Architecture and Politics As a Matter of Interpretation Marian Zervan
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Architecture and Politics as Marian Zervan, Monika Mitášová a Matter of Interpretation All illustrations: Vladimír Dedeček, project and construction of the Slovak National Archive (1971–1983) in Bratislava. Source: the author’s archive and Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava Introduction does not have to be affirmative only. It can also create alternative models of organization and coordination of society, culture and Architecture is political, enters the political world and is nature: design utopian states and cities, deal with an alternative executed in it, provokes political incidents, is politically evaluated, organization of schools and theaters as well as hospitals, prisons criticized and interpreted. Architecture exploring the arché and other power institutions. It can be avant-garde, revolutionary through creating objects and models of the world is political, if and critical. Then it usually provokes social, cultural and political alone for the fact that it affirms the architectonics of the world, incidents, as it itself creates incidental spaces and frameworks society and culture. Architectonics is the organization of all that for human activities. It thus again and again becomes the subject is constant and variable: elements and force fields, the living and of legal and political modifications, voting, social plebiscites and non-living based on a boundary (peras) and horizons, the peratic participations. Architecture simply en-ables, provides options and and apeiratic, on various levels: natural, social and cultural ones. alternatives to our housing and building, and in this respect enters There are different boundaries and horizons in nature, in society natural, social, cultural and political fields. Architecture, primarily and in culture. What is perceived as accessible and inaccessible the affirmative one, is often criticized as conservative – even as in nature is seen as public and private in society and as elitist the most conservative of all arts – but also as one that supports and popular in culture. While some deduce architecture from the the regime or celebrates political systems. However, it is even architectonics and proto-architectonics of nature and the human more criticized and attacked if it is non-affirmative and critical and body, others do so from the architectonics of society and culture. concerned not with celebrations but with alternatives, challenges Ancient cultures were predominantly affirmative in this respect, and options. seeing architecture as an activity which respects natural, social and cultural architectonics. Up to this day, there are architecture All of these tensions of architectonics, architecture and schools that teach building typology as a study of the movements politics appear in the interpretation of architecture and individual and processes of the human body and its natural, social and architectural works. The two main streams of architecture: the cultural needs, including political movements and needs. Besides affirmativeone and the critical or incidental one gave rise to private and public buildings, architecture also creates political two main approaches in architecture interpretation. The first buildings and buildings of power: from parliaments to police approach interprets architecture as a bearer of denotative and stations, military quarters and prisons. However, architecture connotative meanings and there are various interpretation models 1 Artalk Revue 3 – Winter 2018 Marian Zervan, Monika Mitášová: Architecture and Politics as a Matter of Interpretation In our text, we present two model situations of heteronomous and immanentist interpretations to see if and how they are able to reflect political, social and cultural environments and commissions. Besides interpreting these, we will further discuss one of the works by Slovak architect Vladimír Dedeček to introduce our own interpretation model which aspires to overcome 2 the extremes of the polarity of the two interpretation groups. Model Situation 1: Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and his Karlskirche in Vienna and Hans Sedlmayr Structural-iconological interpretation In one of two didactic examples of his interpretation method, which he calls structural in his book Kunst und 3 Wahrheit, Hans Sedlmayr tried to prove that the architect and the artist create an unrepeatable bridge straddling the experience level of the work, the visual character (anschaulicher Charakter from anschauen – to look at) of the work and its iconographic and iconological layers. The monumental grandeur of the Karlskirche complex with an emphasis on the light of the world and the Novum Theatrum Architecturae meets the very complex iconographic and iconological program of the St. Charles Church in Vienna (alluding to the Jesuit saint, the emperor and his links with Charles the Great and Charles the Good). The creator of this program Carl Gustav Heraeus thus paid homage to two Charleses: Charles Borromeo and Emperor Charles VI whom he wanted to glorify as a new “Spanish” Hercules and Solomon while also paying tribute to the city of Vienna as the new Athens and the new eternal Rome. Moreover, the church’s program also responds to the period political and social events: the signing of the Treaty of Rastatt and the end of the plague epidemic in 1713 which was the immediate impulse for the construction of the church. This that focus on revealing these. This is how most heteronomous interpretation models proceed: the iconographic, semiotic one on one hand, and the sociological and sociocultural one on the other hand. The second interpretation approach sees architecture as an autonomous and independent discipline forming its own intra-architectural meanings that emerge in the permanent dialog of architects addressing architectural problems. The first interpretation group admits direct interventions of politics in architecture – whether from outside or inside – while the second group uses the shield of immanentism against these 1 interventions. 1 See for exapmle Michael Hays, “Kritická architektura: medzi kulturou a formou,” in Oxymorón & pleonasmus. Texty kritické a projektivní teorie 2 Marian Zervan and Monika Mitašová, Interpretačné metódy v architektúre architektury [Oxymoron & Pleonasm. Texts on Critical and Projective Theory / Interpretation Methods in Architecture (Praha: Zlatý Řez – Pusté Úľany: of Architecture], ed. Monika Mitášová (Praha: Zlatý řez 2011), 60–82. Schola Philosophica 2016). Originally published as “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form,” 3 Hans Sedlmayr, Kunst und Wahrheit (Mittenwald: Mäander Verlag 1978), Perspecta 21 (1984): 14–29. 143–152. 2 Artalk Revue 3 – Winter 2018 Marian Zervan, Monika Mitášová: Architecture and Politics as a Matter of Interpretation program had to be materialized by codified spatial and formal units reconfiguration of “pre-forms” and new contrapuntal configurations – Sedlmayr even calls them “ur-forms” or “pre-forms” (Urformen) primarily to show that Fischer von Erlach’s work affirmed and the central circular building, a dome with a lantern raised on celebrated the political status quo and configured the emperor as a drum, two tall columns with relief decorations and lanterns, and a saint, Hercules and an Old Testament king and sage. a horizontal building with a portico flanked by two towers. Their configurations and reconfigurations alluded to intra-architectural Sedlmayr thus sees the outcome of his interpretation meanings by their interconnection with other historical buildings: exercise in the interconnection of sacral and secular external Hagia Sofia, Templum Jovis et Pacis and Solomon’s Temple, thus political meanings and does not address focal alternative options linking Vienna to other cities. or incidental spaces. On the contrary; even if he points these out, for instance when accentuating the innovative use of the This iconographic and iconological program could not baroque counterpoint, or when addressing intra-architectural have been so complexly double, or even triple, had it not been meanings, Sedlmayr eventually always sticks to the level of for Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s innovative use of already established forms and internal and external meanings, the principle of mutual structural rearrangement of the above thus transforming the architectural work into a rhetorical form with 4 mentioned six elements (“pre-forms”) into two spatial-facade a varying degree of political convincingness. clusters of two triads. In the first cluster, the first triad consists of the central circular building with a dome and two columns while Model Situation 2: Giuseppe Terragni the second triad consists of the horizontal building flanked by two and his Casa del Fascio in Como and Peter Eisenman towers and the portico. In the second cluster, the first triad consists of the central circular building and two wings of the horizontal Interpretation as close reading building with two towers while the second triad consists of the portico and two massive individual columns with a lantern. It is When interpreting Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio only this architecturally employed “baroque counterpoint” that located at Piazza Giuseppe Verdi in Como close to the Dome and enables the interconnection of the intra-architectural meanings with the City Theater with a portico entry, Peter Eisenman was aware a number of extra-architectural contexts. Sedlmayr’s interpretation that the creator of this building – as a convinced Christian and has shown that the visual character of Fischer’s work