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03 3 Decorum: Tentative notes on its contemporary relevance and use

Johan Celsing

“The greatest glory in the art of building is to know what is appropriate.” later Pope Nicholas V. His comments on architecture are objective and Leon Battista Alberti1 often deal with elementary practical factors but fundamentally they offer a philosophical consideration of the discipline viewed from an We can all probably agree that some brilliant projects possess great, intellectual and cultural perspective. For this reason the work has been perhaps even sublime, beauty. How that helps us in our practical seen as a survey of the subject intended more for an aristocratic cultural endeavours to ensure the standards of what we build is less clear. And élite than for practising architects or master-builders. One senses is beauty our goal? These reflections spring from highly concrete that Alberti balanced his classical pre-Christian discoveries with the experiences as a practitioner. But also from a peculiar feeling of prevailing mediaeval Christian world view. resignation, almost of tedium, that while it seems to be possible I am not referring to Alberti here to offer some kind of historical to realise so much, almost everything, in buildings in the market background. Alberti’s treatise has an idiosyncratically personal but economies of the west, on the other hand remarkably little of all that also moral tone. Important concepts in his work seem to me to be is built seems desirable, or even important. Formal inventiveness particularly relevant and useful for us today as well. exists but frequently it seems to conceal the absence of any sustaining, One of these is Decorum, the appropriate. This concept has become fundamental approach to the discipline, the task or the world around us. somewhat suspect today, in Scandinavia at least, as the term has come That the answer to the question of what makes a project beautiful or to suggest the conventional and the discreet. But if one explores the important cannot solely be found in the aesthetic categories is becoming sources of the concept, one discovers instead some age-old western increasingly clear. It seems as if the tools to which we can resort are to moral concepts that still today impinge upon our ethical attitudes. In be found in reflection or wisdom. After all architecture is also described actual fact, the term derives from elucidation of the virtues. And these, as an old man’s profession. As with really sublime matters, it seems as if I claim, are also worth consideration by architects. Originally the term we can only approach the answer by making detours outside our own was used in literary contexts, one of which was Aristotle’s Poetics. Cicero, professional domain. one of the Latin authors Alberti repeatedly cites, refers to it in De Officiis, One famous and genuinely inspiring document that touches on which in its turn invokes classical Greek philosophy. Aristotle himself these issues in our discipline and our concrete practices was written writes about the virtues in their different forms in The Nichomachean by Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and even today his ideas remain Ethics. The cardinal virtues are: Courage, Justice, Wisdom, Restraint. useful. Although Alberti is famous in architecture, he was in fact a In his discussion about what constitutes the moral virtues Aristotle scholar whose erudition and close study of both classical and mediaeval claims that courage, for instance, is a middle course between fear texts enabled him to develop an approach to some of Europe’s central and blind confidence. Generosity, he asserts, is the middle course moral concepts. Such advanced study of philosophy was as unlikely between close-fistedness and extravagance. Where and how the balance then as it is today for the majority of practitioners. If in those days it between the extremes will be found is not predetermined but has to was the building traditions passed down within the guilds that were be understood from case to case. What is fitting, what is appropriate. most esteemed and handed on to following generations, today’s market As with questions about laws and ordinances, Aristotle says that these prefers a glib visual approach that corresponds to the image of today’s must always take the form of simplified generalisations that have to be prevailing trends. specified in individual cases. Aristotle claims that we acquire the virtues It is in De re Aedificatoria, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, that by repetition as we do other forms of knowledge. Alberti discusses in a memorable and inspiring way both theoretical The relevance of the virtues is, in my opinion, just as great today as and practical aspects of architecture. Although his starting point in it used to be. In some respects we express ourselves differently, however. this book is Vitruvius’ De architectura , it is in fact a more multifaceted Is courage an out-of-date virtue belonging to the military realities of text explicitly grounded in both Classical Roman and Greek learning the Hellenistic period when Athens was at war with Sparta, the Persians and authors such as Cicero, Aristotle and Thucydides. Less explicit but and other peoples? A wise colleague pointed out that courage is no less important is also the way in which the text merges Classical maxims important today. But for battles of a different kind. The challenges with concepts advanced by the encyclopaedists of the Middle Ages.2 facing humanity such as the climate question, overpopulation and For most of his life Alberti was closely linked to the Catholic church. inequality will undoubtedly demand our courage as well. As a young man he studied at famous seats of learning in Venice and In his treatise Alberti elegantly incorporates Decorum into Christian Padua, where one of his fellow-students was Tommaso Parentucelli, Italian architecture in the 15th century. He describes building according

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to the prevailing hierarchies. What applies for private dwellings, houses, cast on site (white Danish cement with Dolomite cross as ballast). Once is possibly some liberty in design but above all the building must not the form-work has been dismantled there will be no further treatment vaunt itself and transgress its social role. Even the dwellings of princes of the surface of the concrete so the casting will demand a great deal of should be subordinate to the supreme, the house of God, the Temple. If care. The all-embracing roof covers very different spaces that house the one frees oneself from this socially hierarchical use of the concept, it can building’s various functions. Next to the great furnace room, its ceiling instead offer a tool to help us to make our own scrutiny of the content tracing the external shape of the building, lies a smaller Ceremony of our architectonic dispositions and their results. In what follows I Room. In the light shed by a slit in its barrow-vaulted ceiling the comment on a few contemporary and, in my view, impressive examples mourners can here bid farewell by the coffin. An atrium has been carved that spontaneously and without any manifest theoretical superstructure out of the building to enable the employees to gather beneath the open embody memorably judicious architecture. One can of course also point sky for rest and recreation without encountering any mourners. The out that virtuous architecture is not created because one has studied atrium, surrounded by sliding glass doors with white concrete passages the right authorities… On the other hand ‘practice maketh perfect’. behind them, provides a source of light and enables the staff to keep Moreover I claim that it is inspiring and impels reflection about our an eye on what is going on in other parts of the building. The entrance alleged contemporary unicity to see how relevant a work written five for the public and for mourners is marked by a canopy inside of the centuries ago can be for the age in which we now live. To see that many perimeter of the building block. Located under a generous roof, this of the questions our predecessors encountered are those we face today, open area provides a link between the interior and the surrounding albeit in another guise. woodland. This is where people assemble or wait, surrounded by Being trained to see that it is not style, perhaps not even appearance, delicate brickwork and a massive granite column. In my view, both now but the underlying approach that is really decisive. and in the past there is an architectural tradition that is rooted in what decorum and the virtues invoke. a s t o n e i n t h e f o r e s t Alberti's concept of decorum may at first sight seem a long way from Repeatedly in my own practice the question arise of what is fitting, the spirited everyday settings created by the French architects Lacaton appropriate, at every level in the conception of a project. In the current Vassal ( Anne Lacaton 1955–, Jean Philippe Vassal 1954–). But I claim project on the new crematorium at Stockholm’s Woodland Cemetery that in them it is possible to perceive more clearly than in the work of the diversity of the aspects has meant that striking the balance of what most other architects the unerring ability to develop what is fitting, seems appropriate has been particularly multifaceted. These questions appropriate, for each specific task. have not been made less demanding by the cemetery administration’s One of their early projects from 1996 in Bordeaux provides stringent budget. considerable food for thought. The task assigned to the architects was How can the new crematorium with its ritual subordination part of a programme through which the city intended to embellish be incorporated into the cemetery’s ensemble of landscape and a number of existing squares. Their square was triangular, bordered chapels? How can the mourners be given a fitting framework for their by trees that framed an open area with park benches where people attendance in the building while at the same time the operations of the played Pètanque. It resembled a village square. The architects visited crematorium are made as rational as required? How can decent premises the square and their impression was that: “On our first visit we get the be offered for the daily work of the staff and not just ceremonial use? feeling that this is already very beautiful because it is authentic, lacking When finances are under pressure, how can costly genuine materials in sophistication. It possesses the beauty of the obvious, necessary, be evaluated in comparison with cheaper ones that are almost right. Its meaning emerges directly. People seem at home here in an indistinguishable? Should the greatest expense be devoted to the public atmosphere of harmony and tranquillity formed over many years. We’ve sections of the building to enhance its dignity or the separate working spent some time watching what happened there. We have conversed areas in which most people actually spend their time? As in every with a few of the local inhabitants… Embellishment has no place here. building project, there seem to be untold questions that are difficult to Quality, charm, life exist. The square is already beautiful.”3 balance, How can completely different parameters be weighed against each other, technology versus spatial qualities, the long-term view against financial realities. But in the end it is the concrete qualities of the building that count. How successfully does it weld rationality with the poetic? The new crematorium is situated in a clearing in an untouched section of woodland. The corpus of the building is very compact and is characterised by its asymmetric volume, which is linked to the uneven topography of the terrain. Both the facades and the roof are in uniform hard-fired dark-brown bricks. The coarse surface of the brickwork and its disposition are intended to anchor the building to the typically Scandinavian undulating pinewoods. In pronounced contrast to the austere exterior, the structure and the interior are in white concrete Lacaton and Vassal public square, Bordeaux The New Crematorium by Johan Celsing

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The proposal the architects finally made to the city was as follows: The Palais de Tokyo has undoubtedly become a living milieu for art and Decorum therefore decouples to some extent the question of the appropriate is not, I claim, denial of the industrial progress without “As a project we have proposed doing nothing apart from some simple culture and apparently at no great expense, which in the future will be appearance from what we like personally. What is fitting can obviously which the world would undoubtedly be a harsher place to live in. What maintenance work—replacing the gravel, cleaning the square more an advantage as there will be nothing to stop the building from being take many different forms, provided that it serves the purpose appears to me to be important and inspiring is to take advantage of the often, treating the lime trees and slightly modifying the traffic—of a developed once again when new demands and desires have evolved. demanded by the task. opening provided by the concept of Decorum, the appropriate, in our kind to improve use of the square and to satisfy the locals.” Some of the most important work by Lacaton Vassal can be seen in their Once the fitting, the appropriate, has been adopted as an approach, it practical work. This temperate response to the task seems as serious as it is unusual commitment for residential settings for both single-family households is difficult to abstain from the possibilities it offers or the questions that It is obvious that the fitting, the just, the appropriate, does not in our age, when competition for commissions and media attention and more large-scale projects. then ensue. It opens up for a freer gaze in which aesthetic expression is provide any immediate architectonic guidance about how buildings most frequently means that architects act opportunistically and affirm One of the practice’s significant contributions in the housing sector subordinated to how well what is appropriate meets each specific case. should be designed and shaped. This is useful and opens up for an their clients’ perhaps ill-considered formulations of their problems in concerns the development of a group of 16-storey apartment blocks Developing one’s judgement to enable understanding of what is fitting, approach in which the idea of appropriacy is a corrective that enables the hope of being awarded yet another new design or something even from the early 1960s at Porte Pouchet in Paris’s 17e arrondisement. The just or appropriate in an architectonic commission is the central task an idea or a solution to be tested only when it has been formulated or worse—a new landmark. architects managed to persuade the authorities to cancel the demolition for every architect and, in my opinion, every individual. Judgement is expressed in drawings. In addition, is it interesting that appropriacy A related argument, although it involves other questions, that had been planned because of the poor condition of the buildings trained naturally in the concrete task that we are given to solve. does not in itself favour any particular style or aesthetic approach. characterised Lacaton Vassal’s project for the completion of the renewal and the unsatisfactory social circumstances. Instead, the architects In our era, perhaps in every era, individual judgement is an act Finally it is worth remembering what Aristotle says in The of the Palais de Tokyo art museum in Paris in 2001. Until 1974 the demonstrated how it was possible to develop the buildings and extend of defence, deliberate resistance, against many of the dogmas or Nichomachean Ethics about equity offering appropriate correction of building, originally built for the World's Fair in 1937, housed Paris's the apartments by adding generous balconies that could be glassed concepts imposed by the age if it contradicts them—Authoritarianism, the deficiencies of the universality of law when he goes more deeply into Museum of Modern Art. In 1999 it had become a building site after in to the existing facades. These additions were self-supporting and Functionalism, Green building, , or whatever they may be. The trained aspects of Justice as a moral virtue. He writes that all laws are general work on a film centre had been cancelled, so that in its interior the could therefore be made without requiring support from the existing and reflective process of judgement in which an individual, or a group of while in certain matters it is impossible to make true generalisations. In character of the original sophisticated concrete structure had been structure. Then the existing facades with their small windows could individuals, intellectually and intuitively consider an architectonic issue cases where general regulations are necessary but they cannot be worded exposed to offer a contrast with the monumental nature of the facades. be demolished. The apartments could be extended and provided with embodies such a gigantic diversity of aspects that can be combined— correctly, the law lists the most common occurrences without therefore The new project was intended to create an art museum with room for fantastic views. What was particularly valuable was that the solution cultural, technical, ethical, personal, historical and economic—and in being unaware of the risk of mistakes. What is more he seems to believe experimentation and free discussion of aesthetics. It was to be open they proposed meant that the tenants could go on living in the blocks themselves have invincible wealth and depth. that it is impossible to make laws on certain matters. And that is why we from noon to midnight. The architects’ response to their task: “Behind while the building work needed to develop them was taking place. The fact that the social order also requires regulations poses no need official judgements. the monumental facades, the interior of the building resembled a The new additions were constructed of prefabricated units. contradiction but they are a necessity when, as is often the case, there In a famous passage that touches on our subject Aristotle writes: magnificent industrial wasteland: the volumes are astonishing, the In case, the references above to the works of Lacaton Vassal is neither the possibility nor the scope for the close study that is in natural light is omnipresent and fulsome and knowingly implemented are misunderstood as suggesting that what is virtuous in their itself desirable. Much of our contemporary architecture seems to be “For when the thing is indefinite the rule is also indefinite, like the by the great overhead skylights and wide bays set out on the facades: approach only concerns social and economic features, other projects have been designed according to current formulae to fulfil the demands leaden rule used in making the Lesbian moulding; the rule adapts demonstrate the opposite. Their project in Vienna for Architektur of some economic trend. And a great deal is already embedded in the itself to the shape of the stone and is not rigid, and so too the decree “To utilize what exists, not to transform it. To make the most out Zentrum’s café in what used to be a 19th century stables involved digital software and production lines provided by industry. Seeking for is adapted to the facts.” of the building’s physical and aesthetic qualities. To preserve the the artistic transformation of the interior. The completed project enormous freedom of the spaces without partitioning them off retains the interior vaults and pillars of the original structure but 1 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten 3 2G Books: Lacaton & Vassal¸ Barcelona 2002 polygonal stones, which was not in itself restricted so as to permit a maximum spatial freedom and fluidity. To create the surfaces have been finished with colourful faience from Istanbul. Books, (translation by J Rykwert, N Leach R Tavenor) to Lesbos, or Lesbian mouldings, which had a twofold MIT, Press 1990. 4 Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle,V. 10. (Translation curve. porosity, to hear the rain, see the sunshine come in, see the city, This lively interior, only partly visible from outside, provides an by David Ross, revised by J. L. Ackrill and J. O. to increase the number of entrances so as to be more open and elegant and above all forceful contrast to the grave architecture of 2 Bearers of Meaning, John Onians, Princeton Urmson) World’s Classics, Oxford 1980). Translators welcoming.” the imperial stables. University Press 1990. are unsure whether the reference is to building with

10 11 Ornamental Topography: Interviews with Joseph Rykwert and Dalibor Vesely

Patrick Lynch

The interviews below form part of a research project that was exhibited j o s e p h r y k w e r t i n t e rv i e w at ly n c h ar c h it e c t s at The Venice Biennale in 2012 under David Chipperfield’s thematic London, 13 July 2012 topic ‘Common Ground’. Originally, I intended to publish them in a book accompanying the exhibition , but instead they became the pat r i c k ly n c h : As well as photographing the civic architecture of the soundtrack of a film, which we showed alongside some models and clubs and the grand palaces and the Royal Academy, David Grandorge photographs of our work in Westminster. The film was actually really a is also going to be photographing Victoria Street for our exhibition in visual essay comprising photographs of Piccadilly and Victoria Street by Venice, which is the kind of seeming complete opposite of this, just David Grandorge—contrasting their more or less ‘civic’ character—and utilitarian Road Engineering. Your book “The Idea of a Town” (1963) some drawings that illustrate some of the points made in my discussions was published at the time when the modern buildings of Victoria Street with Joseph and Dalibor, both of whom had been my tutors. This work were being built. Aldo van Eyck first published it in a magazine, is that wasn’t directly a part of the PhD that I was writing at this time, and right? in fact the interviews didn’t find their way into the final dissertation. However, the issues that arose in conversation with Joseph and Dalibor j o s e p h r y k w e r t : Yes, it was published as a special issue of ‘Forum’. were vital in developing my thinking about the problems of ‘traffic engineering’ in modern cities, and the successes and failures of our p l : Was that based in Holland? Victorian forefathers to incorporate new transport technologies into 19th century London. Aspects of this research found their way into j r : Yes, that was a Dutch magazine. Mimesis, a book about the work of Lynch Architects (published by Artifice Books on Architecture, 2015), andCivic Ground (Artifice, 2017). p l : Right. And did he commission it from you? The discussions below were inspired by two observations. Firstly, that Rykwert’s The Idea of a Town seemed to have been written as a rebuke j r : No, I had written it. And it was sort of awkward because it was to road engineering based urban design; and secondly, that Vesely’s neither long enough to be a book, nor short enough to be an article. So emphasis that the disruptive effects of ‘railway systems’ on parts of it was the right length for a special issue of a magazine. London led in part to the phenomenon of ‘the urban fragment’. Dalibor saw the resultant destruction of continuity in urban settings not solely p l : And is that how you met Aldo van Eyck and became friends? as lamentable, but also as the spur for architecture’s possible creative redemption: ‘the ambiguity of the fragment’, he enigmatically declared, j r : I had met him before, but just on the off chance I showed him the points two ways, not only towards what is lost, but also suggests also ‘a essay, and I said ‘Would ‘Forum’ be interested?’ and he immediately said new restorative power relevant to our culture as a whole’. Dalibor Vesely yes. And he made it a special edition. passed away in March 2015. p l : It must have chimed with him, I imagine, because he was publishing the playgrounds and other things that he was doing.

j r : I already knew the playgrounds. But there was also a connection through Siegfried Giedion.

p l : When you were writing “The Idea of a Town” it must have been quite an unusual thing for somebody teaching architecture to do? How was it received?

j r : Well, it didn’t have many reviews. It had one cold but respectful review in the Times Literary Supplement. I rang a friend of mine and said that’s what happened, and he said how long was it, and I said three columns and he said, what was the tone? I said, “he referred to me as

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Doctor throughout.” He said, “it’s all right” (laughs). And indeed it was, p l : Was urbanism being taught in any way that dealt with the p l : Do you think is that something to do with the war? The fact that are kind of yearning and straining to have meaning? That sculptural as a result of that I got a contract with Faber and Faber. anthropology of the antique city? things had been destroyed and needed to be rebuilt, and the people that form stands in for a sort of meaningful human habitat? were doing it had been sappers in the war, and had been building bridges p l : In the introduction to the book, which was written a few years later, j r : Nobody thought of anthropology and the connection. That was and, a kind of Napoleonic background perhaps? j r : I wouldn’t say that they wanted to create meaningful human you use the phrase “road-engineering”. why my book became an odd one out. Because architects thought that habitat, they want buildings to be separate objects interconnected by the only people who could tell them what to do were sociologists. They j r : Well, it’s a nice thought anyway. traffic lanes. The individuality of the building then becomes paramount; j r : Well, we now say “traffic engineering” of course. didn’t realise that sociologists can tell them why things are bad but they and of course the taller the building, the more traffic-bound the access can’t tell them how to get them right. That’s what sociology is about. p l : I don’t know if it’s true or not, but apparently when Napoleon ruled to it is. In fact the people who now govern the access areas of tall p l : Right. And you say specifically that town planning, as thought of Venice it was his wife who said to him “You know you can’t just rule, buildings are traffic engineers, so they are back in charge, as it were. today, is largely a matter of traffic engineering, road engineering, but p l : So when the book was published a few years later, was it well you need to be seen to be ruling”; and so she persuaded who him to host I don’t know whether you’ve looked at the project for the Kingdom in the past it meant so much more. Were you referring to anybody received? balls and this led to the destruction of Sansovino’s little church, San Tower in Jeddah? in particular, or just the general climate of local council planning Andrea, and the building of the fourth wing of the Piazza San Marco to departments? j r : It had a more welcoming reception. house a ballroom. p l : No. j r : No. The general climate was that the important thing was that p l : From the architectural press or the general academic or public? j r : Called the Napoleonic wing. j r : Well, the original tower was to be a mile high, but the engineers told traffic should be allowed to go through as fast as possible and as them that wasn’t really a very sensible idea, so it’s now only going to be expeditiously as possible. j r : It had a friendly reception from classicists and, and from one or two p l : He was an engineer, you know, wasn’t he? He was a sapper? a kilometre high. So it’s going to be the tallest building in the world. anthropologists. The architectural community wasn’t terribly interested And if you look, it’s set in a suburb which is generated by the building. p l : Really? Was that a kind of ideology? in it until later. j r : Napoleon was an engineer, yes. I suppose Josephine was part of But it’s totally isolated from any of the neighbouring buildings, of that, but it was Fontaine who, when Napoleon said that he was going course, by traffic, traffic entrances. So there’s really a kind of crow’s foot j r : It was certainly an ideology, yes. p l : I know you did a PhD at the Royal College of Art, was it on Ancient to have the great works of art brought from Italy and exhibited at the coming down to the ground with traffic lanes coming in between the Rome? Invalides, it was Fontaine who said that it was a bad idea: which you toes of the crow’s foot. p l : Was there academic support for it? Did people write about it? didn’t say to the first consul. But Napoleon listened. So the flags went to j r : No, my PhD at the Royal College of Art was on published writings. the Invalides, and the works of art went to the Louvre. p l : But it’s this strange yearning for symbolism that’s odd about it, it’s j r : There was a certain amount of academic support for it, yes. I mean, It was not on any specific thesis. It was a doctorate by supplication. like a kind of scientist’s idea of a poem. the for the idea; there were a number of books published about that time p l : One thing that is difficult to explain to architects and architecture about traffic in cities and, well, of course there was ‘Traffic in Towns’ p l : How did you go from being an architect to knowing enough about students today, who mostly think the modern period started with j r : Well it is a bit like that, isn’t it? It’s like the idea of making a (1963) by Professor Colin Buchanan and the work of Geoffrey Copcutt the ancient world to have a command of it? railways or the Bauhaus, is that one of your other—of many—major hotel that is the shape of a sail, and it’s what you might call “why at Cumbernauld (1956). contributions to our subject has been to reveal in your book “The not?” symbolism: “Why not in the shape of a sail?” There’s no idea of j r : Well, I read a lot of books, which helped. And I got involved in an First Moderns: The Architects of the Eighteenth Century” (1980) that necessity. p l : And were you writing consciously against this… excavation in Rome working for a great archaeologist called Frank Brown, in fact the modern period began much earlier. The modern tendency who was wonderful, but is now largely forgotten. He was a very important towards collecting stuff in museums and organising the state around p l : No. Nor of use, or pragmatism, and the anthropological aspects j r : No, I think his book came out after mine, in fact. archaeologist. He did the excavation of the Roman forum and he did the a militaristic idea stripped of some of the ritualistic aspects of Roman of the Roman town reveal that the bodily and the imaginary combine excavation of Doura-Europos in Syria. So, I learnt a lot from him. culture, goes back to Napoleon and Frederick the Great and these together to create a setting that is satisfactory and recognisable and p l : But the general tone of the times was… kind of modernising figures. I don’t know if it’s too trite or pat to say stable and able to cope with the ephemeral character of human events, p l : You made a connection between the ritualistic uses of the ancient this, but it strikes me that this attitude towards people that military and the memorial ones. j r : The general tone of the times was that traffic must be allowed to city and the problems of the modern city neglecting of that aspect of commanders take in times of war—which is that they are a kind of flow, and the traffic is the important thing. There was, I remember, life? goods to be shoved around—is a form of functionalism of a very mean j r : Of course; the main street (of a Roman Town) is called axle a German book called “Die Autogerechte Stadt”, in which rooftops character. What has now happened to architecture now is that it has (Cardo) and the cross street was called something divided into twelve were turned into roadways and interconnections were roundabouts j r : Well, I thought that one of the fundamental misunderstandings was retained some of the formalistic characteristics of functionalism as a (Decumanus); a twelvesome thing, because it was a representation of the in between them. The whole idea was that you got the traffic off the that people treated the orthogonally planned Roman city as a kind of style, but that cities have lost a connection between where food comes passage of the sun through the twelve hours. ground but on rooftops. solidified military camp; whereas the truth was that the Roman military from and how you make things, etc. We seem to be living in a kind of camp was a kind of portable city. What the Romans did when they got strange period where architecture is outwardly modern still, in the sense p l : The Decumanus. p l : It sounds like science fiction. to a place was they put down Rome. And the Rome they put down was a that technology is still seen as something socially progressive—at least diagram which was carried on as ritual. it’s argued to be the case by some people—but architecture’s appearance j r : Round the axle, the Cardo, or the axle, around which the sun j r : Well, of course it never got to execution of any kind, even small is now almost completely disconnected from function. In contrast, the turned. track, but you can imagine you either do the whole thing, you either do p l : And so people’s reading of the Roman camp as militaristic was Roman camp was both an absolutely pragmatic and a symbolic concern. a whole town that way or… You can’t do bits. justification for turning modern cities into one? If in the 1950s we had the practical without the symbolic aspects of the p l : And these towers in Jeddah and the like, they’re, perhaps because of city; we now have a kind of symbolic architecture without the practical the fossil fuel that’s in the ground, they tend to have no real relationship p l : And do you think that architects were being influenced by this? j r : Yes, that’s, that was the way cities were understood, so it fitted. The condition relating appearance to use. At the end of your last book The to the natural world beyond a kind of symbolism of sails and stuff… militaristic, the idea that the city was a camp simply made into dwellings Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts (2008) you talk about j r : Oh yes. fitted the idea of traffic engineering and all that, fitted the idea, the way ‘Emirates Style’. I wonder if you mean that people are attempting to j r : People in Jeddah, want to—not in Jeddah so much—but in Dubai, people thought about cities. create cities based on transport infrastructure and then buildings that people want to ski and play golf. Have you ever looked at the website

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site of Dubai? They advertise skiing in Dubai. Well, you know, it’s phenomenon is Detroit, which, after the bankruptcy of General Motors dal i b o r v e s e ly i n t e rv i e w at christopher l o d g e , h i g h gat e one of Camden, and one of Southwark. Southwark is a perfect not really a land of lawns and snowdrifts, so, you have to make them went down there are a number of squatter-occupied high rises, and bits London 23rd July 2012 illustration of the problem. When you are there you get the message. artificially. So, I don’t think you have a direct contact with local nature of it are being greened, actively, and Detroit is now the biggest producer You have a feeling that the trains are going over your head. You are there. of honey in the United States. So bees are coming back in! One week or so after speaking with Joseph at our offices in Clerkenwell, practically underneath, it’s all up there (points upward) but it’s not here I visited Dalibor at his apartment building on Avenue Road in (indicates ground). Here is the market and over that the trains doing p l : If there’s a tendency within the human species to want to connect p l : The bees were dying a couple of years ago, and it’s weird because it’s Highgate, designed by the modernist architect Douglas Stephenson. their job, going their own speed and so on. This is obviously a way of their daily lives to some cosmic dimension and time, there also seems to not just producing food, it’s producing honey, which is a specific type of Dalibor received us, as he always did, in his study, seemingly fresh thinking, a system. There can be no spontaneity in a closed system like a be another dimension of the human species to want to escape from that. food, a delicacy. I don’t know, it seems to me that nothing human beings from writing. The rest of his flat was a mystery, although the kitchen railway, unlike in a city. The kind of skiing in the desert because ‘why not’? Do you think that do can lack symbolic content… was visible from through a serving hatch guarded by a drinks tray. The the ‘why not’ is… study doubled as a sort of living room, with built-in soft furnishings p l : As you know, for the past six years I have been working on a number j r : No, and certainly, there are no non-representational buildings. largely devoted however to stacks of books. Dagmar Weston wrote of projects on Victoria Street, where the rail system and the draining of j r : It’s a way of asserting, your dominion over nature. It’s making about the apartment’s decor, designed by Dalibor, for ‘The Cultural the marshes by the creation of The Albert Embankment in 1860 led to yourself bigger and grander and more powerful than what you’re p l : Yes. Significance of Architecture’ symposium held in Dalibor’s memory the creation of a new part of London that was somewhat un-planned as constrained by in the natural world. And that, of course, means also at Cambridge in April 2015 . I must admit that my encounter with ‘architecture’, in contrast to the Georgian district of Belgravia which it that you are independent in terms of nurture and all that. That is, all of j r : All buildings are representative, and they represent to us what DV at his flat was fraught with anxiety, as I used to meet him there neighbours. Victoria is dominated by transport connections, rain and that completely goes by the board. I mean all the food in Dubai must we, what we think we are, what we think we value. So, the Shard is a sometimes for supervisions, as his graduate student; and the memory bus stations, and by monolithic mid- 20th century office buildings that be imported, and some of it would be imported from very far away. You representation of the dominance of capital. I know that Renzo Piano has of these conversations are laden with shame at my ignorance and with cut Victoria Street off from its quite rich and diverse hinterland to the know this odd phenomenon? You must have seen these flower sellers at been going on about how it’s like a church spire, and so on, but actually, gratitude for his patience. His desk used to sit in the shade towards north and south. Yet Victoria Street leads to the most important civic traffic lights? They’re selling roses relatively cheaply; in Venice Indian it represents the dominance of the capital which built it, the developer the door, facing the long horizontal window and the view south down buildings in Britain. flower sellers go round with these very long-stemmed roses, and they and the Qatari royal family who occupy large parts of it, as they occupy the hill towards central London. This view is what DV refers to below, all come from Kenya or, they come from places very near the Equator, One Hyde Park and they occupy, and they now own Harrods, so they’re specifically the high street at Crouch End. dv : What is interesting about Victoria is that despite all of the artificial where the stems, can grow naturally straight. So it’s Ecuador, Kenya, playing Monopoly with London, as many people have already remarked. intentions, mostly of the engineers, who created it still has a certain parts of Brazil that are rose farms. I don’t know how this whole thing They represent, in fact, the power of fossil fuels, if you like. pat r i c k ly n c h : In your book ‘Architecture in the Age of Divided degree of traditional urbanity. Not quite traditional urbanity perhaps, works because it seems to me fiscally crazy, but apparently they are Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of but ‘tradition of urbanity’. So, Victoria Street was, at the beginning imported. p l : Can you imagine somewhere between that grand symbolic or cod- Production’ (2004) you talk about the difficult relationships and certainly, it is, perhaps not as much now, nonetheless, very, urban. Just symbolic architecture on the one hand, and a grassroots movement of fundamental differences between ‘Architectural Situations and before the Cubbit brothers created Belgravia (1820 onwards), they p l : So even within the world of road engineering, the natural world people who aren’t architects greening the city via farms? Do you think Engineering Systems’. had been commissioned and involved in building the London docks, comes back in a kind of motif? there might be the possibility of a form of architecture that deals with and they transported land that they dug up there to fill in the marshes the civic and representational and everyday and business-like aspects dal i b o r v e s e ly : Systems are closed, situations are open. Systems, due around Victoria. But Belgravia is made up of squares, gardens, and is j r : Yes. of the city, having any credibility? Or is praxis embroiled in too many to their hermetically closed nature excluding any external intervention, mostly residential; there is very little street life, no shops, etc. Whereas compromises? can be seen as paradigms of modern technology. This can be illustrated Victoria is a street: Victoria Street. Also, keep in mind that it was p l : Do you think that we knew about the ecological problem in the by two photographs of railway lines cutting through London. There’s created in a time (1860s) when there is a great deal of knowledge about 1970s because of the writings of Mary Douglas? And that generation j r : Well, I mean that’s where we as architects should come in, because of architects in the 70s like van Eyck and Hertzberger and some of the there are a lot of people interested in greening the city, some who Germans, Thomas Herzog, were attempting to create a kind of proto- aren’t even architects; but none of them see, so far that I have seen, ecological architecture, but it was forgotten about by postmodernism none of them have imagined it in architectonic terms; they’ve seen it that only dealt with a kind of semiotics of the past as style, rather than as a problem of the greening of the city, but I think it’s now, for your as anthropology, and then a kind of Supermodernism that replaced that generation, to see it in terms of the architecture you produce. Po-Mo which is similarly in denial of stuff that we’ve known about for at least thirty years. j r : Oh yes, I think the whole thing has been passed by. Mary’s “Purity and Danger” came out in 1966, so it’s all been on record for quite a long time. p l : What’s going to happen next, do you think? j r : Well, I think we’re waiting for a crisis, aren’t we? One of the interesting phenomena that we are not looking at is squatter occupation of high-rise buildings. I’ve only seen one really important one, really big high-rise—that was in Recife in Brazil—but I’m told in Johannesburg there are high-rise quarters, which are inaccessible because they’re entirely squatter and criminally occupied. And you know the great Caption left: A long caption long long long long Caption right: A short caption

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how to make modern cities, with developments in Paris to start with, always seen in oscillation with the setting. So, the situation is reflected p l : It’s actually originally from Plato in ‘The Laws’, writing about the next stage where I would situate things like libraries, or anything developments in Vienna etc. The Parisian example was very, strong. That in the building; the building eventually contributes to the character and theatre, which Alberti picks up on, but I think Plato is actually talking which is to do with conversations, academic life and so on. You want to the Parisians can build a new Paris so quickly, and so well, was quite identity, nature, of the particular place, the setting. The city is far broader about scale as metaphor… be on a street or close to it, but you don’t want to be part of the street successful almost from the very beginning. The ‘Haussmannisation’ and much more primary than individual buildings. When people talk life itself, in the full sense. You want to be slightly withdrawn from it; of Paris was very successful, relatively speaking, due to the preserved about civic pride, and civic life, civility, etc., this is only partly to do with dv : Well, you touch on something that becomes clear later in Aristotle’s a library is a place where you want to concentrate. It’d be very difficult sections of the city between the interventions. And so there was a kind architecture: it refers to politics, to social issues, religious issues, other distinction, that you obviously know, of micro and macrocosms. What to read books on Piccadilly Circus. Ideally you’d prefer a courtyard of precedent, that you find in several places in London, for instance, the fields of culture. So I ask the question, when it comes to a street like the is true for the micro is also true, but in a different way, for the macro, somewhere, or a garden; a place where it’s accessible—close to the street Kingsway. Kingsway goes down to Aldwych. It’s a cut that was supposed Rue de Cascades for instance in Paris: “Who made it?” Architects? Who and the other way around. But anyway, it doesn’t matter, the fact is and where you need it. But in a particular spectrum, schools, hospitals— to go further, but didn’t go beyond Russell Square; it stops there. But, are they? Can you name them? Mention any? Some of them you can, but that the belief that ‘A house is a small city, and city is a large house’ is think about it—you know, each of them, if you take the list of things at the beginning of it, as you come across to Aldwych you can see there only very few. The street has been made out of all the contributions that profoundly misleading and a very, very dangerous point of departure. that are in the city, and before you start looking at the city just ask, ‘what is suddenly a very different way of thinking, scale, sense of urbanity and contribute to the life of the street; they are not just architects, they are If a city is just a large house, people take it for granted that a city can be would be the appropriate situation for them?’ How would you situate so on. It’s quite interesting to compare the late Victorian interventions shopkeepers and professionals and lawyers and doctors and you can go then designed as a house, just larger. That’s exactly the problem, it isn’t? them? You get a whole spectrum of levels, and if you simplify terribly in London, with urbanity in mind, what happened later. There are many on and on, the list is very long, like the Yellow Pages! These are all people Because, as you know, a house is a house. Two houses, three houses, five you should probably end up with at least four or five different situations places, for example, Camden Town, where, compared with what it is who are living and working and surviving very nicely in the city: they houses make already something that is a segment of the city. But then in the city itself. And now you can go back to the drawing board and ask today, was a ‘town’: now it’s a little bit of a village. There were trams make it. How many architects’ firms are in the yellow books? Hardly any; we come to the question of something, which can mediate between how the city could be structured so all that is accommodated in such a coming around, and a lot of life around the streets, they’re almost like very few. So, when the oscillation and the primacy of the setting—the them, because something has to mediate between them, something way that everything in these categories has its own place, in such a way boulevards. So, the Victorians created a very dense piece of urbanity. It situation—is suppressed, or is ignored, or is not taken seriously, then has to hold it together, something has to bring them into coherence: that they don’t interfere, that they don’t collide, that they harmonise, is very interesting. You find segments, just segments, or even fragments, you’re dealing with buildings as pieces, with architecture as a sort of What is it? It doesn’t come from the house—it’s not an entrance space, that they exist together as a city? That’s where you get to what I call fragments of late 19th century urbanity even here in Highgate, just not object. At that point, of course, you’re dealing with fragment. Now comes it’s not a corridor—it has to be on a different level, a higher level and good ‘urban configurations’, or ‘urban paradigmatic structures’, or far from here, down the bottom of the hill in Crouch End. Crouch End, an even more interesting issue and question, that even then a fragment scale. That’s where the notion of street, broadly speaking, comes into ‘paradigmatic situations’. That’s where you get courtyards, mews, as you come down the hill, has this tower, on the right hand side, this potentially refers to the whole—still refers to some kind of a setting. existence. The street is a very complex operation because it brings secondary streets, primary streets, where you get parks, where you get kind of little open space, which is like a kind of little piazza or square. Even when today people, average designers, they do a building they still, together buildings but also communicates between other parts of the gardens, where you get ‘street’ proper, and so on and so on. You get a sometimes not consciously—and it doesn’t matter if it’s conscious or city. So, it’s a part of a locality, it establishes its identity in reference whole spectrum of possibilities that people obviously discovered and p l : Is it a church tower? Or a town hall? not—they do make reference to something which is beyond the scale to the unique concreteness of a particular type or particular kind of cultivated in history. You can add to it, you can interpret it further, but and scope of the building itself. And what I mean by that is they don’t building … and the sequence of entry in open continuity to the rest we’ve a long way to go to come anywhere near it nowadays, because dv : No, it is just a clock tower, but there is a tower on the town hall necessarily refer to it as “fabric”, not referring, beyond the scale of of the fabric of the city itself. There is more to it because then we’re all that experience and wisdom has been thrown out the window. All emphasising its public presence. That sort of attitude towards making a architecture and the scope of architecture. But it’s not just the city in its coming close to what is ‘street’, and what is behind the street, because we have done is substituted it with zoning. That’s as crude as a city can town goes up to the nineteen twenties and thirties and we still live and visible form that constitutes the setting for architecture but the culture not everything is ‘street’. Streets constitute configurations, which be. That creates basically closed worlds and ghettoes—large, isolated operate in shadow of that. A street made of Victorian apartment houses, of the city and culture as such that matters, because culture exists in the eventually create a zone of interiority, an internal world. I refer to this fragments separate from the overall fabric of the city. Co-existence, co- not town houses, apartment houses, with shops on the ground level. The cities and around cities. There is no such thing as a culture that would not as ‘urban interior’. There is an urban exterior and urban interior, which operation, continuity, harmony, coherence, all that is not part of the city whole street is treated as a street proper, with proper urban density. have at least an indirect presence, or source, in the fabric of the city. Cities opens a very interesting problem and an interesting question. Looking as a whole nowadays. It’s not easy to even contemplate anything else are primarily the embodiment of culture. at it as a whole, it’s almost common sense: in one way it’s so obvious, in sometimes. So, part of the problem is to acknowledge that the long-term p l : In your book you also talk about the ‘rehabilitatory’ role of another sense it’s so incomprehensible to our way of thinking that the cultivation of urban configuration, well established already, reasserts ‘fragment’ in modern architecture, part of which can be seen in attempts p l : Not many contemporary architects seem to be primarily interested notion of ‘situatedness’ is differentiated, and ‘situatedness’ and situated itself. to re-situate technology in the city. in the city in the way in which you’re talking about it, as a setting for means—somewhere with a particular character, particular qualities, architecture? particular possibilities and limits. Things in the city, the whole spectrum p l : Are you saying that the street is the primary architectural setting, dv : The fragment comes from much deeper levels than that, the of things that are in the city, have at least two, three, or maybe even that it is the basis of civic design? technology is too late for that. Fragmentation starts much earlier; it starts dv : Well, the best demonstration of that is this: can you imagine more, different levels of requirements and expectations. Shops want to at the point where the sense of situatedness of individual buildings in taking four, five, or, whatever number you choose, of signature, iconic be as much outside as possible so people know about them and they can dv : A provocative example is the treatment of streets as a primary a context is lost, and gradually comes to the point in the 19th century, buildings and making a street out of them? Can you make a street out advertise themselves. Shops inside a courtyard is a lost case, isn’t it? You vehicle and mediating link or paradigm of the urban structure. The where a large proportion of what’s happening in cities is done as infill, if it? The authors do not want that. Not one of their buildings want to would have to know about it, so it’s against the commercial nature of 19th century still understood that the street is important; so you don’t filling gaps. That’s more or less what you find in places like Victoria Street be part of a street, it wants to be on its own, a unique piece, it wants the shop. The shop wants to be outside. A workshop doesn’t need to be abolish it, you’re still working with the street, it doesn’t matter how and elsewhere. The important thing is that we don’t probably appreciate to be different. They don’t connect because they are treated as self- outside. It used to be part of the street, of course, but gradually, when bad the street has already become—sterile, empty, etc. I’m thinking of enough the fact that until probably the beginning of the 19th century, as referential or intro-referential operations. They don’t have dimensions the city became more differentiated, the workshop on the street became Amsterdam and Berlage, this late Beaux Arts kind of planning where late as that, architecture was not seen, really, as isolated objects and pieces. that could connect and communicate and open and create continuities a bit of a nuisance. You still find it in oriental cities, but even then they there is nothing but urbanity of a highly reduced sort of complexity Before that, the pieces were always seen as part of something. You built in or relationship or references… and therefore, the notion of a street is would be slightly behind the scenes, either in the back of the shop or where you’ve got urban structure, you’ve got all the squares, all the a particular manner because you were in a particular part of the town. The something which is subordinated to a different scale, different criteria. somewhere slightly hidden. But anyway, this doesn’t change the primary parks, you’ve got all the streets, and secondary streets and so on, but it’s setting that was already there predetermined what you can and what you And that’s exactly where I think the difference between architecture argument that these things in the city are particular conditions. Firstly, all residential. There is no room for workshop and schools or libraries… cannot do. You cannot build a particular kind of very large or complex design and urban design is, really. The trouble is that we still treat one group of things are shops; a second territory, different from shops, But, come the 20th century, the street is abolished and as a result it is or grandiose building on a periphery somewhere, or in the wrong urban design as an extension of architectural design, just on a large- are workshops, studios, ateliers, a whole spectrum of places where a not there. The street is gone, and nothing is there to substitute it in place, an industrial street or craftsmens’ street etc. One can see that, up scale. There is an unfortunate, and mostly misunderstood, quotation certain amount of noise, a certain amount of disruption etc., is possible, architectural thinking. The complexity of its realm is not substituted, to that time, the formation of what we call architecture is individual from Alberti: ‘A house is a small city, and city is a large house.’ The but it doesn’t have to be part of the fully explicit public zone, the public it’s substituted piecemeal, one bit at a time, etc. Traffic replaces contributions always situated in a particular context. Architecture is consequences of this statement are most unfortunate. life of the street. You can go on and on through the list, and you get to streets, so roads take over the streets, and eventually commercial

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life is transferred into commercial centres, shopping centres, based This has not been destroyed, only part of it, on the perimeter. The main the notion of order: and order, in the original term for it, is ‘kosmos’. lost, and today architects try to make their buildings into sculptures. on roads, and motorways. The street is taken apart and its different body of the interior of Paris was preserved. You can see it even today; It’s interesting that Cosmos can be translated into Latin as ‘ornament’: Sometimes though, modern architects placed sculpture in the exterior aspects, different segments, dimensions, are treated as isolated issues the most explicit demonstration of it are, of course, the passages, the Ornate, ornament, order, cosmesis. Because Cosmos is ordering, and it’s territory of their buildings as something to try to signify ‘publicness’ or, in their own right. But the problem, of course, remains: because the galeries. You can go through the galeries around Palais Royal for hours. still preserved in the current term ‘cosmetics’. You order yourself for a perhaps to try to articulate some unity between the ‘Common Ground’ coherence, how buildings come together, how they constitute one You can go inside, from inside you cross the boulevard and into another particular purpose; you paint your face. You re-order yourself. And so of the city and individual buildings. This used to be the case for public piece, a wholeness, a continuum, a city, is not answered. But then in passage and so it goes. You can spend time in the interior, ninety percent on. So anyway, in Ancient Greek cities, the people responsible for order buildings like libraries, for example. the late 20th century almost everybody began to speak and write about of your journey. So, that actually saved the life of Paris. Basically, what are referred to in Greek as ‘kosmetes’. urban density, and the street is back, the street is back! I can illustrate happened is that the suppressed possibilities of life in the inner areas dv : Many libraries, if not most, would have this distinction between this change by a short story from my own life. In Prague we had a group and in the overall fabric of Paris was retained, such that if you cut p l : Who are they, sorry? their public face, their exteriority, and their interiority. Sandy’s (Colin taking part in competitions. We called our group ‘The Continualists’. somewhere you just bring out life into the boulevards. That’s exactly St John Wilson’s) British Library has that; there’s a public piazza or what happened. And it’s still working today. When you come to the dv : Police! Policemen. Well, the people who were responsible for forecourt, then you come to the vestibule, that’s still a very busy, noisy p l : Was this in Prague? Faubourg, in particular Faubourg Saint-Antoine, for instance, you can keeping the order in the cities. Because there are certain rules about public place. Then you get to the coffee shop in the back and so on. So walk—not through passages because they’re not passages—but through what you do in the agora; there are certain things, which you cannot on that level you are very much in a public zone, very open. And then dv : Yes it was in Prague in the 1960s. We did a competition for one courtyards. And you can turn inside the block, and you can go through do there for instance, and what you can do. And so the keepers of order you move from that through the set of transparent doors into a different of the satellite cities on the outskirts of town, and one of the critical the blocks from one to another to another and another, and you still are called kosmetes. So, eventually, within that term, is ornament. world; the reading rooms. In the ‘piazza’ there is a sculpture by Eduardo things we did was to create a street there, a proper street. But this was a find today workshops and other small enterprises there. That’s where Ornament is ordering. Ornament is a language which is mediating Paolozzi, based upon William Blake’s sketch, of Newton. This is, for complete waste of time. The jury just said ‘A street? What do you mean?’ the workshops originally were and they still are. There was a territory between the different levels of reality, and brings things into coherence the British, probably quite a powerful symbol, never mind that Newton We got second prize, because it was quite well represented. But now the where the cabinetmakers used to operate from, and probably, to some and harmony and co-existence. It’s an ordering principle, bringing was a very problematic personality. The piazza brings the library out street is here, the street is back! But usually in the manner of two lines. extent, still are, making and repairing furniture. So there are dozens of things into overall order. That’s why you ornate something; because you and the city in; creates a space of mediation where a number of things, The street is simply in between, so to speak, and it’s lined by buildings. workshops in those courtyards, all slightly different and differentiated are referring to something beyond its own presence. That’s what people partly predictable and partly unpredictable, if possible, can take place. But that doesn’t make a street! We’ve forgotten the setting of the street from say the main Rue de Faubourg Saint Antoine or any other don’t appreciate anymore in the modern term ‘ornament’, that ornament A good analogy is to think of the space in front of Beaubourg in Paris in the context of the city. boulevard, where there are markets and God knows what. Obviously, is not there just to embellish something, to make it more interesting. It (Centre Pompidou), where the piazza is. I remember, when it was under in later development in the 19th century and during the 20th century, a makes it more interesting, but interesting “for what?”… for a purpose. construction, I was talking to Richard Rogers and looking down from p l : The hinterland supports the life of a street. great deal of the diversity and the differentiation of the courtyards has In order to make it part of a larger whole, to situate it, and therefore the second floor onto to the huge piazza below, and he described to me been lost because they are now re-used to a great extent as residential. make it part of the overall order of things because it’s only from the his vision of this going to be the future flower market of Paris. That dv : The whole urban interior is there in the first place, without which But the notion of block is something that is very flexible and open; it has overall order of things that you can understand or derive the order of a was his intention. Obviously, it didn’t happen. But it’s probably quite the street would be of no meaning, would have no density of life. been in cities, working and making a lot of sense right the way through particular thing. good that it didn’t happen, because then it would be a monologue, just What people don’t realize is why, for instance, these radical, dramatic until the late 19th century. Because that would be the place where flowers…. So now it’s open to events, as they come and happen, and transformations of cities in the late 19th century, in Vienna, Brussels, people would situate their, you could call it their secondary level of life, p l : I think that it is interesting that architects used to place sculptures whatever happens, happens, and it’s sort of city space, which sometimes and a large number of French provincial cities. Most of them are or the third level of life, and eventually the very intimate personal life, on their buildings, not only to ornament them, but also to ornament is more interesting than the exhibitions inside. That’s fine. not terribly successful actually, most of them are very problematic, where there would be private gardens occasionally and so on. the part of the city that their buildings face. This has now mostly been piecemeal, never finished, and questionable. On the other hand, some of them are successful and, quite frankly, taking into consideration the p l : This layering of the city has obviously been lost by zoning laws absolutely dramatic change that took place in the ‘Haussmannisation’ but also lost is a layering of expression, of architectonic and cultural of Paris the result was quite successful actually. When you look at articulation. You make a connection in your book between the word the documents—not just the architectural drawings and plans for “Decorum” and its evolution from the Greek word ‘prepon’, meaning transformation, transport and all the rest—if you look at paintings, appropriateness. there are some boulevards, like the Boulevard des Italiens which I think 1 Common Ground Reader: Venice 4 ‘Architecture and the Ambiguity of 6 I discussed Vesely’s visit to Centre was begun in around 1870 and I think finished by 1880/82, Pissarro dv : What we have said about the appropriate, right, corresponding – Biennale of Architecture 2012, ed. Fragment’, Dalibor Vesely, in The Idea Pompidou and his reaction to it in is renting a flat at the corner of Boulevard des Italiens. And from his location, situatedness of particular things in the structure of the city is a David Chipperfield, Kieran Long of the City, ed. Robin Middleton, MIT my contribution to The Cultural window he painted the boulevard about ten times. He was obviously question of being proper. And proper, of course, eventually is Decorum, and Shumi Bose, Marsilio, 2012. My Press, 1996, pp. 115-6. Significance of Architecture: A contribution to this was ultimately conference in memory of Dalibor fascinated by qualities that just look like today. The trees are already and Decorum means something that fits the purpose. Decorum is entitled ‘Brick Love’, a memoir of 5 ‘Dalibor Vesely’s Flat: Dwelling as Vesely, 11 April 2016, Emmanuel there, the life is full, transport is going on, and so on and so on. It’s when you’re dressing for a particular event: you can be overdressed or working with my father on building a Communicative Field’, Dagmar College Cambridge, ‘Hand Drawings’. sites. Weston, unpublished paper, delivered The paper can be viewed and just full Parisian life. So, why? If you look at the Haussmann plan it’s underdressed, because you’re missing the Decorum of the event. at The Cultural Significance of downloaded here: http://www.arct. obviously quite drastic, and he may not have been aware what he has Vitruvius confused the term Decorum. He subordinated Decorum 2 The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology Architecture: A conference in cam.ac.uk/aboutthedepartment/ actually done. As it happened by many, many reasons of coincidence, to décor generally—that’s a term that we use isn’t it? But in a kind of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and memory of Dalibor Vesely, 11 April dalibor-vesely-fund/dalibor- the Ancient World, Joseph Rykwert, 2016, Emmanuel College Cambridge. vesely-memorial-conference/ the Parisian fabric is still there, because he was doing it piecemeal, he of rather confused way because Vitruvius doesn’t make its meaning Faber, 2011 (1963). The paper can be viewed and session-3-legacy-new-horizons/p- was doing cuts, trying to go through impenetrable segments of the clear. And yet Decorum belongs to the overall notion of order—which downloaded here: http://www.arct. lynch-presentation-dv-symposium- 3 Architecture in the Age of Divided cam.ac.uk/aboutthedepartment/ emmanuel-college-opt/view city, so the city can, as it were, can breathe and communicate. There are means what is proper, etc. Decorum is order as a whole; it fits into the Representation: The Question dalibor-vesely-fund/dalibor- segments—I wouldn’t call it fragment—but segments, of boulevards overall order of things. And then you can also begin to understand or of Creativity in the Shadow of vesely-memorial-conference/ that remain. Occasionally they would leave them alone all together, but derive the meaning of terms like ‘common good’, and also questions Production, Dalibor Vesely, MIT, 2006, session-1-history-and-philosophy- pp.300-3. of-architecture/dalibors-flat-the- the important thing is that it’s intervention in such a way that it cuts like ‘what is good?’ Because the good is part of what fits the purpose of dwelling-as-a-communicative-field- into a block and leaves the secondary area, the urban interior alone. the whole, and responds to it. Decorum is, of course, subordinated to dweston/view

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e q u i c o r it volenim oluptam, illabo. Ut reictem fugit sequi si oditatiatur autem rendita quiaero e q u i c o r it volenim oluptam, illabo. Ut reictem fugit sequi si oditatiatur autem rendita quiaero ut harum autecta is alibere pligendem nestotat accupta errunt omniendit volorer ioreribus comnistia consequo et doluptatur sequam ut harum autecta is alibere pligendem nestotat accupta errunt omniendit volorer ioreribus comnistia consequo et doluptatur sequam omniminum culpa qui consequi dolorem rat. Ria nihitas nonseque possint ab int rempore mintior eperfernate eum resequideror omniminum culpa qui consequi dolorem rat. Ria nihitas nonseque possint ab int rempore mintior eperfernate eum resequideror esequunt acesequatur, is nonseque coris restem. Aquosa volorit atatur aut modi aut susdam fuga. Em accus sit, tem natesti isquia esequunt acesequatur, is nonseque coris restem. Aquosa volorit atatur aut modi aut susdam fuga. Em accus sit, tem natesti isquia inimolorum que lam fuga. Nemolor epeles volupta temperum sint facearu ptatiatquias volumqui dolum faccullabor maximusam inimolorum que lam fuga. Nemolor epeles volupta temperum sint facearu ptatiatquias volumqui dolum faccullabor maximusam arum re quam iusam quo te consequam, sum eos et et aciisquo que voluptatiis et voleces nos poribearum none lant. Ut es nem ipis arum re quam iusam quo te consequam, sum eos et et aciisquo que voluptatiis et voleces nos poribearum none lant. Ut es nem ipis eum quis parumquas vel invelene nem ex temquis ne apedi dis pernatem et et eatende dolorest aborem doluptam cus quatur? Soloreh eum quis parumquas vel invelene nem ex temquis ne apedi dis pernatem et et eatende dolorest aborem doluptam cus quatur? Soloreh essimin rerrum il mod mintur, in nonesti occae mporerumendi diorrorIgnis et volupis nihiciur enimporum a deserspicia aut maio verundi. essimin rerrum il mod mintur, in nonesti occae mporerumendi diorrorIgnis et volupis nihiciur enimporum a deserspicia aut maio verundi.

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