Notes on generic architecture
Technische Universiteit Delft - Berlage Institute Rotterdam
Abstract
This essay is an attempt to reconsider the ‘generic’ as a possible political
architectural category within and against the total apparatus of production, a
counter-project ‘to make the brain of the system mad’, far beyond its precedent
theorizations or reluctant acceptance of its pessimistic aura. If cognitive capitalism
undermined any distinction between labour and life, salary and income,
consumption and re-production, work and political action, then precisely production
and its genericness would constitute a fertile ground to elaborate a strategy of
exodus based on the new theories of value and common production, basic income
and housing struggle. Adopting the Operaist tactic ‘first the struggle and then
development’, which considers labour struggle as the premise of capitalist evolution
rather than its consequence, all the architecture of production of the advanced
capital could be conceived as an attempt to tame the violence of the labour-force,
whose destructive character and quantitative requests - more money less work always forced capital itself to refine its instruments of exploitation and reduce its
apparatus to the barest form of ‘possibility.
Preamble: on the generic.
enabled its separation and calculability
from the definite ‘special form’ of the
Marx defined the concept of labor a real
proper use-value. Value was nothing
abstraction, being an abstraction always
but
historically produced when “one thing
homogeneous human labor, of labor-
appears as common to many, to all.”i In
power expended without regard to the
a society where labor turned to be so
mode of its expenditure”,iv being labor-
widely articulated and diffused, to the
power the potential aggregate of mental
point of becoming the prime reason of
and physical capabilities “existing in the
social wealth, it has been possible to
physical form, the living personality, of a
embrace
working
human being”.v Such a potential does
activities within a generic abstract labor,
not exists per se but only as a capacity
a labor sans phrase, uniform in quality
(δύναµις),vi as possibility of becoming
and only different in quantity, the one
indissolubly bound to the living being.
which does not require anyone in
For these reasons man could be
particular to be performed. This average
defined a social individual, a twofold
labor is social by nature and present in
entity
every single activity as ‘crystalized’
determinations and general faculties,
expression
social
gradually attained through a process of
(gemeinschaftliche
‘individuation’ from an indefinite basin of
all
the
of
different
a
common
substance
the
“mere
made
congelation
both
of
of
singular
this
generic existence. This pre-individual
sense, the use of the term ‘generic’,
realm, made of material and intellectual
which
greek
endowments, is constantly declined and
substantive γενος ‘race’, ‘kind’, ‘species’
actualized by each singularity in relation
and the verb γιγνοµαι
to
gesellschafliche
being’,
derives
Substanz).
from
‘generating’
In
the
‘coming into
contingent
circumstances.
‘producing’,
Therefore, the process of individuation
results appropriate to indicate both an
does not exhaust in a single act or in a
undifferentiated general quality of the
final balanced state but lies within an
species-being (Gattungsgwesen)ii and
‘amphibious’
status
the very idea of ‘life-activity’, ‘giving
struggle
adaptation
rise’, ‘becoming’.iii Because of such
preservation: the unlimited human life-
abstractness
engendering aptitude.
and
or
its
genericness,
according
to
Marx,
social
possessed
an
exchange-value
labor
for
of
permanent
and
self-
From mass worker to socialized worker.
that
2
“At
the
highest
development,
point
capitalist
began precisely because of the working
production
process, in the very moment they were
of
social
becomes a moment of the process of
collectively
production which means that all society
apparatus of production. By then, they
lives within the factory, and the factory
lost their own autonomy, becoming
extends its dominion over the whole
entirely incorporated as a particular
society”.vii
mode
Fordist capitalism exploited the body of
Therefore, the productive power socially
the worker to attain its embedded
developed by the workers (Arbeiter als
potential. His actions and movements
gesellschaftlicher Arbeiter),ix within the
where rationalized within the regulated
capitalist apparatus, turned to be the
space-temporal diagram of the factory
productive
out of calculable effort-expenditures.
nurturing the real subsumption of the
The
exchange
socialized labor-power, extending the
between wage and labor-force was both
limits of the factory across the entire
the conviction and the force of the
society and transforming ‘fixed capital’
mass-worker, which could be used to
in the ‘human capital’ of living bodies
counter-attack
and active minds.
hideous
quantitative
the
same
class
of
of
employed
existence
power
within
of
of
the
capital.viii
capital
itself,
employers: “more money, less work”.
The core of contemporary bio-capitalist
The class dialectic was clear: labor-
anthropogenicx production, a production
power was autonomous, being a force
of men by means of men,xi lies in
that
its
knowledge, language and relational
relations, a force that capital could only
competences, creativity, in other words
subsume in the form but not in the
in the whole general intellect, which is
content.
actualized by an accurate and careful
came
Nevertheless,
before
capital
whereas
and
the
worker
modulation of the ‘human capital’ and
entered in relation with capital as an
whose
individual, as singular owner and seller
accumulation is the University.
of his labor-power, he was put at work
Knowledge became a commodity and
as a social individual, in cooperation
education a service that could be
with
were
purchased or exchanged. The creation
of
of
other
assumed
as
workers,
other
which
‘aliquots’
a
value
ultimate
by
paradigm
means
of
of
material
collective labor-force. Their cooperation,
production has been overcome by the
gratuitously offered to the employer,
creation of value through the production
3
of minds and technological innovation.
This not only increased the relation
“Labor struggles are an irreplaceable
between
private
and
instrument of self-consciousness for
industries
with
programs,
capital: without them it does not see, it
fostering particular research sectors
does not recognize its own adversary
which
and, therefore, it does not acknowledge
could
economical
enterprises
academic
immediately
advantages,
provide
but
also
itself.”xiii
reduced the students to precarious
When life itself is put at work,xiv then
cheap workers, consumers of their own
capitalist expropriation could not be
knowledge, mobile victims which have
exerted any longer through closed
to invest and, hence, to in-debt their
disciplinary
lives
with
through open mechanisms of rent,xv in
through
order to not restrain the free flowering of
diplomas or degrees which equals mere
the common potential and reducing its
skill qualifications.
inner productivity. In this sense, the
On the other hand, an economy driven
more labor-power is exploited in its
by immaterial faculties, undermined the
most
old wage relations and processes of
capitalist apparatus is forced towards its
labor valorization, shifting the object of
barest form of ‘possibility’: a typical
the working-class struggle from the
plan, a simple, flexible, reproducible
salary, a compensation for specific
layout
performances, to the basic income, a
productive any human subjectivity.
remuneration for any performed living
The Operaist tactic considers labor
activity. When life is exploited in its
struggle as the real propelling subject of
entirety then the claim for a basic
capitalist
income of existence constitutes the
technological
highest revolutionary program within the
continuous reassessments have always
maximum integration: a generalized,
been
egalitarian,
discriminative
annihilating violence of its opponent.
redistribution of the profits accumulated
From these assumptions, it could be
by the economic system through the
conjectured that the typical plan is a
gratuitous capture and expropriation of
creation of the “working-class and of the
common knowledge and productivity.xii
working-class struggle”, and that the
Labor Struggle and Typical Plan.
generic architecture corresponds to the
in
endless
a
perennial
training,
learning
measured
not
regimes
generic
able
form,
to
of
the
restrain
development,
deployed
and
to
profit,
but
more
and
the
make
whose
managerial
subsume
the
4
minimum spatial framework necessary
lines to the contemporary brain think-
to actualize the unexpressed potentiality
belts.
of labor-power, being ‘generic’ not just a
default status, but rather the undefined
Marx in Detroit: assembly lines.
realm of productive forces prior to any
process of individuation.xvi
In his Postscript of problems,xvii Mario
Tronti
attempts
to
elaborate
some
theoretical principles about the workingclass after Marx at the beginning of the
XX century, offering a viable testing
ground
to
investigate
the
mutual
relations of the wild political battles of
the pre-union American workers and the
Albert Kahn: Highland Park Plant, 1908
political maneuvers of the German
historical Social-democracy vis-à-vis the
spatial development of the architecture
of production. In this sense, the history
of labor movement, written “in letters of
blood and fire”, seems to be vividly
preserved
power
precisely
deployed
apparatuses
factories,
of
where
its
resistance:
machines,
capital’s
strongest
in
its
offices,
supermarkets, museums, academies,
monuments,
ruins.
Therefore,
by
making objective the diagrams of forces
and spatial configurations induced by
labor strife, it would be possible to
reconstruct a genealogy of the typical
plan and its different deployment from
the disciplinary rigidity of the factory to
the
modulative
open-plan
of
the
university, from the bodily assembly
Albert Kahn: Glenn L. Martin Co. Assembly
Building, 1939
Albert Kahn’s industrial architecture
ranges between 1905 and 1942,xviii a
period
in
the
U.S.
animated
by
advanced labor struggles, grassroots
activism,
sabotages
and
mass
demonstrations for higher wages, better
working conditions and freedom of
assembly. All the peaks of labor strife,
the milestones of the american workingclass history, found their immediate
translation in new rational configurations
5
of the manufacturing space and more
daylight
refined strategies of social integration,
articulations.
reducing the shop-floor to its minimum
multistory building, a three-dimensional
integer elements. The two extremes of
concrete frame able to contain the
this progressive typological rarefaction
vertical assembling processes all under
of the industrial layout were the daylight
one roof and, on the other hand, the
factory, introduced at the beginning of
horizontal workshop over one floor, a
the XX century, and the formulated
one story, roof lighted unobstructed
layout, developed during the intense
working space. The combination of
WWII production for the Arsenal of
these two declinations converged in
Democracy.
1908, in his renown project for the Ford
At the fall of the Progressive Era, the
Highland Park Plant in Detroit. The old
hideous social conditions of the labor-
shop was a four-story high concrete
force and the exhausting working rates
skeleton, hosting the different assembly
devoid of safety or sanitary assistance,
procedures of the vehicles, arranged
exploded
strikes,
around the gigantic glazed canopy of
supported by the rising first union
the machine-shop, where all the parts of
organizations
the Ford T were manufactured. The
in
numerous
and
often
violently
system
suppressed. The daylight factory, the
plan
very first fruit of the new age, with its
mathematically
innovative
requirements
reinforced
concrete
and
On
turned
in
two
one
advanced
hand,
into
a
developed
of
the
the
layout,
from
the
manufacturing
glazed
procedures and the arrangement of
surfaces, cleaner and safer spaces,
machinery, according to the three shop-
provided
‘technical
theory principles: “a planned orderly
solution’ to eliminate the menace of the
progression of the commodity through
workers’ associations and to neutralize
the shop, the delivery of work instead of
social discontent while providing the
leaving it to the workman’s initiative to
definitive structure for an even heavier
find it, the analysis of operations into
labor exploitation.
their constituent parts”.xix
Already in 1906, delivering his first two
The
important industrial commissions, the
resulted from the long reorganization of
Packard Motor Car Company Plant in
forces,
Detroit and the Geo Pierce Arrow in
methodologies following the financial
Buffalo, Albert Kahn developed the
crisis in 1929. The Keynesian therapy
fireproof
structures,
the
larger
convenient
‘formulated
approach’,xx instead,
investments
and
design
6
suggested
capitalism
to
inject
the
derive
a
‘formulated’
grammar
of
destructive power of its enemy rather
industrial layouts, consisting in a limited
than maintaining a strenuous opposition
set of typical plans and standardized
against it, considering the crisis as an
criteria rapidly applicable to any kind of
inexorable element of its evolution and
production demands.
the animal spirits of the working-class
The Chevrolet Commercial Body Plant
as its driving force.xxi The future New
(Indianapolis, 1935), the De Soto Press
Deal reforms, and the ‘capitalistic use’
Shop (Detroit, 1936) and the famous
of
Half-Ton Truck Plant for the Chrysler
the
working-class,
required
the
leading ‘planning’ role of the State in
Corporation
order to overcome the market forces
nothing but exemplary declinations of
and to address them towards long-term
the same fundamental module: a fixed
social investments.
formula based on a modular steel-
The drastic economical conditions and
structural bay 40 by 40 feet halved or
the Keynesian principles induced Henry
doubled according to the production
Ford and Albert Kahn to enlarge the
requirements. The butterfly bent roof
market of mass production precisely
beams, differently articulated in the
where the labor-force was the strongest,
three projects, considerably enlarged
the demand was the highest and the
the structural spans avoiding a direct
State had an uncontested economic
solar lighting through inclined steel sash
xxii
control: U.R.S.S.
(Detroit,
1937)
were
The remarkable
monitors. The outer walls were usually
amount of commissions received during
in brick, with continuous steel sashes
the
the
and Gunite sheathes. All technical
consequent international expansion of
equipments and service spaces were
the firm, convinced Kahn to restructure
either packed above or below the shop-
his own office on the model of the
floor leaving the manufacturing space
industrial assembly line. A rational
completely
subdivision in specialized departments
lighting and air-conditioning eliminated
allowed to orchestrate all the technical
the strict dependency upon natural
and executive phases of the projects at
daylight
the same time while drastically reducing
absolutely homogeneous clear plane:
the time of delivering. The massive
because of the artificially controlled
volume
new
conditions, all the points of the floor had
to
the same potentiality whereas the width
Russian
of
bureaucratic
venture,
work
and
procedures
and
the
forced
unobstructed.
turning
the
layout
Electric
to
an
7
and length of the building became
instruments for unlimited exploitation.
Nevertheless, the highest refinement of
the ‘formulated approach’ had been
definitely achieved in Kahn’s project for
the Glenn L. Martin Co. Assembly
Building
in
Baltimore,
designed
to
produce the PBM Mariner and the PB2
Mars airplanes in 1938. It was a single
monolithic rectangular space of 300 by
450 feet, 73 feet high, whose ceiling
Ludwig
was supported by a series of parallel
Building, 1928
Hilberseimer:
Proposal
for
a
City
Pratt trusses, 300 feet long and 30 feet
depth, placed at 50 foot intervals,
“What then is the purpose of these
allowing an assembly spacexxiii entirely
unheard-of constructions? In large part,
free of columns.
they directly serve production. In part
they serve transport and trade and thus
Historical social democracy: enabling
indirectly production. In part, they serve
architectures.
administration,
domicile,
care,
thus
and
and
health
predominantly
production. In part they serve science,
art, technology, education, recreation,
and
thus
indirectly
once
again
production.”xxiv
Mies van der Rohe: Concrete Office Building,
1923
The spirit of capitalism, as Weber put it,
relied on the transformation of the
professional duty in internal vocation, in
a
complete
and
unconditioned
abnegation towards its proper officium.
Such a completely irrational mandate
could only be rationalized through the
power of an ethos, the “worldly ascesis”
of labor as supreme truthful human
8
activity,
fruit
calculated
been improvised but rather legally
entrepreneurial responsibility. Arbeit as
planned through the continuos political
supreme principle of civilization: the
modulation between subversion and
ideological Bildung project, enacted by
control. Politics als Beruf.
the historical German social-democracy
The
at the beginning of XX century, lied
undoubtedly favored by the German
precisely on the cultural transformation
advanced ‘labour aristocracy’ of high-
of
the
precision and specialized workers that
working-class in tangible forms and
impeded the rapid diffusion of the
constituent behaviors. While in United
Taylorist scientific management and the
States,
introduction of the unskilled Fordist
the
of
a
unrestrained
at
the
power
same
of
time,
labor
protective
policies
struggles were having large victories
mass-worker.
and advanced results with workers
representative of the German labor
organization
opposition were the workers of the
and
wild-cat
Another
were
deep-rooted
insubordinations, in no other country as
heavy
in Germany it was so difficult to reach
movement exerted large pressures on
the struggle because of the particular
the national economy as in 1889, when
Sachlichkeit
the Ruhr miners mass-strike made the
of
the
German
class-
extractive-sectors,
composition and the highly developed
whole
bureaucratic state apparatus, which was
Bismarck to introduce labor committees
always
capable
to
the
in the factories. But the radical figure of
conflict
within
the
“organizational
the German class-composition in the
recompose
consequences
they
generated”.xxv In
have
Germany
the
empire
whose
‘tremble’,
forcing
early 20‘s was the Kopfarbeiter,xxvi the
salaried
brain
worker.
Within
the
organization of the working-class came
general rationalization of the clerical
from the capitalist initiative at first, both
workspace,
on a political and on an economical
informational,
level.
and in managerial consultancy sectors,
The
democratic
power
of
the
party,
sided
socialby
the
this
new
especially
in
mass-media
mass
of
cultural,
industries
intellectual
monitoring role of the trade unions,
proletarians constituted the other side of
succeeded in institutionally formalizing
the ungelernte industrial mass workers:
the
the new modern slavery, underpaid
relation
through
a
struggle/organization
careful
compromising
reformism: revolution should not have
precarious, highly exploited and devoid
of
political
and
professional
9
representation.xxvii Despite
their
Fordist economy, and rationalization in
disposable
and
the place of class struggle - in short,
entrepreneurial initiative, which resulted
socialization instead of socialism”.xxix
fundamental in the organization of the
Financial
workers
councils
competition,
salaried
masses
self-coordination
homeless’,
after
1918,
were
maneuvering
production and controlling the market
economic
and bank investments. Between 1922-
principles which generated their own
1923, at the peak of hyper-inflation,
existences, both victims and unaware
when the Deutschmark was substituted
authors of the mass spectacle of the
by
capitalist Grossstadt.
Retenmark,
Mies
According to Kracauer, Berlin was the
postulated
several
city
abstract projects, unmasking the inner
the
with
solid
invisibly
beyond
through oligarchies of stock-companies
by
of
‘spiritually
run
values,
eroded
devoid
the
capital
same
the
most
pronounced
the
abstract
Angestelltenkultur, a culture made by
rules
employees
and
architectures
as
construction,
conceived
for
by
employees
most
employees
of
the
currency
and
of
Hilberseimer
‘destructive’xxx
metropolis
of
the
pure
through
‘enabling’
ermöglichenden
culture tout-court.xxviii With its almost 4
Konstruction.xxxi
millions
Berlin
In 1923 Mies van der Rohe was
became the third city in the world after
collaborating in the magazine G, with
London and New York, counting 883
Hans Richter, Lerner Gräff, El Lissitzky
square kilometers to be administrated.
and Theo van Doesburg. Their intention
The Greater Berlin Building Plan, by
was
Martin
the
mechanization was devoid of spiritual
following Martin Wagner’s New Berlin in
purposes and demanded a further
1924, advocated the construction of a
conceptual theorization, an investigation
new business City, to drive mass
of the elementare Gestaltung and its
consumption
production
economy of power and materials, which
within the calculated plan of the social-
required “elemental means, total control
democratic compromise: “socialization
of
of the construction industry and mass
regularity.”xxxii The problem was not to
housing, technical and bureaucratic
impose new ‘better’ forms, but rather to
solutions to social problems, state
derive
management of conflicts within the
directly from the Grossstadt and its
inhabitants,
Mächler
in
and
1920
1917,
social
and
clear
since
means.
coherent
the
first
Elemental
formal
issue:
order,
principles
10
massive
productive
architecture
as
potentials:
construction,
a
scrupulously calculated in the correct
procedure of binding together the raw
distribution of its bearing supports: the
materials and the forces of an epoch
minimum effort of energy out from the
towards a unique coherent solution.
perfect combination of structure and
Mies’ proposal for a Bürohaus, a
materials. With its layered floors, few
concrete office building for the Grosse
discreet supporting points, the cleared
Berliner Kunstausstellung, appeared the
floor
clearest
disposable
demonstration
of
as
disposable for the most varied uses,
these
plan,
and
for
the
free
facade
advertisements,
the
assumptions: a pure shelter for the
Bürohaus was perfectly appropriate to
human activities in the foreground, an
the real estate logic of the Grossstadt
architecture reduced to simple art of
and thus further articulated, between
organization. The office building was “a
1927 and 1929, for several competitions
house of work, of organization, of
like the Stuttgart Bank in Stuttgart and
clarity,
the
of
economy.
Bright
wide
Kaufhaus
Adam,
workrooms, uncluttered, undivided, only
Alexanderplatz,
articulated according to the organism of
Office Building in Berlin.
the firm. The greatest effect with the
In
least
elaborated
expenditure
of
means.
The
1929
also
a
the
the
Friedrichstrasse
Ludwig
Hilberseimer
proposal
for
the
materials are concrete, iron, glass.
commercial and administrative center of
Ferroconcrete buildings are essentially
Berlin, a project that epitomized all is
skeleton structures. Neither noodles nor
precedents theories and hypotheses on
tank
the
turrets.
Supporting
girder
Grossstadt:
the
Vorschlag
zur
construction with a non supporting wall.
Citybebauung, or Proposal for a City
That
Building.
means
structure.”xxxiii
skin
Despite
and
his
bone
previous
Already
in
Grossstadtarchitektur (1927), but even
skyscraper glass projects, here Mies
in
fully accepted the bare exigencies of the
(1925), Hilberseimer considered the
commercial
speculation,
metropolis as the logical anonymous
providing the maximum exploitable floor
product of the capitalist omnipotence, a
area within the six-story limit of the
bio-political apparatus of residential,
building regulations. The result was a
commercial,
pure
a
settlements where its inhabitants could
rentable volume entirely flexible and
just work and reproduce themselves in
hollow
urban
multistory
factory,
his
previous
cultural
Grossstadtbauten
and
industrial
11
the most social proximity and, at the
(Trabantenstadt), his proposal for the
same time, in the greatest isolation. His
Hochausstadt,
architecture, profoundly influenced by
conceived the metropolis as an all-
the
social-democratic
encompassing machine explicitly based
theories of Eduard Bernstein, could be
on a substratum of industrial and tertiary
conceived as a continuous effort to
activities.xxxiv The city lied on a generic
deduce a definitive ruling system to
productive plinth, source of its own
solve the problems of the city by
ceaseless evolution, while its conditions
understanding
working
of reproduction arose above it, in
spaces within a unique generic plan,
stacked vertical slabs hosting facilities
because generic were also the human
and residential boarding slabs. Such a
productive
faculties
hypothesis was further elaborated in the
continuously at work in the Grossstadt.
project for the Citybebauung, a generic
Between 1923 and 1924, his proposals
city
for the Chicago Tribune competition and
conditions of the Berlin city center. The
for an Industrial Building (Fabrikbau),
project, focused entirely on exchange,
were nothing but elaborations on the
distribution and brain production, was
fundamental
emptiness
the
an ‘immaterial’ translation of the typical
contemporary
tertiary
whose
Albert Kahn’s daylight factories, which
architecture tautologically coincided with
were widely known at that time, and
its simple structure (Gefüge): supports
even reproduced in Beton als Gestalter,
and
radical
published by Hilberseimer just one year
simplification of the plan was also
before.xxxv The two-floors glazed plinth
evident in his parallel project for a
embodied the ultimate transformation of
Wohnstadt,
residential
the sky-lighted machine room: the
settlement in 1923, where the housing
“core” of the Fordist production turned in
units were provided of a unique living
an interrupted hypostyle rentable space
space, a sleep-cabin, devoid of internal
for cultural and commercial programs
circulation and only divided by wooden
with a multi-layered sunken garage. The
equipped partitions.
linear empty typical plan of the two
Nevertheless, if the previous projects
eight-story
were still conceived as isolated and self-
disclosed the definitive replacement of
referential productive units, sort of
the
suburban
human think-belts: the most simple and
revisionist
living
and
beams.
a
and
creative
But
of
city,
the
suburban
satellite-cities
building,
or
‘Vertical-City’,
within
office
assembly-line
the
slabs,
historical
instead,
machinery
with
12
appropriate
construction
to
enable
between the two contradictions of the
undefined spaces for business and
Systems;
‘maximum
Quantity’
and
cognitive labor.
‘maximum Balance’. It is only in this
way, by making the Brain of the System
Sichtbar Machen: University Climatic
mad, that we can interrupt the continuity
System
of processes and links alike”.xxxvi
In 1970 the duo Dziga Vertov, Jean
Louis Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin,
shot Luttes en Italie.xxxvii The plot was
simple, the intent ambitious: by looking
historically at one character, the movie
attempted to unveil the coercive laws of
capitalist
logic
ideological
Archizoom Associates: Proposal for the new
University of Florence, 1971
unmasking
surface.
Paola,
their
the
protagonist, does not know how to
approach the working-class. After a long
self-conscious introspection concerning
her bourgeois condition, ‘composed’ of
different separated events (university,
shopping, family, sex), she gradually
acknowledges the organic substratum
of
the
production-distribution-
consumption cycle hidden beneath the
alleged
‘variety’
of
her
daily-life
spectacle. Such a generic productive
background was rendered with blackArchizoom Associates: Proposal for the new
University of Florence, 1971
ideological veil occurred in front of a
“There is just a ‘Quantitative’ challenge
which,
without
presupposing
screen interruptions, while the rip of the
‘other’
logic systems, accepts the actual Logic
of Production as a level of comparison
mirror, which immediately reflected the
protagonist’s alienation within the social
conditions of production.
Interestingly enough, in the same year,
an important architectural competition
13
for the New University of Florence was
university riots to the whole working-
launched, to which Archizoom Associati
class struggle, in oder to establish an
submitted a project entitled I progetti si
‘organic connection’ with the entire
firmano (Projects need to be signed)
society.xxxviii
against the alleged anonymity of the
At that time, Archizoom had already
competition procedures. By signing the
accumulated numerous experiences of
project, and deliberately proclaiming
‘cultural terrorism’, an ingenious war-
themselves offside, Archizoom rejected
strategy aimed at revealing the marble
the
a
chicken of the imperialist economic
competition brief that fostered only mere
dominion hidden beneath the domestic
issues
management,
bourgeois culture by means of ‘acid’
megastructures, fancy programs, 'aerial
installations, ‘poisoned’ objects, dream
architectures' and 'roof top designs',
beds, ‘exotic’ gazebos, ‘surreal’ and
which
architectural
‘secret’ theaters: “As fake pacifists we
‘objects’ or visionary autres realities
take away our beards and mustaches
rather than critical reflections on the
meditating
contemporary national and international
cheating.”xxxix
university upheavals, as documented in
Influenced by the harsh political debate,
Luttes en Italie. After the first university
the Operaist theories, Tafuri’s Critique
occupation in Trento, in 1966, three
of Ideology, and Marshall McLuhan and
intense years of students riots and
Reyner
workers’ protests, shook the Italian
infatuations, they rapidly maturated an
debate on the role of the new mass-
operative Utopia that could be used as
university within and against the ruling
a critical instance on the system itself,
economical
Considering
while realizing the intrinsic limitations of
themselves as ‘labor-force in formation’
the architectural discipline in intervening
and reclaiming political representative
within
structures analogous to the workers
condition.
unions, independence of knowledge
admonition Sichtbar machen, making
from the technical capitalist integration,
things visible, “to say them clearly in
freedom of accessibility to a superior
order to be understood, at the risk of not
education and the dismantling of the
interpreting very well things intrinsically
obsolete academic class hierarchies,
obscure”xl became the main goal for a
the students attempted to open the
new political approach to the project, as
obtuse
of
still
requirements
urban
proposed
system.
of
the
Banham
an
most
technological
all-encompassing
In
this
violent
sense,
market
Tronti’s
14
a strategy drawn from the actual
Pistoia. This not just as inspiration or
relations of power and aimed at making
poetic invention, but in the sense that
the Brain of the System mad.
we refuse to design an object, preferring
Therefore,
their
proposal
for
the
instead to design its use".xlii
University of Florence constituted the
The ‘Territorial Planimetry’ of the project
fundamental study-case to elaborate a
was a pure grid,xliii a “homogeneous
definitive Theory of the Metropolis,
living diagram”: homogeneous, because
which would eventually result in the
reality was one and the same, the one
model for an Homogeneous and Not-
of production; living, because life in its
Discontinuous City one year later.
xli
genericness was the highest source of
The project derived from an ‘elementary
profit; diagram, because conceived as
application’, at a territorial scale, of the
display of the immanent forces and their
new modern technologies of the ‘well-
power
tempered environment’ - elevators, air-
resulted
conditioning, electric lighting, ‘Flexible
underground’ architecture, a massive
Space’ and ‘Flexible Ceiling’ - which
repetition
equalled the programmatic and formal
productive plinths, structured only by
features of the university to the ones of
the
any other architecture of production,
supporting elements, toilets, shafts and
such
supermarkets,
elevators: the greatest possible freedom
industrialized
within the maximum alienation, a zero-
agricultural fields. On the other hand,
degree project from which everything
proposing only a series of continuous
was possible and unpredictable.xliv The
plans and a single continuous cross-
University was a gigantic platform of
section,
any
superimposed plateaux, able to inform
Archizoom
and reify any of its generic social
intended to overcome the problem of
issues:xlv leisure, recreation, residential
form in general, conceiving territory as a
parkings, information sharing, scientific
neutral
the
research. Already Cedric Price, with his
existence of any ‘outside’ beyond the
Thinkbelt Potteries, in 1964, attempted
ubiquitous relations of production: "The
to attack the concept of a secluded
only architectural form we would have
upper-class university and to undermine
wanted to propose was thus a bank of
the self-referential logic of the campus
fog
by envisioning a linear system for
as
housing
factories,
units,
or
voluntarily
perimetrical
definition,
matter
roaming
devoid
and
between
of
banishing
Firenze
and
relations.
in
a
of
discreet
The
sort
the
ordered
project
of
thus
‘arisen
Hochausstadt
number
of
15
'higher education facilities' on the ruins
more it develops, the more capital
of an abandoned pottery industrial
creates its own gravediggers.
infrastructure in the English Midlands.
Although opening the project towards
‘uncharted territories’ and calculated
uncertainties,
Price's
modular
combinations, interactive centers, and
transfer points, were not daring enough,
being still a collection of objects,
typologies
and
‘quantities’.
On
circumscribed
the
contrary,
for
Archizoom, the isotropic condition of the
market could not be represented except
than by itself, eliminating the problem of
the city and its architecture once and for
all. The problem was not to imagine a
different, a better or fairer city, but
rather to challenge the system in its
entirety,
unveiling
its
intrinsic
quantitative logic of development and
exploitation
through
a
‘definitive’
solution. The mirror, which was used in
Luttes en Italie as estrangement device
to achieve class-consciousness, in the
University maquette was deployed as a
three-dimensional
optical
device
to
render the mise en abîme of the
Universal Climatic System. But the
conjectured coincidence of the market
system
with
proletarianization
knowledge,
the
extension
and
inevitably
of
common
entails
the
battlefield for its final subversion. The
16
i
Karl Marx. “The Method of Political Economy” in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1859), online version http://www.marxists.org, (1999)
ii
Karl Marx. Economical and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, (Moscow: Progress
Publishers,1959), “Estranged Labor”, par. XXIV, online version http://www.marxists.org, (1999)
iii
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott. A Greek–English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940)
iv
Karl Marx. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy (Hamburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1867) Volume 1,
ch.1, online version http://www.marxists.org, (1999)
v
Karl Marx. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy (Hamburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1867) Volume 1,
ch.6, online version http://www.marxists.org, (1999)
vi
Paolo Virno. A Grammar of the Multitude. For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life (Los
Angeles: Semiotex(e), 2004), 83
vii
Mario Tronti. “La fabbrica e la società” originally published in Quaderni Rossi, 2 (1962), 1-31;
reprinted in Operai e Capitale, (Turin: Einaudi,1966)
viii
Renato Panzieri, Lotte operaie nello sviluppo capitalistico, (Turin:Einaudi, 1976)
ix
Karl Marx. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy (Hamburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1867) Volume 1,
ch.2, online version http://www.marxists.org, (1999)
x
Christian Marazzi. “Capitalismo digitale e modello antropogenetico del lavoro. L’ammortamento del
corpo macchina”. in J.L.Laville, C.Marazzi, M. La Rosa, F. Chicci (ed) Reinventare il lavoro
(Rome:Sapere, 2000)
xi
Robert, Boyer. La croissance, début de siècle. (Paris: Albin Michel, 2002)
xii
Andrea Fumagalli, Dieci tesi sul reddito di cittadinanza, (1998), online at
http://www.ecn.org/andrea.fumagalli/10tesi.htm
xiii
Mario Tronti. “Poscritto di Problemi”, in Operai e Capitale, 2nd edition (Turin: Einaudi,1971)
xiv
Andrea Fumagalli, Cristiana Morini. “Life put to work: Towards a life theory of value”, Ephemera.
Theory and Politics in Organization, vol. 10, no. 3 (2010)
xv
Carlo Vercellone. “Crisi della legge del valore e divenire rendita del profitto” in Andrea Fumagalli
and Sandro Mezzadra, eds.,Crisi dell'economia globale. Mercati finanziari, lotte sociali e nuovi scenari
politici (Rome: Ombre Corte, 2010)
xvi
Gilbert Simondon. L’individu et sa genèse phsycho-biologique: L’Individuation à la lumière des
notions de forme et information (Paris: P.U.F, 1964)
xvii
Mario Tronti. “Poscritto di Problemi”, in Operai e Capitale, 2nd edition (Turin: Einaudi,1971)
xviii
A complete analysis of the Albert Kahn work could be found in Nelson, G; Industrial Architecture of
Albert Kahn Inc. (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1939); Grant Hildebrand,
Designing for Industries, (Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 1974); Bucci, Federico; L'architetto di Ford.
Albert Kahn e il progetto della fabbrica moderna, (CittàStudi, 1991)
xix
Henry Ford. “Mass Production”, in Encyclopaedia Britannica (1926). For a detailed description of
the internal production procedures see Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford, the Times, the Man,
and the Company (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1954)
xx
Architectural Forum 51, No.3 (Sept. 1929) in Grant Hildebrand, Designing for Industries, pp. 157
xxi
Antonio Negri. “Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State post-1929”, Revolution Retrieved:
Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis and New Social Subjects 1967–1983
(London:Red Notes, 1988)
xxii
The company was involved in the first Soviet Five Year Plan to design and construct over than 500
industrial complexes, between 1929 and 1932.Led by Albert Kahn, his brother Moritz, Henry Ford and
the Armtorg Trading Corporation, the output of the ‘Russian venture’ was not only the realization of
several massive plants on the model of River Rouge, such as the ones in Chelyabinsk, Stalingrad and
Kuznetsk, but also the ‘export’ of the American advanced technical knowledge through an intensive
training of the russian architects and engineers.
xxiii
The nobility of this ‘box’ profoundly impressed Mies van der Rohe, who utilized a photograph of its
interior hall as background for his perspective collage of the Concert Hall project, in 1942.
xxiv
Walter Rathenau. Gesamtausgabe, (Munich: Hans Dieter Hellige and Ernst Schulin, 1977-83) vol.
2, 51
xxv
Sergio Bologna. “Class composition and the theory of the party at the origin of the workers-councils
movement”, in Telos, 13 (1992), originally published in Sergio Bologna, Operai e Stato (Milan, 1972)
xxvi
Sergio Bologna. Ceti medi senza futuro? (Rome: Derive e Approdi, 2007), 45
xxvii
Emil Lederer. “Die Umschichtung des Proletariats” in Angestellte und Arbeiter (Berlin: Afa-Bund,
Freier Volksverlag, 1929)
xxviii
Sigfried Kracauer. The Salaried Masses: Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany, (London:
Verso, 1998)
xxix
Manfredo Tafuri. “Sozialpolitik and the City in Weimar Germany” in The Sphere and the Labyrinth,
(Cambridge Mass: MIT Press,1987) originally published in Manfredo Tafuri, La Sfera e il Labirinto,
(Turin: Einaudi, 1980)
xxx
Walter Benjamin “The Destructive Character”, in Selective Writings, vol. 2, 1927– 1934, (Harvard
University Press, 2003)
xxxi
Ludwig Hilberseimer; “The Highrise” in G. Material for Elemental Form-Creation, 2, Sept (1923)
xxxii
Hans Richter, Lerner Graff, Lazar M. Lissitzky. G. Material for Elemental Form-Creation, 1, Jul
(1923)
xxxiii
Mies van der Rohe. “Office Building” in G. Material for Elemental Form-Creation, 1, Jul (1923)
xxxiv
Ludwig Hilberseimer. Großstadtarchitektur (Julius Verlag: Stuttgart, 1927)
xxxv
Julius Vischer, Ludwig Hilberseimer. Bauten in Eisenbeton und ihre architektonische Gestaltung
(J. Hoffmann : Stuttgart, 1927)
xxxvi
Archizoom Associati. “Città, catena di montaggio del sociale”, originally published in Casabella,
350-351, Jul-Aug (1970)
xxxvii
Struggles in Italy was a short movie commissioned by RAI italian television, which was eventually
refused and never distributed, highly influenced by Louis Althusser, Ideology and State Apparatuses,
(1970)
xxxviii
To this account, see the “Tesi della Sapienza”, in Il Mulino, 4-5, May-Jun (1967), elaborated by
the collective grew around the political review Potere Operaio Pisano and close to the Operaist claims
xxxix
Archizoom Associates. “Dream Beds” in Domus, 465 (1967)
xl
“Sichtbar machen means to make visible: to say clearly in order to be understood, at the risk of not
interpreting very well things intrinsically obscure. Despite the difficult title, this section is the easiest of
all.” in Mario Tronti. “Poscritto di Problemi” (Turin: Einaudi,1971)
xli
Archizoom Associates. “No-Stop City. Residential Parkings. Climatic Universal System”, in Domus,
Mar (1971)
xlii
Archizoom Associati, “Archizoom: Progetto di concorso per l’università di Firenze”, in Domus, 509,
Apr (1972)
xliii
The referential unit was 125 x125m and the generated territorial modules 500 x 500m were directly
layered on the topographic relief and regularly traversed by diagonal infrastructure lines.
xliv
Andrea Branzi, “Postscript”, in No-Stop City. Archizoom Associati (Orleans: Editions HYX, 2006)
xlv
Archizoom Associates, “Città Catena di Montaggio del Sociale. Ideologia e Teoria della Metropoli”
in Casabella, Jul-Aug (1970)
18