How Henri Lefebvre missed the modernist sensibility of Mies van der Rohe: vitalism at the intersection of a materialist conception of space and a metaphysical approach to architecture

This paper looks at two theoretical statements about 'space', both of which are grounded in a vitalist philosophy. The first is Henri Lefebvre's formulation of 'spatial architectonics', a structure of concepts which he develops in The Production of Space; the second is Mies van der Rohe's intuition of something he termed 'authentic form', a means of triggering new experiences and understandings through sensual engagement with space. Since there are other philosophers and other architects whose thinking about space has been influenced by vitalist philosophy, the discussion will begin with an explanation as to why Lefebvre and van der Rohe have been selected for reciprocal examination.     

What is life? Exploring Mies van der Rohe's concept of architecture as a life process

From his popular motto ‘less is more’ to his concept of architecture as ‘the spatially apprehended will of the epoch’, the aphorisms of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) remain one of his most memorable legacies. Despite being less well known, other such statements promoted by Mies are also important to clarify the philosophy that sustained his works. This paper investigates one of these less known yet highly revealing statements: ‘Building-art is only understandable as a life process’. Considering the broader context of Mies's discourse, philosophical readings and architectural projects, this paper argues that Mies used the term ‘life process’ to refer to a larger changing reality that united the material and the spiritual realms of life. According to Mies, the recognition of this material-spiritual unity was necessary to recover architecture's status as ‘building-art’ [Baukunst] amid an overly technological and individualistic modern age. This view of life and modernity is consistent with the writings of Rudolf Schwarz, Max Scheler and Alfred North Whitehead, which, as this paper shows, were highlighted by Mies not as sources of his thought, but as key references that could especially illuminate the significance of his work and architectural philosophy.     

Situating Situationism: Wandering around New Babylon with Mille Plateaux

This paper explores the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with respect to art, space, and politics. Specifically, I wish to suggest an affinity between their philosophy and the work of the Dutch artist Constant, who was one of the originators of the Situationist International movement in post-war Europe. Deleuze and Guattari's ideas of re-territorialization, constructivism, and nomadology find a resonance with Constant's project of New Babylon, a project he worked on for more than twenty years. Recently, many scholarly works have assessed the intellectual legacy of the Situationist International. Given the solid foundation of this historical work, this paper proposes instead to extend the argument in the direction of the philosophy that would be later proposed in What is Philosophy? and Mille Plateaux. In contrast to a purely historical account, this paper juxtaposes several of Deleuze and Guattari's ideas in an encounter with Constant that aims for a bleeding over, or migration, of relevant themes into new productive territories. With regards to the politics of place, to begin, this paper briefly sketches out the historical position of the Situationist International in Europe, and specific proposals for a project called New Babylon by Constant, an early member of the group. Then a discussion of the political grounding of any possible notion of utopia is followed by a comparison between Deleuze and Guattari's notion of ‘constructivism’ and Constant's notion of ‘construction.’ In conclusion, this paper asks what are the possible consequences or implications of a utopian notion of nomadism upon contemporary life.     

Architecture is the pattern of human mind in space: Claude F. Bragdon and the spatial concept of architecture

‘Space’ has held a central position within the architectural discourse throughout the twentieth century and a number of twenty-first-century publications suggest interest in this notion is not to be diminished any time soon. Seen from our contemporary perspective, the association between architecture and space could therefore seem ordinary and self-evident. However, existing scholarship has dated the adoption of the term ‘space’ in architectural vocabulary—as a fundamental category of architecture—no earlier than the 1890s. This early phase has been strongly associated with the German language and nineteenth-century German aesthetic philosophy, whereas, by contrast, the adoption of the term in architectural discourse in the English language is considered to have followed several decades later. This paper discusses the largely unknown case of the American Claude Fayette Bragdon (1866–1946), an English-speaking architect who adopted the notion of ‘space’ as early as the 1890s: concurrently with his German contemporaries. Through analysis of existing scholarship, archival material and Bragdon's published writings mainly up to the appearance of his book The Beautiful Necessity in 1910, it throws light on the main sources of Bragdon's ‘spatial’ concept of architecture and demonstrates connections to transcendental aesthetics and ground-breaking advances in nineteenth-century mathematics.     

Putting the public back into public space

The exclusion of ‘the public’ from public space has been a growing source of concern in Australian and international urban research. A variety of models of ‘good’ public space are employed to criticise a range of ‘bad’ spatial arrangements and security technologies in contemporary public space. These models often receive less attention than the spaces themselves, but are a fundamental part of any project attempting to ‘put the public back into public space’. This paper compares four models of public space commonly employed by analysts of contemporary public space. Some of the models of ‘good’ public space are themselves inequitable and exclusionary in important respects. Iris Marion Young's“Justice and the Politics of Difference” (1990) develops a multi‐public model which has the potential to address some of these deficiencies, and the paper suggests ways in which this model might be improved.     

The Palmach History Museum,Tel Aviv

In 1928 the Austrian architect and engineer Franz Löwitsch (1894–1946) published the article ‘Sensation of Space and Modern Architecture’ in Imago , the psychoanalytical journal edited by Sigmund Freud. Based on Richard Semon's theories of Mneme, which Löwitsch connected to psychoanalytical theories, the prevalence of dissimilar sensations of space throughout the stages of the development of western architectural history is presupposed, and Löwitsch offered an explanation of how their symbolic meanings reflected psychological conditions of a particular time and culture.

By connecting Semon's theory with psychoanalytical deliberations that equip the inherited memory of spatial sensations with pleasurable or unpleasurable emotions, Löwitsch furthermore argued that spatial sensations produce spatial concepts, and that the dominating shapes and forms of the architecture of a time therefore reflect the dominance of a particular inherited sensation of space. The unifying psychological make-up of a populace thus leads to spatial concepts that form an architecture which reflects these concepts and contain symbols that possess ‘satisfying powers’ valued by the majority of people of that particular time and place.

But Löwitsch's theory speaks of more than a mere justification for the usefulness of psychoanalytic theory as a methodology for the humanities. Löwitsch contrasted his findings meticulously with Oswald Spengler's controversially critiqued book The Decline of the West , Karl Scheffler's The Spirit of the Gothic and Eckhart von Sydow's Primitive Art and Psychoanalysis . The discussion of these contemporaneous writings that essentially sought to find the driving forces for the development of styles helps in formulating Löwitsch's final hypothesis. Here, he proposes the emergence of an ‘energetic space’ in architecture, which is the prevalent sensation of space that he predicts to emerge in the near future. His ultimate aim was not to enter academic discourse but rather to provide a scientifically based explanation, with which the impact of space on the inhabitant can be measured, explained and utilised in architectural practice.     

Visible cities. Saundersian meditations on the concept of collective consumption

In his introduction to Cartesian Meditations (1977), Husserl speaks of his phenomenology as almost a neo‐cartesianism, although he rejects nearly all of the Cartesian philosophy as a result of his radical unfolding of Cartesian themes: from cogito ergo sum emerge not only a defiant cogitatum ergo es but even an et tu cogitas. Of course, no resemblance is implied between Descartes and Husserl on the one hand, and Peter Saunders and the present author on the other. There are, though, two minor exceptions. First, out of admiration for Saunder's work I attempt, not an exegesis or a review, but a similar radical unfolding of my own, possibly new or contradictory themes. Second, just like Husserl based his meditations on Cartesianism, not on Descartes (i.e., on the school, not on the person), I view Saunders as an eloquent and orderly spokesman for the ‘new urban sociology’ in its post‐structuralist phase, focussing on its most central proposition (read result or insight: its ‘urbito’ in mock latin): In essence, the urban is the same as collective consumption. Within this school, Saunders is notable for arriving at a definition of the urban which emphasizes its non‐spatiality. Anticipating my criticism, I have adapted the title from Calvino's novel Le città invisibili. While acknowledging the utopic and spiritual aspects of cities’ lives, I will insist on their being based on very visible, material spatial processes. A city without a sewage system is less than city‐like. A city without streets is unthinkable. Hence the title Visible Cities.     

The godless temple, ‘organon of the infinite’

This essay seeks to illuminate our understanding of ‘space’ by showing how Le Corbusier's concept of dwelling draws upon the notion of the secular sacred. The vehicle of analysis is the close correlation between the disposition of his own apartment, at 24 Rue Nugesser et Coli, Paris (1933), and a critical sequence of his Le poème de l'angle droit, published 22 years later. The correlation gives substance and structure to his repeated declaration to ‘make the house a temple’, in turn part of the universal claims of his concept of unité and therefore a significant element of his cultural aspirations regarding housing. The terms of reference for such a reformulation have their source in Romantic thought, with which this essay begins. However, the particular configuration of themes on which Le Corbusier's domestic symbolism depends—a primordial room oriented to the horizon, the contemplation of a paradigmatic woman by a creative male, a representational regime oriented to controlling the cultural background—is already present in certain Marian paintings of the fifteenth century. The configuration seeks to ensure a form of salvation re-interpreted by Le Corbusier in the light of artistic poésie and philosophical reflection. At the same date, Paul Valéry argues for the paradox of painting as a pure noumenal philosophy. This suggests that the long history of the secular sacred depends upon requiring the transcendent to be also transparent to thought, an ambiguity that lies at the heart of the universality claimed for ‘space’ by Sigfried Giedion.     

Looking through axonometric windows

From Frank Lloyd Wright's box-breaking corner windows to Le Corbusier's fenêtre en longueur and Mies van der Rohe's reflective glass walls, modernist architectural space emerged through the transformation of the window. As a mechanism for articulating the primordial architectural distinction between inside and outside, the window has long been a primary architectural element. In modern architecture, however, the types of window multiplied in response to new technologies, structural systems and cultural conditions. The window increased in importance as architects explored its capacity not only to control the transmission of light, air, heat, vision and information, but also to produce different kinds of space and to transform social distinctions such as those between public and private, self and other. In this essay I present a little-known chapter in that story: the series of windows American architect Claude Bragdon designed in 1915 using his system of ‘projective ornament’ (Fig. 1).     

REFLECTIONS OF THE VIRTUAL: The Virtual in Architecture and the Potential of Animate Form

This paper looks at the place of design in Heidegger's theorisadon of what he posits as the highest danger—the danger threatening both humanity's ability to dwell, and the Earth itself as the source of all potentiality. The paper builds upon a particular reading of one of Heidegger's central concepts, that of ‘projecting’ (entwurf). which, it is argued, could equally be understood as ‘designing.’ The paper demonstrates bow this particular understanding of designing, and thus the implications of the danger it bears, is threaded through Heidegger's work.     

‘To make something with nothing’: Le Corbusier's proposal for refugee housing—Les Constructions ‘Murondins’

This paper discusses the complex political trajectory of Le Corbusier's little-known project for war refugees, Les Constructions ‘Murondins’, and examines how it embodies a significant transformation in both his social orientation and formal ideas during the 1930s and the Vichy period.

In 1940, Le Corbusier and his partner Pierre Jeanneret designed the ‘Murondins’ scheme as a means to erect provisional housing and villages rapidly (including a school, club and youth centre). Le Corbusier proposed that these structures would be built by local youths using pisé (‘rammed earth’), tree trunks, branches and other readily available materials. Beyond housing those in need, he hoped that these new settlements would be the foundation of a new grassroots regional culture that would revitalise the French countryside. For the following two years, he actively promoted the ‘Murondins’ project to the Vichy government (unsuccessfully) as a means of mobilising rural youth; after France's liberation, he campaigned for it again as a solution for housing war victims. Nor did he abandon it in subsequent decades: in 1955, he proposed it to Abbé Pierre's Faim et Soif as a solution for sheltering the homeless; and in 1963, he offered it as a means of housing Algerian Muslims fleeing to France after the Algerian war.     

Drawing the Barcelona Pavilion: Mies van der Rohe and the implications of perspectival space

This article investigates a drawing of the interior of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's 1929 German State Pavilion for the International Exposition at Barcelona. Investigations of the drawing take two forms. The first focuses on a close reading of the drawing, engaging with the work's ‘facture', its method of production and its underlying diagram that structures and pilots meaning for viewers. This section develops a conceptual framing for understanding the drawing's critique of architecture's traditions. The second form of investigation takes a more historical approach. Here, investigation of Miesian scholarship in the context of the Berlin avant-garde during the mid- to late-1920s seeks answers to the questions that emerge from the drawing. Conclusions drawn in the paper show that there are consistencies in approach, especially with the way that other artists in Mies's circle have interpreted specific philosophical texts of the period. The article shows that, while philosophies that in more political circumstances took on a different influence, for artists of this period these same philosophies opened a critique of art's traditional rationale and the visualising structures implicit in those traditions.     

ON ‘THEORISING ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION’

Henry van de Velde's intellectual relation to Nietzsche constitutes one of the interesting episodes in the early developments of Modernism in architecture. On the basic level, it opens the question of the influence of a radical philosopher of Modernity on a contemporary artist: while at another level it raises the question of the correspondence between ‘idea’and ‘form’ in the context of an architectural problem: the project for the Nietzsche Monument in Weimar.

Although this relation has already been explored by other scholars, this paper will look at some of the parallels in the thoughts of the philosopher and the artist, as in their vision of the role of art in culture, while also examining the discrepancies in Henry van de Velde's understanding, or appropriation, of the Nietzschean message. This is evident in the Nietzsche Monument project, a project that showed the artist's difficulty at the time in conceptualizing a project that would concretize the philosopher's vision. Finally, this paper will explore the parallel notions of power and force, the former being a foundational nation in ihe philosopher's thought, the latter afoundational notion in ihe artist's aesthetic theory.     

The Future is Curved

The internationally renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is well known for his large-scale installations that foreground the importance of embodied space by using elemental materials such as light, water and air temperature to create immersive experiences for viewers. This was most conspicuously showcased at Tate Modern in London by The Weather Project (2003), which placed a glowing sun in the Turbine Hall to dramatic effect. Here, two of Eliasson's projects are featured - Your rainbow panorama and Movement microscope - that continue the artist's investigations into ‘unlearning space’ by exploring how space is perceived and created through the presence and movement of the human body.     

The return of the Casa dos Bicos,Lisbon, 1983

The intervention in Casa dos Bicos (‘House of Spikes’), in Lisbon, is a transposition of Manuel Vicente’s work in Macau, a territory under Portuguese administration until 1999, now an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. From 1963 to the 1990s, Manuel Vicente designed a set of unique buildings in Macau, a practice interrupted between 1968 and 1969 when he worked with Louis Kahn. The Casa dos Bicos can be seen as in continuity with Vicente’s experience in Macau, which helps to explain the controversy it generated in the 1980s. The 1755 Lisbon Earthquake damaged the Casa dos Bicos (1521/1523) and only two of the original four floors survived. The 1983 intervention restored its façade and introduced elements of contemporary architecture. The ‘spikes’ façade was remade based on a panel of eighteenth-century azulejos (blue-glazed tiles). However, the interior is a fictionalisation of the old city, a mediaevalist figuration intersected with expressionist references in an exercise of fearless post-modernism: a fable with a monumental staircase, arches, alleys and small openings, which are intended to disorient and conceal. Thus the Casa dos Bicos is not a ‘repositioning’, neither does it opt for the morality of distinguishing the new from the old. In this inaccuracy it is radically post-modern. It disqualifies authenticity, preferring a refined set of mirrors. The façade is a replica, where the free historicism of the window frames conveys a spectral dissonance; the interior consists of ‘lights and shadows’; the ‘curtain wall’ on the rear façade has a provisional character that refers to buildings in Macau. The temporal fluency and the spatial randomness display a free enjoyment of history, equivalent to an ‘historical novel’ or perhaps a Hollywood film based on a true story. Here, the ‘presence of the past’ is not only a slogan, but a reality turned into a fantasy.     

From a/topia to topia: Towards a gendered right to the city for migrant volunteers in London

The paper makes use of an un-orthodox Lefebvrian formulation of the ‘right to the city’ as it adds the gender dimension which was absent from Lefebvre's work. The lens of ‘gendered right to the city’ (Doderer, 2003; Fenster, 2005; Vacchelli, 2014) is used in order to understand the experiences of volunteers working in the women's community and voluntary sector in London. We look specifically at the role of migrant organisations both as places of co-option of migrant labour, as places that enable the integration of migrants and make their participation in the urban fabrics possible, and as places that are appropriated by migrant volunteers in London as a means of enacting active citizenship.London's governance, policy discourses and practices seek to impose a top-down idea of civic participation. In this vision, the role of migrant groups and organisations can only be valued in the context of an active civil society, able to replace the vacuum left by the progressive erosion of the welfare state, leading to a crisis of social reproduction. Lefebvre's theoretical framework of ‘space appropriation’ serves as a way to explore these questions and we propose a further spatial reading which is specific to a gendered right to the city, i.e. the shift from a/topia (not having a space or being denied access to public spaces broadly conceived) to topia. We speculate on what this newly found space looks like and what is its potential for the subversion of top-down policy discourses on civic participation in the neoliberal city.     

Writing sensation: Deleuze,literature, architecture and Virginia Woolf's The Waves

This essay poses the question of how to write architecture. It uses as example the writing of Virginia Woolf in the novel The Waves, aiming to show that Woolf employs a particular mode of rendering architecture through sensory means, which in turn offers a way of discussing approaches to writing architecture that are not often foregrounded in architectural discourse. This is elaborated in the context of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, which offers a useful set of conceptual tools through the notions of percept and affect, and, more specifically, the ‘visions and auditions’ pertinent to language. The aim is to show that we can learn from writing methods such as Woolf's both as observers/thinkers in architecture and as writers attempting to recast its material presence in language, while simultaneously developing a finer conceptual palette derived from philosophy.     

Gathering,Disposing and the Cultivation of Judgement in Sir Henry Wotton's: The Elements of Architecture

Employing a hermeneutic approach to Sir Henry Wotton's seventeenth century text on architecture, this paper discloses the discourse on judgement that lies at its heart. Wotton's conception of judgement is Aristotelian, and refers to Aristotle's Ethics; specifically his discourses on practical reasoning, legislation and political wisdom. Addressed to the aristocratic amateur architects of Jacobean England. The Elements of Architecture seeks to provide a ‘rule’ to guide the cultivation of good judgment in architecture. Nuances of the relationship between ‘rule’ and ‘example’ in Wotton's conception of judgement are examined, highlighting a consonance with the play between logos and ethos that is characteristic of Aristotelian ethics. This play, it is argued, is crucial to Wotton's conception of both judgement and architectural making