Thf Ph uuu of ArcbiHetUH

Funcnonaboc dottmal and thf puritan ~ttitudn .. the mod-

fI'tIlnO'tnnerll bawf ohm romf ImIkr ~tudr.. Yet the anQml
ideo .. pkasl,ll'f mU seems ... crilepow to QDntfmpol"U}"
ucluttttural thcmy. for many If'D<'"~tionsany uclutCCl .. ho
atlnf'd foroo ~nrmplfd to f ~ plu.sUl'f in ateh.tC'l;run:
..as o:>lUi<kR'd deudmt. Politically, tho: tocially contaOUI
bawe bem sllSJ'leious 01 tbe sIlg!ll= trace 01 hedotwm in
arc hi lC'l;!Ural m<k~von and bavf l'fiC'I;tfd il as a ruo; llQNry

opynghled m rial
conc ern . And in the same way, archit ectural conservatives
have relega ted t o t he Left everything ",motely intellectual
or poli ti""l, induding the discou rse 01 pleasure. On both
sides, the idea that a rchitecture can po»ibly exist without
either moral or functional iustification, or even ",sponsibil-
ity, ha s been considered distasteful.
Simila r oppositions are reflected throughOUt
th e .ecen t history 01 architecture. The avant·garde has end·
lcssl y debated opposi tions tha t ~ most ly com plemen tary:
order and disorder, struc ture and chaos, ornament and pur ity,
rat innality and sens uali ty. And thef'e simple dialectics have
pervaded archnect u. al theory tn such an ext ent t hat archi·
teen s •• ! criticism has "'flecte d Similar attitudes: the pur ists'
ordering ollorm versus art nou veau's organic sensuous ness;
Behrens's ethic of form versu s Olbrich '. impulse to the
lorm less _
Oft en these oppositio ns ha ve been loaded
with mora! overtonco. Adolf Loos' s attack on the crimi nality
of orname n t ma sked his lea r of chaos and sensual disorder.
And De StijJ's insistence o n elem entary form waSnot only a
return to some a nochronistic purity but also a deliberate
regression to a secure order.
So strong were these moral overt ones that
t hey even survived Dada's destruc tive at titudes . nd the sUI-
realists' abandonment to the unconscic ue. Tzara'. ironical
conte m pt lor o rder fou nd lew equivalents among architec ts
too busy replacing the systeme des Beaux-Arts by the mod ·
em movem ent's own set of rules. In 191D-despite the con-
nadic«>ry presen ce$ nl Tzara, Richter, Ball, Ducha mp, and
Bretnn-Le O>rbusier and his C<lnt emJll>tari,.. chose the
quiet and acceptable route cdpurism. Even in the earl y 19708,
the wnrk nf th e archi tectural school cireles, with their v,,·
inU!l brands cd irony or .tll· indulgence, ran oounter t o the
moral remi niscence. cd '68 radicalism, althn ugh bDth .hated
a disli ke for esublished values.
Beyond such opposites lie th e myt hical shad·
llws 01 A""llo' . ethi cal and spiritual mind scapu versus
Diony.ius's erotic and sen sual impulses . Architectural det-
initi ons, in th eit surgical prttision, reinlotce and am plify the
impossible alt ernatives: on th e one ha nd, an:hitecture as a
thing 01 the mi nd, a dematerialized or C<lnceptual diocipline
with in typological and morp hological variations, and on the
other, archittttwe as an empirical event th.u C<lttcentntes
on the .sens,.., on th e experience of space.
In th e follOWing paragraphs, I will attempt to
show that today th e pleasu re 0/ an:hittttwe may lie both
insid e and ouu ide . uch oppositions-both in th e dialectic
and in the disintegration of th e dialectic. However, the par .
adcxical natur e of this them e is ineompatible wit h the ac-
cepted, rational l(lgic of classical atgummt; as Rolan d
&nhes puu it in The Pleasute of th e Text: kpleasure doe.
not rudily sunender to analysis, hence th ere will be no
ff

th eses, ant itheses, and syn theses here. The text instead is
composed of fragment . th at relate onl y loosely 10 <lite an·
other. These f,agments--gwmetry. mask. bondage, 0:.= ,
eroucism-ue all to be considered not only within the reo
UJban'~ation won genel;u ed the ir own program s. Depart·
ment stor..,s, railway stations, and arcades WC' e nineteent h·
cen.ury programs born of comme",e and industry. Usually
oompln , they did not read ily re.ult in preei"" forms, and
medi a ting factors h ke ideal buddinR" type s were often re·
quired, risking a complete disjunction between Nform" and
"com en t ."
The modem movement'sea rly att. cks on the
..,mpty form ulas of academicism coodem ned thes<: ill'lunc·
t ions, .long WIth the decaden t coo ten. of mOSt beaux art s
program s, wh ich were regarded lIS pret eXts fo, ,..,peti ti ve
compositiona l reciJ'C" . Th e cOIlcept of the pfOl\Tam it""l! was
not n.acked , but, , n her, the way it rd lect N an obso lete
societY. Inst ead, dose, links betw""n new St>< ial contents,
te<:h nol"gies, and pur< geom etri e. announced a ne w func ·
ti?n.list eth ic, At the IiIst levd, thi s ethic em phasized pfOb.
lem solving rat he, than problem formulating; good
arch itecture was to ~row from t he obiec tive prob lem peculiar
to buildinr. site, and client, in an organic or mechanical
manner. On . second and more hewic level, the revolution·
. ry UTg"," of the futu'ist and constructivist a vant·p,dcs
iomed th".., of e.r1y nine.eenth.."entury u topian soci.l
thin k..,rs to create ne w p,,,grams. "Social w nden..,rs, wm·
N

munal k itchens, workers ' dubs. th e• •e.., facto'ies, or even

unires d '}Mbi/a rion a ccompanied a ne Wvi. iOIl of soci.l.nd
family structu,e. In a frequently narve manne., .reru,ecm,e
was meant to both reflect and mold the socie ty 10 com•.
Yet by Ihe e.rly 1930. in the Uni ted State•
• nd Europe, a ch. nging ",><ial conlnt lavor"'" ne w form• • nd
icbm, by focusing on the intrinsic quehue e 01 autonomous
ohiect>, lornt ed an alliance with sem iot ic theory to make
architecture an easy obi...:t of poetics,
Bm wasn 't aIchiteclure different Irom paint·
ing or literature! Cou ld usc or pmgurn bepan 01form ra ther
than a . u bject or content 1 Didn' t Russi an fonnalism diller
from Grttnbergian modernism in that, rath er than han lShillJt
con . idel ations of content, it sim ply no hmge r op pose<llorm
to content but began to con ceive of it as t he WlaJiry 01 t he
work ', various com pone nt.1 Coment could be equally
formal.
Much 01 the theory 01archileclUral mod em ·
ism (which, nou bly, e merged in th e 1950. rather than in th e
1910.1 was Slmdar to all modernism in its scarch for the
specificity 01architecture, for that which is ch aracteristic of
a,chit.,...u,e aloo e. Bu. how wa, such speci ficity defined!
Old it Include or exclude usc llt i, significant that arch nec·
tu.al postmodcmi.m'. challenge to the lingu Ist ic chOICes 01
m odernism has nev er assaulted its value system, To discu.s
"the c nsis of archnecture" in wholly styh stic terms was a
false polcmic, a clever leint alm oo at masking the absen ce of
concerns about usc.
While it i. not irrelevant to disti nguish be·
tween an autonomous, self· rele rential architeclUre th at tr an·
scends history and cu lt ure and an a tchneeturc that echoes
histori cal or cu lt ural precedents and regional contexI•• it
shou ld be n oted that both add ,e"" the same defin it ion 01
architecture as formal or styltstic manipulallon. Form still
follow.lorm; only the m eaning and the frame of relerence
dilfer. Beyond their diverjting esthetic m ean s, bmh conceive
01 architecture as an obiect of con te m plation, easily accn-
sible to critical a nen tion, as op~ !O the interaction 01
space and events, which i. us ually unremar ked upon . Thus
walls and gesture. , colu mns and figures are , arely seen as
pan 0/ a sin gle sip;n;/y ing sys te m. Theories of reading. when
applied to architecture, are largely fruitless in that th ey reo
duce it 10 an a rt 01 com muni cati on or to a visua l an Ilhe ""-
called single-coding 01 modernism, or th e double-coding of
post modem is m ), dismissing the "intert exllIality" that
makes arohitecture a highly compl ex human activity. The
muluplidty 0/ heterugenwu s discourses, the con stanl inter -
action between mov ement, sensual eXp'-'rience, and concep·
tual acmbati cs refut e Ihe parallel with the visual' rlo.
If we are 10 obse rve, tod ay, an ep islem olojti-
cal break with what is generall y called moderni sm, then it
must .lso qu esti on its ownlonnal cont ingency . By no means
does thi s imply a return 10 notion s of func tion versus form,
to cause-and-efle<:t relat ionsh ips bet ween pro gram and type,
to ulOpian visio ns, or to th e vari ed positivist or m e<:hani sli c
ideologies of th e past . On the contrary, it means going beyond
""ducli ve interpro tat ions of architec ture . The usua l exclu-
sion of th e body a nd its e xperience from all discouISe on the
logic of IorIO in a case in point.
The mise-e n-scenu of Pete, Behrens , who
organized ceremon ic. amid.t the spaces 01 lo""f Maria
O lbrich 's Math ildenhoehe, Hans Poelzig's sel5 for The Go·
Jern; Laszl o Mohol y-Nagy's sla ge design s, which co mbin ed
ci nem a, music, se ts, and actions,freezing simu lt ane ities , El
Po . . . ....

It..,u ky'l dispLaYI of e1""lrom",,~n ieal aerub.1 . ict, OSW

Schlcnuucl ', gc$'ural darien, and Korulanun MelnI k.,.. ',
~ Monu", of Anractoonl . ~ whi ch lurned ,n lO rcn an:hltce-

.ural COIUtnKIlOll_ll cxploded !be rnlncll~ onhodoxy

of an1111ectural modernism. n.,.,,,,, we"". of C<JUnC. ptn:e.
dcnu- Raui....antt ~ u. J.KqUU Louis Do'ricl', re'O'O-
IUIIMa.,. 1ft.... and, lain and It\Of'C .. nllln, Alben Speers
Colhcdral of Icc and the Nu""mbclJllUlly.
M """ recen tl y, dcpamucs from fortn.ol du-
COUrKI and ftnC......t oona:ms for ardu lce1ural events hlY<:
ukn an i~ propam ma lle mode.' AlletrI' ''...c1y. ry-"
poIogK.al . ......n h:ow bc~ to dll.cuss!be cnllcal ~affcct~
of idul buildll~ rypn Ih:ol WC", h luonc.olly born of function
001 wclC la' CI dISplaced 1010 ncw propom, ohen 10 lhell
Dnf;ilUl purpuo.c . Th e... concern. for eve n.>, "",mon,es, and
p"'Il'omo ,uAAeo, • pouiblc d.... nce vll·..·vi. both mudeml~1
orlhodoxy and hi • •oricist rev iva l.