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“Mattering” the Res PublicaJoris Ernest Van Wezemael , Jan Michel Silberberger , Sofia Paisiou & Pierre FreyPublished online: 02 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: Joris Ernest Van Wezemael , Jan Michel Silberberger , Sofia Paisiou & Pierre Frey (2011) “Mattering” the ResPublica, disP - The Planning Review, 47:184, 52-59, DOI: 10.1080/02513625.2011.10557124

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Dr. habil. Joris VanWezemael isprofessor for human geographyat the University of Fribourgwhere he leads the Socio-SpatialComplexity Lab. Before he hasbeen working at the ETH Zürichand the University of Newcastle.His main research interestsinclude housing, planning,architecture, and security.

Jan Silberberger studiedarchitecture and urban planningat the University of Stuttgart aswell as visual communication atHochschule für bildende KünsteHamburg. In his current workhe applies ethnographic methodsto trace decision-making withinjuries of architectural competi-tions in Switzerland.

Sofia Paisiou graduated as an ar-chitect at the NTUA. She got herMSc in urbanism of the TUDelftand worked with architecturaloffices in Athens, Rotterdam andVienna. Currently she is doing aPhD at the university of Fribourg,on an interdisciplinary approachfor studying architectural compe-titions.

Dr. Pierre Frey is professor at theEPF Lausanne. He is a specialistin German studies and an arthistorian. In 1988 he foundedthe Archive de la constructionmoderne at EPF Lausanne.Pierre Frey has written numer-ous publications in the field ofarchitectural competitions andof 20th century architecture.

“Mattering” the Res PublicaThe Architectural Competitions for the Swiss Federal Post Officesin the Late 19th Century as a Foucauldian Dispositif

Joris Ernest Van Wezemael, Jan Michel Silberberger, Sofia Paisiou and Pierre Frey

Abstract: In the paper at hand, we study how theyoung Swiss republic in the late 19th century,which was in a political situation that objectedto direct intervention and was deeply skepti-cal with regard to a centralized state in general,found a way to manifest itself in its major cit-ies.We put forward the hypothesis that this pro-cess of manifestation relied on a powerful socialtechnology: the architectural competition. Ourargument will mainly trace the constitution ofarchitectural competitions as a regulatory de-vice, as an ensemble of “forces of becoming”constituted by the interplay between a specificconstellation of discourses, knowledge-basedpractices, spatial settings, architectural expres-sions, and professional networks.By conceptualizing the agency of the processesstudied as a Foucauldian dispositif, we also aimat contributing to the recent debate on alterna-tive theoretical conceptions in research on ar-chitecture and planning. Empirically, we will fo-cus on competitions for the federal post officesof Lucerne (1885), St.Gallen (1885), Geneva(1888), Zurich (1892), Neuchâtel (1892),Winter-thur (1894), Lausanne (1894), Schaffhausen(1898), Berne (1898) and Chur (1899).

“We have to remember that architecturehas always been a political activity.”

(Deleuze 1995, p.158)

Introduction

Architectural competitions possess a traditionof (at least) 2500 years. There are, for instance,documents concerning a competition for theAcropolis building in 448 BC and there are sev-eral well-documented competitions during theRenaissance period (Strong 1996:10). Yet, ac-cording to Dubey (2005:12) the contemporaryform of architectural competitions, that is, theform as we use it today, did not emerge beforethe second half of the 19th century1. Since then,following Strong (1996:111), architectural com-petitions have become part of the (building) cul-

ture of countries like Austria, Finland, France,and, above all, Switzerland. Lipstadt (2005,2006), for instance, offers an intriguing thoughlimited interpretation of architectural competi-tions as “shapers” of public consciousness, themeaning of public opinion and the possibilityof its mobilization.Referring to Kohoutek (2005), architectural

competitions can be considered to act as directbridges, as platforms of communication, be-tween diverse fields of society, such as politics,aesthetics, law, economy, and science. Mainly,this interdisciplinary aspect allows an architec-tural competition to connect different fields ofactuality and to enable translations betweenthese fields2. For instance, an architecturalcompetition may transform ambiguous societaland politically disputed problems into concretebuilding projects and replace open/unsettled/unsolvable clashes with solid building construc-tions (constructions that can be calculated, de-cided upon, assigned, started, finished, andbrought to account). Hence, architectural com-petitions are able to turn political questions into“a-political design problems” (Kohoutek 2005).Yet, an architectural competition may also con-stitute a political event, in Lipstadt’s sensemen-tioned above, but also in the sense that Viol-let-Le-Duc (1878) proposed. According to thelatter, an architectural competition constitutesan event that enables a society to transcribe (ortranslate) its ideals and objectives into its builtenvironment.Against this background, architectural com-

petitions can be regarded as significant deci-sion-making procedures for the built environ-ment. They open up towards alternative urbanfuture scenarios and act as “sorting machines”for those scenarios. They move a given placefrom the most fixed form (a steel or concreteconstruction, a stonework or simply wasteland)to themost fluid form (discourses, propositions,concepts, projects, drafts, ideas, representedverbally, in texts, plans, models or electroni-cally) and back again. This process of openingup (i.e., producing ideas or creating a multitudeof propositions) and narrowing down (i.e., deter-mining a solution and then putting forward thatsolution for actualization in another fixed set of

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disP 184 · 1/2011 53materials) can be seen as a key characteristic ofthe architectural competition.Moreover, as will be shown in this paper, ar-

chitectural competitions can become a powerfulsocial technology, an agencement (Deleuze andGuattari 1987), a formof distributed agency,whichis based on an alliance (Latour 2005) that containsa whole range of strategies and intentions.

Swiss Late 19th Century ArchitecturalCompetitions as a Foucauldian Dispositif

A building is always local, in the sense that it“matters”: the physical matter can become a sitewhere things that are absent or non-material aremanifested; they are folded into the local physicalspace and produce a place that “matters” to peo-ple. In other words, in connection with collectivesystems of signification, a building can performmeaning and thus relate a concrete site to moreabstract actions. In the paper at hand, we arguethat in the same way the Eiffel Tower folds in as-pects of the art of engineering, or a bank build-ing folds in aspects of the financial market, theSwiss federal post offices of the late 19th centuryfolded the new federal state into the local setting.We will show that this process of “mattering” thenew federal state relied on a powerful social tech-nology: the architectural competition.Yet, when trying to conceptualize the “mat-

tering” of the young Swiss republic by folding itinto local architecture and by creating a visualimage, something like, if the reader excuses theexpression, a “corporate identity” of the federalstate, one cannot merely focus on buildings.Rather one has to consider the generation ofmeaning, a specific constellation of discourses,knowledge-based practices in building design,spatial settings and professional networks ascomponent parts of a social technology. Hence,one has to examine the social technology or theregulative device if one wants to be able to grasphow a building can“matter” the young Swiss re-public and, at the same time, “matter” to a pub-lic that was rather cynical about the centralizedstate and opposed to any patronizing and intru-sive behavior of its authorities.According to John Pløger (2008) dispositifs

are concrete, situational ensembles of forces ofbecoming. They are able to produce truth, objec-tivity, or the normal3. Michel Foucault explainedin an interview (1980) that a dispositif is (a) aheterogeneous ensemble, which may figure indifferent ways according to (b) the nature of theconnections that can exist between the hetero-geneous elements. It (c) further responds to an

urgent need at a given historical moment andtherefore has a dominant strategic function. Adispositif can contain both material/technical/textual forces, installations and configurationsthat, in certain constellations, obtain power togovern, regulate, institutionalize or empowerspecific solutions. This is why, in Deleuze’sterms, a dispositif is more than an ensemble/as-semblage; it is an agencement, a discursive ornon-discursive force that disperses in space boththrough discourses and through regulatory de-vices; hence: a form of distributed agency.In analogy to Pløger’s (2008) view on ur-

ban planning as “dispositif problematics” (seenote 3), architectural competitions concern therelationship between the articulated and thevisible, the relationship between the discourseand the material. Architectural competitionsare predetermined on relationships and con-nections between the said (plans, texts, commu-nication) and the unsaid (strategies, intentionswith regard to effect and affect, prejudices andso on). They are, due to their public activity, trulydependent on the relationships between an en-semble of lived discourses, institutionalized dis-courses and architectural discourses4.We argue that the historically urgent need –

to which the series of architectural competitionsfor federal post office buildings in Switzerlandprovided an answer – refers to manifesting thecentralized state in a political situation that ob-jected to direct intervention and that was deeplyskeptical with regard to same. Therefore, we ap-ply the concept of the dispositif to analyze thatseries of competitions as a process that obtainedmeaning and legitimacy, established a space forarchitecture training, supported an almost exu-berant architectural expression, and eventuallylaid the groundwork for Swiss architecture tobecome an export product (a status that it re-tains to this day).As a process that did not just produce archi-

tectural solutions (buildings and structuring ef-fects with regard to urban development), but alsodispersed “moralizing effects” with regard to theright way of planning or developing buildings andcities, it became, in the sense of a commitment toarchitecture as a creative profession, a mission.

The Architectural Competitionand the Res Publica

By the end of the 19th century, the young fed-eral Swiss state started to produce an incrediblenumber of important buildings on the basis ofmodern, contemporary architectural competi-

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54 disP 184 · 1/2011

tion procedures. Related to this constructionboom and boom in the use of the competitionprocedure, two events have to be pointed out.The first is the general meeting of the SwissSociety of Engineers and Architects in Zurichin 1877. In this meeting, the Swiss Society ofEngineers and Architects adopted its principlesfor the rules governing architectural competi-tions5. The second is the adoption of the Fed-eral Constitution of 1874, which authorized thefederal government to set up its own Office ofConstruction.In short, these two events meant that the

Swiss state – which was itself (still) a buildingsite with regard to its institutions and its self-un-derstanding – was authorized to build its pub-lic edifices, while the engineers and architectsdrew up a plan of action to govern the compe-titions between their various proposals for thattask. At this point, one has to keep in mind thatthe Swiss confederation of individual states pos-sessed constitutional characteristics that madeit a democracy that was quite advanced in in-ternational terms. In addition, access to pub-lic orders of architecture was organized with-out delay, appropriately in a relatively open andtransparent form (one specific characteristic ofthe first competition rulebooks was to provide astructure consisting of local markets, cantonalmarkets and a federal market). These two fac-tors generated a regulatory device that shapedthe institutional and private context that liter-ally presided over the construction of the publicfederal institutions6 and thus the emergence of

a national Swiss scene of public constructionand, consequently, of architecture. That is, theprofound social, political and economic inter-twining of these two measures generated a dis-positif of architectural competitions.The postal buildings filled an urban and

symbolic space that was comparable to thoseof the préfectures in France; they constitutedthe material presence of the federal state in thetowns and the cantons. They folded the face ofthe federal state into local sites, into the localcontext. It is often forgotten that the Postal Ser-vice, the enterprise that transported people andgoods and issued postage stamps, implementedsome of the principal innovations of themodernnation states of the 19th century: the free move-ment of people, tariff unity, and the right to is-sue postage stamps. Switzerland had 22 confed-erate states, at least three national languages,a population divided into two main religiousdenominations, a territory consisting of a verydense texture of towns of small and mediumsignificance, and a population that was deeplyskeptical of the centralized state. Therefore, thearchitectural competition was, of necessity, ameans to mobilize the considerable resourcesneeded to build postal offices in all the cantonalcapitals and important towns. This explains whythere were no fewer than ten competitions be-tween 1885 and 1899 for designs for post officeprojects. These included the towns of Lucerneand St.Gallen (1885), Geneva (1888), Zurich(1892), Neuchâtel (1892) (Figure 1), Winterthur(1894), Lausanne (1894), Schaffhausen, Berne

Fig.1: Competition entry forFederal Post Office in Neuchâtel(ranked second).

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disP 184 · 1/2011 55

(1898), and Chur (1899) (Figure 2). During thatsame period, other postal buildings were beingconstructed in locations ofminor importance bycontractors who were appointed directly.

Case Studies: Post Office Competitionsin 19th Century Switzerland

In this part of the paper, we use empirical datato illustrate the concept of this series of archi-tectural competitions as a dispositif. More pre-cisely, we address this series’ ability to producethe “normal”, that is, its ability to carry out aprocess of normalization (the visible manifesta-tion of the Federal State throughout the coun-try), as well as its ability to produce objectivity(the generation of knowledge with regard to as-sessing the quality of architecture).The following passage from the jury report

for the post office competition in Chur (1899)shows how the board of jurors dealt with the twocontradicting forces (a central state seeking tomanifest itself in its major towns versus a publicthat had been deeply skeptical with regard to acentralized state as such), that is, how the dis-positif “architectural competition” respondedto the need to solve that contradiction.

While the aspects that have been outlined aboveare authoritative for every post office, the par-ticular post office, in this case, the one for Chur,might also feature the unique character of thesite, the characteristics of the landscape, the re-gional method of construction, in short, it might

show to advantage what is typical for the Grisons.Indeed, our modern means of transportationincreasingly obliterate everything that is typi-cal for a specific location and decorate the localmethods of construction with a more interna-tional outer cover, which is not an improvement.A building regarded as an architectural com-position has to fit to its surrounding, especiallyif it becomes important enough to advantagewithin the cityscape. In the same way this wassolved advantageously in former times. Nowa-days, with our modern means, we cannot onlydo that equally, but probably even better, if wejust recognize the characteristic features of thesite. It is surely not acceptable to design a postoffice in Chur in the same way as a mayoralty inParis, Amiens or in an industrial city in the northGerman plain.

Schweizerische Bauzeitung 1899:193,(our translation).

The passage above clearly stresses that a postoffice building, according to the board of jurors,has to feature the unique character of its loca-tion. Only the first sentence of the quoted pas-sage indicates that there were also requirementsof general validity, requirements that had to befulfilled by every federal post office throughoutthe new Swiss state. To illustrate how these re-quirements were addressed by the competitionjury, we would like to quote another passagefrom the jury report of the Chur competition:

A second aspect that came to the jurors’ mindsduring the first circuit concerns the style of con-struction: How can the character of a post officebe expressed? The service counter area struc-

Fig.2: Federal Post Office in Chur.

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56 disP 184 · 1/2011 tures the main façade in a particular mannerand thereby sets it apart from façades of otherbureau and administrative buildings; the sameapplies to the tower required for the telephonebusiness. The service counter area as a neces-sarily closed hall distinguishes itself from openalcoves, as we find them, for instance, in townhalls, and a telephone tower displays particu-lar features that distinguish it from every othertower. Although the tower of the town hall of anancient city was or is an expression of the in-dependence of the city and tried to surpass thetower of the church or the castle in size, for in-stance, in the case of Flanders, a particular typi-cal design was selected. The telephone tower fora post office is essentially a scaffolding for thewires, a scaffolding that is easy to access; a cover-ing shell and roof can be applied, however, theymust not hide the function of the tower.

Schweizerische Bauzeitung 1899:193,(our translation).

This second passage shows that the unifyingor normalizing elements (such as the façade orthe telephone tower), the elements that guaran-teed the recognition of the federal state, wereaddressed as functional necessities, that is, aselements necessary to guarantee the function-ing of the post office. The representational func-tion of these elements, however, was completelyconcealed in the jury report. Yet, this method ofconduct depended on a process of knowledgegeneration with regard to a way of seeing, evalu-ating and speaking about architecture that we willdescribe in the following by using excerpts fromthe jury reports from Neuchâtel (1892), Zurich(1892),Winterthur (1894) and Chur (1899).In the jury report of the Neuchâtel competi-

tion, the jurors mainly discussed specific func-tional aspects, e.g. if the service counter areasprovide enough space, if there are enough stair-cases, if the bureaus for the employees on thefirst floor receive enough daylight, if the bu-reaus are arranged in a suitable way, etc. But,whenever it came to evaluating aspects of theappearance of the proposed buildings, theyused expressions that relate more to the realmof taste. For instance, they pointed out that thefaçades of project No.6 “have a monumentalcharacter” and “are very nicely presented at theperspective view”. Concerning project No.10,they stated that the “façades, except for the ple-thoric design of some details, are beautiful”and that “the perspective view is brilliantly pre-sented”. As for project No.14, they wrote: “Thefaçades and the details are nice and they showbeautiful motifs. The façade facing the square isa bit fragmented” (Schweizerische Bauzeitung1892b: 46, our translation).

In Zurich andWinterthur, the jury membersdid not just discuss specific functional aspectsand detached the appearance of the proposedbuilding from these (as they did in Neuchâtel),but also tried to connect these two fields of eval-uation. To quote the jury report for the compe-tition in Zurich: “Certainly, the ground floor isnot only the most important part when it comesto carrying out the services of a post office. Thedesign of the upper floors and of the façadesalso fundamentally depends on the dispositionof the ground floor” (Schweizerische Bauzei-tung, 1892a:31, our translation). Likewise, thejury in Winterthur in evaluating project No. 10offered this criticism: “The façades with theirunmotivated middle sections are not in accor-dance with the floor plan of the main floor” andconcerning project No.3 lauded: “In particular,one excellence of this project has to be accen-tuated: The service counter area constitutes, inan original and characteristic manner, the mainmotif of the façade” (Schweizerische Bauzeitung1894: 59, our translation).In theChur competition, the jurors introduced

two clear criteria: one criterion which might becalled “form follows function” (i.e., the design ofthe telephone tower) and another that might bedescribed as“integration of the new building intothe existing surrounding” and/or “recognition ofregional specifics” (i.e., incorporating the charac-teristics of the Grisons), which dissolve the con-nection between appearance and taste and bringfunction and appearance together.Thus, by the end of the 19th century, the se-

ries of post office architectural competitions canbe regarded as a generative,“meaning-stimulat-ing” force that contributed to a new objectivitywith regard to style and construction, and espe-cially to the way of seeing, evaluating and speak-ing about architecture. This process shielded orenabled a parallel process: the normalization orunification of important elements – every postoffice featured a similar structure with regardto its façade as well as a telephone tower as anemblem (Figure 3), which gave the Swiss federalstate a recognizable face in all its cantons.

Conclusion

In this paper, we presented the idea that ar-chitectural competitions as a form of distrib-uted agency “mattered” the Res Publica in theyoung federal state of Switzerland in the late19th century.With the introduction of the concept of De-

leuze’s agencement and by linking that concept

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disP 184 · 1/2011 57

Fig.3: Compilation of severalPost Office buildings (realizedas well as unrealized ones).

Post Office Neuchâtel

Post Office Berne

Post Office Lausanne

Post Office Geneva

Post Office Lucerne

Second Prize ZurichSecond to Fifth PrizeWinterthur

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58 disP 184 · 1/2011 to the Foucauldian dispositif, we have shownthat a specific constellation of discourses,knowledge-based practices, spatial settings, ar-chitectural expressions, and professional net-works performed a distributed agency in theform of emerging architectural competitions.Futhermore, this regulative device unfolded anew “objectivity” with regard to construction-related trades, architectural style and the styleof discourse in architecture.We have located the generation of distrib-

uted agency, or agencement, in a “force field”constituted by the political, social and eco-nomic situation in the early period of the Swissfederal state (Dünne, Doetsch 2006: 208),which was carried out in specific spaces: in thehearts of the cities of Lucerne, St.Gallen, Ge-neva, Zurich, Neuchâtel,Winterthur, Lausanne,Schaffhausen, Berne and Chur7. We demon-strated that architectural competitions at theend of the 19th century in Switzerland fulfilledthe need tomanifest the federal state in a politi-cal situation that objected to direct interventionand that was deeply skeptical with regard to acentralized state in general. Thus, architecturalcompetitions carried out a highly importantstrategic task – without being strategically in-vented (in the sense of a tool to sell the centralstate to its public).In our empirical study, we traced the con-

nections between the elements in the ensemblethat gave rise to the architectural competitionin Switzerland, and we showed the profound so-cial, political and economic intertwining of theneeds of the state on the one hand, and the op-portunities for professional development of thearchitects on the other. By examining the juryreports of a series of architectural competitionsbetween 1885 and 1899, we illustrated that thisseries not only achieved the goal of spreading anintegrative visual language, but also contributedto developing criteria for defining the quality ofan architectural project.We argued that architectural competitions as

a regulatory device shaped the institutional andprivate context that literally presided over theconstruction of the public federal institutions.Moreover, a national Swiss scene of public con-struction and, in consequence, of architectureemerged specifically from the birth of the ar-chitectural competition in the late 19th century.Therefore, especially in the light of the recentdebate concerning EU public service contracts,the role of Swiss architecture has to be viewedagainst the background of its specific relationswithin and towards the setup of architecturalcompetitions and the “competition-culture”.

Notes

1 Dubey links the “contemporary” form of archi-tectural competitions to regulations formulatedby a professional organization of architects andengineers as a way to both define and defendthe interests of their members (Dubey 2005: 12)and shows that such regulations came into forcein Switzerland in 1877 (in Germany in 1868, inFrance in 1861 and in Britain in 1872).

2 Following Adrian Mackenzie (2002), one mightrefer to these processes of translation as trans-ductions. During transduction, pre-individualpotentialities interact (Mackenzie 2002), or,following a Deleuzian framework, virtual multi-plicities are put into communication, establish-ing an abstract machine and a diagram.

3 Pløger revisits the original French text of Fou-cault and thereby unveils a set of unjustifiedtranslations. By introducing his understandingof the “dispositif” to planning theory, he opensup an understanding of planning as several “dis-positif problematics”: the discourse and the vis-ible, the said and the unsaid and an ensembleof lived discourses (institutionalized, architec-tural). He further argues that the translation ofdispositif as apparatus emphasizes the technicalmeaning of the word, which reduces the originalconcept of dispositif to a device. “Dispositif ismuch more” (Pløger 2008).

4 At this point, we would like to recall that toFoucault representation is not equal to languageor the word, since for him “there is no singlerepresentational condition” (Colebrook 1999).A dispositif is a plurality, a multiplicity of (avariety of different) component parts. The ar-chitectural competition therefore is to be seenas a constellation of networks of financiers, de-signers and representatives of the state or city;of knowledge-based practices and technologiesof representation; of architecture discourses; ofspatial strategies, of federal politics.

5 Readers interested in the history of the rulesgoverning competitions between 1876 and 1939can find all the necessary information in Freyand Jolliet (1995).

6 At a first stage, government buildings, such asthe Federal Court of Justice, barracks and fed-eral postal buildings were the visible manifesta-tions of this development. At a second stage,after the nationalization of the private railwaysin 1903, the construction of the stations of theFederal railways was also part of the monu-mental expression of related and analogouspreoccupations and affirmations, yet to a lesserextent. Concerning railway station architecturein Switzerland, readers should refer to Stutz(1976). Regarding the development of what wasat stake after nationalization, readers will findan example in the monograph devoted to theLausanne Railway Station in Frey and Mondada(1997).

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disP 184 · 1/2011 597 In the article at hand, we detected and describeda dispositif with the help of historical data of ur-ban planning, however, the concept of dispositifcan be related to actual contributions to theurban planning debate in a similar way. Somefirst attempts in these directions can be found inHillier and Van Wezemael (forthcoming) as wellas VanWezemael (2010).

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Joris VanWezemaelJan SilberbergerSofia Paisiou

Geography UnitUniversity of FribourgChemin du Musée 4CH-1700 Fribourg

joris.vanwezemael@unifr.chjan.silberberger@unifr.chsofia.paisiou@unifr.ch

Prof.Dr. Pierre FreyInstitute of ArchitectureEcole Polytechnique Fédéralede LausanneBP 4243CH-1015 Lausannepierre.frey@epfl.ch

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