Architecture for our times

Susana and I had the opportunity to exchange ideas with many African architects at the conference in Kumasi, Ghana. Here's one we didn't meet: Tanzanian-born architect David Adjaye has a lot to tell us about the meanings of buildings in all parts of the world.

Here, David Adjaye talks with Thelma Golden about architecture in contemporary culture and what buildings can be in the twenty-first century. From “Stories from the Near Future,” the 2008 New Yorker Conference.Constructing Culture.

See also Adjaye Associates web.

Fish story

Yesterday a man handed me two fish. He was on his bicycle and I was walking to buy the paper, but it was nearly 2, when morning ends in Carboneras, and the shop owner had already closed up to go home to fix dinner. The fish were fresh, staring up from the basket of the bicycle. "Cook them a la plancha," he said. "Sorry I don't have a bag -- but you're going home, right? Just carry them in your hand."

I was mighty pleased to receive them, even though I don't even know what species they are and I wasn't sure how to clean them. Nobody who saw me thought it the least odd that I was carrying two red-scaled fish.

This is Carboneras. In a city, I probably wouldn't know somebody who worked counting and baling fish in the port. Here, though, almost all the social currents intersect and sometimes create new eddies. In this case, we'd come together in our library reading club and public recitations as "personas libro" -- my fish friend does very good versions of Lorca. And we know each other well enough to know what to do or say that will please. In much of Spain, life is like that -- communal, where (as a Nigerian friend described life in Africa) "everybody's business is everybody's business." Madrid is different, but not entirely different, I think. In the busy business sections of the city, and in the areas devoted to the tourist trade, and the shopping areas, contacts are impersonal and often brusque. In the more stable neighborhoods, where people see the same people day after day, we at least pretend to keep the small town courtesies, but it takes more effort to keep the eddies whirling.

And then there is that other river, mysterious and mighty, flowing through Madrid and disturbing all the other currents. But it's time to dam this metaphor. It's just that the national political currents, pardon me, I mean forces, are pushing in such a woeful direction, toward privatizing everything and destroying what remains of community, that I wanted to take about something else. Like my friend's gift of the fish. [I learned on Monday that they were besugo a la pinta.]

Cities and Revolutions in Latin America

A call-for-proposals (CFP) with this title caught my attention, because it's something I've been pondering for practically all my adult life -- since my days in rebellious Caracas back in the 1960s. The session organizers, Federica Morelli and Jordana Dym, have also given it a lot of thought. But if their summary of current historiography is right, I have some doubts about the split between pre-modern (colonial and 19th century) and 20th-21st century views of city dynamics.

They write that scholars specializing in the colonial period "tend to emphasize cities as places of social revolution and economic dynamism. Scholars of independence and the nineteenth century see cities as places for popular mobilization (riots) and organized political opposition (juntas, coups) by elites. Scholars of the twentieth century and beyond tend to contrast Indian or peasant villages with the 'mega-cities' of Latin America where factories take in internal and external migrants, housewives demonstrate against dictators, gangs use urban institutions to organize, and politicians develop popular support that launches presidential careers."

The cut seems to be ca. 1920 or so. As described above, “colonialist” & 19th c. histories both see cities as “as places of social revolution and economic dynamism,” including riots & coups. That is, the rapid, innovative social dynamic of “cities,” built places with the greatest density of population – and an inertia of change – is clearly differentiated from the inertia of much slower change in their rural hinterlands, where Marx remarked on “the idiocy of rural life.” It is in the 20th century that ‘megacities’ incorporate the urban v. rural conflict within the urban density: that large numbers of rural people “invade” the cities, that is, are impelled to migrate there, but are not fully assimilated culturally.

Q1: Is this view of the premodern periods generally accurate? In Argentina and Venezuela (the 2 countries whose social history I know best), in the late colonial period and throughout the first century of independence, pressure for change came mostly from the rural areas: montoneras (rebellious bands of mounted men) in Argentina, in Venezuela the many rural revolts leading to changes in the central government in Caracas. The men who came to power, almost always by revolution (i.e., rural revolt), included Páez, a cattleman from the southern llanos, followed by the Monagas brothers (especially José Tadeo) from the rural east, others from rural Miranda or Falcón, and then a whole series of cattlemen and shepherds from the western Andes, especially the state of Táchira, where there was no city of important size.

The earlier independence wars were also largely rural affairs. The assemblies of dignitaries who declared independence met in cities (Tucumán, a quite small provincial capital in the remote north or Argentina, and the colonial capitals were usually centers of conspiracy, but the troops and very soon their officers came from smaller towns & villages). And even earlier, in Peru, Mexico and other places, the most serious threats to the colonial administration had come from small towns and villages.

Q2: In 20th & 21st centuries, why has the assimilation of rural migrants been such a difficult issue? Why have they formed villas miserias (Argentina), barrios (Venezuela), favelas (Brazil), campamentos (Chile), etc., that is, dense and precarious shantytowns surrounding and in interstices within the city, but seemingly antagonistic to its urban culture? Here are some likely explanations:

• Too many arriving too suddenly
• Rejection of the newcomers by the urbanites
• Preference of the newcomers for maintaining family ties & other traditions

The problem with the first hypothesis is that Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico City, Lima, Sao Paulo and other great cities have had much more difficulty assimilating their own rural compatriots than they have had with the large numbers of foreigners who began arriving around the beginning of the 20th century. I don't mean that all those Italians, Gallegos, Japanese, and Eastern European Jews were welcomed by the native urbanites, but that many of them found oportunities in their new environment to become effective urban actors, whether in politics, arts, business, or crime. The rural-urban migrants mostly did not.

I'm tempted to submit a proposal, even though I probably won't be able to get to Lyon (France) next August (I plan to be in the U.S. around that time). At the very least, I wanted to develop some ideas about it.

See the call for papers, IXth International Conference on Urban History, Lyon, France, 27th - 30th August 2008: Cities and Revolutions in Latin America

Back home in Spain

We just got back to our place in Carboneras last night, and we're still a little weary from all the travel: Buenos Aires, Caracas, Bogotá, back to Buenos Aires, and then Madrid. Four grand cities. For pictures and a brief report of some of what we saw in Caracas (in Spanish), check out Política y espacio: El "23 de Enero" and Otra visión de Caracas in Lecturas y Lectores. In coming days I'll post some other notes (in English) on South America today, and how the region has changed since my first acquaintance nearly 45 years ago.

More capitalism, please -- Are you sure?

Terrible things are happening all over the world. Rainforests are disappearing, icecaps melting, the air is becoming unbreathable, and the Chinese are poisoning our toothpaste. And besides all that, there are people who want to kill us, although they don't even know us. Just in today's El País, lead stories include "50 big cities [just in Spain!] exceed air contamination limits," new suicide attacks in Baghdad and in northern Iraq,and terror in the United Kingdom perpetrated (apparently) by physicians who are supposed to be saving lives. And inside there's a map of all the places too dangerous to visit on your vacation.

What's going on, and what should we do? Besides duck, I mean. Is global capitalism the problem? Or is it the solution? And is there anything we can do about it, either way?

Scholar, Richard. Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) gives us arguments on all sides. James Wolfensohn, the intelligent and enterprising past-president of the World Bank (1995-2005, before the lamentable Paul Wolfowitz), is well aware of the problems but convinced that only capitalism can solve them: he gives us lots of persuasive examples of how fomenting capitalism among the poor has improved lives from Rio de Janeiro to South Asia (micro credits, for example, using capital scraped together by the poor themselves, or provision of basic services like water for which the poor are willing to pay a small fee). Meanwhile, Stuart Hall and David Harvey have no doubts that global capitalism is creating poverty, inequality, frustration and massive social violence -- not to mention (curiously, they don't) environmental degradation. Changing the system will be a massive job but not impossible, thinks Harvey. But it will require challenging the very concepts of rights and social justice that Wolfensohn buys into.

Michael Likosky mostly agrees with Harvey and Hall, even as he accepts Wolfensohn's record of good accomplishments -- but raises the moral issue, of whether it is right to make the poor pay for infrastructural improvements that mostly benefit, economically, the big companies that build them?

And then there's Peter Hall, no relation genetically or ideologically to Stuart. He thinks things aren't all that bad, and anyway there's no alternative to capitalism. (He doesn't buy Harvey's argument.)

The only sensible answer is, yes, of course, to all of them. "Capitalism" is many things, all operating simultaneously, with notoriously contradictory effects. The clearest definition of it I know is by Ellen Wood: "a system in which goods and services, down to the most basic necessities of life, are produced for profitable exchange, where even human labor power is a commodity for sale in the market, and where, because all economic actors are dependent on the market, the requirements of competition and profit maximization are the fundamental rules of life."

Such a system is not entirely evil. It has proven very efficient at capital accumulation, which is needed for investment in anything, including good things like those listed by Wolfensohn. And a lot of perfectly awful things, enumerated by Stuart Hall. More important, and in support of Harvey, capitalism (as defined by Wood) is NOT inevitable or unchangeable. Maintaining it obviously requires constant "inputs" of energy and capital in propaganda, police and military repression (think Iraq), an elaborate state and judicial structure (for example, to deny rights to Bush & Blair's prisoners of war). This is because, basically, it goes against those most common human instincts of solidarity and group loyalties, instincts that are likely to break out whenever the State relaxes its vigilance. Nor is the system everywhere in effect (think of how decisions are made in Saudi Arabia, for example, or in your family), but because it is in effect in ruling sectors of the most powerful countries of the globe, its operations in some ways condition everything else.

But our discussions of that great ball of meanings we call "globalization" will get nowhere as long as we use such catch-all terms as "globalization" or even "capitalism." We can sit around nodding our heads in agreement with those who use these words the way we like, but to do anything useful we are going to have to pierce the rhetorical fog and challenge cherished formulations. Harvey seems to be pointing us in the right direction, though so far he is only waving vaguely. And it will only be worth following that path if we can deliver solutions at least as good as Wolfensohn's.

The future of the world

They took all the trees,
put 'em in a tree museum / And they charged the people / a dollar and a half just to see 'em.
(Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi, 1970)

Photo of "Protected Ancient Tree. Sister of Sequoia." Brisbane, Australia.
Photo: Glenn Weiss

Word magic and dizzying change in Brazil

Andrade, Mário de. 1984 [1928]. Macunaíma. Translated by E. A. Goodland. New York: Random House.

This is an amazing, perplexing book by a poet, folklorist and musicologist, so unlike anything else I've read recently that I didn't know what to make of it. The publisher of the translation calls it a "precursor of magic realism," but Andrade is not interested here in anything like "realism." It is more "real" than that, in another way, the reality of dreams. Most of all it is an endless inventive series of linguistic displays, so it seems pointless to read it in translation -- though I thought the translation (very fluid, very funny) must be brilliant. The story is just a device to get the game going, but there is a story: Macunaíma is a kind of monster or demigod (Andrade calls him a "Hero"), born magically into the Tapanhuma tribe in the Amazon jungle, at a time that is both the beginning of the world and the modern era. He is a trickster who loves to fuck, and does so at every opportunity. He is also a shape-shifter, turning himself into noxious insects or birds, or from a mewling infant to a strapping young man with a powerful sex urge. He is present at the creation -- and sometimes is himself the creator -- of animals, plants, constellations and pasttimes. For example, he introduces (unintentionally) the addiction to coffee, the boll weevil, and football, "three of the main pests in the country today." Stumbling into an enchanted pool, he magically turns from black to white with blond hair and blue eyes, but there is not enough magic water left for his brothers to do the same: one just turns red and the other remains black. Now of the right complexion for the city, he travels to São Paulo and discovers that he has to learn two new languages, formal written Portuguese and popular spoken Brazilian -- and, being a hero with divine powers, he does. To confront a giant, he goes to the orchard where pistols grow on trees and shakes one loose -- but it turns out to be useless against the giant's magic. He is bitten by fire ants, pursued by monsters, and killed at least twice, one time from shock after a monkey tricks him into smashing his own testicles. Along the way, you get a sense of the enormous changes occurring in Brazil in the 1920s. And you also pick up some useful information. Did you ever wonder where the sun goes at night? Why, she goes home! Her name is Vei and she has three daughters -- one of whom marries Macunaíma, but the relationship ends when on that same day she discovers him in bed with another trollop. Anyway, the sun and her daughters live in a house on Avenida Branco in Rio de Janeiro. Just so you know.

Some day I hope to be able to read it in the original. It must be amazingly funny. When I do, I may come back to this page, which has helped me glimpse what I'm missing.

Thinking about space

Harvey, David. 2006. Spaces of Global Capitalism. London, New York: Verso.

2 lectures & an essay presented at Heidelberg in 2004.

“Neo-liberalism and the restoration of class power” is about how Reagan & Thatcher led the neo-con or neo-liberal counterrevolution, so that “Freedom” (as in “Operation Iraqi Freedom”) means freedom for the likes of Haliburton, Bechtel, BP et al. Not new information, but coherently assembled.

“Notes towards a theory of uneven geographical development” is just that, notes and rather rough ones, where he is exploring how “several overlapping ways of thinking about” uneven development (why some places are so much richer than others) can be harnessed to a common theory. He lists these more conventional approaches as
1) Historicist/diffusionist interpretations (the poorer places just haven’t caught up yet)
2) “Development of underdevelopment” (poverty and political weakness in poor areas are deliberately constructed by corporations & governments wanting to exploit their resources at the cheapest possible price)
3) Environmentalist explanations, such as Jared Diamond’s (some places were just luckier with their climates and other natural resources)
Harvey thinks all three approaches have merit, i.e., explain parts of the phenomena, and wants to integrate them into one theory. But, as he acknowledges, he still has work to do.



Most interesting (to me) was the essay he calls “Space as a key word,” as a proposed addition to Raymond Williams’ famous book.

Just what is “space”? It has to be something entirely different to a building contractor or to Stephen Hawking, and neither of them (usually) means the same thing as an artist or poet who talks about “conceptual space.” As a geographer, Harvey is professionally interested in space, and wants to consider all its types and how they impinge on one another. He is most impressed by (a) a three-fold typology he himself came up with in a book more than 30 years ago, & (b) Lefebvre’s 3-fold distinction (see below), which he combines in a three-by-three matrix (nine cells) which don’t prove anything, but do generate some interesting new possibilities for thinking about space.

Harvey’s 1973 classification was “absolute space” as “a ‘thing in itself’ with an existence independent of matter” ; “relative space” or how real, materially existing objects relate to one another; and finally “relational space… regarded in the manner of Leibniz, as being contained in objects in the sense that an object can be said to exist only insofar as it contains and represents within itself relationships to other objects.”

I think I get that last one, but that surely is not the clearest possible way to describe it (and I hope we don’t have to buy into Leibniz’s “monad” theory). In political thought, “the left” is such a relational space. It has no real, material existence, and has no meaning except in relation to the political “right.” The second one, relative space, is no problem either: we are talking about real things, like mountains of hard rock or the jumble of objects on my desk, where one thing may be on top of, or under, or behind, etc. some other thing (especially when I’m trying to find it). I’m having a little more trouble with “absolute space” but maybe he’s thinking of something like (as though there were anything like) the universe. Space as conceived by physicists, I suppose.

Harvey paraphrases Lefebvre’s categories as (1) the space of experience and of perception open to physical touch and sensation (what the building contractor or the guys in the storage depot mean by “space,” how many real physical things will fit and how); (2) the representation of space (e.g., paintings, photographs or diagrams, or the hand-signals you make when telling somebody how to get to the Angelika Movie Theater); and (3) spaces of representations, or “the lived space of sensations, the imagination, emotions, and meanings incorporated into how we live day by day.”
I’m not sure that Lefebvre’s categories are all that different from Harvey’s other set, especially Lefebvre’s “spaces of representations” and “meanings” vs. Harvey’s (or Leibniz’s) “relational space.” And if they are not very different, then setting them up as a three-by-three matrix is not likely to yield much new information. But it is a mind-stretching exercise that architects, who must deal with all 9 cells, probably use without thinking about it.

Harvey, David. 1973. Social Justice and the City. London: Edward Arnold.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Translated by D. Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell.
Williams, Raymond. 1985. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

About David Harvey

Images: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from Wikipedia; Solar Earths from the BBC.

The city beautiful, the city dangerous

Canberra, Australia's capital, is one of several areas hit in the past few days by devastating fires causing great property damage and loss of life. An Australian colleague forwarded letters to the editor of the Melbourne Age discussing the connections between the city's much-praised design and the special severity of the devastation there. Here's one of them.

21 Jan 2003 p. 15
Crispin Hull, 'The surprising dividend to be found among the ashes'

'Canberra has the best infrastructure of any city in Australia. It is the best planned city in Australia. Yet the bushfire at the weekend claimed hundreds of homes and let a community stunned.

'Why? The key lies in the word itself - bushfire.

'In Australia, bushfires often claim the odd rural dwelling or a few houses when they reach the edge of a town or city.

'But Canberra is different. It is known as the Bush Capital. And if your city is bush, then it will be subject to bushfire in a way that other conurbations will not.

'In other places, the fire hits the edge of town and stops. In Canberra at
the weekend, the very fact that the city has been so beautifully planned was its nemesis. The flames did not meet a fire-resistant slab of urban development - of tar, cement and bricks. Instead they met trees.

Greenhouse in the sky

A Certain Person (of whom you have seen mention here before) has been most annoyed by the biased reporting and lack of architectural acumen regarding projects for rebuilding at the World Trade Center site. Most recent annoyance was today's NYT editorial, which inspired her to fire off this guided missive to the Editor:

Re: Next Steps for Ground Zero

Crucial decisions will be made about schemes for Ground Zero without a considered public discussion about the context for the memorial, the public space at street level and the proposal�s contribution to the skyline. For example: in looking at Daniel Libeskind�s scheme, could someone please explain why the memorial should share its site with the rattling trains and rather large PATH station, why should it be entered from a museum hovering overhead, and why New York City needs a 40 story high decorative greenhouse that will require substantial admission fees, and skyscrapers whose tops ape Johnson/Burgee�s 1976 Pennzoil Place in Houston, TX?

Susana Torre
New York, January 21,2003

City and Anti-City, 3

My current writing project is a book titled Latin American Architecture and Urbanism: A Critical History, co-written with architect and designer Susana Torre and to be published by W. W. Norton. You can view a partial bibliography of one aspect of the book, originally worked up for a course for New York University's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Comments and suggestions welcome. If you are as keenly interested in the topic as I am, and if you read Portuguese, check out "Urban Data", especially (but not only) for new studies on Brazil's urbanism.

City and Anti-City, 2

Speaking of 9/11 (see below), to read my account of living through that day, go to my five-day journal. My accomplice and I were only a few blocks way when we heard the first plane hit, and -- well, it's all there in the journal.

City and Anti-City

On Saturday, January 25, at 8 p.m., I shall be reading the opening chapters of my new novel, A Gift for the Sultan. In it, the greatest city in the Western world and its culture are under attack by intransigent Muslim warriors originally from Central Asia. The city is Constantinople, the attackers are (mainly) Ottoman Turks, the year is 1402. The conflict still reverberates down to our day, right through the events of 9/11. To hear the beginning of the story of the 15-year old Byzantine princess and the Ottoman war chief who is charged with delivering her to the sultan, come to Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 421 Fifth Avenue (near corner of 8th Street), Brooklyn NY.