Week 9

I'm pleased to say that this week you do not have to read a text, but simply turn up and watch The Fountainhead film in the session. I wouldn't read the book, it is unbearable, yet has been mightily popular and influential. You might read my critique of the character of Howard Roark and Ayn Rand in general for 'Reputations' in this month's Architectural Review (December 2013) conveniently now on the newstands (well, at least on subscribers desks).

Week 8

This week I want you to read Evelyn Waugh's short and humourous novel Decline and Fall. Alongside this I want you to read the section on the barrage (construction of a dam) from Le Corbusier's City of Tomorrow, partly this is to augment your understanding of the Faustian imperative (see below).

It is in Waugh's character of Prof Silinus, who we should take seriously as an effective parody, that we can see some home truths in the character of the organizer architect. Waugh was no stranger to architectural criticism, and wrote a relatively gushing review of L-C's 'City of Tomorrow' whilst clearly in two minds. It is of course the mark of a first class intellect to be able to juggle two opposite ideas in your head at the same time and still function.

For those now running short of time, Professor Otto Silinus enters Waugh's story in Part Two, in the chapter titled 'King's Thursday' (pg 115 in my edition). L-C's discussion of the dam happens around page 140 in my edition of the 'City of Tomorrow'.

P.S. You will find my own interpretation of the significance of Waugh's Prof Silinus recently posted on my blog: Architecture and Other Habits (pauldaviesarchitecture.blogspot.com)

The Faustian Imperative and the Tragedy of Development

Re-reading Berman this week, I was struck by just how 'counterculture' he was, perhaps, for me, just a little too comfortable in both his situation and his opinions, appearing all the more the bohemian American Marxist, a creature so curious as to deserve it's own ethnography.
So I beg the question, what happens if we do not embrace the Faustian imperative, that of the great project, that of 'utopia' if you like? Whilst of course realising at the same time that in order to make an omelet, you are certainly going to have to break some eggs?
On the other hand that corresponding 'tragedy' of development is that fact that in his preoccupation and commitment to the project, Faust ends up blind to 'care'. Sometimes, it is clear, you just can't win.

Week 7

The text this week is chapter one of this book concerning Goethe's story of Faust. Obviously this is an interpretation by Berman, but it is a useful one, bringing an explanation to an overall story we have delved in to so far only in parts. Please read the consecutive sections if you can, sections Berman decides to lable the dreamer, the lover and the developer.

Goethe's story of Faust took him most of his life to write, and ranks as one of the greatest stories ever told, seeming to predict the consequences of the industrial revolution from it's root in the C18th and still relevant to us to day. Goethe is not unlike Shakespeare in significance, and this epic story has been  adopted in many variants. To architecture students, it gives an emotive handle on the processes of urban development aside from those you might get from historical texts.

Berman died recently, so there are obituaries you may wish to read. In persona he certainly looked like Allen Ginsberg, and was certainly, in his love of New York, an academic who was no stranger to the counterculture New York is so famous for. Personally it is his love hate relationship with the processes of development which I find captivating, after all they brought him the metropolis he loved.

The university library assures us that core reading lists are now available on-line, so you should be able to download this text without difficulty.

This Weeks Room

Appropriately enough given our subject this week, we continue our nomadic progress to K307 for the 15th Nov session.

Week 6

This week we explore the significance of another kind of language entirely, so download and read this poem from 1956 to begin. As much as we have enjoyed (!) an inquisition of language in Lefebvre, and felt it lolling around in various forms in Rowe, Eagleton, Meades and so forth, it is worth remembering that some radicals distrusted language in itself! After reading this poem please familiarise yourself with the work of William Burroughs in The Job, make sure you have a passing acquaintance with Jack Karouac's novel On The Road, and have at least heard of Marshall McLuhan.

On Rowe on La Tourette

It is without doubt the sheer loquaciousness of Rowe's essay on La Tourette that is so off-putting. Despite the sophistications contained within, it is hard to get behind that yes it is/no it isn't parade of proposition and denial (denial of course if you are not sufficiently au fait ) that makes up what appears the equivalent of a fireside chat. We might wonder what kind of world Rowe inhabited and compare it with some of the other writers worlds we have encountered. Is Meades at his most insufferable just the same, is Hickey a low-brow Texan version, is Eagleton just the same kind of beast with a chip on his shoulder? I certainly imagine Rowe tucked up in a club chair with a large brandy, and I love the description of him turning up to an event looking not unlike an unmade bed!
However if there is a prize for interpreting this piece it would go to those who discern, with effort, it's primary satisfactions, for of course La Tourette is itself a stark, apparently plain beast, and it is pleasant, even necessary, for the architect to read it otherwise. Meanwhile in the session I pointed out some things I think Rowe passed over which he shouldn't have. Just to note them here:
1. Corbusier clearly provides a viewing balcony on the south side of the courtyard inviting us to insect and appreciate his array of forms in light.
2. Rowe, with his penchant for abstraction, does not concern himself with any literal visual puns that L-C employs; the kidneys, the light canons, the light machine guns, the ear to god, which he employs in the tradition of the very origins of architecture and that provide complex meaning beyond the visual.
3. Rowe avoids discussion of oddities that may relate directly to Greek mythology (the struts supporting Achilles ships replicated in the slanting pilotis for instance).
4. Experiential effect is very heavily codified, the building is not a 'fridge' (bloody cold) an echo chamber (bloody noisy) the roof of the church does not 'lift off' as the sun comes down, all aspects of our experience of this complex that are undeniable.
These four points, and I suspect there are more, are made not so much to undermine Rowe, but to make us aware of his proclivities, and hence put us in a better place to trace his influence in the abstract architecture the US enjoyed subsequently with 'the whites' (New York Five) who dried out the experiential factors even more!
There is a blog post on AAOH with my own essay on La Tourette for those who wish to venture further.

Room Change

There will be a room change tomorrow for our 3pm session due to an open day this weekend. We will be in BR 361