Chapter Eleven: INVOLUTION AND SCHIZOPHRENIA
1. The Analogy
The tendency of architectures to split their formative activity into primary and secondary mechanisms during periods of Involution conforms to a remarkable degree with similar processes which take place in schizophrenic communication. Equally, many of the other symptoms displayed by architecture during these times can be directly translated into the patterns of schizophrenic behaviour. These include the chronic misinterpretation of context, massive compression of meaning into indecipherable knots, displacement of meaning to ‘small things’, literal perception of messages, the addition of contextual masks (decoration), rigid behavioural patterns, anxiety towards ambiguous contexts, disintegration of behaviour into ‘assemblies’ of gestures and ‘word heaps’ and so on. At its most extreme, it may also involve the disintegration of the identity into multiple personalities. Add to these the traumatic origin of the Involutionary phase and its propensity toward extreme digital modes of perception and the analogy between the two field becomes clear. The theoretical context of this analogy between the behaviour of an individual and that of a collection of individuals lies in the fact that they can both be seen in terms of communicational systems that are subject to irreconcilable demands placed on them by an inescapable environment over long periods of time. The result of that is the emergence of a similarity of behaviour.
It is important to recognize that the pathological symptoms which are exhibited in both cases do not result from the addition of some new external factor to the 'normal' mode of each system of communication. An individual does not 'contract' schizophrenia any more than an architecture invents its post-classical state. Both patterns of behaviour can be understood to be perfectly rational attempts to transcend some inescapable paradox which the systems face in their respective environments. The fact that these attempts might be futile and lead to what may be regarded by others as bizarre or even destructive behaviour does not invalidate the logic which informs them. In their respective fields, both the individual and architecture (the collective activity of many architects acting as a single system) is required to behave authentically or spontaneously in an environment which expressly forbids such behaviour. This is the paradox with which they are faced and which they must resolve through the selection of some appropriate response. Appropriate, that is, to the enclosed world in which they find themselves. For an individual that world is determined by a pre-existing set of personal relationships which both demands and yet forbids spontaneous expressions of behaviour. For architecture, the world is determined by an already unified and comprehensive Type which severely restricts the possibility of unusual combinations of its element and yet the unique demands of many contexts require the improbable and the different. So widespread is the Type within architecture (as a similarity between buildings) that any attempt to act spontaneously vis-a-vis a particular context would certainly render the ensuing work incomprehensible.
The particular form of behaviour by which each system learns to cope with these conditions is, therefore, grounded in the HISTORICAL nature of its relationship to its environment. It is required to act in terms of an already established and fixed set of relations which it cannot change. In most circumstances the flexibility of existing sets of relations within the environment or the presence of equally valid alternative sets allow a system to function both spontaneously and comprehensibly. It is when a set of circumstances imposes impossibly restrictive rules of combination on the behaviour of a system - facing it with mutually exclusive choices - that counter-productive behaviour results.
As suggested earlier, the learned response to the paradoxical constraints on behaviour and the uncertainty which this brings is the systematic splitting of experience into primary and secondary components. This unconscious process has its obvious analogy in the philosophical system produced by Descartes; there too, the splitting of the mind-body relation was engendered by doubt and uncertainty as to the literal reality of all experience. However, in that case the 'doubt' was an analytical device rather than an ontological experience. For the schizophrenic individual and for architecture during the Involutionary period, the process of splitting of experience is not a matter of choice but is the way the world is perceived; it is the way the system has LEARNED to be in the world.
The relationship between the primary and secondary mechanisms of communication and their joint function in the of the world of experience is well expressed in the following passage from R.D. Laing's book, 'The Divided Self', where he says:
"The self can be real only in relation to real people and things. But it fears that it will be engulfed, swallowed up in any relationship. If the 'I' only comes into play vis-a-vis objects of phantasy, while a false self manages dealings with the world, various profound phenomenological changes occur in all elements of experience. Thus, the point we have already got to is that the self, being transcendent, empty, omnipotent, free in its own way, comes to be anybody in phantasy, and nobody in reality."
And in another passage he states:
“When experience of the outer world is filtered to the inner self, this self can no longer either experience or give expression to its own desires in a way that is socially acceptable.
Social acceptability has become a technique, a trick. His own view of things, the meaning they have for him, his feelings, his expressions, are now likely to be at least odd and eccentric, if not bizarre and crazy. The self remains encapsulated within its own system, while adaptation and adjustment to changing experiences have to be conducted by the false self." The false self system is apparently plastic: it operates with new people and adapts to changing surroundings. But the self does not keep up with the changes in the real world. The objects of its phantasy relationships remain the same basic figures although they undergo modification, for instance, in the direction of idealization, or they become more persecutory. There is no thought of checking, testing these phantom figures (imagos) in terms of reality. There is no occasion to do so. The individual' self by now is not making any effort to act upon reality, to effect real changes in it." (pages 142, 143).
With few adjustments one could transpose this description of schizophrenia into an analysis of the state of post-classical architecture. When Laing points to the omnipotence and yet emptiness of the self in this situation one is immediately reminded of the state of the typical set after a long period of stereotyping. It too has become free 'in its own way' for it is no longer based on the exigencies of experience but has become locked into idealizing the few elements and routines which define its character. It is in this sense that one can understand Laing's use of the term 'phantasy' for it denotes the detachment of these elements from the empirical world; they have become so abstract and so general in their relationship to experience that they no longer represent anything - they are 'nobody in reality'. The elements of this petrified core which have been sealed off from any real contact with the world (these 'objects of phantasy' or stereotypical elements), must still perform their role as a means of communication with the world. However, in order to do so the Self projects a secondary system of behaviour which superficially can deal with the changing demands of its environment. It is the one aspect of the set which is 'plastic' and apparently responsive to different contexts: it provides a distinct face for every place. Equally, Laing's remark about the problem of the social acceptability of schizophrenic behaviour points to the streams of criticism which inauthentic or bizarre behaviour provokes. Criticism which is directed at the inappropriate nature of schizophrenic behaviour in a particular time, place or circumstance. It is also a criticism which leads to renewed and equally futile attempts by the Self to correct its behaviour by assuming ever more ‘precise’ and thus ever more inappropriate responses to the complexities of its social environment.
Post-classical architecture faces the same problem for it too is incapable of direct expression of the meaning of any particular context and is, therefore, forced to displace this role into inconsequential features of buildings. As the typical set becomes progressively more stereotyped and inarticulate these devices are used to disguise the fundamental arbitrariness of the prevailing Type. They make it APPEAR to be responsive to its environment; but it is, indeed a 'trick'. As Involution continues, the forms of displacement or decoration (improvisation) must become more exaggerated and even grotesque as the typical set becomes less capable of expressing the meaning and the complexity of contexts through a manipulation of its few elements. The task of representation is finally passed over to the forms of displacement which, over time become more articulated, enlarged, out of scale, emphatic and, eventually, 'bizarre and crazy'.
The analogy between these two systems of communication centres on the symmetry between their respective sets of relations. This can be outlined as follows:
INVOLUTION SCHIZOPHRENIA RELATION
Type: Environment Self: Others. Ambiguity-paradox
Type: Displacement Self: False Self. Compensatory
Type: Typical Set Self: 'Imagos'. Idealization
Displacement: Environment False Self: Others Adaptive
By extending the analogy outlined above as a context, one can then look at Laing's more detailed description of the False Self system. He summarizes its development as follows:
1 The false-self system becomes more and more expensive.
2 It becomes more autonomous.
3 It becomes 'harassed' by compulsive and behaviour fragments.
4 All that belongs to it becomes more and more dead, unreal, false and mechanical."
This conforms to certain points made earlier about the increasing dependence of a Type on the mechanism of displacement. The Type is forced to transfer more of its representational functions over to this secondary mechanism which does indeed become more extensive, not only in terms of its physical presence in works of architecture (as decoration or articulation) but also in terms of the semantic function it is required to carry out in architecture. This 'fictitious architecture' must eventually overwhelm and blur the canonical forms of the Type and become its corporeal presence. As it becomes more sophisticated and systematic in its forms, displacement which originated as a form of IMPROVISATION, takes over the architectural functions of the Type. It emerges from being, perhaps, a simple inscription on the primary forms of a classical architecture to being the not- quite-integrated fragments of whole separate architectures. By this parthenogenic process architecture extrudes from itself a group of multivalent images each of which seems to refer to a very particular context. Thus the characteristic forms of the group of Postmodern styles already mentioned such as Historicism, Eclecticism, Hi-Tech, Populism, Regionalism and Deconstructivism each define a very particular approach to the expression of social institutions in built form. To put it another way, each of these styles look as if they had emerged or developed out of some very particular context. Their forms are so specific and emphatic that they each appear to be designed for a group of very special circumstances. Here we have another of those curious reversals we find in the Involutionary phase of an architecture. Where before we had an architectural Type which was a general statement inappropriately applied to specific contexts, now we have a group of very specifically-engineered statements applied generally across architectural production. If these ‘special cases’ were integrated into a single set they would almost appear to be a whole architecture which had a wide repertoire of behavioural responses available to it. In fact they are simply fragments of behaviour - sub-routines - which refer to the kinds of context that the Type was on its own unable to represent. That is why their forms appear to be specially-engineered and emphatic. Each of these Postmodern styles is, on its own a customised repertoire for a certain kind of context. They are, in that sense simply expressions of pure context - frozen improvisations split off from the petrified core of the Type.
The 'autonomy' of which Laing speaks can be understood in two senses. In the first it would refer to the systematization of the forms of displacement - their alteration from fluidity to a digital clarity. The extent of the forms of displacement and the degree of autonomy achieved in an architecture is a matter of time and technology. With Modern Architecture, the function of displacement has reached the point where it substitutes for all authentic re-combination of the typical set. This is an architecture which no longer defines its forms by their USE (in the broadest sense), but by the rationality of their making. In this way displacement now dictates the form of buildings and thus becomes an autonomous function. In a second and related sense it refers to the final splitting of the Type into a group of semi-autonomous styles such as the Postmodern condition discussed above.
Point three in Laing's list ('compulsive behaviour fragments'), can be translated into the ritualistic articulation of buildings. It is a compulsive intention to 'discover' and articulate, as architectural form, functional differences in the context whether they exist or not. It results in the disarticulation of the form of buildings and the creation of spurious differences and distinctions. In fact, one need not take the actual relations which exist in the institution into account at all; its actual differences merely serve as a justification for an arbitrary fragmentation of architectural form. In terms of the logic of the process, these are actual differences digitized into imaginary oppositions. It is a purely formalistic intention disguised as a search for 'truth'. There are more differences in this functionalism than there are in the world at large; there are more 'identities' than there are phenomena to be identified.
With point four on Laing's list one is reminded of the ever-active presence of the typological process and its digital character during periods of involution. If every aspect of the forms of displacement becomes 'dead, unreal, false and mechanical' as against its original fluidity, this is only to be expected given that all material is subject to the reductive action of the typological process. This, of course, is part of the process of systematization mentioned in point two above. As it becomes more autonomous and systematic, inevitably it will begin to appear predictable and mechanical. This 'dryness', this tendency toward abstraction, is the fate that awaits all architectures at the later stages of their history. In the pathological conditions of the Involutionary state, this is what must happen to each infusion of difference into architecture or each extrusion of complexity from the prevailing typical set.
In its own way the form of displacement RECAPITULATES the history of the typical set. It too moves through a cycle of Evolutionary diversity and complexity, Developmental coherence and, finally, Involutionary petrification. In that final state it separates itself from its own context: the typical set - it becomes autonomous. Whatever form it takes, displacement is always in a complementary relation to the typical set; it always remains an allegory of events which have been decided elsewhere. Thus the historical cycle through which it moves is in direct relation to events taking place in the typical set of its time. It is a surface effect of profound changes in the Type itself.
The complexity of the relationship between displacement and Type and, by analogy, between Self and False-Self make it difficult to decipher the true state of things and the limitations which are being imposed on all combinations of the typical set. For instance, which articulations are rea? That is, actually derived out of the particular and pragmatic requirements of a context and which are 'added' to make a building appear more representative? It becomes impossible to tell in the midst of so much fabrication and improvisation. An extended period of Involution generates an extreme degree of additive complexity over the austere and restricted elements of the typical set. Some ideas of this can be sensed from the following passage from Laing:
"One of the greatest barriers against getting to know a schizophrenic is his sheer incomprehensibility: the oddity, bizarreness, obscurity in all that we can perceive of him. There are many reasons why this is so. Even when the patient is striving to tell us, in as clear and straight-forward a way as he knows how, the nature of his anxieties and his experiences, structured as they are in a radically different way from ours, the speech content is necessarily difficult to follow. Moreover, the formal elements of speech are in themselves ordered in unusual ways, and these formal peculiarities seem, at least to some extent, to be the reflection in language of the alternative ordering of his experience, with splits in it where we take coherence for granted, and the running together (confusion) of elements that we keep apart." (Page 163).
2. The Effects of Time and Technology
If one supposes either an unlimited life-span for an Involutionary state, or unlimited technological power, then the processes of splitting or displacement would be forced to repeat themselves for ever. There might be several layers of displacement superimposed on the forms of the architecture during the history of the Involutionary period. The reason for this is that because of the difference in function between the typical set and its form of displacement (between primary and secondary mechanisms), they will inevitably have difficult time-scales. The rate of change of the secondary mechanism will be much quicker than that of the typical set for it must respond to the immediacy of new building production whereas the stereotyped forms of the typical set do not. Indeed, it is precisely because the set is now so inert and unresponsive to events that displacement is required to provide whatever contextual articulation is required for new buildings. Since these come on stream perhaps day by day, this forces the relatively rapid historical evolution of the secondary mechanism. At the same time, the typical set is progressively contracting towards its final evaporation. As each layer of displacement becomes systematized, autonomous and, in its own way, inert, so another layer of 'spontaneous' decoration will be projected in order to maintain the Type's pretence of plurality and responsiveness. This layer will not, however, be projected out of the typical set, as was the first, for that set has been squeezed dry of any diversity. It will emerge out of the forms of the first layer of displacement. Since decoration (characteristic displacement) recapitulates the developmental history of the typical set, it too must eventually split itself into literal and contextual components; this is the cost of its growing systematization. New improvisations are derived from previous improvisations resulting in an exponential growth of difference and elaboration on the forms of the Type. If the external constraints on architecture remain the same, then this process of projection, stereotyping and displacement will be continuous.
The application of this theory to the Involutionary condition of Modern Architecture can, obviously, only be speculative since it is impossible to predict a future with any certainty. Any system has several possible futures although not an infinite number. If, for the sake of argument, it was assumed that present conditions remain constant and, therefore, that the future of Modern Architecture would be 'more-of-the-same' kind of change, then one could outline some possible states for it. Since displacement as such involves pure articulations of built form, the continuity of this process would lead to even finer articulations. The identities (whether real of imagined) would become much more specific and would produce a much more aggregated built form. Works of architecture would, according to this scenario, appear as clusters of units, diverse in form and function loosely framed within a formalized infrastructure. In effect, architecture would move toward an era of bricolage. It is no surprise therefore that one of the Postmodern styles - Deconstructivism makes this dissolution of form one of its primary themes. At a more general level the future of Modern Architecture would be one of continuous disintegration into ever more tenuously related variations on a theme. The result as we now seem to be witnessing, is the formation of several different, but geneologically-related architectures, each of which would continue to articulate their typical set with meticulous precision.
In order to maintain the connotative dimension of meaning, it is necessary for any immortal architecture to generate surface after surface of decorative improvisation or displacement. No matter how stereotyped it has become, architecture must be able to communicate with the world in which it exists even if it does so through the most elliptical of means. The eventual result would be an architecture of enormous complexity. It would, however, be the additive complexity of many layers superimposed one on another rather than one material subject to continuous transformation. Each period of displacement would leave its mark upon the forms of architecture - a residue, hardened by systematization. This sedimentation would not be absolutely consistent, but would, if analysed ‘geologically’, show chronological variations in the duration of the cycles of displacement and in the degree of systematization of each layer before its replacement by another. This inconsistency is caused by minor socioeconomic variations which can take place within the same general environment; these were discussed earlier as periods of economic expansion or recession. These fluctuations of the forms of displacement would increase the apparent complexity of an Involutionary architecture: these many faces and memories would be compressed into one massive form. (On is reminded here of the complexities of certain periods of Hindu architecture or Buddhist temples of Southeast Asia). At this stage of an architecture's history, fully developed, fragmentary and vestigial elements would COLLIDE within the 'frame' of a building; so too would anachronistic forms, shreds of past behaviours, contemporary articulations, unfinished experiments, revivals, and so on. All would be juxtaposed into a dense texture of decoration. The serene geometries and pristine elements of the typical set remain in being only as a virtual foundation for this 'game' played out at the visible level of the architecture. However, finding these typical elements and relations in the midst of such complexity would be more akin to archeology than architecture
Given what was said in an earlier chapter about the use of standardized decoration giving a semblance of unity to Evolutionary types, and of diverse or fluid improvisation being used to articulate a too-unified Type, it is clear that both of these situations must occur simultaneously during the later stages of Involution. At that point the Type is indeed too unified and yet is in a state of disintegration. This 'internal evolution', therefore, requires the application of both standardized and fluid forms of decoration. This is another way of looking at the layering process described above where the continuous emergence of new decorative cycles results in the production of both systematic and fluid 'generations' of decorative forms. The important fact about the process is that these generations coexist in architecture at the same time, thus offering both unity and diversity to an architecture which now depends on both in order to function at all.
3. Masks and More Masks
This encrustation of displaced forms in a theoretically immortal architecture - these variations on variations on a basic plot or theme - parallel the schizophrenic search for perfectly appropriate behaviours. For the schizophrenic, each story, commentary or response to different conditions - each new 'piece' of behaviour - is a play on words or gestures and part of an unending search for ontological certainty. Unfortunately, all this activity is more akin to an exercise in 'running on the spot' for it ends up facing exactly the same problems it had to begin with. Each fractional movement is freeze-framed into a distinct and isolated act; every circumstance which the individual meets is closed off in space and time into an utterly unique event. These fragments of behaviour are catalogued in terms of their success as masks and in terms of their 'social acceptability'. Carefully typed, labelled and therefore reified into things, they are made available for ‘re-assembly’on other occasions. This learned inability to behave pragmatically when necessary by modulating and adjusting one's behaviour, necessitates the construction of a catalogue of isolated pieces of behaviour which must grow in number to meet the multitude of different situations that arise in the course of a life-time. But, as predetermined acts they are quite rigid. They prevent an individual from recognizing the differences between apparently similar events. This lack of subtlety of perception leads to the 'either-or', 'yes-no' forms of digital analysis which must inevitably collide with the continuous gradations which make up the analogue state of lived experience. There is no doubt, however, that when digital representation is carried out with sufficient rigour and at all scales of discourse, it can produce a semblance of authenticity. (Note, for instance, the digital sophistication of the electronic equipment used in recording studios which can reproduce the analogue continuity of the sound of musical instruments.) Yet no matter how sophisticated an individual (or an architecture) is in selecting and assembling the precisely engineered bits of behaviour that go to make up particular responses, there will always be some indefinable inappropriateness in these sequences. Each individual bit might seem to be correct, but the whole complex will seem to be wrong in some way. The ‘seams’ between responses will always be visible. This assembly mode of behaviour will at times appear strange to others and possibly generate hostility. The schizophrenic response to this is not to 'fine tune' his or her behaviour but again to construct another fixed act to deal with that particular situation. Since there is no modulation of behaviour during the act of communication (as there is in non-schizophrenic behaviour), but only after the fact, there is always this lack of synchronization in the message-response exchange. The reality of events is ground down into finer and finer and equally reified bits. There is no recognition that exactly the same event will never occur again and that the presentation of a fixed response to what looks like an identical situation will still be wrong. There is no way the schizophrenic can stop communicating and, equally, there is no way that he or she can stop being inappropriate. The individual is forced to go on inventing new masks whose contextual character will never quite match the situation in which they will be used. Living becomes a continual exercise in crisis management.
Equally, the volatility of architecture in the Involutionary phase, the flickering transience of its styles, its whimsicality, its eclecticism, its desperate search for the novel and the unusual, do not reflect a sense of freedom or pragmatism, but a hopeless struggle for authenticity. The fragments of this architecture and the multiple characteristics by which it sought to disguise the petrification of its central values now reach a final stage of autonomy. They take on a life of their own. The symptoms of this decline are mistaken for organic attributes of the architecture; the disintegration is applauded as a healthy sign of the increasing 'creativity' of architects and the growth of 'individualism' and ‘plurality’ against the tyranny of former times. Fictive (and fictitious) architectural elements and combinations are inflated into parallel architectures. They are assumed to be real, to be identities and independent repertoires which can be considered as options in the formulation of a new more comprehensive architecture.
This permutation of different masks is still, however indirectly, related to the remnants of the classical Type. Indeed, one can say that behind these different masks there stands that singular architectural phenomenon which now simply manifests itself in a multitude of ways. The slow evaporation of the typical set leaves these manifestations in place as the only visible sign of its presence. Yet this is a false dawn. No socioeconomic or institutional changes have been needed to produce this final state of fragmentation which is purely internally generated within architecture. The eternal constraints on architecture have remained as they were. The final catastrophe of complete dissolution of the Type will come about with the eventual advent (at whatever time) of Plural socioeconomic conditions. Even then, there will be no discontinuity in architectural history, but simply a very rapid acceleration of the process of disintegration to a point where the tenuous linkages between the different variations are finally broken forever.
9 Addition and Multiplication
Before the final catastrophe, the pressures an architecture has to cope with are those of number rather than organization. One can also say that in this stable environmental situation architects can still apply the same combinatory rules drawn from a single Type to different contexts. There is only one dimension of difference as far as architectural production is concerned and that is the number of different buildings which are being built and added to the total number already in existence. With the diversification of significant commissioning power and patronage, it becomes possible to develop and apply different rules of combination to the same contexts. There are increasingly different ways of doing the same thing. Experiment becomes the order of the day. There are now two dimensions of difference to the collective operation of assimilating and exchanging architectural characteristics throughout production. It is this multiplication of possibilities which finally explodes what is left of the Type and which carries its need for adaptation over the threshold of its existing possibilities and into the realms of typological re-organization. The Type, as the whole set of similar characteristics portrayed by production, is subject to a catastrophic ELASTICATION of its routines. The differences of characteristics in production multiply rather than just accrete That essential unity of the typical set which had conditioned production through its long history from type(s) to classical Type and, finally, to Involutionary Type is no longer recognizable within the field of production. Similarity has given way to difference.
The mathematical basis of the process of multiplication (as against addition) is that it differentiates an aggregate into classes of characteristics: classes within which different rules of combination are applicable. It is no longer simply a question of number; it is a question of number and kind. Architects can no longer draw upon a common resource of typical elements which had, in the past ensured that no matter how different the variation on the theme, it always remained comprehensible in terms of other variations. Now, in the Evolutionary period, different types cannot be directly related to each other. For a long time to come it will be impossible to exchange characteristics and retain any semblance of architectural coherence. The types are simply too different from each other. This is analogous to the reproductive barrier which results in the formation of new species in the biological world. The separation of groups of an original species by migration will after time and genetic isolation prevent their mating with each other. This reproductive barrier is in fact an operational definition of the concept ‘species’.
At this catastrophic stage in the clinical history of schizophrenia, an individual's behavior would have become an incomprehensible aggregate of behavioural fragments, gestures, words, expressions and perhaps separate personalities which would all collide within the frame of their physical presence. There would no longer be any centre or any recognizable personality which could be identified behind this juxtaposition of bits and pieces. This veritable kaleidoscope of 'faces' is the end of a long series of futile attempts to adjust to the paradoxical demands of others. The point is reached where a sudden multiplication of contexts - some extremely complex circumstance - which must be dealt with ALL AT ONCE (whereas before it would have been dealt with in series), precipitates the individual into psychosis. The remnants of a unique identity are finally dispersed in this explosion of different demands and permanently locked on the surface of behaviour. In real terms, the psychological 'whole' of the individual becomes literally the sum of their parts.
For architecture, this catastrophic event in its history is not the result of choices made or decisions taken by groups or single individuals. It has not come about through visions or revelations or through some spontaneously-created ideology of 'individualism' (although that is how it will be viewed after the event); it is an inexorable product of history. It is a meeting of certain cumulative processes in architecture with a new set of environmental circumstances. As far as architecture is concerned, the essential difference between these and the previous set is simply one of MATHEMATICS. Even if the same number of buildings are being built, the crucial factor is that they are being commissioned by a greater number of patrons. It does not matter what the actual differences are between these patrons, whether they are entrepreneurs, philanthropists, new institutions or business corporations, universities or municipalities; what matters is that they independently able to commission many works of architecture. The new functional tasks and the demand for identifiable 'corporate images' which these commissioning sources will require will still be filtered through and represented by combinations of existing architectural forms. But, the differences between these sources will eventually lead to a diversification of form and the final dissolution of the Type. While the creative activity of architects will remain as it was in the classical and post-classical periods, the different circumstances in which it takes place will have radically altered. The same rules applied in different contexts will lead to a different end result.
10 A Necessary Chaos
Although it is not the result of a choice on the part of anyone, the disintegration of an architecture destroys any possibility of a coherent urban environment. In the City - that 'laboratory of the senses - the effects of the collapse of a unified architectural order reveal themselves in the violent juxtaposition of different styles and different answers to the same questions. This disorder is just as apparent at the level of the City's organization as it is in the profusion of styles which inform its buildings. There is no continuity between the scale, function or planning of different areas of the City, which have become independent entities each with its own unique character. The City becomes a collection of set-pieces colliding within a geographical area. Walking through such a city, there is no way one could predict the character of one of its neighbourhoods from an inspection of an adjacent area; everything is unpredictable. The most powerful image of such a city can be found in the works of Piranesi, especially in his imaginative illustrations of the Campo Marzio produced in 1761-2. In relating this urban image to the collapse of the Classical-Baroque ideal in architecture, Manfredo Tafuri writes:
"Architecture might make the effort to maintain its completeness and preserve itself rom total destruction, but such an effort is nullified by the assemblage of architectural pieces in the city. It is in the city that these fragments are pitilessly absorbed and deprived of any autonomy, and this situation cannot be reversed by obstinately forcing the fragments to assume articulated, composite configurations. In the Campo Marzio we witness an epic representation of the battle waged by architecture against itself. The historically developed language of building types is affirmed here as a superior principle of order, but the configuration of the single building types tends to destroy the very concept of the historically developed language as a whole. History is here invoked as an inherent 'value', but Piranesi's paradoxical rejection of historical, archeological reality makes the civic potential of the total image very doubtful. Formal invention seems to declare its own primacy, but the obsessive reiteration of the inventions reduces the whole organism to a sort of gigantic 'useless machine'." (Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, page 15).
Tafuri later calls this disaggregated urban form, 'This colossal piece of bricolage': a state of things which can, even amongst the immense fertility of its architectural forms, pervade the City with an unavoidable sense of ANONYMITY and LOSS. In this profusion of architectural events and the spurious creativity which arises both in the Evolutionary and Involutionary periods there are more solutions than there are problems; there are more machines than there are purposes for them to serve.
If it is possible to provide several equally valid versions of the truth about a particular context, then this 'freedom', this individuality of expression disguises or ignores a whole dimension of reality; it cannot speak of the many connections between things. It is unable to recognize the similarities which exist between different contexts. As with architecture in the Involutionary period, it cannot, with the means at is disposal, say two things simultaneously. In this state, architecture cannot indicate the similarities AND the differences between one context and another. Evolutionary conditions, as stated earlier, pose equally severe problems of authenticity to those of the early Involutionary period with its uniformities, but now they are reversed: there is MORE formal diversity than there is actual diversity of contexts. In this situation, one cannot predict whether the visible difference between two buildings represents an actual difference in their content or purpose or the institution represented. It may be that two buildings, radically different in form, could represent fundamentally similar contexts. There would be no way of recognizing such a similarity from an investigation of their forms. If everything is different in form, then one cannot tell what, if anything, is the same. There is no frame within which these differences could derive some meaning or against which they could be understood.
The formal chaos which ensues with the loss of a unique and well-defined identity for architecture plunges it into an era of endless experiment from which it cannot extricate itself. There is no way of avoiding this hiatus in the history of architecture as a whole. It is the gap which appears between two distinct architectural Types and is a return to trial-and-error methods of combining form in order to find a simple reliable routine. The duration of this period of experiment cannot be forecast, but only lived through. History or change in the form of another period of socioeconomic integration will, sooner or later call a halt to the multiplication of different architectural solutions to the same problems. Gregory Bateson remarks, with reference to the clinical history of the schizophrenic:
"It would appear that once precipitated into psychosis, the patient has a course to run. He is, as it were, embarked on a voyage of discovery, which is only completed by his return to the normal world, to which he comes back with such insights different from those of the inhabitants who never embarked on such a voyage. Once begun, a schizophrenic episode would appear to have as definite a course as an initiation ceremony, a death and rebirth."
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