events is not a matter of historical precedenceor provocation. In superimposing ideas and perceptions, words and spaces, these events underlined the importance of a certain kind of relationship between abstraction and narative-a complex iuxtaposition of abstract concepts and immediate experiences, contradictions, superimpositions of mutually exclusive sensibilities. 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{ complementingJof events and spaces. Some texts, like Itdo Calvino'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 '/

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United States I gave extracts fuotn Finnegans Wake as the program. The site was London's Covent Garden and the architecture 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 between events and spaces, beyond functionalist notions. The unlolding of events in a literary context inevitably suggestedparallels to the unlolding of events in architecture. Space versus 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, detached or imaginative way? For iI architects could selfL,.

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consciously use such devices as repetition, distortion, or 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, bicycling 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

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could accommodate the everyday lile of an averagesuburban family. Such research was obviouslv not aimed at providing immediate engwers, whether ideological or practicd. Far more important was the understanding that the relation between progra"' and buildi''g could be either highly sympathetic or contrived and artificial. The latter, oI course, fascinated us more, as it reiected all functiondist leanings. It was a time when most architects were questionin& attacking, 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

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often attacked for its reduction to minimalist formd manipulations, we refused to enrich it with witty metaphors. Issues of intertextuality, multiple readings and dual codings had to integrate the notion of program. To use a Palladian arch for an athletic club alters both Palladio end the nature oI the athletic event. As an exploration of the disjunction between expectedform and expecteduse,we begana seriesof proiects oppo-singspeciffc programs with particular, often conflicting spaces. Programatic context versus urban typology, urban iypology versus spatial experience, spatial experience versus procedure, and so on, provided a dialectical framework for research. Wq-consciously suggested programs that were impossiblg to hou'settrem: a stadium in 91 the sites that were Soho, a prison near Wardour Street, * ballroom in. a church-

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yard. At the same time, issues o{ notation became funda-

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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, sections, 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, increasingly becamea sign.that did not necessarily it refer to these movements but rather to the idea of movement-a form o{ notation that was there to recall that architecture was also about the movement of bodies in space, that their languageand the languageof walls were ultimately ;
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of imagespurposefully bluned the conventional relationship between plan, graphic conventions and their meaning in the built realm. Increasingly the drawings became both the notation 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

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force a response.Architecture ceasesto be a backdrop for actions, becoming the action itselL All this suggeststhat "shock" must be manu{acturedby the architect if architecture is to communicate. Influence from the mass media, from fashion and popular magezines, informed the choice of programs: the lunatic asylum, the fashion institute, the Falklands war. It also influenced the graphic techniques, from tle straight black and white photography for the early days to the overcharged grease-pencilillustration of later years, stressing the inevitable "mediatization" of architectural activity. With the dra. matic sense that pervades much of the work, cinematic devices replace conventional description. Architecture becomes the discourse oI events as much as the discourse oI sPaces. From our work in the early days, when event, movement, and spaces were analytically luxtaposed in mutual tension, the work moved toward an increasingly synthetic attitude. We had begun with a critique of the city, had gone back to basics: to simple and pure spaces,to barren landscapes, roomi to simple body movements, $'alking in a a straight line, dancing; to short scenarios. And we gradually increased the complexity by introducing literary parallels and sequences of events, placing these programs within existing urban contexts. Within the worldwide megalopolis, new programs are placed in new urban situations. The pro. cesshas gone full circle: it started by deconstructing the city, today it explores new codesoI assemblage.

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