DOCSLIB.ORG

Michael Sorkin, Traffic in Democracy

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Michael Sorkin, Traffic in Democracy Copyright © 1997 The University of Michigan Coll ege of Architecture + Urban Planning & Michael Sorkin Editor: Kent Kleinman Book Design: Caleb Harris Clauset Production Assistance: Christian Unve rzagt Printed and bound in th e United States of America. Printing: University Lithoprinters, In c. Typeset in Monotype Baskerville and Linotype DIN ISBN 0 9614792 9 9 The University of Michigan College of Architecture + Urban Planning 2000 Bonisteel Boulevard Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2069 USA Michael Sorkin Traffic in Democracy Foreword Since the inauguration of the Raoul Wallenberg Lecture series at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning in 1972, exactly twenty­ five years ago, the lecture has been given by a number of distinguished architects and historians. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner gave the first lecture followed by such notable scholars as Joseph Rykwert, Spiro Kostof and Vincent Scully. Distinguished architects and planners, such as Denise Scott Brown and Daniel Libeskind, have also graced the podium in honor of Wallenberg. These are no ordinary lectures. In each case the speaker has risen to the challenge of addressing the subject of architecture and urban planning as a humane social art. This year's lecture by architect and scholar Michael Sorkin is no different. Sorkin addresses the difficult problem of democracy and planning. It is a topic which would have found favor with Raoul Wallenberg, I am certain. Raoul Wallenberg, class of 1935, exercised one of the greatest rights of democracy- the right to speak out and act. However, he did not exercise this democratic initiative within a democratic state. Wallenberg spoke out and acted during a time of war when democracy and the rights of individuals were at stake. He is credited with saving the lives of countless numbers of people in Hungary during World War II, individuals whose very existence was threatened by a regime which wanted to exterminate Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, communists and others not of the Nazi's persuasion. It is important for us to remember also that this regime wanted to destroy democracy itsel£ Our alumnus Raoul Wallenberg has become an international symbol of the enduring concept that one person can make a difference in the lives of others. As architects and planners, we especially must keep that reality ever in mind. Robert M. Beckley Dean, College qf Architecture + Urban Planning Introduction Any responsible editor will save an author from repetition: repetition of ideas; repetition of peculiar syntactic structures; repetition of unusual terms whose force lies in their singularity. A text read is other than a text written and words uttered in the flow of oration differ from the same words fixed in print. In preparing Michael Sorkin's extraordinary 1997 Wallenberg lecture for the page, a particular word appeared with ill-mannered frequency. I am not referring to a so-called key word (a term of the title, for example, not "democracy," not "traffic") nor a term so essential to the argument that reiteration is inherent to the project at hand ("propinquity," for example). I mean rather a word that appears as mere shortage of an alternative, as lack of variety. For those familiar with Sorkin's exquisite command of the written, this will seem an unlikely deficit. The term in question isfantasy. Consider the evidence: "fantasies of technology as second nature," "fantasies of on-the-fly transfer," "Thomas Jefferson's Cartesian fantasy," "the Cartesian fantasy ... " (again), the "fantasy of collectivity," "that old fantasy of infinity," "private fantasy as public right," "fantasies of non-exclusive neighborhoods," "post-Fordist fantasies." Why not dreams, visions, imagination, conceit? Severalfontasies, it seemed, could be eliminated without semantic damage. Or perhaps not. If, as seems likely, these fontasies are not due to a lack thereof, then perhaps they are programatically loaded and consequently should be protected. Perhaps they are strategic, liminal cues that only become apparent when the aural event is re-viewed, inevitably slower, as text on the page. Perhaps, in fact, fantasy per se is being proffered. Jefferson's grid, technology, non-exclusive neighborhoods: Sorkin links these via a common denominator not because they are equally desirable or attainable, but because these are most powerfully understood as mental constructs that lodge themselves in the imagination, and thus have the potential to change the world. Fantasy is the shared space of dreams and conceits, delusions and visions, all vehicles reaching into the future. Privileging wants over needs, fantasy renders desire transparent, and as such it is arguably the bedrock of social discourse and action. Believing in the potential to change the world is one of the originary fantasies: Raoul Wallenberg's conviction that one individual can do so was- fortunately for many hundreds- of this kind. In the following text, Michael Sorkin argues for a physical analog to democratic political process. Its components are propinquity and traffic, physical proximity measured by human locomotion combined with a space consciously configured for safe human collision. But the argument is laced with another agenda, namely to make propaganda for the space of fantasy. The repetitious presence of the term itself is just a tease. Speaking more direcdy to this point are the images, many more of which accompanied the lecture as a parallel narrative strand without verbal commentary. But lest there be any doubt as to the envisioned endgame, the reader is invited to turn to the last page. There, on the sly, the fantasy is named: " ... new neighborhoods and new cities ... " Kent Kleinman Associate Prqftssor qf Architecture Traffic In Democracy I am deeply honored by the invitation to give a lecture celebrating Raoul Wallenberg. With amazing courage, Wallenberg saved thousands not just from death but from transport to a place so hellish, so radically criminal, as to suggest an end to the history of human possibilities. Auschwitz is often represented as the omega of modernity: rationality and universality pushed to the grotesque. Although this interpretation is too glib, it's not without an element of truth. Auschwitz was a vast and efficient machine for the annihilation of unacceptable difference. As a goal, it was utterly unimaginable bifbre political modernism, before the modern celebration of rationality and universality. Yet to condemn these notions unreservedly- without noting the different outcomes they've had (the democratic revolutions as well as the terror), without trying to understand when and how they begin to turn ugly- is to succumb to the same fanaticism one seeks to condemn. The accommodation of difference is the key project of contemporary democracy. Politics today is obsessed by the pursuit of private identity, our own post-Enlightenment backlash. Gone, it seems, is the famous image of the melting pot, the caldron in which the diversity of individuals is melted down, "purified," in order to provide a gold standard of sameness; in the aftermath of national socialism, any reference to purifYing fires can only have a chilling effect. But if certain images will have to be permanently excised from imagination's repertoire, we must be careful not to sacrifice imagination itself since we still need it to figure the possibilities of negotiating and mediating conflicts among private individuals. One of the great casualties of recent "politically correct" attacks on imagination has been the very image of space. It is as if, in lO reparation for the loss of countless individuals to the destructive forces of modernism, space itself has been melted into air. And yet, if the individuality of individuals is to be safeguarded, it will depend on providing them with a place- a kind of ground. Only public space can guarantee privacy. This is a matter of logic: democracy always implies the occupation of a position. Democracy requires, for its working out, that its citizens occupy positions which are, if only provisionally, fixed. To conduct democracy's negotiations, we must speak from a position of identity, we must be located. Deliberative democracy requires us to be reliably "in the open" to fully participate. But space is more than an image or metaphor. I believe that propinquity- physically being together in space- is itself necessary for democracy. Agnes Heller calls contemporary politics the "concretization of the universal value of freedom." The American understanding of freedom, however, is inscribed in a false, if historical, dichotomy. We venerate the freedom of the frontier, the "democratic" right to be left alone. If this arrangement is not exactly anti-democratic, it's definitely a dodge: it uses space to attenuate propinquity to the point of irrelevance. The city, on the other hand, because of its intense exchange, is the necessary ground for the reconciliation of difference and the exercise of freedom, including the freedom to shift identities. I admire the Hanseatic maxim, "city air makes people free," which implies to me that freedom cannot be imagined outside of a structure of interaction with others. Freedom of speech, for example, necessarily means freedom to address others, to be heard. One cannot be free alone. The existence of others is so fundamental to all of our freedoms that it is senseless to contemplate them outside the notion of community. This is precisely why freedom is a political issue, an issue proper to the polis. And this is exactly where city politics lies. Legible in the variety and tractability of routines of circulation and contact, the currency of propinquity is exchange, the measure of the city's activity. The locus classicus of the rational city is the Athenian agora. Aristotle wrote that the dimensions of an agora should be derived from the space of a shout, an auditory community with a strictly measurable dimension. This suggests that a precondition for the space of democratic governance is the ability to be heard without mediation. A compact space like the agora- in its physical convenience- represents an ideal setting for such exchange.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Community Service Award Nominations C/O Carolyn Mitchell
    AMERICAN SOCIETY OF Community Service Award Nominations LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS c/o Carolyn Mitchell NEW YORK 205 E 42nd St, 14th floor 636 Eye Street, NW New York, NY 10017 Washington, DC 20001-3736 212.269.2984 www.aslany.org Re: Community Service Award: Martin Barry BOARD OF DIRECTORS Martin Barry, is the founder and director of reSITE in Prague and former associate at W President Architecture and Landscape Architecture in New York. At W Architecture, he filled multiple roles CELINE ARMSTRONG for projects of various scales for public and private clients around the world. Martin is a prolific speaker on the topic about the role of landscape architecture in planning the city; over the last President Elect 4 years, he has given over 25 public, professional and academic lectures. From 2012 to 2014, JENNIFER NITZKY he was the Green Infrastructure Fellow at the Design Trust for Public Space, working on the Five Secretary Borough Farm urban agriculture study and publications. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola SARA MALMKVIST College and a Master of Landscape Architecture from Syracuse University. Treasurer Outside of his notable and traditional role within a successful landscape architecture firm, his CARL CARLSON volunteer work has taken on the proportions that many would consider a full-time position in its Trustee own right. As an urban design advocate, he founded reSITE in the Czech Republic while he was ADRIAN SMITH a Fulbright Scholar teaching landscape architecture and urbanism in Prague in 2011-2012. reSITE is a collaborative platform to exchange ideas about livable, resilient and competitive Past President cities.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae March 2011 MICHAEL L. BENEDIKT Hal Box
    1 Curriculum Vitae March 2011 MICHAEL L. BENEDIKT Hal Box Chair in Urbanism Director, Center for American Architecture and Design School of Architecture The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712 (512) 471-1922, fax 512-471-7033, email: [email protected] EDUCATION • Master of Environmental Design, (M.E.D.) Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1975 • Bachelor of Architecture, (B. Arch.) University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 1971 TEACHING • Professor of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin, 1989--present Hal Box Chair in Urbanism, 1999–present Roland W. Roessner Professor 1998–1999 Harwell Hamilton Harris Regents Professor, 1996–1998 Meadows Foundation Centennial Professor, 1991--1995 Harwell Hamilton Harris Teaching Fellow, 1986–1995 - Architectural Design Studio, graduate and undergraduate, all levels - Visual Communications, as above - Graduate seminars: Perception of Space and Environment; Architecture and Reality; Problem Design and Programming; The Architecture of Depth; Cyberspace: A New Venue for Architectural Design; Theory of Economic Value; 1 2 The Art and Science of Architectural Phenomena; The Spiritual Dimensions of Architecture; On Beauty - Thesis Supervision and Independent Project Supervision - Instructor, Europe Program, Fall 1987, Fall 1999 • External Examiner, University College London, MSArchitecture Program, 2003-2007 • Colin Clipson Fellow, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan (winter semester, 2004). Graduate seminar, doctoral
    [Show full text]
  • School of Architecture 2016–2017 School of Architecture School Of
    BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY BULLETIN OF YALE BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY Periodicals postage paid New Haven ct 06520-8227 New Haven, Connecticut School of Architecture 2016–2017 School of Architecture 2016 –2017 BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY Series 112 Number 4 June 30, 2016 BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY Series 112 Number 4 June 30, 2016 (USPS 078-500) The University is committed to basing judgments concerning the admission, education, is published seventeen times a year (one time in May and October; three times in June and employment of individuals upon their qualifications and abilities and a∞rmatively and September; four times in July; five times in August) by Yale University, 2 Whitney seeks to attract to its faculty, sta≠, and student body qualified persons of diverse back- Avenue, New Haven CT 0651o. Periodicals postage paid at New Haven, Connecticut. grounds. In accordance with this policy and as delineated by federal and Connecticut law, Yale does not discriminate in admissions, educational programs, or employment against Postmaster: Send address changes to Bulletin of Yale University, any individual on account of that individual’s sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, PO Box 208227, New Haven CT 06520-8227 status as a protected veteran, or national or ethnic origin; nor does Yale discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. Managing Editor: Kimberly M. Go≠-Crews University policy is committed to a∞rmative action under law in employment of Editor: Lesley K. Baier women, minority group members, individuals with disabilities, and protected veterans. PO Box 208230, New Haven CT 06520-8230 Inquiries concerning these policies may be referred to Valarie Stanley, Director of the O∞ce for Equal Opportunity Programs, 221 Whitney Avenue, 3rd Floor, 203.432.0849.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Catalog Fall 2018
    Urban Research BOOK CATALOG FALL 2018 urpub.org UR (Urban Research), the imprint of Terreform, publishes progressive books about cities and their futures. Understanding that no single approach is adequate to the promise and problems of the urban, we publish a wide range of designs and analyses. Our list includes projects ranging from the practical to the utopian, from community-generated plans for neighborhood transformation to outstanding outcomes from academic studios, to visionary speculations by designers burning the midnight oil, and to collations of scholarly arguments about the most urgent issues of urban growth and survival. Michael Sorkin Editor in Chief Advisory Board Tom Angotti, Hunter College CUNY Thom Mayne, Morphosis Architects Kazi Ashraf, Bengal Institute Suha Ozkan, World Architecture Community M. Christine Boyer, Princeton University Colin Robinson, OR Books Teddy Cruz, Estudio Teddy Cruz Jonathan Solomon, School of the Art Institute Mike Davis, UC Riverside of Chicago Edward Dimendberg, UC Irvine Tau Tavengwa, African Center for Cities Ana Maria Duran Calisto, Estudio AO Srdjan Weiss, Normal Architecture Office Anthony Fontenot, Woodbury School of Eyal Weizman, Goldsmiths College Architecture Mabel O. Wilson, Columbia GSAPP Susanna Hecht, UCLA Kongjian Yu, Peking University John Hill, New York Institute of Technology Walter Hood, UC Berkeley Cindi Katz, Graduate Center CUNY Romi Khosla, Romi Khosla Design Studio UR (Urban Research) urpub.org 2 UR01 GOWNTOWN: A 197X PLAN FOR UPPER MANHATTAN UPPER PLANFOR 197X A GOWNTOWN: Gowntown investigates the impact of Columbia University’s expansion into Upper Manhattan and proposes strategies of transformative leverage provide GOWNTOWNbroad and focused benefit and counter an urbanism of trickle-down and gentrification.Gowntown proposes a planning paradigm focused on both carefully designed and spontaneous institutional and environmental A 197-Xconnections.
    [Show full text]
  • School of Architecture 2001–2002
    School of Architecture 2001–2002 bulletin of yale university Series 97 Number 3 June 30, 2001 Bulletin of Yale University Postmaster: Send address changes to Bulletin of Yale University, PO Box 208227, New Haven ct 06520-8227 PO Box 208230, New Haven ct 06520-8230 Periodicals postage paid at New Haven, Connecticut Issued sixteen times a year: one time a year in May, October, and November; two times a year in June and September; three times a year in July; six times a year in August Managing Editor: Linda Koch Lorimer Editor: David J. Baker Editorial and Publishing Office: 175 Whitney Avenue, New Haven, Connecticut Publication number (usps 078-500) The closing date for material in this bulletin was June 20, 2001. The University reserves the right to withdraw or modify the courses of instruction or to change the instructors at any time. ©2001 by Yale University. All rights reserved. The material in this bulletin may not be repro- duced, in whole or in part, in any form, whether in print or electronic media, without written permission from Yale University. Open House All interested applicants are invited to attend the School’s Open House: Thursday, November 1, 2001. Inquiries Requests for additional information may be directed to the Registrar, Yale School of Architecture, PO Box 208242, 180 York Street, New Haven ct 06520-8242; telephone, 203.432.2296; fax, 203.432.7175. Web site: www.architecture.yale.edu/ Photo credits: John Jacobson, Sarah Lavery, Michael Marsland, Victoria Partridge, Alec Purves, Ezra Stoller Associates, Yale Office of Public Affairs School of Architecture 2001–2002 bulletin of yale university Series 97 Number 3 June 30, 2001 c yale university ce Pla Lake 102-8 Payne 90-6 Whitney — Gym south Ray York Square Place Tompkins New House Residence rkway er Pa Hall A Tow sh m u n S Central tree Whalley Avenue Ezra Power Stiles t Morse Plant north The Yale Bookstore > Elm Street Hall of Graduate Studies Mory’s Sterling St.
    [Show full text]
  • Print 007-8205•RECORD
    2 TheRecord MARCH 20, 2006 Columbians Taking Initiative Architecture School Renews Effort to Keep New Orleans on Policymakers’ Radar Major symposium held in conjunction with Princeton on ways to “reground” the devastated city By Fred A. Bernstein in 10 years what the Corps was thinking of doing in 50” a great school of architecture,but this is not about design. to save the city from additional hurricane damage. It’s about race and class,”Manning noted. ndrei Codrescu, the Romanian-born poet and Reed Kroloff, dean of the architecture school at Participants didn’t shy from controversy. Codrescu novelist transplanted to New Orleans, labeled Tulane University, and Wm. Raymond Manning, a New said that the Bush administration “has put the matter of that city’s political culture a “snake gumbo” Orleans architect, said they’d made progress in devising Katrina behind them,”noting that the president did not A and said that, after Hurricane Katrina, “when strategies for involving urban planners and other mention New Orleans even once in his State of the the people left, they took New Orleans with them.” experts—as well as community residents—in recreating Union address. Codrescu, a regular contributor to National Public the city’s neighborhoods. In Codrescu’s view,to get the dispersed New Orleans Radio, was a participant in a March symposium at population to return, politicians must produce better Columbia on the future sustainability of New Orleans. jobs, better schools, better housing—but so far, they are The symposium was sponsored by the Temple Hoyne showing no signs of taking any of these initiatives.
    [Show full text]
  • School of Architecture 2012–2013
    BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY BULLETIN OF YALE BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY Periodicals postage paid New Haven ct 06520-8227 New Haven, Connecticut School of Architecture 2012–2013 School of Architecture 2012–2013 BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY Series 108 Number 4 June 30, 2012 BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY Series 108 Number 4 June 30, 2012 (USPS 078-500) The University is committed to basing judgments concerning the admission, education, is published seventeen times a year (one time in May and October; three times in June and employment of individuals upon their qualifications and abilities and a∞rmatively and September; four times in July; five times in August) by Yale University, 2 Whitney seeks to attract to its faculty, sta≠, and student body qualified persons of diverse back- Avenue, New Haven CT 0651o. Periodicals postage paid at New Haven, Connecticut. grounds. In accordance with this policy and as delineated by federal and Connecticut law, Yale does not discriminate in admissions, educational programs, or employment against Postmaster: Send address changes to Bulletin of Yale University, any individual on account of that individual’s sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, or PO Box 208227, New Haven CT 06520-8227 national or ethnic origin; nor does Yale discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. Managing Editor: Linda Koch Lorimer University policy is committed to a∞rmative action under law in employment of Editor: Lesley K. Baier women, minority group members, individuals with disabilities, and covered veterans. PO Box 208230, New Haven CT 06520-8230 Inquiries concerning these policies may be referred to the Director of the O∞ce for Equal Opportunity Programs, 221 Whitney Avenue, 203.432.0849 (voice), 203.432.9388 The closing date for material in this bulletin was June 1, 2012.
    [Show full text]
  • New York: the Revitalization of Public Space
    New York: the revitalization of public space Recent interventions in the Manhattan grid EURAU’12 ABSTRACT. During the past 200 years, New York´s grid has been a format for new approaches to “making city”. This past decade has been profitable for New York´s public space. Recent events such as 9/11 and the new Bloomberg administration’s commitment to sustainable growth have provided a driving force behind the revitalization of urban life in the city. This revitalization could not have been possible without the existing elements that foster public space: the grid, public legislation and the citizen. The citizen plays a role as user, critic and promoter of the public space in the city he lives, works and plays in. In some cases, it is not so evident for whom the public space is created. This can be seen through three different types of users in the city and the creation of public space for each of them: the neighbor, the citizen and the visitor. According to Jane Jacobs, “The cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” (JACOBS, 1961. 238) KEYWORDS: New York, Manhattan, revitalization, public space, grid, superblock Ana Morcillo Pallarés Morcillo + Pallarés Arquitectos Paseo, nº 69 – bajo 30530 Cieza (Murcia) Spain, [email protected] 00 34 968 761 764 1. New York. The revitalization of the public space In 2011, the New York grid turned 200 hundred years old and NYC celebrated its new public spaces that grew from its influence. 2011 saw the realization of interventions in Hypar Pavilion at Lincoln Center; New York´s first Urban Design Week in the BMW Guggenheim Labs pavilion and throughout the city, the opening of the second section of the High Line and the long awaited inauguration of the WTC Memorial.
    [Show full text]
  • Sorkin's View of the Street, the City and Architecture
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UCL Discovery DOI: 10.14324/111.444.amps.2013v2i4.001 Title: Driving on the Left: Sorkin’s View of the Street, the City and architecture Michael Sorkin Interviewer / author – Graham Cairns Research – Rachel Isaac-Menard Architecture_media_politics_society. vol. 2, no.4. April 2013 Affiliation: Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, City University of New York (CUNY) Abstract: Sardonic, cutting, insightful, provocative: Michael Sorkin is one of today’s most radical architectural commentators with a staunch leaning to the political left and a literary bent for framing painful truths in ironic, and sometimes hilarious, verse. However, he should not be dismissed as a radical, isolated, or lone and unhindered voice however. He is a Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York, and he has been Professor of Urbanism and Director of the Institute of Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. In addition, he has taught at architecture schools across the world, including the Architectural Association, Columbia, Yale, Harvard and Cornell. Sorkin runs his own design studio and research institute and has been a contributing editor of the Architectural Record. He was the architecture critic of the Village Voice for ten years and has published innumerable articles and essays. A list of some of his books includes: Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, Variations on a Theme Park, Exquisite Corpse, The Next Jerusalem, Indefensible Space, and a long list of other etcs.
    [Show full text]
  • Safe Speech: Public Space As a Medium of Democracy
    BETH DIAMOND Safe Speech University of Michigan Public Space as a Medium of Democracy The ‘‘Medium is the Message’’ is an environmental art installation project intended to explore the interrelationship of art and democracy upon the platform of public space. The various attempts at instigating dialogue and public engagement have served to demonstrate Michael Sorkin’s premise that ‘‘the accommodation of differences is the key project of contemporary democracy.’’ This active engagement in contemporary social issues provides a framework for deeper understanding of academic knowledge in the design professions and opens up potential for its future application, unveiling public space as the critical stage upon which positions of identity are established and negotiated. If there be time to expose through discussion support new goals for more sustainable democratic debate—is a key factor influencing the falsehoods and the fallacies, to avert the communities. In conjunction with environmental future strategies for the built world. evil by the process of education, the remedy to health, an emphasis on social sustainability—which To better prepare the next generation of be applied is more speech, not enforced includes opportunities for cultural expression and landscape architects for their role in the silence. 1. Draft protest on the University of Michigan’s Central Campus Diagonal spilling out onto the adjacent city streets, late 1960s. (Bentley Historical Library, UM News & Information Services Collection.) —Justice Louis Brandeis, 1927. Whitney v. California Architects, landscape architects, and urban planners have the power to alter perception through the formal reconfiguration of space. Often this rearrangement is primarily experienced aesthetically, as a backdrop or setting to specific functions or events.
    [Show full text]
  • Stoppani Edit
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by LSBU Research Open The architecture of the disaster Teresa Stoppani University of Greenwich London Teresa Stoppani [email protected] [email protected] Teresa Stoppani The architecture of the disaster The artificial disaster - the violent destruction of the body of architecture by an intentional and planned act – affects architecture in its physical presence as well as in its strategic and symbolic role. Yet, the symbolic role of architecture is not erased by the disaster, but reconfirmed and emphasized by negation. At work on the physical body and on the symbolic nature of architecture, the artificial disaster affects also architecture’s exterior relations - of inhabitation and use, of history and signification. At the same time, the artificial disaster challenges also the nature of architecture as a discipline, questioning not only its role in the specific circumstances - what is architecture to do? - but also its very nature: what is it that architecture does? Within the possible responses in architecture emerges the possibility of silence, that is, the project of the silence of architecture as an act of design. In the background of this argument are the key notions of ‘silence’ and ‘impossibility’ suggested by Maurice Blanchot in The Writing of the Disaster (Blanchot, 1995). Blanchot’s text in fragments takes on the most difficult task of writing: to acknowledge, describe and explain what is not possible. Blanchot’s writing (or non-writing) is concerned more or less implicitly with the writing of the disaster of the Nazi concentration camps, but his considerations remain valid whenever the issues of disaster and the writing of it are approached.
    [Show full text]
  • School of Architecture 2017–2018 School of Architecture School Of
    BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY BULLETIN OF YALE BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY Periodicals postage paid New Haven ct 06520-8227 New Haven, Connecticut School of Architecture 2017–2018 School of Architecture 201 7–2018 BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY Series 113 Number 4 June 30, 2017 BULLETIN OF YALE UNIVERSITY Series 113 Number 4 June 30, 2017 (USPS 078-500) The University is committed to basing judgments concerning the admission, education, is published seventeen times a year (one time in May and October; three times in June and employment of individuals upon their qualifications and abilities and a∞rmatively and September; four times in July; five times in August) by Yale University, 2 Whitney seeks to attract to its faculty, sta≠, and student body qualified persons of diverse back- Avenue, New Haven CT 0651o. Periodicals postage paid at New Haven, Connecticut. grounds. In accordance with this policy and as delineated by federal and Connecticut law, Yale does not discriminate in admissions, educational programs, or employment against Postmaster: Send address changes to Bulletin of Yale University, any individual on account of that individual’s sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, PO Box 208227, New Haven CT 06520-8227 status as a protected veteran, or national or ethnic origin; nor does Yale discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. Managing Editor: Kimberly M. Go≠-Crews University policy is committed to a∞rmative action under law in employment of Editor: Lesley K. Baier women, minority group members, individuals with disabilities, and protected veterans. PO Box 208230, New Haven CT 06520-8230 Inquiries concerning these policies may be referred to Valarie Stanley, Director of the O∞ce for Equal Opportunity Programs, 221 Whitney Avenue, 3rd Floor, 203.432.0849.
    [Show full text]