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architecture will never abolish chance

chancenOVeMBer 2010

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PROGRAM

Pfanatin an VanalismGodoredo Pereira

Fa(i)lling

Miguel Leal

T Mmy f th Psnt Pedro Levi Bismarck

Nts n th Pactic f Chanc Atelier da Bouça

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eDItOrIaL. From Mallarmé we learn to read the emptiness in between the words, rom Duchampwe learn to interrogate art, rom John Cage to listen the silence o music and rom Siza that orseeing one has to touch the imperceptible. § Te work o art is not made upon a single and universalmeaning but rather is made in the way that it approaches to the spectator, provoking him, questioning him, possessing him. § Te work o art it’s an endless and unpredictable agency o other meanings,senses, interpretations. It’s a chance . And chance it’s the space o interpretation, o experience, o communication, that opens up between us and the work o art. § Chance is not what is without meaning or ortuity but is what turns possible that anything is to be destined in its very beginning. It’s theunpredictability, the imponderability: is lie itsel. § Chance is the empty space given to us to be ree, the

never predened space where we lend to the experience o being ourselves, ailing, ailing again, ailing always. § Architecture it’s the experience o chance, that is, the experience o lie, o the unpredictableconstruction o a never dened routine. Te nished drawings and images stay in the archive, outsidelie goes on, architecture becomes lie, bewitches, becomes sacred and proane, vanishes and reborn. § Te undeterminable nature o architecture is not its imperection but its great possibility: that in theeveryday absent landscape architecture can be able o provoking the unpredictable, o questioning us, ripthe knowledge veil and bring always something new, impossible and beauty. § Tat there will always be a possibility o escaping to what we are atally destined is this the meaning o the word chance.

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Al Faw palace interior occupied by the U.S. Army, Iraq, (Photo: Richard Mosse, ‘Breach’ series, 2009).

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godofredo Pereira

Mnmnts

Te ormer headquarters o PIDE-DGS1 inLisbon were recently transormed in luxury apartments. During the reurbishment, theexisting memorial plaque was moved to a lessvisible area, certainly to avoid jeopardizing the good image o a building that in the wakeo the revolution never became a monument,and in the course o its lie allowed itsel tobe desecrated by the housing market. Beore

such an aront to the memory o ascism andoppression, but lacking the capacity to purchasethe building and transorm it into a monument- or because it was already a monument toneo-liberalism - the only decision remaining was o where to re-locate the existing memorialplaque. In the meantime and as expected, boththe plaque and the açade o the building werevandalized. Honor to the Heroes, it said. Atermuch discussion it was let to the City Council

to make a new memorial plaque, inauguratedwith all due pomp and circumstance. womonuments in one, chance dictating something that certainly the building’s architect neverimagined.

Fimitas

In the relationship between architecture and

chance two competing claims gain prominence:1) i architecture does not think about luck itis because it believes not to depend upon it

and 2) i architecture thinks about luck it is

because it wants to control chance . Te rstassertion is conrmed by the Vitruvian ideal o stability: Firmitas not only reers to a stability or rmness o construction, but to its necessary permanence over time as a permanence o that which is established by architecture itsel.Te best examples o this desire o inscriptionare monuments, buildings with a ceremonialunction, representative pieces that supposedly speak orever. And i the validity o extending

this specic assumption to other architecturalobjects might be debatable, the questioning o to what extent - even in the design o monuments - is architecture ullling this questor permanence seems to be ar more relevant.Hence, to illuminate this issue we mustquestion what is it that is meant by the object(purpose) o architecture.I it is to the organization and arrangemento materials with specic dimensions that

we are reerring to, then perhaps we can say that the monumental object in act remainsorever, such as pyramids or Greek temples.However it is known that the architecturalobject is not exactly the same thing as theobject o architecture , in general assumed tobe the design proposal: invested with ideasand unctions, ideological, symbolic andrepresentative (even when trying not to be). As a design proposal, the object o architecture

will thus be the designing o a building according to certain ideological assumptions, a denitionthat ts well with what history o architecture

prOFanatIOn anD

VanDaLISMon chance in The Life of MonUMenTS

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gives us: the monument materializes theproject. But on the other hand, there is alsothe inscription o the object in the world, opento lie and transormation, by which an objector nished building (perect world) becomesa wild living object, alien to the architect’s

machinations. Although not objectual, can’t thisdimension not also aspire to the title o object o architecture ? And i so, could it be arguedthat architecture has two objects o study,namely the object o the design-proposal and itsbecoming-world?Tis issue doesn’t exist. Simply because or long a choice has been made, that architecture, eventhe one that does not aspire to monumentality,does not generally want anything to do with

lie, but only with death and perection,which may explain a greater interest in thepetrication o the design proposal than in itspossible mutations. And why? Perhaps becausein this dierence between the proposal andits built lie stands a gure that requires theseparation o the two, i.e. chance .Tus, the second assertion given here seemsto be the more correct one: one thinks o luck when one allows onesel to get carried away

by a paranoia o control that reuses to acceptthe becoming o architecture itsel. Whenunexpected transormations o buildings aredescribed in terms o good or bad luck, it’s a sign that priority has been given to the design proposal as object , and in there lies the rsttreacherous stab to architecture and its lie.

Y t, Bts!

Brutus here is the archive, as an attempt tokill architecture (one speaks exclusively aboutthe design proposal and not the building).Te archive is, as noted by Kent Kleinman in“Archiving Architecture”2, a supplement o qualities that the built work will not necessarily possess (uniqueness, stability, permanence) andlives precisely o this orced separation betweenthe conceptual project and the living built work.

Te archive insists on this separation underthe assumption that architecture rests in thedesign proposal and the uture o what’s built is

the work o chance, thus also trying to convey the idea that what is observed in the designproposal can be also observed in the initial stageo the built work: “Te archive should be moreaccurately described as a machine to orget thatarchitectural designs are ontologically distinct

rom their representations”. Unortunately,danger is lurking and moths eat books.In act, the design proposal as an objecto archive or reerence suers, as such, thenecessary vicissitudes o the passage o time,in the orm o its compulsive integration intonew genealogies or historical interpretations. By other words, we ace a much simpler problem:the inuence o chance over architecture isvoluntarily ignored because it is something that

cannot be avoided, but at the same time we seek reuge in the archive as i it would be protectedrom the elements, even i providing nothing more that an illusory protection.But some go urther and decide not only toarchive the proposal but also to archive thebuilding itsel. Te case o Villa Muller isexemplary: within the desire to restore theoriginal design according to the drawingsand ideas o Loos, layers o paint that hid the

original colors were removed, non-originalurnishings were re-placed, the house wascleaned down to its perect-past condition- a past that was not much more than a proposal. In this we can see terror, the terrorinherent to the idea o monument, the terroro the mundane that against the lived lie o architecture transorms the object into a work o art, untouchable. Hence, the reurbishmento Villa Muller (like many others) is in act

prooundly anti-architectural. And even moreso i viewed in the light o Loos’ own positions.But what is even more curious is that in a timewhere it is assumed that architects no longerbuild monumentally, monuments are builteverywhere: monuments to institutions, topast history, to thought, revolution, culture,architecture, etc...Te restoration o the Villa Muller wasveried against the archive containing its

original drawings and available photographs.But by restoring-it, the building ceases tobe architecture and becomes a built archive.

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As such it cannot be touched, it becomes a monument, an image o society’s sel-imaging. When to archive is not enough, then thebuilding has to be killed. And all this is done toprevent mundane chance rom desecrating orvandalizing the beautiul image o architecture.

Pfanatin But let us ocus on the mundane, because i we look at this second lie o the object, wewill notice that to speak o chance is not thatsimple.Te proanation o the architectural objectmeans, according to Agamben, its return to

the common, the mundane space, now reerom the apparatus o power that inscribe it:“Once proaned, that which was unavailableand separate loses its aura and is returned touse”3. I we use the example o Portuguesearchitecture during the Estado Novo - whatbetter example can you have o an architecturethat inscribes certain orms o pastoral powerin the collective identity o a nation?, - then wewill have as examples o proanation the Court

turned into a bakery, the Post Ofce into a cluband Portugal dos Pequenitos into a ConvenienceStore. O course this does not oten happen - orhappens less oten than would be desirable -which may suggest some problems in this idea.Nonetheless, to proane means to remove romthe sacred. Now, we must begin by noticing thatwith regard to architecture, the sacred is thatwhich is determined by the idea as unction,and crystallized in its ‘speaking’ representation.

Te sacred reers not only to a legal or religiousspace but also to the crystallization o thedesign as such. Te issue here is the notion o architecture as the production o sacred, anditsel a sacred production. Tus, the sacredspaces o architecture are those determined by a specic ritual, designed to allow the inscriptiono the sacred (the Idea). Put another way, arethose likely to be desecrated. Tereore, thisstructuring o power via the object is not

unique to state-architecture or architecture o exception, but strangely inherent to the idea o architecture itsel. Moreover, we nd that in

most cases the architectural object is the sceneo constant proanations, constant re-uses andadaptations, consequences o occasion andcircumstance, or - to ollow the line o this essay - o chance . Proanation is then, the denitiono thresholds above which it is considered that

the building is being misrepresented, thresholdsabove which in certain cases it becomes possibleto resort to available legal mechanisms thatintervene and restore order . Proanation orcesan awareness o the irreparable gap betweenthe ideal design proposal and the lived andnecessarily transormed reality.

Vanalism

Sometimes proanation is not merely theresult o everyday lie and earthly concerns,but o a deliberate act against the image o the built object. Tis action that by the object(or through it) aims to produce a particularpolitical eect, indicates that i it is possibleto go rom sacred to proane, then its inverseis also possible, the passing rom proane tosacred. o this action we will, or lack o better,

give the name o vandalism.Te act o vandalism presupposes that theseparation between sacred and proane, betweenpower and living (or between power inscribedin the design and the savagery o mundanebuildings) is nothing but a abrication, a maneuver to hide the real power o thebuilding and the truth o architecture. Onevandalizes because it’s worth it, because thebuilding represents something. Te wall o the

university is a monument to instituted power,the chapel in disuse is actually a maniestationo a conservative institution, the vandalizing o a açade will certainly inuriate supporterso rival political party, etc. Vandalism is anattack against the proane (against the building that pretends to be proane) showing that it isdeeply sacred, bringing to the ore the totemicmonument that lurks behind the mundaneroutine o everyday lie. In a short essay on

monuments, the writer Robert Musil said to besuspicious o their “inconspicuousness”. Tissuspicious inconspicuousness o monuments

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derives rom their ability to go unnoticed whenlet in the background, lost in the everyday o habits, until someone removes them rom thisinvisibility. Vandalism assumes that or othersthe building is a taboo, but in trying to beiconoclastic, it reinvests it as a totem, providing

it with the ability to articulate and give visibility to a power struggle that necessarily exceeds it:exposes the sacred, makes it visible and at thesame time doubles its power. Vandalism assumesthat by deacing the açade the idea that isexpressed on it is simultaneously under attack. And it presupposes that someone cares (and inact there is always someone who cares...).Tus, i proanation seems to mark anontological dierence inscribed in the very

oundations o the practice o architecture,between the object’s design and it’s lie - i.e. twoarchitectures - vandalism by its turn, throughits sacricial action, never relates to the proane,but always to the sacred. However it is precisely due to this being in the world that vandalismis able to restore the ideal dimension to themundane object, and thus to resuscitate it romthe dead. And it is this moment o enchantment

that becomes decisive. At the moment o vandalism, the separation between sacred andproane collapses, and the building, its useand representation, retrieve an immanencethat eluded them since they mutated romdesign proposal into a built object. Ater all,it acilitates the union, the encounter eveni momentary, between these two lives o architecture, the ideal lie, designed, and thereal lie mundane and conictual. Vandalism

unearths the Idea to monumentalize the terriblereality that hides in the proane.

Animism

Between these two aspects o architecture,or between its two objects, there are many relations, o appropriation, o proanation,

o violence, moving rom symbolic to theproane, rom casual to monumental, movesthat reect the power struggles revolving aroundthe built object or making use o it. BeyondKleinmen, we will nally say that this is notso much or simply an ontological separation,

but two lielines that casually intersect only to separate again, producing moments o transer between them, orced by variousmagical incantations o built objects and designproposals. Tus, the object o architecture is nomore than the attempt to have some controlover the relationship between inscription andtransormation or between lie and death. Ater all, the problem is that monumentality - which is usually identied with classical

symbolism - does not simply come out o a decision to build monumentally, i.e. to ollow a certain type o design, but is mainly dictatedby unoreseen circumstances dictated by the lieo architecture, resulting in the building mademonument. And sometimes this process mighthelp to crystallize in the history o architecturea spatial organization and a ormal languagethat was based precisely on the idea o anti-monumentality. Consequently it produces

the lexicon o a new monumentality, that is,a new way to represent and to make visible by through o architecture. Benjamin would say that it is the aura that is at stake; we say that theanxiety against chance that seems to animate thearchitect’s delusions o control, results rom thisinability to accept the totemic and etishisticnature o the architectural object. And it is thisability to discover hidden powers and a kind o living soul in inanimate matter that makes the

lie o architecture.

Gf Pia (Porto, 1979). Architect by FAUP.Master AVAAR, by Bartlett School o Architecture.Currently developing PhD thesis about “Fetishism andMagical Political o Monuments” at the Centre or Research

Architecture, Goldsmiths University at London, with a scholarship rom “Fundação para a Ciência e ecnologia”.Co-editor o magazine DERIOS (www.revistadetritos.com) and teaches at Bartlett School o Architecture, London.

1 PIDE-DGS is the name o the Portuguese secret police during the dictatorship o Salazar.2 Kleinmen, Kent, “Archiving Architecture”, (in Blouin, Francis X., Rosenberg, William G., “Archives, documentation, andinstitutions o social memory: essays rom the Sawyer Seminar”, University o Michigan Press, 2006, pp. 54-60).3 Agamben, Giorgio, “Proanations”, Zone Books, NY, 2007, pp. 73-92.

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‘Honour to the Heroes’ - grafti on the acade o the or-mer headquarters o the PIDE-DGS in Lisbon, beore they started the works or its transormation into a luxury con-dominium.

(Photo: author unknown)

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Pedro oLiVeira

Bas Jan Ader in Ocean Wave (Courtesy CGAC, 2010)

Te wreckage o the Ocean Wave. Details o the exhibition documentary material (CGAC, 2010)

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MigUeL LeaL

ry again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse.Fail worse again. Still worse again. ill sick or good.Trow up or good. Go or good. Where neither or

good. Good and all.

Samuel Beckett

In the morning o the 18th o April o 1976,while sailing 100 miles south o the irishcost, a galician shing boat spotted the semi-

submerged hull o a small sail-boat that didn’treach to 4 meters long. Adrit in the open sea and with no signs o recent occupation, theboat was ound at vertical position, with thebow underwater and the stern out o water.In the interior, amongst many other objects,a passport in the name o Baastian JohanChristiaan Ader was ound. It was indeed theOcean Wave , the boat in which, in July 9th o 1975, the Dutch origin artist Bas Jan Ader had

let rom Cape Cod, Massachusetts, having has nal destination the port o Falmouthin Great-Britain. It wasn’t the rst time that Ader crossed the Atlantic in a sail boat. Back in 1963, being 20 years old, ater travelling by hitch-hiking through France and Spain, heembarked in a sail-boat in Morocco that wouldtake him in a long and troubled 11-month journey to San Diego, Caliornia, withpassages in Martinique and the Panama Canal.

Established since then in Los Angeles, to Bas Jan Ader the Ocean Wave journey was a sort o more or less romantic return to the place rom

where he rst took o, years beore. Yet, whenhe planned to ace by himsel the AtlanticOcean in a risky adventure – and never triedbeore under such circumstances –, Aderhad the objective o concluding his projectIn Search o the Miraculous and we can say,by that, that is constituted above all a radicalaesthetic experiment. Although there weresome adaptations, the chosen boat, a Guppy

13 Pocket Cruiser , a small pleasure sail-boatvery popular at the time in Caliornia, didn’tseemed the most appropriate or the trip.Challenging the Atlantic alone in a nutshellwas to Ader just another way to rehearse thehard crossing between tragedy and arce,ultimate attempt to push to the limit theconrontation with the ideas o risk, all, ail ordisappearance that seem to dominate is work.In Search o the Miraculous was then the

radical gesture demanded to an artist thatexperimented in a very particular way the soclaimed usion between lie and work thatmarked the 60’s and 70’s decades. Actually, Ader integrated the rst generation o conceptual artists rom the East Cost but sinceearly on his work showed a poetic dimensionthat approached him to the long traditiono Romanticism. Tere is, even though, anabsurd and tragic-comic side that also allows

to establish a relation his work with the specicburlesque mechanics. Let us see, or instance,how Ader aces gravity in two 1970 short lms– Fall I and Fall II .

Fa(I)LLInG

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In the rst, we see him seated on a chair atthe top o a roo rom where he nally allsdown, suddenly and helpless; in the second,he’s cycling along a canal and then suddenly alls into water. With no evident explanation,the two alls are absurd and are maybe closerto the Buster Keaton’s slapstick comedy than to the great romantic tragedy. For thatsame reason, tha way Ader combine that

tragic-comic dimension with the melancholy present in his lonely gure, in movies like I’moo Sad to ell You, 1971, in which he criescompulsively in ront o the camera, or inBroken Fall (Organic), same year, in which hepathetically swings rom a tall tree until heleaves himsel al l into the water, transorm hiswork in a singular variant o conceptual artand, at the same time, has someone claimed, inan uncommon synthesis between Europe and

America.Te rst part o the project In Search o the Miraculous was presented at Los Angeles ew time beore rom the Ocean Wave departureand its second moment should haven resultedrom the solitary Ader’s trip, to which hewas planning, already, amongst others,an exhibition at the Gronigen Museum inHolland. Well, Ader ended to disappearsomewhere in the middle o the Atlantic, in a

weirdly topographic way to dene the idea o interruption e maybe the only one that couldin good will complete a project that intendedtaking to the limit the central ideas o his

work. When the Ocean’s Wave stern was ound,10 months ater departure, is was already covered with algae and molluscs and thereore,it was estimated that it was adrit or severalmonths. It is just known that radio contact waslost three weeks ater Ader let and it seemsthat something happened ater already hadpassed Azores. Te signs ound at the boat werenot sufcient to reconstitute what happened.

Te Ocean Wave was brought by the GalicianFishing Boat to La Coruña port but it wouldmysteriously disappear a second time, not long time ater, and now or good. From the OceanWave it remained not much more than somepictures, helping to intensiy the mystery inturn o the Bas Jan Ader last trip.

§

At the 2005 Biennale di Venezia JoachimKoester presented Message rom Andrée , a play in which we can nd signs o his ghost hunter vocation. Te starting point or Koesterwas the ailed trip, in 1897, o the Swedishexplorers Salomon A. Andrée, Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel, that wanted to y a balloonover the North Pole. Te balloon, baptisedwith an imperial bird name – Örnen (Eagle)

–, let Danskoya, near Spitsbergen, in the Arctic, at the 11th o July 1897, but, ater threedays, a phew hundred kilometres ar romthe departure point, it elt in the ice, to never

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rise again. Andrée, Strindberg and Frænkelroamed adrit on the implacable ice o the Arctic during several weeks until they settled,with intentions o passing the winter, in a smallinhabited island – Kvitoya [White Island] –,where they ended dying in uncertain day o themonth o October. Te heroic disappearanceo the expedition stood evolved in mystery during over thirty years, until, in 1930, it

was ound, almost intact, the tented campin Kvitoya. Tere were the bodies o threeman, their logbooks and the photographiclms in which Strindberg, the photographer,methodically saved the group shenanigans. At that time, this unlikely discover had urorin and outside Sweden, having the expeditionadventures reconstitution helped to eed theimaginary o many readers. Joachim Koesterwas not, thereore, the rst to interest about

the atality and contingencies o the ate o theexpedition on a balloon over the North Pole,but he did it in a very particular way. Koester’swork is lled with dark matters and awkwardgures, moving itsel ambiguously betweendocumentary and ction; yet, the core o theinstalation in Venezia was not so much thehistory o the three adventurers but a 16mmormat video, a silent and almost abstract lm.O the recovered lms specially prepared by

Kodak to the expedition, 5 were recovered in1930, already exposed, one o them still insidethe camera. Surprisingly, ater all that time,it was immediately possible to unveil almost

a hundred images. Some o the lms,coveredby risks and stains, had stay almost illegible,but it were precisely those physical marks o its ate that retained Koester’s attention. o Message rom Andrée , the artist lmed, rameby rame, the inopportune stains that lled theone day immaculate white o the landscapespictured in Nils Strindberg photos. Te nalresult is paradoxical, silent and abstract,

something that can be described like the noise that certain sound or visual spectrum areable to produce. Koester chose to concentratein the plastic qualitys o the images, in theprecise sense o a plasticity that directly arisesrom the opening to chance and change, toaccident and contingency. In the video weare conronted with that sort o plasticity autonomy o the photographic emulsion thatreleases the images o a documentary unction

and devoid o any value o indexing. So, it wasmore about the visionary and hallucinatory potential o those stains than the reerenceo the photos to a tragic past, that attractedKoester’s imagination. Te adrit o the threeman on the loose ice plaques, with all that haso dramatic psico-geography and a game withchance, nds in the lm a visual emulating o telepathic and hallucinatory character. Fromthe desolate landscapes o the Arctic, pictured

by Nils Stindberg, remain the unshapedstains that chance produced , and it is precisely that noise, that chance music many timesinterpreted as a mistake or uncomortable

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ailure, that constitutes the substance o Koester’s intervention. Tere’s an unconsciousthat hides in the old and used lms ound atKvitoya, an unconscious without which thoseimages would not be what they are and inthose that appear in Venezia as an abstract andsilent narrative, simple homage not only to thedisgraced adventure on the Arctic ice but alsoto the sel-poetic and imaginative potential o

things, in particular those stains that gainedown lie and re-appeared at surace as theultimate message rom Andrée . (1)

§

Beckett’s shadow and the circularity impliedo the syncopated beat o the Worstward Ho (1983) – ry again, Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again...– pursues me or several years as a possiblemark o an ontology o the artistic practice.It is not something rom which you can writedirectly about and so I recurred to a dislocationeect in which the reerence to the Örnen

all and to the stains o Koester’s lm are likea metonymy that allows me to keep talking about suspension and the apparent ailure o the Bas Jan Ader journey. With this methodI hope to allow the discovery that none o thetrips truly ailed because what matters is try again to ail again, just ail better, once and or all still worse again...(1)

Migl Lal (Porto, 1967) Plastic Ar tist. Lives and worksat Porto. Founding member o VIROSE, an interdisci-plinary structure dedicated to media and the study o the relations between art and technology. Proessor atFaculdade de Belas Artes de Universidade do Porto, wherehe guides atelier work and lectures art and contemporary

cultures courses. http://ml.virose.pt

(1) In Portuguese in the original text. [RANSLAOR NOE]

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Te Örnen immediately ater the orced landing on 14 July 1897. Retouched photography.

Tis text was in part motivated by the exhibition In Search o the Miraculous: Tirty Years Later , presented between May andSeptember o 2010, at the Galician Centre or Contemporary Art, in Santiago de Compostela. With Pedro de Llano as curator,the exhibition departed rom the random link o the story o the Ocean Wave to Galicia to oer a broad reading o the rareedwork o Bas Jan Ader. Note that the Örnen adventure has had already in the 1930’s the book Med Örden mot Polen, based in

Andrée, Strindberg and Frænkel journals and illustrated with some recovered pictures in Kvitoya, even they are retouched,immediately published with success in other countries (check the american version destined to a juvenil audience: Andrée’s Story:From the diaries and Journals o S.A.Andrée, Nils Strindberg, and K. Frænkel, ound on White Island in the Summer o 1930 and edited by the Swedish Society or Antrophology and Geography, New York, Blue Ribbon Books, 1930). More details on the play by

Joachim Koester at Venezia see the catalogue: Joachim Koester: Message rom Andrée , Copenhagen, Te Danish Art Agency, 2005.

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Nine register-memories (Le Corbusier - Villa Savoye, Álvaro Siza - FAUP and Bonjour ristesse, Mies - Barcelona Pa-villlion and e Neue Nationalgalerie, Steven Holl - Kiasma)

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Pedro LeVi BiSMarck

the MeMOrY OF the preSent

The iMPercePTiBLe BecoMing of SPace. archiTecTUre, freedoM and LoVe

It’s the unpredictability that makes the event, but is also the unpredictability that makes the knowledge itsel. Not what can be probabilistically determined but the unprobabilistic point that rips the veil o knowledge and shows something that until then we were unable to predict.

Carlos Amaral Dias1

Prelude 1 - Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar

Te unquiet Mr. Palomar1 is standing by the sea but he doesn’t observe it, instead he xes his eyein a wave, just one. His attempt is to predict all its movements, its random dynamic. He seeks to

nd an order, a scheme, a mental image, which could allow him to organize all that complexity.He doesn’t give up. He reduces the observation feld and lists all the slightest details and variations.I accomplished, soon he will be able to predict all those movements and proceed to that ultimatestage: extend this knowledge to the whole universe. But the tide changes suddenly and Mr. Palomarends up to lose his patience, returning home even more nervous and unquiet than beore.Tis small metaphor that Italo Calvino oers us about the human models o world comprehensionis here as simple as splendidly exposed. In act, man builds himsel upon his desire to control theworld phenomena, to name and give them a sense, a meaning. o project, to investigate, to plan, arethe names o those apparatus that seek to control reality. Forms, operations o the everyday lie, thattrace a path to a specic human artifciality 2, where man saely dwells beore the constant menaceo this endless exterior, that we call the arbitrary, the unpredictable, the uncertain, or just, the

becoming. Te house-shelter is not the indomitable territory-wave , but the small observation feld o the protected and predictable things. Te house is build under the sign o frmitas, o durability, o a habitus able to put us saely in the world. But the question is the appearance that is made to appear. Each observation feld is just a temporary station, a passage, and just like in Palomar, there is always a tide, an imminent and unpredictable disturb. All construction is provisional, contingent, that is ourhuman essence, in death beyond death.

Prelude 2 : Mallarmé, Un coup de dés

What is irreducibly interesting in the Mallarmé poem Un Coupe de dés 3, is that chance is a metaphor

that names not the poem object, but its irreparable purpose. I there is someone that precedesDuchamp in the search o a maximum amplitude and indetermination in the meaning o the work o art is precisely Mallarmé. Te chance that the French poet assigns is the unpredictable opennesswhich is unlocked in the poem own interpretation. Te white space that is let between the phrases

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is the space o chance, o interpretation, o themeanings that each reader (op)poses. Tis was aswell the meaning o the duchampian word inra mince , that untraceable detail, that minimal eventable o giving a provisional meaning to the work o art and transorm it not in an aesthetical object

but in a provisional content, an agency o othermeanings. And this is was as well John Cage’sabsolute quest, not the search or a new language,but that o opening the music to the unspeakableworld o chance, but opening as a way o breaking the traditional codes beyond the endlessdeadlock o all academic mimetologies . Tat wasalso the last search o Yago Conde, this preciseindetermination o the architecture meaning 4.But an indetermination that is not the innite

search o randomness, but architecture ownprecariousness. Precariousness as provisionality against the automatization o the sel closeddiscourses; precariousness as experimentation,questioning, in each moment, architectureitsel and the excessively precise meaningsthat we orget already to interrogate. In short:precariousness as a way to be aware, against theexcessively comort o the habits.

I. Te provisional space - making (himself at)home

Te uncertain as the unpredictable andindetermination as the provisional are themeanings o the word chance that interests usto emphasize, nonetheless they are also themeanings that arise rom the etymological origino this word. Casus ( the Latin word or chance)meant not only an occurrence, an opportunity, but named also the very act o alling (cadentia), o what unpredictably alls, happens, andthereore perishes 5. What becomes relevant inour digression through this word is that whatwe call today casa (house in Portuguese, Spanishand Italian) has precisely the same etymologicalorigin as the word chance (acaso)6. o theRomans the word casa didn’t mean something solid or steady, but a temporary and precariousconstruction, a hut , a shed. Tat was this wordand not the word domus (the lord domains)7 to

name this distinguished and unique place o thehuman dwell and privacy against the exteriority reveals much about the precariousness o thename and action that the word casa (house) still

today designates. I, in one hand, the domus invokes at once this triumphant action over theterritory and over the nature, in other hand,the name casa brings within itsel, and clearly,this precariousness and ragility not only o its construction, but o the very act/event o

making onesel to dwell and to occupy a place orpracticing this reside, this being-in-the world.I, as Heidegger says, to move toward the words is to move toward the world 8, and i theory andthe exercise o writing are, most o all, a tool box ,as Foucault wrote, so the question that cometo us should be, what can we make with thosenames and what can they identiy and oer toour daily activity? In this case, the words remindus that even behind the appearance and stability o the name casa , it is something prooundly precarious and provisional, but simultaneously something that is made upon this provisionality. Te house-project, as something absolutely predened and nished, should be replaced ashouse-tactic, as something thought and designedrecognizing space and time provisional nature.I chance has any meaning as an experience o the world is the awareness o a specic dimensiono lie and dwelling that appears alwaysunprobabilistically, asking always or attention,

answers, but mostly or invention – the ability to listen the unpredictable and to rehearse a (re)action. Because it’s precisely there, in this abruptspace o conrontation that occurs out o thehabitus routine, where is produced the being creative essence in the world, where he produces/nds its own space o action and reedom. Andwhen this happens, when this unpredictable andindeterminate space opens up, we can say thatman makes himsel a home (casa), or maybe, hemakes himsel at home. What the word casus names is precisely this, thatpossibility or something to happen, and thisincalculable happening that the house allowsand oers is the place o the sel, o the being along-the-things; never over-the-world (as in thedomus ), but always provisionally, indeterminate,always opening us into a new and ree relationwith things. Te house is not just a structure ora distracted everyday event, but the practicability that allows the sel a place in the world, not or

him to hide rom it, but to communicate withthe world. Tat this space cannot be predenedin its orm, nor predictable in its meaning, isn’tan imperection o the house, but its git, the

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ultimate possibility that allows architecture itsel,leaving always something to (be)come, to (be)all, and to take place in the world, beyond the world.

2. Te space to come - agio

In the techno imposing landscape o reality any architectural discourse on the house will haveto recognize that it’s mostly an open process, a provisional tactic or a conquest o a place. And,that the last stronghold o the human dwellshouldn’t, and can’t be, a submission to thebureaucratic dictates o laws, markets or images,but always a meditation-excursion in the worldindividual reedom construction, as much as thecreation o a relation space towards the other.

Tis is the meaning o the word agio (at ease),convoked by Giorgio Agamben, that «designates,according to its etymology, the space adjacent(ad-jacens, adjacentia ), the empty place whereeach can move reely, in a semantic constellation- where spatial proximity borders on opportunetime (ad-agio, moving at ease) and convenienceborders on the correct relation»9. Agio is the placeo the ree use o the proper 10, is the space to come, o what is neither determined nor destined, andonly to us is let to be accomplished and achieved. Agamben call it ethos, our ethic possibility, our second nature, but also the unique and possibleplace o our singularity 11. Agio is the space o oursel that is let in suspension, a space-casus and a space-casa, that remains to make and to (be)come .Is not a random place, but the adjacent space,indeterminate in its margins and unpredictablein its nature, which opens up in the limit o thebeing and allows him to conquer its singularity ,his proper place in the world. o have agio is to

make (himsel a) house, it’s to conquer the worldintimate ragility, but it’s moreover, the place-encounter that is made in the presence and searchtowards the other, in the semantic constellation and in the provisional and unique simultaneity between two times and two spaces. It’s a verb more than a name, an action more than a act , anopen and indeterminate space that makes itsel world between man and things12.

3. Te instant space - the memory of the present But isn’t the agio also this indetermination in the

objects limit that Yago Conde was searching, thewhite spaces between the Mallarmé’s phrases, theunsounded silence in John Cage’s music or theduchampian inra mince ? Tis untraceable andunpredictable moment that makes the encounterbetween the work o art and the spectator a ully

individual and inter-subjective event, beyondany universal meaning. Te work o art opens upto chance, to the interpretation adventure, andit’s the interpreter-creator that gives its ultimatemeaning, possessing it, destroying it, remaking it. And when this unique instant is to make casus and casa, happens precisely what we can call theaesthetical momentum. Baudelaire wrote that is the immediate passagerom experience to memory that makes precisely the aesthetical momentum – what he called thememory o the present 13. But isn’t this momentum also that unique instant where the experience issimultaneously already the memory, i.e., wherethe present is already the absent, where what I see is simultaneously what I remember ? Te absoluteand unpredictable synchronization o two times,the untraceable paradox that allows something to escape darkness and be, at last beauty – notby its orm or proportion, but or setting us aceto ace to this human impossibility: to remember

what I still can touch and to touch that which Iknow I will remember , I want to remember. Tatthis unexpected momentum, this slightest instant,can occur and take place, disturbing the limitso our language and interrogating our everyday lie, opening a space – an agio – o closeness andencounter towards the world, is this the ultimatemeaning and aim o the architectonic work. Tatthis can occur unpredictably, indeterminately,and even on the most untraceable and slightestdetail, only reinorces our condence in thearchitecture ability and worth.

4. Te imperceptible space – unveiling the real

All artistic production requires rom us attentionand wake; there is always something to un-veil ,to dis-cover. But the revelation truly content isn’twhat in itsel is to be revealed, but what in itssilence is still let to be said. In other words, notwhat in itsel is inexpugnable, but what is letto me to be said. Te same is to happen in thearchitecture work: i nothing has been let to besaid, and to (be)come, so it means, that nothing

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was in act said. As Agamben writes, «the only content o revelation is what is closed in itsel,what is veiled - the light is just darkness arriving in itsel»14. It is as it would always be necessary some sort o interlude, a space let, but not exactly a void or a silence, rather a threshold that one

can be able to conquer and disclose, reclaiming as yours, intimately yours. As the impending closeness o a revelation that never comes to besaid.In the excursion-in-voyage over Álvaro Siza’sarchitectonic spaces there is always something that remains to be said, there is always anindeterminate meaning, an unpredictable gestureasking or another meaning. Siza’s undamentallesson isn’t in the drawing or in the method,in what we immediately can see, but in whatremains to be seen. For Siza, architecture is mostly a critical and ironic apparatus on the exerciseo the everyday lie. Each building is in itsel a meditation on its condition; each building subverts its own essence and interrogates thenature o our relation with space, with theprograms, with everyday lie. In the distractedlandscape o our daily routine, Siza makes o thearchitectonic space an experience to (be)come, interrogating and provoking us, subverting the

most slightest detail and requiring rom us allconcentration and will, but mostly, all the ease –agio. Te black trace around the Carlos RamosPavilion; the stairs-path accessing the Boa Nova

ea House; the red-colored cube walls in theentrance o the Architecture Faculty o Porto,but also the accelerated perspective in its maincorridor, and in Berlin, the Bonjour ristesse imperceptible eye; they all keep this preciseindetermination o architecture, that ability to

provoke the imponderable, to interrogate, o opening a space in the memory o the present, ripping the veil o knowledge and bringing alwayssomething new, impossible and beauty.

Te Provencal poets (whose songs frst introduce the terminto Romance languages in the orm aizi, aizimen)make ease [agio] a terminus technicus in their poetics,designating the very place o love. Or better, it designates not so much the place o love, but rather love as the

experience o taking-place in a whatever singularity.Giorgio Agamben, Te coming community

P Lvi Bismack (Praia da Granja, 1983) Architect graduated in the Faculty o Architecture o Porto.Studied and worked in Berlin. Is now developing his PhDthesis in FAUP. Lives in Porto. spacingzyx24.blogspot.com

1 Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar.2 Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres.3 Stéphane Mallarmé, A roll o the dice will never abolish chance , 1897.4 Yago Conde, Te architecture o the indeterminacy..5 According to the etymological dictionaries and to San Isidoro de Sevilla (Etymologies ), the origin o the word chance (acaso in

Portuguese) is in the Latin casus (chance, opportunity, accident) that is etymological linked to the verb cadere, that means, to all,to decline, to perish.6 Tis essay, originally written and thought in Portuguese, ollows the root o the name casa into the Latin casus, cadere, uncover-ing a relation between casa e acaso. In roman times, the word casa identied the roman army tents and expressed a temporary and ragile construction. Te English word house is linked to another etymological origin: hiding, concealing (huis ).7 Domus is the Latin word that named the lord’s house and domains (dominium).8 For Heidegger, understanding/ thinking the names behind the words is to understand/think the immemorial relation betweenman and world. CF. Heidegger, Das ding.9 Giorgio Agamben, Te Coming Community, pp. 24.10 Giorgio Agamben, pp. 24.11 Giorgio Agamben, pp. 30.12 Te expression eeling at home, expresses that decisive verbal orm that makes the concretization o the home/house andamplies its provisional meaning as something that takes place, happens, through the momentary production o a space to be in,

an agio.13 Charles Baudelaire, Critique d’art suivi de critique musicale. Te memory o the present reveals, in Baudelaire, the ephemeralmeaning o the present, but retains also the importance o the present experience as construction o a singular memory, an abil-ity to be present in the present, to be aware o the world instant dérive.14 Giorgio Agamben, Te idea o prose. pp. 117.

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Stéphane Mallarmé, Un coup de dés , 1897 (rench edition page, 2003)Le Nombre/ existât-il / autrement qu’hallucination éparse d’agonie / commençât-il et cessât-il / sourdant que nié et closquand apparu / enn / par quelque prousion répandue en rareté / se chirât-il / évidence de la somme pour peu qu’une /illuminât-il / le hasard / Choit / la plume / rythmique suspens du sinistre / s’ensevelir / aux écumes originelles / naguèresd’où sursauta son délire jusqu’à une cime / étrie/ par la neutralité identique du goure.

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Nine variations on the same house

A B C

D E F

G H I

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aTeLier da BoUÇa

Nine variations on the same house

A C C

E G G

H H I

nOteS On the practIce OF chance

The hoUSe aS a SPaTiaL LaBoraTory

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Sm achitct panics with chanc!

Some spatial design wishes tocompletely determinate thelie that occurs and will alwaysoccur within them. Making an

analogy with theater, we wouldsay that they wish in the be-ginning to know and give a tacit answer to an argument, a narrative totally predened. I this narrative isn’t available inthe beginning, becomes itsel object o design in its nitude.

Understanding chance assomething that happens with-

out being consequence o a past event, that is, an eectthat is not explained with a precedent determination, inthese design chance it’s a dra-ma, a terror! Te spaces thateliminate the surprise, thatarrange and predict all, have somuch araid o bad surprises(ew condence in the space

abilities) that eliminate any chances o good surprises.

Chanc is thlss

Chance exists and it’s impos-sible, besides being needless,to design it. As in all tasks thatlead with the course o things

in time, we pursuit to design/set the uture, this desire, weknow it rom the beginning, isin its completeness unachiev-able, but who said that wereally want to predict all?

Can’t we (nor could we evenwanting…) know chance, andset it? o what extent? o whatextent do we want to close all

the ways out and leave a am-ily/institution/community en-closed? Isn’t comort the possi-bility o chance, the multitudeo appropriations, the machineopen to its manipulations?

Achitct maniplats thspac f chanc

“Te idea that architectureshould acilitate all move-ments, likewise, is to assumethat the architecture does not

take a philosophical position,or example in relation to thepeople’s lie, seems to me non-sense. In other words, I preera house that hinders me, orthat put obstacles to preventme o doing silly things andacilitates movements to makesensible things”

Gonçalo M. avares1

Filipa Cast Gi an iag Mac Cia [atli a ba]Tey born in 1976, graduating in the Faculty o Architecture o Porto in 2000. Teir activity as architects is going on since2001 and in 2008 they establish the Atelier da Bouça. Filipa teaches in FAUP and was rom 2008-2010 responsible or thedivision o communication in the OASRN. Both (ab)use rom their house as spatial laboratory and share the obsession o the void as matter o architecture.

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Chanc can infm th achi-tctnic sign

Everything as a tendency to anequilibrium, things take, natu-rally, it’s just place, i.e., adaptto the rituals/movements that

we make in space and time.“Observez un jour, non pas dansun restaurant de luxe où l’inter-vention arbitraire des garçonset des sommeliers détruit monpoème, observez dans un petitcasse-croûte populaire, deux outrois convives ayant pris leur caéet causant. La table est couverteencore de verres, de bouteilles,d’assiettes, l’huilier, le sel, le

poivre, la serviette lerond de serviette, etc. Voyezl’ordre atal qui met tous ces objetsen rapport les uns avec les autres;ils ont tous servi, ils ont été saisispar la main de l’un ou de l’autredes convives; les distances qui lesséparent sont la mesure de la vie.C’est une composition mathéma-tiquement agencée ; il n’y a pas unlieu aux, un hiatus, une trompe-rie. Si un cinéaste non hallucinépar Hollywood était là, tournantcette nature morte, en ‘gros plan’,nous aurions un témoin de pureharmonie» Le Corbusier2

And i, even separating reality rom appearance, our routinesmove aster than the time thatobjects take to set? And i we

don’t want to install perenni-ally and obtusely the comortand, on the contrary, throughthe strange disposition o object, we want the space tooblige us to change?

Intnsifying, “pacticing chanc” infms th pacticf sign…

When one passes rom a sim-ple observer to player, whenwe explore the limits o ex-ibility and rene/radicalize our

own experiences (laboratorial),ollowing the scientic method(problem - premise resulting rom experience -, hypoth-esis - project that answers theproblem - , experience - spaceconstruction -, observation -analysis o the advantages andproblems imposed by the new space, leading to new prem-

ises – we gather an amount o inormation liable o gener-alization and thereore useulto qualiy/guaranty exibility devices to the spaces that wepropose.It is in this way and with thisaim that we (ab)use intensively (o) the house as a spatiallaboratory…or the pleasure o chance as manipulation o the

predened, or just because welike beginnings.

1 Gonçalo M. avares in Pedro Pacheco and Luis Santiago Batista (curadores), Let’s talk about houses …in Portugal (exhibition).rienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa, 2010.

2 Le Corbusier, Prologue Américain, in Précisions, Collection de L’Esprit nouveau. Altamira, 1997.

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Team Pedro Levi Bismarck Pedro Oliveira Carlos Castro

Design

Punkto

ConTribuTions Atelier da Bouça Pedro Levi Bismarck Miguel LealGodoredo Pereira

PrinT Minerva

PrinTing 1000 copies

DisTribuTion

Free

Cover image

taken romRotorelies series,Marcel Duchamp, 1923

ConTaCTs

[email protected]

ARchitectuRe

ObseRvAtORy

SPoNSor: ASSoCIAção de eSudANeS dA FACuLdAde de ArquIeCurA dA uNIVerSIdAde do Poro

SRU DEMOLIÇÕES

POR CIMA.....OU.....POR BAIXO!

J Á E R A

J Á E R A J Á E R A

ESPECIALISTAS EM DESTRUIR PATRIMÓNIO!!!

......TENHA O MELHOR DE DOIS MUNDOS!

JUNTE O URBAN OLD CENTER STYLE MAS COM TODOS OS CONFORTOS E SEGURANÇA DE UM CONDOMÍNIO DE LUXO!VENHA CONHECER OS NOVOS CONCEITOS RESIDENCE IN THE CIT Y-CONFORT-LIVING-LOUNGE-URBAN-TERRACE-SECURITY-GARAGE-LUXURY-CCTV QUE TEMOS PARA SI!

punktO nº1

November 2010

Porto

aDVertISInG

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punktO - chance

GLOSSarY . A HROW OF HE DICE,Mallarmé, critical poem, Baudelaire, Flâneur,Les Fleurs du mal, the memory o the present,reedom, or me just reedon, Walter Benjamin,arcades, André Breton, surrealism, Sant-

Pol Rox, the poet is working, Louis Aragon, André Masson, Freud, Sigmund, unconscient,automatic drawing,Raymond Roussel, JAMAIS, Exquisite corpse,quand bien même lancé dans des circonstanceeternelles, Dada, Le chien andalou, MarcelDuchamp, La mariée en mise à nu par sescélibataires, même, Inra thin, 50cc air de Paris,letrism, situacionism, psicogeography, dérive,

Débord, imponderability, indetermination,uncertainty, hasard, azar, al-azhar, dice, alea iacta est, Julius César, Brutus, ABOLISH, chaos,theory, wing beat, explanations, uncertainty principle, butteries, determining every causes ispredicting every phenomena, God does not play the dice, Einstein, probability, oracles, yche,ortune, goddess, I-ching, book o chances,destin, the garden o orking paths, Jorge LuisBorges, time, space, labirinth, spaces, GeorgesPerec, Erik Satie, John Cage, ontana mix,Fortunately, somewhere between chance andmystery lies imagination, the only thing thatprotects our reedom, despite the act that peoplekeep trying to reduce it or kill it o altogether,Luis Buñuel, CHANCE, beyond all mimetology,all the experimentation and complete reedom,

casus, event, rules or sexual engagement,alling, we are all agreed that your theory iscrazy; the question which divides us is whetherit is crazy enough to have a chance o being correct; my own eeling is that it is not crazy enough, la espanhola quando besa, polka dotsand moonbeams, dialectic materialism, certicatd’authencité, or me with two rocks, the north isbeautiul, oh go! you are beautiul, São Romão

do Coronado, Rien de la mémorable crise ou seût l’evénement, try again, ail again, better again,oute Pensée émet UN COUP DES DÉS.

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Punkto magazine is an irregular, unPredictable, and indisciPlined Publication about limits: of Practice, of theory, of art and architecture.

P E D R O B I S

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v a n d a l i s mp r o f a n a t i o n v i l l a

m u l l e r

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G i o r g i o

A g a m b e n

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l o M . T a v a r e s

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S a m u e l B e c k e t t

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K e n t K l e i n m a n

AT E LI E R D A B O U Ç A

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