EXQUISITE CORPSES:
AN ARCHITECTURAL
MYSTERY
by Galo Canizares
Bachelors of Environmental Design
University of Colorado, 2010
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE
OF TECHNOLOGY
Submitted to the Department of Architecture in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of
Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
February 2014
MAR 2 6 2013
LIBRARIES
©2014 Galo Canizares. All rights reserved.
The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and
to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis
document in whole or in part in any medium now known or
hereafter created.
Signature redacted
Signature of Author:
...............
............
.....................................................
Department of Architecture
Signature redacted
C ertified by...q ............
----. .
. --...-.-- .
Arindam Dutta
Associate Professor of Architectural History
Thesis Supervisor
.........................................
. .......
Accepted by..........Signature
redacted
Takehiko Nagakura
Chair of the Department Committee on Graduate Students
I
Thesis Committee
Arindam Dutta
Associate Professor of Architectural History
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sheila Kennedy, AIA
Professor of the Practice of Architecture
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
William O'Brien Jr.
Assistant Professor of Architecture
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2
EXQUISITE CORPSES:
AN ARCHITECTURAL
MYSTERY
by Galo Canizares
Submitted to the Department ofArchitecture on January 15, 2014 in partialfuililmentof the
requirementsfor the Degree of Master ofArchitecture
Abstract
In 1937, writing about the parallels between mystery fiction and urban dwelling, Walter
Benjamin wrote, ""in times of terror, when everyone is something of a conspirator, everybody
will be in the position of having to play detective." That is to say that anxieties present within
the built environment often lead to a series of actions closely related to those undertaken by
detectives. Using this as a departure point, this project seeks to reconstitute a discussion of
meaning within architecture through the use of narrative, anachronous formal languages,
and literary devices. If we are to take the dismissal of postmodern architectural discussions
as a given, we can place meaning as an archaic subject matter limited to autonomous formal
readings (i.e. dialogues of surface, geometric complexity, etc) and non-existent in the context
of large architectural production (i.e. real estate development, efficiency in construction
methods, etc). However, revisiting linguistic analogies and a nostalgia for lost artifacts and
pairing them alongside contemporary concerns of urban dwelling and architectural agency,
we can re-establish culture-centric modes of architectural production (ones not limited to
parametric or positivistic attitudes).
By embracing the fictional dimension of an architectural project, and exploring the
limits of that fiction, Exquisite Corpses determines a more specific understanding of narrative
architecture, one that does not dismiss or marginalize the subject matter but augments it. A
fictional narrative suggests that contemporary discussions of meaning in architecture must
be taken to certain limits in order to promote agitations, explore morals, and even mediate
anxieties-much in the same way detective mysteries operate. While previous attempts at
promoting these themes rely largely on architecture ad extremum (read: paper architecture,
utopia) this project operates at the scale of the detective mystery or the parable. It sets up an
allegorical framework that situates Exquisite Corpses within the lineage of real projects with
heavy theoretical underpinnings (Tschumi's La Villette, Rossi's urban plazas), but also accepts
the dismissive value of fiction. Ultimately, the goal is to revisit a spectral dialogue excluded
from most contemporary architectural production, and suggest a probable methodology
around which to have discussions of collective memory, meaning, signification, and public
identity.
Thesis Supervisor
Arindam Dutta
Associate Professor of Architectural History
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3
4
EXQUISITE CORPSES:
AN ARCHITECTURAL
MYSTERY
5
Acknowledgments
I would like to offer my deepest thanks to Arindam Dutta for
being my co-conspirator on this journey, for inventing Mr.
White, and for enthusiastically pushing me to ask the important
questions of architecture. To Sheila Kennedy and Liam O'Brien,
my team of investigators without whom the case of Mr. White
would not have been as interesting.
To my friends and faculty in the architecture department, for
being so supportive of such an absurd endeavor. To Eric and
Kyle for all the fun times. To Michael, for all the encouragement,
feedback, and witty comments along the way.
And to my family, for blindly and lovingly supporting me in all
my bizarre experiments as I make my way through the world.
6
CONTENTS
Introduction:
Detectives and The Curious Case of Mr. White's
Exquisite Corpses
9
1. Reading Architecture
15
2. Real and Unreal
37
3. Paranoia
59
4. Representation
71
Appendix i:
Urban Monuments, an Unsolicited Proposal
79
Appendix ii:
An Exquisite Corpses Cheat Sheet
151
Appendix iii:
Notes and Bibliography
155
7
A Note on the Format
This book is a story about architecture. It is also a story about
a fictitious character who succumbs to madness in his quest
to find meaning in the built environment and his struggle to
constitute what was once labeled avant-garde. As a thesis, this
project begins and ends with questions about architectural
knowledge, identity, and multi-disciplinary potentials, but what
sets this endeavor apart is that it first and foremost questions the
reality of an architectural project. In order to productively visit
the key themes of this thesis, its contents have been organized
as follows: an introduction to the story followed by writings
on reading architecture, the real and the unreal, paranoia, and
representation. Throughout the writings, graphic representations
of the work produced in the course of this project will serve as
illustrations that will reinforce certain themes. The story itself
is not presented in prose because it is not complete, but will
eventually be published as a novella. The appendices at the end
can also be used as references and corollary documents to the
text.
8
INTRODUCTION
DETECTIVES AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF
MR. WHITE'S EXQUISITE CORPSES
"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.
One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom
one can neither resist nor understand."
- George Orwell, Why I Write
Detectives
"In times of terror, when everyone is something of a conspirator, everybody will be in the
position of having to play detective"
- Walter Benjamin
Why write a detective story about architecture? Because the detective mystery is a curious
architectural burlesque. In other words, we can say that to read a detective novel is analogous
to performing certain architectural acts. Within this genre, we encounter characters with great
attention to detail and deductive power, phantasmagoric urban settings, speculative futures,
and suspicious fragments which constitute a whole. Formally, the genre is itself a game of
quasi-architectural objects in which structure, characters, and settings play out different
roles. I argue that these roles result in creating content that is unmistakably architectonic
in character. However, beyond an architectural reading at the base level of the detective
mystery, we can also extract a deeper understanding of recurring themes and figures in the
literary history of the genre that parallel architectural notions of the uncanny, the sublime,
and the mythological. The detective mystery therefore can emerge as an allegorical tool for
the representation of a fictional architecture.
The narrative structure of the detective mystery is essentially an architectural project
executed in reverse, whereas the conceptualization of said mystery is a parallel analog. The
motive and act of catching the culprit can be likened to the concept or initial strategy-the
end of the book and the beginning of the project, respectively. On the one side, the story
begins with clues or fragments that eventually lead one to the motive and culprit, and on
the other, the architectural project becomes more and more detailed (or fragmented) as it
develops. This inverse relationship then swiftly changes into a parallel one when we delve
into the authorial process. The actual development and planning of the detective story by
the author mimics the development of the architectural project since both authors conceive
of the "ending first" then proceed to the details.1 The scalar funneling that happens in both
cases results in a cohe'rent artifact that must be understood at all scales.
We must also note that the crafting of the fictional narrative is an act largely
based on "gut feelings" not unlike a designers mysterious intuition.2 The fact that they are
INTRODUCTION
9
both creative acts allows both endeavors to function intuitively, but always with a set of
structural constraints stemming from the discipline. The comparisons drawn here are rooted
within larger questions of architecture's permeability, flexibility, and critical connections to
other disciplines (read: connections of criticality). Architecture's balance of structure and
intuition, though shared with other arts, establishes the potential for a double agency within
the field. That is to say to manifest a detective story about architecture can be equally read as
an architectural story about detectives.
In modern literature, there are few characters as predisposed to architectural
thought as the detective. He shares with the architect his method, technique, sharp eye,
deductive power, acute intuition, and diligence. 3 As a character living in a world of mystery
where everyone is a suspect and every detail is a clue, the detective must piece together the
strange details in order to form a cohesive argument for a motive. He deconstructs crime
scenes and with his cunning ability to look at all the (figurative) angles in a space or situation
recreates them three-sometimes even four-dimensionally. He is a master of his craft and
will always persevere through his task. There are no incomplete mysteries in literature, only
those incomplete in real life.
Carlo Salzani writes "Detection is the method of the flaneur, the archaeologist,
and the historian," in a comparison between the historian and the detective to which the
architect should be rightfully added. He continues, "the fact that the historian has to work
4
as a detective [is] because what he or she has to uncover in the past is a series of crimes."
By crimes he does not mean wrongdoings rather events carried out with certain political
agendas. The reconstituting of these events, not unlike Bernard Tschumi's Manhattan
Transcripts,present both a program for the architectural event and the key objects in play.
However, Tschumi in following the tradition of borrowing piecemeal from other disciplines,
was reluctant to use the noir drama as a whole. He writes "sometimes to really appreciate
architecture, you may even have to commit a murder," but the murder for him is an instance,
not a process.5 The murder mystery is the sum of all its parts, yet the Transcriptsonly focus on
one. As an expanded version of the Transcripts,the detective mystery carries out a completed
architectonic object with a motive/thesis, constructed details/clues, characters/architects,
and programs/victims.
The architect-detective, however, is a curious character when faced with the
question of authorship. A three-way bind presents us with whether the real architect is the
author, the detective, or the criminal. The author, charged with instrujmentalizing the story,
is the omnipresent architect insofar as he is the creator of the master narrative. The criminal,
craftsman of the crime, exists as an endgame doomed to fail, but often in charge of his own
fate; whether he chooses to leave clues or not, his traces form a map or diagram which must
10
be deciphered-Tschumi's strategy. The detective then is the precarious figure who follows
the traces, pieces them together and crafts the motive. The three characters therefore-and I
count the author as a character as he is primarily responsible for the architectonic quality of
the story-result in architectural concepts themselves. They operate together with a system
of checks and balances in a constant part-to-whole relationship.
The Curious Case of Mr. White's Exquisite Corpses
The story that unfolds within this project revolves around a detective and his struggle to
crack the case of the serial killer, Mr. White. Set in contemporary New York City, the
narrative follows the mysterious murders of four unrelated strangers during the summer
of 2013 amongst anxieties of terrorist attacks and the pervasiveness of virtual media. The
instances happened all in different subway stations along Broadway in midtown Manhattan,
but what was curious about these deaths was the way in which the victim died. Witnesses
at the scenes described fast, jerky movements, terminating in a rigor-mortis-like pose. The
detectives assigned to the case have an extremely difficult time deciphering the meaning of
these deaths until several discoveries are made.
The first discovery is a series of compounds in the victim's bloodstream that
suggest that the cause of death was a chemical reaction. That is to say that each victim was
forcefully injected with several compounds that resulted in the bizarre body movements
and involuntary poses. The medical examiner explains that not only were these deaths
premeditated, but they may have also been choreographed.
The second discovery is a small white object with a fingerprint on it. The fingerprint
belonged to a Charles White, an architect living in NYC. Upon searching Mr. White's
apartment, the detectives come across hundreds of drawings of a plan for the NYC subway
stations, small models labeled "monuments", and hundreds of journals in which Mr. White
wrote about architecture, philosophy, the city, and most notably chemistry. One of the
journals contained drawings of body parts being manipulated through chemical reactions.
The primary suspect then becomes the mysterious Mr. White. While at his
apartment, the police noticed that he had not been present in a long time. Though the
police make advances in the case, their inability to fully construe the logic and motives of
Mr. White frustrate them. As the story draws to a close, Mr. White remains at large.
Thesis
This thesis addresses two broad questions about the discipline of architecture:
INTRODUCTION
11
1. How do we (as architects, detectives, and the public) read architecture?
2. What is real and unreal in architecture?
These two questions are then fragmented into smaller topics including signification
in architecture: a revisitation of meaning, contemporary state of urban dwelling, and whether
it is possible to be avant-garde today. The following chapters seek to unpack these themes in
more detail, and outline the methodology undertaken throughout the course of the project.
The chapter on reading architecture tackles the issue of legibility in the built
environment. Taking the dismissal of postmodernism as a given, I posit that there is a need
to revive dialogues of signification in architectural discourse. If we incorporate the digital
into the discussion, we can frame the discussion around a formal agenda for designing
monuments, infrastructural elements, and public spaces (see Mr. White's proposal in the
Appendix). In other words we can ask, because architects, detectives, and the public read the
built environment differently, how do we introduce legible and meaningful forms back into
the city?
The chapter entitled Real and Unreal takes on the second question on the agenda:
of the architectural project. If it is possible for architecture (as a project) to exist
reality
the
only on paper or in the imagination, we can state that the realness of architecture lies in
it's existence as a fictional tool. Fiction here is put forth as synonymous with speculative,
hypothetical, and alternative. Shifting the paradigm of the thesis as a "real solution," I explore
a different understanding of a speculative project; one rooted in a completely fictional
(almost dismissive) framework that reaches out to the literary discipline in an attempt to be
critical.
The last two chapters continue the analysis of fiction and pursue the affective
potentials of the mystery genre and architectural representation. In the section on paranoia,
I examine the traits of the detective novel from a perceptual perspective drawing examples
from Walter Benjamin and Rem Koolhaas. The concluding section on representation
sums up the project with an emphasis on the necessity for appropriate architectural
representation. I argue that testing the limits of representation allows for a multiplicity of
readings and facilitates the discussion of particular themes, such as the roles of spectacle and
performance. By using this thesis defense as an example that sought to question the limits
of representation, the goal is to set up a precedent for an alternative way of representing an
architectural project.
12
To really appreciate architecture,
you may even need to commit
a murder.
w0
Architecture is defined by the actions it witnesses
as much as by the enclosure of its walls. Murder
in the Street differs from Murder in the Cathedral
in the same way as love in the street differs from
the Street of Love. Radically.
BernardTschumi, Advertisements for Architecture, ArchitecturalDesign 47. 1977
INTRODUCTION
13
Mr. White's morphologicalvariantson primitiveforms.
14
CHAPTER ONE
READING ARCHITECTURE
"This moment was that in which language invaded the universal problematic; that in which,
in the absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse-provided we can agree
on this word-that is to say, when everything became a system where the central signified,
the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of
differences."
- Jacques Derrida, Writingand Difference
How do we read architecture? They key to this question lies in what constitutes the "we."
Architecture's long bout with legibility and signification put the architect at the front of
the debate.' However, if we take the "we" to mean the public, issues of reading architecture
become increasingly more complex. Holistic legibility would have to rely on studies of
human perception, psychology, and even democracy to an extent. Moreover, if the "we"
refers to detectives, then the field changes completely. That is to say that the way detectives
experience space or architectural forms is influenced by the case on which they are working.
What these examples illustrate is the complexity of architectural signification. How does an
architecture convey meaning or symbolic value to a larger audience than architects?
This question is posed by me as both the author of this thesis, and also as Charles
White. Taking the dismissal of postmodernism as a given, the goal here is to revisit discussions
of meaning and signification in architecture. For White, the key to this is a reducible language
of forms. By establishing a minimalist grammar, the project becomes hyper-democratic.
He designs a typological Richter Set of repeatable forms that can be combined in infinite
ways; that way the potential for legibility remains in the hands of the public. Later in the
story, however, Mr. White's initial thesis evolves into an anthropomorphic study of form
and figuration. He keeps the idea of combinatory forms, but the combinatory logic evolves
to a more figural one. In other words, he uses the human figure as a way of deriving formal
compositions.
The physical and digital representations of the research conducted by Mr. White
lead to a new methodology for formal inquiry that picks up where the avant-garde of the
1970s and 80s left off. Putting aside theory-laden discourses on semiotics and linguistics
and focusing on psychology and perception, a new discussion of signification can emerge;
one based on typology. By situating himself in the public domain (designing public
monuments), Mr. White can ignore economic pressures and focus solely on the legibility
of the monument. His project, Urban Monuments (see Appendix i), is first and foremost a
form of formal analysis that seeks to embed meaning back into the fabric of the city.
The goal of reviving these dialogues stems out of a perceived need of the public for
legible forms in the built environment. As the novelty of complex surfaces and modernist
READING ARCHITECTURE
15
Mr. Whites initial Urban Monuments studies on typology andform.
aesthetics wanes, new forms must be introduced into the city: meaningful ones. Therefore,
the design research (undertaken by me as Charles White and as myself) in this phase is based
on the physical and morphological qualities of types and forms.
16
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These gramars stem from an obsession with the monolith and perfect square proportions.
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combinatory strategies.
READING ARCHITECTURE
17
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18
READING ARCHITECTURE
19
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20
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32
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READING ARCHITECTURE
33
Mr. White's shift in scale is accompaniedalso by a shift informal inquiry.Here the emphasis on
form isfigural.Like handpuppets, White uses the constraintsof the humanform to achieve new
combinatory compositions, ones not restrainedby typology or monumentality.
34
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35
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CHAPTER TWO
REAL & UNREAL
"The architectural process is not an abstract. It has its basis in life as much as in myth."
- Peter Cook, The Drawingas Wish
If we take fiction to be synonymous with speculative or hypothetical, what are the roles of the
real and unreal in the architectural project? They key lies in the term "alternate." To state that
a thesis project posits the alternate is a given. That is to say that a student's responsibility after
years of studying should be to give alternative solutions to particular problems within his or
her field. Yet, these so-called solutions in architecture present a dichotomy of understanding
rooted in two very distinct historical traditions within the discipline. On one side of the coin
we have the imaginary alternative and on the other, the real alternative. These two modes of
operating in architecture have yielded most of the historical canon of architectural models:
archetypical projects in the development of architecture's history. Recently, versions of these
alternatives have begun to re-emerge as instantiated hypotheses of our not-so-uncertain
future.' The real alternative can
be understood as a predominantly
scientific process. The
positivism inherent in such practices relies on a priori notions of the world as is or rather as
politicians and sociologists explain the current circumstances to be. Though architects are
highly gifted at infiltrating neighboring disciplines, the effect of the "outreach" often leaves a
negative stereotype on our profession (read: "those architects are such know-it-alls!"). This is
evident in numerous current projects which seek to undermine the questionable autonomy
of architecture of the postmodern period in an attempt to assert agency in the unstable
world-one need only look at any recent M.Arch. theses at universities like MIT to get a
glimpse of this in action.2 Whether architecture can solve the the world's "crises" is not the
question here, but rather how does an architectural education prepare one to do so? Or
even, how do we begin contribute to issues more suited to engineering or economics? These
questions are not at all new, but are key to the understanding of a project's real alternative.
They present the counter argument to Manfredo Tafuri's notion that instead of worrying,
"the mass of architects should just do architecture."3 One can say that if there are anxieties
currently present in the discipline, it is from here that they stem. Can we, should we, must
we intervene?
On the other side and at the heart of this thesis, the heroic notion of the architect is
much more readily seen in the all-too-familiar imaginary alternatives put forth in the sixties
to early eighties. Those socially symbolic projects rooted in words like utopia and radical
were dismissed as part of a theoretical period that yielded more confused faces than project
commissions. Nevertheless, history accepted these projects as part of that set of imaginary
alternatives already seen the previous century with architects like C.N. Ledoux and E. L.
REAL & UNREAL
37
Boullke, among others.4 Perhaps it has something to do with the speed at which our culture
is moving, but it seems that we've come full circle as these kaleidoscopic speculations reemerge and as we continue to re-theorize the permanence of modernity itself. Reinhold
Martin most recently took up the task of re-theorizing those "vague and exhausted" words,
postmodernism and utopia, presenting a 21st Century look at themes that act as specters
within architecture. What Martin does with his re-territorialization is not resurrect a dead or
taboo subject, but outline a method which allows us to live with these ghosts long after their
5
supposed death-the specter of Utopia will always haunt architects.
"In a world driven by nonsensical statements, the most absurd of
positions then becomes the clearest path."
- WAI Think Tank, NarrativeArchitecture:A Manifesto
The most recent understanding of the imaginary alternate has come to mean
fictional. But this cynical synonymy only serves to dismiss the issue at hand, which is the
moral-here to mean the right versus the wrong way of acting-intention behind the
alternate. The alternate is a specific kind of fiction which constitutes themes and motifs
apparent in the cultural imaginary. To a certain end, the fictional seeks to narrate an
interpolation between both realms, mimicking the real but positing the imaginary. The most
evident projects operating this way range from well known projects such as Rem Koolhaas'
Exodus to John Hejduk's Berlin Masques. Most recently, this speculative practice can be
seen with figures like Jimenez Lai and WAI (What About It) Think Tank whose work is
clearly haunted by the ghosts of utopia, futurism and narrative architecture and events like
the Once Upon a Place conference in 2010 and the upcoming Writing Place conference
which bring together scholars to discuss the relevance of fiction and literary methods in
architecture.6
"Dancing between the line of narrative and representation, cartooning
is a medium that facilitates experimentations in proportion,
composition, scale, sensibility, character plasticity, and the part-towhole relationship as the page becomes an object."
- Jimenez Lai, Citizens of No Place
Though the fictional alternative works primarily in narrative form, it should be
counted separate from that dismissively idiosyncratic red herring paper architecture. Paper
architecture possesses a different set of ambitions and preoccupations than the narrative tools
38
of fiction. The former is a product of economic and esthetic forces that placed architectural
production in a position of object-making through excesses already present in the discipline,
while the latter is a predominantly representative tool that can generate a wide variety of
scenarios as means of disseminating architectural thought. Thus, a fictional project can end
up being paper architecture, but that is not to say that all fictional projects must be.
Faced with this existential dilemma, the fictional project runs the risk of being
marginalized due to its inability to be understood as more than just a theoretical project, that
is to say an imaginary alternative. But as we've stated before, the fictional lies at the crossroads
of the real and the imaginary-not necessarily in the Lacanian psychoanalytic sense, though
some have argued this as well.7 So how are we to understand this particular mode of practice
within the discipline if we can neither say that it is paper architecture (an object) nor that
it is simply a theoretical solution (imaginary alternative)? The key to this understanding is
representation and process.
"There is no architecture without representation.. .At the root of the architect's
creation, we find the need to represent," writes Douglas Darden whose primary concern
within his own projects was the idea of exploring what could equate in architecture to
writing's figurative language.' The idea of representation as a tool for design is sometimes
difficult to see in drawing because they are masked with the denseness of the object. However,
if we look at narrative, we find that with the added dimension of time, that object becomes
an experience within which the process-the movement within the story-illustrates for the
reader morals, critiques, speculations, and alternatives. Representation, whether it's a poem,
novella, film, or comic book, is the means for the architectural knowledge, not the ends.
These means for disseminating architectural knowledge have unfortunately been
grouped into the category of "narrative architecture." Somewhat synonymous with its paper
counterpart, this term is also deceptively marginalizing. The problem lies when comparing,
for example, the poems of John Hejduk to the parables of Douglas Darden. While both are
clear examples of narrative and highly architectural pieces of work, they could not be more
different. Hejduk uses the poem to illustrate a phenomenological dimension to memories
of particular places. The poem thus becomes a tool for sharing a memory exclusively his.
Darden on the other hand, seeks to achieve a certain morality with his project. By likening
them to parables, he explores an architectural figurative language powerful and vague enough
to produce a cathartic reaction in the reader/onlooker; not to mention the highly melancholic
9
representations in which they are embedded. Narrative is a highly indexical term.
Alternatively, WAI Think Tank's recent manifesto for "Narrative Architecture" seeks
to provide a response to the current "seriousness of architectural discourse." Though they
accept the ambitions of architecture (read: buildings and master plans), the stated goal of their
REAL & UNREAL
39
manifesto is to "talk to architecture about architecture."' 0 This revisitation of autonomous
thought, however, remains still too vague and dismissive in the complex spectrum of our
pluralistic contemporaneity. One need only be reminded of the questions posed by the real
alternatives discussed earlier. A better definition of autonomy may come from Reinhold
Martin again. We can say that architecture's real autonomy comes from the fact that its
"participation in heterogeneous networks of power.. .actually increases with its withdrawal
into private games played in an esoteric language."" That is to say that the more architects
talk to to other architects about architecture, the longer architects become unaware of their
participation in the world, for better or worse. WAI's manifesto's shortcoming is that, while
establishing a productive revisitation of previous project methodologies, namely Archigram,
Superstudio, etc., it does not differentiate between architecture ad extremum-the projects
of those previously mentioned groups-and architectural, let's say, parables-stories with
a moral or thematic underpinnings which posit the aforementioned alternate realities. The
danger with manifestos is that it becomes too easy to be either pro-narrative architecture or
against it.
Yet, these alternate realities whether real or imagined, fictional or plausible, remain
the primary concern of the architectural project. Though some schools of thought are at
odds with each other as to which is more relevant to the education of an architect, we can
agree that at the root of the architectural knowledge is an understanding of representation.
Richness in the methods of representation allows the author a higher disseminative value
to the project, and to use representation as process becomes another means for articulating
a specific subject position. One need not prefer one over the other-diversity is valued
above all else in our current discourses-but it is important to understand when specificity
is required and that to eschew a methodology to the peripheries of the discipline requires a
lot more force than simple categorization. Faced with the challenge of relevance, fictional
narratives with architectural content will continue to emerge because stories consist of an
intricate balance of technique and critique and are some of the most powerful ways to
activate our brains.12
40
A short video wherein Iplay threedistinctwitnesses ofMr. White' actions anda medicalexaminer.
There' a specific characterto the video. It was meant to look as real as possible, but also a little
anachronistic,highlightingthefictional dimension of the story.
REAL & UNREAL
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Footage ofthe incidentsshow mass hysteria andpolice mediation in the subways ofNew York City.
42
The county medical examiner explains the autopsy results and the curious compounds that were
found in the victims. A specialpolice unit raidsMr. White's apartment.
REAL & UNREAL
43
Throughout the clips of Mr. White's apartment, the detective's voice narrates the state of the
investigation and the discovery of the architecturalproject.
44
Near the endofthefootage, a tape thatwasfound in Mr. White' apartmentplays.It is Mr. White
rehearsingthepresentation ofhisprojectfor New York City.
REAL & UNREAL
45
Mr. White's Apartment (top) and the police investigation (bottom).
46
REAL & UNREAL
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56
A fake autopsy report.
REAL & UNREAL
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CC)
CHAPTER THREE
PARANOIA
"The anesthesia of a fear through another one is the traveler's salvation. Between the fresh
cut pages of the crime novel he looks for the idle, as it were, virginal apprehensions, which
could help him to get over the archaic fear of the journey."
- Walter Benjamin
Beyond character and structure as quasi-architectural objects, we find that the detective
mystery can also be placed within a lineage of esthetic and and qualitative architectural
concerns, namely phenomenology and critique. Through figures like Walter Benjamin and
Anthony Vidler, we can extract an underlying theoretical potential in the double agency of
the kriminalroman and the story of Mr. White itself. Unpacking theories of metropolitan life,
the uncanny, and the sublime can situate the detective mystery within a larger architectural
context from which to establish an allegorical critique.
The detective mystery can be understood as a way of reading an architectural
project and engaging the inherent paranoia and anxiety present in the reader. Originally a
tool for anesthetizing the "anxieties of modern life," the crime or detective novel has always
been an urban construct.' One rarely found a mystery that did not deal with urban realities
or environments. This was partially due to the demographic for which it was intended, but
also due to the uncanny nature of metropolitan life. Anthony Vidler writes,
A contemporary philosopher of urban architecture is faced then,
at the end of the twentieth century, not so much with the absolute
dialectic of ancient and modern posed by the avant- and rear-gardes
of the last eighty years, as with the more subtle and difficult task of
calculating the limits of intervention according to the resistance of the
city to change. 2
Vidler's point here is that the modern idea of acting in the city is subverted by
human anxieties of what it means to dwell in the modern city in the first place. Therefore,
the task of the architectural agent is to put aside anxieties and provide solutions to the
problem of urban dwelling. This is evident in the case of Mr. White, where his anxieties
about building monuments in the city manifest themselves as homicidal visions and limit
conditions. His inability to mediate this results in his "alternative" project of murder.
However, what must be noted here is the layering of paranoia within this project (Exquisite
Corpses). It is simultaneously set up where one is not sure if the anxiety felt is that of Mr.
White, the Detective, the author's, or their own.
Other anxieties to be mediated by the detective mystery could be those stemming
PARANOIA
59
from within the discipline itself. Whether anxieties due to architecture's "identity crises" of
relevance and agency are real or imagined, they nevertheless pop up from time to time and
there are few alternatives deal with it productively. Rem Koolhaas' work in Delirious New
York illustrates one such alternative which reconciles the paranoia inherent in the city as
well as in the minds of architects/architecture academics. Borrowing from the surrealists,
Koolhaas employs the paranoid critical method of analysis, and executes several "paranoid"
projects of his own within the metropolis. 3 The result of this "productive paranoia" is a
slight delirium where one simultaneously attempts to grasp the lineage of these architectural
constructs-neo constructivist forms-and a logic of living in a city in which everything
happens "behind the curtain"-its desire. However, these phantom architectures exist
only in the mind of the architect/academic, and thus provide an alternate reading of the
metropolis exclusively reserved for the discipline (read: autonomy).
Koolhaas's delirium brings about the notion of using multidisciplinary tropes
or devices in architectural discussions. His mode of operating in Delirious New York
constitutes a tone similar to a work of literature; it is almost as if he is the biographer of
the city. The result of this tone is an affect most likened to those of journalists, and the
information is presented as moments of drama in the text. The strategy here being that if
one engages the reader's anxiety in a similarly anxious way, one can distract him and present
him with alternate truths (Benjamin's hypothesis). In short, to fight paranoia one must
induce paranoia. To Koolhaas's credit, his background in journalism and film allowed him to
productively utilize these literary devices to his gain. Exquisite Corpses seeks to do the same.
A corollary literary trope to paranoia apparent in detective fiction is the red
herring. Traditionally a tool for "throwing others off the scent," this device is often tied to
a paranoid reading of particular plot lines and can be another productive tool for engaging
anxieties. Looking at this from a larger disciplinary context, we can say that in the seventies
and eighties, "paper architecture" acted as a red herring in the field. That is to say that
to some, the celebrated drawing served as a diversionary tactic, ultimately irrelevant, but
existing with the guise of plausibility.' While the dismissal of paper architecture altogether
is a recurring theme within our profession, we can examine such self-reflexive perturbations
through literary devices, and determine their qualitative value within the discipline.
Throughout the drawings and texts in the story of Mr. White, small elements
are inserted to induce this specific paranoia both at the scale of the project and of the
discipline. The productive paranoia is much like Dali's paranoid critical method, where
certain fragments operate as a kind of deja vu in the annals of architectural history. The
reader chooses to believe he is seeing some meaningful fragment that he has seen before.
What's more is that the critic himself is then able to project his own neuroses into the
60
Le Corbusierwith his Palaceof the Sovietsproposal. 1930. A picture ingrainedin history.
project and become a character: a detective. The drawings and images themselves bring out a
specific mood as well. In the case of the story of Mr. White, they are schizophrenic drawings
produced by a mad architect, but they are not overly fantastical, they represent a very real
architectural issue: the intersection of public space, infrastructure, and monumentality in
the city. The other side of the coin is the detective's paranoia which is embodied in his
inability to read the clues. Therefore, the constant back and forth between the hidden and
revealed, familiar and unfamiliar in Vidler's terms, uncovers potential readings of the same
project, and destabilizes the legible dimension of Mr. White's clues. The detective's paranoia
then is the ultimate tool for reading architecture and architectural history.
PARANOIA
61
Le Corbusier'sstudio in Paris(top). 1961. Mr. Whites studio in Brooklyn (bottom). 2013
62
PeterEisenman's house IVdiagrams (top). Mr. White's morphologicaldiagrams (bottom).
PARANOIA
63
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64
Drawingsfr Mr. White'sproposalforNew York City (see Appendix
i).
What's reflected in these drawings is the melancholy state of Mr. White. His drawings are
dark and brooding. They represent his view of the world as well as of himself. There is a
Piranesian sublime, a Ledoux-esque sectional technique, and even a Rossi-like treatment of
forms.
PARANOIA
65
Section through 72nd andBroadway monument (see Appendix i).
66
Section through 66th and Broadway monument (see Appendix i).
PARANOIA
67
Section through Columbus Circle monument (see Appendix i).
68
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Section through Times Square monument (see Appendix i).
PARANOIA
69
I
70
Ii
CHAPTER FOUR
REPRESENTATION
"There is no architecture without representation.. .At the root of the architect's creation, we
find the need to represent"
- Douglas Darden
The culmination of any design research project requires a precise representation appropriate
for the transmission of the key concepts. The architect's role throughout the entire process
is not only to formulate the concepts or critiques, but represent them accurately. Thus, it
is evident that representation lies at the heart of any architectural project and is ultimately
the unifying thread. Appropriate representation, in short, means that if a project revolves
around a fictional architect, then the fiction must be pervasive. This search for alternative
representations is by no means a novel point in the discipline. Most notably in recent
history, architects have experimented with the comic book (Jimenez Lai, Wes Jones), the
science-fiction short (Jack Self), the poem (John Hejduk, Roger Connah), and even the
film (MOS, Bernard Tschumi) as ways of conceiving and representing a project.' For these
authors, architecture functions as a character or primary agent, rather than the backdrop, and
representation can take on a new dimension; one based on narrative perception's culturally
established apriori,that is a primal phenomenon of human life. They ask not whether stories
themselves are relevant to the discipline, but rather what kind of stories and narrative tropes
are more architectural than others, how does this technique impact form, and what can we
learn from the added dimension?
In the case of Exquisite Corpses, representation is the overarching continuum linking
the themes of the real versus unreal, detective mystery, and architectural signification. From
the very beginning of this project, the question of how to represent a project in a cohesive,
yet clear and critical way drove much of the design research. This representation research
manifested itself in all the layers of the project: the characterization of Mr. White, his metathesis, and the final thesis defense.
The development of Mr. White as a character allowed the fictional dimension
to embody a set of personal neuroses about contemporary architecture. The metaphysical
removal of oneself from the project and embedding of specific anxieties and critical concerns
into Mr. White allowed for an exploration of the limits of architectural representation. As
discussed in the chapter on real versus unreal, the use of fiction gives the reader (and the
author) an instant cop-out. This dismissal, however, leads to a heightened experience of
particular parts of the project. In the case of Mr. White, we are able to push past the feasibility
of an architect-serial-killer and ask questions of why his architecture leads to murder, and
how would an architect commit such a crime? As I stated in the chapter on anxiety and
paranoia, the character's form of representing architecture is an anxious, brooding one, filled
REPRESENTATION
71
Stage set of thefinal thesis defense. It was set up as a detective investigation board complete with
evidence boxes, photocopies of Mr. White'sjournals and evidence tags.
with melancholy. From this we can gather much about Mr. White's personality and what sets
him apart.
Mr. White's proposal for New York is represented as a traditional thesis proposal
with research, subject positions, and original design work. A different kind of realism is
represented here. The project for New York can be taken literally, but can also be subjected to
a more critical interpretation. Mr. White's inherent positivism comes across in the proposal,
and we can begin to see traces of both the architect's struggle to be an active agent of change
and his delusions of grandeur. The written portion of his proposal is written in a tone that
seeks to characterize Mr. White as the madman that he will eventually become.
The final thesis defense for this project was the culmination of the research on
representation. It was presented as a piece of theatre, where I played multiple roles, while
simultaneously discussing the project as a whole. In an attempt to bring Mr. White to
life, I produced a video of the ongoing investigation on his murders. The success of the
methodology remains questionable, but what was evident was the emphasis on legibility
and fiction. Unpacking the layers of the project leaves it banal and homeostatic. However,
presenting it as an interactive drama did allow for a multiplicity of interpretations and a
critical discussion about the role of drama in the fictional project.
72
The exercise in set design was to make the stage look as realistic aspossible. This way, the jurors
would be more compelled to interactboth in and out of character.
REPRESENTATION
73
Photocopies ofMr. White's journalsidentified his neuroses and anxieties.
74
Red string tied the clues together.
REPRESENTATION
75
Layering the drawings on the wall allowedfor richer interaction with the content itself During
the defense, the jury was invited to "examine the evidence."
76
REPRESENTATION
77
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APPENDIX i
URBAN MONUMENTS:
AN UNSOLICITED PROPOSAL BY
CHARLES WHITE
81
INTRODUCTION
95
MONUMENT
101
FORM
10,9
MEANING
117
FOLLY
121
4 PROJECTS
148
URBAN MONUMENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIX i
79
Study models for Urban Monuments
80
INTRODUCTION
This thesis addresses the issues of monumentality, memory, and architectural agency within
the context of New York City's public spaces. Taking the current context as a given-the lack
of a discussion of these themes in the production of space in the city-I posit that revisiting
and expanding specific notions of monumentality and memory results in the production of
meaningful public spaces that introduce a new reading of the city; one that has been lost due
to social class shifts, the privatization of public space, and ambivalent attitudes towards the
infrastructure of the city. This loss, along with the taking over of architectural production by
real estate developers and a focus on efficient construction systems has marginalized the role
of architecture within the public sphere. In the context of Manhattan, public space remains
a commodity traded by urban planning bodies and corporations for economic incentives
and political power. This attitude blurs the distinction between public and private space and
throws off the balance. With the notion of privately-owned-public-space in Manhattan, the
corporate, private world has developed a trojan horse that invades the public sphere and
excludes a major percentage of the public. This attitude, along with the idea of infinitely tall
skyscrapers (read: economic development) and projected mass urbanization poses a threat
to the public realm of the metropolis.
The post-Vietnam era saw a complete change in the economic and social structure
of Manhattan. The emergence of gentrification and redevelopment as a direct result of excess
capital and post-industrial economic production began a series of shifts in the class structure
of various New York City neighbourhoods and public spaces. Taking Union Square as a case
study, Rosalyn Deutsche writes that during the decade of the 1980s, "the economic function
APPENDIX i
81
of the neighbourhood...superseded the broader social function."' That is to say that the built
environment became the primary contested capital among economic players in the city.
Coupled with this game of capital accumulation, Deutsche argues that the shifts in the labor
force-from blue collar to white collar-also played a key role in the realization of marketincentivized urban planning. 2 The demographics of certain neighbourhoods shifted from
light-manufacturing employees to service-based professionals resulting in an era of "intense
class polarization." An emphasis on the potentials for profit of these neighbourhoods resulted
in a mass exodus of the lower-income population illustrating a kind of waterfall effect in
development and spatial politics. New York's rising status as an international economic
epicenter brought with it a significantly less proletariat class which then increased potential
for capital for property owners by catering to this class (read: gentrification), and ultimately
leading to the privatization of public space.
A reconstitution of public space emerged out of this economic discrepancy and
political shift. Terms like "revitalization" and "redevelopment" were used to legitimate the
opportunistic attitudes undertaken by the bourgeois, upper-income demographic and
the profit-hungry urban planning bodies.3 At the same time, the new hegemonic class
proceeded to constitute what Jirgen Habermas describes as a pseudo-public sphere: a
bourgeois demographic partnered with the city that has "yielded to a public sphere that is
privately owned, determined by profit motives, and characterized by the transformation of
1. Deutsche, Rosalyn. Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics. (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996) 15.
2. Ibid., 17.
3. Ibid., 19.
82
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LAND VALUE AND PUBLIC SPACE
Land Value per square foot and the spatial clustering
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of Manhattan. Source: Suarez, Richard Anthony. A new life for plazas:
Reimagining privately owned public spaces in New York City. T1hesis.
Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning,
2012.
APPENDIX i
83
the conditions of everyday life into objects of production."4 The tensions of this consumerist
turn resulted in two types of outcomes. The first is illustrated through the materialization
of Privately Owned Public Space or POPS initiative, while the counter attitude can be seen
through cultural collaborations in the development of Battery Park City in the early 1980s.
With the introduction of POPS in 1961, zoning restrictions were modified to
allow the public to enter plazas and other zones in the city previously inaccessible. The
POPS initiative engaged the private sector by providing tax incentives, and F.A.R. (floor area
5
ratio) bonuses in exchange for secession of private land, usually at street level. However, the
politics surrounding these spaces brought up issues of control, surveillance, and inevitably
exclusion. The focus on these issues divided understandings of the city into one: the shaping
of the city as a social process, and two: the shaping of the city as a functional process. An
example of this can be seen with Mayor Ed Koch's initiative to remove the homeless from
Grand Central Station.6 In 1988, he called for the station to have one objective functiontransportation, thereby explicitly denying it's use as a public space and permitting control
mechanisms that ensure this sole function-largely by evicting the homeless from the
station. Today, the 500+ POPS in the borough of Manhattan (which add up to around
85 acres of public land) are controlled and designed through regulatory policies rather
than social or democratic processes. The quality and usage of these space, therefore, reflects
4. Ibid., 59.
5. Schmidt, Stephan, Jeremy Nemeth, and Erik Botsford. "The Evolution of Privately Owned Public Spaces in
New York City." URBAN DESIGN International 216 (2011): 271.
6. Deutsche, 51.
84
these managerial strategies, for better or worse.7 However, these mechanisms-established
in the 1970s and 80s-have become outdated sociological structures. Policies regarding
surveillance, design, and maintenance can no longer exclude the public realm in the midst
of social activism, public art, and pluralistic cultural visions. There is a clear need for a
reconstitution of public space in the city; perhaps the era of POPS is over.
If the POPS initiative brought up certain Foucauldian critiques of spatial politics
and control mechanisms, the development of Battery Park City can be posited as the corollary
attitude of urban planning in New York City. Began around the same time as the POPS,
Battery Park City is usually seen as a successful project with "multiple victories-of public
policy, public space, urban design, and city planning."' Though it has a rocky history-the
plan was in the works for over ten years, and debates about low-income housing, and public
policy slowed the process-Battery Park City is significant as it symbolizes a real convergence
of cultural and economic balance within the planning process and creation of space in
the city. The "collaborative ventures between artists, architects, and landscape architects"
9
reflected not only human needs for culture and art, but also for design and diversity. These
collaborations included the design of parks, plazas, and gardens designed to stimulate and
diversify the environment, while at the same time integrating the microcosm within the
larger context of New York. The acceptance and integration of these ideas marks Battery
Park City as victorious in one sense, but falls short in actual practice. In the 1990s, Battery
7. Schmidt et al., 271.
8. Deutsche, 81.
9. Ibid., 90.
APPENDIX i
85
Park City remained "ghettoized and exclusionary" as a result of the realities of gentrified
development.10 It became evident that no matter how much planning bodies collaborate
with public artists and designers, the economic repercussions of new development sooner or
later result in hierarchies and social class shifts.
Most recently, New York City has also put forth a number of initiatives to reclaim
certain avenues for public use. The biggest example of this is Times Square, where 7th ave.
between 47th and 42nd is permanently closed off to vehicular traffic." The plans for these
public plazas, however, illustrate a two-dimensional, planar approach to space making that
relies on seating, planters, and graphics to designate the area. Though these "squares" provide
a pedestrian-friendly space, the area itself is banal, and acts more as a corridor than a plaza,
particularly during peak hours. This single dimension of public space continues to be tightly
sandwiched between two giants-the corporation and the city-and though it is not an
official privately-owned public space, it can be read as a private-public-private sandwich
where the ground datum is an infinitely thin line between the corporate space above and the
infrastructural space below.
The point of departure for this proposal is an opposition to the modes of public
space design that began in the 1970s and have continued well into the 21st century. This
thesis takes the context of Manhattan as a functionalist, profit-driven apparatus, that regards
the public-and public space-as a commodity. The failure of various attempts at engaging
cultural and public space demands in real estate (i.e. Battery Park City) presents a need
10. Ibid., 93
11. "Public Plazas." NYC DOT. 'The City of New York. 25 Nov. 2013 <http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/public-plazas.shtml>.
86
to reconstitute what it means to design public space. Traditional modes of development
ultimately result in gentrification and an increase in surrounding property values, thereby
creating exclusionary public space. These spaces reflect the functionalist outlook. However, if
we break the link between real estate development and public space design, turning over the
responsibilities of the latter to the city, a new paradigm of infrastructural-public space can
be achieved. This model reverses the effect of gentrification by accepting that infrastructural
construction does not increase surrounding property values-often times it lowers themand offers opportunities for implementation of truly public space. Yet, there must be a
balance in order to create successful public interventions in the city; the infrastructural
elements must be able to integrate into the public elements, and the public elements must
shape the urban landscape in order to convey meaning.
The definition of urban meaning will be a process of conflict, domination,
and resistance to domination, directly linked to the dynamics of social struggle and
not to the reproductive spatial expression of a unified culture. Furthermore, cities
and space being fundamental to the organization of social life, the conflict over the
assignment of certain goals to certain spatial forms will be one of the fundamental
mechanisms of domination and counter-domination in the social structure."
What Manuel Castells posits here is the potential for meaningful public space by
removing it's functionalist values and allowing it to be shaped by the social structure itself.
Taking Castells point as a design strategy, this project focuses on the redesign of the New
York City Subway entrances. Existing as an inadvertent repository of the public, they offer
12. Deutsche, 53.
APPENDIX i
87
the potential for architectural interventions, infrastructural reorganization, and a resurgence
of the collective memory of the city. Because they are not tied to specific real estate interests,
these sites present a socially symbolic moment in the city where the accumulation is one of
people and not capital.
The subway entrance has primarily been the interface between the public and the
city infrastructure. The transportation network which these instances served was the public's
way of experiencing the bowels of the city-the belly of the beast. The mystery and wonder
initially associated with these spaces initially led to a specific identity for the metropolis.
New York City was branded, like Guimard's Paris, and the entrances became gates into a
fantastic new world. Today the subway entrance has been reduced to a hole in the ground
providing minimal access to the various networks that live underneath. The identity has
been reduced to a typographic brand and though some remnants of the phantasmagoric
spaces are still visible, some of the most intriguing ones have long been decommissionedsee the Rafael Guastavino designed City Hall subway entrance. This project seeks to flesh
out these collective memories and give new significance to the New York Subway entrance.
The architectural explorations this project calls for are (1)
an expansion of the ground
datum on which the subway entrances are located-a shift of the public plane from twodimensional space into three-dimensional space, (2) the use of a minimal formal language
to emphasize the monumentality and plasticity, (3) the embedding of subway infrastructure
within the architecture, and (4) the identification of a series of public programs and activities
that take place in these sites. These explorations are undertaken as an attempt to introduce
a new reading of the city. Inserting these interventions as key moments of drama in the city,
88
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Fig. 2 (Above). Times Square and Herald
Square public plaza plans. Source: http://www.
nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/pubficplazas.shtml
I
Fig. 3 (Right). Broadway Boulevard Master
Concession Agreement plans. Source: http://
www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/
public-plazas.shtml
I
Broadway Boulevwd Master Concession Agreement
LUensed Area (shaded in blue)
'U-M.7APPENDIX
i
89
-
I
Fig. 4. A Brief History of the NYC Subway
90
Fig. 5. City Hall Station (Decommissioned)
addresses the public in neither an economic nor political way. The goal is for the public
to become removed from the limitations of the late-capitalist game for a brief moment in
time and constitute a new collective, moving three-dimensionally through the city, and
experiencing monuments, infrastructure, and each other.
This architectural process becomes the way to both mediate and celebrate
the intersection between the three players in the city-the private, the public, and the
infrastructure. But this game, instead of being about which is the good, the bad, and the
ugly, is a balancing act where public space can become as important a generator of the
identity of the metropolis as modern infrastructure and real estate development. The way
this game is executed is by identifying sites in Manhattan already deeply rooted between the
two spheres-the subway entrances-marking them, and unfolding the ground on which
they sit, exposing a public space directly between the above-ground and the underground.
This project is the physical architectural transformation of the subway entrance from a banal
APPENDIX i
91
set of stairs and turnstiles to a fantastical public space. Each station is drastically opened up,
thickened, and marked by a mysterious monument, an autonomous architectural object
so large in scale that it completely transforms the urban landscape. As such, the subway
entrance can then be seen as a configuration of intertwining spaces, unfolding landscapes,
and symbolic fragments embodying the new reading of Manhattan. Using formal languages
taken from architects Aldo Rossi, John Hejduk, and Bernard Tschumi-who themselves
reconstituted various understandings of symbolism in public space and the interactions
between architecture and the public"-this project can explore not only a reaffirmation of
the public realm, but also an architectural quest into the limits of meaningful compositions
and scale. Therefore, at the outset of this project, is an undeniable attempt to create not only
public space, but complete urban monuments.
13. Hays, K. Michael. Architecture's Desire: Reading the Late Avant-garde. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).
92
Fig. 2. NYC Subway, Current Stations: A series of potential sites for Urban
Monuments.
APPENDIX i
93
L
94
MONUMENT
The monument is necessary. The monument presents a symbolic break in the fabric of the
city. Like the monolith in Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey, it represents a precise formal
agenda which hides as much as it reveals, and is also the only way to compete with the highrise in the metropolis. It is simultaneously a familiar and unfamiliar object; the monument
sets itself apart from the city by being a monolithic, architectural object. The power struggle
between the monument and its context then becomes the symbolic gesture between the
public and private realms. To use Kasmir Malevich's terms, the monument will liberate the
flat surface through an enhancement of consciousness.1
Scale is the key to monumentality. The phenomenal qualities of specific forms
are tied unquestionably to its scale. That a monument can exist without imposing a sense
of grandeur or sublimity is a rare thing, and there's a particular nostalgia for these lost
traditions in contemporary society. However, whether it is due to economic issues or
exhausted resources the younger architectural generation is largely trapped within a culture
of pavilion-making and small-scale installation design. These products, though not lacking in
architectural merit, fail to probe into larger issues of public identity and urban architecture.
The rappel-a-l'ordre I insist on is a return to monumentality and a meaningful architecture.
To paraphrase Jose Luis Sert's and Siegfried Giedion's points on monumentality, this project
seeks to build monuments that transcend generations and express the cultural needs of our
society.2
1. Malevich, K, "Suprematist Manifesto Unovis" in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture. Ed.
Ulrich Conrads. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1970.
2. Sert, J.L., and S. Giedion. "Nine Points on Monumentality." Architecture Culture, 1943-1968: Documentary
anthology. Ed. Joan Ockman. [New York]: Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and
Preservation, 1993.
APPENDIX
i
95
Monolith, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
96
PROPORTION SYSTEM
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APPENDIX i
97
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Fig. 1. Sectional Diagram: Monument
98
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Fig. 2. Perspective: Monument
The monument itself is an autonomous slab. Its insertion into the city is controlled by the
context (i.e. how much it penetrates the ground and how tall it stands).
APPENDIX i
99
100
FORM
There are two forms active in each site, a positive and a negative. The positive is the
infrastructural monument, and the negative is the unfolded public space. The monument is
an archetypal form or architectural trope. This form exists as part of the cultural unconscious.
From the building blocks, we play with as kids, we can extract a set of primitive forms that
exist. The sphere, the cube, the pyramid, the cylinder, the arch. These primordial forms are
links to a particular past, not only in individual life but as part of our collective cultural
memories. Thus, the monument must be part of this tradition if it is to carry with it a
specific meaning.
The articulation of this form, however, is not perfect. It is distorted, and has an
air of mystery. Surface conditions and topological shifts transform the primitive into a less
recognizable object while maintaining the primitive gestalt. Like a hand shadow puppet, the
familiar object is simultaneously read as the original form and a less familiar foreign object.
Paired with the positive, the negative space unfolds and dives into the belly of the
beast-the city. Surgically stripping away the ground plane, the negative juxtaposes the
contextual forms and the archetypal primitives in plan. Taking formal cues from suprematist
compositions, the public plazas excavated from the ground plane are transformed
three-dimensionally into theatres, access ramps, bicycle parking, public restrooms, and
observatories.
APPENDIX i
101
Fig. 1. Rend Magritte, Mental Arithmetic, 1931
The public programs embedded within the ground plane of the city expand
the sectional dimension of the private-public-infrastructure sandwich. Solidifying the
formal figure of the public space allows not only a physically deeper connection with the
underground networks, but also a conceptual interpolation where the transitions between
public, private, and infrastructure are slower, topographical ones, rather than ones based on
rudimentary stairs and shafts.
Tschumi's follies in La Villette, Rossi's piazzas and squares, and Hejduk's masques
are the primary design drivers for this project. Formally, they deal with the composition of
primitive, irreducible elements in the built environment. Thus, the design grammars are
usually composed of primary forms, or rectilinear, geometric compositions. The main driving
force behind using these platforms as inherited objects is that the projects themselves seek to
extract a deeper understanding of form and public space. Tschumi's constructivist grammars
102
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APPENDIX i
103
Fig. 2. Bernard Tschumi, Normative
Follies
Fig. 3. John Hejduk, Border Guards, Riga
Masque
allow for a possibly infinite reconfiguration of follies for public events and activities (Fig.
2).1 Rossi's city hall plaza at Segrate, Italy functions as a monument and a symbolic bridge
between the political power and the public realm (Fig. 3). Hejduk's fantastical masques
present a series of caricatures of objects and subjects that reflect the inhabitants of the city
through choreographed analogies (Fig. 4).
It should be noted that this project does not seek to re-theorize abstract concepts
of the limits of architectural theory (Jeff Kipnis has already done this in his 3 Masterpieces
1. Tschumi, Bernard. Event-Cities 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
2. Rossi, Aldo, Peter Arnell, and Ted Bickford. Aldo Rossi: Buildings and Projects. New York Rizzoli, 1985.
3. Hejduk, John, and Kim Shkapich. Riga, Vladivostok, Lake Baikal: A Work. New York: Rizzoli, 1989.
104
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of 20th Century Architecture, Fig. 5).4 Rather, my position regarding these precedents is
that they serve as a specific lineage in which to follow, both conceptually and formally.
Architecture is a fundamentally symbolic tool, thus, the use of specific archetypes, be they
archaic or not, creates a specific affect. It is this affect that this project seeks to extract.
4. Hays, K. Michael. Architecture's Desire: Reading the Late Avant-garde. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2010.
APPENDIX i
105
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APPENDIX i
107
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108
MEANING
This project is based on several binary oppositions. The structure of the object and the
subject, the public and the private, and the spectator and the spectacle. As a whole, this
project seeks to produce several meanings through specific unfolding of public programs
and infrastructures. They manifest themselves as the monument, the ramp, the void, the
theatre, and the wall.
The first is the monument. As stated before, the program for this object is simply
"mystery," yet it serves a highly functional role in the system. It contains within it a set of
ventilation towers that circulate and filter the air underneath the city. The monument frees
up building lots that are currently being used for subway ventilation and becomes the lung
of the city, a symbol of the breathing metropolis. This symbolism spawns out of an iconic
notion of ventilation in the city. Taking ventilation as a simple infrastructure, we can see
several attitudes toward the deployment, and even character of it. From Marilyn Monroe's
image of her fluttering skirt (Fig. 3), to the massive ornamental ventilation towers on
Governors Island (Fig. 2), one cannot deal with subway exhaust in New York City without
a specific symbolic attitude.
Also embedded within the monument are several antennae that amplify wireless
signals for public access. The citizens, along with their screen obsessions end up reaching a
new level of connectivity as they join an interactive community cluster, a social network of
APPENDIX i
109
sorts.
The ramp mediates the circulation system between the two worlds. It is a
programmed negative space, that formally shears the ground plane and serves to control
the flow of traffic. Expanding the notion of architectural promenades, the series of ramps
distributed throughout the public ground are programmed topographies inserting a
landscape element into an otherwise two-dimensional urban condition.
The void is the primary celebration of the breaking of the ground plane. It is an
unprogrammed element, a canyon in the heart of the metropolis that balances the positive
space of the city with the negative. In contrast to the historical tradition of the void as
signifying the mouth of the subway, this new void, massive in scale serves only to add depth
and sublimity to the public experience. It suggests the expansion of the city downward.
The theatre is a topologically transformed greek theatre. Here, the spectacle
becomes public activity. Markets, shakespeare, skateboarders, preachers, protesters, all are
welcome. The theatre is an open platform for communication and counter-consumerism
that seeks to invert the traditional understanding of a transportation hub and exacerbate
elements already in place, performance, public markets, etc.
The wall is primarily an infrastructural element that divides, retains, and supports
the public program. Scattered throughout the public ground, the wall itself at times
110
Fig. 2. Holland Tunnel Land Ventilation Building
Fig. 3. Marilyn Monroe's iconic depiction.
Fig. 4. Tunnel vent, Governors Island.
Fig. 5. Standard NYC subway vents. Street level.
APPENDIX i
111
Two attitudes for subway ventilation in NYC.: 58 Joralemon Street in
Brooklyn, a subway vent disguised as a house.
constitutes part of a particular object: the theatre, the monument, the ramp, and at other
times is a free standing autonomous fragment providing balance to the formal composition,
but always housing within it support elements: bathrooms, mechanical, storage. The wall,
like a fragment of the monument signifies both absence and presence of urban identities.
112
Holland Tunnel exhaust tower.
APPENDIX i
113
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2.
Fig. 1. Ventilation shafts (Preliminary
study). Air handling units with
concrete shaft.
Fig. 2. Final ventilation shaft design.
Tapered shaft with sound-proofing
foam insulation. Steel beam
structure.
Fig. 3. Two types of ventilation
shafts. Type one has sound-proof
shell facing the inside. Type two faces
outside.
TYPE ONE: INNIE
Fig. 4. Ramp and theatre isolated.
Fig. 5. Monolith as observatory.
Fig. 6. Topological variants on ramps
and theatres.
3.
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THE RAMP
THE THEATRE
APPENDIX
i
115
6--
Church.
Rotunda.
Arcade.
Theatre.
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Originally, the idea for the follies was for them to be typologically specific for each site and therefore
heterogeneous. The project later evolved into a more systemic distribution of ONE singular strategy (the
one
rooted in a specific symbolic understanding: the monolith and the penetrations).
116
FOLLY
Though this project is made up of a series of potentially infinite interventions in the city, it
should not be construed as a folly or pavilion strategy. The failure of these types lies not in
their capacity to be architectonic objects, but rather in their association with a particularly
hegemonic cultural structure. That is to say, that instead of being productive typological
interventions, the contemporary meaning behind the pavilion or folly is that of a fragment of
a "real" architecture in service of the upper class. Therefore, these elements often perpetuate
the fundamental lack of truly public interaction.
Combining the ideas of public monuments with public infrastructures can begin
to close the gap between the upper and lower realms, not only physically (developer space
and underground transportation) but also socially (political and socio-economic status).
The folly should act as a contemporary forum for exchange, much in the classical sense, and
be in opposition to the consumerist landscape. The programmatic function of this project
expands the public realm, grounding the otherwise powerless public within the city largely
controlled by the corporation. This is what I mean by "thickening" the sandwich layer.
These instantiated moments of drama throughout the city act very much like
Tschumi's early proposals for the Parc de la Villette.1 They are coherent compositions, part of
a larger game, with a cohesive thread that runs throughout. They do not attempt to rethink
1. Tschumi, Event-Cities 2, p. 64.
APPENDIX i
117
infrastructure or re-theorize it, nor do they propose a new agenda for an urban architecture;
what they do is formalize public space and mark the city, establishing a point of departure
for new urban memories. It is a game of metropolitan signification, where the inhabitants of
New York can reflect, act, and react in regards to the question "what does it mean to dwell
in the contemporary city?"
118
PUBLIC
RESTROOMS
MONOLITH
ELEVATOR
TO SUBWAY
-
-
ENTRANCE
GLAZING
THEATRE
VOID
ENTRANCE
RAMP
MONOLITH:
VOID
APPENDIX i
119
I
1.[,1
I
120
4 PROJECTS
This project is not utopian. That is to say that it does not situate itself within the realm of
radical architectural projects that seek to transform a particular landscape. Though it has
a transformational agenda, it is one based on stabilizing an organism that has grown more
and more heterogenous as time passed. In other words, we can say that because the current
environment in Manhattan is so diverse, the phantasmagoria of the city is fragmented and
the public is subjected to an outdated conceptualization of public space (read as: parks,
plazas, squares, etc).' This concept must grow along with the advancements in concepts of
architecture and engineering in order for there to be balance.
As previously stated, the way this is done is by expanding the dimension of
existing public spaces connected to city infrastructures. Using a primarily cultural driver
(architecture), we can begin to physicalize the rapidly vanishing (or virtualizing) social
sphere and ground the public in between the corporate realm and the infrastructural realm.
Once again, the people shall have a foothold in the ever-expanding metropolis.
What follows is the documentation of four unsolicited proposals executed according to the
principles set forth in this thesis.
1. These classifications come from NYC's DOT website directly. See http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/public-plazas.shtml
APPENDIX
i 121
Site Plan, NYC
APPENDIX i
123
72nd & Broadway
Description:
"The station at 72nd and Broadway opened on October 27th, 1904. It is an express station with four tracks, two
island platforms. This is a most peculiar station for a farsighted railroad like the IRT. It was totally inadequate
from its opening day, yet it is the best preserved of the original IRT express stations. 72nd Street long suffered
from narrow platforms and narrow stairways to the headhouse and fare control. To maximize the space in the
headhouse, free crossover between uptown and downtown directions was artificially denied by the arrangement of
the turnstiles and gates."
72nd and Broadway is a tabula rasa condition that shifts the paradigm of public space in
the city by violently penetrating the block of Verdi Square. The monolith here is extruded
to the near maximum height in response to the shallowness of the subway tunnel. The
monolith is also paired with a covered theatre that suggests a perfect sphere emerging
from the ground and a triangular void containing the entrance ramp to the subway. This
intervention is perhaps the most generic as the location is by a generic fabric. Therefore,
the monument need not work so hard to compete with the surrounding context.
ZONING DIAGRAM (SOURCE NYC DOT)
Primary Land Use
One S Two Family Residence
Multi-Family Residence (Walk
Multi-Family Residence (Elev
Mixed Residential S Commerci
Commercial Use
* Industrial / Manufacturing
Transportation / Utility
Public Facilities and Instit
Open Space
Parking
EVacant
124
Land
&
Recreation
APPENDIX i
125
126
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APPENDIX i
127
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APPENDIX i
129
66th & Broadway
Description:
"The station at 66th and Broadway opened on October 27th, 1904. It has four tracks and two side platforms.
Recently renovated with a "retro look" makeover, complete with new plaques and tablets in the original 1904
Heins-LaFarge style. The new plaques are made of faience and while they look like they might have been restorations of original work - they are not. The new plaques have the letters "LC" embossed over the "66"; remember,
Lincoln Center did not exist in 1904, when the station was opened. The walls are being refinished with white
panels, which are actually large mosaics of tiny opalescent tiles. Tan Norman brick surrounds and accents these
panels. The ornate ceiling and plaster rosettes around the old light fixtures have been lovingly restored, but the
bulb sockets have been covered over."
66th and Broadway takes advantage of the road medians and places an observatory across
Broadway. The curved staircase leading up to the observatory penetrates the monolith and
allows the public to experience the bowels of the monolith. From the staircase, the public
can see the massive ventilation tower clad with sound-proofing skin that suggests a ribbed
texture. The observatory is paired with a void into the subway that is forty-foot high at the
entrance.
ZONING DIAGRAM (SOURCE NYC DOT)
Primary Land Use
One
& Two
Family Residence
Multi-Family Residence (Walk
Multi-Family Residence (Elev
Mixed Residential &Commerci
Commercial Use
Industrial /
Manufacturing
Transportation / Utility
Public Facilities and Instit
Open Space & Recreation
Parking
Vacant Land
130
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APPENDIX i
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APPENDIX i
135
Columbus Circle
Description:
"The station at 66th and Broadway opened on October 27th, 1904. It is a local station with four tracks and
two side platforms. The side walls of the station feature large name tablet mosaics and both mosaic and faience
plaques of Christopher Columbus's three ships. A mezzanine underneath provides access to the IND station
at Columbus Circle. The downtown platform areas are much larger than necessary for the interchange with
the IND. They are deliberately ample to allow for an expansion of this station into a new express stop. The
downtown local and express tracks would, under an early 1950s NYCTA plan, weave out to accommodate a new
center express platform. The new downtown local platform would be in the bays. Thus this station would have
resembled Pennsylvania Station with three platforms. To ensure the bays remained available, the NY Colliseum
was set back from the street. As part of this plan the 72nd Street station would become a local stop by walling off
the express tracks. The express run would be from Times Square, then Columbus Circle, then 96th Street."
The Columbus Circle monument replaces the previous monument with an observatory.
The monolith is split in the middle and contains an occupiable glass shaft with an elevator.
Outside is a curved ramp and a ceremonial entrance. Instead of being a figural monument,
the new monument is an interactive spectacle where the city and the citizens are in charge.
ZONING DIAGRAM (SOURCE NYC DOT)
Primary Land Use
One & Two Family Residence
Multi-Family Residence
(Walk
Multi-Family Residence (Elev
Mixed Residential & Commerci
Commercial Use
Industrial / Manufacturing
Transportation / Utility
Public Facilities and Instit
Open Space & Recreation
Parking
Vacant Land
136
APPENDIX i
137
/
Site Plan
138
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APPENDIX i
141
Times Square
Description:
"'Ihe Grand Central/Times Square shuttle stations and track are part of the Contract I Interborough subway
construction which opened on October 27, 1904. The "First Subway" was continuous from City Hall on the
east side, up Broadway on the west side, using 42nd St. to get across town. When the two north-south lines were
extended as part of the Dual Contracts construction (1915-1918), the crosstown connection was severed and
changed into a crosstown shuttle operation."
The Times Square entrance at 42nd street provides a perfect site for an Urban Monument.
This intervention opens up the ground in front of the Conde Nast tower and insterts the
monolith like a skyscraper in the center of 7th ave. On the west side of the monolith is a
theatre, while on the opposite side is a series of public bathrooms. In plan these elements
constitute a perfect circle. A covered ramp penetrates the monolith and links the sidewalks
from east to west.
The Times Square monument erases the traces of the current public space in
exchange for more dynamic platforms for recreation.
ZONING DIAGRAM (SOURCE NYC DOT)
Primary Land Use
One S Two Family Residence
Multi-Family Residence (Walk
Multi-Family Residence (Elev
Mixed Residential & Commerci
Commercial Use
Industrial / Manufacturing
Transportation / Utility
Public Facilities and Instit
j
Open Space & Recreation
Parking
Vacant Land
142
APPENDIX
i
143
Site Plan
144
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APPENDIX i
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APPENDIX i
147
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brennan, Joseph. "Abandoned Stations - NYC." Abandoned Stations. 14 Mar. 2005.
Columbia University. 17 Nov. 2013 <http://www.columbia.edu/-brennan/abandoned/
index.html>.
Conrads, Ulrich. Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture. Cambridge, MA:
MIT P, 1970.
Hays, K. Michael. Architecture's Desire: Reading the Late Avant-garde. Cambridge, MA: MIT
P, 2010.
Hejduk, John, and Kim Shkapich. Riga, Vladivostok, Lake Baikal: A Work. New York:
Rizzoli, 1989.
"Privately Owned Public Space - New York City Department of City Planning." Privately
Owned PublicSpace - New York City Departmentof City Planning.City of New York. 17
Nov. 2013 <http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/priv/priv.shtml>.
Rossi, Aldo, Peter Arnell, and Ted Bickford. Aldo Rossi: Buildings and Projects. New York:
Rizzoli, 1985.
Schmidt, Stephan, Jeremy Nemeth, and Erik Botsford. "'he Evolution of Privately Owned
Public Spaces in New York City." URBAN DESIGN International216 (2011): 270-84.
148
Sert, J.L., and S. Giedion. "Nine Points on Monumentality." Architecture Culture, 19431968: Documentary anthology. Ed. Joan Ockman. [New York]: Columbia University
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, 1993.
Suarez, Richard Anthony. A new life for plazas: Reimaginingprivately owned public spaces in
New York City. Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies
and Planning, 2012.
Tschumi, Bernard. Event-Cities 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2000.
APPENDIX i
149
I
150
APPENDIX ii
AN EXQUISITE
CORPSES CHEAT SHEET
This is the original outline used for the final thesis defense preparation.
Meaning
- This thesis seeks to revisit meaning and signification in architecture.
- Dismissal of postmodernism (historicism, populist)
- Revisit of discourses that were dismissed along with Postmodernism
- Signification, linguistics, meaning
- Extract from this - issues of collective memory, anxiety, ways of reading
architecture.
- Goals for architecture
- to explore a continuity of historical tropes
- to promote typology over geometric complexity
- to promote the collective over the individual
- Along with this - reconstitution of what narrative means in
architecture.
- limits, modes, ties to other disciplines (literature, art)
Narrative
- Word that's thrown around
- Paper architecture, utopia, radical projects
- Narrative is how we experience and read space. Beyond navigation.
- The limits of narrative
- literary devices, allegory, moral, allusions
- intellectual reading of architecture - intellectual affect
- Tie to fiction - the use of fictional narratives in architecture
Fiction
- We can say that architecture deals mostly with fiction
- fiction as hypothesis, speculation, alternatives
- difference between real alternative and imaginary alternative (both fictions)
- fiction allows us to put aside real concerns (political, economic, etc)
- focus on fewer aspects
- imaginary alternative - lineage as architecture ad extremum. (dissmissive)
- change of scale of the imaginary alternative - scale of a parable, short
story.
- allows an allegorical approach
APPENDIX
ii
151
- explore limits of specific subject matter: here it's signification, formal
readings, ultimately meaning.
Thesis Framework
- Fictional narrative - Detective mystery
- Meta-narrative or meta-thesis - acts as a case study
- meaning within the context of public space, monumentality, primitive
forms.
-
3 narratives - Detective - Architect Mr. White - Serial Killer Mr. White
- Detective embodies the collective (perception of architecture)
- inability to solve the mystery and tie everything together alludes to the
public's inability to read architecture.
- Architect Mr. White embodies the impulse for architects to speculate about
urban conditions - perhaps even a pseudo-positivistic way.
- Serial Killer Mr. White represents the inability to be avant-garde. The quest for
meaning ultimately leads to madness.
Project - Urban Monuments: A Proposal for NYC
- A thesis that addresses monumentality, memory, and architectural agency
within the context of NYC's spaces.
- Here, Mr. White stands against contemporary modes of designing public space.
- Position on economic and social structure of public spaces.
- Proposes that divorcing the creation of public space from development and
tying it to infrastructure, there is more room for true public space (not privately
owned, that excludes).
- Separation of public space from gentrification or functionalism.
- proposes a redesign of the subway entrances in NYC - beginning with ones
already linked to public space.
- Establishes a minimalist grammar that allows for a reducibility of meaning
- tied to primitive forms.
- Grammar plays off architect's obsession with the monolith (2001) (1-4-9
proportions, mystery, monumentality)
- combinatory logic of the grammar subdues the notion of the icon, but
simultanously preserves the fragments of collective formal memories (primordial
forms)
- These urban monuments serve as repositories for public activity.
- They do not exclude, nor serve explicit functions
152
- Formally, they explore:
- solid/void
- interior/exterior
- spectator/spectacle
- form/function
- This project situates itself in the lineage of other projects (la vilette, hejduk's
masques)
Project - Mystery
- Story takes Mr. White and pushes the fiction to the limit by placing him as a
serial killer/architect.
- His quest for meaning leads to madness.
- He takes this project and turns it into a different way of producing meaning
(murder - Tschumi's axiom).
- Uses his obsession with proportion and form to choreograph normal people's
death - enhancing their meaning.
- The story focuses on the detective's quest to piece together the clues from this
project.
- The police discover his apartment and attain all the evidence they need, but
can't put it together.
- Systems of proportion, choreography, and formal studies are meant to illustrate
a way of signifying.
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154
APPENDIX iii
NOTES
Introduction
1. Stephen Koch, "Chapter 1: Beginnings" in The Modern LibraryWriter's Workshop: A Guide
to the Craft ofFiction (New York: Modern Library, 2003).
2. Ibid., 8-9.
3. Carlo Salzani, "The City as Crime Scene: Walter Benjamin and the Traces of the Detective,"
in New German Critique No. 100 (Winter, 2007): 165-187.
4. Ibid., 186.
5. Bernard Tschumi, "Advertisements for Architecture", Architectural Design 47 (1977):
214-218.
1
Reading Architecture
1. K. Michael Hays, Architecture's Desire: Reading the Late Avant-Garde (Cambridge, Mass:
MIT Press, 2010). p. 147
2 Real and Unreal
1. These observations were made following trends in recent architectural publications where
the two modes of operating are in practice. Articles ranging from Architect Magazine's
"Architecture to the Rescue" (Sept. 2011) to Reinhold Martin's "Critical of What?" in
Harvard Design Magazine (Spring/Summer 2005) present a wide range of back-andforth revisitations of real versus non-real architectural ambitions in discussion today.
Furthermore, questions of what constitutes an architectural thesis expand this discussion
to an educational debate. See Mark Jarzombek, "A Thesis," Thresholds 12 (Spring 1996):
6-8.
2. In recent years MIT architecture students have developed a tradition of producing highly
technical and scientific proposals ranging from infrastructural solutions to productive
typologies. See (but not limited to) Masoud Akbarzadeh, Hydropower Cities. Thesis
(M.Arch), MIT. DSpace@MIT, 2011.; Catherine Winfield, Autopoietic Landscapes.
Thesis (M.Arch), MIT. DSpace@MIT, 2013.; Carolyn Jenkins, East Boston Buffer. Thesis
(M.Arch), MIT. DSpace@MIT, 2013.
3. Manfredo Tafuri, "There is No Criticism, Only History," Design Book Review 9, 1986, p.
11.
4. Neil Bingham, "On the Brink of a Tumultuous Abyss: Images of Fantasy and Visionary
Architecture," in Fantasy Architecture 1500-2036, ed. Clare Carolin, et al. (London:
Hayward Gallery, 2004), p. 12.
5. Martin suggests that revisiting postmodernism can be a productive endeavor when we
take it farther than simple representation. Seen in this light, architecture's notion of utopia
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ceases to be an autonomous act, and can engage a broader spectrum of societal concerns,
namely power and economics. For Martin's position, see Utopia's Ghost (Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).
6. Rem Koolhaas, "Exodus: or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture," in S,M,L,XL (New
York: Monacelli Press, 1995); John Hejduk, Mask of Medusa - Works 1947-1983 (New
York: Rizzoli, 1985); Jimenez Lai, Citizens ofNo Place(New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2012); WAI Think Tank, "Narrative Architecture: a Manifesto" in Volume 36 (July
2013): 46.
7. K. Michael Hays and Marrikka Trotter, "Fielding Fictions: A Conversation" in Log 22
(Spring/Summer 2011): 130. An in-depth version of this analysis can be found in Hays'
book Architecture's Desire (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009).
8. Douglas Darden, "Between Corpus and Corpse" in A+U(July 1988): 12.
9. For examples of Hejduk's poetry see Such Placesas Memory: Poems 1953-1996 (Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press, 1998); for Darden's projects see his monograph Condemned Building
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993).
10. WAI Think Tank, "Narrative Architecture: a Manifesto," 47.
11. Martin, Utopias Ghost, xiv
12. An online article based on several research studies concluded that one of the best ways
people retain information is through stories. Participants were either told information as
facts or within a narrative and the latter proved in most cases to have a better retention
rate. See Leo Widrich, "The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story Is the Most
Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains." Lifehacker.com, Gawker Media, 12 May 2012.
Web.
3 Paranoia
1. Carlo Salzani, "The City as Crime Scene: Walter Benjamin and the Traces of the Detective,"
in New German CritiqueNo. 100 (Winter, 2007): 166.
2. Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992).
3. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York:
Monacelli, 1994).
4. There are numerous accounts ofwhy paper architecture or theory dominated architectural
discussions from the 19 6 0s to 1980s. Jeffrey Kipnis attributes it to lack of economic
activity in the field while figures like Reyner Banham argue that it was necessary to
theorize to bring about an expanded practice. See Kipnis, PerfectActs ofArchitecture (New
York: Museum of Modern Art, 2001); Banham, "A Black Box: The Secret Profession of
Architecture" in A Critic Writes (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996); The
abundance of self-reflexive theoretical arguments written at this time can also be seen in
anthologies such as Kate Nesbitt's Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture:Architecture
156
Theory from 1965 to 1995 (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996) and K. Michael Hays'
Architecture Theory since 1968 (MIT Press, 2000).
4 Representation
1. For complete works of those mentioned see Lai, Citizens ofNo Place; Wes Jones, Meet the
Nelsons (Los Angeles: LA Forum, 2010); Jack Self, Scatterbrain:A CautionaryTale (London:
Speculative Publications, 2010); Hejduk, Such Placesas Memory; Roger Connah, Weome
to the HotelArchitecture (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998); MOS (Michael Meredith
and Hilary Sample), Everything All At Once (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
2013); Bernard Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts (London: Academy Editions, 1994).
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