A Marxist theme is developing among the texts. This week Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space and Marshall Berman’s All That is Solid Melts Into Air form the basis of the discussion, which starts to relate Marxist theory directly to the notion of the architect and the built environment.
As a child of Eagleton’s ignorant post-golden age generation, Lefebvre’s dense text, which centres on the production (and corruption) of social space, is particularly challenging, and will no doubt require re-reading for years to come.
The chapter Social Space begins by discussing how the notion of production has changed. Lefebvre writes that ‘The absolute Idea produces the world; next nature produces the human being; and then human being in turn…produces history, knowledge and self-consciousness – and hence that mind which reproduces the initial and ultimate Idea.’ This relates to Berman’s use of Goethe’s Faust as a representation of modernisation through his transformation from The Dreamer, to The Lover and finally The Developer – who becomes the Idea. As the Developer Faust strives to be the Idea, as he wants to be adored and worshipped. But as Berman alludes to in the title of his chapter, there can be no development without tragedy. Faust undergoes an intellectual and cultural revolution, comparable to the Enlightenment, after which there is no going back. With good intentions he goes out to make a difference to the lives of the civilians, but rather than listening and assessing the real problems, he patronises them with his personal ideals on how society should be.
At this point it is interesting to bring in Lefebvre’s theory of Social Space, which argues that every society of a particular time creates its own space. Ancient Rome was not just an agglomeration of Romans in Rome, it had its own spatial laws, dominated by temples, amphitheatres, and the gods, suited to the culture and beliefs of the time, and the intellectual ideas developed within Rome were related to its spatiality. So, if a society tries to copy the social space of another society, then a strange abstraction no longer related to the culture is created. This can be seen round the world as through the corruption of globalisation cities compete for the tallest buildings, of benefit as a political symbol rather than to the local community, and skylines blend into one. Chinese cities, for example, imitate capitalist urban design, rather than embodying the production of a socialist space.
Society cannot change without producing the appropriate space. Capitalism will only allow spaces that make the most profit to be produced, hence the shoddy state of new builds. Nostalgia, the devil of social space, is also rife among pastiche architecture. Prince Charles’ influence on British planning, most recently at the Chelsea Barracks, proves that we are in a strange feudal-capitalist-class driven society.
The destruction of old Hutong Housing in Beijing; OMA CCTV Tower, Beijing
If the capitalist financial crisis is, as Badiou suggests, about a housing crisis, then architects must play some role at the core of the capitalist system. Berman’s analysis of Faust tells us that The Developer is selfish, destroying communities in the wake of his own ideals. And the architect is no better, whoring himself out for the next big commission. We only have to look at the starchitects building in the UAE, USA and China, countries governed by completely different political ideals, to be proved of that. Iconic structures are using space as a product of control in order to show a dominance of power over society.
Architects, rulers and developers share the same common goal of making history and a name for themselves through their buildings, disregarding moral standards. Thousands of employees in air-conditioned London offices click away on their screens designing the next phallic skyscraper for governments hardly known for their human rights. Like Faust they outsource the dirty work ignoring to contemplate the horrific on site health and safety records, or communities that their baby will replace. How like the modernday architect, complaining about planning objections and ignoring the plight of discplaced community, is Faust, under the pretence of enriching the life of his citizens, forgets why a house might be symbolic to the elderly couple, worth more than any amount of money.
There cannot be development without destruction, whether that be of nature or the built environment. “All natural and human barriers fall before the rush of production and construction.” The cruellest irony is that often these buildings, which destroy whole communities, are in fact just a façade, lit up at night to appear like they are used. In the build up to the Beijing 2008 Olympics, with stadiums built as the ultimate Chinese political symbol, many of the traditional Hutong Communities were destroyed to be replaced by skyscrapers in order to give the city a signature skyline symbolising progress. OMAs CCTV tower, for example, is empty, but is still lit at night to give the impression of being occupied, and thus a “success”. Whilst developers and architects are sure that the next big project is what the world needs, what they need for satisfaction, the truth is that “men are not satisfied by the satisfaction of their conscious desires.”
In running away from Gretchen, Faust is like the heroic architect sacrificing their life for their work, with the notion that ‘he won’t be able to create anything unless he’s prepared to let everything go.’ Le Corbusier is perhaps the most obvious comparison to the Faustian developer, who “strives to change not only his own life, but everyone elses as well” by constructing a radically new social environment that will empty the old world or break it down”. He wanted to exert so much control and leave his mark that he even invented his own measuring system. He tried to convince authorities to destroy whole cities and communities, and re-build according to his Modulor system, and impose his vision of life on all. So adamant in making an immortal name for himself. He had no real political agenda, trying to convince fascists and communists that his ideals were the same as each others. How fitting that the designer of concrete mass buildings lived in a shed.
Recently on a visit to La Tourette one of the friars living there complained of Corbusier competing with God in his daily routine. There is only one way to arrange each room, one way to go about your activities. Corbusiers legacy lives on, the architect is the creator.
Closer to home I can see all the problems mentioned above on the site of my unit project in Silvertown. The local community is trapped between heavy industry and London City Airport. The residents are constantly losing out to the big developers, the latest of whom is Crossrail. The area is essentially one big building site for Crossrail, which will eventually run through Silvertown, but not have a Crossrail station within it. A transport scheme being marketed for the benefit of East London is actually disrupting Silvertown and giving the area nothing in return.
It is impossible to know that were it not for this Faustian kind of development, had industrialization not happened, had a capatilist society not given the goal of money to the big software giants, whether I would be sitting here writing this blog on a computer. Maybe there would be no need for such a blog, maybe something even more exciting would have been invented, who knows. We cannot change history, but we can learn the lessons from tragic mistakes of the past. As the future we have the power to “create new modes of modernity, in which man will not exist for the sake of development, but development for the sake of man.”
