viii

5. An Undergraduate Voice in Architectural Education Laura L. \Villenbrock

6. Beyond Cultural Chauvinism, Broadening and En riching Architectural Education

julie Diaz, Shirl Buss, and Sheryl Tircuil Part U Strategies

7. Cultural Invisibility The African American Experience in Architectural Education Brad Grant

8. The Ilidden Curriculum and the Design Studio, Toward a Critical Studio Pedagogy Thomas A. Dullon

9. Biculturalism and Community Design, A Model for Critical Design Education

Anthony Ward

10. Introducing Gender into Architectural Studios jacqueline Leavill

11 . Rethinking Architectural History from a Gender Perspective

Karen Kingsley

12. Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn Alan Pe.genberg

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Contributors

Contents

97

121

149

165

195

225

249

265

279 289 293

Series Introduction: Cultural Politics and Architectural Education: Refiguring the Boundaries of Political and Pedagogical Practice

Henry A Giroux

Voices ill Arcbitectural Education is developed around a number of guiding principles that rupture dominant assumptions and practices both within its own disciplinary space and across other disciplinary fi e lds. More specifically, it makes problematic those assumptions that legitimate certain taken-for-granted relations among knowledge, power, and pedagogy. Understood in these terms, the contributors all challenge in different ways the nmion that architects can remove themselves from broader issues that shape the land-scape of society. Hence, questions regarding urban design cannot be removed from issues concerning homelessness, environmental decay, urban blight, af-forda.ble housing, racism, sexism, and economic injustice. The contributors af-firm the primacy of the political in the d iscou rse and practice of architectural theol)' and education, but they also reveal how politiCS and ideology structure and shape architectural discourses that shift between effete cultural commen-tary and a reductionistic celebration of the primacy of the aesthetic.

As part of a broader discourse of social responsibility, the contributors attempt to redefine the ethical legitimacy of architectural theory and pedagogy in a society that subordinates almost every aspect of daily life to the rule of capital and the logic of the market. This is not to suggest that the intent of this book is merely to convince people within the fi e ld of architecture to rethink questions of design and planning to undertake much needed internal

x Series Introduction

disciplinary reforms. Such a position would suggest that architects merely need to appropriate ethical and pOlitical considerations as part of their Ian'-guage to refann their disciplinary field. While such a goal is not to be U11-d,erva.lued, Voices in Architectural Education poims to a much wider project: situating the theory and practice of architectural education within cultural politics that challenge not only disciplinary boundaries but also the institu-tional and ideological borders that shape Western industrial societies. Thus,

o the value of this book lies in part in its willingness to engage the limits of '" ItS ?wn disciplinary discourse within rather than outside wider historical,

SOCial, and cultural configurations of power. In attempting to ground architectural theory and practice in cultural politics

that illuminate the field's connections to broader economic and social forces Voices in Architectural Education reconstructs the meaning, purpose, and practice of architectural theory and education in multidisciplinary terms. In this way, political and cultural issues often excluded from the field of archi-tectural theory and design become central to the definition of architecture as a form of cultural politics. In addition, the contributors illuminate the Q importance of making connections between architectural workers and other cultural workers who produce specific symbolic representations organized and regulated within and across various institutional arrangements. At stake here is the importance of defining architects as public intellectuals and pro-~Idmg a dlscours.e that all~~s them to create a new vision in which to engage 111 the construction of cntlCal cultural and institutional spaces with other 0 cultural workers.

Voices in Architectural Education further extends and deepens the notion of cultural politics by making the issue of pedagogy central to the discourses of architectural education. This is an important issue that needs some clari-fication. Within the last decade there has been growing concern among a number of scholars in a variety of diSCiplines with the notion and practice of pedagogy. RefUSing to reduce the concept to the practice of knowledge and skills transmission, the new work on pedagogical practice has been taken up as a form of political and cultural production deeply implicated in the construction of knowledge, subjectivities, and social relations. In the shift

q. away from pedagogy as a form of transmission, there is an increasing attempt , to engage pedagogy as a form of cultural politiCS. Both inside and outside

the academy this has meant a concern with analyses of the production and representati~n Of. mean~ng and how these practices and the practices they provoke are Impltcated 111 dynamics of social power. Unfortunately, the new-found concern with pedagogy in discipl ines other than educational theo and practice is often characterized by a refusal to engage the diverse wo~ undertaken in this field by a number of critical educational theorist'). For example, while pedagogy has become a "hot" topic in French, gender, and Engltsh Itterature studies, the books produced in these diSCiplines largely suggest, by vIrtue of thelf theoretIcal gaps and structured silences, that ped-

series Introduction xi

agogyas a form of critical and political practice is a new theoretical invention diScovered and developed within the narrow confines of each of these re-spective disciplines. 1 The resulting work often expresses itself both in re-ductionistic theories of pedagogy and as an indictment of specialized scholarly work; at the same time, such work implicates itself in the disciplinary elitism that haunts the overall structure of academic disciplines. The field of education becomes the "other," marginalized and displaced as a serious terrain of theOlY, resistance, and cultural politiCS. This suggests not only a commentary on the academic status of educational theolY as a discipline but also the fear and loathing met by any multidisciplinary field that closely intersects with public life.

The contributors to Voices in Architectural Education do not engage in thiS form of historical and ideological amnesia. On the contrary, they collec-tively draw from a wide corpus of work in educational theory and practice while simultaneously reinventing and rewriting such work within a particular multidisciplinary structure and space. In doing so, they perform a valuable theoretical service by articulating critical pedagogy around new problems, discourses, and practices.

Voices in Architectural Education gives new theoretical and practical mean-ing not only to the study of architectural education, but also to a theory and practice of pedagogy, hiStory, cultural studies, and other spheres of academic and daily life that are attempting to redefine the role of the public intellectual as a cultural worker and the space of the social as an eminently political, historical, and cultural landscape. This is an invaluable book not only for students of architectural education but for all cultural workers interested in critical pedagogy and cultural studies. Not only does Voices in Architectural Education offer an example of how critical pedagogy can concretely link D theory and practice, it also refigures the boundaries between politics and 0 cultural work. This is a book that should be read and re-read.

NOTE

1. See for example, Barbara Johnson, ed., Yale French Studies Number 63 (1982), special issue on "The Pedagogical Imperative: Teaching as a Literary Genre"; Gregory L. Ulmer, Applied Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Cary Nelson, Ybeory in the Classroom (Ur-bana: University of!llinois Press, 1986); Patricia Donahue and Ellen Quandahl, eds., Reclaiming Pedagogy.' The Rhetoric of the Classroom (Carbondale: SOUU1-ern IllinOis University Press, 1989); Bruce Henricksen and Thais E. Mogran, eds., ReOrientations .. Cn'ticai Theories and Pedagogies (Urbana: University of IllinOis Press, 1990); Susan L. Gabriel and Isaiah Smithson, eds., Gender in the Classroom (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990); Mas'ud Zavarzadeh

xiv Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude goes to Marsha Olcon, who transcribed tapes, typed and retyped letters and chapters, and generally eased the load, all the while maintaining her sense of humor and flinching only a little whenever I walked into her office. Thanks also to Catherine Gangale for her help in transcribing tapes.

I want to thank my parents for their suppOrt and for making me go to architecture school when I thought I had changed my mind.

l owe a great debt [0 my sons, Nathan and Nolan, for the lime this book has taken from our reading and playing together.

And above all I want to thank my Wife, Janis, an ed itor in her own right, who read evelY chapter and caught things I missed. This book would nOt have been possible without her loving suppOrt, careful critiCism, and endless time put in on the computer. Someday I will have to pay her back

Introduction: Architectural Education, Postmodernism, and Critical Pedagogy

Thomas A Dutton

Technology can be used (Q subjugate the people or it Cdn be used to liberate them . ... And whoever says that a technician of whalever sort, be he [sicl an architeel, doctor, engineer, sciemist, etc., needs solely [Q work with his inslrumems, in his chosen specialty, while his coumrymen are starving or wearing themselves OUl in the struggle, has de facto gone ovcr to thc Olher side. He is nOt apolitica l: he has taken a political decision, but one opposed to the rnovernel1lS for Iiberation. 1

Che Guevara spoke these words before the International Union of Architects (UIA) Congress in 1963. When I first read them ten years later, I was mes-merized, shocked, and angered all at once. Guevara's words were so simple, Straightforward, yet extraordinary. They still have power.

I began teaching in 1977, and I have returned to these words time and again. I look for new wrinkles, trying to unravel new layers of meaning. I often fiddle with the words so as to achieve new understanding by substituting certain words with others. "Technology" is one word I have changed fre-quently, replacing it with such terms as architectural practice, architectural media, modernism, and postmodernism. More recently, as I spend more time teaching architecture than practicing it, I have introduced words like edu~ cation, schooling, curriculum, and pedagogy. The inSight gained from this latter process of substitution is what has led to this book: to bring together a collection of voices who struggle to conceive and practice architectural education in IiberatOl), ways.

Voices in Architectural Education challenges architectural educators to

xvi Introduction

think consciously of their work and experiences in political terms: to rec-ognize the fact that the practice of education is cu llLlral and poli tical. There is no escaping this responsibility to account for cu ltural and political con-sequences. This book is an attempt to make consequences clear, to hold (eachers accountable for (heir actions and, further, to strive for certain con-sequences. To comprehend educational practice in cultural-political terms, then, enables teachers LO investigate pedagogy in relation to the larger SOCiety, and to develop practices that advance democracy and work toward alternmive visions about how life might be organ ized. To put this in other terms is to say that all teachers act on the basis of some theory. Insofar as architectural teachers plan instruction, determine readings, and select programs and build-ing types for studio investigations, they are implementing theory. Paulo Freire, arguably the world's most reknown educator bur hardly known within the United States, puts it this way: "A11 educational practice implies a theoretical stance on the educator's parr. This Stance in turn implies-sometimes more, someti mes less explici tly-an interpretation of man [sic] and the world.'" Henry A. G iroux says something similar: "All pedagogy ... is essentially a political issue and all educational theories are political theories. Inherent in any educational design are value assumptions and choices about the nature of humankind, the use of authority, the value of specific forms of knowledge and, finally, a vis ion of what constitutes the good life .' The question, of course, is whether teachers are fully cogn izam of the theoretical base of their actions.

TheolY, in turn , is never value-free. It always embodies interests and is grounded in societal forms, again with political consequences. To see edu-cation and pedagogy as forms of cullural politics is to construct a new terrain that can invigorate architectural pedagogy and focus discussion loward a needed architecturaVeducationaVpolitical project. In this way, this book is not just about a critica l examination of architectural reaching. It is also about a theolY of society. Taken together, these papers constitute a critical language with which architectural education, architectural theory, and society can be understood in thei r interconnections. In other words, the authors comribute to the rethinking of archi tectural theory and society through thei r cri tical discussion of architectural schoo ling and pedagogy.

Architectural education viewed in these ways is sadly undertheorized by architectural educarors. Work of this kind is almost nonexistent, which in part explains the necessity of this book Among the myriad reasons for th is lack, two stand out. First, architectural education is professionally driven; it is professional education. The profession and the schools of architecture have mainmined a dialogue-sometimes cordial, sometimes antagonistic-about the appropriate level of skills, standards, capabilities, and competencies nec-essary for gainful employment in the profeSSional office. To be sure, specific skills, both technical and theoretical, must be learned. When taken together, they comprise the bulk of the curriculum. Primary among these is the design stud iO. As architects and architectural educators already know, students spend

Introduction Xliii

"derable lime in the design studio learning and practicing design, a fact conSI ..' which resul[5 in other pans of the curn cu lum bemg pushed .to the penph.el.y. Beyond the studiO, there are th~ usual courses on t.he techmque~ and activity of building: structures, mechamcal systems, matenals, construction systems; courses on electriCity, plumbing, and lighting systems; and courses on profes-sional practice in both i[5 production and contract negotiation phases. Ar-

, chitectural programs also include general education, yet the drive to become an architect is so strong as to diminish the importance of these kinds of courses. They are understood as university requirements, courses that "have to be taken," time to be endured, not really relevant to gain entrance to the profession. Ironically, while architecture is wi.dely assume~ to r~vea l much ahout the character of a SOCiety, students learn little about their society beyond that which is necessary to function professionally.

A second reason for (he lack of theoretical inqui ry into architectural ed-ucation as a liberatory practice is simply that architectural programs are staffed by people (mostly architects) who see the practice and theoretical devel-opment of architecture as more important than the practice and theoretical development of education. This is not meant as a critique so much as it is to point out the obvious. What architectural educators spend most of their time debating is Architecture (note the capital A): its histories, theories, tech-niques, practices, roles, civic

xviii Introduction

excellence, to Latin, to the classics, to the great books, to national pride, to the canon of Western cuhure. The socalled restoration of education is based upon discipline, job skills and vocational training, eIllrepreneurial values, and economic conformity. If these may seem laudable, understand that rhey are spun around the political project of cu ltural uniformity:'5 the restoration of (supposed) fixed values, the sanctioning of a (supposed) common national culture, and the providing of students with [he knowledge, language, and values necessary to revere the essential traditions of Western civilization.6

These are frightening and reductive prospects that negate the diversity that is the American condition. Our nation is a multiclass, cultural, ethnic, racial society, and any pretense to canons, or to common national ideals and goals, fails to account for what people value, what they desire, and how all these are constituted in relations of difference. In the words of Mike Rose, "The canon tend!s] to push to the margins much of the literature of our nation: from American Indian songs and chants to immigram fiCtion [0 working class narratives. ,,7

Not only does the return to canons in the name of some national interest privilege cenain forms of culture over others, it also implies reductive nOtions about pedagogy: what has been called a pedagog)' of transmission.S In the Right discourse, the great books, the classics, the canons are seen as ends unto themselves. They are reified. It is a view that suggests knowledge speaks for itself. It follows that the role of the teacher is to impart this already formed knowledge. Again, Mike Rose is instructive:

The canonical orientation encourages a narrowing of focus from learning to that which must be learned: It simplifies the dynamic tension between student and the text and reduces the psychological and social dimensions of instruction .... Infor-mation, wisdom, virtue will pass from the book to the student if the sludent gives the book the time it merits?

The rise to prominence of education as a national (Opic, as well as its swing to the Right, have to be understood as part of a larger orchestrated political project begun at the start of the 1970s. Ilerben Marcuse called this project "counterrevolution,"10 Ira Shor calls it "conservative restoration. ,,11 Shor is especially compelling in documeming the mobilization of consen'ative forces to effect a massive critique against the progressivism of the 1960s, through which they were able (0 articulate and embark upon their agenda for restruc-turing education. The sting of the 1960s was real: the fight for civil rights and the Great Society, rhe rise of the New Left, the prOleSt against the Vietnam War, the rise of the women's and environmental movements, the proliferatiOn of dissenting publications, the call for alternative ways of life and the ques-tioning of things in general, all (Ook their toll on the status quo of power. As Shor characterized the conservative cause, "sornething would have to be

/tItmduction xix

d ne."I ':! In hindSight, it is sLUnning to see the swiftness of this coumerre o oence. All tOO quickly, "the excitemem of education in the 1960s became

sur..., . . I "U mediocrity and austenty III t le .19805. .

There are more than superfiCial parallels between the attack on progressive education and that which has transpired in architectural education over [he la'it 20 years. The forces of retrenchment have likewise impacted upon ar chileCture and architectural education, modifying these realms to serve certain end.;;. Here, (00, the change was swift, the velocity so sweeping as to blur vision. In less than a decade the schools and the profession went from a debate abollt pluralism, social responsibility, and the utility of social science [0 a preoccupation with what Alex Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre term "formalism, graphism, hedonism, elitism, avant-gardism, and antifunctionalism.,,14 For architecture, the 19605 was also a time of great questioning, of criticizing institutional practices, bOlh from within and outside the profession. Archi-tecture, too, felt the sting of the 1960s: The rise of populism with its charge that architects were little more than "professional imperialists,,;IS the discus-sion attending to user needs and the introduction of environmentbehavior interaction, environmental psycholo!,')', and social factors into design;16 the formation of student groups such as The Architects Resistance (TAR) and Architeaure Radicals, Students and Educators (ARSE) to name a couple; the proliferation of community design centers; and the rise of advocacy planning and user participation in the decisionmaking processes of cities and build-ings. All these did much to challenge the prestige and credibility of the profession. Here, too, the status quo pronounced, something would have to be done.

And what has been done in architectural education is conSiderable, every-thing from program structure to curricular emphasis to subject matter to research foci, has been touched to some degree. Architectural education has even seen its own return to basics.

There has been the return to principles, evident on one level by the resurgence of aesthetic formalism and design exercises structured about the deployment of formal geometries. Francis Ching's Architecture .. Fonn, Space and Order, " and Roger H. Clark and Michael Pause's Precedents in Architec-ture,'" both vely popular books, are cases in pOint here. Though useful, they

n~netheless present formal principles of architectural design in a manner dL,assOCiated from their historical, theoretical, and cultural development. Principles, organizational systems, spatial re lationShips, and the like are show-ca'iCd as ends in themselves, as value-free tools to be used at will regardless of CUlture, Circumstance, context.

There has been a return to hislory-mostly the Eurocemric arch itectural canon-marked by the use and analysis of precedent, typology, and mor-

~h~ logy .. Debates continue as to the appropriateness of historical e lements, () wh ich ones should be selected, or whether historical motifs should be

xx Introduction

used literally or abstractly, or architecturally or popu larly. History courses have been reemphasized and expanded, and studios onen begin with anal-yses of types, precedents, and ContexlS.

There is a search for authenticity, which can be understood in two ways. On one hand there are the nostalgiC paths of classicism, the preindustrial city, the lessons of Rome, paths which try to revive meaning and reassert stability in a confused and bewildering world. On the Other hand there is the path of subverSion, the deconstruction of established meaning as the only authentic referent for a world that is uncertain, confused, and indeterminate.

And finally, there is the self-styled promotion of narcissicism, manifested in the propensity to be esoteric, arbitrary, undecidable, to disavow inten-tionality and responsibility in the design process, to be enamored with the blindfold-in a word, to disengage from the world of unpleasantries and retreat into a world of fantasy as a means to unfettered creativity, pure form, freedom.

These and other changes in architectural education are generally unrec-ognized by architectural educators as being parallel to (and influenced by) the national debate on the quality of the nation's schools. Educators and administrators continue to see changes in architectural education rather par-ochially, as the result of mostly internal and professional forces. Ilowever, there are voices in architectural education who situate their work w ithin this national discussion and the forces of society that fuel it. The voices in this book understand architectural education to be a site of unavoidable struggle, a contestation between dominant and subordinated ideologies, cultures, knowledges, and forms of power. I n short, these voices recognize the practice of architectural education as a culwral and political one; who see architectural schooling, like all forms of education, as a social-historical process where the activities of learn ing and teaching are shaped by the competing processes of accommodation, negotiation, and resistance. A major purpose of this book is to see what these voices articulate as a project of possibility, to hear what they say aboUl curricular directions and structure, course content, cultur-al values, and societal directions, and how these are tied to architecwral teaching.

Such a project is all the more necessary given recent trends which suggest a (re)organization of the material and philosophical condition of SOCiety. It is a condition generally described as poslinodern (though not without con-tention). Though we may be obliged to acknowledge a postmodern condition, the label defies easy description. My use of the term poslmociemism is to suggest that we are at a particu lar historical moment (not necessarily a distinct new one), a condition that marks the wane of modernism and the forging of new territories of experience. Just as the modern cond ition produced the machine, industrialization, standardization, planes, trains, and automobiles, the poslmodern condition produces [he world of television, mass media, information processing, terrorism, space stations, shuttles, and telescopes. 19

Introduction xxi

The postmodern condition engenders new categories of experience, new lodes of representation, thought, and politicS. But make no mistake, post-

n odernism is not monolithic. At its very center, the postmodern condit ion ~eals, and cultural practices articulate, the multiplicity of difference, the indeterminacy of language, the rejection of universality and grand narratives, ' nd the breakdown of boundaries generally. Most notable among the latter :'s the boundary between "high" and "low" cu lture, where now Shakespeare and Readers Digest face each other as equal contenders as objects for analysis. To be more specific, postmodernism 's dominant trends can be characterized in the following ways.

The first is economically. Though some have called the economic dynamics of the present society a "d isorgan ized capitalism,"'" it is really more its re-organization, marshalled on a world scale. The global rearrangement of cap-italism is what constitutes the core of raday's society, a fact which cautions that underlying all the perceived differences between modernism and post-modernism, there is continuity; the hallmarks of the capitalist enterprise remain- profit motive, incessant growth, overprodUCtion, wage labor, labor comrol, private property, alienation, competi tion, and hierarchy, to name a few.! 1 This new Structure of multinational capitalism concentrates capital in diversified conglomerates supported by a grid of informational and electronic networks. De-industrialization marks the landscape by industly shifts, plant closures, and capital flight to those regions of cheaper and less-unionized labor. Selective reindustrializmion is occurring in primarily high-tech sectors. And there is a sharper polarization of labor between high-pay- high-skill and low-pay-Iow-skill workers (let alone the unemployed)."

From a social perspective, the fallout from this economic upheavel is grave. It is a siwation of extremes: excess and poverty, space shuttles and homeless people, skyscrapers and sweat shops. The gap between the rich and poor is the largest in America's history (and growing) and the cond ition of home-lessness is not some aberration that in time w ill go away; homelessness is now structural. 25

In urban terms, the City-the principal spatial canvas of late capitalist eco-nO~icS-i s experiencing severe spatial and social transformations. Caught in an tntense rivalry, cities world-wide are undergoing fantastic restructuring to a.ccommodare new spatial and social relations of production and consump-tion, to leverage capital for maximum profitability?'

Politically, with the consolidation of the postmodern economy and its social ~on.sequences, the state is increasingly burdened to meet its welfare and SOCIal service obligations. Partnerships between private enterprise and the state solidify so as to ward off economic and political crises, furthering cor-porate Interests. As Dutton and Ghirardo put it:

States are find' I I ' . II)g t 1CI11se ves In contradlctorv roles. On one hand they tty to regulme Corporate C'tp't' I' h' .

< I a II) 1 e natIOnal and local interest, and on the other hand, they attempt

xxii Introduction

to create a good busi ness climate to induce such capital and developmcnt. This latter situation is especially debilitating for cities because they become caught in an intense rivalry, piued against each other by coqxmuc interests seeking incentives and benefits at public expense.2~

Such circumstances bespeak the alienation of ordinary citizens from public life-the crisis of democracy.

In cultural terms, ours is a society where the produclion of meaning is now equally important as the production of labor. The culture of the image has become so pervasive that life transpires amidst a "hemorrhage of signi-fiers,,;26 cultural texts intersect with other texts, producing more texts. Some argue that this intertextual weaving produces a life of its own, where people are immersed in the play of images and spectacles to the degree that the boundary between reality and unreality is unclear, fuzzy." The mass media, especially through the medium of television-the most prolific image ma-chine in histOry-has effectively colonized the self through the sheer prolif-eration of images (between 15 and 30 images per minute). According to Stan ley Aronowitz, this displacement of the self constitutes /be event of social hiStory of our time. 28

And cognitively, to state Ulat the post modern situat ion is just a little be-wilderi ng is to state its essential character. It is hard to find the handle. Depending on the author, the postmodern condition is an experience of aimlessness, depthlessness, superficiality, disorientation, or spectacle. With postmodernism, we have "total acceptance of ephemerality, fragmemation, discontinuity, the chaOlic."29 Because "posuTIodern ism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary,"'" stable categories of lived experiences are blurred, distinctions dissolve, and meaning itself seems to float, unanchored, adrift. The ability to place oneself in the external world is now lost, rendered unintelligible by "postmodern hyperspace" in architecture, and disparate styles, mannerisms, and linguistic codes in literature.31 The schizophrenic experience becomes the postmodern identity.

Transformation is necessary in architectural education. In the face of a postmodern world that is undergoing enormous economic, social, and eco-logical restructuring, architectural education seems to be profoundly mute, unable to voice direction, and worse yet, not even seeing the need to do so. It is as if there is no language of resistance and that one could not be constructed. It is as Peter Mclaren argues, "the fear of uncertainty, the horror of ambiguity, and the threat of difference ... places us in the thrall of never being capable of taking a position or speak from a space of authority or power."32 Being caught in the anxiety of the present, we lapse into a nihilistic retreat from life. To counter, this book calls for the restructuring of archi-tectural education, but as a project that defines itself integrally as part of a transformalive redefinition of SOCiety. lIence, this book is by authors who conceprualize archirecrural education and pedagogy within a critical analysis

,ntrOduction xxiii

of the larger (postmodern) SOCiety, and who conStruct forms of teaching and learning experiences that reveal and contest profeSSional and societal dlrec-(ions.

Within such a project, dle notion of voice is vital, because it places dle Iitics of narrative in the foreground: Exacrly whose StOry are we talking ~u( in architectural education, pedagogy, and their reconstruction? The

authors represent a multipliCity of voices, including women, people of color, and students. For these VOices, the process of education is part and parcel ofthe quest for critical consciousness, the coming to voice from silence that, as bell hooks says, is "an act of resistance." She continues: "Speaking becomes both a way to engage in active self-transformation and a rite of passage where one moves from being object to subject. Only as subjects can we speak. Ai; objects, we remain voiceless---our beings defined and interpreted by oth- ers. ".B Of course, coming to voice as an act of resistance is not to speak ordinarily. It is speaking out against oppression and domination, it is the speech of struggle, the attempt to establish a Iiberatory voice that potentially can move us all from object to subject. The voices in this book are testimony to this cause. Many express the rage of having been silenced, been made invisible, by the inertia and machinations of dominant ideologies and cultural-political praaices that favor Eurocenrrism, cultural chauvinism, competition, indiVidualism, hierarchy, and patriarchy in architectural schooling. All say much, if at times on ly by implication, about the directions needed in archi-tectural education in order to shift the dominant paradigm in such ways that me marginal might come to occupy the center: to reconfigure the cultural-politiC'dl terrain to make the experiences of gender, race, and class central to a reconceptualization of architectural education and pedagogy. More than a mere list of projects and pedagogies, this anthology is a theoretical inves-tigation of critical practices in architectural education that engage the world in order to change it.

This book contributes to the growing area of critical pedagogy. Buttressed by critical educational theory, critical pedagogy is concerned with how a SOCiety re-produces itself mrough its school systems. It is concerned with how. human consciousness is organ ized and formed in late capitalism by makmg problematic the historical condi tions which have produced us as subJectS. Highlighting the politiCS of the everyday, critical pedagogy unravels

~nd critiques the experiences of students and teachers as they find themselves m asymmetrical relations of power tempered by class race gender ethnicity and . . " , , . omers. Crlllcal pedagogy understands schools to be cruciallv important

"Ites, as places of ongoing struggle, over meaning, power rel~tions truth cal i" '

ms, .orms of knowledge, and classroom practices. But above all, critical :dagogy carries forth the moral imperative of cri tical educational theory "to

~oved by human suffering so as to remOve its causes to give meaning ~o t e principles of equality, freedom, and justice and to in~rea,e those social orms that enable human beings to develop the capacities necessary to over-

xxiv Introduction

come ideologies and material forms that legitimate and are embedded in relations of domination. "31 The authors of this book, moved by forms of oppression, seek to critique and extend the project of critical pedagogy as it pertains to architectural education. That is, they have not abandoned the ideals of critical thinking, the exercising of social responsibility and the re-making of the world in the interests of social and economic justice, equality, and critical democracy; they investigate what constitutes a transfonnative educational practice, and they invite and challenge educators to develop critical pedagogies that reveal and act upon professional and societal direc-tions.

In Chapter 1, "Forms of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Architecture," Tony Schuman traces the changes that have occurred in the social and political critique of architecture over the last 30 years. He argues that now, with the project of deconstruction in architecture vying for the modernist throne and appropriating the cause of resistance, the teaching of architectural design that takes seriously the workings of daily life, the formu lation of program, com-munity participation, and advocacy is being recast as politically conservative.o Through a critique of critical regionalism in the works of Kenneth Frampton, AJex Tzonis, and Liane Lefaivre, and rational transparency in the work of C. Richard Hatch, Schuman focuses anemion on the social meaning of form and thereby enlarges what might constitute the formal and social implications of an architecture of resistance.

In Chapter 2, Lian Hurst Mann situates architectural pedagogy within a threeparty conversation between the discourses of historical materialism deconstruction, and architectural theory. As of this writing, the philosoph; of deconstruction has entered into architecture in a forceful way. Mann's position is that the philosophical project of deconstruction should be taken seriously in architectural pedagogy. And when this philosophical project en-gages the political project of historical materialism, the convergence offers much to enrich architectural theory and pedagogy in a more expansive project for social change. Mann evokes the operation of a dream as the form and content of her chapter, whereby she enacts a would-be exchange of voices on the problems of difference and differentiation. The dreamwork acts out the political nature of knowledge formation by foregrounding Mann's inev-itable rewriting of the other voices as they flow in and out of her text, appearing at times to stand in their own right and at other times to engage her text, sometimes in support, sometimes in comestation.

James Mayo looks at what counts as valued research and creative activity in universities from a political-economic frame in Chapter 3. Much has changed in this area over the last IS years: the marked growth of journals based in architecture schools across Nonh America; the mounting pressure on young professors to publish; the increase in the number of abstracts submitted to professional conferences; and the expansion of tenure and promotion processes to include intermediate reviews and outside and blind

IntrOduction xxv

reviewers-all of which reflect a profound shift in values as to what constitutes legitimate research and how it might be evaluated. Mayo charts the political economiC rnotivations behind the efforts of administrators to increase the "reputatiOnal capital" of their programs by replacing practitionerbased fac-ulty with research-orienred ones. Mayo argues that such transformations result in conflict as faculties are pitted against one another, and where the aims of a competent education are compromised because of an inequitable balance of researchers and practitioners.

Max Bond, in an interview with Thomas A. Dutton in Chapter 4, begins with a very simple yet correct perception: in the roughly 50 years since Bauhaus reforms were introduced into this country, the world has changed considerably. Despite this change, Bond contends that architecture schools continue to function in much the same way: curricu la is still Eurocentric) students are still placed in competitive pursuits that glorify individualism, and course content continues to reify unitary perspectives and the notion of experts. To Bond, the intellectual and ideological construction of the outside world by schools of architecture is grossly at odds with actuality. As dean of a program in which the majority of students are people of color, Bond relates the struggle to implement changes in line with his critique.

In Chapter 5, laura L. Willenbrock provides a narrative of her experiences in an undergraduate architectural program. She recalls her conversations and encounters with her peers and professors in the studio and classroom, at desk crits and formal jury reviews, and in informal situations. As a person on the "receiving" end of pedagogical intentions, Wil lenbrock reveals the often taken-for-granted practices of patriarchy and other forms of hierarchy that envelop architectural schooling.

Whereas Willenbrock's story is about her intellectual growth and self em-powerment, the narratives of Julie Diaz, Shi rl Buss and Shervl Tircuit in Chapter 6 are about their struggle for social empowe;ment in o;der to grow IIltellectually. As recent architecture graduates of the masters program at the University of California at Los Angeles the authors describe the Eurocentric biac; of their experience, and question itS appropriateness given the expansive multicultural history and environment of Los Angeles. As women, and rwo of color, they tell how their aspirations, histories, and experiences were often marginalized) ignored, and even put down. More than a critique, Buss, Diaz, and Tircuit document the proactive efforts to change school policy and to get the school to follow through on an Affirmative Action DiverSity Plan , whICh they helped author, and which provides long-range but attainable goals to diversify the curricu lum as well as the faculty and student body.

Brad Grant's Chapter 7 raises issues about the cultural and political value structure of architectural education as it pertains to minority and subordinated Cultures. In "Cultural Invisibility: The African American Experience in Archi-tectural Education," Grant holds that architecture and architectural education are c10minared by a Eurocentric cultural canon, which reproduces conformity

xxvi Introduction

to Western ideas, histories, formal aesthetics, and modes of social and eco-nomic practice. For Gram, this belies the cullural diversity that actually con-stitutes Western societies, and given recent demographic trends, he documenrs how it will soon be that so-called minority and non-Western cultures will comprise the largest cultural groups, especially in the United States. Grant relates his own experiences as a person made invisible by Eurocentrism, and challenges educators to pose alternative theories and prac-tices to the architeclUral orthodoxy. In a manner similar to Karen Kingsley (see below), Grant lays Out a framework for curricular and pedagogical re-structuring, and shares what he does in his experientially based course "Im-ages, Patterns, and Aesthetics of Subcultural Environments" to get his students to see, intellectually and experientiall y, the roles and contributions of sub-ordinated designers in their resistance to cu ltural hegemony.

In Chapter 8, Thomas A Dutton utilizes the concept of the hidden curric-ulum to analyze the center piece of architecturdl education: the design studio. The concept of the hidden curricu lum is not as familiar in architecmral education as it is in education generally. Dutton uses the hidden curriculum as a theoretical tool to bring to light questions about the organization of knowledge, the orchestration of social relationships, and how these relate to each other and to the forces of power, ideology, and culture. Dutton holds that there is a rough correspondence between studio culture and larger societal practices. Asymmetrical relations of power, the competitive ethiC, the notion of the expert, and the primacy of individual over collective work are but a few of the qualities reproduced. In response, Dutton posits a critical studio pedagol,'l', where the attempt is made to investigate not only the many issues of design, but the politiCS of design education itself, especially with regard to its organization, its production and dissemination of knowledge, its structuring of social relations, and its ideological inclinations.

In Chapter 9, "Biculturalism and Community Design: A Model for Critical Design Education," Anthony Ward takes us into an investigation of studio pedagogy as it encompasses the participation of people other than students in the design process. Ward's studio projects alwa)'s incorporate a "client" from outside the studio environment, and here, he recounts an experience where students worked with the citizens and civil leaders of Whakawne, New Zealand, to generate a town plan. Whakatane is comprised of oppOSitional cu ltures. Ward chronicles how the native Maoris of New Zealand have begun to demand compliance with the 1840 Treaty ofWaitangi (where ch iefs agreed to an equal partnership with the British Crown). Since signing the treaty, the Maori have been systematically stripped of their resources and have been left with a bitterness which has only recently developed into constructive attempts at self-determination and equa li ty. Against this background, Ward describes how design students experienced first hand the subtle (and often not so subtle) ways in which dominant and subordinate cu ltures clash wherein members of the subordinate culture often find it impOssible to defin~

Introduction xxvii

their identities within the political and cultural codes of the dominant culture. Ward points to ways in which designers can faciliate ethnic identity among indigenouS peoples, and shows once again that deSign is never neutral; it is an intentional practice that portrays rhe world in quite specific ways.

Making connections between architecture and feminism is the basis of Jacqueline Leavitt's Chapter 10. Utilizing the topics of homeless ness and public housing in her design studiOS, Leavitt explains her attempts to get studenLS to grapple seriously with women's issues through the design process. Noting that the insertion of gender issues cannOt be left to chance, Leavitt argues that much more is necessaty to integrate issues of concern to women into architectural cu rricula. Paramount among these include women's increasingly permanent role in the labor force, [he feminization of poveny, their longevity in an aging society that will be predominately female, and how these relate to the economy and the state. Leavin uses "consciousness raising" as the vehicle for integrating women's issues and experiences imo the design studio. Because consciousness+raising groups were important vehicles within the women's movement for translating personal issues into political ones, Leavitt contends that not only should such a translation occur at the level of the individual , it should occur at the level of the social or professional. In this way, the "private" issues and practices of the architectural world can be seen in light of the ir political consequences with the outside world.

Karen Kingsley is also concerned with the curricu lar imegration of feminist theory, the experiences of women and gender issues, but directs her attention in Chapter 11 to architectural history courses. For Kingsley, the teaching of architectural hiStory is very much akin to the teaching of the literary C'dnon. It has been exclUSively organ ized around the "great monument-great men" approach. Kingsley argues that such an approach isolates and objectifies de-signer and work, ignoring not on ly the role of women and their contribution to the buill environment, but also the differences in the way women learn. To counter, Kingsley analyzes some of the more popular texts in the teaching of architectural hiStory, shows how they are biased and exclUSive, and suggests alternative readings. She draws from new scholarship in the history of women to construCt a foundation to rethink and restruClure the history/theory por-tions of the architectural curriculum in terms of course content and pedagogy.

Chapter 12 is Alan Feigenberg's account of the process and content of his graduate seminar, "Teaching Architecture." Some years ago, feigenberg be-gan this course with the purpose of creating a forum for architecture students to reflect upon their experiences in school and to teach public school students about their environment. The course grew out of Feigenberg's close asso-ciation with Dr. Mario Salvadori and the Center for the Built Environment, which Salvadori founded in 1987. A major goal of the center is to interest underprivileged youngsters in New York City in the benefits of an education. Interestingly, this is accomplished through the child 's study of his or her own bUilt environment. In this context, Feigenberg's classroom offers an account

xxviii Introduction

of the practice of a critical democracy. Engaged in a socially useful project, he takes his students' backgrounds seriously, as episodes of life lhat are woven into the practice and coment of the classroom. Education becomes a practice that allows his students to make sense of, and problematize, their own ex-periences. This is all the more important given the disadvantaged back-grounds that most of his students are from. Feigenberg offers much for teachers to refleCl upon. The teacher in this case is more than a facilitator. Feigenberg is quite conscious of his power as teacher, but utilizes it in enabling ways, as a means to cr"-dte a space where students feel free enough to come to voice, and to exercise their learning and teaching in collaboration with themselves and the teacher. This chapter is a practical illustration of Paulo Freire's praxis that to learn is to teach and to teach is to learn.

NOTES

1. Che Guevara, address given to the Internat ional Union of Arch itects (UIA) Congre~~, Havana, 1963, quoted from Roben Goodman, After the Planners (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p. 143.

2. Paulo Freire, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (South Hadley, MA Bergin and Garvey Publishers, 1985), p.43.

3. Henry A Giroux, Ideolom', Culture and the Process ofScI:xJOling (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), p. 129.

4. Educating Americans/or the 21st Century, National Science Board Commission on Pre-college Educations in Mathemalics, Science and Technology, quoted from Ira Shor, Culture Wars: School and Society in the Conservative Restoration 1969-1984 (London, RouLiedge and Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 11 2.

5. Stanley Aronowitz and Henry A. Giroux, "Schooling, Culture, and Literacy in the Age of Broken Dreams: A Review of Bloom and Hirsch," Haroard Educational Review, vol. 58, no. 2 (May 1988).

6. Ibid. 7. Mike Rose, Lives on tbe Boundar)': The Stnlggies and Achieveme11ls 0/ America's

Undelprepared (New York The Free Press, 1989), p. 235. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid.

10. Herbert Marcuse, Counter-Revolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972). 11. Ira Shor, Culture Wars. 12. Ibid., p.3. 13. Ibid., p. 4. 14. Alex Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, "The Narcissist Phase in Arch itecture," !be

Haroard Architecture Review, vol. 1 (Spring 1980), p. 54. 15. Alex Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, " In [he Name of the People," (Dutch) Forum ,

vol. XXV, no. 3 (1976). 16. James M. Mayo, "American Architecture and Social Science: An Uneven Alliance,"

Free Inquiry, vol. 17, 110. 1 (May 1989). 17. Francis D. K. Ching, Architecture: Form, Space and Order (New York: Van Nos-

trand Reinhold, 1979).

IntrOduction xxix

18. Roger H. Clark and Michael I)ause, Precedents in Architecture (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985). .

19. Douglas Kellner, "Boundaries and Borderlines: Critica l Reflecllons on Jean s:mdrillard and Cri lica l Theory," paper delivered at Miami University (November 1987). ,r d I (M d U . 20. SconLa'ih andJohn Un)" 77Je End q, Organize Capita Ism a Ison: nlVer~t{y of Wisconsin Press, 1987).

21. David Harvey, 1be Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). 22. See Thomas A. Dutton, "Cities, Cultures and Resistance: Beyond Leon Krier and

the postmodern Condition,"joun1al of Architl->clLlral Education, vol. 42, no. 2 (Winter 1989); and Edward Soja, Rebecca Morales, and Goetz Wolff, "Urban Restructuring: An Analys is of Social and Spatial Change in Los Angeles," Economic Geography, vol. 59 (1983), pp. 195-230.

23. Peter Marcuse, "Neutralizing Homelessness," Socialist Review, vol. ] 8, no. 1 Uanuary-March 1988).

24. Thomas A. DUHon, "Ci ties, Cultures and Resistance." 2S. Thoma'! A. Dutton and Diane Ghirardo, "See the USA in Your Chevrolet: A

Review of Roger and Me," jatonal of Architectural Education, vol. 43, no. 3 (Spring 1990), p. 59.

26. Peter Mclaren, "Schooling the Postmodern Body: Crilical Pedagogy and the Polities of EnOeshment," jollmai of Education, vol. 170, no. 3 (1988), p. 54.

27. Jean Baudrillard, For a CrUique of the Political Economy of the Sign (Sr. Louis, MO, Telos Press, 1981).

28. Stanley Aronowitz, "Mass Culture and the Eclipse of Reason: The Implications for Pedagogy," in O. Lazere, ed., Amencan Media and Mass Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of Californ ia Press, 1983), p. 468.

29. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodetnit)', p. 44. 30. Ibid. 31. Frederic Jameson, "Postmociernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late-Capitalism,"

New Left Review, no. 146 (1984). 32. Peter Mclaren, "Schooling the Postmociern Body," p. 71. 33. bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (BostOn: South

End Press, 1989), p. 12. 34. Henry A. Giroux, "Border Pedagogy and the PolitiCS of Mociernism/Postmod-

ernism,"joumal of Architectural Education, vol. 44, no. 2 (February 1991 ), p. 71.

Forms of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Architecture

1

Tony Schuman

INTRODUCTION

In the shon span of a generation the expression of radical social concerns in architecture has come full circle. The 1960s program of an advocacy ar-chitecture which emphasized process over product and content over form has been challenged by deconstruction theory (as used within architectural discourse) which reasserts the primacy of form and denies both the impor-tance of program and the idea of advocacy. While an earlier generation of postmodernists also sought to re-establish a formalist architecture, they did so in the name of the status quo. The deconstructionists, on the other hand) claim to endorse a set of radical social intentions (a critique of the institutions of bourgeois society) that can only be met by moving architectural theory beyond the failed utopian project of the modern movement. In this light, an approach to architectural design that starts with the workings of daily life-the creation of individual and communal place- is viewed as inherently conselVative. As a charter member of the 1960s generation of radical archi teets, I am asked to turn in my Gird.

The location of resistance in the realm of pure form- repreSentation a" Criticism-may be seen as the end point of a process in which the ideology of the modern movement has been stripped of its social praxis by succeeding generations of architectural theory. In the 20 years between the publication of the leam 10 primer (1962) and Peter Eisenman's /louse X (1982), the dialogue between social practice and architectural theory has been ruptured. Writing from the perspeClive of an academic with a background in community

4 Issues

design and advocacy, I am hard-pressed to explain to my activist friends w hat significance contemporaI)' architectural discourse might have for them, be-cause architectural theo'l' has lost its grounding in real-li fe issues o f com-munity development. This essay is an effort to investigate how this divorce occurred and to reclaim the terri tol)' of social concerns in architecture from the theoretical Covenuy to which it has been consigned.

The retreat into form is in part a response to the disarray of contemporalY society: ule failure of science and technology to produce the social progress promised by the modern movement and the welfare state. This disillusion-ment, whether stemming from cynicism after the cruelties of Nazism, Stalin-ism, and Hiroshima or from despair at the ravages of uneven development, is invoked to explain architecture's wi thdrawal from social engagement and into autonomous formal discourse. Thus, for example, Eisenman establishes as a premise for his House X

an explicit ideological concern w ith a cultural condi tion, namely the apparem inabili ty of modern man to sustain any longer a belief in his own rat ionality and pcrfectabililY. .. , O f course when one denies the importance of function, program, meaning, tech-nology, and c1ient---constraillls traditionally used to justify and in a way support forI11 -making-the rationality of process and the logic inherem in form becomes [sic] almost the last "secu rity" or legiti mation available,l

With the 1988 exhibition of "Deconstructivist Architecture" at New York 's Museum of Modern Art, this refuge in form is saddled with ideological im-plications. In grouping work by an unlikely cohort of architects on the basis of superficial design affini ties, curator Mark Wigley denies any ideological intent-"the architect expresses nothing here"-and specifically disavows any connection between deconstructivist architecture and deconstruction philos-ophy.' At the same time, however, his catalogue essay blurs the distinctions between stylistic and ideological intentions, notably through his choice of critical vocabulary and philosophical references. As a result, the MOMA show contributes greatly to the present confusion in distinguishing among three concepts merged under the "decon" label: deconstructivism (an architectural style), philosophical deconstruction (a French poststruclUralist interrogation of bourgeois philosophy), and deconstruction in architecture (an effort to synthesize architectural form and cu ltural cri ticism) .. ' My concern in this chapter is with the third of these.

Does deconstruction in architectu re represent a new cultural front in re-sisting hegemonic authority, or is the social theorizing simply a political gloss over more traditional aesthetic concerns? K. M ichael Hays, who as editor of Assemblage has conSistently promoted deconstruction as a poli tical project, is candid in identifying a serious weakness in the translation of deconstruction theol1' to architecture;

Fonns of Resistance 5

If an understanding of the affiliations between representational systems and st ~u~(.u.res of power has expanded our conception of. architectu re's do~ain and res.pons l bill ~ I CS, these projects have, for the most part, remamed remarkably Silent on specific questions of power, class, gender, and rhe actual experienccs of subjects in contemporary SOC iety.4

It is precisely this lack of specific ity which makes the operation suspect. AS long as design intentions are expressed in broad generalities, th~~ :ema~n in a self- referential theoretical world and cannOt be tested or CrItiCized 111 any material sense. This reinforces dangerous habits in the design studiO. Striking visual results are used 1O justi fy inauention to funcllon, construction, environment, and so on. Works whose intentions are particularly obscure benefit from an "emperor's new clothes" syndrome: No one wants to admit that they don't get the point. The implication is that design must look radICal in order to be radical. Students mistake a visual attack on the f orm of socIety for a critique of the power relationships which provide its structure.

By restricting critical practice to the realm of architectural representatiOn, deconstruction in architecture trivializes the experience of daily life and reduces the scope of social architecture' This paper will argue that social architecture's concern for client, program, and process also provides a basis for linking architectural representation to social practice. Then conditions will be present for a full -throttle resistant archi tecture that exploits both the ideal (representational) and material (physical) capacities of architecture 111 the campaign to challenge the dominant power structure.

EVOLUTION OF THE THEORYIPRACTICE SCHISM IN SOCIAL ARCHITECTURE

The Modern Movement

It was the great invention of the modern movement lhat the task of ar-chitecture was to address the social problems of the age, and its great conceit to suggest that these problems could be solved through architecture. This invention included both a social practice and a fo rmal theory. TIle practice included a new client for architecture (the working class), a new program (housing for the greater number), a new patron (the welfare state), and a new role for architects (as head of municipal building programs). This prac-tice was born and inscribed under a specific set of historical conditions: the new social democratiC governments in the Weimar Republic fo llowing the rail of the Kaiser in World War I. In this COlllext one can appreciate the bursting elan of Oskar Schlemmer's Manifesto for the fi rst Bauhaus exhibition:

TI1C Staatliche Bauhaus, founded after the catastrophe of the war, in the chaos of the revolution and in the era of an emotion-laden, explosive an , becomes the rallying

6 Issues

point of all those who, with belief in the future and with sky-storming enthusiasm, wish to build [he "cathedral of socialism."6

It is hard to remain impassive before modernism's ernbrace of this utopian project, however naive it may appear in retrospect. 7 More problernatic was their assumption tha[ the egali tarian values of the new society could and shou ld be codified imo a new architectural language' Even granted wide-spread suppOrt for the new building program-worker housing- its appro-priate representation in formal terrns was not self-evident. While standardized construction was a clear expression of industrialized production techniques, why shou ld the resulting uniformity of facade be read as symbolic of equality and social democracy rather than of monotony and centralized authority? The meaning was certainly not inherent in the forms themselves. A style whose symbolism wa, grasped by German workers themselves on ly after extensive propaganda in the form of magaZines (e.g., Das Neue Frank[ul1), exhibitions (of the Bauhaus, the Weissenhof Siedlung), gallery exhibits, and lectures was rejected outright in contemporaneous developmenrs in France (Le Corbusier's worker housing in Pessac) and not even attempted in (he United States (Clarence Stein's Sunnyside Gardens).

The problematic nature of the representational system, however, did not necessarily interfere with the quality of the architectural result. By wedding modern architectural theory to traditional Site-planning theolY (from Camillo Si[[e through Raymond Unwin to Ernst May), the first decade of the modern movement produced such triumphs of urban planning as the Siedlungen of May in Frankfurt, and Taut and Wagner in Berlin. It was only later, when the drive to rationalize urban planning through functional zon ing was codified in the Radiant City tenets of the Athens Charter, that the normative tendencies of modernism produced such disastrous effects on urban social life.

Team 10

It is significant that the first critique of the modern movement emerged from within its own ranks when a dissidem group took over ClAM (Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) following the tenth congress in Du-brovnik in 1956. Known thereafter as Team 10, the group focused its critique on the tenets of the Athens Chaner, with its insistence on separate use zoning of cities and tall, widely spaced housing blocks, the impact of wh ich was al-ready visible in the early 19505. They offered an alternative approach based on patterns of human association (house, street, district, city) rather than func-tional category. While the Team 10 critique challenged the notion of master planning for cities and societies alike and the idea of a universal, normative architectural language to express these social ideals, they did not throw out the notion of social progress itself as their fundamemal goal. Rather, they trans-posed the time frame of their operat ion from the future to the present, and its

Forms oj Resistance 7

ale from the City and nation to the community and the individual. The ~Iues SC; the group were summarized by Alison Smithson in the team 101!nmer: ~The architect'S responsibility towards the individual or groups he bUIlds for , nd towards the cohesion and convenience of the collective structure to whICh

:hey belong, is taken as an absolute responSibility:" . . . Thus while Team 10 abandoned the modermst conceit that architecture

could transform SOCiety, they asserted an equally important, though less he-roiC role for the profession: "to make places where a man can realize what he ':'ishes to be." '" This strategy led to a series of experimenL' with support and infill approaches to housing design such as the projects of ATBAT and, later, Habraken, that emphasized the particularity of each individual but .ig-nored the broader class Structure of society wi th its attendant inequality. Their approach thereby remains utopian in its suggestion that a supportive environment, independent of larger political and economic forces, can enable thiS process of self-realization. II

Team 10 represents a critical juncture in the development of social archi-tecture. Because the group never directly addressed the question of political organization and tended to express its design approach more as a poetic methodology than a specific practice, its legacy opened the door to divergent interpretations: one primarily social, the Other formal. The most influential Team 10 figure in this regard was Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck. A generation of student architects was captivated by van Eyck's insistence 011 both the small details of everyday life and the universal realms which verge on the sp iritual-the in-berween realm of seashore, dusk, and doorstep." It was van Eyck who first calied attention to the problem of representational form in the face of the complex heterogeneity of modern society that he called "vast multipliCity. " "If society has no form," he asked, "how can we build its counterform'" Van Eyck's own response to this question was to propose a humanistiC, almost anthropomorphiC, architecture. "Start with thiS," he offered:

Make a welcome of each door and a countenance of each window. Make of each a place: a bunch of places for e'dch house and each city . ... Get closer to the cemer of human reality and build itS counterforrn- for each man and all rnen, since they no longer do il themselves. 13

For some, getting closer to "the center of human reality" meant an im-mersion in community struggles around issues like housing, education, and parks. Groups like Urban Deadline in New York, an outgrowth of the Co-lumbia strike with whom I was affiliated for ten years, offered technical assistance to community groups on a variety of projects from vest pocket parks to storefront "street academies" for high school dropouts." We were part of the advocacy planning- community design movement that began in New York City in the 1960s in response to the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods through federal urban-renewal programs." From their initial

8 Issues

goal of helping commun ity groups to understand and intervene in the plan-ning process, principally in opposition to redeveloprnent schemes, these groups gradually became involved in formulaling and irnplementing alter-native development plans. Where these activities include architectural design services, however, the scope is generally restricted to low-cost renovation and construction programs emphasizing tight detailing and efficiem plans. Rarely do community design centers have the opponunity to explore the expressive possibilities of architecrure in new construction.

Populism

If van Eyck was significant in pushing some of us toward more intense activism, his writings also encouraged a formal challenge to the reduclive norms of modernism, In ComplexiO, and Contradiction in Architecture, Rob-ert Venturi refers several times to van Eyck's concerns with eternal phenolll-ena- "threshold," "twin-phenomena," "inside-outsicle"-in suppOrt of his own rediscovery of precedent and tradition, particularly as expressed in the formal language of mannerist, baroque, and rococo architecture, The book also introduces Venturi's defense of the commercial vernacular. "Indeed," he argues, "is not the commercial strip of a ROUle 66 almost all right?,, 16 Although the introduction of popular design sou rces, as in the parallel Pop Art movement, reflects a pluralist view of American society, this view is in-terpreted visually. As Vemuri observes, "true concern for society's invened scale of values" can be expressed only through the ironic juxtaposition and interpretation of conventional elements. 17 Through subsequent w ritings, ex-hibits, and buildings, Venturi , Denise Scott Brown, and their collaborators have e laborated a body of work inspired by the "ugly and ordinary" archi-tecture of mass-market consumerism. Although Lhey have presented their use of the commercial vernacular as an ironical gesture aimed at moral subver-sion, it was never clear just what the target ofthis irony was, or what critique of society was suggested by thrOwing popular taste back at the middle class in slightly distorted form, Venturi responds to the populist impulse of the 1960s by removing it from the field of social action by reducing it to the "signs and symbols" of popular culture and turning these to the purposes of high architecture. In the last analysis, the commercial vernacular simply pro-vides more sources for the palette of architectu ral form. An initiat ive wh ich held the tantalizing promise of seeking a new relat ionship between archi-tectural design and the structure of daily life failed to deliver. The archi tectural object was still treated as a purely visual or stylistic object, the acultural universal norms of modernism simply replaced by a more varied represen-tational system. No new theory of architectural design was advanced.

Forms of Resistance 9

postmodernism If it was Venturi 's originali ty to reassert a figurative dime.nsion f~r archi-ure by incorporaring popular culture into the canons of htgh archtlectur~,

tectd I' strength to explo it thereby the tension between past and present, hiS an liS . .. . D ' " ' brought in its wake a host of conseIVative Interpretations. roppmg

iJ1illalive 'd h' h the polycultural brief from the debate, high archllecture returne to Ig , 'ts sources and not only bUildings but whole dlstncts were re-culture lor I , .

f I , ed in the image of Greece and Rome, This use of histoncal form as~ f " I ' , d with it a social message regarding the maintenance 0 pnvi ege to a

carne , d'lU'd I ociet)'. It is no coincidence that postmodermsm emerge In t 1e nIte c asS s d " I 'th I States during a period of resurgent private wealth an pn vi ege WI t 1e

multinational corporate headquarters as Its emblematic bUlldll1g, , If postmodernism's rediscovery of figurative design and street-responsive

urbanism may be described as resistant to the universal norms and spatial strategies of modernism, its representational vocabu lary can only be defined as repressive, In assuming a universal fealty to u1e lessons of Greece and Rome, this approach speaks on ly to the dominant class in our SOCiety, ASlI1gle cultural tradition emerged as the form giver for a variety of constructlons-shopping malls, civic centers, housing complexes, schools, The acultural norms of modernism were replaced by the monocultural forms of European classicism. As the African American scholar H enry Louis Gates Jr. w rote re-cently of parallel developments in literature, "The return of 'the' canon , the high canon of Western masterpieces, represents the return of an order 111 which my people were the subjugated, the VOiceless, the invisible, the un-

bl ,, 18 presented and the unpresenta e,

Deconstruction in Architecture

It is in this context that deconstruction in architecture emerges. As 1111 Foster explains:

A postmodernism of resistance, then, arises as a counter-practice not only to the official culture of modernism but also to the "false normalivity" of a reactionary postmodernism. [n opposition (but notollly in opposition) , a resistant postmodernism is concerned with a critical deconstruction of tradition, not an instrumental pastiche of pop_ or pseudo-historical forms, with a critique of origins, not a return to them. [n short, it seeks to question rather than exploit cultural codes, to explore rather than conce-,l1 SOCial and political affi lial ions.19

The deconstructionist critique is aimed at the idea of a normative repre-sentational role for architecture. Whether this criticism is of the instrumental progreSSivism of modern ism or the hegemonic conservatism of postmod-

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ern ism, deconstruction in architecture falls into the same trap by insisting that the critical power of architecture lies in its form. Having stated that multiple interpretations of built fonn are possible, desirable, and inevitable, deconstruction in architecture dissolves into political agnosticism, operating "to keep in motion the contingent and provisional status of meaning, thereby preventing any position, radical or conservative, from gaining absolute priv-ilcge.,,2o

In denying the primacy of both program and context in order to "desta-bilize" the institUl ions of bourgeois society including that of architecture itself, the deconstructionists restrict their field of operation. ln their passion to negate the idea of fixed meaning, they produce work that is exclusively about meaning, work which is totally dependent for its sign ificance on an immersion of the viewer in its competing "meanings." The status of decon-struction in architecture as critical theory is weakened in practice because it never clarifies just wbat needs to be transformed or how that transformation might take place. I n the process, the social program has been dropped from the brief. By defining themselves as hors de calegorie in terms of ideological content they also place themselves hors de combat in terms of the social fray.

This discussion, of course, assumes that the philosophical layerings which accompany the built work are the true purpose; and that the real intention is not simply free play with abstract geometrical form. In the latter reading, deconstruction in architecture is nothing more than an excuse to mine ar-chitectural hiStory for the unbuilt projects of the RuS,..,ian constructivists, just as earlier postmodernists turned to popular culture and the Palladian orders. In this sense, the social theorizing about the end of utopia e nables the ar-chiten to maintain a patina of social concern, while in reality abandoning any social practice in favor of purely formal investigarions. Deconstruction in archi tecture can then be seen as simply a second generation of postmod-ern isrn, posing as social critique, but retaining the same narrow formalist intention. As Ricardo Bofill , a first-generation postmodernist, explains, "These utopias lin the technological or social writings of the 1 960s] destroy geniuses and masters. In the 1970s, architecture begins to concentrate on itself again. Architects rediscover the pleasure of creation and their craft."Z t In abandoning the social project, "POst-utopian" architecture takes on qualities of the cin-ematic; and the critique of this architecture might well resemble this capsule review of a B-movie: ''It's fast, well-acted and completely meaningless. But it's good meaninglessness."z2

Deconstruction depends for its validation on the public's willingness to accept the theory's own terms of reference as context for the discussion. As soon as we acknowledge the need to situate theory in the world of social action, the deconstructionist concept of retreat into uncertainty loses its force. Literary critic Terry Eagleton advances this argument:

Meaning may well be ullimately undeCidable if we view language contemplatively, as a chain of signifiers on a page; il becomes 'deCidable', and words like 'truth ', 'reality' ,

Forms 0/ Resistance "

I d . ' and 'certainty' have something of their force restored LO them, when we 'knowe ge . . . . ' 1 .~. k of language rmher as something we do, as mdlssoCiably Interwoven wll1 our Ulln . B practical forms of life.

THE POLITICAL REALM OF RESISTANCE

Hegemony More than any other art form, architecture is inscribed in the material as

well as the ideal world. Any disCLIssion of resistance in architecture must move beyond language. The framework for this discussion requires both a theoretical and practical dimension. Antonio Gramsci's c~ncept of hegemony, which analyzes the conditions necessary for the exercise of power by the dominant social class, provides such an analytical structure. He draws a useful distinction between the coercive (political) power of the state and its con-sensual (civil) power. The former relies on the legislature, couns, police, armed forces, and so on to exercise power through domination; the latter on the ideological function of intellectual and cultural leadership to maintain class control through persuasion. In the campaign to overturn the bourgeoiS state, Gramsci thus identifies a crucial role for intellectuals: to develop a counterhegemonic ideology that can make the oppressed conscious of their rights and of their own strength."

Gramsci's emphasis on class conflict and class consciousness has bearing on social conditions in the United States today. Demographic trends docll-ment growing concentrations of wealth and poverty as the result of structural changes in the national economy. Whether this concentration is described in controversial terms like underclass or Third \Vorld or less-charged words like rich and poor, i[S impact is increasingly visible and dangerous. 2s Our response to this uneven development will depend on how the issues are conceptualized. I-Iere, the historic reluctance of Americans to acknowledge the class structure of our society is a serious obstacle to recognizing the depth ofthe problem. In a recent editorial, Benjamin DeMott underlines the gravity of this deception :

An immense weight of subsidized opinion has gathered on the side of social untruth, and the means available to those who try to comend against the untruth are fragile. Social wrong is accepted because substantive, as opposed to sitcom, knowledge about class has been habitually suppressed, and the key mode of suppression remains the promotion of (he idea of c1asslessness. , .. We shall not shake the monSter in our midsl until we take ser ious account of the idea of difference. . . The task is nothing less than that of laying bare the links between the perpetuation of the myth of social sameness and the perpetuation of social wrong. We have all tOO little time in which to get on with it. 26

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Difference

When the idea of resistance is understood in a specific social context and historic moment (e.g., the United States under conditions of late capitalism with rhe domination of the national economy by transnational corporations, increased social and economic inequality by class and race, and the prolif-eration of drug abuse, Violence, homelessness) it becomes possible to identify specific targets for this resistance. In a deeply divided sociery, the idea of resistance cannot stop at the recognition of difference but must be appl ied to challenging the inequities that attend this difference.

This is where architectural deconstruction fails. It celebrates "difference" in a value-free way that refuses to take sides in the real-life social struggle. Rather than posing a position of coul1ferhegemony, the deconstructivists take an antihegemony stance. Theirs is an argument abollt repressed meanings, not about helping repressed social groups find a voice to articulate their own meanings. Even the notion of anxiety is removed from the real world to the intellectual realm. As Eisenman explains, ''The object no longer requires the experience of the user to be understood. No longer does the object need to look ugly or terrifying to provoke an uncertainty; it is now the distance between object and subject-the impossibility of possession which provokes this anxiety. ,,27

This statement about anxiety reveals the problematic nature of deconstruc-tion in architecture as a critical practice: How can a symbolic act of resistance purely in the realm of the cultural apparatus pose a challenge to the political power this apparatus supports'" When anxiety is aestheticized it becomes digestible; the angst of the intellectual more palatable than the anguish of the oppressed. It is easily commodified as one more tidbit in the consumption of fashion. Commenting on the Deconstructivism exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, critic Michael Sorkin noted, "Of course, the institutionalization of this architecture (is deconstructivist dinnerware far behind?) would seem to beg the question of just how threatening it can really be: even psychic structures get etched into the material world. "29 Compare, for example, the respectful critical attention lavished on Eisenman's Wexner Center with the furious reaction to lyrics by rap groups like 2 Live Crew and the Geto Boys, whose menaCing tone reflects the violence of ghetto life. Theirs is the voice of the underc/ass speaking for itself, un intellectualized and untheorized. It is not about repressed meanings; it e:>.presses those meanings. In the words of one reviewer:

Gangster rap is vu lgar, violent, sensationalisT. It prides itself on b luntness, and it doesn'r provide consolmion or tie up loose ends. Unlike action movies, the raps refuse to let listeners oIT the hook. Bmh for what it describes, and for the unquestioned attitudes the raps reveal, it is often frightening-as well it should be. The world it describes

porms of Resistance 13

'h . and gangster rap distills that terror, not JUSt as exploilalion but as exorcism. is terr" ~'lng, . . W . 'f 'It weren't scary, I[ would be a he. BUll

THE PHYSICAL REALM OF RESISTANCE

Fragmentation The socio-spatial impact of uneven development .can be s~en at a v~riery

I . \Vrth the growing concentration of economiC power In transnauonal ofscaes."1 . b . tl'ons and the globalization of labor markets, segregation yeconomlc corpora . I . h' tl

. d conditions of daily existence can be seen 111 1emlsp enc nor .)-function an ' ..' . d ' h d 'sparl'ties in national and regional shifts, and III urban nelghborhoo s. sout I. , I" .

it is at the scale of the City that the fragmentatiOn of contemporary "e IS most . "bl the impact of cycles of investment and diSinvestment most severe. ~I~ "d" . Architectural deconstruction's response 1O the urban VOl IS to mterpret

thiS condition in visual terms and to adopt fragmentatiOn as a design strategy for new construction. Attempts to reestablish a coherent street and block

cture as a framework for daily living (International BUlldlllg Exhibition ~:: the [IBAl strategy in Berlin) are seen as cosmetic efforts to fill up the holes. From this perspective architect Rem Koolhas criticized the IBA for missing a chance "to enhance reality, to adapt to what already existed .... The historical accidents (Berlin destroyed by the war, and redestroyed by the 1950's) could have offered a metaphoric role very much the opposite of the one chosen by IBA. ,,"

In opposing the consciousness promoted by simplistic postmodern scen-ography, deconstruction offers an important critique of the hegemolllc role of civil society in masking u1e impact of class dominance on repressed groups. But the particular alternative strategy posed by deconstruction in architec-ture- mirroring u1e fragmentation of modern society with jarring visual dis-locations of habitual perceptions-denies the role of the city as the arena for social struggle. On the contrary, this confrontational approach reproduces the modernist attack on the urban fabric that was so damaging to the physical space of collective action.

The City If the struggle against repressive authority is construed in terms of action

as well as ideology, the starting point must be to recognize the city as the physical realm of political resistance. As Ilannah Arendt argues,

The only indispensable material factOr in the generation of power is the living tOgether of people. Only where men live so close together that the potentialities for action arc always presem will power remain with them and the foundation of cities ... is therefore the mOSt importam material prerequisite for power.}2

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This urban concentration is necessary for a range of oppositional activities from picket lines, petition drives, and street demOnStf

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?f the six points toward a resistant architecture of "critical regionalism " aItlcul~ted by Fr~mpton) only one (the place-form) bears directly on the necessity for architecture to provide the realm for a physical political resis-tance. The others rely on autonomous elements of architecture. Even sociall ~inded critics like Frampton betray this bias when theorizing about th~ Insrf,umemal role of architecture. Is the resistance in question that of the architect to th~ force~ which govern modern building, or that of the public to the oppressIve stnctures of bourgeois society? It is not surprising the th I' I ' n, o at liS examp es draw heavily on well-known architects of signature build-Ings (e.g., Aalto, Botta, Utzon). It is not clear that the design intentions of these architects, let alone the social effect of their buildings on their publics, carry the weight of reSistant capacity bestowed upon them by the critic.

Framp.ton properly credi~~ Liane Lefaivre and Alex Tzonis with first pro-p'0smg cfltlcal regionalism as an architectural strategy in their 1981 article . The Gfld and the Pathway." Curiously, he fails to comment on a point he lI1cludeS,tn a quote from that article: "No new architecture can emerge without a new kmd of relations bervveen designer and user, without new kinds of programs."". By dropping these concerns from his discussion, Frampton offers a reVISIonist model ,?f ~~itical regionalism which misses an opponunity to expand the concept of crmcal perception of reality" by rooting it in social practICe.

The unfinished task of the 1960s thrust toward a social architecture is to engage the critical power of architectural language in the project of social transformanon by linking formal image to material life. To accomplish th' the derivation of architectural form must be rooted in daily life and soci:;

~ractlce, incl~ding the architect-client relationship. In this manner the re-Sistant potential of architecture's symbolic systems may be more accessible to a diverse public and not limited to academic and professional audiences. An architecture of resistance that starts with an involvement in the material world can push the formal boundaries of social architecture beyond func-tIOnalism and transparency to explOit the cultural force of architectural rep-resentation. The examples that follow describe a representational strate .

h h . I' k gy m w I~ . s,l~ns are 10 ed to social practice through a process of community partlClpatton that expands the palette of critical regionalism.

FORMS OF RESISTANCE: ARCHITECTURE AND DAILY LIFE

The experience of daily life is inscribed across a wide landscape, encom-passmg the metropoli~n region, the City, the neighborhood, and the dwelling. Although the architect s Intervention is typically at the building and neigh-borhood level, recent II1lttalIves such as the "traditional neighborhood d _

I " d h " d e ve op~le~~ an t e pe estrian pocket" have resuscitated interest in town plannmg. These proposals focus welcome attention on issues of rational land use and transportation policy, but in the context of speculative devel-

Forms 0/ Resistance 17