The Cabaret of Hypocrites \ Fredy Massad

Fredy Massad

THE CABARET OF HYPOCRITES

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Enlarged version of an article published in ABC newspaper, Madrid,  08.08 .2012 - Nº 1057

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The fact that the Biennale d’Archittetura di Venezia is a mere vanity fair, some sort of must for any architect who is proud of their intellectual ambitions and wants to share and display them around an aura of sophisticated snobbism, is not the issue.  The Biennale could well be an event that, once finished, would sink into total oblivion because of its irrelevance. In such a case, and either praised or criticized, the absurdity of the Biennale would then be something harmless. However, when the President of the Biennale di Venezia is introducing the junk shop of vacuity, imposture and banality this edition is saying that its motivation is “to help architects emerge from the crisis of identity they are going through”, and then grounds this intention on the idea that their prevailing calamitous image as “celebrity pastry chefs who are being asked to create stunning wedding cakes” is a consequence of their sacrificially bowing to the foolish whims of a society that has asked/forced them to design “astonishing objects that would be akin to a scream in the midst of mediocrity”, we are then facing the proof that absurdity can turn into a despicable manipulative hypocrisy. And that is exactly the issue.

David Chipperfield pompously gives the title of ‘Common Ground’ to a hodgepodge of ‘anything-goes’, while insisting on a call to “react against the prevalent professional and cultural tendencies of our time that place such emphasis on individual and isolated actions.” A statement that sounds somehow hilarious, not just because of the pretence to believe in the utter innocence of the architect, but also because Chipperfield claims it is time to leave the star-system behind while exhibiting the work of Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron… In addition to the fact that such paradoxical selection persists in highlighting, instead of silencing, those names which now very little (or rather, nothing) have to say, it also overshadows the more consistent and meaningful proposals among the 69 participants.  Among these, the reflections about the daily dimension of architecture introduced by Sergison Bates and Caruso St.John can be highly remarked. Unfortunately, they are not the only cases of presence and purposeful content that become lost in the midst of the curatorial incontinence of Chipperfield.

It might seem that the cynical position displayed by Chipperfield stems from a peremptory need to please too many parties, too many interests, right in the moment where it should have been necessary to take a risk: develop a convincing proposal of rupture, a clear statement of difference which would blow up the prevailing ambiguous hollowness. Instead, he has chosen to produce an exhibition that clearly mirrors such hollowness. 

It would be indeed delusional to believe that such a claim could be stated from a platform like the Biennale; however, the utterly unforgivable aspect of this edition is the trespassing the ethical boundaries. Issues such as poverty, social problems derived from recession…are shamelessly used in order to perform an imposture of integrity. And although accurate, not even the angry statement of Wolf Prix against the Biennale’s banality released on Aug.28th sounds entirely credible.

Probably, one of the most interesting lessons on current architecture ideology included in ‘Common Ground’ is the exhibition curated by Luís Fernández-Galiano, ‘Spain mon Amour’. Fernández-Galiano displays in it a selection of the works of Francisco Mangado, Mansilla +Tuñón,  Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano, Paredes Pedrosa Arquitectos and RCR Arquitectes by means of a demeaning presentation which, faking a serious concern about the difficulties of the young Spanish architects face at the moment to achieve a professional fulfillment, does actually make visible the despise that this generation of architects over 50 exudes towards the younger ones. Students and young architects, dressed in white and wearing a Venetian mask, act as human pedestal holding models of buildings built by that generation which recently was using them as exploitable manpower and now wants to expel them (while patronizingly swearing they feel so deeply sorry for them).  Even more shameful yet expressive is the fact that these little models they are holding belong to fifteen buildings that remind of those ‘good old days’ now gone but whose privileges and alleged glory is so hard for so many to let go for good.

Fifty-five national pavilions complete the Biennale, featuring disparate exhibitions whose topics range from opulence and parvenu-ism to some alleged social awareness. In most cases, and despite their attempts at being innovative and technological and regardless how many QR codes they try to use, the national pavilions have been conceived around an outdated exhibition model that leads the visitor to wonder which is the need to attend physically and event that could well be managed through the digital networks.

Among the proposals featured in the national pavilions, Spain’s proposal is perhaps one of the most attuned with the chipperfieldean cabaret: a perfect synthesis of the prevailing confusion among the powers managing architecture in the country. Their curators, Antón García Abril and Débora Mesa, leave us wondering if their project (which includes the non-stop playing of the song by Spanish singer Joan Manuel Serrat, ‘Cada loco con su tema’  - ‘Each to his own theme’-, as remarking the inexistence of any coherence among the exhibited stuff) is a prank or is using an irony so subtle that minds lacking any fine sense of it cannot grasp the radical criticism the exhibition is intended to be. 

The title ‘SPAINLab’ misleads us to expect some kind of exploration of the relationship between architecture and technological research when, in fact, it is resembles more a kind of horror show. The concept retrieves the superficial use of the term ‘laboratory’, which in the 90’s used to be applied to the sort of pseudo-scientific research in architecture. The retrieval of this totally obsolete concept, expecting it to be bestowed with connotations of ‘advanced’ architecture, betrays itself immediately as an excuse to undercover the loss in current Spanish architecture.

The exhibition’s highlight is the project for ElBulli Foundation by Cloud 9, corroborating that the tendence towards ugliness and a misused rethoric on innovation are the philosopher’s stone of this architect more obsessed with his media profile than the material consistency of his alleged advanced visions. It is not presented with sufficient clarity whether Vicente Guallart is included in this exhibition on behalf of his own architectural practice or as chief-architect of the City Council of Barcelona, it is unclear whether he is mixing or mistaking public with private. The connection with the idea of laboratory is also hard to find in the other projects that the exhibition includes. These works by Menis, selgascano, Ecosistema Urbano, RCR Arquitectes and Sancho Madridejos appear more as sterile divertissements than as serious, purposeful and much-needed analyses of the present circumstances in Spain.  Under these circumstances it would have seemed mandatory to generate a self-critical, cathartic proposal instead of the vaudeville conceived by García Abril and Mesa.

The Golden Lion award to Torre Horizonte (renamed Torre David by the jury formed by Wiel Arets, Kristin Feireiss, Robert A.M.Stern, Benedetta Tagliabue and Alan Yentob) as the best project included in ‘Common Ground’ has come as the ultimate proof of the ideology of opportunism and cynicism underlying in this Biennale.

Awarding the obscene sacralization that this vertical favela is has verified how dangerous is the ignorant obsession that has led the ‘first world’ to sublimate other realities. If the project by Urban Think-Tank (Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner) and Justin McGuirk exudes hypocritical irresponsibility, its recognition does nothing but insisting in the celebration of a treacherously fake model of ethics and responsibility that is doing nothing but a narcissistic propaganda by means of an intellectual and economical exploitation of the hardest conditions of poverty, something which was already the foundation of the work of Alejandro Aravena and ELEMENTAL Chile. A quick google-search is enough to check the opinions on general discomfort, coming from different perspectives, about the usage and deliberately misguided interpretation that Brillembourg, Klumpner and McGuirk make of the occupation of a urban building, overlooking the hard and complex social issues involved in it.

The presentation of the project of Urban Think Tank within the framework of ‘Common Ground’ appears as odious as this shallow interpretation. They have opened a sort of fashionable arepería, decorated with photographs and video footage of the Tower, where visitors (as tourists) can “have fun, eat and, in general, have a taste of South America.” An idea which confirms that Urban Think Tank are acting as a great scam devised as gloating for the stupid do-gooderism of the first-world that now drowns in the consequences of its own neoliberal rubbish. 

Under its masking as redemption, the Biennale has betrayed even more clearly the current condition of a system of powers, castes and cronyism that has led current architecture to a state of collapse. A state based on impostures, deceitful statements such as Chipperfield’s. Deny the void filling it up with yet even more void.
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image 1: "Spain, Mon Amour" Luis Fernández Galliano in "Common Ground" (Via Biennale)
Image 2 : Urban Think Tank, Torre de David Project (awarded Golden Lion 2012)

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Architect Fredy Massad founded ¿btbW/Architecture in 1996 together with art historian Alicia Guerrero Yeste devoting their joint work to the analysis of contemporary architecture. 
He combine their regular contributions to the culture supplement of Spanish newspapers ABC and La Vanguardia with articles featured in international magazines, particularly in Europe and South America (Conditions, ORIS, summa+, AU, Vitruvius, arqa, Clarín, Bsau). 
Between 2009 and 2012 they coordinated the architecture section for the Spanish contemporary art magazine EXIT-Express.
From October 2012 Fredy Massad will be editing the architecture blog within the culture section of Spanish newspaper ABC.
He has authored and edited different books and actively lecture in seminars and universities, developing an approach that aims at emphasizing the political and ideological dimension of architecture to actively intervene in the revision and transformation of the paradigms of present society. 

www.btbwarchitecture.com 
office@btbwarch.com

O Inimigo Invisível \ Pedro Bismarck

PEDRO LEVI BISMARCK

O INIMIGO INVISÍVEL

 “O que nós (não) vemos, o que nos olha”

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Havia uma certa estranheza nessa coincidência entre a manifestação de 15 de Setembro e mais um desses festivais, o Optimus D’Bandada. E o que na verdade esteve em palco, nessa tarde de fim de verão no Porto, para além da manifestação em si, e tão despudoradamente, foi o frente-a-frente entre dois dispositivos absolutamente antagónicos: o dispositivo da mobilização política (a manifestação) e o da desmobilização política (o festival). Como sempre essa batalha passou despercebida e, também, como sempre, o Inimigo (o capitalismo e os seus aparatos) esteve em campo sem ser reconhecido como tal.

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Havia uma certa estranheza nessa coincidência entre a manifestação do dia 15 de Setembro e mais um desses tantos festivais que ocupam habitualmente o centro das cidades, o Optimus D’Bandada, a decorrer à mesma hora na Baixa do Porto. Havia um certo desconforto, mas que parecia demasiado óbvio ou demagógico para poder ser objecto de qualquer crítica. Mas, então, como podemos compreender essa estranheza que a coincidência entre manifestação e festival fizeram desvelar? Será que o direito ao político invalida o direito ao prazer? Será que a manifestação invalida o entretenimento? E se não, se o protesto não invalida a dança (como anuncia a reportagem do P3), porque é que fica este desconfortável ruído de fundo?

O que na verdade esteve em palco, para além da manifestação em si, e tão despudoradamente, foi o frente-a-frente entre dois dispositivos absolutamente antagónicos: o dispositivo da mobilização e da acção política (a manifestação) e o da desmobilização política, o dispositivo do espectáculo (o festival). Mas a estranheza de toda esta coincidência não está, simplesmente, na presença, no mesmo lugar, daqueles que ocupam a rua em protesto e dos outros que se enfileiram nos passeios à espera de entrar num qualquer bar. Mas, no facto da batalha entre os dois dispositivos se ter travado, como sempre, silenciosamente e do Inimigo ter estado em campo, também e como sempre, sem ser reconhecido. E este Inimigo não é o governo e o seu catastrófico desígnio, mas um outro, bem mais poderoso: o capitalismo com toda a sua panóplia infindável de dispositivos (televisão, cinema, festivais, universidades, etc.), que todos os dias nos capturam para fora da política e para fora de nós próprios. (Aliás, a prova cabal é que no final a manifestação nem precisou de polícia, pois o Inimigo estava logo ali com as suas armas sedutoras da música e da cerveja).

Aquilo a que assistimos, nessa tarde de sol de fim de verão, para além de toda a esperança nos efeitos mais imediatos da manifestação, foi nem mais nem menos que a impossibilidade de qualquer verdadeira mudança. E porquê? Porque, simplesmente, ainda não aprendemos a reconhecer aquele que é o verdadeiro Inimigo da democracia e da res publica que queremos defender, e, sobretudo, ainda não aprendemos a ter consciência dos meios de captura que este Inimigo nos lança diariamente, anulando sub-repticiamente a nossa consciência política, a nossa capacidade de agir e a nossa liberdade. E esta não é o direito a opinar e a fazer tudo o que se deseja até ao êxtase, mas a vontade de querer saber: os princípios, as leis, as éticas que nos formam e condicionam a nossa própria opinião. Porque penso assim? Porque não penso de outro modo? Um certo «Ousa saber!», como dizia Kant.

A democracia não é o paraíso eterno, dado por adquirido, a quem nos coube agora a singela tarefa de cuidar e limpar. Ela está sempre em perigo. E o Inimigo nunca pára de trabalhar: alimenta a nossa docilidade e ócio, desmantela a nossa capacidade de acção e de comunicação, reduz a cultura à condição de entretenimento, as escolas a máquinas de produção de mão-de-obra barata e, a nós, seres que se acreditam emancipados, à mera condição de consumidores de bens e informações e, como diz o filósofo alemão Peter Sloterdijk, os consumidores finais estão sempre próximos das cloacas. O que está para ser exigido ainda não o foi. E não é apenas mais consumo e mais dinheiro, mas reivindicar o regresso da educação e de uma certa definição de cultura. E, sobretudo, exigirmos a nós próprios, mais formação e mais conhecimento. Não só para não sucumbirmos perante o espectáculo de uma política sem língua e sem voz consagrada ao fait-divers, mas sobretudo, para não ficarmos reféns desses dispositivos que a todo o momento procuram anular a nossa consciência e acção política.

Só quando, perante nós, aparecer como terrivelmente impúdica a coincidência, no mesmo espaço e no mesmo tempo, do dispositivo de emancipação (a política) e do dispositivo do ócio (o espectáculo) estaremos preparados para reconhecer esse verdadeiro Inimigo e, então, exigir dele e de nós um outro modelo de sociedade e de desenvolvimento. Um modelo que não se reduza ao puro consumismo, ao mero mercantilismo de tudo (onde até a língua portuguesa já foi sacrificada), mas um modelo cuja dignidade e o valor do homem não se construa na competição, no individualismo e no trabalho, mas numa relação justa com o ecossistema, com a comunidade e com o futuro. Há muito mais para exigir. Sem isso as lutas de hoje de nada servirão! Pois o Inimigo continuará o seu trabalho, esse Inimigo, como naquelas fábulas, em que à medida que vai alimentando a sua presa, está já a traçar o seu destino fatal. E se há uma natureza altamente predatória é, precisamente, a do capitalismo.

Se, por um lado, só a política nos poderá salvar, por outro, só a poesia poderá salvar a política. E, por isso, valerá a pena recordar as palavras do poeta russo Mayakosvky, quando em 1917, em pleno mês de Outubro, à pergunta, porque não se inscrevia no Partido Comunista, este respondia que, para ele, esta pergunta não se punha, já que o que estava em causa era a sua própria Revolução: “Deve-se aderir ou não aderir [ao partido]? A mim, esta pergunta não se me punha. Era a minha Revolução. Fui para Smólni. Trabalhei. Em tudo o que era preciso. Começam a reunir.” (Mayakovsky, 1917)

(Imagem: via P3 e Cartaz Maio'68)

Um apelo: da lamentação para a política

pedro levi Bismarck

Um apelo: da lamentação para a política

A torrente ininterrupta de denúncias, de lamentações, de comentários, imagens e notícias que abundantemente afluem por todos os lados (sobretudo nas redes sociais), tornou-se não apenas a rotina e o ruído ensurdecedor dos nossos dias, mas o indisfarçável sintoma da nossa triste condição de ‘espectadores’ perante um ‘espectáculo’, o da política, do qual fomos irremediavelmente espoliados e afastados.

Se estamos, de facto, preocupados, e devemos estar, então devemos começar por encontrar os modos de nos reunirmos, encontrarmos, discutirmos, nos cafés, nas escolas ou na rua, e tentar compreender o que cada um pode realmente fazer no lugar onde está, que ocupa, onde trabalha, onde vive. Porque o problema não é só de cortes financeiros e de ordenados, destas medidas ou de outras, mas de modelos. E é preciso discutir os modelos. E para haver política e participarmos nela, mais do que denúncia, tem de haver partilha, encontro e debate.

O que continuo sem compreender (e isto será um apelo ou um lamento?) é onde estão as Universidades e todos os investigadores e toda a produção intelectual? Como é que, perante isto tudo, não há o mais leve rumor de um movimento universitário amplo e organizado (estudantes, professores, investigadores) de crítica e de debate perante um modelo ideológico cujo horizonte não está apenas em reduzir-nos à miséria financeira, mas à penúria intelectual e cultural, em reduzir as escolas a fábricas de produção de mão-de-obra barata e rápida. E o mais miserável é a apatia que grassa por todos estes cantos, a facilidade com que sucumbimos, no final, ao feitiço interminável dos aparatos que, todos os dias, nos conduzem ou para a indolência ou para o deslumbramento: e que vão desde os ‘media’ a esses intermináveis congressos de investigadores – onde a necessidade do 'científico' suplanta todo o imperativo político, mesmo em áreas disciplinares cuja natureza é irremediavelmente política.

O problema é que, no actual estado de coisas, já não podemos passar simplesmente do lamento do comentário para a apatia, ou ir à manifestação das 17h e às 22h ir ao futebol ou ao festival de música. A máquina do prazer e do entretenimento, da qual somos parte, estará sempre aí, decidida a distrair-nos e a fazer-nos esquecer…até a um certo dia, e esse dia não estará assim tão longe, e pode ser o dia não da libertação, mas daquilo que muitos não esperariam voltar a ver repetir-se – o Fascismo. Como disse Thomas Mann (como lembra Rob Riemen), o Fascismo, quando vier, virá sempre em nome de uma outra coisa, e talvez seja em nome da Liberdade. Walter Benjamin, leitor atento de Marx, legou-nos, já sob a sombra negra da ascensão fulgurante do Nazismo, algumas reflexões preciosas, que talvez fosse útil não esquecer:

«O conformismo que desde sempre foi apanágio da social-democracia prende-se não apenas com a sua táctica política, mas também com as suas ideias económicas. E está na origem da sua derrocada recente. Nada corrompeu mais as classes trabalhadoras alemãs do que a ideia de que elas estavam integradas na corrente dominante (…). A velha moral protestante do trabalho, agora em forma secularizada, comemorava com os trabalhadores alemães a sua ressurreição (…). Antevendo coisas terríveis, Marx respondera já que o ser humano que não possua outra riqueza a não ser a força do trabalho “será necessariamente escravo de outros seres humanos, os que se transformaram em proprietários”.»

«Marx diz que as revoluções são as locomotivas da história. Mas talvez as coisas não se passem nada assim. Pode ser que as revoluções sejam, para o género humano que viaja nesse comboio, o gesto de puxar o travão de emergência.»

The community against the state \ Pedro Bismarck

Pedro Levi Bismarck

The Community against the State

The eviction of the Es.Col.A Project in Porto

versão portuguesa

The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be a struggle for the conquest or control of the State, but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and the State organization.

Giorgio Agamben

I believe in the unbelievable, in the magic things,

In the occupation of the world by roses

Natália Correia

There is nothing worse to the ‘state’ than to see true democracy at work. And Why? Because it recalls the ‘state’ itself that vaguely unformulated terror present in its own origin: that the self-management of the public thing and the construction of the community could be done outside its limits and sphere of action (and, therefore, outside its control). In brief: that society can be able, by itself, to substitute and make what the ‘state’, the Town Council, the politics, were incapable of doing and thinking. The police acts in defense of the ‘state’, because what is at stand is the failure of the ‘state’ as ‘state’ and the sudden exposure of the wounds of its apparently and trustful democracy.

The eviction of the Es.Col.A Project from a small abandoned school in a Porto depressed area, it’s an example of this fact. And only this open wound can explain the way Porto Town Council managed this process. From the excessive use of force, to the incapability of dialogue and to ideological prejudice, what grounds Porto Town Council’s action is the awareness that the Es.col.A movement has replaced the municipality in a task that it was not able itself to perform (or nor even attempted to), leaving a school (and its community) for five years in a pure state of abandonment.

We can lose ourselves in many technical and, mostly, legal problems around this question, but the theoretical and political fundament at stake is: for once, a community organized itself around an educational and culture program, without the necessity of the ‘state’, proposing a communitarian platform in a depressed area of the city; for once, a community organized itself to react against the city center abandonment and desertification and was able to do what the Town Council always refused; for once, democracy had wings to work and, once more, the Porto Municipality refused democracy.

Above all, the Porto Town Council is the epitome of the authoritarian ‘state’ but absolutely ineffective, that nothing has done and allows nothing to be done. And is this same Council, that in its own defense uses the public property argument, that no more than sixth months ago has sold the Miradouro da Vitória (a public space and historical landmark) and has rented all the main public infrastructures of the city (recognizing, at that time, its non-vocation to manage them). It has been the Porto Town Council who has mostly contributed to the spoliation of our physical and cultural heritage, who mostly has contributed to the mediocrity of our urban environment. And, for that, the dilapidation danger of the res publica, of what is property of the community, is not in the action of the Es.Col.A project, but on the contrary, in the whole political action of Porto Town Council.

But in order to inscribe this question in a real debate one has to situate the problem of the Es.Col.A in the sphere of politics and not reduce it to a problem of law. The tendency of the actual pragmatism that seeks to reduce everything to a problem of law is the great danger that impends over the emptying of politics. It’s the ethic that grounds the law and not the law that grounds the ethic.

Most of all, what is absolutely necessary is our capability to use all of this, once more, to think what can and what is the essence of the everyday exercise of democracy; to think how can we re-inscribe politics in the center of everyday practice and reclaim what thirty years of economical growth, consumerism and well-fare, had despoiled us, that is: our access to politics, our ability to think politics and the ‘state’ as fundamental part of our life in community.

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Image: Es.Col.A : Escola da Fontinha’s rehabilitation by members of the Es.Col.a Project.

A comunidade contra o estado | Pedro Bismarck

Pedro Levi Bismarck

A comunidade contra o estado

O Projecto Es.Col.A e o Bairro da Fontinha

Porque o facto novo da política que vem é que ela não será já a luta pela conquista ou controlo do Estado, mas luta entre o Estado e o não-Estado (a humanidade), disjunção irremediável entre as singularidades quaisquer e a organização estatal

Giorgio Agamben

Creio no incrível, nas coisas assombrosas,
Na ocupação do mundo pelas rosas

Natália Correia

Não há nada mais terrível para o ‘estado’ do que ver a verdadeira democracia a funcionar! E porquê? Porque recorda ao ‘estado’ esse terror vagamente informulado na sua génese, isto é, que a autogestão daquilo que é público e a construção da comunidade se possam constituir fora dos seus limites e da sua esfera de acção (e, por isso, fora do seu controlo). Em suma: que a própria sociedade possa ser capaz, por si, de o substituir e fazer aquilo que o ‘estado’, a câmara municipal, a política, foram incapazes de fazer e pensar. A polícia intervém em defesa do ‘estado’, porque o que está em causa é o falhanço do ‘estado’ enquanto ‘estado’ e a exposição súbita das feridas que fazem a sua aparente confiável democracia.

O despejo do Projecto Es.Col.A. é o exemplo disso mesmo. E só essa ferida aberta pode explicar o modo como a Câmara Municipal do Porto geriu este processo. Desde o excessivo uso da força policial, à incapacidade de diálogo e ao preconceito ideológico, o que funda a acção da Câmara é ter consciência que um movimento como o Es.Col.A, a substituiu numa tarefa que ela própria não conseguiu (ou nem sequer pretendeu) desenvolver, deixando uma escola (e a comunidade) durante mais de 5 anos ao abandono.

Podemo-nos perder em muitos problemas técnicos e, sobretudo, legais em torno desta questão, mas o fundamento teórico e político em causa é este: por uma vez, uma comunidade organizou-se em torno de um programa educacional e cultural sem necessidade do ‘estado’, propondo uma plataforma comunitária numa zona deprimida da cidade; por uma vez, uma comunidade juntou-se para contrariar o grave problema de abandono do centro da cidade e fez aquilo que a Câmara sempre se recusou a fazer; por uma vez, a democracia teve asas para trabalhar e, mais uma vez, a Câmara Municipal do Porto recusou a democracia.

Acima de tudo, esta Câmara é a epítome do ‘estado’ autoritário mas completamente ineficaz, que nada fez e nada deixa fazer. E é esta mesma Câmara, que em sua defesa usa o argumento da propriedade pública, que ainda há pouco meses vendeu em hasta pública o miradouro da Bataria da Vitória e que não fez mais que arrendar, nos últimos anos, todos os grandes equipamentos públicos da cidade (porque ela própria assumia a sua incapacidade de os gerir).Tem sido a Câmara, esta Câmara, quem mais tem contribuído para a espoliação do nosso património físico e cultural, que mais tem contribuído para a pobreza do nosso ambiente urbano. E, por isso, o perigo da delapidação da coisa pública, daquilo que afinal é pertença da comunidade, não está na acção do Projecto Es.Col.A, mas bem pelo contrário, em toda a acção política da Câmara Municipal do Porto.

Mas para que esta questão possa ser efectivamente discutida, é preciso colocar o problema da Es.Col.A na esfera da política e não reduzi-la a um simples problema de lei. A tendência do pragmatismo actual que tudo quer reduzir à lei é o grande perigo do esvaziamento da política. É a ética que funda a lei e não a lei que funda a ética.

Aquilo que é absolutamente necessário é que tudo isto nos sirva para, uma vez mais, pensar o que faz e o que é a essência do exercício quotidiano da democracia; pensar como podemos voltar a colocar a política no centro da nossa prática quotidiana e reclamar aquilo que trinta anos de crescimento económico, consumismo e bem-estar afinal nos espoliaram: isto é, o nosso acesso à política, a nossa capacidade de pensar a política e o ‘estado’ como parte fundamental da nossa vida em comunidade.

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Imagem via: Es.Col.A : Recuperação das instalações da Escola da Fontinha por membros do grupo Es.Col.A.

Vamos salvar o povo grego dos seus salvadores \ Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou

Vamos salvar o povo grego dos seus salvadores!*

Vicky Skoumbi, editora chefe da revista «Alètheia», Athènes, Michel Surya, director da revista «Lignes», Paris, Dimitris Vergetis, director da revista «Alètheia», Athènes. E: Daniel Alvara, Alain Badiou, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Etienne Balibar, Fernanda Bernardo, Barbara Cassin, Bruno Clément, Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Yannick Courtel, Claire Denis, Georges Didi-Huberman, Roberto Esposito, Francesca Isidori, Pierre-Philippe Jandin, Jérôme Lèbre, Jean-Clet Martin, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Judith Revel, Elisabeth Rigal, Jacob Rogozinski, Hugo Santiago, Beppe Sebaste, Michèle Sinapi, Enzo Traverso

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Tradução Alexandra Balona de Sá Oliveira

Texto publicado originalmente no site da Europe Graduate School

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Num momento em que um em cada dois jovens gregos está desempregado, onde 25 000 sem-abrigo vagueiam pelas ruas de Atenas, onde 30% da população desceu abaixo da linha de pobreza, onde milhares de famílias são forçadas a dar os seus filhos para que estes não morram de fome e frio, onde novos pobres e refugiados disputam o lixo nos aterros sanitários, os “salvadores” da Grécia, sob o pretexto de que os “Gregos” não fazem um “esforço suficiente” impõem um novo plano de ajuda que duplica a dose letal administrada. Um plano que elimina o direito ao trabalho, e que reduz os pobres à miséria extrema, tudo isto fazendo desaparecer do cenário as classes médias.

O objectivo não deve ser o "resgate" da Grécia: sobre este ponto, todos os economistas dignos desse nome estão de acordo. Trata-se de ganhar tempo para salvar os credores conduzindo o país a uma falência em diferido. Trata-se sobretudo de fazer da Grécia um laboratório de mudança social que, num segundo momento, se generalizará a toda a Europa. O modelo experimentado nos Gregos é o de uma sociedade sem serviços públicos, onde as escolas, hospitais e centros de saúde caem em ruína, onde a saúde passa a ser um privilégio dos ricos, onde as populações vulneráveis são condenadas a uma eliminação programada, enquanto que aqueles que ainda trabalham são condenados a formas extremas de empobrecimento e precariedade.

Mas para que esta ofensiva do neo-liberalismo possa alcançar os seus objectivos, será necessário instaurar um regime que faça a economia dos direitos democráticos mais elementares. Sob a exigência dos salvadores, vemos instalar-se na Europa um governo de tecnocratas que desrespeita a soberania popular. Trata-se de um momento de viragem nos regimes parlamentares, onde vemos os "representantes do povo" dar carta branca aos especialistas e aos banqueiros, abdicando do seu suposto poder de decisão. De uma certa forma, trata-se de um golpe de Estado, que faz também apelo a um arsenal repressivo amplificado face aos protestos populares. Assim, quando os membros ratificaram a convenção ditada pela troika (União Europeia, o Banco Central Europeu e o Fundo Monetário Internacional), diametralmente oposta ao mandato que estes tinham recebido, um poder desprovido de legitimidade democrática terá comprometido o futuro do país por trinta ou quarenta anos.

Paralelamente, a União Europeia prepara-se para constituir uma conta bloqueada para onde será transferida directamente a ajuda financeira à Grécia, para que esta seja usada unicamente ao serviço da dívida. As receitas do país devem ser consagradas como “prioridade absoluta” ao reembolso dos credores e, se necessário, pagas directamente nessa conta criada pela União Europeia. A convenção estipula que todas as novas obrigações emitidas dentro deste quadro serão regidas pela lei inglesa, que envolve garantias materiais, enquanto que os diferendos serão julgados pelo tribunal do Luxemburgo, tendo a Grécia renunciado à partida qualquer direito de recurso contra uma tomada determinada pelos seus credores. Para completar o cenário, as privatizações serão confiadas a um fundo gerado pela troika, onde serão depositados os títulos de propriedade dos bens públicos. Em suma, é a pilhagem generalizada, característica própria do capitalismo financeiro que oferece aqui uma bela consagração institucional. Na medida em que vendedores e compradores se sentarão no mesmo lado da mesa, não duvidamos que esta tarefa de privatização seja um verdadeiro festim para os compradores.

Todas as medidas tomadas até agora não fizeram mais do que afundar a dívida soberana grega e, com o auxílio dos salvadores que emprestam a taxas exorbitantes, esta, literalmente, explodiu aproximando-se dos 170% de um PIB em queda livre, enquanto que em 2009 representava somente 120%. É provável que este grupo de resgate – sempre apresentado como “final” – não tenha outro propósito que o de enfraquecer ainda mais a posição da Grécia, de forma a que, privada de toda a possibilidade de propor ela mesma termos de uma reestruturação, seja reduzida a ceder tudo aos seus credores sob a chantagem de “a catástrofe ou a austeridade”.

O agravamento artificial e coercivo do problema da dívida foi utilizado como uma arma para tomar de assalto uma sociedade inteira. É com sabedoria que usamos aqui termos relevantes do domínio militar: trata-se de facto de uma guerra conduzida pelos meios da finança, da política e do direito, uma guerra de classe contra a sociedade inteira. E o espólio que a classe financeira conta arrebatar ao “inimigo”, são os privilégios sociais e os direitos democráticos, mas em última análise, é a possibilidade mesma de uma vida humana. A vida daqueles que não produzem nem consomem o suficiente, ao olhar das estratégias de maximização de lucro, não devem ser conservadas. Assim, a fragilidade de um país apanhado entre a especulação sem limites e os planos de resgate devastadores, torna-se na porta de saída por onde irrompe um novo modelo de sociedade adequado às exigências do fundamentalismo neoliberal. Modelo destinado a toda a Europa, e talvez até mais. Esta é a verdadeira questão e é por isso que defender o povo grego não se reduz a um gesto de solidariedade ou de humanidade abstracta: o futuro da democracia e o destino dos povos europeus estão em questão. Por todo o lado a “necessidade imperiosa” de uma austeridade “dolorosa, mas salutar” vai nos ser apresentada como o meio de escapar ao destino grego, enquanto esta por aí avança sempre em frente.

Perante este ataque persistente contra a sociedade, perante a destruição das últimas ilhotas da democracia, nós apelamos aos nossos concidadãos, nossos amigos franceses e europeus a exprimirem-se alto e forte. Não podemos deixar o monopólio da palavra aos especialistas e aos políticos. O facto de a pedido dos dirigentes alemães e franceses em particular a Grécia seja de agora em diante interdita de eleições pode deixar-nos indiferentes? A estigmatização e o denegrir sistemático de um povo europeu não merece uma resposta? Será possível não elevar a voz contra o assassinato institucional do povo grego? E poderemos nós permanecer silenciosos perante a instauração forçada de um sistema que proíbe a própria ideia de solidariedade social?

Nós estamos no ponto de não retorno. É urgente lutar contra a batalha dos números e a guerra das palavras para conter a retórica ultra-liberal do medo e da desinformação. É urgente desconstruir as lições de moral que ocultam o processo real posto em prática na sociedade. Torna-se mais do que urgente desmistificar a insistência racista sobre a “especificidade grega”, que pretende fazer do suposto carácter nacional de um povo (preguiça e astúcia à vontade) a causa primeira de uma crise, na realidade, mundial. O que conta hoje não são as particularidades reais ou imaginárias, mas as comuns: o destino de um povo que afectará todos os outros.

Muitas soluções técnicas têm sido propostas para sair da alternativa “ou a destruição da sociedade ou a falência” (que quer dizer, vemo-lo hoje: “e a destruição e a falência”). Tudo deve ser tido em conta como elemento de reflexão para a construção de uma outra Europa. Mas primeiro, é necessário denunciar o crime, trazer à luz do dia a situação onde se encontra o povo grego devido aos “planos de ajuda” concebidos por e para os especuladores e os credores. Num momento em que um movimento de apoio se tece em todo o mundo, onde as redes sociais emitem iniciativas de solidariedade, serão os intelectuais franceses os últimos a elevar a sua voz pela Grécia? Sem mais demora, vamos multiplicar os artigos, as intervenções nos media, os debates, as petições, as manifestações. Porque toda a iniciativa é bem-vinda, toda a iniciativa é urgente.

De nossa parte, eis o que propomos: formar rapidamente um comité europeu de intelectuais e artistas pela solidariedade com o povo grego que resiste. Se não formos nós, quem será? Se não for agora, será quando?

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* Texto publicado originalmente no site da Europe Graduate School

Ler versão original em Francês

Read English version

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Alain Badiou, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Étienne Balibar, Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Ranciere, Avital Ronell, são professores na EGS.

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Alexandra Balona vive no Porto e é bolseira da FCT, estando a desenvolver a sua tese de doutoramento na EGS.

Architecture in Uniform | Jean-Louis Cohen

Bruno Zevi in the uniform of the British Army, 1944, CCA Collection

Jean-Louis Cohen

Architecture in Uniform

Designing and Building for the Second World War*

Introduction

The Second World War, which set four continents ablaze between the years 1939 and 1945, affected citizens in the military and civilians alike, and drew on every human resource of the warring nations. The discipline of architecture also entered the fray and was mobilised in all its components. Despite what most histories of the discipline still claim, it experienced a concentrated period of research and transformation.

Between the destruction of Guernica by the Nazis in 1937 and the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, many architects became active combatants. Others pursued their professional work in the service of an intensified industrial production or in response to the requirements of the front. The technical modernization that had been undertaken in the 1920s was continued. Whereas the Allied powers developed new types of pre-fabricated and mobile constructions, the Third Reich set up a methodical scheme of enslavement and extermination, with its own architecture.

More broadly, the war drew upon every aspect of architectural expertise: knowledge of construction, which was useful for building bunkers and reinforcing shelters; visual skills, which were indispensible for camouflage and relevant to the frenzy of propaganda during that period; and the organizational competence needed to advance industrial and territorial projects unprecedented in their scale.

Mobilized as a group, architects were faced with personal choices as well, especially those called upon to take part in the criminal policies of the Nazis. In this sense, the war also tested their moral fibre: some were complicit in the policies of extermination, while others were among their victims.

Within the vast inventory of experiences, the themes that illustrate the diversity of architectural activities are rooted in national contexts, from the United States to Japan, as well as in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Deeply committed to the Allied cause, Canada sent troops to faraway fronts, while the country was transformed at home, as can be seen in the films that punctuate each gallery of the exhibition.

After 1945 the supremacy of modern architecture remained unchallenged, except in the Soviet Union, and there, only for a short time. In the end, the war transformed not only ways of building, but also ways of thinking, and after the six years of conflict, architects would apply broadly to peaceful purposes the methods developed under the pressures of war.

Architects in Uniform

The distance that divides the Nazi minister Albert Speer, sentenced at Nuremberg in 1946 for war crimes, from Szymon Syrkus, a member of the Polish Resistance who was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp, is an indication of the war’s broad impact on human destinies.

Between the extremes of these two figures—on one hand, a government official committed to the suppression of minorities and to extermination, and on the other, a victim of these same policies—are to be found tens of thousands of situations in which architects were borne off by the war.

Mobilized, deployed on the fronts, killed, wounded, or prisoners, Resistance fighters, or refugees — architects shared the fate of all citizens in the warring nations. But the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects would also call upon its readers in 1939 to “fight as architects in the fullest sense of the word.” They found themselves en-trusted with a very wide range of tasks that made them into far more than simple enlisted citizens. Their professional involvement in the war effort would permanently mark the fate of those who escaped a tragic end.

The industrial architecture of Albert Kahn

In its June 1942 issue, The Architectural Record focused on the activities of the Detroit-based agency Albert Kahn Associates, which it called a “producer of production lines.” The journal described the “magic formula” of the office of 600 employees: the “coordination of experienced experts.”

As the architect of Ford and General Motors since the beginning of the century, Kahn constructed steel-framed single-storey volumes lit from above and from the sides. Secondary or service spaces were located in the basement in order not to hinder further expansion and to serve as shelters.

Kahn constructed the Chrysler Tank Arsenal in Michigan, Warren Township between 1940 and 1942. Inside its glazed envelope 400 m long and 100 m wide, the different stages of production were laid out in a linear arrangement. Another project similar in size was the Ford Motors bomber plant, built between 1941 and 1943 at Willow Run, in the same state. This single building of 100,000 m² was capable of “turning out” one airplane per hour. The aviator Charles Lindberg had no hesitation in calling it “a sort of Grand Canyon of a mechanized world.”

While the Austin Company was advocating “windowless” factories, Albert Kahn commented that “they require artificial lighting all the time, as well as mechanical ventilation and air-conditioning”, which he judged unacceptable under future peacetime conditions.

The factories that Kahn built in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1932 were put to similar use, and his tractor plant in Chelyabinsk became the central unit in the complex known as “Tankograd.”

The inaugural work of Mies van der Rohe

In 1943 Ludwig Mies van de Rohe constructed his first American building on the campus of Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology, whose master plan he had laid out in 1939.

Mies was able to realize the Minerals and Metals Research Center only because it was tied to the war effort. Since IIT was working for the military, he obtained an allocation of steel for the framing, unusual at that time in the United States.

Kahn’s first factories had a considerable impact in Germany even before 1914, and it is instructive to compare this first building of Mies van der Rohe with those of the Detroit architect, whose work he knew well. In contrast to Kahn’s Chrysler Tank Arsenal, Mies’ building differed in the elegance and geometric perfection of its openings, and by the precise layout of its brickwork. Despite all the urgency bearing on the project, he nonetheless exerted complete mastery over the structure and proportions of the building, which would subsequently extend to the rest of the campus. The project finds an echo in the modular factory built in concrete by Ernst Neufert, a former assistant to Walter Gropius, in the annexed Alsace.

Dugway, or the architect as expert in destruction

In 1943 strange buildings were constructed on the firing range of Dugway, Utah. Lined up side by side, the “German” and “Japanese” villages had only one purpose: to be consumed by fire.

They were meant to serve for combustion experiments with bombs filled with naphthalene combined with palmitate, or napalm, that Louis Fieser, a Harvard University and Standard Oil Company chemist had recently invented.

Architectural experts were called in to make the experiment realistic. The “German” village was designed by Erich Mendelsohn, a leading figure of the Berlin architects, who studied its exterior volumes and roofing materials, by Konrad Wachsmann, who selected the adequate types of wood, by the furniture dealer Hans Knoll, and by German members of Hollywood’s RKO Pictures Authenticity Division, who selected the furnishings.

Antonin Raymond, who had spent twenty years in Japan, designed the prefabricated wood structure of the “Japanese” village, and furnished it with the relevant domestic equipment and corresponding bedding. In this way, architecture served the destructive purposes of aviators.

Teaching camouflage

The war directly affected architectural education. Many schools suspended their activities, while others switched to more immediate tasks, such as camouflage.

As early as 1939, the École des Beaux-arts of Paris had proposed as a theme for one of its com-petitions a “camouflaged town”, in which students attempted to convey foggy atmospheric effects with watercolours. But it was in the United States that programs became widespread after 1941. Architects took courses in camouflage, like the one Louis I. Kahn developed at the University of Pennsylvania.

Among the programs set up at the time, the courses of László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes at the Chicago School of Design stood out because of the teachers they recruited—military men, engineers, and psychologists—and because of the quality of the work (some of which would be published in the journal Civilian Defense). Moholy-Nagy, who had formulated the theory of an analytical “new vision”, became preoccupied with how to manufacture illusion.

At Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, Konrad Wittman was working on an extremely practical manual of industrial camouflage, whose pages came to resemble a comic book.

All of these programs were the sites of a productive encounter between architectural thinking and the notions of the psychology of form that had been introduced in the United States by Wolfgang Köhler, who was keenly interested in “making objects disappear”—the very basis of camouflage.

The controversy over shelters in London

In London, the issue of civilian protection against air raids became a highly charged political debate towards the end of the 1930s, discussed by politicians, architects, and intellectuals.

The policies of the Conservative governments, supported by Winston Churchill up to the end, focused on individual shelters in gardens, leaving workers living in denser blocks without protection. Drawing on the lessons of civil defence in Barcelona, and based on research trips under-taken during the Spanish Civil War, architects on the left called for the creation of public shelters instead.

With the support of highly respected scientists—such as the physicists C.P. Snow and John Desmond Bernal, the biologist Julian Huxley, and the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane—the architects of the Tecton group, led by Berthold Lubetkin and the engineer Ove Arup, proposed underground shelters for the London borough of Finsbury that could accommodate as many as 7,600 city residents on their spiral ramps. The project would be blocked by the Conservatives, who preferred to distribute the individual Anderson shelter, in steel sheeting, and the Morrison shelter, for use inside the house.

Nevertheless, after the experience of the London Blitz in 1940, a policy for deep-level public shelters linked to the stations of the Under-ground was finally undertaken, and a network of tunnels would be built to that effect.

Germany: bunkers beneath the bombs

Realizing that bombs could just as well fall on German cities, Adolf Hitler launched in 1940 a Sofort programm—an emergency program with the aim of constructing shelters for the civilian population.

They were to complement the cone-shaped Winkel towers, which had been the most widespread shelters until then. Competitions were held throughout Germany to develop these constructions, many of which would assume the reassuring exterior forms of older buildings.

In Hamburg, Konstanty Gutschow built cylindrical shelters topped with a conical roof that evoked windmills or medieval fortifications. Elsewhere, the shelters proposed for Bavaria or Austria by Roderich Fick, or for the Rhineland by Fritz Becker, were disguised as granaries, with high walls and sloping roofs.

These buildings would be very limited in withstanding the Allied carpet bombings that devastated German cities after 1942. The occupants of these crowded shelters would often be asphyxiated from lack of oxygen during the incendiary bombings.

The secret city of Oak Ridge

In 1945 the world would learn about the “birthplace of the atomic bomb” in the heart of the United States. The Architectural Record revealed “a secret city of 75,000 people busily working on they knew not what,” which turned out to be “one of the largest construction projects of the war”: Oak Ridge.

Chosen for its plentiful supply of electricity, the complex included three major facilities: the X-1 nuclear reactor, the Y-12 isotope separation factory, and the gigantic K-25 plant for separating out uranium hexafluoride by gaseous diffusion, which went into operation in February 1945. The factory was housed in a U-shaped building, 735 m long by 135 m wide, covering a total of 18 hectares.

The nearby city built to accommodate the workforce extended over a rectangle measuring one mile by six miles (1.6 by 10 km) drawn up by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Some 3,000 houses were constructed of Cemesto panels that combined asbestos-cement cladding and cane-fibre insulation. Others were trucked in from Dallas in room-sized sections, and still others came from Indiana and West Virginia. By 1945, 10,000 single-family houses had been constructed, along with 13,000 units in well-equipped apartment blocks and in dormitories. There were also 5,000 trailers and 16,000 “huts” or shacks, the only dwellings provided for the African American workers.

Auschwitz: industry and extermination

Auschwitz, in Polish Upper Silesia, was undoubtedly the site of the implementation of Nazi barbarism not only in its most radical, but also in its most rational form. Here, the creation of a centre for the chemical industry, owned by IG Farben and intended to produce synthetic fuel, was combined with setting up a concentration camp, whose initial purpose was to work Soviet war prisoners to death.

After the Wannsee conference of January 1942, which set out the fully planned extermination of European Jews, or “final solution,” the creation of the Birkenau concentration camp enabled the industrialization of genocide. Architects were part of this undertaking. While the traditionalist Hans Stosberg drew up the overall plan of the area that included the camps, the picturesque housing estates of the SS and German managers, as well as the large chemical plant at Monowitz, Fritz Ertl, a former student at the Bauhaus, designed the plan for Birkenau. In their cynical exploitation of every skill, the SS in charge of the camp selected prisoners. As a result, Szymon Syrkus, a pioneer of modern architecture in Poland, who had been arrested as a Resistance fighter, worked for the camp’s building office and designed greenhouses.

Drancy: From the Housing estate to the concentration camp

In 1942, José Luís Sert included in Can our Cities Survive?, the La Muette housing estate in Drancy, a Northern suburb of Paris, as a model example of the new kinds of housing that could be expected after the war. Designed in 1934 in Drancy by Eugène Beaudouin and Marcel Lods, and built in collaboration with Jean Prouvé, the project was experimental in form—five fourteen-storey towers and parallel buildings—and in technique: it was built with precast concrete panels attached to a steel frame.

And yet at that very time, it had become a principal station for the deportation of Jews from France. Its transformation into a camp was made possible by the fact that in 1940 a large U-shaped building was still unfinished and would be simple to recast into a place of detention and surveillance. Almost 70,000 Jews would be held there, guarded first by the gendarmes of the Vichy regime and later by the SS, before being transferred to the extermination camps. Published in 1945, the book Drancy la Juive, written by Jacques Darvillé and Simon Wichené, narrated the sufferings of the prisoners held in a place whose destiny had been transformed by the war.

Air raid protection

Although felt on a relatively moderate scale during the First World War, the threat of air strikes took on new dimensions during the 1930s, with the Japanese raids in China and Nazi bombings in Spain. It would not be long before modern architects became interested in this new set of architectural and urban issues.

As early as 1930, Le Corbusier had raised the spectre of a future air war in order to justify the urban scheme of his “Radiant City”: On the higher levels “the inhabitants [take] refuge above the gas and behind the shielding”, since “the entire ground plane of the city is free (pilotis) [and] the winds easily disperse the gases”; and that underground “the production of pure air continues to work behind its shielding and to supply the inhabitants.” Le Corbusier would constantly refer to the analyses of Paul Vauthier in order to spread his own ideas.

During the first years of the Nazi era, when Hans Schoszberger published a systematic treatise in 1934 on the “technical means for the anti-aircraft defence of buildings,” he considered the urban plans of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and even the linear cities of the Soviet Nikolai Miliutin to be the most effective approach, since they all broke with the dense concentration of existing cities, where crowded populations made such tempting targets.

With war approaching, architects like Ernö Goldfinger, made studies of camps for the evacuation of civilian populations. They evaluated the strength of existing buildings and their below-ground areas, in order to transform them into shelters, even going so far as to imagine the creation of artificial caves for larger crowds. And finally, through a combination of optics and bricolage, they proposed solutions for the blackout that had been imposed on cities, such as the curious luminous belt imagined by Norman Bel Geddes.

Four macro-projects

In 1944, the German city planner Ludwig Hilberseimer, who was teaching in Chicago at the time, referred to “Bigness and Its Effect on Life,” affirming that “the main trend of our time is toward the great dimension.”

This tendency was particularly evident in industrial production, logistics, and the conduct of the war. The productive and administrative tasks at hand required massive forces of productive workers and employees, whose movements needed to be controlled. The rational assembly and dispersal of large crowds became one of the basic elements of wartime logistics, both at the front and in civilian zones, whether the human fluxes consisted of workers, employees, the military, or prisoners.

The large buildings themselves were inserted into extremely vast territorial networks. In Washington, for example, the Pentagon is the central point in a wide system of highways and parking areas. The atomic facilities at Oak Ridge were made possible in this location only by being tied to the hydroelectric facilities of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The same holds true for the Soviet industrial projects east of the Urals, and especially of the Nazi projects: the Auschwitz concentration camp was only one element of a large industrial area located at the intersection of railways linking it to the rest of Europe.

In order to develop these schemes, expanded teams of architects were assembled. They operated within the civilian and military administrations or as private firms, such as the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, whose unstoppable growth began with the project for the town of Oak Ridge.

Alongside these macroscopic projects expanded to the territorial scale, another practice, that of microscopic projects, or rather, of constructions reduced to their minimal dimensions, emerged in the domains of housing, barracks, shelters, and, of course, in places of detention. The most extreme compression of human bodies inside buildings took place in the Nazi concentration camps.

Imagining the Postwar World

Few moments in history have been as eagerly awaited as the end of the Second World War. Aside from the liberation so hoped for by those the Axis armies had enslaved—which would unfortunately turn out to be only a short reprieve for the inhabitants of territories reconquered by the Ussr—expectations for a more just and democratic society were shared by millions of civilians and demobilized soldiers.

The postwar period opened with projects for social reform aimed at defining the features of a welfare state that would last several decades. The Labour government in Britain and the new regime in France that emerged out of the Resistance within and outside the country created a powerful public sector and reformed education as well as social security. In the United States, the GI Bill of Rights, signed by Roosevelt in 1944, enabled millions of veterans to attend university and to buy their own homes. In Germany and Italy, an in-depth process of democratization swept away the oppressive structures of Nazism and Fascism, although the beginnings of the cold war limited political change in Japan.

But the world imagined for the postwar period also took on an architectural profile. Projects were soon developed for the devastated cities. These plans not only addressed the demands of reconstruction, but also allowed a complete rebuilding that the clean slate of destruction sometimes makes possible.

The British plans for Coventry, Plymouth, and London went ahead immediately. On the other hand, plans for the reconstruction of Rotterdam developed under the supervision of the occupying forces, and plans for French cities drawn up under the Vichy regime would be revised after 1945. The prospective energy of urban planners and architects was also expressed in extreme conditions: in occupied Warsaw, Helena Syrkus directed a clandestine workshop that prepared plans for reconstruction, while Franco Albini, Pietro Bottoni, and a group of Milanese architects worked in secret in 1944 on the “ar” (Architetti Riuniti) plan for the capital of Lombardy.

*Selection of texts,  with agreement of the author, from the Exhibition Catalogue “Architecture in Uniform” edited and written by Jean-Louis Cohen.

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Jean-Louis Cohen

Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture, Institute of Fine Art/New York University.

Architecture in Uniform | Designing and Building for the Second World War

Exposição | CCA | Montréal

13.04 – 18.09

+ info : CCA