FORMULARY FOR A NEW URBANISM
Ivan Chtchelov
SIRE, I AM FROM THE OTHER COUNTRY
We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun. Between
the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey wrench and
the surrealists a crystal cup. That's lost. We know how to read every
promise in faces--the latest stage of morphology. The poetry of the
billboards lasted twenty years. We are bored in the city, we really have to
strain to still discover mysteries on the sidewalk billboards, the latest
state of humor and poetry:
Shower
Bath of the Patriarchs
Meat Cutting Machines
Notre Dame Zoo
Sports Pharmacy
Martyrs Provisions
Translucent Concrete
Golden Touch Sawmill
Center for Functional Recuperation
Sainte Anne Ambulance
Cafe Fifth Avenue
Prolonged Volunteers Street
Family Boarding House in the Garden
Hotel of Strangers
Wild Street
And the swimming pool on the Street of Little Girls. And the police station
on Rendezvous Street. The medical-surgical clinic and the free placement
center on the Quai des Orfevres. The artificial flowers on Sun Street. The
Castle Cellars Hotel, the Ocean Bar and the Coming and Going Cafe. The
Hotel of the Epoch.
And the strange statue of Dr. Philippe Pinel, benefactor of the insane, in
the last evenings of summer. To explore Paris
.
And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two
hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music and
without geography, no longer setting out for the hacienda where the roots
think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an
old almanac. Now that's finished. You'll never see the hacienda. It doesn't
exist.
The hacienda must be built.
All cities are geological; you cannot take three steps without encountering
ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed
landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past. Certain
shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us to glimpse
original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary. It must
be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and surrealist writings:
castles, endless walls, little forgotten bars, mammoth caverns, casino
mirrors.
These dated images retain a small catalyzing power, but it is almost
impossible to use them in a symbolic urbanism without rejuvenating them by
giving them a new meaning. Our imaginations, haunted by the old archetypes,
have remained far behind the sophistication of the machines. The various
attempts to integrate modern science into new myths remain inadequate.
Meanwhile abstraction has invaded all the arts, contemporary architecture
in particular. Pure plasticity, inanimate, storyless, soothes the eye.
Elsewhere other fragmentary beauties can be found -- while the promised
land of syntheses continually recedes into the distance. Everyone wavers
between the emotionally still -- alive past and the already dead future.
We will not work to prolong the mechanical civilizations and frigid
architecture that ultimately lead to boring leisure.
We propose to invent new, changeable decors....
Darkness and obscurity are banished by artificial lighting, and the seasons
by air conditioning; night and summer are losing their charm and dawn is
disappearing. The man of the cities thinks he has escaped from cosmic
reality, but there is no corresponding expansion of his dream life. The
reason is clear: dreams spring from reality and are realized in it.
The latest technological developments would make possible the individual's
unbroken contact with cosmic reality while eliminating its disagreeable
aspects. Stars and rain can be seen through glass ceilings. The mobile
house turns with the sun. Its sliding walls enable vegetation to invade
life. Mounted on tracks, it can go down to the sea in the morning and
return to the forest in the evening.
Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of
modulating reality, of engendering dreams. It is a matter not only of
plastic articulation and modulation expressing an ephemeral beauty, but of
a modulation producing influences in accordance with the eternal spectrum
of human desires and the progress in realizing them.
The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present
conceptions of time and space. It will be a means of knowledge and a means
of action.
The architectural complex will be modifiable. Its aspect will change
totally or partially in accordance with the will of its inhabitants....
Past collectivities offered the masses an absolute truth and
incontrovertable mythical exemplars. The appearance of the notion of
relativity in the modern mind allows one to surmise the EXPERIMENTAL aspect
of the next civilization (although I'm not satisfied with that word; say,
more supple, more "fun"). On the bases of this mobile civilization,
architecture will, at least initially, be a means of experimenting with a
thousand ways of modifying life, with a view to a mythic synthesis.
A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization. Everyone is hypnotized
by production and conveniences sewage system, elevator, bathroom, washing
machine.
This state of affairs, arising out of a struggle against poverty, has
overshot its ultimate goal--the liberation of man from material cares--and
become an obsessive image hanging over the present. Presented with the
alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all
countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit. It has become essential to
bring about a complete spiritual transformation by bringing to light
forgotten desires and by creating entirely new ones. And by carrying out an
intensive propaganda in favor of these desires.
We have already pointed out the need of constructing situations as being
one of the fundamental desires on which the next civilization will be
founded. This need for absolute creation has always been intimately
associated with the need to play with architecture, time and space....
Chirico remains one of the most remarkable architectural precursors. He was
grappling with the problems of absences and presences in time and space. We
know that an object that is not consciously noticed at the time of a first
visit can, by its absence during subsequent visits, provoke an indefinable
impression: as a result of this sighting backward in time, the absence of
the object becomes a presence one can feel. More precisely: although the
quality of the impression generally remains indefinite, it nevertheless
varies with the nature of the removed object and the importance accorded it
by the visitor, ranging from serene joy to terror. (It is of no particular
significance that in this specific case memory is the vehicle of these
feelings; I only selected this example for its convenience.)
In Chirico's paintings (during his Arcade period) an empty space creates a
full-filled time. It is easy to imagine the fantastic future possibilities
of such architecture and its influence on the masses. Today we can have
nothing but contempt for a century that relegates such blueprints to its
so--called museums.
This new vision of time and space, which will be the theoretical basis of
future constructions, is still imprecise and will remain so until
experimentation with patterns of behavior has taken place in cities
specifically established for this purpose, cities assembling--in addition
to the facilities necessary for a minimum of comfort and security--
buildings charged with evocative power, symbolic edifices representing
desires, forces, events past, present and to come. A rational extension of
the old religious systems, of old tales, and above all of psychoanalysis,
into architectural expression becomes more and more urgent as all the
reasons for becoming impassioned disappear.
Everyone will live in his own personal "cathedral," so to speak. There will
be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and houses where one
cannot help but love. Others will be irresistibly alluring to travelers....
This project could be compared with the Chinese and Japanese gardens of
illusory perspectives [en trompe l'oeiI]--with the difference that those
gardens are not designed to be lived in all the time--or with the
ridiculous labyrinth in the Jardin des Plantes, at the entry to which is
written (height of absurdity, Ariadne unemployed): Games are forbidden in
the labyrinth. This city could be envisaged in the form of an arbitrary
assemblage of castles, grottos, lakes, etc. It would be the baroque stage
of urbanism considered as a means of knowledge. But this theoretical phase
is already outdated. We know that a modern building could be constructed
which would have no resemblance to a medieval castle but which could
preserve and enhance the Castle poetic power (by the conservation of a
strict minimum of lines, the transposition of certain others, the
positioning of openings, the topographical location, etc.).
The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of
diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life.
Bizarre Quarter--Happy Quarter (specially reserved for habitation) -- Noble
and Tragic Quarter (for good children)--Historical Quarter (museums,
schools)--Useful Quarter (hospital, tool shops) --Sinister Quarter, etc.
And an Astrolaire which would group plant species in accordance with the
relations they manifest with the stellar rhythm, a planetary garden
comparable to that which the astronomer Thomas wants to establish at Laaer
Berg in Vienna. Indispensable for giving the inhabitants a consciousness of
the cosmic. Perhaps also a Death Quarter, not for dying in but so as to
have somewhere to live in peace, and I think here of Mexico and of a
principle of cruelty in innocence that appeals more to me every day.
The Sinister Quarter, for example, would be a good replacement for those
hellholes that many peoples once possessed in their capitals: they
symbolized all the evil forces of life. The Sinister Quarter would have no
need to harbor real dangers, such as traps, dungeons or mines. It would be
difficult to get into, with a hideous decor (piercing whistles, alarm
bells, sirens wailing intermittently, grotesque sculptures, power-driven
mobiles, called Auto-Mobiles), and as poorly lit at night as it is
blindinglylit during the day by an intensive use of reflection. At the
center, the "Square of the Appalling Mobile." Saturation of the market with
a product causes the product's market value to fall: thus, as they explored
the Sinister Quarter, the child and the adult would learn not to fear the
anguishing occasions of life, but to be amused by them.
The principal activity of the inhabitants will be the CONTINUOUS DÉRIVE.
The changing of landscapes from one hour to the next will result in
complete disorientation....
Later, as the gestures inevitably grow stale, this dérive will partially
leave the realm of direct experience for that of representation....
The economic obstacles are only apparent. We know that the more a place is
set apart for free play, the more it influences people's behavior and the
greater is its force of attraction. This is demonstrated by the immense
prestige of Monaco and Las Vegas--and Reno, that caricature of free
love--although they are mere gambling places. Our first experimental city
would live largely off tolerated and controlled tourism. Future avant-garde
activities and productions would naturally tend to gravitate there. In a
few years it would become the intellectual capital of the world and would
be universally recognized as such.
