architecture of immaterial labour

Architektur immaterieller Arbeit

205

English Summary

Architecture of Immaterial Labour

English Summary:


206

The following text is a radically abbreviated

adaptation of the original German version. It

seeks to introduce the reader to the topic of my

dissertation by focusing on the main arguments,

but still keeping the arrangement of the

chapters of the book. For the time translations

are mine for quotes in German, possible existing

English translations notwithstanding. Only if a

source was available in my own library – and, of

course, quotes are originally in English – are

quoted from the English-language references.


207

Introduction The world is labour. [Die Welt ist Arbeit.]

Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt

Regardless of the discourses on the end of

labour, and in contrast to diverse models of

feasible utopias like the twenty-hour week or

basic social security for everyone, life in our

societies is all about work. Particularly in

Western industrial nations, work is becoming

increasingly diffuse. Labour penetrates all

aspects of human activity, work-time and spare-

time merge, and the actual job becomes

indistinguishable from education and vocational

training; nowadays private life and vita activa

are becoming commingled. With its

organisational as well as juridical constructions,

accompanied by popular (neo-liberal) discourses

and under pressure by the imperative of global

capital, existing labour legislation, as well as

pension- and insurance-models of post-war

Europe get radically challenged and

aggressively re-structured. The old dictum of

spatial and temporal simultaneity and

concurrence of work processes, as well as the

functionally distinct, well-defined attribution of

spaces of production disintegrates with current

organizations of a labour concept that is

becoming increasingly diffuse and becomes

more and more immaterial. Today modes, as

well as means of production, require different

spatial figurations for work that are permanently

and continuously manifest in new and

unprecedented formations and figurations. This

book is about these kinds of increasingly

immaterial organizations of spaces.

Spaces

of

Production

From time immemorial, architecture has

organized spaces of production. It framed a

structural as well as a symbolic order that

affected the inner assembly as well as radiated

to the outside. The Royal saltworks of Chaux

(1771-1779) by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, the

social-utopian workers project New Harmony

(1825-27) by Robert Owen and his architect

Stedman Whitwell, but also Boodle’s (1762) or

the Athenæum Club (1824) in London constitute

the ideal type of exemplary modern models for

spaces of labour. They exemplify modes of an

architecture of labour: it encloses an assembly

of men and women, as well as their machines

and composes an ordered and controlled

interior. Architecture of work constructs and

marks out a space for production, regardless of

the mode of community building – be it the

quasi-transcendental sovereign that marks the

working community or be it a community that

authorizes itself.

Architecture efficiently arranges humans and

machines in an exclusive interior. The

exclusiveness of the production-spaces is

thereby conceived in a multitude of modalities,

however always regulated by rules of conduct

and codes. Furthermore the architecture of work

has always been defined in relation to life – to

living and free time. Initially its inner logic

comes about in dissociation from life, but it

simultaneously establishes aspects of life within

its boundaries. Thus, great spaces of production

are always designs that modify working

conditions of assembled workers and create a

difference to existing living conditions.

The disparate spaces of work are instruments of

subjectification and problematize the structures

of power of the subjects – be it the worker, be it

the architects, be it the entrepreneurs – who are

enmeshed within manifold processes of

rationalization, discipline and subjectification,

become produced and are not able to step

outside, to flee. To paraphrase Foucault,

subjects are formed by various powers, are at

once subordinated and are subordinating, they

have the power over something and the power to

something.1

As the sociologist Andreas Reckwitz2 points out,

the production of subjects explicitly delimits

itself from a liberal idea of two disparate and

opposing forces – on the one3 hand of a

continuously liberating individual, versus an

English Summary:


208

inevitable limitation and control of the subject

through society. Rather, it understands the

forces that operate on and through the subject

as cultural forms in which each individual as

subject – in other words, as a rational, reflexive,

socially oriented, moral, expressive, etc.

instance and authority – must needs shape itself

and desires to shape itself.4

The

Societal

Factory

Considering experimental projects of the 1960s,

one gets the idea that, already then, the

regulated framework which accompanied work

had disappeared from the concept of living

altogether and that pure life orders the world:

spare time and play is ubiquitous in self-

adapting, fluid forms, or in mobile plug-in-

designs for living … Labour, but also new modes

of production that arise within an ever

increasing automation are not depicted or

represented by neo-avant-garde projects for a

new leisure society, even though labour is an

immanent part of the postulated creative life of

the homo ludens.

Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt describe

alterations of work conditions in the 1960s in

transition from the mass worker to the labourer

of society. Negri and Hardt are using – in the

tradition of, yet keeping a distance from the

Italian philosopher and operaist Mario Tronti –

the term factory of society. In doing so, Negri

and Hardt expand the traditional Marxian

concept of labour with a multitude of social

productions – a value-creating form of practice

that broaches natural requirements, artificial

desires, and social affairs, thus also

incorporating the sphere of the Marxian non-

labour (Nichtarbeit).

It is this concept of immaterial labour that

broaches a contemporary condition in Western

industrialized societies, that today becomes

more and more significant. It points out

alterations and changes in the very construction

of the concept of work – its attributes and its

conditions. A transformation that disengages

from formerly fixed spaces of production, a

changeover that makes obsolete5 a distinction

between work, manufacturing and action

(Arbeiten, Herstellen und Handeln).

Still, immaterial labour is not a new concept that

replaces old concepts of labour, as some post-

workerist or post-modern literature would have

it.6 Immaterial labour has no monopolistic

position. Its modes of production coexist with

other forms of production. Luc Boltanski and

Eve Chiapello describe this practice as The New

Spirit of Capitalism, composed on the one hand

by management discourses that modify

identities of labour towards the ideal of the

creative artist, and on the other hand, by an

material frame of new communication

technologies. Such a new cultural practice is a

new and general “ideology […], that justifies the

engagement with capitalism”7 that is closely

linked to the emancipation movements of the

1960s and its critique of capitalism.

Thus, immaterial labour is invoked here as a

political concept that allows me to question

significant forms of production of a value-

adding, symbol-producing activity within the

Western industrialized countries. It is a form of

production that increasingly marginalizes an

economy of physical products and fosters an

immaterial economy of information that goes

hand in hand with a constitutive modification of

capitalism. It is a mode of production – as the

concept of the factory of society already

proposes – that no longer is fixed to closed,

mono-functionally determined spaces.

Architecture

of

Immaterial

Labour

The title of the book is the hypothesis of my

investigation: Do we find, parallel to a dominant

cultural practice of immaterial labour new forms

and orders of architecture? Which forces are


209

composing these spaces? How is an

architecture of immaterial labour being

discursively constructed and how is it being

produced? Which forms does it take on? As

means of subjectification and as part of an

organization and of representation, architecture

does offer a research subject that is directly

connected to the disparate forms of capitalism.

In its outstanding examples, dominant discourse

formations crystallize: the idea how people shall

assemble, how people are being made

productive and how such an assembly can be

controlled and steered.

The spatial aspect of a form of production that

diffuses into society, that corresponds with no

traditional manufacture of physical products but

defines itself through communication opens up

the problematic of an architecture of immaterial

labour. From there I deduce questions that are

bound within a political field of the concept of

immaterial labour. Every postulated

improvement towards more life, every

movement that tries to emancipate labour from

capitalism is always and already utilized within

prevailing discourses – in this case the capitalist

system.

So I want to ask, if and how architecture of

immaterial labour only portrays the orderly

appearance of works in a space of production

that is rigorously defined by wage

compensation? Thus: does architecture design –

in the words of the French philosopher Jaques

Rancière – the employment and the attributions

of the spaces, onto which workers activities are

distributed. Or: does the practice of architecture

order new (labour) relations, in relation to

society?8 Are architects therefore consultants,

hosts and agents of a capitalist order, or … do

architects affect familiar orders and

distributions with the means of architecture and

therefore alter its status?

Precisely because architecture is directly linked

to a political, social and societal discourse and

since architecture is shaped by a multitude of

different discourses, I want to propose an

analysis of the diverse framings in which

architecture, but also working subjects, are

being produced. Thus I hope to be able to show

the conflict and frictions that are immanent in

an architecture of immaterial labour.

Projects of the 1960s, projects that are bound to

the above-mentioned discourse on automation

and leisure society, make it possible to identify

and analyze contours of an architecture that

mirrors tendencies of altering modes of

production and labour conditions of a value-

adding immaterial practice. Partly reactive,

partly – seen from today – prophetic, the projects

that I discuss deal with two things: firstly, the

sheer endless extension (both in terms of time

and of space) of workplaces in society, and

secondly, the modes of assembly and the modes

of living together.

This duality of the problem I take up in the two

parts of the book. In the first part I write about

effects of mobilization of formerly closed and

static spaces of production. With the first ever

built office-landscape Buch und Ton for the

media corporation Bertelsman (1960/61) its

architectonic antithesis, the office-building

Centraal Beheer (1968-71), as well as the

emancipatory spare time project Fun Palace

(1962-66). I show the necessity, after the Second

World War, to give form to a new social and

economic hypotheses – namely cybernetics. In

the second part of the book I will discuss

strategies of furnishing (einrichten): I refer to the

experimental project Mobile Office (1969) by

Hans Hollein, a project by Haus-Rucker-Co., and

finally to the performance Bed-In. All three

frame miscellaneous strategies to deal with a

new concept of life and work. Simultaneously,

the projects I discuss formulate a variety of

architectonic practices that comply with a

concept of labour, a labour that converges with

life and diffuse into society.

As hybrid examples, that happen parallel to and

linked with movements of emancipation in the

1960s, every sample encloses in its peculiar

mode, an assembly of people, constitutes an

order and controls its interior, organizes and

marks a space for production.

English Summary:


210

Part 1 To Mobilize

Nimm dir einen Regelkreis

Und tu dich mittenrein

Schnell erhältst du den Beweis

Besser kann die Welt nicht sein

//

Take a control circuit

Put yourself in

Immediatly you will have the proof:

Better the world can’t be

Thomas Meinecke/FSK: “Lob der Kybernetik”


211

Irregular Rhythms Brothers Eberhard and Wolfgang Schnelle: Buch

und Ton office landscape, 1960/61

In

the

landscape

The two images show the customized open-plan

office for the Bertelsmann commision-house

Buch und Ton [Book&Tone]. This company was

responsible for the mail-order business of the

German publishing house & and media group

Bertelsmann. The office space was built from

1960 to 1961 and was conceptualized and

designed by Wolfgang and Eberhard Schnelle, a

management-consultant team.

This office landscape – as the Schnelle brothers

would call it – is a pragmatic experiment to

create an open, pluralistic and self-organizing

space for work. A space designed according to

strict mathematic descriptions, designed

through the analysis of all ascertainable

functional and environmental aspects

(Schnelle). In other words, it was designed

through the particular assessment and analysis

of communication-flow and document

circulation within the organization.

This office landscape claims, on the one hand,

to suffice a human scale of an intimate

architecture, and on the other hand, to be a

space that is efficiently organized to allow a

dynamic alignment of ever modulating work

processes for ever-evolving requirements. The

ultimate aspiration when designing and

organizing such a space ultimately seeks to free

all workers from work through full automation.

To quote Eberhard Schnelle: “[D]oing away with

work, insofar as working people consider it to be

a burden.”

Here some hard facts:

2540 sqm gross floor area, 2947 sqm secondary

rooms on other floors. Room height: 2.95 meters.

Average acoustic level between 49 and 53 Phon

(which is comparable to the noise exposure of a

VW Beetle [1960] at a speed of 50km/h). Floor

covering: nylon-carpet. Ceiling: suspended

aluminium acoustic panels, square and

coloured. Artificial lighting: fluorescent tubes.

Light colour: Wight de Luxe, controllable

illumination level. Air-conditioning: low pressure

facility with maximum six times air change

(renewal), serves also as heating and humidifier,

additionally: de-dusting, sterilising and odour-

neutralising.

This office space is the direct result of a

scientific planning method: Organisations-

kybernetik [cybernetics of organisation]. It had

been developed since 1956 by a trans-

disciplinary team of German computer and

information scientists, mathematicians and

philosophers close management consultants

Eberhard and Wolfgang Schnelle. The method

initially claimed to be a comprehensive, holistic

method to organize, plan and design office

spaces. Later on the method was applied on a

broader scale to organize – amongst others – the

German bureaucracy at large.

The ambition was twofold:

(1) to create an office space as a flexible and

adaptable instrument for corporations – to

conceptualize space that is easy to arrange to

new formations of work-processes, and (2) to

design a workplace as an all-embracing

environment for living – an environment that,

due to an anticipated automation of

administrative work would dismiss people into

an everlasting spare-time.

A New Paradigm

of Governance

and Control

The planning-method explicitly refers to

cybernetics. In the late 1950s – due to a new

epistemological precondition of information-

English Summary:


212

theory9 – cybernetics marks a new model for

governance. A model that applied to “living

creatures, as well to machines and apparatuses,

to economic as well as to psychic processes, to

sociological as well as to aesthetic

phenomena.”10

Cybernetics presupposes the compatibility of

information-exchange of human beings and

machines through digitality. In doing so the

human is less understood as a machine. Rather

he and she, like machines and automats are

modelled as autonomous, self-directing

individuals, whose behaviour (within the

cybernetic system) is understood as coded and

thus as being able to be re-programmed.

The cybernetic model of control is based on

circular feedback loops – it is understood as a

universal paradigm of order that can be vividly

explained with the different levels of cybernetics

of the ship’s crew:

The following four points classify the cybernetic

modes of operation of the human being: (1) to

set goals, (2) to plan [in the sense of developing

methods to efficiently aim for the goal], (3) to

allocate (in the sense of steering), and (4)

physical labour.11 These four points are

equivalent to (1) the captain of a ship, (2) the

pilot, (3) the steersman, (4) the oarsmen.

To quote from an article of Eberhard Schnelle:

“The pilot is the scientist, or, in a company he is

at the executive level; it is the planner who, by

means of rationalization, searches for an optimal

way of reaching the goal, i.e. the index-value.”12

The steersman orders the information into

distinct, unambiguous instructions and

commands for the oarsmen – who might be the

clerk but also, as Schnelle states: “[the]

managers who only sign those papers which

they themselves did not dictate”.13

The cybernetic model of control cannot be

reduced to a central (supervising) power, since

every single instance, every level of cybernetics,

is already spread out as a network. Every

function within the organisation is not being

represented by one person, but by a team of

experts and its automats. The chain of

command is precise and clearly assigned, but

due to the formation of the organization as a

network, the power is no longer traceable to an

origin.

Political Hypothesis,

Pragmatic Experiment

Understood as a political hypothesis,

cybernetics promises a society on equal terms, a

pluralistic community and a self-organizing form

of governance. The French authors’ association

known as tiqqun insists that “the cybernetic

hypothesis is a new narrative, which replaces

the liberal hypothesis at the end of the twentieth

century.”14 For tiqqun, the cybernetic image of

steering has become the main metaphor that

not only describes politics, but every human

agency. As an ideal it translates a stable society

into objective, controllable mechanisms of

society. Thus cybernetics justifies two types of

scientific and social experiments: (1) an

experiment that is aligned to render all human

beings as mechanisms and (2) an experiment

that aims to emulate all living creatures, which

leads to the development of automata, robots

and artificial intelligence, then to mimicry of

collectives, to creation of networks and the

circulation of information.

With their planning method, the Schnelle

brothers and their team broached the

construction of a new, self-organized society in

post-war Germany. As an enterprise of subjects

acting autonomously it constantly aligns itself to

new goals. Thus the planning team enforces a

tendency that aims to shape society as a whole

and to produce a new kind of workspace – one

which functions on different assumptions than

traditional workspaces do.

(1) An enclosed space of the organization is

being marked. It is an abstract, horizontal plane,

that is preferably extensive and within its

compounds accessible, barrier-free. The interior

is (2) regulated by artificial climate, acoustic and

light design, and (3) moveable elements, like

tables, chairs, room dividers, and plants, but


213

also personnel and automata are ordered in

various constellations on the plane.

A catalogue of precise requirements controls the

visually loose arrangement and configuration of

interior space. The furniture is arranged

according to the workgroups. Similar to the set

theory, it is positioned in space. Entrance and

circulation routes are marked by plants and

never run through a working unit. Special

emphasis is placed on intimate the working

conditions of every single workplace: through

lighting, orientation of every single table, etc.

The loose arrangement of the cybernetically

organized workspace resembles a chaotic,

extensive landscape of subjective places – as

Eberhad and Wolfgang Schnelle would call it.

Here is a description of the office landscape

Buch und Ton:

“A transparent and generous effect is produced

through the furniture design. The irregular

rhythm of the arrangement and its chromacity

structure the perception of the space: it is only

the close-up range that is perceived, so that

each workplace produces a subjective place that

creates intimacy. Moveable room dividers and

plants provide visual protection, as well – they

delineate circulation routes and work group

areas.”15

The paradoxical phrase irregular rhythms – a

rhythm which knows no symmetry, follows no

regular motion, no regular repetition, but is

instead irregular and non-cyclical – accurately

articulates the hypothesis of the planners, and

gets to the point.

To put it in positive terms: it postulates an

intended fusion of two divergent movements, as

Roland Barthes would contrast (1) a self-

rhythmical mode of life – a mode of life that does

not follow any kind of organization and in which

no institutionalized, reified and objectified

authority of mediation exists between the

individual and the group, with (2) a confined –

both spatially and societally – life that

accompanies the imminent emergence of a

bureaucratic apparatus.16

Every single working individual in the

cybernetically optimized administration space

needs to realize himself or herself not as

crowded cattle (Marx), but as the autonomous

subject, which is on equal terms with everyone

else. A working subject that needs to come

across a familiar atmosphere, being on the same

hierarchical level and in spatial proximity to the

boss.

Although the office landscape looks chaotic and

irregular,a strict, meticulous, virtually

totalitarian order operates within the

arrangements. An order that is bound to a

conceptually autonomous but interdependent

individual and strict rationalism.

Formation of

a Society of

“Cybernetics of Organization”

It is the organization as enterprise that the team

of Wolfgang and Eberhard Schnelle aims at, as

Wolfgang Schnelle puts it: “Organizations with

the aim of carrying out visible performances

(businesses, authorities, but also political

parties and trade unions).”17 The general

purpose of an organization is thus the alteration

of the environment.

Cybernetic organizers distance themselves from

organizations like schools, churches, prisons,

but also from factories. These are organizations

that aim to influence their members through a

centralized power.18 Architecturally speaking,

they dissociate themselves from the

organizational typology of the factory, which has

been prolonged in the hierarchical model of the

American open-plan office:

Widely considered to be the paradigm of such a

hierarchically organized office building is the

Larkin Corporation (1903-06) in Buffalo.

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it houses the

world’s very first mail-order enterprise. As a kind

of ancestor to the Bertelsmann Buch und Ton

enterprise, it accommodated 1800 employees

English Summary:


214

who were organized in 10 state groups on four

floors. Significant for the building is the four-

storey high central space – the light court –

which accommodates the management and

board of directors.

The Larkin Building is oriented towards the

centre and establishes a closed society, where

no vista of the outside disturbs the

concentration of the workers. Clearly apparent is

the vertical hierarchy that is organized around

the central light court. It is a central, hierarchical

power that operates from within: from the centre

towards the outer ring of the layout.

It is certainly an automated power that Michel

Foucault assigns to light and permanent

visibility that operates here, a power that tears

out the workers from protective darkness. It is a

diffuse but gloomy light that commences

through the light court and the overhead light at

the workplaces. There the workers are fixed at

the heavy metal furniture (custom-designed by

the architect): “In use these chairs allowed only

a limited arc of movement and may have been

uncomfortable over the course of a full work

day.”19

The rejection of such a hierarchically organized

space of production – of such a disciplinary

space, that only works through a central point of

surveillance and control, does not liberate the

work-place from a subjectifying architecture-

machine. Only the figuration of the space of

production of the office landscape takes on a

different form. Only the boarders have been

deferred and are put into different relations to

each other.

The figure of the central space of the

management has been extended with the design

of the Buch und Ton office landscape. The inner

organization follows a spatial scheme of a

horizontal network. It is network whose

paradigm is communication between the

workers and the things (the machines, the

automata, but also the chairs and tables). It

establishes a space that equates all relations

conceptually. It is a space in which all relations

are indifferent. Seen ideally, this space includes

ALL as authorized managers. And there is no

longer an outside.20

The problem of the arrangement of such an

organization is to control and coordinate a big

group of workers and their automata. The

assembled collective needs to be gently

synchronized and directed. The following lines –

which greeted employees at the two entrances

to the Larkin Building – could be considered a

motto for the office landscape per se:

HONEST LABOUR

NEEDS NO MASTER

SIMPLE JUSTICE

NEEDS NO SLAVES

FREEDOM TO EVERY

MAN AND COMMERCE

WITH ALL THE WORLD21

Work

of the

leisure society

In the cybernetically organized Weltbild,

informatics machines and automata take over

the work and send the human race off to an

everlasting, care-free existence. At first they

need to take over all the repetitive and

exhausting work: regressive work-processes, as

cybernetics of organisation would call it – work-

processes that are based on known information

and routines, work-processes that can be

precisely coded – are being taken over by

automats. For the time being employees resume

to work as specialists and skilled workers in

progressive work-processes – work processes

that are based on a high degree of choice, and

are based on unknown information. For

example: experimental work in research, or

creative work, akin to advertising strategies, are

based on progressive work processes.22

But this creates a problem for a cybernetically

organized enterprise: since the decisions within

such progressive work processes are not

controllable, and since such specialized singular


215

decisions are not normative nor objectively

comprehensible, such decisions pose a risk to

the enterprise: Each deciding and specialized

subject becomes an opaque black box.

For the goal-oriented enterprise such singular

decisions are neither predictable nor calculable

and complicate an exact and secure solution.

Thus, specialists and skilled workers are being

insured for the enterprise as follows: (1) team-

building, (2) obligation to work with an exact

defined planning-method and (3) detachment of

skilled authority and disciplinary authority.

In other words: every single specialist is

arranged in a group and becomes dependent on

other specialists. At the same time every single

one has to become active and take on

responsibility for his or her decisions. The

disciplinary function is furthermore detached

from the group of specialists.23

In such a way the given goal is being assessed

and objectified by a multitude of specialized

perspectives. The inner dependency of the work-

groups reduces the possibility of wrong

decisions and levels every approach of

radicalism that might harm (in the positivistic,

rational logic) the system itself. In such a way

the team of specialists and skilled workers

allows a high degree of variety in decision

making processes. Due to the obliged use of a

mathematically precise planning-method that

allots a regularized decision process, the

established risk factor becomes calculable.

Parallel to this, a feedback loop is established

that cares for the values of the enterprise.

The space

of Information

Flow

The network of information that constitutes the

space of the office landscape is controlling body

and infrastructure of the self-regulating and self-

organizing society. Like a dynamically wobbling

formation whose frame of reference constantly

changes the arrangement and figuration, the

office landscape needs to be modified

continually. Like the organization itself, which

reacts to changing parameters of the

environment that constantly compares actual

value with index value, aiming at an instable

balance, the arrangement of the space itself

needs to reconfigure the whole time.

Workers, information-processing machines,

automata, and furniture are conceptualized

within the office landscape as programmable

nodes of a network – as flickering signifiers. The

material shell of the office space itself is a

container. It marks distinct borders of the

organization: within its borders information shall

freely float. But every border-crossing is

precisely controlled:

The point I want to emphasize hereis: The office

landscape is not a space as network or

infrastructure (as the 1960s architecture utopias

would conceptualize it). The office landscape is

not the architectural representation of a

cybernetic model, but rather the direct and

literal translation of a cybernetic organization in

space. The outer limits of the organization

coincide with the building’s surface. Workers,

machines and furniture are dimensionless

points and the information flow connects them.

English Summary:


216

Episode #1: An Incubator for Spare Time Joan Littlewood with Cedric Price, Frank Newby,

Gordon Pask and others: Fun Palace, 1962-196624

The World’s First

Mighty

Space-Mobile

“Arrive and leave by train, bus, monorail, hovercraft, car,

tube, or foot at any time YOU want to – or just have a look at it

as you pass. The information screens will show you what’s

happening. No need to look for an entrance – just walk in

anywhere. No doors, foyers, queues or commissionaries: it’s

up to you to know how you use it. Look around – take a lift, a

ramp, an escalator to wherever or whatever looks interesting.

Choose what you want to do – or watch someone else doing

it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, babies, machinery, or just

listen to your favourite tune. Dance, talk or be lifted up to

where you can see other people make things work. Sit out

over space with a drink and tune in to what’s happening

elsewhere in the city. Try starting a riot or beginning a

painting – or just lie back and stare at the sky.

What time is it? Any time of day or night, winter or summer –

it really doesn’t matter. If it’s too wet that roof will stop the

rain but not the light. The artificial cloud will keep you cool

or make rainbows for you. Your feet will be warm as you

watch the stars – the atmosphere is clear as you join in the

chorus.

Why not have your favourite meal high up where you can

watch the thunderstorm?

[...]

We are building a short-term plaything in which all of us can

realise the possibilities and delights that a twentieth-century

city environment owes us. It must last no longer than we need

it.”25

Fun Palace never got built. In a brochure

though, written by the initiators, the theatre-

maker Joan Littlewood and the architect Cedric

Price, Fun Palace is described as a boundless

thing. A building that no longer is a house. An

infinite traffic junction, if you will, a boundless

hub. As space for activity, it is space for traffic.

One can reach it by land, by water, by foot or

with the tube or by car, …. It is a limitless thing

without borders and has no distinct form. This

thing is space for all and its program is learning

and playing. Its object: self-determination – a

kind of do-what-you-want-autonomy. The goal:

Join in, and synchronize with a new society and

its atmosphere of leisure-time.

Fun Palace is a piece of cybernetic workers

architecture for a leisure society. It is a

subjectification machine that activates the

visitors for spare time according to cybernetic

premises. In its programmatic conception, it

expounds the problem of a new leisure society

and the expedient use of the time (Price,

Littlewood) that increasingly is won through the

soaring automation of production.

As architecture, Fun Palace is the representation

of its cybernetic conception – its supporting

structure is systems boundary. Within its

borders, countless machines – based on

feedback loops – organize the building. To quote

Stanley Mathews: “Virtually every part of the

structure was to be variable, with the overall

structural frame being the fixed element.”26

According to Mark Wigley,27 the vast open

scaffold is the most elaborate version of a

networked incubator for leisure time that is

associated with participatory democracy,

individual creativity and self-actualization. To

Wigley, the load-bearing structure has almost

disappeared and the building only exists due to

zones of activity and zones of a distinct

atmospheric intensity. Fun Palace is a building

that avoids being a building: “[A] new network

architecture emerges, a delicate ghostlike trace

that operates more as landscape than

building”28

Leisure-time

architecture

In the course of planning29 Fun Palace advances

to become a programmable cybernetic theatre,

as Gordon Pask would phrase it: a theatre in


217

which guests would actually need to play

themselves. Studded with communication

systems and programmable control systems to

efficiently script a dramatic performance (“the

present methods of dramatic presentation are

not very efficient ...”) the architecture itself shall

foster an open-ended theatre.

Indeed Fun Palace is a cybernetic machine for

leisure time, a revolutionary apparatus that

produces spare-time as learning, an architecture

that prepares people temporarily for a new life.

Fun Palace is not passive space in which spare

time just could happen. No. Its explicit goal is to

usher people into a new life: it activates people

and aims to enlighten them. Cedric Price and

Joan Littlewood’s intention was that Fun Palace

be a space in which people would be awakened

from their apathy. It represents an experiment to

imagine a new life:

“Automation is coming. More and more machines do our

work for us. There is going to be yet more time left over, yet

more human energy unconsumed. The problem which faces

us is far more that of the ›increased leisure‹ to which our

politicians and educators so innocently refer. This is to

underestimate the future. The fact is that as machines take

over more of the drudgery, work and leisure are increasingly

irrelevant concepts. The distinction between them breaks

down. We need, and we have a right, to enjoy the totality of

our lives. We must start discovering now how to do so.”30

Versus Container:

Anti-Building

The variety of activities in the building is not pre-

determined. The immense structure of the

palace needs to permanently adapt to new and

unprecedented ideas and new technologies. It

needs to suit permanent change and renewal, as

well as destruction. To Stanley Mathews the

architecture of Fun Palace is like the hardware

of a computer that can be programmed in any

new and conceivable way:

“A ‘virtual architecture’ like the Fun Palace, had no singular

programme, but could be reprogrammed to perform an

endless variety of functions. By providing methodologies for

coping with indeterminate systems evolving in time,

cybernetics and game theory established the groundwork for

information and computer technologies as well as for virtual

architecture.”31

Thus Fun Palace’s programme is like software

that controls the figuration of all temporary

processes within the palace by algorithmic

functions and logic interfaces. For Mathews, Fun

Palace’s architecture is like an operative space-

time matrix. It represents its immanent

cybernetic conception. A set of autonomous,

self-organizing enclosures that are constantly

connected with each other are hooked into the

structure as zones of activity, that are able to

adapt and take on every single identity,

depending on its use, […], creating an

architecture that produces, in the words of

Cedric Price an “extremely definitive range of

requirements and aims in the determination of

means of access, site, structural system,

materials, servicing and component design of

the whole.”32

Price intends an architecture that is never

completed, a building that is never a building:

without a specific form, without a specific

programme and without a fixed layout. It is a

becoming anti-architecture (Price) … or in the

words of Rem Koolhaas: “Price wanted to

deflate architecture to the point where it became

indistinguishable form the ordinary...”33

English Summary:


218

Structuring Islands Herman Hertzberger with Lucas & Niemeijer,

Centraal Beheer, 1967-1972

The

Architect’s

Reasoning

Both images depict employees in 1974. They

work in the newly built headquarters for the

insurance company Centraal Beheer in

Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. Shot by the

architect Herman Hertzberger himself, they are

part of a series of portraits that depict the

architecture after it had been appropriated by

employees and workers. “Only when the users

have taken possession of the structures through

contact, interpretation or filling in the details, do

the structures achieve their full status, after the

architecture reached its full-fledged condition.”34

Two years after the building’s opening, it

seemed the right time to follow the traces of its

inhabitants. Thus the portraits explicitly show

the design’s intended use of the spatial

structure. They document the built hypotheses,

as Hertzberger would call it.

The portraits are observations inspired by

ethnology and anthropology. They narrate what

the observer knows and thinks about the

situation. But it is not – as traditional ethnology

would have it – an observation of a world far

away, outside Europe, but the ordered interior of

a modern office building. To Hertzberger, they

are not artefacts that represent historic facts,

but are a form of feedback of a situation, that

happens simultaneously, a situation that the

architect himself orchestrated. They show

aspects of a contemporary social life in 1974 and

Hertzberger’s interpretation of the

interpretations and appropriations of inhabitants

and users of Centraal Beheer. In the words of

the French anthropologist Marc Augé:

“It is important at least to know what one is talking about; and

it is enough for us here to note that, whatever the level at

which anthropological research is applied, its object is to

interpret the interpretation others make of the category of

other on the different levels that define its place and impose

the need for it.”35

The pictures show employees and users who

share a laugh, communicate happily with each

other and work diligently, and how they have

furnish their work-places, which were designed

as the antithesis to office landscaping. Ten years

after the first office landscape, Centraal Beheer

succeeds with similar organizational criteria, but

arrives at a strikingly different solution.

Managerially it is no longer the single instance

(human labourer or machine) but a team of

about four members, that constitutes the

smallest entity for the organization. Thus a

completely different explication of the space for

the goal-oriented society is being designed. It is

a concrete construct, small in scale, that forms a

fixed structure which is seen a series of neutral

containers that can be optionally programmed

in various ways.

Architectonic

Provocation

Hertzberg claims that the work of the architect is

to propose spaces that can be appropriated by

its users for active living. An architect should

animate people to think of new possibilities of

living – an act which causes, of course, various

problems for all parties involved, but is needed

in order to achieve a better future. Thus he

writes about Centaal Beheer:

“This building is a hypothesis. Whether it can withstand the

consequences of what it brings into being depends on the way

in which it conforms, with the passing of time, to the

behaviour of its occupants. The building should be responsive

to people, to their evaluations and their inner worth; it should

provide everyone with the conditions that enable him to be

who he wants to be, and especially who he wants to be in the

eyes of others. It should clarify the relationships, involvements

and responsibilities of its users; patterns and processes are

based in such a way that everyone can evaluate them himself;


219

the building should reveal the extent of the space everyone

can freely use, and pinpoint where and by whom oppression

is being exercised. A building might in this way lead to less

oppressive and less oppressed behaviour.”36

The building is a built – for the time being

scientifically unproven – assumption of a new

and self-organized life at work. It is an

experiment that the series of portraits seeks to

verify:

“However, the architect can still take advantage of the

reorganization that moving into a new building always

necessitates anyway, to try to exert some influence on the

reappraisal of the division of responsibilities, at least in so far

as they concern the physical environment. One thing can lead

to another. Simply by putting forward arguments which can

reassure the top management that delegating responsibilities

for the environment to the users need not necessarily result in

chaos, the architect is in a position where he can contribute

to improving matters, and it is certainly his duty to at least

make an attempt in this direction.”37

To Hertzberger, architecture is a means to

challenge traditional concepts and traditional

ways of living. Thus Centraal Beheer is a

catalyst or, as Hertzberger would call it, a

provocation for the re-structuring of society, that

addresses every single person.

Polyvalent

Appropriation

Hertzberger explicates the office building

Centraal Beheer – the workplace for about 1000

people – as a kind of dwelling of the insurance

company, a dwelling in which actually all

employees shall live to work. Hertzberger

intends the shift in meaning from office building

to residential building. For him it is even

necessary to be able to activate employees:38

“[T]hanks to the differentiation into more or less independent

small blocks separated by arcade-like passages (i.e.

essentially publicly accessible space).

And since there are exits and entrances throughout the

complex, it looks more like a piece of a city than like a single

building – most of all it resembles a kind of settlement.”39

The goal of this specific workplace architecture

is to create a solidly united work community.

Architecture is intended to foster a society in

which people – though in need for taking on

more and more individual responsibility – are

connected to each other. Architecture therefore

is understood as the invisible helping hand.

Thus, Hertzberger claims that Centraal Beheer is

not like traditional architecture, like pyramids,

temples or cathedrals or palaces, which are – in

terms of Hertzberger – only instruments of a

prevailing apparatus that only manifests an

existing order and thus affects people from

above. On the contrary, the spatial structure for

labour at Centraal Beheer aspires to be an

instrument that everybody can play and thus

offering a liberal and liberated life. Structuralist

architecture situates all colleagues – as

performers – at the very centre of the design.

The permanently inevitable changes in the

internal organization of the company implicate

frequent adaptation of teams and departments

within the corporation. Therefore the

architecture needs to absorb and contain every

single reconfiguration, every single re-

programming, without disturbing the actual

work flow, as Hertzberger claims with his

concept:

“The only constructive approach to a situation that is subject

to change is a form that starts out from this changefulness as

a permanent – that is, essentially a static – given factor: a

form which is polyvalent. In other words, a form that can be

put to different uses without having to undergo changes itself,

so that a minimal flexibility can still produce an optimal

solution.”40

With his concept of polyvalency, Hertzberger

delineates a concept of space that fosters

flexibility. A flexible architecture is constantly

adapting itself to new uses. But, as Hertzberger

points out, the flexible plan starts out with the

assumption that a right solution does not exist,

since the problem that requires a solution is ever

changing and can only be temporary. Even with

a flexible set-up that adapts itself to change, will

never able to offer the adequate solution. In

contrast to this, a neutral form, a form that exists

through the absence of identity, through the

English Summary:


220

absence of distinct attributes, offers a different

space for solution. The problem of adaptation

therefore is lesser a problem of modification of

specific attributes, like it is offered by a flexible

architecture, but its inherent quality itself.41

Hertzberger conceives an architecture that has

not yet an identity, and thus cannot loose

identity or become chaotic, just because

something unprecedented happened to the

programme. Hertzberger’s architecture is an

utterly neutral container that, in background

spans as infrastructure, and which allows any

use.

“In the case of this office building, it proved that the single

square spatial unit as ultimately chosen, simple as it is, would

be capable of meeting virtually every spatial requirement.

Thanks to their polyvalence, these different spatial units can

moreover, if necessary, take each other’s roles, and therein

lies the key to absorption of change.”42

In clear opposition to functionalist architecture,

whose form is derived from the idea of efficiency

and that which represents efficiency, but is not

categorically efficient in and of itself,

Hertzberger and his colleagues propose a space

that wants to integrate and wants to breed a

society. It is an architecture whose identity is

not yet given, and which the users can

appropriate with their use of the building.43

Factually, one thousand employees of Centraal

Beheer were allowed to choose their own

lighting and the type of table from a list that was

collectively put together by members of staff

and the architects. In addition, they were invited

to furnish and decorate their own islands with

flowers, plants, posters and other items and thus

– as in line with the idea of the architect – to

take possession of the corporate architecture, to

make it a home.

“[To] make it a home-away-from-home. It is the fundamental

unfinishedness of the building, the greyness, the naked

concrete, and the many other imposed (but also the

concealed), free-choice possibilities, that are meant to

stimulate the occupants to add their own colour, so that

everyone’s choice, and thereby his standpoint, is brought to

the surface.”44

The concept of polyvalent spaces is not, as

Hertzberger points out, a participatory process,

that would leave parts of the design to the users.

Polyvalence is rather the quality and

competence a space has: the architecture can

be interpreted in manifold ways. […] All the

modulations and additions to the polyvalent

space are thus autonomous decisions of the

users and inhabitants, without any intervention

of the architect whatsoever.

“The architect can contribute to creating an environment

which offers far more opportunities for people to make their

personal markings and identifications in such a way that it

can be appropriated and annexed by all as a place that truly

‘belongs’ to them. The world that is controlled and managed

by everyone as well as for everyone will have to be built up of

small-scale, workable entities, no larger than what one

person can cope with and look after on his own terms.”45

Insular

Open-Space

Centraal Beheer was developed beginning with

the inside – from the smallest possible space of

a socially ordered group that would ultimately

organize the vast open space. [...] The formerly

horizontal and homogenous space of the office-

landscape is established by islands that are

stacked 3-dimensionally. At the same time the

formerly hermetically sealed and controlled

envelope of the office-landscape is perforated.

Hertzberger and his colleagues create a spatial

building-block of 3 x 3 x 3 metres, which – as a

grid – defines the whole structure of the house

that contains all installations for telephone,

electricity and data-transmission. The cubic

building-block equals one Team with up to 4

persons. Four of these building blocks plus

additionally needed aisles and walkways make

one island with a dimension of 9 x 9 metres.

Along the 3 x 3 metre grid, islands are

horizontally and vertically arranged to become

one big mega-structure. The system is strictly

defined: height between floors: 3.5 metres,

ceiling height: 3 metres, upper edge of ceiling

truss: 2.17 metres.


221

A catalogue of primary variants of how to use

and furnish the islands is developed. It includes

all possible constellations of collaboration

within the corporation and meets the

requirements for working together in a team. In

a similar way, a concept is developed for the

common rooms and rooms for recreation, as

well as variations of the in-house restaurant. In

regard to community building the arrangement

of chairs and tables is being planned by

improving communication with the assumption

that creating distance = NON

COMMUNICATION46

The flat and horizontal space of the office

landscape is thought through with architectural

means:

“In simple terms, you could say that building order is the unity

that arises in a building when the parts taken together

determine the whole, and conversely, when the separate

parts derive from that whole in an equally logical way. The

unity resulting from design that consistently employs this

reciprocity – parts determining the whole and determining by

it – may in a sense be regarded as a structure. The material

(the information) is deliberately chosen, adapted to suit the

requirements of the task in question, and, in principle, the

solutions of the various design situations (i.e. how the building

is interrelated from place to place) are permutations of or at

least directly derived from one another. As a result there will

be a distinct, one could say family, relationship between the

various parts.”47

The City

in the City

The new headquarters for the insurance

company was planned to be the first element of

an ample re-structuring of Apeldoorn’s

periphery. It was conceived of as a closed

building without any formal reference to its

direct neighbourhood. Still the building was

conceived of as a city in the city and not just a

part of the city. In this respect it is similar to the

prototypic model of the cooperative workers-

community New Harmony, which was a self-

governed and self-organizing colony initiated by

the socially engaged entrepreneur Robert Owen.

Centraal Beheer has no decided main entrance.

One could enter and leave the building at

various points, depending if you were by foot, by

train, by bus, or with your own car or by taxi. The

reception zone was placed at the centre of the

building, at ground floor level.48 A connection

from the planned (but never realized) railway

station to the city centre was conceived as an

interior public street, as a kind of backbone to

which all islands and thus all workplaces where

oriented to.49

Seen from the inside – seen from the islands –

this backbone conveys a domesticated exterior,

a kind of complementary element to the

individual islands, it is the collective space for

all.50 Hertzberger reflects on the street, following

discussions of the Team X and in direct

reference to the Provos in the Netherlands as an

original place of social contact between the

locals and the passer-bys. In that sense the

street becomes a kind of municipal place for

living, a living room for all.51

“Wherever individuals or groups are given the opportunity to

use parts of the public space in their own interests, and only

indirectly in the interest of others, the public nature of the

space is temporarily or permanently put into perspective

through that use.”52

The vista from any work-place in Centraal

Beheer becomes a vista from a corner office, the

most desired location in conventional US-

American office buildings – one of the most

prevalent images in idealising the working

subject (subjektidealisiert) in US-American

commercials of the 1920s and 1930s.53

Between the islands and the bridges, the aisles

in the offices, the public street within the

building and the public urban space outside of

the office building, the boundaries start to

become diffused and blurred. This is not only

due to the porosity of the building itself, but also

due to its materiality – grey, untreated concrete.

As Hertzberger puts it: “It is part of my strategy

to have the same material inside and outside in

order to be able to overstate or understate their

nature, their relativity and interpretation”54

English Summary:


222

Hertzberger’s concern to create a meaningful

architecture for work, that would emancipate

itself from traditional constraints and

restrictions, that – as a kind of fundament or

basis – would offer people a real alternative, is at

the same time related with a concept of

efficiency and control, that turns itself towards a

sociologic concept of the working subject – the

enterprising self: he or she is an artist of the

everyday, one who must continuously master

the situation and be self-enacted, no longer

working well-behaved at his or her assigned

desk …

This new architecture frames the pro-active

employees through:

(1) an work-space that is conceived as a place

for living, (2) architecture integrates and invites

all to actively use and to actively appropriate the

building for his or her own personal needs, and

(3) a pseudo-public consume- and spare-time-

oriented programme is being established in its

vast interior, that opens up the building towards

the city. Thus, conditions of working got

upgraded, at the same time as a new order, a

new spatial organization is being established. As

Hertzberger would end his programmatic text in

Domus:

“The building goes from being an apparatus to an instrument

that should be played. The instrument has capacities which

the performer knows how to extract, and the way in which

that happens defines the freedom which it can generate for

each of its performers.”55

Non-spaces for Labour

Office landscapes and Fun Palace are

immediate, Centraal Beheer indirect, reactions

to a newly established conceptual model that,

after the Second World War, replaced the liberal

hypothesis as dominant formation of discourse.

As a form of governance, in the 1950s

cybernetics postulated a new form of living-

together that promised to help to overcome the

trauma of the devastating war. In the post-war

economic climate in Europe, a situation that

was, on the one hand, marked by reconstruction,

and, on the other hand, was placed within the

area of conflict of a hegemonic, US-American

capitalism and a communist form of economy of

eastern-European nations, cybernetics

represented – for both sides – a conceptual

instrument of control. It was an instrument that

allowed a universally applicable, consensual

democracy, or better, a governance of the self

that could be applied to machines as well as to

human beings.

As political hypothesis the cybernetic utopia

was and still is highly influential and diffused

into a multitude of scientific disciplines.56 Not

only in economy or management-sciences,

cybernetics is a paradigm to the present day,

now however as modulations known in other

names (systems-theory, cognition, artificial

intelligence, …). In the popular discourse

cybernetics was very prominent very early.

Especially the utopia of full-automation,

accompanied with the promise of a leisure

society, through the technologic revolution, are

part of a power diagram, in which the above-

mentioned projects on an emergent form of

labour – namely immaterial labour – came

about.

Linked to a prevailing discourse, all three

projects, – Buch und Ton, Fun Palace, but also

Centraal Behher – form reactive manifestations

of an architecture of immaterial labour. To this


223

very day these projects affect – in their spatial-

organizational solutions – work place

architecture as paradigmatic examples. They

mirror the mechanisms of a cybernetic

hypothesis and produce spaces for work, that

unfold – in diverse ways and modes – their own

power and construct their own worlds and inner

logics. In doing so they impressively exemplify

the power relations in which designers and

architects are embedded and which they need to

affirm in order to be able to act upon it.

By no means are these examples singular. Two

experimental projects – New Babylon by the

Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys and the

Ville Spatiale by the architect Yona Friedman –

also relate directly to cybernetics. Both projects

are ordered by small and manageable,

horizontally organized communities, small

teams whose members are strongly dependent

on each other. They also mirror the cybernetic

discourse and postulate an innocent society

beyond all conflict through levelling out of

hierarchies, team building and feedback loops –

in other words, through the re-modelling of

society from a disciplinary regime to s a

controlling one.

Architectonic and spatially speaking: the

network is the formative concept for all of these

projects, a network that extends itself infinitely,

that represent a holistic, complete world; a

concept, that – for the architects – promises to

deliver the demand for total flexibility and

permanent change.

Similar to Fun Palace New Babylon as well as

Ville Spatiale are representations of the

cybernetic discourse as networks – this time

above the existing city. As Yona Friedman

postulates: there is no global society, but a

global infrastructure, that, as material basis is

available for a multitude of immaterial

organizations.57 The world has become

infrastructure that one can adjust at will, as

Constant Nieuwenhuys claims for his vision of

New Babylon:

“And in the enormous sectors of New Babylon I have

eliminated daylight altogether, because people are breaking

free more and more anyhow, especially from the rhythms of

nature. Man wants to follow his own rhythm. Because

usefulness has less of a grip on life, the whole rhythm of day

and night will disappear.”58

The vision of the enormous sectors of the leisure

city above the clouds that creates its own

artificial climate and finally implements the

abolition of day and night,59 is something that

nowadays Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas calls

Junkspace:

“Architects thought of Junkspace first and named it

Megastructure [...]. Like multiple Babels, huge

superstructures would last through eternity, teeming with

impermanent subsystems that would mutate over time, beyond

their control.”60

Koolhaas talks about an endless interior that

abandons architecture. For him this

contemporary interior space is so extensive, that

one barely sees its limits. It consists of the

appliance of a nearly seamless infrastructure:

elevators, hot air curtains, …, and most of all air

conditioning. It is especially the air-conditioning

that allows the sheer endless interior: “Air

conditioning has launched the endless building.

If architecture separates buildings, air

conditioning unites them.”61

In doing so Junkspace explicates work as spare

time; it is labour of the factory of society, as Rem

Koolhaas would circumscribe it:

“Junkspace is space as vacation; there once was a

relationship between leisure and work, a biblical dictate that

divided our weeks, organized public life. Now we work

harder, marooned in a never-ending casual Friday…. The

office is the next frontier of Junkspace. Since you can work

at home, the office aspires to the domestic; because you still

need a life, it simulates the city. Junkspace features the office

as the urban home, a meeting-boudoir: desks become

sculptures, the work-floor is lit by intimate downlights.

Monumental partitions, kiosks, mini-Starbucks on interior

plazas: a Post-it universe: ‘Team memory’, ‘information

persistence’; futile hedges against the universal forgetting of

the unmemorable, the oxymoron as mission statement.

Witness corporate agit-prop: the CEO’s suit becomes

‘leadership collective’.”62

English Summary:


224

Junkspace extends the concept of the French

anthropologist Marc Augé, the non-places, the

modern transit spaces, the shopping mall, the

motorways, railway stations and airports – all of

them, as I want to add here – are becoming

increasingly molded into our contemporary

work-places:

Cut off from context, spaces without history,

without relation and identity. The non-place

seems to be a space that gets promoted and

classified as place of memory; a space in which

temporary residences are either luxurious or

inhuman conditions. A space, for Marc Augé in

which a dense network of means of

transportation develops that – at the same time

– also get inhabited. It is a world – for Augé – in

which the nomadic user communicates

wordlessly with an abstract, unmediated world

of commerce.63

In that way the contemporary working-nomad is

connected to automata and machines, and

communicates with them in these transitory

non-places. There a universal concept of

information and its transmission operates “as

kind of bodiless fluid that could flow between

different substrates without loss of meaning or

form.”64 To Negri and Hardt these are

increasingly complex networks of work co-

operations,65 in which the body is extended by

cybernetic interfaces that exemplify the

transition towards immaterial labour.


225

Part#2 To Furnish When work becomes home and home becomes work

Arlie Russell Hochschild: “The Time Bind”

English Summary:


226

225 x ø 120 cm Hans Hollein, Mobile Office, 1969

1:06 Minutes

on Television

The Mobile Office was part of a TV-series sequel.

Das österreichische Portrait – so the name of

the TV-series – portrays famous Austrians. The

sequel about Hollein was produced in summer

1969 and broadcasted on a Sunday evening in

December the same year. The project Mobile

Office is a 1:06 minutes segment in the 30-

minute portrait of Hollein. With help of TV

cameras Hollein would delineate an exemplary

nomadic, cosmopolitan workers- and

architecture future.

The Mobile Office is an architecture of

information and its message is being

transported via television. Analyzing it in more

depth it is an ironic answer to specific parts of

the architecture, neo-avant-garde boy groups in

Austria and England, about their naïve,

sometimes regressive association with political

themes of the time, that would, with their

gadgets, plug-ins and add-ons, distance

themselves from a politically motivated activism

of that time.66 Inasmuch as Hollein stages the

transparent bubble as an envelope for working

he makes architecture visible, as a specific part

of a palpable situation. In its presentation via

television he relates significant and typical

conditions of a nomadic living- and working-

formation to architecture and its specific quality

and materiality.

The entrepreneur

and virtuoso

The half-hour show depicts Hollein’s

sentimental relationship to tradition-steeped

Vienna and to Austria as a whole. It constructs a

proximity of his revolutionary Ideas, as they

would be called, to the history of Austria and its

architecture, but also to a cosy way of living of

the former metropolis Vienna, to the horse

carriages, to the Riesenrad ferris wheel, etc.

Hollein lives with his wife in the fourth Viennese

district … He was born and raised there … He

went to school there and then he studied

architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts at

Clemens Holzemeister’s masterclass … After

studying he worked in Sweden and did his

master’s degree in architecture in California …

With the refurbishment of the candle shop Retti

he became famous … He is now a professor in

Düsseldorf … He is about to build a bank in

Vienna, a gallery on 79th Street in NYC. He is

working on a project for the world fair in Osaka,

Japan and on a project for Olivetti in

Amsterdam.67

He stages himself as a kind of hybrid working

subject: He is the cosmopolitan entrepreneur

and a creative subject. He is goal-oriented. He

works on a multitude of projects around the

world. But he also works in teams, works, for

example, also with his wife, who is a haute-

couture designer, and designed the costumes

and suits for the Triennale exhibition in 1968.

Hollein works not only as an architect, he also

does design, commercials and art …

At the beginning of the sequel he presents

himself as the creative architect who thinks

beyond the norm: “I am not the kind of architect

who only builds. I am interested in

miscellaneous … Also commercials and things

like that. I present products. I am something of

an idea man.” (0:39)68 In other words he is a

virtuoso, always a bit crazy, visionary, but still

pragmatic, always interested in solutions. One

needs to go beyond building and set

architecture in relation to new technologies. “I

think that building alone is no longer the

answer. When one starts doing a catalogue of

requirements a building nowadays needs to

fulfill, a space suit serves the purpose much

better than any house that I know.” (0:54)

The workplaces of the young architect are “his

flat […], on the way to his building sites, the


227

airplane, and his third work-place is his atelier.”

(12:55). His workplaces are without boundaries:

His office is not only everywhere and mobile but

also extended – living and working become one.

The atelier, the airplane, and his flat need to

allow all different programmes, a multitude of

functions, they are all workplaces and places for

living at the same time. Hollein lives and works

anywhere, be it in his rocking chair or in his

transparent pneumatic construction.

This kind of staging can be described and

deemed a post-democratic practice, that, since

the early 1970s advances to become the new

avant-garde of workers’ culture at the margins of

big corporations. Charles Heckscher defines the

general model of such a post-bureaucratic

organization-type as a system “in which people

can enter into relations that are determined by

problems rather than predetermined by the

structure.”69 It is based on creative project- and

team-work and comprehends activities in a new

culture-industry that produce symbols:

consulting, information-technologies, design,

advertising, tourism, finance, entertainment,

research … 70

In this new practice it is not so much about

knowledge and information work in its original

meaning, where knowledge would present a

kind of product, but rather labour in which the

productive manipulation of signs and symbols in

itself is the aim and the object.71 It is a kind of

work that calls for performativity – virtuosity – of

the workers. For the Italian philosopher Paolo

Virno, this kind of work – that he would call post-

Fordist – takes on the traditional characteristics

of political acting. To Virno, virtuosity becomes

labour for the masses and the spectacle

becomes an instrument for understanding. The

spectacle – in contrast to Guy Debord – becomes

a production process in which the relation to the

other forms the basis for a new kind of work that

needs to get along without any scripting.72 The

Mobile Office is thus a significant design, in a

double sense a prototypical model of a post-

bureaucratic/post-Fordist way of living and

working.

An Everyday Situation,

an Architecture Prototype

The pneumatic bubble is an architectonic

prototype of a new paradigm of a creative,

entrepreneurial subject: the soft and cuddly

sphere isolates the architect from his or her

immediate surroundings. It produces an insular

indoor climate73 in which the architect is

immersed and thus – no matter where –

becomes active, is only then able to work. In

other words the bubble is – as design – the

precondition for nomadic working, modulating

itself from place to place.

As a kind of outstanding element, the iconic

design affects in a double way: on the one hand,

the bubble is its own metaphor. It is its own

thought bubble and represents the absolute

monadic enclosure of the working subject.74 The

bubble is not functionally determined; it is not a

production space for a group of people but

decidedly an ironically over-subscribed

prototypic single-work-place of a boundless

daily grind.

It is a technologically feasible and socially

conceivable vision that Hollein presents in

television. The above-mentioned one-minute clip

that represents the Mobile Office is part of a

series of utopias at the end of the 1960s that, as

the art-historian and art critic Helmut Draxler

states, are composed by technological and

social utopias. Draxler argues that the pre-

condition of these projects had been a stable,

secure economic prosperity attributable to

Keynesian economic policy. Next to

technological and constructive innovations, this

was accountable for conceiving feasible utopias

for the near future – not so much utopias of

hope and salvation.75

The Mobile Office is decidedly a vision of a

workers’ society. In contrast to a number of

other pneumatic experiments of the late 1960s

and early 1970s that would basically affirm a

popular discourse on the leisure society, Hollein

uses the new material to visualize with his

design a worker’s day. In doing so he uses

English Summary:


228

everyday objects that are – more or less – trivial

and petty items accompanying a modern life in

1969, emphasizing and demonstrating the

normalcy and actuality of the project. In using

these objects in a twisted way, he then also

asserts the difference: the Hoover as

compressor, the airplane as everyday vehicle,

the suitcase to transport one’s own dwelling, or

the mobile phone … the portable bubble in

which Hollein sits and works is introduced on

television as something that everybody is

familiar with in a more conventional form: the

trailer, the caravan.

Artistic

Means of

the Architect

Mobile Office is not architecture in a

conventional sense, but is part of a series of

early projects of Hollein that deal with the

radical extension of the concept of architecture

and design. By using and adopting artistic

means and strategies, Hollein reacts to various

social, but also technological, developments to

make them, on the one hand, visible, and on the

other hand, to make it possible to pursue it and

research it, to extend it and radicalize it with

means of architecture and design.

The Extension to the University of Vienna (1960),

the architecture capsule series Nonphysical

Environmental Control Kit (1967), or the space-

spray Svobodair (1968, with Peter Noever) deal

with media and immaterial aspects of a man-

made environment as architecture. Instead of

real built architecture Hollein conceives an

immaterial architecture of pure affect – a kind of

exceeding atmospheric simulation: the TV-set as

extension to the university, the drug to construct

a non-physical environmental control, a villa in

the countryside, or, in collaboration with the

Austrian office-furniture producer Svoboda, a

spray that changes the environment

immediately, as a revolutionary and new way to

change and improve office environment.

These projects illustrate Hollein’s approach to

architecture, which is always about architecture

as system and therefore go beyond the three-

dimensional object by extending the concept of

architecture and design that Hollein also

emphasizes in his famous manifest-like text

Alles ist Architektur. The Mobile Office traces

Alles ist Architektur in its full radicalism. In

doing so it takes up a moment that Craig

Buckley observes in his discussion about Alles

ist Architektur:

“Between these images one begins to pick up an alternate

repetition present in the manifesto, one that shifts from the

image of the body to its extensions. Citing the ‘telephone

booth’, the ‘helmets of jet pilots’, and the ‘development of

space capsules and space suits’, the expansion of the human

environment proceeds by becoming smaller, departing from

a ‘building of minimal size extended into global dimensions’

to approach the contours of the subject. The dynamic of

extension and contraction stretches the paradoxically

inclusive logic of the manifesto, which expands architecture

to be identified with all things but regrounds this manifold in

one thing: architecture.”76

The Mobile Office takes up the postulation, that

everything could be architecture, and returns to

architecture. In contrast to all immaterialized

experiments, the Mobile Office is tangible

architecture. The pneu is a radical design of a

nomadic work-life that is able to modulate itself

from place to place. It is a hybrid object between

the arts: it is architecture, it is installation. And,

most importantly, it is being broadcast on

television.

Minimal

Environment,

Insulating

In his texts, Hollein stresses the effects of

architecture, the impact that the environment

has on people. For him this environment is

always already man-made, in his sense an

artificial environment. In Alles ist Architektur he

would describe a topologic situation: men and

women are part of an environment that they

themselves construct, but it conditions every


229

single one of them, and society as well (the

individual is always and already part of a group,

a society). At the same time, people would act

on this environment; they would extend it and

re-create new artificial environments. Thus

Hollein writes: “Again and again, physically and

psychologically, the human being extends his

physical and psychological area, affects his

environment in the broadest sense.”77

Thus, the vast plane on which the bubble is

staged, is already as environment constructed

by people and implies already all infrastructure.

The field is an open, extensive plane that is not

yet functionally determined. Furthermore, it

neither follows a visible grid, nor has a

quantitative observable order. The infrastructure

and its knots are just there, they are assumed,

do not require highlighting, or even definition.

They are just there, as Hollein would relate: “…

and everywhere […] I can blow up this thing.”

(09:35)

The bubble is the extreme version of an

enclosed minimal-environment. It is, in terms of

Hollein, a better contemporary dwelling, an

architecture, that goes beyond mere function

that assures physical protection, but also

psychic shelter and at the same time is symbol.

It is a kind of architecture that is, on the on

hand, an apparatus that isolates from

inhospitable (man-made) ambiances, as do the

space suit and the space capsule, at the same

time it also allows communication with others

far away. Besides that it is an architecture that

adapts itself to every single place.

Instantaneous

Programming

As an envelope conceived for an individual, the

pneumatic construction actualizes itself in each

and every situation and with each new program.

It is, in a two-fold way, programmatically open.

Firstly, it is its relationality towards the outside.

Secondly, it is in itself a functionally open

interior. Depending on its use, the portable

house – as Hollein would call his design in the

television broadcast in 1969 – becomes a

nomadic dwelling or a workplace, finally

becoming the Mobile Office. Similar to simple

objects of minimal art – as the German

philosopher Juliane Rebentisch points out – that

are continuously readable as thing and as sign,

that addresses the observer not only as producer

of meaning, but at the same time always already

subverts the production of meaning,78 the

bubble of the Mobile Office allows a constant

programming of the functions of the space.

The dwelling becomes what one uses it for. In

the specific case it becomes workplace, it

becomes Mobile Office. If Hollein had slept in it,

it would be probably known today as ‘Mobile

Bedroom’. The bubble’s distinct quality is to

adapt itself to every situation. The design takes

up the dictum of a continuously required

adaptability of an architecture of maximized

flexibility. But the design does not simply

produce a flexible object that adapts itself to

functions that are assigned in advance, but,

more in the spirit of structuralism, it produces

an object without attributes, that, depending on

use, is in the process of becoming.

Hollein affirms with his design of the Mobile

Office a specific situation in which the modern,

flexible working nomad is torn out into the

inhospitale, sheer endless spaces of non-places

(Augé) that is part of a even larger infrastructure

that guarantees the same standards worldwide.

Hollein’s design, however, withdraws from an

idea of efficiency that would describe the space

by a dense catalogue of requirements, and thus

creates a place, that is – due to its material

qualities and due to its figuration – able to house

a multitude of programmes. In doing so the

design of the minimal-environment withdraws

as well from any (moral) order: it does not want

to affect anyone to appropriate or actively take

part in a better (?) life. One can use it, but is not

obliged to use it, neither as workplace nor as

home for living.

English Summary:


230

Episode#2: Rhythmicizing Vanilla Future

Haus-Rucker-Co., Yellow Heart, easily

transportable home for nomads or just for the

weekend, 1967-1968

Presentation

at the

Building-Site

Sunday, 8 June 1968, around 2 p.m. At the site of

the new police headquarters, around the corner

from the University of Vienna. Amidst the rough

building site one sees a translucent, partly

yellow pneumatic construction. It hovers above

ground. Flexible PVC tubes are connected to the

spherical construction. This alien architecture

expands in a soft rhythm and contracts again.

People gather around the spacey object. They

stand there in groups, around the wafting thing.

In its interior a woman and man linger on a

steel-frame-supported pneumatic pillow.

This yellowish thing is the reasonably well-

functioning prototype of a project by the

Austrian architecture group Haus-Rucker-Co.

(Laurids Ortner, Günther Zamp Kelp und Klaus

Pinter). It explicates in an impressive way what

Günter Zamp Kelp would write in the Austrian

Newspaper Kurier in 1967: “Architecture is

becoming more and more the frame, the support

structure to human life.”79

The thing consists of entangled pneumatic

constructions that are supported by a steel

frame. One can access the spherical inner

bubble via a ladder, crawling through a kind of

air-lock. The inner space consists of a clam-shell

whose inner and outer spheres are inflated in

opposite directions.

The inner bubble is around 1.75 meters in

diameter; the outer one is about a meter wider.

Haus-Rucker-Co. calls it the plus-minus-cells.

The enclosing translucent material is printed

with red dots, that, when the bubble contracts

and expands, as Laurids Ortner explains, slide

form milky spots to clear patterns. One needs to

lay down on a kind of dinghy-platform, make

himself or herself comfortable and fully

relinquish oneself to the rhythm of the

architecture machine.

Mind-Expanding Programme

The presentation of the prototype was a

promotion event of sorts. The goal was to get

spectacular images of the spacey design-

object.80 Members of the group and their

girlfriends demonstrate how the apparatus

works. Pair by pair they crawl into the thing and

– one can imagine – come out of the bubble,

after a certain time span, totally happy and

relaxed.81

The Yellow Heart is part of the Haus-Rucker-Co.

object series known as Mind-Expanding

Programme that propagated an expanded

consciousness. In the brochure accompanying

the Haus-Rucker-Co. exhibition at the Museum

of the 20th Century in Vienna in 1970, all

performances and objects are presented

chronologically. Each project with an image and

a short text: Mind-Expander 1, Pneumachosm,

Ballon für Zwei, Connexion-Skin, Gelbes Herz

(Modell), Gelbes Herz, Fliegenkopf, Electric Skin,

Roomscraper, Battleship, Mind-Expander 2,

HRC–TV Show, Mondessen, Informationsstand,

Magnet-Box.

Each of the objects and performances is

intertwined within Haus-Rucker-Co.’s

conceptual world. The idea of the pneumachosm

gets scaled down to the balloon for two. This

object in turn becomes the connexion skin and

serves as basis for the yellow-heart model,

whose prototype then gets presented, as

mentioned above, on the building site. Each of

the objects is a design product or architecture

object, but is never understood as art piece. The


231

performances and happenings were events of

the boy group, promoting the futuristic products.

All the presentations, all graphics and model

photos, but particularly the documentation

photos of the prototypes, are outstandingly

stylish. They are understood as product ads and

are sometimes pictured with provocatively

dressed women. The architects stage

themselves as pop or rock stars. As Laurids

Ortner would recall: “We would appear in tight

overalls and drive fast cars.”82

Haus-Rucker-Co. and their products are in line

with a series of similar architects’ practices in

Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Most

prominent was, of course, the English group

Archigram, whose popular protagonist Peter

Cook would write experiments in his book in

1970. There he would spin a tale about

experimental architecture, describing a

development in architecture, where architecture

would dissolve into an everyday consumer

product, that Haus-Rucker-Co. had anticipated

with their Mind-Expanding Programme and

correspondingly, with the Yellow Heart.

“Here we are really discussing the possibility that

architecture will dissolve into being an everyday consumer

durable. The notion of the popular package or the optional

extra (added to whatever is already there) will gain ground in

the next few years. We are already familiar with many

environmental supports which are credited with the title of

architecture. These could be termed ‘gadgetecture’: they

may be tents, they may be packages, they may be things you

can knock down or fold up or unpack or combine into

hybrids. At any rate, they will necessarily involve your

choice.”83

To Peter Cook it is the extra-space that was

already being offered by prefab house producers

in the 1960s, that however as module of a series

of clip-ons and add-ons could be assembled to a

novel dwelling. Within this movement

architecture would become a service provider:

“It is in this area that furniture and

environmental development can lead to some

kind of composite series of prototypes.”84

Regulating

Intimate

Cell

The yellow heart is a dynamic-mechanic

machine. The object is enclosed and stands

static, but accelerates, simmers form within:

expands and contracts slowly again. The whole

power of the design rhythmically affects the

interior. The steel construction is the

conservative part of the machine and holds all

other parts in suspension, in abeyance. The

flexible tubes and the colourful prints on the

PVC foil are the wafting elements of the Yellow

Heart that produce the relaxing, luxurious

vanilla reality.

Contrary to a programmatically neutral

attribution in which, in general, people live, work

or sleep, this interior has a singular goal: to

produce a relaxed heterosexual couple in order

to get productive afterwards. The space itself

performs and produces, it actively affects users

who passively lay down and are affected.

With their unbridled optimism Haus-Rucker-Co.

believed in a future leisure society. They wilfully

constructed a soft cell which conditions. At the

same time, they distance themselves from a

performance that happens near by the day

before the presentation – the performance Kunst

und Revolution (Art and Revolution) by Günter

Brus, Otto Mühl, Valie Export, Oswald Wiener

and others at the University of Vienna:

“Viennese actionism celebrated such resurrection, and the

tabloids wrote about it for weeks. But Miasma would not fit

into our yellowish vanilla-future. […] We distanced ourselves

from this performance and pinned up hundreds of A4-posters

against it around the inner city.”85

Hundreds of Haus-Rucker-Co. posters against

nudism, masturbation, against whipping and

self-inflicted wounds, against smearing one’s

own excrement on one’s body while singing the

Austrian national anthem. These posters are the

logical outcome of a young and dynamic,

affirmative practice of architecture.

English Summary:


232

But it is a simple affirmation of a socially

popular discourse that believes in everlasting

spare-time. At the same time this very naïveté is

what makes it so powerful until today. The

yellow heart produces an exclusive interior for

the Voluntary Prisoners86 of a colourful and

happy leisure-society.

Working in Bed John Lennon, Yoko Ono: Bed-In, Amsterdam

und Montreal, March and May 1969.

Second Act:

Recurrence

Late evening on 26 May 1969: a young couple,

followed by an entourage of managers, camera-

teams, photographers and journalists, enters

their hotel-room in Queen Elisabeth Hotel in

Montreal. Both are dressed completely in white.

The young couple are the 36-year-old Japanese

artist and avant-garde musician Yoko Ono and

the 29-year-old English musician John Lennon.

For a week they will work for peace and will

repeat the format of their honeymoon two

months before at the Amsterdam Hilton hotel:

They are going to repeat the Bed-In. Originally

the second week of peace activism was planned

to be in New York. But the U.S. authorities

refused John Lennon a visa.87 So the couple

intended to stage the Bed-In first in the

Bahamas, but after a night in unbearable heat,

they decided to give it a try in liberal Canada.

They needed to take a stopover at the King

Edward hotel in Toronto, to wait for visa, but

could finally travel on to Montreal, where they

would enter room 1742 of the famous Hilton

grand-hotel Queen Elisabeth.

The king-sized bed is positioned centrally at the

huge panorama window that would frame the

vista like a theatre stage behind the big

cushions. Flowers are placed on the wooden

board at the window, both slogans of the Bed-In

are scribbled on slips of paper and pined to the

window behind the bed. Like in Amsterdam we

read: “Bed Peace”, “Hair Peace”. To the left as

well as to the right self-made posters are hung

up. “I love Yoko”. “I love John”. Drawings by

Yoko Ono’s daughter Kyoko next to drawings

done by John Lennon. A guitar leans on the wall.

A telephone is placed to the right of the bed.

Spotlights are mounted above the bed.

Additional spots are installed to the left and the


233

right. The local disk jockey Chuck Chandler sets

up his studio up in the room, Canadian and

other private camera teams, photographers and

journalists are present.

From Monday, 26th May until Sunday, 1st June

1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono work publicly

in bed. From there they are present in all of

North America, are ON AIR. They give interviews

via telephone, welcome guests from their bed

and work in dense spatial conditions for their

mission: Peace for the world. The famous

psychologist Timothy Leary and his wife

Rosmary, the Canadian rabbi and peace activist

Abraham Feinberg and others visit the two. Late

Saturday evening, the day before they leave, the

world-famous song Give Peace a Chance is

recorded in the hotel room.

The performance in the hotel bed was initially

planned to be without script, like an open work

of art. In its first version of appropriating the

hegemonic space of the hotel in Amsterdam, the

roles of the young couple were undecided and

open, thus caused confusion. Both Yoko Ono

and John Lennon gave interviews, were partners

on an equal footing, both with different opinions,

different explanations and messages.

Journalists were irritated and confused and did

not know how to interpret this kind of activism.

Headlines like “Married Couple are in Bed”, or

“They are getting up today” are clear accounts

of the disorientation. In its iteration in Montreal

the Canadian Television Corporation (CBC) took

over to choreograph the Bed-In for its TV-series

The Way It Is.

The broadcasting corporation used the format of

the Bed-In and invited guests, such as the ultra-

conservative comic-strip artist Al Capp, or the

comedian and civil-rights activist Dick Gregory,

to come and talk to John Lennon and Yoko Ono

at their bedside. Thus in the CBS broadcast, the

guests – as well as the hosts – were assigned

specific, traditional roles that ultimately became

part of the Bed-In myth: The angry, male hero

(John Lennon) – maybe a bit naïve, but still very

serious and with a lot of attachment,

campaigning for world-peace, then the devoted

and loyal wife of the hero (Yoko Ono), who

would quietly – quasi voicelessly – adore her

husband, and finally you would have – for

example – the brutal, heart-less, ultra-

conservative provocateur and bad guy (Al Capp),

who would argue that both the musician and his

artist wife only staged this performance in order

to earn a lot of money: “I write my cartoons for

money. Just as you would sing your songs.

Exactly the same reason. ... And much of the

same reason this is happening too, if the truth is

told.” 88 Entering the room, wearing a dark suit,

similar to a marine corps uniform, he

approached the bed limping, his right hand

outstretched and saying, totally self-

deprecatingly and knowing his role: “Dreadful,

Neanderthal old fascist. ... How do you do?”89

The Bed-In is a kind of entrepreneurial

performance of John Lennon and Yoko Ono that

was staged as a symbolic act. They appropriate

the grand hotel typology and – seen from today –

they would prophetically foresee a contemporary

working condition. The Bed-In is a kind of mould

for contemporary working formats, it is a foil for

a life in which working in bed and from the

hotel, as the outmost fantasy of a worker – as a

kind of extreme fiction and phantasma of

freedom and emancipation from work, is slowly

becoming reality today and is shifting its

meaning. It is a life in which work, spare time

and life are increasingly becoming one and the

same thing, in which ‘toppling’ moments come

about that span a boundless spatial claim and

its confined redemption.

In the production of the Bed-In, space for living

and space for working converge. The Bed-In is

not staged in a theatre, or in a stadium, nor was

it arranged and installed in an art museum or a

gallery. Rather it takes place in the spaces that

John Lennon and Yoko Ono live in. The spatial

framing differs constitutive form art-spaces of

Yoko Ono’s practice, it differs from the music-

studio in which both of them would be used to

work in, nor is it the stage – which are all

traditionally separated from the function of

living. Now their daily space of living, their

habitat becomes the space of work. They live in

their performance (work) space and they work in

the space they live in: next to meeting with

English Summary:


234

journalists, holding press conferences and

giving interviews on the telephone, both Yoko

Ono and John Lennon live in these rooms, they

sleep there and they eat there.

Hybrid Workspace:

Grand Hotel

The hotel rooms in Amsterdam, at the Queen

Elisabeth in Montreal, at the Sheraton Hotel at

the Bahamas or at the stopover at the Hotel in

Toronto, the Hamilton Palace Hotel at Hyde

Park Corner in London are home to the two stars

around the time they were married, but also the

places between London, Paris, Gibraltar, Paris,

Amsterdam, Vienna, London, Bahamas, Toronto,

Montreal, Ottawa, London, all airports,

gangways and waiting lounges, their limousines

and airplanes are part of a vast, sheer endless

spatial continuum in which both live and work.

This continuum is emphasized even more

strongly by the official imagery and all the

documentaries that are available toady. Takes

and images from Amsterdam, Montreal, Toronto

or the Bahamas – in which most of the time one

would only see a close-up of the two faces – are

used interchangeably. As if timeless and

spaceless, they are collaged in a way to tell a

specific story, i.e., tell the Lennon myth that was

coined by CBC.

“Each of our hotels is a little America”90 is the

clear and praradigmatic concept of Hilton Hotel

Corporation, in which both of the Bed-In

Performances were staged. All of the hotels that

are used by Lennon and Ono are modern Grand

Hotels, a kind of American-style luxury hotel,

which is conceived as democratic architecture

machine, and is a symbol of a free and peaceful

world in the imagination of an U.S. citizen – it is

an open, transparent and capitalist society.

These modern luxury hotels were all built in

post-war years in International Style, they are all

cool modernist buildings: clearly legible

concrete structures, big windows and

thematically designed interior spheres, exclusive

restaurants and shopping malls.

Analogous to the Clubs in London, for example

Boodle’s (1762) or the Athenæum Club (1824),

the grand hotels frame an ideal bourgeois mode

of work. They are understood as exclusive places

of spare time of the newly established

bourgeoisie, of entrepreneurs, doctors,

academics, but also artists and writers. Still,

such a reading ignores the discursive bourgeois

concept of work that is understood as a place for

the subjective pursuit for happiness. Work that

produces values91 is the application of

knowledge and the exchange of goods and

services. Clubs, but also grand hotels offer a

representative space for grouping a multitude of

productive activity, something that one calls

networking today. In this sense Boodle’s and the

Athenæum, but grand hotels also impressively

explicate a space in which people are

synchronised to become productive for a

common goal.

The American-style luxury hotels, though, are

modernist modulations of an historic type of the

grand hotel and its use as colonial outposts at

the end of the 19th century, within a global

network of railways, in order to pursue

worldwide commerce. The Hilton Hotels were

similar to the impressive grand hotels at the turn

of the century, as for example the Grand Hotel in

Singapore (1887) and the one in Bombay (1904)

that have been conceived as outposts for forging

trade, or the Palast Hotel (1897) and the Grand

Hotel (1905) both in St. Moritz, Switzerland, that

targeted an Anglophile, royal audience and a

predominantly Jewish upper class, that was

always understood as workplace for the

travelling merchant.92

The spaces of these modern Grand Hotels, in

which the Bed-In was staged, establish an

exclusively private interior for an exclusive upper

class. Access is granted to those who can afford

to pay.93 The space itself constitutes an intimate

space of personal and private relations, a kind of

second living room that offers a public character

in which all members are permanently visible.


235

Artistic Framing:

“To Assimilate Art in Life”94

Significant for the Bed-In is the artistic practice

of Yoko Ono. Without her, without the

conceptual framing and her idea about art, and

without the participatory aspects of her poetic

practice, without her work on and with rules and

instructions that would culminate in her

performative practice, the stagings in

Amsterdam and in Montreal would have looked

different.

In a small text, entitled To the Wesleyan

People,95 which Yoko Ono understood as a

footnote to a lecture she was to have delivered

on 13 January 1966 at Wesleyan University, she

explicitly describes her artistic strategy. To Yoko

Ono, art might offer the absence of complexity

of an everyday, of a daily grind, that would

ultimately lead to complete relaxation of the

mind:

“The mind is omnipresent, events in life never happen alone

and the history is forever increasing its volume. The natural

state of life and mind is complexity. At this point, what art can

offer (if it can at all – to me it seems) is an absence of

complexity, a vacuum through which you are led to a state of

complete relaxation of mind.”96

This artistic option, Ono writes, is an event bent.

It is an everyday experience, everyday

occurrence that art might possible bend, in

order to free the mind of a multitude of sensorial

ideas, pre-conceptions, expectations. A

liberation, as she postulates, which only each

individual is able to experience voluntarily for

herself or himself. The work of art is only the

framing of a situation that would initiate the

experience. The end of such an involvement is

thus contingent and ambiguous, since the whole

process happens without a script. In saying so,

Yoko Ono delimits her practice decidedly from a

collective experience of a happening:

“People ask me why I call some works Event and others not.

They also ask me why I do not call my Events Happenings.

Event, to me, is not an assimilation of all the other arts as

Happening seems to be, but an extrication from the various

sensory perceptions. It is not ‘a get togetherness’ as most

happenings are, but a dealing with oneself. Also, it has no

script as happenings do, though it has something that starts it

moving [...]

People talk about happening. They say that art is headed

towards that direction, that happening is assimilating the arts.

I don’t believe in collectivism of art, nor in having only one

direction in anything ...”97

To Yoko Ono the event is an act involving

oneself. She spans the frame for a solopsist

experience, that cannot be communicated in the

very moment of involvement. Her art produces a

time span of wonderment that each one can

extend or stop whenever he or she feels to do so.

“After that you may return to the complexity of

life again, it may not be the same, or it may be,

or you may never return, but this is your problem

...”98 Only afterwards, after this very specific

experience can one relate the art piece to the

everyday.

The openness of Yoko Ono’s works, that only

appears due to the participation and

interpretation of the audience, a moment that is

immanent for example in Ono’s performance

Cut Piece but as well in her Instruction Pieces,

is something that the art critic Emily

Wassermann would explain with Marcel

Duchamp’s lecture The Creative Act.99 It is a

subjective mechanism that produces art in its

raw form – no matter if bad, no matter if good or

indifferent. The audience interprets and

experiences the work of art and brings it in

contact with an outer world, like Duchamp

would end his lecture:

“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the

spectator brings the work in contact with the external world

deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus

adds his contribution to the creative act ...”100

Yoko Ono’s Instruction Pieces,101 published in

her artist-book Grapefruit102 in 1964, challenge

our motoric abilities, question our pre-

conceptions and perceptions of the world, play

in subtle way with all of our senses, that first

come into unprecedented relations to the world

through the instructions: the conventional flow

of time, or progression of seasons become

English Summary:


236

sabotaged, the self is duplicated or all in all

extracted. In asking, even prompting the

readers, never to read an instruction twice,

actually to burn the book after they had read it,

she questions the impossible iteration, the

obnoxious repetition of a subjective experience.

Something that comes to light in her

performance Cut Piece.

Yoko Ono asked the audience to cut off all of the

clothes that she was wearing. The

documentation of the performance at Carnegie

Hall shows Ono sitting alone on the stage. She

wears compact, dark stockings, a black skirt

and a black vest. She sits there lonesome, her

legs bent, the upper part of the body and her

head proudly upraised. She looks straight

ahead, her long hair is bound back to a bun. Her

hands brace her position. In front of her one

sees a scissor. Slowly, one after the other, the

members of the audience approach her on the

stage, taking the scissors and cutting off small

pieces of her clothes – always only small pieces.

All this happens very slowly and deliberately.

Ono tries not to recognize the people, her gaze is

directed straight ahead. At last a man cuts off

the strap of her bra, and she raises her arms

covering her breasts …

She repeats the performance a few times. First it

was performed in 1964 at the Yamaichi Hall in

Kyoto as part of the program Contemporary

American Avant-Garde Music Concert: Insound

and Instructure, afterwards she would perform it

at Shogetsu Art Centre in Tokyo (1965), then at

Carnigie Hall in New York. However, each

interaction with the audience is neither planned

nor choreographed. Instead, the audience

continuously alternates between exhibitionism

and visual desire, between masochism and

sadism, between victim and offender, as the art

critic Kristine Stiles103 would note.

The Cut Piece, as well as the Instruction Pieces

have an effect on the concept of the Bed-In. It

was the performance’s mottos – Stay in Bed,

Grow your Hair – that would act as instructions

for Bed Peace and Hair Peace. But it is also the

distinct, passive and neutral attitude of the

musician and the artist, that – especially in the

first version of the Bed-In – is not imitating life,

but integrates itself as an art form into life. As

an autonomous sphere, it changes perceptions

and conceptions that withdraw from a

production of surplus value.

Contours of an

Exhausting,

Creative,

Entrepreneurial

Practice

As a second significant attribute of the Bed-In

one needs to consider John Lennon’s practice as

an autonomous, responsible entrepreneurial

subject. In November 1963 John Lennon

performed with the Beatles at the Royal Variety

Performance – at the time still as a normal

citizen of the British Empire. With Queen

Elisabeth II in attendance, John Lennon asks –

politely and certainly rehearsed – for help: “For

our last number I'd like to ask your help: Will the

people in the cheaper seats clap your hands?

And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your

jewellery ... ”

Some years later, after having toured around in

the world, playing in front of thousands of

hysteric fans, but also being attached to some of

the emancipation movements of the 1960s, John

Lennon considers himself self-determined. With

his attitude (Walter Benjamin104) he no longer

wants to follow traditional conventions, or even

worse, subordinate to the monarch. On the

contrary: in 1966, in an interview with the

Evening Standard, Lennon compares his

popularity with that of Jesus. At the beginning of

1969 he breaks the bounds to the English Empire

by sending back his MBE (Member of the British

Empire). Around that time he also starts his solo

career and his collaboration with his second

wife, the Japanese artist Yoko Ono.

John Lennon is not so much Working Class

Hero – in its traditional sense – who rebels

against the system, as some biographers would

have it. Instead he has the contours of a new

type of worker, who one can call (using the


237

German sociologist Ulrich Bröckling’s term) the

enterprising self.105 John Lennon is creative and

he is entrepreneurial; he is active and self-

employed, he is innovative and he uses

imaginary chances of winning, he bears the risk

of his enterprise and he works closely with his

wife. He campaigns explicitly for the peace

movement and consciously uses his media

proficiency. In an interview Lennon would

retrospectively speak about his entrepreneurial

account of the Bed-In:

“Yoko and I, when we got together, decided, whatever we

knew, whatever we did, was gonna be in the paper. [...]

Whatever people like us to do ... it’s gonna be in the papers.

So we decided to utilize the space we would occupy anyway

by getting married with a commercial for peace”.106

Often-forgotten images of the first Bed-In in

Amsterdam show the young couple in an over-

sized bed. They lay there peaceful and somehow

lost. Here the first contours of a phenomenon

become visible that the French sociologist Alain

Ehrenberg calls the exhausted self 107 Having

pulled the blanket up to their chins amidst the

bleak Hilton decoration, both look rather

exhausted and worn out, something that also

The ballad of John and Yoko would corroborate.

John Lennon recorded the song, shortly after

returning home to London after the first Bed-In

in Amsterdam:

Drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton

Talking in our beds for a week

The newspeople said

“Say, what're you doing in bed?”

I said, “We're only trying to get us some peace”

The last line of the song … to get us some peace

… could mean two things. I can read it –

following the intention of peace activism – as a

wish to get peace in the world. Otherwise the

song line might also mean that Lennon and his

wife crave for some peace and quiet. The one is

the uncontested interpretation of a prevalent

narration about the powerful work for peace

through refusal. The other interpretation

emphasizes the downside of a self-determined

acting subject: the exhaustion, the wish for no

conflicts and for harmony, as well as the

personal will for peace and quietness. Taking on

this perspective this last song line, but as well

as the forgotten images, show the other

dimension of a self-authorized, hard-working

entrepreneur.

It is the latent exhaustion which can become a

depression that Alain Ehrenberg connects to the

disappearing borderers and boundaries –

between the permitted and the prohibited,

between the possibility and the impossibility –

that challenges the psychic order of every

individual, that alters, irritates and

psychologically exhausts the subject. 108

The

Art

Commercial

During the days in Amsterdam, the initially

neutral, even the passive setting of the Bed-In

changes towards active work for their concern:

world peace. The use of the room changes

totally – both furnish and re-arrange the hotel-

room: the bed is placed at the panorama

window, flowers are brought in, Bed-In

instructions written in block-letters and – to all

visible – pinned up at the window and on walls:

Stay in Bed. Grow your Hair – Hair Peace, Bed-

Peace.

Here and a month later when repeating the Bed-

In in Montreal, John Lennon and Yoko Ono stage

their staying-in-bed as a commercial for an

alternative way of living. They appropriate the

bourgeoisie typology of the Grand Hotel, the

figure of the monarch in bed. In doing so, John

Lennon sells peace like soap: “And you gonna

sell and sell and sell until the housewife thinks:

Oh well ... Peace or war ... these are the two

products”109 Permanently and obstrusive …

“Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace, peace,

peace, peace, peace, .... Peace in your mind ... Peace on

earth ... Peace at home ... Peace at work ...”110

Is the Bed-In a commercial with artistic means

or an artistic performance with means of a

English Summary:


238

commercial? It is a commercial that uses the

framing of Yoko Ono’s artistic practice and it is

an Instruction Piece whose instruction so are

unambiguous and simplistic, that they are

understood everywhere: “Stay in bed. Grow your

hair. Bed peace. Hair peace. Hair peace, Bed

peace”111 The utopian place of such a practice is

the bed: in bed the absolutist king as centre of

the world would hold court and in bed here the

Biedermeier artist-poet Carl Spitzweg works,

dreaming up his poetic fantasies. To stay in bed

means to be free, at least not to need to go to

work every day …

Spatial

Appropriation

In its specific use, the bed is the place of utmost

convergence of work and life. Both accept the

construction of the bourgeois space and

appropriate, in a double affirmation, the space of

containment – the space of subtle control, of

prudential standards and of disciplined life.

By spatially re-configuring the hotel room, and

with their specific use of the space, they

appropriate the American-style luxury hotel, they

re-program the neutral infrastructure of the hotel

– the space receives a different direction, a new

meaning.

The spatial practice of John Lennon and Yoko

Ono is not interested in a kind of truth or in an

essence of architecture.112 In the given situation,

Lennon and Ono are interested in creating an

alternative way of living that withdraws from

prevailing ideas of how to live. To them, the

direction-less, bound-less, neutral – quasi

feature-less, property-less – space, the public

character of the hotel, the convergence of life

and work, but also their own autonomy and their

newly found responsibility in life, form a quality.

At the same time, it is a challenge that they are

attempting by double-affirmation – in terms of

Gille Deleuze’s Nietzsche – in order to design a

new form of living and being together. Even

though it fails when CBC embraces the format

and “topples” it.

Spaces of Performative Labour

In the experimental projects like Mobile Office,

Yellow Heart and Bed-In, the protagonists take a

worldwide infrastructure for granted. I even

would argue that they partly naturalize it within

their designs. These spatial practices would

furnish and arrange and rearrange transitory

spaces of information flow. They come to an

agreement with these pre-conditions and go

beyond in projects like New Babylon, Fun Palace

or Ville Spatiale and others. In the mid-1960s,

these would represent architecture as network

and would dream of a consensual society. With

each of their very specific practices, Hollein,

Ono and Lennon constitute a temporarily stable

space for the individual; they mark symbolically

a partition in micro-politics of the everyday and –

seen from today’s perspective – anticipate forms

of working modes and working conditions that

are prevalent today and which are only slowly

being discussed in architecture.

Yoko Ono, John Lennon and Hans Hollein, but

also the members of Haus-Rucker-Co., are thus

products of a new and prevailing formation of

discourse and point at the nascent contours of a

form of subjectification that is today known as

the enterprising self.113 But in this situation the

Yellow Heart is only the amplification of this

discourse and stays in its spatial design – in

spite of its flashy colours – very traditional and

old-fashioned: It is a disciplinary machine for

individuals, whose programming is done from

the outside (by the police?). It reduces life –

here: love – to become a mechanic rhythm of a

comforting love-society, without miasma,

without excrements and without any

unforeseeable thing. On the contrary, in their

projects Yoko Ono, John Lennon and Hans

Hollein affirm this situation in a different way.

They affect – in using their given means – in a

specific situation a prevailing order; they alter


239

with their spatial practice – at least for the

moment of the act – the designation and the

meaning of the spaces in relation to society.

Hans Hollein is the hybrid, globally acting

entrepreneur, he is the idea man, who has an

extended understanding of architecture, who

wants to produce holistic design. Hollein opens

up architecture towards new technologies and

stages himself as the creative visionary

pragmatic without any moral impetus. With his

radical design of the Mobile Office he makes a

specific condition of living and working visible

and outlines the problems of such a new way of

living. At the same time he creates an

architecture that has all the necessary – material

and programmatic – qualities for a new life as

the individualized, nomadic worker: a climate

bubble, a psychological cover that adapts to all

situations, but also a bubble that allows and

guarantees connectibility to others.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, in contrast,

appropriate the hybrid space of the grand hotel.

They affirm the hegemonic space of an exclusive

society, its public character, and its transparent

architecture, as well as the practice of bourgeois

production – the conversation, in order to

produce their own unsettling performance. They

refigure the familiar space of the establishment

for a moment as a utopia of retreat, as symbol

for another society.

The Mobile Office, but also the Bed-In anticipate

forms of contemporary work conditions and

uses of architecture. On the one hand, we have

the flexible, permanently mobile creative worker

who is doing projects. On the other hand, there

is the ultimate worker utopia – working in bed …

Within their time, both projects can be read to

be political – in the moment of enactment they

would order some of the relations anew. Today

the situation shifts radically … and

emancipatory attributes of the 1960s have

become the norm …

English Summary:


240

Epilogue

The dream of a leisure society was the great delusion of the

twentieth century.

Work is the new leisure.

J.G. Ballard: “Super-Cannes”

Somewhere in the hills northwest of Cannes,

you find the business park Eden-Olympia. It is

the ideal workers’ paradise for an elite group of

skilled workers: luxurious mansions with

swimming pools, private high-class medical

care, ideal tax conditions and, most of all, a

climate like that of northern Californian attracts

a dozen multi-national firms. At first sight, the

dream-palace of J.G. Ballard’s novel Super

Cannes, is the perfect place, a softened design

vision – a mix of Richard Neutra’s modernity

combined with the fantasies of Frank O. Gehry, a

humane version of Villa Radieuse of Le

Corbusier. The real social life happens at the

office. And at night, people only want to mix a

Martini, have a swim in the pool and be alone for

a while, as Wilder Penrose, psychiatrist of Eden

Olympia explains. Work is the better game. Real

fulfilment is to be boss of an investment bank,

design an airplane, or to introduce a new line of

antibiotics. When work gratifies people, they

won’t need spare time any longer. And there is

no longer time for an affair, nor for a fight with

the partner, the friend, and no time for festive

gatherings. Then there will no longer be social

frictions, and no energy for anger, jealousy, or

prejudices … But the people will suffer

sleeplessness, have respiratory problems,

migraines, or skin rashes … and one sunny

morning a doctor will run amok …

Not everything is invented in J.G. Ballard’s

novel. No. Super Cannes is not only a fiction of a

space that is about to topple, a fiction of a

calculated, managed society. At least the

territory and the spaces of the novel, but also the

symptoms of employees, are part of a today’s

reality we are not able to neglect. Super-Cannes

is the luxurious enclave in the hills above

Croisette, as J.G. Ballard points out in the

foreword to the novel. It is the territory of all the

Science Parks along the French Riviera, far

away from the casinos and the Belle Époque

hotels, the predecessors of the Hilton Hotels,

and far away from a nostalgic Riviera with Alain

Delon and Cathrine Deneuve.

But Super Cannes is also the campus of Google

in Mountain View, California, but also numerous

developments in the Unite States or Europe that

dominate the real-estate market.114 Super-

Cannes is also the hotel room in Montreal in

which management guru Tom Peters stages his

portrait.115 Tom Peters stays in hotels 200 nights

a year. He lives and works there in king-sized

beds, works about six hours a day, writes e-mail

and prepares for his next lecture.116

The portrait shows the youthful-looking, older

gentleman sitting on an oversized hotel bed.

Thirty-five years after John Lennon and Yoko

Ono’s stay in the Queen Elizabeth around the

corner, he is at the St. James Hotel, working on

his laptop, surrounded by books, newspapers

and design magazines.

The image refers to the utopian moment of the

Bed-In, displacing its goal: now it is only about

the working subject without a defined

workplace. A living environment which

establishes a homogenous, seamless interior

envelope, it constitutes a circular, self-referential

production space for the creative entrepreneur.

It is a workplace that was declared a space for

retreat, whose inner organization leaves nothing

to chance and tries to keep out everything which

exists beyond its confines. Uncoupled from time

and space, this room is circularly oriented

around the subject in bed. It is a nightly

headquarters of a creative entrepreneur: a self-

referential space.

Hotel bed – hotel and bed – have become, so to

speak, symbolic places of an architecture of

immaterial labour. The bed – and not the garage

– is a new production place, in which not only

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers

– got inspired to invent his Apple I, while

working in his bed, doing his enterprise Dial a

Joke in the early 1970s. Bound to his bed – then


241

becoming the High-Tech apparatus – was also

the overweight and thus immobile entrepreneur

Walter Hudson. Architecture critic Michael

Sorkin would report about him, how he became

famous in the late 1980s, connected to media

and to technology, becoming a permanent guest

in talk-shows. Today the bed-room producer

becomes the Utopian figure of the Piracy

Movement: Due to a radical convergence of

technology, young musicians start not only to

produce all sounds at home in bed at their

laptop, but also distribute it via internet, as the

story goes – forgetting that this figure had

already been embraced by the majors.

But it is also the hotel. First in the 1980s, the

extensive office-complexes replace the grand

hotel of the turn of the century – i.e. in England

where privatized railroad real estate, namely the

rail stations, started to become gentrified. A

paradigmatic example here is Liverpool street

station in London’s East End. Here a major

development, the biggest Office Development

for times in London – Broadgate (1985–90) – was

built around and above the existing rail station

and its hotel: 129,499 m2. Fifty times larger than

the Buch und Ton office landscape,117 it is still

built following basically the same rules, even

has the same density. Under the aegis of Arup

Associates and SOM, market and trend analysis,

as well as international user studies, would be

integrated as feedback into the design. It was all

about the most efficient utilization of the

quarters – an extensive neutral interior that is

equipped with modular office furniture systems,

such as Knoll International’s Powerflex, Herman

Miller’s Action Office or Ethoscape, Steelcase’s

Stratus, or Westinghouse Furniture Systems,

etc. All designed to be ergonomically perfect.

They are – all in terms of cybernetics of

organizations – flexible and promise, like it was

already done by the Brothers Schnelle in the late

1950s, an efficient work-flow and a subjectively

easing, comfortable space for working.

And finally hotelling got implemented in the

early 1990s. Ernest&Young opened their first

hotelling office in Chicago’s Sears Tower. To

reduce real-estate costs, but also to adapt to

technological and juridical transformations and

developments an office was furnished that was

organized like a hotel: people could call in and

book a room if necessary. This takes up a trend

that culminates in a paradigmatic project of

workplace-consulters DEGW and their Dutch

counterpart Twynstra:118 the Shell Learning

Center for Senior Consulters. They would make

a contract with a Holiday Inn in proximity of

Amsterdam’s Shipol airport. During eight weeks

in summer and during weekends, the building

was used as hotel for tourists. The rest of the

time, Shell would use it. Minor adaptations

needed to be made – a small auditorium was

built that houses the learning sessions during

the week and is a cabaret stage on weekends;

the Shell emblem was projected onto the

façade, …

These examples exemplify a situation, that again

today require architects and designers not only

to be mere agents of an predominant discourse,

but also to affirm life, to propose architectures

and designs, that – for the moment – re-arrange

workplaces in relation to society, to produce

better workplaces. In the words of French

philosopher Gilles Deleuze: “Creating has

always been something different from

communicating. The key thing may be to create

vacuolws of noncommunication, circuit

breakers, so we can elude control.”119

English Summary:


242

Notes

1 Cf. Olov Wallenstein: Foucault and the

Genealogy of Modern Architecture, in:

ibid.: Essays, Lectures. Axl Books: Stockholm:

2007, S 361-404, Sven Olov Wallenstein workes

on the double-structure of the Foucaultian

concept of the subject that Foucault himself

developes most of all at the Collège de France

between 1977-78 and1978-79 and concludes (S

362): “Power is always both ‘power over ...’

(application of an external force that moulds

matter) and ‘power to ...’ (the work of shaping a

provisional self as a repsonse to external forces),

and its operations are always connected to a

certain knowledge that is formed of the self.”

Cf.: Michel Foucault: Die Geburt der Biopolitik,

Geschichte der Gouvernmentalität II. Suhrkamp:

Frankfurt/ Main, 2006 (French original edition:

2004, lecture: 1978) 2 Cf. Andreas Reckwitz: Das hybride Subjekt,

Eine Theorie der Subjektkulturen von der

bürgerlichen Moderne zur Postmoderne.

Velbrück Wissenschaft: Göttingen: 2006 3 4 Andreas Reckwitz: Das hybride Subjekt, Eine

Theorie der Subjektkulturen von der


Velbrück Wissenschaft: Göttingen: 2006, S 10 5 Cf. Hannah Arendt: Vita Activa, oder Vom

tätigen Leben, Pieper, Munich: 2007 (English

original version: 1958) 6 E.g.: David Harvey, The Condition of

Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Conditions of

Cultural Change. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford:

1989, pp. 125-188. 7 Luc Boltanski, Éve Chiapello: Der neue Geist

des Kapitalismus, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft

mbH, Constance: 2006 (French original version:

1999), p. 43 8 Jacques Rancière: Das Unvernehmen, Politik

und Philosophie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main:

2002 (French original version: 1995), p. 44 9 Cf.. Joseph Vogl: Regierung und Regelkreis,

Historisches Vorspiel. In: Claus Pias (ed):

Cybernetics – Kybernetik, The Macy-

Conferences 1946-1953, Diaphanes, Zürich-

Berlin: 2004, pp. 67-79. Vogel zeichnet in dem

Text historische Konturen einer Kybernetik als

Regierungskunst anhand des Policeylichen

Regulierung seit dem 17. Jahrhundert nach. 10 Cf. Claus Pias: Zeit der Kybernetik. Eine

Einstimmung. In: ibid. (ed.): Cybernetics –

Kybernetik, The Macy Conferences 1946-1953,

Diaphanes Verlag, Berlin-Zürich, 2004, pp. 9-41,

here: p. 14, my translation into English 11 Müller, A. (Eds.): Lexikon der Kybernetik,

Verlag Schnelle, Quickborn bei Hamburg, 1964,

pp. 73-74 12 Eberhard Schnelle: Organisationskybernetik,

in: Kommunikation Nr. 1, September 1965,

Verlag Schnelle, Quickborn,

p. 10 13 Eberhard Schnelle: Organisationskybernetik,

in: Kommunikation Nr. 1, September 1965,

Verlag Schnelle, Quickborn,

p. 11 14 Tiqqun: Kybernetik und Revolte. Diaphanes,

Zürich-Berlin: 2007 (French original version:

2001), p. 13 and subsequently: pp 13-24, own

translation 15 Brochure “Beschreibung der Bürolandschaft

des Hauses Bertelsmann in der Firma

Kommisionshaus Buch und Ton”, keine

weiteren Angeben erhältlich, Archiv of

Quickborner Team, Hamburg. My translation

and emphasis. 16 See: Roland Barthes: Wie zusammenleben,

Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, first edition, 2007, p.

90 17 Wolfgang Schnelle: Organisation der

Entscheidung, in: Kommunikation, Nr. 2, 1965, p.

60 18 Cf.. Wolfgang Schnelle: Organisation der

Entscheidungen, in: Kommunikation, Nr. 11,

1965, Verlag Schnelle, Quickborn, pp. 59-74,

here: p. 60 19 Jack Quinan: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin

Building, Myth and Fact, The Architectural

History Foundation New York, The MIT Press,

Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: 1987.

p. 62


243

20 Such a perfection of the network is

something that the Mark Wigley also states: “It

is a landscape without an exterior. [...] When the

space suit, space craft, and space station are the

architectural models, it is understood that to

leave the system is to die.” Cf. Mark Wigley: The

Architectural Brain, in: Anthony Burke, Therese

Tierney (eds.): Network Practices, New

Strategies in Architecture and Design, Princeton

Architectural Press, New York: 2007, pp. 30- 53,

here: pp. 31 & 36 21 Jack Quinan: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin

Building, Myth and Fact, The Architectural

History Foundation New York, The MIT Press,

Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: 1987.

p. 92f 22 Cf. Eberhard Schnelle:

Organisationskybernetik, p. 21 23 Eberhard SchnelleSchnelle:

Organisationskybernetik, p. 22 24 All of the publications that I know of and

which I quote in this chapter date the beginning

of the Fun Palace with 1961, sometimes even

earlier. Stanley Mathews, whose dissertation is

published as “From Agit-Prop to Free Spce, The

Architecture of Cedric Price”, tells that Joan

Littlewood and Cedric Price first meet in spring

1962, and then only in summer 1963, where

Cedric Price presents sketches of an

architecture that would eventually become Fun

Palace. Mathews dates the end of the project

with December 1966. 25 Fun Palace brochure design, Cedric Price

Archiv, quoted in: Stanley Mathews: From Agit-

Prop to Free Space, The Architecture of Cedric

Price, Black Dog Publishing, London 2007, p.

136 26 Stanley Mathews: From Agit-Prop to Free

Space, The Architecture of Cedric Price, Black

Dog Publishing, London 2007, p. 81 27 Cf. Mark Wigley: The Architectural Brain, in:

Anthony Burke, Therese Tierney (ed.): Network

Practices, New Strategies in Architecture and

Design, Princeton Architectural Press, New York

2007, pp. 30-53, here: p. 40f 28 Cf. Mark Wigley: The Architectural Brain, in:

Anthony Burke, Therese Tierney (ed.): Network

Practices, New Strategies in Architecture and

Design, Princeton Architectural Press, New York

2007, pp. 30-53, here: p. 42, my emphasis 29 Planning is done in teams directed by Joan

Littlewood, Cedric Price, Frank Newby and

Gordon Pask 30 Fun Palace brochure, Cedric Price Archive,

quoted in: Stanley Mathews: From Agit-Prop to

Free Space, The Architecture of Cedric Price,

Black Dog Publishing, London 2007, p. 70 31 Stanley Mathews: From Agit-Prop to Free

Space, The Architecture of Cedric Price, Black

Dog Publishing, London 2007, p. 74 32 Cedric Price: Fun Palace, in: Cedric Price,

catalogue accompanying the Cedric Price

exhibition at the AA, London, June 1984, pp. 9-

16, here: p. 20, first published in Link, June-July

1965 33 Rem Koolhaas: Introduction Re: CP, in: Hans

Ulrich Obrist (Ed): RE:CP, Birkhäuser –

Publishers for Architecture, Basel, Boston,

Berlin, 2003, pp. 6-9, here: p. 6 34 Arnulf Lüchinger: Strukturalismus in

Architektur und Städtebau, Karl Krämer Verlag

Stuttgart: 1981, p. 57. 35 Marc Augé: Non-Places, Introduction to an

Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso,

London-New York 1995 (French original version:

1992), p. 23 36 Herman Hertzberger: An Office Building for

1000 People, in Holland, in: Domus, 522/5,

March 1973, pp. 1 & 7, here: p. 1 37 Herman Hertzberger: Lessons for Students in

Architecture, Uitgiverij 010 Publishers,

Rotterdam 1991, p. 25 38 Herman Hertzberger: Baudokumentatie,

University of Technology Delft, 1971, I-2: “Dat

het kantoorgebouw tot woongebouw wordt is

daarbij een noodzakelijke

betekenisverschuiving. De andere vorm komt

voort uit de poging om dit nieuwe mechanisme

toegankelijk te maken.” Übersetzung: Dass das

Bürogebäude zum Wohngebäude wird ist dabei

eine notwendige Bedeutungsverschiebung. Die

andere Form [im Sinne von diese

Bedeutungsverschiebung] ergibt sich aus der

Notwendigkeit, den neuen

Mechanismus zugänglich zu machen.

English Summary:


244

39 Herman Hertzberger: Lessons for Students in


Rotterdam, 1991, p. 80 40 Herman Hertzberger: The Public Realm, in:

A&U, Architecture and Urbanism, April 1991

Extra Edition, E9194, p. 22, der in A&U unter dem

Titel “The Public Realm” publizierte Text besteht

aus Ausschnitten von Texten die Hertzberger in

der holländischen Architekturzeitschrift

FORUM, zwischen 1962 und 1973 erstmals

publizierte. 41 Cf. Herman Hertzberger: The Public Realm, in:


Extra Edition, E9194, p. 18 42 Questionnaire to Herman Hertzberger, in:

A&U, Architecture and Urbanism, 8312, 1983, p.

41 43 Cf. Herman Hertzberger: The Public Realm, in:


Extra Edition, E9194, p. 18, the text in A&U “The

Public Realm” is a compilation of parts of texts

Hertzberger initially published in the Dutch

architects magazine FORUM, between 1962 und

1973. 44 Herman Hertzberger: An Office Building for


March 1973, pp. 1 & 7, here: p. 7 45 Herman Hertzberger: Lessons for Students in


Rotterdam, 1991, p. 47 46 Herman Hertzberger: Baudokumentatie,

University of Technology Delft, 1971, I-16 47 Herman Hertzberger: Lessons for Students in


Rotterdam, 1991, p. 126 48 Cf.: Herman Hertzberger: Baudokumentatie,

University of Technology Delft, 1971, I-19 49 Cf.: Herman Hertzberger: Baudokumentatie,

University of Technology Delft, 1971, I-2 50 The program of the street is as follows:

newspaper kiosks, a bar, a bank, a hair-dresser,

an insurance agency, a travel agent’s and a post

office, but also a kindergarten, break-rooms and

cafés are being arranged in the building and

along the street. Moreover a restaurant and, in

its proximity, a space for the workers’ council.

51 Herman Hertzberger: Lessons for Students in


Rotterdam, 1991, p. 48 52 Herman Hertzberger: Lessons for Students in


Rotterdam, 1991, p. 16 53 Cf. Roland Marchand: Advertising the

American Dream. Making Way for Modernity,

1920-1940, Berkeley: 1985 und Andreas Reckwitz:

Das hybride Subjekt, Eine Theorie der

Subjektkulturen von der bürgerlichen Moderne

zur Postmoderne. Velbrück Wissenschaft:

Göttingen: 2006, p. 355f 54 Questionair to Herman Hertzberger, in: A&U,

Architecture and Urbanism, 8312, 1983, p. 41 55 Herman Hertzberger: An Office Building for


March 1973, pp. 1 & 7, here: p. 7 56 Cf. Claus Pias: Zeit der Kybernetik. Eine

Einstimmung. In: (ed.): Cybernetics –

Kybernetik, The Macy Conferences 1946-1953,

Diaphanes Verlag, Berlin-Zürich 2004, pp. 9-41 57 Cf. Yona Friedman: Machbare Utopien, Absage

an geläufige Zukunftsmodelle. Fischer

alternativ, Frankfurt/Main: 1977 (French original

version: 1974), pp. 136-139 58 Constant Nieuwenhuys: the City of the Future,

HP-talk with Constant about New Babylon. In:

Martin van Schaik, Otakar Máčel (ed.): Exit

Utopia, Architectural Provocations 1956-76.

Prestel, Munich, Berlin, London, New York: 2005,

pp. 10-12, here: 11, originally published in in:

Haagse Post, 6 August 1966. 59 Cf.: Mark Wigley: Mark Wigley: The

Architectural Brain, in: Anthony Burke, Therese

Tierney (eds.): Network Practices, New

Strategies in Architecture and Design, Princeton

Architectural Press, New York 2007, pp. 30- 53:

here p. 40: “Constant [...] defines his 1956-74 city

of the near future as a ‘wide world web’ for

spontaneous play. All the technical

infrastructure is buried below the surface so that

the open framework above can be endlessly

reconfigured.” 60 Rem Koolhaas: Junk Space, in: AMO/OMA,

Rem Koolhaas, &&& (Simon Brown, Jon Link):

CONTENT, Taschen, Cologne: 2004, pp. 162-171,

here: 164; my emphasis


245

61 Koolhaas, Rem: Junk Space, in:

AMO/OMA/Koolhaas/&&& (eds.): Content,

Taschen, Cologne: 2004, pp. 162-171, here: p. 162 62 Koolhaas, Rem (2004): Junk Space, in:

AMO/OMA/Koolhaas/&&& (eds.): Content,

Taschen Verlag, Cologne, pp. 162-171, here: p.

169 63 Cf. Marc Augé: Non-Places, Introduction to an

Anthropology of Supermodernity, Verso,

London-New York: 2000 (French original version:

1992), pp. 77-79 64 N. Katherine Hayles: How We Became

Posthuman, Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,

Literature, and Informatics, The University of

Chicago Press, Chicago & London: 1999, p. xi 65 Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt: Die Arbeit des

Dionysos, Materialistische Staatskritik in der

Postmoderne, Edition ID-Archiv, Berlin-

Amsterdam: 1997 (original version: 1994 and

177), pp. 5 & 13 66 See chapter: Episode #2: Rhythmicizing

Vanilla Future 67 These are the biographic cornerstones as they

were presented on television. 68 The numbers in brackets depict the timecode

of the DVD I received from the Austrian

Broadcasting Company, ORF Kundendienst,

that was broadcasted on 7 December 1969. Cf.:

Dieter O. Holzinger: Das österreichische

Portrait, DVD Archivs des Österreichischen

Rundfunks ORF, 2008. “Ich bin nicht so ein

Architekt der nur baut. Mich interessiert

Verschiedenes. Auch die Werbung und

dergleichen. Ich mache Produktvorschläge. Ich

bin so etwas wie eine Idea-Man.” 69 Charles Heckscher: Defining the Post-

Bureaucratic Type, in: Heckscher, Charles und

Donnellon, Anne (ed.): The Post-Bureaucratic

Organization: new perspectives on

organizational change. Sage, Newbury Park, CA:

1994, pp. 14-62, here: p. 24 70 Andreas Reckwitz: Das hybride Subjekt, Eine



Velbrück Wissenschaft: Göttingen: 2006, p. 500 71 Andreas Reckwitz: Das hybride Subjekt, Eine



Velbrück Wissenschaft: Göttingen: 2006, p. 504 72 Cf.: Paolo Virno: Grammatik der Multitude,

Verlag Turia + Kant, Vienna: 2005 (Italian

original version: 2001), p. 80 73 For a extensive discussion of insular climate

and its contemporary constructions […]: see

Peter Sloterdijk: Sphären III, Schäume,

Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main 2004, pp. 309-500. 74 Mit dem französischen Philosophen Gilles

Deleuze gesprochen wirkt die Blase als

außerordentliches Symbol, als Leerstelle und

Konvergenzpunkt des Projektes. Cf. Gilles

Deleuze: Was ist Strukturalismus, Merve, Berlin

1992 (original: 1973), p. 41. 75 Helmut Draxler: Die Utopie des Designs, Ein

archäologischer Führer für alle die nicht dabei

waren. exhibition catalogue, Kunstverein

München: 1994, no pagination. 76 Craig Buckley: From Absolute to Everything:

Taking Possession in “Alles ist Architektur”, in:

Grey Room, Summer 2007, No. 28, pp. 108-122,

here: p. 114 77 Hollein: Alles ist Architektur, »Physisch und

psychisch wiederholt, transformiert, erweitert

[der Mensch] seinen physischen und

psychischen Bereich, bestimmt er ›Umwelt‹ im

weitesten Sinne.« 78 Cf. Juliane Rebentisch: Ästhetik der

Installation, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main 2003, p.

55f 79 Günter Zamp Kelp: Bevölkerungsnahes

Planen – Beat Architektur, in: Kurier, Saturday,

29 July 1967, p. 8 80 Interview with Günter Zamp Kelp, 3 June 2008,

Berlin, by the author. 81 Faktisch waren die Mitglieder der

Architekturgruppe froh, wenn der

experimentelle Mechanismus funktionierte und

sie die doppelschalige Blase nicht händisch im

Rhythmus aufblasen und zusammensacken

lassen mussten. Auch der Lärmpegel in der

Blase war ein nicht gelöstes Detail des

Prototypen. 82 Antje Mayer: Jedem Kaff sein Bilbao. Poppig,

populär oder populistisch? Eine junge

Generation von österreichischen Architekten

scheidet die Geister, wie jüngst die Biennale in

English Summary:


246

Venedig zeigte,

http://www.kwml.net/output/?e=58&page=rb_A

RTIKEL&a=a945fefc&c=Architektur (20.03.2006) 83 Peter Cook: Experimental Architecture, Studio

Vista, London 1970, p. 127 84 Peter Cook: Experimental Architecture, Studio

Vista, London 1970, p. 128 85 Günter Zamp Kelp: Journal. In: HAUS-

RUCKER-CO. 1967 bis 1983. Deutsches

Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt am Maien, Verlag

Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig,

Wiesbaden, 1984, p. 42 86 Cf. Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis: Exodus, or

the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture. Thesis

project at the Architectural Association, London,

1972 and competition entry: Casabella, ‘The City

as Meaningful Environment’, also 1972.

Published in: OMA, Koolhaas, Mau: S,M,L,XL,

010 Publishers, Rotterdam 1995, pp. 2-21; and in:

Martin van Schaik, Otokar Mácel: Exit Utopia,

Architectural Provocations 1956-76, Prestel,

Munich 2005. 87 A year earlier John Lennon had been found

guilty in London of possession of marijuana. The

U.S. government used this as an excuse to deny

him a visa. 88 John and Yoko’s Year of Peace (DVD), Paul

McGrath (director), Alan Lysaght (producer),

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2000,

timecode: 17:42 89 John and Yoko’s Year of Peace (DVD), Paul

McGrath (director), Alan Lysaght (producer),

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2000,

timecode: 17:35 90 Conrad Hilton: Be my Guest, quoted in:

Annabel Jane Wharton: Building the Cold War,

Hilton International Hotels and Modern

Architecture, The University of Chicago Press,

Chicago & London: 2001, p. 1 91 Cf. z.B. die Arbeitswertlehre des schottische

Moralphilosophen Adam Smith, der selbst

Mitglied im Boodle’s war. 92 I discuss this issue extensively in the German

version – analyzing the space of the Clubs in

London as a bourgoise space for production that

is based on communication. 93 One only had access to some clubs if an active

member signalled his or her support.

94 Yoko Ono: To the Wesleyan People, in:

Kristine Stiles, Peter Selz (eds.): Theories and

Documents of Contemporary Art, A Sourcebook

of Artists’ Writings, University of California

Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1996, pp.

736-739. First published in: Yoko Ono: Grapefruit,

Wunternaum Press, Tokyo: 1974 95 Yoko Ono: To the Wesleyan People, in:

Kristine Stiles, Peter Selz (eds.): Theories and

Documents of Contemporary Art, A Sourcebook

of Artists’ Writings, University of California

Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1996, pp.

736-739. 96 ibid: p. 739 97 Yoko Ono: To the Wesleyan People, AaO, p.

738 98 Cf.: Yoko Ono quoted in: Emily Wasserman:

Yoko Ono at Syracuse “This is not here”, in:

Artforum, 10 June 1972, pp. 69-73 99 Cf. Emily Wasserman: Yoko Ono at Syracuse

»This is not here«, in: Artforum, 10 June 1972,

pp. 69-73 100 Marcel Duchamp: The Creative Act, lecture to

the American Federation of Arts in Houston

Texas, 1957.

http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/aspen/mp3/ducham

p1.mp3 (30.10.2007) 101E.g.: 2Hide until everybody goes home. Hide

until everbody forgets about you. Hide until

everybody dies. (Versteck dich bis alle nach

Hause gehen. Versteck dich bis jeder dich

vergisst. Versteck dich bis jeder stirbt)” – HIDE

AND SEEK PIECE, “Stand in the evening light

until you become transparent or until you fall

asleep.” (Steh im Abendlicht bis du transparent

wirst, oder bis du einschläfst.) – BODY PIECE 102 Yoko Ono: Grapefruit, first edition,

Wunternaum Press, Tokyo: 1964; second edition:

Verlag Simon und Schuster, New York: 1970. 103 Kristine Stiles: “Uncorrupted Joy:

International Art Actions”, in: Out of Actions:

Between Performance and the Object, 1949–

1979, Paul Schimmel (ed.), MoCA Los Angeles,

New York/London, 1998, p. 278 104 I introduce the term attitude with Walter

Benjamin in the first part of the German version,

but was not able to grasp it in English without a


247

proper translation – thus left it out for the time

being. 105 Cf. Ulrich Bröckling: Das unternehmerische

Selbst, Soziologie einer Subjektivierungsform,

Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main 2007, particularly

chapter 3.2. 106 John Lennon: Imagine (DVD), Andrew Solt

(director), David L. Wolper (producer), Warner

Home Video, 2005, timecode: 52:57 107 Cf. Alain Ehrenberg: Das erschöpfte Selbst,

Depression und Gesellschaft in der Gegenwart,

CampusVerlag, Frankfurt-New York: 2004

(French original version: 1998) 108 Cf. Alain Ehrenberg: Das erschöpfte Selbst,

Depression und Gesellschaft in der Gegenwart,

CampusVerlag, Frankfurt-New York: 2004;

French original: 1998), p. 9 109 The U.S. vs. John Lennon (DVD), David Leaf,

John Scheinfeld (Directors), 2006, timecode:

22:07 110 The U.S. vs. John Lennon (DVD), David Leaf,

John Scheinfeld (Directors), 2006, timecode:

22:15 111 The U.S. vs. John Lennon (DVD), David Leaf,

John Scheinfeld (Directors), 2006, Timecode:

23:30 112 In the original German version I discuss – in

the paragraphs above – how some architecture

critics deal with the Hilton and the issue of

searching for essential truth in architecture,

which in my opinion, does not lead anywhere. 113 Cf: Ulrich Bröckling: Das unternehmerische

Selbst, Soziologie einer Subjektivierungsform,

Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/ Main: 2007. Marion von

Osten (ed.): Norm der Abweichung, Edition

Voldemeer Zürich, Springer Verlag, Vienna, New

Yor: 2003. Gabriele Michalitsch: Die neoliberale

Domestizierung des Subjekts, Von der

Leidenschaften zum Kalkül, Campus Verlag,

Frankfurt/Main, New York: 2006. Pauline Boudry,

Brigitta Kuster, Renate Lorenz:

Reproduktionskonten fälschen!

Heterosexualität, Arbeit & Zuhause, b_books,

Berlin: 2004 (1999). In popular discourse see:

Richard Florida: The Rise of the Creative Class,

Basic Books, Perseus Books Group, New York

2002

114 Cf. David Walters: Workplace and the New

American Community, in: Chris Grech, David

Walters: Future Office. Design Practice and

Applied Research, Taylor&Francis, New York

2008, pp. 41-62 115 My in-depth analysis has been published

elsewhere: Andreas Rumpfhuber: Über-Guru-

Space, in: Gabu Heindl (ed.): Arbeits-Zeit-Raum,

Bilder und Bauten der Arbeit im Postfordismus,

Turia&Kant, Vienna 2008. 116 Cf. Tom Peters, Essentials: Design, Innovate,

Differentiate, Communicate, DK Publishing,

London, New York, Munich, Melbourne, Delhi,

2005, pp. 16-18 117 Cf. Part 1, Irregular Rhythms 118 In 1969, Twynstra developed brief and the

work organization for Centraal Beheer. Cf. Part

1. Structuring Islands 119 Gilles Deleuze: Control and Becoming, in:

Gilles Deleuze: Negotiations. New York:

Columbia University Press, 1990, here p. 175