Professional Documents
Culture Documents
S
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Correspondence
Thresholds—MIT Architecture
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Copyright © 2012
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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ISSN 1091-711X
ISBN 978-0-9835082-1-2
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Thresholds 40
Socio—
Cambridge, MA
Contents
at Miyashita Koen
33
Move Along!
— Yoshiharu Tsukamoto
There Is Nothing to See
socio—
Humanitarian Trap
163 Cairo di sopra in giù:
— Joseph M. Watson
Perspective, Photography,
and the “Everyday”
245 The End of Civilization
— Christian A. Hedrick
— Daniel Daou
175 Hush
255 Toward a Lake Ontario City
— Steven Beckly and
— Department of
Jonathan D. Katz
Unusual Certainties
189 NORCs in New York
263 Sociopaths
— Interboro Partners
— Jimenez Lai
209 Uncommon Ground:
Aether, Body, and Commons
— Zissis Kotionis
Participation
and/or
Criticality?
Thoughts on an
Architectural Practice
for Urban Change
106
Participation and/or Criticality?
MM
This was one of the starting
points of my inquiry into contemporary forms
of participatory practice—and, especially,
politicians’ love affair with it. As demonstrated
by the UK’s New Labour and the Dutch Polder
Model, participation has produced a very
comfortable situation in which politicians have
FIG. 1 —
W
ebsite of The Winter School Middle East, founded and
managed to withdraw from their responsibility directed by Markus Miessen with co-director Kuwait
as elected representatives of the general public. Zahra Ali Baba. See www.winterschoolmiddleeast.org.
I would call this process the outsourcing
of responsibility. I am not advocating for this I would also like to touch upon the
format of participation, based on the idea experience of institutionalizing myself in
of bottom-up democratic principles of an formal political settings on a governmental
all-inclusive congregation around a table. scale, through East Coast Europe,a project
Rather, I am trying to understand the opposite: commissioned by the Govern-ment of Slovenia
a first-person approach to critical engagement during Slovenia’s presidency of the European
in which the individual—in our case, the Council in 2008, and through a research project
architect—acts upon an urge for political and commissioned by the Dubai government
socio—
social responsibility in one’s practice. think tank Moutamarat that resulted in the
Nothing confounds me more than publication With/Without: Spatial Products,
that over the last decade everyone started Politics and Practices in the Middle East. Both
claiming to be some sort of participatory of these projects attempted to understand
architectural social worker. There are, space as something that is inherently
however, a few examples that demonstrate imagined and, consequently, produced and
this critical participation that interests me. acted upon as a result of this imaginary. In the
There is the Winter School Middle East and the case of East Coast Europe, this was proposed
European Kunsthalle, which serve as de facto through a fictional territorial shift, and in the
cases in which some of these issues have case of With/Without, it was through producing
been scrutinized in their respective a counter-reading of spatial practices in the
contexts. These cases exemplify a mode Middle East to that of Al Manakh. We were
of practice with an end toward the build- interested in a narrative approach on the scale
ing up of independent, small-scale institutions and level of the street, to understand everyday
as alternatives to public art institutions and practices and how they formulate and shape
franchised regional academies Fig. 1 . change. Rather than prescribing a recipe,
this opens up a field of potential departures
for participants. Indeed, this is what sets the
architect’s approach apart from other fields of
knowledge: models are seen to be a platform
for operation, for moving beyond those very
3 For more on these interventions, see The Winter School Middle
East, http://www.winterschoolmiddleeast.org; Vanessa Joan
models, rather than findings or truths in and
Müller and Astrid Wege, European Kunsthalle 2005 2006 2007 of themselves. We are providing a common
(Cologne: European Kunsthalle, 2007); Markus Miessen, East
starting point from where we can begin to
Coast Europe (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2008); Shumon Basar,
Antonia Carver, and Markus Miessen, eds., With/Without: disagree —a theory of how to participate,
Spatial Products, Politics and Practices in the Middle East without squinting at constituencies or voters
(New York: Bidoun, 2007).
but, rather, instigating critical change.3
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Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen
108
Participation and/or Criticality?
decisions, but simply reflects the status quo. participation as the redeeming element in
While we still need critical reflection, I strongly such a practice, we need to come up with
believe that in order to practice, one also alternative ways of doing and thinking about
needs to be projective. architecture. As much as the past generation
My proposed model of the “crossbench has theorized architectural autonomy—the
practitioner” encourages an uncalled ghost of which is more than alive in the
participator who is not limited by existing elite academic institutions of the Northeast
protocols, and who enters the arena with US—current architectural thinkers should
nothing but creative intellect and the will theorize conflict, mediation, negotiation, and
to generate change.6 I am arguing here compromise. That said, I am not proposing
for an inversion of participation, a model to replace outright the architect-as-form-
beyond modes of consensus. Instead of maker with the architect-as-mediator. We
reading participation as the charitable need to ask how experimentation is both
savior of political struggle, I prefer to reflect an architectural and a social process. It
and act upon the limits and traps of its real is remarkable how little the discipline is
motivations. Rather than breeding the next currently interested in the interrelations of
generation of consensual facilitators and spatial form and social dynamics. My current
mediators, I argue for allowing conflict as an research attempts to provide a historical and
enabling force. Through a conflictual mode, theoretical perspective to such concerns by
participation is no longer a process by which looking at architecture’s encounter with the
others are invited “in,” but becomes a means social sciences in the construction of mass
of acting without mandate, as an uninvited housing and new towns, and the emergence
irritant, a forced entry into fields of knowledge of paradigms such as programming,
that might benefit from exterior thinking. Some- participatory planning, and user-oriented
socio—
times democracy must be avoided at all costs. design in the era of the postwar welfare state.9
I think we can change architectural production
KC today by offering tools for rethinking archi-
I would not characterize our tecture’s historically situated social agency.
current condition at all as “Harmonistan.”7 What we have not touched upon so far is
In any newspaper on any given day, I see the distinction between architecture and art
extremes of confict and opposition—the in this critical and projective practice. Art is
only exception is the culture section. It is often said to offer more potential for criticality
disappointing to see how pacified cultural as it seems more free than architecture from
production is today in the face of global the depend-encies and compromises of
conflict and catastrophe, and in this sense, intervention. At the same time, some strands
I do agree with you about the need for of socially engaged or political art today
dissensus. I am still surprised at how inviting offer little more than a set of allusions whose
your friends for pad thai in an art gallery ultimate effect is a surplus of art market
has been celebrated as a participatory, capital. Markus, your practice inscribes itself
progressive, or critical form of art.8 This in what has been called “critical spatial
retreat from the social world by mimicking it practice”—which is neither easily subsumed
in the art gallery has parallels in architectural within the categories of art or architecture,
production. Despite the rise of sustainability
as a new promise for architecture’s societal
relevance, architecture culture continues to
shy away from negotiation with complex 6 See Markus Miessen, The Nightmare of Participation:
Crossbench Praxis as A Mode of Criticality (Berlin: Sternberg
realities for, instead, the solitary games Press, 2010).
of form. This threatens to perpetuate the 7 Ibid.
8 See Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.”
fallacies of architectural autonomy while
9 See Kenny Cupers, “Designing Social Life: The Urbanism of
undoing it of even the last remnants of the Grands Ensembles,” Positions: On Modern Architecture and
critique. Rather than simply inserting Urbanism/Histories and Theories, no. 1 (Spring 2010).
109
Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen
nor within social or cultural activism. Would post-disciplinary form of spatial practice,
you agree that it is more fruitful to position one which no longer understands itself as
yourself still more in the visual arts and new a form of cultural activism as in the ‘60s or
cultural industries, than in the traditional ‘70s, but also one which understands the
outlets of architectural production? Do plethora of tools available in order to apply
these more fluid realms have more critical them in an appropriate context. What you are
potential than that of architectural culture? describing here is precisely the conservative
Or is “critical spatial practice” ultimately view of architecture that often prevents it
less powerful than architecture because it from generating change: that architecture, by
is often more about media than about actual default, is understood as a physical practice.
intervention in the spaces of everyday life? I do not believe this holds true—I actually
think it never did. An alternative practice must
MM acknowledge this—and this is, for the lack of
I would not position myself more in the a better word or term, what I would call critical
visual arts than in architecture. I find this spatial practice Fig. 3 .
distinction fairly problematic. It raises the Architecture is not a discipline that
issue of interdisciplinary or “transdisciplinary” necessarily has a scale or professional body
approaches, which I think, by now, we are but, rather, is something that one does—it is
beyond.10 We should think about architecture a practice. Most architects, from my point of
more as an open field or a territory of tools view, do not produce architecture at all.
which one can access through collaborative They produce buildings, sometime lame,
practice. We are facing what I would call a sometimes otherwise.
thresholds 40
arkus Miessen, The Nightmare of Participation: Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality (Berlin: Sternberg
FIG. 3 — M
Press, 2010). Photo by Hannes Grassegger.
110
Participation and/or Criticality?
socio—
fashionable cloak, this notion of critical spatial
practice is most promising when it is able
to allow new forms of collectivity to emerge.
This is where the real politics of contemporary
practice lie—not in the mimicry of the political
served up by the Biennale industry, but in the
messiness of the contemporary city.
MM
Sure, at the end of the day, critical
spatial practice is simply acknowledging the
fact that architects are not the only actors
or protagonists in a vast territory called
“the production of space.” 11 Critical spatial
practice attempts to undo this myth and tries
to open up a field for debate, which hopefully
will unpack different sets of knowledge.
To be honest, I don’t think that this way of
working is any more individualist, neoliberal, or
entrepreneurial than any other job-description
111
Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen
thresholds 40
Markus Miessen with Kenny Cupers conducting the Urban States “The Space of Politics”
workshop and symposium at USC, Los Angeles, August 2011.
***
Kenny Cupers teaches architectural history, theory, and urban
studies at the University at Buffalo, where he was the 2010-
11 Reyner Banham Fellow. He received his PhD from Harvard
University. Forthcoming books include The Social Project:
Modern Architecture, Social Science, and the Postwar Suburbs in
France, Paris: Life Forms, and Use Matters: An Alternative History
of Architecture (Routledge, 2013).
112
THRESHOLDS 40
SOCIO—
Editor Patrons
Jonathan Crisman James Ackerman
Imran Ahmed
Designer Mark and Elaine Beck
Donnie Luu Tom Beischer
Yung Ho Chang
Assistant Editors Robert F. Drum
Ana María León Gail Fenske
Jennifer Chuong Liminal Projects, Inc.
Antonio Furgiuele Rod Freebairn-Smith
Irina Chernyakova Nancy Stieber
Robert A. Gonzales
Advisory Board Jorge Otero-Pailos
Mark Jarzombek, Chair Annie Pedret
Stanford Anderson Vikram Prakash
Dennis Adams Joseph M. Siry
Martin Bressani Richard Skendzel
Jean-Louis Cohen
Charles Correa Special Thanks
Arindam Dutta To my family,
Diane Ghirardo Mark Jarzombek,
Ellen Dunham-Jones Sarah Hirschman,
Robert Haywood Adam Johnson,
Hassan-Uddin Khan Donnie Luu,
Rodolphe el-Khoury Nader Tehrani,
Leo Marx Adèle Santos,
Mary McLeod Rebecca Chamberlain,
Ikem Okoye Jack Valleli,
Vikram Prakash Anne Deveau,
Kazys Varnelis Kate Brearley,
Cherie Wendelken Deborah Puleo,
Gwendolyn Wright Michael Ames,
J. Meejin Yoon and all of the authors, the
editorial team, the advisory
board, and the patrons.
This issue would not have
been possible without you.