Interior of one of the townhouses looking toward the common backyard.

Running parallel to the back of each row of townhouses is a long subterranean corridor, cramped, artificially lit but still dark, with pipes and cables running through its length, moisture trickling down its unfinished concrete walls, it’s the mechanical and services spine of the block. Garbage cans are lined up at each door marking the otherwise inconspicuous switch to another home. At the end of the corridor is another door, this one leading to a series of hidden exterior steps running parallel to the blind exterior end wall of the townhouse row. If you are not looking for them, the steps, and those coming in and out, are indeed hard to see… Ni vu ni connu. Here the ideology of making a distinction between what is allowed to be seen and what should remain hidden is designed into a long corridor allowing for the covert movement of trash and extra-marital affairs.

We are in Lafayette Park (1961-5), Detroit, the residential complex designed by Mies Van der Rohe. Our tour guides, all long time residents, are immensely proud of where they live. Given the recent financial crisis and the decline with which Detroit has become infamous for (Detroit, mausoleum of high capitalism) it is remarkable (at least for the visitor) to see such a viable community so near downtown. According to one of our guides, the reason why the complex has withstood the crisis is obvious: good design and pride in its architecture. This, it could be added, has gone hand in hand with the tastes of a portion of the middle class on more stable incomes and mortgages. ‘We sometimes have issues with new residents putting up fences, but they are quickly brought down.’ He has a chuckle recalling how he once asked a fellow resident to remove her patio furniture because he was showing the place to visitors. Lafayette Park, he comments with a sigh of relief, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places so resident owners are not allowed any exterior modifications, including modifications to the planting scheme. Appropriation takes place within. And each townhouse visited reflected the personal tastes of the owners within the boundaries set up by the architect and the NRHP–ultimately left to cosmetic changes.

‘Architecture is too important to be left to architects.’ (Giancarlo de Carlo, 1967)

‘And what did the users add? Their needs.’ (Henri Lefebvre, in 1968, discussing the modifications to Le Corbusier’s Maison à Pessac)

When I visited Lafayette Park in April 2011 I was in the midst of a review of the theory and practice of participation in architecture from the 1950s onward. And so I wonder how heritage conservation, also translated into a distinction between things shown and things hidden, relates to the notions of appropriation and occupation for residential architecture as developed since the 1950s. If we follow this trend and see creative appropriation as a form of emancipation from the rigidity of Modern architecture then how should we balance the conservation of residential projects that have become Modernist icons? These are, after all, representatives of a culture’s heritage and a strong emphasis on the process of design over the aesthetics of the product, might indeed make us forget about the value of the object that frames this same process. Lafayette Park is turning out to be a successful product and process. And its resident-owners have bought into the particular lifestyle and ideology it represents as well as how it should be represented. While this is certainly true for those we met, others may not be so convinced (those putting up fences, for example), but certainly everyone appears to be toeing the line. At the moment, Modern residential projects are being re-visited and re-valued so that the tension between ‘user needs’ and design determinism may not, in particular instances, be such an issue after all.

Yet I still cannot help thinking that there is something inherently fraught with the balance between conservation and appropriation, especially when it comes to ‘living’ communities like Lafayette Park. Given that there is no clear boundary between private interests and public concerns, should the ethics governing the conservation of private residential architecture be different from those governing publicly owned architecture? To what extent should the original design and aesthetics of a home be protected against its current occupants? Perhaps more importantly, when should the agency of individual owners be trumped in order to preserve the state of a cultural artefact whose function may invite exactly that type of creative behaviour? But Lafayette Park is a ‘finalized’ masterpiece whose transformation is denied by those who have chosen to live within its well defined perimeter. Here the theories of process and appropriation with roots in the 1950s and 60s meet the reality of actual lived-in Modern architecture at the beginning of the 21^st century.

The undivided backyard between two rows of townhouses is empty, no sign of either spilling out from living rooms or children playing (or having played). There is a common playground in the middle of the complex, with sparse metallic play equipment and painted, without much surprise and to everyone’s ironic delight, black. The only signs of inhabitation from the outside of the townhouses are the interior shading devices for the floor to ceiling windows (vertical blinds and low curtain rods cheekily omitting the original recess-concealed roller blinds) and the owners’ choice of art works for their vestibules. Architects are notorious for omitting the presence of people in the representation of their built projects. In this case people are wilfully removing themselves from the actual ‘living’ project, leaving very few visible traces, hiding most, and finding their agency, it seems, in the freezing of time and space.

I’ve just published a short article in On Site 25 entitled « Shifting identities in east London ». This issue’s theme was « identity » and the article presents three « identity crises » from my study of the Barking Town Square: the authorship of the designers, the architectural object, and the conception of « the public » associated with the project.

Barking Town Square opening ceremony, September 2009

Dalgety Bay suburban castle

Now for something a little lighter. A recent trip to Scotland and a wrong turn into a suburb of Edinburgh brought us to this suburban gem,  a heroic reminder that yes, a man’s home is indeed his castle. It reminded me I had once thought of posting photos of two similar meaningful roadside architectural attractions sharing an uncanny relationship. The above is pretty much the clearest go-ahead nudge one could get.

'WE SPEAK', Château Madrid, Rang du Moulin Rouge just off highway 20

Château Madrid (pictured above) is located at what is approximately the geographical centre (measured in highway kms) between Québec City and Montréal, Canada. The roadside attraction was built in the 1960s into a hotel slash restaurant slash service station slash dinosaur and bigfoot fantasy park. The familiar castle-like form of the building, which has now comfortably lodged itself into the collective memory of every motorist travelling that stretch of the Transcanadian Highway, would have originated from the owners’ fascination with castles seen during a trip to Spain. The blatantly symbolic name of the place, now referred to as ‘Le Madrid’ rather than my childhood memory of ‘Château Madrid’, seems to confirm the rather specious connection. This is especially given the reference in a place which otherwise offers a vacuum of hispano-anything. One would be entitled, though, to understand the decision on symbolic geographical terms; Madrid is, after all, the symbolic geographical centre of Spain. But (if we were to take this interpretation seriously) the connection may have more to do with the real relationship between Spain’s highways (especially the national ones radiating from Madrid) and its castles (authentic in this case). Indeed a towering castle is a common sight from the roads to and from the Spanish capital. And in this case (if you compare with similar sights in France, for example) Spanish castles do have a certain ‘castleness’ je ne sais quoi.

But this is all in jest, after all, so why should the appropriation, commodification and consumption of someone else’s culture be one sided? Which brings us to the second attraction, this one from Spain (pictured below), where a genuine piece of architectural heritage has been crossed with the North American motel typology. The tower, which I am told is auténtica, is visible from the highway, and behind it stretches a series of ‘modern stables’: long arcades with generous arches wide enough to park an upgraded rental. To think of authenticity in both these cases (the Scottish example is instrumental, really, and so does not count) is a nice enough way to ponder over dead ends. The question might be: which achieves best what it claims to be, the hotel/motel wanting to be a castle or the castle wanting to be a hotel/motel?

The genuine, albeit lightly modified...

...and its backside car-ports.

The usual suspects

Architectural design is an imposition on the agency and identity of individual persons and groups. This becomes especially problematic when the object of design is the public realm because heterogeneous social identities tend to be homogenised as a ‘general public’. In this case the interest for architectural design is not the legal responsibility tied to contracts and professional deontology but rather the ethical issues that are raised from representing and interfering significantly in the public life and social practices of others.

The critique of authorship in architecture, while it attacks the myth of individual production, raises the important issue that to accept the agency of users and interpreters in relation to the work means that every work of architecture continues to be designed well after the official handing over of the ‘final’ product. Thus, appropriation and interpretation can be seen as two facets of what is called participatory design and as forms of authorship in themselves.

In a recent personal interview with a member of a critically acclaimed practice doing ‘open design’ (design that is open to interpretation and various uses) it became clear that the ethical response of ‘openness’ did not necessarily involve the acceptance of shared-authorship. While some of their details were specifically designed to support subversive alternative uses they still existed as fixed elements, however ambiguous, of a totalising aesthetic vision. When pressed to know whether changes to the original design by its users could be welcome, the reply was a very honest negative. The behaviour of users, it seemed, however emancipative, still had to fit within a set of preconceived possibilities.

The disjunction between imagined openness and actual fixity, between an emancipated user and a predictable user is not necessarily hypocrisy. The question this raises is rather one of ethics and representation, and of potential versus actual. When an architect claims to be designing according to the agency of the user they are in fact responding to a preconceived representation rather than an actual user. This potential user may be welcome as co-author during the design stage, but it is altogether another issue once the actual asserts their agency over the potential.

The Scoop at the foot of the GLA City Hall: a 'public space' that is privately owned and managed.

The dichotomy of public and private is something that has long been criticised in social theory. A common strand through Arendt (1956), Habermas (1962, 1992) and Sennett (1974) is that it is impossible, in Modern society, to speak of a clear boundary between the two. This touches on an issue common to all discussions on ‘public space’ in that there is a huge discrepancy between what the term implies and what it is used to describe. The requirements for a space to be public are as numerous as contradictory, and always contingent on a particular point of view.

DeLanda’s theory of assemblage (2006) might be of interest in this discussion because it offers a framework for describing complex and unfixed wholes at various scales. The theoretical premise is to conceive of ‘wholes whose properties emerge from the interaction between parts. (p.5)’ One example is that a particular group of individuals can simultaneously experience ‘territorialising’ and ‘de-territorialising’ forces (DeLanda’s theoretical starting point is the philosophy of Deleuze) that tend to respectively homogenise some of its identity and make some of it more heterogeneous. These forces, as opposed to being fixed aspects or categories, are variables of the group. What I suggest here is to apply similar thoughts to public space and to speak instead of social space with varying degrees of public and private.

My second thought has to do with the fact that assemblage theory, as elaborated by DeLanda, describes both human and material variables of social situations. These situations, whether an inter-personal conversation, a group of residents, a municipal government or even an urban agglomeration, are conceptualised as assemblages of persons and objects (agencements in Deleuze). The important distinction, as quoted above, is that the emphasis of study is on the relations between entities or ‘relations of exteriority’ rather than on the entities themselves. In this case it would seem assemblage theory has something valuable to offer in breaching the social/physical divide in theories of the public realm and public space.

References:
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press: 1958.
Manuel DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society, Continuum: 2006.
Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, MIT Press: 1962.
—, ‘Further Reflections on the Public Sphere’, in Craig Calhoun ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, MIT Press: 1992.
Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, Faber: 1974.

Bedale Street underneath the existing rail viaducts. The Victorian ironwork in the background was restored at the turn of the millennium.

Near the south end of London Bridge, across from where the 310m tall Shard designed by Renzo Piano is being erected, Borough Market, one of London’s most distinctive places, is undergoing yet another transformation. The wholesale and retail food market, which falls within a heritage conservation area, is now subject to a controversial project for a new rail viaduct running through its heart. The controversy raises the issue of whether such a place should be exempt from the very alterations that have turned it over the years into one of the most inherently successful heterogeneous places in London.

Built over the last 250 years, the area of the market has become a hodgepodge of architectural elements and styles with a chaotic yet oddly coherent juxtaposition of contemporary architecture, Victorian brick buildings, skeletal wrought iron and glass canopies, and rail viaducts. From any point within the area, your eye follows multiple vanishing points between criss-crossing lines and openings amongst the structures that reveal yet further fleeting structures. Reminiscent of what Eisenstein identified as the ecstatic space of Piranesi’s carcere etchings, the space of Borough Market seems to reach beyond itself. This is a place that is neither subterranean nor overground, and one that can never be experienced as a whole from a distant vantage point. Borough Market is, simply put, one of the single most thrilling spatial experiences of London.

The most recent modifications occurred here between 1995 and 2005 with a widely acclaimed revitalization project by architects Greig and Stephenson. The gentle and clever architectural transformations, at once both contemporary and in keeping with the Victorian fabric, maintain and embrace the overall controlled disorder of the place that so perfectly defines its uniqueness in the city of London.

The train viaduct currently being constructed through the market is the result of growing pressure on the commuter train network at London Bridge. Since it was first evoked in the late 1980s, the project has met with persistent opposition from local residents and local authorities who have focused on the loss of character to the place, the planned demolition of about 20 heritage listed buildings, and the potential threat to market activities themselves. The project, designed by architects Jestico and Whiles and scheduled to be completed in 2012, will see new glass and steel structures erected where buildings and canopies had to be demolished.

Even in the face of seemingly inevitable infrastructure, the demolition of heritage is a tragedy that deserves vehement opposition. Yet, one may wonder when, if at all, such evolved, heterogeneous places should be fixed. Borough Market is a strong reminder that these spaces are less the product of a single, homogeneous regeneration project than the result of a juxtaposition of distinctive elements over time. The success of individual projects depends therefore on the respect they owe to the orderly chaos that is in many ways the heritage of the site.

Spiralling into Modernism

In the book Participation, Claire Bishop underlines three common aspects of participatory art: the desire to create an active/thinking subject who will be able to formulate their own social/political position from the experience of the work; asserting a socially oriented and egalitarian position for themselves by ceding part of their authorship to participants; and the restoration of a social bond in a community through the collaborative elaboration of meaning.

On a recent visit to Barking I saw « Through the planned cities fire will rage« , an exhibition of participatory art between Laura Oldfield Ford and a group of years 10 and 11 students from local schools. Given that my own research touches on the social interactions that constitute the regeneration project in the particular context of the Barking Town Centre I was interested to see how the principles outlined above applied in this specific case. Here the collaboration happens during the development process, with some of the projects (like Barking Town Square) already completed and others (like most of Barking Riverside) still under development, which gives this type of event a vital importance.

The imagination of the students is fantastic and some of the pieces offer genuine moments of reflection. For example a map of the borough with clearly marked unhappiness right of the centre and the great unknown of Dagenham further east: the recognized political divide of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Another group of drawings questioning the value of change and its ‘façades’ in the town centre. There are also moments of levity: is Barking spiralling into Modernism or is it not? The darkly metaphorical Happy Birthday! comic strip. And moments of downright, well… see drawing of plane flying into One Canada Square below. Certainly, the collaboration has succeeded in engaging students with urban issues by which they are directly affected and that must be commended. The participants are indeed given a better position to formulate their own critique of their local socio-economic and political situation. The whole of the work is clearly and thankfully representative of the ‘fire’ of adolescence. (On a marginally and I’ve-listened-to-it-recently related note, let me plug Robert Harrison’s podcast on Pink Floyd.)

The following quotation is taken from the Council’s website:

Ford’s own work uses the strategy of psychogeography to coax out the hidden narratives in the city and formulate a critique of urbanism. In the case of Barking and Dagenham it is the issue of housing that forms the crux of contention. For this new work she imagines militant groups emerging and the planned uses of the new regeneration schemes radically subverted. Her work references the Blitz, 1973, 1981 and points in the future to set out alternative possibilities.

I want to pick up four elements from this description, because although the work of the students is in many ways engaging, I think the handling of the issues at hand and principles of participation need some criticism. What first struck me is how much of the artist’s own aesthetics seem to come through the students’ work. It appears evident from the artist’s own work that there is a tendency to draw on dichotomies, be it planned/unplanned or construction/destruction. This strong dialectic aspect appears to come through quite clearly in the students’ work. The arrangement is fragmented, relies heavily on contrasts (in both form and content) and is primarily oppositional. This leads to a second point: I question whether the students are exploring their own experiential perception of their city through the loose (and highly subjective) framework of psychogeography or rather through the lens of the organiser’s oppositional stance on planning and private development. This again is not to say that the work itself is without merit, but that the premises posited by the artist are not entirely congruent with the result. And certainly not all the pieces are representative of this point. But these first two points should be weighed against the ‘desire to create a thinking/acting subject’.  ‘Through the planned cities fire will rage’ recalls a critique of Modernist town planning from the mid-twentieth century rather than an accurate critique of contemporary practices. Some images featuring One Canada Square, for example, raise the question of whether the intention is not off the mark. Being explicitly critical of private development and branded commercial hegemonies is excellent, but it becomes a tricky line to follow when urban planning is brought in under the same critique. The absence of government planning often goes, as was evidenced in the late 1980s at Canary Wharf, hand in hand with the market’s desire for deregulation. The last point touches on the ‘alternative possibilities’ that are explored in the work. Because the premises of the critique draw on moments of tension and crisis the ‘collaborative elaboration of meaning’ has a hard time escaping wholesale rejection to look more at positive transformation. Could the ‘radical subversion’ of the built environment be gentle?

Home?

No spirit

Change is overrated

Happy birthday!

Future!!

I love this city

Barking from Without is part of the 2010 Cities Methodologies exhibition and conference organised by the UCL Urban Lab. The exhibition is taking place at the Slade Research Centre on Woburn Square from 5 to 7 May 2010.

Barking from Without is an interactive installation presenting material from an ongoing case study of the new Barking Town Square in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Part of a broader research project on design in the contemporary public realm, the case study is supported primarily by participant-observer methods that draw as much on ethnographic fieldwork as on Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. The research is presented in the form of an open dialogue which visitors are encouraged to join by leaving written comments.

All material from the installati0n is posted on Barking Assemblage under the category Barking from Without. If you would like to leave a comment, please email comment@barking-assemblage.org