Chapter Five: ALLEGORY AND DISPLACEMENT
1 The Advent of Allegory
The architectural Type is a symbol - the most representative sign of the whole of architectural production. As such, it resists diversity and speaks only as that ONE set which, theoretically at least, contains all other possibilities which the necessities of production might demand. The actual differences and contradictions which must always pervade any complex system as a function of the interaction of many individual actions are here subsumed within the potential combinations of this symbolic set. Any attempt to represent differences of individual context with unique signs of their own is all but impossible in the face of the polished surface of an architecture which refuses to unravel itself into a wide range of equally-valid solutions to similar, but not identical problems. Each element of this sign-of-signs can call up and forecast the probable configuration of all possible buildings no matter what complexities they may have to represent. Any one of the signs of a classic architecture can provoke a precise sequence of selections from the Type and name their 'correct' typological relationship to each other without the intervention of the architect as creator. At this stage in history Man is subsumed within System. In architectural terms, this state involves the complete interdependence of parts which is exhibited in the organization of a highly-integrated socioeconomic system. It is also the basis of the emotive power of all such symbolic systems that it can, on presentation of one of its elements, call forth and trigger a vast range of predictable associations of ideas, memories, axioms and, more fundamentally, behaviours, from the visible presence of this one element or sign. But what makes each of these signs so emotive is that, as part of the history of the whole symbol, they are compressions of many previous signs whose characteristics have been fused together over time and due to the uninterrupted action of the typological process. In looking at the signs of this kind of architecture (as an example, one may think of a Doric column), the mind of the observer conceptually reverses the typological process which brought about this fusion and proceeds to unravel it into its constituent associations. In contemplating this 'object' with its irreducable density and immediacy, the mind in attempting to act on it, cannot do other than multiply its character into as many differences as it can. Other than physically changing the object, this is the only option that is available to contemplation. This, of course, is another description of the giving of meaning to phenomena which already exist - by setting them into a wider field of images to which they can be related and their character made predictable. It is a creative re-construction of the object in the mind of the observer - a level of participation in its making. However, so precise and homogeneous are the elements of a classical architecture that the associations and memories which it calls to mind are highly predictable. So complete is it in its forms and their relations that it leaves very little to an imaginative re-construction of its images. There is very little participation involved in the contemplation of a classical architecture in the sense of having to conceptually 'complete' its forms. In decondensing the symbol, the mind unfolds it along the lines of its hidden but inevitable differences - its constituent images. But, the path which this opening-up follows has been well mapped out beforehand.
So all-encompassing is the representational power of the symbolic architecture that one is no longer required to understand it or analyse the meaning of it - but only to believe it. One need assume nothing about its forms nor search for the implicit meanings from which it arose for that dimension of connotative meaning has been absorbed within its forms. This architecture does not mean more or other than what it says. One cannot refer to a particular place or time which justifies its character or to a situation beyond the scope of its combinations. It is a language which speaks only of and about itself - it is free of context. It is an assertion or ideology in the form of an architecture and within which there is no sign of ambiguity or a subversive alternative - another way of looking at the same contextual issues. But in so thoroughly transcending experience, by freeing itself from the pragmatics of exchange which gave it is existence, it ceases to fulfil an architecture's primary purpose. It has ceased to be simply the interchange of many different experiences coordinated into a reliable formula, flexibly absorbing further change. It has hardened into an autonomous reality which blocks the transmission of experience and the possibility of innovation. As such, it falls into the trap laid by nature for all thoroughbred species and that is that it is dangerously unable to adapt to new environments or variations on the same environment. Originally evolved as an interpretation of experience - a map – the architectural Type, as it becomes Involutionary, no longer accords with the contextual territory which it once represented. By becoming so typologically pure and specific in its forms and combinations of those forms, it has left itself with very little room for adaptive manoeuvre. It cannot incorporate actual differences of contexts within its range of options. It has backed itself into an evolutionary dead end.
One can compare this situation to the problems of design faced by an engineer. There, the goal of the project was fixed and the success or otherwise of the mechanism which is being designed is determined by how closely it behaviour fits the parameters defined by the goal. By calculation (and trial and error) the engineer adjusts the behaviour of the mechanism towards a completely determined and narrow spectrum of possible states. The mechanism might have to change in order to eventually fulfil its function, but the context in which it is required to work will not. Once it fits that context (mathematically defined), it will not need to alter its behaviour. The socioeconomic stability of an integrated society, if it lasts long enough, will 'delude' the Type into an engineering fallacy by narrowing the permissible limits of behaviour so tightly that it will be unable to adjust its forms to represent different contexts. Unlike the sharply-defined and permanent goal of the engineering mechanism, the context in which an architecture must function is forever changing. There are always new and different contexts to be faced. In representational terms, this symbolic architecture has become functionally obsolete in the sense that it can no longer do what it is supposed to do, but remains semantically active as a definite horizon within which architectural activity may still take place. It has imprinted an indelible trace on the perceptions and memory of the public for whom it says all that can be said in architectural form. It is a habit of perception still not eroded by the vissititudes of experience.
2 Replacing Flexibility With Certainty
But, as before, one can say that nothing is wasted. This hardened symbol, although disconnected from experience and floating free in the memory, reinforces the resistance to change in architectural production. Its continued activity produces a necessary time-lag or evaluation time before new types are absorbed into conventional practice. Its role becomes that of an inhibitor to a potentially too-rapid an assimilation of individual experiments. It constrains in this way the degree of difference or unorthodoxy an embryonic new architecture might incorporate into its types. Thus potential new styles will circle around this functionally obsolete Type defining their character with reference to this symbolic eminence grise. The residue of the Type becomes an active, censorial memory and a frame of reference against which the coherence of new work can be measured. It is a memory of experiences long past and subject to a long period of selective interpretation. As the constancy of new experience begins to have its effect on new types and pushes them into a further stage of development, so the previous architecture is set deeper into the collective memory and the chains of association which it provoked are blurred and side-tracked by a overlay of new experiences.
The evolutionary path which lead an architecture from regulation of diversity to inhibition of change (and to memory) can be understood as a result of too-selective typing of its characteristics. Gregory Bateson deals with this concept in terms of what he calls the 'economics of flexibility'.
"These considerations lead to a classifying of both genotypic and environmental changes in terms of the price which they exact on the flexibility of the somatic system. A lethal change in either environment is simply one which demands somatic modifications which the organism cannot achieve.
But the somatic price of a given change must depend not absolutely upon the change in question, but on the range of somatic flexibility available to the organism at the given time. This range in turn, will depend upon how much of the organism's mutations or environment changes. We face an economics of flexibility which, like any other economics will become determinable for the course of evolution if, and only if, the organism is operating close to the limits set by this economic" (Bateson ibid).
What Bateson calls the 'range of somatic flexibility' is, in the terminology of architecture: the typological range. That is, the set of elements and combinations which are available for the creation of new buildings. In the environment of the integrating state, typological activity has compressed this range to a very narrow spectrum of permissible acts. It has sacrificed syntactic flexibility for semantic precision, thereby creating a world full of clarity and certainty; a certainty founded on the continuing concentration of commissioning sources. The Type substitutes short-term security for long-term survival which would require the retention of diverse characters and sub-routines not predictable in their form by an analysis of what is recurrent. It would be required to maintain the flexibility which is a feature of the pre-Involutionary classical Type which is both unified and yet capable of adjusting itself to suit the complexities of any context. In this state (of developmental change), the typical set still has that residue of the diversity of the different types which it fused together. It still has several minor routines available to cope with the unforseen, but inevitable changes of environment which must arise - an environment which is made up of demands for an endless number of new buildings and different solutions to different contexts.
A serious communicational problem arises when the Type is so depleted by a long process of selection and essentializing of variations that it cannot provide itself with that margin of adaptive safety. It cannot represent what is unique to each of these new contexts.
3 The Pathological Phase
To find itself in this dangerous state of rigidity, the Type has, so to speak, placed the need for order above the need for flexibility and diversity. It is important to point out that there is no conscious intention involved in the emergence of this state. It is an inevitable condition if a society remains integrated over a long period of time. In natural eco-systems, this degree of rigidity is seldom realized for species do not have the power to control the environment in which they live - to stabilize it. Where a natural environmental has 'lured' a species into specialization of response, unforeseen climatic changes or intrusions by other species can lead to the extinction of such specialized organisms. Although retaining their unique characteristics, species in the natural world are still, within limits able to adapt themselves to quite dramatic changes of their environment. The diversity of the natural world and the inbuilt fexibility of natural organisms seldom produces complete rigidity of behaviour.
Typological activity in the first instance acts to maintain differences between characteristic types of architectures. That is to ensure the clarity of the information which they contain. Yet in the conducive conditions of an integrated state the analytical power of the typological process eventually breaks through or overides these differences. It finds ever new layers of similarity within these pools of difference which unite them at more fundamental levels of form (for instance, their basic geometries). Equipped with a sufficient technology, institutions and analytical techniques, it is possible for the compressive power of the typological process to overide the actual diversity of experience and to project more comprehensive (and more abstract) similarities. A further result of the availability of powerful technologies is that the abstract symbols so produced by analysis can be imposed directly on the constituent level of experience. A good example of this imposition of the symbolic level on to experience can be found in the geometric organization of the Baroque landscape; Lucio Costa' plan for Brazilia, Le Corbusier's plan for Chandigarh; Speer's plan for Berlin, and so on together with numerous environmentally hostile new public housing and city centre projects. This is not just a question of size but of the organization of built form around an ideological symbol usually in the form of a simple geometry. One may equally find it in many examples of buildings built in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the zenith of the International Modern Style, for instance, Saarinen's C.B.S. Building in New York or Ricardo Bofill's housing project Les Arcades du Lac near Paris. In historical and evolutionary terms, these projects and many others of their kind marked the shift of Modern architecture into an Involutionary phase, the further development of which would result in its fragmentation into a series of context-dependent styles known generally as the Post Modern movement. Technical prowess, the organizing power of the institutions of state and the homogenity of the integrated state allow the symbol to organize everyday experience. It rolls over local variations and clusters of differences by superimposing and materializing a necessarily abstract and rigid symbol of unity on the real world. The symbol, which logically is the name of a class of signs, is transformed into a real and physical thing - no longer just implicit in the juxtaposition of different forms or their coordination, but explicitly marked out on the earth.
At this point in its history, the Type has placed itself in danger. It has gambled all its credibility - on its power to control all contexts and events and at all scales of production. But, in so highly integrated a system, either everything works or nothing works. thus, the inconsistencies and errors in such 'symbolic' organizations are multiplied throughout the whole area of production. There are no discontinuities or seams in such systems which allow one to isolate malfunctions from the rest of the system. It cannot respond to very particular circumstances by incorporating 'special cases' of its design programmes: adjustments of scale or topography, character or inherent ambiguities of context. It must deal with the environment all-at-once and all at the same level of operation giving over to secondary devices the problem of solving local or detailed issues of context.
The only thing which limits this tendency towards totalitarian control over the environment and to an eventual and inevitable catastrophic readjustment when the scale of its errors increases is lack of the necessary technology. Unless it acquires the power to completely wipe out actual diversity of human behaviour, it will always face the threat of an ultimate error in its calculations which will throw the whole system into disarray. Excluding the possibility of actually increasing its use of technology to iron out such problems, the only other way of maximizing its effect on the environment is if the state of integration in a society were immortal. Given enough time, the symbolic architecture could impose itself throughout a society at all levels, cancelling all differences. Time and technology, therefore, would make experience into a metaphor of the Type. Theoretically, there would be no diversity of context to be reduced in order to maintain its stability. It would be a trans-historical society where the future and the present would coincide. The symbol would become a lived experience.
The statistical chances against such a development happening are extremely high. Such a coincide of Type, socioeconomic structure, chronology and technology all coming together in such a perfect fit are unlikely. But, one may find, in certain pre-industrial societies, periods when the society has almost reached this oceanic state of homogeneity. One can refer to these as theocratic states, constrained by a very strict hierarchy of caste and where the level of everyday life is confined within complex rituals which conflict with the most elementary pragmatism. This austere social Type corresponds with the same degree of rigidity in the architecture of the society. Separated from experience, the Type generates buildings which are works of pure ritual. Whole cities have been designed on the basis of a self-sustaining theocratic or technocratic principle which originated in the distant past from the most pragmatic exchange and assimilation of experience. Later, however, when the cumulative result of many such exchanges has produced a crystalline hardness in the routine, its use begins to clash with the needs of everyday life. The ritualized organization of the environment with its specialized zones and baroque axialities of circulation (whether as avenue or highway), conflicts with the simplest principle of human behaviour, namely that of the least necessary action in order to achieve some desired result. Indeed, in this way, it conflicts with that economy of organization which triggered its own origins as a single flexible routine which could deal with several different contexts. It has become separated from its own history and in its abstraction seems to have become the product of an alien culture.
The Type, whether architectural or urban, is a symbol, of the collective dimension of experience and, therefore founded only on its most recurrent aspects. When the symbol is reified into a plan to be super-imposed on the complexities of everyday life - the level of individuals - it must necessarily inconvenience and disrupt the intricate and heterogeneous web of relationships which define this level of experience. The plan is always much simpler than the environment which it is created to coordinate. (The model is always simpler than that which it models). In deflecting the pragmatic organization of activities with a plan which oversimplifies the relationships in a society, the basis for the ritual organization of life is laid down. In such a society, in order to carry out some task, it is always necessary to do some other task first. The direct linkages between the different parts of the environment, established by experience and which permitted a large number of different ways to get to the same place, or different ways of doing things, are condensed to a few formal connections. The fact that these formal linkages are highly abstract maps of the most recurrent activities and connections defined by pragmatic usage does not lessen their incongruity. The diversity of the environment and the original ease of exchange between its different parts has been drastically reduced. In its place an imaginary version of this order is substituted which condenses that original diversity down into a few elemental relationships; these are channels through which all future communication must take place. In this, there is a conflict between different levels of the same system: between the collective and the individual; between the Symbolic and the Real; between the General and the particular; between the representation and what is represented; between the signifier and the signified.
The nature of such conflicts is significant because it does not arise from sources which lie outside the system itself but results from the system's own activities within its boundaries. It results when the system (as it must) formalizes its own practices into a comprehensive routine which, although it is a method or a technique, also defines the identity of the system. In the Type, the architectural system produces a condensed version of itself - a unique character - assimilated out of the multitude of responses it has made to its environment in the past. These forms had remained dispersed until the advent of Developmental conditions permitted the typological process to formalize them. Thus, the tension between different levels of one system is an inevitable product of historical change. What is also inevitable is that the continuity of an integrated state will exacerbate these tensions by further reducing the possibility of pragmatic responses to situations. The over-formalized responses of the system, in the shape of the Type, make it impossible to respond exactly to the demands of particular contexts - and at the level of lived experience all contexts are particular. There is always this clash between what is necessary and what is permitted.
The alchemical process of transforming the pragmatic base of the system's practices into purely formal (and thus predictable) responses ends with the confounding of logical levels of its organization. If 'what is necessary' is not 'what is permitted', then the system faces a paralysis of action. In order to be correct in any particular circumstance, it must deny the validity of its own learned routines. It must, (although it cannot), deny the Type of practice by which it identifies itself. With the unmediated power of the symbolic level to act directly on experience without modulating its actions by means of intermediate signs, (corresponding to the differences to be found in reality), there is a compression of logical levels. The result is a sort of 'failed seriousness' and a stream of incongruities as the character of its rigid and overly formal buildings clash (sometimes ludicrously) with their contexts. Given the stereotyped condition of an Involutionary architecture, its response to local contexts is inevitably inappropriate.
During such Involutionary periods, it is not just a question of the inability of individual architects to derive an authentic symbolism out of the manipulation of architectural forms or their facile tendency to use 'ready made' symbols as substitutes for thinking. While in individual cases this may be true it is not ultimately a matter of individual skill or creativity. In some periods the repertoire of form itself is so emptied of diversity that it disallows the adequate representation of particular contexts. The typical set cannot be modulated and adjusted to the degree required by the complexities of context. (To attempt to do so would render the ensuing building meaningless in terms of conventional perceptions. There are only a limited number of ways this set can be combined whatever the demands of the context). Architects of all abilities are therefore forced to use the most general propositions to represent very particular circumstances - with all the consequent incongruities which that brings. Quite simply, during such Involutionary periods there is a massive reduction of the semiotic freedom available within the language.
In the past, the relationship of Type to production was one of simile, where one building was regarded as being 'something like' another. This always left open the possibility of other descriptions of reality and other combinations of (similar) forms. With Involution, however, the relationship of simile is hardened into the relationship of a metaphor. One building is identified with another. One can consider a metaphor to be an unlabelled simile which omits the frame of reference within which two things are identified with each other. A frame which points to their actual differences rather than their classified similarities: to the contexts in which those similarities exist. The Type is formulated on the stripping away of such contextual determinatives - those distortions and variations which allow one to tell the difference between one place and a similar place. These are determinatives which mark out the boundary between the Real and Imaginary dimensions of experience. In the pathological phase of the architectural Type, with its overwhelming uniformity of production, it becomes impossible to differentiate between them. There are no longer any permissible sign-posts (differences of form) to indicate one place from another within the uniform grid the Type now lays over production.
4 The Dream State
The substitution of an imaginary coherence for the unpredictability of the real world brings the Involutionary architecture towards the order of the dream state which provides an exact analogy of the processes and perceptions which pervade the Involutionary phase of an architecture. It also offers a useful example of the typological process at work, but in unconstrained circumstances.
The elimination of context, the formation of categories by the typological process, the condensation of multiple events into a few stereotypes, the allocation of meaning to an event by de-constructing it into recognizable recurrences. These are all, of course, functions of the conscious mind ordering reality. These processes also occur in the dream but with two important differences: the first is that in the dream the action of the typological process is much more extreme since there are no actual constraints on what can be imagined and the second is that within the dream there are no labels to say that the dream actually refers to another dimension, namely reality. As far as the dreamer is concerned, it is reality. The dream is a pure and unlabelled metaphor of the empirical world. There is no frame of reference which says otherwise or indicates its relationship to other dimensions of experience. For this reason, the figures who populate it, while they are imaginary constructions, are taken to be real. There is nothing in the dream to suggest they are not. Whereas conscious thought is continually contradicted in its categories by the diversity of the world and its transient states, unconscious thought, in the form of the typological process is allowed an unrestrained freedom to condense experiences derived originally from the real world. It does not deal with the resistant material of experience, but with reports about that experience which it must organize into some coherent and recognizable pattern. There are no limits to the reductions that the typological process may carry out within the dream in order to bring the random events of the day inside the classification of probability. This, indeed is the function of the dream; to process experiences perceived by an individual and make them fit a preconceived order which renders them meaningful. Thus, the irreducable 'things' of experience and events are ‘melted down’ by the typological process and re-cast into pre-formed categories having calculable relations to each other. (Categories which are the product of previous condensations typed by the operations of the mind). The vast amount of data received by the senses during conscious activity is thus made comprehensible as a whole during the hours of sleep or during less concentrated periods of consciousness. It is as well to remember the functional description of the typological process given earlier: the metonymic selection of recurrent events in experience and the fusing of these into fictitious wholes or metaphors. It is these 'most probable' classifications which form the basis of the programmes of action by which humankind through work, transforms the material world.
The distorted versions of reality which one finds in the dream are a consequence of the mind's attempt to essentialize the multiple events of experience into a single fictitious whole. What may appear in the dream state as unities are, in fact the more or less successful condensation of several experiences or personalities. This is why one sometimes finds that in dreams the 'personalities' of the dream characters keep 'slipping' or changing into other personalities. Similarly, the location of events may suddenly shift from one place to another or the dreamer may find that completely different events may overlap each other in the arbitrary unity of the dream. The more probable the experiences which must be processed in the dream state, the easier it will be for the typological process to classify them into recurrent categories and then compress them into the long-term memory. The effort required to hold them together will be that much less than it would be for unusual events which require more time and effort to discover which aspects of them match previously condensed material.
It is not only the events of the day which are processed in one dream period for in order to incorporate new material it is necessary to reorganize the whole storage system. The reason for this has been suggested above, namely, that the reports about the day's experiences (stored temporarily in a short-term memory), are processed by being dispersed into established categories of similarities in the long-term memory. This matching of past and present bits of situations may also explain the 'deja vu' effect experienced during conscious activity. For a moment the continuous subconscious activity of the mind matching existing and new material reveals itself at the conscious level. Some vague resemblance of the immediate environment, not to some real place, but to a fiction condensed out of many different places, temporarily creates a direct link between conscious and subconscious levels. The internal and external images are identified with each other, giving rise to the ambiguity of the deja vu effect that although one 'feels' one has been to a place before, one also 'knows' that this is not the case. The typological process locks this coincidence together until some change of light or movement destroys the similarity.
Since new material from experience is not 'added' to existing stores of memory but is combined with it, its incorporation produces a ripple effect which activates earlier and earlier layers of memory. In his book, 'The Dragons of Eden', Carl Sagan discusses this process as follows:
"Experiments have shown that as the night wears on our dreams engage increasingly earlier material from our past, reaching back to childhood and infancy. At the same time the primary process and emotional content of the dream also increase. We are much more likely to dream of the passions of the cradle just before awakening than just after falling asleep. This looks as if the integration of the day's experience into our memory, the forging of new neural links is either an easier or a more urgent task. As the night wears on and this function is completed, the more affecting dreams, the more bizarre material, the fears and lusts and other powerful emotions of the dream material emerge. Late at night, when it is very still and the obligatory daily dreams have been dreamt, the gazelles and the dragons begin to stir." (Sagan, The Dragons of Eden; Coronet, 1979).
Sleep is made up of a sequence of quiet and active states of mental activity. The latter, the dreaming state, expresses itself physically as periods of Rapid Eye Movement. This corresponds to the sort of mental activity which one would expect to take place during the dream: the scanning and typing of diverse material. There is a lot of work to be done during these periods for new material must be typed recursively into the memory so that it can be classified as a whole (a day's events) and in progressively smaller detailed units (particular place, time, personalities). But to do this requires that earlier memories be triggered to provide the semantic frame for the classification of this material. The question for the subconscious is always: 'where does this particular event fit into the scheme of things defined by past experiences?' One can speculate that the quiet periods which alternate with dreaming are periods when processed material is allowed to sink back into the memory. However, since it is now 'different' in that it has new material in it, there is a semantic gap between this an earlier layers of memory. Thus, a new period of dreaming (typing) is required to match one layer of memory to another. When the typological process has welded these together, another quiet period ensues, and this now unified material is allowed to sink. Theoretically, by the end of the sleeping time, the whole memory will have been reorganized to absorb recent experiences. This might explain Sagan's point about childhood memories being provoked near the times of usual awakening, for these would be the last set which would need to be coordinated with the absorption of new material earlier in the sleeping period.
There is an added complexity to this in that although dreams are the periods of condensation or merging of old and new material - a reason for the strangeness of some of their images - they too become incorporated into the long-term memory. The whole process is totally cumulative in that the memories and the making of those memories are compressed together into a composite whole of great complexity. Thus, the typological activity - the name of what the subconscious mind does ( and, therefore, is) - is completely unrestrained during sleep and transforms literally everything into an aspect of that unified figure, the identity.
It is difficult to identify the characters who inhabit the strange world of the dream for, in many cases, they are composite (or, 'identikit') characters fused out of the recurrent characteristics of several individuals in the real world. For this reason, if one 'looks' at the characters and contexts in a dream they can be unravelled by analysis into several constituent characters or contexts. Or, to be more precise, into the most recurrent aspects of these real figures. This would also explain the 'out of character' behaviour of recognizable personalities in the dream. If, as it does, the typological process essentializes the behaviour of individuals to an extreme degree within the confines of the subconscious, then this completely distorts their personality of those individuals which is, in fact, made up out of an infinite number of variations bound into an identity. There is no 'true' identity which lies hidden underneath these variations of behaviour. The truth is the variations for there is no subject or 'ego' lurking underneath them pulling their strings. The truth for the classification, however, is a different matter. There, the typological process (especially in the unfettered condition of the dream), condenses these real variations into an imaginary unity . This kind of classification, as it takes place in the dream and, unfortunately, also in society in some cases, reduces the complexity of personal behaviour to a stereotype and a caricature. The personality of individuals who inhabit the world outside the dream are condensed in two dimensions, namely, in terms of their personal characteristics and in terms of their history. In the latter case, all that is known or remembered about the person is compressed to an immediacy - to one point in time. In this manner the typological process condenses an individual to a singularity. The result is, of course, that in the dream the individual is almost unrecognizable. As usual there is another level of complexity to this in that there is interference in this stereotype from the similar characteristics of other personalities which the typological process tries to superimpose one on another. The goal is this: to condense the world of experience down to one timeless unity which can be fully comprehended.
Needless to say, this requires an immense typological effort especially when it is necessary to synthesize the constituents of a particularly improbable event and its whole cast of personalities. One may note the intensity of dreams after an individual has experienced some shock or surprise; or, after the experience of reading a provocative book or watching an intensely dramatic film. Difficult as it sometimes is, they have to be made to fit the scheme of things defined by previous classification of experience. It is an effort directed to preventing the dream characters and contexts from remaining as diverse and unpredictable as their 'real-world' counterparts. There must be some way of juggling with these events (splitting them, rotating and re-combining them with existing material, and so on), until they are framed and neutralized.
This is the threat which always underlies the dream: that the whole edifice of stereotypes will disintegrate and bring down with it that predictive certainty which offers the only basis for risk-free action. From this, one may speculate that the fear engendered by a nightmare has more to do with the inability of the typological process to frame unusual new material within available memories than it has with any inherently threatening content of experience. Indeed the characters and contexts which make up the content of the dream may be quite conventional in that they can be easily related to 'ordinary' events and personalities. The ambiguity which inspires the fear in the nightmare arises out of the unclassifiable relationships between these dream elements. The problems are that apparently no matter now one 'writes' new experiences out in terms of memories, there may be events which cannot be contained by any combination or re-combination of existing material. The particular reason for this may lie in the strangeness of the actual event itself as it took place in the real world, or it may be to do with some temporary malfunction in the typological process (caused, perhaps, by fatigue on the part of the individual who dreams). Whatever the reason, the result is that the subconscious has to invent ever more improbable combinations of memory in order to find that pattern into which new material can be slotted. In the nightmare even the most ordinary figures can continually disrupt expectations. Modern drama has found this feature of the dream to be a particularly fruitful source of inspiration where the sometimes violent intrusion of the unpredictable into a conventional context destroys all commonly-accepted frames of reference. Another point to note about such dramas is that in many cases they concern themselves with the breakdown of communication between the parties of the plot. This lack of common language prevents the reconciliation of differences and the final resolution of conflict. An example of this can be found in the dramatic works of the playwright Harold Pinter whose characters, although using the same language, forever fail to communicate with one another. They cannot, therefore resolve the tense ambiguity of their relationships. Much of the power of modern drama comes from its refusal to eliminate the ambiguity of the plot at the end of the play or the film. The audience takes away with them that uncertainty which they themselves will have to resolve, most probably in the hours of sleep.
5 The Unlabelled Metaphor
The dream is a drastically condensed map of reality, but, since it is not labelled as a map, it is mistaken for reality by the dreamer. The intensity of the dream is, therefore, a function of the reductive effort required to compress many different perceptions of experience into one. It is in this sense that one can describe the characters who inhabit the dream and all the elements within it as 'symbols' and, thus, refer to the symbolic quality of the dream. It is in this sense that these terms are used here; they do not refer to some transcendental aspect of the dream, but to its organizational function of containing the world of diversity by reducing it to a few highly-charged, but identifiable, symbols. It is this numerical function which forms the basis of the iconic power of symbols, in that they can be both 'one' and yet represent 'many' for the simple reason that the symbol fuses these two dimensions into its form. Relative to experience, these signs of signs of signs are arbitrary constructions which although connected, however indirectly, with real events nevertheless operate at several removes from them. Their arbitrariness, therefore, lies in their generality with regard to any particular event for they cannot represent what is unique to any of them. However, in the context of the dream, these arbitrary symbols form the totally believable and autonomous world in which the dreamer moves and 'experiences' events. It is a curious world in which the dreamer finds it exceedingly difficult to communicate with the symbolic characters who populate it. Even although this world is constructed out of material drawn from the dreamer's own perceptions of reality, it is still difficult to comprehend the strange context in which he or she moves.
In the dream, experience is written out in a different language and its images are reconstructed to accord not simply with real events but with the extremely selective principles of memory. The dream exists as a product of the combined pressure of these two utterly different dimensions of perception. The drama of the dream is that here one is watching a metaphor being made: material is being transformed from one state to another. It is a movement from simply mirroring experience to symbolizing it and hence making it more comprehensible, not part for part, but whole to whole. This points to the difficulties of communication which are always a feature of the incidents portrayed in a dream. The dreamer finds it extremely frustrating to try and communicate with the characters who populate his or her dream - they always seem to 'miss the point' of the conversation or suddenly shift the subject under discussion. Conversations between the dreamer and these symbolic characters take the form of elliptical communications which, no matter how much the dreamer tries to focus on some particular matter, can never be made to do so. More apposite to their nature as symbols, the dream characters respond to questions at another logical level of the same subject or provide answers to questions which have not been asked.
Just as the dream is a product of the attempted fusing of two dimensions of perception: internal and external, so to the drama of the dream involves both the conscious and subconscious methods of analysing and transforming material. However, during sleep, the conscious mind is a passive observer of subconscious activity. It is only for this reason that the dream is regarded as 'strange' for the conscious participant in it will view it using digital, sequential, linear, narrow focus modes of thought, while the subconscious activity which motivates the dream does so using analogue, symbolic, simultaneous, holistic, wide-scan modes. This does not mean that there are two completely different thought processes in the mind - there is no split between one and another, but, rather they are two versions of the same typological process. This one process handles two kinds of material from two different dimensions of experience; it will appear, therefore, to involve two different kinds of operations. Contrary to the more bureaucratic classifications of the human mind, there is no clear division of the conscious and subconscious levels. They are differentiated by a graduation of more or less compressed images drawn from experience of the empirical world. The images which the typological process must face in that world are infinitely diverse and transient.
The dream is the process of binding the flood of perceptions which come to the mind through the senses. The strangeness of the dream images to the conscious mind is an inevitable result of its sequential mode of perception trying to comprehend a simultaneous process: a close-packing of old and new images. The dream is a simulation of several different ways of organizing the same material to make it fit existing complexes of images; for this reason it can be regarded as many trial-and-error experiments going on at the same time. For once, the conscious mind can observe the dynamics of a whole field of exchange at the microcosmic scale of the mind. All the strangeness and the paradoxes, all the sudden shifts of image and the contradictions which occur in this event of exchange resolve themselves over the years into a unique Type of perception which is used to frame future experience and establish ways of dealing successfully with it.
As with other processes of exchange, the dream transforms material from one state to another and equally its ability to unify this material into a routine is constrained by events outside its control: the inherent diversity of its environment. The degree of integration or diversity of this environment (a state determined by the individual action of many others), will retard or facilitate the development of a perceptual and behavioural routine for the individual. In this case the term 'integration' would refer to the consistency of responses which the individual provokes from those who have the power to confirm or reject different types of behaviour; different questions which the individual poses to his or her environment. If the answers to these 'questions' are consistent - if the same question always (or almost always) draws the same response - then it becomes possible to formulate a routine which can cover most of the circumstances which the individual is likely to meet in the environment. Thus, the dream process will only be required to condense fairly recurrent aspect of experience. If, on the other hand, an individuals behaviour draws inconsistent responses from his or her environment - if the same question draws several different responses no matter how many times it is put - it will be impossible to formulate one routine (an identity), for all circumstances. As in architecture, the field of exchange will be faced with streams of difference which have little or no recurrent aspects. An environment which is unpredictable in this way will provoke intense dream states filled with unresolvable ambiguities - a continuous nightmare within which the dragons will rule. It will be necessary to invent and project ever-new combinations of existing material into the environment so that perhaps one of them will draw a consistent response when repeated. Until this happens the dream state will remain a period of convulsive combination of images as the typological process attempts to type inconsistent material.
In the dream as in the conditions of an Involutionary architecture, experience is completely transformed into a metaphor. A metaphor which, however, no longer represents reality, but has become reality; the Symbolic becomes the Real for it now provides the frame of reference (the context) through which the events of the world are given meaning. Roles are reversed; the empirical world is now viewed as a failed copy of the serene and perfect language of representation.
6 The Generation of Paradox
The architecture of the theocratic state is the fabrication of an imaginary perfection of form which demands the continuous repression of the Real and its differences. This Involutionary architecture which, initially at least, is everywhere similar and coordinated, renders invisible to perception the countless unique events of the world. If their presence is noted at all, they are considered to be ephemeral and inconsequential phenomena which, like ripples on the surface of a smooth pool heighten the perception of its form. Here is an architectural Type which can be applied everywhere and anywhere, in any location, at any scale of problem and for any kind of function. In a great sweep of coordination, it is applied equally to mass housing, law courts, churches, libraries, schools, government buildings, commercial buildings and railway terminals. It defines the character of the interiors of these buildings: the furnishings and decor, the lighting (whether natural or artificial, highlight or floodlight), the hierarchic definition of spaces, the compaction or dispersal of built form. It specifies the character of the details of buildings and urban landscape from the architrave around doors to the shape of lamposts, from the pattern of paving stones to the curve of a handrail on a stair. To a naive visitor who knew nothing of the complexities of the society it might seem that these different buildings and places were merely articulations of one overall function; so similar are the buildings to one another. At the urban scale that is indeed what they are; the 'function' being the City. But the theocratic architecture is applied at all scales so that the coordination of routes and intersections into a clear geometry 'visible from the air' is matched in its coherence at the level of everyday use and perception by the regularity of architectural elements and their limited number. Thus, one architectural Type is coextensive with a whole society and allows it to speak with one voice and thereby identify itself as a unique. The meaning of each building cannot be found in its own particular context, but is always adjacent to it - between it and all other buildings. In this situation, in order to understand the form of one building, one must simultaneously understand all of them: each is defined in terms of all the others. Given this, is it still possible to say that this architecture represents experience? It certainly represents it as a whole, but it cannot identify the unique characteristics of any one of them. New projects become occasions where this architecture can manifest itself so that again roles are reversed: the contexts become representations of the language of form. They offer opportunities for it to materialize itself in space and time.
The gap between representation and reality widens to the point where the forms of this architecture cease to have any meaning outside the frame of their own coherence. The dimension of connotative meaning has been repressed: one cannot predict the form of the building from an analysis of its context or function. It can only be predicted by reference to the denotative clarity of the architectural Type. Since the Type has come to represent itself and to refer to itself, the inevitable result is the generation of paradox. This problem can only get worse as time passes for the state of the Type is not fixed, even in a theocratic society. It is in a period of continuous Involutionary change which further reduces the number of slight variations which remain in the typical set. Architects are required to express the same contextual diversity with less material. The paradox which ensues in architecture comes directly out of the increasingly self-referential state of the Type. It is a sign which refers to itself. One example of this is, of course the sign which states: 'Disregard this Sign': another can be seen in the following sentence: "This Statement is False'. In both these cases, what is missing is a context which would allow thought to break out of the oscillation between 'what is said' and 'what is meant', which in both statements is the same thing. As it is, both statements are 'meaningless' since in order to believe what they say, one must believe the opposite. Whatever meaning they have is purely a surface effect which stems from their grammatical coherence.
In architecture, this degree of internal coordination and, consequently this degree of paradox in communication reveals itself in the incongruities of radically different contexts and functions represented by identical architectural forms. (These are 'words' which can mean two completely different things, minus the mediating clue which indicates which meaning is operative in this time and place.) Yet the totalitarian unity imposed on experience by the architecture of the theocratic state remains simply that of representation. It may disguise the diversity of context and function which exist within the society, but it cannot destroy it. The forces of difference still exert a pressure on architecture; they must be recognized in some way but one must look for traces of this activity operating in the shadow of the all-powerful symbol. They are played out in a minor key inside the grand harmonies of the Involutionary architecture. They express themselves as peripheral features, not of the austere typical set, but adjacent to it. In this architecture, difference is expressed in the form of decorative activity. This is logically consistent with the role of the sign vis-a-vis the symbol. In the Developmental stage of a system of communication, different characteristic signs are bound together into a comprehensive symbol. It is their similarities which are welded together; but there is a limit to what the typological process can do in completely reducing their differences. There is always a trace of difference- a visible ‘aura’ - left over from the process of condensation. As Involution attempts to 'type out' and eliminate this lingering imprecision from the typical set, all it can really do is to collate these random characteristics into a secondary class of representations. This is the class of unclassifiable and marginal forms. Thus, this residue which is left over from the condensation of the symbol contains all that the symbol is not: it is a class of contextual clues earlier referred to as the Para-system As such, it performs the function originally carried out by the signs themselves of indicating different contexts, but now, it is only possible to do this by implication. Since it is the Symbol and the Type which defines the one routine for all contexts (primary architectural elements, character and combinations), the residual sign-functions of the Para-system are a mute reminder of the original diversity of architecture. Its purpose now is to alleviate the incongruities caused by the application of an inflexible typical set. As decoration, it flickers across the uniform surface of the Symbolic architecture as the mark of that connotative dimension unrecognized by the typical set. It surreptitiously links architecture back to the diverse world of experience by articulating the canonical elements and compositions around unique contexts. The abstract purity of the typical set of elements is countered by the complex weavings of decoration as it moves through between and around the primary forms, giving to them a superficial responsiveness to individual context.
It is not that this decoration arises out of the specific character or identity of each context; it does not. It is equally a product of the abstract machinations of the typological process on architectural form. It remains a sub-routine of the Type which, if it still cannot indicate the unique character of a context, can at least indicate that it is different from other contexts. In this it does not name each place, but simply the difference between each place. One can look at decoration as an artificial context or, indeed, a portable context which, while it is still part of the Type can be shunted around to meet different circumstances. Thus, it is only at this secondary level that architecture is able to differentiate one place from another. Needless to say, as the Involutionary phase of an architecture continues with further reductions of the typical set, displacing minute variations of canonical elements, the decorative activity in an architecture becomes more demonstrative.
7 A Polyphony of Decoration
Decoration, slang or the sub-culture represent the inexhaustable differences between the perfect coordinations of their respective symbolic Types and experience. They perform the same representational function as the frame around the painting or the place - names on a map (which indicate that it is not a photograph of the territory). They define, not the context of the object which is represented, but the context of the representation. It is a meta-language which comments on the pristine forms of the primary means of expression.
The critical value of decoration lies in the simple fact that it changes from building to building, from part to part of the same building. It is in this variability that it expresses a kind of representational truth. Unlike the unquestionable assertions of the symbol which offers one highly condensed image for the whole of creation, decoration signifies the particular and the here-and-now of the symbol. It represents that dimension of things excluded from the symbolic representation by the typological process; thus reestablishing (albeit artificially), the connotative realm of meaning. If the symbol or the Type extract from experience its unity, its oneness, then decoration reveals what has been repressed in that process and rendered invisible. It gives diversity a presence at the level or representation and, in a sense, subverts the totalitarian unity of the symbol. Decoration is the graffitti scrawled one the face of the institution.
Repression of diversity in this case has a very specific meaning, for when it is applied to architectural form it requires each element to perform one, and only one, identifiable function. It was mentioned earlier that at the Developmental stage of an architecture, architectural elements could still be modulated to cope with complex situations. They performed as double-function elements, for, with a slight adjustment to their form, they could resolve several formal issues simultaneously. Later, when this possibility is disallowed because of the demand for precisely-named forms and functions then the multitude of different incidents in a building must be handled by an equal multitude of uniquely-engineered forms. Thus, the diversity which is repressed by involution in architecture takes place at this most basic material level of the shape and function of the elements. It is the potential diversity of their functioning which is forbidden for it would mean that an element could have several characteristics determining its one form. It could not be precisely named. The formal disarticulation which follows from this at all scales of the building is, therefore, an inadvertent complication of the form. At each level of the form of the building, all is precise and clear, except, that is, at the level of the whole which becomes blurred by the many marks of clarification. This problem was recognised by the composers of fugues who found it necessary to introduce a slight distortion into each melodic line. Only by doing so was it possible to fully integrate the different parts of the work into perfect harmony without expressing the 'seams' between individual voices.
The diversity which is squeezed out of the typical set into the sub-routine of decoration is reintroduced in order to alleviate the problem of fragmentation. It serves to indicate the context of the canonical elements and to deal with complex formal intersections which cannot be handled by a modulation of primary forms.
8 The Symptoms of Disorder
Decoration is the involutionary admission, the 'slip of the tongue' which betrays the inadequacies of the Involutionary Type in architecture. It expresses the divergence of this routine from the performance demanded of it by the environment in which it acts. It is a Type which in seeking to represent all contexts with a single precise formula, succeeds in representing none of them in particular. One might note in this respect that over time there is a considerable increase in the decorative activity involved in the Involutionary architecture as it strives to compensate for this loss of authenticity. Through this process one can trace the slow petrification of the typical set and its consequent displacement of contextual signs into decoration. One could compare this 'hardened' set with its Developmental phase - its classical state - where the apparent simplicity of its form stemmed directly from their flexibility. In that phase the modulation of forms allowed them to refer specifically to the context in which they were being used. Complexity, at this historical stage of an architecture resides in the potential of the forms themselves. Each of them, while clearly integrated with others is capable of expressing a range of characteristics depending on how it is used and related to other forms. it is this plasticity of architectural form which has been eliminated in the post-Classical world.
In such a comparison, one would become aware that the real development of architecture has ceased and that it has passed into an Involutionary stage of its history. It has begun to generate allegorical representations of itself by means of decoration in the attempt to confirm the authenticity of its routines. It has become necessary for it to double-up on the codes it uses to generate meaning in architectural form. This also entails that in the reading of that form that analysis must take into account, two parallel systems of meaning which interact within the one form of a building: the primary meaning and the allegorical meaning. The latter exists and is used to stave off the semantic crisis which otherwise might befall an Involutionary architecture. Decoration in architecture is a symptom of some failure in the representation capacity of the Type. In this case, it speaks of the contraction of the typical set within the limits of the pragmatics of communication. For all practical purposes it has ceased to be a machine for predicting the future and thereby of reducing risk.
Although the typical set by itself cannot meet the simplest demands of its environment, there is, theoretically, no limit to the permutation of decoration and rotation of canonical elements which can be used to represent new architectural problems. The duration of this stage of an architecture cannot be predicted; that is entirely determined by the socio-economic state of the society. The subsidiary formal mechanism of decoration will allow the Type to continue to function until new socioeconomic conditions drastically alter the constraints within which architecture operates.
Without the dispersal of commissioning sources brought about by a Plural socioeconomic conditions, Involutionary processes in architecture could go on for ever orbiting around the memory of a Classic architecture. It would continue to generate ever more obscure and highly decorative variations on itself and would remain in an allegorical phase where it would produce an endless stream of fictitious differences of architectural form. Involution, by definition is an ‘internal evolution’ of the products of the system but this evolution is not the generation of the new but rather an obsessive elaboration of an existing theme. The apparent differences and complexities of an Involutionary architecture do not arise from the manipulation of the typical set which is now almost fully stereotyped, but from the mass of decorative devices which allow it to continue to function at all as a system of representation. For this reason there is a superficial similarity between the buildings of the Involutionary and Evolutionary periods. They both appear to display a remarkable diversity of architectural form. However, an Evolutionary period is defined by the presence of a number of different autonomous styles each with its own active typical set not just variations on a single theme. In this transition period between Involution and Evolution (stylistically between the one and the many) these new styles do not arise spontaneously but are radical recombinations of existing material and the only material available at the time is the set of decorative variations produced by the Involutionary period. It is these which, in the conditions of a new Plural socioeconomic state are taken up during the Evolutionary phase, subject to typological action and thus transformed into unique styles. In a sense of course, this suggests that the decorative apparatus of one period becomes the typical primary forms of the next. One need only think of the origins of the Graeco-Roman style which lay in the constructional logic of timber buildings translated into marble. Forms such as the pediments, capitals, metopes and mutules derived from timber detailing techniques were simply translated directly into decorative devices in stone having little or no practical function. Yet these same decorative devices and their numerous variations became the basis of much of Western architecture.
The shift from Involution to Evolution in architecture brings about the triumph of the marginal and the institution of a whole new architectural cycle.
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