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Lobsinger Mary Louise, MARISTELLA CASCIATO 0l1}Jr. · MONIQUE ELEB lOlls SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN SANDY ISENSTADT 1\1())) 1~I~NIS1\IS MARY LOUISE LOBS INGER Experimentation REINHOLD MARTIN in Postwar FRANCESCA ROGIER Architectural Culture TIMOTHY M. ROHAN FELICITY SCOTT JEAN-LOUIS VIOLEAU CORNELIS WAGENAAR CHERIE WENDELKEN Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England (OJ >000 Centre Canadien d'Architecture/ PHOTO CREDITS Preface 9 Canadian Centre for Architecture Allantic Film and Imaging: figs. 6.9,6.10, Calavas: and Massachusetts Institute of Technology fig. 9·7: CCA Photographic Services: figs. 305, 5.1-5.9, Introduction: Critical Themes of Postwar Modernism '0-4; Ian Vriihoftrhe Netherlands Photo Archives: SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN AND REjEAN LEGAULT II The Canadian Centre for Architecture figs. 11.3-11.7: John Maltby: fig. ,.2; John R. Paollin: "po rue Baile, Montrbl, Quebec, Canada H3H lS6 fig. 3-'; Peter Smithson: fig. 3.,. 1 Neorealism in Italian Architecture MARISTELLA CASCIATO 25 ISBN 0-.62-0"/208'4 (MIT) COPYRICHTS Contents The MIT Press (, Alison and Peter Smithson Architects: figs. ;,I-B, ;.5, 2 An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism; Five Cambrid~ Center, C.mbri~, MA 02'42 10.6; © Arata Iso"'i: figs. 12.7, u.S; © Balthazar Ecochard, Candilis, and ATBAT-Afrique cover, figs. 6.2, 6.3: © Bertha RudofSL),: figs. 9.2, MONIQUE ELEB 55 All righ.. reserved. No part of this hook may be repro­ 9.4; © Courtesy of Kevin Roche John Kindeloo and duced in any form by any electronic or mechanical Associales: figs. 6.9,6.10; © IBM Corporation; figs. 6.1, 3 Freedom's Domiciles: means (incl~ding photo~opying, recording, or infor, 64 6.6-<i.8; © Immtut gta, ETIl Zurich: fig. l.7' mation storage and retrieval) without permission © Ian Vriihoftrhe Netherlands Photo Archives: cover, Three Projects by Alison and Peter Smithson in writing from the publisher. figs. ILl, 11.2, 11.8; © lean-Louis Cohen, Paris: fig. 2.9; SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN 75 ., lohn Wiley & Sons Limited: fig. 2.8; © Julius Library of Congress Card Number: ()o"IlOI&j Shulman: cover, figs. 4-3, +5, 4.6; © Keru:o Tange: 4- Richard Neutra and the Psychology of Architechnal Consumption ~, Kiyonori Kikutllke: figs. 12.2, 12.3; © Marc SANDY ISENSTADT 97 Printed and bound in Canada figs. 2.5, 2.6, © Paul Rudolph: figs. 8.2, 8.3, 8.6, 8.8; Photo © Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Cybernetic Theory and the Architecture of Performance: Legal Deposit: Columbia University in the City of New York: figs. 8.1, Cedric Price's Fun Palace Nation.l Library of Canada, 2000 8+ 8,5; Photograph © 2000 Museum of Modem Art, MARY LOUISE LOBS INGER 119 Bibliotheque nabonale du Quebec, 2000 New York: cover, fig. 9.8; © Photo WD. Morgan: fig. +" © Rogier Hillier: figs. ,,6-3-9; © Van den Braek 6 Computer Architectures: Saarinen's Patterns, IBM'S Brains en Bakema Architceten: figs. ll.6, ll.7' REINHOLD MARTIN 14-1 © Yukio Futllgawa: Frank Uoyd Wright Foundation, fig. 8.7. 7 The Monumentality of Rhetoric: The Will to Rebuild in Postwar Berlin Every reasonable attempt has been made to identifY ""ner.; of copyrights. Errors or omissions will be FRANCESCA ROGIER 165 corrected in subsequent reprints. 8 The Dangers of Eclecticism: Paul Rudolph's Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley TIMOTHY M. ROHAN 191 Senior Editor: Lesley Johnstone 9 Bernard Rudofsky: Allegories of Nomadism and Dwelling Production Manager: Oems Hunter FELICITY SCOTT 21 5 Translation: Barry Fifield, Neville Saulter Editing: Edward Tingley, Marcia Rodriguez., 10 ACritique ofArchitecture: Peter Smith The Bitter Victory of the Situationist International Reproduction Rights: Jocelyne Gervais JEAN-LOUIS VIOLEAU Index: Eva,Marie Neumann 239 Design: Glenn Goluska 11 Jaap Bakema and the for Freedom CORNELIS WAGENAAR 261 12 Putting Metabolism Back in Place: The Making of a Radically Decontextualized Architecture in Japan CHERIE WENDELKEN 279 Coda: Reconcephlalizing the Modem SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN 301 Contributors 325 Index 328 MARY lOUISE LOBSINGER Cybernetic Theory and the Architecture of Performance: Cedric Price's Fun Palace ~~ We just haven't learned how to enjoy our new freedom: how to tum machinery, robots, computers, and buildings themselves into instruments of pleasure and enjoyment. CEDRIC PRICE To pry the subject free from the stifling repetitions of everyday convention and to nurture an emergent individuality - these were the aspirations that galvanized the Fun Palace Project. As archi­ tecture, it would be purely utilitarian and purposeful: a mechanical slab served as a provisional stage to be continuously set and reset, sited and resited. What was expected to happen in the Palace was as diagrammatically diffused as the contraption itself. It wouldn't be the polite space of municipal geranium beds or fixed teak benches; rather, it was conceived as a social experiment that would fuel both conflict and cooperation.l Sometime in 1960 Joan Littlewood met and became friends with Cedric Price. Littlewood, a veteran of the English radical theater scene, was on the brink of resignation after a nearly thirty-year fight against establishment and commercial entertainments. Prior to the Second World War she had been a member of the Theatre of Action, a left-leaning theatrical company working out of Manchester that favored Brechtian aesthetics and agit-prop street theater.l In 1945 she co-founded the Theatre Workshop and during the 1950S had some success in advancing the cause of experimental theater. At the time of their meeting, Price was still a young architect on the London The Modem Mcwement scene. He was teaching at the Architectural Association, socializing Popular Culhwel within a circle of young aspiring architects with a penchant for tech­ e-ydayLiIe nology, and was acquainted with architectural critic Reyner Banham.4 AnIi'ArchiIedu", The meeting would prove auspicious. Littlewood's desire for a new Democraiic Freedom kind of theatrical venue where her performances could flourish uncon­ Homo Luden. strained by built form became the inspiration for Price's architectur­ Primitivism al imagination. In tum, their project for a Fun Palace became the Aulhenticily vehicle through which the architect developed his idea for an anticipa­ Architecture's History tory architecture capable of responding to users' needs and desires. Regionalism /Ploc. 119 The Fun Palace was a proposal for an Price's ideas for a technologically inno­ infinitely flexible, multi-programmed, twenty­ vative, 'non-deterministic' architecture four-hour entertainment center that marries of planned obsolescence couched in terms communications technologies and industrial of Littlewood's conceptions for alternative building components to produce a machine theatrical practice produced the quintes­ capable of adapting to the needs of users. A sential anti-architectural project, the Fun grid of servicing towers supports open trusses Palace. Littlewood's aesthetic was character­ to which a system of gantries are appended ized by an emphasis on direct commu­ for maneuvering interchangeable parts (from nication between audience and performer information monitors to pre-fab units) into and, importantly, on a communication that position (fig. 5.1). Circulation elements com­ stressed physical form over speech as the prise moving catwalks, escalators. or travela­ means of expressing content.9 The idea tors (suspended, stair-like, and ground-level that the form of theatrical experience should systems). The conventional determination be dynamic ran counter to the well-oiled of built form as an enclosure or legible enve­ proscenium-framed productions of bourgeois for functional requirements is supplant­ theater. Littlewood's work thrived on con­ ed by an idea of environmental control in flict, employed interactive techniques, drew 5.1 Fun PoIace; perspedi.... lea River slle, 1961-65. Ced.-ic Price, archllec1 and drallsmon. Photo reproduc1ion of 0 pholomontoge on mason lie. CCA Colledion which, for example, adjustable sky-blinds on a variety of popular genres and media perform the role of roofing and the task of from pantomime to music hall to film spatial division is assigned to mutable barriers and television, and adapted environmental described as movable screens, warm air forms such as festivals with the aim of engag­ British taste for quaint old theaters.ll This expressive of spatial qualities or formal screens, optical barriers, and static vapor ing the sensory and physical partiCipation first drawing minimally articulates Price's characteristics - but then there really isn't zones. 5Programmatic elements with specific of the audience in the action. 10 In keeping architectural intentions (fig. 502). The repre­ much, in the way of architectonic qualities functional requirements such as kitchens with her early communist roots, theater had sentation of the program is limited to a or materiality, to describe in the Fun Palace. or workshops are housed in standardized a pedagogical function. By the end of the few hand-scrawled notations: a long-distance As Price himself laconically noted, "It's a enclosed units sited on temporary, mechani­ 1950S, however, given rapidly changing observation deck, large viewing screens, an kit of parts, not a building" - one that he cally fitted deck-panels. 6 The structure is social and political imperatives. a burgeon­ inflatable conference hall, and an area desig­ doubted would ever look the same twice. B serviced by a three-dimensional grid and ing of mass media and consumer culture, nated for eating and drinking that is identi­ Ifthe initiation of the project seems rather an uariable net of packaged conditioning and the tum of the Left to an ideal of par­ cal to a space labeled "open exhibition." fortuitous, the ensuing campaign of fund­ equipment" distributed across a gigantic ticipatory democracy. the tactics of radical A floating volume labeled "circular theater­ raising and promotion, negotiations with plinth housing a sewage purification plant theater required reassessment. Theater as part enclosed" is the most substantial clue jurisdictional bodies such as the London and other support systems.
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