llll)llllr))lJril t)

The Anti-Aesthetica

ESSAYS ON POSTMODERN CUTTURE,,

Edited by Hal Foster

BAY PRESS

Seattle,Washington

Towards a Critical Regionalism:Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance

KENNETH FRAMPTON

The phenomenon of universalization, while being an advancement of man-kind, at the same time constitutes a sort of subtle destruction, not only oftraditional cultures, which might not be an ineparable wrong, but also ofwhat I shall callfor the time being the creqtive frylgwgf&rislgtbggs, thatnucleus on the basis of which we interpret life, whnt I shall call in advancethe ethical and mythical nacleus of mankind, The contlict springs up fromthere. We have the feeling that this single world civilization at the same timeexerts a sort of attrition or wearing away at the expense of the culturalresources which have made the great civilizations of the past. This threat isexpressed, among other disturbing effects, by the spreading before our eyesof a mediocre civilization which is the absurd counterpart of what I was just

1. Culture and Civilization

Modern building is now so universally conditioned by optimized technologythat the possibility of creating significant urban form has become extremelylimited. The restrictions jointly imposed by automotive distribution and thevolatile play of land speculation serve to limil the scope of urban design tosuch a degree that any intervention tends to be reduced either to the[4!tP4+*[s****r*1*sg9!"v" lls ir]g"rqt'-Yeq -ofJreg're! ioJ'or to a kind of siiierficial nmSRingTffiidfi modern development requires forthe facilitation of marketing and the maintenance of social control. Todaythe practice of architecture seems to be increasingly polarized between, onthe one hand, a so-called "high-tech" approach predicated exclusivelyupon production and, on the other, the provision of a "compensatoryfacade" to cover up the hanh realities of this universal system.2

Tlventy years ago the dialectical interplay between civilization andculture still afforded the possibility of maintaining some general controlover the shape and significance of the urban fabric. The last two decades,however, have radically transformed the metropolitan centers of thedeveloped world. Wbffir::tjll

.:1f "!3lU'elv overlard bv the two svmblotrc L "'

*-(-*--!*--*Jq'----+@4 t .'fr;; t ft*qi"grly.l96QLhave since

ins hish-rise

Ricoeur-namely, "how to become modern and to return to sources"3-now seems to be circumvented by the apocalyptic thrust of modernization,while the ground in which the mytho-ethical nucleus of a society might takeroot has become eroded by the rapacity of development.a

Ever since the beginning of the Enlightenment, civilization has beenprimarily concerned with instrumental reason, while culture has addresseditself to the specifics of expression-to the realization of the being and theevolution of its collective psycho-social reality. Today civilization tends tobe increasingly embroiled in a never-ending chain of "means and ends"wherein, according to Hannah Arendt, "The 'in order to' has become thecontent of the 'for the sake of;' utility established as meaning generhtesmeaninglessness." 5

citv fabrics in the )fr-.-t-doivriiuioti* {re'ar)" ^,, - fG@f .-. i t-,4#_.linehieh-riseand i -r J* .r ." *"'u"4.+-{FF.q$.--14\,fd. i "q .*f*::_:AHi::xl.-.i_y:j::xa;i.w;/$w*}d#'t.xt:*-_.j..:;.-y::jffigj:F-l;:i:#:y. I '-1_-t .J@heformerhasfinal|ycomeintoitsownasthe,/"o1,'.,.,-!

iiime device forrealizing the increased land value brought into being by the *, *l

.l-. Ilatter. The typical downtown which, up to twenty years ago, still presented a 'n d'e *' . ''

"

mixture of iisidential stqck wift 19.t1-u$(,gnd -iecondary industiy has now

F4" I ,-,become I ittle more tha n {b uro u ras;;;1 g!y;q}pc} the v i ctory oi u ni versalcivilizarion over locally-*ifilm6if diiifrf;-TTe' predicament posed by

stopped en masse at a subcultural level. Thus we come to the crucial.. I

dfn,", * * J; n, , TProblem confronting nations iust risingfrom underdevelopment. In order to^

" ,

- -

.A .g ., ,qfuet on to the road toward modernization, j;-ig necessayy_lg-jiltisaalfu-oJC{ L'-i**

; t Yry'y-.f t' ;ulgl3l tgJ"y (i@ a nit ion? . . . w he nce the

' t oaradox: on the one hana, * has to root fisetJ m tfi[Toiloj itt past, forge at,l ;t lr",{O "- IAA ,., ! ,,. national spirit, and unfurl this spiritual and cultural revindication beforetrf" L{_ } 5

: . : t V thecolonialist's personality. Butinordertotake part inmoderncivilization,li lr " il is necessary at the same time to take part in scientific, technical, t d,,.political.rationatity,W[W_yhlshrcrtaflg!.r9girep_*g.Af y---9ry*.

siyilg_gkdoJgfteek-enltel pqt!-lt is a fi6i: every cihureZainotfristain and absorb the shock of modern civilization. There is the paradox:how to become 4 .dern and to return to sources; how to revive an old.

.-,. dormant civilization and ake part in universal civilization.l-Paul Ricoeur. Historv and Truth

l6

by approaching en masse a

2. The Rise and Fall of the Avant-Garde

The emergence of the avant-garde is inseparable from the modernization ofboth society and architecture. Over the past century-and-a-half avant-gardeculture has assumed different roles, at times facilitating the process ofmodernization and thereby acting, in part, as a progressive, liberative form,at times being virulently opposed to the positivism of bourgeois culture. Byand large, avant-garde architecture has played a positive role with regard tothe progressive trajectory of the Enlightenment. Exemplary of this is the roleplayed by Neoclassicism: from the mid-18th century onwards it serves asboth a symbol of and an instrument for the propagation of universalcivilization. The mid- l9th century, however, saw the historical avant-gardeassume an adversary stance towards both industrial process and Neoclassicalform. This is the first concerted reaction on the part of "tradition" to theprocess of modernization as the Gothic Revival and the Arts-and-Craftsmovements take up a categorically negative attitude towards both utilitarian-ism and the division of labor, Despite this critique, modernization continuesunabated, and throughout the last half of the l9th century bourgeois artdistances itself progressively from the harsh realities of colonialism andpaleo-technological exploitation. Thus at the end of the century the avant-gardist Art Nouveau takes refuge in the compensatory thesis of "art for art'ssake," retreating to nostalgic or phantasmagoric dream-worlds inspired bythe cathartic hermeticism of Wagner's music-drama.

The progressive avant-garde emerges in full force, however, soon afterthe turn of the century with the advent of Futurism. This unequivocalcritique of the ancien rdgime gives rise to the primary positive culturalformations of the 1920s: to Purism, Neoplasticism and Constructivism.These movements are the last occasion on which radical avant-gardism isable to identify itself wholeheartedly with the process of modernization, Inthe immediate aftermath of World War l-"the war to end all wars"-thetriumphs of science, medicine and industry seemed to confirm the liberativepromise of the modern project. In the 1930s, however, the prevailingbackwardness and chronic insecurity of the newly urbanized masses, theupheavals caused by war, revolution and economic depression, followed bya sudden and crucial need for psycho-social stability in the face of globalpolitical and economic crises, all induce a state of affairs in which theinterests of both monopoly and state capitalism are, for the first time inmodern history, divorced from the liberative drives of cultural moderniza-tion. Universal civilization and world culture cannot be drawn upon tosustain "the myth of the State," and one reaction-formation succeedsanother as the historical avant-sarde founders on the rocks of the SnanishCivil War.

Towards a Critical Reeionalism

Not least among these reactions is the reassertiorr of Neo-Kantianaesthetics as a substitute for the culturally liberative modern project,Confused by the political and cultural politics of Stalinism, former left-wingprotagonists of socio-cultural modernization now recommend a strategicwithdrawal from the project of totally transforming the exist ing real ity. Thisrenunciation is predicated on the belief that as long as the struggle betweensocialism and capitalism persists (with the manipulative mass-culturepolitics that this conflict necessarily entails), the modern world cannotcontinue to entertain the prospect ofevolving a marginal, liberative, avant-gardist culture which would break (or speak of the break) with the history ofbourgeois repression. Close to I'art pour l'art, this position was firstadvanced as a "holding pattern" in Clement Greenberg's "Avant-Gardeand Kitsch" of 1939; this essay concludes somewhat ambiguously with thewords: "TMay we look to socialism simply for the preservation of whateverliving culture we have right now." 6 Greenberg reformulated this position inspecifically formalist terms in his essay "Modernist Painting" of 1965,wherein he wrote:

Having been denied by the Enlightenmenr of all tasks they could takeseriously, they Ithe arts] looked as though they were going to be assimilated toentertainment pure and simple, and entertainment looked as though it wasgoing to be assimilated, like religion, to therapy. The arts could savethemselves from this leveling down only by demonstrating that the kind ofexperience they provided was valuable in its own right and nor to be obtainedfrom any other kind of activity.?

Despite this defensive intellectual stance, the arts have nonethelesscontinued to gravitate, if not towards entertainment, then certainly towardscommodity and-in the case of that which Charles Jencks has sinceclassified as Post-Modern Architecture8-towards pure technique or purescenography. In the latter case, the so-called postmodern architects aremerely feeding the media-society with gratuitous, quietistic images ratherthan proffering, as they claim, a creative rappel d I'ordre after thesupposedly proven bankruptcy of the liberative modern project. In thisregard, as Andreas Huyssens has written, "The American postmodernistavant-garde, therefore, is not only the end game of avant-gardism. I!_gl-s"S_*lepecet!*le"fta

-aulquF."'Nevertheless, it is kue that modernization can no longer be simplistically

identified as liberative in se, in part because of the domination of massculture by the media-industry (above all television which, as Jerry Manderreminds us, expanded its persuasive power a thousandfold between 1945 and1975 r0) and in part because the trajectory ofmodernization has brought us tothe threshold of nuclear war and the annihilation of the entire species. Sotoo, avant-gardism can no longer be sustained as a liberative moment, in part

20 The Anti-Aesthetic

because its initial utopian promise has been overrun by the internalrationality of instrumental reason. This "closure" was perhaps bestformulated by Herbert Marcuse when he wrote:

The technologi cal apriori is a political apriori ioasmuch as the transformationof nature involves that of man, and inasmuch as the "man-made creations"issue from and re-enter the societal ensemble. One may still insist that themachinery of the technological universe is "as such" indifferent towardspolitical ends-it can revolutionize or retard society.. IIgggygUWbSltechnics becomes the unircrsal form of material production. itcircrrmscribesan entire c!]lure,jlprqieqLr a historical totality-a "wo.ld." 1r

3. Critical Regionalism and World Culturefuchitecture can only be sustained today as a critical practice if it assumes anarriire-garde position, that is to say, one which distances itslf equallyfrom the Enlightenment myth of progress and from a reactionary, unrealisticimpulse to return to the architectonic forms of the preindustrial past. Acritical arrib

garde has the capacity to cultivafe a ibiistant, identity-giving culture while atthe same time having discreet recourse to universal technique.

It is necessary to qualify the term arribre-garde so as to diminish its criticalscope from such conservative policies as Populism or sentimental Regional-ism with which it has often been associated. In order to ground arribre-gardism in a rooted yet critical strategy, it is helpful to appropriate the termCritical Regionalism as coined by Alex Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre in "TheGrid and the Pathway" (1981); in this essay they caution against theambiguity of regional reformism, as this has become occasionally manifestsince the last quarter of the 19th century:

Regionalism has dominated architecture in almost all countries at some time

the individual and

movements of reform and liberation;. . . on the other, it has proved a powerfultool of repression and chauvinism. . . , Certainly, critical regionalism has itslimitations. The upheaval of the populist movement-a more developed formof regionalism-has brought to light these weak points. No new architecturecan emerge without a new kind of relations between designer and user, with-

Towards a Critical Resionalism Zl

out new kinds of programs. . . . Despite these limitations critical regionalism isa bridge over which any humanistic architecture of the future must pass.r2

Tne fiundamcn+alstmtegy of Critical fJgiversat..ivilizatier with.le-me'rts dEr ,ived rndr-reoly from rL peculiaritGilfg-g3Ilgulglar.e" It is clear from rhe a6ove tMt Critical Regionalismdepends upon maintaining a high level of critical self-consciousneis. It m6]find its governing inspiration in such things as the range and qual ity of thelocal light, or in a rcctonic derived from a peculiar structural mode, or in the

ical and si indedforms of a lost

iil5

^ht doo;0tt"n/q*buJo,cs

(.t n '4.l;lI"A t^4

@es@hiitoricism or the elibly decoralive, [ifry contention ihat only an a-rriEre-

@ismisthe.communicativeorinstrumentalsisn.Such a sign seeks to evoke not a critical perception of reality, but ratherlhesublimation of a desire for direct experience tkough the provision ofinformation. Its tactical aim is to attain, as economically as possible, apreconceived level ofgratification in behavioristic terms. In this respect, thestrong affinity of Populism for the rhetorical techniques and imagery ofadvertising is hardly accidental. Unless one guards against suCh uconvergence, one will confuse the,Jesislglt,capacity of a critical practicewith the demagogic tendencies ofSopulisil)J '

The case can be made that critica'fRegiofi-alism as a cultural strategy is asmuch a bearer of world culture as it is a vehicle of universal civitiiation.And while it is obviously misleading to conceive of our inheriting worldculture to the samedegree as we are all heirs to universal civilization. it isnonetheless evident that since we are, in principle, subject to the impact ofboth, we have no choice but to take cognizance today oftheir interaction. Inthis regard the practice ofcritical Regionalism is contingent upon a processof double mediation. In the first place, it has to "deconstruct. the overallspectrum of world culture which it inevitably inherits; in the second place, ithas to achieve, through synthetic contradiction, a manifest critique ofuniversal civilization. To deconstruct world culture is to remove oneselffrom that eclecticism of the fn de siicle which appropriated alien, exoticforms in order to revitalize the expressivity of an enervated society, (Onethinks of the "form-force" aesthetics of Henri van de Velde or the"whiplash-Arabesques" of Victor Horta.) On the other hand, the mediationof universal technique involves imposing limits on the optimization ofindustrial and postindustrial technology. The future necessity for re-synthesizing principles and elements drawn from diverse origins and quitedifferent ideological sets seems to be alluded to by Ricoeur when he writes:

No one ean say what will become of our civilization when it has really metdifferent civilizations by means other than the shock of conquesi and

ro disti

ition, howeVEilTffiialism bears the'.:lmark of ambiguity. On the one hand, it has been associated with

L2 The Anti-Aesthetic

domination, But we have to admit that this encounter has not yer taken place atthe level of an authentic dialogue. That is why we are in a kind of lult orinterregnum in which we can no longer practice the dogmatism of a singleruth and in which we are not yet capable of conquering the skepticism intowhich we have stepped.r3

A parallel and complementary senriment was expressed by the Dutcharchitect Ald9,V.1n- Efgk who, quite coincidentally, wrote ar the same r,gg_"western civilizftion habitually identifies itself with civilization as su.n-iil Ithe pontificial assumption that what is not like it is a deviation, less \ladvanced, primitive, or, at best, exotically interesting at a safe distance." 9)That Critical Regionalism cannot be simply based on the autochthondusforms of a specific region alone was well put by the californian architectHamilton Harwell Harris when he wrote, now nearly thirty years ago:

Opposed to the Regionalism of Restriction is another type of regionalism, theRegionalism of Liberation. This is the manifestation of a region that isespecially in tune with the emerging thought of the time. We call such amanifestation "regional" only because it has not yet emerged elsewhere...,A region may develop ideas. A region may accept ideas. Imagination andintelligence are necessary for both. In california in the late Tkenties andThirties modern European ideas met a still-developing regionalism. In NewEngland, on the other hand, European Modernism met a rigid and restrictiveregionalism that at 6rst resisted and then surrendered- New England acceptedEuropean Modernism whole because its own regionalism had been reduced toa collection of restrictions,rl

The scope for achieving a self-conscious synthesis between universalcivilization and world culture may be specifically illustrated by Jgrn Utzon,s

' Bagsvaerd Church, built near Copenhagen in1976, a work whose complexmeaning stems directly from a revealed conjunction between, on the onehand, the railonality of normative technique and, on the other, theararionality of idiosyncratic form. Inasmuch as this building is organizedaround a regular grid and is comprised of repetitive, in-fill modules-concrete blocks in the first instance and precast concrete wall units in thesecond- we may justly regard it as the outcome of universal civilization.Su'ch a building system, comprising an in situ concrete frame withprefabricated concrete in-fill elements, has indeed been applied countlesstimes all over the developed world. However, the univCrsality of thisproductive method- which includes, in this instance, patent glazing on theroof-is abruptly mediated when one passes from the optimal modular skinof the exterior to the far less optimal reinforced concreteihell vault spanningthe nave. This last is obviously a relatively uneconomic mode ofconstruction, selected and manipulated first for its direct associativecapacity-that is to say, the vault signifies sacred space-and second for its

multiple cross-cultural references, while the reinforced concrete shell vaulthas long since held an established place within the received tectonic canon ofwestern modern architecture, the highly configurated section adopted inthis instance is hardly familiar, and the only preiedent for such a form, in asacred context, is Eastern rather than wistern-namely, the chirrcsepagoda r99! citga by Utzon in his seminar essay of 1963,

-"pratforms and

Plateaus." t6 Although the main Bagsvaerd vauit spontaneously signifiesits religious nature, it does so in such a way as to preclude an ixclulsivelyoccidental or oriental reading of the code by which the public and sacredspace is constituted. The intent ofthis expresiion is, ofcourse, to secularizethe-sacred form by precluding the usual set ofsemantic religious references

Towards a Critical Regionalism

where any symbol ic-f,illli6i-'i6

ffiilr.rl ilil ,tt ll.1'

I6rn Utzon, Bagsvaerd Church, 1973-1.6North elevation and section.

ecclesiastic usually deeeneratesl;

and thereby the corresponding-range of automatic r"rponi"s that usuailyi:::TPlnY tn"t' endering a

Lt4rlt 4 /Prt Irc o4ult #1 Ua"< 64 t*-t e

4. The Resistance of the Place-Form

The Qlegalopolis fcognized as such in 1961 by the geographer JeanGottmi}ri+stiflfes to proliferate throughout the developed world to suchan extent that, with the exception of cities which were laid in place before theturn of the century, we gre no longgl 3h!c_l!o mahtairdefined urban forms.The last quarter of a centuf has seen the so-called fielddegenerate into a theoretical subject whose discourse bears little relation tothe processal realities of modern development. Today even the super-managerial discipline of urban planning has entered into a state of crisis. Theultimate fate of the plan which was officially promulgated for the rebuildingof Rotterdam after World War II is symptomatic in this regard, since ittestifies , in terms of its own recently changed status, to the current tendencyto reduce all nlanning to little mn"e than rhe altocqtion of land use and theJ$lgi-gldilgllstioo,untilrelativelyrecently,theRo-irermefiGastr-ilmwas revised and upgraded every decade in the light ofbuildings which hadbeen realized in the interim.In 1975, however, this progressive urbancultural procedure was unexpectedly abandoned in favor of publishing anonphysical, infrastructure plan conceived at a regional scale. Such a planconcerns itself almost exclusively with the logistical projection of changesin land use and vy.it\he augmentation of existing distribution systems.

In h-is essay o\t95f,'jBuildine. Dwelline. Thinking," Martin Heideggerprovides us with brcfitical vantage point from whic-tT6 behold this phenom-

"non of {lnll,.gl-PlEce]eooes& Against the Latin or, rather, the antique

abstract concept of space as a more or less endless continuum of eveniysubdivided spatial components or integers-what he terms spatium andextensio-Heidegger opposes the German word for space (or, rather,place), which is the term Raum. Heidegger argues that the phenomenologi-cal essence of such a space/place depends upon the concrete, clearly defined

Towards a Critical Resionalism 25.t

firl"**,'"u ; c+,'lvtn"'ry'*--'*'t a flbounded domain in order to create an architecture of resistance. Onl-y such adefined boundary will permit the built form to stand against-and henceliterally to withstand in an institutional sense- the endless processal flux ofthe Megalopolis.

"/'Tffiounieklace-form, in its public mode, is also essential to what( Hannah Arendt $s termed "the space of human appearance," since the>ldu++effittctrmate powerhas always been predicaiid upon the exisrence

of the "polis" and upon comparable units of institutional and physical form.While the political life of the Greek polis did not stem directly from thephysical presence and representation of the city-state, it displayed incontrast to the Megalopolis the cantonal attributes of urban density. ThusArendt writes in The Human Condition:

The only indispensable material factor in the generation of power is the livingtogether of people. Only where men live so close together that thepotentialities for action are always present will power remain with them andthe foundation ofcities, which as city states have remained paradigmatic forall Western political organization, is therefore the most important materialprerequisite for power. I e

Nothing could be more removed from the political essence of the city-state than the rationalizations of positivistic urban planners such as MelvinWebber, whose ideological concepts of community without propinquity andthe non-place urban realm are nothing if not slogans devised to rationalizethe absence of any true public realm in the modern motopia.2o Themanipulative bias of such ideologies has never been more openly expressedthan in Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contadiction in Architecture(1966) wherein the author asserts that Americans do not need piazzas, sincethey should be at home watching television.2l Such reactionary attitudesemphasize the impotence of an urbanized populace which has paradoxicallylost the object of its urbanization.

While the strategy of Critical Regionalism as outlined above addressesitself mainly to the maintenance of an expressive density and resonance inan architecture of resistance (a cultural density which under today's condi-tions could be said to be potentially liberative in and of itself since it opensthe user to manifold experiences), the provision of a place-form is equallyessential to critical practice, inasmuch as a resistant architecture, in aninstitutional sense, is necessarily dependent on a clearly defined domain.Perhaps the most generic example of such an urban form is the perimeterblock, although other related, introspective types may be evoked, such asthe galleria, the atrium, the forecourt and the labyrinth. And while thesetypes have in many instances today simply become the vehicles foraccommodating psuedo-public realms (one thinks of recent megastructuresin housing, hotels, shopping centers, etc.), one cannot even in these

*v-{n

nature of its boundary, for, as he puts it, "Aqgl$lg stops, but, aslhe Greek-reeos;; is not that from

Mediterranean, Heidegger shows that etymologically the German gerundbuilding is closely linked with the archaic forms of being, cultivating anddwelling, and goes on to state that the condition of "dwelling" and henceultimately of "b"ing" .un only t*j plq.g in u do*uir_lbd-bj&illy-

* oorllto"q.*While we may well remain skeptical as to the merit of grounding critical

practice in a concept so hermetically metaphysical as Being, we are, whenconfronted with the ubiquitous placelessness of our modern environment,nonetheless brought to posit, after Heidegger, the absolute precondition of a

-6 The Anti-Aesthetic

instances entirely discount the latent political and resistant potential oftheplace-form.

5. Culture Versus Nature: Topography' Context,Climate, Light and Tectonic Form

Critical Regionalism necessarily involves a morc directly dialectical relationwith naturc than the more abstract, formal taditions of modern avant-gardearchitecture allow It is self-evident that the tabula rasa tendency ofmodernization favors the optimum use of earth-moving equipment inas'much as a totally flat daturnis regarded as the most economic matrix uponwhich to predicate the rationalization of construction. Here again, onetouches in concrcte terms this fundamental opposition between universalcivilization and autochthonous culture. The bulldozing of an irregulartopography into a flat site is cleady a technocratic gesture which aspires to aconaltion of absolute ploceles.rne,rs, whereas the terracing of the same site torcceive the stepped iorm of a building is an engagement in the act of"cultivating" the site.

Cleady such a mode ofbeholding and acting brings one closeonce againto Heidegger's etymology; at the same time, it evokes the method alluded toby the Swiss architect Mario Botta as "building the site." It is possible toargue that in this last instance the specific culture of the region*that is tosay, its history in both a geological and agricultural sense-becomesinicribed into ihe form and realization of the work, This inscription, whicharises out of "in-laying" the building into the site, has many levels ofsignificance, for it has a capacity to embody, in built form, the prehistory ofthl place, its archeological past and its subsequent cultivation and trans-formation across time. Through this layering into the site the idiosyncrasiesof place find their expression without falling into sentimentality.

What is evident in ihe case of topography applies to a similar degree in thecase of an existing urban fabric, and the same can be claimed for thecontingencies of climate and the temporally inflected qualities of local light.Once again, the sensitive modulation and incorporation of such factors mustalmost by definition be fundamentally opposed to the optimum use ofuniversal technique. This is perhaps most clear in the case of light ancclimate control. The generic window is obviously the most delicate point atwhich these two natural forces impinge upon the outer membrane of thebuilding, fenestration having an innate capacity to inscribe architecture withthe character of a region and hence to express the place in which the workis situated.

Towards a Critical Regionalism

Until recently, the received precepts of modern curatorial practicefavored the exclusive use of artificial light in all art galleries. It has perhapsbeen insuffciently recognized how this encapsulation tends to reduce theaftwork to a commodity, since such an environment must conspire to renderthe work placeless. This is because the local light spectrum is ncverpermitted to play across its surface: here, then, we see how the loss of aura,auributed by Waltcr Benjamin to the processes of mechanical reproduction,also arises from a relatively static application of universal technology. Theconverse of this "placeless" practice would be to provide that art galleriesbe top-lit through carefully contrived monitors so that, while the injuriouseffects of direct sunlight are avoided, Oe ambient light of the exhibitionvoluqlg changes urlde'fh impececf fmconditions guarantee the appearance of a place-conscious poetic-a form offiltration compounded out of an interaction between culture and nature,between art and light. Clcarly this principle applies to all fenestration,irrespectivc of size and location.'A constant 'regional inflection" of theform arises directly from the fact that in certain climates the glazed apertureis advanced, while in others it is recessed behind the masonry facade (or,alternatively, shielded by adjustable sun breakers)

The way in which such openings provide for appropriate ventilation alsoconstitutes an unsentimental element reflecting the nature of local culture.Herc, clearly, the main antagonist of rooted culture is the ubiquitous air-conditioner, applied in all times and in all places, irrespective of the local

the structure explicitly resists the action of gravity. lt is obvious that thisdiscoune of the load borne (the beam) and the load-bearing (the column)cannot be brought into being where the structure is masked or otherwiseconcealed. On the other hand, the tectonic is not to be confused with thepurcly technical, for it is more than the simple revelation of stereotomy orthe expression of skeletal framewort, Its essence was first defined by theGerman aesthetician Karl Biitticher in his book Dic Tektonik der Herienen(1852); and it was perhaps best summarized by the architectural historianStanford Anderson when he wrote:

"Tektonik" referred not just to the activity of making the materially requisiteconstruction. . . but rathcr to the activity that raises this construction to an art

to say, this autonomy iSconshuction and in the way in which the syntactical form of

ffih l',M" e rfrLr* fl^t ry ; N6

28 The Anti-Aesthetic

form....The functionally adequate form must be adapted so as to giveexpression to its function. The sense of bearing provided by the entasis ofGreek columns became the touchstone of this concept of Tektonik.zz

The tectonic remains to us today as a potential means for distilling playbetween material , craftwork and gravity, so as to yield a component which isin fact a condensation of the entire structure. We may speak here of thepresentation of a structural poetic rather than the re-presentation of a facade.

6. The Visual Versus the Tactile

The tactile resilience ofthe place-form and the capacity of the body to readthe environment in terms other than those of sight alone suggest a potentialstrategy for resisting the domination of universal technology. It issymptomatic of the priority given to sight that we find it necessary to remindourselves that the tactile is an important dimension in the perception of builtform. One has in mind a whole range of complementary sensory perceptionswhich are registered by the labile body; the intensity oflight, darkness, heatand cold; the feeling of humidity; the aroma of material; the almost palpablepresence of masonry as the body senses its own confinementi the momentumof an induced gait and the relative inertia of the*bodJ_aEiutrverses the floor;the echoing resonance of our own footfal as well awareof these factors when makins the fil

was his belief that without a solid floor underfoot the actors would beincapable of assuming appropriate and convincing postures.

A similar tactile sensitivity is evident in the finishing of the publiccirculation in Alvar Aalto's Sbynatsalo Town Hall of 1952. The main routeleading to the second-floor council chamber is ultimately orchestrated interms which are as much tactile as they are visual. Not only is the principalaccess stair lined in raked brickwork, but the treads and risers are alsofinished in brick. The kinetic impetus of the body in climbing the stair is thuschecked by the friction ofthe steps, which are "read" soon after incontrastto the timber floor of the council chamber itself. This chamber asserts itshonorific status through sound, smell and texture, not to mention the springydeflection of the floor underfoot (and a noticeable tendency to lose one'sbalance on its polished surface). From this example it is clear that theliberative importance of the tactile resides in the fact that it can only bedecoded in terms of experience itself: it cannot be reduced to mereinformation, to representation or to the simple evocation of a simulacrumsubstituting for absent presences. (

Towards a Critical Regionalism 29

In this way, Critical Regionalism seeks to complement our normativevisual experience by readdressing the

counter the xclusithe

relates.to that which Heidegger has called a "loss of nearness." Inattempting to counter this loss, rhe tactile opposes iiGlffi'tGGii6ffiphicand the drawing of veils over the surface of reality. Its capacity to rto-ut" th"impulse to touch returns the architect to the poetics of construition and to theerection of works in which the tectonic value of each component dependsupon the density of its objecthood. The tactile and the tectonic iointlv havethe capacity to transcend the mere appearance of the technical in much theSamewayasthe@tialtowithstandtherelentlessonslaughr of giobalEodernrzar

Alvar Aalto, Sciynatsalo Town Halt, l95Z

tactile range of human perceptions, Inprioritv accorded to the imase and to -

0 The Anti-Aesthetic

References

hul Ricocur, 'Universal Civilization and National Culturcs' (1961), History and'Iluth,trans. Chas, A. Kclbley (Evanston: Northwcstern Univcnity Prcss, 1965), pp.276-7,That thcsc ar but two sidcs of thc samc coin has pcrhaps bccn most dranaticdlydemonstrtcd in thc Portland City Anncx complcted in Fortland, Oregon in 1982 to thcderigns ofMichacl Graves. The constnrctional fabric ofthis building bcsrr no rlationwhatsocvcr to thc 'rcprcscntative" scenography that is applicd to thc building both insidcand out.Ricocur, p. 277.Fernand Braudcl informs us that thc tcrm "culturc' hardly exirtcd bcforc thc bcginning ofthe l9h c'entury whcn, ac far as AngloSaxon lctlcrc arc conccrned, it dready finds itsclfopposed to 'civilization" in thc writings of Samuel Taylor Colcridgc-above all, inColcridgc's On the Constitution of Church andSlare of 1E30, Thc noun "civilization" hasa somcwhat longcr history, fint rppcaring in 1766, olthough its verb and partlciplc furmsdate to thc l6th and lTth centuries . Thc usc that Ricocur makcs of the opposition bctwecnthcsc tuo terms rclatcs to the work of 20th-ccntury Gcrman thinkcrs and writcrs such rsOsvald Spcnglcr, Fcrdinand Tiinnics, Alfied Wcber and Thomar Mann.Hrnnah Arcndt, Thc Hunan Condition (Chicagol Unircnity of Chicago Prars, 1958),p. 154,Clemcnt Grccnbcrg, "Avant-Gardc and Kirch," in Gillo Dorfles, cd., Kitrch (NcwYork: Universc Books, 1969), p. 126.Grccnbcrg, 'lr{od*niet Painting,' in Grcgory Battcock, ed., Thc Nw Aft (Nov York:Dunon, 1966), pp. 101.2.Sec Charles Jencks, Ile language of fust-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli,1971r.Andreas Huysscns, 'The Search for Tiadition: AvanfGarde and Postmodernism in thc1970s," Ncw Gcrman Critique, 22 (Winrcr l98l), p. 34.Jerry Mandet, Four Arguments for the Elimination o! Televi$on (New York: MorrowQuill, 1978), p. 134.Hcrbert Mucure , One-Dimcnsiotul Man (Boston: Bcacon Press, l96a), p, 156.Alex Tzonis and Liliane l-efaivre, "The Grid and the Pathwry. An Introduction to thcWork of Dimitris and Susana Antonakakis," Arthitecture in Grcece, t5 (Athensl l98l),p. 178,Ricocur, p. 283.Aldo \r'an Eyck, Forum (Amrtcrdam: 1962).Hamilton Harwcll Harris, 'Libcrative and Rrstrictive Rcgion&lism.' Address givcn to theNorthwcst Chaptct of thc AIA in Eugene, Oregon in 1954.Jgrn Utzon, "Plrtforms and Plateaus: ldeas of a Danish Architecl," Zodiac, 10 (Milan:Edizioni Communita, 1963), pp. ll2-14.Jeen Gottnann, Mcgalopolis (Cambridge: MIT Press, 196l).Martin Hcidcgger, "Building, Dwelling, Thinking;" in tucty, Languagc, Thought (NewYork: Harper Colophon, l97l), p. 154. This cssay first appeared in German in 1954.tuendt, p. 201.Melvin Wcbbcr, Explorations in Urban Structure (Philadelphir: University of Pennsyl-vania Press, 1964).Robcrt Vcnturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecturz (New York: Museum ofModcrn Art, 1966), p. 133.Stanfond Andcrson, "Modern Architecture and Industry: Pctcr Behrens, the AEG, andlndustial Design," Oppositions 2l (Summer 1980), p. 83.

Sculpture in the Expanded Field

ROSALIND KRAUSS

lbward the center of the field there is a slight mound, a swelling in rhe earth,which is the only warning given for the presence of the work. Closer to it, thelarge square face of the pit can be seen, as can the ends of the ladder that isneeded to descend into the excavation. The work itselfis thus entirely belowgrade: half atium, half tunnel, the boundary between outside and in, adelicate shucture of wooden posts and beams. The work, Perlietersle@ Mary Miss, is of course a sculptuifrffiGEprecisely, an earthwork.

Over the last ten years rather surprising things have come to be calledsculpture: narrow corridon with TV monitors at the ends; large photographsdocumenting counEy hikes; mirrors placed at strange angles in ordinaryrooms; temporary lines cut into the floor of the desert. Nothing, it wouldseem, could possibly give to such a motley of effort the right to lay claim towhatever orc might mean by the category of sculpture. Unless, that is, thecategory can be made to becomc almost infinitely malleable.

The critical operations that have accompanied postwar American art have

This essay was originally published in Oaobcr 8 (Spring, lg9) and is reprinted here bypermission of thc author.

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8,

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lugely worked in the service of this manipulation. In the

mF"-fig. Tnd though this pulling and strerching of a term such as sculptureis overtly performed in the name of vanguard aesthetics-the ideology ofthe new-its covert mssage is that of historicism. The new is madecomfortable by being made familiar, since it is seen as having graduallyevolved from the forms of the past. Historicism works on the new anddifferent to diminish newness and mitigate difference. It makes a place for

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