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SnuuoN BAsAn, B. L974Shumon Basar'sarticle, "The Poisonous Mixture," an entertaining and enlighteningmeditation on the architect's position in the early twenty-first century, servesas a fit-ting conclusion for this collection. Previously employed in the office of Zaha Hadidand an educator at the Architectural Association in London, Basar no doubt has seenmany professionalsgrapple with the various forms of "impotence" that may afflictthe contemporary architect. Cultural, political, economic, technological, and otherchangesprompt (often unforeseen) ransformations in the architectural discipline, is-suing a constant challenge to the architect's abilities and adaptive skills. Indeed, Basarwrites from experience,noting the young architect'sdevastating acknowledgement ofpowerlessness nd the subsequent reedom to be earnedby relinquishing the idealisticand ultimately unrealistic desire to "achieve everything." This message,passedonthrough Basar's ext and his related activities as an editor, author, lecturer, critic, andcurator, may prove particularly relevant to architects who today struggle to find theirplace in our ever-changing world.

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"The Poisonous Mixture" (2004)

The DealA dopey-looking architect is happily married to an improbably beautiful woman whena sudden recessionstrikes. In a fi t ofpanic, they go to Las Vegas to try to save hem-selves. n a casino, he wife duly declines he advances f a suave,smoldering magnate'He persists, finally making an offer to the frnancially desperatecouple: One milliondollars to spend one night with the beautiful wife. After dismissing the outrageousproposal, the architect and his wife lie back in bed and, from the righteous silencehov-ering between them, the possibility of agreeing o the million dollars begins to seemnot so obsceneafter all. lVhat's "one night," they think, compared to the thousandsofnights that their fortifred, water tight mariage will indubitably contain. But once thedeal s consumed, he very edifice of the marriage begins to fall apart, brick by brick, asthe architect-husband becomesdistraught with anxieties that his wife might actuallyhave enjoyed the night she spent with "the client." Nothing, the architect realizes,will ever be the same.

The Detail\oody Harrelson's character in the film IndecentProposal suffers an ignoble fate be-causehe didn't focus on the detail. He didn't understand how the torrid part-RobertRedford's plea for "just one night"-would relate to the fragile whole of his marriage.The good parable should teach us that one must not underestimate the latent dangersof imperfect detailing-that vigilance to detail should be secondonly to breathing for

ShumonBasar, The PoisonousMixture," in Clntent,ed. Rem Koolhaas t al. (Cologne:Taschen, 004).@ 2004 TschenGmbH and Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Reprinted with permission from theauthor and publsher.

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any self-respectingarchitect. "God is in the details," pronounced Germany's very ownarchitectural St . Augustine, Mies van der Rohe, which probably came as a surprise tothose who thought God had died and gone to heaven.Amen.

The VirtuousIndecentProposalwas released the year I started my education in architecture. Veryquickly, I felt the need to become au fait with the rules governing what i s consideredvirtuoris and what is sinful. Ever since Mies's unique brand of fastidious, materiallytersearchitectureproliferated to become he DNA of the neuteredworld that surroundsus, architects have valorized, with reiigious ferment, the absolute gravitas of "detail-ing": that is,astrangefet ishizat ionofscrews, joints,gaps,andjunct ions. nafurthertwist of obsessive erversity, he construction of the detail should be almost impercep-tible and, aboveall, it should not show evidenceofhaving beenmade by human hands.Along wi th wearing one'sshirt with the top button closed without a tie) and listeningto freeform jazz whrle drafting, the (male) architect's pursuit of the controlled finishis a wayward, contagious infliction peculiarly at odds with the true unwieldy scaleofarchitecture and the manifold. abstractdimensions in which it is situated.

The Battle"Architecture is a poisonous mixture of power and impotence."- \hen I read thisstatement as a student, my idealism was violated in the way a child's world is slowlydismantled with the successive bduction of Santa Claus, Sr:perman, and the Man inthe Moon. "But surely," I protested, "i f our concepts are bold enough, if our passionis hi-octane fueled, can't we achieve anything? Shouldn't we be able to achieve every-thingT" It's only when one begins to try to build something that one understands he

' Rem Koolhaas,ectureat ColumbiaUniversity,1989

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second half of architecture's dialectical recipe. Like Hercules, or Bruce \illis in DlHard, the architect must fight a veritable battle against ever-embittered combatantswho seem ro wanr to seehim fail. There are building regulations, bored bureaucrats,economic vicissitudes, nefarious political climates, unspoken histories, indifferentconstruction industries and the "public." And often, above all of these harbingersof impotence, the architect faces The Client in a relationship that can be as infernalor beautiful as any marciage.This litany is sometimes referred to as "external forces,"implying that the nature of practice is the reciprocity between this "outer realm" andthe "inner lsalrn"-1hs seat of the architect's creativity and will. Understanding thecharacter of architecture's "impotence" might, I thought a few years ater, be the key toliberation: how to unlock idealist delusion and give way to Practicablestrategy.

The SchismThere are two piles of images on my desk. The first includes a series of diagrams andflowcharts showing how a firm, OMA, has recently been extending its operations andpresenceby affiliating itself with diverse companies and experts. The other pile is aseries of close-up photographs of three buildings in Holland, revealing how variousjoints, gaps, surces, and apertureshave held out over time.2 Cracks, oxidation, dete-rioration, patination, a panel lling off here,dead flies: a mesmerizing smear of decayin color. Leafing through the rwo setsof images is like looking at two possible futureoutcomes of a single decisivepresent.

The InevitableThe picrures of aging buildings are a Dorian Gray-like reminder of the inevitableperishability of everything. It might sound portentous to claim that it is the fear of

'?NetherlandsDanceTheater,The Hague; Kunsthal, Rottetdam; Educatorium, Utrecht.

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death that both plagues and motivates architects. This would assume that buildingsare physical personifications oftheir authors, estranged metonyms, or abandoned look-alikes. Any building is however marked by the mortality of its material assemblage.It can go wrong at any time, and might do so in public. The author is unable ro hidefrom the unforeseen problems-the imperfectioll5-6f ths creation. This may be whyJames Stiding never revisited his finished buildings: he claimed it was too much likevisiting ex-loves. Perhaps going back is so teri$'ing because, if the building is thearchitect, any tectonic failures are tantamount to corporeal failures. It's like staring atyour own expiry, and tealizing that there is nothing you can do to stop it.

The Tactical"The important thing is to be aware one exists."3I organize the diagrams into a matrix of my table and behold a spray of acronyms-OMA, AMO, VPRO, 2x4,IDEO; proper n2mss-pmcla,Hawatd, Ove Arup; anda miscellany of individuals, some of whose names I rccognize and others I don't. Inrelation to the photos ofdecay, these diagrams seem ro outline an exploratory searchfor external, abstract organizatioll-abstract not in rhe senseof "not-there," but in theway that freedom is abstract. The various permutations of letters and names look like adesire to discover sa6gi6s-ga6lics of ensuring one's freedom. Having been taughr rhatthe only way architects can generate the conditions oftheir freedom is by building moreand better, getting bigger commissions and ending up w ith afat cigar andahelipad, thespidery networks of intedaced diversification that orbit OMA look insane, and thereforethe right thing to be doing. I can't help but think that the inward-looking speciesofarchitect-frozen by its love for frozen things-seems doomed to D-list subjugation.

3Jean-Ltc Godard, Pienot Le Foa(London:Loimat, L969).

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