THE " ANTI-ARCHITECT " : A PHANTASY OR A PROBABILITY

THE “ANTI-ARCHITECT”: A PHANTASY OR A PROBABILITY Sevgi Türkkan, İstanbul Technical University, İstanbul, Turkey Anti-architect, authorship, authenticity, architectural discipline, architectural practice The term “anti-architect” gained recognition with Cedric Price, epitomizing his own role in the process of designing the influential Fun Palace project in early 1960’s. The project was run by an army of architects, artist and engineers, including the idea-owner avant-garde theater producer Joan Littlewood, head of cybernetics committee Gordon Pask and many others, working on a highly participatory, open-ended anti-building that shapes according to its users requirements. Despite the purposeful withdrawal from conventional authoritarian model of the “architect” and inherent designation of the term “anti”, it is puzzling how today Price is still predominantly recalled as the “architect” of Fun Palace. After over 50 years from Fun Palace, with noteworthy advances in information, communication and design technologies, followed by critical theories regarding the death of the author, questions on the possibility of an “anti-architect” continues to linger. Particularly in the last decades, concepts emanating from free culture and digital technologies started to penetrate into architectural thinking and production, providing new platforms for open-ended, collaborative, bottom-up design practices. Meanwhile, contrarily, the “Architect” grew stronger as a visionary-heroic-individual, who determines and shapes spatial environment accordingly, from the scale of furniture to urban settlements. Architect names are used as labels to guarantee popularity, increase recognition and create economic value. Architectural culture and education still commonly relies on the promotion of an elevated figure of architect, who applies his authority through the forms she/he creates. But who really is the architect, and is she/he really the author, or authority? Can our learnt Albertian reaction of attributing an architect figure to a building be collectively challenged? What are the influences that stimulate alternative practices of architecture and what potentials might be revealed in the absence of heroism discourse? While ubiquitous authority of the architect is preserved and diffused simultaneously, the concept of “anti-architect” calls for a critical reexamination in the light of emerging non-conventional design practices today. Is “anti-architect” really a phantasy, or a potential for an open, participatory future architectural practice? This text attempts to briefly survey this probability in twofolds: first by interpreting the mechanism that inhibits its proliferation, second by glancing at stimulus that may instigate it. Continuous reconstruction of the architect “Anti” is an inherently reflective concept that dwells upon the crystallization of its opposition. Therefore the discussion of the anti-architect is highly bound to the historical and disciplinary continuities that reconstruct the “architect” as an author, and authority figure. At this point, it would be useful to review an array of author-related concepts in decoding the foundations of this continuous construction. Most prominently, it was Alberti who attributed a semi-divine status to the architect as the creator of works reflecting higher truths in De re aedificatoria(c.1450) and placed the him in a unique position with an ability to genuinely create, to produce something from nothing, an act of “divination”. Anstey (2003) quotes from Alberti: “One is invited to discover in the phenomenal object a single valuable quality which is distinct from its physical presence, and whose existence is evidence of the will and mind of a (single) ‘creator’: the architect as author has arrived.” Considering the architect as the sole creative source, owner and authority for his architectural product constituted the basis of modern authorship and our habit of reading (a singular) architect’s personality and intentions by looking at a building, even today. In order to differentiate from craftsmen, Alberti depicted the architect as the one who imagines, rather than the one who builds. In doing so, Alberti also distanced his discourse from Vitruvian understanding of Architecture as Building, by restating Architecture as Drawing, as the locus of imagination and ideas. The emergence of the concept of ‘design’ manifested the value of architectural ideas that is embodied via drawings. Through ‘designing’, both meaning to draw and to designate, the architect was now able to practice his ultimate influence in the realm of architectural representation uninterrupted by external interventions (of the land, owner, builder or others). To exercise his authority, the only condition for the architect would be to attain an authentic imagination, and transmit it onto representative medium that captures and possesses the quintessential intentions of the author, which later on may be subsequently realized by others. Being an etymological relative of author and authority, authenticity plays a major role in this process of identification, ownership and therefore valorization of an architectural idea. Walravens (2002) clarifies how 19th century legal scholars systematized authenticity by applying two major gadgets: “form” and “stamp of personality”, which appropriately corresponded the figurative nature of art in that period. Quoting from Desbois, Walravens continues: “any creation that is not the simple reproduction of an existing work and expresses its author’s taste, intelligence and know-how, in other words his or her personality in its composition and expression, is original.” (Walravens, 2002) Another foundation that stabilizes architect’s authority is the notion of authorization. To become an architect, one has to be given formation, disciplined and authorized in line with the framework recognized by educational and professional institutions. Same institutions facilitate, accredit, administer and control the academic, professional production of architectural knowledge by establishing disciplinary grounds, standards, rights and regulations to secure autonomy for its future actors. Architectural institutions establish, administer and control the disciplinary grounds fuelled with the doctrine of singular authoritarian visionary figure-of-the-architect, and secure an autonomous field for architects by authorizing only those who are fit to prescribed competencies. Author, authority, authorization and authenticity render among the basic concepts that are continuously reconstructed from the beginning of the history of architecture as an autonomous discipline. Despite of changing intellectual and technological paradigms, these tools still govern creative industries in disguise of modern concepts like style, branding etc. as an expression of architect’s personality through unique and expressive forms. Thus Aureli (2008) critically mentions the demand on uniqueness as an emblem for market competitiveness: "in the economy of the iconic building, what is considered "productive” is the personality of the architect, his or her creative ego.“ Hurtt’s (2002) denunciation of modernist myth of originality adds to this criticism by indicating how history, culture and society are devalued by emphasizing the individual over society, originality over knowledge, and creativity over competence. Contingencies, breaks, anti’s Till (2007) importantly reminds that architecture is a contingent discipline. Architectural discipline under the pressure of modernity may be rejecting its contingencies and continuously rebuilding its rigid disciplinary boundaries. Yet along history, there have been instances where institutionalized powers dissolve and architectural practice opens up with a range of experiments regarding roles and authorial positions for architecture. Particularly from early 20th century on there have been discernible paradigm shifts that urge new modes of production and distribution alternative to long-consolidated norms of authority and authorship. 1930’s mechanical reproduction, 70’s socio-cultural upheaval and 2000’s digital revolution can be counted among such prominent thresholds that triggered the criticism on established disciplinary norms. In the influential essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, first published in 1936, Benjamin (2007) talks about the loss of the aura as a loss of a singular authority within the work of art, and the ending of the cult of genius due to the mechanical reproducibility’s dissipation of “authenticity”. Benjamin dates the unique value of 'authentic' artwork based on rituals and the cult of beauty to Renaissance, and mentions that the advent of mechanical reproduction instigated a crisis that liberated the work of art from its parasitical dependence on rituals, and yet came to be designed for reproducibility. In the heyday of late 60’s socio-cultural upheaval, disciplinary boundaries and authorial structures in almost all facets of society were put under vigorous questioning. A number of critics such as Eco, Foucault and Barthes pointed out the predicaments of predefined authorial constructs, and dissolution of the mystical narrative built around “authenticity”, “originality”, “creator”, etc. in creative cultural fields. Eco’s seminal book “Open Work”(1962) drew the concept of "openness" from language and semiotics into artistic production to explain that a work of art is: “a complete and closed form in its uniqueness as a balanced organic whole, while at the same time constituting an open product on account of its susceptibility to countless different interpretations which do not impinge on its unadulterable specificity.” Followingly in 1967, Barthes put authorship notion into question, problematized the “Author-God”; a socio-economic construct that dominates and disguises other aspects of creative processes. He announced “Death of the Author”: “…disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins...it is language which speaks, not the author; to write is, through a prerequisite impersonality, to reach that point where only language acts, ‘performs’, and not ‘me’”(Barthes, 1967). Foucault replied to Barthes’s obituary notice by reclaiming authorship notion as a function that needs to be provoked in order to expose alternative connotations. In “What is an Author?” Foucault stated: “…it is absolutely insufficient to repeat empty slogans: the author has disappeared. Rather, we should reexamine the empty space left by the author's disappearance, observe its new demarcations and the reapportionment of this void; we should await the fluid functions released by this disappearance." (Foucault, 1977) 2000’s digital revolution amplified the intellectual upheaval of 60’s by buttressing the technological possibilities of co-production, co-ownership, hyper-authorship etc. In this altered ontological framework, cultural assets became more mobile, plural and pliant then ever before. These articulations blurred the boundaries of ownership and control, open the creative process to intervention, valorize not only the acts of the creator but all other actors involved in its performance, including the work(text) itself. In various fields, including arts, music, software design, and architecture, alternative authorial performances emerged in great diversity. In the light of 20th century contingencies in creative fields and breaks from authoritarian power structures, the “anti” discourse emerges as a radical stance against institutionalization and disciplinary establishment, with an intention of bringing aforementioned author-related notions etc. on their heads. To bring the discussion into architecture, Price’s “anti-architect” is an encompassing example that showcases the amount and variety of “anti” positions that can be taken, in proportion to inherent complexities and layers that architectural thinking and production entails. In his self-acclaimed role as an “anti-architect”, Cedric Price challenged a number of these notions in designing Fun Palace; a building with no pre-established static form, an anti-architect who withdraws from his authority in exchange of becoming a member of a multi-disciplinary team of experts and cybernetic automation, an ungovernable authenticity of anti-aesthetic industrialized components in constant state of change, an anti-building that doesn’t authoritatively imply a singular program and willingly opens itself to manipulation of its users etc. Price was deeply disturbed and motivated by the overrated authority and blinded belief for the architect’s ability to change the world. He is famously quoted saying he's only radical because architecture got lost, and add naming architects a dull lot for being so convinced that they matter. He also had a strong disbelief in building as a solution to a spatial problem and urged architects to consider not building as part of architecture. Yet the “anti” motive in Fun Palace was not only an opposition fired by a frustration towards the architectural discipline. 1960’s optimism and hope, as well as Britain’s post-war socio-political debates regarding individuals’ leisure time and freedom in society were also defining influences. Price was heavily interested in political philosophy and was known as a committed socialist. His interests had taken him far from the conventions of international style modernism to embrace the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, the art of the Independent Group, Situationism and emerging technologies of cybernetics, game theory, and computers. (Mathews, 2007) When theater producer Joan Littlewood approached him with her inspiration “to create a new kind of theatre - not of stages, performers, and audiences, but a theatre of pure performativity and interaction”, their visions collided in the excitement to question the nature of their actions in experimenting with this laboratory of fun, together with an army of specialists on cybernetics, information technologies, game theory. Fun Palace became an epitome of a socio-political excitement for new ideas regarding individual freedom in post-war society, allowing many professionals to question the nature of their actions, inspired from an architecturally reframed perspective in the unprecedented enthusiasm and outbreak of 1960’s. Anti trajectories against/for architecture Architectural practice and knowledge are inherently complex entities. Therefore the numbers of “anti” positions that can be held are proportionally multifarious and multifaceted. Provoked by emerging conditions in creative practices, one can talk about a variety of counter positions that shake or reformulate the pre-established role for the architect. In the flow of this paper, some of these possibilities will be instantiated by glancing at flourishing concepts, tools and attitudes that may be considerable for architectural practice. The aim of this chapter is to trace out (not all but) some exemplary “anti” trajectories in creative fields that might or already have influenced architectural thinking and production. These trajectories will not be specified or defined in detail but will be highlighted via discursive or practical instances for inspiration and provocation for architecture. Anti-singular. This trajectory refers to a design process that is not dominated by the hegemony of a singular name or stamp of personality. Plurality of actors is an old practice in architecture (groups, teams, collectives). European medieval guilds are practices that predate the cult of the individual figureof–the-architect and disaccord with its theology. Although the singular architect figure has set the mainstream of practice for centuries, in 1950’s group formations such as TAC(The Architect’s Collective) emerged to pioneer collaborative organization models for architectural offices. However group formations are not automatically antidotes to singularity, for they might still perform hierarchically or erode idiosyncrasies, distinctiveness in an obligation to consent. The advent of information technologies and emerging digital platforms add new modes of collectivity to former ones: distributed-intelligence, crowd sourcing, mass-collaboration, cloud intelligence, networked social environments, etc. Different from conventional groups and teams, these new practices allow various non-singular authorial positions where consensus is neither a precondition nor a driving force. Authors are plural; hence they may perform relationally and simultaneously, yet independent from timely, geographic or material restrictions. This is also a consequence of a growing global market for architectural design and having to work in coordination from distant locations. Novel representational platforms (often digital) have the potential to make visible and preserve the personal peculiarities towards a design issue in a collective manner. In other words, plurality transforms towards a form of extended singularity where individual authorial presence is preserved and encouraged. Collective and open design platforms such as Studiowikitecture, project development models such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), networked design practices such as Ocean, crowd-sourcing websites for actors to work independently on the same project such as Arcbazar can be given as examples that correspond to completely different modes of plurality with peculiar organizational structures. Anti-authentic. Not authenticated to a finite author, nor original, unique, genuine by definition. This mode of creative production celebrates derivatives, approriation, re-use, remix etc. Surrealists’ exquisite corpse game, Duchamp’s found objects, ready-mades, pop-art, appropriation art can be counted among historical references for creativity not based on originality or authenticity of forms. In architecture Rowe and Koetter’s Collage City, Neufert’s Architect’s Data, Kit of parts, etc. can be briefly mentioned as alternative approaches to creativity that elevates other aspects of architectural knowledge, such as relationality, contextuality and re-appropriation. Fat Architecture’s 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale installation entitled “The Museum of Copying“ speculates on the notions of copying and repetition in architecture both over the subject and object of a five-meter high facsimile of Palladio’s Villa Rotunda. Today particularly in music and software design, search for alternative authorships give rise to new legal certifications such as “copy-left”. Stallman explains; where copy-right protects a creator's right to control copies and changes to a work, copy-left protects a user's right to copy and change a work. The only necessitation of these certificates is to conserve its open character. Facilitated by open source databases (pool, cloud, etc.) and Creative Common licenses (copy-left, share-alike, etc.) and new processes like “design and release” started to enter the practical fields of architectural production. Architectural offices such as UN Studio and Elemental have recently launched open-source databases in which they shared (although very partially) their research and design materials freely available for public use. Anti-isolated. From education to practice, architectural formation is based on studio culture, where architectural issues are traditionally preceded indoors. Related parties, actors, cultural geographical or contextual inputs are represented or simulated in the isolated environment of the studio. This trajectory underlines a concern for direct involvement into the design problem, by being in direct interaction with stakeholders and experiencing the space, design context and atmosphere in first hand. This activates the design practitioners to develop their manners of communication, while becoming more accessible and flexible in their architectural decision-making. Educational practices based on design-built, communitydriven, hands-on projects such as Rural Studio, as well as architectural practices that dwell on participatory, in-situ, dialogue-based processes such as Rebel Architecture can be exemplified for this tendency of breaking free from the confines of architectural studio in which architectural thinking and making is isolated from the world outside. Anti-disciplinary. The confines of architectural discipline is established and governed by institutionalized frameworks, yet the universal dissolution of intra-disciplinary boundaries and hybridization of expertise constantly challenges them. 1950’s The Independent Group can be mentioned as a group of artist, architects and writers who exemplify an early merge of different disciplinary interests. Interdisciplinarity, multi-disciplinarity and trans-disciplinarity are modes of production that requires a novel use of language and vocabulary that is not merely representative in its own realm, but operative and performative. The increased sophistication of representational tools, design platforms etc., offers novel authorial implications for eroding disciplinary boundaries. Ars Electronica’s Futurelab is such a transdisiplinary experiment that brings together 25 professionals to work on a project at the juxtaposition of being a social activity, artistic expression and scientific exploration. A widely expanding number of multi-disciplinary design offices merge not only different branches of design but also fields like engineering or social sciences. Building Information Modeling (BIM), Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) are transdisiplinary organizational models that forces related parties, including architects to directly communicate with an array of experts from different disciplines related to architectural design, construction and management. Anti-authorized. This trajectory is characterized by an inquisitive interest into spatial practices and built environments that neither have been designed or built by authorized architects, nor authorized by architectural institutions. This entails an exploration of the vernacular, anonymous, ordinary, recurrent and nonpedigreed (as Rudofsky refers it) spatial knowledge that the lineage of architectural history often excludes. Rudofsky’s “Architecture Without Architects”, Venturi and Scott-Brown’s “Learning from Las Vegas”, Atelier Bow Wow’s “Made in Tokyo“ are among such discursive practices that recognize and acknowledge the spatial knowledge that is often disregarded and rejected by the disciplinary establishment. Yet ironically, this exploration is mostly only valorized when it is critically and scholarly rebuilt into an architectural discourse, which then may be engaged in the disciplinary canon and projected in the culture of architectural production. Closing remarks This paper’s interest is not to prescribe, but to provoke architecture to transgress its established and limiting disciplinary confines from a multitude of angles. A possible answer to the questions of antiarchitecture would be to display an array of oppositional perspectives and positions (which only were briefly mentioned above) that can be taken against the predefined role of the architect, instead of offering a well-described anti-architect of one kind. It is true that, historical continuities and radical breaks from it substantially coexist and collide in architectural culture. Yet Till(2007) reminds that the denial of contingency is not simply an issue of aesthetics and visual order; but a much wider one of social control and cultural demise. Therefore the issue of transgressing the disciplinary fixations on the architect figure will seem to linger into the future, despite of the above-mentioned radical openings and potential changes in creative cultural fields of production. Lastly, it can be argued that the “anti-architect” is a worth-exploring phantasy with actual implications on architectural culture, and its evolution as a socially-responsible, creative, cultural, intellectual field. Opening up architectural practice towards new paradigms of collectivity and open-endedness is critical in revealing the creative and social potentials that has long been disguised and obstructed by the myth of singular-genius-figure. Though it is as important to remain skeptical of any anti-ism discourse, and to ensure that the multifaceted and complex, social and ethical issues of architecture are included in the debate. The References: ANSTEY, T. 2003. Authorship and Authority in L.B. Alberti’s De re aedificatoria, Nordic Association for Architectural Research, Vol.4., Gothenburg, p.19-25. AURELI, P.V. 2008. Toward the archipelago. Log, 11, 91-119. The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, page 45. BARTHES, R. 1977. The Death of the Author. In: BARTHES, R., HEATH, S. 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(ed.). Dear Images: Art, Copyright And Culture, London, Ridinghouse, ICA, page 171-172. Sevgi Türkkan, Istanbul, Turkey. M.Arch(2003), MSc Architect(2006) from Istanbul Technical University. Since 2004, she has been working in the same institute, conducting architectural design studio and authoring in national and international publications mainly on architectural theory and education. In 2009, she was granted Fulbright Scholarship as a visiting researcher in Columbia University GSAPP New York and completed her PhD in I.T.U. entitled “Making and Breaking Authorship, Potentials in Architectural Design Studio” in 2016.