industrial architecture and negativity the aesthetics of architecture in the works of gordon matta...
DESCRIPTION
Matta-ClarkTRANSCRIPT
-
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjar20
Download by: [Bibliotheek TU Delft] Date: 15 February 2016, At: 09:13
The Journal of Architecture
ISSN: 1360-2365 (Print) 1466-4410 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjar20
Industrial architecture and negativity: theaesthetics of architecture in the works of GordonMatta-Clark, Robert Smithson and Bernd and HillaBecher
Maro Kriv
To cite this article: Maro Kriv (2010) Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics ofarchitecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher,The Journal of Architecture, 15:6, 827-852, DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2011.533549
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2011.533549
Published online: 29 Nov 2010.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 839
View related articles
Citing articles: 2 View citing articles
-
Industrial architecture andnegativity: the aesthetics ofarchitecture in the works of GordonMatta-Clark, Robert Smithson andBernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy Department of Social Research, Faculty of SocialSciences, University of Helsinki, Finland
The modernist idea of monumentality derived its inspiration from the imagery of late-
nineteenth century industrial structures. In the 1960s, this monumentality and modernist
total design was criticised by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown who proposed the
ugly and ordinary architecture and vital mess of commercial populism instead. On the
background of these two approaches, I will read the art works of Gordon-Matta Clark,
Robert Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Bechers as giving voice to all that is forgotten,
excluded or unacknowledged in architecture. The importance of these artists lies in their
exploration of negativity in architecture. Their art works stage the contras, first, between
the inevitable continuity of architecture as a process and its discontinuity when it is
reduced to a set of objects, as well as the contrast, secondly, between the continuity of
urban and architectural space and its discontinuity when our perceptions reduce it to its
monumental and important parts. Negativity stands for the time before and after of
what is commonly understood as an architecture, as well as for the invisible materiality
parts of urban space and buildings that are usually ignored. Today, it is in obsolete industrial
architecture that negativity finds its purest expression: in the words of Walter Benjamin,
the Modernists imaginary monuments are recognised as ruins even before they have
physically crumbled.
Introduction
In 1923, Le Corbusiers Vers une Architecture was
published. It was to become the canon for the
Modern Movement in architecture. The book drew
on the industrial imagery of American factories
and compared them with the Pantheon. It aimed
to correct the regressive tendencies in the architec-
ture of that time by grounding its practice in the
technical rationality of American engineers. Their
factories and grain silos became symbols of new
architectural monumentality.
In 1975, Gordon Matta-Clark carved a hole into
an abandoned apartment house in Paris, only
moments prior to its speculative demolition. He
created a short-lasting and almost invisible
monument out of the building that had already
lost its function. Although trained originally as an
architect, Matta-Clark turned away from the
actual practice of the discipline and created the
series of exemplary cuts into abandoned factories
and empty houses that explored the limits of the
notion of function in architecture.
827
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
# 2010 The Journal of Architecture 1360-2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2011.533549
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
In 1967, during his trip to Passaic, New Jersey,
Robert Smithson described the processes of archi-
tectural entropy in that suburban landscape. He
selected ordinary, random points on his walk and
documented them as if they were monuments.
Smithson observed the aesthetics of construction
sites and obsolete and polluted industrial land.
Although usually classified as a protagonist of land
art, his specificity lies rather in the complex explora-
tions of the processes of landscape and architectural
ruination.
Since the late 1950s, Bernd and Hilla Becher
have been developing a long-lasting photographic
project of documenting industrial structures on the
verge of obsolescence. Their works pay attention
to the monumental quality of the anonymous
sculptures in a detruit state. Contrary to the Moder-
nists reading of factories as imaginary monuments
of the future, the Bechers are interested in them,
as Benjamin would say, at the precise moment
when they become outmoded. They literally recog-
nise the monuments. . .as ruins even before they
have crumbled.1
This paper intends to show how the works of the
above-mentioned artists constitute a critical
response to the post-war crisis of both modernist
and industrial architecture. At the same time, I
want to demonstrate that this response differs
from the post-modern criticism of modernism, as
elaborated by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-
Brown. Instead of celebrating the popular and the
vernacular, the artists in question explore the field
of negativity in architecture: the phases of before
and after of an architectural process, the invisible
parts of architecture and cities and the repetitive
cycle of construction and destruction underlying
the rhetoric of industrial progress.
During recent decades, obsolescence of the
industrial built environment has constituted the
major issue in the urban planning agenda. The
responses oscillate from ignorance and demolition
on one side to fetish-like conservation efforts on
the other. Today, the importance of the presented
works lies not in questioning one or the other of
the two positions, but in questioning the discursive
field constituted by the recurring conflicts between
these two positions. They attempted to disclose
negativity in architecturesomething that is
ignored by both the rhetoric of progress and the
post-modern celebration of the vernacular and tra-
ditional.
Factory as a monumental image
Grain silo, factory, buildings of industry: these rep-
resented for Le Corbusier the language of new
architecture (Fig 1.).2 He sought to substitute
the neutrality and rationality of engineers struc-
tural intelligence for the pathos of architects con-
strained by the falsity of ornaments, decorations
and traditions.
The language of industrial engineering was
perceived as a neutral and objective vehicle of
arranging space, applicable to all architectural
scales ranging from individual buildings to urban
systems. In the work of Le Corbusier, the industrial
sublime of nineteenth-century technological pro-
gress was at the same time tamed down and
made absolute (Citrohan House, Chandigarh). The
factory was the single most appropriate architec-
tural image representing technological progress
828
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
that should be stretched from production to
consumption and, in general, to living.
Before Le Corbusier, American industrial architec-
ture of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth
centuries had a key influence on Walter Gropius
and Erich Mendelsohn. In 1913, seven pages of
unexplained illustrations of American grain elevators
and factories appeared in Jahrbuch der Deutschen
Werkbundes (Fig 2.). Gropius was soliciting these
pictures for a long time. He compared their monu-
mental effect to the buildings of Ancient Egypt.3
They on their part influenced Mendelsohns silo
dreams of 19141915. It was precisely these
illustrations that Le Corbusier borrowed from
Gropius in 1919 for the article in LEsprit Nouveau,
which was an early germ of Vers une Architecture.4
None of these architects had visited the USA
before they elaborated their silo dreams and indus-
trial fantasies. Mendelsohn visited the country for
the first time in 1924. On this occasion, he wrote:
Mountainous silos, incredibly space-conscious,
but creating space. A random confusion amidst
the chaos of loading and unloading of corn
ships, of railways and bridges, crane monsters
with live gestures, hordes of silo cells in concrete,
stone and glazed brick. Then suddenly a silo with
829
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Figure 1. Le Corbusier,
Towards a New
Architecture (1923).
Illustration originally
published in Jahrbuch
der Deutschen
Werkbundes (1913).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
administrative buildings, closed horizontal fronts
against the stupendous verticals of fifty to
hundred cylinders, and all this in the sharp
evening light. I took photographs like mad. Every-
thing else so far now seemed to have been
shaped interim to my silo dreams. Everything
else was merely a beginning.5
Gropius visited USA for the first time in 1928 and
Le Corbusier in 1935. The key role American
industrial structures played in the rise of modernist
architecture emerged from illustrations. While
Gropius claimed that American builders have
preserved a natural feeling for large compact
forms fresh and intact,6 these forms influenced
European modernists through images in the first
place. Jean-Louis Cohen argues that Le Corbusier
employed a deliberate strategy of seduction-by-
image.7 Colin Rowe points out that the influence
of Le Corbusiers Vers une Architecture has been
principally achieved through the medium of the
illustrated book.8
In the interpretation of Mendelsohn, Gropius and
Le Corbusier, the factory is represented as an ima-
ginary monument and monumental image of the
social progress rooted in and driven by the ration-
ality of science, technology and engineering.
830
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Figure 2. Illustration
published by Gropius in
Jahrbuch der Deutschen
Werkbundes (1913).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
Monumentality
The defining feature of monumentality is an impo-
sition of spatial order, closure and totality. Ideally,
monuments do not allow for misinterpretations.
They are like the readerly texts of Roland Barthes,
where the spectators are reduced to consumers
of meanings already present in the text.9 The role
of a monument is at the same time to unify a
city around a set of meaningful values and to
communicate these values. In the words of Lefebvre,
monumentality
embodies and imposes clearly intelligible mess-
ages. It says what it wishes to sayyet it hides a
good deal more: . . . monumental building masks
the will to power and the arbitrariness of power
beneath signs and surfaces which claim to
express collective will and collective thought. In
the process, such signs and surfaces also manage
to conjure away both possibility and time.10
Images of industrial structures were utilised as visual
supports for monumentalising the future city
designed according to the scientific and neutral prin-
ciples of engineering. While these principles made it
possible for Modern architects to produce architec-
ture on the urban scale and thus revive its social rel-
evance, they also introduced a closure on the
urban future. Architecture, from then on, was sup-
posed to follow one single logic. Monumentality per-
tains to our perception of time. Usually, we connect
the word monument with the past. Alois Riegl has
described the shift that occurred during the nine-
teenth century, when the historical value of monu-
ment was gradually replaced by its age-value. The
historical value of a monument is unintentional. It
was not designed as a monument, but became to
be valued later. Nonetheless, the criteria for the
valuation lie in the unique nature of the thing
valued. In contrast, monument has an age-value
insofar as it conveys a sense of a passing of time.
Here, the criteria are not the unique quality but the
fact that the thing signifies to us a sense of past.11
However, once the monument becomes a signifier
of a general notion of time, there is no reason why it
should not be capable also of pointing towards the
future. If a concrete individual monument refers to
time as an abstract notion, it can also signify the
future reduced to the abstract principle of function-
ality. It is then the materiality of ferro-concrete,
derived from the industrial structures, that plays a
key role of visual representation of this principle:
[Le Corbusier] knew how to bring out the secret
affinity that existed between ferroconcrete con-
struction and the human needs and cravings
that were just coming to the surface.12
If a monument plays a key role in the organisation
and ordering of our spatial and temporal experi-
ence, it is at the same time caught up in a contradic-
tion. On the one hand, it is an embodiment of a
collective unity, bound together around a central
idea, value or myth. However, if on one side monu-
ment clarifies the future and gives identity to a city
and its people, on the other side it does not explain
why the society should have the one particular form
that it signifies. Hence, the collective unity is at the
same time a project, in which a monument plays a
key role. Monument is both an expression of an
idea of a collective future and a tool for speculative
realisation of this idea.
831
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
Crisis and postmodern criticism
At least since the late 1960s, an increasingly large pro-
portion of the industrial built environment has been
rendered obsolete by the same neutral, objective and
rational logic that established its structures as monu-
mental images in the eyes of Modern Movement.
Factories are devalued, as mobile capital explores
undiscovered territories in the search for a new
spatial fix.13 The monuments of scientific rationality
and the future are crumbling. The monumental
vision of the future becomes an object of post-
modern criticism. In 1964, in one of his last works,
Le Corbusier designed a post-modern museum for
himself. In Centre Corbusier, the structure becomes
ornament and the form becomes more important
than function.14 As Tafuri argues, these stylistic
and formal experiments are related to a failure of
modernist architecture to solve the organisation of
production and consumption on the urban scale.15
This line of criticism is most importantly elabo-
rated in Venturi and Scott-Browns Learning from
Las Vegas,16 where they attacked the total design
of modernism:
Total design is the opposite of the incremental city
that grows through the decisions of many: total
design conceives a messianic role for the architect
as corrector of the mess of urban sprawl; it pro-
motes a city dominated by pure architecture and
maintained through design review, and supports
todays architecture of urban renewal and fine
arts commissions.17
It has been shown above how modernist architects
utilised industrial images to present their claims con-
cerning the future. Venturi and Scott-Brown lay
even stronger claim:
The architecture of the Modern movement. . .
developed a vocabulary of forms based on a
variety of industrial models. . . Their factorylike
buildings were more than influenced by the
industrial vernacular structures of the then
recent past, in the sense that historians have
described influences among artists and move-
ments. Their buildings were explicitly adapted
from these sources, and largely for their
symbolic content, because industrial structures
represented, for European architects, the brave
new world of science and technology.18
The stress on the symbolic power of pure form is
important here. If modernist architecture rails
against ornaments, decorations and symbols in
general, according to Venturi and Scott-Brown the
paradoxical outcome is that the whole building
turns into a symbol. Thus, the authors distinguish
between a decorated shed and a duck.19 While
the former accepts the symbolism of architecture
and thus allows for the distinction between the tec-
tonic and expressive part, the latter refuses non-
functional ornaments that would compromise the
purity of form. The paradox involved is that by
expulsion of symbolic language not subjugated to
the totality of a rational design, modernist objects
become symbols themselves. Above, I have charac-
terised the original strategy of Modernism as a
seduction-by-image. Venturi and Scott-Brown for-
cefully argue that this persists in actual modernist
architecture. The refusal of non-functional symbols
and ornaments (decorated shed) in the end turns
to production of the architectural object itself as
symbol (duck). As they famously put it: Minimegas-
tructures are mostly ducks.20
832
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
In contrast to the totalising urbanism and archi-
tecture based on supposedly neutral scientific and
technological rationality, Venturi and Scott-Brown
propose vital mess. In contrast to the architectural
purity and the calculations of engineers, they
propose architectural symbolism of the ugly and
ordinary.21 But while the authors successfully criti-
cise the modernist Plan, they replace it by the
market, which is suggested as the new principle
determining urbanism and architecture. Thus vital
mess urbanism and ugly and ordinary architecture
are at the same time promoted by sales staff.22
By embracing decorated sheds and the populism
of the commercial strip, Venturi and Scott-Brown
fail to achieve the emancipation of architecture
that they were promising. After liberation from
one master, it succumbs to another. Instead of the
rational plan, we are now in the domain of the
market: [W]ords and symbols may be used in
space for commercial persuasion.23 All in all,
things have not improved much when instead of
architecture that communicates the heroism of a
technologico-rational future we have one that per-
suades us in the sophisticated language of the
latest advertising tricks.24
Aesthetics and architecture
The reason for focusing on the art works of Gordon
Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson and Bernd and Hilla
Becher is my conviction that they evade both of
the above-mentioned positions in architecture.
Whilst these works are produced in the context of
the crisis of modernist architecture and urban
planning, they do not yield to post-modern and
populist criticism.
The selection does not claim to be in any way
exhaustive. My interest lies neither in art criticism
nor in mapping of the field of art. I do not intend to
analyse whether the selected art works in any way
represent this field. Rather, I am interested in studying
attempts at redistributing the field that is external,
yet so close to them: the field of architecture.25
Why turn to artists and not to architects them-
selves? What I focus on in this article is the aesthetic
of architecture. Relying on the work of Jacques
Rancie`re,26 I understand the domain of aesthetics to
be the sensible as such. Hence, I am interested in the
aesthetic operations that intervene in our perceptions
of architecture and in the forms by which our architec-
tural consciousness is delineated and structured.
Rancie`re employs the term distribution of sensible
to describe an organisational principle that divides
the whole into parts and determines in what way
individual parts participate in this shared whole.27
An architectural distribution of sensible then
defines what is architecture and what is not, what
is architecture and what is only a building, what is
common within architecture and what is not. It sus-
tains the relationship between the distribution of
social roles in the field of architectural production
and the distribution of ways of seeing and making
proper for each individual part. In relation to the
criticism and transformation of architecture, it also
defines what is perceived as possible and what as
impossible and who shares these perceptions.
The existing distribution of sensible is questioned
when a part refuses to be identified with its parti-
cular position, yet without immediately assuming
another particular position within the whole.28 Ran-
cie`re describes this as a part that has no part,
833
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
because of its paradoxical position: it belongs to the
whole, yet at the same time, it is excluded from
having a particular position in this whole.29 On
account of its ambiguity, a part that has no part is
political insofar as it challenges the aesthetically sus-
tained inequality between parts. Equality is then
understood by Rancie`re as a practical hypothesis,
the effects of which are tested against the everyday
reality of inequality.30
It is then a specific aesthetics of architecture,
focusing on what is forgotten, excluded or unac-
knowledged in the existing architectural distribution
of sensible, that makes the three presented bodies
of artistic work resonate together. They enact a
practical hypothesis of architectural and spatial
equality. Since the interest of the presented artists
in architecture was neither accompanied by having
a direct stake in the field of architectural production
nor bound to the ultimate objective of producing
habitable forms, the role of their artworks may
also be understood as a part that has no part.
Negativity in architecture
It is the notion of negativity, however, that generalises
the concept of a part that has no part and makes it
more suitable for use in relation to architecture. It
broadens the domain of Rancie`res concept from
that of a social group. Negativity expresses those
aspects of architecture that have the ambiguous pos-
ition of being its part and being excluded from it.
If Rancie`re defines politics as the formulation of a
practical hypothesis of equality by the part that has
no part, negativity has, too, direct stakes in the
formulation of politics:
[N]egativity is already political inasmuch as it
signals the vulnerability and contingency of
every phenomenon that appears to be fully posi-
tive and replete. . . . Negativity draws attention
both to the instability of every form and to the
contingency of all boundaries. It delivers the
radical message that things could be different
and that the way they are bounded or limited,
divided up and identified, is not ontologically,
naturally or normatively given.31
In this papers field of inquiry, negativity stands for
what comes before and after what is commonly
understood as architecture. To take these
moments as being intrinsic parts of architecture
and to consider them within the totality of architec-
tural practice is to challenge the existing distribution
of architectural sensible. Artistic exploration of
negativity presents the contrast between the inevi-
table continuity of architectural process and the
discontinuity of architecture reduced to an object.
Negativity also stands for the invisible materiality
of architecturethe parts of buildings and urban
space that are usually ignored and implicitly under-
stood as not being part of a real architecture and
a real city. Here, exploration of negativity stages
the contrast between the essential continuity of
space as a whole and the discontinuity of space
perceptually reduced to its monumental and
important parts.
To invoke negativity is then to be reminded of the
outside of architecture. This notion problematises
any absolutisation or naturalisation of the pres-
ence32 or of the present distribution of sensible. It
is important to understand that negativity differs
from negation: the works I discuss do not oppose
834
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
architecture by not-architecture, but they present
the not-architecture as being part of architecture.
In this sense my position differs from Rosalind
Krauss,33 whose objective is to expand the
coordinates in which we understand a field of pro-
duction (of sculpture, in her case). She conceptualises
not-architecture by inscribing the contrary notions of
landscape and architecture into Greimassquare.34 In
her work, not-architecture emerges as a complemen-
tary term to architecture. What comes out of the
combination of architecture and not-architecture is
then presented under the name of axiomatic struc-
tures, where there is some kind of intervention
into the real space of architecture, sometimes
through partial reconstruction, sometimes through
drawing,. . .through the use of mirrors. . . [or] pho-
tography can be used for this purpose.35
Whilst the discussed art works could come under
this definition, I do not follow this line of analysis
here. The objective of this paper is to explore how
the meeting of architecture and not-architecture
or what I prefer to call the meeting of architecture
and the field of its negativitycan change the
social meaning of architecture itself, or, in other
words, of the architectural distribution of sensible.
Gordon-Matta Clark: holes, functionality and
speculative redevelopment
By mistaking a part for a whole, an activity that
contains elements of violence or destruction is
often labelled as violent and destructive. This is
how Gordon Matta-Clarks Conical Intersect (1975)
(Fig. 3) was received and denounced from the
right, but also from the left of the political spectre.
The editorial of LHumanite ironically commented:
WHAT AN ART! It would seem that this hole is an
art, being made by an artist. The art in the domain
of hole [domaine du trou] is not afraid of the
emptiness in the old district of Les Halles in
Paris. It was the Brantome street, one of the
oldest in Paris, and there behind is the Centre
Georges Pompidou.36
A metonymic displacement takes place in such an
interpretation. The Conical Intersect consists of
cutting a hole into a soon-to-be-destroyed house
in the Beauborg area. The house itself was adjacent
to the future site of the Centre Pompidou and the
old Les Halles that had just been torn down (Fig 4.).
On the one hand, we have a huge hole in the
middle of Paris produced by speculative redevelop-
ment. We have also an empty parking area in the
centre of Paris redeveloped into the Centre Pompi-
dou, which is itself a hole: the buildings structural
system is pushed outside for the sake of maximum
flexibility and adaptability of the empty interior.37
This carcass of signs and flux, as Baudrillard named
it,38 represents one of the first cases of flagship
development, the process by which culture is objecti-
vised as a cultural production, commodified as a cul-
tural consumption and externalised as a sign of a city.
On the other hand, we have a different hole:
Matta-Clarks conical intersect carved into two aban-
doned seventeenth-century apartment houses. From
among the buildings slated for demolition and
making space for the Centre Pompidou, these were
the last.
These holes should not be confused. The former
have a precise purpose and function: they are part
of the speculative restructuring of space. But
Matta-Clarks hole does not have any specific
835
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
836
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Figure 3. Gordon
Matta-Clark: the hole of
Conical Intersect
(1975).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
function, if not a symbolic one: it questions the
justification of architecture and urban development
by the notion of functionality. Although it deals
intimately with architecture, it is rather an anarchi-
tecture. In an interview about a different project,
Matta-Clark explains this:
We were thinking about metaphoric voids, gaps,
left-over spaces, places that were not develo-
ped. . .metaphoric in the sense that their interest
or value wasnt in their possible use. . .You mean
you were interested in these spaces on some
nonfunctional level? Or on a functional level that
was so absurd as to ridicule the idea of function.
. . .Its like juggling with syntax or disintegrating
some kind of established sequence of parts.39
On one side, Matta-Clarks work focuses on the
building that lost the function it had performed
within the urban context. This building now simply
waits to be demolished. On the other side, Conical
Intersect can be also read as a comment on the
meaning of function in architecture.
By intervening into the architectural object in a
seemingly random way (disrespecting the natural
order of architecturedoors/walls/floors), the
837
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Figure 4. The hole of
Les Halles (Le trou des
Halles), Paris (around
19711976).
(Photograph courtesy of
Arnaud Martinez.)
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
work questions what is understood as ordinary and
shows its contingent character (Fig. 5).
We can understand this act of cutting a hole as
displaying the foundations of the practice of archi-
tecture in contemporary society. Stylistic exercises
in architecture mirror the fact that architecture is
not really autonomous and that it is caught in a
contradiction between the production of isolated
architectural objects and the urban organisation of
production.40 If the aspiration of modern architec-
ture to change urban organisation failed due to its
totalising drive, architecture is now doomed to
produce isolated objects without being able to
grasp this production in the totality of its social
and spatial meaning.
Conical Intersect refers to the ambiguity at the core
of Modern Movement. The belief that architecture
can and should change society is reflected in the
continuity between urban planning and architecture
(and ultimately, interior decoration as well). But this
continuity is caught up in a peculiar contradiction,
since this belief in the social power of architecture
is ultimately sustained on the notion of function.
Matta-Clarks work suggests a reading of archi-
tecture that exposes the whole of architectural
process, hidden when architecture is understood
as a functional object. In such reading, intervention
by cutting a hole through the building is not its
destruction, but rather questioning the forces of
urban destruction driven by immediate usefulness
and an abstract idea of space.
At the same time, cutting a hole is an act that
refers to the pure materiality of the object. It
focuses on the precise moment when the object is
losing its function, but still exists. It is a breakdown
of a Corbusierian Plan, but not of a Form: There
are forms without plansdynamic orders and
disorders.41 There are the traces, palimpsests of
past activities that reverberate in empty space.
As Rosalind Krauss puts it when referring to
another art work by Matta-Clark: The cut is able
to signify the buildingto point to itonly
through a process of removal or cutting away. The
procedure . . . succeeds therefore in bringing the
building into the consciousness of the viewer in
the form of a ghost.42
In this sense, a hole is not a negation of architec-
ture but exposure of its negativity. A hole is what
838
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Figure 5. Gordon
Matta-Clark, Bronx
floorsfloor above,
ceiling above, building
fragment (19721973).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
makes the object non-identical with itself and resists
attempts for its closure. It shows those architectural
qualities that persist after the building is stripped of
its functionality. It exposes the entropic tendency of
any architectural object and thus discloses the lack
of foundation beneath the monumental project.
Matta-Clarks site-specific works engage an . . .
extreme relation to the logic of the monument.
. . .[B]etween a past that continuously underwrites
itself, and a future that cannot be built on such
historical aporias, they radicalize the entropic
monument, render it a non-ument. . . They do
not aspire to the fantasy of historical stability as
conventional monuments do. . . [T]hese works
embrace the impossibility of inhabiting that
moment. Counterintuitively, they do this in the
marking of such a place, only to be removed
and destroyed, acknowledging the historicist
presumptions around which the conventional
monument is established.43
Robert Smithson: entropy, materiality and
equality of all points in the space
If Matta-Clarks work is the exposure of the non-
architectural of architecture, Smithson deals with
the architectural of non-architecture.44 The meta-
phor of a hole is utilised by the latter as well. In his
trip to Passaic (Fig. 6), Smithson sees the landscape
. . .full of holes. . .and those holes in a sense are
the monumental vacancies that define, without
trying, the memory-traces of an abandoned set of
futures.45 He does not carve holes as Matta-Clark,
but finds them in the industrial infrastructure of
suburban landscape.
In contrast to the idea of a monument presented
above, Smithson sees holes as having monumental
qualities. Rather than representing suburban land-
scape, holes represent its negativity: its temporal
839
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Figure 6. Robert
Smithson, the
monuments of Passaic
(1967).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
dimension and the continuity of its production. They
disclose the tendency of de-architecturalisa-
tion46landscapes and buildings cannot be
thought without taking into account the phases
before and after of what is called architecture.
Entropy is usually understood as a state of disinte-
gration, and connected with what comes after.
Smithson expanded this notion to the time that pre-
cedes, to the proto-states of architecture:
I became less and less interested in the actual
structure of the building and more interested in
the processes of the building and all the different
preliminary engineering things, like the boring of
holes to take earth samples. . . . So I was inter-
ested in the preliminary aspects of building.47
Proto-architecture, referring to the moment
between the beginning of construction and the
beginning of buildings proper use, is what Smith-
son calls ruins in reverse. In contrast to the ruin as
an abandoned building, Smithson found ruinous
qualities in the construction itself, in the phase
when something is being built (it is in the process
of building) without being built (once it is built, it
can be put to use): Land surveying and preliminary
building, if isolated into discrete stages, may be
viewed as an array of art works that vanish as they
develop.48
Referring to the proto-architecture of the Passaic
landscape, Smithson observes:
that zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in
reverse, that isall the new construction that
would eventually be built. This is the opposite of
the romantic ruin because the buildings dont
fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise
into ruin before they are built.49
Smithson operates not only with temporal negativity
but also that of the spatial. He inverts the logic of
monumental representation by treating all points
in space as if they were equal. The excluded points
are represented as belonging to the whole. Smith-
son does not advocate uncritical celebration of
disorder, chaos and ruins. What he refuses to do,
is to resolve the contradiction between order and
disorder, between ones spatial orientation and
disorientation.50 Between consensual closure of
the space around a monument and the anarchy of
dismembered shreds of space, Smithson suggests
an universal equality of all points of space.
Elaborating the above-mentioned metaphor from
Barthes, Smithson suggests that the landscape could
be less of a readerly and more of a writerly51 object:
with active spectators who decide for themselves
what is important and what is not. If the monument
is understood as a projection of a spatial and social
order, its meaning becomes uncertain as soon as
we take into account that each physical thing in
some way participates in that order. Smithsons
strategy is the inclusion of negativitythe invisible
and unrecognised parts of spaceinto the whole
architectural process. For example, a monument is
not only a statue in the middle of a square, but
also a quarry which provides the necessary material
for its construction; it is not only a factory, but also
all those locations where the raw materials used in
the factory are exploited. If Modern architects
were fascinated by the materiality of the ferro-
concrete, Smithson takes into account the material-
ity of the space as such.
When encountering an important node in space,
Smithson points our attention to all those other
840
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
invisible moments and spaces that constitute its
importance. The awareness of the relationship
between the physical thing in space and moments
in the past or future of this thing leads him to con-
struct an hypothesis of equality52 of all points in
space. He suggests abandoning the logic of important
and unimportant points in space and the spatial
hierarchy of what is worth our attention and what
is not. This is not a new idea of tourism, but rather
that of random walks anywhere: in the mining area,
for example (Fig. 7). In this way, Smithson criticises
the logic of monumental representation.
Smithson develops the notion of representation
in another direction. It is no longer a monument
that represents a city and its inhabitants. It is a non-
site (Fig. 8) that represents the physical point in
space and time. Smithson creates a non-site by con-
tracting the material from a site and removing it into
the enclosed space of a gallery. A non-site abstracts
from the site and at the same time represents it. Or
better, it represents the site in its abstraction.
The Non-Site (and indoor earthwork) is a three
dimensional logical picture that is abstract, yet it
represents an actual site. . . It is by this dimensional
metaphor that one site can represent another site
which does not resemble it. . . A logical intuition
can develop in an entirely new sense of metaphor
free of natural or realistic expressive content.
Between the actual site. . . and The Non-Site itself
exists a space of metaphoric significance.53
If we understood the monument as a Borgesian
Aleph, a point in space that symbolically contains
all other points and signifies the unity of a city, in
Smithsons work the monument is emptied of any
essence and defined negatively. Ultimately, it
becomes an empty space, a hole that becomes
itself monumentalised in the process of artistic
non-site creation: Installations should empty
rooms, not fill them.54
But still, what is this non-site? Apropos the
Smithsons trip to Passaic and resulting work,
Linder contends that it . . .elaborates upon specific
architectural forms and instances of the new monu-
mentality by fictionalising them. In the case of
Passaic, its infrastructural monuments were made
physical by photographing and writing about
them. . ..55 If a non-site is defined as a contraction
of site, Smithson adds that it is photography that
stands for the most extreme contraction of
matter.56 Hereby, we move on to the path taken
by Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Bernd and Hilla Becher: singularity, time and
historicity of anonymous industrial sculptures
With Smithsons non-sites, the photographic work
of Bernd and Hilla Becher shares the method of
abstraction. When they approach (soon to be) aban-
doned industrial architecture, they abstract from the
locality and from the social context of factories. We
are shown neither workers nor the setting of the
factory in the wider environment. The objects are
reduced to pure forms, which are then arranged
into series and grids (Fig. 9):
Through photography, we try to arrange these
shapes and render them comparable. To do so,
the objects must be isolated from their context
and freed from all association.57
But abstraction should not be confused with what
Lefebvre called abstract space.58 The Bechers invent
such presentation of architecture, which does not
841
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
842
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Figure 7. Robert
Smithson at
Gutehoffnungshutte,
Oberhausen, Germany
(1968).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
843
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Figure 8. Robert
Smithson, Non-site,
Oberhausen, Germany
(1964).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
844
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Figure 9. Bernd and
Hilla Becher, Grid
typology of blast
furnaces, perspectival
view, Europe (courtesy
of Hilla Becher).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
bury the singularity of the object under its particular
qualities. It is the arrangement of industrial objects
according to their basic archetypes that enables
the singularities to stand out (Fig. 10). The differ-
ence emerges here out of repetition.
When precisely edited and rigorously arranged
into grids, we see in these industrial objects some
formal and material surplus that cannot be
explained simply by reference to their function.
This is the negativity of industrial architecture, the
non-functional excess beyond its functionality. No
two industrial objects are actually the same, in
spite of being engineering works of pure functional-
ity. Starting from 1969, the Bechers produced the
term anonymous sculptures for these objects.
Unlike similar approaches used in botany or
zoology, for example, the cumulative effect of the
typological method as it is applied in the Bechers
life-project does not provide greater knowledge
of the processes or history of their subject.
Instead, the use of rhythm and repetition endows
the buildings they photograph with the anonym-
ity or abstract form they seek rather than with
scientific specificity (by divorcing meaning from
original purpose and everyday social function)
and, in turn, allows us to read them ahistorically
and extra-socially and appreciate them as auton-
omous aesthetic objects or sculpture.59
In their own words, the Bechers shoot straight,
directly facing the buildings, because they dont
agree with the depiction of buildings in the 1920s
and 1930s. Things were seen either from above or
below which tended to monumentalize the
object.60 In contrast to industrial images that
monumentalised the future based on engineering
rationality, the Bechers present portraits of objects
in passing, soon-to-be-ruins, objects whose func-
tionality lies in the past (figs 11, 12).
The operation of the Bechers repeats the underlying
principle of Matta-Clarks holes and Smithsons
non-sites. It is the singularity of an architectural
object that is marked in its passing presence, in its
universal entropic condition.
It is the building itself that is taken to be a
message which can be presented but not coded.
The ambition of the works is to capture the pres-
ence of the building, to find strategies to force it
to surface into the field of the work. Yet even as
that presence surfaces, it fills the work with an
extraordinary sense of time-past. Though they
are produced by a physical cause, the trace, the
impression, the clue, are vestiges of that cause
which is itself no longer present in the given
sign. Like traces, the works. . .represent the build-
ing through the paradox of being physically
present but temporally remote.61
To abstract is to see these objects detached from their
original use, as mere things speaking through their
pure materiality. Such abstraction liberates these
objects from the function they played during a
specific period of history. Together with an increased
attention to material, surface and texture, this
abstraction exposes the marks and traces of time
inscribed in these industrial structures. The historicity
has returned with full force. As Rancie`re writes
apropos an author of nineteenth-century realistic
novels (substitute factories for characters):
He displays the fossils and hieroglyphs of history
and civilization. He unfolds the poeticality, the
historicity written on the body of ordinary
845
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
846
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Figure 10. Bernd and
Hilla Becher: cooling
towers, Belgium,
Germany, France,
Netherlands,
Luxembourg (1968
1983) (courtesy of Hilla
Becher).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
things. . . . [T]he characters are no longer intelligi-
ble through their ends. They are intelligible
through the clothes they wear, the stones of
their houses or the wallpaper of their rooms.62
Hence, what the Bechers abstraction aims at is not
ignorance of history but the opposite: its redemp-
tion from the thrall of heritage and technical
history.63
847
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Figure 11. Bernd and
Hilla Becher, Minehead,
Charleroi, Belgium
(1975) (courtesy of Hilla
Becher).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
848
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Figure 12. Bernd and
Hilla Becher, Minehead,
Charleroi, Belgium
(1975), detail (courtesy
of Hilla Becher).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
Urban and architectural historians usually refer to
heritage as a fact. For example: The traces of indus-
trialization sometimes disappear swiftly, without
proper research and documentation, thus threaten-
ing the important heritage of the industrial land-
scape that developed over the last two centuries.64
Using such a reified concept, the architectural
object simply is or is not a heritage. The questions
why and how this or that object rises into awareness
as a heritage is never posed. The question of its
historicity, of its passing from functionality to
obsolescence, from the monumental image of
future to the monument of past, is never really asked.
The Bechers refuse the choice between the
Modern movements monumentalisation of the
future and the present interest in the conservation
of industrial structures as heritage. They show us
factories as anonymous sculptures, necessarily con-
taining a degree of non-functional contingency.
But we also come to understand that it is the
same technical rationality that created them,
which is now rendering them obsolete. Each
factory is also a mere thing, beyond any functional
or monumental justification.
Its not a case of photographing everything in the
world, but of proving that there is a form of
architecture that consists in essence of apparatus,
that has nothing to do with design, and nothing
to do with architecture either. They are engineer-
ing constructions with their own aesthetic.65
This brings us again to Matta-Clarks assertion
that there is a form irreducible to Plan and back to
Le Corbusiers seduction by industrial images. In
the course of our trip, the monumentality of
architecture has been reinterpreted through its
negativity: through the presentation of invisible
parts of urban space and through the assertion of
the continuity of architecture as a process instead
of its discontinuity when understood as a set of
glamorous objects.
Conclusion
In this paper I have first explored how modernist
architects interpreted images of industrial buildings
as rational and scientific monuments of the future.
Their totalising vision failed, at the latest, during
the 1960s and was then heavily criticised. Robert
Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown contrasted moder-
nist ducks with decorated sheds in a commercial
strip. But while escaping the total design of the
modernist plan, their theory yielded to the perva-
siveness of the post-modern market logic.
In contrast to both of these positions, the works
of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson and the
Bechers explore negativity in architecture. These
artists are interested in the part of architecture and
space that has no part in the existing distribution
of sensible. These works do not simply oppose archi-
tecture with what it is not but this opposition is
presented in order to challenge the very meaning
and content of architecture.
The works of Bernd and Hilla Becher focus on
buildings, the origins of which lie in the idea of
pure functionality, at the moment they are aban-
doned or soon-to-be-abandoned. Employing such
a view, the purely engineering form is perceived as
an anonymous sculpture. Once presented beyond
its exchange- or use-value, we are able to perceive
the essential historicity of industrial buildings.
849
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
In the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, the hole is a
literal metaphor of that part of space that has no
part. If urban holes are intentionally produced in
the process of spatial restructuring under capitalism,
by producing an architectural hole without any par-
ticular purpose the artist reveals the hidden social
forces behind the process of speculative redevelop-
ment and questions its rationality.
Robert Smithsons art represents space as if all the
points are equaltaking photographs of suburban
infrastructure, strolling in an abandoned quarry,
collecting soil sediments. Every object in space can
have an aesthetic affect, rooted in the perception
of its materiality. Smithson questions the existing
distribution of sensible by regarding any-place as if
equal to any other place.
Today, the importance of these works is twofold.
On the one hand, they show the limits of totalising
claims of technical reason in architecture. On the
other hand, they neither propose commercial popu-
lism as an alternative solution, nor they succumb to
the cultural nostalgia for outdated buildings strongly
present in todays attempts to conserve industrial or
vernacular architecture. Instead, they constantly
point our attention to all that is forgotten, excluded
or unacknowledged: to what I have described as
negativity in architecture.
What the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher have in
common is their exploration of the aesthetic foun-
dations of architecture. They do not propose new
forms of architecture or new modes of architectural
practice. Rather, their works challenge our percep-
tions as to what is architecture and what is not,
ask which phases of the architectural process are
visible and which are not and question what is
monumental and what is ordinary. In this sense,
they can be read as a practical hypothesis of archi-
tectural and spatial equality.
Notes and references1. W. Benjamin, ParisCapital of the Nineteenth
Century,NewLeft Review, 48 (1968), pp. 7788; p. 88.
2. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (London,
John Rodker, 1927).
3. S. Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture. The Growth
of a New Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1949), p. 277.
4. R. Banham, A Concrete Atlantis. U.S. Industrial Build-
ing and European Modern Architecture (Cambridge,
Mass., The MIT Press, 1986).
5. Erich Mendelsohn, quoted in ibid., p. 6.
6. Walter Gropius, quoted in ibid., p. 9.
7. J.-L. Cohen, Introduction, in, Le Corbusier, Toward an
Architecture (London, Frances Lincoln Ltd., 2008), p. 3;
from which consider also the following quotation: In
one of the most notorious falsifications in the history
of modern architecture, Le Corbusier retouched the
photograph of the silos in Montreal, hiding the dome
of the Bonsecours market., J.-L. Cohen. Interestingly
enough, the accusation of historical falsification is mis-
placed in relation to this architects act, which is led by
the desire for a clear, monumental image.
8. Colin Rowe, quoted in J.-L. Cohen, ibid., p. 58.
9. See R. Barthes, S/Z: An Essay (Oxford, Hill & Wang,
1991). Readerly texts are texts-monuments for
Barthes. Readerly text situates the reader in the
passive role of user or client of ready-made
interpretations. It reduces text to the canon. In con-
trast, a writerly text calls on the reader to produce
the meaning. Writerly text is always produced again
and again in the moment of presence. It cannot be
850
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
stored in the past with a definitive interpretation. It is
probably not necessary to say that readerly/writerly is
not an objective property of the text, but resides in
the relationship between the text and its reader.
10. H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, Black-
well, 1991), p. 143.
11. A. Riegl, The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character
and Its Origin, in, K. M. Hays, Oppositions Reader (New
York, PrincetonArchitectural Press, 1998), pp. 621653.
12. S. Giedion,Space, TimeandArchitecture,op. cit., p.433.
13. D. Harvey, The Limits to Capital (Oxford, Basil Black-
well, 1982).
14. C. Jencks, Current architecture (London, Academy Edi-
tions, 1982), p. 50.
15. M. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capi-
talist Development (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT
Press, 1979).
16. R. Venturi, D. Scott-Brown, S. Izenour, Learning from
Las Vegas. The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural
Form (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2000).
17. Ibid., p. 149.
18. Ibid., p. 135.
19. Ibid., p. 87. The term duck comes from the Las Vegas
stand in the shape of a duck. If we take an example of
a hamburger stand, decorated shed is a primitive struc-
ture with large neon signs announcing hamburger,
while duck is a building which is itself in the form of
a hamburger.
20. Ibid., p. 163.
21. Ibid., p. 118.
22. Ibid., p. 118.
23. Ibid., p. 9.
24. Todays junkspace (R. Koolhaas, Junk Space, in,
R. Koolhaas, Content [Cologne, Taschen, 2004],
pp. 162171) is then a strange merger between
the two positions presented: the Plan promoted by a
sales staff, totally designed mess; heroism of ugly
and ordinary.
25. This is where my objectives differ from those of
Rosalind Krauss in her account of not-architecture:
R. Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field, October,
8 (1979), pp. 3044. See more detailed discussion
below.
26. J. Rancie`re, Disagreement (Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press, 1999); J. Rancie`re, Politics and
Aesthetics (London, Continuum, 2006); J. Rancie`re,
On the Shores of Politics (London/New York, Verso,
2007); and J. Rancie`re, The Future of the Image
(London/New York, Verso, 2007).
27. J. Rancie`re, Politics and Aesthetics, op. cit., p. 12.
28. J. Rancie`re, Why Emma Bovary Had to Be Killed,
Critical Inquiry, 34 (2008), pp. 233248; p. 238.
29. J. Rancie`re, Disagreement, op. cit., pp. 1112.
30. This is Rancie`res critique of Bourdieu: J. Rancie`re, The
Ignorant Schoolmaster. Five Lessons in Intellectual
Emancipation (Stanford, CA, Stanford University
Press, 1991), p. 46.
31. D. Coole, Negativity and Politics (London, Routledge,
2000), p. 231.
32. J.-L. Nancy, Hegel. The Restlessness of the Negative
(Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2002),
p. 28.
33. R. Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field, op. cit.
34. Ibid., p. 37.
35. Ibid., p. 41.
36. LHumanite (November 29th, 1975), quoted in
P. M. Lee, Object to be Destroyed. The Work of
Gordon-Matta Clark (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT
Press, 2001), p. 185, own translation.
37. See P. M. Lee, Object to be Destroyed, op. cit., p. 192
and J. Baudrillard, The Beauborg-Effect: Implosion
and Deterrence, October, 20 (1982), pp. 313; p. 5.
38. J. Baudrillard, The Beauborg-Effect: Implosion and
Deterrence, op. cit., p. 3.
39. Gordon Matta-Clark, interviewed by Liza Bear in 1974;
quoted in S. Walker, Gordon Matta-Clark: Drawing on
851
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 6
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016
-
Architecture, Grey Room, 18 (2004), pp. 108131;
p. 115.
40. M. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, op. cit.
41. Gordon Matta-Clark, quoted in J. Attlee, Towards
Anarchitecture: Gordon Matta-Clark and Le Corbu-
sier, Tate Research Papers (Spring, 2007), online at
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/
tatepapers/07spring/attlee.htm.
42. R. Krauss, Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in
America. Part 2, October, 4 (1977), pp. 5867; p. 65.
43. P. M. Lee, Object to be Destroyed, op. cit., p. 55.
44. M. Linder, Sitely Windows: Robert Smithsons
Architectural Criticism, Assemblage, 39 (1999),
pp. 635.
45. R. Smithson, A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic,
New Jersey, in, R. Smithson, Collected Writings
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, University of California
Press, 1996), pp. 6874; p. 72.
46. R. Smithson, Entropy Made Visible. Interview with
Alison Sky, in, R. Smithson, Collected Writings, op.
cit., pp. 301309; p. 304.
47. R. Smithson, Interview with Robert Smithson for the
Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution
(interview by Paul Cummings), in, R. Smithson,
Collected Writings, op. cit., pp. 270296; p. 291.
48. R. Smithson, Towards the Development of an Air
Terminal Site, in, R. Smithson, Collected Writings,
op. cit., pp. 5260; p. 58.
49. R. Smithson, A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic,
New Jersey, op. cit., pp. 6874; p. 72.
50. A. Reynolds, Robert Smithson. Learning from New
Jersey and Elsewhere (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT
Press, 2007), p. 121.
51. R. Barthes, S/Z: An Essay, op. cit.: see also Note 8 above.
52. In the sense used in the work of Rancie`re: see notes
above for details.
53. R. Smithson, A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites, in,
R. Smithson, Collected Writings, op. cit, p. 364.
54. R. Smithson, What is a Museum? A Dialogue between
Allan Karpow and Robert Smithson, in, ibid.,
pp. 4351; p. 44.
55. M. Linder, Sitely Windows: Robert Smithsons
Architectural Criticism, op. cit., p. 22.
56. M. Linder, ibid., p. 22.
57. Bernd and Hilla Becher, quoted in B. Stimson,
The Photographic Comportment of Bernd and Hilla
Becher, Tate Research Papers (Spring, 2004), online
at http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tate
papers/04spring/stimson_paper.htm.
58. Compare H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space,
op. cit., pp. 4953.
59. B. Stimson, The Photographic Comportment of Bernd
and Hilla Becher, op. cit.
60. Bernd and Hilla Becher, quoted in B. Stimson, The
Photographic Comportment of Bernd and Hilla
Becher, op. cit.
61. R. Krauss, Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in
America. Part 2, op. cit., p. 65.
62. J. Rancie`re, The Politics of Literature, SubStance, 103
(2004), pp. 1024; p. 19.
63. Compare following excerpt from the interview with
Bernd and Hilla Becher by Ulf Erdmann Ziegler: In
the 70s, you seem to have been enlisted by the indus-
trial historians. . . . Bernd Becher: They wanted to write
a text, and garnish their text with our photos. Hilla
Becher: They couldnt imagine that photographs
could stand on their own. They wanted to give it a
scientific basis.: U. E. Ziegler, The Bechers Industrial
Lexicon. Interview with Bernd and Hilla Becher, Art
in America, 90 (2002), pp. 92101, 140141 and
143.
64. L. Bergeron, M. T. Maiullari-Pontois, Industry, Architec-
ture, and Engineering: American Ingenuity, 1750
1950 (New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000), p. 217.
65. Bernd Becher, quoted in U. E. Ziegler, The Bechers
Industrial Lexicon, op. cit.
852
Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of
architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert
Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher
Maros Krivy
Dow
nloa
ded
by [B
ibliot
heek
TU
Delft
] at 0
9:13 1
5 Feb
ruary
2016