Man With a Chain Saw: Post-Truth Architecture

A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Architecture

in the School of Architecture and Interior Design of the College of Design Architecture Art and Planning

by

Grant Wagner Bachelor of Science in Architecture, University of Cincinnati March 2020

Committee Chair: Elizabeth Riorden Committee Member: Michael McInturf a.

ABSTRACT

The toll of in-authenticity has rarely rung as loudly through the character-limited halls of public discourse as it does today. Controversy around “Fake News” guides our current political moment, and the impact of social media on our collective grip on reality is difficult to doubt. We, the voluntary prisoners of these situations, forgo re-establishing authenticity as we collectively craft new realities from discreet narratives within new sets of contexts. Within these alternate realities, typical questions of authenticity are subverted and new possibilities are allowed to take over. As with most things, this will eventually be heard in architecture. What new realities can architecture be a part of if its own conventions concerning authenticity are drawn into question? Digging for meaning, the architect will play the role of cultural archaeologian. Following excavation comes exhibition, during which a narrative is constructed about a constructed reality; artifacts of “fake” architecture are re-staged to unhinge a mise en scène of cult objects. Architecture is the stage set for post-truth society, and is made aware of it under the auspices of cultural milieu. vi vii

PREFACE

Thanks to all my professors for their support and their constructive criticism, my friends for their company through the long hours (both in studio and at Arlinn’s), and Jade, for keeping me sane.

x xi CONTENTS

abstract vii preface xi

I. Dank Memes, Trump Tweets, and B-Movies 1

II. Stage-Setting / Table-Manners 15

III. Questioning Authenticity (Within Architecture’s Micro-culture) 25

IV. How to Start a Cult 37

bibliography xlv image sources xlix

xii xiii I.

DANK MEMES, TRUMP TWEETS, AND B-MOVIES

“Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” - EB White

It is difficult to describe the world we are living in a format like this, but in the interest of the “pure scientific mind”, an attempt must be made. This document, thousands of words long, comprising of months of work, constantly re-hashed and discussed at length, was generated by a series of ideas composed in an instant. These ideas were then disseminated in an instant, and consumed in the same instant. The Internet, since its rise to prominence at the turn of the new millennium, has enlarged these instants, which has led to the democratization of intellectual capital, the unification of small communities of all kinds, and an accelerated pace for both commerce and justice; but also: the proliferation of misinformation and the widening of the gaps that separate the old demarcations of class and ideology. Be they Tweets, posts, emails, or memes, these instants have immense

1 “real” Cornell Box “fake” Cornell Box image 1.1 image 1.2 power in the world of today. getting harder every day. When this real versus fake dynamic The digital world has such power over the non-digital is subverted, new possibilities emerge, because a fake is not because it is independent from reality. Digital space, despite (or beholden to the same questions that hem in the real. To be perhaps because of) its adherence to a modified set of rules, is real, something must follow a specific narrative. To be fake, that at least as good a real space. This discovery was made very early narrative must be reinvented. What might this mean for society, on in the formation of digital space, with the Cornell Box1. Seen and what might this mean for the built environment? in images 1.1 and 1.2, it presents a test for digitally rendered As far as society at large is concerned, one of the many images. Can you tell the difference between the “real” object ways this has affected things is by forming a petri dish of micro- and the “fake”? It is not easy with current technology, and it’s cultures. The term micro-culture describes the social dynamics,

1 Cindy M. Goral, Kenneth E. Torrance, Donald P. Greenberg, and Bennett Battaile. Modeling the Interaction of Light Between Diffuse Surfaces. Siggraph 1984.

2 3 ethos, and rules of small groups of people2, which behave similarly to cultures of broader scales, such as global culture, or subcultures based on class, race, and geography, but they contain far fewer members and are likewise much more specific. In the pre-digital era, you may have been the only person in your town that, for example, listens to a certain band. But online, you can connect with every other member of that fanbase anywhere in the world. When all those people gather together in chat rooms, forums, and social media feeds, there is a new sense of normalcy automatically constructed among members of that group. Because of this, what may have been a dissenting set of tastes in a larger context, in fact now has its own conventions, structures, and mores. The heightened and abstracted sense of reality present here mimics the same kind of “fake-ness” present in the Cornell Box, but on a social axis rather than a spatial one. Internet micro-cultures often form consisting of people who have constructed an entire identity around enjoying a piece of entertainment, but they also can be based on stapling bread to trees3, disseminating pictures of chairs underwater4, speculating on the daily problems of beings of higher dimensions5, imagining a popular cartoon cat as an eldritch monstrosity6, or because they’ve formed a cult of personality around Nicholas Cage7. The

2 Coscia, Michele. “Competition and Success in the Meme Pool: A Case Study on Quickmeme.com.” International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 2013. Page 1 3 reddit.com/r/breadstapledtotrees 4 reddit.com/r/chairsunderwater 5 reddit.com/r/fifthworldproblems aesthetic micro-cultures 6 reddit.com/r/imsorryjohn image 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 7 reddit.com/r/onetruegod

4 5 number and kind of micro-cultures are vast, and have varying degrees of self-awareness. The typically unspoken cultural rules of these communities are equally as drummed-up as the communities themselves, but that’s not to say they don’t exist. Many of the ideas of these micro-cultures are most readily legible in their “aesthetic”, an oft-memed term that carries a lot of baggage in these circles. David Ruy, at a 2016 symposium at the Yale School of Architecture entitled “Aesthetic Activism”, explores the variety of ways these micro-cultures represent their identities through the objects they consume, seen in images 1.3-58. One image 1.6 could expect that through these aesthetics, each of these micro- cultures might have a position on architecture. the next, he hardly knows him. He can also circumvent normal Amongst the many cults of personality that have staked channels of government inquiry. Someone can be on the stand claim at the depths of Western culture, one figure understands testifying against him and he can discredit them before they’ve today’s subversion of the real/fake dichotomy better than most, even finished talking, possibly from his toilet. Furthermore, he and he has leveraged it to such an extreme that he was elected can invent narratives that, despite being demonstrably false, in President of the United States. One of the ways Donald Trump’s aggregation generate a form of alternate reality that his followers presidency has been characterized is by his use of Twitter. This - supports and dissidents alike - reside in. In this reality, the fiction particular social media platform started in 2006 as a place to of his positions become truth9. Obvious lies, such as in images share short inconsequential thoughts, but by 2016 had been 1.6 and 1.7, have no impact on his credibility with his base. become a platform for the most powerful man in the world to They, like most Americans, are used to ideas ceasing to exist communicate with the American people, dictate government once they leave their news feed. When ideologies exist on such policy, and attack political opponents. Trump has used the an accelerated timescale, each idea has no context but itself. temporality and isolation of the medium to great effect - he can If these ideas are “instant” enough, they have less time to be change his positions on issues at the drop of a hat and few will checked against a larger context, and are easier to justify within be the wiser. One minute, he thinks someone is a great guy; its own ideological echo chamber. The summation of what the

8 Ruy, David. “Subculture Aesthetics,” n.d. http://www.munyicheng.com/ 9 Trump, Donald. Twitter Post. Sep 6, 2019, 10:29 AM. https://twitter. subculture-aesthetics. com/realDonaldTrump/status/1169981017794535432

6 7 However, he goes on to say:

Faced with the claims of competing taste cultures, it is scarcely possible to talk about Good Taste and keep a straight face. The subject is pure ‘’Saturday Night Live.’’ Bad Taste is more useful. In a pluralistic world, lightning rods are more reliable than compasses. And the wrinkled nose is a universal symbol of the desire to feel superior to whatever seems threatening10.

The micro-culture surround Donald Trump also has an aesthetic Left unchecked, such a lightning rod might start a forest fire. But, with a careful awareness and agency, we can craft the effect a visibily fictitous narrative, which, when presented in a microcultural alternate reality, can become truth. these micro-cultures have on the real world. image 1.7 Not all micro-cultures are this devious. Take, for example, ideas represent becomes the output, rather than any idea itself. genre. Over time, a set of conventions have been built up in each Trump has used this to generate a deep micro-culture around his genre that guide the way a work of, say, film is written, acted, shot, cult of personality, and has had no inhibition wielding the terrible scored, or edited. A film is judged on its ability to conform to these power of this condition. tropes, however, a great deal of success can also be found in Even before his presidency, Trump’s real estate business subverting them. Success like this can even verge on fanaticism, was defined by a micro-culture - one of taste. The late Herbert leading to the distinction of “cult classic”. However, the “cults”in Muschamp, architecture critic for the New York Times, said this of question consist not only of fans but also of other movies that Trump in 1999: claim to share the same genre. Each cult classic attains its status through an aggregation, subversion, or deployment of the [Some], confused by this stunning mosaic of esthetic aforementioned collective tropes. For example, Sergio Leone’s disarray, have singled out Donald Trump as a supreme example of Bad Taste, whatever that might be. The shiny spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars did not draw as much marble, bronze and brass, the gilded building crowns, the from contemporary westerns or Italian cinema as it did from gaudy Atlantic City casinos, the spangled showgirls: it all adds up in their eyes to vulgar excess, an unsophisticate’s Akira Kurosawa’s samurai epic Yojimbo, which in turn borrowed delight in meretricious baubles. He has become a point of from stylistic conventions seen in earlier American filmnoir and orientation in an environment where cultural bearings are easily lost. 10 Muschamp, Herbert. “ART/ARCHITECTURE; Trump, His Gilded Taste, and Me.” The New York Times, 19 Dec. 1999.

8 9 westerns. What can be made of this repeated subversion? As writer and literary theorist Umberto Eco supposes11, the more a work is “unhinged” from the conventions of its genre micro- culture, the more we become aware of those conventions that surround it, and the more clever we feel for recognizing them.

When all the archetypes shamelessly burst in, we plumb Homeric depths. Two clichés are laughable. A hundred clichés are affecting—because we become obscurely aware that the clichés are talking to one another and holding a get-together. As the height of suffering meets sensuality, and the height of depravity verges on mystical energy, the height of banality lets us glimpse a hint of the sublime.

Thus, the insularity of a micro-culture provides an opportunity for new potentials to arise, especially when that insularity is interrupted.

Pertinently, a micro-culture can also produce 2018 internet cult object, rife with discreet references and representations of its cultural moment, which are individual, obscure meta-humor image 1.8 complex, and highly referential. For the architect it is a drawing, model, or other abstraction of built form. For the Internet micro- the propensity to let things become highly inwardly-referential. culture, it is Internet memes. In the original scientific definition, Over time, these images have become more and more inbred, memes are the basic building block of culture12. However, like bouncing around their echo-chambers, and only getting louder14 the memes of the modern day, the definition of the word has as demonstrated in image 1.8. As this tie to reality has loosened, happened to take on extra meanings as it propagated over the the images have gotten more and more effective, or as those Internet13, which as established, is divorced from reality and has who are in on the joke would say, funnier. Now the image contains all other relevant images within its isolated context: to 11 Eco, Umberto. “The Cult of the Imperfect.” In On the Shoulders of Giants. Harvard University Press, 2019. an outside observer, Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress, 12 Dawkins, R. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford Univ. Press. Fowler, J. H., Lord Farquad from the movie Shrek, the YouTuber Markiplier, E and Christakis, N. A. 2010. Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(12):5334– 5338. 14 Rugnetta, Mike. “Half-Baked: After The End of Memes – Pt. 1. and 2.” 3 13 Coscia 3 Dec. 2018, d.rip/mikerugnetta

10 11 “Bottom Text”, and an exaggerated low quality image might have nothing to do with eachother; to an inside observer, they come together in a readable and humorous way. Images like this can use that embodied energy to do more. The aforementioned examples all prove the label given by some philosophers to this millieu: “post-truth”15. Meaning: authenticity has been defenestrated. Somehow, architecture is uniquely positioned to dutifully, futilely, intervene on this condition, and the same naivety by which we intervene on all conditions can guide us here. In some ways, architecture is also like this document. It uses the long, slow-moving, and verbose to tackle the fleeting moments of transfixing “fake-ness”. After all, architecture is not always stalwart and eternal, as loan-words to the popular lexicon like “foundation” might suggest. Buildings change. How many homeowners finish their basements for their kids to play in, only for those kids to grow up and move away? How many restaurant franchises expand, only to eventually lose the public taste? How many governments erect monuments to their ideology, declare that traditional styles fit with “our” values and deconstructionism or brutalism don’t, only to lose the election in a few years? The way we do architecture might change to respond to the “fake-ness” that surrounds the everyday. By re-framing these problems of the discipline, we might be able to begin to unpack them.

15 Kofman, Ava (2018-10-25). “Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331

12 13 II.

STAGE-SETTING / TABLE-MANNERS

damn everything but the circus! ...damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won’t get into the circle, that won’t enjoy, that won’t throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence... - ee cummings

Canonically, architecture rejects fake-ness, rewards the privileged, detests un-originality, and turns its nose up at bad taste. This, in itself, is evidence of another alternate reality generated by a micro-culture. To find truly fake architecture that better suits the conditions of our time, that which does not burden itself with questions of authenticity, one must go outside this canon. Such exercises are not without precedent: Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi explored something similar in their seminal book Learning From Las Vegas1, in which a consideration of the Strip was made with the same rigor with which one might consider the greatest works of the Romans. They

1 Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form - Revised Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.

15 saw the potential in the one part of the built environment that structural uses were slim to was unhinged in its ability to sell narratives, con, and even rip-off none. The power of this message its inhabitants; a set of conditions which were largely ignored by delivered by the architecture is the discipline. However, things have changed quite a bit since the so powerful that it maintains early 1970s. That inauthenticity and self-referentiality may have priority in the company’s logo had an epicenter in Vegas at the time, but today, it surrounds us decades after it left their everywhere. The inside joke of Las Vegas has mutated to have its buildings. Thus, McDonald’s own rules, conventions, and mores. Take fast food restaurants, today can only be fully for example. If architecture is primarily a vehicle for narrative, understood in reference to itself; narratives which drive some of the largest and most successful but, even without awareness of brands in America might have interesting things to say about the history of its architecture, architecture. Branding itself is an exercise in leveraging the excess this self-reference has become of capitalism to generate a micro-culture, which can then be ubiquitous and unquestioned. exploited. To wit: many of these brands are mutations of specific The now-defunct Howard references that have evolved over time into a self-referential and Johnson’s, which was once image 2.1 heavily constructed identity. They seek to emulate a set of these the largest restaurant chain in references, but by being in the wrong context, they have a visible America, used similarly fake architecture as part of its branding. degree of “fake-ness”. Furthermore, through sheer repetition, they When the restaurant started in New England in 19253, it was more convincingly only belong to their own contexts. presented as a classy Georgian style manse which were common One of the clearest, most ubiquitous, and recognizable amongst the New England gentry, replete with ornate cupolas, fake architectures like this is the Golden Arch of McDonald’s. under-eave dentils, a pedimented entrance, and other traditional Originally designed in the early 1950s2, the Arch is architecture at embellishments. This style was already dubiously authentic, as its most symbolic. Its parabolic form was a sign of technology and the cupola was too small and the windows too large to be truly modernity, (it follows Corbusier’s 1931 Palace of the Soviets and Georgian, and the interior was modern from the get-go4. This Eero Saarinen’s 1948 competition winning design for the St Louis could have proved problematic when the company entered the Arch) even though that when it came to McDonald’s, the Arch’s burgeoning and frenetic post-war consumer economy, as the

2 Langdon, Philip. Orange Roofs, Golden Arches: the Architecture of 3 Langdon 46 American Chain Restaurants. New York: Knopf, 1986. Page 85 4 Langdon 52

16 17 Georgian ornament was going reference lent itself handily to out of fashion. A bright orange- faking at the original location colored roof would set their and repeating ad nauseum new identity, but they needed at franchises. Whether the to retain an amount of their tacos actually reflected the previous brand. Therefore, the real Mexican cuisine around Georgian cupola became a mid- the quintessential Mission was century modern Googie Cupola: irrelevant, just as whether the a further faking of an already Bell actually ever rang was fake thing. So, to understand the irrelevant; what was important branding of Howard Johnson’s, was that it was a sign that sold one must at least have an a message from the restaurant, understanding of architectural about the restaurant. Eventually, history, the vernacular of New just like the Golden Arch, the England in the 1920s, and the Bell left the building and became image 2.2 image 2.3 origins of the business. In spite, only part of the sign. Only a or perhaps because of this, it still worked: Howard Johnson’s was vague curvature remains, tacked on, as a gesture. Yet, once the largest restaurant chain in America in the 1960s and 70s, again, to fully understand what this means, one must understand just after adopting the iconic Googie Cupola and orange metal the architectural pedigree of Taco Bell. And once again, the roof. narrative persists, despite its obscurity. Taco Bell also has a central significant architectural The most notable chapter in this part of the story comes element. The Bell in Taco Bell, of course, is not only a reference from Pizza Hut. Of course, the focus is on the iconic roof, which to the name of founder Glenn Bell, who’s company started selling too is integral to the brand’s sign and name. Here, its lineage tacos in 19625, but also a reference to the architecture of the is a bit less easy to deconstruct. One might suppose it is a Spanish Mission, which litters the presumptuous birthplace of nod to a sort of traditional European architecture, which might its cuisine. The flat, upward projecting, and iconic quality of this authenticate the allegedly European fare; some call it a double- mansard, for some reason. Perhaps the red paint hearkens to clay roof tiles popular across Europe, but this taxonomy is murky 5 Langdon 177

18 19 image 2.4 image 2.5 at best6. Pizza, as served at the Hut, is like a cousin to the truly is shocking given that the Pizza Hut logo is all about the roof. authentic pizza invented in Naples; however, that doesn’t actually However, a careful observer will still notice the erstwhile matter to Pizza Hut as a brand. What does matter is if the sign iconography of Pizza Hut lurking beneath. Around the world, convinces a would-be customer that Pizza Hut is very traditionally Internet users have contributed to the documentation of these European and that its European-ness matters. Clearly, it does iconoclastic oddities in their communities, which are often this job well, so much so that McDonald’s even made a rip-off remarkable transformations of brand strategy and program but version of the roof at one point (and the Hamburg-er is even less retain an intact and legible set of references unto the conditions European than pizza). of the buildings themselves7. One blog-runner might describe a What’s even more remarkable about the fake-architecture Pizza Hut in Des Moines which now houses a Police Traffic Unit of Pizza Hut is what happens when it collides with other fake- like this: architectures. Whenever a Pizza Hut is closed and sold to a new We all love the idea of the police chief telling all of the business, they often leave the roof and repaint it or weld some cops week after week that if they don’t get their shit new signage to it. Presumably, either the roof is too expensive together and get traffic violations under control, they will have to work at a Pizza Hut, then the mayor coming in and of a thing to tear off and redo, or the form is inoffensive or breaking the news that they would, indeed, all be working unrecognizable enough to pass a quick glance. This in itself in a Pizza Hut. Evidence room in the cooler. Interrogations

7 Neilsen, Mike. “Used to Be a Pizza Hut.” Used to Be a Pizza Hut, 6 Langdon 99 October 3, 2008. https://usedtobeapizzahut.blogspot.com/.

20 21 happening in the booths. Secretaries playing table-top Pac- Man instead of solitaire.

This fiction exists not in a realm lacking reality, but in an alternate reality constructed by a set of conditions. Such narratives may be constructed, but they have a degree of believability to them, because their construction is already manifest. These mashups are rare in the built environment today, but could become more common as the blurry edges of the architectural discipline break down even further. In the

1990s, Taco Bell began a series of co-branding exercises, in image 2.6 which they and another fast-food restaurant would share a building for marketing purposes. Most famous among these our noses. They represent narratives who’s only concern with are the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bells, but there are the authentic is being read as such, they contain discrete inward several other notable examples. Similar situations can even references, and have new meanings that arise when they are arise serendipitously, and can inadvertently include semiotic re-contextualized and recombined. They may be borne by “fake- associations with a high degree of absurdity or controversy. One ness”, but they carry meaning through to the real world. such situation exists in Nuremberg, Germany, where there are a few buildings left of the old Nazi rallying grounds. They have been stripped of the overt symbols of fascism, but many argue that the forms still carry meaning. In one particular building, which was originally an ancillary powerstation for the Lichtdom, a palimpsest of the reichsadler is still seen on the stone, and the architecture of Speer continues to carry red banners as it did in its past; banners that which now in lieu of fascist iconography bear the brand of a new age führer: the Burger King. This set of precedents might seem farcical, and they are. One might argue that they aren’t even Architecture, but they inarguably carry lessons about architecture hidden right under

22 23 III. QUESTIONING AUTHENTICITY (WITHIN ARCHITECTURE’S MICRO-CULTURE)

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal” - attributed to Pablo Picasso, T.S. Eliot, Igor Stravinsky, and Steve Jobs

Architecture, whether in practice and in discourse, in theory or built, behaves like a micro-culture. Both architecture and the other micro-cultures shown here are a construct of a larger particular cultural moment, and provide a framework or set of rules for that moment to subsist1. These rules are based primarily on internal factors and have few external reference points. Despite this, questions of authenticity are a large part of these cultural moments, especially in architecture. Be they the canon itself, or specific issues like precedent, adaptive reuse, the purpose of context, or representational strategies, each produce an insular answer that deserve reconsidering now that the cultural moment has changed.

1 Coscia 2

25 In the past, architecture has been inauthentic, but that fact is often covered up. Linguistically, it’s not difficult to believe. Ingenuity cannot be that far from being ingenuine, and we have been all the more ingenuous to realize it. Each project is a projection. Whether it has been a formal aesthetic appropriated as a brand identity, a demonstration of culture or power, or as literal tools of propaganda by oppressive states, whenever architecture is architecture, it is doing the same thing. The narratives made by architecture are always supposed to be true, even if they demonstrably aren’t, as facts and evidence will fail in the face of an edifice. If something is “written in stone”, it means image 3.1 it is binding, even more so than the spoken word. But, the written us; it may have been authentic to them, but in reconstructing, it is word is independent from the spoken. The written word lives on, inauthentic to us. Aware of it, we can never recreate it. However, to be misinterpreted, rebooted, parodied, pastiched, is buried we can leverage that inauthenticity to create something more. underground and dug up again, while the spoken word is gone the Its inauthenticity and self-referential nature is its strength. Might moment the air around the speaker stops vibrating. This is doubly these conventions get unhinged when they become aware of their so when architecture is at its most self-referential. When its only artificiality? context is itself, architecture doubles down on its conventions, We can look at history for moments to begin unhinging. and the need for unhinging becomes greater. An early yet notable example is Hadrian’s villa. Throughout the This creates a cognitive dissonance which has always site, a series of artifacts are re-presented as evidence of the plagued architecture. In fact, at the moment the practice became conquests of the Roman Empire. What was behind the curation recognized as architecture, it had this ingenuine-ness. The of these artifacts? Hadrian clearly considered them important or mistake that scholars have made in the past have been to find interesting, because he sought to emulate them in his vision of the oldest thing that looked like architecture, when, in fact, we the Empire. This curation and reconstruction is architecture, not must go to the moment the identification occurred. This is when the objects themselves. Important to this architectural act is the architecture started - not when the first piece of architecture was way that these artifacts are actually misinterpreted - the caryatids made, but when it was first called architecture. The problem of the primitive hut was that it was constructed by primitives and not

26 27 Claude-Nicholas Ledoux, House of Education, 1773 Johnson/Burgee Architects, University of Houston School of Architecture, 1986 image 3.2 image 3.3 don’t hold anything up, seen in image 3.12. As a reconstruction, practice, and has been done by significant architects across time3. each idea becomes more intentional. Through the “incorrect” The most publically known charlatan of this variety is an unhinged intention is made clear, and so is the narrative that none other than Philip Johnson, famous for his 1949 Glass follows suit. House which summarily imitates Mies van der Rohe’s renowned More moments for unhinging can be found in the ways Farnsworth House from a few years earlier. Similarly, his design architecture is taught and practiced. An architect should use for the University of Houston’s School of Architecture was precedents, yet, originality is a virtue. An original will always out- harangued for its appropriation of Ledoux, as shown in images value a knock-off, even if the knock-off is a perfect copy. Although 3.2 and 3.3. However, as argued in recent times by Amanda it has been normalized, the nature of using precedent runs Reeser Lawrence, this work may deserve reconsideration, quite contrary to what would normally be tolerable in practice. At because it “cracks upon, if only through suggestion, our most what point do you stop using the precedent and make the work treasured disciplinary ideology: an alignment of progress with your own? Conventionally, when starting a project you gather originality.”4 Upon a close inspection, the Johnson building is a series of examples of similar projects in the past, which you not an exact copy - certain changes have been made; some systematically dismantle and then steal from. This should be superficial, some less so. What is certainly important is that considered antithetical to the ideal of originality, but it is standard

3 Lawrence, Amanda Reeser, and Ana Miljački. Terms of Appropriation: 2 MacDonald, William L., and John A. Pinto. Hadrian’s Villa and Its Modern Architecture and Global Exchange. New York: Routledge, 2018 Legacy. London: Yale University Press, 1995. 4 Lawrence, Miljački 231

28 29 Johnson’s building is an inexact copy. Rather than fully fake, the building has a “compromised originality”.5 These changes, because they are in reference to something else known, show a level of care and intention in the architecture decisions at hand. To return to Eco, “we become obscurely aware that the clichés are talking to one another and holding a get-together.”6 While the design and its architect deserve more scrutiny in other areas, simply put, by being an inexact copy, it is more forward about it’s inauthenticity. Another supposition comes with reuse, especially as Fondazione Prada, OMA, 2018 our collective building stock grows as new methods to make image 3.4 buildings last longer are developed, and as the impetus to re- use them grows as a way to address environmental issues and the building is. This was explored in the OMA show “Cronocaos” at sustainability issues. One position is that the architecture of a the 2010 Venice Biennale, and their later work at the Fondazione renovation should attempt to restore the building to an ideal state Prada in Milan in 2018. In the Cronocaos show, OMA sets up two in the past. This obviously creates a problem when the use of positions on architecture and time, one presented by Violet-le-Duc a building must change, but putting that aside, the authenticity and one by John Ruskin. As stated by Ruskin, of that ideal state is easy to question. How should we treat old Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; buildings when tasked with restoring or renovating them? Can it is impossible, as impossible as it is to raise the dead, to we ever really presume to know what a building was in the past? restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. Or, instead of letting our interpretation win out over authenticity, do we express that broken relationship between times by letting However, the counter position by Violet-le-Duc is presented as the building be reinterpreted? After all, there is an authenticity such: in making clear that a renovation happened, but that notion of authenticity runs counter to what the most “authentic” version of To restore a building is not to repair it, nor to do maintenance or rebuild, it is to reestablish it in an ultimate state that never existed before7.

5 Lawrence, Miljački 221 6 Eco, Umberto. “The Cult of the Imperfect.” In On the Shoulders of 7 Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Cronocaos, Venice Biennale of Giants. Harvard University Press, 2019. Architecture 2010

30 31 this will be done as an act of preservation or archaeology, such as the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Here, a collection of ancient works of architecture were stolen from their countries of origin and rebuilt in Germany. This is supposed to show examples of architecture of ancient civilizations, but removed from context, do they really function as such? Moving a building doesn’t always make it less architectural, either. The FBI relocated the cabin of infamous domestic terrorist the Unabomber to an FBI storage facility for evidence and analysis. With this change of context, the Unabomber cabin takes on new meanings. Seeing the simple rustic wood building situated in a cold concrete parking garage is a powerful statement given the Unabomber’s fanatical rejection of modernity and fanatic desire to return to pre-modern life. This tension is quite powerful when the pieces are re-juxtaposed and an object can become architecture via radical re-juxtaposition acted upon, even accidentally. image 3.5 Context means even less to Starchitecture, the supposed OMA’s work at the Fondazione Prada employs different positions pinnacle of the discipline. The basic critique is that most in this dialectic across the multiple buildings on its site. Some examples completely ignore the context of the site in favor of the buildings are largely unchanged, while others are entirely new; expression of the Starchitect. The most famous example is Frank still more are sliced up and intruded upon, or reclad in gold leaf, Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao, after which this entire phenomenon as seen in image 3.1. Through the specifics of the problem of is named. Essentially, the building’s global appeal entirely erases reuse, this project is a good example of an unhinged architectural the city it lives in. If architecture is supposed to be in respect to its micro-culture. context, why does one of its most significant examples completely Another place architecture gets tripped up is in reject it and even supersede it? This is another point at which authenticity of context. Location is something that can mean a architecture’s micro-cultural artifice can become unhinged. lot to architecture, be it the climate, sun angle, street presence, In buildings themselves, questions of authenticity are or even a local vernacular. That’s all well and good, but all of this often asked of materials. Is this real wood, or is it a composite? assumes architecture cannot change location. It can. Occasionally Do the materials appear to fit in with the local style? How can

32 33 we make this look more expensive than it actually is? Is veneer ethically acceptable? Great works of architecture, especially of the modern period, are often lauded for their “truth of materials”. However, this truth is not absolute. It is just another game architects must play. If the fake is indistinguishable from the real, why should the real have value? Furthermore, there is the issue of representation. After all, the main product of the architect and the architectural process is not the building, but a drawing. It is especially important to note that this drawing is intended not necessarily as a thing in and of itself, but a representation of a not yet realized object. This object is realized away from the architect, by someone else. As a result, a series of drawing conventions have arisen to better facilitate communication between the two entities. However, counter to intent, this series of conventions has created its own micro-culture: a language of codes and symbols nearly illegible to anyone who does not speak it. This, in turn, deserves unhinging. As a discipline, architecture has a set of conventions to answer many of the standard problems that must be addressed in the course of its discourse or practice. Together, this set of conventions constructs an alternate or artificial state of being, not unlike that of the other micro-cultures of today. Thus, instances which start to unhinge from these standards become more powerful and more necessary. Ultimately, whether we find them tasteful or not is irrelevant.

34 35 IV.

HOW TO START A CULT

“At the very beginning, I - of all this, I did make you a promise. Remember? I did promise that for one hour, I’d tell you only the truth. That hour, ladies and gentlemen, is over...” - Orson Welles, F for Fake 1973

What might architecture look like if it is unhinged from questions of authenticity? In the project, it is assumed that this architecture will arise from a certain micro-culture focused on such an unhinging. Put briefly, the best way to do so is to start a cult. A cult will make an aggregation of cultural forces literal, and it will take them to their furthest extremes. In the real world, this cult is led by one member: the sole author and researcher. In the other world of the project, a number of people are caught up by the ideas of shedding the shroud of authenticity and wrapping themselves in a new canon - that of the fake, the fantasy, and the fast-food. Like any good cult, there must be rituals, both to reaffirm the cult’s ideologies, and to provide a good show for the members. In this cult, one such ritual involves collision. In the

37 first stage, the cultists are seen arriving in the cult’s alternate really brawl with the Taco Bell. Instead, a stage set constructed by reality. Did they simply turn a corner on a city street to find this the cult made it appear so. In the end, that lie is not such a bad alternate reality manifesting an object, or did they drive here with thing. If inauthenticity is the dissonance between what something purpose and simply park outside? During Act II, the cultists don is and what something appears to be, but the two are legibly special coverings to protect themselves from future splattering indiscernible, why is that dissonance a problem? Why not steal food and smashed ornament. These coverings erase old aesthetic from a precedent? Why be original? Who cares what a building identities to allow for easier constructions of new ones. In Act is made out of? Who cares where a building belongs? Why not III, the collision occurs. Cult objects fly from all directions, freeze venerate Pizza Hut? framing only upon contact with another cult object: a Mission Bell facade skewered on a Googie Cupola; hot marinara sauce With a handful of Vertov, a dash of Matta-Clark, and a pinch puddling in the crook of a Golden Arch; a Pizza Hut roof inverted of Tobe Hooper (to taste), the Man With a Chainsaw stages a and sliced ceremoniously into the ground, a wet cheeseburger collision of inexact copies of fast food architecture with cult-like bun squished under a rubber boot. At the next stage, Act IV, the veneration to allow questioning the questions of authenticity cult objects are consumed. And finally, at the fifth stage, the inherent in architecture’s own micro-culture. stakes are pulled up, the robes shed and summarily cleansed, and all that remains are the impressions in the grass and the La commedia è finita! scrapes and taped markings on the studio floor. The instigating collisions appear to happen quite accidently. A pair of readymade forms, operative actions, and one aggregrating force are randomly selected from a pre-determined set and are applied swiftly to eachother. These resulting types can be reinserted into the exercise as forms once again, and continue to stack up in complexity to theoretical infinity. Despite this apparent happenstance, each situation has been carefully crafted by the cult leader through curation . The decision to include certain collisions over others is a core design decision in the project. Chance is merely canned, and redistributed by choice. In the end of course, it is all a show. The Pizza Hut did not

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