Lucius Burckhardt Writings. Rethinking Man-made Environments: Politics, Landscape & Design 9783990434963, 9783990434956

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~ SpringerWienNewYork

Jesko Fezer · Martin Schmitz (Eds.)

Lucius Burckhardt Writings. Rethinking Man-made Environments Politics, Landscape & Design

SpringerWienNewYork

Editors Jesko Fezer, D–Berlin/Hamburg design.hfbk-hamburg.de Martin Schmitz, D–Berlin martin-schmitz.de lucius-burckhardt.org We thank Annemarie Burckhardt (1930-2012) for her many suggestions and steadfast support.

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically those of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, broadcasting, reproduction by photocopying machines or similar means, and storage in data banks. Product liability: The publisher can give no guarantee for the information contained in this book. The use of registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and are therefore free for general use. © 2012 Springer-Verlag/Wien SpringerWienNewYork is a part of Springer Science+Business Media springer.at Coverphoto: Lucius Burckhardt painted a fly on a grape, in emulation of the artist Apelles. Is a realistic simulation of nature the very best art can do? Photo: Annemarie Burckhardt Cover Design: Jesko Fezer, Martin Schmitz, Ekke Wolf Typesetting: Ekke Wolf, A–Vienna, www.typic.at Translated from the German: Jill Denton, D–Berlin Proof reading: Andreas Müller, D–Berlin Printed on acid-free and chlorine-free bleached paper SPIN: 86094037 Library of Congress Control Number: 2012944424 With 32 figures ISBN 978-3-7091-1256-4 SpringerWienNewYork

Content Preface: The Work of Lucius Burckhardt

7

Urban Planning and Democracy (1957)

27

Ulm Anno 5. The Curriculum of the Ulm School of Design (1960)

35

Building—A Process with No Obligations to Heritage Preservation (1967)

44

On the Value and Meaning of Urban Utopias (1968)

63

From Design Academicism to the Treatment of Wicked Problems (1973)

77

Who Plans the Planning? (1974)

85

Family and Home—Two Adaptable Systems (1975)

102

Urban Design and Its Significance for Residents (1975)

115

Gardening—An Art and A Necessity (1977)

123

Why Is Landscape Beautiful? (1979)

133

On the Design of Everyday Life (1979)

142

Design Is Invisible (1980)

153

Dirt (1980)

166

What Is Livability? On Quantifiable and Invisible Needs (1981)

170

The Night Is Man-made (1982)

179

Architecture—An Art or A Science? (1983)

189

A Critique of the Art of Gardening (1983)

195

Fake: The Real Thing (1987)

204

Aesthetics and Ecology (1990)

212

A Walk in Second Nature (1992)

226

The Sermon (1994)

232

Strollological Observations on Perception of the Environment and the Tasks Facing Our Generation (1996)

239

Wasteland As Context. Is There Any Such Thing As The Postmodern Landscape? (1998)

249

On Movement and Vantage Points—the Strollologist’s Experience (1999)

264

Biography

281

Bibliography

283

Index

287

Jesko Fezer · Martin Schmitz

The Work of Lucius Burckhardt Lucius Burckhardt was bold for he claimed that design is invisible. He was exasperating for he asked why landscape is beautiful. He was persistent for he doggedly asked who actually plans the planning. He was egalitarian for he addressed issues such as “livability” and everyday life. He was provocative. He declared the night and dirt to be a focus of his research. He was realistic insofar as he established that to build or to design is a process. He was rebellious for he made a science out of taking a stroll. He was far-sighted for he claimed that care and maintenance are destructive. Lucius Burckhardt published his writings in a broad range of newspapers, magazines, anthologies, art catalogues and yearbooks, and propounded his ideas also via other media, art events and lectures. He thus reached people from all walks of life and areas of expertise. His extensive repertoire encompassed a rich combination of scientific research and formal intervention, expressed through painting, drawing, walking, curating, designing and motoring. His novel re-contextualization and interweave of various disciplines— including some of his own invention—had an often, provocative and irrefutably, lasting impact. He radically and consistently reflected on everyday man-made forms and structures, and made those aspects generally ignored in the professional realm, and overlooked by laymen, his core concern.

7

Annemarie and Lucius Burckhardt in their office at the University of Kassel, in 1993. From the day they married in 1955, they worked in tandem. Photo: Reinhard Franz

The Car and the City

Lucius Burckhardt’s first research interest was the mass motorization of Europe after World War II. The so-called “Greater Basel Correction Plan” of 1949 proposed that narrow roads in the gothic city center be restructured to the benefit of motorists—despite the fact that Basel, unlike many German cities at the time, was still structurally intact. But the new means of individual transport required accessible parking lots near shops and offices. The Correction Plan foresaw the demolition of entire rows of houses, so 8

roads could be widened to accommodate the new traffic system. Politicians and urban planners were ill prepared for such challenges and intervened often to the detriment of the city’s material and social infrastructures. The inhabitants of houses to be demolished “in the cause of urban renewal,” were the most helpless of all. Lucius Burckhardt was one of the very few to recognize the drama of the moment. “Historic City Center in Peril” announced his article for a student newspaper in October 1949, when he was only 24: “Unfortunately, no critical voice has been raised in the daily press, and traffic psychosis seems to have afflicted commentators (insofar as their tastes have not already capitulated to current economic demands—as in, suspension bridge!). If destruction of the historic city center can be postponed until the first postwar motor has ceased to sputter, if the development of public transport can be put on hold for a little while longer, until good taste has got back on its feet, until value judgments have been re-revised, until the bomb damage in Central Europe has permeated the consciousness even of Basel’s population—if the destruction of the historic city center can be postponed say, for thirty years, the battle would be won.”¹ From this moment on, Lucius Burckhardt set himself the task of reflecting on the socio-cultural conditions under which architecture, design, urban planning and landscape design operate—a task he was to consider from interdisciplinary vantage points: as a research fellow at the University of Münster’s Social Research Center in Dortmund, as a lecturer at the Ulm School of Design, as editor of the journal Werk, as a member of the “professorial sofa” (as op-

1

Lucius Burckhardt, “Altstadt in Gefahr,” in: Basler Studentenblatt Nr. 1, 31, Basel, October 1949, p. 12. 9

posed to the professorial chair) at the ETH Zurich, as a professor at Kassel University, as chairman of the German Werkbund and, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as founding dean of the Design Faculty at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Lucius Burckhardt began quasi as a simple citizen up in arms about plans for his hometown Basel then proceeded to make critical civic engagement the basis of his life’s work. A first and fundamental step was to re-imagine planning and architecture in (and for) a democracy. Publications such as Wir selber bauen unsre Stadt² and achtung: die Schweiz³ analyzed the new conditions under which architecture and urban planning operated in the 1950s. Burckhardt studied under Edgar Salin and Karl Jaspers, and graduated in Basel in 1955 with a thesis on “Party and State in the (Italian) Risorgimento.” That same year he married Annemarie Burckhardt, with whom he was to live and work until his death in 2003.

Democratic Urban Planning

In September 1957, a special issue of the Berlin architectural journal Bauwelt was devoted to the opening of “Interbau,” an architectural exhibition project in the Hansa district of West Berlin. A team of authors convened by the new editor Ulrich Conrads and the urban

2 Lucius Burckhardt, Wir selber bauen unsre Stadt (We Build Our City Ourselves), Verlag Felix Handschin, Basel 1953; co-authored by Markus Kutter. 3 Lucius Burckhardt, achtung: die Schweiz (Look Out! Switzerland), Basel 1955; co-authored by Markus Kutter and Max Frisch. 10

Cover of the book achtung: die schweiz! Basel 1955. The authors Lucius Burckhardt, Max Frisch and Markus Kutter proposed people ignore Expo64, the national exhibition in Lausanne, and think instead about building a new city. They thus triggered one of the first public discussions about the true meaning of the term “planning.”

11

sociologist Hans Paul Bahrdt had plenty to say on the subject, as the headline “Critical Material on Interbau”⁴ clearly announced. Lucius Burckhardt’s article, “Urban Planning and Democracy. Also a Commentary on Interbau”⁵ was presented (without further explanation), as a preface to these sociologically informed surveys and critiques. Burckhardt actually made no mention of the exhibition as such in his article yet he did ask, “whom we should blame for present circumstances,” spoke of “a distinct sense of unease” among “cursing citizens,”⁶ and thus hinted heavily at what he thought of it. This was the first article in which Burckhardt outlined his view of the city as an expression of social relationships. He thereby laid the foundations for arguments he was to refine in later years, in the course of his pursuit of a radical and democratic form of urban planning and humane architecture. He strongly believed that the tools and methods of structural planning were ill designed to deal effectively with contemporary problems. His own critique began by addressing the tangible circumstances of everyday (co-)existence, and how people cope with them. He advocated a new concept of planning as well as public participation in the planning processes that shape everyday lives. Burckhardt’s basic premise, “the cityscape is an expression of social relations,” led him to ask as early as 1957 whether we “may ever arrive at another form [of planning] by democratic means.”⁷

4 Bauwelt 37, Berlin, 1957. 5 Lucius Burckhardt, “Stadtplanung und Demokratie” (Urban Planning and Democracy) in: Bauwelt 37, 1957, pp. 969–970. 6 Ibid., p. 969. 7 Ibid., p. 969. 12

Science and Design

In 1960, an article by Lucius Burckhardt was published in the Swiss architectural journal Werk, of which he was soon to become editor. It dealt with the Ulm School of Design (HfG), where he had been a guest lecturer for design theory—and it took a well-aimed, sweeping blow at sectarianism, formalism and the naïve adulation of science. In Ulm, Lucius Burckhardt addressed the everyday and popular dimensions of design as well as its political repercussions, an innovative approach pursued with interest by students yet officially unheeded. For, although the HfG was in the throes of shifting from an artistically driven to a more scientific understanding of design, elitist academicism in a new guise remained predominant. Burckhardt noted therefore, that Max Bill’s “Teutonic irreality” had ceded after his departure to an era of “cynical pragmatism” and “the supremacy of science.”⁸ The architectural historian Kenneth Frampton later contradicted this, attributing to Tomas Maldonado, for many years the dean of the HfG, the comment that the most extreme group of methodologists “was led by a visiting professor at the HfG, namely the Swiss national economist Lucius Burckhardt.”⁹ And it must be said that the methodical approach developed in Ulm, in particular by Horst Rittel, had a formative influence on Burckhardt. As a sociologist he advocated, on the one hand, a serious, scientific

8 Lucius Burckhardt, “Ulm Anno 5” in: Werk Nr. 11, Vol. 47, Zurich 1960, p. 37. Burckhardt was soon to become editor of this journal, a position he held from 1962 to 1972. 9 Kenneth Frampton, Archithese, 15, 1975, p. 30. 13

and methodological approach to design problems yet insisted, on the other, that critiques should remain rooted in reality rather than bow to formalist dictates. It was Horst Rittel of all people, in his new role as a member of the School’s board, who penned an article in the same issue, to counter Burckhardt’s attack.¹⁰ The HfG had requested this opportunity to publish its response, and Rittel used it to present his critical, methodological reading of planning; a reading no longer unanimously accepted at the HfG even then, and which was soon to lead to his departure also.

The State of Architecture

That a scientist from the “still little known field of sociology should be appointed [in January 1962] to the editorial board of the Swiss architectural journal Werk perplexed many readers.”¹¹ And the decision was indeed both crucial and pioneering. Werk was transformed under Burckhardt’s editorship for, instead of simply reviewing realized construction projects, it served as a platform for discussion of the prerequisites and consequences of architecture, and other related issues. “Many viewpoints were accepted for publication, from architectural theory to sociology, semiotics to heritage preservation, and urban planning issues.”¹² Lucius Burckhardt left Werk in 1972.

10 Horst Rittel, “Zu den Arbeitshypothesen der Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm” in: Werk, Nr. 8, Vol. 48, Zurich 1961, pp. 281–293. 11 Fritz Schwarz in: Werk Nr. 59, 1972, p. 180. 12 Ibid., p. 180. 14

The Process of Planning and Building

In collaboration with the renowned Swiss architect and artist Walter Förderer, Burckhardt elaborated his trenchant critique of the professional design field—developed beforehand as a primary focus of his work at the HfG, and published later as a pamphlet. As early as 1967, both in a lecture given at the Werkbund in Karlsruhe, and at the legendary “architectural theory” conference organized by Oswald Mathias Ungers in Berlin, Lucius Burckhardt had criticized architects who strive to attain a specific form through the precise fulfillment of tasks, and who therefore demand for this purpose a precise program, the optimal solution to which (so expert opinion at the time), is a structure that corresponds precisely to that program. Burckhardt polemicized by asking, “What does the designer or architect propose, when faced with a problem? What does the apple tree propose, when faced with a problem? Apples, of course; and the designer will always propose buildings; every problem leads to a building….” And he claimed that such structural “solutions” often have precious little to do with the highly complex problem to which they supposedly relate. Bauen ein Prozess,¹³ a formative text in its day, is still fundamental to an understanding of the ways in which politics and environmental design interrelate, and of planning as an interactive process. The man-made environment deteriorates because it is unable to adapt, Burckhardt believed, and also because it fails either to accommodate temporal dynamics, or to leave sufficient leeway for overlap and blur. Burckhardt demanded that the planning process be limited

13 Lucius Burckhardt, Bauen ein Prozess (Architecture As Process), Teufen 1968, co-authored by Walter Förderer. 15

in scope and impact, claiming that “objectives should be formulated and approached step by step […] and decisions postponed rather than anticipated—despite the ‘visual’ outcomes for which the words ‘model’ or ‘master plan’ prime us.”¹⁴ He spoke in favor of “non-programmed” projects or “fuzzy programming.” He meant by this, not non-planning but rather, a new form of open-ended planning,¹⁵ one that caters for the liberties implicit in everyday use. His question was “How little planning can we get by on; how little can ever be planned at all?”¹⁶ And he proposed that as many decisions as possible be deferred, so as to better facilitate the collective decisionmaking process. This collective process was the linchpin of Lucius Burckhardt’s concept of planning,¹⁷ his means to deconstruct the myth that planning is a rational, apolitical form of environmental design. He identified a crisis in the decision-making process.¹⁸ “Capitalist Urban Development,” the legendary anthology published in 1970, was the first endeavor in the German-speaking countries to throw light from various perspectives on the commodification of urban space under advanced capitalism, and to thereby criticize the role of architects and planners. “Political Decisions in Structural Planning” was a key text, in which Lucius Burckhardt underpinned the theses outlined in Bauen ein Prozess. It signaled

14 Lucius Burckhardt, “Schwierigkeiten beim Nachdenken über Leitbilder,” (Problems When Considering Master Plans), 1971 in: Wer plant die Planung? Architektur, Politik und Mensch, Jesko Fezer/ Martin Schmitz (Eds.) Berlin 2004, p. 69f. 15 Ibid., p. 42. 16 Ibid., p. 38. 17 “… all of these [concepts] ultimately lacked the very essence of urban planning, namely an eye for the process of collective decision-making,” ibid., p. 30. 18 Lucius Burckhardt: “Die Krise der Stadt” (Urban Crisis) 1961, ibid., p. 132. 16

Burckhardt’s steadfast commitment to architecture and urban planning discourse, and delivered further theoretical ammunition to the student revolts underway since 1968.

The Citizen and the City

The range of urban utopias that had blossomed worldwide by the late 1960s was functionalist, Burckhardt claimed, for it continued to seek “neat solutions” with universal validity.¹⁹ Yet, in interpreting architectural utopianism—as evinced over the previous decade by the work of Archigram, Yona Friedman and the Japanese Metabolists—as a cry for help from overtaxed architects, desperate for dialogue with users, stakeholders and citizens on the subject of how a city should be, he clearly ignored the architects’ intent. “Thankfully—and with good reason—criticism of urban planning has become a common good.”²⁰ In response to deterioration of the built environment, itself often a result of postwar infrastructures and reconstruction, public discussion of urban development became widespread in the 1960s, not only in Germany. In delivering fundamental analyses in the 1950s, Lucius Burckhardt had clearly broken new ground in this critical debate. “A creative mind and critic in the field of urban planning, an analyst and an admonishing

19 Lucius Burckhardt, “Wert und Sinn städtebaulicher Utopien.” (On the Value and Meaning of Urban Utopias) in: Das Ende der Städte? Reinhard Krämer (ed.), Stuttgart 1968, pp. 111–129. 20 Wolfgang Pehnt, Die Stadt in der Bundesrepublik – Lebensbedingungen, Aufgaben, Planung, Stuttgart 1974, p. 7. 17

voice, [Burckhardt] made an outstanding contribution to shaping public opinion on architecture in Germany in the 1970s and 80s, with quite singular impact.”²¹

Design Processes

From 1976 to 1983, Lucius Burckhardt was chairman of the German Werkbund, an institution that had monitored the quality of industrial products in Germany since the early twentieth century, and driven campaigns to improve the environment. “In the immediate aftermath of World War II, members of the Werkbund felt they should first rid themselves of all the mental and physical debris of the Third Reich then return to where development had been interrupted in 1933; namely, to modern architecture per se, and to ‘good form’ in the design field.”²² In publications and at conferences, the Werkbund under Burckhardt’s chairmanship increasingly addressed issues related not simply to material objects but also to processes. Whether in the fields of design, planning, construction or appliance manufacture, the spotlight now was not on the finished product but on the decision-making process—and subsequently, also on the social and physical prerequisites, and the repercussions of design and planning decisions. “The Werkbund was the first body in the Federal Republic [of Germany] to raise public awareness of the

21 Gottfried Knapp in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28.08.2003. 22 Il Werkbund – Germania, Austria, Svizzera. Lucius Burckhardt (ed.), Milan 1977, p. 6. 18

risks we now call environmental issues.”²³ As chairman, Burckhardt provided a new theoretical foundation for the Werkbund’s objectives, which he underscored by lecturing in Darmstadt on topics such as Architecture and Participation (1977), Architecture as Language (1978), Eco-Architecture (1978), Regionalism in Architecture (1979), Technology-driven Design (1979), Dirt (1980), Architecture and Imagination (1980), Packaging (1981), Architecture for Everyday Life (1981), The House in the House (1982) and Night (1982).

Invisible Design

“Design is invisible” was Lucius Burckhardt’s core hypothesis. It meant all things are integrated in an invisible system that is also designed, which is to say, man-made. Someone seeking a city apartment is interested primarily, not in apartment buildings’ external appearance but rather, in invisible components such as the rent level, the house rules and the residents. Lucius Burckhardt argued that the “optimal design” for a tramway is when it operates at night. Behind visible objects he saw the invisible social dimension that architects, designers and planners must consider and shape. He likewise criticized the “Good Form Award”²⁴ at the Basel Switzerland trade fair, on account of its disregard for a design object’s specific context.

23 Ibid., p. 6. 24 Max Bill, Die gute Form: 6 Jahre Auszeichnung ‘Die gute Form’ an der Schweizer Mustermesse in Basel / Max Bill. Direktion der Schweizer Mustermesse in Basel/ Zentralvorstand der Schweizer. Werkbundes SWB (Eds.), Winterthur 1957. 19

In 1980, the legendary “Linz Design Forum” used Burckhardt’s “design is invisible” premise as the title for a book published to accompany an exhibition showcasing the comprehensive scope of early postmodernist design. Burckhardt, well equipped with methodological and theoretical tools, and skilled in explaining complex issues in an illuminating and concise manner, once again felt ready to break new ground in current discourse. He drew in several regards both on Ivan Illich’s book Tools for Conviviality, and on the work of Christopher Alexander, and thereby emphasized that design not only has an invisible dimension but also is pivotal to human relationships. And—as the design theorist Bernard E. Bürdek later noted, disparagingly—he instantly created a new “trend,” or “roundabout routes”²⁵ that students and young designers fell over themselves to adopt. His theory of invisible design—and hence, of hitherto overlooked systemic socio-economic dimensions—was indeed a provocative and original contribution to design discourse, and is still of relevance today.

Open-ended Teaching Practice

After Burckhardt began lecturing at the Ulm School of Design (HfG) in 1959, he became deeply concerned about the state of professional training for young architects, urban planners and designers. In 1969, in the aftermath of student revolts, he conceded to

25 Bernhard E. Bürdek in: Der Fall Forum Design. Index zu einem Kulturprojekt, Martin Hochleitner/Gabriele Hofer (Eds.), Weitra 2010. 20

student demands by establishing at the ETH Zurich what was to be a short-lived “professorial sofa” (as opposed to the interim professorial chair), held first by the architect Rolf Gutmann, and later by Rainer Senn and Burckhardt himself, in the role of sociologist. This astonishing experiment addressed nothing less than the role of the architect in society. Criticism of academic structures and the architects they produced led to radical demands for democratic, participatory structures, and their integration in teaching practice. “A new image of the architect’s role was to underpin a reform of professional education and training. The professorial sofa offered its own response to both questions: transparency was called for, not only in the day-to-day work of architects but also in the allocation of grades.”²⁶ Kassel Polytechnic—today the University of Kassel—was founded in 1971 as Germany’s first “reformed university,” as an alternative to both classical universities and institutes of technology. The student movement put its critique of society and urban planning in the public eye. Mounting public pressure led the planning disciplines to acknowledge such criticism, and to allow the humanities and, above all, the social sciences a more significant role. An interdisciplinary degree course in architecture, urban planning and landscape design was launched, and thus Lucius Burckhardt— as of 1973, professor of “the socio-economy of urban systems”—was able to put his stamp on what came to be known as the “Kassel School,” in its entirety. “The University’s concept and structure are characterized by a project-oriented course of study in small groups, by direct exchange between students and teaching staff, by

26 Silvan Blumenthal, Das Lehrcanapé: Lucius Burckhardt und das Architektenbild an der ETH Zürich 1970-1973, Basel 2010, pp. 8–9. 21

practice-oriented course content, and by a critical, interdisciplinary approach.”²⁷

A Problem-oriented Approach

From 1987 to 1989 Lucius Burckhardt was a member of the founding commission of the Saar University of Visual Arts and, in 1992, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the state parliament of Thuringia appointed him founding dean of the Design Faculty of the Bauhaus University of Weimar. In Weimar he amalgamated three subject areas: fine art, product design and visual communication. A self-confessed detractor of the “classic” foundation course, his rallying cry was: “Turn the Bauhaus inside-out.” Accordingly, “…teaching [was] not only to be project-oriented but, first and foremost, problem-oriented. Students [were to] learn to solve real problems rather than prefabricated schoolbook exercises. This is why their work [had] from the outset to address real issues and not merely practice runs. This concept [necessitated] a break with the traditional foundation course as well as with Bauhaus pedagogic principles in their entirety.”²⁸ Before retiring from his post at Weimar, and at the invitation of the university pastor, Lucius Burckhardt gave his “sermon” in

27 Johanna Stippl, “Nur wo der Mensch die Natur gestört hat, wird die Landschaft wirklich schön. Die landschaftstheoretischen Aquarelle von Lucius Burckhardt,” diss., Vienna 2011. 28 “Ein anderes Bauhaus in Weimar. Gespräch mit Marie-Louise Blatter” in: Basler Zeitung (supplement), Nr. 13, 3.4.1993, pp. 1–3. 22

St. Jacob’s Church in Weimar, in which he succinctly outlined his aspirations, both for the teaching profession and for environmental design.

Everyday Culture

On Lucius Burckhardt’s sixtieth birthday, in 1985, the first compilation of his texts from the period 1960–84 was published as “Die Kinder fressen ihre Revolution.”²⁹ Burckhardt observed that participants in the revolts of 1968 were in the process of abandoning their ideals, by “[conforming] increasingly to the institutions criticized, many of which have proved to be indomitable.”³⁰ This too, was part and parcel of the different conditions under which European architecture and planning had to operate in the 1980s. The pre-1984 texts had been compiled under catchy titles such as “Design is invisible,” “Destroyed By Care,” “Minimal Intervention,” and “The Rubbish Theory of Culture.” Burckhardt’s aspiration in refining his basic concept of social environment as a complex system was to create closer links between planning, design and the realities of everyday life. The bewildering complexity and unpredictability of the actual state of urban systems and their ongoing development constantly confronts planning with

29 Lucius Burckhardt, Die Kinder fressen ihre Revolution (The Kids Are Guzzling Their Own Revolution), Bazon Brock (ed.), Cologne 1985. 30 Wolfgang Bessenich, “Profis müssen das Stadtelend verantworten” (The Professionals Must Answer For This Urban Misery) in: Basler Zeitung 30.3.1985. 23

the inadequacy of its tools. Lucius Burckhardt made it his business to unequivocally acknowledge this fact, and to pursue new methods of exploring reality and the dynamics of potential interventions. He thereby turned the spotlight on issues of relevance to the man on the street: on small, common, overlooked or unpopular issues, or simply on everyday life itself; for, to his mind, these objects and circumstances had a much greater impact on people’s lives than any issues previously defined as fields of intervention accessible solely to experts. For his “documenta urbana—sichtbarmachen”³¹ project in 1982, he challenged artists, architects and also laypersons to think about a number of pre-selected locations in Kassel, and to make planning proposals for them.

Taking A Stroll

In the 1980s, it became increasingly clear that the borders between town and country in Central Europe were disappearing. At the same time, commercial and political interests were rapidly coopting upcoming ecological issues. In 1982 for example, the National Horticultural Show in Kassel—which Lucius Burckhardt criticized heavily—showcased “biotopes” at the very spot where large-scale destruction had turned a wild, luxuriant landscape into a leisure park. Lucius Burckhardt had criticized the impact of using cars for personal transport as early as the 1950s then, as motorization slowly reached never before seen dimensions, he founded a new science

31 (documenta urbana—makingvisible). 24

devoted to exploring the connections between mobility, perception and design: the science of walking—or strollology, as it came to be known. The sociologist bundled together all his research interests under this one umbrella term, and the result was an extremely interdisciplinary mix. To take a stroll is the most basic means to perceive the world. We move through cities and landscapes then, once home, all we have seen fuses in a single image, in our mind’s eye. But our mind’s eye is preoccupied already, before we leave the house, by images from advertising, film and literature. When Armstrong first stepped onto the moon he spoke of the Grand Canyon… The motorist who traverses the region of Burgundy in one afternoon claims, it is no longer what it used to be… Strollology—the science of walking—was quick to develop a notion of architecture and urbanism, planning and building, for the globalized world. It proved useful as an instrument with which to render visible hidden aspects of the man-made environment, and to challenge conventional modes of perception. The most important demonstration of this science, “The Voyage to Tahiti,” took place in 1987, in parallel to the documenta 8 in Kassel. “Certain perspectives can doubtless be communicated by art alone, for limitations on our respective viewpoints have become so common nowadays, that people no longer have the sense of perspective necessary to see beyond them.”³² Lucius Burckhardt successfully demonstrated that to apply the tools of the science of walking both to urban and rural environ-

32 “Strollology als Nebenfach – Gespräch mit Hans Ulrich Obrist” (Strollology as a Secondary Subject – A Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist) in: Lucius Burckhardt: Warum ist Landschaft schön? Die Spaziergangswissenschaft, Markus Ritter/Martin Schmitz (Eds.) Berlin 2006, p. 8. 25

ments generates new insights and stimuli in the fields of architecture and planning. “We are the first generation to have to construct a new aesthetic, a strollological aesthetic. Strollological, for the simple reason that the way or route to a place can no longer be taken for granted, but must be reproduced in, or represented by, the object itself. The multilayered message that a building or, in another case, gardens or a cultivated landscape must deliver can no longer rest on a flash of genius on the part of its creator. The enterprising architect’s statement, ‘Where there is no place, I will create a place myself ’ is no longer enough: there are enough such aesthetic cactuses dotted about already and indeed, it is they which have contributed so decisively to the much lamented deterioration of the natural environment. Rather, what is required here is design intelligence, intelligence that conveys a dual message: information about the context as well as about the object in question.”³³ In recognition of his outstanding achievements in the fields of science, ecology, and aesthetics, Lucius Burckhardt was presented the State of Hessen’s Cultural Award in 1994, Germany’s Federal Award for the Promotion of Design in 1995, and Switzerland’s Design Award in 2001. This book assembles in chronological order various texts from the period 1957–99, in which Burckhardt addressed the prerequisites and the repercussions of architecture, planning and design. By choosing this realistic perspective he developed an understanding of the production of man-made environments, which remains relevant, provocative and inspiring to this day.

33 Lucius Burckhardt: “Promenadologische Betrachtungen über die Wahrnehmung der Umwelt und die Aufgaben unserer Generation” (Strollological Observations on Perception of the Environment and the Tasks Facing Our Generation) 1996, in: ibid, p. 256. 26

Urban Planning and Democracy (1957) Is it not actually rather strange, how little concern the public has or, to be more precise, how little concern the public per se has for the cityscape? For the city is the most public manifestation of our shared life, the most visible representation of human activity. And if someone were to dig us up in two thousand years, once all knowledge of our written language had disappeared, the cityscape would be the only thing by which we might be judged. Don’t say the public has no interest in the city! To prove the opposite one need only go onto the streets, or open one’s ears in a tram: a strict judge comments there on every new construction, on every change, and anything petty or tasteless is recalled with caustic wit. What is lacking therefore is not public concern for all that is going on around us but rather, the public expression of such concern: a form or forum that would assure it public impact. We must ask ourselves therefore, why all social opinion, why politics, sport and the arts must engage with a critical public, indeed must measure their public profile virtually at every step while urban planning must not—although it cannot be denied that eminently expressive social opinion takes more concrete, enduring form in the latter than anywhere else. What is missing, we reply, is a vantage point from which public criticism of urban planning may be formulated loudly and clearly in a public context. The matter of urban planning is complex, and determined by factors both aesthetic and extremely banal. So how might agreement be reached? How might two people, one of whom has only praise for the proportions of a square while the other is critical of its lack of parking space, not reach agreement exactly—for that would be asking too much—yet 27

nonetheless find common ground on which to discuss the matter? But let us leave the practical aspects aside for a moment, and stay focused on aesthetics. Ask any group of people to judge a building—and a lively debate will ensue. Ask that same group of people about how a row of houses hangs together, about an aspect of the cityscape—and the result will be Babylonian mayhem. Here, the public lacks all criteria by which the urban planning phenomenon might be assessed. The art of urban planning is an odd matter: odd on account of its position mid-way between the intentional and the unintentional. We notice this particularly when looking for the person responsible, for the presiding instance at whose door we might lay the blame for certain circumstances, or who might make a better job of things. Every house in the city is an expression of intent; someone intended it to become exactly what it is; only the result, the cityscape—or that which should be a cityscape but is not—was unintentional; nobody wanted it to turn out like it is. And yet human beings built the city; it is an expression of conscious activity. So, can the city be a matter of pure coincidence? Is it possible that the city in its entirety has no meaning? Is it merely a tired cliché to claim the city is an expression of social relationships, indeed, is the very mirror of society? This brings us to the question of what form our city might take or, more precisely, of whether we might attain by democratic means something other than a fully unintentional form, or formlessness. For dictatorship lurks behind any uniform plan: the seamless master plan is the outcome of a single will. It can never come into being while real democracy is still at work. So already, as we see, the city is beginning to show its political aspects. But let us pause here, and take a look at the man shaking his head over the new buildings in his city. Surely people have shaken their heads over every change 28

since time immemorial, owing to a natural conservatism that is, after all, irrefutably human. Today however, man asks himself more precisely what is going on. His astonishment over this or that is no longer diffuse but is beginning instead to manifest as a distinct sense of unease. The rising number of accidents, the city’s budget deficit (despite its record revenues), land speculation, the building mania that threatens soon to destroy our historical inner cities, the increase in construction costs and rent levels, the changes on the cityscape and the landscape, and the loss of green spaces—all this shakes the citizen up, and puts the population of our larger cities in a downright defensive mood. The novel thing about this mood is that it has a focus—people are now neither in the dark, nor willing to accept their fate. The outraged citizen no longer perceives the city as an organic development or, at worst, as rank growth but rather, as something in certain respects tangible, and able to be steered; he perceives it, in any case, as the outcome of conscious intent, and therefore as someone’s responsibility. Why is that? The urban dweller lives today in rented accommodation. The question of whether he is satisfied with this apartment is irrelevant. Certainly, he personally would have built it quite differently. He would gladly have done without a part of the kitchen, and added it instead to the living room, or vice versa; he would have preferred useful built-in storage units to a cloakroom, would have built a workshop or spare room instead of the pathetic foyer that is no more than an extension of the corridor, and so forth. But he preferred his apartment to ten others that resemble his own, like peas in a pod—apart from the fact that his has a deep windowsill in the living room, for flowerpots. He now believes himself to be the proud occupant of an apartment he chose personally, and which is therefore an ideal apartment—and ideal it may well be, but its 29

respective inhabitant is not ideal but a human being made of flesh and blood, one who occasionally repairs his own furniture, or has a god-child stay over, whose little bed has to be set up in the bathroom. In short, the apartment intended to suit everyone actually suits no one, and the style of dwelling imposed on us today—identical ideal apartments, provided courtesy of our social housing programs—was invented by no one, was built for no one, and no one on earth intended it to look as it does. The individual is as helpless with regard to housing programs as he is with regard to development of the cityscape. The city is his fate. It determines his lifestyle down to the smallest detail; everything from his rent level to his route to work depends on urban development. And yet the city too is an outcome of anonymous intent. Apparently, no one intended it to look as it does. Apparently, it is no one’s fault when the traffic gets out of hand someplace, and accidents happen; or when businesses some other place go bust because a street there leads traffic to a dead-end. All that can be put down apparently, to fate, economic development and the course of events. And now the cities destroyed during the war in Germany, France, Holland and England must be rebuilt. The population in other countries such as the USA, India and Sweden is to be relocated to new cities, we hear. How do new cities come into being? They do not come into being at all. Rather, they are built on the basis of decisions taken. Any place cities do not come into being, we can be sure that neither a government agency nor an industrial consortium has resolved to build a city. One could also say, the government there has renounced any prospect of urban development, has decided not to pursue urban planning. It is clear that a newly planned city or a destroyed one can be built one way or another. The planner here can weigh up alternatives from the very start. He can allow the city to expand consid30

“And this part of the master plan is intended to ensure people understand the need for the highway.” Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

erably, can connect scattered settlements by building major highways, or locate stores along a wide arc accessible to motorists. He can make the city more compact, create a pedestrianized shopping zone, and accommodate residents in a way such that they get by without owning or using a car. Or he can combine these two approaches in various ways, create concentric districts, and locate only the most important amenities in the city center. In any case, the planner or the planning community has many decisions to reach, countless decisions of very different sorts. Unlike the previous city therefore, the new one will be dictated by somebody’s will or—let us not mince words—people will know then whom they should curse. And here, we must ask ourselves whether it really is imperative that the city fathers and expert of31

ficials prevail over the population “forcefully” and “with no regard for collateral damages,” bear full responsibility, and subsequently harvest either fame or verbal abuse. In other words, we are faced once again with the question of whether urban planning can be simultaneously intentional and democratic. Everything we have said about the new and the rebuilt city, about alternative resolutions and preliminary decisions, holds true also for any existing city. Development in our cities today is so intense and so decisive that the planning authorities and the population are faced constantly with far-reaching decisions. If some of our larger cities act as if no decision has to be taken, this too amounts to a decision—to the decision namely, to leave growth to market forces—and responsibility for this decision to do nothing will be theirs nonetheless, even if they are not around to suffer the consequences. Mostly however, these cities do not choose not to act. They actually do reach endless decisions which—because they are not part of an overall concept—lead, either individually or in their entirety, to side effects that serve to establish the very opposite of what was originally intended. These cities would have done better to consult an expert rather than have their politicians experiment with amateurish planning, one might say. Yet failure generally lies not with the actual professional sector but with the political authorities themselves, insofar as they fail to recognize the political significance of preliminary questions. Such preliminary decisions are necessary in order that the general public may have its say in the democratic decision-making process, and thereby rank its various demands in order of importance. I must emphasize that, when speaking of democracy here, I mean real democracy and not the kind where it is pointed out merely that the people elected parliamentarians, who appointed officials, 32

“Just sign here, please, on the dotted line.” Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

who consulted experts, who then implemented this, that, or whatever. What is important in a real democracy is to clearly distinguish between those things the public must decide and those the professionals must decide. The expert must fulfill competently the task politicians entrust to him. The politicians’ task is to clarify what the public wants, and to rank existing values and those yet to be created in order of their importance. Initially, such public participation will perhaps be voiced outside the established political parties. But if it is to have any political impact it must be voiced through the parties. That the parties seek to maintain their own position on urban planning affairs is often perceived as ridiculous, and as irrefutable proof of the non-viability of democratic urban planning. I take the 33

opposite view, and believe that—if one regards the city as something more than just a mathematical traffic management issue, as the visible expression of our shared life, and if one’s ultimate goal is to seek to improve both that and the city—then engagement with urban planning issues will give rise to new political alternatives, and to new intellectual challenges for our parties. For what are political parties but advocates of various social utopias? And what is urban planning but an attempt to make such utopias visibly real?

34

Ulm Anno 5. The Curriculum of the Ulm School of Design (1960) Germany 1955: lapsed development in the arts field since 1933, and the need to make up for lost time had necessitated a review of the situation of the early 1930s, and led to a veritable renaissance of Modernism. The sudden change in Germany, from historic bankruptcy to commercial proficiency, proved to be lasting and lucrative. Then the first few turned up their noses at this “Wirtschaftswunder”—they reeked of youth movement, and were on the lookout for a new fools’ paradise. The choice of the Kuhberg (Cow Mountain) district of Ulm rather than a location more apt to provide cultural and industrial contacts pointed dangerously in this direction. Thus neo-Modernism, commerce and the tramp of sandals paved the way to Europe’s first school of design. That these forces were obliged to rid themselves of Max Bill, the first dean of the school, and a man of a wholly other ilk, surprised no one. The ideology used to do so was typical: just as Teutonic irreality cedes to cynical pragmatism more easily than one imagines, the rallying cry now was the supremacy of science. We shall deal here neither with the superficial incidents surrounding the overthrow of Bill, nor with the subsequent interregnum that is expected to reach its end this fall. These stories, although at times of downright Castrian fidelity, are at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the ostensibly similar Bauhaus gossip insofar as they are not backed up by the accomplishments of the Bauhaus crowd. Therefore, those students in Ulm who are busy creating a mini-archive in Ulm from gossip retrieved from wastepaper baskets are wasting their time: Darmstadt will not buy it. 35

Given that 150 years of industry and 50 years of Modernism have proved that the form of an object never follows merely from the demands made thereon, and that the quest for a style that represents freedom from style is nothing but a likeable yet misguided aberrance of human illusion, it is difficult to understand the following: namely that, not in 1919, not in 1929 but in 1959, in the wake of the Bill crisis, an endeavor was made yet again to re-establish the positivism of functionality, and consequently to criticize as “formalist” every design that cannot be explained solely in terms of its technical features. The outcome of such disregard for the style issue is that almost all the objects created by Ulm students for their final exam, unless they happen to be electric drills, evince considerable “formalism,” and are strongly reminiscent of those aforementioned 1920s and 30s. Lecturers too, when it comes to criticism, are confronted with questions of form, which they resolve by resorting to design coherency’s je ne sais quoi. An Italian visitor who pointed out this discrepancy was fobbed off, insofar as he was understood at all, with the retort that such attitudes are remnants of the Bill era. For it is not permissible to admit that the consummate form evinced solely by technical objects is a premise of freedom from style. Paradoxically, the theory of technical expediency came to be complemented now by a second theory that addresses the social and sociological contingency of form. People discovered the social aspect of the development of form and fashion. And as people in Ulm live by their convictions, this had unexpected consequences. Sandals were suddenly out, and stalwart Swabian ladies became fashion conscious: they threw out the stocks of sack dresses already written off as market flops, sank up to their high-heels when scaling the clay of the Kuhberg then fluttered green-shadowed eyelids in a mute cry for help. They failed nevertheless to draw the correct conclusion from their masquerade, namely that form, whether it be 36

a style or a fashion, always possesses a degree of freedom independent of purely technical factors. Ulm’s stock of forms proved just as ephemeral as fashion: after all, the font Accidenz-Grotesk, shades of gray, orthogonality, and the technological look now comprise the luxury style of 1960. I have nothing against that. Yet one should not allow one’s students to believe this alone will teach them absolute design for all time. Once this fad has run its course—as it surely will, for all of them do—then Ulm graduates will become slaves to mere “styling” with even less reserve than everyone else. Guests are not always welcome in the cloistered backwater Ulm, for the less foreign matter arrives to ripple one’s retreat, the easier it is to shape the world in one’s own image. Reyner Banham’s visit occurred around that time. This ingenious and humorous architecture critic defends the (here unduly simplified) hypothesis, that any products of our era which the artistically-schooled eye is likely to find lacking in taste—exaggerated automobile chassis, cinema advertising, pin-up girl magic—in fact constitute a kind of folk art: applied art for mass consumption, which Ulm would ignore at its peril, given that it has nothing itself with which to counter that suddenly fashionable spoiler, the “consumability” of form. Yet the “bündisches heart”¹—which continued to beat even in a sack dress—could not believe our clever guest from Albion. People shied away from this experimenter’s consistent realism: the idea namely, that an ultimate outcome of the study of the sociological contingency of form might be the capitalist entrepreneur who personally anticipates a market for the expressiveness of form, thereupon begins to plan the course of fashion himself, and to heat up

1

The reference to the “Bündische Jugend” (as the German Boy Scout movement was called after 1914) here apparently implies loyalty and steadfastness. 37

or cool down conjuncture by recourse to design and in accordance with demand. A compromise was sought therefore, a social market economy of design so to speak; attempts were made to reconcile two opposing theories: the theory of absolute technical expediency, and that of the social contingency and economic freedom of form—nothing easier than that, in the land of Hegel. The resolution of opposites was posited in an imminent era, an era already embarked upon in Ulm, an era in which the fashionable marketing of form is united with advances in production, an era in which every new form is inspired by a new technical twist. The core of this belief was the doctrine of the imminent worldwide demise of the American automobile industry, and the Fidel Castrian ascent of the legendary Fiat 600. Manipulation of the present is a far more difficult task than any conquest of the dreamers’ realm since time began—the future. Several Fiat 600s have been sold meanwhile in fact, even in the USA. Likewise other objects of design have gained ground, even those of Ulm provenance, the renowned Braun radio in particular. Dazzled by their vision of the future, people failed—despite all sociological zeal—to notice that this development concerned only a tiny percentage of the market: the only people buying belonged to the class that had long since devoted itself to the “fine arts,” good taste, and the beet juice of contemporary lifestyle. In humanity’s department store, Ulm has leased a stand in the Modernism department to serve a small and wholly unchanging clientele of not-all-too-angry young men and village schoolmarms. These are vaunted as the face of the future while people keep quiet about the other 97 percent of the population, whose natural need for varied ornamental and showpiece forms keeps the wheels of the economy turning. 38

Instead of indulging such dim outlooks, people prefer to preoccupy themselves with a new theory, the theory of “human engineering.” Every object requires a user. A stove is of little use without a cook. The actual cooking machinery might be said therefore to consist of cook-plus-stove. Cooking is easy with this combo. Anyone who builds such man-machine systems must recognize that humans are unalterable and machines are able to adapt; until now, misguided opinion held that man would surely learn in time how to handle the machine. And we put everything else—color theory, drawing theory and perception—at the service of this learning curve. How much more easily we learn to pull a plug from a socket when the plug is ring-shaped; for the ring shape graphically invites us to insert a finger and to pull. Yet besides the metaphysical accomplishments of “human engineering” there are physiological ones: for instance, how we must cramp our fingers in order to grip a fork! Calloused, crippled hands are the result. So the grip research group is put into action. It studies the gripping operation, the act of lifting the edibles, the path followed to the facial food slot—and what is the result but a Modernist form of cutlery. And the latest fad is a typewriter keyboard with sufficient space for the long fingernails of the machine’s better half. (Needless to mention that real “human engineering” in the USA is presently researching the adaptability of surgeons.) But now, misfortune is fast approaching. The number of lecturers had declined rapidly in the meantime, and to such an extent that operations at the school were under threat. When the school administration embarked on self-sufficiency, retaining recent graduates of the school as teachers, students began to defend themselves. Their threat to sue the school without further ado, for non-fulfillment of its curriculum, proved highly effective; and this demonstrates which state of affairs had transpired by this point. 39

But it was not our intention to report on details. In any case, the dean’s supporters shrank in number so drastically that his reelection was a matter of doubt, and he resigned so as to be on the safe side. This paved the way for a new solution. At the start of the school year (in October 1960), a new deanship took office: the author Gerd Kalow, who became chairman, the Ulm native and nestor Friedel Vordemberge-Gildewart and the mathematician Horst Rittel. The fresh start will prove difficult, perhaps more difficult even than founding the school was, for much initial enthusiasm and goodwill has evaporated. It will succeed only if the future remains in the foreground, not as a bizarre ideology but as a task of education. Two things are top priority: firstly, to define and limit the professional training offered in each of the four disciplines offered at Ulm, and then to appoint a convincing staff. Ulm justifies its existence solely by claiming to offer professional training courses that do not exist elsewhere. In those cases where it must compete with existing state institutions—“visual communication” (graphic design) is one such example—it is not up to standard. On the other hand and despite all idiosyncrasy it must not be allowed to produce a type of professional for which the production process has no use. The Architecture Faculty threatens to do precisely that. In our world, with its division of labor, quite distinct professional training is required for the design of prefabricated construction elements than for the planning of settlements and urban districts, and their construction from prefabricated elements. It makes little sense to teach these two specialized areas to one and the same student. Anyone wishing to pursue the first profession would require a solid foundation in construction, which is not available in Ulm, for various reasons; anyone wishing to pursue the second would need to be taught the modern methods of rationalization, construction site planning and logistics, installation, and 40

much more besides. For prefabricated construction will succeed not on account of its ideological benefits but only if it proves economically viable. In the other two disciplines at least, the “product formers” have no problem when it comes to finding employment. Demand for designers is high, and Ulm is still Europe’s leading school of design. Almost all the work produced by students for their final exam is commissioned by industry, and graduates are assured thus a springboard. Nevertheless a new border must be drawn here, in particular to delimit that which virtually makes Ulm purely an inventors’ school. When going through the students’ final projects, it is striking to find that almost every one of them is distinguished first and foremost by a technical innovation, for the latter is of course what students most enjoy, and it is gratifying also, so long as it proves fit for production. Yet when a technical twist overshadows design in practically every object, it does little to advance the cause of design per se. If, as in Ulm, we reproach entrepreneurs for allowing their “construction staff ” also to pursue design, we cannot simultaneously train designers who wish only to construct things. And, finally, the information department: if I am correctly informed, Bill’s initial intention in setting up this department was to train critics for the industrial manufacturing sector. Later, a more general course aimed at copywriters came into being, whether for print advertising, PR, radio, TV, film or whatever. In practice, these branches require both a broad general education and strict specialization. The upcoming generation assumes its role and possibly even becomes a “Doctor of ” by training on the job, with the support of specialized technicians—photographers, typesetters, sound engineers and so forth. In Ulm one can provide neither an adequate general education nor the skills and capacities required of a technician, and one must therefore ask oneself yet again, whether the pro41

fession created here actually fits into the existing division of labor. Whereby the issue of training for a run-of-the-mill copywriter is downright open-ended: that such a common profession can still be pursued today by a circuitous route, and often as a result of failure in other disciplines, is a waste of energy. Now that a lecturer in “information” has been appointed dean in Ulm, it can be expected that this course will be redefined. Did not Gerd Kalow once call for a “poets’ school”? By the time this article goes to print, we may perhaps know more about the appointments this new deanship will be obliged to make. Under the present circumstances, it will not be easy for anyone to make a binding and long-term commitment to Ulm. The overly exploitative methods pursued previously by Ulm are now making themselves felt. Word is out about the instability of conditions there, and about the fact that the Geschwister Scholl Foundation, the school’s financial backer and hence also its adversary with regard to contractual appointments, does not maintain the requisite distance from school affairs. The situation on Ulm’s Kuhberg accordingly forces everyone to sever important links with professional practice, with universities, and with a richly endowed library. We must hope nevertheless, that the talent and idealism needed to take up such a teaching position will be found, along with the fighting spirit required for self-assertiveness. That is what talented students are waiting for. Should Ulm manage to extricate itself from its sectarianism and intolerance, it will become a thoroughly indispensable institution. Firstly as a school: an industrial product poses challenges of an interdisciplinary nature; it must simultaneously function, be appealing, and be marketable. The designer must receive an education somewhere between technical training, the art academy and a trade school. Where else will he find that, but in Ulm? And sec42

ondly, as a place of reflection—for research into the violent dynamics to which taste and hence, also the desire to consume are subject, is still in its early days. It must merge sociological, economic, psychological, political and technological findings. Ulm is the only institution that, on the one hand, addresses concrete design tasks and thus maintains contact with professional practice; and, on the other, keeps alive a consciousness of the theory that underpins all such operations.

43

Building—A Process with No Obligations to Heritage Preservation (1967) Ten hypotheses: 1. The deterioration of our man-made environment is due to its failure to adapt. This has its roots in the way we think: there is a connection between the concepts we create and architectural issues. We have a tendency to devise identifiable solutions to problems that ought to be dealt with strategically. For example, in response to the problem of aging in today’s society, we come up with “retirement home.” 2. Society overtaxes and abuses the designer (the planner or architect), by letting him “solve” its problems. The designer solves problems intuitively, by reducing their complications to the so-called essentials. The sum of the supposedly, nonessential factors, which is swept under the carpet during this process, creates new, bigger problems. 3. The designer demands that his client provide precise programs. Indeed, he even “helps” him formulate these, and ensures they are implemented. To make a program as precise as possible, the momentum of the problem to be solved is put on hold, and a “permanent solution” then applied to this temporary state of affairs. But a tailor-made solution rammed onto a problem blocks further momentum, and ultimately comes apart at the seams. 4. Expert “solutions” are just what the local politician or private entrepreneur is after. He needs simple issues, and he wants implementation to proceed in specific, distinct phases that end before a new one begins. Strategic planning and a pro44

5.

6.

7.

8.

cess-based approach are impossible when policy is oriented to the race to get things finished, rather than to discussion of potential alternative targets. By meeting momentary needs one “solves” current problems. Similarly, one plans for the future by anticipating a supposed future present, and meeting its needs. One speaks of the “full capacity development” of a community, solves the tasks this poses by making “far-sighted” decisions, and thus predetermines what the future will bring. For anyone who happens (still) to be absent when decisions about the future are made, it is simply tough luck: the unborn have no say. This same disregard of the time factor is evident also in our treatment of the past. Heritage preservation restores buildings to their fictive original condition, possibly even by drawing on artificial style concepts. In national parks, the landscape’s momentary, transitional states are pinned down as timeless, ancient landscapes. Each generation thus creates its own seemingly timeless past by destroying the past of its ancestors. To categorize “solutions” in terms of “issues”—a practice that ensues from the current structures both of policymaking and the construction industry—contradicts both rational usage, and the nature of the city. The city does not require categories but rather, overlap and multiple uses. It is precisely the fuzzy definition of uses, the versatility of urban institutions, which creates structures that make the city both appealing and viable. Multiple uses and growth: the interweave of urban events called for in hypothesis 7, must not go too far, or become irrevocable, for the independent viability of individual uses must be maintained at all times. Otherwise, the overlap that was important initially may lead to blockages when growth 45

9.

10.

occurs, and these can be remedied only by destroying valuable investments. Infrastructural elements must therefore be able to accommodate various uses, phase by phase. The modern aesthetic requires distinct design, attained through precise task fulfillment. The future tasks are complex, and only partially determined. Where does design potential lie? In the future, similar elements are variously combined to solve different tasks; invisible organization, not appearance, determines how an object functions. What then, is the designer’s task? Design is a process accomplished within the triangle described by client, designer and user. Currently, the designer dominates the scenario. The client fails to analyze his problems properly, and leaves them to the designer. The user is completely powerless—he may not and cannot alter what does not belong to him. Therefore, the goal of future “design policy” should be to encourage the public or private client and the user to participate in the work in hand, so as to trigger a genuine decisionmaking process.

This dual reality—man’s impact on the environment, and the environment’s impact on man—is our theme; whereby we must bear in mind that we are simplifying things here a little: in reality, these two factors are interwoven in a single system. We therefore need to portray this system also as a process, as a mutual “learning curve”— although we actually can expect man alone to pursue the latter; we do not really know for sure, how the environment adapts. Man alters the environment without realizing it. Whoever opens his eyes, sees what is happening in agriculture. In the last ten years man has created a new, different landscape in alpine locations. Anyone who saw agricultural land in our medium-high mountain 46

ranges such as the Jura, ten years ago, has since witnessed a change in the agricultural landscape: he now finds only pastureland and cattle-raising there, but not a single field of crops. It takes a lot however, for man to see such changes, and to register them consciously. He only ever sees the individual factor. Every farmer knows, of course, that he personally has abandoned a field, but it takes a special perspective to see this change as a collective act. What I have in mind now, primarily, is not the landscape and agriculture, but urban planning: it takes a trained eye even to see the city as such. The city actually exemplifies much better than anything else what is meant by the proverb, “one cannot see the forest for the trees.” It is extremely difficult to see the city in fact, and for this reason conscious urban planning developed fairly late, historically speaking. Take, say, the famous stage-sets Serlio created for the tragic and comic scenes that represent the city. We are compelled to regard them as idealized images of the city, with no relation at all to urban planning, for they depict simply buildings arranged in a row. It took the absolutist violence of the Baroque to push through really great urban plans, and that era too resigned quickly: the major breakthroughs in Rome, and the extensive sites in Turin remained isolated phenomena, and the later Baroque sought consciously to accomplish its artistic urban planning far away from the city, in smaller seats of royal or ducal power. I can run through this only briefly, in telegram style so to speak. Next came the industrial era, whose masses and agglomerations swamped all the previous configurations of urban form; no other form was available however, so one created sites and facilities, symmetries and compositions that were invisible to the human eye, except on a map of the city. Squares dating from this era may be symmetrical—yet it takes twenty minutes on foot to go from one 47

to the other, so one cannot appreciate their symmetry. However, no one had yet come up with an alternative to symmetrical construction, to compositional arrangements. All such old concepts of urban planning, and even the alternatives proposed by Camillo Sitte, who dismissed grandiose symmetry yet retreated to small irregular spaces, islands of design in what amounted to an amorphous sea—all of these ultimately lacked the very essence of urban planning, namely an eye for the process of collective decision-making, be that decision political, or the sum of individual decisions.

How are decisions reached?

Man and the environment do not come into direct contact or at least, as our hypotheses show, not into direct contact exclusively; but there is a third factor too, we have yet to mention. Let me call it politics, for the time being. It is through politics that man has an impact on the environment, and through politics that the environment has an impact on man. Now, perhaps we have something here, which will occupy us for several minutes, a little model that we shall put to the test. Imagine a town,

P = Politics, U = Environment (Umwelt), M = Man; Drawings: Lucius Burckhardt

48

an industrial town perhaps, in which public opinion maintains that the town lacks a center, and that this so-called center should be created. This drives policy. The politicians think about what might constitute a center: perhaps something to do with culture, or the like. An opera house, it is decided; an opera house will be built in the city center. The town, the environment is enriched by a prestigious building with a facade—and with three sides that are not so beautiful to look at, and which thus ensure no business will ever open on a street bordered by the side facade of an opera house. And this affects people such that gradually, they reach the conclusion that this opera house is a total flop of urban planning. So, the model seems to be working, from left to right. Let’s see, if it also works from right to left. People imagine, one might park in the city; consequently, one can no longer park in the city. In terms of policy, this means that something must be done; and so it is decided to construct an underground parking lot; consequently, people imagine everyone else is now using the parking lot,

so they can park in the city; consequently, one still cannot park in the city. Well, we seem to have found a workable model, so I would like now to draw your attention to my ten hypotheses. In the following I shall use our little model, our little three-stroke engine, to examine these hypotheses one by one, in order to see if they fit this model. Hypothesis 1 addresses the arrow running from man to politics. Man has problems, and politics solves them. I must tell you that 49

this “solve” is something I always have to put in quotation marks, and towards the end of this lecture, I will have only to mention the word “solve,” and you will recoil in horror.

So, politics has the will to solve the problems that plague people, and such solutions must somehow be able to be identified as simply as possible, and at best in a single object. I cited one example: the problem of aging crops up in modern society, and the “solution” is the retirement home; or the problem of reintegrating former prisoners into society crops up, and the “solution” is a home for former prisoners while actually, the way to deal with—note I say “deal with” rather than “solve”—the problem would be to educate everyone else, the rest of society, the non-offenders, about how best to handle such people, and to use that leverage here, and elsewhere too. There is another counterpart to the word “solve” but, significantly, it does not derive from the language of civilians, where it occurs only rarely: it is “strategy.” We must borrow it therefore from people who have developed a rather clever way of thinking indeed, but to a bad end. So the counterpart of direct problem solving would be the introduction of strategies, i.e. the adoption of several measures that lead in various ways, to the desired objective.

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Overtaxed architects

We come now to the political arena, and we must add something here to our little model. The political arena has a subsidiary so to speak, an offshoot, namely the expert: the designer, architect, or planner in his role of consultant. So here, somehow, we have to add on someone, someone not integrated politically in the decision-making process, whose words of advice may amount to a not entirely harmless expert assessment, and also have a considerable impact behind the scenes on the course of developments. So far, this consultant, this specialist—insofar as he was a planner, and insofar as the planner in the vast majority of cases was formerly an architect—solved problems intuitively. This is perfectly legitimate; one can do that. If a complex problem poses many unanswered questions, and one can no longer overlook the unknown factors in the equation then one has little choice but to solve it intuitively—but one must know what one is doing. What is this thing, intuition? It is somehow akin to installing a filter in which the so-called minor problems get stuck. Well, this method of solving matters on the basis of two or three essential, or allegedly essential problems has led to the state of affairs we see in our cities; the sum of all the secondary problems, of parking, etc., has led to circumstances in which the major problem does not appear now to be solved. This is not to dispute the role played by this consultant, whom we need, but it calls into question the way he is overtaxed, and put under stress, as well as the way the politician does not make decisions wholly on his own, but foists a part of the responsibility on to this ancillary organ of the body politic, in a non-political manner. And now, another point—and this brings us to hypothesis 3— 51

about this relationship: the two instances, the politician and the professional, respectively play the role of client and contractor; and here, according to the good old orthodox principles of Modernism and the Werkbund, a precise program is paramount. The architect, so the theory goes, must have a precise program, and then his work will be good. The question now is, whether this still holds true in this form. How did these good programs come into being? I am speaking now about the supposedly simple case of building a villa for a client. How does such a case evolve? The good program evolves something like this: the architect goes to the client and says, “Do you not have a hobby or the like, because I don’t have much of a handle on this project? Do you not have a hobby, developing your own photographs, or breeding dogs, or whatever; something I could get my teeth into, something precise, you know? Or perhaps you collect art? Then I could design an art collector’s house, and it would be published perhaps.” And then he notes the children’s ages: daughter, thirteen, son, nine, and a baby. Then everything is set up precisely. All my life, I have used a vanity that was installed 20 cm too low. It was intended for my older sister, who was just nine years old when the house was built. Thus transferred to our example, “M” is defined first, so that “E” can be designed accordingly; and that is a big mistake. For the

design of E has an eminent effect on M. Even if the client, prior to the house being built, really did collect art or enlarge photo52

graphs himself, the great experience of building his home may have changed him so radically that he is preoccupied now with gardening. So, that is what I have to say on hypothesis 3, on the precise program—the program that generally is not conceived by the client but by the designer himself, who helps the former establish his requirements, in order then quasi to “solve” his problems.

The quest for concrete individual successes

And now hypothesis 4: people in Germany are talking about the sum of 40 billion Deutschmarks that is to be spent in the next few years on building schools. I would now like to describe something that happens en route from politics to the environment, from P to E, yet belongs properly to P in fact, to the political arena. Politics has a fragmentary, dismembering impact on the activities and processes that ought be introduced into society and the environment; more specifically, the politician would like simply to lay the foundation stone, and give the inauguration speech; he is interested in problems that begin and end at some point, any point, and in being able to present a “solution.” He is not interested in talking about difficult things for too long, or in initiating trends. He is therefore not so willing to discuss two different possible strategies, or to commit himself to one of them in a still largely open-minded manner yet with the will to pursue this one direction over several years; rather, he is just very grateful that his consultant, the architect, presents problems to him in the form of “solutions,” i.e. in the form of individual objects. 53

This is not the fault of the politician alone; the fault lies also with the world with which the politician has to struggle, namely with the power of veto in various instances. It is easy to shoot down an object, much easier than it is to set one up. Strategies such as I am calling for here, are threatened by the fact that individual parts of them can be shot down. A strategy—one for improving the inner-city traffic situation, let’s say—could consist, for example, of lowering trolley fares, staggering the opening times of institutions, perhaps even pushing up the price of gas, or other similar measures. But what happens when one such measure is shot down, when people accept that trolley fares should be lowered yet the proposal to raise the cost of gas is torpedoed by some powerful lobby or other— which happens all too easily? That strategies are vulnerable to the power of veto is a real problem. Holders of the power of veto, which is to say individuals or organizations both within and outside the existing body politic, play by the rule that applies when hunting partridge: one does not shoot into the flock; one aims for a single target. And there we have hypothesis 4 in a nutshell.

Disregard of development

Now, a word about planning itself: planning is the big buzzword nowadays, and it seems to me that confusion reigns. We tend to solve the problems of the future as if they were our current problems. We extrapolate a future, i.e. we say, a community that has 250 inhabitants now will have 13,728 inhabitants at point X in time or, so the current jargon, at the time of its full capacity development. 54

We establish this, and then act as if this future circumstance already exists: we adjust the community infrastructure to this future circumstance. So, any development that may occur between now and then is ignored completely; planners actually believe they are being far-sighted by already taking into account the 13,728 inhabitants expected to be around by date X. That is simply unrealistic: firstly, because this time period has yet to pass; it represents a development; we only initiate the process; we are allowed to begin its development, but we cannot complete it; and, secondly, this state of affairs is extremely undemocratic because, of the 13,728 residents who will be part of the community at some future date, only 250 are present now, and able to have their say; the rest will find matters have been settled in the way others thought fit. A phased approach is required here, so that decisions can be corrected at a later date, and another direction be pursued if necessary, if people are unhappy with past developments. Otherwise, the tiny minority, so to speak, the people already present, hands the majority vote over to the people who are not yet around. That was hypothesis 5. The question must be therefore—and I am turning the tables on the planners here, the planners’ tables—not how much must be planned but rather, how little may be planned? How little planning can we possibly get away with? This is not to be confused with an absence of planning. I do not want anyone to imagine I am preaching the “non-plan” here. I am talking rather, about a type of planning that asks: How might we limit planning such that desirable developments are launched, yet the people who arrive on the scene only later also have a say in planning, in the decisions still to be made—hence, planning that does not invalidate either the passage of time, or future developments? And now I want to demonstrate with hypothesis 6, in parentheses so to speak, that past development is invalidated also. We have 55

a tendency to see the past, not as a development but as a matter summarized, and transposed to our present era in a single moment. Think of our heritage preservation programs, whose ultimate goal is to restore a building to the state it is presumed to have been in originally, when it was built. Any conversions carried out since then, which may have been perfectly legitimate given shifts in the use or purpose of the building—any such conversions are eliminated; all that was added on is simply fake and abominable. We have no compunction about searching the archives for plans in order to establish how it actually used to be, how the man who built it actually wanted it to be. Restorers have sought to trace the history of certain buildings even further back than their construction date, because it has been claimed that the client interfered with the architect’s original plans. The past must accordingly be transposed to point zero, to our here and now. Everything our fathers and grandfathers ever did to such buildings was wrong, especially if they restored them in the light of art-historical perspectives; and our sons and grandchildren will consider that all we have restored is wrong too. This whole process of invalidating the past, and all the passage of time has done to buildings, is what gradually destroys the buildings. That was a remark in parentheses.

Our demand: versatile uses

Here is another thing, en route from P to E, from politics to the environment. It actually follows on from my rejection of programs that overly predetermine things. Such predetermining programs tend to lead to unequivocal uses, i.e. a building is considered to 56

be all the more correct, all the better, when it serves one purpose to the exclusion of all others. If that were true—bear in mind the above hypothesis on heritage preservation—then historical buildings would no longer be around; not a single building would survive longer than twenty years, because all uses change in the course of twenty years. Yet the quality of a building depends precisely on the fact that it has not one predetermined use but several; it depends on the fact that multiple use is possible, that the rooms are versatile to some extent, because—I am thinking now of the urban planning context—versatility alone facilitates that which makes the city what it is, namely the overlap of different uses. The street does not serve only one purpose; the residential street has always also been a playground, whether one likes it or not, and any larger residential street has always been a thoroughfare too, and the thoroughfare a residential street. Different uses must be able to overlap also in temporal terms: the parking lot used for the store in the daytime is the theater’s parking lot in the evening. Only such gradual overlap, or the potential for overlap gives rise to the urban interweave, gives rise to that which makes the city what it is, namely the market-like interweave of extremely diverse forms of use. Hypothesis 8 is an interpolation, so to speak, a means to rule out any misunderstanding, as to whether this non-programming, or merely fuzzy programming that I am calling for here constitutes a non-plan. A non-plan is another thing altogether. For it is not bad or weak planning that creates the good city but rather, the investigation of potential blur, or fuzz, which is to say, of potential overlap: this is the scientific form of planning we must pursue. We need to plan for a degree of versatility, and for the freedom to select alternative uses. There are systems that are more or less open to change. Our systems, those we construct, are subject to 57

growth; and in the course of such growth—growth of the city for example—it must remain possible, to revoke the overlap that we introduced initially. If, when engaged in planning a suburb, say, a suburban center, our initial interest is to do whatever it takes to create a little density, overlap and interweave there, and we therefore allow for a great deal of overlap—when we say, for example, schoolchildren should pass through the center on their way to school, certainly, so that housewives run into someone when doing their shopping, and so that schoolchildren see their parents, or their mothers, or other mothers, when school is out, when they make their way home—if we allow these activities to overlap initially then we must be prepared to give them more space, i.e. to reduce the extent of overlap in a second phase, the phase when the population has grown, i.e. we must thin out the density that we initially welcomed, so that no accidents happen. It must remain possible always, not only to interweave structures but also to revoke or disband them. This is a precise requirement, and by no means a call for disorder.

The shifting concept of design

Yes, and now hypothesis 9, which is the hypothesis dedicated to the Werkbund actually, and it deals with appearance, with the question of design. We come now to the relationship of politics to the environment then back to man. That the precise program ought to determine the well-formed object, however large or small that may be, be it an ash-tray, or a city—“from the ash-tray to the 58

city” was once a slogan in fact—that the precise program ought to determine the well-formed object is one of the Werkbund’s core principles. The question now is, how do things stand with the design of fuzzy programming—the design of programming that vaguely relates to the future, and to growth? If, for example, we construct the city hall initially in a way such as to accommodate the city administration, but then move this elsewhere, and rent out the building to businesses, we suddenly can no longer count on the city hall’s symbolic presence as the “City Crown;”¹ we cannot seek tenants for the “City Crown,” as that would surely cause a stir. Hence the question: How might design develop under circumstances engendered by this demand for an open-ended style of planning? I’ll extrapolate more extremely: How might design develop if we were to decide that one actually ought to build mere “urban space?” That is certainly utopian, but perhaps something to think about! One begins by constructing urban space such as the “nursery factories” one finds in England, which is to say, factories for start-up manufacturers, which are built in anticipation of demand, and then rented out to anyone who wants to assemble motor cars, or some plastic object or other; in an extreme case scenario therefore, one might construct urban space then see what happens: see whether stores move in, or insurance companies, or whether the process is sufficiently developed as yet; for perhaps no business

1

“Die Stadtkrone” (City Crown) is an urban planning concept put forward by German Expressionist architects in the early twentieth century, and championed particularly by Bruno Taut. It was often conceived as an inspirational, crystalline form in the city center, on an impressive scale perhaps, or with a homogenous formal idiom; and it sometimes suggested subordination of the individual to the common good. 59

wants to move in, and the space is therefore used initially as residential accommodation. That is the reason for this digression on design, here in hypothesis 9. Yes, even when it comes to objects, we believe in the program, and in the design it engenders, namely the famous Werkbund door handle, or the fork and all that—but actually, those are objects we really have no reason to get all worked up about. Surely, technical gadgets are the really important objects. And development in this regard has run contrary to all our intentions, owing to—to name just the catchword—the invention of the transistor, which symbolizes all recent inventions so to speak. The transistor has created a wholly new situation: the very same unchanging elements, the very same unchanging tangle of wire have given rise to gadgets that look alike, yet have quite different purposes. They can either calculate, or play music, or whatever—how do I know what might all be produced, when everything looks simply like a metal box from the outside yet consists within of transistors and a tangle of wire? Where is design in all this? Design very clearly lies in a very specific element of the structure, namely in its knob. Thanks to the knobs we must press, we can tell what kind of gadget a thing is; and when we understand these knobs, and push them, we can operate the gadget; if we cannot understand them, if they tell us nothing, then the gadget remains something alien, and useless. Now, the situation with this indeterminate space in the city is perhaps quite similar; perhaps the knob here—hence, secondary architecture so to speak—comprises design. Perhaps the prefabricated houses and roads are distinguishable from one another thanks to knobs, or signs, and these signs are able to change also, i.e. in the course of the city’s growth the homely bar signs may cede to the signs of major insurance companies and banks. So, the call for fuzzy programming perhaps necessitates the separation of primary 60

and secondary (accessory) architecture; and solely this secondary architecture can give expression to a conscious design.

Do not patronize the user!

Now, here’s another point about hypothesis 10, namely on the relationship between politics and man, or, in the case of a private commission, on the relationship between the client respectively the designer, and the user. I am critical of the client’s behavior, be he from the public or the private sector, because he leaves everything to the expert, the designer, and hence permits the latter to dictate both task analysis, and the solution. Executive designers everywhere, have their say in the problems in hand; there is no one so familiar with the latest liturgical developments in our churches as the architect. That is not his fault, but the fault of the client who just postpones the solution. The architect simply cannot wait any longer: he has already ordered the tiles, and must decide now on a solution, before the tiles arrive. So he quickly reads, or hears something about liturgy, presents himself as a professional, and solves the problem. What does the designer or architect propose, when someone presents him with a problem? What does the apple tree propose when someone presents it with a problem? Apples, of course; and so the designer or architect will always propose a building—every problem leads to a building—and this brings us back to the start of this lecture: nowadays, “solutions” take the place of strategies. Usually, at this point, the user is not consulted, and he is consequently powerless. The building, or object he uses does not belong 61

to him, and he is not permitted to alter whatever is not his. So the bottom line, our demand, is that building must once again become part of the overall process of changing and designing the environment. We must adopt

the triangular model outlined here, and apply it; and we must take every player in the triangle seriously, and give each an opportunity to become involved in the design process. It is possible to activate the client and the user, but not by having them submit deterministic, predetermined programs. Rather, the extent to which each should be permitted to formulate a plan must leave room always for the next partner in the process, so that he too may have his say.

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On the Value and Meaning of Urban Utopias (1968) The utopian moment

All that is ever built is the result of decisions, and therefore also of wrong decisions. At some point, a will to do a thing must be expressed, and a limit set—in both the negative and positive sense. One cannot want everything at once: certain objectives exclude others. The more determined one is to attain one objective, the more difficult it becomes to satisfy other criteria. Any design process is insofar a process of reduction, of paring down a program to its requisite objectives. Modernist architecture raised this process of selection and reduction to a style motif. Functionalism demands a strict program, a rigorous decision in favor of one as opposed to another architectural objective. The so-called “neat solution” to a construction task becomes a feature of the building; the allegedly, non-existent facade of “Button in Ear”-brand¹ architecture can be seen from afar to express a single architectural objective reduced to its extreme, to the simplest solution. “Uncompromising” connoisseurs say, in praise of such architecture: an architecture whose compromises are tailored to a single architectural objective. Is Modernist architecture functionalist? Probably not. Smooth

1

Burckhardt is referring to the traditional mark of quality the Steiff Company uses for its teddy bears. 63

surfaces, or those crisscrossed or roughened by some process or other, are neither cheaper, nor more practical nor more durable than ornamental surfaces; and cubic, or even organic forms are neither cheaper, nor more functional than classical or historical ones. Without in any way disparaging the achievements of Modernist architecture, we may admit that the functionalism of Modernist architecture makes itself felt at the visual level, which is to say, its “solutions” are above all solutions for the eye. The Modernist architect plays the role of inventor nonetheless: he reinvents a solution for every everyday task. In the absence of an obligatory task he even invents one: classical architecture of a pioneering epoch, named “Fallingwater,” or “The Glass House,” or whatever. Such demonstrative problem-solving lends Modernist architecture thematic interest: one scoffs at the rhetorical architectural styles of the nineteenth century yet creates buildings that do nothing but “talk,” endlessly praising the brilliant way in which they have resolved their respective tasks. The resolution of specific tasks has an isolating character: every building fulfills its appointed task by excluding every conceivable secondary task. Never has a school been so much a school, a private residence so much a private residence, a museum so much a museum as it is today. There they stand, juxtaposed yet disconnected; all the secondary objectives apt to link them have gone by the board. These secondary objectives, these inessentials now pile up, and pose new tasks: Where can one spend one’s leisure time, or one’s old age? Where can one park a stroller, or the car? And where can one meet people? Whereupon our politicians and architects, who are little inclined to assume the blame for this state of affairs, invent new objectives: the leisure center, the parking lot, the shopping mall, the hobby center, the old people’s home and social center… Splendid new tasks for fantastic solutions: and all that is disconnected is 64

lined up once again, disconnected. New secondary tasks go by the board, and then turn into major objectives: new construction tasks loom on the horizon. Functionalism triumphs. The utopian moment arrived at the latest by the late 1950s. Let us not kid ourselves: such utopias are the children of functionalism; they are “neat solutions” to the universal issue. But one had learned that the universal issue must also be resolved, between, as well as above and beyond the objectives in question. To create utopias is a legitimate means to search for the future. The inventor too, takes a similar approach: he mentally pursues a thing by clearing certain secondary factors out of the way, and by temporarily separating these from their attendant characteristics; which is to say, by abstracting. Later, admittedly, he must make a list of all the factors he temporarily ignored. Utopians have generally failed to make such a list—and insofar they are true functionalists. Were utopias ever to be realized, they would share the same fate as contemporary buildings: they would be isolated accomplishments, and ultimately the outcome of mistaken planning in an era whose objectives change rapidly, and therefore cannot be defined as rigorously as functionalism would like. This, as we shall demonstrate, is true also of those utopias that have adopted change as a major objective, and evidently no longer commit to anything for any length of time. As a child of Modernist architecture, utopia “speaks:” its forms announce the solution to the problem it has set out to solve. But these problems are different in nature; they are more fundamental. In announcing the necessity of finding total solutions, utopia passes judgment on the isolationism pursued by functionalism in the 1930s and 1950s. It creates a formal idiom in which it is possible to reach an agreement on urban problems. Insofar utopia is the first step towards surmounting the consequences of functionalism. 65

Utopias 1958–68

Over the past decade, utopias of a more technological design have evolved such that they now take more or less account also of social processes. Yet the term “technological utopia” is ambiguous: most technological utopias would be perfectly viable in technological terms; perhaps quite expensive, initially, but rapidly more affordable, just as other technological utopias—air travel for instance— have also become cheap, or at least affordable. No, these designs for future lifestyles are not utopian in terms of their technology but in terms of the decisions to be made: When will society be inclined to live in this way? “Technological utopias” are the most direct descendants of Modernism. They generally consist of apartments or capsule dwellings that are either conventional, or successors to that which was known in the 1930s as the “Minimum Dwelling.”² What we can gather—or abstract—from this is the progressive rise in living standards. Nowadays, people’s existence minimum always exceeds the existence minimum; and this paradox gives rise to a momentum that can no longer be captured in narrow capsule dwellings. However that may be, such capsule dwellings are now suspended in an emphatically technological, or perhaps even in an expressionist manner, be it on masts like television towers, or on cables and suspension bridges. Let me reiterate: technology itself is not utopian but rather, the notion that modern society will devote a considerable amount of its economic resources to this type of dwelling.

2 The title of the second CIAM in Frankfurt/Main in 1929 was “Die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum,” or “Minimum Existence Housing.” 66

A number of technological utopias work with the Malthusian argument, with the notion that living space must be created for a global population that is reproducing itself a million times over. Conventional materials and construction lots for such living spaces are both in short supply: synthetic cells, mountains of cells somewhat like enlarged foam bubbles are hence, to rise up on the oceans of the world, or even to burrow their way underground.—We do not know the extent of the global population explosion, nor the conclusions people will draw from it. Yet one may presume that other shortages will crop up, long before accommodation grows scarce: nourishment is an issue that can probably be resolved, but politics and organizational issues give us food for thought. Therefore “urbanistic utopias” are perhaps more utopian in a technological sense, yet for us more real—for they take account of organizational and social issues. The earliest of these utopias to gain renown was Kenzo Tange’s urban plan for Greater Tokyo. In consideration of the city’s growth, the contact networks thus necessitated, and the horrific traffic situation likely to ensue, Tange dreamed up a city built on trapezoid stands on the Bay of Tokyo, which was essentially a circulatory system. The terraced stands provide “construction lots” for workspaces and apartments. Their core contains transport termini, garages, factories and offices docked onto huge transport systems that guarantee a consummate circulation system for all types of traffic throughout the entire city. The city is a machine that can assure twenty million people the highest possible level of interaction: every route to work, every visit undertaken for the purpose of business or education can be completed in the shortest possible time. While the transit system and artificial construction lots are made of concrete, the facilities for work and living there are more ephemeral. This promptly drew criticism from another Japanese—Fumi67

hiko Maki—who maintained that that which is constant, namely a person’s apartment, is transient here, whereas that which develops quickly, namely traffic, is fixed for all eternity. In any case, Tange’s urban plan for Greater Tokyo in the late 1950s unambiguously highlighted the preponderance of traffic, and defined the city as the locus of comprehensive professional contacts. In this regard his concept is Modernist; other aspects reveal a suspicious hint of latent Japanese feudalism. The traffic stands with their artificial construction lots belong to the state, and the city thus virtually becomes the state incarnate; the individual is allotted a small surface area on which he may erect his small, disposable home. One is tempted to cite Vogt’s question, “Who is the owner of this house?” and the reply, “The Emperor, your grace—my lord and yours/ And held by me in fief.”³ Another great urban utopia of those years is Yona Friedman’s Spatial City. In difference to Tange, Friedman does not believe in cities with twenty million inhabitants, and he limits the population of his to circa three million. For this population he builds four-tiered stands mounted on carriers into which modular living cells can be inserted at will, or—because of how the light falls—in specific arrangements. Everything flows; everything is free: where there was once a cell there might later be a street, or an airspace even; everyone buys or leases a cell for specific periods then moves on. Contacts do not depend on a mechanical transit system but develop as far as possible like a web: and the more widely dispersed contacts are, the less likely breakdowns are to interrupt the transit system. The entire system remains highly flexible: the cell is mobile, the arrangement is mobile, and finally, the carrier structure itself is

3 68

The reference is to Friedrich Schiller’s drama William Tell (1804).

mobile. All arrangements are only temporary, all fixed features can be dissembled, and all agreements can be revoked. The system designed by the Tel Aviv-based urbanists Jan LubiczNycz and Donald P. Reay likewise draws deeply on tradition, namely on the jubilee year of Mosaic law, in which one is acquitted of all duties and freed of all guilt. But can this principle of acquittal be transposed without further ado to our developed society? Does not our economic system necessarily create structures that demand permanence, and know also how to create permanence? Not only that which is built but also the entire social system is prone to consolidation. We know that from our cities: although houses are demolished and renewed on average every hundred years, the streets continue to exist for centuries, as if the house facades would last forever. Wherever there is nothing solid to protect, impenetrable papery structures emerge: this man makes a contract with that one, saying he will never do this or that; and the more the state waives legislation, the more the web of private agreements runs riot. The utopia of total mobility insofar bypasses reality, because it is not walls that inhibit change. Yona Friedman’s city offers a flexibility that will never be utilized, no more than cars in a parking lot can move around, or the mobile stands at a market be freely arranged. “Urban fiction” might be a good way to describe a category of urban utopias that is essentially the brainchild of two English architectural groups, Archigram and Clip-Kit. At the urban planning level they endeavor to do justice to the demands of the urban fabric and urban contacts, in a more sophisticated way. They thereby seek a path mid-way between Tange’s total traffic installation and Friedman’s total flexibility: the parts of the city are no longer homogenous but specialized. Contact is assured partly by transport yet real contacts can be established wherever necessary, by altering the urban fabric, by 69

resorting to “clip-on” or “plug-in” space modules. The initial spatial arrangement is therefore not final; development and growth are possible, without being foreseen completely, or catered to by builtin flexibility. Conversions cater to anything unforeseeable. The notion of unforeseeable demand for contacts is thereby taken to an extreme: What happens for example, if it becomes apparent that two distant cities need to enter into closer contact—for instance, because the research pursued in the one is to be tested in the other, which calls for extensive information flows between numerous inhabitants? The cities themselves are equipped for such a case with contact organs, and even with limbs, which allows a degree of mobility. As we see, visions of the future are highly realistic: the performance and contact networks so pivotal to the city are extended and analyzed. And yet Archigram and Clip-Kit succeed above all in visual terms: in contrast to Friedman, who never sought to make his constructions technically viable in order that no one might mistake them for reality, the two English groups sought the future design of the city, and thereby also facilitated thematic debate. For these are primarily forms in which a person recognizes the novelty of the new, and to which he must first become accustomed. That such forms benefit, on the one hand, from various revivals and, on the other, from Pop Art serves only to make them all the more accessible, and hence all the more valuable to debate. There is one final group of utopias I would like to describe as “integrated.” Whilst the aforementioned utopias largely dealt with the future into which we can peer as if through a window, the “integrated utopias” address the transition from past and present circumstances to those of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Among these I number Cedric Price’s plan “The Potteries Thinkbelt” and Walter Förderer’s “Stadtumbau ohne Bodenreform” (Urban Rede70

velopment Without Land Reform). Both schemes are premised on the continued and astonishing use of existing structures. The “Potteries Thinkbelt” plan addresses a declining industrial region whose extensive railroad network is no longer used to full capacity. This railroad infrastructure is now used as a mobile university that can deliver higher education to the densely populated area. The railroad stations or better still the former marshaling yards are in effect universities: they comprise fixed facilities such as accommodation for students and lecturers, lecture halls, hubs where one can switch from the trains to the lecture halls and laboratories, as well as some mobile lecture halls, and a range of variously configured spaces for experimentation, whose components are more or less mobile, depending on the nature of the experiments carried out there. Railroad cranes are used to maneuver the latter. The lecturers and many of the students are constantly on the move; their presence enriches the towns, for these acquire specialist skills. This facilitates a close link between the disciplines taught in a city and specific production sectors. The towns benefit from their connection to the scientific transport network, in terms both of general education, and direct contacts between research and production. This utopia teaches us something about modern education policy, which we will not further pursue here, as well as about development policy per se. The exploitation of existing infrastructure for novel purposes is an important element of progress; the era in which one presumed oneself modern because one tore down traditional structures is over. Even in America, people now find themselves obliged to resort to the good old standard-gauge railway. Förderer’s urban development project likewise draws on existing structures, and intervenes in a real and very typical nineteenthcentury neighborhood. It comprises several residential areas, a small park, and a factory within a chessboard-like system of streets. De71

velopment proceeds on an individual basis: whoever wants to build can do so. Provisional flexibility is assured by permitting construction in the airspace above the streets. This is compensated by the expropriation of inner courtyards at the first story level, which are then interlinked in a network of paths that runs diagonally to the street network. The street network now lies underground, and those spaces opening onto the street serve as storage depots and loading bays. Stores are located one story higher, and are oriented to the pedestrian network. Above them are some offices and, mostly, apartments. The factory is turned into a covered parking lot. Whoever lives in the street network and works outside it keeps his car there. His experience of the city unfolds between the car and the apartment; the parking lot therefore cannot be retained in its original form. The parking lot takes on the city center’s former role; this is where men shop on their return home, and have another drink perhaps. Something provisional takes shape in the park: a hybrid of funfair and hobby center. This site changes most rapidly, the garage in the medium-term, and the residential district in longterm phases. But the long-term structures, the walls and streets, go unnoticed by the passer-by: he orientates himself to a more malleable “secondary architecture,” to built-in features, or adaptations of the building—including advertising—undertaken by the user. These are the true keys to the complicated and hidden machinery of the city. A utopia that largely does justice to the genuine urban process is under development here. It says something about the actual behavior of the urban dweller, about his desire for conversions, his need to shape his own world in the shantytown or allotment garden and, ultimately, about his relationship to the car and the parking lot. A realistic aspect of utopia is always that a virtue is made of necessity: whatever already exists is not seen as a hindrance but is used as a point of departure for whatever comes next. In place 72

of expensive demolition, and new structural engineering measures, the entire city is raised above a story bequeathed to us by the nineteenth century.

Utopia and decision-making

In technical terms, nothing stands in the way of the realization of the aforementioned utopias, in particular those of the “technological” variety. If no utopian city has ever been built, then not because this would be utopian but because society prefers to spend money on exploring the moon and the like. It is perfectly feasible however, that forces will one day rise up, to urge on the realization of a utopian city, just as Chandigarh, Brasilia and Montreal’s Habitat ’67 have been realized. And one may presume that in this future case, as in the three aforementioned cases, the wrong project will be realized, and the urban planners will again find themselves looking at a missed opportunity. If one accepts for the time being the range of “technological utopias” presented here, from “urbanistic utopias” to “urban fiction” and “integrated utopias,” we are still lacking the one final design type that actually represents the true and traditional utopian domain: the social variety. Some architects have made a contribution to such utopias: Yona Friedman has written a shrewd script dealing with life in a future spatial city, and Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz has made various statements on life in the near or distant future. This life is depicted again as a faceless future that some day became the present. Yet what we are lacking is a depiction of the processes that bring about the future, that transform present-day society into the 73

future. No one doubts that certain aspects of the lifestyle described by the aforementioned authors—the free circulation of goods, the predominance of leisure over work, and increased social interaction—will at some point become reality. Yet we seek in vain any notion of how, and by which measures today’s society might break out of its daily cycle, and step into that of the future. To describe this cycle, and to trace the few points at which the desired change and development can begin, lies beyond the scope of this article. Therefore only this, briefly and simply put: urban development is a process that unfolds between urban planners, decisionmaking authorities and their consultants, and the city itself, with its inhabitants—in the same way quasi, that architecture is an interactive process involving architects, clients and the outcome: buildings plus those who use them. The factors that stabilize the paths pursued in this cycle are not of a material nature. It is not the walls of existing buildings that hinder the renewal of urban development. When, under the watchword “redevelopment,” the authorities or speculators succeed in destroying then rebuilding a neighborhood, the result is by no means the “new city,” the utopian city, but at best a “new old city” and, at worst, a “family-friendly building project with affordable rents, public green spaces, sufficient parking lots and a shopping mall.” As we described earlier, the designer/ planner dominates this cycle: the client fails to analyze his problems, and leaves them to the architect; the user is completely powerless—he may not and cannot change what does not belong to him. The ostensible tasks the designer/ planner sets himself give rise to ostensible solutions that are largely of an aesthetic nature. Yet because they appear to be logical solutions they have the tendency to become anchored firmly in the minds of the client, and of the users even, and then can no longer be easily dislodged. 74

The appearance of buildings and of the city is therefore the stabilizing locus of the everyday course of things. A connection exists between appearance and conceptualization. That which we can name is something we can also reach a decision on, or destroy; whatever has no “face” has no name, and consequently cannot be debated publicly. In this sense, the needs of modern urbanism are invisible. Urban planning as a system of abstract strategies largely evades the decision-making process. One cannot talk about the city’s hidden mechanisms in the way one can talk about the construction of a new city hall, for example, or about an underground subway designed to “increase public space at street level,” a pseudomeasure particularly favored by city administrations. Therefore, what the city needs most is not identical with such “solutions” as the politician likes to air in public. He needs start and completion dates for projects that take place within a single legislative period, represent a unified whole, and call furthermore for what is known as a “courageous decision.” When the politician has dragged such a project through all requisite instances and to its conclusion he can declare it “successful,” apparently with some justification—for success is measured not in terms of a project’s impact but in terms of its size. The cycle of always reproducing more of the same rests not on external constraints but on the preponderance of all that is visible and identifiable over that which has never yet been seen. Redevelopment is accordingly commendable not owing to its new way of satisfying needs but above all because of how it looks: a novelty is all the more spectacular, the better it succeeds in dressing up the banal fulfillment of traditional tasks in a new, demonstrative guise. Utopia can render service here to the resolution process: it lends a face to new principles of urban planning, so that these can flow into the decision-makers’ political consciousness. The future, in ac75

quiring a face, becomes communicable and therefore conclusive. In giving palpable expression to the solution of future needs, the designer or planner of utopias renders the needs themselves visible, and confronts the public with that which the future holds in store. It would be dangerous if one were to mistake utopia for future reality, and actually realize it. For all urban utopias that have seen the light of day to date, are—insofar as they have a face—“solutions” in the sense of the way architects set about solving problems. We therefore understand utopias not as a call for their realization—for they would then not be utopias—but as planners’ anguished plea for society to free them finally from the dual burden of both formulating and solving tasks. Architects want to awaken their partner in the design process—the client and user—or even to completely reinvent him. They want a counterpart who is open to discussion, who doesn’t merely say yes or, if need be, no, but who expresses his own will in discussions. To set in motion the wheels of a real decision-making process would be to reconstitute politics in the only arena in which politics is at all worthwhile: that in which we formulate our future lifestyle.

76

From Design Academicism to the Treatment of Wicked Problems (1973) However great the changes imposed by pioneers of modern architecture may have been, and however great the impact of the achievements of the 1920s and 30s on the whole of contemporary architecture, professional teaching practice has remained unchanged. The relationship of professor and student has remained the traditional relationship of master and apprentice, and the students’ tasks continue, as always, to be those of abstracting from actual implementation; it is a case of designs for the portfolio, as one used to say in the last century. Conventional design training continues to set the task it has always set, namely to create a specific building on a real or imagined terrain. In the course of the “Lehrcanapé,”¹ we called such tasks the “Youth Center on Paradeplatz.” In the case of such designs it is assumed the terrain is available, that the purpose of the building is correct, and that both the client and prospective owners unanimously welcome the proposed building program. Land prices, traffic congestion, urgency and profit yield are all problem areas that remain outside the scope of such design proposals. The student is educated in an atmosphere of abstraction, at a remove from the real world, which means he is in for a bumpy landing later, on the hard facts of reality.

1

Lehrcanapé: the “professorial sofa” as opposed to the usual professorial chair, was the name given to a temporary professorship at the ETH Zurich, held jointly by the architect Rolf Gutmann and the sociologist Lucius Burckhardt, from 1969 to 1973. Cf. also Silvan Blumenthal, Das Lehrcanapé: Lucius Burckhardt und das Architektenbild an der ETH Zürich 1970-1973, Basel 2010. 77

Any student of the conventional design method learns to take a “trial and error” approach. He endeavors, in one way or another, to put down on paper the task entrusted to him, and after a while he fails, or assistants point out the non-feasibility of his approach, whereupon he tries a new one. What distinguishes the master from the student is the former’s so-called experience. Only rarely does the master embark on paths that do not lead to a goal. The student also takes note of this experience, and instinctively weighs up which paths are relatively sure to lead to goals without demanding too great an effort. The design method born of experience born of intuition conceals from the designer even essential features of the decision-making process. One scribbles a few lines on paper, and dozens of questions are already resolved: site development, the number of stories, perhaps therefore the building materials as well as many things inside the building even, which reveal themselves only later to be design constraints. The design proposal fails because a disproportionate amount of time and skill is expended from this point onwards, on relatively unimportant individual factors. Finally, the semester nears its end, the pace of design increases, and dozens of decisions are once again pushed through in secret. The conventional architect behaves likewise, particularly when it comes to competitions. Major decisions are to be found in a certain sense in two pockets: hidden at the beginning in a paper napkin, along with the supposed brainwave one suddenly brought home; and, at the end, in the bustle of work that precedes project submission. In the 1960s, the growing complexity of the planning and construction fields made a new approach to training indispensable, and led to a phase we call “enlightened academicism.” This posits that a design be premised on a prior phase of analysis. Enlightened academicism believes that a methodical approach is assured by inte78

grating the following in the decision-making process, in an order expressed in German by the acronym ZASPAK: goal identification, analysis, synthesis, planning, implementation and control. This approach overlooks two prerequisites of its successful application: – Goals must be identifiable from the outset. However, in most practical exercises the real goals come to light only during the design process. – Synthesis is required so as to incorporate the insights gained from analysis during the planning process. However, the planning methods taught presently at our universities do not demonstrate how such a large amount of data may be synthesized and incorporated in the planning process. Enlightened academicism led thus to the now familiar two-part task definition. Let’s say, the semester theme is the theater in Hintertüpflingen. The analysis phase serves to determine what the city of Hintertüpflingen needs most urgently; then the design phase proposes development of a railroad yard in Hintertüpflingen in order to obtain a platform on which a theater can be built. A weltanschauung underpins the “enlightened academicism” method: the image of a harmonious world, whose problems can be solved through technological intervention. This is the world of tame problems such as we learned to solve in school: the Greeks are philosophers, the Romans statesmen, the Germans belligerent, and the math teacher’s sums correct. The laws that rule this world are supposedly eternal: whatever we learned in the past, we can apply to the future. Basically, if we had Laplace’s cosmopolitan esprit we could predict the future completely. Yet we lack such a wealth of information, and so restrict ourselves to “essentials.” However, to restrict ourselves to essentials, and to those facts we currently find most relevant is precisely what has put an almost 79

unbearable strain on the resilience and tolerance capacity of our real environment. The problems and limitations concealed by the prosperity euphoria of the 1960s are now erupting on our horizon at an alarming speed. In the light of the above, we consider the premises in which conventional and “enlightened-conventional” academic work is rooted to be fatal. While schools demand that a solution be found for a clearly defined problem, real life demands that the architect map out the scope of problematic issues himself. What he must learn therefore, is to deal with unsolvable, “wicked” problems. It is a mistake to imagine that one’s experience and intuition are the best guides in this uncertain field. Methods do exist in any case, for dealing also with wicked problems. The study of such methods seems to us all the more urgent, given that both the architect’s influence, and its impact on decision-making bodies obliged to take decisions on lofty goals, are intensifying exponentially. This is the reason we named our approach, not “project training”—for conservative academics also could lay claim to that term—but rather, “problemoriented training.”

Problem-oriented training and methodical design

The “Canapé” defined problem-oriented training as a form of teaching focused on one or several issues of such complexity as to be representative of real professional issues, as well as on solutions that ideally evince an integrated, interdisciplinary approach. This approach to training—and moreover, this goal of training— served quasi as a lens through which to consider all other associated 80

goals and measures, be these endeavors to carry out methodological design, or to handle problems within a team comprised of teachers and students. This appraisal of professional design training led away from the popular creative design topics such as a house on a slope, or a weekend lakeside retreat, to more comprehensive issues of socio-political relevance, which could not be solved by construction alone. These were, for example, the problems of education and training for students and professionals. Certainly, one result of this approach was that students at the time received no training in “classical” design techniques. They were confronted rather, with problems whose solution demanded much broader understanding than is required when implementing a structural solution to a spatial program. They were obliged to acquire a problem-solving frame of mind, for this put them in a position to solve problems that could be defined more precisely solely through a step-by-step approach. This capacity to solve undefined problems, which is to say, the capacity to collate, to process, and to apply relevant information in order to solve a problem, we called the “problem-solving frame of mind.” Certainly, students were initially overwhelmed by this kind of “design,” because it was very difficult for them to categorize the wealth of information correctly, and to evaluate individual data with proper regard for the problem at hand. This is evident from the data collated during the far-ranging analysis phases, which was much too extensive, dealt with unspecified issues, and thus later simply impeded a project’s progress. Yet one can still assume that the frame of mind fostered here enabled students to deal with an issue, and to arrive at a result, without knowledge of the habitual solution strategies. The “Canapé” considered its task was to heighten students’ appreciation of the fact that social problems cannot be solved sim81

ply by a design proposal, or by fully implementing a construction project, as well as of the fact that planning, if it is ever to produce comprehensive solutions to identifiable problems, must encourage the formulation of alternative goals. For this reason we tried to proceed methodically, that is, to use systematic reduction to generate the alternative solutions likely to attain previously formulated goals. To this end, and in addition to the regular semester schedule, a methodology seminar was launched in order to teach students the rudiments of design methodology. The seminar was divided into two parts: – The study of various design and evaluation techniques – Application of these techniques to selected test cases It must first be clarified what is actually meant by planning. We premised our approach on A. Faludi’s definition: planning entails the application of systematic methods to the task of formulating social goals, and their translation into concrete action programs. This definition provided a springboard for the presentation and discussion of different types of design. This was followed by an assessment of evaluation techniques, their effectiveness and validity. The subjectivity of evaluation systems was the central problem. On which factors does the result of an evaluation depend; how can it be manipulated; and how much value should be attributed to it, when deciding in favor of, or against an alternative? Given that most problems in the field of planning are heuristic search tasks—hence wicked problems whose solution depends crucially on the personal value system of the person addressing them—the evaluation discussion was broad in scope. The first phase revealed that three key insights seem to have been important for students: 82

1.

2.

3.

Since we are dealing in the planning field with wicked problems, it is important to make the problem-solving process transparent, which is to say, easily comprehensible. Various techniques and methods can be used to meet this demand for transparency; all of them involve the systematic production of diversity, as well as the systematic reduction of this diversity through the evaluation procedure. The goal of all planning is to eliminate disruptions. To eliminate such disruptions requires a very specific frame of mind, a problem-solving frame of mind. It is a process that begins with identification of the disruptive factor and ends with an actual state of affairs: the “Ist-Zustand” that is the fulfillment of the target state or “Soll-Zustand.” This process is ongoing, because the demands made on the built environment are constantly changing, and the limited adaptability of the built environment constantly gives rise to disruptions. Anything built for a specific purpose (a school, a hospital, etc.), is generally already outdated the day it opens. Planning inevitably has a crucial political dimension. Every evaluation gives expression to a system of values held by an individual or a group. To construct an objective evaluation system is impossible. For this reason, evaluation systems should not be prescriptive—in the sense of laying down universal laws—but should be used only to support an argument.

The second phase—application of techniques to various test cases— was unfortunately not the success we had hoped for, as students found this approach rather dry, and took part in these exercises only reluctantly. It was planned to conduct a series of smaller test cases, so as to be able to apply all that had been learned within the lecture 83

framework. Some seminar participants did work on the first two test-case exercises, albeit quite half-heartedly. These were: Exercise 1—To evaluate three different three-room apartments Exercise 2—To design an apartment building for a specific context, in line with the AIDA² method Unfortunately the results of their work are available in fragmented form only, and therefore cannot be documented.

2 The AIDA Reaction Model created by E. K. Strong in 1925 posits that the sales process has four phases—Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. 84

Who Plans the Planning? (1974) Who plans the planning? This question is meant to highlight the fact that planning does not take place in a vacuum but is determined by politics and implicated in a social system. How to plan is something the specialist may know, although, as we shall see, his “how” is not free of social constraints either; but what is planned and what is not, and what one plans to leave to its own devices are issues defined by political and social forces. The city is full of problems, and not all of them become an object of our planning provisions. Moreover, not every consequence of planning is planned. And many a consequence, it has been decided—decided by not taking a decision—will be ignored anyhow. Today, there is much talk of environmental protection; plans are laid to enhance or improve the environment. But deterioration of the environment is also a consequence of planning: it is namely that aspect of planning it was tacitly and unanimously agreed to leave unplanned.

Defining the problem

The question, “Who plans the planning?” therefore means in the first instance, “Who determines what is (and what is not) to be planned?” Local authorities proceed by raising controversial questions or “issues.” From among the problems plaguing a city, the politician elects to make one of them his personal hobbyhorse. Prob85

lems and likewise the types of planning intended to solve them are not easily comparable; the issue of whether the city should put its money either into improving transport or into raising standards of public health cannot be measured against any objective criteria. The local politician takes up controversial issues as a means to compete for votes. Elections are meant to end in consensus as to which problems the body politic should come to grips with. Yet it is blatantly obvious that this method of reaching consensus is downright crude: the voter has no say at all regarding either selection of the problems to be addressed—for it is the politicians’ job to set the agenda—or the means by which a problem should be tackled. The question as to who plans the planning has implications also for the politician’s relationship with the professional planner. The history of how humans formalize their decisions is also the history of endeavors to guarantee the professional’s independence vis-à-vis those in power—both in order to keep him neutral and resistant to vested interests, and to obviate the professional’s own power. The tradition of facultative “professionals” reaches from Israel’s prophets to professors at independent universities, from the leading ranks of military or economic associations to the institutes from which state and economic bodies seek advice. Yet new ways to blend skills are popping up all the time. The consultant aspires to influence, and the policymaker learns either how to deal with science himself, or to bypass the subject. In the classical decision-making model, planning and decisionmaking are kept apart. The government commissions the professional to produce research or projections; the professional presents the results of his research or his various proposals to the government; and the government decides which of them to act on—that is the credo. Modern research into decision-making is devoted largely to a critique of this formalist view of democracy. The skepticism 86

rests on several different aspects with which we shall deal in more detail later: one is that the act of making a decision is actually never so well defined as in the aforementioned model—except perhaps, in the case of a ceremony, a parliamentary session for example, carried out in accordance with resolutions passed in house; another is that the persons involved cannot be divided exactly into “the experts” and “the decision-makers.” That planning—be it urban or regional planning—provides politicians with controversial issues is a relatively recent phenomenon. For sure, an interest in urban planning procedures among concerned parties, or perhaps even a “lobby,” has been in evidence ever since municipal real estate became a commodity. But, for the time being, interaction between urban planners and private initiatives is minimal. In the first phase of industrialization, masses of people rushed to take up new jobs in the cities. Private entrepreneurs housed them as cheaply as possible, in areas hitherto scorned. Far away from these developments, in the city center, the government went about its business. This was the era when city walls were razed, grand boulevards and impressive residential quarters were built, and government and cultural institutions were erected on city squares in the Classicist or Romantic style of planning—all of which happened not without the aid of speculation at times while, at others, the price was financial sacrifice on the altar of urban development. The merging of private and public interests was to prove even more controversial when it came to the development of trams and hence, to urban expansion. Some lots were upgraded and exploited while others on the underbelly of development remained neglected. Owing first to the electric tram and later to private automobiles, city center land prices stagnated for several decades; urban planners and private lobbies consequently remained largely inactive. It was only when the service sector expanded that urban centers rose in 87

value, and the present-day scope of urban planning was established. After World War II, congested streets served as a pretext to sell off inner-city properties, although such lots were then put to intensive commercial use, which led in turn to further congestion. In the late 1960s, when mass motorization led to gridlock, and widening roads became largely obsolete, urban planning turned to the refurbishment of allegedly slum districts, and formed a new coalition in this sector with the construction industry and investors. The question as to who plans the planning therefore leads us today, to a parallelogram of forces between the officials in power, construction industry speculators, civic stakeholders, and the people affected by the measures undertaken. For a time, the planner within this parallelogram remained unnamed. It may be instructive to reflect at this point on the history of the planner’s career. In pursuing this history we come across the distinction between engineering schools and lofty academia and thus—in terms of fields of expertise—between civil and structural engineering and—in terms of job descriptions—between the engineer and the architect. The distinction persists to this day and, in fact, the issue of modern urban planning appears to be driving renewed polarization. Initially however, at least from the 1920s through to the 1960s, the planner was an architect. This was of no little consequence, given that an architect’s training is based on intuitive decision-making. Both his university and his profession set him tasks with more variables than propositions: and intuition is the means by which such tasks are solved. The architect is trained to reduce to its “essentials” any problem presented to him. Of all the types of decision-making methods, intuition is the one that differs most radically from the planning process (see Otto Walter Haseloff on this). Yet we as a society have designated as planner a representative of the very profession we have hitherto 88

trained to reach decisions intuitively. The technique of reducing complex, interrelated issues to their essentials was revealed thereby to be specious. The deterioration of our environment is nothing but the sum of all that is brushed aside as inessential during the planning process. Recognition of this fact owes much to the insight of architecture students in the years 1967–70. Their fight for educational reform was dedicated to the introduction of contextual planning, to dealing with the information that the real architect is meant actually to neglect. Unfortunately, the university framework appears to be allergic to such an attack: it indulges the cult of all that is handcrafted and irrational, the cult of the architect as a herald of celestial salvation. It thereby abandons the field of rational planning to other professions, which may well be better trained in 89

dealing with complex information yet whose knowledge of other, equally essential areas is possibly patchy at best.

Collective decisions

We must not overlook the fact that dealing with planning means dealing with collective processes of decision-making. The decision of every person involved is implicated in his social setting; his personal decision-making style—based on rational criteria, or based intuitively on sublimated experience—is given only subdued expression. If we wish to study such collective decisions we must look to the findings of those sociologists who study organizations, and attempt to apply to public administration a branch of science that was developed mainly in and for the commercial sector. The usual planning report consists of two unequal parts: first comes a detailed analysis of the status quo, comprised of statistics, interviews and inventories. An analytical component of this sort easily contains tens of thousands or, in the case of extrapolations, perhaps millions of data that remain extremely disparate and not easily comparable, even when summarized. The second part of a surveyor’s report proposes “a solution,” the construction of a subway, for example. If one studies the link between the report’s two parts, namely the technique by which its author reaches his conclusion—i.e., digests a range of disparate information and makes a proposal—the link proves to be rather weak. The planner bases his argument on two or three supposedly “essential” factors, and pays no attention to the remaining information. His decision rests therefore at best on intuition, at worst on something whispered in 90

his ear by a third party, yet probably on a compromise that ensues from an organizational dynamic. This dynamic is rooted in the subjective decision-making processes that unfold both in an individual person and in a collective. The heuristic phenomenon is evident already in the individual: he knows which path he should take and which variants he may dismiss as inessential. His attitude can be explained in two ways. Walter Isard provides a rational explanation. He shows that every decision-maker sees before his mind’s eye a ratings chart with which he can gauge the probability of a reward or fame in the case of his being right, and of disgrace and liability in the case of his being wrong. Faced with two measures, one of which is likely to fail, and the other to succeed, the planner will advocate the former—for its failure will assure him less disgrace than success would assure him fame. If it is highly likely a measure will fizzle out mid-way between success and failure then activity will bring greater honor than inactivity, so taking action will be advocated, and so on, and so forth. Other explanations are premised on the decision-maker’s attitude to his professional situation. They demonstrate that the planner’s highest maxim is to attain, not the optimal result but an agreeable social climate within his organization. So decisions are always a compromise between that which is actually needed, and that which one may expect the members of an organization to deliver in terms of innovation or non-routine activities. Studies have shown that a decision-maker who is part of a collective ceases to exercise choice, not at the optimal moment but as soon as he spots a solution that meets, however superficially, the criteria for his objectives, as well as the criteria for his own personal situation. His own psychology thereby plays him a trick or two: his view of reality and the value scale are adjusted so as to accord with the 91

decision he has already foreseen in secret. Moreover, the decisionmaker maneuvers himself subconsciously onto a one-way street: he makes sure that extraneous circumstances alone shrink the number of variants down to one. But all these explanations based on the decision-making subject, even when they take into account the individual’s situation within the collective, overestimate the decisive moment. The decision is triggered in time. There is an element of free choice only for the first decisions but, in reality, such beginnings are impossible to locate, have passed by unnoticed, or been consciously obscured. It is these imperceptibly unfolding decision-making processes that we shall now examine more closely. A first defining force lies in naming the problem. Whoever spells out the existence of a problem for the first time, likewise specifies the means by which to combat it. To name an issue is to give it contours, and naming contains the seeds of the remedy. For instance, to establish that too many traffic accidents occur leads to an improvement in ambulance services; to describe the situation of the elderly leads to the construction of old people’s homes, and not to a general rethink of housing policy; the discrimination faced by less able children leads to the creation of schools for children with special needs, attendance of which thwarts their future social advancement. The issue or problem selected by the body politic has unclear contours, initially. The traffic situation on the railroad station forecourt may be catastrophic, but the remedy is more likely to be found on the city margins, or even further a-field. The politician who takes up the issue of the station forecourt must set limits however—and in doing so, he determines the remedy. His description of hordes of pedestrians snaking their way among honking vehicles instantly evokes a vision of an underpass. All former resolve to redirect traffic on the city margins, and to prioritize public transport is now 92

forgotten: a station underpass is built, and everything else stays the same. Stumbling from one stopgap measure to the next occasionally brings a planning organization into disrepute. In order to restore its reputation in the press and the public eye, the organization then sets its sights on a master plan. A specialist is brought in to compile a package of measures, implementation of which will improve the city’s situation. Following the specialist’s departure however, the organization itself can decide in which order it wishes to proceed: it states which measures will be realized immediately, and which will be postponed indefinitely. This method ensures a plan exists, and can be held up for public approval; yet it simultaneously destroys the plan; for the desired objectives can be attained only by implementing the specialist’s strategy as a complete package. The organization has both a formal and an operative structure, and these assign specific roles to individual members, who hence pursue different courses of action. Above all however, it is hierarchies that determine access to information. Better information generates more effective arguments, and hence heightens the likelihood of seeing something through successfully. This explains the advantages that governments have over parliaments, and that subordinate positions have over the government. Any decision thus reached will be ritualized in accordance with the customary formal order, either by taking a vote, or by putting the responsibility on the most senior person possible, who fails to realize the implications of signing on the dotted line. The tools of reason deployed within organizations allow the demonstrable, which is to say the quantifiable factors predominance over all others. Common urban planning objectives (“traffic liquefaction”) are therefore quantitative in character and are treated as benchmarks moreover, although they compromise the pursuit of 93

other, more important objectives such as livability. Despite the predominance of quantifiable targets, the planner is wary of ever assessing how successfully (or not) his targets are attained, or even of describing any syndromes to which his measures give rise. Until now, in a sense, we have enumerated the technical difficulties encountered in decision-making. Yet decision-making organizations also clearly have vested interests, and mechanisms to ensure their own survival. The organization has an interest in maintaining the status quo and its own security. It is aware however, that it must accomplish something itself, in order to guarantee its security. Its past successes therefore set the pattern for future action. In consequence, the organization’s aspirations to greater security do not hinder its actions but force its hand. Its transportation systems continue to tear apart our cities; alleged slum clearance programs destroy the social fabric of poorer districts, and put real estate in the hands of developers; cars lured into the inner city by a profusion of roads and parking lots block the city center, and pollute the air. Decisions are taken, work continues, but each measure is just one more in a series of would-be success stories. The organization, given its inability to adapt, must pursue the policies it has opted for, although they can spell death for the city. After all that has been said so far, it may look as if planning is wholly in the hands of state agencies and a few companies or individuals with vested interests, such as civil engineers and investors. Yet this state of affairs could never persist, had it not the support of the majority population. In the growth-oriented and inflationary ambience of the last two decades, large numbers of the middleclass have learned that mere activism is beneficial also to them, even without their direct involvement. In a relatively short time, this class has abandoned listless conservatism in favor of a blind faith in economic progress that certainly has nothing at all in com94

mon with political progressiveness. The naysayers have become yesmen, and the morose critics applauding admirers of every material innovation. The bourgeois credo—that prosperity cannot be attained without hard years of investment—is applied in turn to the hectic construction and refurbishment programs underway in our cities. Our cities have become construction sites accessible only via heaps of dirt, planks, and hastily filled-in ditches, or by circumventing extensive barriers. The initiators thereby manage to persuade residents that this is nothing more than an investment phase, following completion of which the cities will be much more comfortable to walk or drive through—as if the respective traffic problem might “be solved.” Locating public transport underground and thereby freeing up the city streets for private traffic—plus the ring roads, radial highways, and central underground parking lots that this implies—only gives rise to a further problem, one that eats its way persistently from the inner city outwards, gradually depleting then completely destroying the livability of poorer neighborhoods on the city’s former outskirts: yet this doesn’t bother the applauding class at all, for it has long since put itself and its children at a safe distance, far away in the new suburbs; and it now uses the city only as a stomping ground for business and pleasure.

The voices of the pawns on the drawing board

It is, to say the least, agreeable for planners to gain the consent of at least some of the people affected by their plans. Implementation of a plan may be menaced even, if objections pile up. The consent 95

of the people concerned must either be ferreted out—or manufactured. Ferreting it out requires that sociology be incorporated in the planning process, while manufacturing consent relies on the Human Relations methods, which is to say, on propaganda for a more positive social climate, and on other, tougher means. Human Relations methods seek to appear enlightened. They are based on the notion that information is “neutral,” as well as on democratic means of conflict resolution such as the press, and political activism. Yet supposedly unbiased information is indeed biased, all the way down to its harmless-looking scale models built of Plexiglas, cardboard and little fake green trees. Among the tougher methods we count the “advice” given to the parties concerned, whenever state officials pay them a visit. The way in which carrot and stick are applied in such cases is generally strictly off the record, and may only be guessed at after the event. While Germany’s “Städtebauförderungsgesetz” (law on promoting urban development) is designed to foster the compilation of data on attitudes towards, and interest in participatory planning processes among “landlords, tenants, leaseholders, and other authorized users in the area of proposed refurbishment under consideration,” such laws and regulations are generally of precious little use. Public administrations since the time of the ancien régime have known how to manufacture public consent. In recent years, sociological surveys or opinion polls have often been put to grave misuse. Comprehensive literature is available on the validity of opinion polls yet planners and planning sociologists ignore such expertise, and experiment instead with primitive methods of questioning, along the lines of: “Are you satisfied with your apartment?”—Yes! No! Don’t know! The results—satisfaction levels of over 90 percent, mostly—are evidently meaningless. Proof enough lies in the fact that the level of satisfaction is all the higher, 96

the worse the living standards are in the place the question is put. This can be explained both in psychological and political terms. Psychologically, it is a case of “dissonance reduction:” as a human being cannot stand any dissonance between the (idealized) target state and current reality of an intimate space such as his home, he bridges the gap between his wish and reality by painting things rosier than they are. And he heaps upon the interviewer the same arguments he uses to convince himself. At the political level, it is the lack of an alternative that leads to consent. For most people, refurbishment means the loss of their apartment, relocation to a new location, and a higher rent. So why on earth would anyone ever hesitate to declare his satisfaction with his old, run-down surroundings? A further step towards addressing people’s problems is advocacy planning, which has been discussed so far in German-speaking countries mainly by the journal ARCH+ (issues 8–10, 1969–70). Advocacy planning at least dispels the myth that the planner might make objective judgments, independently of all the parties concerned. It is more likely that advocates of the concerned parties will negotiate a decision on their behalf, i.e. consider consciously subjective opinions. But weighty arguments that cast doubt on the efficacy of advocacy planning can also be brought into play: for one, it is questionable whether the advocate, a member of the academic upper middle-class, can really get to the heart of the problems faced by members of other social classes. So he may present them with options that lie beyond their personal frame of reference. And, thirdly, not even the advocate can guarantee complete transparency, and the indirect consequences of interventions will reveal themselves only over time. Some cities have followed Munich’s lead in setting up so-called citizens’ forums, at which planners’ proposals are discussed openly. 97

Although only a fraction of the population attends such forums, they do help raise public awareness of the impact of planning. The public administration proved itself quick to learn in this case however: the funding that allows such forums to flourish is synonymous with the destruction of their emancipatory potential. Finally, it must also be asked, who these people concerned or affected by planning actually are. The line can be drawn very clearly in certain cases, for example, in the case of the inhabitants of a slum “under development”—meaning, one about to be razed to the ground. To deduce the composition of social groups that have yet to be moved to an area is more difficult. Does “the people concerned” in this case mean those already resident in an area, or those who have yet to arrive? The latter may still reside in other towns, or be minors, or not even born yet. This demonstrates that democratic planning consists not in rash decision-making but rather, in the planned postponement of any and all decisions that can be postponed, to the general benefit of residents who will arrive on the scene only later, or with new needs. This methodical postponement of decisions is an art in which those who plan the planning are barely versed at present. It too, is no fast track to fame. Demands for advocacy planning are underpinned by the notion that underprivileged social classes are unable to articulate their own concerns. As long as it is not a case of false consciousness—and advocates are the last people who might rectify this, if it is—the ability to voice one’s own terms and conditions is universal. Any difficulties that arise are rooted in translation issues: those “planned” live in their own reality, just as those authorized to plan do. Subjective reality—the way any individual claims to see reality—is a consequence of his education in society and hence, a social construct.

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Planning is not autonomous

We now need to deal with planners themselves, and hence to consider class-specific interpretations of the environment. These originate in one’s family, social class or schooling, but also have a professional dimension in that they are points of view learned or unlearned in the course of one’s studies or on-the-job training. Very often a third factor comes into play, namely “experience,” which many of those authorized to take decisions gained actually in the course of a military career, or even in wartime; and which imparted to them not only a quite peculiar view of their fellow men but, most importantly, allowed any deed or decision taken rashly, on their sole responsibility, to be presumed automatically to be correct. To assume sole responsibility that cannot in reality be borne is part and parcel of the planner’s sense of reality. Yet such responsibility is a blank check, for misjudged planning cannot be reversed; and urban residents driven out of their old districts can no more be returned there than victims of war can be brought back to life. The attitude to life expressed by the middle-class proverbs—“A man forges his own destiny,” “Whoever dares, wins,” etc.—acquires a particularly volatile dimension in the public arena. While the private individual vouches with his person and property for his profit and losses, success in the public arena brings more fame than failure brings liability, for failure can be covered up, blamed on someone up the ladder, or brazenly recast as a success story. Urban planning therefore proceeds from measure to measure, with no regard for the strategic planning that a city actually requires. Careful maintenance of a historical district is not on the decision-maker’s horizon; demolition and new construction on the other hand appear to 99

be perfect solutions. The “redevelopment” of the Dörfle district of Karlsruhe is a case in point: a misconceived bypass road isolated the district, and its roadside margins became inhospitable slums. The city believed it had to intervene, to purchase and tear down everything along the roadside. In consequence, the next row of buildings became a slum, and so was purchased and torn down, just like the first; and this continued until there was a gaping hole in the inner city. Neither local planners nor politicians were prepared to admit that they personally had created the problem they were so busily attempting to solve. The urban planner’s sciences and auxiliary sciences—urban geography, urban sociology, planning theory, planning methodology and planning strategy—have made advances in recent years. Yet how they are applied depends always on the character of the person doing the planning. That we are unable to distinguish clearly between the planner and the apparently superordinate authorities to which he is answerable has already been stated. Insofar, planning is not autonomous but part of a social system; and members of a collective or other organization carry it out. We are currently seeing planning theory and the participatory concept make steady headway, side by side. Planning theories feign objectivity, and thereby tempt the authorities to suppress public participation with all its shifting unpredictability. The authorities, on the other hand, are probabilistic: as human beings they are adaptive, egocentric, comradely, or otherwise “falsely programmed;” they work in an organization that has its own specific group dynamics, and their decisions are not ascertainable but float freely in time. Technical planning is insofar hemmed in on two sides: on the one side by democratization and participation or, expressed in technocratic terms, by the will to see things through; and on the other, by the decision-makers. 100

Planning therefore comprises not only that which technicians plan. To reflect on urban planning means therefore, not (only) to study the newest theories on housing density or traffic management; it is primarily a matter of giving much broader consideration to the ways in which local authorities make plans to change their environment. That this process is nourished by objective knowledge is to be hoped; that it will become a science is an illusion.

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Family and Home—Two Adaptable Systems (1975) It is impossible for the average human mind to harmonize two mobile systems without recourse to tools. Therefore, in each design— whether we are designing the type of family and lifestyle we want, or our apartment—one system must be fixed so that we can keep the other mobile. For most people, the apartment is the fixed system—what they find on the housing market is an apartment with specific dimensions and walls—and the family alone is mobile. And so they are obliged to design a way of living together in their apartment that can be pursued without the family suffering any damage, or falling apart.

Mobile and fixed

A select few exist also, who believe they have the freedom to determine the ground plan personally. They have the architect come by, and they order a villa—just like in a picture book. Then the other system, namely the family, is shut down. The architect inquires about the size of the family and its hobbies—stamps or racing pigeons—then asks how old the eldest daughter is, and the second, and the third. The ground plan is adjusted subsequently to meet the family’s needs precisely. But by the time the family moves into the house, it already has a different form than when the architect took notes. 102

I intend to challenge the myth that says, the precise program gives rise to good architecture based on precise wishes, and precisely expressed needs. This myth pulls the wool over the eyes not only of those who build villas, but also of those responsible for the architecture of the entire welfare sector—of all those, in a word, who know so precisely what other people need.

Building allegedly solves problems

By way of contrast, I wish to point out the importance, firstly, of the dynamic processes of adjustment that set in once a building is complete, which I’ll call for now the post-construction processes (What happens in a house once it is a fixed structure?); and, secondly, of the pre-construction processes (Why was this particular building program selected? Why was it decided to build a house at all?). Many buildings come about, not because a building is required but because construction allegedly solves problems. And these problems floating around in space have the strange tendency to suggest to people at certain moments, they would be solved if something were built. When one talks about these processes, which always have a temporal aspect, one can do so in terms of the following: —in terms of formal and legal relationships: housing is an institution; —in terms of actual indications, i.e. what happens within the group inhabiting an apartment, and what external relationships does it have; housing is a language; —in terms of the housing market (i.e. economics): housing is a system. 103

Housing is an institution

I would like the word institution to be understood in a sociological rather than a concrete sense. Of course, one does think of walls first of all, of the building itself, but that is not the essence of an institution. Rather, a network of relationships is its essence: the legal principles, patterns of behavior, and expectations with which people are confronted. That is essential. A hospital is an institution yet it is a stone structure only in the lesser sense. First and foremost it is a network of relationships, in which people expect certain things of one another. It has a different hierarchy than other places do; people in white coats are in charge there; and this applies only within, not outside the institution. Housing is also such an institution. We can use a current slogan (if we view housing as one of our most important environments): “Environments are invisible.” Our environment does not consist of all that we can see but of legal relationships or, for example, of a residential location’s “good reputation” (one needs a “good address”), and then of the neighborhood, and its institutions. Then the lease is also a part of that invisible institution “apartment,” as is its appendix of house rules defining things one cannot see: whether and when one may enter certain spaces, for example. These are all important factors in our invisible environment. They determine our lifestyle just as radically as walls do. Moreover, the inner life of the apartment is also an institution. The group of residents there may be described as a network of mutually attuned behavior patterns. And the group must settle in now, in conditions dictated once and for all by the existing walls, rooms, doors, corridors and fixed usages. The family molds its shape to fit the ground plan; it tries to find a form of existence that is 104

viable under the conditions the ground plan imposes. Certain behavior patterns crystallize immediately, in order to facilitate the “survival” of the old family in its new situation.

The wrong home set-up

The phenomenon of families seeming to set up home wrongly must be mentioned here too. The way they install themselves and their belongings reveals the difficulties they face in adapting the complex institution “family” to the conditions imposed by a specific ground plan. What we may call the “wrong” set-up in the home is the group’s only possible form of survival when compelled to reside in a design that is patently unsuited to its needs. A typical indication of the institutional character of the family, or of any group of inhabitants, is how rarely they rearrange the furniture. In German and French at least, the word for furniture is related to the word “mobile,” so one could be excused for thinking furniture was meant to be moved around. But that is not so simple, and even less so when it comes to that which architects praise as the pinnacle of modern living, and on which they would be willing to expend very large sums of money, namely mobile walls. The few trial apartments built with mobile walls have had a sorry outcome (sorry for the person who paid for, or built them): mobile walls are moved only very rarely.

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Truce

It seems to me that the failure to make use of built-in flexibility is rooted in the strongly institutionalized relationships of a group, for a group is not a peaceful structure but one ridden by permanent conflict, owing to the fact that its members develop and change: children grow older, criticize their parents, and face strife. The group struggles to maintain its fragile balance, and must therefore declare a truce of sorts. And in order to maintain this truce it needs the constancy of the home environment. Here, a wall may be as flexible as it likes but it will still be extraordinarily difficult to tell the daughter, we are going to move the wall a meter to the left so you will have four square meters less, for you are home only rarely. Your brother, on the other hand, has begun to study, and now needs four square meters more. So hands on, everybody; let us lift the wall, and move it. This causes a huge row of course. So one prefers to suffer discomfort for a while, and an only rarely used room, in order to maintain the group’s dynamic equilibrium a little longer, and not threaten it by making changes. Similar problems arise in connection with those well-meant, additional facilities in housing situations known as “extensions of the apartment:” the corridor forecourt, the stairwells, gardens and parks, and the hobby room in the basement.

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Now use the hobby room

Why doesn’t anyone use the hobby room? Why doesn’t anyone step on the lawn, even though he is allowed to? Also when it comes to these semi-public institutions, which belong neither to the public nor the private sphere, one senses other people’s expectations, or criticisms of one’s behavior, and refrains therefore from laying a claim to the semi-public sphere; from grabbing one’s toolbox one fine day, for example, and retreating to the hobby room to build oneself a table while everyone looks on and thinks: Well now, there goes Burckhardt, off in broad daylight to the hobby room with his toolbox, and stepping on the lawn while he is at it! These are the difficulties we face in connection with the semi-public spaces that were touted as an upgrade of our housing.

Housing is a language

The second perspective to consider is not wholly unrelated to the aforementioned one. Housing is a language. Or: to dwell is to speak. The polemic here seeks to dispel the assumption that to dwell is simply a means to satisfy needs. To dwell some place does indeed satisfy needs, but it does so largely, above and beyond the physiological minimum. We do not spend our nights under the arches. We live in apartments. To live this way expresses a lifestyle: it is a language. We consider ourselves prisoners of convention, and we look at other nations, nomads in tents for example, and imagine they have no such conventions. Ethnologists report that the conventions 107

there are even more rigid than anywhere else, and language, the expression of dwelling, more strictly defined.

A sewing machine in a symbolic grid

A research report on Mongolian yurts (round tents) discussed the symbolism of space distribution in their interior. Modern objects are assigned a precise place, even before they are purchased. When a nomad buys a sewing machine, for instance, she knows exactly where she must place it in the tent. A symbolic, two-dimensional grid runs through the tent’s interior: the space from the entrance through to the rear becomes increasingly ceremonial while the transition from male to female space runs from left to right. The sewing machine is therefore placed on the right-hand side of the central zone. Such symbolic zoning can be called language. Another example: in an apartment, we experience a room height of 3.80 m as beautiful and agreeable. Others consider it unreasonable; to them, nowadays, given that 90 percent of us live in newly built homes with a room height of 2.50 m, high-ceilinged rooms symbolize decadence. If a low, suspended ceiling has not yet been installed in such a house, it is impossible to live there. This is a purely linguistic problem.

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I sit here when I read

None of us live in spaces as large as we would like. Housing is reduced in any case; it is a compromise between the full extent of whatever we would like to show off, and the actual area that we have leased or purchased. In an experiment with young people aged between 17 and 19, they were asked to draft their dream apartment, regardless of size and cost. I admit such experiments may be somewhat questionable. But it was remarkable, how space was “occupied symbolically.” These young people drew one large area then devoted a field within this living space to a single activity. They said: I sit here and listen to music. Then they circled a different field: I sit here when I read. And next to that: We go here when friends drop by. One might also overlap these pastimes. But they spread their activities over the surface area. This demonstrates that reality compels us to provide for overlap in the apartments in which we live. The history of the middle-class and the working-class apartment is a history superimposed on the old, upper-middle-class house with its dining room, drawing room, parlor and kitchen. In modern housing we overlap all that: we make compromises. However practical these may be, they have an impact on language, on the statement an apartment makes. The field is no longer described precisely; it is occupied by several activities. Language in its pure form is no longer present. Those overlaps such as are suggested to us by welfare sector architects, on the premise that they know how we shall live, endanger, obliterate or breach that which I call the language of dwelling, namely our sense of what should be where. They breach “popular domestic culture,” to resort to a dangerous term; breach the expressive dimension that people have come to agree on, in allotting certain activities to certain rooms. 109

Presentation of self in everyday life

One’s housing is a means to express oneself: one wants to present oneself to one’s self, to the group and to friends. This presentation of self in everyday life must have an action margin. This is also the reason why functionalist endeavors in the 1930s, to create housing on the basis of an existence minimum, were ipso facto failed attempts. For housing’s potential as a means of expression goes hand in hand with the inalienable right to a living wage. Particular features thereby play only a limited role. We know that many features of living are highly substitutable. We need those features that exist beyond the existence minimum—but exactly which of them we need remains uncertain. When looking for an apartment, bad heating may be less important than a beautiful balcony—or vice versa. We have the choice between endless apartments that offer some advantage, i.e. a plus; but which also have drawbacks, deficiencies. Apparently, deficiencies and pluses—things that have nothing at all to do with one another—are highly substitutable, because they exist beyond the existence minimum level, and allow us a margin of self-expression.

Speechlessness

What our modern welfare sector architecture offers today is the destruction of this language, of the potential for self-expression inherent to housing. This leads to speechlessness. New apartments remind me of the alienated language the playwright Kroetz has his 110

actors spout: one converses only in prefabricated phrases derived from TV and advertising; ones plies these fragments, these shreds of language, and is hence speechless, and therefore indecisive too, and incapable of communication. The effect of all this—an effect known to anyone who ever pursued sociological research—is that people everywhere are always satisfied with their housing, which is to say, they are speechless on the subject of housing. Every housing construction company therefore has a report in a drawer somewhere: a report on an expensive survey, which states that all the residents of new housing estates are satisfied with their housing. This satisfaction certainly has many roots. People are afraid of change— and rightly so. In older housing they are afraid of modernization. They believe its results would be worse than their present situation. Some are afraid also of being given notice to leave. Ultimately however, such satisfaction is “real” satisfaction insofar as any expression of discontent has been rendered impossible—by the destruction of housing’s potential as a means of expression.

Housing is a system

Modern architects say the apartment is a technical commodity, like a car. This comparison is admissible indeed, because the housing sector is comparable to the car industry. It is a complex of things that happen now to be this way, or that. And because they are this way, or that, they cannot be changed. Cars imply roads, gas stations, the oil trade, oil sheiks, the civil engineering lobby, and politicians who want to build roads. It is a system in which we are enmeshed, and from which we are unable to extricate ourselves. If this triangu111

lar system comprised by the car industry, fuel production, and road construction is affected at any one point, the alarm bell sounds at all three of its points. It is impossible to change anything in this sector. This system intersects with aspects of the housing sector too, insofar as more expensive housing is being built now beyond the city limits, and inner-city housing is being demolished; and this is also a result of road construction, and of the excessive development of urban terrain. Almost all new satellite cities are built in the very locations where no one ought to live. It seems to be a rule of urban planning that non-designated land be used nonetheless as residential land, and vice versa, i.e. that as far as the bigger players in housing construction are concerned, any greenfield site earmarked for residential development, and reasonably accessible by public transport, does not come into question for development; whereas any land the city planners may have earmarked for green or recreational purposes is now where the larger suburbs are built. And these are then accessible by car. Here, the two systems clearly intersect.

Carpet dealers

A great deal depends on the housing system. The apartment building is a strange bundle of assets. It consists of durable assets such as walls, and very short-lived assets, such as carpets. The new housing construction companies are virtually carpet dealers. They sell a short-term asset fully integrated in a long-term asset. The carpet trade is quasi part and parcel of the housing system. Domestic infrastructure comprises a further subsystem that cannot possibly be altered. Everything is as it is. Everyone knows that 112

it could be made accessible to the user. To personally install and alter electrical circuits and plumbing is a perfectly feasible proposition. But the impossibility of accessing these amenities oneself is a characteristic of the system—and also assures the high income of those who do so on one’s behalf. For example, one could design water pipes able to be interlinked, like a garden hose, by carabiner clasps. Nor do I need 220 volts, for I would drop dead if I were to touch those circuits. In the car I have 6 or 12 volts, and just as much light nevertheless. It is a characteristic of the system that the user is not allowed to touch it. The legal system is likewise integrated in the housing system. Anyone who alters something in his apartment is punished. If he maintains his house in good repair, the money he invests is lost to him. A prudent man therefore lets his apartment rot. That is the reason practically the entire housing stock built before World War I is now falling apart: the inhabitant would be an idiot to lift a finger to save it. This is something that could be changed, but it is integral to the housing system.

Where does one find greenfield sites?

Architectural training is also largely an integral component of this way of thinking about buildings. The conventional task students are set is to construct a new building on a greenfield site. Where does one find greenfield sites? One either buys land that has not been earmarked for development, or one tears down old houses. This approach encourages students to destroy resources, and to create new, superfluous objects. In this regard, professional training is an 113

appendage to the housing system. To inhabit a house is a processbased affair. It is based on the adaptive processes that occur both within the group of inhabitants, and in the apartment itself. This process has a systemic character; like all complex systems, it can become blocked. At certain points I can proceed no further. The systems are too large, and too interdependent.

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Urban Design and Its Significance for Residents (1975)

People would be hard put to come up with a word to match our German word “Gestalt.”¹ It says a great deal, and veils even more. Its implicit assertion, that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” is fruitful; yet it fails to convey that to make a whole of various parts is not a natural process but a social act, an act which reflects history, culture, hegemony and education. How modern this concept of the city as a conscious design, as a planned object or cityscape is, and how tightly interwoven it is with our—possibly Romantic—way of seeing becomes evident when we try to glean from the historical travelogues of Montaigne, Felix Platter, or even of such a late author as Madame de Staël, something of the appearance of the cities they visited. We learn the name of the city as well as that of the river on which it stands— both are traced back to their Latin roots perhaps—then we learn about the churches. Some Roman antiquities are sure to be mentioned and, before we know it, we are on nodding terms with several more or less famous personalities. The cityscape corresponds to the pictograms of an artist such as Matthäus Merian. His etchings appear to render urban form visible; in reality they collate information about the actual location, fortifications, major churches and curiosities of a place. Baedeker takes a very different angle: human

1

The German word “Gestalt” has several meanings, among which number design, form, guise, cast and stature. 115

beings vanish, except when in the guise of the typical “Volk” or commoners. Buildings and streets, especially historic ones, acquire importance. It is they, taken as a whole, which constitute the picturesque and photogenic city—which admittedly encompasses only the inner city. Actual residential areas, villa districts and social housing projects, to say nothing of supermarkets, are not yet an object of “urban design,” or part of the cityscape as such, even today. The cityscape as seen by the city resident is a construct too, which is to say, an image engendered by learning processes that unfold in a social setting. The resident’s city differs from that of the tourist presumably inasmuch as the resident processes a greater amount of information to a lesser degree of picturesqueness. The resident has a more precise knowledge of the city than the visitor, but he feels no need to distill what he knows into a souvenir image. It is more likely that familiar features—the street he lives in, his workplace, local shops, his Sunday excursions—are fixed in his mind’s eye solely for the purpose of getting about the place, in a skeleton framework whose extreme form is the subway map. A series of research projects on this theme have shown that a resident takes his bearings from features of relevance to him personally, i.e. those that foster or prohibit his activities. Conspicuous landmarks that play no part in his personal sphere are registered consciously, only when no other pointers are available. Beyond this personal experience of the environment, the resident’s cityscape is no different than that of the tourist. He describes his city by drawing on those very clichés established by the local tour guide or tourism office. The familiar hometown, which one tends a priori to regard as nothing out of the ordinary, is imbued with flair thanks to foreign forces, and to the slogans coined to market it: “The City of Gorgeous Gables,” for example, or “The 116

Ruhr District’s Showcase.” A resident adopts such slogans, even if he has no personal experience of the feature in question but has heard simply, that other people set great store by it. This leads to an important insight. The resident observing parts of his city is unsure how to interpret them whenever he comes across phenomena that have no relevance to his own life, which is to say, no social relevance. Picturesqueness alone, combined with existential irrelevance, is not conducive to legibility. Such parts of the city or architectural structures are read more easily in terms of secondary characteristics, which are more indicative of the social background. A residential street lined—from the connoisseur’s viewpoint—with striking nineteenth-century buildings, let’s say, is judged by any passer-by one cares to ask, in terms either of the make of car parked in front of the buildings, or the matter of how well-kept, neglected or full of trash their front yards may be. And it is such secondary characteristics, in fact, which tell us something about the street’s current social significance. For any city resident unbiased by knowledge of art history the objects in question are significant, not as architectural monuments but as institutions. The city resident’s visible environment is therefore only of secondary importance; the invisible circumstances that shape his environment are of much greater relevance. What types of people live here? How high is the rent? Who owns the house? What are the house rules? Are children allowed to make noise? Are the local shops affordable? Will the street be considered a good address when I apply for a job? This sort of information outweighs by far the fact that the street was built around 1880, or that its style reflects English Neo-Gothic of the 1840s, which derived in turn from certain Tudor revivals in eighteenth-century English castles. Given this primacy of the “invisible” dimension, the apparently contradictory insights acquired through primarily sociological 117

research (such as that of Herbert J. Gans),² and primarily cognitive research (in Kevin Lynch’s sense of the term),³ seem to me to lead to the same results. If we acknowledge, in consequence, that the city resident’s environment is first and foremost a social environment, and that urban design has a role to play only insofar as it conveys social information, and hence a sense of social belonging, we can now hazard certain conclusions that perhaps throw some light on what has happened to our cities and their residents over the last two decades. We all know the score: land not earmarked for construction became the most sought after location; residential buildings shot up like mushrooms on cheap land in places neglected by public transport planning; and the state reneged on its lovely plans, namely by opening up undeveloped land between major traffic arteries to private traffic, and neglecting public transport in the already built-up areas. The repercussions for the city center were catastrophic. The areas devoted to traffic tore apart the inner cities to an extent such that the center, hitherto a compact destination, completely fell apart; and all that remained was parking lots and department stores, along with some older apartment buildings on odd lots, which have long since been in the hands of speculators and are leased generally to immigrant workers. What information does a city in this condition convey to its residents? From 1957 to 1967, that decade of planning and economic optimism known also as the Golden Sixties, public applause for such

2 Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community, Routledge & Kegan Paul, New York 1960/ Random House, New York 1967. For more on Gans and Lynch, cf. also the paper “On the Design of Everyday Life.” 3 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1960. 118

development was still forthcoming. Profiteers were numerous, and only a very few felt the damage, namely those young married couples or new arrivals in town in search of an apartment, who ultimately had to move into the most expensive and least favorably situated housing developments. Anyone who already had an apartment still paid a low rent, and benefited moreover from the wage raises that had to be granted, given the higher rent levels in the growing number of new apartments on offer. Only in the late 1960s, the era of youth revolts, wildcat strikes, and environmental shock did this state of affairs begin to change. Large sections of the population were affected by developments, because either their apartment had been demolished, or their street was threatening to turn into a slum, or to drop considerably in value owing to the amount of traffic whizzing by. The city had become the enemy. In London, under the rallying cry “Let us be,” ad hoc residents’ committees marched in protest against every new initiative launched by the authorities. In Turin, in the summer of 1967, workers at FIAT rose against the city authorities, and were bloodily beaten down by police on the Corso Traiano. In 1968, the city of Paris was brought to a standstill for more than the month of May. Youth revolts in German cities, which were partly the outcome of social disintegration, simply strengthened the resolve of other city residents to turn their backs on the city. Like it or not, the city resident realized that urban life is a viable proposition even without setting foot in the city. In the triangle between suburban residence, shopping center and workplace ghetto, a form of existence came into being, far removed from anything the aesthete still imagines “urban design” to mean. The question of urban design consequently took a back seat to the question: Will cities even continue to exist? Optimists in the fields of technology and media development had envisaged that 119

information systems would take the place of cities, quasi as a natural progression. They believed city life would be possible in the future also in isolation, for social contacts would be able to be maintained successfully, regardless of one’s location. However, we have seen no signs as yet, to suggest the media are developing as tools of democratic debate. It is truer to say, they continue to represent the one-way street of indoctrination, permitting a response only when it suits their agenda. Moreover, the car-free Sundays introduced during the oil crisis in the winter of 1973–74, illustrated very clearly this new, rural “urban dweller’s” lack of independence, and the level of isolation he suffers once the trade in motor cars, to which public transport has been sacrificed, shows its true face. Meanwhile, however, given the menaced, slum-ridden city centers wrecked either by the economic boom or by its counterpart, the crash, we face the grave problem of preserving the city. Preserving the city in the first instance implies landmark restoration, which is to say, the care and maintenance of cultural heritage. How worthy of preservation a building is deemed to be, depends on art historical factors as well as on its picturesque context, or anecdotal city history. Landmark restoration insofar accomplishes only a fraction of what actually needs to be done, namely to preserve the city also as a place fit to live in. The issues therefore are, for one, to save the still quite considerable reserves of comfortable and affordable living space in our inner cities and, secondly, to put this preservation strategy on a firm footing, by creating social conditions that make the city viable not only for extravagant bachelors, student couples and immigrant workers, but also for average members of the population with their normal age and family structures. We showed at the start of this paper, that the prerequisites of doing so lie only to a limited extent in the visible dimension, which is to say, in “physical planning.” 120

If, in this regard, we assert that the legibility of the environment has little to do with architecture per se, but a great deal to do with a building’s current function—viz., that an imposing building may be redundant in social terms, and a modest one currently of major importance—the question arises as to why anyone ever strives to create good architecture? Or, in other words: What is design? Architectural and social significance have coincided at certain moments in history, perhaps purely by fluke. Such good fortune in any event allows us a brief glimpse of Paradise; what becomes visible is the ideal of a society rid of conflict and living in harmony with its selfbuilt environment; without history, certainly, but happy (perhaps). In our constantly shifting society, such buildings immediately become monuments; they become historical because history refutes the supposedly happy moment, and exposes its contradictory foundations. So buildings of the past, thanks to their design and fragmented condition, make us aware of the shifts in power relations that lie behind us, and of those that lie ahead. To recapitulate briefly: urban design as such does not exist; rather, it is a construct, the outcome of how we have learned to interpret whatever we see. For the eye schooled in art history, visible elements merge in a certain design; for the average city resident, social relations constitute the environment. The latter primarily reads this, his own environment, not in terms of architecture but in terms of the secondary characteristics that inform him about the current use and ranking of streets and neighborhoods. The destruction of cityscapes has progressed to an extent such that large sections of the population who pursue an “urban” lifestyle no longer experience the city—or experience it only as a stomping ground for commercial activities, or for male indulgence in vice and danger. Family life between the private suburban residence, the workplace, and the shopping mall is no replacement for the city 121

however. To preserve and revive the city is therefore primarily a matter, not simply of caring for historic buildings but of creating an urban environment that fosters a strong sense of community.

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Gardening—An Art and A Necessity (1977) Gardening is an art—and so as to not discourage anyone we must immediately declare that gardening is Everyman’s art! Gardening is an art even when the artist is unaware he is making art: in allowing a plant to prosper here, pruning one there, and tearing up that one by the roots in order to plant it elsewhere, or to trash it, he is not merely composting but composing too: composing a threedimensional image, his garden. The philosopher Immanuel Kant considered “pleasure gardening,” as he called it, the supreme art. For it best fulfilled the demand he made of art: to portray a thing purposefully, to no purpose. The ostensible need for a well-tended garden—and this includes also any garden kept in meticulous disorder—appears purposeful, even if there is no harvest (for admittedly, Kant was not speaking here of the kitchen garden). This view of the garden as art instantly poses rather difficult questions, namely as to what a garden actually portrays or, to be more precise: as to what representation is, and as to what is represented? Probably there are as many answers to that as there are epochs. The urban dweller with a yearning for nature today portrays something other in his garden than the urban dweller did in medieval times, for the latter fled nature to seek protection in a walled city. And a French nobleman living off his land at the time of the ancien régime, had another sort of garden laid out before his palace than the English banker of today, who makes his money in the City, and whose property is sheer luxury. It is this latter “English” Garden that Kant probably had in mind, when he ascribed to it “purpose123

fulness, to no purpose.” The English garden represents agriculture, without actually being any such thing. In any case, the major concern seems always to be how to depict a natural wilderness in its tamed state, or to make tamed nature look wild—whereby a little of both is shown generally: a mix of artifice and naturalness, rather than just the one extreme. Rousseau, who is generally held to be the prophet of naturalness, also noted how artificial an image of nature the New Heloise¹ conjured in her overgrown garden wilderness: “Such great endeavor made to conceal endeavor…” utters an astonished guest in the New Heloise, after being shown the two palace gardens by the lord and lady of the palace—and this attests to Rousseau’s mocking yet discerning eye for the paradoxical nature of naturalness. In front of the palace, the Baron has transformed a former stately garden into a kitchen garden by replacing chestnut tree-lined avenues with a grove of mulberry bushes. Behind the palace, the Baroness has transformed the kitchen garden into a nature garden by allowing clematis to clamber in profusion over the fruit trees, and by diverting a natural spring to create a pond. Neither garden bears any trace of the effort its creation had required… The official art of gardening is stuck with this same dichotomy still today, although several stories down, in cultural terms. For years if not decades, all public and otherwise emblematic grounds and gardens have alternated between two styles that commingle in manifold ways: the painterly style, which is a variously blended legacy of the English respectively the Japanese respectively the Romantic garden; and the architectonic style, which is an equally

1

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie; or the New Héloise, Marc-Michel Rey, Amsterdam 1761.

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eclectic offspring of the Baroque garden, flowerbeds, and the early Romanticism of Art Nouveau gardens, with a dash of the “kidneyform style” of the 1950s, on which Mexican landscape artist Burle Marx modeled his flowerbeds. In most public parks and grounds moreover, one finds elements of two other special gardening genres: the botanical garden with its rare plants, and the farmer’s garden with its plump, excessively fertilized flowers. A common characteristic of these two styles of public garden, the painterly and the architectonic, is that they are made for the eye, not the feet. They are not at all user-friendly, and hostile even, if the users happen to be children. This is true not only of those parts too delicate to be walked on: the stroller often finds no charming spot, even at points where he is permitted to leave the path. A persistent feature of the painterly style, for example, is to plant a ring of bushes around a tree so as to suggest the pseudo-natural edges of a forest. Yet to be able to sit beneath the tree would be delightful, especially in summertime. An even worse habit is that of planting flowers beneath trees where, shaded and parched, they are bound to perish before the year is out. The modern “art” of gardening has a remedy for that too: at the Federal Horticultural Show in Mannheim in 1975, the lawn beneath the trees was dotted with flower tubs… While the display of such primitivisms in representative public grounds and gardens is rather annoying, the true dilettante’s primitive garden has a magic all its own. To experience this, one need only stroll past a row of allotment gardens, and decipher the different message of each. Bernard Lassus, who is introduced in this issue², has taught us the code: the gardens contain symbols of dis-

2 This article was first published in the Basler Zeitung’s supplement, Basler Magazin, Nr. 21, 1977. 125

tance, designed to transport their owners from a shuttered existence to a larger landscape with new horizons. One dwarf is therefore a captain, his binoculars trained on a flowerbed in the form of a ship; and some birdseed has been scattered on the model of an aircraft carrier lying by the fountain, so that aircraft will land… Let us now forget for a moment the gardening trade, and the official art of gardening pursued in city parks and company headquarters, and consider instead a trend currently emerging in landscape design, that is, in the design of exterior spaces. Admittedly, no examples of this in Switzerland can be named at present. Lately, a whole string of designs and several completed projects have proposed strict observance of the principles of architectonic gardens. All of them cited the typical features of a classical garden: symmetries, clear borders, terracing and no flowers. Generally however, an equally monumental disruption was included in order to break the projects’ symmetry—a diagonal canal, for instance, at odds with the parallel axes and perspectives of the site. What message does garden art of this sort convey? It reflects an attempt to reify big emotions in a simple form. Elementary symbols of magnificence, gravity, symmetry, grief and joy are instantly clear to everyone. Yet this does not mean the message can be consumed at first glance. The gardens here are ingenious gardens, and strolling around them evokes all different kinds of information: memories of gardens in Rome or Paris, certainly, as well as more modern things such as the way in which architects in the 1920s laid out their gardens with naivety and optimism; or the way dictators built during World War II, with the shadow of defeat hanging over them. Should one seek to create gardens ingeniously?—At the least, one should provide an opportunity for experiments to be made, and to be judged. Actually, that should be the purpose of any national horticultural show.

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The necessity of dealing with nature

Should we also discuss “land art” here, a discipline in which art is writ large, and the garden almost incidental? “Land” connotes large-scale artistic experiments materialized using earth, sand, vegetation or rock. These initially appear to be the opposite of garden art insofar as they do not depict nature but alienate or indeed, rape it. Yet they thereby critique and reflect our current approach to the earth, or lead us to think about the utopia of a nature fully subjected for better or worse—for this is perhaps how we should read works such as “Graben, der um die ganze Welt führen könnte.”³ Nature here appears to be misused in order to represent mere ideas; yet these ideas in turn indicate the necessities of dealing with nature. This leads us a priori to a quite contrary trend in garden art, one born of ecological concerns. Conventional gardening, even when it yields nothing, requires work, plants, soil and dung, first and foremost, four fifths of which will drain into the groundwater. Yet nature is designed in such a way that large tracts of it, if handled correctly, can be kept in a fine condition without human maintenance, without waste, without polluting the groundwater with dung, without artificial irrigation, simply by allowing natural crossfertilization and everything else to run wild. The gardener should work with nature, not against it. A major botanical discovery of our day—the discovery of plant societies—put us on to this truth. A single plant must be tended, protected, sown or planted; a plant society, if selected correctly for the site in question, is resistant, robust

3

“A ditch that might lead around the whole world,” an as yet unidentified reference. 127

Where does the landscape begin? In 1985, Parisian artist Paul-Armand Gette used the “0 m mark” in Kassel’s Wilhelmshöhe Park to put this question to the public.

and wholly self-sufficient. To garden with naturally self-propagating plant societies is a new departure; there are few people specialized in the field, and mixed seeds are still hard to come by. Evidence of this trend at Federal Horticultural Shows has been puny to date, and by no means up to standard on the robustness scale: for the aim is to produce flowers as resilient as the weed families that overrun our railroad embankments, gravel pits and trash heaps. We can spot a third trend among those garden artists who have taken a leaf out of the farmers’ and allotment garden leaseholders’ book but have not yet lapsed into the primitivisms of the official gardeners’ flower-trimmed battlefields. The art here consists in translating the individual symbolism of a single allotment garden into a universal symbolism, of finding metaphors that have an archetypal impact on everyone. I like to call this type of garden 128

Whatever we see lying or growing or crawling in front of us is not yet landscape, but a stone, a plant or a bug, and can be defined more precisely by attributing to it a scientific, mineralogical or zoological name. Raise ones gaze, and at some point everything one sees becomes a landscape… Of course, the beginning of a landscape is in the eye of the beholder. Annemarie and Lucius Burckhardt in 1987, on the Furka Pass.

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the mysterious garden. The Romantic garden was once mysterious and full of surprises: a stroll would lead one from cheerful symbols, garden houses, panoramic rotundas and glades to sad, mysterious, melancholy spots, stalactite-filled caves, mock graves, well shafts, natural springs, and ruins that invited the beholder to reflect on mortal transience. Such symbolism was for many years the object of derision; it survived only in private gardens, above all in allotment gardens. Today, we have come to appreciate popular art again; at first we had nothing more than a wry smile for garden dwarves, then we came to adore them, and now, once again, we are learning from them the art of creating a garden full of surprises: a truly mysterious garden, in which kids’ dreams and distant memories of childhood books revive and render palpable our fear of the deep pond, of seeking refuge in the hollow tree stump, and of the fathomless well, as well as our joy in a dull echo. Admittedly, the official gardening journals make no mention of these trends in garden art—they are too busy discussing new concrete slabs for garden paths; or even larger varieties of tulip and rose, which require more dung than ever; or new chemicals that can rid the lawn of weeds at last. It appears that the problems of garden art today are too big and too various to be entrusted any longer to gardeners. I can draw on two examples of current and future landscape planning to demonstrate what I mean: when “Grün 80”⁴ arrived on the scene in Basel there was much talk of the urban horticultural show, and of “greening” districts. Today we know that the G 80 essentially comprises a quite literally limited, which is to say enclosed arena on the city’s outskirts, where a park and a well-tended farm existed previously. It

4 The urban garden development project “Gartenschau der Stadt” or “G 80” was launched in 1980. 130

is evident therefore, that the task of gardening in and for the city is by no means being fulfilled. Consider this analogy: we all are familiar with the green lawns that one finds between apartment buildings. The caretaker mows them regularly. It is not forbidden to step on them, but nobody, at least no adult, does so voluntarily. These areas for leisure and sport, which featured so prominently in the ground plans, and were so highly praised on the day the key to your apartment was handed over, serve now only to mark the distance to be maintained between respectable neighbors. There is one way these areas could be utilized at no extra cost, namely by selling them as private lots to sitting tenants. Yet this would create inequalities. Tenants’ participation in caring for these areas would require a measure of collective organization—and who on earth has time for that? Certainly not the gardeners, and the landlords won’t even give it a thought. For sure, the tenants can do nothing on their own. So here we have a landscape maintenance task of quite a new kind. A similar problem is posed also beyond the housing estates, in what may properly be called urban public space. The city could be lovelier and greener: yet the effort and expense of having the City Department of Parks and Recreation make it so would be huge. We know there are people who would love to do a spot of gardening, and who have been on the waiting list for an allotment garden for years already. Yet not only the law books but also the unspoken rules of urban co-existence prevent them from shouldering their spades, and bedding a few clematis plants on the Heuwaage, or casually sowing a few mullein seeds when walking by the trash heap in St. Alban’s Valley. Here too, public willingness to participate needs to be revived, organized and steered intelligently.

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Creating robust, extensive landscapes

The second, equally grave problem in landscape planning reveals itself beyond the city limits, in the open countryside. So much work and—let’s not kid ourselves—such huge subsidies are ploughed into agriculture in Switzerland that undeveloped wasteland is extremely rare. Yet fallow or unused land is virtually characteristic of modern Western Europe, as are monocultures. If we test our skills in futurology, we quickly come to suppose that fallow land will become a suitable and likely landscape, on the one hand for ecologically sustainable cultivation and, on the other, for our densely populated Central European region. But how do these plots of fallow land look? For these too, as with our urban parks, the Department of Parks and Recreation has a design style at the ready. Today, in places where landscape design is applied on a large scale, to the rehabilitation of disused open cast mines for example, the newly configured, old-fashioned farm is considered a “charming landscape.” Whoever plans large-scale landscape design thus plans precisely that which cannot survive elsewhere, and will turn into wasteland. There are two things to be learned here: firstly, any available land must be given over to the purpose of leisure, must be dedicated to a culture of leisure that is a source of pleasure and causes no ecological damage; and secondly, any non-privatized areas should be turned into the kind of landscape on which plant societies can establish themselves solidly, and thus stand up to picnics, sport, and children’s games. On broad expanses of land that were once left fallow, as well as on the city’s neatly parceled lots, we are awaiting new impulses from gardening, impulses moreover that will far exceed, both in technological and social terms, the scope of the conventional planning applied to our parks and public spaces. 132

Why Is Landscape Beautiful? (1979)

This paper begins and closes with a discussion of what exactly “landscape” is. Which parts of our visible environment are included in that which we call landscape, and which other, equally visible phenomena are excluded? For we agree unanimously on this much at least: the cow pats in Vrin belong to the landscape while tin cans tossed aside by a tourist do not. So the basic idea here is that “landscape is a construct.” And what this terrible phrase conveys is nothing other than that the landscape is to be found, not in environmental phenomena but in the mind’s eye of those doing the looking. To espy a landscape in our environment is a creative act brought forth by excluding and filtering certain elements and, equally, by rhyming together or integrating all we see in a single image, and in a manner influenced largely by our educational background. Was our trip to Vrin therefore only the beginning of a journey through our minds? Naturally we had given this matter some thought during previous discussions. Consequently, we arrived in Vrin with two scenarios in mind. The first went something like this: when we picture a landscape, our mind’s eye draws on the full range of phenomena found in our environment—colors, structures, identifiable natural contexts and signs of human intervention. The environment here resembles the artist’s palette. Yet this comparison, like all good comparisons, is not altogether steady on its feet. The phenomena that make up this palette are too different from one another to be juxtaposed easily, in a single plane. In a sense, it is truer to say that the landscape consists of many different layers: the merely visual layer of colors; a more complex layer 133

comprising the first hints of natural or technological production infrastructures; and a layer in which social aspects and hence, also a temporal dimension can be identified: an abandoned farmhouse, an annoyingly modern building, or—evidence of an era when farmers were still self-sufficient—a field full of a certain variety of grass. And then our second scenario: the landscape constructed thus on the palette, from various phenomena, is oriented to the ideal of the “locus amoenus,”¹ the “charming place” upheld by painting and literature since the time of Homer and Horace, through that of Claude Le Lorrain and the Romantics and, lastly, by our tourism brochures and cigarette advertisements. To identify a landscape as charming is insofar synonymous with the endeavor to “filter out” whatever we actually do see in the place visited, so as to be able to integrate the outcome in our preconceived, idealized image of the charming place. The more the walker sees that matches his expectations—the fountain at the city gates, the quiet shore of a lake, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s white peaks²—the greater his degree of satisfaction. Do these two hypotheses—the “palette” and the “charming place”—stand up? They do and they don’t. What follows is an attempt to cover the key points in a debate the class held on the final day of its trip to Vrin. Does everyone have the same “charming place” in mind? If it is indeed the case that each person viewing a landscape picks out certain elements and filters out others in order to paint his own picture

1

The term has been used traditionally to denote an idealized place of safety or comfort, which incorporates trees, grass and water, lies usually beyond the city limits, and is suggestive hence of a natural paradise untrammelled by the dictates of urban civilization. 2 Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825–98) was a Swiss poet and historical novelist. 134

of a charming place, the outcome is doubtless highly individual: every person applies different criteria. To identify a charming place is to rediscover one’s past youth, to rediscover impressions garnered from the parental home, from books, from older people’s recollections, from pictures on the walls of one’s childhood bedroom or classroom, or those inspired by favorite books. None of us is able to look at the landscape through another person’s eyes. Yet common ground does exist: the virile thing to do at holiday time is to take to the mountains, the lakes, the high seas; individual variations in taste are therefore subordinate to that collective entity we describe as “culture.” And culture in this regard might best be described as the collective memory of anything we perceive as a charming place. But places that in no way correspond to the conventional image of a charming place are also beautiful. Some tourists find the desert appealing, or the northern tundra, while we, for our part, take pleasure in the scree slopes in the high mountains of the Vorder Rhine Valley. Opinions in our class were divided, so this phenomenon could not be explained unanimously. One group said that the unusual landscape, the desert or scree slope are a source of pleasure to us also because we “rediscover” them; through the books we read as children—tales of Red Indians and other adventure stories, as well as romantic travelogues penned in bygone times by explorers—they have become for us quasi charming places.

Utility and beauty

Other members of the class took a different view, namely that the impression of beauty one has when looking at a desert, factory sites, 135

or scree slopes ensues precisely from the contrast between those places and the conventional, idealized charming place. Any pleasure the viewer takes in such a panorama derives from the great sense of accomplishment he feels after having integrated it in this concept of “charming.” Or, in other words: in a truly charming place the viewer need accomplish very little. Aesthetic pleasure is assured him, no doubt, but he learns nothing new. The further removed the place in question is from his ideal—so long as it matches the ideal to some extent—the greater the amount of information he can garner from the situation. And this gives rise to the question we were able to explore experimentally, also through drawing or painting: at which point does an experience of the beauty of a landscape cease? When is a landscape so alien or strange that it is no longer perceived to be a landscape and hence something charming? One point that preoccupied us for a long while was this: what role do natural objects such as plants, animals and stones play in constructing a landscape for the person who never bothers to acquaint himself with them; to look up their names in a reference work, for example, or find out something or other about them? In other words: who sees the landscape as landscape—he who breaks it down into identifiable components, or he who simply enjoys its appearance? At this point, we came to discuss the signal effect of certain combinations of natural phenomena. We noted the way we ourselves subconsciously looked to vegetation for orientation. Where might one park a car in the village? Clumps of nettles are the clearest sign of all that nobody has an interest in a field. Where can our group take a seat in the open air without robbing the farmers of something? Where can we make a small fire? The meadows of the Allmende—the commons—clipped short by cattle, the loosely demarcated edges of the forest (which also serve at times as pasture), and the squat hedges of alpine roses all signal the absence of a 136

The Landscape Trap (1986), a limited edition by Lucius Burckhardt, for the Galerie Eisenbahnstraße in Berlin. At the opening, he spoke on a nearby bombsite on the theme “Landscape Exists in the Mind’s Eye.” We fall into a trap when we confuse landscape with nature.

private land lease and hence, of a potentially aggrieved leaseholder. A subconscious knowledge of plant societies steers even the urban dweller to an appropriate site for a picnic. Are such places lovely primarily, and accessible only incidentally? Or has our own sense of beauty latched onto places unsuited to production because we are driven off the others? Plant societies also alerted us to changes in the village. It seemed to us that weeds and nettles covered unusually large areas between the houses in these highland communities. Trampled grass indicated paths still taken in the daily round of outdoor labor. Yet many outdoor activities associated with the traditional, multifaceted, collective mode of agricultural production are no longer pursued today. Paths and squares between houses in Vrin are considered private property. A right of passage is assured 137

yet they are not public streets. The trodden paths are as broad as their use demands; and the weeds encroach upon those areas that have fallen into disuse. So, vegetation here informs the viewer not only about the richness of the soil but also about the shifting modes of production and social circumstance. This led us to the question of the relationship between utility and beauty. Is the abandoned landscape lovely, or the one currently in use? It was clear to all of us that only city residents would ever debate such a matter; only city residents see agricultural land as landscape. Only someone removed from nature and from agricultural production can look upon agricultural production and natural growth, and label them landscape. In Vrin, terraced slopes and certain types of plant society on the alpine pastures attest still to tillage, the former mode of production. For it is only in the last twenty years that our highland economy has shifted from self-sufficiency to a dairy monoculture. Monoculture was another problem we failed to get to the bottom of in the course of our discussions. Initially we assumed that diversity and hence also self-sufficiency look “more charming.” Then images of extensive monocultures cropped up: fields of grain in aerial photographs from the Swissair calendar. Does their beauty lie in the spatial remove? Or in their geometry, revealed most clearly to the pilot? Dairy production in Vrin implies blossoming pastures—so far. Yet pastureland in some areas of Switzerland is no longer allowed to bloom at all, but is mowed incessantly. The result is an impoverished but still green landscape that cannot yet be said to be ugly. Those monocultures developed in countries where the agricultural economy faces stiffer competition on the global market than ours does are quite definitely ugly however. Wherever cows and pigs are housed in huge industrial stalls, and fed on hay and grain grown elsewhere, wherever surplus dung is dumped on land 138

formerly used to raise cattle, the marriage of beauty and utility is well and truly over. Does that mean however, that our sense of beauty yearns for an old-fashioned style of cultivation, for those production modes recently abandoned and no longer viable? By the time Horace wrote his Arcadian pastoral poetry, Arcadia no longer existed but, rather, a Sicily where masses of slaves produced cereals to feed metropolitan Rome. Is our quest for a beautiful landscape therefore also a quest for recently abandoned production modes—a quest for fruit trees on a pasture near Basel, for example, a pasture of the type made increasingly rare by the rise of the electric lawnmower?

The role of ruins

This led to questions about human input in general, about technological intervention and “disruption” of the landscape. Of course, potential mischief has the artist just itching to turn the church tower into a cooling tower, to sketch a nuclear power station alongside the sanatorium, and to draw a highway leading to the heart of Vrin. Nobody will ever find this type of disrupted landscape beautiful. And yet such interventions are relative; today we so readily accept older interventions of a violent nature as to enjoy them even, as indispensable landscape features. Or were the military fortresses of Grisons Canton not once perhaps a terrifying sight? Is the windmill on a landscape painted by a Dutch Master not a modern form of energy production, analogous to our power stations? And did not the numerous viaducts built for the Rhaetian Railway aesthetically enhance entire valley formations? 139

At this point we discussed the passage of time and the role of the ruin. Technological accomplishment in its derelict form has not only become an integral component of the charming landscape but virtually its emblem: wherever a ruin signals past history, the walker’s anticipated and actual images are reconciled. Eighteenthcentury English gardeners who placed artificial ruins in their artificial landscapes did not do so in vain: ruins symbolized the past and hence, reality. The ruin as a symbol can be read therefore also as dissatisfaction with our contemporary and in a quite other way, ruinous world. By way of contrast, the actual ruin of the landscape—erosion, in a word—did give us pause for thought. The ruin attests to past usage and, even had no ruined castles existed in the region we were studying, traces enough of earlier husbandry were evident in the abandoned terraced slopes, and enhanced the beauty of the landscape. Admittedly, “wounds” is the word that springs to mind for the region’s deserted farmhouses, often razed to their stone foundations. Naturally we gave some thought also to the laborious pursuit of agriculture on high mountain slopes, and in particular to wild haymaking there. Agricultural production and the preservation of alpine flora are closely intertwined here, and the problem of the farmer as “landscape gardener” is one we of course really ought to discuss at length yet will not touch upon here, for the moment. Erosion speaks of the disuse or misuse of nature in a most extreme form, yet one that is not wholly without appeal for tourists, especially in the Vorder Rhine region. Actually, it was at the eroded spots that we—admittedly with a paintbrush and palette, not with words—were best able to pursue the focus of our research: the question as to how far one might distance oneself from the ideal image of the landscape without destroying the message, “This is a landscape.” 140

We painted landscapes, and noted how the very composition and structure of a painting help convey the message “landscape.” If we painted a valley in the foreground, and allowed a mountain range to rise against the sky in the background, it was practically impossible to not produce a landscape. No color, no drawing is so far removed from reality as to destroy the impression of a landscape. “Non-landscapes” could be produced in any case, only by departing from conventional ways of composing or framing the image. Landscape in artistic terms appears therefore to be a construct comprised of conventional visual structures. To our astonishment, our experiments failed in one respect: we did not manage to produce a single ugly landscape. That annoyed us very much, for we had undertaken initially to publish the sort of tourism brochure that would discourage other groups from following in our footsteps to Vrin.

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On the Design of Everyday Life (1979) I do not intend to deliver solid theory in this lecture, just some speculation to stimulate you—and it will be easy to attack what I say. If things go well, we’ll end up with a new job description, one I would call “the integrated designer.” My intention is to identify the organizational context of designed or planned systems, which is to say, the rules that govern usage and actually comprise our environment—in other words, to correlate the invisible part of our lives with its planned, visible, physical dimension. To make that perhaps a little less abstract, I’ll tell you first about something I have observed. I usually spend my vacation on a farm where the mailman used to stop by each day. He never knocked on the door, just opened the door so loudly that one could tell he was in the house. He then put the mail on the table, and waited expectantly for someone to come talk to him a while. Then he went to the next farm. Then the post office decreed that farms should install a mailbox on the road, in order to save the mailmen’s time: a beautiful design task. We therefore acquired a mailbox, a yellow one trimmed in black, with very distinguished-looking metal moldings flat enough to let the rain pour in, and we installed it. After that, we noticed that our farmer and all the farmers in the area no longer had any information, as the dissemination of information in rural areas does not take place through letters. Namely, neighbors do not write to one another; they tell their stories to the mailman, who passes them on at the next farm. The post office actually had no idea of how it conveyed news. It believed it transported letters containing news. In reality however, an invisible system was at work, which actually conveyed news in a most appropriate way. 142

We who are interested in visual culture have partly forgotten to reference the organizational, social dimension, as well as other dimensions that we will deal with later. If we take modern architecture to begin with, I must point out immediately that this dimension was not overlooked initially. Modern architecture of the 1920s certainly had a social dimension insofar as it strove to reorganize society. It strove perhaps to do so in a way we would no longer pursue today—the Frankfurt kitchen—by regulating daily life in a very rigid yet nonetheless, well considered way. That this stimulus (or this mission) turned into a style that subsequently allowed context to fall into oblivion is another matter. The paradoxes of this non-ornamental style then gave rise to all sorts of other approaches. The endeavor to make architecture more expressive by integrating elements of everyday life in it was pursued in theoretical terms— Learning from Las Vegas, Advertising is Beautiful, etc.—yet these did not address more than the purely visual realm. I would like to examine a different strand of development, namely the growing appreciation in the 1960s of the fact that this form of architecture and design cannot save the world. Then, sometime around the mid-1960s, we began to hear terms such as “livability” or—negatively—the notorious “inhospitableness of our cities” (Mitscherlich): hence terms that appeared to integrate the visual context, namely the house or the city, as well as the invisible dimension: How does one use this? Are there rules that hamper its use, or make its use impossible? Does not the housing question imply that one ask also who owns the house, whether the janitor is a nice man, what the house rules actually are, who has the authority to lock the house, etc., etc.? The 1960s also witnessed the emergence of a word with very far-reaching connotations: “environment”—environment as something with a systematic character, with carefully balanced properties, and self-regulatory capacities that we have evidently 143

disrupted. I do not wish to discuss here the extent to which this reading may be tenable; rather, I want to cite it as a further example of the endeavor to integrate the visible and invisible dimensions, i.e. the physical environment and rules. The 1960s introduced a remarkable new approach into the architectural field, yet one that could be read in two ways. I mean Kevin Lynch’s approach in The Image of the City,¹ in which he asks: “How do people actually see their city” and “What do they see of the city?” Lynch observed that people do not see urban planners and architects’ input in the city. When someone asks the way to the railroad station, he is not told in reply, “You must go to the beautiful house designed by Le Corbusier, then take a right, then comes a building designed by Mies van der Rohe, then you go straight ahead, and you’ll be at the station!” He is told rather, “You must go as far as this roadsign then, if no one is looking, you just cut through the flower bed, go past the tobacconist’s, and right behind that is the best way to the station!” So people see the city from their everyday perspectives: Where is the short cut? Where can I buy cigarettes? Where is there a slot machine? And so forth… Lynch’s theory was understood in a dual sense, or misunderstood, whereby one cannot be too sure whether or not Lynch misunderstood himself—if that is possible. For he, or at least his successors, called for the construction of expressive buildings by which people could orientate themselves, whereby actual observations suggest people are orientated not to forms per se but to forms plus usages, which is to say, to everyday signs rather than aesthetic signs.

1

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1960.

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Herbert J. Gans’ book The Levittowners² was published likewise in the 1960s. The author asked himself, why people live in or buy houses in Levittown, in those monotonous settlements made up of detached houses that are built moreover, in a strange, oldfashioned colonial style, with terrible lawns out front that one is not allowed to use, and so forth. So these detached family homes have everything the architect or initiated layman abhors—yet they sell like hot cakes. Mr. Levitt & Sons are doing good business, and the buyers are satisfied. Herbert J. Gans also bought such a house, spent two years there, studied the phenomenon, and ascertained that the people’s environment there is not the visible environment; rather, the Levitts succeeded in creating an invisible, social environment that perfectly suited a certain class of income and social standing. Such people find there what they need, namely families of the same age, who have children who also want to go to schools that lead to university, and who also belong to certain churches of certain denominations, churches that offer a social as well as an ecclesiastical perspective; families in similar professional positions. Levitt pitches people’s environment correctly, because his plans are based on a classification system in which the house itself, its lawn, its garden, its driveway and all the things we find so horrible, rank very near the bottom, whereas invisible factors rate very highly. Finally, let me name a very different discovery made by Ivan Illich, namely that properties with a social character are inherent to objects. Illich expresses this thus, in his striking manner:

2 Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community, Routledge & Kegan Paul, New York 1960/ Random House, New York 1967. 145

Everything that moves faster than 20 kilometers per hour is undemocratic. I do not agree with that. I think the railroad—it is democratic—should have a special permit. Yet we must take advantage of the discovery itself. There are objects that create liberties, and there are objects that create dependencies; there are objects that foster social relations, and there are objects that foster isolation. What we are looking for here, is—to use my term of choice—an integrated or integrative theory of design or planning; one that incorporates regulatory systems as well as the visible dimension of our environment. Until now, architects and designers have said: Spaces regulate life—regulate where entrances are, what shape rooms are, and how objects look. Then there is a profession that says: laws regulate life. And then along come the sociologists and say: no, behavioral patterns and systems of relationship regulate life. And since these professions go about their business so perfectly in parallel, the architects build their buildings; they build schools, and rave on the opening day about how this school will be a community center, a hub of the neighborhood; and they never suspect (or perhaps already suspect), that it will never become a community center, not because any architectural failing precludes this possibility but because the janitor locks up at 8 p.m.—which is good for business of course, for the construction of a community center can be commissioned next. Traffic is approached in a similar manner, namely as an isolated phenomenon. It is calculated how many people will move to an area. A basic presumption is that growth will be continuous. It is then calculated how many people have a car nowadays, and how long it will take until the last baby also has a car. Then road width is adjusted accordingly. Here, the English term “self-fulfilling prophecies” should be taken quite literally: the roads will full-fill, i.e. will fill until they are full, because once roads have been built, they are 146

used, naturally, for this kind of extrapolation of course forces people to use a car to get around. That other possibilities exist, that one might move beyond full capacity calculations, for example by introducing staggered work schedules and the like, can never be grasped—simply because the expert in this field is not available. Now the built, physical world certainly has defining properties. There is a saying in German: “We cannot go through the wall.” Therefore a door must exist. But hidden doors and non-doors exist too, namely laws and prohibitions. And walls are not as important as dos and don’ts are. The tram stop I have to use each day is organized in such a way that I miss the tram whenever I use the cross-walk with traffic signals that leads to the tram stop, because the tram can drive off the exact same moment the cars do. And I cannot board the tram at that moment, because the cars do not stop for me when they have a green light. So, if I don’t want to miss my tram, I have to jump over the flowerbed that lies outside the traffic signal zone. What is decisive here is not the physical access point per se but rather, the regulation. A tram stop is thus an integrated system comprising design, laws and regulations—and it obviously cannot find its designer. I would like now to speak about an important aspect of nonphysical organization, about time. Time and temporal rhythms, timetables and transport schedules: these are the things that govern our lives. I was recently sent a book from France, Anne Cauquelin’s La ville la nuit.³ Can one write a book about the night? The night is a natural phenomenon of course, yet since electric light was invented we can light up the night, at least as far as we need to. But, says Anne Cauquelin, the night is an institution. It is determined,

3

Anne Cauquelin, La ville la nuit, Presse Universitaires de France, Paris 1977. 147

not by the fact that nature creates darkness and light but by rules. When are lights turned on? When are they turned off? In consequence, public transport ceases to operate at a particular time for example, and bars close—hence, infrastructure is not used to full capacity, and our freedom to do as we like is restricted: the freedom, for example, to spend an evening having a drink with friends, then return home by public transport with alcohol in our blood. We cannot do so, because public transport does not run after midnight. In Hamburg’s City Nord district, or in the City of London, there are restaurants that close in the evenings; other restaurants in more outlying districts open only in the evenings, because people in the evening go to other places than they do at midday. The institution night necessitates a dual infrastructure. Let us stick for a while with this issue of time and temporal rhythms. The history of labor struggles, of safety at work, and of the acceptability of labor, also includes the struggle for a shorter working week. But one gets the impression that those responsible on both fronts in this struggle, or on its three fronts—the state, the employers and the unions—do not think the temporal rhythm concept through to its end. Their hitherto legitimate struggle therefore enters a new phase, for we are obliged now to consider how to use leisure time. I’m not talking here—and I should stress this three times over—about the problem of leisure per se. That does not exist in any case. Everyone is convinced that everyone else has problems with leisure, but no one believes he himself does. If only everyone would admit this once and for all, it would put a stop, not only to all this talk of the problems with leisure but also to the leisure facilities that are built in order that other people spend their leisure time properly. So, that is not my issue here. Rather, I am concerned with the issue of how these temporal rhythms determine our lives, namely 148

the daily rhythm, the weekly rhythm, hence also the weekend, the annual rhythm, vacation time and the rhythm of life—at what age do we embark on our working lives, and at what age do we retire? We really ought to know more about the consequences these rhythms have, as well as about how life can be organized under the conditions imposed by temporal rhythms. I consider this really is an issue when it comes to designing our lives. It is moreover, also a visible problem: the daily rhythm leads to congestion on our roads, the annual rhythms to congestion in our tourist resorts, etc. In France at the moment, the planners’ watchword is “desynchronization,” by which they mean that the masses’ working day, and likewise their weekend and vacation schedules, should not follow a uniform temporal rhythm. It is hoped that desynchronization will render redundant the famous July announcements that tell us on certain Friday evenings and Saturday mornings, that roads from Paris to the South have become impassable. Of course, this is functionalism once again: traffic becomes jammed, and so organization is called for; yet this is far from being a redesign of the problem. I would like also to make a passing reference to the other places where such invisible, organizational problems crop up. I already mentioned Ivan Illich and his discovery that objects have a certain authority, and are discriminatory. They can create dependency, for example on power supply systems. Some objects are created such that one has to buy a further object if one wishes to use them; then, when one has done so, one realizes one needs to buy yet another object in order for them to function. In addition, objects have production histories. They may be the product of inhumane labor operations, obtained through exploitation of nature or people; but they may also be made from recyclable raw materials. It is not difficult nowadays, to give the car a beating. We generally think the car is to blame for the destruction of society, namely be149

cause it is discriminatory. There are areas that can be reached solely by motorists, or that cannot be reached on Saturdays and Sundays because public transport provides no service. Another form of social destruction is the isolation that ensues from the fact that the majority population is sitting in cars. The minority population, which is not protected by steel and speed, no longer risks using the roads, roads that previously were considered safe, because previously there were always enough people standing around or walking by, who were able to rush to a person’s aid, or to fetch help. When everyone is sitting in his tin can, and only one person is unprotected, that person feels unsafe: actually unsafe or potentially unsafe. This is not an argument for pedestrian zones however. I consider the impact of pedestrian zones on peripheral areas to be a disaster. But that is another matter. I would like to examine the social characteristics of objects, such as exemplified here by the car, in reference also to other objects. A year ago we talked about building technology, and the issue of the individual’s access to building technology. Our power supply is not just a physical phenomenon; it is also wrapped up in regulations. We are not allowed to fiddle with it, firstly—officially; everyone does fiddle with it however, and can buy everything that is outlawed in any department store. But, given our high voltage, it is not entirely safe to do so. Why cannot a part of our power supply run at a lower voltage, one that wouldn’t kill us if we happened to touch it? That is impossible, the experts say—yet in the car it is possible. The car headlights are as bright as our lamps, have 12 volts, and anyone can fiddle with them. But that, apparently, is impossible in the home. Nor are we allowed to fiddle with our water supply. Licensed tradesmen must do that; and everything must be installed, and under lock and key. The fittings are such that a wrench of the sort 150

we can obtain is unable to open them; only fully trained tradesmen have the right type of wrench to repair our wash basins and replace the seals—whereby that really is something just anyone could do. But, we are told, it is impossible for safety reasons, and we would all have drowned already, and our houses been swept away, if any Tom, Dick or Harry had access to the water pipes. I too believed all that, at least until we bought a washing machine; for then suddenly, everything was allowed. A rubber hose serves as a drain; we hang it over the washtub when the machine is running, and otherwise we hang it on the wall. The water functions here pretty much as it does when we use it in the garden: it arrives through a hose and leaves through a hose. Evidently the washing machine lobby has political power enough to break the rules and return to common sense, to the common sense we could all do with actually, when it comes to house building. Then we could namely help ourselves. It would be more fun too. I would like to mention a further arena—the sickness system— in which an institutional context should be integrated, although this notion initially may seem rather alien. We think of disease as something contagious that flies at us, out of the blue. But it has a highly institutionalized aspect. When one is sitting around at work, tired, it may happen that the boss arrives and says: So, please make up your mind, whether you want to be sick or healthy! Apparently one can decide such a thing. There are two rituals: either I decide, although I am sick, to be healthy, and carry on as before; or I embark on the ritual of being sick, and tell my boss, “Yes, I would be very grateful if you would call a cab for me, then I will call from the hospital, to say how bad it looks.” This, although there’s nothing wrong with me today that a cup of tea and a couple of hours peace and quiet wouldn’t put right. But I have triggered the sickness system already—doctor, nurse, and the whole caboodle. I decided to 151

be sick, and must consequently accept sickness as a context and an institution. And the hospital is also such an environment, designed by architects and managed by organizers, and these two things do not go together. Let’s not broaden the topic even further: I could show you the points where organization does not work, because the context is not designed properly. So, we evidently live in systems that are partly visible but also contain some invisible reference systems, regulatory systems or temporal rhythms. The transitions between these systems are a type of invisible door, namely the rules that facilitate or assure this transition. At some point our work is done and we may go home. The next question might be, whether we can still go shopping, whether our working day, our company’s closing time corresponds to the stores’ closing time. Some stores close a little later than our company, if we are lucky, and perhaps we can make it to the post office too, although, naturally, it is too late to go to any other office. These institutional doors govern how we organize our everyday lives. It is evident therefore, that we are surrounded by an invisible functional system of sorts, which is integrated in the social system comprised of our participation in working life, in our circle of friends and in hierarchies. And now, the final question: Who actually designs this environment by combining the organizational aspect and the visible aspect? Who has even a clue as to who designs what, and as to who determines the regulatory aspects of our environment? Allow me therefore to reiterate the provocative challenge: be an integrated designer! For only then will you be a true designer of everyday life or an architect of everyday life.

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Design Is Invisible (1980) Design objects? Of course we can see them: the whole gamut of designs and devices, from a building to a can opener. The designer gives them a logical, ready-to-use form, premised on certain external parameters: in the case of the can opener, on the structure of a can. The designer of cans, for his part, considers how a can opener functions. That is his external parameter. So we can perceive the world as a realm of objects and divide these, for example, into houses, streets, traffic lights, kiosks, coffee makers, washing-up bowls, tableware or table linen. Such classification is not without consequences: it leads namely to that concept of design which isolates a certain device—a coffee maker, let’s say—acknowledges its external parameters, and sets itself the goal of making a better, or more attractive one; that is, of producing the type of thing likely to have been described in the 1950s as “Good Form.”¹ But we can divide the world up in other ways too—and, if I have understood A Pattern Language² correctly, that is what Christopher Alexander strives to do. He does not isolate a house, a street or a newsstand in order to perfect its design and construction; instead,

Max Bill’s book Die Gute Form (1957) decisively shaped the criteria propounded at the time, for functional yet aesthetically pleasing “timeless” design. The German Ministry of Economics and Technology awarded the “Federal Prize for Good Form” for the first time in 1969. Since 2006, it has been presented annually under the name “Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany.” 2 Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language. Towns, Buildings, Construction, Oxford University Press, New York 1977. 1

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he distinguishes an integral composite such as the street corner from other urban composites; for the newsstand thrives on the fact that my bus has not yet arrived, and so I buy a newspaper; and the bus happens to stop here because this is an intersection where passengers can change to other lines. “Street corner” simply tags a phenomenon that encompasses, above and beyond the visible dimension, elements of an organizational system comprised of bus routes, timetables, magazine sales, traffic light sequences and so on. This way of dividing up our environment also triggers a design impulse—yet one that takes account of the system’s invisible components. What we need, perhaps, so that I won’t miss my bus while scrabbling for change, or because the newsagent is serving another customer, is a simplified method of paying for a newspaper. Some people instantly dream up a new invention—an automatic magazine dispenser with an electric hum—while we imagine intervening somehow in the system: selling magazines for a round sum, or introducing a subscription card that we can simply flash at the newsagent—in any case, some kind of ruling to tackle magazine distribution and that institution “the morning paper.” What are institutions? Let us forget Christopher Alexander’s street corner in favor of a clearly identifiable institution, the hospital. What is a hospital? Well, a building with long corridors, polished floors, glossy white furniture and little trolleys loaded with tableware for mealtimes. This view of the hospital takes us back to the traditional design brief: the architect and the designer are called upon to plan hospitals with shorter corridors, more convivial atmospheres and more practical trolleys. As everybody knows however hospitals are now bigger, their corridors longer, the catering service more anonymous and patient care less caring. That is because neither the architect nor the designer were allowed to intervene in the institution per se, 154

but only to improve existing designs and devices within set external parameters. So, let’s describe the hospital as an institution. Despite all its visible features, it is first and foremost a system of interpersonal relationships. Interpersonal systems are also designed and planned, in part by history and tradition yet also in response to the people alive today. When the Ministry of Health decrees that hospital catering is not the responsibility of medical staff but a management issue—or vice versa—this ruling is part and parcel of the institution’s design. The hospital owes its existence above all to the three traditional roles of doctor, nurse and patient. The nurse’s role evokes a myriad of associations, from the Virgin Mary through to Ingrid Bergman, and appears to be clear-cut. In reality it is far from clear-cut, as it incorporates a great number of more or less vital activities. The doctor, historically only a minor figure on the hospital stage, shot to the top in the nineteenth century, on a wave of scientific claims swallowed whole with religious fervor, and perpetuated to this day by TV and trashy novels, with the result that a formidable whiff of heart transplants now permeates even the most backwoods county hospital. And what about the patient? He has no role to play at all, you say? He simply falls ill, through no fault of his own?—Come now, please make up your mind whether you want to be sick or healthy!—Evidently there is an element of choice in the matter. We can—and must— decide one way or the other, otherwise we will irritate our boss— our boss at work, or the hospital boss. A patient lies down—in Chodowiecki’s day he used to sit—or ambles gratefully around the park, convalescing. He resigns himself in any case to the three-role spiel, although it has long been due for an overhaul; but more of that later. Do other similar institutions exist? Yes, indeed: the night. Yet night is a natural phenomenon, you say? The sun is shining on the 155

Antipodes and so it is dark in our neck of the woods? Anne Cauquelin was the first to posit that the night is artificial. And there is no disputing that human behavior shapes the night one way or another, in line with various man-made institutions. In Switzerland I can work undisturbed after 9 p.m. then go to bed. To give someone a call at that hour is considered impolite. In Germany my telephone is quiet all evening then springs to life at 11 p.m.—for the cheap-rate period begins at 10 p.m., whereupon all international lines are immediately overloaded, and it takes around an hour to get a connection. Thus the night, which evidently originally had something to do with the dark, is a man-made construct, comprised of opening hours, closing times, price scales, timetables, habits and streetlamps. The night, like the hospital, is in urgent need of redesign. Why does public transport cease to run at precisely the moment people drain their last glass in a wine bar, leaving them no option but to take the wheel? Might not a rethink of opening hours make the streets safer for women obliged to return home on foot, late at night? Are we going to live to see the day also in these climes, when car ownership is the sole guarantee of a measure of safety? Let’s take another institution, the private household. For the traditional designer, the household is a treasure trove of appliances clamoring to be planned. There are endless things here to invent or improve: coffee makers, food mixers, and dishwashers, to name only a few. The planner deploys novel means to ensure everything stays the same. Moves to reform the household were made around 1900: early mechanization fostered collectivization as well as untold experiments with canteens, public laundries and built-in, centralized vacuum cleaners. Thanks to the invention of small motors these amenities were reinstated later in the private household. Kitchen appliances save housewives’ time, you say? Don’t make me laugh! 156

The war on dirt is a subsystem within the institution, private household. What is dirt? Why do we fight it? And where does it go after we emerge supposedly victorious? We all know the answer. We just don’t like to admit it. The dirt we fight along with the detergents we use to do so is simply environmental pollution by another name. But dirt is unhygienic, you say, and one cannot avoid a spot of cleaning? Strange! Because people used to clean, even before they knew about hygiene. And besides, the filters used in vacuum cleaners are not fine enough to contain bacteria effectively. Which means that vacuum cleaners merely keep bacteria in circulation. What a shame for the vacuum cleaner, the designers’ favorite brainchild! Then how do people clean in hospitals, where hygiene is truly vital? Hygiene in hospitals rests as far as I can see on three pillars. The first pillar is purely symbolic—for sparkling white surfaces and the shine on polished (which is to say, wax-smeared) floors are considered the epitome of cleanliness. The second is antiseptics—toxins, in other words: an endless flow of new disinfectants designed to kill bacteria. Any success in these stakes is unfortunately short-lived however, for resistant strains never cease to develop, and are engendered selectively in fact, by these very toxins. And the third pillar is vacuum cleaning. In contrast to the domestic vacuum cleaner that releases dust back into the same room it was captured, hospitals’ centralized air conditioning and vacuum-cleaning systems spread dangerous spores all over the place. Is there a remedy for such unpropitious circumstances? Of course—but it falls neither in the designer’s brief nor within his external parameters! The key to the problem is to redesign the health care system, above all by promoting decentralization. Let’s name one last institution: the production site. A lot could be said on this topic but let us stick to one point only: workplaces— by which we mean jobs—are also man-made design objects. We’re 157

not talking here about making chairs at work more comfortable, or about cheering the place up a little, with fresh wallpaper and a few potted plants. The object of design in this context is that particular part of the production process assigned to each individual laborer, and the degree of energy, knowledge and skill, respectively of ignorance, boredom or mindlessness that must be invested at any particular point in the production process. This applies not only to production sites in the narrower sense of the word, i.e. to factory jobs, but also to administrative and clerical work. Workplaces—jobs— are designed ostensibly for productivity; yet productivity of a sort akin to counter-productivity. Automation, as it is called, destroys jobs that have hitherto been a source of satisfaction while other jobs in the manual sector, which could and should most urgently be rationalized, remain unchanged. Here we can touch only briefly on the problem, without offering concrete evidence of our claim. Yet the main point is this: jobs are also designed; not only in the traditional sense of design but in terms of the way the production process is broken down into various types of task, which actively demand or render redundant the laborers’ skills range, and foster or hinder cooperation. The previous comments were intended to show that design has an invisible component, namely an organizational-institutional dimension over which the designer always exercises a certain influence yet which, given the way we classify our environment in terms of objects, tends to remain hidden. Insofar as the world is divided into object categories, and the invisible dimension acknowledged only marginally as an external parameter, the world too is designed. Furthermore, institutions’ resistance to change—especially given the wealth of technological objects now under development—is also a form of design: radiology equipment is designed for the use of nurses in radiology. 158

In the following we wish to consider whether these insights are of any use to us, or simply sad proof of the fact that the world is badly designed. Whenever we think about design, we must address two phases: the phase of actual design or planning through to production; and the consumption phase, up to and including an object’s disposal on the trash heap, or in a museum. Let us take a look first at the established hypothesis on each: – On design: the objective is a functional object, whereby one might discuss endlessly whether functionality per se is identical with beauty, or whether the designer must add beauty as an extra. – And on consumption: technology and technical devices are neutral; their misuse stems from people’s villainy. The Werkbund Almanach (Almanac) from 1914 featured warships as design objects while the journal Werk from April 1976 described the cooling towers of nuclear power stations as an appealing venture for architects. And now, two contrary viewpoints, as a possible premise for a new way of describing the two processes, design and consumption: – On design: objects owe their form to the interactions inherent to the design process. – And on consumption: such objects in turn exert influence on social interaction; objects are not neutral; Tools for Conviviality³ exist (asserts Illich!), as do their opposite, objects that impede social interaction.

3

Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, Harper & Row, New York 1973. 159

And let us test a third hypothesis while we are at it, a hypothesis on counter-productivity: – Every new invention that is put to use effects change, and such change in turn necessitates new inventions. If all the problems that successively arise are dealt with conventionally, namely one by one, as isolated phenomena, the outcome is counter-productivity. Here is a brief example: a central heating system serving several apartments allegedly gave rise to the need to monitor each individual tenant’s energy consumption. Gauges based on the evaporation of liquid were installed and, as a result, each tenant now turns off his radiators whenever he goes out. However, each tenant also wants his apartment to be warm the minute he turns the radiators back on. Consequently, water in the heating system is kept at such a high temperature that every tenant, even the most thrifty, ultimately pays more for heating now than when heating costs were split between tenants, without individual monitoring. Let’s begin therefore with the design process. Here, as we observed in our opening remarks, the designer classifies the world in terms of object categories rather than problem categories. This rests on linguistic determination, for to name a problem is simultaneously to identify the appliance that can remedy it. When I complain that my electric onion chopper may indeed save me a moment’s work but then takes ten minutes to clean, what springs to mind is not so much a return to the simple kitchen knife but a design for an appliance able to clean my onion chopper. The objective, once named, becomes an instant remedy, and supersedes any general endeavor on my part, to cook more efficiently when time is limited. A further effect of this direct link between naming and remedy is the suppression of secondary considerations: with the exception 160

The Triumph of Good Form. Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

of the appliance to be designed, no technical or organizational changes should be necessary. Whatever can be integrated in existing systems, however overloaded these may be, is considered successful: a waste disposal unit built into the sink drainage, an oven 161

that self-cleans through pyrolysis, etc. This type of troubleshooting is rooted in the designer’s position within policymaking bodies: his job is to deliver ideas—but he bears zero liability. In the late 1950s, the Ulm School of Design was the first professional institution to recognize that industrial design is counterproductive—yet the solutions it proposed were technocratic. They were based on a radical analysis of the desired outcome but failed to consider that outcome in its broader context. Students in Ulm were hence likely to submit papers that began something like this: “The exercise consists in raising ten to twenty gram portions of semi-solid substances from a dish circa thirty centimeters in diameter then transferring them horizontally to an open mouth, where a movement of the upper lip relieves the supporting structure of its load…” The result is not Charlie Chaplin’s eating machine but a fork with a Modernist profile. In the meantime, of course, it has been recognized that objects that have great symbolic value yet require only minimal inventiveness—cutlery, for example—do not fall into the design field. Conversely, those things yet to be invented, or at least their technical aspects, are too complex for designers. So design must broaden its scope and embrace socio-design: a way of thinking about resolving problems that results from coordinated changes made both to roles and to objects. One example may be to design a kitchen so inviting, it inspires guests to help the host chop onions… Before leaving the field of design to consider aspects of consumption, I want to slip in a comment or two on shopping and its “hidden persuaders.”⁴ Of course, the marketing and advertising

4 Vance Packard’s book The Hidden Persuaders (David McKay Co., New York 1957) was a pioneering and prescient work that revealed how advertisers use 162

professionals who use depth psychology to sell either soap powder or instant cake mix designed to make a mother feel she is breastfeeding the whole family, have not yet thrown in the towel. But the hype in the design field has pretty much died down: I now buy a new refrigerator when the old one breaks down, not simply because I want one with rounded contours. Rearguard action continues on the car market, where revivals are a flourishing trade, and the avantgarde has already discovered the flea market for other retail sectors. The flea market will be the place dwindling numbers of throwaway consumers meet the swelling ranks of post-industrial society. This is not to say that progress—in its positive as well as its counter-productive guise—has come to a standstill. But the sector in which progress is still being made is straightforward. Progress holds sway in production for the white (official) market but gray market trading, moonlighting, self-sufficiency, barter systems and informal mutual aid are on the rise too. White trading is still scoring points also in these areas: DIY hobby products have slipped onto the shelves among the detergent battalions. Yet these might be fleeting epiphenomena on the road to greater self-sufficiency. Whether we should welcome all this wholeheartedly remains uncertain: it panders to lower middle-class aspirations, and harbors a threat of social isolation; but perhaps a retrograde step or two is the price society must pay for a springboard to new realms of experience. With regard to usage and consumption, we wanted to point out that objects are not neutral. Is there such a thing as evil objects? Goods are harmful when they foster our dependence on systems

psychological methods to tap into unconscious desires in order to “persuade” the consumer to buy promoted products. 163

that ultimately pillage our resources, or desert us. Without doubt we are all attached to such systems, and this makes us liable to blackmail. However we can still influence the extent of our dependency. We should avoid those objects that compel us to buy more accessories. We should distrust media that provide a one-way flow of information, even though we can no longer do without them. We should exercise restraint in buying and using any goods that isolate us. The car is a major case in point, especially as it tends also to foster inconsiderate behavior in its user. The car has destroyed not only our cities but also our society. One can commission as much research as one likes as to why juvenile delinquency is on the rise, why more women are attacked, why districts are becoming derelict, or slums, or no-go areas by night. As long as the defense against motorized crime is a motorized police force, as long as the pedestrian is advised to use his car, the solution can be named without any need for further research: motorization based on private car ownership has abandoned the non-motorized populace to greater insecurity, and to an increasingly uncompetitive mass transit system. This leads to our last remark: on counter-productivity. We already mentioned the example of monitoring heating costs. That is only a minor aspect of the outrageous counter-productivity of the central heating system, every failure of which has been countered by a new remedy that subsequently proved to be a failure, to the point where we now use our electronically controlled, overheated and, in terms of air hygiene, unhealthy central heating system in devastatingly wasteful fashion, as a boiler; and the central heating system is being superseded now by an even greater evil, air conditioning. Counter-productivity, as we have said, arises when inventions are used in such a way as to cause a break in the overall system, a break that is patched up in turn by a further isolated invention. The sum 164

of these successor-inventions equals the counter-productivity of the overall system. To return to the car: since the average inner-city speed for cars has been lowered to match that of cyclists, or pedestrians even, automobile manufacturers are pursuing research into the automobile’s successor. And what are they developing? A car fitted with an additional gadget that allows the car to be steered to its destination by an electronic short-wave remote control system, whenever it enters the city limits. Or to return to the vacuum cleaner: since the public has grown aware that vacuum cleaners are all the more damaging the more efficient they are, i.e. the more powerfully they can whizz bacteria through the filter, the industry is looking at a successor gadget—and guess what that may be? You’re right: a vacuum cleaner with a built-in bacteria filter! Invisible design. Today, this implies conventional design that is oblivious to its social impact. Yet it might also imply the design of tomorrow—design that consciously takes into account the invisible overall system comprised of objects and interpersonal relationships.

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Dirt (1980) Dirty and clean, as you can read in the work of Mary Douglas, are anthropologically determined values. We find cats cute, rats disgusting. Gypsies eat hedgehog meat while other ethnic groups shudder at the thought of roast rabbit. Would you enjoy the taste of roast fox, a favorite dish of alpine farmers? Why did people bury horsemeat for centuries then begin in the nineteenth century to process it, in specially built slaughterhouses? What makes butterflies appetizing and flies repulsive? Opinions regarding spiders are divided, and an earwig too, depending on where one encounters it, provokes outrage or indifference. During World War I, the zoologist Auguste Forel tried to eat earthworms, but ultimately failed to slip them down his throat. And how do things stand with dirt per se? Drat! There’s a grease spot on my tie, and my shoes could urgently use some polish. And what about feces? In the case of cats, it is hardly worth a mention while dogs have free reign outdoors, and human beings nowhere. Italians are a dirty nation; our housekeeper is Italian. White linen needs to be laundered more frequently than colored does. Dirt, which we believe we recognize precisely on account of the disgust it prompts, is evidently a relative and, moreover, a contradictory matter. The social system, the upper classes and majorities dictate standards as to what is dirty and what is clean. In consequence, the lower classes and minorities are dirty—or squeamish; for the standards set and the form discrimination takes may also be reversed. “We are not so squeamish,” says the Count, and personally guts the rabbit that so disgusts the cook. Dirt is not something we can dispose of completely however. 166

The endeavor to impose increasingly high mandatory standards of cleanliness is a brainchild of the detergents industry—and it is polluting our environment. The fact that standards of cleanliness are relative creates some leeway in the design process. We must each regain a clearer sense of cleanliness, one that will not lead us to socialize disgust at the expense of air and water. People always cleaned, even long before they knew the reason why. Today, any child knows that dirt contains bacteria, and can therefore cause sickness. Yet long before this discovery, certain aspects of the material world were treated as inferior, as dirt, in particular when they cropped up in places other than those assigned to them. However, knowledge of bacteria turned the spotlight on the invisible dimension of dirt; visible dirt is only the basis on which bacteria apparently become active. So, can we be sure there are no bacteria lurking on the freshly waxed and polished floors of hospital corridors? In any event, we continue to fight dirt only in its visible dimension. “And so, was the water that drained away dirty?”—“Of course it was dirty, that day. But the worst of it is, that the water was never completely clean.” Just who is talking here? You guessed it. The water in question is that used to cool down a nuclear power plant, and what is called dirt here can be measured only with a Geiger counter. New dirt is clean dirt therefore; dirt that can pass through every kind of filter, and resist every attempt to clean it up; dirt, moreover, that is often actually a by-product of pollution control. “Once nuclear power generates sufficient electricity,” we are told, “we will be able to afford to treat all our sewage, and our rivers will be clean again.” Standards exist also for invisible dirt, and somebody sets them: not the upper classes, in this case, but an anonymous band of of167

ficials, experts, professional associations and lobby groups.—Just what level of lead ions is permissible in the air, in vegetables and in milk? How close to the highways may our cattle be put out to pasture? What level of radiation can a person withstand?—Some authority or other always claims to have the right answer. And the manufacturers never wait to be told it twice over; they just hit whatever level of pollution is permitted. To produce less pollution than permissible would not make economic sense. Yet to produce more pollution than permissible is permissible too. It is written off as an incident, a malfunction. Accidents happen. Invisible dirt is somehow like social housing programs: the maximum is also the minimum, and the norms set ensure that better than the norm is never an option. Let us return now to the issue of visible dirt, to waste and remainders. Do you recall sitting in the tram on the way to school, mulling over the previous evening’s homework, that long equation you deduced had a remainder? And then a schoolmate boards the tram and you shout: “Hey, did you solve the equation? I had a remainder of 7.” “Then you are wrong. I had no remainder.” But how can we be so sure the outcome without a remainder is correct, and the outcome with a remainder wrong? Surely the opposite might be true. However, the equations in our math books in school were always doctored. For schools are supposed to impart a picture of a world in which everything works out precisely. Students are supposed to grow up to become something sensible, and to achieve a lot in their career: a career as a traffic engineer, for instance. A sensible road width is one that can be divided by the number of traffic lanes; any remainder, a half-lane, would not make sense. Admittedly, a half-lane would make cyclists’ lives a lot easier. But cyclists are dirt as far as traffic engineers are concerned: a remainder that somehow refuses to disappear. 168

Problems can be solved without a remainder in college too. A professor of architecture in Zurich sets an exercise: build a youth center on the city’s Paradeplatz. The proposed plan could be realized on that vacant lot. In reality however, an insurance company has already begun to build its headquarters on the same site, and besides, young people rarely hang out on Paradeplatz. Yet because the professor’s assistants had carried out a preliminary study during summer vacation, everything looks just fine on paper. So we actually never learn how to solve problems in a way that leaves a remainder, which is to say, we never learn how to deal with reality. And that is why the world is full of remainders, of odd ends of lots and the like. The road built to accommodate cars curves at a weird angle to pass between two right-angled cubic buildings. Fortunately for us, there are gardeners skilled in landscaping such trigonometric clothoids. Yet curiously, accidents continue to happen even on roads purpose-built for traffic; and because such roads are purpose-built correctly, at least one guilty party must exist for each accident. Accidents are put down to human error, which is the remainder in an utterly perfect system. Even an individual project planned without a remainder will give rise to a remainder when realized alongside another, likewise perfectly planned project. To plan for reality therefore means to plan projects that cater to the existence of such remainders, and that anticipate human behavior. With a stroke of luck, this type of planning might then also reap the beauty once inherent to the older towns and villages in our traditional cultural landscape. Does this imply a return to a perfect world, you ask? On the contrary: it means we renounce any notion of an utterly perfect world being possible.

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What Is Livability? On Quantifiable and Invisible Needs (1981) To plan, one needs exact figures. The planners’ query is directed therefore at sociologists: How much space does a person need? How much space for play? What height of ceiling? How much green space? How much pavement? The sum of the responses, the planner imagines, should give rise to the “livable city.” Of course, the sociologists are taken in by the planners’ query, and launch research based on so-called empirical methods. One of the earliest empirical studies was an inquiry into the optimal room temperature for factory work. A company provided for the trial study a factory hall where women were engaged in piecework, a simple, repetitive activity. The temperature was set at 20°C—and the women attained an unusually high rate of production that day. The next day the stable temperature was 22°C—and the women’s production rate rose even higher. Further monitoring required that the hall be heated to 25°C on the third day—and the women’s production rate rose yet again. Finally, the temperature was lowered to 18°C—and the women produced more on that day than they ever had before. The sociologists found this rather curious, ultimately, and brought in a psychologist. He established that the group of female workers in question had hitherto been neglected by the factory management, and isolated from the rest of the workforce. The fact that people who were apparently acting on behalf of the management, and who sounded at any event like scientists of sorts, were now paying attention to the group, prompted the women to optimize their performance, regardless of which parameters were set for the trial. 170

The story is amusing, but it also makes us think. It speaks of the difficulty empiricists face when they seek to take non-quantifiable factors into account. There is an important word in the title of our conference, and of this lecture: “livability.” The word livability was coined in the 1960s, when cities were optimized, supposedly on the basis of a quantifiable factor, namely traffic norms. The word “livability” serves to describe the value of all that was sacrificed at the time, supposedly to the benefit of urban development. Our seminar is concerned—to put it in scientific terms— with the critique of a quantitative concept of need. The first step therefore, is to describe the indeterminate character of the needs of human beings, as opposed to those of animals, say. It follows that such human needs cannot be fulfilled technically, and that it is therefore impossible to establish quantitative standards for their fulfillment. We need to acknowledge that human needs are not biologically determined, but develop in a social setting. When we say, to fulfill one need generates other needs, we do not mean that it generates covetousness and unwarranted luxury, but rather a quality of life such as is expressed by livability, civilization and sophistication. Next, we should acknowledge that livability or culture or other building blocks of life quality are not objects that occur individually, or in designated quantities—like housing or green space, for example; rather, they are small subsystems comprised of organizational, modifiable and material components. “Nighttime safety” is one such system, which cannot be defined only as the absence of crime; and “peace and quiet” likewise comprises more than simply not exceeding a certain level on the decibel scale. Finally, we must acknowledge also that livability, even if we were to succeed in explaining it definitively, cannot be decreed: it is not a welfare precept but requires active participation in society; and we’ll find time perhaps also for a word or two, in conclusion, on the planners 171

themselves, and their way of planning, which always means to do good, it is true, yet happens at times to do evil. Let us begin with the indeterminacy of the human being as compared with the animal, for example, whose keep and care in the zoo is based on the observance of certain quantities and qualities, surfaces, temperatures, dietary combinations and lighting conditions. Not that man does not pose such biological demands, but his by nature are so plastic and malleable that his later development, his so-called education, puts them on track, and shapes them in a way such that they are no longer quantitative, but have a formal or symbolic character. Long before we die of cold, hunger or lack of space, we perish because our world is no longer that which we have learned it should be. So our needs are not determined biologically, but historically, or at the least, they are so forcefully molded by social development as to leave their biological foundations far behind. This advance both in the development and the satisfaction of need may not be considered a luxury however, so to speak as a mobile superstructure built on biological foundations. None of us can return, alone, to the living standards of the early industrial age; together, under certain circumstances, in the wake of some catastrophe perhaps, we might survive such a regressive step. That living standards—i.e. the extent to which needs exist and can be satisfied—undergo historical development is something we can probably agree on. A more difficult matter is to admit that, even a historical reading of the concept of need does not allow one to premise an existence minimum¹ on

1

The title of the second CIAM in Frankfurt/Main in 1929 was “Minimum Existence Housing.” Cf. also the paper “On the Value and Meaning of Urban Utopias.”

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which modern man can survive. I have the following to say—and I have deliberately framed my thesis paradoxically: no one can survive on the existence minimum. No one can survive on the existence minimum? Well then, let us raise the existence minimum! This very process, of raising the existence minimum in every respect, has been mirrored for decades in the norms, dimensions and comfort requirements of social housing programs. No one can claim it is impossible to live in the apartments built, say, in the framework of German social housing programs. But hundreds of thousands of citizens live in older city centers, far below this historically and politically defined minimum standard. And one hears increasingly, how inhospitable the social housing projects of the 1960s are—and older housing stock, sometimes of a much inferior quality, is being maintained in order to spare people having to move into such projects. Evidently, the concept of livability cannot be realized by attaining a standard based on the sum of a number of norms. To our minds, livability is something whole, and we are little inclined to break it down into its composite parts. We know where it is possible still to live in comfort: in old neighborhoods, in small towns, and certainly in one or other of the modern projects too. Yet none of that is of any use to the planner, so long as he is unable to break the concept down into some building blocks or other, from which to create the new livability. So we have to try for once, to break the environment down, not into its usual quantifiable components, which is to say into spaces, road widths, ceiling heights and green spaces, but into manageable subsystems composed both of quantifiable and non-quantifiable elements.

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In his book A Pattern Language,² Christopher Alexander names one such building block of the livable city: the street corner with its combination of intersection, bus stop, newsstand and cross-walk. These are the visible elements of the street corner, and they are complemented by invisible, organizational factors: the bus timetable, traffic regulations, and the newsstand’s opening times. If the newsstand is still closed when I am waiting for my bus to work, the street corner subsystem fails to function: it lacks an element of livability. We named other subsystems earlier: building blocks of the livable city, which are composed irrevocably quasi, of several quantitative and organizational components. We named safety on our residential streets at night; and anyone will agree that this is a basic prerequisite of livability. How lightly we dealt with the matter! And we look at one another like wide-eyed innocents, and thereby assure one another that the crime rate is very much on the rise. Yet if one looks at the relevant statistics, it is doubtful whether this elementary claim can be substantiated. It is doubtful moreover, whether safety on our residential streets has anything at all to do with crime statistics. We are speaking here, not of violent crime but of the vague feeling of insecurity that prevents us from going out around midnight, to drop a letter in the mailbox or to drink a beer. The sense of safety one used to have in the city rested on the presence of a large number of passers-by. Nowadays, most people who go out at night take their car. Given that individual motorization has reduced the demand for nighttime public transport, the service has been withdrawn almost completely. This has forced the

2 Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language. Towns, Buildings, Construction, Oxford University Press, New York 1977. 174

remaining nighttime passengers to use a car too. The outcome is not only accidents due to drunk driving but also a sense of insecurity on the street. If I happen to meet a single passer-by when isolated amid the cars whizzing by, I feel afraid of him. Another subsystem is noise. Planners plod through the city with noise gauges, and measure the volume in decibels. Noise is more than just physical impact on our auditory organs however. It is also a source of information, and the sum of the noises we hear is our acoustic environment. Disturbing noise therefore amounts to an imbalance in our information environment, long before it becomes physically damaging. All noise is annoying, but our reactions differ greatly, depending on the relationship we have to the noise source. We sleep so to speak, with one ear open, deciphering acoustic messages, and relaying them to our consciousness, whether we like it or not. The selection of “relayed” messages has nothing to do with volume levels but is governed rather by sympathy, anger, fear and curiosity. To date, only aircraft noise monitoring has begun to take this factor into account—and only to a limited extent, moreover—namely, by referencing the Noise and Number Index instead of the decibel scale. But let us return to livability. Initially in the USA, and here too, in the meantime, there have been signs among the general public of an attitude people have attempted prematurely to dismiss as “nostalgia.” American sociologist Herbert J. Gans was the first to note, how valuable certain aspects of a run-down Italian ghetto in Boston had been to its residents. Resettlement of these residents at a higher standard of living has failed to assure them the livability factors they previously enjoyed. In St. Louis, there was an outcry when the Pruitt-Igoe housing project—built as a replacement for demolished slum housing by the prestigious architect Minoru Yamasaki—had to be blown up because of the increasing level of crime there. 175

Herbert J. Gans drew on the example of Levittown to prove that livability values may, but do not necessarily, manifest as a picturesque appearance. The Levittown developments are speculative, newly built residential developments that look horrific to we modern aesthetes and aficionados of old notions of the city; yet they evidently evince those invisible qualities that non-speculative modern urban planning is unable to reproduce. The aesthetically loaded word “nostalgia” is therefore simply a red herring, a means to blind us to the real issues of livability. The growing popularity of older housing stock is not due to its decrepit, picturesque, ruinous or otherwise imperfect condition but rather, to its location in places where those systems I refer to as the true building blocks of the livable environment are still intact. There is a second factor after all, perhaps an aesthetic or socioaesthetic factor: our personal environment does not consist only of all that is physically present, which is to say, of built structures, stones, bricks, grass, trees and parking lots. More importantly, our environment must provide food for thought, so that our imaginations can build a world for us that we sense is right for us, and can accept. It is no help to us at all to be granted portions of comfort, inch by inch: the 60-liter refrigerators of the 1960s, or the 70-liter refrigerators of the 1970s, and so on. Everyone has heard about the home seeker who demands so much he could never possibly be satisfied. The one apartment offered him has a beautiful view but no central heating while the other offers the latest comforts but has no terrace. What do we demand of an apartment? Surely also, that a visitor will say, “What a lovely place you have here; I’d love to have such a view;” or “What high ceilings you have, and they assure such a pleasant ambience and acoustics!” One thing at least remains of the ideal house we were dreaming of when we began our search—the terrace, the garden or the high ceilings—and we are willing therefore, to renounce 176

another. What we demand therefore is a first endeavor, or seeds: the seeds of a dream, says the functionalist, contemptuously; whereupon we add that functionalism, when it was still vibrant, namely in the 1920s, also offered the seeds of a dream. Architecture was never so utopian as when it believed itself to be functionalist. It boasted a level of social development not yet attained. We come now to two last points that deal, not with the inhabitant but with the planner. The notion of researching needs—their translation into blueprints and urban development plans, and their fulfillment—corresponds to a welfare mindset that actually fails to attain its primary goal, namely the so-called satisfaction of needs. Just as any need for rationing engenders the black market, standardization engenders the need to surpass the norm. We have condemned this human trait on moral grounds, and argued that people should be broken of the habit—yet this too attests to a do-gooder approach among people who think themselves better than others. What then, might be the meaning of this mass exodus so hotly decried by planners, the exodus to the single-family residence, the countryside, the abandoned farmhouse and the closed-down factory? People are seeking refuge from the provision of standardized architecture by the welfare state. And here is the second point: well-intentioned welfare has never reached those who truly need it. The entire social housing program has benefited a social class comprised of lower-income but by no means needy families living in thoroughly orderly circumstances. This is not to dispute that public housing subsidies helped certain families maintain a slightly higher standard of living than they would have been able to afford otherwise. Yet, for those people truly of limited means, this fact had disastrous moral consequences. Not only were they excluded from those privileged circles given a boost by public subsidies, but the raised norm also widened the gap be177

tween the living conditions of those eligible for support, and those who were simply abandoned. Livability in this social sense implies thus that I am left with at least a shred of hope of someday obtaining a better apartment. However, the gap between my current situation and the next best on offer should not grow too wide; for if the state-subsidized existence minimum amounts to much more than the average income of the inhabitants of our old towns and industrial cities, we abandon the latter to ghettoized non-livability—to social non-livability. That is why all support should be based, not on the idea of welfare assistance as charity, but on the political concept of mutual aid and participation. These comments amount in essence to a critique of the concept of need upheld by planners, which assumes “quantifiability” and “satisfiability.” Application of this concept has led to the ongoing improvement of whatever is quantifiable, and the ongoing neglect of whatever is not. Furthermore, quantifiable factors were raised to a standard whose exigencies pushed non-quantifiable factors out of the picture. The best example is the street. For traffic planners, lane width for cars is a quantifiable factor whereas the convenience to a person of using the sidewalk is not. What was more natural then, than to narrow the width of our city sidewalks to just about that of the human body, and to widen the roads to accommodate the traffic planners’ recurrently raised norm? As we have endeavored to show, such improvement of quantifiable factors, and neglect of non-quantifiable factors is based on a false method of planning. The object of planning is broken down into parts that are classified, not in terms of their functional interrelationships but in terms of production processes and construction processes. Livability however, will become something we can preserve, or reproduce even, only when we have grasped that it comprises, not the sum of construction-oriented improvements but rather, the organization of vital subsystems. 178

The Night Is Man-made (1989) Initially it seems as clear as day that the night is not a man-made but a natural phenomenon: the sun goes down, dusk casts its spell for a while then darkness falls, finally, unless the moon musters a meager light to help us on our way. Many animals—owls, bats and moths—are experts at locating their food by night while man has driven others such as foxes, deer, and rats into the nocturnal realm. Man himself, who is doubtless a diurnal creature, has increasingly laid claim to the world in spatial terms as well as to the hours that are not rightly his: the nighttime hours. According to Murray Melbin,¹ to whom we shall return later, the night is “the last frontier,” the last remaining area we have still to colonize. When emigration is no longer an option, the fact that not all people are awake at the same time can still reduce the rise in population density in urban areas. Colonization of the night by the diurnal creature man has a technical dimension: lighting. Yet this interesting strand in the history of technology and design is not the issue here. Our concern rather, is to address that which I call “invisible design,”² namely

Murray Melbin, “Night As Frontier” in: American Sociological Review, Vol. 43 Nr. 1, February 1978; idem, “The Colonization of Time” in: Timing Space and Spacing Time, Vol. 2, Tommy Carlstein, Don Parkes, Nigel Thrift, (Eds.), Edward Arnold, London 1978. 2 Lucius Burckhardt, “Design Is Invisible” in: Die Kinder fressen ihre Revolution, Bazon Brock (ed.), Cologne 1985. Cf. also: Kulturmagazin Nr. 37, Bern 1983, for discussion of the 11th International Darmstadt Werkbund Conversation on the theme of “The Night,” which took place November 13, 1982.

1

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those social and legal resolutions, decisions, decrees, ordinances, timetables, schedules and tariffs that together determine the manner by which man colonizes the night. The term “invisible design” hence denotes those human accomplishments that do not shape actual materials yet have a decisive impact on our lives and our environment nonetheless. When public transport operates at night, that changes our habits; and even someone who chooses not to leave the house after nightfall may still fall victim to nocturnal visitors. When the post office introduced a cheaper rate for telephone calls made after 10 p.m., lines tended for a time to be overly busy for an hour, then a cheerful chitchat set in, and lasted until one in the morning; and even those who chose not to make a call were unable to evade it. The opening hours of shops, cinemas and theaters, the extended opening hours of restaurants, pubs, and wine and cocktail bars, along with their voluntary or officially imposed closing times determine not only our personal habits but urban life in general. Where can one go after an evening at the theater? When does the last tram leave? And what does a taxi cost after the tram has left, when the nighttime rate applies? We echo Melbin in calling man’s encroachment and impact on the night a form of colonization. No such thing was necessary in feudal society, for peasants were tired by nightfall, and aristocrats had leisure enough for daytime amusements. The latter welcomed nightfall as an opportunity to pursue their pleasure by other, more flirtatious means. Apart from certain rituals of repentance demanded of monastic communities, worship too is largely a daytime activity. Our only record of the “agape” (love feast) passing for a Eucharist or Holy Communion dates from the Early Christian era in Rome, when religion was still a pleasure and a raison d’être. As a new doctrine free of class distinctions, Christianity had appealed to the working classes, who congregated when they had time, in 180

the evening. To this day we tell the friends we invite home: Do not eat beforehand. This imperative evolved perversely as the dictate: whoever celebrates the Eucharist in the early morning must not break fast beforehand. “Every day has its own vexations” while—so Goethe claims twice in his work—“Night is the better half of life.”³ Philine says so in Goethe’s Apprenticeship, after her mother has already said, “And the night its joys will bring” to her son Hermann, who wishes to marry Dorothea. The latter verse was omitted from several editions published in the late nineteenth century. Connoisseurs of Goethe at the time, including Friedrich Theodor Vischer, found the verse so indecent, they seriously suspected some malevolent typesetter had smuggled it into the text. Literary historians belonged namely to that species whose nights are spent with bloodshot eyes, amid books and manuscripts. This too is a form of colonizing the night: in the daytime one plays the role of professor and privy councilor, and at night one must pay the price. But let us return to colonization of the night in the industrial era. It was no accident that new discoveries in the field of lighting affected the workplace primarily. Cambacérès invented that which Goethe had yearned for, the candlewick that need not be snuffed out; yet he invented it initially, one must add, in the framework of optical research directed at stabilizing the light source. Then followed those discoveries however, which strengthened the light source: gaslight first of all, with which a factory was lit for the first time in 1803; later, Auer von Welsbach invented the gas

3

J. W. von Goethe, Master Wilhelm’s Apprenticeship, Book V, Chapter X; as cited by Peter von Matt in: “Die Nacht, die Frauenzeit,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bilder und Zeiten, 1.04.1989. 181

mantle, which considerably improved the efficacy of the illuminating gas used in the workplace. Finally, Davy invented the arc lamp, and later Edison the light bulb. Like Cambacérès’ candlewick, the light bulb had a major impact on private households too. The means to light factories by night, combined with the high cost of fixed capital, which is to say, of the machines installed in factories for the purpose of gainful exploitation, paved the way for nighttime work. The latter is determined by tariffs, wage levels, the cost of transport and by legislation; and by the absence of legislation too, of course. In 1803, when the powers that be first allowed factories to be artificially lit, this novel phenomenon had not yet been regulated, and the night was open consequently to exploitation. Some time passed before protective legislation came into force, to the benefit of children initially, then of all workers. But shiftwork has never been abolished. It has become less widespread yet, even today, it is not restricted to vital nighttime provision such as public transport, health care and emergency services but still facilitates full capacity exploitation of the means of production; of chemical plants for example, which would have to be a great deal bigger than they are now, if they were permitted to operate only eight hours a day, and had to shut down for sixteen. Shiftwork and nighttime work is the fate of a large section of the working population, and nighttime work has never become truly equal to daytime work. There has been remarkably little research done on shiftwork. Several empirical studies do exist, but none of the major critiques of industrial labor makes much of the fact that two-thirds of such work is done at a time of night when the bourgeois class is at leisure. Marx had identified shiftwork, a relatively new phenomenon in his day, as a novel form of exploitation, yet it appears to have interested his successors only with regard to tariff 182

policy or medical issues. However, the cultural and social repercussions of shiftwork are considerable. Can a life in which one’s waking hours never, or only rarely coincide with those of the majority population even be called a social life? Most shiftwork schedules experiment with a week-by-week reversal of the circadian rhythm. One can accustom oneself to anything—yet none of these forms is pleasant. Besides industrial shiftwork there exists a whole range of other types of “smaller” shifts, in relation to which the word “shift”⁴ takes on a truly sociological ring: generally the working classes—who have no choice but to “shift themselves”⁵—do so on behalf of classes with which they rarely come into contact. One need only think of trash collectors, for example, who thunder through our city streets by night; or of the second wave of office workers who set to work after the first has gone home—or before it arrives. My desk and office carpet also are the realm of a working female trio—a Turkish woman and her daughter, and a German—whom I usually see rushing off whenever I turn up especially early to deal with a heavy workload. What do they think of me? What on earth do they think about in general? Nobody asks them. Day and night appears to be a hierarchical arrangement. It is therefore interesting to note that hierarchies are flattened at night. Those with real authority go home; whoever works at night belongs generally to the lower ranks. Consequently, a shift in responsibilities takes place at night too. By day, the doctor tells the nurse: “Monitor the patient’s pulse, and call me if it becomes erratic.” In

4 The author plays here on two meanings of the German word “Schicht,” namely “shift” and “social class.” 5 A British term meaning “to spring into action.” 183

the evening, before he leaves, the same doctor says: “If his pulse becomes erratic, deal with it. Here is the key to the medicine cabinet.” Things that demand expertise by day are entrusted at night to any old girl Friday. Murray Melbin studied such shifts in interpersonal behavior, and identified similar cases in public life, on the street, in restaurants and in the private stairwell. Solitary night owls should distrust one another, it is commonly assumed. Yet Melbin can prove they tend to trust one another a great deal in fact. People help each other more readily at nighttime than by day. We also colonize the night increasingly in our pursuit of life’s pleasures. Pleasure is virtually synonymous with evening entertainment. Daytime is postponed, for whoever lives it up at night spends all morning in bed. In colonizing the night we renounce the daylight hours. Our endeavors to put a brake on this process are remarkably paradoxical: we switch annually to daylight saving time for example, then scrap it in winter in order that its effect can be felt the following summer. Instinctively, we experience summertime as an artifice, as an imposition on our lives: Italians call it “il tempo legale” (legal time), and Italian newspapers announce in autumn “la fine dei tempo legale,” hence the return to natural time! Work and play together dictate that services in the city continue to operate at night, or ought to: the goal is a city open 24/7, a city where anything and everything is possible, anytime. No metropolis, however large, has ever attained this goal. Closing down the Paris subway between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. is a much-debated topic; some see it as a technical necessity, others merely as old hat. The lower the density of public transport, the greater the importance of the private car. A seriously detrimental side effect is the growing number of accidents caused by drunk driving. How far should nighttime services go? Transportation, polyclinics, emergency rooms and firehouses—all these seem indispensable 184

yet they are not universally available of course, only in the cities. In the countryside we must first wake up the doctor, or ferret out volunteer firefighters from their beds or the bar; and after-work public transport does not even exist. My students can only work at night, at least they claim that is the case; yet their library is closed at night. The library at Harvard is open around the clock—so no one there can claim a good idea came to nought for lack of ideal working conditions. And, on that point, here is a telling detail: a white man sits at the circulation desk by day, and a black man by night. Subtle hierarchies exist, even in the realm of knowledge. But, with the exception of Harvard’s library, the modern city is still a long way from 24/7 operations. In city districts, an unofficial timetable regulates the closing hours of places of entertainment. The lights burn brightest in the inner city, although business is restricted to limited areas there too, and by the early hours of the morning, only a few dedicated streets can offer an open bar or two. Anne Cauquelin⁶ studied this nocturnal time-space pattern in Paris, and identified distinct changes in the cityscape: certain streets acquire and then lose a specific meaning at different times of day and night. Night-owls of a particular kind, people addicted to particular drugs, or members of singular circles, transvestites for example, meet at certain hours of the night in certain streets that, one hour earlier or later, seem nothing special to the innocent passer-by. And how do things stand with the night of thieves, crime, disputes and lawlessness? This is a question one is unlikely ever to fathom entirely. By night, the police and criminals do battle; they chase through the streets, tires screeching. Who started this? Who

6 Anne Cauquelin, La ville la nuit, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1977. 185

first came up with the idea of staging this war at night? Presumably the custom dates from times when the eye of the law closed at night. But nowadays, the eye of the law sees all, especially at night, or so it seems. Or is Melbin’s observation correct, that policemen normally sleep in their patrol cars? Nighttime police patrols have only a minimal success rate. Motorized police very rarely catch a criminal red-handed, and the police on foot almost never. The police force knows this: it deploys police officers actually, merely to increase nocturnal pedestrians’ sense of safety. The motorized patrols do not exactly heighten this sense of safety. Aid for a pedestrian can come only from a pedestrian; and his forlornness amid the nighttime stream of traffic is precisely what heightens his personal sense of fear while, at the collective level, it drives slum deterioration. Any friendly advice, that he should use a car himself, or at least order a cab, accelerates the inexorable advance of the nighttime criminal city. But streetlights now, they assure us safety! This is an old question: Whom do public streetlights really benefit—the criminal, or the person seeking safety? In former times people locked their house and yard at night. They ventured onto the open road only in exceptional cases, armed at best, and accompanied by torchbearers. To whom did public space belong at night, back then? Some researchers, Gleichmann⁷ and Schivelbusch⁸ for example, maintain

7

Peter Reinhart Gleichmann, “Nacht und Zivilisation,” in: Martin Baethge, Wolfgang Essbach (Eds.): Soziologie – Entdeckung des Alltäglichen, Festschrift für Hans Paul Bahrdt, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/Main and New York 1984. 8 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Die Entzauberung des Feuerscheins. Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der künstlichen Beleuchtung, Hanser, Munich 1983. A second, paperback edition was published under the title Lichtblicke, Ullstein, Frankfurt/Main and Berlin 1986. 186

that street lighting was the authorities’ hobbyhorse, and disadvantageous to all common folk. But what constitutes “the common folk?” Did not large sections of the population also benefit from the fact that even men and women who could not afford an armed escort were able henceforth to walk the streets alone? While Schivelbusch claims that the cry “à la lanterne” meant a ruler was to be hanged from the very symbol of public order he personally had instigated, other sources dispute this. Aristocrats and the clergy are portrayed in cartoons of the day as being intent on extinguishing street lamps, and thus on refuting the Enlightenment. The question as to who actually benefits from nocturnal lighting evidently requires further study. The question as to what we illuminate and why appears to have been neglected also. Increasingly, it seems that those responsible for lighting have no other goal than to make everything as bright as possible. Our street lamps illuminate not only streets but also house facades, which are ugly enough by day as it is. Moreover, such brightly lit facades do nothing to improve visibility for road users. Many cities now illuminate all or some of their historic buildings. This can look lovely on condition that the building is lit also from within. Without interior lighting, the facade looks like a ruin. All this lighting would be far more striking, if other nearby buildings were left in the dark. Street lamps ought therefore illuminate only the traffic zone. All vehicles are equipped with their own lights; there is therefore no need for streetlights on highways. Nevertheless Belgium, for example, lights its entire cross-country highway network, and thereby demonstrates that lighting today, goes far beyond that which is technically necessary, and penetrates metaphysical or possibly, even theological space: man is endeavoring to turn night into day. This whole lighting caboodle does not, let me repeat, assure us safety: neither actual safety from traffic accidents, 187

nor a sense of security. It is similar to a long-forgotten comedy from the 1930s, in which a married couple arriving home late at night observes, “It is so disagreeably bright up front, and so disagreeably dark to the rear.” To light the streets of Paris at night—and in a very odd way, moreover, namely by placing a streetlight at the beginning, the middle, and the end of a road, regardless of its length—was undoubtedly a design decision taken by the king. The change, whether welcomed with joy or rejected with suspicion, was in any case evident to all, and nocturnal behavior was adjusted accordingly. Equally effective are those resolutions and decisions we named earlier, which initially appear to have no visible impact: schedules, opening times, closing times, tariffs, regulations, laws, as well as—the absence and abrogation of laws. These constitute the framework that shapes our living conditions at least as radically as any visible and tangible elements such as walls and gates do. We call this phenomenon “invisible design” in order to illustrate that such resolutions are akin to designs, in that they put their stamp on our lives. One product of this invisible design is the night, man-made night: a temporal environment that is opened and closed in accordance with man-made rules. The theater closes at 11 p.m., the last tram leaves at midnight, and so we still have time for a beer. One instance determined the tram schedule, another the theater program, and a third the restaurant closing hours. The overall result is the form our night takes. The end of the night is fixed also, and strangely staggered. The subway begins to run at 5 a.m., the trams at 6, and the workers at 7; bureaucrats begin work at 7.30, but open to the public only at 9. To call someone before 9 a.m. is considered rude, because everyone assumes everyone else belongs to the elite, and thus can sleep late, be late for work and lead a great nightlife.

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Architecture—An Art or A Science? (1983) When we come across the polarity of art and science in the field of architectural design, the first question we must ask is, where, or wherein is the difference between an artistic and a scientific approach supposed to lie? We are unable to trace this difference to concrete aspects of the design process, which is to say, to its thematic content or to its results; hence, on the one hand to artistic buildings, and on the other to technical ones. We know only too well that buildings that appear technical may be intended by their architects to appear artistic; and vice versa, that technical approaches may result in highly artistic forms—the architecture of Mies van der Rohe exemplifies the former for instance, and that of Félix Candela the latter. To differentiate between the artistic and technical aspects of architecture therefore makes sense only when the decision-making method is visible in the actual design process. For instance, a “scientific” decision is one reached step by step, following careful analysis of individual factors, and an assessment both of their effects, and their repercussions for other factors; and one might call an architectural decision “artistic,” whenever the designer strives intuitively to subordinate to personal caprice every last factor that needs to be addressed. The role model for artistic decisionmaking is the story of the Chinese artist from whom a client had commissioned an ink drawing of a rooster. The artist had negotiated a month’s time for the job. One hour before the month reached its end, the client inquired whether he might pick up the drawing immediately. But he has not yet even begun, the artist admitted, and asked the client to return in an hour’s time. When the hour was up, the rooster drawing was finished, and the client inquired as to why 189

the artist had requested a whole month. The artist replied, “I spent the time reflecting on roosters.”

A working group makes a decision. Choices between complex alternatives must be simplified. The “essential” criteria that ensue from simplification prove to be incomparable.

Now, an architect or planner’s product is not of the same ilk as an ink drawing. Rather, it must satisfy a whole range of social and practical criteria. Therefore, pure intuition such as pursued by the Chinese artist is perhaps not an apt analogy when explaining the design process. In fact, it confronts us with a difficulty that we could call the design decision paradox. Architectural design is subject to a complex cluster of imperatives, some of which can be reconciled easily while others conflict intractably. To solve one little problem perfectly gives rise always to several more: windows allow for optimal enjoyment of a beautiful panorama but cause too much heat loss in winter; the optimal driveway to the house passes directly beneath the neighbor’s bedroom; and so forth. In a laboratory context, such problems probably, would be solved scientifically step by step: we would set up a trial situation and improve it constantly, on the basis of experience gained. The best 190

decision-making method here might be called “management of an initially incalculable batch of problems.”—Architecture aspires to create a finished product however, and the client too, wishes for nothing less. In terms of costs, it would be a blow to the client if one were to say to him, perhaps we will tear down this wing again, after all; and this window can be bricked up, if it lets in too much noise. The architect also wants to catch the public eye with a finished product; at any rate, we have yet to see a photo-caption in an architectural journal declare, that the pitched roof may perhaps still be replaced by a flat one. The paradox hinted at above therefore, is: architectural design must provide a solution, although the premises on which the latter will be planned are not wholly transparent.

The decisions arising during the design process should be reached here, one at a time. But which comes first, and which later? This proves to be a crucial question. So how does one decide, what is to be decided first? Drawings by Lucius Burckhardt

Another decision method: one proposes a number of possible alternatives and evaluates them on the basis of criteria that serve as filters. Will any single proposal at all pass through all the filters? The Great Master is experienced: he knows what “works” in advance. “To be experienced” amounts to not wishing to gain more experience.

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The means to reach a solution based on not wholly transparent premises is called intuition. This method of decision-making is vital to human existence. Primitive man would doubtless never have survived had he not been able to make relatively helpful decisions in bewildering situations. We call the situation “paradoxical” only when intuition is used to repress or even, to replace other, more rational methods of decision-making. The situation becomes especially paradoxical when society uses the architect, as it so often does, to reach decisions that the other social bodies with more responsibility for the matter have failed to reach; when, for instance in the so-called urban planning department, the architect’s intuition, which has been honed by his professional training, is used to replace a feasible procedure comprised of small rational steps with the seductive vision of a “grand solution.” To illustrate the above I will outline a further four points in the architectural decision-making process, a process that lasts from the first inclination to construct a building (Should one do anything at all?), through the first rough sketches (“I imagine something like this”), to the plan, and, finally, to usage. The process kicks off not with a construction project but with a problem. The fact that several schoolchildren among the many thousands in a city have impaired sight does not lead necessarily to an institution such as a “school for the blind.” Many educationalists may think blind children should attend normal schools, also in order to raise the other children’ awareness of the existence of such people in their age group. Even if a decision is made in favor of segregation, the solution to the problem is not necessarily a new building. It would be entirely feasible to convert a few vacant stores in the neighborhood into classrooms for blind pupils. To a certain extent, architectural intuition’s first step is to give the problem a name: the “School for the Blind;” a name that persistently conjures 192

the image of a building in the mind’s eye of everyone concerned. The first design decision therefore consists in stripping the complex problem of all that is supposedly “inessential,” and in giving it a name that will lead to a solution, namely to a building. A second step leads to the first rough design proposals or sketches. Here, we observe the following phenomenon: the intuitive design method leads the architect—and likewise his client, who is watching, entranced—to imagine that the first solution that comes along is the best solution. It is not easy to reconcile several factors, even through so-called concentration on the essentials, or through concentration on the so-called essentials. Yet if this is accomplished on the drawing board, it releases a wave of such satisfaction in the brain’s pleasure center, the author and everyone else he has managed to convince instantly imagine, that the one and only possible solution has been found. In consequence, architectural plans conceived intuitively are not optimal but suboptimal. A further step is to produce the so-called plans. As a matter of course, we take “plans” to mean large sheets of paper on which ink strokes indicate the future arrangement of walls. It is on these sheets of paper that decisions are made, and whoever raises his voice in protest will be given to understand that he understands nothing about reading plans. Yet plans are a weak code; they may serve masons and carpenters as guidelines but they cannot portray the future functions of a building. The actual uselessness of so many architectural components, such as can be observed in every recently built public or private building, is related directly to the inarticulacy of the allegedly, planning-oriented code of the ground plan. One last point: to fetishize the product is part and parcel of the intuitive method. Once a building is standing, the architect turns his back on it, and flees. He considers it accomplished, perfect even; and this means no experience is garnered; nothing is learned. Any 193

complaints on the part of the client are noted with annoyance; staff is dispatched to deal with warranty work; and if it is noted later that conversions are being made to the building, to sue for the destruction of intellectual property seems a reasonable option. A “scientific” attitude this is not; an “artistic” one? … Perhaps.

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A Critique of the Art of Gardening (1983) One critique of the contemporary art of gardening is based generally on ecological concerns. To pave over or lay concrete on garden paths, to spray weeds out of existence, and to treat ornamental plants as disposable goods is indeed both wasteful and harmful. Another critique of the art of gardening, and in particular of city policy on parks and gardens, is based on the presumption of public use. It therefore regards the growing tendency to landscape every last patch of green in urban space as the seizure of public goods quasi, and as a disciplinary measure. Critics here also and rightly point out that merely to alter the style of a garden—to turn an eclectic ornamental garden into a so-called biotope—does nothing to improve things for users: for example, neither such type of garden can accommodate children’s games. The present critique addresses a third angle by inquiring what the style of a garden signifies—what message a distinctively designed or neglected area actually conveys—as well as how the viewer or user perceives and interprets that message. This approach ties in with the second aforementioned, user-oriented critique insofar as the potential to use a place must of course be perceived as such, and taken advantage of: opening a door does not automatically mean the public will step through it. This critique is oriented to issues of information and addresses three points in particular: the misinformation that ensues from a style of gardening apt to destroy traces of former use; the professionalization that seeks to divest laypersons of their competence in gardening; and finally, academicism, namely the depletion of the codes of landscape and garden design through their excessive and indiscriminate use. 195

Human behavior in open spaces is governed by two pieces of information: the user must know whether a particular use of a location is physically and legally possible, or whether natural obstacles or proprietary rights stand in its way; and he must consider also, whether the general public will tolerate his intended activity. After asking “Can one do this here?” and “May one do this here?” comes the question “Is this done here?” In a village that is striving to become more beautiful, it is not enough just to put two benches on the village square and plant begonias around them; for as long as being idle in full view of village society is subject to sanctions, no one but drunks would ever dream of taking a seat on the benches. The user gleans messages about how possible or well tolerated an activity may be inter alia from the vegetation. To detect the natural qualities of soil, proprietorial rights or actual use by reading spontaneous (i.e. unplanned) vegetation is a skill we have acquired quite unconsciously, since our earliest childhood. So-called plant sociology is, strangely enough, the latest fruit of botany; only after many centuries of the study of individual species did the botanists of this century “discover” the fact that certain species form societies, that such societies succeed one another, and that such forms of socialization tell us something about an area’s soil conditions, human use, age and impairment. We all possess this knowledge unconsciously however, even when we are unable to name the individual plant species. The fact that vegetation one can walk on indicates a right of way, that undergrowth indicates the current absence of agricultural exploitation, and annuals indicate short-term changes is no more foreign to us than our ready interpretation of prohibition and traffic signs. In essence, city gardening uses this same language: its motto, “Say it with flowers,” signals the behaviors it believes are to be tolerated or prohibited in public parks and facilities. A “mute” dialogue thus 196

ensues between the city parks department and the public: the first response to people tramping through the newly created flowerbed on Königsplatz is to plant roses. After a row of rose bushes also has been trampled underfoot, the form of the flowerbed is changed, and the public’s footpath is paved over. The language of gardeners differs from the language of spontaneous vegetation however, in that care and maintenance always destroys the past. Landscape or garden designs attempt to lay down new rules, whereas the eye of the user scans the condition of existing vegetation—the grass that invites one to walk on it, bedding meadows or waterside shrubs—to glean information about the social acceptance or sanction of the regulations in force. The only spontaneous vegetation gardeners foster is weeds. In botanical terms, weeds are species that thrive in soils prepared and fertilized for ornamental plants, and are able either to produce several generations a year (if their propagation cycle is brief ), or to establish themselves rapidly, by sprouting deep, tenacious roots. Our interest here is not the vegetal-sociological dimension of the weed phenomenon but rather, its “linguistic” dimension. Weeds, as Karl Heinrich Hülbusch has noted, stem from vegetable gardening; it was only when Gründerzeit gardeners began to display flowers like vegetables that the notion of weeds took hold also in the minds of the urban dweller. In aesthetic terms, this led to the sanction of certain wild plants, in particular of the dandelion, whose blooms are no less splendid than those of treasured species such as white and yellow narcissus, or the daisy. That the dandelion is absent from meadow bouquets may be attributed also to its unpleasant sap. Yet the fanaticism with which we tear it up by its roots derives surely from its reputation as “the vegetable pest in the flower bed.” Given, on the one hand, its ornamental plant monocultures and, on the other, its production of short-lived weed societies, the art of gardening makes it impossible to read plots of land in terms of their 197

use and capacities. The most we can discern from an area planted with ornamental plants and weeds is, firstly, that the soil has been freshly tilled and fertilized, which may possibly hamper its use; and, secondly, that the potential interest of an owner or gardener, or perhaps only his temporary lack of interest, affords weed seeds a chance to put down roots. Constant weeding constantly reproduces the same weed society, and hence uniformity, in addition to signaling rejection. In contrast, all older plant societies—on roadsides, quarries, wasteland, countryside meadows, on the unresolved borders between the private and public spheres, on parking lots, or on lots awaiting speculative development, abandoned construction sites and urban industrial sites—signalize longer-term developments. They render past and present use visible, and they assure moreover, that such use is tolerated, for they render legible the fact that many people, perhaps many children, have access to an area. The diversity of plant societies and plant species fosters a discriminating gaze, provides entertaining information also for mere passers-by or non-users, and is insofar a greater source of vitality than the total care lavished on all urban green areas, which leads to an endless, monotonous succession of ornamental plants, ornamental lawns and weeds. The second point in our critique of the modern art of gardening is its professionalization. For anyone who has the means as well as a misapprehension of professional expertise, everything is possible— technically. This fact has served to seriously devalue the longstanding experience of gardeners however amateur, regarding what grows well where and without major interventions. Local conditions need no longer be taken into account. If need be, one simply imports new topsoil. And if rhododendrons fail to flourish alongside dry grasses, one builds drainage and irrigation. This attitude among gardeners 198

The cover of Destroyed By Care (1981), in which the Kassel Werkbund group expressed its criticism of the National Horticultural Show.

who consider themselves landscape designers has a dual impact on our perceptions: for one, it gives rise to misinformation by disturbing the character of the landscape and, secondly, it discourages the amateur gardener. To create a garden in defiance of the landscape and its natural conditions is an approach learned during a form of professional training premised on technical viability. The set pieces or notions grasped summarily in the design class—the ponds, canals, fountains, mounds and sculptured terrains—are deployed everywhere, ruthlessly. That water flows downhill, that geological tectonics underpin the landscape, that hillcrests sprout different vegetation than valleys, all this seems to amount to little more than the sum of the obstacles that must be eliminated by technological means. 199

In the park that was built in 1981 on the lower terrace of the water meadows by the River Fulda in Kassel, there are artificial mounds just high enough to obstruct the view of the ring of hills at the boundary of the Kassel Basin, those of the Kaufunger, Reinhard and Habicht forests—and these mounds were created at the very points designated panoramic sites of interest by the provision of bench seats! The art of gardening thus annihilates the magnificent geographical integrity of the Kassel Basin, of which one had a perfect view from the River Fulda’s water meadows, prior to these interventions. Gardeners faced with a large body of water seem to have nothing better to do than set a smaller body of water alongside it. One design we saw recently proposed to use a small ornamental pond to embellish a site from which one has a panoramic vista of a hairpin bend in the River Fulda. Ponds on hillsides seem to be nothing less than the norm in the art of gardening; yet this fact is nowhere brought home so forcefully as when hilltops are redesigned as natural springs, as was the case at the National Horticultural Show in Stuttgart. Intentionally or not, the professionals’ unswerving belief in their unlimited powers serves to intimidate the layman, and to foster his dependency. I buy a catalogue of the latest flowering plants. It promises me gigantic blooms. In my little garden however, they may wither or flourish, but they never attain the proportions depicted on the catalogue’s cover. Yet only next door, in the city’s public garden, the same flowers look exactly as prescribed. Evidently the gardener knew exactly how to enrich the soil, and what poisons to use to keep away pests; the plastic sheet, and the skull and crossbones warning above each flower bed last fall were not installed in vain. Such incidents foster self-doubt in the layman. Rather than reflect on his inherited knowledge—on how his parents and grandparents 200

did whatever was possible in their gardens, and let well alone whatever was not—he comes to believe he lacks the talent for gardening, and should therefore relinquish his garden to professional care. And we all know where that leads: laying out the garden once and for all is not the end of it, for the professional is much more likely to claim that plants nowadays must be renewed annually, by the professional in person, and that they will all die a sorry death, if ever the client dares presume he may manage the matter himself. The garden is thrown thus so completely off balance, that it must either be manicured permanently to perfection or—much to the chagrin of onlookers—be abandoned to lie fallow for several years. We consider the third point pertaining to the destruction of information to be academicism, which is to say, the depletion of horticultural codes through their eclectic application. The language of the art of gardening is based a priori on distinguishing and individually interpreting the two viable loci of expression such as have been manifest in our climes for centuries, namely in the distinction between the “French” and the “English” styles, which is to say, between gardens that attest to human intervention, public policy and the extension of urban aesthetics into rural areas, and those that symbolize nature, original conditions of use, pastoral landscapes and the like. Undoubtedly, the motifs found within these two contrary loci of expression have long since intermingled, and great gardeners have drawn on both style repertoires simultaneously. But nowadays, the expressive potential of each is used so interchangeably, is so merged as to render their respective contextual significance illegible. Moreover, a growing trend to deploy elements regardless of their origin and semantic context can be observed, even when it comes to smaller details. Japanese bonsai trees, for example, are a means of expression (albeit in miniature) that belongs semantically in the “English garden” context, which is to say, in natural or primi201

tively used landscapes. Such trees should be deployed carefully and sparingly therefore, wherever naturalness is to be demonstrated in a small area, by recourse to a change in scale. But what on earth are these bonsai thuja hedges, bonsai conifers and bonsai junipers supposed to signify when they are planted in rank and file formation? What if tulips are sprouting up between them; tulips that, were the bonsai tree a real tree, would have to be regarded as towering structures? At the National Horticultural Show in Kassel, Japanese bonsai trees had been set around a small pond, the banks of which were decorated with river pebbles. If one were to enlarge this landscape on a scale with real trees and real ponds, the significance of the river pebbles would be absurd. A reduction in scale therefore ought to have been considered, also in their case. (We will not go into detail here, about the fact that the river pebbles bordered the forest on the one hand, and granite slabs on the other; or that the bonsai trees were interspersed with rhododendron bushes of equal size, whose flowers and leaves accordingly looked inappropriately large, etc.). Knowledge of the significance of trees seems to have dissipated entirely. In any case, the one question discussed, is whether trees are “native” or alien—a minor factor, it seems to me, in the context of an artificially designed park or garden. More pertinently, a species of tree itself conveys, or at least used to convey information that evoked associations in the viewer: either with certain locations associated, rightly or wrongly, with tree species; or with traditions in relation to which certain tree species are planted. The horse chestnut, walnut and birch are species worlds apart, and the very fact that they originated in quite different climatic and cultural contexts assures the gardener a rich palette that must be used with great care. But if he plants all these trees indiscriminately, in one and the same arboretum, the inherited code dies away, and the site becomes uninteresting. 202

“Minimal intervention”—this is our adamant response to developments in the art of gardening over the past few decades. Minimal intervention is not only a concept underpinned by thrift and the ecological imperative; it is also a tool to be used at the linguistic level, as a means to impart significance. Significance can never be premised on the destruction of information. Wherever that which exists, that by which one might orientate oneself, is altered, a richer source of orientation must be proffered. The latter cannot be created through the indiscriminate use of signifiers however, just as volume or noise alone, do not suffice to produce language. Rather, the means of creating significance must be introduced subtly into the existing context, and must clarify it. To opt thereby for minimal intervention is a means to guarantee that the significance of whatever already exists will be apprehended in full and accepted.

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Fake: The Real Thing (1987) Real jewelry is not the issue here; it does not interest us at all. It is ephemeral, trivial and fake—yes, fake; but first things first. Its high value, whatever that may be, makes real jewelry extremely short-lived. Only a few choice gems ever survive a generation. The Knights of the Holy Spirit presented Louis XV with a golden cross, studded with diamonds. Diamonds were just what the king was after. He had them removed from the cross and set into the hilt of his sword. When Napoleon came to power, he found this sword among the crown jewels. He liked the diamonds but not the style of the sword. A goldsmith worked a new sword, and set the old diamonds into its hilt. After the Battle of Trafalgar, this sword was given to the Duke of Wellington. To the delight of his wife, Wellington also had the diamonds reworked, this time as a necklace. Maurice Rheims, who recounts this tale, notes that the necklace is unlikely ever to be found. Presumably, Wellington’s daughters and granddaughters are wearing the diamonds in their rings, earrings, brooches and clips. “But that is surely an exception!” cry those whose eyes pop out on stalks, ogling the Queen of England’s crown jewels in the Tower of London. Let us assume, firstly, that everything on display there is genuine. The stones are not very old. Most of them date from the nineteenth century, and have changed hands often. Crowns seem at any event more durable than merely ornamental pieces of jewelry, and for an obvious reason: crowns stand for something, namely for Empire, whereas merely ornamental pieces have no meaning beyond themselves. They are tautological. We have stated enough of a case now to be able to say something about fake jewelry. Fake jewelry 204

is of interest precisely because it stands for something, because it means something, because it stands for “the real thing.” The real thing exists in its own right and has no further meaning. That is why fake jewelry is the real thing, whereas the real thing… But that is impossible, a senseless, vicious circle. If fake jewelry imitates the real thing, but the real thing has no real meaning, then the fake stuff too will become boring in time. And that is why we must come to the very point that prompted our interest in fake jewelry in the first place: fake jewelry is genuine when it does not strive at all to be the real thing but simply transcends it. Real fake jewelry does not imitate real, actually existent jewelry but rather, real jewelry that does not exist—and could not exist, in fact, because no such precious gems exist, at least, not unless they are fake. So, if the genuine jewelry represented by fakes does not exist then the fake stuff really is the real thing. Fake jewelry is a utopia. It considers what the jewelry really worth copying might be like, if ever it were to come into existence. This utopia has a banal name: glamor. Glamor is basically wishful thinking, about how things could and should be. The history of teen fashion, as it is called, is closely interwoven with this preoccupation with role models and ideals, and likewise with the deconstruction of traditional meanings: hence the importance of glamor. Young Londoners who raided their grandfathers’ wardrobes in the 1950s, donned stockbrokers’ suits, and took to the streets, did not want to resurrect nineteenth-century capitalism. They were not interested in counterfeit as such but in investing the look with new symbolism. In the same way, squatters in Frankfurt-Westend were interested, not in living in bankers’ villas as bankers do but in appropriating the pillars, cherubs and atlantes on the villas’ facades for their own idea of utopia; for, to debunk Establishment splendor as glamor gives rise to a new freedom, to the phony fake and to the real thing. 205

And now we have used the word “real” again, which we were actually trying to avoid. The last century wore itself out on the problem of authenticity, with its senseless paradoxes. In all walks of life, the spirit of bourgeois manufacturers united in praise of the real thing—which was perhaps, just punishment for a class that lived from the production of fake goods or ersatz. For, what characterizes the middle class as of 1848 is the fact that it no longer lives surrounded by the things it produces. It produces cotton but wears silk; manufactures rubber but wears leather. Nationalism in particular was attached to the notion of the real thing: monuments of stone, granite, sandstone and marble trace the path of the Second Empire, and even in the Third Reich, eagles and swastikas had to be carved in real stone. Finally, plaster and paint was chipped off house facades in the name of heritage preservation, and the real thing was discovered beneath them: real stones, real buildings. Then paint was stripped from real timber doors too— what else did we expect to find beneath it? This cult of the real thing was countered solely by its denunciator, the cult of glamor; and the claim that appearances are deceptive was countered by this discovery: appearances are the only thing that is not deceptive. Papa Goethe thought all these thoughts long ago, with a mischievous smile on his face. Not that he was on the side of teen fashion, for he sided rather with the Establishment, with the nobility that still wore its jewelry with grace, and bore the real thing with humor, and dignity with charm. In Goethe’s cryptic revolutionary drama The Natural Daughter, the duke plans to give his illegitimate daughter a jewelry case on the day he adopts her. The princess’ joy is dampened when his housekeeper sourly demurs:

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“Yet not the appearance but the genuine worth Can satisfy the cravings of thy heart!”¹ In its ascetic pedantry, the emerging middle class distinguishes between the “appearance” even of the genuine article, and “true substance.” Yet the fledgling princess has a ready quip, a truly charming Goethean couplet: “What is appearance having naught of substance? And what would substance be without appearance?”² For the nineteenth century it was then clear: appearance lacking in substance is fake, fake material or fake jewelry. But what then is the substance that does appear? To demand such substance of real material would amount indeed to barbaric materialism. That is why we put our trust in the youngest generation’s answer: the substance that appears is glamor. While real jewelry was a sign of waste for the nobility, it was a sign of asceticism for the commoner. The nobility bought and made gifts of jewelry without a moment’s hesitation whereas the commoner made investments. When he withdrew surplus value from the market and invested it at no interest, he did so for the sake of caution: by renouncing the interest, today’s profit, he assured the stability of his assets. The middle-class daughters’ jewelry case was the family piggy bank quasi. Was such investment profitable? Moderately. Jewelry is valuable at times when everyone has money; when everyone is in need, no one gets rid of his jewelry. Thus in

“The Natural Daughter,” Act II, Scene V in: Goethe’s Works, Vol. 2, Philadelphia, G. Barrie, 1885. 2 Ibid.

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1946, gold chains and diamond rings turned into nothing more than a few sacks of rapidly wolfed down potatoes. And long-term value is in any case nothing to write home about. The advertising campaign the diamond syndicate launched two years ago was symptomatic of the fact that there are too many diamonds, and too few people to wear them. The price of these gems has fallen therefore, just like the gold price. This brings us back to the question of value. Nothing illustrates commodity fetishism (to use Marx’s term), so well as industry’s search for diamonds and gold, nature’s providential products. Something that should be discovered serendipitously, with a stroke of luck—the gold nugget, the rough diamond—is organized and rationalized here, and mined in huge concentration camps; an industry just like any other, although more macabre. The value of the product mirrors social relations however. And nowadays more than ever, a fall in prices perhaps somehow reflects the fact that such methods of exploitation no longer rank among the finest, even in the exploiters’ own books. The end of white South Africa is a part of the end of the era of good taste. But let us return to that of interest to us: false jewelry and glamor. Appearances alone are not deceptive, we said, and this idea must be considered more closely. Appearances are not deceptive—and how could they be, given that they serve the very matter of discernment? Anatomists tell us it is difficult to distinguish a lion’s skeleton from that of a tiger. Yet any child can tell the difference between a lion and a tiger. Obviously, the difference lies in their appearance or, to be more precise, it is their appearance that makes the difference. Two species of duck are closely related yet differ greatly from one another in appearance, more markedly so in the case of males in the mating season. This distinctive plumage occurs however, only in those regions inhabited by both species of duck. On remote islands 208

where only one of the two species is found, the drakes look quite unimpressive, also in the mating season. The emergence of—fake?—jewelry in teen fashion in recent decades seems significant to me. Broadly speaking, this trend developed thus: in 1968 the new era of modesty began, one symbolized by the hippie who did his best to resemble a poor Indian struggling to find enough to eat and to provide for his family. Clothing, hairstyle and jewelry expressed the following position: a poor, but also unassuming, self-sufficient and therefore happy people has values other than material gain and career advancement. This position implied the use of worthless materials to create modest but aesthetically pleasing jewelry. Sunflower seeds and similar worthless elements, it was discovered, can be strung together to make decorative necklaces. The divergence of various tribes in the realm of teen fashion revealed a need for more nuanced differentiation. Even those who had remained loyal to the Indian gusto no longer portrayed “real” starving Indians, but Indians of the silver screen, Indians with glamor. Sunflower seeds disappeared in favor of gigantic jewels supposedly reminiscent of the treasures of the Indian rajahs. Roadside shops and stalls sprang up, where one could buy colorful glass beads and threads, the building blocks of this gem agenda. Naturally, such building blocks could be used to make more than only “Indian” things. The same kind of glamor might refer to European and American fin de siècle bohemians, to movie stars of the 1930s, or to social classes transformed by glamor. If one considers overall trends in the youth culture of that period, it becomes evident that the conspicuous display of personal symbols and signs turned into a style war: the mutual seizure, appropriation and reinterpretation of signs, pieces of jewelry, medals, uniforms and hairstyles. Phase three: the style war is over now; the “tribes” co-exist and 209

no longer step on each other’s toes. The signs people use are no longer intended for their opponents but for their friends, for only those in the know are able to read the deeper meaning of a stylistic gesture. That is why current fashion remains difficult for outsiders to understand. Seemingly contradictory features are combined for no apparent reason: a sailor’s cap and a blond perm, an old-fashioned, Teddy Boy look and a well-waxed rocker’s quiff, or Punk and Indian emblems. The message is intended only for close friends. To see an outsider shake his head in wonder is considered a successful coup: “Hooray, I’ve got him stumped.” Yet contradictions are very rich in meaning, and the more incomprehensible they are to outsiders, the more insiders find them highly informative: fur on silk, long hair combined with a mustache, jewels on a sweater—for initiates, these signs are like a horoscope of the person in question: “Although you are generally thrifty to the point of avarice, you can be generous when it really matters.”—Well, what is he now, stingy or generous? Outsiders find this contradictory, but the person in question finds himself aptly described: It’s true, I am sometimes petty; but money doesn’t mean a thing to me when it comes to the crunch! The lace collar peeks out from beneath the Norwegian sweater, and there is a flash of Rivière beneath the anorak. I am that kind of guy. Real jewelry has nothing at all to do with any of this. Its message is linear and tautological: one piece of jewelry differs from another in one respect only, which is measured in carats. The intangible and seemingly supernatural dimension of jewelry, which has so fascinated mankind for centuries, is now banal. While, historically, gold and precious stones stood for a supernatural material—for that perhaps, of which Paradise is built, for platonic, immaterial solids, so to speak, to which were attributed an ideal value derived from celestial spheres—such real jewelry has long since been outshined by fakes. And this is the case because it is possible today, not merely 210

Fake: The Real Thing. Photo: Annemarie Burckhardt

to produce fake jewelry that is both indistinguishable from, and of equal value to real jewelry but also, above and beyond that, to produce “fake” jewelry that has no genuine counterpart, and therefore symbolizes much more than real jewelry ever can. Such fake jewelry does not stand for a Platonic world of ideas but for an imaginary world—yet one that, were it to exist, would belong to our worldly realm of the here and now.

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Aesthetics and Ecology (1990) I do not know about you but certainly, I meet plenty of people who tell me they just spent their holidays some place where there are no vacationers. Of course, they got along well with those locals who sell their authentic handicrafts as cheap-at-the-price souvenirs yet who remain unspoiled. For these fortunate people actually get by without money. They live on and can make a good livelihood from this—and here comes the decisive term—from this intact landscape. Now, before we return to our humanitarian vacationers, let me explain the premise of my remarks. Nowadays, under the catchphrase “ecology,” we discuss the various strategies deployed to save resources, preserve species and protect natural cycles from destruction yet, ultimately, the objectives we pursue do not derive from ecology but are of an aesthetic nature. To sum them up we use the magic phrase “intact landscape.” And the definition of what landscape is, is aesthetic. And it is about the aesthetics of the landscape that we will talk today. To return now to our tourist: he is not unlike theologians in the Age of Discovery who discussed whether the soul of the native born resembled our own, or whether a border like the one separating mankind—the master of nature—from nature itself might exist between us and the native born. In any case, our tourist imagines that landscape is natural and intact, so long as the locals till it for their livelihood, but that it is doomed to destruction the moment colonialists or tourists set foot on it—with the exception of our tourist, of course, who got along so well with the locals. My geography teacher—he is long since deceased—went one step further. Of course, he too was of the opinion that the land212

scape and the farmers who cultivate it belong together, and that urbanization, industry and the hotel trade mar this landscape. Yet suddenly areas opened up where his argument changed to include both industry and the industrial population as part of the landscape too. I still remember the day he gave me a bad grade because, for the life of me, I could not grasp how smoke-belching chimney stacks, winding towers, slag heaps glowing in the dark, the Bessemer converter’s yellow dust clouds, and miners in blue peaked caps, heading home on push-bikes from a shift, might ever add up to a landscape. Neither spruce nor fir trees grew in the Ruhr District at the time; only pine and deciduous trees could survive the constant swirl of dust; and large parts of the region were—and are still today—characterized by plant societies that indicate pollution by heavy metal salts. Yet, in my geography teacher’s eyes, this is precisely what made it a “typical Ruhr District landscape.” Let us return now to my opening premise, namely that ecology, insofar as it is oriented to the landscape, pursues an objective rooted not in ecology itself but in an aesthetic dimension. The word “landscape” is without doubt one of our more ingenious linguistic inventions: were we philosophers in scholastic medieval times we might use it to open a debate on the problem of universals. What comes first, the individual item—or the generic term; the myriad of plants, animals, stones, mountains and clouds—or the landscape? Without the concept of “landscape” we, or at least we urban dwellers, would be unable to see and categorize our environment. To see does not suffice alone for perception—a babe in arms sees but he does not perceive. Gradually he learns to distinguish significant objects from among the thousands of impressions he is exposed to: he recognizes foodstuffs, potential playthings and possible obstacles. Yet most of it leaves him indifferent. A person whose livelihood derives from agriculture creates a similar cognitive model: the fruit 213

here is ripe, there it is not; this is good soil, that is poor; the neighbor’s corn is higher than mine, but his vines have not taken as well as ours have. It is a form of perception based on vested interests. The urban dweller’s perception is accordingly “disinterested,” which is to say, he does not expect any profit; he moves around the countryside like a tourist in search of confirmation that the landscape looks either as he imagines it to look, or as his schooling and tourism propaganda have prefabricated it in his mind’s eye. His enjoyment of landscape lies in the sense that those images and turns of phrase acquired in the course of our cultural history—from poetry and painting as well as from more lowbrow forms of culture such as cinema, TV and tourism brochures, and the covers of cheap novels—are made manifest. A culturally coded pattern—the landscape—is vital to the urban dweller or to anyone else alienated from agricultural labor, for it facilitates his ability to read an unfamiliar rural environment. So we see now, that the term landscape includes everything within any given environment. On the one hand, it takes a certain agrarian economic system that can put its stamp on a place and, beyond that, it requires that this singular phenomenon born of economic and natural circumstance be rendered visible by literature and art. Worpswede¹ provides us with an historical example of that which I caricatured in my opening words: the intact landscape and the native born that work it, plus those pioneering tourists who tend to blend their own presence out of the landscape, and who even kick up a fuss at the mere sight of other tourists who (they claim) are bound to drive away the locals, or at the least turn them

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A small town in Lower Saxony, Germany, popular in the late nineteenth century among artists such as Paula Modersohn Becker and Rainer Maria Rilke. It is still a popular artists’ retreat.

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into waitresses and kiosk-keepers. Worpswede still thrives today on this image created in 1890, an image that now barely corresponds to reality, for not only has tourism come to dominate the local economy but the entire local economy has changed: peat is no longer in demand, the swamps have been drained, and intensive agriculture geared to EEC² demands has won the upper hand. For instance, substantial areas of heath are used now to soak up hen dung from local poultry factories. The question as to what landscape is, and which guidelines one might best follow in order to keep a landscape “intact” is historically determined. We know that the origins of landscape lie in classical poetry: in the charming place, the imaginary Arcadia, where a shepherd cups a handful of water from a fresh spring, in the shade of a bush. Greek and Roman poets peddled this image to the people of Athens and Rome at a time when the latter’s only remaining connection to the countryside was the fact that the state had slaves cultivate cereals there, then transport them to the city. A revival of precisely these forms of landscape set in, the moment English capitalists began to create mock-Arcadian landscapes in their actual parks and gardens. Nevertheless, these eighteenthcentury Englishmen and likewise their continental prophet Rousseau differed from our modern-day tourist in that they were well aware of the artificiality of their interventions. We cite in this regard the scene in Rousseau’s novel Julie; or the New Héloise, in which Julie tells her Saint-Preux of the efforts to be countenanced when undertaking to create nature—which is to say, our imagined intact landscape—artificially. Today, when people talk of their desire to

2 The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community (EEC, now EU) in 1957. 215

maintain landscapes by artificial means—and landscape here always denotes agrarian modes of production—then one must bear in mind this point in Rousseau’s work, at which he gives the lie to his much quoted, superficial “Back to nature.” Let us take another look at an epoch marked by a quite different perception of the landscape, namely the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when preservation of “truly natural landscapes” became something of a rallying cry. National parks came into existence at this time, possibly the most extreme example of which was the Swiss National Park of Grisons Canton. Such parks encompassed areas no longer cultivated by mankind but abandoned instead to the elements and to natural processes. Yet even an area left in its “natural” state is by nature a highly artificial construct. The point of departure here is a concept unlikely to have dawned on eighteenth-century landscape gardeners, namely Darwin’s concept of free selection and the survival of the fittest. While a landscaped park offers a picture of seemingly natural harmony, the national park offers a picture of seemingly natural struggle. There on the tree line stand lonely warriors, battling with the wind; there the avalanche roars into the valley, tearing a herd of chamois along with it; and there is where the valiant, hardy alpine flora is meant to prove its strength, unharmed by haymaking and grazing.—Yet that is precisely what it fails to do. The much-proclaimed diversity of alpine flora is part of a system of husbandry based on seasonal grazing and wild haymaking. When this type of agricultural activity ceases—be it by order of conservationists, on account of the use of more modern production techniques such as fertilizers and combine harvesters, or simply because the cultivation of alpine slopes eventually proves unviable—alpine flora vanishes with it. The valiant alpine flowers prove not to be the fittest after all, and are vanquished first by grasses, then by shrubs. Total protection served in 216

this case neither to preserve biodiversity nor to preserve the typical alpine landscape, but led instead to plant successions with which natural scientists of the day had never reckoned. So where are these reflections leading? I come now to three points by which I hope to demonstrate that aesthetics and ecology are more closely connected than one thinks; and that two things suffer whenever this connection is not considered, namely the natural regeneration of resources, and fulfillment of the observer’s expectations of the landscape. Each example revolves around the production of alleged naturalness. I begin with a critique of conventional gardening, in particular of that undertaken by the city parks department. A basic premise here, in this era of total agriculture under EEC constraints, is that little of the countryside remains available for spontaneous vegetation. It is therefore not really far-fetched to assert that “natural nature” momentarily needs the city in order to survive. So-called weeds number among the biological reserves with which we might later manage to recultivate abandoned agricultural land. Yet our city parks department treats weeds as the enemy. It goes about its business of flowers and lawns as if compelled to imitate modern agricultural practice: true, anything it harvests is cast aside as waste yet, prior to that, it is optimized. Now, that used to be a fairly harmless matter given that city gardening was limited to only a few parks. Planning and speculation, in particular on the city margins, assured that tracts of land—derelict buildings, designated building lots awaiting a buyer, and land lying around unsold because it had been overvalued so as to boost the market—were always available for spontaneous vegetation. Bad planning and real estate speculation insofar make great conservationists: they guarantee the dysfunctionalism that is indispensable to the preservation of healthy weeds. Today however, city gardeners find all that disorderly, and are extending the scope of their influ217

ence far beyond the parks to the entire urban area; they mow, lay asphalt, and sow seed in zones where toddlers and teenagers previously would have played on empty lots. Naturalness here seems to be understood as a continuum of unused and unusable areas, as endless lawns and roses that garnish traffic with a touch of green. The bad thing about this development, and this brings me to my second point, is how gardening wreaks destruction on the information conveyed by a landscape. Children—and hence tomorrow’s adults—speak the language of natural vegetation. Hoary plaintain, wall barley, chicory and nettles alert them to whether they can play undisturbed in a place, climb over the fence and make a fire, or expect an angry owner to arrive and instantly lay claim to the land himself. Vegetation is information; gardening, hence the act of putting vegetation in order, is consequently the destruction of information. It clouds issues of authority and responsibility. This destruction of information swept through villages for many years in its most virulent form under the watchword, “Unser Dorf soll schöner werden.”³ The titivation of our villages was achieved by ticking boxes. Accordingly, whatever was unique disappeared; generalities ran rife. A prize jury knew exactly how a beautiful village should look: the village fountain is shut down, and its basin is planted with begonias and geraniums, and surrounded by a lawn on which stand two park benches. The lawn is perfectly manicured, so no path is ever trodden to the benches. No villager or occasional visitor ever dares take a seat on the benches because they emit an

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The national competition “Our village is to grow even lovelier” was launched in 1961. It was open to villages with a population of up to 3,000 inhabitants, which competed for the title “Loveliest Village.” In 1997, the competition was renamed “Unser Dorf hat Zukunft” (Our Village Has A Future).

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aura of having never been used. Trampled paths are frowned on anyhow. The children now cannot tell whether or not they may step on the grass, and therefore don’t—or at least not when an adult is watching—simply to be on the safe side. Naturalness is understood here as the obliteration of all traces of human existence by means of perfect gardening. The destruction of information also plagues entire branches of the tourism industry. The creation of so-called nature reserves, which nowadays have little in common with the National Park’s Darwinist approach, consists primarily in establishing a network of hiking trails. These trails are marked out in such a way as to render redundant any natural sense of orientation vis-à-vis prominent features of the landscape: the objective is quite clearly to make the urban dweller forget how to find his way around a place on his own. Today, there are regions of the Federal Republic of Germany in which the Forestry Commission itself creates a dysfunctional landscape: it propagates landscape images that actually reduce the viability of forestry yet somehow correspond to the images of forests allegedly entertained by hikers. Naturalness is to be read therefore in this context both as the illusory absence of an agriculture economy, and as the introduction into this “wilderness” of human beings who must be constantly informed and instructed. So one asks oneself: what is the true objective when endeavoring to manufacture so-called naturalness? The National Park concept has been downsized to the biotope: the tiniest lots are fenced off and left to their own allegedly natural devices. The result is possibly a reduction in species diversity, and the emergence of plant successions that arouse little interest. Yet, as our example from the city margins has shown, biodiversity thrives best on disruption and change. And thus the question arises as to the true objective of socalled ecology. If the objective is to preserve biodiversity then one 219

would have to create an artificial disruption whenever peat-cutting and real estate speculation disappear—which is ridiculous. If the objective is to preserve certain species then interventions are called for, yet the “naturalness” of such interventions is rather doubtful. Today, many kinds of animal are marooned; the only trout to be found in mountain streams have been stocked there; and zoo parks pride themselves on preserving animals that have become extinct in the wild. A third objective could be to create stable and typical final states such as steppes, deserts, moors, marshes and forests. Such final states may well be natural yet they generally evince limited biodiversity, and are boring. Only outright catastrophes can guarantee the survival of a myriad of species in these final states: forest fires, flash floods, avalanches and the like. The longer we reflect on the ecology and aesthetics issue, the greater the paradoxes we find ourselves facing, whichever approach we take. Ecology is caught up currently in a debate about its objectives while the aesthetic dimension, namely how nature is perceived and represented, is in deep crisis, the crisis of the modern-day art of gardening. What triggered this development? What has changed in our world, our society, and caused such seemingly normal concepts as naturalness and horticultural beauty to be shaken to their roots? Society has been based historically on the principle that nature is there to be exploited. Society understands itself as a productive force, and production proceeds namely by exploiting natural raw materials, or processes for the manufacture of commodities. The natural sciences are also geared to production, and harness all types of knowledge in order to improve methods of mining, methods of breeding—methods of exploitation, in brief. A clear border used to run between the exploiter and the exploited natural world: here is society with its production and distribution processes, and there is nature, 220

the arena of exploitation. Nobody ever suspected that nature in turn would have an impact on society. Yet the catchwords environment and environmental hazard herald this precisely. We are the first generation to witness the natural world, hitherto our arena of exploitation, now rise up in turn, and seriously menace the exploiters. And this means not only that we must exploit resources more sparingly, as we have done at times in the past, but also that the absolute limits of exploitation are now etched so clearly on the horizon as to effect social change. Society and exploited nature today comprise an intricately networked system of effects and counter-effects: human impact on nature, formerly a one-way street, today runs smack up against nature’s impact on mankind. As Ulrich Beck explains graphically in his book Risk Society,⁴ nature is no longer something external but rather, an integral part of the networked society. So our society is the first to have to come to grips with the idea that nature is part of the social process, and not an object to be exploited. Nature as such is invisible; it is perceived only when served up in some way—in the form of an arbitrary representation as landscape, in the form of artificial representations as a garden. In this respect too, our generation is the first to find itself in a novel situation. Our perception of landscape rests traditionally on the opposition of town and countryside. The landscape, as we have noted, denotes the picture that the urban dweller—he who will never soil his fingers with soil—has concocted of the agricultural realm beyond the city walls. Today, this distinction no longer holds true. We live in the metropolis. The metropolis is, on the one hand, the geographical dispersion in space of an endless succession of fragments of both the

4 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Sage, London 1992. First published in German in 1986. 221

city and the countryside; and on the other, an inextricable tangle of urban and rural functions. Where does the urban dweller live? In the countryside preferably, if he can afford to—from whence he drives daily to work in the city. Where does the farmer live? Here in Switzerland, most farmers still live in the countryside yet in Holland, for instance, that need no longer be the case. Someone who cultivates vegetables or tulips can just as easily commute every morning from his urban home to his agrarian workplace. Our forest dwellings are also a thing of the past. The forester does not live in the forest; he just visits it occasionally when not at work in his office. Hence our society is on the threshold of a new way of perceiving its physical environment, one that no longer rests on the opposition of town and country. Town is everywhere, and countryside is everywhere; and for the planner it is increasingly a matter of rendering this more or less urban, or that more or less rural component of a settlement somehow typical and identifiable. Just how do we render visible the fact that something like nature still exists in the middle of our metropolis? Today, city parks departments attempt to save the image of nature by transposing trafficgarnish greenery from the slip roads to the city center: through pedestrian zones, right up to City Hall and the courthouse, and along hospital corridors, they present indifferent foliage in an endless succession of uniform concrete tubs. This careful distribution of greenery provokes a creeping sense that the city is becoming ever more unnatural, and ever more stony. It is precisely in this respect that the art of gardening has lessons to learn—or perhaps it must relearn the lessons of the historical art of gardening with which the designers of the French or the English garden were still familiar. The French garden was a well-staged exposition of the contrast between the town (or the palace) and the surrounding forest. Thanks to a sophisticated system by which materials and meanings were re222

versed—trimmed hedges represented walls, avenues full of statues represented vegetation—the observer became attuned to the fact that he was progressing from the palace to the forest, a forest where the duke rode to hounds and slew the deer; and hence in which the principle of man’s struggle against nature, and man’s exploitation of nature were given ritualized expression. At a time when the infinite reaches of the forest had been curtailed by agrarian workers’ land clearance and introduction of crops such as cereals and wool, there emerged among this rationalized and “geometricized” agricultural terrain a patch of natural wilderness: the English garden. It too, is rooted in a paradoxical transition, namely from the exploited landscape to a purely symbolic representation of its archaic function as the realm of shepherds.—We see that both styles of garden, the formal French and the natural English, are rooted in a paradox. They are in dialogue with the environment: here, with the forest, and there, with enclosed agricultural land. Here therefore, is our lesson for the gardener: greenery becomes visible only when it is discussed; when it raises and renders tangible the issue of the hazards that greenery faces. That we pursue ecological gardening today seems to me to be a matter of course. However, ecological gardening is not yet a means to represent nature, or to render it perceptible. The ways and means of this new art of gardening must first be developed. I presume artists will drive this development rather more forcefully than professional gardeners or landscape architects will. And I can draw on the example of an actual landscape intervention undertaken by Joseph Beuys in the years 1982–87, in the city of Kassel: his renowned work “7000 Oaks.”⁵

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The full work title is “7000 Eichen—Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung” (7000 Oaks—City Forestation instead of City Administration). The project was developed in the framework of documenta 7. 223

“One cannot see the forest for the trees” is a proverb that holds more than a grain of truth. It really is not at all easy to see a forest; for, if we are standing within it, we see the trees that surround us, some tree trunks, a few crowns swaying above our heads—but we do not see the forest as such. So let us therefore leave the forest and take to the open fields. Doubtless we now see something of the forest, its edges; but we cannot tell whether it consists only of a line of trees or continues within, whether we are in fact on the edge of a really large forest. It takes several thousand trees to make a forest, but can one see them? Can one see 7000 trees? The forest is evidently an idea, a concept we must construct in our mind’s eye. Only with the aid of a map can we establish whether we are on the edge of a forest, or faced simply with a strip of woodland only a few meters deep. How therefore, Beuys presumably asked himself, does one ever see 7000 trees? And in a city moreover, where a forest between the streets and houses and gardens is inconceivable. And yet Beuys called his work “The Forestation of Kassel.” It is well known that Beuys had a basalt block half-buried alongside each of his 7000 trees. Before the action began, all 7000 basalt blocks were piled up on Friedrichsplatz in Kassel. Every resident of Kassel saw them. Then the blocks were gradually taken away, to join the 7000 oaks being planted. So now, whenever we see a tree accompanied by a basalt block, near our apartment or workplace in Kassel, we know there are 7000 such trees. And 7000 trees make a whole forest. So there is a whole forest in Kassel—but the forest was made visible, not by planting 7000 trees alongside one another, which in any case would never be perceived as a forest, but rather, by encouraging us to put two and two together in our mind’s eye, and hence to deduce the number of trees. It is an intellectual, artificial and artistic forest yet it is a forest rendered visible in the environment in which modern man is destined to live: the metropolis. 224

A landscape intervention undertaken by Joseph Beuys in the years 1982–87, in the city of Kassel: 7000 Oaks—City Forestation instead of City Administration). Before the action began, all 7000 basalt blocks were piled up on Friedrichsplatz in Kassel. Every resident of Kassel saw them. Then the blocks were gradually taken away, to join the 7000 oaks being planted. Photo: Annemarie Burckhardt

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A Walk in Second Nature (1992) To learn how nature as seen in our mind’s eye translates into the image we call landscape is a perennial object of our research. A walker’s mind and his constantly roaming eye together conjure a seemingly stable image. In a broader sense, the walk accomplishes an even greater miracle: a chain of insights interrupted by distances merges ultimately in a single impression. We go along a road, across a forest, a glade, see a stream, the valley narrows, and eventually, from a hilltop, a broad panorama opens up; and by the time we arrive home we have seen a landscape. We can now describe how the area around Kassel looks, or that west of Schlettstadt or in Montecatini. How, namely? It looks typical, typical of each respective area. Here one ought perhaps digress, and speak of the geographers’ landscape. This is not the same as that of the landscape lovers, walkers, tourists and landscape painters, although some links exist between them. One such link is all that is “typical.” Do you remember geography lessons in school? The white cliffs of Dover are typical of England’s eastern coast; homecoming coal miners in flat caps are typical of the Ruhr District… Don’t laugh. This concept of the typical may have consequences, for example whenever geographers become planners. But let us return to the walk and its history. Born in the English landscape garden, it found its feet in the Scottish highlands then later in the foothills of the Alps, until a new invention—the railroad—triggered its crisis. The railroad reduced the typical region to the destination. It brought the tourists to those hotels where the photo in the brochure, and on the picture postcards on sale there, 226

Landscape-theoretical watercolor drawing by Lucius Burckhardt, untitled. The atomic power station becomes part of an idyllic landscape…

corresponded exactly to the section of landscape on display beyond the windows at least of the more expensive rooms. If one threw open the curtains in the morning, one saw the Giessbach Falls, the Matterhorn or the Sainte Victoire. These destinations represent large regions in the “typical” way, or the early days of nations even. A connection exists between German unification and the image of the island of Helgoland, between the modern Swiss Confederation and the hotel windows in Schwyz and Brunnen. Do we need a brief digression on the topic of why we did not use to be bored of seeing always one and the same landscape? Of course we also played cards and plotted schemes, but the answer to the riddle occurred to me during a stay on the Furka: the 227

In 1988, Lucius Burckhardt accepted an invitation to the 17th Triennale in Milan. A mock travel agency offering “The Voyage to Tahiti” was set up in the “Landscape” section of the show. Photo: Martin Schmitz

weather used to take care of changing the scenery, for we had not yet established that one-sided relationship with the weather such as is shaped by the eternally blue sky of our travel brochures. In Switzerland and elsewhere, a large number of the old hotels at tourist destinations have now vanished: I can name Rigigipfel— demolished; Furka—demolished; Giessbach—closed down. The hotels at these destinations are in decline while tourist numbers continue to grow. Today’s tourists stay at hotels between destinations—for the walk of old has gained a new lease of life, namely in the form of the round trip by car. The round trip by car has a larger perimeter. While the walk explores one hill to the west of Schlettstadt, the trip by car covers 228

At the 17th Triennale in Milan: When Armstrong landed on the moon, he radioed his first impressions to the earth. What did he see on the moon?—A landscape, of course; one, for which he need never have flown to the moon. A rock glacier, the Furka Pass, or the Colorado Canyon would have done the trick just as well. Photo: Martin Schmitz

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the Vosges, the Provence and Tuscany. Consequently, the landscape experience is abstracted to a far greater degree. By the end of his long weekend, the motorist knows “what Burgundy looks like.” Nowhere in Burgundy looks how he imagines Burgundy to look. He is convinced that the people of Burgundy have completely destroyed their beautiful Burgundy. He alone managed to construct an image from the typical remains. In the 1960s, when suddenly everyone owned a car, and used to set off on a tour during the vacation season, the bells tolled for the extended walk. Civil engineers declared that it was necessary to channel traffic in order to avoid traffic jams, and they built the highway, and thereby created the very traffic jams from which they hoped to protect us. Once the highway was built, the problem of destinations raised its head, just as it had with the railroad. The destination must once again be typical because it represents a region; but, as we said earlier, it must be typical to a greater degree of abstraction. The Matterhorn may represent the Alps, and the island of Helgoland Germany—but only very few tourist locations are constituted thus. Since the image of the region, of Tuscany, of Burgundy, exists only in tourists’ imaginations and not in reality, the tourist location must endeavor to live up to this great degree of abstraction. Often this is achieved by adding a further round trip to the trip to the original destination: one goes to Meiringen only to depart from there on the “Three Passes Trip,” or the “Five Glaciers Tour;” and to Samaden to take the “Three Countries Tour,” which takes one over the Ofen Pass, the Stelvio and the Splügen. Five glaciers amount to the abstract essence of the single glacier. Nonetheless, the place one stays should also evince something of this universally typical flair. Of course there are the vernacular, regional types of architecture, alpine for instance, but they developed their characteristic style at a time when neither hotels, nor 230

large parking lots, nor swimming pools existed. So how might these huge buildings be made to look typical of their region? No role models exist, so it is a case of faking things without an original. In modern tourist architecture, the fake is the real thing because a real counterpart to the fake does not exist. It is possible therefore, that everything today is typical of everywhere; the style generated is that of ubiquitous regionalism. Once the tourist location has successfully resolved the problem of typical, regional architecture it then tends to free itself from any compulsion to provide the round trip or the “Three Passes Tour”— which deprive it of tourism revenue in fact. Is it not at all possible to merge all that is typically regional in a single location?—That requires a staged setting. The solution is an institution that combines the joys of an indoor swimming pool with a theme park that gives expression to all that is typical of the region. And since we can now pursue design completely free of local constraints, the region is the world. In an alpine hut on the tropical beach, we can enjoy Finnish health with Japanese philosophy. Without moving an inch, we experience the entire world in the form of a second nature.

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The Sermon (1994) I have chosen a motto for my sermon. It is from the Prophet Ezekiel, Chapter 36, Verse 26, and it says: “[…] I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”¹ It must be said that prophets, contrary to popular belief, do not predict the future. They don’t predict that I’ll hit the jackpot next year or have an accident. What prophets do have to say to society is both timeless and timely. We’ll return later to the verse’s timeless significance. Interpreted by the light of traditional church doctrine it means, mercy replaces the law, and the New Testament replaces the Old. We want to consider what a heart of flesh means for we who are alive today, and working at universities of applied science. To answer that, I’ll need to digress slightly. One skill that man possesses yet animals probably lack is the ability to plan. An animal reacts; it responds in a certain way to a given stimulus. Man also registers a stimulus, a nuisance or an impulse—yet he is able not only to react but also to plan a permanent countermeasure. This characteristic attains a professional dimension in the person of the engineer, and it is about him that we shall speak next. We’ll also reflect on how his skills can be taught and learned. Engineers come up with two types of blueprint: one type I call “the masterpiece,” the other “the neat solution.” The masterpiece ensues from an academic tradition, the neat solution from the polytechnics. The masterpiece is the work of a great master. He has

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“The Major Prophet Ezekiel 36 (KJV—King James Version).” Blue Letter Bible, 1996–2010.

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intuition, likewise an important human quality, namely that of summoning imaginative powers enough to be able to act and to plan, even in circumstances about which one is not adequately informed. The great master needs intuition when he is young, in order to forge great plans while carrying out the minor tasks entrusted to him. Gradually, in the course of his career, he gains that which he calls experience, and which we believe to be the first sign of his heart growing stony. Later in life, the master is given major tasks for which he delivers paltry solutions. Namely he draws on his experience, and concludes that whatever was right for small tasks will do equally well for large ones. To extrapolate thus gives rise to the gigantic failures of planning we know only too well, to Chandigarh, Brasilia, the Salk Institute and so forth. Therefore, when we ask here for a heart of flesh, we do so in order to avoid being paralyzed by past experience, to avoid feeling that we have nothing more to learn simply because we think, “I’ve done that, been there. This is how it’s done;” and, above all, in order to avoid telling our students, “What you’ve begun there will never do. I tried that once, and it didn’t work out.” Now we come to the polytechnic engineer and his neat solution. He, we have noted, is rooted in another tradition, that of the polytechnic school founded by Napoleon, who asked his engineers: How do we get our troops across the Rhine?—And the engineers answered, We build a bridge. The assignment is depoliticized in this way, and responsibility is clearly assigned. Napoleon gives the order and, if the bridge leads to war then because that is what Napoleon wishes. The engineers come up with the solution so they are to blame if the bridge collapses under the weight of the cannons. If the cannons fire on people the engineers remain innocent. In the 1960s, the technical approach ceded to a methodical one. The engineer applies the following formula: define the objective, analyze the problem, reach a conclusion, draw up the plan, imple233

ment it, and monitor how it functions. This, so they say, renders the chosen solution compatible with other economic or ecological processes. The fact is, however, that it is difficult to define the objective the minute one begins work on a task. In consequence, far too much data is collated for analysis, and cannot ultimately be put to use. That which goes by the name of conclusion is therefore an arbitrary dismissal of inconvenient information. To draw up a plan based on this conclusion is accordingly just as intuitive a matter as the traditional masterpiece. The plan is carried out to the letter, and monitored only far too late, when everything has been done. Neat solutions pollute our environment. I would mention the Aswan Dam which has destroyed the ecosystem underpinning irrigation in Egypt; or the World Bank’s construction of the Sardar Sarovar (Narmada) Dam in western India, which is currently displacing 260,000 small farmers; or the 2,400 pump stations likewise financed by the World Bank, which are meant to alleviate the impact of the irrigation system installed recently by engineers in the Indus estuary. The irrigation system has caused sea-salt that lay hitherto deep in the ground to permeate the topsoil and make it unfertile, so the salt water must now be pumped off. The available pumps were designed for freshwater however, and will rust within a few years. But no matter: nobody yet has any idea where the power to run 2,400 pumps is supposed to come from. Evidently the technicians behind neat solutions are always looking ahead to their next task. They follow the law Meadow described, which claims that to redress a problem always leads to a bigger problem. It is clear, moreover, that a neat solution doesn’t deliver a real solution, for this is not at all possible—it merely redistributes the problems. The engineer thus never manages to turn misfortune into good fortune but only to allocate benefits and disadvantages to different people than before. 234

If we ask here for a heart of flesh, then also for the sake of rules or planning methods which put the neat solution in context. In my opinion one shouldn’t go about pretending to adore decision-making. It isn’t necessary to decide everything today. Our successors are not dumber than we are. Rather, they can see further into the future. We may therefore postpone a few decisions. We may also reach soft decisions, which can be revised if planning proves to have been mistaken. Even completed buildings need not imply a precise solution, but should remain convertible, able to serve freshly defined purposes. We should always work on an appropriate scale such as 1:1 at best or, at worst, 1 : 1,000 or 1 : 10,000. We should experiment, but in a way such that we can break off the experiment. We should always remain aware that it is not happiness we bring but rather, a change for the better, for some, and a change for the worse, for others. This is why we should learn to resolve conflicts with empathy. Let us consider teaching, too. Students should be allowed to make mistakes. Making mistakes is the only way to learn. That is why they should be allowed to take on tasks they can fail at: not only textbook exercises that end well, or planning proposals that the professor’s assistant has already trialed, or drawings that lack content but are accomplished to perfection. This is the reason why we haven’t instigated the Bauhaus foundation course in our new Design Faculty. We don’t want an “apprenticeship” that proceeds step by step, whereby one is told at every step, “You may take the next step only when you have accomplished this or that to perfection,” and “Only when you know this will you be allowed to know that.” At our school one is allowed also not to know—and to act nevertheless. And only now begins the actual sermon, with this point precisely: the stony heart presumes to know what it knows, whereas we are dealing with not knowing. 235

Now, this “not knowing” is an ancient term, and classical philosophers said long ago that, “I know that I know nothing” or “It is not given to man to attain complete knowledge.” In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this approach to not knowing implied acknowledgement of Our Lord, who is omniscient on our behalf. The new factor in our day is: the term is devoid of meaning. Our “not knowing” is not a temporary state; it neither refers to a potentially broader science, nor is it a sign of modesty in the face of a comprehensive system of knowledge, or of religion. Nietzsche’s new message “God is dead” is a metaphor for the loss of any possibility of seeing our ignorance, our “not knowing” in relation to greater, intact knowledge. Our knowledge is not like the shards of a broken vase that might still be mended or, at the least, imagined still to be whole. There is no vase, and our shards cannot be made whole because they do not fit together. And there we have the stony heart’s solutions we know only too well: either to act as if nothing is going on, and to herald security even if it actually no longer exists; or to take doubt and skepticism so far as to suggest there might be a basis worth purging, one on which we might erect a new edifice of knowledge. The heart of flesh goes forth from the devastated remains of its own fragmented knowledge in the midst of greater rubble. Lyotard calls these “narratives.” I would now like to mention three such fragments or “narratives.” All of us running around at technical schools take a scientific view of the world, one that suggests natural processes are embedded in systems, and that all these systems are networked in turn to create a great, cosmic system. And this last certainty is precisely what we have lost; yet we are nonetheless incapable of abandoning our idea of it. Perhaps we obscure the image of this crystalline system, as Deleuze and Guattari do, and make of it a disordered rhizome, 236

or a system no longer transparent. But nothing takes us beyond the concept we have of a system. And here, the hard heart springs back into action. The catastrophes I described earlier occurred because either we or the engineers went so far as to apply our concept of the systematic course of things to the act of planning, and thus to become system builders ourselves. That the world constitutes a system is a metaphor; one moreover, for which there is no guarantee. We cannot mistake this image for reality and tinker away at it. Another narrative that we cling to nonetheless is Marxism. This too is a narrative insofar as it explains the way of the world partially and incompletely. The progression from Marxism to dialectical materialism and other universal models of the sort is nothing but folklore. Yet this by no means invalidates the explanatory power of Marxism—a term I take to include the revisionists Luxemburg, Hilferding, and those on the barricades in 1968. We should not believe however, that Marxism might change the world. To believe that, and to use Marxism to that end, is to show one’s stony heart. Yet our heart of flesh cannot do without Marxism as an additional narrative. And finally, one of the greatest narratives we have is our Christian religion. For our fathers, it too was a means of explaining the world and they, hard-hearted as they were, consequently became men of great faith and men of great doubt. They wrote books, inquiring as to whether one may keep the Christian faith without believing in the resurrection of Christ. Such intellectual acts of prowess are alien to us. Neither our belief nor our doubt is that strong. Gianni Vattimo recommends “feeble thinking” (il pensiero debole), and I second that in recommending feeble faith. Christ has risen for my sake— but I have a hard time believing it. And this ability of mine, to live in such discrepancy, is implicit in my plea to leave me my heart of flesh. I will never be either a true believer or a true skeptic. 237

And, in conclusion, I’d like to make one more personal comment: on behalf of the government of Thuringia and in cooperation with others, I, in my capacity as founding dean, have founded the Design Faculty at the University of Architecture and Engineering, here in Weimar. The act of founding the Faculty amounts to an incomplete blueprint, a blueprint that I now abandon with a soft heart, a heart of flesh. I ask others to assume the creative task of filling it with life, and I undertake to understand whatever my successors do. One cannot hold onto a thing until it turns out how one would like it to be. This too is an aspect of the heart of flesh.

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Strollological Observations on Perception of the Environment and the Tasks Facing Our Generation (1996) Aesthetic aspects of the environment have never before concerned people to the extent they do today. Never before were so many committees preoccupied by permit procedures; never were such powerful organizations at work to protect the environment, the landscape, monuments, and a sense of local identity; never was it so difficult to erect a new building in a historical location, or on a landscape still bearing traces of earlier gardens or agriculture. Yet despite all these safeguards, procedures, and turned down construction proposals, complaints about the “uglyfication” of the environment and the destruction of the landscape are growing louder by the day. My science, which attempts to analyze this phenomenon, is called strollology. Strollology examines the sequences in which a person perceives his surroundings. For it is not as if we find ourselves “beamed” all of a sudden to Piccadilly Circus or to the Cancelleria; instead we find our way there, one way or the other. We leave our hotel on the Via Nomentana or the Pincio, catch a bus or flag a cab—younger people go on foot. We check out the streets, cross squares, stroll along the Corso, perhaps take in the Palazzo Vidone, Linottte and St. Andrea della Valle, and are thus sufficiently prepared for the Cancelleria to also fall into place. A parachutist who happened to land among the endless cars parked in the narrow alley in front of the Cancelleria would gain a quite different impression of the architecture than we do. In the old world, the intact world, any context explored strollologically served as an explanatory complement to the actual object 239

Voilà ce qu’on peut dire: nos bâtiments vont bien partout! This much one can say: our buildings work wherever one puts them! Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

of a visit. For example, the Cancelleria is not situated just anywhere such as in a park, on a hillside or on a large square flanked by two fountains. And if the nineteenth century had ever erected an imitation Cancelleria in this way, then the context selected, its driveways, flowerbeds and fountains, would have explained the building as a Gründerzeit¹ replica. A building supported thus by its context had a relatively easy time of expressing itself. And much has been clarified already: we are in Rome, in the Cardinals’ Palace district; or we are on a nineteenth-century boulevard in a commercial and administrative district; or we are in a park whose genesis we are able to date, and are

1

The “Founder Epoch” refers to the early phase of industrialization and economic growth in Germany and Austria, before the stock market crash of 1873.

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“I am a chapel on the landscape.” Yesterday and today. Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

arriving now at the palace. The architectural statement, the architects’ message can be limited under such circumstances to the narrow field of stylistic contrivance; the architect can fulfill the stylistic ideal or, to the Classicists’ horror and to Robert Venturi’s delight, deviate from it. Either message is certain to be clear to the visitor, for his stroll has equipped him to read facades. Let us speak as strollologists also of the landscape for a moment. In the nineteenth century, the age of railroads and terminals, the landscape shrank to a postcard cliché: this is Ostend, and this 241

A mobile bus stop would make life easier for people dependent on public transport, but has only been realized so far in form of a seminar held at Kassel University. Photo: Helmut Aebischer

Scheveningen, Interlaken or the isle of Mont Saint-Michel. The stroll was reduced thus to the choice of a holiday destination, the purchase of a ticket, and the rental of a hotel room with a view to match the postcard. The railroad journey was in a sense also a strollological context. Yet experience of the landscape prior to the Golden Age of railroads was a very different matter: the way was as important as the goal. Perhaps a person would have left town, 242

In the course of the seminar “Perception & Traffic,” led by Lucius Burckhardt and Helmut Holzapfel in 1991, people walked along a busy road, holding windshields in front of their faces. The lack of the protective shell of a car prompted a peculiar perception of “place.” Photo: Bertram Weisshaar

on foot or on horseback, via a brick city gateway, seen strangers at their work, forded a river, entered a forest or climbed a hill. He may have chosen another route back to his home town where, in the evening, tired and weary, he described the landscape to his dear ones: that is how things are in Saint Germain, or in the Jura near Besancon, and the forest of Fontainebleau is like this. Much of that which the stroller related at home he had never really seen, and much of that which he had seen was omitted from his account. The image he conjured was a collage of previous knowledge mixed with fragments garnered along his way. The outcome was nevertheless certain knowledge—he now knew the forest of Fontainebleau. 243

In 1987, “The Voyage to Tahiti” led to an abandoned military training area in Kassel. During the walk, an actor read aloud texts by George Forster, who was on Tahiti with Captain Cook in 1772. This served as a soundtrack while people gazed upon the Dönche Nature Reserve, a place for which the descriptions of a paradise isle were equally apt. Photo: Klaus Hoppe

Did he find it beautiful? Of course: for everything he saw of agriculture and natural growth on his travels was beautiful. Poetry since the days of Theocritus and Horace, and the paintings of Neapolitan and Dutch Masters had prepared him for this beauty, had schooled his eye. And, moreover, he regarded this landscape with disinterest, in Immanuel Kant’s sense of the term, meaning he did not seek to derive from it any personal benefit. He was in search neither of mushrooms nor of a suitable place to till the soil. The urban dweller’s lack of familiarity with the rural landscape was precisely what enabled him to appreciate its aesthetic qualities. 244

“The ZEBRAcrossing”—during a stroll through Kassel in 1993, the available zebra and intersection light crossings were ignored. Use was made instead of a portable striped zebra carpet (Gerhard Lang), rolled out so as to allow a six-lane highway to be crossed at any selected spot. The action drew attention to the disappropriation of city dwellers’ right to walk. Photo: Angela Siever

And now I wish to describe why and to what extent our generation is the first to find itself in a novel situation vis-à-vis the object observed, be it a building or a landscape. And the explanation is once again strollological. It is not objects themselves that have changed, but the context. I’ll name here some of the changes. One actually does arrive in front of many an interesting building in much the same way as our parachutist, but from below, from the subway. I have traveled from the Gare de l’Est to the Louvre station, and find myself now in the Rue de Rivoli. Where am I? What is that? And how rapidly the picture changes: now I am in the courtyard of the Louvre, or in the Tuileries Gardens. I am at a loss without my prior knowledge, my city map or my travel guide. 245

I park my car and head for the city forest. Gas stations, factories (abandoned ones mostly), a second-hand rubber dealer with a stock of old tires, a farmer on a tractor who is spraying his field with a white powder or vapor and, finally, trees. Are they valiant warriors, bowed by the tide of time, or is the forest here dying? And whose fault may that be? Possibly mine, it is said, insofar as I drive a car and have a centrally heated home. And who drinks the water from beneath the sprayed field? Again, I do. So I am implicated in what is happening around me after all; and by no means alien or disinterested, as Kant would have it. Another example: let’s say I go to the park, back to the Tuileries Gardens. In historic times one used to cross the built-up city, the city in which every last square meter was exploited, and in which the king used his great wealth to plant a green oasis, the Tuileries Gardens. So I walk through the “stone city,”² cut through the Palace, and find myself gazing in delight upon this precious public park. Yet, the Tuileries Gardens have come to present a quite other aspect since the nineteenth century: we come now from the Champs Elysées, cut through the grounds that were laid out for the World Exhibitions, search between the Seine and Place de la Concorde for a way to reach the entrance, and ultimately find ourselves in a place not so very unlike the previous grounds. The experience of “I am now setting foot in the park” has been lost. And now let us leave these anyhow still classical situations and take a look around those infinite zones we might best describe as “metropolises.” These are the zones in which the city strives to be the countryside and where everyone, whether building a home or

2 A reference to Werner Hegemann’s book Das steinerne Berlin (Berlin of Stone), Kiepenheuer, Berlin 1930. 246

a factory, surrounds himself with as much greenery as possible. The same is true of the zones in which the countryside aspires to be urban, and in which every small town mayor is in search of an investor prepared to make him a gift of a tower block or, at the least, of a railroad station with an underground section, a pedestrian level, and a multistory parking lot.—And now, my discovery: in these zones of our environment which the majority of people inhabit or visit, the strollological context that fosters understanding of what we see there has disintegrated completely. Therefore we are the first generation of people for whom the aesthetic experience does not occur automatically. Instead, the place itself must explain its aesthetic intent. When we create a park, the park can no longer rely on the fact that we proceed from the town, through a gate, to a green space, and hence know we are visiting the park. Rather, the park must now substantiate by means of its interior design the extent to which it contrasts with its surroundings. So, without us even taking a single step, it must give us the strollological explanation: You have come from the city to the park. The same holds true also for architecture. Architecture can no longer rely on us grasping its greater significance thanks to its location alone, and so must assert its singularity by deviating slightly from the stylistic ideal. For instance, a new bank must now introduce a slightly variant nuance to the banking district. Now, an acclimatized suburban cube that has been incorporated in a partly green, partly concrete-braced artificial plane must fall back on a conveniently ambivalent statement: I am in the suburbs but I am resolutely urban; I am a bank, but a bank like no other… To reiterate: we are the first generation to have to construct a new aesthetic, a strollological aesthetic. Strollological, for the simple reason that the way or route to a place can no longer be taken for granted, but must be reproduced in, or represented by, 247

the object itself. The multilayered message that a building or, in another case, gardens or a cultivated landscape must deliver can no longer be supplied by a flash of genius on the part of its creator. The enterprising architect’s statement, “Where there is no place, I will create a place myself ” is not enough: there are enough such aesthetic cactuses dotted about already and indeed, it is they which have contributed so decisively to the much lamented deterioration of the natural environment. What is required here rather, is design intelligence, intelligence that conveys a dual message: information about the context as well as about the object in question.

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Wasteland As Context. Is There Any Such Thing As The Postmodern Landscape? (1998) Everything is growing more ugly by the day—on that we all agree. We discovered a beach three years ago, on a remote, rocky bay, and went there time and again, with the children. We swam, they searched for seashells, and we never saw a soul all day long. But we returned there last year, and what did we find but a half-built hotel. And in the Alps, two summers ago, we discovered a sunny slope with a whole range of alpine flora: gentians, alpine asters, and lobelia. But this year the struts for a cable lift have been installed, so all the flora will soon be crushed beneath skis and snow ploughs. Don’t we all have similar stories to tell when we return home from a vacation? Is the “uglyfication” of our landscape a one-way street? Our grandparents had a much better time of it. When they left the city they found themselves in a beautiful rural landscape and, if they traveled even further a-field, could enjoy magnificent beaches or mountain vistas. Yet we too still have it good, for we manage now and then to discover a lovely spot, and we keep quiet about it; and even when that spot has gone to the dogs, there is a good chance we will find a new one. But how will things look for our offspring? Will a thing of beauty be lost to them forever? Strong and influential movements protest the “uglyfication” of our environment: lobby groups for the protection of local identity, the protection of the landscape, the protection of the natural environment, and the protection of cultural heritage. Remarkably, all these lobby groups were founded, not recently, but by our grandparents: “protection of ” lobby groups were invented sometime be249

tween 1900 and 1910. Evidently, the impression that everything is increasingly ugly was even stronger then than it is today. Yet we like to think everything in those days was still lovely, and that there was probably little need for the “protection of ” lobby groups. Will our grandchildren think the same about us? Will they say: “Our grandparents still had it so good. There were still so many beautiful places, back then; and is it not strange, how upset they all were about environmental degradation?” Today, we will consider these changes, this apparently one-way development. Without doubt, that thing we describe generally as landscape is changing. Whether or how one might pinpoint the nature of this change is hard to say, for landscape is a quite tricky word, an interpretation of our surroundings. That which is changing might better be described as “tangible space.” Evidently, tangible space used to be in a state such that we called it a beautiful landscape, but we no longer rate it so highly owing to its present alteration. Or do we? Perhaps there are changes now underway that make tangible space look lovelier than ever. It must have been beautiful at some time or other, on its way from primeval Germanic forest to the present-day pig and chicken factories. The decision to describe a certain stage of agricultural development as “beautiful” and as “landscape” is historically determined therefore, which is to say, it is a construct created by past generations, and hence one presumably subject to change and development. That the more remote and extreme instances of agricultural economy such as one finds in the Alps, say, are more beautiful than charming, sheltered places in the countryside around Rome attests to specific historical shifts in our interpretation of landscape. Evidently—and this rather complicates the matter—we are dealing with two developments: firstly, with changes in tangible space, however quantifiable or representable this may be; and, secondly, with the ongoing shifts in our percep250

tion of landscape—and this brings us now to ask: Could it be that our concept of landscape is outdated insofar as it has failed to keep pace with changes in the modern landscape? Let us begin by reviewing the classic, traditional view of a beautiful landscape. This rests, for one, on the distinction between town and country. The construct “landscape” is the urban dweller’s invention; it is he—and not the farmer working the land—who finds the landscape beyond the city limits so appealing. He also fulfills the second premise posited by Immanuel Kant: he has no “vested interest” in the countryside; he visits it, not to buy cheap potatoes or to collect rent from leaseholders, but as a “disinterested” onlooker. He admires the golden ears of corn and the industrious laborers bringing in the harvest but he has no gain from them, and nor does he want any. That his existence as an urban dweller actually depends on the agricultural economy is another story altogether. In addition to the opposition of town and country, and the passing urban dweller’s lack of involvement, there is a third premise: short distances covered on foot or, in the past, on horseback or, today, by bicycle, make it possible to construct an image of the local landscape, and to label it “typical.” Every city has, or at least used to have, a landscape it considers somehow typical: Berliners have their lakes in Brandenburg, Frankfurters the Taunus or the Wetterau, the people of Strasbourg their Vosges, those in Zurich their Lägern, and the Viennese their Vienna Woods. And beyond, way beyond the typical charming features of a hike through the local landscape lies the heroic, sublime vacation landscape: the Curonian Spit, Helgoland, the White Cliffs of Dover, Lake Lucerne, and the Matterhorn. These heroic, sublime landscapes are also integrated in the local-typical schema however, for the simple reason that, having arrived at our vacation destination, we need walk only a short way to see them—perhaps not even that, if the Matterhorn, say, is visible from our hotel window. In this 251

respect we evidently still share the aesthetics of the Golden Age of railroads, with its vacation destinations and hotels. I would like now to demonstrate the extent to which our situation has changed in objective terms, i.e. with regard to that which I call tangible space, as well as in terms of our subjective attitudes and hence, our perceptions. Certainly, the contrast between town and country still exists yet it has become much less pronounced. The urban dweller no longer lives in the city necessarily, and even someone who works the land may choose now not to live on it. All Forestry Commission properties in Germany have been closed down, for if ever a forester is required to see the forest, and happens not to be at work in his office, he travels by car to the point at which his patrol route begins. Nor do farmers need live alongside their fields and stalls these days, and may just as well direct their business from the city. Whoever toils in Holland in the famous tulip farms can arrive there each morning on his motorbike, and likewise winegrowers and cattle raisers in the south of France. The majority population in the countryside, in the villages, is no longer tied to the land for its livelihood. Many commute to work in the city, others have urban jobs in rural areas, or they simply work at home. This has repercussions also on architecture. The old marketplaces and villages no longer have a distinctly rural appearance, and their smart mayors have no greater ambition than to find an investor for a high-rise. The cities meanwhile, are falling apart. Fast means of transport have made high densities and walking distances redundant. The pride of urban mayors is more likely to be urban parks, urban expansion, and to fill every street and square with so-called urban-garnish greenery. Patches of green therefore envelop the motorist at every turn, before releasing him into the underground parking lot, from where he makes his way to the pedestrian zone, once again surrounded by shrubs. 252

Settlement of the countryside by urban dwellers was made possible by the car. The result was development of a settlement structure that can be reached and explored solely by car. Reasonably enough, anyone who lives in the city or the countryside therefore now gets about by car. This has an impact on the distance he walks. Even the very first step into the classical experience of landscape is denied him, for he no longer experiences a transition from urban to rural architecture. He will therefore travel great distances in search of the greatest contrast, the most “unspoiled” place imaginable. The effect of such overly long trips is that he can no longer manage to integrate all he sees in a local-typical landscape schema. A walk in the immediate vicinity therefore no longer guarantees he will find a familiar and hence, preferable landscape. Every motorist has read somewhere, at some time, that exhaust fumes are partly responsible for so-called forest dieback. Individuals deal with this information in different ways: one can continue to use the car and suffer a guilty conscience, or join an association that relieves the feeling of guilt, and fosters a “So what?” attitude. Everyone is aware also, that the work farmers do in their fields is no longer totally harmless: farmers sit on grotesque machines that spread indefinable substances on the fields, substances likely to seep into the groundwater and come gushing out of our faucets the very next day. Our complicity in crime and our awareness of such risks sweep away all traditional notions of the disinterested onlooker on the sidelines. Whatever we do has an impact on the landscape—on forest dieback—and whatever the “Fortunate folk of the country”¹

1

The reference is to Friedrich Schiller’s poem The Walk (1795), in which he discusses the development of human civilization, and the fundamental question of man’s relationship to Nature. 253

do implies a menace for us. This destroys Kant’s premise, that aesthetic perception requires a “disinterested” relationship to the object observed. And now comes the third point I wish to emphasize here, namely the impact of wasteland. Wasteland in its narrower sense, meaning land that is available for cultivation yet left to lie fallow, is a modern phenomenon, a result of surplus production in the agricultural sector. A farmer who does not till his fields can register them as wasteland and is awarded compensation accordingly. Many farmers therefore deduce that their product sales do not cover their labor costs: they do equally well or even better to spare themselves the effort and the raw materials, and pocket the compensation. This is true above all for regions with less fertile ground, so we find the wasteland phenomenon most frequently there. Wasteland might initially be welcome on the landscape, for instead of extensive acreage for potatoes or cereals we see now wild vegetation: grasses run rife first of all, then thistles and shrubs after two or three years, and bushes and saplings eventually. Wherever farmers mow wasteland, which they do as a rule, one finds nothing more than shrubs and thistles. Many hikers enjoy this new type of vegetation, and look on in pleasure as their dogs chase though fields of thistles. And yet, in my opinion, wasteland contributes crucially to changing the look of the landscape. The layout of the historical landscape has its own logic. We leave the city, cross a zone full of market gardens from where vegetables and flowers are delivered to the city; then come fields of grain, pastures for milk production and, finally, the forest. Forest margins are perhaps the most refreshing type of landscape setting for the urban walker, either on account of their diversity and rich vegetation, or because neither farmers nor foresters patrol them. This layout also has a narrative dimension; it reflects how the city is nourished; it 254

reproduces what has come to be known as Von Thünen’s rings,² a model of agricultural land use, which regarded feeding the city as a matter of distance, and as the basis of ground rent. Our walker, to whom I shall return in more detail later, also traverses this narrative, this story; and this imbues with significance the landscape he sees. To the charming or spectacular image—the well-situated farm or the forest margins—it adds now an explanatory footnote, a narration of historical processes on the basis of which a particular type of agriculture has been deemed sensible and logical for this zone encircling the city. The narrative also addresses developments and processes, for example the fact that a grain silo or perhaps even, a mill wheel can still be found alongside a farm that evidently now restricts its business to dairy produce and raising cattle. Yet while an occasional patch of wasteland may look pretty, the point I wish to make is that wasteland on the whole interrupts or disrupts the narration of a logically structured landscape, and thereby hinders the integration of our experience of taking a walk in the local-typical schema of beauty. So far we have described wasteland in its narrower sense; we could say wasteland, in its broader sense, is that area within the new urban/rural spillover zone in which individual elements are not arranged logically. The conglomerate of newly built housing estates, lots standing empty owing to speculation, abandoned commercial sites, and the scattered vestiges of farmers’ existence amounts to a “wasteland” in the metaphorical sense; an illogical wasteland that hence leaves us in the lurch when it comes to interpreting what we see. In order to describe this phenomenon more precisely, I would like to return once again to that which I have called the charm of

2 A model created by farmer and amateur economist J.H. von Thünen (1783– 1850), which was translated into English only in 1966. 255

the local-typical schema. And in order to understood that, it is essential to reflect briefly on my strollology theory.—We believe we perceive the landscape as an “image;” we learn from pastoral novels and tourism brochures how this or that region looks. When we take a walk we seek confirmation of these images, and we are delighted to discover similarities, or variations on a theme we can interpret. In reality however, we see something else on our walks: we cross a field, ford a stream, pass a village, go through a valley or over a hill, feel ourselves hemmed in, or come upon a panoramic vista, and we see a thousand details: a gray cat, or a burned down barn; and we substantiate what we see by drawing on our memory, or on our oblivion. Whatever we have seen is merged—in our mind’s eye, of course—in one image that we then name our landscape experience. Once at home therefore, we do not speak in detail of the narrow valley or the gray cat but rather, we describe the Wetterau, the Jura by Basel, the Vienna Woods, or the lakes of Brandenburg. This artificial image created in our mind’s eye, and underpinned by travel brochures, is feasible thanks solely to the narrative order, the inner logic, and the context of the image sequences we have seen. The less logically such image sequences can be classified, the harder it becomes for us to read the landscape, and the more clamorous the demands made on us to explain what we see. When I come across a windmill in Holland, a pithead in the Ruhr District, or a dung heap in the Black Forest, I can classify these objects easily. If I come across a pithead in the Black Forest however, I would condemn it to oblivion or, depending on my mood, I might become annoyed; I might call the local federal office for protection of the landscape, and demand that it be removed forthwith! Probably I would then discover that the relevant lobby group already exists, for the purpose either of preserving pitheads in the Ruhr District, or of removing them from the Black Forest. 256

Armed with insights derived from the strollology theory, we return now once again to the wasteland: to wasteland in its narrower sense, as well as to the metaphorical wasteland of the disorderly urban/rural environment. At the risk of sounding banal, I call this “the postmodern landscape.” One of the better-known origins of Postmodernism is Robert Venturi’s journey to Las Vegas. It was there he discovered that gigantic, explanatory icons afflict the buildings he named sheds: a huge illuminated sign on the roadside explains a pleasure palace called “Stardust;” yet turn into the drive and one finds oneself approaching a relatively inconspicuous, low building, namely a shed; one of modest size for the simple reason that it must be air-conditioned. For Venturi, the lesson of Learning from Las Vegas³ was that the iconic explanation of a building is distinct from its actual structure or volume, and he weighed this insight against the strict rationalism of Modernist architecture. I learn something else from Las Vegas, for Las Vegas lies in the very zone I describe as metaphorical wasteland. Wasteland requires some explanation: the more established wasteland happens to be, the more the object seen must introduce as well as interpret itself. The disorderliness of our urban/rural environment gives rise to the loquacity of Postmodernism. Take the city hall in an old, established city: a city hall derelict beyond repair, or gutted by fire, and consequently in need of renewal. What a gratifying task for an architect. The city, given its age, has its own logic, its own narrative. I arrive from the railway station, cross the station forecourt, enter the medieval city center, find myself in a jumble of narrow streets then come upon a wide open space, the central

3

Robert Venturi (with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour): Learning from Las Vegas, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1972; revised edition 1977. 257

square, at one corner of which stands the main church; but in the architecture along one of its longer sides there is a gaping hole, the gutted city hall. Every design, even the most nondescript, even the most functionalist concept of a new building for this site says: city hall. The historical city context has primed the visitor for this precisely. The architect therefore need do nothing more than reveal his particular interpretation of a city hall on this site. Let’s take another example, another city hall. A conglomerate of older and more recent settlements, abandoned industrial sites, sports fields and highway slip roads are pronounced to be a city. An extensive green area seems a likely site for a city hall. So what does the architect now design but a postmodern city hall. Naturally, for it must convey two messages to the observer simultaneously; the first is: I am the city hall of the new urban community; and the second: I was designed by the architect so and so. That is the reason for my hypothesis: the more misinformation wasteland disseminates, the more loquacious architecture must become. So we find ourselves all of a sudden in the realm of architecture. We actually intended to talk about landscapes. Is there such a thing as the “postmodern landscape?” I believe there is. The postmodern landscape is the attempt to attune the observer—whose route to the place in question cannot be foreseen, and who is consequently ill prepared, in narrative terms, for whatever awaits him—to that which he will see. Landscape elements that have their own logic must therefore be created in the wasteland. I call such landscapes “hyper-typical landscapes.” Yet this type of landscape is precisely what I wish to distinguish from that which lobby groups for the protection of nature, of the landscape and so forth, reconstruct—under the influence of geographers—as typical landscapes. Let me sketch a brief example. One of Germany’s major historical landscapes is the heath. Basically, this 258

denotes an area on which Caluna vulgaris grows, which blooms red in the fall. Caluna vulgaris is a small bush with a lifespan of circa fifteen years. One of its properties during this lifespan is to prevent younger plants’ seed from sprouting around it. So, the heath dies off respectively is dead after fifteen years, and ready to allow other seeds to sprout. The heath is accordingly an artificial landscape that demands “hard graft.” The heath farmer digs up some Caluna bushes before they reach old age, so the other bushes can seed and regenerate themselves. The heath is a landscape doomed to extinction, on the one hand because nobody these days is prepared for hard graft and, on the other, because the land—especially since the invention of artificial fertilizer—can now be put to more profitable use. If a landscape advocate or nature conservationist wants to regenerate the heath nowadays, the situation might look something like this: a sign on the regional highway directs the motorist to the heath parking lot. There he must leave his car and continue on foot to reach the heath. This greets him in the fall clothed splendidly in red. He also spots a conscientious objector⁴ or an unemployed person doing hard graft. The visitor could not be more disappointed. He asks himself, what was it about the heath anyhow, which made it so poetic. And he returns home to reread Hermann Löns’⁵ account of a walk on the heath: his essay about the black grouse, for instance. Yes, Löns descends from the narrow-gauge railroad car, surrounded (to his initial annoyance) by other hikers, and walks into a small heath vil-

4 Until 2012, young German conscientious objectors could choose to work for two years in a social or civic project rather than do one year’s national service in the army. 5 Hermann Löns (1866–1914), a German journalist and writer, is most famous for his novels and poems celebrating the people and landscape of the North German moors, and particularly of the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. 259

lage. But then Löns realizes he knows another path, and disappears between the vegetable plots, beyond which he reaches the orchards, and beyond those, finally, a sand drift, which he crosses. On its far side everything is green and damp; there are birch and juniper trees, and some famous Heidschnucke sheep. Löns makes his way across a swampy patch, comes at last to the carpet of blooming red, and spots his black grouse—which does not feed on heath flowers, incidentally, but on juniper berries and cranberries. It is clear now: the “typical” landscape cannot be read as an object but only as one component in a narrative sequence, a sequence that attests also to processes: the village defends itself against the sand, the fruit trees encroach on the dunes, the farmer encloses some of the heath, and the heath does battle with juniper and cranberry trees… This simply as an intermezzo, one that teaches us that the postmodern hyper-typical landscape cannot be solely an image, cannot be a heath attached to a parking lot, and maintained by the unemployed. Rather, hyper-typical postmodern landscapes are a consciously designed combination of spectacular (hence tangible), and narrative elements. Löns’ experience of the heath, with its underlying narrative, must be reproduced on a small scale at the heart of the global wasteland. What are the hyper-typical landscapes of the modern age?—I identify three types: the supermarket, the theme park or Disneyland, and the preserved historical city center. All three are forms of landscape with their own logic. Although I have never visited Disneyland personally, I know perfectly well that I would find my way about it. Everything is familiar to me, from the narrow-gauge railway through a Wild West high street to Vesuvius; and I am totally prepared for it, because it unfolds in a logical sequence. By the way, the Euro-Disney hotels in the Marne Valley were not built primarily for European visitors; rather, developers had in mind those Americans who must visit Paris on business and 260

are so bewildered by the capital that they gladly retreat to an orderly landscape they understand, in order to gather their wits in preparation for the day ahead. The supermarket, theme park and the preservation of cultural heritage serve to recreate a condition that Kant considered vital to the aesthetic experience: the observer’s non-involvement or “lack of a vested interest.” In all three configurations my role is that of observer/customer: I can either shop or not shop. A third option, namely to assist proceedings, to do business myself, to offer something personally, is not available. One visits Disneyland “without interest.” Consequently, it is the recreated aesthetic landscape. We have described these three landscapes—the supermarket, Disneyland/ theme park and the preserved historical city center—as postmodern landscapes. They are characterized by the strict segregation of promoter and consumer, whereby the promoter establishes a rigid order. This order is so logical as to instantly make visitors feel at home and, moreover, to trigger the required behavior, namely shopping. One might dispute that this holds true for the historical city center. Yet, there too, one finds a growing tendency to control the range of stores available; to favor the sale of historical and traditional products, to say nothing of antiques; and to integrate real and fake traditions: sales personnel and waiters in traditional regional costumes, wine-tasting, cheese samples accompanied by yet more costumes, and a band, strumming folklore. There is little danger moreover, of foreign visitors finding such folk traditions or the revival of various architectural styles and regional traditions unfamiliar. For what is offered on the whole is a largely artificial, uniform style that I call “ubiquitous regionalism:” motifs derived from Turkish timber architecture, applied to Swiss chalets, and lit by Japanese lanterns evoke the motifs on a hot-dog stand in a pseudo-historical pioneer town in distant Canada. 261

Is there any way out of this post-historical landscape?—For the main point here is this: to overcome the feeling of total “manmade-ness,” of total manipulation. The word “landscape” actually originally denoted selected motifs in a heterogeneous type of environment, motifs of incidental origin. Nobody planned the ruins, shepherds huts and farmers’ fields in a picturesque landscape—and it is the chance heterogeneity of this mix that delights our gaze. Can any examples of partly intentional and partly incidental landscapes be found today? I would describe any such configuration beyond the postmodern landscape, as a “potent landscape.” So now, in conclusion and by way of example, here my endeavor to describe a potent landscape: the setting is the documenta 9 in Kassel, in 1992—its outdoor areas, to be precise. One need only read newspaper and art journal reviews of the time to know the outdoor areas were held to be a complete disaster. Commerce and restaurants predominated, the few artworks on the forecourt of the Fridericianum were not shown advantageously and, worst of all—a barbarity that flabbergasted the Neue Zürcher Zeitung—the stone steps leading from Friedrichsplatz to the Aue Park had been squatted by unauthorized vendors, dealing in pseudo art. To crown it all, the ticket sales, the cloakroom, and the exhibition entrances were so unfortunately arranged that visitors were obliged to stand in line three times over. On some days, the whole of Friedrichsplatz was full of people standing in line. Some time passed before we realized that this was nothing less than a potent landscape. True, it had been planned—yet no one had wanted it to turn out quite as it did. It was indeed a disaster. And yet all the visitors, with the exception of journalists, were perfectly satisfied. As our home was in Kassel we did not need to stand in line. So several weeks passed before we realized we were missing out on a major attraction. Interesting people mingled there, helped 262

each other out, took their neighbor’s umbrella to the cloakroom then returned it when the skies opened. One person was dispatched to fetch coffee for everyone in line and he borrowed the café’s huge parasol, when caught in a sudden shower, before handing it on to the next person once having reached the Fridericianum’s entrance. The Nigerian artist Mo Edoga⁶ was magnificent: for one hundred days he slowly constructed his airy tower, answered every question, and gave the public the feeling that it had a chance, for once, to really exchange ideas with an artist. I won’t go into more detail. What I wished to show was simply this: a new form of artificial landscape based neither on the old formula—wasteland plus loquacity—nor on the new one—total definition of the design and the roles to be played—really does exist, has become conceivable. The landscape mix of human activity, human leisure and chance is still possible.

6 On a public square at documenta 9, in Kassel, in 1992, Mo Edoga used driftwood from the nearby River Fulda and remnants of construction timber to build the “Signal Tower of Hope.” The artwork remained in situ for the duration of the exhibition. Visitors were able to watch the artist in action, and discuss his work with him. 263

On Movement and Vantage Points— the Strollologist’s Experience (1999)

Those who addressed you prior to me have spoiled you doubtless with their polished lectures. My lecture is a patchwork of loose thoughts, partly on the current state of affairs, partly about how things were back then in Ulm. For our objective here after all, is to revive the spirit of Ulm. I can see now, in my mind’s eye, the remarkable ruins of the library in Ulm, which was stocked to two thirds with volumes on mechanisms and gear trains, and to one third with aesthetic books of the kind we actually wanted. Well, Ulm is in fact a history of insights into what happens when one seeks to use rational methods—by which one does not progress from one certainty to another but rather, from a certainty to a growing sense of doubt. In my opinion, Ulm epitomizes this approach. Ulm has various tendencies and orientations, of course, and also much to its credit. I’ll tell you straight off, where I stand. I follow somehow in the steps of Horst Rittel, a mathematician who came to Ulm then spent some time at the University of Stuttgart then disappeared off to Berkeley before finally, regrettably, dying of cancer in Germany. A position which attempted namely to make a science of decision-making in design, and actually always progressed, not from one certainty to another but rather from doubt to doubt—design here in the sense of an attempt to remedy a problem by recourse to inventiveness or organization. And then, there are those difficulties inherent to human thought—and in particular to human thought in a collective context, which is to say, in a team. And design teams 264

are the issue here, for the designer works with other people. The point therefore, is to reflect as a team on the methodological approach and so-called solutions. The first thing is: it is very difficult to define problems. One never knows exactly, what problems are. Parameters must be set before one can remedy them; yet they are essentially without limits, and merge with further problems. Problems have blurred contours. And the design process strips them to the essentials. I have cited an example. The fact that elderly people can no longer live with their offspring is a problem. A parameter is therefore set, namely to place old homeless folk in an old folks’ home. This serves in some way to limit the problem. Problems cannot be remedied. They are wicked—to cite a mathematical term Rittel used very frequently. One cannot remedy them; one can only limit them. And the more one seeks to limit them, the more fatal the solution. There are small solutions and small improvements, and then one tries for the total solution, which is like cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. I have cited an example. To avoid mosquito bites, one can span a net in front of the window, or one can drain all the lakes in the vicinity: the major or the minor solution. The remedy for a problem depends on constraints, on certain conditions—and mostly on the cost factor: a thing may only cost this or that much. Therein lies the discrepancy between the objective and the problem. An example: a route to a school involves crossing a major road. Various solutions are possible: an underpass, an overpass, intersection lights, or whatever. And there is a constraint, since the remedy for the problem may not cost more than one hundred thousand Deutschmarks. So the discrepancy here is: a child could be run over—and: the budget may not exceed one hundred thousand Deutschmarks. 265

Then the interventions: the allocation of pros and cons. Interventions do not solve the problem; they simply allocate pros and cons differently. So, the driver must step on the brake, and the school-kids can cross. Someone benefits, and someone loses out. Most design solutions are a matter of assuring certain population groups either advantages or disadvantages. I am not talking here about a design for porcelain cups but about the sum of decisions taken to remedy a problem. One piece of wisdom that can be traced back to the pre-war national economist, Gunnar Myrdal is: it is never a case of objectives and means. Objectives and means are one and the same thing. Or vice versa. And to say, “That is my objective and this is simply my means,” is to spout ideology. Take the prohibition of cannabis for example, and its enforcement by the police. One can say, “All young people are kept under control in order to stamp out cannabis.” Or one can say, “Cannabis is stamped out in order to keep young people under control.” So the means and the objective are interchangeable. The police say the one thing, of course, and young people think the opposite. Decisions—precisely because they are so complex—tend towards simplification the minute they are reached in collective contexts (for example, when a planner has to present his proposals to policymakers). And such simplification leads namely to so-called simple solutions. At the local government level—so my theory— everything culminates in construction. Therefore, the problem of old people leads to an old folks’ home; the problem of blind people leads to a home for the blind. Thus, attempts are made to remedy problems by erecting a building. This amounts to a reductive phase in the decision-making process, which is inherent not to the matter in hand but to the collective context. And here, the role of naming the problem comes into play again. 266

Who is empowered to give the problem a name? Problems are so general, and they have blurred contours. One never really knows exactly, which one should remedy, and which not. One problem, for instance, is that it always rains on Sundays. In this case however, nobody can prompt a decision-making process—not because that would be impossible, but because no political party or group would ever take it up as a cause. There are problems one can name. In the summertime, young people hang out and sweat; therefore, we need a swimming pool. That is an identifiable solution. So, now we are back where we began. There are many problems; their contours are blurred; they are intermingled, and to name them isolates them from one another, and then so-called solutions are applied to them. This application of solutions was also one of the tasks in Ulm. And in the first phase—I’ll structure this somewhat here—it was endeavored to introduce a clear conceptual approach in order to deal with problems, all the way through to design solutions. This step-by-step approach was named ZASPAK, which is an acronym of the following German words: Z for objective (Ziel): name the objective; A for analysis (Analyse): analyze the problem; S (Synthese): synthesize one’s analysis; P (Plan): formulate a plan; A (Ausführung): move towards implementation; and K (Kontrolle): monitor the result. Sounds totally rational, does it not? So, ZASPAK means, name the objective, analyze the problem, synthesize the analysis, formulate a plan, implement it, and then monitor the result. Then, as we discussed yesterday for example, there are the doubts to which ZASPAK gives rise. We spoke about how a problem might be solved. As a first step I proposed, “Name the objective.” Thereupon someone pointed out, quite rightly, “One doesn’t know at the start, what the objective is. One knows at the end, why one has done 267

a thing, but to name the objective at the start is possible only when dealing with very simple tasks. In the case of more complex tasks one can only really identify the objective at the end.” This has an impact on analysis. Which is to say: analysis was the latest fad at the time, back when databanks and data compilation first came on the scene. So: to analyze a problem gives rise to far too much data, more than might be used effectively afterwards. Then comes synthesis. That is a wonderful, mysterious word. How one proceeds from analysis to synthesis was never really explained; one simply set out to synthesize. This means: the wastepaper basket soon fills up. Synthesis culminates in a plan. The plan is implemented then monitored in the light of the objective. The monitoring phase occurs very late however. By that time, one has pretty much done everything. Even if the monitoring process reveals that this or that was pointless, it is actually too late to be of any use. I would now like—and this is actually the unstructured part of my lecture—to name several tasks. You will say, “Those are not design tasks, strictly speaking.” They are simply the tasks involved in the human decision-making process yet in my opinion, they underpin a theory of design. For they remedy—or “solve”—problems. I wish to name some of them here; the simple tasks first, then the more complex ones. A simple example is a family, asking, “What shall we do tomorrow afternoon?—It’s Sunday.” The two suggestions are, firstly, “Let’s go to an art museum” and secondly, “Let’s visit our sick aunt.” One is aesthetic, the other ethical. Yesterday we were told this is one and the same thing. We are faced with a problem. And this problem—whether to visit our sick aunt, or go to an art museum—is not one we will be able to solve, because these activities, these decisions do not co-exist on the same level: for one of them tends towards aesthetics whereas the other 268

is most definitely an ethical decision—so here, we already have a problem that cannot be solved. I once carried out an exercise with my students. We wanted to see how much thought the population really gives to alternative solutions. And we made our preparations. We said: our way of measuring time is actually pretty strange. These twelve hours—why not have twenty-four of them, and be done with it? And then, when do they change? At midnight: a strange time, when most people are in bed already, while others are not. The time could change in the gray light of dawn, for instance, and then once again, in the evening. And instead of twelve hours, it might just as well be ten. That would make more sense. That was the case in fact during the French Revolution, and then it was revoked. Some very rare clocks that measure ten hours of a hundred minutes each do exist. In short, we thought this was a simple solution. But we had this problem: if the first ten hours of the day begin in the gray light of dawn, and the ten hours of night begin in the evening, then summer and winter would not be the same, of course. So we said, the hours are not always the same length. By daytime, there are ten hours. One divides the time between dawn and the evening into ten hours. And it will always be announced, how long the hours are. And they are accordingly shorter by night in the summertime, and longer in the wintertime. We hit the streets, armed with this plan, and we spoke to passersby. Students went around in pairs, asking, “Do you have a moment? We have a problem. People are up in arms, and no longer satisfied with time. We have come up with a proposal, and we would like to hear your opinion on the matter.” Well, we had actually expected to be given a good clip around the ear, or for irate people to respond with “What nonsense!” That was not the case at all however. Instead, very many people took a great deal of time to give the matter 269

some thought. Inevitably we heard the questions, “Well, what do Norwegians do? They suddenly have an incredibly short day and a very long night. So, when they work a six-hour day, do they actually need work only a few minutes? How does that work?” Then someone says, “Yes, they can. But they can also work the night shift, and be paid the night rate. Then the hours are terribly long.” The strange thing was that many people also offered another solution: our students had to listen to incredible theories on how to improve timekeeping. We see, things are given thought, and the only thing lacking is decision-making. We have an outdated, centuriesold system of time. All our watches and everything else run to its rhythm, and so on. We cannot change it now, but we are not really happy with it. The next planning problem is a very common and trite one: we are planning an intersection. Every city council has to deal with this. Engineers identify the objectives. The objectives are: to reduce the risk of accidents, to increase the speed of traffic, and to keep costs low. The reduction in accident risk is relative. We know every city keeps statistics on accidents, and documents them on city maps. This means one can say: this type of intersection has many small accidents, and this type of intersection has fewer yet more severe accidents; that type of intersection has actually proved its worth, but it was very complicated and expensive to build, and so on. What is not discussed—either by the expert committees or parliament—is the question: How many accidents are we prepared to tolerate? Which could so easily be answered, thanks to the available statistics. Do you want five accidents per year, or eight, or ten? And then one might say: Would you prefer lots of little accidents, or…? All that is implicit in these questions. But of course, this is not discussed. The strange thing is that no one says, “We want no more accidents”—but merely acts as if that is what is meant. 270

The reason this interests me brings me to the next problem now concerning our communities, namely mad cow disease—for the maxim here is: We want to be absolutely free of disease. While, in the case of accidents, one says there are one hundred thousand accidents to eighty million people, one says fifty million cows equals zero mad cow disease, i.e. no mad cow disease. This is obviously a total solution, and leads to correspondingly high costs. Then the European Union proposed that Britain should kill and burn all its cows. Then it was figured out, how many billions that would cost— and no one wanted to pay for it. But the amazing thing in this case is, that people wanted nothing less than a total solution. The distribution was very strange indeed: in England, tens of thousands of cases; in Switzerland, seven hundred such cases, I believe; and no cases at all in France, or so one says—so France says. And the less said about Germany, the better. Everyone knows that the English have smuggled cows. This means: Ireland was not under sanction, so cattle could be shipped there from England, and likewise from Ireland to Europe. So it was not very difficult to bring English cows to Europe, and it is therefore highly unlikely that any country had zero cases. Well. Then came the news: mad cow disease is the same as Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease and can therefore be passed on to humans. A totally unclear hypothesis led people to hazard a positive claim, namely that Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease had affected only very old people—and later, in two or three cases in England, also young people. People said, “Aha, now that is the result of mad cow disease.” While people tolerate hundreds of thousands of road accidents, in this case they tolerate only a zero solution, which is to say total freedom from disease. Of course, I wouldn’t want to catch it either. But it amazes me, how much more protected one is. Already, to catch Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease from a cow is extremely unlikely 271

in Europe, on the continent. One is more likely to be bitten by a crocodile in Rotis! But it has consequences nonetheless: in the United States now, no one with a UK stamp in his passport may donate blood. One must show one’s passport before donating blood and, if one has visited the UK in the previous decade, one cannot donate blood— which amounts to a massive intervention in the face of a monstrous improbability. I’m simply contrasting that and traffic problems. Yes, now we are doing something really big. We are planning the just war. Two just wars are currently underway. So, we are planning the just war. We have objectives too. The objectives are parallel: to liberate Kuwait, and to liberate Kosovo; and then to bring Saddam Hussein before an international tribunal and to bring Milosević before an international tribunal. Then: do not lose face— do not lose face here. Something must be done here—and something must be done there. And of course, we also finally get to try out our weapons. The entire business is subject to severe constraints, to restrictive conditions. You see, the problem has far-reaching repercussions; it cannot be isolated. The Chinese do not want to join in; the Russians do not want to join in. In the first case, it is the Kurds one may not hurt, in the second case, the Montenegrins. It is very difficult to decide what to do. We are all aware of that. I am not speaking in favor of the war or against the war. I am saying, we are planning the just war, and we face enormous difficulties in doing so. Success is not in sight. Both wars are ongoing. One can say: Kuwait has been liberated; Kosovo has not been liberated. As far as the secondary objective, Saddam Hussein / Milosević, is concerned, the result is largely contrary to the original intention. Both men’s power has increased exponentially, as a result of these wars. 272

What lessons can we learn from this resolution, from this design? First, it was not possible to extract the problem itself, with its own inherent system, from the overall system. It was not possible to draw a sharp boundary between the problem we hoped to deal with and the rest of the world. This means: the problem is too strongly interwoven with the rest of the world. Second lesson: there is no room for experiments; there are no maneuvers in war—there is only war. And everything one has already done—one has shattered porcelain; and shattered porcelain cannot be glued back together. There is no turning back. We can say: we have done the right thing. Or: we have done something wrong. But we cannot say: that was just an exercise; we will do it properly next time. A problem such as this exists once only. Now I want to set another task. And I set this task in memory of the mathematician Horst Rittel, who worked in Ulm, as I said, and has since died. This is the example he used to set his students as a planning task. He’d say, “We have a city. The city needs a systematic fire department. And, although the city council has decided to build four firehouses, it is up to you to position them throughout the city. Let us now discuss where the firehouses should be located.” The four firehouses are likely to be located within a circle—if the city is a conventional city and more or less describes a circle on a map. They are thus all equidistant from the city center and the city margins. Four firehouses form a square in the city, a regular one. There is a lobby that says: The square must be as close to the center as possible. That is where the highest values are—the Deutsche Bank, the Dresdner Bank. If they burn down, we’ll all be broke. Then there is the justice lobby. It says: But the forest ranger still lives ten kilometers beyond the city limits. He too belongs to our city. If his house catches fire, the fire department must reach it as 273

quickly as possible. In other words, the circle of firehouses must be equidistant from the city center and the city margins. Everyone has an equal right to be extinguished; the fire department arrives in a half-hour, or in three-quarters of an hour. Everyone has an equal right—the ranger beyond the city limits, and the Deutsche Bank in the city center. Then along come the insurance companies. Of course they wreck this fair solution. They say, we are actually better off when a house that has burned for twenty minutes burns down completely. That costs us less than having to repair a ruin. So either put out a fire in ten minutes, or forget it—it’s pointless. That puts the firehouses pretty close to the center again. One can therefore propose a few solutions. All of them have something to offer. The fairness argument is always on some level or other—the forester hopes the fire is put out, even if it takes three quarters of an hour—and the money argument amounts to saying, we need one district in which a fire can be put out in ten minutes; and as to the rest, we will drive over simply to sweep up the ashes or spray down the neighboring houses. We have to take decisions therefore, based on arguments made on different levels. That is the problem. Now we are doing something major again: we want to save the environment. Everyone surely wants to save the environment. The environment—that is difficult to define. The environment is plants, animals, and everything around us; and all of it is dying; there is the Endangered List, and all that. So we want to save it all. There are also people who say, the environment has a history; everything has evolved. So we imagine climbing into a time machine, to take a look at environmental history. And now, let us run by Germany in 1648. It is rather swampy—in this area here, for example, we hear toads croaking everywhere, and so on. We meet a farmer and say, “How wonderful for you. There are still real swamps here, and very rare 274

toads, and storks everywhere. You have a wonderful environment.” And he replies: “We have a terrible time of it. There are marauding soldiers everywhere; the Thirty Years’ War has just ended, and all the soldiers are sitting around in the woods. When a farmer shows up, he is killed. And these marshes—we cannot till them. We can only till the hills, because our plows are suited only to this dry soil. We lead a dog’s life.” So the intact environment eludes us here too. So, we learned something there. And then we get back into our time machine, and step out in the Ruhr District in 1880. We meet a worker, and say, “These are disgusting conditions in which you live here—the soot, the smoke, the metal oxides in the air. You will not live beyond forty. Your lungs will be ruined by then.” He says, “What do you have against smoke? I’m looking for work. I always go wherever the chimney is belching the most smoke, and ask whether they can use me.” The environment is obviously very subjective—or: it needs a subject. We say we are saving the environment—and it is our environment. For some reason we have now set our minds on the fact that species diversity comprises our environment. Yet when we look into the time machine, we see other people had very different environments. Environment in the sixteenth century meant marshland, persistent marauders, deserters and epidemics. Environment in the nineteenth century meant a population explosion and the search for work. And the sole source of happiness was a smoking chimney. And now we suddenly want, yes, to save the midwife toad and the kingfisher. I am not disputing our plan to save the environment; I am all for the Greens myself. I simply would like us to be clear about the decision-making system that we use here. Our environment has obvious objectives. And these objectives need a subject. The word environment indeed means something that surrounds man, which 275

is to say, it has a subject. I think it is nonsense, or an oddity of science, to imagine one can write environmental history simply by pointing out that it rained a great deal in 1600, and so on, and so forth. That is not environmental history; it is climatic history. Environmental history is whether people at that time were afraid of something, and of what they were afraid—for one needs a subject. When we say “Let’s save the environment,” we are saving something that has a variable subject, and a change of subject implies a change in the material with which we must work. From our vantage point today, we see competing objectives. Some are in favor of “biodiversity.” They want to save certain species. And others say they actually want to save the potentially natural vegetation and biology, fauna and flora. The latter is contradictory, because the potentially natural flora and fauna of a region comprises a fairly limited range of species. Back when primeval Germanic forests stood here, there were relatively few species. You ask, “So how come all the little flowers have survived? There are thousands of species of flowers and insects that feed on the forest.” They have survived thanks to disasters. Which is to say, one part of the forest burned after lightning had struck; and another just disappeared, for example after the Danube had sought to follow another route. Huge disasters of a kind we in our Europe can no longer tolerate have occurred in the past. And the flora followed the disasters. This means: little flowers exist only because large trees fell down at some point, and created a gap. Kingfishers exist only because shifting currents created new riverbanks, and new clearings suitable for nesting. And so on. The question is therefore: How can we preserve biodiversity? Probably we are the ones preserving it already, thanks to the disruptions we cause. It is said already, there are more animal and plant species in the cities now, than on agricultural land. And man, the 276

disrupter, is a preserver of species. Yet he plays this role unconsciously, and it is a role we could organize much more effectively. But we need to bear in mind that we are engaged here in an activity that has a variable subject and a variable object—hence, in a difficult task. Where does all this lead? Yes, our planning methods will be more complex than Ulm’s “ZASPAK”: name the objective, analyze the problem, synthesize—I think I must have put you off that approach by now. The ways in which we can do all this must take a more collective form, and leave more room for discussion. And they must also include mechanisms that allow decisions to be reached on arguments that engage with a problem on different levels. That means: whether we visit an aunt or an art museum—the ethical and aesthetic solutions must be discussed. And given that some things simply cannot be discussed, our last resort is the vote: Who wants to visit his aunt, who wants to go to the art museum? We as a society cannot solve such problems as these, for arguments about them unfold on different levels and therefore do not intersect, except in the ballot box. And which mechanisms ensue from voting. Aunt museums? It is fantastic what solutions are offered nowadays. The public hospital, with art inside: its corridors an art museum and its rooms for patients. What is the impact now, of us having suddenly found a solution? Evidently, certain constraints have loosened. This means our previous approach to the issue was: There are hospitals and there are museums. That was a constraint—that set a limit. And now, along comes someone who loosens that constraint. I believe this is an important process: to recognize that so-called constraints are likewise design variables. Admittedly, design variables of a sort somewhat difficult to alter—but design variables nonetheless. And that is certainly something we have learned from this. 277

Lucius Burckhardt‘s walking stick with the Universal Stock nail: “It’s beautiful here.” Multiple by Andreas Gram & Martin Schmitz.

The other thing we learn is: there was the famous Zwicky Box, which played a role in Ulm also. Zwicky was also a brilliant mathematician. He always made tables: What are the possible solutions, and where is something still missing? One can write up solutions in terms of the way they are formulated, and then see whether they may be combined. That means: You write everything down and then draw a road running right through the table. What is compatible 278

with what? What is compatible with this? One usually imagines there is only one road. And whoever does not agree, i.e. the client, simply holds another opinion. As I mentioned earlier, we know that different lines of argument do not always run on the same level—there are numerous solutions to every problem. It would be an incredible coincidence, were only one solution to exist. If there is only one solution, that is the realm of functionalism. Functionalism says: This is the one best solution. The best spectacles—so stop designing spectacles: that is the one-stop functional solution to the spectacles problem. In reality, best solutions, optima, do exist; they operate on waves. There are optima and then there are worse solutions. And then on another level, there is another optimum. One pair of spectacles has the best glass, but it is quite heavy; the other is made of plastic, but it is very light and therefore doesn’t hurt one. So, there is one thing with two optima. Most solutions have very many optima. And at the start of the design process we really need to invest in the variability range. And, ultimately, we must find mechanisms by which we might reach a decision. If we do not come to a decision because we cannot discuss things exhaustively then political views are in play; but there are in fact, many things we can thrash out. So my advice is: take a broad approach to design from the start, and make more rational use of paper and printing ink. Thank you.

279

Lucius Burckhardt, Basel 1976. Photo: Annemarie Burckhardt

Biography

Lucius Burckhardt, born in Davos in 1925, PhD in Basel, was, as of 1955, scientific

assistant at the Social Research Center of Münster University in Dortmund. After a guest lectureship at Ulm School of Design in 1959, he undertook several teaching assignments from 1961 to 1973 and later on guest lectureships in sociology at Architecture Department of ETH Zurich. From 1962 to 1973, he simultaneously worked as editor-in-chief of the journal “Werk”. From 1976 to 1983, Lucius Burckhardt was First President of German Werkbund, as of 1973, professor of socio-economics of urban systems at Gesamthochschule Kassel. He was corresponding member of German Academy for Urban and Regional Spatial Planning, Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, member of the Foundation Committee of Saar University of Visual Arts from 1987 to 1989, and founding dean of the Design Faculty at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, from 1992 to 1994. In 1994, his work was awarded with the Hessian Culture Prize for outstanding achievements in the realms of science, ecology, and aesthetics, the 1995 Federal Prize for Design Promoters, and the Swiss Design Prize 2001. In 2003, Lucius Burckhardt died in Basel. Book publications: “Wir selber bauen unsre Stadt” (with Markus Kutter), Basel 1953; “Achtung: die Schweiz” (with Max Frisch and Markus Kutter), Basel 1955; “Die neue Stadt” (with Max Frisch and Markus Kutter), Basel 1956; “Reise ins Risorgimento”, Cologne/Berlin 1959; “Bauen ein Prozess” (with Walter Förderer), Teufen 1968; “Moderne Architektur in der Schweiz seit 1900” (with Annemarie Burckhardt and Diego Peverelli), Winterthur 1969; “Der Werkbund in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz”, Stuttgart 1978 (translated into Italian, French, and English); “Für eine andere Architektur” (edited with Michael Andritzky and Ot Hoffmann), Frankfurt/Main 1981; “Die Kinder fressen ihre Revolution” (edited by Bazon Brock), Cologne 1985; “Le design au-delà du visible”, Paris 1991; “Design = unsichtbar”, Ostfildern 1995; “Wer plant die Planung? Architektur, Politik und Mensch”, Berlin 2004; “Warum ist Landschaft schön? Die Spaziergangswissenschaft”, Berlin 2006; “Design ist unsichtbar”, Berlin 2012. www.lucius-burckhardt.org

281

Jesko Fezer (* 1979) is a Berlin-based architect. In cooperation with “ifau” he real-

ized projects in Munich, Stuttgart, Berlin, Utrecht, Graz, New York and London. He is co-manager of the thematic bookshop “Pro qm” and working as author, curator, artist, and exhibition designer. Jesko Fezer taught at various universities and is researching and writing on post-war modernism, design methodology, process based urbanism, participation and the politics of design. He is professor for experimental design at the HFBK (University of Fine Arts) Hamburg.

Martin Schmitz (* 1956) studied under Lucius Burckhardt in Kassel, author of

“Currywurst mit Fritten – Über die Kultur der Imbißbude” 1983, curator of the movie program at documenta 8 in 1987 and the “Dilettantism” conference in 1995. Lectureships in Saarbrücken, Weimar, and Kassel. Curator of documenta urbana symposium “Kunst plant die Planung”, Kassel 2007, and the international convention “Spaziergangswissenschaft: Sehen, erkennen und planen”, Frankfurt am Main 2008. Co-publisher of the books of Lucius Burckhardt: “Wer plant die Planung?”, “Warum ist Landschaft schön?”, and “Design ist unsichtbar”. www.martin-schmitz.de

282

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Index A

F

Archigram 17, 69 ff. Alexander, Christopher 20, 153 ff., 174 f. Auer von Welsbach, Carl 181

Faludi, Andreas 82 Förderer, Walter 15, 70 ff. Forel, Auguste 166 Friedman, Yona 17, 68 ff.

B

G

Baedeker, Karl 115 Banham, Reyner 37 Beck, Ulrich 221 Bergman, Ingrid 155 Beuys, Joseph 223 ff. Bill, Max 13, 19, 25, 35 ff., 41, 153 Burle Marx, Roberto 125

Gans, Herbert J. 118 f., 145 f., 175 ff. Gleichmann, Peter Reinhart 186 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 181 f., 206 ff. Guattari, Félix 236

C

Candela, Felix 189 Cambacérès, Jules de 181 ff. Cauquelin, Anne 147 f., 156, 185 Chaplin, Charly 162 Chodowiecki, Daniel Nikolaus 155 Clip Kit 69 ff. D

Darwin, Charles 216, 219 Davy, Humphry 182 Deleuze, Gilles 236 Douglas, Mary 166

H

Haseloff, Otto Walter 88 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 38 Hilferding, Rudolf 237 Homer 134 Horace 134, 139, 244 Hülbusch, Karl Heinrich 197 I

Illich, Ivan 20, 145 ff., 159 Isard, Walter 91 K

Kalow, Gerd 40 ff. Kant, Immanuel 123 f., 244 ff., 254, 261 Kroetz, Franz Xaver 110

E

Edison, Thomas Alva 182 Edoga, Mo 263 Ezekiel 232

L

Laplace, Pierre-Simon (Marquis de) 79 Lassus, Bernard 125, 285 Le Corbusier 144 Levitt & Sons 145 287

Löns, Hemann 259 ff. Lorrain, Claude 134 Louis XV 204 Lubicz-Nycz, Jan 69 Luxemburg, Rosa 237 Lynch, Kevin 118 f., 144 f. Lyotard, Jean-François 236 M

Maki, Fumihiko 68 Marx, Karl 182, 237 Meadow, Dennis 234 Melbin, Murray 179 ff. Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand 134 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 144, 189 Mitscherlich, Alexander 143 Montaigne, Michel de 115

R

Reay, Donald P. 69 Rittel, Horst 13 ff., 40, 264 ff., 273 Rheims, Maurice 204 Rousseau, Jean-Jaques 124 f., 215 ff. S

Schivelbusch, Wolfgang 186 ff. Schulze-Fielitz, Eckhard 73 Sitte, Camillo 48 Staël, Madame de 115 T

Tange, Kenzo 67 ff. Theocritus 244 Thünen, Johann Heinrich 255 V

Napoleon Bonaparte 204 Nietzsche, Friedrich 236

Vattimo, Gianni 237 Venturi, Robert 241, 257 f. Vischer, Friedrich Theodor 181 Vordemberge-Gildewart, Friedel 40

P

W

Platter, Felix 115 Price, Cedric 70

Wellington, Duke of 204 f.

N

Y

Yamasaki, Minoru 175

288