“The argument which
follows involves the surrender or at least, the temporary suspension of a
prevalent monocular vision, the willingness to recognize certain fantasies
about history and scientific method for the totems which they are, the
concession that political process is likely to be neither very smooth nor very
predictable and, perhaps above all, the dissolution of a cherished prejudice
that all buildings can be, and must become, works of architecture.”
Colin Rowe
& Fred Koetter, Collage City (MIT, 1978), p.101
In 1987 Catalan
theorist Ignasi de Solá-Morales published an essay titled Weak Architecture, in which a crisis in contemporary architecture was
diagnosed as a symptom of the modernism’s apparent end. Resulting in a
historical condition of radical groundless in which “contemporary architecture,
in conjunction with the other arts, is confronted with the need to build on
air, to build in the void,” Solá-Morales contrasts the concepts of weakness with fundamentalism in architecture. While the former threatens to
reproduce the crisis-inducing machine that is modernism, the latter escapes its ideological and aesthetic conditions.
Both tactics approach building as a representation of ideology: fundamentalism digs
deeper into history in order to posit a “more true” ground whereas weakness accepts
the impossibility of a true ground at all.
The project and
recent exhibition Book of Copies by San
Rocco, the notorious architecture collective that produces its eponymous publication,
is a timely meditation on the present-day significance of these two modes of
architectural production. A copy itself, Book
of Copies was originally presented as a part of FAT’s Museum of Copying in the 2012 Venice Biennale. It has been revamped
as
a solo show currently on view at London’s Architectural Association with numerous new books
a new exhibition design by young Milan-based firm PIOVENEFABI.
Each Book of Copies
presented is composed of two parts: a collection of photocopied images, and a
title, “naming a class of buildings that could be produced by copying the
figures.” The project synthesizes the fundamentalism of naming an architectural
type and the weakness of revealing the complexity of what naming a “type” may
mean. While the project admittedly does not intend to “present an exhaustive
taxonomy” it does posit the necessity and liberty of the taxonomization process
in order to “redefine … collective knowledge”.
Throughout the books
on display, the tenuous relation between each book’s signifier and signified is
played with in various ways. Some books take rather common classes of building,
such as Tunnels, Highways, Chinese houses,
Blue buildings, Churches, and so on, to present what might not have been,
but perhaps should be, considered integral to the type. Others take an opposite
approach, proposing unconventional architectural types such as Pachinko Parlors, Villas Where to Shoot a Porno
Movie, Buildings Arguably Built by Aliens,
and Brothels, expanding the notions
of what is built and can be architecture. A third approach is neither focused
on the book’s title nor its content but the fact that it is a book and can be
read as such, emphasizing parts of the built environment that may be overlooked
as merely components of the architectural event, like Billboards, Pilotis, Park gates, and Shop Windows.
Installed with
two photocopy machines in the room, each Book of Copies can be copied and taken
for personal use. As such, the exhibition literally furnishes the architect
with the material for becoming a bricoleur, the famous identity posited by Colin
Rowe and Fred Koetter for the postmodern architect capable of forging the
future. The bricoleur walks the tightrope between “scientific idealism” and
“populist empiricism,” between Solá-Morales’ weakness and fundamentalism: not
merely characterized as one who performs an act of bricolage, the bricoleur is
one who is conscious of the context
of making itself.
This piece originally appeared in ubcube on October 29, 2013, as 'And Again...'
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