Francis Fukuyama’s thesis on ‘The End of History’ is widely credited
with sealing the fate of the ‘historical thinking’, stripping the veneer off of
any ideological alternative to liberal capitalism and crashing the
meta-narratives of the 20th century into self-reflective panic. When Rem
Koolhaas, the doyen of ‘S,M,L and XL’, was appointed curator of the 14th
International Architecture Exhibition, in his 70th year, one sensed
a similar wave rising in ‘architectural thinking’. Presented as a choral
research on architecture, ‘Fundamentals’ the title of this year’s Biennale by Koolhaas,
Professor, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, looked at
architectures past, present and future. Firstly asking the national pavilions
to explore the historic impact of the last 100 years of modernism in ‘Absorbing
Modernity’. The present day is canonised in fifteen booklets on ‘Elements of
Architecture’ that dominate the Central Pavilion as well, charting the impact
of 20th century industrialisation on the built environment, where
now escalators, lifts and toilets dictate the way architecture is programmed.
Architectural futures is tackled in the Monditalia where Italy is the empathetic
host for testing and consuming culture, witnessed in 82 films and 41 architectural
projects with space for first time participations from the world of Dance, Music, Theatre and Cinema. For this
Biennale the image of the architect and products of their sole endeavours – the
‘masterpiece’, is secondary, in place shared collaborations dominate,
either technical, social or ideological such as neo advent-garde groups Superstudio,
founded in Florence in 1966 whose ‘The Secret Life of the Continuous Movement’,
shown at the 1978 Biennale, advanced towards symbolic representations of
architecture where, “Architecture exists in time as salt exists in water”,
where the only possible architecture, then is our own life.
It seems that to
popularise architecture Koolhaas feels the need for the architect to disappear which
has been a reoccurring theme in his oeuvre. As Bart Verschaffel states in, ‘The
Survival Ethics of Rem Koolhaas’ on receiving the Rotterdam-Maaskant Prize
in 1986, ‘it is a remarkable feeling, but I am not an I. Throughout my career I
have only written the word ‘I’ once, and that was in the sentence “I am a ghost
writer”. A ghostwriter is someone who does not appear on stage himself, but
remains in the background and speaks in the name of someone else’. This
statement is unexpected and perhaps even sounds suspect from someone who has
grown into on the most famous and mediagenic architecture stars. Yet in that
same 1986 speech, he heralded this ‘stardom’ as ‘a strategy’: ‘The mythology of
the architect begs a reconstruction plan.’[1]
In the opening Biennale
week debating, ‘5000 years of architecture and
technology, what next?’, with CEO and inventor Tony Fidall of Nest Thermostats, Koolhaas, reflected on
digital technologies desire to commodify architecture as well as predict and
better human behavior. “I
drive an old car and it frequently breaks down. Then I am asked to rent a new
car that predicts my new speed and makes me behave better and be a better
driver, almost all the aspirational words we use now include ‘better ‘ ‘more
responsible’. what about transgression?” By referring to ‘In praise of
shadows’ by Junichirō
Tanizaki comparing Japanese homes to those in Europe, where in “household
implements: we prefer colours compounded by darkness, they prefer the colours
of sunlight”[2] Koolhaas
asks, “why deny these
challenging qualities that also hold beauty?” and are now needed to break the current global homogeneity perpetrated by
digital technology.
Reflecting on the merits of the
Nest Thermostat, Koolhaas posits ‘Well I have mixed feelings, I admire the
intelligence and the use as a tool to be frugal and responsible but also a
fundamental reluctance on my part to see architecture turned into products, and
the relentless commercialization of architectural elements”. In response to
Fidall’s assumpation that, “what you do will last for centuries – what I do
ages quicker within the year”, Koolhaas reveals, “the exhibition on the one
hand shows the huge decrease in flexibility of materials, but in terms of
appearance we are in the same world of accelerated ageing” where, “confidence
has crumbled, the permanence of architecture is a pathetic fiction now, even if
buildings last 25 or 30 years it is a miracle”.
For Koolhaas, the Biennale is a mirror on his thinking and desire to
challenge the popular myths, perpetrated by the modernist narrative of the
architect maestro, the sole author of a permanent architecture, fortified by manifestos
and classical references to ancien regime. Koolhaas shows us that what was a
‘gift’ for one generation is now a ‘given’ for another – a set change, no more
than part of a performance. Famously credited with stating, ‘it’s not me, it’s
made by OMA’ Koolhaas’s design approach, recently unpacked by Albena Yaneva in
‘An Ethnography of Design’ states, ‘Just as it is impossible to understand
Rembrandt’s work without understanding the aspects of his studio practice along
with his specific handling of paint, the theoretical treatment of his models and
his relationship with the market, it is impossible to understand Koolhaas’s
work without considering his design practice.’[3]
Yaneva uncannily describes the Koolhaas contribution where architecture lies;
‘The entire OMA design work revolves around life as it is staged in the office;
in model making, in the travels of the model, in studio events and situations
of reuse. There, the architects are performers and spectators and architecture
becomes part of the performance that we view’.[4]
[1] Verschaffel, B. The Survival Ethics of Rem Koolhaas: The First Houses by OMA. (NAi Publishers 2003)
[2] Tanizaki, J. In Praise of Shadows. p.46 (Japan Quarterly 1954)
[3] Yaneva, A. Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An Ethnography of Design. (010 Rotterdam 2009)
[4] ibid p. 102
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