Piranesi, Koolhaas, and the Subversion of the Concept of Place

Jun-Yang Wang

mong contemporary architec- century urban development: tabula cartoons, and newspaper ads, revealing i rural theoreticians, Rem Kool- rasa large-scale planning, and the con• not only the miscellaneous forms of m haas is certainly one of the sequent loss of characrer and identity Koolhaas' present practice as an archi• most intriguing. He persistently chal• of place. He has the ability to discern tect but also the imprint of his earlier lenges the modes of thinking architects the sublime in the vulgar, hope in the career as a journalist and screenwriter. and planners employ in the name of terrifying, reason in the schizophrenic The structure of the book is indicated human scale, historic values, and the condition of late twentieth century by its title: architectural materials are like. He denies that place and identity cities. He searches for hidden laws in organized by size, both in terms of the are necessarily dependent upon the past, an overwhelming urban wilderness in scope of building construction and the whether this necessity is argued in terms an attempt to subvert the foundations scope of the thinking involved - or of the Heideggerian sophistication or of post-war architectural and urban rather the magnitude of the subject popular consensus. He embraces with• discourse, to reverse its trajectory by matter in question. However, as the out reservation the forces that shape raising questions, and to explore the author suggests, the book has no con• twentieth century urban civilization, potential in the perpetual transforma• nective tissue binding one part to an• embracing thereby what many consider tion of the contemporary world. other. Many of the writings are embed• the dark side of global modernization - Koolhaas' latest book, S, M, L, XL, ded between projects as autonomous an aspect of development that grows unites his attempts to challenge assump• episodes rather than supportive mor• darker as the world approaches the next tions and provoke discussion with tar. Taken as a whole, Koolhaas declares, millennium. His strategy is to explore clearly outlined alternative strategies. the book is a free fall in the space of the the remaining possibilities by accepting The book is a conglomeration of es• topographic imagination, and as such and even applauding much of what says, fictions, diaries, travel logs, pro• its outcome can be read and interpreted 1 others tegatd as the failure of twentieth jects, drawings, models, photos, in an infinite variety of ways.

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 7 Fig. 1: and Ella Zenghelis, , or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, entry for Casabella's competition "The City as Meaningful Environment", 1972.

At this point one is necessarily Association in , driven by "in• vided into a series of identical squares, reminded of the affirmative "nomad tuition, unhappiness with the accu• each with its own program, ranging thought" exercised by modern thinkers mulated innocence of the late sixties, from private allotments to communal from Friedrich Nietzsche to Gilles and simple journalistic interest," 4 facilities. Together these squares are to Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Nomad Koolhaas chose "The Wall as restore the debased ideals of the metro• thought operates in smooth, open- Architecture" as the theme for his final polis "to a sparkling intensity that ended, flowing spaces where one can thesis project. would tempt the inhabitants of the rise up from any point and move to One year later, in 1972, in an entry subconscious London to escape into any other. It is a striving for freedom for the Casabella competition on the the strip in an impulsive exodus - and 6 from codification, whether ideological, theme of "A City with a Significant to become its Voluntary Prisoners." institutional, or professional.2 Nomad Environment" on which he collabo• Depicting a "paradise" which is thought derives from the vagabond rated with , the thread "good" enough to attract the inhabi• imagination of the savage heart on a of the Berlin Wall as Architecture tants of London and thus turn inner and ourer voyage, aspi• reappeared, but this time took the physical structure of the old city into ring to rranscend the limits of experi• form of a fiction about the city of a pile of ruins, Exodus is certainly a ence and thought. London. Entitled "Exodus, or the Utopian vision. As Demetrios Porphy- Koolhaas' inner voyage parallels his Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture," rios observed early in the 1970s, though outer voyage: the book can be read as the tale begins with a direct allusion it is hardly the first urban utopia in a documentary of his tour of rhe world to the Berlin Wall: "Once, a city was history, Koolhaas' and Zenghelis' over the past decades, and of his inquiry divided in two parts. One part became Exodus does not aim to expose the ills inro the condition of twentieth century the Good Half, the other part the Bad of contemporary cities, as its historical architecture and cities under the impact Half. The inhabitants of the Bad Half predecessors did, nor does it propose

7 of politics, economics, and globaliza• began to flock to the good part of the solutions to cure or redeem those ills. tion. Koolhaas firsr became known as divided city, [their flight] rapidly The architectural aim of Exodus is to 5 the author of , how• swelling into an urban exodus." The awaken the sleepwalking metropolis ever, the starting point of his journey story describes an "artificial paradise," of London and to insert in its inarti• and thus OMA's place of origin is, as a strip of land that runs through the culate organism a social condenser of Fritz Neumeyer has suggested, "not center of London, "protected" from "totally desirable alternatives;" and yet New York, as one might assume, but the existing city by two walls along its the tale exposes the dark side of such Berlin."3 A student at the Architectural perimeter. Inside, the zone is subdi• social perfection - that architecture

8 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2 From the very beginning of his hundred years, is, as Tafuri acknow• architectural career, then, Koolhaas ledges, rather startling. What makes the intellectual founda• this historical analysis of the avant- tions of "polite" architecture. In its garde possible are the frequent refe• place one finds, in the words of the rences to the works of Piranesi in the late Italian criric and historian Man- writings of Sergei Eisenstein, one of fredo Tafuri, a "negative Utopia"8 the leading film makers of the moder- which eliminates the distance nist avant-garde. Tafuri cites Eisen• between imagination and annihila• steins exceptional study of Piranesi's tion, between totality and nothing• work Le Carceri as justification for ness, between Utopia and anti- establishing the birth of the avant-garde utopia. Only a few people through• with Piranesi. Piranesi was interested out history have approached archi• in theatrical scenery,10 and it is with tecture in such a way. One was the his imaginary theater of the Carceri, eighteenth century Italian architect Tafuri suggests, that the theme of and etcher Giovan Battista Piranesi, imagination, with all its ideological whose plan of Campo Marzio is, significance, enters into the history of significantly, one of only two pre- modem architecture. With Le Carceri rwentieth century architectural the historical avant-garde enters the Fig. 2: Giovan Battista Piranesi, Careen, images in the more than one thou• real world, and Tafuri logically cont• plate VII (first state), etching. sand pages of S, M, L, XL. inues his study with the theme "the stage as 'virtual city'" in which the field of the avant-garde expands from the can function as an instrument for Piranesi and the "Archaeo• cabaret to the metropolis. imprisoning. At the same time as its logical Reconstruction" of "architectural warfare" stems from the the Campo Marzio This kind of visual or theatrical "hedonistic science of designing collec• To my knowledge, Tafuri was the first affiliation between Piranesi and mo• tive facilities that fully accommodate to explore Piranesi's work in relation dern architecture leads finally to a individual desires," the tale presents to the modern architecture of the twen• "historicity of the avant-garde." How• scenarios as from a horror srory, from tieth century rather than the Roman• ever, Tafuri's introduction to the Car• the purgatory-like reception area to ticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth ceri is particularly interesting for his the totalitarian supervision of the allot• centuries. He did so because of Pira• assertion that "what must be made clear ments. Thus, unlike most urban nesi's "predilection for melodrama and from the start is that all this breaking Utopian thinking, the idealized metro• elemental fear, coupled wirh a taste up, distorting, multiplying, and politan prorotype, the "Good Half" for 'picturesque' ruins and rustic, disarranging, apart from the emotional of London, promises nothing but 9 bucolic landscape." In The Sphere reactions it can elicit, is nothing more relentless pictures from a doomed and the Labyrinth, a study of the avant- than a systematic criticism of the concept civilization, an apocalipsis cum figuris. garde and archirecture, Tafuri starts of place, carried out by using the instru• Instead of a utopia conceived on the 11 with a chapter entitled "'The Wicked ments of visual communication." traditional basis of "goodness," Exodus Architect:' G. B. Piranesi, Heterotopia, At first there seem to be no further is wrought with "dirty realism," revea• and the Voyage." To begin a detailed explorations of this "systematic ling in irs psychological confrontation analysis of the relationship between criticism" of the concept of place in with the Berlin Wall the delirium, the avant-garde and architecture with Tafuri's study - in fact, nowhere in miseries and duplicity of the twentieth Piranesi, who preceded the twentieth the book did he mention this issue century metropolis. century avant-garde by nearly two again. Nevertheless, given the discourse

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 9 on the concept of place in recent of Roman architectural and enginee• his predecessors had. On this open decades, it is not difficult to see the ring achievement Piranesi had begun marshland the historically developed significance of his point: if the concept with the Prima Parte di Architetture e language of specifically Roman buil• of place is inherenrly associated with Prospettive and continued with Opere ding types is affirmed; the combination the center, rhen the Carceri, with its Varie di Architettura, Prospettiva, Gro- of individual building types, however, constant metamorphosis of space, is a teschi, Antichita and the four volumes appears by and large disorderly. Monu• "systematic criticism of the concept of of Le Antichita RomaneP Unlike the ments are massively presented but 'center.'" And if the concern for the frenzy, or to use Eisenstein's word, the arbitrarily disposed. Building types concept of place has resulted in the "madness" of the Carceri,14 the archaeo• vary intensively, but artificially, and need for a concise language of archi• logical approach to the Campo Marzio for their own sake. Streets have vanis• tecture, then the ecstatic intertwining seems a rather rational, "scientific" hed, as has the entire domestic fabric of superstructures, the undermining investigation of the history of Rome, of the city: there is no spatial continuity, of the laws of perspective and thus the "supported by a sound scholarly no structural integration. Instead, a potential liberation of form - or rather method, appropriate to the Enlighten• hodgepodge of individual wills is at liberation from form - of the Carceri ment and its concern with the pheno• work, resulting in a heterogeneous void, present an "unequivocal attack on the mena of historical change."15 a chaotic, senseless heap of building 'language insofar as it is a mode of However, as Stanley Allen has noted, objects that have little to do with one acting upon the world.'" And if the in a project ostensibly devoted to the another. Even in the areas composed legitimacy of the concept of place is archaeological reconstruction of ancient with geometric and hierarchic struc• justified in terms of the subject's Rome, Piranesi clearly ignored the tures, such as the double bend of the dependence on history and nature, historic, monumental center of Rome, river which seems in terms of plans then, in the "negative Utopia" of the where rhe existing ruins were concent• and bird's eye views to represent the Carceri, "History and Nature become rated and stood more or less free of center of the area, rhe extravagant diver• detacbedfmm the subject, not to open contemporary building.16 Instead he sity of building types undermines the up a new universe of values, but rather turned to the Campus Martius, a principles of urban organization. A to present this radical divergence as marginal zone which remained outside language of urban form is thus first

12 the only possible value." the boundary of Rome — the Severan exaggerated and then transgressed. Taken as a whole, the Campus Martius Much of Tafuri's analysis of the Wall - until the Aurelian Wall was builr also violates the very norion of city Carceri holds true for another of in the second half of the third century. walls as urban boundaries. Abandoning Piranesi's works, 77 Campo Marzio The choice of the site is not without the walled city of ancient Rome, Pira• dell'Antica Roma, which he published significance: for Piranesi, the Campo nesi's Campo Marzio appears to have no in 1761-62, shortly after reworking Marzio had always been associated with boundaries, as though able to expand and elaborating of the Invenzioni the training of the young and with endlessly in all directions. Capricciose di Carceri. There are, how• military exercises, bur during the em• ever, some unmistakable fundamental pire it was open to other uses - to Inasmuch as Piranesi grounded his differences between the two works. pleasure and spectacle, to funerals and reconstruction on topographical inves• Whereas the "systematic criticism" of burials. In other words, the Campo tigations of the site as well as evidence the concept of place in the Carceri Marzio is characterized not only by its provided by the fragments of the Seve• appears as a message from nowhere, marginality, but also by its otherness, ran Marble Plan,18 the Campo Marzio the Campo Marzio brings us directly by its incongruity with the city proper cannot be regarded as purely the pro• 17 to Rome, sovereign among cities. of ancient Rome. duct of his imagination. Piranesi him• Unlike the Carceri, the Campo Marzio In his "archaeological reconstruc• self stressed this point in a letter to the is a more or less historic gesture, carry• tion," Piranesi presented more of the Scottish designer Robert Adam, when ing on the archaeological invesrigation otherness of the Campo Marzio than he wrote that, in combining his on-site

10 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2 Fig. 3: Giovan Battista Piranesi, ground pla n of the northern area of the Campus Martius, 1762.

investigations with a careful study of those beyond the Porta Capena, and regarded as a contravention of the city the old plan of the city in the Capitol he will find that the ancients trans• and its rules. Tafuri reveals the book's and the knowledge of the best histori• gressed the strict rules of architecture true nature: "the archaeological mask ans of the time, he hoped that "no one just as much as the moderns. Perhaps of Piranesi's Campo Marzio fools no would claim that I had followed my it is inevitable and a great rule that one: this is an experimental design and own whim rather than...any evidence." the arts on reaching a peak should the city, therefore, remains an un• At the same time, Piranesi makes clear then decline, or perhaps it is part of known."20 It is the Campo Marzids in the same lettet his aspiration to man's nature to demand some license singularly unfamiliar character that transcend the established language of in creative expression as in other things, makes it a colossal non-place, the anti• architecture: but we should not be surprised to see thesis of the place known as Rome. It But before anyone accuses me of that ancient architects have done the is this unknown aspect of the city too falsehood, he should, I beg, examine very things which we sometimes criti• that makes Piranesi's project another 19 the ancient plan of the city which I cize in buildings of our own times. "systematic criticism" of the concept have just mentioned, he should of place, this time on the urban plane, examine the villas of Latium and that Perhaps, more than an investigation of calling into question the vety concept of Hadrian atTivoli, the baths, the ancient Rome, Piranesi's reconstruction of the city. To be sure, given the condi• tombs and other ruins, especially of the Campo Marzio ought to be tion of late twentieth century cities,

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 11 24 Piranesi's Campo Marzio no longer today if current thinking is unable to Surrealism by Salvador Dali. Accor• appears merely an ominously fore• operate without the past as its frame ding to Dali himself, the method is a shadowing "negative Utopia," but a of reference? Without a contemporary form of "irrational knowledge" based realistic description of urban conditions frame of reference, any assessment of upon the "interpretative-critical asso• around the globe today, where key the present becomes no more than a ciation of delirious phenomena." The aspects of traditional cities such as or• prosecution list of what has gone . method thus enables the subject to pass der, integration, centrality, and urban Even though the past is the source of from the "world of delirium" to the boundaries are disappearing. Alex identity and place, can we not take "plane of reality" through the discovery Krieger made the connection between the loss of that past, the erosion of of new and objective "significance in 25 Piranesi and present-day North Ame• historic identity and the eclipse of the irrational." In other words, what rican cities, suggesting that "character," as the point of departure is given is irrational, delirious, and for our comprehension of rhe present insane, and paranoiac-critical activity If we look, say, at greater Toronto or and the future? Koolhaas' urban dis• transforms the "delirium of interpreta• Atlanta or the outskirts of historic course addresses these and other sim• tion" from the "pathological pheno• Boston, or at the most infamous of ilar questions. menon" of paranoia into an adventure edge cities, Tysons Corner in northern of poetic discovery which leads finally Virginia, do we not see environments Koolhaas and the to a conquest of the irrational. as boundless and multi-centered, as "Paranoiac-Critical Tourism" A sort of paranoiac-critical approach conspicuously wasteful, redundant, of the Generic City appears in the work of Koolhaas as and eccentric, as "un-master-planned," In an essay on Surrealism, Hal Foster early as the Exodus. Here, as Fritz and just potentially chaotic, as describes the experiences of André Neumeyer noted, one is presented Piranesi's Rome?21 Breton as an assistant in a psychiatric with a psychological terrain, a "Freud• It seems, however, that the whole dis• clinic at Saint-Dizier in 1916. He ian tableau" of the bizarre forms of life cussion of the concept of place, and treated a soldier who believed that the and the split reality of the metropolis. many other architectural and urban war was a fake, with the wounded made Here, by virtue of a surreal mode of issues of the past decades, are more up cosmetically and the dead on loan perception and representation, "the often than not motivated by an unwill• from medical schools. The soldier hunger for reality could find abundant, ingness to accept this new reality. The intrigued the young Breton: here was exotic nourishment and the desire for point of departure for these discussions a figure shocked into a paranoid alter• contradiction could discover sudden is generally the historic community, native reality that was also somehow a surfaces of friction to lay bare the secret and the lamentation over the loss and critique of this reality.23 To what extent poetic content of this reality."26 It is, devaluation of tradirional cities has this experience at Saint-Dizier impacted howevet, in Delirious New York that resulted in a state of mind that, in Breton's later life as a surrealist is impos• Koolhaas clearly refers to Dali's para- Koolhaas' words, is "fixed on what we sible to know precisely, but the signifi• noiac-crirical method. For Koolhaas, have lost, wrecked with phantom cance of the phenomenon of paranoia paranoiac-critical method is a sequence pain."22 But do we believe that in a on Surrealism can hardly be overstated. of two consecutive but discrete opera• world of change the goal of our inrellec- For not only Breton but many other tions: surrealists as well, from Giorgio de tual discourse is either to determine 1. the synthetic reproduction of the Chirico to Max Ernst, tried to capture how things were in rhe past or how paranoiac's way of seeing the world in and explore the anatomization of they should be on rhe basis of how a new light - with its rich harvest of paranoia in their art. In particular, as they used to be? Should not our aim unsuspected correspondences, ana• Breton stated, "an instrument of be to understand the way things logies and patterns; and 2. the com• primary importance," called the para• actually are? What role can critical pression of these gaseous speculations noiac-critical method, was injected into architectural and urban theory play to a critical point where they achieve

12 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2 Fig. 4: Rem Koolhaas with Zoe Zenghelis, City of the Captive Globe, 1972.

the density of fact: the critical part of Atlanta to Singapore to cut with preci• illustrated by the "exaggerated extra• the method consists of the fabrication sion at the "delirium" of the metropolis polation of an essentially unconscious of objectifying "souvenirs" of the pa• and its new condition in late twentieth Metropolitan landscape,"29 known as ranoid tourism, of concrete evidence century - often on a deep subconscious the "City of Captive Globe," which that brings the "discoveries" of those level. Not surprisingly, while Manhat• he conceived before writing Delirious excursions back to the rest of mankind, tan is used in Delirious New York as New York. "Devoted to the artificial ideally in forms as obvious and "a model to outline fundamental conception and accelerated birth of undeniable as snapshots.27 attributes of high-density, high-rise theories, interpretations, mental con• urbanity," embodied in the Down• structions, proposals and their inflic•

28 This interpretation of the paranoiac- town Athletic Club, what is called tion on the world," Koolhaas wrote, critical method reveals one of the the Culture of Congestion is hardly to the City of the Captive Globe is the surgical scalpels Koolhaas uses as his be understood as physical congestion capital of Ego, "where science, art, journey around the world continues alone. It is above all a programmatic poetry and forms of madness compete from Berlin to New York and from density which can be most precisely under ideal conditions to invent,

JUN-YANG WANG PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 13 Fig. 5: OMA, Boompjes Tower Slab, project, 1979-82. destroy and restore the world of pheno• is everything. USA: everything big. shopping center by Bakema. Rotterdam menal Reality."30 Here the metropolis, Europe: everything small." Then in later became a "gigantic problem," its or the Culture of Congestion, is a rigid 1979 an event intervened which put open center was filled in with closed chaos in the form of the Manhattan aside the dilemmas altogether: Kool• blocks in the name of urban renewal - grid in which each block represents an haas was invited to do a project in as the IBA wrote on its banners, to independent island with unique laws, Rotterdam.31 Similar ro OMA's Berlin, make the city more "urban." In this a maximum agglomeration of differenr Rotterdam was once a historic center regard Rotterdam manifests the situa• values - architecturally as well as ideo• and was known for its own specific tion in Europe in the age of the "• logically. modernity between the wars. Then struction of the European City." Koolhaas returned to Europe in the everything had been suddenly Koolhaas' view of Rotterdam at the late 1970s to teach at the AA in London. destroyed by the war. The city was time was quite different. For Koolhaas, His return was not without dilemmas: rebuilt, but never regained its pre-war not only did the city's unique quality "USA: post-modernism triumphant. urbanism. In fact it was considered a depend precisely on the openness of Europe: historicism on the rise - the model city in the late '50s and early its center, bur, as in the case of Berlin, 'new' superseded, maybe forever? USA: '60s because of its open center and its richness stemmed from the proro- freedom from context. Europe: context perhaps above all the Lijnbaan, a linear typical sequence of its mutation and

14 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2 destruction. His view is hardly surpri• dilemma, that of context and non-con• Koolhaas' position is surely never sing considering the difference between text, seems unresolved. For even in that of a reformist. In the heart of urban Koolhaas' strategy of operating in the the "terrifying beauty of the twentieth chaos he aspires to imagine nothing• present and the protagonists for the century," where "each architectural ness, claiming that "where there is reconsrruction of European cities based doctrine contradicts and undoes the nothing, everything is possible. Where on pte-twentieth century history. essence of the previous one as surely as there is architecture, nothing (else) is Whereas the "Reconstruction of the day follows night," there is a context to possible."36 In a sense, it is this longing European City" in the name of history explore by which "each bastard gets for nothingness that leads him to tran• sets out to erase the most significant his own genealogical tree; the faintest scend the dilemma of context or non- fact of history (the destruction of the hint of an idea is tracked with the context simultaneous to, or rather as a world wars), rwentieth century Europe obstinacy of a detective on a juicy case result of, surpassing the dilemma of is, in Koolhaas' eyes, ridiculously of adultery."34 Certainly this context the big and the small. Beyond a certain beauriful "for those who can forget — is no longer that of figure-ground scale, Koolhaas declares, architecture for a fleeting moment - the arbitrary contextualism. Nor does the clinical acquires the properties of Bigness delusions of order, taste and integrity." inventory of the actual conditions of which jettisons the "art" as well as the Of course this is no easy task: when each site have the same objective as "morality" of architecture. Bigness order, taste and integrity are gone, "the contextualism. transforms the organizational, struc• resulting landscape needs the combined Yet "context" remains an architec• tural and interior/exterior relationships interpretative ability of Champoleon, tural issue, perhaps because of the of architecture. Bigness renders what Schliemann, Darwin and Freud to simple fact that any building is located traditionally can be controlled by disentangle it." And when returning on a specific site. Site conditions can architects or planners uncontrollable. to the past is dismissed for practical be understood in terms of a formal or Bigness discards urban contexts. reasons, the unfortunate alternative is spatial matrix, but also in terms of the Bigness breaks "with scale, with archi• often "the most clinical inventory of configuration of service and supply on tectural composition, with tradition, the actual conditions of each site, no the site or the flow of human and capital with transparency, and with ethics — matter how mediocre, the most calcu• forces through it. Regardless of those the final, most radical break: Bigness lating exploitation of its objective po• conditions, and whether a building's is no longer part of any urban tissue. tential." But Koolhaas found inspira• surroundings are traditional of modern, It exists; at most, it coexists. Its subtext 37 tion in such a dry, factual analysis of the site will one way or another have is fuck context." the site. In the case of Rottetdam, "it an impact on the building. The asser• In his manifesto of Bigness, Koolhaas was the banal conditions of water and tion of context in this sense suggests focuses on the issue of large-scale traffic, together with the reductive both an unreserved acceptance and an buildings and the architectural and inventory of modern typologies, that imaginative approach to reality in all urban consequences of such buildings. 32 triggered the imagination." it messiness and unpredictability — an This issue has haunted architectural This position was expressed in attitude which seems to be part of and urban discourse in recent decades, architectural form in OMA's project Koolhaas' strategy in many cases. On resulting in a contextual mode of for the Boompjes Tower Slab and the the other hand, as Jacques Lucan has thinking, the notion of human scale, projects for Kochstrasse and Friedrich- noted, any obligation to context is, in and the like. These strategies aim to strasse in Berlin, which were designed , a feformist position which criticize, break down, or simply avoid at about the same time. With these assumes that in the wotld we inhabit the Big. Koolhaas goes in the opposite projects, postmodern "histoticism," conditions are fixed and there is there• direction. He fully accepts the architec• the first of the three dilemmas that fore no longer a need for territories tural and urban consequences of the Koolhaas faced in the late '70s, is that are still undetetmined, free, con• Big, treats it as a theoretical domain transcended.33 Meanwhile, the second querable only by new orders ex nihilo?'' (as indicated by the capital B), and

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 15 Fig. 6: Atlanta. explores its potential. In so doing, how• a collective theater where "it" happens; the primary concern; nor is what the ever, he is concerned not merely with there's no collective "it" left. The street city should be. Dismissing these two the size or scale of building projects, has become residue, organizational questions, he tries instead to discover which range from the small Villa device, mere segment of the continuous what rhe ciry actually is. Again he went dall'Ava to the extra large at . metropolitan plane where the remnants to America to find possible answers. Nor is his interest primarily the dilem• of the past face rhe equipment of the "Sometimes it is important to find ma of context or non-context as such. new in an uneasy stand-off... Bigness what the city is - instead of what it Beyond breaking with urban contexts, no longer needs the city: it competes was, or what is should be. This is what Bigness has urban implications which with the city; it represents the city; it drove me to Atlanta - an intuition can only be comprehended in terms of pre-empts the city; or better still, it is that the real city at the end of the 20th 38 the concept of the city itself. the ciry. century could be found there...." So begins Koolhaas' writing on Atlanta, If Bigness transforms architecture, irs Unmistakably, Koolhaas has left the an outstanding example of the Ameri• accumulation generates a new kind of traditional concept of the city far can city which, in Koolhaas' view, city. The exterior of the city is no longer behind. What the city was is no longer

16 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2 "reveals some of the most critical the downtown having been atomized, — distance: it has been constituted shifts in architecture/urbanism of the its autonomous particles could go any• and skillfully maintained as the neces• past 15 years."39 where: "now allis city, a new persua• sarily ragged, myrhical gateway to the Like many other American cities, siveness that includes landscape, park, destabilizing, novelty-introducing Atlanta is actually mote a vast region industry, rust belt, parking lot, housing outside.43 than a city; and like almost all Ameri• tract, single-family house, desert, air• Kwinter's observation is perfectly can cities it once had, and in a sense port, beach, river, ski slope, even down• accurate insofar as Koolhaas' world still has, a downtown. But in the 1960s town." Or, conversely, "Atlanta is not journey is restricted to Eutope and and '70s, while the downtown area of a city; it is a landscape."41 America. But beyond the New World, many other great American cities lay Atlanta's new urban - or rather, as the development of modern Asia in a deep state of despair, downtown Koolhaas puts it, "post-urban" - land• provides another new territoty (thus Atlanta was being revived and in fact scape is a case of Bigness par excellence. his use of the plural "New Worlds") thoroughly rebuilt. For Koolhaas, this Koolhaas himself makes no secret of through which Koolhaas comes to rebuilding of the downtown area was the significance of this case in OMA's explore the condition of Bigness, this not urban renewal in the usual sense; history, stating that it was the shock time along with the volatile process of it was "a virgin rebirth: a city of clone' of the Bigness of the New World(s) global modernization. The outcome characterized by an accelerating redeve• rhat made what was already implicit is his writing on Singapore, an Asian lopment catalyzed by architect/developer in Delirious New York explicit, especially city which in just thirty years has deve• John Portman. He started by rebuilding against the background of Europe.42 loped from a rraditional village into a one block at a time to form a compre• It need hardly be mentioned that its modern, late twentieth century city. hensive urban system in which build• most explicit expression comes with ings are connected to one another by the "Manifesto of Bigness." And as far In what sense is Singapore a test- bridges and skywalks. One essential as the concept of place is concerned, it bed of Bigness for Koolhaas? Certainly element of this new urban system was is clear that Koolhaas' endorsement of not in the sense of its physical size or the architectural device, reinvented by the new urban reality in Atlanta discards population; rather in the sense of the Portman, which he called the "atrium." concepts derived from traditional cities, Bigness implicit in the global process Portman's atrium is a huge glass-roofed and traditional European cities in of modernization: "Bigness, through interior space surrounded by hotel particular. As Sanford Kwinter notes, its very independence of context, is rooms, office cubicles, restaurants, and nothing in Koolhaas' intellectual pro• the one architecture that can survive, all sorts of facilities. Each atrium duction better verifies this elabotation even exploit, the now-global condition 4 becomes "a replica as inclusive as down• from New York to Atlanta: of the tabula rasa." * Historically speak• town itself, an ersatz downtown." The ing, tabula rasa, or beginning anew cumulative result of all the atrium In Koolhaas, the concept of "America" from a clean slate, is not a new pheno• buildings is that "downtown disinteg• has always loomed large. It has served menon of modernization. It first hap• rates into multiple downtowns, a clus• not only enormous aesthetic ends, pened, in fact, in Europe. Haussmann's ter of autonomies."40 Consequently, but has played a major role in genera• boulevards, Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin, what seemed to help rehabilirate and ting both the novelry and the radicality and Ludwig Hiberseimer's housing stabilize Atlanta's downtown actually in OMA's work (especially in the project for downtown Berlin all acceletated its demise in two ways. primarily European context with exemplified the tabula rasa approach First, the traditional concept of the which they have dealt).... For Koolhaas, in various ways. This attitude soon street as an outdoor space no longer America, although deeply studied came to be regarded as the worst sin makes sense: even when the street space and assimilated into his work, has of modernism, a sin to be eradicated remains, the actual life of the city now always strategically been kept at a at all costs. Thus, as Koolhaas describes occurs within the buildings. Second, "dangerous" - and therefore creative it, "the city of Zurich has found the most radical, expensive solution in

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 17 modernization mature in its own right to transcend the dilemmas between tradition and modernization that seem to have been so painful for Europeans? The contributions of non-western sources to the post-war architectural and urban discourse have been nume• rous. More often than not, however, these contributions have tended to form an anthropology of the past. Koolhaas' writing on Singapore is fundamentally different: it is, perhaps for rhe firsr time in the history of archi- recrural and urban planning theory, an arrempr to introduce a non-wes• tern source, in Koolhaas' words, in an "ecology of the contemporary."48 He writes that "Singapore is incredibly 'Western' for an Asian city, the apparent victim of an out-of-control process of modernization. The temptation is to leave it one of those conundrums doomed, in a last polite little spasm of colonialism, to remain so, simply because they are Asian, or Chinese." However, he argues, Fig. 7: OMA, "Tabula Rasa Revisited", Misson Grand Axe, , site expanssion over time, 1991. this perception is a Eurocentric mis• reading. The "Western" is no longer reverting to a kind of reverse archaeo• — especially in Europe — we declared our exclusive domain. Except perhaps logy: layer and layer of new modernists every building in the entire zone that in the regions of its origins, ir now - shopping centers, parking, banks, is older than 25 years worthless - null represents a condition of universal vaults, laboratories - are constructed and void - or ar least potentially aspiration. It is no longer something underneath the center."45 removable?"47 But in southeast Asia, "we" have unleashed, no longer some• Even for Koolhaas, respect for urban where cities leap from the nineteenth thing whose consequences we there• context is legirimate in many cases.46 century straight into the twenty-first, fore have the right to deplore; it is a Nonetheless, the desire to envision the shorrage of building space exacer• self-administered process that we do nothingness led him to employ an in• bated by the exponential growth of not have the right to deny - in the terpretation of the tabula rasa approach urban population and living standards, name of various sentimentalities - to in OMA's project for the redevelop• has the tabula rasa approach to urban those "others" who have long since ment of La Defense in Paris. In the planning been practiced in reality to 49 made it their own. European context, however, this project an historically unprecedented extent. will remain entirely theoretical, based Is what we see happening in Asia an Paul Ricoeur has pointed to the con• as it is on a not very realisric premise: unexpected product of a Pandora's box flict between the emerging universal "whar would happen if, even in Europe first opened in Europe, or will Asian civilization and our established natio-

18 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2 nal cultures, suggesting that in our modern world, "mankind as a whole is on the btink of a single world civilization representing at once a gigantic progress for everyone and an overwhelming task of survival and adapting our cultural heritage to this new setting."30 Thirty years' tabula rasa has almost entirely erased Singapore's cultutal past, the original village now but a wreck floating in an ocean of hygienic newness. The toad to continued modernization seems to make the Ricoeurian paradox either even more overwhelming, in that the task of survival and adapting a well-established cultural heritage to new conditions was entitely ignored in the rush to modernization in Singapore and many other places in Asia, or completely irrelevant, in that since the "cleaning of the slate" almost nothing has survived to be adapted to the new setting. However, it is worthwhile to note that the wholesale tabula rasa planning that was the basic strategy in Singapore's modernization would have been impossible to implement if it had not been supported by aspects of the local cultural heritage, such as "a hard-core Confucian shamelessness, a kind of ultimate power of efficiency" for "taking care" of its people and bringing "help to the multitude,"51 the willingness to pay the price tequired to catch up to the leading industrial countries and become a player in global markets. In this sense, one might consider Singapore a case of moder• nization based on cultural heritage despite physical appearances to the contrary. Or is it? Even during the past thirty years of pursuing tabula rasa development in its pure form, the hunt for identity and character in Singapore has never ceased. As Koolhaas observed, "the manipulation of identities, through which the respect given to each specific culture - its ethnic, religious heritage - is an alibi for avoiding the serious demands - for more and more freedoms - of modern culture."52 What is more, in the age of con• sumerism, when global consumer culture strives for not only the consumption of goods but also the consump• tion of identity and history, the manipulation of iden• tity indeed has far-reaching physical consequences. It engenders cultural subversions like the stylized "Asian" villages, Chinese gardens, the reconstruction of various kinds of temples, tower buildings with "Chinese" roofs,

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 19 and the shopping centers in post-mo• to shopping centers; airports are its Here again the issue of identity arises dern Confucian style that have popped city gates, where both hyper-local and in regard to the Generic City, which up throughout Singapore. It is by no hyper-global commodities are avail• by definition is supposed to be devoid means inconceivable that one day the able; ir is New Towns in an endless re• of identity. Perhaps it is true that what original village will be entirely recon• petition of the same simple structural is called identity, character, and sense structed somewhere, if not on its origi• module; the Generic City is formless, of place is, in Ian Nairn's words, "not a nal sire. In Singapore, the physical ap• a "free-style" assemblage of three ele• fine art extra, it is something that we pearance of cultural heritage and ethnic ments - roads, buildings, and nature. cannot afford to do without."54 This identity is sooner overwhelming than It is the final death of planning. What placelessness, this loss of character and absent, though what remains of the is more, in this the city of tabula rasa, identity, is perceived as an ever-increas• past is no more than histotical kitsch. the cycle of interdependence between ing worldwide phenomenon today, From Singapore - and in fact from history and identity is completely and thus identity is more sorely needed Atlanta as well - there is only one step severed: than ever. In the Generic City, it is no left to the Generic Ciry, the synthetic surprise that as soon as a hint of iden• reproduction and compression of urban it is nothing but a reflecrion of present tity is discovered, it is utilized to the facts or "souvenirs" into an urban form need and present ability. It is the city maximum: that is ideal from the point of view of without history. It is big enough for If it is water-facing, then water-based the paranoiac-critical method, and as everybody. It is easy. It does not need symbols are distributed over irs entire obvious and undeniable as snapshots maintenance. If it gets too small it territory. If it is a porr, rhen ships and to the rest of mankind. The Generic just expands. If it gets old it just self- cranes will appear far inland. If it is City is by definition multi-racial as destructs and renews. It is equally Asian, then "delicate" (sensual, well as multi-cultural; it is located in a exciting - or unexciting - everywhere. insctutable) women appear in elastic tropical climate; its business is clearly It is "superficial" - like a Hollywood poses, suggesting (religious, sexual) manifested in the form of downtown studio lot, it can produce a new submission everywhere. If it has a towers; its urban life is concentrated identity every Monday morning." mounrain, each brochure, menu, ticket, billboard will insist on the hill, as if nothing less then a seamless tautology will convince.5'

What Koolhaas conceives as the para• noiac-critical tourism of the Generic City is obviously a parody of modern man's desperare need for identity, character, and sense of place in the so• ciety of consumption. This parody suggests that what Ricoeur called the "lowest degree of creative culture" is an inevitable consequence of con• sumer culture in a universal civilization. But it should also be noted that in the same essay Ricoeur stresses the "tragic law of the creation of a culture" which diametrically opposes the "false con• Fig. 11 : OMA, 2 Bibliothèques Jussieu, Paris, competition entry, 1993 sciousness" of identity and the steady

20 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2 accumulation of the tools that make the demand for order and the will to psychic and social accommodation to up a civilization. Creativity, Ricoeur formlessness."'8 For Koolhaas, the new the relentless processes of destruction asserts, eludes all definitions.'6 In light conditions of architecture and urba- and creation through which the city of Ricoeur's tragic law of creativity, is nism in the late twentieth century mutates according to the shifting not disregard for the identity of a place have not only changed the very concept requirements of capitalism."60 Perhaps ("Down with character!" as Koolhaas of the city, they have rendered urbanism nowhere is this "anguish of urban puts it) not merely a hypothetical issue as a profession in its traditional sense dynamism" more overwhelming than for the Generic City, but in fact a impracticable, and thus made the in the leading figures of the Modern necessity if we are to approach what struggle between order and chaos mean• Movement. Some of them, from Wil• remains to be explored after the Generic ingless. In other words, inasmuch as liam Morris and Ebeneezer Howard has taken over? the city is the creation of designers to Frank Lloyd Wright, tried to con• and planners, practical demands and quer this "anguish of urban dynamism" Conclusion creative will are both of vital impor• by suggesting a direct opposition or There are two grounds for the concept tance, whether the result is order or alternatives to it; others, such as Otto of place: what a place was in the past formlessness. But to Koolhaas, today's Wagner, Ludwig Hilberseimer, and Le and what it should become in the cities are anything but products of the Corbusier, were fascinated by the future. Piranesi's archaeological recon• design profession. If our cities are dynamics of modern cities, and yet struction of the Campo Marzio seemed formless rather than formally ordered, that fascination was accompanied by to be a reference to the past, yet behind chaotic rather geometrically structured, a persistent fear of chaos and a continual the mask of archaeology his desire for it is not because they are designed to effort to bring the metropolis under creative expression resulted in an ex• be so but because they are the outcome control, either from an architectural perimental design that challenged the of real forces in operation - flows of or a socio-ideological point of view. rules of architecture and cities, and capital, flows of human beings, flows Hence the urban Utopias of the twen• subverted the concept of place in terms of work. If the essence of the super- tieth century: for Howard it is "a peace• of past and future simultaneously. The modern city is its loss of a sense of ful path to real reform;" for Le Cor• paranoiac-critical tourism of Koolhaas' place, this loss is not pre-designed but busier, "revolution can be avoided" Generic City constitutes the "archaeo- a consequence of late-capitalist when the chaos and injustice of nine• logue of the 20th century," utilizing modernization. teenth-century cities are conquered unlimited plane tickets rather than by the harmony and beauty of the If Piranesi's Campo Marzio as a 61 the shovel of the traditional archaeo• Contemporary City. The urban subversion of the concept of place is logist,57 and disregarding questions of Utopias of Modernism are never fully to be understood against the backgro• what places have been or should be. realized, and the anguish of urban und of an architectural ideology based Koolhaas, simply by focusing on the dynamism is never fully overcome. on the Enlightenment concept of The gap between the modern spirit present, by looking into what places 59 Reason and its criticism, then the or cities actually are in a rapidly chang• and the modernized environment was subversion of the concept of place in ing world, launches a discourse in becoming clearer in the late 1950s, the Koolhaas must be seen in relation to which the foundations for the concept result, according to Jane Jacobs, of the epistemological and economic of place are criticized, transgressed, "the principles and aims that had changes since the nineteenth century and finally subverted. shaped modern, orthodox city planning with which the experience of moder• and rebuilding," referring in particular nization can be summed up. Jonathan But there ends the parallel between 62 to Howard and Le Corbusier. Early Piranesi and Koolhaas. Piranesi Crary has suggested that one is brought Modernism's urban ideas and the mo• subjected the city to an experimental to "what Manfredo Tafuri called the dern environments created in accor• design in which the epic tone is, accord• coming to terms with 'the anguish of dance with them have been a new ing to Tafuri, the struggle "between urban dynamism' - the precarious

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 21 source of anguish ever since. This holds condition, we must firsr do away with what exists, and yet in a sense implies true for Europe as well as America. In all preconceptions - architectural as the abandonment of all ideologies. His his essay on the experience of moder• well as urban, ideological as well as position is, as Alejando Zaera has sug• nity, Marshall Betman wrote that "So moral. What is left to explore is not a gested, "a strategic rerreat, the cessation often the price of ongoing and expand• matter of what things were ox should of ideological resistance to the develop• ing modernity is the destruction not bebm what things actually are. To ment of contemporary civilization."ss merely of'traditional' and 'pre-modern' Koolhaas' exhilaration, urban develop• Inasmuch as the development of con• institutions and environments but - ment now tends to run its own course, temporary civilization is not unequi• and here is the real tragedy - of every- putting planners in a position of power- vocal, and inasmuch as our understan• rhing most vital and beautiful in the lessness. And yet "since it is out of ding and treatment of reality remains modern world itself."63 Here, Berman's control, the urban is about to become a necessarily value-laden, Koolhaas' themes of the 1960s "shout in the major vector of the imagination. strategy of non-resistance will itself street" and the attempt at "bringing it Redefined, urbanism will nor only, or undoubtedly meet with opposition. It all back home" in the '70s are but two mosrly, be a profession, but a way of is proof of Koolhaas' inrellecrual examples of how the post-war archi• thinking, an ideology: to accept what strength that in rendering urbanism a tectural and urban discourse has been exists. "Gay Science" aiming ar "perfectly haunted by anguish over the loss of The crisis of the ideological and rational answers to perfectly insane 67 urban vitality. Utopian aspirations of modern archi• questions," he remains so intriguing What then is the relationship tecture has been rigorously analyzed that, as Nick Land said of Georges between Koolhaas' architectural and since Tafuri. According ro Tafuri, this Bataille, one feels rhat "to accept his urban thinking and the Modern Move• crisis, resulting in the demise of the writings is an impossibility, to resist ment? On the one hand he is known architect as social ideologue, is only them an irrelevance. One is excited for paying persistent homage to the the final testimony of some "impotent abnormally, appalled, but without 68 modernist tabula rasa strategy and to and ineffectual myths, which so often refuge." the paradigmatic dimension of rhe serve as illusions that permir the survival Siedlungen and Broadacre City. Yet of anachronistic 'hopes of design.'" 65 this homage is never overshadowed by Whether or not he sympathizes with rhe fear of chaos or the uncontrollable the political position of Tafuri's analy• forces of development. Koolhaas' is a sis, Koolhaas' call for a new ideology die-hard Modernism that embraces seems to have consolidated a post- the consequences of late-capitalist Tafurian position - though absent modernizarion, spectacular as well as Tafuri's pessimism, for the fire of mo• relenrless, and entirely free from dernity rhat Koolhaas' work embraces anguish. Faced wirh new conditions, is fueled by far-reaching optimism. he is exalted rather rhan traumatized, Nor should this post-Tafurian position maintaining that unprecedented, be confused with the kind of "autono• unanticipated, and thus potentially mous architecture" which in post-war liberating possibilities could revitalize architectural and urban discourse took an exhausted profession. Koolhaas the entirely linguistic course of typology accepts the new conditions de facto. or deconsttuction, because this kind Change continues with or without of autonomy has long since been Jun-Yang Wang, arkitekt our consent; change is a pure "given," dismissed by Koolhaas. Instead, Kool• och tekn.dr, är verksam vid and thus in itself is value-free. If we haas declares a new ideology which is School of Architecture and are to understand the new urban transposable, capable of accepting Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai.

22 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2 Notes 1. OMA, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, 18. Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and 44. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 515. S, M, L, XL (The Monacelli Press, 1995) Designer 40. 45. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1249. xix. 19. Jonathan Scott, Piranesi (London: 46. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1099. 2. See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Academy Editions and St. Mattins 47. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1105. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Press, 1975) 166-167. 48. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL ion. Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: The Uni• 20. Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and 49. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1013. versity of Minnesota Press, 1987). See Utopia, (London: MIT Press, 1973) 15. 50. Paul Ricoeur, "Universal Civilization also Gilles Deleuze, "Nomad Thought," 21. Alex Krieger, "Conflicting Ideals for and National Cultures," History and The New Nietzsche, ed. David B. Alli• the City," CSD News Winter/Spring Truth (Chicago: Northwestern Uni• son (New York: Dell, 1977). 1995: 16. versity Press, 1965) 271. 3. Fritz Neumeyer, "OMA's Berlin: The 22. Koolhaas, "Understanding the New 51. Koolhaas, S, M, L.XLioiy, 1037. Polemic Island in the Ciry," Assemblage Urban Condition," GSD Atev Winter/ 52. Koolhaas, S, M, L.XLm^. 11: 38. Spring 1996: 13. 53. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1250. 4. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 216. 23. Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Lon• 54. Edward Relph, Place and Placelessness 5. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 5. don: MIT Press, 1993) xii. (London: Pion Limited, 1976) 32. 6. "Exodus/1972," Architectural Design 24. Franklin Rosemont, ed., What is Sur• 55. Koolhaas, S, M, L.XL 1263. 47-5 (i977) 3*8. realism? Selected Writings, by André 56. Ricoeut, "Universal Civilization and 7. Demetrios Porphyrios, "Pandora's Box," Breton (New York: Monad, 1978) 136. National Cultures" 281. Architectural Design 47.5 (1977) 357. 25. Dawn Ades, Dali (London: Thames 57. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1263. 8. Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the and Hudson, 1982) 119-126. 58. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia 16. Labyrinth (London: MIT Press, 1987) 26. Neumeyer, "OMA's Berlin" 46, 38. 59. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia 14-16. 29. 27. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York 60. Jonathan Crary, "Notes on Koolhaas + 9. See Miranda Harvey, Piranesi: The (NewYork: Monacelli Press, 1994) 238. Modernization," Any9 (1994). Imaginary Views (London: Academy 28. " Architectural Design 47.5 (1977) 319. 61. For the architectural as well as ideo• Editions, 1979) 7. 29. " Architectural Design 47.5 (1977)" 331. logical dimensions of these urban 11. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth 17. 30. Koolhaas, Delirious New York 294. Utopias, see Robert Fishman, Urban 12. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth 31. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 518. Utopias in the Twentieth Century — 27, 34, 38. For the concept of place in 32. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 206-8. Ebeneezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, terms of center, history and nature, 33. For an discussion of the struggle with andLe Corbusier (London: MIT Press, and the language of architecture, see "historicism" in this sense, see Man• 1982). Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci; fredo Tafuri, "Modern Architecture 62. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space & and the Eclipse of History," Theories Great American Cities, New York: Pere• Architecture (London: Studio Vista, and History of Architecture (London: grine Books, 1984) 13-35. 1971); and Norberg-Schulz, The Concept 1980). See also Neumeyer, "OMA's Ber• 63. Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid of Dwelling (New York: Rizzoli, 1985). lin". Melts Into Air (New York: Verso, 1989) 13. In fact the Campo Marzio was done as 34. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 206, 208. 295. the fourth and final volume of Le 35. Jacques Lucan, "Contextualism and 64. Koolhaas, 5, M, L, XL 969, 971. Antichità Romane. Universality," Lotus International I1)-]4. 65. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia 181-182. 14. Sergei Eisenstein, "Piranesi, or the Flui• 36. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 199. 66. Alejandro Zaera, "OMA 1986-1991. dity of Forms," appendix, The Sphere 37. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 495-502. Notes for a Topographic Survey," and the Labyrinth, by Tafuri (London: 38. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 514-15. OMAJKoolhaas ip8y-ippj (Madrid: El MIT Press, 1987). 39. Koolhaas, S, M,L, XL 835. Croquis, 1994). 15. Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and 40. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 839-43. 67. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 971 and Kool• Designer 40. 41. (Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 850. haas, "Understanding the New Urban 16. Stanley Allen, "Piranesi's Campo Marzicr. 42. Koolhaas, 5, M, L, XL 503. Condition" 13. An Experimental Design," Assemblage 43. Sanfotd Kwinter, "Flying the Bullet, ot 68. Nick Land, The Thirstfor Annihilation 10: 72. When Did the Future Begin?" ARCH + — Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihi• 17. Allen, "Piranesi's Campo Marzio' 75. 132 June 1996. lism (London: Routledge, 1992) xii.

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 23