Team 10 Meeting, Bonnieux, France, 1977. from Team 10: in Search of a Utopia of the Present

Reinier de Graaf From CIAM to Cyberspace : Architecture and the Community

“The community” might be the most frequently off-center. The intentionally domestic setting used term in architectural and urban discourse of their meetings is as much a manifesto as any over the last fifty years. For decades, rhetoric outcome of the meetings, written or otherwise. invoking “the community” has endowed even The wives invariably attend— either that, or a the most mediocre designs with an aura of vast reservoir of female architects have failed to good intentions and thus implicitly condemned make it into the history books. designers who decline use of the word. The It is never quite clear to what extent the community has served as a legitimization for meetings are meant to be an exchange of views, anything from Team X to New Urbanism, from or whether they are essentially just a form of Pendrecht to Celebration, from Aldo van Eyck bonding. Team X’s most articulate mantra, “by to Larry Beasley. But what is “the community”? us, for us,” a phrase encapsulated in a drawing Despite its prolific appearance, the frequency by Aldo van Eyck,4 is equally ambiguous. The with which “community” is used seems in- most common interpretation suggests a certain versely proportional to the extent to which it is naiveté associated with the period or an almost truly understood. tautological profession of good intentions, which imply that people should be their own archi- DE GRAAF DE tects. Yet, studying the picture more closely, * * * observing the eerie, almost tribal consensus that exists between members of the group, one In July 1953, an international group of archi- is also left with the impression of a strange tects breaks away from CIAM, until then the hubris, a sense of self-inflated significance of prevailing movement of modern architects.1 the architectural profession and those practic- Critical of what they see as CIAM’s overly ing it. Looking at the isolated, exclusive club of dogmatic functionalist approach, this group, architects gathered around the tree, “the people” eventually known as Team X, believes in re- seem far away. It is as though we are witnessing establishing the relationship between architec- a strange precursor to the phenomenon of the ture and the human habitat. With the formation “starchitect,” where “by us, for us” ultimately of Team X “the community” becomes the focus amounts to architecture for architects. of modern architectural discourse. Some of the meetings produce written docu- Members of the group meet regularly, ments and in 1954 one such document, “The generally in the garden of one their homes in Doorn Manifesto,” credited to the Smithsons, France, England or the Netherlands.2 There is argues that each local situation calls for its own an ample photographic record of these meet- specific habitat concept.5 In the last sentence, ings—the same cast of characters appears architecture, and not sociology, is unequivo- in different compositions—and the scene is cally quoted as the prime source of expertise always the same: a circle of people, seated on to solve societal issues: “The appropriateness of chairs or on the semi-manicured lawn below.3 any solution may lie in the field of architectural In every picture there is a tree, always slightly invention rather than social anthropology.”6

1. Sigfried Giedion, ed., CIAM: A Decade of New Architecture. 4. Max Risselada and Dirk van den Heuvel, eds., Team 10: In Search (Zurich: Editions Gersburger, 1960). of a Utopia of the Present (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2006). 2. “Team 10 Online,”accessed January 1, 2014. http://www. 5. Alison Smithson, “The Doorn Manifesto,” in Team 10 Primer, Team 10 Meeting, Bonnieux, France, team10online.org. ed. Alison Smithson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974). 3. Alison Smithson, Team 10 Meetings: 1953-1984 (New York: 6. Alison Smithson, “The Doorn Manifesto.” 1977. From Team 10: In Search of a Utopia Rizzoli, 1991). of the Present.

Issue 3 45 Reinier de Graaf From CIAM to Cyberspace : Architecture and the Community

Issue 3 45 Building on this, Jaap Bakema writes the book Already in 1950, the sociologist George A. Inasmuch as Kommune 1 constitutes a Paradoxically, it emerges from an unexpected From Chair to City: A Story of People and Space Hillery, Jr. publishes his A Research Odyssey: community, it is no longer a community which alliance of protest and preservation—against, in 1964, and goes one step further to equate the Developing and Testing a Community Theory. is a reflection or a product of shared values of rather than with, the prevailing dogmas of history of mankind to the history of “place-mak- The book’s title is painfully appropriate as the society, but in fact the exact opposite: a form of society as a whole. ing”: buildings are supposed to represent the re- book is largely a journey across every conceiv- protest against society, where the shared rejec- The complex relationship between commu- lations of people living in them.7 This suggestion able definition of community, ending up with 94 tion of particular mainstream values becomes nity and society emerging from the aforemen- is represented very literally on the book’s cover, definitions in total. Unwittingly, the book is an the primary source of bonding. Apparently, at tioned examples constitutes an interesting di- which depicts a mix of high-rise and low-rise early indication of how prominent the search for this point in history, the notion of “the com- chotomy, although perhaps the words are more buildings as parents with their children. a new collectivity in postwar society has become munity” can only exist on the condition of a related than one would expect: in the German For Team X, the built environment is both and will continue to be in the following decades. seemingly inevitable de-escalation of the scale language, community and society branch from the subject of blame and a hypothetical panacea The 1960s are not only the age of “the com- of consensus. the same root word: Gemeinschaft (community) to social problems. However, despite the con- munity,” but also the age of “the commune.” In In the context of this realization, it is and Gesellschaft (society).12 The community fidence of their manifestos, the architecture of Berlin a group of ten men and women segregate interesting to note that the first moment that (Gemeinschaft) is that which precedes society Team X does little to change the way in which from society largely for political motives, living “Community Architect” properly surfaces as an (Gesellschaft) in terms of scale and level of residential neighborhoods continue to be built under the name Kommune 1 (Commune 1).8 official term is in the mid-1970s. In 1974, Rod organization. Society is the institutionalized over much of the 1950s and 1960s. The arrange- Their main credo—“Das Private ist politisch” Hackney, together with the residents of Black version of the community. However, the moment of residential slabs changes into somewhat (the private is political)—makes living in a com- Road, Macclesfield, essentially devises a pilot ment society becomes the predominant form of more varied patterns, no longer exclusively dic- mune essentially a political statement against scheme for the renovation of a working class organization in terms of human relationships; tated by equal quotas of sunlight, the community also becomes a but now also arranged to create tool of rejection. In the face of a “a sense of place.” (Meanwhile, larger society that seemingly fails the places are often the size of a to deliver a lot of its promises, football field—to the extent that to the community is also that which this day, I wonder whether there supersedes society.13 is a direct correlation between the “Who is society? There is no GRAAF DE successes of Dutch soccer in the such thing! There are individual 1970s and the type of residential men and women and there are 14

CRITIQUES neighborhoods most of the players families.” These words, spoken by grew up in.) Margaret Thatcher in 1987 seem In many ways, the community to indicate a strange full cycle, becomes the paradigmatic feature especially when positioned next of the 1950s and 1960s: not only to the manifesto of Kommune 1 in the architecture of Team X, that, albeit for different reasons, but also in academia, where the contained an equally fierce assault discipline of sociology becomes on society. Twenty years later, popular. The 1950s and 1960s are Aldo van Eyck, “For us by us,” presented as the “Otterlo Circles,” Jaap Bakema, Van stoel tot Stad; een verhaal over mensen en ruimte the notion of a society that can CIAM X, Otterlo, Netherlands, 1959. (“From Chair to City; A Story of People and Space”), 1964. a time of sociological experiments. be entrusted with any collective With the emergence of the middle task—a society which acts for the class as the new majority in post-World War II the family as a bourgeois tool largely designed neighborhood in the face of imminent demoli- greater good—appears to be equally rejected by society, the notion of class struggle, which had to further consumption and to reaffirm class tion.10 The ample press campaign that ensues supporters and opponents of “the family.” The been the dominating ideological feature in so- segregation.9 The Kommune 1 manifesto, brands the effort with the slogan: “It’s only result is an ideological vacuum in which “the cial and political theory at the beginning of the against the family and against consumerism, is Working Class conservation!”11 With the exten- community” has become an ideological prop- century, increasingly fades into the background. largely a form of agitation. It calls upon people sive proliferation of this slogan into the media, erty claimed by both the left and the right. The focus now shifts to a theorization of human to raid warehouses and department stores as community architecture is born—in combina- In the context of this ideological disarray, relationships themselves. The main underly- bastions of consumption, which, together with tion with an early form of residents’ partici- something interesting happens in architecture ing driver of the economic system—individual the family, Kommune 1 sees as the direct exten- pation, that other great 1970s phenomenon. as well. Over the course of the 1980s, “the com- consumption—comes under increased scrutiny. sion of the former national socialist government With this focus come new, albeit frail, attempts of Germany, with the same people still in power 10. Charles Knevitt, “Community Architect Mark 1: an interview Bottomore and Robert A. Nisbet (New York: Basic Books, 1978). with Rod Hackney who works in small scale community 13. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, Jose at the “alternative forms of collectivity.” and the same mechanisms still in place. rehabilitation projects,” Building Design (July 11, 1975). Harris, ed., Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis, trans. 11. Nick Wates, “Community Architecture: CA is here to stay,” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 7. Jaap Bakema, Van stoel tot stad: een verhaal over mensen en 8. Ulrich Enzensberger, Die Jahre der Kommune1 Berlin 1967-69 Architects’ Journal 175:23 (June 9, 1982): 42-44. 14. Margaret Thatcher, “Interview with Douglas Keay,” Woman’s ruimte (Zeist: W. De Haan, 1964). (Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch; 2004). 12. Julien Freund, “German Sociology in the time of Max Weber,” Own (September 23, 1987). 9. Enzensberger, Die Jahre der Kommune1 Berlin 1967-69. in A History of Sociological Analysis, eds. Thomas Burton

46 PROJECT Issue 3 47 Building on this, Jaap Bakema writes the book Already in 1950, the sociologist George A. Inasmuch as Kommune 1 constitutes a Paradoxically, it emerges from an unexpected From Chair to City: A Story of People and Space Hillery, Jr. publishes his A Research Odyssey: community, it is no longer a community which alliance of protest and preservation—against, in 1964, and goes one step further to equate the Developing and Testing a Community Theory. is a reflection or a product of shared values of rather than with, the prevailing dogmas of history of mankind to the history of “place-mak- The book’s title is painfully appropriate as the society, but in fact the exact opposite: a form of society as a whole. ing”: buildings are supposed to represent the re- book is largely a journey across every conceiv- protest against society, where the shared rejec- The complex relationship between commu- lations of people living in them.7 This suggestion able definition of community, ending up with 94 tion of particular mainstream values becomes nity and society emerging from the aforemen- is represented very literally on the book’s cover, definitions in total. Unwittingly, the book is an the primary source of bonding. Apparently, at tioned examples constitutes an interesting di- which depicts a mix of high-rise and low-rise early indication of how prominent the search for this point in history, the notion of “the com- chotomy, although perhaps the words are more buildings as parents with their children. a new collectivity in postwar society has become munity” can only exist on the condition of a related than one would expect: in the German For Team X, the built environment is both and will continue to be in the following decades. seemingly inevitable de-escalation of the scale language, community and society branch from the subject of blame and a hypothetical panacea The 1960s are not only the age of “the com- of consensus. the same root word: Gemeinschaft (community) to social problems. However, despite the con- munity,” but also the age of “the commune.” In In the context of this realization, it is and Gesellschaft (society).12 The community fidence of their manifestos, the architecture of Berlin a group of ten men and women segregate interesting to note that the first moment that (Gemeinschaft) is that which precedes society Team X does little to change the way in which from society largely for political motives, living “Community Architect” properly surfaces as an (Gesellschaft) in terms of scale and level of residential neighborhoods continue to be built under the name Kommune 1 (Commune 1).8 official term is in the mid-1970s. In 1974, Rod organization. Society is the institutionalized over much of the 1950s and 1960s. The arrange- Their main credo—“Das Private ist politisch” Hackney, together with the residents of Black version of the community. However, the moment of residential slabs changes into somewhat (the private is political)—makes living in a com- Road, Macclesfield, essentially devises a pilot ment society becomes the predominant form of more varied patterns, no longer exclusively dic- mune essentially a political statement against scheme for the renovation of a working class organization in terms of human relationships; tated by equal quotas of sunlight, the community also becomes a but now also arranged to create tool of rejection. In the face of a “a sense of place.” (Meanwhile, larger society that seemingly fails the places are often the size of a to deliver a lot of its promises, football field—to the extent that to the community is also that which this day, I wonder whether there supersedes society.13 is a direct correlation between the “Who is society? There is no GRAAF DE successes of Dutch soccer in the such thing! There are individual 1970s and the type of residential men and women and there are 14

46 PROJECT Issue 3 47 times gated, communities such as Celebration inhabit progressively starts to acquire trac- credibly make moral claims about society as a tion in the late 1990s. “Community planning” whole? It is clear that “the community” of the expands from architecture and urbanism into New Urbanists is a very different community a multi-disciplinary approach: an “exclusive” than the community of Team X: not a product type of expertise simultaneously claimed by of society at large, but of a society of parts and technology firms, management consultants partial interests. In the context of the New Ur- and even public institutions, all claiming banism movement, “the community” has come to possess unique knowledge of the subject. to equal a concept of division, thus ensuring Vancouver, consistently at the top of so called the breakdown of any possibility of a “commu- “livable cities lists”18 today is as much a form of nity at large.” knowledge as it is the name of city in Canada. Still, there is one important thing that Team In a state of near bankruptcy as recently as the X and the New Urbanists have in common: the 1970s the city makes a remarkable turnaround fact that “the com- during the 1990s, munity” is viewed as a largely at the hands product of spatial pa- of one man.19 With rameters. Throughout little conventional their discourse, “the planning options left community” remains at his disposal, the a fairly straightfor- head of the Van- ward notion, defined couver Municipal through spatial Planning Department proximity in an practically invents orderly progression of the term “community scales: the neighbor- planning.” “Com- GRAAF DE hood, the city and the munity planning” nation. However, the becomes synonymous

CRITIQUES decade that follows with everything that turns everything is good for the city: a upside down. vibrant public realm, In a globalized integrated (green) economy, where cities public space, sustain-

Kommune 1, Berlin, Germany, 1968. increasingly compete able infrastructure, in economic terms, etc., albeit more in “the community” the form of a perpet- munity” continues to dominate the architec- similar rhetoric to Team X, is an almost anti- becomes an economic ual announcement of tural discourse; however, it becomes less and thetical movement to Team X, with its actors notion, no longer de- things to come than less clear who its protagonists really are. In the having very different political associations, fined by territory, but in the form of real ur- early 1990s a manifesto is published arguing for and ultimately realizing (or at least represent- by economic interde- Charles Knevitt, “Community architect mark 1: an inter- ban transformation. view with Rod Hackney,” Building Design 258 (1 July 1975). “the restoration of existing urban centers and ing) a very different style of architecture. The pendence. Employ- “Community plan- towns within coherent metropolitan regions, architects from Team X were primarily agents ment communities ning” becomes hype: the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs of a large public sector, while the architects turn into urban communities. McDonalds, for the first real evidence of a merger between into communities of real neighborhoods and of the New Urbanism are mostly agents of the instance, creates local training programs and urbanism and marketing. diverse districts, the conservation of natural private sector. Their most notorious achieve- funds youth sport and community charity in Even if Vancouver itself does not change environments, and the preservation of our built ment—Celebration—is a town commissioned 17 15 many American cities. that much, the perception of Vancouver legacy.” Although evidently taking a cue from and managed by the Disney Corporation, with As a consequence, the idea that communi- certainly does. In the ‘90s real estate prices the Team X theorists, this is an excerpt from Disney performing many of the tasks previously 16 ties can and should be shaped through and escalate dramatically, and Vancouver becomes a very different type of manifesto: the Charter performed by the public sector. beyond the built environment which they a success story, almost irrespective of any of New Urbanism, published for the first time To what extent can a type of urbanism

in 1993. New Urbanism, whilst practicing a that puts itself at the service of private, at 17. Claudio Vignali, “McDonald’s: ‘think global, act local’—the 19. Larry Beasley, “Planning the Global City: Vancouver, Abu marketing mix,” British Food Journal 103:2 (2001): 97-111. Dhabi and the World,” address given at the University of Toronto 15. “Charter of the New Urbanism,” accessed February 11, 2013, 16. Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, Celebration, U.S.A.: Living 18. Economist Intelligence Unit, “Best Cities Ranking and Urban Lecture Series, Toronto, Canada, November 16, 2011. http://www.cnu.org/charter. in Disney’s Brave New Town (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2000). Report” (New York: The Economist, 2013).

48 PROJECT Issue 3 49 times gated, communities such as Celebration inhabit progressively starts to acquire trac- credibly make moral claims about society as a tion in the late 1990s. “Community planning” whole? It is clear that “the community” of the expands from architecture and urbanism into New Urbanists is a very different community a multi-disciplinary approach: an “exclusive” than the community of Team X: not a product type of expertise simultaneously claimed by of society at large, but of a society of parts and technology firms, management consultants partial interests. In the context of the New Ur- and even public institutions, all claiming banism movement, “the community” has come to possess unique knowledge of the subject. to equal a concept of division, thus ensuring Vancouver, consistently at the top of so called the breakdown of any possibility of a “commu- “livable cities lists”18 today is as much a form of nity at large.” knowledge as it is the name of city in Canada. Still, there is one important thing that Team In a state of near bankruptcy as recently as the X and the New Urbanists have in common: the 1970s the city makes a remarkable turnaround fact that “the com- during the 1990s, munity” is viewed as a largely at the hands product of spatial pa- of one man.19 With rameters. Throughout little conventional their discourse, “the planning options left community” remains at his disposal, the a fairly straightfor- head of the Van- ward notion, defined couver Municipal through spatial Planning Department proximity in an practically invents orderly progression of the term “community scales: the neighbor- planning.” “Com- GRAAF DE hood, the city and the munity planning” nation. However, the becomes synonymous

48 PROJECT Issue 3 49 real physical change.20 It is a model, soon to guise of anonymity? Can a “new” new world, bed where every fact of life is preemptively aug- Postscript be exported to cities as diverse as Abu Dhabi, offering the possibility to start over, augment mented before it sees the light of day. It seems Rotterdam and Dallas. The former civil servant one’s shortcomings and redefine relation- the general rehearsal for life is no longer life Thirty years ago, as a student, I witnessed meanwhile wears an Armani suit, travels ships? Milan Kundera wrote that in terms of itself, but all that is acted out in cyberspace. the tail-end of sociology as a subject taught around the world in a private jet and regularly human relationships we can never know what Tokyo, December 2013, the Akihabara at the Architecture Faculty of the TU Delft. comes back from retirement to spread the gos- we want, because the general rehearsal of life district: the streets are busy; the shops, which Strangely, the abandonment of the one subject pel of “Vancouverism” to struggling cities and is life itself.22 If we are to believe the creators of appear to be doing well, sell DVDs of Japanese that attempted to approach the community as aspiring communities worldwide. virtual communities such as Second Life, that games.25 But the games are no longer limited to a science—based on empirical research—co- Municipal planners are not the only ones to is no longer true: their “Metaverse” offers the the shops. Fetishes to feature in the games have incided with an unprecedented popularity of create their own versions of the “communities possibility of an endless trial and error, where meanwhile found their way into the streets. The the term within the architectural profession, of the future.” The opposite also happens with humans—or, rather, avatars—can interact, free electric wires spanning high above the railroad allowing its rhetoric about “the community” to the emergence of “community go largely unchecked. The com- planning” or grassroots move- munity evolved from something ments defined by broad neighbor- that could be given physical shape hood participation. In the most (Team X) to something that extreme cases this can amount to largely became a virtual construct, an overall surrender to local pow- either as the subject of market- ers. In Rio de Janeiro’s favelas it is ing (Vancouver) or as an exclu- gangs—the only remaining form of sively digital existence online. If “efficient” organization—who run Vancouver marks the point where the systems of “justice” and order. “Community Architecture” is The community is what emerges abandoned as something physical, when society turns its back. the Akihabara district, despite More and more the formation of its apparent absurdity, marks a communities seem to rely on exclu- strange return: the notion of the GRAAF DE sion and voluntary isolation. In the community as a physical phenom- United States, the public sector has enon, or at least as proof of the

CRITIQUES relegated the management of cities need for the physicality of com- to corporations. Communism (the munity, with all the associated only political system to elevate “the relevance for form, style, design community” to a global political and maybe even architecture. doctrine) once spanned a third of Perhaps it is time to revisit the globe; today it is the exclusive the notion of “the community” in property of insular states like North “Scene from Akihabara.” Akihabara District, Tokyo, Japan. “Scene from Akihabara: Enjoying Real Life with a 2D girlfriend.” all of the complexity it deserves. Akihabara District, Tokyo, Japan. Korea. Religion, the cement that Architecture’s preoccupation with held society together, is increasingly its own relevance for the commu- a means to secede from a society no longer under from the limitations of reality.23 Property and overpass cut into the vagina of a mammoth ver- nity has long prevented real knowledge of the its spell, turning religious communities into a services are traded for a virtual currency that sion of a young girl in a school uniform sitting community. The community is now the shared refuge for a diverse definition of “believers.” Sects every now and then—in a strange moment of on top. The accidentally passing train seems to subject of architecture, business, religion, poli- build consensus on a shared rejection of all that interference between the virtual and the real— emerge like a giant penis. An Otaku: a name for tics and the internet. What seems to be missing which refuses to conform to their singular spiri- can be exchanged for hard cash. Products and a local resident (after a character in one of the is an integrated research into how the commu- tual truths. Others find their answers through services are granted a first lease on life before games); he shares his meal with a 2-dimensional nity is manifested and manipulated within all silence and mystery: Scientology; Freemasons; they see birth in the real community (with print of his virtual girlfriend propped up next of these domains. the Omerta—their bond stems from the joint Second Life’s virtual schizophrenia clinic as an to him, a real-life version of the games that are knowledge of that which cannot be said. ironic climax).24 The virtual used to be viewed being traded in the district. In Akihabara, the Is the internet a last refuge?21 Are we wit- as an extension of the real, but increasingly the games and the virtual community built around nessing a rebirth of the community under the virtual is that which precedes the real, a test them have become a reality. “The community” has come full cycle. 20. “About Vancouver,” City of Vancouver, last modified 22. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York: January 22, 2013, http://vancouver.ca/green-vancouver/ Harper & Row, 1984) about-vancouver.aspx. 23. Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (New York: Bantam Books, 1992). 21. Elizabeth Grosz, “Cyberspace, Virtuality and the Real: Some 24. “Mayo Clinic,” accessed January 1, 2013, www.secondlife/ 25. Jakob Nabuoka, “User Innovation and Creative Consumption in Architectural Reflections,” in Architecture from the Outside: destinations/mayo-clinic. Japanese Culture Industries: The Case of Akihabara,” Essays on Virtual and Real Space (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001). Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 92:3 (2010): 205-218 .

50 PROJECT Issue 3 51 real physical change.20 It is a model, soon to guise of anonymity? Can a “new” new world, bed where every fact of life is preemptively aug- Postscript be exported to cities as diverse as Abu Dhabi, offering the possibility to start over, augment mented before it sees the light of day. It seems Rotterdam and Dallas. The former civil servant one’s shortcomings and redefine relation- the general rehearsal for life is no longer life Thirty years ago, as a student, I witnessed meanwhile wears an Armani suit, travels ships? Milan Kundera wrote that in terms of itself, but all that is acted out in cyberspace. the tail-end of sociology as a subject taught around the world in a private jet and regularly human relationships we can never know what Tokyo, December 2013, the Akihabara at the Architecture Faculty of the TU Delft. comes back from retirement to spread the gos- we want, because the general rehearsal of life district: the streets are busy; the shops, which Strangely, the abandonment of the one subject pel of “Vancouverism” to struggling cities and is life itself.22 If we are to believe the creators of appear to be doing well, sell DVDs of Japanese that attempted to approach the community as aspiring communities worldwide. virtual communities such as Second Life, that games.25 But the games are no longer limited to a science—based on empirical research—co- Municipal planners are not the only ones to is no longer true: their “Metaverse” offers the the shops. Fetishes to feature in the games have incided with an unprecedented popularity of create their own versions of the “communities possibility of an endless trial and error, where meanwhile found their way into the streets. The the term within the architectural profession, of the future.” The opposite also happens with humans—or, rather, avatars—can interact, free electric wires spanning high above the railroad allowing its rhetoric about “the community” to the emergence of “community go largely unchecked. The com- planning” or grassroots move- munity evolved from something ments defined by broad neighbor- that could be given physical shape hood participation. In the most (Team X) to something that extreme cases this can amount to largely became a virtual construct, an overall surrender to local pow- either as the subject of market- ers. In Rio de Janeiro’s favelas it is ing (Vancouver) or as an exclu- gangs—the only remaining form of sively digital existence online. If “efficient” organization—who run Vancouver marks the point where the systems of “justice” and order. “Community Architecture” is The community is what emerges abandoned as something physical, when society turns its back. the Akihabara district, despite More and more the formation of its apparent absurdity, marks a communities seem to rely on exclu- strange return: the notion of the GRAAF DE sion and voluntary isolation. In the community as a physical phenom- United States, the public sector has enon, or at least as proof of the

50 PROJECT Issue 3 51