: in-exhaustive emptiness 7X886 Theory of Architecture 1 by Jeroen de Winter (0754119)

“Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand.” Proust, Swann’s way.

Abstract

By ‘aggressively exploring’ the emptiness left behind by post-modernistic crisis Rem Koolhaas discovers and reveals that emptiness is not empty, that emptiness can be used as an in-exhaustive source of inspiration and potential. As emptiness forms a stable factor in the exploration of truth (to destroy and to rebuild) it is through this very approach that the theory of Rem Koolhaas, presented in ‘Delirious New York’ and ‘S,M,L,XL’ constructs its timeless value, and allowed him to escape the crisis of postmodernism.

Introduction

Between the worlds of architectural theory and architectural practice there may in fact be a huge abyss, this does not mean however, that no bridges can be constructed to travel back and forth between both worlds, taking ideas from one side to the other, generating new perspectives, methods, and insights in the process. Therefore I have a strong feeling that architectural theory will continue to form an important discourse within architecture, but not as a necessary path for every architect to propose their own and unique theories, but as a critical design tool, to be able to use it as a mirror, a means to generate new ideas, and a way to switch perspective when caught stuck within the design process, a process which should be fluid and dynamic. For this, I find the writings of Rem Koolhaas extremely useful, hence the reason to choose two of his most renown books as subjects for this essay; ‘Delirious New York’, and ‘S,M,L,XL’.

Perhaps in the end it was the ability to continuously switch between the realm of words and the realm of image/architecture that allowed Rem Koolhaas the opportunity to escape from the crisis of postmodernism.

Research Question

This essay is an attempt to reveal the answers of Rem Koolhaas, provided within ‘Delirious New York’ (1978), and ‘S,M,L,XL’ (1995), to the crisis of postmodernism, as described by in ‘The end of the classical’ (1984).

The crisis of postmodernism

The crisis of postmodernism can perhaps best be described as the death of .

The death of the modern movement was caused by the unveiling of its most persistent fiction, the idea of progress. The strong belief that technology would propel society into the realm of ‘liberté, egalité, and fraternité’, fades away as the image created by the modern movement did no longer simulate the feeling of progress.

Peter Eisenman describes this process of disbelief in this modern movement within his essay ‘the end of the classical’ accordingly: “This idea of progress gave false value to the present; utopia, a form of fantasizing about an open and limitless end, forestalled the notion of closure. Thus the modern crisis of closure marked the end of the process of moving toward the end. Such crises (or ruptures) in our perception of the continuity of history arise not so much out of a change in our idea of origins or ends than out of the failure of the present (and its objects) to sustain our expectations of the future. And once the continuity of history is broken in our perception, any representation of the classical, any classicism, can be seen only as a belief.”1

And so it is that the idea of progress becomes comparable to Freud’s ‘oceanic’ feeling. The faith in the modern movement is dismissed as a result of the fading echo of progress, in a similar way in which Freud dismisses the existence of God based on the absence of any ‘oceanic’ feeling within his own personal experiences.

What is left, is then best described as a void, the emptiness of the architectural discourse, the crisis of postmodernism.

1 P. Eisenman, The end of the classical, perspecta 21, pg. 170 Intermezzo: The raft of the medusa:

“After the shipwreck in the Mediterranean of the Medusa – a military vessel – the soldiers/castaways were left on their raft with only barrels of wine, guns and ammunition. In a premature and drunken panic they began to cannibalize each other on the second day of their journey. Saved on the seventh day of the shipwreck, they could easily have survived without eating anything at all. This monumental expression of ‘loss of nerve’ corresponds to the premature panic and loss of nerve about the Metropolis in the present moment of the 20th century” 2

Rem Koolhaas uses the metaphor of the raft of the medusa to describe the postmodern crisis as a ‘loss of nerve about the metropolis’. A ‘fear of nothingness’, the staring in the distance without knowing whether or not there will be land over the horizon, whether or not they will be saved. The message of Rem Koolhaas is however, to keep faith. Keep faith in the process of modernism, even though at this moment it feels like a dead end. But how to escape from this negative tendency, how to keep faith within the climate of a crisis, a crisis that seems to mistrust any forward movement?

Fig. 1 The Raft of the Medusa

2 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL, pg. 76, 120 “Rem Koolhaas started his contribution to architecture and its theory in the late 1970’s with his escape from the crisis of postmodernism” (Lecture on Koolbaas by Bernard Colenbrander)

“At this point, where our received values are in crisis, the end of the end raises the possibility of the invention and realization of a blatantly fictional future (which is therefore non-threatening in its truth value) as opposed to a simulated or idealized one. […] Architecture in the present is seen as a process of inventing an artificial past and a futureless present. It remembers a no-longer future.”3 (Peter Eisenman : the end of the classical)

So according to Peter Eisenman in order to escape the crisis of postmodernism Rem Koolhaas has to invent ‘another’ past, and a futureless present. It is exactly this approach that is followed by Rem Koolhaas. First another past is invented, a past in which Manhattan, New York, plays the leading role.

Delirious New York: The artificial past of modernity

To invent another past Rem Koolhaas inverses the trick of , the same le Corbusier who called upon architecture as a revolution, the same le Corbusier claims Manhattan, New York to be a non-modern city… Rem Koolhaas however, exposes le Corbusier’s motives.

“Le Corbusier’s task is clear: before he can deliver the city with which he is pregnant, he has to prove that it does not yet exist. To establish the birthright of his brainchild, he has to destroy New York’s credibility, kill the glamorous sparkle of its modernity.”4

Rem Koolhaas has concluded indeed quite the opposite from le Corbusier, Manhattan is a modern city, but not the modern city that is covered with the dogma’s of function, and honesty, but rather a modern city that is seen as a continuously changing architectural process, instigated by the possibilities of the ‘technologies of the fantastic’, amongst which the elevator becomes of primary importance.

It is this process that Rem Koolhaas has located within Manhattan, New York, a process that is at the basis for his ‘culture of congestion’. This culture of congestion can be considered as a cocktail of the architectural and urbanistic principles of the grid, and the when they are combined with the high density of the Metropolis.

“Manhattan is the city of the perpetual flight forward. […] Congestion itself is the essential condition for realizing each of these metaphors in the reality of the Grid: Only congestion can generate the super- house, the Mega-Village, the Mountain and finally the modernized automotive Venice. Together, these metaphors are the foundation of a Culture of Congestion, which is the real enterprise of Manhattan’s architects. […] Through Fantastic Technology it will be possible to reproduce all “situations” – from the most natural to the most artificial – wherever and whenever desired. Each City within a City will be so unique that it will naturally attract its own inhabitants. Each Skyscraper, reflected in the roofs of an endless flow of black limousines, is an island of the “very modernized Venice” – a system of 2,028 solitudes. The Culture of Congestion is the culture of the 20th century.”5

Where Rem Koolhaas sees the skyscraper as the ultimate typology of his culture of congestion, le Corbusier calls the skyscraper “child’s play”, “an architectural incident”, “adolescents of the machine age”, and “not yet modern”. Yet, beside all this accusations from le Corbusier, Rem Koolhaas

3 P. Eisenman, The end of the classical, perspecta 21, pg. 172 4 R. Koolhaas, Delirious New York, pg. 251 5 R. Koolhaas, Delirious New York, pg. 123-125 manages to reveal the beauty of his culture of congestion, and with it, rediscovers the continuity of the architectural discourse. It is this beauty that finds a crystallized form in one of Koolhaas’s projects, mentioned in the ‘fictional conclusion’ of ‘Delirious New York’; ‘the city of the captive globe’.

The city of the captive globe shows a utopian image. One where individual blocks, based on any possible philosophy, collaborate - or at least co-exist - within the urban framework of a grid.

“The City of the Captive Globe is devoted to the artificial conception and accelerated birth of theories, interpretations, mental construction, proposals and their infliction on the World. It is the capital of Ego, where science, art, poetry and forms of madness compete under ideal conditions to invent, destroy and restore the world of phenomenal Reality. […] From these solid blocks of granite, each philosophy has the right to expand indefinitely toward heaven. […] The changes in this ideological skyline will be rapid and continuous: a rich spectacle of ethical joy, moral fever or intellectual masturbation.”6

Fig. 2 The City of the Captive Globe

6 R. Koolhaas, Delirious New York, pg. 294 S,M,L,XL: A futureless present:

Where Delirious New York is the attempt to prove modernism to be alive before it could be considered a movement/revolution, S,M,L,XL is the attempt to prove modernism to be alive even after the death of the Modern movement. Besides this it is also the place where Rem Koolhaas predicts ‘the futureless present’, mentioned in Peter Eisenman’s text, ‘the end of the classical’.

In order to describe the way Rem Koolhaas predicts this ‘futureless present’ it makes sense to start with one of the final chapters of S,M,L,XL; ‘the generic city’.

The Generic City: The Generic City can be read as the ‘culture of congestion’ on steroids, it is the city propelled with the energy of continuous change, a process which, according to Rem Koolhaas will lead eventually to its very own destruction.

“Imagine a Hollywood movie about the Bible. A city somewhere in the Holy Land. Market scene: from left and right extras cloaked in colorful rags, furs, silken robes walk into the frame yelling, gesticulating, rolling their eyes, starting fights, laughing, scratching their beards, hairpieces dripping with glue, thronging toward the center of the image waving stick, firsts, overturning stalls, trampling animals… People shout. Selling wares? Proclaiming futures? Invoking Gods? Purses are snatched, criminals pursued (or is it helped?) by the crowds. Priests pray for calm. Children run amok in an undergrowth of legs and robes. Animals bark. Statues topple. Women shriek – threatened? Ecstatic? The churning mass become oceanic. Waves break. Now switch off the sound – silence, a welcome relief – and reverse the film. The now mute but still visibly agitated men and women stumble backward; the viewer no longer registers only humans but begins to note spaces between them. The center empties; the last shadows evacuate the rectangle of the picture frame, probably complaining, but fortunately we don’t hear them. Silence is now reinforced by emptiness: the image shows empty stalls, some debris that was trampled underfoot. Relief… it’s over. That is the story of the city. The city is no longer. We can leave the theater now…”7

The generic city has no identity, it speculates on stripping the identity of the city. This is no problem as identity is considered a centralizing structure and “a mousetrap in which more and more mice have to share the original bait, and which on closer inspection, may have been empty for centuries”8. Identity is similarly to history, a structure that can no longer be maintained due to exponential human growth implying “that the past will at some point become too “small” to be inhabited and shared by those alive”9.

The generic city has no history, “This is what you get as a result of this belief in history: a building mimics history, but through its scale and volume alone radically breaks through the scale of history and is neither really new, nor really historical”10

The generic city contains both the present and the future, it is a ‘futureless present’.

This way, the concepts described in the generic city offer the ideal context for the practice of Rem Koolhaas as one of Koolhaas’s strongpoint’s is to discover ‘otherness’ in architecture, something he proves (or at least tries very hard to do so) in many of the projects he describes within ‘S,M,L,XL’.

7 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL, pg. 1264 8 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL, pg. 1248 9 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL, pg. 1248 10 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL pg. 772 For example, in his description of the Berlin wall, where he describes the wall as “a permanent, slow- motion evolution”11 and as “heartbreakingly beautiful”12. But also in his theory of ‘Bigness’ in which Rem Koolhaas poses the possibility of architecture “through size alone”13 to “enter an amoral domain, beyond good or bad”14. Even the ‘typical plan’ becomes fuelled with an utmost potential, although it has been discarded by the architectural discourse due to its assumed lack of identity.

11 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL pg. 219 12 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL pg. 222 13 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL pg. 501 14 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL pg. 502 Conclusion:

“The end of S,M,L,XL and the imagined end of the city marked the beginning of the rocketing career of Rem Koolhaas as a building architect everywhere in the world and the rise of his status to starchitect.” (Lecture on Rem Koolhaas by Bernard Colenbrander)

In order to escape from the crisis of postmodernism Rem Koolhaas had to enter and alter the domains of history and memory within the theoretical discourse of architecture. By creating a ‘fictional’ past (Delirious New York), and a ‘futureless’ present (S,M,L,XL) Rem Koolhaas creates his own personal story within the architectural discourse. One that restores and accepts the continuous process of change, and like the skyscraper, “relates to the forces of the Groszstadt like a surfer to the waves”15 even if the result might be of unpredictable form.

Pre-modernism Modernism ------| Revolution |------| crisis of postmodernism

Delirious New York S,M,L,XL ------> ‘the generic city’

Whether or not this process will ultimately result in ‘the generic city’ is unclear, perhaps it is more likely to see different notions of the city crystallize during the process. But for now, the city… the Metropolis, has become the ultimate stage for a screen-play writer with the continuous need to explore the unexplored, and reveal the unrevealed.

However, in order to conceive such a theoretical discourse, one that is based on change, and thus relying mainly on the concept of nothingness (a constant factor in-between destruction and rebuilding). Rem Koolhaas needed to simultaneously embrace and discard modernism. He had to discard the modern movement (which presented modernism as a final situation) yet emphasize aspects of modernism that have forever changed architecture, the city, and with it its culture. He had to reveal once again the beauty of change, to ultimately create an architectural discourse of possibility rather than one filled with the dogma’s of the modern movement.

“If we think of modernism as a struggle to make ourselves at home in a constantly changing world, we will realize that no mode of modernism can ever be definitive. Our most creative constructions and achievements are bound to turn into prisons and whites sepulchers that we, or our children, will have to escape or transform if life is to go on.”16

The ideology of Rem Koolhaas than consists of the tragedy to have to continuously reinvent himself, a continuous process of ‘deflation and inflation’.

It is this process that is at his fundamental base of architecture, one which ultimately resorts to architecture as an evolutionary process, unpredictable. This is the fundamental difference between Rem Koolhaas and the modern movement, which considers architecture as a revolution, yet produces a static end, in contrary to the dynamic ‘futureless present’ proposed by Rem Koolhaas.

15 R. Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL, pg. 43 16 M. Berman, All that is solid melts into air; The experience of Modernism, pg. 8

“Where there is nothing, everything is possible. Where there is architecture, nothing else is possible.” Rem Koolhaas, S,M,L,XL

Bibliography:

Koolhaas, Rem (1978). Delirious New York. New York: Monacelli Press.

Berman, Marshall (1982), All that is solid melts into air; The experience of Modernism. New York: Penguin Books USA inc.

Eisenman, Peter (1984). The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End. Perspecta, 21, 154-173.

Koolhaas, Rem (1995). S,M,L,XL. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.

Colenbrander, Bernard (2014-2015), 7X886 Theory of Architecture 1 lecture series, TU Eindhoven