ANARCHITECTURE – ANARCHY AND ITS TEXTURE
The architecture of temporariness, created without preparations, plans or designs is and has always been a necessity. It has been so since the times of the arbitrary architecture constructed around medieval fortifications, cities hollowed out in rock cavities or illegally occupied tenements and industrial halls.
It is difficult to write about an architecture gouverned by no rules, created a little bit by accident and more out of necessity, architecture that pays no heed to the achievements of architects, urban planners and designers… It is maybe because it has existed from time immemorial, and is often underestimated, disregarded, associated with chaos and disintegration of ‘the principles of morality’, not conforming to ideals of beauty, a well-thought-out form or balanced proportions. Anarchitecture, as this phenomenon is referred to, defies easy classification, escapes architecture criticism and fills a niche which conventional architecture is unable to face up to.
Architecture of temporariness
The ‘unlicensed’ architecture, built on the outskirts of urban agglomerations, among communities pushed to the margin by the city and its inhabitants, plays with diverse trends, mass tastes and conventional aesthetics. Shelters hastily patched together out of cardboard, wood, rags and anything that was at hand, repainted empty buildings, shacks and shelters in a tree, dilapidated self-assembled cars and habitable caravans, ‘nomadic architecture’, on the one hand all these asocial constructs impoverish the urban tissue, but on the other hand they fill its gaps and make use of them, introducing a specific local colours and architectural arbitrariness. Created without a design, planning concept (with matures as construction work goes by) or an architect, they constitute separate organisms, free from clichés, glitter and false show, reflecting instead deep human needs, authenticism and courage to break down social, architectural and aesthetic barriers.
Does the insubordination of creative inhabitants –users of the anarchic architecture who replace architects – not introduce excessive chaos? Is it not a menace to the profession of architect? ‘After all, is there anything else that an architect can do but turn his eyes away from things authentic and important and concentrate on his dainty and pretty projects – and even his big pretty projects, commissioned by very well-educated and very wealthy clients?’1When asking this perverse question, the Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas, delves into the problem of the discrepancy between social needs, cultural conditioning and an increasing impoverishment of the societies on the one hand and, on the other hand, the hermetic profession of the architect, who does not always take into account the real needs of the not-so-rich and not-so-happy users – inhabitants.
Does ‘architecture without an architect’ have its raison d’etre in the modern world?
Is it not possible to reconcile anarchitecture with ‘conventional’ architecture?
The architectural chaos does not only reflect flawed building regulations, unadapted to the needs of the society, but it also reveals deep social divisions. The architecture of your dwelling is the one that you can afford. Everyone can admire a sumptuous palace, but only the chosen few can live there. Disregard for law (also construction law) is not always accompanied by banditry, loutishness and pathology. The poor and marginalised are not referred to as users because they are not clients; palaces are not accessible to them. But they have to live somewhere. That is why they make use of discarded materials, building and land, incorporating them into a new context of their own lives in which such words as ‘architect’, ‘commission’ and ‘design’ do not appear… The architecture of temporariness, made without preparations, plans or designs is and has always been a necessity. It has been so since the arbitrary architecture constructed around medieval fortifications, cities hollowed out in rock cavities or illegally occupied tenements and industrial halls. Is it an utopian idea to imagine an architect cooperating with a community according to the principles of a mutual consensus and a constructive exchange of opinions which enable the author of the project to take into account individual needs, tastes and ideas of the future inhabitants? Below I will attempt to prove that this is a realistic vision, which has become a fact many times since the 1960ies.
Reversal of proportions
According to Fuksas the solution lies in the idea that ‘(...) an architect should deal with everything that occurred in the world yesterday. How is it possible to carry out good projects if one forgets about wars, environmental dilemmas, three billions of human beings living in overpopulated megalopoleis?’2 To put it simply, architecture cannot function in isolation from the surrounding environment, individual needs of its future users and an active approach to space. Space is defined here as a setting for events, social dynamics and human actions. Thanks to such a perspective on architecture the city transforms itself into a dynamic construct, a vital organism, shaped by its inhabitants and not the other way round.
Combining architecture with a social, individualistic (therefore often emotional) approach to a project has for long been a source of protests because it has introduced a horizontal (and not a vertical) structure of decision making; it meant a departure from hierarchism and from the imposition of someone’s authority. According to the popular understanding, it meant chaos and anarchy. People failed to notice that such architecture presupposes an active approach of its users and give them the opportunity to express themselves freely. In such conditions people can create architecture that is flexible, mobile and based on a dialog, and which is also criticised for it anarchic affiliations and a relaxed approach to the questions of form and space.
The open nature of architecture, the creation of a form which adapts itself to the user and the surroundings, a departure from extravagant visions for the benefit of utilitarianism or temporariness (an architecture of poorer districts and of areas afflicted by natural disasters), all thus constitutes a challenge for an architect, undermining his or her authoritarian, autonomous position and the right to make independent decisions. The reversal of proportions, or rather more balanced proportions, between the author of a project and the client not only led to the creation of new social movements, the rise of ‘new urbanism’ and of the architecture of participation, but it also influenced the emergence of a chaotic, often contingent, albeit indispensable, movement of an ‘unlicensed’ architecture, the one without an architect. These movements are not isolated and ephemeral initiatives; they reflect abrupt social changes and human interactions that lead to the shift of control and responsibility over decisions hitherto inaccessible to the general public unacquainted with the principles of aesthetics and beauty.
Acts of participation and social revitalization of ossified cities (squatting, unauthorised dwelling), which begun already in the 1960ties, is invariably disregarded in scientific studies devoted to the sociology and criticism of the urban architecture. Already at that time the Belgian architect Lucien Kroll (born in 1927) was accused of practicing ‘anarchitecture’ due to his participation in the process of urban design. The accusation was put made by the authorities of the Catholic University of Leuven after they had entrusted him with the project of a ‘social-zone’ for the students. The future users themselves actively participated in the decisions concerning the project, which catered for various convictions and tastes. The result consisted of three student houses, a cafe, a kindergarten and a school. In this way emerged an open, heterogeneous space which was the result of individual choices and which contrasted with an orderly architecture already present at the scene, an architecture subordinated to a uniform and passive vision of an architect. Kroll himself achieved his notorious ‘lack of order’ through ‘an objective analysis of the complexity of the users (respecting the ethnicity factor) and through focusing on real inhabitants, not on the abstract ones, as it usually happens. In this way one can avoid reducing people to an insignificant average. Architects can also transform themselves into people open to a variety of views by means of empathy; it will allow them to arrive at the forms consistent with the results of the inhabitants’ spontaneous actions.’
The architecture of social participation was also practiced by the British man Ralph Erskine (the project of rebuilding a working-class housing estate in Newcastle in England 1969-1981, with a critical participation of the future inhabitants – each of them was able to choose the future location of their house, its design and neighbours. Every project, including the one of a small housing estate Janet Square, was subjected to the public discussion and evaluation while changes introduced by the architect were made conforming to the comments of the project participants) and Dutch architects N.J. Habraken and Herman Hertzberger.
Architecture is a political act
A new, sometimes controversial approach to the socially committed architecture inspired Lebbeus Woods, an American architect (born in 1940) to establish the Research Institute for Experimental Architecture. According to Woods, architecture should be renewed, starting from its conceptual foundation, which reflects human tragedies and abrupt changes in the modern world. Woods claims that being an inhabitant is not a simple and passive act, but a complex and dynamic one; it is a battle between a human being and the surrounding conditions (political, social, economic, physical). Woods takes these conditions into account in his projects. His vision is comprehensive, though sometimes chaotic, and it concerns Terra Nova, the Moder City, often affected by a disaster. His project Zagreb Free-Zone incorporates a context of violence, suffering and despair. The project, made available for the public in 1991, consists of a series of mobile ‘housing entities’ supported by partially bombed buildings or suspended between them as if they were war machines occupying the city centre. The projects Berlin FreeZone (1991) or Aerial Paris represent a gloomy vision which draws on utopian futurist cities (Boccini) and which is based on the idea of Freespaces and Freezones, linked together and dependant on thoughts and actions of their inhabitants.
Woods himself acknowledges the anarchic character of the views expressed in his projects and in the book entitled Anarchitecture: Architecture is a political act he states that ‘it should not be surprising that the majority of architects avoid political implications in their work. They believe that they are creators or innovators but in fact they are no more than executors of a certain physical and social order defined by the institutions which poses power and social authority.’ Thus, not only does Woods belittle a merely creational approach to architecture, but he also points out to the close relation existing between an architect and the socio-political life. Does this situation represent a menace to the architect’s status? Does the participation of the architecture users in the planning process weaken the expression of architecture because it carries with itself a threat that architecture will be brutalised, marred and its aesthetic qualities will be diminished? When analysing the above examples I am inclined to say that it is true. It is true that the cooperation between architect and user may result in quite unsightly constructions filling empty spaces in the city landscape; however, this tendency is inevitable, especially in the face of poverty, unemployment and famine on the global scale. On the other hand, the ‘a-aesthetic’ architecture is not subjected to the principles of aesthetics, ‘pure form’ and canonic beauty. It does not have to. It exists above and beyond narrow divisions created by ‘wise and learned’ critics or experts of all descriptions.
Hundertwasser, in his ‘Mould Manifesto’ in 1958, revealed to the world that ‘everyone should be able to build and as long as the freedom to build does not exist, the present-day planned architecture cannot be regarded as art.’ He did not predict that more often than not freedom is a privilege of those who build ‘higher and nicer’ instead of those who build out of what is at their disposal and not out of what they would like to use.
Unlawful dwellers
According to the figures quoted by Jarosław Urbański (Odzyskać miasto [Win back the city]), one in every 10 people in the world occupies his dwelling illegally. Unlawful dwellers make up 90 per cent of the population living in Addis Abeba, 33 per cent in Nairobi, 29 per cent in Seul, 45 per cent in Bombay, 67 per cent in Calcuta, 46 per cent in Mexico etc. Indeed, the ‘architecture without architects’, self-organisational, shaped without constraints, often ephemeral and temporary, becomes an increasingly powerful ‘movement’ which prevents the authorities from interfering with the lives of the citizens and insists on a greater social control over the development of the city landscape. The people who shape this architecture are dwellers, squatters, the homeless, activists, allotment owners and artists - they all interfere with the urban tissue out of necessity or out of the need to help but they are not driven by the desire of self-promotion. Their architecture is insubordinate, with a certain dramatic effect of its own; it’s based on the principles of collectivism, social participation and open dialogue, as illustrated by ecological houses in Drop City shaped as geodesic domes, French shanties built with petrol cans i.e. Bidonville, houses on wheels constructed on car platforms, train carriages which became mobile squats of Wagenburgen, spontaneously appropriated allotments and gardens with various summer houses or brick houses which transform themselves into separate settlements in the city, settlements gouverned by their own rules...
This unpredictable architecture is dominated by contingent forms which are often used by people living on the margin of the society, e.g. by pobladores from Chile – the homeless and illegal dwellers who unlawfully occupy city spaces thus creating their own housing areas. These very specific Chilean callampas, mushroom-like settlements, are crude constructions built of miscellaneous debris.
In 1990-1996, the Brasilian movement ‘Landless Peasants’ initiated 518 actions of taking over land for illegal settlement. The American movement ‘Homes not Jails’, founded by the activists of the ‘Food Not Bombs’ organisation, was involved in similar actions, taking over hundreds of abandoned and unusable lodgings and adopting them to the needs of the future inhabitants.
These widely criticised ‘anarchic’ initiatives, albeit illegal, should above make us aware of the crises of both the housing architecture and the impersonal approach to architects towards the users living on the very bottom of the social hierarchy. In the opinion of Hundertwasser ‘physical inappropriateness of poor settlements is a far lesser evil than moral inappropriateness of the functional architecture’.
The architecture which derives from misery, often associated with anarchitecture, witch is regarded as worse formally and morally, constitutes a specific Temporary Autonomous Zone (Hakim Bey), acting as a key to the understanding of the crucial dilemmas of the modern world and of the increasingly divided and fragmented societies. Significantly, the construction of such zones is undertaken by increasing numbers of artists and architects who consciously depart from practising ‘art for art’s sake’. The projects of shelters – temporary lodgings – by the Japanese Shigeru Bana can be found in many parts of the world. They take into account changing geophysical conditions, as in e.g. a temporary church made out of cardboard rolls erected in the epicentre of the earthquake catastrophe in Kobe. The N55 group, which made its projects (the so called ‘nomadic architecture’) available on the Internet on the free license basis, designed a building (their own dwelling place) which can be freely dismantled and transported from place to place.
The Polish artist Krzysztof Wodliczko is an author of similar, socially committed projects. Thanks to his Vehicle for the homeless in the shape of a multifunction machine, a tent and a cart the homeless from New York were able to find their own place in the city jungle and to adapt at least a piece of the hostile space to their needs.
The American architect, performer and activist Gordon Matta-Clark, who founded the group Anarchitecture in the 1970ties, displayed a strikingly different attitude. He bought unused crumbling buildings, cleft them in half, dissected them into pieces and cut out holes in the walls. In this way he played with the immobility of architecture, he breathed life into it and attacked its inertia. His interest lay only in places which stood no chance of revitalisation. ‘We think more about places where we stop to tie the shoelaces, places with in the anmation of our daily routine are but an interlude.’ His work was not influnced by any ideology; it expressed only a joy of a moment, a transience of an event, although, supposedly, also a little of provocation and the freedom of action in places generally considered asocial.
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Architecture is thus an outcome of an emotional approach to the city perceived as a network of mutual human relations, rather than lifeless, closed-off neighbouhoods. It reflects social concern, but also human resourcefulness, the lack of attention to form, contingency, a chaotic nature and destruction of the established order. It is a play of associations involving materials, preferences and tastes of the inhabitants. When an artist enters this play as well, it becomes a platform of a dialogue between a craftsman (architect) and those who need it (users). Although it may sometimes be a formal experiment, on principle it is able to solve serious and significant social issues. It represents a menace to the aesthetics, a challenge for artists and critics as well as a progress for the ‘unlicensed’, illegal and homeless. It constantly keeps the whole city and its inhabitants on the alert.
It is possible that in the future architects will get involved in the long and mute history of an ‘unjustifiable architecture’. It will not be those who value an authorial project, their own vision and who dash off their commissions, aspiring to be among the ten best paid and most controversial architects. Instead, people need architects who do not flinch at the idea of stepping beyond the margin and who will be willing to remain there, architects who perceive the world differently and are open to human needs, ready to take up the challenge of the confrontation with real people. Not on paper but in the real life, through encounters and discussions. One should not fear that ‘anarchitecture’ would then cease to exist; it will always be present. And it will continue to be ignored. The majority will pretend that it does not exist. It will still trigger indignation and aggression. Anar-users have grown accustomed to it. The idea behind art is that one should find one’s own niche and make use of it, as did Kroll and Erskine, and as is still done by ‘the unlicensed and illegal’, although the latter do not refer to themselves as architects. And maybe that is precisely the point...
Katarzyna Wiącek
Translated by Marta Wójcik
The article comes from the irregular “Recykling Idei” issue no. 8 (2006)