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Assemblage
* b oo
-- ~3olo5r
An Architectural Conversation
Postmodernism and Space turned back into a classical city of the type that seems to be
presupposed by most urban projects; it is also hard to see
MS: You have previously suggested that with the modern it
how any specific building would ever stand out in this kind of
was the temporal that predominated the space/time configu-
fabric, since it is a bewildering, infinite, endless series of built
ration and that with the postmodern it is now space that pre-
things, each of which is different from the next. Some prin-
dominates. Could you say something about this as it relates
ciple of perception then gets lost, and the very vocation to do
to contemporary architecture, especially in light of your own
a distinguished building of some sort, it seems to me, would
model of the postmodern, which differs significantly from
also be lost. And this is a paradoxical prognosis in the light of
most architectural ones?
architects as distinguished as Isozaki.
FJ: It is paradoxical to talk about the spatialization of the
All this means that two kinds of ambition that were, one
postmodern and then try to apply that specifically to architec-
would think, still present in the modern period, or in the
ture, since clearly architecture was spatial all along. The idea
modern movement, disappear in this random textuality. One
was that in an older society, a modern society, but one that's
has to do with the creation of the urban, beginning with
incompletely modernized - in which you have enclaves of dif-
Haussmann and on to Le Corbusier; the other has to do with
ferent kinds of life, agricultural life, peasant life, and so forth
the creation of the modernist building per se, the monumen-
- the temporal dynamics of that society, and of the modern-
tal duck, or whatever you want to call it. It would seem that
ism that it produces, will be much more striking. In effect, it
in this new endless textual fabric neither of these things has
is through the experience of time that the modern is appre-
any meaning anymore, and this is why, I suppose, one should
hended. The temporality of high modernist architecture
think in terms rather of enclaves. That is, most of the inter-
would be the way in which through an older city you arrive at
esting newer buildings that one might be tempted to call
something that stands for the future and that is radically dis-
postmodern in one way or another (obviously that could
jointed from the older kind of city fabric. So this would explain
mean almost anything), most of these projects seem to have
the paradox of talking about one kind of architecture in a tem-
turned around enclaves, such as museum complexes or
poral way and the other in a more homogeneous, spatial way.
dwelling complexes; and, though not a third term between
My idea on the postmodern was, first and foremost, that the an isolated building and a planned city environment, they do
aesthetics of this period and the forms it projects have to be offer an escape from the problems that these both face now.
seen in terms of a whole mode of production and not merely
MS: It seems your model of postmodernism and space dis-
as a kind of style: one that has to do with more complete
places the space versus time debate that David Harvey refers
modernization and with the elimination of those older en-
to in The Condition of Postmodernity. That is, it eclipses the
claves of historical difference that correspond to older kinds
kind of modernist debate between, say, Wyndham Lewis and
of agriculture and older modes of life. As Henri Lefebvre puts
Henri Bergson.
it in The Production of Space, it is the urbanization of global
reality: the tendential transformation of everything into FJ: I think that's so. We have to keep using these two words
something that one has to think of as urban. For example, we - time and space - in any of these moments, but they
no longer have to do with agriculture but with agribusiness; change their relationship to each other. I think this could be
in social terms, things like the capital and the provinces no made clear by insisting, for example, on the way in which
longer obtain: there is a kind of standardization of everything. MTV, and postmodern music generally, is spatial. I think if
In all these senses, a new notion of homogeneous space seems it's understood how this is really part of the way space itself is
to impose itself. The question that arises is thus not merely programmed, then in this period we have a new way of think-
the stylistic one - although that's quite important - but ing about the relationship of time and space: rather than op-
how a specific monument or building makes itself felt in a posing one another as an ethical or metaphysical dualism,
homogeneous urban space. In Tokyo, for example, it is very they tend to cannibalize each other and produce distended
hard to see how the city could be reorganized or rebuilt or and monstrous kinds of symbioses.
32
MS: What effect does this have on other, nonspatial forms of elevator, and within the urban context itself, the grid of
cultural production: literature, for example? Manhattan). Koolhaas offers the picture of the imposition
on the differential of a rigid, and if I may say so, contingent
FJ: There now has to be a spatial dimension to the analysis of
or meaningless structural form, a form that, like the elevator,
all of these things. It is, for instance, not indifferent that tele-
has no internal meaning of its own, but whose function is to
vision is a home appliance, that you look at it in certain spe-
allow this improvisation and differentiation to go on outside
cific places alone; not indifferent that if literature is in crisis,
of itself and around itself. Thus the free spaces are enabled
it is, first and foremost, because of its spatial emplacement in
by the rigidity of the framework. It is almost a political para-
a larger sense - and this is due not merely to the emergence
digm in the sense that the combination of formal require-
of the monopolies of the great publishing companies, but also
ments of a certain order without content permits all kinds of
to the crisis in libraries and book storage and the passage to
forms of freedom or disorder within the interstices.
information systems. So while you can sit and read a book in
a certain contemplative isolation from all of this, it would
I think that what's brilliant about Koolhaas's work is not only
seem that for us today any formal discussion of verbal forms
the obviously very striking nature of the buildings them-
needs to reflect that much more acute spatial situation in
selves, but also the way in which the work offers an interest-
which their reception and production take place.
ing paradigm for other levels (not only for other arts) of
social life, such as the political or even the ethical, the
Post-Civil Society and Space psychoanalytical, and so forth. I don't mean that one should
MS: Recently, you have linked the notion of architectural endorse this program and draw a politics or an ethics from
depthlessness to the philosophical and political problematic the success of these buildings, but it is very interesting that
they do project the combination of a law and freedom that
that you identify as the liquidation of what Hegel called civil
society. This new spatial organization is marked most dra- seems to be characteristic of the present time. In other
matically by the disappearance of the public/private distinc- words, as an ideal this interesting combination is very dif-
tion that you see presaged in the recent work of architect ferent from the authoritarianism of an older corporate or
Rem Koolhaas, in Blade Runner, and in the amorphous planned society, whether that's conceived of from the Left or
sprawl of Tokyo. from the Right, and as it might be seen to be embodied in
the International Style or in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.
FJ: What I have been struck with in the work of Koolhaas is But it is also very different from the fantasies of an anar-
the way it, in effect, builds an enormous envelope for all chism that wants to dissolve all structures and create spaces
kinds of unprogrammed but differentiated activities. If you for a free play that would reinvent its structures at every oc-
follow Niklas Luhmann's idea that modernity is characterized casion or at every moment. I think Koolhaas's projects offer
by differentiation, and if you suppose that there are plateaux free play only on the condition of this rigid and meaningless
in the rhythm of this differentiation, as I do - in other internal structure, and so whatever else this is, it's a very
words, that the differentiation of a postmodern global infor- striking solution to the contemporary intellectual problem
mation society is going to be quite different from the differ- that seems to be a reaction against an older authoritarianism
entiation of an older, "modern" society - then I think one and, nowadays, against an older anarchist libertarianism as
can read one feature of Koolhaas's work as an exemplification well.
of this. But the originality of Koolhaas (as theoretician and ar-
chitect alike) is that his work does not simply glorify differen- MS: I know that you have recently visited and viewed some
tiation in the conventional pluralist ideological way: rather, of the work of Arata Isozaki in Japan. Do Isozaki's buildings,
he insists on the relationship between this randomness and or does Tokyo in general, presage a future-present toward
freedom and the presence of some rigid, inhuman, nondif- which, as some commentators have suggested, the West
ferential form that enables the differentiation of what goes is moving? Or does the work of Koolhaas, Isozaki, and
on around it (in Delirious New York, within the building, the Portman, for that matter, each form a kind of nodal point in
33
an immanent force field that has sloughed off the old linear cially as well as spatially to address this kind of future. Isozaki
constraints? is not at all like this; I wouldn't see him as a comparable fig-
ure. I am obviously not terribly well placed to judge Isozaki's
FJ: The first point to understand is that (and not only in my role in Japan, except that he is a very eminent and remark-
view but as I understand it in Koolhaas's as well) one can't able artistic figure there, and surely one of the world's great-
discuss either Europe or Japan without talking about the est architects as well. But the buildings I've seen of his that I
United States, which is the real form of the future: what find interesting are, in essence, extremely elegant enclave
Koolhaas has called in a striking phrase, "the culture of con- structures, such as the Mito Art Tower, in which the prob-
gestion," a "culture" that figures a very different way of living lems of congestion that Koolhaas deals with are not, as far as
space and law and order than anything preconfigured in the I can see, at issue. And, in fact, I guess I have not seen any
older Europe or in Japan. What I think has to be understood buildings by Isozaki within Tokyo itself - though I am sure
about the Japanese city is that it requires enormous disci- there are or will be some - so I don't know how his work
pline on the part of its subjects to exist in this enormous addresses the problem of a future city like that, if indeed it
agglomeration, and this obviously differentiates Japan very does.
sharply from the United States. That is to say, these are
MS: Given this new model of the space of post-civil society
inner-directed people with a very keen interiorized sense of
that you have been developing, could you draw a comparison
control and convention. Thus, if Tokyo represents some fu-
between the kind of space you analyzed in the Bonaventure
ture, the Japanese character would, on the contrary, seem to
Hotel in Los Angeles and the space of these Koolhaas
represent some past that the other-directed, or consumer,
moment of the United States has left far behind, in terms of
projects and buildings?
both the work ethic and the relationship to law and conven- FJ: Yes, I think that's an interesting comparison, and it's
tion. So one can't immediately project all of Japan into our quite right to juxtapose these things and try to figure out
own future since it seems clear to me that we are not going their difference. I think the essence of what I am trying to get
back to this. Now in the case of Europe, I would think what at by this end of civil society is clearly at issue here somehow.
Koolhaas seems to be implying, and maybe one can distantly The point is that the hotel is still private property. We might
imply the same thing about Japan, is that the new Europe - enter it to mill around as a crowd but we're still within the
in which all of these nation states come together, unified not authority of private property. Therefore it's a strange kind of
merely by currency and presumably in the future also by po- mixture of a private space used for some form of public de-
litical institutions, but as well by increasing rapidity of com- ployment of the private. Now the crucial thing about the end
munication, crossing over of borders, and so on - that this of civil society is that what used to be public is reprivatized,
Europe will tendentially approach something like American that is, what used to be spaces or places marked by govern-
congestion, both in the characterological nature of its citi- ment, and therefore by the public, somehow revert to face-
zens, who seem to feel freer when they cross a language bor- less forms of private control. So that some new kind of thing
der than they do within their mostly rather rigid internal comes into being that is neither the place of one's private life
social traditions, but also in the very mixing of all of these nor the monumentalization of collective powers. This may
different national traditions, which will tend to break them be related to (but I think it's somewhat different from)
down on the American model. Hannah Arendt's notion that the public in our time was be-
ing reprivatized in the sense in which politics became person-
As for Japan, this is clearly less likely to happen, though alized and people were more interested in the personalities of
people have muttered dire predictions about what a Japan political figures than in their programs. Hers was a psycho-
would be like after this flood of consumerism and after the
logical diagnosis, whereas in my view the development has
end of their Protestant ethic - which is probably more a much more to do with mutations in the very juridical forms
Confucian ethic - and potentially even after the emperor of property so that new entities emerge that are not covered
system. So I would say that Koolhaas's work at least tries so- by the previous categories.
34
Now the crucial thing about the Koolhaas stuff, in particular, the enormous scale of the urban totality just as much as on
the Zeebrugge Maritime Terminal, is that it is an interspace that of the building.
between all of these countries that are streaming in to merge
Now, as I've said, I don't quite agree about Isozaki, in that I
into others. As the crossing point or arrival point for the chan-
think that the institution of the enclave, whether it's Disney
nel ferry boats, the terminal is therefore public in a new way,
or the Mito Art Tower, allows you to do some things that you
and yet somehow outside of the public spaces of any of the
cannot do in this absolute correspondence of macrocosms,
nation states involved. It is as though Koolhaas, observing the
whether it's the city as a whole or the Zeebrugge terminal. It
new "culture of congestion," by way of the rapid mixture of
seems to me that we are in another dimension and dealing
these populations that are streaming through, somehow also
with another genre: we shouldn't use the word architecture to
offers a machine for producing this culture in a Europe that
talk about either of these things because they are working at
never knew it before. This somehow seems to me much more
completely different levels. The outsides of Isozaki's build-
interesting in terms of future historical development, in
ings are very splendid expressions of the spirit of the insides,
terms of things that will happen in these categories of public
so we have a kind of different architectural dynamic there
or private, than the Bonaventure, which is a far more conven-
from what's going on in the others. The difference may be
tional building with its hotel police force and predictable
that Isozaki's work corresponds much more to the space that
categories of behavior. I would think, then, that the Bonaven-
corporate society opens up for building: these enclaves are
ture could serve as a symptom of these developments in the
essentially the spaces of corporate contracts. Whereas when
strong sense, whereas Koolhaas's work is a strong formal and
we talk about either the Bibliotheque de France or the
cultural reaction: an attempt both to register these develop-
Zeebrugge Maritime Terminal, I think that we are no longer
ments and in some way to make a statement about them.
at the level of the corporate, but seemingly neither at the
MS: Earlier you mentioned that Koolhaas's projects, espe- level of the old-fashioned state - for these two are not sim-
cially the Zeebrugge Maritime Terminal, could be considered ply downtown state or city office buildings or monuments
as a kind of envelope. There is thus an inside and an outside. but something else.
With Tokyo, it would seem that there is no inside and out-
What interests me about your question is something that is
side: there is an inside without an outside. But this could also
not, I think, specific to architecture, but that I would call the
be true of Koolhaas. Could Isozaki, as one expression of the
dynamics of genre or generic criticism - the way in which
Japanese scene, be described as a more global architect than
the objective situation gives rise to specific genres as it blocks
Koolhaas? Given your suggestion about Koolhaas's projects as
out others. I think that's at least a part of what is at stake
envelopes it would seem so.
here in the way in which the possibility of very different
FJ: It's very important to make clear that although we use the kinds of buildings and of building itself as an activity is given
words for this business of inside and outside, what's novel by the situation and by the structure of corporate global
about the new situation is that the opposition no longer power.
maintains. That is, as you say quite rightly, it's an inside that
MS: One of the languages you have used to describe
has no outside, even though a word like envelope seems to
Koolhaas's recent work is that of "dirty realism." As you note,
suggest this. And that's why in a way the Zeebrugge terminal
you borrow this term from Liane Lefaivre's own borrowing of
and all of Tokyo are comparable. These are macrocosms. the term from Bill Buford's account of the American short
They are definitely felt to be insides. The notion of an inside
story. Could you distinguish between Buford's, Lefaivre's,
hasn't disappeared; it's been reinforced. But the other thing
and your own use of this term, and distinguish these from
that this seems to imply - and indeed Koolhaas talks about
critical regionalism, which also bears a strong relationship to
this himself when he says that now, at this scale, the externals all three?
of the building are so far from anything that goes on on the
inside as to render old-fashioned and meaningless attempts FJ: If one looks at the original text that Lefaivre quotes,
to correlate the two - is that this all has to be understood on which has to do with the newer American short story, one
35
can see that there is, in fact, a very strong regionalist impulse combinations that seem to me to make some sense. We
in Buford's original description and it amounts in his descrip- haven't mentioned Eisenman yet, or so-called deconstruc-
tion of these writers to the spread of standardization to the tionism, which, insofar as it has a kind of deep aesthetic
suburbs and the countryside and the combination of the re- impulse toward an almost Mallarm6an purity, still embodies
mains of an older nature with things we used to think of as a notion of innovation that is combined with a commitment
urban. This isn't, I think, quite the resonance it has when to the permutation or combination of parts or layers or
transferred to architecture, and pretty clearly both Koolhaas whatever.
and Blade Runner no longer have any of this regional spirit
One can thus see a more central or characteristic form of
and thus would be the strong forms of some anonymous con-
postmodernism as involving an abandonment of innovation,
temporary or future urbanization rather than the residual
a consent to replication, and a return to all kinds of dead
forms of a kind of combination of country and city that one
traditions and its combination with parts or elements or
might still get in parts of the formerly provincial United
signifiers. This would be those of the memory of past archi-
States. So there's been a slippage in the very use of this term.
tecture that seem to float across the surface of the work
Now I use "dirty realism" as part of a larger combination
of architects like Graves and Moore. Clearly, the strong com-
scheme that seems to make some sense in dealing with the
bination here is the modernist ideal of innovation and total-
varieties of recent architecture, which gradually seemed more
ity. But then, in my view, "dirty realism," Koolhaas, if you
and more difficult to fit under the notion of the postmodern,
prefer, emerges as the term in which there is a certain con-
if only because the temptation to think of the postmodern as
sent to replication - at least the way in which the individual
a style is so strong (in the restricted sense in which one might
microcosm replicates the macrocosm - but, at the same
think of Charles Moore or Michael Graves as the preeminent
time, there is a will toward totality, toward all-inclusiveness.
practitioners). This restricted style is only one of many recent
And this form of "dirty realism," it seems to me, which wants
forms of architectural production. It seems to me that what
to include all of this "culture of congestion" within itself, is a
emerged was a sense that this was not (as apologists for
distinct form from the other three. Now, should one then go
postmodernity have often liked to say) a wide-open pluralism
on talking about the postmodern in these terms, it's very
in which anything and everything goes, but rather a produc-
tion itself internally limited by a certain number of problems
clear from Koolhaas's own statements that he is quite willing
as well as features. to oppose himself to a lot of this work. On the other hand, if
one is interested in all of this architectural production as a set
of symptoms for the age and in finding out what is distinct,
This understood, perhaps one could then begin to map out
specific, and different about our own historical moment,
what I have called the "constraints of the postmodern," that
then one has to, at least initially, put them all side by side
is, the way in which a system is nonetheless at work behind
and see how they correspond to some new and original situa-
this recent architectural production. I've tried to do this by
tion that we all face.
superimposing two axes along which it seems contemporary
architecture continues to define itself against the older past MS: In the 1988 MoMA exhibition, Koolhaas and OMA
of the high modern. One of these axes turns on the matter of were included under the "deconstructivist" rubric. What
totality versus its parts, elements, or constituent signifiers. does replication offer that the decon solution does not? It
The other one turns on the matter of the new and the repeti- would seem to have something to do with architectural
tive, or innovation and replication, on the supreme value of realism and representation.
the modern to produce a radically new art and a radically
new space as opposed to the ways in which contemporary, FJ: Yes, I think that comes back to the role that the term
postmodern work, in the larger sense of the word, has tended totality plays here. I'm not sure I'd be happy with using the
to revel in pastiche and the return of all kinds of older lan- term realism for any of this. But if we talk about mimesis
guages with which it can then play. These four terms [total- at least we can see the difference between these other two
ity/parts, innovation/replication] give us a certain number of forms of contemporary architecture as opposed to the
36
deconstructionist one, in the sense that Learning from Las marketing and international export, business, and so forth,
Vegas involves the mimesis of a part of a total urban fabric, can accommodate not only perfectly well, but indeed, with
whereas Koolhaas's buildings seem to wish to stand as a mi- enthusiasm.
mesis of the whole macrocosm itself. I think that's why these
MS: You remarked in a previous interview that your call for a
buildings, as I suggested before, can carry certain kinds of po- Gramscian architecture had less to do with an architectural
litical messages, or can include, if you like, political and social
practice per se and more to do with, as you said, "recognizing
models, because they do have the ambition to grapple with
the locus of a new reality and that the cultural politics by
the totality of the social itself.
which it must be confronted is that of space." Does architec-
Gramscian Architecture ture play a role in developing the idea that politics is now
spatial?
MS: At the end of your 1985 essay on Manfredo Tafuri's Ar-
FJ: Yes, I think that's right, but, paradoxically, it returns to
chitecture and Utopia, in which you reject Tafuri's pessimism
Tafuri's own position, which is that you cannot have an ideo-
and Venturi's giddiness, you suggest that perhaps there is
logical critique of buildings, because they are just what the
something to be said for a properly Gramscian architecture.
system has to produce. Ideological critique operates on the
Is this still true today?
level of the theory of the buildings and on the manifestos
FJ: Well, I guess the problem with Gramscian architecture and on the constraints of these things in the realm of analysis
today is that, at least in the way I was describing it, it implies and of thought and of programs, and so forth. I would think
that one can find spaces outside of the world system, and, in that one very important new possibility that all of this has
that sense, the paper architecture that you mentioned fate- added to cultural and political criticism is that everything
fully reflects both the attempt and the impossibility of doing about the discussion of architecture itself is now political;
this. That is, if it's only in imaginary space that one can and also that political discussion somehow seems quite im-
project some alternative, then this says something about real possible without reference to architecture, that is, to space
space and real possibilities. Given the force of the world sys- generally, to the way the urban is organized, to the way geo-
tem today, it becomes harder and harder to imagine this al- politics is organized. This is the new spatial dimension of
ternative, or utopian, space concretely. The various enclaves things. So I guess one could say, going back to the very first
that one can imagine (we spoke, for example, of the enor- question, that what is spatial about the postmodern is that
mous power that the enclaves give to Isozaki's architecture) theories about this current situation, whether they have to
are part of the system, and in this they are corporate. It seems do with its culture or its politics, must now pass through the
much harder today to imagine economic units being able to code of the spatial in order to match their object of analysis.
withdraw from this world system or to sustain an indepen-
dence separate from it, and to this degree, this optimistic Figure Credit
Gramscian strategy seems increasingly problematic. Another Drawing of metro station by
Rem Koolhaas.
form it took was, of course, the notion of critical regionalism.
I fear that while it is important to keep this alive as a value
Fredric Jameson is Director Michael Speaks is a Ph.D.
and a possibility, here too, the very nature of the develop-
of the Graduate Program in candidate in the Graduate
ment of the world system has entered in, as it were, from an Literature at the Center for Program in Literature at the
unexpected angle - since now the autonomous languages
Critical Theory, Duke Uni- Center for Critical Theory,
of separate cultures are themselves the very mechanisms by versity. His books include Duke University, where he is
which the world system reproduces itself and spreads its Signatures of the Visible writing his dissertation on
form of economic standardization. So it's unclear even now (1990) and Postmodernism, culture, space, and architec-
whether the fight for stylistic autonomy in these various re- or, The Cultural Logic of ture. He is also an editor of
gions is really a struggle about autonomy, or not rather a kind Late Capitalism (1991). Polygraph.
of pluralism that the system itself, in its forms of postmodern
37