The action of mediating between two disputing people or groups.

 According to the Oxford Dictionary (online)

Engineer Giacomo Matte Trucco’s Fiat Lingotto Factory opened in Turin, Italy in 1923, a radical new development in the factory typology. Referencing Albert Kahn’s Ford factories in the United States, the reinforced concrete 5 storey 500 meter-long linear assembly line was organized to embody the processes of production. Manufacturing began at the ground level where nearby rails deliver raw materials; assembly continued in a vertical spiral up through the building until the finished car was delivered onto the roof’s race track for a test drive. The completed product would exit the building on one of the monumental ramps at the two ends of the building, ready for display and sale. The building operated as a factory until the early eighties, until Fiat S.p.A. held a competition to transform the interior of the factory into an entertainment hub. In 1985, Fiat commissioned the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), to convert the factory, adding commercial space, offices, an art gallery, an auditorium, conference center, and multiple hotels.

Although the exterior remained largely intact to maintain the previous identity of the building, the factory interior is transformed from a space of production into a space of consumption, permitting the coexistence of each iconic program to construct a new architectural identity. A clear understanding of both functions—the overlapping of the demands and intentions of a space of production from the first quarter of the century and the current understanding of spaces of leisure—come together into a new specific formalization. This radical shift of program from one of work into one of leisure has created a situation in which the spaces of the converted factory reflect these design processes of conversion and conciliation. Despite this otherwise almost seamless conversion, RPBW’s most prominent addition to the project, “The Bubble,” a spherical glass conference space floating above the factory’s roof, is emblematic of the difficulties inherent to the project, an incongruous object of compromise that highlights the complications of mediation and the struggles of resolution.

We open the issue with an interview with Jonathan Sergison, where he discusses the role of architecture in creating an image of and for society and how his own practice both as an architect and teacher approaches this matter; Aureng-Silva presents the idea of the fragment as a framework to conciliate processes of reconstruction and conservation in damaged heritage, and in doing so reconsiders narratives of identity associated to them; Hannah Strothmann finds a refreshing complexity in the common place metaphor of bridges as symbols of conciliation; Marina Montresor and Stephan Lando present Baldessare Peruzzi’s Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne as a work impregnated with tensions and dilemmas of a change of paradigm;  Lemonot takes us to central Bolivia, where they have studied the contemporary cholets and mausoleums typical of the region; Erica Overmeer questions the categorization of identity building processes proposed by this year’s cycle by referring to Herzog & de Meuron’s Barranca Museum once more; and Lagemman’s fourth contribution to the cycle, a fictional interview with Gottfried Semper, speculates upon a possible conciliation of art, architecture, and industry today.

Paired with the processes of assimilation, appropriation, and rejection, we see conciliation as a fourth methodology within architecture’s processes of building identity.  With this final text issue of CARTHA’s On Building Identity, we posit conciliation within architecture as a project of negotiation between two parties, a spatial diplomacy that instrumentalizes the apparent incompatibility of two ideologies to produce a new identity.

Jonathan Sergison is a founding partner of Sergison Bates Architects.  Since the beginning of his career in the mid 1990’s, he has advocated for an architecture that prioritizes awareness of the place it stands on versus spectacularity and uniqueness, mediating with pre-existing conditions of a determined site while still being critical towards it.  With twenty two years of professional practice and twenty five teaching, his voice becomes highly relevant when discussing conciliation in the context of architecture.

In your opinion, what are the defining traces of contemporary society’s identity? Either in a global or local context.

I was born in Great Britain and lived in London for most of my life. More recently, I have been living in Zurich. My view of the defining traits of contemporary society is therefore inevitably affected by my personal experiences and circumstances. In this sense I feel that European culture is founded on classical principles. Of course, these have also been widely exported through colonialism and Western cultural hegemony. But I am also fascinated by the traces of other cultures that endure as forms of resistance to the dominant cultural paradigm.

How do you position yourself towards these traces?

As an architect all that I do stems from an implied relationship to the canon of classicism. Nearly all the work we are involved in is located in Europe and we consciously engage with the numerous and often complex local traditions and cultural influences. If we take London as an example, we are dealing with a rich and culturally complex urban context, which has evolved historically as people of widely different backgrounds settled there. This has been the case throughout the long history of the city, but more so today: London is a truly global city with a very diverse population. The traces this leaves on the urban fabric are there to be read, and we find ourselves drawing upon them rather than denying their existence.

Is architecture relevant to the building of the identity of a society? In which way? or Why not?

Architecture is always creating an image of and for society. The buildings and spaces of a city are central in the creation of the identity of society. The capacity of architecture to offer images that support the ambition of totalitarian regimes is well documented. More recently the commissioning of buildings from well-known architects is seen by some as creating added value. The city I currently live in, Zurich, bears no trace of such expressions of power and control, and offers an urban expression of principles of tolerance and collaboration. This is partly why I find it so agreeable.

Are you conscious of your role as an architect in the building of an architectural and social identity?

In my role as an architect I believe that the sum of all we have built in 22 years of practice represents a minute addition to the various European cities our projects have added to. However, because our projects have been widely published, I would acknowledge that our work has had a wider influence, although our position in architecture is a marginal one. I am happy with this. I do not believe that I could ever claim to build what would amount to the identity of a society.

The role I have had as a teacher has a much bigger influence, and involves a different form of responsibility. Over the last 25 years I have contributed to the education of many hundreds of students, who are now working as architects. While their interests and approaches may differ from my own, I hope that I have helped them to find their direction.

We would like to focus now on one of the four identity building processes from this cycle of CARTHA: Conciliation. Throughout your practice, the relation between a building and its site is a constant concern through the use of critical interpretation. Might this be a way, in the context of the contemporary European urban centers, to conciliate a meaningful architecture with the often contradictory values defined by economical and political interests?

The theme of ‘reconciliation’ is one that we often find ourselves addressing in our work, particularly in relation to the contemporary European city. A clear example of this approach can be found in the apartment building and crèche we realized in Geneva in 2011. In this project we consciously arranged the form and elements of the facades in a manner that interprets the character of the older neighbouring buildings that abut it – a nineteenth century school building and a retail and office building from the 1960s. The two buildings had an ambivalent relationship, which we aimed to reconcile, bridging the gap between them and incorporating them within a bigger urban ensemble. The Basel-based architect Roger Diener once said that ‘a place can be brought to order through the building of a single house’. I believe in this as an ambition.

Jonathan Sergison graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1989 and gained professional experience working for David Chipperfield and Tony Fretton.
Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates founded Sergison Bates architects in London in 1996, and in 2010 a second studio was opened in Zurich Switzerland. Sergison Bates architects have built numerous projects worldwide and the practice has received many prizes and awards. The work of Sergison Bates architects has been extensively published. Jonathan Sergison has taught at a number of schools of architecture, including the University of North London, the Architectural Association in London, was Visiting Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Design and Construction at the Accademia di Mendrisio, Switzerland.
He is particularly interested in urban questions and the conditions of the contemporary European city. More specifically he has addressed through writing, teaching and practice the role housing might play in this changing context.
He regularly writes and lectures, attends reviews in schools of architecture and is actively involved in commissions and competition juries.

The built environment, in its relation with time, is always changing. Its form, its materiality, its context, uses, and meanings are always in constant transformation. In some cases, however,  because of their monumentality and age, but also due to diverse social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances, some buildings as well as urban and natural landscapes become objects of preservation. Though a detailed analysis of the common ways of preserving historic architecture exceeds the limits of the present article, I will state that great part of current preservation “good practices” have their roots in the works and writings of nineteenth and twentieth century European theorists and have influenced the way in which contemporary preservation is thought, policed, and practiced even until today. ¹

In this context, I aim to interpret architecture as a process of continuous change that cannot and should not be fixed in time, a realm of inquiry in which history, earthquakes, preservation, and change can all be conciliated in order to find alternative ways for juxtaposing the past with the present.

Liminality

Located in a seismic area where three tectonic plates overlap, Mexico’s natural and cultural landscapes have historically been in direct relation with earthquakes. For this reason, I will delve into alternative ways in which historic architecture and common preservation practices can be conciliated with contemporary preservation theories as well as with the seismic nature of Mexico’s reality.

As I try to advance the way to think about the common preservation practices that prevent or discourage any contemporary intervention in historic contexts – appealing to international standards, heritage interpretations, national identity discourses and nostalgic views of the past – I want to bring forward the concept of liminality as a tool of analysis from which to think differently about the relationship between earthquakes and damaged historic fabric.

The concept of liminality was originally introduced in the field of anthropology by Arnold Van Gennep (1873 – 1957) in 1909 and further elaborated by Victor Turner (1920-1983) in 1967.²  As part of the “process approach” when studying rites of passage within tribal groups, liminality – form the Latin limen, literally threshold – understands the transitory stages through time that any society experiences and that help shape its identities and communal structures. In this way, overly simplified, “liminality is about how human beings, in their various social and cultural contexts, deal with change.”³ Furthermore, liminality “captures in-between situations and conditions characterized by the dislocation of established structures, the reversal of hierarchies, and uncertainty about the continuity of tradition and future outcomes.”⁴ 

During the September 2017 earthquakes that hit the south and center areas of the country, the Secretary of Culture reported that a total⁶ of 1,821 historic buildings were affected, 20% of them being severely damaged⁵.  The great majority of these 1,821 buildings –over 95% of the total – were catalogued as “Historic Monuments” according to the Ley Federal sobre Monumentos y Zonas Arqueológicos, Artísticos e Históricos⁷,  which means that they were built between the 16th and 19th centuries, that is, during colonial times.

Since one of the most relevant criteria for listing old buildings as historic monuments is the historic period in which they were constructed, it becomes relevant to underline the significant role that the Catholic Church, and specifically the three mendicant orders – Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines – had in shaping the idiosyncratic, economic, social and spatial relations during the colonial period in the territory that today comprises modern day Mexico. Parallel to the spiritual evangelization of the local population, the land and property distributions that existed during the 16th century made possible the construction of the huge convents that survive until today and that were severely damaged during the earthquakes.

The political-economical model of “encomienda”, which George Kubler⁸  describes as the “gradual dissolution, or forced dispersion, of the land rights of the indians,”⁹ allowed for the “encomenderos” (a social class of Spaniards who directly benefited from the control of indigenous labor and not necessarily from production or extraction activities) to gain control of huge portions of territory and of a big number of indigenous workers. This concentration of labor permitted both a better collection of tribute as well as the construction of the large convents that are now interpreted as national historic monuments, some of them even of “universal value”, and that otherwise, would not have been possibly built outside of these particular socio-spatial arrangements of control, exploitation and abuse.

Though I am not trying to diminish their architectural value–the 16th century monasteries are considered by various scholars, including Kubler, to be the most representative of all the Novo Hispanic architectures– the damage of the convents after the 2017 earthquake presents an opportunity to re-examine and re-think the narratives of the historical conditions that made the physical artifacts possible. What stories are we privileging when rebuilding a certain historic monument? Whose heritage is being told? What role did the political and ecclesiastical institutions have played, play and will continue to play in relation to these narratives? Which of these stories are transmitted to the community and why?

Paraphrasing Jorge Otero Pailos¹⁰, new alternatives to common preservation practices should not try to find a unique, universal, one-size-fit-all solution that speaks for culture when dealing with damaged historic buildings, but rather to solicit a cultural response that, taking into account other alternatives to material preservation/restoration, allows for new theoretical approaches that can impact institutional, official  and community responses in benefit of an ever-changing and adaptive relation between historic fabric and post-disaster reconstruction.

Fragments

Following Robert Harbison, “fragments may be construed in both negative and positive ways: as remnants of achievements and plenitudes that are irrevocably lost, or as elements of a restorative power that can provide symbolic and poetic meaning to newly constituted wholes.”¹¹  This appreciation of the concept of fragment, one that is intrinsically bound to their potential to engage memory, creativity and dynamism is the one I would  like to propose as an alternative for preservation. In his critique of material conservation, historian David Lowenthal¹²  says that: “fragments not only reveal what is missing, ghost presences of their past, they also refer to their rediscovery. Thus the fragment implies the history of both its deposit and its recovery. Implicating so many surrounding realms, the fragment is invested with repleteness and intensity.”¹³

I will propose that the damaged architectural elements of the 16th Century Convents in Morelos, Mexico can be thought as fragments from which post-disaster reconstruction of historic fabric should begin to be imagined in inventive ways. Following Lowenthal, fragments “surpass wholes in joining the past dynamically with the present. Mutilated and incomplete, they impart a sense of life from the evidence of their struggle with time.”¹⁴

By utilizing the architectural fragments left by the disaster, critical intervention in historic buildings will indeed preserve historic remnants and at the same time promote new interpretations of the past and future. After being structurally retrofitted and consolidated, the historic fragments will serve as the material signs from which local populations and visitors will continue to relate to peoples, forms, technologies, narratives, stories, and worldviews of the past. At the same time, the juxtaposition of new forms, materials, textures, but also of new spaces, programs and uses will permit historic fabric to actively transform and adapt to novel inclusionary visions of heritage, both in its tangible and intangible components.

Palimpsests

Palimpsests are often associated with writing surfaces that, in antiquity, were used and reused over and over again by the act of erasing. The material that was used, of animal origin, was durable in time but expensive in nature, so medieval scholars and intellectuals were forced to recycle it with every new writing. When it was needed, the old text was erased and the new one was written on top. However, with the passage of time the earlier writings tended to reappear, and thus a variety of texts, meanings and symbols came to resurface, giving a physical presence to different layers of the past.

To think of historic monuments as palimpsests will allow us to look at their complexity beyond mere historicist documents at the service of historians, preservationists and cultural institutions that see their value as mere vestiges of the past. To paraphrase Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva, we should see historic buildings and monuments “as movement, as flight, as a series of transformations.”¹⁵ Being temporarily/partially obliterated, the damaged structures and the meanings and uses associated to them in other times can be replaced by new interpretations and views, later to resurface in spatial or architectural elements not necessarily subjected to mimic their pre-disaster conditions.

Fragments and palimpsests are only two of many possible concepts to think alternatives to preservation. Because of this, they do not intend to be universal nor conclusive, as the nature of the subjective interpretation associated with them impedes any absolute, homogenous definition of how to do intervene historic fabric. However, they try to be a starting point, a provocation to show that flexible possibilities to deal with historic fabric are indeed possible, applicable and enriching.

As they are constantly transformed to accommodate the changing requirements of life, monuments and historic buildings cannot endure in time. For this reason, the concepts of “fragment” and “palimpsest” – interpreted as alternatives to historic preservation – intend to conciliate the potential between post-disaster damage and the reassessment of historic fabric. These real alternatives to common preservation practices will not only be aesthetic opportunities for proposing formal and material interventions in historic buildings, but will mainly represent the inmejorable occasions for the acknowledgment and reinterpretation of heritage narratives that may have been historically obliterated until the present.

In this way, the conciliation proposed by the redefinition of historic buildings as fragments and palimpsests with future would allow for a continuous shift and reinvention of different identity(s) in inclusive and creative ways not necessarily conformed to current preservation practices that tend to ossify historic monuments. This will allow for a liminal change in the formal, material, programmatic and narrative qualities of historic architecture in time.

¹ For a detailed historiography of preservation theories, see Jokilehto, Jukka. A History of Architectural Conservation. Butterworth-Heinemann Series in Conservation and Museology. Oxford, England: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999.
² See Gennep, Arnold Van. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960 and “Betwixt and between: the liminal period in rites de passage” in Turner, Victor W. The Forest of Symbols : Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967.
³ Wydra, H., Thomassen, Bjørn, & Horváth, Ágnes. (2015). Breaking Boundaries : Varieties of Liminality. New York: Berghahn Books p. 40
⁴  ibid p.2
⁵ Plan de acción ante sismos 7 y 19 septiembre. 17 the octubre 2017. Gobierno Federal. https://www.scribd.com/document/361993553/Plan-de-Accion-Ante-Sismos-Sep-2017-171017
⁶ Registro de daños Patrimonio Cultural. Official Spreadsheet by the Coordinación Nacional the Monumentos Históricos. INAH. January 2018.
⁷ The Ley Federal sobre Monumentos y Zonas Arqueológicos, Artísticos e Históricos is the current law regulating the catalogue, management and protection of historic monuments in Mexico. The federal law can be found here: http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/131_160218.pdf
⁸ George Kubler (1912-1996) was probably the most renowned scholar on the art of Pre-Columbian America and Ibero-American Art, with multiple volumes on the history of Colonial architecture in the New Spain.
⁹ Kubler, G. (2012). Arquitectura Mexicana del Siglo xvi (Segunda edición. ed.). Mexico, D. F: Fondo De Cultura Economica. p.62
¹⁰ Otero-Pailos, Langdalen, Arrhenius, Otero-Pailos, Jorge, Langdalen, Erik, and Arrhenius, Thordis. Experimental Preservation. Zürich, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2016.
¹¹ Harbison, Robert. Ruins and Fragments: Tales of Loss and Rediscovery. London: Reaktion Books, 2015
¹² David Lowenthal (1923-2018) was an American historian who specialized in the reinterpretation of concepts of memory and heritage, thinking them in relation with historic architecture.
¹³ Lowenthal, D. (1989). Material Preservation And Its Alternatives. Perspecta-The Yale Architectural Journal, (25), 66-77.
¹⁴ ibid.
¹⁵ Latour, B. and Yaneva, A. “Give me a Gun and I will make all buildings move” in Eisinger, A., Staub, Urs, Geiser, Reto, Kwinter, Sanford, & Bundesamt für Kultur. (2008). Explorations in architecture ; Teaching, Design, Research. Basel [etc.]: Birkhäuser. p. 80-89

Enrique Aureng Silva is an architect. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 2012 and the Master of Design Studies in Critical Conservation at Harvard GSD in 2018. His research focuses on the intervention, transformation and reuse of historic buildings in Latin America, especially in post- disaster scenarios. When not thinking architecture or editing texts, he writes fiction in the form of short stories.

Bridges as symbols for conciliation – a commonplace metaphor. Yet, the image and the straightforward concept of conciliating two parties still emits a persuasive aura. Two isolated grounds can be linked with a simple beam: This perceivable characteristic of the bridge as a connective element vaulting obstacles, voids or gaps, establishes the idea of bridges as conciliating entities within our society. With scales dwarfing their immediate surroundings, bridges both visually and psychologically emerge as focal points of interaction and exchange in the built environment. Here, bridges turn into important references to identity building processes.

Across: the passage

Before the invention of bridges opportunities for crossing were either restricted to specific weather conditions or to boats as mobile means of transportation. The moment humans created a permanent and secure passage marks the beginning of the history of bridges. As permanent structures, bridges enable straightforward, linear movement without detours; bridges are built for movement, not for pausing. The earliest examples of bridges were most likely made out of a simple wooden beam, a log resting on two opposite points. As technology advances, spans extend to longer distances; the load-bearing system of a single beam is replaced by stone-arch constructions, sometimes combined with a wooden secondary structure. With the advancement of iron making during the Industrial Revolution, steel is introduced as a new mass-produced material to the building industry. Engineers and designers begin to develop delicate and comparatively light load-bearing steel structures; the continuously increasing structural complexity enables even longer spans, giving access to new territory. As new physical connections, bridges provide the possibility for interaction between people and mutual exchange of knowledge and goods. Bridges allow for movement, not only physically, but also socially: Howrah Bridge can serve as case study showing the integrative capacity of bridges. Opened in 1943, it links Kolkata, the former capital of colonial British India, with Howrah, a city emerging out of villages already existing long before the British had conquered the land. As new administrative center of British India, Kolkata was built in the swamp lands on the eastern bank of the Hooghly river; yet, it remained dependent on the connection to its neighboring city: Howrah Station, situated right next to the Bridge on the western shore, served as the single connection between the metropolitan region and the rest of the country. Ressources, goods, people and army forces could only be brought into Kolkata via Howrah Bridge. With half a million pedestrians crossing everyday, Howrah Bridge is now considered to be one of the most frequented bridges in the world. Newcomers, travelers and goods: all arrive at Howrah Station; most move on to cross Howrah Bridge on the lookout for a job in Kolkata. The symbol of colonial control has been turned into a symbol for a step up on the social ladder, the passage itself implying a promise of future prosperity.

Let’s shift our focus to Mostar, a city in Bosnia and Herzegovina which derives its name from the word “most”, Bosnian for “bridge”. Stari Most, an old stone-arch bridge built during the Ottoman Empire had for centuries been the major landmark of the city before being completely destroyed during the Croat-Bosniak war. Even though the destruction was in part strategically targeted at a central element of infrastructure, it was primarily a symbolic act of cultural destruction. Bridges can be perceived as key elements constructing a collective identity. After the war ended, efforts were concentrated on reconstructing Stari Most in order to bring people together again. Yet, the ethical division among the local communities, still traumatized by the war, is prevalent. While considerable effort and international capital was directed towards rebuilding the bridge, the people of Mostar were not actively involved in the process, what can be seen as a failure in a potential reconciliatory process between the population of both shores¹.

Beside: the shore

A bridge cannot be seen without its context. Its existence depends on the two sides it is connecting. So let’s look at the shore: As a place of crossing, bridges turn into hubs with synergetic effects on its surrounding area and activities, triggering further city development. Hence, it is not only a metaphor when Marshall McLuhan refers to bridges as an early form of communication². Preceding the days of electronic correspondence, a physical connection was the precondition for communication, as news and mail were delivered by messengers on foot or horse. Bridges allow information to take the shortest and most direct route, accelerating the velocity of communication. While this leads to closer social, economic and political ties across the shores, furthering the propagation of knowledge and spread of information, it also creates the condition for power and control to be exerted from one side onto the other. Being part of a larger infrastructural system, bridges form the logistics of space and power. As McLuhan points out, the Romans made use of bridges as means to establish control over the lands and people they conquered. Governing and organizing an empire required that news and orders could be transmitted within a secure infrastructure. As part of large scale infrastructure programs, bridges can also serve to deliberately separate neighborhoods from one another or, in fact, exclude certain communities. The site of a newly planned bridge within a city is often already occupied. During the planning process, questions of relocation and displacement are entangled in the discussion about integrating new neighborhoods on the other shore. In fact, many cities built along rivers often made use of this natural division from early on: whereas one side of the river is preserved for the clean business district and hence the wealthier middle and upper class, the dirty industry is kept on the other shore: cheap ground affordable for the precariously living working class. Bridges built due to economic reasons, as city growth is limited and trade should become simpler, turn into links between these remote two worlds while at the same time manifesting the division. This can be observed in Howrah / Kolkata as well as in New York, where Brooklyn Bridge, much like Howrah Bridge, connects the business district of Manhattan with Brooklyn on Long Island, a neighborhood that was once considered home of the working class. Brooklyn Bridge provided Brooklynites with the opportunity to easily commute to work in Manhattan, whereas Manhattan dwellers were given the possibility to easily access Long Island for recreation.

The Long Island Parkway bridges provide another controversially disputed example of bridges as social agents: initiated in the 1940s by New York’s mayor at that time, they were built to make areas designed for recreational use accessible. With their low height, however, the overpasses encouraged the use of cars, while keeping tall busses, and hence public transportation, off the road³. Langdon Winner argues in his essay “Do Artefacts Have Politics” that these bridges “embody a systematic social inequality and are a “way of engineering relationships among people.”

Underneath: the river

What happens to the space below? After the construction of bridges as linear passages crossing over the obstacle, the space underneath is often left out of sight. The former active areas  along the riverfront are slowly neglected. Where boats once provided the opportunity for crossing, there is no longer any need to go down to the river. Valleys as formerly active places of exchange are not necessarily entered anymore by traders and travelers and are rather perceived as an idyllic stage setting of the in-between state of the passage. Building a bridge can, in reverse, serve as a measure to cover sceneries that are neither preferred to be looked at from above, nor considered to be worth noticing, or even passing through. Bridges can be focal points with a blinder effect. The new straightforward movement above leaves the space below deserted. In fact, places beneath bridges are often perceived as ambiguous spaces: out of sight from those at the top of the bridge, they appear to be out of control of the public eye. Yet it is this ambiguity of the “underbridge” as an in-between state that can allow for subversive action. “Eichbaumoper”, a project by Raumlabor in 2009, is an opera staged in the in-between space of a metro station which itself is located underneath major highway interchange bridges⁴. Formerly seen as division and so-called “Nicht-Ort“, the collective re-enactment of the space in-between gave way to develop another perception of the place, and hence, to establish a new identity.

Although the river may  have moved out of focus, it has not lost its symbolic importance. Rivers as markers of border lines transform bridges into fragile infrastructures of possible border crossings. During the Cold War’s internal division of Germany, former central inner city bridges, like Oberbaumbrücke in Berlin, turned into highly secured military zones. Bridges can turn into causes of friction. Referring again to the example of Stari Most, bridges are the first military targets to be destroyed in wartime.

The history of bridges is not only a peaceful one of conciliation but also one of power and domination: dominating nature as well as dominating people. It is apparent, that as in many urban or infrastructural projects, the process of building bridges entails  topographical and structural concerns as well as intentions regarding the formation of societies, their social status and multiple ethnicities. Bridges are then not only engineered objects, but elements within and emerging out of society, and as such shaped by politics. Yet, the relation between politics and the built environment is more complex than described by Winner in the case of the Long Island parkway bridges. As Francesco Garutti points out: to directly derive political objectives from a built artefact may prove to be as misleading as the assumption it is a neutral object⁵.

Questioning the commonplace metaphor of bridges as conciliating entities may lead to a better understanding of how society and its built environment is continuously formed and reshaped by the shift of power and its subsequent reconstitution of society. Bridges are not one-dimensional metaphors, but structures as complex as the social identities they embody.

¹ Charlesworth, Esther, “Mostar – reconstruction as reconciliation.” In Architects without frontiers: war, reconstruction and design responsibility (Esther Charlesworth) (Oxford: Architectural Press, 2006): 99-113
²McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), 89f.
³ Winner, Langdon, “Do Artifcats have Politics?,” Daedalus, Vol. 109, No. 1, Modern Technology: Problem or Opportunity? (Winter, 1980): 124f.
⁴ “Eichbaumoper,” raumlabor, accessed November 20, 2018, http://raumlabor.net/eichbaumoper/.
⁵ Francesco Garutti sheds light on the controversially disputed example of the New York Parkway bridges in his research “Can Design Be Devious”. Canadian Centre for Architecture & Francesco Garutti, „Can Design Be Devious?“ iBooks, https://itunes.apple.com/de/book/can-design-be-devious/id1184153702?mt=11.

 

Hannah Maren Strothmann studied architecture, physics and philosophy at the University of Arts in Berlin, the University of Illinois in Chicago and the University of Konstanz. She has worked as a student assistant to  the chair of Art History and Cultural Studies with Prof. Dr. Susanne Hauser and to  the chair of History and Theory of Architecture with Prof. Dr. Michael Bollé. She worked as an editor for PROTOCOL magazine and for Kuehn Malvezzi Architects in Berlin. , She  is currently a Curatorial Intern at the CCA (Centre for Canadian Architecture) in Montréal.
Her interest in bridges dates back to a research project in collaboration with Julius Titze on the Howrah Bridge. The project was a winner of the Paul-and-Margot-Baumgarten Prize in 2016 and resulted in a two-channel video installation which has been exhibited at the 31. European Media Art Festival and at the Rundgang 2017 at the University of Arts Berlin.

Gottfried Semper was born in 1803, the son of a Silesian wool manufacturer and a Huguenot mother. He spent his first sixteen years in Altona, part of Denmark at the time, before he moved to a school in the neighboring German city of Hamburg. His first place of work as an architect was Dresden in Saxony where he also taught at the royal Academy of Arts. When the republican revolts spreading throughout the German States reached Saxony in May 1849, he could not abstain from teaching the Revolters how to build proper barricades. After the German revolts had failed, he was ultimately banned because of his involvement in the Republican May Uprising. He fled first to Paris and then to London before accepting a position at the newly founded Polytechnic of the ETH in Zurich. After he had resigned from his last place of work in Vienna, he died in 1879 during a trip to Rome. Semper can therefore be considered a pan-European architect. He left a vast collection of theoretical writings through which he contributed to the issue of the conciliation of identities, even today. Last but not least, he was invited to this virtual interview because he succeeded in doing what other architects failed to do: the Dresden population identified so strongly with his Hoftheater that the Saxon King, despite Semper’s exile, had no choice but to re-engage him as an architect for the Reconstruction of the building after a fire.

Dennis Lagemann: Good evening, Professor Semper. To get straight to the point: you considered the architecture of your time to be in crisis based on the coincidence of two circumstances. First, three different stylistic directions¹ and their respective advocates were in dispute about the future of architecture. Second, you criticize that art, industry, and architecture had been separated in the field, producing a tension between technical requirements and creative will.

Gottfried Semper: This coincidence is well worth considering and it leads to the assumption of a connection between these two phenomena. While both of these circumstance may have emerged from shared underlying causes, it is undoubtedly true that we are currently overwhelmed by the shear amount of material to be learned, that we have lost sight of our goals and often do not see the forest in front of trees. The perception of difficulties, arising from such an overabundant treasure of knowledge […] was also the cause that led the legislators of early centuries, for example, the creators of the political and religious institutions of the Egyptians and Indians, to introduce strict division of labor. Unfortunately in the course of this, the awareness of the close connection that exists between the various branches of knowledge and ability has been lost.²

DL: This comment brings me to the fact that when you formulate a position on the situation of your own time, you often write in allegories to show how historical patterns repeat themselves. You refer to Greek antiquity frequently, which you seem to adore in almost idolatrous idealization…

GS: First: For no independent architectural style can a state of childhood and gradual development be ascertained; each of them has emerged out of its own principle. The earliest architectural styles were the most perfect ones, at least as far as purity in the expression of the principle they represent.

Second: Most of them die a sudden and violent death as a result of a great social revolution and the victory of a new principle. Greek architecture is the only one that is an exception to the issue stated under 2nd; it has experienced resurrection and will never die in its principles, because these are based on Nature, contain a universal and absolute truth, and speak to us in a language that is understandable unto itself at all times and everywhere, since they are those of Nature.³

DL: Well, this issue of the “language of nature” may have become a little doubtful since structuralism has shown that there is no immediate relation between signifier and signified. But the fact that Le Corbusier was passionately referring to the Acropolis in his writings may at least partially affirm your argument. But according to you, not even Hellenism was resistant to tendencies towards decadence.

GS: But only the next step went downhill. The plain-old bothered fashion began to prevail, the bond that linked the arts ceased, and architecture was abandoned. Sculpture, proud of its own resources, achieved an unsurpassed skill among the Rhodian masters, yet the unconnected works lacked a deeper meaning and harmony. Painting, sculpture’s frivolous sister, indulged in any arbitrary whim of the artist and the lust of the rich.⁴

DL: However, this “arbitrary whim of the artist” seems to be a statement against the freedom of art. Do you think art should be restricted by state or religion?

GS: Convention and taste, these are the two salutary counterweights of the boundless freedom in art!⁵ All the examples listed  reveal the arts to be in the service of society or of those who direct its destiny, that is, as un-free arts. Their emancipation can only result in the fortunate repercussions of an awakened sense of self-consciousness against the feeling of submissive absorption under patronage.⁶

DL: I am afraid this might be an ideal concept, but your success with the Hoftheater in Dresden would at least be worth mentioning in this context. But still, the question arises as to how this reconciliation of the identities of art, industry, and architecture should succeed. Regarding this issue, you repeatedly talk about a system with which you want to get a grip on the “amount of the material to be learned.”

GS: The system of classification based on principles I am trying to suggest here would encompass the whole of art history, but it would of course bring together objects that are separated by great distances of time and space: for example, the Merovingian and Byzantine styles with the style of the art industry of the Assyrians and the Greeks of the heroic age.⁷ The basic idea of any piece of art, resulting from its use and purpose, is independent of fashion, material, as well as temporal and local conditions.⁸

DL: Professor Semper, the way in which you speak about art is a little hard to digest for a person of my time. Although I am aware that the concept of art itself underwent a fundamental shift in meaning at the beginning of the twentieth century, you would not distinguish between the so-called free art and the art that would be called industrial design, correct?

GS: The principles of aesthetics in architecture had first been applied to objects of industry, and the separation that now exists between the latter, architecture, and high art is one of the primary causes of their decay.⁹ Opposed to this, the Doctrine of Style¹⁰ unites beauty as a product or result, not as a sum or a series. It seeks the constituents of the form, which are not themselves form, but idea, force, substance, and means; as these are the preconditions as well as basic features of form.¹¹

DL: It almost sounds as though you think that good style is not an expression of one identity, but a way to create identities as a result of how certain influences are being composed.

GS: Every work of art is a result, or, to use a mathematical expression, a function of any number of agents or forces which are the variable coefficients of its embodiment.

Y = F (x, y, z, etc.)¹²

DL: Are you not going too far?

GS: There will be objections that an artistic problem is not mathematical and that artistic results can hardly be achieved by mathematical calculation. This is very true, and I am the last to believe that mere reflection and calculation will ever succeed in replacing talent and natural taste.¹³

DL: So, good style for you is characterized by reconciling all the components of what you call the “comparative system for a doctrine of style.” You do not want to suggest that art, or rather, creativity, are predictable. Instead you want to point out that creative will, available materials or local traditions do not just factor in to the appearance of an artifact, but more importantly it is a question of their conciliation towards a common purpose.

GS: If x becomes x + a, then the result U will be very different from the earlier result Y, but in principle it will remain identical to the latter […]. If the factors x, y, z, etc. remain the same but F is changed, then Y will change in a different way than before, it will fundamentally differ from its former nature.¹⁴ The fundamental idea of an artifact, emerging from its purpose and utilization, is independent from fashion, from material, and temporal or local conditions.¹⁵

DL: And, can you give us a brief definition of what you mean by “Style”? I am asking this, because the terms “doctrine” and “style” are often perceived to be dangerous in the twenty first  century.

GS: Style is the correspondence of an artistic phenomenon with its genesis, with all preconditions and circumstances of its becoming. From a stylistic point of view, it does not confront us as something absolute, but as a result. Style is the “stylos”, the instrument that the ancients used to write and draw, hence a very significant word for the relationship between form and the history of its creation. The tool, however, at first belongs to the hand that guides it, and a will that guides the latter.¹⁶

DL: You believe that the conciliation of different principles, or perhaps approaches, always needs something to link them? How do you understand the construction of identity of in architecture?

GS: Thus architecture is the last-born of the arts, but at the same time the conciliation of all branches of industry and art into one great overall effect and a guiding idea. It is probable that the laws of style and beauty recognized by us in the arts were first systematically established by architects …¹⁷

DL: But this concept can also backfire, bearing in mind that in recent centuries attempts to shape society through architecture have also failed. Do you not think that architecture has a self-referential autopoiesis and therefore should focus on itself?

GS: We considered the leftover, lifeless carcass of ancient art as something whole and living, and thought it would be proper to copy in the shape we came upon it. […] The lean, dry, sharp, characterless of the newer products of architecture can easily be explained by this ignorant mimicking of ancient fragments.¹⁸ But, joking aside, does all this help us? We want art yet we are given numbers and rules. We want something new yet we are given something that is even older and even more remote from the needs of our time.¹⁹

DL: But did not the Renaissance, so revered by you, only want to restore Antiquity?

GS: The Renaissance has digested and processed the failure of seeing ancient sculpture and architecture colorless, in such a way that a highly self-sufficient art has emerged from this apprehension. ²⁰

DL: Self-sufficient, but not self-referential: A figure like Alberti has not only dealt with ancient architecture, but also with sculpture, fine art, cryptography, and mathematics, developing these arts even further. Thus, what you want to express with your formula as a “Method for invention”²¹ is a plea for the integration of new technologies into the development of artifacts of all kinds coupled with the conscious and creative handling of tradition.

GS: This represents the synthesis of the two seemingly mutually exclusive cultural moments, namely the individual striving and absorption into totality.²² But these are just ineffective home remedies that cannot transform the condition of old-age back into youth power. We do not need the herbs of Medea, but her rejuvenating cauldron. ²³

DL: Professor, before you leave us again, I perhaps should tell you that the application of formal details borrowed from antiquity ceased to exist in architecture only a few decades after your writings were published. In the twentieth century, a new generation developed Modern Architecture. Nevertheless, I start to wonder if this turn was not actually in accordance to some of your deeper intentions, although you passionately took a stand for the use of ornaments as the signification of functionality. But it should be taken into account that even if this way of building was more abstract and deprived of ornamentation, art, industry, and architecture found conciliation through a common identity within the cauldron of the Bauhaus. Professor Semper, thank you for the interview.

¹Classicism, Historism and Eclecticism (A/N)
²Semper, 1884, p. 259.
³Ibid, 293.
⁴Ibid, 12.
⁵Ibid,  25.
⁶Ibid, 420.
⁷Ibid,  283.
⁸Ibid, 261.
⁹Ibid, 266.
¹⁰Stillehre (A/N)
¹¹Semper, 1878, Prolegomena, p. VIII.
¹²Semper, 1884, p. 267.
¹³Ibid, 268.
¹⁴Ibid, 268.
¹⁵Ibid, 268.
¹⁶Semper, 1869, p. 11.
¹⁷Semper, 1884, p. 266.
¹⁸Ibid, 229.
¹⁹Semper, 1878, Prolegomena, p. VIII.
²⁰Ibid, 479.
²¹Semper, 1884, p. 261.
²²Semper, 1869, p. 28.
²³Ibid, 102.

Dennis Lagemann is a Doctoral Candidate in Architecture. He holds a Diploma of Engineering in Architecture and a Master’s degree of Science in Architecture. He conducted additional studies in Philosophy and Mathematics at the Department of Arts & Design in Wuppertal and at ETH Zurich. He was teaching CAD- and FEM-systems, worked as a teaching assistant in Urban Design and Constructive Design until 2013. On the practical side, he worked for Bernd Kniess Architekten on multiple housing and exhibition projects in Cologne, Dusseldorf and Berlin. In his research activities, Dennis was a member of PEM-Research-Group at the Chair of Structural Design at the University of Wuppertal, where he became a Doctoral Candidate in Computational Design. From 2015 on he is participating in the scientific discourse about computation in Architecture and giving talks at conferences, including ACADIA, CAADRIA and ArchTheo. He is now located in Zurich at ETH / ITA / CAAD. His main research interest lies on the question how historical and contemporary notions of space, time and information are being addressed in Architecture.

Architecture is by its intrinsic nature a never-ending process of negotiations between diametrically opposite, sometimes paradoxical forces and – often constrained or reckless – conciliations. The built product generates from the amalgamation of diverse and sometimes incompatible conditions imposed by site, client, budget, desires, technology, scale, politics, ambitions… and so on. The matters of Baldassarre Peruzzi and of Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, though dating almost five centuries and certainly not being an exception in the history of Architecture, are in many ways a fitting example of such a claim.

The (hi)story

In 1527 Rome, the center of the Catholic world, is going through one of the most tragic moments of its millennial history: on May 6th the city is captured, plundered, teared up and almost burned to the ground by the imperial army of Charles V. Pope Clemente VII Medici witnesses the tragedy secluded within Castel Sant’Angelo and will be soon forced to pay a considerable sum for the withdrawal of the invaders and escape to Orvieto dressed up like a farmer. These catastrophic events confirm the decline of the Italian peninsula, at the mercy of foreign troops, with a humiliated and weakened Catholic Christian Church.

The year following the Sack is dominated by plague and famine, with the population decimated and several of the survivors fleeing the city. Among the noble households that have dramatically suffered from the Sack is the aristocratic family Massimo, which claims a mythical ancestry back to the Roman Empire. Even if reduced to only three brothers and with several properties destroyed in the aftermath of the tragic events, the family is still living in the Rione Parione, more precisely along the Via Papale – a sequence of streets linking San Pietro with San Giovanni in Laterano, where a palace is synonym of prestigious social position and strong political power. It is here that one of the brothers, Pietro Massimo, moved by political ambitions and desire of redemption, decides to build on the ruins of his domus antiqua a new private residence meant to celebrate the claimed descent of his family from Fabio Massimo – the man who defeated Hannibal.

In 1532 Baldassarre Peruzzi, who has just returned to Rome, is chosen as the architect to realise the ambitious self-representation project of Pietro and one of the first palaces to be rebuilt after the sack. Being one among the most diverse and polytropic artists of the late Renaissance, a period when Italy was unprecedentedly prolific of geniuses, Peruzzi incarnates the “universal man” as per the ideal Albertian conception of the architect as a humanist and a generalist. Throughout his career he reveals his talent as architect, mosaicist, scenographer, painter, sculptor and literate. Arrived in Rome as a young painter with a great culture of ancient Roman archaeologies, he became a pupil of Raffaello, a collaborator of Bramante and the protégée of Agostino Chigi – for whom he built one of the most harmonious Renaissance villas which would become the paradigm of the urban villa typology, the Villa Farnesina.

During the Sack, apparently due to his elegant manners and handsome figure, Peruzzi was mistaken for a nobleman, kidnapped and tortured for a ransom. He finally managed to flee to his hometown, Siena, where he arrived with few clothes on after being robbed on the way. Only a few years later, thanks to the intercession of the pope Farnese, he will manage to return to Rome.

Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, which will be Peruzzi’s main commission once back in the city, is therefore a sort of personal reconciliation with the city and is rightly considered to be his masterpiece: it reflects all the experience, the culture and the sense of beauty as well as the preoccupations, struggles and uncertainties following the Sack, which characterised his late years, spent in great poverty and amidst rivalries with fellow architects and painters, eventually leading to his death, due to poisoning.

A dramatic procession through space

Peruzzi finds himself to deal with a difficult site into which he “casts” his intervention. The many peculiarities of the plan show continuous negotiations with the pre-existing buildings but also with the ambitions of the client who was trying to re-establish his power and social status. The existing palazzo prior to the Sack was laid in a constrained irregular plot in between Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and Piazza Navona, with only one limited exposure to the public street and divided by a public passage. Peruzzi chooses to maintain two major elements of the previous building in their respective location – the courtyard and the loggia – transforming them into a completely new articulation.

One of the main enigmatic and innovative solutions as well as a contradistinctive feature of the Palazzo is its subtly bent façade, seamlessly connecting the two adjoining buildings in a continuity that resolves all conflicting angles. Another architect from the Renaissance would have placed on the plot an ideal relentless and generic object that could have been displaced anywhere else; Peruzzi goes for a deeper level of complexity deforming the building into an architecture that existentially belongs to that very place conciliating the plot irregularities. Being a master of perspectives, he achieves to convert objective design problems into valuable aesthetic solutions. It is believed that the ancient Odeum by the Emperor Domitian was built underneath the palace, perhaps determining the curvature of the plot; in this view the unusual shape of the façade would acquire an even more fascinating value, as it would imply an immediate reference to the actual ground onto which the palace is built making visible the hidden, yet actually existing. However still no real proof exists of this ancient pre-existence and therefore the curved roman ruin appears to be more an idealized reference than a real determinant constraint. This image of the façade is also given by the Roman Teatro Marcello that Peruzzi himself contributed to define. Thus, on one side the urban context explains the functional reasons behind this configuration and on the other the model and the confrontation standard to rely on is the antique. The recurrent explicit if not flaunted reference to the ancient world is the clear expression of the desire, which Peruzzi shares with Pietro Massimo, to bind to ancient Roman history and defend the endangered identity of the Roman tradition.

Palazzo Massimo is also paradigmatic of the transition happening during the XVI century between Renaissance and Baroque, a period which goes under the name of Mannerism. Deriving its intellectual values from the former and prefiguring the sensual values of the latter, Mannerism seems an evolution from the characters of the Renaissance to those of the Baroque.

The façade is a first example of this transition; in primis through its curvature the building performs actively on its surroundings, with the outside influenced and given a new character by the inside and vice versa. Moreover, in order to maintain the symmetry to Via del Paradiso – running perpendicularly to the entrance – Peruzzi annexes part of the adjacent Palazzo enveloping it with the new facade. Therefore, in an exquisitely baroque ante litteram gesture, the façade is much bigger than the actual building, resulting in an enhanced visual effect. The treatment of the surface is also conceived with the same criteria: the linear bugnato which extends evenly like a skin pulled over the building enhances visually the curving facade; the lack of differentiation at the edges augments the fragmental character already suggested by the curvature.

A noticeable inversion is produced: the “heavy” bugnato order and the “light” column order are vertically flipped in contrast to the classical rule of superimposition of architectural orders. Having to deal with a tight budget, the bugnato surface of the lower level is built out of travertine whereas the upper levels are realized in stucco, a cheap surrogate of stone, still resembling that of the ground floor in order to provide a homogeneous continuity.

The façade of Palazzo Massimo is not only convex, it also has a depth. In order to enter the palace, one has to go through a bent loggia space, high and decorated with ornaments that recall Roman bas-reliefs. This space is the first of a sequence which is the second major element proving the deflection from the Renaissance values and from the classical rules; Peruzzi chooses indeed to build an “urban interior”, keeping the previous public passage within the palace by implementing a sequence of linked voids carved into the mass of the building, becoming its backbone and hierarchically prevailing over the private rooms of the palazzo.

The procession happens within a single space which has been fragmented. The hierarchy of major and minor spaces disappears in favor of a series of major spaces to be experienced incrementally and mediated by the minor ones. The space contracts and changes direction continuously revealing itself as an eccentric system of coherent fractions. The bent loggia is much more than an entrance, it is not a space to traverse but rather a space to stay, as suggested by the sudden inversion of the conventional proportions of the atrium – its enhanced longitudinal character. That feeling is confirmed also by the two benches, symmetrically disposed at the two sides of the entrance and the two small apsidal-like niches, each housing a roman statue representing the mythical ancestors of the Massimo family.

After this space, another inversion is made: a long, vaulted corridor accelerates by means of its narrowness a visitor into one side of a cortile. Funnels of light are channeled through the pierced vaulted ceilings of the loggias on either side of the cortile. Rather than to its geometric center, the attention is shifted to a new axis of symmetry on the right side, determined by a fountain and a stair linking, through a new elegant loggia, the salone on the piano nobile with the cortile.

In the cortile, the dominating dimension is the height; the space is perceived as narrow and becomes a new center of gravity for the rooms organized around it. The life of the palace happens mainly within that hollow space, since most rooms have no other window or opening but the ones facing it. It is a space that echoes what has been already traversed: the flooring is that of the public street, the columns replicate those of the loggia in the façade.

Light coming from a second cortile to the rear reveals the part of an older palazzo, maintained and incorporated by slightly bending the main axis. This provokes the illusion of a much longer space whose end is hidden and can only be reached by moving towards it. The connection to this second cortile happens with the atrium situation that is repeated in its effect and differentiated in its spatial character: the corridor propels again a visitor into a void space, preexisting to Peruzzi’s project and perfectly integrated into it. At the end of the last space, once again under a vaulted ceiling, a huge hole overlooks a small square at the end of which one can have a glimpse of Piazza Navona.

The sequence really is a continuation of the public street on one side and the square on the other, a dynamic axe for the palazzo to develop around. This public path in the heart of the palazzo is well accorded with its civic character which pays tribute to Rome simultaneously increasing the prestige of the family.

 

Conciliation as unity in diversity

 

Instead of presenting architecture as absolute in its objecthood with a clear and unequivocal plan, Peruzzi renders it relative through the changing perception of the subject, who is brought actively into the experience of understanding the building.

The traditionally self-sufficient palazzo is therefore transformed into the subordinate part, though intensively expressive, of a broader whole. It is a porous mass, opposed to its Renaissance ancestor, hermetic and massive, discontinuous from its neighbors, totally autonomous and sometimes redundant. In Palazzo Massimo one must move through the entire spatial sequence in order to assemble its organisation and bring together its fragments.

These qualities mirror the new psychological dimension of the contemporary man who, confronted with the disintegration of the ancient cosmic order, feels as deeply problematic all the fundamental aspects of his existence as well as his relation to other men, God and even himself. The political foundations of the renaissance civilization crumble and the division of the church confirm the disintegration of a unified and absolute world. Few years later Copernicus will scientifically remove the earth from the center of the universe. In Palazzo Massimo, order and harmony have disappeared; the forms are impregnated with tensions and conflicts. Compared to the Renaissance Palazzo whose parts conveyed a unitary and measured image, Peruzzi introduces an atmosphere of doubt, tragedy and conflict hitherto unknown in the history of art. It is a difficult reconciliation of the discrepancies of the Renaissance legacy and ambitions with the contemporary human condition and the meaning of its existence.

Hugo Riemann describes form in music as unity in diversity. This is the core of what Palazzo Massimo is and what will later explode in the Baroque: form is reached accepting the multiplicities and binding them into a meaningful complex whole. The contaminations, negotiations and conciliations of preexisting site conditions and spatial elements, material diversities, ancient glories and contemporary concerns, private and public realms are condensed in an incredibly rich shifting moment for architecture: the expression of doubt of modern man.

 

 

With their work, through different mediums and disciplines, Marina Montresor and Stephan Lando attempt to explore the possibilities of architecture as a fragment of the realm of art.
Together they edited the book Defining Criteria published by Quart Verlag in June 2018.

Erica Overmeer atudied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Worked at Herzog & de Meuron in Basel and at Walter Keller / Scal Verlag in Zürich. Since the 90’s she has been devoting herself to her own photographic projects. In 2012 her work was featured at the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 2016 she co-founded Index Architecture, an international research platform on print publishing in architecture.

“[…]I am trying to find a sort of hybridization that oscillates between biomedicine, which I consider traditional and popular medicine, the antithesis of it. The best result is in using both.

F. & A. Escobar

“When circumstances defy order, order should bend or break: anomalies and uncertainties give validity to architecture.”

R. Venturi

Cliza is just a few kilometers away from Cochabamba, one of the main cities of the central part of Bolivia. It is a very quiet town, in the middle of nowhere, mostly known for its famous “Pichon a la brasa” and delicious “anticucho”. For us, however, going to Clizia became an obsession. Everything started from one single snapshot found accidentally on google maps while we were in La Paz investigating the phenomenon of cholets. Almost by chance, digging into the digital universe of google, looking for other examples of Andean architecture, we landed within the deserted roads of Cliza.

The town had the classic characteristics of any Bolivian suburb; a great industriousness in the agricultural field and a strong identity in folkloristic everyday rituals. These places nowadays are a fertile ground for the rising of cholets, usually constructed by wealthy families who every weekend host grand parties, whether religious or not, to gain respect but often arousing also jealousies inside the community. Cholets are now a privileged architectural translation of cultural identity in Bolivia: facades of bright colours, populated by over-decorated interiors – where the kitsch meets the aesthetic rigour, profane and sacred features come together.

Therefore, we digitally unloaded the yellow little man to the gates of Cochabamba, freely discovering the surroundings from our screen view. There weren’t as many cholets as we expected, but we decided to keep walking further – eventually bumping into the “Cementerio de Toco”, just along the main road of the small town of Cliza. At the beginning, it looked as any ordinary cemetery, but then, turning around a cholita passing by, a white weirdly shaped building suddenly appeared, hidden behind a voluminous tree. From the small snapshot it could not be deducted if it had been built recently, but surely it was something that did not seem to belong to that context.

Or, actually, it was truly something that we are used to see in Bolivia, maybe pushed a bit more towards a peculiar extravagance: insertions of different styles mixing indigenous references with postmodern, post punk or even Chinese fragments. In these rural Bolivian communities, unconventional ornaments are employed both to represent the rising of collective identity and to differentiate individual tastes. If Adolf Loos suggested that modern man should have suppressed individuality, Bolivian are surely overturning the rules.

Cliza is seven hours of driving from La Paz. We departed early and once arrived we parked right in front of the entrance of the cemetery, where a group of old ladies including the keepers were festively eating in the near chapels. This is not unusual in this part of the world, where death is indeed seen as a continuation of life. Therefore, when a loved one passes away, the relatives are used to frequent the grave, arranging big family gatherings in the cemetery and playing songs to the dead. These happenings, together with the aesthetic value of apparently staged architectural backgrounds, contribute to give to the cemetery the atmosphere of a real populated city. Spatial performances to stage a conciliation between this life and the after life.

Although taken by the scene and fed by the people, as hyper excited architects we still tried to reach that odd white chapel, we passed hundreds of mausoleums, each family had its own private one but all of them had the same characteristics in common: a triangular gable frame, columns of all colours from shimmering orange to marmorino effect. Cement casted shapes and extravagant mouldings were intertwined with the traditional structures and mosaics of the apparently original chapels. It was indeed hard to understand if they were conceived in such a way from the beginning or if they were really re-designed through a series post modern additions. We looked at each others and we exclaimed: what a Bolivian Venturi!

In recent years, the sudden revival of some conservative design approaches – totally confined into the discipline and almost scared to engage with the outer world – led to such a deceiving linguistic and iconographical flatness within our commonly shared architectural vocabulary, that looking at these examples we felt a sense of relief: you could finally grasp the flavour of singularities, a certain aesthetic truth grounded into the different layers of subcultures.

Our concern is that within environments that value only calibrated refinement and established elegance, what is mundane and popular is often mistaken as vulgar. However, especially when expressed through folkloric icons and traditions, vulgarity finally can cease to have a negative connotation, re-gaining its etymological meaning (from Latin vulgus: “common people”): it intuitively triggers authenticity and a sense of belonging, helping to fight anorexic models and to broad the notion of beauty – even among those who are the most reluctant to accept exuberance and kitsch aesthetics.

That’s undoubtedly the case of Bolivia, a place that shaped effective mechanisms to deeply connect architecture with its contemporary and stratified culture.

More than an hour later, we eventually discover the white plaster cast mausoleum spotted on google maps. The first one belonging to the “ Familia Jimenez”, had two shirtless keepers and dressed only in jeans set on both sides of a concave glass door. They looked like video game avatars, without a pre-established gender, they were the custodians of the sepulcher. Looking at the side they had wings, as some cyber fictional putti. It is in this common shared nature of the vulgar, together with its extravagance, that architecture provides a perfect basis for a contemporary notion of ornamentation. As architects, we can not help but wonder who ever build such a thing and why. But as well we need to question: what is an architectural ornament today? Whoever designed this mausoleum, wanted to define ornament not as an architectural detail, but perhaps as an adjective to life. Ornamentation as an open linguistic category, embracing a series of effective mistakes to challenge orthodoxy. Misspellings, malformations, malapropisms were there to produce unexpected and meaningful aesthetic hybrids, as within a colloquial spatial dialect. Outside of any architectural rule, these examples – through figurative instances, geometrical expressions and material qualities – trigger an intuitive empathy, framing a momentum, where popular demand intersects artistic beauty.

 

 

The second mausoleum built for the“ Familia Escobar” is more complex; the exterior looks like a spaceship, with a second floor that stretches the same size as one coffin. The two keepers look more like bouncers with earphones and guns at the ankles . They stand above dragon heads with longer wings and sunglasses looking down towards the viewer. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that, looking through the glass, the internal plaster grids are perfectly clean with some leaves, but totally empty – as if they are waiting for someone. In comparison to the other neighbouring mausoleums, they are extravagant but only arouse curiosity, not pain nor devotion.

We should not be surprised by the eccentricity of this tomb, because funnily enough, Farid and Aldo Escobar, were specialist in their bonesetter’s clinic during the XIX century and still today they are considered the best in all of Bolivia. There are many unknown facts around their practice, because they mix scientific methodologies with popular superstitions and words of mouth. Many talks about the “Escobar manipulation” applied to herniated discs and their methodology to hybridize medical practice with secular knowledge.

We could say that Cliza is a very strange case: an experimental isolated place, where styles, identities and rituals complement each other. Going away, we stopped to see the lady who cleaned the streets of the cemetery, which did not seem to care about the aesthetics of these dwellings. Here in Cliza all of this is absurd, but absolutely ordinary.

Last night, when we were finishing to write this story, Robert Venturi passed away. We’re sure that he laughed at us writing about him in such a way, but truly we saw a bit of him in this cemetery. And, as he would have said, it definitely turned us on.