Chapter Ten: INVOLUTION AND LATE MODERN ARCHITECTURE
1 Modern Architecture as Involution
Architecture in the late 20th century exemplifies the conflict between the organizational demands of a rigid symbolic order and the complexity and diversity of human experience. Amidst the current anarchy of its forms one can clearly identify it as being at an Involutionary phase of its history.
However before we look in more detail at this phenomenon it is worthwhile briefly reminding ourselves that the course of Involution can be divided into two theoretically distinct stages. In the first there is a reduction in the semiotic freedom of the typical set established during the Developmental period. The symptoms of this are the increasing uniformity of buildings and their increasing inability to adapt to different contexts. During this stage meaning is gradually displaced into a secondary function of decoration. In the second (and final) stage of Involution, decoration takes over almost all the communicational functions of the Type. The result of this is the splitting of the Type into several context-specific and semi-autonomous sub-styles. For Modern architecture these two stages roughly coincide with, firstly, the postwar period from 1950 till the mid 1970s, stylistically referred to as the International Style of Modern architecture. The second stage from the 1970s onward is usually (and appropriately) termed the ‘Postmodern’ period. In the latter case, there is a fragmentation of architecture into several reasonably distinct styles such as Historicism, Hi-Tech, Regionalism, Populism, De-constructivism, orthodox Modern and other more eclectic variations.
The post-Developmental history of this architecture from the 1960s to the 1980s, is marked out by an almost continual crisis of meaning partly reflected in the almost uninterrupted stream of criticism which is levelled at it both from within and without architectural circles. These criticisms revolve around a rejection of its self-styled rationality, and point to a wide range of its inadequacies in the representation of the social, economic, technical, aesthetic, ecological, psychological and organizational spheres of human activity. Apparently, every statement made by this architecture is in some way ‘wrong’. It would seem that its rationality is quite detached from the level of its everyday use and perception. This can be seen from the kind of adjectives which have been used to condemn it: 'monotonous', 'inconvenient', 'totalitarian', 'insensitive' and 'inhuman'. And yet, this architecture is the result of the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the social, technical and economic base on which it stands. It would seem that whatever it is that has been so thoroughly measured, it has been unrelated to the task of shaping this architecture according to the needs, experiences or complex relations of the society which it is supposed to represent in built form. There is neither the time nor the space in this book to go into the subject of the techniques of analysis used by Modern Architecture to form its programmes. What one can say, however, is that they are so constructed that, in their reductive precision, they are unable to represent the actual conditions and complexity of human experience. Modern techniques of analysis do not simply formalize these conditions into a workable model, they re-define them completely by cutting out the multiplicity of interconnections and the variability of the relations which exist at the level of experience. It has to be said that this kind of reductive analysis is not unique to architecture. It is characteristic of what is loosely called the ‘scientific method’ and is applied in many different fields. The result is always the same. The ‘discovery’ of a group of ‘fundamental elements’ and their reconstitution as a predictable model of a system.
While the purely architectural characteristics of the Modern Type were NOT produced by its relation to the current socioeconomic system but were derived out of its own history, the degree of flexibility or rigidity of the typical set so formed IS the result of this relationship. The centralization of commissioning sources into big institutions which initiate many building projects allow the typological process to assimilate vague similarities between many different projects into a unified typical set. By the first two decades of this century the Modern Type had been established. However, the continuity of those same socioeconomic conditions which gave rise to this period of development and their continuing integration is now the source of the problems which beset Modern Architecture. They define the framework within which an Involutionary phase will arise.
There are two aspects to the crises which faces Modern Architecture, one of which is typical of any Involutionary period, while the other is unique to this Type. The first can be encapsulated in the following statement: An Involutionary period necessarily follows a Developmental period. Within this admittedly banal statement there is the absolutely crucial historical fact that once a unified Type has emerged out of its Developmental phase, ALL FURTHER ARCHITECTURAL ACTIVITY CAN BE REGARDED AS RITUALISTIC. In history, ‘one damn thing follows another’. Societies and forms of discourse must work on material already shaped by the action of previous eras and the state of that material at any given point is irreversible. That state, determined by processes taking place within the history of the system dictates the kind of formative activity which can take place afterwards. In the case of architecture, where the Type is already unified as it was by the first few decades of this century, then the options open for later activity were drastically limited. Constrained both to work on this material AND to produce comprehensible works of architecture, formative activity is forced into an essentially ritualistic role vis-a-vis the Modern Type. In a sense all it can do is to provide a commentary and elaboration of a previous state of things. As suggested earlier, this commentary can only concern itself with the analysis and reduction of the established typical set. Once architecture has been locked into developing one particular set, all future action will be limited to formalizing and re-formalizing its elements until this process is brought to a halt by new socioeconomic conditions. Modern Architecture is currently in the position of engaging in this kind of ritual behaviour. Needless to say the architects of the 19th century found themselves in an entirely different situation. Using exactly the same selection – combination procedures as the architects of the late 20th century, they were required by history to sort and filter the great mass of eclectic forms and diverse styles into a single coherent Type. As usual, same processes in different conditions produce different end results.
The other aspect to current problems, and which follows from the first, is that modern institutions have the technical and organizational power to carry out the analysis and reduction of a typical set with unparalleled rigour. In previous eras the reduction of a typical set to a small group of fixed elements and rules of combination might have taken over a century to complete if at all. Modern Architecture on the other hand, has telescoped this compression of an original set into a period of roughly 40 years. By the middle of this century Modern Architecture was already showing signs of Involutionary pressures on production. In spite of the concerted effort to rid architectural form of ambiguities and non-quantifiable attributes, the end result of this coordinated campaign of rationalization was the production of an 'ORGANIZED NOWHERE'. It had led to the stereotyping of architectural form to a degree unprecedented in history. Here, so it was thought was a unified architectural routine applicable with few adjustments to a multitude of different contexts. Using conceptual models drawn from the repertoire of the physical sciences, architectural activity in the early 1960's had sought to reduce form to a cause-and-effect relationship with the social and technical base upon which it stood. At the time, this deterministic approach to architectural form was portrayed as an eminently laudable attempt to discover the 'real needs' of the population but it merely succeeded in making architecture even more abstract and unresponsive than before. The sterility of much of the architectural production of the time: the faceless mass housing projects, devoid of the most basic services; the arbitrary use of towers for family accommodation; the crushing banality of office blocks; schools designed to look like factories; these instances among many others testify to the internalization of the architectural discourse. Form was being subject to a kind of analysis which could only detach it from experience. In this, one can detect the consistent theme of all Involutionary periods and that is to bring the instrument of representation – architectural form - under calculable control and to eliminate the possibility of contextual variations. Contemporary with these more 'totalitarian' developments in architecture, one could also notice other signs of Involution in the Modern Type. These include the arbitrary articulation of buildings in order to achieve 'significant form' indicating a shift towards displacement and major decorative activity and also the beginnings of historicist, populist and other stylistic tendencies in Modern Architecture. The latter group suggest the beginnings of the future fragmentation of the Type into a group of constituent styles. Both these tendencies point to the steady disintegration of the Modern Type throughout the 20th century as Involution reinforced by an all-powerful technology continued to impose impossibly restrictive demands on the making of form.
Condemned by history to a 'SCHOLASTIC' role vis-a-vis the architectural type established in the early Modern movement, analysis must concern itself with splitting experience into fictitious literal and contextual components in order to remove that threatening fluidity of character which up till now remained an essential (and, in fact, advantageous) feature of the typical set. As suggested earlier, this is to misinterpret the nature of the set by assuming that if its elements change their identity somewhat from place to place and from time to time, that this indicates the existence of some problem or other. In fact, all it indicates is that the set remains representative of experience. The real problem is, however the anxiety of the observer who cannot handle the ambiguity inherent in complex events. Literal interpretations of phenomena must necessarily assume that there are such things as ‘more fundamental’ elements to be found amidst the shifting forms of experience. These are (Platonically-inspired) 'things' which supposedly do not change their character no matter what the context. They can be relied on as concepts which will give a convincing purpose to the unending analyses forced upon architecture by historical chance. After all, there must be some 'meaning' which underlies the apparent flux of events.
The modes of thought which predominates in a particular culture are defined by what has already been said. This defines future possibilities for creative activity. Theoretically, The state of architecture at any time is, either totally determined and unified or it is still open to new combinations. If the state of the material is 'closed', the only option available to the next generation of architects, is the elaboration and clarification of the material. A role which is essentially quantitive and reductive relative to the existing state of the material. At this point in the history of the system the only option available to its agents is to ritualistically ‘name the name’ of the various forms of the material.
In true Involutionary fashion, quantitive techniques result in the uncoupling of complex and inter-locking groups of functions and their transformation into an ORGANIZED AGGREGATE of things. These now calculable 'bits' of reality - sharply defined and bearing a precise name - can now be assembled into an apparently new and more predictable order. This order is achieved by adding together these things (which are not things), these presences (which are not present), into an assembly whose total characteristics can be accurately named, numbered and controlled.
This Involutionary and essentially rigid perception focuses on both dimensions of architecture: elements and 'space' (which like everything else is reified into a 'thing'). The result is an extremely high degree of standardization of elements and a new kind of spatial organization previously described as 'functionalism'. In the latter, the form of buildings and of cities is reduced to an aggregate of constituent forms each one of which is literally identified with one particularly activity or function. The most obvious example of this can be seen at the urban level where each area of a city is zoned to contain one activity only such as housing, commerce, industry or leisure. In some cases, the functional separation of these zones is emphasized by sterilizing the space between them with urban motorways or 'parkland'. (This is reminiscent of the aphasic tendency to completely 'clear the space between words' of unclassifiable meanings).
In some histories of architecture, it is suggested that it is this tendency towards functionalism which makes Modern Architecture so unique. From the point of view of this book, functionalism, as described above, is an inevitable tendency in any post-classical phase of an architecture’s history. It is the only creative and comprehensible option open to the collective activity of architects at that time. Other periods in the history of architecture have shown an equal concern with distributing the form of buildings according to supposedly ‘functionalist’ criteria: where the different activities within the building are identified on a one-to-one basis by consequent articulations in the overall form of the buildings. There is a supposed 'cause-and-effect' relationship between the activity and the form which enclose it. As Emil Kaufmann points out in his book, 'Architecture in the Age of Reason', it was exactly this concern which motivated much of the architecture of 18th century Europe.
"We have seen that in the first decades after 1700 a critical attitude toward the well-established formulas of composition had arisen among the English architects. Somewhat later the Italian 'rigorists', led by Lodoli, felt that architecture should be basically reformed. Toward the end of the eighteen century France developed a new type of architecture distinguished by positive artistic aims of a quite novel character. The new predilection for elementary forms and the new truthfulness to the nature of materials reveal the soundness of the French movement; the endeavours to find new pattern tell of its artistic aspirations. The ideal of pure functionalism remained confined to theory, but was nevertheless as influential ally in the struggle for architectural individualism. The geometric forms and the respect for the properties of the material promised artistic results which agreed with the rationalism underlying the functionalist doctrine far better than the anthropomorphic forms of the Baroque ever could have done." (Kaufmann, page 181, Dover edition).
Whether this 'struggle for architectural individualism' is typed out in Graeco-Roman, Gothic or Modern characteristics, it will express itself in a literal interpretation of architectural elements and spatial organization. It will tend towards an extreme articulation of the forms of the classical period which preceded it by giving them a precise, but arbitrary, identity. For the same reason one must reject the idea which is often put forward that the state of architecture in the 20th century is primarily the result of the application of industrial techniques to form. In this argument, functionalist organization of form - the building as an aggregate of elements and spaces - is taken to be unique to Modern Architecture and can be attributed directly to the use of modern technologies. This idea is quite consistent with an Involutionary perspective on history itself in which every period becomes unique in every way. In this case, it is history which is being turned into an aggregate of distinct events. In fact, of course, some things change and some things stay the same. While the over-articulation of form (called ‘functionalism’ in the 20th century) is common to all Involutionary periods in architecture - as its operative aspect - what is unique to Modern Architecture is its ability to carry out the reduction of form to an unprecedented degree. It is here that modern technologies play their decisive role in architecture; they allow the almost complete disarticulation of the form of buildings and cities. So powerful are these technologies, both technically and organizationally, that the quantitative techniques which they afford to Modern Architecture also result in the compression of the Developmental and Involutionary sequences into a remarkably short time-scale. Although architecture goes through the same developmental stages as previous architectures, the analytical power made available to Modern Architecture by technology makes it appear to be an almost instantaneous, and certainly revolutionary, architecture. This acceleration of history disguises the similarities of process which link Modern Architecture and the architectures of previous epochs.
2 Signs of Crisis
By what means has Modern Architecture disguised its increasingly unrepresentative character? In other words, like other architectures at the same historical stage, how has it displaced its representational problems into secondary activities. Two devices have already been mentioned: over-articulation of form and the emergence of a superficial plurality of styles and approaches. These range, as suggested above, from Hi-Tech to Historicism. In one form or another, the latter seems to have become a particular concern of much of the avant-garde many of whom regard the problems of Modern Architecture as irremediable; that is, the source of the crisis lies not in some temporary malfunction of development but can be traced back to the very origins of the Modern Type. From this point of view ‘modern architecture has failed’ and it is therefore necessary to recover the lost richness of expression in architecture by utilizing forms drawn from previous repertoires such as Classicism in its various forms. Since history in the form of the Modern Movement cannot be reversed, the work of the avant-garde is forced either into proposing truely utopian schemes which offer a consistent, but unrealizable, alternative architecture founded on the principles of the previous Type, (note, for instance the work of Leon Krier) or simply infuses modern forms with spurious 'signs and symbols' of difference and apparent plurality of expression (the work of Michael Graves). It is not surprising that the reified 'bit-and-pieces' of Classicism, whether Mannerist or Roman, which they choose to abstract from their historical context can quite easily be incorporated as decoration 'on' the surface of otherwise typical modern buildings. They pose no threat to its self-styled rationality. Without these superficial additions to the inarticulate forms of Modern Architecture, it would face an even more rapid decline in its credibility as an authentic means of representation. At best, this fragmentary approach to the problems of architecture results in series of amusing stylistic games. With historicism, these can be played out with classical pediments or Mannerist surface techniques; with hi-Tech there is a gross elaboration of the building technology in full colour; with Populism one has the introduction of elements from ‘Main Street’, Levittown or Las Vegas; Regionalism draws upon pre-industrial and traditional architectural elements to establish its contextual identity. These and other approaches are all quite consistent with the final collapse of Modernism and its dispersal into a group of apparently independent styles.
Unable to transcend the problems which are generated by the irreversible condition of Involution, architectural activity (avant-garde or otherwise) in general is forced to displace them in a manner which does not simultaneously contradict the validity of the Modern Type. It is this unconscious process of displacement which pervades almost the whole of productive activity which must be uncovered in order to understand the state of Modern Architecture. If complexity is displaced out of the typical set during Involution, it is always displaced into some secondary activity of architecture which provides the contextual material for identifying the inert primary forms of buildings. In previous architectures at the same historical stage, this 'marking up' of typical elements and spatial organization could be clearly seen in the various forms of decoration which they employed, set rotations, symbolic geometries, allegories, the attachment of imaginary architectures (columns, porticos, pilasters and other fictive elements), together with sculpture and script. (One is reminded here of the Renaissance concept of decoration as the 'corporeal' nature of a building). These were all very overt methods of externalizing complexity rather than allowing it to distort the primary forms of the building. If Involution demands this sort of extrusion, then one must look for its equivalent in the architecture of the later 20th century. It is worth emphasizing that it is the activity of displacement which is being sought, not the activity of decoration per se. For this reason one is not searching for some overt use of the fictitious in the forms of Modern Architecture although they are there, but a group of signs (or symptoms) which are being used consistently to indicate context. The term 'context' does not only refer to the relation of one building to another or to the particular time ,place and circumstances of its making. It can also refers to the relation of one part of the building to another part. That is, it defines the context of each and every part of a building. This is particularly important in the Involutionary phase where the overly-precise nature of the elements tends to the make the building an assembly of architectural elements. Another aspect of such contextual signs which must be looked for is that they should portray ritualistic characteristics.
3 Technology and Architecture
If such a group of signs are to be found in Modern Architecture then they clearly lie in its emphasis on technological rationality. Technology is not simply the technical apparatus by which an architecture may be realized, nor is it the ubiquitous use of machines, prefabrication or the possibility of mass production. Technology is, first and foremost, the method of organization of the work process: it is a matter of coordinating these technical means to ensure their maximum productive capacity. In this it can be considered to be an industrial Type having elements (technical apparatus) and rules for the combination of those elements (their coordination). Technology has as its goal the elimination of inconsistencies and variations of technique across the whole of production. This is essentially a question of the economic use of resources - minimum effort against maximum return. Minimum effort is only achievable given a predictable relationship between the means of production. Technology gives the production process a self-propelling quality by integrating its originally diverse centres into a reliable whole. Like the development of an architectural Type, technology integrates the productive world by splitting down existing productive units into their constituent processes and condensing similar processes together. The units so formed are, therefore, highly specialized in their function and are arranged into an organized aggregate where the performance of each unit or process is highly predictable and repetitive. For pre-20th century architecture there was one inescapable problem which prevented the complete standardization of the Type; the process of production could never be completely coordinated. The means for such control were not available to the institutions which sought to direct, influence and, ultimately unify architectural production. There would always be areas and pockets of production, even in the most centralized state which remained, for one reason or another, outside the influence of the commanding institutions. Also, the existence of adjacent societies with different traditions would contaminate local standards. Nor was there any way of ensuring conformity in the kind of education that architects would receive since most of them would be trained outside the recognized academies. As a prerequisite for professional practice, education in a recognized school of architecture only became mandatory at the beginning of this century. Add to this the lack of a national or international means of publishing the work of many architects and thus speeding up the process of exchange and homogenization of ideas, and one can see that the ideal of perfect standardization would be extremely difficult to achieve. The same 'problems' of diversity of building materials and techniques could be found even within the same society. Given these conditions, it took a very long time indeed for a recognizably unified architectural Type to become established within one society or group of societies.
If these difficulties were removed, as they have been to a large extent in the 20th century, then the possibility of total conformity of architectural production can be imagined. The means are now available to transmit the values of a single architectural style throughout many societies and to ensure a conformity of education for all architects. So too, the growing uniformity of the industrial base in which architects operate and the convergence of the social and cultural traditions of different societies lend themselves to the acceptance of a common architectural Type. It becomes the case that the vast majority of architects, trained in exactly the same way, reliant on the same industrial base, influenced by the same technical literature and conditioned by the same cultural milieu will produce a completely unified and comprehensive architectural Type. This degree of coordination afforded by modern technologies also ensures that the Type so produced will be deeply-programmed into all architectural activity. The unity arrived at by these means (and over a relatively short space of time) will apply to every single dimension of architectural activity, theoretically erasing the possibility of typological diversity. In these circumstances, every action taken and every creative thought merely serves to confirm and reinforce the prevailing Type. The typological and institutional diversity which might have allowed a subversive thought to arise (even by accident) has been ironed out. The material which would have formed the content of an alternative architecture simply does not exist.
If technology allows the coordination of production to this degree and if it also allows the collection and analysis of the vast statistical surveys on which architectural programmes will be based, then one would be tempted to say that here was an architecture which could absorb complexity. If no area of the society need be left unclassified in terms of its social needs and if the technical and economic aspects of an architecture can be precisely defined and, therefore, made utterly reliable, then theoretically, the necessity for displacement would have been removed. After all displacement only occurs when the set of typical elements cannot express the complexity of lived experience. Again, if such an architecture did not need to rely on the experience accumulated in the past, and could reject the historical constraints on what sort of architecture it could be, then, more than any other, it would be a self-consistent architecture. No matter how uniform its routine, technology would have given it the means to derive its forms out of 'needs', 'functions' and the immediate experience of contexts. In effect, it would transcend history not simply by the stability of its typical set but much more fundamentally by generating a set which was ORGANIC to the conditions of its society. More than any other architecture in history, it would seem to be a new ‘nature’ exactly analogous to the relations in the society which it sought to represent. At this level of sophistication, the DIGITAL analysis of contextual relations (i.e., quantitative- reductive) and the dominant mode of behaviour during Involutionary periods), would be reinforced to an extreme degree by the essentially digital nature of technology itself. The latter's own atomistic tendencies would by its power indirectly magnify the same tendencies during the Involutionary period. So detailed would functionalist analysis become for this reason that it would appear to be an analogue of its context. It would seem to have taken absolutely everything into account.
The difference between the digital and analogue modes of perception can, of course, be equated with the atomistic and holistic methods of analysis. A more precise definition of the two terms may be found in the following passage from Antony Wilden's book: 'System and Structure', where he says:
"This is in essence is the prime distinction between the function of the digital and that of the analog. The digital mode of language is denotative: it may talk about any thing and does so in the language of objects, facts, events and the like. Its linguistic function is primarily the sharing of nameable information (in the non-technical sense); its overall function is the transmission or sharing or reproduction of pattern and structures (information in the technical sense). The analog on the other hand talks only about relationships. In human communication there are often serious problems of translation between the two" (Wilden. page 164).
The coincidence of Involution in architecture with a powerful technology would allow architecture to name (i.e., state the characteristic of) every element that was present in production and integrate their similarities to a degree previously unknown. Since Involution is defined with reference to the Type produced in the Developmental stage, its digital power transforms the 'more or less' predictable relationships of that Type (its analogue state) into a number of fixed ‘either-or’ elements which supposedly serve the same overall purpose of representation. (Elements which, as suggested earlier, do not change their character according to context and which are distinct from one another). In a sense there is the creation of a virtual reality.
When the inevitable splitting of literal and contextual elements is reinforced by a technology sympathetic to these ends as it is in the 20th century, a qualitative leap occurs in the process. Whereas in the past digital analysis – the precise classification of architectural elements - would still result in fixed typical elements and fluid decoration; now, that difference can be dissolved. It had always represented a complexity or ambiguity which no amount of Involutionary reduction could eliminate - its fluidity represented the failure of architectural analysis to cope with the ultimate transience of experience. Although architecture could type out a set of highly predictable elements, it could never quite overcome the problem of representing contextual differences with a set of highly predictable elements. The coincidence of an advanced technology with an Involutionary phase of architecture theoretically solves that problem. The most minute variations of context can be classified in architectural terms. The process of splitting takes place at a different order of magnitude from previous periods which could only displace complexity into a sub-routine of unpredictable forms to be called up as necessary. Now nothing need be unpredictable; the whole architectural world can be reduced to an aggregate of fine details which can be combined to represent any circumstance, no matter how complex or variable. The blunt instruments of the past can be replaced by the precision instruments of today.
Decoration arises when analysis has to stop, overwhelmed by the complexity and variety of situations which an architecture must represent. It marks the limit - the high-water mark - of the typological process in architecture. It denoted the beginning of the region of uncertainty: a region to which all unclassifiable material was exiled. In the 20th century the dimensions of that region have apparently been reduced to a marginal - 'statistically negligible' - area of production. What does this mean for Modern Architecture? In one sense it makes it difficult to detect the signs of displacement in contemporary architecture for it is based on a set which seems to be utterly comprehensive. There is no involuntary admission ( a Freudian ‘slip of the tongue’), for instance in the use of overt decoration that the typical set is inadequate to the task of representing the whole of experience – apparently there is no process of displacement in this architecture. The power of technology has allowed it to INTERNALIZE diversity within the limits of a now comprehensive typical set. Or, so it would seem. Yet the Postmodern fragmentation of the Modern points exactly to the fact that the same irreconcilable differences exist within this architecture between the simplicity of the model which it uses and the complexity of the experience which it represents.
5 Technology as Ritual
In architecture, the unconscious activity of displacement is expressed through a ritualization of the organization of the built form. That is, as a rhetorical confirmation of the primary forms of a building. If decoration is called up to alleviate the semantic inadequacies of a building (the Type-in-context), it does so by articulating the stereotyped forms drawn from the typical set. It makes the building speak of a particular place and a particular time. It is a sub-routine which provides the determinative clues which indicate the meaning of the typical elements in this context. It fulfils this function for every part of the building for these elements can no longer be adjusted to suit the inevitably varied circumstances in which they will be used. At this late stage in the historical of an architecture, elements are JUXTAPOSED against each other rather than pragmatically fused with one another. Decoration is focused on those events in a building where different elements and spatial groups meet. In linking the differences which in-form a building it simultaneously expresses its overall organization. It has taken over this role from the typical elements which are now too abstract and inert for they can only express their own consistency. The task of expressing the meaning of any particular building (what makes it forms predictable to each other and to its context), is transferred to a set of relatively inconsequential features. For this reason, meaning is always ADJACENT to the 'key words' of any particular statement.
Decoration articulates or elaborates on events such as entrances, windows, doors, floor levels, corners, eaves, column-beam junctions, stairways, and so on. Similarly, it articulates the internal geometries which organize the distribution of spaces by emphasizing their intersections, focal points and axes. From this, one can suggest that decoration, or more generally, displacement, will focus on the MAKING of buildings both in the technical and organizational senses. It elaborates on the way a building is put together in terms of the elements it uses and the spatial organization it presents. Displacement materializes itself as a commentary on the making of buildings.
In the past there was a clear division between a statement and its commentary; they could be read separately. This is not the case with Modern Architecture where the typological process has eroded the difference between the two. It has gained the power through modern technology to stereotype every dimension of the formative process, including the form of displacement. Effectively, the statement and its commentary are compressed into one form. The result is an apparently uncondittional statement which appears to be an immutable 'fact'. Historically, decoration implied that in some way every building was unique to its context, even although it might utilize the standard elements of the Type. When displacement loses its visible and subversive difference from the typical elements – when displacement as such seems to disappear, so too does architecture's capacity to respond at any level to the complexities of experience. For the first time in history an architecture has lost almost every aspect of its representational flexibility. It has 'literally' become PURE FORM.
While displacement has been emptied of the differences which allowed one to recognize it as decoration, it remains an unavoidable dimension of architectural activity. Indeed, in the case of Modern Architecture it has become an ever more necessary activity, which must alleviate the total collapse of the semantic function. The result of this is that in the 20th century it is not enough just to make a building, one must also show HOW IT WAS MADE. Modern Architecture is compulsively driven to reveal the rationality of every aspect of the organization and fabricating of its work. It cannot stop itself from elaborating on this rationality; opening it up to view; clarifying it and articulating it. However, this massive commentary on the making of Modern Architecture, its ritualization, is still a device whose central purpose is to deflect criticism of its essentially unrepresentative forms. It is the displacement of its inadequacies recast as a confirmation of its rationality. No matter that many of the forms of Modern Architecture have been shown time after time to be completely irrational at the level of everyday use or that the meaning of modern buildings cannot be assumed from their forms, IT MUST APPEAR TO BE RATIONAL. For every one of its real deficiencies there is a technical, economic or organizational justification which cannot be overcome in its own terms. Like the highly compressed symbol mentioned earlier, Modern Architecture deflects criticism of any one of its aspects by continually referring to some other aspect as its ‘cause’. It deflects criticism. This is an architecture which screams its sanity and rationality. But, it is also an architecture which protests its innocence too much. In striving to make itself transparent and absolutely comprehensible, Modern Architecture articulates its forms well beyond any necessary technical or organizational requirements. Indeed, in those terms, much of this is positively uneconomic and spurious. Yet this architecture has the technical ability to carry such articulation to great extremes: to the point, in fact, where it dis-articulates the building to reveal its volumetric organization. This is the extremity of the process of displacement and clarification where the form of the building is EXPLODED into a material diagram of the relationships which exist between the different parts of the building.
Historically, it was only possible to imply these relationships. In effect, Modern Architecture can build the diagram. Here the digital character of Involutionary activity reaches new heights of clarity with the literal introduction of gaps or spaces between the parts of buildings and between the elements which make those parts. More figuratively, one can imagine this digital action has produced buildings which appear, in some cases to have been frozen at the moment after they have been exploded. One need only look at so-called Deconstructivist buildings to sense the ultimately digital design process. The many parts do not fly off in all directions but although now separated from one another, they remain in the same relationship. Where decoration might have been used to link these different parts together - to fill in the gaps between the parts of the building and contextualize each part - its digital equivalent (its negative) emphasizes them. Each element of the building is in sharp focus; so too is its relationship to all others. In this way at least the contextual function of displacement is still operative even if in its literal fashion it can only identify 'one element at a time'. The building as a whole, however, is context-free.
The digital spaces which are used to identify the different parts of the building and to declaim the rationality of its making and organization are equally evident at the large scale. It was mentioned earlier that the sterilized spaces between many modern buildings which isolate them from one another serve to articulate their specific identities. Note, for instance the gigantic cemeteries of tower blocks which face each other is silent affirmation of their own identities. At an even larger scale the highly specialized zoning regulations which govern the organization of many cities performs the same task of clarification. The functions which exist in each of these zones (one can no longer call them neighbourhoods) will be utterly predictable and inevitably, utterly monotonous. True to their ideological nature as the products of Involution, these cities defy the most fundamental principle of urban living, namely that the form of the city should ensure the least necessary action by its inhabitants in order to gain access to any service. One could suggest that cities originated on this basis that the products and services for a whole region were all available in one place. In the past, many cities were organized as a group of self-sufficient neighbourhoods within which one could live, work and play and die. Today, however, planning policy requires that no matter how inconvenient or uneconomic it might be, these functions will be dispersed into specialized parts of the city.
In this ritual celebration of the organization of built form every place and space must have a distinct identity – a distinct name. In Modern Architecture, this extreme degree of technical and formal precision can be understood as an arbitrary punctuation of the organizational logic of the buildings. It is ritualistic insofar as it is applied in all circumstances whether it is justified or not. The continuity of the relations in a context and their interdependence are no longer reflected in the form of buildings which speak (in staccato) only of themselves and their making. The obvious differences between primary form and displacement have been eliminated with the reduction (in both sense of the word) of the overt expression of displacement. In previous architectures, decoration in its most obvious additive form provided buildings with a level of complexity, detail, scale and visual interest which alleviated the mass of a building. In the circumstances of Involution, this was by no means a superficial function. Apart from the pure pleasure which it provided to the observer it served to visually hold the elements of the building together and also identify its relation to its particular context Yet in destroying this visible and autonomous dimension of form and its mediating role, architecture unleashes the full weight of the typological process on itself, unconstrained by history or pragmatism. Reinforced by the empirical world of technology, architecture propels itself towards that final state reserved for all unconstrained ideologies: insanity.
End of Chapter 10
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