AA Dip 14 Term1

36
e Grid and e Administrated Society Charles Lai Diploma 14

description

These thesis explores the potential of the grid as an spatial appartus, as a remedy to the contemporary conditions in the city where there is no boundaries between work and rest, flux and stay...

Transcript of AA Dip 14 Term1

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The Grid and

The Administrated Society

Charles LaiDiploma 14

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image on cover:

Agnes Martin, untitled, 1960

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Abstract

The managerial power upon the subject is visible in the urbanization projects. They are in fact the apparatus for organising and utilizing the population and territories’

economic potential. ‘Rule by no-body’ is the rule by statistics, calculations, and rationality; The use of grid and urbanization as an apparatus to perform managerial power over the subjects are the empirical evident that we can examine in order to

understand the mechanism of subjectivity reproduction.

With the invention of perspective theory the power of uniformity and axiality is discovered and the political power of architecture and urban spaces are revealed.

Spanish King, King Philip II, developed the Law of Indies in the late 1500s to guide the settler of the New World on how to achieve the ultimate goal of colonisation: to conquer the Indies so that they can freely exploit the economic potential of the

land. The setting up of plaza and grid network of roads was not only a mean to allow smooth circulation over the terrain: It is a mean to express the power of the Spaniard regime; A mean to docile or in other words, tame the subjects. Mexico

City is one of the earliest examples of Spanish settlement that was laid out according to the Laws. Its legacy still lingers today as it explicitly influenced the town-

planning policy of the US government.

Cerda’s good intention to embetter the life of the working class is a great example. His belief in justice drove him to a design a city of grids, a system which was the best in distributing benefits and burdens. The plan was pure scientific apparatus

to achieve ‘equality’ and a diagrammatic layout of movements within the city. Within the grid, affordable housing in humane conditions can be built. He rejected Rousseau’s observation of a society with no space for individual’s intimate private ‘heart’. In order to prove that equality doesn’t lead to monotony, he was forced to design various types of model row-houses and ‘interways’ that comply with his

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requirements of speed, light, air, etc. For the sake of justice and equality he evenstarted to include designs of doors and windows and even staircases with handrails in his project. The reason was never explained in his text. ‘The General Theory of

Urbanisation’ became a specific manual of a managerial power.

Perhaps at some point he realized that individuality and equality always go in two different directions; by extending the public realm of society to promote equality, he unconsciously hijacked the individuality of his subjects. No matter how hard he tried he landed on a definite number of variations and could never satisfy the

individualistic quality of his human subjects. The ‘rise of social’ will inevitably violate human ‘heart’ - the intimacy of his/her private life, a condition discovered

by Rousseau and agreed by Hannah Arendt.

Rousseau said, ‘man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains.’ That is perhaps his frustrations towards the inherent contradictions of managerial

intervention.

But if we take a look at other examples of grids, it is not difficult to notice that it is a powerful apparatus to organise the world, allowing human’s individuality to

built upon. From Gaudi’s architecture in the grid of Barcelona, to OMA’s proposal for Exposition Universelle 1989 and Mission Grand Axe in 1991, we witnesses the ability of the grid as an infrastructure for the complexity of the multi-valance of the world. As art critic Rosalind Krauss described, it is a structure that allows a

‘contradiction between the values of science and those of spiritualism to maintain themselves within the consciousness of modernism.’ Through apparatus of the grid we are able to fragment the complexity of the world, examine it carefully so that we

understand it, and upon which we then build a civilization on.

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< I >Managerial Paradigm – from slavery to bio-political administration

Since modernity, the subtle undercurrent of social management administrated our everyday lives in a seemingly anonymous way. When talking about management I am referring to the administrations of the human subjects as a political and social form. The word management obtained its general meaning as the managerial actions conducted by managers in a private enterprise in later stages of capitalism when production become more specialized. The ownership of the means of productions, the bourgeoisie, hence dedicated the operational functions, such as anticipating market demands, planning of production capacity, monitoring of labour and machines, etc. to certain members of the employed workforce and called them managers.

As defined by James Burnham in his book the Managerial Revolution, management essentially means the ‘separation of ownership and control.’(^1). He said ‘Managers at earlier stages of capitalism, around the time of Adam Smith, are capitalist. …But when there are changes in the technique of production, the function of managers become more distinctive, more complex, and more specialized.’(^2)(^image 1). The apparatus of managers are numbers and calculations. They measure quantitatively the quantity demanded by market, cost of productions, and calculate the most rational output volume. These cultures of capitalist production existed before James Burnham’s time as apparatus of administration by the nation state. And this culture of rational decisions shaped the subjective of many generations before us.

1. James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution, Penguin Books Ltd., UK, 1942, pp. 70-81

2. ibid, pp. 70-81

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image 1:

Photo of a capitalist and the workers in his factory during Industrial Revolution

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The concept of management over another human subjects can be traced back to Ancient Greek’s slavery. Slaves are managed with violence and threats and enforced into economic productions in Ancients Greek city-states. So by ruling over slaves, they are free from necessity of life, from having to ‘make a living’, as described by Hannah Arendt. (^3)After the Antiquity period, Europe was mainly dominated by Feudalism. Then in 17th century to 18th century Europe there was a shift in political form. The sovereign’s focus was no longer the ‘security of the prince’, but the ‘security of the population’, especially in the town, in order to legitimize their power and avoid revolts in town. (^4) Population was then considered as the economical asset and the territory was to be managed properly so to serve as the ground for productions, distribution and exchange of economic goods.

The invention of statistics in the 17th century allowed the rational control of the population. Information about the population and territory can be gathered systematically and compare quantitatively. For example the invention of the mortality table by John Graunt in 1663 (^image 2) was used to log numbers and causes of deaths in different areas of the territory. It allowed for the setting up of a ’normation’, normal condition by which the population remain ‘healthy’ and productive. The bio-political state considered the individuals as members of the collective population. The well-being of the population is abstracted into figures and monitored rationally with a distance. These apparatus of management constituted the initially concept of Police, which, generally in the 17th and 18th Century, concerns with ‘well-being’ of the population. Foucault concluded these concerns into thirteen categories: religion, morals, health and subsistence, public peace, the care of buildings, squares, and highways, the sciences and the liberal arts, commerce, manufacture and the mechanical arts, servants and laborers, the theater and games, and finally the care and discipline of the poor, (^5) as described in Delamare’s Compendium. Primarily the police was to maintain the flow of

3. Hannah Arendt described slavery in Classical Greek city-states. Slavery is a mean to escape from necessity, from economic productions, so that the citizens can spare time on other aspects of life.

‘…for instance, by ruling over slaves—and to become free. Because all human beings are subject to necessity, they are entitled to violence toward others; violence is the prepolitical act of liberating oneself from the necessity of life for the freedom of world.’

See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd edn, The university of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1998, pp. 128-129

4. Foucault discussing the shift of the sovereign’s political focuses

‘No longer the safety (sûreté) of the prince and his territory, but the security (sécurité) of the population and, consequently,of those who govern it. I think this is another very important change.’

See Michel Foucault, Security, Territory and Population, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2004, p.93

5. Foucault discussing the concept of Police

‘Delamare’s compendium, and those that followed it, generally specify thirteen domains with which police must be concerned. These are religion, morals, health and subsistence, public peace, the care of buildings, squares, and highways, the sciences and the liberal arts, commerce, manufacture and the mechanical arts, servants and laborers, the theater and games, and finally the care and discipline of the poor, as a “considerable part of the public good.’‘I think you can see that this confirms what I was saying to you last week, namely that police, in the general sense of the term in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is concerned with living and more than just living, living and better than just living. As Montchrétien said, not only being is necessary, but also “well-being.”§ What is actually involved is the goodness, preservation, convenience, and pleasures of life.’

ibid, p.435

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image 2:

Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt in 1662

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human and goods in the road, the town and the marketplace. These functions could be interpreted as the urbanization of territories in contemporary terms (^6), the apparatus of the bio-political management.

One of the earliest forms of urbanization is the grid, which can be traced back to the Classical era. The Greek developed the grid city as a more sophisticated structure to distribute spaces within the city-state and its citizens. It was called the Hippodamian Plan (^image 3), following its inventor Hippodamus of Miletus. The Roman uses grids purely with practical reasons. The Roman constructed military camps and colonies with a land-division system called ‘Centuriatio’. It was a universal system to control their territory and was a mean to conquer. The legacy of the grid in the practice of urbanization continued in Modernity. One of the major forms of cities is the grid. The isotopic geometry of the grid is very efficient in organizing entities within the urban environment. Therefore if it is true that the ultimate agenda of the Modernity is to organize and to categorize things in the world, the grid is the embodiment of that culture. In some example it is used simply as a geometrical device to divide land equally, to lay down infrastructures such as roadways, while in some example it is used as a mean of seclusion and isolation.

The grid in the Laws of the Indies during the 16th Century embodied European super-power’s political agenda of Imperialism. The neo-liberal traces well suit the ideology of the United States and influenced her urban-planning policy. These cities in the New World in turn influenced Ildefon Cerda and his design for the city of Barcelona in the 19th Century. He advanced the apparatus of the grid for his vision to create a fair, harmonious city but couldn’t escape the fate of threatening individual freedom. In the 20th century, OMA used the grid with a completely different intension of isolating heterogeneous conditions to allow freedom within the private realm of the walled square. The dilemma of the grid lay on the fact that it both control and liberate individual. All these example of the grid share a geometrical resemblance but differ in terms of the primary concerns and levels of which they operate.

6. Relationship between the concept of Police and Urbanization

‘These are the institutions prior to police. The town and the road, the market,and the road network feeding the market. Hence the fact that in the seventeenth and eighteenth century police was thought essentially in terms of what could be called the urbanization of the territory. Basically, this involved making the kingdom, the entire territory, into a sort of big town; arranging things so that the territory is organized like a town, on the model of a town, and as perfectly as a town. We should recall that in his Traité de droit public,* which is very important for all these problems of the connection between police power and juridical sovereignty.’

ibid, p.438

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image 3:

Hippodamian Plan

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< II >Laws of the Indies and the politics of architecture

The first paradigm of the grid we examine is the Laws of Indies. It embodied the political ambitions of the Spainish colonization. The ordinances codified the way how these new settlement in the New World should look like. The grid not only serve as a mean to divide and manage the territory, it also serve the intention to tame the native Indians. It is a collection of laws issued by the Spanish King Philip II in 1573 for the colonization of America. The colonization, which began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus, aimed to expand the territory of the Spanish Empire in order to exploit the natural resources of the New World and to inflate the market for economic productions. The 148 ordinances in the Laws of the Indies specified how the settlers in the New World should interact with the native Indians of America. It ranged from how the settlers should choose the location of settlements, to the way on how the town and public buildings should be built, and even to the specific conduct of the settlers. These ordinances not only regulate the physical geography of the townscape, but also allow us to examine the intention of the Spaniard to construct a new subjectivity within the natives.

When the new settlers arrive at the New World, the first thing they need to do is to choose a place for the town, with consideration of climates, ease of transportation, potential of the town to expand, and without violating the free-consent of the Indies.

‘… a plan for the site is to be made, dividing it into squares, streets, and building lots, using cord and ruler, beginning with the main square from which streets are to run to the gates and principal roads and leaving sufficient open space so that even if the town grows, it can always spread in the same manner.’

Laws of the Indies, Ordinance 110

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image 4:

Mexico City, as in 1628

image 5:

Mexico City, as in 1890

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The settlers should start by dividing the land into squares and run streets according to the grid. The center of the town is the plaza, which would be used to held fiestas, a cultural activity important to the Spaniards. (^7)The isotropic quality of the grid allowed the town to grow and extend. One of the most well-know examples is the Mexico City, which was built upon an existing Aztec city, Tenochtitlan. (^image 4, 5) City walls are not common in these new settlements. The houses are to be built on the edges so that they surround the important public buildings. They can be used as fortifications and barricades against the Indians when they offend the Spanish settlements. (Ordinance 133)

Plaza, hospital, royal council, cabildo and most importantly the church are to be ‘decorated better’ and ‘raised from ground level’ to signify the importance. (Ordinance 124) Their significance laid not only on the fact that they provide convenience to the new settlers but they are also the symbol of the bio-political management of the nation state; the symbol of the European civilization in the New World. Buildings besides these public facilities are to be constructed by private sectors; the right to build on the grid was basically given to the hand of investors. This liberty and flexibilities enjoyed by the capitalists well suit the neo-liberal ideology of the United States of American and hence their city-planning policies were heavily influenced by the Laws of the Indies. (^image 6, 7) Most of their cities are organized in grid layout.

We can observe that the Laws of the Indies are not limited to regulating and urbanizing the territory, but also include a political agenda, primarily, to tame the Indians.

‘They shall try as far as possible to have the buildings all of one type for the sake of the beauty of the town.’

Laws of the Indies, Ordinance 134

‘… When the Indians see them they will be stuck with admiration and will understand that the Spaniards are there to settle permanently and not temporarily. They (the Spaniards) should be so feared that they (the Indians) will not dare offend them, but they will respect them and desire their friendship.’

Laws of the Indies, Ordinance 137

On one hand the grid plan of these new settlements allow for a rapid production of urban fabric simply by repetitions, but on the other hand the perspectival spaces created within the town is also relevant. The uniformity achieved by an array of buildings on a linear street is the manifestation of the grid. It expresses the power

7. Ordinance in the Laws of the Indies regulated the growth of town from plaza

‘The main plaza is to be the starting point for the town; if the town is situated on the sea coast, it should be placed at the landing place of the port, but inland it should be at the center of the town. The plaza should be square or rectangular, in which case it should have at least one and a half its width for length inasmuch as this shape is best for fiestas in which horses are used and for any other fiestas that should be held.’

See Laws of the Indies, ordinance 112

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image 7:

City of Philadelphia, 1796

image 6:

City of Chicago, 1898

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of the Spanish Empire by creating amusements and admiration in the Indians. This political potential of architecture and urbanization was discovered in conjunction with the invention of linear perspective.

Even since the observation of the lines converging into a vanishing point and the success in replicating them in painting, theory of linear perspective were ‘invented’. It established a common ground for human to perceive the reality through the rational logic of mathematics.

‘Perspective became a potential effectuator of power. …And when architecture petrifies its passage and forces movement and vision into the same privileged paths, even more so is architecture politicized.’

Robin Evans, Projective Cast, P.141

The grid in the perspectival paintings during the Renassance not only signifies a better representation of the three-dimensional world, it also releases human figures in the imaginative space within the two-dimensional plane of the canvas. As Robin Evans described, ‘these phantoms, so very easy to produce as long as they stay in line and follow directions, are contrivance of the technique.’ (^8)

If we look at Piero della Francesca’s Ideal City painting in 1470, (^image 8) we can observe that the path of movement in the drawing is identical to the vista, the line of vision of the viewer. The buildings are aligned to provide a void that give birth to axiality and symmetry. These new synthesis transcended the canvas into the city and its architecture. The linear streets in the grid, which formed a perspectival space, activated architecture as a political, social device. This void, unobstructed, perspectival space of the street symbolizes a public realm, a common ground for subjects. It becomes an apparatus in the city to inform the individual about presence of the others; of the collective.

8. Robin Evans, The Projective Cast, MIT Press, Cambridge and London, p.140

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image 8:

Ideal City painting, Piero della Francesca, 1470

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< III >Eixample of Barcelona and the ‘Rule of Nobody’

Ildefons Cerda’s plan for Barcelona is another attempt to use the grid as an apparatus of management. (^image 9) The intention to manage, to distribute resources among the city, emanates to the scale of individual’s daily life, and eventually outrun the creator’s expectation to threat individuality. Cerda was trained as a civil engineer. He designed the Eixample, the new extension for the once-walled city of Barcelona. In 1867, he published the book ‘The General Theory of Urbanization’ to demonstrate his rationale behind the design. Although he didn’t win the competition for the new plan of the city, he managed to convince the government to adopt his ideas. Unfortunately his plan wasn’t implemented accurately in reality and only part of his visions is realized.

One of the major driving force of the design is the requirement of speed. Impressed by the locomotion of the steam boat during a journey, (^9) he realized that the modern city requires speed and smooth movement of human, goods, light, air, and even information. As a result he chooses the grid as one of the most efficient way of distributing and de-densify buildings in order to allow smooth movements within

9. Cerda’s inspiration of the design, conceived during a trip on steam boat

‘Shortly thereafter, having already journeyed under sail at sea, I took a short trip on a steam boat . I have never been able to forget the new amazement I felt at seeing the very same engine that I had observed ... on a fixed ground or base, providing the driving force for many other machines which were also fixed and stable upon the same medium, needing here neither it s own stability nor that of the other objects which it drove, nor even that of the medium on which these devices pulsated. Instead, engine, mechanism, devices, and medium were all moving at the same time, ultimately producing a complete system of movement and of locomotion more powerful , safer, faster, and more convenient than any previously known.’

See Ildefons Cerda, The General Theory of Urbanization, extracted from Cerda: The five bases of the General Theory of Urbanization, edited by Arturo Soria Y Puig, p.53

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image 9:

Ildefons Cerda, plan of Eixample, Barcelona

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the city. The corners of the streets are also chamfered to fit the turning radius of the vehicles.

However his major agenda for the design was led by his beliefs in social justice. He carried out a systematic and extensive statistic on the life of the working class in Barcelona (^image 10). One of the major expenses of the working class is housing. The original purpose of his plan was to provide a less dense living condition with adequate light and air, and at the same time affordable for the working class. The grid was simply a scientific apparatus to distribute resources in a seemingly rational way. (^image 11, 12)At the same time the system of public facilities, such as parks that diffused into the private plots and hospitals, are distributed accordingly. The isotropic system could grow rapidly simply by multiplying the fabric. Cerda believed he could eliminate land speculation and allow the different classes in Barcelona to live ‘harmoniously’ by putting forth these social justices. (^10)

Cerda’s plan was criticized as monotonous. However, he is a believer in individualism in contrast (^11). So in order to prove his grid planning for Barcelona will not led to monotony, he engaged into another scale of design. For him, the grid is simply a scientific way of distribution; an infrastructure for the individuality to build upon.

As a result, besides explanations on the scientific methods of distribution, Cerda also included a variety of templates for housing, windows, doors and even sewage caps. (^image 13-19) He never explained the purposes of these design explicitly. Perhaps it is because he could never comprehend a reasonable one that could satisfy both his beliefs in Justice and Individualism.

The limit of the managerial paradigm laid on the fact it is impossible for one to manage individuality; the intimate life of individuals. No matter how much effort Cerda devoted into the design of these various templates, he could never design for each and every individual. The seeming rational approaches endangered these managerial paradigms since they are simply bounded rationality, constrained by the information the manager can grasp hold of. The more powerful the managerial paradigm is, the more it subjectivitify the individual subject. In other words, less individual freedom is enjoyed.

When we examine the sectional drawing of Cerda’s Barcelona, it is obvious that he anticipated a particularization in built environment, ie. the separation of distinct

10. ‘The fundamental basis on which any technical expert must proceed, must first and foremost always be justice, and justice demands, requires, imposes this uniformity and equality, which fools call monotony, Justice is always equal and uniform for all…’

See Ildefons Cerda, The General Theory of Urbanization, 1867, p.701, extracted from Cerda: The five bases of the General Theory of Urbanization, edited by Arturo Soria Y Puig, Electa Espana, p.75

11. ‘ Individualism is a natural tendency in man, whi never wants himself or his own business to be confused with others; and this tendency, which from a certain perspective and in a certain sense may have been neutralized during that lengthy era monment when, tired of the abjness in which he had been, he could hear and second the voice from the depths of his conscience, which said to him, Go forth and be first in the path to human perfection.’

See Ildefons Cerda, The General Theory of Urbanization, 1867, p.577, extracted from Cerda: The five bases of the General Theory of Urbanization, edited by Arturo Soria Y Puig, Electa Espana, p.75

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image 11:

Ildefons Cerda, plan of building blocks distribution

image 10:

Ildefons Cerda, statistic of expensives inBarcelona working class family

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functions in elements of the city, such as lamp post, sewage pipes, trams, cars, private apartments etc. All these particles are engineered and networked to form a relationship in the urban environment; each has a distinct role in the locomotion of urban operations. The private homes are submitted to this system of urban operations and subsumed into the public sphere. (^image 20, 21)

These bio-political apparatus of management operates in subconscious level. There was never someone directing each individual to act or think in a certain manner, however they are directed in a more subconscious way and become homo-fabricatus, part of the social machine that operates with rations and reasons.

If we assess The General Theory of Urbanization as a personal process of Cerda rather than a canonized manual, we can observe a strong struggle within his mind; the struggle between social justice and individualism. Through managing the subjects he believed that he could achieve greater ‘harmony’ for the working class in Barcelona. Although the grid is indeed capable of organizing chaos in order to fulfill economic and political agenda, like the one we found in the Laws of Indies. At the same time ‘normalize’ human subjects into a productive society by organizing them with a seemingly rational manner. Eventually, this process of rationalizing – of managing human subjects – diffuses into our private realm. As of today, much of our private life is conformed to a social ‘norm’. The social became dominant of our intimate life. Through the mediation of money, our mental life and value system is rationalized in economic terms as if it is the only driving force of life. (^12)

It is a condition that Hannah Arendt coined as ‘The rise of social’. (^13) She referenced Romanist Philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau as the first one to address this issue.

‘Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.’

Jean-Jacque Rousseau , The Social Contract

This famous line of the philosopher in his book ‘The Social Contract’ is a perfect example for the struggle. Both the social-self and the private self are modes of human existence. To Rousseau, it was as if the rebellion of the private self against

12. See Georg Simmel, Sociological Theory, 7th edn., McGraw–Hill, New York, 2008, p.158–188

13. The ‘rise of social’ will inevitably violate human ‘heart’ - the intimacy of his/her private life. To Rousseau, it was as if the rebellion of the private self against the social self, and vice-versa. When human socialize, he/she is forced to conform and be ‘normalize’ by the population. It is a recurring process that may never ends. The Romanist music and novel are efforts to reclaim the intimate life of human and goes hand-in-hand with the decline of ‘public art’ such as architecture.

‘He arrived at his discovery through a rebellion not against the oppression of the state but against society’s unbearable perversion of the human heart, its intrusion upon an innermost region in man which until then had needed no special protection.’

‘To Rousseau, both the intimate and the social were, rather, subjective modes of human existence, and in his case, it was as though Jean-Jacques rebelled against a man called Rousseau. The modern individual and his endless conflicts, his inability either to be at home in society or to live outside it altogether, his ever-changing moods and the radical subjectivism of his emotional life, was born in this rebellion of the heart.’

See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd edn, The university of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1998, p.39

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image 12

Ildefons Cerda, plan of building blocks distribution

image 13:

Ildefons Cerda, templates of apartments for working class

image 14:

Ildefons Cerda, templates of apartments for working class

image 15:

Ildefons Cerda, templates of apartments for wealthy class

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the social self, and vice-versa. When humans socialize, they are forced to conform and be ‘normalize’ by the population. The ‘rise of social’ inevitably violates the intimate life, as Rousseau said the ‘intimate heart’ has no tangible place in the society. It is a recurring process that may never ends. (^14)

Hannah Arendt described that the ‘rule of no-body’ is the rule by social and subsequently by its norm and rationality. Since modernity, power has already been dissolved and diffused in different members and institutions in the society. (^15) This power manages the society with numbers, calculations, and rationality. Philosopher Michael Foucault suggested that this is the source of struggles in the contemporary man. The social imposed certain ‘normal conditions’ on the human. This process of subjectification is visible through the anarchist struggles, such as the oppositions between men and women, sane and insane, sick and healthy, etc. it is the struggle against the ‘forms of subjection; against the submission of subjectivity’. (^16) The ‘rule of no-body’ is the rule by rationality and normality. German Sociologist Max Weber has drawn another similar conclusion in late 19th century. He realized this rule by rationality tends to ‘de-humanize’ our society and warned that it will eventually lead us into a ‘polar night of icy darkness’. (^17)

All these point to a conclusion that the flow of social into the private realm is an inherent phenomenon in human because it is simply a way for different subjects to co-exist. The management and the struggle are indeed two poles of a string: any attempt to eliminate one end will only result in speechless frustrations, like Cerda and his never-ending attempts on doors and windows templates.

14. Hannah Arendt referencing Jean-Jacque Rousseau

‘He arrived at his discovery through a rebellion not against the oppression of the state but against society’s unbearable perversion of the human heart, its intrusion upon an innermost region in man which until then had needed no special protection.’

‘To Rousseau, both the intimate and the social were, rather, subjective modes of human existence, and in his case, it was as though Jean-Jacques rebelled against a man called Rousseau. The modern individual and his endless conflicts, his inability either to be at home in society or to live outside it altogether, his ever-changing moods and the radical subjectivism of his emotional life, was born in this rebellion of the heart.’

ibid, p.39

15. When the management of the population become more conscience, power are more distributed and more spread out within the social structure, eg. Family, employers, thru the system of education and the practice of medicine.

‘I don’t think that we should consider the “modern state” as an entity which was developed above individuals, ignoring what they are and even their very existence, but, on the contrary, as a very sophisticated structure, in which individuals can be integrated, under one condition: that this individuality would be shaped in a new form and submitted to a set of very specific patterns.’

See Michel Foucault, The Birth of Bio-politics, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2004

16. When Foucault talk about struggles in society recent in his times, he thinks that it is a struggle against the submitted subjectivity, a derived phenomena that varies in different cultures and ages. He observed in anarchistic struggles are struggle against the ‘government of individualization’.

Anarchistic struggles: ‘opposition to the power of men over women, of parents over children, of psychiatry over the mental ill, of medicine over population, of administration over the ways people live’

‘The relationship between rationalization and excesses of political power is evident. And we should not need to wait for bureaucracy or concentration camps to recognize the existence of such relations.’

See Michel Foucault, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 4, The University of Chicago Press, p.780

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image 16:

Ildefons Cerda, drawings of staircases in apartments of Barcelona

image 17:

Ildefons Cerda, drawings of sewage system

image 18:

Ildefons Cerda, templates of window designs

image 19:

Ildefons Cerda, templates of window designs

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17. The rule of rationality and rules, and its political form of bureaucracy, is indeed a very powerful yet pervasive managerial power. Max Weber warned the possibility of this form of power to dehumanize our society.

‘Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is “dehumanized,”. The more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation. This is appraised as its special virtue by capitalism.’

See Max Weber, Essays in Sociology, Oxford University Press, New York, 1958, p.215

In modern society, the power is not visible. It is rather distributed and ‘programmed’ into the subjects’ mind through education systems. This is what Hannah Arendt mean by ‘rule of no-body’. It is under the same category with bio-power and bio-politics: A distributed matrix of power structures within the society, aimed to maintain a normality that ensure the production of the society.

‘when the peak of the social order is no longer formed by the royal household of an absolute ruler—into a kind of no-man rule. But this nobody, the assumed one interest of society as a whole in economics as well as the assumed one opinion of polite society in the salon, does not cease to rule for having lost its personality. As we know from the most social form of government, that is, from bureaucracy (the last stage of government in the nation-state just as one-man rule in benevolent despotism and absolutism was its first), the rule by nobody is not necessarily no-rule; it may indeed, under certain circumstances, even turn out to be one of its crudest and most tyrannical versions.’

See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd edn, The university of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1998, p.40

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image 20:

Ildefons Cerda, section of infrastructures

image 21:

Ildefons Cerda, section of infrastructures with buildings

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< IV >OMA’s Exposition Universelle 89 and the grid

The grid in Cerda’s Barcelona could be seen as a sign for the ‘Rule of no-body’, yet if we examine some other examples of the grid we could notice the power of it as an apparatus to organize the world in a more ‘formal’ manner and help us to compute the complexity of the reality; to manage these complexity so that we would understand it and be able to utilize it. The perspective machine in Albrecht Durer’s illustration is the translation of the real world through the apparatus of the grid. (^image 22)The contour of the body replicated through the framed grid onto a piece of gridded paper laying flat on the table. The grid became an optic apparatus through which we fragment the complexity of the real world and allow us to examine on it carefully.

Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches for the never-finished drawing ‘Adoration of the Magi’ in 1481 was constructed upon an imaginary plane of a grid. (^image 23)Through the grid not only he was able to construct accurately the architecture in the painting, he was also able to place figures in the different proportions so that they can be situation lively in the imaginary space. The grid is the medium through which the approximation of space could happen. It allowed Leonardo to manipulate the space in the real world, freeze livings and movements, and replicate them onto the canvas.

Art Critic and Theorist Rosalind Krauss described the grid allowed the existence of inexpressible myths and spirits in the materialism of science and logic of the modernity.

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image 22:

Illustration of the perspective machine, Albrecht Durer

image 23:

Leonardo da Vinci, sketches for Adoration of the Magi, 1481

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‘Therefore, although the grid is certainly not a story, it is a structure, and one, moreover, that allows a contradiction between the values of science and those of spiritualism to maintain themselves within the consciousness of modernism, or rather its unconscious, as something repressed.’

Rosalind Krauss, Grids

Karuss look at the grid as an apparatus to ‘approximate the ambi- or even multivalance’ in the world, allowing them to exist in the structure of modernity.’ (^18)

One of OMA’s early projects, the plan for Exposition Universelle ‘89, illustrated this point very well. The competition project started since 1982, aimed for a proposal for the Expo ’89. OMA proposed ‘a scheme of ultimate minimalism’, partly it is because of the fact the French government didn’t have a lot of money for the Expo at the time. OMA proposed the project site to be divided into grid and each country would get a square, completely at their own disposal. (^image 24, 25) ‘If the country was poor, the country could turn its site into a desert. If it was rich, a mirror-clad cube.’ (^19)

The project site was at the heart of Paris, as Rem Koolhaas wrote, ‘It was the first time since the war that a fair would be organized in the center of a city as dense as Paris.’ (^20) Just like many other early OMA projects, the strategy OMA had was a little bit unorthodox. Since chaos was inevitable for a project at that scale, they declared chaos, ‘the metropolitan fete’ (^21) as the aim of the proposal. The site will be porous on the perimeter and the grid was introduced to ‘redistribute flows through the entire city’. (^22)

When one enters the Expo, it would seem that it is maze that demonstrates the extravagant future life. The visitors would be able to navigate between these ‘rooms’ in their own individual way. Each person would get his or her unique experience of the ‘city’. Their will be no hierarchy in the Expo site, each country are free to elaborate on their own square. Rem differentiate the project from another competition, La Villette, by saying ‘If La Villette was our embodiment of the socialists’ early euphoria, Expo was now our articulation of their sobriety.’ (^23) Although the grid introduced a non-hierarchical distribution of land in the site, it didn’t necessary mean that the pockets of land were to be treated homogeneously. The sobriety lies on the fact that individuality exists. The architecture, the grid, is

18. ‘if the window is the matrix of ambi- or multivalance, and the bars of the windows - the grid – are what help us to see, to focus on, this matrix, they are themselves the symbol of the symbolist work of art. They function as the multilevel representation through which the work of art can allude, and even reconsititure, the form of Being’

See Rosalind Krauss, Grids, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1979, p.59

19. Rem Koolhaas & Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL, Monacelli Press, 1995, p.943

20. ibid, p.943

21. ibid, p.943

22. ibid, p.943

23. ibid, p.943

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image 24:

OMA, planning for the Exposition Universelle ‘89

image 25:

OMA, planning for the Exposition Universelle ‘89

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an infrastructure that not only allowed it to happen, the enclosure of the land also foster the individuality.

The concept of the competition lingered in another proposal by OMA – the Mission Grand Axe for Paris in 1991. The grid was used as a theoretical system to regenerate the project site, which is already a populated area at the time. (^image 26, 27) They proposed a superimposition of a grid plan onto the patch of land, gradually over a period of 25 years. They argued that the life expectancy of contemporary buildings are rather short, most of which last less than 30 years. The grid aimed not to translate every condition in the city into its own orthogonal logic, but rather to create hybrid conditions in the city. The grid will allow conflicting conditions to coexist in the territory, as they wrote,

‘The theoretical omnipresence of the grid does not imply homogeneous density: it will organize the coexistence of solid and void, density and emptiness. …. the grid will allow different intensification.’

OMA, S,M,L,XL, P.1132

The apparatus of the grid not only generate urban conditions, it also acts to regenerate the city. The proposal called for a progressive regeneration rather than a once-for-all superimposition of a new urban condition. The existing fabric will be ‘peeled off ’ gradually and be substitute by a new urban grid within 25 years. (^image 28-30) It acknowledged the fact that the city is an organic entity that transform gradually under the perpetual construction and deconstruction process of built environment. The edge of the grid would be constantly transforming during the 25-year period, both existing and the new programs would found they place within the grid after the transformation.

On the first glance, the existence of Gaudi’s architecture could be seen an opposition to Cerda’s isotropic grid. But if we pause and think twice, we could also be understood Cerda’s plan as a system on which Gaudi can elaborate. It is of the same logic as OMA’s Expo ’89 proposal. Casa Mila, Casa Batllo, Sangrada Familia wouldn’t achieve their eccentricity if they are taken out of their contexts in Cerda’s Eixample. The grid of Baracelona embodied the fact that the power of the grid lay exactly on its duality, as an apparatus that both manage and allow freedom. Eccentricity happens inside the bounded square within the grid. Gaudi’s Sangrada Familia expresses itself within the homogeneous field of typical Barcelona blocks designed by Cerda. If we follow Karuss’s grammar, the streets and avenues are the structure on which expressive architecture of Gaudi co-exist with the scientific apparatus of typical Barcelona blocks.

Similarly the structural grid of the modernist architecture is an just idealization of the forces in reality. The loads are normalized into an orthogonal system or posts and beams. Internal stress of the beam was never distributed evenly. The physical properties of the forces of compression and tension worked anonymously within the geometry of the beam, internalized within the steel rebar and concrete cast and masked from our eyes. However it is one of the most efficient ways to organize spaces and programs in the architecture. (^image 31-33)

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image 26:

OMA, Mission Grand Axe for Paris

image 27:

Process of superimposition in a 25-year timeframe, OMA, Mission Grand Axe for Paris

image 28-30 (left to right):

Process of peeling off patches of existing urban fabric, OMA, Mission Grand Axe for Paris

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The LCD screen that we are looking at consisted of a grid of light-emitting-diode that gives the illusion of a real world as if it is appearing right in front of us: Our eyes receive the optics emitted from this grid of light through the lens of the iris, and arrived on the grid of light-sensitive cells on the retina at the back of the eye. The cells modulate the light into digital signals that are passed onto the brain through the neurons and stems of nervous system, which demodulate these binary signals into analog effects of images. This is the mechanism, the structure on which the vague, inexpressible and affectation happens.

The grid achieves its optimum when it remains as an abstract artifact that is able to express its duality. It is important for us to recognize and allow this dilemma of the grid - the ability to manage the mutlivalance quality of the seemly chaotic world, and the potential to allow the individuals to elaborate on their own within the bounded square. Without the grid, the city will throw itself into chaos and cease to operate. The pervasive nature of bio-political management, the ‘Rule of Nobody’, is one of the major characteristics of the contemporary society. Its habitants tamed by the discipline of the capital, who’s ‘intimacy of their hearts have no tangible place in the society’ (^24), lives unconsciously under control. The duality of the grid, the protected boundary of the square could accommodate the intimate life of individual within a managed structure of society. The grid as an apparatus, safeguard the freedom of individuals, peg our ‘unreasonable’ intimate life in the most-propelling current of bio-political control by the capital.

24. ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau …. arrived at his discovery through a rebellion not against the oppression of the state but against society’s unbearable perversion of the human heart, … intimacy of the heart, unlike the private household, has no objective tangible place in the world, nor can the society against which it protests and asserts itself be localized with the same certainty as the public space.’

See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd edn, The university of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1998, p.39

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image 32:

Deformation of a beam in post-and-beam system

image 33:

Internal stress distribution within a beam

image 31:

Constructions of Unite d’Habitation, Le Corbusier

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