A Womb with a View: an Outline of Interiority Helena Andersson
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108 ESSAY A WOMB WITH A VIEW: AN OUTLINE OF INTERIORITY HELENA ANDERSSON I. field of critical architectural agency within the No longer contained by rivers and moun- contemporary European city. As a parallel narra- tains, by flags and hymns, it extends along tive, a series of literary vignettes written in order tracks and pipes, travels through billowing to reenact moments of the history of Strasbourg, steam, settles its disputes with handshakes serve as interpretive illustrations of the theo- and traces its boundaries in ink. Visionary retical framework in question. Contributing to virtuosi flush society’s bloodstream with disciplinary discourse, the paper comments on scientific agents, dissolving local clogs and a tendency for post-structuralist theory being persistent stains. The Experts outperform the used to depoliticise and dematerialise architec- Magi in manufacturing cosmic connections. ture, either through literal, aestheticised trans- Sinews grip pencils and levers; veins throb lation, or through discouragement of anything like chisels and pistons - a perfectly equili- but minimal, temporary interventions. brated man-machine fuelled by devotion to progress and despise for the idle. Europia’s front porches and shop floors adjoin powerful corridors, flocking together under a parlia- mentary plumage plucked of any odd feather. This is the Homeland to end all wars.1 1 Where: Paris Throughout this essay, the conceptual When: 1814 couples of ‘interiority-exteriority’ and ‘smooth- Who: Claude-Henri de la Saint-Simon ness-striation’ will be combined and contrasted What: “De la réorganisation according to the quadrants of the below matrix, de la société européenne, with the intention of briefly evaluating their ou De la nécessité et des spatial implications as means, measure and moyens de rassembler les peuples de l’Europe en un metaphor. Given that the notions are neither seul corps politique, en mutually exclusive nor ‘belong’ together, the conservant à chacun son operation aims to loosely outline an expanded indépendance nationale” ESSAY 109 Introduction er, and affirming the both/and rather than the Interiority, and more specifically the inte- either/or. As argued by DeLanda, any notion of rior, lies at the heart of architectural awareness. internal relations presupposes entities with fixed Conceptualised as the opposite of the ‘ultimate’ properties optimally expressed through interac- exteriority of nature, it is the literal and meta- tion in particular configurations, while ignoring phorical womb in which human life, and even- their relative independence, latent dispositions tually an anthropocentric conception of civilisa- and capacity for multiple realisation.9 A reading 2 2 tion, can occur. Architecture originates from the of systems as sets of exterior relationships, where J. Wambacq and van Tuin- need to dwell in a state of sequential enclosure; detachable, irreducible and heterogeneous com- en, S., Interiority in Sloter- to shape protective membranes and carve out ponents wander between assemblages, renders dijk and Deleuze, p. 3. manageable niches in the midst of chaos. Walter futile any attempt of totalising interiority, while 3 Benjamin and Hanna Arendt imagined the inte- paving the way for manipulation, appropriation 3 10 W. Benjamin, The Arcades rior as “the étui of the private individual” and and ‘noncapitalisable’ paradox. 4 Project, p. 9. “the world’s last, purely humane corner” respec- As space negates – escapes – binary con- tively; vital as a physical place of reflection and ceptions, claim Deleuze and Guattari, it be- 4 retreat from the intense publicness of the mod- comes smooth. Limitless and infinitely varied, H. Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 52. ern city. Meanwhile, various spatial theorists and it emerges as free-moving bodies without fixed philosophers consider so called ‘interiorisation’ qualities, trajectories or points of spatio-tempo- 5 to be a devastating condition of our capitalist, ral reference engage with each other by chance P. Sloterdijk, In the World globalised and technologically advanced reality; and desire. Bluntly put, this intensive, dense, Interior of Capital, p. 12. virtually as well as actually. Benjamin’s arcades viscous environment provides a freedom11 of 6 being the earliest and most famous example, movement and expression which is not afforded R. Koolhaas, ‘Junkspace’, Sloterdijk’s reference to the Crystal Palace as by the extensive, granular, striated space that we 2002. ‘hothouse’5 a potentially more poignant one, usually perceive as our habitat. Striation occurs 6 7 and Koolhaas’ notion of ‘junkspace’ the most at the moment of delimitation, predetermina- R. Exo Adams, Invisible polemical, they all constitute attempts to define tion and restriction of flow, when potentialities Machines: Toward a Theory a gradually inflating architectural type, technol- are ‘forced’ into particular actualities, and is thus of Interiorization, para. 3. ogy and mentality conceived to eliminate risk by inevitable within the material reality of any hu- shutting out a the contingency of a perceived ex- man culture or settlement. Despite its connota- 8 Wambaq and van Tuinen, terior. Seen through this lens, architecture-as-in- tions, the smooth space is not utopian – “never p. 3. terior operates not simply as enclosed, private believe that a smooth space will suffice to save or concealed space, but as securitised, homoge- us”12 – nor is striation intrinsically undesirable. 9 neous, meticulously controlled milieu; hyper-re- However, the concepts are metaphorically ca- M. DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society: sponsive and tendentious while reproducing pable of indicating architectural intent, and Assemblage Theory and a dubious sense of transparency and ‘organic’ function as a spectrum for understanding spatial Social Complexity p. 4. development. Waving the flags of ‘optimisation’ processes that strive towards heterogeneity or and ‘integration’, it promotes a state of seamless- homogeneity, stabilisation and destabilisation, 10 ness, at once all-encompassing and invisible; an respectively;13 processes which always, since B. Cache, Earth Moves, p. 38. architecture which appears to dematerialise into space is produced and not ‘found’, are deeply a generalised atmosphere, “a silent sky”.7 practical, political and poetic. 11 Notwithstanding, that which remains inte- A. Parr (ed.), The Deleuze riorised can never become part of ‘civil’ society Dictionary, p. 296. – rather, it is through the “double movement” of II. 12 expulsion and enclosure, through what Sloterdi- So be it! One cut, to marry the city’s iron and G. Deleuze and Guattari, jk calls ‘inclusive exclusivity’8, that space is pro- water mouths. F., A Thousand Plateaus, duced and perceived at all. What we consider Let us disembowel the gut cramped since p. 500. to be fundamentally ‘architectural’ gestures – the centuries; release its sickly odour; transplant 13 placement of a wall, a roof or a floor – are always its paupers into peripheral convenience. It DeLanda, p. 12. acts of differentiation; acknowledging the Oth- shall require equal parts brute force, desirable 110 ESSAY displays and subtle rocades. It shall require any transitional bumps, physical as well as men- Haussmannian precision, but none of that tal, which might appear on the fringes of the blatant Frenchness! Today’s boulevard is a centripetal vortex – making the act of ‘exiting’ sober street, a modestly meandering artery à not only difficult to perform but to define, if at l’autrichienne. Tomorrow’s cosmopolites reside all definable. In fact, the more the city resembles in air and light, consume through tantalis- infrastructure, the more it is internalised as part ing vitrines, and owe their soles to electric of the body itself; the interior becomes a second transportation. skin. We partially owe today’s ‘smart’ and even Empire, gentlemen, is staged on the perim- wearable technologies to Modernism’s definition eter.14 of the man-machine assemblage as governing unit of the urbe; an ideal, universal template for non-representational city planning.17 Replacing The Smooth Interior the politically and religiously organised, “sym- On the macro scale, any European urban bolical agreement” of the civitas18, the city-as- setting is governed by at least three spatio-tempo- body or city-as-house are holistic entities made ral conditions, or might one say degrees, of inte- of tissue and arteries, living rooms and corridors riority. Firstly, it is part of a global space defined – no longer acknowledging a presence of Oth- by the relationships between “flows that animate er, entirely self-referential, and requiring full any human habitat”15 – predominantly cycles of coordination and consistency in order not to production and consumption. Secondly, it is collapse. deeply entangled with the European Project; the If not obvious already, one must now rec- founding principle of which is free circulation ognise that while undeniably interior, the space of ideas, goods and people in order to mitigate described is far from smooth. Contemporary 14 potentially harmful friction while overriding urbanity, regardless of its facial fluidity, oper- Where: City Hall, place Broglie, 9 rue Brûlée, local conditions and internalising a notion of ates as a mechanism of capture; a Deleuzeian Strasbourg shared identity. Thirdly, it more than ever relies notion denoting how interiority is produced When: 1907 on logistics and infrastructure not only as means by sovereignty, aiming to constitute a “general